Ha that premise as you stated definitely true. I feel like I'm in a fun house a lot.
Some examples of switch flips:
The "pro-Russia" party flipped. In 2008 we had Obama and were all about "Reset button with Russia" and it was the right warning about Russian propaganda techniques.
The "pro mask" side flipped in Covid, but very quickly (it took like 2 months into the pandemic). The first two months of the pandemic the right was all about , shutting the border and masks, and some had biohazard suits in their Twitter profile pics, versus the "Covid scare-mongering as racism" headlines. The flip happened in March 2020.
Feels like a sleight of hand somewhere is happening honestly.
Just adding tally 5000 to my list of insufferable NPR employees. From the major hosts to most of the reporters. I would pay money for an app that automagically blocked NPR employees or NPR employee adjacent discourse from Reddit and Twitter for me. Rather talk to Carlson or Hannity than these people.
If this kind of stuff doesn't make you admit that, yes, huge swathes of online leftists are completely mental, I don't know what will: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qNiAuCqJRdI
You can learn about people by knowing them personally.
You can learn about people by talking to them online.
You can learn about people by reading what they write online.
You can learn about people from reading a tendentious selection of the worst/silliest shit they wrote online. (<- you are here)
You can learn about an entire group of people from the fact that someone posted a link allegedly showing them to be "completely mental". (<- people replying should take care not to end up here)
Because leftists hate white people so so much that the power of their conviction breaks through the non-existence barrier, like Check Yeager powering his jet outta Mach 1 into the wild blue yonder.
It might be common knowledge here that I don’t like Donald Trump. This is the very first time I haven’t been able to put myself in the other guy’s shoes and see “Yeah, if you look at it that way, I suppose.”
When I’ve asked on this forum how to work it out in my brain the answer is something like, “He may be a bastard, but he’s my bastard.” Okay, I can get as far as “He may be a bastard.” and that’s as far as I can imagine.
His very own words make him out to be so awful a specimen of a human being that I can’t even put it into words.
So I’m going to let a British author express this in his words and say, “Yeah, that’s what I see. “
I might get banned for this but I just have to get my feelings out. I know, “Fuck my feelings.” But beyond that. I’d be interested to see which parts of this his fans disagree with.
“A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”
First, he's a bastard, in a pool where being a bastard is expected. He's also a harmless bastard. If you remember 2016, you remember the discourse on the left of how Trump would ruin America. It would become a fascist, racist, sexist ethnostate. They would expatriate to Canada (ok that one is claimed every 4 years, but still). He would empower Russia. Etc etc. None has come to pass.
He's also in a pool where you expect everyone to be a bastard, and can reasonably presume that anyone looking nice is simply a very crafty bastard. And in this pool, most of his competitors may sound to be less bastardly than he, but also a lot more harmful than he.
TL;DR part 1: The qualities you look for in a President aren't the ones you look for in a best friend.
Secondely, regarding the British text you wrote, it's wrong or myopic on multiple points. Trump has humor, made jokes., gave comedic delivery during speeches, just not British humor. Trump went into politics with no support within the establishment, against first his own party, then half his own party + a very well entrenched candidate that saw victory as so sure that she could just claim it "was her turn" and her follower went with that. He was the underdog, just a wealthy underdog (and if not a robin hood, what about an Ivanhoe or a Florian Geyers...ok maybe not that last one).
What remains is the bully-ness, to which I agree (althrough you could also argue wether the bullying is in the eye of the beholder, wether he's a worse bully than others in his pool, or wether we need the opinion of a British, the people who basically invented the stuff, on that), but which leads us to the 2nd TL; DR: The qualities you look for in a President aren't the ones you look for in a best friend.
If Gore had succeeded in getting the recounts he wanted, life would have gone on, and the legal precedent set would have been fine.
Trump called on his vice president to unilaterally pick which electoral college votes would be rejected. If he had succeeded in making this happen, it would permanently have changed how presidential elections work, granting a huge advantage to the incumbent. I would describe that as authoritarian.
Meh. I assume all politicians are narcissists, if not sociopaths. Ugly people pretty much to a man, or woman. You have to be, to have the kind of single-minded drive to dominate and live in the limelight like that. So it neither surprises nor upsets me when a politician has a nasty character.
What matters to me are only his policy choices. On policy Trump was mostly pretty milquetoast, a modest tax cut is pretty much it. The single exception, which is "Operation Warp Speed," a unique public-private cooperative agreement that enormously speeded up the development of COVID vaccines, seems a bit to clever to be his idea, but he put his signature and name to it, so he gets credit in the arbitrary way we judge things. On policy he gets like a B-, mostly for all the stuff he didn't do while he was bloviating, and that's all I really care about. I couldn't care less about the sound and fury on Twitter and late-night talk shows, to neither of which I pay the slightest attention. I don't care in the slightest about cruel or bad jokes, or things said that were mean or in bad taste, or if he invited the Joint Chiefs to a night of hookers and blow at the White House. The "dignity of the office" means exactly squat to me. Generically, I rate the honor of the President no higher than the honor of a two-dollar doxy, and maybe lower if the latter consistently gives good value for the money.
In the end, I'm not a Trump supporter, mostly because he is unable to do the most important task of a leader, which is to hire good subordinates and keep their trust. He was able to hire a lot of good people, initially, but somehow working with him enraged people and all the good people left, leaving him with shitheads and suckups. That makes it impossible to get stuff done, so that makes him no good as a President.
But I didn't mind him. He wasn't the worst President I've ever seen. Biden isn't noticeably better, mostly because he's clueless on economic issues and has no serious influence in Congress even among his own people, so kind of equally impotent.
WoolyAI wrote a great response. But another point worth considering is that you've most likely been manipulated. You're probably only seeing what the media, which hates him, wants you to see. I.e. selection bias, misrepresentation, plain lies - and more, aimed at achieving a certain result.
I'm not the biggest fan of Trump (after his 2016 primary win I considered going Never-Trumper and voting libertarian before deciding that I should vote my self-interest instead of standing athwart history yelling stop). But I can't help noticing that there definitely were moments when his not very attractive persona showed grace, compassion, class (read some speeches or some transcripts from when he invited non-political and not powerful people to the White House to talk). He also frequently showed competence way over what we're seeing from this administration. And you will also notice that, although he was a bully towards the leftist elites (well-deserved, I say), he never acted as if he hated the regular Democrat-voting guy. Contrast this with speeches about how Republicans in general are awful that we're treated to all the time.
I can't believe I'm defending the guy, but I do believe you've been played. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to dislike Trump to some degree, but you, together with most people who have TDS, are clearly victims of the extremely successful anti-Trump propaganda campaign.
Doesn't it seem a bit strange to you that you get so worked up every time you hear his name? I'm fairly certain that it's not just his persona and his record (which was really not all that bad). It always surprises me how unaware most people are that something about their reactions here is not right.
So I considered writing a variety of "mistake theory" responses to this but...they all felt dishonest. Trump's appeal, certainly post-2017, is pure conflict theory. Apologies for the CW.
You're not giving proper weight to "he's my bastard." I suggest you model Trump voters, certainly die hard voters, as 100% sincerely believing that Blue America and every Blue president, no matter how charming and virtuous, sincerely and devoutly hate them. That most of their own leaders, from Mitch McConnell to George Bush and certainly John McCain, as best are ambivalent about them and at worst actively hate them.
At which point nothing else matters. In any discussion of potential candidates for any office, the first question is "does this person hate me, my family, and everything we value". If they do hate you, that's it, you vote for the other guy. Trump is the other guy, he's proudly been the other guy for 7 years, and whatever his faults he stuck faithfully by a base who are convinced, in the marrow of their bones, that every other political actor hates them.
I'll not argue the factual accuracy of this view, but at best you're making an attempt to understand the views of people who's beliefs you don't share, and I suggest being able to interpret events through this view to predict how the Trump block will react.
Mostly because McCain and his clan took point against Trump on Russiagate. There's social/class stuff, still a lot of bad blood about McCain's "Trump activated the crazies" (1), but the core is the McCain took point against Trump.
Most of the Trump base views Russiagate the way the left views January 6th; as attempted coups against the legitimately elected president. Whatever your views on the facts of the investigation, they were never designed or presented with the intention of convincing the Trump base. Quite frankly, most on the left don't really have any plans, or even believe in the possibility, of convincing the Trump base of anything. As a result, they see these as plots to overthrow and defame their "guy" by a media and federal bureaucracy that hates them. And John McCain was the guy publicly defaming Trump and providing political cover to what they see as an attempted, and semi-successful coup.
It's extremely CW but you can get a good grasp on the Trump base's ID on McCain by watching the Rageholic's youtube rants on McCain:
This is basically the most popular explanation going back to the 2015 primaries. I think it is basically accurate. The capitalist pig dogs accepted Trump because they knew the section of their base he had power over would not yield. So they cut a deal with Trump on court judges and a tax cut.
Yes yes, rattle on endlessly about how "nasty" trump is while the left openly express their hatred of white people and especially white men, and even spread this toxic ideology to the schooling system. Keep on being surprised pikachu face when Trump keeps getting support from millions of voters.
It's reasonable hold Trump to a higher standard than internet commentators because Trump was the president. If somebody important like Biden (or even 1% of Democratic congresspeople) said they hate white people, you would have more of a point.
The kid brought a briefcase full of wires into school, the school called the police, and the Obama administration praised the kid and said the school failed him.
That's not a bomb threat. A bomb threat is a threat to set off a bomb. Most people will read your comment, not read the article, and come away with the incorrect impression that the Obama administration chastised a school district for taking a bomb threat seriously.
It's always a pleasure to read articulate, witty, closely-reasoned posts like this one. Really puts gunflint's prose to shame:
"After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. "
It's actually a simple question. And you didn't give a complex answer, you just pointed to a complex article. You said the left openly expresses its hatred or white people. So taking into account all the stuff in the article, what percentage of the left would you estimate hates white people?
Meh, I'm not impressed. You see, it's not difficult to get banned by being an obvious troll. The *art* is in getting Scott to ban you while simultaneously appearing to be genuinely interested in a productive discourse.
I did not miss it, nor did I need it – it was pretty obvious what you were going for after about 4 sentences. Which brings me back to my point: "it's not difficult to get banned by being an obvious troll."
If you have to actually say explicitly that it is satire, then it isn't well written. You don't need to be told that a good joke is a joke, right? The fault here lies with the writer for not writing clearly.
The Atlantic has an interesting article in which the writer, a progressive, argues that top colleges could foster diversity by increasing admission of applicants from poor and working-class families, rather than by using racial discrimination. And doing so would be better than the current system.
The dirty secret of higher education in the United States is that racial preferences for Black, Latino, and Native American college students provide cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy. The current framework of race-based preferences—which goes before the Supreme Court on Monday—is broadly unpopular, has been highly vulnerable to legal challenges under federal civil-rights laws, disproportionately helps upper-middle-class students of color, and pits working-class people of different races against one another. Major public and private universities cling to the status quo anyway, because doing so is easier financially than helping demonstrably disadvantaged students. These institutions act as if the predominant version of affirmative action is the only way to promote racial diversity, but that simply isn’t true. It’s just better for them.
Top universities’ rhetoric about the value of race-based affirmative action is clearly at odds with the persistence of legacy admissions, in which the children of alumni, who are disproportionately white and wealthy, are admitted at significantly higher rates than their academic performance alone would justify. Yet the two practices are entirely consistent when admissions deans act less as objective evaluators of talent than as casting directors who try to minimize their employer’s expenses and maximize its revenues. Many administrators believe that legacy preferences help persuade alumni to donate more money; that most such alumni can also pay full tuition for their children makes these students all the more valuable.
When universities are forced to stop using race-based admissions, they find fairer ways to achieve racial diversity. After California voters approved the first statewide ban on racial preferences at public universities in 1996, institutions affected by similar measures across the country have adopted an array of progressive policies that indirectly promote racial diversity by doing more to admit socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Thankfully, the political system won’t tolerate resegregation of higher education by race. In red and blue states alike, therefore, colleges that cannot employ race-based preferences have increased financial-aid budgets, taken top-ranking students from high schools in poor communities, dropped the use of legacy preferences, and increased admission of students who transfer from community colleges. Without using race, UC Berkeley and UCLA—which, among the top 25 national universities as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, consistently have the highest percentage of students who receive federal Pell Grants—in 2021 admitted their most racially diverse classes in more than 30 years.
It will be tough to pull that off in the face of the kind of no-nonsense strict limitations the Supreme Court is capable of handing down, should it choose to do so, without bringing back standardized exams in a big way. Standardized tests are the greatest tool ever for discovering diamonds in the rough, students in shitty schools from disastrous families who nevertheless have what it takes to succeed academically, because -- as many a sad parent forking out $$$ for a test-prep course has discovered -- they are more resistant to socioeconomic gaming than almost any other criterion.
I have worked in education for over 15 years and have a lot of experience with standardized testing. One thing that has shifted my view, is that at any given time I know about three hundred students fairly well, and I have access to their standardized test scores. The top scoring students are all very smart, although some small portion of them are lazy and jerks and haven't created anything of value in life other than their high test scores.
But in the middle, lets say 50-90th percentile, the test scores are less reliable. Some kids have zero insight, are not curious, can't produce good work except on a worksheet, but they consistently score well above what any of their teachers would expect on standardized tests. (good test takers). Then certain others are intellectually curious, produce great work, they do creative things, then punch below their league on the tests. (poor test takers)
Everybody knows there are good test takers, but seeing the human impact year after year has convinced me that we need more specific tests, and better tests, or we need to put less weight on the tests for those who are scoring in the middle.
Sure, a test is an imperfect instrument. I've written and administered hundreds myself, and I fully endorse this. However, we are not looking for the ideal instrument, the magical Talent-O-Meter that you can point at a human being and have a reading on the Latent Talent Scale pop up good to four decimal place -- because such a thing does not exist, and will probably never exist.
What we're trying to do is compare tests to what *else* we have, which is stuff like grades in a previous school, recommendations, essays, and so forth. Compared to any of the latter, standardized tests are almost magically better, particularly at identifying students who have significant deficits in their preparation or background, people who have talent but are stuck in backwards crappy educational or family situations. Nothing picks that up better than a blind, stupid test, which cannot be influenced by the reputation of the school, by how similar the student is to the culture and look of the examiner, by the student's social skills and winning smile, by cram and prep efforts, and the like.
It's by no means perfect, but it's about the only instrument we have that can't easily be gamed by social skills, either of the student or the parents (or schools, since schools naturally want to promote their students), and is highly resistant to socioeconomic advantages.
I'm afraid I'm also skeptical that your actual motivation is to help students who have genuine talent but test poorly. In my experience -- and I unfortunately include myself in this indictment, being human -- what happens is that teachers take a liking to certain students, for a variety of human psychological and social reasons, and some of those students don't do as well as the teacher who likes them thinks they should, or wishes they would, and wants to help *those* students -- the one he or she likes personally. (Often the key is vague evaluations of being "intellectually curious" and "doing creative work", both of which are sufficiently poorly-defined that they can mean almost anything at all, and need not correlate with brute raw ability.) I know that sounds mean, but bear in mind I am including myself among the people who have fooled themselves this way. It's easy to do . Its' very hard to accept, as a human being, that this other human being with a sterling character, who you like very much, just doesn't have the intellectual horsepower you wish he did.
So I rather suspect you are rationalizing that the test doesn't give "accurate" results for the students you like, when the truth is probably closer to that the test is showing you the limits of your own ability to be objective. Again, I'm not claiming to be any better, I'm human, too. But I think the impersonal exam, standardized against 10 million others across the country, is the only reliable way to avoid the difficult influence of human social skills and social judgments.
Yes, we agree the SAT is an imperfect data point, and it also carries an incredible amount of weight. I argue that we can do better. At some schools we are administering standardized tests 2 and 3 times a year, and this data could be used along with other tests (IB, AP SAT II) I think if you read my comment you will see that I am arguing the the SAT is rather "meh" unless you are in the 90th percentile and really crushing it. The difference between someone in the 70th percentile and someone in the 85th can make a difference in their admissions, but I don't have a lot of confidence that this is meaningful data. Someone has probably done a study of predictive value of the SAT across the different percentile ranges.
Yes I am rationalizing that the test doesn't give accurate results for some of the students I like. It is very accurate for selecting those at the top though.
I am talking about the SAT and the big standardized tests, not testing in classes. SAT is dictating what happens in schools far too much. There are other options such as AP and International Baccalaureate, which are offering more specific exams. The problem I see is that schools are being incentivised to become SAT test prep academies. Teach rote memorization of applying mathematical algorithms and rather than kindling the spark of learning. The smartest kids will be bored.
Schools are already moving towards standards based grading, which means grades are based on knowing the material, passing tests, rather than on completing assignments on time, or doing HW etc. This is good for smart kids who don't do hw and worksheets. But by definition most people are average and they would benefit if school was based less on the SAT.
What would it even mean for a school to be an SAT prep academcy. Years ago, right after college, I worked for a test prep company, writing materials and teaching SAT classes. I agree with Carl Pham that it's quite a good test of developed ability. I can't really think of a way to run as school like an SAT prep academy, other than to try to do a really good job teaching kids reading, writing and math. Take vocabulary: there are hundreds of low-frequency words that might appear on the SAT. There's no way to teach them all to kids via memorization. The kids whose vocabulary is going to be an asset on the SAT are the ones who read a lot. The ones who are going to do well on reading comprehension are the ones who are pushed in their classes to read thoughtfully. And the situation is analogous with math. There isn't any kind of SAT prep for math that's useless except for getting a good SAT math score. What gets kids a good SAT math score is having good math skills.
> Take vocabulary: there are hundreds of low-frequency words that might appear on the SAT. There's no way to teach them all to kids via memorization
"Hundreds of words" doesn't sound tricky to memorise.
Here in Australia, where we do a fair amount of "pass an IQ test to get into this special school" activity, a huge industry has popped up in the last few decades coaching kids from the age of three to perform well on IQ tests. Some of it is just literal shape rotation, but it turns out you can do a lot better on a shape rotation puzzle if you've been doing them every week for five years than if this is the first time you've ever seen one.
As a result the demographics of these special schools have been completely overturned to be composed entirely of the sorts of groups who are most likely to send their kids to special after-school classes for twelve hours a week from the age of three in the hopes of getting into a slightly better school.
What you do is remove everything from the curriculum, except what is on the test. This is what has been the trend for years, especially at lower performing schools. You focus on worksheet applications, multiple choice, rather than on real world type applications (because this is too time consuming and less efficient).
China gets top scores on the PISA. I spent a year in Chinese schools and I understand why: Total rote memorization and teaching to the test. French schools are also very rigorous, and they all follow the same curriculum. US schools on the other hand are all over the place, but in general are very much about kindling the fire, being positive, having fun etc. No other country has things like homecoming and high school cheerleaders. So the US is far more towards kindling the spark than you seem to recognize.
I've always thought that the best case for race-aware affirmative action is: out of fairness and self-interest, universities should try to "control for privilege" and admit students who have proven that they will make the most of whatever opportunities they had, rather than just taking those who were tutored, coached, and coddled into getting the highest SAT scores. Because of intergenerational disparities in wealth and educational achievement, cultural bias, and the probably-real-after-all effects of self-fulfilling teacher expectations, race can legitimately be a factor in this consideration; other things equal, the average black high school senior with a 1530 probably-with-high-uncertainty had to show a bit more initiative to get it than a white classmate with the same score.
The problem is that the causal effect of race, if any, is empirically hard to measure, and even if it exists on average, the correlation of race with K-12 educational resources is far from perfect (e.g. many schools pad their "diversity" stats with a bunch of wealthy African exchange students). Zip code and socioeconomic status are much better predictors of how much external support a kid got on the way to submitting their Common App, and doing affirmative action by regressing on these variables would be a much better way of getting a truly diverse student body that is hungry to take full advantage of its new opportunities.
How could colleges possibly determine who was "making the most of their advantages"? This is an impossible standard. The room for interpretation is so broad colleges could hide anything inside it.
A better question would be how colleges could possibly be *forbidden* from doing this, short of forcing them to ignore everything but test scores. Any admissions counselor will advise you to fill your essays, recommendation letters, and interviews with specific evidence of your resourcefulness and dedication in overcoming obstacles, because it's very rational for admissions committees to want to know this when evaluating how efficiently you'll work to convert their college's resources into future achievements and alumni donations.
>The problem is that the causal effect of race, if any, is empirically hard to measure, and even if it exists on average,
It doesn't. Asian students beat the brakes off every other group even (and often especially) after controlling for wealth, and they're the ones that are most discriminated against
>The correlation of race with K-12 educational resources is far from perfect (e.g. many schools pad their "diversity" stats with a bunch of wealthy African exchange students).
School voucher lottery programs have conclusively demonstrated that there aren't "good schools" once you control for the students who attend them
>Zip code and socioeconomic status are much better predictors of how much external support a kid got on the way to submitting their Common App
Zip code is HEAVILY correlated with race, and its not even clear that "external support" is what explains different in college admissions.
Perhaps you should actually look at the data instead of just speculating about this stuff
> there aren't "good schools" once you control for the students who attend them
> its not even clear that "external support" is what explains different in college admissions
Even if Hanushek's hotly contested claim that variance in school expenditures has no causal effect on educational outcomes is true—and to find that it is, you have to regress away a *lot* of community descriptors that I would fold into "inequitably distributed educational resources"—he doesn't dispute that different schools have different causal effects on student outcomes. From http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek+Woessmann%202017%20from%20Gustafsson%20Festschrift.pdf:
>Due to the limited role of differences in expenditures and class size in explaining cross-country achievement differences, it may be tempting to conclude that school systems do not matter so much for student achievement, after all. Nothing could be more wrong than that. Evidence that differences in teacher quality and instruction time do matter suggests that what matters is not so much the amount of inputs that school systems are endowed with, but rather how they use them.
Therefore, I stand by my assertion that looking at student achievement relative to the average for someone in the same school system (which correlates with ZIP code much better than race does) and of similar SES is a better way for colleges to estimate the unobservable "individual ability and motivation" variable than simply using raw test scores.
It's kind of weird to just assume that the children of parents who would go to such extravagant lengths to give their kids opportunities would be complete slackers and not want to take advantage of those opportunities. Why would the apple fall so far from the tree? The parents are hyper aggressive about exploiting opportunity, but the offspring couldn't care less?
OK this is going to sound super racist or wrong or something, but I also think it's a truth that should be said more. US universities have been sucking the smart people out of everywhere. And for those living in the 'everywhere' that is not a US college town, city. It sucks, cause the smart people are mostly gone.
...Oh and so I support them selecting on things other than talent. (IQ)
I agree, but you would also have to cut those kids off from good jobs in the city. colelge isn't theo nly reason they leave. College is mostly just a way for them to get good jobs away from their hometowns anyway
Is there any reason we can't just program AI with something like "don't do anything that you think we'll dislike?" I would think a sufficiently smart AI could create a pretty good internal model for how the imaginary neutral-average human being thinks, possibly better than we have ourselves, and be able to predict what kinds of world outcomes that we would find strongly distasteful from that. It would be extremely limiting of course but would it be acceptable to let the AI go off of its own best guess of what our values are as a holdover until we figure out how to spell out those values explicitly i.e. actually align it? My gut feeling is that any AI smart enough to do catastrophic damage would also be smart enough that its "things humans want" model would be good enough -ish for it to not go down paths of causing catastrophic damage
The way that you make an AI today is you create a very large set of training data and then you let the AI try various things and then you score the AI's efforts. It make random modifications to itself, runs through the training set, and then takes the changes that result in the most positive changes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Obviously that's an oversimplification, but it's basically true.
So how do you score like let's say hundreds of millions to billions to tens of billions of efforts to "not do anything we'll dislike"? Because that's what you need to do in there.
The classic AI alignment problem is that you create a proxy for "what we'll like/dislike," but the AI only cares about the proxy, not the reality. So like you say, "Well, we'd like you to make paperclips," and the AI is like, "Awesome, I'll turn your car into paperclips," and because you didn't anticipate this in your training set, the AI, even if it's so smart that it understands on some level that you don't want your car turned into paperclips, dgaf.
> So how do you score like let's say hundreds of millions to billions to tens of billions of efforts to "not do anything we'll dislike"?
I had imagined the AI being fed a bunch of human language, like fiction writing and social media posts and stuff. Though after reading these comments I think I might be assuming too much similarity to a person in regards to how an AGI would "think" for that to make any sense.
1) "Don't do anything that you think we'll dislike" is a sentence in English, not a mathematical specification or a computer program, and we don't know in general how to turn the former into the latter.
2) Even if you could turn it into a flawless mathematical specification, we don't know in general how to create an AI that robustly follows a particular utility function (the inner alignment problem).
If we were actually able to create an AI that always wanted to not do things we'd dislike, exactly in the way we meant that, even in really weird scenarios that we never thought about while training it, the AI alignment problem would be 80+% solved.
Yeah good points. Now that you say it, it seems obvious that these systems might not even be conscious, and why would we know whether they would be? As for what we want, I feel like just by being alive I have a pretty good intuition for situations I'd really want to avoid being stuck in, and that an AI could do much better (and that I wouldn't be much different from most anyone else in this regard). But my feeling there could be super naive and I guess maybe an AI couldn't just figure those things out only from observing us, and not being able to live as one of us?
1) The wrench snaps if more that 200 ft-lbs of torque are applied to it. (Note: I made up that figure, so don't criticize me if I'm way off in real life) All users have ways of precisely determining how much torque they apply to the wrench, and no one ever exceeds 180 ft-lbs.
2) The wrench is kept oiled so it won't rust.
3) People who use the wrench are careful not to abuse it by throwing it against hard surfaces or using it for things it wasn't designed for.
4) The wrench is used every day.
Wouldn't the wrench last for 1,000 years under these conditions? If not, why not?
Having worked at a factory and seen firsthand the tool replacement process, absolutely not. Minor wear and tear is extremely common with any tool, especially one frequently used. Minor bending of key areas is normal, and can strip bolts if continued to be used. That's with a lifespan of 5-10 years of regular use.
Wear is the one that comes to mind. If it's used 5 times a day, and each use removes a single layer of iron atoms, that will add up to 0.23mm over a thousand years, which is more than enough to make the wrench not fit bolts properly. I'm also dubious that you can entirely prevent oxidation by keeping it oiled, but I mentally substituted high-quality stainless steel alloy for your plain mild steel anyway.
For an interesting story about the challenges of long-term preservation of precision:
No, almost certainly not if it's at all frequently getting anywhere near 180 ft-lbs. The torque (technically, the shear force resulting from that level of torque) at which the wrench immediately snaps when it's brand new is not only limiting factor for when it gets damaged by use. The two relevant effects I know of are plastic deformation and metal fatigue.
Plastic deformation is when enough force is applied to a material to permanently change its shape, as opposed to elastic deformation where the shape changes under load but snaps back into place when the load is removed. In this context, exceeding the wrench's elastic deformation limit will both permanently bend it and alter the characteristics of the metal where it's bent (making it more brittle, IIRC). Do this enough times to the wrench and it will either snap or get bent to the point of unsuitability. You can mitigate the latter by hammering it back into approximately its original shape, but that comes at the cost of doubling the changes to the metal.
But suppose that 200 ft-lbs is the elastic deformation limit of the wrench, not its immediate breaking point, so the wrench is never under enough strain to undergo plastic deformation. Even then, repeated loading will gradually weaken the wrench due to metal fatigue. Basically, the crystalline structure of the steel is stressed by the load, causing microscopic cracks to form and grow until eventually the steel breaks under loads that it would have borne easily when it was new.
Some metals (steel is amongst them) do have a lower limit of strain below which zero metal fatigue accumulates. If you keep the wrench below its fatigue limit, I don't know of any mechanism that would destroy it over time.
I'm thinking wear would accumulate at the work surfaces that contact the nuts being turned, as the wrench is fitted (imperfectly) against the nuts over and over. It would start with tiny scratches, and over time there would be more and more of them. In the limit, the parallel inside surfaces of the head would be worn round. But it would be a very slow process.
I agree with this. Note that a perfect fit is impossible, or the wrench would need to be press-fit onto the mating part. The clearance required for hand removal means the wrench will rotate to engage the mating faces, creating pressure points and cumulative deformation of the ductile steel.
I have never snapped a wrench outright that I can recall, but have had several worn in the way I describe.
At first blush it seems like why not? But even steel would wear with time with everyday use. Would it wear faster if used with bare hands or gloves? I suppose that would depend on the glove material. How many hours a day is it used? At what pace?
Now I’m thinking of the bronze nude male statue in Rome with the removable genitalia so it could be displayed to a G rated group. As the probably apocryphal story went, they didn’t count on the polishing effect of regular handling so the idea was abandoned.
Looks like a question for a material science person. Or maybe an old auto mechanic.
I'm someone who has never loved Twitter and I am dismayed at how it influences media and national discourse. It seems to foster a special brand of toxicity and bring out the worst impulses and tendencies of online interaction. My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better? What platform do all those frustrated users move to and will that platform just turn into another Twitter? Is there an equivalent platform at all? Will media outlets actually have to start reporting on meaningful content rather than the latest Twitter dust-up? Those high-profile personalities who suck all the oxygen out of the room, will people simply stop paying attention to them without a platform?
Contra Contra Twitter: I love the character limit. American prose bloated around 1980 when it got too easy to just type and type without messing with paper. The character limit enforces concision. A lot of Twitter hate comes from frustrated bloviators. Journalists especially.
You make a good point, but it's easy to skip threads when the first post bores you, and the techno-gunk of line breaks and such is at worst, no worse than the gunk of bloviated prose.
> My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better?
No. Twitter is pretty technically simple. The toxicity is less due to its algorithm or platform and more because of the people on it. And they won't go away.
> Is there an equivalent platform at all?
In terms of technology? Many. In terms of network? No, but the networks can reform if the platform itself is destroyed.
> Will media outlets actually have to start reporting on meaningful content rather than the latest Twitter dust-up?
No. This happens because it's easy or they want to, not because of Twitter.
> Those high-profile personalities who suck all the oxygen out of the room, will people simply stop paying attention to them without a platform?
"My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better?"
If Twitter implodes, some other social media website will come along to replace them. I remember when Vines were all the thing, now they're withered and gone and TikTok has taken over. Remember the heyday of Myspace? Facebook is unusual in having survived so long, and part of why Zuckerberg is moving into Meta is because he senses change is necessary for survival.
All the people crying about Twitter will migrate elsewhere and start up the same nonsense on the new site.
IF people do leave Twitter, I do not think there is an immediate replacement waiting in the wings -- I think it will take a few years until the power users coalesce around something else.
But I don't think anyone's going to leave Twitter, IMO. People of all political persuasions have hated Twitter for a long time -- if a leftist writes a tweet calling it a "hellsite" they'll get tons of likes. But no one is ready to give up that dopamine drip.
Emily Oster wrote an article today that about "Covid amnesty" that got some attention. I only read the first paragraph before it was gated. In that paragraph, she mentions matter-of-factly that the mask she made of a bandana in April 2020 would've done nothing.
Is this now the consensus even among former mask advocates -- that the cloth masks we wore for a year were useless? Or is Oster contrarian here?
I may edit this with references later, but the pre-pandemic research on cloth mask material often ranked bandanas as the worst option to use. (Oddly enough tea-cloths came out as the best material in more than one paper.)
I always thought you wear a mask to stop your sickness from to spreading to others... like sneezing into your elbow/ sleeve. An extra layer of me sneezing into my elbow... may still be worth only 10%... IDK.
Masks work equally well in either direction — like window screens, which can keep the indoor flies in or the outdoor flies out. Anyone wearing a mask now is almost certainly doing it to reduce the chance of their catching Covid. Given that very few other people are wearing masks (in most parts of the country), for one individual to do so is going to make very little difference in the safety of other people in the vicinity.
Even a flimsy single layer of cloth imperfectly covering your mouth and nose is a *slight* decrease in risk. If an N-95 mask stops 95% of whatever micron size particles, the worst cloth mask might be equivalent to an "N-5" mask. But it's still better than literally nothing.
Most people don't think quantitatively about all this. If you've got a good fit, it's a 20:1 reduction in exposure. Realistically probably more like 10:1 since there will be leaks around the edges even with a pretty good-fitting mask, but that's still pretty substantial.
It's not like anyone has done an RCT on cloth mask vs n95 for covid particles, which seems like the sort of thing that would run into ethics issues. But we generally know that facial coverings prevent droplets from moving about. It makes sense that it would have some benefit, the same way we recommend staying 6 feet away from people but being 4 feet from someone is safer than 2 feet.
I was pretty interested in mask quality for a while, and looked at studies where particles in the size ranges likely to carry covid virions were shot at different mask materials, and at dummies with various kinds of masks, and masks with good vs poor fit. The upshot was that pretty much all masks do a little something, but that cloth masks are not all that effective. Obviously the values found differed from study to study, but cloth masks were usually found to be filtering out fewer than 50% of particles of the size range of concern.
We do not have a material with small enough holes in it to literally strain out the small airborne particles that carry covid. What captures them is an electrostatic charge in that papery material that non-surgical masks are made out of. They literally stick to it, via static electricity. One reason cloth masks are ineffective is that they strain, but do not have an electrostatic charge.
The masks people talk about as the good ones -- the n-95's, kn-94's etc -- really are quite good, especially if you are fussy about fit. Even if you do not get perfect fit on yours, you are probably cutting down the amount of virus you get by 90% or so, and that will be enough to keep you from getting infected most of the time, unless you are spending quite a while in a particularly dense cloud of virus. (Chance of getting infected is dose-related, and if you do get infected severity of illness is also dose-related.)
Yes, my understanding was that while cloth masks don't do nearly as much as N95s, etc., they do more than nothing. I know Oster is a slight contrarian, but it's not as if she's a COVID denier. That's why this sentence surprised me: "Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway."
I think part of the question here comes down to how transmission works. If it's mostly big droplets and surface contact, then a surgical or cloth mask probably decreases kind of transmission--it doesn't protect you, but protects others. If it's mostly tiny droplets that dry up into dust motes and float around for ahwile, then cloth and surgical masks don't do much but N95/KN95/etc. masks do.
Since the small droplets seem to matter a lot and the surface contamination seems to matter very little for covid transmission, N95/KN95 masks provide some real protection, whereas surgical and cloth masks are probably not very helpful.
It is basically a statistics thing. Cloth masks used and worn properly and with multiple layers and/or high thread counts are certainly superior to nothing. The question is whether the negatives are compensated for by the positives at that level of protection, and whether people used them correctly.
The other day I saw a dude cycling down a busy street on a hot day, wearing a mask but no helmet. The mind boggles at the sort of concept of personal risk you'd need to get to that point.
The people I know who suffer from seasonal allergies say they’ve discovered that wearing a mask outdoors reduces their symptoms. Seems plausible that cyclist was masking for that reason. Also agree with Axiom — even the
most committed maskers I know do not mask outdoors, unless they’re in a very crowded place
It's pretty common where I live...although I'd like to think it's because most of the outdoor spaces I pass through in SF are "transitional spaces". You know, people getting on and off transit, parking lots, walking around a mall or college...especially for a better-fitted Real Mask(tm), they're a damn hassle to take on and off, so it's totally understandable why one might just leave it on outdoors temporarily.
The real test is if people still wear them in "resting spaces" outdoors. Like if they masked while outdoor dining, or sitting on park benches, or whatnot. I have seen some cyclists, joggers, etc. with masks, but that could just as easily be explained by allergies. Masking makes me miserable no matter the type (hypersensory - why isn't more R&D thrown at making comfortable masks?), so I've gone without as much as possible...but I definitely did notice common large allergens like flower pollen bothered me much less. Might get back into the habit for Christmas season, we'll see. (Wreathes are a huge allergy offender where I work...oily needles everywhere.)
Because solo cycling with a mask is totally illogical even for people who support masks? Even the most pro-mask people where I live, and it is very hyper liberal Democrat, don't do that.
I can see giving amnesty to pretty much any civilian who was wrong or still is wrong about any Covid-related matter. The thing I feel unable to forgive is the hatred people exchanged during Covid disagreements. This sort of thing: On the Reddit Covid sub for my state, somebody put up a post asking for advice about their grandmother. She was in her 90’s, had Covid, and did not want to go to the hospital. Should the poster push back against what her GM wanted? And somebody responded “if you don’t take her to the hospital you’re going to watch her die choking and screaming at home.” Really savage. And also not all that accurate. Last time I looked it up even an unvaccinated women in her mid-80s had only a one in ten chance of dying of Covid. So I looked up info about what deaths from Covid were usually like for the very old, and info I found was that they usually went very quickly. Posted that info for the OP. Added that my mother, near the end of her life, was uninterested in medical interventions, saying she wanted to play the hand she’d been dealt. And that worked out pretty well for her.
But the savagery of the pro-hospitalization person stayed with me, and there was so much of that, and still is — as though people feel they have a license to verbally savage someone who’s in the opposite camp about some Covid thing. What is WRONG with our species?
Is this any different from a million other online things, though? I mean, there are people who routinely send pictures of death camps to Jews, encourage people to kill themselves, or make up and spread vile lies about other people, apparently just because they get a kick out of doing so.
At a guess, in most social contexts, we have norms and social signals and informal sanctions that keep most people from venting the worst things in their souls--respond to someone disagreeing with you about politics by telling them to go home and kill themselves is the sort of thing that cuts *way* back on the number of parties you get invited to. Hell, quite a lot of the nastiest stuff said online would never be said in meatspace for fear of getting into a fistfight. Take away those signals and norms and sanctions, and a fair number of people just go ahead and behave like some caricature of the worst person you can imagine.
The weird thing is that apparently normal people who aren't worse than the average in normal daily life will sometimes turn out to be absolutely monstrous online. I assume this tracks with the way that mass movements will sometimes convince ordinary people to take part in terrible stuff. And also with the way that putting someone in solitary confinement will often basically drive them crazy. We imagine ourselves to be rational and moral beings making independent decisions about how to act, but probably a lot more of how we act depends on social pressure and context and interaction than most of us want to believe. And of course, covid involved rather intense social isolation for many people, which probably made some of them nuttier and nastier than they would otherwise have been.
I'm not sure what an "amnesty" means in this context. It's not like we were going to go round putting people in prison for being wrong about covid anyway. I'm fine with toning down the ad hominem criticism of people who were wrong about covid, as long as we combine it with a no-holds-barred in-depth discussion of exactly how and why they were wrong so we can learn a bit more about what's wrong with our public decisionmaking infrastructure.
I think they want to avoid that too. Mistakes were made, let's try to avoid looking too closely at them.
Of course the "amnesty" will last about as long as the 2024 election cycle when it becomes time to tar Ron DeSantis as a granny murderer for his state's underreaction to covid.
The main thing I remember is that she was *strongly* in favor of reopening schools, and got a lot of hate for it. Which is at least one position that looks very good in light of how online schooling seems to have worked out for most kids.
For what it's worth, this was a place where I was just flat wrong. I thought online education would work well for lots of kids; instead, it seemed like even the kids who did well at first often started getting more and more unhappy and withdrawn as it went on.
Thoughts on a twit from Steven Pinker about a specific review of “What We Owe the Future” and Jack Handy’s quote. Mr. Pinker, paraphrased and parodied:"Since the future is a garden of exponentially forking paths; stipulating correct answers to unsolvable philosophical conundrums and blithe confidence in tech advances played out in the imagination that may never happen”. Always so elegant. Susan Rice should hire him to help tell Joe what to say. OK FIRST POST; waste of time, deeply philosophical, or horse crap?
I've been in a lot of discussions regarding the war in Ukraine and what our role should be in Ukraine's defense. I am skeptical of undefined commitments and unclear policy goals, especially when nuclear war is a plausible outcome of a misstep. Most people react with various levels of moral disgust when I question the current path, and engage in various pseudo-arguments or level ad hominems to poison the well against the perspective. The few times my interlocutor seems willing to engage rationally, there is a predictable moment where the tenor of the discussion changes, or they just completely disengage. But I think it is deeply important that this discussion is taken to its conclusion so that our policy coincides with what we consider acceptable outcomes. The alternative is sleepwalking into a nuclear disaster.
So I pose this question to those who are generally in favor of our current level of engagement in Ukraine and wish to see it increased until Russia is driven out: is it your opinion that the U.S. should ensure Russia fully retreats from Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear exchange?
If the answer is "No", then the only way we can be sure of this outcome is to accept a scenario where Russia claims some sort of substantial victory in Ukraine using only conventional weapons. This means that we must limit our support to Ukraine such that Russia always has a path to victory using only conventional weapons.
If the answer is "it won't come to that", we cannot be sure that Putin will judge the costs of using a nuclear weapon as greater than the costs of full retreat. A total defeat in Ukraine can lead to Putin losing control of the country, and possibly being killed by his own people. He may very well rationalize that the minimum cost move is to simply continue to escalate to unconventional weapons regardless of the outcome. He essentially has no offramp right now. Putting the fate of civilization in the hands of a cornered animal is not the rational option.
I have yet to see anyone offer a full-throated embrace of the affirmative case. Although a few people have indirectly accepted it by responding that we cannot give in to nuclear blackmail, otherwise we will unleash an era of dictators annexing the world on the threat of nuclear war. This argument is misguided for a few reasons. The obvious one is that the only reason nuclear war is being discussed is that the U.S. is intervening in Ukraine, raising the costs of Russia's aggression and also the stakes. The threat of a nuclear response is intended to limit the engagement of the U.S. so that Russia can achieve some victory to compensate for the costs is has already suffered. This is not a blueprint for the next territory grab, it is in fact a deterrent. Nuclear brinksmanship carries an inherent cost. States are not likely to engage in imperialist expansion if the expected result is a proxy war with the West at best, a nuclear standoff at worst. The issue with Ukraine is Putin misjudged the severity of the West's response.
I laid out what I take are the possible scenarios and the various sticking points in which progress ends in the discussions I've had. Hopefully those in favor of ensuring a Russian defeat in Ukraine can articulate their reasoning within this framework, or show why this framework is wrong or overlooking an important point.
While Russia has a low and sinking chance of a battlefield victory, Putin is not looking for an off-ramp. He believes he can win a political victory via sympathetic parties in America and Europe, and by energy terrorism (Kyiv's energy infrastructure probably won't be rebuilt before this winter). He might be right. He has sent no meaningful signals of his willingness to negotiate out; instead, he ordered a politically-costly, legally-unlimited mobilization of the Russian people, "limited" only by his whims. Before their lives were on the line, the Moscow class didn't have much skin in the game. Now they do, and they have an inkling of how the war is going. Putin conscripted them anyway.
The argument for fighting for total Russian defeat and humiliation is pretty simple, and you admit that people have articulated it to you: big countries need to be unwilling to take their neighbors by force. Russia needs to learn this lesson, and China needs to learn this lesson. Ukraine offered no casus belli against Russia; in fact, this is the second time in a decade Russia has attacked Ukraine unprovoked. There is no example of history of giving dictators just a little bit and them being satisfied; there are ample examples of them taking more and more and more. Of course this is the blueprint for the next territory grab, this is Russia's second go-around and China is arming up for one too. So far, Russia has paid a much higher price than expected, but Putin does not believe that the ends are out of reach. And nuclear brinksmanship carries no cost if you believe you can win, and what would cement that belief more than a history of nuclear threats intimidating countries into changing their policies? The path you're arguing for, from Putin's perspective, is just a bit of inflation.
Russia whines about using nukes, trying to imply that they're forced into using them. They're lying. They didn't need to invade. They could leave if they wanted. Losing an aggressive war isn't a threat to Russia's existence, except in Putin and his cronies' speeches. The reason that Eastern Bloc countries have worked so hard to get into NATO and the EU over few decades of the post-Cold War peace is because they know intimately that Russia considers those nations its sphere of influence, toys to be used and discarded at its whim. And NATO is a terrible offensive threat; much of its paper strength is reservists or pointed at other NATO members (such as Greece and Turkey). But like Switzerland of old, a defensive pact can be a remarkably powerful deterrent. That Russia is so upset about a defensive pact, and that they're willing to nuke the territory they ostensibly want, tells everyone willing to listen that what Russia really wants is not clay or safety but dominance. "The only reason we're considering nuking you is because other countries have prevented us from steamrolling you" is a very transparent code for the genocide Russia has been promising Ukraine.
And if we really are risking the world over something, telling abusive, genocidal dictators to stuff it is a pretty good reason.
>He has sent no meaningful signals of his willingness to negotiate out
Because from day one, even with Zelensky was telling us that "this may be the last time you ever hear from me", he has been clear that he is offering Russia less than nothing. Literally, he demanded that he control MORE territory (specifically, Crimea) than before the invasion. Losing territory is not an acceptable outcome for this war for Putin, let alone not securing any new territory, so why would Putin even pretend to negotiate with somebody abjectly uninterested in doing so?
... because Crimea was taken from Ukraine in Russia's 2014 invasion, and that seizure is no more legitimate than any territory they've taken in the 2022 invasion?
Ukraine owes Russia nothing. Putin wants more than that. He's on record before the 2022 invasion that he wants to annihilate Ukraine. Why would Zelensky even try to negotiate with some abjectly uninterested in doing so?
If Russia said "we're pulling back to the 2013 lines and sending you all of your citizens we stole and sent to Siberia, let's negotiate over how much reparations we owe you", assuming Zelensky believes it's not an assassination attempt they could probably get him to the table. But, haha, of course Putin would never do that, he's a blinkered tyrant and the only question is whether he dreams of being the new Tsar or Premier.
But not only is Putin profoundly unlikely to sit down across a table from Zelensky, he isn't acting like he's losing. He's acting like this is the Winter War part Dva and he's going to grind Ukraine down with Russian manufacturing and manpower. While I believe it's just that - an act - and that his last best hope is that he can put it on long enough until the political winds he foresees shift in his favor, it's the path he's committed himself to. He's doubled down and redoubled at every opportunity. He could have dialed down the apocalyptic rhetoric. He could have not issued the general mobilization. He could have returned the stolen Ukrainians. He could have not blown up Ukraine's civilian energy structure shortly before winter. He could have cancelled the regularly-scheduled nuclear drills. He could have not backed out of the grain shipping deal. He could have not waged a campaign of rocketing civilians.
These are not the actions of a man who wants to cut his losses.
If there is zero overlap between the set of acceptable outcomes for Putin and the set of acceptable outcomes for Zelensky, it's unclear why that's more Zelensky's fault than Putin's. (Note that the perfectly symmetric outcome of "neither country occupies the other" is apparently acceptable to Zelensky, which would suggest he is being more reasonable here.)
"is it your opinion that the U.S. should ensure Russia fully retreats from Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear exchange?"
Yes.
The only way that the United States can reduce the probability of a nuclear exchange in the next year to <1%, is to allow Russia to conquer and "ethnically cleanse" Ukraine. Yes, all of it. Once it is clear that the US is completely unwilling to risk nuclear exchange over Ukraine, Russia will go back to its initial goal of taking the whole country, and with unopposed use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine (not a "nuclear exchange" because nobody is nuking them back) they will win.
If Russia conquers Ukraine by use of tactical nuclear weapons, then there is a very high probability that Russia will look to e.g. the Baltic states and say "I bet that trick will work twice. Yeah, yeah, 'NATO', but the US backpedaled from the Budapest Memorandum when things got real". There is a very good chance that China will look to Taiwan and try "the invade using tactical nukes, threaten strategic nukes if the US intervenes" trick as well. A somewhat smaller but still not trivial chance that China will tell North Korea to go ahead and do the same thing vs South Korea. And a very good chance that Israel will nuke Iran before Iran can nuke Israel, and then there's the Indo-Pakistani conflict, and add on to all that, all the other nations that will start nuking up now that they can't count on or don't need to fear the United States.
The price for reducing the risk of a nuclear exchange to <1% over the next year, is increasing the risk of a nuclear exchange to >10% over the next decade. The path that minimizes the risk over the next decade, is the one we are on right now.
"Give the madman with the big gun what he wants, so he doesn't kill us all!" is *sometimes* a defensible strategy if there's a reasonable expectation that e.g. the police will come and arrest the madman before he comes back. If you *are* the policeman, or the closest thing to a policeman that neighborhood has, it is both morally contemptible and extremely stupid.
>and with unopposed use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine (not a "nuclear exchange" because nobody is nuking them back) they will win.
It won't be militarily opposed but they will lose most of their allies.
"If you *are* the policeman, or the closest thing to a policeman that neighborhood has, it is both morally contemptible and extremely stupid."
You said "kill us all", but it's not US, it's not the same people who are the policemen. It's Ukraine. If somebody threatens the policeman, they fight back because there's nobody else. If they threaten somebody else, we have no obligation to protect them.
Just to clarify, I think there are two different ways to read the question:
a. We should be willing to use nuclear weapons first if that's needed to free Ukraine.
b. We should not be willing to let Russia use nuclear weapons first in order to take over Ukraine.
John's response makes sense to (b), but not to (a). If Russia had swept the Ukrainian forces aside in the first weeks of the war and taken over, we would not have used nukes to save them, and if somehow Russia's army magically because competent and properly equipped and spends the next year actually winning the conventional war with Ukraine and taking it over, I think it would be nuts for us to use nukes to prevent that. Or even to directly intervene with US or NATO forces.
To be clear, yes on (b), no on (a). We should absolutely not use nuclear weapons first, outside of a few exotic scenarios of very low probability. If Russia uses nuclear weapons first, we should take whatever action is necessary to ensure they do not achieve anything that they could consider a victory. That does not necessarily require nuclear weapons on our part, but it does involve a risk of further escalation.
Kudos for having the temerity to own the logical conclusion of your policy position. But I strongly disagree with your analysis. It is not true that any victory Russia sees in Ukraine will necessarily be followed by an expansion of their goals. The costs they have borne for what little territory they currently have is immense, and almost certainly not worth any conceivable victory they could hope for at this point. That is, if Putin could do it over again given what he knows, he very likely would not have invaded.
Everyone, even dictators, respond to incentives. We have demonstrated a massive cost of expansion and so any further ideas of expansion will be tempered by the expected costs associated with it. This isn't to say that a state will never calculate that some expansion will be worth the expected cost. But this undermines the idea that every non-aligned state will be swallowed by their stronger neighbors.
It is important we maintain the nuclear taboo. But the best way to do so is to avoid putting nuclear states in positions where using a nuke is reasoned to have a positive expected outcome. We can--and have--disincentivized wanton expansionism. We don't need to engage in nuclear brinksmanship, especially in a standoff where our adversary is extremely motivated to accomplish their goals. If the current world order is hopelessly unstable, the US/NATO absorbing some nuclear strikes is not a rational way to maintain it.
>There is a very good chance that China will look to Taiwan and try "the invade using tactical nukes, threaten strategic nukes if the US intervenes" trick as well.
I don't buy it. Tactical nukes have very little tactical value. They are a sign of desperation. Russia, being in what they consider a desperate situation, may rationalize using them. But other nations you mention that are in stable situations are not going to initiate a conflict with a tactical nuke, especially knowing that it will invite some significant kinetic response from the west, which itself has a large chance of escalating into a nuclear exchange. The incentives are very clear, regardless of the ultimate outcome for Russia if it escalates to using tactical nukes in Ukraine.
I think there's a scenario you're not considering that, in my opinion, is the possible way out of the war, and that is the scenario in which Putin is somehow removed from power. I'm pretty sure Russian citizens are starting to get fed up of Putin's bs and if this war keeps going on for one more year there is no doubt in my mind that there is going to be an internal revolution from citizens and even from people in the government. There have been sources that say that people close to Putin are against all of what he is doing. Also, if Russia ever gets close to launching a nuclear missile, by that point there will be total chaos inside of Russia to the point that people will find a way to get Putin out.
I'm kind of coming around slowly to favor the option of a nuclear first strike on Russia as soon as it passes some level of provocation. Would certainly kill a crapton of Russians, but it could be done without too much collateral damage to Europe, and it would put a final end to the cancer that is Soviet revanchism. We nuked the Japanese and they've been civilized ever since. Maybe that's the only way certain people learn.
You do realize that even if 5% of Russia's arsenal is functional, most if not all of Europe's capitals would get hit neverthless? It's called a first strike because the other side still get to do the 2nd strike.
Leaving a whopping 5% of the Russian strategic arsenal in place after a first strike is a level of incompetence I wouldn't attribute to the USAF at even its least competent historical period. Kind of impressed you think this is plausible, you must assume people who live and breathe this stuff all have IQ 90.
I've already started liquidating the 401k and buying survival gear. nuclear war was basically inevitable after the Democrats lost their shit about the letter to Biden.
Substack really needs a 'remind me of' feature for comments and posts to make it easier to go back and check if folks predictions and claims actually come end up being true.
This strikes me as a false dichotomy. There are a whole range of options between:
(1) Ensure Russia fully retreats from Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear exchange; and,
(2) Limit support to Ukraine such that Russia always has a path to victory using only conventional weapons.
I think that's a false choice. First of all - what does "preserve a path to victory for Russia" even mean? Russian war aims have vacillated from "just liberate the Donbas" to "keep all the stuff we've annexed" to "fully change the regime in Kyiv." If you take it as axiomatic that you have to "preserve a path to Russian victory," and then let Russia decide what "victory" means, then your strategy amounts to being so afraid of the possibility of nukes that you let Russia have whatever it wants, which isn't smart policy.
Second of all, there's a whole range of options between those 2 prongs you've put forth. I'd argue that we're in between them even now, in a space that looks something like "punish Russia as much as possible in order to preserve global norms against use of force to reset borders, as long as said punishment can be meted out without triggering nuclear exchange." And that strikes me as a good place to be. It hasn't been perfectly followed, but the general post-WW2 norm against resetting borders by force has done a *lot* for global peace and prosperity, and if a great power starts flirting with abandoning it, publicly punishing them for it on the global stage is in everyone's interest as long as it can be done without triggering a nuclear war.
That's admittedly a scary thing from a layperson's perspective. Everyone would love to here "zero risk of nuclear war today," every day. But practical reality means you can't set your goals at "zero risk of nuclear war," because if your goal is true zero risk, that just means always giving Russia (or whatever other nuclear power) everything it wants, full stop, and even then you probably aren't at *true* zero. So your goal is to keep nuclear risk de minimis, which all indications appear to show that it still is.
I don't see that it is a false choice. The negation of (1) is to avoid engaging in a nuclear exchange. But the only way we can be sure of avoiding a nuclear exchange is to avoid a scenario where Putin's only options are to escalate to unconventional weapons or to fully retreat from Ukraine. I do not believe leaving Ukraine in defeat is a viable option in Putin's mind, and so escalating to unconventional weapons carries a substantial likelihood. NATO has already warned of a direct response should Russia use a nuclear weapon. But this just begins a tit-for-tat escalation that very likely ends in a nuclear exchange.
There are no high likelihood branches between Russia having a path to victory in Ukraine and ensuring Russian defeat that don't end in a nuclear exchange.
>what does "preserve a path to victory for Russia" even mean?
Victory here means anything he can reasonably claim victory over and not lose control of Russia.
I suspect that’s why people don’t want to debate you. Sooner or later, you just don’t see their arguments and continue to make the same points over and over.
Yes, people often disengage from debates on positions they feel strongly about but are incapable of articulating points in their favor. For my part, I always try to advance the debate as in my last comment.
>There are no high likelihood branches between Russia having a path to victory in Ukraine and ensuring Russian defeat that don't end in a nuclear exchange.
This claim (and the points in favor of this view) supports the structure of the argument in OP. One can certainly disagree and offer evidence against it. But it does advance the argument in the sense of elucidating the premises that support the conclusion.
"But the only way we can be sure of avoiding a nuclear exchange is to avoid a scenario where Putin's only options are to escalate to unconventional weapons or to fully retreat from Ukraine."
There is no way we can be sure of avoiding a nuclear exchange as long as the weapons are there, so putting it that way is a mistake. The best we can hope to do is to keep the probability of a nuclear exchange low. It isn't clear that refusing to give Putin what he could view as a victory results in a significant probability of a nuclear exchange or even that it results in a higher probability of an eventual nuclear exchange than letting him have some kind of victory.
>It isn't clear that refusing to give Putin what he could view as a victory results in a significant probability of a nuclear exchange or even that it results in a higher probability of an eventual nuclear exchange than letting him have some kind of victory.
This is just to altogether reject the idea of employing available evidence to assign credences to various outcomes. But this results in worse outcomes.
"It isn't clear" doesn't mean "I'm rejecting the concept of evidence," it means "The evidence doesn't support one outcome being significantly more likely than the other."
>the general post-WW2 norm against resetting borders by force has done a *lot* for global peace and prosperity
Ehh, no ? There is *A LOT* of examples of states resetting borders by force ? And in a particular egregious case of one state actually creating an entirely new border from scratch where none existed before, it's actually thriving on the dead bodies of the people it slaughtered since 1948 till now?
> if a great power starts flirting with abandoning it
This train left the station since 1950 and the driver is already dead and decomposed at his seat. I'm talking about the Korean War, I don't see any reason, whatsoever, that "Ensure Communism Doesn't Spread At All Costs Oh Gosh Oh Fuck" is any different from "Ensure Nato Doesn't Spread At All Costs Oh Gosh Oh Fuck". It boogles my mind that somebody can unironically think the state that had "Vietnam" written all over it with scarlet shameful letters since the 1970s has any right to talk about Self-Determination or leaving people to choose, let alone *believe it*. At least Russia didn't lie about Nukes in Ukraine's president secret man cave or whatever laughable shit that came out from Bush's butt.
That is to say, It's infuriating to me how "Oh Heck Russia is being unprecedentedly aggressive" has become an actual opinion that honest people can have. The last time you could have held that opinion honestly was in the, I don't know, maybe say the mid 1990s just to be safe. It goes out the windows once you have a internet connection and an honest desire to not be wrong.
It rings to my ears like a conspiracy theorist's desire to see order superimposed on randomness, or the religious desire to see Justice superimposed on Raw Brute Force : "See, It *LOOKS* like the US and EU are just showing Russia who's the boss because they dared to do the exact same things that they have been doing and supporting since the fucking 1950s, But, Actually, it's A Very Clever Plan to instill respect for the sacred international rules that have never ever been violated before" like bruh Bush was literally gloating on an aircraft carrier about how he conquered Iraq like a barbarian warlord would in so many centuries past.
> At least Russia didn't lie about Nukes in Ukraine's president secret man cave or whatever laughable shit that came out from Bush's butt.
Among other things, Russia was talking about biological weapons in Ukraine, then they switched to "we are pretty sure that Ukraine is planning to use a dirty bomb soon" and the rest of the world told them to shut up because it is obvious to everyone that if any dirty bomb goes off it was Russians.
And that's what they are telling to the Western audience. For their own population, they also have colorful stories how this is actually a religious war of Catholics versus Russian Orthodox church, or maybe Satanists against Muslims, depending on the audience. Also, Russia is actually winning this war (do not get confused by a few strategical regroupings), because everyone in Europe is starving and freezing; the victory is near and another mobilization will not be necessary.
The idea that Russia is telling the truth is very weird, because they keep contradicting themselves all the time. Oh, don't forget all those people who swore at the beginning of February that Russia is not going to attack anyone, only a crazy russophobe could imagine such thing happening.
Spare me the “western hypocrisy” histrionics. Nations are composed of people, and like all people, are morally imperfect. Film at 11.
If we’re operating on a wavelength where morals and norms matter in international relations, then failure to be morally perfect in the past has no bearing on whether or not enforcing them the right way now is a good thing to do.
But if you prefer to operate in “morals are naïve and dumb it’s all realpolitik” world then the cold realpolitik fact is that when your rival bends themselves over a barrel you don’t bail them out – you leverage the opportunity and you grind them to dust. That’s not the approach I’d advocate for, but maybe Russia’s apologists should reconsider what they’re asking for when they wave this flag around.
Impressive, you managed to turn an Anarchist into a Russian apologist, that's some ideology alchemy bullshit right there, good job. Now I regret I didn't assume more bad faith in the first comment. I always regret not assuming more bad faith.
>Nations are composed of people, and like all people, are morally imperfect.
Yeah sure, your country did support and *still* support genocidal child murderers[0] once, so what. And hey, maybe they just burned a few asian farmers here and there[1], it was the 1960s man, everything was just so wild and drunk. I'm sure it's an all grown up citizen of the world right now right?, before you were bad, now you're good https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/032/318/bad.jpg ?
> failure to be morally perfect in the past has no bearing on whether or not enforcing them the right way now is a good thing to do.
So first off, not burning people alive is not being morally perfect, I have personally never burned people alive and I'm pretty fucking sure I'm very morally average, I know plenty of people who are, it's not an impossible standard.
Second, I'm not saying that "enforcing" morality now is bad, I'm saying those who claim they're enforcing them when they have a very interesting and spicy history are laughably and obviously not actually enforcing them, but doing whatever, where "whatever" is anything but enforcing rules and morality. I don't really give a shit what virtue signalling technique is all the craze in the US/EU right now, as long as it respects the minimum intelligence of an adult who can read. Given that I'm an adult who can read, I'm entitled to say that the virtue signalling technique of "pretend that Russia is violating some sacred state vows taken since WW2 and act super shocked about it" is not respecting my intelligence. I'm not even at my brightest today.
> when your rival bends themselves over a barrel you don’t bail them out – you leverage the opportunity and you grind them to dust
... and have the balls to say that you're doing just that in front of cameras and microphones, or at least on twitter and blogs, and stop whining and crying about "oh won't anybody just THINK of International Norms". Who's the one really having it both ways here ? I'm okay with both, just pick one and stick with it to the end.
It’s just (a) obviously true to the point of being wasteful of time, and (b) irrelevant since you’ve agreed that the US’ course of action is the same regardless of whether acting under a moral or amoral framework.
I mean, if you want a “Native American Land Acknowledgement”-style statement that the US has done tons of horrible stuff throughout its history before a discussion commences – cool. I’m happy to give you that cookie, and I think the above suffices.
But once that’s out of the way I’m assuming we’ll move on from the “is the US a morally perfect *actor*” conversation and on to the “is the US intervention in Ukraine the correct *action*” conversation, rather than wasting everyone’s time circling a base-level fact everyone already agrees about anyway. If you find a true-blue 50’s style “my country, right or wrong” American patriot in the audience, by all means we can raise that issue with him to set him straight, but until then its… kind of a waste of everybody’s time?
Whether I'm arguing "Tom should do the thing, because it's the right thing to do" or "Tom should do the thing, because it's in his interests," a guy running into the room screaming "everybody remember that Tom is a bad guy! Remember it! He's done bad bad bad things!" is beside the point and adds nothing to the conversation.
I don't want admission of obvious facts, I just want you to not deny them. Specifically, don't say things like :
>The strong post-ww2 norms against resetting borders by force
When there have *never* been such a norm, thanks largerly to the US and its allies. You're allowed to argue anything you want, please do say that US's best interests lies in doing this or that to Russia, or that this should be done for other reasons, go right ahead, argue away. What I'm against is postulating some imagined "International Etiquette" and arguing that Russia is supposedly not respecting it and that the it's good that the US is supposedly forcing it to respect it. This makes 0 sense, there have never been such ettiquete, the entire history of the US proves otherwise. Why would you willingly postulate a wildly wrong premise when there are plenty of true premises that gets you to the same conclusion ?
> "everybody remember that Tom is a bad guy! Remember it! He's done bad bad bad things!"
Actually, if Tom did the bad thing X, and his opponent did that same X, it would be truly dumb of Tom or anyone else to say "Tom needs to fight his opponent because he does X!". Because... it's literally the exact same X on both sides. I don't know how else to explain it. When you're arguing why your enemies need to be fought or stopped or internationally punished or whatever; pick, from among their crimes, something that *you* didn't do very recently. Pick a reason that wouldn't imply all western countries must be sanctioned into the stone age, but your arguments imply exactly that. If you accept that conclusion, then sure, my bad, I'm prepared to apologize profusely.
But how, on green lovely Earth, is it possible to simultaneously believe both :
(A) Any country that violates norms and morality should be punished as hard as we can without provoking nuclear war
(B) [Implied] The Western world (which broke those norms for centuries and not 20 years have passed since they last did it and gloated about it) shouldn't be punished like that.
Pick just one of those. You can still argue for punishing Russia as hard as possible without needing (A), there is plenty of reasons for doing so. But you can't honestly believe (A) and (B) together. Did I just make up (B) completely and you actually believe its negation ? That would be a reason to say I'm sorry. (A) and (B) together is hypocrisy, is all what I'm saying.
Lastly, a stylistic sorry is necessary because I was super aggressive in the previous comment. This was largely provoked by you misreading my politics to be pro Russia. This was dumb and unjustified by the evidence, but I can imagine why someone used to arguing with pro russian opponents might assume that. So sorry for that. I try not to do it these days but it's hard.
b- Israel-Lebanon (2x or 3x or 4x depending on how you count)
c- Israel
You seemed upset I called the genocidal state younger than some grandmothers what it is, so I didn't include a-b-c in the main list. But they exist, I didn't make them up, you can find them on wikipedia
> I recommend you actually learn literally anything about the history and founding of the state in question
Schoolboy response, I probably know more about this state more than you do about your own. Say something I can reply to.
I am not an American, so I am going to avoid discussing what US should do, but it is just incorrect to think that the use of nuclear weapons in this war (which I think is highly unlikely) would, like, seal the fate of our civilization or anything so dramatic. If the rather unlikely scenario that Russia would nuke something, they would nuke not NATO, but against Ukraine.
And democratically elected Ukrainian government, with enthusiastic support of large part of its population, clearly prefers being nuked to surrendering to Putin, at least for now. See their attempts to impose no-flyzone or to get long range weapons, steps that would highly increase their own nuclear risk.
>If the rather unlikely scenario that Russia would nuke something, they would nuke not NATO, but against Ukraine.
But NATO has already stated there would be a "proportional" conventional response if Russia used a nuke. But this very likely leads to serious continued escalation. There is basically zero chance Russia gives up and goes home after that.
Firstly, I should apologize for my atrocious grammar. Lesson about proofreading learned.
Biden and other relevant officials have been purposefully vague about how they would want to respond to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine. Certainly, they are not committed to anything which would trigger Russian nuclear retaliation against NATO.
Personally, I think that Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine is very unlikely, and even if that very unlikely scenario came to pass, it is very unlikely that it would lead to the general nuclear war between NATO and Russia. So, we are protected, so to speak, by two levels of low probability.
I know that Americans conveniently lawyered themselves out of Budapest Memorandum but it remains probable that, if Ukraine is allowed to be taken apart cause "nukes", especially in the egregious genocidal fashion, even though it gave up nukes for the guarantees of this explicit thing not happening, then we'll see everyone and Mexican cartels acquiring nukes in the next decade. In all likelihood the ship has sailed already, I'd wager 80% probability of Poland acquiring nukes in the near future cause let's be real, future of NATO is to be decided in every single American election from now on and Art. 5 is just some paper to be lawyered out of when needed. In the brave new multipolar world every nation is for itself.
And it seems to me the only choices the US have to keep the illusion of its credibility and nuclear non-proliferation alive is either to enter the kinetic war on Ukrainian soil (not gonna happen) or be ambiguous, especially since all help to Ukraine costs it almost nothing in monetary terms. Being ambiguous sucks but other options suck more, at least in the Biden's view.
>or be ambiguous, especially since all help to Ukraine costs it almost nothing in monetary terms.
The problem with ambiguity is that it allows a scenario where we end up in a tit-for-tat engagement with Russia that may inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange. For example, if Russia's use of a tactical nuke in Ukraine begets a significant/proportional conventional response to Russian assets in Ukraine, what are the chances that Russia doesn't respond further? Russia has few options for a proportional conventional strike against NATO.
If our main goal is to avoid being a party to a nuclear exchange, ambiguity does not serve that outcome. It's just not clear to me that maintaining the illusion of the credibility of nuclear non-proliferation (which is likely already gone) is worth significantly raising the likelihood of a nuclear exchange.
>>The problem with ambiguity is that it allows a scenario where we end up in a tit-for-tat engagement with Russia that may inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange.
I think this is another example of setting a laudable but completely impractical goal of zero-risk. If we take off the table every single option which "allows a scenario" that escalates to nuclear exchange, then what you are practically doing is intentionally throwing all choices out the window and leaving yourself with "give Russia everything it wants and hope that they don't just fire nukes anyway."
It's like setting a goal of "zero chemical particulate in the water" or "zero risk of injury on the job." It may look good on a bumper sticker or sound nice from a PR perspective, but as actual policy it's totally unsound and pretty much impossible to achieve, so even when it's uncomfortable to acknowledge it, you're always operating with a goal if *minimal acceptable* risk, and all indications are that we are still very much in a place where risk of a nuclear weapon by Russia is de minimis (because they would change little on the ground, potentially destabilize their own regime, and potentially push India, China, and others on the fence into a position where they'd have to start cutting the Kremlin off), and risk of a nuclear exchange with the United States even more so.
So raising the banner of "getting risk to zero is the only responsible thing to do" would, at present, meaning abandoning Ukraine to be overrun and occupied and its people abused, in order to make a meaningless risk reduction from "near-near zero" to "near-near-nearer zero."
I'd absolutely agree that Ukraine and the West should pull up short of "pushing Russia into a corner where nukes are their only option," but we are very, very far from that corner at present.
>I think this is another example of setting a laudable but completely impractical goal of zero-risk.
This just dodges the substantive debate for a trivial point. Of course every action carries some non-zero mathematical risk of leading to a nuclear exchange. The issue is should we and how to stay clear of non-trivial risk. There is a clear difference in risk between the actions taken thus far and a scenario where NATO attacks Russian positions in Ukraine in response to Russia using a tactical nuke. The point is to get clear of where the line should be to avoid an action that unintentionally leads towards escalating to non-trivial risk.
>I'd absolutely agree that Ukraine and the West should pull up short of "pushing Russia into a corner where nukes are their only option," but we are very, very far from that corner at present.
But we need to define this line ahead of time. Otherwise each escalation may seem a trivial extension and we unknowingly cross the threshold leading to runaway escalation. My argument in OP was that we need to ensure we leave Russia a path to a substantial victory in Ukraine using conventional weapons to ensure we stay clear of non-trivial risk of nuclear exchange.
(1) Your framework seems to define "substantial victory" as whatever Russia demands "substantial victory" to mean;
(2) It also bounces back and forth between very different probability ranges. In some places you reference the issue being "non-trivial risk," in others the issue is where nuclear exchange is "a plausible outcome," or you're describing "greatly raising the likelihood of nuclear exchange" without reference to how much or in comparison to what, or that nuclear exchange is a "possible outcome." Which makes the more defensible framings like "non-trivial" look more like a wedge to open a crack for the broader ones like "possible outcome" than some accurate depiction of what risk threshold you find for tolerable/intolerable.
At a point in time when consensus is still that we are near-zero risk of nuclear exchange, the combined effect of #1 and #2 is essentially an all pain no gain policy. In exchange for a move from our current near-zero risk footing to a future even-nearer-near zero risk footing, "the West" should hand Russia a "path to victory" as subjectively defined by Russia.
To say nothing of what impact that has on the actual incentives vis-a-vis nuclear threats and exchange (does this capitulation encourage more nuclear threats, thus increasing the likelihood threats go wrong in the future?
Does it encourage Russia to define "substantial victory" more maximally, causing Ukraine to be more hostile to negotiated settlement?), which can be argued from a variety of angles, it's just a terrible bargain on its face, which is why most of your interlocutors are disputing the proposition from all kinds of angles.
>Your framework seems to define "substantial victory" as whatever Russia demands "substantial victory" to mean;
I agree it's a weakness of my argument and I'm happy to discuss what that would look like. But I don't think it's necessary. Success in this case is whatever will allow Putin to end hostilities and sell it as a victory at home. The risk right now is Putin's lack of offramp. Whatever can be sold as a viable offramp is a "success" in this context.
> It also bounces back and forth between very different probability ranges.
Sure. It's difficult to talk about probability and credences without offering explicit quantities. But then creating a tree structure with various branches and credence assignments is hard and will likely stymie most discussion rather than add to it. So I'm trying to walk a tight rope here between raising the discourse to one that acknowledges and engages with uncertainty, without being abstruse and tedious.
The key point I'm trying to drive home is that the scenario of a nuclear exchange is so massively negative that anything over "trivial credence" assigned to those branches must be taken very seriously, and presumably given a wide berth.
>At a point in time when consensus is still that we are near-zero risk of nuclear exchange
I agree. However, there is constant discussion about escalating our involvement with more and longer range weapons, or boots on the ground, etc. My objection is to the lack of clarity regarding our goals and the limits of our involvement. Most people find it unconscionable to even voice such concerns.
>Does it encourage Russia to define "substantial victory" more maximally
I don't think this is a likely outcome, as I've argued elsewhere in this thread. The costs Russia is bearing over Ukraine is real and unsustainable. If we present Russia a realistic offramp and the choice is to continue bearing an unbounded cost to sustain an assault or take the offramp, I think there is a strong chance he will take it.
>My argument in OP was that we need to ensure we leave Russia a path to a substantial victory in Ukraine using conventional weapons to ensure we stay clear of non-trivial risk of nuclear exchange.
When you equivocate between "scenario where nukes are Russia's only option" and "scenario where Russia doesn't achieve a substantial victory", you are making some *extremely* favorable assumptions on Putin's behalf. Nuclear powers lose offensive wars from time to time, this situation isn't unique.
Yes, I am assuming that from Putin's perspective, leaving Ukraine without some substantial victory is not an option. Putin seems to consider political control of Ukraine (and Georgia) critical to the security of Russia. But given that mindset, he very well may evaluate the cost of a nuclear exchange with the U.S. as equal to the cost of defeat in Ukraine. Nuclear weapons force the acknowledgement and avoidance of your adversaries red lines, otherwise you invite a nuclear strike.
Even if you don't think Putin genuinely believes Ukraine in NATO is x-risk to Russia, given the damage this war has done to the Russian state, a defeat in Ukraine may be x-risk to Putin himself.
> So raising the banner of "getting risk to zero is the only responsible thing to do" would, at present, meaning abandoning Ukraine to be overrun and occupied and its people abused, in order to make a meaningless risk reduction from "near-near zero" to "near-near-nearer zero."
And of course, all of this is operating under the assumption that paying the danegeld does nothing to impact the number of Danes.
That, plus the damage we could do to credibility with our own allies that we rely on to keep the board between us and the dane favorably tilted such that he doesn't consider knocking on our own door. Trust and good relationships are a big part of international credibility, and I think sometimes we look at Ukraine's battlefield successes so far and don't realize just how rapidly we could score an own-goal and turn this from a Kremlin fiasco into a Kremlin victory if we suddenly publicly hung the Ukrainians out to dry.
"The West doesn't really have your back, they're feckless, weak-kneed democracies who will abandon their partners at the drop of the hat - aligning with an autocratic regime like mine is way smarter & safer" is pretty much exactly what Putin was hoping to prove when this war started. When things are going this well for Ukraine and they aren't interested in coming to the table, it makes zero sense to suddenly kneecap ourselves by proving him right.
> The obvious one is that the only reason nuclear war is being discussed is that the U.S. is intervening in Ukraine, raising the costs of Russia's aggression and also the stakes.
Nope, the reason is that *Russia is losing*.
In a parallel reality where Russia is winning, there is no need to discuss nukes, no matter how much USA or anyone else is involved.
In a parallel reality where Russia is somehow magically losing to Ukraine alone, Russia keeps escalating, from conventional weapons, through white phosphorus and similar, towards nukes if necessary. Exactly the same incentives apply; Putin cannot afford to lose face.
>In a parallel reality where Russia is somehow magically losing to Ukraine alone
In this reality Russia would not have invaded. Russia invaded precisely because they thought Ukraine's defense was feckless and the West would not sustain a significant response. No one wants to break the nuclear taboo, and so any semi-rational statemen will avoid scenarios where escalation to unconventional weapons is likely. The possible world where Ukraine had a stellar, but entirely secret, stash of arms and intelligence sufficient to thwart a continual ramping up of Russian aggression without any of this being known to Russian intelligence is just not reasonable. This world also changes the dynamic of NATO membership, which is surely a contributing factor to the war. The world where *only* Ukraine's ability to defend itself changes and nothing else relevant to the war changes is probably impossible.
>Russia invaded precisely because they thought Ukraine's defense was feckless and the West would not sustain a significant response.
It's very funny to hear "Russia isn't stupid, they only invaded here because they're stupid." Why on earth would they not expect the west to sustain a response? They already played this game in Afghanistan.
Indeed. The only reason that Ukraine is different is because the Ukranians managed to put up a credible fight on their own for long enough that sending them a bit of extra ammo would make a difference.
So I can't speak to your experiences, but I can attest that when I choose to disengage from this topic it's usually because my interlocutor starts showing a pattern of switching between short-term v. long-term considerations and ideological simplicity v. realpolitik that coincidentally always favors the Russian position.
> No one wants to break the nuclear taboo, and so any semi-rational statemen will avoid scenarios where escalation to unconventional weapons is likely.
Why have you chosen not to consider this as an argument against Russian first use of nuclear weapons? Are we to treat their precommitments as absolute, while denying anyone else this superpower?
>Why have you chosen not to consider this as an argument against Russian first use of nuclear weapons?
The difference is that Russia is already engaged and have already shouldered a heavy cost. My point is that, given the knowledge or expectation of paying a heavy cost which could only be overcome by using unconventional weapons, a semi-rational statesman would avoid initiating the engagement. But this argument does not hold once already engaged in a costly fight and retreat carries its own heavy cost. This is why we must engage with the possibility of Putin using a tactical nuke.
