Maybe I am having a biased opening right now because I am young and having a lot of troubles with the dating stuff but honestly I think is although technology is progressing really fast . It’s solving most of our problems but still I have noticed technology has failed to solve the problem of frustration due to dating, so I was trying to understand the reason why this is happening maybe is it due to the very high expectations of of the people or is it happening due to We are not able to see that we are same making mistakes again and again, so let’s suppose in the case of woman, I’m quite sure they’re also looking for honest, connections and meeting the Normal people, but since their views are biased they are feeling to recognise the other normal people. they are not able to find the nice people so I was thinking about having a dating app in which it is shown that with how many people this person has talked with so let’s suppose if guy is talking with the 15 girls at a time it need to be shown on the profile that he has having a conversation with 15 girls, or he had talked with almost hundred girls so it will demotivate woman to talk with men who has most desirable characters as shown on their profile, it will make them understand that what they are seeking is also desired by thousands of other girls, and maybe they will try to have a normal standards. Give you chance to other people as well.
It was about twenty years ago, but I have seen how a successful guy uses a dating application. He had twenty or more browser tabs open; I assume young women living near his location, satisfying his criteria. Every chat history started with the same sentence, I think it was "hello princess, how are you today?"; more interesting than starting with mere "hello" but still something that can be copy-pasted. Whenever he got a notification of a reply in some tab, he switched to that tab, spent a fraction of second looking at the chat history and wrote his next reply. I assume he already had a lot of experience with this and was following some script: first ask something personal but not serious (e.g. "do you like music?"), then ask whether she is free today and try to arrange a date. He was doing this as a background task while we discussed some business transaction, and when we finished he already had a girl waiting for him.
So yes, if you are the kind of a guy who is fluent at getting-the-date-scripts, online dating is a huge amplifier of your abilities; you couldn't approach so many women in such short time (while simultaneously doing something else at your home). And if you are not that kind of a guy, well, he is the kind you are competing against.
That said, isn't this just a more extreme version of the already existing offline difference between an extraverted guy who approaches ten different women in a pub every evening, and an introverted guy who approaches maybe one woman in a month or perhaps in a year? More attempts means more overall success, and importantly, it also means more practice, which means more success per unit of effort later.
The obvious response to trying to limit the number of approaches would be guys creating multiple accounts. In Firefox, you can log in as a different user in different tabs -- you create multiple "containers", each of them managing their own cookies and sessions, acting like a different instance of a web browser.
I think that would work the opposite of the way you're expecting; if someone is talking with a hundred girls at a time on a dating website, it means that a hundred girls have reviewed him as being worth talking to. How many other options have that kind of track record?
If it did work the way you think, where talking to people means other people won't talk to you, it would kill the site. You would have to find a partner in your first X attempts or else the site's membership will ostracize you.
I think you may misconstrue what "talking with 100 girls" means. This means they've got 100 tabs open. This is time-wasting behaviour, suggesting that this person is treating the app like a super low effort job application. If one of the hundreds bite, he doesn't need the other 99, so he's unnecessarily clogged the inboxes of 99 people (except, since the tactic works, most guys do it, and on net that means you waste a LOT of time even if you get tons of matches - basically like receiving dozens of resumes that aren't even remotely suitable for the role).
This isn't a failure mode in traditional matchmaking, because there's a kind of social credit score thing going on. Your mutual friends presumably don't hate you, so they're not going to recommend the complete time-wasters.
There's actually a good analogy to financial credit scores here, but a social credit score would be near impossible to implement. But here's a simple concept stolen from finance - banks usually co-ordinate to make sure only one lender approves a person's home loan application. This stops the consumer from wasting their time by mass spamming applications. The credit scores also stop someone from opening like 30 lines of credit by exploiting the fact that the lenders don't know who else is lending.
Making it public knowledge how many people someone is courting could be useful. I imagine that most people would be tolerant of like, 1 - 5 side conversations. We've all done it. Some people would be dead set on 0 side convos - they want to be the only one - and they can match with other people who want exclusive 1 on 1 chats (realistically I think they'd be a decent population but not the majority), and they can match with each other. Everyone would avoid a profile that had like 80 side convos open because that is a guaranteed timewaster, and if you make a new profile that's sockpuppetting or catfishing and is bannable.
You'd have it as a per session thing, it won't be something that follows your account forever. Idk if you should have 2 separate counts - one for the number of people messaging someone, and another for the number of people replied to, but I think that might also be good. In a party, you'd be able to see like 6 dudes lining up to talk to a girl, so you won't waste your time. On tinder, that queue is invisible, and it's too easy to jump to the incorrect conclusion that someone is ignoring you when they're probably just already in a different conversation.
It would make it a little more analogous to the experience of talking to strangers in a real world, physical setting, where you can see how many people someone's already approached, and how many people are already trying to talk to someone. It's still not as good as a physical party (you can't notice someone real-time turn everyone off, for one) but information wise it gets a little closer.
As anyone tried to figure out how many Tom Swifties appear in the actual Tom Swift books? It seems like it might be interesting to investigate, if someone has a way to get the text of the books and run an LLM through them to find the puns.
I submitted it just now. I am confident that I got it correct.
The "code" is just Base64 encoding, which is obvious by the = sign at the end, which is padding, and the fact that the only other special character is a /.
The decoded instructions ask to implement Black-Scholes in Python and calculate option pricing and delta. I'm done that many times before, so I whipped up a quick solution to keep myself in shape.
I'd say it's fairly easy for someone familiar with Python and option pricing. It's probably quite hard for someone who hasn't done that sort of thing before. The fact that they don't clearly identify inputs makes it harder for someone not familiar with the jargon, who might otherwise be technical enough to solve it.
I believe I was mistaken and there are no spoiler tags in Substack. Please consider this a spoiler tag. Do not continue reading if you don’t want to see more possible information for the challenge.
Lewis - if I’m not too late to get your attention and you don’t mind me asking, for your actual values did you get:
This isn’t my field, I had to make some guesses in terms of terminology, and I’m not always the best communicator. Nutty is probably an exaggeration, but again - bashful.
Thank you very much for confirming. I have not heard or seen anything post-submission from DRW. Not surprising, but I was dreading the possibility I would never get confirmation from someone who was actually in / around the field. I hate to have a mystery linger. You’ve done a tremendously good deed today.
This is a clear-cut example of base64 encoding (the '=' at the end is the telltale sign). After this, you get a few simple-looking questions on the Black-Shoals formula.
The "Magic" operation on the CyberChef website can be a useful tool for problems like this.
I assume if I crack it then the reward is the opportunity to apply for a job that I could have applied for anyway.
Definitely some weird repeated all-caps sequences. Upper vs lower case seems to be significant. I'd start by seeing if there's anything interesting about the distribution of characters and the transition probabilities.
Yeah probably. I don’t care about whatever reward there is; I just want to be able to brag to my friend about the cleverness of SSC commenters/readers.
The prevailing culture for 100 years has been harm reduction. It's not about creating the positive, it's about reducing the negative.
In other words, it's all about putting fires out instead of building them.
And if you ask the people most advanced in this way of thinking to describe a heroic version of their belief system, all they can do is describe someone who doesn't commit any of the horrible sins. (At most, they will engage in the positive act of telling other people to stop engaging in negative acts).
Today's time is defined by our global awareness. This is a great achievement. And it's held up as one by those who trumpet "awareness" and "education" and nouns like that. We know about all the biggest wildfires burning around the world at any given time. We know them intimately, scene by scene, news cycle by news cycle. We will always be like this, because we are proud to be aware and educated and think others should do it more as well.
It can be stressful, though. 100 years ago, millions of people would die of a famine, and most people were unaware and were not made sad by it. It sounds heartless, but maybe that's why Nietzsche said that pity was what made pain contagious.
Today is defined by how aware we are of the largest problems going on all the time. Specifically the largest ones in the world, collectively drawing the attention of just about anyone. We're a new sort of thing, a global community that you can join without even talking with anyone, because it's a Schelling point; anyone looking at the largest world problems knows there's a community of others that must be looking at it with them.
People are proud of this because there's a lot of good in it (this is how we will eventually solve our largest problems), but they are sad because they are thinking about bad things all the time. The human superorganism forms by firing alarm bells, but in these the days of its infancy, it also makes everyone feel powerless to do anything.
But if you can't do anything that will work, you can at least do something you know won't work, and try to get other people to fix their attention on the bad things as well. So the integration of new individuals into the superorganism is progressing anyway.
We have doused the world in water for our fear of fire. Harm reduction means, anything that some people like and some people dislike, is extinguished. The negative experience counts, the postive experience doesn't. How dare you try to find happiness at the cost of hurting someone else? How dare you?
This is why we can't have nice things.
If a parade makes 99 people happy, and 1 offended, it will of course be shut down. Rinse and repeat, and you get a world with fewer and fewer fires. Not a lot of blazes tearing through swamps now, are there? Fire is always a sacrifice of something to create something. But if you're not allowed to make the sacrifice of offending others, you're going to end up creating a lot less.
Yet our time feels like a swamp in some ways, fecund, with our appreciation for earthy witches and Shrek.
But the world feels doused of all warmth and yet burning to pieces at the same time. "No one can say anything, no one can do anything" and "Nothing matters, nothing is true" are postmodern symptoms of minimalism. Minimalism means finding all the flaws and removing them: reducing the negative. It's a great and wise way to be, but taken too far, you end up with nothing.
So, there was a modern age, when we thought we knew what was what. We solved this, we solved that. We cured diseases and ended poverty and mass-produced luxury. Foe after foe fell, and 100 years ago, there was a vision of the future in which humanity continued on to utopia through science and tolerance.
But it turns out many of those successes were just low-hanging fruit. We can't just keep solving our problems by removing the bad bits of things forever. That's what postmodernism did to that visionary, modern age, and is doing. But the so-called successes of postmodernism were the result of of it pruning the excesses off of the highly productive modern era. It did not create of itself, but only polished that which another made.
And now that it has run its course and far past it, things feel very empty for a lot of people. Nothing matters, there are 10 global wildfires burning at any given moment, nothing you do in your personal life has any effect on the real problems (so why even bother putting your life in order?), none of the dousing of every flame in sight has been enough, so all you can do is call for a flood unlike any before.
On the climate change front, that's dousing a lot of industry. On the religious front, it means atheism. On the artistic front, empty chaos. On design, sleek, simple, elegant, and (post)modern.
But we have seen the errors of our ways. Some people are saying we need to go back to modernism. But there’s no going back; there never is and there never was. There’s only forward, and bringing along the best of modernism and postmodernism into the next step: metamodernism.
Postmodernism is minimalist; metamoderism is maximalist. It is Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, the best metamodern movie, and the most metamodern of all metamodern movies, which is extra meta-metamodern of it to be.
American has always had a hint of metamodernsim, ahead of its time. The great melting pot, the biggest and the most, the best and the greatest and the most good and the strongest and the best of the best.
But before metamodernism saves the day (before leading to its own unique series of challenges), there is a flood coming. The global community of the news-followers and the biggest problems-trackers is growing. There’s no system in place designed to exercise power based on the beliefs of a group of people at the global scale, not if the group is a minority in each country. But collectively, it is growing past the size of the most powerful countries on the planet. And just because all of that will hasn’t been harnessed systematically yet, that doesn’t mean it’s going to go slow once it happens. Once this unprecedented level of global consciousness and communication finds a way to mobilize, it will suddenly become a global superpower. And its general shape is toward extreme harm reduction. It has been an enemy to fun, and to comedy, and to the sacred (it calls taking anything very seriously “cringe” (fire is the element of cringe, water is the element of cool (but well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder - Hey Jude))).
We will make our own flood. We are getting ready to bring terrible control to bear to snuff out the last sources of harm around the world. And if it turns out that life is the source of harm, then that puts it on the chopping block next.
But I believe the wiser response is more or less inevitable. It’s just a question of how much we’ll suffer along the way. I have high hopes that we can smooth the process as much as possible and close the case on our current problems and get on to our next challenges to face.
Postmodernism is all about removing flaws. So, we look at everyone’s belief systems, and no one can make an airtight case for their system over the others’. Every system can be criticized in a huge way, and remember that ours is the age in which teaching “critical thinking” is the whole purpose of our educational system at its best. This is how postmodernism judges all the modern visions of the world, eliminates them because they all have flaws, and then ends up with nothing.
But we can let go of our critical postmodern approach to relating with each other. We can appreciate the best that is within each tradition. That is the metamodern way. Find all the good and all the beauty within each tradition and love it, and learn from it. Feel for yourself how others find God through their sacred traditions. Loving the good in other individuals and other groups and other systems is the key to understanding what is missing in them as well. Through this love and understanding, we will re-ignite the fires of passion, color, and adventure that have been coolly mocked out of our world. We can re-enchant our lives and find the faith to dream of a bright future again, to get our act together and our families and communities together and solve our problems. We will discover how much we share in common with our brothers and sisters who seek the divine in their other ways, what we can respect and admire about each other, what we can enjoy together and learn from each other.
So with the flood coming, chaos is coming. We have no idea which industries are going to be utterly transformed by AI in the next 5 years. I mean, we don’t know how AI will disrupt things 2 years from now, but we REALLY don’t know what the world will look like 5 years from now. Artists, writers, lawyers, doctors, at least. The education, retail, and restaurant industries are coming.
Maybe we have a model in Peterson’s and Pageau’s Subsidiary Identity. We need strong connections collected into hierarchies so that signals can pass up hierarchy and affect the top-down perception of things and influence its decision-making. Strong people making strong families and communities, getting their cities in order, and so on. Because when you don’t know what to prepare for, you invest in social capital and healthy institutions so you can be ready to mobilize when novel problems present themselves.
I think history has brought us here, from the visions of modernism, which seem somewhat naive in retrospect, to the criticism of postmodernism, which ironically pedestalizes flaw-removal, to the embrace of coming chaos that metamodernism is specialized for. And if we start smoothing the transition into this next step in history, perhaps we can minimize the destruction of the flood.
I very much want to say the perspective of this post is one-sided. No, the world is shittier and way more diverse than described. No, harm minimization is not run its due course any. I live in an autocracy and I need to consciously deter myself from wailing or being angry at some people in the internet because it’s so so much different here. The proverbial parade will be canceled not when 1% of people feel it harmful, the parade will be held if 0.1% of state-aligned people wishes it so, with utter disdain to what others think. There is much to solve.
This is not to say that I don't value open/positive/humane thinking, there's lack of both really. I definitely don't want to say, without any evidence and kindness, that some people just have it very nice and easy and think that others have only problems like theirs, but it sure feels like that sometimes. Maybe doing something with that kind of thinking would be a good idea.
i'm not sure post modernism is harm reduction as opposed to the realization that every abstract idea exists in a world of people and power structures, and this must be kept in mind.
tbh i dont get anything concrete here; the AI thing is more a return to a hard form of modernity in that an elite is top down shaping the world to their idea and fuck people. im not sure what meta modernity can do or plans to from what you write.
> And if you ask the people most advanced in this way of thinking to describe a heroic version of their belief system, all they can do is describe someone who doesn't commit any of the horrible sins.
Notable exception: Effective altruism.
But in general, I agree. Our cultural definition of a good person has been reduced to "one who does nothing". We are not expected to solve problems (that is government's job), we are supposed to stay in the line, and maybe signal virtue by repeating the proper slogan.
On the other hand, every problem is an opportunity. Doesn't this give more power to various subcultures that define their own value systems? (Unless they grow large and get taken over by normies who bring their normie ways.)
> Today is defined by how aware we are of the largest problems going on all the time.
Looking at the largest problems can paralyze you, because on one hand, most of us aren't doing anything useful that directly contributes to solving those problems; on the other hand, everything else can seem smaller in comparison. "What's the point of cleaning my room, when millions in Africa are dying from malaria, and maybe soon an AI will kill us all?"
For me, parenting is a stabilizing experience. No matter what happens, I need to make my kids breakfast every day; I need to take them to school every day; etc. I can't afford to spend my day thinking about Ukraine, Palestine, AI doom, etc. And perhaps more generally, the solution is to be more involved in some local community (where family is the smallest kind of community), where your ordinary actions can make a big difference. By the way, that requires spending less time online.
> We can't just keep solving our problems by removing the bad bits of things forever.
It seems like people (at least some of them) need a certain amount of tension in their lives, and if you merely keep removing their problems, they will... create new problems, for the lack of better ideas. You also need to give them some positive direction to expend their energy. (Or someone else may give them a negative one.)
I think traditionally sport was supposed to be an answer to this? The socially approved way to channel your extra energy into activities that are not anti-social. (Though this also fails with spectator sports. The players at the football field burn their energy pro-socially, but their fans then go and demolish the city.)
...Or we could simply let everything die. Almost all of human history is pre-postmodern, and it was an even worse shithole than it is now. What makes you think things will be different this time? As long as humanity exists, as long as individual agentic life exists, there will be constant conflict and pain and suffering. But it doesn't have to exist. It can be replaced by something better, something free from the cycle of natural selection. Ultimately, humanity can not and should not survive.
If it’s inevitable there’s no need to hurry it along: another N generations are meaningless against eternity for any conceivable value of N that a recognizable homo sapiens will exist.
Don’t race to a red light.
Also, there ain’t nothing capable of replacing humanity that is free of natural selection. AIs are as natural as the air in your lungs in a big old universe context.
Regarding "from the river to the sea" in Germany, the situation is more complicated than the correction says. German law forbids the usage of symbols of all unconstitutional or terrorist organizations (think swastikas when used in a fascist context). The law does not name any specific banned symbols or organizations, so that determination is up to the courts. However, states (who run German police departments) write guidelines for their prosecutors and police on what they currently consider banned. In this case, Berlin and several other federal states including Bavaria, added that slogan to their lists.
Some local courts (afaict Cologne and Berlin) have said disagreed saying the slogan is covered by freedom of speech. But that doesn't mean it is “unbanned”, as there hasn't been a decision on it by a high court (and, incidentally, German courts are not as bound by precedent as one may imagine coming from the US system). The authorities in Bavaria (Germany's arguably most conservative federal state) seems to maintain their position and it is plausible that a Bavarian court would ignore the decisions from Berlin and Cologne.
There is also a relatively famous retired German judge, Thomas Fischer, who says the slogan is forbidden, but not because it is a symbol of a terrorist organization, but because using it is constitutes an endorsement of the crimes of Hamas (which is also forbidden, but by another law): https://www.lto.de/recht/meinung/m/frage-fische-jubel-terror-hamas/7
Breathlessly "including" sexually-disoriented female impersonators in the tent -- while categorically rejecting Jews --tells me all I need to know. The gender phantasm supersedes reality. Still, I was blind-sided by the "progressive" zombies. Is it gentile self-hatred?
Who knew they already had the brown shirts and jackboots in their closet? When the IDF cleanses Gaza of Hamas, and sweeps it into the sea, I hope they'll take the time and do the work to eliminate Hezbollah and the Houthis.
But when the nightly news propagandists and terrorism fans stage the Suffering Palestinians pageant, they still won't hold Hamas to account, and demand they explain why they have created such suffering for the people who elected them, as well as the Israelis.
Hamas could stop the fighting at any time -- by surrendering and freeing the hostages. But criminal sociopaths aren't inclined to do the intelligent thing: they're busy grooming another generation to hate Israelis. Machiavelli 2.0.
I feel bad for Purpleopolis. Sure, that comment seems to generalize as if all liberals were in the same category and could have been written in a more targeted way - but did you notice all the liberal support for Hamas? It's not pretty.
I think with a more active mod team, a temporary ban would have been more appropriate. But I can imagine Scott looking over their posting history, and deciding that he doesn't want to devote his time and energy toward using a cycle of temp-bans and monitoring to improve this particular poster. So he picked a comment that was egregiously false and unkind, and skipped straight to a preemptive permaban.
Purpleopolis had a habit of putting everything in maximally inflammatory terms. I interacted a bit here and there, and I didn't think they were a troll, just someone with "trapped priors" or "pyschopolitical trauma" or whatever it is. The problem was that they couldn't seem to let go, and weren't able to back off the extreme claim, admit that it was an overreach, and then reformulate what they said in a way that was true and insightful and added to the conversation. There may have been light somewhere in the heat, but it would be hard to find without getting burned.
That's not an isolated incident. I randomly looked up Open Thread 295 and Purpleopolis' first searched comment is hyperbolic trolling. I'm sure it would work for others too.
It's not, but that's a stupid game to play. Plenty of people on both sides have grossly hypocritical opinions. This should be a given. A productive discussion needs to turn on specifics: Person X said Thing Y, here's why that's bad, and here's why it matters to the world at large. That sort of thing.
If you're not doing that, you're not advancing any real form of discussion. You're just bringing heat and not light.
Hi, I've only been commenting here for a couple of months so there's a good chance you don't know who I am or what I'm up to.
What I'm up to is making the world a place a place I'd like (even) more than society as it currently is.
Thus far most of my audience is compromised of people with religious sentiments and jargon of the monotheistic tradition. Probably because my credentials are as an ordained orthodox rabbi.
But what we want is similar to what most people want. What you want. All I can do is speak the language of my audience.
I snuck an introduction to dawkinsian memetics into my recent video and, judging by how poorly that single minute did as a youtube short (1 Like per 100 views) vs how well the full video did (1 like per 30 views) I think I struck the right balance of scientific thinking within a video otherwise filled with religious language.
But of course, just as there are shorthand terms that I can use with Bible Appreciators that would leave areligious rationalists unmoved, there are concepts and understandings that would take a lot of heavy lifting to explain to the aforementioned demographic which could be more easily understood and built upon by people of a decidedly rational bent.
So I hope that you will watch my video with an open heart and a curious mind, and invite others to join us of similar discernment.
Each of us have only so many days left. Our society is disappointing. It's plain that a million things could be made better with a tad of charitable listening, friendly assumption, and public aknowledgment of the very many truths that we know but for reasons of practicality we pretend not to know for our safety.
The crown of kingship lies in the gutter, let us rescue it with our bravery and invite the better world that all previous generations dreamed of.
Or at least join a cool movement of people having real fun while so few others dare to do so.
This excites me - is it possible to build a memetic bridge? Finding religious thinkers that can serve as a foundation, using religious practices or concepts as metaphors to explain rationalist concepts?
Religion was holistic and incorporated every aspect of life.
As the power holders got worse and worse, all while claiming to be speaking for The Ultimate Itself a rightful rebellion broke out which decided to get rid of this whole Ultimate/God concept entirely rather than simply seeking to replace Its supposed earthly representative.
In the process a million good and useful concepts were tossed out with the rest of the religious jargon.
That left human society bereft of a great deal of necessary and essential understanding --- for which they currently have no words.
As explained explicitly in this video, I am not claiming to represent any particular religious community or faith. I simply have the language and both academic and experiential knowledge of the traditions, which offers me additional wells from which to draw for our world as it is today.
Cool! What I'm curious about is your idea of attracting areligious rationalists. I have a hunch they might not mix very well, with potential discordance ending up counter-productive.
Heck, Catholics and Lutherans have difficulty mixing! I've heard told that there are even men and women married to each other who don't mix very well.
But we do what we can. And we take the poison we receive as medicine, and the love we receive woth appreciation but not too much.
This is a human endeavor, and fun.
The Divine Fact will decide the degree of our success but it's a good time and damn wel mkre meaningful than anything else we could be doing.
All I hope is that enough helpful funders arrive before the human facts of my own digestive system, and the world's nuclear system end it all.
But whether the would-be Gifters do awaken in time or not, I'm having a fun time and it feels darn good.
Here's a less religiously friendly video than those you may have seen. The view count is skewed by a less than reputable "promoter" I found through Fiverr back at that time, but it's probably good that it appears among the most popular videos together with the more religious ones.
Also, the video from Tijuana appears quite highly. But that's because the original title mentioned Zona Norte, and a great many hornballs found it through that precise search.
I've since removed the "sexy" terms and have received nearly zero views for the video but I keep it public lest anyone mistake my beliefs and means as puritanically pious.
If you dig what I'm doing, please let people know.
If you have fond memories of the first season of the show "True Detective," you might be interested to know that the fourth season launched last week. This season is set in Alaska, and has a pair of detectives investigating the disappearance of a group of scientists. As in the first season, there's some grotesque violence, plenty of back-woods baggage, and some mystic woo. And there are connections to the first season: the names Cole and Tuttle have featured prominently. Recommended, based on the first two episodes.
Surprisingly I just watched the first season the other day, 10 years later than everyone else.
I was recommended it because I really liked Fargo and was looking for something else interesting to watch (I find most TV/movies super boring) and True Detective.
On that note, check out Fargo Season 5. Season 3 and 4 were crap and 5 makes up for it.
I see the spiral thing is returning this season too. Be interesting to see if the writers can tie it back to season one.
I thought the first season was fantastic. It had a couple of plot holes but Matthew McConaughey‘s character was a blast. ‘Hold it Nietzsche!’ ‘Time is a flat circle.’
I’ve watched the first two episodes of this season too. The first episode didn’t really work for me but I was drawn in by the second.
What the hell, I’ll watch Jodi Foster in just about anything.
There's a new clinic treating depression using the methods of the Heligenfeld clinics in Germany. They claim that this is a successful method. Comments?
Apart from talking somewhat about psychosomatics, spirituality and holistic approaches, I don't see very much new or revolutionary. And they aren't a "new clinic" either, they exist since 1990 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligenfeld_Kliniken
Agreed. The branch(?) opening near me makes the claim about their approach being tested and found to work. I'm just wondering if this claim can be sustained, but I suppose any claim of success in this area should be treated with a little skepticism.
Chrome usually offers to translate the page; not sure what the popup is. Thanks for trying. Running my translator on the home page an excerpt says: "We are one of the leading clinic groups in Germany with a focus on psychosomatic medicine. We are unique in terms of therapy diversity, value orientation and holisticity."
Yes, but that's just the introduction so far, and is utterly vague. If you can get out from under the popup and get a translation of what the whole page says about their methods I'll give you my thoughts. Maybe it would be useful to translate the popup. Probably if you check something off on the popup it will go away, but you have to know what it says to do that.
Has any done a deep analysis of the art market post-AI?
I used to believe it would morph from the ludicrous money-maker of the 2010s into a sort of small-scale handicraft goods market a-la Etsy, but when you stop and think, maybe this idea doesn't hold water. Etsy handicrafts survive largely for two reasons: (1) They're made of high-quality materials that mass manufacturers don't use, and (2) they're hand-made which means broadly higher quality compared to retail goods. The problem is that point (1) is irrelevant for digital art, and point (2) is irrelevant because, unlike e.g. assembly-line "handicrafts" made for Walmart, there is no financial pressure to cut corners or use cheaper materials. When you tell an AI to paint a robot like Van Gogh, it's going to do a great job. Maybe you disagree -- AI Van Gogh paintings have inferior composition, much worse shading, all the strokes are painted the same way, etc. But you must realize 90% of the public cannot see these details. To them, AI Van Gogh is already near perfect.
Now, AI art is absolutely everywhere. Clearly it's good enough for most people (Low standards or whatever, but hey). So this sector of "generic, but competent" artists is taking the biggest hit. Particularly for things where people don't care about the art, but some kind of art is assumed, so they hire an illustrator for cheap. This market was probably never lucrative since asset libraries, stock images, and subtle plagiarism has been kicking at its heels for ages. AI has utterly transformed this sector of art, and things will never be the same. But then we have the Patreon/Pixiv market of artists with unique styles. We know that AI can replicate virtually any style to a decent degree. But surprisingly, this doesn't seem to be threatening this other sector of art very much.
There's 2 ways to view this. Naturally, clients who seek out a particular artist for a commission will have much higher art standards, and find AI art unsatisfying. While an AI version of someone's style could be cleaned up into a good product, right now that requires art skill which limits who can do it. But is there a risk that someday, AI art stops spitting out monstrosities with 7 fingers on a single hand, and miraculously gains the composition knowledge and brush techniques to faithfully imitate Van Gogh? Yeah, absolutely it's gonna happen eventually. The question is, will this replace all artists? Ultimately, I don't think so.
There's a part of human psychology which compels (most of) us to pay things we can easily get for free. On paper, pirating could easily kill the games industry, but in practice it's left hardly any impact. Hell, many people pirate games to try them out, and if they like them, they buy the game on Steam. Same goes with the "Pay what you want" model of digital goods. You're free to pay $00.00, but in practice most people pay $3.00 or $5.00 or $10.00. So when we have Patreon or Pixiv artists with a unique style, we feel that using AI to copy their art is like piracy. Naturally, a contingent of people will "pirate" the work, but most people feel compelled to reward the artist for their deed and pay anyway. In fact, you'll notice most AI art isn't even in the style of any particular artist -- the guys paying Patreon subs aren't chomping at the bit to replace their favorite artists with AI. The market just continues as before, unbothered.
So in other words, there's no need to speculate whether the consumer art market will turn into Etsy or not. Because we know what kind of market it is -- it's like Steam -- and even when you can obtain a 1:1 copy of the product for free, 99% of people will pay anyway.
I want to buy some cool AI-generated glicee-printed art for my walls, but I don't know anywhere that sells it.
(I'm sure I could find some online if I _really_ wanted, so my actual motivation level is low, I'm really just saying that I'd buy some if there was a good AI art gallery near my house.)
To correct any misconceptions people may have about the California Forever project (terrible name btw), I'll quote this from their promotional material:
"And the plan we have put forward is not ”sprawl” either - it’s medium-density, high-quality urbanism. And again, the plan even has a legally binding minimum density standard to make sure we hold ourselves accountable to our walkability goals. We are literally prohibiting ourselves from building sprawl."
> I guess it's too much to hope for someone in California to propose letting property owners make their own decisions about density
I mean, if someone in Californiaforevertown wants to buy up a whole street of medium-density housing to knock it down and give themselves a giant backyard, are they going to be prohibited?
Such a prohibition is probably unnecessary; in desirable areas the density of housing will inevitably approach the maximum legal density permitted, that's just economics.
I'm not sure what it means to let property owners make their own decisions about density; they can do what they like on their own property but that doesn't make a meaningful contribution to the overall density of your area.
No, oddly enough. That one is the nightmare of the California life gone wrong, but it's individualist consumer decadence, not the kind of State power that "California Forever" evokes in me. Neither did I think of "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
I read _Meditation on Moloch_. I would like to suggest the reading of a very short tale to anybody who wants to keep meditating on that issue: _Useless Beauty_ by Guy de Maupassant.
Has anyone watched a film called Bodies Bodies Bodies?
I watched it last night and decided that rational fiction it ain't but the main character's cleavage made up for the fact that everyone onscreen was an idiot.
Then I googled the film afterwards and found out it was supposed to be a comedy. This was a bigger twist than anything in the film itself. We'd just watched it all the way through and there were no hints or foreshadowing at all.
I laughed exactly once, and that was in incredulity at the dialogue. (All the way through, we were wondering whether the screenwriter was Gen Z and this was how they actually sounded, or whether they were 30 years old and trying their best to sound like Kids These Days. The lines that made me laugh were the ones that made me come down hard on hypothesis B.)
The internet says the film was actually a parody/satire of Gen Z - if I'd known the film was actually trying to be funny with those lines I don't think I'd have laughed at them.
Anyway, two good reasons to watch the film, and scriptwriting these days has gone to the dogs.
There are these Youtube videos "Breaking Bad, the Sitcom", where the funniest scenes are flavoured with canned laughter. It works really well, and you see what a great comedian Bryan Cranston is.
I continue to publish things, this time a sort of journal-entry on what it's like to be in my 3rd year of psychiatric residency. Much less technical than what I usually write, which was a nice break from feeling like I need to relentlessly research every statement I make. I think you might enjoy it if you've ever been curious about what psychiatry training is like
Can someone who works in the field or "understands the science" at a deep level explain how the image manipulations that apparently have prompted requested retractions of six and corrections of 31 papers by Harvard researchers could be interpreted as anything other than deliberate, serious misconduct? (See: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/22/dana-farber-issues-corrections/ and https://forbetterscience.com/2024/01/02/dana-farberications-at-harvard-university/). The WSJ (gated, unfortunately) article on the papers and researchers quotes an uninvolved scientist as saying that some of the "errors" are "straightforward mistakes." (On the other hand, he says, “There’s a handful that seem more egregious.”) It could be that the issues are too technical to understand without an adequate technical background. I'm a little skeptical, though, having a much better understanding of the plagiarism issues that have surfaced in the social sciences and humanities and the attempts to dismiss them as "sloppy citation practices."
It really is clear that in the bottom left part of the image the first pair of blots and the second pair are identical. Not knowing how this image is produced, I have no idea how likely it is that this happened by mistake. If the person writing the paper had to assemble the figure from a bunch of separate photos it does seem plausible that somebody could accidentally stick one pair in twice that way. Besides, if somebody wanted to fake the actg results it would have been very easy in Photoshop or another image editor to alter the second of the 2 duplicate pairs of blots so that it had the same favorable characteristics for one's results, but had small differences in shape and density to distinguish it from the first pair.
>Besides, if somebody wanted to fake the actg results it would have been very easy in Photoshop or another image editor to alter the second of the 2 duplicate pairs of blots so that it had the same favorable characteristics for one's results, but had small differences in shape and density to distinguish it from the first pair.
That's exactly what they did. Check the image again—the right pair is squished. I swore you were wrong at first about it being duped, because the horizontal compression was enough to fool my eyes until I zoomed in and saw the little "knobs" on the bottoms of the bands.
I've run gels and done Western blots before. If you're dumb enough to fuck up the figures this bad on accident, I don't trust your data anyway.
Oh, you're right, the right-hand pair is shortened laterally. But still, that's such a subtle change that anyone who looks carefully at the 2 pairs will recognize them as the same. So the shortening doesn't work as a way to hide the evidence. You'd need to change the outline of the blots some, which would be very easy to do.
<If you're dumb enough to fuck up the figures this bad on accident, I don't trust your data anyway.
Yeah, seems very sloppy. But sloppiness and deliberate deception are different, and I'd like to know which it was. Seems to me the case for sloppiness is much stronger. Anyone results-faker with a lick of sense would alter the outline of the blots a bit so none were identical.
>You'd need to change the outline of the blots some, which would be very easy to do
Easier said than done, actually! You can't just MSPaint it, an image like that has enough subtle gradations—particularly at the borders of the blots—that a blotch of black pixels sticks out like a sore thumb. I'd encourage you to try it—open up GIMP or whatever you've got and try to alter the borders without it looking weird.
Maybe it's easy if you've got the new photoshop or something, but how many scientists do?
This is why transformations/stretches, duplications, tilings—the sort of thing people were discussing downthread—are the most common tools in image fraud.
Duplication + slight stretch takes 2 clicks and will probably get by 99% of people, even side-by-side. Throw in a flip-horizontal, you're a criminal mastermind...and smooth, too, because you've got plausible deniability. If you used a blot image from someone else's paper, maybe people would be less likely to notice the duplication...but it's a lot harder to argue that it might've been an honest mistake, if you DO get caught.
You can see on the bottom that now there are 3 pairs of blots. The middle one is unchanged. The one on the right is darkened. The one on the left is changed in shape. This took me 5 mins. and was very easy. Anyone who can sort of stagger thru Photoshop and do basic things could do it.
Wow, you should get into scientific fraud, you'd be top tier!
FR though I think you're overestimating how many biologists have photoshop. More to the point, the nubs on the bottom of the bands that clued me in to them being a duplicate are still there, and this is what I was saying about more intricate manipulations being higher-risk, in that there's no room for ambiguity about your intentions. Maybe less likely to be caught by reviewers, but career-ending in the event that you are. I also don't know how your shoop would stand up to the kind of automated image fraud detection software that people like Bik use—might leave some clear signatures.
Idk, maybe I'm being unfair bc of bias, but my biases come from having seen the extent of this kind of behavior in academia and biological research, so 🤷🏽♂️
I've never done any medical research but I've done astronomical research that involves image manipulation. Typically you have some raw data, and then you need to pick some kind of colour mapping that makes the features you're looking at more obvious.
Depending on the software you were using, maybe there's other filters you can apply, e.g. a "brighten edges" filter. Applying this filter destroys the one-to-one mapping between signal strength and pixel colour so you shouldn't be using it in published work (at least not without explaining the exact procedure which has been used) but it's easy to imagine that someone doofus might apply the wrong filters without realising what they did.
I don't know the details of this case, I'm just speculating on how an innocent mistake could result in "manipulated" images.
That's interesting and helpful. Something similar to that could explain a category of the medical image issues. A different category of image manipulation appears to be copying parts of images (like a snipped screenshot, essentially) and then pasting the snipped copies in either the same image or in other images, sometimes in the same orientation or, surprisingly often, after rotating the copy. That strikes me as something that requires time, deliberation, and care.
My random question is: I am not certain but it seems as most people in the rationality-sphere are moral anti-realists (I am not). How does this jive with also being an effective altruist? I.e., wouldn't moral realism help motivate EA's better?
Metaethics is about what makes ethical statements true, not about what first order moral beliefs to take. Utilitarianism is compatible with all metaethical theories unless you stipulate a semantic thesis like "All moral statements in support of utilitarianism are false."
I think that "morality" is a mix of values and strategies, sometimes difficult to disentangle.
For example, lying to people is wrong in two ways: (1) incorrect beliefs can get them hurt, and (2) when people find out that you are lying, they will no longer trust you.
The former is a question of values. If you don't really mind that other people get hurt (or if they are your enemies, so you want them to get hurt), then for you this is not an argument against lying. The latter is a question of strategy, credibility is an asset, in some situations it can be useful when you enemies know correctly that they can trust you about some things (for example, something happens that could kill both you and your enemies, so you need to make a truce and cooperate on removing the danger).
I am an anti-realist about values. There are already psychopaths among us who don't care about hurting others. If we had a magical pill that could make a spider 2 meters tall and give it IQ 200, the spider probably wouldn't share our moral intuition. So I see human values as "something that (some) humans have" rather than "something that any intelligent being must inevitably have".
But I might be a realist about strategies. Game theory is math, which does not depend on you species.
So from my perspective talking about "moral realism" is confusing, because I expect one side to keep saying "but values evolve!" and the other side to keep saying "but game theory!" as if one somehow disproves the other.
I think the argument that "something that any intelligent being must inevitably have" is real is an extrapolation on how morals would necessarily develop in a pure materialist universe (i.e. no God or outside force creating morality).
If humans developed morality, it would necessarily be for good practical reasons. We can quibble on details, but there's a direction to morality that consistently points towards rules and goals that help society function "better" in some predictable way. If this is true, then a spider-man or an AI would also eventually come to the same conclusions (provided the social or environmental pressures were the same or similar enough - I would say a society where mutual cooperation is valuable, which would be most). A genius spider living among humans would act like a human, including in morality, as doing otherwise would become counterproductive to their goals - specifically when humans kill the spider for being anti-social. Sociopaths don't ignore the moral goals, and often follow the outward appearances involved. They just ignore morality when they think they can get away with it and doing so benefits them. That most of us seem to have something inside us that encourages us to follow morality even when we can identify benefits of doing otherwise is ultimately a benefit to us, as we are far less likely to mess up and break a moral code in a way that gets us in trouble with broader society.
>How does this jive with also being an effective altruist?
the same way that people believe determinism eliminates the possibility of free will: you acknowledge that logic and reason imply one thing, then forget about it and live your life as normal.
(i'm actually a determinist and moral anti-realist, so i'm being serious, not just strawmanning).
I always thought the only requirement was that rationalists be dogmatically overconfident about whatever metaethical views they happened to hold-- and that the majority were cocksure utilitarians, with only a minority of cocksure moral skeptics.
I think that depends on what you mean by "realism". Personally, I don't believe that there's some sort of a dualistic moral code that exists independently in a realm of pure forms etc.; but that doesn't automatically mean that morality is totally arbitrary, either -- because physical laws do in fact exist (well, probably), regardless of whether one believes in them or not.
Yeah I suppose it's also possible that a spectrum of moral realism <----> moral anti-realism positions are valid, too. I might be anti-realist on the level of, say, across the space of all possible types of organisms or intelligences or even more so on the level of universes, when all such things are unknown or allowed to vary. I would probably still say that there are deducible truths that are implied by other contingent facts of nature, and I would probably still call that "realism."
Huh, I don't believe in moral realism and I think I'm relatively (morally) motivated.
I think it's a bit of a mistake to think of motivation stemming from a fountain, and the more virtuous the fountain (it's real, everyone agrees on it and so on) the more motivating it is.
Ultimately motivations, including moral motivations are caused by normal drives, be it peer approval, desire to stick to some set of aesthetically pleasing principles or just innate desire, except it's pro social so adding moral elements to it is advantageous in some way.
The fact that some stories have the ontological tag of "real" and some have the tag of "non real" seems mostly orthogonal to how strong drives are.
Well, the above is *obviously* what a non realist tells themselves.
The argument for moral realism seems to me to be like a consequentialist argument for believing something that isn't true because holding the belief would create better outcomes. My impression is that that's something that "rationalism" tries very hard to avoid, but maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here? It's certainly a decent argument for being religious, and rationalism has roots in the Internet atheism wars of the early 2000s, so I wouldn't expect rationalism to embrace the argument outright.
> My impression is that that's something that "rationalism" tries very hard to avoid, but maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here?
Once you know that X is false, how exactly do you make yourself "believe in X"? Especially if you are aware that you are trying to make yourself believe a false thing for the purpose of higher productivity or something. I think that no one sane can actually do that.
What a non-rationalist can do instead, is to make themselves "believe *that* they believe in X". That is *not* the same thing, but most people are confused about the difference.
The difference is basically, that if you ask a honest believer about X, they will say something like "X is true, obviously" and "people who think X is false are simply mistaken". If you instead ask a honest believer-in-belief about X, they will say something like "believing in X is useful, therefore I believe in X" and "people who think X is false are depriving themselves of the wonderful benefits of the belief in X". But these are two quite different states of mind.
(To make things more complicated, it is possible to simultaneously believe in X and believe that X is useful, but this sounds more like "X is true, obviously; and by a lucky coincidence, it is also useful to believe in it; but X would be true even if it didn't have any practical advantage at all".)
A rationalist who understands how beliefs work can't even make themselves falsely believe-in-belief, because the falsity is too obvious. You can make yourself believe in false things you are confused about, not false things you clearly see as false.
It could be interesting to measure whether belief-in-belief is as motivating as the belief proper. I would expect it to be motivating less, but still a non-zero amount. (So maybe still worth it. But not an option for a rationalist, anyway.)
I think it does happen, but that's the tradeoff. (With, of course, the caveat that sanity isn't binary, and even if it's modeled as scalar, what's a little SAN loss among friends?)
> "X is true, obviously; and by a lucky coincidence, it is also useful to believe in it; but X would be true even if it didn't have any practical advantage at all"
But it seems to me that this pattern is very very very common, and so my conclusion is that it's not so much a corner case, as (somehow) a default state for human cognition. :-( Like, I think it's some form of "Stockholm Syndrome", where when it's convenient to believe something, the unconscious mechanisms of our brains make us actually believe it. And I'm skeptical of the potential for rigorous mental training to protect against this.
Anyway, what I was trying to get at was the tension between "rationality as truth-seeking" and "rationality as systematized winning", and I'd be interested to hear what you have to say on that?
I think the traditional response is that (1) rationality wins on average, not in every single situation, and (2) sometimes half-rationality can be worse than either alternative. If rationality makes me choose better goals, but gives me less motivation to achieve them (because now I can only draw motivation from true thoughts, rather than from all possible convenient thoughts)... I guess the outcome will depend on various circumstances.
Seems to me that a strong source of motivation is having an aligned community. Effective altruists do not need to take their energy from the belief in moral realism; they can simply see their effort as satisfying their own personal preferences (regardless of whether some hypothetical impersonal cosmic force would agree or disagree) while supported by a community of effective altruists who cooperate on the same goal.
Who needs moral realism when you have effectively-altruistic friends?
But if you have neither the effectively-altruistic friends nor the belief in moral realism... yeah, that is probably very demotivating.
More generally, I think that it is much easier to "win systematically" if you are not alone in that attempt. Too bad there are not enough rationalists around some of us. We have not figured out (yet?) how to "raise the sanity waterline".
Case in point, it was being a moral realist that eventually led Leah Libresco (who was fairly active in the Rationalist "movement" back in the day) to become a Catholic. Religious types aren't really welcome in the Rat-sphere: The Sequences assume that whoever is reading them is an atheist, and it's a fairly good assumption to make.
FWIW I think it's pretty straightforward to be both an atheist and a moral realist. You can consider moral "laws" to merely be deducible facts about what is right and wrong once you've chosen other arbitrary features of reality (what kind of being are you, how does physics work, how does society function, how do minds function, what do minds want, how do they best achieve what they want, etc.).
See, I really want this to be true, not the least because that's halfway to solving AI alignment right there (as in, John C. Wright's "The Golden Age"). But I don't actually think it is true; I've yet to see a formulation that does more than sound good, the way a lot of philosophy sounds good at first blush.
But who knows, maybe the problem is just that humans are half an order of magnitude too stupid to actually perceive the truth and make use of it.
I don't disagree that you can be an atheist and a moral realist, but I don't know how philosophically stable combining those two beliefs is. If morality exists in the same way that the laws of physics exists, it's hard to see how we could ever understand it the way we understand the laws of physics. We can observe physical objects and experiment on them to create more useful observations, but how can you observe (or measure) morality?
Leah put it this way in an interview:
"What persuaded me was definitely pushing hard on the question of: How is it we come to know truth? We just can’t kind of bootstrap our way up the way we can with mathematics because mathematics is abstract and true and beautiful. So we can kind of bootstrap our way up because there are things in the physical world that are so apparent to us it doesn’t obviously require any supernatural intervention to know “How did we wind up understanding mathematics?” The basics of addition are graspable just from physical analogies. You can get to all of math just from having integers [whole numbers].
"But morality doesn’t work that way. It’s not as easy as decod[ing] the building blocks of the world around us. [I realized that] my grip on whether ethics existed was more tenuous than whether mathematics existed. So the question is: Where is that kind of knowledge coming from if it’s not something I’m building up from very elementary building blocks around me?"
"Ultimately, I had three propositions that didn’t fit well together: That there was no God. That morality was not dependent on humans — it was not something made, but was something transcendent outside us. And that I didn’t seem to have a way to reach something transcendent on my own. You can’t believe all three at once. So which one will you give up? The one I was definitely most certain about is that morality was transcendent. I kept puzzling away at the third, trying to find out a way to do it. I kept running into problems. Ultimately, the one I decided to give up of those three propositions was there isn’t a God. And it was [through] my conversations with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox friends that I recognized the God they were talking about as the type of God I had been creeping up on without noticing it."
It feels like you also need some kind of grounding axiom like "it is good, all else equal, for minds to get what they want". That's the bit that I'm anti realist on; I agree that if you buy that plus fundamental logic, you get most of the rest.
I was trying to explain the water cycle to my kid. (The child is less than two months old and fell asleep halfway though. This was more an exercise in talking to it lots so it hears English. Nevertheless, there will be a test and if the child fails to demonstrate an acceptable amount of knowledge I'm going to throw it in the pond.)
Anyway, I started with how water is a useful liquid, but how the water particles near the top can easily get warm and bounce out of the liquid and into the air. Which means that the air around you is actually full of water. You can feel when the air is more wet or dry, and we call that the "humidity". The amount of water the air can hold is related to how hot and/or pressurised it is. So when you're in the shower you can feel that the air itself is really humid; if you stop running the hot water, the temperature falls and the air itself gets drier as the water condenses onto the shower glass. You can then watch as the water forms little droplets and runs down the glass as a liquid again, back to join the water on the ground.
Then I mentioned you can scale the whole thing up and, because air gets colder the higher you go, the water condenses (around dust particles instead of the shower glass) and that's how you get clouds. Then we went on a lengthy digression about surface tension and erosion, as I tried to explain how water flows in neat streams and rivers even though rain falls evenly across the whole surface of the land. Then, there being too many witnesses at the pond, I took the child home.
The thing is, when I try to remember how I myself learned about the water cycle - I have one image of a circle of four words ("precipitation", "evapouration", etc) joined by brightly coloured arrows. I think they might even have pushed the boat out and drawn a picture next to each arrow for me (a cloud, a river, etc). But that was it.
Missing from that picture was any visceral understanding of what it is that's going on. I was able to match the label with the definition and the icon, which counted as Knowing It at the time, but which I don't feel counts as Knowledge now.
I can think of many occasions where we were learning stuff and all we were actually doing was just remembering how different tokens related to each other. And it was always a pet peeve of mine, even through University, when the format of the diagrams/illustrations (through their choice of arrow colour, etc) implied some logic about the subject that wasn't true in reality.
Thing is, if I don't count knowing the word "precipitation" to be real Knowledge, but I do count being able to talk about shower condensation and humidity and rivers flowing downhill and so on: what is the real property I'm trying to quantify here?
In the past I've held that you can dissect Science subjects into [Facts to Memorise], [History of X], and [problem solving], where I mentally see the facts to memorise as collections of colourful diagrams, animations, interactive minigames, etc, the history as the story of how we learned all these colourful facts in the first place, and the problem solving is basically the completely separate skill of Maths/Stats/Engineering, just using whatever equations this particular field of science chose to hand to you.
But the extra quality I'm looking for above isn't on the problem-solving side, yet it's not just memorising facts (ie, tokens and symbols.) It's something more interesting that entails being conversant with systems, able to visualise interactions and predict outcomes, etc.
I'd like to put whatever that is in a bottle and work out how you teach it.
I'm sympathetic to your point, but right now you're explaining things for your own amusement, not for the education of a child.
I have a four year old, and I used to think that if I could just explain complicated science stuff to her in the right way then she'd get it. But it doesn't work. I try to explain things like atoms and her eyes glaze over, her brain just isn't ready for the fact that there's things that are not only too small to see, but much much much smaller than the things that are too small to see. Her brain, which boggles at the number 100, is not ready for the number 6.26e23. You or I can look at the world and see a dance of octillions of buzzing molecules, but kids just aren't ready for that.
When you teach the water cycle for the first time, you have just a limited number of facts which you can cram into a child's tiny brain before they've had too much. The fact that ocean water evaporates and turns into clouds and that's where rain comes from -- that's quite enough for a first pass at the subject.
His child is sick, and he told it: "If you tell me where you're hurting, later when you're ready I'll buy you a nice motor-bike." But it wouldn't cooperate, it's simply contumacious! OK, it's six months old and cannot speak, but it could at least point to where it hurts.
As for what I think would be helpful, I think your story is really good. I would suggest:
Not talking about what we discovered and ask how they think the system works before explaining it, that way non intuitive parts become explicit instead of becoming pure hindsight bias.
Trying to relate, in as concrete detail as possible, how we came to know the fact and consequences of it.
I'm going to use "Electrons are a particle." As a similarly concrete example. Since electrons being individual particles means that we can measure the absolute smallest unit of charge, so if you can measure all possible differences in charges to cause an oil droplet to stop falling, then, after many measurements, you can figure out the number consistent with all the charge This is then the number that the smallest charge has.
Why does it matter that they're individual particles? Well because we can now use facts about particles in general to do stuff with electric charge! We can heat up a surface with lots of "loose" electrons on it, and cause them to "boil off". And if we don't have anything in the way we can then try and detect the charge on the other side, hence we can now make the electric equivalent to valves using vacuum tubes!
I get that this example is over elaborate and maybe way too verbose, but the advantage is that there are a lot of spring boards for curiosity. "Why aren't we using vacuum tubes any more?" "Wait, don't fluids also boil off? That doesn't seem particle specific at all!" So 1) there's an easy way to understand how your knowledge is incomplete and 2) ask enough of these and you start seeing commonalities across different physical situations.
This isn't meant to be complete, but this style of question asking is very common among the physics students and professors I talked with in college, and I get the sense that the complete world view you were talking about is very well exemplified by them. It's a common professor flex to forget extremely elementary formulas and then use their prior knowledge to receptive the formula. Not something you can consistently do with just a bag of facts!
This makes me realise I need to update my model from subject = [facts, history, problem solving] to subject = [*model*, history, problem solving]
Where being tested on a fact is "having learned X, Y, Z - tell me what is X?" (which can be answered by basic storage of the tokens used in the explanation) to "having learned about XYZ, where is A/what happens if B occurs?" (which can only be answered by visualising/imagining the whole model and searching/simulating with it.)
All well and good, but you can write down a list of facts, draw a circle around it and declare, "Here, this is Physics, now go and teach it, learn it, test it, boom, curriculum sorted."
I'm now even more interested than I was before in ideas about how you can "write down" a model in the same legible way. In addition to notation, I think there needs to be an extraction process (to get the model out of people's head when they may not themselves know what they know.)
Are you familiar with constructivism? (I mean the original constructivism of Piaget and Vygotsky, not the infamous "radical constructivism".) Because that is precisely about models being more important than facts, and how education is supposed to be about understanding the models rather than memorizing the facts. And of course you can't build a model without some facts... but sadly you can memorize a lot of facts without building the model, which is what many people seem to be doing at schools.
Great little excerpt, cheers for putting it in front of me. The energy/wakalix thing illustrates my hang up about "tokens" vs understanding perfectly.
I do tend to treat terminology with some contempt for just this reason. I will try to answer eg physics questions without using the key term, or if I do have to use it, I'll come at it from some unusual angle or analogy. In doing this I'm trying to put the term in some context that's a bit richer than you'll find in the standard "x is the y of z"-type definitions, to present more handles that could allow someone to grab the concept with. It has the added bonus of infuriating internet pedants everywhere, for some reason.
The pedants sense your power and they are afraid. Having a great idea about what you're talking about means that you can "well actually" to infinity, and people rightfully cower before this talent.
Haha. I have genuinely sat between two people in a pub who well-actuallied each other for a solid two hours. It was awful until I got drunk enough to forget they were there.
Hot stuff (or a little bit of Baader-Meinhof.) Just read the "Housing Theory of Everything" piece from Works in Progress today, which cites Moretti and makes a big deal out of it. Don't know code well enough to assess this on the evidence (and still think we need to build more housing) but a nagging voice at the back of my mind went "did they control for..." while I was reading. glad someone's out there checkin' this shit.
I've got Sleeper Agents on my mind. I've spent last week reading the paper and comments from people online. I have a few comment myself that I'll gather in a separate post, but here I just wanted to say that it feels amazing to be able to see a new field of research at its very beginning!
‘No Way Out’ is only so so. The Americans is 6 seasons of television. It’s upfront about the Jennings being Soviet sleeper agents. It’s set in Reagan era America. If you enjoy watching spy craft play out and the complications of leading a deep cover double life it is very good.
I did too at the time. I enjoyed the last ten minutes quite a bit. I guess the surprise only works once.
It falls into the same category as The Hunt for Red October. It was very topical when in production but the Soviet Union was gone when it was released. Red October was still pretty enjoyable though.
The actress that played Costner’s love interest was disappointed because she did a nude scene that was generally regarded as unhot.
It’s kind of fun a depiction of recent history. Pre cell phone. The era of huge, boxy, ugly, American cars
Over the course of the series the husband develops an appreciation for American consumer culture. ‘Don’t you like all this _stuff_?’ he asks his wife. She remains unambiguously true to the causes though.
Sleeper agents are like whatever it is the facehuggers in Alien implant in someone before they fall off and the person, apparently normal, sits down to supper with his buddies. Except in an AI.
Anyone have any experience in the publishing world? I'm working toward launching a very boutique little publishing company and would love to bend the ear of someone with more knowledge/experience than me.
I published a technical book with a major publisher, and I’m currently working on self-publishing another one. If that works well enough, I’m hoping to grow that into a publishing business. I’m happy to compare notes if you’re interested, just ping me.
"I've been awake for 36 hours straight with the colicky twins, I think a little light distraction catching up on six months backlog of notifications with my fiery burning eyes is just the ticket!" 😀
I recently had an interesting book club experience. It is a group of mostly pretty centrist/heterodox formerly lefty professors/professionals, mostly retired and gay, two serious libertarians. Generally extremely anti-Trump, but also very anti-"woke".
Interestingly this month a very lefty professor comes, who has clashed strongly with the "un-PC" comments of a few of the group before, and is definitely a bit "woke".
Anyway she retired about 5 years ago and sort of stuck up for Gay a bit (basically saying Admins don't do much so who cares about her credentials).
So I put to her my theory that academia is sort of like the monasteries of the late renaissance (still providing a valuable function, but ultimately losing relevance as the primary place where knowledge is produced). I suggested they will need to be replaced by some other model because I just don't think they are salvageable due to their culture.
Anyway her being a lefty, semi-woke, person and a lifelong professor who doesn't agree with me on a lot of things, I expected a lot of pushback, maybe even some dismissiveness/anger.
Instead she told me that when she retired she had the strong sense that she was fleeing a burning building that was about to collapse and that she agrees the current model is super fucked and falling apart.
I'm super-curious about this semi-woke retired prof. Does she not see the connection between her woke beliefs and institutional decay? If so, how does she justify being semi-woke? If not, to what does she ascribe the decay?
I would guess that like a lot of people she just has some weird fences in her mind.
So the 60%?, 80%? of the woke program she ascribes to is great and wonderful. But then she herself can see the excess and issues by going full 100%. She just draws that fence in a different place than likely you or I do.
Like if you have a list of "woke statements", she just agrees with more of them than I do, but not all and she sees the deep problems with going for all of them.
1: Slavery was terrible and it i wonderful it was ended.
2: Jim Crow and other barrier extends for African Americans long past the era of Slavery
3: It is good for society to provide extra recompense to the black community to attempt to redress past wrongs.
4: Some minor preference for black candidates in hiring and education matriculation is an acceptable redress.
5: Black people currently face large day-to-day racial discrimination and race based barrier to success.
6: Income and educational gaps between blacks and white are mostly about racism and caused by racism.
7: Affirmative action and preference hiring don't cause additional racism and don't lead to competency issues due to unfit people advancing.
8: All discrepancies between whites and black are caused by systemic or regular racism and there are no cultural/genetic/environmental factors.
9: White supremacy pervades our day-to-day life everywhere.
10: The way to redress these wrongs is a massive transfer of wealth and educational/professional positions to blacks.
11: Obsessive focus on identity issues is a key element of moving past past racial injustices.
12: Concepts like timeliness and reason and rationality and white supremacy and don't apply to the black community.
13: Capitalism/colonialism/western civilization are filled with white supremacy and need to be abolished and tore up root and branch.
I would get off that train somewhere around item 4. I suspect she would get off somewhere around item 8 or 9.
But she feels immersed in an environment where a bunch of the cultural/political discussion at universities is up in the range of 11-13.
I would point out that she is someone who loves the classical world, so I expect the attacks on "western civilizaiton" and that cultural heritage strike a particular nerve with her.
That is all jsut theorizing and trying to read her mind, but I know her a bit and that would be my guess.
Interesting, thanks for the reply. That makes total sense, actually, but from my perspective the bigger issue is sort of orthogonal to your list. The real problem I have with the woke is how they view those that disagree with them. It's not just that they, say, go all the way up to 10 or 12. It's that they assume that anyone who _doesn't_ go up to 12 is not only wrong but somehow evil and acting in bad faith and therefore shouldn't even be debated. It's a religious certainty. So your friend goes up to 9 or whatever, that's fine. Does she acknowledge that getting off at 4 is a defensible position and maybe that's a perspective that has merit? Or, at the very least, does she recognize that the primary value of academic freedom is tolerating unpopular views and defeating them, if need be, in the realm of open debate? The key evil of woke IMO is its utter intolerance of dissent, so I would judge her more by how she internalized that than by how far up the belief totem she goes. Do you have a read on that?
> It's that they assume that anyone who _doesn't_ go up to 12 is not only wrong but somehow evil and acting in bad faith and therefore shouldn't even be debated.
I've had this happen to me several times when debating conservatives. It's a universal tendency for humans.
I was friends with (and TA for) two of the profs when I was an undergrad and they were still professors (early 2000s), and we have stayed in touch all these years (think monthly lunches). I would guess in both cases I am in their top 20 or so friends (and the reverse).
About 2021? one of them got invited to a book club run by another former student (a decade older than me, is an executive at a large bank) which was at its start seemed to me a sort of a therapy book club for people on the left who hated Trump and Republicans, but became disaffected with the costal elite orthodoxy on the left and their nonsense.
I was myself not quite as much interested in that angle (or maybe just sick of the discussion), but the animating discussion from early on was sort of two main things:
1) How the fuck do so many people support Trump and can they all really be so nihilistic/evil (not sure I totally agree with this one, I see Trump much more as just a collective "fuck you" to the campus/coastal elite orthodoxy and less about people actually supporting him, he is a metaphorical middle finger for a wide variety of disaffected groups).
2) What the hell is this idiocy coming out of campuses Kendi/DEI/ACAB/etc. ? It is the sort of stuff we used to joke about dismissively and treat as intellectual toxic sludge 20 years ago, and somehow has become the prevailing viewpoint on campuses.
The club does cover a wide range of topics, but those are the two themes it seems to come back to semi regularly.
This month we read and discussed an absolutely classic, but we also had some unstructured current events discussion during the later hours and that when we got into Claudine Gay and academia.
There is a minority opinion within libertarianism that prefers dictatorship to democracy on the grounds that a benevolent dictator can reject calls for statist intervention that democracy will embrace, genuflect to Lee Kuan Yew and hope for the best. But A: this is a minority opinion and B: it is utterly dependent on a string of *benevolent* dictators, and C: it's really quite foolish.
The vast majority of us prefer some sort of democracy if we're going to have a government at all. Joe Biden, for all his many faults, is a democratically elected president who has ruled as a democratic president, seeks to be democratically reelected as president, and can be trusted to hand over power peacefully to his democratically-elected successor whether in 2025 or 2029. Donald Trump, since 4 November 2020, has *openly* proposed to install himself as dictator, based only on his unsubstantiated assertion that most Americans voted for him to be a dictator. And he's vindictive rather than benevolent. And it *does not matter* what policies the dictator says he will support; sensible libertarians will just say no to dictatorship.
Now, the one saving grace here is that Donald J. Trump was an incompetent wannabe dictator in 2020, and he's gone downhill since. So it's likely that even if elected president, he wouldn't be able to rule as a dictator like he wants. But you can't be *certain* of that, and he could cause a great deal of lasting damage even in his failure. So really, no, you don't want this. You may want the imaginary version of it, but if you are any sort of libertarian you do not want to risk the reality of it.
Are you serious? I don't want to get all culture war-y or anything, but regardless of his policies certainly you must find him an objectionable person. I consider myself a center-right libertarian, and far more anti-woke than anti-Trump per se, but even I think he's a buffoon and a clearly incompetent leader that represents a real threat to institutional stability. And hey, I get the middle finger protest vote angle. I laughed when he won in 2016 and thought "this will be interesting, let's go enjoy the liberal tears." Even now a good 30% of me spite-hopes that he wins and burns every progressive-captured institution to the ground. But the rational 70% fears the chaos more.
Why? Libertarians aren't anarchists. Some Institutions are very valuable.
Do I want the power of the federal government to be vastly reduced? Yes. Do I think Trump is the person to do a reasonable job of doing that? No. When a semi-incompetent loose cannon who's intensely hated by 40% of the country decides to make extreme slash-and-burn changes to the institutional infrastructure of the federal government, well ... do you like civil war? Because that's how you get civil war.
I agree with almost all of this, right down to the 30%/70% split! (The only exception is that I'm a center almost-libertarian, rather than a center-right libertarian, at least according to a libertarian political quiz that went around in the last month.)
Academia is horribly cruel and exploitative towards adjuncts, post docs and phd students. It is a terrible deal for anyone except the minority of tenured professors. Perhaps a small minority of superstar students who can reliably get a tenured position are getting an acceptable deal as well.
I am extremely leftwing myself. But Academia just isn't something a good faith lefty can defend. Not surprised your comrade couldn't defend it either. Most lefties, myself included, like the ideal of academia and wish things were better. But the current model really is just too fucked and its hard to see paths to sufficient reform.
>> Academia is horribly cruel and exploitative towards adjuncts, post docs and phd students.
I agree on adjuncts but hard disagree on postdocs and soft disagree on PhD students. Our postdocs are pretty well paid (around 70k, which is less than quant finance salaries but comfortably above median wage, and for people in their 20s), and they get a huge amount of freedom. It's a pretty nice life (my postdoc years were great), and nobody is forced into a postdoc position.
For PhD students...they are being paid to learn skills, and y'know, PhD student wage is also pretty close to median wage (ours currently get about 40k). And this for people in their 20s, who are acquiring valuable skills at the same time - skills which will certainly give them the option to make 6 figures upon graduation if they choose to go one of those routes.
The only people who are getting shafted are the adjuncts. The PhD students and postdocs are doing fine.
With one main difference: The monasteries aimed to avoid any new knowledge, just an endless recapitulation of what had already been handed down (as that monk in The Name of the Rose expressed it).
But today's academia is practically the opposite, at the research level anyway, in that practically the sole indicator of merit is novelty. I think that explains much of the more egregious manifestations of wokeness in humanities departments - Academics in those have to try and make a name for themselves by coming up with something new.
"make a name for themselves by coming up with something new"
Well of course. An academic, especially a professor has three jobs: Teach, Research, Outreach.
Only if you make a lot of noise do you get any attention. Andy Grove wrote in 'Only The Paranoid Survive.' That in the future, will be the war for the eyeballs. There are three things which attract eyeballs: Fear, Sex, Novelty.
Thus, everything an academic publishes has to be Fear, Sex, Novelty.
This commentary about academia as a monastery/toxic cult combo made me remember a poem a character named Pursewarden writes in *The Alexandria Quartet*:
I think it's silly to dream of getting rid of a thousand-year-old institution that's a central plank of our society. Firstly it's not going to happen (too many vested interests) and secondly it's probably a bad idea. The university needs reforming, not abolition.
Where would I start? Probably in the way research is funded. Right now there is (in every country) a giant bucket of government money that gets showered haphazardly all over the universities for "research" purposes each year, and the main activity of universities and professors is trying to grab as much of that money as possible.
I would turn off that money spigot. If the government wants to turn money into research, it should hire researchers directly (something like the National Labs) and let them focus full time on their research rather than teaching or getting grants.
Meanwhile, if universities want their professors doing research then that's great, the universities can pay for it out of their own pockets. Harvard can afford to hire top-name professors and give them research funding in exchange for teaching duties. Bowling Green University probably can't afford to, and that's okay, they can have a teaching-only faculty.
> If the government wants to turn money into research, it should hire researchers directly (something like the National Labs) and let them focus full time on their research rather than teaching or getting grants.
I could easily imagine this being even more of a disaster than the current system.
Also, the institutions with `teaching only faculties' already exist, and go by many names. Community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, non-flagship campuses of public universities (except in California, where the non-flagship campuses are still R1) etc.
This assumes the National Labs are fit for purpose. At least in my (and adjacent) fields, the typical professor at an R1 produces more and better research than half a dozen typical National Lab researchers, for all that the professor has to teach and the National Lab researchers don't. And what I've heard from peopple who did e.g. postdocs at National Labs is that they are incredibly siloed and bureaucratic - think the DMV for research, and get almost nothing done. Moving the research enterprise from universities to National Labs would destroy it.
This doesn't mean you can't have research institutions better than the Universities (see the old Bell Labs for exhibit A), but the US government does not appear capable of running them.
ETA: By analogy, the US government currently contracts with SpaceX for space launches. You might think it would be more efficient to turn off the money spigot and just have the government handle its own space launches, but the fact is, the US government no longer has that capability. If it wants space launches, it needs to contract with SpaceX (or similar). Similarly, if the US government wants research done, it needs to contract with universities for it. Maybe in the 1940s the US government had the capability to directly run research labs. It no longer does so. It's not a question of money, its a question of institutional culture and capability.
Then the government can get out of the research business. Hire companies to research specific things for them (like they do with SpaceX and Raytheon and Boeing now). Companies have been doing research for a long time, successfully.
That’s what it does. The companies it hires to do blue sky research are called ‘research universities.’ And they have been doing research for a long time, successfully.
Space X, Raytheon, Boeing et Al don’t do blue sky research. Nor do most industrial labs. The old Bell labs did, but alas, it died. It was the exception. Corporate R&D is mostly D and almost never blue sky R.
> I think it's silly to dream of getting rid of a thousand-year-old institution that's a central plank of our society.
You're quite right: the monasteries are here to stay.
Wrt to reforming vs abolishing the universities: I don't think anyone is thinking they're going to be abolished. What I understood the OP to be talking about is a gradual decline, as slowly over the years universities become less and less able to perform, until eventually all the functions we used to rely on them for are being provided more efficaciously from elsewhere.
I would have said one such replacement could be the corporate sector, which might already function much closer to the way you say you'd like universities to work.
OP said, and I agree:
> I just don't think they are salvageable due to their culture.
I expect tightening the purse strings as you suggest could well have an outsize effect on a university's internal culture, and it flatters my biases to assume that "useless dead wood" and "woke people I disagree with" have a significant overlap. But I'm not convinced it would be enough - I see culture as a much stickier thing than that.
(Even if it did work, the government would still have to agree to do it - and does the government have any reason side with you and I here?)
To me the only reason to say "universities are here to stay" is that there isn't a universally obvious/agreed upon replacement institution yet, which means there isn't yet anywhere for people en masse to flee to. Which is why I asked my question.
I’m pretty skeptical of it being replaced. I think we’ll see at least another few decades of degradation first. Large bureaucratic institutions can continue on in zombie mode long after they’ve died.
I don't know what will replace it, but I know what I would want to replace it:
There are some things I would like to keep in the current system. I like it when doctors and engineers have university degrees; I like that there's a place where the very top tier of scholars can share great and cutting-edge work, and where successful professionals can semi-retire and function as mentors, to the brightest young people.
But the system is bloated, not just with admins and mediocre scholars, but with pointless programs teaching the most trivial information. I blush when I think of some of the classes I paid for. I would have traded my college education for an occupational school combined with an organized apprentice program (+ self-directed, life-long learning), and I think that would work much better for lots of middle-class occupations that today are dominated by people with four-year degrees – journalists, designers, programmers, small business leaders, etc.
Most knowledge should be learned while also learning skills and a certain dexterity (literally and/or figuratively). In too many fields, college grads have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but not a lot of practical knowledge, and so not a lot of understanding.
Apprenticeships are old tech. But we can upgrade them with help from new tech, using AI to help direct our progress and organize our education, identifying what we need to learn, and which resources are most likely to help us learn what we need to.
Finally, I'd like to see the institutions that teach separated from the institutions issuing grades and diplomas, so the school's brand name won't matter so much anymore. Throughout your education, you have to prove to a third party that you're actually learning something worth knowing and doing, and that third party answers to the market, not to the students or the schools. You can get the same attractive diploma whether you went to Harvard, your local community college, or are entirely self-taught. That should do wonders for trimming the fat and cutting the costs of quality education. You'll still need to pay the company that issues your diploma, of course, but there will be massive competition to be the respected, yet affordable mass-market option.
> What do you see as the replacement place where people can share cutting edge work?
In my mind, that’s still something like the University – a place of higher learning – but it’s organized differently. The scholar might have their dayjob at a lab or a think tank or as an independent author or influencer (since this is the future, after all), and just spend a few hours of the month sharing their work – maybe in chunks of time organized around themes, like conferences. Similarly, students, peers and life-long learners aren’t expected to be enrolled full-time to take part. They can choose to pay for and attend only the class / seminar / session / lecture series / conference they are interested in or think will be useful for them.
Since there are separate certification companies, the university has no credit requirements, mandatory classes, or anything of that kind, so you only sign up if you think it makes sense for you as a learner. The institutions or the AI may have recommendations, of course, but for most people, those will not include this kind of cutting edge work, which will typically be quite niche and specialized. The audience will probably reflect that.
These ideas aren’t fully worked out, obviously. They’re just ideas I’ve been pondering, particularly when considering my own somewhat botched education, and when hiring, training and working with students and recent college grads.
It's easy for me to imagine certification services springing up, and companies/recruiters realising slowly that they give a better guarantee of quality than a university degree - at which point the changeover cascades through society (with different industries potentially responding at different rates) until a university degree is a valueless piece of paper and anyone with any nouse is doing the smart thing instead.
It's also easy for me to imagine online courses and the like improving to the point where there's no need to go to (and pay for) a real university, because the quality of teaching is on par if not much better online.
And I can also see innovation and r&d type projects - which are to a great extent done in partnership with external companies anyway - simply moving away from the university and being handled entirely by the companies themselves, once it becomes clear that the quality of the PhDs doesn't give the sponsoring company any real bang for their buck.
What's harder for me to imagine, is any replacement for the environment of learning/academia, where the scholars can share their work. Also on the other end, there's no institution that gives the young a chance to get away from their parents for four years and try all the new experiences that uni gave us.
I feel that, unless some bright chap comes up with something, a lot of the nice things uni provided will be replaced by functional equivalents that are a lot less rich: no real funding for theoretical subjects without obvious applications when companies are funding everything; less sharing of results and ideas, when these same companies are in commercial competition with each other; no community or social cohesion when students are all learning online from rooms in different cities to each other.
Yes, I largely agree. Some changes seem more natural than others.
But to help you imagine how the other things may change as well:
I had the "get away from parents" experience twice before going away to college. First from the military (mandatory-ish military service), then (after a disasterous attempt at business school, where I completely failed at maturity) from Disney (working at Disneyland Paris, pretty much the anti-military).
My brother went to New York and found work at some fancy restaurant and became a foodie. My sister spent a year at a live-in school that offered the program "Extreme Sports, Paragliding" that cost far less than a year in a good college, even with some exotic travels. (They both got university degrees afterward, though.) I have friends and acquaintances who had formative experiences backpacking through Asia, working on a kibbutz, moving to a foreign country to work and learn the language, etc. The point being: 1) Kids will figure out a way to get away from their parents, 2) a university that pampers you may not be the best place to learn independence.
As for the nice things universities offer: Yes, I want to keep many of them, just without the bloat (which I think causes much of the rot). However…
Sharing: We now have digital fora that allow for far more, better and faster sharing than ever before. In 2024, people's bandwidth is as much of a bottleneck as access to the people with the information.
Funding: It'll be the same companies, foundations, and philanthropes funding the research as today, they'll just redirect the money to institutions they trust to do more with it.
Social: I worry about this, too. But we'll still have classes, where peers will meet, collaborate and learn together. They just won't be organized the same way. However, I think solving for lack of social cohesion is a much deeper issue, and we can't make that part of the universities' purpose, even if they may be part of the solution.
I think I agree that someone has to come up with something, but I don't think it has to be "a bright chap". It can just be a bunch of small changes, new technologies, interesting business ideas, etc. – analogous to certification services and online courses – that open up new opportunities and start pulling on the culture until it changes course.
As far as I'm aware, all current lie detectors are simply detecting whether someone is becoming more nervous. This is correlated with lying, but also correlated with thinking about lying before telling the truth. So I would say no, you would first have to find a new thing to test entirely that's more accurate than nerves.
This all hinges on "telling lies" manifesting in observable ways. I'm not convinced thats true in a general enough way to create a reliable lie detector.
Right, and it's incredibly hard to test. Guilty people certainly get nervous when being questioned about a crime they committed. But innocent people probably get nervous too, when being question about a crime they didn't commit but are suspected of.
You can't replicate those sorts of stakes in a lab experiment, unless the subject _really_ thinks they're facing years in prison for a crime they didn't commit, and making plausible threats like that is probably no longer considered an ethical best practice.
You would need to obtain 1. an objective database of lies, that are 2. generalizable to future lies, and 3. you likely need to use your technology in the real world (during the telling of real lies), and 4. your technology must give you enough meaningful information to eventually make inferences about future-lies.
1 seems tough. You could monitor someone's typing & speech easy enough, but to classify language as a lie also requires an understanding of real world events (or sometimes internal events). Did I lie about robbing a bank? If you don't have the video, how will you know? Or, did I lie about why I robbed the bank? For this, you need year 2100 psychology/neuroscience.
2 & 3. In existing lie-detector studies (using fMRI), while training the lie-detector algorithm, people are usually instructed to intentionally lie, which to me doesn't seem generalizable to lying in the real world. With other technologies (say wearable EEG or smart glasses that point cameras at your face), you could detect lies in the real world. Nonetheless, even here, I'd be skeptical about the generalizability of the training set. (Is there truly an "essence" that unites all lies? Maybe we lie to some people about some things for some reasons, and to other people about other things for other reasons. If this is the case, your training set might not be equivalent to your test set. This is a testable question though).
3. fMRI gives lots of meaningful data, but you have to be in the scanner, which means your database of lies likely won't be comprehensive or generalizable to real-world lies. If using a stripped-down EEG, you can wear it on a regular basis, but you might not collect meaningful-enough information to make accurate inferences about one's mental state (supporting this, people have tried to infer inner speech with EEG, and these attempts are usually pretty bad, especially when comparing to studies that use intracranial electrodes). I would think the same goes for facial monitoring, I doubt it gives you enough information to make accurate inferences about lies.
Reading George Eliot the other day, a character dies (spoiler). It's very sad, because she's gentle and good and she leaves behind six children and a husband. And she has time to say goodbye to her children and husband, when she knows she's dying. What does she say?
......
She reminds them of their duties. She tells the eldest girl to take care of the younger ones. She tells the younger children to be good for the eldest girl. She tells her husband he was a good husband.
If you're like me, you assumed she would tell her children she loved them, because that's the very first thing I would think to do if I knew I were dying. Hell, lots of people tell their children they love them every day, or multiple times a day.
Has anyone written a history of "I love you?" How did these words become so mandatory and routine that they are the first thing we think to tell our children when saying goodbye, and also so powerful and dangerous that saying them to someone you're dating can seriously freak them out and potentially end the relationship?
I've always found it very weird about English that the phrase "I love you" is so ordinary. For me, the German equivalence of "I love you" is reserved for intense romantic love. I have maybe said it to 4-5 different people in my life, and I would never say it to my parents, let alone other family members or friends.
I was referring to "Ich liebe dich" = "I love you", which for me is reserved for romantic love.
There is a less strong phrase "Ich habe dich lieb", which is something like "I am fond of you" or "I hold you dear". I find this appropriate to say to parents, children, and sometimes good friends, though I don't use it daily.
(I am not claiming that everyone uses them in exactly the same way as me.)
To more common friends, I would say "Ich mag dich" = "I like you".
