Or, in place of a full review, has anyone around here read the book and care to share opinions on it? I'm very much interested in the themes, but I'm afraid I won't gain new insights, being a regular reader of this blog.
I've noticed that whenever I wear a backpack, particularly with a heavy load, and take my shirt off afterwards, there are pink stripes over my shoulders under where the straps were. Does anyone know why this happens? When I tried googling it, I just got pages about little red spots, which is not what I saw.
Stripes are from compression and red dots are from friction. You probably want more cushioned straps that are larger or you need to have lighter loads.
Ran across this substack article and immediately wondered what Scott Alexander would think of it. True story? Or "big pharma bad" narrative? Tl;dr: The seratonin uptake model of depression is unsupported by evidence; SSRIs are way overprescribed.
>Remember, the thesis of my last post was that the “chemical imbalance” argument hides a sort of bait-and-switch going on between the following two statements:
>(A): Depression is complicated, but it seems to involve disruptions to the levels of brain chemicals in some important way
>(B): We understand depression perfectly now, it’s just a deficiency of serotonin.
>If you equivocate between them, you can prove that psychiatrists were saying (A), and you can prove that (B) is false and stupid, and then it’s sort of like psychiatrists were saying something false and stupid.
The Critical Drinker (a.k.a Will Jordan) is a novelist and online movie/TV critic. He is pretty excited about The House of the Dragon. Where The Rings of Power failed, The House of the Dragon succeeded, according to the Drinker.
He's very funny. One of the few good things to come out of this whole Rings of Power mess is that when searching for online reviews, I came across several people whom I now follow.
I'm even reconciled to Eric Kain, who after starting out all rah-rah for the show, has now comfortably settled down to "why this show is crappy and how it is crappy" 😁
Some of the criticism was indeed extreme and ill-directed and just as uninformed about the canon they were trying to defend as the show was, but most of it was reasonably based on good grounds.
What everyone, even on Tumblr, is laughing about is how the showrunners seem to have genuinely thought that "Halbrand is Sauron" was a big, mysterious, shock revelation. Even when the trailers came out, there were people saying "I know people who know people/I have a Hollywood contact/I got a sneak peek of the script and yeah, Halbrand is Sauron".
This lot can't write a decent plot twist for toffee.
No, I don't hang around there. I was mostly waiting for this place to get up and running. I do argumate and fightify over on TheMotte (redux) but under a different name.
Hm, if the two of you find DSL unpalatable, maybe I'll try to persuade some of the other worthy commenters from there to drift back here. And Johan - your absence is noted with considerable sadness.
Absolutely. I think in the 22nd century the world's political center of gravity will move north, with Canada and Russia possibly eclipsing the US and China as the most important world powers. Should be interesting. Wish I was going to be around to see how things shake out.
Maybe, but it's also going to be hurting other places. Parts of India may be actually uninhabitable (or at least difficult and dangerous) in the summer (minus air conditioning). The southern swath of US states are going to have similar but less severe issues, and large costs to flood-proof their cities. Most of China's recent development is coastal. The next eighty years are going to impose significant costs.
I'm just suggesting that when you sum the improvements for the northern countries with the damage sustained in the south, it will push the currently second tier northern powers past the current first tier.
I could certainly be wrong. But if I could bet on it, that's the way I'd bet.
Sure. What the US vs UK number in 1820? I don't think anyone would dispute that we'd passed them by 1980. Our current dominance isn't set in stone. It can (and I think will) change.
Ireland has warmed up a little over my lifetime, probably for the better. But the weather here is super-variable anyway. Mild and temperate, but it does whatever it wants within those limits.
That said, sea-level rise will mostly inconvenience rather than benefit us.
Of course. A warmer world is pretty much by definition a greener and more ecologically rich world, it's why the Amazon has a riotous biome compared to, say, Greenland. The only part of global warming that anyone rational considers troubing is the potential *speed* of the change, on the grounds that ecologies might not be able to adapt fast enough.
It is, yes, and if it were remotely plausible that anthropogenic activity could raise CO2 levels to, say, 10-100 atm, then I would be concerned that the Earth would turn into Venus.
Edit: a weird gloss on the barreness of the Sahara is that it is the font of life in the Caribbean, with which I believe you are familiar. Generally sea life is starved of iron[1], and the trade winds carry iron-bearing dust from the Sahara far out to sea, leading to a "fertilization" of the western Atlantic, and from that enrichment of humble bacteria and plankton at the bottom of the food chain arises the rich variety of sealife in the Caribbean.
Thanks for the article. It was quite good. I depart from the author in thinking the human contribution to changing climate is proved, or quantifiable. All our activities are a tiny delta on the enormous and complex natural cycles that go on all the time, and which, over history we can easily study, have changed the Earth's climate far more drastically than anything within even the worst nightmares of global warming alarmists.
Figuring out what additional effect the delta has is...very, very tricky. Remember how difficult it was to predict how lockdowns, mask-wearing, mutation, or a vaccine would affect the progress of COVID? Like that -- only about 100x worse, since there are many more moving parts, and many fewer bits of critical data measureable over an accessible time scale, when it comes to climate change than in case of pandemic progression. We can easily do experiments to measure, say, the transmission rate of SARS-Covid-2 under certain circumstances. We can't do experiments that quantify what an extra 50 Gt of CO2 emission in North America does to the jet stream over a 50 year timespan. Most climate features are like this: just too big and too slow to do experiments, which is why we end up relying heavily on complex computer models -- but anyone who's worked with complex computer models should immediate frown in concern over *that*.
Of course the Earth's climate is changing! It's *always* changing, always has, always will. There were once glaciers covering this continent, now there aren't. There were once forests in Greenland, now there aren't. And so on. If I had to bet on any natural climate change going on now, I'd bet on warming, since we are coming out of a glacial maximum and that's normally what happens. (And whether or more precisely when we can expect a new glaciation is an interesting question.)
And so? Does it make sense to throw up our hands and just say "shit happens, climatically speaking, there's nothing to be done about it?" Of course not. It makes all kinds of sense to study what humans may do to affect climate, and to prudently modify what we do, when we can, consistent with all other objectives, and bearing in mind the strong limitations on our knowledge, to prevent contributing to change we don't want to see.
And of course it makes all kinds of sense to think about how we can live with climate change, because it would happen even if we didn't contribute anything to it. We live on a dynamic planet, in a dynamic system, and it behooves us to practice balancing lest we be flung off by an unforeseen gyration.
CO2 as a result of its infrared absorption profile has a direct effect on temperature (and indeed it gets multiplied a bit by processes that are reasonably well understood). We've pumped out a lot over the last couple of centuries, and a lot of it is measurably still there. Whatever you think about the importance of anthropogenic global warming, and what if anything should be done about it - it is a real thing.
I’m not a worker, but I’ve been a patient of a therapist and psychiatrist at Kaiser Oakland, the therapist I had good repport with, but I only got to see her once every other months at most, and I understand that once a week would be better, and I’d say too little progress has been made in that time.
The psychiatrist I’ve only spoken on the phone with, he prescribed me an antidepressant which did work to reduce my sadness, but it replaced my sadness with terrible anger which was worse.
Yeah, Kaiser has a really bad reputation for mental health services. I've tried their nutritional services/coaching and I was very unimpressed. I'm not sure if there's a good alternative though. Actual healthcare that's more than prescriptions is expensive.
Does anyone know when/if they will start letting shadowbanned people back on Twitter? I figured the changes won't go through immediately, but the former corrupt staff just ignores my appeals.
Edit: I know Bezos lurks here and I'll bet Elon might too because a lot of his tweets are ingroup coded, hey Elon if you read this please reform the ban appeals process so it's more fair! The current people throw my ban appeals in the garbage without reading them at all!
What do you mean, specifically? I thought the whole idea of shadowbanning is that you could use Twitter like normally, but be suppressed to the visibility of other people? Are you talking about regular banning?
So both Tyler Cowen(1) and Bryan Caplan(2) have written persuasively on the weakness of the New Right. At it's core, the critique is that the New Right is so hostile to educated elites and bureaucrats that it has no realistic way to actually run the bureaucracy if it gets in power and no coherent policy proposals to change the situation. And I think that's very fair; the biggest failure of the Trump years was an inability to find loyal, competent people to staff the bureaucracy. Quite frankly, the New Right doesn't have a coherent plan to implement it's policies.
On the flipside though, I'm really wondering what the alternative is. Do thinkers like Caplan and Cowen have a realistic plan to get any of their policies through the political process. Do these older Reaganite/libertarian/deregulator types have a realistic slate of candidates to elect? I'm not aware of any Democrats who are amenable to these politics and the Republican tickets in 2024 and 2028 will either be Trump or DeSantis, and if anything DeSantis is more clearly "New Right" than Trump. And the general vibe I've gotten with House and Senate races is that, while Trump-backed candidates don't always win their primaries, they win more than they lose.
But I don't follow politics as much as a used to. Are there credible Republican or Democratic candidates who are sympathetic to Cowen's positions? Is there still a solid block of Reagan Republicans to enact these policies?
I don't think a literal open borders supporter's opinions are especially useful to a group for whom restricting immigration is one of the main issues they care about. If he's giving objectively true strategic analysis, fine, but as has been told to Caplan countless times and which he has hand waved away countless times, open borders would destroy any hope for other right wing policies seeing the light of day.
People are ultimately interested in results. Following a hand-off, libertarian-leaning philosophy has yielded exactly zero wins for the right. And most of the right aren't even that enthusiastic about libertarian economics, as Trump's 2016 candidacy showed. What most right-wing voters tend to care about are social/cultural wins and there's far less fuss about small government dogma.
This, I think, is at the core of the disagreement. Cowen and Caplan are ideological purists who'd ultimately seem to care more about economics than about social issues. Both are very big on loose immigration policies, which doesn't sit well with a substantial fraction of the RW electorate.
I think what we have is that the old Reagan coalition of social conservatives and economic liberals is slowly coming apart and perhaps it was never meant to last anyway.
I've previously described Trump as a very effective middle finger to the Establishment. His actual policies aren't that far from standard Republican, but his mode of operation and goals are. This was the purpose that he was elected to fulfill, which he seems to understand very well.
I've been connected to some pretty far-right voters for years (mostly family), and they have been almost as upset at various Republican leaders as the Democrats. Mitch McConnel and Paul Ryan don't care about your average coal miner or whatever working class voter any more than the Democrats do, and rarely advance policies with the intent or effect of helping out this group of voters. They throw some red meat wedge issue at them at voting time, but day to day tell them to get lost.
Anyway, my point is that the New Right don't actually care about governing - they care about making sure that the elites of both parties recognize that there is a huge number of voters who are not being served by either party, and are angry enough to do something drastic about it. They will quiet down and go back to their lives if/when either party starts truly representing this segment of society. They don't want to lead, they just don't want to be forgotten.
Analysis like Cowen's is accurate, but misses the point. Elites (and Cowen is definitely in that group) are not understanding what's going on. They see the New Right as a new (sub) political party that's trying to gain power for the usual reasons. To be fair, there are definitely normal politicians who are trying to do that - DeSantis for one - but that's not really what the movement is about.
Based on my own experiences of MAGA voters, I agree with your first two paragraphs. (With perhaps the modification that Trump personally doesn't seem to genuinely believe in or much care about _any_ particular policies. He says whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear.)
And yes, Cowen is completely missing the point here. As are most pundits across the existing mainstream.
And also yes, MAGA doesn't care about governing. And in 2016/17 I did think that they had a general shared goal along the lines of "if/when either party starts truly representing this segment of society." But....since around 2018 or 19 they haven't seemed to even genuinely be seeking that. Talking with MAGA voters since maybe a year before 1/6/21 has invariably boiled down to just the middle finger. It's pretty close to pure nihilism now: hate all the elites especially the libtards (of which their working definition now includes more or less everyone who isn't them), and let's burn it all down. Beyond that they truly, or at least the ones I'm acquainted with, no longer give any fucks about accomplishing any particular political or civic change.
That's what for example Joe Walsh, former Tea Party congressman and hard-right radio host, has been saying on social media. He obviously knows far more MAGA voters than I do but his descriptions/predictions about them are nowadays absolutely spot-on in my personal world.
I agree with your additions (though I think Trump, or at least his advisors, do have a more complete policy plan than either are given credit for - but that's a different discussion) and I think I have an answer for why the MAGA voters went scorched earth.
Consider the reaction to a group of voters supporting Trump - the left, the media, and even many mainstream Republicans treated them like idiots who couldn't understand anything. Hillary Clinton called them a "basket of deplorables." The media called them racists. Trump was attacked for both legitimate concerns and a whole host of completely made up things (Russian Collusion for one, which was never supported by any evidence and the FBI knew that when they started the investigation).
The elites of society arranged themselves against this group, and then wondered why this group got so upset by it! The institutions of the country were set against them if they even looked like they supported Trump - like the Justice Department calling parents domestic terrorists if they expressed their opinions at a school board meeting.
Thomas Paine wrote that a government has to be responsive to the people's needs. In doing so, he was legitimizing the need of the American colonies to revolt against the British, because the British king would not or could not provide what the people needed. If we are going down the same path and demonizing what is frankly a huge number of people in this country (including majorities of both minority and white voters), then I can't see how we're surprised when they get angry and demand better representation. When we refuse to give them that, and deride any attempts to remedy the situation, what else do we think they're going to do? Go home saying "aw shucks, I guess we lost"?
The core voting component that the media often complain are solidly pro-Trump no matter what gets reported about him is like 35-40% of the electorate. You can't ignore numbers like that. You have to engage with them. What we've seen so far is a full attempt to shut them down and cut them out of polite society. That is a doomed plan. The fact that Democrats are losing minority voters to Trump-types should be another wake-up call, but I don't think it's going to be. When Trump and his types win in 2024 (which I'm predicting will happen if he runs), are we going to demonize his voters again, or are we going to try to recognize that we need a different plan that doesn't cut 30-50% of the population out of the picture and expect that to just work out?
Sorry if I'm a little fired up about this, but I think we're doing some really stupid things and then blaming the plebs for not just giving up. We ridicule them, even if/when they're right. Even ignoring morality and fairness, it's plain stupid to treat half the country as if they're illegitimate.
"(Russian Collusion for one, which was never supported by any evidence and the FBI knew that when they started the investigation)"
Hmm, well having read the entire Mueller report (a lot of it twice), this is not a very reasonable interpretation of what it found.
Mueller's investigation absolutely did debunk the Steele dossier, at length and in detail. It also concluded that there was no Russian involvement in some specific infamous actions such as the last-minute editing of the 2016 GOP national platform to weaken language related to Ukraine.
Mueller also pointed out though, and carefully documented, that the feds' opening of an investigation into Trump campaign interactions with Russian governmental contacts was not based on the Steele dossier. (In fact it pre-dated the existence of the dossier.)
What the Mueller investigation did find, and document, includes that:
-- Russia clearly did try, in multiple ways, to interfere in the U.S. 2016 presidential election in ways that they though would help Trump.
-- various people close to Trump _tried_ to collude with Russia; failed to report any of those contacts with foreign nationals as required under U.S. election law; and then repeatedly lied about those attempts and contacts to investigators.
Regarding Trump personally, more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors put it this way in a signed statement: "the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice."
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which was majority Republican and chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, had meanwhile conducted its own investigation. Its report issued in summer 2018 found "irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling" in the 2016 U.S. election. It also stated that Senate investigators had documented Trump campaign staff illegally sharing sensitive info "with the Russian intelligence services". And that's just what the committee was willing to declassify; half the report was classified and some members of the Senate committee stated publicly that the classified findings were stronger.
And all of that was _without_ any reliance on the Steele dossier, which was rightly found to be just hot air.
And let's not forget how the followup investigation-of-the-investigators (Durham) ended up being an embarrassing failure.
YMMV of course. And this stuff does get pretty damned twisty. But for me the above blows apart the idea of the Russia-Trump connection having been a "hoax". Maybe we'll never really know for sure, but there's a whole lot of thoroughly-documented smoke that has to be dismissed in the name of waving off that fire.
More than one Trump campaign staffer did collude with Russia; others attempted to; Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump; and Trump as well as his sons and several of his closest aides have lied about all of the above. (Some of that lying being under oath and hence leading to criminal convictions.) You're right that none of that proves that Trump, personally, colluded with Russia.
If on the other hand you think all those proven facts don't add up to collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend the Finance Minister of Nigeria....
It's hard to find a "neutral" source on this stuff, but I understand that the Durham investigation brought more light to the Steele Dossier and the evidence for the initial investigation. Specifically, that there was *nothing* beyond the Steele Dossier that supported the initial reasons for opening the investigation against Trump. Despite that fact, the FBI lied about having more evidence, even though they knew the Steele Dossier was not supported and likely false. They offered Steele a million dollars to find corroborating evidence prior to taking it to the FISA court, but neither Steele nor anyone else ever corroborated it. Many major media organizations tried for months to corroborate it, and also found nothing after the fact.
The original investigation was based on wholly and entirely false allegations that the FBI knew to be false.
That's enough for me to call is a hoax even if they found some unrelated things later. It was no big surprise that Russia tried to influence the election. Every major country tries to do the same, and I'm sure it happened in 2012 and 2020 as well. Acting like it's a big deal is only legitimate because the FBI and Mueller investigated it - but neither found anything surprising and at least the original FBI investigation was knowingly based on lies.
This is something that most people probably don't know about, if the only read major publications that hate Trump.
Durham proved nothing which is why every jury that his cases went to quickly ruled against him.
More importantly, the sole source for the $1 million bounty offer claim is a former FBI analyst named Brian Auten who Durham put on the stand. And during that same testimony, Auten firmly debunked the idea that the Steele dossier had anything to do with the FBI's original investigation. He stated, under oath, that the investigation was launched due to unsolicited intelligence from a friendly country that a Trump campaign aide had bragged to one of its diplomats that the Russians had offered to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
Auten is the sole source for the $1 million bounty story; he is the 10th or 20th sworn source who's said that the Steele dossier was not why the FBI started investigating Russia-Trump coordination. A reasonable person can't sensibly accept the first claim at face value while rejecting the second.
"The fact that Democrats are losing minority voters to Trump-types should be another wake-up call, but I don't think it's going to be."
Agree on both points.
"re solidly pro-Trump no matter what gets reported about him is like 35-40% of the electorate." True. But then you refer to "30-50% of the population" or "half the country". The first does not equal the second nor close to it.
Presidential-election turnouts in the US range between 50 and 62 percent of the voting-age population. So in 2016 Trump got the votes of about 25 percent of US adult citizens; in 2020 he got the votes of about 29 percent of US adult citizens. If we assume that maybe 4/5ths of those are "solidly pro-Trump" voters then that puts his MAGA core at between a fifth and a quarter of the country.
"You can't ignore numbers like that. You have to engage with them." Perhaps 20 to 25 percent of the society is a large enough number that this point still holds. At a philosophical level I would still agree with it, definitely did agree and made that argument from 2016 through 2018. That is after all tens of millions of citizens!
But at a practical level today...have to say, I dunno. When a segment of society goes full nihilism; and moves from verbal violence to actual violent insurrection (1/6/21); and cheers for more of the same but "get it right this time" (as lots of MAGA supporters are doing right now); and keeps doubling down on hero-worship of the likes of Donald J. Trump....I'm no longer sure that 25 percent of the nation is in fact so many that they have to be engaged with when they go _there_. Or frankly that there is any real possibility anymore of engaging with them in any productive way.
Sorry, the 30-50% is the range from what appears to be solidly pro-Trump (which I estimate at 30% but 25% isn't very far from that) and the percent of the population that don't have at least a bachelor's degree. Somewhere in that range is the correct number that are within this population, and need to be considered.
If we were just talking about the very small number calling for violence, I may agree with you. But there are far more people in this population just trying to get through day to day like the rest of us, who are really tired of the elites and leaders making life harder on them in a way they cannot ignore. Covid restrictions that allowed millions of white collar workers to work from home and laid off millions of blue collar workers is a great example of the phenomenon. The people making the decisions chose a path that wasn't a burden to them, but was a huge problem for the bottom half of the country. Add to it that the restrictions also made it nearly impossible to access normal services in person from the government, and often locked people out entirely. If you're a 55-year-old factory worker who doesn't own a computer, the pandemic response looks a *lot* different.
"the Justice Department calling parents domestic terrorists if they expressed their opinions at a school board meeting" -- that is an urban legend, or if we want to be frank about it simply a lie.
What happened is that an outside group wrote a letter _to_ the Attorney General (later retracted) which had argued that some violent threats against school officials “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism”. They did not call anybody a terrorist for simply expressing an opinion on school issues or policies but rather for making violent threats. And then the Attorney General specifically on the record _rejected_ any such implication: said that he couldn’t even “imagine a circumstance” where “parents complaining” at a school board meeting would be “labeled as domestic terrorism.” Instead, Garland directed the FBI to review strategies to address violent threats and harassment against school boards. His memo did not use the phrase domestic terrorism or anything like it, and in that directive he pointedly reminded the FBI that "spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution."
Then Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that an FBI email that a whistleblower had sent to him contradicted Garland's description of the FBI's actions. But in fact the text of that email clearly stated that the FBI's new internal "threat tag" would apply only to “violence, threats of violence, and other forms of intimidation and harassment” against school board members.
So that whole meme was just that, a meme with no facts backing it up. And the perpetration and widespread acceptance of such horseshit is something that I get a little fired up about.
Okay... so nothing the above commenter said was wrong. You've put "context" on the situation, but it is true that a teacher's association actually sent a letter to the government calling these parents violent domestic terrorists, and then the government actually responded by saying that they would investigate. What was said above is a pretty fair characterization of that sequence of events.
This reminds me of these "Fact-Checking" sites where if some event is favorable for Republicans, but so undeniably true that they just can't outright classify it as false, they just said it's "misleading" or "needs context" and then go on a long diatribe about how the context somehow makes the situation less bad for Democrats.
An association of school boards sent a letter to the government. The DoJ responded by saying they would investigate whether school board members are being threatened with violence, while the Attorney General made it clear that the department would not treat simple disagreement or complaining about policies as anything but citizens exercising their constitutional rights.
The allegation as stated and repeated is that the DoJ labeled parents as domestic terrorists. The DoJ unambiguously did not do that, and the head of that department stated clearly that it would not. So the allegation is flatly false; a lie. No contextualizing is needed in order to show that.
Fair enough. The initial letter from the School Board Association was definitely the ones who mentioned domestic terrorists. They did later retract that, but I'll point out that they only did so after massive backlash and several state level Associations pulling out of the national level. Also, the whole helping push the election of Youngkin as a partial backlash to the fiasco.
The initial response from the FBI was to announce that they were "investigating" issues at school boards. Let me ask you this, is there any reason at all for the *FBI* to investigate problems at a local school board? Why in the world would that not be local police, or at least the state police? The FBI would only be involved if this was deemed a significant problem, and the fact that the FBI even deigned to notice local school board issues comes across as very much as response to the letter referring to "domestic terrorists" at school board meetings. I appreciate the fact that Garland has enough legal knowledge and tact to be clearer in his written response, but I will still hold to the position that the FBI had no business whatsoever getting involved.
You still seem to be blaming the feds for language in a letter that somebody sent _to_ them.
The FBI would appropriately get involved if it was a significant problem and/or it involved illegal activity crossing state lines. Since some of what was being reported was threats sent via US Mail or email, the second condition did apply.
As to the first condition, that's a subjective judgement. But...this news story based on specific receipts was published six months _after_ that letter arrived in Garland's mailbox:
My biggest fear is that this situation might actually be long-term supportable. Think about it: if you're hell-belt on denying 40% of the country representation, all you really need to do is to become very good at rigging elections. We're already halfway there - we know elites are very good at controlling access to info that might affect elections, for example. (I can think of a lot more that already worked or is currently in the works, but I don't want to have an argument about every single item here.)
Maybe you have some idea about what can prevent this from going on indefinitely. Who cares about wake-up calls when you're not interested in gaining people's support, but only in winning the election, by any means necessary? (Or do you think they are interested in getting that support?) One election defeat is not going to do much.
Except for that point, I think your description of the situation is spot-on.
The more intellectual wing of this group are definitely worried about this. If a segment of the population only follows major left-leaning media, they will miss anything of the warning signs that there's a problem. I imagine your typical NYT reader has no idea there's anything to worry about - just some loser racists trying to be racist.
And to be fair, there are some racists in this group! Maybe a lot of them! But the implication that it's a majority (including of the black and Hispanic Trump supporters?) or that their primary reasoning is racist is wrong. Their primary reasoning is economic, the same as every other voting group. You can certainly make them look racist, or maybe even turn them racist, by pitting them against other racial groups. Importing millions of low skilled laborers from Central America might do it. Affirmative Action where elites will outright say that they are preferring black candidates over white candidates might do it. We're talking primarily about non-college whites - who aren't doing well economically! They are struggling with globalization, loss of industry, and a transition to a knowledge economy. Pitting them against minorities in the same economic situations is unfair to all of them. Ignoring their concerns and needs while you do it is how you get into our current situation.
Know anyone doing manufacturing? I'm looking to beta test my open-source, open-hardware robotic solutions ( https://yorc.global ) with some clients. Thanks!
There is a news letter called "The Prepared" which is largely about this type of manufacturing. I know that there is a paid tier of the newsletter with a slack channel which likely has a large audience of people you may be interested in talking to.
Light manufacturing. Things like glue dispensing, hole punching, tapping, drilling -- that kind of thing. Know anyone in need of that kind of automation?
If you provide more details I might but as it is I need some better info on the target consumer. For example, I know someone who does camera automation but I'm not sure how to pitch them based on just reading the site.
If you're looking for hobbyists who know python and build and could provide feedback then I am one.
We're not yet ready for beta-testers, but it'd be great if you signed-up on the website (green bar on the bottom) so we could let you know when we were.
At the moment we're looking for a consulting-type role so we can work out any kinks ourselves. Ideally we're looking for someone who has a repetitive manufacturing (or QA, ...) process they want to automate and are willing to pay USD$5k+ for a complete solution. Camera automation would be fine too -- we already built a rig for that in fact.
Will do re:sign up. Are you supplying parts or fully built solutions? And are you looking for any particular industries? No guarantees anyway but I'll ask around.
Long-term we'll sell the motors, cartesian robots, and specific solutions like the dispensing robot and motor-winding robots we already have. Right now because of the chip shortage we don't want to sell the motors because they're lower margin items. We'll sell fully-built solutions at the beginning so as not to introduce variability into the builds. We're looking for product-market fit, so we don't yet have specific industries in mind.
What if those of us with time to spare (an hour a day) chose a school which many poor children attend, and helped atleast a couple every day with homework? Just show up with a healthy snack after school and hang around an hour.
Start this while they're young and help the same kids through high school, or until whenever they become independent in studying. Don't take on too many kids, so you can be more effective.
My MiL does this at my local elementary. The admin make time for her to tutor kids during the regular school day. You might have a bit more success with that approach, as it doesn't ask kids to extend the school day.
Assuming we're talking about the US here where every student has access to schooling (and lottery voucher programs show that schooling "quality" differences don't explain why some students do better than other students, and where race is a stronger predictor of schooling performance than family income).
Headstart tutoring programs in the US produced significant gains in IQ, but these gains went away with time and were hollow for g. If Headstart fails here, I can't imagine any program like this working.
Now, if we're talking about a developing country, that is a lot different, because IQ and schooling performance will be less heritable than in the US, but I assume you are talking about the US.
Scott has a piece somewhere suggesting that elite tutoring is probably the best education solution we've found, but it simply doesn't scale. Volunteer efforts like this are an effort to bring those sorts of benefits to kids who can't otherwise afford them.
I have been volunteering fairly regularly for many years now, and most of my experience is with high school students. A few years in India, and then several years in the US.
Some observations about the challenges involved:
1. US has a lot of regulations around any contact between students and adults who aren't parents/teachers. They are more stringent when it comes to younger children. Students who would benefit the most from free tutoring would be in public schools, and I think public schools have even less flexibility.
Schools are highly unlikely to entertain a random stranger to pitch in an idea about spending time with children. The way would be through an established program. I volunteer that way. Both times I signed up with such programs, there was a mandatory background check. In one of the cases, it also involved fingerprinting. These were several years ago, but IIRC in at least one of these cases I had to pay for the background check myself. After that, there was also mandatory orientation. Since I do it every year I don't have to keep redoing these, so it is a one-time effort. I am not sure if these lapse the way teachers are required to keep up their licensing/whatever.
All meetings are on school premises, and require some staff to be around in the vicinity. Which means fewer opportunities and somewhat inflexible timings -- either the volunteer should be willing to find time during the business hours, or the school should have someone willing to spare time in their free time (in addition to the volunteer, of course).
For any online communication (not just Zoom, but even email to help with HW), a school representative is expected to be included.
All this regulation is somewhat understandable, though coming from India I was surprised and still find it a bit much. That said, the overhead alone, which if not tedious is just boring, is demotivating for would-be volunteers.
2. Among those who get past the overhead and sign up for an actual project, it is common to see folks drop off within the first few weeks. Finding volunteers who are willing to commit for long-term projects (say for a full academic year) with a regular schedule, and who are also comfortable teaching certain subjects (math), is challenging in general. Adults with families are busy. Most adults without families yet generally prefer spending time to form a family. Life happens.
3. Finding students who are interested is also difficult. It is very common to have students who sign up but never show up, show up but are irregular, etc. Somewhat expected, but I think it is in turn demotivating for volunteers.
4. COVID had a major impact on schools. Things got canceled across the board, but also were coupled with a surge in volunteer interest, so opportunities in a way became harder to find. Then things went remote. Zoom lessons are challenging for students in general, and students are extremely unlikely to turn on their cameras and are often on mute (for various reasons, including privacy). As a volunteer you have absolutely no weight in asking them to turn on the camera/mic. Not being a seasoned teacher, you can't be sure whether the student is following or is lost or has tuned out. It takes greater energy to try to be interactive, while getting a poorer signal. Another demotivating factor for volunteers.
Now when schools are starting to reopen again, I think additional restrictions -- to not allow non-essential activities that bring non-essential members into the schools -- have become even more justifiable in terms of avoiding unnecessary risk.
This part is probably more to do with my personal taste. There are more remote opportunities than ever before. But I have found them to be more draining and less satisfying.
Conclusion: Overall a very inefficient market when it comes to matching interested tutors with interested students. Being able to find out an opportunity through informal networks (parents instead of schools) might result in a better match, but it is much less scalable.
I think it might be easier in India. There are fewer regulations. When it comes to children, there is a greater sense of trust even with somewhat new adults. Personal networks are likely to have people among different social classes, so even informally finding a match might be easier.
I don't mean any of this to discourage volunteers. I personally find it (usually) worth the effort. I have had some amazing students over the years, but at least some of that is just random luck. A high school student from my first year of volunteering in the US kept in touch with me throughout the years, and this semester joined a PhD program in Electrical Engineering at a top university.
You can do this as a volunteer. I've done such tutoring on and off since I was in college, ranging from helping people with English to mathematics. As to why more people don't, well, the honest answer is that well off professionals (who could make the biggest impact on test scores) are less likely to give time or money. And when they do they're more likely to give in their own communities rather than going further. Religious conservatives are both more likely to give time and money and more likely to travel into other people's communities to do charitable work. But they're not great at things like SAT tutoring in my experience.
Relatively small scale similar-ish programs exist. I'd be interested in seeing the efficacy data. Also....are you proposing that the school make time during normal hours for this or that it is an after school program, and if it's an afterschool program, are you also going to take the kids to/from home or otherwise accomodate parent schedules?
And finally, what you are proposing is basically a volunteer tutor program. I'm just not convinced that enough people have both the skills, the desire, and the ability (time/schedule wise) to do this to make a society-wide impact. There are roughly 50 million children ages 5-17 in the US. Let's assume you want to try and targe the bottom quarter. That's 12 million. Let's assume that, to be effective, an indvidual tutor can't help more than 3 kids. So now you need 4 million adults who have relevant skills, the requisite schedule flexibility, and most importantly the _desire_ to spend significant amounts of their free time tutoring. I don't think that many people exist in that category. Especially when you consider that the children most in need are often concentrated in a few areas, areas that are least likely to have capable adults.
All that being said, for anyone who wants to do this, it's relatively likely that you will make a large impact in the lives of a few children, and that is a worthwhile endeavor.
Parents will have to choose me, basically. I forgot to say that. And I might have a questionnaire to determine who are the most motivated.
If I make it free, they might not value my time. I've tried something like this before and maybe the mistake I made was being too eager to help, not asking enough of them except showing up. They came late, missed appointments, etc. I then ended it.
"they might not value my time....They came late, missed appointments, etc. I then ended it."
I have some experience in volunteer work in schools. The administrators will likely be skeptical of your commitment. Students not valuing your time is a huge problem in lower achieving communities. You want to come in and work only with the easy -to --work-with motivated students? In a poor community? I am guessing you are not in the USA.
I have been doing some thinking on SN-risk (Steppe Nomad risk, someone told me all about it at a house party). You know the gist: "once every two hundred, three hundred years they get their act together, form a big confederation, and invade either China, the West, or both."
What got me thinking is that the steppe nomads are replaced. The first steppe nomads were the proto-indo-europeans. Fast forward and all the steppe nomads are indo-iranians. Sure, they are decedents of the proto-indo-europeans. But they are from a specific branch. In most of the steppe, they must have replaced their indo-european cousins. How did they do that? But fast forward some more and it gets even stranger.
First, some germanic tribes, most famously the Goths, manages to settle the steppe and learn it way of life. How in hell did this happen? Some bearded guys from Denmark show up and settles the home turf of the famously deadly horse archers that Rome itself couldn’t beat? Then the Goths are driven away by the Huns, and now the whole steppe, who has been indo-iranian for 1500 years is suddenly not anymore since the best and most feared warriors in Euroasia has been replaced by unknown nobodies from Siberia. (Ok, we don’t know for sure that the Huns aren’t indo-iranian but it doesn’t look like it.) Then there’s a host of Turkish tribes, and then the Maygars, and then the Mongols etc. And none of them seem descended from the previous one.
Now, naively, you could expect that that the steppe is the high ground of Euroasia, and that waves of people would emerge out from it but that the steppe itself would have a continuity of dominance and population. Instead, the steppe seems to be reconquered again and again. (Sue, there are some continuity, but new people show up speaking new languages with new haplogroups and dominates the old ones, which is not what I would expect.) What’s going on? Is this the place were the hard-times, strong-men meme holds? How did the Goths, Huns, Turks, Maygars, Mongols etc. learn to be better steppe nomads than the steppe nomads that had been living on the steppe for generations before them?
I also think there's a lot more volatility in population dynamics/geo-strategic balance of powers between groups for pastoral nomads than for agriculturists. Like you said the predominant ethnic group seems to switch every ~1000 years, as apposed to ~5k years for farmers. Also several times a steppe group has become extremely successful and conquered most of Eurasia, e.g.. Aryans, Huns, Mongols etc., which never seems to happen for farmer groups.
I think the most important factor determining success for pre-industrial societies is food production, because, under Malthusian conditions, it determines their maximum size and the surplus labour that can be directed towards war, so maybe that should be the first theory.
I's been argued the success of Indo-Europeans was in large part due to their then unique ability to digest milk, letting them reach higher population densities, than just butchering livestock would, for example.
I'd say the big differences between producing food from farming vs herding is: farming is bottle necked by how much labour you have, herding is bottle necked by how much land you control. Pre-industrial farming is labour-intensive and low margins, your food production per capita is never going above the yields for the most fertile land.
Sheep, goats, cattle and horses reproduce themselves with minimal human intervention if you have the pastures to graze them. which means food production per capita is effectively unlimited.
Therefore I think the maximum rate of population growth for nomads is way higher than for sedentary farmers, especially when you consider farmers have a much higher decease burden from their dense settlements.
That means when a nomad conquers new land he's much better positioned to capitalise on it than a farmer is, he can just watch his flock grow exponentially and not worry about about how to feed his 12 kids. A farmer just get's more land that got hasn't got the time to cultivate, and it'll be a long time before he has enough descendants to fill it up, with the 2.1 kids he can feed. It also strongly incentivises conquest for nomads.
So you can see how a few small initial success for a nomadic group could quickly snowball into controlling the whole steppe and maybe all of Eurasia in a way that won't happen for farmers.
Too many people model steppe nomads as Conan the Barbarian. Steppe nomads were wealthy, sophisticated civilizations that focused on dominating cattle and pasturage instead of agricultural fields. That's all. Because of the inherent difficulty of taxing and coercing people who are constantly on the move they generally had trouble forming stronger states. But they were not poor or marginal peoples. Those would be the northern forest tribes who they dominated.
Nor is there anything special about Central Asia. We're just most familiar with that because the history writing peoples were next door. But you had a rather similar dynamic with the Bantu in Africa and the Arabs in Arabia. (Though pastoral Arabs were genuinely quite poor because of some quirks of desert economy. Basically there were less places to feed flocks which meant that they had to have smaller but faster moving herds which made things difficult. But even there the camel lords had permanent fortresses and Mamluk style slave administrators and the like.)
I'm confused. If you mean "why are there no peoples descended from the Huns" the answer is that there are. If you mean "why are there no longer Huns rampaging through Central Russia" then it's because the Slavs managed to displace them in a centuries long period of conflicts and colonization.
How did the Slavs manage to replace the Huns? And how did the Mongols then replace the Slavs, etc. Why do the rate of replacement seem so much higher than other places (to me), when it intuitively (to me) should be lower?
Slavs didn't replace the descendants of the Huns or other nomadic people. The Tatars and Kalmyks and all that are still there. They displaced them largely through infiltrating along rivers, especially after the Khazar project of building centers along rivers to create a rival empire fell apart (though ultimately the fallout of that led to the more successful Ottomans). You can still see this pattern to this day, by the way, with Russian neighborhoods closer to rivers tending to be more ethnically Russian in places like Tatarstan.
The Mongols didn't replace the Slavs at all. They conquered them but, contrary to Russian national myth, actually ruled with a relatively light touch. Contrary to stories, the autocratic features of Russian government are Russian and the Mongols and East Asians had more open forms of government. And even Russia didn't have it natively: it required an extensive campaign to destroy local rights, integrate local nobles, melting veche bells and all that. Indeed, the Prince of Moscow was a Mongol tax collector and was allowed to keep his faith and local authority and even an army.
I'm not sure what you mean by the rate of replacement. What did happen was that steppe nomads often had relatively porous boundaries. People and even entire tribes would go from being one religion or ethnicity to another and the languages were relatively similar and all that. Indeed, most often when you get a tribal ethnicity like the Mongols or Hungarians they were formed by a bunch of tribes banding together in a confederation. But this is a distinct process from, say, a total ethnic replacement.
Look at Kyiv, for example. Kyiv was (probably) made into a city by Slavs under Khazar rule before a Russian conqueror sailed down river and took the town. And horse nomads continued to be in the area until Soviet times. And that's a fairly typical story. There's a lot of Central Asian cities with similar backgrounds though sometimes the city bound dwellers would, through intermarriage or conversion, come to be considered the same ethnicity as the more wandering peoples.
I'm not sure "ruled with a relatively light touch" is a fair summary. The impact was mixed.
First, the actual Mongol invasion was devastating, and it's hard to separate the effects of that from the effect of Mongol rule over the next 2+ centuries.
Afterwards, you've got centuries of paying tribute, which seems more embarrassing for Russia than actually painful, and Moscow especially seems to be doing pretty well. There's claims that the Mongol helped introduce various useful government and cultural institutions, and claims that the Mongols set technological development back significantly. Historians seem to be fighting over which viewpoint is right but it also doesn't seem like those are incompatible, exactly.
Our discussion here seems to be mostly about "what happened to the Slavs and what happened to the Tatars?" In this respect, I think maybe the most significant impact of the Mongols was all the slave raids, which last well past the end of the "Mongol yoke" period. The fact that these get to the point of measurable population displacement is kind of terrifying. Ironically, these also help Moscow's development a lot, since you've got many people accumulating in the regions that can actually protect themselves.
CONT: I’m starting to get conspiratorial, maybe there’s a true highest-ground urheimat for pre-steppe-nomads somewhere in Siberia, which has unique conditions that forms tribes into a Rock against the steppe nomad Scissor (as the steppe nomads are Scissor to the civilized Paper of Europe and China)? But that’s ridiculous, right?
What's the dynamic here? If anyone knows a good book on the subject I’d be grateful.
What I've heard in reading about the linguistic history of the Caucasus region is something like this. When there is a population expansion anywhere in the vicinity of the steppe, some sub-population quickly radiates out across the steppe and flows out somewhat into the other areas around it. But the steppe provides few boundaries to these expansions, and thus each one tends to wipe out the one before. However, the areas on the edges of the steppes - notably mountainous regions like the Caucasus - tend to preserve remnants of each of these waves. Europe has a few as well, with Turkey and Hungary. But it would be interesting to see if the Altai and Afghanistan regions have this too.
>The thing is, nobody lives *willingly* on the steppe, as a herder.
>The people who end up there are the *losers* of the neolithic revolution
Epistemic status: pure theorizing, I know nothing about that section of history.
Still, "Against the Grain"-style, it might make more sense to think of them as the winners of the "run away from state oppression" olympics. Yes, this requires thinking of them as individuals, and not as groups, but maybe that's precisely the answer to Medieval Cat's problem. The stateless weren't separate tribes fighting and replacing each other, they were a constantly changing mixture of/with outcasts from civilized lands. Once in a blue moon, they got organized and took on some of the states, at which point they got classified with a new name.
I hear what you are saying, but I can't use it to solve the issue I see. Let's compare the steppe to what is now Britain.
In 500 AD, Britain was dominated by Anglo-Saxons who gradually spread their culture and language. Christianity, Vikings and Normans then also left an influence, but the Anglo-Saxon foundation is still there. The inhabitants of England is clearly the decedents of the 500 AD Anglo-Saxons.
In 500 AD, the Pontic–Caspian steppe was dominated by Huns. Then follow a long list of tribes, among them: Bulgars (perhaps decedents of the Huns, perhaps not), Khazars, Maygars and Mongols. And the Mongols aren't the decedents of the Maygars, who aren't the decedents of the Khazars, and so on. There seems to be a flux and replacement here that is much higher.
Now, Britain is an island and all that but I feel like you could tell a similar story for much of Europe and Asia.
Or am I just creating an illusion? Does the Modern Stavropol resident have as much as common with the Huns as a modern Londoner has with the Anglo-Saxons (but clearly the former lack a shared language, that's a big thing)? Were the Maygars and the Khazars like the Vikings and the Normans of England: a small elite that had a respectable cultural impact (but if so, where is the Hun language today)?
Did the steppe nomads just exit as soon as they got good enough at horse archery to conquer somewhere nice? And thus the steppe was empty for the most desperate new tribe to move in and start practicing the Parthian shot?
Was the population on the steppe so low that population fluctuations just mattered more? My model would look like this: Some random Siberian tribe could just walk in on the steppe and get lucky, and suddenly they numbered enough to matter. While Britain 1. didn't have Siberia close by and 2. was populous enough that just because you had a lot of sons who in turn had a lot of sons didn't make your decedents populous enough to have a real impact.
The population density seems always to have been low, or at least frequently-enough brought low by bad winters, disease, or warfare, that there was often room for a sufficiently-desperate tribe to try.
On the edges of the steppe, there might be no clear line as to who is a "steppe nomad" and who is not. Consider a settled, farming society that recognizes a king, and their ethnolinguistically similar pastoral cousins who regularly trade with them, have similar religious practices, and nominally recognize the same king (at least nine years out of ten.) The pastoralists in this "settled" society live a lifestyle indistinguishable from the "real" steppe nomads, and this includes in a military sense -- they are the kingdom's frontier defense. If some of the pastoralists decouple themselves from their more-settled cousins, either by choice or because disaster has befallen their more settled cousins, they already have the steppe lifeways worked out.
If you want to fast forward to early modern times on the Pontic steppe, the northern frontier of the Ottoman empire is populated by the Crimean Tatars, who mostly recognize the authority of the Sultan. The southern frontier of the Russian empire is populated by Cossacks, who mostly recognize the authority of the Czar. The Tatars' ancestors fought with the khans. The Cossacks' ancestors were mostly runaway serfs. But both groups made a living on the same steppe, and made that living in about the same way.
Or cross the Atlantic to the North American great plains at about the same time, and the ancestors of the Sioux were not yet equestrian warriors. Until sometime between 1650 and 1750, they were a mostly-settled people by the lakes of northern Minnesota. At that time, the ancestors of the Red Lake Chippewa conquered the area, and some of the Sioux were able to make their way on the prairies further west, raid or trade for horses, learn how to use them, and their descendants became for a while the foremost military force on the northern great plains.
It's notable in the European cases that different aspects of culture seem to have stuck at different points in history. Modern Italy, France, Spain, and England all have the same sketch history since the iron age, with a layer of Celtic society, conquered by the Roman empire, with a Germanic nobility that set up in the migration period. The national institutions of France, Spain, and England date back to the Germanic migration period, while Italy is a later innovation inspired by this mythic period. But in Italy, Spain, and France the language goes back to the Roman period. But I think the population genetics in England largely goes back to the Celtic period.
My understanding of the steppes is that there is substantial replacement of all layers at all periods!
This is my understanding as well. And I wonder why this substantial replacement happens again and again: My intuition is that the steppe would be unusually resistant to these replacements.
Good point on the state structure being more culturally resistant. But my question kind of remains: how could there have been so many successful invasions of an area that is know for 1. great warriors 2. little of everything else 3. a very specific way of life that requires training since childhood to maintain. Once such an invasion has been performed, I can see how the old culture can be largely replaced. But I can't see how such an invasion happened to begin with. Or why they seem to happen more than invasions of other places.
My novice understanding is that the steppe wasn't just taken over culturally, it was taken over genetically as well. And wouldn't we expect the cultural takeover of the steppe to come from the populous and culturally strong centralized kingdoms of Europe and China, but that never happened.
Private companies will sell anyone surveillance satellite photos of military units and bases. Are there also private companies that sell airplane reconnaissance photos? What would happen if the ACME Spy Plane company received an anonymous order to fly drones over international airspace in the Black Sea and to report the locations of Russian warships?
There already was an incident on September 29th, where a RAF RC-135 (from what I understand, used for gathering electronic intelligence) flying over the Black Sea was intercepted by Russian fighters, and one of the Russian fighters "released a missile". This was a clearly identified NATO aircraft flying a pre-announced route.
My guess is that any aircraft approaching a warship at sea is going to be subject to interception unless it's clearly identified as routine civilian traffic, meaning clearly identified by transponder and flying according to a flight plan. The actual form that interception takes is going to be dependent on the exact circumstances; a US carrier battle group has plenty of aircraft to deter nosy interlopers from a distance, while a Russian warship in a warzone is likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
The two difficulties I see with this are that the only drones with the required range (thousands of km) are military, and probably more important that the Black Sea is a big place and a warship small, so you can't realistically just quarter the area and find the ships, you would need to already have a pretty good general idea where the ships were and just be looking for precise coordinates.
I think it's not implausible, but it seems like a pretty niche application for a commercial operator. Probably what you want to do, if you're a national armed forces fighting the Russians (say), is just buy (on credit one assumes) the military drone from one of your allies and operate it yourself[1].
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[1] One of the follow-on effects of the Russians using Iranian drones may be that they've now normalized the introduction of drones from allied mlitary forces. They can hardly be surprised now if some old MQ1s end up wandering araound Ukrainian airspace (if they aren't already). But that's Russia: long on short-term bravado, a little short on long-term thinking out of consequences.
The commenter who was banned earlier in this thread, and one on 'highlights from the comments on supplement labeling', don't have (banned) next to their username unlike the commenter who was banned on open thread 247 and all those before that. What's up with that?
The network state. Eight hour podcast of Lex Fridman talking with Balaji Srinivasan. It was great! I also downloaded Srinivasan's book "The network state" only a few pages into it. https://thenetworkstate.com/ And I'm thinking Scott is starting a network state. Any thoughts?
I think it’s a dumb idea that won’t work because it is focusing on very tertiary functions of the state and the model doesn’t work at all for the core functions. It’s a book about forming clubs. Woo hoo.
?Yeah OK, but isn't that what Scott is trying to start here. Connect online, have meetups, get to know each other, find collective action.. (which hasn't happened yet, unless you want to count EA.) I'm way more connected to this state, than my real state, NY.
Except you really aren’t at all. Your real state dictates all sorts of things about your life and lays claim to some of your income. While this…umm yeah.
Sure, I've read it and had time to digest it, 3 thoughts.
First, this is one of the best and clearest summaries of modern "weird" political thought. If you've been reading weird political blogs, from SSC to Moldbug, you'll be familiar with most of it but this is probably the best and most concise summary of this kind of though on the market and potentially very useful for new people.
Second, this book isn't really written for most people, it's written very specifically with founders in mind. As someone actively looking for a remote job that will let me live outside the US, this book has absolutely no practical advice or value. This isn't written for people who want to be part of a network state, it's written for people who want to found a network state.
Third, network state is kind of a bad term, he's really talking about network nations. I've run into this confusion, because people don't get how you just...create a blockchain state with significant legal rights. And Balaji does really handwave this away. Balaji's real idea, I think, is to create a network nation. We typically think of nation as synonymous with state but there's plenty of nations, like the Kurds or the Basques or Romani or the Jews throughout history, where there's a real clear cultural/social group with a clear identity but no state. Think of all the different nationalities under the Austrian empire. And Balaji's big idea here, again per my reading, is there's actually a much smaller gap between say, strong social networks like veganism and full nations. And his plan, very literally, seems to be inspiring people to form nations within existing states, then leveraging that nation for political status, following the late 19th century and early 20th century movies for national recognition.
Thanks, Re: state vs nation. I don't think you are disagreeing with Balaji. The 'nation' of Kurds or Jews or Basques, is all the people. The state of Israel, is the hunk of land in the middle east and not all of the 'nation'. So one could have a state for the Kurds, or a network state for the Kurds. The nation of the Kurds already exists.. or at least that's my limited understanding of what he meant.
I think we agree on the concept, I just think it's confusingly worded. I think I've talked with John Shilling on this site before and this was a point of confusion with him but the big thing is that states are things with, ya know, police and laws and taxes and armies. And while that's Balaji's end goal, he's mostly focused on building the precursor to states, which are nations, ie groups of people with strong shared cultural norms. Balaji kind of assumes that network states will naturally arise once you have network nations but people really get hung up on "state" because it sounds like laws and armies and stuff.
Right, States are in control of the violence, police/ army. Nations might want more control of the violence. And I hate violence, but it's necessary, so what is one to do?
There has been a lot of ink spilled baout this book here before, including by me. The idea that we are the cusp of digital "states" or "naitons" or whatever is pretty nonsense. Almsot everything that is the core functionality of the state has to do with territorial monopoly on the use of force. laws and the enforcement of them. Without that you basically have a club or a corporaiton, two structures which people can already make and to which the internet doesn't change much.
Speaking only for myself, I believe (b) rather than (a), because (b) has basically always proven to be true for me and it helps me keep current challenges and difficulties in perspective. It isn't necessarily true, I could be brutally murdered tomorrow, but it's helpful and has proven true for the first portion of my life.
You haven't specified, but I'm going to assume arguendo that what you mean by "protected" and "things wll be OK" are similar, so that (a) and (b) can be compared as to mechanism, not outcome, and furthermore that both translate to "I shall not be unhappy and/or bad things will not happen to me more often than good."
From that point of view, (a) would be novel, a sort of hedonistic God. Most major religions posit a God who has A Plan and a strong sense of judgment, and He/She/They/It are quite capable of imposing bad things on you, and much experience of misery, if that is necessary to educate your soul, or as part of The Plan. That is, your sensory gratification (or lack of sensory immiseration) is *not* God's first priority -- some other kind of universal meaning is.
Something i have come to believe is something like, 'there is a deep structure to the physical universe such that having the right attitude can turn any situation into an eventual positive outcome.'
This seems to map onto both 'a' and 'b', although i think points about 'a' seem to vary wildly depending upon which religious interpretation we are talking about.
Sure, but you've begged the question. You need to define "positive outcome." For example, for a good Christian,the "positive outcome" is "I get to spend eternity in the presence of God." For an atheist hedonist, it's "the product of my lifetime and the amount of sensory pleasure I enjoy during (each multiplied by some scaling factor) is maximized" while for a narcissist politician it might be "people remember my name for the next century." Any one of those three could lead to a significantly dfferent judgment of what is "positive" and what is not.
This is the whole rub of any philosophy, right? At some point a person has to choose how to define this term. It seems like quite a neat hack to just go, oh, hey, any outcome is good by definition and it's up to me to figure out what's good about it.
Well, I'll resist the urge to link to the "This is fine!" dog drinking coffee in a burning house meme.
But sure, it's a good hack, and certainly one close to the heart of a lot of philosophies, either directly (Stoicism, Buddhism) or indirectly (Christianity, in which we redefine "good" to mean "according to God's Plan" and admit we don't and can't fully understand His plan).
I personaly don't fine it satisfying, but then I'm a proponent of Frankl's "logotherapy" viewpoint, wherein the sine qua non of a personal philosophy is to decide what provides life with meaning. That doesn't mean you will end up happy, to be sure, and it doesn't even mean you will succeed at building all the meaning you want. But it does at least give you a direction, a sense of strong purpose, and a reasonably objective yardstick by which to measure your accomplishment. That sense of clarity seems very worthwhile, and I'm personally happy enough to trade any hypothetical guarantee of peace of mind or sensory joy for it.
I decided that what provides my life with meaning is figuring out how to make sense of and deal with the difficulties of the present moment. Things often don’t feel Ok and i put in a lot of effort to learn as much as I can from them.
You can't pray to a probability, you can't cry to it when your life hits an error path and 5-7 bad things starts happening one after the other, you can't see intent in its machinations, you can't read stories of the lavish Eden full of virgins and believe them,etc...
In other words, unless you have magic brain machinery that can instill this "Things Will Be Okay" belief so incredibly deep inside the smallest molecule in the smallest brain cell, (a) is superior.
Imagine a religious statistician trapped under the rubble. You're Bayes' Demon, the god responsible for probability in this universe, you have the ability to make _any_ probabilistic argument seem inhumanly plausible, like it was always destined to be. (since probability and statistics are extremly hard and rarely if ever explained correctly, you're actually just an average rationalist with a beard and the ability to hover.) You appear to the statistician and you have a day to convince them to not feel distress, can you do it ? Can your Bayesian Networks and your hypercomputer simulations of every possible branching outcome actually *comfort*, rather than merely convince, the religious statistician that it's gonna be all okay ?
tldr; it all depends on what you mean by 'belief'. Religion operates in an entirely different spectrum than probablity. If you have a thing that looks like probability but can comfort like a religion then you have neither probability nor religion, you have Blessing itself.
Suppose that probability has come about from a long series of experiments under the hypothesis: “by looking for the good in a situation, i will find it.” Since “good” and “bad” are labels a person computes, a person might conclude that any time they apply the “bad” label they have done so incorrectly.
I would believe they're highly correlated. But I'm not sure what you're saying here. I guess it's the idea that most people who believe in God start doing so because they're natural optimists? I don't think so. The adult converts I can think of are mostly coming from poverty or prison.
I guess it depends on what we mean by "things will be okay" - I'm under the impression that optimism bias is near universal and thus wouldn't correlate to belief in a higher power, but OB is more of a "things will be okay *for me*" thing, so maybe "things will be okay for everybody" might interact differently with faith.
From a largely external perspective (atheist, not that optimistic), the two seem very different in feel. (b) is "extremely bad things just don't happen, by default", (a) is "bad things are possible but are actively being prevented"
Throughout human history, a successful mass emigration and settlement in a distant new area has presumably needed some major incentive, and perhaps some valuable resource to trade.
For example, in the distant past it may have been access to herds of large animals on the steppes or plains of North America, and various animal products such as tusks and furs. In more recent times, motives might include freedom from religious or political oppression, plentiful farm land, and the main resources or "killer apps" initially, in the Americas at least, were tobacco and sugar.
So what major incentives will there be in future decades and centuries for mass emigrations off Earth, to places like Mars or Titan or even further afield? If everyone is comfortable living on Earth then why would many people bother uprooting themselves to spend the rest of their days in difficult and dangerous environments, probably never to visit Earth again?
I propose an obvious answer: To be allowed to continue living at all! Assuming age-related diseases and infirmities are eventually all curable, and age extension becomes commonplace and affordable, there will be a lot of old timers accumulating, and they will have acquired a large proportion of the wealth, as they have today.
So in times to come, I think there will be conflict between them and younger generations feeling crowded out and deprived of their opportunities. Eventually I suggest a deal will be reached whereby past a certain age, medical treatment and rejunenation will be continued only for people willing to relocate off-Earth and leave more room there for new generations. Earth will be thought of and become a kind of nursery.
After all, it matters less if an old-timer's DNA is clobbered by more cosmic radiation, as they presumably won't be breeding, and if the radiation ends up killing them well then so what - They have had a long life already. Also, they won't be growing from infants in a low G environment and thus ending up as adults like eight foot beanpoles a-la Avatar!
This is a great question, it's why I believe that settling the Moon or Mars is unlikely to be successful, but building really nice space stations will be. The key is to build space habitats that are nicer than living on Earth; the movie Elysium seems like a pretty good portrayal of what a "nice" space station could be like.
The added pull of space stations is that they're not subject to Earth rules and can afford to be selective about whom they let in. I would imagine that any space city with any kind of reasonably selective immigration policy would be damn-near-free of the kinds of social problems that you get on Earth.
Does the fact that every human society upon reaching a certain level of material comfort plus female individual empowerment has its birthrate crash -- a pattern which so far has held across all religious or cultural traditions -- have any impact on your projection of humanity's future?
It seems at least imaginable now that at some point the entire human species will be producing children at less than its own replacement rate. (There are several nations right now with fertility rates less than half of replacement, and several large nations are now barely above half of the replacement rate.) Over the sort of timescales you're talking about, perhaps that ends up more than countering the population impact of people living longer and longer.
Well, the main problem with your social evolution hypothesis is that there will always be more old people than young (and if age extension is common *way* more), plus old people are cannier and more experienced than young, so the younger generations don't really have a chance in that conflict. If anyone is going to get sent off-planet to rough it, it will be the young. (Which also mirrors history: it ws the young who undertook dangerous voyages of exploration and colonization.)
But to answer your question, I don't see any strong motivation at all for people in large numbers to leave the planet. It's been theoretically possible for generations for Greenland or Antarctica or the remoter regions of Siberia to be colonized, all of which are way easier and more pleasant to live in than the Moon or Mars, and they haven't been. If people aren't driven to settle the interior of Antarctica it's hard to see why they would settle the Moon. The most probable evolution of our species would be that we live more or less stably on this planet until some environmental event combined with our own flaws wipes us out. The typical lifetime of a species is about 1 million years, and it's not obvious we're going to be any more special.
If you asked me how, in defiance of the odds, we could be special, I'd say it's that we begin deliberately engieering ourselves, and other forms of life, and eventually succeed in engineering ecosystems on plausibly habitable extraterrestrial locations, probably the moons of the outer planets where water is plentiful. I doubt places like Mars will ever be inhabited, because they are just too inimical to life. The fact that they are closer to the Earth than, say, Titan, is pretty unimportant, the major cost of colonization is adaptation to exploit the local environment, and one would not expect ever much physical traffic between radically different ecosystems and creatures.
It doesn't have to be large numbers. Consider _Albion's Seed_-- the British isle weren't depopulated, it just took small minorities moving to north America.
Well, I only meant large in absolute numbers, not relative fractions of the world population, so thanks for opportunity to clarify. I think you would need of order 10,000 people to form a self-sustaining colony. Fewer than that seems likely to pose difficulties in career and mate selection, unless you are willing to turn that process over to a central authority. That's a tiny fraction of Earth's population, but on an absolute basis it's a heck of a lot of people to transport (along with all their kit) to another world.
Edit: I guess I would also say that, if 10,000 people are *initially* willing to leave the planet for some new world, then why not an additional 10,000 (or more) in subsequent years, when the colony is flourishing, everyone is happy, a Declaration of Independence is being drafted, et cetera? After all, immigration to the New World increased substantially once it was clear the colonies would prosper.
So what I would imagine to be the case is either (1) hardly anyone is willing to leave, unless they're well-paid and have some unusual personal reason, e.g. scientists overwintering at Amundsen Station, or (2) enough people are willing to leave initially to start a colony, and many more people are willing to leave to sustain the colony -- which adds up to "people in large numbers," albeit absolute numbers, not necessarily relative.
Echoing AHG, I think it's mainly a technology question. Space is full of resources, so the question is will humanity survive long enough to hit an inflection point between (a) technology to harvest those resources getting cheaper, and (b) scarcity of comparable resources Earthside making them raising their prices. Assuming we survive to a point that (a) and (b) intersect, the rest kind of takes care of itself.
I don't understand why new incentives would be needed ? space contains riches that would make all of Earth's history multiplied and powered by itself 1000000000000000 times look pathetic. Earth recieves only 1/billion of all the energy the Sun gives away for free to the dead darkness to do nothing with, of this incomprehensibly minuscule fraction, most get wasted in an increasingly inefficient bioshpere. This is only a single average star.
It's only the "Monkey View" that sees space as a desolate wasteland, because the Monkey View haven't evolved in space, but space is a vast trove of unimaginable wealth, the source of everything the Monkey View knows and loves on Earth.
As for persecution, it's very alive and very well. The entire ~10000 years history of civilization can be seen as the story of how it became harder and harder for people who disagree with the herd to fuck off away and live in peace elsewhere, *truly elsewhere*, truly cutoff from any causal network that could bind them with people they would hate to be bound with. We made all of beautiful expansive Earth an ugly claustrophobic conglomeration of ~200 centralized, maniacal, and genocidal entities that are all also a networked system with shockingly few points of faliure. Space will have absolutely 0 tolerance for this bullshit, good luck consolidating an empire against the speed of light. So that's pretty damn attractive already.
"Escape all the coercive bullshit humans built on their cradle and all the '''''''Social Contracts''''''' that nobody agrees to and nobody can refuse into a place where freedom of assembly and the ability to choose with whom you want to share your destiny is built-in at the deepest level" ? sign me the fuck up.
The main problem with this point of view is the first thing splinter groups of people in space or wherever are going to do it setup states/coercion again. It is just too useful. Unless there are like small tribes in individual craft, it is all getting eaten by the same pressures.
Yeah of course, I didn't mean to say Space is a magical silver bullet that would make humans' natural instinct to be domineering fuckers go away, it's just a massive sandbox that can absorb fuckups endlessly and still has plenty of room for freedom. What's the easiest way to make ill-behaved children shut up? Give them lots of play room and (if they still fight) isolate them from each other.
When Earth Lenin fucks up, the result is a monster that torments tens of millions for 70 years. When Space Lenin fucks up, the result is (fingers crossed) a pathetic space habitat or an asteroid that can suffer and die with minimal human suffering. Space Lenin took over all habitats and asteroids? To the outer gas giants then. And so on. I know there are *lots* of ways for this to go wrong, but there are significantly more ways it can go right than on Earth.
What you miss is that earth already contains "riches that would make all of Earth's history multiplied and powered by itself 1000000000000000 times look pathetic" and (with a few possible exceptions) it is WAY easier to extract them here than to mine them in space.
Also earths total insolation is already 10000 times more energy than we need, but solar collectors are expensive, so we do not currently manage to capture enough of this abundance. Putting those solar collectors into orbit just makes them WAY more expensive. So you are trying to solve the wrong problem.
Same for escaping from persecution. If you have the capability to escape to and survive in fucking SPACE, just escaping to Antarctica or the middle of the Pacific or the Sahara Desert is again WAY easier and cheaper and would serve the same purpose. The other way around, if you do not even have the capabilities to independently survive in Antarctica, surviving in space is a laughable pipe dream.
I question the premise. I think humans expand pretty promiscuously, without necessarily having a good reason. In particular, consider Siberia or Saharan Africa. If it were about incentives, my thought is that people would have never ended up in places like that. A small number of people will try anything, especially now that there are 8 billion of us. I'm not convinced that population pressure will be a big deal. Large parts of the world are still quite empty, and it's not clear that life extension will be enough to counteract lower birth rates over time. If I had to guess, I'd say the notoriety of going to space will be the biggest motivator.
And then there's the question of how all of this intersects with AI...
Earth will eventually be uninhabitable, at a time that will be difficult to predict. That would be the principle incentive. Maybe this is too abstracted and seemingly distant for there to be a collective anxiety, but threat to life on Earth can happen pretty much any time, such that reducing complete reliance on this rock should be imperative. Beyond that, finite resources on Earth will eventually be depleted, they may be found off-planet. That might seem like a lot of effort, but at this point energy use will be less the concern. Access to materials and capital will be the issue.
The time leading up to a post-automation future is like musical chairs. When the dust settles, everyone will get their pittance to shovel food and junk entertainment in their skulls, but access to capital and class mobility will have cement poured over it. If you want to build something, you might have to go off-planet. If you want more stuff just for yourself, you might have to go off-planet. I expect elites will also appropriate talking points from the greens and those romanticizing primitive society to enforce and get plebeians accustomed to having less.
I tend not to read much sci fi, as most is either fantasy cr*p, to which I wouldn't give the time of day, or a thinly disguised present day story and ludicrously implausible and anachronistic.
I certainly wouldn't dismiss it all out of hand though. There must be masterpieces, but the problem is finding the few pearls amid all the dross!
I recommend Old Man's War, and most of the other works by that author, though it does sound like you hate the essence of a lot of the genre. (i.e. most of it is "fantasy with a different aesthetic" or "social commentary with a convenient fictional set-up", but both of those can be done badly or done well and they're very fun to read done well. The third kind of sci fi is "postulate new tech / physics, discuss implications" - eg. Greg Egan - which I love but has the drawback of needing appendices that explain university level physics to the reader as a prerequisite to understanding the setting).
I do note that you are actively discussing what is essentially a sci fi premise of the form "social commentary in a fictitious future"
People here frequently have like-minded Good Taste in music...any recommendations for progressive* metal? I'm looking for a similar sound to Hammers of Misfortune, but haven't enjoyed other bands-Mike-Scalzi-has-been-part-of as much as the original.
Used to be really into prog rock, but I feel like it's hard to get out from under the shadow of The Greats in that subgenre. Everything turns into a string of, like, "Jethro Tull did this better", "Alan Parsons did this more creatively" -type disappointments.
*have always regretted this choice of term, didn't learn until really recently that it's all about music structure and nothing to do with politics. Wonder how many people bounce off the subgenre completely cause of mood disaffiliation...
Around 2015 I walked into a gas station and they had on something rock-sounding with complicated time signatures. I had to ask what it was and the answer was something like “Bulgarian math rock.” There were some certain bands this guy liked & I wrote them down- I used to love Rush and the same part of my brain was lighting up. But I lost the paper.
However, just now I googled it and got Mental Architects and Monobody. Listened and I would say this is a reasonable recommendation.
Some people in my life like Djent music. And Gojira.
Slayer is in a different direction but I think old school metal just sounds different now.
The Lord Weird Slough Feg is awesome, but its very much more USPM (US power metal) than Hammers of Misfortune.
I like a lot of the post 1990's PM (prog metal). If you like PM because you like noodly weird stuff, check out Devin Townsend. If you like PM for clean musicianshp, check out anything associated with Arjen Anthony Lucassen (I like Star One). If you like PM because you like metal, check out Cynic, Isis, and Voivod. If you want to find acts that started out as straight metal and then evovled into someting else, check out Devin Townsend again, Amorphis, Ihsahn, and Enslaved.