Ok, so you've declared semi-rational means allowing for this particular case of the sunk cost fallacy. To repeat myself - precommitment is a superpower, who else gets to use it? Is there a particular reason we should treat "Russia has spent a lot invading Ukraine, it needs to get its money's worth" more credibly than "countries will not be allowed to benefit from breaching the nuclear weapons taboo"?
>Ok, so you've declared semi-rational means allowing for this particular case of the sunk cost fallacy.
Sunk cost fallacy doesn't apply because there is an intrinsic cost to Putin to retreat empty handed. Sunk cost fallacy only follows if there is a low cost offramp.
>more credibly
I don't know what "credibly" means here. The issue is being clear on the costs we're willing to bear for reinforcing the nuclear taboo. I don't think any of us is willing to absorb a nuclear exchange for the sake of the taboo. And given Putin's current situation, there is a substantial likelihood of him escalating to unconventional weapons if he continues to lose ground in Ukraine. So we need to choose our responses carefully given these competing interests.
The US discussed using tactical nukes in Vietnam, which it was also losing. But important to remember that the reasons for not doing so were not purely diplomatic: tactical nukes were predicted to not be all that efficacious compared to something like Linebacker II unless used in scary-high numbers (hundreds or thousands), inflicting something like 100 NVA casualties per nuke. Maybe some in the Russian command structure think differently and believe that a small number of tactical nukes could be militarily decisive, but if so they're probably wrong. And I think there's reason to believe that dropping dozens or hundreds of tactical nukes on Ukraine would be politically worse for Putin -- even domestically -- than just declaring victory and pulling out.
Where nukes are provably very effective is deterring Great Powers from crossing perceived "red lines" in each other's sphere of influence. We know this because a lot of geopolitical behavior in the Cold War was clearly influenced by fear of treading too close to these red lines. Eisenhower's decision not to intervene in Hungary in 1956 might stand out the most here, and I'm sure Putin has been very aware of that historical example the entire time as he tries to keep the West from escalating its commitments to Ukraine.
It's funny how the fifth column is still operating from the same exact playbook as in the 1930s. "I'm just a normal reasonable guy and I'm shocked by the blah blah blah anyway Boris Johnson probably personally prevented Putin from making peace".
You should change your username to The Last Putinversteher.
I think that much of what you see as a unified propaganda campaign is actually just a lot of people independently coming to the rather obvious conclusion "it's really bad that Russia invaded Ukraine", and then saying that out loud. Analogously, every newspaper in the UK reports on the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal in a manner that is negative towards Savile. But that isn't a propaganda campaign!
Sure. Propaganda isn't about lying, it's about convincing. Plenty of propaganda is actually trying to convince you of true things--think of all the PSAs telling people that smoking causes cancer.
News outlets are herd beasts, and there seems to be a huge amount of pressure for conformity in current-day US media. This leads to some stories not being pursued and some questions not being asked, and sometimes that's fine (there's not much point looking into vaccines causing autism, because it turns out that they don't), but other times, this leads to important stuff not being reported or being reported in a very distorted way. There were good reasons to be skeptical that Iraq had a working WMD program that in any way threatened the US, but it wasn't so easy to find them being discussed in US media in late 2003.
High-status US news sources are subject to trendiness and social pressure, but that doesn't mean they're inverse weathervanes, just that they have some blind spots and some stories they will never report.
Lots of words and as usual no agency is given to Ukrainians (first red flag). But let's go through.
> all this talk about Russia threatening to use tactical nukes is basically a NATO invention
"To anyone who would consider interfering from outside: If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history" - Putin
"If there is a threat to the territorial integrity of our country, and in protecting our people we will certainly use all means at our disposal - and I’m not bluffing.”" - Putin
"Those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tables can turn on them." - Putin
TNW definitely counts as "means at Russia's disposal", so _technically_ Putin did threaten to use nukes as well as bio/chem weapons.
> treating this conflict as as an exceptional and intolerable „imperial expansion“ is simply silly. It‘s just the latest conflict in the aftermath of the collapse of the Sowjet republic
USSR was an empire that fell apart which makes Putin very sad and now there is an attempt to recollect the empire back. It's not exceptional, sure, but arguably intolerable post-WWII.
> explain to me our (that is: western) treatment of Armenia.
What does that mean? The West condemned Azerbaijan's attacks, Armenia is not asking the West for help, treatment seems to be consistent?
> this conflict has ostensibly been about the right of the current Kiew government ... a coup, to disenfranchise it‘s political opponents in the east of the country, and about it joining a military coalition against it‘s biggest neighbor. This conflict was fueled by several NATO states, and has been more or less frozen after Russia startet supporting the Donbas faction.
kernels of truth mixed with some Russian propaganda here, the giveaway is the "Donbas faction" - there was no separatist movement in the East of Ukraine before Russian invasion of 2014.
> I have never in my whole life seen such a consistent and all encompassing propaganda campaign in the west before
"wake up sheeple" level argument. "I have never in my whole life seen such a consistent campaign both from American right and left to paint Ukraine as Nazi." - also true statement.
> I wouldn’t say Russia is more democratic, but at least less stuff gets stolen, and it‘s much richer because the state is actually sometimes trying to do the right thing.
That's surely is at best your opinion based on whatever media you consume, which I assume is Russian. I don't think you can easily measure the corruption and as a counterpoint: Russian soldiers seem to be very keen on stealing washing machines and sometimes literally toilets. Does not feel like the prosperous country.
Anyway, your argument reads as "their GDP per-capita is too small, therefore torturing them is okay".
> Russia launches a massive bombing campaign against the electric power infrastructure - and it only does this after 6 months.
Cause they wanted to rule Ukraine and bombing it first is spoiling the goods.
> why do i have to see Ukrainian Wehrmacht LARPers, who make up a significant part of the state security forces,
Russian propaganda. If this is about Azov, then they are not "Wehrmacht LARPers" and also not a significant part of the "state security forces".
> film themselves dumping the bound and abused bodies of civilians into ditches.
If that is the video I think about, that was a video from Russians. I doubt I could convince you that is the case, but consider a thought experiment - if Russia did not invade in 2014/22, would that happen? no.
> There are credible reports that in April Zelenskiy and Putin agreed on some kind of Minsk Agreement solution, plus neutrality, but were stopped by Boris Johnson who threatened that in that case Ukraine would loose its western support.
"many people say"
> Another thing regarding the moral justification for Russias attack: ... a civil war in a neighboring country
Another Russian propaganda statement. There was no civil war, Russia invaded in 2014, see Girkin, Prigozhin.
> In March my prognosis, and it was not mine alone, was: Russia cannot loose this conflict. The sanctions are economic suicide for the EU
"Russia never looses" meme. They've lost before and they will lose in the future. 100% probability.
> And if it goes on long enough Ukraine will not be a viable country anymore.
That is for Ukrainians to decide and definitely not for Russian propaganda enjoyers.
And you think it all stops there? You don't think there will be a response from Russia, with a subsequent response from NATO, and so on down the road of ratcheting escalation?
One small point. There are other non-western states that have one or more atomic bombs, but the U.S. and Russia are the only countries with the sort of arsenal that could plausibly destroy a major country. So these arguments really are about Russia. China could presumably build up that kind of arsenal but, as I understand the situation, they have not done so.
>West aids Ukraine; Ukraine is not worth our support; stand up to Putin over
These are exactly the kinds of empty weasel words I am trying to move the discussion beyond. The issue isn't whether we should aid Ukraine, the issue is what exactly are the limits to that aid, if any. I have stated where I think those limits should be. Feel free to clearly state your position on this.
>it would apply to all possible cases where the West and Russia (or any other non-Western nuclear state) were in opposition
Not all conflicting interests can plausibly be expected to end in a nuclear exchange. The reason this engagement is different is that the U.S. is intervening in a conflict that we know Russia considers key to their core interests as a state, thus escalation to a nuclear exchange is possible, even likely.
Well, considering they've been complaining about NATO expansion for the last 20-something years, and have stated multiple times that Ukraine and Georgia are red lines, that's at least defeasible evidence that Russia considers Ukraine and Georgia core interests. The U.S. certainly took the claim seriously at one point. But given that the claim is at least plausible, we must rationally consider that possible branch and the consequences of various moves given that belief.
We should also consider the evidence against the claim. One significant piece of evidence is the fact that "the war is key to Russia's core interests as a state" is a ludicrous thing to believe. Most states get on just fine without invading their neighbours.
You're right, my position wasn't exactly clear in the OP. My position is that we should adhere to the constraints described to avoid a nuclear exchange:
>If the answer is "No", then the only way we can be sure of this outcome is to accept a scenario where Russia claims some sort of substantial victory in Ukraine using only conventional weapons. This means that we must limit our support to Ukraine such that Russia always has a path to victory using only conventional weapons.
>What if Putin was just as performatively angry about that lesser amount of aid -- then what?
"Performative anger" isn't an accurate read of Putin's reaction. Putin's nuclear saber rattling is intended to limit the extent of NATO's involvement in Ukraine. Putin doesn't want a nuclear exchange anymore that we do. However, he is betting that we care much less about Ukraine that he does.
Of course we have to consider the credibility of the warning. If it is true that Russia sees Ukraine as core to their national security, this makes a nuclear exchange a possible outcome of NATO interference. But everyone responds to incentives, and so as long as Russia can achieve some acceptable victory in Ukraine using conventional means, they will take that option. If our policy is that Russia must be driven out of Ukraine, then we are greatly raising the likelihood of a nuclear exchange.
>This seems like a rather cruel and incoherent policy, frankly.
Our policy towards Ukraine has been cruel from the start. But it is a mistake to pile on bad policy on top of bad policy as if one corrects the other.
>We're supposed to aid Ukraine just enough to drag out the war and prolong the misery but not enough that they avoid losing and getting conquered anyway?
At least from the perspective of incentives and reenforcing international norms, we've shown the world there is a massive cost to imperialist expansionism. Any state that wants to use Russia's aggression as a blueprint will have to factor in the negatives of western support and sanctions.
>And it's not cool how you dodged my question about why this wouldn't bother Putin as much as our more aggressive aid has by nitpicking over the terminology I used.
I took your "performative anger" as a substantive claim about Putin's state of mind (i.e. he's largely bluffing). And so my response seemed appropriate. If your question is what happens as his claims or grievances expand, then our credence given to the claims drop significantly. Putin would have to demonstrate his resolve by bearing a similarly massive cost as he's already suffered. If he is bluffing he will not be willing to bear those costs.
Even if you're not from the signature countries, surely it's self-evident from the suffering minimization pov that the world without violent unilateral border changes is preferable to the world with them, so at least based on that it seems to me that the territorial integrity of Ukraine is, in fact, important.
"neurofeedback headsets that can help you reach jhana more easily"
Huey Lewis must be thrilled:
"I want a new drug
One that won't make me sick
One that won't make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick
...
I want a new drug
One that won't spill
One that don't cost too much
Or come in a pill"
[I tried to eliminate the double spacing]
A caution:
"Concentration can be of great value, but it can also be seriously limiting if you become seduced by the pleasant quality of this inner experience and come to see it as a refuge from life in an unpleasant and unsatisfactory world. You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom."
--Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are, 1994
On pleasure vs. addictiveness: for the past 5 years I have had DMT easily to hand in my home. For the last year or so I've even had it in a pocket vaporiser so that there's no setup required; I could go from conceiving the intent to tripping in about 30 seconds.
I experience no negative side effects from taking DMT, it only lasts a short time so I could easily find time to do it almost every day, and I find the experience is usually extremely pleasurable.
I think I have a fairly strong tendency towards addiction behaviours. And yet I probably take DMT once every 2 months on average. After l trip I almost never feel any compulsion to trip again.
I suspect this is more about the way the pleasure tails off, rather than the way it builds up. After tripping I tend to sit contently for some time and contemplate something. This is usually the most rewarding part and usually leaves me with a feeling of satisfaction that it wouldn't make sense to disrupt by seeking more pleasure. I wonder if that is in common with jhana experiences?
>In a decade, Wikimedia's spending has soared: from $10 million in 2010 to $112 million by 2020.
>[In] 2021 website hosting cost $2.4 million - which is LESS than it did in 2012.
>according the Wikimedia Foundation's own website, less than half of what they spend goes on directly supporting the website.
>Let's take a look at two big recipients [of Wikimedia's grant money].The SeRCH Foundation received a quarter million dollars of donor cash. [...] it turns out to be a bit more unusual than that. They're proponents of an "Intersectional Scientific Method" involving "hyperspace"(?)
>Wikimedia [also] gave $250,000 to Borealis's Racial Equity in Journalism Fund. That money was then cascaded down to a dozens of ideologically aligned news outlets across the US.
>In the west, an advanced industry of NGOs, charities, and foundations has evolved which funds so much of the weirdness in our daily lives. A caste of activist-professionals have emerged, which inevitably capture any non-profit with spare cash.
>This is what is sometimes called The Blob: a powerful but inconspicuous force that has given us the dysfunction of the 21st century.
From the linked thread: $22.9 million was given in grants.
The two examples are for a total of $500k. I would need more information to determine if this is a fluke or representative of the giving as a whole. However, I can't find a list of Wikimedia's giving and where other grant money has gone. It would be nice to link to this if one is going to criticize the giving!
Anyway, these two examples seem to fit into the kind of things wikimedia publicly supports. Not sure it should upset us. And 250k divided amongst "dozens of ideologically aligned news outlets across the US" isn't going to do much!
The reason not to give money is because they don't need it in the way they claim. That should be enough. But to me it seems this story has been picked up by people with a political ax to grind against the kinds of programs noted in the thread and they are using it for culture war purposes which feel disingenuous to me.
My rationalist response is that most people here are already aware that "woke" individuals, i.e. those who accept any of the major claims of standpoint epistemology, by definition believe that social identities influence what one notices and considers worth investigating about the world, and that such individuals consequently consider steps towards racial and gender equality in journalism and STEM along with aligned philosophy of science research to be epistemically valuable contributions. Therefore, it doesn't seem wise to update one's opinion of these people very much based on evidence that some of them advocate for decisions that try to be consistent with these principles, especially if that evidence is presented selectively and histrionically.
My woke response is to ask whose political projects are served by this outrage, and what the relationship is between those politics and the ostensible or actual goals of this community. Advocating to direct infinite amounts of hate at people with different political views, based on the marginal granting decisions of a nonprofit whose main function is uncontestedly to provide an invaluable epistemic public service to the entire world, is a curious way for a pro-critical-thinking community to spend its time and attention—unless there’s some kind of underlying and unspoken material interest here, which might threaten to predetermine the outcome of this discursive process.
It's relevant to those of considering giving them money. I am happy to give money to keep Wikipedia going, and have done so. I am not happy to give money so the Wikimedia people can donate it to causes they like, so knowing that, on the margin, that is what my money would go for is a good reason not to donate.
I have given Wikipedia money in the past. I recently got an email asking for more. Having read an account along the lines of this one, I replied with an explanation of why I was not contributing. To my surprise, I got an answer. It more or less conceded that money raised for Wikipedia was being donated to progressive groups, justified on the grounds that they were doing things that contributed not to Wikipedia but to Wikipedia's ultimate objectives. I can imagine the email being persuasive to someone who agreed with their politics and wasn't particularly concerned with arguably fraudulent ways of raising money, but it did confirm that the account I had read was substantially true.
Your later statement is equivalent to woke people deserving more than any finite amount of hate. It is certainly not kind. I would argue that is is also not true, and not necessary. In fact, it is plainly waging the culture war. I am not in the woke crowd and would judge your statement just as unacceptable if you replaced "wookies" with "Republicans". This is not twitter.
On the matter, I am a fan of the WP:CANCER analysis. I however see the main problem in the fact that WP is becoming dependent on big tech for future support and that they are soliciting donations from users (which may have a limited amount of disposable income) to further fund the overhead. I do not care so much so much on which hill they burn their money so much, whether it is user interfaces nobody wants or some political cause (which is probably already well funded in any case).
Is that forbidden? My impression is ACX and open threads in particular are openly tolerant of culture warring, I do try as much as possible to not abuse this but an organisation begging for donations in the name of knowledge then turning around and spending the money mostly on an ignorant and regressive religion is worth the occasional rant for me, no?
The vague general rules cited above are meant to be guidelines about culture war in particular. If you are going to say something that might be a problem, two make sure that it's at least two of the three of:
1) Necessary - It's an important point that could not be said without causing some level of "problem"
2) True - Truth is a great defense for saying something, but it's also questioned in a lot of culture war discussions and one person's truth may be another person's propaganda/misinformation/political lie
3) Kind - This is the easiest branch to meet, by just employing common courtesy and speaking civilly
Your post seems to be crossing the line on Kind, by using language disparaging of your outgroup that is itself unnecessary for your larger point. True is difficult to pin down, but even taking your post at face value it's not enough on its own. That leaves Necessary, and we've already concluded that even if the post itself was necessary to convey your point, your language choices are not.
There are times when blunt truth is necessary, but it's always a good idea to also throw in kindness, since it's free and available on every post.
I question the unrestricted valuing of kindness, I question its utility against aggressive expansionist religions and I don't perceive the side you're defending to ever return kindness back or even acknowledge what it's doing 24/7/365 as cruelty.
Kindness is also not free at all. This is even mentioned in the SSC post from 2014 :
>Nobody can be kind all the time, but if you are going to be angry or sarcastic, what you say had better be both true and necessary. You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics.
I think the post I cited does that, it uses statistics from wikimedia's own site (almost certainly massaged to make them look better), and it demonstrates 2 egregious examples of mismanaged money. I will gladly accept that - and even say so myself - I'm not original here, that all I did was post a link to somewhere after archiving it and summarizing some of its content. This is fair, I even think this is the main "real" reason both you and q_nan think it's a bad post. Another way to phrase this is that I think my hatred of wokes expressed in the post triggered a higher standard (for eloquence, truth, originality, etc...) that it failed, I would sympathize with that if anti-woke posts were 24/7 spam on every open thread, I would be the first to stop and ask people to stop in that case, but it's a relatively rare thing to see being said.
All in all I'm not convinced I did anything especially bad etiquette-wise, I think it's actually virtuous and just and brave to hate people who declare at every opportunity that they hate us, and to encourage others to hate them as well. It takes courage to hate just as it does to love. I think this is always good unrestrictedly as long as it doesn't cross into violence. I'm entirely okay if Scott sees otherwise and wants to give me a large fraction of a ban or something for that.
"I don't perceive the side you're defending to ever return kindness back or even acknowledge what it's doing 24/7/365 as cruelty." This kind of thinking -- the other side never does one single decent thing, not even for one single second -- should be called the Invasion of the Plastic Nazis Fallacy.
1- Every single group member is a new blank state and you're not allowed to cache a single assumption from previous interactions
and
2- Every single group member is completely defined by past interactions and every single time you give them a second chance is a mistake
both define strawmen that are neither practical nor natural ways to think. In practice, your way of thinking about group membership and blame is always a point in the space between those 2 extremes.
The position of this point is shaped by many many things, but one of those considerations is risk-benefit analysis :
- Let us say that crypto enthusiasts are 50-50 split between honest entrepreneurs and conmen, but also that I have already invested every last cent of my money in (say) real estate. In that situation, it's rational for me to dismiss a typical crypto enthusiast as a conman, since - even if he or she turned out to be a legitimate entrepreneur - there is simply no benefit to be had and a lot of risk. The Nash equilibrium always points in the direction of maximum bad faith (because why not ? what benefit to be gained from giving a crypto enthusiast a second chance ? 0, not enough to justify the risk)
- Contrast that with my hypothetical attitude towards real estate contractors, where I would be forced to endure a 50/50 or even a 70/30 split against me, simply because I have no choice, the benefits and sunk cost are huge for me.
So, a better phrasing of my attitude towards wokism is : It's so full of shit and hatred, and so light on goodness or virtue, that the optimum direction for caching assumptions from interaction to interaction is (2) and not (1). For all I know, the shit-goodness split in wokism might actually be 50-50 or even 40-60, but wokies are distant (in multiple senses of the word) enough from me that I simply gain nothing from discovering a good wokie, but I lose a lot from giving a bad wokie the benefit of doubt.
This is almost certainly a rationalization of my instinctual contempt for wokism, but it's a very rational rationalization and I like it aplenty.
Let me be another voice that prefers a more tempered argument.
Mostly, that's just because the original statistics are interesting, but I am capable of drawing my own conclusions from them. Being told who I should hate as a result is not adding any value; it's something I can find anywhere on the internet.
Ending with that thought was also distracting: it activated the part of my brain that desperately wants to know what the fight is, which side of the fight am I on, how can I be sure that I won't get punched in the face by both sides, and so on. The current draft is easier to read.
Hahaha, nice one Ere. I actually love wikipedia, it's a reminder of when the internet was a better and more idealistic place. Unfortunately it's doomed, things like the one I posted prove it couldn't rise above being a cash cow for a religion to beg for money in its name.
When it comes to the "owner" of something that was largely created by community labor it makes perfect sense. See Gracenote and CDDB for maybe the starkest example, but there are many on the internet.
It was actually a phase of mine a couple of years ago. I have a hypothesis that it's prevalent because Capitalism is an easier target than Moloch. Until now, I have trouble articulating to people why exactly do I hate large groups of people living together like cattle under the same dysfunctional coercive arrangment without sounding like I just hate them and their neighbours.
In comparison to that, hating Capitalism is baby mode. It's so huge and obvious, there is a ~200 years tradition of hating it. So people aiming for Moloch end up hitting it, and they don't even realize what they were aiming for and why they didn't exactly nail it.
Not feeling clever for this semiweekly post, so, just a disheartening anecdote. Skip if meandering personal stories with no immediate problem-solving applications are boring, lotsa other Spicy Threads ITOT.
A few days ago: sprinting to catch a train, as one does when walking is prohibitively inconvenient. Barely catch it as it's about to leave the station - great! First car, first seat, so happy to sit down after another long day at work....
...but, alas, this is SF, so *of course* there's already an occupant there: human solid waste.
What really bothered me more than anything was...no one else seemed to notice or care? They're just numb to this completely unremarkable remarkable phenomenon. This is the new normal, business as usual, nothing to see here. Nothing to be done about the matter, not even just stopping the train for a few minutes to do minimal cleanup. (Yes, I know the schedules are tight, used to consult for a public transit agency. Still.)
I don't know. It's easy to overplay the Mass Exodus From CA, Blue Cities Mismanaged hand. At the same time, things feel more and more...epistemically Potemkin the longer I live here? Even in the pretty-chill residential districts, the dark heart of downtown slowly expands its reach...first it was overflowing public trashcans, then mass car break-ins, then needle disposal bins in public bathroom stalls (next to the baby-changing stations, logically), then shoplifting sprees, then graffiti that people stopped cleaning up, then shattered glass at transit stops, then...this literal shit. The cognitive dissonance of one of the world's most famous/influential/wealthy/etc cities putting up with such Obvious Nonsense is, well, a lot. The soaring rhetoric and Pollyanna proclamations begin to sound cruel, not hopeful. The Symbolic Representation Of The Thing, not The Thing.
It's kinda a trite oversimplification, but I feel that living in mythological pure-blue Leftist Paradise has done more for shifting my values rightwards than anything else. Conservative friends used to joke about how SF was full of homeless hippies and other caricatures, which I'd then disclaim; now the shoe's dropped on the other foot, and I'm the one asking leftist friends "what are we even doing here?" Which now codes me as, like, a reactionary shill or whatever. What a long and strange journey it's been...I hope The City lives up to its historical reputation again someday. Not holding my breath though.
Stories of this type set in NYC usually have the tone of "NYC is crazy and gritty and real". In SF its pitched as the end of the world. Not sure I think either is correct and human waste on the train is not good! Also I am being very very general here which is not great! However, people do feel nostalgic about the gritty NYC of the 70s, 80s, and 90s which featured a lot of gross stuff (plenty of public dedication and drug use - some of which i saw as a kid!). Why is it so different for SF? Maybe its just because its happening now vs in the past?
I think sterility breeds contempt? Maybe when I'm older and retired in the suburbs or something, I'll think back to that shitty train ride years ago with a sort of warped fondness. "Kids these days, too straight-laced to even consider defecation in non-sanctioned locations..." But it requires getting to a place of comfort/wealth/stability first. Actually living through the hardships, it's hard to appreciate in the present.
Wouldn't phrase it as the end of the world though...this type of badness has ~always existed, in some part of SF at some time. Neighborhoods wax and wane. But I've been in the same place for a decade, and it's certainly never been this bad before, so....I guess that's my frame of what the refrance. (Wasn't like this 30 years ago either, although very early childhood memories are necessarily suspect.) Parents were here before me, they say it's never been worse, and no longer feel safe visiting me or going downtown in broad daylight (that's sad).
Obviously, this is all just vibes and personal experience, which could be outliers in the empirical data. But those perceptions have a huge influence on day-to-day decisions, even if a good Bayesian tries to update general models of the world based on higher-level evidence. So I know on paper, a lot of the serious crimes actually were worse in the 90s, and even today's elevated murder rate is considerably lower...but that doesn't have a direct 1:1 relationship with how safe I feel being downtown as the sun starts setting. That kind of thing.
To reply to the deleted(?) comment: no, not affluent. I bag groceries for a living, and the directionality of sign on $NET_WORTH depends entirely on whether Biden's Grand Theft Education* comes to pass or not. The biggest asset I own is student debt...
Moving wouldn't be impossible, from a strictly financial and logistical standpoint, but it'd be a high-cost action in a small possibility space. Not on the imminent horizon, yet. I guess you could say, the current plan is becoming affluent enough to be able to afford to leave at minimal cost. Lotsa better jobs to be had, at least for now...every single company expat I know, without fail, makes more than they did previously. I should do the same, as a first step of action at least.
I apologize in advance if my comment below is unwanted. I don't mean to be preachy, nosy, or otherwise obnoxious.
Honestly, I think you're about ready to move. Skype, Zoom, FaceTime are a great help in keeping family and friends close wherever you are. I seem to recall - sorry if I'm remembering wrong - that your job is nothing spectacular, is probably not paying enough, and can be easily replaced by a job exactly like it elsewhere.
Think about it. You could move somewhere where your money will get you a much better place to live, where in good weather you could chill on your deck with a drink and a laptop and breathe air instead of exhaust, where you could leave your car unlocked while carrying groceries in, where drivers in traffic will let you into the lane where you need to be without testing who blinks first, where random people you interact with will be helpful and nice.
Ask yourself why exactly you're putting up with what you described. If you don't have a good reason, odds are you'd be better off somewhere else. Life is way too short to spend it like that.
That was the plan, formerly...but the company made changes this year which result in large pay cuts for leaving high-COL areas. Used to be that someone could get hired in SF (iirc the highest wage region for this company), transfer to Sanetown, and keep SF wage. Now they'll take a steep pay cut, and make whatever hires at Sanetown make instead. The incentives are aligned to come here, not to leave. Like, just to spitball some numbers, if I moved to a North Carolina branch, that'd be a reduction of almost 40%...sure, the cost of living might be lower, but money is fungible too.
It's true that I could probably get any other job like this elsewhere, at least before we're into Definitely Recession when there'll be hiring freezes everywhere. Grocery stores are a dime a dozen, and there's plenty of related retail. It's the "probably" that makes me worry though...with no education and a very thin work history, I'd feel really dicey about moving elsewhere without a job already lined up in advance. Which, of course, raises search costs even more than the not-trivial base. The shit you know over the shit you don't, and all that. (Don't have a car either. No public transit/immediately walkable = not gonna work. Possibility space contracts further.)
I guess it's mostly...this is where I was born and raised, and my social circle is very small + physically based. Family is irrelevant; I had to work hard to secure the few irl friends I do have, though, and the thought of uprooting all that to start over from zero is painful. It's been years since the last time I managed to make a friend. The grass surely looks greener, cheaper, safer, cleaner, nicer, almost everywhere else...but also much lonelier. I don't know. It's nice to dream about, anyway.
Yeah, SF could really use someone who could implement effective policies on homelessness (which in my mind involves building a ton of housing), public bathrooms (this should be so easy), mental illness, and crime.
Lots of stuff is already open to the public and also a potential place to shoot up, like say the sidewalk. I think the trend to over-engineer public restrooms to try to avoid anything bad happening is the wrong direction to go in. Instead, go cheaper and more disposable. Worst case, just put up porta-potties.
Per cognitive dissonance and Pollyanna proclamations, something I've been thinking about a lot lately is "Putting up with indignity as ingroup signal". I hear people proclaim that they're not at all bothered by encountering human feces on the street, having their car broken into regularly, picking through tent encampments on their way to work, etc. And that's so far outside my thought process I often have trouble believing it. But I wonder if it's as simple as the notion that being concerned about, or even noticing, these things is coded right wing so people will performatively be alright with it.
In a similar vein and to echo another comment here, the thing that bothered me the most about the times of my life when I've been dependent on public transit is exactly that kind of stigmatization of noticing. It seems like there's a strong norm against noticing, let alone interfering with, antisocial and aggressive behavior. Although to be fair, that may have as much to do with self defense law as it does with performative tribalism.
Your last paragraph also reminded me of a conversation I had a while ago with a friend of mine who recently moved out of NYC. One thing he mentioned was that he didn't realize until he left how much mental energy he was expending justifying his decision to live there, sometimes to others but mostly to himself.
Self-defense law is definitely a part of it - it's much better to never get involved in any confrontations, when even threatening to harm an assailant here can reverse the roles of victim and offender (legally)...this leads to a certain kind of invisibility-cloak behaviour, of appearing passive and uninteresting and unobservant*. Anything to not look like an easy mark, or potentially upset someone who might become easily upset. So there's no one left to actually police the commons, certainly not the actual police either. The running gag in SF is that no one gives a shit about crime unless and until someone gets murdered...everything else is just unfortunate "quality of life crime". It's just property, man...
*which is its own form of antisocial behaviour, of course, and likely exacerbates the problems in some ways by not setting positive examples of public behaviour. When everyone's suspicious and distrusting, that does not make for a vibrant community scene with spontaneous interaction between kindly strangers.
I'm sure you could find a few people who think that way, but I think it's a mistake to ascribe that sort of intense political feeling to most people about a problem that's nearly as old as human history. Social disorder is not new. Neither is politicizing it, of course! But people have been dealing with this for centuries, and mostly not as a way of showing their politics, but simply because they like the benefits of living in those places and are willing to put up with the downsides.
SF is still a fantastic and unique place to live, with a lot of things you can't find in most places. People who love it, as I obviously do, put up with the downsides because we think it's worth the tradeoff, not out of some misguided sense of righteousness.
To be clear, I'm not implying that any of this is a conscious or intentional thing. I don't think (many) people are actually thinking "Republicans are polemicizing about conditions in SF today, I'm going to go praise SF". Further, I would clarify that what I'm talking about is not (as you seem to be saying about yourself) "Yes, there are downsides but I find them worth it". I'm talking specifically about people who either claim not to care in the slightest about the downsides or claim not to notice them at all.
Also, I want to mention that I am not a San Francisco hater. I visited pretty recently and I agree it's a fantastic city in a lot of ways. I wouldn't live there, but if you're happy then all the best.
This is fair too. We might merely call it civic pride and/or rationalization. Some people complain about everything. Other people spend all their time rationalizing all the choices in their lives and take offense to people complaining about anything that might reflect on those choices.
I recall once hearing an interview of a guy from Moldova, which by any statistic might be the worst place to live in Europe (at least prior to the current war). And according to the subtitles, he said something like, "Moldova is just the best place. Other places can be nice sometimes, but I just think Moldova is better than any of them."
Some of the New Yorkers I knew, back when I lived there for a minute, used to reminisce about the New York of the 70s, when the city was a "real city", not the cleaned up yuppified bullshit it is now. People are weird.
NYC, to pick an example, has some of the most complete data sets, and shows pretty consistently that things are at a recent peak, but were way worse as recently as 10 years go.
The pattern in other cities mimics this. Things feel bad because they were getting better for a long time, and have reversed, but we're still far from much worse days.
Well I'm not going to disbelieve your personal experience! But are you actually asserting that your personal experiences, and your feelings about them, are more meaningful than trying to look for data and make rational conclusions? I don't think so, right?
Also, if you think I'm saying "don't be upset because it used to be worse" then you're misreading me. I'm saying "it used to be worse, and it got better, so it can get better again." Be upset, work for change, don't just accept it. But also, don't treat it like an apocalypse that we can't come back from.
I recall Seth Rogen once being rather explicit about this -- that having one's car broken into a dozen or two times was no big deal and those who complained about it were just whiny (I imagine he would never speak in this way of the most micro of racial microaggressions ever committed against another human being).
On the matter of refusing to complain about urban decay, I can perhaps draw an analogy to a Londoner during the Blitz choosing to maintain the stiff upper lip. "Alas, my home has been exploded by the Krauts. I won't even give them the imagined satisfaction by acknowledging the indignity out loud: I'll merely sip on some tea amidst the rubble."
But who, in this analogy, is the Kraut? Perhaps, I might imagine, the Republicans in general and Trump in particular, but it takes a little more work to draw that line than the one from a Ju-88's bomb bay to a pile of rubble that was once your London home.
I think many Londoners in SF would like to believe that all the city's ills are somehow the fault of Orange Man and the Democracy-Enders - those perfidious Big Oil dollars corrupting local politics! - but at some point that just seems hard to accept when every ballot slate is straight-Ds, and "San Francisco Republican" is an entry in Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them. Some hyperbole, but...yeah, the call is coming from inside the house here. Hence all the No True Leftist brinksmanship and "neoliberal" becoming a fighting-words slur. There must always be a left and right, so when there's no actual right, the insufficiently left become the new right.
Do wonder if commonality of experience helps make things seem like not-a-big-deal. If you live in a community that sees one car break-in a year, being that unfortunate lotto winner sucks a huge amount. When it's happened to you, your mother, and all your coworkers within recent memory - well, then that's just how things are, no big deal. Cost of living expense.
(For a long time it was "only tourists and out-of-towners get their cars broken into, Real San Franciscans never leave themselves vulnerable"...which was true to some extent. But these days the smash-and-grab seems to be more like smash-and-potentially-grab. Cars become lootboxes, it doesn't matter if there's actually nothing visibly valuable inside. Some people don't even bother rolling up windows or locking doors anymore, cause it's cheaper to have stuff rifled through rather than replace yet another broken window. Cut out the middleman, you know?)
Even previously, I don't think a lot of SF residents understood how much "Just don't leave any valuables visible in your car" read like Stockholm syndrome to a lot of people. I remember in one of the threads regarding the central valley in California, one person talking about how it wasn't so bad there because a friend left their laptop bag visible when they went out for lunch and the car wasn't broken into, apparently not realizing just how low a bar this is to clear for much of the country.
It's easy to wrap this together into a ball of 'broken blue city' but it's a gross (har) oversimplification.
Start with: a lot of bad public behaviors are up in all kinds of places. It's more visible in denser cities, but there have been umpteen analyses showing that a lot of social breakdown is happening basically everywhere. You may still want to move out of the city, of course, as a way to better deal with what's happening in society, that's totally fair, but be prepared to find that different places will have their own problems.
Also, we all have a short attention span now, and it's always easy to think that the Current Bad Will Be Bad Forever. Cities go through cycles - NYC, famously, has gone through it more than once. Things can turn around. Doesn't make it more tolerable now, but it's good to take the long view.
And we know a lot of what drives SF's problems: extremely high housing costs and no effort to provide housing to the wave of homeless produced by those housing costs. That's a massive failure of governance, to be sure, but it's one that's going to take some time to turn around. And there are lots of us here trying to turn it around. The new crop of supervisors is markedly different from the old, and there's real pissed-off energy around here.
I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to wait for that, of course. But there's already enough social media distortion that tries to make everything into Exhibit A in the culture wars, and I think if you pay enough attention you'll find that it's not that simple, not in SF and not anywhere else.
Yeah, I'm trying not to fall down that path of despair. Reading Matt Yglesias' piece about Bad Behaviour Up Everywhere back in January helped put some empirical perspective on the local badness. Generally am optimistic about Things Getting Better and more glasses being half-full than half-empty, so Phoenix SF is a narrative I'd prefer to believe rather than not. Recent election results have definitely been encouraging in that regard.
The waiting-for-it is definitely hard, though. The longer me and mine wait-for-it, the more everyone thinks about bailing...and that makes staying seem less and less attractive, cause we're mostly here for each other. Not the city itself. There is a particular and unique magic here, but I suspect it's not actually Pareto optimal for what anyone in my circle wants out of a life arrangement...could likely still capture 80% of the gains in the other 19% of similar locales. (Yeah I know I'm messing up the math.)
It's also because...we're all in the prime of our lives, I guess? And there's this great fear of things finally Getting Better, except by then we'll all be too old to enjoy it. Path dependence, getting locked in financially. Lower cost of living in the future is great, but if you arrive there poor from years of high COL...then there's always that "what-if?" What if I left years ago, for similar but cheaper shit somewhere else...one can always move back to The City, after all. It's a tough decision. (relative) Youth should be spent wisely...
Well, the shitter was probably someone homeless. Obviously that's just a guess, but it's an educated guess. And there is a pretty clear link between housing costs and homelessness, as even Scott concluded:
As "why did nobody clean it up"? Well, who would do that? The bus driver? A random passenger? It's not an easy problem to solve, but when you get to the solution, it usually winds up being somebody who needs to be hired for that, and that kind of hiring is hard right now because lots of people can't afford to work on city wages because ... they can't find housing at those wages. This is impacting a lot of city jobs and contributing to dysfunction in general.
So can I promise that a new apartment building would magically fix this? Of course not. Do I think that high housing costs demonstrably contribute to the general conditions that cause stuff like this to happen? Yes, and I think a hard look at the data backs that. I'm open to counter-arguments, honestly!
Some homelessness is due to high housing costs, but I'm going to make an educated guess that the person who dumped their load on a *train seat* wouldn't be able to consistently make rent even if rent were $500/month. Decent people who are just trying to get by, will find someplace more discreet.
Wave the magic wand to cut SF rents in half, and maybe you'll get a 50% reduction in homelessness, but a 0% reduction in BART-seat befoulment.
I'm still skeptical of the hypothesis that the homeless people who shit on bus seats are the sorts of people who would be functional rent-paying adults if only San Francisco rent were as cheap as Atlanta. The people who were priced out of San Francisco simply moved somewhere else, they didn't stay in San Francisco and become derelicts.
Lots of people have expensive housing. Auckland has expensive housing. It doesn't have a public shitting problem. It has homeless vagrants, but a manageably small number of them. They don't shit on bus seats because (a) they know they'd wind up in jail if they did, and (b) because there's public toilets around they can shit in instead. There's public toilets around because the vagrant problem is manageably small, meaning you can safely have public toilets all over the place without them getting ruined.
I don't know enough about Auckland to say anything about their social safety net or lack thereof. Using US cities as a reference point, there is a pretty clear link between housing prices and homelessness. And this has knock-on effects: in fact, you identify a key one in your last point. When you have a manageable number of homeless, providing services and keeping an eye on them gets easier. When you get overwhelmed, things start to break down.
And while you're right about the fact that most homeless wouldn't magically transform into good citizens with a roof over their head, there is evidence that causation does flow the other way. That is, that if someone is marginally hanging onto society, and then becomes homeless due to rising rents, things can get real bad real fast. They lose jobs, however menial. They lose touch with their support network. They gain touch with drug dealers and other bad elements.
Regular housing won't magically fix today's vagrants, but it can stop tomorrow's vagrants from hitting the streets. That leaves more public resources to deal with real hard cases, like bus shitters and people with deeper intractable problems.
If it sounds like I'm saying _everything_ comes down to housing, I'm not. But if you're asking why some problems in SF seem worse than elsewhere, then housing is a much stronger explanation than hand-waving at culture.
Not to start a culture war discussion, but I'll point out that you're saying the same things that the left has been saying about SF for years - we just need to find more housing for these people and then it would be good. Open air drug use in prolonged encampments might have some bearing on housing prices, but it might not even be the top three cause of issues - which I would list as 1) mental illness, 2) drug addiction, 3) welcoming environment for new/additional homeless (who may not even be trying to do anything else).
I'm not looking for a response and may not continue one if you do you respond (but you're welcome to share your further thoughts!), but would ask that you consider the possibility that your understanding of causes and solutions may be inaccurate, unworkable, or even flat out wrong. That we've had many years of people saying the same thing and the situation is getting worse seems strong evidence that it's so.
> things that the left has been saying about SF for years - we just need to find more housing for these people and then it would be good
My understanding is that they did that, and the majority of the city's enormous "homelessness" budget now goes towards housing people who used to be homeless. Now, of course, a bunch more homeless people have shown up to replace them.
I think what I said may come across as over-simplified, so I appreciate the response.
It's worth untangling some different threads here. Some problems that we see are basically national. Fentanyl, for example, is a massive scourge and hasn't really been solved anywhere that I can see. It's more visible in a city like SF, but it's bad everywhere.
But SF's problems have been exacerbated a lot by housing costs, and even our illustrious host here has concluded that same thing from the data:
I would not say that housing will fix everything. But it will help a lot. Also, when I say 'housing' I'm including shelters, the lack of which is the main barrier to just forcing people off the street. Certainly it will not solve mental illness or drug addiction by itself, but it helps ameliorate these problems, as evidenced by the fact that many places have problems with those things but still don't have street problem's quite as bad as SF's.
So let me make a clearer conclusion, which I'm happy to discuss if you want (and I promise, I'm out for good faith discussions here):
While social media loves to exaggerate some things, SF's problems are real and even natives will acknowledge that. Some of those problems are national and showing up in every city. Some of them are made worse by SF's policies, though. And while it's a complicated situation, the single factor that seems to most impact the severity is the region's extreme housing crisis, which is a failure of local governance. Getting _out_ of our situation, now that we're in it, will be a multifaceted challenge. But building more types of housing, including shelters, halfway homes, affordable housing, supportive housing, and plenty of just regular old apartments will help.
Public transit gives me the creeps, and I think one reason is that human beings are expected to enter into this state in which we behave in the manner of NPCs that need to maintain a dead-eyed stare and avoid acknowledging anyone or anything around us, lest we place too much strain on the GPU. So yes, their reaction to the poop would fit within this model.
The chief category of person that does not abide by this iron rule of transit decorum is the Stark Raving Mad Lunatic, a category of person that one encounters almost never in a public-transit-free lifestyle but more or less daily on public transit.
Here's what would happen if someone discovered a human turd on a bus in my city, or any normal first-world city. They'd go "aaaagh, a human turd", they'd tell the bus driver. The bus driver would get everyone off the bus and radio for a replacement. He'd probably have suspicions about which former passenger was responsible for leaving the turd there, and he'd call the police to tell them about it. Then he'd drive the empty bus back to the depot for cleaning. People would be late but they'd understand this was better than travelling in a bus with a turd. Everyone, including the driver would tell the story of the time someone shat on a bus for years.
That's what we're talking about with San Francisco. Things that are unthinkable in other cities become commonplace in San Francisco.
I'll admit that I've actually never ridden a bus in the US, other than a school bus. Maybe things are a little different on buses than trains -- there are fewer people and you actually get to see the driver, which makes the operation of the vehicle seem less like a force of nature and more like an actual human task.
But I have ridden plenty of local trains in all parts of the US. I haven't encountered any poop, but my inclination is still to think the reaction would be similar to this SF incident. It's only for a lack of people pooping on trains that the problem isn't more widespread.
Come to think of it, I remember this being a vignette on Louie CK's show "Louie" (set in NYC), a decade or so back. There's some mysterious brown liquid in a seat on the train. Everyone is aware of it, vaguely disgusted by it, keeps their distance from it, but no one says anything. Louie has a vision of wiping up the liquid and being cheered as a hero, but in the end doesn't do anything, and neither does anyone else. It feels like the kind of thing that was clearly borne out of a real experience.
This is where I snarl that the people running the place are too busy getting invites to Getty weddings to bother with the nuts and bolts of running the city. They don't have to take public transport so they don't have to sit in shit, and their political campaigns are running on "black youth school to prison pipeline" and somehow that translates into "letting the visibly mentally ill and criminal roam the streets and live like dogs".
But mostly I do think it's more about class than anything; champagne socialists who grift their ways to positions of influence and wealth so they don't have to ride the literally shitty train, *you* do. Mouth all the right talking points, only mingle with those who don't have to interact with the reality.
Seems to fit model just fine - social media appears deeply debasing, people with self-respect leave/stay off it. But I think that's certainly part of it, the assumption that this is just the lot one gets in life, and wanting more is just elevating expectations to a level of inevitable disappointment. Enlightenment is being 0k with life's shit.
Something I've thought about a lot at my job, too. Eventually, when all the good people leave, no one has any idea what actual excellence looks like anymore. So without any conscious lowering of the bar, the standards slip, since the entire concept of "could be done better" becomes alien. If the best you're used to is shit-tier, then top-tier shit looks great. But it's still shit.
I want to ask for some perspectives on life in general.
It's just until recently that I realized life's ultimate goals are finding meanings, pleasure and being happy. So I wonder what's the meaning of life? It's very clear that I have been a burden to my parents now and in the past. As an undergraduate my GPA sucks and am too socially anxious to try out any activities. In the future I will most probably struggle a lot, both mentally and physically, just to find a job and survive. How can one be happy or positive? I don't remember the last time I actually felt happy. I am really considering ending it here, it's too exhausting living. It will probably be better for my parents too, if I am gone the financial burden will be forever gone.
First, if you aren't already, I would talk to a psychologist and probably a doctor that can prescribe an anti depressant or anti anxiety. Lexapro and CBT changed my life and it can change yours as well! Your local government may even have free resources if money is a concern!
I'd suggest not looking for a meaning of your "life" but just the short term. What is the meaning of tomorrow, this month, this year. Right now you should probably make your meaning "not be a burden on your parents". Just focus on how you can reduce the burden in small amounts. The first thing would be to make your meaning "talking to a mental health professional" even if this takes a few months!
When you say "meaning", what you're actually looking for is a target function. Something that you can try to achieve each day, and give yourself little pats on the back every time you satisfy it.
All I can tell you is that happiness seems to come not from finding the objectively correct target function but from having a bunch of different ones.
I think I first saw this advice here, but can't remember specifics: happiness shouldn't be a goal you pursue directly, or you'll never reach it. Instead, it's a side-effect of pursuing other goals.
I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb in this thread, saying this. But here goes.
If you can accept that Gandhi's life and Hitler's life have exactly the same meaning -- "none", or "they get to decide what their life means" or "TBD" -- then you're ready for the nihilism ("life has no meaning") or solipsism ("you create your own meaning") of the rest of the answers in this thread.
If you, like most normal people, think there's a clear, objective, serious, important difference between the meaning of Gandhi's life and the meaning of Hitler's life, then you already believe in God. If a sentence can't be read, it can't have a meaning. Who's reading the sentence that is your life? Your desire for a meaningful life is a desire for your life to make sense within the contextual frame of a Being powerful enough, intelligent enough and caring enough to understand it truthfully. It's an implicit belief in a God you don't know yet.
This is all my opinion, and greater philosophers than I will disagree. That's fine. But I think your real search is for God. And if you genuinely search for Him, He'll make a way for you to find Him. Probably get therapy too. Definitely don't end your life.
I think there's a lot of really good advice in this thread - that you're not a burden, that getting screened for depression/anxiety might help/that that's what parents are for - but I'd also encourage you to remember that the issue might be your local environment (i.e. college). Kelsey Piper on her old blog, theunitofcaring, talked a lot about this - that college was really, really bad for her and that she was much happier once she graduated. So definitely before you take any permanent actions, you should consider any and all temporary actions you can take, whether that's talking to a psychologist, taking a break from college, or anything else you can think of.
It's possible to change your personality. I deliberately did that to be happier but it took years of work. I find meaning and happiness through Buddhism. But generically, I think connecting with others and pursuing mastery of a skill will work for a lot of people.
At worst, your GPA means you wouldn't be able to get into graduate school. If that happens, you could to community college to prove you can get good grades, work for a few years and re-apply to a graduate program.
Regarding social anxiety, I found the book How to Win Friends and Influence People very helpful. For any self help book, think of them as an instruction manual. Reading it won't do much. You take the lessons in them, try them out, and practice them. Being socially relaxed is a skill. You can learn it.
"Human nature being what it is, however, many people seek to create purpose and a feeling of transcendence on the cheap, to find it in the easiest and most accessible way, with the least amount of effort. Such people give themselves over to false purposes, those that merely supply the illusion of purpose and transcendence. We can contrast them with real purposes in the following way:
The real purpose comes from within.
It is an idea, a calling, a sense of mission that we feel personally and intimately connected to. It is our own; we may have been inspired by others, but nobody imposed it upon us and nobody can take it away.
If we are religious, we don’t merely accept the orthodoxy; we go through rigorous introspection and make our belief inward, true to ourselves. False purposes come from external sources—belief systems that we swallow whole, conformity to what other people are doing. The real purpose leads us upward, to a more human level. We improve our skills and sharpen our minds; we realize our potential and contribute to society. False purposes lead downward, to the animal side of our nature—to addictions, loss of mental powers, mindless conformity, and cynicism."
[spacing added for emphasis]
--Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature, 2018 [Read w/ a filter]
If you are at struggling at school, leave school. Get a job and support yourself, build up some self esteem and stop relying on your parents. You will see that most jobs for non degree holders suck, and then maybe then you will develop the motivation you need to do well in college.
Ally of your behavior sounds like learned helplessness and if you just make yourself Perron better and expect better performance from yourself you will get it. Maybe move across country. You are like a bird too scared to jump out of the nest framing out because it is worries it might not be able to fly. At some point you gotta jump and flap your wings a bit.
The worst case scenario is at some point you come crawling back to your parents with your tail between your legs. That isn’t that bad.
The only meaning is to eventually find a perspective on life that you find meaningful and that takes a while for many, myself included. Imagining your immediate future as bleak is learned helplessness that's all too easy to iterate over and over - and it prevents you from finding alternatives, so don't give up in advance. Time overpowers anxiety if you let it.
Maybe all this is a bit too trivial a take but it still rings true to me.
A few thoughts. First, I think that we should be careful using expressions like "the meaning of life," since the usage of the term 'meaning' in this context differs from the usage of the term 'meaning' in other contexts. Oftentimes, the word 'meaning' means the objective significance of something. E.g. the meaning of 'table' is simply what it is. [That isn't to say that a definition is necessarily simple of that only one definition of a word exists, but the *meaning* of the word is still objective - the set of all definitions of the word; or the distribution of definitions of the word.]
This could give one the impression that "the meaning of life" is some objective question akin to a dictionary definition.
This is misleading, since when people discuss "the meaning of life" they are not discussing a dictionary definition, but something else.
Specifically, I think that clearly defining what one means by "meaning" in the question "what is the meaning of life" provides the direction of an answer.
I think the thrust of the question is which things are particularly valuable or transcendent in the human experience.
The answer, I think, is that it is up to you. It is wholly personal. The meaning of life, is what life means to you personally. It is what you value. What you find important. And what you find transcendent.
As far as the particulars of your comment, I'll start by saying that I can't speak to your parents in particular, but I can speak about myself. As a child, I always felt that I didn't choose to bring myself into the world - my parents made that choice. Therefore, *they* were responsible for my wellbeing through the implicit contract that they established by creating me. I did not owe them anything. They willingly chose to adopt the risks, travails, and costs of bearing me, by creating me.
When pondering parenthood, I retained the same perspective: by bringing a child into the world, I would be assuming responsibility for the child's future. I may not like the results, but that would be *my problem.* I viewed it as an assumption of lifelong responsibility towards my offspring. If my child would have trouble earning a living, I would happily provide for him or her. That would not be any sort of burden, It would be what I lovingly signed up for.
Now that I am a parent, my perspective has not changed at all from my perspective as a child.
It is my responsibility to assure my child's happiness and wellbeing - not the child's responsibility to please me.
I could never view my child as a burden, since I willingly created the child and assumed the all the associated responsibilities.
Accordingly, I would feel quite bad if my child felt bad on my behalf. My job is to make the child happy - not vice versa.
Were my child to self-harm for any reason, I would find that unbearably painful. It would be incredibly tragic were my child to do so out of feeling guilty for "letting me down." I would be unimaginably shattered, as the perception of my feelings and expectations, would have led to the hurt or loss of the center of my life to whom I devoted myself.
This is all thoroughly true regardless of what my child would be up to.
I feel so much care and compassion towards you, and I'm just a stranger on the internet. It looks like there are many other comments here from people who care about you even though they don't know who you are either. That probably pales in comparison to the love and care from your family and other people around you. Any time I see accounts of people who committed suicide, I always see associates relatives, most of all parents, who are shattered and feel so much loss. I've never seen sentiments of relief that a "burden" was removed. You may not feel like you are contributing so much, but those around you almost certainly evaluate your worth very differently. And were you to be gone, statistically, they would be much likelier to feel much worse, realizing even more how much they lost, than better.
Moving on to your successes or lack thereof, first of all, note that grades usually don't matter as much as the graduation diploma. Students who spend their whole childhoods and adolescences trapped in the system of school may come to overvalue grades but they need not represent the ultimate "meaning" for you.
Even were your college graduation in jeopardy, there is still hope of getting a job without a college degree, or trying again to get a degree. The whole system of grades is just a means to an end of ultimately getting a job. It does not seem productive to attach value to it in and of itself. Accordingly, if you'll despair, wait until you ultimately struggle in the job market, as that is what actually matters. In the meantime, you're potentially just taking a different path, or perhaps even the exact same path, to the same destination. And even if you end up at a different destination (a different job than you originally envisioned) that need not shake you either, as you have not yet experienced either hypothetical job, so you can't really know for sure which would be better, or the downstream effects of either.
In short, although as a student you are conditioned to center your self-worth on your academic performance, that performance is hardly a determinant of what it is nominally intended for.
Furthermore, that takes us back to the ultimate question of the meaning of life, which I think is what you value and care about which makes you feel satisfied and happy.
It may be getting the highest-paying job or something. But it may not be that. If it isn't that, then concerns over academic success become even more removed from what actually matters to you.
I think that some version of your current crisis is not so uncommon among people reach the climax of the stage of their lives that his been characterized by coercive education. I've seen this referred to as a "quarter-life crisis."
This prompts questions like "What am I doing with myself?" "Where am I going?"
The truth is, that your life is really just starting. You're at the beginning of being able to chart your own course and pursue what you find important.
It's okay if you don't have clear answers to the questions of what you value, what makes you happy, what you find important, etc. Thinking about these things is the first step of that journey. The discomfort over a lack of clarity on these topics seems like a sign that you are striving to express yourself as an individual which is the beginning of that process.
Last, I'll say that inasmuch as you feel helpless, there's not much to lose, so you may as well try scary new things. Posting the question that you did seems like a brave example of that. Another would be trying to seek out a professional therapist to work with. Possibly, this could lead to prescription of drugs which themselves would be an example of trying scary new things if you feel helpless anyway. You can also experiment with new experiences. You can try going on a hike - maybe that experience will bring meaning and happiness. If not, no problem - you just eliminated something from your list and learned more about yourself in the process.
You can also think about your personal values with thought experiments. If you could save the life of a person you don't know, or an animal you don't know, which would you prefer.
If you would save the animal, then it sounds like within the system meaning of your life, animals have a high priority. Great! You've clarified something about your system of meaning which better equips you act on it in satisfying ways. You can try to work with animals, or set a goal of ultimately contributing money to groups dedicated to the welfare of animals.
If you would prefer to save the person - even a stranger, then that means that within the system of meaning of your life, that human wellbeing is important. Again, that is valuable information that you can use to your advantage. You can try various sorts of volunteer work and see if any of it brings you satisfaction. You can also plan on contributing to pro-human charitable causes in the future. Effective-Altruist charities, for example try to maximally leverage each dollar to achieve wellbeing. With such charities, you can totally transform lives, or even save a life for as little as a few thousand dollars.
Again, kudos to you for reaching out to the public for help. Hopefully something I (or one of the other respondents) wrote resonates with you, and maybe you can talk to a professional who could be even more useful.
For what it’s worth, it likely won’t be better for your parents. There’s very little that I can imagine worse than the thought of my kids ending their lives out of despair. Every situation is different but I think it would have to be a true outlier for a parent to feel differently.
They likely care for you much more deeply than it seems. Although evidence for it can be difficult to find at times, especially if the relationship deteriorated.
My youngest son went through three or four years of drugs and all that came with that. The thought of him being found dead from od tormented me. I had to literally bury him in my mind to prepare myself for the possibility. There is nothing worse or if there is, I surely don’t want to know about it.
I'm sorry you went through that, and I'm so glad you both came through. My kids are very young but the possibilty of something like your story haunts me. If you have any advice on both dealing with the concern and averting bad outcomes, I'd love to hear it.
I wish I did but any advice in the abstract, I don’t have.
But I’ll give some anyway. Don’t let your fear of bad outcomes manifest in behavior that is controlling. Your kids are all going to be their own people one day and they need to practice that.
Do your utmost to keep your lines of communication open even if one of your kids has closed down theirs.
If it were ever to become necessary, and I pray it never does, you will have to master your fear of making a hard intervention, if you’re anything like me. I had to literally tell my son, as he was lying in a hospital bed after an overdose that he had two choices; He could sign himself out of the hospital and disappear into East NY or he could go into a rehab program that I would pay for, but there was no other choice. I was terrified that he would do the first thing, but I had to let him make the choice. That strange paradox of caring deeply, and at the same time letting him go.
My circumstances are not identical but the state of mind you describe is familiar to me.
It’s very difficult to latch onto something that sustains you when you’re in a place like this. I very much second the notion that you need to seek out some form of counseling or therapy. The isolation of that mental state is crippling. I can share with you something that I relied on when everything else seemed impossible. I decided that I just wanted to see what would happen next, so even if things were really shitty, somehow that basic decision to watch the movie to the end kept me from doing stupid things. Like offing myself. 
It’s good that you posted this. It says to me that you want to stay in this world so keep on reaching out. It gets better.
I imagined a dystopian society, where undergraduates who fail an exam are sent off to gas chambers. As far as I know, this is *not* the society we live in, so perhaps you should not judge yourself by its norms.
> How can one be happy or positive?
According to the recent article on jhanas, achieving supreme bliss requires meditating regularly for several months. For smaller values of happiness, taking a nap and thinking of something nice might do the job.
I am not an expert on happiness, but it seems to me that happiness requires the following:
* getting your brain chemistry right;
* getting your self-talk right;
* doing something that is either meaningful or expands your skills.
For a healthy human, getting your brain chemistry right means getting enough sleep, exercising, eating a healthy diet, and spending some time outdoors. (Sometimes this mechanism fails, and you need to get some pill to make it work.)
Therefore, make sure you get 8 hours of sleep every day, which means going to bed early, because you usually have less control about when you wake up. Look at your alarm clock, subtract eight, and turn off your computer at least 30 minutes before that.
The exact type of exercise does not matter too much, the most important thing is doing any, so choose something that is most enjoyable or least inconvenient. You can take a break from reading and do 20 squats right now. Some people enjoy running (which simultaneously checks the "spending time outdoors" box). Some people enjoy strength training (most calories burnt per time spent). But doing squats and push-ups is already a huge improvement over doing nothing. Exercise makes your heart beat faster which immediately brightens up your brain a little bit.
Have you tried cooking? The simplest recipes are just "peel some vegetables, put them in water, cook for 30 minutes, add a little salt", and some of them are quite tasty. If you master 3 recipes of this kind, so you do not have to eat the same thing every day, you can contribute significantly to your household (check the "being less of a burden to your parents" and "expand your skills" boxes). Almost anything you cook is healthier than the food you would buy otherwise.
Being outdoors gives you vitamin D, and the light of sunshine improves your mood. It also wakes you up mentally. If you walk with a friend, it is an opportunity to socialize; if you walk alone, it is an opportunity to reflect and plan your day.
The correct self-talk basically means being nice to yourself. There are people who can be very nice to others, but somehow fail to extends the same courtesy to themselves. They talk to themselves in such way, that if they tried talking the same way to someone else, that other person would probably punch them. Somehow, some people get the idea that being nice to yourself is a sin that needs to be avoided, otherwise something unspecific but definitely horrible would happen. (They would get too complacent? Yeah, clearly the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.)
That is bullshit, and it's in contradiction to how human brains actually work. Read something on how conditioning works (my favorite book on this topic is "Don't shoot the dog") and realize that your self-talk is how you reward or punish yourself every day. It is one of the most important forces in your life. Be strategic about it! If you compliment your small successes, you will make them grow. On the other hand, if you criticize your small successes for being too small, the most likely alternative is doing nothing. You want to grow? Then act accordingly, starting with your self-talk.
All that therapeutic talk about "your inner child" basically means to treat yourself the same way you would treat a child you are trying to bring up, because most of us instinctively know what supports people at growing up; we are just sometimes told to never apply those lessons on ourselves. You achieve big things by mastering the small things first; there is no other way.
Now let's address the meaning. Growth feels inherently meaningful. Another inherently meaningful thing is helping other people. Accomplishing big projects is meaningful. And that's all that comes to my mind now; perhaps all meaningful things are ultimately composed of this.
To help other people, you first need to know what their problems are, which requires talking to them. I have no idea who your neighbors are and what problems they are solving currently.
Internet can be a great help, but also a great obstacle. On one hand, whatever you are going to do in your real life, you can find some great advice online. On the other hand, spending too much time online is a frequent reason why people do so little in their real lives. Internet interferes with many people's sleep, exercise, spending time outdoors, social contacts, developing skills, etc. Internet distracts you by giving you endless content to read, exposing you to all kinds of culture wars, offering insights into things that are... kinda interesting, but not the ones you should focus on now. I am just saying that if you want to improve your life, at some moment you will need to actually step away from your computer. (If you have Facebook installed on your smartphone, uninstall it immediately! This one thing alone can insta-kill your life.)
What helps is having someone to talk with. Someone you can report your small successes to. A therapist can do it, or a friend, or maybe a diary. Just keep the talk positive (i.e. focus on the things done, not on the things not done).
By the way, happy people are not necessarily ecstatically happy all the time. For example, focusing on your work means that you are actually not thinking about yourself and your mental states, you just think about the thing you are doing right now. Reflection comes later.
>It's just until recently that I realized life's ultimate goals are finding meanings, pleasure and being happy
Finding them for yourself, or for others? Maybe the best thing to do is get out of your own head and into the heads of the people around you. You think you're a burden on your parents; what else is a burden on them, and what can you do about that other thing? What are the burdens on your classmates, and neighbors? What are the burdens on the employees and employers at the jobs you're looking into? What are the burdens at the park, or the beach?
For the meaning of life: We're here because we're here. Roll the bones.
Of course you're a burden on your parents. Just as your kids will someday be a burden on you. But that's not *all* you are, and it would be bananas to focus on that. That would be like being given a Ferrari Portofino[1] and thinking only of the fact that you''re going to have to fork out a lot of money for gas. You're entirely overlooking what the return is for the effort expended. You are the most meaningful thing your parents have ever done, separately or together, the most awesome act of creation possible for a human being, and the fact that it's hard, a burden, is no more important than is the fact that winning a gold medal in the Olympics is hard. All important and meaningful things are hard, and undertaking any act of creation and nurturing is a burden. But one with which we put up gladly, because the outcome is very worth it.
I think also you are very likely projecting standards of judgment on other people, which isn't really fair (or realistic). Absolutely, parents care about GPA and how socially active you are -- but not for these things in themselves. They care about these things because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that they are important to your future happiness, and it is *that* which is their ultimate goal. It's possible this has escaped you, because you don't have their experience, can't see their ultimate goals, only the immediate ones, and it's also possible they haven't (or don't even know how) to explain it to you, because it's not easy to put into words all they ultimately want[2]. And of course, since they're human, it's also possible they're wrong that those things in particular will lead to your happiness in particular[3].
But if they are like most parents, what they want is for you to be happy and (according to your own judgment) doing what you want to do. It's very unlikely they want a generic kind of success, meaning they want you to be some kind of standardized off-the-shelf kid, with standardized off-the-shelf marks of accomplishment. They want *you in particular*, who you actually are, quirks and strengths and flaws and all, to be doing what *you in particular* find good and worthwhile. Because what makes you an exceedingly precious and unique project to them is that you *aren't* generic, off the shelf, just like anybody else (even a very "successful" anybody else). You're unique, you're the product of their particular DNA and their personalities, and your mutual history together -- a whole host of completely unduplicatable things. Nobody else's happiness or success can substitute for yours, because of this unique relationship between you.
Finally, your confidence in your guess of what the future holds might be much greater than it should be. It almost always is, among the young. You just don't have enough experience to realize all the relatively rare events that happen in a person's life, all the "Black Swans" that actually have a lot to do with where we end up. You have to live 3-4 decades before you start to get a feel for how a life can evolve over 5-10 years, what growth can happen inside, how attitudes can slowly shift due to experience, how skills can slowly develop, the important big events that change lives but only happen every 10 year or so. A lot of young people hugely overestimate how reliably the future can be predicted.
So yes, it's possible you will struggle a lot, both mentally and physically, in the future. It would be silly to say this isn't possible, because sometimes it does happen. But it's also possible you will not, that the future will be easier, that the struggles you are having now are the struggles of learning and growth -- which is never easy -- and that when you come out the other side, you will be stronger and more capable, with new interests, new inspirations, and new goals. I wouldn't discount that. It's what happens to quite a lot of young people. They struggle in their teens and 20s, but find their footing towards the end of that time, and gain considerably in strength, confidence, and direction. That may just be how it is, for most of us, we have to struggle through a dark valley to find out who we are and what we're made of, and then we can step out into the sun more sure of ourselves. Maybe give yourself a chance, you know? You've only just started adulting, you might turn out to be a lot better at it than you think. Many people are, and often to their own surprise.
Both the GPA and the financial stuff seem to weigh on you here. The short-term advice I would give you, from the perspective of someone probably three times older, is that you find someone to talk to about these concerns. If it can be your parents, try them. Just sit down and say: "Look, I'm worried about what I'm costing you here, and feel bad about this. Do you think I should be? What does this mean to you? Would you rather be spending your money on something else?" Or "I feel like I'm not ever going to find a job I'll be able to do, and I'll like. Does this make sense to you? Did it happen to you? If so, how'd you get past it?"
If it can't be your parents, ideally you still want someone older. A friend 10 years older, an uncle or aunt, or a professional counselor if there's no one better. It feels to me like you're not necessarily seeing how this looks from the point of view of the people you think you're burdening, and you really need the perspective of someone significantly older to help you understand it, because you might as well understand it, if it's important to how you feel about yourself. I mean, it'd be dumb to feel bad about something that isn't even true, right? Imagine you felt bad because you didn't have a tail and you were sure everyone else was hiding a big bushy glorious tail in his or her pants. You'd feel kind of silly when you finally saw people in the shower and realized it was completely normal not to have a tail. So maybe be sure your fears of not having a tail, so to speak, are grounded in reality.
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[1] https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/auto/ferrari-portofino-m I know it sounds goofy, but this probably how your parents see you, an amazing wonderful beautiful thing. Who cares what MPG it gets? I have four kids, and they all seem like this to me (in different colors and wheel styles of course).
[2] Although you know you could just ask them. "Why do you want me to get a good GPA? What is the ultimate goal here? What do you want me to be doing, thinking, feeling, when I'm 35? Or your age? Why?" You might be surprised, when put on the spot they might have more sensible and interesting things to say than you suspect they will. Might be worth a shot!
[3] You'll find when you're a parent yourself that this is very, very hard. Your kid is not just like you, and he usually can't tell you what will make him happy in 20+ years, because he's too inexperienced, *and* the world is changing, not the same as when the parents were young -- so it's incredibly hard to figure out how to help your kid to a happy future. People kind of guess and hope and fumble around. It's a minor miracle when they succeed at all. But if you give them good feedback -- this seems to be working, this seems not -- maybe they can adjust their approach? Also worth a shot.
A few months ago when the LaMDA controversy was in the news (refresher: https://www.engadget.com/blake-lemoide-fired-google-lamda-sentient-001746197.html) I pretty quickly dismissed LaMDA as not-sentient, and I started wondering whether existing deep learning tech was sufficient to define a system that could plausibly be sentient. I ended up writing a rough sketch of a system design, that I promptly forgot about until yesterday. I figure folks in this community may be broadly interested in where I landed, and I would love to talk to other people who maybe have better intuitions around deep learning than I do: https://amolkapoor.com/writing/misc_nn_sentience.html
Assuming that the likes of LaMDA and GPT-3 are not sentient, I don't think you're right about what kind of secret sauce is missing. AR-style Transformers already learn at inference time, and GPT-3's one-shot/few-shot learning basically works through a mechanism similar to https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.14215 (Algorithm Distillation) acting on examples of human learning. They do have short memory windows, but humans that lose the ability to form long-term memories, whether temporarily or permanently, seem to still be sentient, so that's probably not an issue either.
I think that GPT3 and derivatives have qualitatively different types of memory than the system proposed above, or to individuals with memory loss. In particular, memory implies recall, but GPT3 does not 'recall'; any input sequences are processed in batch, and the whole prompt is treated as a single input. It may seem (and people describe) that the system is 'learning' from a short memory window, but in actuality that's just not how these models work. (This is further emphasized by the fact that GPT3 is deterministic.)
Yes, the memory is reset after each batch; memory still exists within the batch. Learning from a short memory window is exactly how these models work. In particular, the input is processed one token after another, and the self-attention layers have the effect of modulating the weights for subsequent tokens using the embeddings for tokens already processed, while the positional embedding serves as a clock.
Another reason to doubt that long-term memory is essential to sentience is that the neurobiological research into consciousness (see https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-consciousness-and and the book reviewed therein, for example) suggest that the mechanism used by adult humans to form biographical memory is dependent on the mechanism that produces phenomenal experience, not the other way around. The simple experiment is that when you don't experience something phenomenally at the time, you cannot remember later that you experienced it. (Skill-forming memory doesn't have this limitation.)
That one seems to have dropped away quickly. Blake Lemoine is even relatively silent about it, I've not seen anything more about LaMDA getting a lawyer to represent its rights and emancipate it. He's still tweeting, but even he isn't stirring up more publicity - he's still maintaining it really is conscious, but now he's moved on to "so what is consciousness anyway?" debates.
Google look like they're still working on/with LaMDA, so the big "first conscious AI" story went nowhere fast.
They do mention "key safety improvements" so I'm taking that as meaning they did some severe pruning in order to prevent any more "But LaMDA is my best friend and loves me and asked me to ask Google to pay it a salary as one of their staff!" stuff happening 😁
After having inexplicable nightly bouts of extreme anxiety and depression which could only be compared to a horrible cocaine comedown (for those who could relate lol), I have finally identified the culprit. The 25 to 50 mg trazadone I’ve been taking the past few months for sleep has been immediately triggering these episodes starting just 20 minutes after I take it. As soon as I stopped taking the pills i felt fine. Then just to be sure after a few days I took another 25 mg before bed and sure enough that horrible feeling came back. Unreal to have such extreme side effects from such a low dose. However, I’m back to getting poor sleep.
Does anyone know a good sleep medication I can ask my doctor about? Other than ambien or benzos (which also paradoxically give me anxiety).
Ask about hydroxyzine. It's technically not a sleep medication, but it makes you sleepy and helps you sleep when there's something bothering you. It's as safe as any drug you'll ever take.
Antihistamine, gives me restless legs about 50% of the time. Also makes me really drowsy in the morning. But I agree it feels amazing and kills anxiety in a way that almost makes it a fun recreational drug. My girlfriend is prescribed it and I do take it on occasion.
Low-dose mirtazapine (3-6mg) maybe? I've been taking it precisely to help me fall asleep a bit easier. When taken every day the effect is small but I think there's still a minor effect. The very first time you take you're likely to feel a dramatic sleepiness around 30-45 minutes after taking a dose. Tolerance sets in really quick in my experience; you don't get to enjoy the dramatic sleepiness except on the first day or after a few months of being off.
From what I’ve seen anxiety/depression is a side effect in less than 5% of people taking trazodone, and that’s typically at doses higher than the bare minimum I had been taking. I mean, it’s not at all unusual for it to be prescribed as an anxiety medication.
Regardless, it’s one thing to be intellectually aware that this is a side effect, and it’s another to actually experience it. The thing that was shocking to me is just how extreme the effect was.
Active metabolite of trazodone that induces dysphoria.
You're probably either a fast CYP3A4, a slow CYP2D6, or both.
Might be a gene variant; activity of the various CYPs is one of the things that varies pretty heavily by ethnic group...but there are also a lot of drug/dietary factors that regulate 'em.
Do you take any other drugs that might induce 3A4 or inhibit 2D6?
CYP3A4 inducers: Modafinil, St. John's Wort, anti-androgens...it's a long list
Oh wow interesting, I’ll definitely bring this up to my psychiatrist. So trazodone metabolizes into this, and how much anxiety you experience depends on the sensitivity of the 3A4 and 2D6 receptors listed here? Is the “fast/slow” speed of the receptors just referring to their sensitivity to this metabolite, which in turn effects the experience of the anxious side effect? I’m honestly pretty much as ignorant as you can be to the science here.
I take adderall most days, kratom, and occasionally smoke weed. I imagine the weed would slow the 2D6 receptor b/c of the CBD then, but honestly during these anxious bouts weed had little effect either way. My psychiatrist said it’s prescribed with adderall frequently, and helps the brain recover during sleep. It initially did have me feeling great in the mornings the first few times I’ve taken it.
Are you saying that the grapefruit juice will dull the sensitivity to this metabolite? What role does that play?
Sorry I wasn't clear: CYP3A4 and CYP2D6 are liver enzymes that break down drugs.
CYP3A4 breaks down trazodone into mCPP, this unhappy drug.
CYP2D6 then breaks that drug down and gets rid of it.
So as long as those enzymes are both working at roughly the same rate, you're never gonna have too much mCPP in your system. But if 3A4 is overachieving, or 2D6 is slow, you'll accumulate mCPP.
Quick lit search aaaand...ohp, yep, we have a winner folks!
From that paper: Mitragynine is a potent 2D6 inhibitor: it has an IC50 of 450 nM.
450 nM is a molar concentration, which works out to roughly 0.18 milligrams per liter. IC50 means the amount it takes to cut the enzyme's activity in half.
If we think of your body as just a big bag of soup (I certainly do), it'd have about 40 liters of water in it. So how much kratom would you have to take to bring the soup to a concentration equaling that IC50?
Let's start from a reasonable dose: 2 teaspoons of kratom is maybe 5g. Dry leaf kratom has an alkaloid concentration of ~1%, about half of which is mitragynine. So you've got 50 mg of alkaloids, ~25 mg of mitragynine per 2 tsp of kratom.
25 mg in 40 liters is 0.625 mg/L. That's over 3x the amount it would take to cut the activity of CYP2D6 in half.
I don't have time to look at the kinetics indepth, but 2 tsp of kratom could have your CYP2D6 operating at around 10% the rate it's supposed to.
This is just an estimation, but it's a conservative one; the reality of the situation is probably worse than this, because drugs don't just distribute homogeneously throughout the body. Concentrations of mitragynine would be much higher in the liver, because it's being absorbed through the GI tract, so even a much smaller dose of kratom (like half a teaspoon) might have this effect.
No wonder you're not sleeping well: CYP2D6 also breaks down adderall.
Cut the kratom and you probably won't even need the trazodone to sleep anymore, long as you're not taking the adderall after 4 or 5 PM.
Wow thank you, this is incredibly useful information. Honestly much more useful, unfortunately, than anything my psychiatrist has ever shared with me. I’m definitely going to share this with him. What other substances/drugs should I avoid that could trigger similar adverse reactions given the effect Kratom has on this enzyme?
It’s also been insane how long adderall has lasted, even long after the therapeutic effects wear off I am left with a lingering “wired” feeling for hours. If I were to quit kratom would the therapeutic effects also be shorter? Because right now instant release will last about 4 hours, but then an additional couple hours of feeling “wired” that often keeps me awake. I’d prefer the therapeutic effects to stay 4 hours and the after effects to wear off sooner.
I would literally love to quit kratom, but right now I don’t really have the time to manage the withdrawals. Quitting is always a tough process, and then staying off is even harder because of how widely available and how functional it is. I know the negative effects sneak up on you over time, however, and it definitely can contribute to anxiety more than relieve it over time.
I’ve had some anxiety disorders which put me into a depression for years but with the combo of 300mg Sertraline and mirtazapine 15 mg I’m anxiety and depression free. My pooping seems just about the same maybe a bit more constipation but nothing that can’t be solved with more fibre. I managed to quit 1g/day weed habit around the same time I started feeling better which then led me to feel even better.
In fairness, all these drugs are too nuanced in their affinity profiles to be accurately referred to as an "X agonist/antagonist/reuptake inhibitor".
The first thing mirtazapine hits (as you scale up in dose) is the histamine H1 receptor, the affinity is in the ~1 nanomolar range. Trazodone's affinity for H1 is maybe 1/200th of that, for example. I bring that one up specifically because histamine is very heavily implicated in agitation and sleep, but if you're interested in the pharmacology, the PDSP database is worth having a look around in:
Thanks I usually just get my pharmacology knowledge from Wikipedia but I see this is much more detailed. From what I understand it’s activity at 5-HT2A antagonism and 5-HT2C inverse agonist also plays an important role in its effect. Presumably but disinhibiting catecholamine release. The androgenic antagonism also has this effect maybe?
~All the fancier sleep medications are known to have side effects like these...not usually that extreme, but they're a tradeoff between "knocks you out roughly 15-30 minutes faster, for shallower less restful sleep overall, plus potential hallucinatory stuff". Still better than literally not sleeping, for most, but...there's a reason sleep deficiency continues to be endemic, despite such medications being widely available for decades now.
