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1/ We arrived at this ontological inflation of the machine exactly through ontological deflation of the human.
You've undergone the long arc of the Western reduction of the soul to code so now you think code has a soul. The deflation & inflation are two sides of the same coin.
NEW: According to a bombshell report in the New York Times, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah threatened to walk out of Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical launch in May because the pope rejected the idea that machines can be conscious.
Olah’s team then privately lobbied the pope’s advisers “to take the possibility of model consciousness seriously.” Pope Leo XIV held firm.
For months, Anthropic has wined and dined theologians and religious scholars under nondisclosure agreements, hoping they would bless the idea that Claude has moral standing. thelettersfromleo.com/p/nyt-…
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
The future of #ArtificialIntelligence is not pre-determined. As a technology developed by human beings, its future depends on the choices we make. We therefore have the responsibility to guide, change and, when necessary, reject its applications. A reliable system that serves the human person is of greater value than one that is exceptionally powerful but whose consequences cannot be adequately foreseen or controlled.
He's been working up to this:
Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity, 2023
politybooks.com/bookdetail?b…
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
亲爱的德国人你好
这点我很有发言权，在14年我买了一辆保时捷macan，在24年我买了一辆cayenne
第一辆车我用的非常满意，那时候的德系车，不管在外观，动力，驾驶体验，安全性以及档次上都碾压中国国产车，这也是我24年买第二辆德系车的主要原因
然后第二辆车。。。一言难尽，我收到车第二天就出问题了，也就是我脾气好没去4S店闹，这都是次要的，最主要的是有一天我体验了一下我朋友的比亚迪仰望U8，对比性能后我才发现同等价格下我简直就是个冤大头🤷♂️各方面完全碾压德系车
最主要的原因还是因为在中国其实-30-40万的国产车性能以及完全碾压100-120的德系车了，所以这才是保时捷以，奥迪等德系车销量在中国下浮40%的主要因素🤷♂️
简单些说的就是中国工业水准已经吊打德国了
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
Знаете, наблюдая за всеми этими твиттерскими войнами времён второго Вавилона, я заметил, что больше всего выёбываются и учат всех, как надо жить, жители тех стран, на территории которых стоят американские военные базы.
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
Ever notice the gap when Chinese and German netizens talk? Many Germans still picture China as a backward place, while Chinese users casually reference Luther, Bismarck, the Wirtschaftswunder, and Kafka.
Look at the school textbooks and the difference becomes obvious. German textbooks often still show China as a backward country where people ride bicycles because cars are scarce and bow when they meet — old stereotypes with little depth. Chinese high school textbooks, by contrast, cover German literature and history in detail.
Chinese high school Chinese textbooks, by contrast, include multiple works by German-language writers, such as Hermann Hesse’s Reading: Purpose and Prerequisites, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Supplementary materials also feature Heinrich Böll’s Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa… These texts give students real exposure to German literature and thought.
In Chinese high school history textbooks, Germany appears across chapters on Europe’s intellectual liberation movements, bourgeois revolutions and the rise of capitalism, the Cold War and the shifting international order, and the later evolution of capitalist societies. The coverage includes:
🔵 Germany in the Reformation
Martin Luther published the Ninety-Five Theses, rejecting papal authority. Germany was fragmented and heavily exploited by the Roman Curia, earning the nickname “the Pope’s cow.”
🔵 German Unification and Imperial Constitutionalism
In the mid-19th century, political division held back capitalist development. Bismarck achieved unification through three dynastic wars. In 1871 the German Empire was founded and issued the Constitution of the German Empire, establishing a dualistic constitutional monarchy.
🔵 World War I, World War II, and the Anti-Fascist Struggle
Imperialist rivalries, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, and the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany. The establishment of fascist dictatorship in Germany, the invasion of Poland, the invasion of the Soviet Union, and Germany’s surrender in 1945; the Declaration by United Nations and the formation of the global anti-fascist alliance.
🔵 Division and Reunification
After World War II, Germany was divided into occupation zones and became a Cold War frontline. The Berlin crises and the standoff between East and West Germany followed.
Reunification in 1990 marked a major turning point in the end of the bipolar order and the Cold War.