From an upper middle class perspective in the Commonwealth, overuse of "I love you" seems gauche and American. I feel like it would be weird to say it to my parents or for them to say it to me. Not because I don't, but because these sorts of things ought to go without saying.
You know, when my daughter was in middle school, about 15years ago, I noticed that she and her friends routinely said "I love you" to each other when they parted, and doing that seemed off to me. It still does, now that I hear lots of people doing it. It's like the statement loses its meaning. We all already know who we love and who loves us (except when somebody first expresses that sentiment during a budding romance, and that, of course, is momentous). I like it much better when somebody I know loves me gives me a little unexpected glimpse of that feeling -- like maybe they throw an arm over my shoulder and say "I've been missing you and your sense of humor."
Yeah, I think I know what you mean. I have old-fogey worries about raising children in constrained environments, where they only have a limited domain of experience, and getting fed media that encourages them to map the full range of language to onto this limited domain. They know they're supposed to say "I love you", they get positive feedback when they say it, other kids play along with the same script, and so if life ever happens to hit them with something outside that limited domain, they won't know what to call it.
I think that's a valid worry. You can avoid it pretty well if you live an unconventional life. Homeschool your kids and/or live abroad, preferably in more than one country while your kid is growing up. Drastically limit use of electronic media. And for chrissakes do not send them to private schools or high-end private camps & the like, even if you can easily afford it. All those places offer yummy-sounding opportunities to discover and develop individual interests & say they encourage discovery rather than rote learning -- and that's sort of true, at the level of what happens in classrooms. BUT in their substructure all of them are also providing a rigid course in turning into an upper middle class achievatron who gets into Ivies. I really feel sorry for the Harvard students I meet who grew up that way. In contrast, I had a college age patient who had grown up in a fundamentalist Mormon home, and had wholeheartedly adopted the beliefs: you can talk directly to god, life after death in which one's entire family, including pets, stay united in spiritual form for all eternity, importance of wearing special Mormon underwear, etc. But except for growing up in a home where not believing that stuff was not an option, she had not been hassled to turn into a certain kind of person. She was much more able to tell me her actual thoughts and feelings than the Harvard achievatrons. She did not have to run her self-reports through a filter before disclosing them. Harvard kids filtered theirs for wokeness and whether they sounded smart.
Yeah but...what's special about those words? If you died suddenly, why would you regret not saying "I love you" rather than saying or not saying something else? Or doing or not doing something?
Why hasn’t quantification of rumination become a standard tool in mental health treatment? Is it that the connection to symptoms isn’t robust enough? You’d think it could be useful for assessing severity and treatment progress.
Most therapists do not consider rumination a treatment target, but instead a by-product of something else -- say, depression. I actually agree with you that time spent in dark rumination is likely to be a pretty sensitive measure of how somebody's doing. Also that it makes sense to target it in treatment, which I sometimes do.
Another reason why rumination measures are not a standard tool is that there is no easy way to measure them. In real life, very few patients would carry through on homework that involved anything but some extremely simple, coarse-grained measure -- for ex., every night before bed rate the amt. you ruminated that day as none, a little, a moderate amt. or a lot.
I wondered if the course-grainedness of the measure was one of the hold ups but Burns’s Brief Mood Survey seems pretty course too (then again most therapists don’t use that or anything similar do they?). I also wondered if an app doing random experiential sampling could help provide slightly better data.
I do think a motivated person could do thought sampling to capture rumination. You'd set up your phone to do random beeps every 20 mins or so, but only turn on the beep option when you're driving or in some other situation where you're free to just think. When it goes off, you can record a rating or a description of mental content as a voice memo. I like this not just as a way of measuring amount of rumination, but as a way of sensitizing the person to the process: Aim would be that when they slide into rumination, the soon become aware they're ruminating. Of course, they may not feel able to stop ruminating, or may not feel willing to, but at the very least they will now know quickly when the process is going on, and that puts them in a better position -- also changes their relationship to the thoughts. If you're ruminating about all the time you wasted last year, but aren't aware you're ruminating about this unpleasant subject, you experience your mental content as just facts, a movie about the way things are. If you know you're ruminating, you also know you are editing the movie for lowlights of last year, and that you are electing to watch a certain movie.
MCT was developed to address rumination directly but I haven’t gotten the sense that it’s a widely available modality. Hopefully that will change as the evidence base accrues.
If you have cluster headaches or severe migraines (or know someone who does), please email me at ishaan[at]koratkar[dot]com.
I read about Scott Adams’s experience curing his spasmodic dysphonia, and thought that what he did could be used to build a system (“search algorithm”?) to cure strange life impairments of the type doctors and Google can only give vague general recommendations for. To do this, I want to collate a lot of participants with a similar issue, and systematically review ideas for causes and methods for relief.
For context, my dad, extended family, and a close friend have severe migraines/cluster headaches. Most of what I’ve found on the topic is not a permanent cure or alternately costs a lot and has bad side effects. If you know a lot about this topic and think something else, please email me also, I’d love to ask you questions.
For clarity, this will be at zero cost and the results and analysis will be uploaded to something like my profile Substack “Career Scouting” as a neutral database for anyone.
I won't claim any label/diagnosis for my headaches, but I for decades have gotten debilitating headaches (some suicidal ideation inducing) a few times a year. Say once or twice a year in a good year, one or twice a month in a bad year.
For me I found controlling them almost entirely about learning my changing need for sleep as I got older and managing stress.
In my early 20s I could stay up all night playing videogames, drag my ass through an 8 hour shift, maybe take a cat nap for lunch, and go play sports afterwards and be fine. Do it again the next day sometimes.
By my early 30s if I did that with any frequency it would always end up leading to a huge headache, like light and sound bother me headache. So I struggled through about 5 years of fairly frequent bad headaches, before just really getting a lot more careful about trying to always get 4-6 hours of sleep, and taking naps if tired, and managing my stress a lot better (quit my job and went into business for myself).
Things got so so so much better in terms of frequency.
As for when they do come I do the following.
Immediate 1000mg of Tylenol and Ibuprofen (if I could easily get something stronger I would). Immediate food and water until stated, go to bathroom if needed, and then go lay in bed in a dark room with some white noise (fan).
Sleep if at all possible, masturbate if needed. Lay there until headaches goes away (usually ONLY happens if I sleep for at least a couple hours). No screens, though maybe listen to something if I am up for it (typically I am not).
Anyway that has worked like 98% of the time. I typically wake up feeling like a million bucks.
Every few months I get the start of a migraine, as a painless shimmering "Jacob's Ladder" pattern starting at the center of my vision. Left unchecked it slowly expands and becomes more prominent like looking up a spiral staircase. But if I promptly neck a couple of paracetamol pills it soon vanishes, and the pain and slight nausea stage doesn't start.
I assume the pattern is the result of optic nerve fibers or related neurons erroneously starting to fire in synchrony as the result of a sudden strong visual stimulus, such as a PC display going from dark to white at the click of a mouse, perhaps combined with a sugar rush.
I am also a bit overweight, and have found the frequency of migraines has declined in direct proportion to the weight I have put on over the years, since being as slim as a whippet in my youth, when they were much more frequent and I had genuine headaches. So maybe in some way extra weight stabilises the body's energy levels. I would bet real fatties rarely get migraines, or far less often than beanpoles!
I don't believe migraine aura involves the optic nerve, but rather the part of the cortex. that processes visual information. It's at the back of your head, and is thought to be the origination point of 'cortical spreading depression', the putative cause of the migraine syndrome. Hence visual aura being the most common variety. I don't believe aura specifically is triggered by visual stimuli, but many kinds of sensory stimuli can precipitate migraine. There's sometimes a change in awareness of surroundings that accompanies aura that I can see leading to the identification of some stimulus that suddenly seems salient as a trigger, when the process actually started further back in time.
Weight and migraine actually have a positive association; overweight and obesity are risk factors. In individuals I can imagine this being confounded by nutrition status (or any number of things, really).
I know Ishaan and vouch for his intelligence and good-nature. Also, I am interested in this project for its own sake as I have migraines and no full solution at the moment, and have basically run out of ideas. Since I'm probably stuck in some frame I don't even know of, I think a fresh pair of eyes like Ishaans could come up with some new-to-me ideas.
The first article I read on Aeon 8 years ago really grabbed me. It was about a woman who found herself having sex that she didn't want to be having. She wondered if she had been raped. Decades earlier, I found myself in a similar situation but it never occurred to me that I had been raped.
Gender doesn't matter. Rape isn't sex someone doesn't *want*, it's sex someone didn't *consent to*. Those are two different things. People routinely consent to things they don't want, for lots of reasons.
If you find yourself having sex that you don't want but did consent to(*), then hopefully whatever else you are getting out of the exchange is worth it. If not, then you chose poorly. And that's on you, not some imaginary rapist.
* And yes, in some contexts, not saying "no" counts as consent.
It is false that you are off the hook morally for sex as long as your partner consents.
Consent has moral power, but it does not give you a blanket permission to ignore the desires and interests of your partner, and there is plenty of room for moral violation within the bounds of consensual sex.
I have repeatedly argued that "consent" as the sole standard for Good Sex is misguided, that wholly consensual bad sex that good people shouldn't want is a significant problem that we should recognize and address without mangling the concept of "consent" in the process.
But the opposite of Good Sex is not Rape, it's just broadly Bad Sex. And if we're talking about rape, which we are, the consent is what matters. Consent freely obtained gives you blanket permission to say "No I am not a rapist", and consent freely given denies you the right to claim you were raped.
If you just want to talk about Bad Sex, don't use the 'R' word.
I'm not familiar with your oeuvre on this topic, I was just responding to your post, and the "that's on you" part of it did not make much sense to me assuming you agreed with me that consent does not absolve one of moral responsibility for unwanted sex.
I'm still not 100 percent sure we are on the same page, since "a significant problem we should recognize and address" is not the same as "something participants are morally responsible for", but if we agree, then I have no further objection to your view.
Rape is a crime. Bad Sex is not, even if it hurts relationships and could be considered morally wrong on some level (but far lower than rape). Conflating those things causes people to confuse the strong wrong of rape with the mild wrong of a bad date, and not just in a criminal sense. We should be very clear the distinction that does and should exist between them, even if we agree that bad sex can be a moral and relationship failing (which I do agree with).
Could you have physically stopped it if you didn't want it to continue? I tend to think that this is the key question, followed closely by "Would there be negative social consequences if you did stop it?".
What do negative social consequences have to do with it?
If I stop having sex with someone half way through, and she gets mad and tells my friends, and all my friends laugh at me, then that doesn't sound like I was being rape.
A realistic scenario would be something like she saying: "if you stop having sex with me now, I will start screaming for help and accuse *you* of raping *me*".
"And she gets mad and tells my friends" should be followed with "that I fell down the stairs because I'm so clumsy", because what actually happened was that she beat the living shit out of you, and then made you lie to your friends about it, and they all went along.
Negative social consequences wouldn't be from her telling the truth and people reacting to that. Negative social consequences would be from her **lying** about you. "Yeah, we didn't have sex that night, because Melvin asked me to pretend to be a ten-year old girl, and I thought it was disgusting. But I don't know, is that normal? Do all men do that these days, or is it just Melvin? ... Now that you mention it, I have noticed him making excuses to spend time around children, but I thought he was just being a good father figure."
Yes, very much so. If you're being "blackmailed" with something that would result in a loss of social status, then that's all that's happening to you. The sexual experience that you have in that circumstance is definitionally less bad than losing social status, otherwise it couldn't be used to coerce sex from you. "Rape" isn't a word that's used to connote fear of losing social status. It's an abuse of language to suggest that it is.
I've often wondered how much of the harm from rape/sexual assault can be attributed to the socially programmed response/victim narrative, rather than some innate and inescapable damage (this potentially having very deep roots due to the fact that it's not really possible to 'reproductively harm' men in the same way)
Of course the meta-problem with even mentioning this is invalidating real trauma; that is not my intent. However gun to my head I do feel like men are simply harmed less, potentially significantly so, for this reason
I'm a woman and I have never felt the horror/terror about the idea of being raped that many people seem to. I have always felt as though it would infuriate me, not shake me to my core. I have never been raped, though like most people I have had sex when I didn't really want to, because it was awkward to get out of it, or because the relationship was in trouble and I hoped some sex would help things, or because I was hoping sex with the person would be better than I expected it to be -- and doing that felt pretty lousy. And I was once grabbed and groped in the shower of a woman's locker room by a guy - but when I struggled and yelled for help, he let go and fled. But the idea of waking up from sleep or a from a drunken stupor and finding some guy having intercourse with me is not *horrific.* I think I would be furious, but I don't think I would be shaken to my core. Honestly, I would much rather be raped than have somebody cause me injury and pain -- say, break my arm or my nose. Of course a lot of rapes involve actual violence or the threat of violence, but for me the most disturbing aspect of an attack like that would painful bodily harm, not the rape. I've always wondered how many other women feel as I do but hold back from saying it because it sounds insensitive.
Oh, and here's one more godawful insensitive thought I have, and then I'll have disclosed more than enough: Considering rape an unspeakbly bad act, nearly as bad as murder -- WTF? By most reasonable measures it is nowhere near as bad as murder. Yes, of course, it's a BAD thing to do -- but I'd put it on a par with stealing somebody's cherished, expensive possession, or maybe with blackmail or with screwing up someone's life by running some scam on them. I wonder whether some of the awfulness we attribute to the rape of a woman is really an expression of ideas about the value of female "purity", which seem to me ultimately to be about the woman's value to the man in her life: He wants a brand new one, not a second-hand one. He wants other guys to keep their mitts off his expensive new possession. And he wants to be damn sure any babies have his DNA, not the pizza delivery guy's. Etc.
I agree that the idea that "rape is worse than murder" matches the traditional values too suspiciously. (Then again, expressing traditional values in progressive language is not an unusual thing.)
About predicting your reaction to rape, not sure if you also include the part that the rapist is often a trusted person (e.g. at date rape) or someone who has power over you (e.g. an older relative). So in addition to feeling angry, you might also reduce your trust in other people dramatically. Not necessarily knowingly, but maybe you would just feel strongly emotionally opposed to the idea of ever being in a room with only one person, or something like that.
Well if you’re dating someone and have a mad crush on them, and you’re hoping they feel the same way, then it is extremely painful to discover that not only do they not feel some sort of tender fascination towards you, they in fact do not give a shit about you. I’ve certainly experienced versions of that: finding out the guy had told me a bunch of lies about his life; having a guy put me through a dangerous bravery test out on a hiking trail; being belayed by a guy as I climbed a cliff, and having him drop me 50 feet, to within 10 feet of the ground, to scare me; getting hit with a sudden contemptuous diatribe about how irritating and wrong my views are. Those experiences hurt my feelings really badly, and damaged my self-esteem, and made it harder for me to trust the men I dated.
So would being date-raped have been worse than any of those? I don’t think so. There are a lot of things that count as date rape, right?, but what they have in common is that they’re in sort of a gray zone. If you’re on a date with a guy and he duck-tapes your hands together around a tree and has intercourse with you while you struggle and protest, that’s not date rape, right? That’s a rape that happened on a date. If that happened to me, I think it would scare me badly, and I’d feel uneasy for quite a while about being alone with any guy I did not know well.
But as for those gray-zone date rape things: Say it’s back in my college years when I sometimes drank heavily, and the guy and I are drunk, and I say yes all the way up to the penultimate moment, then say no — but he goes ahead anyhow — and I lie there crying, but don’t yell at him to stop, or try to shove him off, or do something that would stop him cold, like stick my fingers in his eyes, hard. Well, I would feel like shit the next day, and would think he was an uncaring pig, and certainly would not want to see him any more. But I’d also think my own contribution to having that lousy experience had been substantial. And thinking that would have protected me from Being Scared of Being Alone with Guys, because I’d have some ideas about ways to keep that sort of thing from happening: Don’t get drunk with guys I don’t know and trust; if someone forces himself on me, don’t hold back from making loud and angry protests.
Seems to me that the conclusion is that if you are already familiar with some level of bad things, another bad thing on the similar level of badness will not traumatize you. The negative impact on your life comes from those bad experiences in general, but the +1 bad experience does not change the outcome significantly.
Traumatizing experiences are those that are exceptionally bad, relative to what you are used to. Or maybe violate some remaining deep assumption about safety (e.g. if you have already experienced bad things, but your family or church seemed like a separate universe, always safe), so you in effect perceive it as a special level of badness.
Our cultural middle-class norms say that physical violence is a special category of evil. No matter how much verbal abuse one person might give another, if the other person slaps them, the one who slapped is the true monster. Similarly, spanking your child would be judged more harshly than any amount of emotional abuse.
Thus, for some people, rape may be their first experience of physical violence ever. (Most of them will be women, because few boys grow up without experiencing any kind of physical conflict.)
And I am not saying here "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger". It probably actually makes you weaker. It's just that if hundred bad experiences cumulatively make you weaker, it is difficult to attribute the harm to any specific experience. A new bad experience of a different level has consequences that can be clearly attributed.
If you want to take a crack at the question (and I'm not saying you should), you could look at what sort of shape you're in. Has your trust level changed? Willingness to be touched? Do situations which share characteristics with the the possible rape upset you?
Being raped can be a big deal for men, with symptoms not obviously different from the effect on women, except that it's worse because of lack of social support. I'm not sure that being raped by a woman has significantly different effects from being raped by a man.
If someone here believes it's impossible for a man to be raped by a woman, you might consider that drugs, non-average physical strength differences, trained reluctance that inhibits a man from defending himself against a woman, or various sorts of coercion might be involved.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that all non-consensual sex has the same bad effects.
I honestly don't understand those who try to connect all non-consensual sex as the same. My wife asks me for sex sometimes when I'm not in the mood. Sometimes I get in the mood and sometimes I really don't, but we do it anyway because I want to be supportive of her needs. This happens in the other direction as well. I can't imagine how little sex we might have (which would bother both of us a lot) if we only ever had sex when both of us were distinctly and affirmatively interested. Life's too busy, and one of us is probably stressed and not thinking about it at any given moment, despite knowing that 90%+ of the time we'll both be glad it happened later.
Right, I agree with everything you have said here, Nancy.
I'm not sure I need to know the answer. It was a brief episode, long, long ago and it has never given me any strife or changed my behaviour in any way. The attitude of my friends suggested that I should not be too bothered. It does seem to be different for girls.
I would agree - I cannot imagine being more than amused / bemused by such an incident. Whereas for good biological reasons, amplified by consequential social factors, most women would be horrified.
And there are more ambiguous situations. A man can't really follow up "I didn't really want to" with anything other than "Oh, well." Women generally shouldn't either, but I can see why they might be more exercised.
I have seen cases where men recounted being disturbed by forced sex with women who had some considerable power / influence over them. No doubt that is a different situation.
I don't know whether it's actually different for girls, or whether the social weight of Sex Being Very Significant for Women and Not Very Significant for Men shapes reactions so that non-consensual sex for women that might just be kind of bad is seen as a huge issue and non-consensual sex for men that actually is a huge issue gets ignored.
Eh ... Does it matter? We've been conditioned socially to think if we get raped or conscripted to war that's no big deal and noble respectively. And I'm completely fine with that? And if I have sons I'm sure I'll carry on the tradition. I wouldn't want to be someone who believed otherwise, either. Nor would I want women to be like us. *Shrug*
Women and men having equal status in divorce proceedings when it comes to kids (but not finances) is the only change I'm in favor of
I don't have an opinion. I don't know how same gender rapes is emotionally processed, and I don't have a strong opinion for how it *should be*. Society hasnt conditioned me on this
Why equal for kids but unequal for finances? What's the critical difference that makes these deserve to be treated distinctly?
(I'll grant that the exact implementation of 'equal' might be importantly distinct. Splitting up an even number of kids to permanent custody is not the same as rotating custody weeks for all of them, even if both are "equal" in some sense.)
Having the state adjudicate divorce is always horrible and messy and unfair. But roughly speaking I feel like the woman has an advantage at raising the kids at an early age 0-3 and there is a big financial opportunity cost to childbearing and being optimized for emotional sensitivity and multitasking. But I don't think men can love their kids any less, and I think after infancy can raise them just as well. Usually divorce happens after kids are a bit grown up, so a default assumption that man supports the woman but has equal access to the children seems like the least bad default option to me
But that's all rationalization of course. Ultimately it's all a socially conditioned feeling. Does it feel unfair for me to be drafted into a horrible war but not for my wife? No. Does it feel unfair for me to give money to my wife if we get divorced (she makes roughly as much as me!)? Slightly, but whatever. Would it feel awful if she got sole custody? It would be devastating
Are “secular religions” a thing? Is that stretching the term “religion” way beyond its meaning or is there no real difference? I’d particularly like to hear from people who think essentialism is a fallacy. How do you reason about this kind of thing?
So, let's start with why people care about this. People care because Westerners have strong taboos against mixing religion and government. Long story short, Europe had a lot of wars over this, Catholic vs Protestant, Protestant A vs Protestant B, all that good stuff. The Western solution was a liberal tolerance policy: everyone's religion is private, we keep it out of government as much as possible, and everyone gets on with their life. Given these prohibitions, it's pretty important what gets defined as a religion.
The issue is that, when we speak of religion in this context, what we're really discussing is a central example of a cluster of factors.
For example, when I say religion, you think Christianity, Islam, Judaism. Let's use a simple model of 3 traits:
#1 Supernatural beliefs
#2 A general morality system, ie good vs bad
#3 Rituals and group affiliations
So, we're all going to get together (#3) to do good thing X (#2) because God said so (#1).
But it's not hard to find non-central examples of religions. For one example, you have polytheistic religions, like the Greek pantheon, where there are widespread supernatural beliefs but a much less cohesive morality system and much weaker group affiliations. Conversely, you can find semi-religious groups, like the Confucianists, who have very strong morality systems and rituals/groups but...the supernatural side was plainly stapled on by the neo-Confucianists later on. These just were never really an issue in the West since, well, not a lot of Confucians in Europe.
The issue at play here is a host of secular ideologies that have arisen over the past two centuries that basically perfectly pattern match to religion except they're completely secular. It's easy to see morality and in-group affiliations among Marxists, Nazis, Libertarians, Effective Altruism, techno-accelerationists, etc without any supernatural beliefs. The argument for treating these as secular religions is essentially saying that these groups closely pattern match to religions in every way except supernatural beliefs, therefore we should treat them as religions.
Now, to clarify, you may not agree with calling them religions, nerds love definition fights, but let's not be obtuse. You may not like my simplified definition of religion, cool, draw up your own list of the 5 or 10 most important factors in a religion, especially as it relates to real actions. There is some underlying overlap, however you define it. Whatever a young man might read, become obsessed with, and dedicate his life to working with others on, whether it's Marixsm or Bitcoin or Jesus, has a pretty big impact on that man and everyone around him, which is why people care.
Christians complain about secular religions because they feel like their ideological preferences are locked out of government while opposing ideologies were free to compete for power. This is fine with something like Bitcoin or Effective Altruism, which doesn't make supernatural claims. The challenge comes from Cultural Marxism/Wokism/the current thing, which have explicit religious claims, being strictly atheist, and is openly hostile to Christianity. This creates a difficult asymmetry where secular religions are able to set policy to their preferences, to the detriment of Christians, without Christians being able to openly respond.
Consider trans issues and how we should teach kids about it, if at all, in public schools. From the Christian perspective, they're locked out of enforcing Christian values in the school's curriculum due to long-standing taboos but Cultural Marxists get to include their ideology in the classroom, the same as a libertarian might, without a second glance. Thus the rhetorhical claims of both "secular religion" and "Judeo-Christian values", both attempts to resolve this issue, either by expanding the taboos against religion to include secular religions, which we might also call strong ideologies, or by creating a secular face for Christian idelogical preferences through "Judeo-Christian values".
But it's all the same thing. We've got a lot of religion-"ish" things competing in the public square, some of which are actively hostile to religions and directly impact them, without the religious feeling they can compete on equal footing due to long-standing taboos.
[disclaimer: not saying the below is wrong, just it has religious components amongst many of it's adherents]
Much of environmentalism carries very strong religious undertones, in that people make it part of 'their identity.' Its a much different thing, to say 'I'm a Christian' than it is to say, 'that stream is polluted.' However, many people cross over the line to 'I'm an Environmentalist' and becomes someone who goes forth looking for a reason to do violence. There's a strong comparison between Environmentalists and Vegans. When you're an evangelical Environmentalist ...
Communism, though, has its prophets, its icons, its sinners and its theory of sin, its holy texts, holy places and holy days, its inquisitions, and even its own eschatology. If this isn't a secular religion, nothing is.
Also, possibly Confucianism, depending on your definitions?
A now edited away definition of religion on Wikipedia that I found productive included that a religion interprets reality in its relationship to a higher order. Again, this could easily include secular movements assuming they have ideas about such a higher order of reality.
The traditional way is to grab a dictionary and try to find some gotcha. "Religious means belief in a god, therefore anything secular cannot be religious by definition!" "No, in *my* dictionary, religious means belief about god, so atheism is also a religion, because it is a belief about god -- specifically that there is none!" "Well, my dictionary says that you only need to believe in something, not necessarily gods, so e.g. a belief in science also qualifies!" Etc.
The rational way is to "taboo" the word for a moment, and try to figure out what exactly are you trying to figure out. When you say "religions", what do you mean by that? Not in the dictionary sense, but what are the things you expect to see when you see a religion (even if some religions may not have it, and some non-religions may have it). For example, it could be a belief in afterlife; a sacred text written by a holy authority (in the next step, we could try to unpack what "sacred" and "holy" means here); a mass movement; a set of beliefs that claim to be the answer to the life, universe, and everything; etc. Then we could list some secular things, and notice that some of these things fit, some don't fit, some fit partially. And that's the entire answer... there is often no clear yes-or-no resolution, only more-or-less or mostly-except.
For example, Marxism is kinda like a religion (comes from a historical authority highly respected by the followers, makes moral judgments about the world and people, predicts a conflict in the future and the final victory of its followers), except also not (no personal gods, no afterlife). Whether you round it to "yes" or "no" is up to you. But it is what it is. Answering "yes" will not take away the absence of personal gods or the absence of afterlife. Answering "no" will not make it less authority-based or makes its followers more open-minded about the possible futures.
Ultimately, the question is, did you want to learn something about the world, or did you just want to win a verbal fight? You have to choose the corresponding approach.
Well put! - I think this is a good way to think about many categories or definitions. They're often fussy - we can often agree about a core, and there are often edge cases that partially fit. That is fine. In order to communicate well we should acknowledge this and make the proper clarifications.
At its best the phrase describes communities of belief that deny they have any religious qualities despite being based in whole or in part on false or unfalsifiable beliefs. You can come up with your own examples but yes, the most important/prominent ones are just going to sum to "leftism," which as we already know is just mutant gnostic protestantism.
"Secular religion" is not incorrect, necessarily-- but it's a hackneyed criticism which I think is probably best avoided except in cases where the resemblance to religious thinking is particularly strong.
To brainstorm, riffing off of the Abrahamic religions I'm most familiar with: does it provide ethical guidance? A community of believers? A vision of what a righteous life entails? Rituals and vocabulary to set yourself apart from those who aren't part of it? Are there taboos, the violation of which causes a feeling of uncleanliness? Is there an evangelical imperative? Would you consider marrying someone who isn't part of it? If you're a member in good standing, and suffer misfortune, will other members of the community help you based purely on your membership? Do you prioritize the lives of other members over the lives of non-members, as in the trolley problem? Does your membership cause friction with non-members in the day-to-day life of a pluralistic society, in a way which you deliberately do not avoid, or possibly seek out?
Wikipedia: "A secular religion is a communal belief system that often rejects or neglects the metaphysical aspects of the supernatural, commonly associated with traditional religion, instead placing typical religious qualities in earthly, or material, entities."
It doesn't take a stance about whether these exist, but the French Revolution's Cult of Reason (which was specifically a cult-like system) seems like a strong contender.
That chimes with the literal meaning of the word "religion", which is roughly "re" (the thing) and "ligio" (which binds, as in ligament). Of course it's usually assumed to have a spiritual component, but that is only a conventional assumption based on the large majority of past and present examples.
1: as I commented much, explaining the legal basis (or lack thereof) for a "river-to-sea"-ban, I shall go contrarian again and tell now of actual "censorship" in Germany: 1. Car-plates! and 2. slogans "All for love" 1. No car-plates allowed with the letters: KZ, HJ, NS, SA, SS - As everyone knows, German car plates consist of 1-2 (seldom 3) letter(s) for the town (B=Berlin / PB=Paderborn) then another 1 or 2 letters chosen by the car owner plus a number (from 1 to 9999). Thus 88 or 18 might get banned some places, as - in Hamburg - "IS" or - more obviously: HH 18 / HH 88 / HH 1933. SK-IN is banned, as is IZ-AN and HEI-L. In my city, HJ used to be ok (SA/SS never were), B-DM seems to be ok in Berlin, still. "Z" is becoming an issue, too
2. 'All for love' is fine, "all for Germany" is not: 'Alles für Deutschland' was a slogan of the SA (I studied history and did not know - the SA got dismantled in 1934 to sooth the army.) "Arbeit macht frei" (as the smoke in the sky) is banned, too. Praise our courts. Thus, Björn Höcke, the head (and face) of the East German part of the xenophop AfD, got accused for concluding a speech: "All for our homeland, all for Saxony, all for Germany!"
I feel like Germany's free speech restrictions are much less of a deal compared to other regulations and restrictions on free enterprise. For example, I was shocked to find out that you can get fined in Germany for throwing out food into the regular waste container.
I confirm ZumBeispiel's experiences for private homes. Maybe it was about a company (restaurant/supermarket/ ...) and the waste-rules for them? Anyways, "free enterprise" or very similar to it: "You want/need to get your waste disposed of by us? Follow the contractual rules." (companies often choose another service-provider than the local/municipal one - but those will have rules, too - or charge higher prices).
What? Never heard of that. Leftover food should go into the regular waste container, not into the biological waste (I think because it attracts rats).
I've once lived in a large apartment building where some honks would throw their waste in any garbage can they want, and there the municipal utilities first attached a warning note to the plastic bin, and then took the plastic bins away, so they had to get more regular waste containers, which increased the waste disposal fees. So, only indirectly a fine.
There's a joke that Chinese AIs can't count past 7, because otherwise they might output "8 9", which is a banned reference to Tiananmen Square. Maybe German AIs will have a similar problem?
It is ironic, given how Scott joked about America invading Germany to impose free speech, that so many of these censorships were introduced during the American occupation. Part of the agreement at Yalta sought to remove all elements of Nazi influence from German society. In practice that meant American occupation authorities ordered book burnings, destruction of artwork, bans on new artworks etc.
From what I understand, the part of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union was a lot worse? Even the entire half of Europe that was occupied by the Soviets was worse. And just look at Tibet and Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Heck, people make a fairly solid argument that America should have been more extreme, when it occupied itself. (After the US Civil War, Reconstruction may have been too little and ended too soon.)
In Germany, your comment might be seen as "far-right-coded" (some declare Germany not to be a sovereign state, but an "US-lackey" - some of those are Kremlin-lackeys). Obviously, you are correct about 1945 - for good reason - and then some time. But nowadays, this is a very German affair. Courts tend to judge: oh, that was probably free speech, no misdemeanor. Politicians do not dare to touch those laws for the usu. reasons. Well, the AfD might ... . "Fascists for free speech" - is a thing.
Oh I can certainly see how that might be a case. It does seem to be mostly extremists who complain they are being censored and thus end up more in favour of free speech in Europe. And certainly I'm sure Germany could repeal the censorship laws if they chose to do so now.
My comment was a bit more aimed at the American impulse to invade other countries and impose their own ideals on them; and how willing they are to brush aside those ideals when it becomes convenient to do so. Even as a joke, it is not very funny when you consider the damage done and lives ruined by American interventions in the past few decades.
I for one, think American interventions (i.e. colonialism) was a very good thing.
Take for instance, the country we tried to colonialize, where the ruler threw enemies of the state 'alive' into a shredder. What did it take to be an enemy of the state? Well, complaining about this leader's adult sons using the primary school system as a hunting grounds for their pedo-escapades. Everybody says today, the US went to Iraq on once false premise ... well, that is a false statement. Its now wiped out of the internet memory, but we went to Iraq with a list of 122 just causes for war. Things like 'The Big Gun' there's a big TV special about 'The Big Gun,' designed by a Canadian Engineer named Bull. It could shoot a rocket boosted shell with a diameter of 1 meter. The Big Gun was built on a mountain-side and aimed only at Israel. Saddam had target multiple US presidents for assassination, Carter & GHW Bush included. That's just cause right there. The invasion of Kuwait ... you may not care about that, but the US has a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to defend Kuwait against Iraq. When Iraq invaded, the US was treaty bound to respond. Maybe its not good to have Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties ... which would result in every little pip-squeak country like Kuwait to have nukes. So we have Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties ... and we have to fulfill them. And remember, that list was one hundred and twenty two items.
To justify it on utilitarian grounds, you'd need to be able to peek into the alternative universe where Saddam and co were left in power, and see how bad things are there. We can't peek into other universes, so we'll never know.
Still, Saddam's regime was pretty awful on its own, it was never going to go away peacefully, and the eventual fall of the Ba'athists was probably inevitably going to segue into a Sunni-Shia civil war. So it's definitely not implausible that we're living in the better universe right now.
The decline of trust is widely spoken about (although not as clear in the rest of the world as in the USA) as a problem of *perception*, but I haven't seen much effort to check if the general public's view on this question is, essentially, correct, with 'most people' instead being replaced by 'people I interact with in my country'. I've moved around and travelled a decent amount, and that chart strikes me as broadly directionally accurate?
It seems roughly in line with my completely anecdotal experience that I can trust about 70% of Norwegians, just over 40% of Canadians and under 40% of Americans, about 30% of Brits, and between 10-20% of ... everyone in that bottom left quadrant.
"It seems roughly in line with my completely anecdotal experience that I can trust about..."
What are you trusting them about? Curious to know if your levels differ based on the context of the relationship you have with the person (stranger vs close friend, for example).
All strangers; friends are filtered for trustworthiness already, and most (all?) cultures have strong rules about being trustworthy to one's friends and family, but that's not the case for strangers.
That Korea and Japan are so low seems strange. I wonder to what extent the various translations of the survey question mean the same thing and are interpreted in the same way.
Is it strange? Social cohesion is not necessarily correlated with individual trust. Sure, everyone keeps up appearances, but the moment you turn your back on them, they will be happy to screw you over. Just because they won't kill you in broad daylight doesn't mean they won't try to ruin your life.
You don't find it strange that the chart has China up there with Sweden but Korea down there with Iraq? I'll admit I don't have as much experience with the Chinese and the Iraqis as I do with Koreans and Swedes, but this strikes me as absurd.
Okay, China being up there is absurd, I have absolutely no idea how that happened. But everything else seems mostly fine, including Korea. Again, there is a difference between collective conformity and individual morality. When injustice happens, the former takes prescedence.
Agreed, the translations may hold slightly different connotations. Japan in particular stood out to me but may be linked to a lack of social connections in general?
The politics of 2024 are becoming a test of our grip on reality. In this case, I'm talking about the October 7th "truther" groups in the U.S. who claim the Gaza attacks were a false flag. The group suggests that Israel was behind the massacre so that it could justify genocide in Gaza. What they are ignoring is that the Hamas attacks are the most documented in history. I'm appalled that anyone could convince others, let alone themselves, into believing such a notion. At a November Oakland City Council meeting a city employee shouted “Israel murdered their own people on October 7." Lies and distortions betray us. Have we abandoned our sense of skepticism? This behavior is contrary to our collective responsibility to perceive reality. The internet has the power to erase history. Don't let it.
Don't worry, Scott checks the reported comments only every couple of months or so, with the most recent purge being a few days ago. You'll be fine for at least 1-2 months :-)
I pay so I doubt Scott will ban me. Scott if you see this any misplaced comments were an accident!
More seriously, I don't think that anyone will be immediately banned for just making a simple mistake about where to put some conversation. Just don't ignore repeated warnings and you should be fine I think.
On banning I am conducting an n=1 trial of operating on substack under my real name and it does seem to keep me politer - there's fora where avatars of me are no longer welcome.
I want to find the names of men who served in Troop "A" of the 24th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), who liberated the town where I live on June 21st 1944. So far I've found 2 and now need to contact various US Army records entities for a complete list, hopefully with their home town details. Does anyone know of any particularly good forums I should then join to try to surface things like photos, diaries etc? I'm already awash with original operational documents produced by the Squadron commander and afterwards by Army education facilities. I'm a journalist intending to support the 80th anniversary commémorations here with the story of Troop "A" and memories of those men from their relatives today.
At a national level, these organizations are mostly policy and lobbying groups, though they may be able to point you in the right direction.
However, both groups have local chapters in almost every city in the US (maybe even multiple). They often function as a club house, bar, gathering place for veterans. If you know the hometown of some of the soldiers in the squad you are researching you could contact those local chapters. They may be willing to help or may know the soldier or their family. For example here is site for the VFW in Kenosha Wisconsin: http://vfw1865.org (I chose this randomly).
You could also contact the libraries in the hometowns of the soldiers. They may be able to share with you newspaper clippings from that time period that could feature the people you are researching. They may also have obituaries that could list children who may still be alive. This is also true of Colleges or Universities in or near the hometowns.
Finally you could post this same question on reddit in https://www.reddit.com/r/ww2/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/ . I'd assume/hope at least a few people in both those forums would be interested in your research and could help point you to resources.
So I read HDM again recently (specifically the subtle knife). I am not a psychiatrist but iiuc (a) Will's mother had pretty classic schizophrenia and (b) that should actually be pretty treatable, especially if you have someone to make sure you're taking your medication. Which raises the question... Was Will actually responsible for making his mother being sick by hiding her illness?
I only read one of the three books, but isn't part of Will hiding her illness because he fears he may have the same (after all, this is a fantasy series where dimension-hopping and magic and the like are all real) because sometimes he sees/hears things that 'aren't there'?
He's also a child - what, 12 or so? He doesn't have an adult knowledge of the world, he's operating off fears of asylums and orphanages that he's picked up. Pretending everything is okay is how he manages the situation.
Re the first part - iirc when he finds out about specters he wonders if they are part of her soul, but before that he's pretty sure she's just scared if things in her own mind.
Re the second part: yeah, his actions definitely make sense given what he knows about the world. I'm just curious whether they're actually what would happen (does the UK really send people to asylums/orphanages that easily? My impression is that involuntary commitment is really hard to push and given that she's mostly functional they'd probably just give her pills and out the door?)
I think, in the present day, someone with just hallucinations (who isn't an immediate danger to themselves or others) is unlikely to get involuntary psychiatric detention.
For example, the daughter of a friend of my mother has an official diagnosis of schizophrenia, but is asymptomatic like 99% of the time. She tells me she sometimes has visual distortions and sees things that aren't there. Doesn't drive a car because driving might be difficult if you start hallucinating. At that level, they'll just give you antipsychoticmedications. (Which, possibly work, given that she is 99% asymptomatic).
No. He's a child and children accept the world view of their parents. Mine were non schizophrenic but pretty wrong about everything. It took me into my teens to realize this and into mid adulthood to fully internalize it. Also she is poor I think therefore reliant on NHS mental health services? Until your schizophrenia leads you to murder a stranger it's going to stay under the radar.
So in his case he's aware she's sick and seeing things that aren't there, he does figure out her paranoias are wrong.
I don't actually think he's actually he's morally blameworthy, but I do wonder - if he'd just gone to a teacher at school and said "hey my mom's sick", would they have gotten her NHS funded medical care that could turn her functional, instead of (as Will feared) putting her in an asylum and sending him to an orphanage?
OK I wasn't fully remembering the state of his understanding. I think even if you have made a diagnosis of schizophrenia it's still hard to know whether your medical system will think it treatable by drugs alone or drugs plus detention. I also think the precautionary principle would say she might be ok on her own but no way can she cope with parenting a child so at the very least he needs taking into care. If he thinks he is up to managing her I think he does morally and rationally the right thing.
Here's a kind of proposal, in a weaker and a stronger form:
Weaker: Not all, but most popular music produced in the last 50 or so years, that has lyrics, is about love/sex/romance
Stronger: Not all, but most music that has lyrics is about love/sex/romance
Is any one of these true, and if so, why? I personally have a hunch towards the weaker form being true, but legitimately stumped as to why. I've heard the usual explanation - love and romance and sex is the ultimately relatable human experience - but it doesn't seem believable that it explains SUCH an overwhelming majority of cases. Has anybody written a serious long treatment of this that I can read?
Apropos of very little, Talking Heads' "Stay Up Late" supposedly came about because David Byrne was annoyed that very few "baby baby" songs had anything to do with actual babies.
My impression is that "romance" has been rapidly declining as a theme in popular songs over the past couple of decades, replaced by more sex. Especially in hip-hop, which seems to be a romance-free zone, with predictable bad consequences for the sorts of communities that listen to a lot of it.
I think it goes through cycles. When popular music started appealing to teenagers instead of adults, of course it went for teenage interests, which are love/sex/romance.
Older songs are also about those themes, but (particularly in jazz) they can be darker/less optimistic - The Man That Got Away, Set Them Up Joe, and so forth. You can have patriotic songs and the like, but if you're trying to write about ordinary human experiences, songs about doing grocery shopping or songs about 'I'm in love and it's wonderful', which do you think are more likely to appeal?
I've actually been thinking about this recently, and I think there's actually a lot less love/sex/romance in pop music these days compared to 50 years ago, especially in Japan. And even the love songs that are still being made are either much more cynical or completely unhinged. Back in, say, the 80s, you have all these rosy, super idealistic love songs, like, uh, this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ (I'm so sorry) but you don't really see many songs like this anymore. I'm currently going through UK top-ten singles in 2023, and it seems that not even a majority of the songs are about love, and most of the ones that are about love are... not very positive about it. Otherwise, they're usually about social critique, (female) empowerment, depression, stuff like that.
And then there's Japan, where the two most popular pop songs of the era are a blatant romanticization of suicide ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8VYWazR5mE ) and a song with a title that roughly translates to "Shut the fuck up" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp3b-RXtz4w ). So yeah, that's fun. Not that I'm complaining, of course, but... It does seem like this might be a symptom of the populace becoming disillusioned with romance. The same thing is probably happening in the West as well, just at a slower pace. After all, there's no shortage of people complaining about how hard it is to find a date, as well as people sharing horrible experiences from relationships... It's all just kinda depressing.
Yoru ni Kakeru isn't even *Yoasobi*'s most popular song, let alone "the most popular pop song of the era". It's not even close. IIRC someone corrected this claim in a previous thread in ACX, so it's frustrating to see this blatant falsehood continue to be repeated.
Alternative propositions offered for consideration or discussion. Shot from the hip, welcome pushback.
1. Almost all popular music before the Beatles was about love.
2. Almost all the popular rock music after the Beatles was abstract (or barely decipherable, even if it was about some specific thing). (Or maybe it was Dylan.) Lemma: It became low status to explicitly say what you meant in a song.
4. Country music was not similarly affected.
5. Country music has a lot of love songs, but also address a wide range of random other complex situations, like being stuck in a small town, nostalgia, depression, addiction, friendship, and love or hate of home.
6. Hip hop does explicit storytelling too, and some strands of metal do too. Radio rock (pop and alternative) is the main outlier here.
Please note this is not implying any quality or inferiority of any genre, this is purely taxonomical not normative, it's ok to want different things at different times.
> 1. Almost all popular music before the Beatles was about love.
I'm not enough of a comprehensive music listener to be able to clearly identify trends pre- and post-Beatles, have to pass.
> (or barely decipherable, even if it was about some specific thing)
Not sure about rock specifically, but somewhat agree.
> Lemma: It became low status to explicitly say what you meant in a song.
(Shooting from the hip, I don't even have anecdotal observations.) Agree in letter, disagree in spirit. This is possibly a thing, but if it is, I believe it's a second-order effect of it becoming easier and cheaper to produce commercially viable music. If you don't need a hundred thousand bucks to produce a minimally playable album, you can do it even if your songwriter sucks, and cryptic barely-making-sense associative lyrics are easier to write than coherent storytelling ones.
> 4. Country music was not similarly affected
> 5. Country music has a lot of love songs, but also address a wide range of random other complex situations, like being stuck in a small town, nostalgia, depression, addiction, friendship, and love or hate of home.
My knowledge of country music starts at two Johnny Cash songs and stops there. Can neither agree nor disagree.
> 6. Hip hop does explicit storytelling too, and some strands of metal do too. Radio rock (pop and alternative) is the main outlier here.
Ah, now here's something I can actually comment on. I listen to a fair bit of rap/hip-hop. So... yes, I do think that it's different in that there aren't that many love songs. They're certainly there, but they're interspersed with a few other stock song themes. Mostly drug dealing, describing a life of wealth and success, and threatening unnamed "opposition" with violence. When there's something like a love song, it's usually a lot more about sex, in absolute majority of cases fellatio, than it is about love. Sometimes it's all those within the same track. But it's extremely rarely anything BUT these.
Which maybe brings me to this thesis - maybe the actual general trait here is that music (going to stick to the weaker version of the original proposition) is actually becoming... same-er. More standardized. Less experimental. It's just that pop music has standardized on love songs.
Why? No clue, but, also shooting from the hip, maybe it's something to do with the internet providing faster feedback loops and more observability? Assuming you're a commercially minded musician, you will want to imitate trends, and it's easier than ever to know what is the trend to imitate? Maybe, also, it's easier to make commercially viable music, and there's far fewer people who make music for shits and giggles/as a hobby, and more wanting commercial success?
Good points. I should sprinkle some examples throughout for reference. REM and the Shins seem straightforwardly downstream from Helter Skelter to me but it's definitely not a scientific review.
Hip hop is a really interesting case study, there's a split in there. High brow like mos def or common or aceyalone doing slice of life vignettes or commenting on bigger issues, club anthem side like lil jon that's just like what you're saying, then a halfway point like Jay Z or outkast maybe wu that can drift either way and add a few "I'm the greatest" anthems in there.
Country has range of this too, party anthems about a keg in a field, more introspective stuff or tragedies, lot of love songs. I think the key to mainstream success in country is being a crossover artist.
There's always some tension between low brow and high brow forms of art and artists that can pull from both sides effectively end up in that sweet spot of critical acclaim and popular appeal.
Yadda yadda Jay Z is the Steven Spielberg of hip hop?
> Hip hop is a really interesting case study, there's a split in there
There definitely was, but is there, still? I'm not as much of a deep-cut listener now (I've switched towards british electronica that sounds like sountracks to non-existing science documentaries and has no lyrics), but from superficial observation, it feels like "conscious hip-hop" is kind of dead.
But I'm not sure if high-brow in the sense that you're referring to even still exists. I used to like Oddisee and he kind of went in that direction but I'm not sure if he's doing anything still, but we're talking about a guy with 200K monthly listeners on Spotify, this is not a trend (compare: Travis Scott - 63 million). It feels like soundcloud rap ate it.
> Yadda yadda Jay Z is the Steven Spielberg of hip hop?
The Swedish artist Laleh (see for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udX7luUKk90 ) has said something to the effect (translating from memory) "I don't make lovesongs, there are so many of those already. Love is an important feeling, but overrepresented in popculture: I sing about all the other feelings instead."
There are several exceptions, and many of her songs can be interpreted to be about love, but not necessarily so. But I enjoy the sentiment :)
I think that if we look at lyrics in general (and not just "popular music produced in the last 50 or so years" but also going back to history as far as we can see), they thrive on strong emotions and that effectively means sex or death. You have themes of loss, of longing, of risk, or expectations, or threats, or certainty/safety/contentment, but the stakes are high when these themes refer to sex or death, so they generally are; sometimes directly, sometimes with euphemisms and allegory - e.g. it's not uncommon that even children nursery rhymes do refer to sex or death in a somewhat obscured manner. And not only in lyrics - take a look at the originally collected Grimm's tales, for example.
And in the last 50 or so years our society has become detached from death (greater security, less child mortality and maternal mortality, wars involve a smaller part of western population, distance from "lifecycle" that was obvious when most people lived on farms) that topic has become less relevant, so only sex remains. Well, perhaps addiction is emerging as a separate high-stakes high-emotions topic that comes up in lyrics every so often; not only now but also in folk songs from a few centuries ago.
My joking, 95%-non-serious answer: Well, there's two kinds of music made 150 years ago (source: reading the Child ballads), songs about love/sex/romance and songs about horribly dying in disturbing ways, and there's overlap between them, but if you write a song about horribly dying in a disturbing way you might get cancelled, so it's safer to write songs about sex. So that's why all songs are about sex, these days.
For those who have experienced the peer review process, I wonder if your experience makes you surprised or leaves you unsurprised by the following experiences of mine: is this sort of thing common in your area of interest if you are a researcher?
1. A few weeks ago, a preprint of mine was rejected after six months, with the principal explanation given being that it was sent to three specialists for a quick opinion, and none of them had responded at all (so no referee report or a quick opinion). And that non-exceptional articles published in the journal had to have a certain page-limit which my article exceeded: which I hadn't found on the journal page while submitting, and which I found was violated by a majority of the articles in the last published volume.
2. Last week, another preprint was rejected, this time in slightly less than six months, with about 750 word "quick report" from someone who said it was quite far from their expertise, that they are interested in the area in which the preprint was written but do not engage in research in it themselves, and that the editor should disregard everything they have to say. Despite saying this, the "quick report" had about 750 words, mostly complaining a lot about how various things in part of the introduction were not clear, saying that the results based on which the paper should really be judged were in another part of the introduction they did not read, and that the editor should look for experts to referee it. Sharing this with me, the editor said that after "quick reports" (plural, but only one was shared with me), they decided not initiate a full referee process, because it seemed that it would be difficult in any case to convince the editorial board to publish it: i.e., they don't want what will certainly be a further delay of at least several months for me.
These shocked me especially because the latter was unlike anything I had seen till then: an elaborate appearance of a show-trial and yet refraining from asserting a concrete opinion. I didn't understand why a non-report should take about six months. To be honest, for a moment I had even wondered if there was sublimated racism. But I asked some colleagues, and their response was that this happens every now and then because journals, when they get too many papers and have to reject, often resort to such expedients. It is unrealistic to give anywhere near a fair trial for all papers, and they don't want to commit to saying that certain papers are bad, and it seems easiest to make a ritual of a fake trial which typically will be accepted without questioning as a sort of realpolitik. It is apparently a problem that globally, the numbers of students and publications have increased, and the number of journals and their page limits haven't kept up. They assured me that it is nothing racist or personal, that it happens to all sorts of people, and that I can simply submit it to another journal without much fear that this would repeat.
If you have engaged with peer review, have you had anything like this, or other weird experiences?
My husband had a paper rejected because one reviewer responded, explicitly, "I am unfamiliar with the topic, therefore reject" (rather than "I am unfamiliar with the topic, therefore try a different reviewer"). And another reviewer failed to understand that the paper was basically an existence proof, demonstrating that it was theoretically possible for a thing to happen in a carefully contrived and engineered set of circumstances, and rejected it because that set of circumstances would be unlikely to arise naturally - which I think is like rejecting a sculpture because that arrangement of materials would be unlikely to arise naturally. (The paper was subsequently accepted elsewhere.)
I lost a lot of trust in the peer review process after being asked to do a review of someone else's paper and not being given any guidance on how I'm meant to do it or what qualities I'm meant to be judging. Maybe more experienced researchers pick this up along the way (I'm a PhD student), but it wasn't a positive sign.
I too never had any guidance on how I am supposed to do it. When I look back at my earlier reports from when I was just past PhD, I am embarrassed by how much nit-picking I did (once an editor asked me for the texfile and removed some nitpicking before sending it to the authors). On the other hand, I also think that while I tried to follow the details, I didn't try enough to synthesize the knowledge in my mind. Experienced and knowledgeable researchers *rarely* read proofs in papers: if they decide to do a serious job, they will typically read the theorems to see what their intuition says about its correctness (and I may sound ridiculous here, but often that intuition picks up mistakes better than line-by-line checking). This creates problems for the lesser mortals who read the paper later: they find ultimately fixable mistakes in proofs, but don't realize it and spend time trying to square the circle.
My understanding on how to review has been evolving, but even now I am not comfortable with judging whether something fits the level of a journal. I see people who are comfortable and who have a fine-grained sense of the pecking order between various journals, but even they are usually biased in some way or the other (it is just impossible to be otherwise). Also, really top level researchers differ from each other on how closely a paper should be refereed. The reviews of my papers (by peers) have been of quite varying levels. There are clearly reviewers who barely read anything, but once I was lucky to have one who understood my paper better than I did myself and gave numerous comments, all of them relevant and some of them enlightening enough that I would say I became a better researcher after that referee report.
On the other hand, as someone who is sometimes on conference program committees, you ocassionally get a paper that is hard to find reviewers for.
For example, suppose someone has done work on computer security requirements for genomic databases (like 23andme). Now, you need to organise reviewers who understand both database security and genomics well enough to review the paper.
Thank you. If so, naively, to me, the reasonable thing to me sounds like just saying "Sorry we can't find reviewers. We regret our inability to consider your paper". Do you know why sometimes they instead write a several sentences long report basically saying "I don't know this stuff. But I read part of the introduction and found that it is addressed to experts", and then somehow make that grounds for rejection? What do they gain from this?
No; this may not be easy to explain, but I will try (sorry that I am clumsy with articulating these nuances so the comment is long):
(i) The only concrete suggestion the quick report author makes is that the editor choose a referee from among experts. Not that the editor could take a call on what to do with the exposition.
(ii) The reviewer hedges themselves at **multiple** points by saying they are not an expert and don't engage in research in this area. They write "you should disregard everything I say", in as many words.
(iii) It is usually understood that either an expert takes the call on approachability (as usually happens), or they say specifically that the paper *needs* to be addressed to non-experts and that the author *should* be adding such and such definitions.
But -- and here is the psychological bit that seems fascinating -- by saying that they were lost (which sounds quite ridiculous to people who actually work in my area), even though after asking multiple times to be disregarded -- they want someone else to take it as a hint that it is not approachable enough (like you just did), though they don't themselves want to take responsibility for saying so. This deviousness is a lot of what bothers me. Why does the report author hedge multiple times, and still write 750 words: the only reason I can think of is that the author understand that this is a set up to help the journal reject a paper it does not want to go through the trouble of a referee process with, so the author doesn't want to say anything
(iv) I understand I can't credibly say this myself, but I feel the exposition is actually quite good (in fact I feel it is in the 90th percentile).
The editor also understands (iii) (they are a well-known person with several prestigious awards listed in their wikipedia page, and the journal is semi-prestigious), and doesn't specifically point out anything wrong with the paper or its exposition, or suggest that I should send it elsewhere after fixing the exposition, but takes recourse to the expedient that based on the quick reports, they feel it would be difficult to convince the rest of the editorial board. So it seems to be a pretty elaborate web of numerous weak assertions designed to help people who want to extrapolate them into stronger statements in their minds: see for instance that the commenter Pete below felt like reading a "nothing amazing" into it (which could begin to make sense if the quick reviewer hadn't said that they didn't even read the part of the introduction which had theorems based on which the paper should be judged).
To my obviously biased perception, there is some lesson on how ritual makes the world work by making it possible to not think too much about meaning.
The specific cases are a bit weird, but it wouldn't also be unusual to reject something for publishing without saying that anything is bad, there are many venues where getting 3 bland reviews "okay paper, no obvious flaws, but nothing amazing" means a rejection as they can fill their desired number of papers with something more interesting.
You seem to be talking of something completely different (and quite common place and well-known), to the point that your comment even seems a bit like an insinuation.
"certain papers are bad, and it seems easiest to make a ritual of a fake trial" If the editor thought the quality of your paper was bad or out of scope then he would just desk reject it. It has happened to me.
What happened to you is something different. Quite simply they tried to find qualified reviewers but after 6 months were unable to. It's becoming more and more difficult to find good reviewers to do unpaid reviews, especially if the topic is not mainstream. Notice this process takes a long time because a lot of people just won't answer and it's hard to keep up with all the invites. Meanwhile 6 months or more have passed and a decision needs to be taken.
Thank you. What you say matches what I hear from others. I would have preferred if they could just say "We regret our inability to find reviewers". But instead they seem to do some weird circus.
How valuable is social media status? I'm thinking about value broadly, as a proxy for connection to ideas, opportunities, and as a warm introduction. Specifically, we can think of three scenarios:
1. A new technology arises. How does a large follower base help you increase your proximity to that technology in terms of understanding, access, and the ability to work on it?
2. You lost your job. How much does your follower base help you get a new one?
3. You were unceremoniously dumped. Does having followers significantly help you find someone new?
Taking Twitter/X as an example: on the one hand, you have meme accounts and "walking memes" (i.e., hyper-specialized human accounts like Bill Pulte) that have lots of followers, but their generic masses of followers don't seem to be particularly valuable unless you have status elswhere. On the other hand, you have high value communities like tpot and building in public, who do seem to have useful connections, if quite few. What is the relative value of, say, a tpot follower vs a generic twitter follower?
Have you benefitted from your social media following?
No, I don't think it means anything unless you're trying to connect with other people who highly value social media and clout. I have next-to-no social media presence and have never struggled to find a partner or a job. I'd argue that having a small, tight circle of trusted contacts is more valuable, as there's less noise when assessing potential opportunities. Blasting out your desire for a partner or work status on social media to a mass of strangers seems like a quick way to get a lot of very low-value responses that you now have to filter.
"3. You were unceremoniously dumped. Does having followers significantly help you find someone new?"
I'd speculate that a guy having a decent number of casual connections within a specific community on social media helps in terms of social proof. Lets say you're interested in someone. You've talked to them. You friend request them on Facebook. They see that you're friends with ten of their friends. They're more likely to accept your friend request.
I'm far from an expert on social media, but I've heard people complain about this phenomenon, that continuing to be friends with with people who have engaged in abusive behavior gives them an effective endorsement, allowing them to more easily persist in their behavior.
Of course, social proof is about being minimally acceptable. There are probably other aspects to having tens of thousands of followers that I'm not fit to comment on.
I had heard of him years ago and my being unable to place the name was really bothering me. He's the philanthropy guy, maximizing the "warm fuzzies" kind of work. I don't mean that in a cynical way -- I'm sure he doesn't even care about how many twitter followers he has except in service to what it is that he's doing there.
It's great to see the rules getting enforced! Thanks for the bans. As I was reading through some of them it reminded me why I often find it so hard to have discussions on reddit and how much more constructive it is here.
Seconded. But it is a bummer that there is still this bug of a reply accidentally being posted as a top-level comment, which makes Middle-East stuff spill out of the sub-thread.
Recently you discussed the lab leak theory of the origin of Covid, and stated that your updated probability of this being true in the light of some new information had not changed much due to the information being “one data point”. This is a misunderstanding. Bayesian updating of a prior is done using the likelihood ratio only - the number of datapoints that contribute to that likelihood ratio is irrelevant (unlike the “frequentist” approach where the sample size formally affects uncertainty). A single datapoint can have a very large likelihood ratio and affect the posterior probability profoundly.
As an example, consider the two prominent Covid origin hypotheses, lab leak (L) and wet market (W), and the single datapoint that the virus originated in Wuhan. Likelihood is the probability of the <data> given the <hypothesis>. According to Wikipedia there are 3 high-level viral labs in China where gain-of-function research is carried out, one of those in Wuhan. The likelihood of <virus arose in Wuhan> if hypothesis L is true is thus 1/3. The number of wet markets in China is not so clear but I am going to use a conservative estimate of 3000. The likelihood of <virus arose in Wuhan> if hypothesis W is true is thus 1/3000. From the above the single datapoint “virus arose in Wuhan” gives a likelihood ratio of 1:1000, and has a profound effect on the posterior probability.
Some quick thoughts, that maybe someone better at statistics than me can answer or comment on?
- The hypothesis rather seem to be <virus arose in Wuhan | virus arose in China>, why restrict it to China? Would doing the analysis for the whole world change the results? For example I assume a large share of the worlds wet markets are in China.
- I think there are more than one wet market in Wuhan, so surely the ratio should be #wet markets in Wuhan / #total wet markets
- As you probably already are aware, I think the priors p(virus arises due to L) and p(virus arises in W), and maybe p(virus arise due to other) - which are pretty hard to assess, are very important for the end result here
1. I restricted the calculation to China as it is the only country with both wet markets and GOF viral labs.
2. The prior probability is swamped by the huge likelihood ratio. The equation is posterior odds = prior odds X likelihood ratio. Eg. if your prior odds of W vs L are 100:1 favouring W then your posterior odds are 10:1 favouring L
I just realized that dividing the world into countries is probably a mistake. Some countries are much larger than others. "In China" is just too big to be very informative.
Maybe the world should be divided into roughly equal population areas that have have borders matching national borders if they include a national border.
In that post Scott isn't talking about updating his probability that Covid was a lab leak. Rather, he is saying that, if new evidence came in proving conclusively that it was or wasn't a lab leak, that should not significantly affect your opinion on e.g. whether gain-of-function research should be banned.
If you believe that Covid plausibly *could have been* caused by somebody in the Wuhan lab dropping a test tube on the floor, that should be enough to make you go "holy **** we'd better make sure that can never happen again!" If it then turns out that no actually it was caused by somebody eating undercooked pangolin and the Wuhan lab wasn't involved, that should not significantly change your opinion. The fact that a routine test-tube-handling accident during GoF research *could* plausibly cause a pandemic, is what matters, not whether any specific pandemic was in fact caused by it.
And of course this works in the other direction too: if we believe that people eating bats and pangolins has a significant risk of causing a pandemic, we should pressure China to crack down on it, irrespective of whether it was the cause of the Covid pandemic. As long as both of these practices are *plausible* causes of the pandemic, we should do something about both of them -- which of them was actually the cause of Covid-19 may be of interest to historians but doesn't really make much difference for future policy decisions.
Does anyone know whether Robin Hanson is still standing by his 2016 predictions in Age of Em that ems created through brain uploading will be transformative to society before AIs are? https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/
His predictions (including estimating that it would take 400 years to reach human-level AI) don't seem to have aged well in the 8 years since (the "Age of LLM"?). But it's possible he'd stand by it.
It was discussed in the last open thread that he has updated recently: he thinks global population and productivity will decline first, until an Amish-like insular fertile culture becomes the majority.
Was the mainstream position on COVID in February 2020 essentially the correct one and the Rationalist position essentially wrong, when looking in retrospective? If governments did ~nothing to stop Covid back in March 2020, we would’ve avoided lockdowns, border closures, lots of political hysteria, rapid inflation, loss of trust in vaccines, etc - at the cost of a few million premature deaths of elderly people.
So was it really all that rational for the Rationality community to take precautions rather than encouraging a “let it rip” approach? We did have good mortality data from South Korea by late February 2020 so it’s not like this could be blamed on the lack of data - and by end of March 2020 there was plenty of it from the U.S. as well, yet the rationality community remained resolute in avoiding personal gatherings.
Nit: The mainstream position on COVID didn't turn to lockdowns until March of 2020.
Major Objection: In February/March 2020, a *brief* lockdown would have been rational, to A: level off the worst of the first-wave peak and B: buy time to set up contact-tracing infrastructure and C: do the operations research to figure out better-targeted measures to implement in April 2020.
However, that's not what we did. There was no operations research, and at least in California nobody even started making plans to hire contact tracers until two months after the state of emergency.
What "we" did, was make three barely-educated guesses and turn them into a civic religion. We were going to lock down, mask up, and socially distance the COVID away until Saint Fauci gave us a vaccine. We had Three Weird Tricks to beat COVID, and we were going to use them.
And any attempt to update those barely-educated guesses would have involved admitting that the first guesses were wrong, which since we had made a religion out of this would have been heresy and thus unthinkable. If COVID continued to spread, the only acceptable response would have been to do More Lockdowns, More Masks, and More Social Distancing.
That what was done included lockdowns, and a rational policy would have included lockdowns, does not mean that what was done was rational.
I understand why mainstream politicians and media did what they did. My argument is that specifically the Rationality community ended up being wrong in retrospect by being the first to call for precautions rather than being the loudest voice objecting against all restrictions.
It is a bit surreal to read all the posts from Rationalists from March 2020 patting themselves on the back for supposedly "calling" COVID earlier than the "mainstream". Even if you ignore the fact that they did not actually see it coming earlier than the mainstream, all the panic looks silly in retrospect. I remember one person in the comments of Putanumonit talked about selling out of the stock market at what turned out to be a temporarily downturn followed by rapid growth.
The only person I personally know who died from COVID died in March 2020. They were 28. A big problem at the beginning was that hospitals didn't know how to treat COVID in anyone and then they didn't have the supplies to treat them. It wasn't just "elderly" people dying (as if their deaths are any less tragic than someone else's).
There were surely better actions and policies that could have taken place at the start of the pandemic, but looking at the situation and saying "better to just not doing anything!" doesn't seem very rational to me.
No, it was primarily the elderly dying even in March 2020, as evidenced by statistics from every country. And we knew that since Feb 2020 thanks to high quality data from South Korea.
"it was primarily the elderly dying even in March 2020" sure but the elderly are always the ones "primarily dying". My point was not that it wasn't primarily old people dying, it was that it wasn't *only* old people dying and there is no reason to think "letting it rip" would only increase deaths of old people.
Sure but the cost-benefit calculation still tells us that "letting it rip" was the optimal scenario. I'm also claiming that this calculation could've been done in Feb 2020 and that the Rationality community ended up being wrong in retrospective.
Is there a specific analysis that are you are referencing or just a general one? I havent seen one which is why I am asking - I want to make sure we are on the same page.
The korean data is compelling but there are big differences between the US and Korean culture and habits in public that leads to a lot of uncertainty. Also, I dont think my behavior was changed much at all because of any mandate.
Basically all precautions I took were based on not wanting to get COVID or give it to my loved ones (maybe these were unnecessary or misguided but they didn't cost me much). I suspect lots of other people would have behave similarly, so the costs of "let it rip" will still include the costs of behavior changes that occurred under the policy that we got.
I dont think more restrictive shut down policies would have helped much. The policies that would have helped were more on the government side and how they delayed or stymied testing or quick roll outs of the vaccine, but those are discussions for another time.
Overall I think "let it rip" has a lot of uncertainty that just can't be accounted for (at least from what I have read).
I've been wondering how much caution is still warranted. I quite often see people arguing that a significantly increased amount of caution relative to pre-covid is still necessary, either to protect people who are particularly vulnerable or because of long-term effects that were not initially noticable. Most of the people I see claiming this are strangers on Tumblr though, so I don't have put much weight on their opinions. Does anyone know if there's actually good evidence for the claim that covid often does long-term damage to the immune system?
I'm pretty sure there's good evidence that it does not. Til recently I followed a bunch of researchers on Twitter who were apolitical, at least in their professional roles and communication, & that's where I saw results of a study that weighs strongly against that the long-term immune system damage.
However, there is pretty good evidence that Long Covid, conservatively defined, affects about 5% of people the first time they have Covid, and about 2% the second time. Most cases of LC resolve by 4-12 mos. , but there are some that do not. I can't remember the figure, but think it's less than 10% of LC cases. I had what I now think was "Long Flu" about 20 years ago, so I take the idea of post-viral syndromes seriously. My quality of life went from about an 8 to about a 3, and stayed that way for 3 years. However, just going by the stats, someone's odds of getting LC that lasts a year or more or low.
I think what is often ignored in discussing the "let it rip" strategy is the number of people who would have gotten sick at the same time and the load on hospitals this would have caused. Remember that at some points during the epidemic, health care all over the world were completely overloaded. This would clearly have been worse with no lock downs. The cost of this - both in human lives due to lack of proper care, on production, and on secondary effects due to all the sick people doing important work not coming in (including -again health care, fire departments, police, all kinds om maintenance etc. etc.) needs to be accounted for in a proper comparison of these strategies.
I saw a convincing analysis somewhere (probably a link on this site) showing that the best strategy, in fact, was to due a hybrid approach, with some combination of lock downs and opening up.
I'd say in general (based mainly on my stomach at this point) that the response was too mild (too slow to close) in the beginning and too hard (too slow to open) in later parts of the epidemic in most places in the west.
Maybe, I haven't looked too much into the details - but that was certainly not how it seemed at the time. During Omicron we already had the vaccines, and many people had Covid already and had immunity, so I'm not sure that is too good of an example.
edit: I'm guessing there must be a lot of research and articles discussing the implications of various degrees of lock-down and counterfactuals by now, maybe this would be a nice topic for a "much more than you wanted to know style article"?
There were two reasonably viable strategies -- lock down until eradication, or let it rip. The only really stupid strategies were the hybrid strategies where you have repeated lockdowns but no eradication. These hybrid strategies were what most of the world pursued, for some reason.
Western Australia did it the best, I think... they had about two weeks of lockdown at the very start, and then lived basically normally (albeit stuck in their Argentina-sized state) for the next couple of years before eventually opening the borders after everyone was vaccinated. They did better than the more famous example of New Zealand which had a couple of extra outbreak/lockdowns.
That's a simplistic description. The hybrid approach boiled down to "keep everything from burning down until we can roll out a good vaccine", which kinda worked except for a) the baffling refusal of many people to take the vaccine, and b) the surprising ability of the virus to work around the protection offered by the vaccine.
That said, yes, pretty much everyone did get Covid in the end, but for most people it was the tamed, more flu-like omicron variants, and they had some protection from the vaccine. So it wasn't "merely" a few million "premature deaths of elderly people" (btw, I am quite happy that my parents are still around, thank you), it was also a few million middle-aged people who didn't get their health wrecked by a wacky virus that damaged all kinds of organs.
Not sure where you're posting from, but the US approach of "keep everything from burning down until we can roll out a good vaccine", didn't work at all because it turned into "keep everything from burning down for three months, then everybody is sick and tired of the lockdowns and has figured out that they don't have to obey the lockdowns". Then we waited another six months to approve the vaccine, during which we had a second wave of COVID that was worse than the first as it reached all the people who had been "saved" by the lockdowns but were now out and about.
We were maybe able to keep them from going out to restaurants, but private house parties are even more conducive to spreading infectious diseases so oops.
When you say the hybrid approach kinda worked except for (various exceptions) you left out the biggest way it didn’t work which was: public health institutions doing a crap job of rolling out vaccines and allocating them efficiently. There were a dozen obvious-to-rationalists improvements we COULD have collectively made to get vaccines into more arms as quickly as possible but didn’t due to a weird combination of “equity” concerns, bad math, risk aversion, institutional resistance to change and just general refusal to think clearly about tradeoffs. Had the rollout been less of a mess, vaccine resistance would be less of a factor.
The craziest part is that *nothing has been learned*! If a new pandemic came along tomorrow for which we had plausible vaccine candidates we’d still make the exact same mistakes! We’d still prioritize letting people die over inconveniencing bureaucrats.
What could we have done instead?
First Doses First. Challenge Trials. Using the MARKET rather than command-and-control to allocate at least SOME supply. Rapidly experimenting (via more Challenge Trials) with using a LOWER DOSE to maximize the *number of people you can vaccinate per unit volume of vaccine*.
Hell, how about simply NOT DOING (or at least not SUBSIDIZING) the kind of research likely to generate such plagues in the first place? Have we even made THAT change?
In so many little ways, the approach actually taken implicitly sent the message that this wasn’t *really* an emergency.
I don’t think so? IIRC first-doses-first, challenge trials, free market distribution of the vaccine and experiments with lowered doses basically almost never happened anywhere. There might be some isolated examples of countries that might have done something kind of like that, but it doesn’t look like a US-specific set of issues. I certainly didn’t hear of any country banning gain-of-function research.
How much do we currently spend to extend the lives of elderly people? Should we pay them heart transplants, costly cancer treatments etc? Should we pay them nursing homes , or let them starve if they can't take care of themselves? How about disabled people? How much are they worth?
These are hard questions, and the short answer is, as a humane society, if we can afford it, we should.
The answer to that question heavily depends on whether you think human lives have intrinsic value. Every time the topic of COVID comes up, my dad always mentions that the only thing it did was "cull the weak," so if you're like him, obviously yes, the lockdowns were a mistake.
I feel the argument is that we got "cull the weak" *anyway* despite the lockdowns; the vulnerable elderly got Covid (some multiple times) anyway, just slightly later as the chosen restrictions weren't even remotely sufficient to prevent the spread, just slow it down. So effectively our choice between "pay the price of lives" and "pay the price of lockdowns" was "why not both?"
I just responded to someone who dislikes the vaccines, saying that the precautionary principle is valid in itself, and that hedging one's bets can be appropriate. My memory is bad around then, but I don't think the quality of the data we had was sufficient to justify the risks. I feel like this is a bad tendency that rationalists have inherited from Sherlock Holmes stories; in reality, the fog of bullshit is thicker than that of London.
In February 2020? No, I think rationalists and lockdown folks were generally correct.
Per my recollection, Covid was just shifting out of "weird internet thing" and "watching the Chinese freakout" to mainstream attention in February. We really didn't know what it was capable of and we certainly didn't have good data out of South Korea. We hadn't even seen those horror stories out of Italy.
With perfect knowledge, we might ideally have done things differently from February to May but at the time people were making reasonable decision given a dramatic amount of uncertainty. It was easily possible that Covid could have been much, much worse. Once June rolled around, lockdowns became much harder to justify.
the failure of world governments to pursue an eradication policy in 2020 has a serious case for crime of the century and humanity will be paying for it for a long time
the rationalists were right then and the government's abandonment of public health in the face of this virus is some real banality of evil type shit
The problem with the travel restrictions was that they weren't really strict enough to actually prevent transmission - they had a lot of exceptions and special cases (even when fully enforced), plus of course they never applied to secondary countries that didn't have them. So putting aside whether they were racist, they were at least more there for show than actually effective.
It's hard for a single government to maintain an eradication policy while it's spreading in other countries. If China had halted its spread, that could have prevented things, but once it got out I don't know what any other country could have done to prevent a global pandemic.
China didn't do a good job of vaccinating its people and gave up on "zero COVID" when it became too transmissible for that to be feasible, resulting in a lot of deaths. Other countries like Australia did manage to keep it out until they'd vaccinated their people, but that vaccination didn't eradicate COVID and instead just reduced the number of deaths & hospitalizations.
AFTER they knowingly let it spread to the rest of the world. Not only did they not restrict outwards travel, they literally punished people for trying to let the outside world know about the virus soon enough for them to restrict *inward* travel from china (though that probably wouldn't have happened anyway in the US, because the democrats were calling travel restrictions "racist" as late as Februrary 2020 when the seriousness of the virus was even more well known).
Covid cost the US $14 trillion (directly and through lost economic activity). Is that worth it to save some elderly people?
If so, then why is that only a good use of money when the elderly face death from covid and nothing else? Why not devote our economy to the preservation of elderly life all the time?
> Covid cost the US $14 trillion (directly and through lost economic activity). Is that worth it to save some elderly people?
There is no alternate universe where COVID does not cause enormous economic damage. Even if the government said "let it rip," people will, shockingly, change their behavior in response to the threat of them and their loved ones dying. Scott did some analysis a while back, and found that high versus low lockdown states of the USA had only modest effects on survival/economy for this reason.
In the absence of financial support, official scaremongering and legal restrictions peoples behavior wouldn’t have changed for more than a few weeks at most vs the 2 years of changes that we saw in practice.
In the absence of financial support the economic situation would have gotten even worse.
Let it rip -> people hear about family/friends dying of covid -> become more conservative/risk-averse in their decision-making -> less demand for consumer products like restaurants -> restaurants go out of business -> people lose their jobs -> less demand in general because people lost their job. This cycle continues until Covid has "let it ripped" its way through the population enough that people stop hearing about family and friends dying. This would have been a LOT longer than "a few weeks."
There is no alternate universe where people were not afraid of the virus. It simply doesn't exist. It was a highly virulent, fairly lethal virus, with no functional treatment, that quickly started overrunning hospitals.
This seems clearly correct. I'm frankly baffled by the idea that "let it rip" would have resulted in serious societal disruption lasting for as little as "a few weeks" at least in the USA. Can't really say regarding other parts of the world but around here....LOL! I mean seriously have you _met_ any Americans??
Also I personally knew two non-senior-citizens who would still be alive today if not for COVID, and know people whose families include more of the same. So even the "let 'em die they're old anyway" approach doesn't seem to hold up particularly well to the observed facts of the virus.
Push to legalize vaccines faster. Given that we had the physical product in February and trials take a few months, we could probably have had vaccines starting in May 2020, not January 2021.
Fair - but I do remember rationalists still being unusually careful in summer 2021 when all of them were already vaccinated, rather than being supportive of a complete “let it rip” approach post-vaccine.
Yeah, I've been critical of that as unreasonably careful and net harmful (or, well, the kind of critical you are towards people you like when you think they're being unreasonable but don't want to alienate them by dismissing their worries, rather than the kind of critical you are with political opponents).
I think e.g. Zvi moshowitz (who's the closest we have to an official "rationalists on COVID" newsletter) was pretty heavily "get vaccinated and go back to living life" too (although not everyone agreed).
That was also my plan from the beginning -- play it safe until we get the vaccine, then do whatever you want.
I thought that was the obvious way, but apparently for most people it was not. Either protecting yourself or not protecting yourself became a way to express your tribal affiliation, so people keep doing that whether it makes sense or not.
In that world, people would have died from the vaccines (as is currently being claimed re: young people and cardiac events) and the AU Shaked would be decrying the dangerous vaccines and asking why the governments didn't opt for lockdowns in order to slow the spread instead.
It's easy to say afterwards "Well we did X but it's clear we should have done Y", when there's a good chance that had we done Y, people would still be saying "obviously X was the better path".
No, I think the vaccines were always pretty obviously good. There's basically no correlation between lockdowns and COVID deaths, but a very strong one with vaccine uptake.
This seems like an argument that proves an awful lot you don't intend it to.
Whether or not they were the right decision on net, lockdowns caused a massive amount of harm. This harm disproportionately fell on the young for a variety of reasons. A few listed below:
- The risk of COVID was much lower for the young, so the cost/benefit ratio was skewed in favour of the elderly
- Lockdowns greatly disrupted life events which occur disproportionately to young people (eg going to school, entering the job market, getting married etc).
