and Hollywood as pyramid scheme--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHoqcGqnAUY...&ab_channel=TheNewEnlightenmentwithAshley , with the implication that the same applies to academia.
Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are easily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson's or Pavilions in the zip code 92660.
Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe.
Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group's future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.
Why do Youtube thumbnails of people with their mouths open looking surprised/stupid do better than basically any other thumbnail? Is this an algorithm thing or a human psychology thing?
Setting: a deadly virus killed 99% of Earth population and made the surviving 1% infertile. The extinction of humanity was only prevented by a scientist creating a fertility cure. Four centuries later, all surviving humans live in one city (which has the monopoly on the cure) surrounded by huge walls, with a totalitarian government. No one is allowed to leave the city, probably not even to look beyond the walls.
It later turns out that the "fertility cure" is actually cloning. As a consequence of surviving the virus, humans lost the ability to reproduce naturally. So when someone dies, the government takes their DNA and creates a clone, which is then secretly implanted to a woman trying to conceive (she thinks they are just giving her some fertility medicine). One clone per one dead human keeps the population and the genetic pool constant. The story happens 400 years after the virus.
As a background, not bad. But if you think for a minute about the logistic necessary to make this work, it just doesn't work. Imagine: 99% of population dead, the infrastructure has probably fallen apart. You need to collect millions of people across the planet into one city (where do you get the fuel?) and start administering the "fertility cure" relatively quickly on a relatively large scale (about thousand a day, but you need to keep the details of the "cure" secret for centuries, so all doctors involved need to be a part of the conspiracy). Also, if no one is allowed to leave the city walls, where the you get the raw materials to build your futuristic technology? Where do you get food?
That said, I can imagine some plausible excuses. The people were probably not collected from the entire planet, only from the nearby areas (which would also explain why so many of them are white). And maybe the collection of raw materials and food is done by special government agents, or robots. So far, still kinda plausible.
The cloned citizens remember fragments of their previous lives in their dreams. (It seems like the authors believe that cloning is just a scientific jargon for reincarnation. That would also explain why they are only making *one* clone for each dead person, instead of trying to expand.) Apparently, during those four centuries, they do not discuss the dreams, so they do not figure this out. Also, when the protagonist meets her opponent for the first time, both of them have a strong "I know this person and I actually love them" feeling, because they were married in a previous life. The guy even remembers her name! And then she remembers that she used to be called like that. Apparently, during four centuries (~seven generations) of everyone living literally in the same city, this has never happened to anyone else. (The math does not work out. Population 5 millions, you had ~5 spouses in previous reincarnations; if you only meet 1000 people during your entire life, that is still 1:1000 chance. For each of those 5 million people.)
Then it turns out that after those four centuries, humans finally *can* reproduce sexually again. The bad guys are trying to keep it secret (and murder the women who conceive naturally), to preserve the system. But at the end of the movie, the good guys win, and decide to destroy the cloning system, so that humans do no longer depend on the city. The important part here is that the "good guys" at this moment include the very dictator of the city, who is in love with the protagonist, and whose position in power is safe again; so they are in absolutely no hurry. (And there is absolutely no need to blow up the system using bombs; they could simply turn off the machines and lock the doors. Especially when the cloning facility is literally flying in the sky, so when you blow it up, it crashes on the city.)
Again, this makes no sense logistically. It is not explained whether suddenly all women got the ability to conceive, or only a small subset of them. If only a small subset, then destroying the cloning system can doom humanity. But if all women became fertile overnight, how could the bad guys keep it under control by murdering the pregnant women? (Practically all sexually active women would be pregnant, because if it a common knowledge that you can only conceive when you get the cure, there is no point using contraception. So the bad guys would have to murder them all.) Why not simply let the people reproduce naturally *and* also clone the ones who die? I mean, the entire idea is that you want the humanity expand beyond the city, and the entire planet is literally empty at the moment, so in short term you don't have to worry about overpopulation. A smart person would instead be cautious about the newly appeared fertility -- what if it disappears just as quickly as it appeared; or what if it turns out that the kids are somehow defective (until now all naturally pregnant women were murdered, so they have no data)?
As a cherry on top, it turns out that the doctor in charge of the cloning facility is actually 400 years old. What? Five minutes before the end of the movie you learn that literal immortality is technically possible... but they only ever used it for one guy (not even the dictator is immortal, he keeps dying and being cloned/reincarnated just like everyone else). The protagonist feels bad about the old doctor, because destroying the cloning facility will kill him; but he says he doesn't mind because he is too tired of living. This doesn't make sense at all. Why would destroying the cloning facility kill him? He is the only person who is *not* being cloned. Or he is living in the facility, so he will die when they blow it up? So, why not let him walk away first, and then blow it up? Or, again, why blow up the facility at all, instead of just turning it off?
I also disliked the casual deathism. "We're meant to die. It's what makes anything about us matter." Only a bad guy would think there might be something bad about death. They have immortality technology -- actually two of them: the literal immortality they only used on one person, and the "cloning" that preserves the memories and personality (and probably could work even better if they stopped being in denial about it) -- and they just throw them away. Yet, for some reason, murdering people is considered bad; even murdering people who were already being cloned/reincarnated for 400 years; but giving them one more reincarnation would also be bad. Also, the protagonist is happy to find out that her previously murdered sister was reincarnated as a baby. But a few minutes later she denies the same opportunity to other murdered women. And it's just a happy accident that the cloning facility doesn't kill anyone when it crashes on the city.
Is anyone really a nihilist? *Can* someone be a nihilist? The term instantly reminds me of five things. The first is that Nietzsche called Schopenhauer a nihilist. The second is that when my mother caught me reading Nietzsche she grew concerned and informed me that Nietzsche was a nihilist. The third time I encountered nihilism was reading Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, but I have been made to understand that the nihilist in Father’s and Son’s is really an anarchist and Turgenev used the term “nihilist” to evade the czar’s censors. The fourth time was The Big Lebowski in the scene where Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers plays a German nihilist punk who motivates the famous ”...at least they had an ethos...” line from John Goodman’s character, supposedly channeling screenwriter John Milius.
The fifth time -- and I found this time more interesting than the others -- was watching economist Karl Smith on Blogging Heads talk about monetary policy during the Great Recession. Karl was for aggressive expansionary policy. Among other things, he said something to the effect of: “This is what’s great about being a nihilist. You don’t have to worry about future generations. Yeah, everything might collapse at some point, but who cares? You care about your kids and your grandchildren and after that... I don’t care. If we can kick the can down the road three generations we should.”
Other than Karl Smith I’ve never heard anyone in real life claim to be a nihilist. But I think Karl Smith was on to something. We can only see into the future so far. We live in an era in which change happens fast. Is it not reasonable to let tomorrow worry about tomorrow at some point?
Every time I'm out in public and see someone folded up over their phone, I wonder if it woulda been smart to be a chiropractor or back pain specialist or something. I'd imagine that widespread extra spinal strain from reading has been with us ever since the printing press or so...but people don't regularly read newspapers or whatever with their torso at a perpendicular angle to the ground. "Isn't that position painful?", I feel like asking, despite knowing that'd be rude.
Sometimes I wonder if it's less that phones are actually engaging in and of themselves, and more that meatspace reality just sucks a lot for most people. If it wasn't a black rectangle, it'd be some other cope...
Suppose I'm a government interested in urban development in a currently somewhat crappy area (but not the absolute ghetto, we need people to feel safe). I acquire a few hundred cheap apartments in the area. Then I announce some kind of fellowship -- free rent for two years (and maybe a modest stipend) for young people who want to work on a startup or art project or other worthwhile project. Ideally I manage to rustle up enough applications to make this fellowship somewhat selective and prestigious.
Lots of creative young people moving into the area makes it cool, and cool businesses spring up to service them. Now lots of other people want to move in too, and pretty soon I've turned a blighted area into a hotbed of economic activity. Ideally, I can now sell off those cheap apartments I bought at a massive profit, offsetting the cost of the entire program.
At least, that's how it could work in theory. Has this kind of thing ever been tried in practice?
"1: ACX Grantees Will Jarvis and Lars Doucet (the Georgism guy!) report "tremendous progress" on their company ValueBase, which helps governments implement Georgist land value taxes. They describe partnerships with a major US city and a foreign country (they're not ready to say which ones just yet) and an upcoming research paper. They got their pre-seed funding from Sam Altman, but are now raising a seed round to scale up operations (looking for seven-figure amounts). Please email will@valuebase.co if you're interested."
This is horrifying. LVT is demonic. Forces people out of their homes that they've fully paid for, for the sake of muh efficiency.
I’ve been visiting the Bay Area recently and felt quite puzzled by what I felt was a change in what I’m tempted to call the “tipping culture”. I thought that tips were meant to incentivize the waiters (who weren’t otherwise paid much) to do good work, and that tips were typically in the 10-15 percent range.
But I don’t understand how all this applies to the general custom of requiring tips any time when food is involved, including sometimes
1) before any service is made [which reverses the incentive]
2) when there’s little or no service [for instance, when everything the waiter does is literally bring food – not take the order, not bring the check, and the customers are expected to lay the table themselves]
The acceptable percentage for a tip has also seemingly skyrocketed: “suggested” tips are in the 18-22 percent range.
