I’m not really sure what critical areas China needs to catch up in at this point. The chips they produce are already good enough for any practical applications. It’s also worth keeping in mind that improving software is much easier than hardware. Western software stacks are incredibly bloated. For example, Huawei starting fresh with their HarmonyOS can make a much leander stack by cutting all the cruft and backwards compatibility out.

I also don’t see China being decades behind in chips. They can already make 7nm, they’re prototyping EUV machines, it’s not going to be long at this point. On top of that, China is investing into research of alternative substrates like graphene, spintronics, etc. Any one of these could make silicon look like vacuum tubes overnight if they can scale them up to mass production. There’s no new fundamental physics that need to be discovered here, we know these these things work in a lab. It’s just a matter of scaling up production. And that’s precisely where state driven development comes in.

Can you explain what this tide of reversal you’re talking about with BRI? Last I looked, the investment is record high https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3340442/china-signs-record-us213-billion-new-belt-and-road-deals-2025-report

The Epstein files are the biggest scandal the western system has faced to date in my opinion. This is bigger than stuff like Watergate because it spans multiple administrations in the US, as well as other western regimes. It’s a total indictment of the idea that there’s any sort of a democracy in the west. It’s now plain for everyone to see that the west is ruled by diabolical monsters who are accountable to no one. And this comes at a time of a rapid decline in the living standards which makes people angry and politically engaged. Things that might’ve been ignored before cannot be ignored any longer.

Finally, it seems to me that the west is headed for a massive financial crash. While people keep playing games with the numbers, it’s pretty clear that all the tangible metrics like job numbers and cost of living are doing very poorly. The only question in my mind is what the catalyst will be. It could be the coming war with Iran which might drive oil prices through the roof.

There might actually be a direct relationship there as well. Taiwan being the chokepoint for western chip production puts them in a perfect position to insert backdoors into all western tech. There’s a reason the US was freaking out over Huawei tech spreading in the west. The problem with it isn’t that there’s some Chinese malware in it, but rather that western agencies can’t use it for spying.

I guess they failed the qualification round of outrunning the TCC. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-military-recruitment.html

Zulip pretty easy to self host. I ran a server for a group of friends a little while back, and it worked great. The UI takes a bit of getting used to, but it is great once you do because everything is a thread by default. And that makes it really easy to catch up on things.

I’m sure there will be more follow up research. In the meantime, seems like fast paced games are likely a good activity to engage in.

The article specifically mentions speed training as the activity that actually produced measurable results while memory training or reasoning training did not. The theory is that this type of activity engages different brain structures.

It’s all a matter of jurisdiction. Open source platforms like Stoat can be run outside the reach of western regimes.

Not that I’ve seen.

not much, just slightly different UX

I honestly kinda prefer older civ games because they were simpler and more focused. For me, Civ3 might really be the peak of the series.

I’ve seen a few similar projects before, but can’t recall what they were off top of my head.

indeed

it looks nearly identical to a cube I had at one of my jobs as well, I think even the phone is the same

It’s the openly becoming part, before there was an attempt to pretend the US was some sort of a democracy. Now, the mask is completely off.

basically yeah, at least if it’s in a group, I always try to see how far I can push people left when just chatting one on one

I think it would look similar to what Chinese science fiction currently looks like. For example, check out anthologies Ken Liu translated or The Three-Body Problem.

Again, I’ll point to China as a counter example. People there don’t see technology as magic, even though Chinese tech is just as complex.

I aslo don’t really agree that the tech in the golden age of sci-fi was simple. Take something like the Apollo program. Sure, people can understand the concept of a big rocket, but the details of how the whole thing works is beyond the ability of any one mind to comprehend.

I think the trend towards magic in the west is simply escapism. Most people don’t want to engage with the world that’s falling apart around them, and to contemplate the likely futures which are looking imcreasingly grim. So fantasy worlds that are divorced from lived reality become increasingly increasingly appealing.

Precisely, and it’s because China is where genuine progress is happening right now. People see technology evolve at a breakneck pace and that’s inspiring them to imagine advances in the future. Also, love some of the sci-fi art that’s been coming out of China. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202205/1266254.shtml

I think it’ll depend on the direction technological progress takes. People will extrapolate based on what’s being built in the real world.

I don’t see why there wouldn’t be. Sci-fi might have a new flavor, the genre has evolved this whole time after all. However, the basic dynamic of people seeing the progress around them and thinking what it means for the future will be the same.

That’s what spurred the genre into being in the first place. And as I’ve pointed out, we can see the same dynamic in China right now for the same material reasons.