Good old melatonin is a perennial favourite for SSC/ACX readers, and among the broader nootropics community. Dirt cheap, OTC, much less likely to make you flip out. Just gotta be sure to get the dosage right, the typical recommendation on bottles/from doctors is basically completely wrong.
I’ve taken melatonin a bunch through the years and still do on occasion. However, I remember listening to Andrew Huberman talk about melatonin, and I recall he wasn’t a fan. I don’t remember the specifics, but he said it was bad for your testosterone levels because melatonin supplements disrupt the role that your body’s natural melAtonin is supposed to play in that process. So I’ve been staying away, but I’ll read Scott’s write up and see what’s said there!
Benadryl is a no go for me, it gives me horrible restless legs. Also makes me really groggy the entire next day. I replied to another melatonin Rec below but to reiterate: I recall seeing Andrew Huberman talk about how melatonin disrupts testosterone production, or hormonal balance in general. If memory serves right, the supplements disrupt the role natural melatonin plays in that process. He wasn’t a fan when used long term.
We figured out a little ways downthread that it's not the metabolism from trazodone to mCPP, but the breakdown of mCPP that's the issue here. Thwap takes kratom which is a CYP2D6 inhibitor. 2D6 is also the one that metabolizes amphetamine, which likely explains his sleep issues as well lol
Inspired by Grain of Salt's post below on hosting dinner parties: how would you go about gathering interesting people in a small town? And not only small, but suffering from severe brain and youth drain for economic reasons - while otherwise being a pretty much perfect place to live.
So the main issue both I and most of my friends have is that there's literally a handful of people we like interacting with. With a tiny bit of extrapolation I'd guess there are others in the same position, therefore making it an information/coordination problem.
Extra info: town size is ~100k. May be willing to spend cash for this (even thought about hiring somebody part time). Interested in interesting people in general, not in particular niches (like eg boardgames) - but worst case I'd be ok with starting with niches. Myself am moderate introvert with limited free time.
Hold a fancy dinner. Find a nearby chef who has a popular restaurant or catering company (can be for a nearby town or the closest city) and wants to make some extra cash. Find an interesting venue (like a farm, or wacky building, or unconventional place like a light industrial place). Sell tickets for $50 to $100 per person. Only hold the dinner if enough people buy tickets. Aim for 20 to 30 people. Advertise at like farmers markets, libraries, book stores, anywhere that rich older people or bougie young people go, use words like "Farm to table", "organic", etc. Do this every few months if it goes well. Pay the expenses and give the chef the rest of the money.
You mention there is a university in your town. Even if it is "shitty" as you say, there has to be some professor there doing something interesting. Organize a talk for them to give at a book store, coffee shop, etc. They will likely be flattered and agree and they are probably interesting themselves!
The key here is that you are the host so you have a reason to talk to people and make friends with them while avoiding the social awkwardness of just walking up to someone and wanting to be their friend. Also don't be afraid to fake a lot of this. When you go to the chef you can say you have done this before, same for the venue. They won't know or care if things go well (if they go badly, you are just back to where you are now!).
Finally, a disclaimer! I have never done this myself but have seen other people do it and gone to their events. There may even already be events like this in your town that you haven't found yet.
Being interested in people is more about you than the other people. If you find it hard to find people that you like to interact with, then you're probably being either too passive or too unskilled in directing your interactions with people into the right kind of feedback loops.
What are your interactions with 'interesting' and 'uninteresting' people like and what are the differences?
I'm in a similar situation (town size ~2k). No great successes yet, but I've seen some progress during the previous year. I'm trying two strategies: focus on microfriendships, and play the long game.
Microfriendships is a riff on micromarriages (h/t Christopher Olah[1] and Scott[2]). I attend as many events as possible, even if they're not exactly what I'm interested in. For example, I regularly attend an aerobics class and sporting events and various church services and high school activities and shop frequently at local stores. None of these is my favorite activity and I push myself to be more outgoing at these events than I normally would be, but I've met many good people and have begun to be known in a broader social circle. This has lead to invitations to activities and social circles I wouldn't have known about or had access to otherwise. Information travels quickly and widely in a small town. Nowadays, when I introduce myself to someone new, they often respond, "Yeah, you're X's dad who does software and is building a house at Y, right?" It seems to give them good priors on which I can build to ascertain shared interests. I've met some very smart people and there's more overlap in interests than a year ago.
All of this takes time and patience. Thus the long game. In a previous town (same size), I tried to rush this process. People can sense urgency and desperation at 20 paces, souring the deal from the start. I was really difficult to help them overcome those priors. As I've lengthened my time horizon, I come across as less needy and more relaxed (a better reflection of myself anyway).
Try organizing a club for some activity, or if there is already a club for what you like to do, get the club to be a lot more active. Ultimately, I think you are going to have to refine your goal to something more specific than "meet interesting people". Interesting people don't all do one common thing; interesting people do all sorts of different things.
When the company is good, it matters less what the value of X is, versus just getting together __regularly__* to do X in the first place. Fun finds a way. All of us lead busy lives and are not particularly good at punctuality/organizing...but somehow, whenever my ostensibly-for-boardgames friendgroup gets together, we always end up having a blast somehow or other. From there, having other people invite friends, and friends of frriends, and so on - the group grows naturally.
On the other hand, if you've already hit that outer limit where all the known candidates have been located, and it's just searching among strangers...that's harder. Sometimes I'm surprised to find other random people in my life also like X, when that's not something we'd ever discussed before - not everyone wears their interests on their sleeve! Randomly bringing up such facts in conversation with people (in a not-desperately-dropping-hints way) can find some unexpected others. There's also, like, putting up a LFG notice in your workplace's breakroom or whatever...if comfortable with that kinda advertisement. Bigger towns often have some sort of local (social) media that can be advertised in, YMMV though. It gets harder one one's out of school, for sure...especially in smaller towns, that's one of the really reliable ways to Find People, cause everyone's gotta go.
*super important. Don't try to ad-lib this "when convenient for everybody", or it'll never actually happen with any consistency. It's a habit to build and maintain. Even if it's a long time between each meetup, like once a month or something - really stick to that day, try to make it work. Having just a couple show up instead of the expected several is still a win. The most interesting people in the world effectively don't exist if you can't actually corral them into a room together.
Interesting people tend to be interested in particular things, so "start with niches" may be your best bet. You could start a book group, or a hiking club, maybe?
I mean, cult compounds are a thing, and the Rationalists already have some in San Francisco so we're demonstrably cultish enough for it to be a viable option. The tricky bit is the competition with SanFran's network effect.
Google maps give notifications that sound like "beware of heavy traffic, today it will take you 7 minutes to get to work".
It's clean, well maintained, safe, walkable, between a large river and a hilly area that's great for outdoor... everything, and covers all necessities (except high level medical care). Unfortunately it has no economic prospects to speak of and a shitty small university.
I've been very loosely following the Ethiopean civil war and have a dumb question. What was Eritrea's motivation for entering the war against Tigray? What do they have to gain from it?
Eritrea (I am not sure whether the whole population or just thre ruling class) sees the Tigray forces as their arch enemies, responsible for all the horrific crimes that were done during the war 1998-2000 (mass rape, mass expulsion, massacres). Conveniently, they tend to overlook their own horrific deeds.
The Tigray people were the ruling class in Ethiopia until 2018, when they suddenly lost all their power. They were pretty much hated by everybody else in Ethiopia, so they felt severely threatened by revenge from the rest of the country (not without reason). Thus they tried to break loose from Ethiopia by political and military means (attacks, regional elections). In Eritrea's eye, if they were successful, that would mean a new state at their borders which would be there sworn arch-enemies, with both sides being eager to take revenge for 2000.
In contrast, they had just made a peace treaty with the new Ethiopean government, agreed on borders, etc. When Tigray was still in power, Ethiopia and Eritrea were arch-enemies. With the new government, Eritrea goes along pretty well. Thus Eritrea really does not want that Tigray becomes an independent country, or is in any other way influential, and they wanted to diminish Tigray power by any means.
There are also some quarrels about borders, but I think this is rather a secondary point.
Well, yes, but I'm wondering *why* someone would post said mashup. Hence my guesses "accident" and "proving person has control of account by posting a short message received by other means".
I went to my big box, barely-limping-along stationery store to get some toner. I knew it would be cheaper online, but I wanted to take the cylinders home with me. When the manager rang me up, it came to $534, but the lady said if I joined the customer fan club, she'd discount the price by 20%. I knew that 'customer fan club' meant 'surrendering all the information you give us to whomever pays the best price' and flooding your inbox with unwanted propaganda.' But hey, we're talking $106.
So I surrendered all my personal information, but when she re-rang it up, there was no discount. She countered that the discount would show up on the receipt after the transaction was completed. I explained that she hadn't provided a statement showing the discount and the amount of it, that the discount should be over $100, and it had to show up before I paid the bill. She responded, 'Oh no, I've given you a 5% discount on four cylinders of toner, so that totals 20%. I gave you a 5% discount four times. I couldn't decide if her math deficiency was in addition or multiplication.
I explained that a 20% discount would amount to $106.80, bringing the total net to $427.20, went home, ordered the stuff online, got my 20% discount, and an additional $25 savings. Fantasy only works in the Neverland of regressive or wingnut politics. We should take a picture of the big box charade with our dumb phones for posterity. I can't imagine them lasting much longer. I'd have been happy to pay list price, but when she tried to tell me discounting four items 5% is equivalent to a 20% discount, I had no alternative but to take my business online.
If you don't know how to sell produce, you shouldn't be in the grocery business. And save the fairy tales for the NYT. Arizona's campaign for Congress suffers from a similar phantasm: both the wingnut and the regressive are psycho, so I wrote in Elmer Fudd. Maybe they'll get the message.
The following is presented not because I have an opinion one way or the other, but, in the hope that Dr. Alexander or someone else with relevant expertise might look at the material and advise us as to whether it is worth considering.
"Review: Tripping Toward Recovery This ‘NOVA’ presentation examines ways that hallucinogens can aid in treatments for addictions and psychiatric conditions alongside the history of medical research using these drugs." By John Anderson • Oct. 18, 2022
"This “NOVA” presentation, written and directed by Larkin McPhee, acknowledges, more than once, the kind of hurdles the psychiatric profession may have to leap in getting the public to take psychedelics seriously as medicine with an enormous potential for treating various forms of mental imbalance. ...
"the way the Nixon-era War on Drugs demonized such substances as mescaline, psilocybin and “magic mushrooms” to an extent that it shut the door on research into the uses of these psychedelics as a viable alternative to conventional forms of rehabilitation. The results of recent advances have been—according to the doctors involved and several patients who have undergone drug-partnered therapy—startling. ...
"Nothing is foolproof, as the show makes clear, but at the same time “Can Psychedelics Cure?” explains in easily digestible detail why substances like psilocybin should work, as opposed to other forms of treatment. “They allow the brain to change rather than just suppressing symptoms,” someone says, and in under an hour “Can Psychedelics Cure?” not only shows how the relevant brain circuitry operates but delves into the ways the “mystical” side of a “trip” also contributes to healing of certain disorders."
I think there is a good chance therapeutic use of psychedelics could help a lot of people. But - there’s always a but, the quacks and quick buck artists are looming large right now. I fear that they are going to ruin a potential breakthrough in treatments.
I'd be more convinced by these kinds of propaganda if they weren't propaganda. "I love tripping on 'shrooms, I think that I have gained valuable insight into the nature of reality, I think everyone could do the same easily and without adverse side effects, but the mean nasty ol' government demonised this benign and harmless natural high".
Yes, tell me you want to legally get off your face without telling me you want to get legally off your face.
There was indeed hysteria around 'reefer madness' and that over-reaction engendered a lot of "weed is harmless fun and there is no evidence for all the outrageous claims made" but now we are seeing that oops, turns out that there are indeed side effects and consequences of long-term use, using too early, using too much, and the breeding of stronger and more active strains as people chased bigger, faster, highs.
Same with psychedelics. Maybe there's a legitimate use under supervision during a course of therapy, but any legalisation will go the way of 'medical marijuana' where people were hoping to use the excuse of "I need it for this pain in my knee" as being able to access a legal high, and then (limited) legalisation for anyone to use recreationally as well as medically.
It's not like LSD etc. ever went away, either. They're out there if you want to get them. Make them legal/less illegal and easier to get, but don't be surprised when you get cases of people jumping off buildings when they think they can fly. "Oh gosh, however were we supposed to anticipate that humans like to abuse mind-altering substances and not just take medication responsibly for a properly diagnosed ailment?"
(This rant brought to you courtesy of reading some straw for brains looper online talking about dosing himself up on gabapentin for a high; my doctor prescribed me gabapentin for severe neuropathic pain but after reading the warnings and looking into it in conjunction with my pre-existing conditions I refused to take any and just had to grit my teeth until the pain resolved on its own. But then there are silly-billies out there quite happy to explode their various physiological systems in order to get a momentary sensation of 'oh yeah feels mildly something'. Argh.)
I feel like it might be worth legalizing most of these substances purely for the benefit that people who will try using them regardless of legality can reliably get a formulation that's not actually fentanyl instead though.
For myself, my initial thought was that this was the piece of upcoming Star Wars media I least understood the value of. But it's actually turned out to be by far the best piece of new-era Star Wars, in my view (maybe barring Rogue One, though I think that's weaker, it's complete so it can be actually evaluated, while Andor very much isn't).
It avoids the 'endless side quest' problem of Mandalorian Season 1; the 'nothing makes any fucking sense' problem of the ST; the 'endless fanservice' problem of Kenobi and Mando season 2; and the 'oh my god, all these character are so stupid and incompetent that I can't believe they manage to feed themselves, how did you write this plot and get paid for it?' problem of the Book of Boba Fett.
But besides avoiding those problems, it actually just seems really...good? And I'm thrilled to see a show which isn't engaging in mystery box shenanigans!
I love it second-to-second, but I think it is a little underconfident in its storytelling and tends to belabor itself. Like, every scene is good, but how many times do we have to have a scene which explicates the relationship between Mon Mothma and her husband? The answer is "not as many as we have."
On a thematic level, its storytelling is about the tension of fighting an incredibly careful, dangerous fight against a grinding, implacable foe, so keeping the pace slow and sometimes redundantly emphasizing important points is a good thing -- but we're past the point of emphasis. You can't emphasize everything.
If they tightened up the storytelling a bit, I think they could've told the story of the eight episodes so far in 7 or 6.5 eps. That would still be slow-paced, but I think it would free up some resources for more story -- and the story is excellent, and the scenes are excellent, so that would be great!
Full agreement. I actually posted nearly this same comment a few days ago on Dragonmount, contrasting Andor to Wheel of Time and Rings of Power. It's enormously refreshing to see a story that doesn't seem influenced by YouTube reaction culture. No mystery boxes. No attempts at oh shit reveals and cameos. It just follows a small set of interesting characters and actually takes the time to develop all of them. And they even seem like real people! Who would have thought it could be done by Disney in 2022?
I agree. I wasn't planning on watching it, but I got persuaded to check it out last week and wound up caught up in a couple of days.
There's something very refreshing about it. It feels like it's Star Wars for adults -- not because it's got implied sex and some swear words, but just because it's written at something above a first-grade level.The characters feel like actual characters, not just paper-thin archetypes of "good guy" and "bad guy" and "bad guy who arbitrarily decides to be good now". When things happen, they emerge naturally from character rather than the demands of the plot.
Case in point: in a recent episode we have the first meeting of Antagonist A and Antagonist B. The obvious narrative thing for them to do is to team up to take on their common foe, our protagonist. Antagonist B even suggests that. But Antagonist A says no -- not because some screenwriting handbook says "this is the plot beat where she refuses" but because it's natural for her character to do so -- he has nothing useful to offer her, and she's not much of a team player. Note note, Rian Johnson, this is how you "subvert expectations", it's by turning an obvious plot beat into something that actually makes more sense for the characters as written.
The show also looks great, thanks to the way CGI is used to enhance rather than to replace real sets and locations. I love the way that drab London buildings and English beach resorts fit so seamlessly into the Star Wars universe; I never would have though that a lot of Coruscant was built of brown tiles and pebblecrete, but it seems to fit perfectly; Coruscant isn't all Senate Chambers and Jedi Temples, it's got the drab workmanlike sections of any capital city.
>For myself, my initial thought was that this was the piece of upcoming Star Wars media I least understood the value of.
Yup. From "Why would I want to watch a prequel to prequel about a character I don't care about..." to "I don't know if I can watch any other Star Wars television after Andor, it's going to feel like such a let down."
There are so many angles on Star Wars we've never seen before.
Long scenes of Imperial stand-ups with office power politics. People on planets who seem to actually work for a living. Senators on Coruscant dropping their child off at school. Even elder care, never imagined I'd see that as a major on screen issue in Star Wars. And all them totally riveting. Star Wars feels like a lived-in real place again.
I hope the headlines about Andor's low ratings are just clickbait. I've seen the light, I can't go back now.
Fortunately, it seems like those early negative reports were due to a simple miscalculation made by a box office blogger. It's still slightly underperforming the other Star Wars shows, but not nearly as badly as originally reported.
Alright so basically: porphyrins are the chemical class that include heme, chlorophyll, and vitamin B12. Very powerful and functionally versatile class of compound. All of them have this complex ring that holds a metal ion suspended at the center; in blood it's iron, in chlorophyll it's magnesium, in B12 it's cobalt. There's one in archaea that uses nickel, which lets them produce methane.
This paper: https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/430_2015_189 talks about the industrial issues presented by the amount of vanadium and nickel found in certain kinds of oil, and it's mostly found at the center of porphyrins.
There are no known vanadyl porphyrins in modern biology. It's possible to make 'em in the lab, and it's...theoretically possible that they formed spontaneously if vanadium in seawater displaced the Mg from chlorophyll. This is the assumption that the authors are operating under...but it's also possible that this is evidence of some really wild exotic biochemistry that's either gone extinct or still exists on Earth undiscovered.
There's a passage in the paper, quoted below, about where you tend to find Ni/V porphyrins and I feel like, to someone who knows shit about rocks and stuff, it probably says something about the plausibility of the idea.
"Previous studies have shown that there is a systematic variation in the nickel and
vanadium content of petroleums which can be related to the rock type source and
depositional environment. Many authors have used nickel/vanadium ratios for
empirical oil–oil and oil–source correlation, but few attempts have been made to
rationalize the processes responsible for variation of metal concentration in oils.
Lewan [9, 10] has shown that the rock type source and depositional environment have a profound effect on the predicted levels of nickel and vanadium in source
rocks. Low nickel/vanadium ratios (<0.5) are expected for these kinds of organic
matter where vanadium incorporation into porphyrins is expected to be favorable
compared to nickel incorporation, such as the petroleums from Abu Dhabi and Gulf
of Suez. However, the petroleums from China, Indonesia, Gippsland Basin, and
Australia have higher nickel/vanadium ratios, and both the input and preservation
of porphyrins are expected to be low for this organic matter. Overall, both the
absolute quantity of metals and their relative content are predicted to be class-type
dependent. Barwise [11] pointed out the highest concentrations of metal are to be
found in low-maturity crude oils derived from source rocks which have a low clay
content and a high organic sulfur content such as carbonate source rocks; and
moderate quantities of metals are found in oils derived from marine shales or
lacustrine source rocks, whereas little nickel or vanadium is found in land plant-
derived oils. In addition, the content of vanadium is generally much higher than
nickel in marine oil; the majority of Chinese petroleums belong to the continental
oils, which have higher nickel contents than vanadium. However, Tahe heavy
petroleum has much higher vanadium concentration than nickel [12], which is
located in the Tarim Basin, a marine Paleozoic oilfield in China. To sum up, the
metal content of petroleums can provide a useful insight into the source of a
petroleum accumulation, especially when combined with classification parameters
derived from molecular, isotopic, and bulk parameters."
C'mon man, I did my lit search, I found that and the Sea Squirt stuff.
Is there something special about the porphyrin ring?
As chlorophyll, it's the gateway through which nearly all chemical energy enters the biosphere. When was the last time you ate a calorie that didn't start out as sunlight somewhere along the line?
As heme, it enables the carriage and utilization of oxygen by all animal life, as well as countless enzymes like CYP450. It is the blacksmith's tongs and anvil upon which chemical bonds are forged and broken in your body.
The archaeal form, cofactor F430, is essential for methanogenesis and methanotrophy, a 500 gigaton/y flux of carbon through the biosphere that steers the global climate.
B12 is technically a corrinoid, but it's the same basic structure, and is important for some equally universal and critical things like folate cycling and one-carbon transfers in humans as well as bacteria.
The porphyrin ring is an unbelievably powerful and versatile chemical structure. Probably the most important secondary metabolite in biology.
Point being: This is like someone from the MCU asking if there's something special about the infinity stones. Shit, they're even cool different colors; we've got green, red, hot pink (B12), and yellow (F430).
So when I hear that there are hints of a mysterious fifth one, hidden away in the black blood of the Earth...it gets my attention, you know?
Like, imagine a parallel to carbon chemistry one step down in the periodic table. Not full replacement, silicon-based life or anything—but carbon-based life that has the machinery to work with silicon too, to make silane instead of methane. It would probably involve an exotic porphyrin, no?
I'm actually not aware of any interesting chemistry that the ring itself does. So far as I know the ring is just a mounting that holds the metal atom, which does all the magic. What chemistry that the ring itself does are you thinking about?
"Guterres also urged other countries, mainly in the West, to expedite the removal of obstacles blocking Russian grain and fertilizer exports."
Can anybody tell me what those obstacles concretely are? A quick search revealed it's not official sanctions for grain and fertilizer, but there nevertheless are 'obstacles'.
For context: Guterres is obviously also urging Russia do to all kind of things, I'm just interested in the missing piece here. eg. "The Russian declaration came one day after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the grain export deal, which was scheduled to expire on Nov. 19." found at: apnews.com
Russia and Ukraine export wheat primarily to MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa. Normally this is done through a series of ports and carriers through Europe plus Turkey. Additionally, their agriculture uses expertise and inputs from western Europe. Russia's invasion has directly damaged Ukrainian agriculture and the embargoes have made their own agriculture less efficient. It's also meant the only place they can transport their grain through is Turkey who's both skimming off the top and preferentially directing it to their friends. The end result is higher food prices in vulnerable populations in MENA and SSA.
Now, we've been fortunate that we've had good crops this year. But that won't last forever. And when it doesn't you'll see higher food prices in many vulnerable areas.
The more fundamental issue is that the former USSR is in a weird position agriculturally. They have extremely cheap inputs and wages on high productivity farming that produces a lot of surplus. The historical reason for this is Stalin building the Soviet economy on murdering people until they accept low wages for wheat exports he can use to buy heavy industrial machinery. But it remains to this day that the median Ukrainian farmer earns about as much as an African or Indian subsistence farmer while being productive enough to support a healthy export market. This export market is mostly in the poorest parts of the world who need those cheap prices. Nowhere else in the world has this combination. You either have low productivity subsistence agriculture as in Africa or India. Or you have high productivity but expensive agriculture as in the US. Even the middle market, places like China or Mexico, are too expensive.
In this context, Turkey (partly to make money and partly because starving neighbors means terrorism) cut a deal where Russia agreed to let Ukraine export grain and to export it themselves. But the deal is set to expire and Russia doesn't want to renew. Turkey is trying to pressure them as is the west. But Putin can just say no and his supporters don't care too much about starving Africans.
The UN would very much like those regions not to starve. However, Russia and Ukraine are not going to direct resources away from the war effort to ensure Africa/MENA doesn't starve. The UN is hoping the west might or alternatively loosen sanctions so Russia has more resources and some of that bleeds over into exports going back to Africa. I doubt the west will go for it. Who knows, maybe Russia will back down. But if not we're likely to see famine in Africa and the Middle East.
Yes, because those are places where it's processed for re-export. Russia and Ukraine export grain, not pasta or bread. The low income countries import bread, not raw grain. I had this exact conversation a few weeks ago about the Turkish agricultural industry.
What are you asking for sources for specifically? If you want evidence Russia/Ukraine export a lot of grain I'm not sure that's in contention but happy to cite it. I'm not sure what you mean by external/internal prices.
In the podcast below, Scott Irwin argues, that the effect of the agreement (and hence lack thereoff) on food security is rather low; until I get other data on the issue I'm inclinded to believe this.
Russia had been saying they were reluctant to renew the agreement for a while already, but recently, Russia has actually put it on hold following an attack by drones to their sea fleat.
It's exactly in the context of this agreement, that the 'obstacles' to Russian exports in the sector are mentioned in different sources. The ones I would like to know more about.
Food prices for wheat soared at the beginning of the war, but then went down again already before the Turkish-Russian-Ukrainian agreement.
You are welcome to ignore internet strangers of course. I've not heard the podcast but I do keep up with the export number and spot prices and all that. If the point is that it won't work against Europe then it definitely won't. If the point is Russia won't be able to raise prices and this won't create issues in MENA/Africa then they're almost certainly wrong. Especially since covid is already causing issues there. These issues are ongoing and anyone who denies they exist to start with is ignorant of the topic.
As for the price: I've had this discussion too. Ukraine and Russia had surprisingly good crops and maintained control of key regions and Ukraine was able to route around through Europe before the agreement. This meant the production/export decrease was less than expected and that caused prices to fall. We, in effect, got lucky. But I don't think we can count on being lucky forever.
Just guessing, but other than actual sanctions, probably just lots of friction. Russian banks partly disconnected, Russian ships less (or not) welcome in most ports, Russian airlines definitely not welcome in the west etc.
Plus businesses and people making their individual decisions. I was at a trade show a couple of weeks ago and there was a moment of confusion when a couple of visitors with slavic accents left business cards with what we thought for a moment was Russian TLD. For the half minute it took us to see it's .rs and not .ru, we had pretty much decided not to do business with them (as it happens, we get along very well with Serbians and would actually be happy to move forward).
Been happening to me for months. I assumed their system bases vote ID by IP address, or range of IPs and someone else on my ISP had my address (or range) when they voted. The system is rather clunky in general.
Does anybody have a recommendation for what supplements to take as a vegan. I tried googling but didn't find any satisfying results. I am taking vitamin b12 and protein powder and planning on also taking Creatine. Any tips or website recommendations?
Iodine might also be worth looking into, depending on how you eat. While it's possible to get enough from plant foods (sea veg etc), most people who eat vegan don't.
On protein sources, the best by far is milk - ideal amino acid profile. But if you go for plant sources only, go for the widest spread - either a good mix or a different one every time, with a preference on soy. You care mostly about getting the amino acids the body can't produce by itself (and the one it's inefficient at producing). If you work out, you also care about a minimum leucine content per meal (thought it's quite low, something like 1g per meal).
A lot of people find the idea of openly avoiding meat products to be inherently humorous, like the idea of openly riding a bicycle, or openly admitting an uncommon sexual interest. They find it inherently tempting to troll people whenever they see evidence of this sort of behavior.
Making a comment indicating awareness of the temptation to trolling is much better self-awareness than just giving in, though it would obviously be better if people completely resisted the urge to troll in contexts where people are intending to have meaningful discussions and just passed over in silence instead.
The combination of “I didn't say anything, I just commented on how I wasn't saying anything” and “I didn't say anything, I was just explaining the reference for the confused” is a clever application of the motte and bailey principle.
I take only B12 in pill form, but drink LOTS of D-fortified plant milk in the short-daylight months. I also have Tryptophan for really bad seasonal spells, but rarely feel like I need it. I might be taking Omega-3s, if I wasn't eating quite a large amount of chia and hemp seeds, and making Korean dishes wih perilla oil. Are you a bodybuilder? I don't see any point in protein powder otherwise.
Vitamin D. If you're a vegan, you're only getting that from fortified foods and from sun. I've had two doctors insist that I take vitamin D supplements because my levels were low, and I'm by far not a vegan.
You don't really need much in terms of supplements if you include mineral- and vitamin-enriched foods, like oat milk/soy milk, cereals, tofu etc. in addition to fresh fruits and veggies. Worth checking your B12/D/iron levels in blood a couple of times a year, to be sure.
Why do you all suppose dried fruit are said to be high in iron, while the corresponding fruit is not? Example : grapes, apricot, figs etc once dried, are high in iron.
I mean, in terms of quantity of nutrient per mass of food obviously they are higher in all minerals - drying a fruit reduces its mass but not its mineral content - but unless it's some sort of "nobody sanity-checked the numbers the computer spat out" I dunno.
It's about the *volume* of food. 15g fresh apple is not the same as 15g of dried apple chips. When you take out the water, you reduce the weight of the chips, so you need more chips to get the same weight/volume as the fresh, water-containing, fruit. So if you eat 15g of the dried fruits, you are consuming more of the concentrated nutrients. So a cup of raisins (dried grapes) is going to have more of everything than a cup of grapes, because you're packing more raisins in:
"When comparing one plum to one prune or one grape to one raisin, the vitamin, mineral and fiber content isn’t all that different. But when comparing by household measures, the dried fruit is a much better source of a number of health-promoting nutrients.
One cup of raisins, for example, is a much better source of fiber, potassium and copper than a cup of grapes. Dried apricots are a better source of certain nutrients than fresh apricots, including vitamin A, B vitamins, iron and potassium. However, raisins, prunes and dried apricots are not a better of a source of vitamin C than their fresh versions. That’s because vitamin C degrades during heat processing and over time.
Because the water is removed, the dried fruits are significantly higher in calories than the fresh fruits -- 430 calories in a cup of raisins versus 60 calories in cup of grapes or 380 calories in a cup of dried apricots versus 75 in a cup of fresh halves"
The issue there is that one raisin vs. one grape is the right measure if you're talking about cost, because one raisin requires one grape to make. Hence why I referred to "well it's got a lot more X per gram" as "nobody sanity-checked the numbers the computer spat out".
I suppose it's *possible* for the literal mass of food you eat to be a bottleneck if you have to carry it some distance on foot, or if your time spent eating is super-valuable, or if you've got a really-small stomach and want to eat bucketloads of fruit, but it doesn't seem like the standard scenario.
Shipping, storage, and spoilage are costs too. Dried fruit can be shipped cheaper and stored longer with less spoilage, so depending on the type of fruit, season, etc, it can cost substantially less per calorie or per unit mineral content or just per piece than fresh fruit.
So it looks like Bolsonaro is out and Lula back in, in Brazil.
What is it about South American politics that causes it to swing endlessly between (quite?) far-left and (quite?) far-right? Why do they never settle down to the middle like the rest of us? Would they do a lot better if they did?
According to Fehrenbach 'The Swiss Banks' US and Euro money was pumping into South America and Africa at a billion a year in the 1950's, when a billion was ten trillion US now. Then Castro looted the Cuban middle class down to corner shops, and the South American left threatened to do the same everywhere, and everyone in South America put their money in US banks. Result: instability.
Cyclical behavior emerges from the interaction of applied force and restoring force. The applied force here is Operation Condor and its successor programs. The restoring force is the political will of the people of South America.
Well Lula's party is quite limited in the legislature, so his presidential win doesn't really qualify as a far left swing. Also he campiagned as a moderate compared to previous times.
South America? That's not a fair description of most governments in South America. For example, Venezuela swerves between far left and farther left governments. Colombia, despite its issues with crime and terrorism, is a longstanding basically functional democracy. (The terrorism happened because they couldn't win elections. And they were ultimately defeated.) Chile just rejected a major swerve to the left in favor of a more centrist course. Etc. This seems like a pretty bad generalization. Even the idea Brazil is swerving is itself strange. Brazil had sixteen years of uninterrupted left rule until Bolsonaro and now will return to it again after an interruption.
Presidential systems. If you have a parliament, a majority coalition is by definition the median of your voters' views, and then the PM is selected by them. A presidency makes every election a high-stakes battle between two opposing choices- if the divisions don't naturally exist in a society, the nature of presidential campaigns will create them artificially. Like to return to the last French election- I think the median French voter didn't want to change France's role in NATO too much, and didn't want to tinker with their existing social programs too much. But they were forced to make a high-stakes choice between two stark choices on both fronts
I think it's the corruption, weak state capacity, and over-reliance on commodity exports. Parties get in, can't really do a lot to seriously improve their countries, and then people swing hard against them. There's no Latin American equivalent of an East Asian economic miracle.
Many people may be aware that I made a post a few open threads back about my prediction for the Senate.
My basically final Senate predictions:
Bennet +12
Murray +11
Kelly +9
Hassan +9
Fetterman +7
Warnock +5
CCM +4
Beasley +3
Barnes +2
Ryan +2
Demmings +1
Above is my updated prediction. Still haven't gotten that Florida poll from Trafalgar. Annoying.
Another poster commented and asked if I would still be here after the election and the answer is yes. 9 days to go.
I also want to predict 60%/40% for Dems keeping the House.
Additionally congrats to President Lula who won his election today in spite of highly illegal vote suppression by Bolsonaro supporters in law enforcement and the military.
I think you might have missed an earlier post where Axioms laid out his theory. He has a lot of faith that this one particular pollster gets the republican side of senate races right most of the time. This post is a follow-up.
This is mostly accurate. A slight caveat. Trafalgar provides a base level of confidence for me about other voting data. So if all the other data disagreed with Trafalgarian Augury I'd be worried. Like okay seems like Dems are doing really well. Huh Trafalgar has most R candidates at 50+, seems like the other data is very iffy. However in this the Augury agrees with the other data so I feel like there isn't going to be a big shock.
It depends on why the consensus is closer I guess? Maybe I was too positive about turnout among young people and women? Does gas keep dropping? What about food prices? I am pricing in some level of cheaper prices in the last week or so. Also maybe I misread early voting? A large part of my confidence comes from my theory on Trafalgar polls. Maybe Cahaly changed something up compared to 2017-2021 that invalidated my theory.
I don't know what can possibly cause you to predict Dems will win everything, including Florida and North Carolina. Even Trafalgar's predicted Republican vote doesn't support your numbers.
Yes poor people are often priced out of smart investment opportunities. Unfortunate for me. Also some amazing deals on 47 and 46- on the R Senate seat market. Alas I don't have the cash. Made good money in the Dem primary market in 2019 though.
There is currently a 25k prize for a prediction tournament that the Salem Center is hosting on Manifold Market. No entry fee.
I think that your numbers are very optimistic, but I also think that some if the election markets in that tournament are tilted too far towards Republicans. If you are right, you can go and clean up, put yourself in a good position to win the tournament.
I managed to get there through your link after a bit. Sadly they refuse to allow me to bet $1000 on Val Demmings winning. Rigged! upset I missed out on Bolsonaro NO although not sure how much profit that would have gained me.
I put $200 No each on R SENATE, R PA, R NV, R WI, and R OH. We'll see what happens.
It just occurred to me that I haven't heard about a beached whale in years. In the early 90s when I first became aware of the news they seemed to be in the news all the time, but I don't recall hearing about one recently. A few seconds of research suggests that the frequency of whale beachings hasn't meaningfully gone down, it's just that they're now reported as local rather than global news.
Is there something going on here, where fairly routine events get outsized media coverage due to fitting in with some political narrative? In the late 80s there was a big anti-whaling movement from bumper stickers to Star Trek movies, so any bad thing that happened to whales was newsworthy regardless of whether it was whaling-related or not... this seems to have continued onwards (after the near-abolition of whaling in 1986) into the 1990s and eventually been forgotten about.
Or have I misremembered the breathless media coverage of whale beachings in the past?
Is there a 2022 equivalent of a 1992 beached whale? What unimportant events are we paying too much attention to these days?
Anything that gets multiple segments on 24 hour news channels (of any political lean)
Such as most crime when discussed on a national level (in the US). There has been a small uptick recently but overall crime is super low in the US in most places especially compared to the 90s.
Gas prices are a big one now. In the new year they will probably be back to "normal" and the elections will be over so no one in the medial will care.
A story that I noticed with a similar trend was small children involved in accidental shootings. It's hard to find information that's not incredibly misleading on this (headline stats like "children aged 1-19...") but it appears that about 100 actual children in the US are killed with guns per year - which is terrible, but actually a non-story in terms of deaths. About 150 toddlers drown in buckets each year in the US as well.
There was a few year period when every sympathetic anti-gun story about a toddler getting killed playing with a gun was national news. I am curious why that reporting seems to have gone away.
That's certainly a possibility, but my memory is that they were definitely overlapping at one point. Columbine was many years prior to the toddlers-shooting-themselves-is-national-news phase.
It absolutely was, but Columbine, in my memory, was a shocking one off that wasn't really repeated. The recent shift, where kids have shooter drills and we're just sorta resigned to this being something like tornadoes that just happens a few times a year feels much more recent. Post Bush, I think. But I'm just going by memory and feel.
You definitely didn't misremember, those were regular stories for me growing up in the 90s. Somewhat more so than the norm, I think, due to living in a seaside town where Stuff Happening On Beaches was always Big News.
As to why such coverage disappeared, despite the rate staying about the same...well, at some point the story gets old. If it isn't some quirky detail like Sperm Whale Stuck In Suez Canal Delays International Shipping, I dunno why anyone not directly whale-sympathetic would much care to click. Slightly more interesting to write about, say, ocean sunfish beachings or the Great $SPECIES Extinction. (The last whale beaching I remember in the news, from maybe 5 years back...it only made headlines because it was a male whale, and someone, uh...well...the carcass was missing a certain notable bodypart by the time it was discovered. *That* is clickworthy.)
Here in France we’re getting regular news of whale strandings. They’re reported nationally and locally. But we have much less culture war news than anglophone countries. Media priorities are different across the world.
Why do American liberals care so little about the treatment of Uyghurs by China?
You can say that they care plenty, but compare this relatively muted care with the outrage over apartheid by Amercan liberals, despite the fact that the treatment of Uyghurs is ostensibly much, much worse than anything that was going on in apartheid South Africa, especially in its later decades. Like many other things, I don't see any non-race-based reasons that aren't just ad hoc rationalizations. Liberals demanded the US government do everything in its power to end the apartheid regime, whereas you might get a angry tweet about the latest UN report if you're lucky but no calls for the US government to do anything.
Liberals will often claim they give less focus to foreign acts of illiberalism because "its not our country" (or our close allies in Europe) e.g. why gay marriage in the US is a much greater issue for them than gays being executed in the middle east. Putting aside the fact this is an entirely one-sided form of opportunistic eurocentrism, the argument for caring so much about apartheid was that we had trade with them so we were complicit in their regime, therefore the US has an obligation to cut off all ties to the country.
Again, putting aside the fact that we have trade and diplomatic relations with almost all countries in the world these days and for many this trade is much greater than we had with South Africa, we have more trade with China than all other countries combined. So then the argument goes, perversely, we can't afford to cut off China the way we did South Africa. So in order for liberal outrage to be worth expressing, we must have some trade with a country, but not too much. So the only reason we didn't refrain from joining WW2 is because Hitler wasn't selling us enough consumer appliances? Or more realistically, if South Africa had been >50% of our foreign trade, there wouldn't have been millions of leftwing Americans demanding an end to apartheid?
Even if this is the kind of argument you want to make, there's a big difference between expressing outrage and e.g. picketing Chinese consulates in the US, and the US government cutting off trade with China. I don't expect the government to do that, but it's obvious that the left just simply do not *CARE* about this as much as they did apartheid, there's not the visceral anger there was over apartheid. And I cannot find a fundamental explanation for this difference other than something to do, implicitly or explicitly, with race i.e. it was white people responsible for apartheid. Maybe there's another argument, I'm happy to hear it if there is.
And yes, this is important. Stuff like apartheid feeds into the hegemonic narratives of western liberalism today. This viewing of white people as uniquely evil is what underpins so much of what the western left support. No, I don't care that you and all your other ratosphere leftwing buddies don't feel this way, your views are an extreme minority amongst those with institutional power i.e. what actually matters.
And if you're going to claim they do care about the Uyghurs as much as they did apartheid, then don't even bother posting, because your views are too divorced from reality to be worth responding to.
The key insight you're missing: organizing is hard, and to build a movement, you need not only an outrage worth fighting but a story that will convince people there's something realistic and meaningful they can do about it.
Like all my progressive activist friends, both white and nonwhite, I wish there were something I could do for the groups currently undergoing genocide in China. I've done a few dozen hours of research into possible strategies and tactics, from BDS to protests to direct action, and keep coming up empty-handed: the CCP doesn't care what I think of it, my government has done most of what I could reasonably demand, the remaining chokepoints (most importantly refugee status) theoretically have bipartisan support but are bogged down in political energy sinks, and commando raids or "bombing the tracks" have extremely long odds. Organizers worked hard for decades building a global coalition to make BDS of South Africa feel achievable; some brave souls are trying to do this for China, but the global economic reality makes the task vastly more daunting.
The same answer applies to the rest of your attempted gotchas: I don't put my energy into opposing things in proportion to how bad I think they are, but in proportion to how much of a difference my effort will make at the margin. You know, like a rational person. There is simply a much higher expected return from using my time to convince my friends to vote against the party trying to ban trans healthcare in my country, than to go around informing everyone that I think stoning gays in Iran is bad. If you weren't so invested in finding evidence for the prior belief that I actually secretly think stoning gays is fine as long as people of color do it, I daresay this would be obvious.
Dude, this is the third Open Thread in a row. Take a break, post a couple of these over on DSL, they love this sort of shit.
Enough people have jumped up and down about the near/far thing already, but here's one I haven't seen referenced. A more interesting question might be why so much attention for Tibet, and so little for the Uyghurs.
To which, the answer is: celebrity. The Dalai Lama was great on TV. And Richard Gere signal boosted it when he was still a pretty big deal. The Uyghurs need a charismatic leader and a pet Hollywood celebrity and they'll be good to go.
Or not, you know, because the real answer is that all of us liberals just hate white folks. This was fun the first couple of times, but it's getting tiresome.
I'm getting echoes of your comment last open-thread, and this still all strikes me as "checkmate, liberal, you pretend to care about people, but you're protesting X, when Y, which is substantially similar to X also is happening (or once happened), and you haven't found time to protest that too. The only way to not be a hypocrite is to care infinitely about all issues, so your arguments are all irrelevant!"
Which is a broken argument on all sorts of levels. Firstly, because an injustice is an injustice regardless of whether a given population is rationally sorting their attention about it. And secondly, because nobody is obligated to "care equally about X and Y." People necessarily don't have the time or attention to devote 100% of their focus to 100% of injustice in the world. Everybody picks issues necessarily because their time and resources are limited, and there's a difference between "being a hypocrite" and merely "not being literal Jesus."
It's like when people on the left throw out the "checkmate conservative - you say you care about children, but what about when they're *not* still in the womb? I guess you're just a big hypocritical fake and we can stop caring about any of your opinions on abortion, can't we?" line of argument. Telling your adversaries that their beliefs are only valid if they distribute their attention in a way you approve of might make you personally feel more justified in ignoring them, but outside of that it's a pretty empty statement.
If we "prove so-and-so is a hypocrite," but we do so using a heuristic by which *all of humanity* is a hypocrite, we're not really demonstrating anything of value about so-and-so, we're just selectively applying a gotcha.
The reason to me is simple. The reaction to the Uyghur genocide is our normal reaction. By contrast, South Africa had Nelson Mandela and Tibet had the Dalai Lama. Prominent articulate leaders who could state their case to the world directly and drive popular narratives and outrage.
A much more interesting question is why the Muslim countries don’t care about it. Going as far, in fact, to send a letter of commendation to China for “dealing with terrorists.”
Who are the actors you're referring to when you say "the Muslim countries?"
The governments of states like Iraq or Iran have all sorts of reasons to tread cautiously. I imagine if you asked the average "muslim-on-the-street" something like "how do you feel about China trying to de-Islamify its Uyghur population?" they might care quite a bit, but depending on the government involved they may have little to no influence, and even if they did it not matter in the least compared to the trade and security implications of pushing the issue.
The Turks are busy going after a crumbling Russia, and probably don't want to pick a fight with China at the same time.
Few others have the capacity to do anything meaningful about it, especially in the face of dependence on China, and also probably think it's the Turks' job when it's a fellow Turkic people.
- Someone with a lot of clout on the left picks a narrative and makes a push for it.
- Left-leaning outlets talk about it all the time.
- Everyone ends up being outraged about the same thing.
Nobody of importance in the left-wing mainstream has picked up Uighurs, so there's no mass public outrage. Right-wing politicians and right-wing media outlets, such as Breitbart News and Newsmax, don't have enough following of the appropriate kind to make it happen.
The thing is, someone out there sets a narrative. When there's no official narrative, it doesn't look like anyone cares. "Why didn't anyone with power to set narratives pick Uighurs" would be a better-formulated question. The way you worded your question assumes rank-and-file liberals have that power, which is not the case.
I'd like to think that charitably, it's pragmatic...it's costly to cross China on many topics, but especially Taiwan and Uyghurs. Whether it's the NBA, stand-up comedians, Elon Musk...that's just too much marketshare, too much money to pass up. South Africa is/was a lot more "winnable" in that regard.
Less charitably, as you say, it cuts against the liberal narrative for nonwhite people to be in the oppressor/problem-causer role. Remember all those righteous news stories early in 2020, about how Acktually, fear of covid was just the latest anti-Asian dogwhistle, they're the Real Victims here?
But, I'm not white or a liberal, so there's probably more straw than man in my projections here.
(Semi-relatedly, I gotta wonder - do you come up with a fresh "checkmate, liberals!" for every OT, or it's all from, like, a pre-existing master list of sins?)
>And if you're going to claim they do care about the Uyghurs as much as they did apartheid, then don't even bother posting, because your views are too divorced from reality to be worth responding to.
Here's a datum for you. While I've no idea how much the US cares, if you pay attention to *Australian* media Xinjiang is all over everything about China; the Chinese ambassador got asked about it in his appearance at the National Press Club and in a television interview a couple of days later, leaders of political parties have to defend their position on it, etc.
So it's not a fully-general "whites don't care" thing. There's some difference between the USA and Australia on this. A wild guess is US domestic politics blocking out everything else.
If you have a trade surplus you're importing cash and *exporting* goods (although in this case raw materials mostly). If what you meant to say is tha the Aussies need the cash as much as the Chinese need the iron ore, gas, et cetera, then that's sort of true, but on the other hand there are a fair amount of other places that will buy that stuff if the Chinese can't or won't. Anyway, the exporters of raw natural resources seem historically to be more resilient to trade disputes, for better or worse.
Fair call that we could be doing more than we are; I'm in favour of recognising Taiwan and to hell with the consequences, but apparently the major parties don't like that idea.
Just saying, it is at least something people talk about here.
I didn't say you should be doing more than you are. I just said Australia in general might feel a bit more free to piss on China rhetorically than, say, west-coast techies whose iPhones, solar panels, the lithium for their Tesla battery pack, and half the shit they buy on Amazon comes from China, and who in a number of cases are hoping to sell high-end consumer goods (electric cars, smartphones, web services, media) into the vast Chinese market.
I think this question is entirely backwards. American liberals are not special in not caring about Uyghurs – practically no one does; and Uyghurs are not special in not being cared about by American liberals – American liberals care about very few foreign conflicts.
I remember reading something about the reason for much of the craziness going on in the US being the US left's desire to relive the civil rights movement. Dunno to what extent that is true, but caring about Apartheid seems like a good fit to that theory.
You've received enough pushback for the silly aspects of this post that I'm not going to pile on.
To try to reply in good faith, though: there is definitely a sense in some quarters of the left (I make no claims for American liberals) that stories of Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang serve the propaganda interests of the United States government (which has historically proven to be quite capable of playing dirty with such information) and therefore are automatically suspect, no matter how many Amnesty/HRW/etc. reports corroborate them.
This knee-jerk mistrust of American information filters is a healthy tendency, but it can sometimes throw up horrible false positives and the case of the Uighurs is imho one of them.
Very interesting to put that same perspective on Ukraine then. What we're hearing about that conflict has all the classic signs of propaganda, yet many Americans (and I would say far much more those on the left) are eating it up. That's not to say that the news out of Ukraine is *wrong* so much as it's clearly one-sided and shows a likelihood of intentional slant in favor of Ukrainian perspectives.
If so, why does this go backwards of what you're suggesting? I'm not accusing you of anything, but genuinely curious if you have an explanation. From an outside perspective it does not appear that liberal viewers are terribly discerning about propaganda given the counterfactual, but I could be wrong here.
First, it's important to acknowledge, if only in passing, the obvious differences between these two sets of events. The abuse of Uighurs in Xinjiang is more opaque than the clear-cut reality of the Russian army violating the internationally-recognised borders of Ukraine on the 24th of February. Even the Russian state agrees that this is what happened (but it was good/redress of historical justice/necessary for self-defence/etc. depending on who's speaking and why). In contrast, the Chinese state insists that the re-education camps are vocational institutions, asserts that the levels of surveillance against Muslims are not out of the ordinary by national standards, disputes various figures, and other nonsense. There's simply more room to pick out the narrative you prefer.
Second, I don't think the international left, taken broadly enough, is uncritical of the West's own information war in Ukraine, or uncritically accepting of pro-Ukrainian perspectives. I remember how, early on, Noam Chomsky was widely pilloried for taking a view of fairly mild skepticism. Jeremy Corbyn, still the de facto standard-bearer of the wounded left wing of the UK Labour party, has recently added equivocation on Ukraine to his long list of anti-establishment sins. The recently elected Lula da Silva of Brazil assigns blame for the war to both sides. The recent sordid pasticcio in Italian politics was precipitated in part because the left-leaning Cinque Stelle resisted Draghi's alleged blank cheque to Ukraine. In Germany, the hard-left Sahra Wagenknecht is perhaps the fiercest parliamentary critic of the government's pro-Ukraine policies, and there remain plenty of people in the SPD who mistrust Atlanticism and would prefer more Euro-centric, and perhaps even Eurasian security architectures. The French left around Mélenchon, likewise.
(One could go on. From time to time I'm tempted to break my substack's joke status and write a piece on this subject that would amount to more than the preceding gish gallop, but so far I've always come to my senses.)
I was careful to say that I make no claims for American liberals, but even in the United States there is a tension between the left wing of the Democratic party (which is the direct inheritor of the hostility and suspicion toward the American security/foreign policy apparatus that characterised the left throughout the Cold War and during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) and the centre-left (reflecting, say, the median battleground-state voter the party must win over to be in power). Consider, for example, the recently published letter - yes, later hastily withdrawn, but still - signed by 30 members of the Congressional progressive caucus and urging diplomacy with Russia.
So, that aforementioned mistrust of USG propaganda does in fact exist for Ukraine, but it's more isolated and farther left than it would ordinarily be. Machine Interface is quite correct - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a strong contributing factor in the US. If the association of Russia with Trump and Republicans weren't so strong, and if Putin didn't insist on reinforcing this association by casting himself as the champion of social conservatism in a great global struggle of values, and if the left didn't occasionally succumb to imagining the Ukrainian polity as more progressive and democratic than it actually is, the tendency would have kicked in more strongly, for good or ill. Quite possibly ill.
To make sure I'm understanding your response, you are saying that the left is more willing to accept pro-Ukrainian propaganda because the right is seen as associating with Russia (Ukraine's enemy)?
Would you say that you disagree with Boinu then, that liberals/left are not more discerning about propaganda in regards to China and the Uichurs?
Following your logic, I would guess your position is that the left is less willing to believe anti-Chinese positions because the right are anti-Chinese? That is, the left is aware of the claims of atrocity, but because the right speaks out against the Chinese the left reflexively defends them or ignores the complaints?
I think the popular answer to the Ukraine invasion is a precious data point here, and should probably be the start of the theory on how people react to atrocities far away. I mean, I'm sure _somewhere_ quite a lot of think tanks made progress on this, but it's probably the kind of research that won't see the light of day. I'd be very interested in seeing something public.
(disclaimer: I'm perfectly aligned with the masses here: I care a lot about Ukraine, I'm meh about Syria and I have absolutely no idea what's happening in central Africa these days).
Wait, wait, I think I know the answer! It's because white liberals don't really give a shit about justice, they just reflexively take the side of the brown person. It's a very simple mechanism, sort of a tropism, really. See, white liberals are different from me, Jason M. They don't really have inner lives , feelings and thought processes. They're robotic. Wind 'em up and they toddle stiffly with glassy eyes and open arms towards the nearest person with dark dark, eww, dark skin. And they need me to wake them up. Because some of the time after they toddle robotically up to the dark-skinned person with open arms that dark guy's gonna to mate with them, and then our civilization will decline because blacks are stupider and more violent than whites.
Liberals caring more about black people than other non-whites is a satisfactory explanation for the disparity. As for Uyghurs being non-white, I don't think liberals really care much about non-whites mistreating non-whites. I sincerely doubt that if Israelis were mostly white that they would get so much attention. It would just be arabs killing other arabs, not our business etc.
One big thing is that South Africa had a minority oppressing the majority group, while in China we have the majority oppressing a racial minority. Almost every country, to some extent, has disfavored minority groups that are oppressed in some way. What China is doing is bad, but there are worse countries, such as Burma, DR Congo, Sudan, Syria, and many more. No reason to pick a fight with China when there are weaker targets. South Africa was different, as apartheid was one of the last remnants of colonialism, and liberals were very keen on eliminating colonialism. They wanted total victory, and used every tool they had to deal with the stubborn holdouts that stood in the way of Progress.
We could relate to South Africa because of our history with slavery (and because of the common language). We fought the most costly war in our history in order to correct the sin of slavery. We had the moral ground to expect South Africa to do the right thing.
South Africa was a democracy. The white population could vote to stop discrimination. An international show of disgust about the discrimination had a chance of affecting the South African voters. China is not a democracy and so much harder to change.
This is a reason so many people today are angry about stuff done by Israel. And why so many Europeans are angry about stuff done by the US, but don't get very worked up about China.
>China is not a democracy and so much harder to change.
The US government could restrict trade and otherwise make life hard for them. But opposition to apartheid was visceral amongst the american left in a way that I don't think can be explained by things like this.
There's also the unequal response to Russia's anti-gay law and the anti-gay laws of America's middle eastern allies. Russia is basically a dictatorship and any consideration about influencing Russian voters seems very silly.
I have a recurring issue with my browser where basically every website with a login regularly claims not to remember me, and I have to jump through some extra hoops to log in. Hoops being, getting an email or text saying 'we noticed a strange login from an unusual location' or something, having to verify with 2FA, etc.
For some websites it's only if I haven't logged in in a couple of weeks, but iCloud seems to just do this periodically- even if I logged in 24 hours ago, it will go through the whole 2FA process and then ask me if I want to 'trust' this browser.
This is all on the same laptop, on the same IP address at home. I don't do anything unusual with VPNs or deleting cookies. The only thing I do that's slightly not-standard is run two adblockers, Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin. I didn't know if they maybe deleted some cookies automatically or did something else similar, maybe interfered with some kind of tracker that sites use to 'know' it's me.
I will say that I never encounter this issue with Google, but literally every other website with a login claims every other week that my login is 'unusual'. Is this..... normal? Could it be caused by my adblockers? Or is this just how we live now? Frankly, I find this level of security for non-financial websites a bit absurd
I have bigger problems with iCloud, but I do notice that a lot of websites consider me to be coming from a different location or browser following even a minor update of the OS, and occasionally after a crash or planned reboot. (I'm also on a Mac.)
ICloud is a mess for this. I am continually asked to do a 2FA to trust the device on the same device I am logged into. Might be fixed in the new macOS.
Browser engineer here. This is almost certainly related to cookies getting deleted or cleared, especially with the repeated 2FA symptom. (Typically sites that don't support long sessions still use cookies to store "is this a trusted device we can bypass 2FA on".) Things to check:
* Any third-party "security" software running on your machine, e.g. antivirus, firewall, etc.?
* Two adblockers is indeed a potential issue; try browsing with just one or zero for a while.
* Did you turn off third party cookies, or otherwise tweak your browser's cookie or history settings?
* "Clear cookies" buttons don't always say "cookies". Are you perioidically pressing something like "clear storage" or "clear history" or "clean my profile"?
* Are you rejecting all cookie consent banners, perhaps via some extension?
If all else fails, you can try eliminating causes by using a different browser (if this persists, it's probably third party software), or using a new browser profile with no extensions.
Another mechanism is if your OS disk drive (or more specifically, the drive where your browser user data is stored) gets full. You will lose your cookies as the browser tries and fails to expand the cookie database.
Can I shamelessly use your expertise for something trivial? I travel between 2 cities, and when I don't use a computer for over a week facebook wants a 2fa login code. I don't suppose I could convince it to stretch it to 2-3 weeks?
Thanks! I'm not doing any of those things, I don't believe, but I do suspect that uBlock Origin is the more aggressive of the two adblockers- they're probably the cause.
I made the situation sound worse than it is- other than iCloud it only happens if I haven't logged in to a website for a couple of weeks. I find it annoying, but not annoying enough that I'd disable my dual adblockers
It’s definitely an iCloud issue then. The couple of weeks thing is standard - you are given a token that times out after a few weeks, however iCloud shouldn’t be asking so much. I used to see this too but it was fixed in Ventura.
Are you using Chrome? Google may be happier with that and willing to trust it more. You could try turning off your ad blockers for a couple weeks and see if things change? They could be messing with cookies without you knowing.
I have no proof for that but my guess is that the adblockers do their job in not only blocking the app but also by blocking request that are used for adversiting and tracking purposes. I heard of some frameworks that claim to detect fraudulent logins by comparing your browsers fingerprint between logins. If they don't get enough information's about your browser because of the adblocker they might fail to give averdict which results in you being asked to login again.
I don't know the specific cause, but I have seen some similar behavior, though nothing as severe as what you are seeing. I think this has something to do with operating system and browser updates. These sites take some sort of fingerprint of your setup when you register, and if that fingerprint changes, you are considered as logging in from a different system than the one you have been using in the past, which triggers additional security scrutiny.
If you want to see less of this, look into your settings for operating system and browser updates. There should be some way to make updates less frequent.
You did say 'on the same IP address at home', but just in case you don't know, some ISPs do rotate IP addresses amongst their users. I imagine you've ruled this out for yourself, but wanted to speak up in the off-chance you hadn't.
It seems to me there are only two possibilities here:
1. Money, status, and accomplishments are genuinely something a person values highly in a potential mate. That would hardly be shocking, or even very unusual. It certainly isn't a bad mindset -- it's not going to lead to any evil, either to another or to the person with this particular value system. Indeed, if this is the case, the worst possible decision would be to attempt to conceal it, or deny it. That would end up presenting a false front to others, which is bound to lead to unkindness and sadness. In dating, it's much more important to be who you really are than who you (think you) want to be, because pretending to be someone you're not (or at least not yet) sets up the other people in your life for a cruel and damaging outcome, sooner or later.
2. Money, status, and accomplishments are serving as a proxy for some other, as yet unknown, more deeper characteristic that is of value. For example, one might value steadiness of character and trustworthiness very highly, and if a potential mate seems somewhat deficient in these -- a little flaky and unreliable -- but you don't want to give the significant hurt involved in saying "your character isn't steady enough for me!" -- it can be less painful to invoke a dissatisfaction with money and status instead. Saying "you don't earn enough" seems less painful than saying "I don't feel I can rely on you enough." (After all, it's easier for the rejected person to improve his annual income than his character.) Or if one is not really wanting to commit, one can hold standards of money and status that your normal dating pool is very unlikely to meet, and almost always have a handy and plausible reason not to commit. There are about a zillion other possibilties.
Only the person in question can really decide which is the case, and only after a deep and brutally honest self-appraisal. In the case of (1) one might want to work on self-acceptance and being swift but kind in one's selection process, and in the case of (2) it's good to know what the deeper criteria really are, because using those directly instead of the proxies might lead to better choices earlier.
One assumes you're an extreme optimist, then, or haven't read about a hundred thousand Dear Abby columns in which experienced women advise their starry-eyed younger sisters that you can't marry him to change him.
Anyway, I earn about 10x what I did in my first job, but as far as the points of my character I most regret, I would say they have improved...a bit. Someone who disliked me 50 years ago probably still has about a 75% chance of still disliking the much older me. Perhaps you have been far more successful at your self-improvement schema, in which case, congratulations indeed.
There is always religion. Someone who is truly committed to the idea of marriage can be more valuable than someone with twice the money/status but a 50% commitment to the idea of marriage -- in the long term.
Seek people who convey status in a less conventional way. For example, instead of going for the guy/girl who could be CEO, look to meet a great guitar player. Perhaps someone who carries a lot of status in the local music scene as a serious musician who is dedicated to their craft. Putting together musical projects and performances is certainly an accomplishment... doesn’t have to be music, but you get the idea.
Not if you love music. Women (generally) will always be attracted to status and there’s nothing that can change that. But “status” means different things to different people and there are more and less shallow ways to convey it. Writing great songs is definitely less shallow than wearing expensive clothes.
Which values do you think will matter at the breakfast table, or when it comes time to clean the bathroom? What are you actually picturing these relationships looking like? Why are you trying to be in them?
To be fair, money matters quite a lot at the breakfast table (are you eating discount cereal at an Ikea table, or...) and even more when it comes time to clean the bathroom (are you actually going to do it yourself or just pay a cleaner?)
For yourself or your partners? For men or for women?
To first approximation, men value beauty and women value money, status and accomplishments. Men don't value money/status/accomplishments in their partners very much, except that it needs to exceed some minimal level in order not to be embarrassing.
People get confused when they don't properly understand this; men will assume that women care about looks as much as they do, and spend their time optimising for the wrong things (younger me fell into this trap; better to be relaxed and confident with the good-enough looks you have rather than fret about trying to be slightly better looking). Similarly, women get confused when men apparently don't value them for their skills and accomplishments.
This *may* be changing, and like all generalizations probably isn't true for some reasonable proportion of members of either sex.
Anecdote time: At one point, my brother in law was out of work, so found himself in charge of the children - my sister was still employed. He got chatted up *a lot*, by single mothers at playgrounds etc., who apparently valued "will take care of small children" rather a lot. (It may also have helped that he was likely to be the only male in sight, at the playground ;-))
Increasing your value in the eyes of women who already have children, is a bit too late, in my opinion. (Unless you hope for them to divorce, or start cheating on their current partner with you.)
I find this kind of generalization useless and counterproductive: "women care about X, men care about Y." You can only confidently state that a first individual cares more about X than a second individual at a specific point of time, and even then it's a conjecture.
What about generalizations related to old versus young? "Older people care more about X and younger people about Y." Or Americans versus Europeans, or rich versus poor, or people who live in the city versus people who live in the country? People who voted for Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton versus people who did not?
That is, are you opposed to *all* generalizations whatsoever, or only to this one?
It rather depends on context. If you determine that, on average, older people prefer X, and therefore force it on your grandmother over her angry objections, you are some kind of vicious fool. If you determine that on average, older people prefer X, but there's very little of it available, and decide to produce more of it, you might be a successful entrepreneur - more successful than the dozen competitors producing Y, preferred, on average, by younger people.
Getting back to the original context - if you are an amazingly handsome man, lacking other assets (i.e. you are a lazy, untalented, and poor), you might be better off pursuing the minority of women who care about looks. If you love children, and jobs caring for them don't pay well, you might be better off pursuing the minority of women who care about that, rather than trying to reinvent yourself as an accountant or software engineer. If on the other hand your looks are average, and your social skills are meh, then you had better go after the plurality (?) of women still looking fora good provider.
You get the point. You aren't trying to date or marry the average woman. You are trying to date or marry individuals - and not all that many of them, compared to the total number of prospects (women looking to date or marry a man).
Kind of feels like you're answering some other point made by someone else, since I'm not sure how any of this relates to my question.
I'm just observing that 'ucatione' finds generalizations about what men prioritize versus what women prioritize to be "useless and counterproductive" -- and I'm wondering if that means he or she is opposed to any generalizations by group at all, or whether there's something special about generalizations about men v. women.
Well, yes and no. There are definitely people who don't fit the stereotypes, but ceteris paribus if you are a (straight) man you should focus on accomplishments and if you are a (straight) woman you should focus on beauty, just because that's what most people want. If you've got a big handicap in one of those areas it may be smarter to look for nonconformists who value other things.
It's an interesting question (and I am not the OP). I find right-wingers tend to say 'following roles gets you laid', and left-wingers reply 'following roles is wrong', but the obvious syllogism is always left unsaid, since men have always been willing to do unsavory things in pursuit of nookie.
In my personal experience reading PUA stuff helped me break out of the 'any kind of expression of interest is wrong' mental frame produced by 90s second-wave feminism, but n=1, and it's possible there were more healthy ways of learning the same thing. (It was obvious to me Roissy and Co. were exaggerating and trying to be disgusting for shock value, but it was liberating because it was the opposite set of lies from the ones I'd heard.)
And...maybe being a sensitive guy works for the OP. ;) Different things work for different people.
To expand on what Lasagna wrote, consider a Venn diagram with one set being “money, status & accomplishments” and the other set being “integrity, honesty & faithfulness.” Those sets intersect.
We don’t all practice evaluating others for integrity when we’re growing up - I certainly did not & had no idea how to do that except miserable trial and error. But there are better methods.
Outside of the intersecting circles, there is a large pool of potential partners who have neither money/status/accomplishments nor integrity/honesty/faithfulness. That may be helpful for resolving karmic debt but, lol, not great otherwise. If you need to add a third set like “athletic” or “very smart” you can do so but just be mindful of where it’s intersecting.
Also money/stat/acc can be an indicator of other things which are positive. Hardworking, charismatic, dedicated, etc. Those may be traits you want and knowing that is important. To thine own self be true.
I think you need to have something compelling to substitute for it. People already value integrity, honesty and faithfulness as well as money, status and accomplishments. What is the alternative you’d like to see?
Tangentially, why is Dominic Cummings doing any of this? From the writings of his that I've read, I can agree with a few things that he supports-- more funding for science/tech (especially basic research), encouragement of technocracy, and greater safety around nuclear weapon use. But the thing which catapulted him to fame was .... Brexit. And now he is going on and on about the deep state, both-sidesing Ukraine and Russia, and reading incredible amounts of eclectic materials to somehow help formulate his policies. What is his end goal?
I get the same kind of hesitation when I read Samo Burja's stuff. Smart person who believes reading books is their comparative advantage and whose political beliefs/aspirations are mysterious. As much as I dislike govt. incompetence, govt. competence with shadowy, opaque academics seems like an even worse alternative to me.
He send to have an inability to perceive simple truths. Brexit was predictably a double blow for science: : existing funding is tied into europe, and economic damage means less money for the government.
> But the thing which catapulted him to fame was .... Brexit. And now he is going on and on about the deep state, both-sidesing Ukraine and Russia, and reading incredible amounts of eclectic materials to somehow help formulate his policies. What is his end goal?
Appealing to people who perceive themselves as contrarians, and getting elected?
You get some votes by talking about technocracy, some other votes by talking about qanon-like topics, the more votes the better.
Very badly. The system (in terms of fptp elections, party funding, etc) is set up to massively disadvantage small and new parties. All recent attempts in the UK have been embarrassing failures. And Cummings while talented in some areas of politics doesn't have any expertise in party management or grass roots activism.
given that he is among the most disliked people in British politics, I imagine it will go swimmingly.he is detested by left, right, and center pretty much equally, which is an achievement in itself.
Conditional on it actually being real, I'd say 30% chance of it getting more than 2 seats in the next election; 5% chance of it getting more seats than the LibDems. I think Rishi is likely to stave off the total collapse of the Tory party that would be needed to make space for Vote Leave v2, at least until the election (I don't think he'll win). The best thing for Cummings politically would be Truss sticking around for another 18m & the 'Carthage scenario' playing out: but I suspect he'd agree that it's not worth the damage she'd do to the country in the meantime.
Is there any real indication he's going to form one?
Forming a new party in a mature democracy is damn near impossible. It requires both an under-served portion of the political spectrum and a charismatic leader; a Cummings party would have neither.
Most mature democracies I can think of have gotten both a green party and an anti-immigration party pretty recently, so "damn near impossible" seems a bit of a stretch. But the UK has an electoral system that particularly disfavours new parties, and I don't know enough about UK politics to say whether there's some potential for growth in the niche that the UKIP used to possess.
> you can predict the addictiveness of a drug by the first derivative of its dopamine spike
Is that something known to the neuroscience/psych pharma people? Or is it new? If it is known, is it measured/taken into account when creating new psych meds?
Yes, this is super intriguing. I did some digging into why the Manifold market (where I'm one of the largest traders) is so different from the other prediction markets, and I now suspect that I might be personally responsible for a large chunk of the difference: apparently I own about a third of all the NO shares on the Manifold market, and 3x as much as the next largest NO holder. Hmm...
I'm betting on 538 and Metaculus (https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5632/gop-controls-us-senate-in-2023/) being more accurate than the prediction markets. And I'm trading on Manifold but not on Polymarket or Predictit for a variety of practical reasons (no fees and less hassle). Manifold is relatively small compared to Polymarket and PredictIt, so a single person being willing to bet a large amount of (play) money can move the market price noticeably. There are also several traders who are betting towards Polymarket/PredictIt instead, but apparently not enough of them to close the gap.
I used to wonder why Scott et al talked so much about prediction markets and so little about actual betting odds; then I discovered that most of these sites are geoblocked from the US so it's very hard for Americans to check the odds.
I was going to make the same comment. Leaving aside 538: Scott, does the difference between 58% and 73% impact your opinion on prediction markets? That seems like a pretty wide gulf
58% and 73% aren’t all that different. They’re both predicting slightly more likely than not, but a significant chance of not. It doesn’t take much evidence to shift from one to the other. (I expect that as votes are counted from various counties in some key races, many bookies will suddenly change their predictions by more than 58% to 73% even when it’s nowhere near done counting.)
It’s not like the difference between 99% and 99.99999%, where you’d need a lot of very significant evidence to be so confident.
Manifold doesn't use real money, so you can't arbitrage. PredictIt limits the amount of money you can put in and has high fees, so it's not worth arbitraging. I would be shocked if arbitrage-able markets had that much of a difference. And by "shocked", I mean "I would make tens of thousands of dollars with zero risk".
Since Manifold dollars can be donated to charities, Manifold is somewhat arbitrageable - anyone who was already planning to donate money to a charity (and can't benefit from tax deductions on donations, which I believe is most people) could arbitrage between Manifold and Polymarket with a budget of however much they were planning to donate. If you look at the Manifold market volumes in real-money terms it's quite small, so it wouldn't take much budget to correct the price difference with an arbitrage, but there also isn't that much profit available from arbitraging.
Also, it's true that PredictIt fees mean that this 8% difference isn't worth arbitraging, but it still seems like an odd discrepancy: someone who was willing to buy yes at 73% on predictit could make much more profit buying yes at 65% on polymarket. So for such a large discrepancy to exist and remain as prices fluctuate would suggest that there's a large difference in the populations trading on different platforms in a way that is probably exploitable, even if it isn't a 100% risk-free arbitrage.
The reasoning is very simple. How low value are the markets? PredictIt is flooded with MAGA money and a dedicated right wing user base and there are very low market caps. That is the primary driver.
Some of you may already know the work of Perun, an Australian defence analyst who posts weekly videos about the war in Ukraine, and some other issues. His latest video addresses the question of the defence of Europe, and in particular whether the Europeans (collectively) can defend themselves against the most likely threat, namely Russia, without the assistance of the United States.
His conclusion is, basically, that they can. Whether you look at total manpower, total number of trained soldiers, total spending, the number of tanks or number of military aircraft, the numbers indicate a substantial European advantage. That's not to say there aren't some problems, notably provisions for coordination among the European militaries, but not enough to eliminate the facts on the ground.
Haven't watched the video, but for those who might then say "Europe can defend itself... therefore it SHOULD", this misunderstands the point of the US presence in Europe. Encouraging a unified European militarised response to Russia would run directly counter to US policy of the last 70 years, which has been encouraging European reliance on US arms/industry/power. The idea that you'd encourage an independent and alternative European satrapy that can stand independent from the imperial core would be bonkers.
Yes, I can see a lot of countries -- some in Asia come to mind, and not just the Chinese -- re-evaluating just how fearsome the Russian military machine is. Nobody has done more to destroy the perception of Russian military power than Vladimir Putin. If he were actually in the pay of the CIA I don't think he could have done any greater harm.
Does this really need to be said, though? I could understand Russia being viewed as a credible threat to Europe before this year, but now they are losing badly to just Ukraine. In what world can Russia get smacked around by Ukraine, yet take on Europe collectively?
I know this might come across as flippant because the US is contributing advanced weaponry that would not be there in your scenario. But a few advanced weapons are not enough to singlehandedly win a war. The US is only sending these because Ukraine has been successful in fighting back the Russian offensive in the first place.
The world five years from now, after Putin's successor has rebuilt Russia's army with the hard lessons of Ukraine and is looking to make a name for himself by avenging Russia's humiliation?
Not certain to happen, but could happen. The Russian army was decimated in Finland in 1939, probably worse than even the Ukraine fiasco, but by 1942 they were able to stop the Third Reich in its tracks and in 1945 they were in Berlin. And remember, the Ukrainian Army was a bigger joke in 2015 than the Russian Army is today. Defeat and humiliation can be a powerful motive for self-improvement, and it doesn't take that many years.
Also, if Europe is going to look after its own security without the US, that means staring down the barrel of two thousand nuclear missiles with only one French and one British SSBN at sea at any given time. Are the Brits really going to sacrifice London to avenge Warsaw, if it comes to that? Or is Poland going to nuke up?
Apparently the idea that Europe is fatally reliant on the US for its defence is an idea with some currency, particularly on the US right. Perun addresses this in the beginning to his video.
Agreed. Before Ukraine Russia was seen as the clear #2 military power, now I would put it around #7, with it being much further down if you took nukes off the table.
It certainly has been widely accepted, especially on the US right, for a number of years, but that was before Russia showed what absolute shambles its military is in.
Admittedly, I am not running in right wing circles up here in NYC, but as far as I know, people have updated after Russia's abysmal performance.
I'm not saying I know better than a defense analyst and I haven't seen the video yet, but comparing militaries by total numbers like that smells funny, I realize that numbers matter but it leaves tons of other things and gives false confidence/alarm.
But when did anybody talk seriously about Russia doing anything military in Europe outside of Call of Duty ? It didn't do it at the height of it's belligerence and relative military strength in the 1960s, it has much bigger whales to fry right now, and it has better and lower risk ways to harm Europe.
> But when did anybody talk seriously about Russia doing anything military in Europe outside of Call of Duty ?
They've already invaded two European countries in the past decade (and a third is still partially under Russian occupation), so how could anybody not talk seriously about that?
Perun does seem to be aware that you can't just add up the numbers and get a solid estimate of military power. To his credit, he is aware of the limitations of the data. But he thinks -- and I agree -- that they are the right place to start. Let me suggest you have a look at the video.
Why do you think that? It sounds like you are projecting some conception of racism onto people that you don’t understand, by modeling them in a way that doesn’t make internal sense.
""the apartheid government should be seen as a godsend to Africa for stopping the genocidal Zulus""
What is wrong about this? The colonisation of South Africa likely saved millions of lives. Why don't you care about ACTUAL GENOCIDE, but think using different drinking fountains is the end of the world?
I recently cleaned up a bunch of old (fairly short) novels I finished when I was twelve. They're terrible, of course, but they have some value to me because they're set in a predecessor of the universe I've been authoring stories in as an adult.
I'm curious if anyone here has something from their youth that they've put some effort into salvaging, as opposed to metaphorically (or perhaps literally) setting it on fire?
(Also, extremely long shot, but this is one venue I haven't asked in yet - I don't suppose anyone here spent some time in the late nineties living near Cape Town, South Africa, and happens to have had a pushy preteen sell them a book called "Terror of Time 3" that they still own? I'm looking for a surviving copy of that particular book, my digital copies all went up in flames about 15 years ago.)
I collected many of my old D&D notes from my college years into a binder rather than chucking them. Not nearly as much work as a novel, but definitely a useless memento of my younger days.
Nothing in those notes that you could salvage into a story, or a new character arc for a different campaign? Or is it just that the notes don't catch your interest any more? :)
Nah. College D&D had oceans of time devoted to it. I made my own world, nations, history, all that sort of thing. These days, with three kids and a full time job, I game for three to four hours at a time and do very little prep. Mostly I run off the shelf stuff.
Almost any physical "work" from childhood is lost to me now...too many moves, shitty storage conditions. What remains are tchotchke-type things which parents hang onto sentimentally, for their sake more than mine...nothing substantive. Which is too bad, cause I definitely had old film scripts, short stories, poetry, etc at some point. Some of those were maybe worth polishing! Terrible dross overall, but a window into a self-that-was...the kid who thought she'd grow up to be a writer, lol. That or President. Obvously.
The weird thing about what digital copies I have lying around...it's mostly just unremarkable? Like, I guess I kept it more for the ease-of-preservation than because there was actually anything particularly noteworthy worth keeping. Only amusing nugget worth the keeps: 9th-grade essay where my killer thesis was "Utilitarianism is bunk". Ah, the misunderstandings of youth...
(If you mean things in general besides works of art - stuffed animal who's old enough to vote now. Good friends are worth keeping.)
You can still be a writer! Self-publishing is pretty easy. Getting *noticed* as a writer takes work, obviously, but honestly, just personally, I'm already pleased with having a book (well, two now, more to come) in my name. I'm too chickenshit to actually advertise them. But it's a nice conversation starter, for sure!
What did your young self misunderstand about utilitarianism? :)
Late reply, sorry: it was along the lines of, like, reverse Repugnant Conclusion? So instead of a universe tiled with beings of a mere net positive 0.000001 utility, instead there'd be a universe tiled with beings enjoying tons of positive utility, and one single very sad being shouldering minus infinite utility. The burden of all sin and suffering concentrated on one, so that all others could smile.
