Back in the day when I was like 15 and DC++ was still a thing, I used to browse people's shared folders. One day I came across a file called "the paradox of false positive". It was a 1 pager that described how a machine which is 99.9% accurate at identifying terrorists would be completely useless due to this false positive base rate fallacy you're describing.

It really stuck with me throughout the years. It's kind o remarkable how even a 99.9% accurate heuristic is insufficient at scale.

Which begs the question: lets assume the intentions are pure (which we know they're not but lets be generous), what other options are there when 99.9% heuristic is not good enough? how do you design systems when they're guaranteed to fail as they scale up?

edit: and what do you know, I just saw this as I scrolled down on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816959

  The line that it “wants to revoke citizenship of brown people and expel them” overstates what appears in the AfD’s official national platform. Its 2025 manifesto proposes:

  1. ending birthright citizenship for children of foreign parents;

  2. removing the normal entitlement to naturalization based on lengthy residence;

  3. generally ending dual citizenship;

  4. deporting people without a legal right to remain, foreign criminals and people whose refugee protection has expired.

  But it does not officially propose stripping all non-white German citizens of citizenship or deporting people based explicitly on skin colour.

Meanwhile, Governments can take away your freedom, block your right to speech, ruin your entire life, seize your private assets/wealth, take away your children, deport you, etc...all depending on how the cultural wind is blowing on a particular day. And they are legally entitled to hold a gun to your head or kill you if you don't comply.

These are not the same level of risk. Yet more hysterical attention is paid to the former instead of the latter. This is dumb.

Be more worried about governments. Read more history.

Also, EU countries in Eastern Europe do already have a high military spending, and even Western European countries are improving.

The situation is less than ideal but not hopeless.

Or rather struggling to hold onto the fantasy of a Russian invasion on their Eastern borders, when Russia has spent 4 years in order to manage to hold on to a quarter of Ukraine, entirely filled with Russians.

> But at the same time, their politicians can't do anything because the minute they suggest that they might have to start cutting pensions and public welfare, and all of these different things in order to start supporting national industry and defense, they lose support immediately.

They don't have to do this [edit: spend excessively on defense], they can cut public spending somewhat and invest (and aid private investment), but the EU is too weak to do this. What they're hoping is that spending on arms can revive their economies. They deeply need a looming threat to convince member states to do this. They should instead make the EU a real federation with teeth (and a real central bank), or call it a day.

The EU needs a proper way to get investment into technology, innovation and infrastructure, not to invade the east a third time (not that they're willing to spend the money on that either, no matter how hard they propagandize and censor.)

The EU seems to spend most of its time threatening to regulate things that it has no ability to produce, and is also not investing in its future ability to produce. It seems doomed to continue to be a vassal of the US, or if it wises up just a little bit, a vassal of China.

edit: Wolfgang Munchau can't stop banging this drum. The European upper-middle class is completely delusional (and up its own ass) in a way that makes even Americans look almost sane. European elites are just US pawns, while they feed these delusions with anti-American "fellow kids" rhetoric.

edit2: Munchau example: https://unherd.com/2026/07/the-great-german-own-goal/

https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/195338

They did id sneakily.

https://www.politico.eu/article/president-vs-parliament-robe...

As I understand it, there will still be another related vote on Thursday, so call your representatives!

We aren't done yet. Game on after the midterms.

Please don't pretend to misunderstand a point just to manufacture the opportunity to reply in bad faith.

Nobody in EU is saying the EU should clean up others' mess around the world, people are just saying the EU should be busy building domestic capacity and capabilities to insulate itself from the issues caused by others around the world, such as securing domestic energy supplies so that the next time USrael blows up the middle east, the EU can just eat it no issue indead of being at the mercy of foreign oligarchs for overpriced energy.

US is so monetary rich and energy rich that they can afford to blow up the middle east every 10 years with little domestic consequences for them, and still have enough gas to drive their Ford F-450s Super Duty to Walmart, heat their pools and AC their homes, without leading to national unrest, but EU is so energy starved that securing energy independence should have been a national security issue for the past 20 years already, not since 2022.

And not just energy, EU is exposed in other areas as well (SW, AI, semiconductors, lithium batteries, agriculture, manufacturing, defense, etc), and again, it will only wake up in panic mode at the 11th hour when US or China twists their arm in some spontaneous international dispute. But politicians instead of focusing on preemptively securing these vulnerabilities BEFORE shit hits the fan, are too busy focusing on controlling people's privacy, which is what EU citizens and commenters here are criticizing.

-- Canadian

The concept of a modern nation is also relatively new. It emerged as an identity for groups of people who were no longer defined mainly by the monarchs ruling over them. That identity replaced the king as the symbol of belonging.

But now nationalism is often doing the opposite. Instead of freeing people from old power structures, it is holding Europe back.

So yes, maybe it is not literally “your house”, but the point still stands. Burning down the city around your house is not exactly a smart move either.

Turns out unifying a lot of different countries that have different languages and interest is a hard problem and in order to satisfy everyone a little bureaucracy is the price to pay. You may find it too bloated, too slow or even too corrupt but burning it to the ground is a lunacy for people who entertain clean slate delusions: Whenever it happens, it is a catastrophy for everyone but a few opportunists.

Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement. Now it can stay an economic union and big powers can pick and choose how to manipulate each one of us for their own purposes or it can strive to be a political union and have a standing on the international stage. We're not there yet but we will, eventually, we just need to hang tight. Things take time.

But this is the hatred you are talking about?

https://www.politico.eu/article/europeans-embrace-eu-gloom-w...