Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Scottyboi]

Another day another tractor.

 

[SWP's back]

Interesting thread

 

[Jimmieblue]

@Vester you say it’s important for Russia to not have a NATO member on its border? But it’s never not had a NATO member on its border since 1947 and currently has 5, none of which are Ukraine. I stopped reading at that line as I wanted to ask you about it before I dig in on the rest of the essay.

I think most people in the know say he’s unhinged and paranoid. He must have seen it as NATO expansion. He is not rational and it’s all been praying on his mind.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

My Ukrainian friend suggested this thread to me earlier today, so I thought I'd share it here too.



It goes into the background of the Russian military and associated politics. Obviously pro-Ukrainian though.

 

[inbetween]

@Vester you say it’s important for Russia to not have a NATO member on its border? But it’s never not had a NATO member on its border since 1947 and currently has 5, none of which are Ukraine. I stopped reading at that line as I wanted to ask you about it before I dig in on the rest of the essay.

The stupidity of this argument is if Russia takes Ukraine then he's gained more NATO countries at his border, not less. On this logic eventually he'll just have no choice but to take Poland, Romania, Estonia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and well all of Europe basically.... And where have we heard this before?

Thank christ we have the channel between us and Europe eh?

 

[Summerbuzz]

All these absolutely-not-bots sharing support for Putin and Russia on Twatter.

There's some estimates that AI could be responsible for as much as 50% of the content on the internet.

You can just make the neural net read hundreds of pages of posts and tweets in favour of a subject, then press play. And people won't know the difference.

I think I found one on reddit around the time of Charlottesville. I had a fairly detailed argument and rebuttal to their rebuttal. Then it went all wierd and noticably very vague, like it suddenly shifted into another persona / context. And that's a tell-tale sign of AI - it can make the right noises in one context, pick out the right words to talk about, but at some point, it can get out the bounds of it's area of expertise, the situations where it works very well. Then you become an 'edge case' and it gives you very mediocre responses. When it's in the mainstream argument, it has learned from the dialogue of thousands and thousands of 'voices', and it picks out what is common to them - the shared belief and the argument that leads to. But if it falls off that track, it's now trying to fake it on using it's learning of words and phrases which come from a much smaller group, maybe just a handful of people. And then the words display a very particular motivation or state of mind, very idiosyncratic, which can be totally out of place. Which is what I saw. The character falls apart in our eyes. It is either having a schizophrenic episode, or you realise it was likely an AI.

Still, until that point, three or four rebuttals and re-rebuttals in, I was convinced I was talking to a human. And and intelligent and passionate one.

That's the power of AI from four years ago. It's possible, because - at least on the internet - 99.9% of what we write is us saying the same thing as someone else, very slightly differently. And people have replied to and argued against our posts. They are the same, saying the same thing as someone else who has made that argumment.

We're all on autopilot. The trick is - very genuinely - to get to a personal level. Bring the individual humanity into it, the sort of thing that emerges in close physical situations, the ways of thinking and responding that are routinely left by the wayside when we are on t'internet.

It's actually very troubling to see how autopiloty we all are. People point at the other side and say that's what they are. But it's rubbish, we're all at it. All the time. It stems from being on a side in the first place. And it stems from our relationship to language.

 

[Inter Me Nan]

Brand opens up a great discussion here.

As it's him some will dismiss it and carry on abusing people with a different opinion to theirs in here.

Not a fan of his but I found that interesting.

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

I think most people in the know say he’s unhinged and paranoid. He must have seen it as NATO expansion. He is not rational and it’s all been praying on his mind.

Russia will float numerous justifications, hoping that some one or more of which meet with agreement among its foes.

In the USA we have a saying for this. Throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks.

Russia's "NATO-aligned Ukraine is an existential threat" shit seems to have stuck on portions of the addle-minded Right.

 

[mat]

Not a fan of his but I found that interesting.

Exactly.

It's not about him. It's about asking the right questions of how and why we ended up in this fucked up situation.

The first casualty of war is truth.

Official propaganda is coming from all sides and people must trust their own intelligence to what we see or read on whatever social media were on.

 

[Scottyboi]

Russia will float numerous justifications, hoping that some one of which meet with agreement.

In the USA we have a saying for this. Throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks.

The "NATO-aligned Ukraine is an existential threat" shit seems to have stuck on portions of the addle-minded Right.

And the self hating white guilt left.