Obviously that's kinda mystical magical, and utility isn't actually directly fungible like that in real life...but there are ways to achieve similar outcomes, in kind if not degree. Lotsa creative ways to make a martyr. Teenage me thought that was bullshit, and thus ended up rejecting the entire calculus of utilitarianism for producing such Obvious Nonsense. Babies and the water they bathe in, I guess.
I'm no stranger to late replies (as you can tell), it's nothing to apologise for. Wanted to say thanks for elaborating on this, I appreciate the insight into young you's escapades. :) (While I'm saying that, let me add that I honestly generally appreciate your posts. Thanks for being a recurring part of the commentariat!)
For what it's worth, I'd love to indulge in this nonsense, my old stuff (and the stuff derived thereof) is similarly nonsense-sourced (Saturday morning cartoons), so I can absolutely sympathise. If you change your mind about sharing your work and want to exchange indulgent nonsense, hit me up at pinkgothic at gmail dot com? :)
Fair warning, if you grabbed Nerehitar, that's a re-write of one of the old books (basically with the goal that an adult can read it and not cringe every other paragraph), which is *pure* self-indulgent nonsense. (It is, however, a very deep look into my soul. If you want to know all about me, albeit written as a protagonist who doesn't share my *personality*, that's the one to look at.)
But if it's A Thread Between The Stars, that's more likely to be worth your while, that actually has world-building, and I'm less anxious about it and will, eventually, once I've finished the sequel, advertise for it.
(The straight-up republishing of my old books, on the other hand, is under my real name, not my pseudonym; need to keep those reputations at least *slightly* separate. 8D Won't point you there, but you can trivially find it if you're slightly clever about it.)
That said, if you want to read my stuff I can also link you to PDFs, so you can 'try before you buy'! I realise this is too late for this case. But feel free to hit me up about freebies. See previous comment for email.
If I say "there could be trillions of people and we could influence the chance of them existing even just a little bit, so x-risk/s-risk should be a moral priority", a lot of EA would be sympathetic. The recent thoughts I've been having point me toward scaling that up because I don't see a principled difference between the above argument and "there could be trillions of trillions of trillions of potential people, and we could influence the chance of them existing every-so-slightly, so x-risk/s-risk overwhems every single other moral priority by orders of magnitude" simliar to Bostrom's Astronomical Waste argument [1]. I'm struggling to see how X-risk doesn't matter more than quite literally anything else whatsoever in the year 2022. If you are an EA that is sympathetic to the first argument, are you also sympathetic to the second? Thanks.
Well, that's fine, you've identified the risk, but unless this is purely an academic exercise, you need next to decide what to do about it. And here we run into a problem: predicting the effect of your actions on the future is notoriously difficult. You certainly don't want to make things worse, right? I mean, snuffing out instead of saving a few trillion lives a few millions years from now because you made a sign error in your calculations would be pretty dreadful.
So maybe warm up to this slowly. First, figure out how to predict whether buying or selling AMZN tomorrow will make you richer or poorer in 6 months' time. Once you nail that down -- which has the nice side effect of accumulating a lot of helpful capital -- you can move on to predicting whether X or Y will win the next election for something or other. Nailing that down will immediately give you a highly visible podium, plus more capital, as people will pay $beaucoup for your predictions and listen with great attention and respect to what you have to say.
There are a lot of places to go from there. You can easily become advisor to a powerful politician, for example, with your unmatched skills at just short-term prediction, and that will give you access to the political power you need when you complete the fine-tuning on your long-term prediction enough to know exactly what to do to ensure all the X-risks are dealt with.
If that was the optimal path to reducing x-risk, that would be the correct moral choice. Do you agree? I'm not suggesting that determining what reduces x-risk is easy. In fact, it could be very difficult. I think your point is "it will be really really difficult."
I would have put it that identifying the x-risk is by far the easiest part of the task, and if you really want to get anywhere you might start with the harder bits instead. I mean, it sounds a bit like the Drug Warriors in the 90s who said "Do you REALIZE how much harm drug abuse causes? Isn't is super-duper-urgent to reduce this scourge? Yes? Well, then...vote for this half-baked nostrum/candidate..."
Fortunately, you're not offering a half-baked nostrum, so that's great, but when you focus on the This Is Terrible We Must Do Something! message, human beings, being the way they are, tend to go off half-cocked pretty much right away (cf. the War on Drugs, assorted military interventions, several energy crises, global cooling/warming/change, the recent spray of nostrums for addressing COVID, and so forth).
Edit: also, I object to summarizing my point as "it will be really really difficult" because that phrasing implies that I accept there is a solution at all, because "really really difficult" is not formally equivalent to "impossible." I'm not persuaded the predictive ability required can ever be constructed, indeed I kind of doubt it can, so my prior here is that it's "impossible" not merely extremely difficult.
So I'm sympathetic to both arguments, as a total utilitarian; I think it's good to remember, though, that the Astronomical Value Theory rests on a fairly big assumption.
Namely, it assumes that the existential risk we currently face is only temporary - a consequence of us living in a 'time of perils', rather than a constant risk of high-level technology. If you fill in any value significantly higher than zero for 'existential risk pe century', the value of the future, though still huge, quickly seems a lot less astronomical.
But a priori, what reason do we have to believe that x-risks will disappear soon, rather than staying constant or increasing? There are two potential reasons: a single friendly AGI, which could reliably shelter humanity, or the spreading of humanity to far planets beyond our solar system (or even galaxy).
So if you think AGI is fairly likely to come soon and be very powerful, or you think we'll spread to the stars and this will guard us against x-risks, the Astronomical Value Thesis holds; otherwise, we're talking about 'mere' trillions of lives, which is high but not astronomical in the sense that it would outweigh most probabilities.
I think that if existential risk continues to persist into later centuries, that continues to motivate action toward reducing later existential risk. Perhaps it is most likely there are only trillions of humans but there could be (with low probability) trillions of trillions of trillions.
As of now, I think humanity is in an extremely precarious state being on a single planet with little means to escape. If there were hundreds of earthlike planets with intelligent life nearby, the risks would be drastically reduced because a catestrophe on earth wouldn't eliminate all humans. If AI eats the universe then...yeah we're in trouble and maybe longtermism doesn't matter, but it's odd we haven't been eaten yet.
Can't you just argue along the lines of "neglecting the present would harm the future" to easily evade the second argument? As far as I can tell, EA's claim is that those risks are disproportionately neglected, not that they are the single most important issues (even if their disproportionate neglect may make working on them the single most effective use of certain people's time).
If the present interests of humanity and future interests were perfectly aligned, then yes, there is no need to prioritize the future. I do not think that is the case, but someone could accept my argument even if they thought it was the case.
Yes, that's the typical EA perspective, I would say. My point is that the premises of longtermism seem to point toward a more radical philisophy in my view.
Well, it would point to a more radical philosophy if anyone identified some concrete action that everyone could do (and isn't already doing) that would benefit the future with higher probability than harm it (as has been said). If the probabilities just cancel out there's no argument
I think that less humans on earth would increase existential risk but perhaps increase human welfare in the short term. Whereas I would be pro-natalist, embracing longtermism would make me anti-natalist except for people focused largely on reducing existential risk.
I don't think probabilities ever really cancel out unless we are talking about perfect coinflip type situations. If the abstract argument works, then there should be examples everywhere in places we wouldn't necessarily expect.
My take on EA is that they put way too little value on observability. "Even just a little bit" works in both directions, so unless you're saying you can guarantee your actions are always positive I don't see what this argument is. What specific actions are actually being recommended here? Because if it's nothing specific, we can accuse the article of wasting our time and delaying colonization by an untold number of seconds.
There is no need to guarantee that my actions will always be positive. Even small probabilities should be motivating. The specific action that this would recommend is diverting focus toward averting x-risk, rather than preventing current suffering. It would mean less emphasis on animal welfare and malaria and more emphasis on AI Risk, nuclear war prevention, etc.
Isn’t there a good case that work on malaria helps all these other things by speeding economic development for billions of people, getting more people involved in research on the others? There’s a good case to be made that just getting more of the next generation involved in these things (as global development programs do) is likely to be more effective than any direct work on these issues.
That’s possible that things just happen to align that way. I just think it would be odd if focusing on other issues was the best way to address x-risk rather than focusing on x-risk itself. I guess I would put the probability of that <5%. What do you think?
I wouldn’t consider that question at that level of abstraction. But I think it’s clear that for many things, the best way to work on them is to work on various preparatory things, particularly when you’re talking about things years off. Often the best way to become a doctor involves some period when you are studying calculus rather than the human body.
Yes, I do think that’s true in many cases. In this case, not so much in my view. I just doubt that saving people from malaria or increasing economic development in developing nations reduces existential risk more than research on preventing existential risk.
If you disagree with me on this point, do you think it would be better for organizations devoted to reducing x-risk to change their focus?
Well, for instance, AI risk and nuclear war prevention are opposed; the best way to stop a nuclear war is to rush up an AI that can calculate a solution, and we in fact had someone in the last thread suggesting nuclear war as a cure for AI risk. That's what I mean; Once the ball goes over the hill you have no idea what kind of bounce it's going to take. You could be actively making it worse by trying. Malaria-ridden people don't think as well as healthy people. People traumatized by animal abuse might lash out at the people around them. Talking about AI risk instead of basketball could rob someone of a Eureka moment where they realize basketball contains a principle necessary to solving AI risk.
I agree it’s a difficult question what to do. I don’t think that we have no idea. I don’t think that you should assign exactly equal probability of increasing x-risk to every possible choice an EA could make.
For example, your basketball example seems unlikely. While I cannot be certain, talking about AI risk seems more productive than basketball. I only need the slightest suspicion.
If it is absolute darkness, then yes, that's a waste of time. I don't think we are in absolute darkness on all questions of existential risk.
I am not saying this is particularly effective, but that we should be as effective as possible in reducing existential risk possibly. If that is not particularly effective, then so be it.
I am asking how this isn't an implication of taking longtermism seriously. There doesn't seem to be a principled difference between why longtermist concerns about ~.5% existential risks are on principle morally different from ~0.000000005% risks. It is a smaller number, but when combined with a higher payoff, expected utility can be equal. What qualifies as "chucking balls in the dark"?
Of course X-risk you can reliably reduce matters a lot! But... how do people justify that their actions are high-probability net positive in the far future? If you think you have a recipe, assume you are an EA living 5000 years ago, what would have been an obviously net-positive intervention given the contemporary knowledge and culture only?
If the future payoff is large enough, you don't need to have a high-probability belief. Even extremely low-probability beliefs should be motivating. The interventions don't have to be obviously net-positive.
I don't know a ton about 5000 years ago but trying to determine what causes disease and not provoking other groups into war would probably reduce x-risk.
I think you do need high probability, or at the very least low probability of doing damage.
You're basically saying that this hypothetical x-risk minimizer 5k years ago could have chosen a low-probability action to reduce disease because the future payoff was so large. What if their low-probability choice was to do a cleansing procession of all diseases around town to placate the God of Plague? Low probability of success, and then everyone is dead.
In terms of today, a low success probability scenario is the future heaven where AI gives humanity exactly what humanity wants. So you work towards progressing AI as much as you can, FOOM, and everyone is dead.
If you don't know the potentially catastrophic consequence of your actions, the rational choice should be not to do it -- or to work in understanding them before doing it, which equates to not doing it.
If that was their choice, it may have been most ethical given their epistemic situation. This is more persuasive becuase they are obviously in a terrible situation. If I provided a principle of "heal the sick", you could point out that healing the sick many years ago was actually worse for them. But the conclusion shouldn't be in the year 2022 that we should not actually try to heal the sick. You should act in the manner that maximizes health in expectation given your current state of knowledge and that includes learning more if necessary.
To "know" something about the future isn't always a clear definition. Everything is a probability distribution over our beliefs. There is no clear cut guideline between low probability and high probability. For a utilitarian, there is no morally significant difference between action and inaction. If I'm not certain that my action is morally good, refraining from doing the action is also a moral choice.
Longtermists ask me to entertain the idea of reducing existential risk by less than 1%. I am not seeing why it's wrong to entertain reducing existential risk by less than 0.00000000000001% for example, even if it's merely in expectation. We can't be certain about these things, I agree. We will be often wrong, I agree. But perfect indifference (literally 0% probability) is not the epistemic state we are in. Yes, it's difficult to know what to do. But do you think we should assign 0-0 odds on all possible moral actions? Or do you think that we should assign such small probabilities that trillions of trillions of trillions isn't motivating compared to present concerns?
I think we agree on more than we might think. I totally subscribe to the idea that inaction is its own sort of action, for instance. But then I'm a bit confused by the part where you talk about perfect indifference.
I have considered what I could do to reduce existential risk by 0.00000000000001%, and what came out was that inaction is the most likely action that has the largest potential positive impact.
Of course, I jest, it's not that I'm living my life in perfect immobility. I think that my best course of action is to increase the knowledge in the world by becoming specialized on a topic, develop it further, and tutor others who want to apply it in their work, or develop it further. But since I was going to do that anyway -- it's my day job and the same applies to virtually anyone -- then the x-risk framework becomes unnecessary.
What you call "perfect indifference" coincides with the best course of action. It's a bit like agnosticism vs atheism. An agnostic reasons like you: "I cannot assign a completely 0% probability to the existence of God, it could be 0.00000000000001%, so I cannot be an atheist". But then every single one of the observable behaviors of a 0.00000000000001% God-existing-probability agnosticist are exactly the same as an atheist. So he's effectively an atheist.
Where do people stand on the Students for Fair Admissions cases being heard by the Supreme Court tomorrow? What's your best argument in favor of the plaintiff (SFFA) or the defendant (Harvard or UNC)?
It occurs to me that one of the defenses of affirmative action practices may undermine the arguments for affirmative action.
Specifically, one of the defenses for selecting Asians at such low rates relative to members of other races, specifically blacks, with equivalent test scores, is that other criteria than test scores are used, such as agreeableness. That is, they are not specifically excluding Asians, but rather, incorporating a larger set of criteria. See e.g. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/politics/harvard-admissions-asian-american/index.html.
If it were really true that Asians are extremely disagreeable relative to other applicants, then it could similarly be true that members of other races differ from each other on average.
If that is the case, then disparity would not be a sign of discrimination; an assumption on which many arguments for affirmative action rest.
No. I just meant I think they'll lose the case, and a lot of other universities will hate them for having provided the test case that forced everybody to retitle their chief diversity officers.
It's possible, if Harvard loses, depending on how epic the decision is, that states with legislatures hostile to affirmative action might write new statutes that impose financial liability on colleges caught using race in admissions decisions, but Massachusetts wouldn't be among them.
Admission should be based on merit. If certain demographics have difficulty competing on a level playing field, they can be offered exceptional assistance. University social engineers shouldn't be deciding who gets in. If 90% of new students admitted to the University of California were African American or Asian American or Muslim American, we should accept it.
If I find myself in surgery, I want to look up and see the most qualified surgeon, not someone arbitrarily deemed culturally appropriate by social engineers. Godspeed to the Supreme Court.
I don’t want the most qualified surgeon. I want the surgeon who is most likely to be effective at helping me. Sometimes that is the most qualified surgeon. But sometimes it’s the surgeon who understands my specific issues and concerns.
If you’re the kind of patient surgeons are most used to seeing, probably the one with the best paper qualifications is best. But if you’re at all unusual, then it is likely to be better to have a surgeon that is familiar with your kind of unusualness rather than one who does best on normal cases.
Wouldn't you rather expect that a major part of what makes a first-class education first-class is that it takes extra time and effort to cover the unusual, in addition to the normal?
I’m thinking about the sort of thing that doesn’t get covered in the education itself. Medical school doesn’t teach you about the cultural tropes and habits of gay black men, or Venezuelan immigrants, or any of the other distinctive communities in the country. This is why it’s a good thing for the top medical school to give the best medical training to some people from each of these communities, so that they can combine the skills they got in the education with the cultural background they have to provide the best care to those communities.
Respectfully, I see some practical problems with that proposal. There are more distinct communities to represent than a given class enrollment capacity for even the largest school to handle. If groups demand proportional enrollment then that compounds the problem. If major new groups are defined that cross intersectional lines, that again multiplies the registrar's woes. Better the institution increase curriculum than attempt to increase enrollment to represent burgeoning groups. Better logistics to wear leather-soled shoes than to try to cover the world with leather
It would make good sense to do so. I'm not at all familiar with medical schools, but in most law schools there are classes like Contracts, Civil Procedure, etc that everyone takes (mostly in the first year). Should all med schools (not just the first-class top tier ones) have similar required course(s) or externships that address Kenny's concerns?
Hi Kenny,. Unusualness in what respect? I'm an aging Boomer who at last count has had ~7 surgeries (general anesthesia/conscious sedation, inpatient/outpatient, invasive/laparoscopic both) so far and my own concerns were never about anything but the surgeon's general, all-around competence, which was very hard to determine a priori, except word of mouth. Some we had recommendations from friends, some we had recommendations from doctors, but the sole criteria was, "are they good?" (In a vague and nebulous sense of that term) so I guess you can count me as a fairly unsophisticated consumer of surgical providers.🤕
Any respect of unusualness could be relevant. It doesn’t sound like you mentioned anything particularly distinctive about yourself (aging boomer with ~7 surgeries sounds like the most common type of surgery patient) but many people find that a doctor from their own racial community or of their own gender or orientation can understand their issues better, and understand particular factors that make some alternative treatment better or worse. Medical school is something where you absolutely want this sort of cultural diversity in ways that are less relevant for, say, astronomers or the like.
As far as I know, I am not particularly closely related to Eknath Easwaran. I don't actually speak Tamil myself, but as I understand it, when someone has two names like this, the first is their father's given name and the second is their given name. (This is a lot like Icelandic or Russian patronymics, except that the father's name is just in the regular form, rather than the "son of" form.) I think "Easwaran" may be a common given name within some particular Tamil Brahmin castes, or even a part of a name (I think it is part of the longer name of many different deities) but it will appear and disappear within families over a couple generations. Still, we likely have an ancestor in common somewhere within the past dozen generations!
Since girls tend to do about a standard deviation better than boys in school (leading to them making up around 60% of the undergrad student body in most degrees, where no explicit male-oriented affirmative action is used), would you also be against any program that prioritises male students?
Yes, most certainly. This isn't a matter of protecting and fostering ones favorite group(s) including ones own self, clan, gender identification, religion, ethnicity, political party, or what-have-you. It's precisely that kind of favoring, no matter how noble ones motives, that leads to mischief, where the waxing and waning of popular sentiment first elevates then casts down and all contend for goods- an assured path to tribalism and the fracturing of society. We ought to keep in mind what one of the earlier justices wrote: that the Constitution was.never intended to promote all goods or remedy all evils.
Godspeed up to a point. What say you all to the Elections Clause, Electors Clause litigation from North Carolina and the Independent State Legislature Theory? Bye bye uniform application of laws.
Two points about the Independent State Legislature thing.
First point:
This was recently decided in a case, Arizona state legislature vs Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. They decided in the anti- direction. 5-4, liberals + Kennedy anti, conservatives pro. Just on that basis, I'd imagine it would be 4 votes anti (2 liberals still there, plus KBJ, plus Roberts who was anti but IMO would join for 2 reasons), Alito against (even though this would go against his own reasoning re precedent in Dobbs) as well as Thomas, not sure about the others but I'm guessing at least Kavanaugh anti.
Two reasons for Roberts, one is just following a recent precedent that isn't "unworkable" or whatever. One is that in the Arizona case he distinguished two old cases thusly (the cases allowed a governor's veto in one, and a ballot initiative in the other, to reject legislature passed rules):
"But it hardly supports the result the majority reaches here. There is a critical difference between allowing a State to supplement the legislature’s role in the legislative process and permitting the State to supplant the legislature altogether."
A case where a state supreme court throws out the legislature's plan is like the old cases, not the Arizona case (which entirely gave redistricting power over to a commission).
Second point:
I think a recent (unanimous!) case is helpful for the anti- view. The one saying that electoral college votes can be bound by state law. The constitution specifically gives them the power to vote, yet the court says that state law can bind what they do with that power. Same with this - the constitution gives power to state legislatures, but state law (here the state constitution) can bind what they do with it.
In fact I think it's a stronger argument because a state legislature is definitely a creature of the state constitution, has no independent existence outside of it, whereas an elector is an actual person with no (necessary) relation to the state government, he holds a federally-created position.
Very nice argument. I agree with your reasoning but not so sure about Alito. There's a lot of public alarm in the usual places, but mostly for fund raising purposes. Privately, almost everyone probably expects a 7-2 or even 8-1 outcome I imagine. But we won't have heard the last of this because as we well know, this Court might put some language in there giving covert guidance for future litigants. Oh yes, Roberts writing the opinion.
I think that having an admissions policy that appears to discriminate against certain groups makes Harvard have to field a defense.
I think two good points for their defense is:
1) Meeting people with a diverse collection of backgrounds and life experiences helps broaden your perspective and give you a better idea of the world as it is, and not just as you’ve seen it. This can be considered an important part of a college education.
2) Most metrics used for college admissions are riggable with sufficient wealth. Extracurriculars, standardized prep, and even volunteer experiences are more easily available to a rich person than a poor person, so a poor person with a mediocre ACT score may be presenting more talent than a rich person with a good score. Since a higher percentage of blacks are poor than whites (for example), it looks racially discriminatory when it’s actually discriminating on class
The counterpoints I like are
1) race isn’t all diversity is, and there are many un-protected things, like political leanings, that aren’t recruited for, but would add diversity too. That is, there are lower hanging fruit to pick
2) I think it would be hard for Harvard (or any top university) to claim that it discriminates against rich people with a straight face. Legacy programs are a good example of this, but stuff like being a D1 fencing school is another example.
I think the main test I’d care about would be if controlling for wealth largely controlled for racial “discrimination” (so a poor white person has roughly the same odds as a poor black person). If this is the case, I’d agree with Harvard, if not, I’d probably lean towards SFFA. I don’t think it would have to completely eliminate the statistical advantage, but the numbers I saw are more extreme than I’m comfortable with
The WSJ recently ran a sort of preview of the case, and the statistics they named were considerable. I can't imagine the evidence being ignored.
It will come down either preserving the integrity of the selection process, or create two parallel pools of students -- those who earn admission through merit, and Affirmative Action charity cases. Lowering the bar not only doesn't work, it patronizes and demeans the capabilities of the students.
I think it's a lot more complicated than that. Places like Harvard preferentially admit based on all sorts of criteria that don't boil down to a straightforward definition of merit. Athletic performance, for instance, or having been raised in an underrepresented region. Or, most notoriously, the children of alumni.
At this point, it seems very clear that elite schools are not at all the simple admit-the-best meritocracies that some have taken them for. There are just a lot more fingers on the scales than was apparent a generation or so ago.
The more I see of the American elite-college admissions system, the less I like it. It is maddeningly opaque, causes students to spend all sorts of time and effort on questionable pursuits and in the end produces a result that is very skewed toward the the well-born. I'd like to see it all replaced by something more straightforward, like the British A-level exams.
Holding precedents aside for a moment, would you argue that say Harvard's policies are consistent with the Civil Rights Act? Specifically the part about no one shall be denied a federal-funding-assisted educational opportunity on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin?
I'm about as liberal as one can get: having been an annual donor to the ACLU and believing as I still do that the Warren Court was the high point of American jurisorudence. But even I felt qualms when Bakke was decided. It was serving an enormous social good, but that ends don't justify means and that we must protect the integrity of the process are twin articles of faith for liberals.
So I have a friend (maybe more of an acquaintance) who either has a lot of health problems or is a hypochondriac. My guess is that it is a little of both. (Or maybe a lot of both.)
What's the best strategy for dealing with a person like this? He spends a lot of time talking about his various health issues, which seems to stress and depress him. Also it gets tedious for me.
I try to change the subject to something more light when I can. I try to listen to his worries as much as possible. But it feels like a broken record at this point.
I'd like to be as good a friend as I can be. But I honestly don't know what is best for him.
Extreme health anxiety is a psychiatric disorder, he needs to seek professional help. There are therapists specializing in the subject matter. You can offer to listen to his concerns once he is in therapy.
Of course he thinks that. Health anxiety feels like having health problems. And if his ability to reflect on past worries is not great, then it will be hard to get him to seek professional help. But you can put up a boundary like the one I mentioned.
I like the frame Eremolalos has too, slightly modified. probably, a brainstorm will not do much. you won't be able to help him with next steps on this subject until he can hold his own emotional space. a good therapist will help set up boundaries around what are constructive ways to invite help, rather than publicly bleeding negative emotion. my thoughts based on limited info, ymmv
Tell him a gentle version of the truth -- that you have a hard time with these health conversations, because you see these topics stress and depress him, and you don't have any ideas to offer, so you end up stressed and depressed too. Then add that any time he would like help figuring out what would be some good steps to take, you'd be game to brainstorm with him.
Then if he takes you up on the brainstorming offer, set up some structure at the beginning that keeps the session from turning into another grim litany of his symptoms and worries. Something like, let's pick one health problem, and do searches that are likely. to turn up promising results, such as "novel treatments for X," "my recovery from X," "recent medical advances X."
What’s the most time anyone has spent trying to enter Jhanas without success?
I think seeing all these people talking about them is encouraging me to pursue them seriously. I’d heard about them off and on but I think I hadn’t really believed they were real.
I think this is the right sort of question to ask. Presumably there are people who tried to reach Jhanas and gave up... I wonder how likely that is to happen.
I do think Jhanas are a real thing but my skepticism (as with any meditation thing) is how obtainable/useful they are for the average person. It may be that the type of person who is drawn to Jhana meditation is more likely to obtain the Jhanas without years of effort, while it's much harder for your average person. Additionally, the benefits and blissfulness of the experience may be greater for "the type of person likely to get into it" than for your average person on the street.
I spent about 3 years with limited success. I practiced methods from: The Mind Illuminated, Ajahn Brahm, Shaila Catherine, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Visuddhi/vimuttimaga. Out of those, The Mind Illuminated worked the best. But despite years practice I only got into the first jhana a few times.
Then I switched methods to Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation (TWIM) and jhanas are consistent to get into and I can go much deeper than the first jhana.
Not exactly jhanas but I heard about guys here doing zazen and rinzai zen stuff for more than two decades, claiming no success. Myself, I have been practising some half-assed zazen for about 17 years and wouldn't claim any success. No problem, though. Sawaki Kodo may be quoted with saying: "Zazen is good for nothing at all." So if it feels successful, one should suppose not having done it right.
after the recent post on jhana and meditation states of bliss, the mentioned today of the start up selling a device to reach the states seems like pretty heavy handed marketing.
If you're concerned that I'm affiliated with them or make money from them in any way, I'm not. If you're concerned that I wrote the post in order to give them an opportunity to pitch, I didn't. If you think I should only highlight things that are irrelevant to anything I have recently talked about, that seems like a bad idea to me.
Forgive the instinctual pattern matching. Thanks for clarifying. First thing I did was subscribe to jhourney mailing list, so im grateful for the info regardless of cynicism.
This is why you get those little disclaimers about not being affiliated with them, being paid/compensated, etc. And those might be a good thing to do going forward.
I will tell you if I ever *am* affilliated with someone I write about. It's pretty rare! Sometimes I help direct money for various important charities, but never to me personally. I don't think I've ever taken money from a company to write about their product in a way that wasn't obviously an ad (eg the sidebar ads on SSC)
14 % on Ukrainian victory (down from 20 % on October 24)
I define Ukrainian victory as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24, regardless of whether it is now directly controlled by Russia (Crimea), or by its proxies (Donetsk and Luhansk "republics”), without losing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without losing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24, or c) return to exact prewar status quo ante.
45 % on compromise solution that both sides might plausibly claim as a victory (unchanged).
41 % on Ukrainian defeat (up from 35 % on October 24)
I define Ukrainian defeat as Russia getting what it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will became neutral, which includes but is not limited to Ukraine not joining NATO. E.g. if Ukraine agrees to stay out of NATO without any other concessions to Russia, but gets mutual defense treaty with Poland and Turkey, that does NOT count as Ukrainian defeat.
Discussion:
Rather drastic update after just a week is caused partly by previous update being based on wrong information, and partly by genuinely new development, both pointing in the same direction.
Previously, I had based my update on an assessment from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), dated October 21 (https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-21), that Russians are withdrawing from their large bridgehead west of the Dnieper river (sometimes called Dnipro, but Dnipro is also an Ukrainian city, which is in turn sometimes called Dnipropetrovsk, so to avoid confusion, I am going to call the river Dnieper).
This assessment was incorrect, as ISW itself admitted on October 24. On the one hand, they can be commended for quickly correcting their mistake, on the other hand, they did it after Kamilo Budanov, chief of Ukrainian military intelligence agency, gave an interview to Ukrainian media where he denied reports of Russian withdrawal.
This does NOT mean that Russian positions west of the river are secure, on the contrary, they are still highly vulnerable, and it would be completely unsurprising if they would be abandoned in a matter of weeks. Which is one of the reasons why I place so high probability on Ukrainian, um, non-defeat. But so far, Russians in Kherson and surroundings are evidently holding out.
ISW until then had been a reliable source of information, so I saw no reason to second guess their assessment. In the future I am going to second guess them more.
Oh, and US midterm elections are incoming. I am convinced that US support for Ukraine would be higher if Democrats win both chambers, and US is obviously by far most important single country supporting of Ukraine. I had somewhat arbitrarily decided that if the probability of Democratic victory in the House elections, according 538 forecast, which I think is by far most reliable around**, slumps below 20 %, I should reflect that in my predictions. So of course in the last few days it is hovering between 19 and 20 %.
So I resolved to reflect it by adding one percentage point to the probability of the Ukrainian defeat.
*Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of 2022, that is.
**At least for me as a foreigner not familiar with relevant cultural background. Re: prediction markets, Zvi Mowshovitz noted that in previous elections, they repeatedly overestimated Republicans.
Now where have I heard of the Dnieper in a military context before? Oh yes.
“Yes, I will throw you back beyond the Dvína and beyond the Dnieper, and will reerect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind of Europe to allow to be destroyed.” ~ Napoleon in War and Peace.
It's a call for more ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians in the Russian-occupied regions. Think about the incentive it creates: the fewer supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty still alive and able to vote in the captured regions when the vote is held, the better the chances Russia will be able to claim the land they conquered. Musk's plan calls for the elections to be proctored by international observers, not by Russia, but nobody can stop the Russians from setting the conditions for electoral victory through both ethnic cleansing and forced immigration/emigration campaigns before that time. We already know ethnic cleansing is taking place through the 'deNazification' campaign. And we've already seen forced resettlement in Kherson, Mariupol, etc.
These are real issues, definitely. Not easy to solve, but they can be addressed through the last census and other records. My question was, provided they are resolved to the satisfaction of all sides, and fair elections could be held, what would this outcome count as, Ukrainian victory, Russian victory or something in between.
Assuming the elections could be held in the way you proposed, after a Russian invasion and occupation to shape public opinion, the outcome would be a big win for Russia. It would establish invasion as a tactic for pushing through political changes supported by Moscow, and would provide a roadmap for future acquisitions.
Moscow wants Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. Any temporary respite that allows them to rebuild their military from scratch and try again is a huge win. Plus, there's the internal messaging. "When we held our legitimate elections, we got overwhelming support! But then NATO came in and held sham elections and we only got [X] oblasts. Those other oblasts are part of Russia, and we will take them back once we're ready!"
Hmm, so, given that Crimean population is very much pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine, and the Donetsk/Luhansk areas are a mixed bag, what would count as anything close to an acceptable outcome, in your view? Or is it going to be another Middle East-style clusterfuck for decades?
It's definitely a thorny problem I'm not going to claim to have an answer to. I don't think the referendum idea is a good solution, since it doesn't seem to solve anything so much as kick the can down the road while setting up worse conflicts for later.
Ukraine has a long and difficult history of division throughout the country, partly because it's often used as a pawn by larger forces, which leads to a lot of corruption. On the other hand, Russia has been doing its best to unify public opinion in other parts of the country. After the martial law and other measures, who knows what the Crimean people will want by the end of this conflict? In the end, I don't particularly care where the lines are drawn on the map, so much as I care about the ethnic cleansing and the precedents set for future conflicts.
Do you really think so? You think Russia is going to withdraw their troops if the votes in any of these regions are in doubt? I'm skeptical that the solution proposed by Musk will play out a simply as has been proposed, especially after Russia held a big celebration declaring them sovereign Russian territory.
That sounds mostly like a compromise solution, which both sides might plausibly claim as a victory; but whether it would be a compromise or Russian victory would depend on what he means by "annexed" regions and whether people who fled them would be eligible to vote in those referenda he proposes. It is not a bad plan, imho.
How seriously do they take their constitution, though? Some countries have stronger protections on the rule of law than others, and Ukraine is known for having a lot of corruption. Is this more of a 'parchment guarantee' or something that would be enforced in practice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0
I'm not sure I'd update in FAVOR of Russia if they decide to keep forces on the West bank of the Dnipro. It was a strategic blunder to locate so many troops on that side of the river in the face of the successful Ukrainian interdiction campaign. That they kept the troops there as long as they did appears to be less out of the strategic value of maintaining a losing position (the only strategic 'win' there would have been to cut their losses early, not later), and more to save face while the loss in Kharkiv was still fresh. The longer the Russians keep troops on that side of the river - where they can't sustainably supply them - the better for Ukraine. It just keeps the Russian vein open and bleeding in Kherson. The recent announcement to continue fighting there seems like more face-saving moves in defiance of good military judgement.
Strategically, what does Russia need to do in order to eke out something resembling victory? They need to pivot massively from their current losing position. They need to shorten the lines they're forced to defend, and complicate logistics for Ukrainians. They need to delay Ukrainian advances long enough to re-build their entire military essentially from scratch. They need to capitalize on the changing US political situation by providing Republicans with a credible alternative to continued war - something that's still unacceptable to Ukrainians, but that US Republicans could accept. The Russians are doing surprisingly little of this.
Now, the fight for Kherson could be used in a limited fashion as a 'delaying tactic', but it's not likely to be enough to bridge the Russians until they can get competent troops into the field. They're deploying new recruits, instead of training them. Hopefully they're also overhauling their training and weapons development programs, but all signs point to the contrary on that front. Instead of admitting mistakes and making corrections, Putin prefers to set up potential 'fall guys' and then oust them when it's politically convenient.
Putin also continues to escalate his rhetoric against Ukraine, in a way that seems calculated to convince even Republicans that there's no prayer of a negotiated settlement. This makes it difficult for the Russians to capitalize on the political benefits of a Republican win. Not only that, but they've stepped up attacks on European infrastructure, such that it may not matter whether the US wants to withdraw support, the Russians are working at drawing the Europeans into an ever-escalating conflict. One they do not have the military might to win even if they were using their troops in an effective manner. Instead, they're throwing away their best troops in an attempt to hold positions they shouldn't have defended, bleeding themselves dry and playing directly into the hands of Western strategists.
But... Russians are actually doing all that you mentioned?
Strikes on power plants, power distribution, and supply depots massively worsen Ukrainian logistics (as their trains were largely electrified).
Ukrainians continue trying to advance, suffer losses, and now starting to lose territory in some places before bulk of mobilised even even arrived at front - estimates are that only around 85k out of total 300k mobilised are already at frontlines, and the rest are actually training.
Setting aside the war crime aspect for a moment, the strike on the Ukrainian dam in Kyrivyi Rih was a well-executed tactical move against Ukrainian infrastructure that provided a battlefield advantage to the Russians. It cut off Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield from resupply while they were attempting to establish a bridgehead, and it could have been disastrous - except that the Russians were unable to capitalize on the move and push the Ukrainians back from their positions at that time.
Around the same time, they hit a power plant in Kharkiv that prevented the Ukrainians from redeploying into the Zaporizhia region before the Russians could get there to stop a second massive counter-attack the size of the one in Kharkiv. Those were both tactically on par with what I'm talking about. They are also far too rare to have a significant impact on Ukrainian logistics.
The current Russian bombing campaign is nothing like that. Instead of focusing on tactical battlefield improvements with their infrastructure attacks, they've gone almost entirely toward strategic bombing, which historically has a poor impact at best. The idea is to break Ukrainian morale going into the winter and eliminate their will to fight. Except that it's almost certain to have the opposite effect. This strategic bombing of non-battlefield-related infrastructure is a horrible idea. It's like the Russian commanders haven't read anything about the failures of strategic bombing in the past. The Russians don't have extra bombing capacity to hit power plants in Lviv. Strikes against non-combatants far from the front have increased commitments from Ukraine's allies to provide more air defense.
This is the opposite of what I claimed would help the Russians. Not only does it not set conditions for a cease-fire (which would be a long-term victory for Russia), it has ensured deeper commitments from outside countries to the defense of Ukraine. Russia will not win this war by strengthening ties between Ukraine and Western Europe/USA. As Putin said, he's really fighting NATO here. In the same way that the worst-case scenario for Ukraine is to accidentally trigger full Russian mobilization, the worst-case scenario for Putin is to accidentally trigger full NATO mobilization. Yet it's like he's trying to match the partial Russian mobilization with partial NATO mobilization by provoking exactly the kind of response that most effectively hinder Russia's war effort.
Current Russian bombing campaign is all about complicating logistics - given that all Ukrainian ammunition has to come from Western side, and large part of Ukrainian rail park was running on electricity. Russians also do hit power plants in Lviv fairly consistently (you can see some strike-related Lviv internet connectivity reports on NetBlocks twitter), they have enough range for that both on their cruise missiles and on kamikaze drones.
At current rate most of Ukraine might be without electricity by winter - damaged high-voltage distribution nodes aren't exactly equipment that can be mass-produced for replacement. No electricity -> no jobs, and thus more refugees coming into EU to strain their energy grid right when EU wants to hunker down and get through winter by cutting consumption.
The idea doesn't seem to break _morale_ - it is to break Ukrainian state and increase costs placed upon their Western backers - just like Western help to Ukraine is all about increasing costs of war for Russia.
Maybe EU can bear those costs. I have my doubts though given their visible incompetence in managing energy crisis.
Air defence still isn't there, and it isn't obvious that existing systems that can be provided on short notice will be sufficiently effective against kamikaze drones (or that they are going to perform any better then existing Ukrainian BUKs and S-300).
I should add that Russian logistics now probably cannot handle 300 000 new troops in Ukraine; they are sending a lot of them to Belarus as some sort of distraction. Imho attack from that direction has close to zero chance to get significant territory (especially since northern borderlands of Ukraine are a forrested backwater), but they might suceed in diverting Ukrainian forces from the main frontlines.
One interesting hypothesis I heard put forth on the "In Moscow's Shadows" podcast - Troops may be going into Belarus as a distraction to force Ukraine to watch that border, but *also* part of the equation may be going into Belarus to use its training resources, since Russia's are overstretched by the mobilization.
Just a hypothesis, but one I though made sense and was interesting.
You are basing your reasoning on an assumption that their position west of the river is unsustainable. That is possible, but far from certain.
If they manage to hold it until the end of the war, which is also very possible, their negotiating position would be quite improved compared to an alternative scenario when they abandon it.
Yes, I'm assuming their position on the West of the river is untenable. It was obvious from the beginning of the interdiction campaign that we would end up in this position. If Russia had, at that point, made the decision to change strategy and not defend this region, today they would have:
1. A shorter front to defend
2. More troops and materiel to defend it with
3. More experienced troops, capable of launching new attacks
4. More supplies for building defensive/offensive campaigns
5. Better morale, from not having fought a losing battle for months under starvation conditions
6. Possibly still positions near Kharkiv and Izyum, with the ability to consolidate the rest of Donetsk and an argument for ending the war in victory.
Now, as to the argument that it's better for the Russians to have a position on the West side of the Dnipro, this is true but was always also a massive risk as it assumes they can hold this position to the end of the war. As we've seen, this risk was unjustified, given all they've lost and with the position still heavily in doubt.
In order to take advantage of that position, they have to set the condition for the end of the war. Putin running around saying that the Ukrainians have "forfeited their rights to sovereignty" doesn't do that. It makes their untenable position worse, and increases the risk that they'll lose this one thing they bet the whole war effort on.
Besides, given the stated goal of the Russians to eliminate Ukraine as a sovereign nation, it make more sense to launch a future campaign from Belarusian borders than to put themselves into a progressively weaker position trying to hold that which looks increasingly like it can't be held. This was a massive gamble that did not pay off for Russia. The only thing the Ukrainians are losing here is the larger number of Russian troops and supplies that had been pouring across the river into their open arms.
I am not sure whether withdrawing from the western side of the river would help Russians east of the river. Until they have their bridgehead, Ukrainians have to keep large numbers of troops and artillery to counter them. Were Russians to withdraw east of the river, Ukrainians could also relocate most of those forces east of the river, thus adding more punch to their attacks or defence.
It is pretty obvious that if Russians would abandon their bridgehead, they would not be able to cross the river again, unless Ukrainian army would completely collapse.
This is why the situation is so advantageous for the Ukrainians and so disastrous for the Russians. From the Russian perspective they're forced to pursue a long-term strategic imperative that creates a tactically impossible situation. Better for the Russians to fight the same Ukrainian forces anywhere else, than in a location where the Russians can't effectively resupply their side, but the Ukrainians can. Logistics win wars, and in Kherson there's no winning scenario for the Russians.
Given all the fighting they are doing around Khrerson at the moment Russian forces don't look undersupplied yet. And i think they can still get artillery support from other side of the river where logistics are better.
They might not be able to advance, but so far they are holding.
That can change of course; but there is distinct lack of Kharkov-like advances in that direction, and reported Ukrainian losses are quite massive. Maybe Ukraine still can throw enough bodies and equipment to win, but clearly that isn't going to be easy.
But again, you assume that Russians just can't sustainably resupply their forces west of the river. If that is true, then of course they should withdraw. But I am not sure whether it is, in fact, true.
Yea. I always thought (and written in previous updates), that when Russia will be pushed against the wall, they will do mobilization, rather than something silly like nuking Ukraine. And even poorly trained and poorly equipped conscripts will be a huge problem for Ukrainians, who were, after all, also poorly trained and poorly equipped when the war started.
This describes Ukrainian troops circa 2014, when Russian troops rolled over the Ukrainians. Since then, the US and Western allies have spent 8 years training Ukrainian armed forces in modern military doctrine. This is a large part of why the Russians were surprised in not being able to roll over what they thought would be 2014 resistance back in February.
Ukrainian training continues to produce capable troops. The Russians have reportedly gutted their training camps, sending many of their most experienced trainers to the front. Meanwhile, they're still incapable of implementing modern military doctrine, relying on the old model of top-down command and control for minor tactical decisions. The introduction of HIMARS forced them to pull their commanders father from the front, further reducing the effectiveness of Russian fighting forces.
"This describes Ukrainian troops circa 2014, when Russian troops rolled over the Ukrainians. Since then, the US and Western allies have spent 8 years training Ukrainian armed forces in modern military doctrine."
There were few elite Western trained units at the start of the war and they were vital, but large amount of initial fighting was done by the militia (Territorial Defense Forces), that was poorly trained and poorly equipped. My understanting is that standards had improved since then. But even militia was quite effective at stopping Russian offensives; in principle I see little reason why Russian conscripts would do much worse against Ukrainian offensives.
Is it possible to be a rationalist and a mystic? What do you make of the fact that Bertrand Russell thought Wittgenstein to be a mystic (to his chagrin)?
Rationalism is both an epistemology and an ontology. Understandably so, since epistemology and ontology are entangled.
The basic ideas are:-
People are embedded in the world.
Knowledge is based on empiricism, sensory data.
Sensation is a form of causation, and an indirect one.
The best epistemology is an ongoing attempt to build an accurate map.of the world.
The ontology limits the epistemology in various ways:-
There is a guarantee of not knowing everything, since the mind is so much smaller than the word.
There is no guarantee of knowing anything, since the mind is an evolutionary kludge.
There is no guarantee of knowing anything with certainty, since a better map is always possible.
Nothing that is known, is known directly, or "in itself".
The mystic can agree that "People are embedded in the world."
("A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us". Einstein)
But the mystic sees embeddedness as an opportunity, not a limitation. In the mystic's epiestemology, the self is directly knowable, knowable by itself. Which also reveals the nature of ultimate reality, because in the mystic's ontology, the two are the same.
The confident rationalist of course rejects the mystics ontology...but only on the basis that it differs from their own ontology, which is a mere mental construct, and an imperfect one. The extreme of this approach is to reject consciousness itself as non-physical, even though
the physicalist map was constructed by consciousness.
I would contend that rationalism (as in the rational sphere, not philosophical rationalism) tends towards mysticism. There are various ways of defining it, and there are several (mostly independent?) mystical traditions. One thing they often have in common is they usually think it's difficult or impossible to put doctrines, beliefs, truths into language or other conventional forms of representation.
This is the direction Wittgenstein went in with his philosophy. At some point he realize that, generally, the "propositional content" of an expression cannot be represented through conventional techniques like "factual correspondence." For a seemingly innocent expression like, "The cat is on the mat," there is probably no representation of "universes where the cat is on the mat" and "universes where the cat is not on the mat." It's an expression that is only meaningful in a context of conventions that include, for instance, the role of the utterer, their perception, etc.
Similarly, the rationalist-sphere tends towards a Bayesian subjectivist interpretation of probability with a prior probability. This usually entails that there is no way to generally represent our beliefs as a set of facts (finite or otherwise). Any finite set of posterior probabilities relies on some prior probability which is a personal subjective belief that can't be put into words.
I think that mysticism as conventionaly understood (ie. in accordance with later Wittgenstein's theory of what constitutes meaning of words; it is a good theory) has to have certain "self-help book-like" element. Definition provided by Sergei in this thread is a good one. And I don't think you can find that in Wittgenstein.
But yea, you can definitely find self help elements in LW, although their strong emphasis on intellect as opposed to faith still makes them poor fit for mysticism label, imho
> mystic: A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.
The second part is not unreasonable, if you interpret it as the subconscious parts of the brain/mind can be inherently better at predicting some parts of the world than the conscious part.
How could you know that there is nothing beyond the intellect, or beyond your intellect, or beyond your ordinary intellect? There is nothing in naturalism to suggest any ceiling.
Oh, I can certainly imagine a world where the human mind has limits of how much it can understand. If anything, most possible worlds would be not usefully compressible that way. I was not implying that the whole of the universe is knowable by a human brain, at least in principle, if this is what you mean.
A mystic could be a rationalist in the sense that they value reason, but would also argue it can only take you so far. Neoplatonism, as already mentioned, is a good example of this.
They employed reason to draw out their vast and complex metaphysical systems. However they define the apex of their system, The One, as ineffable and impossible to define through reason. Only non-rational means, such as devotion, can shed light on The One for the mystic. I believe this dynamic holds true across all mystical systems.
The first line of Tractatus (the world is everything that is the case) is rational enough, although devoid of useful information, then we are told the world is “the totality of facts not of things”.
I decided that was mystical, or meta physical, and for sure I’ve never stubbed my toe on a fact. So that’s where we parted company.
Hmm. Could you maybe be talking about the *feeling* you get when you’re reading one of those guys, and delighted by his incisiveness? I get a delightful shiver certain things, think of it as the philosophy high. I got it from Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic when I was an undergrad. But what Ayer, for instance, was saying, seems to me now like the solvent that eats through all mysticism, sort of like a spurt of the alien’s blood did through the ship in Alien. I mean, take your statement: All there is is consciousness. If the meaning of a statement is its method of verification, isn’t your statement meaningless? Because how could you possibly verify it?
Seems to me that statements of mystical never make sense — “the buddha is dried shit on a stick”. They’re fingers pointing at the moon.
What are some things philosophers have said that seem to you to point to mystical, or even capture it?
Hmmm, well, Wittgenstein was religious -- not the same thing, but . . . There's a letter he sent Norman Malcolm with some prayers in it that he had found and liked. Wrote to Malcolm something like "I am moved by these prayers because they sound *human,* if you know what I mean."
Maybe what Russell meant was that Wittgenstein is confusing, yet you have the feeling he really is on to something.
I mean, being "religious" (setting aside whether Witgenstein was in fact religious) or "moved by prayers" are not the same thing as being a mystic. Othewise basically all people are mystics and that word has no meaning.
Russell probably meant that as an edgy provocation slash insult.
Well I agree religious and mystic are quite different things, but don't think it's true that basically all people are religious. I was startled to see Wittgenstein sharing prayers with a friend -- not that I felt sure that he was an an atheist, though of course atheists are not exactly rare. But sharing a prayer with a friend goes way beyond kinda buying the idea that there's some sort of god, which is the dilute form of religion fairly common in Europe and the US in recent decades. Sounds like religion was quite important to Wittgenstein, & that startled me. I suppose I pictured him as preoccupied in a bleak, convoluted kind of way, with the ideas he wrote about, and not being deeply interested in much else. Do you know much about what he was actually like?
This seems right. Plato seems mysticy. It seems like metaphysical assumptions come prior to rationality. Like, you might start with dualism or monism, then employ the same methods of rationality and end up in different places depending. What’s the difference between being religious and being a mystic anyway? My guess is, mysticism is a more active pursuit? Or are they totally different?
Mystics believe a personal relationship with the divine is possible. They would reject the idea that any form of intermediary, such as scripture or established institutions, are necessary to experience the divine.
For obvious reasons, this was often viewed as heresy by the religious. History abounds with examples of mystic belief catching on (gnostics, cathars etc) and the religious stamping them out. It's only now when religious institutions are in retreat that mysticism seems like the default (ie its the default position for 'spiritual not religious' types). It would have been a very dangerous position to adopt in medieval times.
Sure mystics who operated within the confines of tradition did exist. It's just the nature of being a mystic often meant they stepped outside the lines of accepted belief and got themselves into trouble (excommunication, heresy, burnt at the stake etc)
I started a roleplaying group in 2009 originally from some people I knew from IRC, and then university friends of those people. Since then we've gained and lost members, but the core five of us are all close friends ('Best man at the wedding' close).
There's something to be said for having reason to spend a few hours every week with likeminded people and then sticking to it, uh, religiously.
If one defines "truly close" in positional rather than absolute terms - yes, absolutely, Many Such Cases. (In absolute terms, I don't actually have any friends that meet standard normative floors for the term...but that's probably erroneous typical-minding. Assuming that __of course__ all the normies on social media are rife with friends...)
For the longest time, all my friends were people I met through an old obscure <s>MMO</s> CORPG called Guild Wars...got super into that franchise, dumped truly unfortunate amounts of money and teenage years into playing it and editing the related wikis. Became something of an infamous personality there, one of the Classic Trolls who played the Alpha Bitch to an adoring legion of fans - the complete opposite of who I was in real life, obviously. The game was what brought that community together, but over time, it also became a friendgroup...we'd organize virtual Christmas parties (complete with in-game gifts!), swap music, spill our hearts out over in-game chat or affiliated IM/IRC. (Many came out as LGBT for the first time there. And/or admitted suicidal ideation. Wasn't all fun and games.) People from all over the world...some even ended up meeting in person. "Oh, you live in Britain? Me too, let's hit the pub sometime!" A few even got married, lol.
As the game deteriorated over the years, we'd spend less and less time actually playing, and more time just shooting the shit, hanging out...or branch out together into other games. World of Warcraft, or DDO Online, or S4 League...some migrated to the successor actual-MMO, Guild Wars 2, which afaik is still extant. it all began from that original seed community though. One weird and small game. I think that was a big part of it - the insular nature of the playerbase was naturally conducive to getting to know people better, since all the best content required actual competent humans to help out with.
Of those friends, I eventually lost touch with almost all of them after I stopped playing videogames...just a hobby I grew out of, and it didn't make much sense eventually to use an actual game/game-wiki purely as social media. But we sure had Some Times. Ended up moving in with one of them (Big Deal - got me out of living with parents, started an independent life of my own, etc.). Had a few travel cross-country to visit. Got my first job via their encouragement and references. Aesthetic tastes in entire artistic fields shaped by game-friends...not just regarding games, but anime, music, TV, fashion, books...the sort of influences people normally get from irl friends and family. But I didn't have either of those for guidance, so...it's these nerdy misfits who I grew up with instead.
Still have one dude that I continue to text regularly (we used to use Skype, before that became a worthless piece of shit - you know an app is bad when it's outclassed by ancient SMS messaging). Hosted him at my place twice, and went to my first/only concert with him (Muse!). Similar upbringings, wildly divergent politics these days...but we still bond over ageing parent woes, music, the pains of growing older, the difficulty of dating as unattractive nerds. Soon it'll have been a 20-year friendship. I think that's pretty cool, for something that started in a long-ago videogame and is still 99% "distance". Longer-running than any of my strictly-meatspace friends, haha.
In high school one of my closest friends was somebody I knew exclusively online, from playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights. (Eventually we also chatted on AIM, to further date myself.)
Yes, but it was back in Usenet days. I participated in a group (alt.fan.cecil-adams) that was sort of based on debunking urban legends (but not to the same extent that alt.folklore.urban did), but evolved into part joking around, part arguing about engineering problems, part sharing of joys and sorrows, and then some more joking around. I met one of my now-dearest friends there, and I visit in person several times a year, as well as communicating by email and Facebook. I am online friends with a lot of the other old AFC-A people too, and we will show up in person for weddings and funerals (sadly, more of the latter these days) and will make an effort to visit one another when we are traveling nearby.
Oh yes, Usenet! I have/had a few good friends on sci.electronics.design. I think the great thing usenet had was extended conversations between people. It would be nice to have more of that here. I should go visit (online) again.
Same here, though I mostly lurked. In a lot of ways it was my first internet community, so it's probably for the better I don't have a lot of embarrassing posts floating around.
Several people on IRC, specifically through roleplaying communities - two of my three relationships started this way. I unfortunately can't really recommend the approach, though, IRC is pretty much dead in the water these days. But it *did* work for me.
That said, engaging with people in the Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten comment section has gotten me at least one close friend so far, Concavenator (https://www.deviantart.com/concavenator), who comes to my corner of the internet about once a week to hang out for a little while (and, incidentally, roleplay with me, in his Tagra setting -- https://www.deviantart.com/concavenator/gallery/73059461/tagra).
As someone who has been on IRC every day for the past 22 years and continues to RP there with existing friends: I suppose in some sense it isn't, but if I compare it with twenty years ago, the chance that I can make new friends there has absolutely dropped dramatically. New people are coming in (on the network level, not the channel level) at a rate that might as well be a rounding error, and, most damningly, they usually don't stay for more then five minutes, which just isn't the pace of IRC.
This is my day to day experience (also in talking to long standing staff members of other "large" IRC networks that happen to be on the one I call home). That said, I *can* certainly imagine Libera or Freenode still being active spaces, so IRC being dead is probably not entirely universal, but it certainly seems to have stopped being an overall thriving community catering to many interests.
Do you disagree with this? If so, can you elaborate why?
For clarification, I assume that you mean a friend whom one continues to know *only* online, right? Otherwise, there is at least one person I met on a dating site that would count for me.
I wasn't thinking of that constraint when I asked the question. That said, I would probably exclude dating sites, because... Well, I don't have a great reason to exclude them...
Does Bumble still have the "friends only" setting? Seems like an alright concept for meeting people in real life although I never tried it. Maybe past use of bumble as a dating app biased me towards thinking it was too gay-adjacent. Of course the one time I did try Craigslist "strictly platonic" back in the day on an extended work trip I was getting a lot of emails from addresses like "hungstud69@...", which doesn't help. Anyway, my answer is no.
There's been some strong push-back on the interpretation of Chinese documents in this from James Palmer at Foreign Policy and other folks who can speak and write Chinese:
There's also a decently convincing-looking report out going the other way (pinning it on the wet market - raccoon dogs are blamed, IIRC). Truth is we'll never know.
For a number of infections (apparently most, see article below), they are much more severe for adults than for kids. We now have vaccines against some of the worst, but I think there was a time when "measle parties" actually made sense. (Inviting a child with measles to a party, so that all other children also get it.) Since you were likely to get measles sooner or later, it was better to get it sooner.
Disclaimer: Measle parties are a terrible idea nowadays. Measles are not harmless, not even for kids. Vaccination is a much much better option.
This seems to be true for a lot of infections that we understand well, like measles. For a lot of other infections like common cold, we don't understand them so well, but by analogy the same reasoning might apply. So I would default to "Probably it's true".
I would be very careful to apply analogies between different diseases. Biology is more complicated and very often they do not hold even when you could expect similar reaction.
Never heard that it is good or bad that children get colds very often. I was taught this as merely the statement of a fact that children get colds very often, i.e., that it is an inevitable and does not cause much harm.
My one personal data point. As a kid I was sick with viral infections as well as strep a lot.
I’m 70 now and the last time I missed work for a legit illness - rather than a Twins home game - was in the early 1990s
Since Covid hit I haven’t had any symptoms that would merit a test. I have seasonal allergies and occasionally take an antihistamine in the morning for a runny nose but it always resolves within an hour.
I would be very surprised if getting sick a lot is actually a good thing. the version of common wisdom I've heard is that it's not entirely terrible if your kid keeps putting filthy stuff in their mouth. it can give them enough exposure to random pathogens and allergens to train their immune system *without* getting sick.
Ive googled „ is it good to get sick when young“ and there are tens of articles from reputable sources agreeing that it is. It’s just about immunity. Of course some viruses and pathogens mutate more than others so you don’t gain full lifetime immunity.
I’ve heard claims that this is just about fungi and bacteria and that viruses aren’t relevant. I’ve also heard claims that it’s actually just about exposure to potential allergens themselves and not microbes at all.
Indeed, I think viruses are somewhat prone to mess up the immune system rather than help it. Whereas with all the other sorts, right up to relatively large parasitic worms, there may be immunological advantages to having some acquaintance with the creatures. Even if there are downsides too.
Now while I am vaccinated and even got a booster last December, I drink regularly at the bar in pubs and in general do not hide from the world. I have not had Covid as far as I know, but it seems probable that I sample some virions from time to time, and that my immune system registers their presence. I don't rule out the idea that exposure to viruses might also sometimes be beneficial, is what I am saying. But the hygiene hypothesis, if it is true, is probably not mainly about viruses. Part of it might be about gut microflora rather than direct immunological issues, I suspect.
To get people to show up, you could have everyone contribute money for food. Then they are more committed and less likely to bail out. A pot luck where people have publicly committed to a dish (via email or something) may work as well.
Recruit allies. Two or three friends that share your goals and will help make things a success. Its best if these people have other groups of friends that can expand the potential circle.
If you do this on a small scale, like 8-10 people, tell guests that its expected to be an interesting event with discussion. When you invite them you can say "I hold dinners at my house with 8 or so people i think are interesting and I think you are interesting." Something like that which flatters them and primes them to come in "interesting person mode" (instead of like chill out and relax mode or have small talk mode". You'll also want to have some interesting, thought provoking, but not super decisive topics to bring up. Maybe something like "I read a profile of {academic/author/poet/business person} and they said {something not everyone would agree with}. I thought that was interesting/strange/enticing. {Name of person}, do think {i am right/missing something/crazy} whatever?"
My strategy has been to start with a small core of friends, and invite them over for a big, hefty course. Something like boeuf bourguignon, carbonnade flammande, etc. That's to convince them I can cook. Then next time I propose them to invite a couple of people they know, expending the number of people who know about me and I can contact when I want to host a dinner.
>conversation is lively and interesting
I have no idea, it's killing my will to host these dinners and I'm gonna try some of the ideas in your response.
>people feel inclined to invite new people to come
Just tell them you got room for x persons and they should invite friends.
One small suggestion is not to think of it as weekly dinners while you're still trying to get it started. Just think of it as one single dinner. If it goes well, do it again.
In my childhood, it was about having a piece of entertainment (such as listening to an opera with translated libretto running in parallel on a screen) scheduled every time. These days a couple of clicks on your phone gives you all kinds of entertainment, so I'm not sure if something like that would work.
Maybe have some kind of game scheduled, with some kind of symbolic prize for the winner?
Make sure the first meeting is a success. :) Word of mouth is essential. To be a success you need to be unstressed, the fools needs to be good, and the cherry is you need to do something unusual that’s a hit. If you could actually get a fun, engaging and relaxed philosophical debate going on that would fit the bill.
But don’t worry about choice 3 so much at first. Make sure you have good food, good music, and that YOU are relaxed and having fun.
Choose a subject you love and know a lot about. Offer good food and a comfortable place to hang out. Call it a club for that subject. Say a philosophy club. Get a sense of how seriously people want to actually discuss that subject. And relax and enjoy yourself! Create a mailing list, and choose a day of month to meet, such as 2 pm once a month on the second Saturday.
I want to do this for a P.G. Wodehouse reading club. My challenge is finding people who will truly read the book assigned. They seem to want to socialize without having read the book.
Much as I enjoy P. G. Wodehouse, I find it hard to imagine a P. G. Wodehouse book club. "This week's book was a lot like last week's book, except the character names and awkward comic situations are changed around a little bit".
Acerbic, bailiwick (you already played balustrade, I like that one too), caliginous, dearth, entourage, fusillade, gurney, heiress, iniquity, jalopey, keening, legerdemain, mellifluous, (nattering) nabob (of negativity), omerta, puerile, quillions, rakshasa, seance, turgid, ululation (prefer unction, but conjugation), viridian, widdershins, Xin-Shalast, yore, zenith.
Not my actual BiS list, probably, but I haven't thought on such topic for some time. Unlike "unusually good sounding numbers", the ready answer to which is *always* 5.
Haha good to see lugubrious get some love, although it’s one of those words that in my head means something completely different to its actual meaning, like vermillion
What does it mean for a word to sound good? I tried thinking of some words but I can't see beauty in a single word. I love some words that describe women and cute animals (Voluptuous, Sultry, Toe Beans) and I love old literature because it sounds so fancy and grandiose: Skakespearean English, biblical translations, and things like that.
I can't think of any! There are some that when I read them have me just cooing with pleasure, but I don't seem to have them stored in memory.
Well, there is one: poise. What delights me is that besides meaning, you know, *poise.* the word is also a unit of measure of viscosity. So honey has more poise than water. That's just perfect and yummy.
"They were roaming in the gloaming where the roses bloom so fair,
Just a soldier and his sweetheart staunch and true,
Two hearts were filled with sorrow and there's no thought of tomorrow
As she pinned a rose upon his coat of blue"
— "I'll Be With You When the Roses Bloom Again", by Gus Edwards and Will Cobb (1901)
There's an early recording by Henry Burr, but most of those who perform the song now got it directly or indirectly from the 1929 old-time recordings by Burnett and Rutherford. It's become a bluegrass and old-time-music standard. It's a tear-jerker.
Oh yes, I do like that one. I remember the first time I encountered it. It was in an essay by Tom Wolfe called 'Girl of the Year.' He was describing a mass of people dancing at party, and broken glasses getting crunched underfoot "in the gloaming."
Good column from Ross Douthat today in the Times. I won’t link it because it’s paywalled.
He talks about the strange role reversal of America’s Left and Right happening recently.
Food for thought.
Ha that premise as you stated definitely true. I feel like I'm in a fun house a lot.
Some examples of switch flips:
The "pro-Russia" party flipped. In 2008 we had Obama and were all about "Reset button with Russia" and it was the right warning about Russian propaganda techniques.
The "pro mask" side flipped in Covid, but very quickly (it took like 2 months into the pandemic). The first two months of the pandemic the right was all about , shutting the border and masks, and some had biohazard suits in their Twitter profile pics, versus the "Covid scare-mongering as racism" headlines. The flip happened in March 2020.
Feels like a sleight of hand somewhere is happening honestly.
The most surprising one to me was Democrats becoming the party of big business and Republicans becoming anti-business.
2009*-10. Obama didn't take office in 2008 yet. My bad.
Just adding tally 5000 to my list of insufferable NPR employees. From the major hosts to most of the reporters. I would pay money for an app that automagically blocked NPR employees or NPR employee adjacent discourse from Reddit and Twitter for me. Rather talk to Carlson or Hannity than these people.
If this kind of stuff doesn't make you admit that, yes, huge swathes of online leftists are completely mental, I don't know what will: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qNiAuCqJRdI
You can learn about people by knowing them personally.
You can learn about people by talking to them online.
You can learn about people by reading what they write online.
You can learn about people from reading a tendentious selection of the worst/silliest shit they wrote online. (<- you are here)
You can learn about an entire group of people from the fact that someone posted a link allegedly showing them to be "completely mental". (<- people replying should take care not to end up here)
Because leftists hate white people so so much that the power of their conviction breaks through the non-existence barrier, like Check Yeager powering his jet outta Mach 1 into the wild blue yonder.
It might be common knowledge here that I don’t like Donald Trump. This is the very first time I haven’t been able to put myself in the other guy’s shoes and see “Yeah, if you look at it that way, I suppose.”
When I’ve asked on this forum how to work it out in my brain the answer is something like, “He may be a bastard, but he’s my bastard.” Okay, I can get as far as “He may be a bastard.” and that’s as far as I can imagine.
His very own words make him out to be so awful a specimen of a human being that I can’t even put it into words.
So I’m going to let a British author express this in his words and say, “Yeah, that’s what I see. “
I might get banned for this but I just have to get my feelings out. I know, “Fuck my feelings.” But beyond that. I’d be interested to see which parts of this his fans disagree with.
“A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”
Bravo! You put my thoughts into words (mostly). How do I share this with my friends and family? Do I need to subscribe to something?
I’m grateful to you for your eloquent description of many things Trump-ish.
https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-description-of-trump-i-ve-read
I didn’t give a link or provide the author’s name above. It was written by Nate White and appeared in The London Daily.
Thanks for helping me understand this.
https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-description-of-trump-i-ve-read
First, he's a bastard, in a pool where being a bastard is expected. He's also a harmless bastard. If you remember 2016, you remember the discourse on the left of how Trump would ruin America. It would become a fascist, racist, sexist ethnostate. They would expatriate to Canada (ok that one is claimed every 4 years, but still). He would empower Russia. Etc etc. None has come to pass.
He's also in a pool where you expect everyone to be a bastard, and can reasonably presume that anyone looking nice is simply a very crafty bastard. And in this pool, most of his competitors may sound to be less bastardly than he, but also a lot more harmful than he.
TL;DR part 1: The qualities you look for in a President aren't the ones you look for in a best friend.
Secondely, regarding the British text you wrote, it's wrong or myopic on multiple points. Trump has humor, made jokes., gave comedic delivery during speeches, just not British humor. Trump went into politics with no support within the establishment, against first his own party, then half his own party + a very well entrenched candidate that saw victory as so sure that she could just claim it "was her turn" and her follower went with that. He was the underdog, just a wealthy underdog (and if not a robin hood, what about an Ivanhoe or a Florian Geyers...ok maybe not that last one).
What remains is the bully-ness, to which I agree (althrough you could also argue wether the bullying is in the eye of the beholder, wether he's a worse bully than others in his pool, or wether we need the opinion of a British, the people who basically invented the stuff, on that), but which leads us to the 2nd TL; DR: The qualities you look for in a President aren't the ones you look for in a best friend.
I felt the complaints that Trump was too authoritarian were somewhat validated when he tried to stay on as president despite losing the election
What do you think of Al Gore contesting the election of 2000?
What do *you* think of Al Gore contesting the election of 2000?
If Gore had succeeded in getting the recounts he wanted, life would have gone on, and the legal precedent set would have been fine.
Trump called on his vice president to unilaterally pick which electoral college votes would be rejected. If he had succeeded in making this happen, it would permanently have changed how presidential elections work, granting a huge advantage to the incumbent. I would describe that as authoritarian.
He asked for a recount, which is standard practice in a close election. Then the Supreme Court stopped the recount, and he conceded defeat.
Meh. I assume all politicians are narcissists, if not sociopaths. Ugly people pretty much to a man, or woman. You have to be, to have the kind of single-minded drive to dominate and live in the limelight like that. So it neither surprises nor upsets me when a politician has a nasty character.
What matters to me are only his policy choices. On policy Trump was mostly pretty milquetoast, a modest tax cut is pretty much it. The single exception, which is "Operation Warp Speed," a unique public-private cooperative agreement that enormously speeded up the development of COVID vaccines, seems a bit to clever to be his idea, but he put his signature and name to it, so he gets credit in the arbitrary way we judge things. On policy he gets like a B-, mostly for all the stuff he didn't do while he was bloviating, and that's all I really care about. I couldn't care less about the sound and fury on Twitter and late-night talk shows, to neither of which I pay the slightest attention. I don't care in the slightest about cruel or bad jokes, or things said that were mean or in bad taste, or if he invited the Joint Chiefs to a night of hookers and blow at the White House. The "dignity of the office" means exactly squat to me. Generically, I rate the honor of the President no higher than the honor of a two-dollar doxy, and maybe lower if the latter consistently gives good value for the money.
In the end, I'm not a Trump supporter, mostly because he is unable to do the most important task of a leader, which is to hire good subordinates and keep their trust. He was able to hire a lot of good people, initially, but somehow working with him enraged people and all the good people left, leaving him with shitheads and suckups. That makes it impossible to get stuff done, so that makes him no good as a President.
But I didn't mind him. He wasn't the worst President I've ever seen. Biden isn't noticeably better, mostly because he's clueless on economic issues and has no serious influence in Congress even among his own people, so kind of equally impotent.
WoolyAI wrote a great response. But another point worth considering is that you've most likely been manipulated. You're probably only seeing what the media, which hates him, wants you to see. I.e. selection bias, misrepresentation, plain lies - and more, aimed at achieving a certain result.
I'm not the biggest fan of Trump (after his 2016 primary win I considered going Never-Trumper and voting libertarian before deciding that I should vote my self-interest instead of standing athwart history yelling stop). But I can't help noticing that there definitely were moments when his not very attractive persona showed grace, compassion, class (read some speeches or some transcripts from when he invited non-political and not powerful people to the White House to talk). He also frequently showed competence way over what we're seeing from this administration. And you will also notice that, although he was a bully towards the leftist elites (well-deserved, I say), he never acted as if he hated the regular Democrat-voting guy. Contrast this with speeches about how Republicans in general are awful that we're treated to all the time.
I can't believe I'm defending the guy, but I do believe you've been played. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to dislike Trump to some degree, but you, together with most people who have TDS, are clearly victims of the extremely successful anti-Trump propaganda campaign.
Doesn't it seem a bit strange to you that you get so worked up every time you hear his name? I'm fairly certain that it's not just his persona and his record (which was really not all that bad). It always surprises me how unaware most people are that something about their reactions here is not right.
So I considered writing a variety of "mistake theory" responses to this but...they all felt dishonest. Trump's appeal, certainly post-2017, is pure conflict theory. Apologies for the CW.
You're not giving proper weight to "he's my bastard." I suggest you model Trump voters, certainly die hard voters, as 100% sincerely believing that Blue America and every Blue president, no matter how charming and virtuous, sincerely and devoutly hate them. That most of their own leaders, from Mitch McConnell to George Bush and certainly John McCain, as best are ambivalent about them and at worst actively hate them.
At which point nothing else matters. In any discussion of potential candidates for any office, the first question is "does this person hate me, my family, and everything we value". If they do hate you, that's it, you vote for the other guy. Trump is the other guy, he's proudly been the other guy for 7 years, and whatever his faults he stuck faithfully by a base who are convinced, in the marrow of their bones, that every other political actor hates them.
I'll not argue the factual accuracy of this view, but at best you're making an attempt to understand the views of people who's beliefs you don't share, and I suggest being able to interpret events through this view to predict how the Trump block will react.
Thanks again for unraveling this for me but as Columbo used to say, just one more thing. Why do they think McCain in particular hates them?
Mostly because McCain and his clan took point against Trump on Russiagate. There's social/class stuff, still a lot of bad blood about McCain's "Trump activated the crazies" (1), but the core is the McCain took point against Trump.
Most of the Trump base views Russiagate the way the left views January 6th; as attempted coups against the legitimately elected president. Whatever your views on the facts of the investigation, they were never designed or presented with the intention of convincing the Trump base. Quite frankly, most on the left don't really have any plans, or even believe in the possibility, of convincing the Trump base of anything. As a result, they see these as plots to overthrow and defame their "guy" by a media and federal bureaucracy that hates them. And John McCain was the guy publicly defaming Trump and providing political cover to what they see as an attempted, and semi-successful coup.
It's extremely CW but you can get a good grasp on the Trump base's ID on McCain by watching the Rageholic's youtube rants on McCain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKLS4I4yJU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DhBrTtn2Ho
(1) https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/248232-mccain-trump-fired-up-the-crazies/
Okay, thanks.
This is the most helpful explanation I’ve seen. I appreciate it. I think I actually get it now.
This is basically the most popular explanation going back to the 2015 primaries. I think it is basically accurate. The capitalist pig dogs accepted Trump because they knew the section of their base he had power over would not yield. So they cut a deal with Trump on court judges and a tax cut.
Glad to hear it.
Yes yes, rattle on endlessly about how "nasty" trump is while the left openly express their hatred of white people and especially white men, and even spread this toxic ideology to the schooling system. Keep on being surprised pikachu face when Trump keeps getting support from millions of voters.
It's reasonable hold Trump to a higher standard than internet commentators because Trump was the president. If somebody important like Biden (or even 1% of Democratic congresspeople) said they hate white people, you would have more of a point.
I remember the Obama administration chastising a school district for taking a bomb threat seriously.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/politics/barack-obama-ahmed-texas
The article you linked doesn't mention a bomb threat...
The linked article in that one has a picture of the clock.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/index.html
The kid brought a briefcase full of wires into school, the school called the police, and the Obama administration praised the kid and said the school failed him.
That's not a bomb threat. A bomb threat is a threat to set off a bomb. Most people will read your comment, not read the article, and come away with the incorrect impression that the Obama administration chastised a school district for taking a bomb threat seriously.
It's always a pleasure to read articulate, witty, closely-reasoned posts like this one. Really puts gunflint's prose to shame:
"After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. "
What a shame truth doesn't naturally inhere in the most elegant claim of it, eh?
I have no quarrel with you, Brett. Have a good night. No sarcasm intended.
What percentage of the left would you estimate hates white people?
A complex question with a complex answer: https://ideasanddata.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/american-racism-and-the-anti-white-left/
It's actually a simple question. And you didn't give a complex answer, you just pointed to a complex article. You said the left openly expresses its hatred or white people. So taking into account all the stuff in the article, what percentage of the left would you estimate hates white people?
Meh, I'm not impressed. You see, it's not difficult to get banned by being an obvious troll. The *art* is in getting Scott to ban you while simultaneously appearing to be genuinely interested in a productive discourse.
2/10, try again (with a new account)
I did not miss it, nor did I need it – it was pretty obvious what you were going for after about 4 sentences. Which brings me back to my point: "it's not difficult to get banned by being an obvious troll."
It was simply a bad post, lacking any finesse.
That really should be higher up in the post. Either before or immediately after the first paragraph.
If you have to actually say explicitly that it is satire, then it isn't well written. You don't need to be told that a good joke is a joke, right? The fault here lies with the writer for not writing clearly.
The Atlantic has an interesting article in which the writer, a progressive, argues that top colleges could foster diversity by increasing admission of applicants from poor and working-class families, rather than by using racial discrimination. And doing so would be better than the current system.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/supreme-court-harvard-affirmative-action-legacy-admissions-equity/671869/
Some quotes:
The dirty secret of higher education in the United States is that racial preferences for Black, Latino, and Native American college students provide cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy. The current framework of race-based preferences—which goes before the Supreme Court on Monday—is broadly unpopular, has been highly vulnerable to legal challenges under federal civil-rights laws, disproportionately helps upper-middle-class students of color, and pits working-class people of different races against one another. Major public and private universities cling to the status quo anyway, because doing so is easier financially than helping demonstrably disadvantaged students. These institutions act as if the predominant version of affirmative action is the only way to promote racial diversity, but that simply isn’t true. It’s just better for them.
Top universities’ rhetoric about the value of race-based affirmative action is clearly at odds with the persistence of legacy admissions, in which the children of alumni, who are disproportionately white and wealthy, are admitted at significantly higher rates than their academic performance alone would justify. Yet the two practices are entirely consistent when admissions deans act less as objective evaluators of talent than as casting directors who try to minimize their employer’s expenses and maximize its revenues. Many administrators believe that legacy preferences help persuade alumni to donate more money; that most such alumni can also pay full tuition for their children makes these students all the more valuable.
When universities are forced to stop using race-based admissions, they find fairer ways to achieve racial diversity. After California voters approved the first statewide ban on racial preferences at public universities in 1996, institutions affected by similar measures across the country have adopted an array of progressive policies that indirectly promote racial diversity by doing more to admit socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Thankfully, the political system won’t tolerate resegregation of higher education by race. In red and blue states alike, therefore, colleges that cannot employ race-based preferences have increased financial-aid budgets, taken top-ranking students from high schools in poor communities, dropped the use of legacy preferences, and increased admission of students who transfer from community colleges. Without using race, UC Berkeley and UCLA—which, among the top 25 national universities as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, consistently have the highest percentage of students who receive federal Pell Grants—in 2021 admitted their most racially diverse classes in more than 30 years.
It will be tough to pull that off in the face of the kind of no-nonsense strict limitations the Supreme Court is capable of handing down, should it choose to do so, without bringing back standardized exams in a big way. Standardized tests are the greatest tool ever for discovering diamonds in the rough, students in shitty schools from disastrous families who nevertheless have what it takes to succeed academically, because -- as many a sad parent forking out $$$ for a test-prep course has discovered -- they are more resistant to socioeconomic gaming than almost any other criterion.
