It's a small difference, but important. Especially because that person is far more likely to be responsible (voting) for and profiting from USAs bad stuff.
The issue is propagandists are typically brainwashed already.
This happened a few weeks ago, actually.
I'm an American and I don't believe that.
With China, you can say 'yeah, this is good, but they eat babies for fun' and it would mostly pass with people nodding along.
Hard to think of any critique of the US I've seen on HN recently which acknowledges the possibility that we might mean well.
Even during the Biden administration, right after we allocated billions of dollars to Ukraine, huge numbers of Europeans expressed an unfavorable view of the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...
They call us warmongers and then wonder why we don't want to help them fight their war. Now they say they want to be buddies with China which has been actively helping Russia with arms. I don't think there is any point in the US trying to please Europe.
And then you've got the Australians who express their burning hatred of the US for not giving more aid to Ukraine, while Australia's aid as a fraction of GDP is still sitting around 10-15% of that provided by the US.
Europeans helped when you called after 9/11. Are you seriously arguing about being called warmongers considering what your government started in Iran? (and btw screwed the global energy market)
This lack of self awareness is what turns people away.
So how would you feel if you got labeled as warmongers for that help?
You're welcome to call us warmongers. Just don't expect us to help you fight wars if you do.
Libya was Europe's idea -- we helped when you called -- yet the US still gets blamed for it. If the US had surged more weapons to Ukraine (as some Europeans were requesting), thus provoking Russia to launch a nuke, we surely would've been blamed for that too.
The pattern I've noticed is that anywhere the US has foreign policy involvement (including Europe), there are locals in that region who are both for and against said involvement. People who aren't knowledgeable about the region will generally not know many details, and simply say "oh, the US is involved in a war again". If that's how we're going to be judged, then yes, I want to be involved in fewer wars. And withdrawing from NATO will help with that objective. So I favor NATO withdrawal.
Hardly 'Europe's', it was the idea of some 'humanitarian interventionists' in the Obama admin and the then current president of France who wanted to cover up his corrupt dealings.
For what it's worth, I am not a fan of NATO either, so we can agree on that. All US troops should imo immediately leave Europe and loose all access to military facilities on the continent.
As for the whole warmongers thing, answer me two simple questions:
1. Was the 2003 Iraq war started based on false claims about WMDs? Yes/No?
2. Did you just attack Iran for no good reason? (Yes/No?)
You can see French and UK leadership were making moves before the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
Obama's approach was referred to as "leading from behind".
>For what it's worth, I am not a fan of NATO either, so we can agree on that. All US troops should imo immediately leave Europe and loose all access to military facilities on the continent.
I'm glad we can agree on something. I find that a lot of Europeans are not willing to accept the logical implication of their stated beliefs.
>As for the whole warmongers thing, answer me two simple questions: [...]
I'm not sure why you're pushing this "warmongers" point. As I said, I'm an isolationist. I've left many comments here on HN about how I want the US to be more like Switzerland. The Swiss never do anything and thus they never get blamed for anything.
The families of the thousands of Iranians slaughtered by the regime doubtless think that we are attacking Iran for a good reason. Same way the thousands of Ukrainians slaughtered by Russia probably thought our weapons deliveries were being given for a good reason.
In any case we may be called "complicit" if we do not act -- the same arguments were used in the case of Libya. But we can't keep playing world police. We aren't very good at it, and it is not clear whether it is helpful. Not to mention the dubious ethics of getting involved in the affairs of other countries.
You're either "complicit" in "propping up" bad regimes, or a "warmongering" "imperialist" who "destabilizes" them. There's no way to win. Given the choice, I prefer to be complicit.
Regardless of the 'thousands of Iranians slaughtered by the regime' which is supposed to just be accepted as fact despite everyone citing some random number everytime, no they don't.
Because the logic of 'we'll liberate you from oppression by bombing you' does nothing but unites Iranians more than they ever were united before.
Or do you think the killing of schoolgirls by the US is welcomed by Iranians somehow?
Honestly, I am speechless.
Think about this for just three seconds, I'm begging you.
There is a huge difference between attacking foreign nations because of oil... Oh, pardon me, because of... Geopolitical interests... Oh, pardon me... In the name of democracy and self-defense when you're being attacked (such as Ukraine).
We came to help you after 9/11, when for some reason you invaded Iraq although Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had taken responsibility...
But sure, think that you're white guardians of the flame of freedom and democracy all you want!
You're in exactly the same ballpark as China and Russia, they're just without the Hollywood propaganda.
The U.S politics are easier to understand from the outside. For one it's a democracy, a more transparent process despite a lot is happening behind curtains. I have no idea what North Koreans are able to make of the U.S scene, I know for sure people in U.S and Europe are hardly able to comment on N.K.
tldr: I'm with you non Americans (and Americans) are perfectly able to critique the U.S with some valuable accuracy.
It seems to me that there is a fair amount of misinformation which gets spread about the US. For example, many non-Americans seem to believe that school shootings are a significant cause of death here.
Furthermore, your proposed scheme creates an incentive to be non-transparent and thus not vulnerable to critique. By closing off information about your country, you can say to any critic: "Your critique is incorrect, because you lack information." Thus creating a reputational advantage for countries which successfully clamp down on the flow of information.
Is that your desired outcome? You want a world where criticizing the US can no longer be done as soon as Trump kicks out all of the foreign journalists and stops the information flow?
My argument is that with less transparent public affairs, it is much harder from the outside to understand what may be going on.