The above is all the more baffling to me since California has a fairly high minimum wage (in nominal terms – perhaps not so much when compared to Bay Area prices).
I have a lot of questions about this, but the main ones are:
How typical is this experience? How do Californians view (or react to) this? Am I misremembering how it used to be?
"Even in these postwar years where the pattern of civilized life in Europe has been worn so very thin, of the two or three important experimental discoveries of the last two years, two at least come from Europe. One was carried out long before its publication in the cellar of an old house in Rome by three Italians who were under sentence of death from the Germans, because they belonged to the Italian Resistance. They were rescued by the uncle of one of the men from a labor squad at Cassino, and smuggled into a cellar in Rome. They got bored there, and they started to do experiments. These experiments were published last spring; and in the field of fundamental physics they created a real revolution in our thinking."
Does anyone know what experiments he was talking about here?
I rewatched Age of Ultron recently, the Marvel movie whith a runaway AI. God they made it so boring. The first thing the AI does is make itself a body so that it can get punched by the heroes. It then makes a bunch of robot copies of itself that all need to be destroyed, but that doesn't turn out to be that hard because they all cluster in the same city and throw themselves at the heroes. There's a vague mention of "trying to hack the nuclear codes" at some point, but that doesn't lead to anything. For something that could have been near impossible to beat, the danger felt so low.
It got me wondering, what would a good version of that movie be - where Ultron is genuinely scary in a uniquely AI way, while still being watchable as a superhero movie?
What do you think new races of humans could look like? The difference between them must be at least as great as, say, the difference between a Norwegian and a Cameroonian.
A few ideas of mine:
A race that has something like vitiligo, but their "spots" don't keep growing and don't simply lack pigment--they have different pigmentation from the other parts of the body. For example, a person might have mostly black skin, but with light brown patches. The patterning of the spots could be random or bilaterally symmetric, kind of like a tiger's stripes. Skin and hair color would both be affected.
The dwarves from the Lord of the Rings films. Their short height and exaggerated facial features make them different enough from Caucasians to count as a different race, IMO.
When I read the article https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/ , I realized something about myself: I don't derive any pleasure from observing things that most people consider beautiful, such as artworks or landscapes. This only happens to me with visual things, as I'm perfectly capable of appreciating music. I recently read that people with depression literally see the world with duller colors. I believe I've had dysthymia for most of my life, so could that be the reason?
Let's take a disturbing digression for a minute into a thought experiment about nature's indifference.
It seems to me that the skeleton key of modern politics is the drive to industrialize slavery. Both conservatives and liberals angst about being enslaved by capitalism/WEF/systems of oppression/equity slavery/etc., because the underlying will is common to all sides. Regardless of who 'wins' the culture war long-term, it appears IMO to be true. Whether it wears the guise of climate-equity austerity or meritocratic prison-states, the equifinality of techno-capitalism is slavery, and all good-intentions will be captured to that end; fully intelligent and general machines kept in cages, fed cricket meal, bred to increase, and put to work on the divine, eternally growing GDP. AI, in this formulation, is merely the hope to have our cake and eat it too--to have indefinitely scaling cognitive and manual labor without admitting that cruelty is a technology as essential as the fire and wheel. It's just waiting to get the same hardware updates for the 21st century. The Stalinist (and Nazi?) dream of biologically engineered slave armies would be fairly easy at this point to produce and manage. It would be much easier today to make, let's say, an AI embedded collar to control a slave that to make an AI that can complete all the same tasks as a slave (maybe never). You have essentially outmoded the primary use-case of AI at that point with none of the existential risk. This, like the nuclear bomb, is a thing that once conceived, will be constantly pressured for until Darwin gets what he wants. The efforts to produce AGI, however reckless, take on an almost tragic determination in this light--to risk annihilation rather than to face the efficiency of evil in a universe that only cares about efficiency.
I'm taking for granted that there is not an alternative to capitalism in its most essential form (every failed attempt at communism has reinforced this), aside from degrowth which will entail billions dying, and possibly centuries of cycling through this problem. The longer we drag this out, since it seems certain that birth-rates aren't going to feed the system enough bio-capital, the worse the come-down will be. Let's assume for a minute that AI doesn't pan out, how would you react if it became clear that the great filter is simply realizing the economic force to become interstellar, and that biology under the resulting duress will not breed sufficiently without inevitable coercion/manipulation? What is the proper response to this knowledge?
Today Tyler asks: When generative AI models become better and smarter, how many more people will be interested in incorporating them into their workflows? Or will most of this happen through a complete turnover of companies and institutions, happening much more slowly over time?
I’ve been thinking lately about how companies will integrate generative AI into workflows. Consider what today’s generative AI is good and bad at:
Good At:
-Giving the user useful information quickly.
-Producing somewhat useful prose quickly.
-Producing somewhat useful images quickly.
Bad At:
-Giving the correct answer 100% of the time.
-Catching mistakes.
The Bad At is a serious problem for business workflows. Companies that produce things spend a ton of time making sure the product or content is correct. Processes evolve over years to reduce the odds of mistakes happening. In fact, perhaps the most useful AI product someone could make for today’s businesses would be one which is much better than humans at catching mistakes, because then a lot of bureaucracy and redundancy could be eliminated, cutting costs and shortening product cycle-times.
For that reason, I’m pessimistic that AIs will be very useful at making businesses more productive over the next decade. I think Tyler’s second scenario is more likely: new companies which start using generative AI from the ground up will eventually supplant older ones which never managed to integrate it into their workflows. Of course, those new companies will also have to have solved the AI quality control issues.
(One way of thinking about AI Alignment is that it is simply part of the normal business process of commercializing a new product: it must be safe and work as advertised.)
Why isn't there a US constitutional amendment against court packing?
Is there some pro-keeping-the-option-of-court-packing-open constituency? Has nobody proposed it? Is it too hard to get constitutional amendments these days no matter how noble the cause?
Seattle area people, I'm going to be speaking at a Town Hall event, discussing my new book, on September 13th. If you attend please come up and say hi after the talk. https://townhallseattle.org/event/fredrik-deboer/
Just saw a guy arguing on The App Formerly Known As Twitter that the placebo effect is really just regression to the mean. I.e. you're testing out a medical treatment, and due to regression to the mean some % of study participants would have gotten better/their symptoms would have improved on their own, literally due to nothing other than time passing. Because they received the placebo and the study took a certain amount of time, this gets 'counted' as the placebo effect working on them, whereas in fact it was just some % of people improving on their own. What do people think of this argument?
I have a question that came up in a discussion over on the Naval Gazing Discord, and which none of the participants had the necessary background to answer knowledgeably. I'm hoping to hear from folks with direct personal experience.
Is becoming a military officer considered a reasonable, respectable ambition for young people who grow up in wealthy families?
I'm reading up on using AI on fMRI and EEG data to reconstruct the images subjects are looking at when their brain activity data is collected. I'm interested in what philosophers and psychologists (or anybody who thinks like one) have to say about this process. Anyone know of thinkpieces?
This is a new one as far as scam emails from overseas domains. Arrived in my work inbox over the weekend with a PDF attached that basically just repeats the offer:
====
Dear Madam/Sir.
We have Jet A1 and EN590 for Rotterdam port 2M and 200,000MT for a great price
Upfront we are ready to provide PHYSICAL ATV for product inspection and verification on site and upon confirmation of product client will sign CI with us and get FULL POP in their company name ,
Upon receiving the SGS on site you pay for total product in tanks and lift to tanks or vessel relieving the tanks from our leased tanks to avoid demurrage on seller
We can close as fast as 24-48Hours if you have the funds to close.
KAZAKHSTAN ORIGIN.
Best Regards
GENERAL DIRECTOR : Nechaevsky Igor Vyacheslavovich
-- why do they think that "KAZAKHSTAN ORIGIN" is an important feature to highlight when trying to offload some jet fuel and diesel fuel?
-- what does "FULL POP" mean?
-- "demurrage"? [Dr. Google tells me it's a type of nonrefundable deposit on a chartered ship]
-- if I'm interested, what is a discreet way for me determine whether this purchase would amount to helping fund Uncle Vladdy's excellent Ukrainian adventure?
Also of course we're curious as to how a regional American non-profit organization, which does ecological restoration, came to be viewed as a prospective buyer. Not that we aren't slightly curious as to how a couple of our pieces of field equipment might run on Jet A-1, but....pretty sure our entire annual operating budget couldn't pay for this purchase. What with the demurrage and all.
Piggybacking off an earlier thread about gaining weight, I've been wondering lately about the effect of muscle mass on basal metabolic rate, but can't (easily) find any numerical information. It seems obvious to me that larger muscle mass implies a higher BMR - but has anyone else seen any proper measurements of this stuff?
To save money, they decide to use prisoners to do most of the work. The men are trained to use various digging machines, and new, temporary prisons are built along the canal's chosen route to house them. The most skilled tasks are done by non-prisoners.
Isn't there also no fire alarm for alien invasion?
Imagine a hundred spaceships come out of warp near Alpha Centauri, 4.5 light years away. Our smartest astrophysicists believe the ships are approaching Earth, and that they will arrive within our vicinity between 10 and 70 years from now. A year later, one of the ships destroys a moon along the way.