I have worked in education for over 15 years and have a lot of experience with standardized testing. One thing that has shifted my view, is that at any given time I know about three hundred students fairly well, and I have access to their standardized test scores. The top scoring students are all very smart, although some small portion of them are lazy and jerks and haven't created anything of value in life other than their high test scores.
But in the middle, lets say 50-90th percentile, the test scores are less reliable. Some kids have zero insight, are not curious, can't produce good work except on a worksheet, but they consistently score well above what any of their teachers would expect on standardized tests. (good test takers). Then certain others are intellectually curious, produce great work, they do creative things, then punch below their league on the tests. (poor test takers)
Everybody knows there are good test takers, but seeing the human impact year after year has convinced me that we need more specific tests, and better tests, or we need to put less weight on the tests for those who are scoring in the middle.
Sure, a test is an imperfect instrument. I've written and administered hundreds myself, and I fully endorse this. However, we are not looking for the ideal instrument, the magical Talent-O-Meter that you can point at a human being and have a reading on the Latent Talent Scale pop up good to four decimal place -- because such a thing does not exist, and will probably never exist.
What we're trying to do is compare tests to what *else* we have, which is stuff like grades in a previous school, recommendations, essays, and so forth. Compared to any of the latter, standardized tests are almost magically better, particularly at identifying students who have significant deficits in their preparation or background, people who have talent but are stuck in backwards crappy educational or family situations. Nothing picks that up better than a blind, stupid test, which cannot be influenced by the reputation of the school, by how similar the student is to the culture and look of the examiner, by the student's social skills and winning smile, by cram and prep efforts, and the like.
It's by no means perfect, but it's about the only instrument we have that can't easily be gamed by social skills, either of the student or the parents (or schools, since schools naturally want to promote their students), and is highly resistant to socioeconomic advantages.
I'm afraid I'm also skeptical that your actual motivation is to help students who have genuine talent but test poorly. In my experience -- and I unfortunately include myself in this indictment, being human -- what happens is that teachers take a liking to certain students, for a variety of human psychological and social reasons, and some of those students don't do as well as the teacher who likes them thinks they should, or wishes they would, and wants to help *those* students -- the one he or she likes personally. (Often the key is vague evaluations of being "intellectually curious" and "doing creative work", both of which are sufficiently poorly-defined that they can mean almost anything at all, and need not correlate with brute raw ability.) I know that sounds mean, but bear in mind I am including myself among the people who have fooled themselves this way. It's easy to do . Its' very hard to accept, as a human being, that this other human being with a sterling character, who you like very much, just doesn't have the intellectual horsepower you wish he did.
So I rather suspect you are rationalizing that the test doesn't give "accurate" results for the students you like, when the truth is probably closer to that the test is showing you the limits of your own ability to be objective. Again, I'm not claiming to be any better, I'm human, too. But I think the impersonal exam, standardized against 10 million others across the country, is the only reliable way to avoid the difficult influence of human social skills and social judgments.
Yes, we agree the SAT is an imperfect data point, and it also carries an incredible amount of weight. I argue that we can do better. At some schools we are administering standardized tests 2 and 3 times a year, and this data could be used along with other tests (IB, AP SAT II) I think if you read my comment you will see that I am arguing the the SAT is rather "meh" unless you are in the 90th percentile and really crushing it. The difference between someone in the 70th percentile and someone in the 85th can make a difference in their admissions, but I don't have a lot of confidence that this is meaningful data. Someone has probably done a study of predictive value of the SAT across the different percentile ranges.
Yes I am rationalizing that the test doesn't give accurate results for some of the students I like. It is very accurate for selecting those at the top though.
I am talking about the SAT and the big standardized tests, not testing in classes. SAT is dictating what happens in schools far too much. There are other options such as AP and International Baccalaureate, which are offering more specific exams. The problem I see is that schools are being incentivised to become SAT test prep academies. Teach rote memorization of applying mathematical algorithms and rather than kindling the spark of learning. The smartest kids will be bored.
Schools are already moving towards standards based grading, which means grades are based on knowing the material, passing tests, rather than on completing assignments on time, or doing HW etc. This is good for smart kids who don't do hw and worksheets. But by definition most people are average and they would benefit if school was based less on the SAT.
What would it even mean for a school to be an SAT prep academcy. Years ago, right after college, I worked for a test prep company, writing materials and teaching SAT classes. I agree with Carl Pham that it's quite a good test of developed ability. I can't really think of a way to run as school like an SAT prep academy, other than to try to do a really good job teaching kids reading, writing and math. Take vocabulary: there are hundreds of low-frequency words that might appear on the SAT. There's no way to teach them all to kids via memorization. The kids whose vocabulary is going to be an asset on the SAT are the ones who read a lot. The ones who are going to do well on reading comprehension are the ones who are pushed in their classes to read thoughtfully. And the situation is analogous with math. There isn't any kind of SAT prep for math that's useless except for getting a good SAT math score. What gets kids a good SAT math score is having good math skills.
> Take vocabulary: there are hundreds of low-frequency words that might appear on the SAT. There's no way to teach them all to kids via memorization
"Hundreds of words" doesn't sound tricky to memorise.
Here in Australia, where we do a fair amount of "pass an IQ test to get into this special school" activity, a huge industry has popped up in the last few decades coaching kids from the age of three to perform well on IQ tests. Some of it is just literal shape rotation, but it turns out you can do a lot better on a shape rotation puzzle if you've been doing them every week for five years than if this is the first time you've ever seen one.
As a result the demographics of these special schools have been completely overturned to be composed entirely of the sorts of groups who are most likely to send their kids to special after-school classes for twelve hours a week from the age of three in the hopes of getting into a slightly better school.
What you do is remove everything from the curriculum, except what is on the test. This is what has been the trend for years, especially at lower performing schools. You focus on worksheet applications, multiple choice, rather than on real world type applications (because this is too time consuming and less efficient).
China gets top scores on the PISA. I spent a year in Chinese schools and I understand why: Total rote memorization and teaching to the test. French schools are also very rigorous, and they all follow the same curriculum. US schools on the other hand are all over the place, but in general are very much about kindling the fire, being positive, having fun etc. No other country has things like homecoming and high school cheerleaders. So the US is far more towards kindling the spark than you seem to recognize.
I've always thought that the best case for race-aware affirmative action is: out of fairness and self-interest, universities should try to "control for privilege" and admit students who have proven that they will make the most of whatever opportunities they had, rather than just taking those who were tutored, coached, and coddled into getting the highest SAT scores. Because of intergenerational disparities in wealth and educational achievement, cultural bias, and the probably-real-after-all effects of self-fulfilling teacher expectations, race can legitimately be a factor in this consideration; other things equal, the average black high school senior with a 1530 probably-with-high-uncertainty had to show a bit more initiative to get it than a white classmate with the same score.
The problem is that the causal effect of race, if any, is empirically hard to measure, and even if it exists on average, the correlation of race with K-12 educational resources is far from perfect (e.g. many schools pad their "diversity" stats with a bunch of wealthy African exchange students). Zip code and socioeconomic status are much better predictors of how much external support a kid got on the way to submitting their Common App, and doing affirmative action by regressing on these variables would be a much better way of getting a truly diverse student body that is hungry to take full advantage of its new opportunities.
How could colleges possibly determine who was "making the most of their advantages"? This is an impossible standard. The room for interpretation is so broad colleges could hide anything inside it.
A better question would be how colleges could possibly be *forbidden* from doing this, short of forcing them to ignore everything but test scores. Any admissions counselor will advise you to fill your essays, recommendation letters, and interviews with specific evidence of your resourcefulness and dedication in overcoming obstacles, because it's very rational for admissions committees to want to know this when evaluating how efficiently you'll work to convert their college's resources into future achievements and alumni donations.
Yeah but their ability to accurately evaluate this is 0 or even possibly negative, so...
>The problem is that the causal effect of race, if any, is empirically hard to measure, and even if it exists on average,
It doesn't. Asian students beat the brakes off every other group even (and often especially) after controlling for wealth, and they're the ones that are most discriminated against
>The correlation of race with K-12 educational resources is far from perfect (e.g. many schools pad their "diversity" stats with a bunch of wealthy African exchange students).
School voucher lottery programs have conclusively demonstrated that there aren't "good schools" once you control for the students who attend them
>Zip code and socioeconomic status are much better predictors of how much external support a kid got on the way to submitting their Common App
Zip code is HEAVILY correlated with race, and its not even clear that "external support" is what explains different in college admissions.
Perhaps you should actually look at the data instead of just speculating about this stuff
> there aren't "good schools" once you control for the students who attend them
> its not even clear that "external support" is what explains different in college admissions
Even if Hanushek's hotly contested claim that variance in school expenditures has no causal effect on educational outcomes is true—and to find that it is, you have to regress away a *lot* of community descriptors that I would fold into "inequitably distributed educational resources"—he doesn't dispute that different schools have different causal effects on student outcomes. From http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek+Woessmann%202017%20from%20Gustafsson%20Festschrift.pdf:
>Due to the limited role of differences in expenditures and class size in explaining cross-country achievement differences, it may be tempting to conclude that school systems do not matter so much for student achievement, after all. Nothing could be more wrong than that. Evidence that differences in teacher quality and instruction time do matter suggests that what matters is not so much the amount of inputs that school systems are endowed with, but rather how they use them.
Therefore, I stand by my assertion that looking at student achievement relative to the average for someone in the same school system (which correlates with ZIP code much better than race does) and of similar SES is a better way for colleges to estimate the unobservable "individual ability and motivation" variable than simply using raw test scores.
It's kind of weird to just assume that the children of parents who would go to such extravagant lengths to give their kids opportunities would be complete slackers and not want to take advantage of those opportunities. Why would the apple fall so far from the tree? The parents are hyper aggressive about exploiting opportunity, but the offspring couldn't care less?
OK this is going to sound super racist or wrong or something, but I also think it's a truth that should be said more. US universities have been sucking the smart people out of everywhere. And for those living in the 'everywhere' that is not a US college town, city. It sucks, cause the smart people are mostly gone.
...Oh and so I support them selecting on things other than talent. (IQ)
I agree, but you would also have to cut those kids off from good jobs in the city. colelge isn't theo nly reason they leave. College is mostly just a way for them to get good jobs away from their hometowns anyway
Is there any reason we can't just program AI with something like "don't do anything that you think we'll dislike?" I would think a sufficiently smart AI could create a pretty good internal model for how the imaginary neutral-average human being thinks, possibly better than we have ourselves, and be able to predict what kinds of world outcomes that we would find strongly distasteful from that. It would be extremely limiting of course but would it be acceptable to let the AI go off of its own best guess of what our values are as a holdover until we figure out how to spell out those values explicitly i.e. actually align it? My gut feeling is that any AI smart enough to do catastrophic damage would also be smart enough that its "things humans want" model would be good enough -ish for it to not go down paths of causing catastrophic damage
Have you read Superintelligence?
I have not, I'll take this as a recommendation
Look at the world now. Does it look like we dislike war, poverty, murder and genocide? We would have to tell the AI "do as we say, don't do as we do."
The way that you make an AI today is you create a very large set of training data and then you let the AI try various things and then you score the AI's efforts. It make random modifications to itself, runs through the training set, and then takes the changes that result in the most positive changes. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Obviously that's an oversimplification, but it's basically true.
So how do you score like let's say hundreds of millions to billions to tens of billions of efforts to "not do anything we'll dislike"? Because that's what you need to do in there.
The classic AI alignment problem is that you create a proxy for "what we'll like/dislike," but the AI only cares about the proxy, not the reality. So like you say, "Well, we'd like you to make paperclips," and the AI is like, "Awesome, I'll turn your car into paperclips," and because you didn't anticipate this in your training set, the AI, even if it's so smart that it understands on some level that you don't want your car turned into paperclips, dgaf.
> So how do you score like let's say hundreds of millions to billions to tens of billions of efforts to "not do anything we'll dislike"?
I had imagined the AI being fed a bunch of human language, like fiction writing and social media posts and stuff. Though after reading these comments I think I might be assuming too much similarity to a person in regards to how an AGI would "think" for that to make any sense.
1) "Don't do anything that you think we'll dislike" is a sentence in English, not a mathematical specification or a computer program, and we don't know in general how to turn the former into the latter.
2) Even if you could turn it into a flawless mathematical specification, we don't know in general how to create an AI that robustly follows a particular utility function (the inner alignment problem).
If we were actually able to create an AI that always wanted to not do things we'd dislike, exactly in the way we meant that, even in really weird scenarios that we never thought about while training it, the AI alignment problem would be 80+% solved.
Yeah good points. Now that you say it, it seems obvious that these systems might not even be conscious, and why would we know whether they would be? As for what we want, I feel like just by being alive I have a pretty good intuition for situations I'd really want to avoid being stuck in, and that an AI could do much better (and that I wouldn't be much different from most anyone else in this regard). But my feeling there could be super naive and I guess maybe an AI couldn't just figure those things out only from observing us, and not being able to live as one of us?
Could a steel wrench last for 1,000 years?
1) The wrench snaps if more that 200 ft-lbs of torque are applied to it. (Note: I made up that figure, so don't criticize me if I'm way off in real life) All users have ways of precisely determining how much torque they apply to the wrench, and no one ever exceeds 180 ft-lbs.
2) The wrench is kept oiled so it won't rust.
3) People who use the wrench are careful not to abuse it by throwing it against hard surfaces or using it for things it wasn't designed for.
4) The wrench is used every day.
Wouldn't the wrench last for 1,000 years under these conditions? If not, why not?
Having worked at a factory and seen firsthand the tool replacement process, absolutely not. Minor wear and tear is extremely common with any tool, especially one frequently used. Minor bending of key areas is normal, and can strip bolts if continued to be used. That's with a lifespan of 5-10 years of regular use.
How much is it getting used?
Moderate daily use will see the wrench become useless through abrasive wear long before 1,000 years.
Wear is the one that comes to mind. If it's used 5 times a day, and each use removes a single layer of iron atoms, that will add up to 0.23mm over a thousand years, which is more than enough to make the wrench not fit bolts properly. I'm also dubious that you can entirely prevent oxidation by keeping it oiled, but I mentally substituted high-quality stainless steel alloy for your plain mild steel anyway.
For an interesting story about the challenges of long-term preservation of precision:
https://www.livescience.com/26017-kilogram-gained-weight.html
Hmm, I have no idea, who wants a wrench to last for 1k years?
No, almost certainly not if it's at all frequently getting anywhere near 180 ft-lbs. The torque (technically, the shear force resulting from that level of torque) at which the wrench immediately snaps when it's brand new is not only limiting factor for when it gets damaged by use. The two relevant effects I know of are plastic deformation and metal fatigue.
Plastic deformation is when enough force is applied to a material to permanently change its shape, as opposed to elastic deformation where the shape changes under load but snaps back into place when the load is removed. In this context, exceeding the wrench's elastic deformation limit will both permanently bend it and alter the characteristics of the metal where it's bent (making it more brittle, IIRC). Do this enough times to the wrench and it will either snap or get bent to the point of unsuitability. You can mitigate the latter by hammering it back into approximately its original shape, but that comes at the cost of doubling the changes to the metal.
But suppose that 200 ft-lbs is the elastic deformation limit of the wrench, not its immediate breaking point, so the wrench is never under enough strain to undergo plastic deformation. Even then, repeated loading will gradually weaken the wrench due to metal fatigue. Basically, the crystalline structure of the steel is stressed by the load, causing microscopic cracks to form and grow until eventually the steel breaks under loads that it would have borne easily when it was new.
Some metals (steel is amongst them) do have a lower limit of strain below which zero metal fatigue accumulates. If you keep the wrench below its fatigue limit, I don't know of any mechanism that would destroy it over time.
I'm thinking wear would accumulate at the work surfaces that contact the nuts being turned, as the wrench is fitted (imperfectly) against the nuts over and over. It would start with tiny scratches, and over time there would be more and more of them. In the limit, the parallel inside surfaces of the head would be worn round. But it would be a very slow process.
I agree with this. Note that a perfect fit is impossible, or the wrench would need to be press-fit onto the mating part. The clearance required for hand removal means the wrench will rotate to engage the mating faces, creating pressure points and cumulative deformation of the ductile steel.
I have never snapped a wrench outright that I can recall, but have had several worn in the way I describe.
Much faster than you think. With daily use, it would be a few years (5-10), and even irregularly used tools show clear signs in 50ish years.
At first blush it seems like why not? But even steel would wear with time with everyday use. Would it wear faster if used with bare hands or gloves? I suppose that would depend on the glove material. How many hours a day is it used? At what pace?
Now I’m thinking of the bronze nude male statue in Rome with the removable genitalia so it could be displayed to a G rated group. As the probably apocryphal story went, they didn’t count on the polishing effect of regular handling so the idea was abandoned.
Looks like a question for a material science person. Or maybe an old auto mechanic.
So people are panicking about Twitter and Elon Musk's actions so far.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/elon-musk-twitter-disastrous-weekend/671942/
I'm someone who has never loved Twitter and I am dismayed at how it influences media and national discourse. It seems to foster a special brand of toxicity and bring out the worst impulses and tendencies of online interaction. My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better? What platform do all those frustrated users move to and will that platform just turn into another Twitter? Is there an equivalent platform at all? Will media outlets actually have to start reporting on meaningful content rather than the latest Twitter dust-up? Those high-profile personalities who suck all the oxygen out of the room, will people simply stop paying attention to them without a platform?
Contra Contra Twitter: I love the character limit. American prose bloated around 1980 when it got too easy to just type and type without messing with paper. The character limit enforces concision. A lot of Twitter hate comes from frustrated bloviators. Journalists especially.
You make a good point, but it's easy to skip threads when the first post bores you, and the techno-gunk of line breaks and such is at worst, no worse than the gunk of bloviated prose.
> My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better?
No. Twitter is pretty technically simple. The toxicity is less due to its algorithm or platform and more because of the people on it. And they won't go away.
> Is there an equivalent platform at all?
In terms of technology? Many. In terms of network? No, but the networks can reform if the platform itself is destroyed.
> Will media outlets actually have to start reporting on meaningful content rather than the latest Twitter dust-up?
No. This happens because it's easy or they want to, not because of Twitter.
> Those high-profile personalities who suck all the oxygen out of the room, will people simply stop paying attention to them without a platform?
No.
"My question is, what if the best case scenario happens and it totally implodes? Imagine - advertisers leave, users sunset their accounts, the thing just turns into a ghost town. Do you think national discourse changes for the better?"
Yes.
If Twitter implodes, some other social media website will come along to replace them. I remember when Vines were all the thing, now they're withered and gone and TikTok has taken over. Remember the heyday of Myspace? Facebook is unusual in having survived so long, and part of why Zuckerberg is moving into Meta is because he senses change is necessary for survival.
All the people crying about Twitter will migrate elsewhere and start up the same nonsense on the new site.
IF people do leave Twitter, I do not think there is an immediate replacement waiting in the wings -- I think it will take a few years until the power users coalesce around something else.
But I don't think anyone's going to leave Twitter, IMO. People of all political persuasions have hated Twitter for a long time -- if a leftist writes a tweet calling it a "hellsite" they'll get tons of likes. But no one is ready to give up that dopamine drip.
Emily Oster wrote an article today that about "Covid amnesty" that got some attention. I only read the first paragraph before it was gated. In that paragraph, she mentions matter-of-factly that the mask she made of a bandana in April 2020 would've done nothing.
Is this now the consensus even among former mask advocates -- that the cloth masks we wore for a year were useless? Or is Oster contrarian here?
I may edit this with references later, but the pre-pandemic research on cloth mask material often ranked bandanas as the worst option to use. (Oddly enough tea-cloths came out as the best material in more than one paper.)
I always thought you wear a mask to stop your sickness from to spreading to others... like sneezing into your elbow/ sleeve. An extra layer of me sneezing into my elbow... may still be worth only 10%... IDK.
Masks work equally well in either direction — like window screens, which can keep the indoor flies in or the outdoor flies out. Anyone wearing a mask now is almost certainly doing it to reduce the chance of their catching Covid. Given that very few other people are wearing masks (in most parts of the country), for one individual to do so is going to make very little difference in the safety of other people in the vicinity.
I work in respiratory research.
Even a flimsy single layer of cloth imperfectly covering your mouth and nose is a *slight* decrease in risk. If an N-95 mask stops 95% of whatever micron size particles, the worst cloth mask might be equivalent to an "N-5" mask. But it's still better than literally nothing.
Most people don't think quantitatively about all this. If you've got a good fit, it's a 20:1 reduction in exposure. Realistically probably more like 10:1 since there will be leaks around the edges even with a pretty good-fitting mask, but that's still pretty substantial.
I think this is basically correct.
It's not like anyone has done an RCT on cloth mask vs n95 for covid particles, which seems like the sort of thing that would run into ethics issues. But we generally know that facial coverings prevent droplets from moving about. It makes sense that it would have some benefit, the same way we recommend staying 6 feet away from people but being 4 feet from someone is safer than 2 feet.
I was pretty interested in mask quality for a while, and looked at studies where particles in the size ranges likely to carry covid virions were shot at different mask materials, and at dummies with various kinds of masks, and masks with good vs poor fit. The upshot was that pretty much all masks do a little something, but that cloth masks are not all that effective. Obviously the values found differed from study to study, but cloth masks were usually found to be filtering out fewer than 50% of particles of the size range of concern.
We do not have a material with small enough holes in it to literally strain out the small airborne particles that carry covid. What captures them is an electrostatic charge in that papery material that non-surgical masks are made out of. They literally stick to it, via static electricity. One reason cloth masks are ineffective is that they strain, but do not have an electrostatic charge.
The masks people talk about as the good ones -- the n-95's, kn-94's etc -- really are quite good, especially if you are fussy about fit. Even if you do not get perfect fit on yours, you are probably cutting down the amount of virus you get by 90% or so, and that will be enough to keep you from getting infected most of the time, unless you are spending quite a while in a particularly dense cloud of virus. (Chance of getting infected is dose-related, and if you do get infected severity of illness is also dose-related.)
Yes, my understanding was that while cloth masks don't do nearly as much as N95s, etc., they do more than nothing. I know Oster is a slight contrarian, but it's not as if she's a COVID denier. That's why this sentence surprised me: "Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway."
I think part of the question here comes down to how transmission works. If it's mostly big droplets and surface contact, then a surgical or cloth mask probably decreases kind of transmission--it doesn't protect you, but protects others. If it's mostly tiny droplets that dry up into dust motes and float around for ahwile, then cloth and surgical masks don't do much but N95/KN95/etc. masks do.
Since the small droplets seem to matter a lot and the surface contamination seems to matter very little for covid transmission, N95/KN95 masks provide some real protection, whereas surgical and cloth masks are probably not very helpful.
Yeah, you’re right, I lost track of that.
It is basically a statistics thing. Cloth masks used and worn properly and with multiple layers and/or high thread counts are certainly superior to nothing. The question is whether the negatives are compensated for by the positives at that level of protection, and whether people used them correctly.
The other day I saw a dude cycling down a busy street on a hot day, wearing a mask but no helmet. The mind boggles at the sort of concept of personal risk you'd need to get to that point.
Yes that does seem weird. Are you sure it was a covid thing?
The people I know who suffer from seasonal allergies say they’ve discovered that wearing a mask outdoors reduces their symptoms. Seems plausible that cyclist was masking for that reason. Also agree with Axiom — even the
most committed maskers I know do not mask outdoors, unless they’re in a very crowded place
It's pretty common where I live...although I'd like to think it's because most of the outdoor spaces I pass through in SF are "transitional spaces". You know, people getting on and off transit, parking lots, walking around a mall or college...especially for a better-fitted Real Mask(tm), they're a damn hassle to take on and off, so it's totally understandable why one might just leave it on outdoors temporarily.
The real test is if people still wear them in "resting spaces" outdoors. Like if they masked while outdoor dining, or sitting on park benches, or whatnot. I have seen some cyclists, joggers, etc. with masks, but that could just as easily be explained by allergies. Masking makes me miserable no matter the type (hypersensory - why isn't more R&D thrown at making comfortable masks?), so I've gone without as much as possible...but I definitely did notice common large allergens like flower pollen bothered me much less. Might get back into the habit for Christmas season, we'll see. (Wreathes are a huge allergy offender where I work...oily needles everywhere.)
Because solo cycling with a mask is totally illogical even for people who support masks? Even the most pro-mask people where I live, and it is very hyper liberal Democrat, don't do that.
What were her controversial hot takes?
I can see giving amnesty to pretty much any civilian who was wrong or still is wrong about any Covid-related matter. The thing I feel unable to forgive is the hatred people exchanged during Covid disagreements. This sort of thing: On the Reddit Covid sub for my state, somebody put up a post asking for advice about their grandmother. She was in her 90’s, had Covid, and did not want to go to the hospital. Should the poster push back against what her GM wanted? And somebody responded “if you don’t take her to the hospital you’re going to watch her die choking and screaming at home.” Really savage. And also not all that accurate. Last time I looked it up even an unvaccinated women in her mid-80s had only a one in ten chance of dying of Covid. So I looked up info about what deaths from Covid were usually like for the very old, and info I found was that they usually went very quickly. Posted that info for the OP. Added that my mother, near the end of her life, was uninterested in medical interventions, saying she wanted to play the hand she’d been dealt. And that worked out pretty well for her.
But the savagery of the pro-hospitalization person stayed with me, and there was so much of that, and still is — as though people feel they have a license to verbally savage someone who’s in the opposite camp about some Covid thing. What is WRONG with our species?
Is this any different from a million other online things, though? I mean, there are people who routinely send pictures of death camps to Jews, encourage people to kill themselves, or make up and spread vile lies about other people, apparently just because they get a kick out of doing so.
At a guess, in most social contexts, we have norms and social signals and informal sanctions that keep most people from venting the worst things in their souls--respond to someone disagreeing with you about politics by telling them to go home and kill themselves is the sort of thing that cuts *way* back on the number of parties you get invited to. Hell, quite a lot of the nastiest stuff said online would never be said in meatspace for fear of getting into a fistfight. Take away those signals and norms and sanctions, and a fair number of people just go ahead and behave like some caricature of the worst person you can imagine.
The weird thing is that apparently normal people who aren't worse than the average in normal daily life will sometimes turn out to be absolutely monstrous online. I assume this tracks with the way that mass movements will sometimes convince ordinary people to take part in terrible stuff. And also with the way that putting someone in solitary confinement will often basically drive them crazy. We imagine ourselves to be rational and moral beings making independent decisions about how to act, but probably a lot more of how we act depends on social pressure and context and interaction than most of us want to believe. And of course, covid involved rather intense social isolation for many people, which probably made some of them nuttier and nastier than they would otherwise have been.
I'm not sure what an "amnesty" means in this context. It's not like we were going to go round putting people in prison for being wrong about covid anyway. I'm fine with toning down the ad hominem criticism of people who were wrong about covid, as long as we combine it with a no-holds-barred in-depth discussion of exactly how and why they were wrong so we can learn a bit more about what's wrong with our public decisionmaking infrastructure.
I think they want to avoid that too. Mistakes were made, let's try to avoid looking too closely at them.
Of course the "amnesty" will last about as long as the 2024 election cycle when it becomes time to tar Ron DeSantis as a granny murderer for his state's underreaction to covid.
How do her statements look in light of current data, compared to public health authority statements of the same time?
The main thing I remember is that she was *strongly* in favor of reopening schools, and got a lot of hate for it. Which is at least one position that looks very good in light of how online schooling seems to have worked out for most kids.
For what it's worth, this was a place where I was just flat wrong. I thought online education would work well for lots of kids; instead, it seemed like even the kids who did well at first often started getting more and more unhappy and withdrawn as it went on.
Does GPT count as capabilities research, and if so, does the community wish it hadn’t been invented?
First one is yes; second one I don't think there's a consensus position on.
And Stephen Biko.
You replied directly to ACX email, didn’t you?
Those replies are tagged as newest and go to the top of thread.
If you are responding to someone you have to go back to the browser.
A Substack feature.
Wow, I always wondered how people do frequently replied out of context, thanks for solving that mystery.
Thanks. I will try to do that.
Thoughts on a twit from Steven Pinker about a specific review of “What We Owe the Future” and Jack Handy’s quote. Mr. Pinker, paraphrased and parodied:"Since the future is a garden of exponentially forking paths; stipulating correct answers to unsolvable philosophical conundrums and blithe confidence in tech advances played out in the imagination that may never happen”. Always so elegant. Susan Rice should hire him to help tell Joe what to say. OK FIRST POST; waste of time, deeply philosophical, or horse crap?
Got a link to the original tweet? Having trouble understanding.
My take is: worth thinking about to internalize that the future is also important, but don't kid yourself that you can make specific predictions.
He’s right.
I've been in a lot of discussions regarding the war in Ukraine and what our role should be in Ukraine's defense. I am skeptical of undefined commitments and unclear policy goals, especially when nuclear war is a plausible outcome of a misstep. Most people react with various levels of moral disgust when I question the current path, and engage in various pseudo-arguments or level ad hominems to poison the well against the perspective. The few times my interlocutor seems willing to engage rationally, there is a predictable moment where the tenor of the discussion changes, or they just completely disengage. But I think it is deeply important that this discussion is taken to its conclusion so that our policy coincides with what we consider acceptable outcomes. The alternative is sleepwalking into a nuclear disaster.
So I pose this question to those who are generally in favor of our current level of engagement in Ukraine and wish to see it increased until Russia is driven out: is it your opinion that the U.S. should ensure Russia fully retreats from Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear exchange?
If the answer is "No", then the only way we can be sure of this outcome is to accept a scenario where Russia claims some sort of substantial victory in Ukraine using only conventional weapons. This means that we must limit our support to Ukraine such that Russia always has a path to victory using only conventional weapons.
If the answer is "it won't come to that", we cannot be sure that Putin will judge the costs of using a nuclear weapon as greater than the costs of full retreat. A total defeat in Ukraine can lead to Putin losing control of the country, and possibly being killed by his own people. He may very well rationalize that the minimum cost move is to simply continue to escalate to unconventional weapons regardless of the outcome. He essentially has no offramp right now. Putting the fate of civilization in the hands of a cornered animal is not the rational option.
I have yet to see anyone offer a full-throated embrace of the affirmative case. Although a few people have indirectly accepted it by responding that we cannot give in to nuclear blackmail, otherwise we will unleash an era of dictators annexing the world on the threat of nuclear war. This argument is misguided for a few reasons. The obvious one is that the only reason nuclear war is being discussed is that the U.S. is intervening in Ukraine, raising the costs of Russia's aggression and also the stakes. The threat of a nuclear response is intended to limit the engagement of the U.S. so that Russia can achieve some victory to compensate for the costs is has already suffered. This is not a blueprint for the next territory grab, it is in fact a deterrent. Nuclear brinksmanship carries an inherent cost. States are not likely to engage in imperialist expansion if the expected result is a proxy war with the West at best, a nuclear standoff at worst. The issue with Ukraine is Putin misjudged the severity of the West's response.
I laid out what I take are the possible scenarios and the various sticking points in which progress ends in the discussions I've had. Hopefully those in favor of ensuring a Russian defeat in Ukraine can articulate their reasoning within this framework, or show why this framework is wrong or overlooking an important point.
While Russia has a low and sinking chance of a battlefield victory, Putin is not looking for an off-ramp. He believes he can win a political victory via sympathetic parties in America and Europe, and by energy terrorism (Kyiv's energy infrastructure probably won't be rebuilt before this winter). He might be right. He has sent no meaningful signals of his willingness to negotiate out; instead, he ordered a politically-costly, legally-unlimited mobilization of the Russian people, "limited" only by his whims. Before their lives were on the line, the Moscow class didn't have much skin in the game. Now they do, and they have an inkling of how the war is going. Putin conscripted them anyway.
The argument for fighting for total Russian defeat and humiliation is pretty simple, and you admit that people have articulated it to you: big countries need to be unwilling to take their neighbors by force. Russia needs to learn this lesson, and China needs to learn this lesson. Ukraine offered no casus belli against Russia; in fact, this is the second time in a decade Russia has attacked Ukraine unprovoked. There is no example of history of giving dictators just a little bit and them being satisfied; there are ample examples of them taking more and more and more. Of course this is the blueprint for the next territory grab, this is Russia's second go-around and China is arming up for one too. So far, Russia has paid a much higher price than expected, but Putin does not believe that the ends are out of reach. And nuclear brinksmanship carries no cost if you believe you can win, and what would cement that belief more than a history of nuclear threats intimidating countries into changing their policies? The path you're arguing for, from Putin's perspective, is just a bit of inflation.
Russia whines about using nukes, trying to imply that they're forced into using them. They're lying. They didn't need to invade. They could leave if they wanted. Losing an aggressive war isn't a threat to Russia's existence, except in Putin and his cronies' speeches. The reason that Eastern Bloc countries have worked so hard to get into NATO and the EU over few decades of the post-Cold War peace is because they know intimately that Russia considers those nations its sphere of influence, toys to be used and discarded at its whim. And NATO is a terrible offensive threat; much of its paper strength is reservists or pointed at other NATO members (such as Greece and Turkey). But like Switzerland of old, a defensive pact can be a remarkably powerful deterrent. That Russia is so upset about a defensive pact, and that they're willing to nuke the territory they ostensibly want, tells everyone willing to listen that what Russia really wants is not clay or safety but dominance. "The only reason we're considering nuking you is because other countries have prevented us from steamrolling you" is a very transparent code for the genocide Russia has been promising Ukraine.
And if we really are risking the world over something, telling abusive, genocidal dictators to stuff it is a pretty good reason.
>He has sent no meaningful signals of his willingness to negotiate out
Because from day one, even with Zelensky was telling us that "this may be the last time you ever hear from me", he has been clear that he is offering Russia less than nothing. Literally, he demanded that he control MORE territory (specifically, Crimea) than before the invasion. Losing territory is not an acceptable outcome for this war for Putin, let alone not securing any new territory, so why would Putin even pretend to negotiate with somebody abjectly uninterested in doing so?
... because Crimea was taken from Ukraine in Russia's 2014 invasion, and that seizure is no more legitimate than any territory they've taken in the 2022 invasion?
Ukraine owes Russia nothing. Putin wants more than that. He's on record before the 2022 invasion that he wants to annihilate Ukraine. Why would Zelensky even try to negotiate with some abjectly uninterested in doing so?
If Russia said "we're pulling back to the 2013 lines and sending you all of your citizens we stole and sent to Siberia, let's negotiate over how much reparations we owe you", assuming Zelensky believes it's not an assassination attempt they could probably get him to the table. But, haha, of course Putin would never do that, he's a blinkered tyrant and the only question is whether he dreams of being the new Tsar or Premier.
But not only is Putin profoundly unlikely to sit down across a table from Zelensky, he isn't acting like he's losing. He's acting like this is the Winter War part Dva and he's going to grind Ukraine down with Russian manufacturing and manpower. While I believe it's just that - an act - and that his last best hope is that he can put it on long enough until the political winds he foresees shift in his favor, it's the path he's committed himself to. He's doubled down and redoubled at every opportunity. He could have dialed down the apocalyptic rhetoric. He could have not issued the general mobilization. He could have returned the stolen Ukrainians. He could have not blown up Ukraine's civilian energy structure shortly before winter. He could have cancelled the regularly-scheduled nuclear drills. He could have not backed out of the grain shipping deal. He could have not waged a campaign of rocketing civilians.
These are not the actions of a man who wants to cut his losses.
If there is zero overlap between the set of acceptable outcomes for Putin and the set of acceptable outcomes for Zelensky, it's unclear why that's more Zelensky's fault than Putin's. (Note that the perfectly symmetric outcome of "neither country occupies the other" is apparently acceptable to Zelensky, which would suggest he is being more reasonable here.)
"especially when nuclear war is a plausible outcome of a misstep"
It's not though.
"is it your opinion that the U.S. should ensure Russia fully retreats from Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear exchange?"
Yes.
The only way that the United States can reduce the probability of a nuclear exchange in the next year to <1%, is to allow Russia to conquer and "ethnically cleanse" Ukraine. Yes, all of it. Once it is clear that the US is completely unwilling to risk nuclear exchange over Ukraine, Russia will go back to its initial goal of taking the whole country, and with unopposed use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine (not a "nuclear exchange" because nobody is nuking them back) they will win.
If Russia conquers Ukraine by use of tactical nuclear weapons, then there is a very high probability that Russia will look to e.g. the Baltic states and say "I bet that trick will work twice. Yeah, yeah, 'NATO', but the US backpedaled from the Budapest Memorandum when things got real". There is a very good chance that China will look to Taiwan and try "the invade using tactical nukes, threaten strategic nukes if the US intervenes" trick as well. A somewhat smaller but still not trivial chance that China will tell North Korea to go ahead and do the same thing vs South Korea. And a very good chance that Israel will nuke Iran before Iran can nuke Israel, and then there's the Indo-Pakistani conflict, and add on to all that, all the other nations that will start nuking up now that they can't count on or don't need to fear the United States.
The price for reducing the risk of a nuclear exchange to <1% over the next year, is increasing the risk of a nuclear exchange to >10% over the next decade. The path that minimizes the risk over the next decade, is the one we are on right now.
"Give the madman with the big gun what he wants, so he doesn't kill us all!" is *sometimes* a defensible strategy if there's a reasonable expectation that e.g. the police will come and arrest the madman before he comes back. If you *are* the policeman, or the closest thing to a policeman that neighborhood has, it is both morally contemptible and extremely stupid.
>and with unopposed use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine (not a "nuclear exchange" because nobody is nuking them back) they will win.
It won't be militarily opposed but they will lose most of their allies.
"If you *are* the policeman, or the closest thing to a policeman that neighborhood has, it is both morally contemptible and extremely stupid."
You said "kill us all", but it's not US, it's not the same people who are the policemen. It's Ukraine. If somebody threatens the policeman, they fight back because there's nobody else. If they threaten somebody else, we have no obligation to protect them.
Just to clarify, I think there are two different ways to read the question:
a. We should be willing to use nuclear weapons first if that's needed to free Ukraine.
b. We should not be willing to let Russia use nuclear weapons first in order to take over Ukraine.
John's response makes sense to (b), but not to (a). If Russia had swept the Ukrainian forces aside in the first weeks of the war and taken over, we would not have used nukes to save them, and if somehow Russia's army magically because competent and properly equipped and spends the next year actually winning the conventional war with Ukraine and taking it over, I think it would be nuts for us to use nukes to prevent that. Or even to directly intervene with US or NATO forces.
To be clear, yes on (b), no on (a). We should absolutely not use nuclear weapons first, outside of a few exotic scenarios of very low probability. If Russia uses nuclear weapons first, we should take whatever action is necessary to ensure they do not achieve anything that they could consider a victory. That does not necessarily require nuclear weapons on our part, but it does involve a risk of further escalation.
Kudos for having the temerity to own the logical conclusion of your policy position. But I strongly disagree with your analysis. It is not true that any victory Russia sees in Ukraine will necessarily be followed by an expansion of their goals. The costs they have borne for what little territory they currently have is immense, and almost certainly not worth any conceivable victory they could hope for at this point. That is, if Putin could do it over again given what he knows, he very likely would not have invaded.
Everyone, even dictators, respond to incentives. We have demonstrated a massive cost of expansion and so any further ideas of expansion will be tempered by the expected costs associated with it. This isn't to say that a state will never calculate that some expansion will be worth the expected cost. But this undermines the idea that every non-aligned state will be swallowed by their stronger neighbors.
It is important we maintain the nuclear taboo. But the best way to do so is to avoid putting nuclear states in positions where using a nuke is reasoned to have a positive expected outcome. We can--and have--disincentivized wanton expansionism. We don't need to engage in nuclear brinksmanship, especially in a standoff where our adversary is extremely motivated to accomplish their goals. If the current world order is hopelessly unstable, the US/NATO absorbing some nuclear strikes is not a rational way to maintain it.
>There is a very good chance that China will look to Taiwan and try "the invade using tactical nukes, threaten strategic nukes if the US intervenes" trick as well.
I don't buy it. Tactical nukes have very little tactical value. They are a sign of desperation. Russia, being in what they consider a desperate situation, may rationalize using them. But other nations you mention that are in stable situations are not going to initiate a conflict with a tactical nuke, especially knowing that it will invite some significant kinetic response from the west, which itself has a large chance of escalating into a nuclear exchange. The incentives are very clear, regardless of the ultimate outcome for Russia if it escalates to using tactical nukes in Ukraine.
> if Putin could do it over again given what he knows, he very likely would not have invaded.
While we are discussing whether Putin truly regrets having attacked Ukraine, he is already planning an invasion of Moldova.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russia-is-preparing-a-coup-d-etat-in-moldova-the-washington-post/
You understand the difference between that and invading NATO, right?
Ukraine isn't in NATO either.
I think there's a scenario you're not considering that, in my opinion, is the possible way out of the war, and that is the scenario in which Putin is somehow removed from power. I'm pretty sure Russian citizens are starting to get fed up of Putin's bs and if this war keeps going on for one more year there is no doubt in my mind that there is going to be an internal revolution from citizens and even from people in the government. There have been sources that say that people close to Putin are against all of what he is doing. Also, if Russia ever gets close to launching a nuclear missile, by that point there will be total chaos inside of Russia to the point that people will find a way to get Putin out.
I'm kind of coming around slowly to favor the option of a nuclear first strike on Russia as soon as it passes some level of provocation. Would certainly kill a crapton of Russians, but it could be done without too much collateral damage to Europe, and it would put a final end to the cancer that is Soviet revanchism. We nuked the Japanese and they've been civilized ever since. Maybe that's the only way certain people learn.
You do realize that even if 5% of Russia's arsenal is functional, most if not all of Europe's capitals would get hit neverthless? It's called a first strike because the other side still get to do the 2nd strike.
Leaving a whopping 5% of the Russian strategic arsenal in place after a first strike is a level of incompetence I wouldn't attribute to the USAF at even its least competent historical period. Kind of impressed you think this is plausible, you must assume people who live and breathe this stuff all have IQ 90.
The whole point of nuclear deterrence is that the second strike is launched before the first strike hits.
I've already started liquidating the 401k and buying survival gear. nuclear war was basically inevitable after the Democrats lost their shit about the letter to Biden.
Substack really needs a 'remind me of' feature for comments and posts to make it easier to go back and check if folks predictions and claims actually come end up being true.
This strikes me as a false dichotomy. There are a whole range of options between:
(1) Ensure Russia fully retreats from Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear exchange; and,
(2) Limit support to Ukraine such that Russia always has a path to victory using only conventional weapons.
I think that's a false choice. First of all - what does "preserve a path to victory for Russia" even mean? Russian war aims have vacillated from "just liberate the Donbas" to "keep all the stuff we've annexed" to "fully change the regime in Kyiv." If you take it as axiomatic that you have to "preserve a path to Russian victory," and then let Russia decide what "victory" means, then your strategy amounts to being so afraid of the possibility of nukes that you let Russia have whatever it wants, which isn't smart policy.
Second of all, there's a whole range of options between those 2 prongs you've put forth. I'd argue that we're in between them even now, in a space that looks something like "punish Russia as much as possible in order to preserve global norms against use of force to reset borders, as long as said punishment can be meted out without triggering nuclear exchange." And that strikes me as a good place to be. It hasn't been perfectly followed, but the general post-WW2 norm against resetting borders by force has done a *lot* for global peace and prosperity, and if a great power starts flirting with abandoning it, publicly punishing them for it on the global stage is in everyone's interest as long as it can be done without triggering a nuclear war.
That's admittedly a scary thing from a layperson's perspective. Everyone would love to here "zero risk of nuclear war today," every day. But practical reality means you can't set your goals at "zero risk of nuclear war," because if your goal is true zero risk, that just means always giving Russia (or whatever other nuclear power) everything it wants, full stop, and even then you probably aren't at *true* zero. So your goal is to keep nuclear risk de minimis, which all indications appear to show that it still is.
I don't see that it is a false choice. The negation of (1) is to avoid engaging in a nuclear exchange. But the only way we can be sure of avoiding a nuclear exchange is to avoid a scenario where Putin's only options are to escalate to unconventional weapons or to fully retreat from Ukraine. I do not believe leaving Ukraine in defeat is a viable option in Putin's mind, and so escalating to unconventional weapons carries a substantial likelihood. NATO has already warned of a direct response should Russia use a nuclear weapon. But this just begins a tit-for-tat escalation that very likely ends in a nuclear exchange.
There are no high likelihood branches between Russia having a path to victory in Ukraine and ensuring Russian defeat that don't end in a nuclear exchange.
>what does "preserve a path to victory for Russia" even mean?
Victory here means anything he can reasonably claim victory over and not lose control of Russia.
I suspect that’s why people don’t want to debate you. Sooner or later, you just don’t see their arguments and continue to make the same points over and over.
Yes, people often disengage from debates on positions they feel strongly about but are incapable of articulating points in their favor. For my part, I always try to advance the debate as in my last comment.
You're not advancing the argument, you're just repeating your erroneous assessment of Putin's mental state. The convincing force is nil.
>There are no high likelihood branches between Russia having a path to victory in Ukraine and ensuring Russian defeat that don't end in a nuclear exchange.
This claim (and the points in favor of this view) supports the structure of the argument in OP. One can certainly disagree and offer evidence against it. But it does advance the argument in the sense of elucidating the premises that support the conclusion.
I see it more as you ignoring their points, but let’s agree to disagree, as they say.
"But the only way we can be sure of avoiding a nuclear exchange is to avoid a scenario where Putin's only options are to escalate to unconventional weapons or to fully retreat from Ukraine."
There is no way we can be sure of avoiding a nuclear exchange as long as the weapons are there, so putting it that way is a mistake. The best we can hope to do is to keep the probability of a nuclear exchange low. It isn't clear that refusing to give Putin what he could view as a victory results in a significant probability of a nuclear exchange or even that it results in a higher probability of an eventual nuclear exchange than letting him have some kind of victory.
>It isn't clear that refusing to give Putin what he could view as a victory results in a significant probability of a nuclear exchange or even that it results in a higher probability of an eventual nuclear exchange than letting him have some kind of victory.
This is just to altogether reject the idea of employing available evidence to assign credences to various outcomes. But this results in worse outcomes.
"It isn't clear" doesn't mean "I'm rejecting the concept of evidence," it means "The evidence doesn't support one outcome being significantly more likely than the other."
>the general post-WW2 norm against resetting borders by force has done a *lot* for global peace and prosperity
Ehh, no ? There is *A LOT* of examples of states resetting borders by force ? And in a particular egregious case of one state actually creating an entirely new border from scratch where none existed before, it's actually thriving on the dead bodies of the people it slaughtered since 1948 till now?
> if a great power starts flirting with abandoning it
This train left the station since 1950 and the driver is already dead and decomposed at his seat. I'm talking about the Korean War, I don't see any reason, whatsoever, that "Ensure Communism Doesn't Spread At All Costs Oh Gosh Oh Fuck" is any different from "Ensure Nato Doesn't Spread At All Costs Oh Gosh Oh Fuck". It boogles my mind that somebody can unironically think the state that had "Vietnam" written all over it with scarlet shameful letters since the 1970s has any right to talk about Self-Determination or leaving people to choose, let alone *believe it*. At least Russia didn't lie about Nukes in Ukraine's president secret man cave or whatever laughable shit that came out from Bush's butt.
That is to say, It's infuriating to me how "Oh Heck Russia is being unprecedentedly aggressive" has become an actual opinion that honest people can have. The last time you could have held that opinion honestly was in the, I don't know, maybe say the mid 1990s just to be safe. It goes out the windows once you have a internet connection and an honest desire to not be wrong.
It rings to my ears like a conspiracy theorist's desire to see order superimposed on randomness, or the religious desire to see Justice superimposed on Raw Brute Force : "See, It *LOOKS* like the US and EU are just showing Russia who's the boss because they dared to do the exact same things that they have been doing and supporting since the fucking 1950s, But, Actually, it's A Very Clever Plan to instill respect for the sacred international rules that have never ever been violated before" like bruh Bush was literally gloating on an aircraft carrier about how he conquered Iraq like a barbarian warlord would in so many centuries past.
> At least Russia didn't lie about Nukes in Ukraine's president secret man cave or whatever laughable shit that came out from Bush's butt.
Among other things, Russia was talking about biological weapons in Ukraine, then they switched to "we are pretty sure that Ukraine is planning to use a dirty bomb soon" and the rest of the world told them to shut up because it is obvious to everyone that if any dirty bomb goes off it was Russians.
And that's what they are telling to the Western audience. For their own population, they also have colorful stories how this is actually a religious war of Catholics versus Russian Orthodox church, or maybe Satanists against Muslims, depending on the audience. Also, Russia is actually winning this war (do not get confused by a few strategical regroupings), because everyone in Europe is starving and freezing; the victory is near and another mobilization will not be necessary.
The idea that Russia is telling the truth is very weird, because they keep contradicting themselves all the time. Oh, don't forget all those people who swore at the beginning of February that Russia is not going to attack anyone, only a crazy russophobe could imagine such thing happening.
Spare me the “western hypocrisy” histrionics. Nations are composed of people, and like all people, are morally imperfect. Film at 11.
If we’re operating on a wavelength where morals and norms matter in international relations, then failure to be morally perfect in the past has no bearing on whether or not enforcing them the right way now is a good thing to do.
But if you prefer to operate in “morals are naïve and dumb it’s all realpolitik” world then the cold realpolitik fact is that when your rival bends themselves over a barrel you don’t bail them out – you leverage the opportunity and you grind them to dust. That’s not the approach I’d advocate for, but maybe Russia’s apologists should reconsider what they’re asking for when they wave this flag around.
Impressive, you managed to turn an Anarchist into a Russian apologist, that's some ideology alchemy bullshit right there, good job. Now I regret I didn't assume more bad faith in the first comment. I always regret not assuming more bad faith.
>Nations are composed of people, and like all people, are morally imperfect.
Yeah sure, your country did support and *still* support genocidal child murderers[0] once, so what. And hey, maybe they just burned a few asian farmers here and there[1], it was the 1960s man, everything was just so wild and drunk. I'm sure it's an all grown up citizen of the world right now right?, before you were bad, now you're good https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/032/318/bad.jpg ?
> failure to be morally perfect in the past has no bearing on whether or not enforcing them the right way now is a good thing to do.
So first off, not burning people alive is not being morally perfect, I have personally never burned people alive and I'm pretty fucking sure I'm very morally average, I know plenty of people who are, it's not an impossible standard.
Second, I'm not saying that "enforcing" morality now is bad, I'm saying those who claim they're enforcing them when they have a very interesting and spicy history are laughably and obviously not actually enforcing them, but doing whatever, where "whatever" is anything but enforcing rules and morality. I don't really give a shit what virtue signalling technique is all the craze in the US/EU right now, as long as it respects the minimum intelligence of an adult who can read. Given that I'm an adult who can read, I'm entitled to say that the virtue signalling technique of "pretend that Russia is violating some sacred state vows taken since WW2 and act super shocked about it" is not respecting my intelligence. I'm not even at my brightest today.
> when your rival bends themselves over a barrel you don’t bail them out – you leverage the opportunity and you grind them to dust
... and have the balls to say that you're doing just that in front of cameras and microphones, or at least on twitter and blogs, and stop whining and crying about "oh won't anybody just THINK of International Norms". Who's the one really having it both ways here ? I'm okay with both, just pick one and stick with it to the end.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc
Again, I’m not sure what you want here? An admission that the US has done horrible things? Absolutely. I've never argued anything to the contrary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile#Pinochet_regime
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans
It’s just (a) obviously true to the point of being wasteful of time, and (b) irrelevant since you’ve agreed that the US’ course of action is the same regardless of whether acting under a moral or amoral framework.
I mean, if you want a “Native American Land Acknowledgement”-style statement that the US has done tons of horrible stuff throughout its history before a discussion commences – cool. I’m happy to give you that cookie, and I think the above suffices.
But once that’s out of the way I’m assuming we’ll move on from the “is the US a morally perfect *actor*” conversation and on to the “is the US intervention in Ukraine the correct *action*” conversation, rather than wasting everyone’s time circling a base-level fact everyone already agrees about anyway. If you find a true-blue 50’s style “my country, right or wrong” American patriot in the audience, by all means we can raise that issue with him to set him straight, but until then its… kind of a waste of everybody’s time?
Whether I'm arguing "Tom should do the thing, because it's the right thing to do" or "Tom should do the thing, because it's in his interests," a guy running into the room screaming "everybody remember that Tom is a bad guy! Remember it! He's done bad bad bad things!" is beside the point and adds nothing to the conversation.
I don't want admission of obvious facts, I just want you to not deny them. Specifically, don't say things like :
>The strong post-ww2 norms against resetting borders by force
When there have *never* been such a norm, thanks largerly to the US and its allies. You're allowed to argue anything you want, please do say that US's best interests lies in doing this or that to Russia, or that this should be done for other reasons, go right ahead, argue away. What I'm against is postulating some imagined "International Etiquette" and arguing that Russia is supposedly not respecting it and that the it's good that the US is supposedly forcing it to respect it. This makes 0 sense, there have never been such ettiquete, the entire history of the US proves otherwise. Why would you willingly postulate a wildly wrong premise when there are plenty of true premises that gets you to the same conclusion ?
> "everybody remember that Tom is a bad guy! Remember it! He's done bad bad bad things!"
Actually, if Tom did the bad thing X, and his opponent did that same X, it would be truly dumb of Tom or anyone else to say "Tom needs to fight his opponent because he does X!". Because... it's literally the exact same X on both sides. I don't know how else to explain it. When you're arguing why your enemies need to be fought or stopped or internationally punished or whatever; pick, from among their crimes, something that *you* didn't do very recently. Pick a reason that wouldn't imply all western countries must be sanctioned into the stone age, but your arguments imply exactly that. If you accept that conclusion, then sure, my bad, I'm prepared to apologize profusely.
But how, on green lovely Earth, is it possible to simultaneously believe both :
(A) Any country that violates norms and morality should be punished as hard as we can without provoking nuclear war
(B) [Implied] The Western world (which broke those norms for centuries and not 20 years have passed since they last did it and gloated about it) shouldn't be punished like that.
Pick just one of those. You can still argue for punishing Russia as hard as possible without needing (A), there is plenty of reasons for doing so. But you can't honestly believe (A) and (B) together. Did I just make up (B) completely and you actually believe its negation ? That would be a reason to say I'm sorry. (A) and (B) together is hypocrisy, is all what I'm saying.
Lastly, a stylistic sorry is necessary because I was super aggressive in the previous comment. This was largely provoked by you misreading my politics to be pro Russia. This was dumb and unjustified by the evidence, but I can imagine why someone used to arguing with pro russian opponents might assume that. So sorry for that. I try not to do it these days but it's hard.
>Name ten
Challenge Accepted
1- USA and Korea
2- USA and Vietnam (for the ~20 years it was successful for)
3- Iran-Iraq war
4- Iraq's invasion of Kuwait
5- USA and Iraq (2x, but I will count it as one)
6- Aremnia-Azerbaijan conflict
7- Israel-Egypt conflicts (2x times in 1956 and 1967, ending in failure each time)
8- Indonesian invasion of East Timor
9- The various times India, Pakistan and Bangladesh mix their lands by force (including the founding of Bangladesh itself)
10- Turkey-Cyprus war
I limited this list to the ones I have heard about from, every single one of those I knew about before. For a full list, consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions#1945%E2%80%931999
Bonus :
a- Israel-Syria (Golan Heights)
b- Israel-Lebanon (2x or 3x or 4x depending on how you count)
c- Israel
You seemed upset I called the genocidal state younger than some grandmothers what it is, so I didn't include a-b-c in the main list. But they exist, I didn't make them up, you can find them on wikipedia
> I recommend you actually learn literally anything about the history and founding of the state in question
Schoolboy response, I probably know more about this state more than you do about your own. Say something I can reply to.
Yes. I basically agree with all of this.
I am not an American, so I am going to avoid discussing what US should do, but it is just incorrect to think that the use of nuclear weapons in this war (which I think is highly unlikely) would, like, seal the fate of our civilization or anything so dramatic. If the rather unlikely scenario that Russia would nuke something, they would nuke not NATO, but against Ukraine.
And democratically elected Ukrainian government, with enthusiastic support of large part of its population, clearly prefers being nuked to surrendering to Putin, at least for now. See their attempts to impose no-flyzone or to get long range weapons, steps that would highly increase their own nuclear risk.
>If the rather unlikely scenario that Russia would nuke something, they would nuke not NATO, but against Ukraine.
But NATO has already stated there would be a "proportional" conventional response if Russia used a nuke. But this very likely leads to serious continued escalation. There is basically zero chance Russia gives up and goes home after that.
Firstly, I should apologize for my atrocious grammar. Lesson about proofreading learned.
Biden and other relevant officials have been purposefully vague about how they would want to respond to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine. Certainly, they are not committed to anything which would trigger Russian nuclear retaliation against NATO.
Personally, I think that Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine is very unlikely, and even if that very unlikely scenario came to pass, it is very unlikely that it would lead to the general nuclear war between NATO and Russia. So, we are protected, so to speak, by two levels of low probability.
I know that Americans conveniently lawyered themselves out of Budapest Memorandum but it remains probable that, if Ukraine is allowed to be taken apart cause "nukes", especially in the egregious genocidal fashion, even though it gave up nukes for the guarantees of this explicit thing not happening, then we'll see everyone and Mexican cartels acquiring nukes in the next decade. In all likelihood the ship has sailed already, I'd wager 80% probability of Poland acquiring nukes in the near future cause let's be real, future of NATO is to be decided in every single American election from now on and Art. 5 is just some paper to be lawyered out of when needed. In the brave new multipolar world every nation is for itself.
And it seems to me the only choices the US have to keep the illusion of its credibility and nuclear non-proliferation alive is either to enter the kinetic war on Ukrainian soil (not gonna happen) or be ambiguous, especially since all help to Ukraine costs it almost nothing in monetary terms. Being ambiguous sucks but other options suck more, at least in the Biden's view.
>or be ambiguous, especially since all help to Ukraine costs it almost nothing in monetary terms.
The problem with ambiguity is that it allows a scenario where we end up in a tit-for-tat engagement with Russia that may inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange. For example, if Russia's use of a tactical nuke in Ukraine begets a significant/proportional conventional response to Russian assets in Ukraine, what are the chances that Russia doesn't respond further? Russia has few options for a proportional conventional strike against NATO.
If our main goal is to avoid being a party to a nuclear exchange, ambiguity does not serve that outcome. It's just not clear to me that maintaining the illusion of the credibility of nuclear non-proliferation (which is likely already gone) is worth significantly raising the likelihood of a nuclear exchange.
>>The problem with ambiguity is that it allows a scenario where we end up in a tit-for-tat engagement with Russia that may inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange.
I think this is another example of setting a laudable but completely impractical goal of zero-risk. If we take off the table every single option which "allows a scenario" that escalates to nuclear exchange, then what you are practically doing is intentionally throwing all choices out the window and leaving yourself with "give Russia everything it wants and hope that they don't just fire nukes anyway."
It's like setting a goal of "zero chemical particulate in the water" or "zero risk of injury on the job." It may look good on a bumper sticker or sound nice from a PR perspective, but as actual policy it's totally unsound and pretty much impossible to achieve, so even when it's uncomfortable to acknowledge it, you're always operating with a goal if *minimal acceptable* risk, and all indications are that we are still very much in a place where risk of a nuclear weapon by Russia is de minimis (because they would change little on the ground, potentially destabilize their own regime, and potentially push India, China, and others on the fence into a position where they'd have to start cutting the Kremlin off), and risk of a nuclear exchange with the United States even more so.
So raising the banner of "getting risk to zero is the only responsible thing to do" would, at present, meaning abandoning Ukraine to be overrun and occupied and its people abused, in order to make a meaningless risk reduction from "near-near zero" to "near-near-nearer zero."
I'd absolutely agree that Ukraine and the West should pull up short of "pushing Russia into a corner where nukes are their only option," but we are very, very far from that corner at present.
>I think this is another example of setting a laudable but completely impractical goal of zero-risk.
This just dodges the substantive debate for a trivial point. Of course every action carries some non-zero mathematical risk of leading to a nuclear exchange. The issue is should we and how to stay clear of non-trivial risk. There is a clear difference in risk between the actions taken thus far and a scenario where NATO attacks Russian positions in Ukraine in response to Russia using a tactical nuke. The point is to get clear of where the line should be to avoid an action that unintentionally leads towards escalating to non-trivial risk.
>I'd absolutely agree that Ukraine and the West should pull up short of "pushing Russia into a corner where nukes are their only option," but we are very, very far from that corner at present.
But we need to define this line ahead of time. Otherwise each escalation may seem a trivial extension and we unknowingly cross the threshold leading to runaway escalation. My argument in OP was that we need to ensure we leave Russia a path to a substantial victory in Ukraine using conventional weapons to ensure we stay clear of non-trivial risk of nuclear exchange.
The problem, as I see it, is:
(1) Your framework seems to define "substantial victory" as whatever Russia demands "substantial victory" to mean;
(2) It also bounces back and forth between very different probability ranges. In some places you reference the issue being "non-trivial risk," in others the issue is where nuclear exchange is "a plausible outcome," or you're describing "greatly raising the likelihood of nuclear exchange" without reference to how much or in comparison to what, or that nuclear exchange is a "possible outcome." Which makes the more defensible framings like "non-trivial" look more like a wedge to open a crack for the broader ones like "possible outcome" than some accurate depiction of what risk threshold you find for tolerable/intolerable.
At a point in time when consensus is still that we are near-zero risk of nuclear exchange, the combined effect of #1 and #2 is essentially an all pain no gain policy. In exchange for a move from our current near-zero risk footing to a future even-nearer-near zero risk footing, "the West" should hand Russia a "path to victory" as subjectively defined by Russia.
To say nothing of what impact that has on the actual incentives vis-a-vis nuclear threats and exchange (does this capitulation encourage more nuclear threats, thus increasing the likelihood threats go wrong in the future?
Does it encourage Russia to define "substantial victory" more maximally, causing Ukraine to be more hostile to negotiated settlement?), which can be argued from a variety of angles, it's just a terrible bargain on its face, which is why most of your interlocutors are disputing the proposition from all kinds of angles.
>Your framework seems to define "substantial victory" as whatever Russia demands "substantial victory" to mean;
I agree it's a weakness of my argument and I'm happy to discuss what that would look like. But I don't think it's necessary. Success in this case is whatever will allow Putin to end hostilities and sell it as a victory at home. The risk right now is Putin's lack of offramp. Whatever can be sold as a viable offramp is a "success" in this context.
> It also bounces back and forth between very different probability ranges.
Sure. It's difficult to talk about probability and credences without offering explicit quantities. But then creating a tree structure with various branches and credence assignments is hard and will likely stymie most discussion rather than add to it. So I'm trying to walk a tight rope here between raising the discourse to one that acknowledges and engages with uncertainty, without being abstruse and tedious.
The key point I'm trying to drive home is that the scenario of a nuclear exchange is so massively negative that anything over "trivial credence" assigned to those branches must be taken very seriously, and presumably given a wide berth.
>At a point in time when consensus is still that we are near-zero risk of nuclear exchange
I agree. However, there is constant discussion about escalating our involvement with more and longer range weapons, or boots on the ground, etc. My objection is to the lack of clarity regarding our goals and the limits of our involvement. Most people find it unconscionable to even voice such concerns.
>Does it encourage Russia to define "substantial victory" more maximally
I don't think this is a likely outcome, as I've argued elsewhere in this thread. The costs Russia is bearing over Ukraine is real and unsustainable. If we present Russia a realistic offramp and the choice is to continue bearing an unbounded cost to sustain an assault or take the offramp, I think there is a strong chance he will take it.
>My argument in OP was that we need to ensure we leave Russia a path to a substantial victory in Ukraine using conventional weapons to ensure we stay clear of non-trivial risk of nuclear exchange.
When you equivocate between "scenario where nukes are Russia's only option" and "scenario where Russia doesn't achieve a substantial victory", you are making some *extremely* favorable assumptions on Putin's behalf. Nuclear powers lose offensive wars from time to time, this situation isn't unique.
Yes, I am assuming that from Putin's perspective, leaving Ukraine without some substantial victory is not an option. Putin seems to consider political control of Ukraine (and Georgia) critical to the security of Russia. But given that mindset, he very well may evaluate the cost of a nuclear exchange with the U.S. as equal to the cost of defeat in Ukraine. Nuclear weapons force the acknowledgement and avoidance of your adversaries red lines, otherwise you invite a nuclear strike.
Even if you don't think Putin genuinely believes Ukraine in NATO is x-risk to Russia, given the damage this war has done to the Russian state, a defeat in Ukraine may be x-risk to Putin himself.
> So raising the banner of "getting risk to zero is the only responsible thing to do" would, at present, meaning abandoning Ukraine to be overrun and occupied and its people abused, in order to make a meaningless risk reduction from "near-near zero" to "near-near-nearer zero."
And of course, all of this is operating under the assumption that paying the danegeld does nothing to impact the number of Danes.
That, plus the damage we could do to credibility with our own allies that we rely on to keep the board between us and the dane favorably tilted such that he doesn't consider knocking on our own door. Trust and good relationships are a big part of international credibility, and I think sometimes we look at Ukraine's battlefield successes so far and don't realize just how rapidly we could score an own-goal and turn this from a Kremlin fiasco into a Kremlin victory if we suddenly publicly hung the Ukrainians out to dry.
"The West doesn't really have your back, they're feckless, weak-kneed democracies who will abandon their partners at the drop of the hat - aligning with an autocratic regime like mine is way smarter & safer" is pretty much exactly what Putin was hoping to prove when this war started. When things are going this well for Ukraine and they aren't interested in coming to the table, it makes zero sense to suddenly kneecap ourselves by proving him right.
> The obvious one is that the only reason nuclear war is being discussed is that the U.S. is intervening in Ukraine, raising the costs of Russia's aggression and also the stakes.
Nope, the reason is that *Russia is losing*.
In a parallel reality where Russia is winning, there is no need to discuss nukes, no matter how much USA or anyone else is involved.
In a parallel reality where Russia is somehow magically losing to Ukraine alone, Russia keeps escalating, from conventional weapons, through white phosphorus and similar, towards nukes if necessary. Exactly the same incentives apply; Putin cannot afford to lose face.
>In a parallel reality where Russia is somehow magically losing to Ukraine alone
In this reality Russia would not have invaded. Russia invaded precisely because they thought Ukraine's defense was feckless and the West would not sustain a significant response. No one wants to break the nuclear taboo, and so any semi-rational statemen will avoid scenarios where escalation to unconventional weapons is likely. The possible world where Ukraine had a stellar, but entirely secret, stash of arms and intelligence sufficient to thwart a continual ramping up of Russian aggression without any of this being known to Russian intelligence is just not reasonable. This world also changes the dynamic of NATO membership, which is surely a contributing factor to the war. The world where *only* Ukraine's ability to defend itself changes and nothing else relevant to the war changes is probably impossible.
>Russia invaded precisely because they thought Ukraine's defense was feckless and the West would not sustain a significant response.
It's very funny to hear "Russia isn't stupid, they only invaded here because they're stupid." Why on earth would they not expect the west to sustain a response? They already played this game in Afghanistan.
Indeed. The only reason that Ukraine is different is because the Ukranians managed to put up a credible fight on their own for long enough that sending them a bit of extra ammo would make a difference.
So I can't speak to your experiences, but I can attest that when I choose to disengage from this topic it's usually because my interlocutor starts showing a pattern of switching between short-term v. long-term considerations and ideological simplicity v. realpolitik that coincidentally always favors the Russian position.
> No one wants to break the nuclear taboo, and so any semi-rational statemen will avoid scenarios where escalation to unconventional weapons is likely.
Why have you chosen not to consider this as an argument against Russian first use of nuclear weapons? Are we to treat their precommitments as absolute, while denying anyone else this superpower?
>Why have you chosen not to consider this as an argument against Russian first use of nuclear weapons?
The difference is that Russia is already engaged and have already shouldered a heavy cost. My point is that, given the knowledge or expectation of paying a heavy cost which could only be overcome by using unconventional weapons, a semi-rational statesman would avoid initiating the engagement. But this argument does not hold once already engaged in a costly fight and retreat carries its own heavy cost. This is why we must engage with the possibility of Putin using a tactical nuke.
Retreat carries a cost, but enormously smaller than the cost of a nuclear exchange.
For Putin personally, I'm not sure.
Ok, so you've declared semi-rational means allowing for this particular case of the sunk cost fallacy. To repeat myself - precommitment is a superpower, who else gets to use it? Is there a particular reason we should treat "Russia has spent a lot invading Ukraine, it needs to get its money's worth" more credibly than "countries will not be allowed to benefit from breaching the nuclear weapons taboo"?
>Ok, so you've declared semi-rational means allowing for this particular case of the sunk cost fallacy.
Sunk cost fallacy doesn't apply because there is an intrinsic cost to Putin to retreat empty handed. Sunk cost fallacy only follows if there is a low cost offramp.
>more credibly
I don't know what "credibly" means here. The issue is being clear on the costs we're willing to bear for reinforcing the nuclear taboo. I don't think any of us is willing to absorb a nuclear exchange for the sake of the taboo. And given Putin's current situation, there is a substantial likelihood of him escalating to unconventional weapons if he continues to lose ground in Ukraine. So we need to choose our responses carefully given these competing interests.
The US discussed using tactical nukes in Vietnam, which it was also losing. But important to remember that the reasons for not doing so were not purely diplomatic: tactical nukes were predicted to not be all that efficacious compared to something like Linebacker II unless used in scary-high numbers (hundreds or thousands), inflicting something like 100 NVA casualties per nuke. Maybe some in the Russian command structure think differently and believe that a small number of tactical nukes could be militarily decisive, but if so they're probably wrong. And I think there's reason to believe that dropping dozens or hundreds of tactical nukes on Ukraine would be politically worse for Putin -- even domestically -- than just declaring victory and pulling out.
Where nukes are provably very effective is deterring Great Powers from crossing perceived "red lines" in each other's sphere of influence. We know this because a lot of geopolitical behavior in the Cold War was clearly influenced by fear of treading too close to these red lines. Eisenhower's decision not to intervene in Hungary in 1956 might stand out the most here, and I'm sure Putin has been very aware of that historical example the entire time as he tries to keep the West from escalating its commitments to Ukraine.
You just wrote a second post...yeah, you are legit for sure...:D
It's funny how the fifth column is still operating from the same exact playbook as in the 1930s. "I'm just a normal reasonable guy and I'm shocked by the blah blah blah anyway Boris Johnson probably personally prevented Putin from making peace".
You should change your username to The Last Putinversteher.
I think that much of what you see as a unified propaganda campaign is actually just a lot of people independently coming to the rather obvious conclusion "it's really bad that Russia invaded Ukraine", and then saying that out loud. Analogously, every newspaper in the UK reports on the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal in a manner that is negative towards Savile. But that isn't a propaganda campaign!
Covid vaccines would be another addition to the list of Current Things. That one was pretty good IMO
Sure. Propaganda isn't about lying, it's about convincing. Plenty of propaganda is actually trying to convince you of true things--think of all the PSAs telling people that smoking causes cancer.
News outlets are herd beasts, and there seems to be a huge amount of pressure for conformity in current-day US media. This leads to some stories not being pursued and some questions not being asked, and sometimes that's fine (there's not much point looking into vaccines causing autism, because it turns out that they don't), but other times, this leads to important stuff not being reported or being reported in a very distorted way. There were good reasons to be skeptical that Iraq had a working WMD program that in any way threatened the US, but it wasn't so easy to find them being discussed in US media in late 2003.
High-status US news sources are subject to trendiness and social pressure, but that doesn't mean they're inverse weathervanes, just that they have some blind spots and some stories they will never report.
Lots of words and as usual no agency is given to Ukrainians (first red flag). But let's go through.
> all this talk about Russia threatening to use tactical nukes is basically a NATO invention
"To anyone who would consider interfering from outside: If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history" - Putin
"If there is a threat to the territorial integrity of our country, and in protecting our people we will certainly use all means at our disposal - and I’m not bluffing.”" - Putin
"Those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tables can turn on them." - Putin
TNW definitely counts as "means at Russia's disposal", so _technically_ Putin did threaten to use nukes as well as bio/chem weapons.
> treating this conflict as as an exceptional and intolerable „imperial expansion“ is simply silly. It‘s just the latest conflict in the aftermath of the collapse of the Sowjet republic
USSR was an empire that fell apart which makes Putin very sad and now there is an attempt to recollect the empire back. It's not exceptional, sure, but arguably intolerable post-WWII.
> explain to me our (that is: western) treatment of Armenia.
What does that mean? The West condemned Azerbaijan's attacks, Armenia is not asking the West for help, treatment seems to be consistent?
> this conflict has ostensibly been about the right of the current Kiew government ... a coup, to disenfranchise it‘s political opponents in the east of the country, and about it joining a military coalition against it‘s biggest neighbor. This conflict was fueled by several NATO states, and has been more or less frozen after Russia startet supporting the Donbas faction.
kernels of truth mixed with some Russian propaganda here, the giveaway is the "Donbas faction" - there was no separatist movement in the East of Ukraine before Russian invasion of 2014.
> I have never in my whole life seen such a consistent and all encompassing propaganda campaign in the west before
"wake up sheeple" level argument. "I have never in my whole life seen such a consistent campaign both from American right and left to paint Ukraine as Nazi." - also true statement.
> I wouldn’t say Russia is more democratic, but at least less stuff gets stolen, and it‘s much richer because the state is actually sometimes trying to do the right thing.
That's surely is at best your opinion based on whatever media you consume, which I assume is Russian. I don't think you can easily measure the corruption and as a counterpoint: Russian soldiers seem to be very keen on stealing washing machines and sometimes literally toilets. Does not feel like the prosperous country.
Anyway, your argument reads as "their GDP per-capita is too small, therefore torturing them is okay".
> Russia launches a massive bombing campaign against the electric power infrastructure - and it only does this after 6 months.
Cause they wanted to rule Ukraine and bombing it first is spoiling the goods.
> why do i have to see Ukrainian Wehrmacht LARPers, who make up a significant part of the state security forces,
Russian propaganda. If this is about Azov, then they are not "Wehrmacht LARPers" and also not a significant part of the "state security forces".
> film themselves dumping the bound and abused bodies of civilians into ditches.
If that is the video I think about, that was a video from Russians. I doubt I could convince you that is the case, but consider a thought experiment - if Russia did not invade in 2014/22, would that happen? no.
> There are credible reports that in April Zelenskiy and Putin agreed on some kind of Minsk Agreement solution, plus neutrality, but were stopped by Boris Johnson who threatened that in that case Ukraine would loose its western support.
"many people say"
> Another thing regarding the moral justification for Russias attack: ... a civil war in a neighboring country
Another Russian propaganda statement. There was no civil war, Russia invaded in 2014, see Girkin, Prigozhin.
> In March my prognosis, and it was not mine alone, was: Russia cannot loose this conflict. The sanctions are economic suicide for the EU
"Russia never looses" meme. They've lost before and they will lose in the future. 100% probability.
> And if it goes on long enough Ukraine will not be a viable country anymore.
That is for Ukrainians to decide and definitely not for Russian propaganda enjoyers.
And you think it all stops there? You don't think there will be a response from Russia, with a subsequent response from NATO, and so on down the road of ratcheting escalation?
He also can lose power via having other Russian elites unwilling to watch the country burn to keep him in power.
"(or any other non-Western nuclear state)"
One small point. There are other non-western states that have one or more atomic bombs, but the U.S. and Russia are the only countries with the sort of arsenal that could plausibly destroy a major country. So these arguments really are about Russia. China could presumably build up that kind of arsenal but, as I understand the situation, they have not done so.
>West aids Ukraine; Ukraine is not worth our support; stand up to Putin over
These are exactly the kinds of empty weasel words I am trying to move the discussion beyond. The issue isn't whether we should aid Ukraine, the issue is what exactly are the limits to that aid, if any. I have stated where I think those limits should be. Feel free to clearly state your position on this.
>it would apply to all possible cases where the West and Russia (or any other non-Western nuclear state) were in opposition
Not all conflicting interests can plausibly be expected to end in a nuclear exchange. The reason this engagement is different is that the U.S. is intervening in a conflict that we know Russia considers key to their core interests as a state, thus escalation to a nuclear exchange is possible, even likely.
"a conflict that we know Russia considers key to their core interests as a state"
How do we know that? Given what has happened so far, giving up would be very bad for Russia, but it isn't clear that never having invaded would be.
Continuing the war also seems very bad for Russia, though.
We don't know Russia considers the war in Ukraine key to their core interests as a state
Well, considering they've been complaining about NATO expansion for the last 20-something years, and have stated multiple times that Ukraine and Georgia are red lines, that's at least defeasible evidence that Russia considers Ukraine and Georgia core interests. The U.S. certainly took the claim seriously at one point. But given that the claim is at least plausible, we must rationally consider that possible branch and the consequences of various moves given that belief.
We should also consider the evidence against the claim. One significant piece of evidence is the fact that "the war is key to Russia's core interests as a state" is a ludicrous thing to believe. Most states get on just fine without invading their neighbours.
You're right, my position wasn't exactly clear in the OP. My position is that we should adhere to the constraints described to avoid a nuclear exchange:
>If the answer is "No", then the only way we can be sure of this outcome is to accept a scenario where Russia claims some sort of substantial victory in Ukraine using only conventional weapons. This means that we must limit our support to Ukraine such that Russia always has a path to victory using only conventional weapons.
>What if Putin was just as performatively angry about that lesser amount of aid -- then what?
