As we all know, it is impossible to tile the plane with regular pentagons. However, suppose you were willing to use slightly non-regular pentagons (with different alterations on each tile) so that it *appears* to be a regular tiling. Is there any easy method to figure out how to do this and what the minimum maximum deviation from regular you would need is?
Maybe we can start with filling Lobachevsky plane with pentagons and then applying some mapping function back to Euclidean. (ah no, it seems it won't work if you need tiles to be about same area)
Guy with a high-end products/leather consulting/reviews business is named Tanner... Tanner Leatherstein. Now, is that nominative determinism or just a clever nom-de-plum for marketing purposes?
This open thread is at the point where things start to wind down, so I’m just going to throw out a joke:
It’s late at night and a man is getting ready to go to bed when he hears a knock on his door. He opens it and looks down to see a snail.
“Yes,” it says. “I’d like to talk to you about buying some magazine subscriptions.” Furious at being disturbed, the man rears back, kicks the snail as hard as he can, and storms off to bed.
Two years later there comes another knock. The man answers and again he finds the snail, who looks up at him and says, “What the f*ck was that all about?”
There was this winemaker, see, who wanted to rid his vineyard of grapevine snails. So he hired a couple of people, gave them a little bucket each, and sent them to collect snails. At closing time, they came all back with their buckets full of snails, except one, who happened to be a retrained civil servant.
So they went to look for him, and found him in the vineyard, desperate, with the bucket empty. He explained: "Well, yes I saw the snails and went to collect them, but then: chop-chop! They all ran away!"
I see a motte-and-bailey fallacy in every argument I *hear* that has someone say something like "Our personalities are determined by a combination of both nature/genetics and nurture/environment".
Obviously, that statement is true: both genetics and environment shape our personalities. But when people say it, there's something else going on.
The emphatic statement is: "it is a combination! We say this in iconoclastic opposition to the FOOLS who believe it to be either/or!", and the context is usually in "response" to some scientist who just showed that there is a genetic component to [homosexuality/obesity/what have you] (and who probably worked their fingers to the bone in order to do so).
But the scientist fully accepts that, aggregated across many people, it is a combination, and their little gene is one factor - so why on *earth* would people be so emphatic about this very obvious fact?
The truth is that their interest is in believing a different statement: "environment plays a larger role than genetics" - that statement is their bailey. They won't say it out loud, because it'd mean they'd have to define "larger". But they believe it, and they like believing it. It allows them to pour scorn on lots of things they don't like, things which have changed the environment of people growing up. They can use this to promote their preferred solutions to problems, without engaging with the question of how much impact their solutions would have.
When they say stuff that comes from their bailey, if you say "but genetics plays a significant part in that problem, and we may want to consider anatomy-level solutions to it, for example one study found that-", they will say "Ah but do you not see, people are this way due to a COMBINATION of genetics and environment!", and then that's it - if you reply back, no matter how quantitative you are, they will be taking you to disagree with their facile motte.
Similar to the people who always say that correlation doesn't imply causation. Certainly an incredibly important mental model to keep in mind when doing science, but the more interesting follow-up to a correlation, is to try to explore various causality models, rather than dismissing the pattern outright.
What if the person just wants to have an accurate understanding of the world, and thinks it really does seem like personality has both genetic and environmental influences?
The other two repliers to you comment have done a good job of saying what I think.
Let me emphasize for a fourth time that I think that personality has both genetic and environmental influences.
In fact, it is completely boringly true: absolutely everyone believes it (try and find me someone alive today who unambiguously states that they do not believe it).
That's if we take it at face value. My claim is that you shouldn't take it at face value, because it is a "motte": a facile statement that, in practice, is used to backhandedly imply that the person they are speaking to does *not* believe it.
>What if the person just wants to have an accurate understanding of the world, and thinks it really does seem like personality has both genetic and environmental influences?
Then its weird for them to emphasize that because virtually nobody is claiming it is entirely genetic (but on the other hand, many people scoff at the idea that personality is heritable).
Then they should try to take account of both aspects and possibly control or otherwise identify/test the individual components.
The way OP presents it it's more about using the phrase to ignore the discussion on one side.
I don't recall seeing it much besides to argue against something being mostly one side (and presenting an absurd/noncentral example) though it seemed to be more of a "whaboutism" then what the OP mentions.
Surely this is not surprising, though? I mean, this is what people are like. Which means, parenthetically, it must be adaptive to tribal survival, and it's interesting to speculate why.
My thought would be that it's a high-risk-high-reward gambit: let's say you're a proponent of changing the environment to solve Social Problem X. Someone comes along and offers very sound scientific evidence that the environment has a 1% effect on X. If you maintain your faith in your solution, despite good evidence ot the contrary, you are embarking on a high-risk-high-reward path. It is very likely you will turn out ot be wrong (so that's the high risk), but if you happen to turn out right -- the research was mistaken, or it turns out the environmental mod you champion turns out to be unexpectedly and spectacularly effective -- then you will reap an enormous reward, because you'll have been a prophet. So that's the high reward.
Presumably if most people in the tribe behave this way, it's a disaster, but if a relative handful do, this allows the tribe to cover a few highly-leveraged bets at low cost. (If a bet doesn't pan out, all that happens is one member of the tribe is exposed as a fool or charlatan.)
I had a professor in my psych undergrad who opened up a class by promising to fail anyone who wrote as a conclusion in any test question or assigned essay that some trait was both the result of genetics and environment.
That's because this is a trite statement and not at all what we're interested in when talking about nature vs. nurture. What we're interested in explaining is variance - why some people are one way and other people are another. More specifically, what we want to know is the relative contribution of hereditary factors and environmental factors, which varies based on what population comparison we are making. (e.g. Height is highly heritable in America right now, but if you want to explain the variance in height in America between 1900 and 2000, it's mostly environmental factors that explain it. )
> The truth is that their interest is in believing a different statement: "environment plays a larger role than genetics" - that statement is their bailey. They won't say it out loud, because it'd mean they'd have to define "larger". But they believe it, and they like believing it. It
I think we need to coin a Mind Reader fallacy. If a person doesn’t say something out loud how the fuck do you know what they are thinking?
I see this pretty often here. People willing to assign a set of unproven attributes, unspoken positions etc to their - sometimes simply imagined - ideological enemy.
Now I am not accusing you of the following. It’s just an exaggerated example.
“I voted Democrat.”
Oh so you are _for_ Black Lives Matter protestors burning down cities!
“Uhm no, I’m pretty much against that.”
This is rationalism?
Should I assume merely by the tone of your original post that you believe blacks are dumber and more prone to violence than whites?
I could imagine that possibility but it would be stupid to assume it’s true because you didn’t say it.
You and I don’t know each other beyond what we say out loud here.
I'm absolutely convinced that Motte-and-Bailey is a big part of political discourse. A very current example is Kanye's "white lives matter" thing (sorry for CW but I think it can be throwaway!) - everyone knows not to take that phrase at face value. But with your comment, you're pointing out something negative about the use of "Motte-and-bailey". And I think it's right to do so, because MaB is in some sense "the good/sophisticated version of strawmanning"
"Bob strawmans Alice" = Alice said X. Bob, immediately after Alice said X, gave gave an argument against Y, demonstrating clearly the foolishness and nastiness of Y. But Alice objected that she did not actually believe Y, she only believes X.
"Bob accused Alice of having a motte-and-bailey" = Alice said X. Bob, immediately after Alice said X, gave an argument against Y. Because Bob knew that when people say X, it's really a motte for their bailey. Their bailey is Y.
Everyone hates being strawmanned, myself included. So, motte-and-baileying too much is bad. I'm not sure of a good, bullet-proof solution to this, other than taking extremely large amounts of time and care with arguments against individuals.
But why exactly would so many people so consistently say "personality it is a combination of genetic and environmental influences" in response to me saying "a study recently found a genetic influence on X"? Even though, again, everyone knows that statement is true?
There's a pattern. You're right that I can't be certain about them believing "environment plays a larger role"! But I think the widespreadness of this belief is the best explanation for the pattern I've observed.
I think I had a handle on M&B but I did go back and read the SSC posts
This is so tricky without actual examples.
I can think of a number of reasons why some would assert “but it both!” other than some hidden agenda.
Habit:
Not a directly applicable example but if it’s 104 degrees in the shade chances are you will hear someone say “Hot enough for you”.
IOW Sometimes it’s just a vocal tic that people automatically deploy in certain circumstances.
Laziness:
Related to habit. Hmm this may not apply to what this guy just said, but it’s commonly accepted that ‘it’s both’ so if I don’t feel like thinking very carefully at least nobody can say I’m _wrong_.
Group think:
No explanation necessary.
Foul mood:
I had an argument with my wife this morning, so I’m not conceding anything today.
Petty dominance game:
If I disagree I won’t cede any of my - imaginary - power.
In the end your thesis may be correct but I’m probably a lot older than you so I can’t avoid remembering all the times I’ve incorrectly surmised other peoples’ motivations. At least not without putting my liver at risk. jk
I don’t think my theory of mind is any wackier than the next guy’s but experience has taught me to be very careful about saying “I know what you are thinking.”
>I don’t think my theory of mind is any wackier than the next guy’s but experience has taught me to be very careful about saying “I know what you are thinking.”
As I already explained to you, we can infer it from the implications they think this statement has - namely those that imply environmental differences are what is important.
Your exapmle with Democrats and BLM is extremely poor. Those are two distinct things, whereas Hamish is directly talking about different statements about the exact same thing - heritability.
I can see why those things would cause the person to say "but it both". But I don't see why it would create a general pattern of people saying that rather than something else.
I wouldn't say I *know* that a given person is motte-and-baileying. Just that, at this point, I think they are around 70+%. And it's very annoying, because if it really is the case that 50+% of the time I am talking to someone who disagrees with me about something, they should just come out and say that thing. That would probably lead to a more interesting discussion for everyone, and in any case it would be a more honest one.
To put it differently, they should defend their bailey, instead of pretending that I am attacking their motte (when really their motte is boringly true / in no way something I would deny).
>I think we need to coin a Mind Reader fallacy. If a person doesn’t say something out loud how the fuck do you know what they are thinking?
By inferring it from the implications they believe follow from their declarations of "combination!"
Countless times I've heard people say something to the effect of "intelligence is affected by genes but its also affected by environment, so that means we should still be providing more funding to schools". This obscures the extent that environmental variations explains intelligence variation and therefore whether a given funding increase could be expected to provide an adequate return on investment even taking "environment" naively, but it also completely ignores how much of that fraction IS a result of educational variation specifically.
If I wanted to put some time into answering this question, I'd look into getting API access to the Amazon reviews and/or sales rank data. Amazon categorizes books as memoir, and within that category, there are sure to be some items with no sales and no reviews (or only bad reviews). The authors of those are who you're asking about.
Seems to be a bit of a vague one. Cool in this instance can be short for 'cool headed', in which case the amount of money is the whole of the amount listed no exaggeration or undercounting. Alternatively, it could be cool as a descriptor in which case it's as you found it, signifying the amount of money is surprisingly large.
So, to use an example. A meal that cost a cool twenty would have cost exactly twenty bucks. A meal that cost a cool two hundred is an approximate but this was remarkably high for a meal.
Does anyone else ever make it a point to click-through Substack emails to new posts, so that supported bloggers get better "engagement" numbers on email blasts? Or is that not how such things work anymore?
Someone pseudonymous is booting up a blog on the mindset of privacy concerns at https://psyvacy.substack.com/ - are there any others adjacent to this topic out there?
If India managed to maintain it's caste system largely unchanged for thousands of years, why did the caste system in the Southern United States so rapidly collapse?
>I’m guessing you’re looking for something in Western culture, not the fact that the Confederacy lost the civil war.
But the lower castes did not lose an analogous war, because such war was never fought. Which means that losing a war cannot possibily be the fundamnetal explanation.
And the founding of the United States was throwing off the English caste system. No more state-granted noble titles, no more "jury of your peers", All Men Are Created Equal.
Not really. Some early powerful US families attempted to set themselves up in the manner similar to which the British aristocracy functioned: buy big tracts of land, then live idly off the rent. The massive and ever-expanding availability of land in the US made this model non-viable and both flattened the class system and made it much less calcified as people were able to rise in wealth and prestige via trades and trading.
There were certainly powerful families but economic differences made the social structure of revolutionary America very different.
I'm continuing my 2 year hobby of memorising a monthly poem. I'm still looking for recommendations, under the loose criteria of having a rhyme scheme, being at least somewhat significant culturally, and shorter than ~50 lines. What are poems that have resonated with you? In particular I am also looking for poems dealing with grief and loss.
Well, for a killer one, there's Seamus Heaney's "Mid-Term Break" (c'mon Substack, let us format comments or at least keep line-break formatting instead of clumping it all together):
Mid-Term Break
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Since it's spooky season, what about The Raven? I don't know if it's the right length, but I love Kubla Khan. And how do you feel about Robert Service? The Cremation of Sam McGee is really fun and spooky (and deals with loss).
The Raven is actually my project for next year! I think having 24 shorter poems under my belt, it will be time to try something longer and the Raven has been a favourite of mine for a long time now.
It seems to be popular in our host's circles to reference The Hymn of Breaking Strain, a poem by Kipling. (For instance, it was explicitly used in Unsong and obliquely referenced in Project Lawful.) It rhymes, is roughly 50 lines long, and is somewhat about loss.
I don't usually like Hopkins, and I still have trouble with bits of it, but it may be the only one of his I've memorized.
"They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods."
There's likely plenty better suited to your query in Kipling, and certainly plenty worth memorizing, but this does deal with loss, in a way, and is one of his better-known ones. I think it's the first poem I ever memorized.
There's always The Sally Gardens; I know it as a song, but it was a poem first. Or Do Not Go Gentle.
Ozymandius is loss in a different sense. ("I met a traveler from an antique land...")
I will chime in again if I think of others. It's a fascinating query.
I'm over 70 and one of the things that occasionally bugs me is that my motivation for doing anything has gone (not that I need to do much, but I really enjoy the satisfaction of accomplishing something). I understand that testosterone is not the answer; ideas?
Adderall is energy and motivation in a little white pill. It's not very good for you, but in your place I'd put it on the list of possibilities. Sartre used amphetamines to power through the process of writing his final book.
I'm much younger than you, but suffer from Chronic Fatigue, which I think gives me some insight into what you're feeling. David Friedman's suggestion below is a good one, but the other part I'd add in is the importance of spending time with other people, in person. If you like games, play against other humans. If you like reading, talk to people about the books you're reading, or make a point of sitting and reading together. Spending time with younger, more energetic people should also help - I gather grand-kids are good for that, if you have them :)
I am also over 70. A good many years ago I concluded that if I spent all my time playing — arguing online, reading fiction, playing computer games — I felt stale. So I committed myself to spending two hours a day, seven days a week, on writing projects, broadly defined. In addition to making the rest of the day feel like an earned vacation, it also gets me into doing things that give me a feeling of accomplishment. I have finally managed to complete a poem I had been thinking about doing for a couple of decades, have written chapter drafts for what should end up as a book or two on a range of topics largely inspired by my accumulated blog posts, somewhat over a thousand of them.
Might work for you, might not, but once you are committed to spending the time you may end up finding interesting things to spend it on. Certainly I did.
It goes through all the mechanisms (physical and mental) that they have researched which affect Dopamine, Epinephrine and Acetylcholine - He goes through all the tools that affect these three and I would highly recommend looking at this
The item that is not covered is hormonal precursor / impacts on motivation and Focus.
If you are interested in this and want a deeper dive into Dopamine and Motivation he has another indepth dive here: https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU
I feel dumb offering suggestions to someone older and wiser than me, so sorry if any of this comes across as obvious.
Do you get out often? I find walks and a change of scenery motivates me like nothing else. Grab a coffee, say hi to a stranger, look at buildings, birds... By the time I get home I'm shaken out of whatever monotony was keeping me unmotivated.
I also watched Don Hertzfeldt's 'It's Such a Beautiful Day' recently which gave a temporary boost.
I know that the original poster mentioned NOT (testosterone), but to go straight to recommending medication (in two posts) seems extremely odd.
Are you a health care professional with prescribing privileges?
I'm in 60s. It's seems the first thing would likely investigation of the history. It seems like he is really looking for a hobby or hobbies and for an investigation into possible anhedonia or to distinguish between lack of motivation that could just a normal symptom of generally getting older or if it is sign possibly depression or some other ailment.
While the owen tries something small like to do wordle for 10 days, I'd suggest Owen also try some self investigation: What things did you use to do, what does your spouse, your siblings, and your friends do and think of about motivation and decreased motivation with age. Is lack of motivation a 20 year slide or a 2 year thing corresponding to pandemic or related to retirement or a 6 month acute drop. And then talk with your primary care physician armed with thorough and honest history.
"It seems like he is really looking for a hobby or hobbies and for an investigation into possible anhedonia or to distinguish between lack of motivation that could just a normal symptom of generally getting older or if it is sign possibly depression or some other ailment."
I actually think that is your take on what he *should* be asking for. In fact he is asking for suggestions. Given that, I think it is reasonable to include drugs that increase motivation and energy on the list. He's a grown-up, & can take into consideration the downside of using those drugs. (And it's not as though there's no downside to ruminating alone or with a shrinkazoid about whether he is anhedonic, just getting old, or experiencing a sign of Some Other Ailment)
lots of discourse on direct action strategies of protesters, including splashing tomato soup on van gogh paintings and pouring milk on the floor of a grocery store. i think its a great example of coupling "we die in a climate crisis" with "you dont get to enjoy art anymore because we are dying".
my model of change is that
1. first people get upset at you because they are being inconvenienced, ie you dont get to enjoy art, your favorite highway was blocked off and now you're late to work
2. weeks later they know protestors are just a fact of life, and now its the government's fault they havent gotten off their asses and done something about it
i myself have done some disruptions, and jail is pretty traumatizing, but i'd say if you measured my successes by way of the Unit of Caring (the us dollar) i provided 5 million usd of value.
You know, if you people had enough sense to do something like covering an oil billionaire's car in black oil/grease (or at least, black paint), you might have something resembling success in this regard. It doesn't inconvenience regular people, you're not mindlessly lashing out at something irrelevant that people value, few people are going to feel bad (and may even feel good) about seeing some rich asshole having his car ruined.
Throwing soup at a one-of-a-kind painting is dumb. Doing it to protest something unrelated is also dumb. You're going to make a lot of people mad at your and your organization. *But* you bring awareness to your cause. Whether that awareness-anger-ratio is worth it seems debatable.
disruption is a key component of civil disobedience protests. because disruption spreads uncertainty and gives weak actors leverage against powerful opponents, it is the strongest weapon of social movements.
I don't think this is right. The goto example is the Civil Rights Movement, right? Thing is, that only worked because of the overreaction of the authorities. Same as in 2020 with BLM. Early on the police were surprised and got caught on camera beating the crap out of random people, including old dudes with canes. That got the problem good attention, and brought out huge protests and lots of support. Which disappeared as the police got their shit together.
Disruption gets you attention, yes. But either your cause has to be unknown and very sympathetic (the Jim Crow south), or you have to provoke a reaction that pisses people off more than your action does (Jim Crow again, May 2020 BLM). Fail at both and you're just hurting your cause, by drawing attention to it and linking to something negative (throwing soup at a painting).
Note: the painting was not damaged, so my earlier reaction was over the top. Damaging the frame isn't a crime against humanity the way that destroying a Van Gogh would have been.
Controversies, whether about climate change or other things, happen because people disagree. It's natural enough to assume that your view of what should happen is correct but if you know that many intelligent and well informed people disagree, shouldn't you discount your estimate of the value of what you did to allow for the possibility that you were wrong and any effect you had was to make the world worse off rather than better off?
ive read a lot of books by people who have studied social change for decades and they say its cool to engage in nonviolent direct action that exacerbates contradictions, demonstrates power, and can't be ignored. one of my favorites is This is an uprising by englers
further, it seems like a very very bad idea to take advice from people who are ideologically opposed and committed to your failure. its just not a good idea.
finally, i dont think most of these commenters are well informed. there is a great inferential gap between us, and idk what to do about that while most of them are saying "actually you should be in jail longer". it certainly makes me think that they are not Well Informed
Anyone can get a book published nowadays, so I'm not sure why you think "reading lots of books" is a sign of credibility. I'm sure plenty of Flat Earthers and Q-Anon believers read a lot of books too, and those books reinforce their own views, just like the ones you've read have reinforced yours. And for what it's worth, I have a Master's degree in Political Science and I've never heard of the book you mentioned. (Granted, contrary to what a lot of right-wingers think, Saul Alinsky and Abbie Hoffman were never part of our curriculum, and while we did read Marx, it was with the specific understanding that he was wrong. So maybe the world of academia is just too "establishment" for your liking.)
Honest question though: Is there anything that anyone here can say that will actually cause you to adjust your beliefs or stances by even the slightest amount? Because it certainly doesn't look that way, which makes me wonder why you even bothered posting this in the first place. Just as a way of bragging and Owning The Libs from the left?
As the old saying goes, "a fanatic is someone who can't change their mind and won't change the subject." And there is little value in debating fanatics.
>further, it seems like a very very bad idea to take advice from people who are ideologically opposed and committed to your failure. its just not a good idea.
Then why are you here telling us about how great your actions are?
You don't think you can learn anything by listening to the arguments of people who disagree with you? That seems like a policy designed to make sure that, if you are wrong, you don't discover it.
The people blocking that pipeline back in 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests) were engaging in non-violent direct action, and while I didn't agree with them, I could respect their commitment, and wished the best for everyone involved. There are legitimate protest actions that people can take to effect change.
You haven't mentioned any here. You're deliberately stopping random people getting to work, to effect something they have no control over. What, are you protesting car use as a whole? If you're opposed to gas use, then protest outside the central fuel station, block the trucks delivering the gas. You'll still get arrested, and piss people off, and not change anything, but at least you'll be targeting the group responsible instead of complete strangers.
Absolutely no one thinks the best way to win a war is to invade your enemy's neighbors first. Making more enemies won't help you.
I think you're wrong. The pipeline became a huge cause on the left, forcing the Obama administration to repeatedly delay it and finally deny cert. The Trump admin restarted it, then the Biden admin re-stopped it. The corp trying to build it finally cancelled it, probably realizing that it was going to get shut off every other decade if they didn't.
It's a textbook example of making an unknown cause famous, providing sympathetic protesters, getting them abused by unsympathetic security forces (they hosed the protesters down in the winter, if memory serves), and finally winning your point. It was absolutely effective.
And yet you failed to notice you're copying toddlers. "Throw food and then lie down in the street" doesn't make the President of the United States give you what you want for the one month he has authority to do so.
greensborough north carolina 1960, many black people, mostly students, committed the crime of sitting in at a restaurant, and it was deeply unpopular, and it was coordinated by people willing to fight legal battles and imprisonment. and in 4 years copycat protests became popular, and normies had to concede that it didnt make much sense to deny freedom to an underclass when they wielded such power (sitting in at restaurants)
My guess is that <ambiguous pronoun> is probably just messing around. And <AP> is pleased to have generated a couple hundred reactions with what <AP> probably knows is a weak argument. Jerking our chain for fun. I could be way off base, but that’s my read.
I can only imagine what must be going through your mind reading all of these comments. Perhaps you dismiss all of this through some rationalization; "they're out to get me", "these people are ignorant", "they're trolling" but that would be a real pity.
In this reply there are a lot of people who have given you a very specific critique and this should shed some light on your belief structures that may be faulty.
Although if you convinced someone that the god they believed in for their entire life was false would they thank you
"i myself have done some disruptions, and jail is pretty traumatizing, but i'd say if you measured my successes by way of the Unit of Caring (the us dollar) i provided 5 million usd of value."
No offense, but this sounds absolutely delusional. If anything, you've provided negative value to whatever movements you claim to support, because you wanted to do something that *felt cathartic* instead of putting in the work to actually bring about any real changes in policy and/or public opinion. The real work of change is quite boring and tedious: It involves a lot of long hours making phone calls, knocking doors, handing out flyers on street corners, writing letters to your local elected representatives, going to town hall meetings, and lots of banal logistical work that would make the average day at the office seem exciting by comparison. I should know, I've spent literally years doing it! But the new breed of Very Online edgelord activists wants to skip all the hard parts and focus on "fun" stuff like arguing with people on Twitter, vandalizing public property, and shouting at normies so you can feel self-righteously superior to them, regardless of how unproductive or even counter-productive it may be.
you are listing a lot of activities involved in electoralism, which is useful for turning already-won victories into legislation and policy. however, i think there are more fundamental and actually effective strategies by way of, for instance, organizing marches - which are meant to silently imply "look how we can march around like a military force would" as well as demonstrating a count of voters. another more fundemental and actually effective strategy is to fight legal battles by committing a premediated and carefully planned crime, designed to force out the contradictions between current policy and human values
"however, i think there are more fundamental and actually effective strategies by way of, for instance, organizing marches - which are meant to silently imply "look how we can march around like a military force would" as well as demonstrating a count of voters."
This is highly ineffective, because no one is actually going to be afraid of these people. They represent an extremely small percentage of the overall population, and the moment they actually tried to *act* like a military (e.g. actually use force), they would be completely annihilated. They are allowed to march around precisely because of the fact that they're no real threat to anyone, and in a liberal democratic society, the state and the populace are inclined to tolerate such behaviors as long as they don't become *too* disruptive. But the tolerance of the majority isn't infinite, and stunts like the soup incident will definitely cause it to wane.
There are situations in which the tactics you're describing can work: For example, if the actual military is on the side of the protesters (as was the case during several Latin American coups), or if the protesters have the support of an overwhelming majority of the overall population (as was the case during many of the Arab Spring revolts). But neither of those are true in 21st century America. Expecting that a movement with support from less than 1% of the overall population can intimidate the other 99% into appeasing their demands is absurd.
"another more fundemental and actually effective strategy is to fight legal battles by committing a premediated and carefully planned crime, designed to force out the contradictions between current policy and human values"
And unless you're fighting specifically for people's right to vandalize famous works of art (which is a cause that very few people would get behind), the soup incident doesn't fall into this category at all. The crime is entirely unrelated to the thing you're actually protesting.
"human values", of course, referring to things that have only ever existed in modern european-majority societies. Though I'm sure you have some 'progressive savage' understanding of world history.
"weeks later they know protestors are just a fact of life, and now its the government's fault they havent gotten off their asses and done something about it"
Yes, but when people start demanding that the government "do something," what they have in mind is "using whatever degree of force is necessary to suppress the protests," not "giving the protesters everything they want."
It's been statistically proven that these sorts of extreme methods always *reduce* popular support for whatever cause the protesters are fighting for: Back in 2020, support for the Black Lives Matter movement was up to almost 80% when the protests started, but declined to around 50% after weeks of rioting and extreme demands like "abolish the police," with the steepest declines in the cities that had the greatest amount of violent incidents and property damage. Hell, in Kenosha, support for BLM declined to barely over 50% *among the Black population!*
Splashing tomato soup on priceless works of art does nothing but make people hate the perpetrators and, by extension, climate activists in general. If this turns out to just be a one-off incident, then people will probably forget about it quickly enough, but if things like this start to happen on a regular basis, then it will absolutely torpedo support for environmentalism. (For that matter, the whole narrative that "climate change will literally kill us all and cause human extinction!" also hurts the climate movement, because it's completely bogus and a great many people are aware of that fact. Very few actual climate scientists believe that, and you can't convincingly tell people to "trust the science" while simultaneously denying it yourself.)
Also, leaving aside the many pragmatic arguments against this type of aggressive activism, the whole notion that "we are suffering, therefore other people shouldn't be allowed to be content" is just deeply unethical. It's seen as abusive when people do it on the individual level, why should it be seen as any less evil when it's done on the societal level?
I'm going to destroy a literally irreplaceable painting if I don't get my way right now is not a successful protest. I don't actually know what those guys were protesting against, and I don't care. If I found out, I would be for that thing because fuck those guys. I can't imagine the worldview of a person who that protest would influence positively. It's alien to me.
As to stuff like the public roads, that's well enough I suppose. I think it's bad tactics, be it done with tractors, trucks or bodies, but yeah, that's fine enough and something gov't can and should deal with in normal ways. But I think, on balance, it probably hurts rather than helps whatever cause it supposed to represent.
But destroying a Van Gogh is fucking well out of bounds and those assholes should go to jail for the rest of their lives for crimes against humanity.
Fortunately, there was a glass in the frame in front of the Van Gogh. You can thus reduce your ire to "these imbeciles were too stupid to destroy the irreplaceable painting".
Yeah, I saw that, but thanks for pointing it out in a reply. Glad I was overreacting. I'm going to assume that they knew it was protected and that they intended their protest to be "the art is temporarily unavailable" and not "priceless masterwork permanently damaged".
That drops it back to a public roads protest. I might be sympathetic or unsympathetic, but whatever. Ultimately I think that the people who made the news blocking the road that Trump was taking to a rally in 2016 help his campaign, and the truckers that blocked the roads (in Canada and here) in 2021/2 hurt the legitimacy of the anti-mandate crowd (both by tying anti-mandate to anti-vax and by being unsympathetic jerks). But that's a matter of tactics and choices and as long as you take the legal consequences without complaint I'm basically fine it.
#1 definitely happens, but when people are upset about #1 going into #2, people are just as likely to demand that government "get of their asses" and do something about the *protestors*, rather than demand that whatever issue is being protested be fixed.
See, for example, the explosion of state laws making it easier to run over protesters who are blocking the road. Or the attempts to require a minimum distance between protestors and abortion clinics. Depending on the situation, nuisance protests can easily make people more upset at the protestor than they are about the issue being protested. Which is kinda one of the inherent risks of a tactic that involves being a nuisance to people.
See also the disturbing number of people who think Kyle Rittenhouse was a hero. Not "stupid kid but technically innocent", but positively heroic in his selfless efforts to protect the community from dangerous criminals.
How would you view similar activists for causes you aren't as enthused about (say anti-abortionists or whatever)? As nutters or as kindred spirits? Creating a nuisance or effecting a change?
Funny you should mention that! There were pro-life campaigners who tried using signs with graphic imagery of aborted foetuses and similar tactics.
Did it work? No.
Do you think the received story about "abortion clinic bombers and abortion doctors assassins" means that those tactics worked?
So yes, if some pro-life group went around throwing tins of tomato soup on paintings and gluing themselves to the road, I would think they were idiot nuisances. What worked in the USA? The Supreme Court saying decisions on abortion law should go back to the states to make legislation, and decades of work plugging away at pro-life issues. Not shock tactics, not publicity stunts.
It's a great example of "being a goddamn idiot doing pointless virtue signalling".
The balding young man in a dress spray-painting the Aston Martin showroom garnered nothing but some amused derision. If you want ordinary people to take whatever it is you are protesting about seriously, try not looking like a reject from a Monty Python sketch.
Splashing tomato soup over a van Gogh does what, exactly? They blattered on about cold, hungry families not being able to afford to heat a tin of soup, but they would have done more for an actual cold, hungry family by donating those wasted tins of soup to a charity or - horror of horrors! - getting off their privileged middle-class backsides and going out to deliver hot meals to the old and indigent.
But that wouldn't have garnered the same feeling of "Fighting Da Man!" now would it?
Also, many people do actually go out and deliver food to the hungry, or help out in a soup kitchen, or whatever else. None of them ever appear in a news article or trend on social media. The people who get news and social media coverage are the ones who throw a can of soup at a painting or dump milk on the floor of a store.
We reward the attention-grabbing and destructive behavior, and ignore the decent and helpful behavior. And we get more of what we reward....
>2. weeks later they know protestors are just a fact of life, and now its the government's fault they havent gotten off their asses and done something about it
This doesn't work for climate change. No government on earth can stop climate change by passing some policies. If GHG are going to be meaningfully reduced, it's going to be a process occurring over decades involving cooperation between many countries.
Honestly, this all sounds like you trying to justify throwing tantrums which you enjoy throwing instead of actually putting in the work to determine what will be actually effective and executing it.
Almost the only people who support this kind of action are people who already agree with you. People in the middle just think you're a bunch of nutters and if anything are put off by this silliness.
>i myself have done some disruptions, and jail is pretty traumatizing, but i'd say if you measured my successes by way of the Unit of Caring (the us dollar) i provided 5 million usd of value.
I mean I understand and respect your intent but I think the more likely result is that people will indeed think "it's the government's fault they haven't gotten off their asses and done something about it," but they'll want 'doing something about it' to mean arrests/jail time/making it a felony to block the highway on their morning commute.
Brilliant cheap carbon capture machines: Plants! Luckily they have a lot of them in Brazil. How would some random person in North America or Europe go about to stop the Brazilian government from destroying its rainforests?
Exactly what I always say. People who lack the competence or work ethic to actually contribute to solutions, so they just pull a worthless little stunt where the real goal is getting attention like a toddler. If you care that deeply about climate change, go study climate science and join a team working on carbon capture. Or get involved politically and try to get some wins on the local level.
Just out of curiosity, where do these people think the tins of soup, glue, and canister to spray-paint come from? How are these items produced? Could they possibly involve the use of.... oil?
The paint spraying is harmless, which means it's also ineffectual. He (she? they? hard to tell what their preferred pronouns are when they're clearly male but also wearing a long dress) didn't smash the window or engage in serious property damage, which avoids getting arrested (probably?) but also just means this is "nuisance" level protest rather than anything useful.
Yes, it got publicity. But the publicity it got was "who's this tosser?" not "ah, my awareness of the seriousness of climate change has been raised". It's very nice of them that this group, whomever they may be, are fully inclusive of non-binary folx as street-level activists but does that do anything practical towards stopping oil (or whatever it is they are protesting)?
hey i will engage with serious replies that demonstrate charity. its not worth my time to try to bridge some gap if you can't lend me even an ounce of decorum
Decorum? You're the one trying to overhaul society. Why do you deserve "decorum"? Do you "lend an ounce of decorum" to people who disagree with you in good faith on contentious political issues? Of COURSE you don't. Those people are RACISTS or SEXISTS or TRANSPHOBICS and they deserve to be destroyed.
If you come on here to boast that by your own estimation you have caused $5 million worth of disruption, then it is on you to put up or shut up about how you derive that figure, what good or benefit you imagine you have done, and the final efficacy of anything that you might have participated in.
Did your protesting or night in jail actually achieve anything other than give you the feeling of "I'm so badass, such a rebel against Badness and Mean Stuff!"? Did you get anything done other than waste the time of the cops and the courts? Can you point to anything about "after my/our protest, this bad thing was stopped and/or this good thing was put in its place"?
And why does a ruff'n'tuff disruptor of social norms care about decorum, anyhow?
"Harmless" is exactly the point: they did something stupid and ineffectual that achieved nothing tangible towards the cause of climate change or whatever it is they are protesting, but two young ninnies got to feel like they were doing more than just being nuisances.
I'm sure BP and Exxon and the boardrooms of the other companies on the list below are all having meetings about "Did you hear about the tomato soup? Clearly we must shut down all our wells now!"
>King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."
There were some comments below about TDS. Doesn't TDS basically mean that DT is "living in your head rent free", preventing you from thinking clearly?
If so, isn't that DT's *fault*, considering much of DT's political strategy was to nettle and discombobulate his opponents and detractors like a professional boxer? Isn't the TDS epidemic, then, a very good reason for disliking DT? (I also dislike the lab or bat whatever it was that started Covid.)
I can't help noticing that having an unhealthy obsession with right-wing public figures has been very common at least since Obama years (possibly before, but I can't speak to it because I was less aware of these things). Trump let the obsessed people concentrate all their hate on him, but, if you talk to someone with TDS, they will happily tell you how much they hate other prominent right-wingers - currently, Abbott, Kavanaugh, Cruz, DeSantis, Tucker Carlson come to mind, but there are many more. (Heck, remember when everyone raged against definitely not right-wing Whole Foods for their CEO opposing Obamacare? Or remember how all college students demanded not to allow Chick-fil-a on campus because the CEO said that marriage is between a man and a woman?)
So on one hand Trump did present a convenient target for hate, allowing to focus it all on him, but on the other it was there before him, less concentrated and carefully curated by the media. If you stand in the middle of a battlefield and scream insults, while waving a bunch of flags of your side, on one hand you expect and deserve the enemy to shoot all they have at you, mostly ignoring the rest of your army until it gets too close, but on the other hand the battle is already going on, and you did not start it.
>> I can't help noticing that having an unhealthy obsession with right-wing public figures has been very common at least since Obama years (possibly before, but I can't speak to it because I was less aware of these things).
I think it was around before - I remember Bush Derangement Syndrome being a thing 2001-2008. I don't think it's isolated to public figures on the right though. Obama spent a 8 years living rent free in a *lot* of conservative heads, as did Clinton.
"Or remember how all college students demanded not to allow Chick-fil-a on campus because the CEO said that marriage is between a man and a woman?"
If memory serves, it was because he donates significant money, to the tune of millions of dollars, to charities that helped write the law in Africa that makes homosexuality a capital crime.
Of course, right-wingers at the time (and since) like to pretend it's about marriage, but certainly the memes that pass around liberal facebook frequently mention the whole killing the gays thing.
I think you demonstrated my point perfectly. Lots of people really hated the guy, and when you give your version of why, we find out that your version was presumably based on something that even Politifact rates mostly false. At least my version of why people hated him was based on something he actually said.
I wouldn't be super surprised to find out it's false. I wondered about that when I was posting. But yeah, that's the one. That's what passed around left circles to gin up support for the boycott.
But I don't think it proves your point. Passing around a post around saying Chick-fil-a doesn't want gays to get married wouldn't get you a very good boycott. Saying that Chick-fil-a money is used to kill gay people does the job. Whoever set that up knew they had to lie to get the job done.
Oh, I think you're very likely to be right about that Facebok meme being mostly responsible in this case. If I had known about it, I would have probably come to the same conclusion as you.
I'm just pointing out the pattern of mass derangement towards prominent right-wingers that predates TDS. I can't make up my mind which of the possible two scenarios in this case is worse - a crazy number of people raging against that guy for something he said, or a crazy number of people raging against him because they uncritically gobbled up a not very factual claim made somewhere on Facebook likely with the purpose of inciting all the hate.
Whichever it is, I think it's a big problem, because this kind of thing makes it very hard for the two sides to come to any kind of agreement. (And I also think that it's very clearly a problem that did not start with Trump, even if it sounds as if he'd like to take all the credit.)
Well, gee. Waking up in the morning and remembering the country is being run by a guy who probably couldn’t pass a high school civics test has a way of sticking in your thoughts. I wouldn’t necessarily think of this as derangement.
I am once again pointing out that white male Republicans have the highest knowledge of civics on average.
But having smart black guy in office resulted in what, exactly? Psychotic interventions in the middle east and north africa that caused untold suffering.
TDS is, or should, refer not just to Trump being annoying or agravating or people not liking him but to something extra.
TDS really blew up in the 2016-2018 era and was characterized by:
-An overwhelming obsession with Trump. 24/7 coverage and constant discussion. He dominated discourse and people (Maddow) ran entire shows about Trump Drama for years.
-Unhinged fears. Again, especially in 2017-2018, it was widely believed on the left that Trump was a direct Russian asset for an assortment of reasons. In 2022, hopefully, we can reflect and see that these fears were, at best, dramatically overblown.
So someone might dislike Trump for a variety of good or bad reasons but there's clearly a difference between the obsessive and panic driven coverage and discussion of Trump that dominated in 2017-2018 and normal criticism. I do think there are still people with severe TDS when it comes to certain current and recent events but the CW aspect brings more heat than light so lets stick to things 3+ years old.
Maddow and others couldn't get Trump out of their heads for 5 minutes. It deranged them. That's the whole idea. That was Trump's big strategy before and after he became POTUS. Stay inside of everyone's heads.
>Isn't the TDS epidemic, then, a very good reason for disliking DT? (I also dislike the lab or bat whatever it was that started Covid.)
That's probably one of the core, basic disagreements that split the human race: are you responsible for your emotions, or is what you perceive as the cause of your emotions responsible for them?
You can easily construct ad-absurdum rebuttal of either (what about the absolute asshole making everyone mad? What about the absolute crybaby being traumatized by everything?), and...I don't have much more insight on the subject, actually.
I think the right answer is that *both* are at fault. There's no reason that blame for things needs to add up to 100%. Some things there's less blame to go around because it really was an unforeseeable accident. Some things there's more blame to go around because lots of people's intentional actions had foreseeable consequences on other people's intentional actions.
It is if you make certain assumptions. So say these are true:
1. The causes for your TDS are all bad things that are right to upset you
2. They actually happened
3. They are Trump's fault.
4. You are reacting in correct proportion to them.
But a person who is accusing you of having TDS isn't at that point in the argument where the person making your argument has already won on all fronts, if that makes sense. They are essentially accusing the TDS-haver of being a person for whom one or more of the four above things are false.
Your argument is a bit like someone saying "Since you are a Nazi, isn't any emotion I have about you justified?". And it might be so, if I'm a Nazi - but I'm certainly going to argue on that point.
So "living in someone's head" is something a lot of basketball players attempt to do to each other. They talk shit, say things to their opponents like: "Your mom sucked my dick last night." They try to make the other guy angry so he will react emotionally and lose focus on the game he is supposed to be playing.
The answers in that scenario would be:
1. Yes
2. No
3. N/A
4. A proportional response is still the wrong one because it means your frame of mind has been taken from one field of play to another.
Putting this back into a political context: anger at some of Trump's tweets or comments may be reasonable. However, inserting that anger into an analysis of how otherwise Trump is performing as POTUS might yield an unbalanced assessment.
I gotta say I LOLed at this comment (and the part at the end).
I think yes, it is DT’s fault because it’s essentially exactly what he’s going for.
At the same time, part of DTS seems to be having no self-awareness and not realizing he’s mostly just trolling.
Personally, I find a troll more likable than a self-righteous manipulator (aka the rest of politicians). But that’s probably from watching too much South Park and being conditioned to find Cartman hilarious.
Subjectively, you know what you mean when you say “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but objectively i think you might be projecting the symptom of cluelessness/poor self-awareness in the diagnostic criteria of TDS, if what you’re assuming is that the only reason someone might be triggered by Trump’s trolling is if they don’t understand how Trump is constantly trolling… It’s actually pretty naive and insulating to make that assumption, in the same way Trumpian thought purposely misreads the motivations of Biden voters (“There’s NO WAY that 50 million people would ever be seriously willing to vote for a person while simultaneously experiencing a mere low-to-moderate behavioral drive to attend tailgate rallies with a bunch of other political jackoffs…”) in order to rationalize his own self-serving, laughably dumb election fictions. His style of rhetoric *relies* on the token chucklefucks of his base to misunderstand the actual big picture, which is why he puts on the fucking makeup and puts on the show.
Which brings me back to the alternative explanation for why TDS suffers may actually understand how trolling works and yet still be incensed by a president doing it: because of the TONS of chucklefucks in his base who think that being smart enough to pick up on Trump’s trolling means they can’t be blatantly yet credulously defrauded, because of how Trump’s literal textbook schoolyard tactics have poisoned the discourse in a way you would need to be extremely manipulable not to recognize as a disaster for everybody involved, regardless of their preferred political outcomes, and finally, because the mere existence of an insincere, unserious (“trolly”) Commander in Chief of history’s greatest aggregation of power just reflects so poorly on my own fellow countrymen that i don’t know how sad it would be if they actually got their way and leveled the whole system for the giggles you get from not even really knowing how to give half an actual fuck about anything but sensationalist schadenfreude
What do people think of recall elections and other ways to make governments more (temporally) responsive to the popular will without destabilising politics? I.e. to avoid the situation where a deeply unpopular government still has a de-jure mandate from a few years ago when people liked them more.
In the real world, a number of countries allow recalls to happen if a petition passes a certain threshold proportion of the electorate. This can either apply to individual politicians or the government as a whole, depending on the country. While these are rarely triggered and even more rarely succeed, perhaps a good horse runs even at the shadow of a whip.
For political systems not that different from ours, despite the fact I just made them up, how about the westminster system except with annual recall elections (triggering a general election if they succeed) that drop in threshold every year since the last GE. So it takes 90% popular opposition in the first year, 50% in the 5th year and 10% in the 9th. A new government gets a few years to win public confidence but is kicked out faster if the public get fed up with it.
Or one like westminster but where there are no general elections. Elections are instead spread out across time, with each MP being elected once every 5 years (kind of like midterms but moreso). An average of 5 constituencies would need to hold an election per fortnight for this to work in the UK. Thus a government that suddenly became less popular would see its majority slowly eroded until the opposition could force through a VoNC.
This question is apropos of no particular political developments that might be taking place right now, or anything.
This sort of problem can also be addressed in the context of a system where the Head of Government is de jure responsible to a separate Head of State whose ordinary duties are mainly ministerial and ceremonial but who has strong reserve powers for emergencies. In a situation like that, the Head of State typically has the legal authority to dismiss the Head of Government and call new elections. In practice, these reserve powers very rarely need to be officially invoked, since the implicit threat is generally enough to enforce political norms around resignations and early elections. Other less drastic reserve powers can also be used as leverage, as things like appointment powers and assent to laws passed by the legislature can also be privately made conditional on an appropriate show of popular mandate (snap elections, referendums, etc).
You lose predictability, which feels like a bad thing - a government can't rely on n years to implement its program. You also make it less likely that a government will do things that it believes will be unpopular but in the national interest.