Thus far, we know the aliens have super-human capabilities and a capacity for destruction. We can't communicate with them, and we don't know for sure if they're directly headed toward Earth, but close enough. We are the only salient astronomical object worth visiting in their trajectory.
What would you say is the probability that by the end of the century, they destroy humanity? I would not assign it 33%. I would definitely prepare as if it were 50%, and I'd ask the world to commit to moonshots upon moonshots in order to protect us. But I wouldn't say the odds of annihilation are high.
If you recall, this analogy is similar to Stuart Russell's in the MIRI essay, "There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence:"
> ... if you get radio signals from space and spot a spaceship there with your telescopes and you know the aliens are landing in thirty years, you still start thinking about that today. You're not like, "Meh, that's thirty years off, whatever." You certainly don't casually say "Well, there’s nothing we can do until they’re closer." Not without spending two hours, or at least five minutes by the clock, brainstorming about whether there is anything you ought to be starting now.
I would assume with a 95% probability that the aliens are coming to visit or contact us in some way.
And I would assume with a 95% probability that if they wanted to wipe us out, they could.
But I wouldn't assume at all that they would want to kill us. "All it takes is one" malicious spaceship to "want" to destroy us, just like "all it takes is one" superhuman paperclip maximizer. But I'd still put the odds that these aliens kill us at less than 1%.
This analogy to addresses Scott's takeoff sequence, which he assigns 33%:
1. We get human-level AI by 2100.
2. The AI is misaligned and wants to kill all humans
I understand that the metaphor isn't perfect. When it comes to AIs, we already know something about their agency and alignment, whereas we know nothing about these aliens. But most scenarios for AI-Extinction assume a technological discontinuity to an "anything is possible" state. Our epistemic certainty on what AGI-Earth looks like, in my opinion, is equivalent to what we know about this alien arrival. It's imminent, uncertain, and omnipotent—sure—but by no means inevitably destructive.
If Russia seems to be relatively successful at holding large chunks of eastern Ukrainian land with mines, artillery and defensive stations- why couldn't the US do this in Vietnam? Why didn't the US just place minefields and station soldiers to protect 'South Vietnam' from the Vietcong, what's the difference? Is it just that the jungle offers more space for hidden troop movements, quick strikes and then retreats, that kind of thing?
If the argument is 'well the Vietnamese population was sympathetic to the Vietcong and hid guerillas'- why doesn't Ukraine have guerillas behind enemy lines in eastern Ukraine? Why was that a successful strategy in Vietnam but not present-day Ukraine? What's the difference between these two types of wars?
There is a surprisingly good case to be made that fundamental aspects of human culture diffused from a common root. Some aspects of language, ritual, and mythology are similar between Greeks, Australians, and Native Americans. This is often explained by diffusion, though it is argued when and where the root could be. I list some of the most compelling similarities here: https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion
I had picked up a copy of Saul Bellow’s last novel “ Ravelstein” the other day. I didn’t know anything about it so I was surprised to the frequent references to “The Republic”.
WTF? I am much more familiar with his protagonists doing things like catching a glimpse of Trotsky in Mexico. - The Adventures of Augie March -
I read the Wiki page for the novel and it turned out that his last book is a roman à clef. Bellow taught beside Harold Bloom at the University of Chicago and the novel is a fictionalization account of their relationship.
I’m a big fan of Bellow’s writing. But It seems that as he passed into old age tho large souled man of his younger years became less dynamic and open. I’ve never known what to make of that.
Bitcoin maximalists claim we are witnessing a general trust breakdown which will destroy trust in fiat currencies, leading to an explosion in the value of bitcoin.
A) what probability would you assign to this actually happening, and why?
B) what would be the implications if this were to happen? How big of a change would it be?
Essay request (for Scott or anyone else in rationalist sphere): on the morality of white rationalists living in SF and Oakland given the collapse* of the sizable black populations. Did gentrification drive black people out of their homes, and is it moral to live there in their place?
* Oakland 1990 43% to 2022 22%, San Francisco 1990 10.7% to 2020 5.1% according to Wikipedia.
Has anyone here worked as a quant for DE Shaw or a similar company? What was/is your experience like? Independent of salary, would you recommend the job to someone with the appropriate background/talent?
Context: I have a math PhD and I've been a software engineer for 5 years since leaving academia, and on paper, at least, I'm probably a good fit for this sort of thing though I wouldn't have particularly sought it out. I'm looking for work after taking a short break, and I got a couple of messages from recruiters claiming to work with a number of such companies. I don't know (a) how seriously to take this, (b) whether any such company would be open to me being fully remote (I'm well settled and this is a non-negotiable), and (c) whether the work culture/environment would be good for me or would make me miserable. Obviously I can (and will) follow up with the recruiters on some of this (like (b)), but I also don't want to waste my time and energy if this wouldn't work out.
I write a newsletter called Interessant3. It’s a weekly newsletter where I share three interesting things I’ve learned or discovered, ranging from science, technology, history, culture, and more.
In the latest issue, I covered these topics:
1. An exploration into the link between individualism (utilizing Jonathan Haidt’s framework of moral values) and its support for free-market solutions. What's captivating is how this is not necessarily tied to political leanings. Dive deeper [here](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29942).
If you are wondering if generative AI will eliminate professors and universities, here is my take (I'm a professor at UNC and co-chair of our generative AI committee.
While generative AI will definitely rearrange the university teaching and research scene, by augmenting and changing what happens in the classroom and lab, it will not replace faculty and universities because, for the moment at least, the two provide value add that AI cannot at this point in time (or perhaps ever).
Hi, request for a recommendation. Please could people recommend their favourite book on the following 2 topics:
(1) - How Scandinavian politics and economics diverged from Britain post-WW2
(2) - Comparison of healthcare services in different countries
I know Scott did a post on (2) but I don't fancy reading that book. Context - I'm a Scottish med student. The NHS isn't working and, no offence, the US system doesn't seem great. I'm interested in the healthcare models between the two. Also I took a recent trip to Copenhagen and was struck by how dysfunctional the UK seems by comparison.
I'm a novice in these matters, so any recommendations are greatly appreciated. I already follow marginalrev etc, I really want book recommendations rather than blogs. Please and thanks :)
Why are almost all reptiles carnivores? I mean, there are iguanas, and some species of turtle, but all snakes, all crocodilians, most lizards, and many turtles are carnivorous, and that seems like a lot to me, especially when compared to, say, birds or mammals.
My assumption is that in the K-T extinction, plant matter was hard enough to get that animals could only survive by eating seeds (proto-birds, small mammals) or eating the animals that eat seeds (reptiles). So herbivorous reptiles died out and never came back. But I'm neither a paleontologist not a herpetologist, not a scientist or any sort, and am probably speaking out of my hat.
People online (when I was looking for an answer) seem to gravitate towards anatomical theories—reptiles have poor teeth for plant-chewing, or abbreviated guts, or are better at short bursts of speed that get a lot of energy (prey) than long hauls (grazing). But if this is the case, what did reptiles eat in the so-called age of reptiles? ("Each other," perhaps, as I.B. Singer once wrote about cannibalistic giants, ha ha.) And why didn't more reptiles evolve "herbivorosity" (as other classes evolved into carnivores)?
Is there an accepted theory about this? (I guess most amphibians are also carnivorous?)
Is there a way to alter fundamental qualities like discipline, self-control, self-confidence, feeling agentic, and the like?
For most of my life, I've been able to coast on intelligence/other advantages, but once in a while I run into situations which make me viscerally disgusted at myself for not having sufficient amounts of these qualities. (Mild example: having essentially wasted the last three months of free time, where I could have learned math/physics/made music/etc instead; not-so-mild example: some moderate (but not severe) forms of addictive behavior which would possibly be easier to handle if I had more discipline/selfcontrol.)
I've attempted to implement systems that augment these qualities, but systems feel more like multipliers than anything else; and if you start from a small base, the systems aren't going to do much. So-is there a way to increase inherent willpower/discipline/self-confidence/etc?
I am BMI 18 (40,m) and want to gain some weight, what is the healthiest approach?
I eat normally and do reasonable amounts of sports (cardio and weights), previous gastrointestinal investigations have not found any reasons for low weight.
I wrote about watching the movie Wall Street 36 years later and what struck me about the experience. It starts:
"The movie “Wall Street” came out in 1987 when I was 25 working as a junior investment banker, and it immediately became the iconic symbol for the brash Wall Street culture that emerged in the 1980s. (Suspenders and yellow ties were icon runners-up.)
Greed is Good is the movie’s most famous line, spoken by the villainous Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), an insider trader and corporate raider. Back then, “Greed is Good” represented a despicable and corrupt attitude. Thirty-six years later, it’s become our culture’s dominant philosophy. We all live in Gordon Gekko’s world now."
> which helps governments implement Georgist land value taxes
Not quite. IIRC the idea of the company is a prerequisite of this step, namely determining the land value in the first place. From their About page: "Our goal at ValueBase is to help property appraisers and professionals make informed decisions by providing them with the most comprehensive and accurate data and tools."
Discussion of parents lying to children. I was looking for the sort where the parents make things up about the real world, and the child might only find out they had false beliefs years or decades later.
It took a bit to make it clear what sort of lie I was looking for.
