I wrote up my thoughts on Minicircle as a recipient of the therapy, having it turned on, and then turned off (and soon turned on again), and a friend of both Max & the minicircle team who thinks highly of them all: https://x.com/patrissimo/status/1794493623947403750
I just went through the fiction portion of my library and separated the books I've read from the books I haven't read. I ended up with almost exactly the same number in each category. It turns out I have far more unread books than I expected.
Why, exactly, is it alright for women to be categorically afraid of men, have separate women's spaces, talk about how violent and evil men are, but having any kind of problem with insane rates of violence from black people is completely unacceptable?
Even if most people blacks kill are other blacks, and putting aside the black on white homicide rate is still *higher* than the white on white homicide rate, this fact is the way it is precisely because white people have to go to enormous lengths to avoid being around black people, something which is considered horribly, unforgivably racist. If women were willing/able to segregate themselves from men to the same extents whites are from blacks, then we should expect that male of female violence to be dramatically lower.
And no, for the umpteenth time, economic factors do not explain black violence, nor are these factors entirely or even mostly exogenous in the first place.
Of course, women are so catastrophically bad at statistics that they think bears are safer than men, so obviously none of this is based on any kind of statistical understanding whatsoever.
More on the protest drama on US campuses. Both pro- and anti-demonstration parents — as well as parents who've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their kid's education — are all hopping mad at college presidents and administrators (paywalled WSJ article below) You'd think that universities would have developed a playbook for demonstrations by now. I thought they were pretty common, but Kevin Drum says otherwise — and the cops are usually called when the demonstrators occupy buildings (second link)...
I think Kevin Drum's examples are almost irrelevant, and that the primary point of comparison is going to be BLM from 4 years ago. Not just because these are young people with no perspective, but also because we all seem to be losing our collective memory and developing the attention span of gnats.
On the left, I think it's a matter of not having the administration look the other way and treat them with kid gloves, the way that happened 4 years ago. They expected to play by the same unwritten set of rules as back then, and are squawking loudly as they find out that they no longer have privilege. Alternatively, compare to the paradigmatic case of an upper-middle class black man from a good neighborhood who never had a problem with police, but then gets pulled over while driving through a bad neighborhood, and is treated like a resident of the bad neighborhood. "Galvanizing" might be the word. It's going to be interesting to see whether this generation of leftists will develop a distrust of "official" power structures, now that they've viscerally experienced how their interests are not always the same.
On the right, I think a lot of people had been used to never succeeding, and are now emboldened to push for everything that they saw the other side get. Sadly, it seems that a bunch of them are abandoning free speech principles and embracing "who, whom", but that appears to be the normal state of humanity. :-(
And I think the universities are stuck, because they alternate between claiming to enforce the rules as written (as when testifying before Congress) and relaxing the rules for their favorite sides, and now they're being forced to make choices while under the public eye. I'm surprised that more aren't acting like Northwestern, or simply tolerating the protests as is ("as are"?). That probably means my mental model of university administrators was inaccurate.
>On the left, I think it's a matter of not having the administration look the other way and treat them with kid gloves, the way that happened 4 years ago. They expected to play by the same unwritten set of rules as back then, and are squawking loudly as they find out that they no longer have privilege.
It all boils down to the fact that hating white people is cool and doesn't threaten people in power, but hating jews does
No different with Kanye, there's virtually nothing he couldn't have gotten away with saying about white people, but once he started talking about jews it was game over
Oh my. Nvidia should start naming its chips after tulip varietals. "In a presentation earlier this month, the venture-capital firm Sequoia estimated that the AI industry spent $50 billion on the Nvidia chips used to train advanced AI models last year, but brought in only $3 billion in revenue." *
OC ACXLW Sat May 4 The Hipster Effect and AI Self-Alignment
Hello Folks! We are excited to announce the 64th Orange County ACX/LW meetup, happening this Saturday and most Saturdays after that.
Host: Michael Michalchik Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests) Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place (949) 375-2045 Date: Saturday, May 4 2024 Time 2 pm
Conversation Starters:
The Hipster Effect: Why Anti-Conformists Always End Up Looking the Same: A study examines how the desire to be different can paradoxically lead to conformity among anti-conformists. Using a mathematical model, the author shows how, under certain conditions, efforts by individuals to oppose the mainstream result in a synchronized and homogeneous population.
Questions for discussion: a) How might the "hipster effect" described in the paper relate to other examples of emergent synchronization in complex systems, such as financial markets or neuronal networks? b) The paper discusses several conditions that give rise to the hipster effect, such as a preference for non-conformity and the presence of delay in recognizing trends. What other social or psychological factors might contribute to this phenomenon? c) Can insights from the study of the hipster effect be applied to understanding political polarization and the dynamics of contrarian movements? What strategies might help maintain diversity of opinions in these contexts?
Self-Regulating Artificial General Intelligence: This paper examines the "paperclip apocalypse" concern that a superintelligent AI, even one with a seemingly innocuous goal, could pose an existential threat by monopolizing resources. The author argues that, under certain assumptions about recursive self-improvement, an AI may refrain from enabling the development of more powerful "offspring" AIs to avoid the same control problem that humans face with AIs.
Questions for discussion: a) The paper assumes that an AI can only self-improve by employing specialist "offspring" AIs with targeted goals. How plausible is this assumption, and what implications would a more integrated model of AI self-improvement have for the argument? b) The author suggests that the key to controlling potential negative impacts of AI is to limit their ability to appropriate resources. What legal, economic, or technical mechanisms might be used to enforce such limitations? c) If advanced AIs are indeed "self-regulating" in the manner described, what are the potential benefits and risks of relying on this property as a safety measure? How might we verify and validate an AI's self-regulation capabilities?
Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are readily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson's or Pavilions in the zip code 92660. Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe. Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group's future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.
I haven't posted a high-ranking Israeli government member declaring genocidal things for a long time, but quite amusingly, just right after I see a bunch of comments down thread arguing that what Israel is doing and will continue to do in Gaza is totally not a Genocide, I open Haaretz [1] and see this:
> Israel's Far-right Minister Smotrich Calls for 'No Half Measures' in the 'Total Annihilation' of Gaza
Mmm, interesting. Smotrich is the Finance Minister of Israel, and a member of the security cabinet that have formed after October 7th to oversee the war. His latest news is bitching about Moody's downgrading Israel's rating in early April, and before that attending a conference about resettling Gaza in late January.
Let's see what he has to say, perhaps those who say what's happening in Gaza is an early-stage Genocide will all the usual writing on the walls are really silly and hysterical and nothing of that sort is ever happening.
> Bezalel Smotrich called on Monday for annihilating Israel's enemies, saying "There are no half measures. [The Gazan cities of] Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total annihilation. 'You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven' – there's no place under heaven."
I will point out, though, that based on the article, he is so genocidal that he criticizes Netanyahu for not being genocidal enough. His opinions are not representative of even the government of the state of Israel. I don't know much about Israeli internal politics, but I did know that one of the big criticisms of Netanyahu was that he was willing to be in a coalition government with extremists who had views so abhorrent that other Israeli politicians considered them to be anathema. I can only hope that Smotrich is one of the people they meant.
He's the sort of person I don't trust Wikipedia to be unbiased about, but if you have an uncontrollable urge to stoke your rage for a few minutes, take a look, I think there's some worse stuff there:
I can condemn Netanyahu for associating with Smotrich, but I don't think Smotrich's public statements are an accurate description of Israeli policy toward Gaza. (Although it's bad enough reading about some of the policies that Smotrich does control.)
Well, there are always extremists to the extreme side of the extremists. I bet that there were those in a certain Austrian Painter's government who were also mad that Jews were being forced to labor in camps and given food first before the chambers, and not dealt with right away using the Sturmgewehr 44. Those people didn't represent Austrian Painter's government, and that's entirely irrelevant.
Right. Looking at the views of an extreme member of a group is not a shortcut to determining what the group's overall policy is. It doesn't matter if it's extreme in a way that we don't like, or extreme in a way that we do like.
Especially when it comes to things like coalition governments. If you remember the UK's Tory/LibDem coalition government from 2010-2015, it wouldn't be accurate to look at the most "extreme" Liberal Democrat, and judge the coalition's overall policy based on that.
I'm honestly just surprised that more pro-Israel people haven't switched their rhetoric from "this isn't genocide" to "genocide is justifiable in this scenario." The latter would at least be immune to people pointing out facts to the contrary.
Ah, the glories of the modern world where AI makes our lives so much easier, by automating our work it reduces workload, makes us more productive, and means we get more money *and* leisure time!
If you're an email scammer, that is 😀
An old, rarely-used,. and we *know* it's compromised work email address got the usual "pay up or else" blackmail attempt (as an aside, if I was ever tempted to use Bitcoin or other crypto, the fact that it's mainly touted by these scummy little extortionists would put me right off; goodness, whyever do ordinary people think Decentralised Blockchain Libertarian No Mo' Fiat is criminal trash?)
But this one is keeping up with the times:
"You've heard that the Internet is a dangerous place, infested with malicious links and hackers like me?
Of course, you've heard, but what's the point in it if you are so dismissive of your internet security and don't care what websites you visit?
Times have changed. You read about AI, judging by your browser history, and still didn't understand anything?
Technologies have stepped far forward, and now hackers like me use artificial intelligence.
Thanks to it, I can get not only access to your webcam and record your fun with highly controversial video (I recorded it also, but now that's not the point), but also to all your devices and not only yours.
And I saved a special sauce for this dish. I went further and sent malicious links to all your contacts from your account."
Needless to say, nobody was engaging in naughty no-no fun with this account, but that of course doesn't stop these criminals. Though I almost admire the sheer brass neck of the sign-off:
"Hasta La Vista, Baby!
P.S. Almost forgot. Finally learn what incognito tabs, two-factor authentication, and the TOR browser are, for God's sake!"
*This* is the real safety risk AI proponents should be worrying about - that it gets the same tainted reputation as crypto due to scammers and scandals like this.
When AI starts pulling vast amounts of wealth from the ether, in a way the blockchain can't, I think this type of comment will start to look quite anemic.
When magic AI performs the magic trick of producing magic money from nowhere, and I'll get pie in the sky when I die.
Some people are going to get rich out of AI, the guys sitting on the boards of the companies getting places on the new AI advisory committee for the US government. Not you and not me, though.
I kinda think Marx was about 150 years too early. Assuming AGI doesn't kill us all, collective ownership seems like the only ethical way to handle a magic wealth fountain.
Someone still has to decide who gets to tell the AI to build them a beautiful Malibu beach house or San Francisco luxury apartment, and tell the AI killbots to keep the hoi polloi out. All the nice dachas in the old Soviet Union, and their North Korean equivalents today, are "collectively owned", but some people are more collective than others.
Yes, it's a problem. Humanity has a bad track-record of deciding how to make collective decisions. The market can't handle this. And turning the decisions over to the AIs brings in another set of risks.
Ethics and making money have little to do with one another. Everyone is jumping aboard the gravy train as early as they can (see Sam Altman) because whoever gets there first and gets established as "you license your AI from this company" is going to be the one with their mouth to the spigot of the money fountain. They all know it, that's why principles are going out the window in the pursuit of "Us, pick us! Us first!"
Collective ownership can go whistle for itself, it's what makes the shareholders (who are often large institutions so they have the power) happy. See recent story about our telecoms provider Eir (long story, they used to be government owned way back but have been privatised and sold on several times since):
"The first thing they need to do, according to Michael Killeen of the CX Academy, is stop focusing on shareholders' needs over customer needs.
"When we look at the bottom five performing brands in our CX table, they are brands known to be fixated with shareholder value, while the top ten companies are genuinely committed to helping their customers every day."
He believes a customer focused approach is the reason why credit unions have come first in the CX report each year over the past 9 years.
The second thing the telco sector needs to do is to focus on existing customers rather than continually chasing more new customers.
"Unfortunately, this is linked to the shareholder issue, as the drive for new customer is partially driven by stock exchange valuations that place a higher value on annual figures for new customer acquisition rather than the longevity of existing customers who stay with brands over the years," Mr Killeen said."
Stock market that sets your share price, which is how your company lives or dies, doesn't care that you are lovey-dovey with your workers and collective ownership and worker representation on the board; it cares about "line go up?". If you're giving away shares of the profit to everyone, why would an investor sink their capital into your company? Return the value only to the shareholders, and maximise that value, and you get investment. More investment, more growth. More growth, the economy thrives.
Not *you* the ordinary guy, necessarily, the *economy*. That's the measure.
I think the whole AI bubble is going to burst soon. We won't have to worry about the extinction of humanity. Instead, we're going to see the bottom drop of NVIDIA and the companies in its tech ecosystem similar to the Dot Com bust.
I don't believe in post-scarcity (I mean, we're already living in post-scarcity if you like to look at it, since the mantra about 'ordinary people are richer than ever and can live better than a mediaeval emperor' often gets trotted out) or dystopia or utopia.
Basically "more of the same, only in new configurations".
NB. I don't know how they calculated the GINI coefficient of pre-industrialized societies. Maybe they explain somewhere in the report, though. I just skimmed it.
In terms of PPP, heck yes, there's no way I could buy a smartphone even 50 years ago, not with all the wealth in the world. Not that it would have been useful without cell networks and the Internet, but the level of functionality was barely even imaginable.
Globally, averaging all 8 billion of us now, vs. the ~0.8 billion around 1774, probably, maybe? It depends a lot on China and India.
I guess I'm a bit late for this Open Thread, but let's try anyway.
Is there anyone expert on nuclear energy who has an opinion on this company https://www.newcleo.com/ and their reactor design? As a scientist working in another field the website seems a bit too oriented towards marketing than explaining the science...
Their plan is to have a reactor ready for sale in 2031, and I suspect we just have to wait and see whether they can overcome the engineering challenges required to make that happen. They plan to generate the fuel used by their reactors, which is another project that could run into problems.
In addition to the technical issues, there are also political challenges to deploying nuclear power. They need to convince regulators that their product is safe, and then convince power companies to buy in quantity in order to achieve the economies of scale they predict will occur. Perhaps this won’t be much of an issue; by 2031 concerns about global warming may overwhelm the concerns that the public has traditionally had about nuclear power.
Late to the party again, but hopefully a few of you find this. My second Long Forum post is up, summarising the most nourishing and thought provoking long form content that I stumbled upon over the previous month. Lots of biology, economics and culture to feast upon.
Any group can become more successful on average by simply removing all the below-average members. Few groups jump at the chance. Some groups, like the Jews, have no choice.
Being part of any group has certain advantages and certain disadvantages relative to being a part of certain other groups. There are certainly privileges idiosyncratic to being Jewish, there's also disadvantages.
In terms of why they are more successful than most other groups, a combination of (statistically) higher intelligence and ingroup bias which leads them to receive preferential treatment from other members of the same group.
I don't think he's a troll, I think he's intelligently probing the concept of "privilege" as it is used in current-year discourse.
I think it might be done more effectively on another forum where people have less pre-existing skepticism to the "privilege" idea. But he'd be banned immediately on those sorts of forums, so maybe this is the most reasonable forum.
Do you feel that's broadly true of the many, many provocative throwaway comments he makes on multiple topics on every Open Thread? He's a troll even if, just this once, he made you think about something.
And you don't feed trolls. If they happen to be talking about something you want to discuss, there will be other opportunities to have that discussion.
I dunno man. I'd never noticed this particular commenter before this thread, so I searched for all his comments in the thread and didn't think they were particularly bad.
Nah, drinking children’s blood is old fashioned. Today’s Jews prefer to extort money and power from the rest of us using their invisible giant space lasers.
Scott has a banning setup-and-teardown cycle of approximately 2 to 3 months, and that was before the Twins. No matter how bad or how flagrantly you violate the rules, the ban warms up in 2 months and discharges at once, taking about 10 or 15 commenters with it.
Awful opinions on the Israel-Palestine issue or not, Scott Aronson seems to have a concept of a "Blog Council" formed by some of the long (founding-era) readers, and this council does... I'm not sure what exactly because I don't follow Aronson regularly, but I at least remember that he gives it authorities to decide who should be banned.
Scott Alexander's moderation rulebook seems to be optimized for his old blog, which I lurked but didn't participate in during its last years. On that blog, the trolls and bad faith commenters seem to have come in large waves separated by long peace times, whenever Scott writes on a particular topic they come out from whatever place the blog was linked in one too many times and attack at once. Some of the trolls and bad faith commenters seemed to be coming from his own comment section: the more woke faction that was gradually radicalized over 2015 to 2018 and started resenting the blog more and more.
This doesn't seem to be the case with Substack, firmly in the way of the main stream of the internet. Here the trolls and bad faith commenters are a constant trickle, coming in smaller quantities but more consistently and continuously. With this type of troll pool, you can't take a rest for 2 months.
I recommend those who object to his presence --- I am one of them --report every single comment he makes. Anyone who is a paid subscriber might want to raise the issue on a hidden thread, too.
Later edit: Ascend objected to my calling for people to report every comment,
and I agree that's not fair. So I'm amending my call: IF Hammond makes a claim with no reasoning or data to back it up, or backed up by a link to junk data, AND you think the comment is grounds for banning, THEN I hope you will take the trouble to report him. Scott does eventually respond to reports, though with a huge lag time.
I strongly disagree with "report every single comment he makes". This is the sort of toxic harrassment that ruins so much of the internet. Report the comments you have a problem with, not the ones you don't because you don't like who made them.
(For what it's worth, I don't object to his presence, though I understand why others might. I think he's got a single-issue obsession, but it's one that doesn't have much coverage here (or anywhere) while being something a fair number of people actually believe: I'd rather their beliefs be out in the open and subject to scrutiny rather than being driven into underground secrecy. And also, his top-level comments are usually lazy, but unlike say the bunch of pro-hamas trolls that Scott banned in January, he actually engages with replies to some extent.)
You're right, it's not reasonable to put out a call for people to report every comment he makes, and I'll go back and modify mine. On the other hand, many of his comments are reportable, because he making broad claims about sensitive matters either with no data or reasoning to support them, or with weak and inaccurate data. His linked evidence for his repeated question "why do Jews hate whites" is a screen shot of 20 books by authors with Jewish names with titles that could be taken as broadly critical of whites. This is non-evidence. First of all, you could probably find 20 books or 20 books by people with Chinese names criticizing US parenting. You can start with Tiger Mom. Is that evidence that Chinese-Americans Fucking Hate White Parents? And I looked up 3 of the books inHammond's screen shot out of curiosity and they don't support the case that the authors hate gentiles. One with "white trash" in the title was about poor whites as an unfairly ignored group. One book was a series of interviews about with small children from well-off white families about black people, investigating their early attitudes and ideas about blacks and how they evolve. It did not sound like an angry, accusatory book. And there was no mention in the reviews I read of Jews. It seems entirely possible that there were Jewish kids among those interviewed in the study. Saying the interviews were with white kids would not imply to most people that none were Jewish. I checked another of Hammond's links in earlier This Group Sux posts and it was nearly as weak. Others who have checked some of his links have stated here that they do not say what he claims they do.
I don't object at all to discussions here of the topics and issues Hammond raises. But he is a terrible representative of the point of view he speaks from.
So I will modify my post to say that I personally will report every future Hammond post where he's backing up his points with junk evidence, and that I hope any who shares my view them takes the trouble to report them.
Yes. We usually have one a week, though sometimes Scott instead puts up a subscribers'-only post. Seems like it's been several weeks now since we had one. I think probably Scott's just distracted by parenting 2 infants and has lost track of how long it's been since we had one.
I think a main driver of your loss of readership must be substrack's abysmal interface. The website is ridiculously slow (particularly on mobile where it is almost unusable).
I can imagine many people dont want to subscribe with the website being so poor (as I assume many of the reader friendly versions of this lack all subscriber content).
I don't understand why substack is so crap. They don't seem to provide much to you, other than presumably handling payment and providing this objectively terrible website, and presumably they take a large cut of payment.
Compared to your old website, or hacker news it is just night and day.
Hey, don't underestimate the achievement of making a 12th gen gaming laptop with 16 GB of RAM and an 8 GB RTX 4060 crawl to his absolute knees when rendering a bunch of hierarchal textboxes, it's all done with a 30-year-old tech stack that has been optimized to death for thousands of man hours by an army of smart and highly paid engineers in at least 3 different trillion-dollar companies.
How do they do it? It's driving me nuts. How do they make text heavier and more sluggish on a machine that handles Cyberpunk 2077 on high just fucking fine?
I have 32 GB of RAM, and a full astralcodexten page refreshes at the speed of a heavily-laden three-legged donkey toiling up a steep mountain pass! But then I am based in the UK, so maybe it is the trans-Atlantic hop that takes much of the time.
Does anyone here subscribe to "Blocked and Reported"? It looks like they have open threads that reach about 3,000 comments. I'd be interested to hear if the problems we have are the same there, or whether it's the special modifications that Substack made for Scott.
These are the two main substacks I read, and it is incomprehensible why ACX's comment section is so much worse. (technically, not culturally. this is the best forum on the internet.) I've gotten dozens of webpage crashes on this side, and zero on B&R. And I probably spend twice as much time over there. I wasn't aware that they were making special concessions for SA's sake, but that would explain it. Too bad they did such a horrible job of it.
The like button being hidden is one, I believe Scott mentioned some other things were being created for just him, but I don't remember what and I don't think I read what they could have been.
That's one change I wish could be implemented everywhere. It's a terrible incentive, it has no business being anywhere there might be a serious conversation.
Delivering a few megabytes of text (at most) is really not a difficult engineering problem. It boggles my mind how substack manages to be so egregiously inefficient at this.
yeah, my engagement with the site plummeted since substack. I remain subscribed only out of appreciation since SSC, and wanting to support a voice like Scott's; but I do loathe the change.
Huh, I have a crappy old Moto smartphone which chokes on some apps but likes Substack's just fine. (Since the apps it doesn't like are for things I value less than Substack this has seemed like a net plus.)
For me Substack is worse as a web page than I am used to while browsing via this 1gig fiber broadband feed wired directly into a gamer-caliber desktop PC. It acts as if it's caching, poorly, which there is zero reason for it to be doing. I literally get a smoother Substack response on that half-dead Moto.
It was very fitting that when the comment of section broke and kicked me back to the start, yours was the first comment I saw. Even typing in this textbox somehow manages to be laggy.
Does anyone know of any real life success stories about companies using feature engineering to increase customer contact rates? Preferably something with a news article in a mainstream source. I’m trying to convince some people to dump real time weather reporting and longitude information into a bunch of tables.
More like “train a model that when the weather is this temperature and the forecast is sunny, rainy, etc” it has this average impact on customer connection rate.
A request for a Latin translation. I've always like the phrase "Strong like bull, smart like tractor," and I think it would be a good motto. Can someone translate this into Latin for me? (I used Google Translate which gave "Fortis velut taurus, sagax velut tractor," which doesn't seem right.
Using Google translate, I tried something along the lines of "Bull's strength, chariot's dexterity" (bearing in mind the Romans didn't have tractors). I think that preserves the sense of what you wish the saying to convey.
The result was "Fortitudo tauri, Dexteritas currus", which is slightly more pithy without those two "veluts". Whether the word "currus" is appropriate, I leave you to decide.
I'd go with "Potentia tauri, sapientia tractoris." "Power of a bull, wisdom of a tractor." Tractoris is a fake word but you're not going to get a real one. There is tractator but that has other implications. You could also go with "potentia tauri, sapientia aratoris" which means "strength of a bull, wisdom of a plough puller." But a plough puller could be a person instead of a machine.
I dropped the like because the Germanic languages' use of simile doesn't have an exact match in Latin. Velut is the proper translation for 'like' because medieval Latin speaking Germans/English/etc would use it that way. But it doesn't sound like actual Classical Latin. I switched out fortis (which does mean strength) for potentia because I think it sounds better with sapientia. Sagax means perceptive more than smart, from sagire meaning to perceive. There isn't a good word for smart in Latin. You have to choose some kind of intelligence and sapientia is wisdom or skill. Which is presumably what tractors don't have.
I'll get the ball rolling - maybe (tam) potens quam taurus; (tam) prudens quam tractor? I'm stretching to get the original alliteration to work. Also I'm keeping in tractor with the modern meaning because it keeps the punchline.
Your original phrase has a bit of Latin-like pithiness to it, by removing two "a"s without changing the meaning. It might be nice to keep that, by getting it down to 4 words?
"Tractor" is already a Latin word, it's based on the verb "to pull". We'l have to wait for an actual Latin scholar to tell us whether that's actually the correct word ending for "thing that pulls" or whether it's a weird half-English half-Latin hybrid but I'm sure there's a proper Latin version.
The Vatican has put out Latin dictionaries with new Latin words for the modern world. I don't have one, and don't know if they have "tractor", but worst comes to worst, we could just take an equivalent classical Greek word and use that as the basis for a new Latin word.
The movie is about what would it be like if there was a civil war in the United States today and not as much about contemporary politics. It’s also very much a “war is bad” narrative.
So what are the two (or more) sides fighting over? Pineapple on pizza? If you're going to have a civil war, you have to have a *reason* for fighting one, and differences between the sides. The differences don't have to be huge, but they must be there, else why fight at all?
From over the pond, the most likely casus belli for a US civil war today would appear be a desire of some southern states, such as California or Texas, to secede from the Union and become independent.
I've no idea how likely that is in the foreseeable future, given how many recent immigrants in those states have left their home countries to settle in the US, so most would presumably wish to keep it thay way. But if it did ever happen, I can't imagine the Federal Government or the US Army taking it lying down.
Yeah, the problem is that the only reason anyone in Texas wants to secede is that they're afraid the rest of the country will be dominated by Californians, and the only reason anyone in California wants to secede is that they're afraid the rest of the country will be dominated by Texans. So there's no plausible way to get *both* Texas and California to secede - one one goes, the other just says "Good; I guess the United States of America belongs to people like us now".