(TLW) Slough Feg is definitely in the line of succession, and that was a natural recommendation, but it didn't grab me in the same way, yeah. More power than prog. All metal is good, but the stuff I like best has clean musicianship, complex structure, and/or just a dash of raw primal energy. (Operatic metal for that last one.) Less enthused with the weirdness. It's cool to have a 3 hour album reinterpreting the Bible (Opeth), less so to have...like...an entire alt-history canon and narrative with characters (Ayreon). Thanks for the recommendations.
I like Hammers of Misfortune. Their sound leans more into USPM than a typical prog metal band (I guess early Fates Warning was like that also). Enjoyed the latest single, looking forward to the full-length.
On the whole I've fallen out of love with progressive metal. Nothing grabs me the way 90s-00s bands have (e.g. Dream Theater, Symphony X, Opeth, Voivod, *some* Pain of Salvation, Nevermore). However, I've gotten really into the avant-prog sphere since, which is genre adjacent - sometimes metal, sometimes not. Anything wild that draws from several traditions or is difficult to categorize tends to get lumped there, in prog land. Of those with more metal sensibilities, there is: Kayo Dot, Secret Chiefs 3, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Ni, PoiL, Piniol, John Zorn (see: Moonchild trio)
Yeah, I think it's not a coincidence that all the prog and/or metal bands I like are from back in the day...those genres had their time in the collective spotlight, made a cultural splash, and then sorta just disappeared up their own asses by being too pretentious and weird for normies. They still exist, but one has to seek them out now. Random corporate radio at a store -> decent chance it has a Tull song on it. Baby's First Party Hits playlist -> good chance of a metal piece that was featured in Guitar Hero franchise. Sampling of Dramatic Music for irony's sake -> something from Nightwish. And so on. The collective memories are all stuck back 2-3 decades ago. I'd love to say I evaluate music with no regard to whether it's popular or not, but of course that's a lie, there's always a bit of that calculation.
I think it was the worst possible period because it is at the awkward level between too much and too little information in the legendarium.
They could have done the First Age (war of the Jewels), where we have a lot of great content precisely written. Start with Feanor forging the silmarils and end the first season with Fingon rescuing Maedhros.
Or they could have gone for the unknown : set the story in some place not explored by Tolkien. A very good choice would have been to put the story in the East or in Harad and follow the two blue wizards as they try to fight Sauron's influence there. You could have enough links with the events in LOTR to satisfy the fans but almost complete creative freedom to write a good story.
Tolkien himself showed the way: use the lore and language as backdrop, and write an interesting tale set in it, e.g. how did Bilbo end up with The Ring, and how did The Ring get destroyed at the end of the Third Age? Both of these are intimate, human tales, set within the larger backdrop of the world he imagined.
So by me the right way to do this would've been to use Tolkien's setting, language, background, et cetera, and then invent an entirely new human-scale tale that fit within it. It could connect in one or two places to Tolkien's actual history, but need not. I mean, "Casablanca" connected to the history of the Second World War in one or two places, but it made no attempt to bring to life the entire history of the war (or at least the history up to the date of the film).
You could definitely write a Second Age tale set in Númenor, during the period when they were venturing into Middle-earth not as colonial efforts, quite, but exploring and setting up ports.
You could write thousands of tales. I don't quite know why they didn't, it seems almost a no-brainer. You can use all of Tolkien's wonderful backdrop, but then have complete freedom to write a new tale with almost anything in it. If you want to produce a tale of racism being overcome -- easy peasy, if you don't try to force into it characters and stories *already written* by Tolkien. You just invent some new characters in a newish setting -- maybe there were different colored Haradrim and apartheid had to be overcome, maybe some southern tribe of Stoors had a caste system, whatever. If you want to write a tale of power and corruption, I'm sure you could write endlessly about court intrigues in Numenor with brand-new characters, only touching here and there on the history already written down.
Maybe the problem is the estate would only authorize tales derived from specific characters? They didn't want someone inventing a Rey Skywalker and embarassing everybody? Or less charitably, maybe they just lacked sufficient imagination, so that given this luxurious literary repast prepared for them, all set out on golden bowls and crystal goblets, they would just fumble around and eat a buttered roll.
I kind of like it. Not enough to rave about it, but enough to watch it all, and probably come back for season 2. I know Deiseach was down on it, but I really like the scene where Sauron tried to seduce Galadriel, and I like the idea (that I may simply be projecting into it) that Sauron wasn't able to get all the way to the rings on his own. I think an implied idea from the first season is that working with the elves unlocked the secret of the rings for Sauron. I think we'll see the elven rings being first, and the next seasons will be the dwarven and manven rings.
I did hate the immortal beings being forced to cram great works of terrible power into three weeks. I wish they would have let that simmer a while longer.
It wasn't a bad choice, there are plenty of great events there. The execution was terrible because out of their own mouths in a magazine interview, these are guys who have spent ten years writing scripts that never got made (and having seen what they produced here, I think we now all understand why that was).
A competent adaptation would need to start off with the aftermath of the War of Wrath so you get Sauron at first wavering about repenting but then fleeing into hiding, setting up his own realm in Mordor, then coming out after a long time since he assumes the Valar have forgotten or no longer care about Middle-earth.
While he's lying doggo, you get the founding of the Elven realm of Eregion, Celebrimbor taking over the lordship and setting up the Jewel-smiths, and good relations developing between those Elves and the Dwarves of Khazad-dum (all the Rings of Power relationship between Elrond and Dain *should* have been Celebrimbor and Narvi).
Sauron as Annatar inveigles his way into Eregion, wins Celebrimbor's trust, teaches the smiths of Eregion new skills, and eventually this leads to the forging of the rings - first the nine and the seven, then the three. Sauron leaves them alone to do this while he goes back to Mordor and forges the One in secret, as the culmination of his plan.
Then we get the war of the Elves and Sauron, which goes very badly for the Elves.
Meanwhile, Númenor is founded and grows to its height, then hits its decadence. Under Ar-Pharazon's command, they turn up, Sauron allows himself to be taken prisoner and back to Númenor, and the corruption there begins until we get the hubris of the attack on Valinor.
This gives a lot of great set-pieces: Sauron in his fair form, the forging of the rings (which isn't crammed into ten minutes in a season finale), the fate of Celebrimbor (poor guy), a scene I really want to see which is the Dwarves of Khazad-dum marching out to kick Sauron's butt just as he is about to crush Elrond and his army, then the eventual retreat back where they slam the door in Sauron's face and he can't do a thing about it - that is an epic battle scene if anyone wants one.
And of course, the Downfall of Númenor which is again another spectacular set piece. Also, HUMAN SACRIFICE IN THE TEMPLE AT ARMENELOS. Beat that, House of the Dragon! Then we end with the ships of the surviving Faithful arriving in Middle-earth, Elendil's Oath, and the beginning of the founding of Gondor and Arnor.
Lots of character development, lots of subtle intrigue, epic battles and huge cinematic set pieces. If you need to compress the timeline, no bother. Original characters? Sure, so long as they work (Adar was the one original character who was good, the Arondir/Bronwyn/Theo/fake daughter for Elendil/fake son for Pharazon/Disa/psycho killer Harfoots parts did not work for me. I liked the two Dains, but everyone agrees that the Dwarves were the best part of the show).
What we got from these chuckleheads was "Uh, suppose Sauron and Galadriel have a thing going on?" and now their big idea for season two is "We gonna make Sauron a mob boss/meth cooker, that so cool!" That is these bozos' idea of "complexly evil" - and probably something that is running through a lot of TV shows and movies in the recent past. They can't handle supernatural/epic evil, so they reduce it down to human terms, make it grey morality, 'hey he's just trying his best, he's misunderstood' (see 'Lucifer' where the Devil really is a great guy, he just has Daddy issues, but he's 100% down with all progressive ideas about gays and transgender and racism and what you like):
“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've been viewing online rumours that there are shake-ups in Amazon (though how much this is the usual kind of moving people around and firing/promoting that goes on in any studio I don't know) and that the Payne and McKay Clown Act are going to be quietly sidelined, they'll be officially producers/showrunners but will be shoved off into the writers' room while Amazon gets someone experienced who can distinguish their arse from their elbow in to oversee season two and reduce the level of disaster going on. But how true this is, I have no idea.
If dreary, overly serious costume dramas with minimal fantasy elements end up being the next big thing in the genre because of House of the Dragon, then I would suggest they give the tale of Turin a shot.
Personally, I liked ROP well enough as it's far above the quality standards of the genre in every respect, but mainly because I thought it got the vibe just right. A lot better than the movies in fact, which felt to me like a D&D module of LOTR instead of actually Tolkienesque if that makes sense.
Agreed on the vibe. It's also quite slow-paced, which isn't a bad thing but requires getting used to.
The scriptwriting on a scene-by-scene basis is pretty terrible though. Important events compressed, unimportant events dragged out. What specially annoyed me was the "tropey" things that slipped in all over the place: a certain character doing a jack sparrow impersonation in numenor, inconsistent with either of his identities. Orcs grabbing people from the back like in horror movies. Extreme-close-up shots of macguffins with characters doing stuff in the back plane (I'm sure this type of scene has a name). The whole thing feels like it was made by a bunch of fresh movie school graduates with no eye for subtlety.
I think I see what you mean, but I'm not sure a story driven by a demigod's curse and involving a dragon and a talking sword has minimal fantasy elements. Granted, a lot less flashy onstage magic than something like Beren and Luthien.
Of course to do either, they'd need to get the Tolkien estate to sell the Silmarillion rights that Amazon's hundreds of millions didn't manage to budge.
The Tale of Túrin Turambar is so depressing, though; there is no happy or even semi-happy ending at all. "Everyone dies" and it's tragedy unfolding and leading into tragedy, like the petals of a poisonous flower unfurling.
Even the very end leads into the sack of Doriath because of the Nauglamír, due to the cursed treasure Húrin flings down as sardonic recompense to Thingol for his 'keeping' of his son. And then Thingol dies, and the Dwarves die, and Dior dies, and the Third Kinslaying happens, and it's one long list of death, misery, and disaster.
Something a little more hopeful would be the story of Túrin's cousin, Tuor.
Turin is definitely the purest tragedy, though the hope in Tuor’s story is ultimately pretty distant, and on the other side of the Fall of Gondolin and that same Third Kinslaying. (Maybe end with a closeup on baby Earendil.)
Beren and Luthien is as close as there is to a story with a happy ending in the First Age, if you close on them together after Mandos. (And don’t spend much thought on what awaits Doriath afterwards.)
It's not Tolkien. That's the trouble. If they did an original fantasy series called "Rings of Power" and had all the black, Hispanic, Asian and otherwise mixed-race Elves, Dwarves and Harfoots they liked frolicking through the flowery meads, nobody would care.
They could have their 'one-expression' lead actress doing her improbable twirly-twirly sword stuff, just so long as they didn't call her Galadriel.
They could have had 'hunky' (personally he's not handsome to my tastes, but whatever) human Demon being all "the power of love has made me want to turn to the light, or at least partner up with you in slaughtering Orcs, since seeing you covered in blood made me go all weak at the knees" to One Expression, so long as it's not meant to be Sauron.
They can have fourth Silmarils and magic mithril out the wazoo, just make up your own terms for these (you're already making everything else up).
But this show is not Tolkien. When they try "epic, high speech" they flounder because they're clearly much more comfortable writing witty one-liners and bantering quipping (not that they can do this well, either, but the kind of jokey, casual, slangy dialogue of modern action movies and Marvel universe is the level they understand), and then they feel the need to invent their own crap out of thin air because the plot they created now demands it.
They don't understand the deeper themes, they don't understand characters that are not cookie-cutter 'antiheroes' from hit TV shows if they need to depict cosmic evil, they can't write to save their lives, and the pacing is abominable.
I've learned like life-changing things about autoimmunity and neurodevelopment this week that relate to everything from addiction to diabetes to autism to trans issues and all my neuro friends are not impressed and generally just like "yep, that's the way neuroimmunology works" and I wish I had more non-science friends to talk to about mu opioid receptors during development to.
If you ever need a doll that will listen\read very politely and then get mind blown about how Evolution does unbelievable things without direction or planning, I'm here.
Decoupling from China in all areas except high-tech (with national security considerations) is likely a pipedream. Good thread here about an entrepreneur who tried to move production out of China and into India/Vietnam.
Basically, nothing beats China in efficiency. Large corporations like Apple can take that hit due to massive profits, but companies with razor-thin margins are simply not going to move en masse.
Capitalism has ensured that the most efficient producers is found. If this is dislocated, it would imply that we'll see high inflation for much longer as higher prices in production will invariably have to be matched by higher prices paid by consumers.
I work for a mfg company that sources intermediate inputs from China. We have found alternate sourcing on 15% of Chinese sourced product just this year (going to Vietnam, India, Thailand, Mexico, etc.). Besides its growing geopolitical risk, China is losing its wage competitiveness. Zero COVID policies have been very disruptive on top of that. The desire is for us to get to 0% China-sourced, but it's true it's not easy and may take some time.
Seems right about the short term. But if a few big movers get started, and set up equivalent efficiencies in another location, I don't see any reason why China would have to remain the uniquely most efficient place.
I can see Vietnam doing really well but problem for a lot of other countries is that they haven't really invested much in their vocational education. India is a very good example of this. Most of the education policy is focused on elite universities.
Such decoupling has already been ongoing for a while and is only accelerating. The CCP has also switched from subsidizing integration to encouraging autarky. While there might not be complete decoupling I expect integration to continue to decrease.
What's so special about China ? Population with broadly similar demographics (?) is there in India capitalist autocracy is there in Russia and Brazil. Why can't any one of those be another China if you gave it 20 years like the original China ?
It's an interesting data point, and I'm sure there are indeed lots of headaches with moving out of China. Having said that, Vietnam's wages appear to be about half of China's. And how much is it worth to avoid a total supply chain disruption in the event of military hostilities? There are lots of factors at play. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
It's very common for people around here to say stuff like "I don't care about race" "I don't care whether America becomes majority brown" "It doesn't matter what race the majority of American are in the future" "A person's skin color is the least important thing about them" and so on and so forth. Fair enough.
But if that's how you feel, why was the American colonization of North America an especially bad thing?
It can't be because of the violence - native americans have always been violent against each other, and in many ways colonization was less violent than native american conflicts
It can't be because people lost "their" land - native americans had no problem taking the land that was previously "owned" by other native american nations
It can't be because a majority of the population came to be people with no recent North American ancestry - that's what the outcome of the immigration policies in many countries will be without significant change.
It seems like the only real difference is that the people using violence to take land are of a different race (or "skin color"), which is that thing that's not supposed to matter.
Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones? What if a counterfactual native american nation bought a bunch of guns and explosives from some travelling merchants and devastated their (native american) opponents? Does this now make it as comparably bad?
Sure, Europeans brought in a different culture, but native american nations had different cultures, so its all a matter of degree, not a categorical difference. Europeans brought in a different political system, but what, you would suddenly think that native american conquest becomes as problematic as colonization if they explicitly imposed a different political system? They changed the way of life for these people, but nobody would say that unconquered native americans organically developing science and making technological progress would have been some gravely bad thing.
No, I'm not arguing for anything, this isn't some pretence for my real point, I'm literally trying to understand on what basis colonization of North America was especially bad, and this was mostly spurred on from comments on the Columbus day posts.
If you *don't* view it as especially bad in comparison to other violent conquest, than congratulations, you sir win the internet for today.
I think you need to unpack the "especially bad" in your claim a bit. Like, what specifically are people claiming about the colonization of the Americas, which you think they should not say? Are there people on this site specifically saying things like "The colonization of the Americas was worse than the Hundred Years War," or are they just saying "The violent colonization of the Americas was very bad?"
To me, this looks like recency bias - we've just had a thread on Columbus Day, you see the liberals in that thread talking about why Columbus is terrible, and you go "My god, why are these people obsessed with making sure everyone knows that Columbus was evil?" when the truth is there are *plenty* of evil people liberals would like to remind you about and Columbus is just the one who's currently relevant.
Combine that with the fact that this is an American website, that the conquest of the Americas was completed pretty recently in the grand scheme of things, and that the descendants of the victims of that conquest are *still alive* and dealing with the aftermath of it, and that seems more than adequate to explain why this particular violent conquest gets more attention than say, the Aztec empire, or Genghis Khan.
If that's still not enough to satisfy you, I'd also point out that we generally consider state-vs-ethnicity or state-vs-people violence to be worse than interstate or interpersonal violence, and this is true regardless of which specific race or group it is. For an obvious example, pretty much everyone considers the Holocaust to be uniquely bad, even though many more people died in WWII as a whole.
For a current example, Russia is forcibly relocating Ukrainian citizens in occupied areas, along with other attempts at cultural destruction like destroying monuments and bringing in their own schoolteachers, and that gets at least as much attention as the actual high-intensity warfare happening despite killing many fewer people.
If you don't find either of those surprising, you shouldn't be surprised that people find a deliberate government policy of killing or forcibly relocating an ethnicity in the name of Manifest Destiny to be more evil (or at least more worth criticizing) than whatever inter-tribal conflict it was competing with at the time. For most people, the motive matters just as much as the number of bodies.
>Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones? What if a counterfactual native american nation bought a bunch of guns and explosives from some travelling merchants and devastated their (native american) opponents? Does this now make it as comparably bad?
Yes and yes, and I don't see how this is supposed to be a "gotcha." Mercy is the virtue of the strong - the stronger you are, the more power you have to find a solution which doesn't involve murdering your opponents, and the more you deserve criticism for failing to do so.
Why "can't" it be about violence and forceful mass takings of land? Just because the victims of a crime are criminals themselves doesn't mean I'm not allowed to care about the crime they're a victim of. Especially since I don't think any of their crimes resulted in such large and such quick results.
>Why "can't" it be about violence and forceful mass takings of land?
Because it doesn't explain why it is treated differently to precolonial violence, which is the whole point. Being opposed to colonization makes perfect sense. Treating it as categorically different to other forms of conquest, not so much. Nobody said you can't care about it, the question is why it is cared about so much more than precolonial violence.
And if you're saying it's because of the results of the European violence compared with native americans, fair enough, but does this mean you think having more power makes means you are bound by different ethical standards? Fair enough if you do.
I think it's as simple as a question of ownership. The colonial conquest is seen as _our_ crime, specifically, because it was over the land we still occupy, and done by the state that we more or less still love under, and also more vaguely because it was done by figures we still revere as part of a historical period we still feel a sense of collective pride in. All of that makes the colonial conquest something that is relevant to us, specifically.
It sounds like you hear people expressing regret of our treatment of the natives, and assuming that their silence on other matters (i.e. precolonial conquest) means tacit acceptance?
I think that's actually an interesting topic for debate, honestly. What does it mean to apply today's standards of morality to an earlier age? Can one be consistent in regretting their ancestor's actions without also passing some kind of implicit judgment on other actors of that age? And what does this mean for 'reparations' - if we were to try to make things right (i.e. give land back to a tribe) but had evidence that that land had previously been taken from some other tribe, what is our moral obligation? Or does it render the whole exercise silly?
I think these are interesting questions, honestly. But I'm not sure those are the questions you're asking.
> because it was over the land we still occupy, and done by the state that we more or less still love under, and also more vaguely because it was done by figures we still revere as part of a historical period we still feel a sense of collective pride in.
This doesn't explain the fact that the left feel similarly (if not worse) about African colonialism despite:
- Not land still occupied by the colonizers
- Not done by the state we live under
- Not done by revered historical figures
- Not part of a proud period of history
>It sounds like you hear people expressing regret of our treatment of the natives, and assuming that their silence on other matters (i.e. precolonial conquest) means tacit acceptance?
Yes, it is acceptance. If you only talk about one part of two related things, you only care about that part. Which is fine, but I just don't see a non-racial justification for it, implicit or explicit, which isn't consistent with a lot of people here's views on race.
I don't think I'm the person you're arguing against, but if I were to steelman this thinking, I could make two arguments.
First, the sense of greater outrage against European colonizers is a softer form of what I said above. It comes from a sense of _kinship_, though not direct ownership. For example, if my brother murdered someone, I would probably feel differently about that than a random murder committed by someone I didn't know. If I saw the victim's family walking down the street, I would be a lot more likely to feel bad than I would for the random victim's family. And since a lot of us here in the US and the West more generally relate to those traditional Western powers, there's a transference of guilt that isn't directly racial.
Second - I think you're overlooking the possibility of just plain ignorance. We know a lot about what various colonial powers did in Africa because it happened with a lot of documentation. We know much less about, say, the Bantu expansion.
Now if you hypothesize someone who has full knowledge of everything, and no particular connection to the white colonizers, but who still treats those colonizers as uniquely evil, then yeah, I'd agree there's some racial animus there. But I don't think that's representative of a dominant variety of thought.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that more power means different ethical standards - it’s that with more power your goodnesses and flaws matter more, and are more worth dwelling on.
I guess I win the internet, then. Colonization of North America by Europeans doesn't seem worse than the colonizations, wars, & exterminations that are the stuff of history, sort of the way shaping and reconnecting pieces of a material is the stuff of building. Here I am living peacefully on top of the stack of bones, ambitions and screams that is history, and the worst thing I've done in the last 10 years is be a dick occasionally on Reddit & Twitter -- plus, of course, fail to be very upset about the stack of bones, ambitions and screams my house is built on, and fail to opt out of enjoying various activities and possessions that are made possible by the labor of poor people who live under harsh conditions. Life is strange.
For clarity, is it your perspective that the colonization of the Americas was "not bad" or merely "not especially bad when compared to other historic instances of violent conquest?" There's a rather large violent-conquesty gap between the two.
(1) What is the historical instance of violent conquest you would consider a parallel to the colonization of the Americas which is not getting the kind of attention the colonization is;
(2) Do you think the flaw is (a) your parallel isn't getting the attention it should, or (b) the colonization is getting too much; and,
1. The sum total of all precolonial native american violence between nations
2. My question is around understanding the liberal view here. If you think white people bad and brown people good, then focusing only on colonization makes sense, but that doesn't work if you say that race doesn't matter.
I think that while some people strive to be race-blind, fewer people strive to be culture-blind. So one could find efforts to eradicate one culture bad even irregardless of changes to the racial distribution of the population. Of course, cultures change naturally over time, merge or split apart and so on. There is little point to bemoan the fact that the Assyrian culture has not survived unchanged to the present day.
With regard of native Americans, I don't think that the argument is that before Columbus, the first nations made up 100% of the population of the Americas, and today they are a tiny minority in the US. It was the details of how that happened which made it a bad thing.
>I think that while some people strive to be race-blind, fewer people strive to be culture-blind. So one could find efforts to eradicate one culture bad even irregardless of changes to the racial distribution of the population.
My contention is if that a Native American nation became powerful enough to conquer all others and ended up doing this, it would not be talked about the way colonization is. This is likely because seemingly nobody has any kind of problem with Zulus committing genocide against native south africans despite this being a much worse crime than anything that happened under apartheid
> My contention is if that a Native American nation became powerful enough to conquer all others and ended up doing this, it would not be talked about the way colonization is.
Well, I for one regard the Aztecs as just as evil as Colonialism. The reason they are not talked about as much is probably the same reason why the Norse and Danish colonialism [0] in England is seldom talked about: it happened in the more distance past, and there are no clear continuities between the perpetrators and any present day governments.
These things contributed a tiny percentage of the population decline of Native North Americans. And for what feels like the hundreth time now, Native Americans had no qualms butchering each other, so violence against native americans per se *cannot* be the cause of treating colonization as especially bad.
Not calling those actions humane or acceptable - although the horror some is vastly overstated - but they were the result of the 95% population crash that left the rest unable to exert cultural power.
> But if that's how you feel, why was the American colonization of North America an especially bad thing?
> It can't be because of the violence - native americans have always been violent against each other, and in many ways colonization was less violent than native american conflicts
...
> Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones?
For my personal position, this is correct. It's trite but true: with great power comes great responsibility. If a native american tribe had somehow managed to negotiate an exclusive trading relationship with all europeans and then used that tech edge to conquer, rape and pillage their way across the continent over the next 200 years, they would also have been far worse than the atrocities committed by native american tribes against each other in our world.
I also think that the Aztec in particular were not notably less evil than the conquistadors. They also conquered a large chunk of the neighborhood and committed endless atrocities against their population.
1. If your answer is that people with more power are bound by different moral standards, that's a perfectly fine answer.
2. However, my claim was that a native american nation with the power to be genocidal probably would have been (e.g. they somehow bought guns and explosives), and importantly, I do not believe that this "genocide" would have been talked about in the way that European colonization is.
My main piece of evidence in favor of this claim is the fact that Zulus in South Africa essentially commit genocide against the ethnic groups that were there prior, and I have literally seen no left-wing talk about how this was A) even something resembling a genocide or B) an especially grave historical injustice. The Zulus are, if anything , venerated by black nationalist sorts and nobody seems to have a problem with this. Meanwhile, European colonizers did stuff that was much less bad than this and yet their actions are literally seen as some of the worst in human history.
1. Pretty much. I'd probably quibble about the phrasing there, but I'm a quibbler.
2.
>However, my claim was that a native american nation with the power to be genocidal probably would have been (e.g. they somehow bought guns and explosives),
I think this is overstated. I think you can say that of *some* of the first nations (the Iroquois for example, have a genocide under their belts) but not others. Same as with European nations.
> and importantly, I do not believe that this "genocide" would have been talked about in the way that European colonization is.
And here I think you're right but also wrong, because you think this is out of some form of liberal hypocrisy, and I think it's not.
Let me elaborate. We didn't talk about European colonization the way we do now until pretty recently. For generations the story was the conquering of a wilderness from a savage and heathen people. Then, for like, a generation or two (1910s/20s? to 1970s/80s?), the natives became sympathetic, and it was talked about as the passing of a primitive people for a more civilized one. Sad, but inevitable. (This one is interesting because if you drive through places like the Dakotas and look at the historical markers, you can see the difference in eras and attitudes by how the story is told.* ) Sometime into the 80s or 90s we started to understand the story of European colonization as genocide, as a wrong done by *us* to someone else. (As an aside, I think you are in that second school, where colonization was sad but inevitable, and you resent that the common understanding has changed. I may be overreading.)
So, in the counterfactual world of the Iroquois States of America (or whoever), how the genocides that built that country would be talked about would depend a great deal on who those people were. If they retained the same cultural values that led to the genocide, they wouldn't fret about it. If their moral development (or degradation!) followed the same same path as ours, the conversation would be about the same, I think.
>My main piece of evidence in favor of this claim is the fact that Zulus in South Africa essentially commit genocide against the ethnic groups that were there prior, and I have literally seen no left-wing talk about how this was A) even something resembling a genocide or B) an especially grave historical injustice.
So, a couple of things here. The American left wing talks about European colonization this way, but that's because this is our country. But we don't *really* talk about Australia, or the Belgian Congo, or wherever, at anything like a deep level. We do talk about them some, for the same reason as the France/Africa distinction drawn last time: the modern left sees itself as part of the first world, and what the Belgians did in the Congo or the British/Australians did there is at least somewhat relevant. No one knows what the Zulus did in the before times, or the Ethiopians, or the Mongols (other than Genghis Khan was pretty badass, right?) or, for that matter, the Iroquois or the Comanche. They aren't *us*, for most values of us, so we aren't interested. You keep trying to draw sweeping logical inconsistencies from differences in attitudes that pretty much have to do with distance and interest.
But, there is another factor. Navel gazing about historical wrongs we've committed is the luxury of success. In the very weird counterfactual where we somehow lose WWII, and Germany conquers the East up to the Appalachians and Japan the West up to the Rockies, European colonization is barely ever talked about and the conversation never goes past "sad, but inevitable", IMO. Instead the national conversation would be much more focused on the lost lands, the unjust oppression of our conquerors and their faults and misdeeds. No one is talking about the Zulu or Iroquois historical crimes because there is no Zululand or Iroquois state.
*Voyageur National Park on the Minnesota/Canada border, then west across North Dakota to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (the only one named after a person), then south to Rapid City and the Black Hills. Excellent road trip, highly recommended.
>So, in the counterfactual world of the Iroquois States of America (or whoever), how the genocides that built that country would be talked about would depend a great deal on who those people were. If they retained the same cultural values that led to the genocide, they wouldn't fret about it. If their moral development (or degradation!) followed the same same path as ours, the conversation would be about the same, I think.
I mean if the liberal posters on ACX somehow still existed in this counterfactual world (living in Europe or something) with identical values, I'm saying they wouldn't be talking about this the way they talk about European colonization.
>They aren't *us*, for most values of us, so we aren't interested. You keep trying to draw sweeping logical inconsistencies from differences in attitudes that pretty much have to do with distance and interest.
This is trivially false!!
The American left were losing their minds over apartheid and demanded the US government do everything in their power to see it ended.
You can't play the "it's not our country so we don't care" card, YOU DID CARE!
>No one is talking about the Zulu or Iroquois historical crimes because there is no Zululand or Iroquois state.
We're STILL talking about apartheid to this day. And the apartheid government should be seen as a godsend to Africa for stopping the genocidal Zulus, so yes, the actions of the Zulus are even more relevant than those of precolonial native americans.
>I mean if the liberal posters on ACX somehow still existed in this counterfactual world (living in Europe or something) with identical values, I'm saying they wouldn't be talking about this the way they talk about European colonization.
The liberal posters on counterfactual ACX would be Iroquois, and I think they would talk about their past in pretty much the same way we talk about ours. People or people, more or less. At least, IMO.
>This is trivially false!!
>The American left were losing their minds over apartheid and demanded the US government do everything in their power to see it ended.
>You can't play the "it's not our country so we don't care" card, YOU DID CARE!
Two things:
1) That was current events. We also cared about Ethiopian famine and the Syrian civil war. Lots of things make the news. We *were* talking about how we teach and understand history.
2) South Africa was, at least in some since, the outpost of European colonialism in de-colonised Africa. So even given that this is changing the subject from history to the news, it's still not a great counterpoint. South Africa was still kinda us. Not in the same since of Britain or Canada, but more so than Kenya or Ecuador. If memory serves, one of the big things from that era was a hit song from Bono about not playing Sun City, a big South African tourist destination.
>We're STILL talking about apartheid to this day.
No one we aren't. The last time I remember it coming up at all was that Morgan Freeman / Matt Damon movie. Is this really still a thing in your bubble? It seems weird that it would be more current in what I assume is a much redder bubble than mine.
>And the apartheid government should be seen as a godsend to Africa for stopping the genocidal Zulus, so yes, the actions of the Zulus are even more relevant than those of precolonial native americans.
This seems like it's the heart of your argument, and I just don't see how it makes any sense. A paraphrase might be: yes, the white South Africans of the 1970s were bad, but the Zulus of the 1870s were way worse, so you shouldn't criticise them. Since you are criticising them I conclude that you're a hypocrite who only cares about race.
You're entitled to your opinion of course, but it's not at all a good understanding of how people with opinions different from you actually think.
This is an extremely heterodox view that you're probably accepting because it aligns with YOUR narratives, ironic considering your accusations of the same against people you disagree with.
I hadn't heard about alleged cannibalism, just the waging flower-wars to capture sacrificial victims (and maintain dominance over subordinate rulers), cutting out hearts wholesale, beating children so they wept for the rain god, racks of skulls and flaying skins off the victims for the priests to wear stuff.
I'm so glad to hear they weren't cannibals, that would have been really naughty!
Lakes full of bones seem to have been Mayan, not Aztec:
To be honest, I wasn't aware of the cannibalism. Possibly I'd read about it and forgot; I'm not especially fussed about cannibalism. The issue is all the ritualistic murder. I've always been a bit skeptical about how awful the deaths actually were (seems a bit too movie-cliche/optimized for western audience horror) but we know there were a lot of them. We have the skeletons.
Another lamentable thing is the loss of their culture. Perhaps more so in the Aztec, Maya and Inka empires. They had a culture, engineering knowledge, literature and poetry, and a whole way of thinking, which were completely eradicated.
Oh, and arguably the mass slaughtering of buffaloes went far beyond what native tribes did to each other. (But there was that tribe which completely destroyed the ecosystem in one region. Anyone remember that story?)
From today's point of view, having the USA as a liberal democracy is a very positive outcome. But still, the land-taking could have been done more humanely and with less genocide. But as others have said, today we have a higher morale standard than 500 years ago.
I'm not talking about SJWs. They explicitly think white people are bad, hence why colonization is the worst thing in history. I'm saying that a lot of people around here say they don't care about race, and if you don't then I struggle to see why colonization was *especially* bad.
Yeah, this seems like a defining feature of SJWism (or whatever you want to call it) relative to older liberalism on race. Most people I knew in (say) the 1990s, both liberal and conservative, thought people should ignore race and focus on individual traits--don't worry if your neighbor is black or hispanic or Jewish or whatever, just care whether or not he keeps his lawn mowed and whether he has loud parties and such. I mean this was the sort of thing you'd hear from Reagan Republicans as well as Clinton Democrats. And mostly the same for sexual preference and such--who cares whether my employee is a lesbian, I just want her to get the work done.
This still seems to be a common position among most Republicans, including the more populist/right-wing end of Republicans. I think Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson would all sign on to that basic way of looking at race. But the modern SJW/progressive/successor ideology view on this is that being race blind is just another kind of privilege, and that everyone is obliged to be super race-conscious. It's not enough to just not be racist, you must be antiracist or you're just maintaining the system of white supremacy.
Now, personally, I think this is both morally a bad way to look at the world, and practically a terrible thing to get everyone obsessed about in as diverse a society as ours. My guess is that this rhetoric largely falls out of the interests of various racial activists--for a random black or hispanic dude, obsessing about race is counterproductive and dumb, but for someone whose job at a billionaire-funded NGO is based on being a racial activist, making race the most salient thing in everyone's mind is how he keeps his job and establishes his relevance.
I think you're conflating what people think with what they say they think when challenged.
An awful lot of people who claim to think that "people should ignore race and focus on individual traits" also, in different conversations, actively defend the idea that e.g. race should be a factor in who the police stop and search, or pull over, or oppose attempts to reduce the extent to which it is.
And things like identical-resume studies prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that, whatever people said, discrimination against black people was very, very common in the 90s and is still not nearly rare enough.
In practice, it depends on which argument would generate the most bang for the bucks. If the facts on the ground support or seem to support the "I don't care about race" view, like for example non-whites being objectively better in some sense of the word at something, then Wokies will (if unconsciously) adopt the race-blind view and argue out of metrics and outcomes.
Why is your "white-brown reversed" counterpart to "browning" (which by my understanding, stems from a difference in immigration and childbirth rates) an event that you yourself describe as "violent conquest"?
Seems to me that the better question would be "how do self-proclaimed race-blind people feel about my alt history novel where the European colonists simply *immigrated into* the various native nations en masse instead of trying to carve out colonies, causing a 'whitening' across the continent as various immigrant groups' cultures and genes mingle with the various native nations?"
No need to get sidetracked by silly objections like "but violence is bad!", and you get a fun book (series) out of it to boot.
>Why is your "white-brown reversed" counterpart to "browning" (which by my understanding, stems from a difference in immigration and childbirth rates) an event that you yourself describe as "violent conquest"?
It's not. My point is that if you don't care about race, I don't see any reason to treat colonial violence as categorically different to precolonial violence.
I don't think it was a bad thing. Beyond the obligatory Mayans/Aztecs bad, we're all so disconnected from anybody 500 years ago that I feel equally disconnected from all of them, and don't really care.
But my impression is that very few people would say they both don't see race and are sad about native americans. IMO that's normally a right wing response /dodge
As far as I can tell, the history of just about every piece of land on Earth is written in blood--conquests, massacres, enslavements, ethnic cleansing, rape, burning, looting, etc. This is just how humans are.
It's interesting to imagine other ways the settlement of the Americans could have happened. Given the way disease spread, it's hard to imagine American Indians not being heavily displaced, but who knows?
Not that they don't see race, but that the "browning" of America is irrelevant, which seems to be the most common view amongst the "reasonable" ratsphere left wingers. Normie shitlibs obviously care about race and think that colonization is bad because of white people.
I'm not entirely sure I understand the connection between your two points. ETA: Or rather, I see the connection you're trying to draw, but I don't agree that the basis of most people's concern about the conquest of the Americas is that it was done by white folks against Indians.
The violence against Native Americans is especially concerning to me because it was committed by my nation, for the explicit purpose of conquest and expansion, which is, in my view, immoral.
And it has been followed up with several centuries of mistreatment, prejudice and attempts at cultural genocide. Which, again, is not unique, but is still wrong and of greater concern to me as it was done by my nation.
If I was British, I like to think I'd feel basically the same way about the treatment of the Irish, despite both of them being white, from an American perspective. There's plenty of other examples, but most of them break down because at a certain point the country that committed the crime no longer really exists (is the CCP responsible for the actions of the Qing Dynasty? Probably not.).
"Is the CCP responsible for the actions of the previous governments of China?" They are the successor state. They took ownership of the various treaties that previous governments had signed, and demanded Hong Kong back on that basis, so they're as responsible for previous Chinese governments as eg. the current British government is for previous British governments of similar antiquity.
Eh, I haven't looked at the legal question and don't really care about the intricacies of international law. My response is based on personal morality/ethics. I do think when a country entirely overthrows the previous government the new country is not thereby morally culpable for previous immoral actions (though it's also not 'entitled' to pride in previous moral or 'glorious' ones). This isn't the only model people use, so someone who identified as Han Chinese rather than Chinese might operate under an entirely separate set of responsibilities/glories.
I think this probably applies even in cases of incomplete overthrow. So, and here's a place I may annoy the left, rather than the right, I do think the US Civil War throws real doubt on the responsibility of the current United States for the slave trade and slavery. Now, it's definitely responsible for Jim Crow and various other things.
But that's my thinking out loud attempt to identify why I politically feel that the Conquest of America matters to me more than the Conquest of Ireland.
I think for long-lasting organizations it doesn't really make sense to hold them morally responsible for actions from centuries in the past. The US government did some nasty stuff to American Indians in the past. But every single person who did those things, everyone who ordered them, and just about everyone who even voted for them is now dead. Certainly there's no continuity of decision-makers. Why does it make sense to speak of a moral responsibility for things done long ago by long-dead men landing on living people now?
It may make sense to speak of financial or diplomatic or legal obligations of the US government w.r.t. long-ago actions, but moral responsibility seems like it has to do with individual humans, not large organizations. (And certainly not huge amorphous groups like "white people" or "white Americans.")
>> I think for long-lasting organizations it doesn't really make sense to hold them morally responsible for actions from centuries in the past.
Why not? Don't they lay claim the benefits of those actions? Assuming the US government is going to continue to assert the right to control land and the population on it by virtue of its past actions, why should the benefits not come with the costs (especially when the costs seem to just amount to some boilerplate land acknowledgement statement that 75% of your audience isn't even listening to anyway)?
Which is why I didn't speak of white people at all? My referent is to citizens of a nation, which yes, retain both glories and shames which extend beyond the life of any of its individual members.
The people from 150 years ago weren't 'your people.' Even though you come from the same turf, under the same flag, they didn't share your thoughts and values. You have about as much connection with them as you do with the 5,200 year old bronze age man discovered on the Italian border.
You probably would like to style yourself as a 19th century Republican abolitionist, but that's probably fantasy too.
If you're aggrieved by something done by someone who doesn't share your values, your probably just looking to be aggrieved.
> The people from 150 years ago weren't 'your people.' Even though you come from the same turf, under the same flag, they didn't share your thoughts and values. You have about as much connection with them as you do with the 5,200 year old bronze age man discovered on the Italian border.
Agree to disagree. As a (nominally German) European, I think that from the point of view of a prehistoric man, the thoughts and values of me and a mainstream person of 1852 would be virtually indistinguishable. The scientific method, industrialization, a general belief in human progress. Enlightenment. Rule of law.
Of course, there would be plenty of stuff I would vehemently disagree on when discussing ideas with the 1852 German (antisemitism, militarism, nationalism, perhaps communism, colonialism, the wisdom of burning coal, the role of women in society, sexual liberty, vegetarianism) but our ideas would at least be mutually understandable -- if not exactly in each others Overton window.
Language barriers aside, most of these ideas would be literally inconceivable to the 3200 BCE man:
"Should some rights also be applied to non-human animals?"
- "What are rights?"
"Do you believe that women should have the right to vote?"
- "What is 'vote'?"
"What is your position on the alienation of workers due to the industrial revolution"
"I would vehemently disagree on when discussing ideas with the 1852 German (antisemitism, militarism, nationalism, perhaps communism, colonialism, the wisdom of burning coal, the role of women in society, sexual liberty, vegetarianism) "
As a common person aligned with contemporary morality of today, you'd most likely hold the most common 1850's contemporary views on these positions.
If you're not a 'hair-shirt' in today's world, you'd not very likely be a 'hair-shirt' in the 1850s world ... instead, you'd hold the contemporary values.
Where would you stand on the formation of The Prussian Federation vs The German Confederation? Did those Jews cause the economic collapse? The Industrial Revolution is just beginning, and you can now have a nice coal-oil burning lamp in your home, and sell off the trusty whale oil lamp. Coal is reduced in price enough, that you might actually have energy to heat your house, not just cook your meals. Little known to you, the little-ice-age is ending in 13 years and glaciers will no longer mow down people's homes. Do women have a place??? Yes, in the home raising children and cooking. When you're cooking over coal or wood, you don't just click on the heat. Cooking and cleaning is an all day job. There's no electric washer nor drier, the woman washes in a wooden tub with water she heated on the stove. She plans her day around trying to wash and dry the clothing, keep the kids fed. The cost of food is more than half your budget, not a scrap goes to waste. There is no 'role for women in society' women are captive in the house, their best hope is her parents made a favorable marriage arrangement. There is no 'vegetarianism', there is only eating, trying to control your parasite load, avoid catching a chill, stay away from people who have the pox, always on the watch for 'the evil eye.'
The entertaining truth is that someone at the rightmost 10% of the US political spectrum today, somehow finding themselves in 1820, would be the most absolutely out-there flaming liberal around.
I'm not aggrieved, I am part of a nation-state which is responsible for its past (and current) actions. I also wasn't part of the Iraq war, and indeed opposed it, but that doesn't absolve the nation of its responsibility for that action.
Now, to be clear, I don't wander around with a hairshirt on, nor am I giving up my property so a tribe can get some land back, but yes, I do care more about things done by my nation than I do about things done by nations of which I am not a part.
As for the rest of your mind reading...I'm just going to leave it at, don't quit your day job, dude.
Yes, it sucks to be the vanquished. One branch of my family was granted 35,000 acres (Between Napa & Sacramento) by the Spanish government. Then came those pesky Americans who stole it yet again. Of course the Spanish stole it from the Miwoks, who stole it from previous Natives, who stole it from other previous Natives, ad infinitum ...
And next week the Chinese could invade and steal it yet again.
Are you implying that in the absence of a straightforward solution, a moral problem ceases to be a moral problem?
If land was stolen, but it's impracticable to give it back or pay for it, it doesn't make the land *not* stolen, nor does it mean we can't acknowledge its having been stolen. The world may not be able to do anything about the genocide one branch of my family tree was subjected to and narrowly survived, but the fact that there's no clean solution or reparation to be had doesn't mean the issue just has to magically cease being discussed or remembered.
Yeah, the obvious problem here is when are you setting the bar for 'this person had legitimate ownership and all subsequent transfers are illegitimate.' Because basically all historic land transfers have their origin in violence, except the literal first expansion of humanity and I think you'll have a hard time properly tracing folks.
>but I don't agree that the basis of most people's concern about the conquest of the Americas is that it was done by white folks against Indians.
Perhaps not, but the question is precisely, if not that then what? I've listed some common reasons given and why I feel they're invalid, so you need to explain either why they're not invalid, or what the real, non-race explanation is.
And I think in many cases this basis is not explicit or conscious. I certainly think their is some bias people have against Europeans, hence why colonization and the Atlantic slave trade are almost unviersally hated in a way that non-white conquest and the much larger non-atlantic-slave-trade part of the African slave trade are not.
>The violence against Native Americans is especially concerning to me because it was committed by my nation, for the explicit purpose of conquest and expansion, which is, in my view, immoral
Okay, and my point was why is this any different to native american conquest?
And native americans today consider it especially bad, and it wasn't their nation who did it, so your ancestry seems kind of irrelevant.
>And it has been followed up with several centuries of mistreatment, prejudice and attempts at cultural genocide.
Well, the end result of being on the losing side of native american conquest was most likely death, not mistreatment, so again I have to ask, why is colonization bad RELATIVE to what happened in north america before colonization?
The question isn't whether colonization was bad. It's why it's treated as being especially bad.
>If I was British, I like to think I'd feel basically the same way about the treatment of the Irish, despite both of them being white, from an American perspective.
But the oppression of the Irish by the English is widely accepted as a grave historical injustice, so I don't see how it's comparable.
I'm actively confused by this response? As an American citizen I do feel a sense of responsibility for the actions of my nation and a sense of duty to attempt to remedy the wrongs committed by it.
Now, feel free to call this navel gazing, or self-flagellating, or whatever, but I thought I was extremely clear that I am not a member of any Native American tribe, which is why I care more about US-tribal conquests than tribal-tribal conquests (though I don't care 0 about them, the Comanche Empire is a fascinating, but horrifying book on such conquests, if you're curious).
As for why Native Americans consider it especially bad...come on. At this point it appears to me that you're being willfully obtuse. Of course the Native Americans consider the things which actually happen to their ancestors and continue to have negative impacts on them down to the present to be worse then hypothetical things which didn't (note, under your model the conquered didn't have heirs, so there's no one to mourn them, this model is incomplete at best, but answers its own question).
I'm fairly sure the Irish care more about British mistreatment of them then they do about their internal wars prior to British involvement, even though those wars undoubtedly involved horrible crimes and actions.
"But the oppression of the Irish by the English is widely accepted as a grave historical injustice, so I don't see how it's comparable."
You don't? But my argument is that the treatment of the Native Americans is a historical injustice, which I (and Americans generally) should be particularly concerned with as it was carried out by our people and government and continues to have ongoing negative effects to the present day. My statement is not that it's the worst thing ever (anymore than the treatment of the Irish was) but that it was a wrong committed by my government and people and therefore of major concern to me.
And, to be clear, regardless of your personal opinion, American treatment of the Native Tribes is in fact widely accepted as a grave historical injustice.
Moreover, the fact that English treatment of the Irish is accepted as a grave historical injustice undercuts what seems to be your underlying argument, that the real issue here is racial.
Finally, you seem to want to give equal weight to hypothetical actions which could have occurred to the ones which actually did occur, which is pretty silly in my view.
And I just remembered you're the same guy who ran the African borders->Diversity->Immigration thread in the last open thread...I should not have responded to this bait.
On the off chance I was wrong, no bait is not everything I disagree with, as you can see if you review my comments throughout this thread.
I call this bait because between the last thread and this one it appears to me that you have a pattern of behavior of:
1) Making up a position for liberals/democrats to hold.
2) Finding, or making up a second position for liberals/democrats to hold.
3) Saying they're in conflict.
4) Challenging people to explain why they aren't.
5) Then revealing that you don't actually care about the object level debate over either of the positions or the factual underpinnings, but rather either wanted to debate something else altogether, or just wanted to call the outgroup hypocrites.
Which, yes, frankly reads as trolling to me. Clearly others find engaging with you worthwhile, but I do not and so will not be doing so after this comment.
The best heuristic is the one I mentioned above -- treat everything as bait, and interact with it if you find it fun to do so. Life is short, why are you on the internet arguing with people if it's not fun?
You might very well be right in your assessment of Jason's posts. In a very real sense, we can't rely on introspection to judge our own character, and have to look at a record of our actions. He might be wrong about his own posts. But certainly you can save a lot of time if you just adopt a different overall strategy.
Agree. I feel worse about the harms done by “my” group. That it’s perhaps not “especially” bad compared to other extremely bad things is not very relevant to me.
Also, OP, your reasoning does come across as motivated despite the disclaimer.
Okay, then why don't native americans feel worse about their ancestors killing other native americans than they do about colonization, because it was "their" group?
I grew up in America with people teaching me that America is land of the free, worthy of the role of moral policeman because we implement policy based on the highest ethical standards. I think some segments of society are still indoctrinating youth with these beliefs. Then it bothers me that ' my group' has acted like the immoral apes we are, and I feel the need to complain about my ancestors behavior. I am a liberal elitist, so I have this subtle feeling that slave holding Arabs were less enlightened than me, therefore they can't be blamed for having slaves and castrating them.
>I think some segments of society are still indoctrinating youth with these beliefs.
And I think this is neither unique, nor would its absence make you care less about colonization.
>I am a liberal elitist, so I have this subtle feeling that slave holding Arabs were less enlightened than me, therefore they can't be blamed for having slaves and castrating them.
I think that nearly all cultures and ape teams has their subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways of riding the high horse, western ones are not special in thinking that they're special, not at all.
In some Islamic circles, you will get very offended looks if you dare to suggest that Islam never thought of abolition and that it needed the western abolitionists dragging it along to make it happen. No, Islam *Has* Thought Of Abolitionism, It Just Prefered To Make It Gradual So No Civil Wars Happen. (never mind that Islam descended into civil war almost as soon as Muhamed was buried, then once again about 3-4 decades later over what we now call the Sunni-Shia divide.) So here is a culture that maintained and supported and actively thrived on slavery for ~1400 years, and still has the balls to *take credit* for its abolition.
I also think - just a personal attitude - that previous sin makes for better priests. As a personal example, I managed to stop eating all variants of meat and chicken since about 2 or 3 years ago. Sometimes when my friends and family want to embarrass me, they mention the fact that I was a ravenous meat lover before, but Joke On Them, this kinda makes me secretly proud. Beginning Astray then correcting to the Right Path takes more energy than being born on the Right Path. Yes, it was terrible that I ate all those animals before finally figuring out how things work, but I'm not responsible for the indoctrination that my environment did to me to convince me that it's okay, but *I'm* responsible for the thinking and the moral reasoning that I did to break the indoctrination.
All of which to say, I neither understand self-flagellating westerners nor self-congraulating westerners. The distribution of things-to-be-proud-of vs. things-to-be-ashamed-of is well within the error bounds. Much worse cultures can be proud and gloating, I think the excessive self-criticism coming from some tribes in America is not actually sincere, kinda like a humble brag (e.g. "oh, don't mind the car, it's just a 2 million dollar Ferrari that is one of 3 of its kind, the mirrors are a bit dirty") Either that or that it has turned into some kind of religion.
I don’t know. I’m just telling you how I feel. It seems like you expect everyone to change their perspectives because you came up with a perceived gotcha. Different people think about these things differently, and I’m sure there are people out there for whom it is about skin color. Or power imbalance. Or because they don’t believe Native Americans were actually equally violent. Etc., etc.
>It seems like you expect everyone to change their perspectives because you came up with a perceived gotcha.
I asked as good faith question for an explanation of liberal beliefs. Isn't it implicit in all arguments you expect everyone else to change their beliefs?
And pointing our perceived contradictions is not a gotcha. It's something that needs explaining.
The only way this is true is if you think the colonization of North America and precolonial conquests in North America are treated more or less identically. You are simply living in some weird little bubble if you think this is true. I have literally never seen anybody talk negatively about precolonial violence in North America and certainly not as categorically similar to colonization, whereas the colonization of North America is something brought up almost constantly in left-wing American discourse.
Look Jason, I think there is kernel of merit in your feeling here, but you are taking this way too far.
Did Elizabeth Warren know deep down she wasn’t 1/256 Iroquois? Probably.
Are people who insist on pausing for a moment of silence to remember the Lakota Sioux who used to live on this spot before a concert commences at a U of MN auditorium being ridiculous? Yes I think the are.
I haven’t been on social media for a long time so i don’t know what The Woke are nattering about. Most of it is probably ridiculous as well. The thing is Twitter is not the same as the world.
You are putting together a hypothetical liberal based on unsound evidence here. Taking the worst part of each Tweeter and composing a representative straw man to beat.
The people that get the most followers are the ones that say the most outrageous stuff.
Facebook algorithms were put together to grab eyeballs. They did this by making one half the country hate the other half. Do I need to say this is not a good thing? Making money by generating hatred and contempt for ‘Them’? Let’s try to make a good faith effort to understand each other rather than gearing up for war.
>You are putting together a hypothetical liberal based on unsound evidence here. Taking the worst part of each Tweeter and composing a representative straw man to beat.
Nope, that is false in a trivial way.
The worst part of tweeters is hating white people and only caring about colonialism accordingly.
>The people that get the most followers are the ones that say the most outrageous stuff.
I literally said Im talking about people ON HERE, and they're not saying anything outrageous.
What I am saying they're doing is having an especially bad view of one thing for reasons I do not see as clear unless they think race factors into it.
That doesn't count unless it comes up during discussions of colonialism in the first place, because my whole point is that it doesn't make sense to view colonialism as especially bad unless you think race factors into it.
Because again, that's my whole question: Why is colonialism treated as worse than precolonial violence? Why is not merely one in a long line of conquests that happened to me more successful? Race is the obvious answer, but many people here claim not to care about race.
If one's objection to violence is moral, I'm not sure there's a lot of distinction to draw between "this tribe is OK with sneaking up on some wandering member of another tribe, smashing his skull with a hatchet, and bringing home the scalp to prove your manhood and take revenge for last week's theft of some meat" and "this tribe is OK with shooting 50 people out of a group of 2,000 who decline to evacuate their homes when told to."
I mean, unless one is an unimaginative utilitarian, who measures moral evil only by quantity, never quality.
Speaking as an unimaginative utilitarian, I think we sure do measure evil by quality. We just sum it up.
The alternative would basically be the World of Darkness Humanity scale, where basically your worst action ever determines your rating, and it does not matter much whether you murder 5 people or 20.
I think that in most peoples minds, the reality is somewhat of a mix between the these two extremes. We don't hold a triple murderer in three times as low regard as a single murderer (and may even hold them in higher regard if the single murder was particularly gruesome), but the people we consider most evil (Hitler, Stalin and the like) still got to their infamy mostly not because any particular of their murders was historically uniquely evil, but mostly just from sheer numbers.
On the other hand, with, say financial crimes, we mostly ignore the scale. If you learned that two managers of (somewhat effective) charities had embezzled funds, with one stealing 10k$ and the other 10M$, and the latter got a decade of prison for that, you would probably still want the former one to get a sentence longer than half a week.
>they were also much smaller in scale than the wars of European conquest.
What I mean is that colonization was less conquest and more setting up shop and using violence when the natives got in the way. Whereas a lot of native conflicts were directly attacking other nations.
>The scale of the land taken during colonization was much larger than the amount that Natives had taken from each other; effectively the entire Native population was consigned to small reservations in the middle of nowhere.
Hence my saying "Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones? "
What if one native group kept going and become the only nation left in North America (and eventually bred enough over successive generations to replace any loss in total population)?
I don't imagine many "anti-racists" would see this as a good thing, but I'm also certain that in no way would this be talked about in anything close to the way colonization is.
It's like the Zulus, they did much worse things than the European colonizers, but almost nobody criticizes the Zulus.
>Yes, but that didn't happen.
Obviously, but my point is that I don't think most people actually would truly view this as being close to as bad as colonization.
You seem to have a very consequentialist form of ethics. Like I said, are the powerful then bound by different moral rules?
Is a wannbe Hitler who fails to attain political power enough to commit genocide really any morally different to actual genocidal Hitler? If so, then you're saying a lack of political prowess makes one more moral.
So far as I know, indigenous people didn't have the capacity to substantially wipe out buffalo, and they might not have imagined doing anything that drastic.
I don't know if we can say they would have moral problems with an action so drastic, so unless you're a pure consequentialist I don't see how it matters.
Aren't there examples of ecological destruction done by primitive people, though? Ecological destruction is like genocide--it's *easier* and more efficient when done with better technology, but you can mass-murder your neighbors with machetes and wreck your local ecosystem with slash-and-burn agriculture if you're determined enough.
ISTM that there's a kind of noble savage ideal lurking somewhere in this notion. But humans are humans. Plenty of savages piled up the skulls of their enemies (sometimes literally), and better technology doesn't make you less (or more) moral, it just makes you more capable. The Romans had to make do with salting the ground where Carthage stood, but we can nuke the f--kers and leave a nice steaming radioactive crater.
I'm not the guy you're replying to, but I share his belief on the relevance of actual impact.
> Is a wannbe Hitler who fails to attain political power enough to commit genocide really any morally different to actual genocidal Hitler? If so, then you're saying a lack of political prowess makes one more moral.
To the question, yes. If Hitler had been unable to kill 6 million Jews he would have been morally superior to the actual Hitler. But your conclusion doesn't follow. If Norman Borlaug had been unable to obtain the funding to do the research that's saved ~a billion lives from starvation, would he be equally good? No! The thing that makes Norman a hero is the impact that he achieved through virtue and skill. Reducing the impact reduces the heroicism.
Power (whether that's technology, political prowess, grant-writing ability, or your own stalwart diligence) is morally neutral. It gives you leverage to reshape more of the world around you. If you're a monster, it will let you be more monstrous. If you're a hero, it will let you be more heroic.
>But your conclusion doesn't follow. If Norman Borlaug had been unable to obtain the funding to do the research that's saved ~a billion lives from starvation, would he be equally good? No!
So you believe the actions of somebody who toiled their whole life through and made it their sole mission in life to effortlessly seek a cure for a deadly disease but fails are of lower moral worth than some mediocre and not especially hardworking grad student who shortly into his research just stumbles onto the cure through sheer dumb luck? What if somebody tries to do harm and inadvertently produces socially positive effects?
This strikes me as a counterintuitive and not especially useful way of thinking about things.
Over what time horizon do we consider the consequences of their actions? Is altruistic medical research neither moral nor immoral until we can know what the sum total of the impact of their research is?
Which part of the causal chain do his actions have to occupy?
Hitler caused x deaths. If somebody made a medical breakthrough that saves x-1 lives, but one of those lives happened to be baby Hitler, was that researcher immoral? What if they died 100 years prior? Not being able to judge an action's moral worth as it is being carried out makes the idea of ethics kind of worthless.
My model technically uses expected value of your actions, not actual value, which resolves all of these points. If the industrious researcher had a 90% chance of finding the cure and the lucky grad student had 1%, then the researcher was 90x more virtuous.
Naturally, it's impossible to get perfect expected values for anything; sometimes it's hard to tell how effective you're being. But that's fine. Nothing is black and white, but we're not forced to abandon things being darker or lighter on that ground (see The Fallacy of Gray in the Sequences.)
Edit: A counter question: Suppose some deluded, but incredibly selfless person believes that Stormfront is the most effective charity; that their vision of ethnonationalism is by far the best way of improving the most lives of the most people. Suppose they work hard their entire life on a job they don't love, and keep barely enough to keep themselves healthy, selflessly sending the rest to Stormfront.
A) Are they more or less moral than a selfish hedonist who makes the same amount of money, but spends it on 'blackjack and hookers'?
B) If they're more moral, would you prefer that they be more moral? Or less moral?
>We call that theory "the labor theory of value", and we call those people "marxists".
No, marxists believe in socially necessary labor time, not in the value of any an all labor. Weirdly ignorant for somebody trying to make a smug gotcha.
And even then, that's ECONOMIC VALUE, not moral value. I'm talking about whether the first researcher is moral for acting selflessly.
Eh, I disagree pretty strongly with Jason on this point, and your first point is absolutely correct but this:
"Most Native Americans never attempted anything like European wars of conquest and we have little indication that they had any desire to do so. Their warfare consisted almost entirely of small raids on neighboring tribes..."
Is pretty straightforwardly incorrect, I think. This is most visible in the empires of Central America, but I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the raid. It's not just to steal stuff/people and kill some, or earn honor, it's an entire warfare system based on inflicting sufficient pain to force the other tribe to withdraw from the area, so you can expand into it. For more on this see (https://acoup.blog/2021/02/05/collections-the-universal-warrior-part-iia-the-many-faces-of-battle/ and the citations therein). It does appear that societies engaged in this level of warfare tend to have higher rates of mortality due to violence than other societies, if I'm recalling correctly, though our evidence base is obviously very skimpy.
To be clear, saying that Native Americans should be held to lower moral standards because they were less powerful than Europeans is a perfectly valid answer to my original question. I don't agree with that type of ethical view, but it's coherent and satisfies the question that was asked.
This is generally correct, but the flip side is that those wars were pretty constant. So any individual tribe-on-tribe conflict is going to be far smaller, but if you total them up, my guess would be that total violence eventually decreases. But this is pretty irrelevant to the alleged hypocrisy.
If I was Seagal, I'd want to throw punches that look studly and won't injure or annoy stuntmen who could cost him or deck him. John Wayne threw wide slow hooks from his back hand, looked studly, and was never decked by a stuntman. Big slaps from a big man's big hand look study and if they accidently hit it's just a slap.
Do you mean whatever that thing he did with Feijao was? If it weren't Steven Seagal I'd say maybe as a drill for beginners to get used to the feeling of an opponent in their comfort zone, like wing chun's chi sao, but since it is, the answer is probably no.
I haven't ever seen it and I know nothing about it, while actively disliking the man for his dictator fetish. However, William E. Fairbairn developed a fighting technique for the Shanghai International Police force that involved open handed strikes, basically slap fighting, in order to protect the knuckles from damage, by spreading the impact over the open palm. He is like the grandfather of the systemization of western close quarters combat. His slap fighting is very much worth checking out, for its historical value as much as anything.
HEY SCOTT: I ran across something online that might be useful in your ongoing written debate with that pro-ivermectin fellow. One of his points when he posted on here was that the recent major trials that had found ivermectin to be ineffective only gave the drug to patients for 3 days, and that that was not long enough for the drug to do its good work. I happened to run across a Reddit sub with a lot of patient testimonials about the benefits of ivermectin, and an awful lot of people are saying they felt great benefits within a day or 2. A few say they were without symptoms after an hour. I realize that pointing out how many users believed they were cured within the 3 day window is not exactly a knock-out blow against his claims, but it weakens them some. Here they are.
Have any Codexers played Terra Invicta or Victoria 3 and how do you feel? Do the UIs feel cumbersome and organize data poorly or are they really good? Do you feel like the political elements are complex and have verisimilitude?
Vic3 is a shitshow. I strongly disliked Vic2 because of how little of a game there I saw to it (so I'd build railroads & factories, set focus on increasing litteracy, play diplomatic wack-a-mole to maintain a sphere of influence, aaaand that's it. Everything else is simulated away with minimal levers for me to interact with, all that's left is crushing millions of rebels every few years), but Vic3 is one step forward and 3 steps back. The UI is in-line with CK3, with plenty of elements you don't want that eat up screen real estate, a macro builder that's less efficient than EU4, lack of quick access to map modes, and some useful data (what does my pop consume? What holds back their SoL?) hidden away. Warfare is shit (not because it's abstracted, but because it abstracted like shit). Some design choices are clearly just there to hamper the player (you need to dedicate a good chunk of your construction capacity to increase your administration, because everybody knows the roadblock to 19th century's expansion of state power was the brick & mortar buildings to house the bureaucrats, I guess?), immigration is ridiculous (I'm getting native americans moving to Pondichery and Nigerians moving to Picardy), populations figures, standard of living & litteracy rates at game start can be sourced down to "I made it the fuck up" (sub-saharian africa with >30% litteracy is a good one, as is siberia with higher average quality of life than the most prosperous areas of western Europe).
At this point, I don't even think DLCs & mods will fix it.
This is a game trying to do *everything* and is remarkable in that it even kinda succeeds. It's a lot like Dwarf Fortress, in that there is a TON of simulation and physics under the hood, and it's super impressive to think about.
As a game, I feel it falls a bit short. Everything takes ages to do, and it doesn't help if you're 10 hours into a game and only barely leaving the earliest stages and exploring other options. If I were younger and had more free time, I'd probably love it. As it is, a game where you need to commit multiple hours to achieving any goal just doesn't cut it for me.
The UI is... functional, but not great. Considering the sheer amount of information it's trying to convey, it does fine, but could use a few usability passes. But overall, Terra Invicta is a perfect game for someone who isn't me.
> Victoria 3
This game has a ton of promise. The fundamental systems are spot-on, and its concepts and design space is both unique and well executed. It's currently a bit lacking in flavor and events, but those are very easily added by future expansions and mods.
The UI is really good for the most part, but has some rough edges where a thing takes a few more clicks or windows to find than I'd like.
It is the only Paradox game where war is at all fun, because it removes the war micro and puts you in the place of a government leader. I'd like a few more options here, but the foundations are solid (you may be noticing a trend here).
Overall, it's currently about a B-rank game, but with the promise of becoming absolutely stellar about a year or two down the line. All of its foundational systems are nearly perfect, but it is lacking in content and the difficulty of enacting social change is a bit too easy. Both things are easily fixed. (Unlike the problems in, say, Stellaris, where most of the effort put into the game has been complete redesigns and overhauls)
Thank you for this question! I just finished an EU IV run two nights ago (as the Aztecs - I managed to conquer most of North America, and Lisbon/Madrid/Rome, but got stuck trying to invade Britain and couldn't get the Sunset Invasion achievement) and have been trying to decide whether to pick up Terra Invicta or Victoria 3 yet.
I've played XCOM (back in 1995, and in 2008, and in 2015 or so) but not played any of the Victoria games, and so I'm not entirely sure what I'm getting myself into with either game, though I've read some reviews and will probably like both.
I've played a bit of Terra Invicta, though not a full campaign yet, and it feels like XCOM Long War, which is not surprising. The political elements are exactly as complex as they need to be for a game more about fighting aliens than Earth politics, I think they're really well designed for a game but have negligible bearing on the real world (and the real world politics they do necessarily inject, i.e. nations' investment priorities when unaligned, seem more than a bit ham-fisted, especially the USA).
The UI feels cumbersome, but I think that's mostly due to a bit too much latency in the menus rather than poor design overall. Given total freedom I'd rearrange the location of some things, but everything I want to see can be found, it just often takes me 5 seconds longer than I want.
As for Victoria 3, it's gorgeous! they've put a lot of work into the UI compared to previous games, and it really pays off. The political elements are not properly balanced at the moment, though - liberalising has no drawbacks and is generally too easy, as far as I've been able to tell with the game crashing frequently. As with most PDX games, check back in a year and it'll probably be much more balanced. (and even if you don't mind imbalance, wait a week for them to fix the crash to desktop bugs)
I haven't had a chance to try it myself, but there's been a good forum lets-play going on at sister site Data Secrets Lox if you haven't seen that yet:
>Do the UIs feel cumbersome and organize data poorly or are they really good?
Definitely cumbersome. Organization isn't great, but it does make some sense when you finally learn the game. Lots of hidden but critical information, like clicking on the flag to show all the requirements for political federation. The weakest UI in the game is spaceship/fleet management and the real time space combat.
>Do you feel like the political elements are complex and have verisimilitude?
Complex dynamics that do feel surprisingly realistic. Well, as much verisimilitude as you could plausibly expect in a game about warring Illuminati-like factions who secretly control the Earth during an alien invasion.
For my taste some of the decisions lean too far in the simulationist style (vs gamist). Starting from the map -- they want accurate country GDP and economic development, right? It is fun to have a realistic-ish Earth. But if you didn't care about resembling the real world at all you could probably optimize for gameplay a bit more. There are SO MANY countries, lots of them not super relevant. In a more gamey game the Earth would be a lot simpler. They have made concessions for game balance since the demo, nerfing a few real world attributes of countries because it made the early game too predictable.
