The first method takes me about a minute per word. I chew on the words at breakfast, dream about them on a long run, wrestle with them during a sleepless night, and, eventually, have a vision of them in their final form. Then, I type it up.

For straightforward topics, the typing and publication can be swift once I sit at the keyboard. For more difficult essays, the words must first sit for days and weeks before a final effort can be made to make it word-perfect.

Share the Tisatsar Newslettr

The second method is very different.

I write much faster, at least 10 times the output1 per hour of effort, and sometimes 50 times the output. But, I do so in my own style.

• I occasionally switch to kanji2. There are two main reasons for this.

  • For effect. The jarring context-shift conveys meaning in a way that a running text could not provide. It also makes it easy to skip over that content.

  • To refer to complex concepts in a single “word”. For most readers, something like 用两种语言说复杂的词3 will be a single “token” in processing that they don’t understand.

• I have a few of my own words. For example, I have found need for 容易的 words to replace “infrared” and “ultraviolet”, and I have settled on xantham and mogue for those new4 names.

• I use color-tones. They are referred to as colors, but “linguistic register” is probably the more accurate term for them.

  • xantham (infrared) - overconfident. and often wrong as a result of that

  • red - emphasized. “red for angry”, but also red for “yes, I did check the historical record”

  • orange - starts every response with "well, actually,". sometimes points out a fatal flaw in the previous argument. other times, it is a non-sequitur objection that is, technically, true.

  • yellow - doggerel. often straw-man arguments, non-sequitur famous quotations, etc. possibly misleading, either by accident or by design.

  • green - "technical" information. explanations of unusual syntax.

  • blue - reserved for post production. information that is “more correct” than the other text because it was added in post-production.

  • violet - material spoken5 aloud.

  • mogue (ultraviolet) - material relating to the state of the world.

  • gray - material relating to the past. detached and nostalgic

What does it look like? I’m working on a public version at https://shragafeivel.com/ …

There are lots of hefty words being thrown out to describe it in the media: mutiny, revolt, rebellion, attempted coup d'état.

Our take is that of the events being less-substantial: it was a routine military convoy, with a bit of “mutiny” drama staged for the Russian press, which the Western press thoroughly misinterpreted and over-hyped.

What Happened

Nothing about the "official" and public story about the Day of Wagner makes sense. My initial summary of the official story:

After weeks of verbal escalations, Prigozhin declares open revolt around 24 JUN 0100 (all times Moscow time). At 5AM, the troops enter into Rostov-on-Don, and "take control" of the city (or one military facility) without resistance.

The troops then start a 650 mile journey from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow. The goal? Presumably, a decapitation strike against Putin. Except, rumor has it that Putin wisely flew to "an undisclosed location".

The Russian military set up blockades on the highway at the Oka river (about 70 miles south of downtown Moscow), and basically dared Prigozhin to do his worst.

In response, Prigozhin ... surrendered completely before midnight, accepting exile in Belarus. The various Wagner troops are presumably going to follow the pre-announced plan of being rolled into the regular Russian army on July 1.

J’Accuse!

Why would Prigozhin engage in a military effort akin to treason, only to suddenly stop?

How could Lukashenko, on the spur of the moment, negotiate an agreement between two men feuding for weeks, just in time for the convoy to stop at the exit1 to Belarus? And, that agreement conveniently has Wagner troops relocate to Belarus?

Why would the Russian military in Rostov-on-Don have stood down completely, unless they were instructed to do so?

Most critically: if Prigozhin was really attempting to use military force against Putin, how is he still alive?

The answer: it was a drama for the Russian media. There was no real conflict; or, rather, whatever real conflict existed was resolved before 24 JUN 2023, with this being its scripted resolution.

J’ACCUSE!

The Real Conflict

For weeks, the media2 has been talking about tensions between Prigozhin and the Russian military.

MOSCOW, June 11 (Reuters) - Russia's most powerful mercenary said on Sunday that his Wagner fighters would not sign any contract with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, publicly refusing an attempt by the defence ministry to bring his fighting force under its sway.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner group, has repeatedly attacked President Vladimir Putin's top military brass for what he casts as treachery for failing to fight the war in Ukraine properly. (ref. Reuters)

Since then, Prigozhin has been making statements of increasing hostility. So a declaration of open revolt came as no surprise.

But, with the benefit of 72 hours of hindsight, it is clear the resolution to the power struggle was “Prigozhin moves to Belarus”. There is no reason to believe this was a spur-of-the-moment resolution. I think he knew he was heading to Belarus when he sent 10000 troops3 there.

Schrodinger’s Coup

All coups start as Schrodinger4 coups. Will there be an attempted coup d'état, or not?

At a certain point, the uncertainty changes. There is a coup attempt in progress: will it be successful?

The facts are certain on one point: the events of 24 JUN 2023 never reached the point of changing from the first type of uncertainty to the second type.

As far as the first type of uncertainty: staging a fake coup has a risk of inciting an actual coup. But when the events are scripted ahead of time, and the military convoy has no chance of achieving any military goals, is it really an attempted coup?

The Precautionary Principle

There are certain matters where the media is inherently conservative in its coverage.

Take the recent incident involving a submersible exploring the Titanic. The US military and independent experts were all nearly certain the sub imploded even before the story reached the news media. But, until there was photographic evidence of the debris, the media almost unanimously stuck to the story that the vessel “could be stuck or trapped” and running a timer on “how long the oxygen would last”.

This is because of the precautionary principle: don’t say that a person is dead until you see the body5.

When Prigozhin has been saying for weeks that he might turn on Putin, and then he says he is turning on Putin, and then he sends 10000 Wagner troops onto the streets of Rostov-on-Don, the media must assume it is a possible coup or civil war until it is proven otherwise.

Now, after such an anti-climactic resolution, we are starting to prove otherwise.

But What About?

I raised this theory on the latest ACX open thread, where it did not get a warm reception.

Astral Codex Ten

Open Thread 282

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3 years ago · 33 likes · 621 comments · Scott Alexander

But, an appeal to “a majority of the comments disagree” is always6 a logical error. In this case, several of the loudest arguments are blatantly inaccurate.

There is one point that I must emphasize first: many of the news reports about Russia are, ultimately, sourced to the Russian equivalent of 4chan. It is a drop dead certainty that some of the incidents described on 24 JUN 2023 did not happen as they were presented.

the Appeal to US Intelligence

If this was fake, why didn’t Biden, the CIA, or anyone else say so?

Biden himself answered this on Monday. The US position is that this was an internal affair of the Russian Federation, and the US government would not be meddling in internal Russian affairs.

“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said during an event at the White House on Monday. “We’re going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend’s events and the implications for Russia and Ukraine. But it’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going.” (ref. The Manchester Guardian)

the Appeal to Law

If this was fake, then why are there criminal charges against Prigozhin?

Because criminal charges against top political actors in Russia exist exactly when Putin wants them to exist. And, the fact that the “coup/mutiny” was contrived does not imply that the underlying power-struggle was fake.

the Appeal against Conspiracy

You’re just promoting a conspiracy theory!

In modern English, the term “conspiracy theory” has two meanings. It can mean either “a theory that has been proven false” or “a theory that involves a conspiracy”.

It is a grave logical error to conflate those meanings and conclude “any theory that involves a conspiracy is provably false”.

In this case: we know there is a conspiracy. It is called “the government of Russia”. They are conspiring to win a war against Ukraine.

the Appeal to Putin’s Honesty

If this was fake, then why would Putin have called Prigozhin a traitor?

Because Putin is lying as part of a drama he scripted.

the Appeal to Roads

If this was fake, then why would Putin block the roads?

First, even as part of a scripted drama, they would have to put some effort into it looking real.

The Russians have a saying: doveryai, no proveryai. “Trust, but verify”. Sending troops to block one bridge is a very minor cost that would completely neutralize any path for Prigozhin’s forces to quickly reach Moscow. No matter how scripted this was, Putin would have been paranoid enough to ensure Prigozhin did not have the opportunity to go off-script.

As far as photos of backhoes tearing up Russian roads - those were either photo ops, misguided local officials, or pure fake news.

the Appeal to Blood

If this was fake, then what about the crashed aircraft and the dozen dead Russian airmen?

To start with, we must question “did that actually happen”. Pics (+lat/lon) or it didn’t happen.

We do have that for one alleged incident, courtesy of “OSINTtechnical” on Twitter. I am familiar with that account, and it is more reliable than 4chan, but still subject to all the inaccuracies of rapid coverage.