The other problem is, our "states" haven't had the functionality of sovereign polities in over a century. They're critically dependent on the Federal Government for too many things, and don't have the skills or resources to take on those responsibilities on short notice, so they'd basically collapse if they tried to secede without the Feds holding their hand all the way. And I *think* most of them know that.
The Thick of It and Veep seemed to be able to portray endless political strife and conflict, down to a pretty granular level, without even mentioning a political leaning, let alone any policy.
And in any case, it's incoherent to walk about "what it would be like if there was a civil war in the United States today" *without* reference to contemporary politics. It's like you're talking about a civil war as if it were a random weather disaster, but how a civil war would play out today depends entirely on the political situation *today*. There's simply no conceivable way a civil war would occur anything like what is depicted in the movie.
Right, but if they covered the political aspect it would be 100% preachy leftist tirade. I haven't seen the movie but I'm pretty sure avoiding politics is a much better choice.
Are there any good live radio stations these days, specifically in the NYC area? By good, I mean interesting (not sports, NPR, shows with a GOP or Democrat axe to grind). I love listening to the radio as a medium but am often disappointed with the content of it.
Another solid station. Gives a good injection of wall-street perspective occasionally. And when something really big is going down in the country, they often have good live coverage without wacky hot takes. Just a bit too blood pressure-raising to listen to frequently. —- A plus is that their 1130 AM transmission is rather powerful… can pick it up here in Sussex County.
I fondly remember jamming out to JM in the AM waiting for the middle school bus, and I now (20 yrs later!) occasionally listen to Clay Pidge’s Wake and Bake on the way to work. The music is not always… how do I say, something I understand, but the Pidge is so into it that it makes me listen a bit closer.
A Demon-Haunted Land by Monica Black examines the phenomenon in Germany just after WWII, of a massive upswing in the number and prominence of witch trials and faith healers. Black makes a convincing case for mass hallucination and witch hysteria as a symptom of, and method of working out, societal trauma.
There was also a big upsurge in spiritualism and seances etc after WW1. I seem to recall Arthur Conan Doyle in the 1920s firmly believing that fairies existed, and making rather a fool of himself using photos he claimed were genuine to promote his spiritualist beliefs.
> Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder.
So rather than people being put on trial for witchcraft, people were put on trial for defamation, which is not the same thing and would happen in any modern secular court system depending on defamation standards. If saying "A shot B dead" without proof is illegal, saying "A killed B with a hex" (without proof, obviously) is likely also to be illegal.
As a German, I never have heard about this before. I suppose it could have happened, if you were living under Nazi propaganda for most of your adult life and suddenly that world view falls apart because you are soundly defeated by people you thought to be your inferiors, then you might start to question everything and end up in all kinds of strange epistemic places.
On the other hand, I am not sure that guilt about being complicit in the Shoa has much to do with it. The standard position of the perpetrator generation was denial. Almost nobody wanted to talk about it ca. 1945. It was up to the next generation to start talking about what horrors the Germans had committed, and establish the Erinnerungskultur. Still, I guess that the median German in 1945 might have been aware of claims of the SS committing mass murder and perhaps might also have felt that these claims were likely true, but it was very much not talked about.
The book remarks extensively on the "not talking about it" thing and makes a pretty reasonable case for the drastic uprise in disability (and subsequent faith healing) and witchcraft accusations as being a sort of spiritual outlet for a sublimated guilt.
"We don't talk about what we saw the doctor do to our neighbor in 1943, because at the time we were all complicit... but now every time I look at him I get a bad feeling... he might be a witch." And "I never, ever think about how I turned in my Jewish best friend's mother to the SS when she came to us for help, but for some reason now whenever I try to leave my house my legs don't work. But I've heard there's a guy who talks to god who can help people like me by asking god's forgiveness."
I couldn't find one with a quick search, but I believe there was also a great outpouring of New Age / alternative healing stuff in collapse-era Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia.
"Not talked about" and "not felt about" are two very different things. Indeed, adopting a strategy of not talking about something, and trying to make it socially costly for others to talk about it, is very often a coping response to feeling very bad (maybe guilty, maybe just traumatized) about something.
So I hardly think that "the standard position of the perpetrator generation was denial" shows that they didn't feel guilty about their complicity or inaction.
But surely most of them weren't complicit and didn't actually do anything like contribute to the holocaust. I don't feel guilty about the invasion of Iraq, though obviously that's comparing apples and oranges.
Apples and oranges is putting it very, very, very mildly. The persecution, dehumanization and murder of Jews took place both inside and outside of Germany, and was carried out on a massive scale right in front of the German populace. It's also a little odd to compare such a thing to an invasion, which, however misguided or reckless and ultimately disastrous it may have been, was an act of warfare at least theoretically directed against an enemy nation's military and leadership.
I think you're missing the point. If I didn't do X, why would I feel guilty about X? Whether X took place on the Moon or inside my house, whether it's an invasion or mass murder, why would I feel guilty about something I didn't do?
From my understanding, this will be mostly applied to statements of facts. If you can't convince the pubic about the falsehood of a factual claim, putting the issuer of the claim on trial instead will just make them look like a victim on top.
Trump voters don't vote for him because they believe that every word out of his mouth is the literal truth.
Also, I will be watching how uniformly this is enforced towards mainstream politicians who use false claims as an applause light. If every time some politician claims that something disproportionally affects women and is factually proven wrong, will they go to jail for it?
Re follistatin gene therapy. Follistatin plays an Important role in reproduction. Yet, I’ve heard nothing about the impact of this therapy on fertility. Are people aware of this relationship? Anybody studying it?
It's definitely the case that a lot of drugstores (I'm in Philadelphia) have a good bit of their merchandise in locked glass cases-- you have to get a staff member to get something out if you want to buy it. I don't *think* skin lotion is one of the items locked away.
First I heard that stuff way being stolen in quantity by organized groups to be sold on ebay. This didn't seem crazy to me. but I never checked for what was on ebay.
Then I heard there was no evidence of organized groups stealing at scale.
Then I heard this was a conspiracy by the drug store chains to have an excuse for closing locations, though I don't know why they'd go to the expense when they can just close stores.
The food isn't locked down. CVS carries a lot of shelf stable food which presumably could be resold. The original claim wasn't about desperate people stealing, it was about a few people willing to steal a lot, and a larger number people looking for bargains.
In California, there is ample evidence of organized retail theft, and of increased individual shoplifting.
I have read credible arguments from, among others, business/finance blogger Wolf Richter that drugstore chains have been using the (incontrovertibly real) increase in retail theft as an excuse to close stores that they would have closed anyway for the usual reasons: general cost-cutting plus a rational response to the fact that brick-and-mortar drug chains are getting murdered by online pharmacies. (Why do they need an excuse? Because when drugstore chains close pharmacies there is inevitably an outcry from the affected communities accusing them of heartlessly removing a vital lifeline for the poor and elderly, etc., which damages the brand.)
But of course, *sigh*, this is a culture war issue. So if you're a drooling commie SJW, you are required to pretend that the marked increase in retail theft is all in our imaginations, and that retailers of all kinds have invested real shareholder money into thick glass cases, additional security guards, separate health & beauty sections with a separate cash register and theft detectors, and so on, as an elaborate show to make marginalized people look bad. And if you're a perfectly rational Bayesian prior updater, you're required to pretend that every CVS is a constant war zone, picked clean of goods at all times, and that it's unthinkable for corporations to lie or fudge the truth about their reasons for closing stores. So here we are.
I explained why a corporation in the business of running brick-and-mortar pharmacies would feel the need to offer an excuse. it's hardly "deranged" to suppose that such a company might do so. Such companies quite commonly do so (whether the excuses offered are truthful or not is irrelevant, of course). Indeed, to suggest that public-facing corporations do not offer justifications to the public for their potentially unpopular decisions is...well, in an effort to turn down the temperature here I'll just say that it's a bit out of touch with the easily observable actions of many, many corporations taking many, many unpopular actions over the years--especially grocery stores or pharmacies closing locations.
The reason I commented in the first place is because Walgreens in particular publicly claimed that it was closing stores in San Francisco due to shoplifting.. Whether or not that was the real reason, it is incontrovertible that that corporation--which demonstrably exists and is traded on the NASDAQ--publicly offered an excuse for its closing of specific stores rather than simply closing them without comment.
>Of course a company will say why it's closing a store
OK, we're making progress: we're at least back into a model of reality where companies do, contra your first comment, actually quite frequently offer public justifications for actions such as store closings.
>What's deranged
That's a strong term, and you've used it twice now. Is it particularly important to you that your interpretation of the facts before you (including the ones that I've had to bring to your attention) in this case be the correct one?
> is to insist that somehow saying "we are closing this store because it is unprofitable" would be so risky to their brand image
You've already walked back your earlier assertion that corporations are too based and alpha to deign to justify their decisions about store closings to the public. Now that you agree that sometimes they do...did you think they do it because they like the sounds of their own voices? Almost by definition, if a company feels compelled to give excuses to the public for a controversial decision, they do so because they wish to mitigate damage to the image of their brand.
>that instead they'd be willing to lie to shareholders and the government about the reason.
Shareholders? The government? The cases I have in mind haven't involved anything other than statements to the media or press releases, and I don't believe I ever implied otherwise.
Now, earlier I had to nudge you toward a model of reality in which companies occasionally feel compelled to justify their decisions to the public. I hope I don't have to do the same for a model of the world in which the content of press releases or statements to the media are 1) at least somewhat frequently inaccurate and, generally, 2) able to be made without substantial risk of prosecution for violating laws concerning disclosures to shareholders or perjury.
To be clear, I don't have enough data before me to form a strong opinion about whether Walgreens in particular or retailers in general are being honest about their reasons for closing stores. I was simply calling people's attention to an argument I've seen made in favor of "no, at least some of them aren't." It may be the case that that argument is wrong, but it's hardly "deranged" to suggest that any company anywhere might be dishonest in its public statements.
In my city it appears be both organized groups and individuals, and the individuals both stealing for personal use and for redistribution, almost certainly resale or trade in kind. I hadn't heard about eBay, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some more sophisticated groups trying to exploit law-enforcement-inefficiencies to make a profit. I wouldn't say that it's "desperate people", necessarily. If I had to guess, I'd say it's some of the more daring or entrepreneurial addicts who pull off the big hauls, and the rest are just targets of opportunity. Most of the homeless cohort is pretty desperate as is, and the most desperate ones are usually too weak and tired and beaten-down to try this sort of thing.
Basic food is available in a number of ways, and can be cheap, so I'm not surprised that it's not locked up. Things like powdered laundry detergent have been targets, and are apparently used for black market resale to non-homeless people. I suppose this category involves factors like "stores well", "everyone needs it", "compact value", and so forth (but big boxes of powdered detergent, seriously?). Maybe people are less willing to by stolen food off the black market, but are willing to buy stolen cleaning products? I did talk to someone in my local grocery store who said that the directives for which products to seal up are handed down from corporate, so there's probably a good bit of inefficiency in that response. Just because it's sealed up, doesn't mean that anyone in my state was stealing it.
Premium ice cream was a target for a while; I'm told because it's the perfect food for when coming down off of fentanyl.
Various far-left people and groups keep shifting arguments for why this isn't happening or isn't bad, and I can't keep up with what the current nonsense is. I've even heard that it's a deliberate policy of turning left-wing neighborhoods into food deserts. A consistent theme is that this is all covered by insurance so the corporations aren't actually harmed, which of course has a few enormous things wrong with it. (At least it's not usually by the same people who claim that it's morally praiseworth to harm giant corporations.) Most, I think they just want some vaguely clever response that they can repeat loudly and righteously so they look good on camera.
I worked for 6 months at an urban Sears store in 1982. It was quite an education. I was able to observe humanity at its worst and its best. This comment calls for an example of one of the worst or at least one of the saddest.
I was able to talk to the security team there almost daily. They had a nemesis they referred to as the ‘garbage bag man’. He would enter the store with an empty garage bag and fill it with baby related products like disposable diapers and somehow would always evade security and make off with goods that he sold below asking price to low income mothers.
For worst I’d have relate a true tale of grand larceny or flashers putting their dicks on the counter in front of a female cashier. Or maybe obnoxious suburban guys trying to pull an obvious grift in the city store. Or fellow cashiers running a large scale dip into the till scheme.
For the best I’d have to put my phone down and sit at a keyboard and maybe present something with a bit of nuance. Stories with too much poignance to bang out with one thumb.
Re the garbage bag thief I don’t think he had inside help. I was only there for 6 months. He could just been as lucky as he was elusive. This was before inexpensive and inescapable CCTV.
I watched a training exercise with a new security hire. She played the part of a thief trying to escape with 2 trained security guys trying to prevent her exit. They did finally catch her but it was close.
Seems to be Culture Warring; there are plenty of online videos of (alleged) organised shoplifting in San Francisco (and I presume other cities) where gangs just stroll in, strip the shelves, and run back out to the waiting get-away car.
This produces a lot of heat but not much light in the comments, where you can imagine the sides line up on (1) this is the fault of the crazy Democrat local government and (2) this isn't happening and if it is it's a conspiracy by the MAGA set and if it's not it's down to poverty and lack of opportunity that poor black people are being forced to steal necessary items.
One side is "Gangs run riot, stores have to lock goods behind glass, eventually stores decide to shut down, then the bleeding-hearts go 'why is nobody willing to open a drugstore in this area that badly needs one? it must be racism!'" and the other side is, as quoted, "it's a conspiracy to close down stores by the evil capitalist chains".
What the true facts about level of thieving are, God alone knows, I don't think we'll find them from online discussion of the problem.
A decade ago I worked for a drug store (CVS) in what is probably one of the highest income towns in America (far from the bay area or any or any other major metropolitan area). During the year or so I was working there, we got a call from... another store? district manager? that several stores had just been hit by "organized crime" (their words), who had just grabbed a bunch of makeup (the best ratio of profit margins to weight for both scalpers and the store) and walked out. We got sent pictures, and the shift supervisor sat in waiting; sure enough they walked in, grabbed a bunch, and walked out.
I got a comment on FB from a drug store person that there's a lot being stolen and resold at flea markets, which would be a lot harder to track than reselling on ebay. I don't think I've been seeing drug store stuff at flea markets, but I don't go to a lot of flea markets.
CVS and Target can close any store they want, for any reason or none. They don't need to make up an excuse.
The 2020 media environment in the US was really amazing in how it got almost all prestige media outlets in lockstep wrt the acceptable way to talk about things. This was the world of "Fiery, but peaceful, protests" and NPR running a positive piece on a book titled "In Defense of Looting" book. (I didn't read it; the interviewer and author seemed to be literally defending looting during riots as a good thing, but maybe if I read the book I'd have a more nuanced view of it.) I think a lot of this has stuck around, with a lot of media outlets basically seeing any CW-aligned question as not being about what statements are true or false, but rather about what facts would be good for the side they've decided are the good guys.
Long term, I wonder if that will be the last nail in the coffin of prestige media sources. Lying about stuff people see with their own eyes *really* destroys your credibilty fast.
"Myth vs. Reality: Trends in Retail Theft: Despite spikes in some cities, crime data doesn’t show a nationwide increase in shoplifting and other forms of retail theft."
"...Violent crime has declined nationally since jumping in 2020, but trends in retail theft are more difficult to assess, in part because of varying data collection and theft reporting methods. That said, the available crime data and industry figures cut against claims of a national increase in retail theft, despite notable spikes in some cities."
That crime data is almost certainly problematic. Several of the most hard-hit jurisdictions have prosecutors who refuse to prosecute shoplifting, meaning that police stop arresting shoplifters, meaning that stores stop reporting shoplifters. Meaning that it doesn't show up in the crime statistics. (Filing a criminal report can take a bit of work, and stores are understaffed as is.)
Not to mention that there are increasing numbers of people who are ideologically opposed to calling the police for almost anything. If you call the police on a shoplifter, and they actually find the person, and the person resists arrest and is shot, what then? How sure are you that the cops even found the right person? "Snitches get stitches" (the bizarro world version of "me too").
But at least bounded distrust still holds; when they say:
> Contrary to media accounts, reported incidents declined over the same period in San Francisco (down 5 percent)
We can have a decent idea of what's going on there. And they do mention this anecdote:
> Changes in how theft is reported may also influence crime counts and, by extension, perceptions of trends in retail theft. In one particularly dramatic case, a Target store in San Francisco reported 154 shoplifting incidents in September 2021 —10 times more than the preceding month — due to a “new reporting system” that made it easier for the store to document incidents with the police. The increase was so large that it skewed citywide data, making it look as if monthly shoplifting counts had doubled across San Francisco. Reporting discrepancies this sensational are likely rare. But smaller swings in the data may be more common.
But if the data is bad, then the proper conclusion is that we don't know whether shoplifting is increasing or not. I can imagine that there are just as many prosecutors who go out of their way to prosecute crimes like shoplifting, and therefore the police go out of their way to find them, or "creatively generate" incidents. I also imagine there are equal numbers of people who are ideologically committed to suppressing people in poor urban areas, for example by generating more arrests. So, on a theoretical level, it's a wash either way.
The article I linked to claims that despite spikes is some cities (which are therefore real) overall retail theft hasn't increased nationwide. And if, as you say, the change is due to a change in reporting procedures, then there isn't a real increase there either.
Any crime is too much, but it isn't really increasing, is the point.
> But if the data is bad, then the proper conclusion is that we don't know whether shoplifting is increasing or not.
I basically agree. We have a number of individual reports that it is, but no solid data. I'm going with the reports (including my own eyes), but that's my choice.
I don't think your "wash" analysis is quite right, though. There's a lot of reasons why it might be down in many places but up in a few particular cities. The key is that those cities lean left, and elect officials who lean left, and drag their police into superficially acting left, and most especially who provide the sort of homeless services that encourage people to travel hundreds of miles. (Not to mention that a left-leaning population is going to be more welcoming.)
The upshot is that I think these factors mean that the greatest increases are going to be located in the places least likely to report them.
> Any crime is too much,
This is largely irrelevant to the discussion, but have you heard the phrase "the optimal amount of X is not zero"?
"The increase was so large that it skewed citywide data, making it look as if monthly shoplifting counts had doubled across San Francisco"
I like how the 'real' explanation for this, which is supposed to reassure us all about the level of crime, is that "no, there weren't more thefts, there were more *reported* thefts, so they really were robbing this much all along!"
My city had some "renter protection" laws during covid that I think drove rental housing prices up. One made it hard to evict people, and another required owners to accept the first qualified applicant. I think there were also restrictions on the types of allowable qualifications. The result seems to have severely damaged the rental market.
I went to see Civil War to a small local movie theater with friends yesterday. It was mostly a confusing experience.
Spoilers, not rot13:ing them because there's not really that much to spoil here:
I knew that the movie would try to present an "second American civil war" without trying to get too political - a befuddling decision itself - but the movie doesn't really commit to any narrative.
Is the WF justified in rebelling against the authoritarian president? Maybe? They vaguely indicate that the president is bad (he's on a third term!), but the loyalist forces are not shown doing anything particularly bad (unless you count that fed riot cops are tetchy in a situation where a suicide bomber might strike at any moment), and all the war crimes are committed by WF or the presumably WF-affliated Hawaiian shirt irregulars who execute surrendered uniformed troops. But since there's no weight to either side it's not really a "war is hell, both sides are bad" thing either.
Are they trying to portray Wagner Moura's character as someone who is doing a toxic masculinity? Maybe? Is it bad that the one community has decided to go on conducting life as normal expect with snipers on roofs? Maybe? The clearest narrative ark is the Kirsten Dunst character being on a suicide run after "losing her faith in journalism" (lol) and, in the end, willing her photography mojo to Cailee Spaeny figuratively through the lens of a camera, but since we've established that photojournalism is basically useless for anything besides taking cool photos and seeking thrills, we should we care?
The only scene with actual tension is the one with Jesse Plemons and his racist militia, and that's partly because Jesse Plemons is a great actor (some said during Breaking Bad that Jesse Plemons is a dollar store Matt Damon, I argue that eventually we'll see Matt Damon properly as a dollar store Jesse Plemons), but also in large part because these guys at least seem to hold an actual ideology and be actually doing things that happen in actual civil wars, ie. running a death squad on ethnic/religious basis. I've seen some indicate that the whole rest of the movie is basically a long intro and outro to the Jesse Plemons scene.
It was probably a good idea for them to make a war movie about reporters. Since many journalists are a obsessed with the idea of their social relevance, getting 5 stars in magazines doesn't seem particularly hard, especially since I don't think the movie was advertised as concentrating as heavily on journalism as it was.
2.5/5, 2 for some cool shots and for not being too long (though you could have easily cropped out half a hour by cutting back on some early stuff and the unnecessarily long DC fight scene) and 0.5 extra for the Jesse Plemons scene.
He said Spoilers - that’s enough. He didn’t have to mention ROT13 at all. Anyway ROT13 is a painful spoiler system. Most of the time I’m not copying and pasting the text
The substitution cipher where each letter is rotated 13 letters from the actual. It’s used to hide things like movie spoilers and such so a joke or riddle is not given away.
We use it so often here that you start to pretty quickly scan and decipher without using a little app.
Edit - I think I misunderstood your question and you knew what it is. To answer the what’s the point question is that there is not very much of a point if the commenter mentions it up front and not reading it solves the spoiler problem.
No, I looked at my comment before posting and concluded that it doesn't really include something that would count as a "spoiler" in the sense that it reveals a major plot twist in advance, namely since there aren't major plot twists or secrets to be spoiled as such.
All the reviews by people who went to see it have been "This is rubbish", so I don't think that there is much danger of spoilers. The general tenor has been in agreement with Tatu; there is no plot as such, just Photojournalist Angsty Lady and her merry band driving around the country.
You can't even extract "Orange Man Bad" as the 'point' of the movie, because nobody is given any sort of reason or set of demands for what they're doing. They just all divided up and started shooting.
I kept thinking about how this would still provide a good setting for a CRPG (why are there comparatively few CRPGs situated in a present-day-style wartime setting?), and it struck me that the plot, such as it was, was almost literally a CRPG plot already.
We start with the tutorial (water riot) where we get a refresher on how to use action points, take photos, communicate, even transfer an item to a party member. Then, at the hotel, the main quest (or maybe a big DLC quest?) starts and the party is assembled.
An early random encounter demonstrates that one party member is low on the levels or maybe has the wrong skillset, and the narrative has told us that the main quest's final encounter is dicey, so the party decides to grind side quests for EXP. They even visit a literal shop and a literal rest site.
During one of the side quests the party encounters an enemy (Plemons) that's a bit too high for their current levels, so in addition to two temp party members who were probably hardcoded to be killed anyway, they lose one of the main party members. After this, they find out that the main quest's time limit has run out and they're locked out of the best ending. However, the story graciously lets them go through the final battle for a secondary ending.
Alex Garland has apparently served as a video game writer as well, so I guess it sticks.
I haven't seen the movie, but I get the impression is that the point is wars happen because the two sides are willing to use ordinary people as a background.
Maybe the point is that photojournalism (and war coverage in general) isn't this big deal about recording and revealing truth, it's just about making journalists feel they're important when they drop into conflict hotspots and snap their little photos and then zoom out again?
That the real point of it all is "Man, this will win me a Pulitzer!" so they don't know and don't care about what is going on, about what A and B are fighting each other, it's all the same to them what the ostensible reason for the conflict is, they're just interested in the cool images they can get?
Like, they sort of hint that the Nick Offerman President character might be influenced by Trump, but he's not, really. His mannerism are not particularly Trumpish; he holds some speeches where he mentions the flag and God and such, but those would be more normie-Republican coded, and he could even be a Democrat. Completely anodyne, a waste of an actor.
I saw that in clips and my reaction was "They're trying to say 'this is Trump' without saying 'this is Trump'. but even worse, they're conflating 'normie-Republican' (as you say) with 'MAGA redhat loon Jan 6th coup democracy dies!!!!' in order to paint all Republicans as 'they're all like that, it doesn't matter who gets elected, any Republican is Trump-lite'" and that was so dumb and betrayed a lack of understanding of what is going on. Clearly we are supposed to just know by innate instinct who the Good Guys are and that naturally they vote Democrat 🙄
Yeah, but the WF rebels aren't really particularly Democratic-coded either. The only thing hinting into that direction is that they are vaguely alluded to being allied to "Portland Maoists", but in another scene, there are probably-WF-affliated militiamen wearing boogaloo boys Hawaiian shirts. A thematic mess.
Have culture wars online died down in general, or is it just that this place is much less culture war-y than SSC? It just occurred to me that I haven't seen a lot of angry online CW disputes over the past couple years. Plenty of arguments about the ME of course, but that's over a war-war not an argument about bathrooms or whatever. I thought once we got back into an election year that the CW heat would start to burn again, but that doesn't seem to have happened. Is it over?
Funnily enough I've also seen the claim that the culture war is over made on Tumblr, but with more of a smug implication that it's over because the SJW/woke side won.
This place is a lot less heated because The Rightful Caliph does not put up with any of that, so we are on our (semi-)best behaviour.
If/when I really get into Culture War stuff, I do it on other sites (and regularly tussle with the mods of those). On here I try to remember my party manners 😀
I think the ME is taking up the energy. I think most of us are here for interesting discussions with intelligent people, and are not so much invested in waging the culture war. It's satisfying to snark about my outgroup, but I try to keep it down to avoid polluting the environment too much.