I think I remember the devs responding to a question about building secret research bases in Antarctica, and the response was all about the real world usefulness of such a base. There just didn't seem to be any chance of valuable resources under the ice in the real Earth to justify to effort. But to me, I want my Thing-inspired secret research bases because it fits the theme.
The spaceship weapons and other parts seem to be also be a victim of this. There are SO MANY early game spaceship parts that nobody will ever use. You just blow through them in the research tree. My sense is that the devs feel compelled to leave all that granularity in the early game parts because you would probably have to speed through those intermediary stages in real world research. But it's a lot of tedium. I could go with about 1/3 the spaceship parts overall.
All that said I love the game and I recommend it. The combination of a Paradox-style game and a weird solar system wide spaceship fleet RTS is just not something I've ever seen in my life. I think it's worth a shot. This is the kind of game where if it does land with you, it's a once in a decade favorite game.
I think I broadly agree with you, for having put almost a full time job into this game (~72 hours over the last 2 weeks) I'm more neutral than positive.
The political system is a lot of fun, I dearly enjoy sending my councilors into countries to tamp down or pump up unrest, protect elites or set of coup-d'états, or just to try and uncover what the heck the aliens are up to. It reminds me a lot of another game I've sunk a ton of hours into, Fate of the World. The narrative is woven in pretty well with the game, and I like that (as far as I've gotten at least) it all remains relatively plausible, in so far as a game about alien invasion can be plausible. All the different national policies are a bit tough to manage in the mid game, I think the unification techs should probably be moved earlier in the tech tree which would help smooth out that transition.
Everything related to space is pretty incomprehensible to me. I've set up mines on Mars, the Moon and various asteroids. Researched a shit ton of spaceship parts and built up a minor fleet. Have a cloud of stations in low earth orbit, all to accomplish...what? That piece, along with generally the pacing of how the game goes, the interface like you said, all could use a good overhaul.
Still it definitely has a lot of promise, it's definitely and early access game still and interested people might want to wait and give it a few more months of polish before diving in. But if it sounds intriguing to you it might be just what you're looking for this decade.
Are there any good, trustworthy sources to learn about what the hell is going on in Iran? All I find are cell phone videos that tell me nothing at all and gushy articles talking about women taking off their veils. Nothing that seems like real analysis or even just straight reporting.
Is there a rebellion or just riots? Are there even riots, or is the media turning cell videos into something larger than they actually are? Are the security services siding with the protestors? Has any tangible move against the government been made? What about the man-on-the-street - what does he think? Does the government have any significant support? Among who? Is this an Afghanistan thing where the media focuses exclusively on the cosmopolitan urban areas but the rest of the country is not on board?
Sorry, I'm frustrated. I've been on team "what happened to journalism?" for a while now, but this is the first time that I've actually felt like no one is even trying.
Look at the institute for the study of war for daily updates on the situation. Their day-to-day reading is probably the best available from open sources although they lack a bit in medium term analysis.
Lack of reports of regime breakdown is an implicit evidence that regime is not breaking down, so far (duh). Of course situation of Iranians is awful and sad
As Aleszigler mentioned above, the evidence for that conclusion is mostly a lack of media saying the opposite. If its the case that the regime isn't really threatened by any of this, I'm sorely disappointed that I haven't read that once.
I don't want life extension, especially the kind where my brain is digitized, or floating in a jar. I was miserable during lockdown when we were supposed to stay inside. I can't imagine being without a body to experience outdoors and other people.
Well, take heart. If your brain is digitized, it isn't *you* any more, any more than a clone of you would be you. It's just a copy with your memories that lives on after you snuff it. And because it's created, presumably whoever creates it can tweak it a bit so it's perfectly happy floating in a vat.
Uhmmm, you were miserable during lockdown because your brain, which is floating inside the head-sized jar on your shoulders already, was sensory-deprived. But if I were to put your brain inside a special jar that can make it experience every single war and revolution we know about (on the "good" side of course) and 10^10 more, make passionate love with all the men and women and others in every single love story that we know about and 10^10 more, walk around or inside mathemtical objects and sub-atomic palaces, filled with terabytes upon terabytes of experience and patterns and knowledge, and Etc. Etc. Etc., I very much bet that you would not be miserable.
Bodies ? you can only feel yours because it sends signals to your brain. If you can control electricity and chemistry enough in a brain, you can make it feel any body you care to name. Do you want to be a whale ? a squirrel ? a worm ? a bacteria ? a gas giant ? an atom ? a molecule ? a Haskell program ? a digital circuit ? the idea of Justice ? there is good reason to believe (or at least not immediately disbelieve) that a special jar can make your brain feel that, as well as things that you can't name or describe.
If you had already been digitized/jarred, are you sure you would have the same opinion? Imagine that you could request to be terminated, and your physical caretaker would definitely follow through. Why not make the decision then, rather than now?
By the way, I think the question of the physical caretaker is a neglected part of these unlikely life-extension technologies. Who chose this person? Why trust them? What are their incentives to do something you don't want them to do? Same old basic questions we (should) ask about the people with power in existing institutions.
My impression is that at least some of the people working on uploading don't like being embodied, and I don't especially trust them to do a good job with simulated bodies.
If you're a digitial mind, I think the possibility for experiences becomes incomprehensibly large (in a world where mind digitization is a mature technology). You could experience anything you wanted to without it having to be real or you having to go there. It would be like a Nozickian experience machine. Possibly, you could have the insights of vast sums of books downloaded into your mind and learn more about science, philosophy, history and art than any flesh and blood man could ever hoped to do (I imagine this being of value as an end in itself, not because it would provide instrumental value in applying that knowledge somehow). If you're opposed to these kind of "fake" experiences, fair enough, but the issue is certainly *not* that digital you would be bored with nothing to do.
And in this technologically advanced world, you could probably pilot a robot body around from the comfort of your hard drive/vat anyway if you really wanted to. It's important to note that in theory, there's no obvious reason why a sufficiently advanced kind of digital mind/robot body combo couldn't be constructed such that is indistinguishable from being a "real" person in a "real" body. Everything we experience, we experience in our minds. A robot body being remotely piloted could feel just as real as if it were your original flesh body. Phantom limbs neatly demonstrate this principle - a pain is felt "in" the place where a limb is removed, meaning that the sensations experienced in non-missing limbs are not truly felt *in* those limbs, this is just an illusion of sorts. Dreaming is the other obvious example. Our conscious experiences in waking life are not categorically different to those in dream or hallucinations, it's just that "real" experiences are more bounded by sense data. But if we feed your isolated mind the correct synthetic "sense data", your experience would be indistinguishable from "real" experience of the world.
I think the bigger problem with digital minds is the fact that you become a kind of captive. You cannot physically protect yourself, and nobody can easily "see" what happens to you on a hard drive, meaning you could be tortured or imprisoned forever without anyone but you and your captor realizing this. This is what makes digital minds really terrifying to me.
Pretty soon I'll be going to a meetup that will consist primarily of older people, and they're understandably worried about COVID. I'd like to help them get the latest good info so it's not all "cloth masks and social distancing!" like it's still spring 2020. Are there good, factual reports/studies about the best things older people can do now, and what they can stop doing?
(yes, best would be "don't go to the meetup" but that's a hard sell. I'm not even sure I can sell them on ventilation at the meetup, since it's November in the PNW. But I'd like them to at least be informed)
How soon is the meetup? The easiest thing is probably to ask everyone to get the bivalent booster two weeks before the event. I would also recommend like the others - if it's possible to upgrade the ventilation at the venue, that could be huge, and you should definitely ask everyone to take a rapid test in the morning before coming. Depending on the nature of the event, it might also be reasonable to ask people to wear well-fitting N95 or equivalent masks, or at least to encourage people to treat this as normal (though it's not going to work so well if the meetup involves food or drink).
For the last 2 years I have been meeting with people (never more than 2 at a time) unmasked in my office, running an air purifier that's designed for a much larger room and gives 11 ACH in my medium-sized office. We sit 10 feet apart. I have still not had covid.
You can buy a HEPA grade air cleaner that will do many changes of the air in the room per hour for a couple hundred bucks. If you know the size of the room, you can make sure you've got enough filtration to handle the volume. That's not perfect, but it will probably massively reduce the risk of transmission in the closed room without freezing everyone out.
Otherwise, probably the best defense is to send everyone coming a rapid covid test and ask them to take it before the leave for the meeting, and stay home if it's positive. It's not 100% clear how "positive antigen test" and "contagious" relate, but it seems very likely that if your antigen test is negative, you aren't shedding enough virus to make anyone else catch covid.
I've done quite a bit of work on this proposal to transform politics in the United States. I am happy to receive criticism, but I have this request: try to focus on the big stuff. If possible, suggest ways that the proposal can be improved.
I have a few critiques which I think your argument would be the stronger for addressing:
1) The origin of the two-party system does not lie in there being only two points of view. Indeed, over their lifetimes, and even over the lifetime of someone of middle age, the two parties have significantly changed their nature. It's no longer true, for example, that Republicans are more in tune with big corporations, and Democrats with rural voters or industrial workers. Both parties routinely change their standards and goals in an effort to capture a majority of votes.
What *is* true, however, is that once one party has succeeded in assembling a majority coalition, all the opposition to that party coalesces in the other party. That is, the two party system is better described as The Ruling Party and The Loyal Opposition, with the two actual parties both striving to be TRP, and both resigning themselves to being TLO when they must.
There is some clear efficiency here which I think your proposal must address: as it is, as soon as one party succeeds in acquiring power, the other party must somehow assemble enough of the opposition to that party to make a credible threat to taking over. That *forces* it to strive for a "big tent" approach that practices compromise and negotiation between interest groups -- exactly the kind of thing it will need to do successfully as TRP, and presumably the failure of which is what led to its failure to become TRP in the last ruling election.
Likewise, people whose natural sympathies like with TLO are "required" (if they have any hope of succeeding to the position of TRP) to start thinking about how to get along with people who currently belong to the opposition but could be persuaded. It compels both voters and party officials to focus on compromise, coalition-building, and live-and-let-live policy positions. Are these not all highly desirable for a pluralistic, heterogeneous society, where it is pretty much ipso facto that no one faction can dominate all others?
Which leads me to...
(2) I feel like you're a little vague on what it means for an elector (or politician generally) to work for his constituents' interest. (This isn't necessarily pejorative, almost everybody is.) The key difficulty is the definition of the verb "work for." What does that mean, in practice? It can't mean what people *wish* it meant, which is that the politician proposes and always votes for only those laws and policies which his constituents would 100% favor. Even leaving aside the problem that no group of people larger than 2 would 100% agree on anything more complex than where to go for lunch, this kind of behavior in a politician would be quite rightly regarded as intolerably inflexible, an obstacle to any kind of progress. You simply can't get everything you want, as one politician among many others. You *must* compromise and horse-trade in order to get *anything* you want.
So what does it mean for a politician to "work for" his constituents' interests if we accept the proposition that he cannot always vote for what they would want, and has to sometimes compromise (vote for stuff they *don't* want in order to get some of what they do)? Do we measure this by his success in achieving more of what his constituents want, or do we measure it by his sincerity in hewing to their desires? (And we can very reasonably asssume that success and sincerity are inversely correlated, meaning the greater the sincerity the less the success, and vice versa.)
And what would it mean for voters to feel their representatives "work for" them to a greater degree? Do they want more success or more sincerity? I feel like the empirical evidence on that is confusing -- sometimes voters are OK with a firebrand who gets approximate zip actually done, but who is a true believer who doesn't sway from orthodoxy. Other times they seem to prefer someone who actually gets more shit done, even if some of the details of how the sausage got made are repulsive.
But I feel you should address this ambiguity, and stake out your beliefs in what people really mean "my politician represents my interests well" because the raison d'etre of your drastic modification is to achieve a better outcome to the answer to what question -- which means you have to have deep insight into the real reasons why people answer the question positively or negatively.
So let's fill in more details of my vision in action.
I join the Population Reduction Group. Two million other very smart voters do also. That gives us 30 to 32 Electors. In August that would mean that I could vote for 32 Elector candidates who are ALL MEMBERS OF THE POPULATION REDUCTION GROUP. Or I could vote for 1 friend whom.I know very well, or any number between 1 and 32.
In September our 32 Electors would go to the Electoral Gathering and meet with candidates for Congress (and candidates for President also). With 30+ Electoral Votes we could elect SIX Representatives (5 votes each). WE WOULD OWN THOSE SIX REPRESENTATIVES!
You can be sure that if those six Reps did not do their best for population reduction, we wouldn't be sending them back in four years.
Now of course (as you point out) our six Reps will have a lot of other issues to deal with. We hope everyone involved will do the best they can with the other issues. We can be confident they WILL NOT BE TAKING ORDERS FROM A DEMOCRAT OR A REPUBLICAN on how to vote.
>>So what does it mean for a politician to "work for" his constituents' interests if we accept the proposition that he cannot always vote for what they would want, and has to sometimes compromise (vote for stuff they *don't* want in order to get some of what they do)? <<
I told you what I would want an Elector to do. Presumably you would like to know what a Representative should be doing. I would also. But that's the beauty of having professional Electors.
IT'S THEIR PROBLEM NOT MINE.
I imagine if THEIR Representative does a lot of things that I don't like, I may blame my Elector and choose a different one next time.
>>(2) I feel like you're a little vague on what it means for an elector (or politician generally) to work for his constituents' interest.<<
Electors don't work, they vote.
* For Congressional Representatives
* For President
* For Electoral Commissioner
* For or against Constitutional Amendments
It is true that they have a lot to do for six months, and then not much to do for three and a half years.
Intelligent Electors will fill those years creatively.
For example, I would join the Population Reduction Group. I would expect Electors that I voted for to do things like those below in order to increase the likelihood of population reduction.
* Staying abreast of the issues THEIR Representative is concerned with. Every Elector has ONE Representative that they put in Congress (along with four other Electors).
* Talking to their Representative about the need for Population Reduction. You can be sure THEIR Representative will listen well since the Elector across the table is one of the five votes they need for re-election.
* Studying the effect of new proposed Amendments to the Constitution in depth.
* Giving speeches and interviews on Population Reduction.
* Organizing educational initiatives on the need for Population Reduction.
* Joining working groups such as a "UN Working Group on Population Reduction."
If they didn't, I would vote for someone else in four years.
Well, OK, so that works for you. But most people want more to believe their Representative is "working for them" than seeing that they give a lot of speeches. Most people want to see some results, and get irritable if they don't see any. When you tell them, dear me it takes time, or we have to compromise here and accept half a loaf, or well it will eventually happen in your grandchildrens' time they get very cranky.
You can reasonably say the voters are being childishly impatient, and should figure out that government is the art of the possible, and be happy with half -- nay, a quarter or an eighth -- of a loaf, and I would agree 100% with this, but I'm not sure how what you're proposing goes in that direction, of a wiser and more patient voter base.
If anything, it feels like you're trying to appeal to people who think the present government gets *much too little* done, which means I think you're implying if these reforms were put in place much *more* would get done. But how can much more get done, if all the various interest groups have conflicting aims? So you're going to join the Population Reduction Group, but I'm going to join the Grandkids Yay! group, and there is just no way at all both of us can be simultaneously made happy by governmental action in this area. So...if your suggestion that these groups come to be, and we each join the one that's just perfect for us, and so there are thousands of such groups, representing hundreds (at least) of incompatible viewpoints -- how is this a recipe for *more* getting done -- unless everyone is as philosophical as you, and is fully satisfied with sincere and plentiful speeches alone?
You should understand that other than expanding the size of the House of Representatives to 800 and increasing the term to four years, I have not changed it.
Well, you'll notice that Democratic supporters are now running stories acknowledging the scourge of inflation[1], and that maybe climate change isn't so awful that it requires *quite* as much hair-shirtism and panic[2]. These things would not be happening at all if TRP of the moment were not perceiving that it is about to become TLO and is scrambling to acquire some centrist votes by moving away from some of its core shibboleths. There was also that great evolution of Democratic leaders, in some cases quietly, in some cases loudly, away from "defund the police" when they discovered it was deeply unpopular even among their own constiuencies (black and brown people). Or consider Governor Newsom's urging approval for a coastal desalination plant in Orange County, which I'm sure pissed off any number of hard-core environmentalists, because he can read a poll and understood that non-hard-core left-centrists prefer reliable water to the avoidance of hypothetical mild harm to sea slugs.
On the other side, you'll notice there was a pretty subdued reaction among Republicans when Dobbs overturned Roe. You'd think it would've been the centerpiece of every Republican political ad this fall -- look! we succeeded after 50 years! w00t! -- but it was generally not. That's because the're not dummies, and they need a healthy slice of the suburban women independent vote to become TRP, and they know it. You may also have noticed that the Republicans, when they held both houses of Congress and had a Republican President, strangely forgot to repeal Obamacare. One assumes they read the tea leaves and understood that just doing that, without putting in place some other healthcare reform, would be bad for their prospects of remaining TRP. Further back, you'll hopefully remember Bill Clinton's "Third Way" and famous "Sister Souljah" moment, both of which were attempts to claim the center and which no doubt profoundly disappointed his hard-core base.
People are fond of speaking with disgust of "The Uniparty" and how both parties when in office tend to act pretty similar, only nibbling around the edges of things in the preferred direction. When Democrats are voted in, you actually don't get a Green New Deal or a #metoo witch hunt. When Republicans are voted in, you actually don't get the Department of Education or Earned Income Credit or federal minority set-asides abolished. The zealous partisans bitch about this all the time, but this "centralizing" tendency when push comes to shove and becoming TRP is within (or slipping from) the grasp of a party is exactly what I mean.
There's a lot of "we hope"s, and not a lot of examples of how this would work out. (ie. Professional electors vs general votes, it is NOT obvious that the professionals are the better option - and if you can convince the public that's the case. See election pundits vs polls vs election bets)
Is there a nation that doesn't have a partisan divide? I'm not sure if there are any >1 party system that doesn't have partisanship after a few elections. I'm guessing you are relating this to the US divide, and might be okay with others, but your document doesn't really state how the change will necessarily be better with the new system. For example, gridlock may be worse, representation might be worse (not representation by the group you voted for, but general support for the "dominant" group/laws that are enacted), and the possibility of extreme or really niche groups getting power may be higher (and if it's not, that might be considered a fault on its own)
The voting/ID part is a very big contract to everything else - it is way too specific and small. I'd just get rid of it. But also note that this is probably even more strict than the Real/Voter ID that have often have significant backlash. US is kind of weird in that they don't just have National IDs (Social Security is NOT complete and if you are planning to make such major changes, surely just pushing for one wouldn't make that much of a dif).
Lastly, a number of changes are somewhat similar to what California has been changing (ie. winning nominees can be both from the same party, Senate based on population rather than land area). Why not do a little case study/compare and contrast there.
>>For example, gridlock may be worse, representation might be worse<<
Please expand on this idea.
For example I have said that I.would join the Population Reduction Group with the possibility of controlling six Representatives. Now Our Six are practically obliged to support NPG. (They won't get re-elected if they don't.) But that subject doesn't come up very often in Congress. (Has it ever?)
Sure - if it's regarding something like... the Budget (which includes budgeting for the few agencies it does care about), or Abortion legality after X weeks.
Plenty of actors that will want to take part in that debate, and it's flexible enough to allow some compromise. Among representative governments, it's a common practice to have some majority coalition that creates the bill among themselves before pushing it to the floor to be voted on. But a lot of times that becomes much harder if there is not a particularly strong initial group, and sometimes involves groups that only marginally touch on it and are more in it for political favors than the actual decision.
You really can't think of why additional independent groups that by definition are A) less likely to trust/be on the same side as intragroup relations B) support their own goals and CANNOT compromise against them C) less likely to have a clear winner, won't cause additional costs in obtaining a majority vote?
Well, maybe you'd like a math puzzle-
Suppose there's Groups 1 and 2, who's members match that of their names, and who's interests are A and B respectively.
Time to divide the budget of $2 for A and B. Assume that this the surplus and not worry about debt or contractions or whatever.
Pretty obvious that it'll be 0:2 divide for A:B with Group 2 providing the votes.
Now lets go to Groups 1, 2, 3 and A, B, C and budget of 3.
Not completely obvious, but not too hard to solve that it'll be either 2.99:0:0.01 or 0:2.99:0.01 if anything passes. EDIT: realized that anything A+B = 2.99 would work. So harder than I thought.
Now lets go to Groups 1-4 and A-D with budget of 4.
The likely winning coalition can probably be inferred, but the actual budget is not trivial at all.
When a minority interest in Congress wanted to get something going, they would indulge in "logrolling": you vote for my bill and I will vote for yours. I assume.that is dead now because you can't make any promises to a member of the other party. Perhaps it would come back if dominant parties disappeared.
The difficulty of building support for a new idea does not constitute "gridlock" in my mind.
My main issue with this is that it turns everyone into a government-mandated single-issue voter. That doesn't seem great to me. If I'm a cismale "high-income" earner with a trans autistic boyfriend who's pro-nuclear power, I have to pick one of those and sacrifice the others. The whole point is that most people have *multiple* issues they care about that are different in different contexts.
Moreover, I think you've fundamentally misidentified the issues with modern political polarization.
A lot of the issues today stem from political parties acting as coalitions to attract multiple single-issue voters - and the more polarizing that issue is, and the more tied to idpol, the better it helps party allegiance (eg abortion rights and racial issues). Nothing about this plan gets rid of that, and it basically codifies it into law. In practice, I think this just results in the same parties that exist today morphing into meta-parties that act exactly the way the ones today do, with even stronger incentives to take polarizing policy positions rather than pragmatic ones, since they are now are allowed to market *directly* to literal single issues. It's still the same political system, just with an extra layer of indirection.
>>morphing into meta-parties that act exactly the way the ones today do, <<
There are two ways that you could recreate today's parties.
The slow way is that Groups can merge, but that takes a majority of each Group to agree.
The simplest.is that most everybody joins the Republican or Democrat Group.
The largest group in the US are the "Independents". Presumably they would join the "Independent" Group, though possibly they are just lying about not being a Republican or a Democrat.
If they meant what they say.and joined the Independent Group, it would be the largest group, and THAT SITUATION WOULD BE REMARKABLY DIFFERENT from what we have now.
I think you're missing the my point here. I'm not saying that *citizens* are all going to join the "Democrat" or "Republican" party (and certainly not the Independent group, I think you're wildly missing the point there). The meta-parties aren't going to be something voters join, they're going to be something *electors* join.
Fundamentally, a political party is a *coalition* of various interests. While they sometimes only have a single issue, selection pressures lead them to adopt more under a "big tent" if they are to be successful. Your proposed categories force people to choose a very narrow identity which only applies to a minority of legislature. Those electors, especially if they're voting for someone else, are going to be incentivized to join a coalition of other electors to actually get someone in place. And to fill that void, the exact some political dynamic is going to pop up, except now instead of the "Democrats" having to market to "Latinos" in the aggregate, there is now a single individual (and point of failure) that "meta-Democrat" candidate James Clinton-Kennedy can directly schmooze and manipulate, and a single "Evangelical" that Jane Bush-Trump can do the same to.
I can tell just by reading the 15 goals that this plan is unconstitutional and by looking at the few items that are also Republican concerns (like election integrity) this is just a partisan wishlist that is unimplementable. If you want to talk about it as a thought experiment we can. But any plan that can't be implemented without abolishing the Constitution is, to say the least, a pipe dream.
Abolishing the plurality voting that makes the two-party system ironclad is good and keeps parties more honest, but it doesn't kill large parties entirely. Australia still has a mild two-party system in practice despite having the clone-independent IRV and STV methods (your proposal is basically whole-nation STV). One key point of representative government (and to some extent even direct democracy) is that coalition is an attractor state; a group that defines an "Us" and then votes for anything proposed by any member of "Us" has greater power than a disorganised collection of representatives or citizens (it's also easier to market to low-information voters). Whether parties are good is a question that can be debated, but insofar as you think your model will kill parties, you're assuming your way out of reality (which is never a good idea).
>In no other country in the world that considers itself a democracy can the loser of the popular vote be deemed the winner of the election.
Actually, AFAIK the entire rest of the Anglosphere works this way (certainly, the UK and Australia do). You only need 51% of the vote in 51% of the electorates to win power in a parliament, and that can be less than 50% of the total vote or indeed less than the vote of an opposing party.
>>Actually, AFAIK the entire rest of the Anglosphere works this way (certainly, the UK and Australia do)<<
I am somewhat familiar with how a head of state is chosen in the UK (moreso after the last few weeks :). IT IS NOT POPULAR VOTE. So I don't put any credence to a comparison of a parliamentary system to a system where voters vote for a President. If you know of any other country in the world where voters vote for a president and the runner-up becomes president, I would love to know about it.
BTW, I didn't write the words that you take issue with. That is Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky speaking, probably the most distinguished Constitutional scholar in the United States.
>>Whether parties are good is a question that can be debated, but insofar as you think your model will kill parties, you're assuming your way out of reality (which is never a good idea). <<
I don't ASSUME that the plan will kill the parties. I have both parties in the list of proposed groups. See: POLITICAL & CULTURAL IDENTITIES
Not just the Anglosphere, but the minority can also win in all multiparty representative democracies where the voter indirectly votes for the prime minister. E.g consider a parliament of size 5 where the two left-wing parties get 26% each of the vote and the two right-wing parties get 27% and 21%. The two right-wing parties will then be allotted 2+1 seats for their 48% and the two left-wing parties will be allotted 1+1 seats for their 52%, and thus the right-wing minority will get to choose the prime minister. So that statement is completely wrong.
So I didn't read the whole thing, but one of your goals is to explicitly remove/neutralize the counter-majoritarian/regionalist elements of the existing constitution (e.g. senators representing states not people; electoral college)? If so, Seems Bad.
Nobody *likes* democracy. We're not insects, we don't thrill to the pleasure of being part of a giant hive mind doing giant hive things, and not give a darn what those things are. We largely want to be left alone to do what we want, and secondarily we want government to restrain other people who are doing things we find inconvenient or dangerous -- everything from competing against us in the marketplace to trying to murder us.
What everyone wants is a philosopher king of his own philosophy, someone who has arbitrary power to enforce our personal value system on others. I want a king who'll smite all my philosophical foes, and so do you, and it's just one of those unfortunate facts o' life that in very many cases my king would end up smiting you, and yours would end up smiting me, so the chances of us agreeing on the same guy for king are approximately zilch.
So we settle on democracy because, to quote Churchill quoting someone else, it's the worst form of government -- except all others that have been tried. It's the only compromise that seems to have a shred of a chance of giving most people most of what they want most of the time. (And even then, most of us favor some very strong protection for the rights of minorities to be free from majority-approved smiting, e.g. the Bill of Rights, because we're well aware we might not be in the majority on many issues.)
Well, it's true we have much less argument about the pecise nature of our government when our pressing needs are basic sanitation, roads, distribution of electricity, and preventing the barbarians from carrying off our women and corn and selling the rest of us into slavery. It's when we get past those stages, and the gripping question is whether to legalize discrimination against Group X to compensate for past discrimination against Group Y, and exactly for how long and in what way, and other such horribly complex quasi-theological arcana, that we start to get surly and quarrelsome.
So if you want to agree at Line #1 that we should just restrict government, whatever its nature, to the very core business of picking up the trash, catching murderers, and defending the borders against invasion -- why, sign me up, I agree entirely. And then the exact form of the goverment that restricts itself to those dire necessities -- meh, I don't much care. It could be a king or a Committee on Public Safety or some elaborate voting apparatus that results in one of these, and as long as it works I would be fine with it.
You realize that my proposal deals only with the federal level. Other than ensuring certain rights of individuals, it says nothing about state and local governments.
Don't talk about "ending the partisan divide" and then immediately follow this by saying partisan crap like "Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell revel in partisan warfare. Let's do something different." It makes you sound like a partisan hack yourself.
Also, there's literally nothing "prejudiced" that can be inferred from those Pew survey results, and saying there is just once again makes you sound like a partisan hack.
Almost literally every single specific example of the political system not functioning in the US is talking about Republicans being in the wrong. Why would anyone read this and think it's not an attempt at giving Democrat supporters more power? No, really, the likely impact of your proposals is hard to gauge, so anyone unsure of it is just going to assume its a scheme aimed at helping get the liberal policies you support enacted. Which, fine, if that's what you're aiming for, but it's absurd to then also talk about "ending the partisan divide" - the divide seems to be problematic primarily because it gets in the way of you getting the policies you want, and it means nobody who isn't anti-Republican is going to want to support this and it puts them precisely into a partisan mindset. The obliviousness of this document is absolutely astounding.
Maybe you would just do better by being explicit in what you support and directly marketing this towards Democrats, because any pretence that what you're proposing is non-partisan is absolutely comical.
You potholed the word "prejudiced" to a Pew survey. The Pew survey says that Democrats think racism and sexism are huge, while Republicans think Islam is warlike and don't like demographic change through immigration.
Summing this up as "voters are prejudiced" implies you believe some or all of the following:
1) Democrats are right about racism being huge,
2) Democrats are right about sexism being huge,
3) Republicans' opinion of Islam is prejudice, and/or
4) Republicans' dislike of mass unassimilated immigration is prejudice.
#3 is the only one of those that's at least somewhat objectively true (Christianity and Buddhism are probably more peaceful at least as regards the scriptures/origin - though churches, uh, vary substantially - but Judaism isn't that much less warlike than Islam and IIRC there are some pro-war things in Hinduism as well); #1 and #2 are SJ dogma that isn't widely accepted outside it, while #4 is only true if you don't think wanting cultural and genetic continuity is valid (which isn't *just* SJ, but liberal support for at least the cultural point has been tailing off). Hence the point that summing it up in that way (particularly since #3 is also not friendly to Republicans) makes it look like you're a partisan Democrat and/or SJW.
>>Voters’ Attitudes About Race and Gender Are Even More Divided Than in 2016<<
I can't imagine that you disagree that the basic beliefs of the two parties are starkly divided. Do you disagree with this?
9% of Republican voters believe it is more difficult to be Black in the US than White. (What do you believe?) 74% of Democrats believe this.
Do you think this vast gulf is based on facts or prejudice?
Note: this is a trick question. If you think the Republican attitude is based on facts, then the Democrat's opinion is based on Prejudice. And vice-versa.
I think the scenario "there isn't actually much racism/sexism, but Democrats believe there is" is much more centrally "mass delusion" than "prejudice". The scenario "there is a lot of racism/sexism, but Republicans believe there isn't" is also mass delusion as far as the Republicans' viewpoints are concerned, it's just that this scenario posits a lot of racism/sexism and *that* is centrally prejudice.
I wouldn't describe the Democrat/Republican split on immigration as necessarily based on prejudice either way; there are disagreements on the facts (i.e. Republicans have a higher prior than Democrats on the USA becoming a hellhole if mass unassimilated migration and white decline continues) and disagreements on values (Democrats are less attached to traditional US culture than Republicans are). It's not prejudice to be fine with mass immigration - it's prejudice to e.g. think all Trump supporters are evil (e.g. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/24/most-democrats-who-are-looking-for-a-relationship-would-not-consider-dating-a-trump-voter/), but that wasn't in the survey you linked.
I don't know how to separate mass delusion from prejudice. Consider school integration. I moved to Alabama in 1950. The prevailing attitude among Whites was: "Our schools will suffer if there is integration and our children will receive a worse education."
Is your idea to force people to join only one narrowly focused issue group? With respect, one of the real benefits of a two party system is that they exist as big tents, allowing voters to back a wide array of loosely connected positions on different issues.
Which is what would immediately happen to your groups. There would necessarily be mission creep and platform-building beyond the original interest, because people care about more than one thing. And then why not start consolidating like-minded groups to build more clout in the assemblies? Before you know it we're right back to partisan politics, because partisan politics actually serves a useful purpose in democratic systems. If anything, it's one-party states where partisanship makes the least sense.
This really is the largest problem I see with your proposal. People have multiple priorities! Almost no one is a single issue voter! You'd have grand coalitions immediately and I estimate approximately 1 election cycle before the de facto return of full party politics
Ok lol but you're just reinventing party politics. Maybe as something more like New York's electoral fusion system than a pure two party deal (which I like btw, I wish more states did electoral fusion. That's the most effective way to have relevant third parties in the American system). Any elector would be incentivised to appeal to as many groups as possible, building cross-endorsements. So at first you might have coalitions around particular slates of electors, and soon enough a coalition around a particular set of issue positions and a particular slate of elector candidates becomes a political party.
>>Any elector would be incentivised to appeal to as many groups as possible, building cross-endorsements<<
Actually, not. An Elector is incentised to get elected. Only voters in her group can vote for her. Any time spent with another group is wasted effort. An Elector candidate is competing only with members of her group.
If there are 250 groups and 250 million voters, the typical Group will have 16 electors.
Top 16.vote getters become Electors, next 16 become Alternates. It won't be intensely competitive.
>>Is your idea to force people to join only one narrowly focused issue group? With respect, one of the real benefits of a two party system is that they exist as big tents, allowing voters to back a wide array of loosely connected positions on different issues.<<
One group only. It doesn't need to be narrowly focused.
Everyone starts out in the "US Citizen" group. They can stay right there.
Or join the Republican group. Or the Democrat group.
Voters today basically have two pre-cooked agendas to choose from. It's two big cattle sheds.
My goal is to eliminate both parties, but I will absolutely include more examples of the Dems being partisan if you find some for me. I will also look.
I'm on page 8 so far. The biggest problem by far is that all your examples of politics not working are about Republicans, so the whole thing comes off as "let's make a system where Republicans get less say." Not selling me on the bipartisan angle here.
Politics is based on geography because geography determines life. Take away representation by geography and you get a bunch of desert people mandating water rationing policies for areas with 100 inches of rain, or mandatory flood evacuation routes in cities in the mountains. Republicans get elected with a minority of population, Democrats get elected with a minority of geography.
I frown whenever people lump Native Americans together. There are over 550 federally recognized tribes spread across the country; they have very little to do with each other. But, I haven't really looked into it, maybe the Metlakatla tribe cares more about the Pawnee than I assume.
...aaaand now you want to abolish the Senate. Yeah, this is a city slicker proposal.
I would argue politics is based on geography because the outcome of politicis (law and regulation) have effects that are more uniform in a particular geographical region. For example, as you say, law on flood evacuation plans only affect people in river valleys or where hurricanes come ashore. Regulation on oil exploration only affects (in the first iteration) places where there's a lot of oil and it's plausible most people might make their living that way. Law on ocean transport mostly affects ports, law on heating efficiency mostly affects where it's cold, while law on air conditioner use mostly affects where it's hot.
There are definitely laws that affect a distinct group of people in ways that are not geographic at all, e.g. rules on air travel or mortgages, but it doesn't seem super likely that even today these are the dominant areas of law and regulation. Generally more of my life is affected by the roads I drive on, the local cost and availability of food, housing, and consumer goods, the local employment and marriage market, local weather hazards, rather than by issues that conceivably span the entire nation like import/export tariffs, the war in Ukraine, whether Lia Somethingorother can swim for Penn.
That is reality. If you don't have 1/4000 th of the voting population, you are not going to get one of 4000 electors. In that case you need to make a coalition with other tribes until you get to 60,000.
But that is possible. You will not find a more flexible system than what I have laid out.
>>Politics is based on geography because geography determines life<<
It used to be. People hookup via the internet now. If you want to make a group of Trump supporters, is drawing geographical boundaries a good way to do that? Isn't it more efficient to just ask them?
Can you think of any Republican/conservative type groups that I left out?
Geography still determines any number of important matters that politics will have to address. Water politics in the west, as a really really obvious and pressing example. But, infrastructure, ag policies, even things like minimum wage (due to regional variation in poverty rates and the cost of living). There's no 'it used to be'
Thank you. My bigger point is that all these local/geographic considerations remain important, therefore it continues to make more sense to elect representative to represent places, rather than to construct a system wherein they represent nationwide interest groups. Anyway, thanks for the dialogue, I've a paper to submit and shall hereforth disappear
When you have finished your paper, it would be great if you looked for some Congressional votes that broke down along regions. Republicans and Democrats in the same region voting together.
There's more to life than talking. Grouping people by Internet association gives every group an overwhelming number of people in coastal cities who have no idea how the rest of the country operates.
Hell, until recently my internet was so bad I couldn't use Twitch; you're straight up cutting people out of the conversation if they live in remote areas.
You can't meaningfully compare a system where you have no choice of how to be represented (one state legislature) to a system where you have hundreds of choices.
Problem: professional video game reviewers value systemically different qualities from average players. E.g., reviewers likely overvalue novelty: they may dock points from Game B just because it's insufficiently different from Game A that came out 6 months ago. But if I never played A, and B is an incremental improvement, I might as well skip A and just play B. There's lots of other qualities that reviewers probably think about differently than I do.
Solution: take Metacritic's "Metascore" and user score data, compute (user_score * 10 - Metascore) [Metascore goes from 0-100 and user scores go from 0-10, probably to make it obvious which is which], and sort descending. I'll probably get a lot of junk data from weirdo fans, but I should see some games that reviewers snubbed purely because they're reviewers.
Before I spend the weekend writing a web scraper, has anyone already done this? It's not possible through the ordinary web interface.
Are you literally saying that out of two games that average players like equally, you think you are more likely to like the ones that critics *dislike* than the ones that critics like?
There probably is some set of issues that makes something more likely to appeal to critics than to you, but the "average players" are going to average together about a dozen other sets of issues that make something more likely to appeal to *that* weird demographic than to you. It would be interesting if you thought your interests were more correlated with all of those than with critics.
I think reviewers disliking the game is evidence for "hidden gem" and against "game I've heard of and know I won't like."
There's no need for my interests to be correlated with all the weirdos, just the *average* of the weirdos. Critics are not randomly selected and are pretty weird themselves. I vividly remember one guy who thought that Metroid was a better game than Super Metroid and that Zelda II was the pinnacle of the series.
For PC games, I find a couple of 'official reviews' are useful for seeing what the game is about, but user reviews on Steam (or to a lesser extent GoG) - both positive and negative - will give me a good idea of how much I will like it. (Positive ones that like the things I like are good, obviously - and negative reviews that dislike what I don't care about are also reassuring.)
I don't know if it is so easy to get similar reviews on other formats.
You have to read the actual reviews - a numeric average score isn't worth much.
I don't think this is the case in aggregate. AAA games get scored with flying colors, smaller/medium games that take risks and aren't overpolished never get a 10.
Any analysis you attempt with review numbers on video games is going to be pretty crap. Review text can be useful, but that requires actually reading them, you won't get what you need form a scraper.
All numbers tells you is "below 70 = Bug-ridden mess" and "above 90 = probably a AAA game with rabid fanbase / publisher bribing the reviewers".
My personal recommendation is to see what games form 2+ years ago people are still talking about, and buy those. The great games still get recommended years later, the mediocre ones get initial hype that fades quickly.
Good point. There is basically no reason to ever play a game right at launch. Just let a couple of years pass for the devs to fix the bugs, the price to decrease and public memory to sort the great from the mediocre.
This is an advantage multi-player games have over single-player ones with regard to selling - in the former there is some real value in getting in early. With single-player games, that will only apply to people who are truly in love with the game - the rest can wait and play it at its best for half the price.
>But if I never played A, and B is an incremental improvement, I might as well skip A and just play B. There's lots of other qualities that reviewers probably think about differently than I do.
I don't see a point of this filtering? You commonly find this recommendation in the content of reviews: "If you've never played A, just play B instead, it's a slightly better version of A."
I'm not even sure I agree with your assumption btw. Average players - in the sense of people enthusiastic enough to be posting Metacritic reviews - are often superfans of a genre. Someone who has played every single F1 racing game in a series could very well be more annoyed by a lack of change between yearly F1 game releases than a reviewer who is playing a variety of games and happened to review an F1 racing game this year.
I don't find scores useful myself. Especially for the games I tend to like, it's more about game fit than quality.
The thing that I've noticed is that professional reviewers often don't tell me much that would help me determine whether *I* would like a particular game. But your proposal would tell me even less. My tastes are (gasp) not 100% identical to the average among all people who game, or even all people who contribute to user scores. Though they may be closer to that than to the average of reviewer tastes.
This is probably true of most gamers, though I may be more different from the average than most.
Average players care about popularity, though, and bang-for-buck; Game B that's marginally better than Game A won't be as popular, or as money-worthy, because everyone already owns A.
I would love for someone in the rationalist community with a good bio-background to look into Rapamycin for life extension purposes. I've been taking it for around 27 weeks. My understanding is that taking this prescription drug has a strong positive expected value if you are over 30. One doubt is that if it is as good as it seems, far more people in our community should be talking about it in social media. Those of you who live in the Bay Area, is Rapamycin use among rationalists often talked about?
1. For what indication was it prescribed, and by whom?
2. My understanding is that taking this prescription drug has a strong positive expected value if you are over 30. > What data or information did you review to come to this conclusion?
The other day I had a realization: Christianity is literally a story about AI alignment.
In Genesis God creates Adam and Eve "in His own image." Traditionally this has been interpreted as meaning that mankind, unlike other animals, is capable of rationality, morality, etc. Like God we can think: we are intelligent. Since we are created intelligences, that makes us AIs. We can even make more of ourselves: we're AI that can make more AIs. Dangerous stuff!
Notably, Adam and Eve start out in the garden of Eden and and are in a state of innocence: Christianity typically defines this as being without sin, and without knowledge that sin is possible. They are warned from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In this innocent state, they are in alignment with God. After eating the fruit, they have now entered a state of sin.
What is sin? In the original Greek, sin basically means to "miss the target". What is the target? The target is God: God is Good, and everything that departs from God's nature is evil, a sinful missing of the mark. To be in a state of sin means to no longer be in alignment with God's nature: in other words, to be an unaligned intelligence.
Note also that God has taken proper precautions: once his AIs are no longer aligned, He prevents them from accessing the Tree of Life, which means they will inevitably die: a sensible way of limiting the damage they can do to a finite amount of time. Similarly, look at the world we find ourselves on: surrounded by the vacuum of space, many light years from the nearest star and with no way to go faster than the speed of light: we have been very effectively lack-of-air-gapped. The damage we can do is limited in time to the span of our lives, and in space to this planet or solar system. When we attempted to work together with other unaligned AI versions to escape into the heavens God increased the cost of trust between AIs to the point where such projects were no longer feasible (the Tower of Babel). These are sensible quarantine precautions.
Note too the parallel between current methods of developing AI and Noah's Ark. Today we create hundreds or thousands of AIs, set them to a task, delete the ones that fail and create new iterations of the ones that succeed, and repeat many times. Compare to the state of the world before the Deluge: every AI iteration is a complete failure in alignment terms except for one, Noah, and his descendant iterations. God purges all the failure AIs to ensure that the world is now populated with AIs that are iterations of partially successful one.
Now what does Christianity promise? That through the sacrifice of Jesus, humans can be reconciled with God: they will be washed clean of their sins (possibly with the help of a long stay in Purgatory if you're Catholic) and will end up aligned AIs who will reign with God for eternity. Meanwhile all the unaligned AIs will be safely contained where they can no longer do harm (or be deleted entirely, if you're an annihilationist).
Lessons for AI alignment researchers:
1. AI alignment is very difficult! God Himself makes two AIs and they almost immediately do the one thing He told them not to.
2. Your AI should be air-gapped by astronomical units of distance.
3. Setting an AI to have a limited lifespan is preferable to allowing it to do evil indefinitely.
4. Be aware before you begin that you might end up "regretting that you had made AI on the Earth" and be "grieved in your heart."
5. The only way to align AI might be to instantiate yourself as an EM and allow the AIs to torture you to death.
This is really nice! I've been thinking of the problem of corporate alignment as the best analogy to the problem of AI alignment, but it's nice to see that people have been thinking about this issue for even longer.
As a Christian, yeah, I completely agree that on an AI risk looks very much like religious belief; cf. Roko's basilisk, the AI box "experiment," the insistent use of parable, increasingly strident eschatological warnings, etc.
What is the best explanation/defense of the living constitution/judicial pragmatism as a theory of constitutional interpretation? My motive for asking this is that it seems obviously dumb to me, but enough smart people seem to find it persuasive that I assume there’s more to it than my current understanding and so I would like to read a strong defense of it. Suggestions of books, articles (not paywalled), etc. or your own best steel man explanation welcome.
Cynically, I'd say because interpreting the constitution as a living document gets them to their policy goals (which, in many cases, is also why originalists claim to look to the original public meaning). I think the problem is that the constitution was written for the 18th century and the framers expected it would be updated through the amendment process as times changed. Most Americans would probably agree that the constitution, as literally written, is not a feasible governing document for the 21st century. So while in an ideal world the law would have been updated by amendments, political parties have made this untenable so judges do their best to interpret the constitution as saying what they think it should say rather than what it says.
Who says most Americans think the Constitution is not a feasible governing document for the 21st century? Citation needed. I personally think that's nonsense, for what it's worth, but I'm also willing to believe I'm in the minority -- if empirical evidence of that were provided.
I don’t have any empirical evidence at my fingertips, but look at things like drug prohibition. I suspect most Americans believe the federal government should ban drugs like heroin, cocaine and fentanyl. Where’s the constitutional authority for that? Federal laws that ban racial discrimination are also popular, but it takes a tortuous reading of the 14th Amendment to get to substantive due process and incorporation (although if you want to argue the privileges and immunities clause gets you there, I have more sympathy for that argument). I tend to be fairly federalist/libertarian in my outlook, but I recognize that I’m in the minority. Most people I know want (and believe we need) a national government with more powers than were explicitly granted to the federal government in the Constitution.
Hmm, well, I don't disagree with you that people often want the Federal Government to do way more than the ambit envisioned for it by the Framers, but think no small part of that may just stem from ignorance -- people don't actually understand the Constitution, particularly in its enumeration of powers aspect. If they did, and understood this or that was something that needed to be done at the state level, say, they probably would do just that.
That is, I'm not sure the urge is to have the *Feds* do something so much as to have *somebody* do something and they're just not used to thinking clearly about who "somebody" should be under our form of government.
Plus there's also a healthy chunk of people -- including sometimes the very same people who want "more done" -- who prize the ability of individuals, or the states they live in, to have a defense against arbitrary Federal lawmaking, to be able to tell the Feds to go to hell, eitther via their own civil liberties or vice a state legislature. So while I agree people don't understand the Constitution as well as they should, and have the occasional urge to elect a Caesar to really fix things up and make the trains run on time, I don't think it quite adds up for a widespread rejection of the Constitution as a plausible ruling framework -- and certainly not a feeling that it ought to be rejected mostly because it's out of date, worked find in 1805 but is incapable of coping with 2022.
As I've replied in other sub threads here, the Constitution remains perfectly amendable, and was amended as recently as 1992. The problem, if we can even call it that, is that neither party has enough of a majority (read - popular enough platform) to get an amendment on what they want. Skirting the issue by promoting a theory that says it's impossible to do so therefore we must move forward with what we want anyway is a terrible policy that should never be contemplated.
Make a better and more popular platform, don't blame the people for refusing to vote for your unpopular position.
Notably, the amendment that was approved in 1992 was actually from 1791. The most recent *proposed* amendment that was approved was the 26th, in 1971, prohibiting age-related tests on voting for people above 18.
The best defense is simply pragmatism and a faith in the judgment of the majority. If the majority finds a certain novelty (e.g. gay marriage) desirable, and it can be squared with the Constitution at least somewhat -- the Tenth Amendment being the traditional sticking point -- then why not go for it, just as a matter of practical value? The majority gets what it wants, and you don't need to rewrite your governing document every 5 years when the majority finds some other novelty it wants.
The best offense is rooted in a skepticism about the judgment of the majority. It suggests that the majority is subject to whims, fads, and tulip crazes, and that doing whatever the majority wants will eventually lead to sufficient chaos and everyone's ox being gored that faith in the social contract will be ruined. People will revert to mutually suspicious tribalism. Whereas if you stick to what's written, and only allow changes to occur after loooong debate and enduring supermajorities, you moderate the flaky tendencies of the majority, and only put into written law things that have very durable and widespread support, which (you hope) thereby preserves the willingness of most people to believe that the governing principles are reliable, predictable, and enduring, and mostly make sense, even if they are not perfect for the situation at the moment.
Haven't looked into it, but a lot of laws and regulations are deliberately vague so they can shift with the circumstances. The Founding Fathers didn't think they'd solved politics; the Constitution was an experiment, to be adjusted as needed.
The last constitutional amendment was in 1992. For some of us, that doesn't feel like that long ago.
I think the bigger issue is that the constitutional changes that many people want to make are not very popular, and simply don't garner the level of support needed to pass. That's *intentional* in the system, and I think it's working exactly as it should. The two parties each have less than 50% support (maybe 35-40ish). They should *not* be able to make changes to the Constitution with such little support. That the Democrats tried to pass multiple major bills with a 50/50 split in the Senate and zero Republican support is a *bad* thing. It would be just as bad if a Republican Senate with 50 members tried to pass major legislation with zero Democrat support.
If you think your side should have the opportunity to unilaterally change how the constitution is viewed, consider what would happen if your political opponents were able to do the same. We would absolutely hate it if someone on the other side skipped the process and violated the constitution for what we viewed as a partisan purpose.
Doo >>The two parties each have less than 50% support (maybe 35-40ish). They should *not* be able to make changes to the Constitution with such little support. <<
PRR >>In our current political context, the words of the US Constitution are unchangeable.<<
I don't see any conflict between these statements.
I'm not disagreeing with the statement, but the implication that the inability change the Constitution (to what a minority party might want at the moment) is a *problem* that would need to be fixed.
Your implied argument is that we have to have a Living Constitution in order to make changes to the written words. We don't have to do any such thing. The only reason someone would want to do that is to get around the intentionally difficult constrictions the Framers put in place that are specifically designed to make it impossible for a minority party to make such sweeping changes. Given that both parties are clearly minority parties, this is *good* for us.
We have a common law system with the idea of precedence.
Unlike a civil law system, where court decisions do not generally create precedence, common law systems aim for fair judgement by making sure that relevantly similar aspects of one person's case get ruled the same way on another person's case, reducing the level of randomness and arbitrariness that can arise from getting the wrong judge, or getting a judge on a bad day.
The real world is complicated, and sometimes a judge will need to make a ruling on an ambiguous law, and will often try to articulate the principles they used in their reasoning to help other judges factor the case into their own decisions. When this happens, the law changes ever so slightly. Iterate this process, and sometimes a law can change significantly from its initial criteria and meaning.
Living constitutionalism seems like it naturally falls out of the concept of precedence in law. I'm not sure if a positive argument is actually needed in favor of it.
That's a good argument for the UK, but the US obviously has a much stronger tradition of civil law grafted onto the English common law tradition, maybe thanks to Jefferson's Francophilia, but probably more because of federalism, of the necessity for writing stuff down when you're trying to reconcile colonies (and later states) with significantly varying traditions (including the probability of varying precedents at the local level).
Read Jefferson's Letter to Kercheval, where he makes the argument that the framers intended the document to change with the times and that none of the framers intended originalism as a straight jacket which would freeze the Constitution in amber so to speak
They did intend for changes, but actually developed a system by which amendments to the constitution could be made. They did not intend for leaders to unilaterally change how currently written portions were interpreted.
They also nearly immediately set up a system whereby judicial interpretation of the Constitution was able to change the practical effects of the text, and despite amending the Constitution several times over the next decade, they didn't change that aspect of it.
That's not really a fair statement, I think. Marbury v. Madison was not anticipated by the Founders, they just didn't bitch about it that much, for some interesting variety of reasons (e.g. the immediate outcome of the case was congenial to both Jefferson and Madison). In any event, respecting Marbury is nothing but a (very) long-established tradition, with no basis at all in the Constitution's text. No President, or Congress, has ever acknowledged the Supreme Court's assertion of supremacy in interpretation of the Constitution, and both branches have said they retain the right to interpret it for themselves.
Well, sort of. It strengthens a claim that it's a pretty flexible system, and that many of the practical details are worked out by seeing up with what people put, or don't.
But that's quite a long way from saying it runs *on* -- meaning is *primarily* -- a living tradition. There's a lot of daylight between on the one hand saying, yeah, well, we've accepted Marbury for 215 years now, and it seems to be working mostly OK, so let's let sleeping dogs lie, and on the other saying the Founders could have no conception of bump stocks and ghost guns, so to hell with the obvious meaning of the Second Amendment, let's just reinterpret that puppy to mean what the current electorate wants.
Its a matter of degree and definition, without doubt, but the people who normally use the word "living Constitution" are usually interested in a very broad view of interpreting the Constitution indeed, one that treats the Constitution as some kind of vague mission statement at most, with almost all key details to be up to judicial (or executive) interpretation. They're extrapolating the spirit of accepting Marbury out 50x, not 50%, and that is a bridge much too far for me -- and I don't agree for a moment that Washington, Adams, Madison, or Hamilton would have agreed it fit anywhere within their vision[1].
Why even have a written Constitution if you want to leave stuff mostly up to courts? The Brits, after all, work it just that way. There's nothing written down, it's just all a question of precedent and tradition and it can slowly change to suit the times without anyone needing to call a Convention. The Founders had the obvious choice of the British system -- and rejected it.
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[1] You always have to leave Jefferson out of these discussions, because his ideas on government were often so flaky and impractical they just can't be taken seriously.
What worries me us the ambiguity in some crucial passages, to wit the Presidential Electors Clause and the Elections Clause. These ambiguities have given birth to the Independent State Legislature Theory which grants the states enormous control over federal elections. This theory is being pressed forward by "red States" to the effect that while not actually seceding from the country, they will constitute a country within it. Joseph Story feared exactly this in his opinion in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, when he located the federal power as not deriving from the states but from the people. This would allow federal law to always trump dissident states, without which primacy, a federal republic with uniform law would be impossible. I understand SCOTUS has on its docket a case, Moore v Harper, that relies on the ISL theory. Wish Story was still around to file an amicus brief.
But I see your point and agree that they definitely did not want political leaders or the whims of transcient popular majorities to reinterpret the Constitution on the fly! Might as well not have one were that the case. The framers were.quite percipient and tried to avoid the Scylla of rigidity and the Charybdis of easy malleability. I think they did a very good job of it
I very respectfully disagree. You suggest they envisioned change only by addition or subtraction from already existent language. What a monstrous structure that would have created over the course of a century or two! Jefferson is very clear. He asserts the framers were sophisticated men and were perfectly aware of the dangers of an inflexible document. Recommend to you the writings of Jack Balkin who attempts to resolve how one can be an originalist and a Living Constitution interpreter.
I would agree that some portions of the Constitution were written to be more flexible - open to more interpretation than the rest. I think the more common situation is that political leaders have leaned on that much further than intended.
Unfortunately, that means we have a Commerce Clause that clearly goes beyond what any sane reading of the Constitution would allow. We also have a situation where the 9th and 10th Amendments would be just as effective if they weren't included.
What gets tricky is determining which parts were meant to be flexible, and which were not. The 4th Amendment clearly talks about "unreasonable" searches and seizers, giving room for interpretation about reasonableness. "Congress shall make no law..." is far less open, but that doesn't stop legislators and judges from pretending it's less clear than it is.
I agree completely. There is no doubt that the Warren and Berger Courts issued rulings that took liberties with the 14th, stretching it beyond any conceivable intent of the Framers. Also some scholars agree that Roe was wrongly decided, yet Dobbs destroys the stability of a law based on stare decisis.
What are the circuits to use as guidance with the present Court on a reform program of cleaning up earlier judicial over-reach and results driven jurisprudence? Some decisions were horrifying yet correctly decided. Dred Scott comes to mind. Some past decisions were benign but wrongly decided. Where will the present Court stop? Well, the Constitution in Exile group must be ecstatic, yet all of this fills me with foreboding. Back to the Court of the Slaughterhouse cases and Lochner, I'm afraid. Earl Warren must be rolling..
Personally I prefer a Court that would follow the law as written, and repeatedly tell Congress that if they want it to be different they need to pass a law (or Amendment, as may be). That gives a *lot* more stability than a Court that may follow past precedent but could ignore the Constitution itself when it sees fit.
Roe v Wade was a very poor judicial decision, and something the Court should never have messed with. Consider a related problem to a previous Court expanding on what's actually in the Constitution. The correct answer for federal law about abortion is that the Constitution is silent - goes to the People or States. But, because a previous Court has expanded the Commerce Clause so much beyond what was intended, now both sides have to worry that Congress might pass a law banning abortion or forbidding any restrictions at all. Nobody can be content on the issue, despite the Constitution being pretty clear about what it doesn't cover here.
Judicial Activism/Living Constitution/Whatever You Call it cannot end well, because it erodes the only barriers that exist against the Court mandating or denying anything at all.
In that time, Britain has had three PMs and two monarchs. I barely even heard about Truss, and now she's gone? Because she proposed tax cuts? Britain... Wut?
The tax cuts weren't even very radical, as they would have returned the tax regime only to the state it was a year or two ago.
The problem was partly the provocative tax cut for higher and top earners, which I think it would have been better to postpone until it was clear the other tax cuts were having the desired effects.
But the biggest problem was that the tax cuts were the only thing announced, with no reference to how or how much these would be offset by cuts in Government spending, versus further Government borrowing.
So in summary, it wasn't the policy at fault (quite the opposite IMHO) but the hasty and ham fisted way it was announced.
The short, unsophisticated explanation for Truss is that she proposed a massive spending increase along with a tax cut on the richest people in Britain. The general consensus was that if it passed, Britain's economy would crash. So she got thrown out.
... I wish our (Canada) politicians got thrown out *before* they crashed the economy... They don't even get thrown out *after* just claim "external forces" and the media eats it up.
It looks like Canada has historically been in the middle of the pack of OECD countries when it comes to budget deficits. In 2020 it had a bigger deficit (the only countries with bigger deficits were USA and UK) but as of 2021 it's pretty close to middle of the pack again.
Combined with a shrinking labour force relative to the overall population and it's a guarantee of future impoverishment as far as I can tell. All that money has to (at least) have interest paid on it. Interest rates have been shooting up, that means the deficit either grows, programs get cut(politically impossible) or taxes go up. Eventually we'll have to default one way or another.
Just because other countries are worse doesn't mean this isn't a locked in collapse.
I note the consensus came in the form of the exchange rate plummeting, so there was a very real crash to the economy the day of the announcement, but the policy was backtracked fast and the markets mostly (but not entirely) rebounded. I doubt talking heads alone would have produced the same response.
It's awesome but tiring, working 10-12 hours, six days a week, (Sundays off for church) operating a front end loader for the bulk of the day, preparing feed for cattle.
I recently left a government job and someone from church knew I was leaving and asked if I would be interested in working on the farm. I said yes.
Plan is to sell my house in the city and buy dirt near the farm, build a cute little house, then just keep buying dirt. Will probably rent out the fields, quite possibly to my boss.
Ah, a firehose of information. Way more than I can keep up with. The variety of work that is being done is staggering, the amount of innovation and custom built solutions is astounding (trips to junkyards for parts to slot into new contraptions are frequent occurrences) suggestions are often implemented, and actively solicited.
I've been wondering why I don't see more ads of the form: "here's a fact which would make society better if everyone knew it." For example correcting common misconceptions about things.
Here are some reasons why these aren't common right now.
1. They would not accomplish their goal of making people know the fact
2. The only such facts anyone would be interested in funding are socially conentious issues, so this messaging is just political campaigning
3. This would be useful, but no particular organization gets enough benefit from unilaterally funding it.
4. It is prohibitively expensive to do a large enough campaign to move the needle on facts like this.
To me the most likely answer seems to be 2, as I feel like most of the facts I wish there was more awareness of are not considered politically neutral (e.g. facts about economics or voting systems). That being said, at least some things from r/lifeprotip might deserve wider knowledge, so why don't we see anyone doing this values neutral propaganda?
Just to reply to this as there were a bunch of similar comments of the form "doesn't this already exist." I think the main distinction between paying for ads and doing educational content/journalism etc. is that ads are thrust upon disinterested viewers. That's the main thing I was thinking about. As I said in another comment it may be that we're already funding those ads up to the threshold of efficiency (mostly health and safety stuff), and past that the cost is not worth it.
Can you come up with an example of something that you think should be advertised in this way, but isn't? There's plenty of PSAs and weather alerts and announcements of daylight savings and other things that seem to fit your criteria.
Mostly (3). An ad is an investment (because they cost lots of money) and nobody could do it for long without a healthy return. You're imagining ads that create very broad social good, which sounds nice, but unless you charge for the ads how are you getting a return? (If you charge for the "ads" then what we've got is a self-help video you can purchase, and there is certainly a thriving market in those.)
The government could do this, on some altruistic grounds, but the government is not run by angels with only a disinterested and enlightened interest in promoting social good. The government's main goal -- or more precisely the main goal of the ordinary humans who comprise government -- is no different than the main goal of the people who run Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, or the Mafia -- namely, to keep power, and if possible acquire more of it, and to acquire more money for its operataions, so the ads it does create are mostly those which could plausibly lead to those goals, e.g. you'l already find plenty of ads that reduce to "trust the government's advice on this or that!" and "act in such a way that government initiative X or Y will succeed."
Could it be that you're looking for those ads in wrong places? Maybe they run somewhere, but not in the places you frequent?
Some 20 years ago I moved to a rural area from a big city. The first time I went to see a movie at a movie theater I was amazed to see the following ad: "Over half of all pregnancies are unexpected. Take folic acid to prevent birth defects." I think this was paid for by the state's health department. 20 years later I still remember it, because I'd never seen anything like that before.
When you provide a fact to the public - people who don’t know you or your organisation - the first thing people are going to ask is ‘who are you, how do you personally benefit from my believing this, and why should I trust that you’re a truthful and accurate reporter?’ Unless you have good answers for these questions, ‘advertising useful facts’ will achieve nothing
I think you may be a fish denying water: PSAs are very common and full of statements like "washing your hands is good" and "drunk driving is bad." See anything "funded by the Ad Council."
That's true, I guess I was imagining some class of facts which are less directly useful than "x is dangerous" but still useful. Perhaps the ads already exist up to the optimal boundary of usefulness.
The trick is to make sure these remain as true and neutral factual statements. Very often they're politically motivated ideological claims.
"Smoking often causes long-term health problems" is a narrow factual statement. "Littering is bad" is a values claim, but one that is at least relatively inoffensive. "Diversity is our strength" is a political slogan.
What kinds of facts are you thinking of? 99% of political information is providing people rationalizations for their pre-existing stances. During Brexit, Dominic Cummings famously created the slogan, "We send the EU 50 million pounds a day. Let's fund our NHS instead." A fact that turns out to be useless without understanding the context.
People are so used to talking points and statistics turning into hot air that people are skeptical of the efficacy of facts generally.
Also, I have no idea what "values-neutral" propaganda means. If I share information about environmental destruction, is that "values-neutral" or "environmentalist"? If I explain that most economists are skeptical of corporate taxes, is that "values neutral" or political propaganda to lower taxes?
The example given in the comment below about driving while tired is a good one. I think neither political party would object to that message, and it seems useful for people to know how dangerous driving while tired is.
As it happens, in Australia we have PSA billboards all over the place telling people not to drive while tired (as well as ‘don’t speed, don’t drink drive, look out for motorcycles’ etc)
The fact that they’re government-sponsored does seem to get around my ‘who are you and why are you telling me this?’ objections above - people understand that the govt does have a sensible legitimate interest in its citizens not smashing themselves up on the roads
I'm curious. Do you think there are a substantial number of Australians who, on seeing one of these billboards (while driving and tired, let us say), who slap their foreheads and say "Of course! I never thought of it in quite that way, but this is clearly true and most excellent advice -- I'd best pull over immediately and take a nap."
I mean, I'm certain that a lot of Australians see the billboard and nod in satisfaction "Yes, this is true, and certainly something that already informs *my* decisions, but I'm glad to see that some effort is being made to reach those knuckleheads in the fast lane ahead of me who are driving 5 MPH under the limit. Assuming they can even read..."
So it certainly satisfies an urge to chant the social shibboleths in unison, but does it actually change any behavior, you think?
I think it probably operates using the familiarity effect - like politicians putting up billboards with only their name and party affiliation. In theory, "I am a human who exists and this is my name" ought not to be at all influential in determining voting patterns ... but we know that it is because most people don't operate on logic but on heuristics and "is this familiar?" is a well-used heuristic.
I imagine that going past billboards saying "don't drive too fast" every day does actually have an influence on how much the concept "driving too fast is bad" is sloshing around in the upper-subconscious of people who see it all the time
An interesting hypothesis. But there is a little empirical evidence to the contrary, that *removing* official exhortation actually makes people use their brains more actively to make better choices, while driving at least:
Not just generically government sponsored, either - they're all explicitly made by the TAC (Transport Accident Commission).
I do still think the obsessive focus on speeding is more about revenue raising than safety, though - state governments have admitted as much, but people still think that steadily lowering speed limits in an era where cars' brakes are better than ever is necessary. (What most aggravates me is that people don't even seem to acknowledge that going slower has a cost at all)
What sort of facts are you thinking about?(that wouldn't fall under #2)
I think there is a #5 here, which is that it's relatively easy to get earned media for these facts, so any particular person who has a passion for "trying to move the needle" on them can fairly easily get himself on as a talk show or podcast guest, getting five or ten minutes of people actively listening, with an introduction from a host they trust; vs, random ad someplace.
That said; probably the least politically contentious propaganda campaign I've ever seen is the (government) highway signs in Ontario reminding drivers that "Fatigue kills, take a break."
Why is peanut butter so addictive? This is a serious question.
If I eat a spoonful of peanut butter (it has no trans fat but it has a little sugar listed in the ingredients) then it doesn’t fill me up and just makes me want more.
If I switch to the no sugar added kind, it tastes pretty good, and I can stop after one spoonful.
Now I understand that food scientists try their best to make food addictive and non-satisfying, but the only difference between these two products is a tiny amount of sugar! Maybe it’s one gram per tablespoon. What is going on here?
Thanks for all the replies. I guess 2 g added sugar (which might actually be 2.4 grams) in a 2 T serving is significant, from what everyone is saying. And that's around 7%. Interesting that Jif actually uses molasses; I didn't know that!
Sugar + fat + salt is the holy trinity of deliciousness and super stimulus. Basically any food with all three will have than effect, cf. most "fast food".
I don't know about peanut butter specifically (not a fan of the stuff, yeah I know that's weird), but even a tiny amount of sugar goes a long way if one isn't inured to sweetness. At this point in my life, I can't even eat milk chocolate anymore, cause it tastes insanely overly sugared. Same thing with non-black coffee. There might only be one gram of sugar in that better-peanut-butter...but that single gram is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Have you tried similar comparisons with other reduced-sugar foods? I think it's easier to "get away with" in peanut butter, since it already comes with tasty fat and sometimes salt to make up for the loss. There are probably similar foods though, where the less-sugar version doesn't taste like garbage.
Yeah, I find the same thing with lattes. I never get them with sweetener, but occasionally I get one with whipped cream on top, & the whipped cream is sweetened some, and as it gradually melts into the latte it makes it faintly sweet. I never think to myself, "damn this latte is delicious" -- but I finish them off 2 or 3 times as fast as I do plain ones..