- Young people are disproportionately affected by mental health issues, and lockdown exacerbated mental health issues. Compounding that, the life circumstances of many young people made lockdown harder to endure without a serious hit to mental health - for example many of my friends spent lockdown in a one-bed flat with no outside space compared to almost all of my parents' friends who spent it in a >3 bed family home with ample outdoor space. Older people are disproportionately more likely to have spent COVID with a spouse too, so getting some face-to-face interaction with another person every day.
- The trillions of dollars of borrowing / damage to the economy will accrue almost entirely to the young.
I assume you agree those harms are pretty uncontroversial, both in terms of their existence and in terms of which group they disproportionately impact. With that said, if you would hypothetically have tried to harm young people for enforcing a 'no lockdown' policy on you, do you agree that young people should seek to harm you for the policy which we actually non-hypothetically did employ and which harmed them to your benefit?
My wife defended her PhD in computational neuroscience this past week, so if you know of any jobs that need expertise in modeling neuromechanical control strategies, NODEs, EEG data, 8+ semesters of teaching graduate level statistics (she's a whiz with R), or an exhaustive knowledge of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I have the prefect candidate for you. She would prefer to stay in biological data/wearables world if possible, but is keeping an open mind. We currently live in the middle of nowhere while I'm finishing my PhD, so remote is a must.
General suggestions about job searching are also appreciated. Right now the unemployment rate is reported as super low, labor force participation is high, and the US is adding bunches of jobs every month, but anecdotally pretty much every member of my immediate family has been laid of from their long tenured white collar/information sector job and is having tons of trouble finding new employment. I know about problems in the tech sector, but it seems like there more a general malaise in white collar jobs paying more than 80k a year. Anyone else experiencing this?
I think one thing that may explain the disconnect between low unemployment rate and difficulty finding a job is specifically around remote work.
Demand for remote work is off the charts, tons of people want it. Many people who currently have in-person jobs would like to switch. The supply of remote workers exceeds the demand by a fair bit.
At the same time, anecdotally tech companies at least are souring a bit on remote work. It's great for senior people who are already productive and in the habit of working all day, but it's much less good for the average employee and downright bad for new grads or very junior people. That last category could be because they don't have the right habits, or because there's just a ton of on-the-job learning that they need to do and that works way better in person than at home alone only interacting via video.
Having managed teams through the pandemic, I'm now very picky about who I feel comfortable being remote versus coming in at least a decent amount.
Given the state of the job market, have you considered a post-doc position within academia? My personal experience is that there pretty plentiful (though I can't speak to positions within your wife's field) and there's consistent chatter within academia these days about a post-doc shortage.
Pay isn't great compared to the private sector, but it's better than nothing and keeps you in the field.
Yeah, the eventual goal is to move to a biotech hub on the East Coast where we are from when I graduate with my PhD in two years. But till then, we are stuck in a university town in the Midwest.
I've been seeing these YouTube ads for a new perfume that supposedly contains pheromones that trigger arousal. I'm pretty sure it's BS but is there any evidence that the human brains responds to pheromones of any kind? It's my understanding that mammals aren't as pheromone sensitive as insects, but you've got secretions like musk which are specifically designed to trigger other mammals through scent. Any chance of a residual sensitivity to certain types of odors beyond the obvious smell good/smell bad?
Are they still flogging that horse? There have been products now for years alleging that they contain pheromones and by using them you'll be drowning in (sex of your choice) attention, but I've never seen that they do anything. There are studies claiming that women like sweaty clothing with male pheromones to plain clothing (or something), I'm not too sure since I have no temptation to stick my nose into a sweaty t-shirt to test that:
If this theory is true then smells could determine histocompatibility of a potential mate in humans, specifically an MHC which is diverse from your own would lead to advantages in the immune system for offspring. This would be dependent on the genetics of both parties though, so you’d have to manufacture something very specific, and also figure out how to mask your own. This is also not proven.
Not exactly what you are going for but i think babies smell the way they do as an adaptive feature to endear themselves to adults. No product required.
Milk consumption may be the bio-mechanism by which the smell is produced. The point is it may trigger a low level response in our brains to put adults in endearment mode, put there by evolution.
Further speculation. I have read the mutation allowing adults to digest milk is relatively recent and spread throughout humans far faster than may be generally expected from the marginal advantage it creates. But... if it was messing with endearment triggers, seems like it would be pretty 'fit'. Make of that what you will regarding stereotypical Asian/European romantic pairings.
Puppies also smell really good (especially when compared to some adult dogs), well after they've stopped drinking milk. The transition from "sweet smelling puppy" to "odiferous dog" is pretty gradual. I want to say both babies and puppies are "fresh" smelling, and older people sometimes have a particular smell (no offense intended) that we associate with aged things generally. Now I'm pretty curious about what could be behind this.
I believe I experience pheromones consciously, and that most people don't experience them consciously, though I have nothing to go on except personal anecdote and intuition.
The nose is a multi-functional tool:
1) You bring an object you are inspecting to your nose, and sniff. Your nose generates sense data and sends it to the brain where it is interpreted as a smell and brought to conscious attention with a smell qualia.
2) You taste food while eating. Your tongue is only responsible for sensing the most basic taste components of a taste: sugar, salt, pH, and protein content. The vast majority of more specialized, unique flavors are actually sensed as smells within the inner sinus. That data as it comes from the nose is essentially identical to what would be transmitted to the brain while simply smelling food and not eating it, but because the brain recognizes that it is eating rather than inspecting, it brings the sense data to conscious attention with a taste qualia rather than a smell qualia.
The above two are I believe very well established within the scientific literature. But I want to stress the difference in qualia here. A sensory input from the same sense organ can generate two very different qualia depending on context. This is why foods taste so different and bland when you are sick, by the way - your sinus is blocked so vastly less sent can make its way into your sinus to be detected, and so much of the typical sensory data from tasting food is absent.
3) You are nearby a healthy, fertile, non-family, opposite-gender individual. Your nose senses their pheromones and sends this sense data to your brain just like any other smell, but your brain doesn't want you to be a pervert and so does not generate any conscious qualia at all, though it does get you aroused and instantiates an abstract sense of attraction and desire toward the person you are smelling.
I think that unlike most people, my brain is doesn't filter out pheromone detections from generating qualia for me. And I think this reduces my reproductive fitness, which is why most people aren't consciously aware of pheromonal qualia.
I will also say that it seems highly plausible that scent is a really useful tool for animals, including humans, to identify each other. Scents are just chemicals, and one of the most basic things that DNA does is build proteins that make chemicals. It seems intuitively plausible to me that one of the easiest kinds of things to evolve with DNA is different scents. And plausible that it is easy to turn on and off different individual scent components biologically. I think pheromones can help detect mates, but also plausibly detect family members, community members, and strangers.
The nose is a highly parallel sensory organ - there are thousands of individual scents it can pick up. Suppose evolution can invent 10 easy to produce and easy to regulate scents. The genes to produce each of these scents are encoded into the DNA of each member of a species. When an individual is born, some of those genes are turned on or off at random, and they stay on or off throughout that individual's lifespan. That individual now has a moderately unique identifying characteristic that can be easily measured by nearby individuals - their particular combinations of active scent genes gives them a characteristic scent code. With 10 genes being turned on or off at random, there are >1000 different combinations in total, which would be plenty of unique identifiers to identify each person in a typical ancestral tribe / Dunbar's number unit of individuals. Seems like this would be a really useful kind of biological hardware for social animals to have. With a little more complexity, if children can inherit some of their scent code from their parents, it could even make for a fairly straightforward hard-coded biological system for determining relatedness at a glance (or rather, a sniff) which has got to be useful for any social animal species.
Frankly, I would be more surprised if evolution hasn't developed this kind of capability for social mammals. I think in the case of insects, pheromones are vastly more simple and standardized within species which makes them much easier for scientists to study. It was also really clear to scientists to look for pheromones as a solution to all manner of insect behavior questions just because there weren't a lot of other plausible sounding solutions. In contrast, higher animals are so much more complex, it is much easier for scientists to come up with many more explanations for their behavior than simple pheromones. And if the pheromone systems themselves are vastly more multi-factorial, they would be much harder to study in the same way as insect ones are.
There's certainly evidence, but the studies aren't showing a very strong effect and haven't been replicating as well as one would like.
My personal suspicion is that the self-report methodology used introduces noise, and the attempts to double-blind decrease signal out of the evolutionary range (i.e. a briefly-worn tshirt in a bag isn't really like being next to a sweaty mostly-naked woman at a watering hole).
Anecdotes aren't evidence, but sometimes when I'm around someone of my preferred type who's been exercising, and I get a whiff of their underarm scent, it's like getting shocked by electricity.
Consumer spending makes up a bit over two-thirds of the US economy. So if there was some kind of widespread AI automation of white collar jobs..... wouldn't we almost immediately enter a serious recession/new Great Depression/worse, due to depressed consumer demand? People who have not only recently lost their job, but also don't see the prospect of working again in their sector due to it being automated, are not exactly great spenders. AIs are not themselves spending money to prop up the US economy unless we enter some radically new phase of species evolution. I see all this handwaving that lots of white collar jobs are going to be automated in the future, but I don't think pundits have really thought through the 2nd & 3rd order effects of what widespread automation would entail. At some point society is motivated to *not* automate a ton of middle class & upper middle class jobs.
(Yes yes I know that automation may never happen, that in the past people have made predictions about huge job losses that have not come true, and so on. Your boring canard about 'that's just what the Luddites said!' is not the point of the discussion. This is meant to be a fun thought exercise about the effects of widespread automation on society, not a specific prediction)
It doesn't matter whether "society" is motivated to not automate a ton of middle class & upper middle class jobs. It matters whether the tiny subset of society that actually hires a ton of middle class & upper class people is motivated to automate those jobs. Since each of those employers gets 100% of the cost savings from their enterprise's automation, and and a tiny fraction of the benefits of broad upper/middle-class employment, their motivations may differ substantially from those of "society".
If there are huge layoffs and an ensuing recession or worse, demagogic politicians will run & win on outlawing AI. So yes it matters to society a lot, companies don't operate in a vacuum
Even with more AI automation than now, there's still going to be jobs that basically amount to being a shit magnet - checking and monitoring the AI work results so that if something bad happens to slip through, it's *your* fault, not the fault of some person above you who would otherwise be the one to blame.
> At some point society is motivated to *not* automate a ton of middle class & upper middle class jobs.
I totally buy all of the premises of your thought experiment. I think we are facing a massive loss of middle class jobs as we figure out how to automate the functions they perform. Someone mentioned that it took a long time for tractors to take over. I think that's the wrong comparison.
Consider, instead, how long it took supermarkets to lay off all their checkout people and replace them with a single person to supervise self-checkout. I think that's closer to how it will go down with white-collar jobs: in any domain where margins are really tight, companies will have to switch to the new technology quickly or go out of business (pre-tractor people did not have that constraint). Off the top of my head that includes drivers, filers, people who answer the phone, most lawyers, people who work in shops — most white collar workers, in fact. I think programmers will be safe for a while for the odd mix of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that we bring.
Granted, it's taken a while for self-driving cars to get going — but that's because of all the idiot human drivers that they have to deal with. What if we got rid of them?
Where are all these people going to get jobs after they are laid off.
Answer: they won't.
The model for thinking about this is all the people in manufacturing who were laid off in Thatcher's Britain in the early 80s. It took decades for some of those communities to recover and the only job that some workers found was to be strippers. Others remained unemployed forever.
We might wonder about where all the laid off people will get money. Perhaps a generous government will give them some UBI using revenue from the handful of very rich people who own all the AI. But wait! Perhaps those very rich people won't feel like giving away their hard earned income to lazy ex-white-collar workers who won't even get jobs as strippers. Perhaps they'll all move to New Zealand and manage their growing empires from there.
I think it's a mistake to think about **society** making decisions about what's best for society. People with power make decisions. At the moment that's all the middle class white-collar workers who vote in elections but if they lose all their money and power they won't be making too many decisions any more. It will be the ultra-rich owners of AI companies and the politicians that they control.
I have to laugh, because years back I got into discussions on this very site about minimum wage and blue collar/manual worker wages and got told that no, no, no, see, what matters is *productivity*, goods are getting cheaper, it doesn't matter if the lowly don't earn as much or even lose their jobs because you don't need consumers to buy products (I'm so stupid I couldn't understand how that works but whatever), it's the price. So see all the cheap phones and TVs today! That's the important part!
So in the same spirit, don't worry, Lost Future. The robots will make goods so cheap, everyone will buy and consume, and the economy will boom! How people with no jobs and no money are going to be consumers I have no idea, but I was assured that didn't matter when it came to low-paid working class jobs paying buttons or poofing out of existence, so have no fear for the same when it comes to high-paying white collar jobs! 😀
It seems very easy to solve this with UBI - after all, it seems easy to imagine a world were robots do all the work for us, and we reap all the benefits.
Business-as-usual-capitalism clearly works less well in this scenario - unless we want all the benefits to be increasingly large Yachts and space tourism for the small % who happened to gain ownership of the robots.
To be clear - I see the benefits of free market capitalism right now. This is a thought experiment about a sort-of utopian end game in the far future, where robots can do all or most of the actual work. In this scenario I don't think free markets would work very well at all.
I don't think we're going to get mass UBI - see all the objections to the welfare system as it currently stands. Telling the nation that "90% of the workforce are now obsolete, don't worry we'll fund it by taxing the corporations" - yes, the corporations, who will just tamely take it and not move headquarters overseas for tax purposes or go to court to tie this up in litigation for decades. Those corporations, huh?
If moving overseas to avoid paying taxes is so easy and consequence-free, why haven't they done so already?
Also, even high taxes can be worth it if the money's good - if you lay off 90% of your labor and thus make 10 times the profit, and the government doubles your tax rate, you're still making 5 times as much money compared to not doing business there at all.
Oh, I didn't mean it would be easy to implement as a policy, -just that it seems to be a simple solution from a more mechanical, far view perspective...
There's a certain mindset that causes people to think the one single version of the future they imagine is the only future that is possible. I used to think this way but I've increasingly grown to despise it.
If such a change were to occur, it probably wouldn't be immediately. The Economist had a great article recently on how long it took tractors to spread across farms. It took decades. Computers took a surprisingly long time: there are plenty of boomers and still can't type. Even if the technology is amazing, people take a while, and competition doesn't usually kill firms that do so slowly overnight.
Tractors did displace some laborers and farmers, as famously memorialized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. But eventually society adapted, both by finding things for those people to do, and by changing its structure: Steinbeck records really awful labor practices by firms that preyed on the desperate workers turned out of farming, but those practices in time became illegal.
If we had a really crazy AI push that could displace most white-collar jobs, the reality is that we'd also replace, uh, pretty much all jobs. If you have an AI that can think, write and code, getting to an AI that can do physical things like cook, clean, construct, etc. is not very difficult at all. That would probably result in a society where many fewer people worked, or people only worked if they had to. It might be a bit bumpy getting there, like it's been through most major technological changes, but some enormous section of the population not working or consuming is just not a stable equilibrium in a democracy.
" getting to an AI that can do physical things like cook, clean, construct, etc. is not very difficult at all"
How is your AI going to get into my kitchen to cook, clean etc.? It needs some kind of physical interface to interact with other physical objects, unless you're postulating that the AI will (via wireless tech?) generate and manipulate force fields to load the dishwasher, peel and chop the carrots, and mop the floor?
Those kinds of hands-on job are the ones which are going to be harder to automate away; they need to build purpose-built factories in order to have robots building cars today, they can't just sling 'em into an ordinary factory like human workers walking in on their own two feet. So for big industrial purposes, with AI guiding robots, sure. For building sites? That will take a bit longer. For turning up to vacuum your office and empty the bins? Longer still.
This website promises great advances, but I have some caveats:
Take the photos for the (current) robot vacuum cleaners. I don't have lots of nice, empty, smooth floor space in my home. The places where I want cleaning done, because that is where the dust builds up, are the "take things off shelves and clean there, lift up those bundles of wires, pull out the sofa and vacuum behind it" kind of work that - right now - only a human can do. A little robot vacuum that picks up in the open space of my sitting room does about one-fifth of what needs to be done.
"When it comes to home robots, the first thing that comes to mind is robots that clean. Robotic vacuum cleaners were first introduced in this category, followed by other cleaning robots such as window, grill and pool robot cleaners. Their advanced sensors and cameras allow them to navigate and learn the environment accurately, then give information to their ‘brain’ to plan the most efficient cleaning routes. Together with powerful features like strong suction power, these cleaning robots can initiate the cleaning process without human interference."
I don't have a grill or pool, I would be interested in a window cleaning robot. So what is that?
So a small machine that I have to put on and take off the window myself. Marginally more convenient than washing the window with my own hands, but not really up there yet as "fully automated, never hire a window cleaner again" service.
Maybe in five years time they'll have AI window cleaners that position themselves inside and outside and don't need me to put them on (three feet above the ground) or take them off. When the days of Rosie from the Jetsons come, I'll be delighted, but so far it seems that replacing the manager who sat in the window office by AI will be a lot easier than replacing the lowly contract cleaners or window washers who maintain that office.
You're right, I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. What I meant was that an AI sufficiently advanced to *replace large numbers of workers* who need to think, write and code would entail sufficient advancement that the robots would be easy. You're absolutely right that the current level of AI performance has been, in practice, much easier than physical tasks.
Agreed. The general rule of thumb is that the more you can reduce a task and it's solution to data, the easier it is to apply machine learning approaches to it.
Which means that, for instance, office work of all sorts is much easier to automate than anything that requires human hands. Pity that we've systematically devalued the exact sorts of professions (teaching, nursing, gardening, mechanics, cleaning, crafts and odd-jobs of all sorts) most resistant to automation. Oh well, I'm sure that the invisible hand will sort everything out for the best.
> If you have an AI that can think, write and code, getting to an AI that can do physical things like cook, clean, construct, etc. is not very difficult at all.
What in the world makes you think that?
We already have human minds that can think, write, and code *and* have spatial reasoning abilities and the physical capacity to experiment. It turns out robotics is still really hard.
There's an observation that had already been made in AI/ML 20+ years ago, but should probably be evident to everyone by now: our historical predictions about what's easy and what's hard in AI are somewhere between "useless" and "exactly backwards." It turns out art, poetry, and lying are pretty easy. Locomotion is hard. Manual dexterity is really hard. Logical reasoning is incredibly hard!
We haven't even begun to try to teach AIs to do mechanical engineering or R&D technician-type work, but I would be absolutely shocked if any of that fell in the "easy" bucket. AI has no concept of mechanical reasoning, and the existing approach of shoveling massive amounts of data into it doesn't seem at all promising as a solution to that problem. (Have you seen Dall-E renderings of bicycles? It's seen tons of pictures of bikes, it knows exactly what the parts look like, but it doesn't get how they go together, which means it can't possibly infer what they do, let alone how to improve them.)
You're right, I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. What I meant was that an AI sufficiently advanced to *replace large numbers of workers* who need to think, write and code would entail sufficient advancement that the robots would be easy. You're absolutely right that the current level of AI performance has been, in practice, much easier than physical tasks.
A lot of economists have weighed in on this issue, but the central problem (as far as I can see) is that there is no law of nature that states that improvements in technology should always create more jobs for everyone. Instead, the industrial world got lucky in that a large number of people whose grandparents used to be farmers are now sitting in offices performing legal, marketing and admin work. Even this was not evenly spread across the world, of course, and the consequences of mechanisation seem to have thrown up some difficult-to-solve issues like the middle income country trap and the narrowing development window (which Scott has, I think, discussed in the past). So, you know, not exactly an unqualified success for anyone not currently working out of a nice office in a major city.
The other issue is that there is no law of nature which states that economies and societies must inevitably run towards either long-term sustainability (political, economic or environmental), nor that they must be run for the benefit of the majority of the population. Instead, the sort of society which the West broadly thinks of as 'normal' (technocratic, vaguely meritocratic, with a large middle class and relatively well-distributed power structure) may in the future come to be seen as sort of a quaint interlude between the autocratic, unequal societies of the past and the autocratic, unequal societies to come.
For my money, the 'best' outcome would be for improved methods of manufacture to run hand-in-hand with increasing automation, so that by the time that the disruptions of the latter really begin to bite, the improvements in the former can allow for much more distributed, local forms of manufacture and production to compete. We could all live in a world where the village production model has re-asserted itself, even if a large number of us would be completely baffled by it.
The worst case scenario (again, for my money) is if automation starts to really eat into middle-class employment but manufacture remains centralised and concentrated. Because then there is the risk of us getting to the point where the owners of the automated factories realise that they can just make their yachts for themselves and skip the whole convoluted "pay people to work in your factory to make the goods that you then sell back to these same people so that you can make enough money to buy a yacht" system that we currently use. At which point around 95% of the population is surplus to requirements and ends up dying off one way or the other. There is no law, after all, that states that capitalism cannot work as a small market of the hyper-rich buying the few things they cannot make for themselves from each other.
> There is no law, after all, that states that capitalism cannot work as a small market of the hyper-rich buying the few things they cannot make for themselves from each other.
Well, the risk of a communist revolution is one limiter.
Despite early predictions, self driving cars haven't become widespread. I expect 30 years or so of the transition of automation of white collar jobs as there are many types. And during that transition period the combination of low birth rate and shift in spending in other sectors of the economy such as infrastructure makes it possible to avoid a depression with large unemployment.
If you haven't read it already, you might appreciate "The Lights in the Tunnel". It's pretty old at this point and I haven't read it in awhile to see how the predictions hold up, but it's on the exact phenomena you describe.
Although I think that the phenomenon of 'bullshit jobs' or 'email jobs' (i.e., white collar makework and featherbedding) is somewhat exaggerated, it's also true that many, many corporations employ more people than they actually need to. And, at least in the context of avoiding this particular misfortune, that looks like a good thing. Turns out that corporations are not quite as effectively single-minded at maximizing shareholder value as it sometimes seems, and end up getting mired in a distributed principal-agent problem...
I would further point out that as the fraction of shareholders increasingly becomes foreign entities, the incentive to do anything about this more locally i.e. in the US decreases a bit.
This is the lump of labor fallacy. You're assuming that doing more work (as with AI) causes people to be unemployed because you're implicitly assuming there's a limited amount of work and once it's done people who are leftover are unemployed. This is not the case.
What might happen is that these people go from comfortable highly paid office work into a different field. A huge motivation behind Luddism is relatively well paid people seeking to preserve their incomes in the face of technological change. For example, Luddites themselves were powered in large part by weavers and cloth makers who had an interest in keeping clothing relatively expensive to keep high incomes. But overall bringing down prices will have a net positive effect on the economy and those people will retrain into new professions. There's some research showing those specific people lose out relatively to keeping their higher incomes in the same field. But overall society sees higher incomes and employment and therefore higher spending.
Put another way, we've gone through a huge amount of automation in agriculture and that hugely boosted consumer demand. And we still employ a lot of people and our incomes have gone up. You have to argue AI automation of service work is somehow different in kind than the sort of automation a tractor does to argue it creates unemployment.
"For example, Luddites themselves were powered in large part by weavers and cloth makers who had an interest in keeping clothing relatively expensive to keep high incomes."
No. They weren't trying to keep clothing expensive; read "Shirley" by Charlotte Bronte, where a large part of the plot involves the frame-breakers. It's set in the Yorkshire textile industry and depression of the Napoleonic War of 1811-12. The factory owner can't afford to pay high wages, so he's being forced to mechanise. This means replacing workers, because the machinery means he needs fewer of them to produce the cloth.
The frame-breakers, for their part, are fighting for work. They can't just go "oh well, I'll go off and be a plumber or a carpenter instead", and the move from cottage industry to factory mechanisation is all part of it. Everybody is fighting for their economic interest, because lack of work for the weavers means either taking jobs at lower wages, or no work (and there's no social security safety net). The factory owner doesn't want to throw people out of work, but if he doesn't reduce costs, he has no choice but to close down the mill. The weavers don't want to ruin his business or drive up the cost of cloth, they want to avoid destitution. Customers don't want expensive cloth if they can get cheaper cloth, because there's a depression on and money is tight.
If anyone is selfish, they all are, and saying "but cheap cloth!" doesn't cover the entirety of it. Mechanisation won, and what was skilled work became unskilled work, because the looms did most of it. Now women and children could be employed, at lower wages. The displaced weavers did not "move into new professions", they worked for subsistence wages or were unemployed.
While I have no objections to seeing the highly-salaried getting a taste of their own medicine (now we'll see who really *is* productive and creative, won't we?) all the cheap goods in the world are no good if the workers can't afford them, and if the white collar consumers are losing jobs and having to take lower pay, who is going to buy the expensive goods that the iPhone factories in China produce?
A fiction book written in 1849 about events that happened five years before the author was born is not really a historical document. Bronte lived in a time when the guilds had largely lost and the new conflict was between labor and capital in a more modern style. She probably projected that backward. But actual historical documents show the frame breakers were stockingers and weavers and the like, not factory workers. And since we know their pay rates we know they were middle class to upper middle class, richer than the workers who they were making unemployed by breaking their frames.
I agree everyone is acting in their own economic interest. The question is if we're willing to make the many poorer for the wealth and job security of the few. Because what actually happened, in the end, was that cheap cloth led to huge economic growth and everyone being better off. Many weavers didn't return to their previously high incomes but there was more income in general. If we privilege the weavers we end up in a world where weavers make more but the world is much poorer.
This crisis where workers can't afford the goods they produce because of low wages has been predicted for two hundred years and not actually happened because technology is deflationary.
I'm going to say that a book written thirty years after the event, in the same area, where the writer could talk to those for whom those events were in living memory, is more reliable as to the general mood than a glib 2024 "it was only the greedy weavers trying to keep cloth expensive for high wages".
You can say that but saying it doesn't make it true. By that logic Gone With The Wind is a genuine account of what life was like in the South. That too was written by someone from the same area and, while there's a bit more difference in time, it was close enough that events were within living memory.
If you want to read actual evidence based history instead of fiction then the Smithsonian has a good article available online. There's also The Writings of the Luddites (a book that's a collection of their writings) if you want to hear it in their own voices. Despite being maximally charitable to their cause it specifies quite clearly they're interested (among other things) in preserving occupational privileges against lower classes and arguing that, while it would keep cloth expensive, it was worth it for reasons.
But we actually know the longer term outcome of this upheaval. Average incomes are more than twenty times higher now than then in developed countries, and work is safer with substantially more leisure per week. The Industrial Revolution and ensuing modern breakthrough was the greatest advancement of living standards and quality of life in the history of… well, of history.
>What might happen is that these people go from comfortable highly paid office work into a different field
What specifically are the jobs that former lawyers, accountants, writers, programmers, and so on going to do, that would pay even a fraction of what they made before? You sort of handwaved this away by not stating what these jobs are, can you name them? The idea that the pool of jobs needing to be done coincidentally matches the population seems to me to be quite fallacious. Not disputing that there will be plenty of plumbing, construction, labor, warehouse and so on jobs.
Anyways I specifically put the 2nd paragraph in there (the part in parentheses) to say that this was a thought experiment and not a specific prediction, because I knew someone was going to come along and be boring and give the 'that's just what they said about automating the Luddite jobs away' canard. It's a boring unoriginal argument that we've all heard a million times. The point of the thought experiment was to model what would happen to the economy in the case of mass layoffs, *not* argue whether those layoffs will happen
"What specifically are the jobs that former lawyers, accountants, writers, programmers, and so on going to do, that would pay even a fraction of what they made before?"
Learn to code? Oops, that's not an option anymore in this scenario. Maybe they'll get jobs in the new, clean-energy, economy the Green New Deal is setting up. All those vacancies for solar panel installers, they're coming right up, just wait and see!
Okay, part of me is laughing, because for years the likes of us deplorables were told that the Thatcherite union-busting was a good thing (and there's a certain element of truth there), that shipping manufacturing industries lock, stock and barrel overseas to low cost labour countries was a good thing, that we were racists if we didn't rejoice over poor Chinese rice farmers now getting to work in sweatshops making chips for Western companies, that 'learn to code', that we deserved what was happening for not being smart enough, educated enough, middle-class enough to get good salaried white-collar jobs. That cheap goods were our reward, that the economy was booming so we must be lying or just ignorant and stupid.
Shoe is on the other foot now, is it starting to pinch? But remember: cheap goods! Rising GDP! Booming economy! Somebody is getting rich, and it's not you, but that's not important because you don't matter!
I never specified they would earn the same income. But there is a different between these specific people losing income and society as a whole losing income. This is the driving force of Luddism: "Yes, society will be better off but I, personally, might be poorer."
I can list as many jobs that aren't those four things or white collar as you want. And I am admitting there will be layoffs in those industries. I'm just not admitting there will be structural unemployment or a net decrease in society-wide income. In which case there's no macroeconomic problem. It might be bad for the weavers that factories pump out cheaper, higher quality cloth but it doesn't lead to general societal poverty.
An answer being boring does not make it bad. You asked if there would be mass unemployment if AI advanced enough to do current jobs and evidence from previous times tech has advanced is relevant. There is the argument that tech starts out replacing a small fraction of jobs humans can do but eventually might be able to do virtually all, but "white collar jobs" is not all jobs. Economies have persisted with a tiny percentage of white collar jobs. Replacing blue-collar & service worker jobs would cover a larger portion of the labor force.
Yes, if AGI becomes a cheaper and perfect substitute for human labor then that's a different scenario. Though not as negative a one as is sometimes portrayed.
Well, they would have to get the money somewhere. But they could tax corporate profits more heavily... while this has downsides, it also represents a tax on foreign holders of US stocks (currently near 40% of the total ownership is foreign) and thus a clawback or transfer of wealth from other countries to the US. Should be more politically feasible than it might have been in the past.
If tech has advanced that much, then we have prosperity and finding money is less of a problem than it is now. The government could tax the consumption of whoever owns the tech, tax their land, whatever. In the limiting case where robots can do everything it can just grab some robots and have them reproduce themselves so they can be given to those who don't already own them.
" In the limiting case where robots can do everything it can just grab some robots and have them reproduce themselves so they can be given to those who don't already own them."
And how does that help? "Okay, I need food, better get my robot to make some" - out of what raw materials? "Well, uh, my robot can grow the food for me!" In what land do you own? "Fine, then fire up the Rep-Lo-Mat and make it out of - " again, where do you obtain the raw materials? or the energy to make them - "the utility company supplies electricity!" And you pay the bill how?
So you need your solar panels (if you live in an area with consistent enough sunlight) to make the energy so your robot can turn that energy into matter. So simple, sure! This is not the United Federation of Planets *quite* yet, 'give everyone a robot' isn't going to work. Everyone has a computer/smartphone, but they're not all working as software engineers with those resources.
So what will happen when I go and tell all the people who feel poor and struggling that they are not actually poor and struggling, they're actually prosperous? Will they feel any different?
This is exactly my point: prosperity/happiness is all subject to the hedonic treadmill. In the 1930s they thought that once we had machines to do all the drudgery for us, we'd all work 5 hours a week and be happy. That didn't happen, but yet we're still making the same predictions. It seems like we should learn something from the past.
Hi, in early 2021 I posted here regarding the COVID vaccines. At that time I said that I thought the dangers of a new variety of medical treatment outweighed the stated benefits of the vaccines. At the time the prevailing attitude was that my opinion was not rational. I'm now 39 and have COVID twice and still have not received any vaccines. My opinion remains basically the same, I'm curious where people here stand now.
The Covid vaccine was about as effective as *initially* advertised - it did not really contain infection but did smooth off the waves and prevent a large number of deaths, particularly during the otherwise hard hitting Delta variant wave. It obviously did not meet the biggest hype promises of the time when people thought it would genuinely stop the crisis for good (ie. basically make you night-invulnerable to serious Covid, stop the spread etc.), but it has also not been the "10-20 % of recipients will die in few years" style death solution the direst conspiracy theorists breathlessly claimed.
I made a death tole prediction early, thought everyone would get sick and it would be flu like death rate(fantastic anchor and baseline), I stopped wearing a mask about a month in, I skipped applying for many many jobs because they said "anti vaxx need not apply"
I'm angry when I see "killing grandma" rhetoric(such as people just posting rn), I feel vindicated and expect people will start backing away from pill pushing modern medicine quitely(cowardly) and I imagine this is what happened with forced euthanasia post-ww2 people will slowly faze it out of fashion and pretend no one ever supported anything over a decade.
You think that in a few decades we'll have retreated from modern medicine and will be pretending it never existed? That's quite a prediction. Do you see any evidence of a reduction in the use of medical services now, or any increase in the use of non-modern medicine?
*Pill-pushing* modern medicine, teacher complains a kid is noisy in class => METH.
Several the people are the horrific current weight lost drugs will learn the hard way, everyone will probably know someone who had a bad reaction to the neo-vaxxines but *who never made it into a formal data base*
You should have a preference for old, cheap drugs; doctors who will tell you to lose weight or check your house for mold. Rn I believe doctors have major preferences for the newest most expensive drugs with the least real world testing and who think 15 minutes once a year where you ask the patient for they want more or less pills then an hour of insurance paperwork is an acceptable way to treat people.
> Do you see any evidence of a reduction in the use of medical services now, or any increase in the use of non-modern medicine?
The neo-vaxxine "compliance rate" dropped
Podcasters are willing to talk about theories of health that are not "take a pill" or if they are its vitamins and nuutropics(read cheap) where all old media has tons of "new pill ads" and "brought to you by pizer"; while podcasts are growing cnn is dying
Theres talk in the "anti vax" spaces of "how to find a good doctor" which is probably a few bad experiences away from where I am.
In what context? Several podcasters are or talk to doctors, would you rather be treated by washington's doctors or joe rogan, is a 10 minute and rushed conversation equal to a 3 hour podcast in explaining your options?
I think that a big problem with Covid vaccines was coercion but otherwise they were very safe. I’ve yet to see any good data showing otherwise.
I got two doses and a booster, don’t regret it as I assume it saved me from a week of flu like symptoms. But I think it was dumb to force people to get one.
> I’ve yet to see any good data showing otherwise.
Would you consider using the vaers database existence be an acceptable argument in a autism vaccine debate?
Why is it discarded in this debate when I imagine that "the government collects statistics after vaccines to look for issues" probaly was an argument in the last one?
If vares isn't good data *could* anyone have gathered good data?
VAERS is not intended to be used in that way. It's intended to be an early warning sign for public health professionals to use to begin their research into potential issues. It's entirely anecdotal. The goal is for people to see potential issues, then research them, collecting better, more robust data. Using VAERS as representative sample is like watching the nightly news for a single city and drawing conclusions about the average daily life in that city. (its even worse because VAERS entries are just whatever people, including the general public, send to VAERS, its not checked for truth or accuracy)
In the event vaers reports raise by 100x the soft-mandates should have disappeared and these studies should have started, or something, some process, otherwise its an empty promise that experts are paying attention.
I don't remember any such thing, I don't believe any update to policy ever kicked in.
We would expect the number of reports in VAERS to increase once people started taking the vaccine because millions of people were taking it at one time, it was a very big event so people gave it a lot of attention, and it was very politicized so some people were motivated to report anything that could possibly be related to getting the vaccine even if it wasn't. The raw number of reports doest tell you much of anything without further research.
Is there a good non-kooky analysis and writeup of vaers data regarding covid vaccination?
I was in a low risk for covid but since I have no meaningful allergies and always tolerated other vaccinations well and worked on-site in an office in a state that didn't shut down, so I decided to get the Pfizer vaccine as soon as I could (had absolutely no perceptible issues with it). I did get omicron in Jan of 2022 but I've had colds worse than that.
One of my direct reports got covid and lost his sense of smell, and the wife of another coworker had an extreme case of vaccine injury, so I've seen the bad stuff on both sides. I just haven't seen high quality analysis because it is so politically charged and/or kooky. I think many reasonable people just froze-in their initial assumptions on the vaccines because the signal-to-noise ratio is so low.
> Is there a good non-kooky analysis and writeup of vaers data regarding covid vaccination?
You not settling a political argument with stock trading like models and data interrupting. Debating about the specifics of vaers would be like adding in politics to a wallstreetbets prediction.
Vaers sent a signal, you should revist why you think this vaxxine is safe; otherwise why is vaers there?
If the vaers data was up for interupation, why shouldn't "vaxxines cause autism" people just talk about details of the vaers system not showing autism but this (long complex nonsense) math show its there? Im just suggesting you should be timeless and consistent between believing "vaxxines dont cause autism" and "neo vaxxines dont cause heart problems", if its not these statistics what is it based on?
I'm very confused by your argument, so I'm probably not understanding it. I accept there have been vaccine-injured people. What do I need to revisit exactly? I was asking if someone already did the work to try to estimate the scope of the problem, since I know I am far from the best person to take on such an endeavor. Maybe for people <50 years old, it was a net negative to take the vaccines, or maybe not. In my case, it didn't seem to cause any problems, and in the history of vaccine development, nearly all of the documented adverse effects show up relatively shortly after the vaccination.
I assumed you were the same person as myst(default profile pics should be random, bleh) and was doubling down on the "no good data"
I think its fine to believe they were "low risk"(I doubt it, but eh) but the start of the thread was claiming "very safe". I don't think good data exists, ever existed and its putting the burden of proof in the wrong place.
> Is there a good non-kooky analysis and writeup of vaers data regarding covid vaccination?
I'm not convinced by computer models or what counts as good statistics in the journals(reproducibility crisis, etc.), it would be disungunisous to give you a link I found and skimmed read the absract. As far as I'm concerned "line went up", government officials saying to ignore the governments data cause "vaccines are safe" are just lying.
I'm sure there are good write ups, but the basic concept of VAERS is that anyone can post any symptoms that they experienced, whether or not there's evidence that it's related to a vaccine, in the hope that if the vaccine has a side effect, then patterns will be found in these reports, and they can be further studied.
So that's the answer to the question:
>Why is it discarded in this debate when I imagine that "the government collects statistics after vaccines to look for issues" probaly [sic] was an argument in the last one?
>If vares [sic] isn't good data *could* anyone have gathered good data
In reality, this isn't the government collecting data. It's more like a government sponsored blog where people can post whatever, true or not, vaccine related or not.
To answer the question of what data could be better, the answer would be data with a control group, like large scale clinical trials.
Another better form of data would be population statistics comparing outcomes in the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, either at the individual level, if those data are available, or in aggregate.
I got put in charge of vaccines at my work, as the employees here were high priority to receive it earlier than general population. I did a lot of research on the different types of vaccines and their effectiveness in real time.
By all accounts, the vaccines were very helpful for high risk categories (older, poor health). They made very little difference for low risk categories (younger, particularly children, and healthy).
I was in favor of vaccines when they first came out and remain in favor for the higher risk groups. I am against all forced vaccinations for covid and feel that there are some populations that are worse off taking the vaccine than not (young children, teenage and young adult males, etc.) and a lot of populations where it's a tossup and doesn't matter. We were told a) that the vaccines provided protections against getting covid (false) and b) that the vaccines prevented spread (false), and c) that there were no side effects (false). I consider all of those a serious hit against health agencies and their reputations.
Had the vaccines always been optional and had governments not claimed things that were untrue (unknown at the time, so they should not have claimed them either way), I think government health organizations would have much better reputations right now and we would be far better prepared, with better buy in on available treatments, for future pandemics than how things actually turned out.
> They made very little difference for low risk categories (younger, particularly children, and healthy)
What exactly does "very little difference" mean? Mortality from having covid? Duration and severity of illness? Long-term effects, e.g. lung capacity reduction, long covid, expected life span post-covid?
I was under the impression the vaccines helped a lot in terms of reducing severity of having covid. My personal experience, triple-vaxxed at the time I finally got it, was a quite mild illness. Assuming the vaccines were responsible for the mild symptoms, it was well worth the tradeoff of the vaccine side-effects (which are definitely much worse than other vaccines I've had, but quite manageable nonetheless).
Very little difference because for young and healthy people, covid's symptoms are typically extremely mild anyway. I got covid prior to the vaccines being available, and other than being tired it was very mild.
Vaccines do help young people, but the difference is negligible. Since 2020 less than 2,000 children under 18 have died of covid in the US. I don't have the statistics on it, but understand that most of those deaths were among children with existing comorbidities (i.e. not healthy). Of the 1.13 million people who died related to covid in the US, 1.06 million were over the age of 50.
Just want to point out the vaccines were optional in large swaths of the country, including where I was living/working at the time. Interestingly, though I kept a picture of my covid vaccination card on my phone just in case, I was asked for it exactly once during the pandemic--and, absurdly, that was not until _after_ the omicron wave when I went to a concert in California, where such insanity is embraced.
Whether they were required is very specific to where you live and what job you have. Many (all?) federal jobs required vaccinations in order to remain employed, regardless of where you lived. Obviously NY, CA, and other blue states were also very likely to require it, sometimes for doing basic things like going out to eat.
In your 30s the main reason two years ago to get vaccinated was to avoid killing older relatives and acquaintances when you get infected. There is a chance of a long covid, but it is in single digits of percent. So your decision is warranted, assuming you don't care about other people. It is no longer an issue, since vaccines are freely available to those who want them. That said, the vaccines have been tested on enough people to prove its (relative) safety.
Unfortunately, the main reason was to keep your job when your workplace mandated vaccines to stay employed - often even if you were a fully remote worker or otherwise could not infect your workplace.
The vaccines did not prevent spread and there was always other options to protect older relatives (not going out when sick, for instance). These were not foolproof, but neither was anything else we could have done. More people died after the vaccines were fully available than before.
Older people and sick people had really good reason to take the vaccine. 30-year-olds did not. Unless you consider forcing people to do it through economic threats to be good.
This comment thread (as Eremolalos has described) is useless, but just a note, here: the claim about stopping the spread was related to the alpha variant, and those who claimed that then claim that it did in fact prevent you from becoming a vector for alpha. As this was the only one (so the claim goes) expected to be a real grandma-killer, it was a success.
This isn't my claim -- I don't have one. Whole thing has always bored me.
While the precautionary principle is valid, I think it needs to generally be subordinate to actually looking at the specific details, otherwise it becomes a reason for never doing anything. (It still might be a reason for hedging bets, though.) In my case, I did enough reading to think that the mRNA technology was a distinct improvement, so I got them. **shrug** And besides, the J&J vaccine used old technology and seemed to be almost as effective, modulo the number of doses, so that would have been an alternative if the worry was solely about mRNA. (And J&J was more stable in places without reliable electricity, like Papua New Guinea, so it was good that we made it.)
I don't think your decision, as described, sounds particularly rational. But I'm also fine with you being able to make that decision (blah blah freedom, blah blah strength through diversity, blah blah not putting all our eggs in one basket). On the one hand, by now, there should be enough evidence that the mRNA vaccines don't do anything particularly bad. But on the other hand, after being infected at least twice, your immune system probably knows how to deal with the covid-19 virus just as well as if you'd been vaccinated. So I'd say a more rational perspective for you might be something along the lines of, "my precaution was a false alarm this time, but no harm done, so I'd be happy to get a vaccine if I need one, but I probably won't need one for a while".
I just had an exchange with someone about a Covid related issue, and remembered afresh why I have vowed not to discuss it online any more: Many many people are locked into positions about various Covid-related issues. They are basically closed systems -- not matter *what* info or reasoning you present, it has no effect whatever on their stance. So I am not willing to engage with you because I have such dread of finding out that you're not "curious where people here stand," you're just sure you're standing in the right place, and would enjoy an argument with somebody who disagrees. In which case, fuck you, I'm not engaging. I realize that may not be your stance, but even so, I'm not willing to chance it.
Hey, you're correct that my post is a shot across the bow and you are unlikely to convince me to change my mind, but you can make your best argument for the world and I promise I won't get mad.
I don't give a shit whether you get mad at me. I'm just sick of talking to people who are not listening and considering what I have to say, but are instead waiting for their turn to argue back. It's *pointless.* Why don't you just print out a page, sort of like a resume, except that it will consist of the 11 covid-related matters regarding which you will never budge an inch, along with your absolute *favorite* ways of expressing each stance and implying that people who believe otherwise are wrongheaded -- italicize those and use a purple font. We can then each hand you a card that says, "OK, thanks for sharing" and go back to our lives.
I would expect most of us are overwhelmingly in favor of vaccines. Speaking personally, it's bizarre to me that medicine as a whole so wasteful (and was on net bad for you for most of its history), and the controversial bit is the thing that actually works by taking advantage of the immune system we evolved.
I will note that for particularly healthy populations (or those with more side effects - i.e. young males), those numbers are not very far away from the potential health benefits of getting the vaccine. They're not the same, but both are clearly in the "we should not worry about this" range. From 2020-2023 about 11 million people aged 50+ in the US died to all causes. Almost 10% of those deaths were related to covid (not necessarily from). In the same timeframe about 130,000 children (aged 0-17) died from all causes. Just over 1% were related to covid. So a much smaller percent of a much smaller number. 18-39 were a little bit higher percent related to covid and a good bit higher total mortality, but still way below the 50+ age group.
The vaccines should have been optional in all cases, and provided very little benefit for healthy people below age 50.
1. Taking the rate of government payout for injury as the actual rate of injury is ridiculous. In the US, there have been 89,000 reported hospitalizations from COVID vaccination which resulted in 12,000 claims for COVID vaccine injury and only 6 people have received compensation. Do you think that means only 6 people have been injured in the US?
2. You would need to show that the vaccine reduced the risk of long COVID more than the risk from the product itself. Roughly 8% of VSAFE participants reported vaccine side effects that they sought medical attention for. The MOST optimistic study I've seen says "full" vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID from around 12% to around 5% or a 7% absolute risk reduction. You incur risks from the vaccine every time you take another dose.
3. How long does long COVID last? How long do vaccine injuries last?
To say it is not going well is an understatement. Her arithmetic skills are fine, but she is really struggling with understanding the general approach of using abstract mathematical properties in various demonstrations (e.g., use the definition of subtraction [a - b = a + (-b)] to show that -11 - 13 = - (11 + 13)). She has memorized the algebraic forms of the various properties (e.g., the distributive property is a(b+c) = ab + ac), but she can't "see" where to apply them, nor that the variables can stand for whole expressions rather than just single numbers. So we're slowly working through the book, but I don't get the sense that she's really mastering or learning anything. Plus she has a bunch of vague slogans in her head taught at school that she's either mis-remembering or misapplying interfering with everything as well. It also doesn't help that she hates trial and error, and gets very upset if she doesn't know how to do something correctly.
Anyone have any suggestions as to how to proceed? I'm assuming at this point that it's a failure of pedagogy on my part, and maybe some more practice would help (but practice with what, exactly?). Or is there some other way to explain these sorts of abstractions to someone having trouble with them? Any books/videos that have helped you teach mathematical reasoning to kids? Maybe I should just make a zillion practice problems and eventually her math pattern-matcher will come online? That doesn't sound like fun, but I'm not sure what else to do. Or I could just wait until she's older, but I would like her to be able to take the more advanced math classes in middle school.
It's not quite what you were asking for, but I just happened to stumble across this link, which has some suggestions for math books for children in the middle, and I recalled this thread.
Thanks for all the replies; I'll work on concretization and look into some of the supplemental tools, but as other people suggested, it may just be a developmental thing, so I'm not going to push it too hard.
Speaking as someone with no mathematical ability at all (and I suspect I have dyscalculia), that may be the basic problem right there. You may be assuming that she can pick up maths because she'll intuitively understand the underlying principles, but as someone who *can't* see where it all goes, I'm here to tell you it ain't necessarily so.
I don't know if your daughter has a gift for maths or not, but speaking from my own struggles:
(1) Most important thing: do NOT make "learning maths" the fulcrum of your relationship with your daughter. My own father tried to help me out with learning what I couldn't understand at school, and the rows got so bad my mother barred us from ever doing it again. Don't destroy the relationship you have with her over frustration on both your sides. So she'll always have to use a calculator? So the hell what? Oh this means she'll never get a good job as a coder if she doesn't have maths skills? Upthread we're arguing over AI coming for all those jobs anyway
(2) What you say about "they do it differently at school" was a huge part of the frustration; obviously, the way my father had learned to do maths forty years before was completely different to the New Maths just burgeoning into being when I was in school. If she's anything like me, she'll be stuck on "This is the way Teacher said to do it and this is the Right Way and I'll get into trouble if I do it differently".
(3) Drop the abstraction and go as concrete as you can. Number lines helped me enormously over figuring out "how come adding two negative numbers is a plus?"
If you're used to "negative sign means take this away, not add it on", then a visual representation of moving up and down really helps.
(4) Explain to her what you are trying to do. You may *think* you're doing this, but you aren't doing it in reality. I had to read your explanation there and think about it, and I'm not eleven years of age anymore.
"understanding the general approach of using abstract mathematical properties in various demonstrations (e.g., use the definition of subtraction [a - b = a + (-b)] to show that -11 - 13 = - (11 + 13))."
That's not obvious, and you may well imagine that you've explained it, when you've just (so far as she can tell) said "this is how this works" but not explained it. I had big problems with that in trigonometry, when it seemed to me to be just "this is how this works" but I didn't have an explanation for *why* that was the way.
(5) As others have said, it may not be the right time just yet, it may all click for her later. But do at least contemplate the possibility that she will never be 'good' at maths. Don't try forcing what is not there. If you're both getting frustrated and tired and angry, back off, let it rest, do something else. And good luck!
I'm wondering if DragonBox Algebra is worth a try? It builds up the ideas of algebra very gradually.
The other thing to do is just wait until they cover algebra at school and not try to rush things - the teachers probably know much more about how to teach algebra than we do as parents and mine at least are much more prepared to do huge amounts of practice in a school context. My older one (13) has learned algebra at school much more than at home (I did teach him a bit during covid) and is sailing through it at school.
If you want to do more challenging stuff at home, I recommend Simon Singh's website Parallel as it is more fun than just doing lots of exercises. I feel like one's job as a parent is to inspire more than teach. If they get excited enough about maths then they will want to go away and learn the harder stuff!
Seconding Jose Vieira here. I was a "profoundly gifted" kid, child of a mathematician, ended up getting a math degree myself, and I have vivid memories of being completely baffled by my mother's attempts to explain algebra to me around age 10. Then a few months later, without any outside intervention, a switch flipped and I got it.
Briefly-once-a-teacher here. It could be she's just not ready for that level of abstraction yet. It's not uncommon for that age. It sounds like she's fine with more concrete applications of those rules (?) but is having trouble understanding what these symbols are all about.
If that's the case it sounds like your options are to A) focus on that and not do any further progress through that book until she's got it B) momentarily give up on that book, and instead just give her lots of concrete applications of that rule to work on, until you're confident she can do those, then move on to something else and return to this plan at a later time. Maybe do lots of stuff where formulas are used all the time to prime her for that sort of thing.
Either way, always try to make the jump from concrete to abstract as gradual as possible. Good luck!
Given the importance of trial-and-error, I would focus on that rather than algebra. Agile methods and fast iterations of recursive self-improvement is a must in a complex world.
Nassim Taleb talks about how many big inventions come out of tinkering, with the theory lagging behind. This includes the jet engine, the first aeroplanes etc.
Here are some ideas re tinkering and your daughter. Keep in mind that I'm not an expert, so take these with a grain of salt:
* Make a Rube Goldberg machine together. They never work as expected, and need to be expanded slowly, by trial and error (precursor to industrial engineering?). Try doing this project and celebrating all failures (excitedly say "what do you want to try next time?" etc)
* Introduce her to kids that are high on tinkering, and let them influence her. Maybe they can do the Rube Goldberg Machine together even. Might be a nice way to connect with other home schooling parents.
* Tell her stories about the great tinkerers, how manned air flight was considered impossible, and how many times the Wright brothers had to try and fail until they succeeded. Might be even better if you find a similar story featuring a female protagonist.
Being a former gifted child myself, I've had to learn tinkering and self-love as an adult. I've written about it on my substack:
I have no particular expertise and haven’t played it, but I remember reading that this video game was pretty good for teaching algebra: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonBox
...Please be careful not to push her too hard. The "gifted-student-to-mentally-ill-wreck" pipeline is real, considering I've been a victim of it myself. If she's smart and motivated, she can figure all this stuff out when she needs to. And if she's not... there are still plenty of career opportunities for her.
Probably a crazy idea, but try geometry first instead. That might train the right kind of thinking, without any slogans that might interfere with her reasoning.
I feel like people teach math using jargon and wrote when even something like category theory "a monad is a specialized subset of functor" shouldn't be
Algebra is the when you have a true statement and change it into a new, also true statement:
if 2+2=4 and you add 1 to both sides is 2+2+1=4+1 does that seem reasonable, is it true? (amazing I didn't start with 50 pages of unbelievably dense writing or use any foreign words) Why do they teach using super formal "axioms" and a ritual for 3 pages of math homework rather then starting with the simple premise and letting it play out
Developmentally speaking, the kind of abstraction that supports algebraic operation develops late, canonically around age 12. She may not be ready for this yet, and it doesn't sound like she's enjoying it or getting much out of the exercises. Give it another six or eighteen months, and what seemed impossible may come comparatively easily.
I have experienced being an 11 year old homeschooled in algebra.
In the end the solution was to (much later) take a course from someone who wasn't my parents. I also had pretty good success with a hybrid course and Khan Academy (instant feedback and visual progress! Yay!). Also with taking chemistry and algebra concurrently, since chemistry is interesting and uses some algebra.
Something we didn't try, but based on eventual experience might have been useful, would be to switch to geometry for a year or two. I worked my way through Euclid's Elements on a chalkboard, and it was great. This is unlikely to set her back behind most of her classmates unless she's going into something extremely math intensive (and even then, you could come back and tutor her and she could catch up when it's obviously important). I've talked with some mathy friends, and there seems to be something about (generally smart enough to do math) people that latches on way more easily to either algebra or geometry, and the geometry people are currently underserved by the education system. Also, Euclid (real Euclid, not a textbook of how to solve math problems *using* Euclid) is just lovely.
What *are* some contexts where the distributive property is important and useful, outside of algebra class?
I homeschooled my daughter through 7th grade, and she, too, got very upset if she didn't know how to do something. And the thing about math is that there's a kind of bewilderment that hits most of us from time to time -- I remember that imaginary numbers did that to me. I felt like I needed some kind of picture or grasp of what sort of thing they were, and I could not form one. But I had a sort of basic confidence that it would make sense eventually, so I persevered, and learned several more years of increasingly fancy math. But some kids just *hate* that "I don't get it" feeling you always have at some point with new math concepts.
So it might help to identify that feeling, and tell her it's part of the experience of learning math, the way getting out of breath is part of playing tag. But mostly, I think you need suggestions of good ways to get this material about negative numbers etc. across to her. I am sure there is some book or website or teaching approach that does a good job of helping people get an intuitive grasp of how all that stuff works, but I don't know where or what it is. But here's a good lead: There's a website called Hoagie's Gifted. Most participants are homeschoolers, but even if you aren't homeschooling it's very useful. It's a big messy site with all kinds of stuff there, but lots of it is good. There are also parents' forums, and you can ask this exact question on there and probably get some good answers. I was on a forum like that when I homeschooled, and remember that people had great suggestions for how to explain why to divide by a fraction you invert and multiply.
Thanks for the response! Asking homeschoolers is definitely a good suggestion. I'm just doing this as supplementation, which is probably slowing things; in hindsight, I should probably be trying to integrate this with her regular math class in some way!
I was on here before discussing the possibility of keeping an adult submerged long-term as part of a short story about ocean colonization. I finished the short story and have been wondering more about practical applications. There is an existent formula for artificial amniotic fluid which seems to be as simple as a series of dissolved salts:
Na+ (Sodium): 109 mM
Cl− (Chloride): 104 mM
HCO3− (Bicarbonate): 19 mM
K+ (Potassium): 6.5 mM
Ca2+ (Calcium): 1.6 mM
pH: 7.0–7.1
Osmolarity: 235.8 mOsm kg−1 water
I was hoping to get some feedback on problems that might arise with this kind of ocean colonization; not of the seasteading variety, but non-bio-engineered semi-aquatic humans. It seems to me a simple heating and filtering pump system connected to a waterproof suit might suffice, with room for protocols involving the use of dry-breaks and the application of soap powder or anti-biotics to maintain skin health (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13129/). I am not a doctor or an engineer but I have been considering performing a simple series of real-world tests for the idea just as entertainment or for YouTube, culminating in the creation of an ocean campsite(?) with solar panels and protective cage. There might be a number of guinness records that would be easy to break with this tech.
The Der Durchwanderer ban seems like it may be excessive. User seems to have been banned for saying that the only reason to use preferred pronouns, rather than pronouns matching biological sex is to avoid having people yell at you on the internet. This seems like an actual idea that can be debated on its merits, unlike other banned comments that consisted of substanceless ad hominem attacks, and the like.
I think that going through a huge backlog of flagged comments might make it more likely to get banned. At least two of the banned comments had replies from Scott initially (so he saw them, read them, and replied to them without banning them), and then they apparently got banned later.
I imagine that after reading dozens of dozens of obnoxious comments (as I'm sure most flagged comments are), it might shorten ones fuse. I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to do it.
I think it is fine to ban people who make predictably divisive claims, with no attempt to back up their claims, using inflammatory language like "proto fascist gender theologians who deserve pity and contempt rather than obedience."
A different comment making essentially the same claim could conceivably have started a worthwhile conversation and not been ban-worthy, but I don't think this one is a big loss.
Yeah, I'd be quite interested in a reading a civil discussion about the differences between the paradigms of "binary gender with potential gender non-conformity / semi-hierarchical subgenders" vs. "a multiplicity of mix-your-own genders", and how trans people have both historically fit into that and, more so lately, shaped the discourse.
But that inflammatory language is not the way to get there. It's a pity, the commenter did seem to be capable of better discussion later on in that thread, and I think a non-permanent ban would have been better. But if I were going to argue for yet another ban reduction, it'd be for beowolf888, and I'm leaning toward not pushing my luck with respect to annoying Scott by constant appeals for clemency. :-)
What the fucking fuck, *beowulf* got banned? He'll state his views bluntly, but does not seem very subject to irritability. And how do you know? Did Scott put up a list somewhere of who he banned?
He was conversing with a troll, and took the bait. **shrug** I'd have suggested something more like 2 weeks rather than a month, but I don't think Scott can be that granular. And I'd also have applied some sort of statute-of-limitations reduction, since it was 5 months ago and quite obviously it's not like the conversation caused any lasting decrease in beowulf888's comment quality. A one-day slap saying "I only noticed this now, don't do it again" would seem right to me.
I wish Scott would farm out this task. A grad student could do it, or some council of present members. Those interested could even run for election and present our ideas of what constitutes good moderation. Banning people 3-5 mos after they first talk trash is basically useless. The trashtalker gets to torture us for *several months* after their first unforgivably godawful post. Reasonable people who lose their temper with a troll don't get a shot across the bow. People who have been humiliated or wounded by some mean jackass don't get any justice until way too late.
I may be misremembering, but I feel as though he's made statements about how seriously he takes this responsibility and not feeling right about passing it off. It's less efficient, for sure, but heavy indeed is the head that wears the crown (and we all know what happens with mods ['they do it for free']).
Yeah, I think part of the problem is that Scott has lots of better things to do with his time than read the comments, so he lacks the context that we do.
I recently read the book Chaos (Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties) by Tom O’Neill, and I was wondering if its various claims have been vetted by someone who knows about the subject. Assuming that O’Neill’s representing his material fairly, it does sound likely that Manson was working as some kind of police informant; that higher-ups pulled strings to keep their asset out of prison; that he then went too far (viz. he orchestrated some of the most visible and sensational murders of the century) and everyone in an embarrassed fit tried to cover up their role in keeping this guy on the streets.
Further along the tinfoil-hat spectrum, I was very interested to learn that psychiatrist/MKUltra participant Jolly West—a man whose research focused on (among other things) inducing psychosis through drugs and hypnosis—lobbied to see Jack Ruby immediately after his arrest; was rejected (because: who is this guy?) but persevered, and was finally permitted after others had analyzed Ruby and found him perfectly sane. West and Ruby were alone together in Ruby’s cell for a while, and then West emerged, and said (essentially), “The weirdest thing, guys! Sometime between when everyone else was talking to Ruby and now, the guy’s gone nuts!” And sure enough, Ruby was at that point crazy, and would remain so the remaining few years of his life.
Can that be true? I understand that Ruby had done at least one crazy, or at least impulsive, thing before meeting West (shooting a guy in public); was West’s extended private interview not actually the watershed moment for Ruby’s madness?
I don’t usually subscribe to conspiracy theories (while aware that the CIA et al. have, you know, conspired quite a bit), but the West/Ruby angle keeps gnawing at me.
Nevertheless, everything I know about Manson comes from two mass-market potboilers (Helter Skelter and The Family) read decades ago, so I’m no position to tell if O’Neill’s a fudger or not. Is there a more thorough debunking/supporting than I've found? Thoughts?
I don't remember enough details about this to post specifics, but if you want videos about Manson, Jolly West, Scientology, and (I think) Aleister Crowley, here it is.
I could believe that Manson was some kind of police informant along with everything else, that kind of con artist/petty criminal is going to have entanglements with the law and if he was in the 'counter-culture' scene he'd have been useful as a low-level informant for drug busts etc.
How protected was he? I'd say not very much, certainly not on the level of "this guy is really important, keep him out of jail" but more useful enough that small charges were let skate/used to hold over his head as coercion if he tried to stop informing.
The rest of it? Drugs, craziness, inflated sense of his own importance that he thought he could get away with literal murder.
I found it quite surprising (assuming that O'Neill is not fabricating things wholesale, which I assume he is not) the sheer number of times (I lost count) that Manson, a federal parolee, would openly violate parole or get arrested for various crimes and then get just shunted back onto the streets again as everyone decided not to follow up on it. If he'd been the mayor's son you'd still say "this is getting to be a bit much," but of course he was an unwashed ex-con druggie, a demographic less habitually treated with kid gloves by the legal system. So it sure looks to me like Something Was Up there.
Of course, O'Neill wants to flirt with the idea that Manson was trained in brainwashing technique by government operatives, which would be…more.
I havent read CHAOS yet but do plan to. So I wont comment specifically about its claims. However, prior to sometime in the 80s when computerized records and greater cross agency cooperation became popular, the US saw a huge number of serial killer who basically just fell through the gaps and were able to exploit lax police practices to continue killing. John Wayne Gacy, The Golden State Killer, Ted Bundy, etc.
From what I know about CHAOS, I think the theory is intriguing and its likely true that Manson benefited from special treatment because of connections to CIA related personnel but overall, without really strong evidence, its hard for me to believe his story wasn't fairly typical of the time (as typical as a psychotic killer can be).
Not having read the book, I can't comment. Going by the Wikipedia article, Manson spent more time in jail than out of it, and even in California he had a tough time - until he (illegally?) moved to San Francisco, and lucked out by getting onto a test project:
"Less than a month after his 1967 release, Manson moved to Berkeley from Los Angeles, which could have been a probation violation. Instead, after calling the San Francisco probation office upon his arrival, he was transferred to the supervision of criminology doctoral researcher and federal probation officer Roger Smith. Until the spring of 1968, Smith worked at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic (HAFMC), which Manson and his family came to frequent. Roger Smith, as well as the HAFMC's founder David Smith, received funding from the National Institutes of Health, and reportedly the CIA, to study the effects of drugs like LSD and methamphetamine on the counterculture movement in San Francisco's Haight–Ashbury District. The patients at the HAFMC became subjects of their research, including Manson and his expanding group of mostly female followers, who came to see Roger Smith regularly."
So I'm making huge assumptions here, but it's possible that he may have wangled his way into greater leniency due to Smith (and, if we believe it, the CIA involvement in funding the clinic). I don't believe this makes Manson some kind of Manchurian Candidate, but rather that *if* there was black ops money floating around, Manson and his contacts and set were a handy bunch of test subjects and getting locked up would have messed up the studies, so no more influence than "Dude, it's the 60s, everyone in the entire country is coming to SF and getting high, it's not worth your while to bust this guy" was needed.
It also seems that California tightened up parole, and was more inclined to use parole violations to shunt people back into jail, in the wake of the Manson Family murders:
"Lending additional urgency to the “law and order” political turn, California had been uniquely traumatized by high-profile and gruesome tragedies such as the string of Manson Family murders in the late 1960s. It is perhaps telling, then, that buried among Presley’s file on SB 1057 was a clipping on Charles Manson. Someone had taken a yellow highlighter to the following phrase: “Manson . . . becomes eligible for parole this year.” Manson, of course, had been convicted under the old indeterminate sentencing system. Moreover, the determinate sentencing law did not cover murder; even under the new system, someone convicted of Manson’s crimes (multiple murders via a conspiracy theory) could still, and likely would, be kept in prison for life. And finally, parole release (what was at issue with Manson) is not the same thing as post release parole supervision (what was at issue with SB 1057), though both are colloquially known as “parole.” Nevertheless, the traumatic memory of Manson, who along with some of his followers was back in the news for various reasons throughout the 1970s, surely contributed to a general climate in which legislators felt it was best to err on the side of caution in criminal justice matters."
It seems (I say cautiously due to the cursory nature of looking stuff up like this) that California had a different parole system, and it may have been much more lenient in the 60s, as during the 70s it was the parole officers themselves that led the push to make parole violations grounds for returning people to prison without another trial:
"Charles Swim, the head of the Parole Agents’ Association of California, submitted a list of examples for publication in the Prosecutor’s Brief, the newsletter of the recently formed California District Attorneys Association, which ran under the headline, “Parole Officers Lodge Protest.” The article began with a statement of concern that district attorneys had been publicly questioning the value of parole supervision. It provided examples describing a range of crimes committed by parolees, from “possession of a .38 caliber revolver and drugs” to “attempting to force a 14- year-old girl into prostitution.” In all seven cases, the local district attorney had declined to prosecute for one reason or another: “to protect the identity of an informant,” “due to jurisdictional problems between two counties,” “due to lack of witnesses of good reputation,” “due to lack of proof of intent,” “due to a defective search warrant,” or “because there was a ‘lack of suitable evidence’ for prosecution.”
Manson probably got the benefit of such a situation, where the cops were arresting him but he got back out onto the streets, plus getting into the experimental study group, and of course this all blew up in their faces later. No need for a CIA asset conspiracy theory.
I have not looked deeply into this specific set of claims but the CIA getting up to some wild shit seems like the most parsimonious explanation for a lot of weirdness in the 60’s and 70’s.
I love the Beach Boys, and Beach Boys fans love to float various theories about why Brian Wilson broke down—his artistic designs on Smile were superhumanly ambitious; the Love/Jardine axis wanted more good-time surf tunes and put so much pressure on him; Murray Wilson was a jackass—but when I read Mike Love’s autobiography and came to the part where Love asserts that it was, pure and simple, the drugs that got to Brian…well, I never thought I’d agree with Mike Love about much of anything, but it hit me as a thunderbolt that, like, of course it was the drugs. It was always the drugs (plus a little bit Murray, Mike adds). So my parsimonious explanation for weirdness in the ’60s is: just the drugs.
Another possible explanation is that he had a schizophrenic episode. He was 22. He was in the age range where people who have whatever it takes to be psychotic have their first episode. I tried every single drug I knew of except heroin, and used cannabis lavishly, and so did all my friends. None of us flipped out.
Some sources say schizoaffective; the drug use sure paints a messy picture. (By the way, don't you love it when reporters are like "so-and-so battled schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder. They were also diagnosed with manic-depression, paranoia, and schizoaffective disorder."?)
My regular mailman is a guy in his 20s. He always has an album playing inside his mailbag. One morning he came by… Is that flippin’ Pet Sounds???? Sure enough.
>Why did American, and Western in general, opinion about supporting Ukraine change so much?
Because western media massively overhyped ukraine strength and russian incompetence, as well as the likely effect that sanctions would have, the likelihood of there being a coup/revolt or other way of putin being overthrown very quickly, and the likelihood of putin dying from the 17 different types of cancer he supposedly has. This means the average joe thought the war would be over quickly, but in reality little has changed in the past 12 months and there could be years before anything meaningfully does.
I also think resentment is playing into it. Many americans are struggling with high costs of living and are resentful that the government seems more interested helping some europeans about something.
Have those things really been overhyped? Until the war, there were serious discussions on the Internet that assumed Russia could march across Europe and be at the borders of France within three days. Clearly that is not the case and the Russian armed forces are much weaker and more incompetent than had been thought. On the coup/revolt side, it is not that long since a column of tanks and soldiers were marching on Moscow! As for Putin having cancer, who knows, but speculation about that is nothing new for world leaders (see what people say about Biden/Trump, for example...)
I would like to think news about Ukraine arresting/killing journalists and cancelling elections broke through to the mainstream
but it's probably just general war and empire weariness
there's something incredibly depressing about Democrats being able to make open support for a right-wing dictatorship that arms nazis and throws socialists in jail into a defining issue... for their side!
Mostly war fatigue with a side order of political polarization. Speaking of which, "right-wing dictatorship that arms nazis" is a good way to convince a lot of us here that you aren't interested in serious discussion. There are other forums where that style is more appropriate.
it's an accurate description of the post-Maidan Ukrainian state. Polemical, yes, but not false.
While we're tearing down statues of Confederate generals they're renaming streets and holding holidays for people who helped carry out the holocaust, while pro-Ukraine media outlets constantly have to blur the insignias of the soldiers they're honoring. Oligarchs run the country and anyone who tries to change that gets thrown in jail or murdered by the SBU.
It is, at minimum, a sufficiently *controversial* description of Ukraine, that it needs to be explained and supported, not slipped in as a parenthetical aside while pretending to want to talk about something else.
And when you open with the latter, you pretty much forfeit the opportunity for the former.
European countries generally don't hold elections during wartime, none did in WWI or WWII, and Ukraine's actions were legitimate under their constitution. Not saying it's a good idea, it does create a pretty glaring political perverse incentive.
I feel like the alternative - having an election where an enemy military can engage in exxxtreme voter suppression where they bomb polling places likely to turn out against them - is much worse. The USA can have elections during wars with ease because nobody can meaningfully bomb our polling places.
I don’t think that’s a realistic concern. Since the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine has been divided between pro-Western and pro-Russian factions, with Russia and the West both interfering to help their side. In 2014, Russia invaded and occupied Crimea and part of Donbass. These regions were more pro-Russian, and their occupation effectively disenfranchised them from the Ukrainian elections and swung Ukraine in a pro-Western direction.
In other words Russia has effectively suppressed the pro-Russian voters in Ukraine already. The parts of Ukraine now in 2024 that remain unoccupied are much more anti-Russia than previously, and the most pro-Western parts of Ukraine such as Lviv are effectively unreachable by Russian bombs. There is no conceivable way Russia could sway the election results their way by attacking polling places and honestly very little capacity for them to attempt such strikes in the first place thanks to Ukraine’s air defenses.
To your argument about the United States, the United States held elections during the Civil War in 1862 and 1864, despite multiple entire states being part of the Confederacy as well as multiple Confederate incursions into the North. It’s true that the US was in little immediate danger in the World Wars but this was certainly not true for the Civil War.
Even if it would be impossible for Russia to suppress Zelensky's vote enough to push him out of office, no matter where they bombed (probably true right now), it is still generally bad. As war weariness grows, it might become possible to seriously influence the election with "just" a +10% vote, which might actually be possible.
What's interesting is the sign of the polarisation. I'm old enough to remember when Democrats were the peaceniks and Republicans the warmongers.
I'm wondering whether it's simply a matter of the fact that the war started under a Democrat presidency. If Russia invaded Ukraine during the Jeb! presidency then would we be having massive 2003-style peace marches in the streets?
I would think the reason 2003 saw massive marches is because the US was the one doing the invading then, and not Russia. Do you think liberals just march in the streets any time a new war starts anywhere?
That may be related, but my money has been on the fact that the Democrats are the ones holding all the reins of power - media, the bureaucracy, even the military generals it seems. They're in charge of those evaluations now, and recognized the need to appear strong and support international efforts to confront would-be expansionist states.
Was it that the issue became polarized, or was it that the factions used to have the same policy and now have different policies? That is, were people always supporting what their faction said, but we didn't notice as long as both major factions said the same thing?
Your second option appears to be to be expressing one of the ways that an issue becomes polarized (the other being that both factions pick a side and then people move to the faction they agree with on that issue, rather than changing their opinion on the issue to align with their faction).
I was thinking of "polarization" as being the process when people move from taking decisions based on what they think, to taking positions based on what their faction thinks. So the second way would be pre-polarized, if that makes sense? I'm using the term not to refer to a simple difference of opinion, but to one that's inherently based on factionalism (even if the people involved would deny it).
(I'm not terribly sure this is coherent. I was going to say something different, originally, but then this occurred to me.)
Polarization, the word, is based on the polarization of light, which just means that the various issues all get aligned, so every issue is either vertically or horizontally polarized - that is, it means that instead of people holding position 1 on issue A and position 2 on B and 1 on C, everyone comes to hold 1 on all issues, or 2 on all issues.
Do people pick their faction because of their opinions or their opinions based on their faction? Both, of course; and I don't think you can separate those two factors anyway.
So I think that thinking of polarization as the sorting process that says "on this issue, faction D thinks X and faction R thinks not-X" is more useful than trying to work out whether individuals are thinking X/X' because of their faction, or have joined a faction because they think X/X'.
Hm, on reflection, I think "polarization" in the political sense is a property of people, and thus also groups. So talking about an "issue being polarized" was incoherent. I think it'd be better to say that at first, the issue wasn't politicized, but then it became politicized, at which point polarized people picked the appropriate position. (Recognizing that polarization isn't a binary or even a scalar concept.)
Basically this. Probably inevitable, unfortunately. Seems like the only topics which don't get polarized are those which stay largely out of the public eye.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan lasted as long as 10 years (1979-1989), and neither the Reagan administration nor the American public seemed to have any problems supporting them.
That was in the old days, before we spent sixteen hours a day staring at a little screen getting news pushed at us. It took longer to get bored of things when your only exposure to them was the occasional five column inches on page 8 of the paper saying "that war is still going on".
We're all bored of the Ukraine show now. Season 1 started off strong but now nothing is really happening, and they keep teasing a big development but it never happens.
And while there was a cool subplot at the end of season 1 where the apprentice tried to kill the Sith lord and failed, that was wrapped up early on in season 2, and there's been no replacement.
Also the nature of the aid to Afghanistan was low key compared to Ukraine. CIA smuggling hand held antiaircraft weapons and ammunition to Afghanistan, vs publicly sending artillary and armored vehicles to Ukraine.
Yes, definitely easier to justify a smaller expense - especially since Afghani leaders weren’t making a pilgrimage to Washington every 6 months asking for more money while berating Americans for not doing enough.
>So back in 2004, we found the average attention span on any screen to be two and a half minutes on average. Throughout the years it became shorter. So around 2012 we found it to be 75 seconds.
>This is with logging techniques. This is an average. And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds, and others have replicated this result within a few seconds. So it seems to be quite robust.
I'm offering my volunteer services for minor personal coding jobs as someone with what's basically a bachelor's degree worth of knowledge in Math/CS but no work experience, so if there's any medium/small projects of yours you think someone like me could help with, please let me know.
I only started reading ACX after the move from SSC. I have gone back and read the top posts from SSC but still felt like I was missing out on some of the old classics. I built a website to resurface old content from blogs by sending weekly emails. Let me know if you have any suggestions of other blogs / content you’d like to see, hope you find it helpful!
I work at a landscape/landscape architecture design and build firm, but I've been in the outdoor trades most of my adult life. I started at the bottom as a dumb laborer in my 20s and built skills. I've done arborist work, forestry, landscaping maintenance/installation, hardscape installation, sitework for commercial and residential building, and heavy equipment operation for all of the above.
Unless you go to a specific program to become accredited in design or environmental impact, really the only way in is up from whatever starting point you can grab on to. Design is most obviously a desk job most of the time, environmental stuff less so but very administrative in it's nature. If you want to learn the *trade*, you really have to just go get a job.
I have a relative that's a Game Warden. They want a college degree from applicants, though I'm not sure if that's preferred or required. I know they're way behind on applicants and can't fill all of their positions, so it's a great time to get into it!
This seems like the sort of job where the degree is meant to filter for candidates' ability to complete burdensome tasks over long time periods, rather than to filter for candidates' ability to solve complicated problems. I think it's more likely than not that the organization would make an exception for people without degrees who seem like competent implementers.
To increase applications a little bit, the organization could try re-titling their job ads from 'game warden' to 'poacher of poachers'.
Was looking at environmental engineering jobs recently, saw a bunch that involved some serious tree-climbing. I doubt they require any special degree for that. Also, my daughter, who's a very serious rock climber, knows someone who makes his living repairing windmills. He's an itinerant craftsman. Travels to the next job, sleeps in a tent set up near it, climbs to the top of the damn windmill and does what needs to be done. (She concluded, wisely, that he was not marriage material.)
No, really. If twitter leftists are sad enough to try and ruin your career, they're sad enough to post about these support groups to their followers, mock you for it and make your life even worse.
Because any such group would need to consist of a broad spectrum of people, ranging from reasonable people unfairly targeted (say, Jordan Peterson) to grade A jerks who are shunned for good reasons (say, Richard Spencer).
The Petersons of the world have nothing to gain, either socially or in PR terms, from hanging out with the Spencers, so they would flee this group. And by evaporative cooling, eventually the group just exists of the worst and most rightfully-shunned people.
Is there none? Doesn't Peterson want cancel culture to end?
If you want people to stand up for themselves, is it the worse thing in the world to say "hey, its ok if your getting death threats mr. spencer, I saw you getting punched and thought thats wrong"?
I don't think they'd work very well if they were "public". Some accused witches are innocent people, but others may well have made deals with the devil, and what do you think the Bayesian odds of associating with real witches would be, in one of these groups? Especially where everyone can see you? Probably there'd be trolls and zealots from one side trying to infiltrate and dig up dirt, and trolls and zealots from the other side trying to drag you into full-on human-sacrifice-level dark magic.
Another angle is, if you've been cancelled, you've probably gotten a crash course on how horrible people can be, and how much they're willing to lie to benefit themselves. It's not a feeling that's very conducive to opening up to a bunch of strangers online, strangers who may very well be psychopathic liars themselves.
> what do you think the Bayesian odds of associating with real witches would be, in one of these groups?
literally 0, and unironically your assuming a *benefit* to cancel culture; I would expect a bad metric to punish honest actors more then dishonest ones.
