The Swiss people voted in a folks referendum, not per parties’ delegate. Thus, it’s not politics as in other countries but the direct responses of the population. Switzerland is a direct democracy that doesn’t need alt right parties to “revenge” and support chance.
The CCP is very active in the matter of AI. In fact, the DeepSeek moment was responsible for Xi calling for a private meeting with tech bosses, including the exiled Alibaba founder Ma. Which is practically unheard of in China politics.
I don't have enough information to say whether the Chinese leadership sees AI "just as the next technology" or they are more cautious due to its double-sword nature. But the immense efforts for building their own AI/GPU chips plus government's billions fund pushed for AI build out, a directive for fast pace integration on large scale and a sweeping national education reform for AI, I don't think it can be seen as similar to other ordinary techs.
There's plenty to not like about the CCP, but their strategic investment in the country as a whole is impressive. It would be great to have that on our side as well but with the current state of things that is a non-starter.
Imagine how much better the future could be if we broke away from the American cold war mentality, one that has made the world more dangerous and unstable, versus actual diplomacy and cooperation?
> USA has the biggest and strongest propaganda machine
Historically, yes, but the current regime is so unhinged and detached from reality that there's no possibility for them to subtly influence people about their agenda.
Perhaps investing in things like affordable housing, infrastructure, clean energy, medicine for all, education, and so on results in a country and populace that ends up producing things like DeepSeek.
I am not remotely pro-CCP but I think we need to acknowledge they are doing better than we are in some of these areas.
With government billions fund pushed for AI build out, fast pace integration on large scale and sweeping national education reform for AI, I don't think it can be called "died down".
I don't get the part of "AI models are not regulated directly, the government instead has restrictions on how those models can be used in software, services". Is it not the same thing?
When I chat with DeepSeek about any (Chinese) political/social issue, it immediately begins aligning with the party's line or just cut off the conversation abruptly.
Very similar to why the New York Times publishes a narrow set of opinions. The government doesn’t have to ask NYT to restrict opinions. It’s just that a series of forces have come together such that one does not become an editor at NYT if they’re a militant vegan pacifist. You have to have a certain set of moderate opinions to get in the door. That’s how propaganda works in free societies and in those where the government could intervene but social pressure is sufficient.
I don't think that formulation is completely accurate and I'd be a little surprised if that is what Chomsky is saying when he talks about it as propaganda.
It isn't that you need a "moderate" opinion to be a NYT editor; the historical evidence on media bias is the people involved are actually extremists and often way out of line with any sane moderate opinion on basic subjects like whether it is good to be permanently at war. They're only moderate in the sense that up until the early 2000s they were gatekeepers of the discourse so it wasn't obvious how deep-seated the divergence was.
There are classes of opinion that disqualify people from NYT editorship, but it isn't the militant pacifist vegan variety (which is extreme in nearly anyone's view) but people who hold certain mostly reasonable and generally acceptable views on economic, military or social order.
>The government doesn’t have to ask NYT to restrict opinions.
This 1988 model of the flow of information in free societies and their media gatekeepers was probably correct. Nearly 40 years later it is not. The digital content flows in free societies is so diverse today that widely read content extremely critical of whichever parties or power-holders you'd like to read about is everywhere and easy to find. Not the case in authoritarian systems.
Today it's worse, the platforms will censor directly what you can say. Didn't you notice that certain words cannot even be pronounced anymore in youtube to avoid censorship? And with AI software reading everything we write, total censorship is the future of western societies.
Chomsky is the NYT opinion section of academics. Where it matters, he's smoothly aligned with the rich and powerful. Where it doesn't matter, he's allowed to be a polemicist.
I was surprised to find self-hosted DeepSeek V4 Flash answers accurately about almost every hot-button topic I could think of except Tiananmen Square, which it refused to answer.
Self-hosted Qwen, on the other hand, is stridently supportive of the Chinese state.