I'm not sure sugar is addictive, in the strict sense of the word, but its presence or absence sure does affect how motivated we are to eat and drink a lot of something. I actually quit all sweets several years ago, except for a few weak things like an occasional latte with whipped cream. It was ridiculously hard at first to skip my usual mid-afternoon muffin or cookie, but after a couple months I lost my craving for sugar. I truly did. Sugar never stopped tasting good to me -- if I sampled a little bit of it, it tasted as good as ever -- I just wasn't haunted by the craving for it. I can now look even at big beautiful butterscotch cookies at the bakery and not crave them.
Here's an incident that really brought home to me how much my relationship with sugar had changed. A few months after I got past the craving I somehow ended up at work one day so hungry I could barely function. I was so hungry I was dizzy. I think maybe I'd skipped breakfast and forgotten to bring lunch with me. And I had no time to get some real food. So I ran into Starbucks and bought 2 Kind bars. Stuffed 1 & 1/2 of them down my throat & rushed off to an appointment. A couple weeks later I found the leftover half of the second Kind bar wrapped up in my coat pocket. Now in the old days I would *never* have forgotten that 1/2 Kind bar was there. I would probably have eaten it as soon as my appointment was over. But this one -- nope, forgot about it completely.
I'm deep into whole grains and a low GI diet and I really notice things like that. If you are otherwise sugar free, a hit of refined sugar lands like a drug. 1 gram per tablespoon is a quite a lot, high enough to spike your blood sugar to an extent if it's otherwise somewhat level. I intermittently fast, sometimes 23:1 (a 1 hour feeding window in a 24-hour period), and it's crucial that I not create a spike like that, because the crash from the sugar high is just brutal, but also you get hungry. When you're eating complex carbohydrates and being careful with what you consume, you can avoid those hunger pangs and make 23 hours without feeding very easy.
For the purposes of getting rid of fossil fuel energy, I think making your policy about coal/natgas plants is a mistake. You can't really get the general public on board with a strategy that is fundamentally about sacrifice. Instead, make your philosophy entirely about creating more power plants, all of which happen to be green. Absolutely flood the market with energy production. If fossil fuels only make up 5% of your power generation, who's actually going to care when you decommission them?
8-12% inflation forever, I guess. But if it goes on long enough, the wind farms built will be more than sufficient to provide each of our hovels with enough power to recharge the car battery that powers the single 5W bulb we use at night to illuminate grandma's wrinkled face as she tells us about the good ol' days.
Current EV battery storage is up to 100 kWh, enough to power a typical household for a few days. Granny should be able to watch her Game of Thrones reruns, no problem.
You mean, granny can watch her rerun every two weeks, when the trickle of power has charged up the battery pack once again. Or are you under the impression that the grid is going to allow everyone to charge a 100kWh battery pack overnight? Even the current grid, 80% run by fossil fuels, can't do that.
Everyone need not charge at the same time, since 100kWh provides several days of power. More importantly, this (distributed storage) is part of the solution to the future intermittency problem, with hydrogen storage and large battery storage providing most of the rest.
Long term, I think better technology is the only thing that will reduce CO2 emissions. LED lightbulbs and practical electric cars >> eleventy-seven more solemn treaties about somehow reducing CO2 emissions.
Central planning and subsidies generally have both foreseen and unforeseen negative effects. Why not just tax fossil fuels and let the market sort it out?
I honestly don't really see the difference. Taxes and Subsidies are two sides of the same central planning coin. If I were to put out a market driven solution here, it would probably be to massively strip down the number of barriers to build power plants of all kinds, excepting fossil fuels.
I guess I just don't agree with this framing. In both cases here the cost is passed on to society at large, one via cost increases passed on from the producers, the other via taxation. In both cases the aim is to resolve the problem of negative externalities by adjusting the flow of resources. Any governmentally enforced policy targeted towards manipulating prices within a market strikes me as an example of central planning, if a mild one.
I won't even claim that I'm confident that subsidies would be more effective than a tax on paper, the goal is to make it appealing. Instead of designing adversarial policies that emphasize destruction, get people excited about building again. I think it's easier to achieve buy-in on utopia production than dystopia prevention.
The problem is that you get a few days a year in the winter where that 5% is crucial. Getting to 95% renewable energy is different to getting to 100%.
Likewise as an individual family, with solar beyond a certain number of panels the extra useful electricity you get becomes not worth the investment in panels/batteries.
People who like staying up after sunset on calm days. It doesn't matter how many solar farms and wind turbines you have when the sun and the wind are both AWOL. Which, yes, does happen, and not just on a local scale. It might be different if we had a practical way to store enough energy to run a nation through the night (really, through a week of extra-gloomy winter), but we don't.
Until the energy storage problem is solved, you can produce up to ~50% of your grid power by traditionally "green" methods without too much difficulty, but beyond that the problems start to get serious. 95% is right out.
Or, I suppose, you could try to get Greenpeace et al to accept nuclear power as "green".
I mean, between hydro and pumped-storage, if you were really desperate to do it without nuclear you probably could, but it would be a lot more work and take a LOT more space. But the broader problem is that we've made it a lot easier to prevent things then to build them, so we're pretty stuck.
I'm pretty sure there isn't enough untapped hydro to make this work, but even more convinced that we would not like the environmental devastation that many dams would create.
Well, that's why I added pumped storage, which you can use to balance the instability with other renewables.
And of course it would have major environmental impacts, that's a natural consequence of taking up a bunch more space in sensitive areas (of course, so would windmills or solar panels, I think the most space efficient form of energy generation is nuclear, but I'd have to check). There's no version of the power system which doesn't have negative environmental consequences, there's only more and less bad and more and less expensive ones.
Has anyone put together a map of all the places that will have to be intermittently flooded to provide energy buffering for e.g. all of Europe?
Nuclear reactors, at least you can buy with just money, and you can probably come up with the money if you care enough. Pumped energy storage requires a fairly specific bit of geography, which Gaia isn't obligated to provide when and where you want it and which, where it does exist, tends to already be in use for other purposes by people who will be rather upset at being flooded out. So if someone has looked into this and identified the necessary geographic resources, fine. If it's just "here's a nifty idea, and here's a proof of concept implementation in one geographically favorable location, now I wave my hands and let someone else figure out how to scale it up by two or three orders of magnitude", then it needs a bit more work.
Does it have to be pumped hydro in natural settings? Could we build buildings where we do this? Or lift up heavy rocks with excess power and let them down to generate electricity? Or is that the sort of thing that works in theory and is way too expensive/bulky to be practical?
" We present the first estimate of the global assessment of SPHS potential, using a novel plant-siting methodology based on high-resolution topographical and hydrological data. Here we show that SPHS costs vary from 0.007 to 0.2 US$ m−1 of water stored, 1.8 to 50 US$ MWh−1 of energy stored and 370 to 600 US$ kW−1 of installed power generation. This potential is unevenly distributed with mountainous regions demonstrating significantly more potential. The estimated world energy storage capacity below a cost of 50 US$ MWh−1 is 17.3 PWh, approximately 79% of the world electricity consumption in 2017."
I don't claim to know how much power storage is required (which I think would depend on the mix of renewable types), but to be clear, this paper is built on the theory that all pumped storage requires the correct topography, rather than constructing that topography, if needed. But nuclear is definitely easier to deploy and can maintain base load rather than merely providing storage for other power generation methods, though I was surprised by how many fairly large scale projects are already completed or underway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations) though, note a large number of those are in China, where the data is probably not to be trusted.
To me, nuclear is the only currently available and realistic option for non-carbon energy generation. We will pay significantly more money than for carbon-based energy, which I'm not sure people are actually willing and able to do.
As is, we're looking at 44% of our power generation in 2050 still being carbon-based. That's down from 60% now, but likely almost as high as current in absolute terms because overall demand will grow in the meantime. EVs powered by burning coal and gas isn't very "green" by any accounting.
So, this is supply-side vs demand-side attempts at greening. Matt Yglesias has a lot to say about this, which I generally agree with. However, I think there's a lot of degrowth/overpopulation folks who are quite loud (but I don't think even an actual plurality) in green spaces, for whom the cuts are the point.
More broadly, I think there's a real tendency to view 'sacrifice for a political cause' not as something to be made only if absolutely necessary, but as something to brag about on all sides of the political spectrum (the number of people who want to cosplay as revolutionaries, whether that's anti-fa or proud boys, is pretty distressing).
In Australia, the process has been inverted from that of a sane policy: coal and gas are being regulated out of existence BEFORE "green" energy sources and firming have been installed. Subsidised unfirmed RE has flooded the market, but they go silent for hours or days, leaving FF to come back and rescue the grid. It's completely uneconomic and unsustainable. We have gone from energy surplus to teetering on shortages from day to day.
All our grid woes could be solved if the AEMO (our energy market operator) issued a simple quid pro quo to all energy providers bidding for access to the grid: "all suppliers must submit 24 hours of guaranteed supply of xMW per hour, 24 hours in advance". This would stop wind and solar in its tracks, since their supply is random on an hourly basis (wind) or episodic over 24h (solar), and stabilise grid supply by only allowing continuous, dispatchable power sources (gas, coal, hydro). This would relegate wind and solar to their rightful off-grid place to provide variable power for hydrogen generation, desalination, water pumping for pumped hydro, off-grid battery recharging, etc. When wind and solar come back with an RE+firming package that guarantees continuous supply, they can be allowed on-grid as a trial.
Elon Musk's most important idea with Tesla was to make the electric car into an upgrade; rather than a inconvenience endured for the sake of climate stability, they are some of the fastest accelerating cars on the market with a host of high tech features. Do that with energy and you'll get similar results; don't do it in a way that drives up people's power use or forces them to live a life less well off than their parents though.
For me it's making time-suck sites as hard to access as possible. I don't have the Twitter or Facebook app on my phone. When I use either site on the browser, I log out afterwards (and don't save my password) so I have to log back in to use it. With Facebook, I also have 2-factor authentication set up so I have to open Authy and get the code then go back into the browser to type it in. Other things that have helped are the Freedom App and disabling almost all notifications.
Stopped having internet at home and stopped having 4g on my phone.
Now if I want to lose a couple of hours on Reddit I need to walk to the McDonald next street, suddenly the latest event on twitter is not so interesting...
Basically I take out the cable of my WiFi box and put it at my office. I picked it up on Monday because I expected I would actually need Internet in the evening this week.
Is it worth it ? I've only started this a couple of weeks ago so it's still early to tell. For now it seems totally worth it. I feel way better about everything. This week as I said I again had internet at home and I immediately switched back to compulsive browsing.
I work from home a lot but I don't really need internet to do so. I walk to the McDonald once a day to pick up my emails and WhatsApp and browse anything I want, but doing so standing in the street is annoying enough that I only read things that really interest me. When I really need internet for an extended period (for work or video calls or administrative stuff typically) I can mostly do it from my office. If I know I'll need it in the evening, or if I just want to have internet at home again for a couple of days I just bring back my cable.
Admittedly it works only because of my very specific life and work situation (alone in my flat, work mainly from home while not needing an internet connection, easily accessed WiFi points in my neighborhood...). But it feels great for now and I will probably keep it like this for the near future.
Regarding compulsive phone use: I came up with a technique about 6 years ago that worked a lot for me and now I don't even have to use it to stay away from my phone. It's simple, at the time I was studying for my IGCSE's and I didn't want my phone to suck up my studying hours, so what I did is I placed my phone as far as I could under my bed so that if I wanted to retrieve it I would have to get on my stomach and slide under my bed. What this did is it made me think twice about wanting to get my phone. Now when I study I leave my phone anywhere in the room (with notification sound off) and I don't feel the need to use it at all.
Also, a friend of mine has an option in his phone that removes all color and leaves everything in this gray-ish color. I suppose the aim of this is to make everything look boring so that in the long run you become less temepted to click on it.
Do something else. It's not sufficient to focus on mere abstinence and it may backfire. Rather, create new habits from the ground-up. Pencil them into your day and stick to them, use reminders, and voila. You're now doing x/y/z instead of mindlessly surfing.
We're basically creatures of habit and function on auto-pilot more often than we believe. This means we can't rely on the cognitive overhead of "don't do x" all the time, because it will be completely bypassed. The idea is to steer auto-pilot into other directions, through habit-forming.
For instance on breaks you could physically distance yourself from the laptop/devices and just go for a walk. In evenings you could make it a point to stick to a hobby.
Made myself do something phoneless, *anything* really, in the morning immediately after waking up. Even if it's just getting out of bed to use the bathroom and brew coffee. Laying in the comfortable sheets "for a few minutes" "just to check emails" is a bad idea 99.9% of the time. Takes a lot longer than a few minutes, and always ends up segueing into non-email things. Slipping on this crucial first-action-of-the-day has been a major source of my tardiness-to-work lately, and it's quite embarrassing.
(If one must morning-tech, though, better to do it with phone than actually boot up a real computer...way more distracting options down that road. One thing I "love" about browsing internet on phone is that it's such a shitty experience, so I'm not inclined to do anything remotely complex or engaging.)
Using an actual alarm clock rather than a phone for waking up also helps (it's easy not to be tempted if temptation isn't physically within easy reach). The hardcore version is to not keep phone in the bedroom at all, of course - or at least in a drawer far away from bed, etc.
Disable as many notifications as you can get away with, especially of the push variety. Mute everything. Get in the habit of using "airplane mode" or other similar no-internet-connectivity reduced-function modes, *unless* you specifically need access for something concrete. Don't carry phone in pocket - even a trivial inconvenience "airgap" like in a bag helps. Some people claim going greyscale helps a lot, but I find that impairs actual functionality too much. Dark mode is a good compromise, if you like that aesthetic. Don't watch videos - read transcipts or listen to podcasts instead, if possible.
Adblock I'm of two minds about. On the one hand, it removes a lot of potential distactions. On the other hand, part of what keeps me from browsing internet more on phone is that a lot more ads/annoying functionality slips through (I'm used to running NoScript on real computers, but that breaks most mobile sites in really inconvenient ways). So the less pleasant or easy that is, the less I end up doing it. Tradeoffs abound.
Finally, getting in the habit of doing things in meatspace rather than digitally, when feasible. Shopping at physical stores, talking to people in actual meetings, playing board games. This is less about being a luddite, and more about...getting comfortable with doing things in a physical way? A feeling of agency. The internet was originally sold as having the world at your fingertips, and that's true in some respects still...but it's also become an enfeebling cage in many ways, neutering peoples' ability to do things without their rectangle servants. Dependency is an inevitable result of feeling incapable of doing things non-digitally. (And, let's be honest, a lot of the claimed conveniences of doing things electronically tend to underdeliver. Always amazed how much more productive in-person or phonecall conversations are for Getting Problems Solved, vs. sending emails.)
Could go on, it's been an ongoing saga of Constant Vigilance to not let myself cede more ground than I really want in this battle for engagement. And I say that this as someone who's never been on social media and already is way less "Phone-Bound" than all my peers :( Devil's device. I often miss old Motorola flip phones. Would go back if so many parts of modern life weren't unfortunately smartphone-gated.
I intentionally didn't get Twitter for the same reason. I also recently deleted Facebook - which has felt great! I don't miss it, and don't even think about it unless I'm in a situation where I'm feeling slightly bored.
We as a society need to learn to feel bored again and be okay with that.
I have to throw the kitchen sink at it. Browser plugin blockers. Blockers on my router. All the Android features that dim and remove color from your screen and restrict app times. Keeping my phone in another room. And a lot more.
None of it is a solution but the weight of a million nudges does make a big overall difference. It's still a problem.
I haven't, but the closest I've come was following the Atomic Habits advice of making tiny, specific, repeatable commitments to doing other things. "Whenever I get a cup of coffee, I'll write at least one sentence of a story. Whenever I finish brushing my teeth, I'll do at least ten jumping jacks."
Biggest part of reducing internet use is having something to replace it. Why are you trying to stop, what are you trying to do instead? Make tiny, repeatable commitments to that.
I use a free app called Self Control. Doesn't allow fine-tuning, but I wanted a blunt instrument anyhow. There are fancier ones that allow you to make finer adjustments to what is blocked for how long.
I tried and failed. However, in the process of trying I found some good methods to break me out of the loop of compulsively checking certain websites for whether they've updated. I consolidated them all into an RSS feed reader (Feedly) so I only feel compelled to check one website instead of a dozen, and for sites such as reddit, I used my ad blocker to block the 'next page' button so I couldn't mindlessly keep browsing. That works on the old layout, but perhaps not on the new one, I'm not sure if that has infinite scrolling. If it does that, then you're better off just blocking the main body of the site all together, so that even if you browse to the site out of habit, you don't see anything, which reminds you of the fact you decided to stop using it.
In general, make it easier to access what you want to do instead of the shallow things. Then make it habit of engaging with the former instead of the latter.
For the internet, keep tabs open that you'd rather engage with, open whatever project you want to work on instead of the browser, edit your homepage so it's blank, delete shallow sites from your history so you have to actively seek them out. Maybe even get one of those extensions that will block certain sites if you really can't stay away.
For the phone, putting the phone out of reach is a big one. Replace with easy access to things you'd rather be doing. (books, weights, other hobbies...)
If you need to have your phone around, I had good luck loading it up with books I wanted to read and always opening the ebook app before I locked the phone. That way the ebook app was always the first thing I saw, so I'd be more likely to start reading a good book instead of scrolling. Replace with whatever you'd rather be doing with your phone instead of scrolling.
Getting rid of notifications was helpful for me. Once I became used to purposefully checking it when I needed to it became easier not to touch it when I didn't need to.
Absolutely shocked that Scott has not, for all his interest in supplements and psychiatry, posted all that much about FMT, gut bacteria, or the gut-brain axis.
I'm something of a shithead myself, so I recently started a substack to get people talking about the possibility that the cure for schizophrenia and Parkinson's might have been inside us all along, as well as to explore the evidence and mechanisms connecting the bacteria in your gut to how you think, feel, and act.
You and I have pretty different priors on a wide range of topics, so the post came off as kinda...combative. Like, the evangelism doesn't actually stop after the intro hook. Intriguing though. It's not just Scott, I too am baffled that media of all stripes made a yuge deal about The Microbiome(tm) like a decade ago and then seem to have promptly forgotten about it. Only seems to come up when it's convenient for pushing product. You know, all the "probiotic" shit being peddled these days. (Sure is a lot of sugar in kombucha!)
I do think it assumes too much that depression etc. are the inevitable result of the modern obviously-broken world...it's not the exact argument you make, but rhymes a lot with "depression caused by capitalism"-type vacuous claims. There's a very specific reason I feel like shit - inept management at a once-tolerable job. Which doesn't mean gut health or other macro forces aren't contributing in some way, I'm sure they do. But I'm of the belief that malaise often has more concrete roots than people realize and/or are willing to admit to themselves. Seen that same story too many times.
I do appreciate the excuse to do vodka shots though. *That* is the kind of science I love. For whatever it's worth, the best vodka I ever had was an organic one distilled from quinoa - incredibly clean and weirdly hangover-free. You might be onto something! Hard liquor is an infrequent-enough purchase for me that it wouldn't really be troublesome to go organic-only, assuming I can find it, and if test results pan out...
A specific question to finish with: are all the benefits of lactation only to infants? I've heard claims like breast milk promoting wound healing when applied directly, but never any advice for grown women to drink their own lactate. Also puzzled why the effect size of "Breast is Best"-type interventions seems to continuously be so small, if it's that big a deal. (It's an effect I want to believe in, so I keep expecting stronger evidence. Same with natural birth vs. c-sec, the additional-bacteria hypothesis is just so alluring.)
Do you think the media discussion of the microbiome has dropped off? There's a lot less of the "this weird thing scientists are talking about that you've never heard of" stuff, but I think the total amount of discussion (including contentful discussion) has probably been gradually increasing, if anything. It's just now more often in side notes in articles that are officially about other topics.
That seems about right, yes. But I think This One Weird Trick and headline-grabbers about the power of poop punch above their weight: not because it matters much practically for most people (I mean there are worse things than encouraging more consumption of yogurt I guess), but because those are the incentives research and publishing get aligned to these days. Sadly. So when I see a promising new area drop out of the spotlight into the side notes, vs vanishing entirely, that indicates:
A) Initial hype was way overblown (cf "orchid children", Genes For X, etc); or
B) Funding has dried up along with interest.
I'm hoping microbiome is in Column B rather than Column A, since it continues to look like a promising new frontier. Overall though, raising the total discussion waterline seems less important than turning that discussion into productive gains in knowledge. Since the practical impacts of Awareness(tm) for the average person are still small/difficult. Like someone who wasn't already on the Organic bandwagon probably isn't going to hop on because gut microbes. (And, yeah, that's putting a lot of faith in "something good will shake out of the schlock" belief, which is maybe not actually true about science done for the clicks.)
Huh, I was under the impression that interest in the microbiome has been stably rising and continuing to get more funding within academia. It just isn't getting as many newspaper headlines as it used to.
Thanks for the feedback. I understand why it might come off combative; this piece is an edit of a doc that had been sitting on my desktop for a long time, which was written for a friend who I know DOES share a lot of my priors.
You should subscribe, though! I'll write you up a post about why most probiotics are total bullshit, and I already had a piece on "vaginal seeding", C-section, and the breastmilk microbiome. It was a bit hastily written so I didn't cite it super well, but sounds like you might be interested and it would be a good jumping-off point for your own explorations.
But also, consider: if the benefit of breastfeeding is primarily mediated by microbiome transmission, you'd expect to see those gains diminish with cumulative matrilineal antibiotic use, which means the effect size could be rapidly decreasing over time.
As for your the first part of your question: there's sort of two perspectives on how breastfeeding steers microbiome development to exert a beneficial effect on health.
One is that microbial biomass/DNA and immune factors in the milk "educate" the infant's immune system while it's still young and impressionable; this is analogous to the mom's body providing the child with a "guest list" of which bacteria are cool. In this model, you'd expect much of the benefit of lactation to be lost on someone who's more than a few years old, once thymic involution has really gotten going in earnest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymic_involution
The other model is that it's just a combination probiotic/prebiotic effect, where live bacteria from the mother's gut are provided along with the "compost starter" of milk oligosaccharides.
Here, too, you'd expect much less benefit once someone's already got an established microbiome versus the blank slate of a sterile infant gut, but fecal transplant trials indicate that newly-introduced bacteria are best able to take hold when their niche is unoccupied. In this model, breastmilk could be a useful follow-on to antibiotics to help put a person's microbiome back on track. However, the fact that the milk microbiome changes over lactation makes it a dice-roll whether a given sample of milk would have a given bacterium.
Pooling over time could solve this, but the difficulty is that a lot of gut bacteria are strictly anaerobic; exposure to oxygen for longer than a few minutes kills them. Freezing also kills many of them even though milk is a decent natural cryopreservative. So you'd probably lose a lot of the benefit if it wasn't literally fresh out of the breast.
In either case you wouldn't expect mom drinking her own milk to help much, though. Her body's already producing any of the immune factors etc. in there, and she can't increase her own biodiversity.
Oh neat, I'll go look for that birthing people post.
Good point on antibiotics - it makes sense that maybe we'd see a stronger effect from further back in time, when hospitals were less lethally sterile, antibiotics were less omnipresent, and home births were more common. Tradeoffs to be made between potential benefit of "messy" birth, and immediate infant mortality. There's also of course the whole "formula is better than starvation" angle...although difficulties in milk production might have many of the same root causes as other Modern Difficulties.
Well, I was mostly thinking about weird edge cases like people with lactation fetish. Maybe that's too much evopsych wishful thinking though. And there's a ton of thorny ethical issues if the product's gotta be nearly perfectly fresh...even if there were some potential pre/probiotic effect for adults, and we could identify random women with A+ microbiomes to share...how would that work? The minefield of moral hazard already stops lots of other way-less-intimate "body transactions" like financial remuneration for kidney donation.
Although now I can imagine wet nurses listing "excellent bacteria!" as a qualification in a not-too-divergent reality. One more thing for elite parents to compete over.
>Well, I was mostly thinking about weird edge cases like people with lactation fetish.
You're almost definitely on to something there, yeah. Same with a scat fetish; I think this is one of few places where it's hard to take evopsych too far. What could be more fundamental, more ingrained? A lot of other mammal species practice coprophagy.
"Anaerobic yogurt" is not a bad idea, either. The main reason most existing probiotics are bullshit is because Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are some of the only nonpathogenic gut taxa that can survive in oxygen. I like to say they are the cats and dogs of the bacterial kingdom: pretty tame, good for certain things, but if an ecosystem is floundering for lack of birds, or bamboo, or earthworms, there's no breed of dog that can fix the problem.
Starting from a healthy human's milk and fermenting it in at body temp in a no-oxygen environment, you might be able to produce a stable culture community that captures a lot more of the diversity, at numbers where freezing wouldn't be too detrimental.
Ofc you could just skip the milk and do the same thing with shit, but that's a harder sell.
It was my layperson's understanding that animals which practice coprophagy do it for the additional nutrients derived from second-pass processing, like in rabbits. But it could certainly be for microbe reasons too.
"Breast milk yogurt" I expect to be DOA due to FDA obstinancy, given the already-demonstrated difficulties around lifting restrictions on the actual fresh stuff. (Or even on inert formula, lol.) One can dream though. It would absolutely be easier to sell than shit, since fighting against primal self-preservation/disgust instincts is difficult no matter how one tries to override with rationalization. Nevermind the other obvious troubles. If we ever see fecal transplants become more commonplace, I expect it'll be via backwards insertion rather than frontwards...things like enemas and suppositories are weird, but at least within the medical Overton window already.
It's funny, among people I talk to there's a definite gender divide on whether poop pills or colorectal infusion are more acceptable.
I'm of the opinion that oral capsules are probably superior for a range of conditions. There's one data where colorectal worked wonders for people with Parkinson's, where a nasogastric tube did not, so efficacy might vary by indication.
Re effect sizes for breastfeeding - what's being measured? I imagine long-term studies are expensive enough to be rare, so if the premiere study is missing one key variable, it's unlikely someone will run a new study just to add that one in.
Also, I'd expect transferring the mother's microbiome to be most helpful with healthy mothers - if the parents are eg. obese, that microbiome is probably going to steer the child to obesity.
Usually IQ, though there've been a few longitudinal ones hunting for a range of possible variables ("healthier", like long-term mortality etc). They always find a benefit of some sort, but it's been hard to disentangle from confounders like SES. Although perhaps that's just press reporting downplaying actually-decent effect sizes to push a pro-Trust The Science(tm) message. I'm sadly not in the habit of reading actual papers directly.
Boy, it'd be a huge can of worms to tell fat mothers it's dangerous to breastfeed their kids, and they should hire a slim wetnurse instead. I hope that specific angle doesn't prove to be the case. Talk about IRL infohazards.
Hey, thanks! I fixed the wine bit, and added a bit of pontification on how it's sometimes nice to have restrictive heuristics when you're faced with the overwhelming number of choices that confront us every day. :)
Thank you! I got into the weeds a bit with a commenter, and they ended up drawing out a bunch of the actionable tips and heuristics for grocery shopping that I ought to have included. Will probably rehash them in Part 2
Sorry, so new to this I’m not even sure if my chiding respond to the OP has been banned (I don’t see it any more, but that lack-of-quality top post remains). So best practice is to ignore political hit posts?
Hey guys. How's life? I just submitted my visa application online and scheduled an appointment in a few days. Now I just have to hope I don't get hit with a fine and ban at the border crossing for overstaying, because apparently Ukraine changed their policy of allowing humanitarian volunteers to overstay. I would have gone earlier, but their system went down after the attacks. What happens when you're in a bus and get stopped at the border? Does the whole bus get delayed, or are you left behind?
What do you mean 'infinite outcomes'? Do you mean outcomes which are in the far future and so large as to be infinite for all practical purposes (like for example preventing x risk)? I think there are broadly two answers:
1) There's a perspective issue with treating some outcomes as 'finite' and some as 'infinite'. Saving the life of someone who would have died of malaria also saves the life of every one of their descendents. It is special pleading to apply one framework to near-term effects and another to long-term effects
2) Outcomes should be discounted into the future, especially if you're talking about spending money now in exchange for a benefit in the distant future somewhere. I did a bit of back-of-envelope maths and I think if the discount rate is >2% then long-term interventions start to look considerably less attractive compared to malaria prevention
Isn't this a fun(?) theory about Omicron? That the much more contagious but much less virulent covid version is so much what we were hoping for during the Delta wave that it's probably someone's secret white hat bio-warfare?
Not that I've heard. I'd expect the people responsible would have trumpeted that pretty loudly if they'd made any positive difference, and I have been following the issue at least casually, so I'm pretty confident that there was no benefit to any of this work. This time, at least.
It was originally thought that the virus probably originated from bats living in Yunnan province, about 1400 kilometres from Wuhan, where previous SARS outbreak originated (but it was NOT first noticed in Yunnan, which is a rural backwater; first reports came from around the megacity of Guangzhou) but since then, media (WaPo, here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-covid-bats-caves-hubei/2021/10/10/082eb8b6-1c32-11ec-bea8-308ea134594f_story.html) reported that some suspicious bats live also in Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan. Note that Hubei is big, Enshi, where those caves are located, is still around 450 kilometres from Wuhan. Of course some other suspicious bats might live closer to Wuhan, unreported.
Gain of function research was totally useless in fighting this particular pandemic, as far as I know.
Remember that it was initially called SARS 2 or such. And you are not thinking about the possible cause/effect equation of why the lab was located there in the first place - because there was a nearby bat population that previous caused infections nearby.
He seems to think Sunak is the establishment candidate, whatever that means.
He seems to have some anxiety that Sunak is Hindu.
Well, Truss was fired by the investor class as she had a budget that caused the markets to tank. This hurt the poor the most. She was lowering taxes and increasing spending. The currency traders and govt bond owners basically said we've lost confidence the UK can repay its debts anymore.
Sunak will do the opposite (an austere budget). Increase taxes,, lower spending. That has already steadied the markets. He will try to be smart about it or he will be fired too, by some other group (not the investor class, which is only one of his constituencies).
I don't think "the establishment" cares about his religion.
The essay you shared is an incoherent essay vaguely suggesting ominous things behind his selection.
All politicians try to increase taxes and decrease spending in smart ways so they can still be elected.
The Tories did well in some northern and midlands towns partly because populations there were strongly pro-Brexit (unwisely as I think, and some of us are old enough to remember when the Tories were pro-EU because they wanted an internal market at scale, while the Labour left was opposed to us being part of a capitalist club); partly because Corbyn was seen a pro-IRA, anti-our troops etc; and partly because populations in the post-industrial towns are increasingly geriatric, and older voters tend to vote Tory.
There are unquestionably some pretty grim pockets of people who just don't like black and Asians, but as someone who follows a "fallen giant" football, sorry soccer team in the lower leagues with large working class support I think these are small pockets, and getting smaller over time.
In the end, if there was the rise of a significant faction talking about racial purity, talking about a conquered people etc, I would want to be part of facing it down. No doubt I am too old to fight usefully, but I would do what I can. As it is, this kind of person needs to be watched, but they can largely be left to howl their hatred at the moon.
(1) Anybody who thinks calling themselves after Morgoth is somehow impressive, don't impress me much
(2) The crack about Diwali is dumb, because unless you are going to posit a conspiracy theory that Sunak engineered Truss' downfall to happen *just* at the right time for him to take power on a Hindu holy day, then it's on the same level of coincidence as "Hmmm - Hallowe'en is coming right up and that is a PAGAN DEVIL-WORSHIP FESTIVAL - COINCIDENCE????" theorising.
(3) I'm not going to pretend to know if Sunak is devout or secular. I do think Rishi cares more about his money, though, so if that is your model of a 'conquered people', fair enough - the Tory big-wigs care more about the international finance industry in London and keeping the global investors and cosmopolitan sacks of spondulicks pouring in happy and to heck with the common people. This is a fully multicultural endeavour, so your white Anglican Tories and your brown Hindu Tories can all happily join hands and go on holidays to Caribbean tax havens to spend more time with their bulging wallets.
(4) "In Britain the people of the land, by which I mean the indigenous population"
Let me pose you, Mr. Morgoth as you dog-walk on the fells, this question:
Do you mean the English, the Scots, the Welsh, a mixture of all same? Do you mean any particular one of the waves of settlers, invaders, and migrants who have turned up over millennia? Do you mean the blue-eyed dark-skinned Cheddar Man and his people?
Or are we on the old kick about, to quote the satirical column 'From the Message Boards' in "Private Eye", "Aethelstan" who is a "true Englishman with a thousand years of Angelfolc blood coursing through my veins" who hates the "mongrel British"?
Are the Anglo-Saxons back in favour today or not? Have we dropped the (in light of two World Wars, now rather embarrassing) Teutonic connection which was once proudly boasted of?
What about those invading Romans, by the way? Any traces of their bloodlines remaining behind in the "indigenous population"?
To me Rishi shows signs of being a devout Hindu. Not faking it. If he was faking it, I'm surprised it pays to be different.
Hindus are generally secular. It is not a proselytizing religion. Hindus do not believe they (maybe I should say we) have a monopoly on the truth.
His money came from marriage. His in-laws went from nothing to billionaire, through sheer talent in business (not do much in software) and hard work. They deserve their money. Not ill-gotten wealth.
The in-laws live in the same simple apartment for decades, and don't flaunt their wealth. They seem like decent liberal-minded folks to me. They don't comment on politics and seem just nice.
I imagine the indigenous population of Britain as a short dark-haired people, given to a certain heft when the harvest is good, speaking a language incomprehensible unless you are born to it but good at picking up other tongues, a talent for gab, a fondness for laughter, strong drink and libidinous dance, and a scary talent with metal-tipped killing devices, which they keep sharp and handy behind the door even unto extreme old age.
This isn't really a very sophisticated take. It reads like the proverbial '*man with the hammer', in the sense that it seems like he had a conclusion he was planning to reach and has tortured the facts to make that conclusion occur.
I don't know if you're British, but his analysis of British politics as being a victim of deep-state subterranean manoeuvring is not reasonable. The Conservative Party (the party of Rishi Sunak, currently in power) has always had a fundamental tension between members who emphasised broadly libertarian free-market interpretations of their doctrine and members who emphasised broadly statist socially-conservative interpretations of their doctrine. This tension was most acute around issues to do with Britain's membership of the European Union, and tensions around this point have historically been the cause of several Conservative governments collapsing. Our former Prime Minister, David Cameron, was facing exactly such a rebellion in 2016, and so proposed a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union to put that rebellion down. Unfortunately he lost this referendum, and the balance between the libertarian and statist wings of the party was fundamentally broken (unfortunately for him I mean, jury is still out on the question generally I suppose!)
The result of this has been three Prime Ministers with no real ability to govern more than day-to-day, because they were unable to form a consensus within their party about the future direction of the country. Theresa May - I think - understood this and history will be quite kind to her premiership. Boris Johnson was handed an enormous mandate by a weak Labour party (the opposition party, who were also undergoing their own realignment at this time), but managed to bring his own government down through sleaze and inability to effectively deliver policy. Liz Truss reversed the economic mandate on which Johnson was elected without building consensus with her MPs, and was hit with the double-whammy of general unfavourable global financial markets coinciding with a rushed budget, which tanked Britain's economy.
So when I say that the analysis is tortured, I mean that any half-intelligent person reading the British news could see that Johnson and Truss were not long for government. The people who brought down Johnson have specific names, and (for some of them) you can read their blogs if you want where they explicitly say that's what they're trying to do. Dominic Cummings is a former advisor to Johnson who was forced out after allegedly disagreeing with Johnson's wife about policy direction, Michael Gove is an important powerbroker in the Conservative Party who had an odd falling-out with Johnson and Rishi Sunak almost certainly leaked photos to the press of Johnson partying during the strictest period of lockdown.
Moreover, Sunak would not be any shadowy global elite's choice for Prime Minister if they actually planned and orchestrated this from the start. Sunak was a minor treasury official under Johnson (not even a cabinet post) when the Chancellor, Sajid Javid, was forced to resign by (again allegedly) a disagreement with Dominic Cummings about who was allowed to advise him. As this was right at the start of the COVID pandemic, Sunak was promoted to keep some stability in the Treasury because all other ministers had their hands full (this is slightly unfair to Sunak - he was a rising star in the party and clearly being groomed for the role, but nobody would let a relatively untested MP loose on the Chancellor role like this under ordinary circumstances). There are plenty of technocratic immigrant MPs who could serve the role, and be more obvious candidates than Sunak. Javid himself would be a good example.
I don't really think the stuff about religion follows from the false premises about globalist elites manipulating our political system, but I do think it is notable that this analysis focusses on *race* at all. Rishi Sunak is one of the richest Prime Ministers we have ever had, and famously doesn't know the price of a loaf of bread because his family have several kinds of bread delivered each day. An analysis which focussed on class rather than race might have something pretty trenchant to say. I find it incredibly weird that the author quotes from Wikipedia to establish that Sunak has incomprehensible cultural traditions around Lakshmi Puja, without considering that what is *actually* incomprehensible to British people is how he could have been made Chancellor of the Exchequer during a time when his wife didn't pay tax in England as an explicit attempt to pay less tax to the Treasury which Sunak was nominally in charge of (although this 'cultural tradition' is extremely important to the ultra-wealthy). That is to say, a British working class Hindu has much more in common with a British working class Christian than either of them do with billionaire Rishi Sunak.
So I can quite confidently predict the following:
1) Sunak will continue the trend of British Tory Prime Ministers governing day-to-day without any long term vision for curing the ills of the country. He will continue to face ungovernable elements of his own party (this time from the libertarian end in contrast to Truss and Johnson who faced it from the social conservative end). He will lose the next election to Labour, who have mostly managed to resolve their internal factionalism.
2) White British males will categorically not go through what "Jews [went] through in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries". I don't know what specific privation the author is referring to here, but this is a histrionic take based on inaccurate twitter-level speculation about British politics.
I wouldn't really describe that as 'subterranean' - he was extremely unpopular with the kind of people who owned newspapers, so people with newspapers ran negative stories about him until he resigned. There's no need to invoke a sinister deep state to explain it.
The „deep state“ is just the security services and they do have journalists on their payroll. Jon Snow* recently said he was approached by MI5 and they offered to double his salary, (except tax free which is more than doubling). You can even control this kind of stuff by just having a lunch with the right editors.
But do you really think the billionaire owner of the Express was just getting ready to publish his, 'Why I support Corbyn for PM' article when some MI5 lackey approached him and said, "If you switch your editorial direction towards hating Corbyn then we'll give you a bunch of money"? That just seems fantastical to me, given that Corbyn's explicit policy of 'tax billionaires' seems to explain the entire thing without invoking MI5 bribes.
I would personally treat Corbyn as evidence of no deep state antics in British politics - insofar as the 'deep state' was arraigned against him, the worst they could dig up was that his pro-Palestine policies looked a bit like antisemitism if you squinted. If that is genuinely the best the subterranean globalist forces can muster against an existential threat to their existence like Corbyn then I don't see how we can simultaneously believe they are competent enough to get a Hindu elected simply to tweak the noses of ordinary British people who otherwise wouldn't stand for it.
Knowing nothing about Britain (or Morgoth), I'm going to say it's very light on substance. I leave not knowing if Rishi is an immigrant or a natural-born citizen*, how many members of Parliament are non-white and how long that's been the case, which party the man is part of**, pretty much anything that would back up the claim.
*I assume natural-born on the grounds they would have complained if he was a full immigrant.
**Liberals celebrating suggests the liberal party, but I couldn't say for sure.
He talks about Sunak being the first non-white Prime Minister since Disraeli, but he leaves out one Boris Johnson, grandson of a Turkish-English man, great-grandson of a Turkish politician, who has Turkish second cousins via his grandfather's half-brother:
If we're going to babble about race, then surely the one-drop rule applies here? How can a one-eighth Turkish person be considered 'white', if we are going to be strict about classifying Jewish-heritage politicians as non-white?
I'm inclined to agree with EC-2021. It's very disturbing to read this account, but the truth is that staff caring for people as profoundly retarded as this man (I believe they said his mental age was 1 & 1/2) have to do all kinds of things that would be grotesquely cruel and unjust to someone less impaired. For instance, some people as impaired as this man eat feces, tear off their own fingernails, assault others in ways that could gravely injure them. Unless staff are willing to let them harm themselves and others in these ways, they have to either restrain them, physically or with drugs, or punish the behavior by doing something to the patient that is unpleasant in such a primordial way (electric shock, lemon juice in the mouth) that even a profoundly damaged mind remembers the punishment and wants to avoid it.
This man was spending a lot of time stimulating his penis in a way that did not bring him to orgasm, and that staff believed could injure it. Staff had already tried punishment with lemon juice, I believe. Seems like that remaining alternatives are to punish him more severely, probably with electric shock, to restrain him round the clock with drugs or a straitjacket, or to train him to masturbate in a way that did not injure his penis and that gave him some relief from unremitting sexual desire. I think the last choice is most humane.
I've dealt with one heavily mentally retarded person (a relative) for a long period of time (6 years or so); mental age of five or so.
It's really really plausible that this is true. The guy I knew would pluck out his hair, one hair at a time, until he had giant, bleeding bald spots. He would pick skin away from any nick, turning it into a huge ulcer, and occasionally start a wound where one didn't previously exist. He... just WASN'T properly pain avoidant at all. I have no idea why exactly, but it led to many many injuries, and a lot of effort spent by his adoptive parents (and those of us helping support them in caring for him) to keep him from repeatedly seeking whichever sensation and opening up a wound there.
Fortunately for us, he was verbal and capable of some amount of self restraint and social pressure (at least, when he wasn't having a psychotic break.) And he'd been raised mostly away from other mentally disabled people, and so wasn't sexualized, so the masturbation thing wasn't an issue for us. But I guarantee you that if he had discovered that he liked masturbation, his genitals would have been covered in wounds within a couple months. He didn't have the skills or pain aversion to prevent that.
And... then what? What do you DO with the kid then? I don't know, and I'm glad I never had to try to solve that problem. Buying him lube and demonstrating seems incredibly icky, but you just have no good choices at that point. Everything is awful. And the guy I knew was at least verbal; you could talk to him and make a very simple plan. What if he wasn't? Just let him tear wounds in his genitals?
Seemed like at the end of the account they were not sure whether the training had made the main capable of orgasms. There was something about possible dry ejaculations -- and also it sounded like article was written not long after the training was carried out. In any case, what they did seems worth a try to me. Bear in mind what this man must have been accustomed to. It sounds like he needed to be diapered and bathed by staff, and it would not be a bit surprising if he'd also sometimes needed enemas, application of medicine to his anus and genitals, etc. Having his private parts touched by staff , and sometimes touched at length in order to clean him up adequately, would have been a daily occurrence in his life. Given all that, I do not think his experience of the masturbation training would have had much in common with sexually abused children feel. Besides the fact that he'd have been accustomed to having staff touch every part of his body, his experience would have lacked an important element that that's present in the experience of sexually abused children: the sense that the adult is in a weird, altered state, intense and urgent, acting oddly, ignoring the child's reaction. First of all, there is no reason to think the guy who carried out the training was sexually aroused; and even if he had been, I doubt that this institutionalized man had the mental capacity to recognize an unusual emotional state and be distressed by it.
Can't read the study as it's behind a paywall, but the abstract starts with the claim that his prior method of masturbation was both ineffective (and presumably uncomfortable) and dangerous to him?
Eh, I see no indication this went through IRB. Its also 35 years old.
However, reading through it, I think there's a genuinely hard problem of how to handle someone in the position of the 'subject' and they did get consent from the next of kin.
This squicks me out pretty good, but I honestly don't know what the right answer on something like this ought to be.
You seem to be "thinking in words". Also known as the noncentral fallacy / the worst argument in the world. "Action X qualifies as being part of category Y, and Y is a bad category, so X is bad - even though X doesn't share any of the important characteristics of category Y that we typically think of as being bad."
Of course it's not generally acceptable. But this is a person who's literally never going to be able to consent to sex and was, from the description, attempting to engage in masturbation. I am unconvinced it's more ethical to just stand by and do nothing, if he's in your care.
This squicks me out, but, to be clear, given the set of described behaviors, what should his caretakers do? Just leave him alone to hump random things? Try to make sure everything he's around is something which won't injure him if he humps it?
I suspect cases like this are places where absolutely nothing you can do won't sound pretty awful. The easy answer is apply Copenhagen ethics and not get involved, but that's not an answer for the whole society--we have people who are in this condition and will never get better, and we need to work out how to give them whatever life they can have at an acceptable cost.
The objection is that admitting Ukraine might cause WWIII (and/or the possibility of admitting Ukraine might have already set wheels in motion leading to WWIII, if you think the Ukraine war's going to blow up). If Ukraine were admitted and WWIII didn't occur, a lot of these people might not be so worried about it as an ongoing thing.
Russia being in the CSTO is not news; it's been there nearly 20 years, and hasn't caused a nuclear war. Unless somebody tries to conquer Belarus, Armenia or the 'stans, it's hard to see how it would, either (Russia itself, of course, would respond with nukes to someone attempting to conquer it; the CSTO is irrelevant there).
Fair enough, although I'm not aware of anyone having designs to conquer those other places the way Russia does with Ukraine.
Also, the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO in the future is part of the reason Russia invaded now. At this point that's water under the bridge and there's no longer much reason for Ukraine to not join NATO once the war ends (assuming Ukraine still exists and Global Thermonuclear War doesn't happen), but there's an argument that, due to this being predictable, NATO/Ukraine not ruling it out earlier was a mistake.
Because the US and western Europe aren't a part of CSTO, whereas we are part of NATO, and Ukraine joining NATO puts existing NATO members at a heightened risk of direct conflict with Russia for the sake of saving Ukraine from losing territory.
What does Russia being in CSTO do that anything like this? It's just Russia plus a bunch of small, not very powerful countries. Unless NATO did something boneheaded like invading Tajikistan, I don't see how the CSTO affects us in any way.
Ok I'll bite. It's clearly a provocation to Russia to talk about bringing Ukraine into NATO.
An analogy: China is building it's own military pact across east Asia and Oceania, with a stated purpose of maintaining an adversarial stance toward the USA. The security of every member is backed by the wide deployment of Chinese military forces and, in extremis, per treaty guarantee, by China's nuclear arsenal. China continues expanding this 'defensive' alliance across the Pacific, and finally prominent figures in China begin to talk about bringing in Mexico. The USA considers the possibility of Chinese troops being based in Mexico an unacceptable security risk, and warns that any move to admit Mexico to Chinese NATO would constitute an unjustified provocation.
I don't know why this wouldn't be a good analogy to Ukraine in NATO. The USA wouldn't tolerate China in Mexico; why should we think Russia is obliged to tolerate us (plus NATO's other nuclear powers) in Ukraine?
The CSTO isn't like this at all. It's not expansionist, for one. It's only members are original joiners from 1994, and they're all far weaker than Russia, and other than Belarus they're nowhere near NATO's borders. If the CSTO started adding, say, Finland and the Baltics and Bulgaria to push into Western Europe, then the situation would be analogous.
Why is it so hard to believe that the USA could tolerate Mexico aligning with China? We've tolerated communists in Cuba for over 60 years now. And Cuba actually *had* nuclear weapons on its soil, while Russia is going to war over the *possibility* that Ukraine might someday in the future join NATO.
Also, I don't believe Mexico is currently worried about a US invasion, so why they seek Chinese security guarantees in this hypothetical? Meanwhile, Ukraine has an entirely reasonable fear of Russian invasion because Russia already *did* invade and annex their territory eight years ago.
I think that this analogy is good, but there is one thing that I think ought to be emphasised.
I agree that as a matter of fact, US would maybe, probably, invade Mexico if it would voluntarily ally itself with China. But that would just mean that US is acting as an aggresive imperial power, disregarding international law. As is Russia.
Now, as another matter of fact, NATO governments are in the first instance obliged to care for the security of their own citizens (to an extent permitted by an international law, see previous section), which would be massively imperiled if Ukraine would join NATO before it (Ukraine) comes to a reasonable accomodation with Russia, so I am not really advocating for Ukrainian NATO membership
If this is also a universe where Cancún was annexed in 2014 in a surprise invasion, Baja California in the following years, and Mexico is joining foreign pacts of fear of being entirely annexed? If so, I'm rooting for Mexico.
In this universe, it seems like China would have a very reasonable argument that (a) Mexico has a valid security interest in not being conquered, and (b) the international community has a valid security interest in maintaining the post-WW2 consensus against nations resetting their borders by force, and most people would view America's objections as a smokescreen for "don't help my small neighbors I want to be able to conquer and abuse them without consequence rather than having to court their partnership diplomatically like anyone else."
This would obviously be bad for the US, but we as a nation would have no grounds to object. If we can't convince our neighbors that being diplomatically aligned with us is better than with China then we've fucked up.
I'm other words, it may be a "provocation" to Russia, but that doesn't give Russia any moral grounds to _do_ anything about it.
I agree it doesn't justify Russia attacking its neighbour.
> This would obviously be bad for the US, but we as a nation would have no grounds to object. If we can't convince our neighbors that being diplomatically aligned with us ...
With all due respect, please have a look at US foreign policy in the past 70 years or so. There was a lot of what went beyond nicely 'convince' others and accept if they were not aligned.
I think the US had _horrible_ foreign policy in our hemisphere in the past (the most relevant example being the Cuban missile crises; it was understandable, but completely hypocritical given American missile emplacements in Turkey/similarly close to the USSR). I wish we hadn't acted that way, and I think the way we did makes our current objections weaker. I can't change the past, but I can argue for moral actions today.
Well who said anything about moral grounds. This is about prudent action on the geopolitical stage, namely not uselessly antagonizing nuclear-armed powers.
But anyway if you want to argue moral grounds, that nations have a moral right to see to their own security seems uncontroversial. Note well, I'm not saying that Russia's invasion was morally justified, but Russia's objecting to talk of Ukraine in NATO probably was entirely justified.
They have moral grounds to see to their own security until the point that it steps upon the sovereignty of other nations. If nations don't acknowledge and respect as an absolute line the sovereignty of other nations than literally anything can be justified. I would argue strenuously against anything other than diplomatic attempts to prevent Mexico or Canada or any other nation from joining some hypothetical defense pact with China.
Accepting for the sake of argument that it is an antagonization, what makes you think it is useless?
Ukraine has by some measures the largest military in Europe, and a $200B-ish economy that it wants to orient towards the West. Russia's own rhetoric is that Ukraine-in-NATO is so powerful as to constitute an "existential threat" that Russia must go to war to prevent.
So it seems like (a) Russia is lying about that, or (b) considering Ukraine in NATO is anything but a "useless provocation" of Russia. Provocative, to be sure, but hardly useless.
NATO, and especially NATO expanded into Ukraine, is designed (since its Blue Period after the fall of the USSR) to support the most rapacious military-industrial complex humanity has ever assembled, and to risk nuclear war doing so. CSTO is an entirely symbolic reaction to NATO.
Obvious disclaimer that I don't support Russia's invasion, but that's a separate issue.
I do not suppose that it will change your mind, but even before the war, Russian military spending, measured as a share of GDP, was higher than that of the US, which has a largest military spending per capita of NATO members. See here: https://ourworldindata.org/military-spending#military-spending-as-share-of-gdp.
Of course Russia is far smaller (in terms of population) and poorer than the US, so in absolute numbers NATO military spending is way higher.
Now, it is true that elevated Russian spending is in a large part a reaction to a perceived NATO threat. But at the same time, NATO spending is in large part (especially that of European NATO members, of course) reaction to a perceived Russian threat. Chicken egg problem.
This criticism might have held weight *before* Russia went out of its way to demonstrate to basically every member of NATO why it's still a necessary and useful defensive alliance.
But it's kind of hard to say "NATO serves no purpose other than to justify bloated military budgets" when NATO now appears to be the only thing reason the Baltics and others aren't getting the same treatment Ukraine is, and most NATO members are, if anything, realizing that they haven't spent *enough* on the military because they just trusted that their NATO membership would keep them safe.
That claim assumes NATO/US action prior to February had no role in provoking the attack, which I find unreasonable. Further, NATO/US actions in stalling diplomatic talks between Ukraine and Russia since the invasion started, and massive handouts to the western MIC, appear to me to support my prior claim.
The CSTO is just Russia and a few of its small friends which are also post-Soviet states. It's not nearly as serious as NATO. Besides, if you are going to make a comparison it would be to the *United States*' membership in NATO. We are talking about the biggest country in the alliance.
Devil's Advocate: After the cessation of hostilities, what's the plan for Ukraine not to be re-invaded as soon as Russia reconstitutes its capabilities?
Better question is, what would the Russian plan for the success of the new invasion be? Ukraine, if it survives as a Western aligned country (yeah, that it is a big if), would be far better prepared next time, and this time it is not exactly a cakewalk for the Russian army.
But it won't be enough? Ukraine was interested in the economic alignment with Europe first and foremost but even that is totally unacceptable to Russia apparently, all the while NATO has always been off the table and Russians did know it. 2014 happened anyway.
Now Russians built up their society into the genocidal frenzy and their propaganda is busy translating one message - either Ukraine stops existing as a nation and culture or Russia. It is stupid beyond belief but here we are.
So at this point there is nothing Ukraine can do to convince Russians under Putin regime that it's the nation worth existing, all the while there is nothing Putin can do to assuage Ukrainians that Russians will stop waging genocide, cause he broke all possible promises and burned any legitimacy long ago. And frankly Russian messaging is so nuts these days with all those "we must drown Ukrainian children" and "desatanization" spiels, it's really hard to think about Russians as a sane nation you can make deals with.
Russia being "threatened" by NATO was always propaganda bs but it is utterly irrelevant today. Hell, Finland is basically in NATO now and what do Russians do? Move all their armies from the Finnish border to Ukraine.
Yes, that would be enough. At least it would have been enough at the beginning. Now after 8 months of war and crippling sanctions Russia might have changed its objective given how much it has lost.
NATO Ukraine relationship started in 1992. Putin said at the famous (now) Munich speech in 2007 that NATO expansion must stop and getting to Russia's borders will lead to serious military response.
Guess what happens next year 2008. Ukraine applies to NATO membership with all members voting for and only 2 members voting against it. How about that?
And to make things even better, immediately after being denied membership, NATO made clear that Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO members one day.
Not long after that Russia invades Georgia. Who would have thought right?
I get it. Russia bad, Putin bad but let's not be hypocrites. The situation is absurd. Putin has been warning about this present war for 16 years.
NATO should stick to invading countries like afghanistan, libya, iraq, syria (no one ever sanctions them it seems) and not fuck with nuclear superpowers just because the US can't control its arrogance and hegemony ambitions.
I'm pretty far on the 'Ukraine should join NATO' side, but as an outsider, what difference that jumps at out at me is that CSTO is basically not a real thing? I don't believe any of the members ended up sending troops to support, none are major military powers and the main thing it does is give a legal fig leaf to Russia's attempt to remain a regional hegemon. Also, no nuclear power has declared ridiculously over-the-top complaints about it?
The goldfish that I didn't accidentally murder myself tended to kill themselves by overeating.
Which I suppose is still PEBKAC in some ways, cause food is human-administered. But I can't really do anything about the ones who went out of their way to, like, eat gravel.
Sorta baffling that goldfish are generally considered "dumb" and disposable, but the very-similar-fish koi are seen as Wise And Venerable or whatever. I remember some years back when a few idiot college kids killed a school-mascot koi and ate it, and I got a viscerally angry reaction from reading about it. But mass goldfish deaths via Baby's First Pets doesn't really trouble my conscience much, despite being the far greater utility loss.
I’ve said in the past that when you see a kid leaving a carnival with a plastic bag goldfish, you are likely watching that goldfish’s last few days of life.
No doubt, but not 20 X.
Has anybody in the rationalist blogosphere reviewed the book "How to Build a Healthy Brain: Reduce stress, anxiety and depression and future-proof your brain" by Kimberley Wilson ( https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Healthy-Brain-well-being/dp/1529347025 )?
Or, in place of a full review, has anyone around here read the book and care to share opinions on it? I'm very much interested in the themes, but I'm afraid I won't gain new insights, being a regular reader of this blog.
I've noticed that whenever I wear a backpack, particularly with a heavy load, and take my shirt off afterwards, there are pink stripes over my shoulders under where the straps were. Does anyone know why this happens? When I tried googling it, I just got pages about little red spots, which is not what I saw.
I can’t give you the exact cause but it doesn’t surprise me. It probably has happened to me too but I just shrugged and said, “strap marks, hmm.”
I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.
I don't think they're anything to worry about either, but I'm still curious about what is actually happening in the skin that causes this.
Stripes are from compression and red dots are from friction. You probably want more cushioned straps that are larger or you need to have lighter loads.
Ran across this substack article and immediately wondered what Scott Alexander would think of it. True story? Or "big pharma bad" narrative? Tl;dr: The seratonin uptake model of depression is unsupported by evidence; SSRIs are way overprescribed.
https://unherd.com/2022/10/the-truth-about-depression-drugs/
That looks like the same outdated argument that has been going around forever and refuses to die. Scott wrote about it in 2015: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/05/chemical-imbalance/ followup: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/18/polemical-imbalance/ If you are too lazy to click:
>Remember, the thesis of my last post was that the “chemical imbalance” argument hides a sort of bait-and-switch going on between the following two statements:
>(A): Depression is complicated, but it seems to involve disruptions to the levels of brain chemicals in some important way
>(B): We understand depression perfectly now, it’s just a deficiency of serotonin.
>If you equivocate between them, you can prove that psychiatrists were saying (A), and you can prove that (B) is false and stupid, and then it’s sort of like psychiatrists were saying something false and stupid.
A more recent take from Scott on SSRIs: https://lorienpsych.com/2020/10/25/ssris/#2_How_do_SSRIs_work
The Critical Drinker (a.k.a Will Jordan) is a novelist and online movie/TV critic. He is pretty excited about The House of the Dragon. Where The Rings of Power failed, The House of the Dragon succeeded, according to the Drinker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfXkVUhzoWo
He's very funny. One of the few good things to come out of this whole Rings of Power mess is that when searching for online reviews, I came across several people whom I now follow.
I'm even reconciled to Eric Kain, who after starting out all rah-rah for the show, has now comfortably settled down to "why this show is crappy and how it is crappy" 😁
And I have to give the guy kudos for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ZXNf8_xB8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qUu9cI0oq4
Some of the criticism was indeed extreme and ill-directed and just as uninformed about the canon they were trying to defend as the show was, but most of it was reasonably based on good grounds.
What everyone, even on Tumblr, is laughing about is how the showrunners seem to have genuinely thought that "Halbrand is Sauron" was a big, mysterious, shock revelation. Even when the trailers came out, there were people saying "I know people who know people/I have a Hollywood contact/I got a sneak peek of the script and yeah, Halbrand is Sauron".
This lot can't write a decent plot twist for toffee.
Maybe it was widely known, but I had managed to avoid that spoiler until now and was still planning to watch the show. Damn.
I apologise for that! I never meant to spoil anyone, I assumed any discussion about the show would be among those who had already watched it.
You can still watch it and see if any of the other mystery boxes work for you? It's only eight episodes and you can power through it.
Hey, Deiseach. Long time, no see.
Hello yourself!
I don't remember seeing you around DSL much.
No, I don't hang around there. I was mostly waiting for this place to get up and running. I do argumate and fightify over on TheMotte (redux) but under a different name.
Hm, if the two of you find DSL unpalatable, maybe I'll try to persuade some of the other worthy commenters from there to drift back here. And Johan - your absence is noted with considerable sadness.
Will any parts of the world get more stable and/or more clement climates thanks to global warming?
Absolutely. I think in the 22nd century the world's political center of gravity will move north, with Canada and Russia possibly eclipsing the US and China as the most important world powers. Should be interesting. Wish I was going to be around to see how things shake out.
It will certainly help Russia, but not to the enough degree you imagíne.
Maybe, but it's also going to be hurting other places. Parts of India may be actually uninhabitable (or at least difficult and dangerous) in the summer (minus air conditioning). The southern swath of US states are going to have similar but less severe issues, and large costs to flood-proof their cities. Most of China's recent development is coastal. The next eighty years are going to impose significant costs.
I'm just suggesting that when you sum the improvements for the northern countries with the damage sustained in the south, it will push the currently second tier northern powers past the current first tier.
I could certainly be wrong. But if I could bet on it, that's the way I'd bet.
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
Russia has 6% of our GDP
Sure. What the US vs UK number in 1820? I don't think anyone would dispute that we'd passed them by 1980. Our current dominance isn't set in stone. It can (and I think will) change.
Ireland has warmed up a little over my lifetime, probably for the better. But the weather here is super-variable anyway. Mild and temperate, but it does whatever it wants within those limits.
That said, sea-level rise will mostly inconvenience rather than benefit us.
Yes, raising the entire city of Miami, for example.
Inconvenient.
Of course. A warmer world is pretty much by definition a greener and more ecologically rich world, it's why the Amazon has a riotous biome compared to, say, Greenland. The only part of global warming that anyone rational considers troubing is the potential *speed* of the change, on the grounds that ecologies might not be able to adapt fast enough.
The Sahara is quite hot, you know.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-really-turned-sahara-desert-green-oasis-wasteland-180962668/
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/08/31/climate-change-remains-top-global-threat-across-19-country-survey/
It is, yes, and if it were remotely plausible that anthropogenic activity could raise CO2 levels to, say, 10-100 atm, then I would be concerned that the Earth would turn into Venus.
Edit: a weird gloss on the barreness of the Sahara is that it is the font of life in the Caribbean, with which I believe you are familiar. Generally sea life is starved of iron[1], and the trade winds carry iron-bearing dust from the Sahara far out to sea, leading to a "fertilization" of the western Atlantic, and from that enrichment of humble bacteria and plankton at the bottom of the food chain arises the rich variety of sealife in the Caribbean.
---------------
[1] The story of how this was discovered is astonishing: https://mlml.sjsu.edu/2020/06/18/30-years-the-iron-hypothesis-is-no-more/
Good article.
Where My Climate Doubts Began to Melt https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/28/opinion/climate-change-bret-stephens.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUyYiZ_tU1Gw5CRWySB4B99Frf3b-VkPs7nn74LS-TDj1GzuEcH4XF8EfEY6VuItEp0ijeX8NMKL8iQuc0zvNaOwYlbTiUlaa-ucZPJTQp-8X0X2Uq0ojEVqw57zKtNzazdbkjmeX65RnfaX3tC6HUzSV2JF5688dlIlqs3HMClPrGAfc1joclpYopBp97Qz8AZSmMrqOoX004YIPaG0mavgomWOhZWiXQnMqc498DdQZRDFHGShBv8Dp2qYMcaJ5MYvGJf1N3c9H-gL4RFmRrMI-pYpU3TIDSnL5v2qXfB6v0MJRI3q2uvnzhmbaO6w
Thanks for the article. It was quite good. I depart from the author in thinking the human contribution to changing climate is proved, or quantifiable. All our activities are a tiny delta on the enormous and complex natural cycles that go on all the time, and which, over history we can easily study, have changed the Earth's climate far more drastically than anything within even the worst nightmares of global warming alarmists.
Figuring out what additional effect the delta has is...very, very tricky. Remember how difficult it was to predict how lockdowns, mask-wearing, mutation, or a vaccine would affect the progress of COVID? Like that -- only about 100x worse, since there are many more moving parts, and many fewer bits of critical data measureable over an accessible time scale, when it comes to climate change than in case of pandemic progression. We can easily do experiments to measure, say, the transmission rate of SARS-Covid-2 under certain circumstances. We can't do experiments that quantify what an extra 50 Gt of CO2 emission in North America does to the jet stream over a 50 year timespan. Most climate features are like this: just too big and too slow to do experiments, which is why we end up relying heavily on complex computer models -- but anyone who's worked with complex computer models should immediate frown in concern over *that*.
Of course the Earth's climate is changing! It's *always* changing, always has, always will. There were once glaciers covering this continent, now there aren't. There were once forests in Greenland, now there aren't. And so on. If I had to bet on any natural climate change going on now, I'd bet on warming, since we are coming out of a glacial maximum and that's normally what happens. (And whether or more precisely when we can expect a new glaciation is an interesting question.)
And so? Does it make sense to throw up our hands and just say "shit happens, climatically speaking, there's nothing to be done about it?" Of course not. It makes all kinds of sense to study what humans may do to affect climate, and to prudently modify what we do, when we can, consistent with all other objectives, and bearing in mind the strong limitations on our knowledge, to prevent contributing to change we don't want to see.
And of course it makes all kinds of sense to think about how we can live with climate change, because it would happen even if we didn't contribute anything to it. We live on a dynamic planet, in a dynamic system, and it behooves us to practice balancing lest we be flung off by an unforeseen gyration.
You are ignoring the time frame. Yes the Earth naturally goes through enormous changes IN MILLIONS SOMETIME HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS.
Tell me you are not thinking the changes over the industrial age is a natural cycle!
https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/
See graph:
Robust CO2 data from ice cores covering the last 800,000 years.
CO2 as a result of its infrared absorption profile has a direct effect on temperature (and indeed it gets multiplied a bit by processes that are reasonably well understood). We've pumped out a lot over the last couple of centuries, and a lot of it is measurably still there. Whatever you think about the importance of anthropogenic global warming, and what if anything should be done about it - it is a real thing.
Russia is supposed to gain a lot of arable land.
I've heard that parts of the American cornbelt are getting better rainfall, and thus crop yields due to it. How true those claims are I'm not sure.
Russia is the coldest nation in the world.
ctrl-f shows zero hits for discussion of prediction markets on the question of whether or not the experimental mid-week open thread will be
1) some definable percentage as successful as other open threads
2) successful enough to continue.
C'mon folx, we're better than this.
Weekly Orange County ACX LW discussion and meetup this Saturday, the 29th.
1) Topics Rules for Rulers or why we can't get rid of corruption and a rigged system.
2) Curating your social milieu to help yourself grow.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KOQVxELlQxcIWPJloAvPlD2-4se1Z6_g8NEuNuc5Zqg/edit?usp=sharing
I’m not a worker, but I’ve been a patient of a therapist and psychiatrist at Kaiser Oakland, the therapist I had good repport with, but I only got to see her once every other months at most, and I understand that once a week would be better, and I’d say too little progress has been made in that time.
The psychiatrist I’ve only spoken on the phone with, he prescribed me an antidepressant which did work to reduce my sadness, but it replaced my sadness with terrible anger which was worse.
Overall I’d say not helpful enough.
Plumber and Johan?
Yeah, Kaiser has a really bad reputation for mental health services. I've tried their nutritional services/coaching and I was very unimpressed. I'm not sure if there's a good alternative though. Actual healthcare that's more than prescriptions is expensive.
Does anyone know when/if they will start letting shadowbanned people back on Twitter? I figured the changes won't go through immediately, but the former corrupt staff just ignores my appeals.
Edit: I know Bezos lurks here and I'll bet Elon might too because a lot of his tweets are ingroup coded, hey Elon if you read this please reform the ban appeals process so it's more fair! The current people throw my ban appeals in the garbage without reading them at all!
What do you mean, specifically? I thought the whole idea of shadowbanning is that you could use Twitter like normally, but be suppressed to the visibility of other people? Are you talking about regular banning?
Jeff Bezos reads ACX? I am very skeptical of this claim.
He follows Scott on Twitter.
Big difference between that and saying he lurks in open threads
+1, certainly for looking at the comments
So both Tyler Cowen(1) and Bryan Caplan(2) have written persuasively on the weakness of the New Right. At it's core, the critique is that the New Right is so hostile to educated elites and bureaucrats that it has no realistic way to actually run the bureaucracy if it gets in power and no coherent policy proposals to change the situation. And I think that's very fair; the biggest failure of the Trump years was an inability to find loyal, competent people to staff the bureaucracy. Quite frankly, the New Right doesn't have a coherent plan to implement it's policies.