I would think bad employees (people hire) have great resumes and do great interviews and are the fastest to return to the pool, good employees with weaknesses searching would be slower.
I would think a fake organic farm would be better at following legalese or paying bribes on time.
I'm made a Manifold market on the question of how many (if any) hunger deaths biofuels have caused. I hope an accurate answer can get out there and tip the balance of urgency for dropping corn ethanol subsidies, or reassure me that it's merely a waste of money!
"Answer will resolve to the market's choice after 30 days"
So, people will be betting on what they think other people will bet the answer will be? That doesn't seem at all informative. Well, not informative as to the nominal question, at least. It's no better than an opinion poll, of nonspecialists but on an obscure but highly technical subject.
I'm probably not _quite_ as pro prediction market as Scott is, but I do generally agree that they are powerful tools for being better informed about the world....but having taken a look at the question and the resolution criteria....I'm really not sure that my priors on this topic should shift at all based on how it resolves.
And as far as being a tool for driving policy change, this one seems even less likely to work on the broader public who would probably see this as just a weird, small, under powered poll.
Hey guys, I'm just gonna leave this here... My latest about how a certain children's show may have kicked off a cultural push towards self-parody. Thx for reading!!
That took a very long time to bring up the point you're leading with here. Reminds me of The Ladykillers, where there's a whole movie and only like the last ten minutes involve trying to kill ladies.
This reminds me of sincere irony. A metamodern idea, where you are able to act with more sincerity by at the same time signaling self-awareness through irony.
If the show's creators had a parodizing intent, the example you provided would have been a perfect example, expressing a sincere critique by a form of accelerationistic irony.
> Imagine if you will: a near-future humanist enlightenment where a large part of the goal, maybe aside from election cycles, is that everyone ditches their political affiliations and admits them to be the interpersonal poison that they really are. Is this too much to hope for?
You say that as if a society like that doesn't exist already. If you want an apolitical society, go to Japan. Almost nobody engages with politics because nobody wants to rock the boat. Nobody wants to change anything because that'll probably just make things worse anyways. The result is what's effectively an oligarchy by choice, but at least things are peaceful there. Sure, the government is corrupt and incompetent, but who cares? We're all going to die anyways.
Haha, okay. The point was that if the driving ideal behind our society was more humanistic and less two-party team sport, more would get done that helped everyone, and society would be healthier on an interpersonal level. I think? Not apolitical, pro-social.
...And how do you imagine that would happen? Obviously not everyone shares your values, and even if they do, they're going to have different ideas on how to accomplish things because they're less or more intelligent than you are. You care enough about the world that you want to promote your own worldview and your own methods, so you try to gather popular support for it, and... damn, that's starting to sound a lot like politics. The only world where political conflict doesn't exist is one where no one cares enough to actually try to improve anything, which is exactly what's happened in Japan. And while there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, I'm assuming you're not the kind of person who thinks that the answer to hard problems is suicide.
Pretty much no one, yeah. It doesn't even come up on social media, other than to complain about the current prime minister and call him names (current one is pretty hilarious, 増税メガネ, literally translating to "tax-raising glasses"). Even when the former prime minister got assassinated, it wasn't that big of a deal, though that was mostly because the assassin had a very good justification for it. Turns out people don't like it when the government colludes with a foreign cult that destroyed countless lives, who knew. ...Though, no one actually cared about it until the assassination happened.
Does Azelastine nasal spray prevent respiratory viruses? Compelling, needs a bunch of er docs willing to sign up as guinea pigs for a multi-center observational trial.
Neat, I've been using azelastine since it was prescription-only and never got COVID, I wonder if that's why. I'm the only person I know who never got it, even though I work alongside and live with high-risk folk and I never really followed precautions carefully.
Azelastine feels good every time I use it, blasts the sinuses open and makes me feel like I could snort a horse.
Schools have (at least) two competing goals: teaching, and filtering the successful from the unsuccessful. Sometimes these two goals oppose each other.
If you teach the fundamentals to those who have somehow missed them (e.g. because they came from a worse school), you might do better at the "teaching" goal, but you are needlessly complicating things for yourself with regards to the "filtering" goal. Ultimately, you have to ruin some students' lives. Why not those who already had bad luck in the past?
The solution would be to separate teaching from evaluation, and have a separate institution that is evaluated only on how well they can teach. Such institution would probably be happy to review the fundamentals. Leave evaluation to a separate institution that does not have the power to undercut students' learning.
> My impression of the conventional schooling I grew up with is that students are rewarded for knowing things, which isn't the same as learning things.
Definitely. My daughter (3rd grade) is mostly rewarded at school for knowing things she already knew *before* school.
From my perspective, that makes her a smart kid, but it definitely doesn't make it her a good student, i.e. a person who is good at learning *at* school.
Can someone explain to me why a two-state (or perhaps a three-state, with Gaza and West Bank not necessarily being a single entity with a single government) solution isn't a viable long-term option?
I hear that it wouldn't be acceptable to Israel, but why? Ignoring the current party politics and whatever motivation Netayahu has in the short-term, why wouldn't it be acceptable in the long run? Because to me it seems that having a clear neighbour with clear borders and clear relationships is what I'd want if I was in Israel, even if that neighbour is slightly hostile - something like Israel-Lebanon or Israel-Jordan relations.
The biggest problem I can see is that Gaza at least is going to be desperately poor for a generation at least. The Gazans have almost no material capital (especially now, but even before 10/7), they have very little human capital, they have almost no natural resources, they have very little good farmland, and with the possible exception of Hamas they have no non-corrupt institutions. And the idea that a coalition of helpful Arab nations, or European ones, is going to come up with the trillion or so dollars of aid that would be necessary to change that, is pure fantasy. The West Bank is in *somewhat* better shape, but not by much and being shackled to Gaza would drag it down while keeping the two separate leaves Gaza to sink.
And a bunch of desperately poor Gazans living next to a prosperous Israel are not going to say "but we are at peace, so all is good, and maybe if we all work very hard our grandchildren might not be desperately poor". They are going to blame Israel for their plight, claim that Israel took all their land and broke all their stuff, and demand that Israel Must Pay. And the idea that Israel is going to pay up to the tune of a trillion or so dollars, is also fantasy.
So a lot of the Gazans, and more than a few on the West Bank, are going to do what we already know they will do in that situation - try to make the Israelis pay in blood. If they're not subject to a pretty thorough blockade, they'll have the benefit of all the weapons e.g. Iran can ship them, and access to training camps, logistical and intelligence support, etc. And on the subject of fantasy, one more: the idea that any police force composed of Palestinians will take decisive action to stop patriotic Palestinians from killing Israeli Jews.
The second-biggest problem is that, even if the first-biggest problem is overstated, the Israelis will quite reasonably suspect that it is the real deal, and the bit where Israel might be persuaded to wait and see if the Palestinians will really try to rape and murder them all, went away about four months ago.
A Palestine that isn't actually occupied by Israel is at least theoretically possible, but it's going to be a Palestine where Israelis are inspecting every shipment that comes in to the country to block anything that might be used as part of a weapon. And we know what that looks like, because that was Gaza on 10/6. Clear borders (nothing makes borders clearer than a blockade), clear relationships, and central to that relationship was the part where the Gazans really, really hate the Israelis.
And no, I don't have a solution. I'm not sure there is a solution.
I think that North Korea and South Korea is an example that two hostile countries can coexist for many decades, and there also is the notion of one country being much poorer and becoming even more so, having propaganda that blames the other side (and USA) for all their ills, etc. So why wouldn't a similar solution have a chance of working? Draw a line on the map, make a DMZ and shoot anything in it, preventing incursions and raids like 10/7 with military force, treating the border as a front line of a war, because it apparently effectively is one.
For the first generation after 1945, there was not a hostile rich nation next to a hostile poor nation on the Korean peninsula, just two poor ones. Arguably the North was richer than the South for part of that period, but not by enough to matter.
So *after* the first generation, the stalemate was locked in, the attitudes were frozen, and they didn't include "those guys stole all our stuff and that's why the poor, let's kill them and take all their stuff". The Koreans, North and South alike, mostly blamed Japan for their poverty, with the North also blaming the US, but not so much blaming each other.
That's a very different situation than Israel/Palestine.
Wouldn't that solution just be what we had on 10/6 (often derided as "the worlds largest concentration camp!"), only a lot worse because you aren't letting anything cross the border at all?
I don't think that would work. For one, I think Gaza would starve.
Neither the pre-10/6 or any plausible post-whenever-this-ends situation involve "not letting anything cross the border at all". Bags of grain did cross the border, are crossing the border, and will continue to cross the border. Clothing. Basic medical supplies. Lumber. Limited quantities of other construction supplies.
Enough to avoid starvation, not enough to build a prosperous economy. There aren't enough customs inspectors in the world to check every shipment of goods necessary for a prosperous economy for anything that could be used to build a rocket, bunker, or bomb. A prosperous economy depends on having neighbors that trust you not to bomb them (or are too weak to do anything about it), so that at least some of your borders aren't subject to that sort of thing.
The ultimate goal is the neutralization of all possible threats to Israel. They're not going to stop with Gaza and Palestine. The only thing that can truly secure one's own existence is power, and that ultimately means stripping all adversaries of agency or existence.
...Well, things currently do seem to be building up to a full-on war in the Middle East. The US ultimately benefits from having a strong proxy state in the area, and any accusations against Israel of crimes against humanity is actually good for the the US, since that makes Israel more dependent on us. And who knows, maybe it'll let Biden pull a George W Bush and keep Trump out of power.
Because a state can accumulate weapons, and Israel will forever try to prevent this from happening.
Israel's standard goal is that the Palestinians have no weapons at all. You notice that the Western powers never suggest that the Palestinians have a right of defense.
The distances are too short, rocket and normal artillery ranges are too long. To accept a solution like that Israel must trust it'll not get overrun when a coalition of neighboring Arab states pull another one. Until now they tried a few times and failed but Israel only needs to lose once to get wiped because they don't have any strategical depth to retreat into.
Still they offered similar solutions in the past and Palestinians rejected them.
1. A leader like Arafat and Abbas could never cede the “right of return” and end all grievances with Israel in a final status agreement. Doing so is massively unpopular with the Pali public. They would get shot.
2. Even if some other leader, like a puppet installed by the Gulf, did so, firstly there would be a risk that he would get overthrown and second some terrorist groups could just operate as proxies out of the territory even if they weren’t the government, like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
3. At the end of the day the problem is that any territory the IDF withdraws from invariably becomes a terrorist stronghold. It happened in South Lebanon (despite UN peacekeepers) and happened in Gaza. The “two state solution” was tried in Gaza - the IDF withdrew and also removed the settlers. The results have not been good for anyone.
Now, I think Israel should have kept the army but removed the settlers.
A "state" that cannot fish more than a short distance from its shoreline. A "state" that does not control its airspace, electric supply, or water supply. A "state" that cannot cross its border with Egypt. A "state" that cannot have an army.
Come on...
I mean perhaps you approve of all of these restrictions. Just don't pretend it's a state.
But for sure, something that's *closer* to an independent state than to full occupation was tried in Gaza. From an Israeli point of view, if you make some steps in the direction of an independent state, and what you get back is far more violence, why would you take more steps in that direction?
Especially since Hamas isn't *saying* that it wants an independent state - it's saying that it wants to destroy Israel.
But ironically, Hamas IS severely injuring Israel. Putting aside all thoughts of ethics, one could say that the October 7th attack was brilliant. It has baited Israel into killing over 30,000 Palestinians. The world is horrified. I am horrified (and I used to support Israel). Israel will not soon recover from these optics.
> Hamas saying they want to destroy Israel, is like a little kid telling the playground bully, "I'm going to kill you." It's a complete fantasy.
Firstly, while they can't destroy Israel outright right now - they clearly can kill a thousand citizens, kidnap 250 people, displace 130k-ish Israelis, and completely wreck Israel's economy. If they can pull off an attack like this once every two-three years - they won't actually destroy Israel, but they will severely damage Israel.
> But ironically, Hamas IS severely injuring Israel.
So we agree apparently - except not sure what you mean by it being "ironic". They can't yet outright destroy Israel but they can severely damage Israel.
Btw, while Hamas can't directly destroy Israel, it might be able to get other countries to join in in attacking Israel - which is definitely possible. Since Hamas is funded by Iran, arguably Hamas attacking Israel *is* a form of Iran attacking - though if it attacked directly, things would be much much worse.
> Putting aside all thoughts of ethics, one could say that the October 7th attack was brilliant. It has baited Israel into killing over 30,000 Palestinians. The world is horrified. I am horrified (and I used to support Israel). Israel will not soon recover from these optics.
Of course it was brilliant. From Hamas's perspective, they've achieved everything they wanted - they hurt Israel immensely, gotten the world's attention back on Palestinians, and gotten Israel to kill many Palestinians, which is helping them a lot.
---
It looks like we agree on a lot, I'm not sure what we disagree on - do you agree that Israel should destroy Hamas? Do you disagree? Trying to locate what (if anything) we disagree on.
Hamas saying they want to destroy Israel, is like a little kid telling the playground bully, "I'm going to kill you." It's a complete fantasy.
>>why would you take more steps in that direction?<<
Please note that my point is that a two-state solution is also a fantasy. I'm not saying whether Israel should embrace a two-state solution or not, I'm saying it's never going to happen.
An eighth of Palestinians have left since Hamas took over, so I think that's at best misleading. It's not like it's impossible to leave.
Anyway, Israel's invasion and reoccupation of Gaza will likely mean the end of the blockade. Gazans will be allowed to leave. Israel's campaign means the end of this "concentration camp".
>>Israel Has Sought Palestinian Demilitarization Since Oslo
The State of Israel’s requirement that a prospective Palestinian state be demilitarized has been in effect since the 1993 Declaration of Principles (DOP), which served as the basis for the Oslo process and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, the term “demilitarization,” as it is commonly understood (i.e., a limitation on war materials), is too narrowly defined and does not sufficiently cover the full range of Israel’s security needs. The broader concept includes preventing the development of symmetrical and asymmetrical military threats against Israel – including conventional warfare, terrorism and guerilla warfare – from and via the territory of the PA and a perspective Palestinian state. Demilitarization, then, is a means to safeguarding Israel’s security, not an end in itself.<<
Israel insists on a Palestine with no right of self-defense. The Palestinians reject this. You then blame the Palestinians for the failure of the peace process.
The short answer is that a Palestinian state would become Hamastan 2.0 by default and it could lead to another 10/7.
I’m open to this solution but you would need something to actually make it work, like a permanent IDF presence or a guarantee by the UN to compensate Israel a billion dollars for every rocket fired from this state, and ten billion dollars for every terrorist death.
Here's a successful "diversity and inclusion" program. It turns out that if the population you are trying to do "diversity and inclusion" on is mostly Ashkenazi, it's not so difficult.
Integration of Haredi women into high-tech in general is on the rise. High-tech attracts ultra-Orthodox women who are looking for high-paying professions, since in most cases they are the breadwinners in the family. According to results of recent assessment tests conducted in schools, the haredi girls also possess the skills: the ultra-Orthodox female students lead in math and in reading skills and are ahead of the secular and state-religious sector; they are also ranked second in sciences, not far behind the secular sector. Thus, if in 2022 there were 1,000 ultra-Orthodox girls who graduated the computer programs, this year, their number will rise to 1,300, and next year's forecast is 1,900; in addition, about 500 female graduates from colleges that grant B.Sc. degrees.
What is less known is that these ultra-Orthodox hi-tech women increasingly integrate into the defense industries and into high-tech systems in the defense arms. About 160 ultra-Orthodox women already work in the high-tech division of the police, also in key positions in development projects and in jobs defined as highly classified. In the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), there are about 120 ultra-Orthodox women in high-tech positions, "and there may actually be more, because we don't label people according to their religious affiliation," says Sivan Hever, who is in charge of "Diversity and inclusion in employment" (hiring employees from diverse populations) at the company.
Reading between the lines of this blog, I presume there are a few Zionist readers of ACX. If you're in this category - why? Why would you read a blog from a rationalist atheist who I think would enjoy breaking down religious beliefs and understanding how conflicts propagate themselves? While simoultaneously having a pretty reductionistic view of a complex conflict based on a religion?
There are rationalist or at least rationalist-adjacent Catholics, so I'm not sure why you are surprised by rationalist Jews. In particular, Judaism is about culture as much as it is about theology, so there are plenty of atheist or agnostic Jews.
And part of what Jewish culture is about, is understanding that you are massively outnumbered by people who want to rape and murder you for no other reason than that you are Jews. Or that your grandparents were Jews and you still hang out with people whose grandparents were Jews so, meh, close enough. People have been murdering Jews for no other reason than that they are Jews since *long* before there were Jews in any position to oppress Palestinians; that's basically an unalterable aspect of the human condition at this point.
One rational response to this is to spread out, keep a low profile in small communities, preferentially in places where the rape-and-murder-Jews-for-being-Jews crowd isn't particularly strong this generation. And moving whenever that changes. But since 1938, this response has been considered broadly inadequate.
So, the other rational response is to create a nation of mostly Jews where any Jew can be welcome and where there is a powerful army of Jews tasked first and foremost with making sure nobody murders the local Jews. I am not a Jew, but I have friends who are and I absolutely support this plan. Go ahead and call me a Zionist if you like.
I'm not surprised there are Jewish rationallists - I know several. I'm surprised that rationalists in general seem pretty unconcerned by the suffering that Palestinians have been going through for generations (especially right now). This isn't mutually exclusive with concern for Israeli citizens, which I share.
If you were trying to understand people's level of concern for Palestinian suffering, then you should have asked about their level of concern for Palestinian suffering. You didn't. You asked about Zionism, which is not defined as "insufficient concern for Palestinian suffering". It is entirely possible to be a Zionist, and concerned by the suffering of the Palestinian people.
I used to be one of them. But as Moon Moth says, 10/7 changed things. I
feel about the suffering of the Palestinian people today the way I feel about the suffering of the German and Japanese people in 1943-1945. Objectively, it would be better if there had been less suffering, but the suffering was an unavoidable consequence of a necessary thing, so let's get on with it and get through to the other side as quickly as possible.
As detailed in other threads, I've been trying to nail down what Zionism actually is, and can't say I've made a great deal of progress. (My country has a very minimal Jewish population so I have no intuitive sense of what it is.)
I strongly question how unavoidable the suffering has been, particularly this time round. Today some hostage families staged a protest about how Israel's response has been focused on the destruction of Gaza rather than recovering the hostages. Some survivors were shot at by IDF helicopters a couple months ago. Many hostages have surely died in bombings.
One thing to point out is that there is a difference between this:
> the suffering that Palestinians have been going through for generations
and this:
> (especially right now)
And that difference is Oct 7th. I remember where I was when I heard about it, and I remember feeling sad and helpless and resigned, not just for the deaths on that day, but for the deaths that I knew would come soon in response, as inevitable as gravity. I was actually worried that the entire region would descend into general warfare in a clockwork cycle of retaliation, perhaps even going nuclear. But Biden sent a pair of carrier battle groups to keep that from happening. So there hasn't been as much slaughter as I feared, and I hope that you are also happy about that.
Here's a question or three for you: Going back to the evening of Oct 7th, what did you think would happen afterwards? What kind of response did you think that Israel would make? What kind of response did you think Hamas thought Israel would make?
I've had similar worries, but overall the slaughter is worse than I expected.
I never know what to expect from Israel. For example, they have an incredibly sophisticated and well-resourced military and intelligence system, so I would have expected Israel to see Oct 7 coming a mile away. As it turned out, they did, but senior leadership ignored the warnings, which makes me even more confused.
I think a good response from Israel would have been to commence negotiations with Hamas for the hostages' return, while working to locate their hostages so they could extract them whenever it was safe. What actually happened was they just started bombing everything. A few weeks ago some rescued hostages explained to Netanyahu that they were a bit pissed off when an IDF helicopter fired at them. It seems certain that IDF bombing has killed many hostages who may never be recovered. Hostages' relatives protested about this in a parliamentary committee today. I hope to God they recover their loved ones.
I suppose Hamas expected Israel to negotiate, hoping that negotiations may allow them independence from occupation. I think it's also worthwhile asking the opposite questions - what are Palestinians expected to do after decades of occupation, conflict and failure to negotiate independence?
Your potential responses for Israel would definitely seem appropriate, if all that had happened on Oct 7th was a mass hostage snatch, with maybe a few military killings. But given the sheer number of killings, especially the avoidable civilian killings, I can't see Israel not responding in kind.
I don't know what the Palestinians were "expected" to do. It's a horrible situation, and there may not be any good choices. But the situation for Gazan Palestinians is worse than for West Bank Palestinians or Israeli Palestinians, and that seems to be a direct result of decisions made by Hamas. So maybe the first step is get rid of Hamas, stop launching rockets, and just try to build as good a life as possible. I know, it's not emotionally feasible. But after 75 years and 3 (4, now?) lost wars, maybe it's time to stop. Leave, never forget, start toasting "next year in Jerusalem", and plan on moving back in a thousand years or so.
I've personally been in situations, when I was a child, where I would lash out at my tormentors, even though I knew I wouldn't win the resulting fight, and even though I knew I'd suffer more than they would. It's not a good strategy, but there's a certain satisfaction to it. That feels like what Hamas did, trying to inflict what damage they could, and provoke an Israeli response that they could hold up to the world as a justification. Unfortunately, ethics are time-directional, otherwise you get stable time loops of mutual vengeance.
It probably doesn't help that, as far as I can tell, in Hamas' theology everyone who dies because of Israel counts as a martyr, and goes straight to Paradise. I don't know how many Gazans actually believe that, but it can still create social reality as long as people have to appear to believe.
If anything, Jews are wildly over-represented in rationalist spaces. I don't think it's fair or civil to declare one half an argument to have a "pretty reductionist view".
Sorry for any offense. In other threads I'm trying to nail down what Zionism actually means, so that may affect the question. I guess the lack of caring for those massacred in Gaza, occupied in the West Bank etc. is what I was referring to as "Zionist" but it seems that word might mean something different, which I'm trying to understand.
That is not what Zionism means, one might say that is a pretty reductionist and bad faith smear of Zionism.
There's a saying "Two Jews, Three Opinions"; you'll never find an objective and universal definition of Zionism anywhere, I'd genuinely advise you not to bother. When you encounter it online, and apparently when you yourself use it, it's as a pejorative to pin objectionable opinions on people who don't actually think them.
Im Zionist in the sense of 'i think there should be a Jewish ethnostate' Because I think for whatever reason the world is a dangerous place for Jews and them being able to organize is the most effective long term defense response. Jewish, not religious (religion was illegal in Russia, great grandfather killed for being Zionist) if relevant
I just....do. I find basically everything any rationalist I ever talk to wants to talk about interesting, and writings of Scott/elezier etc have meaningfully shaped my worldviews. That's like asking a math nerd why they like math. They know they like math with greater confidence than the 'why'. Maybe you're better off asking if I agree/believe a moral or factual claim that rationalists tend to believe more than non rationalists?
Zionism was just a movement for giving ethnic Jews their own country. It was a movement, it succeeded, and most people in Israel would say they're "Zionists" in the same way that someone from the US would say they're "American" - it just means you're part of Israel.
I feel like the term gets uses in the West in far different ways, but that's all it is - Jews having their own homeland. And yes, that means "ethnic" Jews, not necessarily religious Jews - the majority of Israel is secular. I personally am an atheist.
I don't know if the "majority" of Israel is secular. Among Israeli Jews I thought it's like 40% Hiloni, 30% Masorti, 15% Dati, 15% Haredi or something. But secular+traditional is like 70% or so, and the traditionals are really pretty secular. Israeli Arabs are also more religious than Israeli Jews, right? But whatever, secular enough. It's certainly not any sort of theocractic state, much as this goddamned government that will get creamed in the next elections has tried.
Yeah, according to wikipedia it's like 45% secular, which is almost a majority, and definitely a majority if you also count traditional - traditional is a pretty big range though. There's no simple mapping to Christians in the US, but I think "church-going" vs. not is fairly close.
I don't know where you got this idea that everyone who self-identifies as "Zionist" has a "pretty reductionistic view" of a complex conflict. No doubt that religion plays a large role in this conflict, but why can't secular people have a view too? The woke religion and the Christian religion play large roles in American politics, but I don't see why seculars can't have a view on it. Palestinians are almost all religious Muslims, Israeli Jews are a mix of secular and religious.
Do I self-identify as Zionist? Sure. Do I believe that Israel should Israel continue to exist, like the US? Yes. Do I think Hamas is a terrorist organization that needs to be destroyed?
Yes. Am I more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians? Yes. Would I like for there to be a two-state solution? Yes. Do I think any Palestinian leadership would accept a two-state solution? No. Do I think that even if they did that it would actually work? No. Do I like Netanyahu? No. Do I like the settlements? No. Do I like the judicial reform? No.
Anyway, while it is not perfect, Israel is a developed first-world country with an amazing startup scene, rationalist meetups, great universities, a free press, Arab minority rights, a strong court system, an indigenous space program (one of the smallest countries to do so), etc. It has both a high IQ and a high TFR including among smart people, a welcome rarity these days. It has a high GDP/capita. It has very high levels of happiness. Hamas is a barbaric ISIS-like terrorist organization. Anyone who cares about the future of humanity and scientific progress should side with civilized Israel over barbaric Hamas. Of course I don't mean to say that all Arabs are barbarians, and in fact Israeli Arabs hate Hamas and polls show them as feeling more integrated into Israel than ever after 10/7.
A two state solution seems unlikely at this point. The best hope for peace is that orthodox Jews in Israel have enough babies that there can be a one-state solution with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians with a long term Jewish majority.
That's a very enlightening answer. I guess Zionism is a little hard to define and I'm not an expert by any means. How I imagine Zionism is something along the lines of "Israel has done (almost) nothing wrong, owes Palestinians (almost) nothing, and is (almost) blameless for atrocities like Oct 7". How does that sound as a definition, and would you support that? Obviously there may also be an element of "identifying" as Zionist rather than it simply describing you.
One could just take the view that Israel's wrongs are outweighted by their neighbors' wrongs.
The majority of Israeli Jews today are Mizrahim who are native to the Middle East. When they fled to Israel they were forced to leave behind land approximately 4x the size of Israel.
So if the Palestinians are owed reparations, the Mizrahim are also owed 4x those reparations.
The ideal solution would be for the Arab states to pay reparations to the Mizrahim, and the Mizrahim can then forward 1/4 of their reparations to the Palestinians, and we can call the matter settled. Sounds fair?
@20WS Intent matters in morality. The proposition that if the arabs were disarmed they would live in peace at roughly UN partition borders (with the expectation that if those borders were violated they would renounce peace), if the Jews were disarmed they would be quickly slaughtered, is that a prediction you would agree with?
Israel's wrongs are not outweighed by their neighbors' wrongs in the current conflict (~1,000 deaths vs ~25,000). The fatality counts are similar in most other instances of conflict.
Re reparations for Mizrahim - if we're trying to calculate the precise disutility caused to people living in the present day, that's gonna be tough. Land area could be one way to do it, but that would ignore land value, generational trauma etc. Probably a more useful and timely question is how to stop the current conflict which leaves hundreds or thousands dead each year.
In WWII Japan killed 94,000 Americans and America (with it's allies) killed about 2 million Japanese. Does that mean America's wrongs in that war outweighed Japans?
Imagine a hypothetical: a robber walks into a store and shoots at the cashier with the intent to kill, but only wounds him. The cashier draws and shoots back and kills him. Is the wrongs of the cashier outweighing the wrongs of the robber? After all, the cashier was only wounded but the robber is now dead.
It's clear to me that the destruction of the Japanese Empire was a moral act, and justified under the laws of war. And it's clear to me that the cashier has done nothing wrong. If you disagree, you may have to explain why.
Nah. Zionism is just 'there should be an ethnostate for jews'. I agree the Jews stole land from the Palestinians, mostly by buying up land rights from ottoman landlords and kicking people out, and then with a UN partition plan that has no moral authority. But....most countries are founded that way and Jews needed somewhere to go. Ideally Jews got a part of Germany or Russia or something but politics so it was Israel. The Palestinians responded to the situation in a very morally bad way and arabs as a group have consistently failed to wipe Israel off the map. Jews don't have a right to do what Palestinians have done to the Jews to any of the people abusing them over the last several thousands of years and their choices have led to the destruction of leftist politics in Israel
Zionism is that there should be a homeland for Jews. Israel is not an ethnostate like Liberia. Arabs can vote and there was an Arab party in the last government. Yes, they bought up land from Arab tenants who legally owned it and expelled the Palestinians. The UN partition plan was indeed a nonbinding UNGA plan, so basically what you had was a free-for-all like with India and Pakistan.
I don't know about getting a part of Germany or Russia, given that it was far more practical to get Jews from Morocco and Iraq to somewhere in the Middle East. A Jewish state on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain (like, in the parts of Germany that the Polish/Russians took) would have ended up communist. No thanks. Anyway, the Zionist movement goes back to the 19th century and at least half of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi.
I agree with all of this. 'Ethnostate' to me includes 'all races have equal rights, only people of a certain race can immigrate here'. I'm saying Israel's creation was unfair to the Palestinians. The land 'rights' Jews bought were mostly from 'arabs' who weren't Palestinian and didn't live in Palestine. I'm reasonably fine with Israel's creation, and strongly support its continued existence. Ultimately, any state not controlled by Jews leads to slaughter of Jews (a proposition) so any homeland for Jews must have a mechanism to ensure Jews control it, even if some non Jews are welcome there as full citizens. Whatever that mechanism is, I call it an ethnostate. Is there anything you think we disagree on?
Zionism is the belief that Israel should exist and thrive, in accordance with the principle of self-determination. It does not imply that only Jews but not Palestinians are afforded self-determination or anything of the sort. It's just a national liberation movement for the Jewish people, to have a state in their historic homeland. As a consequence of its sentimental value and proximity to most of the major Jewish population centers (Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Morocco, Syria, Iraq, its own Jewish communities, etc), the historic homeland was the best Schelling point, though Uganda was considered.
You've made 2 replies to this comment - I'll respond to both. As i see it, this comment is about what Zionism is, and the other comment is about the diversity of political beliefs among Jews.
Thanks for defining Zionism However, going back to the fact that ACX has long ties to the rationalist community, I want to break that down a bit to make sure we agree on this.
When you say "Israel should exist and thrive", there's quite a bit to unpack there. Usually, rationalists want to improve overall utility, so thriving is a no-brainer. Some rationalists consider individuals to have human rights. This may not have a solid theoretical basis, but is a useful rule for ensuring higher utility overall. However, political governance systems seem to just come and go as societies change. By "Israel", do you think Zionists mean the current political governance system of the land we call Israel?
If, by "Israel", you mean the set of people that live on the land we call Israel (which was populated by Palestinians in ~1900), then Zionism would seem to imply that people should never have gone there and set up their own political system, since it interefered with the thriving of the people living in Israel at the time.
However, I suspect that Zionists would define "Israel" as something else. I suspect they mean an independent, ddmocratic political governance system, which applies only to people with some Jewish ancestry living in Palestine. Is that the case?
You might as well ask what Taiwanese nationalism or Singaporean nationalism is, and whether Taiwanese nationalists or Singaporean nationalists would have considered the migration of ethnic Chinese to these places a mistake. Like in the Israel example, the arrival of those people was a net benefit to the people already there. Non-Han minorities in Taiwan and Singapore have rights, just as with non-Jews in Israel.
All the Arabs between the river and the sea have a higher per capita GDP than Egyptians or Jordanians or Syrians or Lebanese. It's still true even if you include descendants of refugees from 1948 in the former category.
By Israel I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel . The country of Israel, which is 80% Jewish, 20% Arab, a first-world democracy with a huge GDP, HDI, etc, great startup scene, a free press, great universities, and so on. Zionists wanted to set up a country like this, they wanted for it to succeed and thrive. It's an independent democratic country, and it doesn't only apply to people with Jewish ancestry. Arabs can vote and have rights, lots of Russians with vague Jewish family ties were given citizenship, Ethiopians with no Jewish ancestry were bussed again, some Ukrainians with literally no Jewish ties were given citizenship, etcetera. It's a Jewish and democratic state, the realization of the Jewish peoples' right to self determination.
It's true in 1900 only a minority of the population was Jewish, but it's hard to make the case that Zionist immigration actually interfered with this thriving. Kligler cleared out malaria allowing for a high rate of Arab population growth. Today Israeli Arabs have Greek-level GDP/capita, unparalleled among non-oily MENA countries. Palestinians in the WB+Gaza have standards of living similar to Egypt and Jordan, and much better than in Syria. You can look at GDP, HDI, life expectancy, and all of that. Overall the picture is that Zionism is a net good for Palestinians. Empirical evidence shows that Arabs are far better off living in Israel, and they have more rights and so on (free speech, elections, LGBT rights, whatever), than under self-government.
No country has done almost nothing wrong, not America, not Britain, and not Israel. Is that a point of view that you have actually seen? Many self-described Zionists have all sorts of criticism of various Israeli government actions. Israel is a democracy with a lot of different political parties. They definitely do not all agree with each other. Have you seen the judicial reform stuff? There is a saying: two Jews, three opinions.
I don't know about what Israel "owes" Palestinians, I wouldn't mind Israel paying Palestinians compensation for whatever grievances (e.g. lost property in 1948, and of course Israel should also be paid for e.g. Jews' loss of property in the Arab world), but unfortunately that won't solve the problem because Palestinians aren't WEIRD rationalists. In an ideal solution the international community would pay Israel and Palestine lots of $$ on net, so that e.g. for every dollar of compensation Israel pays the Palestinians it would get two dollars from the international community. But, are all of the grievances Palestinians have against Israel totally 100% illegitimate? Of course not. Both sides have legitimate grievances, as in any conflict. Even the Axis Powers had *very* legitimate grievances (e.g. Versailles).
As for Israel's blame for Oct 7, given that such massacres happened before the existence of Israel (e.g. Hebron 1929) it's hard for me to really blame Israel at all for that one. It's also worth noting that support for 10/7 in Gaza went *down* a lot since the start of the invasion, while in the West Bank it went up. It's not some kind of response to suffering and oppression or whatever, but rather more opportunity-based. One could perhaps blame Netanyahu for his strategy of being relatively dovish on Hamas and letting Qatar send a lot of cash to them. It's a stretch to say he "propped up" Hamas, as he still cooperates with Fatah against Hamas. But it's true that Netanyahu preferred to try to buy piece and quiet from Hamas, rather than deal with Fatah and the peace process. To be fair to him, a peace process with Fatah didn't have much of a chance of success either, and Fatah was always corrupt and ineffectual anyway, but Netanyahu's policies could not have helped and I strongly believe they were a mistake.
One can describe oneself as pro-Allies without signing off on everything the Allies did (e.g. Dresden, Japanese internment, etc) and also while recognizing that the Axis side had some legitimate grievances too. The existence of religious, ethnic, and tribal motivations here were definitely present in WWII, of course on the Axis side (e.g. Nazi racial supremacy, Japanese ethnic supremacy, Shinto martyrdom). They were also present on the Allied size. Many people didn't like the Nazis because they were anti-Christian and kind of pagan. In the US, the view of the Japanese was certainly colored by the fact that they were non-white and not Christian. People have all sorts of motivations and reasons for having opinions on a conflict. In any case, this doesn't mean that we should strive for absolute neutrality.
How do you think the war is going? How much do you know of Israeli politics? Do you think there’s a chance many Israelis will look back on it as mistake, like the invasion of Iraq for the US?
I think there is no chance that Israelis will look back on the invasion of Gaza as a mistake. It would be as if the Taliban were in America, invaded the Southwest US for a day, and killed 1/10,000th of our population, while some other Taliban-types were in Canada.
I think the war is going decently well, but not as well as the first part where North Gaza was captured quickly. Khan Younis will fall soon. There is talk of a hostage deal but I don't think it will happen.
That’s an impressive level of certainty. Here is a dark scenario, not one I think is particularly likely, but something like it seems plausible: after the Biden administration ends, there is another Democratic administration that’s much more skeptical of Israel. After more atrocities, remaining international support for Israel collapses. Egypt stops supporting the blockade. Another Hamas-like group rises because the conditions causing it to come into existence haven’t changed; funding is still there, and there are always more recruits.
Egypt stops supporting the blockade? No way. I don't think this is scenario is very plausible. Anyway, there are many Hamas-like groups, the solution is to crush them militarily. Eventually Palestinians will learn that terrorism doesn't work.
Do you think most of the remaining hostages are even alive at this point? Are any alive? It's been over three months, and Hamas has had a lot of reason to make a deal to end the war. Giving back the hostages would have been a good idea and would have been a point where Israel could have exited and claimed goals were met, while not destroying all of Hamas. A win-win, I think.
I doubt that many are alive. I do think Hamas would keep some alive just to release propaganda videos from time to time.
My impression is that Hamas is... not a rational actor as we would understand it, and up to a first-order approximation views itself as locked in a zero-sum game with Israel.
Short answer: contrary to propaganda, Zionism is a secular national movement. Theodor Hertzel was a liberal/modernist, and the ruling party in Israel for the first decades was *socialist*.
I recently found out something about why Zionism started as a secular movement-- it's because of a (somewhat common at the time?) religious belief that the right response to persecution was to do religious rituals more thoroughly.
I'll look for the links if anyone cares, but I've seen videos from people who still believe this. I'm horrified, but I guess it makes sense. In times when there seemed like there was nothing to be done about persecution, doing rituals could offer some emotional relief. Memes don't die easily.
That is simply not true. Zionism started as a secular movement in the 1800s Europe out of a desire for a safe homeland for Jews. Secular Jews were (and still are) the most worldly and capable of organizing any sort of movement, I don't think the chareidies would have ever been able to pull it off.
The biggest catalyst that traces directly to Israel is the Der Judenstaat essay by Theodor Herzl, a Jewish French journalist who witnessed antisemitism and especially the Dreyfus affair, where (summarizing heavily) a Jewish French army officer was falsely accused of treason.
I don't think that's a very good description of common attitudes at the time. More like status quo bias, opposition to radical change, and especially to change largely being pushed by ideological opponents. Sure, within the subset of the religious population that didn't support various Zionist movements, all they could do was keep practicing their religion, but religious piety was never seen as an alternative to political solutions. Rather, it was all they had, anyway, after not being enthused by particular political solutions. There were massive Jewish population movements in the interwar period, for example, including the religious, due to upheaval and persecution - there was never some universal dogma that they could never do anything in response to persecution other than practice rituals and die.
Compare to doctors and therapists who tell you to do some stuff, and if it doesn't work, blame you for not doing it right or not trying hard enough. :-/
I don't really care about the politics associated with it. But the secular part is interesting - do you think Zionists are interested in people who are ethnically Jewish, rather than religiously so? If that's the case I'm not sure it's helpful, given that ethnic bias is an even larger taboo than religious bias (if "bias" is the right word - not sure what would be better)
(Edit: and by "taboo" I really mean a logical error that most rationalists would find very obvious)
Important background: I am an Israeli, and a Zionist in the sense that Israelis use that word, which is probably different from how you use it.
To your question: the mainstream Zionist view is that being Jewish is an ethnic/cultural/national identity, that is historically connected to a religion just like most such identities used to be before Christianity (e.g. Greek mythology, kings being priests and incarnations of gods all over the ancient middle east...).
The meaning of having a Jewish state is debated inside the Zionist movement since day one, because it is a coalition around advancing a vague common goal, rather than a single philosophy. Most of us, as well a Israel's declaration of independence and multiple court decisions, do *not* take it to mean a state that discriminate among its citizens based on either religion or ethnicity. It mostly mean that the states symbols (flag etc) are related to Jewish culture, and that it does openly discriminate in its immigration policy - which is much more common than an American might expect, even in liberal democracies. Who exactly should get preference in immigration based on being jew, is an ongoing debate inside Israel.
I wouldn't use the term "Zionist" here, I'd use the term "Israeli". Zionism in this context just confuses matters.
Israel as a country only really cares about ethnicity - a big chunk of Israel is secular, and there's an ongoing political battle within Israel as to just how "religious" to make the country.
I mean, I wouldn't ever suggest that every Israeli has a similar political mindset and/or level of interest in Scott's blog. I think Zionism is specifically what I'm talking about here.
What do *you* mean when you say Zionist? Most Israelis would consider it to be saying "someone who believes Israel should exist", which is a weird thing to have a word for except that so many people are *against* the idea.
I'm a Zionist in that sense - I'm an Israeli citizen that believes Israel has a right to exist. I definitely don't agree with the minority of Israelis that think Israel needs to be expanded territorially. But I'm not sure what *you're* referring to.
Let me also say that in general what has happened in the past is generally a decent predictor of what will happen in the future. There is a long history of people hating Jews and trying to kill them, and so making sure Jews have an independent country seems like a good idea, especially in light of Jews' disproportionate contributions to scientific progress, global GDP, etc (which is a main reason people hate Jews in the first place).
"If people are assumed to start out identical but some end up wealthier than others, observers may conclude that the wealthier ones must be more rapacious. And as the diagnosis slides from talent to sin, the remedy can shift from redistribution to vengeance. Many atrocities of the 20th century were committed in the name of egalitarianism, targeting people whose success is taken as evidence of their criminality. The kulaks ("Bourgeois peasants") were exterminated by Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet union; teachers, former landlords, and "rich peasants" were humiliated, tortured, and murdered during the Chinese cultural revolution; city dwellers and literate professionals were worked to death or executed during the reign of the Khmer rouge in Cambodia. Educated and entrepreneurial minorities who have prospered in their adopted regions, such as the Indians in East Africa and Oceania, the Ibos in Nigeria, the Armenians in Turkey, the Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the Jews almost everywhere, have been expelled from their homes or killed in Pogroms because their visibly successful members were seen as parasites and exploiters."
Do you think that abolishing all religious and ethnic nationalism actually would actually maximize global GDP and take civilization to the stars? You might just get communism, low TFR, etcetera. Since most normies won't accept HBD, these are at least good excuses to favor high-skill immigration over low-skill immigration and prevent e.g. the destruction of every first-world country by a combination of mass third-world migration and then "equity" for those third-world immigrants, as the far-left wants with Israel.
There is a strong effective altruist case to be pro-religion. Empirically it massively increases TFR and life happiness. I am an atheist. I don't deny that religion is behind some bad policies but I am not sure what's to dislike about it. Humans need some kind of religion in some sense. Without religion you get a void of wokism, which also has irrational beliefs, but doesn't make you happy or increase TFR.
- pay as many Gazans as are interested a cheerful price to leave and go somewhere else, renouncing all claims in perpetuity.
- pay interested Israelis to move somewhere else... Not sure where. And renounce all claims of going back in perpetuity.
- pay an independent force to provide security and maybe social services, as long as there are no militants and no cross-border attacks or rocket fire.
- ...?
- a combination of the above.
My estimates of what each one of those would cost range from $1B to $1T, and one cannot skimp here.
It is simply impossible to permanently "buy out" a purported ethnic claim on a piece of land. The signatories will die, the details will be lost to time and contested, descendants of whichever side turns out to have gotten the worse end of the deal will simply ignore the deal and irridentistly insist on fighting to take it back.
By some accounts, the Dutch bought Manhattan Island for 60 guilders, but 400 years later you'll see people calling America Turtle Island, doing land acknowledgements etc.
True, but if that buy out comes along with those who are paid off leaving Israeli, then it's a success. The problem right now is that Israel is full of more than a million people who want to destroy Israel. Move those people out of Israel, and you have a lot less of a problem.
Apparently Israel's foreign minister Katz has now floated the idea of creating an artificial island in the Mediterranean for the Palestinians to live on. That sounds like something a lot of money could be thrown at and that might work.
EDIT: Apparently this was fake news, but it might still be a good idea?
I don't think that "pay as many X as are interested to move" is a useful tactic in any way, because if e.g. half of the people move and half of the people stay, you have spent a lot of money but haven't made any progress at all in solving the problems, because the point of contention still remains, and the people remaining are presumably the more principled ones with a larger than average motivation to keep up their position in the conflict.
There can't be a fully voluntary relocation in this case - any solution that relies on relocation automatically implies at least some elements of forced relocation, with all the associated issues.
Some of the similar ideas have been tried or at least suggesed. Issues that have made them fail:
- Egypt (and Jordan) *really* don't want to take in Palestinians. Jordan almost had a coup when they took them in after the 48 war, and Lebanon was pretty much wrecked. Israel tried pushing Egypt to take Gaza as part of the peace deal in the seventies and Egypt point blank refused. Not sure what their price would be but given the risk of instability and PR hit to being perceived as helping Israel it'd be very, very high.
- Palestinians really don't want that either. When many (probably a large majority, but not going to hard claim that since polling is unreliable) Palestinians say "kick out the settlers" they mean Tel Aviv just as much as they do the WB settlements.
- paying Gazans to move somewhere else would fail on both sides: very few places want to take them and the Gazans don't want to move (they value land over their lives - there's a cultural reason as well as a political one why Palestinian refugees are the only class of refugee that's hereditary and stays "refugees" after being resettled).
- Gaza, despite stereotype, is (pre-war) closer to middle income than developing nation. Gazans probably wouldn't want to move to Sudan or whatever even on QOL grounds, even without ideological barriers.
- take this 10x for Israelis. Some Israelis do move abroad, but the ones that don't really like being in Israel (war aside, it's kinda nice being in a socially cohesive high trust society with a good economy and a functional healthcare system). And Israel's GDP is about half a trillion dollars, so even without sentimental attachments (which are high) the price to buy that out would be something like 15-20 trillion dollars (assuming you're buying 30 years of GDP). Plus you'd have to find a western country willing and able to take in ten million immigrants at once, in a world where western countries can't build housing.
What do you think the price might be for both Egypt agreeing to take it, and the Gazans agreeing to become Egyptian citizens? How much per Gazan? How much per Egyptian? How much to the leadership? Who else would need to be paid and how much?
There is absolutely no way the Egyptians will take Gazans. Egypt controlled Gaza from 1949 through 1967 (technically shared between Egypt and Syria for the beginning of that time period but it was still administered by Egyptians) and by all accounts weren't kind to the Gazans. Since then Egypt has watched Jordan and Lebanon try and fail to accept and rehabilitate Gazans, and wants no part in it
For Gazans, It's really hard to say, since most people aren't willing to put a price on their sacred values. Large voluntary migration like this has never been done without military force - even during the Irish potato famine, like half the people stayed to starve in Ireland.
For Egypt I suspect it would actually be doable despite their bluster, especially since their government was already in an economic crisis and the houthi blockade is making that worse (Egyptian government gets a significant chunk of their revenue from the Suez canal).
Yh other problem though is that it'd be really hard to sell this as a solution to the relevant players, since moving large groups of people like that is ethnic cleansing-y and most countries wouldn't want to enable that (some Israelis might like the idea, but I don't think a government would actually be willing to pay the international PR price for suggesting it seriously, especially since it almost certainly wouldn't work and would only convince the Palestinians they should fight harder since it'd reinforce their concept that Israel wants to kick them out).
Hmm, they don't have to move at all, how can it be ethnic cleansing? Just a change of governance from hated settlers to the "friendly" muslims. I guess it's ethnic cleansing-y if one imagines that the right of return might one day be gained back.
Sorry, I thought that was about the "pat them to move" option.
About the "Egyptian government in Gaza" option, the main problem (aside from Egypt not wanting to) is that the Egyptian government wouldn't really have the power to enforce a monopoly on violence in Gaza. They already have trouble doing it in Sinai, which is closer, much less densely populated, and has much less terrorist infrastructure (e.g. they relied on the idf to bomb ISIS to prevent them taking over Sinai).
Hold a series of meetings between leaders, sub-leaders way down the command chain, and plain citizens during which everyone takes ecstasy. Hire an awesome mediator/family therapist to mediate discussion.
Pay a bribe to the Egyptian government to take all the Gaza residents. Should cost less than $10B. Secure it by guaranteeing US citizenship and secret service protection to the top 50 people in the Egyptian government, should a coup happen.
I feel the desire to observe that the short version of recent European history has basically been the Holy Roman Empire splitting into France and Germany and fighting over Alsace and Lorraine for the last thousand years. History may be sped up these days, but it isn't over yet
BTW, one irony of Middle-Eastern geography is that Samarium's name is _not_ derived from Samaria (the chunk of the west bank). Samarium even has a refractory oxide, Sm2O3, which is sometimes called samaria (in analogy with silica, magnesia, alumina, etc.).
Foreword: the most common critique of this proposal is that the Israelis should have to move to a new country and let the Palestinians have the country they used to have. I certainly understand the justice of that, but I don't believe that's going to happen. In fact I believe the probability of the Israelis packing up and leaving is zero. And while we wait for justice, the Palestinians are being slaughtered. So I think we need to focus on something that could actually work, rather than some theoretically better solution.
One must wonder how many decades people will cling to the vision of a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians while the facts on the ground move continually in the other direction. ("Netanyahu emphasizes his opposition to two-state solution" https://wapo.st/495ULG9) Nor is a one-state solution (Palestinians gain citizenship) any more plausible. Time for a new idea.
The fundamental problem for Israel and the Palestinians is that there are 5 million stateless Palestinians and Israel will never accept them as citizens because they are not Jewish. Historically no Arabic country has welcomed them either.
>>For the past month, both Jordan and Egypt have repeatedly declared that their borders would not be opened to receive even one Palestinian—not as a way to deny humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under attack but rather as a countermove to deny Israel the opportunity to empty the West Bank and Gaza of as many Palestinians as possible. Jordan’s fears are not unfounded, and its redline of refusing to admit Palestinians remains unlikely to change for several reasons.<<
Without a country, the Palestinians will never be free. I see one possible solution: the world should buy a country for the Palestinians.
It would not be cheap. Rebuilding Gaza after Israel finushes destroying it will also not be cheap, but the world will pay for it. Here is my proposal.
The idea when first proposed was to buy a less-developed part of Sudan bordering Egypt with a size close to that of Israel. A refinement is to negotiate a deal with the micronation self-proclaimed as the "Islamic Republic of Hala’ib Triangle". This entity covers 7,950 square miles (20,580 sq km), comparable to the size of Israel (8,630 sq mi).
Set aside the competing claims of Sudan and Egypt for this area, and focus on justice for the current inhabitants which number about 1500. I'm proposing a payment of $1 million US per resident, infants included. The nominal cost would be $1.5 billion, about the cost of 2 to 3 weeks of bombs to be dropped on the Gazans. Also a grant of ten acres per resident.
Hala'ib lies between Sudan and Egypt and borders the Red Sea to the east. I believe the best approach is that the current residents, mostly Bedouins, would have citizenship in the new country along with the Palestinians. They would be suddenly rich, of course, which would not be a new phenomenom for Bedouins.
The 1500 rich Bedouins and the five million not-rich Palestinians would be the citizens of the new country which might be called the Hala'ib-Palestine Alliance.
Hala'ib-Palestine would be far enough away from Israel that continued hostilities would be unlikely in addition to being pointless.
Many persons claim that the Palestinians would never accept the idea of moving away from the birthplace of Islam. Not living in the birthplace of Islam does not seem to be a problem for the rest of the nearly 2 billion Muslims. A quick poll of the Palestinans in between bombardments and sniper attacks should resolve that question.
There would need to be a threshold (supermajority) for final approval on both the Hala'ib and the Palestinian sides. Of course a proposal which looks very good to those directly involved will probably be repugnant to Sudan and Egypt, so those countries must be dealt with. One possibility: offer to redirect the aid that the US gives Israel (approximately $4 billion per year) for ten years: $2 billion per year to Sudan, and the same for Egypt. Set a one-year deadline for agreement: if either country does not agree, all of the money goes to the other country. Regardless, the establishment of the new country would proceed under UN and US protection.
The new country should include a nature preserve for the Nubian wild ass.
It should also include a large interior area which is reserved for nomadic occupation only. In addition a strip of land one mile thick along the Red Sea plus land for an airport and various parcels for government installations should be under permanent government control. The oceanfront area could be leased for resort development. The land remaining after the grants to the original Hala'ib residents would be divied up among the Palestinians.
The flags of the two nations are very similar though the Arab colors occur in a different order. My suggestion for a merged flag is to take the Palestinian flag and place the coat of arms of the Hala’ib Triangle in the white bar.
Enlist a coalition of nations including some of the richer Arab nations to build a new Palestine in the new country. The US can contribute the money it would spend replacing the buildings and infrastructure in Gaza that Israel has turned to rubble. Israel can restore what it has destroyed in Gaza.
What will the Palestinians in the Hala’ib Triangle do when the Hala’ibians pushed out into Egypt and Sudan call them colonizers and start firing rockets into the Hala’ib Triangle and demanding a Right of Return to their native state of Hala’ib?
For kicks and giggles, you could imagine some Israeli group sending the Hala’ibians money and weapons just to pull the uno-reverse card on the Palestinians.
If the attempt to buy a homeland for Jews in 1948 led to endless war, it seems likely any attempt to buy a homeland for Palestinians in 2024 will lead to equally endless war.
Any solution you could apply to the latter would be better off applied to the former.
If you can get the Arab states to foot the bill, sure!
I think the part you're missing is that Israel/Palestine is on the Mediterranean coast and somewhat arable land, while the Hala’ib triangle seems, from satellite images, to be desert. Probably why almost nobody lives there.
If you paid me $1 million dollars to move to the desert, I would use some of that money to immediately move *out* of the desert.
As other commenters wrote, this is unrealistic for many reasons. Scott Atran has a piece on how $$ doesn’t work for sacred values in Israel-Palestine. Palestinians aren’t WEIRD.
I do want to point out that the Palestinian state in this scenario might well pose a Houthi-style threat to Red Sea shipping.
I actually sort of agree that it's plausible that the Palestinians are best off in some scenario where they leave because I don't think Israel will ever allow them to have a state. But there are two problems I see with any such scenario;
1) It would be very expensive, and no one really has an incentive to pay for it. On the one hand, giving Palestinians citizenship to rich countries, even without a stipend, would be good for them, but rich countries won't take them. For it to be worth it for them to accept moving en masse to a poorer part of the world, either as citizens or to get a new state, they would likely have to be given considerable subsidies. How much is enough to build a new country from scratch with even a modest third world standard of living? I don't know honestly? And if you have to pay another country to forfeit a bunch of land? This could potentially cost trillions. The only country that might have a strong incentive to want to pay for such a resettlement is Israel, and the Israeli electorate would never accept such a bill as a matter of principle.
2) If anyone other than Israel pays the cost of Palestinian resettlement, then from the perspective of Palestinians and their sympathizers, Israel will have 'gotten away with it.' And these are precisely the people you would need to persuade to accept such an arrangement. But for anyone who believes Israel has helped cause this situation by marginalizing the Palestinians, then resettling the Palestinians at everyone else's expense will mean Israel will have effectively gotten away with expelling the Palestinians by (again, from the perspective of Palestinian-sympathetic people) mistreating them until someone else pitied them enough to bail them out. And that's not just a visceral objection; the precedent creates some pretty bad incentives. A country that wants to rid itself of a minority group could try to replicate the scenario by mistreating and fomenting conflict with said group until some other party comes along and pays the marginalized group to leave. It incentivizes state mistreatment of demographic groups they don't like; a sort of 'Curly effect' writ large.
So for anyone who believes that the status quo in which such a plan is being considered is largely the result of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, then carrying any such plan (unless Israel were made to pay for it) would incentivize similar mistreatment by other countries against other perceived 'problem populations' (or even by Israel in the future against its own Arab population).
Building infrastructure for >5 million people more or less from scratch seems extremely expensive. I did a quick search and found a couple links saying building a city that large from scratch would cost 100-500k per resident. Some billionaire named Marc Lore proposed a couple years ago to build a city in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telosa) to ultimately house 5 million by 2050; he estimates it will cost $400 billion. I'd guess as with most big infrastructure projects, the cost will be at least a few times that. Of course, maybe it would be cheaper to build a city in northeast Africa (but land is apparently only a small fraction of the overall cost). But I wouldn't take that for granted, since there may be a lot of challenges to building a city in what is essentially a desert.
Just for it to be economically worth it, since current per capita GDP of the west banks is just shy of 2k (Gaza is less than 1k), you'd need to pay at least $10 billion a year to support a standard of living better than what they have in Palestine.
And what are the long term economic prospects for this new country? Most Palestinians (according to wikipedia) are employed in agriculture. Can Hala'ib support that much agriculture? It looks like much of it is desert, so I'm not so sure. Does it have any natural resources? Or would Palestinians basically end up being permanently dependent on international largesse?
$40 B over 10 years is cheap for Israel. If they could have paid that to make the Gazan problem go away, I'm 99% sure that they would have done so by now. Followup question: why not apply the same solution to the West Bank?
> My desire to stop the slaughter is greater than my desire to punish Israel.
I think this is where you are fundamentally disconnected from the people involved. If Hamas wanted to stop the slaughter, they could have surrendered at any time after Oct 7, or better yet, just not done Oct 7 in the first place. Clearly there's something that they value more than stopping the slaughter. ("Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils.")
If everyone behaved like perfectly rational actors then there wouldn't be a conflict in the first place. There are many barriers to this plan but they are mostly surmountable, what isn't surmountable (in the near term) is Palestinian support for Hamas and fighting against Israel.
Also there is no good polling data coming out of there. Both sides have a strong incentive right now to assume that every single Palestinian would rather die supporting Hamas than live under better conditions elsewhere.
There are many many barriers to this idea but I find the concept of wealthy nations resolving a humanitarian/religious/warfare situation by applying an immense pile of charitable money innately appealing.
However I think putting all the Palestinians on land near Israel is begging for war.
If you're going to spend the immense amount of money to buy land and peacefully ethnically cleanse gaza, you should probably also try to buy one of the azores or some other place much further away.
Do you think firing amateur rockets across a fence is the only possible way nations can engage in conflict? We are already dealing with houthi militants flexing their power on the red sea and you want to put another nation of displaced and discontented people on the same sea?
And that's something that could happen almost immediately. Where will we be in 20 years, 50 years? Do you think a people banished to some random desert while their holy land is within driving, naval, and short flight distance will be chill with this status quo?
If you adopt the radical measure of displacing millions of people I think you should at least displace them far far away.
a supermajority didn't vote for Hamas in the last election nevertheless gaza got a hamas government, resulting in among other things the January 7 attack on Israel.
As for your other question, I have to conclude you are being deliberately obtuse.
This shares one key feature with the two state solution, that it's completely unpopular with anybody on the ground. Some Israelis might be ok with it as it's incredibly pro Israel, but most would realize that it's exceedingly unrealistic and not worth any political capital to attempt it.
>
>>For the past month, both Jordan and Egypt have repeatedly declared that their borders would not be opened to receive even one Palestinian—not as a way to deny humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under attack but rather as a countermove to deny Israel the opportunity to empty the West Bank and Gaza of as many Palestinians as possible. Jordan’s fears are not unfounded, and its redline of refusing to admit Palestinians remains unlikely to change for several reasons.<<
This is simply not true. The reason Jordan and Egypt (and everybody else) will not accept Palestinians is that historically Palestinian migrants have been extremely destabilizing, and accepting Palestinians would cause serious security issues and quite possibly state collapse.
Palestinians were welcomed en mass to Jordan and Lebanon, in Jordan they were even broadly granted citizenship. This resulted in the Jordanian and Lebanese civil wars.
There simply isn't a solution where everybody wins, life isn't an episode of West Wing.
A fully independent Palestinian second state would immediately reignite official hot conflict with Israel.
A semi-independent Palestinian second state would be a hotbed for terrorist attacks against Israel, much as Gaza and the West Bank are now. It would also require repressive tactics that Israel could not possibly actually implement, but would still be flamed for.
Palestinians being granted second-tier citizenship in Israel is unpalatable to anybody, especially globally.
Palestinians being granted full citizenship in Israel would quickly if not immediately result in it no longer being a Jewish state, defeating the purpose of its existence and likely leading to mass exodus and/or massacres of Israelis.
Palestinians have historically been incapable of producing a leader that can maintain internal power and legitimacy while moving towards peace.
Everybody in the Middle East would love their territorial rivals to be mass resettled, but nobody is interested in being mass resettled themselves.
Nobody is willing to destroy their own countries by taking in Palestinians (except maybe Canada apparently?).
Personally I don't know how the status quo can/will be moved past. A genocide of the Palestinians is obviously off the table, unacceptable, and even from a strategic perspective would be suicidal for Israel. Israeli capitulation and allowing a genocide of Israelis is equally obviously off the table, unacceptable, and suicidal for Israel. Palestinians don't seem to be interested in a settlement on terms the relative military strengths of Israel and Palestine would justify, Israel doesn't seem interested or capable of enforcing such a settlement, and the Palestinians would simply foment a new terror group to break it.
Perhaps after another generation of stalemate Palestinians will be more willing to accept and stick to a settlement, or some other solution will present itself. In the meantime Israel continues to be a beacon of hope, economic progress, LGBTQ+ safety and acceptance, and overall modernity and progress in a region that is hateful and jealous towards it.
I like the idea of creating a Palestinian de jure "state" that is demilitarized and has a permanent IDF presence, signed with some puppet leader, so Israel would have to cede control of isolated settlements and the Arab neighborhoods in EJ. This would at least solve the "conflict" as far as the international system is concerned, so KSA normalization, no more UNRWA, etcetera. The leadership would be weak and unpopular and would rely on the IDF presence, and the IDF would need to fight terrorists and so on. Things would keep happening. But at least from a diplomatic perspective, the conflict would be over.
Israel doesn't have the funds or manpower required (infinite) for a permanent military occupation, which is what enforcing a demilitarized state would require. It would be a tremendous indictment of Israel on the global stage, which Israel doesn't want, and would only get worse when Israel inevitably has to enforce the demilitarization by putting down uprisings through force.
Any agreement signed by a puppet leader will (rightly imo) just be ignored completely.
Even imagining that the US would take the side of the Palestinians is fantastical. But I have a sense of flux in world affairs greater than any time since the fall of the Soviet Union.
I mean this with all possible respect to what seems a noble impulse...no, it's not. Nothing we do, or say here is a start on peace in Israel/Palestine.
Yes, yes, "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?", "… where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small," "no gods or kings, only man," etc. In a better world, it would be possible. This is not that world. Yet.
Maybe I am having a biased opening right now because I am young and having a lot of troubles with the dating stuff but honestly I think is although technology is progressing really fast . It’s solving most of our problems but still I have noticed technology has failed to solve the problem of frustration due to dating, so I was trying to understand the reason why this is happening maybe is it due to the very high expectations of of the people or is it happening due to We are not able to see that we are same making mistakes again and again, so let’s suppose in the case of woman, I’m quite sure they’re also looking for honest, connections and meeting the Normal people, but since their views are biased they are feeling to recognise the other normal people. they are not able to find the nice people so I was thinking about having a dating app in which it is shown that with how many people this person has talked with so let’s suppose if guy is talking with the 15 girls at a time it need to be shown on the profile that he has having a conversation with 15 girls, or he had talked with almost hundred girls so it will demotivate woman to talk with men who has most desirable characters as shown on their profile, it will make them understand that what they are seeking is also desired by thousands of other girls, and maybe they will try to have a normal standards. Give you chance to other people as well.
It was about twenty years ago, but I have seen how a successful guy uses a dating application. He had twenty or more browser tabs open; I assume young women living near his location, satisfying his criteria. Every chat history started with the same sentence, I think it was "hello princess, how are you today?"; more interesting than starting with mere "hello" but still something that can be copy-pasted. Whenever he got a notification of a reply in some tab, he switched to that tab, spent a fraction of second looking at the chat history and wrote his next reply. I assume he already had a lot of experience with this and was following some script: first ask something personal but not serious (e.g. "do you like music?"), then ask whether she is free today and try to arrange a date. He was doing this as a background task while we discussed some business transaction, and when we finished he already had a girl waiting for him.
So yes, if you are the kind of a guy who is fluent at getting-the-date-scripts, online dating is a huge amplifier of your abilities; you couldn't approach so many women in such short time (while simultaneously doing something else at your home). And if you are not that kind of a guy, well, he is the kind you are competing against.
That said, isn't this just a more extreme version of the already existing offline difference between an extraverted guy who approaches ten different women in a pub every evening, and an introverted guy who approaches maybe one woman in a month or perhaps in a year? More attempts means more overall success, and importantly, it also means more practice, which means more success per unit of effort later.
The obvious response to trying to limit the number of approaches would be guys creating multiple accounts. In Firefox, you can log in as a different user in different tabs -- you create multiple "containers", each of them managing their own cookies and sessions, acting like a different instance of a web browser.
I think that would work the opposite of the way you're expecting; if someone is talking with a hundred girls at a time on a dating website, it means that a hundred girls have reviewed him as being worth talking to. How many other options have that kind of track record?
If it did work the way you think, where talking to people means other people won't talk to you, it would kill the site. You would have to find a partner in your first X attempts or else the site's membership will ostracize you.
I think you may misconstrue what "talking with 100 girls" means. This means they've got 100 tabs open. This is time-wasting behaviour, suggesting that this person is treating the app like a super low effort job application. If one of the hundreds bite, he doesn't need the other 99, so he's unnecessarily clogged the inboxes of 99 people (except, since the tactic works, most guys do it, and on net that means you waste a LOT of time even if you get tons of matches - basically like receiving dozens of resumes that aren't even remotely suitable for the role).
This isn't a failure mode in traditional matchmaking, because there's a kind of social credit score thing going on. Your mutual friends presumably don't hate you, so they're not going to recommend the complete time-wasters.
There's actually a good analogy to financial credit scores here, but a social credit score would be near impossible to implement. But here's a simple concept stolen from finance - banks usually co-ordinate to make sure only one lender approves a person's home loan application. This stops the consumer from wasting their time by mass spamming applications. The credit scores also stop someone from opening like 30 lines of credit by exploiting the fact that the lenders don't know who else is lending.
Making it public knowledge how many people someone is courting could be useful. I imagine that most people would be tolerant of like, 1 - 5 side conversations. We've all done it. Some people would be dead set on 0 side convos - they want to be the only one - and they can match with other people who want exclusive 1 on 1 chats (realistically I think they'd be a decent population but not the majority), and they can match with each other. Everyone would avoid a profile that had like 80 side convos open because that is a guaranteed timewaster, and if you make a new profile that's sockpuppetting or catfishing and is bannable.
You'd have it as a per session thing, it won't be something that follows your account forever. Idk if you should have 2 separate counts - one for the number of people messaging someone, and another for the number of people replied to, but I think that might also be good. In a party, you'd be able to see like 6 dudes lining up to talk to a girl, so you won't waste your time. On tinder, that queue is invisible, and it's too easy to jump to the incorrect conclusion that someone is ignoring you when they're probably just already in a different conversation.
It would make it a little more analogous to the experience of talking to strangers in a real world, physical setting, where you can see how many people someone's already approached, and how many people are already trying to talk to someone. It's still not as good as a physical party (you can't notice someone real-time turn everyone off, for one) but information wise it gets a little closer.
As anyone tried to figure out how many Tom Swifties appear in the actual Tom Swift books? It seems like it might be interesting to investigate, if someone has a way to get the text of the books and run an LLM through them to find the puns.
Anyone want to help crack this code?
https://drw.com/can-you-crack-this-code
No idea the level of difficulty. This is from a trading firm that my friend works at. I’m sure someone here can get it.
I submitted it just now. I am confident that I got it correct.
The "code" is just Base64 encoding, which is obvious by the = sign at the end, which is padding, and the fact that the only other special character is a /.
The decoded instructions ask to implement Black-Scholes in Python and calculate option pricing and delta. I'm done that many times before, so I whipped up a quick solution to keep myself in shape.
I'd say it's fairly easy for someone familiar with Python and option pricing. It's probably quite hard for someone who hasn't done that sort of thing before. The fact that they don't clearly identify inputs makes it harder for someone not familiar with the jargon, who might otherwise be technical enough to solve it.
Fun exercise. Thanks for sharing.
I believe I was mistaken and there are no spoiler tags in Substack. Please consider this a spoiler tag. Do not continue reading if you don’t want to see more possible information for the challenge.
Lewis - if I’m not too late to get your attention and you don’t mind me asking, for your actual values did you get:
4.65
13.16
-0.095
I'm wondering why you said earlier that you might come off nutty, when you got the right answer?
This isn’t my field, I had to make some guesses in terms of terminology, and I’m not always the best communicator. Nutty is probably an exaggeration, but again - bashful.
Thank you very much for confirming. I have not heard or seen anything post-submission from DRW. Not surprising, but I was dreading the possibility I would never get confirmation from someone who was actually in / around the field. I hate to have a mystery linger. You’ve done a tremendously good deed today.
Yes, that is exactly what I got!
You’re welcome! Thanks for sharing your solution. That’s definitely far outside my knowledge.
So I've got no chance at solving this, but do we think the picture next to it is related to the code, or just a stock image?
PARTIAL SOLUTION:
This is a clear-cut example of base64 encoding (the '=' at the end is the telltale sign). After this, you get a few simple-looking questions on the Black-Shoals formula.
The "Magic" operation on the CyberChef website can be a useful tool for problems like this.
https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/
I submitted a guess but am too bashful to reveal what I submitted, even in spoilers. After sending it in I realized it may come off nutty.
Very excited to see if anyone else found it as interesting and what they might think, though.
An unhelpful hint: you're worth more the more random you are.
DRW is a high frequency trading shop/market maker, yes?
I assume if I crack it then the reward is the opportunity to apply for a job that I could have applied for anyway.
Definitely some weird repeated all-caps sequences. Upper vs lower case seems to be significant. I'd start by seeing if there's anything interesting about the distribution of characters and the transition probabilities.
Yeah probably. I don’t care about whatever reward there is; I just want to be able to brag to my friend about the cleverness of SSC commenters/readers.
That’s not Rot13.
A flood is coming.
Why?
Because everything's on fire.
The prevailing culture for 100 years has been harm reduction. It's not about creating the positive, it's about reducing the negative.
In other words, it's all about putting fires out instead of building them.
And if you ask the people most advanced in this way of thinking to describe a heroic version of their belief system, all they can do is describe someone who doesn't commit any of the horrible sins. (At most, they will engage in the positive act of telling other people to stop engaging in negative acts).
Today's time is defined by our global awareness. This is a great achievement. And it's held up as one by those who trumpet "awareness" and "education" and nouns like that. We know about all the biggest wildfires burning around the world at any given time. We know them intimately, scene by scene, news cycle by news cycle. We will always be like this, because we are proud to be aware and educated and think others should do it more as well.
It can be stressful, though. 100 years ago, millions of people would die of a famine, and most people were unaware and were not made sad by it. It sounds heartless, but maybe that's why Nietzsche said that pity was what made pain contagious.
Today is defined by how aware we are of the largest problems going on all the time. Specifically the largest ones in the world, collectively drawing the attention of just about anyone. We're a new sort of thing, a global community that you can join without even talking with anyone, because it's a Schelling point; anyone looking at the largest world problems knows there's a community of others that must be looking at it with them.
People are proud of this because there's a lot of good in it (this is how we will eventually solve our largest problems), but they are sad because they are thinking about bad things all the time. The human superorganism forms by firing alarm bells, but in these the days of its infancy, it also makes everyone feel powerless to do anything.
But if you can't do anything that will work, you can at least do something you know won't work, and try to get other people to fix their attention on the bad things as well. So the integration of new individuals into the superorganism is progressing anyway.
We have doused the world in water for our fear of fire. Harm reduction means, anything that some people like and some people dislike, is extinguished. The negative experience counts, the postive experience doesn't. How dare you try to find happiness at the cost of hurting someone else? How dare you?
This is why we can't have nice things.
If a parade makes 99 people happy, and 1 offended, it will of course be shut down. Rinse and repeat, and you get a world with fewer and fewer fires. Not a lot of blazes tearing through swamps now, are there? Fire is always a sacrifice of something to create something. But if you're not allowed to make the sacrifice of offending others, you're going to end up creating a lot less.
Yet our time feels like a swamp in some ways, fecund, with our appreciation for earthy witches and Shrek.
But the world feels doused of all warmth and yet burning to pieces at the same time. "No one can say anything, no one can do anything" and "Nothing matters, nothing is true" are postmodern symptoms of minimalism. Minimalism means finding all the flaws and removing them: reducing the negative. It's a great and wise way to be, but taken too far, you end up with nothing.
So, there was a modern age, when we thought we knew what was what. We solved this, we solved that. We cured diseases and ended poverty and mass-produced luxury. Foe after foe fell, and 100 years ago, there was a vision of the future in which humanity continued on to utopia through science and tolerance.
But it turns out many of those successes were just low-hanging fruit. We can't just keep solving our problems by removing the bad bits of things forever. That's what postmodernism did to that visionary, modern age, and is doing. But the so-called successes of postmodernism were the result of of it pruning the excesses off of the highly productive modern era. It did not create of itself, but only polished that which another made.
And now that it has run its course and far past it, things feel very empty for a lot of people. Nothing matters, there are 10 global wildfires burning at any given moment, nothing you do in your personal life has any effect on the real problems (so why even bother putting your life in order?), none of the dousing of every flame in sight has been enough, so all you can do is call for a flood unlike any before.
On the climate change front, that's dousing a lot of industry. On the religious front, it means atheism. On the artistic front, empty chaos. On design, sleek, simple, elegant, and (post)modern.
But we have seen the errors of our ways. Some people are saying we need to go back to modernism. But there’s no going back; there never is and there never was. There’s only forward, and bringing along the best of modernism and postmodernism into the next step: metamodernism.
Postmodernism is minimalist; metamoderism is maximalist. It is Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, the best metamodern movie, and the most metamodern of all metamodern movies, which is extra meta-metamodern of it to be.
American has always had a hint of metamodernsim, ahead of its time. The great melting pot, the biggest and the most, the best and the greatest and the most good and the strongest and the best of the best.
But before metamodernism saves the day (before leading to its own unique series of challenges), there is a flood coming. The global community of the news-followers and the biggest problems-trackers is growing. There’s no system in place designed to exercise power based on the beliefs of a group of people at the global scale, not if the group is a minority in each country. But collectively, it is growing past the size of the most powerful countries on the planet. And just because all of that will hasn’t been harnessed systematically yet, that doesn’t mean it’s going to go slow once it happens. Once this unprecedented level of global consciousness and communication finds a way to mobilize, it will suddenly become a global superpower. And its general shape is toward extreme harm reduction. It has been an enemy to fun, and to comedy, and to the sacred (it calls taking anything very seriously “cringe” (fire is the element of cringe, water is the element of cool (but well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder - Hey Jude))).
We will make our own flood. We are getting ready to bring terrible control to bear to snuff out the last sources of harm around the world. And if it turns out that life is the source of harm, then that puts it on the chopping block next.
But I believe the wiser response is more or less inevitable. It’s just a question of how much we’ll suffer along the way. I have high hopes that we can smooth the process as much as possible and close the case on our current problems and get on to our next challenges to face.
Postmodernism is all about removing flaws. So, we look at everyone’s belief systems, and no one can make an airtight case for their system over the others’. Every system can be criticized in a huge way, and remember that ours is the age in which teaching “critical thinking” is the whole purpose of our educational system at its best. This is how postmodernism judges all the modern visions of the world, eliminates them because they all have flaws, and then ends up with nothing.
But we can let go of our critical postmodern approach to relating with each other. We can appreciate the best that is within each tradition. That is the metamodern way. Find all the good and all the beauty within each tradition and love it, and learn from it. Feel for yourself how others find God through their sacred traditions. Loving the good in other individuals and other groups and other systems is the key to understanding what is missing in them as well. Through this love and understanding, we will re-ignite the fires of passion, color, and adventure that have been coolly mocked out of our world. We can re-enchant our lives and find the faith to dream of a bright future again, to get our act together and our families and communities together and solve our problems. We will discover how much we share in common with our brothers and sisters who seek the divine in their other ways, what we can respect and admire about each other, what we can enjoy together and learn from each other.
So with the flood coming, chaos is coming. We have no idea which industries are going to be utterly transformed by AI in the next 5 years. I mean, we don’t know how AI will disrupt things 2 years from now, but we REALLY don’t know what the world will look like 5 years from now. Artists, writers, lawyers, doctors, at least. The education, retail, and restaurant industries are coming.
Maybe we have a model in Peterson’s and Pageau’s Subsidiary Identity. We need strong connections collected into hierarchies so that signals can pass up hierarchy and affect the top-down perception of things and influence its decision-making. Strong people making strong families and communities, getting their cities in order, and so on. Because when you don’t know what to prepare for, you invest in social capital and healthy institutions so you can be ready to mobilize when novel problems present themselves.
I think history has brought us here, from the visions of modernism, which seem somewhat naive in retrospect, to the criticism of postmodernism, which ironically pedestalizes flaw-removal, to the embrace of coming chaos that metamodernism is specialized for. And if we start smoothing the transition into this next step in history, perhaps we can minimize the destruction of the flood.
I very much want to say the perspective of this post is one-sided. No, the world is shittier and way more diverse than described. No, harm minimization is not run its due course any. I live in an autocracy and I need to consciously deter myself from wailing or being angry at some people in the internet because it’s so so much different here. The proverbial parade will be canceled not when 1% of people feel it harmful, the parade will be held if 0.1% of state-aligned people wishes it so, with utter disdain to what others think. There is much to solve.
This is not to say that I don't value open/positive/humane thinking, there's lack of both really. I definitely don't want to say, without any evidence and kindness, that some people just have it very nice and easy and think that others have only problems like theirs, but it sure feels like that sometimes. Maybe doing something with that kind of thinking would be a good idea.
i'm not sure post modernism is harm reduction as opposed to the realization that every abstract idea exists in a world of people and power structures, and this must be kept in mind.
tbh i dont get anything concrete here; the AI thing is more a return to a hard form of modernity in that an elite is top down shaping the world to their idea and fuck people. im not sure what meta modernity can do or plans to from what you write.
> And if you ask the people most advanced in this way of thinking to describe a heroic version of their belief system, all they can do is describe someone who doesn't commit any of the horrible sins.
Notable exception: Effective altruism.
But in general, I agree. Our cultural definition of a good person has been reduced to "one who does nothing". We are not expected to solve problems (that is government's job), we are supposed to stay in the line, and maybe signal virtue by repeating the proper slogan.
