If you tried to back up your assumption with figures or with specific historical facts, you would see that it is wrong. It's not just about the fact that there was instability somewhere at some point, but about how it is being perpetuated. The countries you list above are very diverse. But what they all have in common, and what distinguishes them from countries in Latin America, is that there is a lot of ocean between them and the US. Admittedly, this also applies to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. But if we examine the question of what distinguishes these countries from the ones you list, it brings us back to the connection that was already pointed out above. I live in Germany and have had access to toothpaste my whole life. People my age in Cuba can still remember very well what it was like to have to do without toothpaste. Now ask your favorite LLM who temporarily prevented toothpaste from being imported into Cuba.
The topic is about Latin America in general. Cuba is a very small and extreme outlier for several reasons so not very representative, I would say. It's certainly true that communist regimes from Cambodia to North Korea to Cuba have often been horrible for their people, whatever the root causes might be.
No, I'm talking about Latin America in general though. And yes it is certainly true there was colonialism, destabilization, economic coercion, and all that from large powers. I don't deny that. The examples I gave fit exactly the same description though. There was no "vast ocean" between the Ottoman Empire and Europe where it was throwing its weight around for centuries. Nor was there a vast (or any) ocean between China and colonial European powers, or later Japan.
So if "vast oceans" are part of your thesis, you are going to have to explain and define that far better, with a lot more supporting evidence and reason for your claims.
You can vaguely handwave and pontificate about differences between other examples and just assert without any real evidence or reasoning that must have been the cause of it. But like I said, that's just not scientific or even compelling in the slightest, really.
Of course it's not scientific. I don't wear a lab coat, and neither do you. You should take a look at yourself in that regard. You can't accuse me of lacking standards that you yourself don't live up to.
Ecuador 2010, Honduras 2009, Venezuela 2002, Haiti 1994, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador until 1990, Panama 1989, Grenada 1983, Bolivia 1980, Chile 1973, Dominican Republic 1965, Cuba 1961, Guatemala 1954, and so on until the territorial destruction of Mexico in 1848: all of them wars, coup attempts, occupations, protection of U.S. corporate interests, installation of military dictatorships, attempted assassinations of heads of government, etc.
These are recent events that naturally have a massive impact on the political and economic development of the nations concerned. And you want to equate that with the fact that the Turks were in Vienna at some point or that a nation of 1.41 billion Chinese has now recovered somewhat from European colonialism. Sorry, but that's ridiculous. The US bears significant responsibility for the poor political and economic situation in many Latin American countries. You don't have to agree with this assessment. But to pretend that there aren't a multitude of valid arguments for it is either ignorant or disingenuous.
> I don't wear a lab coat, and neither do you. You should take a look at yourself in that regard. You can't accuse me of lacking standards that you yourself don't live up to.
You are on the side of attempting to explain it away with "US interference". It's not whether I am scientific or not, lol.
> Ecuador 2010, Honduras 2009, Venezuela 2002, Haiti 1994, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador until 1990, Panama 1989, Grenada 1983, Bolivia 1980, Chile 1973, Dominican Republic 1965, Cuba 1961, Guatemala 1954, and so on until the territorial destruction of Mexico in 1848: all of them wars, coup attempts, occupations, protection of U.S. corporate interests, installation of military dictatorships, attempted assassinations of heads of government, etc.
Europe and China had massive wars. Coup attempts, assassinations, military dictatorships, etc. in the last century.
You deny the obvious and argue with superficial platitudes. Show me a country anywhere in the world that is thriving despite being defenseless against the encroachments of a nearby superpower. I can't think of one. If you need more examples, the former Soviet countries near Russia have a similar problem.
Without the Marshall Plan, Germany would probably be an agricultural country with a below-average GDP, just like Ukraine. You would have to be completely clueless to believe that weaker countries can develop freely and independently of the influence of the major powers in whose sphere of influence they find themselves.
If you believe that the differences in economic performance and political stability in different countries have other causes, then say so openly instead of beating around the bush.
I don't ignore the obvious at all. I listed several places that were oppressed and had varying outcomes. The fact you're pretending to not understand this is weird, but telling.
I can find nothing to support the claim that Cuba allegedly has labor camps for children. As far as I can see, this is an unsubstantiated propaganda claim. It is well known that the US is currently having ICE round up people off the streets and imprison them throughout the country. There is evidence that five-year-old children are being detained separately from their parents. The ability of people to apply double standards is always astonishing.
I will read the article and incorporate it into my view of things. I don't get the impression that you are prepared to evaluate information in a similarly open-minded way. You remain silent on all the points I have raised. This makes it clear to me that you are an ideologue.
I already knew about US immigration services abuse. It's absolutely a problem. It seems like a non sequitur in the discussion though. The actions of ICE in the US since Trump was elected don't seem like they have any relevance to the educational problems in Latin America in the 60s though? I mean, unless ICE now has time machines. If that's the case, I will absolutely start worrying. A lot.
I mentioned ICE because you mentioned something about child labor camps in Cuba. You have to keep things in context when you make non sequitur insinuations. I don't share the view that ICE is the first problematic development and that everything was fine in the US before that. We can end the exchange here. Nothing positive will come of it.
Cuba being a totalitarian communist dictatorship is of course the primary reason for both the bad economy, the disappearances, and the labor camps. These are not unrelated.
The issues with ICE are because of totalitarianism too. So one would think we agree on this point.
Attacking a country's people because the government is a dictatorship makes no sense. Especially when we were just fine with the brutal dictatorship that preceded the one we hate, because that one was capital-friendly and didn't try to give white man's money to brown people.
I mean, if your argument is that sanctions never work and are useless, then that's a position that we can argue, but I guess that means you also would support lifting all sanctions against Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, etc?