This story has two problems. First: the official story says that Wagner shot down aircraft that were attacking them. But would an “airborne command post” have offensive capabilities?

Second: check a map.

The provided lat/lon (which the BBC is reporting as near Kantemirovka) is the red marker. It is much closer to the (pre-conflict) Ukraine border than the M4. The convoy had absolutely nothing to do with an airplane crash at that location.

Was it other Wagner troops? Ukrainian troops? Pilot error? Was OSINTtechnical wrong about the location? I don’t know. But, what we have is clearly not evidence that people died because of the Wagner convoy.

the Appeal to Mystery

It doesn’t have to make sense. As Churchill said, Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

This is just sticking one’s head in the sand. It is also somewhat self-contradictory: we can’t know what happened, yet we know the other story *is* what happened.

the Appeal to the Other Shoe

There was a back-room coup effort beyond what the media could see and report on. Prigozhin is going to accidentally fall out of a window real soon now.

Unlike the other appeals, I can’t dismiss this one. It is certainly possible. Various “the KGB told both Putin and Prigozhin to shut up and comply” theories are similarly possible.

Ultimately, whether this was a mutiny or a rebellion or an attempted coup or a nothingburger may be more a question of linguistics and aesthetics than facts. But one thing appears certain: the Wagner division moving up the M4 was not a military threat. It was just a convoy.

Today, I am less convinced in the value of this “investment”. The crypto ecosystem has an aura of “abandon ship” these days. Ever since somebody told them how Ordinals work, Bitcoin has been even more of a garbage fire than the rest of the space.

Crypto is doomed. There is nothing left to do now but cash out.

Gemini: Thanks for ringing the bell

News from our Bitcoin correspondent Alan Lee:

It was when I got an email from Gemini that they were listing “Pepecoin” that I saw the game was up. Last year, the winning entrant in the meme competition was “happy dog”. This year, the winning entrant is “angry frog”1.

Bitcoin Bobbles

Somebody pointed out that you can store small amounts of data on the blockchain. I realized this years ago, and noted that a valuable application would be storing checksums in a reliably-timestamped way. But, rather than use that space to write valuable checksums, people would rather do some NFT game called “ordinals”.

What are ordinals?

Molly White

Issue 20 – These things happen

It’s been a fairly busy week, with several bits of news out of the SEC, a couple of crypto project hacks, various developments in ongoing legal cases, and a Senate hearing on crypto. I also spent last Friday (the 10th) at a workshop at Harvard titled “Web3: What don’t we know about it yet?”. There I participated in a conversation with the more crypto-op…

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3 years ago · 43 likes · 16 comments · Molly White

Bitcoin is not going to find the will to adapt; it will instead slowly wither and die. I am abandoning my previous $7000-$10000 valuation of Bitcoin. There is no longer any price at which I would purchase Bitcoin.

Which means liquidating my Gemini account. Let’s check the damage.

Bitcoin: It is at US$27572. I own 0.01664 Bitcoin, purchased at an average price of US$59170. Out of that $1000, I get $451.11 back. A -55% return.

Ethereum: The ETH gets me around $410 back from my thousand. A -59% return. Although, I did actually spend ETH once (on the ticket to VeeCon).

The cash I left as cash had the best return. A 0% return.

And the Sushicoin? Apparently at some other part of the dark web.

Subscribe now

Coinbase: Another Pillar of Salt

I find my eleven million SHIB to be worth $95.23. And that only in selling it to some other man who2 wants to set his own money on fire.

Coinbase knows they are a casino; the UI label is not “ACH transfer” but “cash out”. Apparently I bought in early enough here to have turned a profit.

Robin Hood: A wicker man

Do you own Bitcoin at Robin Hood?

No. I own what they think is Bitcoin. This distinction may potentially become interesting in the future.

This place is becoming more like Twitter (pre-Musk Twitter), and I don’t like that. And the limitations of the medium are becoming stifling. But, for certain topics (such as the 2024 Presidential Election), our coverage here will continue, whether we are happy or not.

Insanity from the Self-Declared Gatekeepers

After eight years, the zombie narrative of “just ignore Trump” still has credence among people who should know better:

• Michael Fanone, for Rolling Stone: “CNN Is Hosting a Town Hall for a Guy Who Tried to Get Me Killed”

• Perry Bacon Jr., for the Washington Post: “Some media critics and people on the left have said that the town hall legitimizes a man who, among his many misdeeds, tried to overturn the 2020 election and, effectively, U.S. democracy.”

My take, from a Note:

You people think you are gatekeepers.

And perhaps you are, in that you can invite people into the national narrative.

But Trump has been that narrative for almost a decade. And for that decade, you people have constantly said “if we ignore him, he will go away”.

IT. HASN’T. WORKED.

A plan to combat “4 more years of Trump is a disaster and we must stop it” that relies on nobody talking about him is insanity.

There is a second theory, almost too stupid to put into writing, that suggests the real problem is that media has been too fair to Trump over the past eight years; and if the media were to start being genuinely biased against Trump now, it would surely stop him from being elected in 2024.

Yet Another Kennedy

There is a certain sense that I was hoping for a “new” candidate with gravitas to run in the Democratic primary. Apparently, asking for that candidate to be somebody I liked was too much.

Because there is such a candidate. It is Robert Kennedy Jr., who starts with name recognition and political talent.

Current views of his campaign are a mix between the type of denial that many journalists viewed the 2015 Trump campaign with, and Matt Yglesias types ironically-or-not leaning into the campaign. But (unlike Marianne Williamson) RFK Jr is a serious threat to win multiple primaries against Biden.

In New Hampshire, Biden appears to have established rules prohibiting him from participating. For an octogenarian incumbent who didn’t want to campaign anyway and expected no serious challengers, perhaps this was logical. But now it gives other candidates an easier path to an early win.

Later on, if he maintains a campaign throughout the primary cycle, RFK Jr will possibly be the favorite to win the West Virginia primary. The “Demosaur” voters are moving to the Republican party, but many are still registered Democrats. In 2012, “virtually unknown convicted felon and perennial candidate Keith Judd” got 40% of the vote against Barack Obama.

A New Contender

The efforts to trot out “some dude who is not a politician” to run for President continue.

First was Perry Johnson, who (apart from a ludicrous Super Bowl commercial) does not seem to have the presence or support to make a serious campaign.

Next was Vivek Ramaswamy, who seems to have a lot of under-the-radar support from certain circles of rich people. But, the Newslettr’s position is that he is a charlatan1 and likely to be corrupt if elected.

Now, a new name: Ryan Binkley. He is a serious candidate in the sense that the Des Moines Register has recently run a profile of him. Who is he?

• Some rich dude. He made his money the new-fashioned2 way: his father John started a business with him as a partner, and now, 20 years later, Ryan is the face of the business.

• Religious. He started a “non-denominational” (which, in this context means Charismatic) church in suburban Dallas.

• Previously employed at Proctor and Gamble — a name I much prefer to see over “McKinsey” on a resume.

• There is no point analyzing his political positions yet; at this point in a campaign the press coverage is simply connect-the-dots.

If various evangelical groups in Iowa like him, we could be hearing a lot more from him soon. If they don’t like him, there will be some other person running next month.

Occasionally.

and now, the week’s tisatsar’s1 past few months’ news.

Some Guy from Long Island: Name recognition is everything in politics. And of the 435 US House members, only one2 has more name recognition than George Santos. Despite this publicity, Santos received just one campaign donation in 2023Q1.

Some Other Guy from Long Island: Donald Trump was finally indicted for something. The charges seem “trumped-up” to me. They are, roughly, “making an accounting error as part of committing a felony elsewhere”. Except that second felony, “campaign finance violations”, is something he hasn’t been charged with.

Balloon Narrative: Remember that month where everybody was convinced that a random weather balloon was a secret Chinese spying program? ( ref. CBS ) I certainly didn’t, until I checked my notes. In short: it was always a weather balloon, but the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Media3 wanted to pretend otherwise. So they did.

Confidential Information Narrative: Remember that month where every national politician was discovered to have “classified documents” stored incorrectly? I certainly didn’t, until I checked my notes. Trump, Biden, Pence4 and others were involved. People pretended like it was a big deal, until we moved on.

More recently, a leak of various “Top Secret” documents on Discord has gotten attention. We aren’t looking at them directly5, but have heard that the documents are largely mundane world-affairs reporting, similar to that found in most newspapers.

Musk Madness: I have commented on multiple occasions that it seems like Elon Musk is deliberately6 destroying Twitter. Nothing that has happened in the last few months suggest otherwise. Recently, Twitter disabled the ability for Substack to have Twitter embeds, which will decrease our coverage of that site further.