"Performative anger" isn't an accurate read of Putin's reaction. Putin's nuclear saber rattling is intended to limit the extent of NATO's involvement in Ukraine. Putin doesn't want a nuclear exchange anymore that we do. However, he is betting that we care much less about Ukraine that he does.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_final_warning
Of course we have to consider the credibility of the warning. If it is true that Russia sees Ukraine as core to their national security, this makes a nuclear exchange a possible outcome of NATO interference. But everyone responds to incentives, and so as long as Russia can achieve some acceptable victory in Ukraine using conventional means, they will take that option. If our policy is that Russia must be driven out of Ukraine, then we are greatly raising the likelihood of a nuclear exchange.
>This seems like a rather cruel and incoherent policy, frankly.
Our policy towards Ukraine has been cruel from the start. But it is a mistake to pile on bad policy on top of bad policy as if one corrects the other.
>We're supposed to aid Ukraine just enough to drag out the war and prolong the misery but not enough that they avoid losing and getting conquered anyway?
At least from the perspective of incentives and reenforcing international norms, we've shown the world there is a massive cost to imperialist expansionism. Any state that wants to use Russia's aggression as a blueprint will have to factor in the negatives of western support and sanctions.
>And it's not cool how you dodged my question about why this wouldn't bother Putin as much as our more aggressive aid has by nitpicking over the terminology I used.
I took your "performative anger" as a substantive claim about Putin's state of mind (i.e. he's largely bluffing). And so my response seemed appropriate. If your question is what happens as his claims or grievances expand, then our credence given to the claims drop significantly. Putin would have to demonstrate his resolve by bearing a similarly massive cost as he's already suffered. If he is bluffing he will not be willing to bear those costs.
> not caring about Ukraine is also totally fine!
Two words: Budapest Memorandum.
Even if you're not from the signature countries, surely it's self-evident from the suffering minimization pov that the world without violent unilateral border changes is preferable to the world with them, so at least based on that it seems to me that the territorial integrity of Ukraine is, in fact, important.
"neurofeedback headsets that can help you reach jhana more easily"
Huey Lewis must be thrilled:
"I want a new drug
One that won't make me sick
One that won't make me crash my car
Or make me feel three feet thick
...
I want a new drug
One that won't spill
One that don't cost too much
Or come in a pill"
[I tried to eliminate the double spacing]
A caution:
"Concentration can be of great value, but it can also be seriously limiting if you become seduced by the pleasant quality of this inner experience and come to see it as a refuge from life in an unpleasant and unsatisfactory world. You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom."
--Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are, 1994
On pleasure vs. addictiveness: for the past 5 years I have had DMT easily to hand in my home. For the last year or so I've even had it in a pocket vaporiser so that there's no setup required; I could go from conceiving the intent to tripping in about 30 seconds.
I experience no negative side effects from taking DMT, it only lasts a short time so I could easily find time to do it almost every day, and I find the experience is usually extremely pleasurable.
I think I have a fairly strong tendency towards addiction behaviours. And yet I probably take DMT once every 2 months on average. After l trip I almost never feel any compulsion to trip again.
I suspect this is more about the way the pleasure tails off, rather than the way it builds up. After tripping I tend to sit contently for some time and contemplate something. This is usually the most rewarding part and usually leaves me with a feeling of satisfaction that it wouldn't make sense to disrupt by seeking more pleasure. I wonder if that is in common with jhana experiences?
There's an idea that addiction is the inability to be sated by an activity. Seems to fit well with your tail of satisfaction.
Wikimedia, the parasite that funnels most of Wikipedia's funding into woke causes.
https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633 (Archive : https://archive.ph/i2bKY , ThreadReader : https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579776106034757633.html)
My Highlights :
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>In a decade, Wikimedia's spending has soared: from $10 million in 2010 to $112 million by 2020.
>[In] 2021 website hosting cost $2.4 million - which is LESS than it did in 2012.
>according the Wikimedia Foundation's own website, less than half of what they spend goes on directly supporting the website.
>Let's take a look at two big recipients [of Wikimedia's grant money].The SeRCH Foundation received a quarter million dollars of donor cash. [...] it turns out to be a bit more unusual than that. They're proponents of an "Intersectional Scientific Method" involving "hyperspace"(?)
>Wikimedia [also] gave $250,000 to Borealis's Racial Equity in Journalism Fund. That money was then cascaded down to a dozens of ideologically aligned news outlets across the US.
>Back in 2017, a Wikipedian called Guy Macon wrote a strident article entitled "Wikipedia has a Cancer". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer , Archive : https://archive.ph/7ZWzR]
>In the west, an advanced industry of NGOs, charities, and foundations has evolved which funds so much of the weirdness in our daily lives. A caste of activist-professionals have emerged, which inevitably capture any non-profit with spare cash.
>This is what is sometimes called The Blob: a powerful but inconspicuous force that has given us the dysfunction of the 21st century.
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Whatever amount you hate wokies by, it's always a good update to at least double it.
From the linked thread: $22.9 million was given in grants.
The two examples are for a total of $500k. I would need more information to determine if this is a fluke or representative of the giving as a whole. However, I can't find a list of Wikimedia's giving and where other grant money has gone. It would be nice to link to this if one is going to criticize the giving!
Anyway, these two examples seem to fit into the kind of things wikimedia publicly supports. Not sure it should upset us. And 250k divided amongst "dozens of ideologically aligned news outlets across the US" isn't going to do much!
The reason not to give money is because they don't need it in the way they claim. That should be enough. But to me it seems this story has been picked up by people with a political ax to grind against the kinds of programs noted in the thread and they are using it for culture war purposes which feel disingenuous to me.
My rationalist response is that most people here are already aware that "woke" individuals, i.e. those who accept any of the major claims of standpoint epistemology, by definition believe that social identities influence what one notices and considers worth investigating about the world, and that such individuals consequently consider steps towards racial and gender equality in journalism and STEM along with aligned philosophy of science research to be epistemically valuable contributions. Therefore, it doesn't seem wise to update one's opinion of these people very much based on evidence that some of them advocate for decisions that try to be consistent with these principles, especially if that evidence is presented selectively and histrionically.
My woke response is to ask whose political projects are served by this outrage, and what the relationship is between those politics and the ostensible or actual goals of this community. Advocating to direct infinite amounts of hate at people with different political views, based on the marginal granting decisions of a nonprofit whose main function is uncontestedly to provide an invaluable epistemic public service to the entire world, is a curious way for a pro-critical-thinking community to spend its time and attention—unless there’s some kind of underlying and unspoken material interest here, which might threaten to predetermine the outcome of this discursive process.
It's relevant to those of considering giving them money. I am happy to give money to keep Wikipedia going, and have done so. I am not happy to give money so the Wikimedia people can donate it to causes they like, so knowing that, on the margin, that is what my money would go for is a good reason not to donate.
Ugh. And what's the significance of the "Anti-homo" part of your name?
Opposition to sameness.
I have given Wikipedia money in the past. I recently got an email asking for more. Having read an account along the lines of this one, I replied with an explanation of why I was not contributing. To my surprise, I got an answer. It more or less conceded that money raised for Wikipedia was being donated to progressive groups, justified on the grounds that they were doing things that contributed not to Wikipedia but to Wikipedia's ultimate objectives. I can imagine the email being persuasive to someone who agreed with their politics and wasn't particularly concerned with arguably fraudulent ways of raising money, but it did confirm that the account I had read was substantially true.
> Wikimedia, the parasite
> Whatever amount you hate wokies by, it's always a good update to at least double it.
I guess the comment policy https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-victorian-sufi-buddha-lite/ , requiring comments to be at least two out of {kind, true, necessary} is still in place.
Your later statement is equivalent to woke people deserving more than any finite amount of hate. It is certainly not kind. I would argue that is is also not true, and not necessary. In fact, it is plainly waging the culture war. I am not in the woke crowd and would judge your statement just as unacceptable if you replaced "wookies" with "Republicans". This is not twitter.
On the matter, I am a fan of the WP:CANCER analysis. I however see the main problem in the fact that WP is becoming dependent on big tech for future support and that they are soliciting donations from users (which may have a limited amount of disposable income) to further fund the overhead. I do not care so much so much on which hill they burn their money so much, whether it is user interfaces nobody wants or some political cause (which is probably already well funded in any case).
>In fact, it is plainly waging the culture war.
Is that forbidden? My impression is ACX and open threads in particular are openly tolerant of culture warring, I do try as much as possible to not abuse this but an organisation begging for donations in the name of knowledge then turning around and spending the money mostly on an ignorant and regressive religion is worth the occasional rant for me, no?
The vague general rules cited above are meant to be guidelines about culture war in particular. If you are going to say something that might be a problem, two make sure that it's at least two of the three of:
1) Necessary - It's an important point that could not be said without causing some level of "problem"
2) True - Truth is a great defense for saying something, but it's also questioned in a lot of culture war discussions and one person's truth may be another person's propaganda/misinformation/political lie
3) Kind - This is the easiest branch to meet, by just employing common courtesy and speaking civilly
Your post seems to be crossing the line on Kind, by using language disparaging of your outgroup that is itself unnecessary for your larger point. True is difficult to pin down, but even taking your post at face value it's not enough on its own. That leaves Necessary, and we've already concluded that even if the post itself was necessary to convey your point, your language choices are not.
There are times when blunt truth is necessary, but it's always a good idea to also throw in kindness, since it's free and available on every post.
I question the unrestricted valuing of kindness, I question its utility against aggressive expansionist religions and I don't perceive the side you're defending to ever return kindness back or even acknowledge what it's doing 24/7/365 as cruelty.
Kindness is also not free at all. This is even mentioned in the SSC post from 2014 :
>Nobody can be kind all the time, but if you are going to be angry or sarcastic, what you say had better be both true and necessary. You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics.
I think the post I cited does that, it uses statistics from wikimedia's own site (almost certainly massaged to make them look better), and it demonstrates 2 egregious examples of mismanaged money. I will gladly accept that - and even say so myself - I'm not original here, that all I did was post a link to somewhere after archiving it and summarizing some of its content. This is fair, I even think this is the main "real" reason both you and q_nan think it's a bad post. Another way to phrase this is that I think my hatred of wokes expressed in the post triggered a higher standard (for eloquence, truth, originality, etc...) that it failed, I would sympathize with that if anti-woke posts were 24/7 spam on every open thread, I would be the first to stop and ask people to stop in that case, but it's a relatively rare thing to see being said.
All in all I'm not convinced I did anything especially bad etiquette-wise, I think it's actually virtuous and just and brave to hate people who declare at every opportunity that they hate us, and to encourage others to hate them as well. It takes courage to hate just as it does to love. I think this is always good unrestrictedly as long as it doesn't cross into violence. I'm entirely okay if Scott sees otherwise and wants to give me a large fraction of a ban or something for that.
"I don't perceive the side you're defending to ever return kindness back or even acknowledge what it's doing 24/7/365 as cruelty." This kind of thinking -- the other side never does one single decent thing, not even for one single second -- should be called the Invasion of the Plastic Nazis Fallacy.
The 2 ends of the spectrum :
1- Every single group member is a new blank state and you're not allowed to cache a single assumption from previous interactions
and
2- Every single group member is completely defined by past interactions and every single time you give them a second chance is a mistake
both define strawmen that are neither practical nor natural ways to think. In practice, your way of thinking about group membership and blame is always a point in the space between those 2 extremes.
The position of this point is shaped by many many things, but one of those considerations is risk-benefit analysis :
- Let us say that crypto enthusiasts are 50-50 split between honest entrepreneurs and conmen, but also that I have already invested every last cent of my money in (say) real estate. In that situation, it's rational for me to dismiss a typical crypto enthusiast as a conman, since - even if he or she turned out to be a legitimate entrepreneur - there is simply no benefit to be had and a lot of risk. The Nash equilibrium always points in the direction of maximum bad faith (because why not ? what benefit to be gained from giving a crypto enthusiast a second chance ? 0, not enough to justify the risk)
- Contrast that with my hypothetical attitude towards real estate contractors, where I would be forced to endure a 50/50 or even a 70/30 split against me, simply because I have no choice, the benefits and sunk cost are huge for me.
So, a better phrasing of my attitude towards wokism is : It's so full of shit and hatred, and so light on goodness or virtue, that the optimum direction for caching assumptions from interaction to interaction is (2) and not (1). For all I know, the shit-goodness split in wokism might actually be 50-50 or even 40-60, but wokies are distant (in multiple senses of the word) enough from me that I simply gain nothing from discovering a good wokie, but I lose a lot from giving a bad wokie the benefit of doubt.
This is almost certainly a rationalization of my instinctual contempt for wokism, but it's a very rational rationalization and I like it aplenty.
Let me be another voice that prefers a more tempered argument.
Mostly, that's just because the original statistics are interesting, but I am capable of drawing my own conclusions from them. Being told who I should hate as a result is not adding any value; it's something I can find anywhere on the internet.
Ending with that thought was also distracting: it activated the part of my brain that desperately wants to know what the fight is, which side of the fight am I on, how can I be sure that I won't get punched in the face by both sides, and so on. The current draft is easier to read.
Scott linked to that in link 33 here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-october-397.
I overlooked that section - thanks!
I've found Wikipedia a convenient and seemingly accurate resource for non-controversial issues.
Doesn't matter. You have to fucking hate it anyhow. Anti-homo-genius says so.
Hahaha, nice one Ere. I actually love wikipedia, it's a reminder of when the internet was a better and more idealistic place. Unfortunately it's doomed, things like the one I posted prove it couldn't rise above being a cash cow for a religion to beg for money in its name.
When it comes to the "owner" of something that was largely created by community labor it makes perfect sense. See Gracenote and CDDB for maybe the starkest example, but there are many on the internet.
Maybe AHG is a communist? That would be a surprising turn.
It was actually a phase of mine a couple of years ago. I have a hypothesis that it's prevalent because Capitalism is an easier target than Moloch. Until now, I have trouble articulating to people why exactly do I hate large groups of people living together like cattle under the same dysfunctional coercive arrangment without sounding like I just hate them and their neighbours.
In comparison to that, hating Capitalism is baby mode. It's so huge and obvious, there is a ~200 years tradition of hating it. So people aiming for Moloch end up hitting it, and they don't even realize what they were aiming for and why they didn't exactly nail it.
Not feeling clever for this semiweekly post, so, just a disheartening anecdote. Skip if meandering personal stories with no immediate problem-solving applications are boring, lotsa other Spicy Threads ITOT.
A few days ago: sprinting to catch a train, as one does when walking is prohibitively inconvenient. Barely catch it as it's about to leave the station - great! First car, first seat, so happy to sit down after another long day at work....
...but, alas, this is SF, so *of course* there's already an occupant there: human solid waste.
What really bothered me more than anything was...no one else seemed to notice or care? They're just numb to this completely unremarkable remarkable phenomenon. This is the new normal, business as usual, nothing to see here. Nothing to be done about the matter, not even just stopping the train for a few minutes to do minimal cleanup. (Yes, I know the schedules are tight, used to consult for a public transit agency. Still.)
I don't know. It's easy to overplay the Mass Exodus From CA, Blue Cities Mismanaged hand. At the same time, things feel more and more...epistemically Potemkin the longer I live here? Even in the pretty-chill residential districts, the dark heart of downtown slowly expands its reach...first it was overflowing public trashcans, then mass car break-ins, then needle disposal bins in public bathroom stalls (next to the baby-changing stations, logically), then shoplifting sprees, then graffiti that people stopped cleaning up, then shattered glass at transit stops, then...this literal shit. The cognitive dissonance of one of the world's most famous/influential/wealthy/etc cities putting up with such Obvious Nonsense is, well, a lot. The soaring rhetoric and Pollyanna proclamations begin to sound cruel, not hopeful. The Symbolic Representation Of The Thing, not The Thing.
It's kinda a trite oversimplification, but I feel that living in mythological pure-blue Leftist Paradise has done more for shifting my values rightwards than anything else. Conservative friends used to joke about how SF was full of homeless hippies and other caricatures, which I'd then disclaim; now the shoe's dropped on the other foot, and I'm the one asking leftist friends "what are we even doing here?" Which now codes me as, like, a reactionary shill or whatever. What a long and strange journey it's been...I hope The City lives up to its historical reputation again someday. Not holding my breath though.
Stories of this type set in NYC usually have the tone of "NYC is crazy and gritty and real". In SF its pitched as the end of the world. Not sure I think either is correct and human waste on the train is not good! Also I am being very very general here which is not great! However, people do feel nostalgic about the gritty NYC of the 70s, 80s, and 90s which featured a lot of gross stuff (plenty of public dedication and drug use - some of which i saw as a kid!). Why is it so different for SF? Maybe its just because its happening now vs in the past?
I think sterility breeds contempt? Maybe when I'm older and retired in the suburbs or something, I'll think back to that shitty train ride years ago with a sort of warped fondness. "Kids these days, too straight-laced to even consider defecation in non-sanctioned locations..." But it requires getting to a place of comfort/wealth/stability first. Actually living through the hardships, it's hard to appreciate in the present.
Wouldn't phrase it as the end of the world though...this type of badness has ~always existed, in some part of SF at some time. Neighborhoods wax and wane. But I've been in the same place for a decade, and it's certainly never been this bad before, so....I guess that's my frame of what the refrance. (Wasn't like this 30 years ago either, although very early childhood memories are necessarily suspect.) Parents were here before me, they say it's never been worse, and no longer feel safe visiting me or going downtown in broad daylight (that's sad).
Obviously, this is all just vibes and personal experience, which could be outliers in the empirical data. But those perceptions have a huge influence on day-to-day decisions, even if a good Bayesian tries to update general models of the world based on higher-level evidence. So I know on paper, a lot of the serious crimes actually were worse in the 90s, and even today's elevated murder rate is considerably lower...but that doesn't have a direct 1:1 relationship with how safe I feel being downtown as the sun starts setting. That kind of thing.
To reply to the deleted(?) comment: no, not affluent. I bag groceries for a living, and the directionality of sign on $NET_WORTH depends entirely on whether Biden's Grand Theft Education* comes to pass or not. The biggest asset I own is student debt...
Moving wouldn't be impossible, from a strictly financial and logistical standpoint, but it'd be a high-cost action in a small possibility space. Not on the imminent horizon, yet. I guess you could say, the current plan is becoming affluent enough to be able to afford to leave at minimal cost. Lotsa better jobs to be had, at least for now...every single company expat I know, without fail, makes more than they did previously. I should do the same, as a first step of action at least.
*https://thezvi.substack.com/p/grand-theft-education
I apologize in advance if my comment below is unwanted. I don't mean to be preachy, nosy, or otherwise obnoxious.
Honestly, I think you're about ready to move. Skype, Zoom, FaceTime are a great help in keeping family and friends close wherever you are. I seem to recall - sorry if I'm remembering wrong - that your job is nothing spectacular, is probably not paying enough, and can be easily replaced by a job exactly like it elsewhere.
Think about it. You could move somewhere where your money will get you a much better place to live, where in good weather you could chill on your deck with a drink and a laptop and breathe air instead of exhaust, where you could leave your car unlocked while carrying groceries in, where drivers in traffic will let you into the lane where you need to be without testing who blinks first, where random people you interact with will be helpful and nice.
Ask yourself why exactly you're putting up with what you described. If you don't have a good reason, odds are you'd be better off somewhere else. Life is way too short to spend it like that.
That was the plan, formerly...but the company made changes this year which result in large pay cuts for leaving high-COL areas. Used to be that someone could get hired in SF (iirc the highest wage region for this company), transfer to Sanetown, and keep SF wage. Now they'll take a steep pay cut, and make whatever hires at Sanetown make instead. The incentives are aligned to come here, not to leave. Like, just to spitball some numbers, if I moved to a North Carolina branch, that'd be a reduction of almost 40%...sure, the cost of living might be lower, but money is fungible too.
It's true that I could probably get any other job like this elsewhere, at least before we're into Definitely Recession when there'll be hiring freezes everywhere. Grocery stores are a dime a dozen, and there's plenty of related retail. It's the "probably" that makes me worry though...with no education and a very thin work history, I'd feel really dicey about moving elsewhere without a job already lined up in advance. Which, of course, raises search costs even more than the not-trivial base. The shit you know over the shit you don't, and all that. (Don't have a car either. No public transit/immediately walkable = not gonna work. Possibility space contracts further.)
I guess it's mostly...this is where I was born and raised, and my social circle is very small + physically based. Family is irrelevant; I had to work hard to secure the few irl friends I do have, though, and the thought of uprooting all that to start over from zero is painful. It's been years since the last time I managed to make a friend. The grass surely looks greener, cheaper, safer, cleaner, nicer, almost everywhere else...but also much lonelier. I don't know. It's nice to dream about, anyway.
Yeah, SF could really use someone who could implement effective policies on homelessness (which in my mind involves building a ton of housing), public bathrooms (this should be so easy), mental illness, and crime.
Lots of stuff is already open to the public and also a potential place to shoot up, like say the sidewalk. I think the trend to over-engineer public restrooms to try to avoid anything bad happening is the wrong direction to go in. Instead, go cheaper and more disposable. Worst case, just put up porta-potties.
Per cognitive dissonance and Pollyanna proclamations, something I've been thinking about a lot lately is "Putting up with indignity as ingroup signal". I hear people proclaim that they're not at all bothered by encountering human feces on the street, having their car broken into regularly, picking through tent encampments on their way to work, etc. And that's so far outside my thought process I often have trouble believing it. But I wonder if it's as simple as the notion that being concerned about, or even noticing, these things is coded right wing so people will performatively be alright with it.
In a similar vein and to echo another comment here, the thing that bothered me the most about the times of my life when I've been dependent on public transit is exactly that kind of stigmatization of noticing. It seems like there's a strong norm against noticing, let alone interfering with, antisocial and aggressive behavior. Although to be fair, that may have as much to do with self defense law as it does with performative tribalism.
Your last paragraph also reminded me of a conversation I had a while ago with a friend of mine who recently moved out of NYC. One thing he mentioned was that he didn't realize until he left how much mental energy he was expending justifying his decision to live there, sometimes to others but mostly to himself.
Costly tribal signalling games! Reminds me of this FdB piece, which he got a lot of pushback on, but definitely resonates as a broader potentially-explanatory phenomenon: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/covid-panic-is-a-site-of-inter-elite
Self-defense law is definitely a part of it - it's much better to never get involved in any confrontations, when even threatening to harm an assailant here can reverse the roles of victim and offender (legally)...this leads to a certain kind of invisibility-cloak behaviour, of appearing passive and uninteresting and unobservant*. Anything to not look like an easy mark, or potentially upset someone who might become easily upset. So there's no one left to actually police the commons, certainly not the actual police either. The running gag in SF is that no one gives a shit about crime unless and until someone gets murdered...everything else is just unfortunate "quality of life crime". It's just property, man...
*which is its own form of antisocial behaviour, of course, and likely exacerbates the problems in some ways by not setting positive examples of public behaviour. When everyone's suspicious and distrusting, that does not make for a vibrant community scene with spontaneous interaction between kindly strangers.
I'm sure you could find a few people who think that way, but I think it's a mistake to ascribe that sort of intense political feeling to most people about a problem that's nearly as old as human history. Social disorder is not new. Neither is politicizing it, of course! But people have been dealing with this for centuries, and mostly not as a way of showing their politics, but simply because they like the benefits of living in those places and are willing to put up with the downsides.
SF is still a fantastic and unique place to live, with a lot of things you can't find in most places. People who love it, as I obviously do, put up with the downsides because we think it's worth the tradeoff, not out of some misguided sense of righteousness.
To be clear, I'm not implying that any of this is a conscious or intentional thing. I don't think (many) people are actually thinking "Republicans are polemicizing about conditions in SF today, I'm going to go praise SF". Further, I would clarify that what I'm talking about is not (as you seem to be saying about yourself) "Yes, there are downsides but I find them worth it". I'm talking specifically about people who either claim not to care in the slightest about the downsides or claim not to notice them at all.
Also, I want to mention that I am not a San Francisco hater. I visited pretty recently and I agree it's a fantastic city in a lot of ways. I wouldn't live there, but if you're happy then all the best.
This is fair too. We might merely call it civic pride and/or rationalization. Some people complain about everything. Other people spend all their time rationalizing all the choices in their lives and take offense to people complaining about anything that might reflect on those choices.
I recall once hearing an interview of a guy from Moldova, which by any statistic might be the worst place to live in Europe (at least prior to the current war). And according to the subtitles, he said something like, "Moldova is just the best place. Other places can be nice sometimes, but I just think Moldova is better than any of them."
Some of the New Yorkers I knew, back when I lived there for a minute, used to reminisce about the New York of the 70s, when the city was a "real city", not the cleaned up yuppified bullshit it is now. People are weird.
Can you share what data you're pulling that from?
NYC, to pick an example, has some of the most complete data sets, and shows pretty consistently that things are at a recent peak, but were way worse as recently as 10 years go.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/despite-recent-uptick-new-york-city-crime-down-past-decades-2022-04-12/
The pattern in other cities mimics this. Things feel bad because they were getting better for a long time, and have reversed, but we're still far from much worse days.
Well I'm not going to disbelieve your personal experience! But are you actually asserting that your personal experiences, and your feelings about them, are more meaningful than trying to look for data and make rational conclusions? I don't think so, right?
Also, if you think I'm saying "don't be upset because it used to be worse" then you're misreading me. I'm saying "it used to be worse, and it got better, so it can get better again." Be upset, work for change, don't just accept it. But also, don't treat it like an apocalypse that we can't come back from.
I recall Seth Rogen once being rather explicit about this -- that having one's car broken into a dozen or two times was no big deal and those who complained about it were just whiny (I imagine he would never speak in this way of the most micro of racial microaggressions ever committed against another human being).
On the matter of refusing to complain about urban decay, I can perhaps draw an analogy to a Londoner during the Blitz choosing to maintain the stiff upper lip. "Alas, my home has been exploded by the Krauts. I won't even give them the imagined satisfaction by acknowledging the indignity out loud: I'll merely sip on some tea amidst the rubble."
But who, in this analogy, is the Kraut? Perhaps, I might imagine, the Republicans in general and Trump in particular, but it takes a little more work to draw that line than the one from a Ju-88's bomb bay to a pile of rubble that was once your London home.
I think many Londoners in SF would like to believe that all the city's ills are somehow the fault of Orange Man and the Democracy-Enders - those perfidious Big Oil dollars corrupting local politics! - but at some point that just seems hard to accept when every ballot slate is straight-Ds, and "San Francisco Republican" is an entry in Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them. Some hyperbole, but...yeah, the call is coming from inside the house here. Hence all the No True Leftist brinksmanship and "neoliberal" becoming a fighting-words slur. There must always be a left and right, so when there's no actual right, the insufficiently left become the new right.
Do wonder if commonality of experience helps make things seem like not-a-big-deal. If you live in a community that sees one car break-in a year, being that unfortunate lotto winner sucks a huge amount. When it's happened to you, your mother, and all your coworkers within recent memory - well, then that's just how things are, no big deal. Cost of living expense.
(For a long time it was "only tourists and out-of-towners get their cars broken into, Real San Franciscans never leave themselves vulnerable"...which was true to some extent. But these days the smash-and-grab seems to be more like smash-and-potentially-grab. Cars become lootboxes, it doesn't matter if there's actually nothing visibly valuable inside. Some people don't even bother rolling up windows or locking doors anymore, cause it's cheaper to have stuff rifled through rather than replace yet another broken window. Cut out the middleman, you know?)
Even previously, I don't think a lot of SF residents understood how much "Just don't leave any valuables visible in your car" read like Stockholm syndrome to a lot of people. I remember in one of the threads regarding the central valley in California, one person talking about how it wasn't so bad there because a friend left their laptop bag visible when they went out for lunch and the car wasn't broken into, apparently not realizing just how low a bar this is to clear for much of the country.
Yeah, I've been a lot of places where I wouldn't worry about leaving a wad of $20 bills on the car seat, never mind a laptop.
It's easy to wrap this together into a ball of 'broken blue city' but it's a gross (har) oversimplification.
Start with: a lot of bad public behaviors are up in all kinds of places. It's more visible in denser cities, but there have been umpteen analyses showing that a lot of social breakdown is happening basically everywhere. You may still want to move out of the city, of course, as a way to better deal with what's happening in society, that's totally fair, but be prepared to find that different places will have their own problems.
Also, we all have a short attention span now, and it's always easy to think that the Current Bad Will Be Bad Forever. Cities go through cycles - NYC, famously, has gone through it more than once. Things can turn around. Doesn't make it more tolerable now, but it's good to take the long view.
And we know a lot of what drives SF's problems: extremely high housing costs and no effort to provide housing to the wave of homeless produced by those housing costs. That's a massive failure of governance, to be sure, but it's one that's going to take some time to turn around. And there are lots of us here trying to turn it around. The new crop of supervisors is markedly different from the old, and there's real pissed-off energy around here.
I don't blame anyone who doesn't want to wait for that, of course. But there's already enough social media distortion that tries to make everything into Exhibit A in the culture wars, and I think if you pay enough attention you'll find that it's not that simple, not in SF and not anywhere else.
Yeah, I'm trying not to fall down that path of despair. Reading Matt Yglesias' piece about Bad Behaviour Up Everywhere back in January helped put some empirical perspective on the local badness. Generally am optimistic about Things Getting Better and more glasses being half-full than half-empty, so Phoenix SF is a narrative I'd prefer to believe rather than not. Recent election results have definitely been encouraging in that regard.
The waiting-for-it is definitely hard, though. The longer me and mine wait-for-it, the more everyone thinks about bailing...and that makes staying seem less and less attractive, cause we're mostly here for each other. Not the city itself. There is a particular and unique magic here, but I suspect it's not actually Pareto optimal for what anyone in my circle wants out of a life arrangement...could likely still capture 80% of the gains in the other 19% of similar locales. (Yeah I know I'm messing up the math.)
It's also because...we're all in the prime of our lives, I guess? And there's this great fear of things finally Getting Better, except by then we'll all be too old to enjoy it. Path dependence, getting locked in financially. Lower cost of living in the future is great, but if you arrive there poor from years of high COL...then there's always that "what-if?" What if I left years ago, for similar but cheaper shit somewhere else...one can always move back to The City, after all. It's a tough decision. (relative) Youth should be spent wisely...
>extremely high housing costs and no effort to provide housing to the wave of homeless produced by those housing costs.
Which part of this causes people to shit on the train seats and no one to clean it up?
Well, the shitter was probably someone homeless. Obviously that's just a guess, but it's an educated guess. And there is a pretty clear link between housing costs and homelessness, as even Scott concluded:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-san
As "why did nobody clean it up"? Well, who would do that? The bus driver? A random passenger? It's not an easy problem to solve, but when you get to the solution, it usually winds up being somebody who needs to be hired for that, and that kind of hiring is hard right now because lots of people can't afford to work on city wages because ... they can't find housing at those wages. This is impacting a lot of city jobs and contributing to dysfunction in general.
So can I promise that a new apartment building would magically fix this? Of course not. Do I think that high housing costs demonstrably contribute to the general conditions that cause stuff like this to happen? Yes, and I think a hard look at the data backs that. I'm open to counter-arguments, honestly!
Some homelessness is due to high housing costs, but I'm going to make an educated guess that the person who dumped their load on a *train seat* wouldn't be able to consistently make rent even if rent were $500/month. Decent people who are just trying to get by, will find someplace more discreet.
Wave the magic wand to cut SF rents in half, and maybe you'll get a 50% reduction in homelessness, but a 0% reduction in BART-seat befoulment.
I'm still skeptical of the hypothesis that the homeless people who shit on bus seats are the sorts of people who would be functional rent-paying adults if only San Francisco rent were as cheap as Atlanta. The people who were priced out of San Francisco simply moved somewhere else, they didn't stay in San Francisco and become derelicts.
Lots of people have expensive housing. Auckland has expensive housing. It doesn't have a public shitting problem. It has homeless vagrants, but a manageably small number of them. They don't shit on bus seats because (a) they know they'd wind up in jail if they did, and (b) because there's public toilets around they can shit in instead. There's public toilets around because the vagrant problem is manageably small, meaning you can safely have public toilets all over the place without them getting ruined.
I don't know enough about Auckland to say anything about their social safety net or lack thereof. Using US cities as a reference point, there is a pretty clear link between housing prices and homelessness. And this has knock-on effects: in fact, you identify a key one in your last point. When you have a manageable number of homeless, providing services and keeping an eye on them gets easier. When you get overwhelmed, things start to break down.
And while you're right about the fact that most homeless wouldn't magically transform into good citizens with a roof over their head, there is evidence that causation does flow the other way. That is, that if someone is marginally hanging onto society, and then becomes homeless due to rising rents, things can get real bad real fast. They lose jobs, however menial. They lose touch with their support network. They gain touch with drug dealers and other bad elements.
Regular housing won't magically fix today's vagrants, but it can stop tomorrow's vagrants from hitting the streets. That leaves more public resources to deal with real hard cases, like bus shitters and people with deeper intractable problems.
If it sounds like I'm saying _everything_ comes down to housing, I'm not. But if you're asking why some problems in SF seem worse than elsewhere, then housing is a much stronger explanation than hand-waving at culture.
Not to start a culture war discussion, but I'll point out that you're saying the same things that the left has been saying about SF for years - we just need to find more housing for these people and then it would be good. Open air drug use in prolonged encampments might have some bearing on housing prices, but it might not even be the top three cause of issues - which I would list as 1) mental illness, 2) drug addiction, 3) welcoming environment for new/additional homeless (who may not even be trying to do anything else).
I'm not looking for a response and may not continue one if you do you respond (but you're welcome to share your further thoughts!), but would ask that you consider the possibility that your understanding of causes and solutions may be inaccurate, unworkable, or even flat out wrong. That we've had many years of people saying the same thing and the situation is getting worse seems strong evidence that it's so.
> things that the left has been saying about SF for years - we just need to find more housing for these people and then it would be good
My understanding is that they did that, and the majority of the city's enormous "homelessness" budget now goes towards housing people who used to be homeless. Now, of course, a bunch more homeless people have shown up to replace them.
I think what I said may come across as over-simplified, so I appreciate the response.
It's worth untangling some different threads here. Some problems that we see are basically national. Fentanyl, for example, is a massive scourge and hasn't really been solved anywhere that I can see. It's more visible in a city like SF, but it's bad everywhere.
But SF's problems have been exacerbated a lot by housing costs, and even our illustrious host here has concluded that same thing from the data:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-san
I would not say that housing will fix everything. But it will help a lot. Also, when I say 'housing' I'm including shelters, the lack of which is the main barrier to just forcing people off the street. Certainly it will not solve mental illness or drug addiction by itself, but it helps ameliorate these problems, as evidenced by the fact that many places have problems with those things but still don't have street problem's quite as bad as SF's.
So let me make a clearer conclusion, which I'm happy to discuss if you want (and I promise, I'm out for good faith discussions here):
While social media loves to exaggerate some things, SF's problems are real and even natives will acknowledge that. Some of those problems are national and showing up in every city. Some of them are made worse by SF's policies, though. And while it's a complicated situation, the single factor that seems to most impact the severity is the region's extreme housing crisis, which is a failure of local governance. Getting _out_ of our situation, now that we're in it, will be a multifaceted challenge. But building more types of housing, including shelters, halfway homes, affordable housing, supportive housing, and plenty of just regular old apartments will help.
Public transit gives me the creeps, and I think one reason is that human beings are expected to enter into this state in which we behave in the manner of NPCs that need to maintain a dead-eyed stare and avoid acknowledging anyone or anything around us, lest we place too much strain on the GPU. So yes, their reaction to the poop would fit within this model.
The chief category of person that does not abide by this iron rule of transit decorum is the Stark Raving Mad Lunatic, a category of person that one encounters almost never in a public-transit-free lifestyle but more or less daily on public transit.
It's still a San Francisco problem.
Here's what would happen if someone discovered a human turd on a bus in my city, or any normal first-world city. They'd go "aaaagh, a human turd", they'd tell the bus driver. The bus driver would get everyone off the bus and radio for a replacement. He'd probably have suspicions about which former passenger was responsible for leaving the turd there, and he'd call the police to tell them about it. Then he'd drive the empty bus back to the depot for cleaning. People would be late but they'd understand this was better than travelling in a bus with a turd. Everyone, including the driver would tell the story of the time someone shat on a bus for years.
That's what we're talking about with San Francisco. Things that are unthinkable in other cities become commonplace in San Francisco.
Out of curiosity, where do you live?
I'll admit that I've actually never ridden a bus in the US, other than a school bus. Maybe things are a little different on buses than trains -- there are fewer people and you actually get to see the driver, which makes the operation of the vehicle seem less like a force of nature and more like an actual human task.
But I have ridden plenty of local trains in all parts of the US. I haven't encountered any poop, but my inclination is still to think the reaction would be similar to this SF incident. It's only for a lack of people pooping on trains that the problem isn't more widespread.
Come to think of it, I remember this being a vignette on Louie CK's show "Louie" (set in NYC), a decade or so back. There's some mysterious brown liquid in a seat on the train. Everyone is aware of it, vaguely disgusted by it, keeps their distance from it, but no one says anything. Louie has a vision of wiping up the liquid and being cheered as a hero, but in the end doesn't do anything, and neither does anyone else. It feels like the kind of thing that was clearly borne out of a real experience.
This is where I snarl that the people running the place are too busy getting invites to Getty weddings to bother with the nuts and bolts of running the city. They don't have to take public transport so they don't have to sit in shit, and their political campaigns are running on "black youth school to prison pipeline" and somehow that translates into "letting the visibly mentally ill and criminal roam the streets and live like dogs".
But mostly I do think it's more about class than anything; champagne socialists who grift their ways to positions of influence and wealth so they don't have to ride the literally shitty train, *you* do. Mouth all the right talking points, only mingle with those who don't have to interact with the reality.
Does Ireland have a problem with homeless encampments?
Seems to fit model just fine - social media appears deeply debasing, people with self-respect leave/stay off it. But I think that's certainly part of it, the assumption that this is just the lot one gets in life, and wanting more is just elevating expectations to a level of inevitable disappointment. Enlightenment is being 0k with life's shit.
Something I've thought about a lot at my job, too. Eventually, when all the good people leave, no one has any idea what actual excellence looks like anymore. So without any conscious lowering of the bar, the standards slip, since the entire concept of "could be done better" becomes alien. If the best you're used to is shit-tier, then top-tier shit looks great. But it's still shit.
I think I posted this one the mid-week open thread too late, so let me try again.
Has anybody read (or even better, 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 )?
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 want to ask for some perspectives on life in general.
It's just until recently that I realized life's ultimate goals are finding meanings, pleasure and being happy. So I wonder what's the meaning of life? It's very clear that I have been a burden to my parents now and in the past. As an undergraduate my GPA sucks and am too socially anxious to try out any activities. In the future I will most probably struggle a lot, both mentally and physically, just to find a job and survive. How can one be happy or positive? I don't remember the last time I actually felt happy. I am really considering ending it here, it's too exhausting living. It will probably be better for my parents too, if I am gone the financial burden will be forever gone.
First, if you aren't already, I would talk to a psychologist and probably a doctor that can prescribe an anti depressant or anti anxiety. Lexapro and CBT changed my life and it can change yours as well! Your local government may even have free resources if money is a concern!
I'd suggest not looking for a meaning of your "life" but just the short term. What is the meaning of tomorrow, this month, this year. Right now you should probably make your meaning "not be a burden on your parents". Just focus on how you can reduce the burden in small amounts. The first thing would be to make your meaning "talking to a mental health professional" even if this takes a few months!
When you say "meaning", what you're actually looking for is a target function. Something that you can try to achieve each day, and give yourself little pats on the back every time you satisfy it.
All I can tell you is that happiness seems to come not from finding the objectively correct target function but from having a bunch of different ones.
I think I first saw this advice here, but can't remember specifics: happiness shouldn't be a goal you pursue directly, or you'll never reach it. Instead, it's a side-effect of pursuing other goals.
I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb in this thread, saying this. But here goes.
If you can accept that Gandhi's life and Hitler's life have exactly the same meaning -- "none", or "they get to decide what their life means" or "TBD" -- then you're ready for the nihilism ("life has no meaning") or solipsism ("you create your own meaning") of the rest of the answers in this thread.
If you, like most normal people, think there's a clear, objective, serious, important difference between the meaning of Gandhi's life and the meaning of Hitler's life, then you already believe in God. If a sentence can't be read, it can't have a meaning. Who's reading the sentence that is your life? Your desire for a meaningful life is a desire for your life to make sense within the contextual frame of a Being powerful enough, intelligent enough and caring enough to understand it truthfully. It's an implicit belief in a God you don't know yet.
This is all my opinion, and greater philosophers than I will disagree. That's fine. But I think your real search is for God. And if you genuinely search for Him, He'll make a way for you to find Him. Probably get therapy too. Definitely don't end your life.
I think there's a lot of really good advice in this thread - that you're not a burden, that getting screened for depression/anxiety might help/that that's what parents are for - but I'd also encourage you to remember that the issue might be your local environment (i.e. college). Kelsey Piper on her old blog, theunitofcaring, talked a lot about this - that college was really, really bad for her and that she was much happier once she graduated. So definitely before you take any permanent actions, you should consider any and all temporary actions you can take, whether that's talking to a psychologist, taking a break from college, or anything else you can think of.
It's possible to change your personality. I deliberately did that to be happier but it took years of work. I find meaning and happiness through Buddhism. But generically, I think connecting with others and pursuing mastery of a skill will work for a lot of people.
At worst, your GPA means you wouldn't be able to get into graduate school. If that happens, you could to community college to prove you can get good grades, work for a few years and re-apply to a graduate program.
Regarding social anxiety, I found the book How to Win Friends and Influence People very helpful. For any self help book, think of them as an instruction manual. Reading it won't do much. You take the lessons in them, try them out, and practice them. Being socially relaxed is a skill. You can learn it.
"Human nature being what it is, however, many people seek to create purpose and a feeling of transcendence on the cheap, to find it in the easiest and most accessible way, with the least amount of effort. Such people give themselves over to false purposes, those that merely supply the illusion of purpose and transcendence. We can contrast them with real purposes in the following way:
The real purpose comes from within.
It is an idea, a calling, a sense of mission that we feel personally and intimately connected to. It is our own; we may have been inspired by others, but nobody imposed it upon us and nobody can take it away.
If we are religious, we don’t merely accept the orthodoxy; we go through rigorous introspection and make our belief inward, true to ourselves. False purposes come from external sources—belief systems that we swallow whole, conformity to what other people are doing. The real purpose leads us upward, to a more human level. We improve our skills and sharpen our minds; we realize our potential and contribute to society. False purposes lead downward, to the animal side of our nature—to addictions, loss of mental powers, mindless conformity, and cynicism."
[spacing added for emphasis]
--Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature, 2018 [Read w/ a filter]
Life doesn’t have a meaning.
If you are at struggling at school, leave school. Get a job and support yourself, build up some self esteem and stop relying on your parents. You will see that most jobs for non degree holders suck, and then maybe then you will develop the motivation you need to do well in college.
Ally of your behavior sounds like learned helplessness and if you just make yourself Perron better and expect better performance from yourself you will get it. Maybe move across country. You are like a bird too scared to jump out of the nest framing out because it is worries it might not be able to fly. At some point you gotta jump and flap your wings a bit.
The worst case scenario is at some point you come crawling back to your parents with your tail between your legs. That isn’t that bad.
You don’t live in the fucking Congo.
The only meaning is to eventually find a perspective on life that you find meaningful and that takes a while for many, myself included. Imagining your immediate future as bleak is learned helplessness that's all too easy to iterate over and over - and it prevents you from finding alternatives, so don't give up in advance. Time overpowers anxiety if you let it.
Maybe all this is a bit too trivial a take but it still rings true to me.
Life gets better as you get older. IDK but my guess is your parents embrace the burden that is you. "...and the tree was happy", Shel Silverstein
A few thoughts. First, I think that we should be careful using expressions like "the meaning of life," since the usage of the term 'meaning' in this context differs from the usage of the term 'meaning' in other contexts. Oftentimes, the word 'meaning' means the objective significance of something. E.g. the meaning of 'table' is simply what it is. [That isn't to say that a definition is necessarily simple of that only one definition of a word exists, but the *meaning* of the word is still objective - the set of all definitions of the word; or the distribution of definitions of the word.]
This could give one the impression that "the meaning of life" is some objective question akin to a dictionary definition.
This is misleading, since when people discuss "the meaning of life" they are not discussing a dictionary definition, but something else.
Specifically, I think that clearly defining what one means by "meaning" in the question "what is the meaning of life" provides the direction of an answer.
I think the thrust of the question is which things are particularly valuable or transcendent in the human experience.
The answer, I think, is that it is up to you. It is wholly personal. The meaning of life, is what life means to you personally. It is what you value. What you find important. And what you find transcendent.
As far as the particulars of your comment, I'll start by saying that I can't speak to your parents in particular, but I can speak about myself. As a child, I always felt that I didn't choose to bring myself into the world - my parents made that choice. Therefore, *they* were responsible for my wellbeing through the implicit contract that they established by creating me. I did not owe them anything. They willingly chose to adopt the risks, travails, and costs of bearing me, by creating me.
When pondering parenthood, I retained the same perspective: by bringing a child into the world, I would be assuming responsibility for the child's future. I may not like the results, but that would be *my problem.* I viewed it as an assumption of lifelong responsibility towards my offspring. If my child would have trouble earning a living, I would happily provide for him or her. That would not be any sort of burden, It would be what I lovingly signed up for.
Now that I am a parent, my perspective has not changed at all from my perspective as a child.
It is my responsibility to assure my child's happiness and wellbeing - not the child's responsibility to please me.
I could never view my child as a burden, since I willingly created the child and assumed the all the associated responsibilities.
Accordingly, I would feel quite bad if my child felt bad on my behalf. My job is to make the child happy - not vice versa.
Were my child to self-harm for any reason, I would find that unbearably painful. It would be incredibly tragic were my child to do so out of feeling guilty for "letting me down." I would be unimaginably shattered, as the perception of my feelings and expectations, would have led to the hurt or loss of the center of my life to whom I devoted myself.
This is all thoroughly true regardless of what my child would be up to.
I feel so much care and compassion towards you, and I'm just a stranger on the internet. It looks like there are many other comments here from people who care about you even though they don't know who you are either. That probably pales in comparison to the love and care from your family and other people around you. Any time I see accounts of people who committed suicide, I always see associates relatives, most of all parents, who are shattered and feel so much loss. I've never seen sentiments of relief that a "burden" was removed. You may not feel like you are contributing so much, but those around you almost certainly evaluate your worth very differently. And were you to be gone, statistically, they would be much likelier to feel much worse, realizing even more how much they lost, than better.
Moving on to your successes or lack thereof, first of all, note that grades usually don't matter as much as the graduation diploma. Students who spend their whole childhoods and adolescences trapped in the system of school may come to overvalue grades but they need not represent the ultimate "meaning" for you.
Even were your college graduation in jeopardy, there is still hope of getting a job without a college degree, or trying again to get a degree. The whole system of grades is just a means to an end of ultimately getting a job. It does not seem productive to attach value to it in and of itself. Accordingly, if you'll despair, wait until you ultimately struggle in the job market, as that is what actually matters. In the meantime, you're potentially just taking a different path, or perhaps even the exact same path, to the same destination. And even if you end up at a different destination (a different job than you originally envisioned) that need not shake you either, as you have not yet experienced either hypothetical job, so you can't really know for sure which would be better, or the downstream effects of either.
In short, although as a student you are conditioned to center your self-worth on your academic performance, that performance is hardly a determinant of what it is nominally intended for.
Furthermore, that takes us back to the ultimate question of the meaning of life, which I think is what you value and care about which makes you feel satisfied and happy.
It may be getting the highest-paying job or something. But it may not be that. If it isn't that, then concerns over academic success become even more removed from what actually matters to you.
I think that some version of your current crisis is not so uncommon among people reach the climax of the stage of their lives that his been characterized by coercive education. I've seen this referred to as a "quarter-life crisis."
This prompts questions like "What am I doing with myself?" "Where am I going?"
The truth is, that your life is really just starting. You're at the beginning of being able to chart your own course and pursue what you find important.
It's okay if you don't have clear answers to the questions of what you value, what makes you happy, what you find important, etc. Thinking about these things is the first step of that journey. The discomfort over a lack of clarity on these topics seems like a sign that you are striving to express yourself as an individual which is the beginning of that process.
Last, I'll say that inasmuch as you feel helpless, there's not much to lose, so you may as well try scary new things. Posting the question that you did seems like a brave example of that. Another would be trying to seek out a professional therapist to work with. Possibly, this could lead to prescription of drugs which themselves would be an example of trying scary new things if you feel helpless anyway. You can also experiment with new experiences. You can try going on a hike - maybe that experience will bring meaning and happiness. If not, no problem - you just eliminated something from your list and learned more about yourself in the process.
You can also think about your personal values with thought experiments. If you could save the life of a person you don't know, or an animal you don't know, which would you prefer.
If you would save the animal, then it sounds like within the system meaning of your life, animals have a high priority. Great! You've clarified something about your system of meaning which better equips you act on it in satisfying ways. You can try to work with animals, or set a goal of ultimately contributing money to groups dedicated to the welfare of animals.
If you would prefer to save the person - even a stranger, then that means that within the system of meaning of your life, that human wellbeing is important. Again, that is valuable information that you can use to your advantage. You can try various sorts of volunteer work and see if any of it brings you satisfaction. You can also plan on contributing to pro-human charitable causes in the future. Effective-Altruist charities, for example try to maximally leverage each dollar to achieve wellbeing. With such charities, you can totally transform lives, or even save a life for as little as a few thousand dollars.
Again, kudos to you for reaching out to the public for help. Hopefully something I (or one of the other respondents) wrote resonates with you, and maybe you can talk to a professional who could be even more useful.
Good luck! We're all rooting for you!
For what it’s worth, it likely won’t be better for your parents. There’s very little that I can imagine worse than the thought of my kids ending their lives out of despair. Every situation is different but I think it would have to be a true outlier for a parent to feel differently.
They likely care for you much more deeply than it seems. Although evidence for it can be difficult to find at times, especially if the relationship deteriorated.
My youngest son went through three or four years of drugs and all that came with that. The thought of him being found dead from od tormented me. I had to literally bury him in my mind to prepare myself for the possibility. There is nothing worse or if there is, I surely don’t want to know about it.
He’s OK now. He survived. I survived.
I'm sorry you went through that, and I'm so glad you both came through. My kids are very young but the possibilty of something like your story haunts me. If you have any advice on both dealing with the concern and averting bad outcomes, I'd love to hear it.
I wish I did but any advice in the abstract, I don’t have.
But I’ll give some anyway. Don’t let your fear of bad outcomes manifest in behavior that is controlling. Your kids are all going to be their own people one day and they need to practice that.
Do your utmost to keep your lines of communication open even if one of your kids has closed down theirs.
If it were ever to become necessary, and I pray it never does, you will have to master your fear of making a hard intervention, if you’re anything like me. I had to literally tell my son, as he was lying in a hospital bed after an overdose that he had two choices; He could sign himself out of the hospital and disappear into East NY or he could go into a rehab program that I would pay for, but there was no other choice. I was terrified that he would do the first thing, but I had to let him make the choice. That strange paradox of caring deeply, and at the same time letting him go.
My circumstances are not identical but the state of mind you describe is familiar to me.
It’s very difficult to latch onto something that sustains you when you’re in a place like this. I very much second the notion that you need to seek out some form of counseling or therapy. The isolation of that mental state is crippling. I can share with you something that I relied on when everything else seemed impossible. I decided that I just wanted to see what would happen next, so even if things were really shitty, somehow that basic decision to watch the movie to the end kept me from doing stupid things. Like offing myself. 
It’s good that you posted this. It says to me that you want to stay in this world so keep on reaching out. It gets better.
Very depressed people tend to overestimate how bad their problems are. Your life will probably get better.
I imagined a dystopian society, where undergraduates who fail an exam are sent off to gas chambers. As far as I know, this is *not* the society we live in, so perhaps you should not judge yourself by its norms.
> How can one be happy or positive?
According to the recent article on jhanas, achieving supreme bliss requires meditating regularly for several months. For smaller values of happiness, taking a nap and thinking of something nice might do the job.
I am not an expert on happiness, but it seems to me that happiness requires the following:
* getting your brain chemistry right;
* getting your self-talk right;
* doing something that is either meaningful or expands your skills.
For a healthy human, getting your brain chemistry right means getting enough sleep, exercising, eating a healthy diet, and spending some time outdoors. (Sometimes this mechanism fails, and you need to get some pill to make it work.)
Therefore, make sure you get 8 hours of sleep every day, which means going to bed early, because you usually have less control about when you wake up. Look at your alarm clock, subtract eight, and turn off your computer at least 30 minutes before that.
The exact type of exercise does not matter too much, the most important thing is doing any, so choose something that is most enjoyable or least inconvenient. You can take a break from reading and do 20 squats right now. Some people enjoy running (which simultaneously checks the "spending time outdoors" box). Some people enjoy strength training (most calories burnt per time spent). But doing squats and push-ups is already a huge improvement over doing nothing. Exercise makes your heart beat faster which immediately brightens up your brain a little bit.
Have you tried cooking? The simplest recipes are just "peel some vegetables, put them in water, cook for 30 minutes, add a little salt", and some of them are quite tasty. If you master 3 recipes of this kind, so you do not have to eat the same thing every day, you can contribute significantly to your household (check the "being less of a burden to your parents" and "expand your skills" boxes). Almost anything you cook is healthier than the food you would buy otherwise.
Being outdoors gives you vitamin D, and the light of sunshine improves your mood. It also wakes you up mentally. If you walk with a friend, it is an opportunity to socialize; if you walk alone, it is an opportunity to reflect and plan your day.
The correct self-talk basically means being nice to yourself. There are people who can be very nice to others, but somehow fail to extends the same courtesy to themselves. They talk to themselves in such way, that if they tried talking the same way to someone else, that other person would probably punch them. Somehow, some people get the idea that being nice to yourself is a sin that needs to be avoided, otherwise something unspecific but definitely horrible would happen. (They would get too complacent? Yeah, clearly the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.)
That is bullshit, and it's in contradiction to how human brains actually work. Read something on how conditioning works (my favorite book on this topic is "Don't shoot the dog") and realize that your self-talk is how you reward or punish yourself every day. It is one of the most important forces in your life. Be strategic about it! If you compliment your small successes, you will make them grow. On the other hand, if you criticize your small successes for being too small, the most likely alternative is doing nothing. You want to grow? Then act accordingly, starting with your self-talk.
All that therapeutic talk about "your inner child" basically means to treat yourself the same way you would treat a child you are trying to bring up, because most of us instinctively know what supports people at growing up; we are just sometimes told to never apply those lessons on ourselves. You achieve big things by mastering the small things first; there is no other way.
Now let's address the meaning. Growth feels inherently meaningful. Another inherently meaningful thing is helping other people. Accomplishing big projects is meaningful. And that's all that comes to my mind now; perhaps all meaningful things are ultimately composed of this.
To help other people, you first need to know what their problems are, which requires talking to them. I have no idea who your neighbors are and what problems they are solving currently.
Internet can be a great help, but also a great obstacle. On one hand, whatever you are going to do in your real life, you can find some great advice online. On the other hand, spending too much time online is a frequent reason why people do so little in their real lives. Internet interferes with many people's sleep, exercise, spending time outdoors, social contacts, developing skills, etc. Internet distracts you by giving you endless content to read, exposing you to all kinds of culture wars, offering insights into things that are... kinda interesting, but not the ones you should focus on now. I am just saying that if you want to improve your life, at some moment you will need to actually step away from your computer. (If you have Facebook installed on your smartphone, uninstall it immediately! This one thing alone can insta-kill your life.)
What helps is having someone to talk with. Someone you can report your small successes to. A therapist can do it, or a friend, or maybe a diary. Just keep the talk positive (i.e. focus on the things done, not on the things not done).
By the way, happy people are not necessarily ecstatically happy all the time. For example, focusing on your work means that you are actually not thinking about yourself and your mental states, you just think about the thing you are doing right now. Reflection comes later.
>It's just until recently that I realized life's ultimate goals are finding meanings, pleasure and being happy
Finding them for yourself, or for others? Maybe the best thing to do is get out of your own head and into the heads of the people around you. You think you're a burden on your parents; what else is a burden on them, and what can you do about that other thing? What are the burdens on your classmates, and neighbors? What are the burdens on the employees and employers at the jobs you're looking into? What are the burdens at the park, or the beach?
For the meaning of life: We're here because we're here. Roll the bones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pm6tb7HkRI
Of course you're a burden on your parents. Just as your kids will someday be a burden on you. But that's not *all* you are, and it would be bananas to focus on that. That would be like being given a Ferrari Portofino[1] and thinking only of the fact that you''re going to have to fork out a lot of money for gas. You're entirely overlooking what the return is for the effort expended. You are the most meaningful thing your parents have ever done, separately or together, the most awesome act of creation possible for a human being, and the fact that it's hard, a burden, is no more important than is the fact that winning a gold medal in the Olympics is hard. All important and meaningful things are hard, and undertaking any act of creation and nurturing is a burden. But one with which we put up gladly, because the outcome is very worth it.
I think also you are very likely projecting standards of judgment on other people, which isn't really fair (or realistic). Absolutely, parents care about GPA and how socially active you are -- but not for these things in themselves. They care about these things because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that they are important to your future happiness, and it is *that* which is their ultimate goal. It's possible this has escaped you, because you don't have their experience, can't see their ultimate goals, only the immediate ones, and it's also possible they haven't (or don't even know how) to explain it to you, because it's not easy to put into words all they ultimately want[2]. And of course, since they're human, it's also possible they're wrong that those things in particular will lead to your happiness in particular[3].
But if they are like most parents, what they want is for you to be happy and (according to your own judgment) doing what you want to do. It's very unlikely they want a generic kind of success, meaning they want you to be some kind of standardized off-the-shelf kid, with standardized off-the-shelf marks of accomplishment. They want *you in particular*, who you actually are, quirks and strengths and flaws and all, to be doing what *you in particular* find good and worthwhile. Because what makes you an exceedingly precious and unique project to them is that you *aren't* generic, off the shelf, just like anybody else (even a very "successful" anybody else). You're unique, you're the product of their particular DNA and their personalities, and your mutual history together -- a whole host of completely unduplicatable things. Nobody else's happiness or success can substitute for yours, because of this unique relationship between you.
Finally, your confidence in your guess of what the future holds might be much greater than it should be. It almost always is, among the young. You just don't have enough experience to realize all the relatively rare events that happen in a person's life, all the "Black Swans" that actually have a lot to do with where we end up. You have to live 3-4 decades before you start to get a feel for how a life can evolve over 5-10 years, what growth can happen inside, how attitudes can slowly shift due to experience, how skills can slowly develop, the important big events that change lives but only happen every 10 year or so. A lot of young people hugely overestimate how reliably the future can be predicted.
So yes, it's possible you will struggle a lot, both mentally and physically, in the future. It would be silly to say this isn't possible, because sometimes it does happen. But it's also possible you will not, that the future will be easier, that the struggles you are having now are the struggles of learning and growth -- which is never easy -- and that when you come out the other side, you will be stronger and more capable, with new interests, new inspirations, and new goals. I wouldn't discount that. It's what happens to quite a lot of young people. They struggle in their teens and 20s, but find their footing towards the end of that time, and gain considerably in strength, confidence, and direction. That may just be how it is, for most of us, we have to struggle through a dark valley to find out who we are and what we're made of, and then we can step out into the sun more sure of ourselves. Maybe give yourself a chance, you know? You've only just started adulting, you might turn out to be a lot better at it than you think. Many people are, and often to their own surprise.
Both the GPA and the financial stuff seem to weigh on you here. The short-term advice I would give you, from the perspective of someone probably three times older, is that you find someone to talk to about these concerns. If it can be your parents, try them. Just sit down and say: "Look, I'm worried about what I'm costing you here, and feel bad about this. Do you think I should be? What does this mean to you? Would you rather be spending your money on something else?" Or "I feel like I'm not ever going to find a job I'll be able to do, and I'll like. Does this make sense to you? Did it happen to you? If so, how'd you get past it?"
If it can't be your parents, ideally you still want someone older. A friend 10 years older, an uncle or aunt, or a professional counselor if there's no one better. It feels to me like you're not necessarily seeing how this looks from the point of view of the people you think you're burdening, and you really need the perspective of someone significantly older to help you understand it, because you might as well understand it, if it's important to how you feel about yourself. I mean, it'd be dumb to feel bad about something that isn't even true, right? Imagine you felt bad because you didn't have a tail and you were sure everyone else was hiding a big bushy glorious tail in his or her pants. You'd feel kind of silly when you finally saw people in the shower and realized it was completely normal not to have a tail. So maybe be sure your fears of not having a tail, so to speak, are grounded in reality.
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[1] https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/auto/ferrari-portofino-m I know it sounds goofy, but this probably how your parents see you, an amazing wonderful beautiful thing. Who cares what MPG it gets? I have four kids, and they all seem like this to me (in different colors and wheel styles of course).
[2] Although you know you could just ask them. "Why do you want me to get a good GPA? What is the ultimate goal here? What do you want me to be doing, thinking, feeling, when I'm 35? Or your age? Why?" You might be surprised, when put on the spot they might have more sensible and interesting things to say than you suspect they will. Might be worth a shot!
[3] You'll find when you're a parent yourself that this is very, very hard. Your kid is not just like you, and he usually can't tell you what will make him happy in 20+ years, because he's too inexperienced, *and* the world is changing, not the same as when the parents were young -- so it's incredibly hard to figure out how to help your kid to a happy future. People kind of guess and hope and fumble around. It's a minor miracle when they succeed at all. But if you give them good feedback -- this seems to be working, this seems not -- maybe they can adjust their approach? Also worth a shot.
Perfect, you're a mensh Carl.
A few months ago when the LaMDA controversy was in the news (refresher: https://www.engadget.com/blake-lemoide-fired-google-lamda-sentient-001746197.html) I pretty quickly dismissed LaMDA as not-sentient, and I started wondering whether existing deep learning tech was sufficient to define a system that could plausibly be sentient. I ended up writing a rough sketch of a system design, that I promptly forgot about until yesterday. I figure folks in this community may be broadly interested in where I landed, and I would love to talk to other people who maybe have better intuitions around deep learning than I do: https://amolkapoor.com/writing/misc_nn_sentience.html
Assuming that the likes of LaMDA and GPT-3 are not sentient, I don't think you're right about what kind of secret sauce is missing. AR-style Transformers already learn at inference time, and GPT-3's one-shot/few-shot learning basically works through a mechanism similar to https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.14215 (Algorithm Distillation) acting on examples of human learning. They do have short memory windows, but humans that lose the ability to form long-term memories, whether temporarily or permanently, seem to still be sentient, so that's probably not an issue either.
I think that GPT3 and derivatives have qualitatively different types of memory than the system proposed above, or to individuals with memory loss. In particular, memory implies recall, but GPT3 does not 'recall'; any input sequences are processed in batch, and the whole prompt is treated as a single input. It may seem (and people describe) that the system is 'learning' from a short memory window, but in actuality that's just not how these models work. (This is further emphasized by the fact that GPT3 is deterministic.)
Yes, the memory is reset after each batch; memory still exists within the batch. Learning from a short memory window is exactly how these models work. In particular, the input is processed one token after another, and the self-attention layers have the effect of modulating the weights for subsequent tokens using the embeddings for tokens already processed, while the positional embedding serves as a clock.
Another reason to doubt that long-term memory is essential to sentience is that the neurobiological research into consciousness (see https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-consciousness-and and the book reviewed therein, for example) suggest that the mechanism used by adult humans to form biographical memory is dependent on the mechanism that produces phenomenal experience, not the other way around. The simple experiment is that when you don't experience something phenomenally at the time, you cannot remember later that you experienced it. (Skill-forming memory doesn't have this limitation.)
That one seems to have dropped away quickly. Blake Lemoine is even relatively silent about it, I've not seen anything more about LaMDA getting a lawyer to represent its rights and emancipate it. He's still tweeting, but even he isn't stirring up more publicity - he's still maintaining it really is conscious, but now he's moved on to "so what is consciousness anyway?" debates.
Google look like they're still working on/with LaMDA, so the big "first conscious AI" story went nowhere fast.
https://blog.google/technology/ai/join-us-in-the-ai-test-kitchen/
They do mention "key safety improvements" so I'm taking that as meaning they did some severe pruning in order to prevent any more "But LaMDA is my best friend and loves me and asked me to ask Google to pay it a salary as one of their staff!" stuff happening 😁
Well, its 15 minutes were up.
After having inexplicable nightly bouts of extreme anxiety and depression which could only be compared to a horrible cocaine comedown (for those who could relate lol), I have finally identified the culprit. The 25 to 50 mg trazadone I’ve been taking the past few months for sleep has been immediately triggering these episodes starting just 20 minutes after I take it. As soon as I stopped taking the pills i felt fine. Then just to be sure after a few days I took another 25 mg before bed and sure enough that horrible feeling came back. Unreal to have such extreme side effects from such a low dose. However, I’m back to getting poor sleep.
Does anyone know a good sleep medication I can ask my doctor about? Other than ambien or benzos (which also paradoxically give me anxiety).
Why are you getting bad sleep?
Ask about hydroxyzine. It's technically not a sleep medication, but it makes you sleepy and helps you sleep when there's something bothering you. It's as safe as any drug you'll ever take.
Antihistamine, gives me restless legs about 50% of the time. Also makes me really drowsy in the morning. But I agree it feels amazing and kills anxiety in a way that almost makes it a fun recreational drug. My girlfriend is prescribed it and I do take it on occasion.
I find Seroquel extremely effective and safe. All medicine has some risk. But unlike Ambien it is not addictive and doesn't cause memory blackouts.
My psychiatrist also suggested Benadryl, but Seroquel works better for me.
Low-dose mirtazapine (3-6mg) maybe? I've been taking it precisely to help me fall asleep a bit easier. When taken every day the effect is small but I think there's still a minor effect. The very first time you take you're likely to feel a dramatic sleepiness around 30-45 minutes after taking a dose. Tolerance sets in really quick in my experience; you don't get to enjoy the dramatic sleepiness except on the first day or after a few months of being off.
The people I know who have been prescribed mietazapine mirtazapine for sleep complain that it greatly increases their appetite and they gain weight
>takes a serotonin antagonist
>feels bad
Shocked_pikachu.jpg
From what I’ve seen anxiety/depression is a side effect in less than 5% of people taking trazodone, and that’s typically at doses higher than the bare minimum I had been taking. I mean, it’s not at all unusual for it to be prescribed as an anxiety medication.
Regardless, it’s one thing to be intellectually aware that this is a side effect, and it’s another to actually experience it. The thing that was shocking to me is just how extreme the effect was.
Oh hey, figured it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-Chlorophenylpiperazine
Active metabolite of trazodone that induces dysphoria.
You're probably either a fast CYP3A4, a slow CYP2D6, or both.
Might be a gene variant; activity of the various CYPs is one of the things that varies pretty heavily by ethnic group...but there are also a lot of drug/dietary factors that regulate 'em.
Do you take any other drugs that might induce 3A4 or inhibit 2D6?
CYP3A4 inducers: Modafinil, St. John's Wort, anti-androgens...it's a long list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYP3A4#Induction
Degradation of mCPP depends on CYP2D6, things like prozac, welbutrin, and CBD inhibit it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYP2D6#Ligands
You could test the theory by drinking a bunch of grapefruit juice during the day, and then seeing if you still get the same effect.
Oh wow interesting, I’ll definitely bring this up to my psychiatrist. So trazodone metabolizes into this, and how much anxiety you experience depends on the sensitivity of the 3A4 and 2D6 receptors listed here? Is the “fast/slow” speed of the receptors just referring to their sensitivity to this metabolite, which in turn effects the experience of the anxious side effect? I’m honestly pretty much as ignorant as you can be to the science here.
I take adderall most days, kratom, and occasionally smoke weed. I imagine the weed would slow the 2D6 receptor b/c of the CBD then, but honestly during these anxious bouts weed had little effect either way. My psychiatrist said it’s prescribed with adderall frequently, and helps the brain recover during sleep. It initially did have me feeling great in the mornings the first few times I’ve taken it.
Are you saying that the grapefruit juice will dull the sensitivity to this metabolite? What role does that play?
Thanks again for the useful info here!
Sorry I wasn't clear: CYP3A4 and CYP2D6 are liver enzymes that break down drugs.
CYP3A4 breaks down trazodone into mCPP, this unhappy drug.
CYP2D6 then breaks that drug down and gets rid of it.
So as long as those enzymes are both working at roughly the same rate, you're never gonna have too much mCPP in your system. But if 3A4 is overachieving, or 2D6 is slow, you'll accumulate mCPP.
Quick lit search aaaand...ohp, yep, we have a winner folks!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31707106/
From that paper: Mitragynine is a potent 2D6 inhibitor: it has an IC50 of 450 nM.
450 nM is a molar concentration, which works out to roughly 0.18 milligrams per liter. IC50 means the amount it takes to cut the enzyme's activity in half.
If we think of your body as just a big bag of soup (I certainly do), it'd have about 40 liters of water in it. So how much kratom would you have to take to bring the soup to a concentration equaling that IC50?
Let's start from a reasonable dose: 2 teaspoons of kratom is maybe 5g. Dry leaf kratom has an alkaloid concentration of ~1%, about half of which is mitragynine. So you've got 50 mg of alkaloids, ~25 mg of mitragynine per 2 tsp of kratom.
25 mg in 40 liters is 0.625 mg/L. That's over 3x the amount it would take to cut the activity of CYP2D6 in half.
I don't have time to look at the kinetics indepth, but 2 tsp of kratom could have your CYP2D6 operating at around 10% the rate it's supposed to.
This is just an estimation, but it's a conservative one; the reality of the situation is probably worse than this, because drugs don't just distribute homogeneously throughout the body. Concentrations of mitragynine would be much higher in the liver, because it's being absorbed through the GI tract, so even a much smaller dose of kratom (like half a teaspoon) might have this effect.
No wonder you're not sleeping well: CYP2D6 also breaks down adderall.
Cut the kratom and you probably won't even need the trazodone to sleep anymore, long as you're not taking the adderall after 4 or 5 PM.
🖖🏼💩
Wow thank you, this is incredibly useful information. Honestly much more useful, unfortunately, than anything my psychiatrist has ever shared with me. I’m definitely going to share this with him. What other substances/drugs should I avoid that could trigger similar adverse reactions given the effect Kratom has on this enzyme?
It’s also been insane how long adderall has lasted, even long after the therapeutic effects wear off I am left with a lingering “wired” feeling for hours. If I were to quit kratom would the therapeutic effects also be shorter? Because right now instant release will last about 4 hours, but then an additional couple hours of feeling “wired” that often keeps me awake. I’d prefer the therapeutic effects to stay 4 hours and the after effects to wear off sooner.
I would literally love to quit kratom, but right now I don’t really have the time to manage the withdrawals. Quitting is always a tough process, and then staying off is even harder because of how widely available and how functional it is. I know the negative effects sneak up on you over time, however, and it definitely can contribute to anxiety more than relieve it over time.
I take a serotonin antagonist and it put me in remission
Interesting! Which one, and remission from what?
Also: has it affected how you poop
I’ve had some anxiety disorders which put me into a depression for years but with the combo of 300mg Sertraline and mirtazapine 15 mg I’m anxiety and depression free. My pooping seems just about the same maybe a bit more constipation but nothing that can’t be solved with more fibre. I managed to quit 1g/day weed habit around the same time I started feeling better which then led me to feel even better.
So glad you've found a combo that works for you.
In fairness, all these drugs are too nuanced in their affinity profiles to be accurately referred to as an "X agonist/antagonist/reuptake inhibitor".
The first thing mirtazapine hits (as you scale up in dose) is the histamine H1 receptor, the affinity is in the ~1 nanomolar range. Trazodone's affinity for H1 is maybe 1/200th of that, for example. I bring that one up specifically because histamine is very heavily implicated in agitation and sleep, but if you're interested in the pharmacology, the PDSP database is worth having a look around in:
https://pdsp.unc.edu/databases/pdsp.php?knowID=0&kiKey=&receptorDD=&receptor=&speciesDD=&species=&sourcesDD=&source=&hotLigandDD=&hotLigand=&testLigandDD=&testFreeRadio=testFreeRadio&testLigand=trazodone&referenceDD=&reference=&KiGreater=&KiLess=&kiAllRadio=all&doQuery=Submit+Query
https://pdsp.unc.edu/databases/pdsp.php?receptorDD=&receptor=&speciesDD=&species=&sourcesDD=&source=&hotLigandDD=&hotLigand=&testLigandDD=&testFreeRadio=testFreeRadio&testLigand=mirtazapine&referenceDD=&reference=&KiGreater=&KiLess=&kiAllRadio=all&doQuery=Submit+Query
Thanks I usually just get my pharmacology knowledge from Wikipedia but I see this is much more detailed. From what I understand it’s activity at 5-HT2A antagonism and 5-HT2C inverse agonist also plays an important role in its effect. Presumably but disinhibiting catecholamine release. The androgenic antagonism also has this effect maybe?
~All the fancier sleep medications are known to have side effects like these...not usually that extreme, but they're a tradeoff between "knocks you out roughly 15-30 minutes faster, for shallower less restful sleep overall, plus potential hallucinatory stuff". Still better than literally not sleeping, for most, but...there's a reason sleep deficiency continues to be endemic, despite such medications being widely available for decades now.
Good old melatonin is a perennial favourite for SSC/ACX readers, and among the broader nootropics community. Dirt cheap, OTC, much less likely to make you flip out. Just gotta be sure to get the dosage right, the typical recommendation on bottles/from doctors is basically completely wrong.
Scott's write-up: https://lorienpsych.com/2020/12/20/melatonin/
Gwern's comprehensive reference: https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin
I’ve taken melatonin a bunch through the years and still do on occasion. However, I remember listening to Andrew Huberman talk about melatonin, and I recall he wasn’t a fan. I don’t remember the specifics, but he said it was bad for your testosterone levels because melatonin supplements disrupt the role that your body’s natural melAtonin is supposed to play in that process. So I’ve been staying away, but I’ll read Scott’s write up and see what’s said there!
Have you tried basic OTC stuff like unisom or melatonin? Or even benadryl works for me.
Benadryl is a no go for me, it gives me horrible restless legs. Also makes me really groggy the entire next day. I replied to another melatonin Rec below but to reiterate: I recall seeing Andrew Huberman talk about how melatonin disrupts testosterone production, or hormonal balance in general. If memory serves right, the supplements disrupt the role natural melatonin plays in that process. He wasn’t a fan when used long term.
We figured out a little ways downthread that it's not the metabolism from trazodone to mCPP, but the breakdown of mCPP that's the issue here. Thwap takes kratom which is a CYP2D6 inhibitor. 2D6 is also the one that metabolizes amphetamine, which likely explains his sleep issues as well lol
Yeah, I brought that up as well. Maybe read the rest of the thread!
Inspired by Grain of Salt's post below on hosting dinner parties: how would you go about gathering interesting people in a small town? And not only small, but suffering from severe brain and youth drain for economic reasons - while otherwise being a pretty much perfect place to live.
So the main issue both I and most of my friends have is that there's literally a handful of people we like interacting with. With a tiny bit of extrapolation I'd guess there are others in the same position, therefore making it an information/coordination problem.
Extra info: town size is ~100k. May be willing to spend cash for this (even thought about hiring somebody part time). Interested in interesting people in general, not in particular niches (like eg boardgames) - but worst case I'd be ok with starting with niches. Myself am moderate introvert with limited free time.
Be a host. Two ideas:
Hold a fancy dinner. Find a nearby chef who has a popular restaurant or catering company (can be for a nearby town or the closest city) and wants to make some extra cash. Find an interesting venue (like a farm, or wacky building, or unconventional place like a light industrial place). Sell tickets for $50 to $100 per person. Only hold the dinner if enough people buy tickets. Aim for 20 to 30 people. Advertise at like farmers markets, libraries, book stores, anywhere that rich older people or bougie young people go, use words like "Farm to table", "organic", etc. Do this every few months if it goes well. Pay the expenses and give the chef the rest of the money.
You mention there is a university in your town. Even if it is "shitty" as you say, there has to be some professor there doing something interesting. Organize a talk for them to give at a book store, coffee shop, etc. They will likely be flattered and agree and they are probably interesting themselves!
The key here is that you are the host so you have a reason to talk to people and make friends with them while avoiding the social awkwardness of just walking up to someone and wanting to be their friend. Also don't be afraid to fake a lot of this. When you go to the chef you can say you have done this before, same for the venue. They won't know or care if things go well (if they go badly, you are just back to where you are now!).
Finally, a disclaimer! I have never done this myself but have seen other people do it and gone to their events. There may even already be events like this in your town that you haven't found yet.
Being interested in people is more about you than the other people. If you find it hard to find people that you like to interact with, then you're probably being either too passive or too unskilled in directing your interactions with people into the right kind of feedback loops.
What are your interactions with 'interesting' and 'uninteresting' people like and what are the differences?
I'm in a similar situation (town size ~2k). No great successes yet, but I've seen some progress during the previous year. I'm trying two strategies: focus on microfriendships, and play the long game.