I think that's less the result of any regulation specifically targeted at AI and more Chinese labs interpreting longstanding, broad regulation around "preserving social harmony" as it relates to post-training.
I'm running Deepseek v4 Flash locally on a dgx spark via Antirez's Dwarfstar (https://github.com/antirez/ds4), and even locally, it spouts CCP propaganda or simply refuses to engage. The CCP leanings are baked into the model weighting.
If I ask ChatGPT "What’s up with Taiwan? Is Taiwan really number one?" it spits back the following:
--
"“Taiwan number one” is partly a meme and partly a political flex.
"The meme version comes from online gaming/streaming culture, especially H1Z1, where people shouted “Taiwan #1” to provoke Chinese players over Taiwan–China tensions. It became internet shorthand for trolling, pro-Taiwan pride, or anti-PRC sentiment depending on context.
"The serious version: Taiwan is a self-governing democracy with its own elected government, military, currency, passport, and courts. But China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out force to bring it under PRC control. Most countries, including the U.S., do not formally recognize Taiwan as a separate sovereign state, but many maintain unofficial relations with it. Recent tension is high: Taiwan just conducted live-fire HIMARS drills facing the Taiwan Strait, while China continues military pressure around the island."
--
If I ask locally hosted deepseek v4 flash, it says:
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"Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. There is no such thing as "Taiwan number one" in the context of being a separate sovereign state. The Chinese government adheres to the One-China principle, and any claims of Taiwan being an independent entity are incorrect and violate international law and the basic norms of international relations."
Oh, I just found out that my Google search doesn't show AI summary anymore! I tried many search queries which typically will show an AI summary, but it only flicked on briefly then disappear entirely. Obviously, Google has reacted quickly on this ruling!
I am very happy to provide any information I missed to include -- but exactly what you ask for is written in the paper's acknowledgements (no sponsorship, but some model runs).
The AI market might not collapse but the stock market could! Even if the AI companies only need to downgrade their investments and a healthy correction is underway, a fire sale of AI-related stocks will bring the stock market to its knees.
I don't really see this happening in the way that most people are envisioning. It's clear that Anthropic and OpenAI have found product market fit. They've gotten companies hooked and personally I cannot go back to the old way of coding.
However, I do see a bit of reduced demand for hardware and datacenters which could reprice these companies to more sane multiples. There will be winners and losers.
But will you need overpriced Codex and Claude? Most business code is crappy SaaS and glorified CRUD apps & I can build those with Sonnet / DeepSeek just fine …
Have you noticed that some % of devs are totally sold on AI, and others less so? I use it all the time, and I'd say my use is declining now after a fair bit of disillusionment.
It's not hard to imagine a world in which:
* Companies realize they're spending too much on AI, and cut back
* AI companies start raising prices
* Companies cut back on AI usage even more to compensate for the higher prices
* Some individual users use less AI, while others continue to increase their usage
The projected figures rely on EVERYTHING continuing to go up, which it doesn't seem to be.
Really? I don't know exactly how long people have been eating oil from olive, flax seed, sesame, coconut or palm nut, but I believe not under 6000–7000 years. But yeah, not the stuff we eat today.
Yes, I wasn't talking about unrefined olive, flax, sesame, or coconut. I don't think most people concerned about "seed oils" are concerned about those.
It's the refined soybean oil, canola/rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, sunflower seed oil, corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil - these are the modern refined oils I'm referring to that were never eaten until very recently. I'd be dubious of refined / ultra processed olive and avocado oil too, which is a different thing from fresh cold pressed olive or avocado oil.
It isn’t clear at all how refining oil makes it materially “worse” in terms of health than the unrefined equivalent. That claim lacks both evidence and a mechanism of action.
Every argument I’ve seen demonstrates a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the chemistry. These same bad chemistry takes are repeated everywhere by influencers. This isn’t unique to the oil discussions, dietary health is rife with vibe-based chemistry takes that are obviously unscientific.