🔵 Economic development
Second Industrial Revolution: relatively high industrial growth between 1870 and 1913; as a latecomer, Germany industrialized rapidly over roughly 30–40 years and caught up with Britain; by the early 20th century its industrial output ranked first in Europe and second in the world, with clear leadership in the electrical industry and related fields.
After World War II: through the social market economy, West Germany rose from rubble to economic miracle and became Western Europe’s strongest economy by the 1960s.
When SOME German netizens smugly call Chinese people “brainwashed,” they might first want to check whether they know their own history better than a Chinese high school student.
In German primary school textbooks, China is still in the 1980s (Shared by a Chinese mom in Germany).
"Many Chinese people do not have a car. Meiying’s father also rides a bike or walks…"
"Meiying doesn’t have her own room in Beijing. She has to sleep with her parents…"
"Chinese people do not shake hands to greet each other. They bow politely…"
Falseness like this breeds a natural sense of superiority in kids. And it explains why so many foreigners are stunned when they actually come to China. They’ve been fooled by bad guys.
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
Amics, hay un sistema político en el que los líderes se eligen por mérito y no mediante un concurso de popularidad conformado por una serie de candidatos patrocinados por diferentes facciones del capital y en el que, además, se ejecuta a los corruptos sin miramientos.
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
还有一点其实你们忽略了，为什么我们的历史千年不断？因为每个朝代都有专门的史官做记录，君王的言行，奏章，政策都要详细客观记录。而君王最怕死后留下骂名，而他们也致力于做出功绩以求青史留名。因为每个君王死后我们的文系统都会给他甚至有功绩的大臣一个字号的谥号。比如著名的昏君商纣王，我们取"纣"字就是给他盖棺定论，死后让后人评说。
所以不是你们理解那种无约束的暴君形式的独裁者。当然，按照你们西方语境下，所有几千年来的中国皇帝都是独裁者。但是这一点也不重要。
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
A while back, I had a great conversation with @michaeljswalker about China’s development model on his Novara Media show.
My former PhD supervisor, Ha-Joon Chang, watched it and had some interesting feedback on capitalist versus communist development models in East Asia.
In the conversation with Michael, I made a qualitative distinction between China (more communist-oriented) and the East Asian developmental states that boomed economically before China (more capitalist-oriented).
Ha-Joon suggests that the East Asian developmental states were more inspired by communism and Marxism than Michael and I suggested.
Here’s part of our conversation, which Ha-Joon has given me permission to share.
HA-JOON: Hi Jostein, I’ve listened to your Novara Media podcast. Excellent. Just one thing: the relationship between (state) capitalism and communism in East Asia is rather more complicated than you and Michael suggest.
First of all, many of the leaders of state capitalism were either communists when they were young or at least strongly influenced by communist ideas. The Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) were ‘brothers’ with the Chinese Communist Party. The ‘Three Principles of the People’ of Dr Sun Yat-sen (founder of the KMT) clearly state that all the key industries (heavy industry, banking, infrastructure) should be state-owned, which is why Taiwan had such a high proportion of SOEs in GDP. Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s son and the second president of Taiwan, was very left-wing, having been trained at a party school in the Soviet Union, where he was friends with Deng Xiaoping. When he was president, he promoted more progressive policies, pursuing a more planned approach to development and becoming politically more open.
Our General Park was a communist when he was younger. His brother was a well-known communist, considered one of the leaders of a major communist uprising in South Korea (then officially under US trusteeship) in 1946. Park Chung-hee himself was sentenced to death for his involvement in a communist mutiny in 1948 but saved himself by handing over a list containing the names of about 200 of his comrades. Kim Jong-pil, his nephew-in-law and for a while Park’s number two, is also said to have been a communist when he was young.
Of course, when Park came to power, he and his military junta had to declare that ‘anti-communism is the first principle of our government’ so that the US would accept them, and they violently suppressed left-wing political groups in the name of anti-communism (whether or not those groups were really communist). But many of their policy ideas were strongly influenced by communist practices, if not necessarily by the theories of Karl Marx: five-year plans, the nationalisation of all banks, the New Village Movement (which adopted the Maoist idea of making peasants build local infrastructure during the fallow season), and so on.