Microfriendships is a riff on micromarriages (h/t Christopher Olah[1] and Scott[2]). I attend as many events as possible, even if they're not exactly what I'm interested in. For example, I regularly attend an aerobics class and sporting events and various church services and high school activities and shop frequently at local stores. None of these is my favorite activity and I push myself to be more outgoing at these events than I normally would be, but I've met many good people and have begun to be known in a broader social circle. This has lead to invitations to activities and social circles I wouldn't have known about or had access to otherwise. Information travels quickly and widely in a small town. Nowadays, when I introduce myself to someone new, they often respond, "Yeah, you're X's dad who does software and is building a house at Y, right?" It seems to give them good priors on which I can build to ascertain shared interests. I've met some very smart people and there's more overlap in interests than a year ago.
All of this takes time and patience. Thus the long game. In a previous town (same size), I tried to rush this process. People can sense urgency and desperation at 20 paces, souring the deal from the start. I was really difficult to help them overcome those priors. As I've lengthened my time horizon, I come across as less needy and more relaxed (a better reflection of myself anyway).
1: https://colah.github.io/personal/micromarriages/
2: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/theres-a-time-for-everyone
This is something you can probably get more advice for on the Rationality Meetups discord: https://discord.gg/58hmSjb4
Try organizing a club for some activity, or if there is already a club for what you like to do, get the club to be a lot more active. Ultimately, I think you are going to have to refine your goal to something more specific than "meet interesting people". Interesting people don't all do one common thing; interesting people do all sorts of different things.
Replying to get notifications. I'm in exactly the same boat and very interested in the convo.
Just btw, are you in the UK at all?
Nope, Romania. UK is where kids here go to college :))
But otherwise I imagine it's pretty similar.
When the company is good, it matters less what the value of X is, versus just getting together __regularly__* to do X in the first place. Fun finds a way. All of us lead busy lives and are not particularly good at punctuality/organizing...but somehow, whenever my ostensibly-for-boardgames friendgroup gets together, we always end up having a blast somehow or other. From there, having other people invite friends, and friends of frriends, and so on - the group grows naturally.
On the other hand, if you've already hit that outer limit where all the known candidates have been located, and it's just searching among strangers...that's harder. Sometimes I'm surprised to find other random people in my life also like X, when that's not something we'd ever discussed before - not everyone wears their interests on their sleeve! Randomly bringing up such facts in conversation with people (in a not-desperately-dropping-hints way) can find some unexpected others. There's also, like, putting up a LFG notice in your workplace's breakroom or whatever...if comfortable with that kinda advertisement. Bigger towns often have some sort of local (social) media that can be advertised in, YMMV though. It gets harder one one's out of school, for sure...especially in smaller towns, that's one of the really reliable ways to Find People, cause everyone's gotta go.
*super important. Don't try to ad-lib this "when convenient for everybody", or it'll never actually happen with any consistency. It's a habit to build and maintain. Even if it's a long time between each meetup, like once a month or something - really stick to that day, try to make it work. Having just a couple show up instead of the expected several is still a win. The most interesting people in the world effectively don't exist if you can't actually corral them into a room together.
Interesting people tend to be interested in particular things, so "start with niches" may be your best bet. You could start a book group, or a hiking club, maybe?
Town size kindof works against it - not enough critical mass for most niches.
I mean, cult compounds are a thing, and the Rationalists already have some in San Francisco so we're demonstrably cultish enough for it to be a viable option. The tricky bit is the competition with SanFran's network effect.
> while otherwise being a pretty much perfect place to live.
How?
Google maps give notifications that sound like "beware of heavy traffic, today it will take you 7 minutes to get to work".
It's clean, well maintained, safe, walkable, between a large river and a hilly area that's great for outdoor... everything, and covers all necessities (except high level medical care). Unfortunately it has no economic prospects to speak of and a shitty small university.
I've been very loosely following the Ethiopean civil war and have a dumb question. What was Eritrea's motivation for entering the war against Tigray? What do they have to gain from it?
In one word: revenge.
Eritrea (I am not sure whether the whole population or just thre ruling class) sees the Tigray forces as their arch enemies, responsible for all the horrific crimes that were done during the war 1998-2000 (mass rape, mass expulsion, massacres). Conveniently, they tend to overlook their own horrific deeds.
The Tigray people were the ruling class in Ethiopia until 2018, when they suddenly lost all their power. They were pretty much hated by everybody else in Ethiopia, so they felt severely threatened by revenge from the rest of the country (not without reason). Thus they tried to break loose from Ethiopia by political and military means (attacks, regional elections). In Eritrea's eye, if they were successful, that would mean a new state at their borders which would be there sworn arch-enemies, with both sides being eager to take revenge for 2000.
In contrast, they had just made a peace treaty with the new Ethiopean government, agreed on borders, etc. When Tigray was still in power, Ethiopia and Eritrea were arch-enemies. With the new government, Eritrea goes along pretty well. Thus Eritrea really does not want that Tigray becomes an independent country, or is in any other way influential, and they wanted to diminish Tigray power by any means.
There are also some quarrels about borders, but I think this is rather a secondary point.
Thanks. I vaguely thought for months that I should, one of these days, try to find out wtf is going on Ethiopia. Now I don't have to.
siblicide
Uh, did you post this by accident, or are you proving you have control of your account, or...?
I meant to post it as a reply to the thread about interesting-sounding words.
It is an interesting sounding word.
I think it’s meant to be mashup of siblings and homicide.
Well, yes, but I'm wondering *why* someone would post said mashup. Hence my guesses "accident" and "proving person has control of account by posting a short message received by other means".
I’ve linked it to the war in Eritrea and thought it was a comment about fratricidal behavior. So I made it makes sense to me.
There is a sub thread here on interesting words. I’m going to guess honest mistake.
Correct
Is it a mashup of sibling and homicide?
I was always pretty good at playing Dictionary.
Unreality is a bad business choice.
I went to my big box, barely-limping-along stationery store to get some toner. I knew it would be cheaper online, but I wanted to take the cylinders home with me. When the manager rang me up, it came to $534, but the lady said if I joined the customer fan club, she'd discount the price by 20%. I knew that 'customer fan club' meant 'surrendering all the information you give us to whomever pays the best price' and flooding your inbox with unwanted propaganda.' But hey, we're talking $106.
So I surrendered all my personal information, but when she re-rang it up, there was no discount. She countered that the discount would show up on the receipt after the transaction was completed. I explained that she hadn't provided a statement showing the discount and the amount of it, that the discount should be over $100, and it had to show up before I paid the bill. She responded, 'Oh no, I've given you a 5% discount on four cylinders of toner, so that totals 20%. I gave you a 5% discount four times. I couldn't decide if her math deficiency was in addition or multiplication.
I explained that a 20% discount would amount to $106.80, bringing the total net to $427.20, went home, ordered the stuff online, got my 20% discount, and an additional $25 savings. Fantasy only works in the Neverland of regressive or wingnut politics. We should take a picture of the big box charade with our dumb phones for posterity. I can't imagine them lasting much longer. I'd have been happy to pay list price, but when she tried to tell me discounting four items 5% is equivalent to a 20% discount, I had no alternative but to take my business online.
If you don't know how to sell produce, you shouldn't be in the grocery business. And save the fairy tales for the NYT. Arizona's campaign for Congress suffers from a similar phantasm: both the wingnut and the regressive are psycho, so I wrote in Elmer Fudd. Maybe they'll get the message.
The following is presented not because I have an opinion one way or the other, but, in the hope that Dr. Alexander or someone else with relevant expertise might look at the material and advise us as to whether it is worth considering.
"Can Psychedelics Cure?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhFxZovImRk
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/can-psychedelics-cure/
"Review: Tripping Toward Recovery This ‘NOVA’ presentation examines ways that hallucinogens can aid in treatments for addictions and psychiatric conditions alongside the history of medical research using these drugs." By John Anderson • Oct. 18, 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-psychedelics-cure-review-tripping-toward-recovery-nova-pbs-11666127536
"This “NOVA” presentation, written and directed by Larkin McPhee, acknowledges, more than once, the kind of hurdles the psychiatric profession may have to leap in getting the public to take psychedelics seriously as medicine with an enormous potential for treating various forms of mental imbalance. ...
"the way the Nixon-era War on Drugs demonized such substances as mescaline, psilocybin and “magic mushrooms” to an extent that it shut the door on research into the uses of these psychedelics as a viable alternative to conventional forms of rehabilitation. The results of recent advances have been—according to the doctors involved and several patients who have undergone drug-partnered therapy—startling. ...
"Nothing is foolproof, as the show makes clear, but at the same time “Can Psychedelics Cure?” explains in easily digestible detail why substances like psilocybin should work, as opposed to other forms of treatment. “They allow the brain to change rather than just suppressing symptoms,” someone says, and in under an hour “Can Psychedelics Cure?” not only shows how the relevant brain circuitry operates but delves into the ways the “mystical” side of a “trip” also contributes to healing of certain disorders."
I am pretty positive about psychedelics as a medicine for certain disorders of the mind.
I think there is a good chance therapeutic use of psychedelics could help a lot of people. But - there’s always a but, the quacks and quick buck artists are looming large right now. I fear that they are going to ruin a potential breakthrough in treatments.
I'd be more convinced by these kinds of propaganda if they weren't propaganda. "I love tripping on 'shrooms, I think that I have gained valuable insight into the nature of reality, I think everyone could do the same easily and without adverse side effects, but the mean nasty ol' government demonised this benign and harmless natural high".
Yes, tell me you want to legally get off your face without telling me you want to get legally off your face.
There was indeed hysteria around 'reefer madness' and that over-reaction engendered a lot of "weed is harmless fun and there is no evidence for all the outrageous claims made" but now we are seeing that oops, turns out that there are indeed side effects and consequences of long-term use, using too early, using too much, and the breeding of stronger and more active strains as people chased bigger, faster, highs.
Same with psychedelics. Maybe there's a legitimate use under supervision during a course of therapy, but any legalisation will go the way of 'medical marijuana' where people were hoping to use the excuse of "I need it for this pain in my knee" as being able to access a legal high, and then (limited) legalisation for anyone to use recreationally as well as medically.
It's not like LSD etc. ever went away, either. They're out there if you want to get them. Make them legal/less illegal and easier to get, but don't be surprised when you get cases of people jumping off buildings when they think they can fly. "Oh gosh, however were we supposed to anticipate that humans like to abuse mind-altering substances and not just take medication responsibly for a properly diagnosed ailment?"
(This rant brought to you courtesy of reading some straw for brains looper online talking about dosing himself up on gabapentin for a high; my doctor prescribed me gabapentin for severe neuropathic pain but after reading the warnings and looking into it in conjunction with my pre-existing conditions I refused to take any and just had to grit my teeth until the pain resolved on its own. But then there are silly-billies out there quite happy to explode their various physiological systems in order to get a momentary sensation of 'oh yeah feels mildly something'. Argh.)
I feel like it might be worth legalizing most of these substances purely for the benefit that people who will try using them regardless of legality can reliably get a formulation that's not actually fentanyl instead though.
Well, Oregon is trying the experiment. Early reports aren't encouraging:
https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/05/13/overdose-deaths-rose-336-in-oregon-last-year/
That's just decriminalization, not legalization. It specifically does not help with this problem because supply is still through the black market.
I'm aware that it's always possible to rationalize the data into fitting your theory. But we'll try again:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/23/california-legal-illicit-weed-market-516868
Your article says most places are doing way better than California though ...
What do folks think about Star Wars: Andor?
For myself, my initial thought was that this was the piece of upcoming Star Wars media I least understood the value of. But it's actually turned out to be by far the best piece of new-era Star Wars, in my view (maybe barring Rogue One, though I think that's weaker, it's complete so it can be actually evaluated, while Andor very much isn't).
It avoids the 'endless side quest' problem of Mandalorian Season 1; the 'nothing makes any fucking sense' problem of the ST; the 'endless fanservice' problem of Kenobi and Mando season 2; and the 'oh my god, all these character are so stupid and incompetent that I can't believe they manage to feed themselves, how did you write this plot and get paid for it?' problem of the Book of Boba Fett.
But besides avoiding those problems, it actually just seems really...good? And I'm thrilled to see a show which isn't engaging in mystery box shenanigans!
But what do other folks think?
I love it second-to-second, but I think it is a little underconfident in its storytelling and tends to belabor itself. Like, every scene is good, but how many times do we have to have a scene which explicates the relationship between Mon Mothma and her husband? The answer is "not as many as we have."
On a thematic level, its storytelling is about the tension of fighting an incredibly careful, dangerous fight against a grinding, implacable foe, so keeping the pace slow and sometimes redundantly emphasizing important points is a good thing -- but we're past the point of emphasis. You can't emphasize everything.
If they tightened up the storytelling a bit, I think they could've told the story of the eight episodes so far in 7 or 6.5 eps. That would still be slow-paced, but I think it would free up some resources for more story -- and the story is excellent, and the scenes are excellent, so that would be great!
Full agreement. I actually posted nearly this same comment a few days ago on Dragonmount, contrasting Andor to Wheel of Time and Rings of Power. It's enormously refreshing to see a story that doesn't seem influenced by YouTube reaction culture. No mystery boxes. No attempts at oh shit reveals and cameos. It just follows a small set of interesting characters and actually takes the time to develop all of them. And they even seem like real people! Who would have thought it could be done by Disney in 2022?
I agree. I wasn't planning on watching it, but I got persuaded to check it out last week and wound up caught up in a couple of days.
There's something very refreshing about it. It feels like it's Star Wars for adults -- not because it's got implied sex and some swear words, but just because it's written at something above a first-grade level.The characters feel like actual characters, not just paper-thin archetypes of "good guy" and "bad guy" and "bad guy who arbitrarily decides to be good now". When things happen, they emerge naturally from character rather than the demands of the plot.
Case in point: in a recent episode we have the first meeting of Antagonist A and Antagonist B. The obvious narrative thing for them to do is to team up to take on their common foe, our protagonist. Antagonist B even suggests that. But Antagonist A says no -- not because some screenwriting handbook says "this is the plot beat where she refuses" but because it's natural for her character to do so -- he has nothing useful to offer her, and she's not much of a team player. Note note, Rian Johnson, this is how you "subvert expectations", it's by turning an obvious plot beat into something that actually makes more sense for the characters as written.
The show also looks great, thanks to the way CGI is used to enhance rather than to replace real sets and locations. I love the way that drab London buildings and English beach resorts fit so seamlessly into the Star Wars universe; I never would have though that a lot of Coruscant was built of brown tiles and pebblecrete, but it seems to fit perfectly; Coruscant isn't all Senate Chambers and Jedi Temples, it's got the drab workmanlike sections of any capital city.
>What do folks think about Star Wars: Andor?
>For myself, my initial thought was that this was the piece of upcoming Star Wars media I least understood the value of.
Yup. From "Why would I want to watch a prequel to prequel about a character I don't care about..." to "I don't know if I can watch any other Star Wars television after Andor, it's going to feel like such a let down."
There are so many angles on Star Wars we've never seen before.
Long scenes of Imperial stand-ups with office power politics. People on planets who seem to actually work for a living. Senators on Coruscant dropping their child off at school. Even elder care, never imagined I'd see that as a major on screen issue in Star Wars. And all them totally riveting. Star Wars feels like a lived-in real place again.
I hope the headlines about Andor's low ratings are just clickbait. I've seen the light, I can't go back now.
Fortunately, it seems like those early negative reports were due to a simple miscalculation made by a box office blogger. It's still slightly underperforming the other Star Wars shows, but not nearly as badly as originally reported.
"Long scenes of Imperial stand-ups"
I never realized I wanted a George Carlin comedian in Star Wars before.
Well, I never expected Star Wars Jersey Shore in Andor. A stand up comedian wouldn't be completely unexpected.
"There's seven words you can't say on Imperial holovision: Sith Porg Force Hutt Darthsucker Mothmafucker and T...*choking noises*"
We got any petrogeologists in the house?
Third year geology undergrad?
Alright so basically: porphyrins are the chemical class that include heme, chlorophyll, and vitamin B12. Very powerful and functionally versatile class of compound. All of them have this complex ring that holds a metal ion suspended at the center; in blood it's iron, in chlorophyll it's magnesium, in B12 it's cobalt. There's one in archaea that uses nickel, which lets them produce methane.
This paper: https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/430_2015_189 talks about the industrial issues presented by the amount of vanadium and nickel found in certain kinds of oil, and it's mostly found at the center of porphyrins.
There are no known vanadyl porphyrins in modern biology. It's possible to make 'em in the lab, and it's...theoretically possible that they formed spontaneously if vanadium in seawater displaced the Mg from chlorophyll. This is the assumption that the authors are operating under...but it's also possible that this is evidence of some really wild exotic biochemistry that's either gone extinct or still exists on Earth undiscovered.
There's a passage in the paper, quoted below, about where you tend to find Ni/V porphyrins and I feel like, to someone who knows shit about rocks and stuff, it probably says something about the plausibility of the idea.
"Previous studies have shown that there is a systematic variation in the nickel and
vanadium content of petroleums which can be related to the rock type source and
depositional environment. Many authors have used nickel/vanadium ratios for
empirical oil–oil and oil–source correlation, but few attempts have been made to
rationalize the processes responsible for variation of metal concentration in oils.
Lewan [9, 10] has shown that the rock type source and depositional environment have a profound effect on the predicted levels of nickel and vanadium in source
rocks. Low nickel/vanadium ratios (<0.5) are expected for these kinds of organic
matter where vanadium incorporation into porphyrins is expected to be favorable
compared to nickel incorporation, such as the petroleums from Abu Dhabi and Gulf
of Suez. However, the petroleums from China, Indonesia, Gippsland Basin, and
Australia have higher nickel/vanadium ratios, and both the input and preservation
of porphyrins are expected to be low for this organic matter. Overall, both the
absolute quantity of metals and their relative content are predicted to be class-type
dependent. Barwise [11] pointed out the highest concentrations of metal are to be
found in low-maturity crude oils derived from source rocks which have a low clay
content and a high organic sulfur content such as carbonate source rocks; and
moderate quantities of metals are found in oils derived from marine shales or
lacustrine source rocks, whereas little nickel or vanadium is found in land plant-
derived oils. In addition, the content of vanadium is generally much higher than
nickel in marine oil; the majority of Chinese petroleums belong to the continental
oils, which have higher nickel contents than vanadium. However, Tahe heavy
petroleum has much higher vanadium concentration than nickel [12], which is
located in the Tarim Basin, a marine Paleozoic oilfield in China. To sum up, the
metal content of petroleums can provide a useful insight into the source of a
petroleum accumulation, especially when combined with classification parameters
derived from molecular, isotopic, and bulk parameters."
Is there something special about the porphyrin ring that interests you? Because vanadium as a catalytic center is rare but not unknown:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_bromoperoxidase
C'mon man, I did my lit search, I found that and the Sea Squirt stuff.
Is there something special about the porphyrin ring?
As chlorophyll, it's the gateway through which nearly all chemical energy enters the biosphere. When was the last time you ate a calorie that didn't start out as sunlight somewhere along the line?
As heme, it enables the carriage and utilization of oxygen by all animal life, as well as countless enzymes like CYP450. It is the blacksmith's tongs and anvil upon which chemical bonds are forged and broken in your body.
The archaeal form, cofactor F430, is essential for methanogenesis and methanotrophy, a 500 gigaton/y flux of carbon through the biosphere that steers the global climate.
B12 is technically a corrinoid, but it's the same basic structure, and is important for some equally universal and critical things like folate cycling and one-carbon transfers in humans as well as bacteria.
The porphyrin ring is an unbelievably powerful and versatile chemical structure. Probably the most important secondary metabolite in biology.
Point being: This is like someone from the MCU asking if there's something special about the infinity stones. Shit, they're even cool different colors; we've got green, red, hot pink (B12), and yellow (F430).
So when I hear that there are hints of a mysterious fifth one, hidden away in the black blood of the Earth...it gets my attention, you know?
Like, imagine a parallel to carbon chemistry one step down in the periodic table. Not full replacement, silicon-based life or anything—but carbon-based life that has the machinery to work with silicon too, to make silane instead of methane. It would probably involve an exotic porphyrin, no?
I'm actually not aware of any interesting chemistry that the ring itself does. So far as I know the ring is just a mounting that holds the metal atom, which does all the magic. What chemistry that the ring itself does are you thinking about?
Well, try doing photosynthesis with just a magnesium atom, let me know how far you get.
"Guterres also urged other countries, mainly in the West, to expedite the removal of obstacles blocking Russian grain and fertilizer exports."
Can anybody tell me what those obstacles concretely are? A quick search revealed it's not official sanctions for grain and fertilizer, but there nevertheless are 'obstacles'.
For context: Guterres is obviously also urging Russia do to all kind of things, I'm just interested in the missing piece here. eg. "The Russian declaration came one day after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the grain export deal, which was scheduled to expire on Nov. 19." found at: apnews.com
Russia and Ukraine export wheat primarily to MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa. Normally this is done through a series of ports and carriers through Europe plus Turkey. Additionally, their agriculture uses expertise and inputs from western Europe. Russia's invasion has directly damaged Ukrainian agriculture and the embargoes have made their own agriculture less efficient. It's also meant the only place they can transport their grain through is Turkey who's both skimming off the top and preferentially directing it to their friends. The end result is higher food prices in vulnerable populations in MENA and SSA.
Now, we've been fortunate that we've had good crops this year. But that won't last forever. And when it doesn't you'll see higher food prices in many vulnerable areas.
The more fundamental issue is that the former USSR is in a weird position agriculturally. They have extremely cheap inputs and wages on high productivity farming that produces a lot of surplus. The historical reason for this is Stalin building the Soviet economy on murdering people until they accept low wages for wheat exports he can use to buy heavy industrial machinery. But it remains to this day that the median Ukrainian farmer earns about as much as an African or Indian subsistence farmer while being productive enough to support a healthy export market. This export market is mostly in the poorest parts of the world who need those cheap prices. Nowhere else in the world has this combination. You either have low productivity subsistence agriculture as in Africa or India. Or you have high productivity but expensive agriculture as in the US. Even the middle market, places like China or Mexico, are too expensive.
In this context, Turkey (partly to make money and partly because starving neighbors means terrorism) cut a deal where Russia agreed to let Ukraine export grain and to export it themselves. But the deal is set to expire and Russia doesn't want to renew. Turkey is trying to pressure them as is the west. But Putin can just say no and his supporters don't care too much about starving Africans.
The UN would very much like those regions not to starve. However, Russia and Ukraine are not going to direct resources away from the war effort to ensure Africa/MENA doesn't starve. The UN is hoping the west might or alternatively loosen sanctions so Russia has more resources and some of that bleeds over into exports going back to Africa. I doubt the west will go for it. Who knows, maybe Russia will back down. But if not we're likely to see famine in Africa and the Middle East.
While we're talking about the grain agreement: I found Dmitri Alperovitch's overview of destinations interesting:
"Destinations of UKR grain by tons from July till RU's termination of the deal today:
14 High-Income Countries: 52%
7 Upper-Middle Income Countries: 26%
11 Lower-Middle Income Countries: 19%
4 Low Income Countries: 2%
Spain, Turkiye, Italy and China account for 53% of tonnage"
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1586429099068760064?s=20&t=DzPZjrEEIFNHwpZ500HlnA
Even though in the end, it's more about prices, not destinations.
Btw. do you have any source handy for your claims on pre-war Ukraine - Russia exports and internal/external prices?
Yes, because those are places where it's processed for re-export. Russia and Ukraine export grain, not pasta or bread. The low income countries import bread, not raw grain. I had this exact conversation a few weeks ago about the Turkish agricultural industry.
What are you asking for sources for specifically? If you want evidence Russia/Ukraine export a lot of grain I'm not sure that's in contention but happy to cite it. I'm not sure what you mean by external/internal prices.
In the podcast below, Scott Irwin argues, that the effect of the agreement (and hence lack thereoff) on food security is rather low; until I get other data on the issue I'm inclinded to believe this.
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1586411710906343427?s=20&t=DzPZjrEEIFNHwpZ500HlnA
Russia had been saying they were reluctant to renew the agreement for a while already, but recently, Russia has actually put it on hold following an attack by drones to their sea fleat.
It's exactly in the context of this agreement, that the 'obstacles' to Russian exports in the sector are mentioned in different sources. The ones I would like to know more about.
Food prices for wheat soared at the beginning of the war, but then went down again already before the Turkish-Russian-Ukrainian agreement.
You are welcome to ignore internet strangers of course. I've not heard the podcast but I do keep up with the export number and spot prices and all that. If the point is that it won't work against Europe then it definitely won't. If the point is Russia won't be able to raise prices and this won't create issues in MENA/Africa then they're almost certainly wrong. Especially since covid is already causing issues there. These issues are ongoing and anyone who denies they exist to start with is ignorant of the topic.
As for the price: I've had this discussion too. Ukraine and Russia had surprisingly good crops and maintained control of key regions and Ukraine was able to route around through Europe before the agreement. This meant the production/export decrease was less than expected and that caused prices to fall. We, in effect, got lucky. But I don't think we can count on being lucky forever.
Wasn't there a ban on insuring Russian-flag ships, or does it only apply to oil tankers?
Just guessing, but other than actual sanctions, probably just lots of friction. Russian banks partly disconnected, Russian ships less (or not) welcome in most ports, Russian airlines definitely not welcome in the west etc.
Plus businesses and people making their individual decisions. I was at a trade show a couple of weeks ago and there was a moment of confusion when a couple of visitors with slavic accents left business cards with what we thought for a moment was Russian TLD. For the half minute it took us to see it's .rs and not .ru, we had pretty much decided not to do business with them (as it happens, we get along very well with Serbians and would actually be happy to move forward).
Does anybody know if Marginal Revolution’s comment system is buggy? https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/10/a-safety-emergency-happened-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology-in-november-of-2019.html
The webpage indicates I have upvoted and downvoted a load of comments but I have zero recollection actually doing this. Anyone else get this?
Yes, I remember some comments on that blog describing the same problem. I didn't see if they had acknowledged the issue or not though.
Thanks
Been happening to me for months. I assumed their system bases vote ID by IP address, or range of IPs and someone else on my ISP had my address (or range) when they voted. The system is rather clunky in general.
I assumed the same. Really annoying though, I wish it wasn’t like this.
Also there were a bunch of Tyler Cowen comment impersonators recently and I couldn’t tell if any of them were the real thing.
Does anybody have a recommendation for what supplements to take as a vegan. I tried googling but didn't find any satisfying results. I am taking vitamin b12 and protein powder and planning on also taking Creatine. Any tips or website recommendations?
Have doctor administered blood tests shown you are chronically deficient in any minerals or vitamins?
Not yet but im planning on getting a Test in a couple of months.
Iodine might also be worth looking into, depending on how you eat. While it's possible to get enough from plant foods (sea veg etc), most people who eat vegan don't.
On protein sources, the best by far is milk - ideal amino acid profile. But if you go for plant sources only, go for the widest spread - either a good mix or a different one every time, with a preference on soy. You care mostly about getting the amino acids the body can't produce by itself (and the one it's inefficient at producing). If you work out, you also care about a minimum leucine content per meal (thought it's quite low, something like 1g per meal).
https://bit.ly/3DJJnTs
must resist trolling.
Why, if im allowed to ask?
A lot of people find the idea of openly avoiding meat products to be inherently humorous, like the idea of openly riding a bicycle, or openly admitting an uncommon sexual interest. They find it inherently tempting to troll people whenever they see evidence of this sort of behavior.
Making a comment indicating awareness of the temptation to trolling is much better self-awareness than just giving in, though it would obviously be better if people completely resisted the urge to troll in contexts where people are intending to have meaningful discussions and just passed over in silence instead.
The temptation to respond "500g beef orally per day" was immense for me, and probably him. Now that you asked I can say it.
Thanks.
The combination of “I didn't say anything, I just commented on how I wasn't saying anything” and “I didn't say anything, I was just explaining the reference for the confused” is a clever application of the motte and bailey principle.
Now please stop it.
Supplement needs might vary by individual:
https://deniseminger.com/2016/10/20/why-do-some-people-do-well-as-vegans-and-vegetarians-clues-from-the-magical-world-of-genetics/
I take only B12 in pill form, but drink LOTS of D-fortified plant milk in the short-daylight months. I also have Tryptophan for really bad seasonal spells, but rarely feel like I need it. I might be taking Omega-3s, if I wasn't eating quite a large amount of chia and hemp seeds, and making Korean dishes wih perilla oil. Are you a bodybuilder? I don't see any point in protein powder otherwise.
Vitamin D. If you're a vegan, you're only getting that from fortified foods and from sun. I've had two doctors insist that I take vitamin D supplements because my levels were low, and I'm by far not a vegan.
You don't really need much in terms of supplements if you include mineral- and vitamin-enriched foods, like oat milk/soy milk, cereals, tofu etc. in addition to fresh fruits and veggies. Worth checking your B12/D/iron levels in blood a couple of times a year, to be sure.
Are you getting enough vitamin K?
Nice link. Thanks.
Why do you all suppose dried fruit are said to be high in iron, while the corresponding fruit is not? Example : grapes, apricot, figs etc once dried, are high in iron.
I mean, in terms of quantity of nutrient per mass of food obviously they are higher in all minerals - drying a fruit reduces its mass but not its mineral content - but unless it's some sort of "nobody sanity-checked the numbers the computer spat out" I dunno.
You raised an interesting point, so I dug around a little and this seems to be the best explanation I found:
https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/dried-fruit-nutritious-fresh-fruit-7614.html
It's about the *volume* of food. 15g fresh apple is not the same as 15g of dried apple chips. When you take out the water, you reduce the weight of the chips, so you need more chips to get the same weight/volume as the fresh, water-containing, fruit. So if you eat 15g of the dried fruits, you are consuming more of the concentrated nutrients. So a cup of raisins (dried grapes) is going to have more of everything than a cup of grapes, because you're packing more raisins in:
"When comparing one plum to one prune or one grape to one raisin, the vitamin, mineral and fiber content isn’t all that different. But when comparing by household measures, the dried fruit is a much better source of a number of health-promoting nutrients.
One cup of raisins, for example, is a much better source of fiber, potassium and copper than a cup of grapes. Dried apricots are a better source of certain nutrients than fresh apricots, including vitamin A, B vitamins, iron and potassium. However, raisins, prunes and dried apricots are not a better of a source of vitamin C than their fresh versions. That’s because vitamin C degrades during heat processing and over time.
Because the water is removed, the dried fruits are significantly higher in calories than the fresh fruits -- 430 calories in a cup of raisins versus 60 calories in cup of grapes or 380 calories in a cup of dried apricots versus 75 in a cup of fresh halves"
The issue there is that one raisin vs. one grape is the right measure if you're talking about cost, because one raisin requires one grape to make. Hence why I referred to "well it's got a lot more X per gram" as "nobody sanity-checked the numbers the computer spat out".
I suppose it's *possible* for the literal mass of food you eat to be a bottleneck if you have to carry it some distance on foot, or if your time spent eating is super-valuable, or if you've got a really-small stomach and want to eat bucketloads of fruit, but it doesn't seem like the standard scenario.
Shipping, storage, and spoilage are costs too. Dried fruit can be shipped cheaper and stored longer with less spoilage, so depending on the type of fruit, season, etc, it can cost substantially less per calorie or per unit mineral content or just per piece than fresh fruit.
Anyone dug into https://electionbettingodds.com ? Looks interesting.
"This site pulls live odds are from FTX.com, Betfair.com, PredictIt.org, and Smarket.com. ... and was designed to translate the odds into a more readable format."
It creates an average(*) of the odds from these prediction markets.
* For their definition of average, see: https://electionbettingodds.com/about.html
Not much point because PI heavily impacts the odds.
So it looks like Bolsonaro is out and Lula back in, in Brazil.
What is it about South American politics that causes it to swing endlessly between (quite?) far-left and (quite?) far-right? Why do they never settle down to the middle like the rest of us? Would they do a lot better if they did?
According to Fehrenbach 'The Swiss Banks' US and Euro money was pumping into South America and Africa at a billion a year in the 1950's, when a billion was ten trillion US now. Then Castro looted the Cuban middle class down to corner shops, and the South American left threatened to do the same everywhere, and everyone in South America put their money in US banks. Result: instability.
Well, we seem to be slowly getting the hang of it .
Cyclical behavior emerges from the interaction of applied force and restoring force. The applied force here is Operation Condor and its successor programs. The restoring force is the political will of the people of South America.
Well Lula's party is quite limited in the legislature, so his presidential win doesn't really qualify as a far left swing. Also he campiagned as a moderate compared to previous times.
South America? That's not a fair description of most governments in South America. For example, Venezuela swerves between far left and farther left governments. Colombia, despite its issues with crime and terrorism, is a longstanding basically functional democracy. (The terrorism happened because they couldn't win elections. And they were ultimately defeated.) Chile just rejected a major swerve to the left in favor of a more centrist course. Etc. This seems like a pretty bad generalization. Even the idea Brazil is swerving is itself strange. Brazil had sixteen years of uninterrupted left rule until Bolsonaro and now will return to it again after an interruption.
Presidential systems. If you have a parliament, a majority coalition is by definition the median of your voters' views, and then the PM is selected by them. A presidency makes every election a high-stakes battle between two opposing choices- if the divisions don't naturally exist in a society, the nature of presidential campaigns will create them artificially. Like to return to the last French election- I think the median French voter didn't want to change France's role in NATO too much, and didn't want to tinker with their existing social programs too much. But they were forced to make a high-stakes choice between two stark choices on both fronts
I think it's the corruption, weak state capacity, and over-reliance on commodity exports. Parties get in, can't really do a lot to seriously improve their countries, and then people swing hard against them. There's no Latin American equivalent of an East Asian economic miracle.
This was going to be my answer as well. When you have major corruption problems, radical change and disrupting the status quo is appealing.
They really seem to oscillate between leftists causing inflation and rightists causing a lot of poverty, I have to say.
Many people may be aware that I made a post a few open threads back about my prediction for the Senate.
My basically final Senate predictions:
Bennet +12
Murray +11
Kelly +9
Hassan +9
Fetterman +7
Warnock +5
CCM +4
Beasley +3
Barnes +2
Ryan +2
Demmings +1
Above is my updated prediction. Still haven't gotten that Florida poll from Trafalgar. Annoying.
Another poster commented and asked if I would still be here after the election and the answer is yes. 9 days to go.
I also want to predict 60%/40% for Dems keeping the House.
Additionally congrats to President Lula who won his election today in spite of highly illegal vote suppression by Bolsonaro supporters in law enforcement and the military.
Your predictions are certainly out of line with the consensus. What do you think that you have right that the consensus has wrong?
If reality turns out to be closer to the consensus prediction than to your own, what do you plan on learning from this?
I think you might have missed an earlier post where Axioms laid out his theory. He has a lot of faith that this one particular pollster gets the republican side of senate races right most of the time. This post is a follow-up.
This is mostly accurate. A slight caveat. Trafalgar provides a base level of confidence for me about other voting data. So if all the other data disagreed with Trafalgarian Augury I'd be worried. Like okay seems like Dems are doing really well. Huh Trafalgar has most R candidates at 50+, seems like the other data is very iffy. However in this the Augury agrees with the other data so I feel like there isn't going to be a big shock.
It depends on why the consensus is closer I guess? Maybe I was too positive about turnout among young people and women? Does gas keep dropping? What about food prices? I am pricing in some level of cheaper prices in the last week or so. Also maybe I misread early voting? A large part of my confidence comes from my theory on Trafalgar polls. Maybe Cahaly changed something up compared to 2017-2021 that invalidated my theory.
I don't know what can possibly cause you to predict Dems will win everything, including Florida and North Carolina. Even Trafalgar's predicted Republican vote doesn't support your numbers.
I predict you're going to be very disappointed.
It supports it pretty well in a lot of these. Also I will only be meaningfully disappointed if Dems lose the Senate.
These are insanely optimistic for Dems. You can currently buy Tim Ryan for 13 cents on PredictIt
Yes poor people are often priced out of smart investment opportunities. Unfortunate for me. Also some amazing deals on 47 and 46- on the R Senate seat market. Alas I don't have the cash. Made good money in the Dem primary market in 2019 though.
There is currently a 25k prize for a prediction tournament that the Salem Center is hosting on Manifold Market. No entry fee.
I think that your numbers are very optimistic, but I also think that some if the election markets in that tournament are tilted too far towards Republicans. If you are right, you can go and clean up, put yourself in a good position to win the tournament.
What's the legality for US citizens? Do you have a link to the relevant markets? Do I actually get anything in the tournament besides kudos?
And there's no issues related to the contest prize for American citizens?
It is specifically for American citizens.
I don't understand how you can read '25k prize' and ask if you get anything. Just use Google.
25k of what though? I don't recall off hand if Manifold uses actual money or play money.
And does the tournament use the same units as the rest of the site?
+1
If you want a more detailed introduction to the tournament, I wrote this up recently—
https://infovores.substack.com/p/testing-my-crystal-ball
I managed to get there through your link after a bit. Sadly they refuse to allow me to bet $1000 on Val Demmings winning. Rigged! upset I missed out on Bolsonaro NO although not sure how much profit that would have gained me.
I put $200 No each on R SENATE, R PA, R NV, R WI, and R OH. We'll see what happens.
3. I haven't been banned, but maybe I should have been? ;-)
You are obviously just not trying hard enough.
It just occurred to me that I haven't heard about a beached whale in years. In the early 90s when I first became aware of the news they seemed to be in the news all the time, but I don't recall hearing about one recently. A few seconds of research suggests that the frequency of whale beachings hasn't meaningfully gone down, it's just that they're now reported as local rather than global news.
Is there something going on here, where fairly routine events get outsized media coverage due to fitting in with some political narrative? In the late 80s there was a big anti-whaling movement from bumper stickers to Star Trek movies, so any bad thing that happened to whales was newsworthy regardless of whether it was whaling-related or not... this seems to have continued onwards (after the near-abolition of whaling in 1986) into the 1990s and eventually been forgotten about.
Or have I misremembered the breathless media coverage of whale beachings in the past?
Is there a 2022 equivalent of a 1992 beached whale? What unimportant events are we paying too much attention to these days?
Anything that gets multiple segments on 24 hour news channels (of any political lean)
Such as most crime when discussed on a national level (in the US). There has been a small uptick recently but overall crime is super low in the US in most places especially compared to the 90s.
Gas prices are a big one now. In the new year they will probably be back to "normal" and the elections will be over so no one in the medial will care.
A story that I noticed with a similar trend was small children involved in accidental shootings. It's hard to find information that's not incredibly misleading on this (headline stats like "children aged 1-19...") but it appears that about 100 actual children in the US are killed with guns per year - which is terrible, but actually a non-story in terms of deaths. About 150 toddlers drown in buckets each year in the US as well.
There was a few year period when every sympathetic anti-gun story about a toddler getting killed playing with a gun was national news. I am curious why that reporting seems to have gone away.
Good question. Replaced in the meme-space by the rise in school shootings?
That's certainly a possibility, but my memory is that they were definitely overlapping at one point. Columbine was many years prior to the toddlers-shooting-themselves-is-national-news phase.
It absolutely was, but Columbine, in my memory, was a shocking one off that wasn't really repeated. The recent shift, where kids have shooter drills and we're just sorta resigned to this being something like tornadoes that just happens a few times a year feels much more recent. Post Bush, I think. But I'm just going by memory and feel.
You definitely didn't misremember, those were regular stories for me growing up in the 90s. Somewhat more so than the norm, I think, due to living in a seaside town where Stuff Happening On Beaches was always Big News.
As to why such coverage disappeared, despite the rate staying about the same...well, at some point the story gets old. If it isn't some quirky detail like Sperm Whale Stuck In Suez Canal Delays International Shipping, I dunno why anyone not directly whale-sympathetic would much care to click. Slightly more interesting to write about, say, ocean sunfish beachings or the Great $SPECIES Extinction. (The last whale beaching I remember in the news, from maybe 5 years back...it only made headlines because it was a male whale, and someone, uh...well...the carcass was missing a certain notable bodypart by the time it was discovered. *That* is clickworthy.)
Here in France we’re getting regular news of whale strandings. They’re reported nationally and locally. But we have much less culture war news than anglophone countries. Media priorities are different across the world.
Or, what important events are we not paying enough attention to?
Good post.
This happened a couple of weeks ago:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/11/asia/new-zealand-pilot-whales-mass-stranding-deaths-intl-hnk
Some more info here about some recent Tasmanian beachings:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-22/tasmania-whale-strandings-keep-happening-what-we-know/101463898
The relevant SSC post is https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/
Why do American liberals care so little about the treatment of Uyghurs by China?
You can say that they care plenty, but compare this relatively muted care with the outrage over apartheid by Amercan liberals, despite the fact that the treatment of Uyghurs is ostensibly much, much worse than anything that was going on in apartheid South Africa, especially in its later decades. Like many other things, I don't see any non-race-based reasons that aren't just ad hoc rationalizations. Liberals demanded the US government do everything in its power to end the apartheid regime, whereas you might get a angry tweet about the latest UN report if you're lucky but no calls for the US government to do anything.
Liberals will often claim they give less focus to foreign acts of illiberalism because "its not our country" (or our close allies in Europe) e.g. why gay marriage in the US is a much greater issue for them than gays being executed in the middle east. Putting aside the fact this is an entirely one-sided form of opportunistic eurocentrism, the argument for caring so much about apartheid was that we had trade with them so we were complicit in their regime, therefore the US has an obligation to cut off all ties to the country.
Again, putting aside the fact that we have trade and diplomatic relations with almost all countries in the world these days and for many this trade is much greater than we had with South Africa, we have more trade with China than all other countries combined. So then the argument goes, perversely, we can't afford to cut off China the way we did South Africa. So in order for liberal outrage to be worth expressing, we must have some trade with a country, but not too much. So the only reason we didn't refrain from joining WW2 is because Hitler wasn't selling us enough consumer appliances? Or more realistically, if South Africa had been >50% of our foreign trade, there wouldn't have been millions of leftwing Americans demanding an end to apartheid?
Even if this is the kind of argument you want to make, there's a big difference between expressing outrage and e.g. picketing Chinese consulates in the US, and the US government cutting off trade with China. I don't expect the government to do that, but it's obvious that the left just simply do not *CARE* about this as much as they did apartheid, there's not the visceral anger there was over apartheid. And I cannot find a fundamental explanation for this difference other than something to do, implicitly or explicitly, with race i.e. it was white people responsible for apartheid. Maybe there's another argument, I'm happy to hear it if there is.
And yes, this is important. Stuff like apartheid feeds into the hegemonic narratives of western liberalism today. This viewing of white people as uniquely evil is what underpins so much of what the western left support. No, I don't care that you and all your other ratosphere leftwing buddies don't feel this way, your views are an extreme minority amongst those with institutional power i.e. what actually matters.
And if you're going to claim they do care about the Uyghurs as much as they did apartheid, then don't even bother posting, because your views are too divorced from reality to be worth responding to.
The key insight you're missing: organizing is hard, and to build a movement, you need not only an outrage worth fighting but a story that will convince people there's something realistic and meaningful they can do about it.
Like all my progressive activist friends, both white and nonwhite, I wish there were something I could do for the groups currently undergoing genocide in China. I've done a few dozen hours of research into possible strategies and tactics, from BDS to protests to direct action, and keep coming up empty-handed: the CCP doesn't care what I think of it, my government has done most of what I could reasonably demand, the remaining chokepoints (most importantly refugee status) theoretically have bipartisan support but are bogged down in political energy sinks, and commando raids or "bombing the tracks" have extremely long odds. Organizers worked hard for decades building a global coalition to make BDS of South Africa feel achievable; some brave souls are trying to do this for China, but the global economic reality makes the task vastly more daunting.
The same answer applies to the rest of your attempted gotchas: I don't put my energy into opposing things in proportion to how bad I think they are, but in proportion to how much of a difference my effort will make at the margin. You know, like a rational person. There is simply a much higher expected return from using my time to convince my friends to vote against the party trying to ban trans healthcare in my country, than to go around informing everyone that I think stoning gays in Iran is bad. If you weren't so invested in finding evidence for the prior belief that I actually secretly think stoning gays is fine as long as people of color do it, I daresay this would be obvious.
Well said.
Dude, this is the third Open Thread in a row. Take a break, post a couple of these over on DSL, they love this sort of shit.
Enough people have jumped up and down about the near/far thing already, but here's one I haven't seen referenced. A more interesting question might be why so much attention for Tibet, and so little for the Uyghurs.
To which, the answer is: celebrity. The Dalai Lama was great on TV. And Richard Gere signal boosted it when he was still a pretty big deal. The Uyghurs need a charismatic leader and a pet Hollywood celebrity and they'll be good to go.
Or not, you know, because the real answer is that all of us liberals just hate white folks. This was fun the first couple of times, but it's getting tiresome.
I'm getting echoes of your comment last open-thread, and this still all strikes me as "checkmate, liberal, you pretend to care about people, but you're protesting X, when Y, which is substantially similar to X also is happening (or once happened), and you haven't found time to protest that too. The only way to not be a hypocrite is to care infinitely about all issues, so your arguments are all irrelevant!"
Which is a broken argument on all sorts of levels. Firstly, because an injustice is an injustice regardless of whether a given population is rationally sorting their attention about it. And secondly, because nobody is obligated to "care equally about X and Y." People necessarily don't have the time or attention to devote 100% of their focus to 100% of injustice in the world. Everybody picks issues necessarily because their time and resources are limited, and there's a difference between "being a hypocrite" and merely "not being literal Jesus."
It's like when people on the left throw out the "checkmate conservative - you say you care about children, but what about when they're *not* still in the womb? I guess you're just a big hypocritical fake and we can stop caring about any of your opinions on abortion, can't we?" line of argument. Telling your adversaries that their beliefs are only valid if they distribute their attention in a way you approve of might make you personally feel more justified in ignoring them, but outside of that it's a pretty empty statement.
If we "prove so-and-so is a hypocrite," but we do so using a heuristic by which *all of humanity* is a hypocrite, we're not really demonstrating anything of value about so-and-so, we're just selectively applying a gotcha.
The reason to me is simple. The reaction to the Uyghur genocide is our normal reaction. By contrast, South Africa had Nelson Mandela and Tibet had the Dalai Lama. Prominent articulate leaders who could state their case to the world directly and drive popular narratives and outrage.
A much more interesting question is why the Muslim countries don’t care about it. Going as far, in fact, to send a letter of commendation to China for “dealing with terrorists.”
Who are the actors you're referring to when you say "the Muslim countries?"
The governments of states like Iraq or Iran have all sorts of reasons to tread cautiously. I imagine if you asked the average "muslim-on-the-street" something like "how do you feel about China trying to de-Islamify its Uyghur population?" they might care quite a bit, but depending on the government involved they may have little to no influence, and even if they did it not matter in the least compared to the trade and security implications of pushing the issue.
The Turks are busy going after a crumbling Russia, and probably don't want to pick a fight with China at the same time.
Few others have the capacity to do anything meaningful about it, especially in the face of dependence on China, and also probably think it's the Turks' job when it's a fellow Turkic people.
But the western claim isn’t that this is a terrorist operation, but genocide.
I think it goes like this:
- Someone with a lot of clout on the left picks a narrative and makes a push for it.
- Left-leaning outlets talk about it all the time.
- Everyone ends up being outraged about the same thing.
Nobody of importance in the left-wing mainstream has picked up Uighurs, so there's no mass public outrage. Right-wing politicians and right-wing media outlets, such as Breitbart News and Newsmax, don't have enough following of the appropriate kind to make it happen.
The thing is, someone out there sets a narrative. When there's no official narrative, it doesn't look like anyone cares. "Why didn't anyone with power to set narratives pick Uighurs" would be a better-formulated question. The way you worded your question assumes rank-and-file liberals have that power, which is not the case.
I'd like to think that charitably, it's pragmatic...it's costly to cross China on many topics, but especially Taiwan and Uyghurs. Whether it's the NBA, stand-up comedians, Elon Musk...that's just too much marketshare, too much money to pass up. South Africa is/was a lot more "winnable" in that regard.
Less charitably, as you say, it cuts against the liberal narrative for nonwhite people to be in the oppressor/problem-causer role. Remember all those righteous news stories early in 2020, about how Acktually, fear of covid was just the latest anti-Asian dogwhistle, they're the Real Victims here?
But, I'm not white or a liberal, so there's probably more straw than man in my projections here.
(Semi-relatedly, I gotta wonder - do you come up with a fresh "checkmate, liberals!" for every OT, or it's all from, like, a pre-existing master list of sins?)
They all seem to be a riff on “White people are being overrun by other races in this country! Why are liberals okay with this?”
Watch for the next one.
>And if you're going to claim they do care about the Uyghurs as much as they did apartheid, then don't even bother posting, because your views are too divorced from reality to be worth responding to.
Here's a datum for you. While I've no idea how much the US cares, if you pay attention to *Australian* media Xinjiang is all over everything about China; the Chinese ambassador got asked about it in his appearance at the National Press Club and in a television interview a couple of days later, leaders of political parties have to defend their position on it, etc.
So it's not a fully-general "whites don't care" thing. There's some difference between the USA and Australia on this. A wild guess is US domestic politics blocking out everything else.
I've lived in Australia for the past few years. The Australian left were literally angrier about George Floyd than about Xinjiang.
Well, not to be too cynical, but doesn't Australia have like a $100 billion trade surplus with China? They need you more than you need them.
Countries with a trade surplus need the goods they are importing.
If you have a trade surplus you're importing cash and *exporting* goods (although in this case raw materials mostly). If what you meant to say is tha the Aussies need the cash as much as the Chinese need the iron ore, gas, et cetera, then that's sort of true, but on the other hand there are a fair amount of other places that will buy that stuff if the Chinese can't or won't. Anyway, the exporters of raw natural resources seem historically to be more resilient to trade disputes, for better or worse.
Fair call that we could be doing more than we are; I'm in favour of recognising Taiwan and to hell with the consequences, but apparently the major parties don't like that idea.
Just saying, it is at least something people talk about here.
I didn't say you should be doing more than you are. I just said Australia in general might feel a bit more free to piss on China rhetorically than, say, west-coast techies whose iPhones, solar panels, the lithium for their Tesla battery pack, and half the shit they buy on Amazon comes from China, and who in a number of cases are hoping to sell high-end consumer goods (electric cars, smartphones, web services, media) into the vast Chinese market.
That's still a pretty low amount of caring though. Where _are_ the protests outside the Chinese consulate? Where are the attempted boycotts?
I mean, I've kinda been living under a rock as far as general news goes, but looking around:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/drew-pavlou-to-return-to-australia-while-still-under-police-suspicion-of-chinese-embassy-bomb-hoax-20220813-p5b9kj.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-24/china-ambassador-xiao-qian-speech-protest/101180684
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-30/protest-at-opening-of-new-adelaide-chinese-consulate/100037766
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-25/calls-for-australia-to-ban-uyghur-linked-imports/12699124
The last one's a bit old, but still.
I think this question is entirely backwards. American liberals are not special in not caring about Uyghurs – practically no one does; and Uyghurs are not special in not being cared about by American liberals – American liberals care about very few foreign conflicts.
Okay, then what explains the response to e.g. apartheid?
I remember reading something about the reason for much of the craziness going on in the US being the US left's desire to relive the civil rights movement. Dunno to what extent that is true, but caring about Apartheid seems like a good fit to that theory.
You've received enough pushback for the silly aspects of this post that I'm not going to pile on.
To try to reply in good faith, though: there is definitely a sense in some quarters of the left (I make no claims for American liberals) that stories of Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang serve the propaganda interests of the United States government (which has historically proven to be quite capable of playing dirty with such information) and therefore are automatically suspect, no matter how many Amnesty/HRW/etc. reports corroborate them.
This knee-jerk mistrust of American information filters is a healthy tendency, but it can sometimes throw up horrible false positives and the case of the Uighurs is imho one of them.
Sod all to do with race, though.
Very interesting to put that same perspective on Ukraine then. What we're hearing about that conflict has all the classic signs of propaganda, yet many Americans (and I would say far much more those on the left) are eating it up. That's not to say that the news out of Ukraine is *wrong* so much as it's clearly one-sided and shows a likelihood of intentional slant in favor of Ukrainian perspectives.
If so, why does this go backwards of what you're suggesting? I'm not accusing you of anything, but genuinely curious if you have an explanation. From an outside perspective it does not appear that liberal viewers are terribly discerning about propaganda given the counterfactual, but I could be wrong here.
First, it's important to acknowledge, if only in passing, the obvious differences between these two sets of events. The abuse of Uighurs in Xinjiang is more opaque than the clear-cut reality of the Russian army violating the internationally-recognised borders of Ukraine on the 24th of February. Even the Russian state agrees that this is what happened (but it was good/redress of historical justice/necessary for self-defence/etc. depending on who's speaking and why). In contrast, the Chinese state insists that the re-education camps are vocational institutions, asserts that the levels of surveillance against Muslims are not out of the ordinary by national standards, disputes various figures, and other nonsense. There's simply more room to pick out the narrative you prefer.
Second, I don't think the international left, taken broadly enough, is uncritical of the West's own information war in Ukraine, or uncritically accepting of pro-Ukrainian perspectives. I remember how, early on, Noam Chomsky was widely pilloried for taking a view of fairly mild skepticism. Jeremy Corbyn, still the de facto standard-bearer of the wounded left wing of the UK Labour party, has recently added equivocation on Ukraine to his long list of anti-establishment sins. The recently elected Lula da Silva of Brazil assigns blame for the war to both sides. The recent sordid pasticcio in Italian politics was precipitated in part because the left-leaning Cinque Stelle resisted Draghi's alleged blank cheque to Ukraine. In Germany, the hard-left Sahra Wagenknecht is perhaps the fiercest parliamentary critic of the government's pro-Ukraine policies, and there remain plenty of people in the SPD who mistrust Atlanticism and would prefer more Euro-centric, and perhaps even Eurasian security architectures. The French left around Mélenchon, likewise.
(One could go on. From time to time I'm tempted to break my substack's joke status and write a piece on this subject that would amount to more than the preceding gish gallop, but so far I've always come to my senses.)
I was careful to say that I make no claims for American liberals, but even in the United States there is a tension between the left wing of the Democratic party (which is the direct inheritor of the hostility and suspicion toward the American security/foreign policy apparatus that characterised the left throughout the Cold War and during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) and the centre-left (reflecting, say, the median battleground-state voter the party must win over to be in power). Consider, for example, the recently published letter - yes, later hastily withdrawn, but still - signed by 30 members of the Congressional progressive caucus and urging diplomacy with Russia.
So, that aforementioned mistrust of USG propaganda does in fact exist for Ukraine, but it's more isolated and farther left than it would ordinarily be. Machine Interface is quite correct - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a strong contributing factor in the US. If the association of Russia with Trump and Republicans weren't so strong, and if Putin didn't insist on reinforcing this association by casting himself as the champion of social conservatism in a great global struggle of values, and if the left didn't occasionally succumb to imagining the Ukrainian polity as more progressive and democratic than it actually is, the tendency would have kicked in more strongly, for good or ill. Quite possibly ill.
To make sure I'm understanding your response, you are saying that the left is more willing to accept pro-Ukrainian propaganda because the right is seen as associating with Russia (Ukraine's enemy)?
Would you say that you disagree with Boinu then, that liberals/left are not more discerning about propaganda in regards to China and the Uichurs?
Following your logic, I would guess your position is that the left is less willing to believe anti-Chinese positions because the right are anti-Chinese? That is, the left is aware of the claims of atrocity, but because the right speaks out against the Chinese the left reflexively defends them or ignores the complaints?
I think the popular answer to the Ukraine invasion is a precious data point here, and should probably be the start of the theory on how people react to atrocities far away. I mean, I'm sure _somewhere_ quite a lot of think tanks made progress on this, but it's probably the kind of research that won't see the light of day. I'd be very interested in seeing something public.
(disclaimer: I'm perfectly aligned with the masses here: I care a lot about Ukraine, I'm meh about Syria and I have absolutely no idea what's happening in central Africa these days).
Wait, wait, I think I know the answer! It's because white liberals don't really give a shit about justice, they just reflexively take the side of the brown person. It's a very simple mechanism, sort of a tropism, really. See, white liberals are different from me, Jason M. They don't really have inner lives , feelings and thought processes. They're robotic. Wind 'em up and they toddle stiffly with glassy eyes and open arms towards the nearest person with dark dark, eww, dark skin. And they need me to wake them up. Because some of the time after they toddle robotically up to the dark-skinned person with open arms that dark guy's gonna to mate with them, and then our civilization will decline because blacks are stupider and more violent than whites.
How'm I doing, Jason?
1. We trade too much with China, and they are busy going after Russia.
2. Progressives and liberals feel bad saying bad things about people who aren't white. (I agree with you on this one.)
3. I do actually think many liberals care about Uyghurs, they're just afraid to make it a big focus because of 2. above.
Liberals caring more about black people than other non-whites is a satisfactory explanation for the disparity. As for Uyghurs being non-white, I don't think liberals really care much about non-whites mistreating non-whites. I sincerely doubt that if Israelis were mostly white that they would get so much attention. It would just be arabs killing other arabs, not our business etc.
One big thing is that South Africa had a minority oppressing the majority group, while in China we have the majority oppressing a racial minority. Almost every country, to some extent, has disfavored minority groups that are oppressed in some way. What China is doing is bad, but there are worse countries, such as Burma, DR Congo, Sudan, Syria, and many more. No reason to pick a fight with China when there are weaker targets. South Africa was different, as apartheid was one of the last remnants of colonialism, and liberals were very keen on eliminating colonialism. They wanted total victory, and used every tool they had to deal with the stubborn holdouts that stood in the way of Progress.
These are excellent points.
We could relate to South Africa because of our history with slavery (and because of the common language). We fought the most costly war in our history in order to correct the sin of slavery. We had the moral ground to expect South Africa to do the right thing.
I imagine that SA speaking English was a factor.
South Africa was a democracy. The white population could vote to stop discrimination. An international show of disgust about the discrimination had a chance of affecting the South African voters. China is not a democracy and so much harder to change.
This is a reason so many people today are angry about stuff done by Israel. And why so many Europeans are angry about stuff done by the US, but don't get very worked up about China.
>China is not a democracy and so much harder to change.
The US government could restrict trade and otherwise make life hard for them. But opposition to apartheid was visceral amongst the american left in a way that I don't think can be explained by things like this.
There's also the unequal response to Russia's anti-gay law and the anti-gay laws of America's middle eastern allies. Russia is basically a dictatorship and any consideration about influencing Russian voters seems very silly.
I mean, it was as much of a democracy as the Jim Crow south had been, and in the 1970s-80s, that was a relatively recent example.
Ok, but the possibility of the minority voting to change the system still existed.
I have a recurring issue with my browser where basically every website with a login regularly claims not to remember me, and I have to jump through some extra hoops to log in. Hoops being, getting an email or text saying 'we noticed a strange login from an unusual location' or something, having to verify with 2FA, etc.
For some websites it's only if I haven't logged in in a couple of weeks, but iCloud seems to just do this periodically- even if I logged in 24 hours ago, it will go through the whole 2FA process and then ask me if I want to 'trust' this browser.
This is all on the same laptop, on the same IP address at home. I don't do anything unusual with VPNs or deleting cookies. The only thing I do that's slightly not-standard is run two adblockers, Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin. I didn't know if they maybe deleted some cookies automatically or did something else similar, maybe interfered with some kind of tracker that sites use to 'know' it's me.
I will say that I never encounter this issue with Google, but literally every other website with a login claims every other week that my login is 'unusual'. Is this..... normal? Could it be caused by my adblockers? Or is this just how we live now? Frankly, I find this level of security for non-financial websites a bit absurd
Minor additional note: weird things can happen if you briefly run out of disk space.
I have bigger problems with iCloud, but I do notice that a lot of websites consider me to be coming from a different location or browser following even a minor update of the OS, and occasionally after a crash or planned reboot. (I'm also on a Mac.)
An obvious case of login dysphoria. You better get it checked.
ICloud is a mess for this. I am continually asked to do a 2FA to trust the device on the same device I am logged into. Might be fixed in the new macOS.
Browser engineer here. This is almost certainly related to cookies getting deleted or cleared, especially with the repeated 2FA symptom. (Typically sites that don't support long sessions still use cookies to store "is this a trusted device we can bypass 2FA on".) Things to check:
* Any third-party "security" software running on your machine, e.g. antivirus, firewall, etc.?
* Two adblockers is indeed a potential issue; try browsing with just one or zero for a while.
* Did you turn off third party cookies, or otherwise tweak your browser's cookie or history settings?
* "Clear cookies" buttons don't always say "cookies". Are you perioidically pressing something like "clear storage" or "clear history" or "clean my profile"?
* Are you rejecting all cookie consent banners, perhaps via some extension?
If all else fails, you can try eliminating causes by using a different browser (if this persists, it's probably third party software), or using a new browser profile with no extensions.
Another mechanism is if your OS disk drive (or more specifically, the drive where your browser user data is stored) gets full. You will lose your cookies as the browser tries and fails to expand the cookie database.
Can I shamelessly use your expertise for something trivial? I travel between 2 cities, and when I don't use a computer for over a week facebook wants a 2fa login code. I don't suppose I could convince it to stretch it to 2-3 weeks?
Thanks! I'm not doing any of those things, I don't believe, but I do suspect that uBlock Origin is the more aggressive of the two adblockers- they're probably the cause.
I made the situation sound worse than it is- other than iCloud it only happens if I haven't logged in to a website for a couple of weeks. I find it annoying, but not annoying enough that I'd disable my dual adblockers
It’s definitely an iCloud issue then. The couple of weeks thing is standard - you are given a token that times out after a few weeks, however iCloud shouldn’t be asking so much. I used to see this too but it was fixed in Ventura.
I just think it's funny how Google is the one party that's never fooled. Tells you something about their tracking prowess....
Are you using Chrome? Google may be happier with that and willing to trust it more. You could try turning off your ad blockers for a couple weeks and see if things change? They could be messing with cookies without you knowing.
I have no proof for that but my guess is that the adblockers do their job in not only blocking the app but also by blocking request that are used for adversiting and tracking purposes. I heard of some frameworks that claim to detect fraudulent logins by comparing your browsers fingerprint between logins. If they don't get enough information's about your browser because of the adblocker they might fail to give averdict which results in you being asked to login again.
I don't know the specific cause, but I have seen some similar behavior, though nothing as severe as what you are seeing. I think this has something to do with operating system and browser updates. These sites take some sort of fingerprint of your setup when you register, and if that fingerprint changes, you are considered as logging in from a different system than the one you have been using in the past, which triggers additional security scrutiny.
If you want to see less of this, look into your settings for operating system and browser updates. There should be some way to make updates less frequent.
You did say 'on the same IP address at home', but just in case you don't know, some ISPs do rotate IP addresses amongst their users. I imagine you've ruled this out for yourself, but wanted to speak up in the off-chance you hadn't.
For those of you who are really into music, my Russian Futurism blog on Russian classical music might be of interest: russianfuturism.blogspot.com
How do you get out of the "value = money, status and accomplishments" mindset in dating?
I find that being kind and interesting works well enough. Let people talk about themselves, they like that.
It seems to me there are only two possibilities here:
1. Money, status, and accomplishments are genuinely something a person values highly in a potential mate. That would hardly be shocking, or even very unusual. It certainly isn't a bad mindset -- it's not going to lead to any evil, either to another or to the person with this particular value system. Indeed, if this is the case, the worst possible decision would be to attempt to conceal it, or deny it. That would end up presenting a false front to others, which is bound to lead to unkindness and sadness. In dating, it's much more important to be who you really are than who you (think you) want to be, because pretending to be someone you're not (or at least not yet) sets up the other people in your life for a cruel and damaging outcome, sooner or later.
2. Money, status, and accomplishments are serving as a proxy for some other, as yet unknown, more deeper characteristic that is of value. For example, one might value steadiness of character and trustworthiness very highly, and if a potential mate seems somewhat deficient in these -- a little flaky and unreliable -- but you don't want to give the significant hurt involved in saying "your character isn't steady enough for me!" -- it can be less painful to invoke a dissatisfaction with money and status instead. Saying "you don't earn enough" seems less painful than saying "I don't feel I can rely on you enough." (After all, it's easier for the rejected person to improve his annual income than his character.) Or if one is not really wanting to commit, one can hold standards of money and status that your normal dating pool is very unlikely to meet, and almost always have a handy and plausible reason not to commit. There are about a zillion other possibilties.
Only the person in question can really decide which is the case, and only after a deep and brutally honest self-appraisal. In the case of (1) one might want to work on self-acceptance and being swift but kind in one's selection process, and in the case of (2) it's good to know what the deeper criteria really are, because using those directly instead of the proxies might lead to better choices earlier.
>(After all, it's easier for the rejected person to improve his annual income than his character.)
...wait, what? This seems completely backwards.
One assumes you're an extreme optimist, then, or haven't read about a hundred thousand Dear Abby columns in which experienced women advise their starry-eyed younger sisters that you can't marry him to change him.
Anyway, I earn about 10x what I did in my first job, but as far as the points of my character I most regret, I would say they have improved...a bit. Someone who disliked me 50 years ago probably still has about a 75% chance of still disliking the much older me. Perhaps you have been far more successful at your self-improvement schema, in which case, congratulations indeed.
There is always religion. Someone who is truly committed to the idea of marriage can be more valuable than someone with twice the money/status but a 50% commitment to the idea of marriage -- in the long term.
Seek people who convey status in a less conventional way. For example, instead of going for the guy/girl who could be CEO, look to meet a great guitar player. Perhaps someone who carries a lot of status in the local music scene as a serious musician who is dedicated to their craft. Putting together musical projects and performances is certainly an accomplishment... doesn’t have to be music, but you get the idea.
That's still status and just as shallow.
Not if you love music. Women (generally) will always be attracted to status and there’s nothing that can change that. But “status” means different things to different people and there are more and less shallow ways to convey it. Writing great songs is definitely less shallow than wearing expensive clothes.
Which values do you think will matter at the breakfast table, or when it comes time to clean the bathroom? What are you actually picturing these relationships looking like? Why are you trying to be in them?
To be fair, money matters quite a lot at the breakfast table (are you eating discount cereal at an Ikea table, or...) and even more when it comes time to clean the bathroom (are you actually going to do it yourself or just pay a cleaner?)
It all depends on what you're dating for. Money could hold up to scrutiny at all points. Status and accomplishment have little domestic value.
For yourself or your partners? For men or for women?
To first approximation, men value beauty and women value money, status and accomplishments. Men don't value money/status/accomplishments in their partners very much, except that it needs to exceed some minimal level in order not to be embarrassing.
People get confused when they don't properly understand this; men will assume that women care about looks as much as they do, and spend their time optimising for the wrong things (younger me fell into this trap; better to be relaxed and confident with the good-enough looks you have rather than fret about trying to be slightly better looking). Similarly, women get confused when men apparently don't value them for their skills and accomplishments.
This *may* be changing, and like all generalizations probably isn't true for some reasonable proportion of members of either sex.
Anecdote time: At one point, my brother in law was out of work, so found himself in charge of the children - my sister was still employed. He got chatted up *a lot*, by single mothers at playgrounds etc., who apparently valued "will take care of small children" rather a lot. (It may also have helped that he was likely to be the only male in sight, at the playground ;-))
Increasing your value in the eyes of women who already have children, is a bit too late, in my opinion. (Unless you hope for them to divorce, or start cheating on their current partner with you.)
I find this kind of generalization useless and counterproductive: "women care about X, men care about Y." You can only confidently state that a first individual cares more about X than a second individual at a specific point of time, and even then it's a conjecture.
What about generalizations related to old versus young? "Older people care more about X and younger people about Y." Or Americans versus Europeans, or rich versus poor, or people who live in the city versus people who live in the country? People who voted for Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton versus people who did not?
That is, are you opposed to *all* generalizations whatsoever, or only to this one?
It rather depends on context. If you determine that, on average, older people prefer X, and therefore force it on your grandmother over her angry objections, you are some kind of vicious fool. If you determine that on average, older people prefer X, but there's very little of it available, and decide to produce more of it, you might be a successful entrepreneur - more successful than the dozen competitors producing Y, preferred, on average, by younger people.
Getting back to the original context - if you are an amazingly handsome man, lacking other assets (i.e. you are a lazy, untalented, and poor), you might be better off pursuing the minority of women who care about looks. If you love children, and jobs caring for them don't pay well, you might be better off pursuing the minority of women who care about that, rather than trying to reinvent yourself as an accountant or software engineer. If on the other hand your looks are average, and your social skills are meh, then you had better go after the plurality (?) of women still looking fora good provider.
You get the point. You aren't trying to date or marry the average woman. You are trying to date or marry individuals - and not all that many of them, compared to the total number of prospects (women looking to date or marry a man).
Kind of feels like you're answering some other point made by someone else, since I'm not sure how any of this relates to my question.
I'm just observing that 'ucatione' finds generalizations about what men prioritize versus what women prioritize to be "useless and counterproductive" -- and I'm wondering if that means he or she is opposed to any generalizations by group at all, or whether there's something special about generalizations about men v. women.
Well, yes and no. There are definitely people who don't fit the stereotypes, but ceteris paribus if you are a (straight) man you should focus on accomplishments and if you are a (straight) woman you should focus on beauty, just because that's what most people want. If you've got a big handicap in one of those areas it may be smarter to look for nonconformists who value other things.
"Has not believing in this generalization helped you get more dates?"
Yes, treating women as individuals has helped me get more dates.
It's an interesting question (and I am not the OP). I find right-wingers tend to say 'following roles gets you laid', and left-wingers reply 'following roles is wrong', but the obvious syllogism is always left unsaid, since men have always been willing to do unsavory things in pursuit of nookie.
In my personal experience reading PUA stuff helped me break out of the 'any kind of expression of interest is wrong' mental frame produced by 90s second-wave feminism, but n=1, and it's possible there were more healthy ways of learning the same thing. (It was obvious to me Roissy and Co. were exaggerating and trying to be disgusting for shock value, but it was liberating because it was the opposite set of lies from the ones I'd heard.)
And...maybe being a sensitive guy works for the OP. ;) Different things work for different people.
This is a great question.
To expand on what Lasagna wrote, consider a Venn diagram with one set being “money, status & accomplishments” and the other set being “integrity, honesty & faithfulness.” Those sets intersect.
We don’t all practice evaluating others for integrity when we’re growing up - I certainly did not & had no idea how to do that except miserable trial and error. But there are better methods.
Outside of the intersecting circles, there is a large pool of potential partners who have neither money/status/accomplishments nor integrity/honesty/faithfulness. That may be helpful for resolving karmic debt but, lol, not great otherwise. If you need to add a third set like “athletic” or “very smart” you can do so but just be mindful of where it’s intersecting.
Also money/stat/acc can be an indicator of other things which are positive. Hardworking, charismatic, dedicated, etc. Those may be traits you want and knowing that is important. To thine own self be true.
As in, how you perceive the value of men? Just to be clear, men don't care about these things so much in women.
I think you need to have something compelling to substitute for it. People already value integrity, honesty and faithfulness as well as money, status and accomplishments. What is the alternative you’d like to see?
How do people think Dominic Cummings’s startup party will go
Tangentially, why is Dominic Cummings doing any of this? From the writings of his that I've read, I can agree with a few things that he supports-- more funding for science/tech (especially basic research), encouragement of technocracy, and greater safety around nuclear weapon use. But the thing which catapulted him to fame was .... Brexit. And now he is going on and on about the deep state, both-sidesing Ukraine and Russia, and reading incredible amounts of eclectic materials to somehow help formulate his policies. What is his end goal?
I get the same kind of hesitation when I read Samo Burja's stuff. Smart person who believes reading books is their comparative advantage and whose political beliefs/aspirations are mysterious. As much as I dislike govt. incompetence, govt. competence with shadowy, opaque academics seems like an even worse alternative to me.
He send to have an inability to perceive simple truths. Brexit was predictably a double blow for science: : existing funding is tied into europe, and economic damage means less money for the government.
> But the thing which catapulted him to fame was .... Brexit. And now he is going on and on about the deep state, both-sidesing Ukraine and Russia, and reading incredible amounts of eclectic materials to somehow help formulate his policies. What is his end goal?
Appealing to people who perceive themselves as contrarians, and getting elected?
You get some votes by talking about technocracy, some other votes by talking about qanon-like topics, the more votes the better.
Very badly. The system (in terms of fptp elections, party funding, etc) is set up to massively disadvantage small and new parties. All recent attempts in the UK have been embarrassing failures. And Cummings while talented in some areas of politics doesn't have any expertise in party management or grass roots activism.
given that he is among the most disliked people in British politics, I imagine it will go swimmingly.he is detested by left, right, and center pretty much equally, which is an achievement in itself.
I must be behind the times - where is the evidence that this is happening?
He said it will. Nothing concrete yet. If you don’t sub to his Substack I’d recommend it!
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/doPejjd84w8BmERqj/choice-writings-of-dominic-cummings
If every disillusioned grump who threatened to start a new party actually did it, the ballot paper would be as long as the phone book.
It's something he's mentioned in passing in the occasional tweet and blog post; eg here:
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1582325397248561152?t=jCt6p7FjzCvhUldbcUYZ6w&s=19
I'm not aware of any further details but would be interested in more if anyone has them.
He’ll talk about it on Substack soon I think
Conditional on it actually being real, I'd say 30% chance of it getting more than 2 seats in the next election; 5% chance of it getting more seats than the LibDems. I think Rishi is likely to stave off the total collapse of the Tory party that would be needed to make space for Vote Leave v2, at least until the election (I don't think he'll win). The best thing for Cummings politically would be Truss sticking around for another 18m & the 'Carthage scenario' playing out: but I suspect he'd agree that it's not worth the damage she'd do to the country in the meantime.
Is there any real indication he's going to form one?
Forming a new party in a mature democracy is damn near impossible. It requires both an under-served portion of the political spectrum and a charismatic leader; a Cummings party would have neither.
Most mature democracies I can think of have gotten both a green party and an anti-immigration party pretty recently, so "damn near impossible" seems a bit of a stretch. But the UK has an electoral system that particularly disfavours new parties, and I don't know enough about UK politics to say whether there's some potential for growth in the niche that the UKIP used to possess.
From Stephen's reply:
> you can predict the addictiveness of a drug by the first derivative of its dopamine spike
Is that something known to the neuroscience/psych pharma people? Or is it new? If it is known, is it measured/taken into account when creating new psych meds?
It’s interesting how divergent those probabilities of Republicans Senate control are.
Yes, this is super intriguing. I did some digging into why the Manifold market (where I'm one of the largest traders) is so different from the other prediction markets, and I now suspect that I might be personally responsible for a large chunk of the difference: apparently I own about a third of all the NO shares on the Manifold market, and 3x as much as the next largest NO holder. Hmm...
I'm betting on 538 and Metaculus (https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5632/gop-controls-us-senate-in-2023/) being more accurate than the prediction markets. And I'm trading on Manifold but not on Polymarket or Predictit for a variety of practical reasons (no fees and less hassle). Manifold is relatively small compared to Polymarket and PredictIt, so a single person being willing to bet a large amount of (play) money can move the market price noticeably. There are also several traders who are betting towards Polymarket/PredictIt instead, but apparently not enough of them to close the gap.
Comparing the odds from professional bookies is also interesting https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics
I'm surprised the UK bookmakers don't get referenced more as an upper bound given that they're big and well-established.
Americans, you're missing out on *walkable, mixed use prediction markets*.
I used to wonder why Scott et al talked so much about prediction markets and so little about actual betting odds; then I discovered that most of these sites are geoblocked from the US so it's very hard for Americans to check the odds.
I suppose it'd be worth either finding or making an aggregator that
a) lets the yanks peer in
b) plots a time series
c) gives you a 38% probability instead of telling you that if you put down a Lady Godiva and win, you'll get your money back with another £8 on top.
I was going to make the same comment. Leaving aside 538: Scott, does the difference between 58% and 73% impact your opinion on prediction markets? That seems like a pretty wide gulf
58% and 73% aren’t all that different. They’re both predicting slightly more likely than not, but a significant chance of not. It doesn’t take much evidence to shift from one to the other. (I expect that as votes are counted from various counties in some key races, many bookies will suddenly change their predictions by more than 58% to 73% even when it’s nowhere near done counting.)
It’s not like the difference between 99% and 99.99999%, where you’d need a lot of very significant evidence to be so confident.
Smarkets is unlimited real money I think. And seems to be giving 67% FWIW. https://smarkets.com/event/42048961/politics/us/2022-house-and-senate-elections/senate-control
Manifold doesn't use real money, so you can't arbitrage. PredictIt limits the amount of money you can put in and has high fees, so it's not worth arbitraging. I would be shocked if arbitrage-able markets had that much of a difference. And by "shocked", I mean "I would make tens of thousands of dollars with zero risk".
Since Manifold dollars can be donated to charities, Manifold is somewhat arbitrageable - anyone who was already planning to donate money to a charity (and can't benefit from tax deductions on donations, which I believe is most people) could arbitrage between Manifold and Polymarket with a budget of however much they were planning to donate. If you look at the Manifold market volumes in real-money terms it's quite small, so it wouldn't take much budget to correct the price difference with an arbitrage, but there also isn't that much profit available from arbitraging.
Also, it's true that PredictIt fees mean that this 8% difference isn't worth arbitraging, but it still seems like an odd discrepancy: someone who was willing to buy yes at 73% on predictit could make much more profit buying yes at 65% on polymarket. So for such a large discrepancy to exist and remain as prices fluctuate would suggest that there's a large difference in the populations trading on different platforms in a way that is probably exploitable, even if it isn't a 100% risk-free arbitrage.
The reasoning is very simple. How low value are the markets? PredictIt is flooded with MAGA money and a dedicated right wing user base and there are very low market caps. That is the primary driver.