On the other hand, every problem is an opportunity. Doesn't this give more power to various subcultures that define their own value systems? (Unless they grow large and get taken over by normies who bring their normie ways.)
> Today is defined by how aware we are of the largest problems going on all the time.
Looking at the largest problems can paralyze you, because on one hand, most of us aren't doing anything useful that directly contributes to solving those problems; on the other hand, everything else can seem smaller in comparison. "What's the point of cleaning my room, when millions in Africa are dying from malaria, and maybe soon an AI will kill us all?"
For me, parenting is a stabilizing experience. No matter what happens, I need to make my kids breakfast every day; I need to take them to school every day; etc. I can't afford to spend my day thinking about Ukraine, Palestine, AI doom, etc. And perhaps more generally, the solution is to be more involved in some local community (where family is the smallest kind of community), where your ordinary actions can make a big difference. By the way, that requires spending less time online.
> We can't just keep solving our problems by removing the bad bits of things forever.
It seems like people (at least some of them) need a certain amount of tension in their lives, and if you merely keep removing their problems, they will... create new problems, for the lack of better ideas. You also need to give them some positive direction to expend their energy. (Or someone else may give them a negative one.)
I think traditionally sport was supposed to be an answer to this? The socially approved way to channel your extra energy into activities that are not anti-social. (Though this also fails with spectator sports. The players at the football field burn their energy pro-socially, but their fans then go and demolish the city.)
...Or we could simply let everything die. Almost all of human history is pre-postmodern, and it was an even worse shithole than it is now. What makes you think things will be different this time? As long as humanity exists, as long as individual agentic life exists, there will be constant conflict and pain and suffering. But it doesn't have to exist. It can be replaced by something better, something free from the cycle of natural selection. Ultimately, humanity can not and should not survive.
If it’s inevitable there’s no need to hurry it along: another N generations are meaningless against eternity for any conceivable value of N that a recognizable homo sapiens will exist.
Don’t race to a red light.
Also, there ain’t nothing capable of replacing humanity that is free of natural selection. AIs are as natural as the air in your lungs in a big old universe context.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/carbon-footprint-homegrown-food-allotment-increase/
Does anyone know the original study referred to here?
It's https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-023-00023-3. A bit confusing in that the lead author is Jason K. Hawes, but The Telegraph's journalist refers to him by his nickname, Jake.
Thanks.
Regarding "from the river to the sea" in Germany, the situation is more complicated than the correction says. German law forbids the usage of symbols of all unconstitutional or terrorist organizations (think swastikas when used in a fascist context). The law does not name any specific banned symbols or organizations, so that determination is up to the courts. However, states (who run German police departments) write guidelines for their prosecutors and police on what they currently consider banned. In this case, Berlin and several other federal states including Bavaria, added that slogan to their lists.
Some local courts (afaict Cologne and Berlin) have said disagreed saying the slogan is covered by freedom of speech. But that doesn't mean it is “unbanned”, as there hasn't been a decision on it by a high court (and, incidentally, German courts are not as bound by precedent as one may imagine coming from the US system). The authorities in Bavaria (Germany's arguably most conservative federal state) seems to maintain their position and it is plausible that a Bavarian court would ignore the decisions from Berlin and Cologne.
There is also a relatively famous retired German judge, Thomas Fischer, who says the slogan is forbidden, but not because it is a symbol of a terrorist organization, but because using it is constitutes an endorsement of the crimes of Hamas (which is also forbidden, but by another law): https://www.lto.de/recht/meinung/m/frage-fische-jubel-terror-hamas/7
The German Wikipedia has a bit more detail if anyone is interested: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_River_to_the_Sea#Deutschland
Breathlessly "including" sexually-disoriented female impersonators in the tent -- while categorically rejecting Jews --tells me all I need to know. The gender phantasm supersedes reality. Still, I was blind-sided by the "progressive" zombies. Is it gentile self-hatred?
Who knew they already had the brown shirts and jackboots in their closet? When the IDF cleanses Gaza of Hamas, and sweeps it into the sea, I hope they'll take the time and do the work to eliminate Hezbollah and the Houthis.
But when the nightly news propagandists and terrorism fans stage the Suffering Palestinians pageant, they still won't hold Hamas to account, and demand they explain why they have created such suffering for the people who elected them, as well as the Israelis.
Hamas could stop the fighting at any time -- by surrendering and freeing the hostages. But criminal sociopaths aren't inclined to do the intelligent thing: they're busy grooming another generation to hate Israelis. Machiavelli 2.0.
I feel bad for Purpleopolis. Sure, that comment seems to generalize as if all liberals were in the same category and could have been written in a more targeted way - but did you notice all the liberal support for Hamas? It's not pretty.
I think with a more active mod team, a temporary ban would have been more appropriate. But I can imagine Scott looking over their posting history, and deciding that he doesn't want to devote his time and energy toward using a cycle of temp-bans and monitoring to improve this particular poster. So he picked a comment that was egregiously false and unkind, and skipped straight to a preemptive permaban.
Purpleopolis had a habit of putting everything in maximally inflammatory terms. I interacted a bit here and there, and I didn't think they were a troll, just someone with "trapped priors" or "pyschopolitical trauma" or whatever it is. The problem was that they couldn't seem to let go, and weren't able to back off the extreme claim, admit that it was an overreach, and then reformulate what they said in a way that was true and insightful and added to the conversation. There may have been light somewhere in the heat, but it would be hard to find without getting burned.
That's not an isolated incident. I randomly looked up Open Thread 295 and Purpleopolis' first searched comment is hyperbolic trolling. I'm sure it would work for others too.
It's not, but that's a stupid game to play. Plenty of people on both sides have grossly hypocritical opinions. This should be a given. A productive discussion needs to turn on specifics: Person X said Thing Y, here's why that's bad, and here's why it matters to the world at large. That sort of thing.
If you're not doing that, you're not advancing any real form of discussion. You're just bringing heat and not light.
Agreed on all, but he ate a permanent ban for this one. I feel like a lot of people do the exact same thing and stay around.
Are there any online primary care physicians that accept Medi-Cal? I need a referral.
Hi, I've only been commenting here for a couple of months so there's a good chance you don't know who I am or what I'm up to.
What I'm up to is making the world a place a place I'd like (even) more than society as it currently is.
Thus far most of my audience is compromised of people with religious sentiments and jargon of the monotheistic tradition. Probably because my credentials are as an ordained orthodox rabbi.
But what we want is similar to what most people want. What you want. All I can do is speak the language of my audience.
I snuck an introduction to dawkinsian memetics into my recent video and, judging by how poorly that single minute did as a youtube short (1 Like per 100 views) vs how well the full video did (1 like per 30 views) I think I struck the right balance of scientific thinking within a video otherwise filled with religious language.
But of course, just as there are shorthand terms that I can use with Bible Appreciators that would leave areligious rationalists unmoved, there are concepts and understandings that would take a lot of heavy lifting to explain to the aforementioned demographic which could be more easily understood and built upon by people of a decidedly rational bent.
So I hope that you will watch my video with an open heart and a curious mind, and invite others to join us of similar discernment.
Each of us have only so many days left. Our society is disappointing. It's plain that a million things could be made better with a tad of charitable listening, friendly assumption, and public aknowledgment of the very many truths that we know but for reasons of practicality we pretend not to know for our safety.
The crown of kingship lies in the gutter, let us rescue it with our bravery and invite the better world that all previous generations dreamed of.
Or at least join a cool movement of people having real fun while so few others dare to do so.
https://ydydy.substack.com/p/introducing-yedidya
This excites me - is it possible to build a memetic bridge? Finding religious thinkers that can serve as a foundation, using religious practices or concepts as metaphors to explain rationalist concepts?
It needs to be.
Religion was holistic and incorporated every aspect of life.
As the power holders got worse and worse, all while claiming to be speaking for The Ultimate Itself a rightful rebellion broke out which decided to get rid of this whole Ultimate/God concept entirely rather than simply seeking to replace Its supposed earthly representative.
In the process a million good and useful concepts were tossed out with the rest of the religious jargon.
That left human society bereft of a great deal of necessary and essential understanding --- for which they currently have no words.
As explained explicitly in this video, I am not claiming to represent any particular religious community or faith. I simply have the language and both academic and experiential knowledge of the traditions, which offers me additional wells from which to draw for our world as it is today.
https://youtu.be/A9IURMaQhVY?feature=shared
Cool! What I'm curious about is your idea of attracting areligious rationalists. I have a hunch they might not mix very well, with potential discordance ending up counter-productive.
Curious about your thoughts
Heck, Catholics and Lutherans have difficulty mixing! I've heard told that there are even men and women married to each other who don't mix very well.
But we do what we can. And we take the poison we receive as medicine, and the love we receive woth appreciation but not too much.
This is a human endeavor, and fun.
The Divine Fact will decide the degree of our success but it's a good time and damn wel mkre meaningful than anything else we could be doing.
All I hope is that enough helpful funders arrive before the human facts of my own digestive system, and the world's nuclear system end it all.
But whether the would-be Gifters do awaken in time or not, I'm having a fun time and it feels darn good.
Here's a less religiously friendly video than those you may have seen. The view count is skewed by a less than reputable "promoter" I found through Fiverr back at that time, but it's probably good that it appears among the most popular videos together with the more religious ones.
https://youtu.be/De5lWoTPTTY?feature=shared
Also, the video from Tijuana appears quite highly. But that's because the original title mentioned Zona Norte, and a great many hornballs found it through that precise search.
I've since removed the "sexy" terms and have received nearly zero views for the video but I keep it public lest anyone mistake my beliefs and means as puritanically pious.
If you dig what I'm doing, please let people know.
You will probably want to avoid parts like this:
https://www.readthesequences.com/Avoiding-Your-Beliefs-Real-Weak-Points
If you have fond memories of the first season of the show "True Detective," you might be interested to know that the fourth season launched last week. This season is set in Alaska, and has a pair of detectives investigating the disappearance of a group of scientists. As in the first season, there's some grotesque violence, plenty of back-woods baggage, and some mystic woo. And there are connections to the first season: the names Cole and Tuttle have featured prominently. Recommended, based on the first two episodes.
Surprisingly I just watched the first season the other day, 10 years later than everyone else.
I was recommended it because I really liked Fargo and was looking for something else interesting to watch (I find most TV/movies super boring) and True Detective.
On that note, check out Fargo Season 5. Season 3 and 4 were crap and 5 makes up for it.
I see the spiral thing is returning this season too. Be interesting to see if the writers can tie it back to season one.
I thought the first season was fantastic. It had a couple of plot holes but Matthew McConaughey‘s character was a blast. ‘Hold it Nietzsche!’ ‘Time is a flat circle.’
I’ve watched the first two episodes of this season too. The first episode didn’t really work for me but I was drawn in by the second.
What the hell, I’ll watch Jodi Foster in just about anything.
The first two episodes seem like a mashup of Michael Crichton and Robert W. Chambers. It’ll be interesting to see if the writers make it work.
There's a new clinic treating depression using the methods of the Heligenfeld clinics in Germany. They claim that this is a successful method. Comments?
Psychologist here. Looked around online, could not find any info about their treatment. Can you give a link to info?
https://www.heiligenfeld.de/
Here's their flyer about how they treat depressions: https://www.heiligenfeld.de/download/2495/
Apart from talking somewhat about psychosomatics, spirituality and holistic approaches, I don't see very much new or revolutionary. And they aren't a "new clinic" either, they exist since 1990 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligenfeld_Kliniken
So now, what makes this interesting?
Agreed. The branch(?) opening near me makes the claim about their approach being tested and found to work. I'm just wondering if this claim can be sustained, but I suppose any claim of success in this area should be treated with a little skepticism.
But that's in German, which I cannot read or speak. Also, there's a pop-up that covers almost the whole page and I can't make it go away.
Chrome usually offers to translate the page; not sure what the popup is. Thanks for trying. Running my translator on the home page an excerpt says: "We are one of the leading clinic groups in Germany with a focus on psychosomatic medicine. We are unique in terms of therapy diversity, value orientation and holisticity."
Yes, but that's just the introduction so far, and is utterly vague. If you can get out from under the popup and get a translation of what the whole page says about their methods I'll give you my thoughts. Maybe it would be useful to translate the popup. Probably if you check something off on the popup it will go away, but you have to know what it says to do that.
The popup is about privacy settings, mostly cookies. Click "Ablehnen" (reject all). Every website based in the EU is supposed to have that due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation. I don't even notice it anymore.
Has any done a deep analysis of the art market post-AI?
I used to believe it would morph from the ludicrous money-maker of the 2010s into a sort of small-scale handicraft goods market a-la Etsy, but when you stop and think, maybe this idea doesn't hold water. Etsy handicrafts survive largely for two reasons: (1) They're made of high-quality materials that mass manufacturers don't use, and (2) they're hand-made which means broadly higher quality compared to retail goods. The problem is that point (1) is irrelevant for digital art, and point (2) is irrelevant because, unlike e.g. assembly-line "handicrafts" made for Walmart, there is no financial pressure to cut corners or use cheaper materials. When you tell an AI to paint a robot like Van Gogh, it's going to do a great job. Maybe you disagree -- AI Van Gogh paintings have inferior composition, much worse shading, all the strokes are painted the same way, etc. But you must realize 90% of the public cannot see these details. To them, AI Van Gogh is already near perfect.
Now, AI art is absolutely everywhere. Clearly it's good enough for most people (Low standards or whatever, but hey). So this sector of "generic, but competent" artists is taking the biggest hit. Particularly for things where people don't care about the art, but some kind of art is assumed, so they hire an illustrator for cheap. This market was probably never lucrative since asset libraries, stock images, and subtle plagiarism has been kicking at its heels for ages. AI has utterly transformed this sector of art, and things will never be the same. But then we have the Patreon/Pixiv market of artists with unique styles. We know that AI can replicate virtually any style to a decent degree. But surprisingly, this doesn't seem to be threatening this other sector of art very much.
There's 2 ways to view this. Naturally, clients who seek out a particular artist for a commission will have much higher art standards, and find AI art unsatisfying. While an AI version of someone's style could be cleaned up into a good product, right now that requires art skill which limits who can do it. But is there a risk that someday, AI art stops spitting out monstrosities with 7 fingers on a single hand, and miraculously gains the composition knowledge and brush techniques to faithfully imitate Van Gogh? Yeah, absolutely it's gonna happen eventually. The question is, will this replace all artists? Ultimately, I don't think so.
There's a part of human psychology which compels (most of) us to pay things we can easily get for free. On paper, pirating could easily kill the games industry, but in practice it's left hardly any impact. Hell, many people pirate games to try them out, and if they like them, they buy the game on Steam. Same goes with the "Pay what you want" model of digital goods. You're free to pay $00.00, but in practice most people pay $3.00 or $5.00 or $10.00. So when we have Patreon or Pixiv artists with a unique style, we feel that using AI to copy their art is like piracy. Naturally, a contingent of people will "pirate" the work, but most people feel compelled to reward the artist for their deed and pay anyway. In fact, you'll notice most AI art isn't even in the style of any particular artist -- the guys paying Patreon subs aren't chomping at the bit to replace their favorite artists with AI. The market just continues as before, unbothered.
So in other words, there's no need to speculate whether the consumer art market will turn into Etsy or not. Because we know what kind of market it is -- it's like Steam -- and even when you can obtain a 1:1 copy of the product for free, 99% of people will pay anyway.
I want to buy some cool AI-generated glicee-printed art for my walls, but I don't know anywhere that sells it.
(I'm sure I could find some online if I _really_ wanted, so my actual motivation level is low, I'm really just saying that I'd buy some if there was a good AI art gallery near my house.)
To correct any misconceptions people may have about the California Forever project (terrible name btw), I'll quote this from their promotional material:
"And the plan we have put forward is not ”sprawl” either - it’s medium-density, high-quality urbanism. And again, the plan even has a legally binding minimum density standard to make sure we hold ourselves accountable to our walkability goals. We are literally prohibiting ourselves from building sprawl."
https://californiaforever.com/news/the-urbanist-case-for-a-new-community-in-solano-county/
I guess it's too much to hope for someone in California to propose letting property owners make their own decisions about density.
> I guess it's too much to hope for someone in California to propose letting property owners make their own decisions about density
I mean, if someone in Californiaforevertown wants to buy up a whole street of medium-density housing to knock it down and give themselves a giant backyard, are they going to be prohibited?
Such a prohibition is probably unnecessary; in desirable areas the density of housing will inevitably approach the maximum legal density permitted, that's just economics.
I'm not sure what it means to let property owners make their own decisions about density; they can do what they like on their own property but that doesn't make a meaningful contribution to the overall density of your area.
"the California Forever project (terrible name btw)"
It really is unfortunate, it sent my mind immediately to this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrWflCJPM4w
The name makes me think of Wakanda Forever, so I associate it with lame comic book movies.
What, not this one ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BciS5krYL80
No, oddly enough. That one is the nightmare of the California life gone wrong, but it's individualist consumer decadence, not the kind of State power that "California Forever" evokes in me. Neither did I think of "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Moon over Marin" is the best California song anyway.
I read _Meditation on Moloch_. I would like to suggest the reading of a very short tale to anybody who wants to keep meditating on that issue: _Useless Beauty_ by Guy de Maupassant.
Has anyone watched a film called Bodies Bodies Bodies?
I watched it last night and decided that rational fiction it ain't but the main character's cleavage made up for the fact that everyone onscreen was an idiot.
Then I googled the film afterwards and found out it was supposed to be a comedy. This was a bigger twist than anything in the film itself. We'd just watched it all the way through and there were no hints or foreshadowing at all.
I laughed exactly once, and that was in incredulity at the dialogue. (All the way through, we were wondering whether the screenwriter was Gen Z and this was how they actually sounded, or whether they were 30 years old and trying their best to sound like Kids These Days. The lines that made me laugh were the ones that made me come down hard on hypothesis B.)
The internet says the film was actually a parody/satire of Gen Z - if I'd known the film was actually trying to be funny with those lines I don't think I'd have laughed at them.
Anyway, two good reasons to watch the film, and scriptwriting these days has gone to the dogs.
I have always thought of Breaking Bad, which I absolutely loved, as a very very dark comedy.
I remember people being disconcerted at me thinking that *The Remains of the Day* was something of a comedy.
Somebody riding on a streetcar, knowing that they've fucked up romance so so so bad.
There are these Youtube videos "Breaking Bad, the Sitcom", where the funniest scenes are flavoured with canned laughter. It works really well, and you see what a great comedian Bryan Cranston is.
I saw Bryan Cranston on Colbert talking about playing LBJ. He broke into a Jesse Pinkman riff. “And that’s how we pass legislation bitches!”
I continue to publish things, this time a sort of journal-entry on what it's like to be in my 3rd year of psychiatric residency. Much less technical than what I usually write, which was a nice break from feeling like I need to relentlessly research every statement I make. I think you might enjoy it if you've ever been curious about what psychiatry training is like
https://polypharmacy.substack.com/p/on-being-a-3rd-year-psychiatry-resident
P.S. Scott, I am mindful that I keep posting my work here - if you think it's excessive just let me know.
Just here to say thank you to Scott for featuring my Substack on his recommendation list, and to plug it shamelessly to other readers.
Can someone who works in the field or "understands the science" at a deep level explain how the image manipulations that apparently have prompted requested retractions of six and corrections of 31 papers by Harvard researchers could be interpreted as anything other than deliberate, serious misconduct? (See: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/22/dana-farber-issues-corrections/ and https://forbetterscience.com/2024/01/02/dana-farberications-at-harvard-university/). The WSJ (gated, unfortunately) article on the papers and researchers quotes an uninvolved scientist as saying that some of the "errors" are "straightforward mistakes." (On the other hand, he says, “There’s a handful that seem more egregious.”) It could be that the issues are too technical to understand without an adequate technical background. I'm a little skeptical, though, having a much better understanding of the plagiarism issues that have surfaced in the social sciences and humanities and the attempts to dismiss them as "sloppy citation practices."
I got curious and looked at one of the images in the second of the 2 articles linked. It's here: https://pubpeer.com/storage/image-1702574994021.png
It really is clear that in the bottom left part of the image the first pair of blots and the second pair are identical. Not knowing how this image is produced, I have no idea how likely it is that this happened by mistake. If the person writing the paper had to assemble the figure from a bunch of separate photos it does seem plausible that somebody could accidentally stick one pair in twice that way. Besides, if somebody wanted to fake the actg results it would have been very easy in Photoshop or another image editor to alter the second of the 2 duplicate pairs of blots so that it had the same favorable characteristics for one's results, but had small differences in shape and density to distinguish it from the first pair.
>Besides, if somebody wanted to fake the actg results it would have been very easy in Photoshop or another image editor to alter the second of the 2 duplicate pairs of blots so that it had the same favorable characteristics for one's results, but had small differences in shape and density to distinguish it from the first pair.
That's exactly what they did. Check the image again—the right pair is squished. I swore you were wrong at first about it being duped, because the horizontal compression was enough to fool my eyes until I zoomed in and saw the little "knobs" on the bottoms of the bands.
I've run gels and done Western blots before. If you're dumb enough to fuck up the figures this bad on accident, I don't trust your data anyway.
Oh, you're right, the right-hand pair is shortened laterally. But still, that's such a subtle change that anyone who looks carefully at the 2 pairs will recognize them as the same. So the shortening doesn't work as a way to hide the evidence. You'd need to change the outline of the blots some, which would be very easy to do.
<If you're dumb enough to fuck up the figures this bad on accident, I don't trust your data anyway.
Yeah, seems very sloppy. But sloppiness and deliberate deception are different, and I'd like to know which it was. Seems to me the case for sloppiness is much stronger. Anyone results-faker with a lick of sense would alter the outline of the blots a bit so none were identical.
>You'd need to change the outline of the blots some, which would be very easy to do
Easier said than done, actually! You can't just MSPaint it, an image like that has enough subtle gradations—particularly at the borders of the blots—that a blotch of black pixels sticks out like a sore thumb. I'd encourage you to try it—open up GIMP or whatever you've got and try to alter the borders without it looking weird.
Maybe it's easy if you've got the new photoshop or something, but how many scientists do?
This is why transformations/stretches, duplications, tilings—the sort of thing people were discussing downthread—are the most common tools in image fraud.
Duplication + slight stretch takes 2 clicks and will probably get by 99% of people, even side-by-side. Throw in a flip-horizontal, you're a criminal mastermind...and smooth, too, because you've got plausible deniability. If you used a blot image from someone else's paper, maybe people would be less likely to notice the duplication...but it's a lot harder to argue that it might've been an honest mistake, if you DO get caught.
OK, I took the image into photoshop and changed the one that's a duplicate in 2 different ways.
https://i.imgur.com/npNHZoM.png
You can see on the bottom that now there are 3 pairs of blots. The middle one is unchanged. The one on the right is darkened. The one on the left is changed in shape. This took me 5 mins. and was very easy. Anyone who can sort of stagger thru Photoshop and do basic things could do it.
Wow, you should get into scientific fraud, you'd be top tier!
FR though I think you're overestimating how many biologists have photoshop. More to the point, the nubs on the bottom of the bands that clued me in to them being a duplicate are still there, and this is what I was saying about more intricate manipulations being higher-risk, in that there's no room for ambiguity about your intentions. Maybe less likely to be caught by reviewers, but career-ending in the event that you are. I also don't know how your shoop would stand up to the kind of automated image fraud detection software that people like Bik use—might leave some clear signatures.
Idk, maybe I'm being unfair bc of bias, but my biases come from having seen the extent of this kind of behavior in academia and biological research, so 🤷🏽♂️
Elizabeth Bik lawsuit also had a chilling effect on some scientist outright criticising others work as fraudulent.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/elisabeth-bik-faces-legal-action-after-criticizing-studies-68831
idk man in my heart Elizabeth Bik is an icon and her work is an inspiration to outright criticize fraudulent work where you spot it.
I've never done any medical research but I've done astronomical research that involves image manipulation. Typically you have some raw data, and then you need to pick some kind of colour mapping that makes the features you're looking at more obvious.
Depending on the software you were using, maybe there's other filters you can apply, e.g. a "brighten edges" filter. Applying this filter destroys the one-to-one mapping between signal strength and pixel colour so you shouldn't be using it in published work (at least not without explaining the exact procedure which has been used) but it's easy to imagine that someone doofus might apply the wrong filters without realising what they did.
I don't know the details of this case, I'm just speculating on how an innocent mistake could result in "manipulated" images.
That's interesting and helpful. Something similar to that could explain a category of the medical image issues. A different category of image manipulation appears to be copying parts of images (like a snipped screenshot, essentially) and then pasting the snipped copies in either the same image or in other images, sometimes in the same orientation or, surprisingly often, after rotating the copy. That strikes me as something that requires time, deliberation, and care.
My random question is: I am not certain but it seems as most people in the rationality-sphere are moral anti-realists (I am not). How does this jive with also being an effective altruist? I.e., wouldn't moral realism help motivate EA's better?
Metaethics is about what makes ethical statements true, not about what first order moral beliefs to take. Utilitarianism is compatible with all metaethical theories unless you stipulate a semantic thesis like "All moral statements in support of utilitarianism are false."
I think that "morality" is a mix of values and strategies, sometimes difficult to disentangle.
For example, lying to people is wrong in two ways: (1) incorrect beliefs can get them hurt, and (2) when people find out that you are lying, they will no longer trust you.
The former is a question of values. If you don't really mind that other people get hurt (or if they are your enemies, so you want them to get hurt), then for you this is not an argument against lying. The latter is a question of strategy, credibility is an asset, in some situations it can be useful when you enemies know correctly that they can trust you about some things (for example, something happens that could kill both you and your enemies, so you need to make a truce and cooperate on removing the danger).
I am an anti-realist about values. There are already psychopaths among us who don't care about hurting others. If we had a magical pill that could make a spider 2 meters tall and give it IQ 200, the spider probably wouldn't share our moral intuition. So I see human values as "something that (some) humans have" rather than "something that any intelligent being must inevitably have".
But I might be a realist about strategies. Game theory is math, which does not depend on you species.
So from my perspective talking about "moral realism" is confusing, because I expect one side to keep saying "but values evolve!" and the other side to keep saying "but game theory!" as if one somehow disproves the other.
I think the argument that "something that any intelligent being must inevitably have" is real is an extrapolation on how morals would necessarily develop in a pure materialist universe (i.e. no God or outside force creating morality).
If humans developed morality, it would necessarily be for good practical reasons. We can quibble on details, but there's a direction to morality that consistently points towards rules and goals that help society function "better" in some predictable way. If this is true, then a spider-man or an AI would also eventually come to the same conclusions (provided the social or environmental pressures were the same or similar enough - I would say a society where mutual cooperation is valuable, which would be most). A genius spider living among humans would act like a human, including in morality, as doing otherwise would become counterproductive to their goals - specifically when humans kill the spider for being anti-social. Sociopaths don't ignore the moral goals, and often follow the outward appearances involved. They just ignore morality when they think they can get away with it and doing so benefits them. That most of us seem to have something inside us that encourages us to follow morality even when we can identify benefits of doing otherwise is ultimately a benefit to us, as we are far less likely to mess up and break a moral code in a way that gets us in trouble with broader society.
> there's a direction to morality that consistently points towards rules and goals that help society function "better" in some predictable way.
There could be more than one local maximum, so the evolution of morality could be path dependent.
A better functioning human society is not the same as a better functioning bee society, because of the differences in biology.
> most of us seem to have something inside us that encourages us to follow morality
The urge to copy what others do is a specifically human superpower; apes get the second place.
>How does this jive with also being an effective altruist?
the same way that people believe determinism eliminates the possibility of free will: you acknowledge that logic and reason imply one thing, then forget about it and live your life as normal.
(i'm actually a determinist and moral anti-realist, so i'm being serious, not just strawmanning).
I always thought the only requirement was that rationalists be dogmatically overconfident about whatever metaethical views they happened to hold-- and that the majority were cocksure utilitarians, with only a minority of cocksure moral skeptics.
I think that depends on what you mean by "realism". Personally, I don't believe that there's some sort of a dualistic moral code that exists independently in a realm of pure forms etc.; but that doesn't automatically mean that morality is totally arbitrary, either -- because physical laws do in fact exist (well, probably), regardless of whether one believes in them or not.
Yeah I suppose it's also possible that a spectrum of moral realism <----> moral anti-realism positions are valid, too. I might be anti-realist on the level of, say, across the space of all possible types of organisms or intelligences or even more so on the level of universes, when all such things are unknown or allowed to vary. I would probably still say that there are deducible truths that are implied by other contingent facts of nature, and I would probably still call that "realism."
Huh, I don't believe in moral realism and I think I'm relatively (morally) motivated.
I think it's a bit of a mistake to think of motivation stemming from a fountain, and the more virtuous the fountain (it's real, everyone agrees on it and so on) the more motivating it is.
Ultimately motivations, including moral motivations are caused by normal drives, be it peer approval, desire to stick to some set of aesthetically pleasing principles or just innate desire, except it's pro social so adding moral elements to it is advantageous in some way.
The fact that some stories have the ontological tag of "real" and some have the tag of "non real" seems mostly orthogonal to how strong drives are.
Well, the above is *obviously* what a non realist tells themselves.
Would it? Why?
The argument for moral realism seems to me to be like a consequentialist argument for believing something that isn't true because holding the belief would create better outcomes. My impression is that that's something that "rationalism" tries very hard to avoid, but maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here? It's certainly a decent argument for being religious, and rationalism has roots in the Internet atheism wars of the early 2000s, so I wouldn't expect rationalism to embrace the argument outright.
> My impression is that that's something that "rationalism" tries very hard to avoid, but maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here?
Once you know that X is false, how exactly do you make yourself "believe in X"? Especially if you are aware that you are trying to make yourself believe a false thing for the purpose of higher productivity or something. I think that no one sane can actually do that.
What a non-rationalist can do instead, is to make themselves "believe *that* they believe in X". That is *not* the same thing, but most people are confused about the difference.
The difference is basically, that if you ask a honest believer about X, they will say something like "X is true, obviously" and "people who think X is false are simply mistaken". If you instead ask a honest believer-in-belief about X, they will say something like "believing in X is useful, therefore I believe in X" and "people who think X is false are depriving themselves of the wonderful benefits of the belief in X". But these are two quite different states of mind.
(To make things more complicated, it is possible to simultaneously believe in X and believe that X is useful, but this sounds more like "X is true, obviously; and by a lucky coincidence, it is also useful to believe in it; but X would be true even if it didn't have any practical advantage at all".)
A rationalist who understands how beliefs work can't even make themselves falsely believe-in-belief, because the falsity is too obvious. You can make yourself believe in false things you are confused about, not false things you clearly see as false.
It could be interesting to measure whether belief-in-belief is as motivating as the belief proper. I would expect it to be motivating less, but still a non-zero amount. (So maybe still worth it. But not an option for a rationalist, anyway.)
> I think that no one sane can actually do that.
I think it does happen, but that's the tradeoff. (With, of course, the caveat that sanity isn't binary, and even if it's modeled as scalar, what's a little SAN loss among friends?)
> "X is true, obviously; and by a lucky coincidence, it is also useful to believe in it; but X would be true even if it didn't have any practical advantage at all"
But it seems to me that this pattern is very very very common, and so my conclusion is that it's not so much a corner case, as (somehow) a default state for human cognition. :-( Like, I think it's some form of "Stockholm Syndrome", where when it's convenient to believe something, the unconscious mechanisms of our brains make us actually believe it. And I'm skeptical of the potential for rigorous mental training to protect against this.
Anyway, what I was trying to get at was the tension between "rationality as truth-seeking" and "rationality as systematized winning", and I'd be interested to hear what you have to say on that?
I think the traditional response is that (1) rationality wins on average, not in every single situation, and (2) sometimes half-rationality can be worse than either alternative. If rationality makes me choose better goals, but gives me less motivation to achieve them (because now I can only draw motivation from true thoughts, rather than from all possible convenient thoughts)... I guess the outcome will depend on various circumstances.
Seems to me that a strong source of motivation is having an aligned community. Effective altruists do not need to take their energy from the belief in moral realism; they can simply see their effort as satisfying their own personal preferences (regardless of whether some hypothetical impersonal cosmic force would agree or disagree) while supported by a community of effective altruists who cooperate on the same goal.
Who needs moral realism when you have effectively-altruistic friends?
But if you have neither the effectively-altruistic friends nor the belief in moral realism... yeah, that is probably very demotivating.
More generally, I think that it is much easier to "win systematically" if you are not alone in that attempt. Too bad there are not enough rationalists around some of us. We have not figured out (yet?) how to "raise the sanity waterline".
What about situations where it seems more effective to "choose to believe" something false?
> More generally, I think that it is much easier to "win systematically" if you are not alone in that attempt.
Absolutely agreed. Tit-for-tat only starts to shine when it's not surrounded by DefectBots.
> What about situations where it seems more effective to "choose to believe" something false?
Too bad to be me, I guess.
> Tit-for-tat only starts to shine when it's not surrounded by DefectBots.
That is a great way to put it.
Case in point, it was being a moral realist that eventually led Leah Libresco (who was fairly active in the Rationalist "movement" back in the day) to become a Catholic. Religious types aren't really welcome in the Rat-sphere: The Sequences assume that whoever is reading them is an atheist, and it's a fairly good assumption to make.
Huh. I can see how that would happen, yeah.
FWIW I think it's pretty straightforward to be both an atheist and a moral realist. You can consider moral "laws" to merely be deducible facts about what is right and wrong once you've chosen other arbitrary features of reality (what kind of being are you, how does physics work, how does society function, how do minds function, what do minds want, how do they best achieve what they want, etc.).
See, I really want this to be true, not the least because that's halfway to solving AI alignment right there (as in, John C. Wright's "The Golden Age"). But I don't actually think it is true; I've yet to see a formulation that does more than sound good, the way a lot of philosophy sounds good at first blush.
But who knows, maybe the problem is just that humans are half an order of magnitude too stupid to actually perceive the truth and make use of it.
I don't disagree that you can be an atheist and a moral realist, but I don't know how philosophically stable combining those two beliefs is. If morality exists in the same way that the laws of physics exists, it's hard to see how we could ever understand it the way we understand the laws of physics. We can observe physical objects and experiment on them to create more useful observations, but how can you observe (or measure) morality?
Leah put it this way in an interview:
"What persuaded me was definitely pushing hard on the question of: How is it we come to know truth? We just can’t kind of bootstrap our way up the way we can with mathematics because mathematics is abstract and true and beautiful. So we can kind of bootstrap our way up because there are things in the physical world that are so apparent to us it doesn’t obviously require any supernatural intervention to know “How did we wind up understanding mathematics?” The basics of addition are graspable just from physical analogies. You can get to all of math just from having integers [whole numbers].
"But morality doesn’t work that way. It’s not as easy as decod[ing] the building blocks of the world around us. [I realized that] my grip on whether ethics existed was more tenuous than whether mathematics existed. So the question is: Where is that kind of knowledge coming from if it’s not something I’m building up from very elementary building blocks around me?"
"Ultimately, I had three propositions that didn’t fit well together: That there was no God. That morality was not dependent on humans — it was not something made, but was something transcendent outside us. And that I didn’t seem to have a way to reach something transcendent on my own. You can’t believe all three at once. So which one will you give up? The one I was definitely most certain about is that morality was transcendent. I kept puzzling away at the third, trying to find out a way to do it. I kept running into problems. Ultimately, the one I decided to give up of those three propositions was there isn’t a God. And it was [through] my conversations with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox friends that I recognized the God they were talking about as the type of God I had been creeping up on without noticing it."
https://www.ncregister.com/interview/ethics-mathematics-and-the-rosary-an-ex-atheist-discusses-her-conversion
It feels like you also need some kind of grounding axiom like "it is good, all else equal, for minds to get what they want". That's the bit that I'm anti realist on; I agree that if you buy that plus fundamental logic, you get most of the rest.
I'm back to thinking about how we teach things.
I was trying to explain the water cycle to my kid. (The child is less than two months old and fell asleep halfway though. This was more an exercise in talking to it lots so it hears English. Nevertheless, there will be a test and if the child fails to demonstrate an acceptable amount of knowledge I'm going to throw it in the pond.)
Anyway, I started with how water is a useful liquid, but how the water particles near the top can easily get warm and bounce out of the liquid and into the air. Which means that the air around you is actually full of water. You can feel when the air is more wet or dry, and we call that the "humidity". The amount of water the air can hold is related to how hot and/or pressurised it is. So when you're in the shower you can feel that the air itself is really humid; if you stop running the hot water, the temperature falls and the air itself gets drier as the water condenses onto the shower glass. You can then watch as the water forms little droplets and runs down the glass as a liquid again, back to join the water on the ground.
Then I mentioned you can scale the whole thing up and, because air gets colder the higher you go, the water condenses (around dust particles instead of the shower glass) and that's how you get clouds. Then we went on a lengthy digression about surface tension and erosion, as I tried to explain how water flows in neat streams and rivers even though rain falls evenly across the whole surface of the land. Then, there being too many witnesses at the pond, I took the child home.
The thing is, when I try to remember how I myself learned about the water cycle - I have one image of a circle of four words ("precipitation", "evapouration", etc) joined by brightly coloured arrows. I think they might even have pushed the boat out and drawn a picture next to each arrow for me (a cloud, a river, etc). But that was it.
Missing from that picture was any visceral understanding of what it is that's going on. I was able to match the label with the definition and the icon, which counted as Knowing It at the time, but which I don't feel counts as Knowledge now.
I can think of many occasions where we were learning stuff and all we were actually doing was just remembering how different tokens related to each other. And it was always a pet peeve of mine, even through University, when the format of the diagrams/illustrations (through their choice of arrow colour, etc) implied some logic about the subject that wasn't true in reality.
Thing is, if I don't count knowing the word "precipitation" to be real Knowledge, but I do count being able to talk about shower condensation and humidity and rivers flowing downhill and so on: what is the real property I'm trying to quantify here?
In the past I've held that you can dissect Science subjects into [Facts to Memorise], [History of X], and [problem solving], where I mentally see the facts to memorise as collections of colourful diagrams, animations, interactive minigames, etc, the history as the story of how we learned all these colourful facts in the first place, and the problem solving is basically the completely separate skill of Maths/Stats/Engineering, just using whatever equations this particular field of science chose to hand to you.
But the extra quality I'm looking for above isn't on the problem-solving side, yet it's not just memorising facts (ie, tokens and symbols.) It's something more interesting that entails being conversant with systems, able to visualise interactions and predict outcomes, etc.
I'd like to put whatever that is in a bottle and work out how you teach it.
I'm sympathetic to your point, but right now you're explaining things for your own amusement, not for the education of a child.
I have a four year old, and I used to think that if I could just explain complicated science stuff to her in the right way then she'd get it. But it doesn't work. I try to explain things like atoms and her eyes glaze over, her brain just isn't ready for the fact that there's things that are not only too small to see, but much much much smaller than the things that are too small to see. Her brain, which boggles at the number 100, is not ready for the number 6.26e23. You or I can look at the world and see a dance of octillions of buzzing molecules, but kids just aren't ready for that.
When you teach the water cycle for the first time, you have just a limited number of facts which you can cram into a child's tiny brain before they've had too much. The fact that ocean water evaporates and turns into clouds and that's where rain comes from -- that's quite enough for a first pass at the subject.
I had to think of Karl Valentin in the pharmacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1aO_yZb6bk
His child is sick, and he told it: "If you tell me where you're hurting, later when you're ready I'll buy you a nice motor-bike." But it wouldn't cooperate, it's simply contumacious! OK, it's six months old and cannot speak, but it could at least point to where it hurts.
As for what I think would be helpful, I think your story is really good. I would suggest:
Not talking about what we discovered and ask how they think the system works before explaining it, that way non intuitive parts become explicit instead of becoming pure hindsight bias.
Trying to relate, in as concrete detail as possible, how we came to know the fact and consequences of it.
I'm going to use "Electrons are a particle." As a similarly concrete example. Since electrons being individual particles means that we can measure the absolute smallest unit of charge, so if you can measure all possible differences in charges to cause an oil droplet to stop falling, then, after many measurements, you can figure out the number consistent with all the charge This is then the number that the smallest charge has.
Why does it matter that they're individual particles? Well because we can now use facts about particles in general to do stuff with electric charge! We can heat up a surface with lots of "loose" electrons on it, and cause them to "boil off". And if we don't have anything in the way we can then try and detect the charge on the other side, hence we can now make the electric equivalent to valves using vacuum tubes!
I get that this example is over elaborate and maybe way too verbose, but the advantage is that there are a lot of spring boards for curiosity. "Why aren't we using vacuum tubes any more?" "Wait, don't fluids also boil off? That doesn't seem particle specific at all!" So 1) there's an easy way to understand how your knowledge is incomplete and 2) ask enough of these and you start seeing commonalities across different physical situations.
This isn't meant to be complete, but this style of question asking is very common among the physics students and professors I talked with in college, and I get the sense that the complete world view you were talking about is very well exemplified by them. It's a common professor flex to forget extremely elementary formulas and then use their prior knowledge to receptive the formula. Not something you can consistently do with just a bag of facts!
This makes me realise I need to update my model from subject = [facts, history, problem solving] to subject = [*model*, history, problem solving]
Where being tested on a fact is "having learned X, Y, Z - tell me what is X?" (which can be answered by basic storage of the tokens used in the explanation) to "having learned about XYZ, where is A/what happens if B occurs?" (which can only be answered by visualising/imagining the whole model and searching/simulating with it.)
All well and good, but you can write down a list of facts, draw a circle around it and declare, "Here, this is Physics, now go and teach it, learn it, test it, boom, curriculum sorted."
I'm now even more interested than I was before in ideas about how you can "write down" a model in the same legible way. In addition to notation, I think there needs to be an extraction process (to get the model out of people's head when they may not themselves know what they know.)
Are you familiar with constructivism? (I mean the original constructivism of Piaget and Vygotsky, not the infamous "radical constructivism".) Because that is precisely about models being more important than facts, and how education is supposed to be about understanding the models rather than memorizing the facts. And of course you can't build a model without some facts... but sadly you can memorize a lot of facts without building the model, which is what many people seem to be doing at schools.
Not a direct answer, but you might find this anecdote from ur-rationalist work *Surely you're joking Mr Feynman*. Details it: https://sistemas.fciencias.unam.mx/~compcuantica/RICHARD%20P.%20FEYNMAN-SURELY%20YOU'RE%20JOKING%20MR.%20FEYNMAN.PDF
(Page 169, "Judging books by their cover")
Can't seem to get copy paste working, but the relevant quote starts with "What finally clinched it, and finally made me resign"
Great little excerpt, cheers for putting it in front of me. The energy/wakalix thing illustrates my hang up about "tokens" vs understanding perfectly.
I do tend to treat terminology with some contempt for just this reason. I will try to answer eg physics questions without using the key term, or if I do have to use it, I'll come at it from some unusual angle or analogy. In doing this I'm trying to put the term in some context that's a bit richer than you'll find in the standard "x is the y of z"-type definitions, to present more handles that could allow someone to grab the concept with. It has the added bonus of infuriating internet pedants everywhere, for some reason.
The pedants sense your power and they are afraid. Having a great idea about what you're talking about means that you can "well actually" to infinity, and people rightfully cower before this talent.
Haha. I have genuinely sat between two people in a pub who well-actuallied each other for a solid two hours. It was awful until I got drunk enough to forget they were there.
You might enjoy this, seems in the same realm of the idea you’re searching for https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pPWiLGsWCtN92vLwu/intro-to-naturalism-orientation
Or maybe this sub article specifically - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/S8kAJamj66gekjBwC/knowing
Yes, this is definitely getting at the same thing. Cheers!
If I were looking for as extensive as possible a data set on human height, where would you suggest me to look?
New replication: I find that the results in Moretti (AER 2021) are caused by coding errors.
https://twitter.com/michael_wiebe/status/1749462957132759489
I'm also launching a Patreon to support my replication work.
https://www.patreon.com/michael_wiebe
Hot stuff (or a little bit of Baader-Meinhof.) Just read the "Housing Theory of Everything" piece from Works in Progress today, which cites Moretti and makes a big deal out of it. Don't know code well enough to assess this on the evidence (and still think we need to build more housing) but a nagging voice at the back of my mind went "did they control for..." while I was reading. glad someone's out there checkin' this shit.
That's probably Hsieh and Moretti (2019), which someone else has critiqued for coding errors and modeling issues:
https://twitter.com/michael_wiebe/status/1749566693209465302
I've got Sleeper Agents on my mind. I've spent last week reading the paper and comments from people online. I have a few comment myself that I'll gather in a separate post, but here I just wanted to say that it feels amazing to be able to see a new field of research at its very beginning!
You are thinking of Kevin Costner’s Tom Farrell character in ‘No Way Out’ or maybe Elizabeth and Philip Jennings in ‘The Americans’?
Or am I missing a reference here?
I should've mentioned that it was the paper. Anyway, are those movies any good?
‘No Way Out’ is only so so. The Americans is 6 seasons of television. It’s upfront about the Jennings being Soviet sleeper agents. It’s set in Reagan era America. If you enjoy watching spy craft play out and the complications of leading a deep cover double life it is very good.
I haven't seen it in forever, but I remember liking No Way Out.
I did too at the time. I enjoyed the last ten minutes quite a bit. I guess the surprise only works once.
It falls into the same category as The Hunt for Red October. It was very topical when in production but the Soviet Union was gone when it was released. Red October was still pretty enjoyable though.
The actress that played Costner’s love interest was disappointed because she did a nude scene that was generally regarded as unhot.
Thanks, I think I'm gonna check out the Americans at some point this year
It’s kind of fun a depiction of recent history. Pre cell phone. The era of huge, boxy, ugly, American cars
Over the course of the series the husband develops an appreciation for American consumer culture. ‘Don’t you like all this _stuff_?’ he asks his wife. She remains unambiguously true to the causes though.
Matthew Rhys and Keri Russle are great in it.
Sleeper agents are like whatever it is the facehuggers in Alien implant in someone before they fall off and the person, apparently normal, sits down to supper with his buddies. Except in an AI.
It's a paper about AI, recently published by Anthropic. Scott gave an overview here:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ai-sleeper-agents
Ah, thanks.
Anyone have any experience in the publishing world? I'm working toward launching a very boutique little publishing company and would love to bend the ear of someone with more knowledge/experience than me.
I published a technical book with a major publisher, and I’m currently working on self-publishing another one. If that works well enough, I’m hoping to grow that into a publishing business. I’m happy to compare notes if you’re interested, just ping me.
Oh yes that’d be great! Would love to compare notes.
Sounds good, just grab a slot at your convenience in my calendar:
https://calendly.com/florentbuisson/60min
> Thanks to everyone who reminded me to go through the moderation backlog. I’ve permabanned...
Scott is back and he's like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfvLcozLwtE
He's a new parent, so that's no sleep and nothing better to do than go through the mod logs and BAN HAMMER 😀
This is now my headcanon.
"I've been awake for 36 hours straight with the colicky twins, I think a little light distraction catching up on six months backlog of notifications with my fiery burning eyes is just the ticket!" 😀
I recently had an interesting book club experience. It is a group of mostly pretty centrist/heterodox formerly lefty professors/professionals, mostly retired and gay, two serious libertarians. Generally extremely anti-Trump, but also very anti-"woke".
Interestingly this month a very lefty professor comes, who has clashed strongly with the "un-PC" comments of a few of the group before, and is definitely a bit "woke".
Anyway she retired about 5 years ago and sort of stuck up for Gay a bit (basically saying Admins don't do much so who cares about her credentials).
So I put to her my theory that academia is sort of like the monasteries of the late renaissance (still providing a valuable function, but ultimately losing relevance as the primary place where knowledge is produced). I suggested they will need to be replaced by some other model because I just don't think they are salvageable due to their culture.
Anyway her being a lefty, semi-woke, person and a lifelong professor who doesn't agree with me on a lot of things, I expected a lot of pushback, maybe even some dismissiveness/anger.
Instead she told me that when she retired she had the strong sense that she was fleeing a burning building that was about to collapse and that she agrees the current model is super fucked and falling apart.
Makes me a lot more confident in my viewpoint.
I'm super-curious about this semi-woke retired prof. Does she not see the connection between her woke beliefs and institutional decay? If so, how does she justify being semi-woke? If not, to what does she ascribe the decay?
I would guess that like a lot of people she just has some weird fences in her mind.
So the 60%?, 80%? of the woke program she ascribes to is great and wonderful. But then she herself can see the excess and issues by going full 100%. She just draws that fence in a different place than likely you or I do.
Like if you have a list of "woke statements", she just agrees with more of them than I do, but not all and she sees the deep problems with going for all of them.
1: Slavery was terrible and it i wonderful it was ended.
2: Jim Crow and other barrier extends for African Americans long past the era of Slavery
3: It is good for society to provide extra recompense to the black community to attempt to redress past wrongs.
4: Some minor preference for black candidates in hiring and education matriculation is an acceptable redress.
5: Black people currently face large day-to-day racial discrimination and race based barrier to success.
6: Income and educational gaps between blacks and white are mostly about racism and caused by racism.
7: Affirmative action and preference hiring don't cause additional racism and don't lead to competency issues due to unfit people advancing.
8: All discrepancies between whites and black are caused by systemic or regular racism and there are no cultural/genetic/environmental factors.
9: White supremacy pervades our day-to-day life everywhere.
10: The way to redress these wrongs is a massive transfer of wealth and educational/professional positions to blacks.
11: Obsessive focus on identity issues is a key element of moving past past racial injustices.
12: Concepts like timeliness and reason and rationality and white supremacy and don't apply to the black community.
13: Capitalism/colonialism/western civilization are filled with white supremacy and need to be abolished and tore up root and branch.
I would get off that train somewhere around item 4. I suspect she would get off somewhere around item 8 or 9.
But she feels immersed in an environment where a bunch of the cultural/political discussion at universities is up in the range of 11-13.
I would point out that she is someone who loves the classical world, so I expect the attacks on "western civilizaiton" and that cultural heritage strike a particular nerve with her.
That is all jsut theorizing and trying to read her mind, but I know her a bit and that would be my guess.
Interesting, thanks for the reply. That makes total sense, actually, but from my perspective the bigger issue is sort of orthogonal to your list. The real problem I have with the woke is how they view those that disagree with them. It's not just that they, say, go all the way up to 10 or 12. It's that they assume that anyone who _doesn't_ go up to 12 is not only wrong but somehow evil and acting in bad faith and therefore shouldn't even be debated. It's a religious certainty. So your friend goes up to 9 or whatever, that's fine. Does she acknowledge that getting off at 4 is a defensible position and maybe that's a perspective that has merit? Or, at the very least, does she recognize that the primary value of academic freedom is tolerating unpopular views and defeating them, if need be, in the realm of open debate? The key evil of woke IMO is its utter intolerance of dissent, so I would judge her more by how she internalized that than by how far up the belief totem she goes. Do you have a read on that?
> It's that they assume that anyone who _doesn't_ go up to 12 is not only wrong but somehow evil and acting in bad faith and therefore shouldn't even be debated.
I've had this happen to me several times when debating conservatives. It's a universal tendency for humans.
Where those conservatives acting on behalf of an institution, or was it a purely personal response?
How did you find this group? Asking for, uh, "a friend". ;-)
I was friends with (and TA for) two of the profs when I was an undergrad and they were still professors (early 2000s), and we have stayed in touch all these years (think monthly lunches). I would guess in both cases I am in their top 20 or so friends (and the reverse).
About 2021? one of them got invited to a book club run by another former student (a decade older than me, is an executive at a large bank) which was at its start seemed to me a sort of a therapy book club for people on the left who hated Trump and Republicans, but became disaffected with the costal elite orthodoxy on the left and their nonsense.
I was myself not quite as much interested in that angle (or maybe just sick of the discussion), but the animating discussion from early on was sort of two main things:
1) How the fuck do so many people support Trump and can they all really be so nihilistic/evil (not sure I totally agree with this one, I see Trump much more as just a collective "fuck you" to the campus/coastal elite orthodoxy and less about people actually supporting him, he is a metaphorical middle finger for a wide variety of disaffected groups).
2) What the hell is this idiocy coming out of campuses Kendi/DEI/ACAB/etc. ? It is the sort of stuff we used to joke about dismissively and treat as intellectual toxic sludge 20 years ago, and somehow has become the prevailing viewpoint on campuses.
The club does cover a wide range of topics, but those are the two themes it seems to come back to semi regularly.
This month we read and discussed an absolutely classic, but we also had some unstructured current events discussion during the later hours and that when we got into Claudine Gay and academia.
As a pro-Trump libertarian the idea of virulently anti-Trump libertarians confuses me.
I mean, obviously he's not a libertarian as such, but he's more so than the alternatives.
There is a minority opinion within libertarianism that prefers dictatorship to democracy on the grounds that a benevolent dictator can reject calls for statist intervention that democracy will embrace, genuflect to Lee Kuan Yew and hope for the best. But A: this is a minority opinion and B: it is utterly dependent on a string of *benevolent* dictators, and C: it's really quite foolish.
The vast majority of us prefer some sort of democracy if we're going to have a government at all. Joe Biden, for all his many faults, is a democratically elected president who has ruled as a democratic president, seeks to be democratically reelected as president, and can be trusted to hand over power peacefully to his democratically-elected successor whether in 2025 or 2029. Donald Trump, since 4 November 2020, has *openly* proposed to install himself as dictator, based only on his unsubstantiated assertion that most Americans voted for him to be a dictator. And he's vindictive rather than benevolent. And it *does not matter* what policies the dictator says he will support; sensible libertarians will just say no to dictatorship.
Now, the one saving grace here is that Donald J. Trump was an incompetent wannabe dictator in 2020, and he's gone downhill since. So it's likely that even if elected president, he wouldn't be able to rule as a dictator like he wants. But you can't be *certain* of that, and he could cause a great deal of lasting damage even in his failure. So really, no, you don't want this. You may want the imaginary version of it, but if you are any sort of libertarian you do not want to risk the reality of it.
Are you serious? I don't want to get all culture war-y or anything, but regardless of his policies certainly you must find him an objectionable person. I consider myself a center-right libertarian, and far more anti-woke than anti-Trump per se, but even I think he's a buffoon and a clearly incompetent leader that represents a real threat to institutional stability. And hey, I get the middle finger protest vote angle. I laughed when he won in 2016 and thought "this will be interesting, let's go enjoy the liberal tears." Even now a good 30% of me spite-hopes that he wins and burns every progressive-captured institution to the ground. But the rational 70% fears the chaos more.
> represents a real threat to institutional stability
I would've thought that a self-described libertarian would consider this a plus.
Why? Libertarians aren't anarchists. Some Institutions are very valuable.
Do I want the power of the federal government to be vastly reduced? Yes. Do I think Trump is the person to do a reasonable job of doing that? No. When a semi-incompetent loose cannon who's intensely hated by 40% of the country decides to make extreme slash-and-burn changes to the institutional infrastructure of the federal government, well ... do you like civil war? Because that's how you get civil war.
I agree with almost all of this, right down to the 30%/70% split! (The only exception is that I'm a center almost-libertarian, rather than a center-right libertarian, at least according to a libertarian political quiz that went around in the last month.)
Agree Wanda.
Academia is horribly cruel and exploitative towards adjuncts, post docs and phd students. It is a terrible deal for anyone except the minority of tenured professors. Perhaps a small minority of superstar students who can reliably get a tenured position are getting an acceptable deal as well.
I am extremely leftwing myself. But Academia just isn't something a good faith lefty can defend. Not surprised your comrade couldn't defend it either. Most lefties, myself included, like the ideal of academia and wish things were better. But the current model really is just too fucked and its hard to see paths to sufficient reform.
>> Academia is horribly cruel and exploitative towards adjuncts, post docs and phd students.
I agree on adjuncts but hard disagree on postdocs and soft disagree on PhD students. Our postdocs are pretty well paid (around 70k, which is less than quant finance salaries but comfortably above median wage, and for people in their 20s), and they get a huge amount of freedom. It's a pretty nice life (my postdoc years were great), and nobody is forced into a postdoc position.
For PhD students...they are being paid to learn skills, and y'know, PhD student wage is also pretty close to median wage (ours currently get about 40k). And this for people in their 20s, who are acquiring valuable skills at the same time - skills which will certainly give them the option to make 6 figures upon graduation if they choose to go one of those routes.
The only people who are getting shafted are the adjuncts. The PhD students and postdocs are doing fine.
Maybe you are in STEM? I think PhD student experience is far different outside of STEM. Not sure if non-STEM postdocs exist but if so, same.
Yes.
Things are quite different outside STEM (and I think postdocs mostly do not exist) but at a minimum the blanket condemnation was overbroad.
> academia is sort of like the monasteries
With one main difference: The monasteries aimed to avoid any new knowledge, just an endless recapitulation of what had already been handed down (as that monk in The Name of the Rose expressed it).
But today's academia is practically the opposite, at the research level anyway, in that practically the sole indicator of merit is novelty. I think that explains much of the more egregious manifestations of wokeness in humanities departments - Academics in those have to try and make a name for themselves by coming up with something new.
"make a name for themselves by coming up with something new"
Well of course. An academic, especially a professor has three jobs: Teach, Research, Outreach.
Only if you make a lot of noise do you get any attention. Andy Grove wrote in 'Only The Paranoid Survive.' That in the future, will be the war for the eyeballs. There are three things which attract eyeballs: Fear, Sex, Novelty.
Thus, everything an academic publishes has to be Fear, Sex, Novelty.
... and here we are.
> There are three things which attract eyeballs:
I thought it was snakes, ripe fruit, and naked plains apes? Although actually, that's pretty close...
> Fear, Sex, Novelty
DO NOT COMBINE THEM
Edit: PM me if you have interesting ways to disregard this advice
This commentary about academia as a monastery/toxic cult combo made me remember a poem a character named Pursewarden writes in *The Alexandria Quartet*:
Hail Albion, drear home of cant
Pursewarden sends thee greetings scant
Thy maxims he's turned back to front
Abhorring cant, adoring c***.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit?
Being of the exact same opinion, I'm gonna remember this post.
Any thoughts on what will replace it? This is something I keep coming back to.
I think it's silly to dream of getting rid of a thousand-year-old institution that's a central plank of our society. Firstly it's not going to happen (too many vested interests) and secondly it's probably a bad idea. The university needs reforming, not abolition.
Where would I start? Probably in the way research is funded. Right now there is (in every country) a giant bucket of government money that gets showered haphazardly all over the universities for "research" purposes each year, and the main activity of universities and professors is trying to grab as much of that money as possible.
I would turn off that money spigot. If the government wants to turn money into research, it should hire researchers directly (something like the National Labs) and let them focus full time on their research rather than teaching or getting grants.
Meanwhile, if universities want their professors doing research then that's great, the universities can pay for it out of their own pockets. Harvard can afford to hire top-name professors and give them research funding in exchange for teaching duties. Bowling Green University probably can't afford to, and that's okay, they can have a teaching-only faculty.
> If the government wants to turn money into research, it should hire researchers directly (something like the National Labs) and let them focus full time on their research rather than teaching or getting grants.
I could easily imagine this being even more of a disaster than the current system.
Also, the institutions with `teaching only faculties' already exist, and go by many names. Community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, non-flagship campuses of public universities (except in California, where the non-flagship campuses are still R1) etc.
This assumes the National Labs are fit for purpose. At least in my (and adjacent) fields, the typical professor at an R1 produces more and better research than half a dozen typical National Lab researchers, for all that the professor has to teach and the National Lab researchers don't. And what I've heard from peopple who did e.g. postdocs at National Labs is that they are incredibly siloed and bureaucratic - think the DMV for research, and get almost nothing done. Moving the research enterprise from universities to National Labs would destroy it.
This doesn't mean you can't have research institutions better than the Universities (see the old Bell Labs for exhibit A), but the US government does not appear capable of running them.
ETA: By analogy, the US government currently contracts with SpaceX for space launches. You might think it would be more efficient to turn off the money spigot and just have the government handle its own space launches, but the fact is, the US government no longer has that capability. If it wants space launches, it needs to contract with SpaceX (or similar). Similarly, if the US government wants research done, it needs to contract with universities for it. Maybe in the 1940s the US government had the capability to directly run research labs. It no longer does so. It's not a question of money, its a question of institutional culture and capability.
Then the government can get out of the research business. Hire companies to research specific things for them (like they do with SpaceX and Raytheon and Boeing now). Companies have been doing research for a long time, successfully.
That’s what it does. The companies it hires to do blue sky research are called ‘research universities.’ And they have been doing research for a long time, successfully.
Space X, Raytheon, Boeing et Al don’t do blue sky research. Nor do most industrial labs. The old Bell labs did, but alas, it died. It was the exception. Corporate R&D is mostly D and almost never blue sky R.
> I think it's silly to dream of getting rid of a thousand-year-old institution that's a central plank of our society.
You're quite right: the monasteries are here to stay.
Wrt to reforming vs abolishing the universities: I don't think anyone is thinking they're going to be abolished. What I understood the OP to be talking about is a gradual decline, as slowly over the years universities become less and less able to perform, until eventually all the functions we used to rely on them for are being provided more efficaciously from elsewhere.
I would have said one such replacement could be the corporate sector, which might already function much closer to the way you say you'd like universities to work.
OP said, and I agree:
> I just don't think they are salvageable due to their culture.
I expect tightening the purse strings as you suggest could well have an outsize effect on a university's internal culture, and it flatters my biases to assume that "useless dead wood" and "woke people I disagree with" have a significant overlap. But I'm not convinced it would be enough - I see culture as a much stickier thing than that.
(Even if it did work, the government would still have to agree to do it - and does the government have any reason side with you and I here?)
To me the only reason to say "universities are here to stay" is that there isn't a universally obvious/agreed upon replacement institution yet, which means there isn't yet anywhere for people en masse to flee to. Which is why I asked my question.
I’m pretty skeptical of it being replaced. I think we’ll see at least another few decades of degradation first. Large bureaucratic institutions can continue on in zombie mode long after they’ve died.
ACX regular commentators?
GPT5
This but unironically
I don't know what will replace it, but I know what I would want to replace it:
There are some things I would like to keep in the current system. I like it when doctors and engineers have university degrees; I like that there's a place where the very top tier of scholars can share great and cutting-edge work, and where successful professionals can semi-retire and function as mentors, to the brightest young people.
But the system is bloated, not just with admins and mediocre scholars, but with pointless programs teaching the most trivial information. I blush when I think of some of the classes I paid for. I would have traded my college education for an occupational school combined with an organized apprentice program (+ self-directed, life-long learning), and I think that would work much better for lots of middle-class occupations that today are dominated by people with four-year degrees – journalists, designers, programmers, small business leaders, etc.
Most knowledge should be learned while also learning skills and a certain dexterity (literally and/or figuratively). In too many fields, college grads have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but not a lot of practical knowledge, and so not a lot of understanding.
Apprenticeships are old tech. But we can upgrade them with help from new tech, using AI to help direct our progress and organize our education, identifying what we need to learn, and which resources are most likely to help us learn what we need to.
Finally, I'd like to see the institutions that teach separated from the institutions issuing grades and diplomas, so the school's brand name won't matter so much anymore. Throughout your education, you have to prove to a third party that you're actually learning something worth knowing and doing, and that third party answers to the market, not to the students or the schools. You can get the same attractive diploma whether you went to Harvard, your local community college, or are entirely self-taught. That should do wonders for trimming the fat and cutting the costs of quality education. You'll still need to pay the company that issues your diploma, of course, but there will be massive competition to be the respected, yet affordable mass-market option.
I'm definitely on-board with the idea of separate certification companies, ideally a plurality thereof all subject to competition with each other.
What do you see as the replacement place where people can share cutting edge work?
> What do you see as the replacement place where people can share cutting edge work?
In my mind, that’s still something like the University – a place of higher learning – but it’s organized differently. The scholar might have their dayjob at a lab or a think tank or as an independent author or influencer (since this is the future, after all), and just spend a few hours of the month sharing their work – maybe in chunks of time organized around themes, like conferences. Similarly, students, peers and life-long learners aren’t expected to be enrolled full-time to take part. They can choose to pay for and attend only the class / seminar / session / lecture series / conference they are interested in or think will be useful for them.
Since there are separate certification companies, the university has no credit requirements, mandatory classes, or anything of that kind, so you only sign up if you think it makes sense for you as a learner. The institutions or the AI may have recommendations, of course, but for most people, those will not include this kind of cutting edge work, which will typically be quite niche and specialized. The audience will probably reflect that.
These ideas aren’t fully worked out, obviously. They’re just ideas I’ve been pondering, particularly when considering my own somewhat botched education, and when hiring, training and working with students and recent college grads.
It's easy for me to imagine certification services springing up, and companies/recruiters realising slowly that they give a better guarantee of quality than a university degree - at which point the changeover cascades through society (with different industries potentially responding at different rates) until a university degree is a valueless piece of paper and anyone with any nouse is doing the smart thing instead.
It's also easy for me to imagine online courses and the like improving to the point where there's no need to go to (and pay for) a real university, because the quality of teaching is on par if not much better online.
And I can also see innovation and r&d type projects - which are to a great extent done in partnership with external companies anyway - simply moving away from the university and being handled entirely by the companies themselves, once it becomes clear that the quality of the PhDs doesn't give the sponsoring company any real bang for their buck.
What's harder for me to imagine, is any replacement for the environment of learning/academia, where the scholars can share their work. Also on the other end, there's no institution that gives the young a chance to get away from their parents for four years and try all the new experiences that uni gave us.
I feel that, unless some bright chap comes up with something, a lot of the nice things uni provided will be replaced by functional equivalents that are a lot less rich: no real funding for theoretical subjects without obvious applications when companies are funding everything; less sharing of results and ideas, when these same companies are in commercial competition with each other; no community or social cohesion when students are all learning online from rooms in different cities to each other.
Yes, I largely agree. Some changes seem more natural than others.
But to help you imagine how the other things may change as well:
I had the "get away from parents" experience twice before going away to college. First from the military (mandatory-ish military service), then (after a disasterous attempt at business school, where I completely failed at maturity) from Disney (working at Disneyland Paris, pretty much the anti-military).
My brother went to New York and found work at some fancy restaurant and became a foodie. My sister spent a year at a live-in school that offered the program "Extreme Sports, Paragliding" that cost far less than a year in a good college, even with some exotic travels. (They both got university degrees afterward, though.) I have friends and acquaintances who had formative experiences backpacking through Asia, working on a kibbutz, moving to a foreign country to work and learn the language, etc. The point being: 1) Kids will figure out a way to get away from their parents, 2) a university that pampers you may not be the best place to learn independence.
As for the nice things universities offer: Yes, I want to keep many of them, just without the bloat (which I think causes much of the rot). However…
Sharing: We now have digital fora that allow for far more, better and faster sharing than ever before. In 2024, people's bandwidth is as much of a bottleneck as access to the people with the information.
Funding: It'll be the same companies, foundations, and philanthropes funding the research as today, they'll just redirect the money to institutions they trust to do more with it.
Social: I worry about this, too. But we'll still have classes, where peers will meet, collaborate and learn together. They just won't be organized the same way. However, I think solving for lack of social cohesion is a much deeper issue, and we can't make that part of the universities' purpose, even if they may be part of the solution.
I think I agree that someone has to come up with something, but I don't think it has to be "a bright chap". It can just be a bunch of small changes, new technologies, interesting business ideas, etc. – analogous to certification services and online courses – that open up new opportunities and start pulling on the culture until it changes course.
Is a reliable lie detector possible? It may use any modern technology--fMRI, EEG, AI monitoring facial expressions, etc.
As far as I'm aware, all current lie detectors are simply detecting whether someone is becoming more nervous. This is correlated with lying, but also correlated with thinking about lying before telling the truth. So I would say no, you would first have to find a new thing to test entirely that's more accurate than nerves.
This all hinges on "telling lies" manifesting in observable ways. I'm not convinced thats true in a general enough way to create a reliable lie detector.
Right, and it's incredibly hard to test. Guilty people certainly get nervous when being questioned about a crime they committed. But innocent people probably get nervous too, when being question about a crime they didn't commit but are suspected of.
You can't replicate those sorts of stakes in a lab experiment, unless the subject _really_ thinks they're facing years in prison for a crime they didn't commit, and making plausible threats like that is probably no longer considered an ethical best practice.
You would need to obtain 1. an objective database of lies, that are 2. generalizable to future lies, and 3. you likely need to use your technology in the real world (during the telling of real lies), and 4. your technology must give you enough meaningful information to eventually make inferences about future-lies.
1 seems tough. You could monitor someone's typing & speech easy enough, but to classify language as a lie also requires an understanding of real world events (or sometimes internal events). Did I lie about robbing a bank? If you don't have the video, how will you know? Or, did I lie about why I robbed the bank? For this, you need year 2100 psychology/neuroscience.
2 & 3. In existing lie-detector studies (using fMRI), while training the lie-detector algorithm, people are usually instructed to intentionally lie, which to me doesn't seem generalizable to lying in the real world. With other technologies (say wearable EEG or smart glasses that point cameras at your face), you could detect lies in the real world. Nonetheless, even here, I'd be skeptical about the generalizability of the training set. (Is there truly an "essence" that unites all lies? Maybe we lie to some people about some things for some reasons, and to other people about other things for other reasons. If this is the case, your training set might not be equivalent to your test set. This is a testable question though).
3. fMRI gives lots of meaningful data, but you have to be in the scanner, which means your database of lies likely won't be comprehensive or generalizable to real-world lies. If using a stripped-down EEG, you can wear it on a regular basis, but you might not collect meaningful-enough information to make accurate inferences about one's mental state (supporting this, people have tried to infer inner speech with EEG, and these attempts are usually pretty bad, especially when comparing to studies that use intracranial electrodes). I would think the same goes for facial monitoring, I doubt it gives you enough information to make accurate inferences about lies.
Okay, the thing I think that would be most difficult would be subjects that believe their lies in the moment they are telling them.
Would their fMRI or EEG differ in those cases?
More likely detectable with fMRI, but possibly detectable by both.
There's a relevant Seinfeld episode.
A device would still be very useful if this were the only problem.
Good question. Conventional polygraphs are notoriously unreliable.
What's the maximum false positive/negative rate you're willing to accept?
I'm being intentionally vague, because I don't know much about the subject.
I imagine that different uses will have different acceptable ratios.
I'll throw it back to you. What do you think an acceptable rate would be for, say, testifying under oath?
99.9% FP and NP should be enough to eliminate trials entirely and just do sentencing based of lie detector results.
99% and you still need a trial but the lie detector can serve as a great datapoint.
90% and it's only useful if there's other strong evidence in either direction.
Less than that and it turns into a wash. I don't expect any technology to reliably reach a 90% threshold at this time, so it's not all that useful.
Reading George Eliot the other day, a character dies (spoiler). It's very sad, because she's gentle and good and she leaves behind six children and a husband. And she has time to say goodbye to her children and husband, when she knows she's dying. What does she say?
......
She reminds them of their duties. She tells the eldest girl to take care of the younger ones. She tells the younger children to be good for the eldest girl. She tells her husband he was a good husband.
If you're like me, you assumed she would tell her children she loved them, because that's the very first thing I would think to do if I knew I were dying. Hell, lots of people tell their children they love them every day, or multiple times a day.
Has anyone written a history of "I love you?" How did these words become so mandatory and routine that they are the first thing we think to tell our children when saying goodbye, and also so powerful and dangerous that saying them to someone you're dating can seriously freak them out and potentially end the relationship?
I'm thinking it didn't need to be said.
I've always found it very weird about English that the phrase "I love you" is so ordinary. For me, the German equivalence of "I love you" is reserved for intense romantic love. I have maybe said it to 4-5 different people in my life, and I would never say it to my parents, let alone other family members or friends.
Is there an equivalent phrase in German that you would use towards parents, children or other nonromantic loved ones? Or is there no set phrase?
I was referring to "Ich liebe dich" = "I love you", which for me is reserved for romantic love.
There is a less strong phrase "Ich habe dich lieb", which is something like "I am fond of you" or "I hold you dear". I find this appropriate to say to parents, children, and sometimes good friends, though I don't use it daily.
(I am not claiming that everyone uses them in exactly the same way as me.)
To more common friends, I would say "Ich mag dich" = "I like you".
This discussion reminds me of my favorite German song
Ich liebe dich nicht mehr, oder weniger als du. Als du mich geliebt hast. Als du mich noch geliebt hast.
From an upper middle class perspective in the Commonwealth, overuse of "I love you" seems gauche and American. I feel like it would be weird to say it to my parents or for them to say it to me. Not because I don't, but because these sorts of things ought to go without saying.
You know, when my daughter was in middle school, about 15years ago, I noticed that she and her friends routinely said "I love you" to each other when they parted, and doing that seemed off to me. It still does, now that I hear lots of people doing it. It's like the statement loses its meaning. We all already know who we love and who loves us (except when somebody first expresses that sentiment during a budding romance, and that, of course, is momentous). I like it much better when somebody I know loves me gives me a little unexpected glimpse of that feeling -- like maybe they throw an arm over my shoulder and say "I've been missing you and your sense of humor."
> It's like the statement loses its meaning.
Yeah, I think I know what you mean. I have old-fogey worries about raising children in constrained environments, where they only have a limited domain of experience, and getting fed media that encourages them to map the full range of language to onto this limited domain. They know they're supposed to say "I love you", they get positive feedback when they say it, other kids play along with the same script, and so if life ever happens to hit them with something outside that limited domain, they won't know what to call it.
I think that's a valid worry. You can avoid it pretty well if you live an unconventional life. Homeschool your kids and/or live abroad, preferably in more than one country while your kid is growing up. Drastically limit use of electronic media. And for chrissakes do not send them to private schools or high-end private camps & the like, even if you can easily afford it. All those places offer yummy-sounding opportunities to discover and develop individual interests & say they encourage discovery rather than rote learning -- and that's sort of true, at the level of what happens in classrooms. BUT in their substructure all of them are also providing a rigid course in turning into an upper middle class achievatron who gets into Ivies. I really feel sorry for the Harvard students I meet who grew up that way. In contrast, I had a college age patient who had grown up in a fundamentalist Mormon home, and had wholeheartedly adopted the beliefs: you can talk directly to god, life after death in which one's entire family, including pets, stay united in spiritual form for all eternity, importance of wearing special Mormon underwear, etc. But except for growing up in a home where not believing that stuff was not an option, she had not been hassled to turn into a certain kind of person. She was much more able to tell me her actual thoughts and feelings than the Harvard achievatrons. She did not have to run her self-reports through a filter before disclosing them. Harvard kids filtered theirs for wokeness and whether they sounded smart.
I can’t help you with a history but, really, mortal beings can’t say those words too often to the people they care about.
Yeah. :-/
Okay. Why?
Because anyone of us could be gone at any moment. The survivor will always regret the last one left unsaid.
Edit: I suppose I should add I was raised RC and that idea was drummed home continuously. Pre-Vatican Ii anyway.
In grade school I’d go to sleep thinking about playing third base the next day, unless of course I died in my sleep or the Rapture happened overnight.
Yeah but...what's special about those words? If you died suddenly, why would you regret not saying "I love you" rather than saying or not saying something else? Or doing or not doing something?
No. I mean if someone I cared about died suddenly I would regret not having let them know that I cared about them.
It wouldn’t have to be those specific words really. Attention is love.
Any word of kindness or listening to their experiences with attention and compassion would be the same.
Why hasn’t quantification of rumination become a standard tool in mental health treatment? Is it that the connection to symptoms isn’t robust enough? You’d think it could be useful for assessing severity and treatment progress.
Most therapists do not consider rumination a treatment target, but instead a by-product of something else -- say, depression. I actually agree with you that time spent in dark rumination is likely to be a pretty sensitive measure of how somebody's doing. Also that it makes sense to target it in treatment, which I sometimes do.
Another reason why rumination measures are not a standard tool is that there is no easy way to measure them. In real life, very few patients would carry through on homework that involved anything but some extremely simple, coarse-grained measure -- for ex., every night before bed rate the amt. you ruminated that day as none, a little, a moderate amt. or a lot.
I wondered if the course-grainedness of the measure was one of the hold ups but Burns’s Brief Mood Survey seems pretty course too (then again most therapists don’t use that or anything similar do they?). I also wondered if an app doing random experiential sampling could help provide slightly better data.
I do think a motivated person could do thought sampling to capture rumination. You'd set up your phone to do random beeps every 20 mins or so, but only turn on the beep option when you're driving or in some other situation where you're free to just think. When it goes off, you can record a rating or a description of mental content as a voice memo. I like this not just as a way of measuring amount of rumination, but as a way of sensitizing the person to the process: Aim would be that when they slide into rumination, the soon become aware they're ruminating. Of course, they may not feel able to stop ruminating, or may not feel willing to, but at the very least they will now know quickly when the process is going on, and that puts them in a better position -- also changes their relationship to the thoughts. If you're ruminating about all the time you wasted last year, but aren't aware you're ruminating about this unpleasant subject, you experience your mental content as just facts, a movie about the way things are. If you know you're ruminating, you also know you are editing the movie for lowlights of last year, and that you are electing to watch a certain movie.
MCT was developed to address rumination directly but I haven’t gotten the sense that it’s a widely available modality. Hopefully that will change as the evidence base accrues.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1077722921001371
Wow, that's really interesting. I'll have to settle in and read that this week.
I certainly use it on myself. How many pages can I read in an hour, in between intrusive thoughts? (The answer partly depends on the subject matter.)
While reading does seem like a good time to “take a reading”. While doing routine walks too I find.
If you have cluster headaches or severe migraines (or know someone who does), please email me at ishaan[at]koratkar[dot]com.
I read about Scott Adams’s experience curing his spasmodic dysphonia, and thought that what he did could be used to build a system (“search algorithm”?) to cure strange life impairments of the type doctors and Google can only give vague general recommendations for. To do this, I want to collate a lot of participants with a similar issue, and systematically review ideas for causes and methods for relief.
For context, my dad, extended family, and a close friend have severe migraines/cluster headaches. Most of what I’ve found on the topic is not a permanent cure or alternately costs a lot and has bad side effects. If you know a lot about this topic and think something else, please email me also, I’d love to ask you questions.
For clarity, this will be at zero cost and the results and analysis will be uploaded to something like my profile Substack “Career Scouting” as a neutral database for anyone.