And, at least for me, most other issues have settled down. I know roughly where I stand, and am willing to talk about it with reasonable people, several levels inside a comment chain, or preferably in a hidden thread. Current events might warrant a bit of discussion. But most of the time, I'm not interested in charging headlong into the melee and using Smite Evil on a bunch of monsters that I can tell from sight are racially Always Evil.
SSC forked into DSL and ACX; with some overlap but not much compared to the total ACX commentariat. DSL I think got most of the "right wing" posters, and most of the culture war because it had enough combatants for such. ACX seems much more consistently blue-grey, to use the old SSC language, which makes it more congenial but - aside from Scott's posts - less broadly interesting.
Funny, because from my point of view, this place seem to lean right, probably because it leans skeptic, and skeptic lends itself to "small c conservatism" in many ways. It also seems to lean "Libertarian", which is more right than left, at least in the US.
According to the latest survey, almost 65% of the audience identifies as either liberal or social-democratic, against just over 30% identifying as either conservative or libertarian. (2024 poll, "Political Affiliation") Also, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 32% to 8%. (2024 poll, "American Parties")
You may be used to an environment where liberal politics are the overwhelming consensus, which isn't the case here. That would explain why this place seems to lean right, while actually being well left of center compared to the American population.
It's probably to the right of the median for young, urban, college-educated Americans, and thus to the right of any definition of "center" that comes by way of the US mainstream media(*). And to the right of most of Europe. But it's to the left of SSC, definitely to the left of DSL, and I think to the left of American society as a whole. SSC was unique, and wonderful. ACX on its best days can maybe equal that, but it's bigger and it can make Scott a decent living, which is not a trivial consideration.
*ETA: Or to the right of the consensus of most not-explicitly-right-wing parts of the internet.
"It's probably to the right of the median for young, urban, college-educated Americans"
Well, I'm only one for three there, so my own perception of this place remains unexplained. Also, I have never cared what most people on the internet think about anything, and I'm not starting now.
Slate Star Codex, the blog Scott Alexander ran before ACX. And Data Secrets Lox, a forum created by and for the SSC commentariat as a new home, when SSC went away and it wasn't clear if or when Scott would have a new forum of his own.
You may be able to discern an anagrammatic theme in the naming.
Speaking of culture war, there is also themotte.org which took over the periodic culture war threads after some people on the internet became annoyed with opinions in the SSC CW threads and decided to go after SSC because of them.
What Nancy and NotA said. DSL also had a first-mover advantage, being set up by SSC refugees in the immediate aftermath of the SSC shutdown, while it took a while for Scott and Substack to get everything arranged for ACX.
That initially gave DSL a good spectrum of commenters, which combined with a good comment interface made for a decent forum. That might have continued for many years if ACX had never happened; instead we got the fork.
I first learned about it in Naval Gazing, yet another SSC-spawned blog (free of culture warfare, but heavy on naval warfare). But there was a lot of general outreach, trying to find all the SSC regulars and let them know.
I also learned about it on Naval Gazing. Prior to SSC going down I was a long time lurker...DSL was great for a while, but it's been getting steadily less interesting as it undergoes evaporative cooling.
Yeah, I clicked the link, read a few threads, and was reminded why I am not a regular reader.
The comment interface is way faster, but I think tree structure is better than linear; it is easier to see who responds to whom. But the noise-to-signal ratio feels worse; it is almost like the average internet debate for smart people.
I think that tree vs. linear isn't an obvious choice, and it's bet to make it a convenient option. I think the Tor linear structure was fine, and Reactor wrecked it by making it tree, though I admit putting replies in a tiny font made it worse.
I think this is basically correct. My assumption is that the culture war will be properly over once it's uncontroversial to admit that culture warring was something the left did, contrary to their shrilly strident narrative that it was the right that was waging a culture war against all of their objectively correct positions that had all been status quo forever anyway.
I think the idea that the Culture Wars are over is wildly optimistic. Everything seems to be polarized these days--opinions are as deeply divided as ever, and regardless of who wins in November, none of it is going away.
I'm not saying it *is* over, I'm saying you will know it is by that token, when it happens. *Right now* you'd have better luck getting an average leftist to catch a squirrel with his bare hands and flay it alive than to admit this.
The people on the Left that I know are pretty convinced that the Right started it all, way back in the 1980's with the Moral Majority. The creation of Fox News was another milestone they would point to.
But I'm not saying one side or the other is more culpable with respect to cultural propaganda, quite the opposite.
"One side was right all along" seems like a pretty audacious prediction for hindsight. It certainly is on some things but less so on others. There were some things that the idiot left shrilly pushed that might actually have been good in the long run, even if a lot of innocent eggs had to be cracked to make the omelet. I'm definitely not sure though; I'm 60% that metoo was a net positive.
Uh, metoo was blatantly obviously a retarded lynch mob mass hysteria that led to exactly, precisely nothing good whatsoever, so I doubt we'll be able to see eye to eye on prediction probabilities :-D
No, it was pretty close, and could have gone either way. My read at the time was that it was Clinton's election to lose, and she did.
It's different now--everyone has heard the arguments on both sides ad nauseum. It's all about a very small number of swing voters right now, and they haven't engaged yet.
Has anyone seen accounts by the children of wealthy parents who were busted a few years ago for using various frauds to get their kids admitted to college? I'll take interviews, articles, anything where these kids tell the story and its consequences from their point of view.
I haven't seen anything like that, but I think I can imagine what they would tell you off the record -- all rich kids pay for school admissions, it's just that there are proper channels that are more expensive, and side channels that are relatively less expensive (still very expensive though) but sometimes blow up... which is what happened now.
The thing that makes most people outraged is *not* the thing that makes it a crime. Most people are outraged that rich kids can pay for school admissions... but this is actually business as usual, this is exactly how the system is designed to work, this is how those schools got most of their wealth. The actual crime was that some families tried to get a discount by paying a wrong person instead... and unlike those who did the same thing in previous years successfully, these were unlucky and got caught.
*
Note that I am *not* defending those families: they did the thing that many people consider immoral, and on top of that, they also tried to cheat to get it cheaper. But the public outrage is actively misdirected by journalists here -- what people are outraged about is the ability to "pay to win" in a supposedly meritocratic educational system, but what the targets are selected for is "paying less than they were supposed to". They are punished for trying to cheat the people who are organizing the immoral thing, not for participating in the immoral thing per se. If this type of crime is successfully discouraged, it will not result in more fairness, but in the existing unfairness being more profitable. People participating in the outrage blindly are actually helping the thing they are outraged about.
Part of the cheating to get in situation might be that people have a reasonable sense that a good bit of admissions are arbitrary. Why is being good at an unusual but respectable sport an advantage? This is silly. Why not cheat?
"All rich kids" is I think misleading. Starting with, what's your definition of "rich"? Because the normal price for admission by generous above-board donation to the school, for any elite university, is now in the eight-figure range. Billionaires will probably pay that without hesitation; hectomillionaires might do it after thinking about it, but garden-variety multimillionaires and celebrities are priced out of that market.
And I'm skeptical that there's really that much public outrage about the handful of billionaires' kids, particularly when they are actually pumping tens of millions of dollars into the school. Things like legacy admissions are much more common, just as unearned, and don't have an obvious up side to the other students or parents, so those seem to generate more heat.
Paying half a million to a "fixer" to get in through the back door is also unearned, also does nothing for the rest of the students, and is just plain sleazy but in a novel and interesting way that people will pay attention to.
Yet the very existence of billionaires, or hecto millionaires buying their way into college should remind us that the morality here is for the poor, or relatively poor. It’s fine to get enraged with the latter gaming the system illegally if you are also enraged with the former gaming the system legally, otherwise you are equating morality with legality.
The morality of not stealing luxury cars and big-screen TVs is for the poor, or relatively poor, because the rich will simply buy the things.
Buying a thing from its rightful owner, at a mutually agreeable price, is not immoral. Not even if you're rich, and no matter how many people would rather the rightful owner not offer that thing for sale. Bribing one of the employees of the rightful owner to open the back door and let you pilfer the warehouse, is theft and is immoral. Even if you're poor, and no matter how much you really really really want the thing that rich people can afford and you cannot.
Someone will no doubt want to bring up the alleged nobility of a starving peasant stealing a loaf of bread from an uncaring Scrooge, but we're talking about a ticket to USC for someone who didn't bother to pay attention in high school, blocking that same opportunity for someone who actually earned it.
Yes. Whenever people mention Lori Loughlin online I rush to her defense - pointing out that she was doing what she was doing because she wasn’t rich enough to legally buy in.
I know about the many ways rich families pay for admission, or pay for things that make admission more likely (tutors, SAT prep etc.) But I recently met someone whose family paid in quite a direct way for admission to a prestigious university, and is profoundly affected by the knowledge. Know someone else who, like maybe 30% of kids at their prep school, got a diagnosis of ADHD from a neurologist, which qualified them to have 50% more time to take the SAT. That person also is very disturbed by the feeling that they're an imposter. It's Imposter Syndrome, but with some reality basis -- though in fact both people are quite smart, as evidenced by their college performance and later achievements.
Viliam, these 2 people would definitely *not* tell you off the record that it's no big deal because everybody wealthy does some version of what their families did.
I agree. The person feels awful. On the other hand, the original testing was done when he was 15 or so, and nobody said outright, "we're going to just pay a doc to say you have a disability, then you'll get 50% longer on the SAT, OK son?" He was doing badly in school (mainly because he wasn't trying) so taking him for neuropsych testing wasn't a ridiculous thing to do. And at the time he had the testing he did not know about the hidden advantages of getting labelled as someone with ADHD or severe test anxiety, just thought his parents were making too big a deal of his not being an achievatron. It's easy to hate on the kids who have parents who do this kind of shit, and to imagine they are fully on board and think it's fine, but the 2 examples I've seen so far of these kids have really been harmed by the "help" their parents gave them.
Parents are supposed to do these things in a way that their children won't find out, until maybe much later, so they can believe they won in a meritocratic competition.
If you want your kids to win at life, "unfair advantages" + "clear conscience" is the right combination for producing success, optimism, and self-esteem.
There is a similar thing with the state universities here that doesn't involve money.*
The investigating media back when we had more of that did a deep dive into college and law school admissions at Big State U's. They found pattern of a lot of "exceptions" that were found to be paired with letters written on the lucky person's behalf, by legislators. The letters were anti-correlated with e.g. LSAT scores.
These tended to be the nieces and nephews and friends' kids of the politicians.
It was very well-documented, but didn't amount to anything. This is not the sort of privilege anybody in power is inclined to deprive themselves of. You get a true bipartisan spirit on that!
And too, it didn't neatly fit the narrative of privilege. The majority of the recipients of the unmerited acceptances were from the "poorest" part of the state.
*Of course it did invove money, because legislators award money to the universities to some degree.
Also the tax fraud part of it. Families involved in this scam didn't just "pay money to try to get Timmy into a better school," the guy running the scam had a fraudulent 501c3 that scam participants "donated" to as payment for his services. They then went back at the end of the year and tried to deduct the donation as charitable when they filed their taxes. That's why it got to the level of criminal charges against many of the participants - they didn't just want to cheat to get their kids better college admissions, they committed fraud so that they could deduct the cost of that cheating from their taxes as a charitable donation.
My understanding is that there was bribery involved, too. I pay off the underwater basketweaving coach of Prestige U to say he wants my kid for the underwater basketweaving team, take some pictures of my kid in a swimming pool with a snorkel, weaving a basket, and then he gets in. I don't think you'd actually get a criminal fraud charge if you just helped your kid lie about extracurriculars in his application.
To a first approximation, the crime wasn't buying their kids' way into prestigious colleges--you can do that by making a big enough donation. The crime was buying their kids' spots at the prestigious colleges from scalpers instead of from the university.
I thought it was such a strange thing to risk. There are so many colleges - who cares which one your kid goes to? If she's a girl mostly interested in fashion and her own looks, as seemed to be the case with the celebrity ones - she will be more likely to stay the course at a lesser school anyway. This is what "marketing" majors are for. I don't know if these Hollywood people are sensitive about their own intelligence, so that to admit your kid is no genius (or no athlete?) would be too hard? But it's not like anyone would be fooled in that way. Or care.
What a bizarre final parenting lesson to teach your kid.
In the case you're probably thinking of, note that neither parent ever graduated from college themselves, but managed to work their way into elite society in ways that many would consider shallow and superficial. From some of the comments I've seen, they were rather insecure about that and wanted to make sure their children had all the educational advantages they didn't, while becoming Properly Elite in a way that a BA from Cal State Northridge really doesn't facilitate.
If you've never been to college, you might not be well equipped to determine which universities do or do not offer a solid education. And if you're also rich, you'll probably want to err on the side of caution with your own kids.
Yes. I just suspect that most people who are outraged wouldn't agree with a statement "they should have paid the full price of 'pay to win' instead" (in which case they wouldn't be required to lie about sport teams). And yet, if the parents did so, the outrage wouldn't be aimed at them now.
I have a question for those concerned about extinction risk: if intelligent life were discovered elsewhere in the universe, would that make you less worried about it because intelligent life would survive even if humans went extinct? Contrariwise, if it were somehow proven that no other intelligent life exists, would that make you more concerned?
I like humans above and beyond, and often at the expense of, other conscious creatures, which is why I still eat chicken. I would choose humans over even a more intelligent species. Call it blind loyalty. That discovery would, however, affect my answer to your second question:
It would not make me more concerned if we proved intelligent life doesn't exist, because I'm as convinced as is possible considering the available evidence that the Great Filter is nuclear catastrophe. It's just too easy to split the atom and the fact that we've almost made it to our nuclear centennial without collapsing modern civilization to ruins is one of the greatest miracles in the history of mankind.
There are x-risks which only affect our rock here and then there are x-risks which affect our light cone.
For the former part, I think there would some solace in the fact that someone else will try to get some utility of all that previously mostly pointless universe.
For the latter, I would consider an extinction which also proceeds to transform the rest of the galaxy into paperclips to be much worse. (I would still update the odds for great filters, though.)
No and no. I feel a bond with the beings on my planet, especially the ones of my species, and especially especially for certain members of my species. It's not because they're intelligent life, it's because they're all sweet embraceable you's. I'm not exactly a fan of intelligent life, and in my dark moods I think it's unfortunate that even the forms of it on our planet exist. New beings are wired to start life with such joy and excitement, and so many then go on to lives of entrapment, lethal boredom, or pain. And then they die in pain.
I dunno Moon Moth. It's imaginable that we make it better for people. But for animals? They eat each other. And there is no hospice for them, no morphine. Their deaths must be terrible, panting alone in the bushes. I know most people don't think about this, but it forces itself into my mind.
That's the hope of the glorious AI-run transhumanist future, though. We didn't find God so we build one instead, who can track the fall of every sparrow. Or something. Maybe build a simulation where nothing ever *really* suffers, and upload everything into it. Maybe there's just a little suffering-counter in the corner of our vision, with the current level and the lifetime total, and an odd but harmless situation so we don't accidentally set fire to ourselves.
I do think of it, sometimes. I'll spare you an example from last year. But also think about it sometimes when I play with cats, and they catch the toy in their mouth, bring it down with their weight on top, and do the little headshake to snap its neck. But the cats are cute, too.
Depends on how similar that life is to us. If it's similar enough to be comprehensible to us then yes, it genuinely would make me feel better (both in itself and in that its discovery implies better odds of survival for us in several ways).
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." -- Bill Waterson, of Calvin and Hobbes
This is not just you, but I am so tired, so goddamn tired, of the habitual undercutting of species self-respect for humans. It may have had an intent to prevent grandiosity, but I believe it's become a thing in itself, and not healthy.
That’s what someone says when they want you to set your sights a little lower, to make your goals a little less lofty. “Only human”. It’s supposed to be a reminder that, when you get down to it, we are basically chimps who traded a little less hair for a little more brain. “Only human” means: you’re limited. You’re fragile. You are flawed. And all that is true – but that doesn’t preclude greatness.
You, and I, are human.
When evolution created us as weird chimps to hunt and gather on the African Savannah, we said “how about we thrive on every corner of every continent instead?” And when evolution looked at us skeptically and said “um…even the really cold parts? Like, there’s this whole Scandinavian region you are really not cut out for” we said “ESPECIALLY the really cold parts, and when we get there we’re going to invent IKEA because frankly these rocks are uncomfortable”, at which point evolution presumably threw up its hands and left the weird insane chimps to it.
We are the humans! We are the ones who write, who speak, who invent! We are the strange chimps who always found a way to thrive, on every corner of this ridiculous planet, no matter what it threw at us!
We are the humans! We are the ones who saw a poisonous tree, thought “that looks delicious”, turned it into almonds, and now we pour it in our coffee for breakfast! We are the humans, and we have it in ourselves to care, and love, and protect all of our people! We are perhaps uniquely endowed with the ability to go beyond what drives evolution instilled in us, to love and care and protect for its own sake.
We are the humans! We figured out what the stars are made of! We’ve peered into distant galaxies! We’ve mapped the echoes of the very beginning of the universe! We figured out what EVERYTHING is made out of, and now we take the fundamental building blocks of everything and SPLIT THEM APART to make energy. Like that! (said as a light turns on) We are the humans, and after spreading to every corner of this planet, we looked up and said “yeah, that looks good.” We are the humans, and if you want to do a full headcount you’re going to need to go into orbit. We are the humans, built to run on the Savannah, but now you can find our footprints on the moon.
We are the humans. We’re the reason you don’t see Smallpox around anymore. It got a bad case of us. Oh, and by the way, we’re not done. You know polio? It killed or paralyzed five hundred thousand of us in 1950. But humans noticed, and humans said “FUCK NO”, and inch by inch we’ve fought back, from half a million each year to just THIRTY-FOUR cases of polio in the wild in 2016. This year? Only SIXTEEN. Polio is at the gates of oblivion, and we have a message: Give smallpox our regards.
Next time someone says that you’re only human, forget the “only”! You are one of THE humans! The truth-seekers, the peacemakers, the atom-splitters, the moon-walkers, the artists, the dreamers, the lovers and protectors – The rebels who defy the world they were made for, who never stop dreaming and working for a better tomorrow.
We are not done. We have countless problems left to solve, many of them self-made. But we are the humans, and we don’t give up, and we have come this far, and as long as even one of us is still breathing, we fight – because we are ONLY HUMAN.
That's a somewhat different point. I take "only human" to have different meanings. It can mean don't be too ambitious, or as you say, don't be ambitious at all.
For example, I used to believe I ought to be able to come up with arguments which would convince people immediately. This was simply a wrong ambition, and I'm glad I gave it up.
On the other hand, I can be amazed that I had such a crazy ambition, and that gets into not acknowledging that part of being human is sometimes getting things wrong.
I think there's a difference between "have modest ambitious" and "your species is fundamentally disgusting".
Maybe it's a rational response to the observation that the species keeps trying over and over to come up with ways to make itself miserable if not destroy itself.
The thing is, the human race isn't close to ideally competent. It also has remarkable achievements and isn't reliably self-destructive. I feel like too much emotional weight is getting put on the negative side.
No one is perfect. If one cannot laugh at oneself, one is in a sorry state indeed. I think that includes laughing at one's species. Laughing does not mean one's species is always laughable. The highs do not cancel the lows, nor the lows the highs.
Anyone know where I can chat about a relative's stomach ulcer (caused by H. Pylori bacteria) diagnosis via endoscopy? I looked at Reddit but the discussions seemed somewhat useless on this subject.
If someone here knows the answers, my questions are :
1. What is the typical treatment i.e. what cocktail of antibiotics? Other dogs and donts with it, like diet? Is it true you have to avoid spicy food?
2. How do you tell if you're cured? Are there tests other than endoscopy? I see a lot in Amazon but no clue if they're any good.
Had an ulcer diagnosis years ago, H. Pylori. Funny thing, I don't remember having an endoscopy... Was it diagnosed from poop? Sorry, really can't recall anymore.
Anyway, the symptoms were mild, but persistent; a kind of stomach pain that was just... different from anything else I felt before.
You would probably remember the endoscopy. You have to swallow the device -- the camera? -- on the end of the tube, before they can feed the rest of the tube down, & you have to be awake for that. It feels like swallowing a set of car keys. After that they give you IV Versed which either blisses you out or just knocks you out, but swallowing those keys is definitely memorable.
I'm going to have an endoscopy on Thursday, never had one before. Thanks for telling me about the car keys, but I'm still going to refuse sedation if I can - have to hang around being observed for 4 hours afterward, then have someone babysit me for 24 hours? All for the sake of a 15-30 min procedure? Forget that, they can just give me topical anaesthetic for my throat and I'll practice my "swallow bunch of keys" skills!
It's actually nowhere near as bad as swallowing a bunch of car keys!
As I recall, it did not actually hurt -- the problem was more that I thought it was going to, & was also afraid that it was going to get stuck in my throat. It did not get stuck, and swallowing was weird and uncomfortable but not, as I said, actually painful. Also, I've had a thing about swallowing pills & stuff all my life -- have a fear that they'll get stuck in my throat. It was pretty bad when I was a kid, but I have now overridden the urge not to swallow a handful of pills so many times that it's greatly weakened. But I think the remnant of that old phobia probably made swallowing the damn thing harder for me than for most. Anyhow, hope you get good news & useful info from the procedure.
And about staying at the doctor's for 4 hrs and then being observed for the next 24: I have disregarded that several times after procedures that knocked me out, and just announced that I was leaving. They can't actually make you stay. What they'll do to cover their asses is have you sign a form saying you're leaving against medical advice. In the US the med they give you is intravenous Versed, which is in the same family as Valium. It is *extremely* pleasant. Knocks out all anxiety, and gives you a lovely feeling of blissful wellbeing. But it wears off very quickly once they stop the IV, and you feel like your usual alert and anxious self again. I do think it would be a bad idea to drive after the procedure, but getting a ride home once I felt awake and able to walk normally has always worked out fine for me. I suppose there's a small risk that the procedure itself did some damage and they're monitoring for signs of internal bleeding, but the chances of that sort of damage seem quite small, and if it had happened you'd probably have pain or vomit blood or something.
I've done the "leaving against medical advice" a couple of times before, and they were *extremely* pissed-off about it. But I did it because "I've been here for 36 hours, you've done Sweet Fanny Adams for the problem I came in with, and I need to go to work and I might as well be home in my own bed as in this crappy overflow ward".
I am obese, which is one reason; anaesthesiologists hate sedating fat patients https://www.asahq.org/madeforthismoment/preparing-for-surgery/risks/obesity/ so I decided since it's a minor procedure and there's no good reason to get sedation (apart from "yes I'd like to have a happy daze going on") and put up with the bitching from the anesthesiologist (I had one elective procedure cancelled because the anaesthesiologist refused to do it) before, during and afterwards, I might as well put on my brave face and tell them "It will not be required". Avoiding discomfort not worth the hassle of the consultant and the knock-out guy arguing beforehand over "I'm not doing this" and delaying the procedure that I just want to get done and over with as fast as possible so I can get home and get on with things.
Oh, I see the complication. Well, it may be that anesthesiologists are not concerned about Versed the way they are about general anesthesia, where they use true knock-out drugs. Versed gives what's called "waking sedation. " Lots of people who had Versed have dim memories of the procedure after, and you're also able to respond while full of Versed to things like "could you turn your head a little?" But I'm sure you're up to doing this without drugs if that's called for.
Ouch, no, definitely would have remembered that! I have had a lung endoscopy many years ago, but of course no swallowing devices was involved for that one. They did knock me out quite hard for it though, I only remember being wheeled in, and then waking up and sitting in there for a few hours, waiting for the swallow reflex to coming back.
I am not an expert, but my understanding is that something like 90% of ulcers turn out to be caused by that bacterial species, and can be cured with antibiotics.
I had an ulcer diagnosed by endoscopy, and my only treatment was to take omeprazole (reduces stomach acid) for --- I'm not sure how long, I think something like a couple of months. That cured me, or at least caused all my symptoms to go away. If 2 mos. on the medication had not given the ulcer enough time to heal I would have known, because the ulcer caused a burning sensation that was different from regular heartburn. It's nos 10+ years later and I have not had a recurrence. I don't think my ulcer was a very large or severe one, and treatment may differ depending on had bad an ulcer you have, its location, etc. I'd recommend looking on Up to Date, a continuously updated online manual for doctors. I believe you can subscribe for a day or a week at a time. That will tell you what the standard treatment is, what are the indications for non-standard treatments, and what steps are needed to tell whether the ulcer has healed.
1. One small ulcer plus moderate inflammation in stomach.
2. Moderate amount of H pylori bacteria detected.
Treatment recommended is Omeprazole plus 2 antibiotics (clarithromycin 500 3x a day plus Metronidazole 500 2x a day).
Note : The standard treatment according to Google search is Clarithromycin plus Amoxicillin but he remembers being allergic to Penicillin as a child so they're not doing that).
The hook with these endless articles is anthropomorphizing animals by playing with semantics. If we suggest insects are conscious, that renders consciousness as unremarkable as sentience, with "awareness of internal existence" not referring to cerebral self reflection and understanding abstract concepts, but some banality. It kicks the can down the road to come up with other redundant terms for what distinguishes the human experience from animals.
As far as reader squabbling is concerned, which is mostly about our relationship with animals, consciousness is a red herring anyway. Skip to what you want to say.
“Inspired by recent research findings that describe complex cognitive behaviors in these and other animals, the document represents a new consensus and suggests that researchers may have overestimated the degree of neural complexity required for consciousness.”
Who decided complex cognitive behaviors indicate greater consciousness? People in apparent comas who cannot respond at all to the outside world sometimes indicate post-coma that they were acutely aware of what was going on around them. And I guess this means people with high IQ scores are capable of greater joy and suffering than the rest of us.