Some of you may already know the work of Perun, an Australian defence analyst who posts weekly videos about the war in Ukraine, and some other issues. His latest video addresses the question of the defence of Europe, and in particular whether the Europeans (collectively) can defend themselves against the most likely threat, namely Russia, without the assistance of the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKlIh_-U4bU
His conclusion is, basically, that they can. Whether you look at total manpower, total number of trained soldiers, total spending, the number of tanks or number of military aircraft, the numbers indicate a substantial European advantage. That's not to say there aren't some problems, notably provisions for coordination among the European militaries, but not enough to eliminate the facts on the ground.
Haven't watched the video, but for those who might then say "Europe can defend itself... therefore it SHOULD", this misunderstands the point of the US presence in Europe. Encouraging a unified European militarised response to Russia would run directly counter to US policy of the last 70 years, which has been encouraging European reliance on US arms/industry/power. The idea that you'd encourage an independent and alternative European satrapy that can stand independent from the imperial core would be bonkers.
Yes, I can see a lot of countries -- some in Asia come to mind, and not just the Chinese -- re-evaluating just how fearsome the Russian military machine is. Nobody has done more to destroy the perception of Russian military power than Vladimir Putin. If he were actually in the pay of the CIA I don't think he could have done any greater harm.
Ye, but if there ain't a will, there ain't a way.
Does this really need to be said, though? I could understand Russia being viewed as a credible threat to Europe before this year, but now they are losing badly to just Ukraine. In what world can Russia get smacked around by Ukraine, yet take on Europe collectively?
I know this might come across as flippant because the US is contributing advanced weaponry that would not be there in your scenario. But a few advanced weapons are not enough to singlehandedly win a war. The US is only sending these because Ukraine has been successful in fighting back the Russian offensive in the first place.
The world five years from now, after Putin's successor has rebuilt Russia's army with the hard lessons of Ukraine and is looking to make a name for himself by avenging Russia's humiliation?
Not certain to happen, but could happen. The Russian army was decimated in Finland in 1939, probably worse than even the Ukraine fiasco, but by 1942 they were able to stop the Third Reich in its tracks and in 1945 they were in Berlin. And remember, the Ukrainian Army was a bigger joke in 2015 than the Russian Army is today. Defeat and humiliation can be a powerful motive for self-improvement, and it doesn't take that many years.
Also, if Europe is going to look after its own security without the US, that means staring down the barrel of two thousand nuclear missiles with only one French and one British SSBN at sea at any given time. Are the Brits really going to sacrifice London to avenge Warsaw, if it comes to that? Or is Poland going to nuke up?
I would say the Poles are keeping their options open:
https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/nonproliferation-supporting-the-non-proliferation-treaty-ahead-of-the-2020-review-conference
Russia could cause a lot of damage, even without a chance of a big victory.
Apparently the idea that Europe is fatally reliant on the US for its defence is an idea with some currency, particularly on the US right. Perun addresses this in the beginning to his video.
Agreed. Before Ukraine Russia was seen as the clear #2 military power, now I would put it around #7, with it being much further down if you took nukes off the table.
It certainly has been widely accepted, especially on the US right, for a number of years, but that was before Russia showed what absolute shambles its military is in.
Admittedly, I am not running in right wing circles up here in NYC, but as far as I know, people have updated after Russia's abysmal performance.
I'm not saying I know better than a defense analyst and I haven't seen the video yet, but comparing militaries by total numbers like that smells funny, I realize that numbers matter but it leaves tons of other things and gives false confidence/alarm.
But when did anybody talk seriously about Russia doing anything military in Europe outside of Call of Duty ? It didn't do it at the height of it's belligerence and relative military strength in the 1960s, it has much bigger whales to fry right now, and it has better and lower risk ways to harm Europe.
> But when did anybody talk seriously about Russia doing anything military in Europe outside of Call of Duty ?
They've already invaded two European countries in the past decade (and a third is still partially under Russian occupation), so how could anybody not talk seriously about that?
>two European countries in the past decade (and a third is still partially under Russian occupation)
One of them is Ukraine, sure, but which other European countries have been invaded by Russia in the past decade (or even since the 90's)?
Sorry, I was a bit off with the dates: Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. The country they've been occupying a part of since the 90s is Moldova.
> But when did anybody talk seriously about Russia doing anything military in Europe outside of Call of Duty ?
I suppose if you leave Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, East Germany out of Europe that’s true.
Perun does seem to be aware that you can't just add up the numbers and get a solid estimate of military power. To his credit, he is aware of the limitations of the data. But he thinks -- and I agree -- that they are the right place to start. Let me suggest you have a look at the video.
Yes hopefully the US realised this and their full focus turns to Asia
No, talking about e.g. the Chinese the way the Russians are talked about would be racist.
Why do you think that? It sounds like you are projecting some conception of racism onto people that you don’t understand, by modeling them in a way that doesn’t make internal sense.
Because THATS ALREADY HAPPENED. Right wingers already get called racist for criticizing China.
Major warning (50% of ban): Attacking other commenters, falsely accusing them of ideas they don't believe.
I never said a word about Asians, and I said as a group, not every individual.
You got a source for these quotes you keep posting?
""the apartheid government should be seen as a godsend to Africa for stopping the genocidal Zulus""
What is wrong about this? The colonisation of South Africa likely saved millions of lives. Why don't you care about ACTUAL GENOCIDE, but think using different drinking fountains is the end of the world?
There’s a lot of hate for Russia in the US, the war is definitely not being treated as a regional war far far away. So that won’t happen.
I recently cleaned up a bunch of old (fairly short) novels I finished when I was twelve. They're terrible, of course, but they have some value to me because they're set in a predecessor of the universe I've been authoring stories in as an adult.
I'm curious if anyone here has something from their youth that they've put some effort into salvaging, as opposed to metaphorically (or perhaps literally) setting it on fire?
(Also, extremely long shot, but this is one venue I haven't asked in yet - I don't suppose anyone here spent some time in the late nineties living near Cape Town, South Africa, and happens to have had a pushy preteen sell them a book called "Terror of Time 3" that they still own? I'm looking for a surviving copy of that particular book, my digital copies all went up in flames about 15 years ago.)
I collected many of my old D&D notes from my college years into a binder rather than chucking them. Not nearly as much work as a novel, but definitely a useless memento of my younger days.
Nothing in those notes that you could salvage into a story, or a new character arc for a different campaign? Or is it just that the notes don't catch your interest any more? :)
Nah. College D&D had oceans of time devoted to it. I made my own world, nations, history, all that sort of thing. These days, with three kids and a full time job, I game for three to four hours at a time and do very little prep. Mostly I run off the shelf stuff.
Almost any physical "work" from childhood is lost to me now...too many moves, shitty storage conditions. What remains are tchotchke-type things which parents hang onto sentimentally, for their sake more than mine...nothing substantive. Which is too bad, cause I definitely had old film scripts, short stories, poetry, etc at some point. Some of those were maybe worth polishing! Terrible dross overall, but a window into a self-that-was...the kid who thought she'd grow up to be a writer, lol. That or President. Obvously.
The weird thing about what digital copies I have lying around...it's mostly just unremarkable? Like, I guess I kept it more for the ease-of-preservation than because there was actually anything particularly noteworthy worth keeping. Only amusing nugget worth the keeps: 9th-grade essay where my killer thesis was "Utilitarianism is bunk". Ah, the misunderstandings of youth...
(If you mean things in general besides works of art - stuffed animal who's old enough to vote now. Good friends are worth keeping.)
You can still be a writer! Self-publishing is pretty easy. Getting *noticed* as a writer takes work, obviously, but honestly, just personally, I'm already pleased with having a book (well, two now, more to come) in my name. I'm too chickenshit to actually advertise them. But it's a nice conversation starter, for sure!
What did your young self misunderstand about utilitarianism? :)
Late reply, sorry: it was along the lines of, like, reverse Repugnant Conclusion? So instead of a universe tiled with beings of a mere net positive 0.000001 utility, instead there'd be a universe tiled with beings enjoying tons of positive utility, and one single very sad being shouldering minus infinite utility. The burden of all sin and suffering concentrated on one, so that all others could smile.
Obviously that's kinda mystical magical, and utility isn't actually directly fungible like that in real life...but there are ways to achieve similar outcomes, in kind if not degree. Lotsa creative ways to make a martyr. Teenage me thought that was bullshit, and thus ended up rejecting the entire calculus of utilitarianism for producing such Obvious Nonsense. Babies and the water they bathe in, I guess.
I'm no stranger to late replies (as you can tell), it's nothing to apologise for. Wanted to say thanks for elaborating on this, I appreciate the insight into young you's escapades. :) (While I'm saying that, let me add that I honestly generally appreciate your posts. Thanks for being a recurring part of the commentariat!)
Do you have an example at hand that you'd be willing to share of where you reused the ideas?
For what it's worth, I'd love to indulge in this nonsense, my old stuff (and the stuff derived thereof) is similarly nonsense-sourced (Saturday morning cartoons), so I can absolutely sympathise. If you change your mind about sharing your work and want to exchange indulgent nonsense, hit me up at pinkgothic at gmail dot com? :)
Eep, hello, anxiety, haha.
Fair warning, if you grabbed Nerehitar, that's a re-write of one of the old books (basically with the goal that an adult can read it and not cringe every other paragraph), which is *pure* self-indulgent nonsense. (It is, however, a very deep look into my soul. If you want to know all about me, albeit written as a protagonist who doesn't share my *personality*, that's the one to look at.)
But if it's A Thread Between The Stars, that's more likely to be worth your while, that actually has world-building, and I'm less anxious about it and will, eventually, once I've finished the sequel, advertise for it.
(The straight-up republishing of my old books, on the other hand, is under my real name, not my pseudonym; need to keep those reputations at least *slightly* separate. 8D Won't point you there, but you can trivially find it if you're slightly clever about it.)
That said, if you want to read my stuff I can also link you to PDFs, so you can 'try before you buy'! I realise this is too late for this case. But feel free to hit me up about freebies. See previous comment for email.
If I say "there could be trillions of people and we could influence the chance of them existing even just a little bit, so x-risk/s-risk should be a moral priority", a lot of EA would be sympathetic. The recent thoughts I've been having point me toward scaling that up because I don't see a principled difference between the above argument and "there could be trillions of trillions of trillions of potential people, and we could influence the chance of them existing every-so-slightly, so x-risk/s-risk overwhems every single other moral priority by orders of magnitude" simliar to Bostrom's Astronomical Waste argument [1]. I'm struggling to see how X-risk doesn't matter more than quite literally anything else whatsoever in the year 2022. If you are an EA that is sympathetic to the first argument, are you also sympathetic to the second? Thanks.
[1] https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste
Well, that's fine, you've identified the risk, but unless this is purely an academic exercise, you need next to decide what to do about it. And here we run into a problem: predicting the effect of your actions on the future is notoriously difficult. You certainly don't want to make things worse, right? I mean, snuffing out instead of saving a few trillion lives a few millions years from now because you made a sign error in your calculations would be pretty dreadful.
So maybe warm up to this slowly. First, figure out how to predict whether buying or selling AMZN tomorrow will make you richer or poorer in 6 months' time. Once you nail that down -- which has the nice side effect of accumulating a lot of helpful capital -- you can move on to predicting whether X or Y will win the next election for something or other. Nailing that down will immediately give you a highly visible podium, plus more capital, as people will pay $beaucoup for your predictions and listen with great attention and respect to what you have to say.
There are a lot of places to go from there. You can easily become advisor to a powerful politician, for example, with your unmatched skills at just short-term prediction, and that will give you access to the political power you need when you complete the fine-tuning on your long-term prediction enough to know exactly what to do to ensure all the X-risks are dealt with.
If that was the optimal path to reducing x-risk, that would be the correct moral choice. Do you agree? I'm not suggesting that determining what reduces x-risk is easy. In fact, it could be very difficult. I think your point is "it will be really really difficult."
I would have put it that identifying the x-risk is by far the easiest part of the task, and if you really want to get anywhere you might start with the harder bits instead. I mean, it sounds a bit like the Drug Warriors in the 90s who said "Do you REALIZE how much harm drug abuse causes? Isn't is super-duper-urgent to reduce this scourge? Yes? Well, then...vote for this half-baked nostrum/candidate..."
Fortunately, you're not offering a half-baked nostrum, so that's great, but when you focus on the This Is Terrible We Must Do Something! message, human beings, being the way they are, tend to go off half-cocked pretty much right away (cf. the War on Drugs, assorted military interventions, several energy crises, global cooling/warming/change, the recent spray of nostrums for addressing COVID, and so forth).
Edit: also, I object to summarizing my point as "it will be really really difficult" because that phrasing implies that I accept there is a solution at all, because "really really difficult" is not formally equivalent to "impossible." I'm not persuaded the predictive ability required can ever be constructed, indeed I kind of doubt it can, so my prior here is that it's "impossible" not merely extremely difficult.
So I'm sympathetic to both arguments, as a total utilitarian; I think it's good to remember, though, that the Astronomical Value Theory rests on a fairly big assumption.
Namely, it assumes that the existential risk we currently face is only temporary - a consequence of us living in a 'time of perils', rather than a constant risk of high-level technology. If you fill in any value significantly higher than zero for 'existential risk pe century', the value of the future, though still huge, quickly seems a lot less astronomical.
But a priori, what reason do we have to believe that x-risks will disappear soon, rather than staying constant or increasing? There are two potential reasons: a single friendly AGI, which could reliably shelter humanity, or the spreading of humanity to far planets beyond our solar system (or even galaxy).
So if you think AGI is fairly likely to come soon and be very powerful, or you think we'll spread to the stars and this will guard us against x-risks, the Astronomical Value Thesis holds; otherwise, we're talking about 'mere' trillions of lives, which is high but not astronomical in the sense that it would outweigh most probabilities.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/N6hcw8CxK7D3FCD5v/existential-risk-pessimism-and-the-time-of-perils-4 for a far more thorough explanation, with all the necessary math.
I think that if existential risk continues to persist into later centuries, that continues to motivate action toward reducing later existential risk. Perhaps it is most likely there are only trillions of humans but there could be (with low probability) trillions of trillions of trillions.
As of now, I think humanity is in an extremely precarious state being on a single planet with little means to escape. If there were hundreds of earthlike planets with intelligent life nearby, the risks would be drastically reduced because a catestrophe on earth wouldn't eliminate all humans. If AI eats the universe then...yeah we're in trouble and maybe longtermism doesn't matter, but it's odd we haven't been eaten yet.
Another victim of Pascal's mugging.
Can't you just argue along the lines of "neglecting the present would harm the future" to easily evade the second argument? As far as I can tell, EA's claim is that those risks are disproportionately neglected, not that they are the single most important issues (even if their disproportionate neglect may make working on them the single most effective use of certain people's time).
If the present interests of humanity and future interests were perfectly aligned, then yes, there is no need to prioritize the future. I do not think that is the case, but someone could accept my argument even if they thought it was the case.
Yes, that's the typical EA perspective, I would say. My point is that the premises of longtermism seem to point toward a more radical philisophy in my view.
Well, it would point to a more radical philosophy if anyone identified some concrete action that everyone could do (and isn't already doing) that would benefit the future with higher probability than harm it (as has been said). If the probabilities just cancel out there's no argument
I think that less humans on earth would increase existential risk but perhaps increase human welfare in the short term. Whereas I would be pro-natalist, embracing longtermism would make me anti-natalist except for people focused largely on reducing existential risk.
I don't think probabilities ever really cancel out unless we are talking about perfect coinflip type situations. If the abstract argument works, then there should be examples everywhere in places we wouldn't necessarily expect.
My take on EA is that they put way too little value on observability. "Even just a little bit" works in both directions, so unless you're saying you can guarantee your actions are always positive I don't see what this argument is. What specific actions are actually being recommended here? Because if it's nothing specific, we can accuse the article of wasting our time and delaying colonization by an untold number of seconds.
There is no need to guarantee that my actions will always be positive. Even small probabilities should be motivating. The specific action that this would recommend is diverting focus toward averting x-risk, rather than preventing current suffering. It would mean less emphasis on animal welfare and malaria and more emphasis on AI Risk, nuclear war prevention, etc.
Isn’t there a good case that work on malaria helps all these other things by speeding economic development for billions of people, getting more people involved in research on the others? There’s a good case to be made that just getting more of the next generation involved in these things (as global development programs do) is likely to be more effective than any direct work on these issues.
That’s possible that things just happen to align that way. I just think it would be odd if focusing on other issues was the best way to address x-risk rather than focusing on x-risk itself. I guess I would put the probability of that <5%. What do you think?
I wouldn’t consider that question at that level of abstraction. But I think it’s clear that for many things, the best way to work on them is to work on various preparatory things, particularly when you’re talking about things years off. Often the best way to become a doctor involves some period when you are studying calculus rather than the human body.
Interesting.
Yes, I do think that’s true in many cases. In this case, not so much in my view. I just doubt that saving people from malaria or increasing economic development in developing nations reduces existential risk more than research on preventing existential risk.
If you disagree with me on this point, do you think it would be better for organizations devoted to reducing x-risk to change their focus?
Well, for instance, AI risk and nuclear war prevention are opposed; the best way to stop a nuclear war is to rush up an AI that can calculate a solution, and we in fact had someone in the last thread suggesting nuclear war as a cure for AI risk. That's what I mean; Once the ball goes over the hill you have no idea what kind of bounce it's going to take. You could be actively making it worse by trying. Malaria-ridden people don't think as well as healthy people. People traumatized by animal abuse might lash out at the people around them. Talking about AI risk instead of basketball could rob someone of a Eureka moment where they realize basketball contains a principle necessary to solving AI risk.
I agree it’s a difficult question what to do. I don’t think that we have no idea. I don’t think that you should assign exactly equal probability of increasing x-risk to every possible choice an EA could make.
For example, your basketball example seems unlikely. While I cannot be certain, talking about AI risk seems more productive than basketball. I only need the slightest suspicion.
So you're going to pick a direction in the darkness and just chuck balls into it. That's not effectiveness, that's self-soothing.
If it is absolute darkness, then yes, that's a waste of time. I don't think we are in absolute darkness on all questions of existential risk.
I am not saying this is particularly effective, but that we should be as effective as possible in reducing existential risk possibly. If that is not particularly effective, then so be it.
I am asking how this isn't an implication of taking longtermism seriously. There doesn't seem to be a principled difference between why longtermist concerns about ~.5% existential risks are on principle morally different from ~0.000000005% risks. It is a smaller number, but when combined with a higher payoff, expected utility can be equal. What qualifies as "chucking balls in the dark"?
That's a good point I hadn't considered, thanks.
Of course X-risk you can reliably reduce matters a lot! But... how do people justify that their actions are high-probability net positive in the far future? If you think you have a recipe, assume you are an EA living 5000 years ago, what would have been an obviously net-positive intervention given the contemporary knowledge and culture only?
If the future payoff is large enough, you don't need to have a high-probability belief. Even extremely low-probability beliefs should be motivating. The interventions don't have to be obviously net-positive.
I don't know a ton about 5000 years ago but trying to determine what causes disease and not provoking other groups into war would probably reduce x-risk.
I think you do need high probability, or at the very least low probability of doing damage.
You're basically saying that this hypothetical x-risk minimizer 5k years ago could have chosen a low-probability action to reduce disease because the future payoff was so large. What if their low-probability choice was to do a cleansing procession of all diseases around town to placate the God of Plague? Low probability of success, and then everyone is dead.
In terms of today, a low success probability scenario is the future heaven where AI gives humanity exactly what humanity wants. So you work towards progressing AI as much as you can, FOOM, and everyone is dead.
If you don't know the potentially catastrophic consequence of your actions, the rational choice should be not to do it -- or to work in understanding them before doing it, which equates to not doing it.
If that was their choice, it may have been most ethical given their epistemic situation. This is more persuasive becuase they are obviously in a terrible situation. If I provided a principle of "heal the sick", you could point out that healing the sick many years ago was actually worse for them. But the conclusion shouldn't be in the year 2022 that we should not actually try to heal the sick. You should act in the manner that maximizes health in expectation given your current state of knowledge and that includes learning more if necessary.
To "know" something about the future isn't always a clear definition. Everything is a probability distribution over our beliefs. There is no clear cut guideline between low probability and high probability. For a utilitarian, there is no morally significant difference between action and inaction. If I'm not certain that my action is morally good, refraining from doing the action is also a moral choice.
Longtermists ask me to entertain the idea of reducing existential risk by less than 1%. I am not seeing why it's wrong to entertain reducing existential risk by less than 0.00000000000001% for example, even if it's merely in expectation. We can't be certain about these things, I agree. We will be often wrong, I agree. But perfect indifference (literally 0% probability) is not the epistemic state we are in. Yes, it's difficult to know what to do. But do you think we should assign 0-0 odds on all possible moral actions? Or do you think that we should assign such small probabilities that trillions of trillions of trillions isn't motivating compared to present concerns?
I think we agree on more than we might think. I totally subscribe to the idea that inaction is its own sort of action, for instance. But then I'm a bit confused by the part where you talk about perfect indifference.
I have considered what I could do to reduce existential risk by 0.00000000000001%, and what came out was that inaction is the most likely action that has the largest potential positive impact.
Of course, I jest, it's not that I'm living my life in perfect immobility. I think that my best course of action is to increase the knowledge in the world by becoming specialized on a topic, develop it further, and tutor others who want to apply it in their work, or develop it further. But since I was going to do that anyway -- it's my day job and the same applies to virtually anyone -- then the x-risk framework becomes unnecessary.
What you call "perfect indifference" coincides with the best course of action. It's a bit like agnosticism vs atheism. An agnostic reasons like you: "I cannot assign a completely 0% probability to the existence of God, it could be 0.00000000000001%, so I cannot be an atheist". But then every single one of the observable behaviors of a 0.00000000000001% God-existing-probability agnosticist are exactly the same as an atheist. So he's effectively an atheist.
Thanks, I see. Yes, I do think we are largely on the same page on the higher level argument. Thanks.
Where do people stand on the Students for Fair Admissions cases being heard by the Supreme Court tomorrow? What's your best argument in favor of the plaintiff (SFFA) or the defendant (Harvard or UNC)?
It occurs to me that one of the defenses of affirmative action practices may undermine the arguments for affirmative action.
Specifically, one of the defenses for selecting Asians at such low rates relative to members of other races, specifically blacks, with equivalent test scores, is that other criteria than test scores are used, such as agreeableness. That is, they are not specifically excluding Asians, but rather, incorporating a larger set of criteria. See e.g. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/politics/harvard-admissions-asian-american/index.html.
If it were really true that Asians are extremely disagreeable relative to other applicants, then it could similarly be true that members of other races differ from each other on average.
If that is the case, then disparity would not be a sign of discrimination; an assumption on which many arguments for affirmative action rest.
Pretty sure Harvard is fucked.
How fucked can they possibly be? Any chance of being forced to pay billions in compensation to thousands of rejected students?
No. I just meant I think they'll lose the case, and a lot of other universities will hate them for having provided the test case that forced everybody to retitle their chief diversity officers.
It's possible, if Harvard loses, depending on how epic the decision is, that states with legislatures hostile to affirmative action might write new statutes that impose financial liability on colleges caught using race in admissions decisions, but Massachusetts wouldn't be among them.
Admission should be based on merit. If certain demographics have difficulty competing on a level playing field, they can be offered exceptional assistance. University social engineers shouldn't be deciding who gets in. If 90% of new students admitted to the University of California were African American or Asian American or Muslim American, we should accept it.
If I find myself in surgery, I want to look up and see the most qualified surgeon, not someone arbitrarily deemed culturally appropriate by social engineers. Godspeed to the Supreme Court.
I don’t want the most qualified surgeon. I want the surgeon who is most likely to be effective at helping me. Sometimes that is the most qualified surgeon. But sometimes it’s the surgeon who understands my specific issues and concerns.
If you’re the kind of patient surgeons are most used to seeing, probably the one with the best paper qualifications is best. But if you’re at all unusual, then it is likely to be better to have a surgeon that is familiar with your kind of unusualness rather than one who does best on normal cases.
Wouldn't you rather expect that a major part of what makes a first-class education first-class is that it takes extra time and effort to cover the unusual, in addition to the normal?
I’m thinking about the sort of thing that doesn’t get covered in the education itself. Medical school doesn’t teach you about the cultural tropes and habits of gay black men, or Venezuelan immigrants, or any of the other distinctive communities in the country. This is why it’s a good thing for the top medical school to give the best medical training to some people from each of these communities, so that they can combine the skills they got in the education with the cultural background they have to provide the best care to those communities.
Respectfully, I see some practical problems with that proposal. There are more distinct communities to represent than a given class enrollment capacity for even the largest school to handle. If groups demand proportional enrollment then that compounds the problem. If major new groups are defined that cross intersectional lines, that again multiplies the registrar's woes. Better the institution increase curriculum than attempt to increase enrollment to represent burgeoning groups. Better logistics to wear leather-soled shoes than to try to cover the world with leather
It would make good sense to do so. I'm not at all familiar with medical schools, but in most law schools there are classes like Contracts, Civil Procedure, etc that everyone takes (mostly in the first year). Should all med schools (not just the first-class top tier ones) have similar required course(s) or externships that address Kenny's concerns?
Hi Kenny,. Unusualness in what respect? I'm an aging Boomer who at last count has had ~7 surgeries (general anesthesia/conscious sedation, inpatient/outpatient, invasive/laparoscopic both) so far and my own concerns were never about anything but the surgeon's general, all-around competence, which was very hard to determine a priori, except word of mouth. Some we had recommendations from friends, some we had recommendations from doctors, but the sole criteria was, "are they good?" (In a vague and nebulous sense of that term) so I guess you can count me as a fairly unsophisticated consumer of surgical providers.🤕
Any respect of unusualness could be relevant. It doesn’t sound like you mentioned anything particularly distinctive about yourself (aging boomer with ~7 surgeries sounds like the most common type of surgery patient) but many people find that a doctor from their own racial community or of their own gender or orientation can understand their issues better, and understand particular factors that make some alternative treatment better or worse. Medical school is something where you absolutely want this sort of cultural diversity in ways that are less relevant for, say, astronomers or the like.
Can't argue with that. Thanks for the quick response! Bye the bye, are you related to the famous spiritual teacher we boomers so admired?
As far as I know, I am not particularly closely related to Eknath Easwaran. I don't actually speak Tamil myself, but as I understand it, when someone has two names like this, the first is their father's given name and the second is their given name. (This is a lot like Icelandic or Russian patronymics, except that the father's name is just in the regular form, rather than the "son of" form.) I think "Easwaran" may be a common given name within some particular Tamil Brahmin castes, or even a part of a name (I think it is part of the longer name of many different deities) but it will appear and disappear within families over a couple generations. Still, we likely have an ancestor in common somewhere within the past dozen generations!
Since girls tend to do about a standard deviation better than boys in school (leading to them making up around 60% of the undergrad student body in most degrees, where no explicit male-oriented affirmative action is used), would you also be against any program that prioritises male students?
Yes, most certainly. This isn't a matter of protecting and fostering ones favorite group(s) including ones own self, clan, gender identification, religion, ethnicity, political party, or what-have-you. It's precisely that kind of favoring, no matter how noble ones motives, that leads to mischief, where the waxing and waning of popular sentiment first elevates then casts down and all contend for goods- an assured path to tribalism and the fracturing of society. We ought to keep in mind what one of the earlier justices wrote: that the Constitution was.never intended to promote all goods or remedy all evils.
Godspeed up to a point. What say you all to the Elections Clause, Electors Clause litigation from North Carolina and the Independent State Legislature Theory? Bye bye uniform application of laws.
That's Moore v Harper, orsl arguments on December 7th I believe. A very important case
Two points about the Independent State Legislature thing.
First point:
This was recently decided in a case, Arizona state legislature vs Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. They decided in the anti- direction. 5-4, liberals + Kennedy anti, conservatives pro. Just on that basis, I'd imagine it would be 4 votes anti (2 liberals still there, plus KBJ, plus Roberts who was anti but IMO would join for 2 reasons), Alito against (even though this would go against his own reasoning re precedent in Dobbs) as well as Thomas, not sure about the others but I'm guessing at least Kavanaugh anti.
Two reasons for Roberts, one is just following a recent precedent that isn't "unworkable" or whatever. One is that in the Arizona case he distinguished two old cases thusly (the cases allowed a governor's veto in one, and a ballot initiative in the other, to reject legislature passed rules):
"But it hardly supports the result the majority reaches here. There is a critical difference between allowing a State to supplement the legislature’s role in the legislative process and permitting the State to supplant the legislature altogether."
A case where a state supreme court throws out the legislature's plan is like the old cases, not the Arizona case (which entirely gave redistricting power over to a commission).
Second point:
I think a recent (unanimous!) case is helpful for the anti- view. The one saying that electoral college votes can be bound by state law. The constitution specifically gives them the power to vote, yet the court says that state law can bind what they do with that power. Same with this - the constitution gives power to state legislatures, but state law (here the state constitution) can bind what they do with it.
In fact I think it's a stronger argument because a state legislature is definitely a creature of the state constitution, has no independent existence outside of it, whereas an elector is an actual person with no (necessary) relation to the state government, he holds a federally-created position.
Very nice argument. I agree with your reasoning but not so sure about Alito. There's a lot of public alarm in the usual places, but mostly for fund raising purposes. Privately, almost everyone probably expects a 7-2 or even 8-1 outcome I imagine. But we won't have heard the last of this because as we well know, this Court might put some language in there giving covert guidance for future litigants. Oh yes, Roberts writing the opinion.
I think that having an admissions policy that appears to discriminate against certain groups makes Harvard have to field a defense.
I think two good points for their defense is:
1) Meeting people with a diverse collection of backgrounds and life experiences helps broaden your perspective and give you a better idea of the world as it is, and not just as you’ve seen it. This can be considered an important part of a college education.
2) Most metrics used for college admissions are riggable with sufficient wealth. Extracurriculars, standardized prep, and even volunteer experiences are more easily available to a rich person than a poor person, so a poor person with a mediocre ACT score may be presenting more talent than a rich person with a good score. Since a higher percentage of blacks are poor than whites (for example), it looks racially discriminatory when it’s actually discriminating on class
The counterpoints I like are
1) race isn’t all diversity is, and there are many un-protected things, like political leanings, that aren’t recruited for, but would add diversity too. That is, there are lower hanging fruit to pick
2) I think it would be hard for Harvard (or any top university) to claim that it discriminates against rich people with a straight face. Legacy programs are a good example of this, but stuff like being a D1 fencing school is another example.
I think the main test I’d care about would be if controlling for wealth largely controlled for racial “discrimination” (so a poor white person has roughly the same odds as a poor black person). If this is the case, I’d agree with Harvard, if not, I’d probably lean towards SFFA. I don’t think it would have to completely eliminate the statistical advantage, but the numbers I saw are more extreme than I’m comfortable with
The WSJ recently ran a sort of preview of the case, and the statistics they named were considerable. I can't imagine the evidence being ignored.
It will come down either preserving the integrity of the selection process, or create two parallel pools of students -- those who earn admission through merit, and Affirmative Action charity cases. Lowering the bar not only doesn't work, it patronizes and demeans the capabilities of the students.
I think it's a lot more complicated than that. Places like Harvard preferentially admit based on all sorts of criteria that don't boil down to a straightforward definition of merit. Athletic performance, for instance, or having been raised in an underrepresented region. Or, most notoriously, the children of alumni.
At this point, it seems very clear that elite schools are not at all the simple admit-the-best meritocracies that some have taken them for. There are just a lot more fingers on the scales than was apparent a generation or so ago.
The more I see of the American elite-college admissions system, the less I like it. It is maddeningly opaque, causes students to spend all sorts of time and effort on questionable pursuits and in the end produces a result that is very skewed toward the the well-born. I'd like to see it all replaced by something more straightforward, like the British A-level exams.
Bakke gets trimmed way back and ditto Grutter v. Bollinger. With this Court I've become a pessimist. Stare decisis... Sayonara!
Holding precedents aside for a moment, would you argue that say Harvard's policies are consistent with the Civil Rights Act? Specifically the part about no one shall be denied a federal-funding-assisted educational opportunity on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin?
No, they are not.
I'm about as liberal as one can get: having been an annual donor to the ACLU and believing as I still do that the Warren Court was the high point of American jurisorudence. But even I felt qualms when Bakke was decided. It was serving an enormous social good, but that ends don't justify means and that we must protect the integrity of the process are twin articles of faith for liberals.
So I have a friend (maybe more of an acquaintance) who either has a lot of health problems or is a hypochondriac. My guess is that it is a little of both. (Or maybe a lot of both.)
What's the best strategy for dealing with a person like this? He spends a lot of time talking about his various health issues, which seems to stress and depress him. Also it gets tedious for me.
I try to change the subject to something more light when I can. I try to listen to his worries as much as possible. But it feels like a broken record at this point.
I'd like to be as good a friend as I can be. But I honestly don't know what is best for him.
If possible, you should timebox it. Set special time aside in which he's not allowed to discuss health issues (or vice versa?)
Source: a friend did this, and found that having time "away" from their health problems was surprisingly nice.
Obviously having some time to complain is important too, but there can be diminishing returns...
Extreme health anxiety is a psychiatric disorder, he needs to seek professional help. There are therapists specializing in the subject matter. You can offer to listen to his concerns once he is in therapy.
But he doesn't think he has health anxiety. He thinks he has health problems.
Of course he thinks that. Health anxiety feels like having health problems. And if his ability to reflect on past worries is not great, then it will be hard to get him to seek professional help. But you can put up a boundary like the one I mentioned.
seconding this.
I like the frame Eremolalos has too, slightly modified. probably, a brainstorm will not do much. you won't be able to help him with next steps on this subject until he can hold his own emotional space. a good therapist will help set up boundaries around what are constructive ways to invite help, rather than publicly bleeding negative emotion. my thoughts based on limited info, ymmv
Tell him a gentle version of the truth -- that you have a hard time with these health conversations, because you see these topics stress and depress him, and you don't have any ideas to offer, so you end up stressed and depressed too. Then add that any time he would like help figuring out what would be some good steps to take, you'd be game to brainstorm with him.
Then if he takes you up on the brainstorming offer, set up some structure at the beginning that keeps the session from turning into another grim litany of his symptoms and worries. Something like, let's pick one health problem, and do searches that are likely. to turn up promising results, such as "novel treatments for X," "my recovery from X," "recent medical advances X."
Pratt's pill strikes
> Pratt's pill strikes
Was this sentence complete?
What’s the most time anyone has spent trying to enter Jhanas without success?
I think seeing all these people talking about them is encouraging me to pursue them seriously. I’d heard about them off and on but I think I hadn’t really believed they were real.
I think this is the right sort of question to ask. Presumably there are people who tried to reach Jhanas and gave up... I wonder how likely that is to happen.
I do think Jhanas are a real thing but my skepticism (as with any meditation thing) is how obtainable/useful they are for the average person. It may be that the type of person who is drawn to Jhana meditation is more likely to obtain the Jhanas without years of effort, while it's much harder for your average person. Additionally, the benefits and blissfulness of the experience may be greater for "the type of person likely to get into it" than for your average person on the street.
I spent about 3 years with limited success. I practiced methods from: The Mind Illuminated, Ajahn Brahm, Shaila Catherine, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Visuddhi/vimuttimaga. Out of those, The Mind Illuminated worked the best. But despite years practice I only got into the first jhana a few times.
Then I switched methods to Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation (TWIM) and jhanas are consistent to get into and I can go much deeper than the first jhana.
Not exactly jhanas but I heard about guys here doing zazen and rinzai zen stuff for more than two decades, claiming no success. Myself, I have been practising some half-assed zazen for about 17 years and wouldn't claim any success. No problem, though. Sawaki Kodo may be quoted with saying: "Zazen is good for nothing at all." So if it feels successful, one should suppose not having done it right.
Similar to The Sawaki Kodo quote: "The buddha is dried shit on a stick."
If I tell you, “hitting yourself repeatedly on the head with a stick is good for nothing at all,” would you do it then?
Pretty sure you're lying, or you wouldn't need to say that. <Begins hitting head with stick.>
https://interessant3.substack.com
I write a newsletter containing three interesting things, once a week.
Check this out; it is indeed interesting and I signed up.
after the recent post on jhana and meditation states of bliss, the mentioned today of the start up selling a device to reach the states seems like pretty heavy handed marketing.
If you're concerned that I'm affiliated with them or make money from them in any way, I'm not. If you're concerned that I wrote the post in order to give them an opportunity to pitch, I didn't. If you think I should only highlight things that are irrelevant to anything I have recently talked about, that seems like a bad idea to me.
Forgive the instinctual pattern matching. Thanks for clarifying. First thing I did was subscribe to jhourney mailing list, so im grateful for the info regardless of cynicism.
This is why you get those little disclaimers about not being affiliated with them, being paid/compensated, etc. And those might be a good thing to do going forward.
I will tell you if I ever *am* affilliated with someone I write about. It's pretty rare! Sometimes I help direct money for various important charities, but never to me personally. I don't think I've ever taken money from a company to write about their product in a way that wasn't obviously an ad (eg the sidebar ads on SSC)
But if you buy it and it does work you would be more relaxed about the marketing. 🤔
Buying a stairway to heaven.
This is another update to my long-running attempt at predicting the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Previous update is here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-247/comment/9948783.
14 % on Ukrainian victory (down from 20 % on October 24)
I define Ukrainian victory as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24, regardless of whether it is now directly controlled by Russia (Crimea), or by its proxies (Donetsk and Luhansk "republics”), without losing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without losing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24, or c) return to exact prewar status quo ante.
45 % on compromise solution that both sides might plausibly claim as a victory (unchanged).
41 % on Ukrainian defeat (up from 35 % on October 24)
I define Ukrainian defeat as Russia getting what it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will became neutral, which includes but is not limited to Ukraine not joining NATO. E.g. if Ukraine agrees to stay out of NATO without any other concessions to Russia, but gets mutual defense treaty with Poland and Turkey, that does NOT count as Ukrainian defeat.
Discussion:
Rather drastic update after just a week is caused partly by previous update being based on wrong information, and partly by genuinely new development, both pointing in the same direction.
Previously, I had based my update on an assessment from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), dated October 21 (https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-21), that Russians are withdrawing from their large bridgehead west of the Dnieper river (sometimes called Dnipro, but Dnipro is also an Ukrainian city, which is in turn sometimes called Dnipropetrovsk, so to avoid confusion, I am going to call the river Dnieper).
This assessment was incorrect, as ISW itself admitted on October 24. On the one hand, they can be commended for quickly correcting their mistake, on the other hand, they did it after Kamilo Budanov, chief of Ukrainian military intelligence agency, gave an interview to Ukrainian media where he denied reports of Russian withdrawal.
This does NOT mean that Russian positions west of the river are secure, on the contrary, they are still highly vulnerable, and it would be completely unsurprising if they would be abandoned in a matter of weeks. Which is one of the reasons why I place so high probability on Ukrainian, um, non-defeat. But so far, Russians in Kherson and surroundings are evidently holding out.
ISW until then had been a reliable source of information, so I saw no reason to second guess their assessment. In the future I am going to second guess them more.
Oh, and US midterm elections are incoming. I am convinced that US support for Ukraine would be higher if Democrats win both chambers, and US is obviously by far most important single country supporting of Ukraine. I had somewhat arbitrarily decided that if the probability of Democratic victory in the House elections, according 538 forecast, which I think is by far most reliable around**, slumps below 20 %, I should reflect that in my predictions. So of course in the last few days it is hovering between 19 and 20 %.
So I resolved to reflect it by adding one percentage point to the probability of the Ukrainian defeat.
*Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of 2022, that is.
**At least for me as a foreigner not familiar with relevant cultural background. Re: prediction markets, Zvi Mowshovitz noted that in previous elections, they repeatedly overestimated Republicans.
45% for some kind of compromise
40% for Ukrainian victory
15% for Russian victory
Just making a public prediction without any explanations. Let's see how it fares against yours.
Now where have I heard of the Dnieper in a military context before? Oh yes.
“Yes, I will throw you back beyond the Dvína and beyond the Dnieper, and will reerect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind of Europe to allow to be destroyed.” ~ Napoleon in War and Peace.
In your view, an outcome similar to what Musk suggested, what would it count as?
It's a call for more ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians in the Russian-occupied regions. Think about the incentive it creates: the fewer supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty still alive and able to vote in the captured regions when the vote is held, the better the chances Russia will be able to claim the land they conquered. Musk's plan calls for the elections to be proctored by international observers, not by Russia, but nobody can stop the Russians from setting the conditions for electoral victory through both ethnic cleansing and forced immigration/emigration campaigns before that time. We already know ethnic cleansing is taking place through the 'deNazification' campaign. And we've already seen forced resettlement in Kherson, Mariupol, etc.
These are real issues, definitely. Not easy to solve, but they can be addressed through the last census and other records. My question was, provided they are resolved to the satisfaction of all sides, and fair elections could be held, what would this outcome count as, Ukrainian victory, Russian victory or something in between.
Assuming the elections could be held in the way you proposed, after a Russian invasion and occupation to shape public opinion, the outcome would be a big win for Russia. It would establish invasion as a tactic for pushing through political changes supported by Moscow, and would provide a roadmap for future acquisitions.
Moscow wants Odessa and a land bridge to Transnistria. Any temporary respite that allows them to rebuild their military from scratch and try again is a huge win. Plus, there's the internal messaging. "When we held our legitimate elections, we got overwhelming support! But then NATO came in and held sham elections and we only got [X] oblasts. Those other oblasts are part of Russia, and we will take them back once we're ready!"
Hmm, so, given that Crimean population is very much pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine, and the Donetsk/Luhansk areas are a mixed bag, what would count as anything close to an acceptable outcome, in your view? Or is it going to be another Middle East-style clusterfuck for decades?
It's definitely a thorny problem I'm not going to claim to have an answer to. I don't think the referendum idea is a good solution, since it doesn't seem to solve anything so much as kick the can down the road while setting up worse conflicts for later.
Ukraine has a long and difficult history of division throughout the country, partly because it's often used as a pawn by larger forces, which leads to a lot of corruption. On the other hand, Russia has been doing its best to unify public opinion in other parts of the country. After the martial law and other measures, who knows what the Crimean people will want by the end of this conflict? In the end, I don't particularly care where the lines are drawn on the map, so much as I care about the ethnic cleansing and the precedents set for future conflicts.
Do you really think so? You think Russia is going to withdraw their troops if the votes in any of these regions are in doubt? I'm skeptical that the solution proposed by Musk will play out a simply as has been proposed, especially after Russia held a big celebration declaring them sovereign Russian territory.
Presumably in principle it could be arranged so that people who fled would also get a vote
Presumably in practice Russia would have to agree to the conditions the vote will be held under in order for the compromise solution to be acceptable.
And all people who "disappeared" would be counted as votes against Russia?
That sounds mostly like a compromise solution, which both sides might plausibly claim as a victory; but whether it would be a compromise or Russian victory would depend on what he means by "annexed" regions and whether people who fled them would be eligible to vote in those referenda he proposes. It is not a bad plan, imho.
How seriously do they take their constitution, though? Some countries have stronger protections on the rule of law than others, and Ukraine is known for having a lot of corruption. Is this more of a 'parchment guarantee' or something that would be enforced in practice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0
I'm not sure I'd update in FAVOR of Russia if they decide to keep forces on the West bank of the Dnipro. It was a strategic blunder to locate so many troops on that side of the river in the face of the successful Ukrainian interdiction campaign. That they kept the troops there as long as they did appears to be less out of the strategic value of maintaining a losing position (the only strategic 'win' there would have been to cut their losses early, not later), and more to save face while the loss in Kharkiv was still fresh. The longer the Russians keep troops on that side of the river - where they can't sustainably supply them - the better for Ukraine. It just keeps the Russian vein open and bleeding in Kherson. The recent announcement to continue fighting there seems like more face-saving moves in defiance of good military judgement.
Strategically, what does Russia need to do in order to eke out something resembling victory? They need to pivot massively from their current losing position. They need to shorten the lines they're forced to defend, and complicate logistics for Ukrainians. They need to delay Ukrainian advances long enough to re-build their entire military essentially from scratch. They need to capitalize on the changing US political situation by providing Republicans with a credible alternative to continued war - something that's still unacceptable to Ukrainians, but that US Republicans could accept. The Russians are doing surprisingly little of this.
Now, the fight for Kherson could be used in a limited fashion as a 'delaying tactic', but it's not likely to be enough to bridge the Russians until they can get competent troops into the field. They're deploying new recruits, instead of training them. Hopefully they're also overhauling their training and weapons development programs, but all signs point to the contrary on that front. Instead of admitting mistakes and making corrections, Putin prefers to set up potential 'fall guys' and then oust them when it's politically convenient.
Putin also continues to escalate his rhetoric against Ukraine, in a way that seems calculated to convince even Republicans that there's no prayer of a negotiated settlement. This makes it difficult for the Russians to capitalize on the political benefits of a Republican win. Not only that, but they've stepped up attacks on European infrastructure, such that it may not matter whether the US wants to withdraw support, the Russians are working at drawing the Europeans into an ever-escalating conflict. One they do not have the military might to win even if they were using their troops in an effective manner. Instead, they're throwing away their best troops in an attempt to hold positions they shouldn't have defended, bleeding themselves dry and playing directly into the hands of Western strategists.
But... Russians are actually doing all that you mentioned?
Strikes on power plants, power distribution, and supply depots massively worsen Ukrainian logistics (as their trains were largely electrified).
Ukrainians continue trying to advance, suffer losses, and now starting to lose territory in some places before bulk of mobilised even even arrived at front - estimates are that only around 85k out of total 300k mobilised are already at frontlines, and the rest are actually training.
Setting aside the war crime aspect for a moment, the strike on the Ukrainian dam in Kyrivyi Rih was a well-executed tactical move against Ukrainian infrastructure that provided a battlefield advantage to the Russians. It cut off Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield from resupply while they were attempting to establish a bridgehead, and it could have been disastrous - except that the Russians were unable to capitalize on the move and push the Ukrainians back from their positions at that time.
Around the same time, they hit a power plant in Kharkiv that prevented the Ukrainians from redeploying into the Zaporizhia region before the Russians could get there to stop a second massive counter-attack the size of the one in Kharkiv. Those were both tactically on par with what I'm talking about. They are also far too rare to have a significant impact on Ukrainian logistics.
The current Russian bombing campaign is nothing like that. Instead of focusing on tactical battlefield improvements with their infrastructure attacks, they've gone almost entirely toward strategic bombing, which historically has a poor impact at best. The idea is to break Ukrainian morale going into the winter and eliminate their will to fight. Except that it's almost certain to have the opposite effect. This strategic bombing of non-battlefield-related infrastructure is a horrible idea. It's like the Russian commanders haven't read anything about the failures of strategic bombing in the past. The Russians don't have extra bombing capacity to hit power plants in Lviv. Strikes against non-combatants far from the front have increased commitments from Ukraine's allies to provide more air defense.
This is the opposite of what I claimed would help the Russians. Not only does it not set conditions for a cease-fire (which would be a long-term victory for Russia), it has ensured deeper commitments from outside countries to the defense of Ukraine. Russia will not win this war by strengthening ties between Ukraine and Western Europe/USA. As Putin said, he's really fighting NATO here. In the same way that the worst-case scenario for Ukraine is to accidentally trigger full Russian mobilization, the worst-case scenario for Putin is to accidentally trigger full NATO mobilization. Yet it's like he's trying to match the partial Russian mobilization with partial NATO mobilization by provoking exactly the kind of response that most effectively hinder Russia's war effort.
Current Russian bombing campaign is all about complicating logistics - given that all Ukrainian ammunition has to come from Western side, and large part of Ukrainian rail park was running on electricity. Russians also do hit power plants in Lviv fairly consistently (you can see some strike-related Lviv internet connectivity reports on NetBlocks twitter), they have enough range for that both on their cruise missiles and on kamikaze drones.
At current rate most of Ukraine might be without electricity by winter - damaged high-voltage distribution nodes aren't exactly equipment that can be mass-produced for replacement. No electricity -> no jobs, and thus more refugees coming into EU to strain their energy grid right when EU wants to hunker down and get through winter by cutting consumption.
The idea doesn't seem to break _morale_ - it is to break Ukrainian state and increase costs placed upon their Western backers - just like Western help to Ukraine is all about increasing costs of war for Russia.
Maybe EU can bear those costs. I have my doubts though given their visible incompetence in managing energy crisis.
Air defence still isn't there, and it isn't obvious that existing systems that can be provided on short notice will be sufficiently effective against kamikaze drones (or that they are going to perform any better then existing Ukrainian BUKs and S-300).
I should add that Russian logistics now probably cannot handle 300 000 new troops in Ukraine; they are sending a lot of them to Belarus as some sort of distraction. Imho attack from that direction has close to zero chance to get significant territory (especially since northern borderlands of Ukraine are a forrested backwater), but they might suceed in diverting Ukrainian forces from the main frontlines.
One interesting hypothesis I heard put forth on the "In Moscow's Shadows" podcast - Troops may be going into Belarus as a distraction to force Ukraine to watch that border, but *also* part of the equation may be going into Belarus to use its training resources, since Russia's are overstretched by the mobilization.
Just a hypothesis, but one I though made sense and was interesting.
You are basing your reasoning on an assumption that their position west of the river is unsustainable. That is possible, but far from certain.
If they manage to hold it until the end of the war, which is also very possible, their negotiating position would be quite improved compared to an alternative scenario when they abandon it.
Yes, I'm assuming their position on the West of the river is untenable. It was obvious from the beginning of the interdiction campaign that we would end up in this position. If Russia had, at that point, made the decision to change strategy and not defend this region, today they would have:
1. A shorter front to defend
2. More troops and materiel to defend it with
3. More experienced troops, capable of launching new attacks
4. More supplies for building defensive/offensive campaigns
5. Better morale, from not having fought a losing battle for months under starvation conditions
6. Possibly still positions near Kharkiv and Izyum, with the ability to consolidate the rest of Donetsk and an argument for ending the war in victory.
Now, as to the argument that it's better for the Russians to have a position on the West side of the Dnipro, this is true but was always also a massive risk as it assumes they can hold this position to the end of the war. As we've seen, this risk was unjustified, given all they've lost and with the position still heavily in doubt.
In order to take advantage of that position, they have to set the condition for the end of the war. Putin running around saying that the Ukrainians have "forfeited their rights to sovereignty" doesn't do that. It makes their untenable position worse, and increases the risk that they'll lose this one thing they bet the whole war effort on.
Besides, given the stated goal of the Russians to eliminate Ukraine as a sovereign nation, it make more sense to launch a future campaign from Belarusian borders than to put themselves into a progressively weaker position trying to hold that which looks increasingly like it can't be held. This was a massive gamble that did not pay off for Russia. The only thing the Ukrainians are losing here is the larger number of Russian troops and supplies that had been pouring across the river into their open arms.
I am not sure whether withdrawing from the western side of the river would help Russians east of the river. Until they have their bridgehead, Ukrainians have to keep large numbers of troops and artillery to counter them. Were Russians to withdraw east of the river, Ukrainians could also relocate most of those forces east of the river, thus adding more punch to their attacks or defence.
It is pretty obvious that if Russians would abandon their bridgehead, they would not be able to cross the river again, unless Ukrainian army would completely collapse.
This is why the situation is so advantageous for the Ukrainians and so disastrous for the Russians. From the Russian perspective they're forced to pursue a long-term strategic imperative that creates a tactically impossible situation. Better for the Russians to fight the same Ukrainian forces anywhere else, than in a location where the Russians can't effectively resupply their side, but the Ukrainians can. Logistics win wars, and in Kherson there's no winning scenario for the Russians.
Given all the fighting they are doing around Khrerson at the moment Russian forces don't look undersupplied yet. And i think they can still get artillery support from other side of the river where logistics are better.
They might not be able to advance, but so far they are holding.
That can change of course; but there is distinct lack of Kharkov-like advances in that direction, and reported Ukrainian losses are quite massive. Maybe Ukraine still can throw enough bodies and equipment to win, but clearly that isn't going to be easy.
But again, you assume that Russians just can't sustainably resupply their forces west of the river. If that is true, then of course they should withdraw. But I am not sure whether it is, in fact, true.
Yea. I always thought (and written in previous updates), that when Russia will be pushed against the wall, they will do mobilization, rather than something silly like nuking Ukraine. And even poorly trained and poorly equipped conscripts will be a huge problem for Ukrainians, who were, after all, also poorly trained and poorly equipped when the war started.
This describes Ukrainian troops circa 2014, when Russian troops rolled over the Ukrainians. Since then, the US and Western allies have spent 8 years training Ukrainian armed forces in modern military doctrine. This is a large part of why the Russians were surprised in not being able to roll over what they thought would be 2014 resistance back in February.
Ukrainian training continues to produce capable troops. The Russians have reportedly gutted their training camps, sending many of their most experienced trainers to the front. Meanwhile, they're still incapable of implementing modern military doctrine, relying on the old model of top-down command and control for minor tactical decisions. The introduction of HIMARS forced them to pull their commanders father from the front, further reducing the effectiveness of Russian fighting forces.
"This describes Ukrainian troops circa 2014, when Russian troops rolled over the Ukrainians. Since then, the US and Western allies have spent 8 years training Ukrainian armed forces in modern military doctrine."
There were few elite Western trained units at the start of the war and they were vital, but large amount of initial fighting was done by the militia (Territorial Defense Forces), that was poorly trained and poorly equipped. My understanting is that standards had improved since then. But even militia was quite effective at stopping Russian offensives; in principle I see little reason why Russian conscripts would do much worse against Ukrainian offensives.
Is it possible to be a rationalist and a mystic? What do you make of the fact that Bertrand Russell thought Wittgenstein to be a mystic (to his chagrin)?
Rationalism is both an epistemology and an ontology. Understandably so, since epistemology and ontology are entangled.
The basic ideas are:-
People are embedded in the world.
Knowledge is based on empiricism, sensory data.
Sensation is a form of causation, and an indirect one.
The best epistemology is an ongoing attempt to build an accurate map.of the world.
The ontology limits the epistemology in various ways:-
There is a guarantee of not knowing everything, since the mind is so much smaller than the word.
There is no guarantee of knowing anything, since the mind is an evolutionary kludge.
There is no guarantee of knowing anything with certainty, since a better map is always possible.
Nothing that is known, is known directly, or "in itself".
The mystic can agree that "People are embedded in the world."
("A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us". Einstein)
But the mystic sees embeddedness as an opportunity, not a limitation. In the mystic's epiestemology, the self is directly knowable, knowable by itself. Which also reveals the nature of ultimate reality, because in the mystic's ontology, the two are the same.
The confident rationalist of course rejects the mystics ontology...but only on the basis that it differs from their own ontology, which is a mere mental construct, and an imperfect one. The extreme of this approach is to reject consciousness itself as non-physical, even though
the physicalist map was constructed by consciousness.
I would contend that rationalism (as in the rational sphere, not philosophical rationalism) tends towards mysticism. There are various ways of defining it, and there are several (mostly independent?) mystical traditions. One thing they often have in common is they usually think it's difficult or impossible to put doctrines, beliefs, truths into language or other conventional forms of representation.
This is the direction Wittgenstein went in with his philosophy. At some point he realize that, generally, the "propositional content" of an expression cannot be represented through conventional techniques like "factual correspondence." For a seemingly innocent expression like, "The cat is on the mat," there is probably no representation of "universes where the cat is on the mat" and "universes where the cat is not on the mat." It's an expression that is only meaningful in a context of conventions that include, for instance, the role of the utterer, their perception, etc.
Similarly, the rationalist-sphere tends towards a Bayesian subjectivist interpretation of probability with a prior probability. This usually entails that there is no way to generally represent our beliefs as a set of facts (finite or otherwise). Any finite set of posterior probabilities relies on some prior probability which is a personal subjective belief that can't be put into words.
I think that mysticism as conventionaly understood (ie. in accordance with later Wittgenstein's theory of what constitutes meaning of words; it is a good theory) has to have certain "self-help book-like" element. Definition provided by Sergei in this thread is a good one. And I don't think you can find that in Wittgenstein.
But yea, you can definitely find self help elements in LW, although their strong emphasis on intellect as opposed to faith still makes them poor fit for mysticism label, imho
> mystic: A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.
The second part is not unreasonable, if you interpret it as the subconscious parts of the brain/mind can be inherently better at predicting some parts of the world than the conscious part.
How could you know that there is nothing beyond the intellect, or beyond your intellect, or beyond your ordinary intellect? There is nothing in naturalism to suggest any ceiling.
Oh, I can certainly imagine a world where the human mind has limits of how much it can understand. If anything, most possible worlds would be not usefully compressible that way. I was not implying that the whole of the universe is knowable by a human brain, at least in principle, if this is what you mean.
A mystic could be a rationalist in the sense that they value reason, but would also argue it can only take you so far. Neoplatonism, as already mentioned, is a good example of this.
They employed reason to draw out their vast and complex metaphysical systems. However they define the apex of their system, The One, as ineffable and impossible to define through reason. Only non-rational means, such as devotion, can shed light on The One for the mystic. I believe this dynamic holds true across all mystical systems.
C'mon, Wittgenstein wasn't a mystic in any normal sense of that word (source: I had read his most famous works).
The first line of Tractatus (the world is everything that is the case) is rational enough, although devoid of useful information, then we are told the world is “the totality of facts not of things”.
I decided that was mystical, or meta physical, and for sure I’ve never stubbed my toe on a fact. So that’s where we parted company.
> for sure I’ve never stubbed my toe on a fact
Is that so?
He's definitely mystical in comparison to the Logical Positivists -- but then again, so is almost everybody else, even, I dunno, Scott Galloway.
The positivists literally believe that all there is is consciousness. That seems pretty mystical to me.
The positivists literally disbelieved in metaphysics, "all there is is consciousnesses" would qualify by anyones definition.
I can imagine an argument along the lines of
1. LPs talk only about observation sentences.
2a. Observation sentences report sense data.
2b. Sense data are qualia
2c. Qualia are non physical.
3. Therefore , positivism is all about consciousness.
But an actual positivist would reject 2b and 2c.
Hmm. Could you maybe be talking about the *feeling* you get when you’re reading one of those guys, and delighted by his incisiveness? I get a delightful shiver certain things, think of it as the philosophy high. I got it from Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic when I was an undergrad. But what Ayer, for instance, was saying, seems to me now like the solvent that eats through all mysticism, sort of like a spurt of the alien’s blood did through the ship in Alien. I mean, take your statement: All there is is consciousness. If the meaning of a statement is its method of verification, isn’t your statement meaningless? Because how could you possibly verify it?
Seems to me that statements of mystical never make sense — “the buddha is dried shit on a stick”. They’re fingers pointing at the moon.
What are some things philosophers have said that seem to you to point to mystical, or even capture it?
Hmmm, well, Wittgenstein was religious -- not the same thing, but . . . There's a letter he sent Norman Malcolm with some prayers in it that he had found and liked. Wrote to Malcolm something like "I am moved by these prayers because they sound *human,* if you know what I mean."
Maybe what Russell meant was that Wittgenstein is confusing, yet you have the feeling he really is on to something.
I mean, being "religious" (setting aside whether Witgenstein was in fact religious) or "moved by prayers" are not the same thing as being a mystic. Othewise basically all people are mystics and that word has no meaning.
Russell probably meant that as an edgy provocation slash insult.
Well I agree religious and mystic are quite different things, but don't think it's true that basically all people are religious. I was startled to see Wittgenstein sharing prayers with a friend -- not that I felt sure that he was an an atheist, though of course atheists are not exactly rare. But sharing a prayer with a friend goes way beyond kinda buying the idea that there's some sort of god, which is the dilute form of religion fairly common in Europe and the US in recent decades. Sounds like religion was quite important to Wittgenstein, & that startled me. I suppose I pictured him as preoccupied in a bleak, convoluted kind of way, with the ideas he wrote about, and not being deeply interested in much else. Do you know much about what he was actually like?
"Do you know much about what he was actually like?"
Not much, except that he was what many people would call "a weirdo", as Unsigned Integer says
I always thought that quote of Wittgenstein's - Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent - suggested some type of sympathy for mysticism
It has always given me a fine frisson too.
This seems right. Plato seems mysticy. It seems like metaphysical assumptions come prior to rationality. Like, you might start with dualism or monism, then employ the same methods of rationality and end up in different places depending. What’s the difference between being religious and being a mystic anyway? My guess is, mysticism is a more active pursuit? Or are they totally different?
Mystics believe a personal relationship with the divine is possible. They would reject the idea that any form of intermediary, such as scripture or established institutions, are necessary to experience the divine.
For obvious reasons, this was often viewed as heresy by the religious. History abounds with examples of mystic belief catching on (gnostics, cathars etc) and the religious stamping them out. It's only now when religious institutions are in retreat that mysticism seems like the default (ie its the default position for 'spiritual not religious' types). It would have been a very dangerous position to adopt in medieval times.
Sure mystics who operated within the confines of tradition did exist. It's just the nature of being a mystic often meant they stepped outside the lines of accepted belief and got themselves into trouble (excommunication, heresy, burnt at the stake etc)
Have you made a truly close friend online? If so, where?
I started a roleplaying group in 2009 originally from some people I knew from IRC, and then university friends of those people. Since then we've gained and lost members, but the core five of us are all close friends ('Best man at the wedding' close).
There's something to be said for having reason to spend a few hours every week with likeminded people and then sticking to it, uh, religiously.
If one defines "truly close" in positional rather than absolute terms - yes, absolutely, Many Such Cases. (In absolute terms, I don't actually have any friends that meet standard normative floors for the term...but that's probably erroneous typical-minding. Assuming that __of course__ all the normies on social media are rife with friends...)
For the longest time, all my friends were people I met through an old obscure <s>MMO</s> CORPG called Guild Wars...got super into that franchise, dumped truly unfortunate amounts of money and teenage years into playing it and editing the related wikis. Became something of an infamous personality there, one of the Classic Trolls who played the Alpha Bitch to an adoring legion of fans - the complete opposite of who I was in real life, obviously. The game was what brought that community together, but over time, it also became a friendgroup...we'd organize virtual Christmas parties (complete with in-game gifts!), swap music, spill our hearts out over in-game chat or affiliated IM/IRC. (Many came out as LGBT for the first time there. And/or admitted suicidal ideation. Wasn't all fun and games.) People from all over the world...some even ended up meeting in person. "Oh, you live in Britain? Me too, let's hit the pub sometime!" A few even got married, lol.
As the game deteriorated over the years, we'd spend less and less time actually playing, and more time just shooting the shit, hanging out...or branch out together into other games. World of Warcraft, or DDO Online, or S4 League...some migrated to the successor actual-MMO, Guild Wars 2, which afaik is still extant. it all began from that original seed community though. One weird and small game. I think that was a big part of it - the insular nature of the playerbase was naturally conducive to getting to know people better, since all the best content required actual competent humans to help out with.
Of those friends, I eventually lost touch with almost all of them after I stopped playing videogames...just a hobby I grew out of, and it didn't make much sense eventually to use an actual game/game-wiki purely as social media. But we sure had Some Times. Ended up moving in with one of them (Big Deal - got me out of living with parents, started an independent life of my own, etc.). Had a few travel cross-country to visit. Got my first job via their encouragement and references. Aesthetic tastes in entire artistic fields shaped by game-friends...not just regarding games, but anime, music, TV, fashion, books...the sort of influences people normally get from irl friends and family. But I didn't have either of those for guidance, so...it's these nerdy misfits who I grew up with instead.
Still have one dude that I continue to text regularly (we used to use Skype, before that became a worthless piece of shit - you know an app is bad when it's outclassed by ancient SMS messaging). Hosted him at my place twice, and went to my first/only concert with him (Muse!). Similar upbringings, wildly divergent politics these days...but we still bond over ageing parent woes, music, the pains of growing older, the difficulty of dating as unattractive nerds. Soon it'll have been a 20-year friendship. I think that's pretty cool, for something that started in a long-ago videogame and is still 99% "distance". Longer-running than any of my strictly-meatspace friends, haha.
Collaborating on open source software.
In high school one of my closest friends was somebody I knew exclusively online, from playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights. (Eventually we also chatted on AIM, to further date myself.)
Yes, but it was back in Usenet days. I participated in a group (alt.fan.cecil-adams) that was sort of based on debunking urban legends (but not to the same extent that alt.folklore.urban did), but evolved into part joking around, part arguing about engineering problems, part sharing of joys and sorrows, and then some more joking around. I met one of my now-dearest friends there, and I visit in person several times a year, as well as communicating by email and Facebook. I am online friends with a lot of the other old AFC-A people too, and we will show up in person for weddings and funerals (sadly, more of the latter these days) and will make an effort to visit one another when we are traveling nearby.
Oh yes, Usenet! I have/had a few good friends on sci.electronics.design. I think the great thing usenet had was extended conversations between people. It would be nice to have more of that here. I should go visit (online) again.
Whoa, a Doper. Now that's a blast from the past. Very cool.
I figured a few AFC-A folks would wind up on SSC.
No UseNet, but I was a Doper for a long time on the message board.
Same here, though I mostly lurked. In a lot of ways it was my first internet community, so it's probably for the better I don't have a lot of embarrassing posts floating around.
Several people on IRC, specifically through roleplaying communities - two of my three relationships started this way. I unfortunately can't really recommend the approach, though, IRC is pretty much dead in the water these days. But it *did* work for me.
That said, engaging with people in the Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten comment section has gotten me at least one close friend so far, Concavenator (https://www.deviantart.com/concavenator), who comes to my corner of the internet about once a week to hang out for a little while (and, incidentally, roleplay with me, in his Tagra setting -- https://www.deviantart.com/concavenator/gallery/73059461/tagra).
> IRC is pretty much dead in the water these days.
It’s not.
As someone who has been on IRC every day for the past 22 years and continues to RP there with existing friends: I suppose in some sense it isn't, but if I compare it with twenty years ago, the chance that I can make new friends there has absolutely dropped dramatically. New people are coming in (on the network level, not the channel level) at a rate that might as well be a rounding error, and, most damningly, they usually don't stay for more then five minutes, which just isn't the pace of IRC.
This is my day to day experience (also in talking to long standing staff members of other "large" IRC networks that happen to be on the one I call home). That said, I *can* certainly imagine Libera or Freenode still being active spaces, so IRC being dead is probably not entirely universal, but it certainly seems to have stopped being an overall thriving community catering to many interests.
Do you disagree with this? If so, can you elaborate why?
For clarification, I assume that you mean a friend whom one continues to know *only* online, right? Otherwise, there is at least one person I met on a dating site that would count for me.
I wasn't thinking of that constraint when I asked the question. That said, I would probably exclude dating sites, because... Well, I don't have a great reason to exclude them...
Does Bumble still have the "friends only" setting? Seems like an alright concept for meeting people in real life although I never tried it. Maybe past use of bumble as a dating app biased me towards thinking it was too gay-adjacent. Of course the one time I did try Craigslist "strictly platonic" back in the day on an extended work trip I was getting a lot of emails from addresses like "hungstud69@...", which doesn't help. Anyway, my answer is no.
Gain of function research? You mean that thing the government is actively funding *to this day*?
Maybe also tell them the 'I' in 'AI' stands for 'infection.' That should rev things up quite a bit.
Provocative new preprint that IMO should overshadow the vanity fair piece https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1
and the lay person substack version.
https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/a-synthetic-origin-of-sars-cov-2
There's been some strong push-back on the interpretation of Chinese documents in this from James Palmer at Foreign Policy and other folks who can speak and write Chinese:
https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/1586553917411917824
More https://twitter.com/Matt_Schrader_/status/1586197674197680128
https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1586359293325938688
Seems to be being roundly condemned by journalists who work on Chinese politics
There's also a decently convincing-looking report out going the other way (pinning it on the wet market - raccoon dogs are blamed, IIRC). Truth is we'll never know.
The ability to trace the spread and genetic drift back to individual stalls intthe wet market seems pretty convincing
https://twitter.com/MichaelWorobey/status/1497607357722808322
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
For a number of infections (apparently most, see article below), they are much more severe for adults than for kids. We now have vaccines against some of the worst, but I think there was a time when "measle parties" actually made sense. (Inviting a child with measles to a party, so that all other children also get it.) Since you were likely to get measles sooner or later, it was better to get it sooner.
Disclaimer: Measle parties are a terrible idea nowadays. Measles are not harmless, not even for kids. Vaccination is a much much better option.
This seems to be true for a lot of infections that we understand well, like measles. For a lot of other infections like common cold, we don't understand them so well, but by analogy the same reasoning might apply. So I would default to "Probably it's true".
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2020/young-adults-face-higher-risk-severe-disease-infections-school-age-children
I would be very careful to apply analogies between different diseases. Biology is more complicated and very often they do not hold even when you could expect similar reaction.
You don't want them getting cytomegalovirus (commonly spread at daycares) as it's a lifelong infection that can cause lots of health problems.
https://denovo.substack.com/p/cytomegalovirus-the-worst-herpesvirus
Never heard that it is good or bad that children get colds very often. I was taught this as merely the statement of a fact that children get colds very often, i.e., that it is an inevitable and does not cause much harm.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841828/
I rarely got sick as a kid and I rarely get sick now. I guess I'm what you might call a [insert your own punchline here].
My one personal data point. As a kid I was sick with viral infections as well as strep a lot.
I’m 70 now and the last time I missed work for a legit illness - rather than a Twins home game - was in the early 1990s
Since Covid hit I haven’t had any symptoms that would merit a test. I have seasonal allergies and occasionally take an antihistamine in the morning for a runny nose but it always resolves within an hour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
I would be very surprised if getting sick a lot is actually a good thing. the version of common wisdom I've heard is that it's not entirely terrible if your kid keeps putting filthy stuff in their mouth. it can give them enough exposure to random pathogens and allergens to train their immune system *without* getting sick.
Ive googled „ is it good to get sick when young“ and there are tens of articles from reputable sources agreeing that it is. It’s just about immunity. Of course some viruses and pathogens mutate more than others so you don’t gain full lifetime immunity.
Not getting sick often enough with minor viruses could cause food allergies, asthma and other "atopic" disorders. Google "hygiene hypothesis".
I’ve heard claims that this is just about fungi and bacteria and that viruses aren’t relevant. I’ve also heard claims that it’s actually just about exposure to potential allergens themselves and not microbes at all.
Indeed, I think viruses are somewhat prone to mess up the immune system rather than help it. Whereas with all the other sorts, right up to relatively large parasitic worms, there may be immunological advantages to having some acquaintance with the creatures. Even if there are downsides too.
Now while I am vaccinated and even got a booster last December, I drink regularly at the bar in pubs and in general do not hide from the world. I have not had Covid as far as I know, but it seems probable that I sample some virions from time to time, and that my immune system registers their presence. I don't rule out the idea that exposure to viruses might also sometimes be beneficial, is what I am saying. But the hygiene hypothesis, if it is true, is probably not mainly about viruses. Part of it might be about gut microflora rather than direct immunological issues, I suspect.
The vaccine is trying to stimulate what getting the virus would do - give you antibodies.
To get people to show up, you could have everyone contribute money for food. Then they are more committed and less likely to bail out. A pot luck where people have publicly committed to a dish (via email or something) may work as well.
Recruit allies. Two or three friends that share your goals and will help make things a success. Its best if these people have other groups of friends that can expand the potential circle.
If you do this on a small scale, like 8-10 people, tell guests that its expected to be an interesting event with discussion. When you invite them you can say "I hold dinners at my house with 8 or so people i think are interesting and I think you are interesting." Something like that which flatters them and primes them to come in "interesting person mode" (instead of like chill out and relax mode or have small talk mode". You'll also want to have some interesting, thought provoking, but not super decisive topics to bring up. Maybe something like "I read a profile of {academic/author/poet/business person} and they said {something not everyone would agree with}. I thought that was interesting/strange/enticing. {Name of person}, do think {i am right/missing something/crazy} whatever?"
Also there is actually an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m5LK4FTNoo
>people show up
My strategy has been to start with a small core of friends, and invite them over for a big, hefty course. Something like boeuf bourguignon, carbonnade flammande, etc. That's to convince them I can cook. Then next time I propose them to invite a couple of people they know, expending the number of people who know about me and I can contact when I want to host a dinner.
>conversation is lively and interesting
I have no idea, it's killing my will to host these dinners and I'm gonna try some of the ideas in your response.
>people feel inclined to invite new people to come
Just tell them you got room for x persons and they should invite friends.
One small suggestion is not to think of it as weekly dinners while you're still trying to get it started. Just think of it as one single dinner. If it goes well, do it again.
It's targeted to the religious but the Leah Lebresco book "Building the Benadict Option" has lots of good advice for building these sorts of groups.
In my childhood, it was about having a piece of entertainment (such as listening to an opera with translated libretto running in parallel on a screen) scheduled every time. These days a couple of clicks on your phone gives you all kinds of entertainment, so I'm not sure if something like that would work.
Maybe have some kind of game scheduled, with some kind of symbolic prize for the winner?
Make sure the first meeting is a success. :) Word of mouth is essential. To be a success you need to be unstressed, the fools needs to be good, and the cherry is you need to do something unusual that’s a hit. If you could actually get a fun, engaging and relaxed philosophical debate going on that would fit the bill.
But don’t worry about choice 3 so much at first. Make sure you have good food, good music, and that YOU are relaxed and having fun.
>the fools needs to be good,
Fabulous! So true.
Ha! That's the best Freudian slip ever
Choose a subject you love and know a lot about. Offer good food and a comfortable place to hang out. Call it a club for that subject. Say a philosophy club. Get a sense of how seriously people want to actually discuss that subject. And relax and enjoy yourself! Create a mailing list, and choose a day of month to meet, such as 2 pm once a month on the second Saturday.
I want to do this for a P.G. Wodehouse reading club. My challenge is finding people who will truly read the book assigned. They seem to want to socialize without having read the book.
Much as I enjoy P. G. Wodehouse, I find it hard to imagine a P. G. Wodehouse book club. "This week's book was a lot like last week's book, except the character names and awkward comic situations are changed around a little bit".
The sorting process seems like it would be interesting.
“No, not yet, I’m certainly weirder than *her*“
crenelations
parturient
splendour
refulgent
Lots of goodness here. A related question - why do people dislike "moist"? I find it perfectly cromulent.
Acerbic, bailiwick (you already played balustrade, I like that one too), caliginous, dearth, entourage, fusillade, gurney, heiress, iniquity, jalopey, keening, legerdemain, mellifluous, (nattering) nabob (of negativity), omerta, puerile, quillions, rakshasa, seance, turgid, ululation (prefer unction, but conjugation), viridian, widdershins, Xin-Shalast, yore, zenith.
Not my actual BiS list, probably, but I haven't thought on such topic for some time. Unlike "unusually good sounding numbers", the ready answer to which is *always* 5.
need deosil to balance widdershins
it's a guy thing
anterograde
glistering
interstices
noctilucent
subduction
Amy Lowell's, famously, was "cellar door".
(To which my reply would be, "OK, how much you want for it?"
amaryllis
catamount
evensong
terraform
I actually have a .txt that I put fun/rare words in as I encounter them. Some highlights(other than ones I just added from this thread):
panegyric
quotidian
brummagem
lugubrious
quantitude
Haha good to see lugubrious get some love, although it’s one of those words that in my head means something completely different to its actual meaning, like vermillion
What does it mean for a word to sound good? I tried thinking of some words but I can't see beauty in a single word. I love some words that describe women and cute animals (Voluptuous, Sultry, Toe Beans) and I love old literature because it sounds so fancy and grandiose: Skakespearean English, biblical translations, and things like that.
To me it means sounding satisfying (when said aloud or in one’s head) in the same way certain noises are satisfying
callipygian - having well shaped buttocks. First saw it describing fenders on an early 50’s Buick.
Oh, yes, especially because it has “pig” in it, and pigs actually have quite firm and shapely buttocks.
viridian
onomatopoeia
haiku
"I think twinkle's a nice word. So's viridian."
—Delirium, 'The Sandman'
Circuitous.
I can't think of any! There are some that when I read them have me just cooing with pleasure, but I don't seem to have them stored in memory.
Well, there is one: poise. What delights me is that besides meaning, you know, *poise.* the word is also a unit of measure of viscosity. So honey has more poise than water. That's just perfect and yummy.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=628625978348248
Gloaming.
"They were roaming in the gloaming where the roses bloom so fair,
Just a soldier and his sweetheart staunch and true,
Two hearts were filled with sorrow and there's no thought of tomorrow
As she pinned a rose upon his coat of blue"
— "I'll Be With You When the Roses Bloom Again", by Gus Edwards and Will Cobb (1901)
There's an early recording by Henry Burr, but most of those who perform the song now got it directly or indirectly from the 1929 old-time recordings by Burnett and Rutherford. It's become a bluegrass and old-time-music standard. It's a tear-jerker.
Oh yes, I do like that one. I remember the first time I encountered it. It was in an essay by Tom Wolfe called 'Girl of the Year.' He was describing a mass of people dancing at party, and broken glasses getting crunched underfoot "in the gloaming."
Yes it has to be used poetically. Not so much in formal prose. A weather report with “rain approaching come the gloaming” would be odd.
Oobleck
Kibitzer, Fritz, Frau, Schachspiel, Zwischenzug, Patzer, Schmuck, Shmuley (I find Yiddish and German words in general quite satisfying)
Rubicund
Vestibule
Vestige
Vitiated
Phlogiston
Vermillion
diencephalon
Agamemnon
ineluctable
I've honestly always been fond of 'nevertheless', which I think has a very nice rhythm.