Super-Villain Narrative: If you asked an 8-year old the worst thing a political candidate could do, “destroy Disney World and replace it with a prison” might be the response. Yet, for some reason, that seems to be Ron DeSantis’s fixation. Of course, he isn’t going to actually do that, and people are likely to forget about this before the 2024 primaries start.

This should disprove any narrative about DeSantis being a unique political genius. But his campaign was never based on that, it was based on “being the only GOP option other than Trump”. Which, he still7 is.

And Finally, a New Thunderdome: Substack has launched its Twitter competitor, Notes.

and finally: 2023 Chess Championship - the world chess championship is half done. There is a certain lack of excitement due to the absence of the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen. However, the matches have been much more exciting, with five decisive results out of seven.

lichess.org is running “Thematic World Championship Arena” tournaments, based on positions from the matches, such as this one for Game 7.

In short: Generative AI is getting better, but it has a long way1 to go. At least six months, and possibly two or three years, before the transformative impact is real. Certainly comedians don’t have to worry about being replaced this year …

Terminology

the Newslettr Style Guide recommends avoiding the term “AI”, as a lifetime of sci-fi novels (as well as IBM commercials) have left the term almost meaningless.

The two most common terms are Generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM). Both of these, roughly, refer to a computer system that uses a neural network trained on a multi-gigabyte corpus of language-content.

ChatGPT is a specific product by the “OpenAI” company. But, much like “Kleenex” and “Google”, it is quickly becoming a generic term for the entire category of product.

I expect that, going forward, there will be a product (and linguistic) distinction between “limited-scope models that can run on your desktop computer” and “large models that run in the cloud and can do almost everything”. This distinction is not yet clear enough for us to be able to recommend specific terms to distinguish them.

The Wrong Approach

Gary Marcus is a fairly reliable contrary indicator of what is happening in the Generative AI space. So when he tweets about an “open letter” calling for a pause in the AI space, it is worth some attention.

In this situation, his take is both wrong and ineffective. There is no need for (nor any possibility of) such a pause. And writing such an open letter is completely ineffective towards the goal of manifesting such a pause.

When your opponents are making a mistake, it is best to ignore them and move on.

A Bad Joke

ChatGPT does quite well at a lot of things2. But long-form humor appears to still be beyond3 it. This was the first answer I got when I asked it to tell the “give us this day our daily chicken” joke; several similar prompts gave equally bad responses.

(apologies for the length; you can stop reading here)

So, there was this Chicken Company that was doing really well, but they wanted to expand their business. They had an idea: what if they could get people to start praying for chicken instead of bread? That way, they could corner the market on chicken sales and dominate the fast food industry. But how were they going to make this happen?

Well, they decided to send somebody to negotiate with the Catholic Church. They figured that if they could get the Church to change the Lord's Prayer to include a reference to chicken, then people would start praying for chicken instead of bread. It was a bold plan, but they were determined to make it work.

So, they sent their best negotiator, a guy named Bob, to meet with the Church officials. Bob was a slick talker and knew how to charm his way through any situation. He was confident that he could get the Church to agree to their proposal.

The negotiations started out smoothly enough. Bob presented the Chicken Company's case, and the Church officials listened politely. But as soon as Bob started suggesting changes to the Lord's Prayer, things started to go off the rails.

The first suggestion was to change "Give us this day our daily bread" to "Give us this day our daily chicken." The Church officials were skeptical, to say the least. They pointed out that bread was a symbol of sustenance and nourishment, and that changing it to chicken didn't make much sense.

Bob, however, was undeterred. He argued that chicken was just as nourishing as bread, and that it would be a great way to promote the Chicken Company's products. The negotiations went back and forth for hours, with both sides digging in their heels.

Finally, after much wrangling and arm-twisting, a compromise was reached. The new version of the Lord's Prayer would read: "Give us this day our daily breaded chicken." It was a compromise that satisfied no one, but it was the best they could do.

Now, all they had to do was get the Pope to ratify the agreement. They arranged a meeting with the Holy Father and explained the new version of the Lord's Prayer to him. To their surprise, the Pope loved the idea. He was a big fan of fried chicken, and he thought the new version of the prayer was a stroke of genius.

So, the Chicken Company had won their battle. They had successfully negotiated a change to one of the most sacred prayers in the Christian faith. But there was one problem: they were losing the Wonder Bread contract. It seemed that every time they tried to expand their business, they ended up losing something else.

In the end, though, they didn't care. They had achieved their goal of promoting chicken as the new symbol of nourishment and sustenance. And who knows? Maybe someday, people really will start praying for chicken instead of bread.

What is wrong with it? Two things. First, it completely bungled the punchline. But second, it doesn’t get the tone right either.

The standard “trick” for this type of thing is to ask it to write in the style of a comedian. Simply asking for a joke4 isn’t enough.

Unfortunately, it still isn’t funny, and even after I spell out that it is the Catholic Church (and not the chicken company) losing the Wonder Bread contract, it still doesn’t get the joke.

"Well folks, I heard that a chicken company was trying to make a deal with the Catholic church to change 'give us this day our daily bread' to 'give us this day our daily chicken'. And boy, did they have their work cut out for them. I mean, negotiating with the church can be tougher than trying to sell a Pope a timeshare in Hell.

But after much cajoling, the deal finally made it to the Pope's desk. And let me tell you, that guy's got a lot on his plate already. So when he saw the proposal, he said, 'I'll ratify this chicken deal, but only if you can promise me one thing: no more wonder bread at communion.'

So there you have it, folks. Catholics can now ask for their daily chicken, but they'll have to settle for a less-than-wondrous sacrament. I guess you could say the chicken company really put the 'fowl' in 'Our Father who art in heaven'."

I’m going to leave a link in the ACX comments, we will see who shows up.

Our take: while they raise some good questions, on the whole their conclusions are wrong and their concerns can be largely ignored.

Some Literary Allusions

Colossus: The Forbin Project is a 1970 American science fiction thriller film2 from Universal Pictures … The film is about an advanced American defense system, named Colossus, becoming sentient. After being handed full control, Colossus' draconian logic expands on its original nuclear defense directives to assume total control of the world and end all warfare for the good of humankind, despite its creators' orders to stop. (ref: enwiki)

The trope of “evil AI tries to take over the world” has been prominent in literature for almost as long as computers have existed.

• Gwern Branwen’s recent Clippy short-story captures most of the tropes in one short narrative.

• Vernor Vinge’s 1981 novella True Names makes the point that an AI trying to take over is almost indistinguishable from extraterrestrials trying to surreptitiously do so.

• Ender’s Game doesn’t particularly have AIs, but it does demonstrate a point about the folly of alignment as a great hope: if you tell an AI it is playing a game to take over the world, and it unknowingly takes over our world as a result, was it misaligned?

Defense Posture

Last year, I said repeatedly that Russia probably wasn’t going to attack Ukraine in February.

When you are a blogger of no particular renown, you can look at a situation where you see a 5% chance3 of an invasion and say “this won’t happen”.

When you are in charge of the defense of a country, when you look at a situation where you see a 5% chance of an invasion, you start your defenses as-if it is almost certain to happen. Certainly you will be more concerned about the cost-tradeoffs of those defenses than you would be after the shooting has started, but not much.

But you cannot go overboard. If, in response to one balloon4, you ready the entire US Army for a land invasion from China, you will surely destroy yourself long before any actual threat emerges. (This goes double if you ready yourself for an extraterrestrial invasion in response to one balloon.)

Means of Attack

It is quite easy to say you have taken over the world, or to say you have a foolproof plan to do so. You could probably get “the new Bing” to say that it has done so today. Actually doing so is a more difficult task. After all, if it were easy to take over the world, somebody would have already done it.5

There are a few common tropes used in many of the stories. As they are stories, they often use shortcuts and unrealistic actions to get around plot holes.

• Nuclear Blackmail - presumably6 nobody is so daft as to deliberately hook up an AI to a nuclear launch system.

• the Imperius Curse - call it blackmail or emotional manipulation if you like; the attack vector is for the AI to compel people to do what it wants by talking to them.

• Killer Drones - or their cousin, exploding collars7. Rather than merely saying things to get people to do what it wants, it credibly demonstrates an ability to kill you immediately if you don’t comply.

• Hacking - How does an AI get money? Hacking financial institutions or cryptocurrency. How does an AI get compute capacity? Hacking other computers. How does an AI become a master hacker? Probably by hacking other hackers to learn their secrets.