Sanctions don't never work, but they certainly must be used judiciously. They can and will be anticipated and countered, as Russia has shown. Their overuse has pushed the intended victims into a trading bloc rather than isolating them. I want a competent and effective government, even if it's one that kills innocent people for profit and destroys democracy in other countries. Instead we just get sanctions that do nothing and evil for profit.
> [Sanctions] can and will be anticipated and countered, as Russia has shown.
How have they shown that? I think they've showed that they won't stop the war, but that's not at all the same as anticipating or countering the sanctions. Since they couldn't anticipate the war lasting longer than a week I think we can safely say they didn't anticipate having an ongoing war AND sanctions.
Due to the sanctions, Russia has shifted its economic focus away from the West. This has given BRICS a massive boost. BRICS+ now controls over 40% of global GDP and over half of global oil exports. I don't know how much the sanctions are affecting people's everyday lives in Russia itself. In 2023, there were newspaper articles here in Germany about how we are still importing Russian oil, just not directly from Russia, but indirectly via India.
This is the first time I've read anything in English about Kärnten and Steiermark. Styria and Carinthia are impressive names. It's as if the Roman Empire were still there.
Considering, both, that most of the austrian states are the successors of duchies that existed already more than 500 years ago in the HRE, and that their governors today are also jokingly called „princes“, your idea is not that far fetched.
I live in a city where I can be fairly certain that I will not be the victim of a robbery. I don't need to carry a weapon or otherwise appear defensible. This type of crime simply does not exist here (or only to a very limited extent). That is “freedom from.” If I had the right to carry a firearm to defend myself in the event of a robbery, that would be “freedom to.” These two forms of freedom can be distinguished in a very clear-cut way. One allows you to do certain things. The other ensures that negative events do not occur. In North America, the cultural focus seems to be primarily on “freedom to.” But I would consider it a massive restriction of my freedom if I could not walk through my neighborhood at night without worry, even if I had the right to carry a firearm for protection.
Your semantic sleight of hand cannot reflect the difference between someone who feels safe because they believe they can and are allowed to defend themselves against danger (freedom to defend oneself) and someone who feels safe because they believe there is no danger (freedom from danger). However, there is a clearly discernible qualitative difference between these two freedoms. Otherwise, there would be no difference in terms of freedom between walking through Caracas, Tijuana, Port-au-Prince, or Pietermaritzburg with a firearm in your pocket and walking completely unarmed through Abu Dhabi, The Hague, or Trondheim.
I am in Germany. I will keep my 14-year-old Renault gasoline car roadworthy and use it for as long as possible. When it is no longer economically viable to drive a gasoline-powered car, I expect there to be electric cars that cost a four-figure sum in euros when new, are virtually maintenance-free, and come with a guarantee that a replacement battery will be available at a reasonable price (preferably from third-party suppliers) that I can replace myself without having to go to a specialist workshop. I hope that there will be manufacturers who recognize the need for such vehicles and will meet that demand. I will definitely not pay 20,000 or 50,000 euros or whatever for a skateboard with a battery and car bodywork.
Articles like this confirm my opinion on the subject. What annoys me most is that we argued in favor of electric cars because of climate protection. I am in favor of climate protection, but when I read this article, I just feel like I'm being taken for a ride. Politicians should not have simply decided to phase out combustion engines. They should have imposed further constraints on the automotive industry with regard to low purchase costs, durability, reusability, and affordable maintenance.
This is a balancing act between conflicting requirements. It is understandable that you don't want to jump back and forth between countless small subfunctions in order to meticulously trace a computation. But conceptually, the overall process still breaks down into subprocesses. Wouldn't it make sense to move these sub-processes into separate functions and name them accordingly? I have a colleague who has produced code blocks that are 6000 lines long. It is then almost impossible to get a quick overview of what the code actually does. So why not increase high-level readability by making the conceptual structure visible in this way?
A ReverseList function, for example, is useful not only because it can be used in many different places, but also because the same code would be more disruptive than helpful for understanding the overall process if it were inline. Of course, I understand that code does not always break down into such neat semantic building blocks.
> Focus on separating pure code from stateful code, that's the key to large maintainable software! And choose composability over inheritance.
I think they have made clear what they are criticizing. And a video game is exactly that: a video game. You can play it or leave it. You don't seem to be making a good faith effort to understand the other points of view being articulated here. So this is a good point to end the exchange.
> And a video game is exactly that: a video game. You can play it or leave it.
No one is claiming you can't walk away from LLM's, or re-prompt them. The discussion was whether they're inherently unchallenging, or if it's possible to prompt one to be challenging and not sycophantic.
"But you can walk away from them" is a nonsequitur. It's like claiming that all games are unchallenging, and then when presented with a challenging game, going "well, it's not challenging because you can walk away from it." This is true, and no one is arguing otherwise. But it's deliberately avoiding the point.
That's an extremely weak argument. Ultimately, it's about the numerical values. Where you set the reference point is secondary as long as you can convert. We could also set your birthday as the zero point. I'm not a Christian and I have to live with BC/CE too. I'm not saying that there is no Eurocentric perspective or that European understanding of history is not shaped by it. But we can reflect on this and correct it. Postcolonial criticism should not go so far as to see the BC/CE system as a structural mechanism of oppression. That's just ridiculous. You'd be better off dealing with concrete economic oppression instead of peddling this Foucault/Spivak/Said nonsense! Sorry for being so blunt, but it upsets me every time. I mean, what's the alternative here? Should we switch to the Mayan calendar now so that it's not so Eurocentric? That's ridiculous. A little Hegelianism (or Laoziism, for that matter) wouldn't hurt you!