I won't claim any label/diagnosis for my headaches, but I for decades have gotten debilitating headaches (some suicidal ideation inducing) a few times a year. Say once or twice a year in a good year, one or twice a month in a bad year.
For me I found controlling them almost entirely about learning my changing need for sleep as I got older and managing stress.
In my early 20s I could stay up all night playing videogames, drag my ass through an 8 hour shift, maybe take a cat nap for lunch, and go play sports afterwards and be fine. Do it again the next day sometimes.
By my early 30s if I did that with any frequency it would always end up leading to a huge headache, like light and sound bother me headache. So I struggled through about 5 years of fairly frequent bad headaches, before just really getting a lot more careful about trying to always get 4-6 hours of sleep, and taking naps if tired, and managing my stress a lot better (quit my job and went into business for myself).
Things got so so so much better in terms of frequency.
As for when they do come I do the following.
Immediate 1000mg of Tylenol and Ibuprofen (if I could easily get something stronger I would). Immediate food and water until stated, go to bathroom if needed, and then go lay in bed in a dark room with some white noise (fan).
Sleep if at all possible, masturbate if needed. Lay there until headaches goes away (usually ONLY happens if I sleep for at least a couple hours). No screens, though maybe listen to something if I am up for it (typically I am not).
Anyway that has worked like 98% of the time. I typically wake up feeling like a million bucks.
Every few months I get the start of a migraine, as a painless shimmering "Jacob's Ladder" pattern starting at the center of my vision. Left unchecked it slowly expands and becomes more prominent like looking up a spiral staircase. But if I promptly neck a couple of paracetamol pills it soon vanishes, and the pain and slight nausea stage doesn't start.
I assume the pattern is the result of optic nerve fibers or related neurons erroneously starting to fire in synchrony as the result of a sudden strong visual stimulus, such as a PC display going from dark to white at the click of a mouse, perhaps combined with a sugar rush.
I am also a bit overweight, and have found the frequency of migraines has declined in direct proportion to the weight I have put on over the years, since being as slim as a whippet in my youth, when they were much more frequent and I had genuine headaches. So maybe in some way extra weight stabilises the body's energy levels. I would bet real fatties rarely get migraines, or far less often than beanpoles!
I don't believe migraine aura involves the optic nerve, but rather the part of the cortex. that processes visual information. It's at the back of your head, and is thought to be the origination point of 'cortical spreading depression', the putative cause of the migraine syndrome. Hence visual aura being the most common variety. I don't believe aura specifically is triggered by visual stimuli, but many kinds of sensory stimuli can precipitate migraine. There's sometimes a change in awareness of surroundings that accompanies aura that I can see leading to the identification of some stimulus that suddenly seems salient as a trigger, when the process actually started further back in time.
Weight and migraine actually have a positive association; overweight and obesity are risk factors. In individuals I can imagine this being confounded by nutrition status (or any number of things, really).
I know Ishaan and vouch for his intelligence and good-nature. Also, I am interested in this project for its own sake as I have migraines and no full solution at the moment, and have basically run out of ideas. Since I'm probably stuck in some frame I don't even know of, I think a fresh pair of eyes like Ishaans could come up with some new-to-me ideas.
The first article I read on Aeon 8 years ago really grabbed me. It was about a woman who found herself having sex that she didn't want to be having. She wondered if she had been raped. Decades earlier, I found myself in a similar situation but it never occurred to me that I had been raped.
https://raggedclown.substack.com/p/dont-you-know-that-its-different
Is it different for girls? Should it be? How come?
Gender doesn't matter. Rape isn't sex someone doesn't *want*, it's sex someone didn't *consent to*. Those are two different things. People routinely consent to things they don't want, for lots of reasons.
If you find yourself having sex that you don't want but did consent to(*), then hopefully whatever else you are getting out of the exchange is worth it. If not, then you chose poorly. And that's on you, not some imaginary rapist.
* And yes, in some contexts, not saying "no" counts as consent.
It is true that not all unwanted sex is rape.
It is false that you are off the hook morally for sex as long as your partner consents.
Consent has moral power, but it does not give you a blanket permission to ignore the desires and interests of your partner, and there is plenty of room for moral violation within the bounds of consensual sex.
I have repeatedly argued that "consent" as the sole standard for Good Sex is misguided, that wholly consensual bad sex that good people shouldn't want is a significant problem that we should recognize and address without mangling the concept of "consent" in the process.
But the opposite of Good Sex is not Rape, it's just broadly Bad Sex. And if we're talking about rape, which we are, the consent is what matters. Consent freely obtained gives you blanket permission to say "No I am not a rapist", and consent freely given denies you the right to claim you were raped.
If you just want to talk about Bad Sex, don't use the 'R' word.
I'm not familiar with your oeuvre on this topic, I was just responding to your post, and the "that's on you" part of it did not make much sense to me assuming you agreed with me that consent does not absolve one of moral responsibility for unwanted sex.
I'm still not 100 percent sure we are on the same page, since "a significant problem we should recognize and address" is not the same as "something participants are morally responsible for", but if we agree, then I have no further objection to your view.
Rape is a crime. Bad Sex is not, even if it hurts relationships and could be considered morally wrong on some level (but far lower than rape). Conflating those things causes people to confuse the strong wrong of rape with the mild wrong of a bad date, and not just in a criminal sense. We should be very clear the distinction that does and should exist between them, even if we agree that bad sex can be a moral and relationship failing (which I do agree with).
Agreed, and thank you for saying it so I didn't have to.
> Is it different for girls?
Could you have physically stopped it if you didn't want it to continue? I tend to think that this is the key question, followed closely by "Would there be negative social consequences if you did stop it?".
What do negative social consequences have to do with it?
If I stop having sex with someone half way through, and she gets mad and tells my friends, and all my friends laugh at me, then that doesn't sound like I was being rape.
A realistic scenario would be something like she saying: "if you stop having sex with me now, I will start screaming for help and accuse *you* of raping *me*".
It's about power and fear.
"And she gets mad and tells my friends" should be followed with "that I fell down the stairs because I'm so clumsy", because what actually happened was that she beat the living shit out of you, and then made you lie to your friends about it, and they all went along.
Negative social consequences wouldn't be from her telling the truth and people reacting to that. Negative social consequences would be from her **lying** about you. "Yeah, we didn't have sex that night, because Melvin asked me to pretend to be a ten-year old girl, and I thought it was disgusting. But I don't know, is that normal? Do all men do that these days, or is it just Melvin? ... Now that you mention it, I have noticed him making excuses to spend time around children, but I thought he was just being a good father figure."
That sounds like terrible hypothetical behaviour, which probably falls under the definition of blackmail, but not rape.
Does the nature of the threat really matter?
Yes, very much so. If you're being "blackmailed" with something that would result in a loss of social status, then that's all that's happening to you. The sexual experience that you have in that circumstance is definitionally less bad than losing social status, otherwise it couldn't be used to coerce sex from you. "Rape" isn't a word that's used to connote fear of losing social status. It's an abuse of language to suggest that it is.
I've often wondered how much of the harm from rape/sexual assault can be attributed to the socially programmed response/victim narrative, rather than some innate and inescapable damage (this potentially having very deep roots due to the fact that it's not really possible to 'reproductively harm' men in the same way)
Of course the meta-problem with even mentioning this is invalidating real trauma; that is not my intent. However gun to my head I do feel like men are simply harmed less, potentially significantly so, for this reason
I'm a woman and I have never felt the horror/terror about the idea of being raped that many people seem to. I have always felt as though it would infuriate me, not shake me to my core. I have never been raped, though like most people I have had sex when I didn't really want to, because it was awkward to get out of it, or because the relationship was in trouble and I hoped some sex would help things, or because I was hoping sex with the person would be better than I expected it to be -- and doing that felt pretty lousy. And I was once grabbed and groped in the shower of a woman's locker room by a guy - but when I struggled and yelled for help, he let go and fled. But the idea of waking up from sleep or a from a drunken stupor and finding some guy having intercourse with me is not *horrific.* I think I would be furious, but I don't think I would be shaken to my core. Honestly, I would much rather be raped than have somebody cause me injury and pain -- say, break my arm or my nose. Of course a lot of rapes involve actual violence or the threat of violence, but for me the most disturbing aspect of an attack like that would painful bodily harm, not the rape. I've always wondered how many other women feel as I do but hold back from saying it because it sounds insensitive.
Oh, and here's one more godawful insensitive thought I have, and then I'll have disclosed more than enough: Considering rape an unspeakbly bad act, nearly as bad as murder -- WTF? By most reasonable measures it is nowhere near as bad as murder. Yes, of course, it's a BAD thing to do -- but I'd put it on a par with stealing somebody's cherished, expensive possession, or maybe with blackmail or with screwing up someone's life by running some scam on them. I wonder whether some of the awfulness we attribute to the rape of a woman is really an expression of ideas about the value of female "purity", which seem to me ultimately to be about the woman's value to the man in her life: He wants a brand new one, not a second-hand one. He wants other guys to keep their mitts off his expensive new possession. And he wants to be damn sure any babies have his DNA, not the pizza delivery guy's. Etc.
I agree that the idea that "rape is worse than murder" matches the traditional values too suspiciously. (Then again, expressing traditional values in progressive language is not an unusual thing.)
About predicting your reaction to rape, not sure if you also include the part that the rapist is often a trusted person (e.g. at date rape) or someone who has power over you (e.g. an older relative). So in addition to feeling angry, you might also reduce your trust in other people dramatically. Not necessarily knowingly, but maybe you would just feel strongly emotionally opposed to the idea of ever being in a room with only one person, or something like that.
Well if you’re dating someone and have a mad crush on them, and you’re hoping they feel the same way, then it is extremely painful to discover that not only do they not feel some sort of tender fascination towards you, they in fact do not give a shit about you. I’ve certainly experienced versions of that: finding out the guy had told me a bunch of lies about his life; having a guy put me through a dangerous bravery test out on a hiking trail; being belayed by a guy as I climbed a cliff, and having him drop me 50 feet, to within 10 feet of the ground, to scare me; getting hit with a sudden contemptuous diatribe about how irritating and wrong my views are. Those experiences hurt my feelings really badly, and damaged my self-esteem, and made it harder for me to trust the men I dated.
So would being date-raped have been worse than any of those? I don’t think so. There are a lot of things that count as date rape, right?, but what they have in common is that they’re in sort of a gray zone. If you’re on a date with a guy and he duck-tapes your hands together around a tree and has intercourse with you while you struggle and protest, that’s not date rape, right? That’s a rape that happened on a date. If that happened to me, I think it would scare me badly, and I’d feel uneasy for quite a while about being alone with any guy I did not know well.
But as for those gray-zone date rape things: Say it’s back in my college years when I sometimes drank heavily, and the guy and I are drunk, and I say yes all the way up to the penultimate moment, then say no — but he goes ahead anyhow — and I lie there crying, but don’t yell at him to stop, or try to shove him off, or do something that would stop him cold, like stick my fingers in his eyes, hard. Well, I would feel like shit the next day, and would think he was an uncaring pig, and certainly would not want to see him any more. But I’d also think my own contribution to having that lousy experience had been substantial. And thinking that would have protected me from Being Scared of Being Alone with Guys, because I’d have some ideas about ways to keep that sort of thing from happening: Don’t get drunk with guys I don’t know and trust; if someone forces himself on me, don’t hold back from making loud and angry protests.
Seems to me that the conclusion is that if you are already familiar with some level of bad things, another bad thing on the similar level of badness will not traumatize you. The negative impact on your life comes from those bad experiences in general, but the +1 bad experience does not change the outcome significantly.
Traumatizing experiences are those that are exceptionally bad, relative to what you are used to. Or maybe violate some remaining deep assumption about safety (e.g. if you have already experienced bad things, but your family or church seemed like a separate universe, always safe), so you in effect perceive it as a special level of badness.
Our cultural middle-class norms say that physical violence is a special category of evil. No matter how much verbal abuse one person might give another, if the other person slaps them, the one who slapped is the true monster. Similarly, spanking your child would be judged more harshly than any amount of emotional abuse.
Thus, for some people, rape may be their first experience of physical violence ever. (Most of them will be women, because few boys grow up without experiencing any kind of physical conflict.)
And I am not saying here "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger". It probably actually makes you weaker. It's just that if hundred bad experiences cumulatively make you weaker, it is difficult to attribute the harm to any specific experience. A new bad experience of a different level has consequences that can be clearly attributed.
If you want to take a crack at the question (and I'm not saying you should), you could look at what sort of shape you're in. Has your trust level changed? Willingness to be touched? Do situations which share characteristics with the the possible rape upset you?
Being raped can be a big deal for men, with symptoms not obviously different from the effect on women, except that it's worse because of lack of social support. I'm not sure that being raped by a woman has significantly different effects from being raped by a man.
If someone here believes it's impossible for a man to be raped by a woman, you might consider that drugs, non-average physical strength differences, trained reluctance that inhibits a man from defending himself against a woman, or various sorts of coercion might be involved.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that all non-consensual sex has the same bad effects.
I honestly don't understand those who try to connect all non-consensual sex as the same. My wife asks me for sex sometimes when I'm not in the mood. Sometimes I get in the mood and sometimes I really don't, but we do it anyway because I want to be supportive of her needs. This happens in the other direction as well. I can't imagine how little sex we might have (which would bother both of us a lot) if we only ever had sex when both of us were distinctly and affirmatively interested. Life's too busy, and one of us is probably stressed and not thinking about it at any given moment, despite knowing that 90%+ of the time we'll both be glad it happened later.
Right, I agree with everything you have said here, Nancy.
I'm not sure I need to know the answer. It was a brief episode, long, long ago and it has never given me any strife or changed my behaviour in any way. The attitude of my friends suggested that I should not be too bothered. It does seem to be different for girls.
I would agree - I cannot imagine being more than amused / bemused by such an incident. Whereas for good biological reasons, amplified by consequential social factors, most women would be horrified.
And there are more ambiguous situations. A man can't really follow up "I didn't really want to" with anything other than "Oh, well." Women generally shouldn't either, but I can see why they might be more exercised.
I have seen cases where men recounted being disturbed by forced sex with women who had some considerable power / influence over them. No doubt that is a different situation.
I don't know whether it's actually different for girls, or whether the social weight of Sex Being Very Significant for Women and Not Very Significant for Men shapes reactions so that non-consensual sex for women that might just be kind of bad is seen as a huge issue and non-consensual sex for men that actually is a huge issue gets ignored.
I think this is about where I am.
Eh ... Does it matter? We've been conditioned socially to think if we get raped or conscripted to war that's no big deal and noble respectively. And I'm completely fine with that? And if I have sons I'm sure I'll carry on the tradition. I wouldn't want to be someone who believed otherwise, either. Nor would I want women to be like us. *Shrug*
Women and men having equal status in divorce proceedings when it comes to kids (but not finances) is the only change I'm in favor of
When you talk about males being raped, you're talking about their being raped by women, right? What about males being raped by other guys?
I don't have an opinion. I don't know how same gender rapes is emotionally processed, and I don't have a strong opinion for how it *should be*. Society hasnt conditioned me on this
Why equal for kids but unequal for finances? What's the critical difference that makes these deserve to be treated distinctly?
(I'll grant that the exact implementation of 'equal' might be importantly distinct. Splitting up an even number of kids to permanent custody is not the same as rotating custody weeks for all of them, even if both are "equal" in some sense.)
Having the state adjudicate divorce is always horrible and messy and unfair. But roughly speaking I feel like the woman has an advantage at raising the kids at an early age 0-3 and there is a big financial opportunity cost to childbearing and being optimized for emotional sensitivity and multitasking. But I don't think men can love their kids any less, and I think after infancy can raise them just as well. Usually divorce happens after kids are a bit grown up, so a default assumption that man supports the woman but has equal access to the children seems like the least bad default option to me
But that's all rationalization of course. Ultimately it's all a socially conditioned feeling. Does it feel unfair for me to be drafted into a horrible war but not for my wife? No. Does it feel unfair for me to give money to my wife if we get divorced (she makes roughly as much as me!)? Slightly, but whatever. Would it feel awful if she got sole custody? It would be devastating
Are “secular religions” a thing? Is that stretching the term “religion” way beyond its meaning or is there no real difference? I’d particularly like to hear from people who think essentialism is a fallacy. How do you reason about this kind of thing?
Uh....yeah, secular religion is a thing.
So, let's start with why people care about this. People care because Westerners have strong taboos against mixing religion and government. Long story short, Europe had a lot of wars over this, Catholic vs Protestant, Protestant A vs Protestant B, all that good stuff. The Western solution was a liberal tolerance policy: everyone's religion is private, we keep it out of government as much as possible, and everyone gets on with their life. Given these prohibitions, it's pretty important what gets defined as a religion.
The issue is that, when we speak of religion in this context, what we're really discussing is a central example of a cluster of factors.
For example, when I say religion, you think Christianity, Islam, Judaism. Let's use a simple model of 3 traits:
#1 Supernatural beliefs
#2 A general morality system, ie good vs bad
#3 Rituals and group affiliations
So, we're all going to get together (#3) to do good thing X (#2) because God said so (#1).
But it's not hard to find non-central examples of religions. For one example, you have polytheistic religions, like the Greek pantheon, where there are widespread supernatural beliefs but a much less cohesive morality system and much weaker group affiliations. Conversely, you can find semi-religious groups, like the Confucianists, who have very strong morality systems and rituals/groups but...the supernatural side was plainly stapled on by the neo-Confucianists later on. These just were never really an issue in the West since, well, not a lot of Confucians in Europe.
The issue at play here is a host of secular ideologies that have arisen over the past two centuries that basically perfectly pattern match to religion except they're completely secular. It's easy to see morality and in-group affiliations among Marxists, Nazis, Libertarians, Effective Altruism, techno-accelerationists, etc without any supernatural beliefs. The argument for treating these as secular religions is essentially saying that these groups closely pattern match to religions in every way except supernatural beliefs, therefore we should treat them as religions.
Now, to clarify, you may not agree with calling them religions, nerds love definition fights, but let's not be obtuse. You may not like my simplified definition of religion, cool, draw up your own list of the 5 or 10 most important factors in a religion, especially as it relates to real actions. There is some underlying overlap, however you define it. Whatever a young man might read, become obsessed with, and dedicate his life to working with others on, whether it's Marixsm or Bitcoin or Jesus, has a pretty big impact on that man and everyone around him, which is why people care.
Christians complain about secular religions because they feel like their ideological preferences are locked out of government while opposing ideologies were free to compete for power. This is fine with something like Bitcoin or Effective Altruism, which doesn't make supernatural claims. The challenge comes from Cultural Marxism/Wokism/the current thing, which have explicit religious claims, being strictly atheist, and is openly hostile to Christianity. This creates a difficult asymmetry where secular religions are able to set policy to their preferences, to the detriment of Christians, without Christians being able to openly respond.
Consider trans issues and how we should teach kids about it, if at all, in public schools. From the Christian perspective, they're locked out of enforcing Christian values in the school's curriculum due to long-standing taboos but Cultural Marxists get to include their ideology in the classroom, the same as a libertarian might, without a second glance. Thus the rhetorhical claims of both "secular religion" and "Judeo-Christian values", both attempts to resolve this issue, either by expanding the taboos against religion to include secular religions, which we might also call strong ideologies, or by creating a secular face for Christian idelogical preferences through "Judeo-Christian values".
But it's all the same thing. We've got a lot of religion-"ish" things competing in the public square, some of which are actively hostile to religions and directly impact them, without the religious feeling they can compete on equal footing due to long-standing taboos.
[disclaimer: not saying the below is wrong, just it has religious components amongst many of it's adherents]
Much of environmentalism carries very strong religious undertones, in that people make it part of 'their identity.' Its a much different thing, to say 'I'm a Christian' than it is to say, 'that stream is polluted.' However, many people cross over the line to 'I'm an Environmentalist' and becomes someone who goes forth looking for a reason to do violence. There's a strong comparison between Environmentalists and Vegans. When you're an evangelical Environmentalist ...
Possibly, but it shouldn't be overused.
Communism, though, has its prophets, its icons, its sinners and its theory of sin, its holy texts, holy places and holy days, its inquisitions, and even its own eschatology. If this isn't a secular religion, nothing is.
On the other hand, American Civil Religion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion ) seems to have a considerably weaker claim.
Also, possibly Confucianism, depending on your definitions?
A now edited away definition of religion on Wikipedia that I found productive included that a religion interprets reality in its relationship to a higher order. Again, this could easily include secular movements assuming they have ideas about such a higher order of reality.
There are two ways to approach this.
The traditional way is to grab a dictionary and try to find some gotcha. "Religious means belief in a god, therefore anything secular cannot be religious by definition!" "No, in *my* dictionary, religious means belief about god, so atheism is also a religion, because it is a belief about god -- specifically that there is none!" "Well, my dictionary says that you only need to believe in something, not necessarily gods, so e.g. a belief in science also qualifies!" Etc.
The rational way is to "taboo" the word for a moment, and try to figure out what exactly are you trying to figure out. When you say "religions", what do you mean by that? Not in the dictionary sense, but what are the things you expect to see when you see a religion (even if some religions may not have it, and some non-religions may have it). For example, it could be a belief in afterlife; a sacred text written by a holy authority (in the next step, we could try to unpack what "sacred" and "holy" means here); a mass movement; a set of beliefs that claim to be the answer to the life, universe, and everything; etc. Then we could list some secular things, and notice that some of these things fit, some don't fit, some fit partially. And that's the entire answer... there is often no clear yes-or-no resolution, only more-or-less or mostly-except.
For example, Marxism is kinda like a religion (comes from a historical authority highly respected by the followers, makes moral judgments about the world and people, predicts a conflict in the future and the final victory of its followers), except also not (no personal gods, no afterlife). Whether you round it to "yes" or "no" is up to you. But it is what it is. Answering "yes" will not take away the absence of personal gods or the absence of afterlife. Answering "no" will not make it less authority-based or makes its followers more open-minded about the possible futures.
Ultimately, the question is, did you want to learn something about the world, or did you just want to win a verbal fight? You have to choose the corresponding approach.
Well put! - I think this is a good way to think about many categories or definitions. They're often fussy - we can often agree about a core, and there are often edge cases that partially fit. That is fine. In order to communicate well we should acknowledge this and make the proper clarifications.
At its best the phrase describes communities of belief that deny they have any religious qualities despite being based in whole or in part on false or unfalsifiable beliefs. You can come up with your own examples but yes, the most important/prominent ones are just going to sum to "leftism," which as we already know is just mutant gnostic protestantism.
I think one could make a good case for certain varieties of capital-L Libertarianism counting.
"Secular religion" is not incorrect, necessarily-- but it's a hackneyed criticism which I think is probably best avoided except in cases where the resemblance to religious thinking is particularly strong.
To brainstorm, riffing off of the Abrahamic religions I'm most familiar with: does it provide ethical guidance? A community of believers? A vision of what a righteous life entails? Rituals and vocabulary to set yourself apart from those who aren't part of it? Are there taboos, the violation of which causes a feeling of uncleanliness? Is there an evangelical imperative? Would you consider marrying someone who isn't part of it? If you're a member in good standing, and suffer misfortune, will other members of the community help you based purely on your membership? Do you prioritize the lives of other members over the lives of non-members, as in the trolley problem? Does your membership cause friction with non-members in the day-to-day life of a pluralistic society, in a way which you deliberately do not avoid, or possibly seek out?
The first definition that comes up on google is
"secular (adj). Not connected with religious or spiritual matters."
I think secular religion is an oxymoron.
Wikipedia: "A secular religion is a communal belief system that often rejects or neglects the metaphysical aspects of the supernatural, commonly associated with traditional religion, instead placing typical religious qualities in earthly, or material, entities."
It doesn't take a stance about whether these exist, but the French Revolution's Cult of Reason (which was specifically a cult-like system) seems like a strong contender.
That chimes with the literal meaning of the word "religion", which is roughly "re" (the thing) and "ligio" (which binds, as in ligament). Of course it's usually assumed to have a spiritual component, but that is only a conventional assumption based on the large majority of past and present examples.
1: as I commented much, explaining the legal basis (or lack thereof) for a "river-to-sea"-ban, I shall go contrarian again and tell now of actual "censorship" in Germany: 1. Car-plates! and 2. slogans "All for love" 1. No car-plates allowed with the letters: KZ, HJ, NS, SA, SS - As everyone knows, German car plates consist of 1-2 (seldom 3) letter(s) for the town (B=Berlin / PB=Paderborn) then another 1 or 2 letters chosen by the car owner plus a number (from 1 to 9999). Thus 88 or 18 might get banned some places, as - in Hamburg - "IS" or - more obviously: HH 18 / HH 88 / HH 1933. SK-IN is banned, as is IZ-AN and HEI-L. In my city, HJ used to be ok (SA/SS never were), B-DM seems to be ok in Berlin, still. "Z" is becoming an issue, too
2. 'All for love' is fine, "all for Germany" is not: 'Alles für Deutschland' was a slogan of the SA (I studied history and did not know - the SA got dismantled in 1934 to sooth the army.) "Arbeit macht frei" (as the smoke in the sky) is banned, too. Praise our courts. Thus, Björn Höcke, the head (and face) of the East German part of the xenophop AfD, got accused for concluding a speech: "All for our homeland, all for Saxony, all for Germany!"
https://www.lto.de/recht/meinung/m/fischer-hcke-alles-fuer-deutschland-strafbarkeit/ (German, the tl;dr is a the end, be careful google-translating legal language - I do agree with Prof Fischer about Höcke knowingly using the SA-phrase. I doubt prosecuting him for this use is helpful, no matter the result.)
I feel like Germany's free speech restrictions are much less of a deal compared to other regulations and restrictions on free enterprise. For example, I was shocked to find out that you can get fined in Germany for throwing out food into the regular waste container.
I confirm ZumBeispiel's experiences for private homes. Maybe it was about a company (restaurant/supermarket/ ...) and the waste-rules for them? Anyways, "free enterprise" or very similar to it: "You want/need to get your waste disposed of by us? Follow the contractual rules." (companies often choose another service-provider than the local/municipal one - but those will have rules, too - or charge higher prices).
What? Never heard of that. Leftover food should go into the regular waste container, not into the biological waste (I think because it attracts rats).
I've once lived in a large apartment building where some honks would throw their waste in any garbage can they want, and there the municipal utilities first attached a warning note to the plastic bin, and then took the plastic bins away, so they had to get more regular waste containers, which increased the waste disposal fees. So, only indirectly a fine.
There's a joke that Chinese AIs can't count past 7, because otherwise they might output "8 9", which is a banned reference to Tiananmen Square. Maybe German AIs will have a similar problem?
:D
It is ironic, given how Scott joked about America invading Germany to impose free speech, that so many of these censorships were introduced during the American occupation. Part of the agreement at Yalta sought to remove all elements of Nazi influence from German society. In practice that meant American occupation authorities ordered book burnings, destruction of artwork, bans on new artworks etc.
From what I understand, the part of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union was a lot worse? Even the entire half of Europe that was occupied by the Soviets was worse. And just look at Tibet and Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Heck, people make a fairly solid argument that America should have been more extreme, when it occupied itself. (After the US Civil War, Reconstruction may have been too little and ended too soon.)
In Germany, your comment might be seen as "far-right-coded" (some declare Germany not to be a sovereign state, but an "US-lackey" - some of those are Kremlin-lackeys). Obviously, you are correct about 1945 - for good reason - and then some time. But nowadays, this is a very German affair. Courts tend to judge: oh, that was probably free speech, no misdemeanor. Politicians do not dare to touch those laws for the usu. reasons. Well, the AfD might ... . "Fascists for free speech" - is a thing.
Oh I can certainly see how that might be a case. It does seem to be mostly extremists who complain they are being censored and thus end up more in favour of free speech in Europe. And certainly I'm sure Germany could repeal the censorship laws if they chose to do so now.
My comment was a bit more aimed at the American impulse to invade other countries and impose their own ideals on them; and how willing they are to brush aside those ideals when it becomes convenient to do so. Even as a joke, it is not very funny when you consider the damage done and lives ruined by American interventions in the past few decades.
I for one, think American interventions (i.e. colonialism) was a very good thing.
Take for instance, the country we tried to colonialize, where the ruler threw enemies of the state 'alive' into a shredder. What did it take to be an enemy of the state? Well, complaining about this leader's adult sons using the primary school system as a hunting grounds for their pedo-escapades. Everybody says today, the US went to Iraq on once false premise ... well, that is a false statement. Its now wiped out of the internet memory, but we went to Iraq with a list of 122 just causes for war. Things like 'The Big Gun' there's a big TV special about 'The Big Gun,' designed by a Canadian Engineer named Bull. It could shoot a rocket boosted shell with a diameter of 1 meter. The Big Gun was built on a mountain-side and aimed only at Israel. Saddam had target multiple US presidents for assassination, Carter & GHW Bush included. That's just cause right there. The invasion of Kuwait ... you may not care about that, but the US has a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to defend Kuwait against Iraq. When Iraq invaded, the US was treaty bound to respond. Maybe its not good to have Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties ... which would result in every little pip-squeak country like Kuwait to have nukes. So we have Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties ... and we have to fulfill them. And remember, that list was one hundred and twenty two items.
The Iraq invasion, followed by the civil war, killed like over half a million people. I don’t see that could be justified.
To justify it on utilitarian grounds, you'd need to be able to peek into the alternative universe where Saddam and co were left in power, and see how bad things are there. We can't peek into other universes, so we'll never know.
Still, Saddam's regime was pretty awful on its own, it was never going to go away peacefully, and the eventual fall of the Ba'athists was probably inevitably going to segue into a Sunni-Shia civil war. So it's definitely not implausible that we're living in the better universe right now.
will there be a post about the results of the https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/2023-prediction-contest I wonder who the winners are
The decline of trust is widely spoken about (although not as clear in the rest of the world as in the USA) as a problem of *perception*, but I haven't seen much effort to check if the general public's view on this question is, essentially, correct, with 'most people' instead being replaced by 'people I interact with in my country'. I've moved around and travelled a decent amount, and that chart strikes me as broadly directionally accurate?
It seems roughly in line with my completely anecdotal experience that I can trust about 70% of Norwegians, just over 40% of Canadians and under 40% of Americans, about 30% of Brits, and between 10-20% of ... everyone in that bottom left quadrant.
Taking this graph of trust vs GDP/capita (taken, in turn, from Dan Gardner's post on the topic: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe325f460-454d-48a5-9dd7-f247c6c6c41c.heic?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Original post: https://dgardner.substack.com/p/dont-trust-the-trust-decline?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2
"It seems roughly in line with my completely anecdotal experience that I can trust about..."
What are you trusting them about? Curious to know if your levels differ based on the context of the relationship you have with the person (stranger vs close friend, for example).
All strangers; friends are filtered for trustworthiness already, and most (all?) cultures have strong rules about being trustworthy to one's friends and family, but that's not the case for strangers.
That Korea and Japan are so low seems strange. I wonder to what extent the various translations of the survey question mean the same thing and are interpreted in the same way.
Is it strange? Social cohesion is not necessarily correlated with individual trust. Sure, everyone keeps up appearances, but the moment you turn your back on them, they will be happy to screw you over. Just because they won't kill you in broad daylight doesn't mean they won't try to ruin your life.
You don't find it strange that the chart has China up there with Sweden but Korea down there with Iraq? I'll admit I don't have as much experience with the Chinese and the Iraqis as I do with Koreans and Swedes, but this strikes me as absurd.
Okay, China being up there is absurd, I have absolutely no idea how that happened. But everything else seems mostly fine, including Korea. Again, there is a difference between collective conformity and individual morality. When injustice happens, the former takes prescedence.
Agreed, the translations may hold slightly different connotations. Japan in particular stood out to me but may be linked to a lack of social connections in general?
The politics of 2024 are becoming a test of our grip on reality. In this case, I'm talking about the October 7th "truther" groups in the U.S. who claim the Gaza attacks were a false flag. The group suggests that Israel was behind the massacre so that it could justify genocide in Gaza. What they are ignoring is that the Hamas attacks are the most documented in history. I'm appalled that anyone could convince others, let alone themselves, into believing such a notion. At a November Oakland City Council meeting a city employee shouted “Israel murdered their own people on October 7." Lies and distortions betray us. Have we abandoned our sense of skepticism? This behavior is contrary to our collective responsibility to perceive reality. The internet has the power to erase history. Don't let it.
Please keep all middle east related comments in the subthread.
User banned for this comment.
I accidentally posted a reply in its own thread, thus violating the rule. I deleted it though. Glad Scott didn’t ban me. :)
It is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer a ban because of Substack's terrible UI.
- Benjamin Franklin
I didn't get banned fortunately.
Don't worry, Scott checks the reported comments only every couple of months or so, with the most recent purge being a few days ago. You'll be fine for at least 1-2 months :-)
I pay so I doubt Scott will ban me. Scott if you see this any misplaced comments were an accident!
More seriously, I don't think that anyone will be immediately banned for just making a simple mistake about where to put some conversation. Just don't ignore repeated warnings and you should be fine I think.
;)
Any success stories anyone can give who has done tDCS?
For what purpose?
On banning I am conducting an n=1 trial of operating on substack under my real name and it does seem to keep me politer - there's fora where avatars of me are no longer welcome.
I want to find the names of men who served in Troop "A" of the 24th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), who liberated the town where I live on June 21st 1944. So far I've found 2 and now need to contact various US Army records entities for a complete list, hopefully with their home town details. Does anyone know of any particularly good forums I should then join to try to surface things like photos, diaries etc? I'm already awash with original operational documents produced by the Squadron commander and afterwards by Army education facilities. I'm a journalist intending to support the 80th anniversary commémorations here with the story of Troop "A" and memories of those men from their relatives today.
The National WW2 Museum has a resource page on researching a veteran: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/research-veteran
In the US there are two large organizations that cater to war veterans:
The American Legion: https://www.legion.org
Veterans of Foreign Wars (usually called VFW): https://www.vfw.org
At a national level, these organizations are mostly policy and lobbying groups, though they may be able to point you in the right direction.
However, both groups have local chapters in almost every city in the US (maybe even multiple). They often function as a club house, bar, gathering place for veterans. If you know the hometown of some of the soldiers in the squad you are researching you could contact those local chapters. They may be willing to help or may know the soldier or their family. For example here is site for the VFW in Kenosha Wisconsin: http://vfw1865.org (I chose this randomly).
You could also contact the libraries in the hometowns of the soldiers. They may be able to share with you newspaper clippings from that time period that could feature the people you are researching. They may also have obituaries that could list children who may still be alive. This is also true of Colleges or Universities in or near the hometowns.
Finally you could post this same question on reddit in https://www.reddit.com/r/ww2/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/ . I'd assume/hope at least a few people in both those forums would be interested in your research and could help point you to resources.
This is very helpful advice - thank you very much ! You've saved me a considerable amount of 'faffing'.
Great to hear! Good luck with your research, sounds like a valuable project.
So I read HDM again recently (specifically the subtle knife). I am not a psychiatrist but iiuc (a) Will's mother had pretty classic schizophrenia and (b) that should actually be pretty treatable, especially if you have someone to make sure you're taking your medication. Which raises the question... Was Will actually responsible for making his mother being sick by hiding her illness?
I read those books and I have this vague sense he wanted to make sure she was not taken away from him or him from her
I only read one of the three books, but isn't part of Will hiding her illness because he fears he may have the same (after all, this is a fantasy series where dimension-hopping and magic and the like are all real) because sometimes he sees/hears things that 'aren't there'?
He's also a child - what, 12 or so? He doesn't have an adult knowledge of the world, he's operating off fears of asylums and orphanages that he's picked up. Pretending everything is okay is how he manages the situation.
Re the first part - iirc when he finds out about specters he wonders if they are part of her soul, but before that he's pretty sure she's just scared if things in her own mind.
Re the second part: yeah, his actions definitely make sense given what he knows about the world. I'm just curious whether they're actually what would happen (does the UK really send people to asylums/orphanages that easily? My impression is that involuntary commitment is really hard to push and given that she's mostly functional they'd probably just give her pills and out the door?)
I think, in the present day, someone with just hallucinations (who isn't an immediate danger to themselves or others) is unlikely to get involuntary psychiatric detention.
For example, the daughter of a friend of my mother has an official diagnosis of schizophrenia, but is asymptomatic like 99% of the time. She tells me she sometimes has visual distortions and sees things that aren't there. Doesn't drive a car because driving might be difficult if you start hallucinating. At that level, they'll just give you antipsychoticmedications. (Which, possibly work, given that she is 99% asymptomatic).
No. He's a child and children accept the world view of their parents. Mine were non schizophrenic but pretty wrong about everything. It took me into my teens to realize this and into mid adulthood to fully internalize it. Also she is poor I think therefore reliant on NHS mental health services? Until your schizophrenia leads you to murder a stranger it's going to stay under the radar.
So in his case he's aware she's sick and seeing things that aren't there, he does figure out her paranoias are wrong.
I don't actually think he's actually he's morally blameworthy, but I do wonder - if he'd just gone to a teacher at school and said "hey my mom's sick", would they have gotten her NHS funded medical care that could turn her functional, instead of (as Will feared) putting her in an asylum and sending him to an orphanage?
OK I wasn't fully remembering the state of his understanding. I think even if you have made a diagnosis of schizophrenia it's still hard to know whether your medical system will think it treatable by drugs alone or drugs plus detention. I also think the precautionary principle would say she might be ok on her own but no way can she cope with parenting a child so at the very least he needs taking into care. If he thinks he is up to managing her I think he does morally and rationally the right thing.
Here's a kind of proposal, in a weaker and a stronger form:
Weaker: Not all, but most popular music produced in the last 50 or so years, that has lyrics, is about love/sex/romance
Stronger: Not all, but most music that has lyrics is about love/sex/romance
Is any one of these true, and if so, why? I personally have a hunch towards the weaker form being true, but legitimately stumped as to why. I've heard the usual explanation - love and romance and sex is the ultimately relatable human experience - but it doesn't seem believable that it explains SUCH an overwhelming majority of cases. Has anybody written a serious long treatment of this that I can read?
Apropos of very little, Talking Heads' "Stay Up Late" supposedly came about because David Byrne was annoyed that very few "baby baby" songs had anything to do with actual babies.
Lead Belly said there are two types of songs. Songs about interpersonal relationships, and songs about trains.
It seems to me that there's been a rise in inspirational "it's alright to be yourself" songs in the past 50 years. Plausible?
My impression is that "romance" has been rapidly declining as a theme in popular songs over the past couple of decades, replaced by more sex. Especially in hip-hop, which seems to be a romance-free zone, with predictable bad consequences for the sorts of communities that listen to a lot of it.
...so this is an excuse to post non-romance songs we like right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITUhINgcW2o
"I keep one eye open to the shadows on the floor."
Wouldn't be surprised if the studios push people to write love songs too, they sell after all.
I think it goes through cycles. When popular music started appealing to teenagers instead of adults, of course it went for teenage interests, which are love/sex/romance.
Older songs are also about those themes, but (particularly in jazz) they can be darker/less optimistic - The Man That Got Away, Set Them Up Joe, and so forth. You can have patriotic songs and the like, but if you're trying to write about ordinary human experiences, songs about doing grocery shopping or songs about 'I'm in love and it's wonderful', which do you think are more likely to appeal?
I've actually been thinking about this recently, and I think there's actually a lot less love/sex/romance in pop music these days compared to 50 years ago, especially in Japan. And even the love songs that are still being made are either much more cynical or completely unhinged. Back in, say, the 80s, you have all these rosy, super idealistic love songs, like, uh, this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ (I'm so sorry) but you don't really see many songs like this anymore. I'm currently going through UK top-ten singles in 2023, and it seems that not even a majority of the songs are about love, and most of the ones that are about love are... not very positive about it. Otherwise, they're usually about social critique, (female) empowerment, depression, stuff like that.
And then there's Japan, where the two most popular pop songs of the era are a blatant romanticization of suicide ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8VYWazR5mE ) and a song with a title that roughly translates to "Shut the fuck up" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp3b-RXtz4w ). So yeah, that's fun. Not that I'm complaining, of course, but... It does seem like this might be a symptom of the populace becoming disillusioned with romance. The same thing is probably happening in the West as well, just at a slower pace. After all, there's no shortage of people complaining about how hard it is to find a date, as well as people sharing horrible experiences from relationships... It's all just kinda depressing.
> where the two most popular pop songs of the era are a blatant romanticization of suicide ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8VYWazR5mE )
Yoru ni Kakeru isn't even *Yoasobi*'s most popular song, let alone "the most popular pop song of the era". It's not even close. IIRC someone corrected this claim in a previous thread in ACX, so it's frustrating to see this blatant falsehood continue to be repeated.
Black Eyed Peas have a song called Shut Up that's about romance.
I can't even claim I've been tricked with that first link, well played.
Alternative propositions offered for consideration or discussion. Shot from the hip, welcome pushback.
1. Almost all popular music before the Beatles was about love.
2. Almost all the popular rock music after the Beatles was abstract (or barely decipherable, even if it was about some specific thing). (Or maybe it was Dylan.) Lemma: It became low status to explicitly say what you meant in a song.
4. Country music was not similarly affected.
5. Country music has a lot of love songs, but also address a wide range of random other complex situations, like being stuck in a small town, nostalgia, depression, addiction, friendship, and love or hate of home.
6. Hip hop does explicit storytelling too, and some strands of metal do too. Radio rock (pop and alternative) is the main outlier here.
Please note this is not implying any quality or inferiority of any genre, this is purely taxonomical not normative, it's ok to want different things at different times.
> 1. Almost all popular music before the Beatles was about love.
I'm not enough of a comprehensive music listener to be able to clearly identify trends pre- and post-Beatles, have to pass.
> (or barely decipherable, even if it was about some specific thing)
Not sure about rock specifically, but somewhat agree.
> Lemma: It became low status to explicitly say what you meant in a song.
(Shooting from the hip, I don't even have anecdotal observations.) Agree in letter, disagree in spirit. This is possibly a thing, but if it is, I believe it's a second-order effect of it becoming easier and cheaper to produce commercially viable music. If you don't need a hundred thousand bucks to produce a minimally playable album, you can do it even if your songwriter sucks, and cryptic barely-making-sense associative lyrics are easier to write than coherent storytelling ones.
> 4. Country music was not similarly affected
> 5. Country music has a lot of love songs, but also address a wide range of random other complex situations, like being stuck in a small town, nostalgia, depression, addiction, friendship, and love or hate of home.
My knowledge of country music starts at two Johnny Cash songs and stops there. Can neither agree nor disagree.
> 6. Hip hop does explicit storytelling too, and some strands of metal do too. Radio rock (pop and alternative) is the main outlier here.
Ah, now here's something I can actually comment on. I listen to a fair bit of rap/hip-hop. So... yes, I do think that it's different in that there aren't that many love songs. They're certainly there, but they're interspersed with a few other stock song themes. Mostly drug dealing, describing a life of wealth and success, and threatening unnamed "opposition" with violence. When there's something like a love song, it's usually a lot more about sex, in absolute majority of cases fellatio, than it is about love. Sometimes it's all those within the same track. But it's extremely rarely anything BUT these.
Which maybe brings me to this thesis - maybe the actual general trait here is that music (going to stick to the weaker version of the original proposition) is actually becoming... same-er. More standardized. Less experimental. It's just that pop music has standardized on love songs.
Why? No clue, but, also shooting from the hip, maybe it's something to do with the internet providing faster feedback loops and more observability? Assuming you're a commercially minded musician, you will want to imitate trends, and it's easier than ever to know what is the trend to imitate? Maybe, also, it's easier to make commercially viable music, and there's far fewer people who make music for shits and giggles/as a hobby, and more wanting commercial success?
Good points. I should sprinkle some examples throughout for reference. REM and the Shins seem straightforwardly downstream from Helter Skelter to me but it's definitely not a scientific review.
Hip hop is a really interesting case study, there's a split in there. High brow like mos def or common or aceyalone doing slice of life vignettes or commenting on bigger issues, club anthem side like lil jon that's just like what you're saying, then a halfway point like Jay Z or outkast maybe wu that can drift either way and add a few "I'm the greatest" anthems in there.
Country has range of this too, party anthems about a keg in a field, more introspective stuff or tragedies, lot of love songs. I think the key to mainstream success in country is being a crossover artist.
There's always some tension between low brow and high brow forms of art and artists that can pull from both sides effectively end up in that sweet spot of critical acclaim and popular appeal.
Yadda yadda Jay Z is the Steven Spielberg of hip hop?
> Hip hop is a really interesting case study, there's a split in there
There definitely was, but is there, still? I'm not as much of a deep-cut listener now (I've switched towards british electronica that sounds like sountracks to non-existing science documentaries and has no lyrics), but from superficial observation, it feels like "conscious hip-hop" is kind of dead.
I mean, sure, occasionally Freddie Gibbs or Kendrick will say something about slaves in chains. There was also, uh, this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZ5e94QnWk .
But I'm not sure if high-brow in the sense that you're referring to even still exists. I used to like Oddisee and he kind of went in that direction but I'm not sure if he's doing anything still, but we're talking about a guy with 200K monthly listeners on Spotify, this is not a trend (compare: Travis Scott - 63 million). It feels like soundcloud rap ate it.
> Yadda yadda Jay Z is the Steven Spielberg of hip hop?
Not implausible.
The Swedish artist Laleh (see for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udX7luUKk90 ) has said something to the effect (translating from memory) "I don't make lovesongs, there are so many of those already. Love is an important feeling, but overrepresented in popculture: I sing about all the other feelings instead."
There are several exceptions, and many of her songs can be interpreted to be about love, but not necessarily so. But I enjoy the sentiment :)
The other popular themes — religion, death, war, patriotism and political strife — are not so well adapted to popular commercial music.
I think that if we look at lyrics in general (and not just "popular music produced in the last 50 or so years" but also going back to history as far as we can see), they thrive on strong emotions and that effectively means sex or death. You have themes of loss, of longing, of risk, or expectations, or threats, or certainty/safety/contentment, but the stakes are high when these themes refer to sex or death, so they generally are; sometimes directly, sometimes with euphemisms and allegory - e.g. it's not uncommon that even children nursery rhymes do refer to sex or death in a somewhat obscured manner. And not only in lyrics - take a look at the originally collected Grimm's tales, for example.
And in the last 50 or so years our society has become detached from death (greater security, less child mortality and maternal mortality, wars involve a smaller part of western population, distance from "lifecycle" that was obvious when most people lived on farms) that topic has become less relevant, so only sex remains. Well, perhaps addiction is emerging as a separate high-stakes high-emotions topic that comes up in lyrics every so often; not only now but also in folk songs from a few centuries ago.
My initial thought is that there's such a plethora of interests right now, so it's hard to find universals that are generally relatable.
Love/Sex/Romance has a bunch of nice features:
* It's relateable
* It involves status (interesting!)
* It's positive
* It's not taboo
My joking, 95%-non-serious answer: Well, there's two kinds of music made 150 years ago (source: reading the Child ballads), songs about love/sex/romance and songs about horribly dying in disturbing ways, and there's overlap between them, but if you write a song about horribly dying in a disturbing way you might get cancelled, so it's safer to write songs about sex. So that's why all songs are about sex, these days.
For those who have experienced the peer review process, I wonder if your experience makes you surprised or leaves you unsurprised by the following experiences of mine: is this sort of thing common in your area of interest if you are a researcher?
1. A few weeks ago, a preprint of mine was rejected after six months, with the principal explanation given being that it was sent to three specialists for a quick opinion, and none of them had responded at all (so no referee report or a quick opinion). And that non-exceptional articles published in the journal had to have a certain page-limit which my article exceeded: which I hadn't found on the journal page while submitting, and which I found was violated by a majority of the articles in the last published volume.
2. Last week, another preprint was rejected, this time in slightly less than six months, with about 750 word "quick report" from someone who said it was quite far from their expertise, that they are interested in the area in which the preprint was written but do not engage in research in it themselves, and that the editor should disregard everything they have to say. Despite saying this, the "quick report" had about 750 words, mostly complaining a lot about how various things in part of the introduction were not clear, saying that the results based on which the paper should really be judged were in another part of the introduction they did not read, and that the editor should look for experts to referee it. Sharing this with me, the editor said that after "quick reports" (plural, but only one was shared with me), they decided not initiate a full referee process, because it seemed that it would be difficult in any case to convince the editorial board to publish it: i.e., they don't want what will certainly be a further delay of at least several months for me.
These shocked me especially because the latter was unlike anything I had seen till then: an elaborate appearance of a show-trial and yet refraining from asserting a concrete opinion. I didn't understand why a non-report should take about six months. To be honest, for a moment I had even wondered if there was sublimated racism. But I asked some colleagues, and their response was that this happens every now and then because journals, when they get too many papers and have to reject, often resort to such expedients. It is unrealistic to give anywhere near a fair trial for all papers, and they don't want to commit to saying that certain papers are bad, and it seems easiest to make a ritual of a fake trial which typically will be accepted without questioning as a sort of realpolitik. It is apparently a problem that globally, the numbers of students and publications have increased, and the number of journals and their page limits haven't kept up. They assured me that it is nothing racist or personal, that it happens to all sorts of people, and that I can simply submit it to another journal without much fear that this would repeat.
If you have engaged with peer review, have you had anything like this, or other weird experiences?
My husband had a paper rejected because one reviewer responded, explicitly, "I am unfamiliar with the topic, therefore reject" (rather than "I am unfamiliar with the topic, therefore try a different reviewer"). And another reviewer failed to understand that the paper was basically an existence proof, demonstrating that it was theoretically possible for a thing to happen in a carefully contrived and engineered set of circumstances, and rejected it because that set of circumstances would be unlikely to arise naturally - which I think is like rejecting a sculpture because that arrangement of materials would be unlikely to arise naturally. (The paper was subsequently accepted elsewhere.)
Thank you very much for sharing these experiences. These help me in processing what is going on.
I lost a lot of trust in the peer review process after being asked to do a review of someone else's paper and not being given any guidance on how I'm meant to do it or what qualities I'm meant to be judging. Maybe more experienced researchers pick this up along the way (I'm a PhD student), but it wasn't a positive sign.
I too never had any guidance on how I am supposed to do it. When I look back at my earlier reports from when I was just past PhD, I am embarrassed by how much nit-picking I did (once an editor asked me for the texfile and removed some nitpicking before sending it to the authors). On the other hand, I also think that while I tried to follow the details, I didn't try enough to synthesize the knowledge in my mind. Experienced and knowledgeable researchers *rarely* read proofs in papers: if they decide to do a serious job, they will typically read the theorems to see what their intuition says about its correctness (and I may sound ridiculous here, but often that intuition picks up mistakes better than line-by-line checking). This creates problems for the lesser mortals who read the paper later: they find ultimately fixable mistakes in proofs, but don't realize it and spend time trying to square the circle.
My understanding on how to review has been evolving, but even now I am not comfortable with judging whether something fits the level of a journal. I see people who are comfortable and who have a fine-grained sense of the pecking order between various journals, but even they are usually biased in some way or the other (it is just impossible to be otherwise). Also, really top level researchers differ from each other on how closely a paper should be refereed. The reviews of my papers (by peers) have been of quite varying levels. There are clearly reviewers who barely read anything, but once I was lucky to have one who understood my paper better than I did myself and gave numerous comments, all of them relevant and some of them enlightening enough that I would say I became a better researcher after that referee report.
Well, yes. Papers getting rejected for stupid reasons,
Iike they couldn't find a reviewer who s a subject matter expert, is unfortunately common.
Without naming names, one of my groups papers got a reviewer rejection that was so unreasonable that we we have it framed and mounted on the wall.
On the other hand, as someone who is sometimes on conference program committees, you ocassionally get a paper that is hard to find reviewers for.
For example, suppose someone has done work on computer security requirements for genomic databases (like 23andme). Now, you need to organise reviewers who understand both database security and genomics well enough to review the paper.
Thank you. If so, naively, to me, the reasonable thing to me sounds like just saying "Sorry we can't find reviewers. We regret our inability to consider your paper". Do you know why sometimes they instead write a several sentences long report basically saying "I don't know this stuff. But I read part of the introduction and found that it is addressed to experts", and then somehow make that grounds for rejection? What do they gain from this?
Isn't that saying it's not approachable enough?
No; this may not be easy to explain, but I will try (sorry that I am clumsy with articulating these nuances so the comment is long):
(i) The only concrete suggestion the quick report author makes is that the editor choose a referee from among experts. Not that the editor could take a call on what to do with the exposition.
(ii) The reviewer hedges themselves at **multiple** points by saying they are not an expert and don't engage in research in this area. They write "you should disregard everything I say", in as many words.
(iii) It is usually understood that either an expert takes the call on approachability (as usually happens), or they say specifically that the paper *needs* to be addressed to non-experts and that the author *should* be adding such and such definitions.
But -- and here is the psychological bit that seems fascinating -- by saying that they were lost (which sounds quite ridiculous to people who actually work in my area), even though after asking multiple times to be disregarded -- they want someone else to take it as a hint that it is not approachable enough (like you just did), though they don't themselves want to take responsibility for saying so. This deviousness is a lot of what bothers me. Why does the report author hedge multiple times, and still write 750 words: the only reason I can think of is that the author understand that this is a set up to help the journal reject a paper it does not want to go through the trouble of a referee process with, so the author doesn't want to say anything
(iv) I understand I can't credibly say this myself, but I feel the exposition is actually quite good (in fact I feel it is in the 90th percentile).
The editor also understands (iii) (they are a well-known person with several prestigious awards listed in their wikipedia page, and the journal is semi-prestigious), and doesn't specifically point out anything wrong with the paper or its exposition, or suggest that I should send it elsewhere after fixing the exposition, but takes recourse to the expedient that based on the quick reports, they feel it would be difficult to convince the rest of the editorial board. So it seems to be a pretty elaborate web of numerous weak assertions designed to help people who want to extrapolate them into stronger statements in their minds: see for instance that the commenter Pete below felt like reading a "nothing amazing" into it (which could begin to make sense if the quick reviewer hadn't said that they didn't even read the part of the introduction which had theorems based on which the paper should be judged).
To my obviously biased perception, there is some lesson on how ritual makes the world work by making it possible to not think too much about meaning.
Probably the only qualified reviewer you can find turns out to be the same guy that wrote the paper.
The specific cases are a bit weird, but it wouldn't also be unusual to reject something for publishing without saying that anything is bad, there are many venues where getting 3 bland reviews "okay paper, no obvious flaws, but nothing amazing" means a rejection as they can fill their desired number of papers with something more interesting.
You seem to be talking of something completely different (and quite common place and well-known), to the point that your comment even seems a bit like an insinuation.
The whole peer review process is completely broken with all incentives in the wrong direction. Nothing can surprise me about it.
The whole peer review process is completely broken with all incentives in the wrong direction. Nothing can surprise me about it.
"certain papers are bad, and it seems easiest to make a ritual of a fake trial" If the editor thought the quality of your paper was bad or out of scope then he would just desk reject it. It has happened to me.
What happened to you is something different. Quite simply they tried to find qualified reviewers but after 6 months were unable to. It's becoming more and more difficult to find good reviewers to do unpaid reviews, especially if the topic is not mainstream. Notice this process takes a long time because a lot of people just won't answer and it's hard to keep up with all the invites. Meanwhile 6 months or more have passed and a decision needs to be taken.
Thank you. What you say matches what I hear from others. I would have preferred if they could just say "We regret our inability to find reviewers". But instead they seem to do some weird circus.
if you, like me, are a big fan of ACX, then you may also like all my other favorite reads over the years: I just published this list of my top 1% favorites, for the past three years: https://npfoss.notion.site/Reading-Log-22dd3a2649644c1baa74b621faae9bda
How valuable is social media status? I'm thinking about value broadly, as a proxy for connection to ideas, opportunities, and as a warm introduction. Specifically, we can think of three scenarios:
1. A new technology arises. How does a large follower base help you increase your proximity to that technology in terms of understanding, access, and the ability to work on it?
2. You lost your job. How much does your follower base help you get a new one?
3. You were unceremoniously dumped. Does having followers significantly help you find someone new?
Taking Twitter/X as an example: on the one hand, you have meme accounts and "walking memes" (i.e., hyper-specialized human accounts like Bill Pulte) that have lots of followers, but their generic masses of followers don't seem to be particularly valuable unless you have status elswhere. On the other hand, you have high value communities like tpot and building in public, who do seem to have useful connections, if quite few. What is the relative value of, say, a tpot follower vs a generic twitter follower?
Have you benefitted from your social media following?
4. Someone makes a public accusation of sexual misconduct against you. Does having followers make this more or less likely to turn into a shitshow?
No, I don't think it means anything unless you're trying to connect with other people who highly value social media and clout. I have next-to-no social media presence and have never struggled to find a partner or a job. I'd argue that having a small, tight circle of trusted contacts is more valuable, as there's less noise when assessing potential opportunities. Blasting out your desire for a partner or work status on social media to a mass of strangers seems like a quick way to get a lot of very low-value responses that you now have to filter.
"3. You were unceremoniously dumped. Does having followers significantly help you find someone new?"
I'd speculate that a guy having a decent number of casual connections within a specific community on social media helps in terms of social proof. Lets say you're interested in someone. You've talked to them. You friend request them on Facebook. They see that you're friends with ten of their friends. They're more likely to accept your friend request.
I'm far from an expert on social media, but I've heard people complain about this phenomenon, that continuing to be friends with with people who have engaged in abusive behavior gives them an effective endorsement, allowing them to more easily persist in their behavior.
Of course, social proof is about being minimally acceptable. There are probably other aspects to having tens of thousands of followers that I'm not fit to comment on.
I had never heard of Bill Pulte.
I had heard of him years ago and my being unable to place the name was really bothering me. He's the philanthropy guy, maximizing the "warm fuzzies" kind of work. I don't mean that in a cynical way -- I'm sure he doesn't even care about how many twitter followers he has except in service to what it is that he's doing there.
Doesn't this depend on the website?
For example, new tech=Hacker News, new job=LinkedIn, new romance=Instagram or Tiktok or something?
It's great to see the rules getting enforced! Thanks for the bans. As I was reading through some of them it reminded me why I often find it so hard to have discussions on reddit and how much more constructive it is here.
And also, thanks for having a Middle East sub-thread.
Seconded. But it is a bummer that there is still this bug of a reply accidentally being posted as a top-level comment, which makes Middle-East stuff spill out of the sub-thread.
Being Bayesian
Recently you discussed the lab leak theory of the origin of Covid, and stated that your updated probability of this being true in the light of some new information had not changed much due to the information being “one data point”. This is a misunderstanding. Bayesian updating of a prior is done using the likelihood ratio only - the number of datapoints that contribute to that likelihood ratio is irrelevant (unlike the “frequentist” approach where the sample size formally affects uncertainty). A single datapoint can have a very large likelihood ratio and affect the posterior probability profoundly.
As an example, consider the two prominent Covid origin hypotheses, lab leak (L) and wet market (W), and the single datapoint that the virus originated in Wuhan. Likelihood is the probability of the <data> given the <hypothesis>. According to Wikipedia there are 3 high-level viral labs in China where gain-of-function research is carried out, one of those in Wuhan. The likelihood of <virus arose in Wuhan> if hypothesis L is true is thus 1/3. The number of wet markets in China is not so clear but I am going to use a conservative estimate of 3000. The likelihood of <virus arose in Wuhan> if hypothesis W is true is thus 1/3000. From the above the single datapoint “virus arose in Wuhan” gives a likelihood ratio of 1:1000, and has a profound effect on the posterior probability.
Some quick thoughts, that maybe someone better at statistics than me can answer or comment on?
- The hypothesis rather seem to be <virus arose in Wuhan | virus arose in China>, why restrict it to China? Would doing the analysis for the whole world change the results? For example I assume a large share of the worlds wet markets are in China.
- I think there are more than one wet market in Wuhan, so surely the ratio should be #wet markets in Wuhan / #total wet markets
- As you probably already are aware, I think the priors p(virus arises due to L) and p(virus arises in W), and maybe p(virus arise due to other) - which are pretty hard to assess, are very important for the end result here
1. I restricted the calculation to China as it is the only country with both wet markets and GOF viral labs.
2. The prior probability is swamped by the huge likelihood ratio. The equation is posterior odds = prior odds X likelihood ratio. Eg. if your prior odds of W vs L are 100:1 favouring W then your posterior odds are 10:1 favouring L
I just realized that dividing the world into countries is probably a mistake. Some countries are much larger than others. "In China" is just too big to be very informative.
Maybe the world should be divided into roughly equal population areas that have have borders matching national borders if they include a national border.
Are you talking about this post?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-learning-from-dramatic-events
In that post Scott isn't talking about updating his probability that Covid was a lab leak. Rather, he is saying that, if new evidence came in proving conclusively that it was or wasn't a lab leak, that should not significantly affect your opinion on e.g. whether gain-of-function research should be banned.
If you believe that Covid plausibly *could have been* caused by somebody in the Wuhan lab dropping a test tube on the floor, that should be enough to make you go "holy **** we'd better make sure that can never happen again!" If it then turns out that no actually it was caused by somebody eating undercooked pangolin and the Wuhan lab wasn't involved, that should not significantly change your opinion. The fact that a routine test-tube-handling accident during GoF research *could* plausibly cause a pandemic, is what matters, not whether any specific pandemic was in fact caused by it.
And of course this works in the other direction too: if we believe that people eating bats and pangolins has a significant risk of causing a pandemic, we should pressure China to crack down on it, irrespective of whether it was the cause of the Covid pandemic. As long as both of these practices are *plausible* causes of the pandemic, we should do something about both of them -- which of them was actually the cause of Covid-19 may be of interest to historians but doesn't really make much difference for future policy decisions.
What is the datapoint you are talking about and how do you suggest we reason about it mathematically?
The datapoint is that the virus originated in Wuhan. The reasoning is Bayesian logic.
Does anyone know whether Robin Hanson is still standing by his 2016 predictions in Age of Em that ems created through brain uploading will be transformative to society before AIs are? https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/
His predictions (including estimating that it would take 400 years to reach human-level AI) don't seem to have aged well in the 8 years since (the "Age of LLM"?). But it's possible he'd stand by it.
We have a bet about this at 9:1 odds! So he definitely believed it in October 2021.
https://twitter.com/LechMazur/status/1444780038298218500
It was discussed in the last open thread that he has updated recently: he thinks global population and productivity will decline first, until an Amish-like insular fertile culture becomes the majority.
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-311?r=9m449&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=47344340
Was the mainstream position on COVID in February 2020 essentially the correct one and the Rationalist position essentially wrong, when looking in retrospective? If governments did ~nothing to stop Covid back in March 2020, we would’ve avoided lockdowns, border closures, lots of political hysteria, rapid inflation, loss of trust in vaccines, etc - at the cost of a few million premature deaths of elderly people.
So was it really all that rational for the Rationality community to take precautions rather than encouraging a “let it rip” approach? We did have good mortality data from South Korea by late February 2020 so it’s not like this could be blamed on the lack of data - and by end of March 2020 there was plenty of it from the U.S. as well, yet the rationality community remained resolute in avoiding personal gatherings.
I don't think there was ever a single "the mainstream position on COVID". You'll have to be more specific.
Nit: The mainstream position on COVID didn't turn to lockdowns until March of 2020.
Major Objection: In February/March 2020, a *brief* lockdown would have been rational, to A: level off the worst of the first-wave peak and B: buy time to set up contact-tracing infrastructure and C: do the operations research to figure out better-targeted measures to implement in April 2020.
However, that's not what we did. There was no operations research, and at least in California nobody even started making plans to hire contact tracers until two months after the state of emergency.
What "we" did, was make three barely-educated guesses and turn them into a civic religion. We were going to lock down, mask up, and socially distance the COVID away until Saint Fauci gave us a vaccine. We had Three Weird Tricks to beat COVID, and we were going to use them.
And any attempt to update those barely-educated guesses would have involved admitting that the first guesses were wrong, which since we had made a religion out of this would have been heresy and thus unthinkable. If COVID continued to spread, the only acceptable response would have been to do More Lockdowns, More Masks, and More Social Distancing.
That what was done included lockdowns, and a rational policy would have included lockdowns, does not mean that what was done was rational.
I understand why mainstream politicians and media did what they did. My argument is that specifically the Rationality community ended up being wrong in retrospect by being the first to call for precautions rather than being the loudest voice objecting against all restrictions.
It is a bit surreal to read all the posts from Rationalists from March 2020 patting themselves on the back for supposedly "calling" COVID earlier than the "mainstream". Even if you ignore the fact that they did not actually see it coming earlier than the mainstream, all the panic looks silly in retrospect. I remember one person in the comments of Putanumonit talked about selling out of the stock market at what turned out to be a temporarily downturn followed by rapid growth.
The only person I personally know who died from COVID died in March 2020. They were 28. A big problem at the beginning was that hospitals didn't know how to treat COVID in anyone and then they didn't have the supplies to treat them. It wasn't just "elderly" people dying (as if their deaths are any less tragic than someone else's).
There were surely better actions and policies that could have taken place at the start of the pandemic, but looking at the situation and saying "better to just not doing anything!" doesn't seem very rational to me.
No, it was primarily the elderly dying even in March 2020, as evidenced by statistics from every country. And we knew that since Feb 2020 thanks to high quality data from South Korea.
"it was primarily the elderly dying even in March 2020" sure but the elderly are always the ones "primarily dying". My point was not that it wasn't primarily old people dying, it was that it wasn't *only* old people dying and there is no reason to think "letting it rip" would only increase deaths of old people.
Here is the data from the CDC showing deaths by age over time: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
Sure but the cost-benefit calculation still tells us that "letting it rip" was the optimal scenario. I'm also claiming that this calculation could've been done in Feb 2020 and that the Rationality community ended up being wrong in retrospective.
Is there a specific analysis that are you are referencing or just a general one? I havent seen one which is why I am asking - I want to make sure we are on the same page.
The korean data is compelling but there are big differences between the US and Korean culture and habits in public that leads to a lot of uncertainty. Also, I dont think my behavior was changed much at all because of any mandate.
Basically all precautions I took were based on not wanting to get COVID or give it to my loved ones (maybe these were unnecessary or misguided but they didn't cost me much). I suspect lots of other people would have behave similarly, so the costs of "let it rip" will still include the costs of behavior changes that occurred under the policy that we got.
I dont think more restrictive shut down policies would have helped much. The policies that would have helped were more on the government side and how they delayed or stymied testing or quick roll outs of the vaccine, but those are discussions for another time.
Overall I think "let it rip" has a lot of uncertainty that just can't be accounted for (at least from what I have read).
Are you refering to an actual cost-benefit analysis here, and in that case, why don't you link to it?
I've been wondering how much caution is still warranted. I quite often see people arguing that a significantly increased amount of caution relative to pre-covid is still necessary, either to protect people who are particularly vulnerable or because of long-term effects that were not initially noticable. Most of the people I see claiming this are strangers on Tumblr though, so I don't have put much weight on their opinions. Does anyone know if there's actually good evidence for the claim that covid often does long-term damage to the immune system?
I'm pretty sure there's good evidence that it does not. Til recently I followed a bunch of researchers on Twitter who were apolitical, at least in their professional roles and communication, & that's where I saw results of a study that weighs strongly against that the long-term immune system damage.
However, there is pretty good evidence that Long Covid, conservatively defined, affects about 5% of people the first time they have Covid, and about 2% the second time. Most cases of LC resolve by 4-12 mos. , but there are some that do not. I can't remember the figure, but think it's less than 10% of LC cases. I had what I now think was "Long Flu" about 20 years ago, so I take the idea of post-viral syndromes seriously. My quality of life went from about an 8 to about a 3, and stayed that way for 3 years. However, just going by the stats, someone's odds of getting LC that lasts a year or more or low.
I think what is often ignored in discussing the "let it rip" strategy is the number of people who would have gotten sick at the same time and the load on hospitals this would have caused. Remember that at some points during the epidemic, health care all over the world were completely overloaded. This would clearly have been worse with no lock downs. The cost of this - both in human lives due to lack of proper care, on production, and on secondary effects due to all the sick people doing important work not coming in (including -again health care, fire departments, police, all kinds om maintenance etc. etc.) needs to be accounted for in a proper comparison of these strategies.
I saw a convincing analysis somewhere (probably a link on this site) showing that the best strategy, in fact, was to due a hybrid approach, with some combination of lock downs and opening up.
I'd say in general (based mainly on my stomach at this point) that the response was too mild (too slow to close) in the beginning and too hard (too slow to open) in later parts of the epidemic in most places in the west.
It would've been a problem for a week or two (as seen with Omicron's peak) but then we'd be back to the 2019 normal again.
Maybe, I haven't looked too much into the details - but that was certainly not how it seemed at the time. During Omicron we already had the vaccines, and many people had Covid already and had immunity, so I'm not sure that is too good of an example.
edit: I'm guessing there must be a lot of research and articles discussing the implications of various degrees of lock-down and counterfactuals by now, maybe this would be a nice topic for a "much more than you wanted to know style article"?
There were two reasonably viable strategies -- lock down until eradication, or let it rip. The only really stupid strategies were the hybrid strategies where you have repeated lockdowns but no eradication. These hybrid strategies were what most of the world pursued, for some reason.
Western Australia did it the best, I think... they had about two weeks of lockdown at the very start, and then lived basically normally (albeit stuck in their Argentina-sized state) for the next couple of years before eventually opening the borders after everyone was vaccinated. They did better than the more famous example of New Zealand which had a couple of extra outbreak/lockdowns.
That's a simplistic description. The hybrid approach boiled down to "keep everything from burning down until we can roll out a good vaccine", which kinda worked except for a) the baffling refusal of many people to take the vaccine, and b) the surprising ability of the virus to work around the protection offered by the vaccine.
That said, yes, pretty much everyone did get Covid in the end, but for most people it was the tamed, more flu-like omicron variants, and they had some protection from the vaccine. So it wasn't "merely" a few million "premature deaths of elderly people" (btw, I am quite happy that my parents are still around, thank you), it was also a few million middle-aged people who didn't get their health wrecked by a wacky virus that damaged all kinds of organs.
Not sure where you're posting from, but the US approach of "keep everything from burning down until we can roll out a good vaccine", didn't work at all because it turned into "keep everything from burning down for three months, then everybody is sick and tired of the lockdowns and has figured out that they don't have to obey the lockdowns". Then we waited another six months to approve the vaccine, during which we had a second wave of COVID that was worse than the first as it reached all the people who had been "saved" by the lockdowns but were now out and about.
We were maybe able to keep them from going out to restaurants, but private house parties are even more conducive to spreading infectious diseases so oops.
When you say the hybrid approach kinda worked except for (various exceptions) you left out the biggest way it didn’t work which was: public health institutions doing a crap job of rolling out vaccines and allocating them efficiently. There were a dozen obvious-to-rationalists improvements we COULD have collectively made to get vaccines into more arms as quickly as possible but didn’t due to a weird combination of “equity” concerns, bad math, risk aversion, institutional resistance to change and just general refusal to think clearly about tradeoffs. Had the rollout been less of a mess, vaccine resistance would be less of a factor.
The craziest part is that *nothing has been learned*! If a new pandemic came along tomorrow for which we had plausible vaccine candidates we’d still make the exact same mistakes! We’d still prioritize letting people die over inconveniencing bureaucrats.
What could we have done instead?
First Doses First. Challenge Trials. Using the MARKET rather than command-and-control to allocate at least SOME supply. Rapidly experimenting (via more Challenge Trials) with using a LOWER DOSE to maximize the *number of people you can vaccinate per unit volume of vaccine*.
Hell, how about simply NOT DOING (or at least not SUBSIDIZING) the kind of research likely to generate such plagues in the first place? Have we even made THAT change?
In so many little ways, the approach actually taken implicitly sent the message that this wasn’t *really* an emergency.
This is all US specific right?
I don’t think so? IIRC first-doses-first, challenge trials, free market distribution of the vaccine and experiments with lowered doses basically almost never happened anywhere. There might be some isolated examples of countries that might have done something kind of like that, but it doesn’t look like a US-specific set of issues. I certainly didn’t hear of any country banning gain-of-function research.
Yet responses varied. Just not across the widest possible scale.
(Feeling glad that no one implemented a free market approach)
>(btw, I am quite happy that my parents are still around, thank you)
How much are your parent's generation's lives worth? Should be spend $14 trillion over a few years to stop a chunk of the elderly dying?
How much do we currently spend to extend the lives of elderly people? Should we pay them heart transplants, costly cancer treatments etc? Should we pay them nursing homes , or let them starve if they can't take care of themselves? How about disabled people? How much are they worth?
These are hard questions, and the short answer is, as a humane society, if we can afford it, we should.
All spending has opportunity costs. 14T spent on COVID is 14T not available to spend on anything else.
We can `afford' to spend 99% of GDP on healthcare for the elderly. No society does, and its not because no society is humane.
The answer to that question heavily depends on whether you think human lives have intrinsic value. Every time the topic of COVID comes up, my dad always mentions that the only thing it did was "cull the weak," so if you're like him, obviously yes, the lockdowns were a mistake.
I feel the argument is that we got "cull the weak" *anyway* despite the lockdowns; the vulnerable elderly got Covid (some multiple times) anyway, just slightly later as the chosen restrictions weren't even remotely sufficient to prevent the spread, just slow it down. So effectively our choice between "pay the price of lives" and "pay the price of lockdowns" was "why not both?"
I just responded to someone who dislikes the vaccines, saying that the precautionary principle is valid in itself, and that hedging one's bets can be appropriate. My memory is bad around then, but I don't think the quality of the data we had was sufficient to justify the risks. I feel like this is a bad tendency that rationalists have inherited from Sherlock Holmes stories; in reality, the fog of bullshit is thicker than that of London.
In February 2020? No, I think rationalists and lockdown folks were generally correct.
Per my recollection, Covid was just shifting out of "weird internet thing" and "watching the Chinese freakout" to mainstream attention in February. We really didn't know what it was capable of and we certainly didn't have good data out of South Korea. We hadn't even seen those horror stories out of Italy.
With perfect knowledge, we might ideally have done things differently from February to May but at the time people were making reasonable decision given a dramatic amount of uncertainty. It was easily possible that Covid could have been much, much worse. Once June rolled around, lockdowns became much harder to justify.
Generally correct? The "lockdown folks" admitted to opposing travel bans for reasons of ideology, not effectiveness.
the failure of world governments to pursue an eradication policy in 2020 has a serious case for crime of the century and humanity will be paying for it for a long time
the rationalists were right then and the government's abandonment of public health in the face of this virus is some real banality of evil type shit
I REALLY hope you were this angry at the democrats calling travel restrictions 'racist' as late as February 2020.
I wasn't because I didn't realize what Covid was yet
I am now; endemic Covid may prove to be Biden's real legacy, deadlier than even his wars
The problem with the travel restrictions was that they weren't really strict enough to actually prevent transmission - they had a lot of exceptions and special cases (even when fully enforced), plus of course they never applied to secondary countries that didn't have them. So putting aside whether they were racist, they were at least more there for show than actually effective.
Yes, the "China travel ban" was a good idea, but at that time, Covid had already arrived in the US.
It's hard for a single government to maintain an eradication policy while it's spreading in other countries. If China had halted its spread, that could have prevented things, but once it got out I don't know what any other country could have done to prevent a global pandemic.
Not advocating this, but didn't China demonstrate it was possible to contain it long enough to vaccinate everyone before uncontrolled spread?
China didn't do a good job of vaccinating its people and gave up on "zero COVID" when it became too transmissible for that to be feasible, resulting in a lot of deaths. Other countries like Australia did manage to keep it out until they'd vaccinated their people, but that vaccination didn't eradicate COVID and instead just reduced the number of deaths & hospitalizations.
AFTER they knowingly let it spread to the rest of the world. Not only did they not restrict outwards travel, they literally punished people for trying to let the outside world know about the virus soon enough for them to restrict *inward* travel from china (though that probably wouldn't have happened anyway in the US, because the democrats were calling travel restrictions "racist" as late as Februrary 2020 when the seriousness of the virus was even more well known).
As one of those elderly people, I endorse the measures that were taken.
Covid cost the US $14 trillion (directly and through lost economic activity). Is that worth it to save some elderly people?
If so, then why is that only a good use of money when the elderly face death from covid and nothing else? Why not devote our economy to the preservation of elderly life all the time?
> Covid cost the US $14 trillion (directly and through lost economic activity). Is that worth it to save some elderly people?
There is no alternate universe where COVID does not cause enormous economic damage. Even if the government said "let it rip," people will, shockingly, change their behavior in response to the threat of them and their loved ones dying. Scott did some analysis a while back, and found that high versus low lockdown states of the USA had only modest effects on survival/economy for this reason.
In the absence of financial support, official scaremongering and legal restrictions peoples behavior wouldn’t have changed for more than a few weeks at most vs the 2 years of changes that we saw in practice.
In the absence of financial support the economic situation would have gotten even worse.
Let it rip -> people hear about family/friends dying of covid -> become more conservative/risk-averse in their decision-making -> less demand for consumer products like restaurants -> restaurants go out of business -> people lose their jobs -> less demand in general because people lost their job. This cycle continues until Covid has "let it ripped" its way through the population enough that people stop hearing about family and friends dying. This would have been a LOT longer than "a few weeks."
There is no alternate universe where people were not afraid of the virus. It simply doesn't exist. It was a highly virulent, fairly lethal virus, with no functional treatment, that quickly started overrunning hospitals.
This seems clearly correct. I'm frankly baffled by the idea that "let it rip" would have resulted in serious societal disruption lasting for as little as "a few weeks" at least in the USA. Can't really say regarding other parts of the world but around here....LOL! I mean seriously have you _met_ any Americans??
Also I personally knew two non-senior-citizens who would still be alive today if not for COVID, and know people whose families include more of the same. So even the "let 'em die they're old anyway" approach doesn't seem to hold up particularly well to the observed facts of the virus.
What would you have done in March 2020 in a counterfactual world that just “let it rip”?
Push to legalize vaccines faster. Given that we had the physical product in February and trials take a few months, we could probably have had vaccines starting in May 2020, not January 2021.
Also, more support (or at least less opposition) for the different kinds of vaccines, such as RaDVaC, or the Winfried Stöcker's vaccine.
Fair - but I do remember rationalists still being unusually careful in summer 2021 when all of them were already vaccinated, rather than being supportive of a complete “let it rip” approach post-vaccine.
