The latter two of those things don't necessarily imply the first thing, though.

I appreciate the argument. I won't get into it here, except to say that I wish we had John von Neumann participating in this conversation.

Did John von Neumann really advocate a nuclear first strike on the USSR? He is oft quoted as follows:

If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not 1 o’clock?

The source for this quote is his obituary in Life magazine ^[1] , which does not cite a source.

A review of Ananyo Bhattacharya’s biography "The Man From the Future" says:

[Bhattacharya] repeatedly claims that von Neumann advocated a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, but nothing in von Neumann’s actual writings, public or private, support this often-made assertion, which I believe is based on a fundamental misinterpretation of his views. ^[2]

Bhattacharya responded:

As von Neumann’s second wife, Klara Dan, notes in her journal, “In the immediate postwar years, Johnny quite openly advocated preventive war before the Russians became too strong.” Marina, von Neumann’s daughter, mentions in her memoirs “his extremely hard-line ideas on U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union, which included the possibility of preventive war on the latter.” Her father, she says, “made his feelings crystal clear in an interview with Life magazine: ‘If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say at five o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?’” ^[3]

(So apparently the Life obituary quote came from an interview? Or perhaps Marina von Neumann Whitman forgot that it was an obituary and not an interview.)

It's frustrating that apparently John von Neumann "quite openly" advocated preventative war, but apparently we have nothing on the subject written by the man himself — no strategic analyses, no persuasive essays, no list of targets. What ultimatum shall be made to the enemy before declaring war? How many bombs will be needed? What kind of government shall replace the defeated USSR? Which country will be next? Perhaps the answer is in the 22 feet of paper in the John and Klára Dán von Neumann archive in the Library of Congress. ^[4]

Or perhaps von Neumann didn't call for preventive war after all, because it's insane.

1. Blair, Clay (February 25, 1957). “Passing of a great mind: John von Neumann, a brilliant, jovial Mathematician, was a prodigious servant of science and his country,” Life: p 96, https://books.google.com/books?id=rEEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA89. See also the nicely-formatted copy at Qualia Computing. ↩︎

2. Stephen Budiansky, ‘The Man From the Future’ Review: The Genius of John von Neumann. Wall Street Journal, Feb. 25, 2022. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-from-the-future-review-the-genius-of-john-von-neumann-11645810799. archived ↩︎

3. Ananyo Bhattacharya, "Genius, War and Risk in John von Neumann". Letter to the Wall Street Journal. March 4, 2022. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/john-von-neumann-math-genius-war-soviet-union-risk-11646350849. archived ↩︎

4. John Von Neumann and Klára Dán Von Neumann papers, 1912-2000 ↩︎

Consider the subtle difference between:

• An AI smart enough to defeat all of humanity, if all of humanity coordinated to stop the AI.
• An AI smart enough to defeat an institution as powerful as the United States, if the US coordinated to stop the AI.
• An AI smart enough to defeat an institution as powerful as Google + OpenAI, if they coordinated to stop the AI.
• Etc.

If humanity manages to muster only a fraction of our power to oppose a particular AI system, the AI system might win that contest without being as smart as the first item in the list.

Re: Your tea recipe, beware: California bay laurel leaves contain umbellulone, which is toxic and can cause methemoglobinemia.

Really? My read was that the USPTO claimed GPT stands for "generative pre-trained transformer", and OpenAI has neither confirmed nor disputed that, merely arguing that most consumers don't know that.

GPT = Generative Pre-Training?

Everyone thinks GPT stands for "Generative Pre-trained Transformer". (For example, Wikipedia.) Does it really? The earliest mention of "GPT" is in the GPT-2 paper, which refers to "the OpenAI GPT model" and cites the GPT-1 paper. That paper does not contain the phrase "generative pre-trained transformer". But it does contain the phrase "generative pre-training", in the title and in the body, italicized.

Good post, but do you really want to use the specific term political machine for this? "Bloc" or "institution" seem more like what you're talking about here, unless I'm misunderstanding.

So you form the band and try to figure out how to keep everyone working together so that no one's confidence drops below 50%. If you're not sure you can do that, consider the value of trying anyway and seeing if you can do it. If the expected values still don't work out, don't start the band.

The Rothschilds musical is about the ambitious Mayer Rotschild who raises his children to be his business partners. I recommend the 1970 recording.

Part of Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer tells the story of Cosimo de Medici securing lasting power for his family. It's a fun read.

Of course Barrayar is about an adventuring expectant mother. Cordelia Naismith shows up later in the Vorkosigan series, but in Mirror Dance she seemed larger than life, no longer the adventuring type.