The confusion around this subject is startling. Why don’t we start with the one way we know of to temporarily and relatively safely separate a person from consciousness (general anesthesia), and try to determine what kind of neurological activity is necessarily present for consciousness to persist? This wouldn’t be remotely conclusive but it would at least be a scientific first step. Are people with high IQs (those that display more complex cognitive behaviors) more difficult to sedate? As far as I can tell, no data suggests this.
I'm a lot more inclined to believe in octopus intelligence than in bee intelligence.
The phrase "could only be described as play" would be assuming the conclusion, if it didn't require a giant leap to actually get from there to the conclusion. Also I notice that the title boldly states "have consciousness" but the text hedges with "a realistic possiblity". It's bad on purpose to make us click. And then talks about the Cambridge Declaration.
I'll again hold out and say that I have yet to hear a decent description of "consciousness", and until I do I hold it in about the same regard as I do the ancient Egyptian divisions of the soul.
Octopus opening a jar. If I had never seen a screw top lid before I think it would have taken me nearly this long to figure it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kuAiuXezIU
They are quite smart. I feel sorry for them, since they usually have a solitary life, although maybe they wouldn't be equipped to feel what we feel, and maybe they have their own deep octopus feelings that we know not of.
Bees seem a nice simple example of how intelligent things need not be conscious. It seems equally a stretch both to deny that a hive is intelligent and to suppose it is conscious.
"I'll again hold out and say that I have yet to hear a decent description of "consciousness", and until I do I hold it in about the same regard as I do the ancient Egyptian divisions of the soul."
I think that's actually quite easy if you define it functionally, it's just that you're forced to be far more inclusive than most people want. To the point where you have to believe that the vast majority of total pleasure and suffering are being experienced by microscopic animals, and you have very good reasons to expect that many plants and single celled organisms also have consciousness (which in my view doesn't have to entail anything beyond the kind of rudimentary learning that even many plants and protists do).
I think consciousness is just the internal state which causes something to respond to stimuli, and actively seek or avoid it. I don't think it makes sense to say that a nematode that responds to avoid a given negative stimuli (and can even learn to avoid neutral stimuli it learns to associate with that) isn't suffering, yet try to say that a (insert the least intelligent animal you think has qualia) which behaves analogously *is* suffering.
I do appreciate the attempt to come up with a useful definition, but, to be an annoying rationalist about it, why would you choose the word "consciousness" for this? It seems bound to create confusion when combined with the many colloquial uses of consciousness.
Personally, I tend to call this sort of thing "sentient". Things that pursue pleasure and flee pain, and that have some sort of memory and ability to change actions in the future based on past experience. Anything capable of "suffering", from a certain sort of Buddhist perspective. I'm not sure if being able to "learn" is really part of it, but it seems inseparable given the limitations of our bio neural nets.
I actually think a lot of good would come from people being more coherent in how they talk about this subject!
I think my usage of consciousness captures the most important aspect of the term which refers to whether there's something that it's subjectively "like" to be a given mind.
Sure people lump in a lot of other cognitive traits in with consciousness usually, *but I think that doing this is bad* and pretty reliably leads to equivocation and sloppy thinking. For instance it leads people to have confused models that predict an organisms capacity to suffer based on irrelevant cognitive factors which there is no logical reason to expect should matter.
I think trying to define consciousness to include all the different cognitive traits people may intuitively want to include leads to people drawing a category which is ultimately arbitrary and doesn't "cleave reality at the joints" as it were.
I believe this is actually very important in many areas especially ethics, and this particular bad categorization leads many otherwise clever rationalists to believe really dumb things. For instance I remember Yudkowski saying some silly stuff about not thinking animals experience suffering (while insisting that people who think otherwise are confused). So I worry that being confused about this subject may literally contribute to existential AGI risk.
So please help me spread the word about the subject!
Since I constantly see people talking about ethics in ways which make no sense if they're considering the qualia of microscopic organisms. I personally care about moral agency, not the capacity to feel suffering, but I think people who care more about suffering as a moral principle really ought to know about this. Since when you consider microbe and plant suffering it makes it much harder and more technologically involved to try to minimize the suffering caused by your consumption choices. Plus if this knowledge becomes more widespread then it will lead to people writing complex utilitarian analysis which consider microbes that I'm sure I will find very entertaining to read (plus they may be useful for some of of my fictional worldbuilding :p)
The capacity for rudimentary learning is an integral aspect here. A normal thermostat doesn’t display this because that would be needlessly complex for its purpose. Even microbes are after all far more complex in their behavior than a thermostat.
Though I do think a lot of neural networks are probably conscious. So you could make a conscious learning thermostat, and in some contrived circumstances that might be useful.
Being conscious is a bit more than just reacting to stimulus. The thermometer isn’t conscious.
I once wrote a small blog post - which I might repost here on Substack - about everybody suddenly experiencing a red dot in the sky. Scientists and philosophers looked into it and their best hopes of explaining it didn’t work. It wasn’t mass hysteria, individuals sane and insane alike saw the dot. Nor could scientists explain it. The red dot faded as they approached it. When a spaceship was apparently in the midst of the dot, the spaceship itself saw nothing and recorded nothing. People on board saw nothing and recorded nothing.
After that the great philosophers and scientists all agreed that the red dot didn’t exist.
>Being conscious is a bit more than just reacting to stimulus. The thermometer isn’t conscious.
As I said in my comment you do also require some learning to say something's probably conscious, but the variety of organisms that can display classical conditioning is extremely broad. I found an interesting paper that mentions various reasons you might expect that consciousness is actually a conserved trait predating multicellularity (since that seems more parsimonious than convergent evolution): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5413897/
It's not 100% clear in context what point your short story is supposed to make. However if the red dot is supposed to be an analogy for consciousness, then I think it only really works if you define consciousness in the sort of confused way which I complain about above.
Sort of the big feature of my model of consciousness is that it's completely functional. There's nothing spooky or nebulous about consciousness within my model, it's just the internal state which responds to stimuli through changes in its internal state that lead to the behavioral changes we call learning. Of course consciousness within this model is so incredibly simple that virtually anything which displays classical conditioning is probably conscious.
I grew up in a family where nobody killed insects -- not because of any religious or ethical belief, but just because it made all of us feel bad to do it. We lived in a tropical climate and the typical cockroach was an inch and a half long, and when I turned on the shower sometimes a big meaty spider came rushing up out of the drain. I'd call my father and he'd come catch the big bug in question in a cup or a paper bag and throw it out the window. I didn't even know that was unusual until middle school. Did we think they were conscious? Well, seems like there are degrees of consciousness. They're definitely more conscious than clothespins or the cucumber in the fridge. They run to avoid capture. Seems likely they feel pain when crushed -- since pain is a simple, effective mechanism for teaching animals not to do things that harm them. If you were designing a cockroach, would you just not bother with pain? Or is there some other way you could reduce its odds of destroying itself by walking into flames or whatever? I still catch bugs and throw them out the window. Seems better to err on the side of kindness, and it's really not more trouble than stepping on the thing then cleaning your shoe and the floor.
I always catch insects and throw them out the window. Except I swat any houseflies (don't get many, and if they get to the window first that's fine). Spiders can stay unless they look like they belong in the garden - and I move any hibernating butterflies to somewhere cool.
Houseflies are impossible to catch. Trick for getting them to fly out window: Close door to room, turn off lights, draw shades on every window but one, and open that one, including the screen. If the open window is the brightest spot in the room the flies will go straight toward it and out.
I would do that for bluebottles (carrion flies) because they have a use in nature. [Also if a mouse or something larger died in the walls, you won't get just one at a time.] And they are very enthusiastic about sunlight anyway, they want to fly out and find more corpses.
Houseflies do not get the full benefit of my pacific ways.
At one point, I had an infestation of grain moths-- small pale brown moths with a bit of iridescence. They eat grain and they're a problem if you store any. The right solution is bug-bombing, but at on point I was dealing with them by killing them by clapping them between my hands.
I was also doing meditation, and when I killed one immediately after meditation, I felt a huge jolt. I didn't end up respecting all life, I was just left with a question about what happened, and I still have no idea.
It was something I never want to experience again. People who meditate don't necessarily avoid killing-- is there a way to be less vulnerable? Might I have killed a moth with an unusually large soul? I have no idea.
Some Japanese soldiers in WW2 were Buddhists, they might have useful advice on how to be a meditator who is okay with killing. I think it probably involved some "not my karma -- I am just following orders" kind of thinking.
I generally try to avoid killing insects, but I make an exception for mosquitoes, moths (the kind that tries getting in my food), and ticks, because they are the ones who try to attack my body or property, so from certain perspective it's self-defense.
Tibet had armies until the Chinese conquered them. There were special Vajrayana rituals to cleanse the soldiers of their karma if they had to kill (there used to be a website that described the rituals, but I can't find it now). Also, a lot of Tibetan Buddhists are not vegetarians. As one lama told me (and I paraphrase), "There's not much except grass above 10,000 feet."
I think consciousness is a spectrum - insects and spiders seem to have some sort of internal life, although very limited, and are able to display difference in preference and personality. A lizard seems to have more going on, and a cow yet more. There are also differences that cut across this sort of general gradient - the average jumping spider, for instance, seems to have more going on cognitively than a goldfish does.
So on the basis of simple kindness, and of respect for another creature's existence that I'd wish to be respected in my own, I try to be as gentle as possible.
Just take that to it's logical conclusion (which unfortunately I've never seen anyone else do) and your logic here should extend far beyond just insects, or even just animals. Since having an internal state that avoid negative stimuli and seeks positive stimuli is something that many if not most organisms have a use for.
After all being able to show basic learning by associating a neutral stimuli with a negative stimuli seems to be present in so many different organisms that it could well be a conserved trait that predates multicellularity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5413897/
I have taken it to its logical conclusion and contemplated that. The paramecia, etc. Tiny shrimp infants in our drinking water. Little sprouting things. I get it.
Even if any of that were true, knowledge like that becoming widespread is... incredibly inconvenient. We don't need more people sympathizing with pests.
I agree. Every time people here talk about how selecting for intelligent embryos will improve the world, I say I think the world would benefit more from increasing the number of highly empathic people. Nobody even bothers to argue with me, they just ignore the idea. Does anyone really think the Israel/Palestine situation would get better if the leaders involved each had 10 extra IQ points? Even on here, with lots of smart people, I have seen someone in an Israel/Palestine argument change their mind about something exactly once.
>I say I think the world would benefit more from increasing the number of highly empathic people
I still continue to be skeptical. Most empathy is local. I interact with a tiny handful of people on a typical day. I try to make the day of the grocery store cashier that I interact with a bit better rather than a bit worse, but this is a tiny effect.
So sounds like genetic contribution is there, but not large. But you could probably get something more hereditary if you threw in a coupla related and desirable traits, prob. correlated with empathy, such as low propensity for violence & rage (you sound like you'd qualify for that trait). The thing about empathy is that I don't think it gives the person high on the trait an evolutionary advantage the way intelligence does. But I think having more empathic, even-tempered people in a group will give the *group* an evolutionary advantage.
Oops. I replied to a different sub-thread with that link and I cut and pasted in there by mistake. Correcting the original post. Also correct link is here...
The logic of "bees are playing with things just for fun and therefore they must have consciousness" makes no sense. The argument hangs on this fun "not being connected with mating or survival". But when humans have fun it is a safe to bet that it has something to do with mating or survival, so if bees are different from humans in this way, it's odd to conclude that this difference implies a similarity.
It's cool to know that bees play, though. The scientists should try harder to figure out what it has to do with mating or survival.
OK, I'll bite. what does having fun as a human have to do with mating or survival? I suppose when you're young, doing something fun introduces you to potential sexual partners. I could see that going out clubbing or playing Twister (or better yet playing Strip Twister!) could be fun that leads to mating outcomes. But organized sports? Most sports are segregated by sex, so they don't seem to have much direct impact on mating. And they may have a negative impact on survival (certainly you're more likely to be injured playing sports than not playing sports). Rock climbing, white water rafting, parachuting, all come to mind as ways to have fun that are potentially contra-survival.
My thesis is that any typical behavior by a species has to do with mating and or survival. Survival here includes survival of your children or other close relatives. Part of why I am not a rationalist is that I don't think humans are good at figuring out which parts of our behavior are productive and which aren't.
Play/having fun obviously can serve a role in skill development and status seeking. Plenty of it may seem worthless, but I doubt that is true. Or at least no more worthless than any risk taking behavior.
I think playing may have helped survival in humans on relevant time scales (i.e. in hunter-gatherers or similar) by:
-Teaching members of a group to work together, important if you are to work as a hunting party or similar.
-Learning and exploring important skills for survival. For example hide and seek could teach you to hide from predators or stalk prey. Many games/sports teach important motoric skills and so on.
-Finding new inventions that may be important to survival by playing with what is available. For example finding new ways to use a tool or trap etc.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I'm sure more rigerous threatment of the subject exist among anthropologist etc.
Although I can't think of any references right now, what you've said jibes with what mainstream anthropologists and ethologists have posited.
Unlike many on this list, I'm not enamored of the theory that geniuses have moved civilization forward. I believe that ordinary humans working together have contributed to the bulk of our engineering and scientific progress. And in immature humans, I think games are key to learning cooperation and controlled competition in groups.
Does anyone have a strong skeptical view (or analysis) of reincarnation parapsychology? I'm specifically referring to the work of Ian Stevenson, James Tucker, and James Matlock.
The evidence for reincarnated souls (from cases of the reincarnation type) seems much stronger than that for extraterrestrial UFOs, for example, but gets a tiny fraction of the interest. I struggle to find a plausible explanation for some of these cases taken in aggregate that doesn't pose at least some problem for materalism.
I think that the gist of the matter is that aliens do not imply new physics, while reincarnation requires the state of one brain to be preserved and then reapplied to another brain, and all of that occurring naturally using some particle which would have to be frequent enough to do the job while also being elusive enough that we have not detected it yet.
Put simply, say I require one unit of evidence that someone is an alien.
Then I might require ten units for the claim that they are able to teleport people like in Star Trek, and 100 units of evidence that they can transmit information at faster than light speed.
Reincarnation as a natural process would require our world to be so that teleportation of brain contents happens naturally without us being able to detect it. Let us say that this involves another factor of 1000 of evidence over the transporter device.
In fact, most of my probability mass for reincarnation is that it would be another intelligence (aliens, simulators) intentionally to mess with us, rather than a phenomenon which occurs naturally like the microwave background or tooth decay.
Why don't aliens require new physics? We don't have physics that would allow spacecraft to reach relativistic speeds. We don't have the physics that would allow wwarp drives, wormhole travel, or any FTL travel. Unless aliens are very very long-lived or have some sort of hibernation technology, crossing interstellar space would be a challenge under physics as we know it.
But if the Block Universe Hypothesis is correct that would allow for precognition, and some other forms of ESP. Likewise panpsychism isn't ruled out by contemporary physics (but it's probably unfalsifiable).
>We don't have physics that would allow spacecraft to reach relativistic speeds
Is this true? I believe it would require a lot of energy to accelerate a space ship to relativistic speeds (a large fraction of the speed of light), but would it require new physics?
As I understand it relativity says that from the frame of reference of the space ship, travel can be arbitrarily fast - it is from an outside frame of reference that the space ship will approach but not exceed the speed of light?
(Very possible that I'm wrong about that last part)
Not endorsing theories of aliens visiting earth, just interested in space travel in general.
IANAP, but E=MC^2 says that the mass of an object under acceleration will increase in a quadratic curve (sorry, I may be using the wrong math term) as the acceleration increases. And it would require a similar increasing curve of energy consumption to keep it accelerating. Anyway, speedswhere the relativistic passing of time would be slow enough to make it feasible to cross stellar distances in a human lifespan would require sources of energy we don't have at our disposal under our current physics. And if we figured out how to hibernate or to be put into a stassis for some long period of time, a slowboat would require more fuel than would be practical. A Bussard ramjet could theoretically collect enough interstellar hydrogen to give an interstellar vehicle a limitless supply of fuel, but that would require magnetic monopoles (and if I remember my popular science that I read a couple of decades ago magnetic monopoles would require supersymmetry to be true — and tests at CERN seem to have falsified supersymmetry).
Wormholes? Right now, they're mathematical abstractions that haven't been proven to exist. And how do you create a wormhole with the physics and energies we have at our disposal? And we probably can't access the energies that could create a wormhole.
Warp drives? We don't have a mechanism to create a localized warp bubble in space-time. And again, even if we did, we probably can't access the energies that could create to create such a thing.
The objects that were filmed darting around those Navy jets seemed to be inertialess. If they were physical objects, the aliens that created them would have to have had some way to remove mass from Baryons. If the our pion-condensate theory of mass is true (and I don't think it's even falsifiable at the energies we can access) then the aliens have some way to mess with the behavior of quarks without destroying the matter that's composed of those quarks.
I am not a physicist, though. And some of what I'm telling you I may be garbled. But, bottom line, interstellar travel would require us to access energies that are beyond our capability unless we make a some breakthrough in physics.
The Voyager probes will eventually reach other solar systems. Okay, they don't have any delta-v to decelerate, but in general we have the tech to escape Sol's gravity.
It is right that the travel times will be a bit on the long side, but a million years would probably suffice (Bring a book.)
> We don't have physics that would allow spacecraft to reach relativistic speeds
I would argue that we don't have the engineering to do that.
Standard proton fusion works like this:
4 H-1 --> He-4 + 26MeV
The (mostly nonrelativistic) velocity of the Helium nucleus would be sqrt(2E/m)=sqrt(2*26MeV/4000MeV), roughly.
So if you use proton fusion and exhaust the helium, that would get you to an exhaust velocity on the order of 0.1c . Put that into the rocket equation and build a space ship in which 90% of the mass is fuel, and you get a delta v of 0.2c without any new physics required. Enough to visit another star in a human life time. Just because humankind has been struggling with getting fusion energy to become viable for a few generations there is no reason to assume that we (or some aliens) might not solve it in a few more generations.
This is a good answer, and indeed your last paragraph is part of the actual response of materialists ("more likely to be alien teenagers than actual reincarnation, so even if you had a perfect CORT it wouldn't be a knockdown argument for dualism"). I think it's really wrong, though. Materialist priors are just way too high on materialism when there is still a lot that's not understood about consciousness. Willingness to believe in alien pranksters or faster-than-light travel is, in my view, rooted in a erroneous preference for tech-coded stuff. Science fiction is considered more plausible than other sorts of fiction, regardless of the evidence for each.
Ideas like "there is a soul, comprised of material we don't understand that travels between bodies in a way we don't understand" is way more intellectual parsimonious than "there are aliens on mars messing with us by frying 4-year old heads with prank rays to make us believe in reincarnation." Physics aside, this always felt like common sense to me.
> Willingness to believe in alien pranksters or faster-than-light travel is, in my view, rooted in an erroneous preference for tech-coded stuff.
No scientists believe in FTL.
If by alien pranksters you mean Aliens, then scientists believe in aliens because the balance of probability would suggest that we are hardly the only intelligent species in the Galaxy, and certainly not the universe.
If by alien pranksters you mean the aliens visiting Earth right now to stick prods up our bums , then nobody sensible really believes in that.
Anyway it’s not an argument for your position to argue there are other stupid arguments.
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally uncharitable or just haven't understood my comment. I didn't say any scientists believe in FTL, or that FTL being impossible is a reason to believe in reincarnation.
quiet_NaN argued that reincarnation is ex-ante 1000x less likely than FTL information transmission. He further argued that, if they exists at all, memories of past lives is more likely to come from aliens messing with us than actual reincarnated souls. I disagree with both, and think there's a resistance to the reincarnation explanation because it's less science-coded than FTL travel or alien pranksters.
How is it ex-ante less likely than FTL travel? FTL travel is just as much a pseudoscientific hypothesis as reincarnation. OTOH some recent meta-analysis of precognition studies shows that there's a statistically significant effect that people can pick up information from the future. If time isn't sequential then all sorts of information flows are possible. And ultimately, reincarnation is a type of information transfer. Of course, this meta-study also implies it's possible to have information transfer at FTL speeds. So alien possession of human consciousness is not ruled out in that scenario.
As a youngster, I believed I was an alien intelligence sent here to collect as much data about humans and this planet as I could, before I die and they uploaded it. I still don't feel very human. Humans as species puzzle me greatly. ;-)
> FTL travel is just as much a pseudoscientific hypothesis as reincarnation.
From the numbers I originally stated, I think my priors were p(reincarnation)=p(FTL)/100.
FTL+special relativity breaks causality, which feels unlikely. Physics would still be salvageable, though.
OTOH, naturally occurring (no alien pranksters) reincarnation would require a mechanism such as souls which become unlinked from the brain at death and float invisibly around until they find another brain.
Scientists have looked at nerve cells and they appear to work through ordinary chemistry. We might not understand how huge numbers of such have to be wired to make a brain, but we have had some success with building artificial neural networks recently. If souls are real we basically deal with an antagonistically designed universe, the kind where God put dinosaur bones into the rocks to test our faith in Young Earth Creationism.
The bit about children spontaneously recounting a past life around the age of 4, I’ve seen this in one of my own children. Stories about “when I was a grownup”. Seems like a variation on the imaginary friend mixed with some archetype of incarnation. That is, I think this is a real psychological phenomenon but our understanding of the mind and especially the archetypical realms is limited. No non-physical spooky stuff required to explain.
Because I've shared my past life memories with others, people have opened up with me. I had an acquaintance who worked in a daycare/nursery school, and she would ask kids who they were before they were born. Some, but not all, gave her specific answers with some interesting details. Most of our memories of our early years get overwritten by or around age four. My stepson was older than four when I heard her tell me this. So I never got to ask him about who he was in his past life. But knowing about that memory loss, I monitored his memories from ages three onward. He loved the woman who ran his daycare. He'd talk about her all the time after we picked him up from daycare. I thought she was a pill, but he'd go on and on about how Mrs <name withheld> played games or read to him. We moved him over to a nursery school when he turned four. I made a point of asking him about how Mrs <name withheld>. He remembered her quite clearly until about age four and half, when over a two-week period he forgot about her. He had no memories of her after that. I thought that was pretty amazing. The mind of children seems to go through a massive memory purge around age four.
I remember this myself. I remember being so embarrassed about the shaming response I got from my teacher and her son (my friend) when I told her about it that I tried to force myself to forget it. I never thought too hard about what it was then; could have been anything from a dream memory to a recollection of the womb or something. I do remember being absolutely certain it was a real memory though, and that's why I was so comfortable telling her about it.
IMO, reincarnation would imply some sort of non-physical layer to reality, which contains souls (and maybe other things) and allows them to persist through time and attach to different living creatures over time.
There's various beliefs that posit such a layer, including the belief that we're all in a simulation (anyone ever used code that doesn't initialize its data structures properly?), but I don't happen to hold any of them at the moment.
These currents generate fluctuating electromagnetic fields
These fields propagate outward into space
They will continue to propagate forever.
Now, the strength of these fields is vanishingly small, but greater than 0. So everything that makes me "me" will exist in this universe long after I'm dead.
Unfortunately, we understand electromagnetism and the quanta of the EM field which we call photons rather well. While admittedly not having done the math, I think that human brain is terrible at broadcasting its inner state on the EM spectrum. Aside from the fact that a lot of bands will be promptly be reabsorbed by by the surrounding brain matter, one important fact is that two axons running a micrometer apart can have vastly different functions. In a toy model, one might encode "elephant" and the other might encode "cheese". To tell apart if you have been thinking of elephants or cheese, one would have to resolve that, which means that the wave length of the photons would have to be smaller than a micrometer, so we are talking about near infra-red, almost visible. Given that my head looks rather intransparent to me, I don't think that many photons in that band will make it through the rest of my brain and my skull.
My best skeptical argument: The idea that one's essential self can inhabit a different body at a different era in history, while having no memory of the earlier life (or a most a few weird wisps of memory) is just incoherent. What even *is* a self, then? The original body (and most of us experience our body as an important aspect of ourselves) is gone. In our new incarnation we don't speak the language we spoke in the old one, have the skills that we learned, the prejudices and preferences and habits, the friends, the family, etc. All that is gone. And, most important, we don't have the store of life memories we were accumulating up until death in our earlier incarnation. What then *is* a self if it's independent of the body, the attitudes, the info, the skills, the preferences, the attachments and the memories someone has? If I knew that in 2162 "I" would be reincarnated as a farmer on a rehabbed, well oxygenated Mars it wouldn't make me feel a bit less distressed that my present life will end in death. So "I" come back as a male farmer and don't remember or care about any of the things I do right now? Well then, good luck to that guy but he ain't me.
I think this is a really modern conception of the self. Compatibilism began as a way to rescue free will (and the self) from materialism.
I don’t find it persuasive. Right now I have many properties—love Japanese food and my family, hate spiders, can read at an advanced level, experience yellow, do division. If you took those things away from me, either by a series of unfortunate accidents or brainwashing techniques or whatever, it would still be *me* experiencing qualia.
The reincarnation hypothesis is totally coherent. Your consciousness survives without any (many) memories of your past lives. It just implies modern materialism, especially parts like functionalism, is wrong, and compatibilism becomes more of a hazy, woo-adjacent belief that isn’t necessary to explain the self.
If I took away your memories it wouldn’t you experiencing anything at all. It would be effectively a new person, with a blank slate. You may have some genetic traits in common with the other guy but all learned behaviour would be gone. The old you would be dead.
Anyway unless the believers in reincarnation can explain how the consciousness gets to the new human it remains unproven.
>If I took away your memories it wouldn’t you experiencing anything at all. It would be effectively a new person, with a blank slate.
Is this then true also for a marginal change? In the same sense I'm not the same person as myself 20 years ago, 1 year ago, 1 second ago or 1 tick of whatever is the smallest unit of my brain state. So this is really a question of what the definition of self is - and the way we normally use it, it can't really be about our memories.
