Funny how OpenAI keeps on being everything but open.

Well, "funny" probably isn't the right word here. Elon Musk is just such a prime example of what's wrong with the world and the economic system that all of his projects feel indelibly tainted by him.

The man is a tax-dodging and union-hating billionaire calling himself "basically a socialist". That's just… no. No. Noooo. No.

However its party cadre has an unfortunate habit of serially getting caught in compromising situations where it’s clear they support the neo-Nazi far right

This is just like our "totally not neo-Nazi" party here in Finland. Their members continuously get caught on photo with neo-Nazis but they're absolutely not affiliated in any way

Near enough a ground zero for any missile so that you don't survive the initial strike

Furze is great. I'm honestly surprised he still has the standard amount of limbs & digits and is alive and well. For anyone who's not familiar I highly recommend watching the bunker stuff too, or anything he's made for that matter

… how could it be a "phase"? Is being LGBT+ in general "a phase"?

The situation here is unsurprisingly pretty complex.

There's a lot of fairly well-substantiated anxiety that we're going to be next in line due to not being in NATO. Our Foreign Policy Institute said that it's fairly likely Russia will be using military force against us in the "next few years". This really hammers home the sort of anxiety we're talking about here.

A couple of years ago the majority of Finns were against joining, in recent polls it's been about 50/50. It definitely says something that it's still only 50/50, though.

The main argument against NATO seems to revolve around our supposed historical neutrality, but in all honestly it feels more like Finlandization than an actual argument; our "neutrality" has never been exactly neutral, starting with being allied with the Nazis (totally only for convenience, we swear, no ideological ties whatsoever, no sir). Another (and IMO more credible) argument is that we don't want to be dragged into a war by the US – people don't really trust the US especially after Trump, and the US's human rights abuses are often pointed out in NATO discussions. Some also feel a bit iffy about joining an alliance with Turkey, whose human rights record is also not exactly what you'd call stellar. Edit: many especially on the left (where most of the resistance to joining NATO is coming from, in addition to some of the ultranationalist nutballs who love Putin) also say that joining a military alliance makes no sense if you want peace.

The debate you're referring to probably meant the various citizens' initiatives that popped up. We have an online initiative system where the parliament has to consider every initiative with over 50k signatures (done using an eID provider). They, however, aren't in any way compelled to do anything about them, and the majority of initiatives really don't lead to squat unless there was existing political will to do it in the first place.

I'd give about 50-70% odds of us going for NATO membership, although the question is how do we do that without Russia eg. starting a border skirmish before the membership ratification round is done.

As a Finn I'm more than moderately worried that we're, if not next in line, at least in line for a demilitarization by Russia.

We're not a NATO member (mainly because our population is 90% idiots who can't understand that WW II was very different time), so there's a nontrivial chance that we'll get invaded just 'cause – and if we start talks to join NATO we're sure to get invaded just like Ukraine.

Russia is much like the US; their culture is so deeply sociopathic that their existence as a nation is a threat to everyone. Unfortunately there's no way to unfuck that particular situation without a nuclear holocaust, but at this point I'm not even convinced that'd be a bad thing. We're going to destroy the planet and ourselves one way or another, we're not nearly smart enough to not do that.

Weirdly judgemental. Should everybody just stay in situations that don't make them happy?

Although considering the state of fusion research funding, it's no surprise we don't know much.

I imagine sending probes to investigate neighbouring star systems would be exciting the first dozen or so times, but then there's ever-increasing costs and time-frames, while the public interest wanes and scientists see diminishing returns. At some point, funding for the project stops, and so do the probes.

Although I'd note that this assumes similar economic systems and motives to us 20th century humans

Finding rudimentary life on Mars would be terrible news – it'd mean the Great Filter is ahead of us, and judging by how thoroughly we've screwed the pooch with climate I'm pretty sure I know what that Filter is.

I think the answer to Fermi's Paradox is simply that intelligent life tends to destroy itself in one way or another. Nukes didn't quite do it for us but climate change might.

Ah, the US: the best legal system money can buy. It's honestly astonishing something like this can happen in a nominally 1st world country

Wonder why the GOP only can resonate with morons these days

They've gone far enough to the authoritarian side that they're hitting what these studies reference. This snippet from one says it best:

Right-wing ideologies offer well-structured and ordered views about society that preserve traditional societal conventions and norms (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Such ideological belief systems are particularly attractive to individuals who are strongly motivated to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in preference for simplicity and predictability (Jost et al., 2003; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). Theoretically, individuals with lower mental abilities should be attracted by right-wing social-cultural ideologies because they minimize complexity and increase perceived control (Heaven, Ciarrochi, & Leeson, 2011; Stankov, 2009). Conversely, individuals with greater cognitive skills are better positioned to understand changing and dynamic societal contexts, which should facilitate open-minded, relatively left-leaning attitudes (Deary et al., 2008a; Heaven et al., 2011; McCourt, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen, & Keyes, 1999). Lower cognitive abilities therefore draw people to strategies and ideologies that emphasize what is presently known and considered acceptable to make sense and impose order over their environment. Resistance to social change and the preservation of the status quo regarding societal traditions—key principles underpinning right-wing social-cultural ideologies—should be particularly appealing to those wishing to avoid uncertainty and threat.

Indeed, the empirical literature reveals negative relations between cognitive abilities and right-wing social-cultural attitudes, including right-wing authoritarian (e.g., Keiller, 2010; McCourt et al., 1999), socially conservative (e.g., Stankov, 2009; Van Hiel et al., 2010), and religious attitudes (e.g., Zuckerman, Silberman, & Hall, 2013).

Oh dear it's worse than I thought. At this point I'm fairly sure he was serious

I honestly can't tell if that was a joke or if he's actually being serious. My initial reaction was that it had to be a joke, but then I realized that he's some random dudebro podcast influencer so there's a very good chance he thinks he's outsmarted experts