The "five seats every fortnight" Westminster system seems particularly problematic; you could easily wind up in a situation where the government balances on a knife edge and power swaps back and forth on an irregular weekly schedule for a period of years.
I would think this would also be a problem for international relations. A government of one nation may hesitate to sign a treaty with another nation's government that may suddenly change with little warning.
Treaties don't work like that. And if they did ... you signed them with the government of the day, not the head of state. they could still.be invalidated by a normal change of government.
On paper treaties don't work like that; in practice the toothlessness of international law means that they often kind of do.
And it's not even 100% clear to me that they shouldn't, to some extent - I think "no government can bind its successor" is a principle with a lot going for it; how you trade that off against being able to make and rely on long term commitments is a hard problem. Otherwise a government that wants to prevent a democratically elected successor reversing its policies just has to find a willing neighbour and commit to them in a treaty.
Hyperdiffusion is called pseudoscience three times just in the intro of its wiki page. Seems ungenerous as there are respectable people who say the Olmecs were influenced by Asian sources: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2741354
According to the Wikipedia page, hyperdiffusion is the "claim that all major cultural innovations and societies derive from one (usually lost) ancient civilization".
I might be sympathetic to the idea that Wikipedia is using an ungenerous definition, but the article you linked to doesn't even contain the word "hyperdiffusion".
The Wikipedia article, likewise, doesn't refute the idea that Asian cultures influenced the Olmecs.
Yeah, should have explained more. When I looked at the map of possible diffusion, the one that struck me as least likely was the arrow from Asia to Central America. Then I ran into the paper about Olmecs which supports that arrow being real. The paper doesn't talk about any central event, but does make the case for very long range diffusion of ideas that were fundamental to Meso-American civilization. Everyone knows the Mayan calendar and how important it was to them. Maybe that was borrowed from South Eastern Asia.
Joseph Campbell also makes the case that agricultural creation myths in Polynesia and Algonquian Native Americans are so similar because of, possibly, a global diffusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEqR73j_oMY&t=935s
Campbell is *absolutely* fringe in any academic sense. All of his ideas are pseudoscience that got popular with laymen, he's like Frazer in that regard.
Is anyone living their life in a significantly differently manner as a direct result of AI risk fears? (Excluding those who are working directly on AI Safety). It seems that the main problem in acting on beliefs of elevated risk is uncertainty in outcomes and timelines. For instance, deciding not to save for retirement seems like a bad idea if you think there is even a (say) 20% chance that AGI is not invented by the time you hit the age of 60. Working a high-paying, high-stress job for a decade in order to retire early and enjoy yourself seems like it would only be a good idea if AGI is at least 20 years away. Curious how others think about this topic.
You might already know about this but CodeProject dot com is a great resource for getting into this sort of thing. You can probably find related articles on their AI page as well as their Internet of Things page.
It's supported by a big community of developers and you can get answers to programming questions there.
Thanks Gunflint, I bookmarked it. Kind of looks like it's for people who are at least halfway up the slope, whereas I am sitting in the grassy area at the bottom of the mountain. I have had absolutely nothing to do with programming, and am starting from scratch. But I'm not too proud to ask simple questions, even in a setting like that. And I like math, logic and puzzles, so will probably be ok.
In my view treating AGI and Singularity fantasies as reality is useless. However, in my lifetime I have been and will continue to promote and vote for people who will try to get things like basic income and robot taxes going so that we can allow AI and robot to take over jobs without throwing everybody not already rich under the bus.
I am donating more money to charity moving from 1% - 10% of income and not putting money in an Investment Savings Account. anymore. Though there are several factors interplaying at once, I wouldn't call it all AI determined, but it maybe 40%.
I posted on this topic over at lesswrong. Personally I have stopped all retirement contributions, and I am trying to work out better ways yo use wealh that are consistent with my beliefs about the future.
Not really concerned. I expect it will be viable at least 20 years after safe, reliable, personal cold fusion is in every home, powering every car, etc
So when I strap into my cold fusion powered Prius, I’ll start giving it some serious thought.
Are speeches/sermons/lectures/concerts/performances a human universal? I.e. one person or a small group of people do some act, a larger group of people watch without participating. I can't find this in the Wikipedia list of human universals, so I thought I ask here. On one hand, it feels very modern to me with the clear distinction between the person acting and the observers. One the other hand, it seems very natural. If anyone has read some interesting anthropology or history on the subject, please share and I'll be grateful.
I don't know about universals, but I disagree about the audience/actor distinction being modern. The Greeks were having drama competitions 2500 years ago. Maybe I'm missing what you're getting at?
Some performers do seem to plug into some seemingly cosmic energy. Van Morrison was having some staging problems and drawing hecklers at a concert at Winterland in the early 1970s, before he finally walked off -- to be replaced by the oracle of the cotton fields of Brooklyn, Taj Mahal. Taj growled his big stoner grin and had everyone on their feet dancing within minutes. No princess, that Taj. He just plugged into the collective song.
The book Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman is about a bushman/San ethnic group, on the margin of the Kalahari Desert, between about the 1930s and 1970s. Performances were usually interactive, and there was nothing that we would recognize as a speech.
For example, one person recounts a dream or a hunt, but others break in with comments and jokes. It's just a form of conversation. Or one person goes into a trance as part of a healing ritual for someone who is ill, but the rest of the group is singing or talking or wiping sweat off of the healer, rather than sitting silently.
There was one type of performance, the women's drum dance, where men were expected to sit and watch rather than participate. The author, Marjorie Shostak, thinks it most likely developed in the 19th century (perhaps implying there might have been direct or indirect European influence).
I reviewed chapter 13 (on healing rituals). My above comment misremembered a few details, but it's broadly accurate.
This line on the women's drum dance is the closest thing in the chapter to a passive audience at a performance:
>Although some men do not bother to attend, others are drawn to it and sit watching.
Overall, it's a good book if you're interested in what might or might not be a human universal, especially related to gender and sexuality norms, and women's attitudes towards health. Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, about the Mbuti, might also be worthwhile.
I really can't imagine hunter-gatherers doing this. They would have collective, largely interactive musical performances, but the idea of one person explicitly lecturing a group seems like a kind of formalness that doesn't exist for these kind of people.
I suspect that the idea of one person lecturing a group depends on the group being largely anonymous to the one person while the one person is known to the group, which depends on a larger than tribal society. That said, even in a family/tribal context, there would likely be times when one person is up front by the fire telling their story of how they found the cache of honey on the mountaintop - though these might be much more like Q&A sessions or one-many conversations, more than a lecture.
Do people in Berkeley know about the history of the Morrell Airship? In 1908, a guy named Morrell built a (hilariously phallic) 450-foot dirigible roughly where MLK Park is today. After two spectacular failures, in which miraculously no one was killed, he lost his investors. A worthwhile watch just for the photos of a flying bratwurst the size of a city block:
Why don't states that have run out of lethal injection drugs just kill death row inmates via nitrogen? Or, any other similar gas that replaces oxygen. Nitrogen's lethal, it's very widely available (i.e. can't be blocked by the EU), and death is supposed to be fairly painless. It seems like a nobrainer- instead, I see states casting around for weird alternate ways to execute inmates. Why not gas? In fact, why did states go the lethal injectable drugs route at all? Gas seems very easy and much cheaper
I'm also very confused - why that specific drug? Doesn't the US make a shit tonne of various drugs? 1 gram of most opioids would work and would be unblockable.
South Carolina has re-authorized the use of firing squads.
I haven't looked into the details for SC, but I remember that the official US Military protocol for execution by firing squad (*) is an evergreen bit of information on another forum I subscribe to and occasionally comment on. It seems like a very quick and effective system.
(Of course, it's for executions during wartime, and in military chain-of-command. Still, I would anticipate no problems rounding up the N riflemen needed. Note: the BS about half the squad shooting blanks to salve their conscience, is Hollywood falderal.)
For the record, I support the death penalty. However, the record of many spectacular miscarriages of justice ... It is alarming to hear of it regularly esp. w/r/t DNA exoneration of people imprisoned for decades. Still, obvious cases would best for society if those people were gone, closure etc.
________________
* -- If you wonder when/why firing squads are needed, remember that since the beginning of origanized armies, Spies are summarily executed.
Because any change in method would be seized upon by anti-death-penalty activists and it would be shut down, *even if the new method were more humane than lethal injection*.
Seems disingenuous to me, unless your honest stance is that capital punishment hypothetically WOULD be just fine if only there were a better method for it.
Given how long this has been going on, that the AVERAGE time people spend on death row in the US (I'm assuming this is focused on the US issue) is over a decade, and how similar tactics for abortions worked out, I'm not sure what definition of effective would fit it. Non-direct, yes, but effective?
Also, they would probably want some heavier noble gas like argon/krypton. While more expensive, it's easier to contain, works faster, and less likely to cause scares (of the dihydrogen monooxide type)
None of that has to do with deterring the execution method. Or how effective that strategy is.
My point on that segment is that they still use separate long and expensive things rather than just sticking to the "effective" way. Even if it is to delay it until it works out, that still doesn't imply anything on the effectiveness of the original strategy.
I think you are assuming states or politicians "want" to execute people, as opposed to the death penalty being something voters are for, which politicians can spend some of their political capital to achieve.
What is more in a politician's favor than being able to be pro-death-penalty, without actually killing anybody? Killing people is politically risky; if somebody was executed wrongfully and it later becomes obvious, you don't want to be the person who can be blamed for making that possible. Plus, you have to spend political capital to make it happen.
Whereas, if you're pro death penalty, but you just can't get anything done, well, that's not your fault.
The most humane way to kill people would be a massive falling weight that crushes the brain before nerve impulses have time to travel. No one seriously proposes this simply because it would look barbaric.
My understanding is that execution methods are usually optimized to minimize the psychological toll on the executioner, rather than to minimize the suffering of the condemned.
I personally think this is the correct prioritization, although I'm still in favor of reducing suffering for the condemned if it can be done with no downsides.
I mean, it was explicitly invented to be a more humane method of execution than those that were standard at the time - no risk of the headsman being bad at his job and taking many axe swings to do the beheading
If you change the method of execution, death penalty opponents will immediately sue you on the grounds that the new method is inhumane, regardless of what it is, just to use the legal system to filibuster it. The only solution that does not require a long and expensive legal defense is to use a method that a previous court has already ruled is humane.
Largely because the death penalty doesn't mean the state can just kill them however they feel like. In all the cases I've seen people are sentenced to death by very specific means, and those means are codified into law and in the specific sentences. This can be changed, people in Arizona for instance sentenced to death by gas chamber could opt-in to lethal injection as we were transitioning away from the gas chamber (cyanide gas if I recall correctly, not nitrogen.)
If that's true, why don't the state legislatures just change the laws? I don't see that Texas or another red state is going to have a tough time pushing a new execution method through state government
Anti-death-penalty activists have deep pockets and will absolutely work each individual method up to SCOTUS. Funny how strategic suppression lawsuits are fine if they're done by and for the Good Side, isn't it.
I note that anti-abortion campaigners absolutely believe that they're saving lives by doing so, and the lives of innocent unborn babies, no less (rather than condemned criminals, a much less sympathetic group)
If you're trying to do *anything*, and you talk yourself into "by any means necessary", you are a menace to society and need to do much less and reflect much more. "By any means necessary" is a blank check, and one that often adds up to a cost far greater than the value of whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. But your myopic focus on the one good thing you are hoping to do, blinds you to all other consequences.
Except that 'saving lives by any means necessary' isn't allowed when an average citizen wants to be armed for self defense, or wants to live in an area without ethnic groups with higher percentages of violence, or the police want to use coercion to get a confession of a drug dealer, or number of other less dramatic solutions that are not in favor with Elite Left.
So it's basically special pleading in the form of disruption of democracy and social norms, and those advocating for the use of any means for special ends are gonna miss those norms when they're gone.
"Saving lives by any means necessary" isn't something generally favoured in any public policy field in any country known to me, although different balances can legitimately be struck in, for example, the regulation of motorised transport. At any rate, the concept is quite clearly different from saving someone from being killed.
Being opposed to areas members of certain ethnic groups are unable to live doesn't strike me as a notably left wing stance, "elite" or not.
Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma have authorized the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method.
I can’t find a source but I seem to recall that one reason it was never implemented was that it is a rather pleasant way to die. A sort of euphoric intoxication can occur before death. Not what these states want to see in an execution. Writhing in pain, smoking body parts, bursting into flame, etc are more in line with the desired effect.
Not a guy with a serene smile shaking his head saying, “I suppose you stupid fucks will figure out I’m innocent about ten minutes after I’m …”
The original sedative used for lethal injections, sodium thiopental, is absolutely a painkiller. States had to switch to less effective drugs after the EU banned export of sodium thiopental for use in executions.
What's the reason they don't use e.g. fentanyl, which is legal for medical uses? I could be wrong but I imagine death by fentanyl overdose is anesthetising and therefore not painful.
(I'm against the death penalty but as long as we have it we ought to carry it out intelligently)
Yeah, seconding this. Related question- is it really that hard to manufacture a very small batch of any chemical compound, in this case sodium thiopental? I understand that a full-scale factory cranking industrial amounts requires a great deal of manufacturing expertise- but if you're literally just making 1-2 doses, can't..... any chemist just whip that up, with the right reagents? Why is it so hard? (I mean I'm not particularly pro-death penalty, I'm just curious from a chemical engineering POV)
Imagine that you are trying to get as many people as possible to fill out a survey, and you have a few rewards (discrete) that you can give out as you see fit. What's the game theory approach to optimize the # of people who fill out the survey?
There are ~140 people total in the pool and the time frame for completion is ~2 weeks
I've never seen a survey offer a prize worth caring about. When I fill out surveys, it's because I've been persuaded that my doing so is valuable; I suggest you focus on explaining how your research is important, so people want to help you.
Sounds to me like you should be seeking a psychology answer rather than a game theory answer.
The game theory answer would be something about determining everyone's minimum price to fill out the survey and then offering them the smallest amount that you can that's still above that price until you run out of resources. (Using lotteries to create expected values in the desired range if your rewards are too big.) But that assumes that people respond rationally to incentives, which is materially false in most realistic scenarios of the sort you've described.
What most people actually seem to do is to pool your rewards into bundles that are large enough to feel emotionally impactful but not so big that you hit large obvious diminishing returns, and then enter all participants into a lottery for those bundles. I don't know whether that's backed up by research or not.
I liked the approach from Aella's kink survey, where after you fill out the survey it gives you a fun "what fictional character are you as kinky as" message that you can share with your friends.
(I did not reach the end of the survey but apparently tons of people did, and I think many of them were motivated by the message at the end.)
Not theory, but a single data point: We had a pool of ~400 people and found they were more incentivized to take the survey when we had more, smaller rewards versus fewer, big ones.
Put all the prize pool together, the winner is drawn by lot, you get one lot/number for people you make take the survey, you must at least make another person take the survey.
My inspiration is stuff that I use to saw a lot on twitter, a company giving out a thing of high value to one or a few person choosed randomly, on the condition that they share and follow. The initial idea was that to get into the pool you have to make someone else take the survey, but that doesn't capitalize on the people that are ready to put in more work to get more chances. Adding the rule "you bring 10 people you get 10x more chances to win" fixes that.
This is all intuition, I never studied any of this stuff formally.
Thoughts on semaglutide and pancreatic cancer risk ? I believe it is generally accepted that inflammation is associated with increased cancer risk and this drug does show increased incidence of pancreatitis. I know the clinical studies on semaglutide did not show increased cancer risk, but they're relatively short-term and pancreatic cancer is usually only detected in later stages after a tumor has been growing for years.
My father looked into this and I vaguely remember him saying that he thought the studies picked up a weak signal that would have been statistically significant if they had been done better, don't remember the details. He tried to get money and resources for better studies but got frustrated after too much bureaucracy.
The few studies that I found with a quick google suggest that the rate of pancreatitis is about equal between control and treatment groups, 0.3 vs. 0.4 % (another study shows more cases in placebo group). Pancreatitis ==> 13x odds ratio of pancreatic cancer development so that would be a concern but I'd question whether it's relevant.
Given how many cancers are associated with obesity I'd say it's worth it
Hey Trebuchet, I noticed you commented on Zvi's Balsa FAQ and someone replied, then it disappeared before I could read the reply. Did you delete it, or...?
I didn't note the author, but there was an early comment arguing that Zvi should remove a question from the FAQ. Zvi did delete that question, and presumably the comment too.
Don't have a copypaste available, but the question was something along the lines of "isn't this all a big thing to stop Trump; aren't you Trump-deranged?" and the answer that he mostly wanted prosperity for its own sake but also thought Trump was bad because he was authoritarian and prosperity would help defeat him; he said that he's aware most people with TDS aren't aware they have TDS and that if you think him thinking Trump is bad because he's authoritarian implies he has TDS then you should think he has TDS.
Trebuchet's comment said, roughly, that this question/answer might as well have put out a giant sign saying he's going to be a Democrat shill, when the rest of the post didn't really make you think about Trump at all. (Note again that this is my recollection of what trebuchet said, not how I'd describe things.)
Zvi said something fairly-similar in his first response to criticism https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/why-balsa-research-is-worthwhile/ - I notice that there are very good nonpartisan, uncontroversial reasons to want specifically Donald Trump not to be in the White House (most obviously, his age, the extreme difficulty he had and would again have in Doing Things as an outsider, and his extreme divisiveness to the point that the Democrats' loyalty might not be assured), but Zvi instead gave the controversial answer that even I have reservations about.
Does it seem reasonable to think Zvi has TDS because he writes about how Trump is a bad authoritarian who should be stopped, in the same posts he talks about wanting to be a nonpartisan organization that avoids culture war issues? That really seems like he is so deranged that he can't notice "Stop the top Republican candidate from winning" is culture war. Or I suppose, that he's just doing fundraising PR and trying to double-dip on "policy wonks who like nonpartisanship" and "libs with TDS".
I don't understand why a comment that Trump has authoritarian tendencies is perceived as partisan. Is it possible to criticize someone like Trump without it being considered partisan?
I don't like Trump, though I agree with some of his policies. My dislike for him is not partisan. There are other Republicans I would support. Yet any time I express dislike for Trump, regardless of reason, it is perceived as partisan by Republicans who support him.
It's not the disliking Trump, it's loudly disliking Trump while simultaneously trying to be a nonpartisan avoider of the culture war. That suggests a serious lack of self-awareness.
"We also believe that Trump is at this point a would-be authoritarian and that his returning to the Presidency would be quite bad and is worth working to prevent."
Commenters apparently convinced Zvi that it was a bad idea to openly oppose the presumptive Republican presidential candidate while also claiming to be nonpartisan.
To be clear, I did consider this when writing the post spilling the beans. But considering the fact that he's accepting donations, and considering his previous post which is still up, I decided it was worth dropping the bomb.
Authoritarian is a propaganda term. The Democrats were furiously demanding that the entire country be put into hard lockdown based on the opinions given by liberal figures of authority. This is far more "authoritarian" than anything Trump ever did, regardless of whether lockdowns were an effective or otherwise "objectively" correct option or not.
The general pattern of the past seven years or so in the US, from what I see, is progressives and Democrats stacking the deck while Republicans flip the table. Flipping the table is more spectacular, but a stacked deck still isn't a fair game - it's worth remembering that Russia and the PRC do have elections, and they're not even rigged in terms of votes AFAIK, but media control and disqualification make them useless for actually unseating the ruling party.
For a quick rundown of the deck-stacking measures:
1) strong ideological bias of schools and especially universities, some of it hidden from parents
2) delegitimisation of conservatism and Republicans in media (including some places where there *hasn't* been a successful mirror-version, like Wikipedia)
3) censorship of conservatives and Republicans on social media platforms (mostly unofficial, although the Disinformation Governance Board was an attempt at official)
4) demographic change via immigration
5) opposition to anti-illegal-voting measures (yes, yes, I know the Democrats' reason for this is fear of Jim Crow, but if you gain from illegal action X and you oppose measures to stop X you're in implicit collusion with the criminals doing X regardless of your motives).
Now, obviously, you can say that all of that is still legal and some of Trump's various schemes weren't, which is mostly true, and you can say that Trump's schemes were pretty slimy, which is definitely true, but that list (particularly #1-#3, plus the so-far-unrealised possibility of disqualifying Trump) hits most of the beats of a group trying to set up a Russian-style de facto one party state (there is also a word for the practice of coordinating the vast majority of cultural and scientific organisations around a specific political agenda) and it's not very surprising that people would object to that.
The situation in the US is definitely asymmetrical, but it's tricky to pick one side as undermining democracy more than the other - they both do it, just in different ways.
Long runs were my goto method when I was younger. As my joints have aged bicycling either outdoors or on my turbo trainer have taken their place.
Strength training is good- and good for you - too. I have a large basement so I like free weights. I have a bench and squat rack and I try to keep to two workouts a week for maintenance. Bench press, bent forward row and squats are my usual routine.
Any sort of physical workout is good for clearing your mind and moving your motivation off top dead center.
I should have been specific, but it is specially weight lifting that helped in my case. Cardio and general physical activity are almost neutral nowadays but helped a lot at first. I have no idea what the general action mechanism is, so your mileage might vary and I might be forgetting another lifestyle intervention I can't think of
The only debate seems to turn on a conflation of efficacy vs. effectiveness. There doesn't seem to be any credible evidence that colonoscopies are not efficacious for individuals. All of the studies that might seem to show that are actually about population-level effectiveness, which, while relevant for public policy, has no relevance for personal medical care. For more detail on this distinction, see: https://peterattiamd.com/colonoscopy-and-acm/
"Parenthetically, of the 11,843 colonoscopies performed in this study there were zero perforations and 15 (0.127%) bleeding complications. If nothing else, this reinforces how safe colonoscopy is in the hands of experienced endoscopists. "
There were ZERO perforations because ZERO of the colonoscopies done in study were under anesthesia! Anesthesia not used in Europe. Without anesthesia it is the patient that prevents perforation because they tell the doctor - Stop! You're hurting me.
Anecdotally, a friend of the family died from sepsis after a poorly-conducted colonoscopy*. The chance of finding a problem and fixing it has to be weighed against the chance of creating a problem.
*(I think this was the same place that killed another friend by giving her radiation treatment in the wrong part of her body. True Rural medicine sucks.)
One of the most useful books I read, back in the early 2000’s, was “Raising Your Spirited Child.” My 2nd child was particularly sensitive (with her, we learned that Target sold socks without seams, because seams bothered her so much, and many other kids too, apparently!) The book validated how each kid was different and it’s okay to respect their innate temperaments and unique selves. We also had a wonderful pediatrician who said kids with her temperament usually did really well in school because they have so much tenacity and focus. This kid loves to get A’s and is now in grad school. So there’s that.
Not necessarily. This was 22 years ago and I hadn’t ever heard of Asperger’s. The title to the book is: “Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic.” Perhaps I am being preciously euphemistic, but she was never diagnosed with Asperger’s. My point was seeing sensitivity as part of my child’s temperament, not something to be fixed, was very helpful for me.
What is the point? If a child grew up to successful adult while everyone thought she had simply an innate "spirited" or sensitive temperament, and we would then find out that yes, some MDs would have diagnosed her with some sort of Asperger's ... was that kind of Asperger's diagnosis ever useful? Map is not the territory, etcetera.
It's not as useful to be diagnosed as an adult, but for parents of a younger child who notice one or two prominent symptoms (eg. sensitivity to any roughness in fabrics), knowing the other tendencies in the cluster (eg. other sensory issues, like bright lights and loud noises, or a tendency to take things at face value) helps parents head off potential problems before they crop up rather than after they have caused suffering to the child.
Sure. But my point was more in direction ... if the existence of cluster of tendencies / symptoms / personality traits and their characteristics can also be effectively communicated by calling it certain kind of personality cluster and writing books about that particular personality cluster, is it then worse or better than thinking about the same cluster in terms of "medical condition"? We in the West have a certain framework for thinking about medical conditions and diagnoses, and it lends much better to the kind of condition that after diagnosis can be treated by medical professionals with discrete interventions (operations, medications, therapy sessions...). Nobody is diagnosed as "normal", after all.
And yes, I am aware that for some people on the spectrum it can be debilitating.
This sounds like my daughter - very bothered by socks, car seats, and other tactile clothing. She's got a ton of tenacity and focus, but also a lot of anxiety about doing well. She was quite concerned about getting the lowest grade so far this year - 97% in one class.
"Spirited" sounds like a euphemism that's probably about right.
I was always bothered by seams. Also a good pupil.
As a father of two girls age 2 and 4 I would love to hear more from parents that are further down the road as to what advice has turned out to be useful (and what is bunk).
My brother and his wife are soon going to have a child. I don't have any experience with children (and frankly, not much with young parents either). Are there things that you shoud do/should not do? Things that are very appreciated, things that are taboo? For example, I can imagine that unless they specifically ask for it, sending resources on pedagogy or childcare could be seen as weird/annoying/bad/obnoxious.
In addition to the other good advice, I note that there are a few vaccines one is meant to get booster shots for before interacting with a newborn. I know Whooping Cough is one of them but I'm sure there are others. (I need to look into it because I too am about to be an uncle in a few weeks)
Good one! The whooping cough vaccine's protection attenuates over the course of about a decade. My wife (then girlfriend) got it back in 2009 and it was no fun. She coughed hard enough to crack a rib, and then, of course, kept coughing. It was painful and went on for weeks.
In addition to what everyone else has said: one of the most valuable things you can give to the parents of a small child is time to themselves. Offering to take the baby for a walk around the block, or watch the baby at home so the parents can themselves take a walk around the block, can be wonderful. Maybe not in the first few weeks, but soon after that.
Do: offer to bring by snacks/ cooked meals, ask if they need anything from the store, offer to help out with errands/etc. Emphasize that you are not fazed if baby cries or if they need to be late to an event. Educate yourself on how primitive newborns are (no neck control!) so you know what to expect and don't suggest that their 2 month old should be sitting up or speaking. Suggest looking up "5 S's" on youtube to learn how to help calm fussy baby. Ask parents how they are doing instead of just asking about the baby.
Don't: insist on rigorous meeting times, since the new baby's nap schedule will likely dictate this. Offer suggestions for why baby is crying. Insist on meeting baby before they are ready. Buy random baby crap they don't want.
oh, sorry I more thing I forgot: wash your hands before touching the baby, and don't visit if you're sick, even if it's just a cold! A newborn with a cold is very unhappy, and a fever in a newborn is a medical emergency that requires hospitalization.
The extremes of early sickness fade fast. That's mostly a very young newborn, which calms down significantly after a few weeks and especially a few months.
yes, >~2 months you no longer have to go to the ER for fever, but I still think sickness in older babies should be prevented when it's simple stuff like not visiting when you're actively sick!
the parents will definitely not be thanking you if you pass along a mild sickness to their slightly older baby, as it often interferes with their sleep and they get pretty cranky.
I'll third the idea of doing chores. My mother in law came to visit when our son was about 2 weeks old and the biggest help was that she could do little chores which gave my wife and I a few extra minutes to sleep. Laundry, dishes, take out the trash - these things are awesome.
Also just being another set of eyes or hands for watching or holding the baby is really helpful. I would say that infants are a lot more sturdy than I thought before having one. As long as their head is supported it would be really hard to hurt them when you hold them, so don't be too nervous.
It depends on the personality of your brother and his wife, but my wife and I weren't really interested in chatting much during those first weeks/months. Just too tired, too much to do and think about. So don't expect much in that way and don't be offended if they seem annoyed all the time (lack of sleep does that to you!).
If your sister in law has to pump (instead of nurse) this will be a big pain in the ass for her. It takes up just as much time as nursing but the baby still hasn't eaten. Being available to give her time to pump can be really helpful as well.
Slightly different emphasis. Chores are a favor, do it graciously and if you aren't feeling it feel free not to.
But, when you're ready for babysitting, treat it like they're doing you a favor. "Hey guys, can I get some uncle time on Friday? You guys could go out."
This will be (likely) very much appreciated, and will let you build a relationship with the kid.
Another idea for a little later: take the kid for a weekend or a week. I did this with my sisters' kids when they were little and midsize, and now they do this for me. For the parent it's a nice couple of days for a getaway (or long home project), for the kids it's an adventure (I used to take my nieces and nephew to Shakespeare in the park and the Ren Faire), and for you it will (hopefully) be a treat. Kid time, especially when you don't have kids, can be a lot of fun, and it's different from the rest of your life.
I would second this. If you really want to help them go visit them and help them with chores for a while. The initial stages are very labor/attention intensive.
I make it clear to them that I'm doing this to make me feel better so they should not feel obligated to read it. I have had several get back to me that the two page writeup was useful (partially because it doesn't overlap with most other 'helpful tips').
My conclusions: this is not "The Lord of the Rings". Think of it as "Amazon's 'Rings Of Power'" and it's an okay-ish fantasy show. But they have gone from changing the canon to inventing their very own original horseshit which is now driving the plot, such as it is, so it's not Tolkien.
One of the worst episodes of television I have ever watched is the Racist Truck Episode of "Supernatural". But the worst thing about that was simple dumb stupid idiocy. It wasn't mean-spirited, it wasn't ripping something better off, it was a ham-handed attempt at "Racism Bad" and when people said this was a terrible episode, nobody came out swinging about "criticism of this episode means you hate empowered black women in lead roles so you are a white supremacist". It was accepted that this was awful, and everyone moved on.
Rings Of Awesome Powa! is not that kind of awful. It's mean-spirited pissing on canon. Payne and McKay (who, out of their own mouths in a "Hollywood Reporter" interview, admitted they had spent ten years writing scripts that never got made) think they can write better than Tolkien, so they invent their own crap. Now Sauron is an incel who goes bad because Galadriel rejected him harshly. And this is "complexly evil" not simplistic evil like Tolkien wrote about cosmic entities. Sauron is gonna be the next Tony Soprano or Walter White in season two!
The fact that *these* are their benchmarks shows the poverty of their imaginations. "Uh, duh, how we gonna write bad guy for modern audience? Uh, how 'bout we copy hit shows that ended fifteen and nine years ago respectively?"
“Season one opens with: Who is Galadriel? Where did she come from? What did she suffer? Why is she driven?” says Payne. “We’re doing the same thing with Sauron in season two. We’ll fill in all the missing pieces.”
“Sauron can now just be Sauron,” McKay adds. “Like Tony Soprano or Walter White. He’s evil, but complexly evil. We felt like if we did that in season one, he’d overshadow everything else. So the first season is like Batman Begins, and the The Dark Knight is the next movie, with Sauron maneuvering out in the open. We’re really excited. Season two has a canonical story. There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!’ In season two, we’re giving it to them.”
I could go on, but why bother? It's not Tolkien. As modern generic TV fantasy, it's meh. Too much crammed into the last episode to try and cliffhanger us into caring about season two, when as ever the 'mysteries' are transparently obvious:
Is the Stranger Gandalf? (Heck, yeah)
Is Isildur dead? (No, he has to grow up and kill Sauron, like in the movies this show has been copying all season)
Is Elendil's fake daughter going to look into the palantir? (Of course she is)
Is Pharazon going to take advantage of Tar-Palantir's death and Míriel's blindness to seize power? (If he doesn't, he's an idiot, and he's one of the few characters with three functioning brain cells in this show)
Is Elendil's fake daughter going to be the human version of Galadriel and, after looking into the palantir and seeing the future, she is now going to be making all the decisions about the fate of Númenor that her father made in canon, the same way Galadriel is the one who decided three rings should be made? (Well, since they have to do something more with her than have her standing around looking gormless, Isildur is off the scene for the moment, and Anarion apparently does not exist, yes to all this).
Is Celeborn dead? (Since they decided in episode seven that oh yeah, Galadriel has a husband so she can't bone Sauron, no - though he may well wish he were)
Dash it, sometimes I wish the some of the very old original primitive versions of the legendarium had survived into Tolkien's later revisions, because I'd love to turn Makar and Meássë loose on these twerps:
My feelings about the show are mixed, and I found the finale disappointing, but:
"Sauron is an incel who goes bad because Galadriel rejected him harshly"
He was bad all along, just convincing her he wasn't by telling incomplete truths. I don't love that last, since book Galadriel was suspicious of Annatar from the get go. But he didn't become evil in the finale. He wants to order the world and rule it, and is known to have been willing to use brutal methods (as Adar recounts) to advance those goals well before he ever met Galadriel.
(His efforts to get established as a smith in Numenor suggest that plan A was to forge rings there, and maybe make it his power base.)
Offering her all the kingdoms of the world to rule by his side is an innovation, but probably not all that different from what Saruman presumably thought he was agreeing to as he plotted his sudden but inevitable betrayal.
The Stranger is likely Gandalf, though some other wizard remains possible. If he is Gandalf, he shouldn't be going to Rhun ("to the East I go not"), while the Blue Wizards did. But the latter don't appear in LotR and so using one of them would require the Tolkien Estate to give permission.
I don't think "Is Isildur dead?" or "Is Earien going to look in the palantir" really even qualify as mysteries. As you say, anyone who's seen the film knows Isildur will wind up with an heir, and anyone who's seen *any* film knows that you don't show someone walking up the stairs to a palantir in order to establish that she turned around at the last moment to get bubble tea. Thinking Isildur is dead is presumably going to affect Elendil's motivations next season.
Likewise, even if one had never read the Akallabeth, Pharazon surely reads as "scheming vizier" to literally anyone. He's even got the beard! (Though I don't think the show has informed the viewer how close he is in the line of succession.)
Anarion does exist, even if he's Sir Not Appearing This Season. He's doing something Elendil doesn't approve of in the west. Almost certainly western Numenor rather than The West, though I suppose some version of Amandil's attempt to redo Earendil's journey that will wind up with him shipwrecked and unsuccessful isn't completely ruled out. (Except then Elendil would be concerned rather than angry.)
Possibly Earien will be giving Elendil the advice he got from his father re being ready to get out of Dodge, based on her palantir vision.
I do wonder just what the show Numenoreans are doing with all those ships They have a Sea Guard but no naval adversaries (unless they think they're defending against Valinor, in which case lotsa luck), and a busy harbor even though going to Middle Earth with 5, make that 3 ships was a momentous and politically fraught decision. (And Pelargir is an old Numenorean port that can be resettled with Southlanders.) Book Numenor was a major maritime empire engaged in extensive colonization and pillage by this point, but RoP Numenor doesn't appear to be doing that.
The mystery box approach is frustrating, because they're trying to invent mysteries in a canon where we already know X lives and Y happens.
This may work for a casual audience that doesn't know the books or the movies, but then the question remains: who are they making this show for? They've been going very heavy on the Tolkien angle, but if their audience is "people just tuning in for a fantasy show who know nothing about the world in question", then why not just do Original Series?
And even if you are a casual viewer who has no idea who Isildur is, you must have picked up that he lives because his horsie was set free to run off and find him. Like Lassie. Or Aragorn's horse, in the movies, which the show is totally not copying scenes and even lifting dialogue from, not at all!
So their 'mysteries' are very obvious. Yes, that's Gandalf. Yes, Isildur is alive (because if he's dead, then Berak the Horsie would be very upset and we don't upset animals today in movies). Yes, Earien is going to look in the palantir. They *might* possibly set up more (fake) conflict between Earien and her father due to what she sees - if she sees the Destruction of Númenor like everyone else who has looked in, she might double-down on her opposition to getting involved in war in Middle-earth.
"Pharazon surely reads as "scheming vizier" to literally anyone. He's even got the beard!"
Don't forget the eyebrows! Those are Evil Eyebrows with the best of them!
Rings of Power Númenor is *all over the place*. They have a settlement/port in Middle-earth, after declaring in earlier episodes that they had nothing to do with the place for centuries. They have a navy, but they're doing nothing with it. The mighty fleet of three ships couldn't be brought back up to its original strength of five ships by taking any of the other ships we see in the harbour?
As for the handling of Sauron, that is the greatest divergence.
Everything he said to Galadriel was true - she is the one who insisted he was the King of the Southlands, not him; he did tell her he took the pouch off a dead man; he did want to remain in Númenor and it was Galadriel who promised Miriel that he would come along; since we see the forging of the three rings without previously making the nine and the seven, it does look like he genuinely wanted to help the Elves.
Now, there could be a masterplan in place whereby he caused the Darkness that made the Elves fade so they need the mithril so he can pop up to tell them to make rings with it, rings he will control - and that in order to get into Eregion, he manipulated Galadriel all along, but that would mean that he had to know she would end up on a ship to Valinor and then jump overboard so he could be on a raft in exactly the right place to pick her up and worm his way into her confidence so that she would take him along. That's more plotting than the show has demonstrated it can pull off so far.
Halbrand/Sauron's character has acted very variably all along; at times, he was obviously doing bad things (e.g. on the raft when he split off alone and then the rest of them got attacked and killed by a sea monster so that he and Galadriel were the only ones left) but then at other times he seems genuine about just wanting to stay in Númenor and work as a smith. Galadriel has done worse things than he has done so far, so how much was him being manipulative and how much was him trying to sincerely change?
Of course Sauron is evil, of course his initial weak impulse to repent after the War of Wrath faded, but this version of Sauron is so different from canon that I think they really are trying to portray him as some kind of conflicted anti-hero; Galadriel could have set him on the right path if only she hadn't rejected him out of hand when he wanted her help to bind him to the light!
It's mushy nonsense, and I do think they chopped and changed from one episode to another based on audience reaction; they did seem to be setting up a Galadriel/Halbrand romance, but since most people had already guessed he was Sauron, that wouldn't work any more so they threw in a mention of Celeborn in episode seven and had the big break-up in the finale.
Because they had dawdled along time-wasting in the previous episodes, and as I suspect had intended to stretch out storylines into the second season (like 'is Halbrand Sauron?' maintaining the 'mystery' so that they could introduce him into Eregion and becoming a confidante of Celebrimbor), they had to finish everything up in a hurry for the finale.
So rush, rush, rush, the rings get forged in a matter of days, Galadriel finally suspects Halbrand is not who she thinks due to a random line from Celebrimbor that is an echo of what Adar said (even though up to now she is the one who has been pushing him as King of the Southlands) and we get that 'revelation' which everyone knew was coming.
They built up the notion of the white-cloaked cultists, then threw all that away in a hurried conclusion (unless they plan to bring them back as a 'surprise' when Gandalf and Nori get to Rhun - you thought we were dead, but we can't be killed by you!) and now we have Sauron heading off to Mordor and Galadriel responsible for the three Elven rings.
And apparently still not telling anyone that yes, Sauron is back and that was him? Will we have this drawn out through season two - when is she going to tell? Elrond knows now as well, is he going to tell? what will they do?
EDIT: Funnily enough, I would have enjoyed a few episodes of Celebrimbor and Halbrand being forge buddies, because (a) finally Celebrimbor got something to do other than stand around in his bathrobe (b) the exploding forge bits were funny, yes I'm easily pleased (c) they seemed to be genuinely getting on well and (d) I would have liked to see the process of learning to make the rings, seven and nine as well as the three. It would have fit better if the sixteen were the first trial essays, getting stronger as they learned more, and *then* we had the big revelation, Halbrand flees, and Celebrimbor changes the plan so that instead of the final One Ring they had intended to create, he makes the three Elven rings.
But we couldn't get that because they had to cram everything into the finale in order to tidy up their dangling plots.
I'm guessing that their main imagined viewer is someone who saw the films, doesn't know them backwards and forwards but may be caught short by major contradictions. (So, e.g., Celeborn certainly isn't dead and neither is Isildur, but they're not expected to know much more than "the Rings were forged" and *maybe* "Numenor fell", rather than any details.)
Though they're clearly throwing in details that only book fans would care about, whether or not they can win them all over. Showing Aman in the days of the Trees, alluding to stories they don't have the rights to tell in sculpture, etc. That's obviously polarizing, and will only irritate people who are already unhappy with the massive liberties they're taking. But it's hard to know how it will all shake out.
(I know plenty of people who hate the Jackson movies for similar reasons, and I can certainly while away a few hours on the places where he fundamentally fails to get Tolkien myself. But I like the films overall, and it's probably fair to say that they're remembered very positively in popular culture and genre fandom generally even if the controversy within Tolkien fandom will never die.)
I'm not sure the chronology of the production allows for them to have made changes based on audience reaction, unless it was from test audiences.
I agree that I really wish they'd spent more time on the forging of the Rings and Halbrand insinuating himself into Eregion. (Send Galadriel somewhere else if she's not to look dense for not twigging sooner.) I don't like the idea of the Three being the first Rings they ever forged, with no need for essays in the craft and no clear idea why they'd forge sixteen more Great Rings with the emergency past and Sauron revealed.
(Also: who puts a forge at the top of a tower? I'm not remotely an expert, but that just seems like a bad idea, from having to haul fuel and metal up and down the stairs to the hazards of explosions like the one we see messing with the structure.)
I don't think Sauron is going to be a conflicted antihero so much as a villain whose motives we know. Adar kind of fills that slot anyway, and I won't be surprised if the heroes are forced to make common cause with him on the grounds that "independent Orc kingdom" is better than a Dark Lord.
Of course they have the general prequel problem that they can't actually win. But maybe the Orcs get driven offstage to the east or south. Or they're crushed with sad music in a way that helps enable the victory of the Last Alliance as Galadriel sheds a single tear for her erstwhile foe.
I do think that Sauron is supposed to be adapting his plans on the fly, though not necessarily full "everything that has transpired has done so according to my design". I'm not sure if he's supposed to have planned his chance meeting with Galadriel (which yes, would be a stretch even for an immortal Ainu, not least because no one sane could predict that one of the oldest and most respected Eldar in Middle-Earth would jump into the ocean, let alone where). I *think* he's supposed to be trying to make opportunities as they come: get in Galadriel's good graces, insinuate himself into Numenorean smithcraft, okay, maybe he can work with king of the Southlands if the elf won't leave him in peace to use ringcraft in Numenor, wait, infiltrating the Noldor is even better!
Maybe he knew about (or arranged) the whole Elvish decay/mithril/Celebrimbor wanting to emulate Feanor thing and manipulated affairs from the beginning to get himself put into the middle of it. But I don't think that's been shown, and I agree that would be a lot of a lot if they confirm that's what happened. I'd at least rather read it as Sauron's adapting fluidly to changing circumstances and taking advantage of his adversaries' ignorance.
I'm guessing that there wasn't a lot of sincere interest in helping the Elves as much as laying the groundwork for dominating them. (Ideally with Galadriel as Witch-queen, but if not, oh well.)
Presenting himself as offering a means to improve the world is in keeping with pre-Downfall Sauron. But I think the fact that he's been comprehensively lying through omission and that he's shown to have been doing monstrous experimentation (both his northern stronghold and Adar's reports, the latter reaffirmed by Halbrand's clear rage at Adar) communicates to the audience that he's not actually misunderstood, and while he may have self-righteous justifications they're not actually righteous and I don't think we're meant to think they are.
(Which isn't to say some segment of the fandom won't become his partisans. But people got from actual Tolkien to writing "The Last Ringbearer". Ditto shipping heroes with hot villains. There's no accounting for fans.)
I'd actually missed that Galadriel didn't tell them Halbrand was Sauron. I really hope that's an editing oversight and it will be clear she did tell them next season.
I agree puzzle box storytelling is getting very old, and hope they're not going to keep relying on it to the same extent going forward.
What is absolutely infuriating is that somebody involved with this has read the books, or knows something, maybe just Googled shit online, because they put in tiny details that only lore nerds will catch.
Like having the Bough of Return on the Númenorean ships (a real 'blink and you'll miss it' reference). Or the bat-eared headdress of one of the white cloaked mystics referring to Thuringwethil (and the moon phases on the collar of another make me think 'moon - werewolves - Draugluin'). Small little things that are plainly nods to the lore and those fans who know the lore.
And then they do crap like give Elendil a daughter, invent 'Halbrand', and so on.
The Jackson films have their flaws, no two ways about it; they got Denethor wrong, for a start (but that's a choice I understand making for the sake of the movie story). "The Hobbit" movies were wrong, too little material stretched out over three movies, meaning that a ton of filler had to be inserted and invented. But there are moments there where Jackson just gets it *right*, even if he has made changes. There aren't any similar moments I can point to in "Rings of Power"; the dinner table scene between Durin and Gil-galad was one I *thought* might be something, where there is a seriousness about what Dwarves value and what Elves have made of it, and that there is some kind of diplomacy between Dwarves and Elves going on, some kind of cultural respect - but then the show ruins it by cheapening it: Durin made it all up, he only wanted a free table because Dísa has been nagging him to get a new one so he lied to con Gil-galad out of it.
Even Ralph Bakshi is looking way better by comparison. He just tried rotoscoping and other novel effects, he didn't mess about with the plot.
A forge at the top of a tower? Yes. It's meant to be Celebrimbor's workshop, but given the explosion they are indeed forging the mithril alloy there, which as you say is *dumb*.
And what about the giant forge they needed the Dwarves to build, which has been flying up at top speed (can't beat Dwarven craftsmanship) and is now a useless huge building in the courtyard? It's more bad storytelling: well yeah they don't need the industrial forge now that they won't be using every scrap of mithril the Dwarves can produce, but it's a red herring that is a waste of audience attention, and more of the way they introduce and then dump plot elements for convenience.
I admit I'd missed the Bough of Return till you'd mentioned it in an earlier comment.