>If I took away your memories it wouldn’t you experiencing anything at all.
Do you believe amnesiacs are different people than they were before their amnesia? I would describe an amnesiac as a person who has forgotten memories, not an entirely new person.
I didn't say reincarnation was "proven". But I disagree that you'd have to explain how the consciousness transfer itself happens for reincarnation to be a very likely outcome. For example, if your 3 year old child (raised in rural Nebraska) said: "In a past life, I was a samurai named ____ in year 1305, with a wife named X and two sons named Y and Z. I was buried in Q specific cemetery in Japan. I also remember semifluent Japanese," I posit you would reasonably conclude that they were probably reincarnated, without knowing exactly how the consciousness transfer works.
Well, the focus in this case would be on the odd reports of things like memories or languages of some past person appearing in young children. Philosophical questions about actual persistence or continuity of identity are a separate concern. In other words there could be a phenomenon here even if it doesn't actually qualify as 'reincarnation' or what have you.
Aren't aliens also incompatible with most organized religions?
I personally found the case of James Leininger (especially the skeptical correspondence between Michael Sudduth and Matlock on the matter) to be so compelling that I think it's either a case of past life memories or overt fraud with the middle ground "odd coincidences" possibility less likely than both. I'd say the same with Kemal Atasoy, although there's less publicly available material to go on. Finally, it's very remarkable that the common features of Ian Stevenson's original 20 cases suggestive of reincarnation keep coming up in new cases: memories between ages 2-6, commonly related to violent deaths, occasionally with related birthmarks, that later fade away over time.
> Aren't aliens also incompatible with most organized religions?
C.S. Lewis wrote some sci-fi on this premise. "Out of the Silent Planet" tells of a Verne/Wells-esque trip to Mars, which is inhabited by three unFallen species. If you like the genre of "first contact with aliens who are subtly Very Different", you should definitely read it. Among its virtues is that it's short.
It wouldn't even necessarily contradict Young Earth Creationism either. If God made us 6,000 years ago, he could have made the aliens 6,000 years ago too.
> Aren't aliens also incompatible with most organized religions?
You can just say that God made aliens. Doesn't have to make sense. The point is that people want to believe in aliens because reality is boring as hell, and they'll latch onto anything that would make their lives marginally more interesting. But people don't want to believe in reincarnation. They want to go to heaven. The two ideas are inherently incompatible.
...Regardless, how much people want something to be real has no relation with whether or not it's actually real. It's good practice to be skeptical of things that have obvious motivated reasoning behind them, particularly those involving death.
What's the motivational reason for wanting to be reincarnated? All I got out of reincarnations was a bunch of fuzzy memories and people giving me funny looks if I talk about it. I didn't even get a frigging t-shirt!
The whole raison d'être for Buddhism is to get us out of the cycle of rebirth. Of course, if you view life as suffering that's a good motivation not to be reborn to suffer again and again. At least Christians get to go to heaven with alabaster buildings, manicured lawns, and angels singing hosannas. Muslims (at least male Muslims) get to go to a paradise heaven with lots wine and houri at their beck and call. (Question: are there male houri for the women?)
Let me tell you, reincarnation is not what's its cracked up to be. At best it's like only being able to remember a piece of an interesting dream. Give me nirvana, or give me death!
That's the issue I have with my memories of other lives. They could as easily be artifacts of my imagination. But I also realize that most of my memories from this life involve a lot of voluntary and involuntary embellishments. But because I cannot separate the embellishments from the original elements of my memories I regard all my memories with skepticism. But I cherish them even if they're false, because I still have learned from them, and I act in accordance with the entire memory corpus available to me. The only spooky event I had was meeting my wife from my past life. She admitted the connection but was very disturbed that I described some events in her past life memories. Not enough detail to pin down who we were, though. And just the act of talking about memories with each other may have distorted our memories of the memories...
They are totally falsifiable, and many have been falsified! The modern way these cases are treated is to preregister as many "early" memories as possible, and match them against actual people. If you can't find a match to the overwhelming majority of the memories, in my mind the case is not evidence of reincarnation.
Then falsify my past-life memories, please. ;-) If they're real, I was never anyone famous enough to get into recorded history. And they don't provide enough detail for me to get names and dates out of them. If they're false, they seem just as real as my supposedly real memories — which, when I examine them, are at best imperfect recordings of selected events in my life. The only reason I give *some* of my current life's memories some credence is because of all the dated documents that come along with modern living. But if I talk to family members about the details of events we experienced together, I see that either I've misremembered a lot, or my relatives have misremembered. I suspect both.
No. The furthest back they go would probably be the New Kingdom of Egypt, and they're all human (some female, but predominantly male for the past thousand years). As a Buddhist, I was told that I could be reincarnated as anything. But that's not my experience of my past-life memories. I asked a Gelug lama about this. He laughed and assured me that they were all false memories. He explained that only advanced Bodhisattvas can have memories of their past lives, but (if I understood him correctly) that's more because of the omniscience that advanced Bodhisattvahood (i.e Bhumi level 10 and above, IIRC) gives to sentient beings — and not because of actual memories.
Still, they're there in my consciousness. Illusion/delusion or not they affect the way I look at the world — and that's the ultimate function of memory, isn't it?
Some. As a young kid (age five? age six?), I had lots of dreams about being in ancient Egypt. But I was also aware of ancient Egypt because my folks had lots of coffee table books about ancient Egypt. So I was aware I was in ancient Egypt in my dreams. I may have had memories of other places and times, but I wasn't aware of their setting because I didn't have the historical knowledge to identify their settings.
Sure, my active imagination may have been influenced by those coffee table books full of pictures of ancient Egypt, but my folks had similar books about ancient Rome, Greece, the Holy Land, Mesopotamia, and Meso-American civilizations. I didn't have dreams about those places.
It wasn't until I was older that I had dreams and waking memories of other places and times — but I could recognize them because I had the historical and anthropological knowledge to recognize their context. All these memories are patchy, though. More like quick flashes of moving scenes — sometimes with other people — who might be speaking to me, but I can't understand their words (which makes a weird sort of sense if we assume that language is associated with the brain our mind stream happens to inhabit in a particular life).
I get the impression that I hung around ancient Egypt for many generations, though I may have bounced up to Minoan Crete a couple of times (or I was a trader who plied the Med, because I have vivid images of being on boats at on the sea) — but by the time Ptolemy took over, I had moved on to other places. There's a big gap in my past life memories from about the 4th Century BCE until about 4th of 5th centuries CE. I may have them, but because I can't place them in the context of time or culture, I don't recognize them. But they pick up again in Central Asia. I was a Buddhist monk or some sort of Buddhist scholar or philosopher in a few of those lives. Lots of images of scrolls with flowing script on them. Pleasant cities in lush valleys with dry mountains all around. Then I moved further to the Northeast. I was a Mongol in one of those lives who made a journey to a Buddhist monastery in the highlands (Tibet?). Images of the endless Steppes and riding horses across them. Then I lingered a while with the tribes that lived in the boreal forests of Siberia. I was doing shamanic things. Then I bounced over to Central and Eastern Europe in the 16th Century CE. Lots of dreams and waking memories of crowded cities with multistory buildings along rivers. And stuffy rooms full of cloth. I get the impression I was a cloth merchant of some sort in one of those lives. But I was living middle-class style lives, and there were books, so I was educated in those lives. There was a woman who seemed to be reincarnating along with me as my wife/mother/sister. There's a city in Poland (whose name escapes me at the moment) with a squared moat around it. I saw the picture of it, and I was shocked at how familiar it looked. I had the certainty that I lived in a house overlooking that moat.
As a kid of five or six, I had an irrational fear of the police. I was outside a local department store with my mom, when a police officer started talking to us in a friendly way (he may have been flirting with my mother who was a beautiful woman). He squatted down to talk to me at my level. He was just trying to be friendly, but I started screaming, "Don't let him kill me! Don't let him take me away!" My mom had to hustle me away because I freaking out. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that I had memories from WWII and the Holocaust. Men in uniforms beat me. And I died in a concentration camp. I am one of a cohort of people born between the mid-1950s and early 1960s that has traumatic memories of WWII. The former wife in my last life who I mentioned above was born the same year I was this time around and she remembered strikingly similar scenes as I did in her memory. It turns out there's a large group of Jews born in the same period that have memories of the Holocaust. I'm a goy, but I have them too. I was a scholar in my past life, who was reborn in a family of scholars — but safely in New England and not Europe! It's not just Jews. I have a Filipino friend, born around 1960, who has memories of having her legs crushed under the treads of a Japanese tank.
Of course, with the advent of cable TV, through the Hitler Channel (err, the History Channel) we've all been exposed to images of the violence of WWII. So I'm perfectly willing to admit these violent memories could just be due to suggestion. But I don't really believe that explanation.
What about those experiences changed your mind? This sentiment always really confused me because while I can imagine evidence I could experience on drugs that would convince me of this, I've never actually heard of the experiences that people had being at all like what it would take to convince me.
I've taken plenty of both lsd and shrooms (including very high dosages) and never had a religious sort of experience, but I also can't imagine ever being convinced by any experience that I couldn't check the veracity of in some way after the fact (like say getting information about the outside world you couldn't possibly have known).
So, reality for you is consensus-based? There may be something to that. But remember Western materialism is a relatively new consensus-based phenomenon. I hope you don't get put down in the Amazon rainforest and have to deal with the consensual reality experienced by some Amazonian tribes. I forget which anthropologist it was who after a few years of living with his hosts started to see the spirit beings his hosts saw — even though he wasn't on psychotropic substances.
Anyway, I had a couple of episodes of psychokinesis while on magic mushrooms. Both witnessed by other people (who were also tripping, unfortunately). But even if was a hallucination, one would need to explain why it was a shared hallucination.
I had a rough time with a malicious entity that acted like a poltergeist that followed me home after a trip and that scared the shit out of me, after I had (presumably) come down from the trip. It seemed to feed on my fear. Luckily I had some knowledge of the theory of sympathetic magic (from my undergrad courses in Anthropology), and I was able to get rid of it.
I've communed with the non-human consciousness of trees (you can watch the lectures of the botanist Stefano Mancuso if you want some independent support that trees exhibit a type of consciousness).
Many times while tripping I was in a state which I called "the groove", in which all sorts of weird synchronicities occurred. But I had had some "magical" experiences before I started tripping — though psychedelics may have opened the gateways for other experiences that happened during my post-tripping life.
I need to write up my "magical" memoirs. I've written a few chapters, but I've had some very wild paranormal experiences — not just on psychedelic drugs. But I don't require you to believe me. I experienced what I experienced.
The consensus aspect of my view is purely pragmatic and I can absolutely imagine experimental evidence which would be able to convince me, even in a scenario where I was the only person around. If anything I'm always going to rank certain kinds of recorded evidence as far more important than corroborating eyewitness evidence.
What's important is just that I'm not entirely relying upon me and others minds being reliable in ways that seem impossible to square with all the psychological research I've seen about the unreliability of eyewitnesses.
> But even if was a hallucination, one would need to explain why it was a shared hallucination.
The sticking point for me has always been that the various psychological explanations for these sort of poorly controlled observations are ultimately much more plausible to me than them being real, given what I would consider to be an extremely suspicious lack of corroborating evidence which I should expect to exist. There's also aspects of most of these experiences that make me tend to think they're a-priori unlikely, since I would predict a-priori that if they were real there would be both more consistency between people's experiences, as well as observable evidence that can be checked later like I said before.
I definitely "want to believe" compared to most materialists, but it's hard to get your hopes up about any tests you may wish to run, when you know that other people must have already performed such tests (given how these phenomena aren't reported as being *that* rare based on the anecdotes I've heard). It very hard to imagine how it could plausibly be the case that I would be the first person to accurately record the supernatural, unless it's an extremely rare localized phenomenon or something.
I've heard people mention analogous similar sorts of experiences to the psychokinesis you mention, but it just seems really implausible to me that with everyone carrying around camera phones, we still don't have good video of these phenomena.
There's certainly plenty of excuses for why these sort of supernatural phenomena seem allergic to reliable recording devices, but I've never heard one that didn't seem like a really ad hoc justification for the lack of expected evidence.
>I've communed with the non-human consciousness of trees (you can watch the lectures of the botanist Stefano Mancuso if you want some independent support that trees exhibit a type of consciousness).
I absolutely agree trees are conscious, but I don't really know what it would mean to meaningfully "commune" with an organism that doesn't have a theory of mind, and so can't even comprehend that other minds exist. Though we may not disagree here, given what you said before about not being sure that your reincarnation memories literally happened to you given your level of enlightenment.
That being said I still have a tiny glimmer of hope, enough to be interested in proposing experiments. So if you think you have means of communicating with spiritual entities with any level of reliability let me know, as there's a lot of questions I'd propose you should ask (like say mathematical proofs such as large novel prime factorizations).
The trouble is a lot of paranormal experiences are so transitory and random that it's hard to falsify them. But to your point, I no longer regard my memory as reliable, and I no longer trust my qualia as being reliable. After all we're not directly perceiving reality, we're seeing an edited version of reality through nervous systems that evolved in response to a specific set of ecological pressures. A cat or a bat almost certainly perceive the world differently from us. Moreover, our qualia are filtering out a lot of extraneous data, and for the data that gets past our filters, our mind categorizes and interprets it almost instantaneously. The reality that we perceive is not necessarily the reality out there.
If it isn't 'reincarnation' in some continuity-of-identity sense and is just some bizarre crosstalk of human memory it would obviously still be profoundly interesting despite not being evidence for the existence of a disembodied self.
I think most reincarnation theorists would say the former, but for me I am much more concerned with verifying the phenomenon itself. It seems like a huge deal if even one individual has ever been reincarnated!
>It seems like a huge deal if even one individual has ever been reincarnated!
Hmm... I'm not sure if this is true, depending on the flavor of the "huge deal".
For the sake of discussion, if were a case where someone was reincarnated with full memories (avoiding the discussion, as Eremolalos said, about what it even _means_ to be reincarnated _without_ memories), it would certainly force us to drastically revisit how we think memories work. In that sense, it certainly _would_ be a big deal.
For any ordinary person, though, if reincarnation happened, but happened less than one time in a billion, and everyone else winds up vanishing forever, as current understanding of the brain suggests, why should much change for ordinary people (that is, people who are not neuroscientists or possibly artificial neural network engineers)? Unless there is some reason to think that it can be tweaked to happen regularly, why would one isolated case matter to John Q. Public?
My son watched Gladiator last year and now he’s trying to restore the Roman Empire. Help!
I don’t usually turn to internet forums for advice but after the insanity of the past year, I’ll try anything. Last summer, my son Mark was a typical, albeit shy, fourteen year old. But that changed after he watched Gladiator with my husband. I was apprehensive about him watching an R rated movie but my husband assured me it was fine. Anyways, they never really spent that much time together so I relented. Mark loved it. He watched that movie every single day that summer. There was something magical about its characters and story that spoke to Mark and gave him romantic ideas about what Rome meant. His excitement was infectious. I hadn’t seen it in years and so for his birthday, I gave him an illustrated history book about Rome and from that point on, he was enthralled.
Mark read that book cover to cover to such an extent that he practically had it memorized. But that wasn’t enough and he wanted more. He read Wikipedia articles about Rome. He listened to podcasts about Rome. He watched youtube videos about Rome. Rome all day and Rome all night. Mark went to the library and went through the history section vigorously. The librarians loved him. They weren’t used to teenagers being so excited about reading. Every day that summer he went to the library and spent the entire day soaking up Rome. Once school started, he would go to the library after school. When he came home, he would tell us all kinds of “fun facts” about Rome. Did you know the city had a million inhabitants? Did you know that Ancient Rome traded with China? Did you know that the Roman Empire didn’t fall until 1453? My son did and he needed to make sure everyone knew. I was starting to get sick of Rome but what are you going to do? At least he was getting out of the house, and there are certainly worse hobbies your kid can have. He continued doing this for a few months and it was fine. But then it went from a hobby to an obsession.
Mark’s father indulged him in these flights of fancy by buying him Roman armor for Christmas. He read about military drills that Roman legionaries would do and imitated them. He looked ridiculous marching around our neighborhood. Worse, he insisted on wearing sandals in near freezing weather. We fought every day over it until his dad did some research and learned that Romans wore more practical shoes in colder places like Germany. But even though we fixed that problem, there was a less lethal but still enormous problem of what to do when Mark went back to school after the break. I was really worried about him going back to school. He was losing touch with reality at this point and wanted to emulate Roman generals and emperors by wearing his armor at school. I told Mark that he looked ridiculous and all the kids would make fun of him. He said that this is what he wanted to do, and I was always telling him to be more outgoing and stop caring what others thought. That was certainly not what I meant! But against my better judgement, I relented and, true to his word, he went full Roman. What happened next was weirder than I could have imagined.
On his first day back, Mark went to school and just like I said, his classmates mocked him. Everyone laughed at how stupid he looked. But Mark wasn’t bothered. “They’ll come around” he proclaimed confidently, as if it wasn’t an insane thing to say. But to my astonishment, he was right. At first, the boys mocked him. They marched around and pretended to follow his orders. But apparently they enjoyed it so much that their mockery turned in to sincerity. There was something about his confidence they found magnetic, and the girls latched themselves on to him as well. They wanted to be the Cleopatra to his Julius Caesar.(I tried telling him things turned out badly for both of them, but naturally he ignored that.) Mark became the most popular kid in school but just like his adopted namesake, he had bigger ambitions.
Mark made videos that he uploaded to Youtube. At first, it was simply educational videos but then it morphed into something bigger. In one of his videos, he made an offhand comment about restoring the Roman Empire and it went viral on social media. His video channel exploded in popularity. He kept making more videos about his plans and how he intended to achieve them. He received donations from others to make these dreams a reality. Mark promised that once the “campaigning season”(summer break) began, he would go ahead with his plans and got thousands of supporters willing to go with him. I couldn’t believe it but he literally wanted to sail to Italy and announce himself as emperor, believing they would simply let him.
As summer approached, Mark prepared for this expedition. He recruited all the boys from his high school and received money from all over the world. I asked him how he planned to invade an entire country with nothing but a few thousand schoolboys and he assured me no one would stand against him. He referenced battles from Julius Caesar’s time. I emphatically repeated that he was not Julius Caesar and he smirked and said “not yet”. Some of his subscribers lent him their own private boats and even though they weren’t the “triremes” my son wanted, he found them acceptable. Then, they got some kitchen knives as swords and cobbled together “armor” from whatever metal things they could find. I told him he couldn’t do it. He didn’t listen. My husband half heartedly said he couldn’t do it. Mark said it was his destiny. After some prodding, I got the principal to say he would be expelled for going. He talked about receiving a vision from “Mars” that said he had been blessed by the gods, and that it would be an insult not to go through with it. I took him to a therapist to cure his mental illness but she ended up agreeing with him. What was happening? I forbade him from going. I pleaded with him. I even suggested building a “New Rome” here. He wouldn’t have it. There was only one way to restore the glory of Rome and he was the one to do it. Mark left this morning. I tried to physically force him to stop but his friends simply prevented me from doing so. He plans to embark in the next few days.
Despite my pleas, there is nothing I have done that will stop him from going through with this disaster. At best, his plan would end with him humiliated for the rest of his life and at worst, he could end up dead. Has everyone lost it? Not only do his friends support him but so does everyone in his life. When pressed on why, they say there is just “something about him.” They can’t explain what that “something” is, but they all agree he has it, even the authorities. Neither the cops nor the government officials I talked to have any interest in keeping him here. Has everyone lost their mind? I tried everything I could to prevent this insanity, but nothing is working so in my desperation I turn to random people on the internet. What should I do?
IMO, more specificity about the details would enhance the verisimilitude. Rather than "an illustrated history book about Rome," choose an actual title or two from Osprey's catalogue. Once he starts going through the library's collections — what does Mark think about Mary Beard? What does he think about Gibbon? Rather having him "watch youtube videos about Rome," have him work his way through Scipio Martianus' channel, start speaking in Latin, and perhaps develop strong views about classical vs. ecclesiastical pronunciation. (It might also be worth giving "Gladiator" a rewatch, since one of its central premises was that the Empire was a Bad Thing and needed to be abolished in favor of a restored Republic. What does Mark think about that idea?)
Mark's motivations and thinking could also be made more psychologically plausible. If he knows that the Roman Empire "didn't fall until 1453," he knows that the Roman Empire doesn't need to be in Rome, so why exactly does he think he can't he build one "here"? (Presumably "here" is somewhere in the US, but again more specificity might be better. You might write "here in Michigan," "here in Oregon," or "here in New Jersey": which of these best fits your intended aesthetic effect?)
I wanted to go more detailed about Rome but I don’t think it would work story-wise. Mark may care about Latin pronunciation but his mom certainly wouldn’t and she’s the one telling the story.
For me, it was the opposite: the mom's lack of interest in her son's developing obsession struck me as unrealistic and immersion-breaking. It didn't feel like a character portrait of a mother uninterested in the details of her son's life, it felt like a story written by an author uninterested in those details. If Brandon is aiming for the former, I think the characterization needs to be established more forcefully.
I might be barking up the wrong tree (and I am *very bad* at literary subtexts, I literally thought Animal Farm was a story about some animals) but is this supposed to be an allegory for the existence of trans people?
For what it's worth, I assumed this was a real post -- but after a couple of paragraphs, while still thinking it was a real post, I felt sure the person was lying. I can't put my finger on why. I think one thing was that in a real post the writer would have spent more time early on talking about their point of view, explaining what kind of help they wanted, and just *venting*. Something like, "there's a crazy situation in my house. My son seems to have developed an obsession or maybe a delusion, and my husband isn't taking it seriously. I'd like to know whether anybody here has gone through something similar, and if so how you handled it. . . ." And maybe that voice would break through now and then later in the narrative. "WTF, right? And even the *teachers* don't seem that bothered. I feel as though I'm in Invasion of the body Snatchers and all the other adults have been replaced by emotionless aliens."
Also, I just am not able to believe that when the son went to school in armor the other kids turned around so quick. That just wouldn't happen. If you want people to believe the story, I think you need to come up with a more plausible explanation of how the kids became the son's followers. Like maybe he stood up to the bully substitute -- or won the basketball game for his school while in armor -- or demonstrated astonishing skill with whatever the weapons of his era were.
Not sure what to make of this. It’s definitely not supposed to be a plausible explanation about how it could happen. It’s a silly story about a kid who becomes this Ferris Bueller-esque figure who gets this done through sheer charisma even though it’s ridiculous.
I too thought it was real, but started having doubts at "They marched around and pretended to follow his orders. But apparently they enjoyed it so much that their mockery turned in to sincerity." They enjoyed following his orders? I wanted more explanation, and read further, but didn't get it.
In Greek mythology, the children of Kronos are Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus, in that order. The youngest are most powerful, and the oldest are least powerful. What's up with that?
Well, it's part of the story that Zeus is the youngest, so that position is fixed. (Others have told the story here)
For the rest, I just assume that they were sorted into females and males, because if you make up an order, that is the easiest grouping. That already explains like 90% of the signal you are relying on, because it is up to taste whether Poseidon is really stronger than Hades, or Demeter stronger than Hestia.
Although birth order effects usually favour the eldest child, most papers on birth order effects do not take into account fathers who eat their children.
The children of Kronos and Rhea, as you may recall, were all swallowed by their father immediately after birth, with the exception of Zeus. Once Zeus was fully grown he forced his father to regurgitate all his siblings. So the older children are less powerful, proportional to the time they spent in Cronos's digestive system.
One can assume that being slowly digested inside a Titan's gullet over a period of decades or centuries slowly saps whatever potential you might have originally had, a bit like public school.
>Although birth order effects usually favour the eldest child, most papers on birth order effects do not take into account fathers who eat their children.
LOL!
And getting a double-blinded RCT past the IRB takes forever...
The Greeks understood that age both makes you stronger (e.g., 18 year olds are stronger than 8 year olds) and weaker (18 year olds are stronger than 80 year olds). For people, they believed generally that people were getting worse and worse with time. Humanity, as a whole, was decaying.
For the gods, this makes very little sense. Humans age, die, and are replaced by a new generation which can be weaker than the generation that it replaced.
For gods, they don't age. They don't die naturally. If they're going to be replaced by a new generation, the only way that makes sense is if that new generation is stronger than the generation it is replacing.
Partly it's the demands of the story: Kronos replicates Ouranos' offense by killing his own children (they get better), so it has to be the youngest child that overthrows his father and establishes the new order. It was the same in the previous generation, since Kronos was the youngest of the Titans, and avenged the death (they got better) of the giants and the hundred-handed by killing Ouranos. I would also note that the ancient Greeks did not necessarily practice primogeniture: customs varied a good deal. As to the actual order, I'm inclined to say it's poetic license. You're going to end with Zeus, why not set up a nice order? Though I'm a bit wary of saying definitely that we consider, say, Demeter less 'powerful' than Hera.
Yeah, assignation of power levels is a bit suspect. Hestia may simply have had a more concentrated focus, and we all know what happened when Demeter got upset about Persephone...
She does in the Aeneid, though it's at least partially because Zeus/Jove raised up a Trojan:
"Fearful of that, the daughter of Saturn, the old war in her remembrance that she fought at Troy for her beloved Argos long ago,—nor had the springs of her anger nor the bitterness of her vexation yet gone out of mind: deep stored in her soul lies the judgment of Paris, the insult of her slighted beauty, the hated race and the dignities of ravished Ganymede; fired with this also, she tossed all over ocean the Trojan remnant left of the Greek host and merciless Achilles, and held them afar from Latium; and many a year were they wandering driven of fate around all the seas. Such work was it to found the Roman people."