One can note the effects of certain measures without cherishing the schemes.
For that matter I'm personally convinced more transparency is overall a net benefit. It helps the public at large appreciate situations. But my preference, and the detrimental vs beneficial aspects of a system are irrelevant to the argument I made.
I.e. he doesn't see the US as "the good guys" either.
Pointing out the war threat from China isn't hypocritical just because you don't list all the war threats from the US at the same time.
When China does good, it's always that they do mostly bad.
With China it's always pointed out how much power the state has over corporations there, but in the US out of control lobying is supposed to be 'concerned citizens expressing their opinions' or some shit. We're still supposed to take for granted that it is a representative democracy, if a flawed one.
Yes, they just can't talk about some of those values publically.
Of course not. When it comes to SOTA LLMs you have the choice between two bad options. For many, choosing the Chinese option is just choosing the lesser of two evils (and it's much cheaper).
Mistral is right here, their models are in-between the cheap to run Chinese models and top of the line performances of US frontier models.
The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution. They did manage to force Apple to switch from using lightening connectors to USB though so their wins can't just be laughed off. Maybe they'll surprise us but it'd be a welcome change from their usual routine.
Production of state of the art semiconductors, yes. NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc.
> The EU fumbled the software revolution, the successes mainly came from the US
Worldwide massive success, mostly yes. Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though.
> The safe money is they are going to be an also-ran for the AI revolution
Not really. Past performances, or lack thereof, are not indicative of future ones.
Mistral are pretty good and selling well in the enterprise space. Some of the best voice models are coming from France (Kyutai).
If you fall out of the state of the art then the claim of EU fumbling semiconductors is correct. The richest block in the world should settle for no less than being state of the art. Anything less is fumbling it.
>NXP, STMicro, Infineon are still there and massive in automotive, industrial, card chips, etc.
The EU semi companies you listed are absent from the state of the art and only make low margin commodity parts that don't have moats. ASML exists but is not enough for claiming EU superiority since the EUV light source is still US IP designed and manufactured. And one top company is too little.
>Worldwide massive success, mostly yes.
Worldwide success is where the big money is, and you need a lot of money for cutting edge research and experimentation to build the future successes. Hence the claim of EU fumbling software is correct.
>Most European countries have their local or regional success stories though.
EU mom and pop shops aren't gonna make enough money to be able to afford risky ambitious ventures the likes of FAANGs have. Which is probably why you work for Hashicorp, a large global US company, and not some local EU company.
Mistral is good for many tasks where you do not need SOTA or near SOTA performance. They cannot compete if you do.
Then they need money.
So most of the talent flee or get bought, typical example in machine learning space is huggingface or fchollet.
Then European government plays catch-up and offer subventions, but at the same time makes rules to make sure companies don't threaten US dominance, or Asian manufacturing.
Mistral is typically playing catch the subsidy game.
Europe is constructed so that it can't win, but can "pick" the winner between scylla and charybdis, pest and cholera.
Because they have no spine and no leverage/muscle on the international stage to throw their weight around and make sure they get what's best for themselves at the expense of everyone else the same way US, China, etc do.
They play the international nice guy that just ends up being the doormat everyone takes advantage of, being at the mercy of Russian and Azeri gas, at the mercy of US tech, energy and defence, and at the mercy of Chinese manufacturing after dismantling their own manufacturing, at the mercy of Turkey for migration enforcement, etc so they can't do anything radical that upsets their "partners", or that makes their virtue signaling policies look bad, or risk massive repercussions they aren't prepared for, so they just turtle, bury their head in the sand and pretend everything is going fine while falling further into obscurity.
EU flaunts its "moral values" as its strength, but their geopolitical adversaries have no such values and are dominating over them in the process exploiting their morals against them as their weakness. There's nothing virtuous in being/acting weak and letting others dominate you.
By design European laws are superior to national laws. Leaving the union is also instant bankruptcy because all countries have very high level of debt which are only guaranteed because they are in the union.
European population is getting old and replaced by a migration coming mainly from previous African colonies.
Future paying for the past.
Uhm, Europe is not the US. We still have a lot of manufacturing. It varies by country - the UK unfortunately had structural problems, finance supremacy and a Thatcher who hated unions so much that she'd rather destroy unionized industries than have unions. Central Europe still does a pretty large amount of manufacturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7W20hdgWXY
I think I'll take the open AI models, innovative high quality EVs and cheap solar panels, please.
When someone points out hypocrisy, this is "the answer", it seems. But it is just a statement, not a rebuttal of the hypocrisy that was pointed out.
Hypocrisy is still hypocrisy.
And bad things are bad things. Yet no amount of propaganda (red scare, "eew dictatorship", Uyger-genocide, Taiwan threat) can convince me that the China is as evil (or more evil) than the US-Israel alliance of the the last 50 years.
Not mentioning US problems every time they criticize CCP problems is not automatically hypocrisy, and this idea basically means you cannot criticize anything without criticizing everything someone considers just as bad or worse at the same time.
Calling a discussion on China hypocritical because it doesn't say "but US worse" is essentially trying to build in whataboutism into every discussion.
It's a symptom of increasing polarization and part of the problem.
That's the hypocrisy: not seeing the block of wood in the eye of one while complaining about the speck of wood in the eye of the other.
By trying to be less hypocritical we create a more level playing field based on facts, instead of gut-feeling based hatred.
Whatabboutism is, IMHO, used a lot as a way to circumvent having to address the glaring hypocrisy: i see it's used to shut up those to point out hypocrisy.