I'm not too bothered by invented characters if they're not disruptive to the story. (The effortful demographic box checking can be obtrusive, but it's the style of the time.) Inventing interstitial stories isn't necessarily a bad thing for an adaptation, and something like Elendil having a daughter doesn't throw things out of whack the way, e.g., Thingol having a son and heir would unbalance the story of Beren and Luthien.
Especially if her early inclination towards the King's Men means that she's not going to outlive Numenor, which wouldn't surprise me.
Likewise, Arondir and Bronwyn. We know there were elf-mortal romances other than the three big ones, since the princes of Dol Amroth were descended from one. And that story is especially odd in the context of Tolkien's idea that Elves (other than Finwe) don't marry twice. The main departure from Tolkien is having the male in this one be from the higher kindred, where Tolkien always has the man marrying up. (Thingol->Melian as well as all the Eldar/Edain marriages and Finduilas's unrequited love for Turin. Arguably Eol->Aredhel also fits the pattern even though they're both Elves.)
Pharazon having a son, especially one who isn't Miriel's, is a bigger departure, But I'm willing to wait and see what they do with that.
One problem with this sort of storytelling is that the first season involves a lot of table setting. We're in the first 20% of the story, so to some extent it's like asking for brilliance in Jackson' first half of The Fellowship of the Ring. (Which gave us the ridiculous wizard battle, because when you have Ian McKellan and Christopher Lee together the last thing you want to do is just let them act at one another. But it did also give us Hobbiton looking just as Hobbiton should, to its great credit.)
I absolutely get not wanting to spend another eight hours seeing where it will go next season when they haven't won your trust. And all things being equal I'd prefer a closer adaptation rather than an "inspired by" story. I'm still curious enough for now. Though a two-year gap is not going to help retain audience interest, or even memory of exactly what happened this season.
>nobody came out swinging about "criticism of this episode means you hate empowered black women in lead roles so you are a white supremacist". It was accepted that this was awful, and everyone moved on.
That's because it aired in 2006, when it was much harder to defend a bad story by calling your opponents racist.
Especially because in 2006 it certainly felt like there a lot of people in Fandom starting down this road.
(In fact, there were people who excessively focused on the inadequate treatment of racism as to why that episode was bad - because if the show had better interrogated its own internal racism it would have been worthwhile.)
It's very nearly so bad you should watch it, but only if you don't care about Tolkien's canon.
I don't know who half the actors are; the one guy I thought was excellent was Joseph Mawle, who plays Adar and even under the prosthetic makeup managed to out-act Morfydd 'One Expression' Clark in their scene together.
The guy who plays Elendil is Lloyd Owen, who I see is RADA trained. Then he gets told in episode seven "stand there and be emotional with the horsie". I hope to God the actors are trousering the cash with both hands, because they might as well be getting some benefit from this trainwreck.
There have been some fun memes out of it, but as anything approaching "Lord of the Rings", apart from shamelessly copying scenes and dialogue from the Jackson movies - forget it! What's even worse is that all concerned, from Bezos on down, have sworn and vowed and declared and avouched that they are YUUUGE Tolkien fans and want to be as faithful to the canon as possible and are so inspired that they start every day with a quote from the books.
And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
I'm telling you, this makes Ralph Bakshi look like a genius in comparison. He may have been 60s/70s counter-culture trippin', but the worst thing he did was steal Boromir's trousers. He didn't decide to rewrite the entire freakin' lore so that Sauron was disguised as a human from 'the Southlands' and was infatuated to the point of proposing marriage to Galadriel.
No, that's not something I imagined after sustaining massive brain damage - they really went and did that.
What is the point of Elendil's fake daughter? They said they created her to "inject some female energy" into the wotsit, and their main sign of this is her bazooms. They are not the most massive of bazooms ever, but they are very noticeably bazooms, and possibly even braless bazooms, and they're about the one thing that you remember about her. The show seemed to be trying to start up a romance between her and Pharazon's fake son, but to say that this was watery would be an insult to water, which after all is a vitally necessary element.
I'm guessing Earien is there to be a viewpoint character to the King's Men and the descent of Numenorean society, which Elendil and Isildur are necessarily going to be outside of as secret and then increasingly open rebels. Pharazon is an obvious villain, but arguably someone needs to be the "normal", not initially evil Numenorean who gets caught up in the events of the Downfall through desperation and temptation and fear. I may be wrong, of course.
Yeah, but I think Cemen, Pharazon's fake son, is the guy who is/was supposed to be the 'ordinary viewpoint Númenorean who's a King's Man'.
Up until he was impressed with Earien's bazooms and was persuaded by her to go off to try to persuade his father not to support Míriel sending ships to Middle-earth to liberate the Southlands.
I have no idea what is supposed to be going on there. Earien was standing around in the square watching the whole "Elves are gonna take our jobs!" rabble-rousing, and it *seemed* like she didn't like this, but at this stage I don't know if she's pro- or anti-Faithful. She seems to be "don't go to war", her chief reason for trying to get Cemen to persuade his dad to stop the liberation fleet (all three ships), but if her opinions are any more formed than that is hard to say.
And Cemen is all over the place - first he was "heck yeah I am proud Númenorean" and supporting his dad, then he switched to bazooms and was "why get involved in someone else's war?" where Pharazon had to explain the facts of political life to him (for Númenor's gain by having a client state in Middle-earth which will enable us to have a base for trade and exploitation of resources), then he tried burning down/blowing up one ship which managed to take out two ships (so he was effective in his own way) but didn't stop the liberation fleet of three ships sailing.
Since the show can't be bothered to give us any background on who is thinking what, I have no idea what Earien's politics - if any - are, or what Cemen's are now: does he stick with Dad who is on track to be the de facto ruler of Númenor now, or does he remain loyal to bazooms, and is Earien on Pharazon's side now? What will she do after looking in the palantir?
I'm not even interested in getting that answered, since both Earien and Cemen are tissue-thin characters with no development other than "I'm Earendil's daughter" and "I'm attracted to her (for whatever reasons, probably bazooms because she has done nothing or said nothing of note yet)".
Some of them seem to be good actors, if they got anything in the damn script to work with. He's a RADA graduate, so he's got the training and the chops, and his biggest scene so far was doing some horse-whispering.
Whoever is playing Celebrimbor might as well have phoned in his lines (all six of them he's had so far) while they stuck a mannequin in a bathrobe in the corner to represent him, for all he's been given to do so far. It's particularly galling since he's the smith who crafted the rings, and that *should* have been his Big Episodes, but they knocked off the smithing in about ten minutes of the finale, so back he goes into standing around doing nothing much for the next season.
The only thing that would draw me to watch season two is if we get a lot more of Adar, who is a vaguely sympathetic character and the guy playing him is a damn good actor. However, it looks like season two is going to be "all Sauron, all the time" as our dauntless duo of showrunners develop him to be "Tony Soprano or Walter White".
I just started a substack! It's called "Eat Shit and Prosper"—gonna be talking a lot about the gut microbiome and its connection to psychiatric/neurodegenerative diseases, but also more general stuff about microbial ecology.
Some practical advice for staying healthy in an increasingly adversarial world, with a lil dose of pontification on who's really driving the bus (hint: you are the bus).
Quick question about eating shit: Is fecal transplant looking promising for people with Crohn's disease? I looked into it for a friend a few years ago, & results seemed mixed.
Looking promising! 36% of patients in full clinical remission 2 months out from a 2-dose regimen. Maybe not the miracle you'd hope to see, but it's a lot better than pretty much anything else.
More importantly, pretty much no serious adverse events, i.e. not likely to make things worse if they give it a try.
My friend has an 11 yo son who has lots of stomach aches and upsets from his Crohn's. Kid's now on -- I forget what, but some drug the docs hoped not to have to use on him. Maybe a steroid? And still with lots of stomach pain even on whatever undesirable drug it is. At my suggestion, friend asked the doc about fecal transplant, doc knew about it -- apparently down-the-hatch route is called "crapsules" -- but declined to try that at this point. Is there a down side to fecal transplant? Do docs just regard it as too iffy and weird? Are they all hypnotized by sales pitches from drug reps? What's the case against crapsules?
I know, when docs were first doing this they just mixed water and donor feces in a blender and gave it to patient as an enema. (Patients were told to BYOB, bring your own blender.) I’d try this myself in a heartbeat if I had Crohn’s.
FDA is regulating it as a drug, meaning a doctor can only do FMT as part of a registered clinical trial.
They issued an "enforcement discretion" notice allowing it to be used outside of clinical trials for C. diff, because tens of thousands of people die of that every year.
But for everything else, the current thinking is "You can wait until Rebiotix introduces the $5000 version of shit-in-a-bag/shit-in-a-pill". And you'll pay out of pocket because it'll be off-label use. Fortunately, poop is unique among drugs in that literally everybody healthy produces it once a day.
Come talk to me about "the horror" when you're watching one of your parents die of Alzheimer's, when they're hitting the cliff where the faculties start to go quicker and quicker, and there's exactly one medical procedure that's been reported to reverse the progression, and no doctor will do it for them even though it's got a better risk profile than any approved drug for their condition.
Or when your kid is practically skin and bones, and you have to try and think of the words to say that'll get him to eat a little, even though he's not faking the tears when he says the mashed potatoes makes his insides hurt, but you've tried every food, every diet, and no matter what it is, everything makes him hurt, and at the back of your mind you wonder if he's right when he says you should just let him starve to death.
Antibiotics are, of course, a powerful tool that have their place in medicine. But "overuse" is specifically using them outside of that place, and there's no reason we shouldn't come down on that as hard as possible.
Been a while since I took a close look at the stats, but IIRC 1/3-1/2 of antibiotic prescriptions are deemed unnecessary in retrospect.
Obviously few physicians prescribe an antibiotic they know is unnecessary, but "see if it helps" thinking is all too common, especially among patients. The "customer is always right" mentality is not helping with this situation.
Also: that last graph you linked....interesting that the slope doesn't actually change when penicillin is introduced. What do you think is up with that?
I can never decide if this guy is an honest broker, or feels the need to play devils advocate because the opposing viewpoint is so prevailing that he feels the need to come out with "hot takes". Certainly solar/wind have some downsides. But the language in these tweets seems kind of silly.
Yep, I haven’t seen him advocate for oil and gas, but I have seen him advocate for nuclear.
But I think advocating against solar/wind isn’t a great strategy. Similar to how anti-nuclear advocacy has resulted in increased coal power, advocating against solar/wind will result in the same, which seems bad.
If the discussion is really about solar vs nuclear, I appreciate pointing out the limitations of solar (of which baseload power is the biggest), but fossil fuel electricity is still the main problem, and should be the main focus of criticism, IMO.
I would say that the main *immediate* problem, seems to be politically symbolic decisions to shut down functioning existing power plants like the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, without giving one shred of thought to the physical repurcussions of those decisions.
Shellenberger rose quite a bit in my estimation when I learned about all his work to stop the Diablo Canyon shutdown.
In other good news on the nuclear front, GA's new nuclear plant, delayed for three DECADES, has finally loaded all the fuel into the first reactor, and will power up in a few months pending standard start-up/fuelling tests and observations.
Maybe in Germany? But the biggest change in power generation in the United States in the last 20 years has been a steep decline in coal, and a corresponding rise in natural gas. Solar/wind is still single-digit percentages and nuclear has been very stable.
Is wind still single-digit percentages? I thought that gas was about 40%, nuclear, coal, and "renewables" were each about 20%, and that within renewables, wind had passed hydro and solar is growing substantially too.
That's pretty spot on, but yes wind is at 9%. And I doubt it will get a lot larger, for the same reason hydro has been stuck where it is for decades. Both depend critically on having a certain unusual geographical situation -- either a nicely dammable river for hydro, or an unusually steady wind and lots of space for wind. The good places are already mostly used up.
It's possible someone might think of some innovation in wind turbine design that makes use in lower wind speeds plausible -- I think that has already happened once -- but places where the wind just blows all day all the time are necessarily pretty unusual -- I mean, there's a good reason we switched away from sail power in transport long ago -- and having a use factor of 5% really makes a hash out of your ROI.
Didn't hydro follow a standard sort of S curve in that growth? At least, it looks like there were several decades of stable growth in hydro, and then a slowdown, before it stalled. Wind seems to still be in the early days of stable growth, so I wouldn't expect it to stall any time soon.
Thanks for the charts! I was talking about United States (in response to a comment about United States) and it looks from this like wind is about 9% of power generation here - so still single digit percents, but not for long.
FWIW, I generally approve of advocacy that might help increase spread of nuclear power (Thorium holds promise here, but needs investment to have a chance to be implemented at scale). If pointing out limitations of renewables increases chances of adopting nuclear more widely, then I approve. I just see the most likely outcome of increased skepticism towards solar/wind as increased fossil fuels rather than nuclear, which doesn’t seem like a good trade-off
So everything that told me calories is (fat + protein + carbs) was wrong! It also seems to make beer nutrition labels extra deceptive. Why is there no row for alcohol?
I was taught (in nursing school) that calories equals carbs plus protein plus fat plus alcohol, but we don't consider it a macro because hopefully it isn't contributing a large amount of calories to your diet. It shouldn't really be considered a carb because it has a different kcal/g contribution
OTOH, I would be kinda amazed if the metabolic efficiency for sugar (sucrose) was very different between humans. Being more energy efficient is obviously a survival trait.
The strict definition of a carbohydrate is that its empirical formula is Cn(H2O)m where n and m are arbitrary integers (sucrose, for instance is C12(H2O)11). Ethanol is thus not a carbohydrate, as it has too many hydrogens (its empirical formula is C2H6O).
Is that the legal strict definition of a carbohydrate or the chemical strict definition of a carbohydrate? Chemical and legal definitions are famously different for many words, such as "organic".
Why have batteries beat out hydrogen as the go-to form of energy storage for renewables, whether in cars or for the grid? I would naively imagine that a lot of the infrastructure built for natural gas could be used/expanded to transport hydrogen, making it possible to produce hydrogen in places where renewable sources are cheap and bounteous, and then ship the hydrogen via pipes, rail, etc. to other places, just as we have done for many (most?) of our energy needs for over a century with oil and gas. I assume there are reasons for why batteries seem to be winning out thus far, but what information I am able to find with a few Google searches is either contradictory or unenlightening. Probably I just don't know enough about it to even know how to effectively search on this topic.
For transportation, batteries have the advantage that you don't need to convert energy from electricity to hydrogen and then to whatever form you want again, which requires expensive equipment on the electrolysis side and has fairly low (30%?) round-trip efficiency, and can also use already-existing infrastructure to move it to and from where it is needed.
For grid use, I don't think there are any attempts for serious day-scale battery storage, just for hour-scale storage. And batteries are pretty good in storing energy for an hour.
I've seen proposals for grid-scale battery storage using chemicals other than lithium.
Basically, lithium is really good for consumer applications, but for grid-scale storage you want cheaper materials and long-term reliability after many recharge cycles. So there's been some research into battery chemistry that works better for grid storage (I think the one I saw was aluminum-sulfur?), though it'll probably take a few years to be ready.
I'm curious why there isn't more work on making liquid fuels (eg ethanol) from water and carbon dioxide plus energy. This seems to be the ideal energy storage material, it's super energy dense and you can carry it in a bucket. Do we lack an efficient chemical pathway for doing it?
There's plenty of ways to make liquid hydrocarbon fuels from other hydrocarbon fuels, e.g. water gas used to be used a century or more ago for fuel, and there's modern "syngas" and in the last energy crisis (in the 70s) we talked a lot about coal gasification for the purpose of making so-called "clean fuels."
However I think few green aficianados would be pleased by these solutions, what they would typically want is some way to make fuel from CO2, water, and sunlight, the way plants do. That's definitely trickier. CO2 is obviously a very, very stable molecule when you live at the bottom of a lake of O2, so unwrapping the C from the eager grasp of the O takes some doing. Plants can do it because they have enzymes, which can pretty much do any organic reaction, even those that look ridiculous on paper. I think there may be some very slow progress on inorganic catalysts, and with trying to engineer enzymes to do it.
I surmise that part of the problem may be that for the plant's purposes glucose is an excellent end-point, but not so much for ours, because its material properties as a fuel aren't good. Generally we want a pretty hydrophobic fuel, like a pure hydrocarbon, or at worst an alcohol, because otherwise it tends to stick to stuff, lose water and get gummy, or absorb water and get diluted, et cetera. On the other hand, living cells like hydrophilic fuel (like sugars) because that makes it super easy to transport and store.
Garrett's answer to my query mentioned the Sabatier process. After reading a bit about it, it does sound like the primary barrier is prices of synthetic fuel have not historically been competitive with naturally occurring hydrocarbons. Perhaps the elevated fuel prices in Europe will spur more innovation in that area, driving down prices.
>produce hydrogen in places where renewable sources are cheap and bounteous, and then ship the hydrogen via pipes, rail, etc. to other places
You could do this (though not with natural gas pipes, for reasons others have noted), but it would be less efficient than simply using high-voltage power lines, because electrolysis and fuel cells both have significant inefficiencies.
Natural gas is piped places because we don't make it using electricity; we dig it out of the ground.
As Garret said, basically none of the natural gas infrastructure is suitable for hydrogen.
In addition, you would need to manufacture a ton of new infra anyway since the current grid is largely not powered by natural gas either, and neither are cars.
On the other hand, batteries are fully compatible and modular (give or take various integration problems) with the existing electrical grid. You can plug your hybrid car into standard outlets in your garage.
The dominant form today is actually pumped hydropower, which is surprisingly efficient and very mature, but difficult to build out at scale. Li-ion batters are much easier to just build where you need them. Every other form of storage is either in its infancy or has major drawbacks:
Lead-acid batteries: require careful management to extend their lifetimes.
Isn't hydrogen difficult to store, because hydrogen atoms are so small? Also I assume that most people just go "Hindenburg disaster!" when they hear "hydrogen."
For use in homes or cars, batteries directly produce electricity which can just plug into existing infrastructure. Hydrogen gas would require some additional infrastructure to convert to electricity. For grid-scale storage, I'm not sure.
Hydrogen is much more difficult to store as the atoms are just so small that they easily escape and need a lot of pressure. Similarly the efficiency of converting energy into hydrogen is relatively low compared to batteries, i.e. you lose a lot of energy by converting forth and back
As far as storage goes - if you're only storing energy overnight, batteries have much lower energy loss than hydrogen. If you're storing energy for weeks or months ... the arguments are less clear. I'm guessing it's just inertia and "economic incentives" that favor that inertia.
Putting hydrogen in passenger automobiles is a terrible idea for lots of reasons. Hydrogen is difficult to store, difficult to transport, and explosive. Building out an entire network to distribute it (so even stupid people can safely use it) is a fool's errand.
Diesel's the only common automotive fuel that isn't a potential flammable gas; both petrol (a.k.a. gasoline) and LPG are capable of explosion, but nonetheless these are pretty common and safe.
1. Hydrogen is a very small molecule, which means that it leaks through pipe walls and seals fairly easily. On a small scale this isn't a big deal, but on a large scale you are going lose a lot of your energy storage.
2. Hydrogen will combine with materials used to create most existing pipe infrastructure, rendering them extremely brittle.
3. Hydrogen isn't a liquid at anything near STP. This means you need to keep it under significant pressure or cryogenic temperatures. Doing either of these requires significant energy input and means that your fueling stations need to have specialty equipment.
None of these is especially difficult to overcome, but it is substantially more expensive to do so. If you want to use the existing natural gas infrastructure you are better off looking at the Sabatier process to convert your hydrogen and available carbon dioxide into "natural" gas which can use the existing infrastructure. OTOH if you just want to use hydrogen you are probably best to use it for something like long-haul trucking where using specialty refueling stations and equipment is more reasonable.
Thanks, that answers my question about why hydrogen is not a viable alternative to batteries. Reading a bit about the Sabatier process was very helpful. I now wonder why synthetic hydrocarbons haven't taken off more than they have thus far, as they do seem like a clearcut case of alternatives that could use existing infrastructure. Perhaps the elevated fuel prices in Europe will spur more innovation in that space.
Also, hydrogen is much more flammable than pretty much anything else you'd consider using as a fuel. But the flames are pretty much invisible in daylight. Which, coupled with "leaks through pipe walls and seals fairly easily", is a recipe for random horrible death. Hydrogen systems are best left to trained professionals, which is a serious limitation for consumer-facing applications.
Long-haul trucking, presumably we can get the truckers and their mechanics properly trained if we want to go that route.
Yes, now Hondurans are free to wallow in their democratic peace and violence indefinitely. I'm sure that promising left-wing candidate in the next election is the real solution to all their problems though.
I’ve been reading lots of books about outer space with my kids (N.B.: if you’re wondering whether you want to have kids, it’s worth it just to read books about outer space with them). One of the things they’re super interested in are the gas giants in our solar system.
Can any experts out there explain what the hell is up with, like, Jupiter? It really has no solid substance on it? If you had a super powered space suit and entered Jupiter’s atmosphere, would you just keep falling through it until you hit the core and then just bob around? How is there a center of gravity without solid matter? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it.
In the same vein: my boys love to talk about what it’d be like to visit each planet and the various moons. Does anyone know any place to find a good description of what that would be like? The closest I ever found was a fun XKCD description of what would happen if you tried to fly a plane on each planet (https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/), but that’s a frustratingly limited scenario.
Holy shit! You guys are amazing. We’ll be reading these posts / watching these videos for weeks to come. My boys are going to love this. Thank you all so much!
It depends a little on what you mean by "solid." If you just mean something about as dense as ordinary familiar solids, like wood, glass, rocks you'd find lying around on the ground, then that would happen when you got ~25% of the way to Jupiter's center. About halfway down it's about as dense as ordinary metals like iron or copper, and by the time you get to within 20% of the core it's reached the densest substances we know on the surface of the Earth, like gold or iridium.
But physicists normally define a "solid" (with certain subtle exceptions related to glasses) as a substance in which the atoms or molecules form a regular crystalline array, which makes it much more resistant to twisting force than an equally dense liquid or solid. In that sense, it's less clear whether there's big regions of crystalline solid in Jupiter -- the problem being it's mostly made of H2 and He, neither of which form crystals easily[1], except at very low temperatures (the center of Jupiter may be ~40,000K) and very high pressures, basically because H2 molecules and He atoms exert essentially no force on each other unless they're actually touching, and when they do touch they act like very hard, very rigid, but very slick little balls that can't push into each other but can slide around each other easily. Makes holding a crystal of H2 or He together like trying to hold a tower of polished glass marbles together -- you'd need huge pressure from all sides.
We don't know how much of the heavier elements are down in the core of Jupiter (because it's hard to get samples back ha ha), and we don't know that much about the behavior of H2 at extremely high pressures. A lot of clever work has been done with diamond anvil cells, but it's hard to characterize the material properties of the micrograms or less of material you can fit in there. The current fashionable thought is that H2 becomes a metal at sufficiently high pressures, and this might be what's going on inside Jupiter, it might have a giant layer of H metal, currents flowing through which may explain its gargantuan magnetic field.
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[1] It's possible that He doesn't solidify at 1atm even at 0K, due to quantum effects.
I just realized that I typed "[only watch S1]". Ooops. I meant to write that I had only watched S1 myself and so couldn't speak the the quality of the other seasons.
Well depends on your defintion of "solid". The presures and temperatures get very high, so you get progressively more and more dense liquid/gas that eventually stops being like anything you would be used to.
"If you had a super powered space suit and entered Jupiter’s atmosphere, would you just keep falling through it until you hit the core and then just bob around? "
No you would fall until you hit the zone where you were neutrally bouyant. Where the graviational pull is equalized by your bouyancy. Humans aren't very dense.
"How is there a center of gravity without solid matter?"
Gravity for such a large thing is VERY strong. All the stuff is ever so slightly pulling on all the other stuff, but there is just a TON of stuff. If fact this is easier without solids, as the shape is more elastic and the natural shape of such an object is a sphere (well and ellipsoid sphere because it is rotating so the "waist"/equator swells due to angular momentum.
In fact it is easier to get a liquid/gas/plamsa into a sphere than a solid as the solid wants to retain its shape more. The earth isn't a sphere because the solids that make it up are a sphere. The solids just a dozen kilometers down are like toothpaste, and deeper they get even more fluid.
"Does anyone know any place to find a good description of what that would be like? "
I am positive you could find something like this for some/all planets on Youtube. Youtube has GREAT astronomy content.
Think about the Sun. That REALLY has nothing solid. If you fell in and didn't mind the heat, you'd keep falling (being compressed under pressure) until you hit the core.
To answer the first person's question, gravity doesn't depend on a solid surface. The Earth's atmosphere doesn't affect Earth's gravity much, but that's because there is not much of it compared to the Earth. It still has a gravitational pull.
No you would fall until you hit the zone where you were neutrally bouyant. Where the graviational pull is equalized by your bouyancy. Humans aren't very dense.
It's actually more likely you'll hit a "sea" of something denser and just float ontop of that. Kind of like Earth except it probably won't be sea water. And you might have already sunk through a layer or two of other liquids.
Liquids don't compress well so it's unlikely that there will be a full gradient of density by the time it approaches the typical human density. Though I'm assuming you'll be hitting one of the calmer regions and not one of the areas of unending storms in which you'll probably have other issues to worry about than the mixing of the layers.
"my boys love to talk about what it’d be like to visit each planet and the various moons. Does anyone know any place to find a good description of what that would be like?"
I’m also not an expert, and that matches my understanding as well. If you imagine jumping into water on earth, you sink for a bit and then stop (and probably float). The buoyant force is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid, so you sink/fall when you’re more dense than the fluid. When you’re less dense than the fluid, the buoyant force is greater than your weight, and so you’re pushed upward. You float when your density matches that of the fluid.
Not suicide so far as I'm aware, but there's research out about retirements and quitting being drastically up, and fewer successful hires in large districts (but more in small ones):
Some of the specific numbers are 45% higher retirement rate (~1 in 77 additional officers retiring), 18% higher resignation rate (~1 in 131), and 5% lower (average) hire rate (~1 in 217 fewer), but it's probably best to look at the actual link, especially the "Percent Change Between Time Periods by Agency Size" table; there's nuance in there.
Other grain of salt to consider I suppose is that the data's a bit over a year old at this point, and it's possible things have changed in that year.
"Despite suicide rates for the general population declining by 3 percent, or 1,656 people, from 2019 to 2020, according to CDC data, the rates among first responders showed moderate to no decrease from 2017 to 2020, the Ruderman study found."
I'm an Economics undergrad, due to graduate in a bit more than half a year or so. I have two questions, one about productivity, one about entering CS. (Unfortunately, I don't have people around me who can really answer these in detail-apologies if these aren't relevant for this place.)
1. I'm relatively happy with myself as far as it goes (I've figured out how to be consistently happy for multiple months, exercise etc is providing me with a higher energy budget) but it turns out that I'm really bad at working hard. I was able to 'coast' through school, and college is also not very hard, so there hasn't been a reason for me not to procrastinate. My limit on intense focus-unless I'm programming, and thus 'playing'-seems to be around 2-3 hours a day, and that mostly on very good days. Is there a way to raise that? (I've had good success with installing habits like exercise by basically making myself do it consistently for a month or so, and then using the momentum from that to keep doing it. is there an analog for increasing perseverance?)
I ask this because it really seems like this is now the blocker on me being able to do things-my current algorithm of 'do <thing> until it's interesting, then stop' isn't really working out. (Also makes it hard to start new projects which potentially could have been fun but aren't, since I think they'd be boring and never start them.)
2. While I like Economics (yes, really-I suspect it's done a fair share in making me smarter, by installing the reflex to look for problems if nothing else...) my original thing has always been CS. I don't have a CS degree though, and don't really have tangible projects, since I was mostly pulled by my curiosity when I was younger. (So I know parts of Haskell and Prolog, but barely have the equivalent of an IRC client coded...I think my laziness w.r.t. projects just stems from a lack of inherent curiosity for them though, I suspect I'd be fine in an environment that provides external structure and insentives.)
So, if I don't have a CS degree, what do I do to be hired? bootcamps? work on some actual projects? randomly email people? prep for interviews? some superset/subset of all these?
I would strongly, STRONGLY encourage you to not create input-level goals for yourself like amount-of-focus, and instead find opportunities/jobs/ways of working where you judge yourself and are judged by others on output goals.
Some of the most productive people I know only really focus 3 hours a day, because their ideal pattern of work is that the other 5 hours is necessary-but-low-value-add work (e.g., think of all the emails involved in scheduling big important workshops) or just sitting there letting their brain run a bunch of thinking in the background.
If you instead focus on input-level goals, you will find it very hard to be happy if you are a typical American overachiever college graduate, because it is always hypothetically possible to do a little more work each day than you did. This way lies burnout.
(The counterexample is someone who has a bounded keep-the-streak-going goal, like "I go to the gym for 120 minutes a week", but most professional jobs you would take don't think about business inputs that way.)
I'd say 2-3 hours a day is not terrible, I'm usually pretty happy with 3-4 hours of real work, and proud of a 6 hour work day. (For background, I work in software.)
In regards to getting a job in software, you can't really go wrong with networking. If you have just a couple small projects under your belt to demonstrate you're capable, and then befriend the right people, you can totally land a job. I have a friend that was trying to get into software, she had a degree in bio but had done a couple CS projects, and had just started in a CS program, and it was straightforward for me to organize an internship with my employer to get her in the door. She just accepted a full-time salaried position with them a couple months ago. Really the demand for tech workers is so high, if you can just demonstrate the ability to learn, your odds are good.
2-3 hours of focused work per day is actually a lot more than most employees get during the day or can sustain.
Building projects is a great way to demonstrate your skills. Or focus on programming jobs that also leverage your economics knowledge like Data Engineers or similar.
A lot of people "work hard" without producing much. 2-3 hours of intense, focused work should be exhausting, you should be beat afterwards. And it's not slacking, I don't think most people are doing 8 hours of intense, focused work because I don't see many peers with 3-4x my output.
I say, try listing relevant coursework and experience on your resume, even if it's not your degree. It can be an asset, especially if you're applying to finance-type jobs, to go for the more programming-heavy/quant jobs
When I went to my college's career fairs, most of the recruitment was geared towards the econ people by finance and trading firms. I brought my resume with; it had some CS coursework on it, like "algorithms" and "basic Python". I got asked a logic puzzle by one recruiter right at the career fair, and my experience was pretty limited. I say put it on your resume, go to career fairs, and apply places.
If you're a US citizen, you can look into work for the national security establishment: treasury/finance type jobs and economic analysis. But I knew someone in physics who applied for data science analytics type positions in this field, and had success. So your specific degree doesn't pigeon-hole you into just that role.
How old are you? I see myself as a fundementally "lazy" person who is prone to coasting, probably in large part due to how easy school was for me and a totally unstructured/crap childhood with few real expectations/consequences.
My "coasting" got seriously in the way of professional/academic success until ~26-27, at which point my unhappiness with my station in life exceeded my desire to coast and I started working hard more systematically and consistently. I still slack off for streches, but only to an extent that my talent can more than compensate. For instance I have a meeting in 10 minutes I should have been prepping for for the last 20, but I am good enough that my presence in the meeting will still be well above average with only 5-10 minutes of prep.
Anyway, I wouldn't see yourself as "doomed" to you current situaiton. From the outside everyone thingks I am super hard working and diligent, and I do at times where needed put in 70-80-100 weeks. But I also have weeks where there is 60 hours of work and I do 30, and then the next week I need to scramble my ass off to catch up. It does help that I have my own business, so I cannot rely on others, if I don't do work it simply doesn't get done since I am the only one at my business who can do the things I do. it can be good to setup incentives like this where the consequences of bad behavior are high. Then eventually your habits change a bit.
Tackle 1) as though your life and success depend on it, because they do There are plenty of tips to be found on the huberman lab podcast. The ones that have worked for me are - sleeping by 10pm. Working (not working out) first thing in the morning (after getting ready), cutting out all or most sources of un-earned dopamine
I recommend a bootcamp. I don't usually recommend them--however, a key factor is who you are going in, and if you're already proficient in programming, it's actually a *better* fit for you than if you weren't.
1) because you'll rapidly skill up in the skills most in demand, and 2) you'll also get decent at knowing how to present and interview to get good tech jobs.
Even if you think you don't want to work in 'those' areas, getting a year or two of exp will make it easier to pursue the niche Haskell/Prolog/whatever jobs.
I'd be wary of folks saying you can get in without a big commitment like a bootcamp; it's widely understood that getting into tech is the hardest part (the first job), and also that it's harder to get your foot in the door than it was a few years ago (i.e. when other folks did).
If you're interested in data/data science, just get in somewhere and start studying python.
If you're educated and can do Excel, you'll get hired to do analytics somewhere. If you can do Python, they will take advantage of that and you'll get promoted fast.
This is something I didn't consider. I'm not really interested in data science that much (Economics was mostly a 'best worst option' deal) but I know Python and might pick this up if other stuff doesn't work out.
Not that familiar with Excel, though, but I'm sure that can be fixed pretty easily. (I know a friend who used to do Excel and VBA in a bank and earned really well..it sounds soul-sucking but I might as well also look into that...)
I see lots of guys in the data space with this kind of "econ, meteorology, finance" background. I don't think it's intrinsically any easier than actual software engineering but there's a much simpler transition.
Like, in software engineering, it feels very binary: either you can code or you can't. In data there's lots of intermediate steps: Excel->SQL->Python/R->Software/Data Engineer. It's much easier to get your foot in the door and much easier to climb the tech stack.
You can try and build that focus to keep working on the boring bits. I need it at work for CS, as the fun part of writing the code flies by, but then adding the right tests and cleaning it up to handle dumb edge cases is boring. That's why they pay you to do work.
I might recommend trying to finish a project or two. Limit the scope up front, but then make a roadmap and try and keep at least one commit per day. That streak maintenance, number go up thing helped me stick to it. Doesn't have to be a big commit, even just tidying a bit counts, it's more that you say down and got to work.
Maybe also pick something which isn't in just for yourself? I spent some time localizing someone else's app and sharing that back upstream. This can help avoid being sloppy, as you want the code to be accepted.
My third book, Losing My Religions, has been published. It covers several topics I think will be of interest to you, and I quote Scott in it for the main philosophy chapter.
The e-book files are available for free, as I hope the book can be as helpful as possible to as many people who want to read it.
Any parents here have resources for early childhood education that actually seemed to work? A lot of things give me an extreme eyebrow raise although most of what I see from Montessori types seem practical as far as making him feel confident and competent. Is anything else out there? Is Montessori real? Son is going to be one in a few months and want to see if we can be more deliberate. Parents only please unless you also happen to be a working expert.
Edit: thanks for all the suggestions. Also as a point of clarity I am not proposing to raise my son in a Soviet style elite training program more like “hey this actually helped my kid learn to read.” My main goal is of course to give him the tools to build a happy and successful life not quiz him on the relative abundance of deuterium until the light goes out of his smile.
Big agreement with baby sign language, How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen (they have books aimed at specific age groups too, and a book about siblings, all of which are worth checking out), Janet Lansbury/RIE, and just reading a lot. Very true that they will learn how to be and behave from YOU starting NOW. I have 3 but they're still pretty little.
For school we just figured, given their parents' background, our kids would be fine academically and intelligence-ly no matter what, so we focused on the type of life experience they would have at school. For us, we went with a school that emphasizes outdoor time, working with hands, self-direction, focus, mixed ages, no tech until later grades, that kind of thing. It aligns with our values about how to spend time. This is a Montessori school, but there's a lot of variation among Montessori schools. Probably the local public school would have been fine academically and they would do fine, but the 15 minute recess and wasted time and tablets really depressed me. There's more to life than academics and they spend so much time at school that it sure counts as 'life' too.
At home we read a ton and talk about ideas often. My daughter loves the show Numberblocks and wanders around happily reciting math problems. I include them in all housework tasks and expect them to do age-appropriate chores pretty much from birth. No Soviet elites here, just bright, busy kids doing their own thing.
I have three kids. They all read well above grade level. For my oldest and youngest it just came naturally. My middle I sat with, evening after evening, as she frustratedly beat her way through the beginner books and felt herself stupid because it was hard. Through K and 1st, she tested at grade level. In the summer after 1st grade we listened to some American Girl audiobooks on a family road trip vacation. They hit just right for her, and she came home and burned through all of those books my wife could dig out from when she was a kid, and then all of the ones we could find for her. When she started the second grade she tested as being at the end of 4th grade in terms of her reading, and has stayed consistently ahead.
For whatever reason*, it took her longer, and I was very worried that my middle baby might be (gasp!) average. But she was fine, and when she was ready to read she advanced rapidly. All of which is to say that some kids are on a different calendar than normal, and it's mostly fine.
*the reason was likely moderate dyslexia, diagnosed later
I do think we sometimes discredit the idea that distribution curves exist within people as well as across people. I’m fully waiting for him to be a jock pro level athlete just to surprise me.
My biggest piece of advice would be to have expectations and require your children to meet them. People are really good at raising their behavior to the required level. Not any of this touchy feely garbage. Presumably you love and care for your kids, most people don't need advice about that these days.
What most parents struggle with is establishing that they are in charge, their word goes, and that their are consequences for not living up to expectations. You are a stand in for "the world/god" when they grow up. Except you actually care about them. So it is great for them. But you need to teach them that "the world" will punish them for laziness/stupidity/recklessness etc.
Otherwise you end up with a 15 year old who has had a great emotionally nurturing and supportive life, and has zero ability to do hard work, and zero ability to overcome challenges or obstacles.
Anyway, my relationship with my kids is great, and everyone talks about how great they are. Athletic, relatively interested in academics, polite, well behaved, socially the center of the kids in the nieghborhood. And I would put a lot of that down to me not accepting bad behavior or whining whenthey were say 2-6. Don't let them get their way by crying. Make them pick up after themselves. Hell by 7 or 8 they can start doing dishes and other small chores. If you don't like how they are are using their access to Netflix, take it away for 5 days. If you can't get them to focus about the danger of streets, give them a light cuff across the head, or an unpleasant face to face scolding. Your kids should be a little bit afraid of one of the parents and their disapproval/rebuke. You are certainly going to be a lot more measured and loving about it than the world will be.
This is so true. And such hard work. It is so much easier to just let things slide than to consistently enforce discipline.
But the clarity and consistency of discipline is also important. Actions should have clear, known consequences (positive and negative).
The legal system is just "discipline for grown-ups" and many principles of the legal system are similarly applicable to children. Principles like notice, proportionality, non-arbitrary enforcement, intent, etc.
And this is completely separate from your other task, which is making sure that your children know that they are loved and supported.
I homeschooled my daughter up through 5th grade. This site is a wonderful resource, whether you are homeschooling or not: https://www.hoagiesgifted.org
Emily Oster has some sections on this in her book Cribsheet. The biggest take away for me is that who the parents are (and if they are educated and rich basically) has such a huge impact on child outcomes that stressing about the perfect education scheme is likely wasted effort. Finding something your kid likes and enjoys is probably more important. Emily's advice has been basically, if you are asking this is probably doesn't matter for you because you are already such an involved parent (in a good way).
We are currently touring schools for our 18 mo old. Montessori, Waldorf, etc. All of them have been good. We will probably make the decision based on cost, how long the school day is, and distance to our house.
Meh see while that sort of thing is true in aggregate, I feel like among the very engaged invested upper middle class parents I know, you still see pretty disparate outcomes in child bahvior that track pretty closely on parent behavior. Granted there are some difficult chicken/egg effects, where perhaps the parents of 8 year olds who get pushed around by them a little bit had particularly bossy kids and that is how they got there.
But from my sample I would see a big overlap even among "upper middle class kids who are going to be "fine", between kids who don't face real reprecussions for their behavior, and kids who are ill behaved at say 10 or lazy/undisicplined at 15.
Just because the average in a group is 80 insetad of 50, doens't mean there aren't strategies to put them on the higher end of that average.
I think that parents need to have a stronger concept of what is and isn't malleable in their child. You're not going to change their IQ, and you're not going to change some fundamental aspects of their personality. But a lot of other stuff is up for grabs. For instance, you're not going to turn a shy child into a gregarious one, but you can equip a shy child with enough social skills to be able to comfortably navigate social situations despite their shyness. You probably can't turn a lazy child into a hardworking one, but you can equip the lazy child with enough discipline to get things done despite their natural laziness.
I had poor follow-through on a lot of methodologies. However, baby sign language can help immensely to bridge communication the gap between now and when they speak. Also reading and pointing out things in books: pictures, objects, narrating things. My kids are different in verbal ability but also the first one got a lot more of this than the second and I think there's a noticeable difference.
On modeling emotional behavior: they really record how you talk and mirror you back. I've heard my own phrases thrown at me by a 3 y.o., my same tones of frustration, etc. Which leads me to believe that how you carry yourself and behave in front of them really makes a difference.
On things they're good at: with both my kids, around age 2.5 or so, I had a light-bulb moments where I intuitively just GOT how to show them something and they just GOT me. With the older, I suddenly found that I could EXPLAIN, verbally, and she understood me (finding an object, following a direction, etc.). With the second one, I could SHOW HER, physically, how to do it, and she could just repeat it, in a way that the other one couldn't. Maybe you might have this, and maybe you might not, but they might have a learning style and it might mesh with yours and stuff might just click: but you have to keep trying.
On learning to read: my older child, who has good verbal ability, we did the phonics using just magnetic letters. We learned letters and then at some point I started introducing their sounds; at age 3 or so I started doing informal phonics, words like CAT RAT BIN etc. Then, kids being very suggestible, I said "aaaaah but sometimes the A likes to make an "Ay" sound, like if you put the secret little E here".... and did the phonics combinations with magnetic letters; just thought of word families as they came up. I tried a book, but the book required writing skills and we weren't there yet.
On music: there are programs for early musical education; if your child is singing at ~2-3, you can start "Do Re Mi", and if you find they have perfect pitch you can start some musical and rhytmic education, even piano. There's a Russian lady who has a whole methodology (but in Russian) and videos teaching her 2-yo grandkids, and there's a Catholic method called "Ward method", but there are lots of other resources.
On counting/math: I take a similar ad-hoc kind of approach -- counting, "what if you counted UP by two? HEY what is two and two?" And just casual introduction of division, multiplication, fractions, place value. If they get bored I don't push too much.
On Montessori: I think it's school-dependent, and you need to go and see if it's just overpriced daycare with overpriced "fancy" toys or if they do something useful. A friend's son went to Montessori and it seems like they definitely learn self-direction and good habits; but it might not be as a good a fit or a more social and boisterous kid. But this is hearsay.
Thanks for this and baby sign language is actually what made me curious about what is out there. My wife saw it on TikTok and I was certain it was nonsense but low and behold at only seven months he’s very good at signing milk even though it also means “breastfeed me until I fall asleep.” Wouldn’t have thought the deliberate communication capacity was there before the speech but was wrong.
I'll second the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen books. I'll also add the Whole Brain Child series as books that seem possibly useful. Perhaps the best book I've read on parents and kids is Allison Gopnik's The Gardener and the Carpenter: https://www.amazon.com/Gardener-Carpenter-Development-Relationship-Children/dp/1250132258/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=. I think what I've distilled from the decently researched parenting books I've read is essentially the following: Kids need food, shelter and love from their parents. Outside of that, your specific parenting style probably won't make too much of a difference. Connection is more important than control. Trying to exercise too much control will probably make you (and your kids) miserable while having very few benefits.
Mine are 9 and 11 now and seem to be turning out ok :-)
Montessori - found the ideas interesting (following the child etc) but very hard to do at home. John Holt, mentioned by somebody else, is interesting reading too.
Not quite 'education' in a formal sense but I found RIE (and specifically Janet Lansbury's blog) really useful - changed the type of 'toys' that I got my children at that age and still influences my parenting in lots of ways.
Again, also not education as such but I found the book How to Talk So Kids will Listen and How to Listen So Kids will Talk helpful. Too young for it at the moment, but I think it's worth reading sooner rather than later.
Think there is lots of evidence that reading to children is super-important (and lovely bonding time even with mine at their age!)
Remember that the behaviour you model as a parent is more important than anything else. If you are curious, then they will probably become curious too. If you are kind, they will probably become kind etc.
Also also remember that you need to stay sane - your moods will rub off on your children. You want to have fun with them.
But overall, I think if you are asking this question here, then you probably won't go too far wrong from an educational point of view :-)
I have five children. They (and a bunch of research) have taught me that children are just the way they are. I can't imagine a pedagogy that would have worked for all of my children. For example, only child number 4 turned out to be interested in aestetic pursuits like painting and sculpturing. So my best advice is keep it open and stay tuned to your child's interests.
"Seven Ages of Childhood" by Ella Cabot describes the various epochs of a child's development in readily accessible detail. Different ages will require different approaches; this was something that I guess I had intuited before but had never had it explained to me so straightforwardly. https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Ages-Childhood-Classic-Reprint/dp/133169972X
Haven't read his book, so just guessing: He said lots of random stuff, probably repeated the most edgy opinions he heard from other people, and got some of that right.
Okay, let me lead with the fact that I’m not about to kill myself.
That said, over the years, I occasionally have been mildly suicidal, so as a general rule I don’t keep any means in my house if I don’t have to. That said, some things you need to be a functional adult (knives for example), so for such things I usually do research on why they would be a terrible way to kill oneself.
This has been a pretty effective strategy over the years that has kept me from having to worry too much about my suicide risk.