Yeah, I've been critical of that as unreasonably careful and net harmful (or, well, the kind of critical you are towards people you like when you think they're being unreasonable but don't want to alienate them by dismissing their worries, rather than the kind of critical you are with political opponents).
I think e.g. Zvi moshowitz (who's the closest we have to an official "rationalists on COVID" newsletter) was pretty heavily "get vaccinated and go back to living life" too (although not everyone agreed).
That was also my plan from the beginning -- play it safe until we get the vaccine, then do whatever you want.
I thought that was the obvious way, but apparently for most people it was not. Either protecting yourself or not protecting yourself became a way to express your tribal affiliation, so people keep doing that whether it makes sense or not.
In that world, people would have died from the vaccines (as is currently being claimed re: young people and cardiac events) and the AU Shaked would be decrying the dangerous vaccines and asking why the governments didn't opt for lockdowns in order to slow the spread instead.
It's easy to say afterwards "Well we did X but it's clear we should have done Y", when there's a good chance that had we done Y, people would still be saying "obviously X was the better path".
No, I think the vaccines were always pretty obviously good. There's basically no correlation between lockdowns and COVID deaths, but a very strong one with vaccine uptake.
Turnabout is always fair play, so if my society had chosen to put me in harm's way, I would have endeavored to make the most nearly analogous choice.
This seems like an argument that proves an awful lot you don't intend it to.
Whether or not they were the right decision on net, lockdowns caused a massive amount of harm. This harm disproportionately fell on the young for a variety of reasons. A few listed below:
- The risk of COVID was much lower for the young, so the cost/benefit ratio was skewed in favour of the elderly
- Lockdowns greatly disrupted life events which occur disproportionately to young people (eg going to school, entering the job market, getting married etc).
- Young people are disproportionately affected by mental health issues, and lockdown exacerbated mental health issues. Compounding that, the life circumstances of many young people made lockdown harder to endure without a serious hit to mental health - for example many of my friends spent lockdown in a one-bed flat with no outside space compared to almost all of my parents' friends who spent it in a >3 bed family home with ample outdoor space. Older people are disproportionately more likely to have spent COVID with a spouse too, so getting some face-to-face interaction with another person every day.
- The trillions of dollars of borrowing / damage to the economy will accrue almost entirely to the young.
I assume you agree those harms are pretty uncontroversial, both in terms of their existence and in terms of which group they disproportionately impact. With that said, if you would hypothetically have tried to harm young people for enforcing a 'no lockdown' policy on you, do you agree that young people should seek to harm you for the policy which we actually non-hypothetically did employ and which harmed them to your benefit?
How scary
My wife defended her PhD in computational neuroscience this past week, so if you know of any jobs that need expertise in modeling neuromechanical control strategies, NODEs, EEG data, 8+ semesters of teaching graduate level statistics (she's a whiz with R), or an exhaustive knowledge of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I have the prefect candidate for you. She would prefer to stay in biological data/wearables world if possible, but is keeping an open mind. We currently live in the middle of nowhere while I'm finishing my PhD, so remote is a must.
General suggestions about job searching are also appreciated. Right now the unemployment rate is reported as super low, labor force participation is high, and the US is adding bunches of jobs every month, but anecdotally pretty much every member of my immediate family has been laid of from their long tenured white collar/information sector job and is having tons of trouble finding new employment. I know about problems in the tech sector, but it seems like there more a general malaise in white collar jobs paying more than 80k a year. Anyone else experiencing this?
I think one thing that may explain the disconnect between low unemployment rate and difficulty finding a job is specifically around remote work.
Demand for remote work is off the charts, tons of people want it. Many people who currently have in-person jobs would like to switch. The supply of remote workers exceeds the demand by a fair bit.
At the same time, anecdotally tech companies at least are souring a bit on remote work. It's great for senior people who are already productive and in the habit of working all day, but it's much less good for the average employee and downright bad for new grads or very junior people. That last category could be because they don't have the right habits, or because there's just a ton of on-the-job learning that they need to do and that works way better in person than at home alone only interacting via video.
Having managed teams through the pandemic, I'm now very picky about who I feel comfortable being remote versus coming in at least a decent amount.
Given the state of the job market, have you considered a post-doc position within academia? My personal experience is that there pretty plentiful (though I can't speak to positions within your wife's field) and there's consistent chatter within academia these days about a post-doc shortage.
Pay isn't great compared to the private sector, but it's better than nothing and keeps you in the field.
Remote jobs are becoming more and more scarce. In person jobs in high tech hubs are still plentiful in my experience.
Yeah, the eventual goal is to move to a biotech hub on the East Coast where we are from when I graduate with my PhD in two years. But till then, we are stuck in a university town in the Midwest.
I've been seeing these YouTube ads for a new perfume that supposedly contains pheromones that trigger arousal. I'm pretty sure it's BS but is there any evidence that the human brains responds to pheromones of any kind? It's my understanding that mammals aren't as pheromone sensitive as insects, but you've got secretions like musk which are specifically designed to trigger other mammals through scent. Any chance of a residual sensitivity to certain types of odors beyond the obvious smell good/smell bad?
It’s absolutely true. Ymmv though.
Are they still flogging that horse? There have been products now for years alleging that they contain pheromones and by using them you'll be drowning in (sex of your choice) attention, but I've never seen that they do anything. There are studies claiming that women like sweaty clothing with male pheromones to plain clothing (or something), I'm not too sure since I have no temptation to stick my nose into a sweaty t-shirt to test that:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987372/
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0262
If it's for perfume, then it's a gimmick (and it'll probably smell nasty, into the bargain).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2519788/
If this theory is true then smells could determine histocompatibility of a potential mate in humans, specifically an MHC which is diverse from your own would lead to advantages in the immune system for offspring. This would be dependent on the genetics of both parties though, so you’d have to manufacture something very specific, and also figure out how to mask your own. This is also not proven.
Not exactly what you are going for but i think babies smell the way they do as an adaptive feature to endear themselves to adults. No product required.
I would think that babies smell the way they do because they drink a lot of milk. We like the way babies smell because we like babies.
I have heard more than one Asian person say that Europeans smell like babies; that is, like milk.
These may not be mutually exclusive claims.
Milk consumption may be the bio-mechanism by which the smell is produced. The point is it may trigger a low level response in our brains to put adults in endearment mode, put there by evolution.
Further speculation. I have read the mutation allowing adults to digest milk is relatively recent and spread throughout humans far faster than may be generally expected from the marginal advantage it creates. But... if it was messing with endearment triggers, seems like it would be pretty 'fit'. Make of that what you will regarding stereotypical Asian/European romantic pairings.
Puppies also smell really good (especially when compared to some adult dogs), well after they've stopped drinking milk. The transition from "sweet smelling puppy" to "odiferous dog" is pretty gradual. I want to say both babies and puppies are "fresh" smelling, and older people sometimes have a particular smell (no offense intended) that we associate with aged things generally. Now I'm pretty curious about what could be behind this.
I believe I experience pheromones consciously, and that most people don't experience them consciously, though I have nothing to go on except personal anecdote and intuition.
The nose is a multi-functional tool:
1) You bring an object you are inspecting to your nose, and sniff. Your nose generates sense data and sends it to the brain where it is interpreted as a smell and brought to conscious attention with a smell qualia.
2) You taste food while eating. Your tongue is only responsible for sensing the most basic taste components of a taste: sugar, salt, pH, and protein content. The vast majority of more specialized, unique flavors are actually sensed as smells within the inner sinus. That data as it comes from the nose is essentially identical to what would be transmitted to the brain while simply smelling food and not eating it, but because the brain recognizes that it is eating rather than inspecting, it brings the sense data to conscious attention with a taste qualia rather than a smell qualia.
The above two are I believe very well established within the scientific literature. But I want to stress the difference in qualia here. A sensory input from the same sense organ can generate two very different qualia depending on context. This is why foods taste so different and bland when you are sick, by the way - your sinus is blocked so vastly less sent can make its way into your sinus to be detected, and so much of the typical sensory data from tasting food is absent.
3) You are nearby a healthy, fertile, non-family, opposite-gender individual. Your nose senses their pheromones and sends this sense data to your brain just like any other smell, but your brain doesn't want you to be a pervert and so does not generate any conscious qualia at all, though it does get you aroused and instantiates an abstract sense of attraction and desire toward the person you are smelling.
I think that unlike most people, my brain is doesn't filter out pheromone detections from generating qualia for me. And I think this reduces my reproductive fitness, which is why most people aren't consciously aware of pheromonal qualia.
I will also say that it seems highly plausible that scent is a really useful tool for animals, including humans, to identify each other. Scents are just chemicals, and one of the most basic things that DNA does is build proteins that make chemicals. It seems intuitively plausible to me that one of the easiest kinds of things to evolve with DNA is different scents. And plausible that it is easy to turn on and off different individual scent components biologically. I think pheromones can help detect mates, but also plausibly detect family members, community members, and strangers.
The nose is a highly parallel sensory organ - there are thousands of individual scents it can pick up. Suppose evolution can invent 10 easy to produce and easy to regulate scents. The genes to produce each of these scents are encoded into the DNA of each member of a species. When an individual is born, some of those genes are turned on or off at random, and they stay on or off throughout that individual's lifespan. That individual now has a moderately unique identifying characteristic that can be easily measured by nearby individuals - their particular combinations of active scent genes gives them a characteristic scent code. With 10 genes being turned on or off at random, there are >1000 different combinations in total, which would be plenty of unique identifiers to identify each person in a typical ancestral tribe / Dunbar's number unit of individuals. Seems like this would be a really useful kind of biological hardware for social animals to have. With a little more complexity, if children can inherit some of their scent code from their parents, it could even make for a fairly straightforward hard-coded biological system for determining relatedness at a glance (or rather, a sniff) which has got to be useful for any social animal species.
Frankly, I would be more surprised if evolution hasn't developed this kind of capability for social mammals. I think in the case of insects, pheromones are vastly more simple and standardized within species which makes them much easier for scientists to study. It was also really clear to scientists to look for pheromones as a solution to all manner of insect behavior questions just because there weren't a lot of other plausible sounding solutions. In contrast, higher animals are so much more complex, it is much easier for scientists to come up with many more explanations for their behavior than simple pheromones. And if the pheromone systems themselves are vastly more multi-factorial, they would be much harder to study in the same way as insect ones are.
> musk which are specifically designed to trigger
I had never considered Elon as an example of nominative determinism before.
**applause**
There's certainly evidence, but the studies aren't showing a very strong effect and haven't been replicating as well as one would like.
My personal suspicion is that the self-report methodology used introduces noise, and the attempts to double-blind decrease signal out of the evolutionary range (i.e. a briefly-worn tshirt in a bag isn't really like being next to a sweaty mostly-naked woman at a watering hole).
Anecdotes aren't evidence, but sometimes when I'm around someone of my preferred type who's been exercising, and I get a whiff of their underarm scent, it's like getting shocked by electricity.
Consumer spending makes up a bit over two-thirds of the US economy. So if there was some kind of widespread AI automation of white collar jobs..... wouldn't we almost immediately enter a serious recession/new Great Depression/worse, due to depressed consumer demand? People who have not only recently lost their job, but also don't see the prospect of working again in their sector due to it being automated, are not exactly great spenders. AIs are not themselves spending money to prop up the US economy unless we enter some radically new phase of species evolution. I see all this handwaving that lots of white collar jobs are going to be automated in the future, but I don't think pundits have really thought through the 2nd & 3rd order effects of what widespread automation would entail. At some point society is motivated to *not* automate a ton of middle class & upper middle class jobs.
(Yes yes I know that automation may never happen, that in the past people have made predictions about huge job losses that have not come true, and so on. Your boring canard about 'that's just what the Luddites said!' is not the point of the discussion. This is meant to be a fun thought exercise about the effects of widespread automation on society, not a specific prediction)
It doesn't matter whether "society" is motivated to not automate a ton of middle class & upper middle class jobs. It matters whether the tiny subset of society that actually hires a ton of middle class & upper class people is motivated to automate those jobs. Since each of those employers gets 100% of the cost savings from their enterprise's automation, and and a tiny fraction of the benefits of broad upper/middle-class employment, their motivations may differ substantially from those of "society".
If there are huge layoffs and an ensuing recession or worse, demagogic politicians will run & win on outlawing AI. So yes it matters to society a lot, companies don't operate in a vacuum
Even with more AI automation than now, there's still going to be jobs that basically amount to being a shit magnet - checking and monitoring the AI work results so that if something bad happens to slip through, it's *your* fault, not the fault of some person above you who would otherwise be the one to blame.
> At some point society is motivated to *not* automate a ton of middle class & upper middle class jobs.
I totally buy all of the premises of your thought experiment. I think we are facing a massive loss of middle class jobs as we figure out how to automate the functions they perform. Someone mentioned that it took a long time for tractors to take over. I think that's the wrong comparison.
Consider, instead, how long it took supermarkets to lay off all their checkout people and replace them with a single person to supervise self-checkout. I think that's closer to how it will go down with white-collar jobs: in any domain where margins are really tight, companies will have to switch to the new technology quickly or go out of business (pre-tractor people did not have that constraint). Off the top of my head that includes drivers, filers, people who answer the phone, most lawyers, people who work in shops — most white collar workers, in fact. I think programmers will be safe for a while for the odd mix of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that we bring.
Granted, it's taken a while for self-driving cars to get going — but that's because of all the idiot human drivers that they have to deal with. What if we got rid of them?
Where are all these people going to get jobs after they are laid off.
Answer: they won't.
The model for thinking about this is all the people in manufacturing who were laid off in Thatcher's Britain in the early 80s. It took decades for some of those communities to recover and the only job that some workers found was to be strippers. Others remained unemployed forever.
We might wonder about where all the laid off people will get money. Perhaps a generous government will give them some UBI using revenue from the handful of very rich people who own all the AI. But wait! Perhaps those very rich people won't feel like giving away their hard earned income to lazy ex-white-collar workers who won't even get jobs as strippers. Perhaps they'll all move to New Zealand and manage their growing empires from there.
I think it's a mistake to think about **society** making decisions about what's best for society. People with power make decisions. At the moment that's all the middle class white-collar workers who vote in elections but if they lose all their money and power they won't be making too many decisions any more. It will be the ultra-rich owners of AI companies and the politicians that they control.
I have to laugh, because years back I got into discussions on this very site about minimum wage and blue collar/manual worker wages and got told that no, no, no, see, what matters is *productivity*, goods are getting cheaper, it doesn't matter if the lowly don't earn as much or even lose their jobs because you don't need consumers to buy products (I'm so stupid I couldn't understand how that works but whatever), it's the price. So see all the cheap phones and TVs today! That's the important part!
So in the same spirit, don't worry, Lost Future. The robots will make goods so cheap, everyone will buy and consume, and the economy will boom! How people with no jobs and no money are going to be consumers I have no idea, but I was assured that didn't matter when it came to low-paid working class jobs paying buttons or poofing out of existence, so have no fear for the same when it comes to high-paying white collar jobs! 😀
It seems very easy to solve this with UBI - after all, it seems easy to imagine a world were robots do all the work for us, and we reap all the benefits.
Business-as-usual-capitalism clearly works less well in this scenario - unless we want all the benefits to be increasingly large Yachts and space tourism for the small % who happened to gain ownership of the robots.
To be clear - I see the benefits of free market capitalism right now. This is a thought experiment about a sort-of utopian end game in the far future, where robots can do all or most of the actual work. In this scenario I don't think free markets would work very well at all.
I don't think we're going to get mass UBI - see all the objections to the welfare system as it currently stands. Telling the nation that "90% of the workforce are now obsolete, don't worry we'll fund it by taxing the corporations" - yes, the corporations, who will just tamely take it and not move headquarters overseas for tax purposes or go to court to tie this up in litigation for decades. Those corporations, huh?
If moving overseas to avoid paying taxes is so easy and consequence-free, why haven't they done so already?
Also, even high taxes can be worth it if the money's good - if you lay off 90% of your labor and thus make 10 times the profit, and the government doubles your tax rate, you're still making 5 times as much money compared to not doing business there at all.
Oh, I didn't mean it would be easy to implement as a policy, -just that it seems to be a simple solution from a more mechanical, far view perspective...
There's a certain mindset that causes people to think the one single version of the future they imagine is the only future that is possible. I used to think this way but I've increasingly grown to despise it.
If such a change were to occur, it probably wouldn't be immediately. The Economist had a great article recently on how long it took tractors to spread across farms. It took decades. Computers took a surprisingly long time: there are plenty of boomers and still can't type. Even if the technology is amazing, people take a while, and competition doesn't usually kill firms that do so slowly overnight.
Tractors did displace some laborers and farmers, as famously memorialized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. But eventually society adapted, both by finding things for those people to do, and by changing its structure: Steinbeck records really awful labor practices by firms that preyed on the desperate workers turned out of farming, but those practices in time became illegal.
If we had a really crazy AI push that could displace most white-collar jobs, the reality is that we'd also replace, uh, pretty much all jobs. If you have an AI that can think, write and code, getting to an AI that can do physical things like cook, clean, construct, etc. is not very difficult at all. That would probably result in a society where many fewer people worked, or people only worked if they had to. It might be a bit bumpy getting there, like it's been through most major technological changes, but some enormous section of the population not working or consuming is just not a stable equilibrium in a democracy.
" getting to an AI that can do physical things like cook, clean, construct, etc. is not very difficult at all"
How is your AI going to get into my kitchen to cook, clean etc.? It needs some kind of physical interface to interact with other physical objects, unless you're postulating that the AI will (via wireless tech?) generate and manipulate force fields to load the dishwasher, peel and chop the carrots, and mop the floor?
Those kinds of hands-on job are the ones which are going to be harder to automate away; they need to build purpose-built factories in order to have robots building cars today, they can't just sling 'em into an ordinary factory like human workers walking in on their own two feet. So for big industrial purposes, with AI guiding robots, sure. For building sites? That will take a bit longer. For turning up to vacuum your office and empty the bins? Longer still.
This website promises great advances, but I have some caveats:
https://www.ecovacs.com/us/blog/home-robot-design
Take the photos for the (current) robot vacuum cleaners. I don't have lots of nice, empty, smooth floor space in my home. The places where I want cleaning done, because that is where the dust builds up, are the "take things off shelves and clean there, lift up those bundles of wires, pull out the sofa and vacuum behind it" kind of work that - right now - only a human can do. A little robot vacuum that picks up in the open space of my sitting room does about one-fifth of what needs to be done.
"When it comes to home robots, the first thing that comes to mind is robots that clean. Robotic vacuum cleaners were first introduced in this category, followed by other cleaning robots such as window, grill and pool robot cleaners. Their advanced sensors and cameras allow them to navigate and learn the environment accurately, then give information to their ‘brain’ to plan the most efficient cleaning routes. Together with powerful features like strong suction power, these cleaning robots can initiate the cleaning process without human interference."
I don't have a grill or pool, I would be interested in a window cleaning robot. So what is that?
https://www.ecovacs.com/us/winbot-window-cleaning-robot
So a small machine that I have to put on and take off the window myself. Marginally more convenient than washing the window with my own hands, but not really up there yet as "fully automated, never hire a window cleaner again" service.
Maybe in five years time they'll have AI window cleaners that position themselves inside and outside and don't need me to put them on (three feet above the ground) or take them off. When the days of Rosie from the Jetsons come, I'll be delighted, but so far it seems that replacing the manager who sat in the window office by AI will be a lot easier than replacing the lowly contract cleaners or window washers who maintain that office.
You're right, I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. What I meant was that an AI sufficiently advanced to *replace large numbers of workers* who need to think, write and code would entail sufficient advancement that the robots would be easy. You're absolutely right that the current level of AI performance has been, in practice, much easier than physical tasks.
Agreed. The general rule of thumb is that the more you can reduce a task and it's solution to data, the easier it is to apply machine learning approaches to it.
Which means that, for instance, office work of all sorts is much easier to automate than anything that requires human hands. Pity that we've systematically devalued the exact sorts of professions (teaching, nursing, gardening, mechanics, cleaning, crafts and odd-jobs of all sorts) most resistant to automation. Oh well, I'm sure that the invisible hand will sort everything out for the best.
> If you have an AI that can think, write and code, getting to an AI that can do physical things like cook, clean, construct, etc. is not very difficult at all.
What in the world makes you think that?
We already have human minds that can think, write, and code *and* have spatial reasoning abilities and the physical capacity to experiment. It turns out robotics is still really hard.
There's an observation that had already been made in AI/ML 20+ years ago, but should probably be evident to everyone by now: our historical predictions about what's easy and what's hard in AI are somewhere between "useless" and "exactly backwards." It turns out art, poetry, and lying are pretty easy. Locomotion is hard. Manual dexterity is really hard. Logical reasoning is incredibly hard!
We haven't even begun to try to teach AIs to do mechanical engineering or R&D technician-type work, but I would be absolutely shocked if any of that fell in the "easy" bucket. AI has no concept of mechanical reasoning, and the existing approach of shoveling massive amounts of data into it doesn't seem at all promising as a solution to that problem. (Have you seen Dall-E renderings of bicycles? It's seen tons of pictures of bikes, it knows exactly what the parts look like, but it doesn't get how they go together, which means it can't possibly infer what they do, let alone how to improve them.)
As I mentioned in reply to the other commenter:
You're right, I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. What I meant was that an AI sufficiently advanced to *replace large numbers of workers* who need to think, write and code would entail sufficient advancement that the robots would be easy. You're absolutely right that the current level of AI performance has been, in practice, much easier than physical tasks.
A lot of economists have weighed in on this issue, but the central problem (as far as I can see) is that there is no law of nature that states that improvements in technology should always create more jobs for everyone. Instead, the industrial world got lucky in that a large number of people whose grandparents used to be farmers are now sitting in offices performing legal, marketing and admin work. Even this was not evenly spread across the world, of course, and the consequences of mechanisation seem to have thrown up some difficult-to-solve issues like the middle income country trap and the narrowing development window (which Scott has, I think, discussed in the past). So, you know, not exactly an unqualified success for anyone not currently working out of a nice office in a major city.
The other issue is that there is no law of nature which states that economies and societies must inevitably run towards either long-term sustainability (political, economic or environmental), nor that they must be run for the benefit of the majority of the population. Instead, the sort of society which the West broadly thinks of as 'normal' (technocratic, vaguely meritocratic, with a large middle class and relatively well-distributed power structure) may in the future come to be seen as sort of a quaint interlude between the autocratic, unequal societies of the past and the autocratic, unequal societies to come.
For my money, the 'best' outcome would be for improved methods of manufacture to run hand-in-hand with increasing automation, so that by the time that the disruptions of the latter really begin to bite, the improvements in the former can allow for much more distributed, local forms of manufacture and production to compete. We could all live in a world where the village production model has re-asserted itself, even if a large number of us would be completely baffled by it.
The worst case scenario (again, for my money) is if automation starts to really eat into middle-class employment but manufacture remains centralised and concentrated. Because then there is the risk of us getting to the point where the owners of the automated factories realise that they can just make their yachts for themselves and skip the whole convoluted "pay people to work in your factory to make the goods that you then sell back to these same people so that you can make enough money to buy a yacht" system that we currently use. At which point around 95% of the population is surplus to requirements and ends up dying off one way or the other. There is no law, after all, that states that capitalism cannot work as a small market of the hyper-rich buying the few things they cannot make for themselves from each other.
> There is no law, after all, that states that capitalism cannot work as a small market of the hyper-rich buying the few things they cannot make for themselves from each other.
Well, the risk of a communist revolution is one limiter.
Despite early predictions, self driving cars haven't become widespread. I expect 30 years or so of the transition of automation of white collar jobs as there are many types. And during that transition period the combination of low birth rate and shift in spending in other sectors of the economy such as infrastructure makes it possible to avoid a depression with large unemployment.
If you haven't read it already, you might appreciate "The Lights in the Tunnel". It's pretty old at this point and I haven't read it in awhile to see how the predictions hold up, but it's on the exact phenomena you describe.
https://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology-ebook/dp/B002S0NITU/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EDO5S7MY7HOR&keywords=lights+in+the+tunnel&qid=1705900042&sprefix=lights+in+the+tunnel%2Caps%2C333&sr=8-1
Although I think that the phenomenon of 'bullshit jobs' or 'email jobs' (i.e., white collar makework and featherbedding) is somewhat exaggerated, it's also true that many, many corporations employ more people than they actually need to. And, at least in the context of avoiding this particular misfortune, that looks like a good thing. Turns out that corporations are not quite as effectively single-minded at maximizing shareholder value as it sometimes seems, and end up getting mired in a distributed principal-agent problem...
I would further point out that as the fraction of shareholders increasingly becomes foreign entities, the incentive to do anything about this more locally i.e. in the US decreases a bit.
This is the lump of labor fallacy. You're assuming that doing more work (as with AI) causes people to be unemployed because you're implicitly assuming there's a limited amount of work and once it's done people who are leftover are unemployed. This is not the case.
What might happen is that these people go from comfortable highly paid office work into a different field. A huge motivation behind Luddism is relatively well paid people seeking to preserve their incomes in the face of technological change. For example, Luddites themselves were powered in large part by weavers and cloth makers who had an interest in keeping clothing relatively expensive to keep high incomes. But overall bringing down prices will have a net positive effect on the economy and those people will retrain into new professions. There's some research showing those specific people lose out relatively to keeping their higher incomes in the same field. But overall society sees higher incomes and employment and therefore higher spending.
Put another way, we've gone through a huge amount of automation in agriculture and that hugely boosted consumer demand. And we still employ a lot of people and our incomes have gone up. You have to argue AI automation of service work is somehow different in kind than the sort of automation a tractor does to argue it creates unemployment.
"For example, Luddites themselves were powered in large part by weavers and cloth makers who had an interest in keeping clothing relatively expensive to keep high incomes."
No. They weren't trying to keep clothing expensive; read "Shirley" by Charlotte Bronte, where a large part of the plot involves the frame-breakers. It's set in the Yorkshire textile industry and depression of the Napoleonic War of 1811-12. The factory owner can't afford to pay high wages, so he's being forced to mechanise. This means replacing workers, because the machinery means he needs fewer of them to produce the cloth.
The frame-breakers, for their part, are fighting for work. They can't just go "oh well, I'll go off and be a plumber or a carpenter instead", and the move from cottage industry to factory mechanisation is all part of it. Everybody is fighting for their economic interest, because lack of work for the weavers means either taking jobs at lower wages, or no work (and there's no social security safety net). The factory owner doesn't want to throw people out of work, but if he doesn't reduce costs, he has no choice but to close down the mill. The weavers don't want to ruin his business or drive up the cost of cloth, they want to avoid destitution. Customers don't want expensive cloth if they can get cheaper cloth, because there's a depression on and money is tight.
If anyone is selfish, they all are, and saying "but cheap cloth!" doesn't cover the entirety of it. Mechanisation won, and what was skilled work became unskilled work, because the looms did most of it. Now women and children could be employed, at lower wages. The displaced weavers did not "move into new professions", they worked for subsistence wages or were unemployed.
While I have no objections to seeing the highly-salaried getting a taste of their own medicine (now we'll see who really *is* productive and creative, won't we?) all the cheap goods in the world are no good if the workers can't afford them, and if the white collar consumers are losing jobs and having to take lower pay, who is going to buy the expensive goods that the iPhone factories in China produce?
A fiction book written in 1849 about events that happened five years before the author was born is not really a historical document. Bronte lived in a time when the guilds had largely lost and the new conflict was between labor and capital in a more modern style. She probably projected that backward. But actual historical documents show the frame breakers were stockingers and weavers and the like, not factory workers. And since we know their pay rates we know they were middle class to upper middle class, richer than the workers who they were making unemployed by breaking their frames.
I agree everyone is acting in their own economic interest. The question is if we're willing to make the many poorer for the wealth and job security of the few. Because what actually happened, in the end, was that cheap cloth led to huge economic growth and everyone being better off. Many weavers didn't return to their previously high incomes but there was more income in general. If we privilege the weavers we end up in a world where weavers make more but the world is much poorer.
This crisis where workers can't afford the goods they produce because of low wages has been predicted for two hundred years and not actually happened because technology is deflationary.
I'm going to say that a book written thirty years after the event, in the same area, where the writer could talk to those for whom those events were in living memory, is more reliable as to the general mood than a glib 2024 "it was only the greedy weavers trying to keep cloth expensive for high wages".
You can say that but saying it doesn't make it true. By that logic Gone With The Wind is a genuine account of what life was like in the South. That too was written by someone from the same area and, while there's a bit more difference in time, it was close enough that events were within living memory.
If you want to read actual evidence based history instead of fiction then the Smithsonian has a good article available online. There's also The Writings of the Luddites (a book that's a collection of their writings) if you want to hear it in their own voices. Despite being maximally charitable to their cause it specifies quite clearly they're interested (among other things) in preserving occupational privileges against lower classes and arguing that, while it would keep cloth expensive, it was worth it for reasons.
But we actually know the longer term outcome of this upheaval. Average incomes are more than twenty times higher now than then in developed countries, and work is safer with substantially more leisure per week. The Industrial Revolution and ensuing modern breakthrough was the greatest advancement of living standards and quality of life in the history of… well, of history.
>What might happen is that these people go from comfortable highly paid office work into a different field
What specifically are the jobs that former lawyers, accountants, writers, programmers, and so on going to do, that would pay even a fraction of what they made before? You sort of handwaved this away by not stating what these jobs are, can you name them? The idea that the pool of jobs needing to be done coincidentally matches the population seems to me to be quite fallacious. Not disputing that there will be plenty of plumbing, construction, labor, warehouse and so on jobs.
Anyways I specifically put the 2nd paragraph in there (the part in parentheses) to say that this was a thought experiment and not a specific prediction, because I knew someone was going to come along and be boring and give the 'that's just what they said about automating the Luddite jobs away' canard. It's a boring unoriginal argument that we've all heard a million times. The point of the thought experiment was to model what would happen to the economy in the case of mass layoffs, *not* argue whether those layoffs will happen
"What specifically are the jobs that former lawyers, accountants, writers, programmers, and so on going to do, that would pay even a fraction of what they made before?"
Learn to code? Oops, that's not an option anymore in this scenario. Maybe they'll get jobs in the new, clean-energy, economy the Green New Deal is setting up. All those vacancies for solar panel installers, they're coming right up, just wait and see!
Okay, part of me is laughing, because for years the likes of us deplorables were told that the Thatcherite union-busting was a good thing (and there's a certain element of truth there), that shipping manufacturing industries lock, stock and barrel overseas to low cost labour countries was a good thing, that we were racists if we didn't rejoice over poor Chinese rice farmers now getting to work in sweatshops making chips for Western companies, that 'learn to code', that we deserved what was happening for not being smart enough, educated enough, middle-class enough to get good salaried white-collar jobs. That cheap goods were our reward, that the economy was booming so we must be lying or just ignorant and stupid.
Shoe is on the other foot now, is it starting to pinch? But remember: cheap goods! Rising GDP! Booming economy! Somebody is getting rich, and it's not you, but that's not important because you don't matter!
I never specified they would earn the same income. But there is a different between these specific people losing income and society as a whole losing income. This is the driving force of Luddism: "Yes, society will be better off but I, personally, might be poorer."
I can list as many jobs that aren't those four things or white collar as you want. And I am admitting there will be layoffs in those industries. I'm just not admitting there will be structural unemployment or a net decrease in society-wide income. In which case there's no macroeconomic problem. It might be bad for the weavers that factories pump out cheaper, higher quality cloth but it doesn't lead to general societal poverty.
An answer being boring does not make it bad. You asked if there would be mass unemployment if AI advanced enough to do current jobs and evidence from previous times tech has advanced is relevant. There is the argument that tech starts out replacing a small fraction of jobs humans can do but eventually might be able to do virtually all, but "white collar jobs" is not all jobs. Economies have persisted with a tiny percentage of white collar jobs. Replacing blue-collar & service worker jobs would cover a larger portion of the labor force.
Yes, if AGI becomes a cheaper and perfect substitute for human labor then that's a different scenario. Though not as negative a one as is sometimes portrayed.
The U.S. government could just give out UBI if this happens.
Well, they would have to get the money somewhere. But they could tax corporate profits more heavily... while this has downsides, it also represents a tax on foreign holders of US stocks (currently near 40% of the total ownership is foreign) and thus a clawback or transfer of wealth from other countries to the US. Should be more politically feasible than it might have been in the past.
If tech has advanced that much, then we have prosperity and finding money is less of a problem than it is now. The government could tax the consumption of whoever owns the tech, tax their land, whatever. In the limiting case where robots can do everything it can just grab some robots and have them reproduce themselves so they can be given to those who don't already own them.
" In the limiting case where robots can do everything it can just grab some robots and have them reproduce themselves so they can be given to those who don't already own them."
And how does that help? "Okay, I need food, better get my robot to make some" - out of what raw materials? "Well, uh, my robot can grow the food for me!" In what land do you own? "Fine, then fire up the Rep-Lo-Mat and make it out of - " again, where do you obtain the raw materials? or the energy to make them - "the utility company supplies electricity!" And you pay the bill how?
So you need your solar panels (if you live in an area with consistent enough sunlight) to make the energy so your robot can turn that energy into matter. So simple, sure! This is not the United Federation of Planets *quite* yet, 'give everyone a robot' isn't going to work. Everyone has a computer/smartphone, but they're not all working as software engineers with those resources.
You're right about land being scarce, which is why it makes sense for taxes to be laid on the unimproved value of land.
According to anyone from 100 years ago, we have amazing tech advances now. But nobody would argue that we have prosperity.
...EVERYONE would argue that we have prosperity. You're on the goddamn Internet.
So what will happen when I go and tell all the people who feel poor and struggling that they are not actually poor and struggling, they're actually prosperous? Will they feel any different?
This is exactly my point: prosperity/happiness is all subject to the hedonic treadmill. In the 1930s they thought that once we had machines to do all the drudgery for us, we'd all work 5 hours a week and be happy. That didn't happen, but yet we're still making the same predictions. It seems like we should learn something from the past.
No, the central bank determines aggregate demand.
Hi, in early 2021 I posted here regarding the COVID vaccines. At that time I said that I thought the dangers of a new variety of medical treatment outweighed the stated benefits of the vaccines. At the time the prevailing attitude was that my opinion was not rational. I'm now 39 and have COVID twice and still have not received any vaccines. My opinion remains basically the same, I'm curious where people here stand now.
The Covid vaccine was about as effective as *initially* advertised - it did not really contain infection but did smooth off the waves and prevent a large number of deaths, particularly during the otherwise hard hitting Delta variant wave. It obviously did not meet the biggest hype promises of the time when people thought it would genuinely stop the crisis for good (ie. basically make you night-invulnerable to serious Covid, stop the spread etc.), but it has also not been the "10-20 % of recipients will die in few years" style death solution the direst conspiracy theorists breathlessly claimed.
I made a death tole prediction early, thought everyone would get sick and it would be flu like death rate(fantastic anchor and baseline), I stopped wearing a mask about a month in, I skipped applying for many many jobs because they said "anti vaxx need not apply"
I'm angry when I see "killing grandma" rhetoric(such as people just posting rn), I feel vindicated and expect people will start backing away from pill pushing modern medicine quitely(cowardly) and I imagine this is what happened with forced euthanasia post-ww2 people will slowly faze it out of fashion and pretend no one ever supported anything over a decade.
You think that in a few decades we'll have retreated from modern medicine and will be pretending it never existed? That's quite a prediction. Do you see any evidence of a reduction in the use of medical services now, or any increase in the use of non-modern medicine?
*Pill-pushing* modern medicine, teacher complains a kid is noisy in class => METH.
Several the people are the horrific current weight lost drugs will learn the hard way, everyone will probably know someone who had a bad reaction to the neo-vaxxines but *who never made it into a formal data base*
You should have a preference for old, cheap drugs; doctors who will tell you to lose weight or check your house for mold. Rn I believe doctors have major preferences for the newest most expensive drugs with the least real world testing and who think 15 minutes once a year where you ask the patient for they want more or less pills then an hour of insurance paperwork is an acceptable way to treat people.
> Do you see any evidence of a reduction in the use of medical services now, or any increase in the use of non-modern medicine?
The neo-vaxxine "compliance rate" dropped
Podcasters are willing to talk about theories of health that are not "take a pill" or if they are its vitamins and nuutropics(read cheap) where all old media has tons of "new pill ads" and "brought to you by pizer"; while podcasts are growing cnn is dying
Theres talk in the "anti vax" spaces of "how to find a good doctor" which is probably a few bad experiences away from where I am.
Its absolutely important to be critical of doctors pushing things, but to then default to podcasters for advice is very silly.
In what context? Several podcasters are or talk to doctors, would you rather be treated by washington's doctors or joe rogan, is a 10 minute and rushed conversation equal to a 3 hour podcast in explaining your options?
I think that a big problem with Covid vaccines was coercion but otherwise they were very safe. I’ve yet to see any good data showing otherwise.
I got two doses and a booster, don’t regret it as I assume it saved me from a week of flu like symptoms. But I think it was dumb to force people to get one.
> I’ve yet to see any good data showing otherwise.
Would you consider using the vaers database existence be an acceptable argument in a autism vaccine debate?
Why is it discarded in this debate when I imagine that "the government collects statistics after vaccines to look for issues" probaly was an argument in the last one?
If vares isn't good data *could* anyone have gathered good data?
VAERS is not intended to be used in that way. It's intended to be an early warning sign for public health professionals to use to begin their research into potential issues. It's entirely anecdotal. The goal is for people to see potential issues, then research them, collecting better, more robust data. Using VAERS as representative sample is like watching the nightly news for a single city and drawing conclusions about the average daily life in that city. (its even worse because VAERS entries are just whatever people, including the general public, send to VAERS, its not checked for truth or accuracy)
In the event vaers reports raise by 100x the soft-mandates should have disappeared and these studies should have started, or something, some process, otherwise its an empty promise that experts are paying attention.
I don't remember any such thing, I don't believe any update to policy ever kicked in.
We would expect the number of reports in VAERS to increase once people started taking the vaccine because millions of people were taking it at one time, it was a very big event so people gave it a lot of attention, and it was very politicized so some people were motivated to report anything that could possibly be related to getting the vaccine even if it wasn't. The raw number of reports doest tell you much of anything without further research.
Here is an example of that further research: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2023-04-19/03-COVID-Shimabukuro-508.pdf this was presented on April 19th 2023 and looked at data from August 28 2022 through April 9 2023. You could probably find more research like this - it took me about 2 minutes to find this one.
We also had very large trials of the vaccine. The most well know with over 40,000 participants: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577 . When it comes to adverse events, there were more severe, life threatening events with the placebo group than the treatment group and there were 4 deaths in the placebo group vs only 2 in the treatment group. https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577/suppl_file/nejmoa2034577_appendix.pdf (Page 9).
Is there a good non-kooky analysis and writeup of vaers data regarding covid vaccination?
I was in a low risk for covid but since I have no meaningful allergies and always tolerated other vaccinations well and worked on-site in an office in a state that didn't shut down, so I decided to get the Pfizer vaccine as soon as I could (had absolutely no perceptible issues with it). I did get omicron in Jan of 2022 but I've had colds worse than that.
One of my direct reports got covid and lost his sense of smell, and the wife of another coworker had an extreme case of vaccine injury, so I've seen the bad stuff on both sides. I just haven't seen high quality analysis because it is so politically charged and/or kooky. I think many reasonable people just froze-in their initial assumptions on the vaccines because the signal-to-noise ratio is so low.
> Is there a good non-kooky analysis and writeup of vaers data regarding covid vaccination?
You not settling a political argument with stock trading like models and data interrupting. Debating about the specifics of vaers would be like adding in politics to a wallstreetbets prediction.
Vaers sent a signal, you should revist why you think this vaxxine is safe; otherwise why is vaers there?
If the vaers data was up for interupation, why shouldn't "vaxxines cause autism" people just talk about details of the vaers system not showing autism but this (long complex nonsense) math show its there? Im just suggesting you should be timeless and consistent between believing "vaxxines dont cause autism" and "neo vaxxines dont cause heart problems", if its not these statistics what is it based on?
I'm very confused by your argument, so I'm probably not understanding it. I accept there have been vaccine-injured people. What do I need to revisit exactly? I was asking if someone already did the work to try to estimate the scope of the problem, since I know I am far from the best person to take on such an endeavor. Maybe for people <50 years old, it was a net negative to take the vaccines, or maybe not. In my case, it didn't seem to cause any problems, and in the history of vaccine development, nearly all of the documented adverse effects show up relatively shortly after the vaccination.
I assumed you were the same person as myst(default profile pics should be random, bleh) and was doubling down on the "no good data"
I think its fine to believe they were "low risk"(I doubt it, but eh) but the start of the thread was claiming "very safe". I don't think good data exists, ever existed and its putting the burden of proof in the wrong place.
> Is there a good non-kooky analysis and writeup of vaers data regarding covid vaccination?
I'm not convinced by computer models or what counts as good statistics in the journals(reproducibility crisis, etc.), it would be disungunisous to give you a link I found and skimmed read the absract. As far as I'm concerned "line went up", government officials saying to ignore the governments data cause "vaccines are safe" are just lying.
I'm sure there are good write ups, but the basic concept of VAERS is that anyone can post any symptoms that they experienced, whether or not there's evidence that it's related to a vaccine, in the hope that if the vaccine has a side effect, then patterns will be found in these reports, and they can be further studied.
So that's the answer to the question:
>Why is it discarded in this debate when I imagine that "the government collects statistics after vaccines to look for issues" probaly [sic] was an argument in the last one?
>If vares [sic] isn't good data *could* anyone have gathered good data
In reality, this isn't the government collecting data. It's more like a government sponsored blog where people can post whatever, true or not, vaccine related or not.
To answer the question of what data could be better, the answer would be data with a control group, like large scale clinical trials.
Another better form of data would be population statistics comparing outcomes in the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, either at the individual level, if those data are available, or in aggregate.
I got put in charge of vaccines at my work, as the employees here were high priority to receive it earlier than general population. I did a lot of research on the different types of vaccines and their effectiveness in real time.
By all accounts, the vaccines were very helpful for high risk categories (older, poor health). They made very little difference for low risk categories (younger, particularly children, and healthy).
I was in favor of vaccines when they first came out and remain in favor for the higher risk groups. I am against all forced vaccinations for covid and feel that there are some populations that are worse off taking the vaccine than not (young children, teenage and young adult males, etc.) and a lot of populations where it's a tossup and doesn't matter. We were told a) that the vaccines provided protections against getting covid (false) and b) that the vaccines prevented spread (false), and c) that there were no side effects (false). I consider all of those a serious hit against health agencies and their reputations.
Had the vaccines always been optional and had governments not claimed things that were untrue (unknown at the time, so they should not have claimed them either way), I think government health organizations would have much better reputations right now and we would be far better prepared, with better buy in on available treatments, for future pandemics than how things actually turned out.
> They made very little difference for low risk categories (younger, particularly children, and healthy)
What exactly does "very little difference" mean? Mortality from having covid? Duration and severity of illness? Long-term effects, e.g. lung capacity reduction, long covid, expected life span post-covid?
I was under the impression the vaccines helped a lot in terms of reducing severity of having covid. My personal experience, triple-vaxxed at the time I finally got it, was a quite mild illness. Assuming the vaccines were responsible for the mild symptoms, it was well worth the tradeoff of the vaccine side-effects (which are definitely much worse than other vaccines I've had, but quite manageable nonetheless).
Very little difference because for young and healthy people, covid's symptoms are typically extremely mild anyway. I got covid prior to the vaccines being available, and other than being tired it was very mild.
Vaccines do help young people, but the difference is negligible. Since 2020 less than 2,000 children under 18 have died of covid in the US. I don't have the statistics on it, but understand that most of those deaths were among children with existing comorbidities (i.e. not healthy). Of the 1.13 million people who died related to covid in the US, 1.06 million were over the age of 50.
Just want to point out the vaccines were optional in large swaths of the country, including where I was living/working at the time. Interestingly, though I kept a picture of my covid vaccination card on my phone just in case, I was asked for it exactly once during the pandemic--and, absurdly, that was not until _after_ the omicron wave when I went to a concert in California, where such insanity is embraced.
Whether they were required is very specific to where you live and what job you have. Many (all?) federal jobs required vaccinations in order to remain employed, regardless of where you lived. Obviously NY, CA, and other blue states were also very likely to require it, sometimes for doing basic things like going out to eat.
In your 30s the main reason two years ago to get vaccinated was to avoid killing older relatives and acquaintances when you get infected. There is a chance of a long covid, but it is in single digits of percent. So your decision is warranted, assuming you don't care about other people. It is no longer an issue, since vaccines are freely available to those who want them. That said, the vaccines have been tested on enough people to prove its (relative) safety.
Unfortunately, the main reason was to keep your job when your workplace mandated vaccines to stay employed - often even if you were a fully remote worker or otherwise could not infect your workplace.
The vaccines did not prevent spread and there was always other options to protect older relatives (not going out when sick, for instance). These were not foolproof, but neither was anything else we could have done. More people died after the vaccines were fully available than before.
Older people and sick people had really good reason to take the vaccine. 30-year-olds did not. Unless you consider forcing people to do it through economic threats to be good.
Vaccination does not prevent you from being a vector. It only reduces the chances slightly.
This comment thread (as Eremolalos has described) is useless, but just a note, here: the claim about stopping the spread was related to the alpha variant, and those who claimed that then claim that it did in fact prevent you from becoming a vector for alpha. As this was the only one (so the claim goes) expected to be a real grandma-killer, it was a success.
This isn't my claim -- I don't have one. Whole thing has always bored me.
While the precautionary principle is valid, I think it needs to generally be subordinate to actually looking at the specific details, otherwise it becomes a reason for never doing anything. (It still might be a reason for hedging bets, though.) In my case, I did enough reading to think that the mRNA technology was a distinct improvement, so I got them. **shrug** And besides, the J&J vaccine used old technology and seemed to be almost as effective, modulo the number of doses, so that would have been an alternative if the worry was solely about mRNA. (And J&J was more stable in places without reliable electricity, like Papua New Guinea, so it was good that we made it.)
I don't think your decision, as described, sounds particularly rational. But I'm also fine with you being able to make that decision (blah blah freedom, blah blah strength through diversity, blah blah not putting all our eggs in one basket). On the one hand, by now, there should be enough evidence that the mRNA vaccines don't do anything particularly bad. But on the other hand, after being infected at least twice, your immune system probably knows how to deal with the covid-19 virus just as well as if you'd been vaccinated. So I'd say a more rational perspective for you might be something along the lines of, "my precaution was a false alarm this time, but no harm done, so I'd be happy to get a vaccine if I need one, but I probably won't need one for a while".
I just had an exchange with someone about a Covid related issue, and remembered afresh why I have vowed not to discuss it online any more: Many many people are locked into positions about various Covid-related issues. They are basically closed systems -- not matter *what* info or reasoning you present, it has no effect whatever on their stance. So I am not willing to engage with you because I have such dread of finding out that you're not "curious where people here stand," you're just sure you're standing in the right place, and would enjoy an argument with somebody who disagrees. In which case, fuck you, I'm not engaging. I realize that may not be your stance, but even so, I'm not willing to chance it.
Hey, you're correct that my post is a shot across the bow and you are unlikely to convince me to change my mind, but you can make your best argument for the world and I promise I won't get mad.
I don't give a shit whether you get mad at me. I'm just sick of talking to people who are not listening and considering what I have to say, but are instead waiting for their turn to argue back. It's *pointless.* Why don't you just print out a page, sort of like a resume, except that it will consist of the 11 covid-related matters regarding which you will never budge an inch, along with your absolute *favorite* ways of expressing each stance and implying that people who believe otherwise are wrongheaded -- italicize those and use a purple font. We can then each hand you a card that says, "OK, thanks for sharing" and go back to our lives.
I do know what you mean, it is frustrating.
I would expect most of us are overwhelmingly in favor of vaccines. Speaking personally, it's bizarre to me that medicine as a whole so wasteful (and was on net bad for you for most of its history), and the controversial bit is the thing that actually works by taking advantage of the immune system we evolved.
It's natural -- if the medicine works, it means that few people die, which is used as evidence that the problem was never serious in the first place.
I stand with Eremolalos. I don't want to argue about Covid vaccines either. But incidentally, today they published some fresh data: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/impfschaeden-corona-100.html
65 million vaccinated people
11827 claims for vaccination damage (that's 0.018 %)
467 cases approved (that's 0.000718 %)
5000+ cases refused
658 cases discharged for other reasons
5597 cases yet to be handled (for lack of experts)
Thanks for the info!
I will note that for particularly healthy populations (or those with more side effects - i.e. young males), those numbers are not very far away from the potential health benefits of getting the vaccine. They're not the same, but both are clearly in the "we should not worry about this" range. From 2020-2023 about 11 million people aged 50+ in the US died to all causes. Almost 10% of those deaths were related to covid (not necessarily from). In the same timeframe about 130,000 children (aged 0-17) died from all causes. Just over 1% were related to covid. So a much smaller percent of a much smaller number. 18-39 were a little bit higher percent related to covid and a good bit higher total mortality, but still way below the 50+ age group.
The vaccines should have been optional in all cases, and provided very little benefit for healthy people below age 50.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
Sergei said above the chance of long covid is "single digits of percent", which is several magnitudes higher than 0.000718 %.
1. Taking the rate of government payout for injury as the actual rate of injury is ridiculous. In the US, there have been 89,000 reported hospitalizations from COVID vaccination which resulted in 12,000 claims for COVID vaccine injury and only 6 people have received compensation. Do you think that means only 6 people have been injured in the US?
2. You would need to show that the vaccine reduced the risk of long COVID more than the risk from the product itself. Roughly 8% of VSAFE participants reported vaccine side effects that they sought medical attention for. The MOST optimistic study I've seen says "full" vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID from around 12% to around 5% or a 7% absolute risk reduction. You incur risks from the vaccine every time you take another dose.
3. How long does long COVID last? How long do vaccine injuries last?
There's still an open question of what Long Covid even is, let alone whether it's a real thing or how serious it is.
And this is where I stop discussing with you and refer to Eremolalos' wise words.
Trying to teach my 11-year-old daughter prealgebra using this book: https://artofproblemsolving.com/store/book/prealgebra
To say it is not going well is an understatement. Her arithmetic skills are fine, but she is really struggling with understanding the general approach of using abstract mathematical properties in various demonstrations (e.g., use the definition of subtraction [a - b = a + (-b)] to show that -11 - 13 = - (11 + 13)). She has memorized the algebraic forms of the various properties (e.g., the distributive property is a(b+c) = ab + ac), but she can't "see" where to apply them, nor that the variables can stand for whole expressions rather than just single numbers. So we're slowly working through the book, but I don't get the sense that she's really mastering or learning anything. Plus she has a bunch of vague slogans in her head taught at school that she's either mis-remembering or misapplying interfering with everything as well. It also doesn't help that she hates trial and error, and gets very upset if she doesn't know how to do something correctly.
Anyone have any suggestions as to how to proceed? I'm assuming at this point that it's a failure of pedagogy on my part, and maybe some more practice would help (but practice with what, exactly?). Or is there some other way to explain these sorts of abstractions to someone having trouble with them? Any books/videos that have helped you teach mathematical reasoning to kids? Maybe I should just make a zillion practice problems and eventually her math pattern-matcher will come online? That doesn't sound like fun, but I'm not sure what else to do. Or I could just wait until she's older, but I would like her to be able to take the more advanced math classes in middle school.
It's not quite what you were asking for, but I just happened to stumble across this link, which has some suggestions for math books for children in the middle, and I recalled this thread.
https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/how-to-help-parents-and-teachers
Thanks for all the replies; I'll work on concretization and look into some of the supplemental tools, but as other people suggested, it may just be a developmental thing, so I'm not going to push it too hard.
"she can't "see" where to apply them"
Speaking as someone with no mathematical ability at all (and I suspect I have dyscalculia), that may be the basic problem right there. You may be assuming that she can pick up maths because she'll intuitively understand the underlying principles, but as someone who *can't* see where it all goes, I'm here to tell you it ain't necessarily so.
I don't know if your daughter has a gift for maths or not, but speaking from my own struggles:
(1) Most important thing: do NOT make "learning maths" the fulcrum of your relationship with your daughter. My own father tried to help me out with learning what I couldn't understand at school, and the rows got so bad my mother barred us from ever doing it again. Don't destroy the relationship you have with her over frustration on both your sides. So she'll always have to use a calculator? So the hell what? Oh this means she'll never get a good job as a coder if she doesn't have maths skills? Upthread we're arguing over AI coming for all those jobs anyway
(2) What you say about "they do it differently at school" was a huge part of the frustration; obviously, the way my father had learned to do maths forty years before was completely different to the New Maths just burgeoning into being when I was in school. If she's anything like me, she'll be stuck on "This is the way Teacher said to do it and this is the Right Way and I'll get into trouble if I do it differently".
(3) Drop the abstraction and go as concrete as you can. Number lines helped me enormously over figuring out "how come adding two negative numbers is a plus?"
https://www.splashlearn.com/math-vocabulary/number-sense/number-line
If you're used to "negative sign means take this away, not add it on", then a visual representation of moving up and down really helps.
(4) Explain to her what you are trying to do. You may *think* you're doing this, but you aren't doing it in reality. I had to read your explanation there and think about it, and I'm not eleven years of age anymore.
"understanding the general approach of using abstract mathematical properties in various demonstrations (e.g., use the definition of subtraction [a - b = a + (-b)] to show that -11 - 13 = - (11 + 13))."
That's not obvious, and you may well imagine that you've explained it, when you've just (so far as she can tell) said "this is how this works" but not explained it. I had big problems with that in trigonometry, when it seemed to me to be just "this is how this works" but I didn't have an explanation for *why* that was the way.
(5) As others have said, it may not be the right time just yet, it may all click for her later. But do at least contemplate the possibility that she will never be 'good' at maths. Don't try forcing what is not there. If you're both getting frustrated and tired and angry, back off, let it rest, do something else. And good luck!
About dropping the abstraction: Seesaws provide a pretty good concrete way of talking about equations.
I'm wondering if DragonBox Algebra is worth a try? It builds up the ideas of algebra very gradually.
The other thing to do is just wait until they cover algebra at school and not try to rush things - the teachers probably know much more about how to teach algebra than we do as parents and mine at least are much more prepared to do huge amounts of practice in a school context. My older one (13) has learned algebra at school much more than at home (I did teach him a bit during covid) and is sailing through it at school.
If you want to do more challenging stuff at home, I recommend Simon Singh's website Parallel as it is more fun than just doing lots of exercises. I feel like one's job as a parent is to inspire more than teach. If they get excited enough about maths then they will want to go away and learn the harder stuff!
Seconding Jose Vieira here. I was a "profoundly gifted" kid, child of a mathematician, ended up getting a math degree myself, and I have vivid memories of being completely baffled by my mother's attempts to explain algebra to me around age 10. Then a few months later, without any outside intervention, a switch flipped and I got it.
Briefly-once-a-teacher here. It could be she's just not ready for that level of abstraction yet. It's not uncommon for that age. It sounds like she's fine with more concrete applications of those rules (?) but is having trouble understanding what these symbols are all about.
If that's the case it sounds like your options are to A) focus on that and not do any further progress through that book until she's got it B) momentarily give up on that book, and instead just give her lots of concrete applications of that rule to work on, until you're confident she can do those, then move on to something else and return to this plan at a later time. Maybe do lots of stuff where formulas are used all the time to prime her for that sort of thing.
Either way, always try to make the jump from concrete to abstract as gradual as possible. Good luck!
Is there anything she's interested in where knowing more math would be helpful?
This is a very tentative suggestion, though.
Given the importance of trial-and-error, I would focus on that rather than algebra. Agile methods and fast iterations of recursive self-improvement is a must in a complex world.
Nassim Taleb talks about how many big inventions come out of tinkering, with the theory lagging behind. This includes the jet engine, the first aeroplanes etc.
Here are some ideas re tinkering and your daughter. Keep in mind that I'm not an expert, so take these with a grain of salt:
* Make a Rube Goldberg machine together. They never work as expected, and need to be expanded slowly, by trial and error (precursor to industrial engineering?). Try doing this project and celebrating all failures (excitedly say "what do you want to try next time?" etc)
* Introduce her to kids that are high on tinkering, and let them influence her. Maybe they can do the Rube Goldberg Machine together even. Might be a nice way to connect with other home schooling parents.
* Tell her stories about the great tinkerers, how manned air flight was considered impossible, and how many times the Wright brothers had to try and fail until they succeeded. Might be even better if you find a similar story featuring a female protagonist.
Being a former gifted child myself, I've had to learn tinkering and self-love as an adult. I've written about it on my substack:
* On comfort zones, risking failure: https://honestliving.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-exploration
* Awkwardness and fear of failure/risk aversion: https://honestliving.substack.com/p/dealing-with-awkwardness
* How to relate to mistakes: https://honestliving.substack.com/p/second-order-unskillfulness
I have no particular expertise and haven’t played it, but I remember reading that this video game was pretty good for teaching algebra: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonBox
Take her to the zoo, and I am only half-kidding.
...Please be careful not to push her too hard. The "gifted-student-to-mentally-ill-wreck" pipeline is real, considering I've been a victim of it myself. If she's smart and motivated, she can figure all this stuff out when she needs to. And if she's not... there are still plenty of career opportunities for her.
Probably a crazy idea, but try geometry first instead. That might train the right kind of thinking, without any slogans that might interfere with her reasoning.
I feel like people teach math using jargon and wrote when even something like category theory "a monad is a specialized subset of functor" shouldn't be
Algebra is the when you have a true statement and change it into a new, also true statement:
if 2+2=4 and you add 1 to both sides is 2+2+1=4+1 does that seem reasonable, is it true? (amazing I didn't start with 50 pages of unbelievably dense writing or use any foreign words) Why do they teach using super formal "axioms" and a ritual for 3 pages of math homework rather then starting with the simple premise and letting it play out
Developmentally speaking, the kind of abstraction that supports algebraic operation develops late, canonically around age 12. She may not be ready for this yet, and it doesn't sound like she's enjoying it or getting much out of the exercises. Give it another six or eighteen months, and what seemed impossible may come comparatively easily.
I have experienced being an 11 year old homeschooled in algebra.
In the end the solution was to (much later) take a course from someone who wasn't my parents. I also had pretty good success with a hybrid course and Khan Academy (instant feedback and visual progress! Yay!). Also with taking chemistry and algebra concurrently, since chemistry is interesting and uses some algebra.
Something we didn't try, but based on eventual experience might have been useful, would be to switch to geometry for a year or two. I worked my way through Euclid's Elements on a chalkboard, and it was great. This is unlikely to set her back behind most of her classmates unless she's going into something extremely math intensive (and even then, you could come back and tutor her and she could catch up when it's obviously important). I've talked with some mathy friends, and there seems to be something about (generally smart enough to do math) people that latches on way more easily to either algebra or geometry, and the geometry people are currently underserved by the education system. Also, Euclid (real Euclid, not a textbook of how to solve math problems *using* Euclid) is just lovely.
What *are* some contexts where the distributive property is important and useful, outside of algebra class?
I homeschooled my daughter through 7th grade, and she, too, got very upset if she didn't know how to do something. And the thing about math is that there's a kind of bewilderment that hits most of us from time to time -- I remember that imaginary numbers did that to me. I felt like I needed some kind of picture or grasp of what sort of thing they were, and I could not form one. But I had a sort of basic confidence that it would make sense eventually, so I persevered, and learned several more years of increasingly fancy math. But some kids just *hate* that "I don't get it" feeling you always have at some point with new math concepts.
So it might help to identify that feeling, and tell her it's part of the experience of learning math, the way getting out of breath is part of playing tag. But mostly, I think you need suggestions of good ways to get this material about negative numbers etc. across to her. I am sure there is some book or website or teaching approach that does a good job of helping people get an intuitive grasp of how all that stuff works, but I don't know where or what it is. But here's a good lead: There's a website called Hoagie's Gifted. Most participants are homeschoolers, but even if you aren't homeschooling it's very useful. It's a big messy site with all kinds of stuff there, but lots of it is good. There are also parents' forums, and you can ask this exact question on there and probably get some good answers. I was on a forum like that when I homeschooled, and remember that people had great suggestions for how to explain why to divide by a fraction you invert and multiply.
Maybe try betterexplained(dot)com which was some excellent intuitive explainers of maths concepts.
Thanks for the response! Asking homeschoolers is definitely a good suggestion. I'm just doing this as supplementation, which is probably slowing things; in hindsight, I should probably be trying to integrate this with her regular math class in some way!
I was on here before discussing the possibility of keeping an adult submerged long-term as part of a short story about ocean colonization. I finished the short story and have been wondering more about practical applications. There is an existent formula for artificial amniotic fluid which seems to be as simple as a series of dissolved salts:
Na+ (Sodium): 109 mM
Cl− (Chloride): 104 mM
HCO3− (Bicarbonate): 19 mM
K+ (Potassium): 6.5 mM
Ca2+ (Calcium): 1.6 mM
pH: 7.0–7.1
Osmolarity: 235.8 mOsm kg−1 water
I was hoping to get some feedback on problems that might arise with this kind of ocean colonization; not of the seasteading variety, but non-bio-engineered semi-aquatic humans. It seems to me a simple heating and filtering pump system connected to a waterproof suit might suffice, with room for protocols involving the use of dry-breaks and the application of soap powder or anti-biotics to maintain skin health (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13129/). I am not a doctor or an engineer but I have been considering performing a simple series of real-world tests for the idea just as entertainment or for YouTube, culminating in the creation of an ocean campsite(?) with solar panels and protective cage. There might be a number of guinness records that would be easy to break with this tech.
Thoughts?
The Der Durchwanderer ban seems like it may be excessive. User seems to have been banned for saying that the only reason to use preferred pronouns, rather than pronouns matching biological sex is to avoid having people yell at you on the internet. This seems like an actual idea that can be debated on its merits, unlike other banned comments that consisted of substanceless ad hominem attacks, and the like.
That's a topic Scott's long been sensitive about, and debating it in the wrong language is likely to get on his bad side quicker than most.
I think that going through a huge backlog of flagged comments might make it more likely to get banned. At least two of the banned comments had replies from Scott initially (so he saw them, read them, and replied to them without banning them), and then they apparently got banned later.
I imagine that after reading dozens of dozens of obnoxious comments (as I'm sure most flagged comments are), it might shorten ones fuse. I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to do it.
I think it is fine to ban people who make predictably divisive claims, with no attempt to back up their claims, using inflammatory language like "proto fascist gender theologians who deserve pity and contempt rather than obedience."
A different comment making essentially the same claim could conceivably have started a worthwhile conversation and not been ban-worthy, but I don't think this one is a big loss.
Yeah, I'd be quite interested in a reading a civil discussion about the differences between the paradigms of "binary gender with potential gender non-conformity / semi-hierarchical subgenders" vs. "a multiplicity of mix-your-own genders", and how trans people have both historically fit into that and, more so lately, shaped the discourse.
But that inflammatory language is not the way to get there. It's a pity, the commenter did seem to be capable of better discussion later on in that thread, and I think a non-permanent ban would have been better. But if I were going to argue for yet another ban reduction, it'd be for beowolf888, and I'm leaning toward not pushing my luck with respect to annoying Scott by constant appeals for clemency. :-)
I didn't know know that psychology labs were a thing. Full of Rorschach blot generators and fake wiring for Milgram experiments presumably.
(Did you mean to leave this comment here? I don't see how it fits this particular conversation...)
No sorry it's a comment on an item in Scott's header
What the fucking fuck, *beowulf* got banned? He'll state his views bluntly, but does not seem very subject to irritability. And how do you know? Did Scott put up a list somewhere of who he banned?
He was conversing with a troll, and took the bait. **shrug** I'd have suggested something more like 2 weeks rather than a month, but I don't think Scott can be that granular. And I'd also have applied some sort of statute-of-limitations reduction, since it was 5 months ago and quite obviously it's not like the conversation caused any lasting decrease in beowulf888's comment quality. A one-day slap saying "I only noticed this now, don't do it again" would seem right to me.
I wish Scott would farm out this task. A grad student could do it, or some council of present members. Those interested could even run for election and present our ideas of what constitutes good moderation. Banning people 3-5 mos after they first talk trash is basically useless. The trashtalker gets to torture us for *several months* after their first unforgivably godawful post. Reasonable people who lose their temper with a troll don't get a shot across the bow. People who have been humiliated or wounded by some mean jackass don't get any justice until way too late.
I may be misremembering, but I feel as though he's made statements about how seriously he takes this responsibility and not feeling right about passing it off. It's less efficient, for sure, but heavy indeed is the head that wears the crown (and we all know what happens with mods ['they do it for free']).
Yeah, I think part of the problem is that Scott has lots of better things to do with his time than read the comments, so he lacks the context that we do.
It's in the opening of this thread.
I recently read the book Chaos (Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties) by Tom O’Neill, and I was wondering if its various claims have been vetted by someone who knows about the subject. Assuming that O’Neill’s representing his material fairly, it does sound likely that Manson was working as some kind of police informant; that higher-ups pulled strings to keep their asset out of prison; that he then went too far (viz. he orchestrated some of the most visible and sensational murders of the century) and everyone in an embarrassed fit tried to cover up their role in keeping this guy on the streets.
Further along the tinfoil-hat spectrum, I was very interested to learn that psychiatrist/MKUltra participant Jolly West—a man whose research focused on (among other things) inducing psychosis through drugs and hypnosis—lobbied to see Jack Ruby immediately after his arrest; was rejected (because: who is this guy?) but persevered, and was finally permitted after others had analyzed Ruby and found him perfectly sane. West and Ruby were alone together in Ruby’s cell for a while, and then West emerged, and said (essentially), “The weirdest thing, guys! Sometime between when everyone else was talking to Ruby and now, the guy’s gone nuts!” And sure enough, Ruby was at that point crazy, and would remain so the remaining few years of his life.
Can that be true? I understand that Ruby had done at least one crazy, or at least impulsive, thing before meeting West (shooting a guy in public); was West’s extended private interview not actually the watershed moment for Ruby’s madness?
I don’t usually subscribe to conspiracy theories (while aware that the CIA et al. have, you know, conspired quite a bit), but the West/Ruby angle keeps gnawing at me.
Nevertheless, everything I know about Manson comes from two mass-market potboilers (Helter Skelter and The Family) read decades ago, so I’m no position to tell if O’Neill’s a fudger or not. Is there a more thorough debunking/supporting than I've found? Thoughts?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jon+atack+manson
I don't remember enough details about this to post specifics, but if you want videos about Manson, Jolly West, Scientology, and (I think) Aleister Crowley, here it is.
I could believe that Manson was some kind of police informant along with everything else, that kind of con artist/petty criminal is going to have entanglements with the law and if he was in the 'counter-culture' scene he'd have been useful as a low-level informant for drug busts etc.
How protected was he? I'd say not very much, certainly not on the level of "this guy is really important, keep him out of jail" but more useful enough that small charges were let skate/used to hold over his head as coercion if he tried to stop informing.
The rest of it? Drugs, craziness, inflated sense of his own importance that he thought he could get away with literal murder.
I found it quite surprising (assuming that O'Neill is not fabricating things wholesale, which I assume he is not) the sheer number of times (I lost count) that Manson, a federal parolee, would openly violate parole or get arrested for various crimes and then get just shunted back onto the streets again as everyone decided not to follow up on it. If he'd been the mayor's son you'd still say "this is getting to be a bit much," but of course he was an unwashed ex-con druggie, a demographic less habitually treated with kid gloves by the legal system. So it sure looks to me like Something Was Up there.
Of course, O'Neill wants to flirt with the idea that Manson was trained in brainwashing technique by government operatives, which would be…more.
I havent read CHAOS yet but do plan to. So I wont comment specifically about its claims. However, prior to sometime in the 80s when computerized records and greater cross agency cooperation became popular, the US saw a huge number of serial killer who basically just fell through the gaps and were able to exploit lax police practices to continue killing. John Wayne Gacy, The Golden State Killer, Ted Bundy, etc.
From what I know about CHAOS, I think the theory is intriguing and its likely true that Manson benefited from special treatment because of connections to CIA related personnel but overall, without really strong evidence, its hard for me to believe his story wasn't fairly typical of the time (as typical as a psychotic killer can be).
Not having read the book, I can't comment. Going by the Wikipedia article, Manson spent more time in jail than out of it, and even in California he had a tough time - until he (illegally?) moved to San Francisco, and lucked out by getting onto a test project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Manson#1968:_San_Francisco_and_cult_formation
"Less than a month after his 1967 release, Manson moved to Berkeley from Los Angeles, which could have been a probation violation. Instead, after calling the San Francisco probation office upon his arrival, he was transferred to the supervision of criminology doctoral researcher and federal probation officer Roger Smith. Until the spring of 1968, Smith worked at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic (HAFMC), which Manson and his family came to frequent. Roger Smith, as well as the HAFMC's founder David Smith, received funding from the National Institutes of Health, and reportedly the CIA, to study the effects of drugs like LSD and methamphetamine on the counterculture movement in San Francisco's Haight–Ashbury District. The patients at the HAFMC became subjects of their research, including Manson and his expanding group of mostly female followers, who came to see Roger Smith regularly."
So I'm making huge assumptions here, but it's possible that he may have wangled his way into greater leniency due to Smith (and, if we believe it, the CIA involvement in funding the clinic). I don't believe this makes Manson some kind of Manchurian Candidate, but rather that *if* there was black ops money floating around, Manson and his contacts and set were a handy bunch of test subjects and getting locked up would have messed up the studies, so no more influence than "Dude, it's the 60s, everyone in the entire country is coming to SF and getting high, it's not worth your while to bust this guy" was needed.
It also seems that California tightened up parole, and was more inclined to use parole violations to shunt people back into jail, in the wake of the Manson Family murders:
https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mayeux.pdf
"Lending additional urgency to the “law and order” political turn, California had been uniquely traumatized by high-profile and gruesome tragedies such as the string of Manson Family murders in the late 1960s. It is perhaps telling, then, that buried among Presley’s file on SB 1057 was a clipping on Charles Manson. Someone had taken a yellow highlighter to the following phrase: “Manson . . . becomes eligible for parole this year.” Manson, of course, had been convicted under the old indeterminate sentencing system. Moreover, the determinate sentencing law did not cover murder; even under the new system, someone convicted of Manson’s crimes (multiple murders via a conspiracy theory) could still, and likely would, be kept in prison for life. And finally, parole release (what was at issue with Manson) is not the same thing as post release parole supervision (what was at issue with SB 1057), though both are colloquially known as “parole.” Nevertheless, the traumatic memory of Manson, who along with some of his followers was back in the news for various reasons throughout the 1970s, surely contributed to a general climate in which legislators felt it was best to err on the side of caution in criminal justice matters."
It seems (I say cautiously due to the cursory nature of looking stuff up like this) that California had a different parole system, and it may have been much more lenient in the 60s, as during the 70s it was the parole officers themselves that led the push to make parole violations grounds for returning people to prison without another trial:
"Charles Swim, the head of the Parole Agents’ Association of California, submitted a list of examples for publication in the Prosecutor’s Brief, the newsletter of the recently formed California District Attorneys Association, which ran under the headline, “Parole Officers Lodge Protest.” The article began with a statement of concern that district attorneys had been publicly questioning the value of parole supervision. It provided examples describing a range of crimes committed by parolees, from “possession of a .38 caliber revolver and drugs” to “attempting to force a 14- year-old girl into prostitution.” In all seven cases, the local district attorney had declined to prosecute for one reason or another: “to protect the identity of an informant,” “due to jurisdictional problems between two counties,” “due to lack of witnesses of good reputation,” “due to lack of proof of intent,” “due to a defective search warrant,” or “because there was a ‘lack of suitable evidence’ for prosecution.”
Manson probably got the benefit of such a situation, where the cops were arresting him but he got back out onto the streets, plus getting into the experimental study group, and of course this all blew up in their faces later. No need for a CIA asset conspiracy theory.
I have not looked deeply into this specific set of claims but the CIA getting up to some wild shit seems like the most parsimonious explanation for a lot of weirdness in the 60’s and 70’s.
I love the Beach Boys, and Beach Boys fans love to float various theories about why Brian Wilson broke down—his artistic designs on Smile were superhumanly ambitious; the Love/Jardine axis wanted more good-time surf tunes and put so much pressure on him; Murray Wilson was a jackass—but when I read Mike Love’s autobiography and came to the part where Love asserts that it was, pure and simple, the drugs that got to Brian…well, I never thought I’d agree with Mike Love about much of anything, but it hit me as a thunderbolt that, like, of course it was the drugs. It was always the drugs (plus a little bit Murray, Mike adds). So my parsimonious explanation for weirdness in the ’60s is: just the drugs.
But the CIA works as well.
Another possible explanation is that he had a schizophrenic episode. He was 22. He was in the age range where people who have whatever it takes to be psychotic have their first episode. I tried every single drug I knew of except heroin, and used cannabis lavishly, and so did all my friends. None of us flipped out.
Some sources say schizoaffective; the drug use sure paints a messy picture. (By the way, don't you love it when reporters are like "so-and-so battled schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder. They were also diagnosed with manic-depression, paranoia, and schizoaffective disorder."?)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/russespinoza/2019/06/06/brian-wilson-postpones-tour-citing-mental-health-struggles/?sh=587e05116d30
My regular mailman is a guy in his 20s. He always has an album playing inside his mailbag. One morning he came by… Is that flippin’ Pet Sounds???? Sure enough.
Had to show him this from The Onion
https://www.theonion.com/report-album-as-good-as-sgt-pepper-comes-out-about-1820302213
I think my favorite "The CIA was doing _what_???" story is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax
Did "climax" mean "climax" in 1954?
Many Thanks! As far as I can tell, yes.
Oh, signs point to yes. https://www.etymonline.com/word/climax
CIA dealing drugs squares the circle for me.
Yeah, it all comes around…
Why did American, and Western in general, opinion about supporting Ukraine change so much?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/513680/american-views-ukraine-war-charts.aspx
>Why did American, and Western in general, opinion about supporting Ukraine change so much?
Because western media massively overhyped ukraine strength and russian incompetence, as well as the likely effect that sanctions would have, the likelihood of there being a coup/revolt or other way of putin being overthrown very quickly, and the likelihood of putin dying from the 17 different types of cancer he supposedly has. This means the average joe thought the war would be over quickly, but in reality little has changed in the past 12 months and there could be years before anything meaningfully does.
I also think resentment is playing into it. Many americans are struggling with high costs of living and are resentful that the government seems more interested helping some europeans about something.
Have those things really been overhyped? Until the war, there were serious discussions on the Internet that assumed Russia could march across Europe and be at the borders of France within three days. Clearly that is not the case and the Russian armed forces are much weaker and more incompetent than had been thought. On the coup/revolt side, it is not that long since a column of tanks and soldiers were marching on Moscow! As for Putin having cancer, who knows, but speculation about that is nothing new for world leaders (see what people say about Biden/Trump, for example...)
I would like to think news about Ukraine arresting/killing journalists and cancelling elections broke through to the mainstream
but it's probably just general war and empire weariness
there's something incredibly depressing about Democrats being able to make open support for a right-wing dictatorship that arms nazis and throws socialists in jail into a defining issue... for their side!
Mostly war fatigue with a side order of political polarization. Speaking of which, "right-wing dictatorship that arms nazis" is a good way to convince a lot of us here that you aren't interested in serious discussion. There are other forums where that style is more appropriate.
it's an accurate description of the post-Maidan Ukrainian state. Polemical, yes, but not false.
While we're tearing down statues of Confederate generals they're renaming streets and holding holidays for people who helped carry out the holocaust, while pro-Ukraine media outlets constantly have to blur the insignias of the soldiers they're honoring. Oligarchs run the country and anyone who tries to change that gets thrown in jail or murdered by the SBU.
It is, at minimum, a sufficiently *controversial* description of Ukraine, that it needs to be explained and supported, not slipped in as a parenthetical aside while pretending to want to talk about something else.
And when you open with the latter, you pretty much forfeit the opportunity for the former.
European countries generally don't hold elections during wartime, none did in WWI or WWII, and Ukraine's actions were legitimate under their constitution. Not saying it's a good idea, it does create a pretty glaring political perverse incentive.
I feel like the alternative - having an election where an enemy military can engage in exxxtreme voter suppression where they bomb polling places likely to turn out against them - is much worse. The USA can have elections during wars with ease because nobody can meaningfully bomb our polling places.
I don’t think that’s a realistic concern. Since the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine has been divided between pro-Western and pro-Russian factions, with Russia and the West both interfering to help their side. In 2014, Russia invaded and occupied Crimea and part of Donbass. These regions were more pro-Russian, and their occupation effectively disenfranchised them from the Ukrainian elections and swung Ukraine in a pro-Western direction.
In other words Russia has effectively suppressed the pro-Russian voters in Ukraine already. The parts of Ukraine now in 2024 that remain unoccupied are much more anti-Russia than previously, and the most pro-Western parts of Ukraine such as Lviv are effectively unreachable by Russian bombs. There is no conceivable way Russia could sway the election results their way by attacking polling places and honestly very little capacity for them to attempt such strikes in the first place thanks to Ukraine’s air defenses.
To your argument about the United States, the United States held elections during the Civil War in 1862 and 1864, despite multiple entire states being part of the Confederacy as well as multiple Confederate incursions into the North. It’s true that the US was in little immediate danger in the World Wars but this was certainly not true for the Civil War.
Even if it would be impossible for Russia to suppress Zelensky's vote enough to push him out of office, no matter where they bombed (probably true right now), it is still generally bad. As war weariness grows, it might become possible to seriously influence the election with "just" a +10% vote, which might actually be possible.
Because it became a partisan political issue and so you got negative polarization, rather than remaining a shared priority.
More broadly there's been a collapse in topics which haven't suffered that fate...
What's interesting is the sign of the polarisation. I'm old enough to remember when Democrats were the peaceniks and Republicans the warmongers.
I'm wondering whether it's simply a matter of the fact that the war started under a Democrat presidency. If Russia invaded Ukraine during the Jeb! presidency then would we be having massive 2003-style peace marches in the streets?
I would think the reason 2003 saw massive marches is because the US was the one doing the invading then, and not Russia. Do you think liberals just march in the streets any time a new war starts anywhere?
