(Counterpoint: for big groups like bureaucracies, intra-country variances can average out.  I do think we can predict that a group of 100 random Americans writing an AI constitution would place more value on political self-determination and less on political unity than a similar group of Chinese.)

There's more variance within countries than between countries.  Where did the disruptive upstart that cares about Free Software^[1] come from?  China.  Is that because China's more libertarian than the US?  No, it's because there's a wide variance in both the US and China and by chance the most software-libertarian company was Chinese.  Don't treat countries like point estimates.

1. ^{^}

   Free as in freedom, not as in beer

Of course, I agree, it's such a pattern that it doesn't look like a joke.  It looks like a very compelling true anecdote.  And if someone repeats this "very compelling true anecdote" (edit and other people recognize that, no, it's actually a meme) they'll make AI alignment worriers look like fools who believe Onion headlines.

This is a joke, not something that happened, right?  Could you wrap this in quote marks or put a footnote or somehow to indicate this is riffing on a meme and not a real anecdote from someone in the industry?  I read a similar comment on LessWrong a few months ago and it was only luck that kept me from repeating it as truth to people on the fence about whether to take AI risks seriously.

LessWrong is uncensored in China.

I know it's not your main point, but for the actual 4-minute-mile I'm on the side of the null hypothesis.  In a steady progression, once any one arbitrary threshold is crossed (4:10 minutes, 4:00 minutes, 3:50 minutes), many others are soon to follow.

Trolling a bit, perhaps we could talk about a "4-Minute-Mile Gell-Mann Effect".  Events that to outsiders look like discontinuous revolutions look to insiders like minor ticks with surprising publicity.

A standard trick is to add noise to the signal to (stochastically) let parts get over the hump.

BTW, feed this post into ChatGPT and it will tell you the answer

Somewhat mean caveat emptor for other readers: I just spent an hour trying to understand this post, and wish that I hadn't.  It's still possible I'm missing the thing, but inside view is I've found the thing and the thing just isn't that interesting.^[1]
 

1. ^{^}

   Feeding a program its Gödel numbering isn't relevant (and doesn't work?!), and the puzzle is over perhaps missing out on an unfathomably small amount of money^[2].

2. ^{^}

   By "unfathomably small" I mean ≈$\frac{1}{2^{{10}^{{10}^{googol}}}}$ dollars.  And, sure, there could be a deep puzzle there, but I feel that when a puzzle has its accidental complexity removed you usually can produce a more compelling use case.

Could you spell this out?  I don't see how AI has much to do with trade.  Is the idea that AI development is bounded on the cost of GPUs, and this will raise the cost of outside-China GPUs compared to inside-China GPUs?  Or is it that there will be less VC money e.g. because interest rates go up to combat inflation?