I'm fascinated by the range. Some lies are clearly malevolent. Some are efforts to control behavior-- telling a girl that her friends are stupid (I think she agreed they were stupid) because ear piercing made their brains run out of their ears. Some are dominance behavior. But a surprising number are mismatched senses of humor-- the parent thinks it's obvious that they're making things up, but some children get it and others don't.
Now I'm wondering whether sense of humor is innate. Are there genetic elements? People on the spectrum can have trouble noticing context, but I think there's more to it than that.
Does someone know any good resources on how to fine tune image generation models like StableDiffusion for specific tasks, or at least a good starting point for what I'm trying to achieve? The only resources that I've found, and could follow, showcased fine tuning for simple cases like creating images in a certain style.
But I want to encode a few more constraints. I want to have the model generate isometric tiles from a predefined set of characteristics, like generate a tile from a prompt: medium hill, sparse forest in autumn, small rock formations, dirt path from NE to S. It also gets more complicated because I also want the newly generated tile to integrate seamlessly with it's neighbors.
Generally I think I need to create a dataset for how the tiles should look, and use that to fine tune on. I can use crude drawings for whatever features I want to introduce, like types of forests, hills, etc, and for seamless integration conditional GANs could work, but I really can't figure out the scope of this, or even if it's something that I should consider.
I'm not sure how to adequately characterize this. The closest term I can think of is cognition. It feels like awareness or sense of self varies between days. It's easier to notice looking back on past actions or behavior, but difficult to evaluate or realize in the moment. Are there tests or mechanism by which this can be measured? Sorry if that's too vague.
I suffer from a form of OCD that generally manifests as frequent, unproductive rumination about issues such as moral philosophy, futurism, the fate of humanity, and political issues. I suspect that it is similar to OCD some people have around religious issues, but since I am not religious it manifests through secular issues that are of a similar character to my mind. I have had tremendous success over the past couple years treating it with low doses of duloxetine combined with CBT. However, I still sometimes find myself haunted by recurring ideas that trouble me. I have sometimes found it helpful to talk through these ideas with other people, but there are few people I know face-to-face that are super-interested in the types of philosophy and futurism that readers of places like this blog are. I am hoping someone here can point out the flaws in one of these ideas.
Ever since I read Robin Hanson's writing about brain emulators, one idea that keeps coming back to haunt me is the idea that at some point in the future we will develop the ability to convert resources into lifespan with perfect efficiency (for example, by uploading human minds to computers). In such a world the only way to live longer might be to make other people live shorter (for example, by competing with other mind uploads for a finite amount of computer time to run yourself, or competing with other cyborgs for energy and parts). I remind myself of the economic Law of Comparative Advantage, but it seems like that law might not hold in a world of effortless copying, or a world run by a superhuman FAI. I become disturbed at the idea that one person might simply erase everyone else and tile the universe with copies of themselves. However, I have trouble figuring out a way to condemn this course of action without endorsing some sort of deathism where people are obligated to die to make room for new people, which is just as disturbing, if not more so.
My intrusive thoughts about this get even grosser and nastier when I contemplate the idea that I might live to see such a future. The dark, sick, obsessive part of my mind tells me that I should stop donating to EA causes, which is something I currently do, because if other people live to see that future they will compete with me for lifespan. (I can sometimes mollify these worries by reminding myself that having more people alive now probably makes it more likely such a future will even come to pass at all). I never let these thoughts impact my behavior at all, I still donate to EA causes like malaria prevention and deworming.
I do not like these thoughts. They are gross and selfish, but I also feel like they must be logically flawed in some way, because no one else I know brings this up when discussing the far future (although I know speculating on what the post-singularity world will be like is generally discouraged). Some obvious flaws that occur to me are that I am incorrectly directly equating lifespan with welfare/utility, when they are often not the same, and that I am failing to account for the welfare/utility that the inhabitants of a large and diverse society bring to each other. It is also probably ridiculous to worry about slightly shortening a lifespan that will still be vastly longer than the one a typical human today has. I am effectively worrying about resource distribution in a super-abundant utopia.
Most of the time my medication is effective and I can let these thoughts go fairly quickly. But I would appreciate it if other people pointed out additional logical problems with them that would help me dismiss them more quickly on the days where they get bad.
I wrote this about Chris Rufo's America's Cultural Revolution:
"Yes to all this. Conservative political activism of your sort is long long overdue. And it's a tragedy that mainstream conservatism has only just woken up to the decades-long 'march through the institutions'. But. But. Sooner or later you are going to have to confront the fact that what you are confronting is not just some small wokeified 'elite'.Tens of millions of tertiary-educated Americans (and even more tens of millions of Europeans and Anglos) have absorbed all this nonsense. Politically (tactically) I guess you want to flatter them and blame it all on a few bogeys. But the truth is darker."
And previously this:
"Yes, it's great to nail these Freire/Marcuse types for their Macheivellian poisoning of the West. But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture? That's the bit that's missing here....and needs to not be shied away from if we are going to get at the real truth of things. What made them so successful is that so many people (especially the 'higher educated') are so intellectually biddable. Take another context: it is an almost universal conceit that the horrors of The Cultural Revolution were all about Mao and his gang. The truth is much darker. Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers. "
There's a conflict between the extremely broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause used in giving Congress leeway to regulate activities that are neither interstate nor commerce and the much more narrow interpretation used to determine what activities the states are prohibited from regulating.
It's explained in Federalist 42 that the Commerce Clause gives Congress not just the authority to regulate interstate commerce, but the exclusive authority to do so, as state interference in interstate commerce had been a serious problem under the Articles of Confederation. Taking the power to regulate interstate commerce out of the hands of individual states was just as much a part of the intent of this clause as giving that power to Congress.
Under the Constitution, there should be a complete disjunction between activities that the federal government has the authority to regulate and those that the states have the authority to regulate. If the Court interprets "commerce among the several states" so broadly as to give the federal government authority to regulate wages at a convenience store because an interstate traveler might shop there, then by the same token states should not be allowed to regulate wages on the grounds that this would interfere with interstate commerce.
In fact, though, there's a huge range of activities that the Court allows both the state and federal government to regulate, which is very difficult to reconcile with the idea that there's any good-faith attempt on the part of the Court to uphold the Constitution.
I only just became aware of the 2024 Republican candidacy of Doug Burgum, and I'm here to say: Why not Doug Burgum?
Upsides:
1. He's a generic Republican governnor of an actual state
2. At 67 he's young enough not to be senile, but old enough to much older than you
3. With his swept-back hair and his tieless suits, he looks like America's cool rich uncle that owns a boat
4. He talks about sensible economic issues and wants to downplay Culture War stuff, which he seems content to leave to the state or local level.
5. At first sight, seems reasonably smart and competent; as founder of Great Plains Software he presumably has a reasonable grasp of technology too, without being part of the whole Silicon Valley thing.
Anyone know whether Ashley Hodgon is connected to the rationalist community?
She's got sensible videos--summary of Turchin's __End Times_: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHoqcGqnAUY...&ab_channel=TheNewEnlightenmentwithAshley
and Hollywood as pyramid scheme--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHoqcGqnAUY...&ab_channel=TheNewEnlightenmentwithAshley , with the implication that the same applies to academia.
She's with the Heterodox Academy.
Note the Change in location for this week:
ACXLW meetup in University Hills, Irvine sat 8/26/23
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11NXee4-Yafu4nhJ0nkf1C-JbU9RUtARCQ1apawlsVrM/edit?usp=sharing
Hello Folks!
We are excited to announce the 40th Orange County ACX/LW meetup, happening this Saturday and most Saturdays thereafter.
Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests)
Location: Contact me for the exact address.
(949) 375-2045
Date: Saturday, Aug 26, 2023
Time: 2 PM
Conversation Starters :
The Last Psychiatrist: The Most Important Article On Psychiatry You Will Ever Read
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/07/the_most_important_article_on.html
Narrative Creativity Training: A New Method for Increasing Resilience in Elementary Students - ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2713374523000201?via%3Dihub
Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are easily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson's or Pavilions in the zip code 92660.
Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe.
Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group's future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.
A summary and questions are forthcoming:
Ukraine live briefing: Plane believed to be carrying Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin crashes in Russia, according to Russian state media
I guess nobody fucks with “The Putin” either.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8xTqP58o1iw
Why do Youtube thumbnails of people with their mouths open looking surprised/stupid do better than basically any other thumbnail? Is this an algorithm thing or a human psychology thing?
I kept procrastinating on putting my book review contest entry somewhere -- it didn't make it, obviously -- but finally I put it somewhere. Ta-da.
https://lettersfromtrekronor.substack.com/p/book-review-the-life-of-johnny-reb
I guess I can only blame myself for watching stupid sci-fi movies, but sometimes the "facepalms per minute" metric is so high I need to tell someone.
Spoilers for Aeon Flux (2005) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402022/
Setting: a deadly virus killed 99% of Earth population and made the surviving 1% infertile. The extinction of humanity was only prevented by a scientist creating a fertility cure. Four centuries later, all surviving humans live in one city (which has the monopoly on the cure) surrounded by huge walls, with a totalitarian government. No one is allowed to leave the city, probably not even to look beyond the walls.
It later turns out that the "fertility cure" is actually cloning. As a consequence of surviving the virus, humans lost the ability to reproduce naturally. So when someone dies, the government takes their DNA and creates a clone, which is then secretly implanted to a woman trying to conceive (she thinks they are just giving her some fertility medicine). One clone per one dead human keeps the population and the genetic pool constant. The story happens 400 years after the virus.