That may be related, but my money has been on the fact that the Democrats are the ones holding all the reins of power - media, the bureaucracy, even the military generals it seems. They're in charge of those evaluations now, and recognized the need to appear strong and support international efforts to confront would-be expansionist states.
I wonder if opposition to Russia is basically treated as equivalent to opposition to Trump.
Was it that the issue became polarized, or was it that the factions used to have the same policy and now have different policies? That is, were people always supporting what their faction said, but we didn't notice as long as both major factions said the same thing?
Your second option appears to be to be expressing one of the ways that an issue becomes polarized (the other being that both factions pick a side and then people move to the faction they agree with on that issue, rather than changing their opinion on the issue to align with their faction).
I was thinking of "polarization" as being the process when people move from taking decisions based on what they think, to taking positions based on what their faction thinks. So the second way would be pre-polarized, if that makes sense? I'm using the term not to refer to a simple difference of opinion, but to one that's inherently based on factionalism (even if the people involved would deny it).
(I'm not terribly sure this is coherent. I was going to say something different, originally, but then this occurred to me.)
Polarization, the word, is based on the polarization of light, which just means that the various issues all get aligned, so every issue is either vertically or horizontally polarized - that is, it means that instead of people holding position 1 on issue A and position 2 on B and 1 on C, everyone comes to hold 1 on all issues, or 2 on all issues.
Do people pick their faction because of their opinions or their opinions based on their faction? Both, of course; and I don't think you can separate those two factors anyway.
So I think that thinking of polarization as the sorting process that says "on this issue, faction D thinks X and faction R thinks not-X" is more useful than trying to work out whether individuals are thinking X/X' because of their faction, or have joined a faction because they think X/X'.
Hm, on reflection, I think "polarization" in the political sense is a property of people, and thus also groups. So talking about an "issue being polarized" was incoherent. I think it'd be better to say that at first, the issue wasn't politicized, but then it became politicized, at which point polarized people picked the appropriate position. (Recognizing that polarization isn't a binary or even a scalar concept.)
Basically this. Probably inevitable, unfortunately. Seems like the only topics which don't get polarized are those which stay largely out of the public eye.
Timing, I expect. The longer the war drags on, the more will wonder how long we can keep supporting them.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan lasted as long as 10 years (1979-1989), and neither the Reagan administration nor the American public seemed to have any problems supporting them.
Because spreading soviet control was viewed as an, eventually, existential threat to the US.
Russia...issn't. If Russia carves out eastern ukraine for itself, this means almost nothing except to ukrainian nationalists.
> If Russia carves out eastern ukraine for itself, this means almost nothing except to ukrainian nationalists.
It would probably encourage Russia to continue their conquest in some other country (Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan...).
That was in the old days, before we spent sixteen hours a day staring at a little screen getting news pushed at us. It took longer to get bored of things when your only exposure to them was the occasional five column inches on page 8 of the paper saying "that war is still going on".
We're all bored of the Ukraine show now. Season 1 started off strong but now nothing is really happening, and they keep teasing a big development but it never happens.
And while there was a cool subplot at the end of season 1 where the apprentice tried to kill the Sith lord and failed, that was wrapped up early on in season 2, and there's been no replacement.
Wasn’t the amount of support much smaller relative to GDP?
Yes, it was about 10 times smaller relative to GDP. Do you think this is the reason? Still, it is only 0.2% of GDP.
Also the nature of the aid to Afghanistan was low key compared to Ukraine. CIA smuggling hand held antiaircraft weapons and ammunition to Afghanistan, vs publicly sending artillary and armored vehicles to Ukraine.
Yes, definitely easier to justify a smaller expense - especially since Afghani leaders weren’t making a pilgrimage to Washington every 6 months asking for more money while berating Americans for not doing enough.
Good point! There is some evidence that the attention span of the American public has decreased since then. On a short time scale
https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans
quotes Dr. Gloria Mark
>So back in 2004, we found the average attention span on any screen to be two and a half minutes on average. Throughout the years it became shorter. So around 2012 we found it to be 75 seconds.
>This is with logging techniques. This is an average. And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds, and others have replicated this result within a few seconds. So it seems to be quite robust.
I'm offering my volunteer services for minor personal coding jobs as someone with what's basically a bachelor's degree worth of knowledge in Math/CS but no work experience, so if there's any medium/small projects of yours you think someone like me could help with, please let me know.
you should probably say which language, id insistently point are any of mine if you said one magic word
Code for Boston is a group of coders who do projects to help the community. You can probably particpate via Zoom. They're easy to find online.
I only started reading ACX after the move from SSC. I have gone back and read the top posts from SSC but still felt like I was missing out on some of the old classics. I built a website to resurface old content from blogs by sending weekly emails. Let me know if you have any suggestions of other blogs / content you’d like to see, hope you find it helpful!
https://www.evergreenessays.com/
Going through these, I saw you also banned RiseOA. Was that one part of this series of bans?
Should probably include them for completeness.
Anyone here work in forestry, environment, any other outdoor trade? Would love to hear how you broke into the field and got started with the career.
I work at a landscape/landscape architecture design and build firm, but I've been in the outdoor trades most of my adult life. I started at the bottom as a dumb laborer in my 20s and built skills. I've done arborist work, forestry, landscaping maintenance/installation, hardscape installation, sitework for commercial and residential building, and heavy equipment operation for all of the above.
Unless you go to a specific program to become accredited in design or environmental impact, really the only way in is up from whatever starting point you can grab on to. Design is most obviously a desk job most of the time, environmental stuff less so but very administrative in it's nature. If you want to learn the *trade*, you really have to just go get a job.
I have a relative that's a Game Warden. They want a college degree from applicants, though I'm not sure if that's preferred or required. I know they're way behind on applicants and can't fill all of their positions, so it's a great time to get into it!
This seems like the sort of job where the degree is meant to filter for candidates' ability to complete burdensome tasks over long time periods, rather than to filter for candidates' ability to solve complicated problems. I think it's more likely than not that the organization would make an exception for people without degrees who seem like competent implementers.
To increase applications a little bit, the organization could try re-titling their job ads from 'game warden' to 'poacher of poachers'.
Was looking at environmental engineering jobs recently, saw a bunch that involved some serious tree-climbing. I doubt they require any special degree for that. Also, my daughter, who's a very serious rock climber, knows someone who makes his living repairing windmills. He's an itinerant craftsman. Travels to the next job, sleeps in a tent set up near it, climbs to the top of the damn windmill and does what needs to be done. (She concluded, wisely, that he was not marriage material.)
Why aren't there just public support groups for canceled people?
It's an oxymoron. If you have public support you aren't canceled.
Because they would get cancelled.
No, really. If twitter leftists are sad enough to try and ruin your career, they're sad enough to post about these support groups to their followers, mock you for it and make your life even worse.
There are private safe heavens that people move to in order to avoid angry crowds. This question reminded me of the dark forest theory of the internet: https://onezero.medium.com/the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet-7dc3e68a7cb1
Because any such group would need to consist of a broad spectrum of people, ranging from reasonable people unfairly targeted (say, Jordan Peterson) to grade A jerks who are shunned for good reasons (say, Richard Spencer).
The Petersons of the world have nothing to gain, either socially or in PR terms, from hanging out with the Spencers, so they would flee this group. And by evaporative cooling, eventually the group just exists of the worst and most rightfully-shunned people.
Is there none? Doesn't Peterson want cancel culture to end?
If you want people to stand up for themselves, is it the worse thing in the world to say "hey, its ok if your getting death threats mr. spencer, I saw you getting punched and thought thats wrong"?
Because everybody would meta-hate them. It would need to be a private, hidden support group.
I don't think they'd work very well if they were "public". Some accused witches are innocent people, but others may well have made deals with the devil, and what do you think the Bayesian odds of associating with real witches would be, in one of these groups? Especially where everyone can see you? Probably there'd be trolls and zealots from one side trying to infiltrate and dig up dirt, and trolls and zealots from the other side trying to drag you into full-on human-sacrifice-level dark magic.
Another angle is, if you've been cancelled, you've probably gotten a crash course on how horrible people can be, and how much they're willing to lie to benefit themselves. It's not a feeling that's very conducive to opening up to a bunch of strangers online, strangers who may very well be psychopathic liars themselves.
> what do you think the Bayesian odds of associating with real witches would be, in one of these groups?
literally 0, and unironically your assuming a *benefit* to cancel culture; I would expect a bad metric to punish honest actors more then dishonest ones.
I would think bad employees (people hire) have great resumes and do great interviews and are the fastest to return to the pool, good employees with weaknesses searching would be slower.
I would think a fake organic farm would be better at following legalese or paying bribes on time.
This might be one: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-party-is-cancelled
I'm made a Manifold market on the question of how many (if any) hunger deaths biofuels have caused. I hope an accurate answer can get out there and tip the balance of urgency for dropping corn ethanol subsidies, or reassure me that it's merely a waste of money!
https://manifold.markets/Canucklug/how-many-starvation-deaths-have-bio
"Answer will resolve to the market's choice after 30 days"
So, people will be betting on what they think other people will bet the answer will be? That doesn't seem at all informative. Well, not informative as to the nominal question, at least. It's no better than an opinion poll, of nonspecialists but on an obscure but highly technical subject.
I'm probably not _quite_ as pro prediction market as Scott is, but I do generally agree that they are powerful tools for being better informed about the world....but having taken a look at the question and the resolution criteria....I'm really not sure that my priors on this topic should shift at all based on how it resolves.
And as far as being a tool for driving policy change, this one seems even less likely to work on the broader public who would probably see this as just a weird, small, under powered poll.
Hey guys, I'm just gonna leave this here... My latest about how a certain children's show may have kicked off a cultural push towards self-parody. Thx for reading!!
https://kyleimes.substack.com/p/a-self-fulfilling-parody
That took a very long time to bring up the point you're leading with here. Reminds me of The Ladykillers, where there's a whole movie and only like the last ten minutes involve trying to kill ladies.
Recently learned this existed, and by proxy that CoComelon existed, so here you go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-CeYAYpi_4
And honestly, that song is good.
Props for noticing the homage to The Ladykillers
This reminds me of sincere irony. A metamodern idea, where you are able to act with more sincerity by at the same time signaling self-awareness through irony.
If the show's creators had a parodizing intent, the example you provided would have been a perfect example, expressing a sincere critique by a form of accelerationistic irony.
Sincere irony: https://metamoderna.org/when-irony-saves-the-faithful/
> Imagine if you will: a near-future humanist enlightenment where a large part of the goal, maybe aside from election cycles, is that everyone ditches their political affiliations and admits them to be the interpersonal poison that they really are. Is this too much to hope for?
You say that as if a society like that doesn't exist already. If you want an apolitical society, go to Japan. Almost nobody engages with politics because nobody wants to rock the boat. Nobody wants to change anything because that'll probably just make things worse anyways. The result is what's effectively an oligarchy by choice, but at least things are peaceful there. Sure, the government is corrupt and incompetent, but who cares? We're all going to die anyways.
And just to be clear, I'm as pessimistic about that actually happening as I'm sure you are.
Haha, okay. The point was that if the driving ideal behind our society was more humanistic and less two-party team sport, more would get done that helped everyone, and society would be healthier on an interpersonal level. I think? Not apolitical, pro-social.
...And how do you imagine that would happen? Obviously not everyone shares your values, and even if they do, they're going to have different ideas on how to accomplish things because they're less or more intelligent than you are. You care enough about the world that you want to promote your own worldview and your own methods, so you try to gather popular support for it, and... damn, that's starting to sound a lot like politics. The only world where political conflict doesn't exist is one where no one cares enough to actually try to improve anything, which is exactly what's happened in Japan. And while there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, I'm assuming you're not the kind of person who thinks that the answer to hard problems is suicide.
Okay, yes. I'm covertly stumping for my political campaign, and you busted me. And no one in Japan cares? NO ONE??
Pretty much no one, yeah. It doesn't even come up on social media, other than to complain about the current prime minister and call him names (current one is pretty hilarious, 増税メガネ, literally translating to "tax-raising glasses"). Even when the former prime minister got assassinated, it wasn't that big of a deal, though that was mostly because the assassin had a very good justification for it. Turns out people don't like it when the government colludes with a foreign cult that destroyed countless lives, who knew. ...Though, no one actually cared about it until the assassination happened.
And you think Japan would be a healthier society if individuals cared more about politics?
Does Azelastine nasal spray prevent respiratory viruses? Compelling, needs a bunch of er docs willing to sign up as guinea pigs for a multi-center observational trial.
My write up on some of the data is here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/bessstillman/p/pulse-check-does-otc-nasal-spray?r=16l8ek&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Neat, I've been using azelastine since it was prescription-only and never got COVID, I wonder if that's why. I'm the only person I know who never got it, even though I work alongside and live with high-risk folk and I never really followed precautions carefully.
Azelastine feels good every time I use it, blasts the sinuses open and makes me feel like I could snort a horse.
Jake Seliger on why don’t schools teach fundamentals? https://jakeseliger.com/2024/01/16/why-dont-schools-teach-debugging-or-more-fundamentally-fundamentals/
Schools have (at least) two competing goals: teaching, and filtering the successful from the unsuccessful. Sometimes these two goals oppose each other.
If you teach the fundamentals to those who have somehow missed them (e.g. because they came from a worse school), you might do better at the "teaching" goal, but you are needlessly complicating things for yourself with regards to the "filtering" goal. Ultimately, you have to ruin some students' lives. Why not those who already had bad luck in the past?
The solution would be to separate teaching from evaluation, and have a separate institution that is evaluated only on how well they can teach. Such institution would probably be happy to review the fundamentals. Leave evaluation to a separate institution that does not have the power to undercut students' learning.
Warehousing students is a third goal. Teaching them too quickly might interfere with that.
My impression of the conventional schooling I grew up with is that students are rewarded for knowing things, which isn't the same as learning things.
> My impression of the conventional schooling I grew up with is that students are rewarded for knowing things, which isn't the same as learning things.
Definitely. My daughter (3rd grade) is mostly rewarded at school for knowing things she already knew *before* school.
From my perspective, that makes her a smart kid, but it definitely doesn't make it her a good student, i.e. a person who is good at learning *at* school.
MIDDLE EAST SUBTHREAD: Please keep all Middle-East-related discussion as replies to this comment.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mearsheimer/p/gazas-future-apartheid-or-ethnic
John Mearshimer says Israel is doing apartheid and ethnic cleansing and sees "no end of troubles" for Israel.
Can someone explain to me why a two-state (or perhaps a three-state, with Gaza and West Bank not necessarily being a single entity with a single government) solution isn't a viable long-term option?
I hear that it wouldn't be acceptable to Israel, but why? Ignoring the current party politics and whatever motivation Netayahu has in the short-term, why wouldn't it be acceptable in the long run? Because to me it seems that having a clear neighbour with clear borders and clear relationships is what I'd want if I was in Israel, even if that neighbour is slightly hostile - something like Israel-Lebanon or Israel-Jordan relations.
The biggest problem I can see is that Gaza at least is going to be desperately poor for a generation at least. The Gazans have almost no material capital (especially now, but even before 10/7), they have very little human capital, they have almost no natural resources, they have very little good farmland, and with the possible exception of Hamas they have no non-corrupt institutions. And the idea that a coalition of helpful Arab nations, or European ones, is going to come up with the trillion or so dollars of aid that would be necessary to change that, is pure fantasy. The West Bank is in *somewhat* better shape, but not by much and being shackled to Gaza would drag it down while keeping the two separate leaves Gaza to sink.
And a bunch of desperately poor Gazans living next to a prosperous Israel are not going to say "but we are at peace, so all is good, and maybe if we all work very hard our grandchildren might not be desperately poor". They are going to blame Israel for their plight, claim that Israel took all their land and broke all their stuff, and demand that Israel Must Pay. And the idea that Israel is going to pay up to the tune of a trillion or so dollars, is also fantasy.
So a lot of the Gazans, and more than a few on the West Bank, are going to do what we already know they will do in that situation - try to make the Israelis pay in blood. If they're not subject to a pretty thorough blockade, they'll have the benefit of all the weapons e.g. Iran can ship them, and access to training camps, logistical and intelligence support, etc. And on the subject of fantasy, one more: the idea that any police force composed of Palestinians will take decisive action to stop patriotic Palestinians from killing Israeli Jews.
The second-biggest problem is that, even if the first-biggest problem is overstated, the Israelis will quite reasonably suspect that it is the real deal, and the bit where Israel might be persuaded to wait and see if the Palestinians will really try to rape and murder them all, went away about four months ago.
A Palestine that isn't actually occupied by Israel is at least theoretically possible, but it's going to be a Palestine where Israelis are inspecting every shipment that comes in to the country to block anything that might be used as part of a weapon. And we know what that looks like, because that was Gaza on 10/6. Clear borders (nothing makes borders clearer than a blockade), clear relationships, and central to that relationship was the part where the Gazans really, really hate the Israelis.
And no, I don't have a solution. I'm not sure there is a solution.
I think that North Korea and South Korea is an example that two hostile countries can coexist for many decades, and there also is the notion of one country being much poorer and becoming even more so, having propaganda that blames the other side (and USA) for all their ills, etc. So why wouldn't a similar solution have a chance of working? Draw a line on the map, make a DMZ and shoot anything in it, preventing incursions and raids like 10/7 with military force, treating the border as a front line of a war, because it apparently effectively is one.
For the first generation after 1945, there was not a hostile rich nation next to a hostile poor nation on the Korean peninsula, just two poor ones. Arguably the North was richer than the South for part of that period, but not by enough to matter.
So *after* the first generation, the stalemate was locked in, the attitudes were frozen, and they didn't include "those guys stole all our stuff and that's why the poor, let's kill them and take all their stuff". The Koreans, North and South alike, mostly blamed Japan for their poverty, with the North also blaming the US, but not so much blaming each other.
That's a very different situation than Israel/Palestine.
Wouldn't that solution just be what we had on 10/6 (often derided as "the worlds largest concentration camp!"), only a lot worse because you aren't letting anything cross the border at all?
I don't think that would work. For one, I think Gaza would starve.
Neither the pre-10/6 or any plausible post-whenever-this-ends situation involve "not letting anything cross the border at all". Bags of grain did cross the border, are crossing the border, and will continue to cross the border. Clothing. Basic medical supplies. Lumber. Limited quantities of other construction supplies.
Enough to avoid starvation, not enough to build a prosperous economy. There aren't enough customs inspectors in the world to check every shipment of goods necessary for a prosperous economy for anything that could be used to build a rocket, bunker, or bomb. A prosperous economy depends on having neighbors that trust you not to bomb them (or are too weak to do anything about it), so that at least some of your borders aren't subject to that sort of thing.
The ultimate goal is the neutralization of all possible threats to Israel. They're not going to stop with Gaza and Palestine. The only thing that can truly secure one's own existence is power, and that ultimately means stripping all adversaries of agency or existence.
That doesn't sound likely to me, but what would a clear predication to test your theory?
...Well, things currently do seem to be building up to a full-on war in the Middle East. The US ultimately benefits from having a strong proxy state in the area, and any accusations against Israel of crimes against humanity is actually good for the the US, since that makes Israel more dependent on us. And who knows, maybe it'll let Biden pull a George W Bush and keep Trump out of power.
Because a state can accumulate weapons, and Israel will forever try to prevent this from happening.
Israel's standard goal is that the Palestinians have no weapons at all. You notice that the Western powers never suggest that the Palestinians have a right of defense.
The distances are too short, rocket and normal artillery ranges are too long. To accept a solution like that Israel must trust it'll not get overrun when a coalition of neighboring Arab states pull another one. Until now they tried a few times and failed but Israel only needs to lose once to get wiped because they don't have any strategical depth to retreat into.
Still they offered similar solutions in the past and Palestinians rejected them.
I certainly would like this sort of solution, and have no love for the settlement movement, but the problem here is Palestinian rejectionism.
Netanyahu is Netanyahu but Barak and Olmert did offer this kind of deal.
https://thirdnarrative.org/palestinians-still-reject-clinton-parameters/
The problem here is this:
1. A leader like Arafat and Abbas could never cede the “right of return” and end all grievances with Israel in a final status agreement. Doing so is massively unpopular with the Pali public. They would get shot.
2. Even if some other leader, like a puppet installed by the Gulf, did so, firstly there would be a risk that he would get overthrown and second some terrorist groups could just operate as proxies out of the territory even if they weren’t the government, like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
3. At the end of the day the problem is that any territory the IDF withdraws from invariably becomes a terrorist stronghold. It happened in South Lebanon (despite UN peacekeepers) and happened in Gaza. The “two state solution” was tried in Gaza - the IDF withdrew and also removed the settlers. The results have not been good for anyone.
Now, I think Israel should have kept the army but removed the settlers.
>>The "two-state solution" was tried in Gaza<<
A "state" that cannot fish more than a short distance from its shoreline. A "state" that does not control its airspace, electric supply, or water supply. A "state" that cannot cross its border with Egypt. A "state" that cannot have an army.
Come on...
I mean perhaps you approve of all of these restrictions. Just don't pretend it's a state.
I wouldn't call it a two-state solution either.
But for sure, something that's *closer* to an independent state than to full occupation was tried in Gaza. From an Israeli point of view, if you make some steps in the direction of an independent state, and what you get back is far more violence, why would you take more steps in that direction?
Especially since Hamas isn't *saying* that it wants an independent state - it's saying that it wants to destroy Israel.
But ironically, Hamas IS severely injuring Israel. Putting aside all thoughts of ethics, one could say that the October 7th attack was brilliant. It has baited Israel into killing over 30,000 Palestinians. The world is horrified. I am horrified (and I used to support Israel). Israel will not soon recover from these optics.
(Replying to both your comments here)
> Hamas saying they want to destroy Israel, is like a little kid telling the playground bully, "I'm going to kill you." It's a complete fantasy.
Firstly, while they can't destroy Israel outright right now - they clearly can kill a thousand citizens, kidnap 250 people, displace 130k-ish Israelis, and completely wreck Israel's economy. If they can pull off an attack like this once every two-three years - they won't actually destroy Israel, but they will severely damage Israel.
> But ironically, Hamas IS severely injuring Israel.
So we agree apparently - except not sure what you mean by it being "ironic". They can't yet outright destroy Israel but they can severely damage Israel.
Btw, while Hamas can't directly destroy Israel, it might be able to get other countries to join in in attacking Israel - which is definitely possible. Since Hamas is funded by Iran, arguably Hamas attacking Israel *is* a form of Iran attacking - though if it attacked directly, things would be much much worse.
> Putting aside all thoughts of ethics, one could say that the October 7th attack was brilliant. It has baited Israel into killing over 30,000 Palestinians. The world is horrified. I am horrified (and I used to support Israel). Israel will not soon recover from these optics.
Of course it was brilliant. From Hamas's perspective, they've achieved everything they wanted - they hurt Israel immensely, gotten the world's attention back on Palestinians, and gotten Israel to kill many Palestinians, which is helping them a lot.
---
It looks like we agree on a lot, I'm not sure what we disagree on - do you agree that Israel should destroy Hamas? Do you disagree? Trying to locate what (if anything) we disagree on.
Hamas saying they want to destroy Israel, is like a little kid telling the playground bully, "I'm going to kill you." It's a complete fantasy.
>>why would you take more steps in that direction?<<
Please note that my point is that a two-state solution is also a fantasy. I'm not saying whether Israel should embrace a two-state solution or not, I'm saying it's never going to happen.
A full-fledged state without these restrictions would have gone even worse...
Just call it what it is. A concentration camp.
Concentration camps don't have shopping malls and military grade weapons in them.
An eighth of Palestinians have left since Hamas took over, so I think that's at best misleading. It's not like it's impossible to leave.
Anyway, Israel's invasion and reoccupation of Gaza will likely mean the end of the blockade. Gazans will be allowed to leave. Israel's campaign means the end of this "concentration camp".
>>Israel Has Sought Palestinian Demilitarization Since Oslo
The State of Israel’s requirement that a prospective Palestinian state be demilitarized has been in effect since the 1993 Declaration of Principles (DOP), which served as the basis for the Oslo process and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, the term “demilitarization,” as it is commonly understood (i.e., a limitation on war materials), is too narrowly defined and does not sufficiently cover the full range of Israel’s security needs. The broader concept includes preventing the development of symmetrical and asymmetrical military threats against Israel – including conventional warfare, terrorism and guerilla warfare – from and via the territory of the PA and a perspective Palestinian state. Demilitarization, then, is a means to safeguarding Israel’s security, not an end in itself.<<
https://jcpa.org/requirements-for-defensible-borders/demilitarized_palestinian_state/
Israel insists on a Palestine with no right of self-defense. The Palestinians reject this. You then blame the Palestinians for the failure of the peace process.
Do you know why Israel insists on that?
Imagine if the United States insisted on being a Christian Nation, and would employ any means to keep it that way.
Imagine the US ending a defensive war with an agreement that keep the losing side militarily unthreatening. Oh, right - Japan
Because they want a Jewish state, and they will employ any means to keep it that way.
The short answer is that a Palestinian state would become Hamastan 2.0 by default and it could lead to another 10/7.
I’m open to this solution but you would need something to actually make it work, like a permanent IDF presence or a guarantee by the UN to compensate Israel a billion dollars for every rocket fired from this state, and ten billion dollars for every terrorist death.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-312/comment/47832183?r=7es01&utm_medium=ios
What are good places to read summaries of internal Israeli politics and political debates?
I think Haaretz (left), ynet (center), jpost (center-right) are pretty good.
I would also recommend @HeTows and @tamritzblog the twitter accounts.
Here's a successful "diversity and inclusion" program. It turns out that if the population you are trying to do "diversity and inclusion" on is mostly Ashkenazi, it's not so difficult.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rkj00rvktt
Integration of Haredi women into high-tech in general is on the rise. High-tech attracts ultra-Orthodox women who are looking for high-paying professions, since in most cases they are the breadwinners in the family. According to results of recent assessment tests conducted in schools, the haredi girls also possess the skills: the ultra-Orthodox female students lead in math and in reading skills and are ahead of the secular and state-religious sector; they are also ranked second in sciences, not far behind the secular sector. Thus, if in 2022 there were 1,000 ultra-Orthodox girls who graduated the computer programs, this year, their number will rise to 1,300, and next year's forecast is 1,900; in addition, about 500 female graduates from colleges that grant B.Sc. degrees.
What is less known is that these ultra-Orthodox hi-tech women increasingly integrate into the defense industries and into high-tech systems in the defense arms. About 160 ultra-Orthodox women already work in the high-tech division of the police, also in key positions in development projects and in jobs defined as highly classified. In the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), there are about 120 ultra-Orthodox women in high-tech positions, "and there may actually be more, because we don't label people according to their religious affiliation," says Sivan Hever, who is in charge of "Diversity and inclusion in employment" (hiring employees from diverse populations) at the company.
Reading between the lines of this blog, I presume there are a few Zionist readers of ACX. If you're in this category - why? Why would you read a blog from a rationalist atheist who I think would enjoy breaking down religious beliefs and understanding how conflicts propagate themselves? While simoultaneously having a pretty reductionistic view of a complex conflict based on a religion?
There are rationalist or at least rationalist-adjacent Catholics, so I'm not sure why you are surprised by rationalist Jews. In particular, Judaism is about culture as much as it is about theology, so there are plenty of atheist or agnostic Jews.
And part of what Jewish culture is about, is understanding that you are massively outnumbered by people who want to rape and murder you for no other reason than that you are Jews. Or that your grandparents were Jews and you still hang out with people whose grandparents were Jews so, meh, close enough. People have been murdering Jews for no other reason than that they are Jews since *long* before there were Jews in any position to oppress Palestinians; that's basically an unalterable aspect of the human condition at this point.
One rational response to this is to spread out, keep a low profile in small communities, preferentially in places where the rape-and-murder-Jews-for-being-Jews crowd isn't particularly strong this generation. And moving whenever that changes. But since 1938, this response has been considered broadly inadequate.
So, the other rational response is to create a nation of mostly Jews where any Jew can be welcome and where there is a powerful army of Jews tasked first and foremost with making sure nobody murders the local Jews. I am not a Jew, but I have friends who are and I absolutely support this plan. Go ahead and call me a Zionist if you like.
I'm not surprised there are Jewish rationallists - I know several. I'm surprised that rationalists in general seem pretty unconcerned by the suffering that Palestinians have been going through for generations (especially right now). This isn't mutually exclusive with concern for Israeli citizens, which I share.
If you were trying to understand people's level of concern for Palestinian suffering, then you should have asked about their level of concern for Palestinian suffering. You didn't. You asked about Zionism, which is not defined as "insufficient concern for Palestinian suffering". It is entirely possible to be a Zionist, and concerned by the suffering of the Palestinian people.
I used to be one of them. But as Moon Moth says, 10/7 changed things. I
feel about the suffering of the Palestinian people today the way I feel about the suffering of the German and Japanese people in 1943-1945. Objectively, it would be better if there had been less suffering, but the suffering was an unavoidable consequence of a necessary thing, so let's get on with it and get through to the other side as quickly as possible.
Hamas Delenda Est.
As detailed in other threads, I've been trying to nail down what Zionism actually is, and can't say I've made a great deal of progress. (My country has a very minimal Jewish population so I have no intuitive sense of what it is.)
I strongly question how unavoidable the suffering has been, particularly this time round. Today some hostage families staged a protest about how Israel's response has been focused on the destruction of Gaza rather than recovering the hostages. Some survivors were shot at by IDF helicopters a couple months ago. Many hostages have surely died in bombings.
One thing to point out is that there is a difference between this:
> the suffering that Palestinians have been going through for generations
and this:
> (especially right now)
And that difference is Oct 7th. I remember where I was when I heard about it, and I remember feeling sad and helpless and resigned, not just for the deaths on that day, but for the deaths that I knew would come soon in response, as inevitable as gravity. I was actually worried that the entire region would descend into general warfare in a clockwork cycle of retaliation, perhaps even going nuclear. But Biden sent a pair of carrier battle groups to keep that from happening. So there hasn't been as much slaughter as I feared, and I hope that you are also happy about that.
Here's a question or three for you: Going back to the evening of Oct 7th, what did you think would happen afterwards? What kind of response did you think that Israel would make? What kind of response did you think Hamas thought Israel would make?
I've had similar worries, but overall the slaughter is worse than I expected.
I never know what to expect from Israel. For example, they have an incredibly sophisticated and well-resourced military and intelligence system, so I would have expected Israel to see Oct 7 coming a mile away. As it turned out, they did, but senior leadership ignored the warnings, which makes me even more confused.
I think a good response from Israel would have been to commence negotiations with Hamas for the hostages' return, while working to locate their hostages so they could extract them whenever it was safe. What actually happened was they just started bombing everything. A few weeks ago some rescued hostages explained to Netanyahu that they were a bit pissed off when an IDF helicopter fired at them. It seems certain that IDF bombing has killed many hostages who may never be recovered. Hostages' relatives protested about this in a parliamentary committee today. I hope to God they recover their loved ones.
I suppose Hamas expected Israel to negotiate, hoping that negotiations may allow them independence from occupation. I think it's also worthwhile asking the opposite questions - what are Palestinians expected to do after decades of occupation, conflict and failure to negotiate independence?
Your potential responses for Israel would definitely seem appropriate, if all that had happened on Oct 7th was a mass hostage snatch, with maybe a few military killings. But given the sheer number of killings, especially the avoidable civilian killings, I can't see Israel not responding in kind.
I don't know what the Palestinians were "expected" to do. It's a horrible situation, and there may not be any good choices. But the situation for Gazan Palestinians is worse than for West Bank Palestinians or Israeli Palestinians, and that seems to be a direct result of decisions made by Hamas. So maybe the first step is get rid of Hamas, stop launching rockets, and just try to build as good a life as possible. I know, it's not emotionally feasible. But after 75 years and 3 (4, now?) lost wars, maybe it's time to stop. Leave, never forget, start toasting "next year in Jerusalem", and plan on moving back in a thousand years or so.
I've personally been in situations, when I was a child, where I would lash out at my tormentors, even though I knew I wouldn't win the resulting fight, and even though I knew I'd suffer more than they would. It's not a good strategy, but there's a certain satisfaction to it. That feels like what Hamas did, trying to inflict what damage they could, and provoke an Israeli response that they could hold up to the world as a justification. Unfortunately, ethics are time-directional, otherwise you get stable time loops of mutual vengeance.
It probably doesn't help that, as far as I can tell, in Hamas' theology everyone who dies because of Israel counts as a martyr, and goes straight to Paradise. I don't know how many Gazans actually believe that, but it can still create social reality as long as people have to appear to believe.
If anything, Jews are wildly over-represented in rationalist spaces. I don't think it's fair or civil to declare one half an argument to have a "pretty reductionist view".
Sorry for any offense. In other threads I'm trying to nail down what Zionism actually means, so that may affect the question. I guess the lack of caring for those massacred in Gaza, occupied in the West Bank etc. is what I was referring to as "Zionist" but it seems that word might mean something different, which I'm trying to understand.
That is not what Zionism means, one might say that is a pretty reductionist and bad faith smear of Zionism.
There's a saying "Two Jews, Three Opinions"; you'll never find an objective and universal definition of Zionism anywhere, I'd genuinely advise you not to bother. When you encounter it online, and apparently when you yourself use it, it's as a pejorative to pin objectionable opinions on people who don't actually think them.
The conflict is only asymmetrically based on religion, id est it's Islam on one side and the Jewish people on the other.
There is such a thing as an atheist Jewish person, there is no such thing as an atheist Muslim.
Atheist rationalists coming down on the side of Israel should not be surprising.
Im Zionist in the sense of 'i think there should be a Jewish ethnostate' Because I think for whatever reason the world is a dangerous place for Jews and them being able to organize is the most effective long term defense response. Jewish, not religious (religion was illegal in Russia, great grandfather killed for being Zionist) if relevant
Perfect. So, why are you interested in rationality/whatever else ACX writes about?
I just....do. I find basically everything any rationalist I ever talk to wants to talk about interesting, and writings of Scott/elezier etc have meaningfully shaped my worldviews. That's like asking a math nerd why they like math. They know they like math with greater confidence than the 'why'. Maybe you're better off asking if I agree/believe a moral or factual claim that rationalists tend to believe more than non rationalists?
Zionism was just a movement for giving ethnic Jews their own country. It was a movement, it succeeded, and most people in Israel would say they're "Zionists" in the same way that someone from the US would say they're "American" - it just means you're part of Israel.
I feel like the term gets uses in the West in far different ways, but that's all it is - Jews having their own homeland. And yes, that means "ethnic" Jews, not necessarily religious Jews - the majority of Israel is secular. I personally am an atheist.
I don't know if the "majority" of Israel is secular. Among Israeli Jews I thought it's like 40% Hiloni, 30% Masorti, 15% Dati, 15% Haredi or something. But secular+traditional is like 70% or so, and the traditionals are really pretty secular. Israeli Arabs are also more religious than Israeli Jews, right? But whatever, secular enough. It's certainly not any sort of theocractic state, much as this goddamned government that will get creamed in the next elections has tried.
Yeah, according to wikipedia it's like 45% secular, which is almost a majority, and definitely a majority if you also count traditional - traditional is a pretty big range though. There's no simple mapping to Christians in the US, but I think "church-going" vs. not is fairly close.
Zionism is more about ethnicity than religion
Anyway, we should all support Israel for the same reasons that Elon Musk supports Israel.
I don't know where you got this idea that everyone who self-identifies as "Zionist" has a "pretty reductionistic view" of a complex conflict. No doubt that religion plays a large role in this conflict, but why can't secular people have a view too? The woke religion and the Christian religion play large roles in American politics, but I don't see why seculars can't have a view on it. Palestinians are almost all religious Muslims, Israeli Jews are a mix of secular and religious.
Do I self-identify as Zionist? Sure. Do I believe that Israel should Israel continue to exist, like the US? Yes. Do I think Hamas is a terrorist organization that needs to be destroyed?
Yes. Am I more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians? Yes. Would I like for there to be a two-state solution? Yes. Do I think any Palestinian leadership would accept a two-state solution? No. Do I think that even if they did that it would actually work? No. Do I like Netanyahu? No. Do I like the settlements? No. Do I like the judicial reform? No.
Anyway, while it is not perfect, Israel is a developed first-world country with an amazing startup scene, rationalist meetups, great universities, a free press, Arab minority rights, a strong court system, an indigenous space program (one of the smallest countries to do so), etc. It has both a high IQ and a high TFR including among smart people, a welcome rarity these days. It has a high GDP/capita. It has very high levels of happiness. Hamas is a barbaric ISIS-like terrorist organization. Anyone who cares about the future of humanity and scientific progress should side with civilized Israel over barbaric Hamas. Of course I don't mean to say that all Arabs are barbarians, and in fact Israeli Arabs hate Hamas and polls show them as feeling more integrated into Israel than ever after 10/7.
A two state solution seems unlikely at this point. The best hope for peace is that orthodox Jews in Israel have enough babies that there can be a one-state solution with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians with a long term Jewish majority.
That's a very enlightening answer. I guess Zionism is a little hard to define and I'm not an expert by any means. How I imagine Zionism is something along the lines of "Israel has done (almost) nothing wrong, owes Palestinians (almost) nothing, and is (almost) blameless for atrocities like Oct 7". How does that sound as a definition, and would you support that? Obviously there may also be an element of "identifying" as Zionist rather than it simply describing you.
I know a fair number of Jews who believe that, some rationalists, some not. I don't know how many are Israeli.
One could just take the view that Israel's wrongs are outweighted by their neighbors' wrongs.
The majority of Israeli Jews today are Mizrahim who are native to the Middle East. When they fled to Israel they were forced to leave behind land approximately 4x the size of Israel.
So if the Palestinians are owed reparations, the Mizrahim are also owed 4x those reparations.
The ideal solution would be for the Arab states to pay reparations to the Mizrahim, and the Mizrahim can then forward 1/4 of their reparations to the Palestinians, and we can call the matter settled. Sounds fair?
@20WS Intent matters in morality. The proposition that if the arabs were disarmed they would live in peace at roughly UN partition borders (with the expectation that if those borders were violated they would renounce peace), if the Jews were disarmed they would be quickly slaughtered, is that a prediction you would agree with?
Israel's wrongs are not outweighed by their neighbors' wrongs in the current conflict (~1,000 deaths vs ~25,000). The fatality counts are similar in most other instances of conflict.
Re reparations for Mizrahim - if we're trying to calculate the precise disutility caused to people living in the present day, that's gonna be tough. Land area could be one way to do it, but that would ignore land value, generational trauma etc. Probably a more useful and timely question is how to stop the current conflict which leaves hundreds or thousands dead each year.
I don't think you can just do a body count to decide who is more in the wrong, though.
In WWII Japan killed 94,000 Americans and America (with it's allies) killed about 2 million Japanese. Does that mean America's wrongs in that war outweighed Japans?
Imagine a hypothetical: a robber walks into a store and shoots at the cashier with the intent to kill, but only wounds him. The cashier draws and shoots back and kills him. Is the wrongs of the cashier outweighing the wrongs of the robber? After all, the cashier was only wounded but the robber is now dead.
It's clear to me that the destruction of the Japanese Empire was a moral act, and justified under the laws of war. And it's clear to me that the cashier has done nothing wrong. If you disagree, you may have to explain why.
Nah. Zionism is just 'there should be an ethnostate for jews'. I agree the Jews stole land from the Palestinians, mostly by buying up land rights from ottoman landlords and kicking people out, and then with a UN partition plan that has no moral authority. But....most countries are founded that way and Jews needed somewhere to go. Ideally Jews got a part of Germany or Russia or something but politics so it was Israel. The Palestinians responded to the situation in a very morally bad way and arabs as a group have consistently failed to wipe Israel off the map. Jews don't have a right to do what Palestinians have done to the Jews to any of the people abusing them over the last several thousands of years and their choices have led to the destruction of leftist politics in Israel
Zionism is that there should be a homeland for Jews. Israel is not an ethnostate like Liberia. Arabs can vote and there was an Arab party in the last government. Yes, they bought up land from Arab tenants who legally owned it and expelled the Palestinians. The UN partition plan was indeed a nonbinding UNGA plan, so basically what you had was a free-for-all like with India and Pakistan.
I don't know about getting a part of Germany or Russia, given that it was far more practical to get Jews from Morocco and Iraq to somewhere in the Middle East. A Jewish state on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain (like, in the parts of Germany that the Polish/Russians took) would have ended up communist. No thanks. Anyway, the Zionist movement goes back to the 19th century and at least half of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi.
I agree with all of this. 'Ethnostate' to me includes 'all races have equal rights, only people of a certain race can immigrate here'. I'm saying Israel's creation was unfair to the Palestinians. The land 'rights' Jews bought were mostly from 'arabs' who weren't Palestinian and didn't live in Palestine. I'm reasonably fine with Israel's creation, and strongly support its continued existence. Ultimately, any state not controlled by Jews leads to slaughter of Jews (a proposition) so any homeland for Jews must have a mechanism to ensure Jews control it, even if some non Jews are welcome there as full citizens. Whatever that mechanism is, I call it an ethnostate. Is there anything you think we disagree on?
Zionism is the belief that Israel should exist and thrive, in accordance with the principle of self-determination. It does not imply that only Jews but not Palestinians are afforded self-determination or anything of the sort. It's just a national liberation movement for the Jewish people, to have a state in their historic homeland. As a consequence of its sentimental value and proximity to most of the major Jewish population centers (Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Morocco, Syria, Iraq, its own Jewish communities, etc), the historic homeland was the best Schelling point, though Uganda was considered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
You've made 2 replies to this comment - I'll respond to both. As i see it, this comment is about what Zionism is, and the other comment is about the diversity of political beliefs among Jews.
Thanks for defining Zionism However, going back to the fact that ACX has long ties to the rationalist community, I want to break that down a bit to make sure we agree on this.
When you say "Israel should exist and thrive", there's quite a bit to unpack there. Usually, rationalists want to improve overall utility, so thriving is a no-brainer. Some rationalists consider individuals to have human rights. This may not have a solid theoretical basis, but is a useful rule for ensuring higher utility overall. However, political governance systems seem to just come and go as societies change. By "Israel", do you think Zionists mean the current political governance system of the land we call Israel?
If, by "Israel", you mean the set of people that live on the land we call Israel (which was populated by Palestinians in ~1900), then Zionism would seem to imply that people should never have gone there and set up their own political system, since it interefered with the thriving of the people living in Israel at the time.
However, I suspect that Zionists would define "Israel" as something else. I suspect they mean an independent, ddmocratic political governance system, which applies only to people with some Jewish ancestry living in Palestine. Is that the case?
No. We mean a democratic political system applying to everyone under its rule, with a Jewish marjority and some obligations toward diaspora Jews
You might as well ask what Taiwanese nationalism or Singaporean nationalism is, and whether Taiwanese nationalists or Singaporean nationalists would have considered the migration of ethnic Chinese to these places a mistake. Like in the Israel example, the arrival of those people was a net benefit to the people already there. Non-Han minorities in Taiwan and Singapore have rights, just as with non-Jews in Israel.
All the Arabs between the river and the sea have a higher per capita GDP than Egyptians or Jordanians or Syrians or Lebanese. It's still true even if you include descendants of refugees from 1948 in the former category.
By Israel I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel . The country of Israel, which is 80% Jewish, 20% Arab, a first-world democracy with a huge GDP, HDI, etc, great startup scene, a free press, great universities, and so on. Zionists wanted to set up a country like this, they wanted for it to succeed and thrive. It's an independent democratic country, and it doesn't only apply to people with Jewish ancestry. Arabs can vote and have rights, lots of Russians with vague Jewish family ties were given citizenship, Ethiopians with no Jewish ancestry were bussed again, some Ukrainians with literally no Jewish ties were given citizenship, etcetera. It's a Jewish and democratic state, the realization of the Jewish peoples' right to self determination.
It's true in 1900 only a minority of the population was Jewish, but it's hard to make the case that Zionist immigration actually interfered with this thriving. Kligler cleared out malaria allowing for a high rate of Arab population growth. Today Israeli Arabs have Greek-level GDP/capita, unparalleled among non-oily MENA countries. Palestinians in the WB+Gaza have standards of living similar to Egypt and Jordan, and much better than in Syria. You can look at GDP, HDI, life expectancy, and all of that. Overall the picture is that Zionism is a net good for Palestinians. Empirical evidence shows that Arabs are far better off living in Israel, and they have more rights and so on (free speech, elections, LGBT rights, whatever), than under self-government.
No country has done almost nothing wrong, not America, not Britain, and not Israel. Is that a point of view that you have actually seen? Many self-described Zionists have all sorts of criticism of various Israeli government actions. Israel is a democracy with a lot of different political parties. They definitely do not all agree with each other. Have you seen the judicial reform stuff? There is a saying: two Jews, three opinions.
I don't know about what Israel "owes" Palestinians, I wouldn't mind Israel paying Palestinians compensation for whatever grievances (e.g. lost property in 1948, and of course Israel should also be paid for e.g. Jews' loss of property in the Arab world), but unfortunately that won't solve the problem because Palestinians aren't WEIRD rationalists. In an ideal solution the international community would pay Israel and Palestine lots of $$ on net, so that e.g. for every dollar of compensation Israel pays the Palestinians it would get two dollars from the international community. But, are all of the grievances Palestinians have against Israel totally 100% illegitimate? Of course not. Both sides have legitimate grievances, as in any conflict. Even the Axis Powers had *very* legitimate grievances (e.g. Versailles).
As for Israel's blame for Oct 7, given that such massacres happened before the existence of Israel (e.g. Hebron 1929) it's hard for me to really blame Israel at all for that one. It's also worth noting that support for 10/7 in Gaza went *down* a lot since the start of the invasion, while in the West Bank it went up. It's not some kind of response to suffering and oppression or whatever, but rather more opportunity-based. One could perhaps blame Netanyahu for his strategy of being relatively dovish on Hamas and letting Qatar send a lot of cash to them. It's a stretch to say he "propped up" Hamas, as he still cooperates with Fatah against Hamas. But it's true that Netanyahu preferred to try to buy piece and quiet from Hamas, rather than deal with Fatah and the peace process. To be fair to him, a peace process with Fatah didn't have much of a chance of success either, and Fatah was always corrupt and ineffectual anyway, but Netanyahu's policies could not have helped and I strongly believe they were a mistake.
One can describe oneself as pro-Allies without signing off on everything the Allies did (e.g. Dresden, Japanese internment, etc) and also while recognizing that the Axis side had some legitimate grievances too. The existence of religious, ethnic, and tribal motivations here were definitely present in WWII, of course on the Axis side (e.g. Nazi racial supremacy, Japanese ethnic supremacy, Shinto martyrdom). They were also present on the Allied size. Many people didn't like the Nazis because they were anti-Christian and kind of pagan. In the US, the view of the Japanese was certainly colored by the fact that they were non-white and not Christian. People have all sorts of motivations and reasons for having opinions on a conflict. In any case, this doesn't mean that we should strive for absolute neutrality.
How do you think the war is going? How much do you know of Israeli politics? Do you think there’s a chance many Israelis will look back on it as mistake, like the invasion of Iraq for the US?
I think there is no chance that Israelis will look back on the invasion of Gaza as a mistake. It would be as if the Taliban were in America, invaded the Southwest US for a day, and killed 1/10,000th of our population, while some other Taliban-types were in Canada.
I think the war is going decently well, but not as well as the first part where North Gaza was captured quickly. Khan Younis will fall soon. There is talk of a hostage deal but I don't think it will happen.
That’s an impressive level of certainty. Here is a dark scenario, not one I think is particularly likely, but something like it seems plausible: after the Biden administration ends, there is another Democratic administration that’s much more skeptical of Israel. After more atrocities, remaining international support for Israel collapses. Egypt stops supporting the blockade. Another Hamas-like group rises because the conditions causing it to come into existence haven’t changed; funding is still there, and there are always more recruits.
Egypt stops supporting the blockade? No way. I don't think this is scenario is very plausible. Anyway, there are many Hamas-like groups, the solution is to crush them militarily. Eventually Palestinians will learn that terrorism doesn't work.
Do you think most of the remaining hostages are even alive at this point? Are any alive? It's been over three months, and Hamas has had a lot of reason to make a deal to end the war. Giving back the hostages would have been a good idea and would have been a point where Israel could have exited and claimed goals were met, while not destroying all of Hamas. A win-win, I think.
I find myself doubting that they are still alive.
I doubt that many are alive. I do think Hamas would keep some alive just to release propaganda videos from time to time.
My impression is that Hamas is... not a rational actor as we would understand it, and up to a first-order approximation views itself as locked in a zero-sum game with Israel.
Some people who are -ists (Baptists, florists, Zionists) are one dimensional, but most aren't. Most people are multifarious.
Short answer: contrary to propaganda, Zionism is a secular national movement. Theodor Hertzel was a liberal/modernist, and the ruling party in Israel for the first decades was *socialist*.
I recently found out something about why Zionism started as a secular movement-- it's because of a (somewhat common at the time?) religious belief that the right response to persecution was to do religious rituals more thoroughly.
I'll look for the links if anyone cares, but I've seen videos from people who still believe this. I'm horrified, but I guess it makes sense. In times when there seemed like there was nothing to be done about persecution, doing rituals could offer some emotional relief. Memes don't die easily.
That is simply not true. Zionism started as a secular movement in the 1800s Europe out of a desire for a safe homeland for Jews. Secular Jews were (and still are) the most worldly and capable of organizing any sort of movement, I don't think the chareidies would have ever been able to pull it off.
The biggest catalyst that traces directly to Israel is the Der Judenstaat essay by Theodor Herzl, a Jewish French journalist who witnessed antisemitism and especially the Dreyfus affair, where (summarizing heavily) a Jewish French army officer was falsely accused of treason.
I don't think that's a very good description of common attitudes at the time. More like status quo bias, opposition to radical change, and especially to change largely being pushed by ideological opponents. Sure, within the subset of the religious population that didn't support various Zionist movements, all they could do was keep practicing their religion, but religious piety was never seen as an alternative to political solutions. Rather, it was all they had, anyway, after not being enthused by particular political solutions. There were massive Jewish population movements in the interwar period, for example, including the religious, due to upheaval and persecution - there was never some universal dogma that they could never do anything in response to persecution other than practice rituals and die.
Compare to doctors and therapists who tell you to do some stuff, and if it doesn't work, blame you for not doing it right or not trying hard enough. :-/
Yes.
I don't really care about the politics associated with it. But the secular part is interesting - do you think Zionists are interested in people who are ethnically Jewish, rather than religiously so? If that's the case I'm not sure it's helpful, given that ethnic bias is an even larger taboo than religious bias (if "bias" is the right word - not sure what would be better)
(Edit: and by "taboo" I really mean a logical error that most rationalists would find very obvious)
Important background: I am an Israeli, and a Zionist in the sense that Israelis use that word, which is probably different from how you use it.
To your question: the mainstream Zionist view is that being Jewish is an ethnic/cultural/national identity, that is historically connected to a religion just like most such identities used to be before Christianity (e.g. Greek mythology, kings being priests and incarnations of gods all over the ancient middle east...).
The meaning of having a Jewish state is debated inside the Zionist movement since day one, because it is a coalition around advancing a vague common goal, rather than a single philosophy. Most of us, as well a Israel's declaration of independence and multiple court decisions, do *not* take it to mean a state that discriminate among its citizens based on either religion or ethnicity. It mostly mean that the states symbols (flag etc) are related to Jewish culture, and that it does openly discriminate in its immigration policy - which is much more common than an American might expect, even in liberal democracies. Who exactly should get preference in immigration based on being jew, is an ongoing debate inside Israel.
Perfect. So, why are you interested in rationality/whatever else ACX writes about?
Not op, but... for the same reason as why anyone else is interested in Scott's writings, I imagine.
You make it sound like there's a contradiction, not sure why?
I wouldn't use the term "Zionist" here, I'd use the term "Israeli". Zionism in this context just confuses matters.
Israel as a country only really cares about ethnicity - a big chunk of Israel is secular, and there's an ongoing political battle within Israel as to just how "religious" to make the country.
I mean, I wouldn't ever suggest that every Israeli has a similar political mindset and/or level of interest in Scott's blog. I think Zionism is specifically what I'm talking about here.
What do *you* mean when you say Zionist? Most Israelis would consider it to be saying "someone who believes Israel should exist", which is a weird thing to have a word for except that so many people are *against* the idea.
I'm a Zionist in that sense - I'm an Israeli citizen that believes Israel has a right to exist. I definitely don't agree with the minority of Israelis that think Israel needs to be expanded territorially. But I'm not sure what *you're* referring to.
Let me also say that in general what has happened in the past is generally a decent predictor of what will happen in the future. There is a long history of people hating Jews and trying to kill them, and so making sure Jews have an independent country seems like a good idea, especially in light of Jews' disproportionate contributions to scientific progress, global GDP, etc (which is a main reason people hate Jews in the first place).
"If people are assumed to start out identical but some end up wealthier than others, observers may conclude that the wealthier ones must be more rapacious. And as the diagnosis slides from talent to sin, the remedy can shift from redistribution to vengeance. Many atrocities of the 20th century were committed in the name of egalitarianism, targeting people whose success is taken as evidence of their criminality. The kulaks ("Bourgeois peasants") were exterminated by Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet union; teachers, former landlords, and "rich peasants" were humiliated, tortured, and murdered during the Chinese cultural revolution; city dwellers and literate professionals were worked to death or executed during the reign of the Khmer rouge in Cambodia. Educated and entrepreneurial minorities who have prospered in their adopted regions, such as the Indians in East Africa and Oceania, the Ibos in Nigeria, the Armenians in Turkey, the Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the Jews almost everywhere, have been expelled from their homes or killed in Pogroms because their visibly successful members were seen as parasites and exploiters."
- Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate
Do you think that abolishing all religious and ethnic nationalism actually would actually maximize global GDP and take civilization to the stars? You might just get communism, low TFR, etcetera. Since most normies won't accept HBD, these are at least good excuses to favor high-skill immigration over low-skill immigration and prevent e.g. the destruction of every first-world country by a combination of mass third-world migration and then "equity" for those third-world immigrants, as the far-left wants with Israel.
There is a strong effective altruist case to be pro-religion. Empirically it massively increases TFR and life happiness. I am an atheist. I don't deny that religion is behind some bad policies but I am not sure what's to dislike about it. Humans need some kind of religion in some sense. Without religion you get a void of wokism, which also has irrational beliefs, but doesn't make you happy or increase TFR.
What are different ways to throw money at this problem and have a chance of success? Here are some that come to mind:
- pay Egypt (and maybe Jordan) a cheerful price (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MzKKi7niyEqkBPnyu/your-cheerful-price) to take over Gaza (and maybe West Bank).
- pay as many Gazans as are interested a cheerful price to leave and go somewhere else, renouncing all claims in perpetuity.
- pay interested Israelis to move somewhere else... Not sure where. And renounce all claims of going back in perpetuity.
- pay an independent force to provide security and maybe social services, as long as there are no militants and no cross-border attacks or rocket fire.
- ...?
- a combination of the above.
My estimates of what each one of those would cost range from $1B to $1T, and one cannot skimp here.
It is simply impossible to permanently "buy out" a purported ethnic claim on a piece of land. The signatories will die, the details will be lost to time and contested, descendants of whichever side turns out to have gotten the worse end of the deal will simply ignore the deal and irridentistly insist on fighting to take it back.
By some accounts, the Dutch bought Manhattan Island for 60 guilders, but 400 years later you'll see people calling America Turtle Island, doing land acknowledgements etc.
It doesn't work.
True, but if that buy out comes along with those who are paid off leaving Israeli, then it's a success. The problem right now is that Israel is full of more than a million people who want to destroy Israel. Move those people out of Israel, and you have a lot less of a problem.
Buy weapons and kill the other side.
That is the current approach. It'd be nice if there were some alternatives.
Apparently Israel's foreign minister Katz has now floated the idea of creating an artificial island in the Mediterranean for the Palestinians to live on. That sounds like something a lot of money could be thrown at and that might work.
EDIT: Apparently this was fake news, but it might still be a good idea?
I think in any case it'll be more expensive than just pushing them out by brute force and weathering the consequences.
I don't think that "pay as many X as are interested to move" is a useful tactic in any way, because if e.g. half of the people move and half of the people stay, you have spent a lot of money but haven't made any progress at all in solving the problems, because the point of contention still remains, and the people remaining are presumably the more principled ones with a larger than average motivation to keep up their position in the conflict.
There can't be a fully voluntary relocation in this case - any solution that relies on relocation automatically implies at least some elements of forced relocation, with all the associated issues.
Some of the similar ideas have been tried or at least suggesed. Issues that have made them fail:
- Egypt (and Jordan) *really* don't want to take in Palestinians. Jordan almost had a coup when they took them in after the 48 war, and Lebanon was pretty much wrecked. Israel tried pushing Egypt to take Gaza as part of the peace deal in the seventies and Egypt point blank refused. Not sure what their price would be but given the risk of instability and PR hit to being perceived as helping Israel it'd be very, very high.
- Palestinians really don't want that either. When many (probably a large majority, but not going to hard claim that since polling is unreliable) Palestinians say "kick out the settlers" they mean Tel Aviv just as much as they do the WB settlements.
- paying Gazans to move somewhere else would fail on both sides: very few places want to take them and the Gazans don't want to move (they value land over their lives - there's a cultural reason as well as a political one why Palestinian refugees are the only class of refugee that's hereditary and stays "refugees" after being resettled).
- Gaza, despite stereotype, is (pre-war) closer to middle income than developing nation. Gazans probably wouldn't want to move to Sudan or whatever even on QOL grounds, even without ideological barriers.
- take this 10x for Israelis. Some Israelis do move abroad, but the ones that don't really like being in Israel (war aside, it's kinda nice being in a socially cohesive high trust society with a good economy and a functional healthcare system). And Israel's GDP is about half a trillion dollars, so even without sentimental attachments (which are high) the price to buy that out would be something like 15-20 trillion dollars (assuming you're buying 30 years of GDP). Plus you'd have to find a western country willing and able to take in ten million immigrants at once, in a world where western countries can't build housing.
What do you think the price might be for both Egypt agreeing to take it, and the Gazans agreeing to become Egyptian citizens? How much per Gazan? How much per Egyptian? How much to the leadership? Who else would need to be paid and how much?
There is absolutely no way the Egyptians will take Gazans. Egypt controlled Gaza from 1949 through 1967 (technically shared between Egypt and Syria for the beginning of that time period but it was still administered by Egyptians) and by all accounts weren't kind to the Gazans. Since then Egypt has watched Jordan and Lebanon try and fail to accept and rehabilitate Gazans, and wants no part in it
For Gazans, It's really hard to say, since most people aren't willing to put a price on their sacred values. Large voluntary migration like this has never been done without military force - even during the Irish potato famine, like half the people stayed to starve in Ireland.
For Egypt I suspect it would actually be doable despite their bluster, especially since their government was already in an economic crisis and the houthi blockade is making that worse (Egyptian government gets a significant chunk of their revenue from the Suez canal).
Yh other problem though is that it'd be really hard to sell this as a solution to the relevant players, since moving large groups of people like that is ethnic cleansing-y and most countries wouldn't want to enable that (some Israelis might like the idea, but I don't think a government would actually be willing to pay the international PR price for suggesting it seriously, especially since it almost certainly wouldn't work and would only convince the Palestinians they should fight harder since it'd reinforce their concept that Israel wants to kick them out).
Hmm, they don't have to move at all, how can it be ethnic cleansing? Just a change of governance from hated settlers to the "friendly" muslims. I guess it's ethnic cleansing-y if one imagines that the right of return might one day be gained back.
Sorry, I thought that was about the "pat them to move" option.
About the "Egyptian government in Gaza" option, the main problem (aside from Egypt not wanting to) is that the Egyptian government wouldn't really have the power to enforce a monopoly on violence in Gaza. They already have trouble doing it in Sinai, which is closer, much less densely populated, and has much less terrorist infrastructure (e.g. they relied on the idf to bomb ISIS to prevent them taking over Sinai).
Hold a series of meetings between leaders, sub-leaders way down the command chain, and plain citizens during which everyone takes ecstasy. Hire an awesome mediator/family therapist to mediate discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLINZ1QOLE4
There you go! World leaders that cum together share the kingdom forever.
Pay a bribe to the Egyptian government to take all the Gaza residents. Should cost less than $10B. Secure it by guaranteeing US citizenship and secret service protection to the top 50 people in the Egyptian government, should a coup happen.
I feel the desire to observe that the short version of recent European history has basically been the Holy Roman Empire splitting into France and Germany and fighting over Alsace and Lorraine for the last thousand years. History may be sped up these days, but it isn't over yet
I think this is a bad oversimplification because we also fought vs England over Normandy for a thousand years.
This is a good joke, undercut by putting it in this subthread.
Do comments on Iran/Pakistan bloodshed count as Middle-East, or does Pakistan count as beyond the geographic boundary?
BTW, one irony of Middle-Eastern geography is that Samarium's name is _not_ derived from Samaria (the chunk of the west bank). Samarium even has a refractory oxide, Sm2O3, which is sometimes called samaria (in analogy with silica, magnesia, alumina, etc.).
In contrast, magnesium _is_ named after magnesia (the oxide, MgO), which in turn is named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Magnesia.
In some alternate history, where nominative determinism holds more strongly, Samarium should have been discovered in a mineral from Samaria :-)
Iran is part of the Middle East. Pakistan is South Asian (although the "stan" in its name also makes it Central Asian).
Many Thanks! Agreed. I'm going to take Scott's answer as definitive for the purpose of ACX, since he is the host here.
I think airstrikes on terrorist groups makes them spiritually part of the Middle East regardless of the geography.
lmao
Many Thanks! That seems reasonable.
Idea: Buy a Country for the Palestinians
Foreword: the most common critique of this proposal is that the Israelis should have to move to a new country and let the Palestinians have the country they used to have. I certainly understand the justice of that, but I don't believe that's going to happen. In fact I believe the probability of the Israelis packing up and leaving is zero. And while we wait for justice, the Palestinians are being slaughtered. So I think we need to focus on something that could actually work, rather than some theoretically better solution.
One must wonder how many decades people will cling to the vision of a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians while the facts on the ground move continually in the other direction. ("Netanyahu emphasizes his opposition to two-state solution" https://wapo.st/495ULG9) Nor is a one-state solution (Palestinians gain citizenship) any more plausible. Time for a new idea.
The fundamental problem for Israel and the Palestinians is that there are 5 million stateless Palestinians and Israel will never accept them as citizens because they are not Jewish. Historically no Arabic country has welcomed them either.
>>For the past month, both Jordan and Egypt have repeatedly declared that their borders would not be opened to receive even one Palestinian—not as a way to deny humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under attack but rather as a countermove to deny Israel the opportunity to empty the West Bank and Gaza of as many Palestinians as possible. Jordan’s fears are not unfounded, and its redline of refusing to admit Palestinians remains unlikely to change for several reasons.<<
https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/21/jordan-s-redline-on-admitting-palestinians-is-unlikely-to-change-pub-91077
Without a country, the Palestinians will never be free. I see one possible solution: the world should buy a country for the Palestinians.
It would not be cheap. Rebuilding Gaza after Israel finushes destroying it will also not be cheap, but the world will pay for it. Here is my proposal.
The idea when first proposed was to buy a less-developed part of Sudan bordering Egypt with a size close to that of Israel. A refinement is to negotiate a deal with the micronation self-proclaimed as the "Islamic Republic of Hala’ib Triangle". This entity covers 7,950 square miles (20,580 sq km), comparable to the size of Israel (8,630 sq mi).
https://micronations.wiki/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Hala%27ib_Triangle
Set aside the competing claims of Sudan and Egypt for this area, and focus on justice for the current inhabitants which number about 1500. I'm proposing a payment of $1 million US per resident, infants included. The nominal cost would be $1.5 billion, about the cost of 2 to 3 weeks of bombs to be dropped on the Gazans. Also a grant of ten acres per resident.
Hala'ib lies between Sudan and Egypt and borders the Red Sea to the east. I believe the best approach is that the current residents, mostly Bedouins, would have citizenship in the new country along with the Palestinians. They would be suddenly rich, of course, which would not be a new phenomenom for Bedouins.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1982/01/31/saudi-arabiafrom-bedouins-to-oil-barons/bef09597-7dd2-481c-9a85-1041320e0a63/
The 1500 rich Bedouins and the five million not-rich Palestinians would be the citizens of the new country which might be called the Hala'ib-Palestine Alliance.
Hala'ib-Palestine would be far enough away from Israel that continued hostilities would be unlikely in addition to being pointless.
Many persons claim that the Palestinians would never accept the idea of moving away from the birthplace of Islam. Not living in the birthplace of Islam does not seem to be a problem for the rest of the nearly 2 billion Muslims. A quick poll of the Palestinans in between bombardments and sniper attacks should resolve that question.
There would need to be a threshold (supermajority) for final approval on both the Hala'ib and the Palestinian sides. Of course a proposal which looks very good to those directly involved will probably be repugnant to Sudan and Egypt, so those countries must be dealt with. One possibility: offer to redirect the aid that the US gives Israel (approximately $4 billion per year) for ten years: $2 billion per year to Sudan, and the same for Egypt. Set a one-year deadline for agreement: if either country does not agree, all of the money goes to the other country. Regardless, the establishment of the new country would proceed under UN and US protection.
The new country should include a nature preserve for the Nubian wild ass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_wild_ass
It should also include a large interior area which is reserved for nomadic occupation only. In addition a strip of land one mile thick along the Red Sea plus land for an airport and various parcels for government installations should be under permanent government control. The oceanfront area could be leased for resort development. The land remaining after the grants to the original Hala'ib residents would be divied up among the Palestinians.
The flags of the two nations are very similar though the Arab colors occur in a different order. My suggestion for a merged flag is to take the Palestinian flag and place the coat of arms of the Hala’ib Triangle in the white bar.
Enlist a coalition of nations including some of the richer Arab nations to build a new Palestine in the new country. The US can contribute the money it would spend replacing the buildings and infrastructure in Gaza that Israel has turned to rubble. Israel can restore what it has destroyed in Gaza.
What will the Palestinians in the Hala’ib Triangle do when the Hala’ibians pushed out into Egypt and Sudan call them colonizers and start firing rockets into the Hala’ib Triangle and demanding a Right of Return to their native state of Hala’ib?
For kicks and giggles, you could imagine some Israeli group sending the Hala’ibians money and weapons just to pull the uno-reverse card on the Palestinians.
I doubt that you read the proposal. I think we should not try to communicate.
If the attempt to buy a homeland for Jews in 1948 led to endless war, it seems likely any attempt to buy a homeland for Palestinians in 2024 will lead to equally endless war.
Any solution you could apply to the latter would be better off applied to the former.
Pay $1 million compensation to each Palestinian?
OK. I think they would settle for that.
If you can get the Arab states to foot the bill, sure!
I think the part you're missing is that Israel/Palestine is on the Mediterranean coast and somewhat arable land, while the Hala’ib triangle seems, from satellite images, to be desert. Probably why almost nobody lives there.
If you paid me $1 million dollars to move to the desert, I would use some of that money to immediately move *out* of the desert.
Madagascar? (poor joke, my bad; German Jews were planned to be sent there)
More seriously: Buy Gaza and give it away. Oh, Israel kind "owns" the place in some way, makes it even easier, no one needs to move, even. - Which would be part and parcel of the three-states-solution proposed here by Noah: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-three-state-solution-is-the-only There ia another one, ofc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-state_solution#
As other commenters wrote, this is unrealistic for many reasons. Scott Atran has a piece on how $$ doesn’t work for sacred values in Israel-Palestine. Palestinians aren’t WEIRD.
I do want to point out that the Palestinian state in this scenario might well pose a Houthi-style threat to Red Sea shipping.
I actually sort of agree that it's plausible that the Palestinians are best off in some scenario where they leave because I don't think Israel will ever allow them to have a state. But there are two problems I see with any such scenario;
1) It would be very expensive, and no one really has an incentive to pay for it. On the one hand, giving Palestinians citizenship to rich countries, even without a stipend, would be good for them, but rich countries won't take them. For it to be worth it for them to accept moving en masse to a poorer part of the world, either as citizens or to get a new state, they would likely have to be given considerable subsidies. How much is enough to build a new country from scratch with even a modest third world standard of living? I don't know honestly? And if you have to pay another country to forfeit a bunch of land? This could potentially cost trillions. The only country that might have a strong incentive to want to pay for such a resettlement is Israel, and the Israeli electorate would never accept such a bill as a matter of principle.
2) If anyone other than Israel pays the cost of Palestinian resettlement, then from the perspective of Palestinians and their sympathizers, Israel will have 'gotten away with it.' And these are precisely the people you would need to persuade to accept such an arrangement. But for anyone who believes Israel has helped cause this situation by marginalizing the Palestinians, then resettling the Palestinians at everyone else's expense will mean Israel will have effectively gotten away with expelling the Palestinians by (again, from the perspective of Palestinian-sympathetic people) mistreating them until someone else pitied them enough to bail them out. And that's not just a visceral objection; the precedent creates some pretty bad incentives. A country that wants to rid itself of a minority group could try to replicate the scenario by mistreating and fomenting conflict with said group until some other party comes along and pays the marginalized group to leave. It incentivizes state mistreatment of demographic groups they don't like; a sort of 'Curly effect' writ large.
So for anyone who believes that the status quo in which such a plan is being considered is largely the result of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, then carrying any such plan (unless Israel were made to pay for it) would incentivize similar mistreatment by other countries against other perceived 'problem populations' (or even by Israel in the future against its own Arab population).
Thank you for your extensive response.
Can you address the proposed destination and the proposed incentives more directly?
In the proposal, Israel loses $4 B per year.
My desire to stop the slaughter is greater than my desire to punish Israel.
Building infrastructure for >5 million people more or less from scratch seems extremely expensive. I did a quick search and found a couple links saying building a city that large from scratch would cost 100-500k per resident. Some billionaire named Marc Lore proposed a couple years ago to build a city in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telosa) to ultimately house 5 million by 2050; he estimates it will cost $400 billion. I'd guess as with most big infrastructure projects, the cost will be at least a few times that. Of course, maybe it would be cheaper to build a city in northeast Africa (but land is apparently only a small fraction of the overall cost). But I wouldn't take that for granted, since there may be a lot of challenges to building a city in what is essentially a desert.
Just for it to be economically worth it, since current per capita GDP of the west banks is just shy of 2k (Gaza is less than 1k), you'd need to pay at least $10 billion a year to support a standard of living better than what they have in Palestine.
And what are the long term economic prospects for this new country? Most Palestinians (according to wikipedia) are employed in agriculture. Can Hala'ib support that much agriculture? It looks like much of it is desert, so I'm not so sure. Does it have any natural resources? Or would Palestinians basically end up being permanently dependent on international largesse?
Expensive, yes. But no more expensive than rebuilding Gaza, and you don't have to drag the rubble out of the way.
$40 B over 10 years is cheap for Israel. If they could have paid that to make the Gazan problem go away, I'm 99% sure that they would have done so by now. Followup question: why not apply the same solution to the West Bank?
> My desire to stop the slaughter is greater than my desire to punish Israel.
I think this is where you are fundamentally disconnected from the people involved. If Hamas wanted to stop the slaughter, they could have surrendered at any time after Oct 7, or better yet, just not done Oct 7 in the first place. Clearly there's something that they value more than stopping the slaughter. ("Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils.")
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The proposal says 5 million Palestinians. That's all of the stateless Palestinians, West Bank included.
Drat, I guess my reading comprehension is worse than I thought. :-)
If everyone behaved like perfectly rational actors then there wouldn't be a conflict in the first place. There are many barriers to this plan but they are mostly surmountable, what isn't surmountable (in the near term) is Palestinian support for Hamas and fighting against Israel.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514
>>Palestinian support for Hamas and fighting against Israel.<<
Would you like the Palestinians to capitulate?
Also there is no good polling data coming out of there. Both sides have a strong incentive right now to assume that every single Palestinian would rather die supporting Hamas than live under better conditions elsewhere.
I believe that you are claiming that most Palestinians would not agree with this proposal.
There are many many barriers to this idea but I find the concept of wealthy nations resolving a humanitarian/religious/warfare situation by applying an immense pile of charitable money innately appealing.
However I think putting all the Palestinians on land near Israel is begging for war.
If you're going to spend the immense amount of money to buy land and peacefully ethnically cleanse gaza, you should probably also try to buy one of the azores or some other place much further away.
Have you looked at a map? Look up the Hala'ib Triangle. None of the Palestinian rockets could reach Israel.
Besides the point is to find them land that is geographically and geophysically similar.
Do you think firing amateur rockets across a fence is the only possible way nations can engage in conflict? We are already dealing with houthi militants flexing their power on the red sea and you want to put another nation of displaced and discontented people on the same sea?
And that's something that could happen almost immediately. Where will we be in 20 years, 50 years? Do you think a people banished to some random desert while their holy land is within driving, naval, and short flight distance will be chill with this status quo?
If you adopt the radical measure of displacing millions of people I think you should at least displace them far far away.
Chill?
Do you think a supermajority will vote for it?
Why would they want to attack Israel after they have their own country approximately 1500 km away.
a supermajority didn't vote for Hamas in the last election nevertheless gaza got a hamas government, resulting in among other things the January 7 attack on Israel.
As for your other question, I have to conclude you are being deliberately obtuse.
This shares one key feature with the two state solution, that it's completely unpopular with anybody on the ground. Some Israelis might be ok with it as it's incredibly pro Israel, but most would realize that it's exceedingly unrealistic and not worth any political capital to attempt it.
>
>>For the past month, both Jordan and Egypt have repeatedly declared that their borders would not be opened to receive even one Palestinian—not as a way to deny humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under attack but rather as a countermove to deny Israel the opportunity to empty the West Bank and Gaza of as many Palestinians as possible. Jordan’s fears are not unfounded, and its redline of refusing to admit Palestinians remains unlikely to change for several reasons.<<
This is simply not true. The reason Jordan and Egypt (and everybody else) will not accept Palestinians is that historically Palestinian migrants have been extremely destabilizing, and accepting Palestinians would cause serious security issues and quite possibly state collapse.
Thank you for agreeing with me.
>>Historically no Arab country has welcomed them either.
Palestinians were welcomed en mass to Jordan and Lebanon, in Jordan they were even broadly granted citizenship. This resulted in the Jordanian and Lebanese civil wars.
I could get into the history, but it's not relevant to the current situation.
> [...] the history [is] not relevant to the current situation
This sequence of words is always 100% wrong when it comes to the Middle East, no matter the immediate context.
I would love for you to run this by one or more persons "on the ground".
Meanwhile, what's your solution? Perhaps keep the status quo.
There simply isn't a solution where everybody wins, life isn't an episode of West Wing.
A fully independent Palestinian second state would immediately reignite official hot conflict with Israel.
A semi-independent Palestinian second state would be a hotbed for terrorist attacks against Israel, much as Gaza and the West Bank are now. It would also require repressive tactics that Israel could not possibly actually implement, but would still be flamed for.
Palestinians being granted second-tier citizenship in Israel is unpalatable to anybody, especially globally.
Palestinians being granted full citizenship in Israel would quickly if not immediately result in it no longer being a Jewish state, defeating the purpose of its existence and likely leading to mass exodus and/or massacres of Israelis.
Palestinians have historically been incapable of producing a leader that can maintain internal power and legitimacy while moving towards peace.
Everybody in the Middle East would love their territorial rivals to be mass resettled, but nobody is interested in being mass resettled themselves.
Nobody is willing to destroy their own countries by taking in Palestinians (except maybe Canada apparently?).
Personally I don't know how the status quo can/will be moved past. A genocide of the Palestinians is obviously off the table, unacceptable, and even from a strategic perspective would be suicidal for Israel. Israeli capitulation and allowing a genocide of Israelis is equally obviously off the table, unacceptable, and suicidal for Israel. Palestinians don't seem to be interested in a settlement on terms the relative military strengths of Israel and Palestine would justify, Israel doesn't seem interested or capable of enforcing such a settlement, and the Palestinians would simply foment a new terror group to break it.
Perhaps after another generation of stalemate Palestinians will be more willing to accept and stick to a settlement, or some other solution will present itself. In the meantime Israel continues to be a beacon of hope, economic progress, LGBTQ+ safety and acceptance, and overall modernity and progress in a region that is hateful and jealous towards it.
I like the idea of creating a Palestinian de jure "state" that is demilitarized and has a permanent IDF presence, signed with some puppet leader, so Israel would have to cede control of isolated settlements and the Arab neighborhoods in EJ. This would at least solve the "conflict" as far as the international system is concerned, so KSA normalization, no more UNRWA, etcetera. The leadership would be weak and unpopular and would rely on the IDF presence, and the IDF would need to fight terrorists and so on. Things would keep happening. But at least from a diplomatic perspective, the conflict would be over.
Israel doesn't have the funds or manpower required (infinite) for a permanent military occupation, which is what enforcing a demilitarized state would require. It would be a tremendous indictment of Israel on the global stage, which Israel doesn't want, and would only get worse when Israel inevitably has to enforce the demilitarization by putting down uprisings through force.
Any agreement signed by a puppet leader will (rightly imo) just be ignored completely.
It's all very well to talk about a demilitarized Palestine, but how do you intend to do it?
That's the deal on the West bank and it would be working pretty well except for the Israeli settlers.
I don't think there is a US/UN solution to this problem. That is, alas, fairly frequently true.
Even imagining that the US would take the side of the Palestinians is fantastical. But I have a sense of flux in world affairs greater than any time since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Putting words on a page. It's a start.
I mean this with all possible respect to what seems a noble impulse...no, it's not. Nothing we do, or say here is a start on peace in Israel/Palestine.
The incumbent (rent-seeking) states have strong incentives against setting a precedent that "sovereignty" can be bought.
What about seasteading? If the US endorses it just to end the headache, a new Palestinian city-state could be build just off the coast.
Yes, yes, "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?", "… where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small," "no gods or kings, only man," etc. In a better world, it would be possible. This is not that world. Yet.
My proposal, rather boldly, does not assume that Sudan and Egypt will agree.
Any good restaurant recommendations in Abu Dhabi?
Mynt is a great Indian restaurant