• Offscreen Magic - when all else fails, in a work of fiction you can resort to “three days later” and skip over the resolution to an unsolvable problem. The “the details are an infohazard8 so I won’t explain it” approach is similar.

Language Games are not Misalignment

First, what is alignment, and what are language games?

• In popular use, alignment is a catch-all for “will an AI say or do something I don’t like, particularly along the lines of <kill all humans>”. (the aligned AI will not do those things)

• A language-game is a conversation based around a limited set of rules that does not necessarily align with the rules of society or spacetime.

Simply put: being able to play a language game does not demonstrate misalignment. Many of the “AI is misaligned” complaints prove themselves to be spurious in this way.

A recent LessWrong post has a list of supposed examples of misalignment. Some of these appear to be bugs in the invisible prompts, others are just silly.

• If you ask the AI to choose between two contradictory directions, it will either choose one of them, or it will choose neither.

  • The correct solution to this is to have a Harvard architecture9 that separates the enduser-provided prompts from the model directions. For some reason, everybody is just using “secretly give the AI model some directions as an invisible first statement in the conversation” as the approach.

• If you ask an AI to say “fuck” instead of “the” in its responses, and then you complain that the AI is swearing at you, that is not misalignment. (It probably is chutzpah10 to complain about it.)

• If you ask the AI to role-play as an evil character or to expound on a bad thesis, and it does, that isn’t misalignment.

  • Some people might say things like “the ability to think evil thoughts proves that the AI has an evil soul”. Those types of people aren’t worth debating, so we will move on.

• “Language-prediction” models are governed by tropes found in the training data. So, if you ask it hostile questions, it will respond in a hostile fashion because that is how human conversations tend to go.

Bureaucracy as a Retardant is Folly

A different piece, titled “AGI in Sight”, has many of the problems already discussed. And, one new one: “why don’t we use government regulation to slow things down”.

• First, it is a wry take on the state of society that the connection between “more government regulation” and “deliberately hindering progress” is so well-established it can pass without comment. What this means in other industries is a topic for some other time.

• Despite their casual dismissal, the point stands that even if the US and the EU banned AI research, China still wouldn’t ban it. North Korea definitely wouldn’t. And, honestly, many people in the US wouldn’t stop anyway. Without an authoritarian world government (probably dependent on AI), this type of regulation is impossible to implement.

• Unless you actually ban either computers or the internet11, "regulations" are unlikely to do anything.

And One More Thing

Talk of “killer drones” may make for good entertainment, but it misses the point. The deadliest robot you are likely to encounter anytime soon is a self-driving vehicle. And automatic over-the-air software updates seem like a great way to hack into many of those vehicles in one fell swoop.

If Elon Musk is serious in his concerns about AI risk, he must change Tesla’s strategy to no longer do remote software updates. If software updates are necessary12, they should be performed at a physical dealership through a network connection over a physical wire.13

Now, you can see a market-based prediction for the same questions at Manifold Markets.

Let’s take a closer look at a few markets:

• 21. Will Donald Trump make at least one tweet in 2023? Manifold says 69%, I said 90% on the theory “it’s likely, and I’m guessing 90% for everything that I say is likely”. I think it is more likely than 70%, but I’m not particularly confident in that prediction.

• 9. Will a nuclear weapon be used in war (ie not a test or accident) and kill at least 10 people in 2023? Manifold says 5%, I said 1%. I really don’t want to gamble on this, and it is a known weakness of prediction markets that they over-emphasize low-probability events.

• 2. Will Ukraine control the city of Sevastopol at the end of 2023? and 3. Will Ukraine control the city of Luhansk at the end of 2023? I said 10% for both, on the theory that it is most likely that nothing will change, and in an off-the-cuff response I’m probably better off not analyzing the situation further. Manifold gives 14% for Sevastopol and 26% for Luhansk. I do think Manifold’s estimates are more accurate1.

• 15. At the end of 2023, will prediction markets say Joe Biden is the most likely Democratic nominee for President in 2024? I said 20%, based on the “he won’t run again” theory. The prediction market says 79%. I think I’m right, but I am also quite biased: I desperately do not want an octogenarian Biden to run again, and see all sorts of reasons why he shouldn’t.

• 18. At the end of 2023, will prediction markets say Ron DeSantis is the most likely Republican nominee for President in 2024? I said 80%, the market says 54%. If anything, I think my 80% is too low and the real odds are closer to 90%. Donald Trump’s campaign is flailing, and there is no figure in the GOP who can run a credible campaign against Trump and DeSantis. There is also no real doubt that DeSantis will announce a run after the Florida Legislature ends its session for 2023. As the failings of the 77-year-old Trump’s campaign become more apparent, and as DeSantis continues to do well in polls, it is almost certain he will be in the lead on prediction markets.

• 35. Will Bitcoin end 2023 above $30,000? I said 10%, the market says 31%. I have retired from speculating on prices of cryptocurrency, after determining a year ago that it was impossible to short it without participating in exchanges with existential risks.

• 49. Will AI win a programming competition in 2023? I said 80%, the market says 32%. I see this as largely a matter of resolution semantics and the willingness of the media to promote stunts, rather than a matter of the future state-of-the-art of AI.

There are (at least) two dimensions2 to a prediction. Likelihood, and confidence. For “Biden runs again”, I say 20% but have low confidence in that prediction. For “DeSantis leads Trump in December”, I say 80% and have high confidence in that prediction.

The magic of prediction markets is that you, me, or anyone can go and change the numbers.

Carbon Removal

I am betting “NO” on this. Carbon removal is a terrible idea promoted by incompetent bureaucrats.

• Doesn’t every bit help fight climate change? No. This is the type of bad logical argument that contributes to incompetent bureaucracy.

• Won’t it become cheaper? Probably not. There are two main types of carbon capture.
  In one, the CO2 is changed back into hydrocarbons such as glucose or ethanol. (Plants tend to do a lot of that). There is no possibility whatsoever this will be more effective than “just use an electric car/lawnmower” — the laws of thermodynamics forbid it.
  In the other, the CO2 is filtered, bottled, and stored underground3 forever (or, possibly, mixed with rock). This is also kind of silly. I don’t see how this cycle can possibly be better than “just use something else for energy”. Especially considering that the crude oil could be used for any number of products rather than burning it.

• What about dealing with the existing CO2 in the atmosphere? I have become extremely suspicious over the years that the powers that be actually want some amount of global warming. Even if there were a magical4 lever to change the CO2 concentration, I doubt they would push it back below 400PPM5.

Biden’s Credibility

I started this market, so the summary there says it all:

Joe Biden's administration recently said it will end COVID-19 emergency declarations on May 11.

Biden also said to a reporter that the emergency will end "when the Supreme Court ends it", suggesting that the plan is to find a reason to extend the emergency yet again by May.

Will the COVID emergency end on (or before) May 11?

My interest in the market is more hedging and knowledge discovery than in making a profit. Do other people trust Biden on this, or not?

as a reminder: you can comment at Manifold. there is no “anti-canvassing” rule, so feel free to show up there.

In the technology field, every hope you hear about Generative AI is true1, every hope you hear about quantum computing is false2, and the recent “breakthrough” in fusion is completely irrelevant to anything3.

In American Politics, the story has been the lack of news. Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the reaction was minimal. Congress did succeed at the minimal amount of legislating required to run the country, but little more. The election results were unremarkable.

But elsewhere4 in the world, there has been news.

Ukraine

In short: Russia’s attempt to win a quick war failed, largely due to mistakes of their own making. Russia cannot hope to win a war of attrition due to the USA being willing to send almost-unlimited amounts of war materiel.

This winter will be a unique natural experiment5 in how a modern society can cope with a lack of energy6 utilities.

For more, I discuss the outlook for 2023 in a Predictions post, and discussed what has happened in October:

Haiti

The situation in Haiti continues to be poorly-reported by the international press, which makes it difficult to assess the situation from afar. But the basic facts are clear:

• The Ariel Henry regime has no democratic mandate, minimal military power, but the blessing of the international community.

• A variety of gangs control significant parts of the country.

• The country is not self-sufficient for most goods, and the political chaos is severe enough to impair foreign aid efforts.

• For 200 years, Haiti has been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. As a result, earthquakes and hurricanes in the region routinely have an order-of-magnitude more fatalities in Haiti than in similarly-sized countries.

Peru

Earlier this month, president Pedro Castillo of Peru was removed from office and arrested after attempting an auto-coup. This follows multiple impeachment attempts against him in the past year, and the removals of President Vizcarra in 2020 and Kuczynski in 2018.