Now I’m Type 1 diabetic, and I have insulin on me all the time. Having accidentally been severely hypoglycemic to the point of almost passing out before, it seems like a pretty effective and painless way to go. So, I need help figuring out why it would be bad means, since I’m coming up blank (standard stuff about suicide=bad isn’t helpful here, and insulin also mitigates an alarming number of those arguments).
Maybe someone snuck into your house and replaced all your insulin with itching powder. Trying to overdose will just make you scratch yourself to death.
Uh ... trigger warning? This is an explanation of why something could be bad. It will, to a certain mindset, be quite bad.
Quantum immortality may be correct. If so, then you should expect any suicide attempt to result in the most likely future in which you survive - given that the attempt was made, but failed.
So, if you imagine yourself waking up from such an attempt, what harms could the attempt have made upon your body? Brain damage is a possibility; you could wake up without the ability to talk coherently. And if quantum immortality is correct, you'll be stuck with that for a potentially very long time.
I'm aware of the "standard stuff about suicide=bad," and it's reasonably effective, but having it reiterated to me isn't helpful here, and I find that eliminating means is a fairly effective second line of defense for me that makes me feel safer.
I think that it depends on context. Usually no, but if you have to run defense, say as a prison guard, it might be worth considering ways that a prisoner might attack you.
My understanding is that this actually can be an effective treatment for certain kinds of body dysmorphia, so yes, it's an appropriate question in some contexts.
The prison guard analogy posits two "yous", which I think you should thoroughly discuss with a professional.
But would a healthcare professional allow a discussion of what's the best? way to murder someone? Beyond ethics there would be significant legal ramifications.
Removing means is an important defense to an impetuous act.
As to dysmorphia (really body integrity identity disorder) treatment that ostensibly allows what's the best way to voluntarily cut off healthy limb, I'd like to see research. Because I believe that there would be significant ethical issues.
>The prison guard analogy posits two "yous", which I think you should thoroughly discuss with a professional.
There is a reasonably common framing with mental illness, where the illness is personified and othered. IE, "Hang in there, people really do like you and want to be around you, your anxiety is lying to you."
One person on my feed used to talk about days when her head weasels were particularly difficult.
The idea, IIUI, is to separate the "real" you from the disease.
mm, probably true, but it's also not something that I'd probably choose to discuss, especially not in a public conversation where I might be worried that someone would use whatever was come up with.
You've hit upon one of the reasons that I'm posting semi-anonymously on an internet forum instead of actually asking my doctor. If you might pose harm to yourself or others, they have an obligation to report you, and it's hard to phrase "why is insulin a bad way to kill myself" in a way that I'm confident wouldn't alarm them.
Yup.
I'll try and find the reference where I heard about it, but tbh it will probably take me a little while to get around to. Once I get it, I'll post it as a reply to your comment, but let's table it until then?
I've dealt with suicidal ideation most of my life, but I've never been super close to suicide. I think you're being a little over concerned about the "if you might pose hard to yourself or others." I've talked extensively about suicidal ideation with counselors and psychiatrists, and they have never reported me. From my experience, you need to be really close to actually committing the act before they're going to do anything, and any counselor is going to be happy to talk to you about this. They likely won't want to focus on the cost/benefit analysis of different methods though, instead they're going to talk to you about the reasons in your life that you're considering this in the first place (why are all the arguments you've seen for suicide=bad so unconvincing to you, what are some arguments you might find more convincing).
I guess I'm wondering, can you imagine structuring your life in such away that suicide is a more distant threat? It seems like you're interested in your own safety. Maybe instead of letting yourself be suicidal and trying to remove all the dangers, create things to cling to. I'm no expert, but from behavioral psych, you can't simply remove behaviors and leave a void there, something else always fills the gap. Sounds like you're doing a good job removing the dangers, and creating gaps, but that's only half the battle. You need to fill yourself with something else or more dangers, often more tenacious, will come in to fill those spaces. Shrinks are pretty good at helping you build a life worth living.
Mystik, do you rationally think that your life will always be this way? I know from experience that it can feel that way, but it is entirely possible that feeling is incorrect.
I think I will occasionally be suicidal going forward in life, and I’ll probably always need insulin. But I also don’t think that I’ll always be suicidal through my life.
It's inconsistent, success is not guaranteed since it is possible you will be found and given relatively straight forward aid. However, there could be complications leaving you permanently brain damaged but not dead and placing you under more constant supervision/care. It could be thought of as an alternative method of poisoning yourself with all the flaws and failures inherent to that method.
We have a diabetic relation who lived alone and went into a diabetic coma. Someone was trying to contact her at the time via phone, and when she didn't pick up came by and found her.
She was hospitalized for several weeks, had to do rehab, could barely walk when she got home, and still uses a walker from time to time. As far and I can tell she's still incredibly weak, has pain and appetite issues, and is suffering permanent effects from that time period.
This doesn't directly answer your question but -- what about getting a service dog who will recognize a diabetic coma? I understand that if you had decided to kill yourself you could just shut the dog out of the room. But still --seems like it would be a good thing to have anyway, in case you have have an unintentional coma, and for company. And the dog would bark his head off if locked out of your room when it senses something's wrong, and that might bring people to your home. There are also little safes you can buy -- put an item inside, enter how long the safe will stay locked. You could keep all your extra insulin locked up, just have enough around for today's doses plus however much extra you might need today if your blood sugar gets too high.
The dog might be a good solution once I move to a different apartment, I'll keep it in mind. Unfortunately, I have so little insulin resistance that there's no way to keep so little insulin around that it couldn't be an issue (it just isn't sold in such small units).
For the second (and final) time, I want to signal boost excellent work being done by Phil Magness and co-authors. They try and expose left leaning academics who are tarring champions of markets and liberty like Mises. The left leaning academics use academically and intellectually dishonest techniques which readers of this blog would be no strangers to, given Scott's personal history with the NYT, but I was still surprised that even academics are being so dishonest in peer reviewed work.
Misrepresenting Mises: Quotation Editing and a Rejection of Peer Review at Cambridge University Press
I tend to get twitchy when I read descriptions like "champions of markets and liberty". I don't know who Mises is from a hole in the ground, all I've seen is complaints about the 'Mises caucus' took over some Libertarian/libertarian movement and got some local power and now it's all gone to hell (citation needed).
Plus I've just finished re-reading Robert Harris' "Cicero" trilogy and while he is not the greatest prose stylist in the world, the historical basis is fascinating enough to keep anyone reading, and it should cure readers of naive hero-worship, given all the presentation of X, Y or Z as villainous monster or heroic champion, regardless of the actual facts, but depending on the political necessity of the day.
Are "left-leaning academics" out to get this guy and those like him? Possibly. Are those guys heroic champions? Possibly. Is it political partisanship that A is on one side and B is on the other, and who you think are the heroic champions of liberty depends on which side you fall? Most likely.
Ludwig von Moses was an early 20th century economist who was a "founder" of what is known as the Austrian School. At a high-level its basically just free market stuff, but there are some specific monetary policy elements which make it different than other free market schools of thought. Mises, Hayek, and Freeman are the big three free-market economists of the 20th century. https://mises.org is the organization which tries to carry on his legacy.
Mises Caucus is a bunch of nut cases who think of themselves as libertarians but really just seem to care about gun rights and not paying taxes and being free to be jerks with little consequence. As a free market proponent and what most people would identify as libertarian, these Mises Caucus guys are very embarrassing and potentially dangerous. Their views are a more extreme version of the Tea Party (which is where many of the members got their start).
They worked very hard the past few years to gain power within the Libertarian party and took effective control over the party recently. Their views and actions are so divergent from traditional LP folks that many people have left the party and state level parties have disbanded to avoiding supporting the national party. If you are conspiratorial person it would be pretty easy to justify a theory that the Mises Caucus was funded/supported by the far right to complete obliterate the already weak Libertarian Party.
So basically Mises Caucus =/= Ludwig von Mises and Libertarian Party =/= libertarianism.
If you can't even spell "Friedman" correctly (not "Freeman") - when the man's literal son is posting in this comment thread! - then you probably shouldn't be making such bold claims about groups you dislike because it suggests you don't know the first thing about them.
The justified complaint of the Mises caucus was that the people running the Libertarian Party were watering down libertarian doctrine to appeal to the center and left. The problem is that it rather looks as though the Mises Caucus people are doing the same thing in the other direction, as when they use arguments from Hans Hoppe to make a case for immigration restrictions.
Immigration restrictions are the only thing that will stop libertarianism becoming completely irrelevant (to the extent it isn't already). How do libertarians not understand this by now? They can barely convince people of libertariansim in perhaps the most (ideologically) libertarian country in history, and yet they imagine they're going to convince hundreds of millions of foreigners to radically alter their political views. It's delusional.
>really just seem to care about gun rights and not paying taxes and being free to be jerks with little consequence.
I know you're listing these to distinguish from "good" libertarians, but the Mises Caucus is only a few years old, and those (especially the first two) have all been distinguishing traits of self-described American (right-)libertarians for well over a decade, since those describe all the libertarians I knew in high school. All you're missing is drug legalization.
(Edit: unless I've misread and you're listing these to point out that these are the *only* things they share with "real" libertarians, which makes the third item a self-burn directed at your own tribe)
You also can't really neatly separate American right-libertarianism from the Libertarian party, because without that it is quite literally just liberalism by another name[1]. The 15 years between its coinage to refer to right-liberals/ancaps and the party's formation is dwarfed by the 50 years the Libertarian party has had to to define the movement. (Not to mention the century before that where the term used associated with the left)
"You also can't really neatly separate American right-libertarianism from the Libertarian party, because without that it is quite literally just liberalism by another name[1]."
Not quite. Classical liberalism included support for broadening the franchise. Modern libertarianism doesn't include any particular position on the details of how a democracy should be run.
Beyond that, the problem is that the enemies of liberalism stole its name early in the Twentieth Century; most people now associate "liberalism" with an ideology that includes watered down democratic socialism, support for government regulation of the economy and redistribution.
We solved that problem by stealing "libertarian" from the left anarchists, who can't complain since they don't believe in property rights. But I doubt that there has been any time in the past fifty years when a majority of libertarians were part of the LP. That's why it has become common to distinguish between libertarian and Libertarian. I am a libertarian but not a Libertarian.
Fair points. And I suppose I should defer to you for definitions here. :P
I will say that my point is more about how, when accounting for how the philosophy has evolved from its classical-liberal roots, any definition of libertarianism which does not at least account for the shared influence of The Party is similar to (to use a more extreme example) a definition of "the left" which doesn't account for the influence of Marxism(-Leninism)/Sovietism.
Endorsed on the complaints about the muddying of the term "liberal", I've complained before about how it means both anything and nothing at this point.
>We solved that problem by stealing "libertarian" from the left anarchists, who can't complain since they don't believe in property rights.
Actual lol, thank you.
>I doubt that there has been any time in the past fifty years when a majority of libertarians were part of the LP.
Granted, but I think a substantial part of this has to be attributed to "the official Libertarian party for elected office" being as near an oxymoron as you can get in said context (barring actual anarchist parties). I suspect that *any* individual who enthusiastically engages with the apparatus of the state is going to have a difficult time getting majority libertarian support, without even accounting for the normal values-dissonance between political parties and their constituents.
The Mises caucus thing is actually super confusing because it's less about Mises the man than the institute named after him, which is more influenced by Mises' student Rothbard. Among popular libertarian/Austrian economics there's a divide between the people who tend to associate with the Mises Institute and those who are roughly organized around the folks at George Mason university. Very little of that divide actually has to do with Ludwig von Mises himself.
I think Austrian economics is a dead end, but I have to give kudos to mises.org for making so much material freely available (before SciHub came around to make that the norm for academic publications).
Paleolibertarians (right on culture but don't want the government imposing things, right on economics) vs neolibertarians (1990s-left on culture, right on economics), more or less?
I think it's sort of devolved to that to some degree. On a more academic level it's closer to what you might call dogmatic vs. practical libertarianism; Rothbard or early Nozick vs. Mill; Non-aggression principle absolutists vs. utilitarian libertarians. All of those are probably somewhat reductionist but you can start to see the idea. The Mises folks have also been criticized for being too close to the alt-right. That might be an understatement, though I'm trying to remain somewhat impartial in my description even though I am personally not impartial. Someone told me that they're now all-in on Russian propaganda, though I haven't bothered to check as I've been done with them for years.
Why would you think they would need to? Just because one is "uncomfortably close to the alt right" doesn't oblige one to necessarily swallow every piece of 1940s NSDAP race laws.
For a start, you could take a few minutes and read any one of the articles that I've linked to, and that would go a long way towards answering your questions
She *could*, but one of the lovely things about a site like this is that if you ask a simple question you often get a simple answer. As Deiseach did here, from Julian. No clicks or articles required.
The thing is, it's pretty annoying when someone comes here with their personal crusade. We've had much more egregious cases over the years, but the basic pattern is the same. You're asking for attention and time, but what are you offering in return? You certainly haven't done the legwork of *actually informing us*, which would be an obvious place to start if you want us to be more informed.
I'm offering you a link to a well researched and well written piece of scholarship, which in turn is trying to raise the quality of research, something we all depend on. You're of course welcome to not engage with it, but I found the uninformed preachiness of the post I was replying to uncalled for. Your mileage may vary.
Which makes you question why God isn't doing it Himself? Does He always delegate this kind of work, reserving Himself for actual miracles and saving people from themselves?
I've read plenty of research papers, just very few that deal with opinions on other people. The closest I've come to reading stuff like this is in literature reviews, which tend to take biased positions. But I've never seen anything this egregious.
The public dissatisfaction with 'trust the science' is more about the publication of dubious, or even fake, research.
Science is supposed to be self-correcting. But the cachet comes from publishing something new, not in finding fault in published work (which publishers are often loath to retract).
But also note that Nancy MacLean's hit piece on John Buchanan was not peer-reviewed. If it had been, perhaps some of her slime and malquoting would have been discoverd?
I think the Slobodian and Cambridge University press example says otherwise. The peer review process there uncovered some of the problems, but they were simply ignored in favour of political point scoring
Yeah, except the other candies recommended are *also* bad for you, and doubtless have FDA warnings against over-consumption.
I love licorice but I've had to give it up since it does raise blood pressure. However, the chocolate candies recommended in its stead are also packed full of sugars (very bad!) and other agents, and consuming a ton of them instead of a ton of licorice is also frowned upon.
I would eat licorice but I never see the real stuff we had when we were kids, that was like leather. You remember, Deiseach I am sure, the long twists of it, up to 18 inches or so.
Is there a good theory on why people disagree on politics? Sometimes they can be reduced to fundamental value differences or disagreements on well defined predictions, but those are the rare cases.
Few suggestions of my own:
1. People get random influences over life that form their political opinions, so their politics draw something like a normal distribution. More realistically, stuff like social circles, environments and feedback loops would also have significant influence.
2. Or maybe it's the other way around - stuff that 99% of the people agree on won't become controversial topics, so the ones that people argue about are the ones that people naturally tend to have very different opinions of.
Neither of them feel completely satisfactory though. Does anyone have better ideas? Or maybe this is a well-researched topic already?
Some other posts here may say something similar, but I'd like to put out my own half-baked theory for folks to poke holes in. It starts with the observation that political/hot-button/culture war issues can be framed as "altruistic" vs "selfish" - e.g. abortion "Women should be able to make their own medical decisions" vs "My religion says it's a sin and everyone should obey my religion"; vegetarianism "I care about animal welfare" vs "I want to eat yummy animals", gays "People should be free to love as they wish to" vs "My religion says it's a sin and everyone should obey my religion"; gun control "People shouldn't have to get killed" vs "My cold dead hands". The framing can be flipped, e.g. abortion "I care about unborn fetuses" vs "My body, my choice". The 2nd step is to notice that evolution selects for both, "selfish" is obvious, "altruistic" needs group selection, which is somewhat controversial, but it seems obvious to me that kin altruism is evolutionarily adaptive. Since both traits are selected for, people wind up with a mix of both and conflict must follow.
Note that "selfish" tends to have negative connotations - almost every religion/ethical system deprecates "selfish" (2 exceptions I can think of are Ayn Randism and The Church Of Satan). But these negative connotations are human judgements, evolution doesn't judge.
I'd suggest a couple of things. First, people disagree because they disagree. Just in general, people think different stuff. There's a sense in which it's a mistake to seek an explanation for something that happens naturally.
Second, funnily enough, we disagree about politics because we're getting better at living peacefully with one another. Think of the things that people used to disagree about, that aren't nearly so salient any more. Religion is a biggie: I think the relative lack of religious wars and religious strife around the world at the moment is actually a real triumph. Think about how much Catholics and protestants used to divide up towns within living memory in the USA. But those kinds of divisions have faded, not because people agree more on how to worship god, but because we have very consciously taught children not to fight over those things.
Similarly, stuff like local pride and taste in music. Remember them censoring Elvis's dancing on TV? Real censorship because of a style of music. And stereotypically, parents complaining about the "noise" that their teenagers listen to. We seem to do that less now. Football clubs in England would have literal regular brawls with supporters of a club from a different part of London back in the 1970s. That seems to happen a bit less now. And again, I don't think it's because people aren't interested in their local area or their sports teams any more. They've just been taught that you can't turn those attachments into strife.
So what's left? Politics. We can't teach people not to argue about politics because politics is an inherently argumentative process. So that's where a lot of people's argumentative energy has gone.
Broadly, I think the most important divergences are differences in experiences.
If you're in a right-wing community, normal is right-wing, and people with an axe to grind with the community end up or present as left-wing. If you're in an left-wing community, normal is left-wing, and people with an axe to grind with the community end up or present as right-wing. But people with an axe to grind are not representative of people in general, and any given person's personal experiences are shaped to a significant extent by their more local political forces. So, to begin with, when left-wing people talk about right-wing people, they're really talking about right-wing-people-in-left-wing-enclaves, who are *not actually the same as right-wing people*. Likewise, when right-wing people talk about left-wing people, they are talking about left-wing-people-in-right-wing-enclaves.
So that's one kind of experience.
Another is that, in some places, whether or not your upstairs neighbor plays guitar at 4:00 AM is an important part of civil society, and in other places, your nearest neighbor can fire off cannons without disturbing you. I think a lot of the harshest disagreements in modern society come down to forcing other people to abide by rules that make no sense where they live, or for structuring society and our collective resources in a way which makes sense for one way of life but not another - whether or not free college sounds like a good idea depends in large part whether or not you see college as necessary to your way of life; likewise, whether or not open borders sound like a good idea depends in large part on whether or not you think your salary is globally competitive. Whether or not you want minimum wages or stronger unions depends on whether or not you see employment as a rare and valuable opportunity, or a constant exploitative temptation.
I think the best argument I ever heard for (2) was from video essay " How to Radicalize a Normie"[1], in the context of how the term "political" is used in internet forum culture:
>The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with, ”but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.
This sort of definition also goes a long way in explaining the phenomenon where certain people will label any representation of someone from outside their privileged/normative identity as "political"[2]
> Nobody, other than the usual lizardman constant, is bothered by "representation" per se.
Sure. Nobody holds the low status position "X" on the objective question. Everybody just hold position "Ephemism of X" on the meta-question which is conviniently functionally undistinguishable from "X" on objective question and isn't associated with low status. The fact that the meta question wouldn't even arise if everyone agreed on the objective question is also conviniently omitted from the discourse.
I mean, I think the objection here is that when they look at the current media landscape and conclude the problem is not -
"profit focused corporations are not great stewards of franchises, because their incentives lead them to greenlight and churn out as many low-quality sequels and remakes as possible because they'll sell tickets no matter how mediocre they are",
- but rather -
"allowing people who want diversity to make movies is bad"
-it's fair to say that they're a little biased on the object-level question. Especially when the most meme-ably bad movie of the year, Morbius, had a white male lead.
The problem with the black Little Mermaid isn't that she's black, it's that Disney's live action remakes are mediocre cash grabs that forsake the expressiveness you get from animation.
Now I will grant that "corporate wokism is just a marketing gimmick" is a totally valid position, but the question is why said lizardperson-believers are always so fixated on and offended by this particular marketing gimmick.
The problem is that diversity is both the justification for making the low quality sequel / remake and the shield for why the low quality sequel / remake is beyond criticism. This is why we complain so much about the diversity gimmick.
If you were to have gone to a producer and say "I want to do a Scooby-Doo spin-off without the title character", you'd have been laughed out of the room before you could finish your pitch. Then some D-list celeb added "Shaggy'll be an African-American, Velma will be Asian, Daphne will be Latinx, and Fred, well, since we're out of options, we'll just make him a moron to show what we think of white males" and the show got made. And it's to the point where artists doing fan art of the original series are being harassed for not adapting to the new diverse cast.
Allowing people that care about tallying diversity points more than producing good entertainment to make entertainment is a losing proposition for people that want entertainment. It's not impossible to combine diversity and entertainment, but it's not easy, and the pushback to those complaining about the poor quality of diverse entertainment we're getting makes it harder.
Allowing people that care more about money than producing good entertainment to make entertainment is also a losing proposition, but it's one that is inherently self-limiting. We complain about bad entertainment regardless of the cause, but when we complain about entertainment that's bad because those associated with it are relying on the diversity gimmick, we get pushback, and pushback that is riddled with inconsistencies and logical fallacies.
>Unironically correct. Regardless of how good their politics may or may not be that person _does_ have an agenda, and having an agenda _is_ ruining a community, and therefore that person should be ejected from the community if they can't keep it in their pants.
Ergo, anyone who complains about lack of free speech and wants to create stronger free speech norms should be removed from twitter, since that's an agenda. Also anyone who complains about trans people, and tries to argue we shouldn't let minors get whatever surgeries they want, because that's also an agenda. Definitely anyone who has anything to do with digital assets or currency, agendas galore. Also anyone [...]
Come on Treb. That wasn't even close to a well-reasoned first-principles position. You're just blindly doing tribe signaling. I expect better from you when trolling my comments. 4/10
ACX is, though, and the two of us are still here :P
I think the problem you're trying to get at is "don't start flame wars/re-ignite bitter arguments", specifically in a way that violates community norms. The problem isn't having an agenda *per se*, it's flaunting it in a way that's going to start strife in a community. Which ultimately comes back to "things on which the community disagrees".
In your gaming shop example, if you imagine a shop frequented by trans youths with pride flags on the window, said person would likely get the reaction "it's fine, now take out your damn chaos marines", with about the same tone as if they wouldn't shut up about the latest marvel movie or about how Necron Soulslurpers are overpowered and you can't believe Games Workshop released them.
Hacker news is a good example of this - you're allowed to discuss politics when it's relevant, but if you get into a flame war or post obvious flame bait, whether about gender politics or vim-vs-emacs, you get rate-limited.
"Unironically correct. Regardless of how good their politics may or may not be that person _does_ have an agenda, and having an agenda _is_ ruining a community, and therefore that person should be ejected from the community if they can't keep it in their pants."
You see the obvious counter to this, though: having a norm where the reformist is discouraged from critiquing some element of the status quo for the sake of the general good humour just cedes the political ground to whatever the local default is. Someone with an agenda still wins, now it just happens to be whoever got to the community first, established said default, and does not have to talk about their 'politics'.
Surely, at least sometimes, you've been the one to upset the apple cart with a minority opinion?
"It's childish and entitled to assume that every space one travels through must stroke one's political erogenous zones. Part of being a decent human being is being able to get along with people who are different from you."
I mostly agree with this. I just don't see it as favouring the incumbent ideology over the incoming ideology in any way. If anything, the opinion as stated seems to serve my argument.
"This assumes incorrectly that everybody is only doing stuff to push their politics, but even if in this case they had a deliberate culture they wanted to create -- are they somehow not entitled to have their own place? Is every knee required to bend?"
Well, the assumption is your original assumption. The interloper probably isn't exclusively a doorstep proselytiser either, they're in the community to do other stuff. But sure, if the safe space is deliberately created, like a LGBTQ+ Marksmanship Range or a Christian Dad Literary Club, and the knee is already bent a certain way, then I can see the reasoning. If the community is something like a general fandom, where the default is not honestly claimed but instead tacitly assumed by one group or another, then not so much.
"I have, yes. And because I'm a decent human being, I recognized when trying to evangelize my opinions was inappropriate, and was able to keep it in my pants."
I'm content to take your word for it, though I will admit it's a little difficult to believe it never left your pants at all, even just to test the waters.
Obviously, this takes place in the context of a certain political paradigm, but if everybody in the US were suddenly born with the exact same genes that affect political views, we should expect a dramatic decline in political views diversity in the US.
Things were so much simpler in the early 1990’s when a local casino could put up a billboard saying “Come in a Democrat and leave a Republican!” and everyone got the joke.
Incidentally, in a preview of cancel culture they were forced to take it down. So I guess not all snowflakes are on the left.
Things have gotten ever so much more complicated in the interim.
I've thought a lot about this question, and based on my observations over the years, I think it mainly boils down to the fact that people who disagree with me are evil.
I once argued with someone down to the fundamentals, where we realized he was ok with X on principle, and I wasn't, and we knew we weren't going to agree. How those preconceptions were formed? Maybe it was upbringing, may it's genetics, maybe both, who knows.
I know that certain books that I read really resonated with me, and some disgusted me viscerally, even at a pretty young age; and the same goes for people who hate those same books. So who knows.
There are arguments about facts, definitions and values. And there are meta-arguments about epistemology, ethics status games and all kind of other stuff which in the end are as well either about facts, or definitions or values. Interestingly, in my experience, much more are about facts than it seems at the first glance. The problem, however, that all of these three types of disagreements are mixed and confused with each other, due to people being bad at separating between nominative and descriptive reasoning and the nature of the memetic landscape.
Modern political disagreement isn't just an argument between two people, it's a memetic competition between highly optimized narratives. Both narratives have great, detailed, making total sense from inside, explanations, why your opponents are evil/crazy/stupid and you are good and right. How it's useless to even try to communicate with these crazy people, that only ridiculing and oppressing them can work, that it's definetely what your opponents are already doing anyway and that's the only reason why their ridiculous views are so widespreaded. There are also huge amount of cherrypicked examples, explanations why every apparent attempt of your opponent to argue in a good faith is actually a trick and a trap that will score them political points and what are the best way to trap them likewise, self reinforcing explotation of toxoplazma of rage dynamics and so on.
I like that expression, once you put it that way, it no longer feels strange that politics is way more controversial than other equally difficult subjects.
There are lots of explanations, some of which are good. Some is explained by differences in values and priorities. Some is explained by differing expectations of the effects of policy choices. Some is explained by naked self-interest, where different people have different interests.
I think most, though, is explained by tribalism. In the contemporary US, at least, nearly all the population is split into "red" and "blue" tribes, and most people accept their "tribe's" positions on most issues, because the people they identify with also accept these positions. I came across this explanation many years ago, which gives strong reasoning for this conclusion (I can now find it only on the Wayback Machine):
I don't know why you think value differences are rare; the people who can't define their core values still have a nebulous concept of them. That and tribalism account for most of it.
But looks like no one's mentioned personal power yet. There are the "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" people, who see a path to power from sowing discord and will do what they can to maximize it. Even in a world where everyone believes exactly the same things, people will always rally against the current leader because they want to be the current leader, and people will listen to them because of tribalism.
I think than Politics is the Mind-Killer because while our ancestral environment may have prepared us to be halfway decent Bayesians when hunting prey or whatever, in tribal politics calm reasoning was probably not a survival trait. These days, politics is mostly not a life-or-death thing any more, but in ancestral societies, supporting an idea which 80% of your fellow tribespersons abhorred would have bad consequences rather quickly.
John Nerst had an interesting post (https://everythingstudies.com/2022/05/24/the-political-is-personal/) about how people form political opinions by extrapolating from their own psychology, and often fail to realize that other peoples' minds work differently from their own. His own summary of the idea:
"We assume 1) that our experience of how our mind works is correct and 2) that other minds work the same way. This of course influences our attitudes on how to live life, and further extends to our beliefs about how society works and thus our political and moral views. So these are, ultimately, downstream of personal psychological quirks."
I don't think this explains all of political disagreement, but I think it undeniably forms a part.
"Sometimes they can be reduced to fundamental value differences or disagreements on well defined predictions, but those are the rare cases."
Are they the rare cases? They seem to me to be exactly this, philosophical differences put into practice. You and I can be presented with the exact same set of circumstances, facts, and feasible methods, but if I want to optimise for equality while you want to optimise for individual freedom - and someone else for prosperity, and so on - we'll end up in discord.
Tangentially, one of the more admirable aspects of the EA project (speaking as a distant and far from clued-in observer) is the attempt to find, quantify, and target relatively apolitical good that almost everyone can agree on. Pandemic prevention, malaria nets, vitamins, longer, higher-quality lives. Concern over AI risk always comes across as the one thing that doesn't look like the others.
"They seem to me to be exactly this, philosophical differences put into practice. You and I can be presented with the exact same set of circumstances, facts, and feasible methods, but if I want to optimise for equality while you want to optimise for individual freedom - and someone else for prosperity, and so on - we'll end up in discord."
I've heard this argument for years, and it hasn't been completely convincing to me, because I've always felt like it didn't dig far enough down.
For starters, I think we all agree that equality and individual freedom are good things to have, all other things being equal. That implies that if you're optimizing for equality and I'm optimizing for individual freedom, I can still look at your project and understand why and how it could be a thing I could want. Likewise for you, checking out my project. But if each of us could understand the good in the other's work, how can we oppose it even so? The most obvious answer is that each of us likes our own good thing more; the more subtle answer is that we are probably facing a choice between two goods at point where increasing one comes only at the expense of the other, and we've each chosen a different path of that fork.
But why did we each choose the path that we did? It wasn't a pure mental coin flip; if it were, we wouldn't defend our choices so strongly. It could be a coin flip that somehow keyed into our competitive drive, sort of like how you can divide any group of people into "team green" and "team purple" and stage a game and they'll compete, vigorously. But in those cases, everyone understands the game is contrived, and you can point that out and they'll go back to being one crowd. (Or maybe not - witness pro sports events where people get hurt in rioting.) We can't (typically) point out that our choice of optimization is contrived and go back to collaboration.
I often find it's because each of us has information the other does not, and if we compared notes, we'd maybe change our minds. That typically doesn't happen because we've each tied our reputation to our initial choice, but if we're supposedly rational, there's no reason to do that except by accident, and in that case we just note the mistake and proceed to share info. There's also cases when the information available isn't enough, and we're forced to rely on heuristics. But heuristics are themselves information; we could share them, too. What then?
When I dig *this* deep, I find that the heuristics are sort of floating atop a frothing sea of uncertainty - I'm putting 10% more certainty on one of my sources than you are, 8% more on another; or there are maybe ten different heuristics we're employing, each relying on over five factors, and those fifty factors are being processed by our subconscious faster than our conscious can track and record discretely, because they fluctuate quickly, often depending on yet more heuristics, and possibly grounding out in stuff like "I know this because it's allowed me to make small predictions hundreds of times over my life, and you only learned of it a minute ago so your confidence is necessarily near 50% only", and so on.
"I think we all agree that equality and individual freedom are good things to have, all other things being equal."
I don't think you should assume this. There's stuff like lawn maintenance laws, where individual freedom is curtailed for aesthetic uniformity. You can't optimize for both freedom and uniformity, you're tearing down one to build the other.
Equality means different things to different people.
>If I play golf against Tiger Woods, is the game fair before or after we institute a stroke handicap that allows for our vastly different skill levels?
So there are fundamentally conflicting values in play before you get to optimization.
I was talking more about the average voters. A random supporter of, say, Donald Trump, probably doesn't support him because he predicts 0.2%p higher GDP growth under Trump's presidency, it's likely more about vague nice feelings he has about him(same goes for any other politician, of course). What I'm curious is, how can we have such different vague impressions for the same people? Surely rational predictions can only diverge so far.
There’s a forthcoming book from Oliver Traldi on the Philosophy of Political Beliefs which I expect to be absolutely excellent, on this subject especially
As we all know, it is impossible to tile the plane with regular pentagons. However, suppose you were willing to use slightly non-regular pentagons (with different alterations on each tile) so that it *appears* to be a regular tiling. Is there any easy method to figure out how to do this and what the minimum maximum deviation from regular you would need is?
Did you check this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_tiling
This has points where four pentagons touch. If such points are to be removed, then deviations from regularity increase a lot...
I am also interested in this question!
Maybe we can start with filling Lobachevsky plane with pentagons and then applying some mapping function back to Euclidean. (ah no, it seems it won't work if you need tiles to be about same area)
Are you thinking of something like a Penrose tiling?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling
Guy with a high-end products/leather consulting/reviews business is named Tanner... Tanner Leatherstein. Now, is that nominative determinism or just a clever nom-de-plum for marketing purposes?
Either way, funny enough to mention. https://www.tannerleatherstein.com/about
Seeing as I can't find any record of anyone else with that last name, I'm going to say nom de plum.
Leatherstein is an implausible half-English half-German construction.
The full German version Lederstein does seem to be a real surname.
This open thread is at the point where things start to wind down, so I’m just going to throw out a joke:
It’s late at night and a man is getting ready to go to bed when he hears a knock on his door. He opens it and looks down to see a snail.
“Yes,” it says. “I’d like to talk to you about buying some magazine subscriptions.” Furious at being disturbed, the man rears back, kicks the snail as hard as he can, and storms off to bed.
Two years later there comes another knock. The man answers and again he finds the snail, who looks up at him and says, “What the f*ck was that all about?”
Oooh, saviour of the thread, with snail jokes!
There was this winemaker, see, who wanted to rid his vineyard of grapevine snails. So he hired a couple of people, gave them a little bucket each, and sent them to collect snails. At closing time, they came all back with their buckets full of snails, except one, who happened to be a retrained civil servant.
So they went to look for him, and found him in the vineyard, desperate, with the bucket empty. He explained: "Well, yes I saw the snails and went to collect them, but then: chop-chop! They all ran away!"
https://interessant3.substack.com/ Three Interesting Things Once a Week. Pretty simple.
I see a motte-and-bailey fallacy in every argument I *hear* that has someone say something like "Our personalities are determined by a combination of both nature/genetics and nurture/environment".
Obviously, that statement is true: both genetics and environment shape our personalities. But when people say it, there's something else going on.
The emphatic statement is: "it is a combination! We say this in iconoclastic opposition to the FOOLS who believe it to be either/or!", and the context is usually in "response" to some scientist who just showed that there is a genetic component to [homosexuality/obesity/what have you] (and who probably worked their fingers to the bone in order to do so).
But the scientist fully accepts that, aggregated across many people, it is a combination, and their little gene is one factor - so why on *earth* would people be so emphatic about this very obvious fact?
The truth is that their interest is in believing a different statement: "environment plays a larger role than genetics" - that statement is their bailey. They won't say it out loud, because it'd mean they'd have to define "larger". But they believe it, and they like believing it. It allows them to pour scorn on lots of things they don't like, things which have changed the environment of people growing up. They can use this to promote their preferred solutions to problems, without engaging with the question of how much impact their solutions would have.
When they say stuff that comes from their bailey, if you say "but genetics plays a significant part in that problem, and we may want to consider anatomy-level solutions to it, for example one study found that-", they will say "Ah but do you not see, people are this way due to a COMBINATION of genetics and environment!", and then that's it - if you reply back, no matter how quantitative you are, they will be taking you to disagree with their facile motte.
Similar to the people who always say that correlation doesn't imply causation. Certainly an incredibly important mental model to keep in mind when doing science, but the more interesting follow-up to a correlation, is to try to explore various causality models, rather than dismissing the pattern outright.
What if the person just wants to have an accurate understanding of the world, and thinks it really does seem like personality has both genetic and environmental influences?
The other two repliers to you comment have done a good job of saying what I think.
Let me emphasize for a fourth time that I think that personality has both genetic and environmental influences.
In fact, it is completely boringly true: absolutely everyone believes it (try and find me someone alive today who unambiguously states that they do not believe it).
That's if we take it at face value. My claim is that you shouldn't take it at face value, because it is a "motte": a facile statement that, in practice, is used to backhandedly imply that the person they are speaking to does *not* believe it.
>What if the person just wants to have an accurate understanding of the world, and thinks it really does seem like personality has both genetic and environmental influences?
Then its weird for them to emphasize that because virtually nobody is claiming it is entirely genetic (but on the other hand, many people scoff at the idea that personality is heritable).
Then they should try to take account of both aspects and possibly control or otherwise identify/test the individual components.
The way OP presents it it's more about using the phrase to ignore the discussion on one side.
I don't recall seeing it much besides to argue against something being mostly one side (and presenting an absurd/noncentral example) though it seemed to be more of a "whaboutism" then what the OP mentions.
Surely this is not surprising, though? I mean, this is what people are like. Which means, parenthetically, it must be adaptive to tribal survival, and it's interesting to speculate why.
My thought would be that it's a high-risk-high-reward gambit: let's say you're a proponent of changing the environment to solve Social Problem X. Someone comes along and offers very sound scientific evidence that the environment has a 1% effect on X. If you maintain your faith in your solution, despite good evidence ot the contrary, you are embarking on a high-risk-high-reward path. It is very likely you will turn out ot be wrong (so that's the high risk), but if you happen to turn out right -- the research was mistaken, or it turns out the environmental mod you champion turns out to be unexpectedly and spectacularly effective -- then you will reap an enormous reward, because you'll have been a prophet. So that's the high reward.
Presumably if most people in the tribe behave this way, it's a disaster, but if a relative handful do, this allows the tribe to cover a few highly-leveraged bets at low cost. (If a bet doesn't pan out, all that happens is one member of the tribe is exposed as a fool or charlatan.)
I had a professor in my psych undergrad who opened up a class by promising to fail anyone who wrote as a conclusion in any test question or assigned essay that some trait was both the result of genetics and environment.
That's because this is a trite statement and not at all what we're interested in when talking about nature vs. nurture. What we're interested in explaining is variance - why some people are one way and other people are another. More specifically, what we want to know is the relative contribution of hereditary factors and environmental factors, which varies based on what population comparison we are making. (e.g. Height is highly heritable in America right now, but if you want to explain the variance in height in America between 1900 and 2000, it's mostly environmental factors that explain it. )
>>>mostly environmental factors
Has someone done the math on this?
> The truth is that their interest is in believing a different statement: "environment plays a larger role than genetics" - that statement is their bailey. They won't say it out loud, because it'd mean they'd have to define "larger". But they believe it, and they like believing it. It
I think we need to coin a Mind Reader fallacy. If a person doesn’t say something out loud how the fuck do you know what they are thinking?
I see this pretty often here. People willing to assign a set of unproven attributes, unspoken positions etc to their - sometimes simply imagined - ideological enemy.
Now I am not accusing you of the following. It’s just an exaggerated example.
“I voted Democrat.”
Oh so you are _for_ Black Lives Matter protestors burning down cities!
“Uhm no, I’m pretty much against that.”
This is rationalism?
Should I assume merely by the tone of your original post that you believe blacks are dumber and more prone to violence than whites?
I could imagine that possibility but it would be stupid to assume it’s true because you didn’t say it.
You and I don’t know each other beyond what we say out loud here.
This is a very interesting comment, because there's something tricky to articulate here. I would like to assume you have read about motte-and-bailey, the references are this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ (shortish post listing examples) or this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-words-words-words/ (bombastic but very culture war heavy, in fact one of the most CW SSC posts) - either one is fine.
I'm absolutely convinced that Motte-and-Bailey is a big part of political discourse. A very current example is Kanye's "white lives matter" thing (sorry for CW but I think it can be throwaway!) - everyone knows not to take that phrase at face value. But with your comment, you're pointing out something negative about the use of "Motte-and-bailey". And I think it's right to do so, because MaB is in some sense "the good/sophisticated version of strawmanning"
"Bob strawmans Alice" = Alice said X. Bob, immediately after Alice said X, gave gave an argument against Y, demonstrating clearly the foolishness and nastiness of Y. But Alice objected that she did not actually believe Y, she only believes X.
"Bob accused Alice of having a motte-and-bailey" = Alice said X. Bob, immediately after Alice said X, gave an argument against Y. Because Bob knew that when people say X, it's really a motte for their bailey. Their bailey is Y.
Everyone hates being strawmanned, myself included. So, motte-and-baileying too much is bad. I'm not sure of a good, bullet-proof solution to this, other than taking extremely large amounts of time and care with arguments against individuals.
But why exactly would so many people so consistently say "personality it is a combination of genetic and environmental influences" in response to me saying "a study recently found a genetic influence on X"? Even though, again, everyone knows that statement is true?
There's a pattern. You're right that I can't be certain about them believing "environment plays a larger role"! But I think the widespreadness of this belief is the best explanation for the pattern I've observed.
I think I had a handle on M&B but I did go back and read the SSC posts
This is so tricky without actual examples.
I can think of a number of reasons why some would assert “but it both!” other than some hidden agenda.
Habit:
Not a directly applicable example but if it’s 104 degrees in the shade chances are you will hear someone say “Hot enough for you”.
IOW Sometimes it’s just a vocal tic that people automatically deploy in certain circumstances.
Laziness:
Related to habit. Hmm this may not apply to what this guy just said, but it’s commonly accepted that ‘it’s both’ so if I don’t feel like thinking very carefully at least nobody can say I’m _wrong_.
Group think:
No explanation necessary.
Foul mood:
I had an argument with my wife this morning, so I’m not conceding anything today.
Petty dominance game:
If I disagree I won’t cede any of my - imaginary - power.
In the end your thesis may be correct but I’m probably a lot older than you so I can’t avoid remembering all the times I’ve incorrectly surmised other peoples’ motivations. At least not without putting my liver at risk. jk
I don’t think my theory of mind is any wackier than the next guy’s but experience has taught me to be very careful about saying “I know what you are thinking.”
>I don’t think my theory of mind is any wackier than the next guy’s but experience has taught me to be very careful about saying “I know what you are thinking.”
As I already explained to you, we can infer it from the implications they think this statement has - namely those that imply environmental differences are what is important.
Your exapmle with Democrats and BLM is extremely poor. Those are two distinct things, whereas Hamish is directly talking about different statements about the exact same thing - heritability.
I can see why those things would cause the person to say "but it both". But I don't see why it would create a general pattern of people saying that rather than something else.
I wouldn't say I *know* that a given person is motte-and-baileying. Just that, at this point, I think they are around 70+%. And it's very annoying, because if it really is the case that 50+% of the time I am talking to someone who disagrees with me about something, they should just come out and say that thing. That would probably lead to a more interesting discussion for everyone, and in any case it would be a more honest one.
To put it differently, they should defend their bailey, instead of pretending that I am attacking their motte (when really their motte is boringly true / in no way something I would deny).
Having slept on it I can offer my own bit of mind reading of hidden motivation. Fear of starting a discussion that will wander into eugenics.
Haha, well don't worry, I just read YOUR mind ;) the wonders of language! I do not agree with Emil Kirkegaard, but I do agree with Toby Young.
>I think we need to coin a Mind Reader fallacy. If a person doesn’t say something out loud how the fuck do you know what they are thinking?
By inferring it from the implications they believe follow from their declarations of "combination!"
Countless times I've heard people say something to the effect of "intelligence is affected by genes but its also affected by environment, so that means we should still be providing more funding to schools". This obscures the extent that environmental variations explains intelligence variation and therefore whether a given funding increase could be expected to provide an adequate return on investment even taking "environment" naively, but it also completely ignores how much of that fraction IS a result of educational variation specifically.
Give me an example of a person who wrote an autobiography that no one cared about or bought.
There was one called Nobody Gives a Shit What I've Been Through, but I didn't read it.
If I wanted to put some time into answering this question, I'd look into getting API access to the Amazon reviews and/or sales rank data. Amazon categorizes books as memoir, and within that category, there are sure to be some items with no sales and no reviews (or only bad reviews). The authors of those are who you're asking about.
https://webservices.amazon.com/paapi5/documentation/browsenodeinfo.html
There's a Reddit thread for best and worst autobiographies, that's as close as I can get to ignored.
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/twe6r0/lets_discuss_best_and_worst_autobiographiesmemoirs/
Confessions of a Sociopath sounds like it's in the running. Apparently it's heavy narcissism from someone who's not actually a diagnosed sociopath.
How would anyone know about it?
Ain't no such critter - everyone got a momma.
What does the expression "For a cool [amount of money]" mean?
I've heard it many times in my life, but have never understood what "For a cool" added to such statements.
I found this definition online, but is it right?
12. ADJECTIVE [ADJECTIVE noun]
You can use cool to emphasize that an amount or figure is very large, especially when it has been obtained easily.
[informal, emphasis]
Columbia recently re-signed the band for a cool $30 million.
I believe cool actually refers to the lack of hyperbole.
The phrase dates backs to the 1700s but was also the title of a famous early 1930s novel satirizing Horatio Alger.
Seems to be a bit of a vague one. Cool in this instance can be short for 'cool headed', in which case the amount of money is the whole of the amount listed no exaggeration or undercounting. Alternatively, it could be cool as a descriptor in which case it's as you found it, signifying the amount of money is surprisingly large.
So, to use an example. A meal that cost a cool twenty would have cost exactly twenty bucks. A meal that cost a cool two hundred is an approximate but this was remarkably high for a meal.
Hope that helps.
Does anyone else ever make it a point to click-through Substack emails to new posts, so that supported bloggers get better "engagement" numbers on email blasts? Or is that not how such things work anymore?
every time. what else would i do?