On the flipside though, I'm really wondering what the alternative is. Do thinkers like Caplan and Cowen have a realistic plan to get any of their policies through the political process. Do these older Reaganite/libertarian/deregulator types have a realistic slate of candidates to elect? I'm not aware of any Democrats who are amenable to these politics and the Republican tickets in 2024 and 2028 will either be Trump or DeSantis, and if anything DeSantis is more clearly "New Right" than Trump. And the general vibe I've gotten with House and Senate races is that, while Trump-backed candidates don't always win their primaries, they win more than they lose.
But I don't follow politics as much as a used to. Are there credible Republican or Democratic candidates who are sympathetic to Cowen's positions? Is there still a solid block of Reagan Republicans to enact these policies?
(1) https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/10/classical-liberalism-vs-the-new-right.html
(2) https://betonit.substack.com/p/who-will-run-it
I don't think a literal open borders supporter's opinions are especially useful to a group for whom restricting immigration is one of the main issues they care about. If he's giving objectively true strategic analysis, fine, but as has been told to Caplan countless times and which he has hand waved away countless times, open borders would destroy any hope for other right wing policies seeing the light of day.
People are ultimately interested in results. Following a hand-off, libertarian-leaning philosophy has yielded exactly zero wins for the right. And most of the right aren't even that enthusiastic about libertarian economics, as Trump's 2016 candidacy showed. What most right-wing voters tend to care about are social/cultural wins and there's far less fuss about small government dogma.
This, I think, is at the core of the disagreement. Cowen and Caplan are ideological purists who'd ultimately seem to care more about economics than about social issues. Both are very big on loose immigration policies, which doesn't sit well with a substantial fraction of the RW electorate.
I think what we have is that the old Reagan coalition of social conservatives and economic liberals is slowly coming apart and perhaps it was never meant to last anyway.
I've previously described Trump as a very effective middle finger to the Establishment. His actual policies aren't that far from standard Republican, but his mode of operation and goals are. This was the purpose that he was elected to fulfill, which he seems to understand very well.
I've been connected to some pretty far-right voters for years (mostly family), and they have been almost as upset at various Republican leaders as the Democrats. Mitch McConnel and Paul Ryan don't care about your average coal miner or whatever working class voter any more than the Democrats do, and rarely advance policies with the intent or effect of helping out this group of voters. They throw some red meat wedge issue at them at voting time, but day to day tell them to get lost.
Anyway, my point is that the New Right don't actually care about governing - they care about making sure that the elites of both parties recognize that there is a huge number of voters who are not being served by either party, and are angry enough to do something drastic about it. They will quiet down and go back to their lives if/when either party starts truly representing this segment of society. They don't want to lead, they just don't want to be forgotten.
Analysis like Cowen's is accurate, but misses the point. Elites (and Cowen is definitely in that group) are not understanding what's going on. They see the New Right as a new (sub) political party that's trying to gain power for the usual reasons. To be fair, there are definitely normal politicians who are trying to do that - DeSantis for one - but that's not really what the movement is about.
Yeah that sounds about right. I live in Trump country, a general fu to all politicians is common. I won't vote for T but I feel the same way.
Based on my own experiences of MAGA voters, I agree with your first two paragraphs. (With perhaps the modification that Trump personally doesn't seem to genuinely believe in or much care about _any_ particular policies. He says whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear.)
And yes, Cowen is completely missing the point here. As are most pundits across the existing mainstream.
And also yes, MAGA doesn't care about governing. And in 2016/17 I did think that they had a general shared goal along the lines of "if/when either party starts truly representing this segment of society." But....since around 2018 or 19 they haven't seemed to even genuinely be seeking that. Talking with MAGA voters since maybe a year before 1/6/21 has invariably boiled down to just the middle finger. It's pretty close to pure nihilism now: hate all the elites especially the libtards (of which their working definition now includes more or less everyone who isn't them), and let's burn it all down. Beyond that they truly, or at least the ones I'm acquainted with, no longer give any fucks about accomplishing any particular political or civic change.
That's what for example Joe Walsh, former Tea Party congressman and hard-right radio host, has been saying on social media. He obviously knows far more MAGA voters than I do but his descriptions/predictions about them are nowadays absolutely spot-on in my personal world.
I agree with your additions (though I think Trump, or at least his advisors, do have a more complete policy plan than either are given credit for - but that's a different discussion) and I think I have an answer for why the MAGA voters went scorched earth.
Consider the reaction to a group of voters supporting Trump - the left, the media, and even many mainstream Republicans treated them like idiots who couldn't understand anything. Hillary Clinton called them a "basket of deplorables." The media called them racists. Trump was attacked for both legitimate concerns and a whole host of completely made up things (Russian Collusion for one, which was never supported by any evidence and the FBI knew that when they started the investigation).
The elites of society arranged themselves against this group, and then wondered why this group got so upset by it! The institutions of the country were set against them if they even looked like they supported Trump - like the Justice Department calling parents domestic terrorists if they expressed their opinions at a school board meeting.
Thomas Paine wrote that a government has to be responsive to the people's needs. In doing so, he was legitimizing the need of the American colonies to revolt against the British, because the British king would not or could not provide what the people needed. If we are going down the same path and demonizing what is frankly a huge number of people in this country (including majorities of both minority and white voters), then I can't see how we're surprised when they get angry and demand better representation. When we refuse to give them that, and deride any attempts to remedy the situation, what else do we think they're going to do? Go home saying "aw shucks, I guess we lost"?
The core voting component that the media often complain are solidly pro-Trump no matter what gets reported about him is like 35-40% of the electorate. You can't ignore numbers like that. You have to engage with them. What we've seen so far is a full attempt to shut them down and cut them out of polite society. That is a doomed plan. The fact that Democrats are losing minority voters to Trump-types should be another wake-up call, but I don't think it's going to be. When Trump and his types win in 2024 (which I'm predicting will happen if he runs), are we going to demonize his voters again, or are we going to try to recognize that we need a different plan that doesn't cut 30-50% of the population out of the picture and expect that to just work out?
Sorry if I'm a little fired up about this, but I think we're doing some really stupid things and then blaming the plebs for not just giving up. We ridicule them, even if/when they're right. Even ignoring morality and fairness, it's plain stupid to treat half the country as if they're illegitimate.
"(Russian Collusion for one, which was never supported by any evidence and the FBI knew that when they started the investigation)"
Hmm, well having read the entire Mueller report (a lot of it twice), this is not a very reasonable interpretation of what it found.
Mueller's investigation absolutely did debunk the Steele dossier, at length and in detail. It also concluded that there was no Russian involvement in some specific infamous actions such as the last-minute editing of the 2016 GOP national platform to weaken language related to Ukraine.
Mueller also pointed out though, and carefully documented, that the feds' opening of an investigation into Trump campaign interactions with Russian governmental contacts was not based on the Steele dossier. (In fact it pre-dated the existence of the dossier.)
What the Mueller investigation did find, and document, includes that:
-- Russia clearly did try, in multiple ways, to interfere in the U.S. 2016 presidential election in ways that they though would help Trump.
-- various people close to Trump _tried_ to collude with Russia; failed to report any of those contacts with foreign nationals as required under U.S. election law; and then repeatedly lied about those attempts and contacts to investigators.
Regarding Trump personally, more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors put it this way in a signed statement: "the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice."
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which was majority Republican and chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, had meanwhile conducted its own investigation. Its report issued in summer 2018 found "irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling" in the 2016 U.S. election. It also stated that Senate investigators had documented Trump campaign staff illegally sharing sensitive info "with the Russian intelligence services". And that's just what the committee was willing to declassify; half the report was classified and some members of the Senate committee stated publicly that the classified findings were stronger.
And all of that was _without_ any reliance on the Steele dossier, which was rightly found to be just hot air.
And let's not forget how the followup investigation-of-the-investigators (Durham) ended up being an embarrassing failure.
YMMV of course. And this stuff does get pretty damned twisty. But for me the above blows apart the idea of the Russia-Trump connection having been a "hoax". Maybe we'll never really know for sure, but there's a whole lot of thoroughly-documented smoke that has to be dismissed in the name of waving off that fire.
So, in a lot of words, Trump did not collude with Russia. Got it.
More than one Trump campaign staffer did collude with Russia; others attempted to; Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump; and Trump as well as his sons and several of his closest aides have lied about all of the above. (Some of that lying being under oath and hence leading to criminal convictions.) You're right that none of that proves that Trump, personally, colluded with Russia.
If on the other hand you think all those proven facts don't add up to collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend the Finance Minister of Nigeria....
It's hard to find a "neutral" source on this stuff, but I understand that the Durham investigation brought more light to the Steele Dossier and the evidence for the initial investigation. Specifically, that there was *nothing* beyond the Steele Dossier that supported the initial reasons for opening the investigation against Trump. Despite that fact, the FBI lied about having more evidence, even though they knew the Steele Dossier was not supported and likely false. They offered Steele a million dollars to find corroborating evidence prior to taking it to the FISA court, but neither Steele nor anyone else ever corroborated it. Many major media organizations tried for months to corroborate it, and also found nothing after the fact.
The original investigation was based on wholly and entirely false allegations that the FBI knew to be false.
That's enough for me to call is a hoax even if they found some unrelated things later. It was no big surprise that Russia tried to influence the election. Every major country tries to do the same, and I'm sure it happened in 2012 and 2020 as well. Acting like it's a big deal is only legitimate because the FBI and Mueller investigated it - but neither found anything surprising and at least the original FBI investigation was knowingly based on lies.
This is something that most people probably don't know about, if the only read major publications that hate Trump.
Nah you don't need to read any major publications about that, just read the actual court documents.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60698540/united-states-v-danchenko/
Durham proved nothing which is why every jury that his cases went to quickly ruled against him.
More importantly, the sole source for the $1 million bounty offer claim is a former FBI analyst named Brian Auten who Durham put on the stand. And during that same testimony, Auten firmly debunked the idea that the Steele dossier had anything to do with the FBI's original investigation. He stated, under oath, that the investigation was launched due to unsolicited intelligence from a friendly country that a Trump campaign aide had bragged to one of its diplomats that the Russians had offered to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
Auten is the sole source for the $1 million bounty story; he is the 10th or 20th sworn source who's said that the Steele dossier was not why the FBI started investigating Russia-Trump coordination. A reasonable person can't sensibly accept the first claim at face value while rejecting the second.
"The fact that Democrats are losing minority voters to Trump-types should be another wake-up call, but I don't think it's going to be."
Agree on both points.
"re solidly pro-Trump no matter what gets reported about him is like 35-40% of the electorate." True. But then you refer to "30-50% of the population" or "half the country". The first does not equal the second nor close to it.
Presidential-election turnouts in the US range between 50 and 62 percent of the voting-age population. So in 2016 Trump got the votes of about 25 percent of US adult citizens; in 2020 he got the votes of about 29 percent of US adult citizens. If we assume that maybe 4/5ths of those are "solidly pro-Trump" voters then that puts his MAGA core at between a fifth and a quarter of the country.
"You can't ignore numbers like that. You have to engage with them." Perhaps 20 to 25 percent of the society is a large enough number that this point still holds. At a philosophical level I would still agree with it, definitely did agree and made that argument from 2016 through 2018. That is after all tens of millions of citizens!
But at a practical level today...have to say, I dunno. When a segment of society goes full nihilism; and moves from verbal violence to actual violent insurrection (1/6/21); and cheers for more of the same but "get it right this time" (as lots of MAGA supporters are doing right now); and keeps doubling down on hero-worship of the likes of Donald J. Trump....I'm no longer sure that 25 percent of the nation is in fact so many that they have to be engaged with when they go _there_. Or frankly that there is any real possibility anymore of engaging with them in any productive way.
Sorry, the 30-50% is the range from what appears to be solidly pro-Trump (which I estimate at 30% but 25% isn't very far from that) and the percent of the population that don't have at least a bachelor's degree. Somewhere in that range is the correct number that are within this population, and need to be considered.
If we were just talking about the very small number calling for violence, I may agree with you. But there are far more people in this population just trying to get through day to day like the rest of us, who are really tired of the elites and leaders making life harder on them in a way they cannot ignore. Covid restrictions that allowed millions of white collar workers to work from home and laid off millions of blue collar workers is a great example of the phenomenon. The people making the decisions chose a path that wasn't a burden to them, but was a huge problem for the bottom half of the country. Add to it that the restrictions also made it nearly impossible to access normal services in person from the government, and often locked people out entirely. If you're a 55-year-old factory worker who doesn't own a computer, the pandemic response looks a *lot* different.
"the Justice Department calling parents domestic terrorists if they expressed their opinions at a school board meeting" -- that is an urban legend, or if we want to be frank about it simply a lie.
What happened is that an outside group wrote a letter _to_ the Attorney General (later retracted) which had argued that some violent threats against school officials “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism”. They did not call anybody a terrorist for simply expressing an opinion on school issues or policies but rather for making violent threats. And then the Attorney General specifically on the record _rejected_ any such implication: said that he couldn’t even “imagine a circumstance” where “parents complaining” at a school board meeting would be “labeled as domestic terrorism.” Instead, Garland directed the FBI to review strategies to address violent threats and harassment against school boards. His memo did not use the phrase domestic terrorism or anything like it, and in that directive he pointedly reminded the FBI that "spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution."
Then Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that an FBI email that a whistleblower had sent to him contradicted Garland's description of the FBI's actions. But in fact the text of that email clearly stated that the FBI's new internal "threat tag" would apply only to “violence, threats of violence, and other forms of intimidation and harassment” against school board members.
So that whole meme was just that, a meme with no facts backing it up. And the perpetration and widespread acceptance of such horseshit is something that I get a little fired up about.
Okay... so nothing the above commenter said was wrong. You've put "context" on the situation, but it is true that a teacher's association actually sent a letter to the government calling these parents violent domestic terrorists, and then the government actually responded by saying that they would investigate. What was said above is a pretty fair characterization of that sequence of events.
This reminds me of these "Fact-Checking" sites where if some event is favorable for Republicans, but so undeniably true that they just can't outright classify it as false, they just said it's "misleading" or "needs context" and then go on a long diatribe about how the context somehow makes the situation less bad for Democrats.
Huh?
An association of school boards sent a letter to the government. The DoJ responded by saying they would investigate whether school board members are being threatened with violence, while the Attorney General made it clear that the department would not treat simple disagreement or complaining about policies as anything but citizens exercising their constitutional rights.
The allegation as stated and repeated is that the DoJ labeled parents as domestic terrorists. The DoJ unambiguously did not do that, and the head of that department stated clearly that it would not. So the allegation is flatly false; a lie. No contextualizing is needed in order to show that.
Fair enough. The initial letter from the School Board Association was definitely the ones who mentioned domestic terrorists. They did later retract that, but I'll point out that they only did so after massive backlash and several state level Associations pulling out of the national level. Also, the whole helping push the election of Youngkin as a partial backlash to the fiasco.
The initial response from the FBI was to announce that they were "investigating" issues at school boards. Let me ask you this, is there any reason at all for the *FBI* to investigate problems at a local school board? Why in the world would that not be local police, or at least the state police? The FBI would only be involved if this was deemed a significant problem, and the fact that the FBI even deigned to notice local school board issues comes across as very much as response to the letter referring to "domestic terrorists" at school board meetings. I appreciate the fact that Garland has enough legal knowledge and tact to be clearer in his written response, but I will still hold to the position that the FBI had no business whatsoever getting involved.
You still seem to be blaming the feds for language in a letter that somebody sent _to_ them.
The FBI would appropriately get involved if it was a significant problem and/or it involved illegal activity crossing state lines. Since some of what was being reported was threats sent via US Mail or email, the second condition did apply.
As to the first condition, that's a subjective judgement. But...this news story based on specific receipts was published six months _after_ that letter arrived in Garland's mailbox:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-education-threats/
My biggest fear is that this situation might actually be long-term supportable. Think about it: if you're hell-belt on denying 40% of the country representation, all you really need to do is to become very good at rigging elections. We're already halfway there - we know elites are very good at controlling access to info that might affect elections, for example. (I can think of a lot more that already worked or is currently in the works, but I don't want to have an argument about every single item here.)
Maybe you have some idea about what can prevent this from going on indefinitely. Who cares about wake-up calls when you're not interested in gaining people's support, but only in winning the election, by any means necessary? (Or do you think they are interested in getting that support?) One election defeat is not going to do much.
Except for that point, I think your description of the situation is spot-on.
The more intellectual wing of this group are definitely worried about this. If a segment of the population only follows major left-leaning media, they will miss anything of the warning signs that there's a problem. I imagine your typical NYT reader has no idea there's anything to worry about - just some loser racists trying to be racist.
And to be fair, there are some racists in this group! Maybe a lot of them! But the implication that it's a majority (including of the black and Hispanic Trump supporters?) or that their primary reasoning is racist is wrong. Their primary reasoning is economic, the same as every other voting group. You can certainly make them look racist, or maybe even turn them racist, by pitting them against other racial groups. Importing millions of low skilled laborers from Central America might do it. Affirmative Action where elites will outright say that they are preferring black candidates over white candidates might do it. We're talking primarily about non-college whites - who aren't doing well economically! They are struggling with globalization, loss of industry, and a transition to a knowledge economy. Pitting them against minorities in the same economic situations is unfair to all of them. Ignoring their concerns and needs while you do it is how you get into our current situation.
Rodes.pub/Haiti
BTW, I don't live in Haiti. Too dangerous.
Why don't you consider the possible contribution of genetics to a very low mean national IQ?
I don't know what this comment relates to.
(I don't know how to view it in context in the thread.)
Know anyone doing manufacturing? I'm looking to beta test my open-source, open-hardware robotic solutions ( https://yorc.global ) with some clients. Thanks!
There is a news letter called "The Prepared" which is largely about this type of manufacturing. I know that there is a paid tier of the newsletter with a slack channel which likely has a large audience of people you may be interested in talking to.
Cool, thanks for the lead!
What kind of manufacturing? What scale?
Light manufacturing. Things like glue dispensing, hole punching, tapping, drilling -- that kind of thing. Know anyone in need of that kind of automation?
If you provide more details I might but as it is I need some better info on the target consumer. For example, I know someone who does camera automation but I'm not sure how to pitch them based on just reading the site.
If you're looking for hobbyists who know python and build and could provide feedback then I am one.
We're not yet ready for beta-testers, but it'd be great if you signed-up on the website (green bar on the bottom) so we could let you know when we were.
At the moment we're looking for a consulting-type role so we can work out any kinks ourselves. Ideally we're looking for someone who has a repetitive manufacturing (or QA, ...) process they want to automate and are willing to pay USD$5k+ for a complete solution. Camera automation would be fine too -- we already built a rig for that in fact.
Will do re:sign up. Are you supplying parts or fully built solutions? And are you looking for any particular industries? No guarantees anyway but I'll ask around.
Long-term we'll sell the motors, cartesian robots, and specific solutions like the dispensing robot and motor-winding robots we already have. Right now because of the chip shortage we don't want to sell the motors because they're lower margin items. We'll sell fully-built solutions at the beginning so as not to introduce variability into the builds. We're looking for product-market fit, so we don't yet have specific industries in mind.
> No guarantees anyway but I'll ask around.
That's great, thank you.
What if those of us with time to spare (an hour a day) chose a school which many poor children attend, and helped atleast a couple every day with homework? Just show up with a healthy snack after school and hang around an hour.
Start this while they're young and help the same kids through high school, or until whenever they become independent in studying. Don't take on too many kids, so you can be more effective.
My MiL does this at my local elementary. The admin make time for her to tutor kids during the regular school day. You might have a bit more success with that approach, as it doesn't ask kids to extend the school day.
Any evidence that this works?
Assuming we're talking about the US here where every student has access to schooling (and lottery voucher programs show that schooling "quality" differences don't explain why some students do better than other students, and where race is a stronger predictor of schooling performance than family income).
Headstart tutoring programs in the US produced significant gains in IQ, but these gains went away with time and were hollow for g. If Headstart fails here, I can't imagine any program like this working.
Now, if we're talking about a developing country, that is a lot different, because IQ and schooling performance will be less heritable than in the US, but I assume you are talking about the US.
Scott has a piece somewhere suggesting that elite tutoring is probably the best education solution we've found, but it simply doesn't scale. Volunteer efforts like this are an effort to bring those sorts of benefits to kids who can't otherwise afford them.
I have been volunteering fairly regularly for many years now, and most of my experience is with high school students. A few years in India, and then several years in the US.
Some observations about the challenges involved:
1. US has a lot of regulations around any contact between students and adults who aren't parents/teachers. They are more stringent when it comes to younger children. Students who would benefit the most from free tutoring would be in public schools, and I think public schools have even less flexibility.
Schools are highly unlikely to entertain a random stranger to pitch in an idea about spending time with children. The way would be through an established program. I volunteer that way. Both times I signed up with such programs, there was a mandatory background check. In one of the cases, it also involved fingerprinting. These were several years ago, but IIRC in at least one of these cases I had to pay for the background check myself. After that, there was also mandatory orientation. Since I do it every year I don't have to keep redoing these, so it is a one-time effort. I am not sure if these lapse the way teachers are required to keep up their licensing/whatever.
All meetings are on school premises, and require some staff to be around in the vicinity. Which means fewer opportunities and somewhat inflexible timings -- either the volunteer should be willing to find time during the business hours, or the school should have someone willing to spare time in their free time (in addition to the volunteer, of course).
For any online communication (not just Zoom, but even email to help with HW), a school representative is expected to be included.
All this regulation is somewhat understandable, though coming from India I was surprised and still find it a bit much. That said, the overhead alone, which if not tedious is just boring, is demotivating for would-be volunteers.
2. Among those who get past the overhead and sign up for an actual project, it is common to see folks drop off within the first few weeks. Finding volunteers who are willing to commit for long-term projects (say for a full academic year) with a regular schedule, and who are also comfortable teaching certain subjects (math), is challenging in general. Adults with families are busy. Most adults without families yet generally prefer spending time to form a family. Life happens.
3. Finding students who are interested is also difficult. It is very common to have students who sign up but never show up, show up but are irregular, etc. Somewhat expected, but I think it is in turn demotivating for volunteers.
4. COVID had a major impact on schools. Things got canceled across the board, but also were coupled with a surge in volunteer interest, so opportunities in a way became harder to find. Then things went remote. Zoom lessons are challenging for students in general, and students are extremely unlikely to turn on their cameras and are often on mute (for various reasons, including privacy). As a volunteer you have absolutely no weight in asking them to turn on the camera/mic. Not being a seasoned teacher, you can't be sure whether the student is following or is lost or has tuned out. It takes greater energy to try to be interactive, while getting a poorer signal. Another demotivating factor for volunteers.
Now when schools are starting to reopen again, I think additional restrictions -- to not allow non-essential activities that bring non-essential members into the schools -- have become even more justifiable in terms of avoiding unnecessary risk.
This part is probably more to do with my personal taste. There are more remote opportunities than ever before. But I have found them to be more draining and less satisfying.
Conclusion: Overall a very inefficient market when it comes to matching interested tutors with interested students. Being able to find out an opportunity through informal networks (parents instead of schools) might result in a better match, but it is much less scalable.
I think it might be easier in India. There are fewer regulations. When it comes to children, there is a greater sense of trust even with somewhat new adults. Personal networks are likely to have people among different social classes, so even informally finding a match might be easier.
I don't mean any of this to discourage volunteers. I personally find it (usually) worth the effort. I have had some amazing students over the years, but at least some of that is just random luck. A high school student from my first year of volunteering in the US kept in touch with me throughout the years, and this semester joined a PhD program in Electrical Engineering at a top university.
Thank you!
...with parental consent, yeah? It's not just a strange adult showing up uninvited at a children's facility?
My kids' school has a volunteer application and a background check. I assume that's common.
You can do this as a volunteer. I've done such tutoring on and off since I was in college, ranging from helping people with English to mathematics. As to why more people don't, well, the honest answer is that well off professionals (who could make the biggest impact on test scores) are less likely to give time or money. And when they do they're more likely to give in their own communities rather than going further. Religious conservatives are both more likely to give time and money and more likely to travel into other people's communities to do charitable work. But they're not great at things like SAT tutoring in my experience.
Relatively small scale similar-ish programs exist. I'd be interested in seeing the efficacy data. Also....are you proposing that the school make time during normal hours for this or that it is an after school program, and if it's an afterschool program, are you also going to take the kids to/from home or otherwise accomodate parent schedules?
And finally, what you are proposing is basically a volunteer tutor program. I'm just not convinced that enough people have both the skills, the desire, and the ability (time/schedule wise) to do this to make a society-wide impact. There are roughly 50 million children ages 5-17 in the US. Let's assume you want to try and targe the bottom quarter. That's 12 million. Let's assume that, to be effective, an indvidual tutor can't help more than 3 kids. So now you need 4 million adults who have relevant skills, the requisite schedule flexibility, and most importantly the _desire_ to spend significant amounts of their free time tutoring. I don't think that many people exist in that category. Especially when you consider that the children most in need are often concentrated in a few areas, areas that are least likely to have capable adults.
All that being said, for anyone who wants to do this, it's relatively likely that you will make a large impact in the lives of a few children, and that is a worthwhile endeavor.
Thank you! I really want to try.
Parents will have to choose me, basically. I forgot to say that. And I might have a questionnaire to determine who are the most motivated.
If I make it free, they might not value my time. I've tried something like this before and maybe the mistake I made was being too eager to help, not asking enough of them except showing up. They came late, missed appointments, etc. I then ended it.
"they might not value my time....They came late, missed appointments, etc. I then ended it."
I have some experience in volunteer work in schools. The administrators will likely be skeptical of your commitment. Students not valuing your time is a huge problem in lower achieving communities. You want to come in and work only with the easy -to --work-with motivated students? In a poor community? I am guessing you are not in the USA.
I have been doing some thinking on SN-risk (Steppe Nomad risk, someone told me all about it at a house party). You know the gist: "once every two hundred, three hundred years they get their act together, form a big confederation, and invade either China, the West, or both."
What got me thinking is that the steppe nomads are replaced. The first steppe nomads were the proto-indo-europeans. Fast forward and all the steppe nomads are indo-iranians. Sure, they are decedents of the proto-indo-europeans. But they are from a specific branch. In most of the steppe, they must have replaced their indo-european cousins. How did they do that? But fast forward some more and it gets even stranger.
First, some germanic tribes, most famously the Goths, manages to settle the steppe and learn it way of life. How in hell did this happen? Some bearded guys from Denmark show up and settles the home turf of the famously deadly horse archers that Rome itself couldn’t beat? Then the Goths are driven away by the Huns, and now the whole steppe, who has been indo-iranian for 1500 years is suddenly not anymore since the best and most feared warriors in Euroasia has been replaced by unknown nobodies from Siberia. (Ok, we don’t know for sure that the Huns aren’t indo-iranian but it doesn’t look like it.) Then there’s a host of Turkish tribes, and then the Maygars, and then the Mongols etc. And none of them seem descended from the previous one.
Now, naively, you could expect that that the steppe is the high ground of Euroasia, and that waves of people would emerge out from it but that the steppe itself would have a continuity of dominance and population. Instead, the steppe seems to be reconquered again and again. (Sue, there are some continuity, but new people show up speaking new languages with new haplogroups and dominates the old ones, which is not what I would expect.) What’s going on? Is this the place were the hard-times, strong-men meme holds? How did the Goths, Huns, Turks, Maygars, Mongols etc. learn to be better steppe nomads than the steppe nomads that had been living on the steppe for generations before them?
I also think there's a lot more volatility in population dynamics/geo-strategic balance of powers between groups for pastoral nomads than for agriculturists. Like you said the predominant ethnic group seems to switch every ~1000 years, as apposed to ~5k years for farmers. Also several times a steppe group has become extremely successful and conquered most of Eurasia, e.g.. Aryans, Huns, Mongols etc., which never seems to happen for farmer groups.
I think the most important factor determining success for pre-industrial societies is food production, because, under Malthusian conditions, it determines their maximum size and the surplus labour that can be directed towards war, so maybe that should be the first theory.
I's been argued the success of Indo-Europeans was in large part due to their then unique ability to digest milk, letting them reach higher population densities, than just butchering livestock would, for example.
I'd say the big differences between producing food from farming vs herding is: farming is bottle necked by how much labour you have, herding is bottle necked by how much land you control. Pre-industrial farming is labour-intensive and low margins, your food production per capita is never going above the yields for the most fertile land.
Sheep, goats, cattle and horses reproduce themselves with minimal human intervention if you have the pastures to graze them. which means food production per capita is effectively unlimited.
Therefore I think the maximum rate of population growth for nomads is way higher than for sedentary farmers, especially when you consider farmers have a much higher decease burden from their dense settlements.
That means when a nomad conquers new land he's much better positioned to capitalise on it than a farmer is, he can just watch his flock grow exponentially and not worry about about how to feed his 12 kids. A farmer just get's more land that got hasn't got the time to cultivate, and it'll be a long time before he has enough descendants to fill it up, with the 2.1 kids he can feed. It also strongly incentivises conquest for nomads.
So you can see how a few small initial success for a nomadic group could quickly snowball into controlling the whole steppe and maybe all of Eurasia in a way that won't happen for farmers.
Sounds like a good excuse to link A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry's posts on the Fremen Mirage. https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/
If the people of the Steppes keep getting conquered, we might ask if the Steppes themselves have a weakening effect on the people who live in them.
Too many people model steppe nomads as Conan the Barbarian. Steppe nomads were wealthy, sophisticated civilizations that focused on dominating cattle and pasturage instead of agricultural fields. That's all. Because of the inherent difficulty of taxing and coercing people who are constantly on the move they generally had trouble forming stronger states. But they were not poor or marginal peoples. Those would be the northern forest tribes who they dominated.
Nor is there anything special about Central Asia. We're just most familiar with that because the history writing peoples were next door. But you had a rather similar dynamic with the Bantu in Africa and the Arabs in Arabia. (Though pastoral Arabs were genuinely quite poor because of some quirks of desert economy. Basically there were less places to feed flocks which meant that they had to have smaller but faster moving herds which made things difficult. But even there the camel lords had permanent fortresses and Mamluk style slave administrators and the like.)
Sure, but this doesn't really answer my question. Why didn't the Huns leave decedents on the steppe that are still recognizably Huns to this day?
I'm confused. If you mean "why are there no peoples descended from the Huns" the answer is that there are. If you mean "why are there no longer Huns rampaging through Central Russia" then it's because the Slavs managed to displace them in a centuries long period of conflicts and colonization.
How did the Slavs manage to replace the Huns? And how did the Mongols then replace the Slavs, etc. Why do the rate of replacement seem so much higher than other places (to me), when it intuitively (to me) should be lower?
Slavs didn't replace the descendants of the Huns or other nomadic people. The Tatars and Kalmyks and all that are still there. They displaced them largely through infiltrating along rivers, especially after the Khazar project of building centers along rivers to create a rival empire fell apart (though ultimately the fallout of that led to the more successful Ottomans). You can still see this pattern to this day, by the way, with Russian neighborhoods closer to rivers tending to be more ethnically Russian in places like Tatarstan.
The Mongols didn't replace the Slavs at all. They conquered them but, contrary to Russian national myth, actually ruled with a relatively light touch. Contrary to stories, the autocratic features of Russian government are Russian and the Mongols and East Asians had more open forms of government. And even Russia didn't have it natively: it required an extensive campaign to destroy local rights, integrate local nobles, melting veche bells and all that. Indeed, the Prince of Moscow was a Mongol tax collector and was allowed to keep his faith and local authority and even an army.
I'm not sure what you mean by the rate of replacement. What did happen was that steppe nomads often had relatively porous boundaries. People and even entire tribes would go from being one religion or ethnicity to another and the languages were relatively similar and all that. Indeed, most often when you get a tribal ethnicity like the Mongols or Hungarians they were formed by a bunch of tribes banding together in a confederation. But this is a distinct process from, say, a total ethnic replacement.
Look at Kyiv, for example. Kyiv was (probably) made into a city by Slavs under Khazar rule before a Russian conqueror sailed down river and took the town. And horse nomads continued to be in the area until Soviet times. And that's a fairly typical story. There's a lot of Central Asian cities with similar backgrounds though sometimes the city bound dwellers would, through intermarriage or conversion, come to be considered the same ethnicity as the more wandering peoples.
I'm not sure "ruled with a relatively light touch" is a fair summary. The impact was mixed.
First, the actual Mongol invasion was devastating, and it's hard to separate the effects of that from the effect of Mongol rule over the next 2+ centuries.
Afterwards, you've got centuries of paying tribute, which seems more embarrassing for Russia than actually painful, and Moscow especially seems to be doing pretty well. There's claims that the Mongol helped introduce various useful government and cultural institutions, and claims that the Mongols set technological development back significantly. Historians seem to be fighting over which viewpoint is right but it also doesn't seem like those are incompatible, exactly.
Our discussion here seems to be mostly about "what happened to the Slavs and what happened to the Tatars?" In this respect, I think maybe the most significant impact of the Mongols was all the slave raids, which last well past the end of the "Mongol yoke" period. The fact that these get to the point of measurable population displacement is kind of terrifying. Ironically, these also help Moscow's development a lot, since you've got many people accumulating in the regions that can actually protect themselves.
CONT: I’m starting to get conspiratorial, maybe there’s a true highest-ground urheimat for pre-steppe-nomads somewhere in Siberia, which has unique conditions that forms tribes into a Rock against the steppe nomad Scissor (as the steppe nomads are Scissor to the civilized Paper of Europe and China)? But that’s ridiculous, right?
What's the dynamic here? If anyone knows a good book on the subject I’d be grateful.
What I've heard in reading about the linguistic history of the Caucasus region is something like this. When there is a population expansion anywhere in the vicinity of the steppe, some sub-population quickly radiates out across the steppe and flows out somewhat into the other areas around it. But the steppe provides few boundaries to these expansions, and thus each one tends to wipe out the one before. However, the areas on the edges of the steppes - notably mountainous regions like the Caucasus - tend to preserve remnants of each of these waves. Europe has a few as well, with Turkey and Hungary. But it would be interesting to see if the Altai and Afghanistan regions have this too.
>The thing is, nobody lives *willingly* on the steppe, as a herder.
>The people who end up there are the *losers* of the neolithic revolution
Epistemic status: pure theorizing, I know nothing about that section of history.
Still, "Against the Grain"-style, it might make more sense to think of them as the winners of the "run away from state oppression" olympics. Yes, this requires thinking of them as individuals, and not as groups, but maybe that's precisely the answer to Medieval Cat's problem. The stateless weren't separate tribes fighting and replacing each other, they were a constantly changing mixture of/with outcasts from civilized lands. Once in a blue moon, they got organized and took on some of the states, at which point they got classified with a new name.
I hear what you are saying, but I can't use it to solve the issue I see. Let's compare the steppe to what is now Britain.
In 500 AD, Britain was dominated by Anglo-Saxons who gradually spread their culture and language. Christianity, Vikings and Normans then also left an influence, but the Anglo-Saxon foundation is still there. The inhabitants of England is clearly the decedents of the 500 AD Anglo-Saxons.
In 500 AD, the Pontic–Caspian steppe was dominated by Huns. Then follow a long list of tribes, among them: Bulgars (perhaps decedents of the Huns, perhaps not), Khazars, Maygars and Mongols. And the Mongols aren't the decedents of the Maygars, who aren't the decedents of the Khazars, and so on. There seems to be a flux and replacement here that is much higher.
Now, Britain is an island and all that but I feel like you could tell a similar story for much of Europe and Asia.
Or am I just creating an illusion? Does the Modern Stavropol resident have as much as common with the Huns as a modern Londoner has with the Anglo-Saxons (but clearly the former lack a shared language, that's a big thing)? Were the Maygars and the Khazars like the Vikings and the Normans of England: a small elite that had a respectable cultural impact (but if so, where is the Hun language today)?
Did the steppe nomads just exit as soon as they got good enough at horse archery to conquer somewhere nice? And thus the steppe was empty for the most desperate new tribe to move in and start practicing the Parthian shot?
Was the population on the steppe so low that population fluctuations just mattered more? My model would look like this: Some random Siberian tribe could just walk in on the steppe and get lucky, and suddenly they numbered enough to matter. While Britain 1. didn't have Siberia close by and 2. was populous enough that just because you had a lot of sons who in turn had a lot of sons didn't make your decedents populous enough to have a real impact.
All of the above?
The population density seems always to have been low, or at least frequently-enough brought low by bad winters, disease, or warfare, that there was often room for a sufficiently-desperate tribe to try.
On the edges of the steppe, there might be no clear line as to who is a "steppe nomad" and who is not. Consider a settled, farming society that recognizes a king, and their ethnolinguistically similar pastoral cousins who regularly trade with them, have similar religious practices, and nominally recognize the same king (at least nine years out of ten.) The pastoralists in this "settled" society live a lifestyle indistinguishable from the "real" steppe nomads, and this includes in a military sense -- they are the kingdom's frontier defense. If some of the pastoralists decouple themselves from their more-settled cousins, either by choice or because disaster has befallen their more settled cousins, they already have the steppe lifeways worked out.
If you want to fast forward to early modern times on the Pontic steppe, the northern frontier of the Ottoman empire is populated by the Crimean Tatars, who mostly recognize the authority of the Sultan. The southern frontier of the Russian empire is populated by Cossacks, who mostly recognize the authority of the Czar. The Tatars' ancestors fought with the khans. The Cossacks' ancestors were mostly runaway serfs. But both groups made a living on the same steppe, and made that living in about the same way.
Or cross the Atlantic to the North American great plains at about the same time, and the ancestors of the Sioux were not yet equestrian warriors. Until sometime between 1650 and 1750, they were a mostly-settled people by the lakes of northern Minnesota. At that time, the ancestors of the Red Lake Chippewa conquered the area, and some of the Sioux were able to make their way on the prairies further west, raid or trade for horses, learn how to use them, and their descendants became for a while the foremost military force on the northern great plains.
It's notable in the European cases that different aspects of culture seem to have stuck at different points in history. Modern Italy, France, Spain, and England all have the same sketch history since the iron age, with a layer of Celtic society, conquered by the Roman empire, with a Germanic nobility that set up in the migration period. The national institutions of France, Spain, and England date back to the Germanic migration period, while Italy is a later innovation inspired by this mythic period. But in Italy, Spain, and France the language goes back to the Roman period. But I think the population genetics in England largely goes back to the Celtic period.
My understanding of the steppes is that there is substantial replacement of all layers at all periods!
This is my understanding as well. And I wonder why this substantial replacement happens again and again: My intuition is that the steppe would be unusually resistant to these replacements.
"(but clearly the former lack a shared language, that's a big thing)"
So do the latter.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version
I'm aware that old English and modern English are very different, but it has continuity. Modern English clearly descends from old English.
Good point on the state structure being more culturally resistant. But my question kind of remains: how could there have been so many successful invasions of an area that is know for 1. great warriors 2. little of everything else 3. a very specific way of life that requires training since childhood to maintain. Once such an invasion has been performed, I can see how the old culture can be largely replaced. But I can't see how such an invasion happened to begin with. Or why they seem to happen more than invasions of other places.
My novice understanding is that the steppe wasn't just taken over culturally, it was taken over genetically as well. And wouldn't we expect the cultural takeover of the steppe to come from the populous and culturally strong centralized kingdoms of Europe and China, but that never happened.
Sparta's military reputation is pretty much just talk. Their military record is no better - and maybe worse - than Athen.
https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-vi-spartan-battle/
Private companies will sell anyone surveillance satellite photos of military units and bases. Are there also private companies that sell airplane reconnaissance photos? What would happen if the ACME Spy Plane company received an anonymous order to fly drones over international airspace in the Black Sea and to report the locations of Russian warships?
The drones would almost certainly be shot down.
There already was an incident on September 29th, where a RAF RC-135 (from what I understand, used for gathering electronic intelligence) flying over the Black Sea was intercepted by Russian fighters, and one of the Russian fighters "released a missile". This was a clearly identified NATO aircraft flying a pre-announced route.
My guess is that any aircraft approaching a warship at sea is going to be subject to interception unless it's clearly identified as routine civilian traffic, meaning clearly identified by transponder and flying according to a flight plan. The actual form that interception takes is going to be dependent on the exact circumstances; a US carrier battle group has plenty of aircraft to deter nosy interlopers from a distance, while a Russian warship in a warzone is likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
The two difficulties I see with this are that the only drones with the required range (thousands of km) are military, and probably more important that the Black Sea is a big place and a warship small, so you can't realistically just quarter the area and find the ships, you would need to already have a pretty good general idea where the ships were and just be looking for precise coordinates.
I think it's not implausible, but it seems like a pretty niche application for a commercial operator. Probably what you want to do, if you're a national armed forces fighting the Russians (say), is just buy (on credit one assumes) the military drone from one of your allies and operate it yourself[1].
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[1] One of the follow-on effects of the Russians using Iranian drones may be that they've now normalized the introduction of drones from allied mlitary forces. They can hardly be surprised now if some old MQ1s end up wandering araound Ukrainian airspace (if they aren't already). But that's Russia: long on short-term bravado, a little short on long-term thinking out of consequences.
They get shot down and if Russia is pissed enough the CEO gets assassinated?
The commenter who was banned earlier in this thread, and one on 'highlights from the comments on supplement labeling', don't have (banned) next to their username unlike the commenter who was banned on open thread 247 and all those before that. What's up with that?
The network state. Eight hour podcast of Lex Fridman talking with Balaji Srinivasan. It was great! I also downloaded Srinivasan's book "The network state" only a few pages into it. https://thenetworkstate.com/ And I'm thinking Scott is starting a network state. Any thoughts?
(Maybe start here? https://thenetworkstate.com/the-network-state-in-one-thousand-words)
I think it’s a dumb idea that won’t work because it is focusing on very tertiary functions of the state and the model doesn’t work at all for the core functions. It’s a book about forming clubs. Woo hoo.
?Yeah OK, but isn't that what Scott is trying to start here. Connect online, have meetups, get to know each other, find collective action.. (which hasn't happened yet, unless you want to count EA.) I'm way more connected to this state, than my real state, NY.
Except you really aren’t at all. Your real state dictates all sorts of things about your life and lays claim to some of your income. While this…umm yeah.
Sure, I've read it and had time to digest it, 3 thoughts.
First, this is one of the best and clearest summaries of modern "weird" political thought. If you've been reading weird political blogs, from SSC to Moldbug, you'll be familiar with most of it but this is probably the best and most concise summary of this kind of though on the market and potentially very useful for new people.
Second, this book isn't really written for most people, it's written very specifically with founders in mind. As someone actively looking for a remote job that will let me live outside the US, this book has absolutely no practical advice or value. This isn't written for people who want to be part of a network state, it's written for people who want to found a network state.
Third, network state is kind of a bad term, he's really talking about network nations. I've run into this confusion, because people don't get how you just...create a blockchain state with significant legal rights. And Balaji does really handwave this away. Balaji's real idea, I think, is to create a network nation. We typically think of nation as synonymous with state but there's plenty of nations, like the Kurds or the Basques or Romani or the Jews throughout history, where there's a real clear cultural/social group with a clear identity but no state. Think of all the different nationalities under the Austrian empire. And Balaji's big idea here, again per my reading, is there's actually a much smaller gap between say, strong social networks like veganism and full nations. And his plan, very literally, seems to be inspiring people to form nations within existing states, then leveraging that nation for political status, following the late 19th century and early 20th century movies for national recognition.
Thanks, Re: state vs nation. I don't think you are disagreeing with Balaji. The 'nation' of Kurds or Jews or Basques, is all the people. The state of Israel, is the hunk of land in the middle east and not all of the 'nation'. So one could have a state for the Kurds, or a network state for the Kurds. The nation of the Kurds already exists.. or at least that's my limited understanding of what he meant.
I think we agree on the concept, I just think it's confusingly worded. I think I've talked with John Shilling on this site before and this was a point of confusion with him but the big thing is that states are things with, ya know, police and laws and taxes and armies. And while that's Balaji's end goal, he's mostly focused on building the precursor to states, which are nations, ie groups of people with strong shared cultural norms. Balaji kind of assumes that network states will naturally arise once you have network nations but people really get hung up on "state" because it sounds like laws and armies and stuff.
Right, States are in control of the violence, police/ army. Nations might want more control of the violence. And I hate violence, but it's necessary, so what is one to do?
OK the idea that to be a state, you need to control some sort of violence sucks... but I don't know what to do about it.
He is just really wrong.
Thanks for this valuable insight.
There has been a lot of ink spilled baout this book here before, including by me. The idea that we are the cusp of digital "states" or "naitons" or whatever is pretty nonsense. Almsot everything that is the core functionality of the state has to do with territorial monopoly on the use of force. laws and the enforcement of them. Without that you basically have a club or a corporaiton, two structures which people can already make and to which the internet doesn't change much.
I liked this review of The Network State quite a bit:
https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/book-review-the-network-state
Very nice, thanks. The podcast with Lex was great... it took me several days to get through it all.
Compare and contrast:
a) a belief in a loving omnipotent god that you don’t fully understand but who will protect you no matter what
b) an extremely high prior probability on the belief “things will be OK”
b) could just be an optimist
Or a grim nihilist (no matter what, everything will be OK because nothing matters)
a)'s god could be a yandere maybe? that "no matter what"...
Speaking only for myself, I believe (b) rather than (a), because (b) has basically always proven to be true for me and it helps me keep current challenges and difficulties in perspective. It isn't necessarily true, I could be brutally murdered tomorrow, but it's helpful and has proven true for the first portion of my life.
You haven't specified, but I'm going to assume arguendo that what you mean by "protected" and "things wll be OK" are similar, so that (a) and (b) can be compared as to mechanism, not outcome, and furthermore that both translate to "I shall not be unhappy and/or bad things will not happen to me more often than good."
From that point of view, (a) would be novel, a sort of hedonistic God. Most major religions posit a God who has A Plan and a strong sense of judgment, and He/She/They/It are quite capable of imposing bad things on you, and much experience of misery, if that is necessary to educate your soul, or as part of The Plan. That is, your sensory gratification (or lack of sensory immiseration) is *not* God's first priority -- some other kind of universal meaning is.
Something i have come to believe is something like, 'there is a deep structure to the physical universe such that having the right attitude can turn any situation into an eventual positive outcome.'
This seems to map onto both 'a' and 'b', although i think points about 'a' seem to vary wildly depending upon which religious interpretation we are talking about.
Sure, but you've begged the question. You need to define "positive outcome." For example, for a good Christian,the "positive outcome" is "I get to spend eternity in the presence of God." For an atheist hedonist, it's "the product of my lifetime and the amount of sensory pleasure I enjoy during (each multiplied by some scaling factor) is maximized" while for a narcissist politician it might be "people remember my name for the next century." Any one of those three could lead to a significantly dfferent judgment of what is "positive" and what is not.
> You need to define "positive outcome."
This is the whole rub of any philosophy, right? At some point a person has to choose how to define this term. It seems like quite a neat hack to just go, oh, hey, any outcome is good by definition and it's up to me to figure out what's good about it.
Well, I'll resist the urge to link to the "This is fine!" dog drinking coffee in a burning house meme.
But sure, it's a good hack, and certainly one close to the heart of a lot of philosophies, either directly (Stoicism, Buddhism) or indirectly (Christianity, in which we redefine "good" to mean "according to God's Plan" and admit we don't and can't fully understand His plan).
I personaly don't fine it satisfying, but then I'm a proponent of Frankl's "logotherapy" viewpoint, wherein the sine qua non of a personal philosophy is to decide what provides life with meaning. That doesn't mean you will end up happy, to be sure, and it doesn't even mean you will succeed at building all the meaning you want. But it does at least give you a direction, a sense of strong purpose, and a reasonably objective yardstick by which to measure your accomplishment. That sense of clarity seems very worthwhile, and I'm personally happy enough to trade any hypothetical guarantee of peace of mind or sensory joy for it.
Are these really incompatible?
I decided that what provides my life with meaning is figuring out how to make sense of and deal with the difficulties of the present moment. Things often don’t feel Ok and i put in a lot of effort to learn as much as I can from them.
You can't pray to a probability, you can't cry to it when your life hits an error path and 5-7 bad things starts happening one after the other, you can't see intent in its machinations, you can't read stories of the lavish Eden full of virgins and believe them,etc...
In other words, unless you have magic brain machinery that can instill this "Things Will Be Okay" belief so incredibly deep inside the smallest molecule in the smallest brain cell, (a) is superior.
Imagine a religious statistician trapped under the rubble. You're Bayes' Demon, the god responsible for probability in this universe, you have the ability to make _any_ probabilistic argument seem inhumanly plausible, like it was always destined to be. (since probability and statistics are extremly hard and rarely if ever explained correctly, you're actually just an average rationalist with a beard and the ability to hover.) You appear to the statistician and you have a day to convince them to not feel distress, can you do it ? Can your Bayesian Networks and your hypercomputer simulations of every possible branching outcome actually *comfort*, rather than merely convince, the religious statistician that it's gonna be all okay ?
tldr; it all depends on what you mean by 'belief'. Religion operates in an entirely different spectrum than probablity. If you have a thing that looks like probability but can comfort like a religion then you have neither probability nor religion, you have Blessing itself.
Suppose that probability has come about from a long series of experiments under the hypothesis: “by looking for the good in a situation, i will find it.” Since “good” and “bad” are labels a person computes, a person might conclude that any time they apply the “bad” label they have done so incorrectly.
I agree there are differences, though.
one can believe in (b) just by understanding hedonic adaptation
I would believe they're highly correlated. But I'm not sure what you're saying here. I guess it's the idea that most people who believe in God start doing so because they're natural optimists? I don't think so. The adult converts I can think of are mostly coming from poverty or prison.
I guess it depends on what we mean by "things will be okay" - I'm under the impression that optimism bias is near universal and thus wouldn't correlate to belief in a higher power, but OB is more of a "things will be okay *for me*" thing, so maybe "things will be okay for everybody" might interact differently with faith.
From a largely external perspective (atheist, not that optimistic), the two seem very different in feel. (b) is "extremely bad things just don't happen, by default", (a) is "bad things are possible but are actively being prevented"
Throughout human history, a successful mass emigration and settlement in a distant new area has presumably needed some major incentive, and perhaps some valuable resource to trade.
For example, in the distant past it may have been access to herds of large animals on the steppes or plains of North America, and various animal products such as tusks and furs. In more recent times, motives might include freedom from religious or political oppression, plentiful farm land, and the main resources or "killer apps" initially, in the Americas at least, were tobacco and sugar.
So what major incentives will there be in future decades and centuries for mass emigrations off Earth, to places like Mars or Titan or even further afield? If everyone is comfortable living on Earth then why would many people bother uprooting themselves to spend the rest of their days in difficult and dangerous environments, probably never to visit Earth again?
I propose an obvious answer: To be allowed to continue living at all! Assuming age-related diseases and infirmities are eventually all curable, and age extension becomes commonplace and affordable, there will be a lot of old timers accumulating, and they will have acquired a large proportion of the wealth, as they have today.
So in times to come, I think there will be conflict between them and younger generations feeling crowded out and deprived of their opportunities. Eventually I suggest a deal will be reached whereby past a certain age, medical treatment and rejunenation will be continued only for people willing to relocate off-Earth and leave more room there for new generations. Earth will be thought of and become a kind of nursery.
After all, it matters less if an old-timer's DNA is clobbered by more cosmic radiation, as they presumably won't be breeding, and if the radiation ends up killing them well then so what - They have had a long life already. Also, they won't be growing from infants in a low G environment and thus ending up as adults like eight foot beanpoles a-la Avatar!
This is a great question, it's why I believe that settling the Moon or Mars is unlikely to be successful, but building really nice space stations will be. The key is to build space habitats that are nicer than living on Earth; the movie Elysium seems like a pretty good portrayal of what a "nice" space station could be like.
The added pull of space stations is that they're not subject to Earth rules and can afford to be selective about whom they let in. I would imagine that any space city with any kind of reasonably selective immigration policy would be damn-near-free of the kinds of social problems that you get on Earth.
Does the fact that every human society upon reaching a certain level of material comfort plus female individual empowerment has its birthrate crash -- a pattern which so far has held across all religious or cultural traditions -- have any impact on your projection of humanity's future?
It seems at least imaginable now that at some point the entire human species will be producing children at less than its own replacement rate. (There are several nations right now with fertility rates less than half of replacement, and several large nations are now barely above half of the replacement rate.) Over the sort of timescales you're talking about, perhaps that ends up more than countering the population impact of people living longer and longer.
Many historic emigrations were.very slow processes. Nomads can driftwithout noticing.
Well, the main problem with your social evolution hypothesis is that there will always be more old people than young (and if age extension is common *way* more), plus old people are cannier and more experienced than young, so the younger generations don't really have a chance in that conflict. If anyone is going to get sent off-planet to rough it, it will be the young. (Which also mirrors history: it ws the young who undertook dangerous voyages of exploration and colonization.)
But to answer your question, I don't see any strong motivation at all for people in large numbers to leave the planet. It's been theoretically possible for generations for Greenland or Antarctica or the remoter regions of Siberia to be colonized, all of which are way easier and more pleasant to live in than the Moon or Mars, and they haven't been. If people aren't driven to settle the interior of Antarctica it's hard to see why they would settle the Moon. The most probable evolution of our species would be that we live more or less stably on this planet until some environmental event combined with our own flaws wipes us out. The typical lifetime of a species is about 1 million years, and it's not obvious we're going to be any more special.
If you asked me how, in defiance of the odds, we could be special, I'd say it's that we begin deliberately engieering ourselves, and other forms of life, and eventually succeed in engineering ecosystems on plausibly habitable extraterrestrial locations, probably the moons of the outer planets where water is plentiful. I doubt places like Mars will ever be inhabited, because they are just too inimical to life. The fact that they are closer to the Earth than, say, Titan, is pretty unimportant, the major cost of colonization is adaptation to exploit the local environment, and one would not expect ever much physical traffic between radically different ecosystems and creatures.
It doesn't have to be large numbers. Consider _Albion's Seed_-- the British isle weren't depopulated, it just took small minorities moving to north America.
Well, I only meant large in absolute numbers, not relative fractions of the world population, so thanks for opportunity to clarify. I think you would need of order 10,000 people to form a self-sustaining colony. Fewer than that seems likely to pose difficulties in career and mate selection, unless you are willing to turn that process over to a central authority. That's a tiny fraction of Earth's population, but on an absolute basis it's a heck of a lot of people to transport (along with all their kit) to another world.
Edit: I guess I would also say that, if 10,000 people are *initially* willing to leave the planet for some new world, then why not an additional 10,000 (or more) in subsequent years, when the colony is flourishing, everyone is happy, a Declaration of Independence is being drafted, et cetera? After all, immigration to the New World increased substantially once it was clear the colonies would prosper.
So what I would imagine to be the case is either (1) hardly anyone is willing to leave, unless they're well-paid and have some unusual personal reason, e.g. scientists overwintering at Amundsen Station, or (2) enough people are willing to leave initially to start a colony, and many more people are willing to leave to sustain the colony -- which adds up to "people in large numbers," albeit absolute numbers, not necessarily relative.
Echoing AHG, I think it's mainly a technology question. Space is full of resources, so the question is will humanity survive long enough to hit an inflection point between (a) technology to harvest those resources getting cheaper, and (b) scarcity of comparable resources Earthside making them raising their prices. Assuming we survive to a point that (a) and (b) intersect, the rest kind of takes care of itself.
I don't understand why new incentives would be needed ? space contains riches that would make all of Earth's history multiplied and powered by itself 1000000000000000 times look pathetic. Earth recieves only 1/billion of all the energy the Sun gives away for free to the dead darkness to do nothing with, of this incomprehensibly minuscule fraction, most get wasted in an increasingly inefficient bioshpere. This is only a single average star.
It's only the "Monkey View" that sees space as a desolate wasteland, because the Monkey View haven't evolved in space, but space is a vast trove of unimaginable wealth, the source of everything the Monkey View knows and loves on Earth.
As for persecution, it's very alive and very well. The entire ~10000 years history of civilization can be seen as the story of how it became harder and harder for people who disagree with the herd to fuck off away and live in peace elsewhere, *truly elsewhere*, truly cutoff from any causal network that could bind them with people they would hate to be bound with. We made all of beautiful expansive Earth an ugly claustrophobic conglomeration of ~200 centralized, maniacal, and genocidal entities that are all also a networked system with shockingly few points of faliure. Space will have absolutely 0 tolerance for this bullshit, good luck consolidating an empire against the speed of light. So that's pretty damn attractive already.
"Escape all the coercive bullshit humans built on their cradle and all the '''''''Social Contracts''''''' that nobody agrees to and nobody can refuse into a place where freedom of assembly and the ability to choose with whom you want to share your destiny is built-in at the deepest level" ? sign me the fuck up.
The main problem with this point of view is the first thing splinter groups of people in space or wherever are going to do it setup states/coercion again. It is just too useful. Unless there are like small tribes in individual craft, it is all getting eaten by the same pressures.
Yeah of course, I didn't mean to say Space is a magical silver bullet that would make humans' natural instinct to be domineering fuckers go away, it's just a massive sandbox that can absorb fuckups endlessly and still has plenty of room for freedom. What's the easiest way to make ill-behaved children shut up? Give them lots of play room and (if they still fight) isolate them from each other.
When Earth Lenin fucks up, the result is a monster that torments tens of millions for 70 years. When Space Lenin fucks up, the result is (fingers crossed) a pathetic space habitat or an asteroid that can suffer and die with minimal human suffering. Space Lenin took over all habitats and asteroids? To the outer gas giants then. And so on. I know there are *lots* of ways for this to go wrong, but there are significantly more ways it can go right than on Earth.
What you miss is that earth already contains "riches that would make all of Earth's history multiplied and powered by itself 1000000000000000 times look pathetic" and (with a few possible exceptions) it is WAY easier to extract them here than to mine them in space.
Also earths total insolation is already 10000 times more energy than we need, but solar collectors are expensive, so we do not currently manage to capture enough of this abundance. Putting those solar collectors into orbit just makes them WAY more expensive. So you are trying to solve the wrong problem.
Same for escaping from persecution. If you have the capability to escape to and survive in fucking SPACE, just escaping to Antarctica or the middle of the Pacific or the Sahara Desert is again WAY easier and cheaper and would serve the same purpose. The other way around, if you do not even have the capabilities to independently survive in Antarctica, surviving in space is a laughable pipe dream.
I question the premise. I think humans expand pretty promiscuously, without necessarily having a good reason. In particular, consider Siberia or Saharan Africa. If it were about incentives, my thought is that people would have never ended up in places like that. A small number of people will try anything, especially now that there are 8 billion of us. I'm not convinced that population pressure will be a big deal. Large parts of the world are still quite empty, and it's not clear that life extension will be enough to counteract lower birth rates over time. If I had to guess, I'd say the notoriety of going to space will be the biggest motivator.
And then there's the question of how all of this intersects with AI...
Earth will eventually be uninhabitable, at a time that will be difficult to predict. That would be the principle incentive. Maybe this is too abstracted and seemingly distant for there to be a collective anxiety, but threat to life on Earth can happen pretty much any time, such that reducing complete reliance on this rock should be imperative. Beyond that, finite resources on Earth will eventually be depleted, they may be found off-planet. That might seem like a lot of effort, but at this point energy use will be less the concern. Access to materials and capital will be the issue.
The time leading up to a post-automation future is like musical chairs. When the dust settles, everyone will get their pittance to shovel food and junk entertainment in their skulls, but access to capital and class mobility will have cement poured over it. If you want to build something, you might have to go off-planet. If you want more stuff just for yourself, you might have to go off-planet. I expect elites will also appropriate talking points from the greens and those romanticizing primitive society to enforce and get plebeians accustomed to having less.
Curious, have you read Old Man’s War?
I tend not to read much sci fi, as most is either fantasy cr*p, to which I wouldn't give the time of day, or a thinly disguised present day story and ludicrously implausible and anachronistic.
I certainly wouldn't dismiss it all out of hand though. There must be masterpieces, but the problem is finding the few pearls amid all the dross!
I recommend Old Man's War, and most of the other works by that author, though it does sound like you hate the essence of a lot of the genre. (i.e. most of it is "fantasy with a different aesthetic" or "social commentary with a convenient fictional set-up", but both of those can be done badly or done well and they're very fun to read done well. The third kind of sci fi is "postulate new tech / physics, discuss implications" - eg. Greg Egan - which I love but has the drawback of needing appendices that explain university level physics to the reader as a prerequisite to understanding the setting).
I do note that you are actively discussing what is essentially a sci fi premise of the form "social commentary in a fictitious future"
I mean it's no Anna Karenina, but covers a lot of similar territory to what you propose (with some War in addition to the Old Man bit)
People here frequently have like-minded Good Taste in music...any recommendations for progressive* metal? I'm looking for a similar sound to Hammers of Misfortune, but haven't enjoyed other bands-Mike-Scalzi-has-been-part-of as much as the original.
Used to be really into prog rock, but I feel like it's hard to get out from under the shadow of The Greats in that subgenre. Everything turns into a string of, like, "Jethro Tull did this better", "Alan Parsons did this more creatively" -type disappointments.
*have always regretted this choice of term, didn't learn until really recently that it's all about music structure and nothing to do with politics. Wonder how many people bounce off the subgenre completely cause of mood disaffiliation...
I agree, prog rock is a terrible name.
Around 2015 I walked into a gas station and they had on something rock-sounding with complicated time signatures. I had to ask what it was and the answer was something like “Bulgarian math rock.” There were some certain bands this guy liked & I wrote them down- I used to love Rush and the same part of my brain was lighting up. But I lost the paper.
However, just now I googled it and got Mental Architects and Monobody. Listened and I would say this is a reasonable recommendation.
Some people in my life like Djent music. And Gojira.
Slayer is in a different direction but I think old school metal just sounds different now.
Try “Live at Gambrinus Pub” on Mental Architects’ Bandcamp.
The Lord Weird Slough Feg is awesome, but its very much more USPM (US power metal) than Hammers of Misfortune.
I like a lot of the post 1990's PM (prog metal). If you like PM because you like noodly weird stuff, check out Devin Townsend. If you like PM for clean musicianshp, check out anything associated with Arjen Anthony Lucassen (I like Star One). If you like PM because you like metal, check out Cynic, Isis, and Voivod. If you want to find acts that started out as straight metal and then evovled into someting else, check out Devin Townsend again, Amorphis, Ihsahn, and Enslaved.
(TLW) Slough Feg is definitely in the line of succession, and that was a natural recommendation, but it didn't grab me in the same way, yeah. More power than prog. All metal is good, but the stuff I like best has clean musicianship, complex structure, and/or just a dash of raw primal energy. (Operatic metal for that last one.) Less enthused with the weirdness. It's cool to have a 3 hour album reinterpreting the Bible (Opeth), less so to have...like...an entire alt-history canon and narrative with characters (Ayreon). Thanks for the recommendations.
I like Hammers of Misfortune. Their sound leans more into USPM than a typical prog metal band (I guess early Fates Warning was like that also). Enjoyed the latest single, looking forward to the full-length.
On the whole I've fallen out of love with progressive metal. Nothing grabs me the way 90s-00s bands have (e.g. Dream Theater, Symphony X, Opeth, Voivod, *some* Pain of Salvation, Nevermore). However, I've gotten really into the avant-prog sphere since, which is genre adjacent - sometimes metal, sometimes not. Anything wild that draws from several traditions or is difficult to categorize tends to get lumped there, in prog land. Of those with more metal sensibilities, there is: Kayo Dot, Secret Chiefs 3, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Ni, PoiL, Piniol, John Zorn (see: Moonchild trio)
Thanks, that's a ton of options to look into.
Yeah, I think it's not a coincidence that all the prog and/or metal bands I like are from back in the day...those genres had their time in the collective spotlight, made a cultural splash, and then sorta just disappeared up their own asses by being too pretentious and weird for normies. They still exist, but one has to seek them out now. Random corporate radio at a store -> decent chance it has a Tull song on it. Baby's First Party Hits playlist -> good chance of a metal piece that was featured in Guitar Hero franchise. Sampling of Dramatic Music for irony's sake -> something from Nightwish. And so on. The collective memories are all stuck back 2-3 decades ago. I'd love to say I evaluate music with no regard to whether it's popular or not, but of course that's a lie, there's always a bit of that calculation.
So, most of the comments I have seen about Amazon's "The Rings of Power" have been pretty downbeat. People didn't like the first season much.
Was the Second Age the wrong part of Middle-Earth history to adapt for the screen, and if so, what would have been a better choice?
I think it was the worst possible period because it is at the awkward level between too much and too little information in the legendarium.
They could have done the First Age (war of the Jewels), where we have a lot of great content precisely written. Start with Feanor forging the silmarils and end the first season with Fingon rescuing Maedhros.
Or they could have gone for the unknown : set the story in some place not explored by Tolkien. A very good choice would have been to put the story in the East or in Harad and follow the two blue wizards as they try to fight Sauron's influence there. You could have enough links with the events in LOTR to satisfy the fans but almost complete creative freedom to write a good story.
Tolkien himself showed the way: use the lore and language as backdrop, and write an interesting tale set in it, e.g. how did Bilbo end up with The Ring, and how did The Ring get destroyed at the end of the Third Age? Both of these are intimate, human tales, set within the larger backdrop of the world he imagined.
So by me the right way to do this would've been to use Tolkien's setting, language, background, et cetera, and then invent an entirely new human-scale tale that fit within it. It could connect in one or two places to Tolkien's actual history, but need not. I mean, "Casablanca" connected to the history of the Second World War in one or two places, but it made no attempt to bring to life the entire history of the war (or at least the history up to the date of the film).
You could definitely write a Second Age tale set in Númenor, during the period when they were venturing into Middle-earth not as colonial efforts, quite, but exploring and setting up ports.
The Tale of Aldarion and Erendis, for example.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Aldarion_and_Erendis:_The_Mariner%27s_Wife
You could write thousands of tales. I don't quite know why they didn't, it seems almost a no-brainer. You can use all of Tolkien's wonderful backdrop, but then have complete freedom to write a new tale with almost anything in it. If you want to produce a tale of racism being overcome -- easy peasy, if you don't try to force into it characters and stories *already written* by Tolkien. You just invent some new characters in a newish setting -- maybe there were different colored Haradrim and apartheid had to be overcome, maybe some southern tribe of Stoors had a caste system, whatever. If you want to write a tale of power and corruption, I'm sure you could write endlessly about court intrigues in Numenor with brand-new characters, only touching here and there on the history already written down.
Maybe the problem is the estate would only authorize tales derived from specific characters? They didn't want someone inventing a Rey Skywalker and embarassing everybody? Or less charitably, maybe they just lacked sufficient imagination, so that given this luxurious literary repast prepared for them, all set out on golden bowls and crystal goblets, they would just fumble around and eat a buttered roll.
I kind of like it. Not enough to rave about it, but enough to watch it all, and probably come back for season 2. I know Deiseach was down on it, but I really like the scene where Sauron tried to seduce Galadriel, and I like the idea (that I may simply be projecting into it) that Sauron wasn't able to get all the way to the rings on his own. I think an implied idea from the first season is that working with the elves unlocked the secret of the rings for Sauron. I think we'll see the elven rings being first, and the next seasons will be the dwarven and manven rings.
I did hate the immortal beings being forced to cram great works of terrible power into three weeks. I wish they would have let that simmer a while longer.