I've been wondering if there are certain abnormal social behaviors that consistently develop in youths who learned to communicate through chat?
When I was 14-17 I would periodically, for prolonged periods of time, spend maybe 8 hours a day on average in "spaces" where communication was text based - messenger, World of Warcraft, omegle and skype especially - and if books and diaries are a space of communication, then that as well. I read. Read, wrote and typed.
My mornings with my family were mostly silent - i left my mom, dad and brother to do the talking. In school I would listen in class, give answers to the teacher, and spend the breaks playing alone or with others, but mostly in silence; after school I struggled to think of things to say, while it astounded me that the other kids could have so much to say (eventually I had the revelation that the other kids werent speaking to share information; they were just creating fun) ... at dinner i would leave the speaking to my family again, and after dinner i would do homework or read... you get the picture. When i became a teen I would get more verbose, but not in person; in text, online... VERY verbose, haha. Its embarrassing to look back at.
Anyway...
I'm asking because I know I communicate abnormally when I speak. I have been told by so many people that when they met me they thought I spoke in a bizarre fashion that was hard to comprehend but at the same time beautifully clear. And I am dying to pinpoint what it is. None of them have been able to articulate exactly what it was. I don't think it's autism. I might be autistic too, but I don't think that accounts for it. I think there's something else wrong with me and I am dying to find out what it is so that I may seek out someone who' s the same.
Were any of you chronically online when you were teens? and were you practically mute when you were "offline", but verbose when online? And do you have unusual ways of speaking now? Have you become good at talking, or will you always feel more natural when typing?
Please, I want to fix my communication so bad. I don't want to my style to be called weird. It's so estranging. Thank you
I'll second Nancy's "talking like writing" as a major cause. When encountering people in real life after meeting them initially online, I've gotten the comment "huh, you actually talk like that" several times. It's never bothered me so unfortunately I don't have any advice for fixing it.
I do think it's a result of being too online at a critical period and, prior to and in addition to that, reading a lot of old books. I was extremely shy as a child (a word which here means sub-20) and didn't talk much, so it probably is a result of not developing the same cues as most people to distinguish written vs spoken English.
Not a result of autism per se, but I would bet it is strongly correlated with high-functioning autism and similar traits, in that grey area where people sometimes self-diagnose.
I don't want to spam post thank you's, so I'll just type one here. Thank you. I'm still not really sure about much, but thanks to you the uncertainty is easier to bear.
What makes you think autism cannot be the cause? People say it’s pretty common in autistic people, to see exactly the pattern of behaviours displayed both by you and the other people who responded (and, erm.., by me, as well, to an extent). On the other hand, I agree that this seems fixable by practice and meeting more people. And I’m really sorry to hear that it makes life difficult for you.
Can you pinpoint whether it is your selection of words, or rather your way of pronouncing them?
When I was a teenager, I could rather easily speak in the fashion of someone else. Like, I could imitate someone's speaking style, to the point that it would freak people out who know both me and the other person. By speaking style I don't mean the choice of word, I rather mean intonation, lengths of vowels, where to raise and lower the voice, stuff like that. And I used these styles permanently, like I met some guy at some youth camps and used his style for the next one or two years.
If your abnormal speaking is about pronunciation and sound, then perhaps this is something you might try. Pick some person to study, either some acquaintance or some actor, imitate their style of speaking, and make this your permanent style.
I brought it up because it resonates with Firstname's point 3 below. When I sing a song, then I imitate it one-to-one, including accent and everything. I think I just put this to the extreme as a teenager.
About myself: I was (and still am) much more on the text side than on the speech side, though not as extreme as you. I don't think that anyone has told me that I speak in a bizarre fashion, but some people told me that my voice is notable. As a kid/teenager I was in a theater group, and trained my voice quite heavily on this very clear style that you need if you want to be understood be an audience, so that may be an explanation. (Very clear pronunciation, a voice that is not necessarily loud but carries far, a little bit like singing.) And I am also pretty far in the autism spectrum.
Your post resonated with me so much that I made an account just to reply.
Disclaimer: I am definitely on the autism spectrum myself so take anything I say about "normal conversation" with a grain of salt.
I don't think I exactly fit the description you're looking for of someone who learned to communicate through text-based means first, but I decided to reply because of the following:
1. A random stranger at an ACX meetup recently told me I had a completely unique voice unlike anything they had ever heard.
2. People often tell me I "don't have an accent", and when pressed, they'll clarify with something along the lines of "well, you definitely sound American but sometimes it's like you're trying to enunciate every phoneme of every syllable." This is in spite of having grown up in the American south, where most of the people around me most definitely *did* have an accent.
3. When singing along to my favorite songs (alone of course -- I would never do this in the presence of even my best friends), I find it much more satisfying to imitate the singer's accent as much as I can than to just sing in whatever my "normal" accent is. This works even if the song is in another language, and has therefore caused a noticeable improvement in my ability to pronounce certain sounds that don't exist in English, such as a Japanese style "r" where your tongue hits the bottom of your mouth (I believe the official term is "voiced alveolar tap").
4. Growing up, people definitely noticed (and occasionally clued me in) that I only ever talked to my closest friends and family, or answered direct questions from teachers or other students in an academic context. I never engaged in small talk or even getting to know classmates sincerely because I didn't see any value in it. Every time I tried my brain was fighting against it the whole time; I just fundamentally didn't want to socialize and that was the end of it. Again, people around me were confused by this behavior since I could be very articulate in non-small talk situations.
5. For the exact same reasons I hated small talk, I never made any social media accounts, even though literally everybody I knew was signing up for Facebook at the very least. Thus, I wasn't "chronically online" by the modern definition, but I did spend a *lot* of time lurking on the internet, mostly Wikipedia at first but later on stumbled across various news websites, forums, and blogs, eventually leading me here. So I may not have "learned to communicate" online but my worldview is very skewed by the way internet people speak.
6. I also spent an utterly ridiculous amount of time as a kid watching movies from the 70s-90s (with a few 2000s movies sprinkled in), so it's very possible that influenced my "accent" more than in-person interactions did.
7. My brain goes into a state of existential panic whenever I hear a recording of myself speaking. I know most people express discomfort at the sound of their own voice, but I swear, it's dialed up to 11 for me. To give a (very) rough approximation, when I speak, what I imagine it sounds like is similar to Kyle MacLachlan (Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks) but what I hear in recordings is much closer to Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite). This difference is so jarring that I lose all focus and motivation for whatever I was doing immediately and have to speak at length to "recover the illusion".
So in conclusion, yeah, I'm not quite the sort of person you were looking for a response from, but I think I can give you some advice, and it may be a bit hard to hear: give up on sounding "normal". In my experience, it's not even remotely feasible. What *is* possible is being confident in the way you express yourself. Start thinking of your "beautifully clear" voice as an asset rather than a liability. If you just focus on communicating precisely what you wish to communicate, people will appreciate that, even if they think something about the way you speak sounds strange. I have found myself in numerous circumstances wherein precise articulation narrowly saved me from misunderstandings the average person might have been caught off guard by. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize this, but I prefer it this way. I'd rather have maximal control over what I say than sound "natural" and "easy to talk to".
Again, take all this with a grain of salt. I'm not really the advice-giving type, and I'm already going way outside my comfort zone to interact with a stranger on the internet. Hope this helps (and sorry for being verbose... I have trouble with brevity).
I meant to not spam post thank yous, and I've already posted one, but I have to thank you for bothering to make a profile and type this out. It's very endearing and relatable :) I'll just keep talking how I do, then. Keep being me, as some would say. Who cares if the message is delivered in an unusual manner if the message gets through, right?
People didn't evolve to communicate through chatrooms. They evolved to communicate through natural speech, so it makes that you would feel awkward about it. It's like learning a new language when you aren't a child. You'll have odd ticks and sound funny. If you want to be like everyone else, you have to just immerse yourself in social situations with others and speak out loud with other people more.
I'm too old to have been in your precise situation, but I was socially isolated in grade school, which led to me struggling with interpersonal interaction in college. I got better, though, but not before someone told me that they thought I sounded like what an angel would sound like. To this day, I am unsure what they meant, but I think it might have something to do with speaking in literary register and enunciating, since I had spent more time reading than talking. I think it might be something like what I hear when I listen to the recordings of Scott reading Unsong. (Give it a listen?)
I'd suggest practice would help, one way or the other. Maybe you'll always be a little different, but it probably won't hurt to find some friendly people and try to imitate what they do.
Does Mutually Assured Destruction make sense? MAD is supposed to act as a deterrent, but say that it has failed for whatever reason, Russia has launched its entire nuclear arsenal at the US, and this is sure to annihilate nearly the entire US population. The US president, in his bunker, now has to decide whether to retaliate. If he strictly follows the MAD principle, he should retaliate, reducing Russia to rubble. However, the entire point of MAD was to prevent America from being destroyed in the first place. Now that this will happen anyways, is there really a point to killing more than 100 million additional people? Perhaps the really important thing now is the continued survival of humanity. Maybe the US president in office at the time has a taste for vengeance and will retaliate anyways. But I believe most presidents would refrain for humanitarian reasons, perhaps contenting themselves with strikes on the Kremlin or at most Moscow. Now, if the Russian president knew this in advance, then he would realize that MAD is not a credible threat. If he values American lives much less than the American president values Russian lives (plausible), it is plausible that he will then go ahead and nuke America. In game theory parlance, this would be a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium.
Obviously I have made some assumptions above, but it's not clear to me that they are any less realistic than the standard ones leading to MAD. If one wanted to get back to MAD, Americans could elect more bloodthirsty/impulsive leaders, who would not hesitate to retaliate. However, this would have the unfortunate side effect of increasing the probability that the same leader initiates a nuclear first-strike, or gets involved in bloody conventional wars. An easier way would be to advertise that we are going to use MAD, regardless of whether we will. Perhaps the fact that we all learn about MAD in schools is just an elaborate facade constructed for precisely this purpose. A third way would be to implement an automatic missile detection and retaliation system, the downside being catastrophe due to false positives. None of these seems foolproof.
First off, MAD doesn't involve killing a hundred million Russians, because there are barely a hundred million Russians to kill and nuclear war is <<<100% efficient at killing. And the continued survival of humanity is not at risk from nuclear war. At this point, if Biden and Putin and Xi got together and said, "how could we kill off the human race with our current nuclear arsenals", then the lynch mob hunting them down in the aftermath would number many billions. And they'd have rebuilt industrial civilization in a century or so.
We are going to kill tens of millions of Russians in the hypothetical case of a Russian nuclear sneak attack on the United States, and reduce Russia to a thing that won't be an industrial nation for at least a generation, for three very strong reasons.
First, there will be at least a hundred million Americans who survived the war, probably a couple hundred million. Who will be busy trying to rebuild the United States of America, and that process would be greatly hindered by e.g. the Russian army invading North America. So, we're going to arrange for Russia to not be able to do that.
Second, there are over seven billion people who are neither Americans nor Russians, some of whom will die in the war but most will not. It would not be good for those people to live in a world ruled by the sort of tyrant who launches massive nuclear sneak attacks to get his way - particularly since he'll still have some of his nuclear weapons and all of his nuclear weapons factories. So, as a public service, we're going to destroy that tyrant and the nation that facilitated his brand of tyranny.
Third, after a Russian nuclear sneak attack killing many tens of millions of Americans, the surviving Americans with their own nuclear weapons are going to really, really, really hate the Russians. Hate is not a design defect in humanity; it exists for a reason, and your hypothetical is a central example of such. But even if it were a defect, it's one we aren't going to fix and it will guide our behavior.
As Mr. Doolittle says, not in the United States. Note in particular that the US has both an enormous surplus in agricultural productivity, producing I think 3-4x as much food as needed for its current population, and an even larger excess in overall shipping and logistics capability. Supply chain disruptions won't cut through those margins.
At least in the United States. Nations that depend on US food exports, might go hungry.
Do you really think the supply chain is going to survive a massive nuclear attack? Most of the stuff - ports, truck depots, warehouses, fuel depots - is going to be destroyed or badly damaged. The power network is going to be badly damaged. Without electricity you can't pump gas in modern stations. You can't fuel up the agricultural vehicles you need to harvest food or take animals to be slaughtered. You won't have the trucks you need, even if you had the gas. Within days of the attack you will have millions of injured and hungry people fleeing cities desperate for food and water. Any kind of order is going to be impossible to maintain. And shipping? Are you serious? Do you really think the major ports are going to survive? And even if they did, are you going to have the capability to load and unload them, to transport goods around, to coordinate the incoming and outgoing ships?
Yes, I'm serious. I thought it would have been pretty clear from the style and content of my previous posts that I am serious. Your question and tone strike me as argumentative posturing, and as rather insulting so please go away.
In the meantime, addressing just one of your frankly ridiculous points, do you seriously believe that a trucker trying to deliver a truckload of food to his home town is going to look at a service station and say, "Oh Noes! It is Absatively Unpossible to pump fuel without electricity!", and sit down and cry while his neighbors starve? Because I'm pretty sure he'll be back on the road in a few hours, by any of half a dozen obvious methods.
As for the rest of your objections, and the new ones you come up with, no, I'm done with you. If you want you can imagine you've won a great victory by annoying me to the point where I won't debate you any further.
Nuking farmland is very inefficient and would take far more nukes than exist. I did an analysis for a thread a few months ago and every nuke on the planet would only destroy a small percent of the US.
Some, maybe even a lot by most standards, of people will die due to broken logistics networks, but not 10s of millions.
How do you think the food gets from the farms to the people? The logistics networks are absolutely vital to prevent mass starvation. Within two or three days of an all out nuclear war a lot of people are going to experience real hunger for the first time in their lives. When that happens anarchy will not be far away. Sure the farms will be there, but food is not ready on order, without fuel distribution farmers won't be able to harvest most of it, and without reliable electricity they won't be able to keep it from rotting.
If the Russians used most of their nukes to hit farming-related infrastructure, that's a possibility. But then they would be leaving the major infrastructure and big cities in place for lack of enough nukes, which means maintaining overall stability and rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure faster.
Crops are harvested once or twice a year, so we've got many months of food (from the US alone, let alone imports from places not destroyed) in which to work out temporarily solutions. With satellite communications we would still be in contact with each other and coordinate food and other vital logistics.
Think more Shaun of the Dead (temporary issues that seem overwhelming but aren't) than Dawn of the Dead.
You're seriously overestimating the ability for most of the world to *build*, much less *rebuild*, industrial civilization. Much of the world can barely be said to even have industrial civilization today, and much of it that has it in a rudimentary way only has so because of the west or china. And even for those in the west or east asia who have built industrial civilization, this capability was seriously dependant on the smartest fractions of the population. Today, these people overwhelmingly live in the biggest cities of the US, China and so on, and would be the least likely to survive an all out nuclear war accordingly.
As for mere survival, Africa would likely have a massive population after this doomsday pact, but Africa imports 85% of its food from outside of the continent, so a famine is practically unavoidable. Maybe not enough to kill them off entirely, but the damage would be enormous even without a single nuke landing in Africa.
There's quite a bit of industry in Central and South America, Australia, and India, and none of those places are likely to be major targets in a nuclear war. Are the Chileans, Mexicans, Indians, and Australians going to forget how to operate power plants or factories because the US and Russia and China nuked each other into famine and mass death?
Economists call that the time inconsistency problem. It comes up in monetary policy. Sargent won an econ nobel for it.
I don't share your view on how US presidents would react. Sparing a belligerent nation right after they've launched an enormous attack on you is atypical.
"Now that this will happen anyways, is there really a point to killing more than 100 million additional people?"
Yes, there is. If Russia destroys America with nukes, it would be by far the most evil country that has ever existed. For the sake of wiping out an unspeakably evil country from the world, for the sake of America's honor, and for the sake of proving to all of posterity the horror of nuclear war, the American president MUST utterly annihilate Russia.
"But I believe most presidents would refrain for humanitarian reasons, perhaps contenting themselves with strikes on the Kremlin or at most Moscow."
Any president who thinks like that is not a president I will ever support.
but yes, there's no foolproof way to secure your future when the keys to your future ultimately lie in someone else's hands. The reason for the equilibrium of the Prisoner's Dilemma being (D, D) is mostly because of the assumptions that: A) the other guy has more control of your destiny than you do; and B) both of your incentives are misaligned.
When you think about it, MAD is actually borrowed from what Haidt would call "cultures of honor" (which is still practiced in the 'hood). I.e. protecting your reputation (for being vengeful) is more important than life itself. So I imagine it's at least somewhat effective.
(I have a confession to make. I actually meant two-boxer. because MAD and one-boxing embraces precommitment, whereas two-boxing rejects precommitment.
You're questioning MAD while trying to have your cake and eat it too, which is a two-boxer thing to do. But I always get the names "one-box" and "two-box" confused. because at first glance, my brain thinks "one-box" implies "take box A", whereas "two-box" implies "take box B". Which does not reflect the actual thought experiment.)
Stalin was a real person, Omega is not. MAD doesn't require retroactive causality, it just requires me to want to kill you after you decide to kill me.
fair enough. I just wanted to introduce a precommitment angle to the discussion.
(I even sympathize a bit, because I've always found omega's perfect omniscence a little hard to imagine. Which is weird because I don't have that issue with laplace's demon.)
Fair enough. I can see why you would think that. I suppose for me both decisions come down to a certain kind of deontological ethics, instead. I am not "meant" to take both boxes so I don't. And I "shouldn't" harm innocent civilians so I won't. It's true that I then no longer reap the benefits of MAD, but I'm questioning the efficacy of MAD in the first place, so I don't think it's necessarily inconsistent.
Interesting! Different policies have different trade-offs, after all. They are lossy compressions, by nature. In the past, I've questioned MAD too. Although my line of thought diverges a bit. I.e. "On one hand, MAD is suppose to deter. But on the other hand, civilians are generally innocent. But on the first hand, isn't the point of democracy to make civilians responsible for policy? hmm..."
I've read that Harry Truman, upon learning of the Manhattan Project, reacted with abject horror that (paraphrasing from memory): "this isn't a weapon for killing soldiers, this is a weapon for killing women and children". And that Gorbachev refused to press the Big Red Button even during training simulations <glares at Ender Wiggin>. So your pacifism certainly has other proponents. (Although Truman did decide to use the bombs anyway...)
----
Anyway. It sounds like you're trying to look for a better solution than deterrence.
A while ago, Apxhard had an interesting comment about how society runs on consensus mechanisms, and that these mechanisms are necessarily ordered in a hierarchy by cost. Which includes coinflips, the justice system, etc. (And now blockchains!) Deterrence is advertisement, and advertisement can only do so much. It gets a lot of attention because it's the penultimate consensus mechanism. The ultimate being actual warfare. It's the ultima ratio regum. The final argument. The last resort. The BATNA. But alas, still not a guarantee that you'll get what you want. And that's just the nature of politics. If it doesn't work out, you're kinda SoL.
The difference between honor culture vs. MAD isn't the efficacy, it's the stakes. At some point, I think we just have to make peace with the possibility of nuclear annihilation. (And if that doesn't horrify you enough, I vaguely recall from "Shadow of the Giant" an explanation by Bean as to why the logic of space-warfare naturally entails a First Strike nuclear doctrine.)
I guess what im trying to say is: if you want to avoid becoming irradiated, instead of pondering MAD you should perhaps work on alternative consensus mechanisms. I hear some of them are going to the moon. :^)
I think our instinct for vengeance is an evolved solution to this game theoretic problem. (It's imperfect and has side effects, like every other product of evolution.)
I think this is basically Kavka's Toxin Paradox - while nuking the other guy gains no profit, *intending* to nuke the other guy is necessary for deterrence to work. But how can you say you "intend" to do something if you don't actually do it when the time comes?
>A third way would be to implement an automatic missile detection and retaliation system, the downside being catastrophe due to false positives.
This is what Russia's "perimeter"/"dead hand" system is supposedly meant to do. (Although the fear was more of decapitation strikes than of the president being unwilling to push the button.)
A practical reason to retaliate is to leave the world without a country willing to start nuclear war. Where "the world" is whatever is left of US (quite a lot, actually) plus the other 90% of the world population you forgot about :) They'd much prefer to live in a world where starting a nuclear war is a bad proposition.
Just imagine how unstable the world would be in your scenario if US didn't retaliate. Everybody would be with their finger on the launch button, or already pressing it preemtively.
This is the little-realized altruistic aspect of vengeance. You sacrifice yourself to remove a threat to the greater population. Remember the gom jabbar test in the beginning of "Dune"?
Let's say it's 2010 and a major Hollywood producer rapes you. It's over, it's done, you won't ever be alone with him again, and you can try to recover and move on with your life. Do you call him out and seek justice? It'll turn your own life into a media circus, and destroy whatever of it you have left, and at the end it's just two people's words against each other, and maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe your career will be over, maybe other people will refuse to be alone in a room with you out of fear of false accusations. Is it worth it? How would you feel if you knew that he did this many times before, and none of his other victims said or did anything, thus passively letting him continue to rape people, now including you? Are you willing to allow him to continue doing this to other people in the future?
How badly would you, personally, have to be hurt, before you decided that revenge was appropriate? There's no police. No outside authority. No one is coming to help you. You're all alone, you and the button.
Maybe if they did it to your loved ones, instead of you? What's the worst thing that you can imagine? You can't save them. They're as good as dead already. And you've only got a limited time to act.
Would you describe someone who decides upon revenge as bloodthirsty or impulsive?
I am certain that I would not take revenge if it implied millions of innocent people also had to die, regardless of how much pain had been caused to me, personally. I think the desire for revenge is natural, but it shouldn't always be acted upon. I think it's tough to put game theory aside, as the reason why we have the impulse in the first place is due to (evolutionary) game theory. If I recall correctly, in "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins demonstrates that a "Tit for Tat" strategy, of (1) not initiating aggression, (2) retaliating immediately and proportionately for wrongdoing, (3) forgiving the initial aggression afterwards, tends to do quite well in a population. It thus makes sense that vengeance evolved and would be a useful deterrent in many situations; it's e.g. why I support the criminal justice system. It's just not necessarily a good guide to situations that never occurred in the ancestral environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Making life-or-death decisions for millions of people is one of those cases. Governments ought to be far more circumspect about retaliation than individuals would.
But if (a) your opponent knows you won't take revenge, and (b) your opponent has no moral scruples, you're opening yourself to an attack. I think both sides during the Cold War assumed that the other side had no moral scruples. Under that assessment, it makes sense to create a deadman's switch situation (and retaliatory systems were made to be as automatic as possible to prevent someone like you who had moral scruples from interfering when the retaliation was put into motion).
Then you are like a lot of people. This is how it plays out fictionally in the first 6 minutes of War Games from 1983. The second man would not turn the launch key.
As someone once said, deserve's got nothing to do with it. You kill millions of people to also kill a few guys who will predictably cause the world many more millions of lives' worth of assorted grief if they go on. And the reason they would be able to do that, is that most of the millions of people you're contemplating killing would predictably work long hours to facilitate the schemes of the malevolent few, so "innocent bystander" only gets you so far.
Protection of the innocent is so much more important than punishing the guilty. If you let the guilty go free, you are not the one who ends up hurting the potential victims in the future. If you imprison the innocent, you are culpable for destroying innocence, one of the worst things a human being can do to another. It's why we take crimes against children so seriously. This is why our standard for evidence in our CJ system is is lethally important.
A non-human shield doesn't deliberately do anything, it just gets used by the person being shielded. However, the term "hostage" is typically used for involuntary human shields so that might be a better term.
Game theorists and foreign policy interests were all well aware of these points, and the US and the Soviet Union tried the two strategies you name: Nixon intentionally cultivated an image of instability and aggressive unpredictability(“a mad dog”) so that Soviet officials would be afraid to do anything, and the Soviets advertised an automatic nuclear response system (which never actually existed) in order to discourage the US from launching a preemptive strike
This should be expanded to a full conspiracy theory. Maybe nukes actually do not exist at all. USA and Soviet Union just made them up, to discourage a possible third party from trying to interfere with their mutual conflict. Japan basically agreed to pretend to be nuked to save face (capitulation to an enemy with practically godlike weapons is less shameful that capitulation to a merely stronger enemy). In the meanwhile, a few more countries decided to call their bluff by declaring that they have nukes, too. If nukes were real, obviously Ukraine would have never given them up.
Calling the bluff is a really cool idea. But I also like the idea of it being like Star Trek TNG's first contact story, where once a country gets close enough to discovering that nukes don't exist, we have to bring them in on the secret, which is why we try to prevent other countries from getting that far. Maybe these can be combined somehow.
"is there really a point to killing more than 100 million"
The belief that the usa would be vengefully willing to do it is required for it, so the usa needs to be credibly willing to do it. its far easier to convince someone that you are credibly willing to do it if you are, rather than getting hundreds of millions of people to merely act like they're willing to do it. Therefore, it would have to happen in the end despite providing no benefit because of the hope it would act as a deterrant beforehand. This kind of will has to be genuine and ironclad a literal "I will literally vengefully annihilate your population" kind of a thing not merely a "I am willing to reconsider after being nuked."
"If one wanted to get back to MAD, Americans could elect more bloodthirsty/impulsive leaders, who would not hesitate to retaliate. "
I think most politicians would pretty much retaliate across the board. It's an understood condition of being elected and therefore not a question posed to candidates. Americans simply would not vote for someone not willing to vengefully nuke the enemy. Of course underlying all this is the sense that this is proportionate and reactive, not pro-active and disproportionate.