Someone pseudonymous is booting up a blog on the mindset of privacy concerns at https://psyvacy.substack.com/ - are there any others adjacent to this topic out there?
If India managed to maintain it's caste system largely unchanged for thousands of years, why did the caste system in the Southern United States so rapidly collapse?
A cursory glance at the Wikipedia page suggests that the caste system very much did not exist largely unchanged for thousands of years...
Genetic analysis demonstrates that the anti-colonial rhetoric of WP is incorrect.
I’m guessing you’re looking for something in Western culture, not the fact that the Confederacy lost the civil war.
There’s Christianity and the fact that chattel slavery was not a big part of the European culture that first settled the United States.
>I’m guessing you’re looking for something in Western culture, not the fact that the Confederacy lost the civil war.
But the lower castes did not lose an analogous war, because such war was never fought. Which means that losing a war cannot possibily be the fundamnetal explanation.
I should have specified I meant the early 20th Century Jim Crow state of affairs.
I’m confused. The Jim Crow era was a period when whites were trying to re-establish the caste system.
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States.
And the founding of the United States was throwing off the English caste system. No more state-granted noble titles, no more "jury of your peers", All Men Are Created Equal.
I think this is very naive. The early US had extremely powerful families that took the place of British nobility.
Not really. Some early powerful US families attempted to set themselves up in the manner similar to which the British aristocracy functioned: buy big tracts of land, then live idly off the rent. The massive and ever-expanding availability of land in the US made this model non-viable and both flattened the class system and made it much less calcified as people were able to rise in wealth and prestige via trades and trading.
There were certainly powerful families but economic differences made the social structure of revolutionary America very different.
I'm continuing my 2 year hobby of memorising a monthly poem. I'm still looking for recommendations, under the loose criteria of having a rhyme scheme, being at least somewhat significant culturally, and shorter than ~50 lines. What are poems that have resonated with you? In particular I am also looking for poems dealing with grief and loss.
At Henry's Bier, by John Berryman
At Henry’s bier let some thing fall out well:
enter there none who somewhat has to sell,
the music ancient & gradual,
the voices solemn but the grief subdued,
no hairy jokes but everybody’s mood
subdued, subdued,
until the Dancer comes, in a short short dress
hair black & long & loose, dark dark glasses,
uptilted face,
pallor & strangeness, the music changes
to “Give!” & “Ow!” an how! the music changes,
she kicks a backward limb
on tiptoe, pirouettes, & she is free
to the knocking music, sails, dips, & suddenly
returns to the terrible gay
occasion hopeless & mad, she weaves, it’s hell,
she flings to her head a leg, bobs, all is well,
she dances Henry away.
Naming of Parts,
Ars poetica https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17168/ars-poetica
The Shield of Achilles https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=26040 and
Repose of https://dailypoetry.me/hart-crane/repose-rivers/
all lack the rhyme scheme, but I love them all. Second the recommendation of The Oracle, and the Kipling (Ford o Kabul River is another).
Oh, and also Lady of Shallot. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45360/the-lady-of-shalott-1842
I strongly recommend Clive James' "Japanese Maple":
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:
Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
Well, for a killer one, there's Seamus Heaney's "Mid-Term Break" (c'mon Substack, let us format comments or at least keep line-break formatting instead of clumping it all together):
Mid-Term Break
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Kipling's "Hymn to Breaking Strain" is a favorite of mine.
I also like Houseman "The Oracles"
My favorite Kipling poem is "The Mary Gloster," a Browning monolog that I think better than Browning's, but it is more than fifty lines.
"They flee from me that sometimes did me seek" by Wyatt is short and good.
Derek Mahon is a favourite and I love his account of Horace's eleventh ode (carpe diem)
Don’t waste your time, Leuconoé, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.
Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow
us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now
which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,
decant your wine: the days are more fun than the years
which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest
one day at a time, and never mind the rest.
"The days are more fun than the years...." is a sentiment I try to bring to mind very frequently.
In rather different vein, Emily Dickinson's poems are nice and short for remembering, and this one moves me very much
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
Wonderful and moving poem indeed!
Since it's spooky season, what about The Raven? I don't know if it's the right length, but I love Kubla Khan. And how do you feel about Robert Service? The Cremation of Sam McGee is really fun and spooky (and deals with loss).
The Raven is actually my project for next year! I think having 24 shorter poems under my belt, it will be time to try something longer and the Raven has been a favourite of mine for a long time now.
Dirge Without Music
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love ,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
And, of course, also by Millay:
CHILDHOOD IS THE KINGDOM WHERE NOBODY DIES
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.
And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it's much too small, because she won't curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.
But you do not wake up a month from then, two months
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God! Oh, God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
—mothers and fathers don't die.
And if you have said, "For heaven's sake, must you always be kissing a person?"
Or, "I do wish to gracious you'd stop tapping on the window with your thimble!"
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you're busy having fun,
Is plenty of time to say, "I'm sorry, mother."
To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,
who neither listen nor speak;
Who do not drink their tea, though they always said
Tea was such a comfort.
Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries;
they are not tempted.
Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly
That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
Shout at them, get red in the face, rise,
Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake
them and yell at them;
They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed; they slide
back into their chairs.
Your tea is cold now.
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house.
Don't know many. I guess I'll suggest O Fortuna. Do they have to be in English?
Don't think The Spider and the Fly count as grief or loss, but it's 44 lines.
The Logical Song, by Supertramp? Music counts as poems, right?
It seems to be popular in our host's circles to reference The Hymn of Breaking Strain, a poem by Kipling. (For instance, it was explicitly used in Unsong and obliquely referenced in Project Lawful.) It rhymes, is roughly 50 lines long, and is somewhat about loss.
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_strain.htm
"Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for."
I don't usually like Hopkins, and I still have trouble with bits of it, but it may be the only one of his I've memorized.
"They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods."
There's likely plenty better suited to your query in Kipling, and certainly plenty worth memorizing, but this does deal with loss, in a way, and is one of his better-known ones. I think it's the first poem I ever memorized.
There's always The Sally Gardens; I know it as a song, but it was a poem first. Or Do Not Go Gentle.
Ozymandius is loss in a different sense. ("I met a traveler from an antique land...")
I will chime in again if I think of others. It's a fascinating query.
Thank you for these, they are lovely. The Road Through The Wood is a good one, I've always been a fan of Kipling.
Do Not Go Gentle and Ozymandius are already in my repertoire!
Another (short) good lesser known Robert Frost poem is "I Have Been One Acquainted With the Night".
I'm over 70 and one of the things that occasionally bugs me is that my motivation for doing anything has gone (not that I need to do much, but I really enjoy the satisfaction of accomplishing something). I understand that testosterone is not the answer; ideas?
Adderall is energy and motivation in a little white pill. It's not very good for you, but in your place I'd put it on the list of possibilities. Sartre used amphetamines to power through the process of writing his final book.
Have you had your test levels checked though?
I'm much younger than you, but suffer from Chronic Fatigue, which I think gives me some insight into what you're feeling. David Friedman's suggestion below is a good one, but the other part I'd add in is the importance of spending time with other people, in person. If you like games, play against other humans. If you like reading, talk to people about the books you're reading, or make a point of sitting and reading together. Spending time with younger, more energetic people should also help - I gather grand-kids are good for that, if you have them :)
I have a one hour skype with my grandson once a week.
I am also over 70. A good many years ago I concluded that if I spent all my time playing — arguing online, reading fiction, playing computer games — I felt stale. So I committed myself to spending two hours a day, seven days a week, on writing projects, broadly defined. In addition to making the rest of the day feel like an earned vacation, it also gets me into doing things that give me a feeling of accomplishment. I have finally managed to complete a poem I had been thinking about doing for a couple of decades, have written chapter drafts for what should end up as a book or two on a range of topics largely inspired by my accumulated blog posts, somewhat over a thousand of them.
Might work for you, might not, but once you are committed to spending the time you may end up finding interesting things to spend it on. Certainly I did.
Hang in there Owen.
I can highly recommend Huberman's video on Motivation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA50EK70whE
It goes through all the mechanisms (physical and mental) that they have researched which affect Dopamine, Epinephrine and Acetylcholine - He goes through all the tools that affect these three and I would highly recommend looking at this
The item that is not covered is hormonal precursor / impacts on motivation and Focus.
If you are interested in this and want a deeper dive into Dopamine and Motivation he has another indepth dive here: https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU
I feel dumb offering suggestions to someone older and wiser than me, so sorry if any of this comes across as obvious.
Do you get out often? I find walks and a change of scenery motivates me like nothing else. Grab a coffee, say hi to a stranger, look at buildings, birds... By the time I get home I'm shaken out of whatever monotony was keeping me unmotivated.
I also watched Don Hertzfeldt's 'It's Such a Beautiful Day' recently which gave a temporary boost.
Thanks for writing a considered reply. I get out often, walk a lot in nature but it doesn't increase my motivation. Sorry!!
Have you tried Ritalin/Adderall/misc dopamine-increasing substance ?
No. Not keen on amphetamines
Perhaps modafinil / armodafinil is worth a shot then ?
I know that the original poster mentioned NOT (testosterone), but to go straight to recommending medication (in two posts) seems extremely odd.
Are you a health care professional with prescribing privileges?
I'm in 60s. It's seems the first thing would likely investigation of the history. It seems like he is really looking for a hobby or hobbies and for an investigation into possible anhedonia or to distinguish between lack of motivation that could just a normal symptom of generally getting older or if it is sign possibly depression or some other ailment.
While the owen tries something small like to do wordle for 10 days, I'd suggest Owen also try some self investigation: What things did you use to do, what does your spouse, your siblings, and your friends do and think of about motivation and decreased motivation with age. Is lack of motivation a 20 year slide or a 2 year thing corresponding to pandemic or related to retirement or a 6 month acute drop. And then talk with your primary care physician armed with thorough and honest history.
"It seems like he is really looking for a hobby or hobbies and for an investigation into possible anhedonia or to distinguish between lack of motivation that could just a normal symptom of generally getting older or if it is sign possibly depression or some other ailment."
I actually think that is your take on what he *should* be asking for. In fact he is asking for suggestions. Given that, I think it is reasonable to include drugs that increase motivation and energy on the list. He's a grown-up, & can take into consideration the downside of using those drugs. (And it's not as though there's no downside to ruminating alone or with a shrinkazoid about whether he is anhedonic, just getting old, or experiencing a sign of Some Other Ailment)
I don't think any one without a license to prescribe should be recommending prescription medication.
That medications are even advertised in US is highly problematic.
lots of discourse on direct action strategies of protesters, including splashing tomato soup on van gogh paintings and pouring milk on the floor of a grocery store. i think its a great example of coupling "we die in a climate crisis" with "you dont get to enjoy art anymore because we are dying".
my model of change is that
1. first people get upset at you because they are being inconvenienced, ie you dont get to enjoy art, your favorite highway was blocked off and now you're late to work
2. weeks later they know protestors are just a fact of life, and now its the government's fault they havent gotten off their asses and done something about it
i myself have done some disruptions, and jail is pretty traumatizing, but i'd say if you measured my successes by way of the Unit of Caring (the us dollar) i provided 5 million usd of value.
You know, if you people had enough sense to do something like covering an oil billionaire's car in black oil/grease (or at least, black paint), you might have something resembling success in this regard. It doesn't inconvenience regular people, you're not mindlessly lashing out at something irrelevant that people value, few people are going to feel bad (and may even feel good) about seeing some rich asshole having his car ruined.
I think a better explanation of this act is similar to the first section of Scott's "Toxoplasma of Rage": https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ (which I really need to re-read again because it's been a while)
Throwing soup at a one-of-a-kind painting is dumb. Doing it to protest something unrelated is also dumb. You're going to make a lot of people mad at your and your organization. *But* you bring awareness to your cause. Whether that awareness-anger-ratio is worth it seems debatable.
disruption is a key component of civil disobedience protests. because disruption spreads uncertainty and gives weak actors leverage against powerful opponents, it is the strongest weapon of social movements.
So would it be OK for the police to come break some shit in your living room in an effort to gain, you know, leverage?
This is all just meaningless words
I don't think this is right. The goto example is the Civil Rights Movement, right? Thing is, that only worked because of the overreaction of the authorities. Same as in 2020 with BLM. Early on the police were surprised and got caught on camera beating the crap out of random people, including old dudes with canes. That got the problem good attention, and brought out huge protests and lots of support. Which disappeared as the police got their shit together.
Disruption gets you attention, yes. But either your cause has to be unknown and very sympathetic (the Jim Crow south), or you have to provoke a reaction that pisses people off more than your action does (Jim Crow again, May 2020 BLM). Fail at both and you're just hurting your cause, by drawing attention to it and linking to something negative (throwing soup at a painting).
Note: the painting was not damaged, so my earlier reaction was over the top. Damaging the frame isn't a crime against humanity the way that destroying a Van Gogh would have been.
The awareness it raises is "oh, those are the soup-throwing idiots" which doesn't really advance the cause.
Controversies, whether about climate change or other things, happen because people disagree. It's natural enough to assume that your view of what should happen is correct but if you know that many intelligent and well informed people disagree, shouldn't you discount your estimate of the value of what you did to allow for the possibility that you were wrong and any effect you had was to make the world worse off rather than better off?
ive read a lot of books by people who have studied social change for decades and they say its cool to engage in nonviolent direct action that exacerbates contradictions, demonstrates power, and can't be ignored. one of my favorites is This is an uprising by englers
further, it seems like a very very bad idea to take advice from people who are ideologically opposed and committed to your failure. its just not a good idea.
finally, i dont think most of these commenters are well informed. there is a great inferential gap between us, and idk what to do about that while most of them are saying "actually you should be in jail longer". it certainly makes me think that they are not Well Informed
Anyone can get a book published nowadays, so I'm not sure why you think "reading lots of books" is a sign of credibility. I'm sure plenty of Flat Earthers and Q-Anon believers read a lot of books too, and those books reinforce their own views, just like the ones you've read have reinforced yours. And for what it's worth, I have a Master's degree in Political Science and I've never heard of the book you mentioned. (Granted, contrary to what a lot of right-wingers think, Saul Alinsky and Abbie Hoffman were never part of our curriculum, and while we did read Marx, it was with the specific understanding that he was wrong. So maybe the world of academia is just too "establishment" for your liking.)
Honest question though: Is there anything that anyone here can say that will actually cause you to adjust your beliefs or stances by even the slightest amount? Because it certainly doesn't look that way, which makes me wonder why you even bothered posting this in the first place. Just as a way of bragging and Owning The Libs from the left?
As the old saying goes, "a fanatic is someone who can't change their mind and won't change the subject." And there is little value in debating fanatics.
>further, it seems like a very very bad idea to take advice from people who are ideologically opposed and committed to your failure. its just not a good idea.
Then why are you here telling us about how great your actions are?
You don't think you can learn anything by listening to the arguments of people who disagree with you? That seems like a policy designed to make sure that, if you are wrong, you don't discover it.
The people blocking that pipeline back in 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests) were engaging in non-violent direct action, and while I didn't agree with them, I could respect their commitment, and wished the best for everyone involved. There are legitimate protest actions that people can take to effect change.
You haven't mentioned any here. You're deliberately stopping random people getting to work, to effect something they have no control over. What, are you protesting car use as a whole? If you're opposed to gas use, then protest outside the central fuel station, block the trucks delivering the gas. You'll still get arrested, and piss people off, and not change anything, but at least you'll be targeting the group responsible instead of complete strangers.
Absolutely no one thinks the best way to win a war is to invade your enemy's neighbors first. Making more enemies won't help you.
>Absolutely no one thinks the best way to win a war is to invade your enemy's neighbors first. Making more enemies won't help you.
Not at all your point but the Netherlands and Belgium would like a word . . .
And look how that turned out for Germany! But you have a good point that "X is clearly false" != " no one believes X"
+1
hey cant help but notice but that protest that you posted literally didn't work? im talking about effective activism
I think you're wrong. The pipeline became a huge cause on the left, forcing the Obama administration to repeatedly delay it and finally deny cert. The Trump admin restarted it, then the Biden admin re-stopped it. The corp trying to build it finally cancelled it, probably realizing that it was going to get shut off every other decade if they didn't.
It's a textbook example of making an unknown cause famous, providing sympathetic protesters, getting them abused by unsympathetic security forces (they hosed the protesters down in the winter, if memory serves), and finally winning your point. It was absolutely effective.
And yet you failed to notice you're copying toddlers. "Throw food and then lie down in the street" doesn't make the President of the United States give you what you want for the one month he has authority to do so.
Can you give an example of effective activism?
greensborough north carolina 1960, many black people, mostly students, committed the crime of sitting in at a restaurant, and it was deeply unpopular, and it was coordinated by people willing to fight legal battles and imprisonment. and in 4 years copycat protests became popular, and normies had to concede that it didnt make much sense to deny freedom to an underclass when they wielded such power (sitting in at restaurants)
Not sure why this generated such a fuss. Kids say dopey things sometimes. They usually grow out of it.
im 30 thanks
30 year olds should know better than to say goofy stuff like their impotent rage has created $5 million in value
Not everyone has reached mental maturity by age 30. Some never do.
My guess is that <ambiguous pronoun> is probably just messing around. And <AP> is pleased to have generated a couple hundred reactions with what <AP> probably knows is a weak argument. Jerking our chain for fun. I could be way off base, but that’s my read.
I can only imagine what must be going through your mind reading all of these comments. Perhaps you dismiss all of this through some rationalization; "they're out to get me", "these people are ignorant", "they're trolling" but that would be a real pity.
In this reply there are a lot of people who have given you a very specific critique and this should shed some light on your belief structures that may be faulty.
Although if you convinced someone that the god they believed in for their entire life was false would they thank you
i will engage with posts that demonstrate charity
"i myself have done some disruptions, and jail is pretty traumatizing, but i'd say if you measured my successes by way of the Unit of Caring (the us dollar) i provided 5 million usd of value."
No offense, but this sounds absolutely delusional. If anything, you've provided negative value to whatever movements you claim to support, because you wanted to do something that *felt cathartic* instead of putting in the work to actually bring about any real changes in policy and/or public opinion. The real work of change is quite boring and tedious: It involves a lot of long hours making phone calls, knocking doors, handing out flyers on street corners, writing letters to your local elected representatives, going to town hall meetings, and lots of banal logistical work that would make the average day at the office seem exciting by comparison. I should know, I've spent literally years doing it! But the new breed of Very Online edgelord activists wants to skip all the hard parts and focus on "fun" stuff like arguing with people on Twitter, vandalizing public property, and shouting at normies so you can feel self-righteously superior to them, regardless of how unproductive or even counter-productive it may be.
you are listing a lot of activities involved in electoralism, which is useful for turning already-won victories into legislation and policy. however, i think there are more fundamental and actually effective strategies by way of, for instance, organizing marches - which are meant to silently imply "look how we can march around like a military force would" as well as demonstrating a count of voters. another more fundemental and actually effective strategy is to fight legal battles by committing a premediated and carefully planned crime, designed to force out the contradictions between current policy and human values
"however, i think there are more fundamental and actually effective strategies by way of, for instance, organizing marches - which are meant to silently imply "look how we can march around like a military force would" as well as demonstrating a count of voters."
This is highly ineffective, because no one is actually going to be afraid of these people. They represent an extremely small percentage of the overall population, and the moment they actually tried to *act* like a military (e.g. actually use force), they would be completely annihilated. They are allowed to march around precisely because of the fact that they're no real threat to anyone, and in a liberal democratic society, the state and the populace are inclined to tolerate such behaviors as long as they don't become *too* disruptive. But the tolerance of the majority isn't infinite, and stunts like the soup incident will definitely cause it to wane.
There are situations in which the tactics you're describing can work: For example, if the actual military is on the side of the protesters (as was the case during several Latin American coups), or if the protesters have the support of an overwhelming majority of the overall population (as was the case during many of the Arab Spring revolts). But neither of those are true in 21st century America. Expecting that a movement with support from less than 1% of the overall population can intimidate the other 99% into appeasing their demands is absurd.
"another more fundemental and actually effective strategy is to fight legal battles by committing a premediated and carefully planned crime, designed to force out the contradictions between current policy and human values"
And unless you're fighting specifically for people's right to vandalize famous works of art (which is a cause that very few people would get behind), the soup incident doesn't fall into this category at all. The crime is entirely unrelated to the thing you're actually protesting.
"human values", of course, referring to things that have only ever existed in modern european-majority societies. Though I'm sure you have some 'progressive savage' understanding of world history.
"weeks later they know protestors are just a fact of life, and now its the government's fault they havent gotten off their asses and done something about it"
Yes, but when people start demanding that the government "do something," what they have in mind is "using whatever degree of force is necessary to suppress the protests," not "giving the protesters everything they want."
It's been statistically proven that these sorts of extreme methods always *reduce* popular support for whatever cause the protesters are fighting for: Back in 2020, support for the Black Lives Matter movement was up to almost 80% when the protests started, but declined to around 50% after weeks of rioting and extreme demands like "abolish the police," with the steepest declines in the cities that had the greatest amount of violent incidents and property damage. Hell, in Kenosha, support for BLM declined to barely over 50% *among the Black population!*
Splashing tomato soup on priceless works of art does nothing but make people hate the perpetrators and, by extension, climate activists in general. If this turns out to just be a one-off incident, then people will probably forget about it quickly enough, but if things like this start to happen on a regular basis, then it will absolutely torpedo support for environmentalism. (For that matter, the whole narrative that "climate change will literally kill us all and cause human extinction!" also hurts the climate movement, because it's completely bogus and a great many people are aware of that fact. Very few actual climate scientists believe that, and you can't convincingly tell people to "trust the science" while simultaneously denying it yourself.)
Also, leaving aside the many pragmatic arguments against this type of aggressive activism, the whole notion that "we are suffering, therefore other people shouldn't be allowed to be content" is just deeply unethical. It's seen as abusive when people do it on the individual level, why should it be seen as any less evil when it's done on the societal level?
Thank you for doing this. That was a really good response.
This is exactly what I came here to say, and you said it better than I could!
I'm going to destroy a literally irreplaceable painting if I don't get my way right now is not a successful protest. I don't actually know what those guys were protesting against, and I don't care. If I found out, I would be for that thing because fuck those guys. I can't imagine the worldview of a person who that protest would influence positively. It's alien to me.
As to stuff like the public roads, that's well enough I suppose. I think it's bad tactics, be it done with tractors, trucks or bodies, but yeah, that's fine enough and something gov't can and should deal with in normal ways. But I think, on balance, it probably hurts rather than helps whatever cause it supposed to represent.
But destroying a Van Gogh is fucking well out of bounds and those assholes should go to jail for the rest of their lives for crimes against humanity.
Fortunately, there was a glass in the frame in front of the Van Gogh. You can thus reduce your ire to "these imbeciles were too stupid to destroy the irreplaceable painting".
I assumed they knew there was a glass frame and so intended to get the intention without actually destroying some irreplaceable priceless thing.
Yeah, I saw that, but thanks for pointing it out in a reply. Glad I was overreacting. I'm going to assume that they knew it was protected and that they intended their protest to be "the art is temporarily unavailable" and not "priceless masterwork permanently damaged".
That drops it back to a public roads protest. I might be sympathetic or unsympathetic, but whatever. Ultimately I think that the people who made the news blocking the road that Trump was taking to a rally in 2016 help his campaign, and the truckers that blocked the roads (in Canada and here) in 2021/2 hurt the legitimacy of the anti-mandate crowd (both by tying anti-mandate to anti-vax and by being unsympathetic jerks). But that's a matter of tactics and choices and as long as you take the legal consequences without complaint I'm basically fine it.
I think there's a gap in your strategy.
#1 definitely happens, but when people are upset about #1 going into #2, people are just as likely to demand that government "get of their asses" and do something about the *protestors*, rather than demand that whatever issue is being protested be fixed.
See, for example, the explosion of state laws making it easier to run over protesters who are blocking the road. Or the attempts to require a minimum distance between protestors and abortion clinics. Depending on the situation, nuisance protests can easily make people more upset at the protestor than they are about the issue being protested. Which is kinda one of the inherent risks of a tactic that involves being a nuisance to people.
See also the disturbing number of people who think Kyle Rittenhouse was a hero. Not "stupid kid but technically innocent", but positively heroic in his selfless efforts to protect the community from dangerous criminals.
How would you view similar activists for causes you aren't as enthused about (say anti-abortionists or whatever)? As nutters or as kindred spirits? Creating a nuisance or effecting a change?
Funny you should mention that! There were pro-life campaigners who tried using signs with graphic imagery of aborted foetuses and similar tactics.
Did it work? No.
Do you think the received story about "abortion clinic bombers and abortion doctors assassins" means that those tactics worked?
So yes, if some pro-life group went around throwing tins of tomato soup on paintings and gluing themselves to the road, I would think they were idiot nuisances. What worked in the USA? The Supreme Court saying decisions on abortion law should go back to the states to make legislation, and decades of work plugging away at pro-life issues. Not shock tactics, not publicity stunts.
It's a great example of "being a goddamn idiot doing pointless virtue signalling".
The balding young man in a dress spray-painting the Aston Martin showroom garnered nothing but some amused derision. If you want ordinary people to take whatever it is you are protesting about seriously, try not looking like a reject from a Monty Python sketch.
Splashing tomato soup over a van Gogh does what, exactly? They blattered on about cold, hungry families not being able to afford to heat a tin of soup, but they would have done more for an actual cold, hungry family by donating those wasted tins of soup to a charity or - horror of horrors! - getting off their privileged middle-class backsides and going out to deliver hot meals to the old and indigent.
But that wouldn't have garnered the same feeling of "Fighting Da Man!" now would it?
Also, many people do actually go out and deliver food to the hungry, or help out in a soup kitchen, or whatever else. None of them ever appear in a news article or trend on social media. The people who get news and social media coverage are the ones who throw a can of soup at a painting or dump milk on the floor of a store.
We reward the attention-grabbing and destructive behavior, and ignore the decent and helpful behavior. And we get more of what we reward....
Care to give more detail about how you estimated 5 million usd of value?
>2. weeks later they know protestors are just a fact of life, and now its the government's fault they havent gotten off their asses and done something about it
This doesn't work for climate change. No government on earth can stop climate change by passing some policies. If GHG are going to be meaningfully reduced, it's going to be a process occurring over decades involving cooperation between many countries.
Honestly, this all sounds like you trying to justify throwing tantrums which you enjoy throwing instead of actually putting in the work to determine what will be actually effective and executing it.
Almost the only people who support this kind of action are people who already agree with you. People in the middle just think you're a bunch of nutters and if anything are put off by this silliness.
>i myself have done some disruptions, and jail is pretty traumatizing, but i'd say if you measured my successes by way of the Unit of Caring (the us dollar) i provided 5 million usd of value.
This is delusional
I mean I understand and respect your intent but I think the more likely result is that people will indeed think "it's the government's fault they haven't gotten off their asses and done something about it," but they'll want 'doing something about it' to mean arrests/jail time/making it a felony to block the highway on their morning commute.
The best way to protest is to work to make batteries, PV modules, and carbon capture from the air ridiculously cheap.
Some people are doing that.
Yes the best but also simultaneously the most difficult
It's much easier to destroy.
Brilliant cheap carbon capture machines: Plants! Luckily they have a lot of them in Brazil. How would some random person in North America or Europe go about to stop the Brazilian government from destroying its rainforests?
Perhaps Europe could set an example, not destroy its own old growth woods?
...oh, right...
Yeah, dang it, a couple of centuries too late for that!
Exactly what I always say. People who lack the competence or work ethic to actually contribute to solutions, so they just pull a worthless little stunt where the real goal is getting attention like a toddler. If you care that deeply about climate change, go study climate science and join a team working on carbon capture. Or get involved politically and try to get some wins on the local level.
> who usually don't deliberately throw soup at paintings.
Citation needed
"I bravely put myself out there with my comb-over and terrible fashion choices to protest a luxury car brand!"
https://news.sky.com/video/just-stop-oil-activist-sprays-aston-martin-showroom-with-orange-paint-12722077
Just out of curiosity, where do these people think the tins of soup, glue, and canister to spray-paint come from? How are these items produced? Could they possibly involve the use of.... oil?
The paint spraying is harmless, which means it's also ineffectual. He (she? they? hard to tell what their preferred pronouns are when they're clearly male but also wearing a long dress) didn't smash the window or engage in serious property damage, which avoids getting arrested (probably?) but also just means this is "nuisance" level protest rather than anything useful.
Yes, it got publicity. But the publicity it got was "who's this tosser?" not "ah, my awareness of the seriousness of climate change has been raised". It's very nice of them that this group, whomever they may be, are fully inclusive of non-binary folx as street-level activists but does that do anything practical towards stopping oil (or whatever it is they are protesting)?
hey i will engage with serious replies that demonstrate charity. its not worth my time to try to bridge some gap if you can't lend me even an ounce of decorum
Decorum? You're the one trying to overhaul society. Why do you deserve "decorum"? Do you "lend an ounce of decorum" to people who disagree with you in good faith on contentious political issues? Of COURSE you don't. Those people are RACISTS or SEXISTS or TRANSPHOBICS and they deserve to be destroyed.
Hm? You mean their disruptive direct action didn't jolt you out of your complacency and cause you to change your position?
If you come on here to boast that by your own estimation you have caused $5 million worth of disruption, then it is on you to put up or shut up about how you derive that figure, what good or benefit you imagine you have done, and the final efficacy of anything that you might have participated in.
Did your protesting or night in jail actually achieve anything other than give you the feeling of "I'm so badass, such a rebel against Badness and Mean Stuff!"? Did you get anything done other than waste the time of the cops and the courts? Can you point to anything about "after my/our protest, this bad thing was stopped and/or this good thing was put in its place"?
And why does a ruff'n'tuff disruptor of social norms care about decorum, anyhow?
"Let's go block that highway because we have strong political opinions. Don't worry, people will forget we made them angry in a few weeks."
"Hi. I'm the guy who kept you stuck in traffic for 3 hours that day. Can we have a civil conversation about how that was totally worth it to me?"
Maybe your model of how people respond to assholery is wrong.
It might be ineffective but throwing tomato soup on a glass protector is pretty harmless imo.
"Harmless" is exactly the point: they did something stupid and ineffectual that achieved nothing tangible towards the cause of climate change or whatever it is they are protesting, but two young ninnies got to feel like they were doing more than just being nuisances.
I'm sure BP and Exxon and the boardrooms of the other companies on the list below are all having meetings about "Did you hear about the tomato soup? Clearly we must shut down all our wells now!"
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/010715/worlds-top-10-oil-companies.asp
Can you ask for civility after a sit in or other such activity? Civil disobediance is by definition uncivil.
Okay? Then don't demand decorum!
That's literally the opposite of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is disobedience that remains civil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
>King regarded civil disobedience to be a display and practice of reverence for law: "Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law."
Food-based tantrums aren't civil disobedience.
There were some comments below about TDS. Doesn't TDS basically mean that DT is "living in your head rent free", preventing you from thinking clearly?
If so, isn't that DT's *fault*, considering much of DT's political strategy was to nettle and discombobulate his opponents and detractors like a professional boxer? Isn't the TDS epidemic, then, a very good reason for disliking DT? (I also dislike the lab or bat whatever it was that started Covid.)
I can't help noticing that having an unhealthy obsession with right-wing public figures has been very common at least since Obama years (possibly before, but I can't speak to it because I was less aware of these things). Trump let the obsessed people concentrate all their hate on him, but, if you talk to someone with TDS, they will happily tell you how much they hate other prominent right-wingers - currently, Abbott, Kavanaugh, Cruz, DeSantis, Tucker Carlson come to mind, but there are many more. (Heck, remember when everyone raged against definitely not right-wing Whole Foods for their CEO opposing Obamacare? Or remember how all college students demanded not to allow Chick-fil-a on campus because the CEO said that marriage is between a man and a woman?)
So on one hand Trump did present a convenient target for hate, allowing to focus it all on him, but on the other it was there before him, less concentrated and carefully curated by the media. If you stand in the middle of a battlefield and scream insults, while waving a bunch of flags of your side, on one hand you expect and deserve the enemy to shoot all they have at you, mostly ignoring the rest of your army until it gets too close, but on the other hand the battle is already going on, and you did not start it.
>> I can't help noticing that having an unhealthy obsession with right-wing public figures has been very common at least since Obama years (possibly before, but I can't speak to it because I was less aware of these things).
I think it was around before - I remember Bush Derangement Syndrome being a thing 2001-2008. I don't think it's isolated to public figures on the right though. Obama spent a 8 years living rent free in a *lot* of conservative heads, as did Clinton.
"Or remember how all college students demanded not to allow Chick-fil-a on campus because the CEO said that marriage is between a man and a woman?"
If memory serves, it was because he donates significant money, to the tune of millions of dollars, to charities that helped write the law in Africa that makes homosexuality a capital crime.
Of course, right-wingers at the time (and since) like to pretend it's about marriage, but certainly the memes that pass around liberal facebook frequently mention the whole killing the gays thing.
Never heard about that before. Googled it now. Is it this?
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/oct/25/facebook-posts/what-does-chick-fil-have-do-ugandas-anti-gay-bill-/
I think you demonstrated my point perfectly. Lots of people really hated the guy, and when you give your version of why, we find out that your version was presumably based on something that even Politifact rates mostly false. At least my version of why people hated him was based on something he actually said.
I wouldn't be super surprised to find out it's false. I wondered about that when I was posting. But yeah, that's the one. That's what passed around left circles to gin up support for the boycott.
But I don't think it proves your point. Passing around a post around saying Chick-fil-a doesn't want gays to get married wouldn't get you a very good boycott. Saying that Chick-fil-a money is used to kill gay people does the job. Whoever set that up knew they had to lie to get the job done.
Oh, I think you're very likely to be right about that Facebok meme being mostly responsible in this case. If I had known about it, I would have probably come to the same conclusion as you.
I'm just pointing out the pattern of mass derangement towards prominent right-wingers that predates TDS. I can't make up my mind which of the possible two scenarios in this case is worse - a crazy number of people raging against that guy for something he said, or a crazy number of people raging against him because they uncritically gobbled up a not very factual claim made somewhere on Facebook likely with the purpose of inciting all the hate.
Whichever it is, I think it's a big problem, because this kind of thing makes it very hard for the two sides to come to any kind of agreement. (And I also think that it's very clearly a problem that did not start with Trump, even if it sounds as if he'd like to take all the credit.)
Oh, 100% my dude. I too remember the 2nd Bush administration. And, for that matter, the Obama administration. This is just how we are.
Well, gee. Waking up in the morning and remembering the country is being run by a guy who probably couldn’t pass a high school civics test has a way of sticking in your thoughts. I wouldn’t necessarily think of this as derangement.
I am once again pointing out that white male Republicans have the highest knowledge of civics on average.
But having smart black guy in office resulted in what, exactly? Psychotic interventions in the middle east and north africa that caused untold suffering.
TDS is, or should, refer not just to Trump being annoying or agravating or people not liking him but to something extra.
TDS really blew up in the 2016-2018 era and was characterized by:
-An overwhelming obsession with Trump. 24/7 coverage and constant discussion. He dominated discourse and people (Maddow) ran entire shows about Trump Drama for years.
-Unhinged fears. Again, especially in 2017-2018, it was widely believed on the left that Trump was a direct Russian asset for an assortment of reasons. In 2022, hopefully, we can reflect and see that these fears were, at best, dramatically overblown.
So someone might dislike Trump for a variety of good or bad reasons but there's clearly a difference between the obsessive and panic driven coverage and discussion of Trump that dominated in 2017-2018 and normal criticism. I do think there are still people with severe TDS when it comes to certain current and recent events but the CW aspect brings more heat than light so lets stick to things 3+ years old.
Maddow and others couldn't get Trump out of their heads for 5 minutes. It deranged them. That's the whole idea. That was Trump's big strategy before and after he became POTUS. Stay inside of everyone's heads.
>Isn't the TDS epidemic, then, a very good reason for disliking DT? (I also dislike the lab or bat whatever it was that started Covid.)
That's probably one of the core, basic disagreements that split the human race: are you responsible for your emotions, or is what you perceive as the cause of your emotions responsible for them?
You can easily construct ad-absurdum rebuttal of either (what about the absolute asshole making everyone mad? What about the absolute crybaby being traumatized by everything?), and...I don't have much more insight on the subject, actually.
I think the right answer is that *both* are at fault. There's no reason that blame for things needs to add up to 100%. Some things there's less blame to go around because it really was an unforeseeable accident. Some things there's more blame to go around because lots of people's intentional actions had foreseeable consequences on other people's intentional actions.
https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/TDS
I don't know why you all are blaming DynaTrace Inc. for Tokyo Disney Sea.
I’m going with The Daily Show.
It is if you make certain assumptions. So say these are true:
1. The causes for your TDS are all bad things that are right to upset you
2. They actually happened
3. They are Trump's fault.
4. You are reacting in correct proportion to them.
But a person who is accusing you of having TDS isn't at that point in the argument where the person making your argument has already won on all fronts, if that makes sense. They are essentially accusing the TDS-haver of being a person for whom one or more of the four above things are false.
Your argument is a bit like someone saying "Since you are a Nazi, isn't any emotion I have about you justified?". And it might be so, if I'm a Nazi - but I'm certainly going to argue on that point.
So "living in someone's head" is something a lot of basketball players attempt to do to each other. They talk shit, say things to their opponents like: "Your mom sucked my dick last night." They try to make the other guy angry so he will react emotionally and lose focus on the game he is supposed to be playing.
The answers in that scenario would be:
1. Yes
2. No
3. N/A
4. A proportional response is still the wrong one because it means your frame of mind has been taken from one field of play to another.
Putting this back into a political context: anger at some of Trump's tweets or comments may be reasonable. However, inserting that anger into an analysis of how otherwise Trump is performing as POTUS might yield an unbalanced assessment.
I gotta say I LOLed at this comment (and the part at the end).
I think yes, it is DT’s fault because it’s essentially exactly what he’s going for.
At the same time, part of DTS seems to be having no self-awareness and not realizing he’s mostly just trolling.
Personally, I find a troll more likable than a self-righteous manipulator (aka the rest of politicians). But that’s probably from watching too much South Park and being conditioned to find Cartman hilarious.
Subjectively, you know what you mean when you say “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but objectively i think you might be projecting the symptom of cluelessness/poor self-awareness in the diagnostic criteria of TDS, if what you’re assuming is that the only reason someone might be triggered by Trump’s trolling is if they don’t understand how Trump is constantly trolling… It’s actually pretty naive and insulating to make that assumption, in the same way Trumpian thought purposely misreads the motivations of Biden voters (“There’s NO WAY that 50 million people would ever be seriously willing to vote for a person while simultaneously experiencing a mere low-to-moderate behavioral drive to attend tailgate rallies with a bunch of other political jackoffs…”) in order to rationalize his own self-serving, laughably dumb election fictions. His style of rhetoric *relies* on the token chucklefucks of his base to misunderstand the actual big picture, which is why he puts on the fucking makeup and puts on the show.
Which brings me back to the alternative explanation for why TDS suffers may actually understand how trolling works and yet still be incensed by a president doing it: because of the TONS of chucklefucks in his base who think that being smart enough to pick up on Trump’s trolling means they can’t be blatantly yet credulously defrauded, because of how Trump’s literal textbook schoolyard tactics have poisoned the discourse in a way you would need to be extremely manipulable not to recognize as a disaster for everybody involved, regardless of their preferred political outcomes, and finally, because the mere existence of an insincere, unserious (“trolly”) Commander in Chief of history’s greatest aggregation of power just reflects so poorly on my own fellow countrymen that i don’t know how sad it would be if they actually got their way and leveled the whole system for the giggles you get from not even really knowing how to give half an actual fuck about anything but sensationalist schadenfreude
What do people think of recall elections and other ways to make governments more (temporally) responsive to the popular will without destabilising politics? I.e. to avoid the situation where a deeply unpopular government still has a de-jure mandate from a few years ago when people liked them more.
In the real world, a number of countries allow recalls to happen if a petition passes a certain threshold proportion of the electorate. This can either apply to individual politicians or the government as a whole, depending on the country. While these are rarely triggered and even more rarely succeed, perhaps a good horse runs even at the shadow of a whip.
For political systems not that different from ours, despite the fact I just made them up, how about the westminster system except with annual recall elections (triggering a general election if they succeed) that drop in threshold every year since the last GE. So it takes 90% popular opposition in the first year, 50% in the 5th year and 10% in the 9th. A new government gets a few years to win public confidence but is kicked out faster if the public get fed up with it.
Or one like westminster but where there are no general elections. Elections are instead spread out across time, with each MP being elected once every 5 years (kind of like midterms but moreso). An average of 5 constituencies would need to hold an election per fortnight for this to work in the UK. Thus a government that suddenly became less popular would see its majority slowly eroded until the opposition could force through a VoNC.
This question is apropos of no particular political developments that might be taking place right now, or anything.
This sort of problem can also be addressed in the context of a system where the Head of Government is de jure responsible to a separate Head of State whose ordinary duties are mainly ministerial and ceremonial but who has strong reserve powers for emergencies. In a situation like that, the Head of State typically has the legal authority to dismiss the Head of Government and call new elections. In practice, these reserve powers very rarely need to be officially invoked, since the implicit threat is generally enough to enforce political norms around resignations and early elections. Other less drastic reserve powers can also be used as leverage, as things like appointment powers and assent to laws passed by the legislature can also be privately made conditional on an appropriate show of popular mandate (snap elections, referendums, etc).
I think you can't let the recall value drop below like 30% of the votes of the last election.
You need to make the costs high enough that it won't just be used as griefing, but I think more checks on power are always better.
You lose predictability, which feels like a bad thing - a government can't rely on n years to implement its program. You also make it less likely that a government will do things that it believes will be unpopular but in the national interest.
The "five seats every fortnight" Westminster system seems particularly problematic; you could easily wind up in a situation where the government balances on a knife edge and power swaps back and forth on an irregular weekly schedule for a period of years.
Yes, you can overdo recall...it's what I call a Laffer-like problem, where the sweet spot is in the middle somewhere that is hard to identify.
I would think this would also be a problem for international relations. A government of one nation may hesitate to sign a treaty with another nation's government that may suddenly change with little warning.
Treaties don't work like that. And if they did ... you signed them with the government of the day, not the head of state. they could still.be invalidated by a normal change of government.
On paper treaties don't work like that; in practice the toothlessness of international law means that they often kind of do.
And it's not even 100% clear to me that they shouldn't, to some extent - I think "no government can bind its successor" is a principle with a lot going for it; how you trade that off against being able to make and rely on long term commitments is a hard problem. Otherwise a government that wants to prevent a democratically elected successor reversing its policies just has to find a willing neighbour and commit to them in a treaty.
Recalls are predictable themselves...if things are going that badly, a recall is not unexpected. Or unwelcome.
Hyperdiffusion is called pseudoscience three times just in the intro of its wiki page. Seems ungenerous as there are respectable people who say the Olmecs were influenced by Asian sources: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2741354
According to the Wikipedia page, hyperdiffusion is the "claim that all major cultural innovations and societies derive from one (usually lost) ancient civilization".
I might be sympathetic to the idea that Wikipedia is using an ungenerous definition, but the article you linked to doesn't even contain the word "hyperdiffusion".
The Wikipedia article, likewise, doesn't refute the idea that Asian cultures influenced the Olmecs.
So, I'm not really sure what point you're making.
Yeah, should have explained more. When I looked at the map of possible diffusion, the one that struck me as least likely was the arrow from Asia to Central America. Then I ran into the paper about Olmecs which supports that arrow being real. The paper doesn't talk about any central event, but does make the case for very long range diffusion of ideas that were fundamental to Meso-American civilization. Everyone knows the Mayan calendar and how important it was to them. Maybe that was borrowed from South Eastern Asia.
Joseph Campbell also makes the case that agricultural creation myths in Polynesia and Algonquian Native Americans are so similar because of, possibly, a global diffusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEqR73j_oMY&t=935s
He's not exactly fringe.
Campbell is *absolutely* fringe in any academic sense. All of his ideas are pseudoscience that got popular with laymen, he's like Frazer in that regard.
Is anyone living their life in a significantly differently manner as a direct result of AI risk fears? (Excluding those who are working directly on AI Safety). It seems that the main problem in acting on beliefs of elevated risk is uncertainty in outcomes and timelines. For instance, deciding not to save for retirement seems like a bad idea if you think there is even a (say) 20% chance that AGI is not invented by the time you hit the age of 60. Working a high-paying, high-stress job for a decade in order to retire early and enjoy yourself seems like it would only be a good idea if AGI is at least 20 years away. Curious how others think about this topic.
I ordered a MouseAir kit because I want to learn more about AI. I am not joking. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sunair/mouseair-ai-based-diy-cat-toy-for-the-raspberry-pi
You might already know about this but CodeProject dot com is a great resource for getting into this sort of thing. You can probably find related articles on their AI page as well as their Internet of Things page.
It's supported by a big community of developers and you can get answers to programming questions there.
Thanks Gunflint, I bookmarked it. Kind of looks like it's for people who are at least halfway up the slope, whereas I am sitting in the grassy area at the bottom of the mountain. I have had absolutely nothing to do with programming, and am starting from scratch. But I'm not too proud to ask simple questions, even in a setting like that. And I like math, logic and puzzles, so will probably be ok.
They are good about answering the questions of newcomers at that site. The star rating system for published articles is pretty reliable too.