It wasn't a bad choice, there are plenty of great events there. The execution was terrible because out of their own mouths in a magazine interview, these are guys who have spent ten years writing scripts that never got made (and having seen what they produced here, I think we now all understand why that was).
https://www.glyphweb.com/arda/a/annatar.php
A competent adaptation would need to start off with the aftermath of the War of Wrath so you get Sauron at first wavering about repenting but then fleeing into hiding, setting up his own realm in Mordor, then coming out after a long time since he assumes the Valar have forgotten or no longer care about Middle-earth.
While he's lying doggo, you get the founding of the Elven realm of Eregion, Celebrimbor taking over the lordship and setting up the Jewel-smiths, and good relations developing between those Elves and the Dwarves of Khazad-dum (all the Rings of Power relationship between Elrond and Dain *should* have been Celebrimbor and Narvi).
Sauron as Annatar inveigles his way into Eregion, wins Celebrimbor's trust, teaches the smiths of Eregion new skills, and eventually this leads to the forging of the rings - first the nine and the seven, then the three. Sauron leaves them alone to do this while he goes back to Mordor and forges the One in secret, as the culmination of his plan.
Then we get the war of the Elves and Sauron, which goes very badly for the Elves.
Meanwhile, Númenor is founded and grows to its height, then hits its decadence. Under Ar-Pharazon's command, they turn up, Sauron allows himself to be taken prisoner and back to Númenor, and the corruption there begins until we get the hubris of the attack on Valinor.
This gives a lot of great set-pieces: Sauron in his fair form, the forging of the rings (which isn't crammed into ten minutes in a season finale), the fate of Celebrimbor (poor guy), a scene I really want to see which is the Dwarves of Khazad-dum marching out to kick Sauron's butt just as he is about to crush Elrond and his army, then the eventual retreat back where they slam the door in Sauron's face and he can't do a thing about it - that is an epic battle scene if anyone wants one.
And of course, the Downfall of Númenor which is again another spectacular set piece. Also, HUMAN SACRIFICE IN THE TEMPLE AT ARMENELOS. Beat that, House of the Dragon! Then we end with the ships of the surviving Faithful arriving in Middle-earth, Elendil's Oath, and the beginning of the founding of Gondor and Arnor.
Lots of character development, lots of subtle intrigue, epic battles and huge cinematic set pieces. If you need to compress the timeline, no bother. Original characters? Sure, so long as they work (Adar was the one original character who was good, the Arondir/Bronwyn/Theo/fake daughter for Elendil/fake son for Pharazon/Disa/psycho killer Harfoots parts did not work for me. I liked the two Dains, but everyone agrees that the Dwarves were the best part of the show).
What we got from these chuckleheads was "Uh, suppose Sauron and Galadriel have a thing going on?" and now their big idea for season two is "We gonna make Sauron a mob boss/meth cooker, that so cool!" That is these bozos' idea of "complexly evil" - and probably something that is running through a lot of TV shows and movies in the recent past. They can't handle supernatural/epic evil, so they reduce it down to human terms, make it grey morality, 'hey he's just trying his best, he's misunderstood' (see 'Lucifer' where the Devil really is a great guy, he just has Daddy issues, but he's 100% down with all progressive ideas about gays and transgender and racism and what you like):
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/rings-of-power-sauron-season-2-lotr-1235240809/
“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've been viewing online rumours that there are shake-ups in Amazon (though how much this is the usual kind of moving people around and firing/promoting that goes on in any studio I don't know) and that the Payne and McKay Clown Act are going to be quietly sidelined, they'll be officially producers/showrunners but will be shoved off into the writers' room while Amazon gets someone experienced who can distinguish their arse from their elbow in to oversee season two and reduce the level of disaster going on. But how true this is, I have no idea.
If dreary, overly serious costume dramas with minimal fantasy elements end up being the next big thing in the genre because of House of the Dragon, then I would suggest they give the tale of Turin a shot.
Personally, I liked ROP well enough as it's far above the quality standards of the genre in every respect, but mainly because I thought it got the vibe just right. A lot better than the movies in fact, which felt to me like a D&D module of LOTR instead of actually Tolkienesque if that makes sense.
Agreed on the vibe. It's also quite slow-paced, which isn't a bad thing but requires getting used to.
The scriptwriting on a scene-by-scene basis is pretty terrible though. Important events compressed, unimportant events dragged out. What specially annoyed me was the "tropey" things that slipped in all over the place: a certain character doing a jack sparrow impersonation in numenor, inconsistent with either of his identities. Orcs grabbing people from the back like in horror movies. Extreme-close-up shots of macguffins with characters doing stuff in the back plane (I'm sure this type of scene has a name). The whole thing feels like it was made by a bunch of fresh movie school graduates with no eye for subtlety.
I think I see what you mean, but I'm not sure a story driven by a demigod's curse and involving a dragon and a talking sword has minimal fantasy elements. Granted, a lot less flashy onstage magic than something like Beren and Luthien.
Of course to do either, they'd need to get the Tolkien estate to sell the Silmarillion rights that Amazon's hundreds of millions didn't manage to budge.
The Tale of Túrin Turambar is so depressing, though; there is no happy or even semi-happy ending at all. "Everyone dies" and it's tragedy unfolding and leading into tragedy, like the petals of a poisonous flower unfurling.
Even the very end leads into the sack of Doriath because of the Nauglamír, due to the cursed treasure Húrin flings down as sardonic recompense to Thingol for his 'keeping' of his son. And then Thingol dies, and the Dwarves die, and Dior dies, and the Third Kinslaying happens, and it's one long list of death, misery, and disaster.
Something a little more hopeful would be the story of Túrin's cousin, Tuor.
Turin is definitely the purest tragedy, though the hope in Tuor’s story is ultimately pretty distant, and on the other side of the Fall of Gondolin and that same Third Kinslaying. (Maybe end with a closeup on baby Earendil.)
Beren and Luthien is as close as there is to a story with a happy ending in the First Age, if you close on them together after Mandos. (And don’t spend much thought on what awaits Doriath afterwards.)
It's not Tolkien. That's the trouble. If they did an original fantasy series called "Rings of Power" and had all the black, Hispanic, Asian and otherwise mixed-race Elves, Dwarves and Harfoots they liked frolicking through the flowery meads, nobody would care.
They could have their 'one-expression' lead actress doing her improbable twirly-twirly sword stuff, just so long as they didn't call her Galadriel.
They could have had 'hunky' (personally he's not handsome to my tastes, but whatever) human Demon being all "the power of love has made me want to turn to the light, or at least partner up with you in slaughtering Orcs, since seeing you covered in blood made me go all weak at the knees" to One Expression, so long as it's not meant to be Sauron.
They can have fourth Silmarils and magic mithril out the wazoo, just make up your own terms for these (you're already making everything else up).
But this show is not Tolkien. When they try "epic, high speech" they flounder because they're clearly much more comfortable writing witty one-liners and bantering quipping (not that they can do this well, either, but the kind of jokey, casual, slangy dialogue of modern action movies and Marvel universe is the level they understand), and then they feel the need to invent their own crap out of thin air because the plot they created now demands it.
They don't understand the deeper themes, they don't understand characters that are not cookie-cutter 'antiheroes' from hit TV shows if they need to depict cosmic evil, they can't write to save their lives, and the pacing is abominable.
Really the worst example of world building I’ve ever seen. Surprisingly fans of the books like it. Normally these are the most critical.
Really? all I've seen online and from friends has been criticism
I've learned like life-changing things about autoimmunity and neurodevelopment this week that relate to everything from addiction to diabetes to autism to trans issues and all my neuro friends are not impressed and generally just like "yep, that's the way neuroimmunology works" and I wish I had more non-science friends to talk to about mu opioid receptors during development to.
please write this up, I'd love to know more!
If you ever need a doll that will listen\read very politely and then get mind blown about how Evolution does unbelievable things without direction or planning, I'm here.
I'd be happy to be one of those non-neuro persons who wants to hear about all the life-changing things you learned in neuroimmunology.
Sounds interesting! Reference? Book or blog...?
Seconded
Decoupling from China in all areas except high-tech (with national security considerations) is likely a pipedream. Good thread here about an entrepreneur who tried to move production out of China and into India/Vietnam.
https://twitter.com/stevehouf/status/1584630268953911297
Basically, nothing beats China in efficiency. Large corporations like Apple can take that hit due to massive profits, but companies with razor-thin margins are simply not going to move en masse.
Capitalism has ensured that the most efficient producers is found. If this is dislocated, it would imply that we'll see high inflation for much longer as higher prices in production will invariably have to be matched by higher prices paid by consumers.
Read Tim Cook on China and Tooling engineers. It’s a pipe dream.
I work for a mfg company that sources intermediate inputs from China. We have found alternate sourcing on 15% of Chinese sourced product just this year (going to Vietnam, India, Thailand, Mexico, etc.). Besides its growing geopolitical risk, China is losing its wage competitiveness. Zero COVID policies have been very disruptive on top of that. The desire is for us to get to 0% China-sourced, but it's true it's not easy and may take some time.
Seems right about the short term. But if a few big movers get started, and set up equivalent efficiencies in another location, I don't see any reason why China would have to remain the uniquely most efficient place.
I can see Vietnam doing really well but problem for a lot of other countries is that they haven't really invested much in their vocational education. India is a very good example of this. Most of the education policy is focused on elite universities.
Such decoupling has already been ongoing for a while and is only accelerating. The CCP has also switched from subsidizing integration to encouraging autarky. While there might not be complete decoupling I expect integration to continue to decrease.
What's so special about China ? Population with broadly similar demographics (?) is there in India capitalist autocracy is there in Russia and Brazil. Why can't any one of those be another China if you gave it 20 years like the original China ?
All of those countries have had time to do what China did, but haven’t yet.
But you could have said the same thing about China compared to Japan/Korea/Singapore/Taiwan before.
Not really. You have to start China after Deng and then compare its growth with other developing capitalist countries.
It's an interesting data point, and I'm sure there are indeed lots of headaches with moving out of China. Having said that, Vietnam's wages appear to be about half of China's. And how much is it worth to avoid a total supply chain disruption in the event of military hostilities? There are lots of factors at play. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
It's very common for people around here to say stuff like "I don't care about race" "I don't care whether America becomes majority brown" "It doesn't matter what race the majority of American are in the future" "A person's skin color is the least important thing about them" and so on and so forth. Fair enough.
But if that's how you feel, why was the American colonization of North America an especially bad thing?
It can't be because of the violence - native americans have always been violent against each other, and in many ways colonization was less violent than native american conflicts
It can't be because people lost "their" land - native americans had no problem taking the land that was previously "owned" by other native american nations
It can't be because a majority of the population came to be people with no recent North American ancestry - that's what the outcome of the immigration policies in many countries will be without significant change.
It seems like the only real difference is that the people using violence to take land are of a different race (or "skin color"), which is that thing that's not supposed to matter.
Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones? What if a counterfactual native american nation bought a bunch of guns and explosives from some travelling merchants and devastated their (native american) opponents? Does this now make it as comparably bad?
Sure, Europeans brought in a different culture, but native american nations had different cultures, so its all a matter of degree, not a categorical difference. Europeans brought in a different political system, but what, you would suddenly think that native american conquest becomes as problematic as colonization if they explicitly imposed a different political system? They changed the way of life for these people, but nobody would say that unconquered native americans organically developing science and making technological progress would have been some gravely bad thing.
No, I'm not arguing for anything, this isn't some pretence for my real point, I'm literally trying to understand on what basis colonization of North America was especially bad, and this was mostly spurred on from comments on the Columbus day posts.
If you *don't* view it as especially bad in comparison to other violent conquest, than congratulations, you sir win the internet for today.
I think you need to unpack the "especially bad" in your claim a bit. Like, what specifically are people claiming about the colonization of the Americas, which you think they should not say? Are there people on this site specifically saying things like "The colonization of the Americas was worse than the Hundred Years War," or are they just saying "The violent colonization of the Americas was very bad?"
To me, this looks like recency bias - we've just had a thread on Columbus Day, you see the liberals in that thread talking about why Columbus is terrible, and you go "My god, why are these people obsessed with making sure everyone knows that Columbus was evil?" when the truth is there are *plenty* of evil people liberals would like to remind you about and Columbus is just the one who's currently relevant.
Combine that with the fact that this is an American website, that the conquest of the Americas was completed pretty recently in the grand scheme of things, and that the descendants of the victims of that conquest are *still alive* and dealing with the aftermath of it, and that seems more than adequate to explain why this particular violent conquest gets more attention than say, the Aztec empire, or Genghis Khan.
If that's still not enough to satisfy you, I'd also point out that we generally consider state-vs-ethnicity or state-vs-people violence to be worse than interstate or interpersonal violence, and this is true regardless of which specific race or group it is. For an obvious example, pretty much everyone considers the Holocaust to be uniquely bad, even though many more people died in WWII as a whole.
For a current example, Russia is forcibly relocating Ukrainian citizens in occupied areas, along with other attempts at cultural destruction like destroying monuments and bringing in their own schoolteachers, and that gets at least as much attention as the actual high-intensity warfare happening despite killing many fewer people.
If you don't find either of those surprising, you shouldn't be surprised that people find a deliberate government policy of killing or forcibly relocating an ethnicity in the name of Manifest Destiny to be more evil (or at least more worth criticizing) than whatever inter-tribal conflict it was competing with at the time. For most people, the motive matters just as much as the number of bodies.
>Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones? What if a counterfactual native american nation bought a bunch of guns and explosives from some travelling merchants and devastated their (native american) opponents? Does this now make it as comparably bad?
Yes and yes, and I don't see how this is supposed to be a "gotcha." Mercy is the virtue of the strong - the stronger you are, the more power you have to find a solution which doesn't involve murdering your opponents, and the more you deserve criticism for failing to do so.
Three cheers for beleester's debunking of the gotcha.
Why "can't" it be about violence and forceful mass takings of land? Just because the victims of a crime are criminals themselves doesn't mean I'm not allowed to care about the crime they're a victim of. Especially since I don't think any of their crimes resulted in such large and such quick results.
>Why "can't" it be about violence and forceful mass takings of land?
Because it doesn't explain why it is treated differently to precolonial violence, which is the whole point. Being opposed to colonization makes perfect sense. Treating it as categorically different to other forms of conquest, not so much. Nobody said you can't care about it, the question is why it is cared about so much more than precolonial violence.
And if you're saying it's because of the results of the European violence compared with native americans, fair enough, but does this mean you think having more power makes means you are bound by different ethical standards? Fair enough if you do.
I think it's as simple as a question of ownership. The colonial conquest is seen as _our_ crime, specifically, because it was over the land we still occupy, and done by the state that we more or less still love under, and also more vaguely because it was done by figures we still revere as part of a historical period we still feel a sense of collective pride in. All of that makes the colonial conquest something that is relevant to us, specifically.
It sounds like you hear people expressing regret of our treatment of the natives, and assuming that their silence on other matters (i.e. precolonial conquest) means tacit acceptance?
I think that's actually an interesting topic for debate, honestly. What does it mean to apply today's standards of morality to an earlier age? Can one be consistent in regretting their ancestor's actions without also passing some kind of implicit judgment on other actors of that age? And what does this mean for 'reparations' - if we were to try to make things right (i.e. give land back to a tribe) but had evidence that that land had previously been taken from some other tribe, what is our moral obligation? Or does it render the whole exercise silly?
I think these are interesting questions, honestly. But I'm not sure those are the questions you're asking.
> because it was over the land we still occupy, and done by the state that we more or less still love under, and also more vaguely because it was done by figures we still revere as part of a historical period we still feel a sense of collective pride in.
This doesn't explain the fact that the left feel similarly (if not worse) about African colonialism despite:
- Not land still occupied by the colonizers
- Not done by the state we live under
- Not done by revered historical figures
- Not part of a proud period of history
>It sounds like you hear people expressing regret of our treatment of the natives, and assuming that their silence on other matters (i.e. precolonial conquest) means tacit acceptance?
Yes, it is acceptance. If you only talk about one part of two related things, you only care about that part. Which is fine, but I just don't see a non-racial justification for it, implicit or explicit, which isn't consistent with a lot of people here's views on race.
I don't think I'm the person you're arguing against, but if I were to steelman this thinking, I could make two arguments.
First, the sense of greater outrage against European colonizers is a softer form of what I said above. It comes from a sense of _kinship_, though not direct ownership. For example, if my brother murdered someone, I would probably feel differently about that than a random murder committed by someone I didn't know. If I saw the victim's family walking down the street, I would be a lot more likely to feel bad than I would for the random victim's family. And since a lot of us here in the US and the West more generally relate to those traditional Western powers, there's a transference of guilt that isn't directly racial.
Second - I think you're overlooking the possibility of just plain ignorance. We know a lot about what various colonial powers did in Africa because it happened with a lot of documentation. We know much less about, say, the Bantu expansion.
Now if you hypothesize someone who has full knowledge of everything, and no particular connection to the white colonizers, but who still treats those colonizers as uniquely evil, then yeah, I'd agree there's some racial animus there. But I don't think that's representative of a dominant variety of thought.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that more power means different ethical standards - it’s that with more power your goodnesses and flaws matter more, and are more worth dwelling on.
An entirely one edged sword, of course.
I guess I win the internet, then. Colonization of North America by Europeans doesn't seem worse than the colonizations, wars, & exterminations that are the stuff of history, sort of the way shaping and reconnecting pieces of a material is the stuff of building. Here I am living peacefully on top of the stack of bones, ambitions and screams that is history, and the worst thing I've done in the last 10 years is be a dick occasionally on Reddit & Twitter -- plus, of course, fail to be very upset about the stack of bones, ambitions and screams my house is built on, and fail to opt out of enjoying various activities and possessions that are made possible by the labor of poor people who live under harsh conditions. Life is strange.
Well said.
For clarity, is it your perspective that the colonization of the Americas was "not bad" or merely "not especially bad when compared to other historic instances of violent conquest?" There's a rather large violent-conquesty gap between the two.
It's all bad. My point is why people treat them as monumentally different.
So that being the case:
(1) What is the historical instance of violent conquest you would consider a parallel to the colonization of the Americas which is not getting the kind of attention the colonization is;
(2) Do you think the flaw is (a) your parallel isn't getting the attention it should, or (b) the colonization is getting too much; and,
(3) Why did you choose 2(a) or 2(b)?
1. The sum total of all precolonial native american violence between nations
2. My question is around understanding the liberal view here. If you think white people bad and brown people good, then focusing only on colonization makes sense, but that doesn't work if you say that race doesn't matter.
I think that while some people strive to be race-blind, fewer people strive to be culture-blind. So one could find efforts to eradicate one culture bad even irregardless of changes to the racial distribution of the population. Of course, cultures change naturally over time, merge or split apart and so on. There is little point to bemoan the fact that the Assyrian culture has not survived unchanged to the present day.
With regard of native Americans, I don't think that the argument is that before Columbus, the first nations made up 100% of the population of the Americas, and today they are a tiny minority in the US. It was the details of how that happened which made it a bad thing.
>I think that while some people strive to be race-blind, fewer people strive to be culture-blind. So one could find efforts to eradicate one culture bad even irregardless of changes to the racial distribution of the population.
My contention is if that a Native American nation became powerful enough to conquer all others and ended up doing this, it would not be talked about the way colonization is. This is likely because seemingly nobody has any kind of problem with Zulus committing genocide against native south africans despite this being a much worse crime than anything that happened under apartheid
> My contention is if that a Native American nation became powerful enough to conquer all others and ended up doing this, it would not be talked about the way colonization is.
Well, I for one regard the Aztecs as just as evil as Colonialism. The reason they are not talked about as much is probably the same reason why the Norse and Danish colonialism [0] in England is seldom talked about: it happened in the more distance past, and there are no clear continuities between the perpetrators and any present day governments.
[0] https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/
>>>details of how that happened
You mean germ theory?
These things contributed a tiny percentage of the population decline of Native North Americans. And for what feels like the hundreth time now, Native Americans had no qualms butchering each other, so violence against native americans per se *cannot* be the cause of treating colonization as especially bad.
No, I'm not. You're listing examples of violence against native americans and then treating them as special.
Rounding errors.
Not calling those actions humane or acceptable - although the horror some is vastly overstated - but they were the result of the 95% population crash that left the rest unable to exert cultural power.
A majority of the decline in native american population was a result of disease and outbreeding.
> But if that's how you feel, why was the American colonization of North America an especially bad thing?
> It can't be because of the violence - native americans have always been violent against each other, and in many ways colonization was less violent than native american conflicts
...
> Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones?
For my personal position, this is correct. It's trite but true: with great power comes great responsibility. If a native american tribe had somehow managed to negotiate an exclusive trading relationship with all europeans and then used that tech edge to conquer, rape and pillage their way across the continent over the next 200 years, they would also have been far worse than the atrocities committed by native american tribes against each other in our world.
I also think that the Aztec in particular were not notably less evil than the conquistadors. They also conquered a large chunk of the neighborhood and committed endless atrocities against their population.
+1
To paraphrase James Carville, It's the genocide, stupid.
1. If your answer is that people with more power are bound by different moral standards, that's a perfectly fine answer.
2. However, my claim was that a native american nation with the power to be genocidal probably would have been (e.g. they somehow bought guns and explosives), and importantly, I do not believe that this "genocide" would have been talked about in the way that European colonization is.
My main piece of evidence in favor of this claim is the fact that Zulus in South Africa essentially commit genocide against the ethnic groups that were there prior, and I have literally seen no left-wing talk about how this was A) even something resembling a genocide or B) an especially grave historical injustice. The Zulus are, if anything , venerated by black nationalist sorts and nobody seems to have a problem with this. Meanwhile, European colonizers did stuff that was much less bad than this and yet their actions are literally seen as some of the worst in human history.
1. Pretty much. I'd probably quibble about the phrasing there, but I'm a quibbler.
2.
>However, my claim was that a native american nation with the power to be genocidal probably would have been (e.g. they somehow bought guns and explosives),
I think this is overstated. I think you can say that of *some* of the first nations (the Iroquois for example, have a genocide under their belts) but not others. Same as with European nations.
> and importantly, I do not believe that this "genocide" would have been talked about in the way that European colonization is.
And here I think you're right but also wrong, because you think this is out of some form of liberal hypocrisy, and I think it's not.
Let me elaborate. We didn't talk about European colonization the way we do now until pretty recently. For generations the story was the conquering of a wilderness from a savage and heathen people. Then, for like, a generation or two (1910s/20s? to 1970s/80s?), the natives became sympathetic, and it was talked about as the passing of a primitive people for a more civilized one. Sad, but inevitable. (This one is interesting because if you drive through places like the Dakotas and look at the historical markers, you can see the difference in eras and attitudes by how the story is told.* ) Sometime into the 80s or 90s we started to understand the story of European colonization as genocide, as a wrong done by *us* to someone else. (As an aside, I think you are in that second school, where colonization was sad but inevitable, and you resent that the common understanding has changed. I may be overreading.)
So, in the counterfactual world of the Iroquois States of America (or whoever), how the genocides that built that country would be talked about would depend a great deal on who those people were. If they retained the same cultural values that led to the genocide, they wouldn't fret about it. If their moral development (or degradation!) followed the same same path as ours, the conversation would be about the same, I think.
>My main piece of evidence in favor of this claim is the fact that Zulus in South Africa essentially commit genocide against the ethnic groups that were there prior, and I have literally seen no left-wing talk about how this was A) even something resembling a genocide or B) an especially grave historical injustice.
So, a couple of things here. The American left wing talks about European colonization this way, but that's because this is our country. But we don't *really* talk about Australia, or the Belgian Congo, or wherever, at anything like a deep level. We do talk about them some, for the same reason as the France/Africa distinction drawn last time: the modern left sees itself as part of the first world, and what the Belgians did in the Congo or the British/Australians did there is at least somewhat relevant. No one knows what the Zulus did in the before times, or the Ethiopians, or the Mongols (other than Genghis Khan was pretty badass, right?) or, for that matter, the Iroquois or the Comanche. They aren't *us*, for most values of us, so we aren't interested. You keep trying to draw sweeping logical inconsistencies from differences in attitudes that pretty much have to do with distance and interest.
But, there is another factor. Navel gazing about historical wrongs we've committed is the luxury of success. In the very weird counterfactual where we somehow lose WWII, and Germany conquers the East up to the Appalachians and Japan the West up to the Rockies, European colonization is barely ever talked about and the conversation never goes past "sad, but inevitable", IMO. Instead the national conversation would be much more focused on the lost lands, the unjust oppression of our conquerors and their faults and misdeeds. No one is talking about the Zulu or Iroquois historical crimes because there is no Zululand or Iroquois state.
*Voyageur National Park on the Minnesota/Canada border, then west across North Dakota to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (the only one named after a person), then south to Rapid City and the Black Hills. Excellent road trip, highly recommended.
>So, in the counterfactual world of the Iroquois States of America (or whoever), how the genocides that built that country would be talked about would depend a great deal on who those people were. If they retained the same cultural values that led to the genocide, they wouldn't fret about it. If their moral development (or degradation!) followed the same same path as ours, the conversation would be about the same, I think.
I mean if the liberal posters on ACX somehow still existed in this counterfactual world (living in Europe or something) with identical values, I'm saying they wouldn't be talking about this the way they talk about European colonization.
>They aren't *us*, for most values of us, so we aren't interested. You keep trying to draw sweeping logical inconsistencies from differences in attitudes that pretty much have to do with distance and interest.
This is trivially false!!
The American left were losing their minds over apartheid and demanded the US government do everything in their power to see it ended.
You can't play the "it's not our country so we don't care" card, YOU DID CARE!
>No one is talking about the Zulu or Iroquois historical crimes because there is no Zululand or Iroquois state.
We're STILL talking about apartheid to this day. And the apartheid government should be seen as a godsend to Africa for stopping the genocidal Zulus, so yes, the actions of the Zulus are even more relevant than those of precolonial native americans.
>I mean if the liberal posters on ACX somehow still existed in this counterfactual world (living in Europe or something) with identical values, I'm saying they wouldn't be talking about this the way they talk about European colonization.
The liberal posters on counterfactual ACX would be Iroquois, and I think they would talk about their past in pretty much the same way we talk about ours. People or people, more or less. At least, IMO.
>This is trivially false!!
>The American left were losing their minds over apartheid and demanded the US government do everything in their power to see it ended.
>You can't play the "it's not our country so we don't care" card, YOU DID CARE!
Two things:
1) That was current events. We also cared about Ethiopian famine and the Syrian civil war. Lots of things make the news. We *were* talking about how we teach and understand history.
2) South Africa was, at least in some since, the outpost of European colonialism in de-colonised Africa. So even given that this is changing the subject from history to the news, it's still not a great counterpoint. South Africa was still kinda us. Not in the same since of Britain or Canada, but more so than Kenya or Ecuador. If memory serves, one of the big things from that era was a hit song from Bono about not playing Sun City, a big South African tourist destination.
>We're STILL talking about apartheid to this day.
No one we aren't. The last time I remember it coming up at all was that Morgan Freeman / Matt Damon movie. Is this really still a thing in your bubble? It seems weird that it would be more current in what I assume is a much redder bubble than mine.
>And the apartheid government should be seen as a godsend to Africa for stopping the genocidal Zulus, so yes, the actions of the Zulus are even more relevant than those of precolonial native americans.
This seems like it's the heart of your argument, and I just don't see how it makes any sense. A paraphrase might be: yes, the white South Africans of the 1970s were bad, but the Zulus of the 1870s were way worse, so you shouldn't criticise them. Since you are criticising them I conclude that you're a hypocrite who only cares about race.
You're entitled to your opinion of course, but it's not at all a good understanding of how people with opinions different from you actually think.
This is an extremely heterodox view that you're probably accepting because it aligns with YOUR narratives, ironic considering your accusations of the same against people you disagree with.
I hadn't heard about alleged cannibalism, just the waging flower-wars to capture sacrificial victims (and maintain dominance over subordinate rulers), cutting out hearts wholesale, beating children so they wept for the rain god, racks of skulls and flaying skins off the victims for the priests to wear stuff.
I'm so glad to hear they weren't cannibals, that would have been really naughty!
Lakes full of bones seem to have been Mayan, not Aztec:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlymiller/2019/08/09/skulls-analyzed-from-the-mayan-sacred-cenote-show-that-human-sacrifices-were-sourced-from-far-and-wide-across-mexico-in-1000-ad/?sh=2d5e1a94e8b7
To be honest, I wasn't aware of the cannibalism. Possibly I'd read about it and forgot; I'm not especially fussed about cannibalism. The issue is all the ritualistic murder. I've always been a bit skeptical about how awful the deaths actually were (seems a bit too movie-cliche/optimized for western audience horror) but we know there were a lot of them. We have the skeletons.
Another lamentable thing is the loss of their culture. Perhaps more so in the Aztec, Maya and Inka empires. They had a culture, engineering knowledge, literature and poetry, and a whole way of thinking, which were completely eradicated.
Oh, and arguably the mass slaughtering of buffaloes went far beyond what native tribes did to each other. (But there was that tribe which completely destroyed the ecosystem in one region. Anyone remember that story?)
From today's point of view, having the USA as a liberal democracy is a very positive outcome. But still, the land-taking could have been done more humanely and with less genocide. But as others have said, today we have a higher morale standard than 500 years ago.
For what it's worth, SJWs are *against* saying "I don't see race". I think they'd call it white privilege.
I'm not talking about SJWs. They explicitly think white people are bad, hence why colonization is the worst thing in history. I'm saying that a lot of people around here say they don't care about race, and if you don't then I struggle to see why colonization was *especially* bad.
As other people have pointed out elsewhere, you're confusing real SJWs with the imaginary strawmen you've made up in your head.
Yeah, this seems like a defining feature of SJWism (or whatever you want to call it) relative to older liberalism on race. Most people I knew in (say) the 1990s, both liberal and conservative, thought people should ignore race and focus on individual traits--don't worry if your neighbor is black or hispanic or Jewish or whatever, just care whether or not he keeps his lawn mowed and whether he has loud parties and such. I mean this was the sort of thing you'd hear from Reagan Republicans as well as Clinton Democrats. And mostly the same for sexual preference and such--who cares whether my employee is a lesbian, I just want her to get the work done.
This still seems to be a common position among most Republicans, including the more populist/right-wing end of Republicans. I think Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson would all sign on to that basic way of looking at race. But the modern SJW/progressive/successor ideology view on this is that being race blind is just another kind of privilege, and that everyone is obliged to be super race-conscious. It's not enough to just not be racist, you must be antiracist or you're just maintaining the system of white supremacy.
Now, personally, I think this is both morally a bad way to look at the world, and practically a terrible thing to get everyone obsessed about in as diverse a society as ours. My guess is that this rhetoric largely falls out of the interests of various racial activists--for a random black or hispanic dude, obsessing about race is counterproductive and dumb, but for someone whose job at a billionaire-funded NGO is based on being a racial activist, making race the most salient thing in everyone's mind is how he keeps his job and establishes his relevance.
I think you're conflating what people think with what they say they think when challenged.
An awful lot of people who claim to think that "people should ignore race and focus on individual traits" also, in different conversations, actively defend the idea that e.g. race should be a factor in who the police stop and search, or pull over, or oppose attempts to reduce the extent to which it is.
And things like identical-resume studies prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that, whatever people said, discrimination against black people was very, very common in the 90s and is still not nearly rare enough.
In practice, it depends on which argument would generate the most bang for the bucks. If the facts on the ground support or seem to support the "I don't care about race" view, like for example non-whites being objectively better in some sense of the word at something, then Wokies will (if unconsciously) adopt the race-blind view and argue out of metrics and outcomes.
Why is your "white-brown reversed" counterpart to "browning" (which by my understanding, stems from a difference in immigration and childbirth rates) an event that you yourself describe as "violent conquest"?
Seems to me that the better question would be "how do self-proclaimed race-blind people feel about my alt history novel where the European colonists simply *immigrated into* the various native nations en masse instead of trying to carve out colonies, causing a 'whitening' across the continent as various immigrant groups' cultures and genes mingle with the various native nations?"
No need to get sidetracked by silly objections like "but violence is bad!", and you get a fun book (series) out of it to boot.
>Why is your "white-brown reversed" counterpart to "browning" (which by my understanding, stems from a difference in immigration and childbirth rates) an event that you yourself describe as "violent conquest"?
It's not. My point is that if you don't care about race, I don't see any reason to treat colonial violence as categorically different to precolonial violence.
I don't think it was a bad thing. Beyond the obligatory Mayans/Aztecs bad, we're all so disconnected from anybody 500 years ago that I feel equally disconnected from all of them, and don't really care.
But my impression is that very few people would say they both don't see race and are sad about native americans. IMO that's normally a right wing response /dodge
As far as I can tell, the history of just about every piece of land on Earth is written in blood--conquests, massacres, enslavements, ethnic cleansing, rape, burning, looting, etc. This is just how humans are.
It's interesting to imagine other ways the settlement of the Americans could have happened. Given the way disease spread, it's hard to imagine American Indians not being heavily displaced, but who knows?
Not that they don't see race, but that the "browning" of America is irrelevant, which seems to be the most common view amongst the "reasonable" ratsphere left wingers. Normie shitlibs obviously care about race and think that colonization is bad because of white people.
I'm not entirely sure I understand the connection between your two points. ETA: Or rather, I see the connection you're trying to draw, but I don't agree that the basis of most people's concern about the conquest of the Americas is that it was done by white folks against Indians.
The violence against Native Americans is especially concerning to me because it was committed by my nation, for the explicit purpose of conquest and expansion, which is, in my view, immoral.
And it has been followed up with several centuries of mistreatment, prejudice and attempts at cultural genocide. Which, again, is not unique, but is still wrong and of greater concern to me as it was done by my nation.
If I was British, I like to think I'd feel basically the same way about the treatment of the Irish, despite both of them being white, from an American perspective. There's plenty of other examples, but most of them break down because at a certain point the country that committed the crime no longer really exists (is the CCP responsible for the actions of the Qing Dynasty? Probably not.).
"Is the CCP responsible for the actions of the previous governments of China?" They are the successor state. They took ownership of the various treaties that previous governments had signed, and demanded Hong Kong back on that basis, so they're as responsible for previous Chinese governments as eg. the current British government is for previous British governments of similar antiquity.
Yes we are responsible to uphold territorial agreements.
If I have work done on my house, and skip out without paying, the physical property actually owes the debt.
Eh, I haven't looked at the legal question and don't really care about the intricacies of international law. My response is based on personal morality/ethics. I do think when a country entirely overthrows the previous government the new country is not thereby morally culpable for previous immoral actions (though it's also not 'entitled' to pride in previous moral or 'glorious' ones). This isn't the only model people use, so someone who identified as Han Chinese rather than Chinese might operate under an entirely separate set of responsibilities/glories.
I think this probably applies even in cases of incomplete overthrow. So, and here's a place I may annoy the left, rather than the right, I do think the US Civil War throws real doubt on the responsibility of the current United States for the slave trade and slavery. Now, it's definitely responsible for Jim Crow and various other things.
But that's my thinking out loud attempt to identify why I politically feel that the Conquest of America matters to me more than the Conquest of Ireland.
I think for long-lasting organizations it doesn't really make sense to hold them morally responsible for actions from centuries in the past. The US government did some nasty stuff to American Indians in the past. But every single person who did those things, everyone who ordered them, and just about everyone who even voted for them is now dead. Certainly there's no continuity of decision-makers. Why does it make sense to speak of a moral responsibility for things done long ago by long-dead men landing on living people now?
It may make sense to speak of financial or diplomatic or legal obligations of the US government w.r.t. long-ago actions, but moral responsibility seems like it has to do with individual humans, not large organizations. (And certainly not huge amorphous groups like "white people" or "white Americans.")
>> I think for long-lasting organizations it doesn't really make sense to hold them morally responsible for actions from centuries in the past.
Why not? Don't they lay claim the benefits of those actions? Assuming the US government is going to continue to assert the right to control land and the population on it by virtue of its past actions, why should the benefits not come with the costs (especially when the costs seem to just amount to some boilerplate land acknowledgement statement that 75% of your audience isn't even listening to anyway)?
Which is why I didn't speak of white people at all? My referent is to citizens of a nation, which yes, retain both glories and shames which extend beyond the life of any of its individual members.
The people from 150 years ago weren't 'your people.' Even though you come from the same turf, under the same flag, they didn't share your thoughts and values. You have about as much connection with them as you do with the 5,200 year old bronze age man discovered on the Italian border.
You probably would like to style yourself as a 19th century Republican abolitionist, but that's probably fantasy too.
If you're aggrieved by something done by someone who doesn't share your values, your probably just looking to be aggrieved.
> The people from 150 years ago weren't 'your people.' Even though you come from the same turf, under the same flag, they didn't share your thoughts and values. You have about as much connection with them as you do with the 5,200 year old bronze age man discovered on the Italian border.
Agree to disagree. As a (nominally German) European, I think that from the point of view of a prehistoric man, the thoughts and values of me and a mainstream person of 1852 would be virtually indistinguishable. The scientific method, industrialization, a general belief in human progress. Enlightenment. Rule of law.
Of course, there would be plenty of stuff I would vehemently disagree on when discussing ideas with the 1852 German (antisemitism, militarism, nationalism, perhaps communism, colonialism, the wisdom of burning coal, the role of women in society, sexual liberty, vegetarianism) but our ideas would at least be mutually understandable -- if not exactly in each others Overton window.
Language barriers aside, most of these ideas would be literally inconceivable to the 3200 BCE man:
"Should some rights also be applied to non-human animals?"
- "What are rights?"
"Do you believe that women should have the right to vote?"
- "What is 'vote'?"
"What is your position on the alienation of workers due to the industrial revolution"
- "??"
"Do you agree that the rents are to damn high?"
- "What are rents?"
"I would vehemently disagree on when discussing ideas with the 1852 German (antisemitism, militarism, nationalism, perhaps communism, colonialism, the wisdom of burning coal, the role of women in society, sexual liberty, vegetarianism) "
As a common person aligned with contemporary morality of today, you'd most likely hold the most common 1850's contemporary views on these positions.
If you're not a 'hair-shirt' in today's world, you'd not very likely be a 'hair-shirt' in the 1850s world ... instead, you'd hold the contemporary values.
Where would you stand on the formation of The Prussian Federation vs The German Confederation? Did those Jews cause the economic collapse? The Industrial Revolution is just beginning, and you can now have a nice coal-oil burning lamp in your home, and sell off the trusty whale oil lamp. Coal is reduced in price enough, that you might actually have energy to heat your house, not just cook your meals. Little known to you, the little-ice-age is ending in 13 years and glaciers will no longer mow down people's homes. Do women have a place??? Yes, in the home raising children and cooking. When you're cooking over coal or wood, you don't just click on the heat. Cooking and cleaning is an all day job. There's no electric washer nor drier, the woman washes in a wooden tub with water she heated on the stove. She plans her day around trying to wash and dry the clothing, keep the kids fed. The cost of food is more than half your budget, not a scrap goes to waste. There is no 'role for women in society' women are captive in the house, their best hope is her parents made a favorable marriage arrangement. There is no 'vegetarianism', there is only eating, trying to control your parasite load, avoid catching a chill, stay away from people who have the pox, always on the watch for 'the evil eye.'
The entertaining truth is that someone at the rightmost 10% of the US political spectrum today, somehow finding themselves in 1820, would be the most absolutely out-there flaming liberal around.
A far right American would find themselves the flaming liberal in Eastern Europe, Africa, or Asia.
I'm not aggrieved, I am part of a nation-state which is responsible for its past (and current) actions. I also wasn't part of the Iraq war, and indeed opposed it, but that doesn't absolve the nation of its responsibility for that action.
Now, to be clear, I don't wander around with a hairshirt on, nor am I giving up my property so a tribe can get some land back, but yes, I do care more about things done by my nation than I do about things done by nations of which I am not a part.
As for the rest of your mind reading...I'm just going to leave it at, don't quit your day job, dude.
Yes, it sucks to be the vanquished. One branch of my family was granted 35,000 acres (Between Napa & Sacramento) by the Spanish government. Then came those pesky Americans who stole it yet again. Of course the Spanish stole it from the Miwoks, who stole it from previous Natives, who stole it from other previous Natives, ad infinitum ...
And next week the Chinese could invade and steal it yet again.
Are you implying that in the absence of a straightforward solution, a moral problem ceases to be a moral problem?
If land was stolen, but it's impracticable to give it back or pay for it, it doesn't make the land *not* stolen, nor does it mean we can't acknowledge its having been stolen. The world may not be able to do anything about the genocide one branch of my family tree was subjected to and narrowly survived, but the fact that there's no clean solution or reparation to be had doesn't mean the issue just has to magically cease being discussed or remembered.
Yeah, the obvious problem here is when are you setting the bar for 'this person had legitimate ownership and all subsequent transfers are illegitimate.' Because basically all historic land transfers have their origin in violence, except the literal first expansion of humanity and I think you'll have a hard time properly tracing folks.
>but I don't agree that the basis of most people's concern about the conquest of the Americas is that it was done by white folks against Indians.
Perhaps not, but the question is precisely, if not that then what? I've listed some common reasons given and why I feel they're invalid, so you need to explain either why they're not invalid, or what the real, non-race explanation is.
And I think in many cases this basis is not explicit or conscious. I certainly think their is some bias people have against Europeans, hence why colonization and the Atlantic slave trade are almost unviersally hated in a way that non-white conquest and the much larger non-atlantic-slave-trade part of the African slave trade are not.
>The violence against Native Americans is especially concerning to me because it was committed by my nation, for the explicit purpose of conquest and expansion, which is, in my view, immoral
Okay, and my point was why is this any different to native american conquest?
And native americans today consider it especially bad, and it wasn't their nation who did it, so your ancestry seems kind of irrelevant.
>And it has been followed up with several centuries of mistreatment, prejudice and attempts at cultural genocide.
Well, the end result of being on the losing side of native american conquest was most likely death, not mistreatment, so again I have to ask, why is colonization bad RELATIVE to what happened in north america before colonization?
The question isn't whether colonization was bad. It's why it's treated as being especially bad.
>If I was British, I like to think I'd feel basically the same way about the treatment of the Irish, despite both of them being white, from an American perspective.
But the oppression of the Irish by the English is widely accepted as a grave historical injustice, so I don't see how it's comparable.
I'm actively confused by this response? As an American citizen I do feel a sense of responsibility for the actions of my nation and a sense of duty to attempt to remedy the wrongs committed by it.
Now, feel free to call this navel gazing, or self-flagellating, or whatever, but I thought I was extremely clear that I am not a member of any Native American tribe, which is why I care more about US-tribal conquests than tribal-tribal conquests (though I don't care 0 about them, the Comanche Empire is a fascinating, but horrifying book on such conquests, if you're curious).
As for why Native Americans consider it especially bad...come on. At this point it appears to me that you're being willfully obtuse. Of course the Native Americans consider the things which actually happen to their ancestors and continue to have negative impacts on them down to the present to be worse then hypothetical things which didn't (note, under your model the conquered didn't have heirs, so there's no one to mourn them, this model is incomplete at best, but answers its own question).
I'm fairly sure the Irish care more about British mistreatment of them then they do about their internal wars prior to British involvement, even though those wars undoubtedly involved horrible crimes and actions.
"But the oppression of the Irish by the English is widely accepted as a grave historical injustice, so I don't see how it's comparable."
You don't? But my argument is that the treatment of the Native Americans is a historical injustice, which I (and Americans generally) should be particularly concerned with as it was carried out by our people and government and continues to have ongoing negative effects to the present day. My statement is not that it's the worst thing ever (anymore than the treatment of the Irish was) but that it was a wrong committed by my government and people and therefore of major concern to me.
And, to be clear, regardless of your personal opinion, American treatment of the Native Tribes is in fact widely accepted as a grave historical injustice.
Moreover, the fact that English treatment of the Irish is accepted as a grave historical injustice undercuts what seems to be your underlying argument, that the real issue here is racial.
Finally, you seem to want to give equal weight to hypothetical actions which could have occurred to the ones which actually did occur, which is pretty silly in my view.
And I just remembered you're the same guy who ran the African borders->Diversity->Immigration thread in the last open thread...I should not have responded to this bait.
Have a good one.
So to be clear, "bait" is anything you disagree with?
On the off chance I was wrong, no bait is not everything I disagree with, as you can see if you review my comments throughout this thread.
I call this bait because between the last thread and this one it appears to me that you have a pattern of behavior of:
1) Making up a position for liberals/democrats to hold.
2) Finding, or making up a second position for liberals/democrats to hold.
3) Saying they're in conflict.
4) Challenging people to explain why they aren't.
5) Then revealing that you don't actually care about the object level debate over either of the positions or the factual underpinnings, but rather either wanted to debate something else altogether, or just wanted to call the outgroup hypocrites.
Which, yes, frankly reads as trolling to me. Clearly others find engaging with you worthwhile, but I do not and so will not be doing so after this comment.
Have a good one.
The best heuristic is the one I mentioned above -- treat everything as bait, and interact with it if you find it fun to do so. Life is short, why are you on the internet arguing with people if it's not fun?
You might very well be right in your assessment of Jason's posts. In a very real sense, we can't rely on introspection to judge our own character, and have to look at a record of our actions. He might be wrong about his own posts. But certainly you can save a lot of time if you just adopt a different overall strategy.
First rule of the internet, grasshopper: everything is bait, even in the comment section of one of the smartest bloggers on this series of tubes.
Agree. I feel worse about the harms done by “my” group. That it’s perhaps not “especially” bad compared to other extremely bad things is not very relevant to me.
Also, OP, your reasoning does come across as motivated despite the disclaimer.
Okay, then why don't native americans feel worse about their ancestors killing other native americans than they do about colonization, because it was "their" group?
I grew up in America with people teaching me that America is land of the free, worthy of the role of moral policeman because we implement policy based on the highest ethical standards. I think some segments of society are still indoctrinating youth with these beliefs. Then it bothers me that ' my group' has acted like the immoral apes we are, and I feel the need to complain about my ancestors behavior. I am a liberal elitist, so I have this subtle feeling that slave holding Arabs were less enlightened than me, therefore they can't be blamed for having slaves and castrating them.
>I think some segments of society are still indoctrinating youth with these beliefs.
And I think this is neither unique, nor would its absence make you care less about colonization.
>I am a liberal elitist, so I have this subtle feeling that slave holding Arabs were less enlightened than me, therefore they can't be blamed for having slaves and castrating them.
That's....admirable of you to admit.
I think that nearly all cultures and ape teams has their subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways of riding the high horse, western ones are not special in thinking that they're special, not at all.
In some Islamic circles, you will get very offended looks if you dare to suggest that Islam never thought of abolition and that it needed the western abolitionists dragging it along to make it happen. No, Islam *Has* Thought Of Abolitionism, It Just Prefered To Make It Gradual So No Civil Wars Happen. (never mind that Islam descended into civil war almost as soon as Muhamed was buried, then once again about 3-4 decades later over what we now call the Sunni-Shia divide.) So here is a culture that maintained and supported and actively thrived on slavery for ~1400 years, and still has the balls to *take credit* for its abolition.
I also think - just a personal attitude - that previous sin makes for better priests. As a personal example, I managed to stop eating all variants of meat and chicken since about 2 or 3 years ago. Sometimes when my friends and family want to embarrass me, they mention the fact that I was a ravenous meat lover before, but Joke On Them, this kinda makes me secretly proud. Beginning Astray then correcting to the Right Path takes more energy than being born on the Right Path. Yes, it was terrible that I ate all those animals before finally figuring out how things work, but I'm not responsible for the indoctrination that my environment did to me to convince me that it's okay, but *I'm* responsible for the thinking and the moral reasoning that I did to break the indoctrination.
All of which to say, I neither understand self-flagellating westerners nor self-congraulating westerners. The distribution of things-to-be-proud-of vs. things-to-be-ashamed-of is well within the error bounds. Much worse cultures can be proud and gloating, I think the excessive self-criticism coming from some tribes in America is not actually sincere, kinda like a humble brag (e.g. "oh, don't mind the car, it's just a 2 million dollar Ferrari that is one of 3 of its kind, the mirrors are a bit dirty") Either that or that it has turned into some kind of religion.
I don’t know. I’m just telling you how I feel. It seems like you expect everyone to change their perspectives because you came up with a perceived gotcha. Different people think about these things differently, and I’m sure there are people out there for whom it is about skin color. Or power imbalance. Or because they don’t believe Native Americans were actually equally violent. Etc., etc.
>It seems like you expect everyone to change their perspectives because you came up with a perceived gotcha.
I asked as good faith question for an explanation of liberal beliefs. Isn't it implicit in all arguments you expect everyone else to change their beliefs?
And pointing our perceived contradictions is not a gotcha. It's something that needs explaining.
I’m looking forward to The Onion article for this headline.
The only way this is true is if you think the colonization of North America and precolonial conquests in North America are treated more or less identically. You are simply living in some weird little bubble if you think this is true. I have literally never seen anybody talk negatively about precolonial violence in North America and certainly not as categorically similar to colonization, whereas the colonization of North America is something brought up almost constantly in left-wing American discourse.
Look Jason, I think there is kernel of merit in your feeling here, but you are taking this way too far.
Did Elizabeth Warren know deep down she wasn’t 1/256 Iroquois? Probably.
Are people who insist on pausing for a moment of silence to remember the Lakota Sioux who used to live on this spot before a concert commences at a U of MN auditorium being ridiculous? Yes I think the are.
I haven’t been on social media for a long time so i don’t know what The Woke are nattering about. Most of it is probably ridiculous as well. The thing is Twitter is not the same as the world.
You are putting together a hypothetical liberal based on unsound evidence here. Taking the worst part of each Tweeter and composing a representative straw man to beat.
The people that get the most followers are the ones that say the most outrageous stuff.
Facebook algorithms were put together to grab eyeballs. They did this by making one half the country hate the other half. Do I need to say this is not a good thing? Making money by generating hatred and contempt for ‘Them’? Let’s try to make a good faith effort to understand each other rather than gearing up for war.
Oh, and pre Colonial violence was bad too.
>You are putting together a hypothetical liberal based on unsound evidence here. Taking the worst part of each Tweeter and composing a representative straw man to beat.
Nope, that is false in a trivial way.
The worst part of tweeters is hating white people and only caring about colonialism accordingly.
>The people that get the most followers are the ones that say the most outrageous stuff.
I literally said Im talking about people ON HERE, and they're not saying anything outrageous.
What I am saying they're doing is having an especially bad view of one thing for reasons I do not see as clear unless they think race factors into it.
How you're so confused by this is beyond me.
Fine me a SINGLE INSTANCE of it then. You are living in a bubble if you think precolonial and colonial violence are treated remotely similarly.
American Colonies, Alan Taylor.
It's where I learned about the Iroquois-Huron war that ended with the Iroquois absorbing everyone who wasn't killed.
Or, for that matter, the wikipedia page on the Beaver Wars.
>Not counting all the ones in this thread?
That doesn't count unless it comes up during discussions of colonialism in the first place, because my whole point is that it doesn't make sense to view colonialism as especially bad unless you think race factors into it.
Because again, that's my whole question: Why is colonialism treated as worse than precolonial violence? Why is not merely one in a long line of conquests that happened to me more successful? Race is the obvious answer, but many people here claim not to care about race.
If one's objection to violence is moral, I'm not sure there's a lot of distinction to draw between "this tribe is OK with sneaking up on some wandering member of another tribe, smashing his skull with a hatchet, and bringing home the scalp to prove your manhood and take revenge for last week's theft of some meat" and "this tribe is OK with shooting 50 people out of a group of 2,000 who decline to evacuate their homes when told to."
I mean, unless one is an unimaginative utilitarian, who measures moral evil only by quantity, never quality.
Speaking as an unimaginative utilitarian, I think we sure do measure evil by quality. We just sum it up.
The alternative would basically be the World of Darkness Humanity scale, where basically your worst action ever determines your rating, and it does not matter much whether you murder 5 people or 20.
I think that in most peoples minds, the reality is somewhat of a mix between the these two extremes. We don't hold a triple murderer in three times as low regard as a single murderer (and may even hold them in higher regard if the single murder was particularly gruesome), but the people we consider most evil (Hitler, Stalin and the like) still got to their infamy mostly not because any particular of their murders was historically uniquely evil, but mostly just from sheer numbers.
On the other hand, with, say financial crimes, we mostly ignore the scale. If you learned that two managers of (somewhat effective) charities had embezzled funds, with one stealing 10k$ and the other 10M$, and the latter got a decade of prison for that, you would probably still want the former one to get a sentence longer than half a week.
>they were also much smaller in scale than the wars of European conquest.
What I mean is that colonization was less conquest and more setting up shop and using violence when the natives got in the way. Whereas a lot of native conflicts were directly attacking other nations.
>The scale of the land taken during colonization was much larger than the amount that Natives had taken from each other; effectively the entire Native population was consigned to small reservations in the middle of nowhere.
Hence my saying "Sure, more native Americans died directly and indirectly due to Europeans (most population decline was due to disease and outbreeding, not massacres). Does that mean more powerful groups are bound by different ethics than weaker ones? "
What if one native group kept going and become the only nation left in North America (and eventually bred enough over successive generations to replace any loss in total population)?
I don't imagine many "anti-racists" would see this as a good thing, but I'm also certain that in no way would this be talked about in anything close to the way colonization is.
It's like the Zulus, they did much worse things than the European colonizers, but almost nobody criticizes the Zulus.
>Yes, but that didn't happen.
Obviously, but my point is that I don't think most people actually would truly view this as being close to as bad as colonization.
You seem to have a very consequentialist form of ethics. Like I said, are the powerful then bound by different moral rules?
Is a wannbe Hitler who fails to attain political power enough to commit genocide really any morally different to actual genocidal Hitler? If so, then you're saying a lack of political prowess makes one more moral.
So far as I know, indigenous people didn't have the capacity to substantially wipe out buffalo, and they might not have imagined doing anything that drastic.
I don't know if we can say they would have moral problems with an action so drastic, so unless you're a pure consequentialist I don't see how it matters.
Aren't there examples of ecological destruction done by primitive people, though? Ecological destruction is like genocide--it's *easier* and more efficient when done with better technology, but you can mass-murder your neighbors with machetes and wreck your local ecosystem with slash-and-burn agriculture if you're determined enough.
ISTM that there's a kind of noble savage ideal lurking somewhere in this notion. But humans are humans. Plenty of savages piled up the skulls of their enemies (sometimes literally), and better technology doesn't make you less (or more) moral, it just makes you more capable. The Romans had to make do with salting the ground where Carthage stood, but we can nuke the f--kers and leave a nice steaming radioactive crater.
So far as I know, indigenous people plausibly wiped out a lot of charismatic megafauna, though it's not absolutely certain.
This was presumably hunting for food (and other things like bone and leather)and maybe trophies.
I see a difference between that and mass killing of a major resource of an enemy.
I'm not the guy you're replying to, but I share his belief on the relevance of actual impact.
> Is a wannbe Hitler who fails to attain political power enough to commit genocide really any morally different to actual genocidal Hitler? If so, then you're saying a lack of political prowess makes one more moral.
To the question, yes. If Hitler had been unable to kill 6 million Jews he would have been morally superior to the actual Hitler. But your conclusion doesn't follow. If Norman Borlaug had been unable to obtain the funding to do the research that's saved ~a billion lives from starvation, would he be equally good? No! The thing that makes Norman a hero is the impact that he achieved through virtue and skill. Reducing the impact reduces the heroicism.
Power (whether that's technology, political prowess, grant-writing ability, or your own stalwart diligence) is morally neutral. It gives you leverage to reshape more of the world around you. If you're a monster, it will let you be more monstrous. If you're a hero, it will let you be more heroic.
>But your conclusion doesn't follow. If Norman Borlaug had been unable to obtain the funding to do the research that's saved ~a billion lives from starvation, would he be equally good? No!
So you believe the actions of somebody who toiled their whole life through and made it their sole mission in life to effortlessly seek a cure for a deadly disease but fails are of lower moral worth than some mediocre and not especially hardworking grad student who shortly into his research just stumbles onto the cure through sheer dumb luck? What if somebody tries to do harm and inadvertently produces socially positive effects?
This strikes me as a counterintuitive and not especially useful way of thinking about things.
Over what time horizon do we consider the consequences of their actions? Is altruistic medical research neither moral nor immoral until we can know what the sum total of the impact of their research is?
Which part of the causal chain do his actions have to occupy?
Hitler caused x deaths. If somebody made a medical breakthrough that saves x-1 lives, but one of those lives happened to be baby Hitler, was that researcher immoral? What if they died 100 years prior? Not being able to judge an action's moral worth as it is being carried out makes the idea of ethics kind of worthless.
My model technically uses expected value of your actions, not actual value, which resolves all of these points. If the industrious researcher had a 90% chance of finding the cure and the lucky grad student had 1%, then the researcher was 90x more virtuous.
Naturally, it's impossible to get perfect expected values for anything; sometimes it's hard to tell how effective you're being. But that's fine. Nothing is black and white, but we're not forced to abandon things being darker or lighter on that ground (see The Fallacy of Gray in the Sequences.)
Edit: A counter question: Suppose some deluded, but incredibly selfless person believes that Stormfront is the most effective charity; that their vision of ethnonationalism is by far the best way of improving the most lives of the most people. Suppose they work hard their entire life on a job they don't love, and keep barely enough to keep themselves healthy, selflessly sending the rest to Stormfront.
A) Are they more or less moral than a selfish hedonist who makes the same amount of money, but spends it on 'blackjack and hookers'?
B) If they're more moral, would you prefer that they be more moral? Or less moral?
>We call that theory "the labor theory of value", and we call those people "marxists".
No, marxists believe in socially necessary labor time, not in the value of any an all labor. Weirdly ignorant for somebody trying to make a smug gotcha.
And even then, that's ECONOMIC VALUE, not moral value. I'm talking about whether the first researcher is moral for acting selflessly.
>No, it means more malicious groups should be judges more harshly.
Do you have any evidence that Europeans were more malicious and not simply much more powerful?
>they weren't at all like the "wannabe Hitler" in your example.
I'm not saying they were, but do you imagine that e.g. comanches with guns and explosives wouldn't have significantly expanded their ambitions?
>I would.
That's admirable, but my point is I don't think that would be the genuine response of most people.
Where is the condemnation of the zulus? (not from you specifically but in general)
Eh, I disagree pretty strongly with Jason on this point, and your first point is absolutely correct but this:
"Most Native Americans never attempted anything like European wars of conquest and we have little indication that they had any desire to do so. Their warfare consisted almost entirely of small raids on neighboring tribes..."
Is pretty straightforwardly incorrect, I think. This is most visible in the empires of Central America, but I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the raid. It's not just to steal stuff/people and kill some, or earn honor, it's an entire warfare system based on inflicting sufficient pain to force the other tribe to withdraw from the area, so you can expand into it. For more on this see (https://acoup.blog/2021/02/05/collections-the-universal-warrior-part-iia-the-many-faces-of-battle/ and the citations therein). It does appear that societies engaged in this level of warfare tend to have higher rates of mortality due to violence than other societies, if I'm recalling correctly, though our evidence base is obviously very skimpy.
To be clear, saying that Native Americans should be held to lower moral standards because they were less powerful than Europeans is a perfectly valid answer to my original question. I don't agree with that type of ethical view, but it's coherent and satisfies the question that was asked.
This is generally correct, but the flip side is that those wars were pretty constant. So any individual tribe-on-tribe conflict is going to be far smaller, but if you total them up, my guess would be that total violence eventually decreases. But this is pretty irrelevant to the alleged hypocrisy.
Is there any logic to Steven Seagal's slap-fighting technique?
If I was Seagal, I'd want to throw punches that look studly and won't injure or annoy stuntmen who could cost him or deck him. John Wayne threw wide slow hooks from his back hand, looked studly, and was never decked by a stuntman. Big slaps from a big man's big hand look study and if they accidently hit it's just a slap.
Downside- could jam a finger.
Do you mean whatever that thing he did with Feijao was? If it weren't Steven Seagal I'd say maybe as a drill for beginners to get used to the feeling of an opponent in their comfort zone, like wing chun's chi sao, but since it is, the answer is probably no.
I haven't ever seen it and I know nothing about it, while actively disliking the man for his dictator fetish. However, William E. Fairbairn developed a fighting technique for the Shanghai International Police force that involved open handed strikes, basically slap fighting, in order to protect the knuckles from damage, by spreading the impact over the open palm. He is like the grandfather of the systemization of western close quarters combat. His slap fighting is very much worth checking out, for its historical value as much as anything.
No, it's all bullshido.
HEY SCOTT: I ran across something online that might be useful in your ongoing written debate with that pro-ivermectin fellow. One of his points when he posted on here was that the recent major trials that had found ivermectin to be ineffective only gave the drug to patients for 3 days, and that that was not long enough for the drug to do its good work. I happened to run across a Reddit sub with a lot of patient testimonials about the benefits of ivermectin, and an awful lot of people are saying they felt great benefits within a day or 2. A few say they were without symptoms after an hour. I realize that pointing out how many users believed they were cured within the 3 day window is not exactly a knock-out blow against his claims, but it weakens them some. Here they are.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/oputj8/any_bad_experiences_with_ivermectin/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/oo35a8/has_anyone_on_here_actually_used_ivm_for_acute/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/p8u3rm/has_anyone_taken_ivermectin_for_covid_and_found/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/p7gzvo/looking_at_the_evidence_for_the_use_of_ivermectin/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ivermectin/comments/wje6b8/our_experience_with_ivm_vs_standard_do_nothing/
Have any Codexers played Terra Invicta or Victoria 3 and how do you feel? Do the UIs feel cumbersome and organize data poorly or are they really good? Do you feel like the political elements are complex and have verisimilitude?
I really like TI, but it does need some work.
I would be careful with VIC3. Historically paradox has released some half finished messed up games and then slowly fixed them up over years.
But Imperator the recent Roman era one only got half fixed up before they walked way from it. I I kinda felt like VIC2 never quite worked.
Anyway, I used to love Paradox like crazy, but they have fallen out of favor with me.
I haven't yet touched at TI, but intend to.
Vic3 is a shitshow. I strongly disliked Vic2 because of how little of a game there I saw to it (so I'd build railroads & factories, set focus on increasing litteracy, play diplomatic wack-a-mole to maintain a sphere of influence, aaaand that's it. Everything else is simulated away with minimal levers for me to interact with, all that's left is crushing millions of rebels every few years), but Vic3 is one step forward and 3 steps back. The UI is in-line with CK3, with plenty of elements you don't want that eat up screen real estate, a macro builder that's less efficient than EU4, lack of quick access to map modes, and some useful data (what does my pop consume? What holds back their SoL?) hidden away. Warfare is shit (not because it's abstracted, but because it abstracted like shit). Some design choices are clearly just there to hamper the player (you need to dedicate a good chunk of your construction capacity to increase your administration, because everybody knows the roadblock to 19th century's expansion of state power was the brick & mortar buildings to house the bureaucrats, I guess?), immigration is ridiculous (I'm getting native americans moving to Pondichery and Nigerians moving to Picardy), populations figures, standard of living & litteracy rates at game start can be sourced down to "I made it the fuck up" (sub-saharian africa with >30% litteracy is a good one, as is siberia with higher average quality of life than the most prosperous areas of western Europe).
At this point, I don't even think DLCs & mods will fix it.
> Terra Invicta
This is a game trying to do *everything* and is remarkable in that it even kinda succeeds. It's a lot like Dwarf Fortress, in that there is a TON of simulation and physics under the hood, and it's super impressive to think about.
As a game, I feel it falls a bit short. Everything takes ages to do, and it doesn't help if you're 10 hours into a game and only barely leaving the earliest stages and exploring other options. If I were younger and had more free time, I'd probably love it. As it is, a game where you need to commit multiple hours to achieving any goal just doesn't cut it for me.
The UI is... functional, but not great. Considering the sheer amount of information it's trying to convey, it does fine, but could use a few usability passes. But overall, Terra Invicta is a perfect game for someone who isn't me.
> Victoria 3
This game has a ton of promise. The fundamental systems are spot-on, and its concepts and design space is both unique and well executed. It's currently a bit lacking in flavor and events, but those are very easily added by future expansions and mods.
The UI is really good for the most part, but has some rough edges where a thing takes a few more clicks or windows to find than I'd like.
It is the only Paradox game where war is at all fun, because it removes the war micro and puts you in the place of a government leader. I'd like a few more options here, but the foundations are solid (you may be noticing a trend here).
Overall, it's currently about a B-rank game, but with the promise of becoming absolutely stellar about a year or two down the line. All of its foundational systems are nearly perfect, but it is lacking in content and the difficulty of enacting social change is a bit too easy. Both things are easily fixed. (Unlike the problems in, say, Stellaris, where most of the effort put into the game has been complete redesigns and overhauls)
Thank you for this question! I just finished an EU IV run two nights ago (as the Aztecs - I managed to conquer most of North America, and Lisbon/Madrid/Rome, but got stuck trying to invade Britain and couldn't get the Sunset Invasion achievement) and have been trying to decide whether to pick up Terra Invicta or Victoria 3 yet.
I've played XCOM (back in 1995, and in 2008, and in 2015 or so) but not played any of the Victoria games, and so I'm not entirely sure what I'm getting myself into with either game, though I've read some reviews and will probably like both.
I've played a bit of Terra Invicta, though not a full campaign yet, and it feels like XCOM Long War, which is not surprising. The political elements are exactly as complex as they need to be for a game more about fighting aliens than Earth politics, I think they're really well designed for a game but have negligible bearing on the real world (and the real world politics they do necessarily inject, i.e. nations' investment priorities when unaligned, seem more than a bit ham-fisted, especially the USA).
The UI feels cumbersome, but I think that's mostly due to a bit too much latency in the menus rather than poor design overall. Given total freedom I'd rearrange the location of some things, but everything I want to see can be found, it just often takes me 5 seconds longer than I want.
As for Victoria 3, it's gorgeous! they've put a lot of work into the UI compared to previous games, and it really pays off. The political elements are not properly balanced at the moment, though - liberalising has no drawbacks and is generally too easy, as far as I've been able to tell with the game crashing frequently. As with most PDX games, check back in a year and it'll probably be much more balanced. (and even if you don't mind imbalance, wait a week for them to fix the crash to desktop bugs)
I haven't had a chance to try it myself, but there's been a good forum lets-play going on at sister site Data Secrets Lox if you haven't seen that yet:
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,7690.0.html
Terra Invicta:
>Do the UIs feel cumbersome and organize data poorly or are they really good?
Definitely cumbersome. Organization isn't great, but it does make some sense when you finally learn the game. Lots of hidden but critical information, like clicking on the flag to show all the requirements for political federation. The weakest UI in the game is spaceship/fleet management and the real time space combat.
>Do you feel like the political elements are complex and have verisimilitude?
Complex dynamics that do feel surprisingly realistic. Well, as much verisimilitude as you could plausibly expect in a game about warring Illuminati-like factions who secretly control the Earth during an alien invasion.
For my taste some of the decisions lean too far in the simulationist style (vs gamist). Starting from the map -- they want accurate country GDP and economic development, right? It is fun to have a realistic-ish Earth. But if you didn't care about resembling the real world at all you could probably optimize for gameplay a bit more. There are SO MANY countries, lots of them not super relevant. In a more gamey game the Earth would be a lot simpler. They have made concessions for game balance since the demo, nerfing a few real world attributes of countries because it made the early game too predictable.