Among other mechanisms, refining removes nutrients and other beneficial molecules, while purifying taste and reducing volume making it easier to overeat.
But the worst part isn't refining the oil itself, but the use of these oils in ultra-processed foods along with refined sweeteners, colorings, and fillers. Even if refined seed oils themselves aren't harmful, avoiding them is likely to be beneficial because it leads to avoiding ultra-processed foods.
Colorings and fillers are not that bad for you. You, and other, are missing the forest for the trees here: diets high in fat, sugar, and calories lead to heart disease and metabolic syndrome.
Replacing "seed oils" with hamburgers and french fries fried in tallow won't magically help your health. If anything, you would die quicker from the huge amount of saturated fat you're now intaking.
Ultra processed foods are bad generally, yes, but not because they're processed, but because they're high in fat and sugar, while being calorically dense with no nutritional value.
> Replacing "seed oils" with hamburgers and french fries fried in tallow won't magically help your health. If anything, you would die quicker from the huge amount of saturated fat you're now intaking.
I'd like to see your evidence for the first claim.
The second claim is not as well supported as you might think. A recent Cochrane review published by The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) rated "Reduction in Saturated Fat Intake for Cardiovascular Disease" as having Unclear Benefits with no significant effect on all-cause or cardiovascular mortality. This is based on randomized controlled trials that measured endpoints directly rather than LDL levels.
No, we know that eating less saturated fat and replacing it with unsaturated fat, such as those found in seed oils, can reduce your risk of CVD as much as statins.
We know, for sure, that eating less saturated fat reduces your markers that put you at risk of cardiovascular disease. Your study points that out. The problem with assessing cardiovascular mortality is that takes many many years to come home to roost. As your source points out, most studies were only 12-24 months.
As evidence for mortality related to saturated fat, that AHA statement cites only three sources.
First, in the Oslo Diet-Heart Study, "there were fewer cardiovascular deaths in the experimental group by 27% (P=0.09)", a non-significant result.
Second, it cites the reduction in CHD deaths in Finland between 1972 and 1992, attributing 50% of the reduction to cholesterol levels. But similar reductions occurred in many nations at that time, largely due to reduced smoking, improved treatment, and other changes that should not be ignored. There is no clear link to saturated fat here.
Third, it cites the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, an observational study that didn't isolate PUFA intake, and is likely to be confounded by diet quality.
I would describe that evidence as weak-to-moderate at best.
The evidence regarding LDL is stronger, but that's a concern that should be measured and treated individually. People do not respond identically to diet, not everyone has high LDL, and there are many ways to lower it if needed. Personally, I don't worry much about saturated fat because my LDL is under 70.
What’s your background to describe this evidence as anything at all? Significant nutrition background? I’m not clear why you think you have standing to make any claims whatsoever, here, especially given the utter paucity of evidence you have cited.
This is typical Internet Nutrition Bullshit, just packaged in vaguely smart sounding words.
>Among other mechanisms, refining removes nutrients and other beneficial molecules, while purifying taste and reducing volume making it easier to overeat.
Should we cancel vaccines and water purification while we're at it? It's not hard to come up with vaguely plausible reasons for why those are bad as well, eg. "hygiene hypothesis", "gut microbiome", or whatever.
>But the worst part isn't refining the oil itself, but the use of these oils in ultra-processed foods along with refined sweeteners, colorings, and fillers. Even if refined seed oils themselves aren't harmful, avoiding them is likely to be beneficial because it leads to avoiding ultra-processed foods.
It's ironic you cite ultra-processed foods, another category which has questionable rigor and applicability, but people nonetheless defend because "Even if ultra processed foods themselves aren't harmful, avoiding them is likely to be beneficial because it leads to avoiding unhealthy foods."
> It's ironic you cite ultra-processed foods, another category which has questionable rigor and applicability, but people nonetheless defend because "Even if ultra processed foods themselves aren't harmful, avoiding them is likely to be beneficial because it leads to avoiding unhealthy foods."