In my view treating AGI and Singularity fantasies as reality is useless. However, in my lifetime I have been and will continue to promote and vote for people who will try to get things like basic income and robot taxes going so that we can allow AI and robot to take over jobs without throwing everybody not already rich under the bus.
I am donating more money to charity moving from 1% - 10% of income and not putting money in an Investment Savings Account. anymore. Though there are several factors interplaying at once, I wouldn't call it all AI determined, but it maybe 40%.
No one said yes to a related question last week (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-245/comment/9619623). I remain interested in hearing from people who are doing this, but they seem hard to find.
I posted on this topic over at lesswrong. Personally I have stopped all retirement contributions, and I am trying to work out better ways yo use wealh that are consistent with my beliefs about the future.
Not really concerned. I expect it will be viable at least 20 years after safe, reliable, personal cold fusion is in every home, powering every car, etc
So when I strap into my cold fusion powered Prius, I’ll start giving it some serious thought.
I'm living my life differently by telling myself that I'm going to learn about AI so I can help with AI Safety but then not doing it. :/
In case you've never read the famous argument to the contrary and would like to:
"There’s No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence" https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/
Are speeches/sermons/lectures/concerts/performances a human universal? I.e. one person or a small group of people do some act, a larger group of people watch without participating. I can't find this in the Wikipedia list of human universals, so I thought I ask here. On one hand, it feels very modern to me with the clear distinction between the person acting and the observers. One the other hand, it seems very natural. If anyone has read some interesting anthropology or history on the subject, please share and I'll be grateful.
I don't know about universals, but I disagree about the audience/actor distinction being modern. The Greeks were having drama competitions 2500 years ago. Maybe I'm missing what you're getting at?
Some performers do seem to plug into some seemingly cosmic energy. Van Morrison was having some staging problems and drawing hecklers at a concert at Winterland in the early 1970s, before he finally walked off -- to be replaced by the oracle of the cotton fields of Brooklyn, Taj Mahal. Taj growled his big stoner grin and had everyone on their feet dancing within minutes. No princess, that Taj. He just plugged into the collective song.
But of course, it morphs into a shared experience, rather than a vicarious one.
The book Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman is about a bushman/San ethnic group, on the margin of the Kalahari Desert, between about the 1930s and 1970s. Performances were usually interactive, and there was nothing that we would recognize as a speech.
For example, one person recounts a dream or a hunt, but others break in with comments and jokes. It's just a form of conversation. Or one person goes into a trance as part of a healing ritual for someone who is ill, but the rest of the group is singing or talking or wiping sweat off of the healer, rather than sitting silently.
There was one type of performance, the women's drum dance, where men were expected to sit and watch rather than participate. The author, Marjorie Shostak, thinks it most likely developed in the 19th century (perhaps implying there might have been direct or indirect European influence).
This is exactly what I'm was looking for. Thank you.
I reviewed chapter 13 (on healing rituals). My above comment misremembered a few details, but it's broadly accurate.
This line on the women's drum dance is the closest thing in the chapter to a passive audience at a performance:
>Although some men do not bother to attend, others are drawn to it and sit watching.
Overall, it's a good book if you're interested in what might or might not be a human universal, especially related to gender and sexuality norms, and women's attitudes towards health. Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, about the Mbuti, might also be worthwhile.
I really can't imagine hunter-gatherers doing this. They would have collective, largely interactive musical performances, but the idea of one person explicitly lecturing a group seems like a kind of formalness that doesn't exist for these kind of people.
I suspect that the idea of one person lecturing a group depends on the group being largely anonymous to the one person while the one person is known to the group, which depends on a larger than tribal society. That said, even in a family/tribal context, there would likely be times when one person is up front by the fire telling their story of how they found the cache of honey on the mountaintop - though these might be much more like Q&A sessions or one-many conversations, more than a lecture.
Do people in Berkeley know about the history of the Morrell Airship? In 1908, a guy named Morrell built a (hilariously phallic) 450-foot dirigible roughly where MLK Park is today. After two spectacular failures, in which miraculously no one was killed, he lost his investors. A worthwhile watch just for the photos of a flying bratwurst the size of a city block:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR-yQ4TObJ8
"I came to Berkeley to build my ship for trial purposes, to train my crew and demonstrate to the world that my theory is right."
I've only been to Berkeley once, but I feel like it's some sort of natural attractor for people who might make this statement.
I'd heard of it, but I've never been to Berkeley.
Why don't states that have run out of lethal injection drugs just kill death row inmates via nitrogen? Or, any other similar gas that replaces oxygen. Nitrogen's lethal, it's very widely available (i.e. can't be blocked by the EU), and death is supposed to be fairly painless. It seems like a nobrainer- instead, I see states casting around for weird alternate ways to execute inmates. Why not gas? In fact, why did states go the lethal injectable drugs route at all? Gas seems very easy and much cheaper
I'm also very confused - why that specific drug? Doesn't the US make a shit tonne of various drugs? 1 gram of most opioids would work and would be unblockable.
South Carolina has re-authorized the use of firing squads.
I haven't looked into the details for SC, but I remember that the official US Military protocol for execution by firing squad (*) is an evergreen bit of information on another forum I subscribe to and occasionally comment on. It seems like a very quick and effective system.
(Of course, it's for executions during wartime, and in military chain-of-command. Still, I would anticipate no problems rounding up the N riflemen needed. Note: the BS about half the squad shooting blanks to salve their conscience, is Hollywood falderal.)
For the record, I support the death penalty. However, the record of many spectacular miscarriages of justice ... It is alarming to hear of it regularly esp. w/r/t DNA exoneration of people imprisoned for decades. Still, obvious cases would best for society if those people were gone, closure etc.
________________
* -- If you wonder when/why firing squads are needed, remember that since the beginning of origanized armies, Spies are summarily executed.
On the subject of that particular firing squad rumor, I'd like to share with you all a delightful piece of sketch comedy:
https://youtu.be/x7KBpWxdrj0?t=385
I had read somewhere that that just one of the rifles had a blank charge.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/us/waukesha-parade-attack-trial
Sometimes you get camera footage of the guy committing the crime from multiple angles and then they spend their whole trial trolling the court.
That's NOT what the question was. Textbook Motte and Bailey.
You are moving the goal posts. First it's 'what if they are innocent' then it's 'well, so they're guilty but do they truly deserve to die'.
A life sentence is Death By Old Age.
Because any change in method would be seized upon by anti-death-penalty activists and it would be shut down, *even if the new method were more humane than lethal injection*.
Seems disingenuous to me, unless your honest stance is that capital punishment hypothetically WOULD be just fine if only there were a better method for it.
As much as you think US conservative states would be fine with abortion if their clinics pass all the various regulations on it.
Disagree. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/
Given how long this has been going on, that the AVERAGE time people spend on death row in the US (I'm assuming this is focused on the US issue) is over a decade, and how similar tactics for abortions worked out, I'm not sure what definition of effective would fit it. Non-direct, yes, but effective?
Also, they would probably want some heavier noble gas like argon/krypton. While more expensive, it's easier to contain, works faster, and less likely to cause scares (of the dihydrogen monooxide type)
None of that has to do with deterring the execution method. Or how effective that strategy is.
My point on that segment is that they still use separate long and expensive things rather than just sticking to the "effective" way. Even if it is to delay it until it works out, that still doesn't imply anything on the effectiveness of the original strategy.
Good post.
I think you are assuming states or politicians "want" to execute people, as opposed to the death penalty being something voters are for, which politicians can spend some of their political capital to achieve.
What is more in a politician's favor than being able to be pro-death-penalty, without actually killing anybody? Killing people is politically risky; if somebody was executed wrongfully and it later becomes obvious, you don't want to be the person who can be blamed for making that possible. Plus, you have to spend political capital to make it happen.
Whereas, if you're pro death penalty, but you just can't get anything done, well, that's not your fault.
The most humane way to kill people would be a massive falling weight that crushes the brain before nerve impulses have time to travel. No one seriously proposes this simply because it would look barbaric.
My understanding is that execution methods are usually optimized to minimize the psychological toll on the executioner, rather than to minimize the suffering of the condemned.
I personally think this is the correct prioritization, although I'm still in favor of reducing suffering for the condemned if it can be done with no downsides.
The guillotine works pretty well too.
Yeah, honestly I'd guess the guillotine was probably more humane than the methods we use now.
I mean, it was explicitly invented to be a more humane method of execution than those that were standard at the time - no risk of the headsman being bad at his job and taking many axe swings to do the beheading
If you change the method of execution, death penalty opponents will immediately sue you on the grounds that the new method is inhumane, regardless of what it is, just to use the legal system to filibuster it. The only solution that does not require a long and expensive legal defense is to use a method that a previous court has already ruled is humane.
Largely because the death penalty doesn't mean the state can just kill them however they feel like. In all the cases I've seen people are sentenced to death by very specific means, and those means are codified into law and in the specific sentences. This can be changed, people in Arizona for instance sentenced to death by gas chamber could opt-in to lethal injection as we were transitioning away from the gas chamber (cyanide gas if I recall correctly, not nitrogen.)
If that's true, why don't the state legislatures just change the laws? I don't see that Texas or another red state is going to have a tough time pushing a new execution method through state government
"state government"
Anti-death-penalty activists have deep pockets and will absolutely work each individual method up to SCOTUS. Funny how strategic suppression lawsuits are fine if they're done by and for the Good Side, isn't it.
I note that anti-abortion campaigners absolutely believe that they're saving lives by doing so, and the lives of innocent unborn babies, no less (rather than condemned criminals, a much less sympathetic group)
If you're trying to do *anything*, and you talk yourself into "by any means necessary", you are a menace to society and need to do much less and reflect much more. "By any means necessary" is a blank check, and one that often adds up to a cost far greater than the value of whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. But your myopic focus on the one good thing you are hoping to do, blinds you to all other consequences.
No? The guilty of capital crimes should die, saving their lives is vile, the morality is straightforward.
Except that 'saving lives by any means necessary' isn't allowed when an average citizen wants to be armed for self defense, or wants to live in an area without ethnic groups with higher percentages of violence, or the police want to use coercion to get a confession of a drug dealer, or number of other less dramatic solutions that are not in favor with Elite Left.
So it's basically special pleading in the form of disruption of democracy and social norms, and those advocating for the use of any means for special ends are gonna miss those norms when they're gone.
"Saving lives by any means necessary" isn't something generally favoured in any public policy field in any country known to me, although different balances can legitimately be struck in, for example, the regulation of motorised transport. At any rate, the concept is quite clearly different from saving someone from being killed.
Being opposed to areas members of certain ethnic groups are unable to live doesn't strike me as a notably left wing stance, "elite" or not.
Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma have authorized the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method.
I can’t find a source but I seem to recall that one reason it was never implemented was that it is a rather pleasant way to die. A sort of euphoric intoxication can occur before death. Not what these states want to see in an execution. Writhing in pain, smoking body parts, bursting into flame, etc are more in line with the desired effect.
Not a guy with a serene smile shaking his head saying, “I suppose you stupid fucks will figure out I’m innocent about ten minutes after I’m …”
The original sedative used for lethal injections, sodium thiopental, is absolutely a painkiller. States had to switch to less effective drugs after the EU banned export of sodium thiopental for use in executions.
What's the reason they don't use e.g. fentanyl, which is legal for medical uses? I could be wrong but I imagine death by fentanyl overdose is anesthetising and therefore not painful.
(I'm against the death penalty but as long as we have it we ought to carry it out intelligently)
What do you mean about it being hard to watch -- you mean disturbing to watch?
Why can't sodium thiopental be manufactured outside Europe?
Yeah, seconding this. Related question- is it really that hard to manufacture a very small batch of any chemical compound, in this case sodium thiopental? I understand that a full-scale factory cranking industrial amounts requires a great deal of manufacturing expertise- but if you're literally just making 1-2 doses, can't..... any chemist just whip that up, with the right reagents? Why is it so hard? (I mean I'm not particularly pro-death penalty, I'm just curious from a chemical engineering POV)
But the government obviously can? Or immunize someone else (like a compounding pharmacy) to do it?
Imagine that you are trying to get as many people as possible to fill out a survey, and you have a few rewards (discrete) that you can give out as you see fit. What's the game theory approach to optimize the # of people who fill out the survey?
There are ~140 people total in the pool and the time frame for completion is ~2 weeks
Maybe offer a reward that doesn't cost you much, but would be valued by your target audience.
I've never seen a survey offer a prize worth caring about. When I fill out surveys, it's because I've been persuaded that my doing so is valuable; I suggest you focus on explaining how your research is important, so people want to help you.
Sounds to me like you should be seeking a psychology answer rather than a game theory answer.
The game theory answer would be something about determining everyone's minimum price to fill out the survey and then offering them the smallest amount that you can that's still above that price until you run out of resources. (Using lotteries to create expected values in the desired range if your rewards are too big.) But that assumes that people respond rationally to incentives, which is materially false in most realistic scenarios of the sort you've described.
What most people actually seem to do is to pool your rewards into bundles that are large enough to feel emotionally impactful but not so big that you hit large obvious diminishing returns, and then enter all participants into a lottery for those bundles. I don't know whether that's backed up by research or not.
I liked the approach from Aella's kink survey, where after you fill out the survey it gives you a fun "what fictional character are you as kinky as" message that you can share with your friends.
(I did not reach the end of the survey but apparently tons of people did, and I think many of them were motivated by the message at the end.)
unfortunately the survey cannot be changed and it is boring
It also gives you a numerical score so you and your friends can compare.
Not theory, but a single data point: We had a pool of ~400 people and found they were more incentivized to take the survey when we had more, smaller rewards versus fewer, big ones.
Put all the prize pool together, the winner is drawn by lot, you get one lot/number for people you make take the survey, you must at least make another person take the survey.
My inspiration is stuff that I use to saw a lot on twitter, a company giving out a thing of high value to one or a few person choosed randomly, on the condition that they share and follow. The initial idea was that to get into the pool you have to make someone else take the survey, but that doesn't capitalize on the people that are ready to put in more work to get more chances. Adding the rule "you bring 10 people you get 10x more chances to win" fixes that.
This is all intuition, I never studied any of this stuff formally.
Thoughts on semaglutide and pancreatic cancer risk ? I believe it is generally accepted that inflammation is associated with increased cancer risk and this drug does show increased incidence of pancreatitis. I know the clinical studies on semaglutide did not show increased cancer risk, but they're relatively short-term and pancreatic cancer is usually only detected in later stages after a tumor has been growing for years.
I thought newest research is pointing in direction of fungal infection as initiator of pancreatic cancer.
My father looked into this and I vaguely remember him saying that he thought the studies picked up a weak signal that would have been statistically significant if they had been done better, don't remember the details. He tried to get money and resources for better studies but got frustrated after too much bureaucracy.
The few studies that I found with a quick google suggest that the rate of pancreatitis is about equal between control and treatment groups, 0.3 vs. 0.4 % (another study shows more cases in placebo group). Pancreatitis ==> 13x odds ratio of pancreatic cancer development so that would be a concern but I'd question whether it's relevant.
Given how many cancers are associated with obesity I'd say it's worth it
Hey Trebuchet, I noticed you commented on Zvi's Balsa FAQ and someone replied, then it disappeared before I could read the reply. Did you delete it, or...?
As a test, I wrote a comment on Zvi's blog noting the deletion: https://web.archive.org/web/20221018143316/https://thezvi.substack.com/p/balsa-faq/comments
Zvi deleted it.
I didn't note the author, but there was an early comment arguing that Zvi should remove a question from the FAQ. Zvi did delete that question, and presumably the comment too.
What was the removed question?
Don't have a copypaste available, but the question was something along the lines of "isn't this all a big thing to stop Trump; aren't you Trump-deranged?" and the answer that he mostly wanted prosperity for its own sake but also thought Trump was bad because he was authoritarian and prosperity would help defeat him; he said that he's aware most people with TDS aren't aware they have TDS and that if you think him thinking Trump is bad because he's authoritarian implies he has TDS then you should think he has TDS.
Trebuchet's comment said, roughly, that this question/answer might as well have put out a giant sign saying he's going to be a Democrat shill, when the rest of the post didn't really make you think about Trump at all. (Note again that this is my recollection of what trebuchet said, not how I'd describe things.)
Zvi said something fairly-similar in his first response to criticism https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/why-balsa-research-is-worthwhile/ - I notice that there are very good nonpartisan, uncontroversial reasons to want specifically Donald Trump not to be in the White House (most obviously, his age, the extreme difficulty he had and would again have in Doing Things as an outsider, and his extreme divisiveness to the point that the Democrats' loyalty might not be assured), but Zvi instead gave the controversial answer that even I have reservations about.
Does it seem reasonable to think Zvi has TDS because he writes about how Trump is a bad authoritarian who should be stopped, in the same posts he talks about wanting to be a nonpartisan organization that avoids culture war issues? That really seems like he is so deranged that he can't notice "Stop the top Republican candidate from winning" is culture war. Or I suppose, that he's just doing fundraising PR and trying to double-dip on "policy wonks who like nonpartisanship" and "libs with TDS".
I don't understand why a comment that Trump has authoritarian tendencies is perceived as partisan. Is it possible to criticize someone like Trump without it being considered partisan?
I don't like Trump, though I agree with some of his policies. My dislike for him is not partisan. There are other Republicans I would support. Yet any time I express dislike for Trump, regardless of reason, it is perceived as partisan by Republicans who support him.
No, it's not TDS. You can reasonably dislike Trump without having TDS; TDS requires a certain histrionic panic.
Having said that, while I greatly admire the Zvi, this smells like an upcoming victim of Conquest's second law.
It's not the disliking Trump, it's loudly disliking Trump while simultaneously trying to be a nonpartisan avoider of the culture war. That suggests a serious lack of self-awareness.
Ah, I found it from a another comment:
"We also believe that Trump is at this point a would-be authoritarian and that his returning to the Presidency would be quite bad and is worth working to prevent."
Commenters apparently convinced Zvi that it was a bad idea to openly oppose the presumptive Republican presidential candidate while also claiming to be nonpartisan.
Isn't removing it worse than leaving it in? Isn't having a hidden anti-Trump agenda worse than having an open anti-Trump agenda?
It's only worse if people find out.
To be clear, I did consider this when writing the post spilling the beans. But considering the fact that he's accepting donations, and considering his previous post which is still up, I decided it was worth dropping the bomb.
Authoritarian is a propaganda term. The Democrats were furiously demanding that the entire country be put into hard lockdown based on the opinions given by liberal figures of authority. This is far more "authoritarian" than anything Trump ever did, regardless of whether lockdowns were an effective or otherwise "objectively" correct option or not.
Not as authoritarian as Trump's attempt to have the VP unilaterally declare him the next president, which would have ended presidential democracy.
Yeah I'll take that over being literally imprisoned for months on end.
The general pattern of the past seven years or so in the US, from what I see, is progressives and Democrats stacking the deck while Republicans flip the table. Flipping the table is more spectacular, but a stacked deck still isn't a fair game - it's worth remembering that Russia and the PRC do have elections, and they're not even rigged in terms of votes AFAIK, but media control and disqualification make them useless for actually unseating the ruling party.
For a quick rundown of the deck-stacking measures:
1) strong ideological bias of schools and especially universities, some of it hidden from parents
2) delegitimisation of conservatism and Republicans in media (including some places where there *hasn't* been a successful mirror-version, like Wikipedia)
3) censorship of conservatives and Republicans on social media platforms (mostly unofficial, although the Disinformation Governance Board was an attempt at official)
4) demographic change via immigration
5) opposition to anti-illegal-voting measures (yes, yes, I know the Democrats' reason for this is fear of Jim Crow, but if you gain from illegal action X and you oppose measures to stop X you're in implicit collusion with the criminals doing X regardless of your motives).
Now, obviously, you can say that all of that is still legal and some of Trump's various schemes weren't, which is mostly true, and you can say that Trump's schemes were pretty slimy, which is definitely true, but that list (particularly #1-#3, plus the so-far-unrealised possibility of disqualifying Trump) hits most of the beats of a group trying to set up a Russian-style de facto one party state (there is also a word for the practice of coordinating the vast majority of cultural and scientific organisations around a specific political agenda) and it's not very surprising that people would object to that.
The situation in the US is definitely asymmetrical, but it's tricky to pick one side as undermining democracy more than the other - they both do it, just in different ways.
What is the one thing that has given you the largest productivity boost?
Fear
This one definitely resonates.
Maybe the showrunners for the Rings of Power could use some more fear? Though, I suspect what they lack is courage...
Really enjoyed your review of it in one of the previous threads!
Doing what I like doing instead of what I think I should like doing.
your words cut deep, deeper than any blade
Practice! Specifically with things I have some inherent emotional investment in.
Exercise helps in the long run for me. In the short term, the usual chemical suspects do the job well enough
any particular kinds of exercise? Or just any form of exercise does the trick for you?
Long runs were my goto method when I was younger. As my joints have aged bicycling either outdoors or on my turbo trainer have taken their place.
Strength training is good- and good for you - too. I have a large basement so I like free weights. I have a bench and squat rack and I try to keep to two workouts a week for maintenance. Bench press, bent forward row and squats are my usual routine.
Any sort of physical workout is good for clearing your mind and moving your motivation off top dead center.
I should have been specific, but it is specially weight lifting that helped in my case. Cardio and general physical activity are almost neutral nowadays but helped a lot at first. I have no idea what the general action mechanism is, so your mileage might vary and I might be forgetting another lifestyle intervention I can't think of
Marriage. More generally, having a goal (supporting my family) that went beyond daily grind or entertainment.
Before I was in a serious relationship, I could have gotten by on $10-12/hour in a crummy apartment and not worried about it too much.
Isn't it really weird how salient income becomes once you have a long-term partner?
Never cared about money or wealth at all when I was single, now I think about it at least 3x a day
Getting older, acquiring more obligations, and hence being busier. Work expands to fill the time available.
Amphetamines.
You know I been watching that old tv show Breaking Bad on Netflix. Seem like it did kind of energize and motivate some of the characters.
Birth.
The great colonoscopy debate.
https://youtu.be/WqmbqoDGYt4
The only debate seems to turn on a conflation of efficacy vs. effectiveness. There doesn't seem to be any credible evidence that colonoscopies are not efficacious for individuals. All of the studies that might seem to show that are actually about population-level effectiveness, which, while relevant for public policy, has no relevance for personal medical care. For more detail on this distinction, see: https://peterattiamd.com/colonoscopy-and-acm/
"Parenthetically, of the 11,843 colonoscopies performed in this study there were zero perforations and 15 (0.127%) bleeding complications. If nothing else, this reinforces how safe colonoscopy is in the hands of experienced endoscopists. "
There were ZERO perforations because ZERO of the colonoscopies done in study were under anesthesia! Anesthesia not used in Europe. Without anesthesia it is the patient that prevents perforation because they tell the doctor - Stop! You're hurting me.
Anecdotally, a friend of the family died from sepsis after a poorly-conducted colonoscopy*. The chance of finding a problem and fixing it has to be weighed against the chance of creating a problem.
*(I think this was the same place that killed another friend by giving her radiation treatment in the wrong part of her body. True Rural medicine sucks.)
Yes, there are risks, as with pretty much any medical intervention, but that does not negate the net efficacy of the procedure.
What studies on colonoscopy? This was essential first RCT.
One of the most useful books I read, back in the early 2000’s, was “Raising Your Spirited Child.” My 2nd child was particularly sensitive (with her, we learned that Target sold socks without seams, because seams bothered her so much, and many other kids too, apparently!) The book validated how each kid was different and it’s okay to respect their innate temperaments and unique selves. We also had a wonderful pediatrician who said kids with her temperament usually did really well in school because they have so much tenacity and focus. This kid loves to get A’s and is now in grad school. So there’s that.
So... sorry if I'm being hopelessly obtuse here, but is "spirited" just a precious euphemism for "has Aspergers"?
Not necessarily. This was 22 years ago and I hadn’t ever heard of Asperger’s. The title to the book is: “Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic.” Perhaps I am being preciously euphemistic, but she was never diagnosed with Asperger’s. My point was seeing sensitivity as part of my child’s temperament, not something to be fixed, was very helpful for me.
I'm not trying to accuse you personally of anything, I'm just saying, that sounds exactly like Aspergers.
What is the point? If a child grew up to successful adult while everyone thought she had simply an innate "spirited" or sensitive temperament, and we would then find out that yes, some MDs would have diagnosed her with some sort of Asperger's ... was that kind of Asperger's diagnosis ever useful? Map is not the territory, etcetera.
It's not as useful to be diagnosed as an adult, but for parents of a younger child who notice one or two prominent symptoms (eg. sensitivity to any roughness in fabrics), knowing the other tendencies in the cluster (eg. other sensory issues, like bright lights and loud noises, or a tendency to take things at face value) helps parents head off potential problems before they crop up rather than after they have caused suffering to the child.
Sure. But my point was more in direction ... if the existence of cluster of tendencies / symptoms / personality traits and their characteristics can also be effectively communicated by calling it certain kind of personality cluster and writing books about that particular personality cluster, is it then worse or better than thinking about the same cluster in terms of "medical condition"? We in the West have a certain framework for thinking about medical conditions and diagnoses, and it lends much better to the kind of condition that after diagnosis can be treated by medical professionals with discrete interventions (operations, medications, therapy sessions...). Nobody is diagnosed as "normal", after all.
And yes, I am aware that for some people on the spectrum it can be debilitating.
This sounds like my daughter - very bothered by socks, car seats, and other tactile clothing. She's got a ton of tenacity and focus, but also a lot of anxiety about doing well. She was quite concerned about getting the lowest grade so far this year - 97% in one class.
"Spirited" sounds like a euphemism that's probably about right.
I was always bothered by seams. Also a good pupil.
As a father of two girls age 2 and 4 I would love to hear more from parents that are further down the road as to what advice has turned out to be useful (and what is bunk).
My brother and his wife are soon going to have a child. I don't have any experience with children (and frankly, not much with young parents either). Are there things that you shoud do/should not do? Things that are very appreciated, things that are taboo? For example, I can imagine that unless they specifically ask for it, sending resources on pedagogy or childcare could be seen as weird/annoying/bad/obnoxious.
In addition to the other good advice, I note that there are a few vaccines one is meant to get booster shots for before interacting with a newborn. I know Whooping Cough is one of them but I'm sure there are others. (I need to look into it because I too am about to be an uncle in a few weeks)
Good one! The whooping cough vaccine's protection attenuates over the course of about a decade. My wife (then girlfriend) got it back in 2009 and it was no fun. She coughed hard enough to crack a rib, and then, of course, kept coughing. It was painful and went on for weeks.
Unless otherwise indicated, all unsolicited advice is criticism, and will be perceived as such.
In addition to what everyone else has said: one of the most valuable things you can give to the parents of a small child is time to themselves. Offering to take the baby for a walk around the block, or watch the baby at home so the parents can themselves take a walk around the block, can be wonderful. Maybe not in the first few weeks, but soon after that.
Do: offer to bring by snacks/ cooked meals, ask if they need anything from the store, offer to help out with errands/etc. Emphasize that you are not fazed if baby cries or if they need to be late to an event. Educate yourself on how primitive newborns are (no neck control!) so you know what to expect and don't suggest that their 2 month old should be sitting up or speaking. Suggest looking up "5 S's" on youtube to learn how to help calm fussy baby. Ask parents how they are doing instead of just asking about the baby.
Don't: insist on rigorous meeting times, since the new baby's nap schedule will likely dictate this. Offer suggestions for why baby is crying. Insist on meeting baby before they are ready. Buy random baby crap they don't want.
Source: I have a young child :)
Thank you!
oh, sorry I more thing I forgot: wash your hands before touching the baby, and don't visit if you're sick, even if it's just a cold! A newborn with a cold is very unhappy, and a fever in a newborn is a medical emergency that requires hospitalization.
Thanks for the precision. I knew that you had to be careful but didn't know that a fever could be this dangerous.
The extremes of early sickness fade fast. That's mostly a very young newborn, which calms down significantly after a few weeks and especially a few months.
yes, >~2 months you no longer have to go to the ER for fever, but I still think sickness in older babies should be prevented when it's simple stuff like not visiting when you're actively sick!
the parents will definitely not be thanking you if you pass along a mild sickness to their slightly older baby, as it often interferes with their sleep and they get pretty cranky.
And as soon as they start in daycare they (and you) will be sick ~1/month, and yes I am speaking from experience
I'll third the idea of doing chores. My mother in law came to visit when our son was about 2 weeks old and the biggest help was that she could do little chores which gave my wife and I a few extra minutes to sleep. Laundry, dishes, take out the trash - these things are awesome.
Also just being another set of eyes or hands for watching or holding the baby is really helpful. I would say that infants are a lot more sturdy than I thought before having one. As long as their head is supported it would be really hard to hurt them when you hold them, so don't be too nervous.
It depends on the personality of your brother and his wife, but my wife and I weren't really interested in chatting much during those first weeks/months. Just too tired, too much to do and think about. So don't expect much in that way and don't be offended if they seem annoyed all the time (lack of sleep does that to you!).
If your sister in law has to pump (instead of nurse) this will be a big pain in the ass for her. It takes up just as much time as nursing but the baby still hasn't eaten. Being available to give her time to pump can be really helpful as well.
Thanks for the detailed answer, I'll keep that in mind!
Are you local? If so, the best thing you can do is go over, do dishes for them, learn to change a diaper etc.
This is great advice.
Slightly different emphasis. Chores are a favor, do it graciously and if you aren't feeling it feel free not to.
But, when you're ready for babysitting, treat it like they're doing you a favor. "Hey guys, can I get some uncle time on Friday? You guys could go out."
This will be (likely) very much appreciated, and will let you build a relationship with the kid.
Another idea for a little later: take the kid for a weekend or a week. I did this with my sisters' kids when they were little and midsize, and now they do this for me. For the parent it's a nice couple of days for a getaway (or long home project), for the kids it's an adventure (I used to take my nieces and nephew to Shakespeare in the park and the Ren Faire), and for you it will (hopefully) be a treat. Kid time, especially when you don't have kids, can be a lot of fun, and it's different from the rest of your life.
Bringing prepared food or dishes ready to be cooked is also very much appreciated
Thanks!
I am, so I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!
I would second this. If you really want to help them go visit them and help them with chores for a while. The initial stages are very labor/attention intensive.
Thank you!
I tend to send this (quite short!) link to my friends expecting a first baby:
http://mistybeach.com/mark/Babies.html
I make it clear to them that I'm doing this to make me feel better so they should not feel obligated to read it. I have had several get back to me that the two page writeup was useful (partially because it doesn't overlap with most other 'helpful tips').
Yeah, as a dad I agree: that’s some solid advice
Thanks!
Thanks!
Has Deiseach reviewed the end of Rings of Power yet?
I have done, in Open Thread 245:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-245/comment/9731208
My conclusions: this is not "The Lord of the Rings". Think of it as "Amazon's 'Rings Of Power'" and it's an okay-ish fantasy show. But they have gone from changing the canon to inventing their very own original horseshit which is now driving the plot, such as it is, so it's not Tolkien.
One of the worst episodes of television I have ever watched is the Racist Truck Episode of "Supernatural". But the worst thing about that was simple dumb stupid idiocy. It wasn't mean-spirited, it wasn't ripping something better off, it was a ham-handed attempt at "Racism Bad" and when people said this was a terrible episode, nobody came out swinging about "criticism of this episode means you hate empowered black women in lead roles so you are a white supremacist". It was accepted that this was awful, and everyone moved on.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/Racist_Truck
Rings Of Awesome Powa! is not that kind of awful. It's mean-spirited pissing on canon. Payne and McKay (who, out of their own mouths in a "Hollywood Reporter" interview, admitted they had spent ten years writing scripts that never got made) think they can write better than Tolkien, so they invent their own crap. Now Sauron is an incel who goes bad because Galadriel rejected him harshly. And this is "complexly evil" not simplistic evil like Tolkien wrote about cosmic entities. Sauron is gonna be the next Tony Soprano or Walter White in season two!
The fact that *these* are their benchmarks shows the poverty of their imaginations. "Uh, duh, how we gonna write bad guy for modern audience? Uh, how 'bout we copy hit shows that ended fifteen and nine years ago respectively?"
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/rings-of-power-sauron-season-2-lotr-1235240809/
“Season one opens with: Who is Galadriel? Where did she come from? What did she suffer? Why is she driven?” says Payne. “We’re doing the same thing with Sauron in season two. We’ll fill in all the missing pieces.”
“Sauron can now just be Sauron,” McKay adds. “Like Tony Soprano or Walter White. He’s evil, but complexly evil. We felt like if we did that in season one, he’d overshadow everything else. So the first season is like Batman Begins, and the The Dark Knight is the next movie, with Sauron maneuvering out in the open. We’re really excited. Season two has a canonical story. There may well be viewers who are like, ‘This is the story we were hoping to get in season one!’ In season two, we’re giving it to them.”
I could go on, but why bother? It's not Tolkien. As modern generic TV fantasy, it's meh. Too much crammed into the last episode to try and cliffhanger us into caring about season two, when as ever the 'mysteries' are transparently obvious:
Is the Stranger Gandalf? (Heck, yeah)
Is Isildur dead? (No, he has to grow up and kill Sauron, like in the movies this show has been copying all season)
Is Elendil's fake daughter going to look into the palantir? (Of course she is)
Is Pharazon going to take advantage of Tar-Palantir's death and Míriel's blindness to seize power? (If he doesn't, he's an idiot, and he's one of the few characters with three functioning brain cells in this show)
Is Elendil's fake daughter going to be the human version of Galadriel and, after looking into the palantir and seeing the future, she is now going to be making all the decisions about the fate of Númenor that her father made in canon, the same way Galadriel is the one who decided three rings should be made? (Well, since they have to do something more with her than have her standing around looking gormless, Isildur is off the scene for the moment, and Anarion apparently does not exist, yes to all this).
Is Celeborn dead? (Since they decided in episode seven that oh yeah, Galadriel has a husband so she can't bone Sauron, no - though he may well wish he were)
Dash it, sometimes I wish the some of the very old original primitive versions of the legendarium had survived into Tolkien's later revisions, because I'd love to turn Makar and Meássë loose on these twerps:
https://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/reference/characterofthemonth/makar-measse.php
Yes, Sauron can now be like a Mafia boss! What a comedown for an eternal spirit who was involved in the very creation of the material world!
My feelings about the show are mixed, and I found the finale disappointing, but:
"Sauron is an incel who goes bad because Galadriel rejected him harshly"
He was bad all along, just convincing her he wasn't by telling incomplete truths. I don't love that last, since book Galadriel was suspicious of Annatar from the get go. But he didn't become evil in the finale. He wants to order the world and rule it, and is known to have been willing to use brutal methods (as Adar recounts) to advance those goals well before he ever met Galadriel.
(His efforts to get established as a smith in Numenor suggest that plan A was to forge rings there, and maybe make it his power base.)
Offering her all the kingdoms of the world to rule by his side is an innovation, but probably not all that different from what Saruman presumably thought he was agreeing to as he plotted his sudden but inevitable betrayal.
The Stranger is likely Gandalf, though some other wizard remains possible. If he is Gandalf, he shouldn't be going to Rhun ("to the East I go not"), while the Blue Wizards did. But the latter don't appear in LotR and so using one of them would require the Tolkien Estate to give permission.
I don't think "Is Isildur dead?" or "Is Earien going to look in the palantir" really even qualify as mysteries. As you say, anyone who's seen the film knows Isildur will wind up with an heir, and anyone who's seen *any* film knows that you don't show someone walking up the stairs to a palantir in order to establish that she turned around at the last moment to get bubble tea. Thinking Isildur is dead is presumably going to affect Elendil's motivations next season.
Likewise, even if one had never read the Akallabeth, Pharazon surely reads as "scheming vizier" to literally anyone. He's even got the beard! (Though I don't think the show has informed the viewer how close he is in the line of succession.)
Anarion does exist, even if he's Sir Not Appearing This Season. He's doing something Elendil doesn't approve of in the west. Almost certainly western Numenor rather than The West, though I suppose some version of Amandil's attempt to redo Earendil's journey that will wind up with him shipwrecked and unsuccessful isn't completely ruled out. (Except then Elendil would be concerned rather than angry.)
Possibly Earien will be giving Elendil the advice he got from his father re being ready to get out of Dodge, based on her palantir vision.
I do wonder just what the show Numenoreans are doing with all those ships They have a Sea Guard but no naval adversaries (unless they think they're defending against Valinor, in which case lotsa luck), and a busy harbor even though going to Middle Earth with 5, make that 3 ships was a momentous and politically fraught decision. (And Pelargir is an old Numenorean port that can be resettled with Southlanders.) Book Numenor was a major maritime empire engaged in extensive colonization and pillage by this point, but RoP Numenor doesn't appear to be doing that.
The mystery box approach is frustrating, because they're trying to invent mysteries in a canon where we already know X lives and Y happens.
This may work for a casual audience that doesn't know the books or the movies, but then the question remains: who are they making this show for? They've been going very heavy on the Tolkien angle, but if their audience is "people just tuning in for a fantasy show who know nothing about the world in question", then why not just do Original Series?
And even if you are a casual viewer who has no idea who Isildur is, you must have picked up that he lives because his horsie was set free to run off and find him. Like Lassie. Or Aragorn's horse, in the movies, which the show is totally not copying scenes and even lifting dialogue from, not at all!
So their 'mysteries' are very obvious. Yes, that's Gandalf. Yes, Isildur is alive (because if he's dead, then Berak the Horsie would be very upset and we don't upset animals today in movies). Yes, Earien is going to look in the palantir. They *might* possibly set up more (fake) conflict between Earien and her father due to what she sees - if she sees the Destruction of Númenor like everyone else who has looked in, she might double-down on her opposition to getting involved in war in Middle-earth.
"Pharazon surely reads as "scheming vizier" to literally anyone. He's even got the beard!"
Don't forget the eyebrows! Those are Evil Eyebrows with the best of them!
Rings of Power Númenor is *all over the place*. They have a settlement/port in Middle-earth, after declaring in earlier episodes that they had nothing to do with the place for centuries. They have a navy, but they're doing nothing with it. The mighty fleet of three ships couldn't be brought back up to its original strength of five ships by taking any of the other ships we see in the harbour?
As for the handling of Sauron, that is the greatest divergence.
Everything he said to Galadriel was true - she is the one who insisted he was the King of the Southlands, not him; he did tell her he took the pouch off a dead man; he did want to remain in Númenor and it was Galadriel who promised Miriel that he would come along; since we see the forging of the three rings without previously making the nine and the seven, it does look like he genuinely wanted to help the Elves.
Now, there could be a masterplan in place whereby he caused the Darkness that made the Elves fade so they need the mithril so he can pop up to tell them to make rings with it, rings he will control - and that in order to get into Eregion, he manipulated Galadriel all along, but that would mean that he had to know she would end up on a ship to Valinor and then jump overboard so he could be on a raft in exactly the right place to pick her up and worm his way into her confidence so that she would take him along. That's more plotting than the show has demonstrated it can pull off so far.
Halbrand/Sauron's character has acted very variably all along; at times, he was obviously doing bad things (e.g. on the raft when he split off alone and then the rest of them got attacked and killed by a sea monster so that he and Galadriel were the only ones left) but then at other times he seems genuine about just wanting to stay in Númenor and work as a smith. Galadriel has done worse things than he has done so far, so how much was him being manipulative and how much was him trying to sincerely change?
Of course Sauron is evil, of course his initial weak impulse to repent after the War of Wrath faded, but this version of Sauron is so different from canon that I think they really are trying to portray him as some kind of conflicted anti-hero; Galadriel could have set him on the right path if only she hadn't rejected him out of hand when he wanted her help to bind him to the light!
It's mushy nonsense, and I do think they chopped and changed from one episode to another based on audience reaction; they did seem to be setting up a Galadriel/Halbrand romance, but since most people had already guessed he was Sauron, that wouldn't work any more so they threw in a mention of Celeborn in episode seven and had the big break-up in the finale.
Because they had dawdled along time-wasting in the previous episodes, and as I suspect had intended to stretch out storylines into the second season (like 'is Halbrand Sauron?' maintaining the 'mystery' so that they could introduce him into Eregion and becoming a confidante of Celebrimbor), they had to finish everything up in a hurry for the finale.
So rush, rush, rush, the rings get forged in a matter of days, Galadriel finally suspects Halbrand is not who she thinks due to a random line from Celebrimbor that is an echo of what Adar said (even though up to now she is the one who has been pushing him as King of the Southlands) and we get that 'revelation' which everyone knew was coming.
They built up the notion of the white-cloaked cultists, then threw all that away in a hurried conclusion (unless they plan to bring them back as a 'surprise' when Gandalf and Nori get to Rhun - you thought we were dead, but we can't be killed by you!) and now we have Sauron heading off to Mordor and Galadriel responsible for the three Elven rings.
And apparently still not telling anyone that yes, Sauron is back and that was him? Will we have this drawn out through season two - when is she going to tell? Elrond knows now as well, is he going to tell? what will they do?
EDIT: Funnily enough, I would have enjoyed a few episodes of Celebrimbor and Halbrand being forge buddies, because (a) finally Celebrimbor got something to do other than stand around in his bathrobe (b) the exploding forge bits were funny, yes I'm easily pleased (c) they seemed to be genuinely getting on well and (d) I would have liked to see the process of learning to make the rings, seven and nine as well as the three. It would have fit better if the sixteen were the first trial essays, getting stronger as they learned more, and *then* we had the big revelation, Halbrand flees, and Celebrimbor changes the plan so that instead of the final One Ring they had intended to create, he makes the three Elven rings.
But we couldn't get that because they had to cram everything into the finale in order to tidy up their dangling plots.
I'm guessing that their main imagined viewer is someone who saw the films, doesn't know them backwards and forwards but may be caught short by major contradictions. (So, e.g., Celeborn certainly isn't dead and neither is Isildur, but they're not expected to know much more than "the Rings were forged" and *maybe* "Numenor fell", rather than any details.)
Though they're clearly throwing in details that only book fans would care about, whether or not they can win them all over. Showing Aman in the days of the Trees, alluding to stories they don't have the rights to tell in sculpture, etc. That's obviously polarizing, and will only irritate people who are already unhappy with the massive liberties they're taking. But it's hard to know how it will all shake out.
(I know plenty of people who hate the Jackson movies for similar reasons, and I can certainly while away a few hours on the places where he fundamentally fails to get Tolkien myself. But I like the films overall, and it's probably fair to say that they're remembered very positively in popular culture and genre fandom generally even if the controversy within Tolkien fandom will never die.)
I'm not sure the chronology of the production allows for them to have made changes based on audience reaction, unless it was from test audiences.
I agree that I really wish they'd spent more time on the forging of the Rings and Halbrand insinuating himself into Eregion. (Send Galadriel somewhere else if she's not to look dense for not twigging sooner.) I don't like the idea of the Three being the first Rings they ever forged, with no need for essays in the craft and no clear idea why they'd forge sixteen more Great Rings with the emergency past and Sauron revealed.
(Also: who puts a forge at the top of a tower? I'm not remotely an expert, but that just seems like a bad idea, from having to haul fuel and metal up and down the stairs to the hazards of explosions like the one we see messing with the structure.)
I don't think Sauron is going to be a conflicted antihero so much as a villain whose motives we know. Adar kind of fills that slot anyway, and I won't be surprised if the heroes are forced to make common cause with him on the grounds that "independent Orc kingdom" is better than a Dark Lord.
Of course they have the general prequel problem that they can't actually win. But maybe the Orcs get driven offstage to the east or south. Or they're crushed with sad music in a way that helps enable the victory of the Last Alliance as Galadriel sheds a single tear for her erstwhile foe.
I do think that Sauron is supposed to be adapting his plans on the fly, though not necessarily full "everything that has transpired has done so according to my design". I'm not sure if he's supposed to have planned his chance meeting with Galadriel (which yes, would be a stretch even for an immortal Ainu, not least because no one sane could predict that one of the oldest and most respected Eldar in Middle-Earth would jump into the ocean, let alone where). I *think* he's supposed to be trying to make opportunities as they come: get in Galadriel's good graces, insinuate himself into Numenorean smithcraft, okay, maybe he can work with king of the Southlands if the elf won't leave him in peace to use ringcraft in Numenor, wait, infiltrating the Noldor is even better!
Maybe he knew about (or arranged) the whole Elvish decay/mithril/Celebrimbor wanting to emulate Feanor thing and manipulated affairs from the beginning to get himself put into the middle of it. But I don't think that's been shown, and I agree that would be a lot of a lot if they confirm that's what happened. I'd at least rather read it as Sauron's adapting fluidly to changing circumstances and taking advantage of his adversaries' ignorance.
I'm guessing that there wasn't a lot of sincere interest in helping the Elves as much as laying the groundwork for dominating them. (Ideally with Galadriel as Witch-queen, but if not, oh well.)
Presenting himself as offering a means to improve the world is in keeping with pre-Downfall Sauron. But I think the fact that he's been comprehensively lying through omission and that he's shown to have been doing monstrous experimentation (both his northern stronghold and Adar's reports, the latter reaffirmed by Halbrand's clear rage at Adar) communicates to the audience that he's not actually misunderstood, and while he may have self-righteous justifications they're not actually righteous and I don't think we're meant to think they are.