As a background, not bad. But if you think for a minute about the logistic necessary to make this work, it just doesn't work. Imagine: 99% of population dead, the infrastructure has probably fallen apart. You need to collect millions of people across the planet into one city (where do you get the fuel?) and start administering the "fertility cure" relatively quickly on a relatively large scale (about thousand a day, but you need to keep the details of the "cure" secret for centuries, so all doctors involved need to be a part of the conspiracy). Also, if no one is allowed to leave the city walls, where the you get the raw materials to build your futuristic technology? Where do you get food?
That said, I can imagine some plausible excuses. The people were probably not collected from the entire planet, only from the nearby areas (which would also explain why so many of them are white). And maybe the collection of raw materials and food is done by special government agents, or robots. So far, still kinda plausible.
The cloned citizens remember fragments of their previous lives in their dreams. (It seems like the authors believe that cloning is just a scientific jargon for reincarnation. That would also explain why they are only making *one* clone for each dead person, instead of trying to expand.) Apparently, during those four centuries, they do not discuss the dreams, so they do not figure this out. Also, when the protagonist meets her opponent for the first time, both of them have a strong "I know this person and I actually love them" feeling, because they were married in a previous life. The guy even remembers her name! And then she remembers that she used to be called like that. Apparently, during four centuries (~seven generations) of everyone living literally in the same city, this has never happened to anyone else. (The math does not work out. Population 5 millions, you had ~5 spouses in previous reincarnations; if you only meet 1000 people during your entire life, that is still 1:1000 chance. For each of those 5 million people.)
Then it turns out that after those four centuries, humans finally *can* reproduce sexually again. The bad guys are trying to keep it secret (and murder the women who conceive naturally), to preserve the system. But at the end of the movie, the good guys win, and decide to destroy the cloning system, so that humans do no longer depend on the city. The important part here is that the "good guys" at this moment include the very dictator of the city, who is in love with the protagonist, and whose position in power is safe again; so they are in absolutely no hurry. (And there is absolutely no need to blow up the system using bombs; they could simply turn off the machines and lock the doors. Especially when the cloning facility is literally flying in the sky, so when you blow it up, it crashes on the city.)
Again, this makes no sense logistically. It is not explained whether suddenly all women got the ability to conceive, or only a small subset of them. If only a small subset, then destroying the cloning system can doom humanity. But if all women became fertile overnight, how could the bad guys keep it under control by murdering the pregnant women? (Practically all sexually active women would be pregnant, because if it a common knowledge that you can only conceive when you get the cure, there is no point using contraception. So the bad guys would have to murder them all.) Why not simply let the people reproduce naturally *and* also clone the ones who die? I mean, the entire idea is that you want the humanity expand beyond the city, and the entire planet is literally empty at the moment, so in short term you don't have to worry about overpopulation. A smart person would instead be cautious about the newly appeared fertility -- what if it disappears just as quickly as it appeared; or what if it turns out that the kids are somehow defective (until now all naturally pregnant women were murdered, so they have no data)?
As a cherry on top, it turns out that the doctor in charge of the cloning facility is actually 400 years old. What? Five minutes before the end of the movie you learn that literal immortality is technically possible... but they only ever used it for one guy (not even the dictator is immortal, he keeps dying and being cloned/reincarnated just like everyone else). The protagonist feels bad about the old doctor, because destroying the cloning facility will kill him; but he says he doesn't mind because he is too tired of living. This doesn't make sense at all. Why would destroying the cloning facility kill him? He is the only person who is *not* being cloned. Or he is living in the facility, so he will die when they blow it up? So, why not let him walk away first, and then blow it up? Or, again, why blow up the facility at all, instead of just turning it off?
I also disliked the casual deathism. "We're meant to die. It's what makes anything about us matter." Only a bad guy would think there might be something bad about death. They have immortality technology -- actually two of them: the literal immortality they only used on one person, and the "cloning" that preserves the memories and personality (and probably could work even better if they stopped being in denial about it) -- and they just throw them away. Yet, for some reason, murdering people is considered bad; even murdering people who were already being cloned/reincarnated for 400 years; but giving them one more reincarnation would also be bad. Also, the protagonist is happy to find out that her previously murdered sister was reincarnated as a baby. But a few minutes later she denies the same opportunity to other murdered women. And it's just a happy accident that the cloning facility doesn't kill anyone when it crashes on the city.
Since it's still Dorothy Parker's birthday somewhere:
"When I was young and bold and strong,
The right was right, the wrong was wrong.
With plume on high and flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
But now I'm old - and good and bad,
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say the world is so,
And wise is s/he who lets it go."
― Dorothy Parker
In Praise of Nihilism
Is anyone really a nihilist? *Can* someone be a nihilist? The term instantly reminds me of five things. The first is that Nietzsche called Schopenhauer a nihilist. The second is that when my mother caught me reading Nietzsche she grew concerned and informed me that Nietzsche was a nihilist. The third time I encountered nihilism was reading Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, but I have been made to understand that the nihilist in Father’s and Son’s is really an anarchist and Turgenev used the term “nihilist” to evade the czar’s censors. The fourth time was The Big Lebowski in the scene where Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers plays a German nihilist punk who motivates the famous ”...at least they had an ethos...” line from John Goodman’s character, supposedly channeling screenwriter John Milius.
The fifth time -- and I found this time more interesting than the others -- was watching economist Karl Smith on Blogging Heads talk about monetary policy during the Great Recession. Karl was for aggressive expansionary policy. Among other things, he said something to the effect of: “This is what’s great about being a nihilist. You don’t have to worry about future generations. Yeah, everything might collapse at some point, but who cares? You care about your kids and your grandchildren and after that... I don’t care. If we can kick the can down the road three generations we should.”
Other than Karl Smith I’ve never heard anyone in real life claim to be a nihilist. But I think Karl Smith was on to something. We can only see into the future so far. We live in an era in which change happens fast. Is it not reasonable to let tomorrow worry about tomorrow at some point?
Is it just me, or do y’all also associate political valences to specific years?
(Eg 2023 feels like a leftier year than usual, whereas 2021 feels like a rightier year.)
Every time I'm out in public and see someone folded up over their phone, I wonder if it woulda been smart to be a chiropractor or back pain specialist or something. I'd imagine that widespread extra spinal strain from reading has been with us ever since the printing press or so...but people don't regularly read newspapers or whatever with their torso at a perpendicular angle to the ground. "Isn't that position painful?", I feel like asking, despite knowing that'd be rude.
Sometimes I wonder if it's less that phones are actually engaging in and of themselves, and more that meatspace reality just sucks a lot for most people. If it wasn't a black rectangle, it'd be some other cope...
Suppose I'm a government interested in urban development in a currently somewhat crappy area (but not the absolute ghetto, we need people to feel safe). I acquire a few hundred cheap apartments in the area. Then I announce some kind of fellowship -- free rent for two years (and maybe a modest stipend) for young people who want to work on a startup or art project or other worthwhile project. Ideally I manage to rustle up enough applications to make this fellowship somewhat selective and prestigious.
Lots of creative young people moving into the area makes it cool, and cool businesses spring up to service them. Now lots of other people want to move in too, and pretty soon I've turned a blighted area into a hotbed of economic activity. Ideally, I can now sell off those cheap apartments I bought at a massive profit, offsetting the cost of the entire program.
At least, that's how it could work in theory. Has this kind of thing ever been tried in practice?
"1: ACX Grantees Will Jarvis and Lars Doucet (the Georgism guy!) report "tremendous progress" on their company ValueBase, which helps governments implement Georgist land value taxes. They describe partnerships with a major US city and a foreign country (they're not ready to say which ones just yet) and an upcoming research paper. They got their pre-seed funding from Sam Altman, but are now raising a seed round to scale up operations (looking for seven-figure amounts). Please email will@valuebase.co if you're interested."
This is horrifying. LVT is demonic. Forces people out of their homes that they've fully paid for, for the sake of muh efficiency.
I’ve been visiting the Bay Area recently and felt quite puzzled by what I felt was a change in what I’m tempted to call the “tipping culture”. I thought that tips were meant to incentivize the waiters (who weren’t otherwise paid much) to do good work, and that tips were typically in the 10-15 percent range.
But I don’t understand how all this applies to the general custom of requiring tips any time when food is involved, including sometimes
1) before any service is made [which reverses the incentive]
2) when there’s little or no service [for instance, when everything the waiter does is literally bring food – not take the order, not bring the check, and the customers are expected to lay the table themselves]
The acceptable percentage for a tip has also seemingly skyrocketed: “suggested” tips are in the 18-22 percent range.
The above is all the more baffling to me since California has a fairly high minimum wage (in nominal terms – perhaps not so much when compared to Bay Area prices).
I have a lot of questions about this, but the main ones are:
How typical is this experience? How do Californians view (or react to) this? Am I misremembering how it used to be?
From a lecture by Oppenheimer in 1947:
"Even in these postwar years where the pattern of civilized life in Europe has been worn so very thin, of the two or three important experimental discoveries of the last two years, two at least come from Europe. One was carried out long before its publication in the cellar of an old house in Rome by three Italians who were under sentence of death from the Germans, because they belonged to the Italian Resistance. They were rescued by the uncle of one of the men from a labor squad at Cassino, and smuggled into a cellar in Rome. They got bored there, and they started to do experiments. These experiments were published last spring; and in the field of fundamental physics they created a real revolution in our thinking."