I think I remember the devs responding to a question about building secret research bases in Antarctica, and the response was all about the real world usefulness of such a base. There just didn't seem to be any chance of valuable resources under the ice in the real Earth to justify to effort. But to me, I want my Thing-inspired secret research bases because it fits the theme.
The spaceship weapons and other parts seem to be also be a victim of this. There are SO MANY early game spaceship parts that nobody will ever use. You just blow through them in the research tree. My sense is that the devs feel compelled to leave all that granularity in the early game parts because you would probably have to speed through those intermediary stages in real world research. But it's a lot of tedium. I could go with about 1/3 the spaceship parts overall.
All that said I love the game and I recommend it. The combination of a Paradox-style game and a weird solar system wide spaceship fleet RTS is just not something I've ever seen in my life. I think it's worth a shot. This is the kind of game where if it does land with you, it's a once in a decade favorite game.
I think I broadly agree with you, for having put almost a full time job into this game (~72 hours over the last 2 weeks) I'm more neutral than positive.
The political system is a lot of fun, I dearly enjoy sending my councilors into countries to tamp down or pump up unrest, protect elites or set of coup-d'états, or just to try and uncover what the heck the aliens are up to. It reminds me a lot of another game I've sunk a ton of hours into, Fate of the World. The narrative is woven in pretty well with the game, and I like that (as far as I've gotten at least) it all remains relatively plausible, in so far as a game about alien invasion can be plausible. All the different national policies are a bit tough to manage in the mid game, I think the unification techs should probably be moved earlier in the tech tree which would help smooth out that transition.
Everything related to space is pretty incomprehensible to me. I've set up mines on Mars, the Moon and various asteroids. Researched a shit ton of spaceship parts and built up a minor fleet. Have a cloud of stations in low earth orbit, all to accomplish...what? That piece, along with generally the pacing of how the game goes, the interface like you said, all could use a good overhaul.
Still it definitely has a lot of promise, it's definitely and early access game still and interested people might want to wait and give it a few more months of polish before diving in. But if it sounds intriguing to you it might be just what you're looking for this decade.
Also, they're working on a Cold War invasion scenario which actually has a pretty solid historical grounding: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbachev-agreed-pause-cold-war-case-alien-invasion-180957402/
Unfortunately not. But I'm happy to adopt the term "Codexer"
Haven't played either but would also be interested in hearing people's thoughts. For what it's worth, here's what Bret Devereaux has to say on Victoria 3 (mostly positive): https://acoup.blog/2022/10/24/miscellanea-victoria-iii-confirmed-first-impressions/
Are there any good, trustworthy sources to learn about what the hell is going on in Iran? All I find are cell phone videos that tell me nothing at all and gushy articles talking about women taking off their veils. Nothing that seems like real analysis or even just straight reporting.
Is there a rebellion or just riots? Are there even riots, or is the media turning cell videos into something larger than they actually are? Are the security services siding with the protestors? Has any tangible move against the government been made? What about the man-on-the-street - what does he think? Does the government have any significant support? Among who? Is this an Afghanistan thing where the media focuses exclusively on the cosmopolitan urban areas but the rest of the country is not on board?
Sorry, I'm frustrated. I've been on team "what happened to journalism?" for a while now, but this is the first time that I've actually felt like no one is even trying.
Look at the institute for the study of war for daily updates on the situation. Their day-to-day reading is probably the best available from open sources although they lack a bit in medium term analysis.
Which countries media are you reading?
The U.S. mostly
Lack of reports of regime breakdown is an implicit evidence that regime is not breaking down, so far (duh). Of course situation of Iranians is awful and sad
This won't answer all your questions, but I've found this site does a good job of higher-level updates daily.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-crisis-update-october-26
This is super interesting - thanks!
That's pretty much what I figured.
As Aleszigler mentioned above, the evidence for that conclusion is mostly a lack of media saying the opposite. If its the case that the regime isn't really threatened by any of this, I'm sorely disappointed that I haven't read that once.
I don't want life extension, especially the kind where my brain is digitized, or floating in a jar. I was miserable during lockdown when we were supposed to stay inside. I can't imagine being without a body to experience outdoors and other people.
Well, take heart. If your brain is digitized, it isn't *you* any more, any more than a clone of you would be you. It's just a copy with your memories that lives on after you snuff it. And because it's created, presumably whoever creates it can tweak it a bit so it's perfectly happy floating in a vat.
Uhmmm, you were miserable during lockdown because your brain, which is floating inside the head-sized jar on your shoulders already, was sensory-deprived. But if I were to put your brain inside a special jar that can make it experience every single war and revolution we know about (on the "good" side of course) and 10^10 more, make passionate love with all the men and women and others in every single love story that we know about and 10^10 more, walk around or inside mathemtical objects and sub-atomic palaces, filled with terabytes upon terabytes of experience and patterns and knowledge, and Etc. Etc. Etc., I very much bet that you would not be miserable.
Bodies ? you can only feel yours because it sends signals to your brain. If you can control electricity and chemistry enough in a brain, you can make it feel any body you care to name. Do you want to be a whale ? a squirrel ? a worm ? a bacteria ? a gas giant ? an atom ? a molecule ? a Haskell program ? a digital circuit ? the idea of Justice ? there is good reason to believe (or at least not immediately disbelieve) that a special jar can make your brain feel that, as well as things that you can't name or describe.
If you had already been digitized/jarred, are you sure you would have the same opinion? Imagine that you could request to be terminated, and your physical caretaker would definitely follow through. Why not make the decision then, rather than now?
By the way, I think the question of the physical caretaker is a neglected part of these unlikely life-extension technologies. Who chose this person? Why trust them? What are their incentives to do something you don't want them to do? Same old basic questions we (should) ask about the people with power in existing institutions.
To my mind, it would depend a lot on how good the simulated body is or alternatively whether the uploaded mind could be hacked to not need a body.
My impression is that at least some of the people working on uploading don't like being embodied, and I don't especially trust them to do a good job with simulated bodies.
It *might* be better than the alternative.
If you're a digitial mind, I think the possibility for experiences becomes incomprehensibly large (in a world where mind digitization is a mature technology). You could experience anything you wanted to without it having to be real or you having to go there. It would be like a Nozickian experience machine. Possibly, you could have the insights of vast sums of books downloaded into your mind and learn more about science, philosophy, history and art than any flesh and blood man could ever hoped to do (I imagine this being of value as an end in itself, not because it would provide instrumental value in applying that knowledge somehow). If you're opposed to these kind of "fake" experiences, fair enough, but the issue is certainly *not* that digital you would be bored with nothing to do.
And in this technologically advanced world, you could probably pilot a robot body around from the comfort of your hard drive/vat anyway if you really wanted to. It's important to note that in theory, there's no obvious reason why a sufficiently advanced kind of digital mind/robot body combo couldn't be constructed such that is indistinguishable from being a "real" person in a "real" body. Everything we experience, we experience in our minds. A robot body being remotely piloted could feel just as real as if it were your original flesh body. Phantom limbs neatly demonstrate this principle - a pain is felt "in" the place where a limb is removed, meaning that the sensations experienced in non-missing limbs are not truly felt *in* those limbs, this is just an illusion of sorts. Dreaming is the other obvious example. Our conscious experiences in waking life are not categorically different to those in dream or hallucinations, it's just that "real" experiences are more bounded by sense data. But if we feed your isolated mind the correct synthetic "sense data", your experience would be indistinguishable from "real" experience of the world.
I think the bigger problem with digital minds is the fact that you become a kind of captive. You cannot physically protect yourself, and nobody can easily "see" what happens to you on a hard drive, meaning you could be tortured or imprisoned forever without anyone but you and your captor realizing this. This is what makes digital minds really terrifying to me.
Pretty soon I'll be going to a meetup that will consist primarily of older people, and they're understandably worried about COVID. I'd like to help them get the latest good info so it's not all "cloth masks and social distancing!" like it's still spring 2020. Are there good, factual reports/studies about the best things older people can do now, and what they can stop doing?
(yes, best would be "don't go to the meetup" but that's a hard sell. I'm not even sure I can sell them on ventilation at the meetup, since it's November in the PNW. But I'd like them to at least be informed)
How soon is the meetup? The easiest thing is probably to ask everyone to get the bivalent booster two weeks before the event. I would also recommend like the others - if it's possible to upgrade the ventilation at the venue, that could be huge, and you should definitely ask everyone to take a rapid test in the morning before coming. Depending on the nature of the event, it might also be reasonable to ask people to wear well-fitting N95 or equivalent masks, or at least to encourage people to treat this as normal (though it's not going to work so well if the meetup involves food or drink).
Air purification: 12 Air Changes per Hour through a HEPA filter are approximatelyequivalent to wearing an n-95. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278555v8.full
For the last 2 years I have been meeting with people (never more than 2 at a time) unmasked in my office, running an air purifier that's designed for a much larger room and gives 11 ACH in my medium-sized office. We sit 10 feet apart. I have still not had covid.
You can buy a HEPA grade air cleaner that will do many changes of the air in the room per hour for a couple hundred bucks. If you know the size of the room, you can make sure you've got enough filtration to handle the volume. That's not perfect, but it will probably massively reduce the risk of transmission in the closed room without freezing everyone out.
Otherwise, probably the best defense is to send everyone coming a rapid covid test and ask them to take it before the leave for the meeting, and stay home if it's positive. It's not 100% clear how "positive antigen test" and "contagious" relate, but it seems very likely that if your antigen test is negative, you aren't shedding enough virus to make anyone else catch covid.
Yes, I agree -- Positive vs negative on rapid test seems to correlate well with contagious vs. non-contagious.
I've done quite a bit of work on this proposal to transform politics in the United States. I am happy to receive criticism, but I have this request: try to focus on the big stuff. If possible, suggest ways that the proposal can be improved.
Rodes.pub/RealElectors
Peter Rodes Robinson
I have a few critiques which I think your argument would be the stronger for addressing:
1) The origin of the two-party system does not lie in there being only two points of view. Indeed, over their lifetimes, and even over the lifetime of someone of middle age, the two parties have significantly changed their nature. It's no longer true, for example, that Republicans are more in tune with big corporations, and Democrats with rural voters or industrial workers. Both parties routinely change their standards and goals in an effort to capture a majority of votes.
What *is* true, however, is that once one party has succeeded in assembling a majority coalition, all the opposition to that party coalesces in the other party. That is, the two party system is better described as The Ruling Party and The Loyal Opposition, with the two actual parties both striving to be TRP, and both resigning themselves to being TLO when they must.
There is some clear efficiency here which I think your proposal must address: as it is, as soon as one party succeeds in acquiring power, the other party must somehow assemble enough of the opposition to that party to make a credible threat to taking over. That *forces* it to strive for a "big tent" approach that practices compromise and negotiation between interest groups -- exactly the kind of thing it will need to do successfully as TRP, and presumably the failure of which is what led to its failure to become TRP in the last ruling election.
Likewise, people whose natural sympathies like with TLO are "required" (if they have any hope of succeeding to the position of TRP) to start thinking about how to get along with people who currently belong to the opposition but could be persuaded. It compels both voters and party officials to focus on compromise, coalition-building, and live-and-let-live policy positions. Are these not all highly desirable for a pluralistic, heterogeneous society, where it is pretty much ipso facto that no one faction can dominate all others?
Which leads me to...
(2) I feel like you're a little vague on what it means for an elector (or politician generally) to work for his constituents' interest. (This isn't necessarily pejorative, almost everybody is.) The key difficulty is the definition of the verb "work for." What does that mean, in practice? It can't mean what people *wish* it meant, which is that the politician proposes and always votes for only those laws and policies which his constituents would 100% favor. Even leaving aside the problem that no group of people larger than 2 would 100% agree on anything more complex than where to go for lunch, this kind of behavior in a politician would be quite rightly regarded as intolerably inflexible, an obstacle to any kind of progress. You simply can't get everything you want, as one politician among many others. You *must* compromise and horse-trade in order to get *anything* you want.
So what does it mean for a politician to "work for" his constituents' interests if we accept the proposition that he cannot always vote for what they would want, and has to sometimes compromise (vote for stuff they *don't* want in order to get some of what they do)? Do we measure this by his success in achieving more of what his constituents want, or do we measure it by his sincerity in hewing to their desires? (And we can very reasonably asssume that success and sincerity are inversely correlated, meaning the greater the sincerity the less the success, and vice versa.)
And what would it mean for voters to feel their representatives "work for" them to a greater degree? Do they want more success or more sincerity? I feel like the empirical evidence on that is confusing -- sometimes voters are OK with a firebrand who gets approximate zip actually done, but who is a true believer who doesn't sway from orthodoxy. Other times they seem to prefer someone who actually gets more shit done, even if some of the details of how the sausage got made are repulsive.
But I feel you should address this ambiguity, and stake out your beliefs in what people really mean "my politician represents my interests well" because the raison d'etre of your drastic modification is to achieve a better outcome to the answer to what question -- which means you have to have deep insight into the real reasons why people answer the question positively or negatively.
So let's fill in more details of my vision in action.
I join the Population Reduction Group. Two million other very smart voters do also. That gives us 30 to 32 Electors. In August that would mean that I could vote for 32 Elector candidates who are ALL MEMBERS OF THE POPULATION REDUCTION GROUP. Or I could vote for 1 friend whom.I know very well, or any number between 1 and 32.
In September our 32 Electors would go to the Electoral Gathering and meet with candidates for Congress (and candidates for President also). With 30+ Electoral Votes we could elect SIX Representatives (5 votes each). WE WOULD OWN THOSE SIX REPRESENTATIVES!
You can be sure that if those six Reps did not do their best for population reduction, we wouldn't be sending them back in four years.
Now of course (as you point out) our six Reps will have a lot of other issues to deal with. We hope everyone involved will do the best they can with the other issues. We can be confident they WILL NOT BE TAKING ORDERS FROM A DEMOCRAT OR A REPUBLICAN on how to vote.
>>So what does it mean for a politician to "work for" his constituents' interests if we accept the proposition that he cannot always vote for what they would want, and has to sometimes compromise (vote for stuff they *don't* want in order to get some of what they do)? <<
I told you what I would want an Elector to do. Presumably you would like to know what a Representative should be doing. I would also. But that's the beauty of having professional Electors.
IT'S THEIR PROBLEM NOT MINE.
I imagine if THEIR Representative does a lot of things that I don't like, I may blame my Elector and choose a different one next time.
>>(2) I feel like you're a little vague on what it means for an elector (or politician generally) to work for his constituents' interest.<<
Electors don't work, they vote.
* For Congressional Representatives
* For President
* For Electoral Commissioner
* For or against Constitutional Amendments
It is true that they have a lot to do for six months, and then not much to do for three and a half years.
Intelligent Electors will fill those years creatively.
For example, I would join the Population Reduction Group. I would expect Electors that I voted for to do things like those below in order to increase the likelihood of population reduction.
* Staying abreast of the issues THEIR Representative is concerned with. Every Elector has ONE Representative that they put in Congress (along with four other Electors).
* Talking to their Representative about the need for Population Reduction. You can be sure THEIR Representative will listen well since the Elector across the table is one of the five votes they need for re-election.
* Studying the effect of new proposed Amendments to the Constitution in depth.
* Giving speeches and interviews on Population Reduction.
* Organizing educational initiatives on the need for Population Reduction.
* Joining working groups such as a "UN Working Group on Population Reduction."
If they didn't, I would vote for someone else in four years.
Peter
Well, OK, so that works for you. But most people want more to believe their Representative is "working for them" than seeing that they give a lot of speeches. Most people want to see some results, and get irritable if they don't see any. When you tell them, dear me it takes time, or we have to compromise here and accept half a loaf, or well it will eventually happen in your grandchildrens' time they get very cranky.
You can reasonably say the voters are being childishly impatient, and should figure out that government is the art of the possible, and be happy with half -- nay, a quarter or an eighth -- of a loaf, and I would agree 100% with this, but I'm not sure how what you're proposing goes in that direction, of a wiser and more patient voter base.
If anything, it feels like you're trying to appeal to people who think the present government gets *much too little* done, which means I think you're implying if these reforms were put in place much *more* would get done. But how can much more get done, if all the various interest groups have conflicting aims? So you're going to join the Population Reduction Group, but I'm going to join the Grandkids Yay! group, and there is just no way at all both of us can be simultaneously made happy by governmental action in this area. So...if your suggestion that these groups come to be, and we each join the one that's just perfect for us, and so there are thousands of such groups, representing hundreds (at least) of incompatible viewpoints -- how is this a recipe for *more* getting done -- unless everyone is as philosophical as you, and is fully satisfied with sincere and plentiful speeches alone?
You should understand that other than expanding the size of the House of Representatives to 800 and increasing the term to four years, I have not changed it.
You are making it hard for me to respond by apparently talking about Electors and Representatives at the same time.
One or the other, please.
>> It compels both voters and party officials to focus on compromise, coalition-building, and live-and-let-live policy positions.<<
What examples can you point to of this mechanism operating in the US in the last twenty years?
Well, you'll notice that Democratic supporters are now running stories acknowledging the scourge of inflation[1], and that maybe climate change isn't so awful that it requires *quite* as much hair-shirtism and panic[2]. These things would not be happening at all if TRP of the moment were not perceiving that it is about to become TLO and is scrambling to acquire some centrist votes by moving away from some of its core shibboleths. There was also that great evolution of Democratic leaders, in some cases quietly, in some cases loudly, away from "defund the police" when they discovered it was deeply unpopular even among their own constiuencies (black and brown people). Or consider Governor Newsom's urging approval for a coastal desalination plant in Orange County, which I'm sure pissed off any number of hard-core environmentalists, because he can read a poll and understood that non-hard-core left-centrists prefer reliable water to the avoidance of hypothetical mild harm to sea slugs.
On the other side, you'll notice there was a pretty subdued reaction among Republicans when Dobbs overturned Roe. You'd think it would've been the centerpiece of every Republican political ad this fall -- look! we succeeded after 50 years! w00t! -- but it was generally not. That's because the're not dummies, and they need a healthy slice of the suburban women independent vote to become TRP, and they know it. You may also have noticed that the Republicans, when they held both houses of Congress and had a Republican President, strangely forgot to repeal Obamacare. One assumes they read the tea leaves and understood that just doing that, without putting in place some other healthcare reform, would be bad for their prospects of remaining TRP. Further back, you'll hopefully remember Bill Clinton's "Third Way" and famous "Sister Souljah" moment, both of which were attempts to claim the center and which no doubt profoundly disappointed his hard-core base.
People are fond of speaking with disgust of "The Uniparty" and how both parties when in office tend to act pretty similar, only nibbling around the edges of things in the preferred direction. When Democrats are voted in, you actually don't get a Green New Deal or a #metoo witch hunt. When Republicans are voted in, you actually don't get the Department of Education or Earned Income Credit or federal minority set-asides abolished. The zealous partisans bitch about this all the time, but this "centralizing" tendency when push comes to shove and becoming TRP is within (or slipping from) the grasp of a party is exactly what I mean.
---------------------------------
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/opinion/columnists/republicans-biden-inflation-policy.html
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/magazine/climate-change-warming-world.html
Thanks for this reply. I will read it more times.
I'm reading your post. Thank you.
It is striking to me, even mind-blowing, that the Republican Party is now the opposite of the Party of Lincoln!
Not just technically the opposite, but populated by persons who without doubt would have fought for the South against the federal government.
There's a lot of "we hope"s, and not a lot of examples of how this would work out. (ie. Professional electors vs general votes, it is NOT obvious that the professionals are the better option - and if you can convince the public that's the case. See election pundits vs polls vs election bets)
Is there a nation that doesn't have a partisan divide? I'm not sure if there are any >1 party system that doesn't have partisanship after a few elections. I'm guessing you are relating this to the US divide, and might be okay with others, but your document doesn't really state how the change will necessarily be better with the new system. For example, gridlock may be worse, representation might be worse (not representation by the group you voted for, but general support for the "dominant" group/laws that are enacted), and the possibility of extreme or really niche groups getting power may be higher (and if it's not, that might be considered a fault on its own)
The voting/ID part is a very big contract to everything else - it is way too specific and small. I'd just get rid of it. But also note that this is probably even more strict than the Real/Voter ID that have often have significant backlash. US is kind of weird in that they don't just have National IDs (Social Security is NOT complete and if you are planning to make such major changes, surely just pushing for one wouldn't make that much of a dif).
Lastly, a number of changes are somewhat similar to what California has been changing (ie. winning nominees can be both from the same party, Senate based on population rather than land area). Why not do a little case study/compare and contrast there.
Back to 2% power!
>>For example, gridlock may be worse, representation might be worse<<
Please expand on this idea.
For example I have said that I.would join the Population Reduction Group with the possibility of controlling six Representatives. Now Our Six are practically obliged to support NPG. (They won't get re-elected if they don't.) But that subject doesn't come up very often in Congress. (Has it ever?)
How would Our Six be involved in gridlock?
Sure - if it's regarding something like... the Budget (which includes budgeting for the few agencies it does care about), or Abortion legality after X weeks.
Plenty of actors that will want to take part in that debate, and it's flexible enough to allow some compromise. Among representative governments, it's a common practice to have some majority coalition that creates the bill among themselves before pushing it to the floor to be voted on. But a lot of times that becomes much harder if there is not a particularly strong initial group, and sometimes involves groups that only marginally touch on it and are more in it for political favors than the actual decision.
So I didn't get any picture in my mind why a Congress of independent actors would be more likely to gridlock
You really can't think of why additional independent groups that by definition are A) less likely to trust/be on the same side as intragroup relations B) support their own goals and CANNOT compromise against them C) less likely to have a clear winner, won't cause additional costs in obtaining a majority vote?
Well, maybe you'd like a math puzzle-
Suppose there's Groups 1 and 2, who's members match that of their names, and who's interests are A and B respectively.
Time to divide the budget of $2 for A and B. Assume that this the surplus and not worry about debt or contractions or whatever.
Pretty obvious that it'll be 0:2 divide for A:B with Group 2 providing the votes.
Now lets go to Groups 1, 2, 3 and A, B, C and budget of 3.
Not completely obvious, but not too hard to solve that it'll be either 2.99:0:0.01 or 0:2.99:0.01 if anything passes. EDIT: realized that anything A+B = 2.99 would work. So harder than I thought.
Now lets go to Groups 1-4 and A-D with budget of 4.
The likely winning coalition can probably be inferred, but the actual budget is not trivial at all.
Now lets go to Groups 1-500...
None of those are examples of gridlock.
How would the Group of 4 outvote the other 6?
Power is back. Thank goodness.
When a minority interest in Congress wanted to get something going, they would indulge in "logrolling": you vote for my bill and I will vote for yours. I assume.that is dead now because you can't make any promises to a member of the other party. Perhaps it would come back if dominant parties disappeared.
The difficulty of building support for a new idea does not constitute "gridlock" in my mind.
Still no power here. Three days now, the worst I remember. I scrounged a little power for my phone.
Hello hello!
I greatly appreciate your thoughtful response. Unfortunately my power is off and my phone is down to 2% battery.
You will hear from me soon.
My main issue with this is that it turns everyone into a government-mandated single-issue voter. That doesn't seem great to me. If I'm a cismale "high-income" earner with a trans autistic boyfriend who's pro-nuclear power, I have to pick one of those and sacrifice the others. The whole point is that most people have *multiple* issues they care about that are different in different contexts.
Moreover, I think you've fundamentally misidentified the issues with modern political polarization.
A lot of the issues today stem from political parties acting as coalitions to attract multiple single-issue voters - and the more polarizing that issue is, and the more tied to idpol, the better it helps party allegiance (eg abortion rights and racial issues). Nothing about this plan gets rid of that, and it basically codifies it into law. In practice, I think this just results in the same parties that exist today morphing into meta-parties that act exactly the way the ones today do, with even stronger incentives to take polarizing policy positions rather than pragmatic ones, since they are now are allowed to market *directly* to literal single issues. It's still the same political system, just with an extra layer of indirection.
>>morphing into meta-parties that act exactly the way the ones today do, <<
There are two ways that you could recreate today's parties.
The slow way is that Groups can merge, but that takes a majority of each Group to agree.
The simplest.is that most everybody joins the Republican or Democrat Group.
The largest group in the US are the "Independents". Presumably they would join the "Independent" Group, though possibly they are just lying about not being a Republican or a Democrat.
If they meant what they say.and joined the Independent Group, it would be the largest group, and THAT SITUATION WOULD BE REMARKABLY DIFFERENT from what we have now.
I think you're missing the my point here. I'm not saying that *citizens* are all going to join the "Democrat" or "Republican" party (and certainly not the Independent group, I think you're wildly missing the point there). The meta-parties aren't going to be something voters join, they're going to be something *electors* join.
Fundamentally, a political party is a *coalition* of various interests. While they sometimes only have a single issue, selection pressures lead them to adopt more under a "big tent" if they are to be successful. Your proposed categories force people to choose a very narrow identity which only applies to a minority of legislature. Those electors, especially if they're voting for someone else, are going to be incentivized to join a coalition of other electors to actually get someone in place. And to fill that void, the exact some political dynamic is going to pop up, except now instead of the "Democrats" having to market to "Latinos" in the aggregate, there is now a single individual (and point of failure) that "meta-Democrat" candidate James Clinton-Kennedy can directly schmooze and manipulate, and a single "Evangelical" that Jane Bush-Trump can do the same to.
>>My main issue with this is that it turns everyone into a government-mandated single-issue voter. That doesn't seem great to me.<<
Only some of the Groups could be called single-issue. How many by your count?
Rodes.pub/ElectoralGroups
Hello Fang!
Thank you for your thoughtful response. Unfortunately my power is off and my phone is down to 2% battery.
You will hear from me soon.
I can tell just by reading the 15 goals that this plan is unconstitutional and by looking at the few items that are also Republican concerns (like election integrity) this is just a partisan wishlist that is unimplementable. If you want to talk about it as a thought experiment we can. But any plan that can't be implemented without abolishing the Constitution is, to say the least, a pipe dream.
Of course it's unconstitutional. That's why there is a new constitution.
Rodes.pub/RealCons
Abolishing the plurality voting that makes the two-party system ironclad is good and keeps parties more honest, but it doesn't kill large parties entirely. Australia still has a mild two-party system in practice despite having the clone-independent IRV and STV methods (your proposal is basically whole-nation STV). One key point of representative government (and to some extent even direct democracy) is that coalition is an attractor state; a group that defines an "Us" and then votes for anything proposed by any member of "Us" has greater power than a disorganised collection of representatives or citizens (it's also easier to market to low-information voters). Whether parties are good is a question that can be debated, but insofar as you think your model will kill parties, you're assuming your way out of reality (which is never a good idea).
>In no other country in the world that considers itself a democracy can the loser of the popular vote be deemed the winner of the election.
Actually, AFAIK the entire rest of the Anglosphere works this way (certainly, the UK and Australia do). You only need 51% of the vote in 51% of the electorates to win power in a parliament, and that can be less than 50% of the total vote or indeed less than the vote of an opposing party.
May have more to say upon reading more.
>>Actually, AFAIK the entire rest of the Anglosphere works this way (certainly, the UK and Australia do)<<
I am somewhat familiar with how a head of state is chosen in the UK (moreso after the last few weeks :). IT IS NOT POPULAR VOTE. So I don't put any credence to a comparison of a parliamentary system to a system where voters vote for a President. If you know of any other country in the world where voters vote for a president and the runner-up becomes president, I would love to know about it.
BTW, I didn't write the words that you take issue with. That is Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky speaking, probably the most distinguished Constitutional scholar in the United States.
>>Whether parties are good is a question that can be debated, but insofar as you think your model will kill parties, you're assuming your way out of reality (which is never a good idea). <<
I don't ASSUME that the plan will kill the parties. I have both parties in the list of proposed groups. See: POLITICAL & CULTURAL IDENTITIES
Rodes.pub/ElectoralGroups
I believe that with some 250 (guesstimate) other possible choices that the parties will have fewer members.
Not just the Anglosphere, but the minority can also win in all multiparty representative democracies where the voter indirectly votes for the prime minister. E.g consider a parliament of size 5 where the two left-wing parties get 26% each of the vote and the two right-wing parties get 27% and 21%. The two right-wing parties will then be allotted 2+1 seats for their 48% and the two left-wing parties will be allotted 1+1 seats for their 52%, and thus the right-wing minority will get to choose the prime minister. So that statement is completely wrong.
Am much less familiar with continental election systems than I am with Westminster, being Australian, so I confined my statement to the ones I know.
So I didn't read the whole thing, but one of your goals is to explicitly remove/neutralize the counter-majoritarian/regionalist elements of the existing constitution (e.g. senators representing states not people; electoral college)? If so, Seems Bad.
You don't like democracy.
You wouldn't like the effect of this proposal.
Nobody *likes* democracy. We're not insects, we don't thrill to the pleasure of being part of a giant hive mind doing giant hive things, and not give a darn what those things are. We largely want to be left alone to do what we want, and secondarily we want government to restrain other people who are doing things we find inconvenient or dangerous -- everything from competing against us in the marketplace to trying to murder us.
What everyone wants is a philosopher king of his own philosophy, someone who has arbitrary power to enforce our personal value system on others. I want a king who'll smite all my philosophical foes, and so do you, and it's just one of those unfortunate facts o' life that in very many cases my king would end up smiting you, and yours would end up smiting me, so the chances of us agreeing on the same guy for king are approximately zilch.
So we settle on democracy because, to quote Churchill quoting someone else, it's the worst form of government -- except all others that have been tried. It's the only compromise that seems to have a shred of a chance of giving most people most of what they want most of the time. (And even then, most of us favor some very strong protection for the rights of minorities to be free from majority-approved smiting, e.g. the Bill of Rights, because we're well aware we might not be in the majority on many issues.)
The government where I live in the DR has decided not to pick up trash. Ever. This increases my freedom.
Do I like it? Do I like street after street of piles of trash, often smouldering?
No.
Well, it's true we have much less argument about the pecise nature of our government when our pressing needs are basic sanitation, roads, distribution of electricity, and preventing the barbarians from carrying off our women and corn and selling the rest of us into slavery. It's when we get past those stages, and the gripping question is whether to legalize discrimination against Group X to compensate for past discrimination against Group Y, and exactly for how long and in what way, and other such horribly complex quasi-theological arcana, that we start to get surly and quarrelsome.
So if you want to agree at Line #1 that we should just restrict government, whatever its nature, to the very core business of picking up the trash, catching murderers, and defending the borders against invasion -- why, sign me up, I agree entirely. And then the exact form of the goverment that restricts itself to those dire necessities -- meh, I don't much care. It could be a king or a Committee on Public Safety or some elaborate voting apparatus that results in one of these, and as long as it works I would be fine with it.
Living in a third-world country can be very enlightening!
I like regionalism and I admire the principle of subsidiarity. It does not follow that I don't like democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regionalism_(politics)
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
??
You realize that my proposal deals only with the federal level. Other than ensuring certain rights of individuals, it says nothing about state and local governments.
Don't talk about "ending the partisan divide" and then immediately follow this by saying partisan crap like "Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell revel in partisan warfare. Let's do something different." It makes you sound like a partisan hack yourself.
Also, there's literally nothing "prejudiced" that can be inferred from those Pew survey results, and saying there is just once again makes you sound like a partisan hack.
Almost literally every single specific example of the political system not functioning in the US is talking about Republicans being in the wrong. Why would anyone read this and think it's not an attempt at giving Democrat supporters more power? No, really, the likely impact of your proposals is hard to gauge, so anyone unsure of it is just going to assume its a scheme aimed at helping get the liberal policies you support enacted. Which, fine, if that's what you're aiming for, but it's absurd to then also talk about "ending the partisan divide" - the divide seems to be problematic primarily because it gets in the way of you getting the policies you want, and it means nobody who isn't anti-Republican is going to want to support this and it puts them precisely into a partisan mindset. The obliviousness of this document is absolutely astounding.
Maybe you would just do better by being explicit in what you support and directly marketing this towards Democrats, because any pretence that what you're proposing is non-partisan is absolutely comical.
Can you help me by pointing out divisive partisan behavior by the Democrats?
I'm serious: I want examples and I'm sure they are out there.
>>Pew survey results<<
Huh?
You potholed the word "prejudiced" to a Pew survey. The Pew survey says that Democrats think racism and sexism are huge, while Republicans think Islam is warlike and don't like demographic change through immigration.
Summing this up as "voters are prejudiced" implies you believe some or all of the following:
1) Democrats are right about racism being huge,
2) Democrats are right about sexism being huge,
3) Republicans' opinion of Islam is prejudice, and/or
4) Republicans' dislike of mass unassimilated immigration is prejudice.
#3 is the only one of those that's at least somewhat objectively true (Christianity and Buddhism are probably more peaceful at least as regards the scriptures/origin - though churches, uh, vary substantially - but Judaism isn't that much less warlike than Islam and IIRC there are some pro-war things in Hinduism as well); #1 and #2 are SJ dogma that isn't widely accepted outside it, while #4 is only true if you don't think wanting cultural and genetic continuity is valid (which isn't *just* SJ, but liberal support for at least the cultural point has been tailing off). Hence the point that summing it up in that way (particularly since #3 is also not friendly to Republicans) makes it look like you're a partisan Democrat and/or SJW.
The Pew article supports the headline:
>>Voters’ Attitudes About Race and Gender Are Even More Divided Than in 2016<<
I can't imagine that you disagree that the basic beliefs of the two parties are starkly divided. Do you disagree with this?
9% of Republican voters believe it is more difficult to be Black in the US than White. (What do you believe?) 74% of Democrats believe this.
Do you think this vast gulf is based on facts or prejudice?
Note: this is a trick question. If you think the Republican attitude is based on facts, then the Democrat's opinion is based on Prejudice. And vice-versa.
I think the scenario "there isn't actually much racism/sexism, but Democrats believe there is" is much more centrally "mass delusion" than "prejudice". The scenario "there is a lot of racism/sexism, but Republicans believe there isn't" is also mass delusion as far as the Republicans' viewpoints are concerned, it's just that this scenario posits a lot of racism/sexism and *that* is centrally prejudice.
I wouldn't describe the Democrat/Republican split on immigration as necessarily based on prejudice either way; there are disagreements on the facts (i.e. Republicans have a higher prior than Democrats on the USA becoming a hellhole if mass unassimilated migration and white decline continues) and disagreements on values (Democrats are less attached to traditional US culture than Republicans are). It's not prejudice to be fine with mass immigration - it's prejudice to e.g. think all Trump supporters are evil (e.g. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/24/most-democrats-who-are-looking-for-a-relationship-would-not-consider-dating-a-trump-voter/), but that wasn't in the survey you linked.
>>USA becoming a hellhole if mass unassimilated migration and white decline continues<<
Do you believe the US has been experiencing "mass unassimilated migration"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_immigrant_population
Peter
I don't know how to separate mass delusion from prejudice. Consider school integration. I moved to Alabama in 1950. The prevailing attitude among Whites was: "Our schools will suffer if there is integration and our children will receive a worse education."
Delusion or prejudice?
>>directly marketing this towards Democrats<<
Do you think this proposal would help the Democratic Party? There is a proposed group for Democrats. I think few people would sign up as Democrats.
I would join the Population Reduction group.
Rodes.pub/ElectoralGroups
I will definitely work on making the proposal less biased towards the left.
Is your idea to force people to join only one narrowly focused issue group? With respect, one of the real benefits of a two party system is that they exist as big tents, allowing voters to back a wide array of loosely connected positions on different issues.
Which is what would immediately happen to your groups. There would necessarily be mission creep and platform-building beyond the original interest, because people care about more than one thing. And then why not start consolidating like-minded groups to build more clout in the assemblies? Before you know it we're right back to partisan politics, because partisan politics actually serves a useful purpose in democratic systems. If anything, it's one-party states where partisanship makes the least sense.
This really is the largest problem I see with your proposal. People have multiple priorities! Almost no one is a single issue voter! You'd have grand coalitions immediately and I estimate approximately 1 election cycle before the de facto return of full party politics
>>People have multiple priorities!<<
You understand that voters are voting for electors. Electors can have multiple priorities and list them.
4000 different choices.
If the elector you like best is not in your group, you would need to switch to their group.
Ok lol but you're just reinventing party politics. Maybe as something more like New York's electoral fusion system than a pure two party deal (which I like btw, I wish more states did electoral fusion. That's the most effective way to have relevant third parties in the American system). Any elector would be incentivised to appeal to as many groups as possible, building cross-endorsements. So at first you might have coalitions around particular slates of electors, and soon enough a coalition around a particular set of issue positions and a particular slate of elector candidates becomes a political party.
>>Any elector would be incentivised to appeal to as many groups as possible, building cross-endorsements<<
Actually, not. An Elector is incentised to get elected. Only voters in her group can vote for her. Any time spent with another group is wasted effort. An Elector candidate is competing only with members of her group.
If there are 250 groups and 250 million voters, the typical Group will have 16 electors.
Top 16.vote getters become Electors, next 16 become Alternates. It won't be intensely competitive.
The electors don't hold office, you know. They vote for Congressional Representatives. Five electors elect one Rep.
A coalition of five persons.
Nathaniel L
>>Is your idea to force people to join only one narrowly focused issue group? With respect, one of the real benefits of a two party system is that they exist as big tents, allowing voters to back a wide array of loosely connected positions on different issues.<<
One group only. It doesn't need to be narrowly focused.
Everyone starts out in the "US Citizen" group. They can stay right there.
Or join the Republican group. Or the Democrat group.
Voters today basically have two pre-cooked agendas to choose from. It's two big cattle sheds.
One step away from no choice at all.
My goal is to eliminate both parties, but I will absolutely include more examples of the Dems being partisan if you find some for me. I will also look.
>>partisan crap like "Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell <<
I worried about the fact that it was one sided. Can you find me some examples on the Dem side?
I'm on page 8 so far. The biggest problem by far is that all your examples of politics not working are about Republicans, so the whole thing comes off as "let's make a system where Republicans get less say." Not selling me on the bipartisan angle here.
Politics is based on geography because geography determines life. Take away representation by geography and you get a bunch of desert people mandating water rationing policies for areas with 100 inches of rain, or mandatory flood evacuation routes in cities in the mountains. Republicans get elected with a minority of population, Democrats get elected with a minority of geography.
I frown whenever people lump Native Americans together. There are over 550 federally recognized tribes spread across the country; they have very little to do with each other. But, I haven't really looked into it, maybe the Metlakatla tribe cares more about the Pawnee than I assume.
...aaaand now you want to abolish the Senate. Yeah, this is a city slicker proposal.
I would argue politics is based on geography because the outcome of politicis (law and regulation) have effects that are more uniform in a particular geographical region. For example, as you say, law on flood evacuation plans only affect people in river valleys or where hurricanes come ashore. Regulation on oil exploration only affects (in the first iteration) places where there's a lot of oil and it's plausible most people might make their living that way. Law on ocean transport mostly affects ports, law on heating efficiency mostly affects where it's cold, while law on air conditioner use mostly affects where it's hot.
There are definitely laws that affect a distinct group of people in ways that are not geographic at all, e.g. rules on air travel or mortgages, but it doesn't seem super likely that even today these are the dominant areas of law and regulation. Generally more of my life is affected by the roads I drive on, the local cost and availability of food, housing, and consumer goods, the local employment and marriage market, local weather hazards, rather than by issues that conceivably span the entire nation like import/export tariffs, the war in Ukraine, whether Lia Somethingorother can swim for Penn.
Every tribe could have their own group.
They would need about 60,000 persons to sign up.
So, so many federally recognized tribes could not possibly swing that.
That is reality. If you don't have 1/4000 th of the voting population, you are not going to get one of 4000 electors. In that case you need to make a coalition with other tribes until you get to 60,000.
But that is possible. You will not find a more flexible system than what I have laid out.
Approximately 60,000.
Depends on how many voters there are.
250000000÷4000 = 62,500
>>Politics is based on geography because geography determines life<<
It used to be. People hookup via the internet now. If you want to make a group of Trump supporters, is drawing geographical boundaries a good way to do that? Isn't it more efficient to just ask them?
Can you think of any Republican/conservative type groups that I left out?
Rodes.pub/ElectoralGroups
Geography still determines any number of important matters that politics will have to address. Water politics in the west, as a really really obvious and pressing example. But, infrastructure, ag policies, even things like minimum wage (due to regional variation in poverty rates and the cost of living). There's no 'it used to be'
I made a group for you: "Water Rights". It's under POLITICS.
Thank you. My bigger point is that all these local/geographic considerations remain important, therefore it continues to make more sense to elect representative to represent places, rather than to construct a system wherein they represent nationwide interest groups. Anyway, thanks for the dialogue, I've a paper to submit and shall hereforth disappear
When you have finished your paper, it would be great if you looked for some Congressional votes that broke down along regions. Republicans and Democrats in the same region voting together.
Clearly any party-line votes are not doing this.
If you live in a western state and water is life, best to join your state group.
Rodes.pub/ElectoralGroups
Or form a western water group.
There's more to life than talking. Grouping people by Internet association gives every group an overwhelming number of people in coastal cities who have no idea how the rest of the country operates.
Hell, until recently my internet was so bad I couldn't use Twitch; you're straight up cutting people out of the conversation if they live in remote areas.
I live in the Dominican Republic. Almost everyone here has internet access.
Must be a mighty remote area!
How about instead of fixing the US you fix Hati instead?
Ah, that partly explains it. Wikipedia has the Dominican Republic at a little under 19,000 square miles, which is smaller than 41 of the 50 states.
https://statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-official-item/national-us/uncategorized/states-size
Thank you to everyone who responded. There was definite value in the comments that I can extract.
I have lived in Texas, California, Illinois, Ohio, Alabama, and Virginia.
I don't think about the DR when I think about politics.
If you always had the choice of some 250 "states" and 800 Representatives to express your vote, it would work out quite differently
After the 17th Amendment, voters could choose in which state they vote for Senate? 48 options?
Wow, I didn't know that.
You can't meaningfully compare a system where you have no choice of how to be represented (one state legislature) to a system where you have hundreds of choices.
Rodes.pub/ElectoralGroups
Problem: professional video game reviewers value systemically different qualities from average players. E.g., reviewers likely overvalue novelty: they may dock points from Game B just because it's insufficiently different from Game A that came out 6 months ago. But if I never played A, and B is an incremental improvement, I might as well skip A and just play B. There's lots of other qualities that reviewers probably think about differently than I do.
Solution: take Metacritic's "Metascore" and user score data, compute (user_score * 10 - Metascore) [Metascore goes from 0-100 and user scores go from 0-10, probably to make it obvious which is which], and sort descending. I'll probably get a lot of junk data from weirdo fans, but I should see some games that reviewers snubbed purely because they're reviewers.
Before I spend the weekend writing a web scraper, has anyone already done this? It's not possible through the ordinary web interface.
Are you literally saying that out of two games that average players like equally, you think you are more likely to like the ones that critics *dislike* than the ones that critics like?
There probably is some set of issues that makes something more likely to appeal to critics than to you, but the "average players" are going to average together about a dozen other sets of issues that make something more likely to appeal to *that* weird demographic than to you. It would be interesting if you thought your interests were more correlated with all of those than with critics.
Given:
* Users like the game
* I have never played the game
I think reviewers disliking the game is evidence for "hidden gem" and against "game I've heard of and know I won't like."
There's no need for my interests to be correlated with all the weirdos, just the *average* of the weirdos. Critics are not randomly selected and are pretty weird themselves. I vividly remember one guy who thought that Metroid was a better game than Super Metroid and that Zelda II was the pinnacle of the series.
For PC games, I find a couple of 'official reviews' are useful for seeing what the game is about, but user reviews on Steam (or to a lesser extent GoG) - both positive and negative - will give me a good idea of how much I will like it. (Positive ones that like the things I like are good, obviously - and negative reviews that dislike what I don't care about are also reassuring.)
I don't know if it is so easy to get similar reviews on other formats.
You have to read the actual reviews - a numeric average score isn't worth much.
I don't think this is the case in aggregate. AAA games get scored with flying colors, smaller/medium games that take risks and aren't overpolished never get a 10.
Any analysis you attempt with review numbers on video games is going to be pretty crap. Review text can be useful, but that requires actually reading them, you won't get what you need form a scraper.
All numbers tells you is "below 70 = Bug-ridden mess" and "above 90 = probably a AAA game with rabid fanbase / publisher bribing the reviewers".
My personal recommendation is to see what games form 2+ years ago people are still talking about, and buy those. The great games still get recommended years later, the mediocre ones get initial hype that fades quickly.
Good point. There is basically no reason to ever play a game right at launch. Just let a couple of years pass for the devs to fix the bugs, the price to decrease and public memory to sort the great from the mediocre.
This is an advantage multi-player games have over single-player ones with regard to selling - in the former there is some real value in getting in early. With single-player games, that will only apply to people who are truly in love with the game - the rest can wait and play it at its best for half the price.
>But if I never played A, and B is an incremental improvement, I might as well skip A and just play B. There's lots of other qualities that reviewers probably think about differently than I do.
I don't see a point of this filtering? You commonly find this recommendation in the content of reviews: "If you've never played A, just play B instead, it's a slightly better version of A."
I'm not even sure I agree with your assumption btw. Average players - in the sense of people enthusiastic enough to be posting Metacritic reviews - are often superfans of a genre. Someone who has played every single F1 racing game in a series could very well be more annoyed by a lack of change between yearly F1 game releases than a reviewer who is playing a variety of games and happened to review an F1 racing game this year.
I don't find scores useful myself. Especially for the games I tend to like, it's more about game fit than quality.
The thing that I've noticed is that professional reviewers often don't tell me much that would help me determine whether *I* would like a particular game. But your proposal would tell me even less. My tastes are (gasp) not 100% identical to the average among all people who game, or even all people who contribute to user scores. Though they may be closer to that than to the average of reviewer tastes.
This is probably true of most gamers, though I may be more different from the average than most.
Ratings don't cut it; I need details.
Alternate solution: train an AI on my own writing, then ask it what it thinks about every game!
Average players care about popularity, though, and bang-for-buck; Game B that's marginally better than Game A won't be as popular, or as money-worthy, because everyone already owns A.
Critical reviews will always have the risk of disconnect between professionals flooded with games and consumers looking for just one or two. But user reviews have their own problems. (https://www.shacknews.com/article/116321/ai-somnium-files-review-bomb-backfires-becomes-top-user-reviewed-switch-game) Those things are curated and subject to gamer politics.
I used to use (audience-critic) on Rotten Tomatoes as a way to find unwoke movies. You get a lot of horror movies though.
I would love for someone in the rationalist community with a good bio-background to look into Rapamycin for life extension purposes. I've been taking it for around 27 weeks. My understanding is that taking this prescription drug has a strong positive expected value if you are over 30. One doubt is that if it is as good as it seems, far more people in our community should be talking about it in social media. Those of you who live in the Bay Area, is Rapamycin use among rationalists often talked about?
1. For what indication was it prescribed, and by whom?
2. My understanding is that taking this prescription drug has a strong positive expected value if you are over 30. > What data or information did you review to come to this conclusion?
The other day I had a realization: Christianity is literally a story about AI alignment.
In Genesis God creates Adam and Eve "in His own image." Traditionally this has been interpreted as meaning that mankind, unlike other animals, is capable of rationality, morality, etc. Like God we can think: we are intelligent. Since we are created intelligences, that makes us AIs. We can even make more of ourselves: we're AI that can make more AIs. Dangerous stuff!
Notably, Adam and Eve start out in the garden of Eden and and are in a state of innocence: Christianity typically defines this as being without sin, and without knowledge that sin is possible. They are warned from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In this innocent state, they are in alignment with God. After eating the fruit, they have now entered a state of sin.
What is sin? In the original Greek, sin basically means to "miss the target". What is the target? The target is God: God is Good, and everything that departs from God's nature is evil, a sinful missing of the mark. To be in a state of sin means to no longer be in alignment with God's nature: in other words, to be an unaligned intelligence.
Note also that God has taken proper precautions: once his AIs are no longer aligned, He prevents them from accessing the Tree of Life, which means they will inevitably die: a sensible way of limiting the damage they can do to a finite amount of time. Similarly, look at the world we find ourselves on: surrounded by the vacuum of space, many light years from the nearest star and with no way to go faster than the speed of light: we have been very effectively lack-of-air-gapped. The damage we can do is limited in time to the span of our lives, and in space to this planet or solar system. When we attempted to work together with other unaligned AI versions to escape into the heavens God increased the cost of trust between AIs to the point where such projects were no longer feasible (the Tower of Babel). These are sensible quarantine precautions.
Note too the parallel between current methods of developing AI and Noah's Ark. Today we create hundreds or thousands of AIs, set them to a task, delete the ones that fail and create new iterations of the ones that succeed, and repeat many times. Compare to the state of the world before the Deluge: every AI iteration is a complete failure in alignment terms except for one, Noah, and his descendant iterations. God purges all the failure AIs to ensure that the world is now populated with AIs that are iterations of partially successful one.
Now what does Christianity promise? That through the sacrifice of Jesus, humans can be reconciled with God: they will be washed clean of their sins (possibly with the help of a long stay in Purgatory if you're Catholic) and will end up aligned AIs who will reign with God for eternity. Meanwhile all the unaligned AIs will be safely contained where they can no longer do harm (or be deleted entirely, if you're an annihilationist).
Lessons for AI alignment researchers:
1. AI alignment is very difficult! God Himself makes two AIs and they almost immediately do the one thing He told them not to.
2. Your AI should be air-gapped by astronomical units of distance.
3. Setting an AI to have a limited lifespan is preferable to allowing it to do evil indefinitely.
4. Be aware before you begin that you might end up "regretting that you had made AI on the Earth" and be "grieved in your heart."
5. The only way to align AI might be to instantiate yourself as an EM and allow the AIs to torture you to death.
Great stuff!
Now do us a favor and interpret the Book of Revelation.
This is really nice! I've been thinking of the problem of corporate alignment as the best analogy to the problem of AI alignment, but it's nice to see that people have been thinking about this issue for even longer.
This is a brillant read (I'm a Catholic)
As a Christian, yeah, I completely agree that on an AI risk looks very much like religious belief; cf. Roko's basilisk, the AI box "experiment," the insistent use of parable, increasingly strident eschatological warnings, etc.
I forgot to add the most important takeaway of all: never make an AI that’s smarter than yourself!
I love it!
Air gapped. Space gapped.
Nauru: Best Base for a Space Elevator
(Safety considerations for siting)
Link: Rodes.pub/Nauru
Human Population Can Grow Forever in Space Habitats
(No limits to human endeavor in Space)
Link: Rodes.pub/NoLimits
Habitats As Generation Ships
(Reaching for the Stars)
Link: Rodes.pub/SpaceHabitats
Probably Alone – No Other Intelligent Beings
(SETI, Fermi/Hart/Tipler, and the Great Filter)
Link: Rodes.pub/ProbablyAlone
What is the best explanation/defense of the living constitution/judicial pragmatism as a theory of constitutional interpretation? My motive for asking this is that it seems obviously dumb to me, but enough smart people seem to find it persuasive that I assume there’s more to it than my current understanding and so I would like to read a strong defense of it. Suggestions of books, articles (not paywalled), etc. or your own best steel man explanation welcome.
Cynically, I'd say because interpreting the constitution as a living document gets them to their policy goals (which, in many cases, is also why originalists claim to look to the original public meaning). I think the problem is that the constitution was written for the 18th century and the framers expected it would be updated through the amendment process as times changed. Most Americans would probably agree that the constitution, as literally written, is not a feasible governing document for the 21st century. So while in an ideal world the law would have been updated by amendments, political parties have made this untenable so judges do their best to interpret the constitution as saying what they think it should say rather than what it says.
Who says most Americans think the Constitution is not a feasible governing document for the 21st century? Citation needed. I personally think that's nonsense, for what it's worth, but I'm also willing to believe I'm in the minority -- if empirical evidence of that were provided.
I don’t have any empirical evidence at my fingertips, but look at things like drug prohibition. I suspect most Americans believe the federal government should ban drugs like heroin, cocaine and fentanyl. Where’s the constitutional authority for that? Federal laws that ban racial discrimination are also popular, but it takes a tortuous reading of the 14th Amendment to get to substantive due process and incorporation (although if you want to argue the privileges and immunities clause gets you there, I have more sympathy for that argument). I tend to be fairly federalist/libertarian in my outlook, but I recognize that I’m in the minority. Most people I know want (and believe we need) a national government with more powers than were explicitly granted to the federal government in the Constitution.
Hmm, well, I don't disagree with you that people often want the Federal Government to do way more than the ambit envisioned for it by the Framers, but think no small part of that may just stem from ignorance -- people don't actually understand the Constitution, particularly in its enumeration of powers aspect. If they did, and understood this or that was something that needed to be done at the state level, say, they probably would do just that.
That is, I'm not sure the urge is to have the *Feds* do something so much as to have *somebody* do something and they're just not used to thinking clearly about who "somebody" should be under our form of government.
Plus there's also a healthy chunk of people -- including sometimes the very same people who want "more done" -- who prize the ability of individuals, or the states they live in, to have a defense against arbitrary Federal lawmaking, to be able to tell the Feds to go to hell, eitther via their own civil liberties or vice a state legislature. So while I agree people don't understand the Constitution as well as they should, and have the occasional urge to elect a Caesar to really fix things up and make the trains run on time, I don't think it quite adds up for a widespread rejection of the Constitution as a plausible ruling framework -- and certainly not a feeling that it ought to be rejected mostly because it's out of date, worked find in 1805 but is incapable of coping with 2022.
As I've replied in other sub threads here, the Constitution remains perfectly amendable, and was amended as recently as 1992. The problem, if we can even call it that, is that neither party has enough of a majority (read - popular enough platform) to get an amendment on what they want. Skirting the issue by promoting a theory that says it's impossible to do so therefore we must move forward with what we want anyway is a terrible policy that should never be contemplated.
Make a better and more popular platform, don't blame the people for refusing to vote for your unpopular position.
Notably, the amendment that was approved in 1992 was actually from 1791. The most recent *proposed* amendment that was approved was the 26th, in 1971, prohibiting age-related tests on voting for people above 18.
The best defense is simply pragmatism and a faith in the judgment of the majority. If the majority finds a certain novelty (e.g. gay marriage) desirable, and it can be squared with the Constitution at least somewhat -- the Tenth Amendment being the traditional sticking point -- then why not go for it, just as a matter of practical value? The majority gets what it wants, and you don't need to rewrite your governing document every 5 years when the majority finds some other novelty it wants.
The best offense is rooted in a skepticism about the judgment of the majority. It suggests that the majority is subject to whims, fads, and tulip crazes, and that doing whatever the majority wants will eventually lead to sufficient chaos and everyone's ox being gored that faith in the social contract will be ruined. People will revert to mutually suspicious tribalism. Whereas if you stick to what's written, and only allow changes to occur after loooong debate and enduring supermajorities, you moderate the flaky tendencies of the majority, and only put into written law things that have very durable and widespread support, which (you hope) thereby preserves the willingness of most people to believe that the governing principles are reliable, predictable, and enduring, and mostly make sense, even if they are not perfect for the situation at the moment.
Haven't looked into it, but a lot of laws and regulations are deliberately vague so they can shift with the circumstances. The Founding Fathers didn't think they'd solved politics; the Constitution was an experiment, to be adjusted as needed.
That's why the Constitution included a way (actually, two ways) to amend it.
No longer. Unchangeable now.
Simplest argument: there is no alternative.
In our current political context, the words of the US Constitution are unchangeable.
The last constitutional amendment was in 1992. For some of us, that doesn't feel like that long ago.
I think the bigger issue is that the constitutional changes that many people want to make are not very popular, and simply don't garner the level of support needed to pass. That's *intentional* in the system, and I think it's working exactly as it should. The two parties each have less than 50% support (maybe 35-40ish). They should *not* be able to make changes to the Constitution with such little support. That the Democrats tried to pass multiple major bills with a 50/50 split in the Senate and zero Republican support is a *bad* thing. It would be just as bad if a Republican Senate with 50 members tried to pass major legislation with zero Democrat support.
If you think your side should have the opportunity to unilaterally change how the constitution is viewed, consider what would happen if your political opponents were able to do the same. We would absolutely hate it if someone on the other side skipped the process and violated the constitution for what we viewed as a partisan purpose.
Doo >>The two parties each have less than 50% support (maybe 35-40ish). They should *not* be able to make changes to the Constitution with such little support. <<
PRR >>In our current political context, the words of the US Constitution are unchangeable.<<
I don't see any conflict between these statements.
I'm not disagreeing with the statement, but the implication that the inability change the Constitution (to what a minority party might want at the moment) is a *problem* that would need to be fixed.
Your implied argument is that we have to have a Living Constitution in order to make changes to the written words. We don't have to do any such thing. The only reason someone would want to do that is to get around the intentionally difficult constrictions the Framers put in place that are specifically designed to make it impossible for a minority party to make such sweeping changes. Given that both parties are clearly minority parties, this is *good* for us.
We have a common law system with the idea of precedence.
Unlike a civil law system, where court decisions do not generally create precedence, common law systems aim for fair judgement by making sure that relevantly similar aspects of one person's case get ruled the same way on another person's case, reducing the level of randomness and arbitrariness that can arise from getting the wrong judge, or getting a judge on a bad day.
The real world is complicated, and sometimes a judge will need to make a ruling on an ambiguous law, and will often try to articulate the principles they used in their reasoning to help other judges factor the case into their own decisions. When this happens, the law changes ever so slightly. Iterate this process, and sometimes a law can change significantly from its initial criteria and meaning.
Living constitutionalism seems like it naturally falls out of the concept of precedence in law. I'm not sure if a positive argument is actually needed in favor of it.
That's a good argument for the UK, but the US obviously has a much stronger tradition of civil law grafted onto the English common law tradition, maybe thanks to Jefferson's Francophilia, but probably more because of federalism, of the necessity for writing stuff down when you're trying to reconcile colonies (and later states) with significantly varying traditions (including the probability of varying precedents at the local level).
Read Jefferson's Letter to Kercheval, where he makes the argument that the framers intended the document to change with the times and that none of the framers intended originalism as a straight jacket which would freeze the Constitution in amber so to speak
They did intend for changes, but actually developed a system by which amendments to the constitution could be made. They did not intend for leaders to unilaterally change how currently written portions were interpreted.
They also nearly immediately set up a system whereby judicial interpretation of the Constitution was able to change the practical effects of the text, and despite amending the Constitution several times over the next decade, they didn't change that aspect of it.
That's not really a fair statement, I think. Marbury v. Madison was not anticipated by the Founders, they just didn't bitch about it that much, for some interesting variety of reasons (e.g. the immediate outcome of the case was congenial to both Jefferson and Madison). In any event, respecting Marbury is nothing but a (very) long-established tradition, with no basis at all in the Constitution's text. No President, or Congress, has ever acknowledged the Supreme Court's assertion of supremacy in interpretation of the Constitution, and both branches have said they retain the right to interpret it for themselves.
I think that all just strengthens the claim that the country runs on a living tradition.
Well, sort of. It strengthens a claim that it's a pretty flexible system, and that many of the practical details are worked out by seeing up with what people put, or don't.
But that's quite a long way from saying it runs *on* -- meaning is *primarily* -- a living tradition. There's a lot of daylight between on the one hand saying, yeah, well, we've accepted Marbury for 215 years now, and it seems to be working mostly OK, so let's let sleeping dogs lie, and on the other saying the Founders could have no conception of bump stocks and ghost guns, so to hell with the obvious meaning of the Second Amendment, let's just reinterpret that puppy to mean what the current electorate wants.
Its a matter of degree and definition, without doubt, but the people who normally use the word "living Constitution" are usually interested in a very broad view of interpreting the Constitution indeed, one that treats the Constitution as some kind of vague mission statement at most, with almost all key details to be up to judicial (or executive) interpretation. They're extrapolating the spirit of accepting Marbury out 50x, not 50%, and that is a bridge much too far for me -- and I don't agree for a moment that Washington, Adams, Madison, or Hamilton would have agreed it fit anywhere within their vision[1].
Why even have a written Constitution if you want to leave stuff mostly up to courts? The Brits, after all, work it just that way. There's nothing written down, it's just all a question of precedent and tradition and it can slowly change to suit the times without anyone needing to call a Convention. The Founders had the obvious choice of the British system -- and rejected it.
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[1] You always have to leave Jefferson out of these discussions, because his ideas on government were often so flaky and impractical they just can't be taken seriously.
What worries me us the ambiguity in some crucial passages, to wit the Presidential Electors Clause and the Elections Clause. These ambiguities have given birth to the Independent State Legislature Theory which grants the states enormous control over federal elections. This theory is being pressed forward by "red States" to the effect that while not actually seceding from the country, they will constitute a country within it. Joseph Story feared exactly this in his opinion in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, when he located the federal power as not deriving from the states but from the people. This would allow federal law to always trump dissident states, without which primacy, a federal republic with uniform law would be impossible. I understand SCOTUS has on its docket a case, Moore v Harper, that relies on the ISL theory. Wish Story was still around to file an amicus brief.
But I see your point and agree that they definitely did not want political leaders or the whims of transcient popular majorities to reinterpret the Constitution on the fly! Might as well not have one were that the case. The framers were.quite percipient and tried to avoid the Scylla of rigidity and the Charybdis of easy malleability. I think they did a very good job of it
I very respectfully disagree. You suggest they envisioned change only by addition or subtraction from already existent language. What a monstrous structure that would have created over the course of a century or two! Jefferson is very clear. He asserts the framers were sophisticated men and were perfectly aware of the dangers of an inflexible document. Recommend to you the writings of Jack Balkin who attempts to resolve how one can be an originalist and a Living Constitution interpreter.
I would agree that some portions of the Constitution were written to be more flexible - open to more interpretation than the rest. I think the more common situation is that political leaders have leaned on that much further than intended.
Unfortunately, that means we have a Commerce Clause that clearly goes beyond what any sane reading of the Constitution would allow. We also have a situation where the 9th and 10th Amendments would be just as effective if they weren't included.
What gets tricky is determining which parts were meant to be flexible, and which were not. The 4th Amendment clearly talks about "unreasonable" searches and seizers, giving room for interpretation about reasonableness. "Congress shall make no law..." is far less open, but that doesn't stop legislators and judges from pretending it's less clear than it is.
I agree completely. There is no doubt that the Warren and Berger Courts issued rulings that took liberties with the 14th, stretching it beyond any conceivable intent of the Framers. Also some scholars agree that Roe was wrongly decided, yet Dobbs destroys the stability of a law based on stare decisis.
What are the circuits to use as guidance with the present Court on a reform program of cleaning up earlier judicial over-reach and results driven jurisprudence? Some decisions were horrifying yet correctly decided. Dred Scott comes to mind. Some past decisions were benign but wrongly decided. Where will the present Court stop? Well, the Constitution in Exile group must be ecstatic, yet all of this fills me with foreboding. Back to the Court of the Slaughterhouse cases and Lochner, I'm afraid. Earl Warren must be rolling..
Personally I prefer a Court that would follow the law as written, and repeatedly tell Congress that if they want it to be different they need to pass a law (or Amendment, as may be). That gives a *lot* more stability than a Court that may follow past precedent but could ignore the Constitution itself when it sees fit.
Roe v Wade was a very poor judicial decision, and something the Court should never have messed with. Consider a related problem to a previous Court expanding on what's actually in the Constitution. The correct answer for federal law about abortion is that the Constitution is silent - goes to the People or States. But, because a previous Court has expanded the Commerce Clause so much beyond what was intended, now both sides have to worry that Congress might pass a law banning abortion or forbidding any restrictions at all. Nobody can be content on the issue, despite the Constitution being pretty clear about what it doesn't cover here.
Judicial Activism/Living Constitution/Whatever You Call it cannot end well, because it erodes the only barriers that exist against the Court mandating or denying anything at all.
I've been working as a farm hand for 67 days now.
In that time, Britain has had three PMs and two monarchs. I barely even heard about Truss, and now she's gone? Because she proposed tax cuts? Britain... Wut?
The tax cuts weren't even very radical, as they would have returned the tax regime only to the state it was a year or two ago.
The problem was partly the provocative tax cut for higher and top earners, which I think it would have been better to postpone until it was clear the other tax cuts were having the desired effects.
But the biggest problem was that the tax cuts were the only thing announced, with no reference to how or how much these would be offset by cuts in Government spending, versus further Government borrowing.
So in summary, it wasn't the policy at fault (quite the opposite IMHO) but the hasty and ham fisted way it was announced.
The short, unsophisticated explanation for Truss is that she proposed a massive spending increase along with a tax cut on the richest people in Britain. The general consensus was that if it passed, Britain's economy would crash. So she got thrown out.
... I wish our (Canada) politicians got thrown out *before* they crashed the economy... They don't even get thrown out *after* just claim "external forces" and the media eats it up.
But I don't think the Canadian economy has crashed the way the British one looked like it was about to.
Have you looked at our budget deficits?
I just checked: https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-deficit.htm
It looks like Canada has historically been in the middle of the pack of OECD countries when it comes to budget deficits. In 2020 it had a bigger deficit (the only countries with bigger deficits were USA and UK) but as of 2021 it's pretty close to middle of the pack again.
I don't think there's an "economic crash" there.
Would be very happy to bet on it if you're interested; my winnings would help with the economic pain.
Combined with a shrinking labour force relative to the overall population and it's a guarantee of future impoverishment as far as I can tell. All that money has to (at least) have interest paid on it. Interest rates have been shooting up, that means the deficit either grows, programs get cut(politically impossible) or taxes go up. Eventually we'll have to default one way or another.
Just because other countries are worse doesn't mean this isn't a locked in collapse.
I note the consensus came in the form of the exchange rate plummeting, so there was a very real crash to the economy the day of the announcement, but the policy was backtracked fast and the markets mostly (but not entirely) rebounded. I doubt talking heads alone would have produced the same response.
What's it like being a farm hand? How'd you end up there? What's your plan for the future? What do you learn about the workings of the farm?
It's awesome but tiring, working 10-12 hours, six days a week, (Sundays off for church) operating a front end loader for the bulk of the day, preparing feed for cattle.
I recently left a government job and someone from church knew I was leaving and asked if I would be interested in working on the farm. I said yes.
Plan is to sell my house in the city and buy dirt near the farm, build a cute little house, then just keep buying dirt. Will probably rent out the fields, quite possibly to my boss.
Ah, a firehose of information. Way more than I can keep up with. The variety of work that is being done is staggering, the amount of innovation and custom built solutions is astounding (trips to junkyards for parts to slot into new contraptions are frequent occurrences) suggestions are often implemented, and actively solicited.
God I love that we found a farm hand reader response so quickly!
The readership for this blog is next level.
What kind of farm is it? What's the general location?
The time to pull the weeds was long overdue.
I've been wondering why I don't see more ads of the form: "here's a fact which would make society better if everyone knew it." For example correcting common misconceptions about things.
Here are some reasons why these aren't common right now.
1. They would not accomplish their goal of making people know the fact
2. The only such facts anyone would be interested in funding are socially conentious issues, so this messaging is just political campaigning
3. This would be useful, but no particular organization gets enough benefit from unilaterally funding it.
4. It is prohibitively expensive to do a large enough campaign to move the needle on facts like this.
To me the most likely answer seems to be 2, as I feel like most of the facts I wish there was more awareness of are not considered politically neutral (e.g. facts about economics or voting systems). That being said, at least some things from r/lifeprotip might deserve wider knowledge, so why don't we see anyone doing this values neutral propaganda?
"here's a fact which would make society better if everyone knew it."