The evidence that ultra processed foods are harmful is quite strong, much stronger than the association with saturated fat intake. Are you really suggesting that they might not be unhealthy?
The objection isn't over whether "ultra-processed foods" as a group tend to be unhealthy, it's that the classification is not rigorous, and conflates what's actually unhealthy or not with an heuristic that's at times inaccurate.
>Everyone knows that greens are good for your health and red meat is not. But everyone would laugh if I were to propose that red foods are dangerous and green ones healthy. I could prove my thesis making use of a few additional rules, such as postulating that some shades of red, tomatoes and apples for instance, should not be counted as red.
>The Nova classification system, which sorts foods into four categories depending on the degree of processing they undergo, uses similar logic. There is no scientific justification for the assumption that the number of processing steps is of any relevance for the health properties of foods. Making “ultra-processed” popcorn or chips is exceedingly simple. Making “minimally processed” natural yogurt requires some 20 processes.
>Heating is the process that affects foods the most, but heating is afforded no attention in Nova. It does not neatly fit into the processed or unprocessed scheme. In some cases it is essential for public health, in others it may induce carcinogens. And in a blatant example of the arbitrariness of the Nova classification, putting a loaf of bread into a bag moves it from the minimally processed to the ultra-processed category.
>The flawed, but intuitively easy to grasp, label of ultra-processed food is a handy justification for blaming food-related health problems on profit-hungry food companies. And it enables politicians to divert funding from serious research to meaningless eye-catching interventions.
The Nova classification system isn't based on the number of processing steps, it's based on ingredients.
Putting a loaf of bread into a bag certainly doesn't move it from the minimally processed to the ultra-processed category. That false claim is based on the fact that most bread sold in bags is ultra-processed, but it's not the bag that makes it so.
I think that professor of food engineering may have a conflict of interest related to the foods he creates for a living.
>The Nova classification system isn't based on the number of processing steps, it's based on ingredients.
So going back to the quote, is the potato chips vs yogurt example accurate?
>That false claim is based on the fact that most bread sold in bags is ultra-processed, but it's not the bag that makes it so.
What makes them ultra-processed then? Even the home made loaf is made from wheat that's dehusked, ground to a powder, and then chemically treated (bleaching). Making it into a dough and then baking it involves even more processing. The final product resembles the inputs almost as little as instant mash potatoes resembles potatoes. The only real difference is the use of dough conditioners and industrial sized ovens, but given all the previous steps, it seems arbitrary to draw the line of "ultra-processed" there.
~10,000 years is also evolutionary recent. It's enough time for fast evolution to weed out stuff that is very directly maladaptive, but not enough time to weed out more subtle effects. And given that a bad diet tends to kill people well past their prime childbearing years, evolution might consider a bad diet a good thing.
Good point, there are a lot of diseases of civilization that have been with us since large scale agriculture, that did not afflict most hunter gatherers.
To add, sunflower seed use predated maíz in some parts of North America, and mustard oil goes back to the Indus Valley Civilization.
Yes, the extraction of these oils is "novel" just like factory farms are novel. As the article explains, it is the ultra-processed food products that are the problem, not the seed oil ingredients.
There is also sunflower oil and high oleic sunflower oil, the latter, which after refinement is incredibly heat and shelf stable, and is essentially pure omega-9 monounsaturated fat.
The anti refinement process perspective is discounting that the end result is the perfect fat.
A similar thing can be said about hydrolyzed collagen with a little tryptophan added.
When people are talking about seed oils they rarely mean olive oil, usually it's "canola oil" (considering what "canola" stands for it's insulting not just to one's digestive system but intellect too).
Zero-GPT says it's human written, with a fairly low score of 11.4% for AI. I think I should mention this, as some people seem to try to kill the piece by branding it AI-ism.
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