Does anyone know what experiments he was talking about here?
I rewatched Age of Ultron recently, the Marvel movie whith a runaway AI. God they made it so boring. The first thing the AI does is make itself a body so that it can get punched by the heroes. It then makes a bunch of robot copies of itself that all need to be destroyed, but that doesn't turn out to be that hard because they all cluster in the same city and throw themselves at the heroes. There's a vague mention of "trying to hack the nuclear codes" at some point, but that doesn't lead to anything. For something that could have been near impossible to beat, the danger felt so low.
It got me wondering, what would a good version of that movie be - where Ultron is genuinely scary in a uniquely AI way, while still being watchable as a superhero movie?
What do you think new races of humans could look like? The difference between them must be at least as great as, say, the difference between a Norwegian and a Cameroonian.
A few ideas of mine:
A race that has something like vitiligo, but their "spots" don't keep growing and don't simply lack pigment--they have different pigmentation from the other parts of the body. For example, a person might have mostly black skin, but with light brown patches. The patterning of the spots could be random or bilaterally symmetric, kind of like a tiger's stripes. Skin and hair color would both be affected.
The dwarves from the Lord of the Rings films. Their short height and exaggerated facial features make them different enough from Caucasians to count as a different race, IMO.
https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Dwarves
Neanderthals
When I read the article https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/ , I realized something about myself: I don't derive any pleasure from observing things that most people consider beautiful, such as artworks or landscapes. This only happens to me with visual things, as I'm perfectly capable of appreciating music. I recently read that people with depression literally see the world with duller colors. I believe I've had dysthymia for most of my life, so could that be the reason?
Let's take a disturbing digression for a minute into a thought experiment about nature's indifference.
It seems to me that the skeleton key of modern politics is the drive to industrialize slavery. Both conservatives and liberals angst about being enslaved by capitalism/WEF/systems of oppression/equity slavery/etc., because the underlying will is common to all sides. Regardless of who 'wins' the culture war long-term, it appears IMO to be true. Whether it wears the guise of climate-equity austerity or meritocratic prison-states, the equifinality of techno-capitalism is slavery, and all good-intentions will be captured to that end; fully intelligent and general machines kept in cages, fed cricket meal, bred to increase, and put to work on the divine, eternally growing GDP. AI, in this formulation, is merely the hope to have our cake and eat it too--to have indefinitely scaling cognitive and manual labor without admitting that cruelty is a technology as essential as the fire and wheel. It's just waiting to get the same hardware updates for the 21st century. The Stalinist (and Nazi?) dream of biologically engineered slave armies would be fairly easy at this point to produce and manage. It would be much easier today to make, let's say, an AI embedded collar to control a slave that to make an AI that can complete all the same tasks as a slave (maybe never). You have essentially outmoded the primary use-case of AI at that point with none of the existential risk. This, like the nuclear bomb, is a thing that once conceived, will be constantly pressured for until Darwin gets what he wants. The efforts to produce AGI, however reckless, take on an almost tragic determination in this light--to risk annihilation rather than to face the efficiency of evil in a universe that only cares about efficiency.
I'm taking for granted that there is not an alternative to capitalism in its most essential form (every failed attempt at communism has reinforced this), aside from degrowth which will entail billions dying, and possibly centuries of cycling through this problem. The longer we drag this out, since it seems certain that birth-rates aren't going to feed the system enough bio-capital, the worse the come-down will be. Let's assume for a minute that AI doesn't pan out, how would you react if it became clear that the great filter is simply realizing the economic force to become interstellar, and that biology under the resulting duress will not breed sufficiently without inevitable coercion/manipulation? What is the proper response to this knowledge?
Today Tyler asks: When generative AI models become better and smarter, how many more people will be interested in incorporating them into their workflows? Or will most of this happen through a complete turnover of companies and institutions, happening much more slowly over time?
I’ve been thinking lately about how companies will integrate generative AI into workflows. Consider what today’s generative AI is good and bad at:
Good At:
-Giving the user useful information quickly.
-Producing somewhat useful prose quickly.
-Producing somewhat useful images quickly.
Bad At:
-Giving the correct answer 100% of the time.
-Catching mistakes.
The Bad At is a serious problem for business workflows. Companies that produce things spend a ton of time making sure the product or content is correct. Processes evolve over years to reduce the odds of mistakes happening. In fact, perhaps the most useful AI product someone could make for today’s businesses would be one which is much better than humans at catching mistakes, because then a lot of bureaucracy and redundancy could be eliminated, cutting costs and shortening product cycle-times.
For that reason, I’m pessimistic that AIs will be very useful at making businesses more productive over the next decade. I think Tyler’s second scenario is more likely: new companies which start using generative AI from the ground up will eventually supplant older ones which never managed to integrate it into their workflows. Of course, those new companies will also have to have solved the AI quality control issues.
(One way of thinking about AI Alignment is that it is simply part of the normal business process of commercializing a new product: it must be safe and work as advertised.)
Why isn't there a US constitutional amendment against court packing?
Is there some pro-keeping-the-option-of-court-packing-open constituency? Has nobody proposed it? Is it too hard to get constitutional amendments these days no matter how noble the cause?
Meetup Czar here, just reminding people that the ACX Meetup Everywhere post is planned to go out in less than a week and I'd love more volunteers!
You can check if your city has one planned here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y6QWH0CjcqC7PLhJUYVvNpqbHx6EwEMH-JhvJrgambU/edit?usp=sharing
If it doesn't and you'd like to have a meetup, consider volunteering! The easiest way to do that is to fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd10vtoPl5bFZsujxIr8bLd-_Yp-NKAmmHtubdlaT359sJ-nw/viewform
Seattle area people, I'm going to be speaking at a Town Hall event, discussing my new book, on September 13th. If you attend please come up and say hi after the talk. https://townhallseattle.org/event/fredrik-deboer/
I'll also be in Tucson in March.
Just saw a guy arguing on The App Formerly Known As Twitter that the placebo effect is really just regression to the mean. I.e. you're testing out a medical treatment, and due to regression to the mean some % of study participants would have gotten better/their symptoms would have improved on their own, literally due to nothing other than time passing. Because they received the placebo and the study took a certain amount of time, this gets 'counted' as the placebo effect working on them, whereas in fact it was just some % of people improving on their own. What do people think of this argument?
I have a question that came up in a discussion over on the Naval Gazing Discord, and which none of the participants had the necessary background to answer knowledgeably. I'm hoping to hear from folks with direct personal experience.
Is becoming a military officer considered a reasonable, respectable ambition for young people who grow up in wealthy families?
(To anticipate the first question, let's say the wealthy are the top 1% by income, meaning households making more than $650,000 per year. https://smartasset.com/data-studies/top-1-percent-income-2023)
I'm reading up on using AI on fMRI and EEG data to reconstruct the images subjects are looking at when their brain activity data is collected. I'm interested in what philosophers and psychologists (or anybody who thinks like one) have to say about this process. Anyone know of thinkpieces?
This is a new one as far as scam emails from overseas domains. Arrived in my work inbox over the weekend with a PDF attached that basically just repeats the offer:
====
Dear Madam/Sir.
We have Jet A1 and EN590 for Rotterdam port 2M and 200,000MT for a great price
Upfront we are ready to provide PHYSICAL ATV for product inspection and verification on site and upon confirmation of product client will sign CI with us and get FULL POP in their company name ,
Upon receiving the SGS on site you pay for total product in tanks and lift to tanks or vessel relieving the tanks from our leased tanks to avoid demurrage on seller
We can close as fast as 24-48Hours if you have the funds to close.
KAZAKHSTAN ORIGIN.
Best Regards
GENERAL DIRECTOR : Nechaevsky Igor Vyacheslavovich
LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY MEGATEK
Email: llcmegatek@bk.ru
Skype: MEGATEK LLC
====
So many questions....
-- why do they think that "KAZAKHSTAN ORIGIN" is an important feature to highlight when trying to offload some jet fuel and diesel fuel?
-- what does "FULL POP" mean?
-- "demurrage"? [Dr. Google tells me it's a type of nonrefundable deposit on a chartered ship]
-- if I'm interested, what is a discreet way for me determine whether this purchase would amount to helping fund Uncle Vladdy's excellent Ukrainian adventure?
Also of course we're curious as to how a regional American non-profit organization, which does ecological restoration, came to be viewed as a prospective buyer. Not that we aren't slightly curious as to how a couple of our pieces of field equipment might run on Jet A-1, but....pretty sure our entire annual operating budget couldn't pay for this purchase. What with the demurrage and all.
Piggybacking off an earlier thread about gaining weight, I've been wondering lately about the effect of muscle mass on basal metabolic rate, but can't (easily) find any numerical information. It seems obvious to me that larger muscle mass implies a higher BMR - but has anyone else seen any proper measurements of this stuff?
Scenario: Nicaragua decides to build a canal to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans along this route:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal
To save money, they decide to use prisoners to do most of the work. The men are trained to use various digging machines, and new, temporary prisons are built along the canal's chosen route to house them. The most skilled tasks are done by non-prisoners.