(Which isn't to say some segment of the fandom won't become his partisans. But people got from actual Tolkien to writing "The Last Ringbearer". Ditto shipping heroes with hot villains. There's no accounting for fans.)
I'd actually missed that Galadriel didn't tell them Halbrand was Sauron. I really hope that's an editing oversight and it will be clear she did tell them next season.
I agree puzzle box storytelling is getting very old, and hope they're not going to keep relying on it to the same extent going forward.
What is absolutely infuriating is that somebody involved with this has read the books, or knows something, maybe just Googled shit online, because they put in tiny details that only lore nerds will catch.
Like having the Bough of Return on the Númenorean ships (a real 'blink and you'll miss it' reference). Or the bat-eared headdress of one of the white cloaked mystics referring to Thuringwethil (and the moon phases on the collar of another make me think 'moon - werewolves - Draugluin'). Small little things that are plainly nods to the lore and those fans who know the lore.
And then they do crap like give Elendil a daughter, invent 'Halbrand', and so on.
The Jackson films have their flaws, no two ways about it; they got Denethor wrong, for a start (but that's a choice I understand making for the sake of the movie story). "The Hobbit" movies were wrong, too little material stretched out over three movies, meaning that a ton of filler had to be inserted and invented. But there are moments there where Jackson just gets it *right*, even if he has made changes. There aren't any similar moments I can point to in "Rings of Power"; the dinner table scene between Durin and Gil-galad was one I *thought* might be something, where there is a seriousness about what Dwarves value and what Elves have made of it, and that there is some kind of diplomacy between Dwarves and Elves going on, some kind of cultural respect - but then the show ruins it by cheapening it: Durin made it all up, he only wanted a free table because Dísa has been nagging him to get a new one so he lied to con Gil-galad out of it.
Even Ralph Bakshi is looking way better by comparison. He just tried rotoscoping and other novel effects, he didn't mess about with the plot.
A forge at the top of a tower? Yes. It's meant to be Celebrimbor's workshop, but given the explosion they are indeed forging the mithril alloy there, which as you say is *dumb*.
And what about the giant forge they needed the Dwarves to build, which has been flying up at top speed (can't beat Dwarven craftsmanship) and is now a useless huge building in the courtyard? It's more bad storytelling: well yeah they don't need the industrial forge now that they won't be using every scrap of mithril the Dwarves can produce, but it's a red herring that is a waste of audience attention, and more of the way they introduce and then dump plot elements for convenience.
I admit I'd missed the Bough of Return till you'd mentioned it in an earlier comment.
I'm not too bothered by invented characters if they're not disruptive to the story. (The effortful demographic box checking can be obtrusive, but it's the style of the time.) Inventing interstitial stories isn't necessarily a bad thing for an adaptation, and something like Elendil having a daughter doesn't throw things out of whack the way, e.g., Thingol having a son and heir would unbalance the story of Beren and Luthien.
Especially if her early inclination towards the King's Men means that she's not going to outlive Numenor, which wouldn't surprise me.
Likewise, Arondir and Bronwyn. We know there were elf-mortal romances other than the three big ones, since the princes of Dol Amroth were descended from one. And that story is especially odd in the context of Tolkien's idea that Elves (other than Finwe) don't marry twice. The main departure from Tolkien is having the male in this one be from the higher kindred, where Tolkien always has the man marrying up. (Thingol->Melian as well as all the Eldar/Edain marriages and Finduilas's unrequited love for Turin. Arguably Eol->Aredhel also fits the pattern even though they're both Elves.)
Pharazon having a son, especially one who isn't Miriel's, is a bigger departure, But I'm willing to wait and see what they do with that.
One problem with this sort of storytelling is that the first season involves a lot of table setting. We're in the first 20% of the story, so to some extent it's like asking for brilliance in Jackson' first half of The Fellowship of the Ring. (Which gave us the ridiculous wizard battle, because when you have Ian McKellan and Christopher Lee together the last thing you want to do is just let them act at one another. But it did also give us Hobbiton looking just as Hobbiton should, to its great credit.)
I absolutely get not wanting to spend another eight hours seeing where it will go next season when they haven't won your trust. And all things being equal I'd prefer a closer adaptation rather than an "inspired by" story. I'm still curious enough for now. Though a two-year gap is not going to help retain audience interest, or even memory of exactly what happened this season.
>nobody came out swinging about "criticism of this episode means you hate empowered black women in lead roles so you are a white supremacist". It was accepted that this was awful, and everyone moved on.
That's because it aired in 2006, when it was much harder to defend a bad story by calling your opponents racist.
Ah, for the dear dead days of the past!
Especially because in 2006 it certainly felt like there a lot of people in Fandom starting down this road.
(In fact, there were people who excessively focused on the inadequate treatment of racism as to why that episode was bad - because if the show had better interrogated its own internal racism it would have been worthwhile.)
I love how you write! So personnal and fun!
It's very nearly so bad you should watch it, but only if you don't care about Tolkien's canon.
I don't know who half the actors are; the one guy I thought was excellent was Joseph Mawle, who plays Adar and even under the prosthetic makeup managed to out-act Morfydd 'One Expression' Clark in their scene together.
The guy who plays Elendil is Lloyd Owen, who I see is RADA trained. Then he gets told in episode seven "stand there and be emotional with the horsie". I hope to God the actors are trousering the cash with both hands, because they might as well be getting some benefit from this trainwreck.
There have been some fun memes out of it, but as anything approaching "Lord of the Rings", apart from shamelessly copying scenes and dialogue from the Jackson movies - forget it! What's even worse is that all concerned, from Bezos on down, have sworn and vowed and declared and avouched that they are YUUUGE Tolkien fans and want to be as faithful to the canon as possible and are so inspired that they start every day with a quote from the books.
And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
I'm telling you, this makes Ralph Bakshi look like a genius in comparison. He may have been 60s/70s counter-culture trippin', but the worst thing he did was steal Boromir's trousers. He didn't decide to rewrite the entire freakin' lore so that Sauron was disguised as a human from 'the Southlands' and was infatuated to the point of proposing marriage to Galadriel.
No, that's not something I imagined after sustaining massive brain damage - they really went and did that.
What is the point of Elendil's fake daughter? They said they created her to "inject some female energy" into the wotsit, and their main sign of this is her bazooms. They are not the most massive of bazooms ever, but they are very noticeably bazooms, and possibly even braless bazooms, and they're about the one thing that you remember about her. The show seemed to be trying to start up a romance between her and Pharazon's fake son, but to say that this was watery would be an insult to water, which after all is a vitally necessary element.
I'm guessing Earien is there to be a viewpoint character to the King's Men and the descent of Numenorean society, which Elendil and Isildur are necessarily going to be outside of as secret and then increasingly open rebels. Pharazon is an obvious villain, but arguably someone needs to be the "normal", not initially evil Numenorean who gets caught up in the events of the Downfall through desperation and temptation and fear. I may be wrong, of course.
Yeah, but I think Cemen, Pharazon's fake son, is the guy who is/was supposed to be the 'ordinary viewpoint Númenorean who's a King's Man'.
Up until he was impressed with Earien's bazooms and was persuaded by her to go off to try to persuade his father not to support Míriel sending ships to Middle-earth to liberate the Southlands.
I have no idea what is supposed to be going on there. Earien was standing around in the square watching the whole "Elves are gonna take our jobs!" rabble-rousing, and it *seemed* like she didn't like this, but at this stage I don't know if she's pro- or anti-Faithful. She seems to be "don't go to war", her chief reason for trying to get Cemen to persuade his dad to stop the liberation fleet (all three ships), but if her opinions are any more formed than that is hard to say.
And Cemen is all over the place - first he was "heck yeah I am proud Númenorean" and supporting his dad, then he switched to bazooms and was "why get involved in someone else's war?" where Pharazon had to explain the facts of political life to him (for Númenor's gain by having a client state in Middle-earth which will enable us to have a base for trade and exploitation of resources), then he tried burning down/blowing up one ship which managed to take out two ships (so he was effective in his own way) but didn't stop the liberation fleet of three ships sailing.
Since the show can't be bothered to give us any background on who is thinking what, I have no idea what Earien's politics - if any - are, or what Cemen's are now: does he stick with Dad who is on track to be the de facto ruler of Númenor now, or does he remain loyal to bazooms, and is Earien on Pharazon's side now? What will she do after looking in the palantir?
I'm not even interested in getting that answered, since both Earien and Cemen are tissue-thin characters with no development other than "I'm Earendil's daughter" and "I'm attracted to her (for whatever reasons, probably bazooms because she has done nothing or said nothing of note yet)".
She’s in the Builders’ Guild, and I can think of only one major construction project in Numenor’s future.
(“So how are you on altars? Say about six feet long, or as much more as Numenoreans are taller than other Men?”)
I have to say, I really like Owen's voice. I almost wonder if they should have saved him to be Saruman, whether in this production or some other.
Some of them seem to be good actors, if they got anything in the damn script to work with. He's a RADA graduate, so he's got the training and the chops, and his biggest scene so far was doing some horse-whispering.
Whoever is playing Celebrimbor might as well have phoned in his lines (all six of them he's had so far) while they stuck a mannequin in a bathrobe in the corner to represent him, for all he's been given to do so far. It's particularly galling since he's the smith who crafted the rings, and that *should* have been his Big Episodes, but they knocked off the smithing in about ten minutes of the finale, so back he goes into standing around doing nothing much for the next season.
The only thing that would draw me to watch season two is if we get a lot more of Adar, who is a vaguely sympathetic character and the guy playing him is a damn good actor. However, it looks like season two is going to be "all Sauron, all the time" as our dauntless duo of showrunners develop him to be "Tony Soprano or Walter White".
There's something to look forward to 🙄
Thanks for the link! XD
I just started a substack! It's called "Eat Shit and Prosper"—gonna be talking a lot about the gut microbiome and its connection to psychiatric/neurodegenerative diseases, but also more general stuff about microbial ecology.
https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-jungle
Some practical advice for staying healthy in an increasingly adversarial world, with a lil dose of pontification on who's really driving the bus (hint: you are the bus).
I thought the Orange Menace wrote that book.
Quick question about eating shit: Is fecal transplant looking promising for people with Crohn's disease? I looked into it for a friend a few years ago, & results seemed mixed.
Looking promising! 36% of patients in full clinical remission 2 months out from a 2-dose regimen. Maybe not the miracle you'd hope to see, but it's a lot better than pretty much anything else.
More importantly, pretty much no serious adverse events, i.e. not likely to make things worse if they give it a try.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jgh.15598
Better and longer-lasting results with multiple attempts, apparently much higher response rates going down the hatch rather than up the back.
My friend has an 11 yo son who has lots of stomach aches and upsets from his Crohn's. Kid's now on -- I forget what, but some drug the docs hoped not to have to use on him. Maybe a steroid? And still with lots of stomach pain even on whatever undesirable drug it is. At my suggestion, friend asked the doc about fecal transplant, doc knew about it -- apparently down-the-hatch route is called "crapsules" -- but declined to try that at this point. Is there a down side to fecal transplant? Do docs just regard it as too iffy and weird? Are they all hypnotized by sales pitches from drug reps? What's the case against crapsules?
You could do the experiment if you have a suitable donor. It is perhaps unattractive but nobody will die.
I know, when docs were first doing this they just mixed water and donor feces in a blender and gave it to patient as an enema. (Patients were told to BYOB, bring your own blender.) I’d try this myself in a heartbeat if I had Crohn’s.
Is your friend healthy? Thepowerofpoop.com has some solid guides for DIY
Edit: also, when docs were first doing this, it was 4th century China and people like Ge Hong were calling it the "yellow soup".
Ge Hong also known for reporting the usefulness of Artemisia in malaria! and eating mercury to try and attain immortality.
Still, as Meatloaf would say...
Regulatory capture.
FDA is regulating it as a drug, meaning a doctor can only do FMT as part of a registered clinical trial.
They issued an "enforcement discretion" notice allowing it to be used outside of clinical trials for C. diff, because tens of thousands of people die of that every year.
But for everything else, the current thinking is "You can wait until Rebiotix introduces the $5000 version of shit-in-a-bag/shit-in-a-pill". And you'll pay out of pocket because it'll be off-label use. Fortunately, poop is unique among drugs in that literally everybody healthy produces it once a day.
Shoot me an email. SDSkolnick@gmail.com
Come talk to me about "the horror" when you're watching one of your parents die of Alzheimer's, when they're hitting the cliff where the faculties start to go quicker and quicker, and there's exactly one medical procedure that's been reported to reverse the progression, and no doctor will do it for them even though it's got a better risk profile than any approved drug for their condition.
Or when your kid is practically skin and bones, and you have to try and think of the words to say that'll get him to eat a little, even though he's not faking the tears when he says the mashed potatoes makes his insides hurt, but you've tried every food, every diet, and no matter what it is, everything makes him hurt, and at the back of your mind you wonder if he's right when he says you should just let him starve to death.
Here's your citation, since I'm sure you'd ask. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0300060520925930
Antibiotics are, of course, a powerful tool that have their place in medicine. But "overuse" is specifically using them outside of that place, and there's no reason we shouldn't come down on that as hard as possible.
Been a while since I took a close look at the stats, but IIRC 1/3-1/2 of antibiotic prescriptions are deemed unnecessary in retrospect.
Obviously few physicians prescribe an antibiotic they know is unnecessary, but "see if it helps" thinking is all too common, especially among patients. The "customer is always right" mentality is not helping with this situation.
Also: that last graph you linked....interesting that the slope doesn't actually change when penicillin is introduced. What do you think is up with that?
Erstwhile friend-of-the-blog Michael Shellenberger appears to have gone all-in on "solar/wind bad, oil/gas good" on his Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1581730315852136448
It's not worth my effort to respond to his Gish Gallop of talking points, but maybe somebody he will listen to could take a crack at it.
Germany industry is going at a gallop.
I can never decide if this guy is an honest broker, or feels the need to play devils advocate because the opposing viewpoint is so prevailing that he feels the need to come out with "hot takes". Certainly solar/wind have some downsides. But the language in these tweets seems kind of silly.
He's an advocate for nuclear energy, I believe, not for oil and gas.
Yep, I haven’t seen him advocate for oil and gas, but I have seen him advocate for nuclear.
But I think advocating against solar/wind isn’t a great strategy. Similar to how anti-nuclear advocacy has resulted in increased coal power, advocating against solar/wind will result in the same, which seems bad.
If the discussion is really about solar vs nuclear, I appreciate pointing out the limitations of solar (of which baseload power is the biggest), but fossil fuel electricity is still the main problem, and should be the main focus of criticism, IMO.
I would say that the main *immediate* problem, seems to be politically symbolic decisions to shut down functioning existing power plants like the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, without giving one shred of thought to the physical repurcussions of those decisions.
Shellenberger rose quite a bit in my estimation when I learned about all his work to stop the Diablo Canyon shutdown.
In other good news on the nuclear front, GA's new nuclear plant, delayed for three DECADES, has finally loaded all the fuel into the first reactor, and will power up in a few months pending standard start-up/fuelling tests and observations.
Maybe in Germany? But the biggest change in power generation in the United States in the last 20 years has been a steep decline in coal, and a corresponding rise in natural gas. Solar/wind is still single-digit percentages and nuclear has been very stable.
Is wind still single-digit percentages? I thought that gas was about 40%, nuclear, coal, and "renewables" were each about 20%, and that within renewables, wind had passed hydro and solar is growing substantially too.
That's pretty spot on, but yes wind is at 9%. And I doubt it will get a lot larger, for the same reason hydro has been stuck where it is for decades. Both depend critically on having a certain unusual geographical situation -- either a nicely dammable river for hydro, or an unusually steady wind and lots of space for wind. The good places are already mostly used up.
It's possible someone might think of some innovation in wind turbine design that makes use in lower wind speeds plausible -- I think that has already happened once -- but places where the wind just blows all day all the time are necessarily pretty unusual -- I mean, there's a good reason we switched away from sail power in transport long ago -- and having a use factor of 5% really makes a hash out of your ROI.
Didn't hydro follow a standard sort of S curve in that growth? At least, it looks like there were several decades of stable growth in hydro, and then a slowdown, before it stalled. Wind seems to still be in the early days of stable growth, so I wouldn't expect it to stall any time soon.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42955
My go-to for this sort of thing is Our World in Data. Some relevant charts: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source will give you the % values you want for electricity production, which is what we've been talking about. Wind is not close to passing hydropower, but you can look at country-by-country stuff to see if it might be true for individual countries. For example, in USA it is true that wind has surpassed hydroelectric (see https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-source-stacked?country=OWID_WRL~CHN~IND~USA~JPN~DEU~GBR~BRA~FRA~CAN~SWE~ZAF)
Big list of additional charts here: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-key-charts
Thanks for the charts! I was talking about United States (in response to a comment about United States) and it looks from this like wind is about 9% of power generation here - so still single digit percents, but not for long.
Yes, I was specifically thinking of Germany.
FWIW, I generally approve of advocacy that might help increase spread of nuclear power (Thorium holds promise here, but needs investment to have a chance to be implemented at scale). If pointing out limitations of renewables increases chances of adopting nuclear more widely, then I approve. I just see the most likely outcome of increased skepticism towards solar/wind as increased fossil fuels rather than nuclear, which doesn’t seem like a good trade-off
why does this have 95 calories, when the macros seem to add up to much less? https://www.michelobultra.com/products/beers/michelob-ultra
"Carbs" probably doesn't count the alcohol. 355mL of beverage * 4.2 alcohol by volume = ~ 15mL.
15 mL * 0.789 g/mL x 7kCal/g = ~83 kCal.
Add in the basic carbs plus some rounding and you get to 95 kCal.
Interesting! I also found this (https://www.mensjournal.com/food-drink/how-count-alcohol-against-your-daily-macros/)
So everything that told me calories is (fat + protein + carbs) was wrong! It also seems to make beer nutrition labels extra deceptive. Why is there no row for alcohol?
I was taught (in nursing school) that calories equals carbs plus protein plus fat plus alcohol, but we don't consider it a macro because hopefully it isn't contributing a large amount of calories to your diet. It shouldn't really be considered a carb because it has a different kcal/g contribution
Also speciecist. :-)
OTOH, I would be kinda amazed if the metabolic efficiency for sugar (sucrose) was very different between humans. Being more energy efficient is obviously a survival trait.
I am very willing to believe that. We learned lots of questionable things.
Ethanol is a carbohydrate.
Can you add some flavor here? Why does it not show up on the label then? Why does wikipedia just call it "similar" to a carbohydrate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol#Metabolism
and list it separately here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient#Macronutrients
The strict definition of a carbohydrate is that its empirical formula is Cn(H2O)m where n and m are arbitrary integers (sucrose, for instance is C12(H2O)11). Ethanol is thus not a carbohydrate, as it has too many hydrogens (its empirical formula is C2H6O).
Is that the legal strict definition of a carbohydrate or the chemical strict definition of a carbohydrate? Chemical and legal definitions are famously different for many words, such as "organic".
What about formaldehyde? :-)
Why have batteries beat out hydrogen as the go-to form of energy storage for renewables, whether in cars or for the grid? I would naively imagine that a lot of the infrastructure built for natural gas could be used/expanded to transport hydrogen, making it possible to produce hydrogen in places where renewable sources are cheap and bounteous, and then ship the hydrogen via pipes, rail, etc. to other places, just as we have done for many (most?) of our energy needs for over a century with oil and gas. I assume there are reasons for why batteries seem to be winning out thus far, but what information I am able to find with a few Google searches is either contradictory or unenlightening. Probably I just don't know enough about it to even know how to effectively search on this topic.
For transportation, batteries have the advantage that you don't need to convert energy from electricity to hydrogen and then to whatever form you want again, which requires expensive equipment on the electrolysis side and has fairly low (30%?) round-trip efficiency, and can also use already-existing infrastructure to move it to and from where it is needed.
For grid use, I don't think there are any attempts for serious day-scale battery storage, just for hour-scale storage. And batteries are pretty good in storing energy for an hour.
I've seen proposals for grid-scale battery storage using chemicals other than lithium.
Basically, lithium is really good for consumer applications, but for grid-scale storage you want cheaper materials and long-term reliability after many recharge cycles. So there's been some research into battery chemistry that works better for grid storage (I think the one I saw was aluminum-sulfur?), though it'll probably take a few years to be ready.
I'm curious why there isn't more work on making liquid fuels (eg ethanol) from water and carbon dioxide plus energy. This seems to be the ideal energy storage material, it's super energy dense and you can carry it in a bucket. Do we lack an efficient chemical pathway for doing it?
There's plenty of ways to make liquid hydrocarbon fuels from other hydrocarbon fuels, e.g. water gas used to be used a century or more ago for fuel, and there's modern "syngas" and in the last energy crisis (in the 70s) we talked a lot about coal gasification for the purpose of making so-called "clean fuels."
However I think few green aficianados would be pleased by these solutions, what they would typically want is some way to make fuel from CO2, water, and sunlight, the way plants do. That's definitely trickier. CO2 is obviously a very, very stable molecule when you live at the bottom of a lake of O2, so unwrapping the C from the eager grasp of the O takes some doing. Plants can do it because they have enzymes, which can pretty much do any organic reaction, even those that look ridiculous on paper. I think there may be some very slow progress on inorganic catalysts, and with trying to engineer enzymes to do it.
I surmise that part of the problem may be that for the plant's purposes glucose is an excellent end-point, but not so much for ours, because its material properties as a fuel aren't good. Generally we want a pretty hydrophobic fuel, like a pure hydrocarbon, or at worst an alcohol, because otherwise it tends to stick to stuff, lose water and get gummy, or absorb water and get diluted, et cetera. On the other hand, living cells like hydrophilic fuel (like sugars) because that makes it super easy to transport and store.
Garrett's answer to my query mentioned the Sabatier process. After reading a bit about it, it does sound like the primary barrier is prices of synthetic fuel have not historically been competitive with naturally occurring hydrocarbons. Perhaps the elevated fuel prices in Europe will spur more innovation in that area, driving down prices.
H2 is a gigantic pain in the ass to work with. Even rocket ship designers avoid if it they can.
>produce hydrogen in places where renewable sources are cheap and bounteous, and then ship the hydrogen via pipes, rail, etc. to other places
You could do this (though not with natural gas pipes, for reasons others have noted), but it would be less efficient than simply using high-voltage power lines, because electrolysis and fuel cells both have significant inefficiencies.
Natural gas is piped places because we don't make it using electricity; we dig it out of the ground.
As Garret said, basically none of the natural gas infrastructure is suitable for hydrogen.
In addition, you would need to manufacture a ton of new infra anyway since the current grid is largely not powered by natural gas either, and neither are cars.
On the other hand, batteries are fully compatible and modular (give or take various integration problems) with the existing electrical grid. You can plug your hybrid car into standard outlets in your garage.
With regards to grid storage, this paper helped me understand the strengths & weaknessess of the various technologies out there:
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/76097.pdf
The dominant form today is actually pumped hydropower, which is surprisingly efficient and very mature, but difficult to build out at scale. Li-ion batters are much easier to just build where you need them. Every other form of storage is either in its infancy or has major drawbacks:
Lead-acid batteries: require careful management to extend their lifetimes.
Compressed-air storage: still being developed.
Flywheels: poor capacity for the price.
Other gravity systems: still being developed.
Isn't hydrogen difficult to store, because hydrogen atoms are so small? Also I assume that most people just go "Hindenburg disaster!" when they hear "hydrogen."
For use in homes or cars, batteries directly produce electricity which can just plug into existing infrastructure. Hydrogen gas would require some additional infrastructure to convert to electricity. For grid-scale storage, I'm not sure.
Hydrogen is much more difficult to store as the atoms are just so small that they easily escape and need a lot of pressure. Similarly the efficiency of converting energy into hydrogen is relatively low compared to batteries, i.e. you lose a lot of energy by converting forth and back
As far as storage goes - if you're only storing energy overnight, batteries have much lower energy loss than hydrogen. If you're storing energy for weeks or months ... the arguments are less clear. I'm guessing it's just inertia and "economic incentives" that favor that inertia.
Putting hydrogen in passenger automobiles is a terrible idea for lots of reasons. Hydrogen is difficult to store, difficult to transport, and explosive. Building out an entire network to distribute it (so even stupid people can safely use it) is a fool's errand.
Diesel's the only common automotive fuel that isn't a potential flammable gas; both petrol (a.k.a. gasoline) and LPG are capable of explosion, but nonetheless these are pretty common and safe.
1. Hydrogen is a very small molecule, which means that it leaks through pipe walls and seals fairly easily. On a small scale this isn't a big deal, but on a large scale you are going lose a lot of your energy storage.
2. Hydrogen will combine with materials used to create most existing pipe infrastructure, rendering them extremely brittle.
3. Hydrogen isn't a liquid at anything near STP. This means you need to keep it under significant pressure or cryogenic temperatures. Doing either of these requires significant energy input and means that your fueling stations need to have specialty equipment.
None of these is especially difficult to overcome, but it is substantially more expensive to do so. If you want to use the existing natural gas infrastructure you are better off looking at the Sabatier process to convert your hydrogen and available carbon dioxide into "natural" gas which can use the existing infrastructure. OTOH if you just want to use hydrogen you are probably best to use it for something like long-haul trucking where using specialty refueling stations and equipment is more reasonable.
Thanks, that answers my question about why hydrogen is not a viable alternative to batteries. Reading a bit about the Sabatier process was very helpful. I now wonder why synthetic hydrocarbons haven't taken off more than they have thus far, as they do seem like a clearcut case of alternatives that could use existing infrastructure. Perhaps the elevated fuel prices in Europe will spur more innovation in that space.
Also, hydrogen is much more flammable than pretty much anything else you'd consider using as a fuel. But the flames are pretty much invisible in daylight. Which, coupled with "leaks through pipe walls and seals fairly easily", is a recipe for random horrible death. Hydrogen systems are best left to trained professionals, which is a serious limitation for consumer-facing applications.
Long-haul trucking, presumably we can get the truckers and their mechanics properly trained if we want to go that route.
Upcoming unconferences in Prospera, the charter city on the beautiful Caribbean island of Roatan:
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/edtech2022
Prospera Fintech Summit, November 18-20, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/fintech2022
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/model-city-monday-62722
Very unlikely to be cancelled, sorry to say
Yes, now Hondurans are free to wallow in their democratic peace and violence indefinitely. I'm sure that promising left-wing candidate in the next election is the real solution to all their problems though.
I’ve been reading lots of books about outer space with my kids (N.B.: if you’re wondering whether you want to have kids, it’s worth it just to read books about outer space with them). One of the things they’re super interested in are the gas giants in our solar system.
Can any experts out there explain what the hell is up with, like, Jupiter? It really has no solid substance on it? If you had a super powered space suit and entered Jupiter’s atmosphere, would you just keep falling through it until you hit the core and then just bob around? How is there a center of gravity without solid matter? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it.
In the same vein: my boys love to talk about what it’d be like to visit each planet and the various moons. Does anyone know any place to find a good description of what that would be like? The closest I ever found was a fun XKCD description of what would happen if you tried to fly a plane on each planet (https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/), but that’s a frustratingly limited scenario.
More generally, are there good places for kids who are interested in that sort of thing to hang out with each other?
Holy shit! You guys are amazing. We’ll be reading these posts / watching these videos for weeks to come. My boys are going to love this. Thank you all so much!
It depends a little on what you mean by "solid." If you just mean something about as dense as ordinary familiar solids, like wood, glass, rocks you'd find lying around on the ground, then that would happen when you got ~25% of the way to Jupiter's center. About halfway down it's about as dense as ordinary metals like iron or copper, and by the time you get to within 20% of the core it's reached the densest substances we know on the surface of the Earth, like gold or iridium.
But physicists normally define a "solid" (with certain subtle exceptions related to glasses) as a substance in which the atoms or molecules form a regular crystalline array, which makes it much more resistant to twisting force than an equally dense liquid or solid. In that sense, it's less clear whether there's big regions of crystalline solid in Jupiter -- the problem being it's mostly made of H2 and He, neither of which form crystals easily[1], except at very low temperatures (the center of Jupiter may be ~40,000K) and very high pressures, basically because H2 molecules and He atoms exert essentially no force on each other unless they're actually touching, and when they do touch they act like very hard, very rigid, but very slick little balls that can't push into each other but can slide around each other easily. Makes holding a crystal of H2 or He together like trying to hold a tower of polished glass marbles together -- you'd need huge pressure from all sides.
We don't know how much of the heavier elements are down in the core of Jupiter (because it's hard to get samples back ha ha), and we don't know that much about the behavior of H2 at extremely high pressures. A lot of clever work has been done with diamond anvil cells, but it's hard to characterize the material properties of the micrograms or less of material you can fit in there. The current fashionable thought is that H2 becomes a metal at sufficiently high pressures, and this might be what's going on inside Jupiter, it might have a giant layer of H metal, currents flowing through which may explain its gargantuan magnetic field.
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[1] It's possible that He doesn't solidify at 1atm even at 0K, due to quantum effects.
Not a direct answer to your question, but a few movies/videos I recommend (10 year old kid appropriate):
*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Odyssey_(TV_series)
*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universe_(TV_series)#Season_1:_2007 [only watch S1]
For great fun the Spitzer Space Telescope people put out an "IRRelevant Astronomy" series of short videos that my kid enjoyed.
*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRrelevant_Astronomy
I just realized that I typed "[only watch S1]". Ooops. I meant to write that I had only watched S1 myself and so couldn't speak the the quality of the other seasons.
"It really has no solid substance on it?"
Well depends on your defintion of "solid". The presures and temperatures get very high, so you get progressively more and more dense liquid/gas that eventually stops being like anything you would be used to.
"If you had a super powered space suit and entered Jupiter’s atmosphere, would you just keep falling through it until you hit the core and then just bob around? "
No you would fall until you hit the zone where you were neutrally bouyant. Where the graviational pull is equalized by your bouyancy. Humans aren't very dense.
"How is there a center of gravity without solid matter?"
Gravity for such a large thing is VERY strong. All the stuff is ever so slightly pulling on all the other stuff, but there is just a TON of stuff. If fact this is easier without solids, as the shape is more elastic and the natural shape of such an object is a sphere (well and ellipsoid sphere because it is rotating so the "waist"/equator swells due to angular momentum.
In fact it is easier to get a liquid/gas/plamsa into a sphere than a solid as the solid wants to retain its shape more. The earth isn't a sphere because the solids that make it up are a sphere. The solids just a dozen kilometers down are like toothpaste, and deeper they get even more fluid.
"Does anyone know any place to find a good description of what that would be like? "
I am positive you could find something like this for some/all planets on Youtube. Youtube has GREAT astronomy content.
Think about the Sun. That REALLY has nothing solid. If you fell in and didn't mind the heat, you'd keep falling (being compressed under pressure) until you hit the core.
To answer the first person's question, gravity doesn't depend on a solid surface. The Earth's atmosphere doesn't affect Earth's gravity much, but that's because there is not much of it compared to the Earth. It still has a gravitational pull.
No you would fall until you hit the zone where you were neutrally bouyant. Where the graviational pull is equalized by your bouyancy. Humans aren't very dense.
would you oscillate first?
It's actually more likely you'll hit a "sea" of something denser and just float ontop of that. Kind of like Earth except it probably won't be sea water. And you might have already sunk through a layer or two of other liquids.
Liquids don't compress well so it's unlikely that there will be a full gradient of density by the time it approaches the typical human density. Though I'm assuming you'll be hitting one of the calmer regions and not one of the areas of unending storms in which you'll probably have other issues to worry about than the mixing of the layers.
Until the friction stopped you, yeah.
"my boys love to talk about what it’d be like to visit each planet and the various moons. Does anyone know any place to find a good description of what that would be like?"
You could let them play Doom.
Lots of good info comparing Earth’s and Jupiter’s core. Briefly, Jupiter has a rocky inner core coated in a thick layer of metallic hydrogen.
https://sciencing.com/jupiters-core-vs-earths-core-21848.html#:~:text=Size%20and%20Mass&text=The%20core%27s%20density%20is%20estimated,(151%20billion%20trillion%20tons).
I’m also not an expert, and that matches my understanding as well. If you imagine jumping into water on earth, you sink for a bit and then stop (and probably float). The buoyant force is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid, so you sink/fall when you’re more dense than the fluid. When you’re less dense than the fluid, the buoyant force is greater than your weight, and so you’re pushed upward. You float when your density matches that of the fluid.
Is there any evidence that the anti-police movement in the U.S. has damaged the mental health of police or raised their suicide rate?
Not suicide so far as I'm aware, but there's research out about retirements and quitting being drastically up, and fewer successful hires in large districts (but more in small ones):
https://www.policeforum.org/workforcesurveyjune2021
Some of the specific numbers are 45% higher retirement rate (~1 in 77 additional officers retiring), 18% higher resignation rate (~1 in 131), and 5% lower (average) hire rate (~1 in 217 fewer), but it's probably best to look at the actual link, especially the "Percent Change Between Time Periods by Agency Size" table; there's nuance in there.
Other grain of salt to consider I suppose is that the data's a bit over a year old at this point, and it's possible things have changed in that year.
Vaguely related https://www.reuters.com/world/us/officer-who-responded-us-capitol-attack-is-third-die-by-suicide-2021-08-02/
Suicide rate seems flat for police:
"Despite suicide rates for the general population declining by 3 percent, or 1,656 people, from 2019 to 2020, according to CDC data, the rates among first responders showed moderate to no decrease from 2017 to 2020, the Ruderman study found."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/06/10/high-suicide-rate-police-firefighters-mental-health/7470846001/
I'm an Economics undergrad, due to graduate in a bit more than half a year or so. I have two questions, one about productivity, one about entering CS. (Unfortunately, I don't have people around me who can really answer these in detail-apologies if these aren't relevant for this place.)
1. I'm relatively happy with myself as far as it goes (I've figured out how to be consistently happy for multiple months, exercise etc is providing me with a higher energy budget) but it turns out that I'm really bad at working hard. I was able to 'coast' through school, and college is also not very hard, so there hasn't been a reason for me not to procrastinate. My limit on intense focus-unless I'm programming, and thus 'playing'-seems to be around 2-3 hours a day, and that mostly on very good days. Is there a way to raise that? (I've had good success with installing habits like exercise by basically making myself do it consistently for a month or so, and then using the momentum from that to keep doing it. is there an analog for increasing perseverance?)
I ask this because it really seems like this is now the blocker on me being able to do things-my current algorithm of 'do <thing> until it's interesting, then stop' isn't really working out. (Also makes it hard to start new projects which potentially could have been fun but aren't, since I think they'd be boring and never start them.)
2. While I like Economics (yes, really-I suspect it's done a fair share in making me smarter, by installing the reflex to look for problems if nothing else...) my original thing has always been CS. I don't have a CS degree though, and don't really have tangible projects, since I was mostly pulled by my curiosity when I was younger. (So I know parts of Haskell and Prolog, but barely have the equivalent of an IRC client coded...I think my laziness w.r.t. projects just stems from a lack of inherent curiosity for them though, I suspect I'd be fine in an environment that provides external structure and insentives.)
So, if I don't have a CS degree, what do I do to be hired? bootcamps? work on some actual projects? randomly email people? prep for interviews? some superset/subset of all these?
I would strongly, STRONGLY encourage you to not create input-level goals for yourself like amount-of-focus, and instead find opportunities/jobs/ways of working where you judge yourself and are judged by others on output goals.
Some of the most productive people I know only really focus 3 hours a day, because their ideal pattern of work is that the other 5 hours is necessary-but-low-value-add work (e.g., think of all the emails involved in scheduling big important workshops) or just sitting there letting their brain run a bunch of thinking in the background.
If you instead focus on input-level goals, you will find it very hard to be happy if you are a typical American overachiever college graduate, because it is always hypothetically possible to do a little more work each day than you did. This way lies burnout.
(The counterexample is someone who has a bounded keep-the-streak-going goal, like "I go to the gym for 120 minutes a week", but most professional jobs you would take don't think about business inputs that way.)
I'd say 2-3 hours a day is not terrible, I'm usually pretty happy with 3-4 hours of real work, and proud of a 6 hour work day. (For background, I work in software.)
In regards to getting a job in software, you can't really go wrong with networking. If you have just a couple small projects under your belt to demonstrate you're capable, and then befriend the right people, you can totally land a job. I have a friend that was trying to get into software, she had a degree in bio but had done a couple CS projects, and had just started in a CS program, and it was straightforward for me to organize an internship with my employer to get her in the door. She just accepted a full-time salaried position with them a couple months ago. Really the demand for tech workers is so high, if you can just demonstrate the ability to learn, your odds are good.
2-3 hours of focused work per day is actually a lot more than most employees get during the day or can sustain.
Building projects is a great way to demonstrate your skills. Or focus on programming jobs that also leverage your economics knowledge like Data Engineers or similar.
Yeah, +1 to this.
A lot of people "work hard" without producing much. 2-3 hours of intense, focused work should be exhausting, you should be beat afterwards. And it's not slacking, I don't think most people are doing 8 hours of intense, focused work because I don't see many peers with 3-4x my output.
I say, try listing relevant coursework and experience on your resume, even if it's not your degree. It can be an asset, especially if you're applying to finance-type jobs, to go for the more programming-heavy/quant jobs
When I went to my college's career fairs, most of the recruitment was geared towards the econ people by finance and trading firms. I brought my resume with; it had some CS coursework on it, like "algorithms" and "basic Python". I got asked a logic puzzle by one recruiter right at the career fair, and my experience was pretty limited. I say put it on your resume, go to career fairs, and apply places.
If you're a US citizen, you can look into work for the national security establishment: treasury/finance type jobs and economic analysis. But I knew someone in physics who applied for data science analytics type positions in this field, and had success. So your specific degree doesn't pigeon-hole you into just that role.
How old are you? I see myself as a fundementally "lazy" person who is prone to coasting, probably in large part due to how easy school was for me and a totally unstructured/crap childhood with few real expectations/consequences.
My "coasting" got seriously in the way of professional/academic success until ~26-27, at which point my unhappiness with my station in life exceeded my desire to coast and I started working hard more systematically and consistently. I still slack off for streches, but only to an extent that my talent can more than compensate. For instance I have a meeting in 10 minutes I should have been prepping for for the last 20, but I am good enough that my presence in the meeting will still be well above average with only 5-10 minutes of prep.
Anyway, I wouldn't see yourself as "doomed" to you current situaiton. From the outside everyone thingks I am super hard working and diligent, and I do at times where needed put in 70-80-100 weeks. But I also have weeks where there is 60 hours of work and I do 30, and then the next week I need to scramble my ass off to catch up. It does help that I have my own business, so I cannot rely on others, if I don't do work it simply doesn't get done since I am the only one at my business who can do the things I do. it can be good to setup incentives like this where the consequences of bad behavior are high. Then eventually your habits change a bit.
Tackle 1) as though your life and success depend on it, because they do There are plenty of tips to be found on the huberman lab podcast. The ones that have worked for me are - sleeping by 10pm. Working (not working out) first thing in the morning (after getting ready), cutting out all or most sources of un-earned dopamine
I recommend a bootcamp. I don't usually recommend them--however, a key factor is who you are going in, and if you're already proficient in programming, it's actually a *better* fit for you than if you weren't.
1) because you'll rapidly skill up in the skills most in demand, and 2) you'll also get decent at knowing how to present and interview to get good tech jobs.
Even if you think you don't want to work in 'those' areas, getting a year or two of exp will make it easier to pursue the niche Haskell/Prolog/whatever jobs.
I'd be wary of folks saying you can get in without a big commitment like a bootcamp; it's widely understood that getting into tech is the hardest part (the first job), and also that it's harder to get your foot in the door than it was a few years ago (i.e. when other folks did).
If you're interested in data/data science, just get in somewhere and start studying python.
If you're educated and can do Excel, you'll get hired to do analytics somewhere. If you can do Python, they will take advantage of that and you'll get promoted fast.
This is something I didn't consider. I'm not really interested in data science that much (Economics was mostly a 'best worst option' deal) but I know Python and might pick this up if other stuff doesn't work out.
Not that familiar with Excel, though, but I'm sure that can be fixed pretty easily. (I know a friend who used to do Excel and VBA in a bank and earned really well..it sounds soul-sucking but I might as well also look into that...)
I see lots of guys in the data space with this kind of "econ, meteorology, finance" background. I don't think it's intrinsically any easier than actual software engineering but there's a much simpler transition.
Like, in software engineering, it feels very binary: either you can code or you can't. In data there's lots of intermediate steps: Excel->SQL->Python/R->Software/Data Engineer. It's much easier to get your foot in the door and much easier to climb the tech stack.
You can try and build that focus to keep working on the boring bits. I need it at work for CS, as the fun part of writing the code flies by, but then adding the right tests and cleaning it up to handle dumb edge cases is boring. That's why they pay you to do work.
I might recommend trying to finish a project or two. Limit the scope up front, but then make a roadmap and try and keep at least one commit per day. That streak maintenance, number go up thing helped me stick to it. Doesn't have to be a big commit, even just tidying a bit counts, it's more that you say down and got to work.
Maybe also pick something which isn't in just for yourself? I spent some time localizing someone else's app and sharing that back upstream. This can help avoid being sloppy, as you want the code to be accepted.
Sound like actionable advice?
thanks, I think this is useful. I've used streaks before to great effect (primarily to install habits) so maybe I can reuse them in this context too.
Really the problems are more about finding projects that seem interesting. Maybe I should just pick up something random? let me see.
Hi Friends,
My third book, Losing My Religions, has been published. It covers several topics I think will be of interest to you, and I quote Scott in it for the main philosophy chapter.
The e-book files are available for free, as I hope the book can be as helpful as possible to as many people who want to read it.
You can get the files and read the early reviews at: https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Take care!
Any parents here have resources for early childhood education that actually seemed to work? A lot of things give me an extreme eyebrow raise although most of what I see from Montessori types seem practical as far as making him feel confident and competent. Is anything else out there? Is Montessori real? Son is going to be one in a few months and want to see if we can be more deliberate. Parents only please unless you also happen to be a working expert.
Edit: thanks for all the suggestions. Also as a point of clarity I am not proposing to raise my son in a Soviet style elite training program more like “hey this actually helped my kid learn to read.” My main goal is of course to give him the tools to build a happy and successful life not quiz him on the relative abundance of deuterium until the light goes out of his smile.
Big agreement with baby sign language, How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen (they have books aimed at specific age groups too, and a book about siblings, all of which are worth checking out), Janet Lansbury/RIE, and just reading a lot. Very true that they will learn how to be and behave from YOU starting NOW. I have 3 but they're still pretty little.
For school we just figured, given their parents' background, our kids would be fine academically and intelligence-ly no matter what, so we focused on the type of life experience they would have at school. For us, we went with a school that emphasizes outdoor time, working with hands, self-direction, focus, mixed ages, no tech until later grades, that kind of thing. It aligns with our values about how to spend time. This is a Montessori school, but there's a lot of variation among Montessori schools. Probably the local public school would have been fine academically and they would do fine, but the 15 minute recess and wasted time and tablets really depressed me. There's more to life than academics and they spend so much time at school that it sure counts as 'life' too.
At home we read a ton and talk about ideas often. My daughter loves the show Numberblocks and wanders around happily reciting math problems. I include them in all housework tasks and expect them to do age-appropriate chores pretty much from birth. No Soviet elites here, just bright, busy kids doing their own thing.
I have three kids. They all read well above grade level. For my oldest and youngest it just came naturally. My middle I sat with, evening after evening, as she frustratedly beat her way through the beginner books and felt herself stupid because it was hard. Through K and 1st, she tested at grade level. In the summer after 1st grade we listened to some American Girl audiobooks on a family road trip vacation. They hit just right for her, and she came home and burned through all of those books my wife could dig out from when she was a kid, and then all of the ones we could find for her. When she started the second grade she tested as being at the end of 4th grade in terms of her reading, and has stayed consistently ahead.
For whatever reason*, it took her longer, and I was very worried that my middle baby might be (gasp!) average. But she was fine, and when she was ready to read she advanced rapidly. All of which is to say that some kids are on a different calendar than normal, and it's mostly fine.
*the reason was likely moderate dyslexia, diagnosed later
I do think we sometimes discredit the idea that distribution curves exist within people as well as across people. I’m fully waiting for him to be a jock pro level athlete just to surprise me.
And once they've done that ten or twenty times, they'll be on a different reading level. Like a lot of things, this one is about reps.
My biggest piece of advice would be to have expectations and require your children to meet them. People are really good at raising their behavior to the required level. Not any of this touchy feely garbage. Presumably you love and care for your kids, most people don't need advice about that these days.
What most parents struggle with is establishing that they are in charge, their word goes, and that their are consequences for not living up to expectations. You are a stand in for "the world/god" when they grow up. Except you actually care about them. So it is great for them. But you need to teach them that "the world" will punish them for laziness/stupidity/recklessness etc.
Otherwise you end up with a 15 year old who has had a great emotionally nurturing and supportive life, and has zero ability to do hard work, and zero ability to overcome challenges or obstacles.
Anyway, my relationship with my kids is great, and everyone talks about how great they are. Athletic, relatively interested in academics, polite, well behaved, socially the center of the kids in the nieghborhood. And I would put a lot of that down to me not accepting bad behavior or whining whenthey were say 2-6. Don't let them get their way by crying. Make them pick up after themselves. Hell by 7 or 8 they can start doing dishes and other small chores. If you don't like how they are are using their access to Netflix, take it away for 5 days. If you can't get them to focus about the danger of streets, give them a light cuff across the head, or an unpleasant face to face scolding. Your kids should be a little bit afraid of one of the parents and their disapproval/rebuke. You are certainly going to be a lot more measured and loving about it than the world will be.