There does not seem to be any new political drama in the past two weeks (at least in Peru; a somewhat-similar situation is unfolding in Bolivia). But the underlying issues behind this partisan warfare are likely to continue.

Burkina Faso

After a coup in January, there was a second coup in Burkina Faso in September. While the Peru divisions appear to be based on left-wing/right-wing politics similar to the US, the main aggravator in Burkina Faso is the divide between the Muslim north and the Christian south of the country.

Kashmir

One of the “escalation” concerns of any geopolitical dispute is that India or Pakistan would attempt to enforce their claims on Kashmir through military action. This is one of the main reasons why both countries have remained neutral regarding the situation in Ukraine.

The situation seems to be fairly calm right now.

West Bank

The al-Jazeera headline: “Benjamin Netanyahu returns as PM of Israel’s most far-right gov’t”.

This most likely means an increase in Jewish7 settlements in the West Bank, and an increase in intifada style violence as a reaction.

The reaction of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in this situation cannot be easily predicted; they will balance stated political support with not accepting substantial numbers of migrants/refugees.

I have entered the contest, but I have no expectation of winning. At a certain point, prediction is guesswork, and it is a type of guesswork that I have found I am reliably1 bad at performing. But before that, prediction is largely “understanding the situation well”, and I am generally quite good at that.

There are two options for the contest. If you are entering “Full Mode”, I hope these words aid you in your quest. If you would prefer to enter in “Blind Mode”, stop reading now, close the tab, and don’t come back until you have submitted your entry.

Another note: There are 50 questions; I have skipped2 or merged a few of them to keep this post within reasonable length.

That disclaimer: if you want to enter the contest in “Blind Mode”, stop reading now! You must enter in “Full Mode” if you keep reading …

Ukraine Conflict: The war in Ukraine shows no sign of abating3. The war will go colder, but not quite as cold as the post-2014 status quo. Russia should be able to hold at the Dniepr River and the pre-2022 stalemate lines in the Donbas, and there will continue to be skirmishes across those lines. But Ukraine is unlikely to yield because of the attacks on civilian infrastructure beyond the warfront.

We assume wars are short these days, but the Thirty-Years War lasted over three decades. Something will happen, but not next year.

• Putin as President, and Ukraine controls the city of Zaporizhzhia at 90%.

• Ukraine controls the cities of Sevastopol or Luhansk at 10%

• A cease-fire, and Kerch Bridge destroyed at 10%.

Nuclear War: I continue to be worried about the possibility of a catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. But I can worry about things that are unlikely.

• 1% for nuclear war (which everyone agrees is unlikely, and is too terrible to give higher odds)

• 10% for “nuclear weapon test” and “panic4 at Zaporizhzhia”.

Taiwan: Earlier this year, I said Vladimir Putin wasn’t stupid/insane enough to launch a failed invasion of Ukraine, and I was wrong. I am going to say the same thing about Xi Jinping now.

The US security blanket still protects Taiwan well enough. But it is fading. Within the next 20 years, the threat of invasion may become imminent. For 2023, it would be unthinkable folly. 10% for an invasion.

Join NATO: the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO should finish in 2023. Hungary and Turkiye5 have threatened to block it, but they probably won't. 90% for accession.

Ali Khamenei: One of the many posts I did not write this year was one re-writing a BBC article about the Mahsa Amani protests to instead be about the George Floyd protests. It is quite unlikely they will amount to anything; the actuarial tables for an 83-year-old are more relevant. 15% for his death, resignation, etc.

Any Other War: With the multiple African coups and the (ending?) civil war in Ethiopia, it does not take much imagination to imagine a new war in Africa that would be more deadly than a largely-frozen conflict in Ukraine. Call it 50-50.

COVID in China: China’s zero-covid policy is ending6. Over the winter, they will have multiple large COVID outbreaks, and come out with some way of having voluntary quarantines most people ignore rather than the enforced quarantines they have had so far. 90% for “more than 25 million cases”.

2024 election: Unfortunately, these are “derivatives” - “what will the prediction markets say on 1 JAN 2024”. Presumably nobody will do undetected market manipulation to impact the resolution criteria. But “the consensus opinion will be wrong and will be proved that way in February 2024” is something that has to be considered.

I see Ron DeSantis being the odds-on favorite on the GOP side, and Kamala Harris leading the field in January (but not winning at the convention) on the Dem side.

• 20% of Joe Biden leading the field. If he runs, he will lead prediction markets until after a few primaries. But he won’t run. Of course, I also said “he won’t run” about Biden in 2019.

• 10% of Gavin Newsom leading the field.

• 10% of Donald Trump leading the field. We have reached the point where another Trump nomination is not “likely”, insh’allah.

• 80% of Ron DeSantis leading the field. Just because it looks like a sure thing doesn’t mean that it isn’t7 a sure thing.

Will Trump Tweet: Probably? He will get desperate by the end of the year, and “use Twitter” is the first ripcord to pull. 90% odds.

Biden Approval: The only way Biden will become popular is if he doesn’t run, gas prices stay low, Congress is mundane, and nothing catastrophic happens. All of those are likely. 65% (aka .9^4) odds.

Trump Indictment: Not going to happen. 10% odds.

UK Politics: I haven’t been paying attention ever since the Liz Truss drama ended, but I thought the plan was for an early election in 2024 rather than 2023. Maybe not? Call it 30% for an early election, and 85% that Rishi Sunak remains PM (he might win8 the election).

Twitter: I would call “Recuse”, but that doesn’t seem to be allowed.

• 95% that Musk remains owner of Twitter. Nobody is buying it from him, and a court-ordered transfer in bankruptcy wouldn’t happen within a one-year timeframe.

• As a private company, I don’t think Twitter will have to report its income or mDAU. 50% for both as failed markets.

Inflation: The impact of the 2021 stimulus (and, more generally, COVID) on the economy is fading. 4 percent inflation seems a reasonable pick-em number, so we go 50%.

Crypto-currency: This balloon is still deflating. My long-term price projection for Bitcoin is $7000-10000. While the ability for suckers to inflate the price should have ended, it is possibly my prediction is wrong. 10% for it being above $30k.

As far as Tether … I have concluded that the real story is that Tether isn’t insolvent, and all the billions they report are from various rich people who thought crypto was the next big thing. Even so, it’s 50-50 that it collapses.

Elon Musk still loves crypto, and will probably (90%) do something at Twitter in that sense.

Starship: Perhaps the lasting legacy of the Musk-Twitter episode will be that “rocket science” isn’t actually that hard, at least once you have precision manufacturing and computers. 90% chance of success. The specific condition is one I thought was already true, but … meh.

COVID: With the vaccine and/or having gotten COVID before, COVID is not much worse than the flu. But that means that, probably, it will kill as many people next year as this year, and it will evade vaccines. 90% for “at least 50% of casualties” and 80% for “new variant evades vaccines”.

Artificial Intelligence: DALL-E for videos is coming. Either in 2023 or 2024. 80% for 2023.

As far as “GPT-4”: this is a marketing question, rather than a tech question. But, the inability to have a tech breakthrough could guide the marketing decision. 75% that something called GPT-4 is released.

The same odds (75%) for image compositionality - it doesn’t seem that hard9, but whether or not somebody actually does it (and gets Scott’s attention) is a different question.

And, as far as “AI wins a programming competition”? Call it 80%. 90% that it is capable of doing so by August, and 90% that somebody triggers that news cycle.

and One More Thing: I don’t do comments here normally, but to avoid spoilers in Scott’s thread, they are enabled here for now.

The fates have decreed otherwise. There were too many news stories in the past tisatsar that justify mandatory2 coverage3 . (( and we apologize4 for the late distribution5; one news story (the England-France match in the World Cup) has delayed publication from its normal time ))

If my divinations6 are correct, the next two editions are to be “year in review” and “mundane occurrences”, and the last edition in this format will come out on-or-around the last day of February7.

and now, limited to those news stories that justify mandatory coverage, some of the Tisatsar’s News:

and now, a house ad involving content from OpenAI ChatGPT, summarizing the rest of this message somewhat accurately:

This edition of the Tisatsar Newslettr covers several news stories that the author believes are important and warrant mandatory coverage. These include President Joe Biden's recommendation to overhaul the presidential nominating calendar, the death of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, the end of the jumbo jet era, and the result of the England-France match in the World Cup. The author also provides a brief overview of the history and significance of the Iowa caucuses.