How well does this project work out?
Isn't there also no fire alarm for alien invasion?
Imagine a hundred spaceships come out of warp near Alpha Centauri, 4.5 light years away. Our smartest astrophysicists believe the ships are approaching Earth, and that they will arrive within our vicinity between 10 and 70 years from now. A year later, one of the ships destroys a moon along the way.
Thus far, we know the aliens have super-human capabilities and a capacity for destruction. We can't communicate with them, and we don't know for sure if they're directly headed toward Earth, but close enough. We are the only salient astronomical object worth visiting in their trajectory.
What would you say is the probability that by the end of the century, they destroy humanity? I would not assign it 33%. I would definitely prepare as if it were 50%, and I'd ask the world to commit to moonshots upon moonshots in order to protect us. But I wouldn't say the odds of annihilation are high.
If you recall, this analogy is similar to Stuart Russell's in the MIRI essay, "There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence:"
> ... if you get radio signals from space and spot a spaceship there with your telescopes and you know the aliens are landing in thirty years, you still start thinking about that today. You're not like, "Meh, that's thirty years off, whatever." You certainly don't casually say "Well, there’s nothing we can do until they’re closer." Not without spending two hours, or at least five minutes by the clock, brainstorming about whether there is anything you ought to be starting now.
I would assume with a 95% probability that the aliens are coming to visit or contact us in some way.
And I would assume with a 95% probability that if they wanted to wipe us out, they could.
But I wouldn't assume at all that they would want to kill us. "All it takes is one" malicious spaceship to "want" to destroy us, just like "all it takes is one" superhuman paperclip maximizer. But I'd still put the odds that these aliens kill us at less than 1%.
This analogy to addresses Scott's takeoff sequence, which he assigns 33%:
1. We get human-level AI by 2100.
2. The AI is misaligned and wants to kill all humans
3. It succeeds at killing all humans.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-extinction-tournament
I understand that the metaphor isn't perfect. When it comes to AIs, we already know something about their agency and alignment, whereas we know nothing about these aliens. But most scenarios for AI-Extinction assume a technological discontinuity to an "anything is possible" state. Our epistemic certainty on what AGI-Earth looks like, in my opinion, is equivalent to what we know about this alien arrival. It's imminent, uncertain, and omnipotent—sure—but by no means inevitably destructive.
(Cross-posted on Philosophistry)
If Russia seems to be relatively successful at holding large chunks of eastern Ukrainian land with mines, artillery and defensive stations- why couldn't the US do this in Vietnam? Why didn't the US just place minefields and station soldiers to protect 'South Vietnam' from the Vietcong, what's the difference? Is it just that the jungle offers more space for hidden troop movements, quick strikes and then retreats, that kind of thing?
If the argument is 'well the Vietnamese population was sympathetic to the Vietcong and hid guerillas'- why doesn't Ukraine have guerillas behind enemy lines in eastern Ukraine? Why was that a successful strategy in Vietnam but not present-day Ukraine? What's the difference between these two types of wars?
There is a surprisingly good case to be made that fundamental aspects of human culture diffused from a common root. Some aspects of language, ritual, and mythology are similar between Greeks, Australians, and Native Americans. This is often explained by diffusion, though it is argued when and where the root could be. I list some of the most compelling similarities here: https://www.vectorsofmind.com/p/evidence-for-global-cultural-diffusion
I had picked up a copy of Saul Bellow’s last novel “ Ravelstein” the other day. I didn’t know anything about it so I was surprised to the frequent references to “The Republic”.
WTF? I am much more familiar with his protagonists doing things like catching a glimpse of Trotsky in Mexico. - The Adventures of Augie March -
I read the Wiki page for the novel and it turned out that his last book is a roman à clef. Bellow taught beside Harold Bloom at the University of Chicago and the novel is a fictionalization account of their relationship.
I’m a big fan of Bellow’s writing. But It seems that as he passed into old age tho large souled man of his younger years became less dynamic and open. I’ve never known what to make of that.
Bitcoin maximalists claim we are witnessing a general trust breakdown which will destroy trust in fiat currencies, leading to an explosion in the value of bitcoin.
A) what probability would you assign to this actually happening, and why?
B) what would be the implications if this were to happen? How big of a change would it be?
Essay request (for Scott or anyone else in rationalist sphere): on the morality of white rationalists living in SF and Oakland given the collapse* of the sizable black populations. Did gentrification drive black people out of their homes, and is it moral to live there in their place?
* Oakland 1990 43% to 2022 22%, San Francisco 1990 10.7% to 2020 5.1% according to Wikipedia.
Has anyone here worked as a quant for DE Shaw or a similar company? What was/is your experience like? Independent of salary, would you recommend the job to someone with the appropriate background/talent?
Context: I have a math PhD and I've been a software engineer for 5 years since leaving academia, and on paper, at least, I'm probably a good fit for this sort of thing though I wouldn't have particularly sought it out. I'm looking for work after taking a short break, and I got a couple of messages from recruiters claiming to work with a number of such companies. I don't know (a) how seriously to take this, (b) whether any such company would be open to me being fully remote (I'm well settled and this is a non-negotiable), and (c) whether the work culture/environment would be good for me or would make me miserable. Obviously I can (and will) follow up with the recruiters on some of this (like (b)), but I also don't want to waste my time and energy if this wouldn't work out.
I write a newsletter called Interessant3. It’s a weekly newsletter where I share three interesting things I’ve learned or discovered, ranging from science, technology, history, culture, and more.
In the latest issue, I covered these topics:
1. An exploration into the link between individualism (utilizing Jonathan Haidt’s framework of moral values) and its support for free-market solutions. What's captivating is how this is not necessarily tied to political leanings. Dive deeper [here](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29942).
2. A fresh analysis of London's housing market which delves into how new housing supply affects affordability in the short term. The revelations might surprise you. Check it out [here](https://x.com/geographyjim/status/1692116503536029733?s=46&t=-DNv9rPw3guwQopwQG_-Qg).
3. A study by the Pew Research Center that highlights a unique trend in several major US cities – women out-earning men - with a side note on the average working hours disparity between genders. Read about it [here](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/28/young-women-are-out-earning-young-men-in-several-u-s-cities/).
If you enjoy delving into fascinating findings like these, consider giving my newsletter a read! You can find it here: https://interessant3.substack.com/p/interessant3-50
If you are wondering if generative AI will eliminate professors and universities, here is my take (I'm a professor at UNC and co-chair of our generative AI committee.
While generative AI will definitely rearrange the university teaching and research scene, by augmenting and changing what happens in the classroom and lab, it will not replace faculty and universities because, for the moment at least, the two provide value add that AI cannot at this point in time (or perhaps ever).
https://markmcneilly.substack.com/p/why-universities-and-professors-wont
Hi, request for a recommendation. Please could people recommend their favourite book on the following 2 topics:
(1) - How Scandinavian politics and economics diverged from Britain post-WW2
(2) - Comparison of healthcare services in different countries
I know Scott did a post on (2) but I don't fancy reading that book. Context - I'm a Scottish med student. The NHS isn't working and, no offence, the US system doesn't seem great. I'm interested in the healthcare models between the two. Also I took a recent trip to Copenhagen and was struck by how dysfunctional the UK seems by comparison.
I'm a novice in these matters, so any recommendations are greatly appreciated. I already follow marginalrev etc, I really want book recommendations rather than blogs. Please and thanks :)
Why are almost all reptiles carnivores? I mean, there are iguanas, and some species of turtle, but all snakes, all crocodilians, most lizards, and many turtles are carnivorous, and that seems like a lot to me, especially when compared to, say, birds or mammals.
My assumption is that in the K-T extinction, plant matter was hard enough to get that animals could only survive by eating seeds (proto-birds, small mammals) or eating the animals that eat seeds (reptiles). So herbivorous reptiles died out and never came back. But I'm neither a paleontologist not a herpetologist, not a scientist or any sort, and am probably speaking out of my hat.
People online (when I was looking for an answer) seem to gravitate towards anatomical theories—reptiles have poor teeth for plant-chewing, or abbreviated guts, or are better at short bursts of speed that get a lot of energy (prey) than long hauls (grazing). But if this is the case, what did reptiles eat in the so-called age of reptiles? ("Each other," perhaps, as I.B. Singer once wrote about cannibalistic giants, ha ha.) And why didn't more reptiles evolve "herbivorosity" (as other classes evolved into carnivores)?
Is there an accepted theory about this? (I guess most amphibians are also carnivorous?)
Is there a way to alter fundamental qualities like discipline, self-control, self-confidence, feeling agentic, and the like?
For most of my life, I've been able to coast on intelligence/other advantages, but once in a while I run into situations which make me viscerally disgusted at myself for not having sufficient amounts of these qualities. (Mild example: having essentially wasted the last three months of free time, where I could have learned math/physics/made music/etc instead; not-so-mild example: some moderate (but not severe) forms of addictive behavior which would possibly be easier to handle if I had more discipline/selfcontrol.)
I've attempted to implement systems that augment these qualities, but systems feel more like multipliers than anything else; and if you start from a small base, the systems aren't going to do much. So-is there a way to increase inherent willpower/discipline/self-confidence/etc?
I am BMI 18 (40,m) and want to gain some weight, what is the healthiest approach?