This is so true. And such hard work. It is so much easier to just let things slide than to consistently enforce discipline.
But the clarity and consistency of discipline is also important. Actions should have clear, known consequences (positive and negative).
The legal system is just "discipline for grown-ups" and many principles of the legal system are similarly applicable to children. Principles like notice, proportionality, non-arbitrary enforcement, intent, etc.
And this is completely separate from your other task, which is making sure that your children know that they are loved and supported.
I homeschooled my daughter up through 5th grade. This site is a wonderful resource, whether you are homeschooling or not: https://www.hoagiesgifted.org
Emily Oster has some sections on this in her book Cribsheet. The biggest take away for me is that who the parents are (and if they are educated and rich basically) has such a huge impact on child outcomes that stressing about the perfect education scheme is likely wasted effort. Finding something your kid likes and enjoys is probably more important. Emily's advice has been basically, if you are asking this is probably doesn't matter for you because you are already such an involved parent (in a good way).
We are currently touring schools for our 18 mo old. Montessori, Waldorf, etc. All of them have been good. We will probably make the decision based on cost, how long the school day is, and distance to our house.
Meh see while that sort of thing is true in aggregate, I feel like among the very engaged invested upper middle class parents I know, you still see pretty disparate outcomes in child bahvior that track pretty closely on parent behavior. Granted there are some difficult chicken/egg effects, where perhaps the parents of 8 year olds who get pushed around by them a little bit had particularly bossy kids and that is how they got there.
But from my sample I would see a big overlap even among "upper middle class kids who are going to be "fine", between kids who don't face real reprecussions for their behavior, and kids who are ill behaved at say 10 or lazy/undisicplined at 15.
Just because the average in a group is 80 insetad of 50, doens't mean there aren't strategies to put them on the higher end of that average.
I think that parents need to have a stronger concept of what is and isn't malleable in their child. You're not going to change their IQ, and you're not going to change some fundamental aspects of their personality. But a lot of other stuff is up for grabs. For instance, you're not going to turn a shy child into a gregarious one, but you can equip a shy child with enough social skills to be able to comfortably navigate social situations despite their shyness. You probably can't turn a lazy child into a hardworking one, but you can equip the lazy child with enough discipline to get things done despite their natural laziness.
I had poor follow-through on a lot of methodologies. However, baby sign language can help immensely to bridge communication the gap between now and when they speak. Also reading and pointing out things in books: pictures, objects, narrating things. My kids are different in verbal ability but also the first one got a lot more of this than the second and I think there's a noticeable difference.
On modeling emotional behavior: they really record how you talk and mirror you back. I've heard my own phrases thrown at me by a 3 y.o., my same tones of frustration, etc. Which leads me to believe that how you carry yourself and behave in front of them really makes a difference.
On things they're good at: with both my kids, around age 2.5 or so, I had a light-bulb moments where I intuitively just GOT how to show them something and they just GOT me. With the older, I suddenly found that I could EXPLAIN, verbally, and she understood me (finding an object, following a direction, etc.). With the second one, I could SHOW HER, physically, how to do it, and she could just repeat it, in a way that the other one couldn't. Maybe you might have this, and maybe you might not, but they might have a learning style and it might mesh with yours and stuff might just click: but you have to keep trying.
On learning to read: my older child, who has good verbal ability, we did the phonics using just magnetic letters. We learned letters and then at some point I started introducing their sounds; at age 3 or so I started doing informal phonics, words like CAT RAT BIN etc. Then, kids being very suggestible, I said "aaaaah but sometimes the A likes to make an "Ay" sound, like if you put the secret little E here".... and did the phonics combinations with magnetic letters; just thought of word families as they came up. I tried a book, but the book required writing skills and we weren't there yet.
On music: there are programs for early musical education; if your child is singing at ~2-3, you can start "Do Re Mi", and if you find they have perfect pitch you can start some musical and rhytmic education, even piano. There's a Russian lady who has a whole methodology (but in Russian) and videos teaching her 2-yo grandkids, and there's a Catholic method called "Ward method", but there are lots of other resources.
On counting/math: I take a similar ad-hoc kind of approach -- counting, "what if you counted UP by two? HEY what is two and two?" And just casual introduction of division, multiplication, fractions, place value. If they get bored I don't push too much.
On Montessori: I think it's school-dependent, and you need to go and see if it's just overpriced daycare with overpriced "fancy" toys or if they do something useful. A friend's son went to Montessori and it seems like they definitely learn self-direction and good habits; but it might not be as a good a fit or a more social and boisterous kid. But this is hearsay.
Thanks for this and baby sign language is actually what made me curious about what is out there. My wife saw it on TikTok and I was certain it was nonsense but low and behold at only seven months he’s very good at signing milk even though it also means “breastfeed me until I fall asleep.” Wouldn’t have thought the deliberate communication capacity was there before the speech but was wrong.
Yeah, the signs for “more” and “all done” were super helpful for our little guy, months before he could talk
For more specific educational advice, I haven't used this, but people who seem to know what they're talking about claim it's a great way to teach reading: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ref=sr_1_3?campaign_id=229&crid=UMRBEVC3M38S&dchild=1&emc=edit_jm_20210903&instance_id=39540&keywords=teach+your+child+to+read+in+100+easy+lessons&nl=john-mcwhorter&qid=1630530587®i_id=71409965&segment_id=68013&sprefix=teach+your+%2Caps%2C184&sr=8-3&te=1&user_id=114bf234264be577dca001b47594e4e6
I'll second the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen books. I'll also add the Whole Brain Child series as books that seem possibly useful. Perhaps the best book I've read on parents and kids is Allison Gopnik's The Gardener and the Carpenter: https://www.amazon.com/Gardener-Carpenter-Development-Relationship-Children/dp/1250132258/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=. I think what I've distilled from the decently researched parenting books I've read is essentially the following: Kids need food, shelter and love from their parents. Outside of that, your specific parenting style probably won't make too much of a difference. Connection is more important than control. Trying to exercise too much control will probably make you (and your kids) miserable while having very few benefits.
Thanks!
Mine are 9 and 11 now and seem to be turning out ok :-)
Montessori - found the ideas interesting (following the child etc) but very hard to do at home. John Holt, mentioned by somebody else, is interesting reading too.
Not quite 'education' in a formal sense but I found RIE (and specifically Janet Lansbury's blog) really useful - changed the type of 'toys' that I got my children at that age and still influences my parenting in lots of ways.
Again, also not education as such but I found the book How to Talk So Kids will Listen and How to Listen So Kids will Talk helpful. Too young for it at the moment, but I think it's worth reading sooner rather than later.
Think there is lots of evidence that reading to children is super-important (and lovely bonding time even with mine at their age!)
Remember that the behaviour you model as a parent is more important than anything else. If you are curious, then they will probably become curious too. If you are kind, they will probably become kind etc.
Also also remember that you need to stay sane - your moods will rub off on your children. You want to have fun with them.
But overall, I think if you are asking this question here, then you probably won't go too far wrong from an educational point of view :-)
This is wonderful thank you!
I have five children. They (and a bunch of research) have taught me that children are just the way they are. I can't imagine a pedagogy that would have worked for all of my children. For example, only child number 4 turned out to be interested in aestetic pursuits like painting and sculpturing. So my best advice is keep it open and stay tuned to your child's interests.
Perhaps not exactly what you are looking for but I have three book recommendations. "Emile" by Rousseau really challenged my thinking on why I wanted certain things for my children. I'm usually in opposition to most of his political philosophy, but when I found myself agreeing with him on several points regarding parenting, the chance for serious self-reflection was welcome. https://www.amazon.com/Emile-Philosophical-Treatise-Education-Annotated/dp/B0B38CX3ZD/ref=sr_1_3?crid=IULOPY2TQYFM&keywords=emile+rousseau&qid=1666012722&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIzLjU5IiwicXNhIjoiMy4yNyIsInFzcCI6IjMuMjYifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=emile+rousseau%2Cstripbooks%2C94&sr=1-3
"Seven Ages of Childhood" by Ella Cabot describes the various epochs of a child's development in readily accessible detail. Different ages will require different approaches; this was something that I guess I had intuited before but had never had it explained to me so straightforwardly. https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Ages-Childhood-Classic-Reprint/dp/133169972X
"How Children Fail by John Holt was an excellent discussion of what goes on in elementary-age children's minds as they negotiate the demands of formal education. Very illuminating and thought-provoking, especially since I'm homeschooling my kids and I can see them doing many of the things Holt describes. https://www.amazon.com/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Development/dp/0201484021/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ILQ67T46JMRG&keywords=how+children+fail&qid=1666012620&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjE1IiwicXNhIjoiMC41NCIsInFzcCI6IjAuNjEifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=how+children+fail%2Caps%2C100&sr=8-1
Rousseau is a moron.
Rousseau abandoned all of his children to orphanages. He is possibly the worst reference on parenting in history.
Did he go to the Benjamin Franklin school of parenting?
Which is why if I find myself agreeing with something he says, it's a great opportunity for puzzling out why I think that way.
Haven't read his book, so just guessing: He said lots of random stuff, probably repeated the most edgy opinions he heard from other people, and got some of that right.
Okay, let me lead with the fact that I’m not about to kill myself.
That said, over the years, I occasionally have been mildly suicidal, so as a general rule I don’t keep any means in my house if I don’t have to. That said, some things you need to be a functional adult (knives for example), so for such things I usually do research on why they would be a terrible way to kill oneself.
This has been a pretty effective strategy over the years that has kept me from having to worry too much about my suicide risk.
Now I’m Type 1 diabetic, and I have insulin on me all the time. Having accidentally been severely hypoglycemic to the point of almost passing out before, it seems like a pretty effective and painless way to go. So, I need help figuring out why it would be bad means, since I’m coming up blank (standard stuff about suicide=bad isn’t helpful here, and insulin also mitigates an alarming number of those arguments).
Thanks
-Mystik
Maybe someone snuck into your house and replaced all your insulin with itching powder. Trying to overdose will just make you scratch yourself to death.
Uh ... trigger warning? This is an explanation of why something could be bad. It will, to a certain mindset, be quite bad.
Quantum immortality may be correct. If so, then you should expect any suicide attempt to result in the most likely future in which you survive - given that the attempt was made, but failed.
So, if you imagine yourself waking up from such an attempt, what harms could the attempt have made upon your body? Brain damage is a possibility; you could wake up without the ability to talk coherently. And if quantum immortality is correct, you'll be stuck with that for a potentially very long time.
Why isn't the " standard stuff about suicide=bad isn’t helpful here"?
Do you believe that "what's the best way to murder someone" is an acceptable question?
How about what's the best way to voluntarily chop off a healthy limb?
No these questions are not rational and useful questions.
There are no means that can justify the end.
Just to go in line:
I'm aware of the "standard stuff about suicide=bad," and it's reasonably effective, but having it reiterated to me isn't helpful here, and I find that eliminating means is a fairly effective second line of defense for me that makes me feel safer.
I think that it depends on context. Usually no, but if you have to run defense, say as a prison guard, it might be worth considering ways that a prisoner might attack you.
My understanding is that this actually can be an effective treatment for certain kinds of body dysmorphia, so yes, it's an appropriate question in some contexts.
Thank you for explaining your thought process.
The prison guard analogy posits two "yous", which I think you should thoroughly discuss with a professional.
But would a healthcare professional allow a discussion of what's the best? way to murder someone? Beyond ethics there would be significant legal ramifications.
Removing means is an important defense to an impetuous act.
As to dysmorphia (really body integrity identity disorder) treatment that ostensibly allows what's the best way to voluntarily cut off healthy limb, I'd like to see research. Because I believe that there would be significant ethical issues.
>The prison guard analogy posits two "yous", which I think you should thoroughly discuss with a professional.
There is a reasonably common framing with mental illness, where the illness is personified and othered. IE, "Hang in there, people really do like you and want to be around you, your anxiety is lying to you."
One person on my feed used to talk about days when her head weasels were particularly difficult.
The idea, IIUI, is to separate the "real" you from the disease.
mm, probably true, but it's also not something that I'd probably choose to discuss, especially not in a public conversation where I might be worried that someone would use whatever was come up with.
You've hit upon one of the reasons that I'm posting semi-anonymously on an internet forum instead of actually asking my doctor. If you might pose harm to yourself or others, they have an obligation to report you, and it's hard to phrase "why is insulin a bad way to kill myself" in a way that I'm confident wouldn't alarm them.
Yup.
I'll try and find the reference where I heard about it, but tbh it will probably take me a little while to get around to. Once I get it, I'll post it as a reply to your comment, but let's table it until then?
Consider that your reticence to talk with your doctor could be the prisoner trying to plan something to hurt the prison guard.
Your doctor should be informed.
There is no "good" way to get murdered or to experience an attempted murder.
But I appreciate your instincts to avoid the near occasion of harm. That is a good instinct.
I've dealt with suicidal ideation most of my life, but I've never been super close to suicide. I think you're being a little over concerned about the "if you might pose hard to yourself or others." I've talked extensively about suicidal ideation with counselors and psychiatrists, and they have never reported me. From my experience, you need to be really close to actually committing the act before they're going to do anything, and any counselor is going to be happy to talk to you about this. They likely won't want to focus on the cost/benefit analysis of different methods though, instead they're going to talk to you about the reasons in your life that you're considering this in the first place (why are all the arguments you've seen for suicide=bad so unconvincing to you, what are some arguments you might find more convincing).
I guess I'm wondering, can you imagine structuring your life in such away that suicide is a more distant threat? It seems like you're interested in your own safety. Maybe instead of letting yourself be suicidal and trying to remove all the dangers, create things to cling to. I'm no expert, but from behavioral psych, you can't simply remove behaviors and leave a void there, something else always fills the gap. Sounds like you're doing a good job removing the dangers, and creating gaps, but that's only half the battle. You need to fill yourself with something else or more dangers, often more tenacious, will come in to fill those spaces. Shrinks are pretty good at helping you build a life worth living.
Mystik, do you rationally think that your life will always be this way? I know from experience that it can feel that way, but it is entirely possible that feeling is incorrect.
I think I will occasionally be suicidal going forward in life, and I’ll probably always need insulin. But I also don’t think that I’ll always be suicidal through my life.
It's inconsistent, success is not guaranteed since it is possible you will be found and given relatively straight forward aid. However, there could be complications leaving you permanently brain damaged but not dead and placing you under more constant supervision/care. It could be thought of as an alternative method of poisoning yourself with all the flaws and failures inherent to that method.
The problem is that I live alone. Realistically no one would find me for a few days
We have a diabetic relation who lived alone and went into a diabetic coma. Someone was trying to contact her at the time via phone, and when she didn't pick up came by and found her.
She was hospitalized for several weeks, had to do rehab, could barely walk when she got home, and still uses a walker from time to time. As far and I can tell she's still incredibly weak, has pain and appetite issues, and is suffering permanent effects from that time period.
Thanks for sharing this. I'm sorry to hear that happened to the relative, and I appreciate you being willing to share the story.
This doesn't directly answer your question but -- what about getting a service dog who will recognize a diabetic coma? I understand that if you had decided to kill yourself you could just shut the dog out of the room. But still --seems like it would be a good thing to have anyway, in case you have have an unintentional coma, and for company. And the dog would bark his head off if locked out of your room when it senses something's wrong, and that might bring people to your home. There are also little safes you can buy -- put an item inside, enter how long the safe will stay locked. You could keep all your extra insulin locked up, just have enough around for today's doses plus however much extra you might need today if your blood sugar gets too high.
The dog might be a good solution once I move to a different apartment, I'll keep it in mind. Unfortunately, I have so little insulin resistance that there's no way to keep so little insulin around that it couldn't be an issue (it just isn't sold in such small units).
For the second (and final) time, I want to signal boost excellent work being done by Phil Magness and co-authors. They try and expose left leaning academics who are tarring champions of markets and liberty like Mises. The left leaning academics use academically and intellectually dishonest techniques which readers of this blog would be no strangers to, given Scott's personal history with the NYT, but I was still surprised that even academics are being so dishonest in peer reviewed work.
Misrepresenting Mises: Quotation Editing and a Rejection of Peer Review at Cambridge University Press
https://econjwatch.org/articles/misrepresenting-mises-quotation-editing-and-a-rejection-of-peer-review-at-cambridge-university-press
Darity, Camara, and MacLean on William H. Hutt
https://econjwatch.org/articles/darity-camara-and-maclean-on-william-h-hutt
The intellectual dishonesty they expose is stunning to me.
I tend to get twitchy when I read descriptions like "champions of markets and liberty". I don't know who Mises is from a hole in the ground, all I've seen is complaints about the 'Mises caucus' took over some Libertarian/libertarian movement and got some local power and now it's all gone to hell (citation needed).
Plus I've just finished re-reading Robert Harris' "Cicero" trilogy and while he is not the greatest prose stylist in the world, the historical basis is fascinating enough to keep anyone reading, and it should cure readers of naive hero-worship, given all the presentation of X, Y or Z as villainous monster or heroic champion, regardless of the actual facts, but depending on the political necessity of the day.
Are "left-leaning academics" out to get this guy and those like him? Possibly. Are those guys heroic champions? Possibly. Is it political partisanship that A is on one side and B is on the other, and who you think are the heroic champions of liberty depends on which side you fall? Most likely.
Magness hates the "Mises Caucus" and their inspiration in Hans Herman Hoppe.
Ludwig von Moses was an early 20th century economist who was a "founder" of what is known as the Austrian School. At a high-level its basically just free market stuff, but there are some specific monetary policy elements which make it different than other free market schools of thought. Mises, Hayek, and Freeman are the big three free-market economists of the 20th century. https://mises.org is the organization which tries to carry on his legacy.
Mises Caucus is a bunch of nut cases who think of themselves as libertarians but really just seem to care about gun rights and not paying taxes and being free to be jerks with little consequence. As a free market proponent and what most people would identify as libertarian, these Mises Caucus guys are very embarrassing and potentially dangerous. Their views are a more extreme version of the Tea Party (which is where many of the members got their start).
They worked very hard the past few years to gain power within the Libertarian party and took effective control over the party recently. Their views and actions are so divergent from traditional LP folks that many people have left the party and state level parties have disbanded to avoiding supporting the national party. If you are conspiratorial person it would be pretty easy to justify a theory that the Mises Caucus was funded/supported by the far right to complete obliterate the already weak Libertarian Party.
So basically Mises Caucus =/= Ludwig von Mises and Libertarian Party =/= libertarianism.
If you can't even spell "Friedman" correctly (not "Freeman") - when the man's literal son is posting in this comment thread! - then you probably shouldn't be making such bold claims about groups you dislike because it suggests you don't know the first thing about them.
The justified complaint of the Mises caucus was that the people running the Libertarian Party were watering down libertarian doctrine to appeal to the center and left. The problem is that it rather looks as though the Mises Caucus people are doing the same thing in the other direction, as when they use arguments from Hans Hoppe to make a case for immigration restrictions.
Immigration restrictions are the only thing that will stop libertarianism becoming completely irrelevant (to the extent it isn't already). How do libertarians not understand this by now? They can barely convince people of libertariansim in perhaps the most (ideologically) libertarian country in history, and yet they imagine they're going to convince hundreds of millions of foreigners to radically alter their political views. It's delusional.
>really just seem to care about gun rights and not paying taxes and being free to be jerks with little consequence.
I know you're listing these to distinguish from "good" libertarians, but the Mises Caucus is only a few years old, and those (especially the first two) have all been distinguishing traits of self-described American (right-)libertarians for well over a decade, since those describe all the libertarians I knew in high school. All you're missing is drug legalization.
(Edit: unless I've misread and you're listing these to point out that these are the *only* things they share with "real" libertarians, which makes the third item a self-burn directed at your own tribe)
You also can't really neatly separate American right-libertarianism from the Libertarian party, because without that it is quite literally just liberalism by another name[1]. The 15 years between its coinage to refer to right-liberals/ancaps and the party's formation is dwarfed by the 50 years the Libertarian party has had to to define the movement. (Not to mention the century before that where the term used associated with the left)
[1] https://fee.org/articles/who-is-a-libertarian/
"You also can't really neatly separate American right-libertarianism from the Libertarian party, because without that it is quite literally just liberalism by another name[1]."
Not quite. Classical liberalism included support for broadening the franchise. Modern libertarianism doesn't include any particular position on the details of how a democracy should be run.
Beyond that, the problem is that the enemies of liberalism stole its name early in the Twentieth Century; most people now associate "liberalism" with an ideology that includes watered down democratic socialism, support for government regulation of the economy and redistribution.
We solved that problem by stealing "libertarian" from the left anarchists, who can't complain since they don't believe in property rights. But I doubt that there has been any time in the past fifty years when a majority of libertarians were part of the LP. That's why it has become common to distinguish between libertarian and Libertarian. I am a libertarian but not a Libertarian.
Fair points. And I suppose I should defer to you for definitions here. :P
I will say that my point is more about how, when accounting for how the philosophy has evolved from its classical-liberal roots, any definition of libertarianism which does not at least account for the shared influence of The Party is similar to (to use a more extreme example) a definition of "the left" which doesn't account for the influence of Marxism(-Leninism)/Sovietism.
Endorsed on the complaints about the muddying of the term "liberal", I've complained before about how it means both anything and nothing at this point.
>We solved that problem by stealing "libertarian" from the left anarchists, who can't complain since they don't believe in property rights.
Actual lol, thank you.
>I doubt that there has been any time in the past fifty years when a majority of libertarians were part of the LP.
Granted, but I think a substantial part of this has to be attributed to "the official Libertarian party for elected office" being as near an oxymoron as you can get in said context (barring actual anarchist parties). I suspect that *any* individual who enthusiastically engages with the apparatus of the state is going to have a difficult time getting majority libertarian support, without even accounting for the normal values-dissonance between political parties and their constituents.
The Mises caucus thing is actually super confusing because it's less about Mises the man than the institute named after him, which is more influenced by Mises' student Rothbard. Among popular libertarian/Austrian economics there's a divide between the people who tend to associate with the Mises Institute and those who are roughly organized around the folks at George Mason university. Very little of that divide actually has to do with Ludwig von Mises himself.
I think Austrian economics is a dead end, but I have to give kudos to mises.org for making so much material freely available (before SciHub came around to make that the norm for academic publications).
Paleolibertarians (right on culture but don't want the government imposing things, right on economics) vs neolibertarians (1990s-left on culture, right on economics), more or less?
I think it's sort of devolved to that to some degree. On a more academic level it's closer to what you might call dogmatic vs. practical libertarianism; Rothbard or early Nozick vs. Mill; Non-aggression principle absolutists vs. utilitarian libertarians. All of those are probably somewhat reductionist but you can start to see the idea. The Mises folks have also been criticized for being too close to the alt-right. That might be an understatement, though I'm trying to remain somewhat impartial in my description even though I am personally not impartial. Someone told me that they're now all-in on Russian propaganda, though I haven't bothered to check as I've been done with them for years.
Ironically, I believe Mises himself claimed to be a utilitarian rather than a deontologist. Of course, he also wasn't an anarchist (unlike Rothbard).
Rothbard was an anti-statist, not "anarchist".
Correct that Mises was a utilitarian. But Rothbard described himself as an anarchist. I believe he coined the term "anarcho-capitalist."
How do they get around Mises' ancestry?
Have you considered that your belief that anyone right of center hates jews is a propagandistic left-wing caricature?
Why would you think they would need to? Just because one is "uncomfortably close to the alt right" doesn't oblige one to necessarily swallow every piece of 1940s NSDAP race laws.
Educate yourself a bit more before being so free with opinions perhaps?
Opinion is free, and I reserve the right to say "what makes this guy a big champion?" rather than tamely accepting that is so.
For a start, you could take a few minutes and read any one of the articles that I've linked to, and that would go a long way towards answering your questions
She *could*, but one of the lovely things about a site like this is that if you ask a simple question you often get a simple answer. As Deiseach did here, from Julian. No clicks or articles required.
You have (of course) every right to an opinion. But it's my opinion that you would be better served if you tried to have it be more informed.
The thing is, it's pretty annoying when someone comes here with their personal crusade. We've had much more egregious cases over the years, but the basic pattern is the same. You're asking for attention and time, but what are you offering in return? You certainly haven't done the legwork of *actually informing us*, which would be an obvious place to start if you want us to be more informed.
I'm offering you a link to a well researched and well written piece of scholarship, which in turn is trying to raise the quality of research, something we all depend on. You're of course welcome to not engage with it, but I found the uninformed preachiness of the post I was replying to uncalled for. Your mileage may vary.
Phil is doing God's work.
Which makes you question why God isn't doing it Himself? Does He always delegate this kind of work, reserving Himself for actual miracles and saving people from themselves?
Indeed, I find his efforts very impressive. My worry is that as usual, the hit pieces gain traction, while the corrections will get buried.
Your surprise suggests you are new to reading research papers.
Peer review is often used to suppress ideas that go against the prevailing views and opinions of the community.
Sometimes reviewers don't agree with a paper, but let it through because they have to show solidarity with the community, e.g.,
"Why the masturbation paper indicts academia": https://thomasprosser.substack.com/p/why-the-masturbation-paper-indicts
I think the difference is that my field is economics. The article you've linked to, and the areas discussed in it, seem to have it worse.
I've read plenty of research papers, just very few that deal with opinions on other people. The closest I've come to reading stuff like this is in literature reviews, which tend to take biased positions. But I've never seen anything this egregious.
There is a recent palladium article which discusses the idea suppression angle (linking it to the appropriation of scientific authority by the state), although at a high level: https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/10/10/the-transformations-of-science/
The public dissatisfaction with 'trust the science' is more about the publication of dubious, or even fake, research.
Science is supposed to be self-correcting. But the cachet comes from publishing something new, not in finding fault in published work (which publishers are often loath to retract).
Retraction Watch https://retractionwatch.com/
is a site that a fare few academics would like to suppress
But also note that Nancy MacLean's hit piece on John Buchanan was not peer-reviewed. If it had been, perhaps some of her slime and malquoting would have been discoverd?
I think the Slobodian and Cambridge University press example says otherwise. The peer review process there uncovered some of the problems, but they were simply ignored in favour of political point scoring
People who've read the Biodeterminist's Guide to Parenting might know that licorice is bad for you. This post explains how: https://denovo.substack.com/p/licorice-sucks
Yeah, except the other candies recommended are *also* bad for you, and doubtless have FDA warnings against over-consumption.
I love licorice but I've had to give it up since it does raise blood pressure. However, the chocolate candies recommended in its stead are also packed full of sugars (very bad!) and other agents, and consuming a ton of them instead of a ton of licorice is also frowned upon.
Moderation in everything is the key.
I would eat licorice but I never see the real stuff we had when we were kids, that was like leather. You remember, Deiseach I am sure, the long twists of it, up to 18 inches or so.
> Moderation in everything is the key.
Even in moderation.
100 year old person: "yes, I was part of that craze"
Is there a good theory on why people disagree on politics? Sometimes they can be reduced to fundamental value differences or disagreements on well defined predictions, but those are the rare cases.
Few suggestions of my own:
1. People get random influences over life that form their political opinions, so their politics draw something like a normal distribution. More realistically, stuff like social circles, environments and feedback loops would also have significant influence.
2. Or maybe it's the other way around - stuff that 99% of the people agree on won't become controversial topics, so the ones that people argue about are the ones that people naturally tend to have very different opinions of.
Neither of them feel completely satisfactory though. Does anyone have better ideas? Or maybe this is a well-researched topic already?
Some other posts here may say something similar, but I'd like to put out my own half-baked theory for folks to poke holes in. It starts with the observation that political/hot-button/culture war issues can be framed as "altruistic" vs "selfish" - e.g. abortion "Women should be able to make their own medical decisions" vs "My religion says it's a sin and everyone should obey my religion"; vegetarianism "I care about animal welfare" vs "I want to eat yummy animals", gays "People should be free to love as they wish to" vs "My religion says it's a sin and everyone should obey my religion"; gun control "People shouldn't have to get killed" vs "My cold dead hands". The framing can be flipped, e.g. abortion "I care about unborn fetuses" vs "My body, my choice". The 2nd step is to notice that evolution selects for both, "selfish" is obvious, "altruistic" needs group selection, which is somewhat controversial, but it seems obvious to me that kin altruism is evolutionarily adaptive. Since both traits are selected for, people wind up with a mix of both and conflict must follow.
Note that "selfish" tends to have negative connotations - almost every religion/ethical system deprecates "selfish" (2 exceptions I can think of are Ayn Randism and The Church Of Satan). But these negative connotations are human judgements, evolution doesn't judge.
I'd suggest a couple of things. First, people disagree because they disagree. Just in general, people think different stuff. There's a sense in which it's a mistake to seek an explanation for something that happens naturally.
Second, funnily enough, we disagree about politics because we're getting better at living peacefully with one another. Think of the things that people used to disagree about, that aren't nearly so salient any more. Religion is a biggie: I think the relative lack of religious wars and religious strife around the world at the moment is actually a real triumph. Think about how much Catholics and protestants used to divide up towns within living memory in the USA. But those kinds of divisions have faded, not because people agree more on how to worship god, but because we have very consciously taught children not to fight over those things.
Similarly, stuff like local pride and taste in music. Remember them censoring Elvis's dancing on TV? Real censorship because of a style of music. And stereotypically, parents complaining about the "noise" that their teenagers listen to. We seem to do that less now. Football clubs in England would have literal regular brawls with supporters of a club from a different part of London back in the 1970s. That seems to happen a bit less now. And again, I don't think it's because people aren't interested in their local area or their sports teams any more. They've just been taught that you can't turn those attachments into strife.
So what's left? Politics. We can't teach people not to argue about politics because politics is an inherently argumentative process. So that's where a lot of people's argumentative energy has gone.
Broadly, I think the most important divergences are differences in experiences.
If you're in a right-wing community, normal is right-wing, and people with an axe to grind with the community end up or present as left-wing. If you're in an left-wing community, normal is left-wing, and people with an axe to grind with the community end up or present as right-wing. But people with an axe to grind are not representative of people in general, and any given person's personal experiences are shaped to a significant extent by their more local political forces. So, to begin with, when left-wing people talk about right-wing people, they're really talking about right-wing-people-in-left-wing-enclaves, who are *not actually the same as right-wing people*. Likewise, when right-wing people talk about left-wing people, they are talking about left-wing-people-in-right-wing-enclaves.
So that's one kind of experience.
Another is that, in some places, whether or not your upstairs neighbor plays guitar at 4:00 AM is an important part of civil society, and in other places, your nearest neighbor can fire off cannons without disturbing you. I think a lot of the harshest disagreements in modern society come down to forcing other people to abide by rules that make no sense where they live, or for structuring society and our collective resources in a way which makes sense for one way of life but not another - whether or not free college sounds like a good idea depends in large part whether or not you see college as necessary to your way of life; likewise, whether or not open borders sound like a good idea depends in large part on whether or not you think your salary is globally competitive. Whether or not you want minimum wages or stronger unions depends on whether or not you see employment as a rare and valuable opportunity, or a constant exploitative temptation.
I think the best argument I ever heard for (2) was from video essay " How to Radicalize a Normie"[1], in the context of how the term "political" is used in internet forum culture:
>The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with, ”but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.
[1] https://innuendostudios.tumblr.com/post/188501365677/heres-how-to-radicalize-a-normie-a-video-essay
This sort of definition also goes a long way in explaining the phenomenon where certain people will label any representation of someone from outside their privileged/normative identity as "political"[2]
[2] https://twitter.com/emmahvossen/status/1138841342921060354
> Nobody, other than the usual lizardman constant, is bothered by "representation" per se.
Sure. Nobody holds the low status position "X" on the objective question. Everybody just hold position "Ephemism of X" on the meta-question which is conviniently functionally undistinguishable from "X" on objective question and isn't associated with low status. The fact that the meta question wouldn't even arise if everyone agreed on the objective question is also conviniently omitted from the discourse.
I mean, I think the objection here is that when they look at the current media landscape and conclude the problem is not -
"profit focused corporations are not great stewards of franchises, because their incentives lead them to greenlight and churn out as many low-quality sequels and remakes as possible because they'll sell tickets no matter how mediocre they are",
- but rather -
"allowing people who want diversity to make movies is bad"
-it's fair to say that they're a little biased on the object-level question. Especially when the most meme-ably bad movie of the year, Morbius, had a white male lead.
The problem with the black Little Mermaid isn't that she's black, it's that Disney's live action remakes are mediocre cash grabs that forsake the expressiveness you get from animation.
Now I will grant that "corporate wokism is just a marketing gimmick" is a totally valid position, but the question is why said lizardperson-believers are always so fixated on and offended by this particular marketing gimmick.
The problem is that diversity is both the justification for making the low quality sequel / remake and the shield for why the low quality sequel / remake is beyond criticism. This is why we complain so much about the diversity gimmick.
If you were to have gone to a producer and say "I want to do a Scooby-Doo spin-off without the title character", you'd have been laughed out of the room before you could finish your pitch. Then some D-list celeb added "Shaggy'll be an African-American, Velma will be Asian, Daphne will be Latinx, and Fred, well, since we're out of options, we'll just make him a moron to show what we think of white males" and the show got made. And it's to the point where artists doing fan art of the original series are being harassed for not adapting to the new diverse cast.
Allowing people that care about tallying diversity points more than producing good entertainment to make entertainment is a losing proposition for people that want entertainment. It's not impossible to combine diversity and entertainment, but it's not easy, and the pushback to those complaining about the poor quality of diverse entertainment we're getting makes it harder.
Allowing people that care more about money than producing good entertainment to make entertainment is also a losing proposition, but it's one that is inherently self-limiting. We complain about bad entertainment regardless of the cause, but when we complain about entertainment that's bad because those associated with it are relying on the diversity gimmick, we get pushback, and pushback that is riddled with inconsistencies and logical fallacies.
>Unironically correct. Regardless of how good their politics may or may not be that person _does_ have an agenda, and having an agenda _is_ ruining a community, and therefore that person should be ejected from the community if they can't keep it in their pants.
Ergo, anyone who complains about lack of free speech and wants to create stronger free speech norms should be removed from twitter, since that's an agenda. Also anyone who complains about trans people, and tries to argue we shouldn't let minors get whatever surgeries they want, because that's also an agenda. Definitely anyone who has anything to do with digital assets or currency, agendas galore. Also anyone [...]
Come on Treb. That wasn't even close to a well-reasoned first-principles position. You're just blindly doing tribe signaling. I expect better from you when trolling my comments. 4/10
>Twitter isn't a community.
ACX is, though, and the two of us are still here :P
I think the problem you're trying to get at is "don't start flame wars/re-ignite bitter arguments", specifically in a way that violates community norms. The problem isn't having an agenda *per se*, it's flaunting it in a way that's going to start strife in a community. Which ultimately comes back to "things on which the community disagrees".
In your gaming shop example, if you imagine a shop frequented by trans youths with pride flags on the window, said person would likely get the reaction "it's fine, now take out your damn chaos marines", with about the same tone as if they wouldn't shut up about the latest marvel movie or about how Necron Soulslurpers are overpowered and you can't believe Games Workshop released them.
Hacker news is a good example of this - you're allowed to discuss politics when it's relevant, but if you get into a flame war or post obvious flame bait, whether about gender politics or vim-vs-emacs, you get rate-limited.
"Unironically correct. Regardless of how good their politics may or may not be that person _does_ have an agenda, and having an agenda _is_ ruining a community, and therefore that person should be ejected from the community if they can't keep it in their pants."
You see the obvious counter to this, though: having a norm where the reformist is discouraged from critiquing some element of the status quo for the sake of the general good humour just cedes the political ground to whatever the local default is. Someone with an agenda still wins, now it just happens to be whoever got to the community first, established said default, and does not have to talk about their 'politics'.
Surely, at least sometimes, you've been the one to upset the apple cart with a minority opinion?
"It's childish and entitled to assume that every space one travels through must stroke one's political erogenous zones. Part of being a decent human being is being able to get along with people who are different from you."
I mostly agree with this. I just don't see it as favouring the incumbent ideology over the incoming ideology in any way. If anything, the opinion as stated seems to serve my argument.
"This assumes incorrectly that everybody is only doing stuff to push their politics, but even if in this case they had a deliberate culture they wanted to create -- are they somehow not entitled to have their own place? Is every knee required to bend?"
Well, the assumption is your original assumption. The interloper probably isn't exclusively a doorstep proselytiser either, they're in the community to do other stuff. But sure, if the safe space is deliberately created, like a LGBTQ+ Marksmanship Range or a Christian Dad Literary Club, and the knee is already bent a certain way, then I can see the reasoning. If the community is something like a general fandom, where the default is not honestly claimed but instead tacitly assumed by one group or another, then not so much.
"I have, yes. And because I'm a decent human being, I recognized when trying to evangelize my opinions was inappropriate, and was able to keep it in my pants."
I'm content to take your word for it, though I will admit it's a little difficult to believe it never left your pants at all, even just to test the waters.
Like basically everything else, genetics enormously affects the development of political views: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/#:~:text=Almost%20forty%20years%20ago%2C%20evidence,be%20explained%20by%20genetic%20influences.
Obviously, this takes place in the context of a certain political paradigm, but if everybody in the US were suddenly born with the exact same genes that affect political views, we should expect a dramatic decline in political views diversity in the US.
Self interest and personality seem like the key factors, with herd instinct picking up the slack.
Happy is he whose self interest, personality and herd instinct all push in the same direction, for he need never feel doubt.
Things were so much simpler in the early 1990’s when a local casino could put up a billboard saying “Come in a Democrat and leave a Republican!” and everyone got the joke.
Incidentally, in a preview of cancel culture they were forced to take it down. So I guess not all snowflakes are on the left.
Things have gotten ever so much more complicated in the interim.
I've thought a lot about this question, and based on my observations over the years, I think it mainly boils down to the fact that people who disagree with me are evil.
I once argued with someone down to the fundamentals, where we realized he was ok with X on principle, and I wasn't, and we knew we weren't going to agree. How those preconceptions were formed? Maybe it was upbringing, may it's genetics, maybe both, who knows.
I know that certain books that I read really resonated with me, and some disgusted me viscerally, even at a pretty young age; and the same goes for people who hate those same books. So who knows.
There are arguments about facts, definitions and values. And there are meta-arguments about epistemology, ethics status games and all kind of other stuff which in the end are as well either about facts, or definitions or values. Interestingly, in my experience, much more are about facts than it seems at the first glance. The problem, however, that all of these three types of disagreements are mixed and confused with each other, due to people being bad at separating between nominative and descriptive reasoning and the nature of the memetic landscape.
Modern political disagreement isn't just an argument between two people, it's a memetic competition between highly optimized narratives. Both narratives have great, detailed, making total sense from inside, explanations, why your opponents are evil/crazy/stupid and you are good and right. How it's useless to even try to communicate with these crazy people, that only ridiculing and oppressing them can work, that it's definetely what your opponents are already doing anyway and that's the only reason why their ridiculous views are so widespreaded. There are also huge amount of cherrypicked examples, explanations why every apparent attempt of your opponent to argue in a good faith is actually a trick and a trap that will score them political points and what are the best way to trap them likewise, self reinforcing explotation of toxoplazma of rage dynamics and so on.
"highly optimized narratives"
I like that expression, once you put it that way, it no longer feels strange that politics is way more controversial than other equally difficult subjects.
There are lots of explanations, some of which are good. Some is explained by differences in values and priorities. Some is explained by differing expectations of the effects of policy choices. Some is explained by naked self-interest, where different people have different interests.
I think most, though, is explained by tribalism. In the contemporary US, at least, nearly all the population is split into "red" and "blue" tribes, and most people accept their "tribe's" positions on most issues, because the people they identify with also accept these positions. I came across this explanation many years ago, which gives strong reasoning for this conclusion (I can now find it only on the Wayback Machine):
https://web.archive.org/web/20070111190035/http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/irrationality.htm
Our esteemed host offered similar reasoning many years ago. He talks extensively about tribalism and self-segregation, without making it explicitly about political positions: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
I don't know why you think value differences are rare; the people who can't define their core values still have a nebulous concept of them. That and tribalism account for most of it.
But looks like no one's mentioned personal power yet. There are the "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" people, who see a path to power from sowing discord and will do what they can to maximize it. Even in a world where everyone believes exactly the same things, people will always rally against the current leader because they want to be the current leader, and people will listen to them because of tribalism.
I think than Politics is the Mind-Killer because while our ancestral environment may have prepared us to be halfway decent Bayesians when hunting prey or whatever, in tribal politics calm reasoning was probably not a survival trait. These days, politics is mostly not a life-or-death thing any more, but in ancestral societies, supporting an idea which 80% of your fellow tribespersons abhorred would have bad consequences rather quickly.
John Nerst had an interesting post (https://everythingstudies.com/2022/05/24/the-political-is-personal/) about how people form political opinions by extrapolating from their own psychology, and often fail to realize that other peoples' minds work differently from their own. His own summary of the idea:
"We assume 1) that our experience of how our mind works is correct and 2) that other minds work the same way. This of course influences our attitudes on how to live life, and further extends to our beliefs about how society works and thus our political and moral views. So these are, ultimately, downstream of personal psychological quirks."
I don't think this explains all of political disagreement, but I think it undeniably forms a part.
That makes sense. Thank you for the link, very interesting read.
"Sometimes they can be reduced to fundamental value differences or disagreements on well defined predictions, but those are the rare cases."
Are they the rare cases? They seem to me to be exactly this, philosophical differences put into practice. You and I can be presented with the exact same set of circumstances, facts, and feasible methods, but if I want to optimise for equality while you want to optimise for individual freedom - and someone else for prosperity, and so on - we'll end up in discord.
Tangentially, one of the more admirable aspects of the EA project (speaking as a distant and far from clued-in observer) is the attempt to find, quantify, and target relatively apolitical good that almost everyone can agree on. Pandemic prevention, malaria nets, vitamins, longer, higher-quality lives. Concern over AI risk always comes across as the one thing that doesn't look like the others.
"They seem to me to be exactly this, philosophical differences put into practice. You and I can be presented with the exact same set of circumstances, facts, and feasible methods, but if I want to optimise for equality while you want to optimise for individual freedom - and someone else for prosperity, and so on - we'll end up in discord."
I've heard this argument for years, and it hasn't been completely convincing to me, because I've always felt like it didn't dig far enough down.
For starters, I think we all agree that equality and individual freedom are good things to have, all other things being equal. That implies that if you're optimizing for equality and I'm optimizing for individual freedom, I can still look at your project and understand why and how it could be a thing I could want. Likewise for you, checking out my project. But if each of us could understand the good in the other's work, how can we oppose it even so? The most obvious answer is that each of us likes our own good thing more; the more subtle answer is that we are probably facing a choice between two goods at point where increasing one comes only at the expense of the other, and we've each chosen a different path of that fork.
But why did we each choose the path that we did? It wasn't a pure mental coin flip; if it were, we wouldn't defend our choices so strongly. It could be a coin flip that somehow keyed into our competitive drive, sort of like how you can divide any group of people into "team green" and "team purple" and stage a game and they'll compete, vigorously. But in those cases, everyone understands the game is contrived, and you can point that out and they'll go back to being one crowd. (Or maybe not - witness pro sports events where people get hurt in rioting.) We can't (typically) point out that our choice of optimization is contrived and go back to collaboration.
I often find it's because each of us has information the other does not, and if we compared notes, we'd maybe change our minds. That typically doesn't happen because we've each tied our reputation to our initial choice, but if we're supposedly rational, there's no reason to do that except by accident, and in that case we just note the mistake and proceed to share info. There's also cases when the information available isn't enough, and we're forced to rely on heuristics. But heuristics are themselves information; we could share them, too. What then?
When I dig *this* deep, I find that the heuristics are sort of floating atop a frothing sea of uncertainty - I'm putting 10% more certainty on one of my sources than you are, 8% more on another; or there are maybe ten different heuristics we're employing, each relying on over five factors, and those fifty factors are being processed by our subconscious faster than our conscious can track and record discretely, because they fluctuate quickly, often depending on yet more heuristics, and possibly grounding out in stuff like "I know this because it's allowed me to make small predictions hundreds of times over my life, and you only learned of it a minute ago so your confidence is necessarily near 50% only", and so on.
"I think we all agree that equality and individual freedom are good things to have, all other things being equal."
I don't think you should assume this. There's stuff like lawn maintenance laws, where individual freedom is curtailed for aesthetic uniformity. You can't optimize for both freedom and uniformity, you're tearing down one to build the other.
Equality means different things to different people.
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=36916
>If I play golf against Tiger Woods, is the game fair before or after we institute a stroke handicap that allows for our vastly different skill levels?
So there are fundamentally conflicting values in play before you get to optimization.
I was talking more about the average voters. A random supporter of, say, Donald Trump, probably doesn't support him because he predicts 0.2%p higher GDP growth under Trump's presidency, it's likely more about vague nice feelings he has about him(same goes for any other politician, of course). What I'm curious is, how can we have such different vague impressions for the same people? Surely rational predictions can only diverge so far.
There’s a forthcoming book from Oliver Traldi on the Philosophy of Political Beliefs which I expect to be absolutely excellent, on this subject especially