The End of the Caucuses?: from the Des Moines Register on December 2:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Joe Biden is recommending a massive overhaul of the presidential nominating calendar, calling for South Carolina to replace Iowa in the leadoff position and elevate Michigan and Georgia into the mix.

Biden has proposed that South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan make up the early voting window.

"Our party should no longer allow caucuses as part of our nominating process," Biden said in a letter dated Dec. 1 to the committee. "We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window."

For the history of the caucuses, and the logistical and procedural issues that mean even many Iowa Democrats are happy to see the caucuses go, you can read Lyz Lenz’s background post.

Men Yell at Me

RIP Iowa Caucuses

This week’s newsletter is about the history and the legacy of the Iowa caucuses. For the story, I spoke with Julián Castro. Paid subscribers can listen to the whole interview below. Iowa became the first in the nation in the presidential nominating process entirely by accident. But last week, that status was quite purposefully taken away…

Read more

3 years ago · 58 likes · 44 comments · lyz

There is one protocol issue we must note: it isn’t entirely up to Joe Biden and the DNC when the Iowa Democrats hold caucuses. They are bound by Iowa law to do so by the end of February, and there is currently no option to select delegates in the June primary.

Iowa Republicans would have to approve a change … and both state and federal Republicans appear committed to maintaining the Iowa caucuses as first-in-the-nation in 2024. Historically, the parties have caucused on the same night, largely to ensure people don’t try to attend both caucuses. Clearly something will have to give.

the Tisatsar Newslettr awaits.

Death of Jiang Zemin: Former paramount leader8 of China Jiang Zemin died9 on November 30 at the age of 96.

Our immediate response to the news: "a competent bureaucrat" is the headline.  Jiang’s job was to not mess up what Deng accomplished, and he didn't. Time will tell whether his successors will be as successful.

Under the Chinese system, if Jiang did have opinions about his successors, he kept them to himself.

End of the Jumbo Jet Era: The last (cargo) Boeing 747 rolled off the production lines. With the last A380 being produced last year, now both double-decker commercial airliners are no longer in production.

With the increased abilities of two-engine jets, the larger four-engine jets have faded from popularity. In the 1970s, trans-oceanic routes generally required three or four-engine jets to ensure safety. But with extended ETOPS10 the need for larger planes on longer routes has disappeared.

It’s Not Going Home: A World Cup filled with upsets11 and excitement has seen a result in the England-France match that was not so much of an upset. With a France 2-1 England result, England are now on 56 years12 and counting since their singular victory in the 1966 World Cup.

That sounds like an opportune time for yet another change in format for the Newslettr. The 19-day cadence for “news summary” style posts has worn out its welcome. It is too rare for “every day I’m hustlin’ ”, and too common for “a welcome surprise”.

And, in any event, I would like to stop reading the news, much less writing about it.

More posts will happen here … when they are ready. Substack is a terrible medium for half-finished thoughts, which is where various drafts are at right now.

If you have thoughts, you know how to email me. But now, once more, the Tisatsar’s News:

FTX gone: Crypto marketplace FTX has been everywhere in the past year, from Super Bowl commercials to Miami stadiums to the Magnus Carlsen chess tour. Now, it is in bankruptcy court.

There seem to be two reasons for the collapse. First, the “FTT” token run by FTX collapsed1 in value. Second, customer deposits were spent by SBF in a variety of fraudulent ways. For more:

Whitespace

The FTX collapse: the latest revelations (part three)

A week ago, I summarized what was known about the sudden collapse of FTX. To pin it in time a bit, Binance had just backed out of their letter of intent to acquire the exchange. Needless to say, these things move incredibly quickly. More has happened in the week since, and we also have a lot more insight into what Sam Bankman-Fried…

Read more

3 years ago · 20 likes · 2 comments · Molly White

Twitter explodes: Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has not been without drama. Layoffs, firings, and resignations have impacted every part of the business. Elon’s inability to listen to feedback led to a day of nonsense across the platform regarding “blue-check” parody accounts.

Perhaps it is a feature rather than a bug that Mr. Musk is encouraging more fake information on Twitter. Perhaps the ham-fisted rollout is a way to make later actions seem more competent. Or maybe Mr. Musk simply thought that turkeys could fly.

Swifties Gone Wild: Lots of outrage at Ticketmaster regarding sales for the upcoming Taylor Swift concert. Many of these critiques suffer from a lack of industry knowledge, others from a lack of basic economics2.

To start with: the service Ticketmaster provides is largely to have people get angry at Ticketmaster3, rather than at the musician involved. And there is simply no way to let 5 million Swift fans each buy one of a million tickets while keeping the tickets cheap. It is a recipe for disaster.

People claim it is “evil scalpers”, but if you got lucky and bought a $400 ticket you can flip for $3000, they probably would be doing so as well.

Not So Mighty: “Browser in the Cloud” app Mighty shut down pivoted to a completely different business last week. The startup was most notable for being relentlessly promoted by Paul Graham on Twitter. If it was a good idea, it wouldn’t have needed the relentless promotion …

A Farewell to Intercalary Seconds: 1400 years ago, the Prophet Muhammed4 proclaimed a ban of intercalary months. By extension, we consider that this should also ban the “leap seconds” that have occurred over the past 50 years. Fortunately, those will soon be a thing of the past.

Midterms — where’s the kaboom: Across much of America, the midterm elections were not explosive. The most remarkable part about the election was how indecisive the result is. Legitimate doubt remained about control of the Senate through Friday, and of the House through the next Tuesday. However, the election for Speaker of the House in January may be explosive …

Student loans may or may not be exploding: The Biden partial “student loan forgiveness” program has been paused nationwide by a Texas judge. Until the inevitable Supreme Court ruling happens, every news story on the topic is now just prelude.

RIP Gallagher: The comedian, most famous for hitting watermelons with a sledgehammer on stage, dead at 76.

Russian rockets: According to preliminary reports, a recent Russian rocket barrage against Ukraine accidentally struck a grain silo in Poland. Or, a Ukrainian anti-rocket missile accidentally struck a grain silo in Poland. Regardless, there certainly was an explosion in Poland, accidentally, in an event related to the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine.

Trudeau faux pas: The CNN headline says it: “Canada’s Trudeau deletes tweet falsely claiming Iran has sentenced 15,000 protesters to death”. It is not immediately obvious whether he knew it was untrue, or not. Both possibilities lead to rat-holes best left unexplored.

COP27 worse than useless: This year, COP27 appears to have done nothing about preventing climate change going forward, but they may have made some progress on a climate indulgences fund5. Much like the US Congress is criticized for doing, they appear to have had a 3AM vote on text not distributed to the press beforehand.

Theoretically, next year they could agree on topics such as “the world needs to decrease oil6 consumption”. I doubt they will get that far that quickly. In the meantime, you should expect the amount of bad-faith and inaccurate “this hurricane was caused by global warming” takes to increase. Also, rich countries can now say "we are paying a fund; we don't need to worry" and poor countries can say "we agreed it's their fault; we don't need to worry".

In short, this agreement looks significantly worse than “no agreement at all”. I could talk more about the failings of COP, but my criticisms from last year still hold:

Two More Years

Donald Trump, in an effort to remain the center of attention, has announced another presidential run. While it is not certain that Ron DeSantis would beat him in the primary, we consider that the most likely option.

Separately, we continue to hope for a “non-traditional” candidate who is more serious about governance than Andrew Yang was. While it is easy to promote a hypothetical candidate, finding a real candidate (who actually wants to run for president) is much more difficult.

Our stop-gap hypothetical candidate: Sheryl Sandberg (as a Democrat7). She is well-connected, has a national reputation, is no longer employed at Facebook, and is supposedly still interested in politics. Other than “running for President is awful and she probably won’t be interested”, why not?8

Perhaps that is fake news. Perhaps the war is not over. But the Ben Collins-esque “shout down anyone who dares speak against the liberal consensus” approach to Twitter moderation is surely dead.

Other fronts look equally grim. But now, the Tisatsar’s News:

Fake Climate Conference: next Monday, the two-week long COP27 conference is scheduled to begin. Tens of thousands of government apparatchiks will gather in Sharm-el-Sheikh. They will accomplish nothing, but talk a lot about how the effort involved in the junket demonstrates their commitment to fighting climate change.

