Financial repression (disposable income as % of GDP, limits on currency conversion)
Censorship level (% of movies shown in theaters that are pre-approved by government censors, % of foreign websites that are accessible)
Population/movement controls (not sure how to measure these, but e.g. “one-child policy” and hukou household registration system, which have no counterparts in the US)
After thinking for a few days, I agree with your objection. Incarceration rate is a signal but not as strong a signal as I thought, unless it spikes really high. (Still feel that foreign wars are a strong signal though, I wonder if you have objections to that too.)
China has little ability to project power across the ocean so it can only have wars with its neighbors. Nevertheless, since CCP took over in 1949 it has fought in
Korean War (1950–1953)
Sino-Indian War (1962)
Sino-Soviet Border Conflict (1969)
Sino-Vietnamese War (1979)
with total deaths of ~190,690 – 427,522 for China and ~207,941 – 240,988 for its enemies (according to Gemini Pro). This is roughly half of the total deaths of wars the the US has fought across the globe during the same period, but OOMs more than the US if we only count its neighbors (say the western hemisphere).
To put it another way, in order to compare their willingness to fight wars, you have to factor out their capabilities (including e.g. alliances and vulnerabilities to counterattacks and sanctions), after which it’s far from clear that China is less war-like than the US.
I’m 43 years old and the last of these wars ended before I was born.
Also, I wonder about your comparison of deaths. You say 400-700K killed in wars involving China. If we look at the biggest wars involving the US in the same period, the Korea war killed 2.5-4M, the Vietnam war killed 1.5-3M, and the war on terror killed 1-4M and is ongoing (all numbers from Wikipedia). Maybe the US is responsible for only double China’s number, or maybe more. I guess it depends how many deaths should be blamed on the US and how many on others.
Do you know the Hide your strength, bide your time quote (commonly attributed to Deng Xiaoping, who didn’t actually say it (his successor did) but did apply a similar policy)? If we apply an instrumental convergence / deceptive alignment lens on this, we have to conclude that we can’t really make any conclusions based on surface behavior, about how “aligned” (peaceful or warlike) a country is, while it’s below some capabilities threshold, at least if it’s collectively smart enough.
(I thought of mentioning this analogy in my previous comment, but it seemed too obvious to spell out explicitly. Did I underestimate the inferential distance? Do you still disagree?)
No country is aligned, and in particular neither China nor the US is aligned to me (a Russian emigrant). They’d both treat me badly if it was in their nationalist interests.
Mostly I’m trying to make the same point as the OP: many people, including LWers, are fanning up the military and AI arms race on the US side, and in my opinion there’s no strong justification for this.
Mostly I’m trying to make the same point as the OP: many people, including LWers, are fanning up the military and AI arms race on the US side, and in my opinion there’s no strong justification for this.
I agree that there’s no strong justification for this, but would make other arguments in this direction rather than point out the data that you did (China caused fewer deaths in external wars), mainly that AGI/ASI is likely to be either unaligned/uncontrollable or radically change the power structure and/or values of whatever country “wins” the AI race, so we can’t form strong judgments based on past evidence.
BTW who on LW is fanning this race? If I try to recall what I’ve seen, it’s mostly about trying to slow China down (through things like export controls and securing American AI labs) rather than speed the US up, which seems unobjectionable? Do you see LWers doing more than this, or think this is objectionable too?
If Alice and Bob are doing something that might be plausibly interpreted as a race, and Alice is not
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to move faster, if she thought about the situation as a race],
but she is
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to slow Bob down, if she thought about the situation as a race],
then this should make an impartial observer Charlie increase his credence that at the very least Alice (if not Bob) is thinking about the situation as a race.
Have you looked into:
Financial repression (disposable income as % of GDP, limits on currency conversion)
Censorship level (% of movies shown in theaters that are pre-approved by government censors, % of foreign websites that are accessible)
Population/movement controls (not sure how to measure these, but e.g. “one-child policy” and hukou household registration system, which have no counterparts in the US)
After thinking for a few days, I agree with your objection. Incarceration rate is a signal but not as strong a signal as I thought, unless it spikes really high. (Still feel that foreign wars are a strong signal though, I wonder if you have objections to that too.)
China has little ability to project power across the ocean so it can only have wars with its neighbors. Nevertheless, since CCP took over in 1949 it has fought in
Korean War (1950–1953)
Sino-Indian War (1962)
Sino-Soviet Border Conflict (1969)
Sino-Vietnamese War (1979)
with total deaths of ~190,690 – 427,522 for China and ~207,941 – 240,988 for its enemies (according to Gemini Pro). This is roughly half of the total deaths of wars the the US has fought across the globe during the same period, but OOMs more than the US if we only count its neighbors (say the western hemisphere).
To put it another way, in order to compare their willingness to fight wars, you have to factor out their capabilities (including e.g. alliances and vulnerabilities to counterattacks and sanctions), after which it’s far from clear that China is less war-like than the US.
I’m 43 years old and the last of these wars ended before I was born.
Also, I wonder about your comparison of deaths. You say 400-700K killed in wars involving China. If we look at the biggest wars involving the US in the same period, the Korea war killed 2.5-4M, the Vietnam war killed 1.5-3M, and the war on terror killed 1-4M and is ongoing (all numbers from Wikipedia). Maybe the US is responsible for only double China’s number, or maybe more. I guess it depends how many deaths should be blamed on the US and how many on others.
Do you know the Hide your strength, bide your time quote (commonly attributed to Deng Xiaoping, who didn’t actually say it (his successor did) but did apply a similar policy)? If we apply an instrumental convergence / deceptive alignment lens on this, we have to conclude that we can’t really make any conclusions based on surface behavior, about how “aligned” (peaceful or warlike) a country is, while it’s below some capabilities threshold, at least if it’s collectively smart enough.
(I thought of mentioning this analogy in my previous comment, but it seemed too obvious to spell out explicitly. Did I underestimate the inferential distance? Do you still disagree?)
No country is aligned, and in particular neither China nor the US is aligned to me (a Russian emigrant). They’d both treat me badly if it was in their nationalist interests.
Mostly I’m trying to make the same point as the OP: many people, including LWers, are fanning up the military and AI arms race on the US side, and in my opinion there’s no strong justification for this.
I agree that there’s no strong justification for this, but would make other arguments in this direction rather than point out the data that you did (China caused fewer deaths in external wars), mainly that AGI/ASI is likely to be either unaligned/uncontrollable or radically change the power structure and/or values of whatever country “wins” the AI race, so we can’t form strong judgments based on past evidence.
BTW who on LW is fanning this race? If I try to recall what I’ve seen, it’s mostly about trying to slow China down (through things like export controls and securing American AI labs) rather than speed the US up, which seems unobjectionable? Do you see LWers doing more than this, or think this is objectionable too?
If Alice and Bob are doing something that might be plausibly interpreted as a race, and Alice is not
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to move faster, if she thought about the situation as a race],
but she is
[doing the things that you’d expect her to do, if she wanted to slow Bob down, if she thought about the situation as a race],
then this should make an impartial observer Charlie increase his credence that at the very least Alice (if not Bob) is thinking about the situation as a race.