Thanks, you bring up some interesting points. I do agree with you that most Americans, especially those who grew up during the Cold War, would like a president who would be willing to vengefully nuke the enemy. I think all past presidents would have been capable of doing it; I'm just not sure whether e.g. Obama or Clinton would have actually ended up doing it when faced with the decision. I also think Bernie Sanders wouldn't have been capable of it if elected-- it's true that a majority of Americans think he's too pacifistic, but that may change over the next few decades.
I have this silly though experiment that I can't figure out. I only asked the GPT 3.5 about it and it argues that it should work, but I can't really trust that. I've also asked this question on reddit some ten years ago but the only answer that I got didn't really read the experiment setup and thought both magnets would be on at the same time.
So we have two electromagnets, A and B, set up to oppose each other, the magnets are placed at a distance and their fields are strong enough to exert a force on each other from that distance. Both magnets are fixed on a mobile platform, something like this:
A ............. B
------------
O...........O
(A and B are the electromagnets, the O O are the wheels of the platform, the dots are there cause the spaces between A and B, and between the O's got gobbled up when posting this)
Next the chain of events:
- both magnets A and B start by being off
- magnet A is turned on, magnet B is still off
- magnet A is turned off right as the electromagnetic field it generates leaves it, so long before its field reaches B (which if off when A is fired)
- just before the field from A reaches B, magnet B is turned on only long enough for the field from A to pass through it and have the fields interact, magnet B is turned off right after that, so long before its field reaches A (which is off and would still be off when the field from B passes through it)
- after the filed from B (now off) passes A (which is still off), repeat
Now, reasoning naively, the mobile platform should move towards the right, but this looks like a non inertial drive, which is impossible, so I must be missing out on why this shouldn't work, likely related to how electromagnetic momentum works, can anyone explain why this doesn't work?
If I replace A with a cannon and B with a really sturdy wall it's clear that the platform would jerk towards the left and then right, basically going nowhere, but magnetic fields are not really cannonballs so I'm at a loss here.
Nice, thanks. I think I googled it when I first asked this (on a throwaway cause I thought it was a stupid question) but I didn't think of doing so now, just asked GPT, so thank you for finding this.
Still, I'm surprised by the answer. I guess I thought it was impossible cause otherwise I'd expect seeing space vehicles with a nuclear reactor and some magnets strapped to itself without the need to eject mass at one end to propel itself, but now that this seems to work I image we don't have that cause the process would be massively inefficient or something like that. Hm, get one question answered, and another one pops up, thanks again.
Edit: had a comment that disappeared which argued that I misinterpreted the stackexchange post, and I read "Bottom line: Yes, there is a net push of the magnet(s)" as there being a resulting motion, even though the sentence continues saying that both momentums balance each other, so I'm at a loss on how to interpret the meaning of a net push, and I'm still confused.
My interpretation of that StackExchange answer is that the magnets will move, but not reactionlessly. It's a photon drive - electromagnetic waves go one way, magnets go the other way.
Photon drives don't have "reaction mass" per se, but the energy of the photons comes from the mass of your reactor, so there's no free lunch. They're basically just very, very weak rockets with a more compact fuel tank.
There has been some regulatory activity about AI in both the EU and the USA recently. I'm curious about whether the calls for it are in good faith, in particular which is larger:
People who are actually worried about near-term (job losses, deepfakes) issues citing existential issues
or
People who are actually worried about existential issues citing near-term (job losses, deepfakes) issues
I'm also of the alien-feeling persuasion. But I find the intellectual jousting to be very entertaining and addicting. But because I'm on a different wavelength from most of the people on this group, I don't feel like I could establish close friendships with most of the people here. I went to one meetup and I felt like an outsider there.
However, I feel like I'm on a similar wavelength to you, Moon Moth. I feel like you're simpatico enough that I could hang with you. That's not an invitation to connect, though. Just an observation. ;-)
As in the old political litmus test, I'd gladly have a beer with you. :-)
I've felt like outsiders at all the handful of meetups I've been to, but there's usually people there that I can have good conversations with, and now even some that I recognize, and say "hi" to, and who express regret that we didn't share a conversation this time around.
It's like the way I feel about science fiction fandom-- I don't like everyone, but it's a good place to find friends. I think I feel more at home than you two.
I'm very sorry it's like that for you, but you're pointing at something important-- that feeling at home is a mixture of how you're treated and how you feel about how you're treated.
I read an interesting anthropology piece which claimed that most of early human civilization was founded on murder. Assume that human desire is largely mimetic, i.e. people want things because other people want them (not including things biologically required for survival like food). If people want the same things but there are not enough resources for everyone, there will inevitably be conflict. All of this is pretty basic, but the next bit is the interesting part.
People are struggling as they all try to acquire a limited amount of resources. There just isn't enough to go around, so they start getting angry. Suddenly the tension reaches a boiling point and someone stabs Billy the sheepherder to death. Afterwards, the community doesn't get divided, but quite the opposite. They all agree that the real issue was Billy. He was cursed by the gods, or practicing occult magic, or maybe nobody really liked him. It wasn't that someone killed Billy to take his sheep or his wife or his land. And so everyone goes back to their daily lives, all of their angst gone for a time, until the next murder inevitably occurs down the line.
I have some doubts about this, especially because a lot of early legal development had to do with regulating blood feuds. This suggests that in fact everyone was not fine with Billy being stabbed, and maybe Billy's uncle was going to stab someone back. Fortunately the author makes it easy for us here by claiming that the coming of Christianity upended the entire murder conflict resolution paradigm. As Christians venerate victims and protecting the weak while making murder a taboo, it was no longer socially acceptable to blame societal outcasts for everything.
My question for the ACX commentariat is, does anyone know the historical background here? If the author is right, there should be a dramatic difference in murder rates between pagan Rome and Christian Rome, or early Christian societies and other societies.
It's horseshit. Pagan Viking society had a massively regulated wergild system and converting to Christianity and being told they just should not murder each other period upended it, AFAIK. Just for one example.
As a split-the-difference sort of person, I wonder whether relief-after-scapegoating is a thing that happens, but not a driving force for structuring societies.
Why a limited amount of resources? If the solution to hitting a limit is to stagnate and start infighting, eventually they'll be conquered by people who innovated and/or decided to expand.
I'd need some sources to take that argument seriously. As someone with an undergrad anthro degree, that doesn't sound like a theory an anthropologist would make. Cultural anthropologists study human cooperation. Archeologists also study human cultures from their cultural artifacts, but they've mostly bought into the theories of social cooperation (as do I). Although physical anthropologists posited the "killer ape" theory of human evolution, that went out the window when Jane Goodall witnessed chimps killing chimps.
This sounds more like an argument that an ethologist would make.
Dunno where you get that without getting the source, but what you're discussion is straight René Girard. My impression is that he was a powerful but quirky thinker; the effects he wrote about probably do happen, but I don't think they're quite as ubiquitous or they explain nearly as much as he claimed.
Legal Systems Very Different from Ours by David Friedman may be of interest to you. It's about how societies found various ways to deal with Billy being stabbed.
I'd also add that most of the murder was done between tribes, where we de-humanize the opponent. So we can still keep most empathy for the tribe members.
If people didn't like Billy to begin with, they might decide he had it coming. But if a society always blames the victim, it is functionally a society that is completely ok with its members killing each other, and that society is going to wipe itself out. Even among chimps a killer has to worry about what the victim's friends will do.
Meh, Japan managed to survive despite that. At one point, things got bad enough that some samurai were just killing random civilians just for the hell of it. But having a heirarchy of power does solve a lot of problems, and it's ultimately not in the interest of the powerful for their subordinates to kill without reason.
Japan did not allow anybody to murder anybody else. They allowed certain people to murder certain other people. The upper classes survived because murdering them wasn't allowed, and the lower classes survived because there were too many of them for the murderers to get everyone.
Yeah, someone in that society would figure out that if victims always get blamed, clearly the thing to do is to do unto others before they do unto you.
I didn't comment on it at the time but I really wished Scott had reviewed Violence and Sacred instead. I saw Satan Fall Like Lightning feels more like a summary of Girard's ideas for people already convinced than a real attempt at convincing skeptics.
I wasn't aware of this one. Clearly the anthropologist was heavily influenced by Girard, the single victim process is exactly what he describes. He also goes on a lot about how woke is kind of a secular heresy of Christianity with exaltation of victimhood. I'm still interested in comparing murder rates in Roman society pre/post-Christianity, if that data even exists. Scott didn't go into any quantitative analysis (not knocking him for this, I don't know if it can even be done in a meaningful way.)
Sounds like a good question for David Friedman. The economist/libertarian/medieval-hobbyist who wrote a book called "legal systems very different than ours". He was a regular, before Scott aborted SSC.
Let's go further back in history and look at apes. Actually, let's just look at apes today instead. They seem to kill each other even without accumulating resources.
I'm slowly reading a translation of Water Margin 水浒传, a Chinese novel written in the Ming dynasty and set in the twelfth century. It is essentially equivalent to the stories of Robin Hood, a heroic epic in prose telling the stories of various admirable outlaws who are oppressed in different ways by malevolent government officials.
The most prominent feature of the text, to me, is the lack of sanitization. Robin Hood stories went through a period of heavy bowdlerization and the product of that period is what modern people tend to be familiar with, but the earliest texts preserve a very clear-eyed view of what being a 14th-century highwayman meant.
The Chinese literary record is much better preserved than the medieval British oral record, and this didn't happen to Water Margin. It's pretty common for the heroes to do things that you probably wouldn't expect of a villain in a modern story.
But recently something else in the text struck me.
At this point in the story, one of our protagonists is visiting a friend, the military governor of a particular city. There is a separate civil governor, and the two governors do not get along. They have a power struggle, and the narrator tells us this:
> But not for nothing was Liu Gao a scholar. His mind was deep and devious, and he was full of schemes.
He goes on to completely anticipate and thwart the military side's plan.
Today there are many people who will happily tell you with a straight face that someone doing well on difficult tests tells you nothing but that the examinee can do well on tests. This seems to have been too implausible for the audience of a pretty openly anti-elitist set of stories in 15th-century China.
(As the civil governor, Liu Gao will have been appointed to his post after scoring highly on the civil service examinations. The text is correct to equate "civil governor" with "scholar".)
The Water Margin was definitely sanitized and changed. Famously so. There's a whole series of chapters that got added where they repent their crimes and all that. (Also, it's set in the 12th century.)
Anyway, these genius type characters are an East Asian literary archetype. It's not specifically scholars or government officials. Zhuge Liang or Sun Bin were not scholar-officials. Sun Bin was famously bad at politics. So was Yi Sunshin. Yi actually failed his exam at least once (and I believe a few times). And I think Sun and Zhuge never took them. They might still be called scholars or gentleman or so on because they were clearly intelligent. But in many cases they would be more admired for going against politics than living within it.
These are strategists. But you can see it equally with purely civil governors. Their names are just less common because war's dramatic. The idea is not "officials are smart and good" or that passing a test makes you worthy. In fact the opposite was a more common lesson. Stories of corrupt officials are more common than honest ones. The idea is that highly intelligent people exude a kind of charisma, insight, and strength through the power of their mind. And in some stories this crosses over into them being able to do literal magic.
This seems disconnected enough from my comment that I wonder if you meant to reply to someone else in the thread?
But in particular:
> The idea is not "officials are smart and good" or that passing a test makes you worthy. In fact the opposite was a more common lesson. Stories of corrupt officials are more common than honest ones.
There appears to be no implication in Water Margin that corrupt officials are worse than the other kind. Song Jiang is introduced to us as a minor court [legal court, not imperial court] official who is up to his eyeballs in corruption.
The idea that corrupt officials are no better or worse than other kinds is not the impression I'd gotten. And the fact there's 108 bandits at Mount Liang along with the other demonic connections would seem to imply some moral content.
>He goes on to completely anticipate and thwart the military side's plan.
I've been obsessed with this trope in eastern stories for years! Other examples include:
~ In "Hero (2016)" the protagonist steps up to the emperor and the first thing the emperor says is "I see you're here to kill me." There's no foreshadowing, just an infallible intuitive jump.
~In "The Three Body Problem (2008)" a character is debating covering an antagonist with a sniper rifle and is chastised with "She's sharp as a tack, She'll know," as if it's physically possible to tell if someone is pointing a rifle at you from hundreds of yards away.
~In "Shogun (2024)" as outlined recently by Freddie debour. ( I know it's not eastern, but they're leaning pretty heavily on eastern tropes)
Is this a product of the culture's hierarchy raising their leaders to supernatural heights? Is there a specific name for the phenomena of elevating natural intelligence/intuition to supernatural perception? Is this related to the crash of Korean Air Flight 801?!?
"There's no foreshadowing, just an infallible intuitive jump."
This isn't true at all – I think you may just not be familiar with wuxia tropes, or else you missed this one. The Emperor, like ourselves, can tell the titular Hero is there to kill him because of the candles. The Hero's killing intent or battle aura causes him to emanate qi toward the Emperor, causing the flames to flutter away from the Hero and toward the Emperor. It's by this token that he and we can deduce the Hero's plan, it's not an intuitive jump but physical observation.
See, in Shogun, what Freddie complained about was actually something I enjoyed. Hell yes, give me a (barely) fiction(alized) Great Man in Toranaga, a guy who actually is smart and competent and succeeds on those merits! After seeing the "subversion" of greatness fall flat on its face in the case of Napoleon, where it just made Napoleon a petty small-minded guy who occasionally succeeded in a battle almost despite himself, it certainly made for more enjoyable media.
Is it realistic? Are the Great Men infallible? (and even Toranaga isn't infallible - as Freddie's commenters point out, he didn't foresee his half-brother's betrayal, or the earthquake that devastated his forces!) Who cares, it's fiction. Whatever works.
It's not entirely fiction. Toranaga is based on Tokugawa Ieyasu, a real historical character and the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the whole story leads up to the (real) battle of Sekigahara.
Yes, that's why I said (barely) fiction(alized), not just "fiction". It's still fiction in the sense that it doesn't just directly recount history with the names changed.
I wrote more about it below, but I think it's a result of the imperial examinations. In a similar way, I think the modern rationalist movement owes a lot to Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" stories. Both want to believe that sufficient intelligence allows superhuman feats.
The Judge Dee (or Di) stories might be an archetype for this. I haven't read them, so I'm recommending them here by reputation. I believe that Di is a judge noted for investigatory prowess, with a significant impact on modern Chinese pop culture.
The plot point that I highlighted in my initial comment isn't a good example of this. Supernatural deductive powers aren't required.
You probably live in a bubble of similarly smart people. In medieval China, with quite worse living conditions and 8 centuries of Flynn effect missing, being able to be a scholar probably put you a couple of standard deviations above the mean, in a world with a median in the 80s. Quite a few "cunning plots" become possible in these conditions.
Wow! You're talking about the culture that invented gunpowder, rockets, the compass, paper, moveable type printing, woodblock printing, paper money, blast furnaces, the wheelbarrow, row-crop farming, seed drills, and possibly kites. Tell me again about the low IQ of medieval Chinese?
It wasn't until the 17th Century that Europe began to outpace China in economic productivity. And after listening to the lectures up on Hanging with History (https://www.buzzsprout.com/955531) it's hard not to view the Industrial Revolution as an accident — where all the right components came together in Great Britain in the right mix — i.e. economic incentives that promoted new innovations, low government censorship that allowed a relatively free exchange of philosophical thought), the right kind of iron ore, the right kind of coal, the existential threat of invasion (from the French under Napoleon).
If it helps I don't have a better opinion on the average IQ in Europe at the same time. We know that there's little you can do to raise IQ, but there's a lot of things you can do to decrease it - most of them quality of life things. In pre-industrial societies you have almost all of them stacked up. Even the Flynn effect is probably just living conditions catching up and bringing us close to the max potential.
I'm probably a bit biased toward this way of thinking because I live in a country with major economic emigration and constant brain drain over the last 35 years. It's a lot easier here to think in terms of "you can't develop this industry because the limiting factor is how many competent people you can attract".
It's crazy to view the Industrial Revolution as an accident. Western Europe had a lot going on those last couple centuries and the Industrial Revolution was the culmination of it.
That was my opinion, too. But after listening to Hanging With History I changed my mind. Granted that Great Britain couldn't have had the Industrial Revolution outside the European context. But it couldn't have happened anywhere else in Europe, except Great Britain, because of all sorts of different inhibiting issues in the other nation-states of continental Europe.
I read The Great Divergence a couple years ago where he makes that claim and I didn’t find it persuasive at all. Europe was innovating militarily, economically, technologically and intellectually for hundreds of years before 1800. The Industrial Revolution was baked in well before it happened.
What if the story had been sanitized in a different way? Instead of adding things like "he humbly prayed and God told him the optimal course of action", it would be "he scored highly on his civil service examinations and was very smart so he thought of the optimal course of action".
That is, who would be sanitizing it, and what was their public justification for holding power?
I think stories will, by one means or another, tend to suit the beliefs of their transmitters and audiences.
In the case of this story, those would be highly educated members of imperial China. Of course they would want stories that celebrate incredible personal feats of intellectual prowess. There's a tendency in Chinese history and literature to downplay the contributions of millions and millions of people, and attribute it all to a stroke of genius on the part of one singularly brilliant man. (It's almost enough to make me Maoist.)
Whereas when the Grimm Brothers were revising their tales, they made alterations to suit their more wealthy, urban, educated audience. Changing mothers to stepmothers, changing being eaten to being swallowed whole (and later rescued), tacking on a paragraph-long happy ending, justified by an act of prayer inserted earlier. That sort of stuff.
I still don't understand your first comment. I observed that Water Margin failed to be sanitized to accord with modern sensibilities. I don't know how to answer "what if it had been sanitized in a different way?". The comparison might be to the sanitization that I observed had happened, of the Robin Hood legends, but that sanitization involves giving Robin Hood nobler motives and toning down his thieving, murderous behavior. (Generally removing the murderous behavior outright.)
The novelization of Water Margin probably was written by a member of the educated class. It is much less clear that that was the intended audience. The stories are mostly not original to the novel and can be traced back through popular plays, and before then (and simultaneously) they would have been part of the oral tradition.
The book has not so far done any celebrating of incredible personal feats of intellectual prowess. Journey to the West doesn't do that either, though I think there is a certain amount of lionization of Zhuge Liang in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The closest match I know of for that description is the Judge Dee stories, which, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I haven't read. But I don't think it's a general theme in Chinese literature any more than Sherlock Holmes is a general theme of British literature rather than one guy who appears in several popular books.
You might note that, as I observed in my reply to Deiseach, the educated class is not portrayed _at all_ favorably in Water Margin. If you want a story written by the elite for the elite, look for Dream of the Red Chamber.
What I meant was, we here today expect that things like Rogin Hood and the Grimm Brothers will have passed through a cultural filter and will have been altered in certain ways, to conform to standards and to help set standards. We can predict that certain things will have been removed, and we can guess that other things have been added. Pre-modern Chinese literature is going to pass through a different cultural filter. So we today reading it will see things that would have been sanitized out of Robin Hood and the Grimm Brothers, and we also may have a harder time seeing things that were added, because we don't automatically recognize the pattern. Does that make sense?
And I may be overreacting a bit. That "superhuman omnicompetent smart guy" trope is something that specifically bugs me, and even more so when found in Chinese literature, so I'm probably oversensitive to even its milder incarnations.
And OK, yeah, Journey to the West doesn't hit that trope directly, but the Monkey King is just so over the top... Fun, yes, but...
> Today there are many people who will happily tell you with a straight face that someone doing well on difficult tests tells you nothing but that the examinee can do well on tests. This seems to have been too implausible for the audience of a pretty openly anti-elitist set of stories in 15th-century China.
If you're anti-elite, you might question the scholarship of the elites. Or you might just reject the notion that scholarship is good.
The text doesn't seem to take too high a view of intelligence; the mark of being a scholar is to be devious and scheming after all your learning has taught you how to plot and connive 😀
I presume "it" is straight up telling us that he is a scholar, a deep thinker, devious, and excellent at planning, not your retrospective that we should have known all this from the fact that he did well on civil service tests. If that was what we should have inferred, then there wouldn't be a need to tell us explicitly that *this* civil servant is intelligent, and in any case, it wouldn't explain any difference between him and the other civil governor, who I presume would have done similarly on the same tests.
But I haven't read this, and only know about it what you posted.
The other governor is military; they're chosen differently.
The English here explicitly relates the deep, devious, scheming mind to the fact that the civil governor is a scholar. I can't speak for the Chinese directly, but I see no real reason to doubt that it does the same.
From all this killing the pavilion was swimming in blood, bodies could be seen lying everywhere in the flickering light of the candles. Wu Song said to himself: "It had to be all or nothing; kill a hundred, you can only die for it once." Sword at the ready, he went downstairs.
"What's all the hullaballoo upstairs?" the General's wife was inquiring as Wu Song rushed in. At this monstrous sight she shrieked: "Who are you?"
But Wu Song's sword was already flying. It caught her square in the forehead and she fell with a shriek right there in front of the pavilion. Wu Song held her down but when he tried to cut off her head the sword wouldn't cut. Baffled, he saw by the light of the moon that the blade was completely blunted. "So that's why I couldn't get her head off," he thought.
He slipped out of the back door to get his halberd again and threw away the blunt sword. Then he turned and went back to the tower. A lamp could be seen approaching. It turned out to be the singing girl, Yulan, the one he'd had the trouble with before. She was accompanied by two children. When the light of her lamp fell on the General's wife where she lay dead on the floor, Yulan screamed: "Merciful Heaven!" Wu Song raised his halberd and ran her through the heart. He also killed the children, a single thrust to each. He went to the central hall, bolted the main door and returned. He found two or three more young girls and stabbed them to death too.
"Now at last," he said, "my heart is eased. Now it's time to stop." He threw away his halberd, went out of the side-door, took from his shirt-front the drinking vessels he had squashed and put them in the sack he had left in the stable, tying it on his waist. And off he strode, halberd in hand. Reaching the city wall, he thought: "If I wait for the gates to open I'll be caught. Surely the best thing to do is to climb the wall now, while it's dark, and clear off." So he leapt up onto the wall.
>He also killed the children, a single thrust to each. He went to the central hall, bolted the main door and returned. He found two or three more young girls and stabbed them to death too.
Wu Song also stops at an inn where, as he is already aware by reputation, the owners drug and butcher some of their guests to feed to the others. When he suspects that he has been given human meat, he provokes a fight with the proprietress (for reasons unclear to me, this translation calls her "the Ogress"; her Chinese epithet is clearly "the Tigress") and is about to kill her when her husband, the Gardener, arrives and recognizes Wu Song. After this the three of them are good friends.
This is a major exception to the general rule that you can tell the difference between heroes and villains; I don't really see any redeeming qualities in the treatment of this couple, but they're heroes anyway.
On a tangent, incapacitating drugs used to spike drinks are a significant plot element in the novel. I had thought of these as a fairly modern technology. What kind of stuff was available in the 12th-16th centuries?
>This is a major exception to the general rule that you can tell the difference between heroes and villains; I don't really see any redeeming qualities in the treatment of this couple, but they're heroes anyway.
Hmm... Interesting question - maybe in the literary tradition of the time the distinction between heroes and villains was some other parameter, clear to readers then, but different from what we use now???
>On a tangent, incapacitating drugs used to spike drinks are a significant plot element in the novel. I had thought of these as a fairly modern technology. What kind of stuff was available in the 12th-16th centuries?
Good question! I assume opium was available, but I thought that it (and most alkaloids) has a bitter taste. Chloral hydrate is one of the earliest synthetic sedatives, but it only goes back to 1832 (Justus von Liebig) AFAIK.
Is anyone still taking seriously the extremely optimistic hopes Yudkowsky described in the Sequences for what rationality might make people capable of, and treating that as a goal they're working towards? Is he?
I think the problem with rationalism is that it does not take into account a lot of the non-rational factors that push people in the direction of making and believing bad arguments: anger and desire to win, need to signal affiliation with valued others, self-esteem benefits of loathing an outgroup, etc. There are not many people for whom the desire to keep their thinking up to a certain standard of fairness and correctness is a powerful motivation all by itself. The people it's sufficient motivation for tend to be pretty non-social, and unusually attracted to rules and systems.
EY was quite clear that he considered his rationality a half-made art, comparable to knowing how to punch without knowing how to kick.
I don't think that half-version of rationality does that much (except get us interested in completing it). I also think the full version of it might be incomplete because it will contain things challenging to the punch's half-perspective. It is precisely because of how different it is that this missing half of the art adds so much that the first half is missing.
I do have hopes that there exists a version of self-improvement and societal improvement that can enjoy runaway success and rapidly improve us as a species. Our dialectic has worked blindly so far, but if we turn it back on itself and hone it to an edge, we will quickly become capable of jumping ahead of the schedule of insights as it looks right now.
So instead of trying to answer questions, I propose a short period of focusing on getting better at answering questions by intentionally designing dialectic infrastructure and technology; why bother trying to see through the fog to the dim light far away, when the fog will be gone and the light right up close as soon as we make our dialectic recursively self-improving?
Thanks for that interesting link. I am curious about one of your comments,
“ I think a history of the idea of procrastination would be very interesting. I get the impression that ancient peoples had very confused beliefs around it. I don't feel like there is some corpus of ancient anti-procrastination techniques from which TAPs are conspicuously missing, but why not? And premodern people seem weirdly productive compared to moderns in a lot of ways.”
Interesting survey, I think I can see what it's trying to get at (and reading the linked Substack inclines me towards that) but I don't want to speculate until the results are in.
The one thing I'd say is the compulsory "gimme your email address"; the email I use to sign in with Google is (1) a different one to the email I use for other purposes, such as subscribing to this Substack and (2) not my real name anyway.
