"There's no such thing as a tactical nuke" is a common refrain among scholars, albeit skewed toward those not at military war colleges. The argument is that strategic use of a tactical nuclear weapon leads down the exact same escalation path as use of any other nuclear weapon. Moreover, that the very notion of a "tactical nuke" makes escalation more likely. You can disagree, and plenty do, but there's also plenty who don't disagree or at least don't want to find out.
> Moreover, that the very notion of a "tactical nuke" makes escalation more likely.
Sorry, but the notion exists, and the bombs exist. With n=2, likelyhood of nuclear escalation is hard to predict, but access to tactical nukes certainly hasn't increased the incidence of nuclear war so far.
I do think it's pretty hard to actually use a tactical nuke. If you use one against a nuclear power, it seems likely to escalate to mutually assured destruction. If you use one against a non-nuclear power, it seems likely to result in reprisal from the world, including potential nuclear response and therefore escalation to mutually assured destruction. I would think that the yield of the weapon barely matters, it's the fact that it's a nuclear weapon.
Who are these "scholars" exactly? The only reference I could find is Jim Mattis, and the context was very specific when he said that.
Furthermore, this is a "what if" scenario since tactical nukes have never been used. Of course it would make escalation likely during an open conflict, so what? Doesn't change the fact that there is a material difference between a tactical nuke and a strategic one.
Are you retconning Hiroshima and Nagasaki as usage of tactical nukes? And when they were not only used against an adversary without nukes, but at a time when the US was the only nuclear state, so that escalation was impossible?
The nominal definition of tactical nukes has less to do with yield and more to do with how they're used; tactical typically means a weapon designed for use on the battlefield.
If you have a real interest in this area, a subscription to Foreign Affairs would be useful. Especially during the 20th century that's where all these arguments were hashed out. Tactical nukes were already being publicly debated in the 1950s. You may be able to access many older articles, from Foreign Affairs and others, through a free JSTOR account.
First link was written by an intern, let's be serious. The second seems to have more legitimacy, ok, so we have this one guy, but the article is very weak. He doubts that tactical nuclear weapons would help control escalation. OK. I don't think that's the center of the argument here. I also think using tactical nukes would lead to escalation, so what? Doesn't change the fact that tactical and strategic nukes are different things.
Can people please not post links with vague titles like this? I had to click through and read half the article to even figure out what this was about, and I wasn’t interested.
Me too. So as a service to the community: the article is about a noticeable increase of submissions about high-energy theory to arXiv due to mediocre articles quickly produced with or by AI and how to deal with that.
These days, it feels like, every article about something big happening is about an AI doomsday scenario, AI bubble "finally" bursting or AGI being reached.
Maybe one exception is milestones in nuclear fusion, but even that is very much rare compared to these.
Guidelines say "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" in that case I'd argue that it's linkbait so changing it is justified
Scientific studies grasping for explanations to spiritual things always give me a smile. This is the way. It’s about opening up to the energetic experience being conveyed through the medium (art, music, whatever). Has nothing to do with individual variations in biology or physiology.
> scientific studies grasping for explanations to spiritual things always give me a smile.
There are no "spiritual" things. Everything we experience is based upon biology and chemistry. Where do you think the "chills" come from if not synaptic firing?
They are the result of an infinite and ever expanding cosmos; absolutely no magic thinking or beliefs are required. I don't need to pretend that magic exists just because processes are complex.
What I'm getting at is the difference between subjective experience ("chills") and any theory describing it. ("Qualia", "no amount of simulating water will make anything wet", etc.)
Although personally I prefer scientific theories to describe reality (they are still the best/most useful), our experience is never "based" on theories.
I don't really have to interrogate why the term "spiritual" has absolutely no meaning wrt the genetic underpinnings of the effects discussed in the study. The study was scientific. It isn't complicated.
They were created by magic Gaia energy spirit beings,
obviously. Or God, if that is your desired flavor. Or the beings in control of the simulation we're living in.
While I think Gemini is the worst of the three big competitors, Waymo is an superb example of this talent. Kudos to Google engineers for producing so many diamonds despite producing many terrible flops over the years. We might find out their system of organization was the best one after all.
I don't mean to be cynical, but I read this move as: OpenAI scared, no way to make money with similar product, so acqui-hire the creator to keep him busy.
I'd love to be wrong, but the blog post sounds like all the standard promises were made, and that's usually how these things go.
He is a mythical 100x dev compared to how everyone else is doing agentic engineering... look at the openclaw commit history on github. Everything's on main
Peter has been running agents overnight for months using free tokens from his influencer payments to promote AI startups and multiple subscription accounts:
Hi, my name is Peter and I’m a Claudoholic. I’m addicted to agentic engineering. And sometimes I just vibe-code. ... I currently have 4 OpenAI subs and 1 Anthropic sub, so my overall costs are around 1k/month for basically unlimited tokens. If I’d use API calls, that’d cost my around 10x more. Don’t nail me on this math, I used some token counting tools like ccusage and it’s all somewhat imprecise, but even if it’s just 5x it’s a damn good deal.
... Sometimes [GPT-5-Codex] refactors for half an hour and then panics and reverts everything, and you need to re-run and soothen it like a child to tell it that it has enough time. Sometimes it forgets that it can do bash commands and it requires some encouragement. Sometimes it replies in russian or korean. Sometimes the monster slips and sends raw thinking to bash.
Love the idea, discussed doing something similar with a friend around the late 2000s but never did.
Hate to say it, but the concept needs to be gamified and turned into an app. This is the only way you’re gonna get the average citizen today to engage. Need to implement viral loops and gamification to even get peoples’ attention on something like this, much less hold it.
> Hate to say it, but the concept needs to be gamified and turned into an app. This is the only way you’re gonna get the average citizen today to engage. Need to implement viral loops and gamification to even get peoples’ attention on something like this, much less hold it.
No, I don't think that's true. First I'm not sure I even agree that all "average citizens" should need to engage, it has to engage the ones that cares, not absolutely everyone. And I don't think success should be measured in "engagement" here, but I'm also not a laissez-faire capitalist, so maybe that's where the difference comes in.
There are similar platforms in relatively wide usage already, https://decidim.org/ being one of them, and as far as I know has zero gamification, because again, "engagement" as in "users spend time on the website" isn't and shouldn't be the goal here.
I'm willing to bet this was assigned to him as part of his training or something, but I don't know that.
On the subject of the content, in actual seriousness, this was a pre-modern, pre-secularized age before the traditionally religious was privatized and viewed as some kind of optional quirky fantasy for adults, subject to taste, one as good as the other. So, moral instruction would have been more overt and crisp, and the subject matter prominent in public. The challenges and difficulties of the moral life would have been taught and spoken of more openly.
I know the OP is joking, but this would be no cause for alarm, as the image is noble in its content. It depicts St. Anthony's triumph over the demonic. It does not glorify the demonic or debase the good.
In this context, Man's fallen state predisposes him toward sin. He is tempted to do things he should not and knows he should not. Add to that the malice and opportunism of the fallen angels - the demons - who, while on a short divine leash, nonetheless can exploit the weaknesses and evil in men to lead them toward their doom. The image would then be received as quite inspiring, perhaps helping to inspire and concentrate the viewer's own efforts to resist temptation, combat evil, and to progress on his own journey of conquering the self.