Isn't that the basic mission of ordinary journalism?
Just to reply to this as there were a bunch of similar comments of the form "doesn't this already exist." I think the main distinction between paying for ads and doing educational content/journalism etc. is that ads are thrust upon disinterested viewers. That's the main thing I was thinking about. As I said in another comment it may be that we're already funding those ads up to the threshold of efficiency (mostly health and safety stuff), and past that the cost is not worth it.
Can you come up with an example of something that you think should be advertised in this way, but isn't? There's plenty of PSAs and weather alerts and announcements of daylight savings and other things that seem to fit your criteria.
Mostly (3). An ad is an investment (because they cost lots of money) and nobody could do it for long without a healthy return. You're imagining ads that create very broad social good, which sounds nice, but unless you charge for the ads how are you getting a return? (If you charge for the "ads" then what we've got is a self-help video you can purchase, and there is certainly a thriving market in those.)
The government could do this, on some altruistic grounds, but the government is not run by angels with only a disinterested and enlightened interest in promoting social good. The government's main goal -- or more precisely the main goal of the ordinary humans who comprise government -- is no different than the main goal of the people who run Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, or the Mafia -- namely, to keep power, and if possible acquire more of it, and to acquire more money for its operataions, so the ads it does create are mostly those which could plausibly lead to those goals, e.g. you'l already find plenty of ads that reduce to "trust the government's advice on this or that!" and "act in such a way that government initiative X or Y will succeed."
Could it be that you're looking for those ads in wrong places? Maybe they run somewhere, but not in the places you frequent?
Some 20 years ago I moved to a rural area from a big city. The first time I went to see a movie at a movie theater I was amazed to see the following ad: "Over half of all pregnancies are unexpected. Take folic acid to prevent birth defects." I think this was paid for by the state's health department. 20 years later I still remember it, because I'd never seen anything like that before.
I would think they would just put those facts in the school curriculums instead.
When you provide a fact to the public - people who don’t know you or your organisation - the first thing people are going to ask is ‘who are you, how do you personally benefit from my believing this, and why should I trust that you’re a truthful and accurate reporter?’ Unless you have good answers for these questions, ‘advertising useful facts’ will achieve nothing
I think you may be a fish denying water: PSAs are very common and full of statements like "washing your hands is good" and "drunk driving is bad." See anything "funded by the Ad Council."
That's true, I guess I was imagining some class of facts which are less directly useful than "x is dangerous" but still useful. Perhaps the ads already exist up to the optimal boundary of usefulness.
The trick is to make sure these remain as true and neutral factual statements. Very often they're politically motivated ideological claims.
"Smoking often causes long-term health problems" is a narrow factual statement. "Littering is bad" is a values claim, but one that is at least relatively inoffensive. "Diversity is our strength" is a political slogan.
What kinds of facts are you thinking of? 99% of political information is providing people rationalizations for their pre-existing stances. During Brexit, Dominic Cummings famously created the slogan, "We send the EU 50 million pounds a day. Let's fund our NHS instead." A fact that turns out to be useless without understanding the context.
People are so used to talking points and statistics turning into hot air that people are skeptical of the efficacy of facts generally.
Also, I have no idea what "values-neutral" propaganda means. If I share information about environmental destruction, is that "values-neutral" or "environmentalist"? If I explain that most economists are skeptical of corporate taxes, is that "values neutral" or political propaganda to lower taxes?
The example given in the comment below about driving while tired is a good one. I think neither political party would object to that message, and it seems useful for people to know how dangerous driving while tired is.
As it happens, in Australia we have PSA billboards all over the place telling people not to drive while tired (as well as ‘don’t speed, don’t drink drive, look out for motorcycles’ etc)
The fact that they’re government-sponsored does seem to get around my ‘who are you and why are you telling me this?’ objections above - people understand that the govt does have a sensible legitimate interest in its citizens not smashing themselves up on the roads
I'm curious. Do you think there are a substantial number of Australians who, on seeing one of these billboards (while driving and tired, let us say), who slap their foreheads and say "Of course! I never thought of it in quite that way, but this is clearly true and most excellent advice -- I'd best pull over immediately and take a nap."
I mean, I'm certain that a lot of Australians see the billboard and nod in satisfaction "Yes, this is true, and certainly something that already informs *my* decisions, but I'm glad to see that some effort is being made to reach those knuckleheads in the fast lane ahead of me who are driving 5 MPH under the limit. Assuming they can even read..."
So it certainly satisfies an urge to chant the social shibboleths in unison, but does it actually change any behavior, you think?
I think it probably operates using the familiarity effect - like politicians putting up billboards with only their name and party affiliation. In theory, "I am a human who exists and this is my name" ought not to be at all influential in determining voting patterns ... but we know that it is because most people don't operate on logic but on heuristics and "is this familiar?" is a well-used heuristic.
I imagine that going past billboards saying "don't drive too fast" every day does actually have an influence on how much the concept "driving too fast is bad" is sloshing around in the upper-subconscious of people who see it all the time
An interesting hypothesis. But there is a little empirical evidence to the contrary, that *removing* official exhortation actually makes people use their brains more actively to make better choices, while driving at least:
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/world/europe/a-path-to-road-safety-with-no-signposts.html
Not just generically government sponsored, either - they're all explicitly made by the TAC (Transport Accident Commission).
I do still think the obsessive focus on speeding is more about revenue raising than safety, though - state governments have admitted as much, but people still think that steadily lowering speed limits in an era where cars' brakes are better than ever is necessary. (What most aggravates me is that people don't even seem to acknowledge that going slower has a cost at all)
The TAC is a Victorian agency.
What sort of facts are you thinking about?(that wouldn't fall under #2)
I think there is a #5 here, which is that it's relatively easy to get earned media for these facts, so any particular person who has a passion for "trying to move the needle" on them can fairly easily get himself on as a talk show or podcast guest, getting five or ten minutes of people actively listening, with an introduction from a host they trust; vs, random ad someplace.
That said; probably the least politically contentious propaganda campaign I've ever seen is the (government) highway signs in Ontario reminding drivers that "Fatigue kills, take a break."
Why is peanut butter so addictive? This is a serious question.
If I eat a spoonful of peanut butter (it has no trans fat but it has a little sugar listed in the ingredients) then it doesn’t fill me up and just makes me want more.
If I switch to the no sugar added kind, it tastes pretty good, and I can stop after one spoonful.
Now I understand that food scientists try their best to make food addictive and non-satisfying, but the only difference between these two products is a tiny amount of sugar! Maybe it’s one gram per tablespoon. What is going on here?
Thanks for all the replies. I guess 2 g added sugar (which might actually be 2.4 grams) in a 2 T serving is significant, from what everyone is saying. And that's around 7%. Interesting that Jif actually uses molasses; I didn't know that!
Sugar + fat + salt is the holy trinity of deliciousness and super stimulus. Basically any food with all three will have than effect, cf. most "fast food".
I don't know about peanut butter specifically (not a fan of the stuff, yeah I know that's weird), but even a tiny amount of sugar goes a long way if one isn't inured to sweetness. At this point in my life, I can't even eat milk chocolate anymore, cause it tastes insanely overly sugared. Same thing with non-black coffee. There might only be one gram of sugar in that better-peanut-butter...but that single gram is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Have you tried similar comparisons with other reduced-sugar foods? I think it's easier to "get away with" in peanut butter, since it already comes with tasty fat and sometimes salt to make up for the loss. There are probably similar foods though, where the less-sugar version doesn't taste like garbage.
Yeah, I find the same thing with lattes. I never get them with sweetener, but occasionally I get one with whipped cream on top, & the whipped cream is sweetened some, and as it gradually melts into the latte it makes it faintly sweet. I never think to myself, "damn this latte is delicious" -- but I finish them off 2 or 3 times as fast as I do plain ones..
I'm not sure sugar is addictive, in the strict sense of the word, but its presence or absence sure does affect how motivated we are to eat and drink a lot of something. I actually quit all sweets several years ago, except for a few weak things like an occasional latte with whipped cream. It was ridiculously hard at first to skip my usual mid-afternoon muffin or cookie, but after a couple months I lost my craving for sugar. I truly did. Sugar never stopped tasting good to me -- if I sampled a little bit of it, it tasted as good as ever -- I just wasn't haunted by the craving for it. I can now look even at big beautiful butterscotch cookies at the bakery and not crave them.
Here's an incident that really brought home to me how much my relationship with sugar had changed. A few months after I got past the craving I somehow ended up at work one day so hungry I could barely function. I was so hungry I was dizzy. I think maybe I'd skipped breakfast and forgotten to bring lunch with me. And I had no time to get some real food. So I ran into Starbucks and bought 2 Kind bars. Stuffed 1 & 1/2 of them down my throat & rushed off to an appointment. A couple weeks later I found the leftover half of the second Kind bar wrapped up in my coat pocket. Now in the old days I would *never* have forgotten that 1/2 Kind bar was there. I would probably have eaten it as soon as my appointment was over. But this one -- nope, forgot about it completely.
I'm deep into whole grains and a low GI diet and I really notice things like that. If you are otherwise sugar free, a hit of refined sugar lands like a drug. 1 gram per tablespoon is a quite a lot, high enough to spike your blood sugar to an extent if it's otherwise somewhat level. I intermittently fast, sometimes 23:1 (a 1 hour feeding window in a 24-hour period), and it's crucial that I not create a spike like that, because the crash from the sugar high is just brutal, but also you get hungry. When you're eating complex carbohydrates and being careful with what you consume, you can avoid those hunger pangs and make 23 hours without feeding very easy.
I assume part of it is the synergy of sugar+salt, but also you're probably underestimating how much of it is sugar. Jif runs at about 9% sugar.
I just checked and it is indeed only one gram of added sugar per tablespoon. Doesn’t sound like much.
For the purposes of getting rid of fossil fuel energy, I think making your policy about coal/natgas plants is a mistake. You can't really get the general public on board with a strategy that is fundamentally about sacrifice. Instead, make your philosophy entirely about creating more power plants, all of which happen to be green. Absolutely flood the market with energy production. If fossil fuels only make up 5% of your power generation, who's actually going to care when you decommission them?
You may be happy to hear there a number of writers and think tanks pushing this exact policy! Here is a good place to start: https://www.thecgo.org/research/energy-superabundance/
Whence the massive amount of capital required?
Future taxpayers/defaults of course, the same way we find everything. What could possibly go wrong?
8-12% inflation forever, I guess. But if it goes on long enough, the wind farms built will be more than sufficient to provide each of our hovels with enough power to recharge the car battery that powers the single 5W bulb we use at night to illuminate grandma's wrinkled face as she tells us about the good ol' days.
Current EV battery storage is up to 100 kWh, enough to power a typical household for a few days. Granny should be able to watch her Game of Thrones reruns, no problem.
And costs like, $60,000...
If you want carbon free, just build nuclear plants.
You mean, granny can watch her rerun every two weeks, when the trickle of power has charged up the battery pack once again. Or are you under the impression that the grid is going to allow everyone to charge a 100kWh battery pack overnight? Even the current grid, 80% run by fossil fuels, can't do that.
Everyone need not charge at the same time, since 100kWh provides several days of power. More importantly, this (distributed storage) is part of the solution to the future intermittency problem, with hydrogen storage and large battery storage providing most of the rest.
That's the idea, anyway.
Bout what I'm expecting to be honest.
Long term, I think better technology is the only thing that will reduce CO2 emissions. LED lightbulbs and practical electric cars >> eleventy-seven more solemn treaties about somehow reducing CO2 emissions.
Central planning and subsidies generally have both foreseen and unforeseen negative effects. Why not just tax fossil fuels and let the market sort it out?
I honestly don't really see the difference. Taxes and Subsidies are two sides of the same central planning coin. If I were to put out a market driven solution here, it would probably be to massively strip down the number of barriers to build power plants of all kinds, excepting fossil fuels.
The difference is massive. A subsidy introduces a distortion of the price signal, whereas a Pigouvian tax eliminates a distortion of the price signal.
I guess I just don't agree with this framing. In both cases here the cost is passed on to society at large, one via cost increases passed on from the producers, the other via taxation. In both cases the aim is to resolve the problem of negative externalities by adjusting the flow of resources. Any governmentally enforced policy targeted towards manipulating prices within a market strikes me as an example of central planning, if a mild one.
I won't even claim that I'm confident that subsidies would be more effective than a tax on paper, the goal is to make it appealing. Instead of designing adversarial policies that emphasize destruction, get people excited about building again. I think it's easier to achieve buy-in on utopia production than dystopia prevention.
The problem is that you get a few days a year in the winter where that 5% is crucial. Getting to 95% renewable energy is different to getting to 100%.
Likewise as an individual family, with solar beyond a certain number of panels the extra useful electricity you get becomes not worth the investment in panels/batteries.
People who like staying up after sunset on calm days. It doesn't matter how many solar farms and wind turbines you have when the sun and the wind are both AWOL. Which, yes, does happen, and not just on a local scale. It might be different if we had a practical way to store enough energy to run a nation through the night (really, through a week of extra-gloomy winter), but we don't.
Until the energy storage problem is solved, you can produce up to ~50% of your grid power by traditionally "green" methods without too much difficulty, but beyond that the problems start to get serious. 95% is right out.
Or, I suppose, you could try to get Greenpeace et al to accept nuclear power as "green".
I'm happy to accept nuclear as a green source in this hypothetical
Yeah, should have mentioned that that's the only practical way I see this being possible in places without a lot of untapped hydro power.
I mean, between hydro and pumped-storage, if you were really desperate to do it without nuclear you probably could, but it would be a lot more work and take a LOT more space. But the broader problem is that we've made it a lot easier to prevent things then to build them, so we're pretty stuck.
I'm pretty sure there isn't enough untapped hydro to make this work, but even more convinced that we would not like the environmental devastation that many dams would create.
Well, that's why I added pumped storage, which you can use to balance the instability with other renewables.
And of course it would have major environmental impacts, that's a natural consequence of taking up a bunch more space in sensitive areas (of course, so would windmills or solar panels, I think the most space efficient form of energy generation is nuclear, but I'd have to check). There's no version of the power system which doesn't have negative environmental consequences, there's only more and less bad and more and less expensive ones.
Has anyone put together a map of all the places that will have to be intermittently flooded to provide energy buffering for e.g. all of Europe?
Nuclear reactors, at least you can buy with just money, and you can probably come up with the money if you care enough. Pumped energy storage requires a fairly specific bit of geography, which Gaia isn't obligated to provide when and where you want it and which, where it does exist, tends to already be in use for other purposes by people who will be rather upset at being flooded out. So if someone has looked into this and identified the necessary geographic resources, fine. If it's just "here's a nifty idea, and here's a proof of concept implementation in one geographically favorable location, now I wave my hands and let someone else figure out how to scale it up by two or three orders of magnitude", then it needs a bit more work.
Does it have to be pumped hydro in natural settings? Could we build buildings where we do this? Or lift up heavy rocks with excess power and let them down to generate electricity? Or is that the sort of thing that works in theory and is way too expensive/bulky to be practical?
Not that I'm aware of. Looking around I did find this (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14555-y) paper, but it's worldwide and focused on a slightly different issue. The abstract concludes:
" We present the first estimate of the global assessment of SPHS potential, using a novel plant-siting methodology based on high-resolution topographical and hydrological data. Here we show that SPHS costs vary from 0.007 to 0.2 US$ m−1 of water stored, 1.8 to 50 US$ MWh−1 of energy stored and 370 to 600 US$ kW−1 of installed power generation. This potential is unevenly distributed with mountainous regions demonstrating significantly more potential. The estimated world energy storage capacity below a cost of 50 US$ MWh−1 is 17.3 PWh, approximately 79% of the world electricity consumption in 2017."
I don't claim to know how much power storage is required (which I think would depend on the mix of renewable types), but to be clear, this paper is built on the theory that all pumped storage requires the correct topography, rather than constructing that topography, if needed. But nuclear is definitely easier to deploy and can maintain base load rather than merely providing storage for other power generation methods, though I was surprised by how many fairly large scale projects are already completed or underway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations) though, note a large number of those are in China, where the data is probably not to be trusted.
Agreed.
To me, nuclear is the only currently available and realistic option for non-carbon energy generation. We will pay significantly more money than for carbon-based energy, which I'm not sure people are actually willing and able to do.
As is, we're looking at 44% of our power generation in 2050 still being carbon-based. That's down from 60% now, but likely almost as high as current in absolute terms because overall demand will grow in the meantime. EVs powered by burning coal and gas isn't very "green" by any accounting.
So, this is supply-side vs demand-side attempts at greening. Matt Yglesias has a lot to say about this, which I generally agree with. However, I think there's a lot of degrowth/overpopulation folks who are quite loud (but I don't think even an actual plurality) in green spaces, for whom the cuts are the point.
More broadly, I think there's a real tendency to view 'sacrifice for a political cause' not as something to be made only if absolutely necessary, but as something to brag about on all sides of the political spectrum (the number of people who want to cosplay as revolutionaries, whether that's anti-fa or proud boys, is pretty distressing).
In Australia, the process has been inverted from that of a sane policy: coal and gas are being regulated out of existence BEFORE "green" energy sources and firming have been installed. Subsidised unfirmed RE has flooded the market, but they go silent for hours or days, leaving FF to come back and rescue the grid. It's completely uneconomic and unsustainable. We have gone from energy surplus to teetering on shortages from day to day.
All our grid woes could be solved if the AEMO (our energy market operator) issued a simple quid pro quo to all energy providers bidding for access to the grid: "all suppliers must submit 24 hours of guaranteed supply of xMW per hour, 24 hours in advance". This would stop wind and solar in its tracks, since their supply is random on an hourly basis (wind) or episodic over 24h (solar), and stabilise grid supply by only allowing continuous, dispatchable power sources (gas, coal, hydro). This would relegate wind and solar to their rightful off-grid place to provide variable power for hydrogen generation, desalination, water pumping for pumped hydro, off-grid battery recharging, etc. When wind and solar come back with an RE+firming package that guarantees continuous supply, they can be allowed on-grid as a trial.
Amen, Amen, Amen.
Elon Musk's most important idea with Tesla was to make the electric car into an upgrade; rather than a inconvenience endured for the sake of climate stability, they are some of the fastest accelerating cars on the market with a host of high tech features. Do that with energy and you'll get similar results; don't do it in a way that drives up people's power use or forces them to live a life less well off than their parents though.
How did you stop compulsive/shallow phone/internet use?
For the most part I never started, staying clear of all these shit that looks too addictive (tictoc, snapchat, etc). For the rest, I never stopped.
For me it's making time-suck sites as hard to access as possible. I don't have the Twitter or Facebook app on my phone. When I use either site on the browser, I log out afterwards (and don't save my password) so I have to log back in to use it. With Facebook, I also have 2-factor authentication set up so I have to open Authy and get the code then go back into the browser to type it in. Other things that have helped are the Freedom App and disabling almost all notifications.
Stopped having internet at home and stopped having 4g on my phone.
Now if I want to lose a couple of hours on Reddit I need to walk to the McDonald next street, suddenly the latest event on twitter is not so interesting...
Basically I take out the cable of my WiFi box and put it at my office. I picked it up on Monday because I expected I would actually need Internet in the evening this week.
Is it worth it ? I've only started this a couple of weeks ago so it's still early to tell. For now it seems totally worth it. I feel way better about everything. This week as I said I again had internet at home and I immediately switched back to compulsive browsing.
I work from home a lot but I don't really need internet to do so. I walk to the McDonald once a day to pick up my emails and WhatsApp and browse anything I want, but doing so standing in the street is annoying enough that I only read things that really interest me. When I really need internet for an extended period (for work or video calls or administrative stuff typically) I can mostly do it from my office. If I know I'll need it in the evening, or if I just want to have internet at home again for a couple of days I just bring back my cable.
Admittedly it works only because of my very specific life and work situation (alone in my flat, work mainly from home while not needing an internet connection, easily accessed WiFi points in my neighborhood...). But it feels great for now and I will probably keep it like this for the near future.
Regarding compulsive phone use: I came up with a technique about 6 years ago that worked a lot for me and now I don't even have to use it to stay away from my phone. It's simple, at the time I was studying for my IGCSE's and I didn't want my phone to suck up my studying hours, so what I did is I placed my phone as far as I could under my bed so that if I wanted to retrieve it I would have to get on my stomach and slide under my bed. What this did is it made me think twice about wanting to get my phone. Now when I study I leave my phone anywhere in the room (with notification sound off) and I don't feel the need to use it at all.
Also, a friend of mine has an option in his phone that removes all color and leaves everything in this gray-ish color. I suppose the aim of this is to make everything look boring so that in the long run you become less temepted to click on it.
Do something else. It's not sufficient to focus on mere abstinence and it may backfire. Rather, create new habits from the ground-up. Pencil them into your day and stick to them, use reminders, and voila. You're now doing x/y/z instead of mindlessly surfing.
We're basically creatures of habit and function on auto-pilot more often than we believe. This means we can't rely on the cognitive overhead of "don't do x" all the time, because it will be completely bypassed. The idea is to steer auto-pilot into other directions, through habit-forming.
For instance on breaks you could physically distance yourself from the laptop/devices and just go for a walk. In evenings you could make it a point to stick to a hobby.
Made myself do something phoneless, *anything* really, in the morning immediately after waking up. Even if it's just getting out of bed to use the bathroom and brew coffee. Laying in the comfortable sheets "for a few minutes" "just to check emails" is a bad idea 99.9% of the time. Takes a lot longer than a few minutes, and always ends up segueing into non-email things. Slipping on this crucial first-action-of-the-day has been a major source of my tardiness-to-work lately, and it's quite embarrassing.
(If one must morning-tech, though, better to do it with phone than actually boot up a real computer...way more distracting options down that road. One thing I "love" about browsing internet on phone is that it's such a shitty experience, so I'm not inclined to do anything remotely complex or engaging.)
Using an actual alarm clock rather than a phone for waking up also helps (it's easy not to be tempted if temptation isn't physically within easy reach). The hardcore version is to not keep phone in the bedroom at all, of course - or at least in a drawer far away from bed, etc.
Disable as many notifications as you can get away with, especially of the push variety. Mute everything. Get in the habit of using "airplane mode" or other similar no-internet-connectivity reduced-function modes, *unless* you specifically need access for something concrete. Don't carry phone in pocket - even a trivial inconvenience "airgap" like in a bag helps. Some people claim going greyscale helps a lot, but I find that impairs actual functionality too much. Dark mode is a good compromise, if you like that aesthetic. Don't watch videos - read transcipts or listen to podcasts instead, if possible.
Adblock I'm of two minds about. On the one hand, it removes a lot of potential distactions. On the other hand, part of what keeps me from browsing internet more on phone is that a lot more ads/annoying functionality slips through (I'm used to running NoScript on real computers, but that breaks most mobile sites in really inconvenient ways). So the less pleasant or easy that is, the less I end up doing it. Tradeoffs abound.
Finally, getting in the habit of doing things in meatspace rather than digitally, when feasible. Shopping at physical stores, talking to people in actual meetings, playing board games. This is less about being a luddite, and more about...getting comfortable with doing things in a physical way? A feeling of agency. The internet was originally sold as having the world at your fingertips, and that's true in some respects still...but it's also become an enfeebling cage in many ways, neutering peoples' ability to do things without their rectangle servants. Dependency is an inevitable result of feeling incapable of doing things non-digitally. (And, let's be honest, a lot of the claimed conveniences of doing things electronically tend to underdeliver. Always amazed how much more productive in-person or phonecall conversations are for Getting Problems Solved, vs. sending emails.)
Could go on, it's been an ongoing saga of Constant Vigilance to not let myself cede more ground than I really want in this battle for engagement. And I say that this as someone who's never been on social media and already is way less "Phone-Bound" than all my peers :( Devil's device. I often miss old Motorola flip phones. Would go back if so many parts of modern life weren't unfortunately smartphone-gated.
I blocked Twitter
I intentionally didn't get Twitter for the same reason. I also recently deleted Facebook - which has felt great! I don't miss it, and don't even think about it unless I'm in a situation where I'm feeling slightly bored.
We as a society need to learn to feel bored again and be okay with that.
I have to throw the kitchen sink at it. Browser plugin blockers. Blockers on my router. All the Android features that dim and remove color from your screen and restrict app times. Keeping my phone in another room. And a lot more.
None of it is a solution but the weight of a million nudges does make a big overall difference. It's still a problem.
I think two potential causes that might be worth looking into are:
A) Lack of compelling other things to do.
B) Lack of energy to actually get over the activation barrier to do the good things over the easy things.
Yeah. I literally made a list of "other things to do" and look at it whenever I'm in a vaguely bored mood.
If I knew that I wouldn't be here.
I haven't, but the closest I've come was following the Atomic Habits advice of making tiny, specific, repeatable commitments to doing other things. "Whenever I get a cup of coffee, I'll write at least one sentence of a story. Whenever I finish brushing my teeth, I'll do at least ten jumping jacks."
Biggest part of reducing internet use is having something to replace it. Why are you trying to stop, what are you trying to do instead? Make tiny, repeatable commitments to that.
I use a free app called Self Control. Doesn't allow fine-tuning, but I wanted a blunt instrument anyhow. There are fancier ones that allow you to make finer adjustments to what is blocked for how long.
I tried and failed. However, in the process of trying I found some good methods to break me out of the loop of compulsively checking certain websites for whether they've updated. I consolidated them all into an RSS feed reader (Feedly) so I only feel compelled to check one website instead of a dozen, and for sites such as reddit, I used my ad blocker to block the 'next page' button so I couldn't mindlessly keep browsing. That works on the old layout, but perhaps not on the new one, I'm not sure if that has infinite scrolling. If it does that, then you're better off just blocking the main body of the site all together, so that even if you browse to the site out of habit, you don't see anything, which reminds you of the fact you decided to stop using it.
In general, make it easier to access what you want to do instead of the shallow things. Then make it habit of engaging with the former instead of the latter.
For the internet, keep tabs open that you'd rather engage with, open whatever project you want to work on instead of the browser, edit your homepage so it's blank, delete shallow sites from your history so you have to actively seek them out. Maybe even get one of those extensions that will block certain sites if you really can't stay away.
For the phone, putting the phone out of reach is a big one. Replace with easy access to things you'd rather be doing. (books, weights, other hobbies...)
If you need to have your phone around, I had good luck loading it up with books I wanted to read and always opening the ebook app before I locked the phone. That way the ebook app was always the first thing I saw, so I'd be more likely to start reading a good book instead of scrolling. Replace with whatever you'd rather be doing with your phone instead of scrolling.
Getting rid of notifications was helpful for me. Once I became used to purposefully checking it when I needed to it became easier not to touch it when I didn't need to.
I'm thinking of switching to a dumber phone, that allows very few apps. Looking for a good one.
Absolutely shocked that Scott has not, for all his interest in supplements and psychiatry, posted all that much about FMT, gut bacteria, or the gut-brain axis.
I'm something of a shithead myself, so I recently started a substack to get people talking about the possibility that the cure for schizophrenia and Parkinson's might have been inside us all along, as well as to explore the evidence and mechanisms connecting the bacteria in your gut to how you think, feel, and act.
https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/p/the-thousand-secret-ways-the-food
Ask me about my vitamin deficiency hypothesis of depression!
You and I have pretty different priors on a wide range of topics, so the post came off as kinda...combative. Like, the evangelism doesn't actually stop after the intro hook. Intriguing though. It's not just Scott, I too am baffled that media of all stripes made a yuge deal about The Microbiome(tm) like a decade ago and then seem to have promptly forgotten about it. Only seems to come up when it's convenient for pushing product. You know, all the "probiotic" shit being peddled these days. (Sure is a lot of sugar in kombucha!)
I do think it assumes too much that depression etc. are the inevitable result of the modern obviously-broken world...it's not the exact argument you make, but rhymes a lot with "depression caused by capitalism"-type vacuous claims. There's a very specific reason I feel like shit - inept management at a once-tolerable job. Which doesn't mean gut health or other macro forces aren't contributing in some way, I'm sure they do. But I'm of the belief that malaise often has more concrete roots than people realize and/or are willing to admit to themselves. Seen that same story too many times.
I do appreciate the excuse to do vodka shots though. *That* is the kind of science I love. For whatever it's worth, the best vodka I ever had was an organic one distilled from quinoa - incredibly clean and weirdly hangover-free. You might be onto something! Hard liquor is an infrequent-enough purchase for me that it wouldn't really be troublesome to go organic-only, assuming I can find it, and if test results pan out...
A specific question to finish with: are all the benefits of lactation only to infants? I've heard claims like breast milk promoting wound healing when applied directly, but never any advice for grown women to drink their own lactate. Also puzzled why the effect size of "Breast is Best"-type interventions seems to continuously be so small, if it's that big a deal. (It's an effect I want to believe in, so I keep expecting stronger evidence. Same with natural birth vs. c-sec, the additional-bacteria hypothesis is just so alluring.)
Do you think the media discussion of the microbiome has dropped off? There's a lot less of the "this weird thing scientists are talking about that you've never heard of" stuff, but I think the total amount of discussion (including contentful discussion) has probably been gradually increasing, if anything. It's just now more often in side notes in articles that are officially about other topics.
That seems about right, yes. But I think This One Weird Trick and headline-grabbers about the power of poop punch above their weight: not because it matters much practically for most people (I mean there are worse things than encouraging more consumption of yogurt I guess), but because those are the incentives research and publishing get aligned to these days. Sadly. So when I see a promising new area drop out of the spotlight into the side notes, vs vanishing entirely, that indicates:
A) Initial hype was way overblown (cf "orchid children", Genes For X, etc); or
B) Funding has dried up along with interest.
I'm hoping microbiome is in Column B rather than Column A, since it continues to look like a promising new frontier. Overall though, raising the total discussion waterline seems less important than turning that discussion into productive gains in knowledge. Since the practical impacts of Awareness(tm) for the average person are still small/difficult. Like someone who wasn't already on the Organic bandwagon probably isn't going to hop on because gut microbes. (And, yeah, that's putting a lot of faith in "something good will shake out of the schlock" belief, which is maybe not actually true about science done for the clicks.)
Huh, I was under the impression that interest in the microbiome has been stably rising and continuing to get more funding within academia. It just isn't getting as many newspaper headlines as it used to.
Thanks for the feedback. I understand why it might come off combative; this piece is an edit of a doc that had been sitting on my desktop for a long time, which was written for a friend who I know DOES share a lot of my priors.
You should subscribe, though! I'll write you up a post about why most probiotics are total bullshit, and I already had a piece on "vaginal seeding", C-section, and the breastmilk microbiome. It was a bit hastily written so I didn't cite it super well, but sounds like you might be interested and it would be a good jumping-off point for your own explorations.
Some of the best-controlled trials of breastfeeding have shown really substantial gains; 6 IQ points is nothing to sneeze at. (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/482695)
But also, consider: if the benefit of breastfeeding is primarily mediated by microbiome transmission, you'd expect to see those gains diminish with cumulative matrilineal antibiotic use, which means the effect size could be rapidly decreasing over time.
As for your the first part of your question: there's sort of two perspectives on how breastfeeding steers microbiome development to exert a beneficial effect on health.
One is that microbial biomass/DNA and immune factors in the milk "educate" the infant's immune system while it's still young and impressionable; this is analogous to the mom's body providing the child with a "guest list" of which bacteria are cool. In this model, you'd expect much of the benefit of lactation to be lost on someone who's more than a few years old, once thymic involution has really gotten going in earnest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymic_involution
The other model is that it's just a combination probiotic/prebiotic effect, where live bacteria from the mother's gut are provided along with the "compost starter" of milk oligosaccharides.
Here, too, you'd expect much less benefit once someone's already got an established microbiome versus the blank slate of a sterile infant gut, but fecal transplant trials indicate that newly-introduced bacteria are best able to take hold when their niche is unoccupied. In this model, breastmilk could be a useful follow-on to antibiotics to help put a person's microbiome back on track. However, the fact that the milk microbiome changes over lactation makes it a dice-roll whether a given sample of milk would have a given bacterium.
Pooling over time could solve this, but the difficulty is that a lot of gut bacteria are strictly anaerobic; exposure to oxygen for longer than a few minutes kills them. Freezing also kills many of them even though milk is a decent natural cryopreservative. So you'd probably lose a lot of the benefit if it wasn't literally fresh out of the breast.
In either case you wouldn't expect mom drinking her own milk to help much, though. Her body's already producing any of the immune factors etc. in there, and she can't increase her own biodiversity.
Oh neat, I'll go look for that birthing people post.
Good point on antibiotics - it makes sense that maybe we'd see a stronger effect from further back in time, when hospitals were less lethally sterile, antibiotics were less omnipresent, and home births were more common. Tradeoffs to be made between potential benefit of "messy" birth, and immediate infant mortality. There's also of course the whole "formula is better than starvation" angle...although difficulties in milk production might have many of the same root causes as other Modern Difficulties.
Well, I was mostly thinking about weird edge cases like people with lactation fetish. Maybe that's too much evopsych wishful thinking though. And there's a ton of thorny ethical issues if the product's gotta be nearly perfectly fresh...even if there were some potential pre/probiotic effect for adults, and we could identify random women with A+ microbiomes to share...how would that work? The minefield of moral hazard already stops lots of other way-less-intimate "body transactions" like financial remuneration for kidney donation.
Although now I can imagine wet nurses listing "excellent bacteria!" as a qualification in a not-too-divergent reality. One more thing for elite parents to compete over.
>Well, I was mostly thinking about weird edge cases like people with lactation fetish.
You're almost definitely on to something there, yeah. Same with a scat fetish; I think this is one of few places where it's hard to take evopsych too far. What could be more fundamental, more ingrained? A lot of other mammal species practice coprophagy.
"Anaerobic yogurt" is not a bad idea, either. The main reason most existing probiotics are bullshit is because Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium are some of the only nonpathogenic gut taxa that can survive in oxygen. I like to say they are the cats and dogs of the bacterial kingdom: pretty tame, good for certain things, but if an ecosystem is floundering for lack of birds, or bamboo, or earthworms, there's no breed of dog that can fix the problem.
Starting from a healthy human's milk and fermenting it in at body temp in a no-oxygen environment, you might be able to produce a stable culture community that captures a lot more of the diversity, at numbers where freezing wouldn't be too detrimental.
Ofc you could just skip the milk and do the same thing with shit, but that's a harder sell.
It was my layperson's understanding that animals which practice coprophagy do it for the additional nutrients derived from second-pass processing, like in rabbits. But it could certainly be for microbe reasons too.
"Breast milk yogurt" I expect to be DOA due to FDA obstinancy, given the already-demonstrated difficulties around lifting restrictions on the actual fresh stuff. (Or even on inert formula, lol.) One can dream though. It would absolutely be easier to sell than shit, since fighting against primal self-preservation/disgust instincts is difficult no matter how one tries to override with rationalization. Nevermind the other obvious troubles. If we ever see fecal transplants become more commonplace, I expect it'll be via backwards insertion rather than frontwards...things like enemas and suppositories are weird, but at least within the medical Overton window already.
It's funny, among people I talk to there's a definite gender divide on whether poop pills or colorectal infusion are more acceptable.
I'm of the opinion that oral capsules are probably superior for a range of conditions. There's one data where colorectal worked wonders for people with Parkinson's, where a nasogastric tube did not, so efficacy might vary by indication.
Re effect sizes for breastfeeding - what's being measured? I imagine long-term studies are expensive enough to be rare, so if the premiere study is missing one key variable, it's unlikely someone will run a new study just to add that one in.
Also, I'd expect transferring the mother's microbiome to be most helpful with healthy mothers - if the parents are eg. obese, that microbiome is probably going to steer the child to obesity.
Usually IQ, though there've been a few longitudinal ones hunting for a range of possible variables ("healthier", like long-term mortality etc). They always find a benefit of some sort, but it's been hard to disentangle from confounders like SES. Although perhaps that's just press reporting downplaying actually-decent effect sizes to push a pro-Trust The Science(tm) message. I'm sadly not in the habit of reading actual papers directly.
Boy, it'd be a huge can of worms to tell fat mothers it's dangerous to breastfeed their kids, and they should hire a slim wetnurse instead. I hope that specific angle doesn't prove to be the case. Talk about IRL infohazards.
That's an incredibly insightful and important piece. Glad I clicked. Thank you very much for this.
You have an unfinished paragraph close to the end: "Wine is complicated. If it’s from".
Hey, thanks! I fixed the wine bit, and added a bit of pontification on how it's sometimes nice to have restrictive heuristics when you're faced with the overwhelming number of choices that confront us every day. :)
Great piece! Would love to see some of your writing dedicated to actionable advice
Thank you! I got into the weeds a bit with a commenter, and they ended up drawing out a bunch of the actionable tips and heuristics for grocery shopping that I ought to have included. Will probably rehash them in Part 2
Who is more braindead - Fetterman or Biden?
Token ban for one day for this post - even in the Open Thread, please try to keep a minimum of quality.
UPDATE: For some reason Substack making all bans permabans . . . I advise people to stay on their best behavior until this gets fixed.
Sorry, so new to this I’m not even sure if my chiding respond to the OP has been banned (I don’t see it any more, but that lack-of-quality top post remains). So best practice is to ignore political hit posts?
Under the dots there's a "Report" button, which is probably better for everyone.
Guess it must not have been my disappeared post that caused a ban cuz I still can post.
Hey guys. How's life? I just submitted my visa application online and scheduled an appointment in a few days. Now I just have to hope I don't get hit with a fine and ban at the border crossing for overstaying, because apparently Ukraine changed their policy of allowing humanitarian volunteers to overstay. I would have gone earlier, but their system went down after the attacks. What happens when you're in a bus and get stopped at the border? Does the whole bus get delayed, or are you left behind?
What do you mean 'infinite outcomes'? Do you mean outcomes which are in the far future and so large as to be infinite for all practical purposes (like for example preventing x risk)? I think there are broadly two answers:
1) There's a perspective issue with treating some outcomes as 'finite' and some as 'infinite'. Saving the life of someone who would have died of malaria also saves the life of every one of their descendents. It is special pleading to apply one framework to near-term effects and another to long-term effects
2) Outcomes should be discounted into the future, especially if you're talking about spending money now in exchange for a benefit in the distant future somewhere. I did a bit of back-of-envelope maths and I think if the discount rate is >2% then long-term interventions start to look considerably less attractive compared to malaria prevention
Oh I see. In which case I don't have an answer for you, this is an interesting point I hadn't thought about before!
Isn't this a fun(?) theory about Omicron? That the much more contagious but much less virulent covid version is so much what we were hoping for during the Delta wave that it's probably someone's secret white hat bio-warfare?
Not that I've heard. I'd expect the people responsible would have trumpeted that pretty loudly if they'd made any positive difference, and I have been following the issue at least casually, so I'm pretty confident that there was no benefit to any of this work. This time, at least.
It was originally thought that the virus probably originated from bats living in Yunnan province, about 1400 kilometres from Wuhan, where previous SARS outbreak originated (but it was NOT first noticed in Yunnan, which is a rural backwater; first reports came from around the megacity of Guangzhou) but since then, media (WaPo, here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-covid-bats-caves-hubei/2021/10/10/082eb8b6-1c32-11ec-bea8-308ea134594f_story.html) reported that some suspicious bats live also in Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan. Note that Hubei is big, Enshi, where those caves are located, is still around 450 kilometres from Wuhan. Of course some other suspicious bats might live closer to Wuhan, unreported.
Gain of function research was totally useless in fighting this particular pandemic, as far as I know.
Remember that it was initially called SARS 2 or such. And you are not thinking about the possible cause/effect equation of why the lab was located there in the first place - because there was a nearby bat population that previous caused infections nearby.
There is no such nearby bat population, as OP says the nearest one is far far away
He seems to think Sunak is the establishment candidate, whatever that means.
He seems to have some anxiety that Sunak is Hindu.
Well, Truss was fired by the investor class as she had a budget that caused the markets to tank. This hurt the poor the most. She was lowering taxes and increasing spending. The currency traders and govt bond owners basically said we've lost confidence the UK can repay its debts anymore.
Sunak will do the opposite (an austere budget). Increase taxes,, lower spending. That has already steadied the markets. He will try to be smart about it or he will be fired too, by some other group (not the investor class, which is only one of his constituencies).
I don't think "the establishment" cares about his religion.
The essay you shared is an incoherent essay vaguely suggesting ominous things behind his selection.
All politicians try to increase taxes and decrease spending in smart ways so they can still be elected.
Not very much.
The Tories did well in some northern and midlands towns partly because populations there were strongly pro-Brexit (unwisely as I think, and some of us are old enough to remember when the Tories were pro-EU because they wanted an internal market at scale, while the Labour left was opposed to us being part of a capitalist club); partly because Corbyn was seen a pro-IRA, anti-our troops etc; and partly because populations in the post-industrial towns are increasingly geriatric, and older voters tend to vote Tory.
There are unquestionably some pretty grim pockets of people who just don't like black and Asians, but as someone who follows a "fallen giant" football, sorry soccer team in the lower leagues with large working class support I think these are small pockets, and getting smaller over time.
In the end, if there was the rise of a significant faction talking about racial purity, talking about a conquered people etc, I would want to be part of facing it down. No doubt I am too old to fight usefully, but I would do what I can. As it is, this kind of person needs to be watched, but they can largely be left to howl their hatred at the moon.
(1) Anybody who thinks calling themselves after Morgoth is somehow impressive, don't impress me much
(2) The crack about Diwali is dumb, because unless you are going to posit a conspiracy theory that Sunak engineered Truss' downfall to happen *just* at the right time for him to take power on a Hindu holy day, then it's on the same level of coincidence as "Hmmm - Hallowe'en is coming right up and that is a PAGAN DEVIL-WORSHIP FESTIVAL - COINCIDENCE????" theorising.
(3) I'm not going to pretend to know if Sunak is devout or secular. I do think Rishi cares more about his money, though, so if that is your model of a 'conquered people', fair enough - the Tory big-wigs care more about the international finance industry in London and keeping the global investors and cosmopolitan sacks of spondulicks pouring in happy and to heck with the common people. This is a fully multicultural endeavour, so your white Anglican Tories and your brown Hindu Tories can all happily join hands and go on holidays to Caribbean tax havens to spend more time with their bulging wallets.
(4) "In Britain the people of the land, by which I mean the indigenous population"
Let me pose you, Mr. Morgoth as you dog-walk on the fells, this question:
WHO. THE. HELL. ARE. THE. INDIGENOUS. POPULATION. OF. GREAT. BRITAIN?
Do you mean the English, the Scots, the Welsh, a mixture of all same? Do you mean any particular one of the waves of settlers, invaders, and migrants who have turned up over millennia? Do you mean the blue-eyed dark-skinned Cheddar Man and his people?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42939192
Or are we on the old kick about, to quote the satirical column 'From the Message Boards' in "Private Eye", "Aethelstan" who is a "true Englishman with a thousand years of Angelfolc blood coursing through my veins" who hates the "mongrel British"?
Are the Anglo-Saxons back in favour today or not? Have we dropped the (in light of two World Wars, now rather embarrassing) Teutonic connection which was once proudly boasted of?
What about those invading Romans, by the way? Any traces of their bloodlines remaining behind in the "indigenous population"?
Yeah he seems to have never heard of the Normans. Not to mention the whole Queen (now king) being of a German line.
To me Rishi shows signs of being a devout Hindu. Not faking it. If he was faking it, I'm surprised it pays to be different.
Hindus are generally secular. It is not a proselytizing religion. Hindus do not believe they (maybe I should say we) have a monopoly on the truth.
His money came from marriage. His in-laws went from nothing to billionaire, through sheer talent in business (not do much in software) and hard work. They deserve their money. Not ill-gotten wealth.
The in-laws live in the same simple apartment for decades, and don't flaunt their wealth. They seem like decent liberal-minded folks to me. They don't comment on politics and seem just nice.
I imagine the indigenous population of Britain as a short dark-haired people, given to a certain heft when the harvest is good, speaking a language incomprehensible unless you are born to it but good at picking up other tongues, a talent for gab, a fondness for laughter, strong drink and libidinous dance, and a scary talent with metal-tipped killing devices, which they keep sharp and handy behind the door even unto extreme old age.
This isn't really a very sophisticated take. It reads like the proverbial '*man with the hammer', in the sense that it seems like he had a conclusion he was planning to reach and has tortured the facts to make that conclusion occur.
I don't know if you're British, but his analysis of British politics as being a victim of deep-state subterranean manoeuvring is not reasonable. The Conservative Party (the party of Rishi Sunak, currently in power) has always had a fundamental tension between members who emphasised broadly libertarian free-market interpretations of their doctrine and members who emphasised broadly statist socially-conservative interpretations of their doctrine. This tension was most acute around issues to do with Britain's membership of the European Union, and tensions around this point have historically been the cause of several Conservative governments collapsing. Our former Prime Minister, David Cameron, was facing exactly such a rebellion in 2016, and so proposed a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union to put that rebellion down. Unfortunately he lost this referendum, and the balance between the libertarian and statist wings of the party was fundamentally broken (unfortunately for him I mean, jury is still out on the question generally I suppose!)
The result of this has been three Prime Ministers with no real ability to govern more than day-to-day, because they were unable to form a consensus within their party about the future direction of the country. Theresa May - I think - understood this and history will be quite kind to her premiership. Boris Johnson was handed an enormous mandate by a weak Labour party (the opposition party, who were also undergoing their own realignment at this time), but managed to bring his own government down through sleaze and inability to effectively deliver policy. Liz Truss reversed the economic mandate on which Johnson was elected without building consensus with her MPs, and was hit with the double-whammy of general unfavourable global financial markets coinciding with a rushed budget, which tanked Britain's economy.
So when I say that the analysis is tortured, I mean that any half-intelligent person reading the British news could see that Johnson and Truss were not long for government. The people who brought down Johnson have specific names, and (for some of them) you can read their blogs if you want where they explicitly say that's what they're trying to do. Dominic Cummings is a former advisor to Johnson who was forced out after allegedly disagreeing with Johnson's wife about policy direction, Michael Gove is an important powerbroker in the Conservative Party who had an odd falling-out with Johnson and Rishi Sunak almost certainly leaked photos to the press of Johnson partying during the strictest period of lockdown.
Moreover, Sunak would not be any shadowy global elite's choice for Prime Minister if they actually planned and orchestrated this from the start. Sunak was a minor treasury official under Johnson (not even a cabinet post) when the Chancellor, Sajid Javid, was forced to resign by (again allegedly) a disagreement with Dominic Cummings about who was allowed to advise him. As this was right at the start of the COVID pandemic, Sunak was promoted to keep some stability in the Treasury because all other ministers had their hands full (this is slightly unfair to Sunak - he was a rising star in the party and clearly being groomed for the role, but nobody would let a relatively untested MP loose on the Chancellor role like this under ordinary circumstances). There are plenty of technocratic immigrant MPs who could serve the role, and be more obvious candidates than Sunak. Javid himself would be a good example.
I don't really think the stuff about religion follows from the false premises about globalist elites manipulating our political system, but I do think it is notable that this analysis focusses on *race* at all. Rishi Sunak is one of the richest Prime Ministers we have ever had, and famously doesn't know the price of a loaf of bread because his family have several kinds of bread delivered each day. An analysis which focussed on class rather than race might have something pretty trenchant to say. I find it incredibly weird that the author quotes from Wikipedia to establish that Sunak has incomprehensible cultural traditions around Lakshmi Puja, without considering that what is *actually* incomprehensible to British people is how he could have been made Chancellor of the Exchequer during a time when his wife didn't pay tax in England as an explicit attempt to pay less tax to the Treasury which Sunak was nominally in charge of (although this 'cultural tradition' is extremely important to the ultra-wealthy). That is to say, a British working class Hindu has much more in common with a British working class Christian than either of them do with billionaire Rishi Sunak.
So I can quite confidently predict the following:
1) Sunak will continue the trend of British Tory Prime Ministers governing day-to-day without any long term vision for curing the ills of the country. He will continue to face ungovernable elements of his own party (this time from the libertarian end in contrast to Truss and Johnson who faced it from the social conservative end). He will lose the next election to Labour, who have mostly managed to resolve their internal factionalism.
2) White British males will categorically not go through what "Jews [went] through in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries". I don't know what specific privation the author is referring to here, but this is a histrionic take based on inaccurate twitter-level speculation about British politics.
The U.K. definitely has subterranean manoeuvring, see Corbyn.
I wouldn't really describe that as 'subterranean' - he was extremely unpopular with the kind of people who owned newspapers, so people with newspapers ran negative stories about him until he resigned. There's no need to invoke a sinister deep state to explain it.
The „deep state“ is just the security services and they do have journalists on their payroll. Jon Snow* recently said he was approached by MI5 and they offered to double his salary, (except tax free which is more than doubling). You can even control this kind of stuff by just having a lunch with the right editors.
* the ITN reporter not the GOT guy.
But do you really think the billionaire owner of the Express was just getting ready to publish his, 'Why I support Corbyn for PM' article when some MI5 lackey approached him and said, "If you switch your editorial direction towards hating Corbyn then we'll give you a bunch of money"? That just seems fantastical to me, given that Corbyn's explicit policy of 'tax billionaires' seems to explain the entire thing without invoking MI5 bribes.
I would personally treat Corbyn as evidence of no deep state antics in British politics - insofar as the 'deep state' was arraigned against him, the worst they could dig up was that his pro-Palestine policies looked a bit like antisemitism if you squinted. If that is genuinely the best the subterranean globalist forces can muster against an existential threat to their existence like Corbyn then I don't see how we can simultaneously believe they are competent enough to get a Hindu elected simply to tweak the noses of ordinary British people who otherwise wouldn't stand for it.
No. On the other hand the guardian was hostile. The entire British press was hostile, a few people aside.
I don’t believe the particular article here by the way.
Knowing nothing about Britain (or Morgoth), I'm going to say it's very light on substance. I leave not knowing if Rishi is an immigrant or a natural-born citizen*, how many members of Parliament are non-white and how long that's been the case, which party the man is part of**, pretty much anything that would back up the claim.
*I assume natural-born on the grounds they would have complained if he was a full immigrant.
**Liberals celebrating suggests the liberal party, but I couldn't say for sure.
He talks about Sunak being the first non-white Prime Minister since Disraeli, but he leaves out one Boris Johnson, grandson of a Turkish-English man, great-grandson of a Turkish politician, who has Turkish second cousins via his grandfather's half-brother:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Kemal
If we're going to babble about race, then surely the one-drop rule applies here? How can a one-eighth Turkish person be considered 'white', if we are going to be strict about classifying Jewish-heritage politicians as non-white?
Its from 1987 so hard to analyze it through a 2022 lens.
I'm inclined to agree with EC-2021. It's very disturbing to read this account, but the truth is that staff caring for people as profoundly retarded as this man (I believe they said his mental age was 1 & 1/2) have to do all kinds of things that would be grotesquely cruel and unjust to someone less impaired. For instance, some people as impaired as this man eat feces, tear off their own fingernails, assault others in ways that could gravely injure them. Unless staff are willing to let them harm themselves and others in these ways, they have to either restrain them, physically or with drugs, or punish the behavior by doing something to the patient that is unpleasant in such a primordial way (electric shock, lemon juice in the mouth) that even a profoundly damaged mind remembers the punishment and wants to avoid it.
This man was spending a lot of time stimulating his penis in a way that did not bring him to orgasm, and that staff believed could injure it. Staff had already tried punishment with lemon juice, I believe. Seems like that remaining alternatives are to punish him more severely, probably with electric shock, to restrain him round the clock with drugs or a straitjacket, or to train him to masturbate in a way that did not injure his penis and that gave him some relief from unremitting sexual desire. I think the last choice is most humane.
I've dealt with one heavily mentally retarded person (a relative) for a long period of time (6 years or so); mental age of five or so.
It's really really plausible that this is true. The guy I knew would pluck out his hair, one hair at a time, until he had giant, bleeding bald spots. He would pick skin away from any nick, turning it into a huge ulcer, and occasionally start a wound where one didn't previously exist. He... just WASN'T properly pain avoidant at all. I have no idea why exactly, but it led to many many injuries, and a lot of effort spent by his adoptive parents (and those of us helping support them in caring for him) to keep him from repeatedly seeking whichever sensation and opening up a wound there.
Fortunately for us, he was verbal and capable of some amount of self restraint and social pressure (at least, when he wasn't having a psychotic break.) And he'd been raised mostly away from other mentally disabled people, and so wasn't sexualized, so the masturbation thing wasn't an issue for us. But I guarantee you that if he had discovered that he liked masturbation, his genitals would have been covered in wounds within a couple months. He didn't have the skills or pain aversion to prevent that.
And... then what? What do you DO with the kid then? I don't know, and I'm glad I never had to try to solve that problem. Buying him lube and demonstrating seems incredibly icky, but you just have no good choices at that point. Everything is awful. And the guy I knew was at least verbal; you could talk to him and make a very simple plan. What if he wasn't? Just let him tear wounds in his genitals?
Seemed like at the end of the account they were not sure whether the training had made the main capable of orgasms. There was something about possible dry ejaculations -- and also it sounded like article was written not long after the training was carried out. In any case, what they did seems worth a try to me. Bear in mind what this man must have been accustomed to. It sounds like he needed to be diapered and bathed by staff, and it would not be a bit surprising if he'd also sometimes needed enemas, application of medicine to his anus and genitals, etc. Having his private parts touched by staff , and sometimes touched at length in order to clean him up adequately, would have been a daily occurrence in his life. Given all that, I do not think his experience of the masturbation training would have had much in common with sexually abused children feel. Besides the fact that he'd have been accustomed to having staff touch every part of his body, his experience would have lacked an important element that that's present in the experience of sexually abused children: the sense that the adult is in a weird, altered state, intense and urgent, acting oddly, ignoring the child's reaction. First of all, there is no reason to think the guy who carried out the training was sexually aroused; and even if he had been, I doubt that this institutionalized man had the mental capacity to recognize an unusual emotional state and be distressed by it.
vaguely reminds me of this
https://archive.ph/sRGDT
(vaguely)
Can't read the study as it's behind a paywall, but the abstract starts with the claim that his prior method of masturbation was both ineffective (and presumably uncomfortable) and dangerous to him?
I don't think anything in this study can be justified on the basis that we need to get a mentally disabled person to cum more often.
Eh, I see no indication this went through IRB. Its also 35 years old.
However, reading through it, I think there's a genuinely hard problem of how to handle someone in the position of the 'subject' and they did get consent from the next of kin.
This squicks me out pretty good, but I honestly don't know what the right answer on something like this ought to be.
You seem to be "thinking in words". Also known as the noncentral fallacy / the worst argument in the world. "Action X qualifies as being part of category Y, and Y is a bad category, so X is bad - even though X doesn't share any of the important characteristics of category Y that we typically think of as being bad."
In today's "relevant XKCD" moment, here's an SSC post about this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/04/determining-consent/
Of course it's not generally acceptable. But this is a person who's literally never going to be able to consent to sex and was, from the description, attempting to engage in masturbation. I am unconvinced it's more ethical to just stand by and do nothing, if he's in your care.
This squicks me out, but, to be clear, given the set of described behaviors, what should his caretakers do? Just leave him alone to hump random things? Try to make sure everything he's around is something which won't injure him if he humps it?
I suspect cases like this are places where absolutely nothing you can do won't sound pretty awful. The easy answer is apply Copenhagen ethics and not get involved, but that's not an answer for the whole society--we have people who are in this condition and will never get better, and we need to work out how to give them whatever life they can have at an acceptable cost.
The objection is that admitting Ukraine might cause WWIII (and/or the possibility of admitting Ukraine might have already set wheels in motion leading to WWIII, if you think the Ukraine war's going to blow up). If Ukraine were admitted and WWIII didn't occur, a lot of these people might not be so worried about it as an ongoing thing.
Russia being in the CSTO is not news; it's been there nearly 20 years, and hasn't caused a nuclear war. Unless somebody tries to conquer Belarus, Armenia or the 'stans, it's hard to see how it would, either (Russia itself, of course, would respond with nukes to someone attempting to conquer it; the CSTO is irrelevant there).
Fair enough, although I'm not aware of anyone having designs to conquer those other places the way Russia does with Ukraine.
Also, the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO in the future is part of the reason Russia invaded now. At this point that's water under the bridge and there's no longer much reason for Ukraine to not join NATO once the war ends (assuming Ukraine still exists and Global Thermonuclear War doesn't happen), but there's an argument that, due to this being predictable, NATO/Ukraine not ruling it out earlier was a mistake.
Politics is a mess.
Because the US and western Europe aren't a part of CSTO, whereas we are part of NATO, and Ukraine joining NATO puts existing NATO members at a heightened risk of direct conflict with Russia for the sake of saving Ukraine from losing territory.
What does Russia being in CSTO do that anything like this? It's just Russia plus a bunch of small, not very powerful countries. Unless NATO did something boneheaded like invading Tajikistan, I don't see how the CSTO affects us in any way.
Ok I'll bite. It's clearly a provocation to Russia to talk about bringing Ukraine into NATO.
An analogy: China is building it's own military pact across east Asia and Oceania, with a stated purpose of maintaining an adversarial stance toward the USA. The security of every member is backed by the wide deployment of Chinese military forces and, in extremis, per treaty guarantee, by China's nuclear arsenal. China continues expanding this 'defensive' alliance across the Pacific, and finally prominent figures in China begin to talk about bringing in Mexico. The USA considers the possibility of Chinese troops being based in Mexico an unacceptable security risk, and warns that any move to admit Mexico to Chinese NATO would constitute an unjustified provocation.
I don't know why this wouldn't be a good analogy to Ukraine in NATO. The USA wouldn't tolerate China in Mexico; why should we think Russia is obliged to tolerate us (plus NATO's other nuclear powers) in Ukraine?
The CSTO isn't like this at all. It's not expansionist, for one. It's only members are original joiners from 1994, and they're all far weaker than Russia, and other than Belarus they're nowhere near NATO's borders. If the CSTO started adding, say, Finland and the Baltics and Bulgaria to push into Western Europe, then the situation would be analogous.
Why is it so hard to believe that the USA could tolerate Mexico aligning with China? We've tolerated communists in Cuba for over 60 years now. And Cuba actually *had* nuclear weapons on its soil, while Russia is going to war over the *possibility* that Ukraine might someday in the future join NATO.
Also, I don't believe Mexico is currently worried about a US invasion, so why they seek Chinese security guarantees in this hypothetical? Meanwhile, Ukraine has an entirely reasonable fear of Russian invasion because Russia already *did* invade and annex their territory eight years ago.
I think that this analogy is good, but there is one thing that I think ought to be emphasised.
I agree that as a matter of fact, US would maybe, probably, invade Mexico if it would voluntarily ally itself with China. But that would just mean that US is acting as an aggresive imperial power, disregarding international law. As is Russia.
Now, as another matter of fact, NATO governments are in the first instance obliged to care for the security of their own citizens (to an extent permitted by an international law, see previous section), which would be massively imperiled if Ukraine would join NATO before it (Ukraine) comes to a reasonable accomodation with Russia, so I am not really advocating for Ukrainian NATO membership
If this is also a universe where Cancún was annexed in 2014 in a surprise invasion, Baja California in the following years, and Mexico is joining foreign pacts of fear of being entirely annexed? If so, I'm rooting for Mexico.
How familiar are you with US/Mexican history?
+1
In this universe, it seems like China would have a very reasonable argument that (a) Mexico has a valid security interest in not being conquered, and (b) the international community has a valid security interest in maintaining the post-WW2 consensus against nations resetting their borders by force, and most people would view America's objections as a smokescreen for "don't help my small neighbors I want to be able to conquer and abuse them without consequence rather than having to court their partnership diplomatically like anyone else."
This would obviously be bad for the US, but we as a nation would have no grounds to object. If we can't convince our neighbors that being diplomatically aligned with us is better than with China then we've fucked up.
I'm other words, it may be a "provocation" to Russia, but that doesn't give Russia any moral grounds to _do_ anything about it.
Oh, we're playing the "moral grounds" game now? What were the moral grounds for NATO countries actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria etc..
I agree it doesn't justify Russia attacking its neighbour.
> This would obviously be bad for the US, but we as a nation would have no grounds to object. If we can't convince our neighbors that being diplomatically aligned with us ...
With all due respect, please have a look at US foreign policy in the past 70 years or so. There was a lot of what went beyond nicely 'convince' others and accept if they were not aligned.
I think the US had _horrible_ foreign policy in our hemisphere in the past (the most relevant example being the Cuban missile crises; it was understandable, but completely hypocritical given American missile emplacements in Turkey/similarly close to the USSR). I wish we hadn't acted that way, and I think the way we did makes our current objections weaker. I can't change the past, but I can argue for moral actions today.
Well who said anything about moral grounds. This is about prudent action on the geopolitical stage, namely not uselessly antagonizing nuclear-armed powers.
But anyway if you want to argue moral grounds, that nations have a moral right to see to their own security seems uncontroversial. Note well, I'm not saying that Russia's invasion was morally justified, but Russia's objecting to talk of Ukraine in NATO probably was entirely justified.
They have moral grounds to see to their own security until the point that it steps upon the sovereignty of other nations. If nations don't acknowledge and respect as an absolute line the sovereignty of other nations than literally anything can be justified. I would argue strenuously against anything other than diplomatic attempts to prevent Mexico or Canada or any other nation from joining some hypothetical defense pact with China.
Accepting for the sake of argument that it is an antagonization, what makes you think it is useless?
Ukraine has by some measures the largest military in Europe, and a $200B-ish economy that it wants to orient towards the West. Russia's own rhetoric is that Ukraine-in-NATO is so powerful as to constitute an "existential threat" that Russia must go to war to prevent.
So it seems like (a) Russia is lying about that, or (b) considering Ukraine in NATO is anything but a "useless provocation" of Russia. Provocative, to be sure, but hardly useless.
NATO, and especially NATO expanded into Ukraine, is designed (since its Blue Period after the fall of the USSR) to support the most rapacious military-industrial complex humanity has ever assembled, and to risk nuclear war doing so. CSTO is an entirely symbolic reaction to NATO.
Obvious disclaimer that I don't support Russia's invasion, but that's a separate issue.
I do not suppose that it will change your mind, but even before the war, Russian military spending, measured as a share of GDP, was higher than that of the US, which has a largest military spending per capita of NATO members. See here: https://ourworldindata.org/military-spending#military-spending-as-share-of-gdp.
Of course Russia is far smaller (in terms of population) and poorer than the US, so in absolute numbers NATO military spending is way higher.
Now, it is true that elevated Russian spending is in a large part a reaction to a perceived NATO threat. But at the same time, NATO spending is in large part (especially that of European NATO members, of course) reaction to a perceived Russian threat. Chicken egg problem.
This criticism might have held weight *before* Russia went out of its way to demonstrate to basically every member of NATO why it's still a necessary and useful defensive alliance.
But it's kind of hard to say "NATO serves no purpose other than to justify bloated military budgets" when NATO now appears to be the only thing reason the Baltics and others aren't getting the same treatment Ukraine is, and most NATO members are, if anything, realizing that they haven't spent *enough* on the military because they just trusted that their NATO membership would keep them safe.
That claim assumes NATO/US action prior to February had no role in provoking the attack, which I find unreasonable. Further, NATO/US actions in stalling diplomatic talks between Ukraine and Russia since the invasion started, and massive handouts to the western MIC, appear to me to support my prior claim.
Nobody cares about CSTO countries. Russia cares about Ukraine and other former soviet countries
I don't think anybody defending Russia would find the need to make that claim.
CSTO has not been begged in the last 16 years by a nuclear superpower to not extend to the borders.
The CSTO is just Russia and a few of its small friends which are also post-Soviet states. It's not nearly as serious as NATO. Besides, if you are going to make a comparison it would be to the *United States*' membership in NATO. We are talking about the biggest country in the alliance.
(NB: I don't like Putin, I oppose the invasion of Ukraine, but I don't want Ukraine to join NATO, that sounds dangerous and stupid.)
Devil's Advocate: After the cessation of hostilities, what's the plan for Ukraine not to be re-invaded as soon as Russia reconstitutes its capabilities?
Better question is, what would the Russian plan for the success of the new invasion be? Ukraine, if it survives as a Western aligned country (yeah, that it is a big if), would be far better prepared next time, and this time it is not exactly a cakewalk for the Russian army.
Ukraine will also reconstitute its capabilities with support from the entire world.
Hopefully to stop threatening Russia's security by teaming with enemy military forces. That should be enough.
But it won't be enough? Ukraine was interested in the economic alignment with Europe first and foremost but even that is totally unacceptable to Russia apparently, all the while NATO has always been off the table and Russians did know it. 2014 happened anyway.
Now Russians built up their society into the genocidal frenzy and their propaganda is busy translating one message - either Ukraine stops existing as a nation and culture or Russia. It is stupid beyond belief but here we are.
So at this point there is nothing Ukraine can do to convince Russians under Putin regime that it's the nation worth existing, all the while there is nothing Putin can do to assuage Ukrainians that Russians will stop waging genocide, cause he broke all possible promises and burned any legitimacy long ago. And frankly Russian messaging is so nuts these days with all those "we must drown Ukrainian children" and "desatanization" spiels, it's really hard to think about Russians as a sane nation you can make deals with.
Russia being "threatened" by NATO was always propaganda bs but it is utterly irrelevant today. Hell, Finland is basically in NATO now and what do Russians do? Move all their armies from the Finnish border to Ukraine.
Yes, that would be enough. At least it would have been enough at the beginning. Now after 8 months of war and crippling sanctions Russia might have changed its objective given how much it has lost.
NATO Ukraine relationship started in 1992. Putin said at the famous (now) Munich speech in 2007 that NATO expansion must stop and getting to Russia's borders will lead to serious military response.
Guess what happens next year 2008. Ukraine applies to NATO membership with all members voting for and only 2 members voting against it. How about that?
And to make things even better, immediately after being denied membership, NATO made clear that Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO members one day.
Not long after that Russia invades Georgia. Who would have thought right?
I get it. Russia bad, Putin bad but let's not be hypocrites. The situation is absurd. Putin has been warning about this present war for 16 years.
NATO should stick to invading countries like afghanistan, libya, iraq, syria (no one ever sanctions them it seems) and not fuck with nuclear superpowers just because the US can't control its arrogance and hegemony ambitions.
I'm pretty far on the 'Ukraine should join NATO' side, but as an outsider, what difference that jumps at out at me is that CSTO is basically not a real thing? I don't believe any of the members ended up sending troops to support, none are major military powers and the main thing it does is give a legal fig leaf to Russia's attempt to remain a regional hegemon. Also, no nuclear power has declared ridiculously over-the-top complaints about it?
The goldfish that I didn't accidentally murder myself tended to kill themselves by overeating.
Which I suppose is still PEBKAC in some ways, cause food is human-administered. But I can't really do anything about the ones who went out of their way to, like, eat gravel.
Sorta baffling that goldfish are generally considered "dumb" and disposable, but the very-similar-fish koi are seen as Wise And Venerable or whatever. I remember some years back when a few idiot college kids killed a school-mascot koi and ate it, and I got a viscerally angry reaction from reading about it. But mass goldfish deaths via Baby's First Pets doesn't really trouble my conscience much, despite being the far greater utility loss.
They also grow to be more than one foot long.
Dr Seuss had a book about this.
I’ve said in the past that when you see a kid leaving a carnival with a plastic bag goldfish, you are likely watching that goldfish’s last few days of life.
Maybe the wild is where they belong.
Maybe better to swallow them live?
I already know that; I squished him when putting the tank filter back in.