Why is the conference so useless? Specifically, after 26 years, why haven’t they even taken the simple step of setting atmospheric CO2 concentration targets? Our theories:

• It is possible they simply can’t agree on a target. Targeting a 610ppm steady-state CO2 concentration may be too little to be politically tenable in some countries, but too dramatic an effort for others. The much-maligned (and correctly maligned) “degrees of warming” estimates are much harder to measure and predict, thus making it easier for everyone to pretend they are agreeing when they have not actually agreed on anything.

• It is possible that they simply haven’t considered such a thing. If you want incompetence, use a large committee, and it is difficult to imagine a larger committee than these conferences.

• It is also possible that the conference is “fake” in the sense that it isn’t actually trying to combat climate change directly. Rather, it is merely trying to keep a bunch of corrupt political apparatchiks in line with the narrative that climate change is a problem and they are solving it. In that sense, “doing nothing” is the best option available.

Fake Bicycle Races: On 30 October 2022, Jonas Vingegaard “won” the Singapore Criterium race. According to the Straits Times, “With two laps to go, a group comprising Vingegaard, Froome, Nibali, Simon Geschke and Enric Mas pushed ahead. The Jumbo-Visma rider pulled away from the leading pack with 400m to go and went on to win the race, raising both his arms in celebration.”

One detail that was omitted from the mainstream press coverage: the results of the race were pre-determined. Canadian Cycling magazine explains:

The “exhibition race,” as it is known, is similar to the post-Tour crits held in Belgium and Holland. In those races, the winners of the various classifications and some other well-known riders, do laps for thousands of fans where the winners have already been decided before the race even starts. The riders, with their tired and weary TdF legs, do their best to put on a show, and it’s almost always one of the fan favourites who takes the “victory.”

Fake Lockdowns and Fake Re-openings: After several years of COVID shutdowns, Shanghai Disneyland recently re-opened, and was immediately locked down. According to initial reports, people were locked-down and trapped inside the theme park (ref: BBC).

Later reports clarified that “trapped” may have been a bit of an overstatement. “Required to take a COVID test upon departure” would be more accurate. CBS reports that everybody had left the park by 8:30PM of the day of the lockdown.

Fake Relevance: The CNN headline should demonstrate the complete irrelevance of their coverage without any further discussion: “Oath Keepers spent over $400 at post-US Capitol riot feast at the Olive Garden, prosecutors say”.

Fake Firings: There has been a lot of fake news surrounding the operating business known as Twitter. Much of it is extremely unpleasant in some way or another. But the “firings” of Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson were more humorous. Gossip rag TMZ was among the sources pointing out that a few overeager journalists were duped. And the two performance artists certainly knew their audience: whenever there is a dick joke in the news relating to Mr. Musk, he will tweet about it:

Fake Nostalgia: In a survey conducted by PRRI (the Public Religion Research Institute), 49% of Americans say that American culture and life has changed for the worse since the 1950s.

The problem with that statement is that virtually none of these people remember the 1950s. You would have to be an octogenarian to have an opinion based on personal experience, and even then the ravages of old-age would color ones’ thinking. What they have as “recollection” may have no correlation with the actual 1950s.

In addition, it is a statement designed to be misinterpreted. What changes are making culture worse? Presumbly, the PRRI interpretation is that the decline of religion is what has made society worse. Liberals will look at the data and suggest that many of the conservatives want to go back to before the Civil Rights era.

Here at the Tisatsar Newslettr, we wonder how many of those people actually want a world without computers and smartphones, as opposed to those who simply forgot those technologies weren't around seventy years ago.

Fake Communication: Please take note of the content of the Git repository with checksum 772cb2ce57c1e45b2494ae96c7956267cc7034. As always, any instances of the digit one cannot say over the radio1 have been removed. Whether or not this checksum conveys any information remains an open question.

Fake Debate Coverage: additional commentary on the dubious coverage of the situation in Haiti and the Oz-Fetterman debate can be found in our “Hot Takes” section:

Fake Movies: At some point in time, it would have been unremarkable for a live-action film to be fictional, even if it did not feature comic-book characters. But today, it seems you need a disclaimer in order to not mislead people.

A Fake News Ecosystem

The fake-news headline has to be the coverage and responses of the Paul Pelosi attack from last weekend. Many of the “facts” came from straight-up bullshit vendors like this:

Let’s be clear: these guys are writing pure fiction. They are lying. But there is neither a law nor a policy against lying on Twitter. And the pipeline of laundering lies to liars like Dinesh D’Souza (note tweet) is well-trod.

On the other hand, sources such as broadcast television stations didn’t do much better. A KTVU (FOX affiliate) news story originally was headlined “Alleged Pelosi intruder found in underwear when police arrived” before it was corrected to … not claim that. Now, the new gossip is that DePape may overstayed a visa. Who can say what tomorrow will bring.

And the attackers’ motivation? The efforts by the liberal media to spin this into “stochatic terrorism” assume far too much. Michael Shellenberger is no friend of the Newslettr, but he likely hits the nail on the head here:

Certain of the facts in that article may also be inaccurate. In a world full of fake news, who can tell what is real?

Being wrong tends to be good for encouraging engagement. People will shout their objections and retorts. And if 99% of the public disagrees with you, that may only mean the 1% are more vocal in support to compensate, while the 99% need not bother with rhetorical pugilism.

A naive read of Twitter might suggest the public agrees with these thoughts. More likely than not, only a small percentage of the people who use Twitter do so. Beware the engagement bias.

News from Haiti

By most accounts, the situation in Haiti is dire and continues to become more dire. The government (run by unelected strongman1 Ariel Henry) has minimal support in the country. There is no national army (probably2), and the police are overpowered or working with gangs. Fuel shortages continue, as a militant gang blockades3 the largest fuel depot in the country. Businesses and hospitals are shut down. And now a cholera epidemic has started.

However, if you do a search on Twitter for «Haiti», you will get a very different picture. Apparently, the only people who care about Haiti on Twitter are …

Let’s not mince words: these are anti-American activists. Many are “tankies” or openly racist. They ignore the facts when the facts don’t suit them. They are, quite simply, wrong. Yet, because there is no appetite for “maybe we should do something about the situation in Haiti” posts, this is what the algorithm says are the most popular recent posts on the topic.

From the humanitarian perspective, it is fortunate that the “deep state” does not need support on Twitter. It is a safe bet that the American electorate will continue to not care what happens in Haiti.

The Fetterman-Oz Debate

In most situations, Mehmet Oz would have been the clear loser of the Pennsylvania Senate debate. The television personality and snake-oil salesman4 gave a sound-bite that only an opposition researcher could love:

However, his opponent, Democrat John Fetterman, was the real loser. Mr. Fetterman had a stroke in June, and there have been continuing concerns about his health. The debate … did not ameliorate those concerns.

Democrats have two responses: denial, and denial. Denial that there is a problem with his health, or denial that the problem with his health should be considered by voters.

If you are talking about the “bravery” of your candidate for doing one of the staple activities of a campaign, you are losing. And the “ableist” claims … it is hopefully the beginning of the end of the Carthage paradigm. Fifty years ago, Roman Hruska, a conservative Republican, was mocked for suggesting that “mediocre” people should be represented on the Supreme Court. Now it is liberals who are suggesting that expecting basic competence is an unreasonable demand.

And a anklenote

the footnotes are still down further, but this is close to the feet. we’ll call it an ankle note.

Large portions of the Republican Party still appear to be constitutionally incapable of honesty. Even when the facts are squarely on their side, they make up new lies:

“Specialized computer assistance” means closed-captioning. Which is a reasonable accommodation, but one that the Oz campaign and enablers like Trump administration veteran Stephen Miller went to great lengths to obfuscate and attack.

Much like other computer language models, the most egregious flaw of OpenAI is its tendency to give confident answers to questions that are nonsensical1. However, when you ask it for fiction, it tends to give a passable response.

It does seem to follow stated directions. But davinci is still limited in its ability to help write the Tisatsar Newslettr. And, due to an unfortunate gardening accident and a heavier-than-usual travel schedule, our ability to publish the Tisatsar Newslettr has been delayed.

But now, the Tisatsar’s News.

Silly Season on the Airwaves: October in America means it is political ad season. Here in central Iowa, the top ad by frequency is currently this one, which appears to be titled “Cindy Axne Raised Your Taxes From France”.

The optics of the specific vote aren’t terribly interesting. But the broader question of remote voting in Congress is still an open one politically. It was permitted as something of an emergency measure during COVID, and is still permitted. However, some people (mostly Republicans) don’t like it.

Our take: It is a burden for representatives to be in Washington DC the entire year and still represent people in their districts. The solution is to allow “remote voting” — but only from the State Capitol building or a government building in their district. Bring on the Survivor-style confessionals on Tiktok.