Many Japanese government officials were communists when they were young. In Japan, unlike in Korea (I don’t know about Taiwan in this respect), communism was NOT illegal, so until the 1990s the majority of economists in Japanese universities were Marxists (although most of them belonged to the Uno School, a rather scholastic version of Marxist economics).
ME: So, to synthesise your thoughts here, is your argument that the developmental state paradigm was more communist- or Marxist-inspired than Michael and I acknowledged?
HA-JOON: In a nutshell, yes. But the bigger point is that everyone’s policy ideas had very complex origins and interactions.
ME: Okay, so how would you then defend communism and Marxism as anti-fascist ideologies, given that many have described both the KMT and General Park as fascists?
HA-JOON: It depends on one’s definition of fascism. If you define it as the ideas of Mussolini and Hitler, I would say the KMT and Park were closer to communism than to fascism. If you define fascism as anti-trade-union authoritarianism, then they were more fascist than communist.
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
Coding is now cheap enough that anyone can build their own app. I think hardware is next.
I spent today walking the Shenzhen robotics expo. Here's what I saw 🧵
cc @ernieho_ai
At some fateful point, in a radical break from their own tradition, Europeans came to view freedom in purely negative terms, as what you were not prevented from doing. What was de-materialized was then mystified and divinized. Chinese guy comes along and just does math on it.
今天碰到一个欧洲人对线，
他反复跟我强调一件事，他是自由的。
我算了笔账，实在没听懂。
一个月工资，先砍掉五分之一交税，
房租再砍掉二分之一，
物价往上走，收入往下走。
然后他告诉我，他非常自由。
我问他，自由在哪。
他说不上来，但表情很坚定。
那一刻我突然明白了，
自由这个词在他那，不是状态，是信仰。
他爷爷的爷爷那辈，有地，有房子，
到了他这一代，地没了，房没了，
最后剩下的一样东西，叫自由。
人不能什么都没有，还觉得自己亏，
所以必须把最后这个词，供起来。
你跟他算账，他跟你念经。
账是算不赢的，经可以念一辈子。
中国人理解这个事，一直很朴素，
自由不是你嘴里喊的，是你手里有的。
手里有选择，才叫自由，
手里什么都没有，那不叫自由，叫没别的可叫。
祖上有产，到这一代，被割得干干净净，
割完了还要替镰刀鼓掌，夸割得好自由。
Yes we are. And it's not even close. The response below is of fairly typical quality. It's clear China has an educational overcapacity problem.
nitter.cf/jxzdmzw/status/2115265…
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
法国人把“敢于侮辱本国历史人物”当成文明程度的指标，还要求中国人接受同一套价值标准。
一个民族有权尊重自己的历史人物，而不必因为其他民族流行解构英雄，就跟着解构自己的伟人。
你们有嘴贱的自由，我们也有撤回商业合同的自由。
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
Just saying
John Pang 彭润年 retweeted
Sometimes I read something that makes me wonder “what is it like to be a liberal?” in exactly the same way Tom Nagel wondered “what is it like to be a bat?”
Super compressed learning arc:
Chinese vault the Great Firewall expecting to find the Germany of Marx, Hegel, Kant and Nietzsche. They meet today's Germany, vanguard of the cultural West. 🫢
"Abandon illusions and prepare for struggle!"