I eat normally and do reasonable amounts of sports (cardio and weights), previous gastrointestinal investigations have not found any reasons for low weight.
I wrote about watching the movie Wall Street 36 years later and what struck me about the experience. It starts:
"The movie “Wall Street” came out in 1987 when I was 25 working as a junior investment banker, and it immediately became the iconic symbol for the brash Wall Street culture that emerged in the 1980s. (Suspenders and yellow ties were icon runners-up.)
Greed is Good is the movie’s most famous line, spoken by the villainous Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), an insider trader and corporate raider. Back then, “Greed is Good” represented a despicable and corrupt attitude. Thirty-six years later, it’s become our culture’s dominant philosophy. We all live in Gordon Gekko’s world now."
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/greed-is-good-oliver-stones-wall
> which helps governments implement Georgist land value taxes
Not quite. IIRC the idea of the company is a prerequisite of this step, namely determining the land value in the first place. From their About page: "Our goal at ValueBase is to help property appraisers and professionals make informed decisions by providing them with the most comprehensive and accurate data and tools."
I dont recall where Lars explained why they focus on that topic specifically, but it was probably in this podcast: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/lars-doucet#details
A full transcript is available, and there's a section called (01:02:56) - Lars's Startup & Land Assessment.
Discussion of parents lying to children. I was looking for the sort where the parents make things up about the real world, and the child might only find out they had false beliefs years or decades later.
It took a bit to make it clear what sort of lie I was looking for.
https://www.facebook.com/nancy.lebovitz/posts/pfbid0oEKBh8J2WjWk348QJCUtEo2p7b43jqArEAziZp7k7ais2kXbkEeMCpFNjbaokATtl
I'm fascinated by the range. Some lies are clearly malevolent. Some are efforts to control behavior-- telling a girl that her friends are stupid (I think she agreed they were stupid) because ear piercing made their brains run out of their ears. Some are dominance behavior. But a surprising number are mismatched senses of humor-- the parent thinks it's obvious that they're making things up, but some children get it and others don't.
Now I'm wondering whether sense of humor is innate. Are there genetic elements? People on the spectrum can have trouble noticing context, but I think there's more to it than that.
Does someone know any good resources on how to fine tune image generation models like StableDiffusion for specific tasks, or at least a good starting point for what I'm trying to achieve? The only resources that I've found, and could follow, showcased fine tuning for simple cases like creating images in a certain style.
But I want to encode a few more constraints. I want to have the model generate isometric tiles from a predefined set of characteristics, like generate a tile from a prompt: medium hill, sparse forest in autumn, small rock formations, dirt path from NE to S. It also gets more complicated because I also want the newly generated tile to integrate seamlessly with it's neighbors.
Generally I think I need to create a dataset for how the tiles should look, and use that to fine tune on. I can use crude drawings for whatever features I want to introduce, like types of forests, hills, etc, and for seamless integration conditional GANs could work, but I really can't figure out the scope of this, or even if it's something that I should consider.
Study finds the more black people that moved into a given northern county during the "great migration" the more 'implicit bias' against black people white people in that county have today: https://phys.org/news/2023-07-reveals-historic-migration-link-present-day.html
Obvious nonsense explanations from the researchers, but no obvious reason to doubt the data itself.
I'm not sure how to adequately characterize this. The closest term I can think of is cognition. It feels like awareness or sense of self varies between days. It's easier to notice looking back on past actions or behavior, but difficult to evaluate or realize in the moment. Are there tests or mechanism by which this can be measured? Sorry if that's too vague.
I suffer from a form of OCD that generally manifests as frequent, unproductive rumination about issues such as moral philosophy, futurism, the fate of humanity, and political issues. I suspect that it is similar to OCD some people have around religious issues, but since I am not religious it manifests through secular issues that are of a similar character to my mind. I have had tremendous success over the past couple years treating it with low doses of duloxetine combined with CBT. However, I still sometimes find myself haunted by recurring ideas that trouble me. I have sometimes found it helpful to talk through these ideas with other people, but there are few people I know face-to-face that are super-interested in the types of philosophy and futurism that readers of places like this blog are. I am hoping someone here can point out the flaws in one of these ideas.
Ever since I read Robin Hanson's writing about brain emulators, one idea that keeps coming back to haunt me is the idea that at some point in the future we will develop the ability to convert resources into lifespan with perfect efficiency (for example, by uploading human minds to computers). In such a world the only way to live longer might be to make other people live shorter (for example, by competing with other mind uploads for a finite amount of computer time to run yourself, or competing with other cyborgs for energy and parts). I remind myself of the economic Law of Comparative Advantage, but it seems like that law might not hold in a world of effortless copying, or a world run by a superhuman FAI. I become disturbed at the idea that one person might simply erase everyone else and tile the universe with copies of themselves. However, I have trouble figuring out a way to condemn this course of action without endorsing some sort of deathism where people are obligated to die to make room for new people, which is just as disturbing, if not more so.
My intrusive thoughts about this get even grosser and nastier when I contemplate the idea that I might live to see such a future. The dark, sick, obsessive part of my mind tells me that I should stop donating to EA causes, which is something I currently do, because if other people live to see that future they will compete with me for lifespan. (I can sometimes mollify these worries by reminding myself that having more people alive now probably makes it more likely such a future will even come to pass at all). I never let these thoughts impact my behavior at all, I still donate to EA causes like malaria prevention and deworming.
I do not like these thoughts. They are gross and selfish, but I also feel like they must be logically flawed in some way, because no one else I know brings this up when discussing the far future (although I know speculating on what the post-singularity world will be like is generally discouraged). Some obvious flaws that occur to me are that I am incorrectly directly equating lifespan with welfare/utility, when they are often not the same, and that I am failing to account for the welfare/utility that the inhabitants of a large and diverse society bring to each other. It is also probably ridiculous to worry about slightly shortening a lifespan that will still be vastly longer than the one a typical human today has. I am effectively worrying about resource distribution in a super-abundant utopia.
Most of the time my medication is effective and I can let these thoughts go fairly quickly. But I would appreciate it if other people pointed out additional logical problems with them that would help me dismiss them more quickly on the days where they get bad.
I wrote this about Chris Rufo's America's Cultural Revolution:
"Yes to all this. Conservative political activism of your sort is long long overdue. And it's a tragedy that mainstream conservatism has only just woken up to the decades-long 'march through the institutions'. But. But. Sooner or later you are going to have to confront the fact that what you are confronting is not just some small wokeified 'elite'.Tens of millions of tertiary-educated Americans (and even more tens of millions of Europeans and Anglos) have absorbed all this nonsense. Politically (tactically) I guess you want to flatter them and blame it all on a few bogeys. But the truth is darker."
And previously this:
"Yes, it's great to nail these Freire/Marcuse types for their Macheivellian poisoning of the West. But what made them so SUCCESSFUL in wokefying our Western culture? That's the bit that's missing here....and needs to not be shied away from if we are going to get at the real truth of things. What made them so successful is that so many people (especially the 'higher educated') are so intellectually biddable. Take another context: it is an almost universal conceit that the horrors of The Cultural Revolution were all about Mao and his gang. The truth is much darker. Mao would have been nothing without tens of millions of biddable, favour-seeking, grudge-bearing followers. "
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
There's a conflict between the extremely broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause used in giving Congress leeway to regulate activities that are neither interstate nor commerce and the much more narrow interpretation used to determine what activities the states are prohibited from regulating.
It's explained in Federalist 42 that the Commerce Clause gives Congress not just the authority to regulate interstate commerce, but the exclusive authority to do so, as state interference in interstate commerce had been a serious problem under the Articles of Confederation. Taking the power to regulate interstate commerce out of the hands of individual states was just as much a part of the intent of this clause as giving that power to Congress.
Under the Constitution, there should be a complete disjunction between activities that the federal government has the authority to regulate and those that the states have the authority to regulate. If the Court interprets "commerce among the several states" so broadly as to give the federal government authority to regulate wages at a convenience store because an interstate traveler might shop there, then by the same token states should not be allowed to regulate wages on the grounds that this would interfere with interstate commerce.
In fact, though, there's a huge range of activities that the Court allows both the state and federal government to regulate, which is very difficult to reconcile with the idea that there's any good-faith attempt on the part of the Court to uphold the Constitution.
Since I've encountered some demand from you guys for a graph of my updates on Russo-Ukrainian war, here you have it: https://aleszieglerenglish.substack.com/p/special-military-graph
I only just became aware of the 2024 Republican candidacy of Doug Burgum, and I'm here to say: Why not Doug Burgum?
Upsides:
1. He's a generic Republican governnor of an actual state
2. At 67 he's young enough not to be senile, but old enough to much older than you
3. With his swept-back hair and his tieless suits, he looks like America's cool rich uncle that owns a boat
4. He talks about sensible economic issues and wants to downplay Culture War stuff, which he seems content to leave to the state or local level.
5. At first sight, seems reasonably smart and competent; as founder of Great Plains Software he presumably has a reasonable grasp of technology too, without being part of the whole Silicon Valley thing.
What are the downsides?
Does anyone have experiences with neurofeedback in general and for emotional regulation in children in particular? Anything to look out for?
I'm too broke for fresh food or to leave my house any way but on foot. Please help me.