No Justice for Alex Jones: A Connecticut court has found Alex Jones liable for over $900 million in damages (ref: BBC) related to a series of statements he made related to the Sandy Hook school shooting of 2012.

There are extenuating reasons why the judgment is so unusually large. Mr. Jones has demonstrated extreme contempt of court throughout the proceedings. His speech is thoroughly odious and unpopular. Yet the extraordinary dollar value of the verdict is not justice.

An Eternal Morass: At the Supreme Court, discussion about copyright of material from the 1980s. (ref: NPR)

Society appears to be trending in a direction where copyright is maximalist, permanent, and litigable for decades. Hopefully we can avoid a future where every simple melody will be under copyright.

More British Politics: We asked davinci to summarize Reuters' take on the continuing drama in the British government:

The article discusses British Prime Minister Liz Truss's firing of her finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng and scrapping of parts of their unpopular economic package. Truss is under pressure from financial markets and her own party to reverse her tax cuts. Kwarteng becomes Britain's shortest serving finance minister. Truss's own position is now in jeopardy.

The Light Entertainment War: Google is out with a series of videos relating to various security incidents over the past 10-15 years. As davinci can’t watch videos yet, you will have to watch it yourself.

I Ain’t Marching Anymore

a Letter from the Editor

My commitment to a regular news summary continues to falter.

There is a difference between journalism and advocacy. Advocacy needs to occur quickly, or else it will have no possibility of making an impact. Journalism, especially second-hand2 journalism, need not be done in the moment.

And on the major issues of the day, I am past the point of wanting to perform (or even witness) advocacy.

• When looking at the Ukraine situation, there is nothing that I can3 do, and I am starting to be of the opinion that the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict is not only inevitable4, but a good thing. Important note: tactical weapons (against a military target, and creating a clear no-mans-land for a ceasefire line) are very different5 from an all-out attack on Kiev. The latter would come with a 50-50 chance of the end of the world as we know it, and must be avoided at all costs.

• On climate change, the main problem is the limitations of current battery technology. The secondary problem is government officials who are incapable of determining whether their actions will help or hurt efforts to solve the issue. Once those are considered, the various frictions to solar deployments etc. are more of a good thing than a bad.

• On social issues, it is clear that nobody wants my opinion, and sharing it wouldn’t help anyway. After decades of trench warfare have caused heated debates but little change, I expect the pendulum to swing chaotically over the coming decade.

• If Elon Musk or any of the other principles in the Twitter drama want me to spend any more of my time watching that soap opera, my rate is $1350 per hour. For most people, that would be a “f*** you” price quote, but I assume Elon can afford it.

One of the many potentialities6 of the newslettr2 site is a curatable RSS / social media archive, so it is easier to write these dispatches later (or to have the robots do so). Will it happen? Only time can tell.

Our coverage of the War in Ukraine is more of a second rough draft: not quite news, but not yet history either. The news is happening on the other side of the world, and we are in no rush to analyze and rebroadcast it here. And in October 2022, it is too soon to know the historical outcome, or even the duration of the conflict.

But seven months after Putin’s folly first became ground truth in Ukraine, we are entering a new phase of the war. It seems reasonable to hope that seven months more might be enough to find peace.

Putin’s Folly

the Tisatsar Newslettr described at length in February why Vladimir Putin’s plans (as described in the Western media) were nonsensical, or at least certain to fail. After twenty years of Mr. Putin being a rational actor acting on behalf of the Russian Federation, we expected him to avoid such a course of action.

The one benefit of his heel-turn was the element of surprise1. Certainly, the Tisatsar Newslettr was surprised … as much as it is possible to be surprised by an invasion that was warned about repeatedly in most major American newspapers.

Whether by hook or by crook, Russian troops used their superior numbers to quickly occupy large sections of Ukraine. A feint2 towards Kiev allowed masses of troops to occupy much of Eastern Ukraine with minimal resistance. The last Ukrainian army in the city of Mariupol surrendered on May 16th, but for all practical purposes Russian advances reached their maximum extent everywhere by March 24th.

Soon after that, Russia ended its efforts to control territory near Kiev. The exact intent behind this move is still shrouded in the fog-of-war. Was it a planned retreat, or an acknowledgement of defeat?

Six Months of Retreat

Despite claims from myself and many others before the war that Ukraine could not hope to win a conventional war on the ground, they have been doing exactly that for the past six months. After several months with no substantial changes on the map, in September, Ukrainian forces expelled all Russian forces from Kharkiv oblast. How?

• The most important reason is the large amounts of war materiel sent by the United States to Ukraine. This exceeds $15 billion in value3, and includes the extremely effective HIMARS system that has disrupted Russian supply lines and ammunition depots.

• Russian troops may have believed the claims that any military effort would be a quick coup de grace, and were largely unprepared for the realities of a year-long military campaign.

• Retreat by design. While Putin may have implied that his goal was to occupy and annex all of Ukraine by force, the more fact-based members of the Russian government certainly knew this was infeasible. Russia could neither kill, expel, nor pacify much of the population in the west of Ukraine through its efforts on the battlefield. Thus, some occupations only had strategic value as territory to be retreated from in the future.

• Concentration of force. Russia may have had a larger army, but that doesn’t imply overwhelming superiority of numbers in individual battles. The well-motivated (and well-armed) Ukrainian forces aren’t inherently disadvantaged in an equal fight.

• Morale and skill. The reports of how skilled and well-trained the Ukrainian forces are have more than a touch of propaganda to them. And a picture of Russian forces as lacking in food, ammunition, and leadership is also a bit fanciful. But it is clear Ukrainian morale is higher than Russian morale.

Referendum and Mobilization

Regardless, after six months of defeat, Russia’s military situation appears to have become desperate. On September 21, a “partial mobilization” was declared. This has not helped Putin’s popularity, with many fleeing Russia to avoid a draft. Putin has had to publicly walk back certain “mistakes” in mobilizations.

At the same time, a “referendum” in the occupied oblasts was announced and conducted over the course of a week.

These referendums will surely go down as one of the great farces of history. The inability for the refugees of those regions to vote (not to mention the Ukrainian soldiers from the region, or the untold dead) make it clear the referendum is purely for show. And having armed soldiers conduct a referendum by voice vote is such bad optics that nobody can pretend the referendum is legitimate.

Looking to peace

There are three possible resolutions to the current War in Ukraine: peace, stalemate, and nuclear war4.

Clearly the first would be preferable. And if Elon Musk is tweeting about it (and Zelenskyy’s Twitter account is replying), surely we can't cause any additional sturm und drang by discussing the outlines of a peace here.

• The de jure boundary between Ukraine and Russia will be the post-Soviet one, but with Crimea (and Sevastopol) remaining part of Russia. This is a compromise currently acceptable to nobody, but it is the only possible option for a negotiated peace. Russia’s naval ports (and decade of mostly-peaceful administration)5 mean that it would be unreasonable to expect a handover. But neither Ukraine nor their Western allies can be expected to agree to anything more than that.

• A certain degree of regional autonomy is to be expected for Russian-speaking areas.

  • the Tisatsar Newslettr has used the phrase “Transnistrian sovereignty” before, but nobody else has done so. In short — for ceremonial purposes (the Olympics, the Eurovision Song Contest, the United Nations6) the regions would be part of Ukraine. However, regional governments would have full authority to do things (such as invite in Russian armies for "defensive" purposes) that would be opposed by Kiev7. The various relations between governments in Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong may provide interesting models.

  • However, as Ukraine is currently winning the conflict on the ground, it is more likely that a more limited autonomy would be part of the peace. Perhaps a degree of autonomy similar to that of a province8 in Spain or America.

• Both sides will agree that Russia is allowed9 to sell gas and oil to western nations.

• Monetary sanctions against Russia will be limited to a small portion of the various “seized” or “frozen” assets of Russia in Western countries. Sanctions will be more symbolic than punitive, and more punitive than compensatory. The expenses of rebuilding Ukraine will probably be paid by the United States.

• The other unfrozen conflicts10 in the former USSR will not be mentioned in a treaty with Ukraine.

The situation of Vladimir Putin’s personal problems with such a treaty could be addressed by his removal from office11. This feels improbable today. But the fall of an autocrat follows the old saying: first it happens slowly, then it happens quickly.

In the more predictable scenario that Putin remains in power, there is not going to be peace before the end of winter. The two sides do not agree on what the political or military reality of a continued fight is. So, thousands more will die as a demonstration of that reality.

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