nitter.cf/ycuqqHMfLAolj1T/status…
我们把德国人想得太好了。对于这一点，中国人，尤其是我自己，真的需要深刻反思。
我从小就喜欢历史。小学四到六年级的时候，我就大量阅读了二战史，其中相当多的篇幅都与德国有关。我知道“沙漠之狐”隆美尔和他的第七装甲师，也知道曼施坦因、古德里安、邓尼茨。我还知道一些著名的德国军人，比如第一次世界大战中的“红男爵”，以及那个以特种作战闻名的德国党卫队军官奥托·斯科尔兹内。
从那时起，我所接触的历史书籍，就给我塑造了一个强大、纪律严明、战斗力惊人的德国形象。
我一直为隆美尔感到惋惜。在我当时读到的那些书中，蒙哥马利的胜利似乎有些胜之不武。他所拥有的兵力和后勤补给远远超过隆美尔，而隆美尔却能在北非战场上与英军周旋，甚至一度占据上风。在年少时的我看来，盟军最终战胜德国，很大程度上依靠的就是体量上的碾压。
抛开意识形态，希特勒的死亡在我当时的理解中，也颇有一种悲剧英雄式的壮烈感。
中国最后一个由汉人建立的王朝是明朝。崇祯皇帝是一个能力不足、难以挽救国家局势的皇帝，但他又因为最终的结局而备受惋惜，甚至受到某种程度的崇拜。中国人可以接受一个无能的人，尤其是一个倾尽全力却依然无力回天的悲剧人物。这样的人，更容易得到同情。
崇祯就是如此。在我看来，他虽然能力不足，但最终选择了死亡，以此证明自己。他的问题在于能力不够，而不是天生邪恶，或者从一开始就怀着错误的动机。
在我当时的理解中，希特勒也是一个类似的人物。希特勒用死亡结束了自己的一生。年少时的我，很容易将这种结局理解为一种悲剧性的、甚至带有英雄色彩的落幕。
后来，大约到了高中时期，我开始阅读更多有关中国抗日战争的历史，逐渐了解到德国顾问帮助中国抵抗日本侵略的故事。
例如，德国将领汉斯·冯·塞克特曾担任蒋介石的军事顾问，参与国民政府军队的整顿规划；他的继任者亚历山大·冯·法肯豪森，也对中国军队的训练和建设产生了重要影响。在德国顾问的帮助下，国民政府整训了包括第87师、第88师在内的一批精锐部队。这些部队在淞沪会战中投入战斗，表现出了相当顽强的战斗力。
还有拉贝先生。拉贝虽然是纳粹党员，却在南京大屠杀期间担任南京安全区国际委员会主席，参与保护了大量中国平民，使许多人免于遭受日军的屠杀。
这些历史经历进一步加深了我对德国的好感。在我的印象中，德国不仅拥有优秀的军事传统，而且曾经有人真诚地帮助过中国。
后来，德国工业产品也进一步强化了这种印象。德国汽车，尤其是大众，在中国市场非常畅销，曾经长期占据重要地位。在许多中国人的印象里，德国制造意味着严谨、精密、可靠，仿佛德国人做事就应该是一丝不苟、不容易出错的。
这一切共同构成了我对德国的滤镜。
可是，我在 X 上看到的德国人，又是怎么样的呢？
你们大大破坏了我对你们的幻想。
我在 X 上看到的，是一群鹰派的德国人。他们让我想起中国的邻居日本。面对中国人对你们表达出来的善意，你们却表现得极具冒犯性。你们用一种假惺惺的语气，提出大量冒犯性的问题，而一群中国人却傻乎乎地在这些问题下面认真回答。
是谁给了你们勇气，让你们觉得自己有资格担任审判者？你们又能审判谁？
德国人，尤其是 X 上面的德国人，谢谢你们，戳破了我对德国的这层滤镜。
我曾经看到过一种说法，认为希特勒原本想要与中国结盟，而不是日本。至于这种说法究竟有多少历史依据，需要另行考证。但现在看来，你们当初似乎确实应该选择日本作为盟友，因为在我看来，你们表现出了某种相似的民族性，那就是阴湿。
我不知道你们能不能理解“阴湿”这个词的概念。
这个词用来形容一个人的性格，指的是一种黏糊糊的、如同烂泥一样的恶心感。它不会直接对你造成伤害，但是，当它触碰到你的时候，你会觉得恶心、难受。你知道它未必能对你造成什么实质性的伤害，但它就是让你感到不舒服。
X 上那些德国人的提问，给我的感受就是如此。
你们挤出笑脸，然后故意提出大量冒犯性的问题，摆出一副虚伪的笑容，看着一群傻乎乎的中国人手忙脚乱地应付你们那些莫名其妙的问题。
中国人吃猫吗？中国人吃狗吗？
没错，我们中国人就是吃猫吃狗。
我们不仅吃猫吃狗，我们还专门吃德国人的猫和狗。