I think forcing people to use the Google sign-in email may result in "By the way, this is not my normal email and you won't be able to contact me with this one", so maybe an option for either "don't have to sign in to take this survey" or a place to give an alternate email address might be helpful?
I will definitely be waiting to see the results and already have a "yeah, but" response in mind to what I think the conclusions will be 😀
Ran across this yesterday, and it feels like the kind of thing I would read in an ACX links digest:
The Phantom Time Conspiracy “claims that the period from 614 A.D. to 911 A.D. was fabricated during the Middle Ages to place Otto the Third in the year 1000 and legitimize his claim over the Holy Roman Empire. The entire Carolingian period is thereby fake and we actually live in the year 1727.”
Much like the moon landing conspiracies can be answered by "so how did they get the Soviet Union to agree that the Americans won the space race?", the obvious question for this one is "so, how did they get all the countries outside the HRE to agree to the new fake calendar?"
This reminds me of Scott's coffeepocalypse post from earlier this week.
Upon hearing about this theory I find myself immediately dismissing it, not after carefully weighing up any of the evidence of its proponents, but simply because it pattern-matches to a whole lot of other wacky theories which have turned out to be wrong.
This is what the AI Doom doubters who engage with the argument at the level of "oh yeah, people said that about coffee too" are doing. It might be frustrating if you're an insider who has had his head deep in the weeds of the argument for years, but it's what most people do most of the time about most things; I haven't got time to entertain wacky theories about the future or the past so I'll just wave them away (and hope that someone else better qualified will engage with the actual substance of the argument).
Sounds like Fomenko's "New Chronology". It's a really cool theory that sounds like something you'd see in a sci-fi novel, either due to time travel shenanigans or due to planetary-scale memory loss or due to civilizational collapse on a colony.
Once in a few years I get bored enough to click on SneerClub. Today I was shocked to see it... dead?
Apparently, 10 months ago they decided to commit a collective sudoku, because the Reddit admins told them to... uhm, actually I can't even figure what exactly it was that they told them. The goodbye message just quotes a very unspecific message from Reddit admins, saying "please take steps to begin that process" and "we will reach out soon with information on what next steps will take place", which SneerClub interprets as "being told to bend the knee or to die", and chooses to die.
I suppose that explanation makes way more sense for someone in the loop. I just feel a vague discomfort about the news that even bullies feel unsafe on Reddit these days. Then again, how many people still use Reddit? I also suspect that this might all be just an excuse, and the true reason is that the moderators of SneerClub simply got tired after a decade of doing the same pointless thing over and over again, and decided to move on, but for the purpose of feeling better about themselves, they decided to rebrand their retirement as heroically sacrificing their lives on the altar of... something.
They mention that the new rules on Reddit would allow big subs to take over small ones, by having many members subscribe to the small sub and then voting for new moderators. Is this actually true? If yes, it seems like a lot of fun going to happen. (Also, if true, I can imagine a way more efficient form of protest: ten people - or one person with nine sockpuppets - taking over hundreds of subs having less than ten subscribers and replacing their homepage with a protest message. The fact that this didn't already happen makes me suspect the information might not be entirely true.)
Tried to find out more. In other posts they say they are actually protesting against API changes. That only makes me more confused. So is this about the API changes, or the fear that Scott will send thousand cultists who will vote out the existing mods and establish Scott as the only legitimate authority on hating Scott? Also, isn't it a bit ironic that you spend a decade mocking people for their worries about coming technological change, and then you get hysterical about how the coming technological change will make you unable to continue your life as usual? At least the rationalists are losing their sleep over the idea that an AI might exterminate humanity, rather than that it might make loading Reddit pages a bit slower.
Ah, seems like the have a new website, where 80% of posts are made by David Gerard. Okay guys, I wish you a nice API and not too many subscribers! I will check your website again in ten years.
A lot of small lefty political sites relocated to greener pastures - and mostly starved there, I would assume. Slightly annoying if you liked to click on them from time to time, I guess, but no great loss to the world. Most of the sites I go to, related to games, software, books etc. seem largely unchanged, though probably the APIcalypse did some damage. I don't know what if anything it did to large political sites as I don't go there or to the front page. Haven't been on SSC much lately but that looks about the same as before.
10 months ago is exactly the timing of widespread protests against the API pricing changes. SneerClub wasn't the only small subreddit that closed down and then never opened back up. Nothing about this is specific to them, closing permanently was a plausible outcome for any small sub with cantankerous mods during those protests. Nothing to see here.
> They mention that the new rules on Reddit would allow big subs to take over small ones, by having many members subscribe to the small sub and then voting for new moderators. Is this actually true?
No. The Reddit subreddit democracy thing is 1) probably not going to happen and 2) even if it did could not be used to remove SneerClub moderators in the way they're describing.
That's not what I mean. What I mean is that Reddit (the company) has no interest in allowing large subreddits to take over small subreddits in this manner. Reddit's goal is to cater to many different niches, and this would reduce the number of niches.
I wondered if it might be like The Motte, which decided to jump before it was pushed, and your concluding sentences make it seem that way - instead of whatever changes Reddit might demand (which probably would be hollowing-out the entire sub-reddit), they decided to pack up the caravan and move on to pastures new.
To explain a joke, it was some spammer account that posted dozens of messages like "LW is shit" with links to the (old) SneerClub website. This happened a few years ago, and somehow it escaped the moderators's attention (probably because he only commented on old debates). I accidentally found it in google results when looking for SneerClub.
As far as reddit clones go, that one is actually nice and fast and neat and well designed. Or maybe it just helps that it's not constantly under DDOS like .win and voat.
Has anyone studied or thought about whether aphantasia would negatively affect IQ tests due to the tests reliance on visual pattern recognition questions? I can solve those questions but I find them so unintuitive— I have to use my hands and turn my head to try to figure out the pattern. My wife claims she can see the next tile in her minds eye. She can confabulate shapes in her mind quickly to validate her prediction.
I think this reflects that "aphantasia" doesn't describe a literal inability to mind's-eye visualize but a difference in answering questions/identfying and describing one's internal experience. Anecdotally, a lot of aphantasia descriptions are weirdly Barnum-y for something that should in theory be super distinct.
(Whether matrix reasoning type stuff is "visuospatial" is a different question. In theory, it isn't. In practice, everyone looks at it and goes "ah, that's visuospatial".)
It's not super distinct because there is a continuum - people with imagination have radically different capabilities and uses of it.
Those papers are really interesting, thanks for the link!
e.g. Personally I have decent (not amazing) spatial imagination - relative positions of things, so would do fine in rotating tasks. But I have very little colour or texture, and extremely low detail of images. So I'd do perfectly well at the tasks in the papers, even though I've very weak phantasic abilities.
I think the reason those papers don't find meaningful impacts is because the tasks are relatively straightforward, and there are multiple ways to do such tasks. Also often the task might be done elsewhere in the brain and merely presented consciously to phantasics via visual circuity.
We know for sure it isn't a Barnum-y fake from MRI scans (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186241/) and that it isn't just varying description of inernal experience from Descriptive Experience Sampling (which is a very thorough method - any questions you have about it, Hurlburt will have gone into in various books)
My visual working memory is non existent, compared to something like remembering a complex software program. I find it hard to translate shapes, positions, movement, to a symbolic system in my head. My wife who is an artist never has to go through that step. It’s just so much more effortful than doing math or coding.
I have Aphantasia and an education correlated with having a very high IQ (both on the verbal and math side). I find the Raven's Progressive Matrices absurdly hard and have wondered if this reflects my being genuinely less intelligent than I think or a bias in IQ testing caused by my Aphantasia.
I have (as far as I can tell) an excellent ability to form mental images, and Raven's Progressive Matrices were a delight to do.
Working memory tests, on the other hand, I do miserably at. Though I don't think it's related, other than the fact that if I have to keep a large number in my working memory I tend to imagine it written down.
I looked back at "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" and Russell Brand was seen as the go to example if the most absurd partisan Blue Tribe person, how times have changed.
The "everyone is Blue Tribe until they're accused of sexual harassment" adage seems to hold true. There is of course also an intermediate stage in all this, in which said person weakly defends free speech against blue tribe extremists.
In this case I think it's more "Everyone gets accused of sexual harassment once they stop being reliably Blue Tribe".
Same thing that happened to Bill Cosby -- everyone knew about the rape but for some reason nobody cared, until he started saying things about how young black men should really pull up their pants instead of blaming others. (This isn't a conspiracy theory, check the Hannibal Burress section on Cosby's wikipedia page, the rape allegations were deliberately resurfaced as a response to his comments about black people.)
In Brand's case, he started making remarks about vaccines and bam, suddenly everyone remembers he's a creepy druggie pervert. I have to at least respect Brand for having his own stupid opinions rather than following the path of least resistance though.
Yes. Cosby had had allegations of drugging women and sleeping with them in the past, he'd paid off some women in exchange for signing some kind of nondisclosure agreement, all that was kind-of in the air if you were paying attention. (Or so I understand--I wasn't paying attention.) And something (I forget what) triggered a sort of phase change where everyone's belief about what everyone else believed included "Cosby has a hobby of drugging and raping women," and soon thereafter there were a ton of accusers who thought they'd be believed now, and the rest is history.
It's actually a pretty interesting case study of how you can get a widespread change in what "everyone believes" when everyone is mainly just trying to believe (or say they believe) what everyone else believes. Changing my mind about literal truth is hard--you need evidence and arguments, and it mostly happens one person at a time or at least requires dramatic proof. Changing my mind about social truth is about changing my perception of what everyone believes.
The classic version of this is how a police state falls--everyone hates the dictator, but nobody knows everyone else hates the dictator. One day, something (I think it was mostly Facebook and Twitter during the Arab Spring) causes a phase change, everyone ends up realizing everyone else also hates the dictator, and soon the dictator is dead or in exile.
One might say the causality is mostly the other way, especially when the accusations in question are either transparent baloney or idiotic pearl-clutching.
I can't believe he's being defended here when he has clear drug-fueled sexual issues and is batshit conspiracy woo woo crazy; entirely an anti-intellectual.
I presented a humorous binary, and in attempting* to refute one you demonstrated the other. By all means clutch your pearls and expostulate about how charming successful handsome men have rather more sexual partners than you do.
*What's the age of consent across the pond?
Also amusing is the ingroup/outgroup 'defense' framing. I absolute cannot stand Russell Brand, and my only contact with his annoying voice is walking through a room while someone was watching youtube (or whatever streaming platform he's been on lately) on a big-screen tv. It's no 'defense' of him to note that angering the media leads to accusations in the media. You're arguing with me in the comment section of a man who has been doxxed and slandered by the NYT, after all.
I know the age of consent there. If someone is accused of sexual misconduct, you think knowing he was a 31 year old doing going to nightclubs and doing heroin with 17 year olds is irrelevant or indicative?
Scott was doxed (no doxxing Brand here) and slandered by a media org, therefore all accusations in the media are untrue???
Right. The sexual harassment accusation is entirely unnecessary in the move (but it, along with racism, or other irrefutable slanders, is pretty useful to throw into the alt-righting). All you have to do is question the woke-left orthodoxy (in any way that puts you on the radar), and within weeks you're alt-right. It's kinda creepy actually.
The result is that the alt-right is an EXTREMELY diverse set of people now. Way more diverse (on any measure you care to fabricate) than the woke-left.
I am a mathematics postdoc, and I am leading a group of computer science students in a project to generalize the results of alpha geometry to other fields of mathematics like algebra and analysis. We need some help with project planning and training LLMs on synthetic data. Would anyone here be interested in advising us on this/working with us?
On one hand, I've written a fair number of book reviews over the years. But on the other, I don't use Google Docs, as I don't consider Google an ethical organization and try to deal with them as little as possible.
I looked at Philosophy Bear's survey, out of curiosity. But I realized that I don't care about the $50 (if I took it, it would be for my own enjoyment), and on the other hand, I don't know what "charity" means and don't want to buy a pig in the proverbial poke. (I'm not generally motivated to support organized charities—I would rather donate directly to people whose needs I can assess myself—and some charities support causes I oppose.)
I guess I'm not a good fit to this part of the Internet ecosystem.
The impression I got, based on discussion of how the charity had to accept donations via PayPal and the recipient or their friends couldn't be employees of the charity, was that the winner chooses the charity within the specified bounds.
I chose to donate to charity, thinking I would get to choose one myself, but I also thought about just taking the $50, because I felt lazy and didn't want to figure out *which* charity. But it doesn't matter: I won't get the prize anyway, as I also was too lazy to figure out how much my pension is and convert that to $$.
1) Do you promise to keep our answer-email correlations confidential? You never AFAICT say as much, and while I personally am sufficiently doxxed to not really care, a lot of those questions are cancel-bait.
Relatedly: Your survey requires one to be registered and signed into Google, unlike Scott's surveys. Could you turn off that requirement? Is there a good reason for it?
We should blame somebody - probably Society - for the malign influences in our childhood which have handicapped us in the race for success in adult life. Had we learned to lie, cheat and steal, how much better for us!
Wrote a post on the UK - its people's character, the ways it's amazing, the things it does badly, and the things in which it's underrated. Would love thoughts and comments!
Thanks for sharing! I found your article timely because the conventional wisdom seems to be that the UK is on the decline and that it's sort of a mediocre, almost boring, place. It's good to get an article pushing back on that.
I also think well-integrated immigrants like yourself are well positioned to write articles like this because you can simultaneously see the culture from the outside and the inside. However this demographic has the obvious bias of being bullish on their new country - if they weren't, they wouldn't still be there!
I do have one criticism of the article which is that its portrayal of the United States seems a bit off. As a New Yorker this statement seemed absurd:
> People call the US a melting pot, but by all accounts it’s not really: cultures do not blend in the US. They just cohabit (and barely that).
I'm not sure where you got this impression. In my experience the US is very good at immigrant integration. There's a very real sense that naturalized US citizens are full Americans, and due to birthright citizenship in part but also because of the culture their children are as American as anyone else. This may seem to nit-picking on an article about the UK, but I think there's a general phenomenon in which Europeans think they know a lot more about the US than they actually do.
I haven't lived in the US, so my impression is from what I read / hear from friends; racism seems much more prevalent in the US, with people from different ethnic / racial / religious origins clustering together and inter-mingling less than in the UK. But maybe I'm wrong!
yeah I think you are wrong here (have lived in continental europe, england, and the usa. Am non-white). England is massively better at integration and assimilation than, say, Germany, but the US is as much better again.
As an intuition pump, you should think of the US as having two races. [A.D.O.S. (American descendants of slavery) and native Americans], and [everyone else]. The US is excellent as assimilation and integration within the latter supergroup, but not between the two supergroups.
By direct election? Implausible, but Sunak didn't win a general election either. By elevation from the vice presidency (or speakership)? Not implausible.
In any case (a) who can get elected head of state via direct election is a very different question to how accepting the society is in day to day life and (b) your question pertains to religion, not race. The US is a more Christian society than the UK, yes.
Also, since you are asking about head of state: what are the odds of a Muslim or a Hindu becoming King of the UK?
Anecdote #n here chiming in to say that I don't really see racism anywhere. But I also live in a place where race is hardly mentioned at all. My town's (and most nearby) demographics are roughly 70% Mexican, 20% white, and a healthy mix of "other." No one who visited my town would be able to come away feeling like racism has a presence at all. But, again. Just me and my quite Red area. I can't speak as confidently about more lefty places where it's so obvious race has significance in their pop culture.
Regarding the alcohol use, I cannot speak of the British, but at least in Finland (which has an even stronger pattern of "sober on workdays, wasted on weekends" style drinking, the alcohol not only has the function of being a formal ways to let go of inhibitions and "normal life", it also serves as a sort of a masculinity ritual (with a "proving your equal to men" factor for women). Ie being able to handle huge amounts of booze is an expected thing for a man to do, and even if it ends up with you blacking out or puking or getting into a lot of trouble, well - you took on the challenge and this time the alcohol bested you, as long as it happened due to a culturally acceptable amount of booze, there's not a huge amount of shame in this failure in itself.
Understanding this masculinity ritual aspect helped me understand, for example, why there's been such a trend in Finnish far-right politics, going back over a century, of movements and actions failing because everyone's drunk as a skunk all the time - the connection of masculinity and far-right politics being almost self-evident.
Contradictions: While we can compartmentalise, a simpler explanation is that these contradictory behaviors are often not manifested by the same people/subculture.
Biscuits: in fact everywhere's "family" biscuits (as opposed to gourmet biscuits) are rubbish. You were given them by your mum when you were four as a treat and so see them through rose tinted glasses. I've known people from several countries to wax lyrical over cheap bland or sugary biscuits that happen to be common where they grew up. London is full of ethnic stores all importing different varieties of crappy biscuits and snacks from home - often manufactured by the same company.
"easily trace their family tree back to medieval ages": This is an exaggeration - 1840 is easy as that is the first census and they are digitised. Beyond that you have to travel the country peering at bad handwriting in musty archives. If you know someone who got back to medieval times easily, it's probably because some distant relative did the hard bit already and uploaded it somewhere.
The weather: it's changed radically in the last few years. This may be the new normal or an aberration, but it's not what got us our reputation for terrible weather. However, some of the reputation for terrible weather came from smog due to domestic coal burning - which went 50 years ago but the French still think London is foggy.
Haha ! Don't worry, I believe you. There has to be some country with good biscuits, especially if it hasn't been taken over by the biscuit conglomerates. I just think that English biscuits aren't worse than once from the average country.
Since you've given a recommendation for Greek biscuits, what are the Swiss ones you think are better?
I appreciate the engagement, but I disagree with most of your points :)
Contradictions: definitely not - it's absolutely the same people who, sans alcohol, are quiet and diffident, but who let loose and turn into different people when out.
Biscuits: again, no. The Greek or Swiss run-of-the-mill biscuits are definitely better than McVitie's (and they're made by family-owned companies).
Family records: yes, it's an exaggeration, but as you say, you *can* travel and find records, even if handwritten.
Every now and then, I get an email that someone liked my post. However, I have never seen/found a "like" button in the comments. I really want a way to "promote" some comments over others, and it is a constant frustration that I cannot. The only thing I have found that is close is replying, but I also don't want to spam "this" everywhere.
I was just thinking about this -- I've been getting a *lot* of likes lately. I was never a fan of likes being turned off; they remove an important way to recognize high-effort comments. If there's a whole browser extension dedicated to turning them back on, that sounds like the original intent has thoroughly failed.
There's a browser extension called ACX tweaks that re-enables them, or when you reply to someone, they get a reply notification by e-mail and in that e-mail there is a like button as well.
I have ACX tweaks turned on and, while the underscore->italics and quote processing and precise timestamps work, when I "like" something, I see the "heart" symbol get filled in and the count incremented - but the comment's author appears to not get notified and the increment and filled-in "heart" appear to both disappear next time I visit the ACX web page. So I think there is a bug (or I _still_ haven't set the configuration options properly). This is on a windows 10 laptop under firefox. ( BTW, I've "liked" your comment - do you see any notification? )
I was diagnosed with a brain tumour just over two years ago and I never asked for a prognosis. I have had three people close to me who had the same tumour and they all died quite quickly. I assumed that I would too.
Now it’s two years later and I am not dead yet and I am starting to think that I should have asked how long I have in the first place. I would have made very different plans if I had known I would last this long.
I have an appointment with my oncologist coming up and I think I want to ask how long I have so I can make plans for the rest of my life. If it’s a year or two, I’d rather spend it somewhere nice like a beach in Vietnam. If it’s much longer, I’ll need to carry on working. If it’s much shorter, I’ll go watch the ducks on the harbour.
My wife thinks I should forget about knowing because we are all going to die sometime and no one knows when but I wonder what the smart people here would do.
I wrote what I think on my blog but I’m more interested in what you think. What would you do? Would you ask?
At a rough approximation, cancers grow until they kill you. This means that length of life is a function of how big is the cancer, where it is, and how fast it’s growing.
We can usually estimate how fast a cancer will grow by histopathological features (what subtype, what grade) and increasingly these days, molecular features (in the case of brain cancers the presence or absence of IDH mutation is the single most important factor.)
In your case because the biopsy was inconclusive we may be limited in our ability to predict (I’d encourage you though to ask your oncologist in what way it was inconclusive? Did they simply not get enough tissue, or were there features that were borderline such that the pathologist didn’t feel comfortable neatly classifying it?)
That leaves us with velocity of change being potentially the most useful factor. If it’s been two years, and you’re still here well enough to post on ASX and consider travelling to Vietnam, I’d suggest we are looking at a relatively slow velocity. But here serial MRI scans would be helpful.
The other confounding factor is of course treatment which has the potential to significantly prolong things eg if vismodegib gets regulatory approval in the UK. I have certainly met patients who withdrew all their superannuation on cancer diagnosis, did way better than expected, and ended up having to go back to work 5 years later.
Something oncologists are increasingly being asked to do these days is give prognosis estimates with error bars, not just a median, which people tend to overinterpret. So 10th and 90th percentiles as well. Worth asking if this is an option.
Thank you, Turtle. The biopsy was a needle biopsy and did not get sufficient tumour. The pathologists were not confident and the molecular profile had nothing to say. The surgeon wanted to do a full craniotomy to get a better sample but I declined. Two of the pathologists said, “Probably astro”. The other said don’t know.
What I am most interested in though is whether other folks would want a prognosis. Would you want to know?
Just yes, I would want to know. The knowledge would enable me to optimize my relationships, my spiritual well-being, my finances and my travel plans. I don't even see the other side of the argument, actually. It's relevant that I am in my 60s I suppose, because my eventual death is a sober reality to me. Might have felt different in my 30s or earlier.
Bear in mind too that oncologists are notoriously reluctant to give definitive prognoses for exactly this reason - they are genuinely unsure, and obviously it's a matter of life changing importance to people, and they don't want to cause you terrible problems when they get it wrong.
So in your case you may have to press them if you want more than exactly zero useful information. My default response if someone asked me would be something like "I really don't know because we don't have an adequate tissue sample/we don't know how you will respond to treatment." You would have to ask me specifically, like, "should I take a holiday in Vietnam, vs continue to work, vs withdraw my savings" for me to think "OK, this guy understands I can't do better than ballpark, but ballpark is still going to be useful to him."
When my dad was dying of cancer, the oncologist gave him a prognosis (broadly accurate--the doctor said probably six months to a year, and my dad died in that range of time) prefaced with "I'll give you my estimate, but I'm always wrong." I assume this was to make it clear he couldn't give any guarantees.
It's different in each situation and of course some oncologists have different approaches. I always check that a patient wants to know and check that they understand my limitations before giving my best estimate, but am happy to give that if requested.
I have a really good relationship with my oncologist and she has told me plenty of good news and bad news (or her best guess at it) in the past. I have just never asked her before for a prognosis. I have no doubt that if she is able to make a guess, she will do her best and if she is not able, she will tell me so.
I know her guess will be a guess based on historical record of other patients. I also know that brain cancers are very varied, with probably more variation than most other cancers.
I expect her answer will be something like "you have a long time to go" or "if I were you, I would book that trip to Vietnam". That will be accurate enough for me.
Me? For sure. Because, look, the number your oncologist tells you is not from gazing into a crystal ball, it's an educated guess, based on extrapolation from patients similar to you. It could be off in either direction by 3x. People think that doctors are oracular prophets with this stuff. We're really not.
It might affect your life, right? Like if they say one year vs ten years, you'll do something different with your future plans.
Just don't put too much stock in the response. If they say "two years" remember that's a median and you could be 90th percentile, or 99th percentile, or whatever. If you're still here in 18 months, don't go "well, six months left now." That's a common attitude, and it makes about as much sense as a mum asking her obstetrician how long her baby will live, and they go "actuarially, approximately 80 years," and now the kid is turning 79 and is in great health but figures they had better start planning their funeral.
I suffer from a chronic condition that often ends badly but is very difficult to develop a prognosis for. The medical profession as a whole seems quite unwilling to make concrete projections unless the outcome is fairly certain. Sort of like when you ask your accountant or lawyer if something is kosher and they give you a word salad that doesn't really answer the question.
of course I do my own research, but it really seems that the internet and social media and just the general increase in information good and bad makes it harder and harder to do your own valid research and feel you're on solid ground.
The fact that you're posting here is a good sign. There aren't many places on the internet where you can pretty much count on opinions having some grounding in reality. That said, even on this blog you get questionable responses. All I can say is, with some irony, do your own research.
For about the first year I researched about three hours a night, every night. I've been a bit more relaxed in recent months.
In my day job, I run an online community for patients. For some cancers, the advice is excellent - but we don't have a good brain cancer community. Surprisingly, the best one I belong to is on Reddit.
I've lived with a medical condition with a median survival term of 5 years for 22+ years now - even if they quote a median to you, it doesn't tell you anything about the tails of the distribution, or about your specific situation.
Basically, I'm not sure asking them is going to actually help you make a better decision, especially if it's the difference between needing to work / not. If I were in your shoes, I'd research on pubmed for "% that survives x years" charts or tables for your specific condition, and that's probably the most informed prior you'll be able to get. And the doctor isn't going to know that off the top of their head, it's basically up to you.
I've spent many long nights reading pubmed and looking at Kaplan-Meier charts. I don't have a proper diagnosis because my biopsy was inconclusive but it's definitely a low grade glioma (two years to ten years depending on the subtype) with lots of dependent variables. My tumour has a gliomatosis pattern which the old papers say puts me at less than 12 months but new papers say makes no difference. Brain tumours are complicated.
I would hope that my oncologist can be a little more precise — though I understand that she will still be quoting averages from the past, not making a specific prediction for me.
These days prognosis is more based on molecular sub typing ie DNA analysis. I assume you’re IDH mutant? Do you know what your 1p/19q codeletion status is?
If the results were inconclusive your oncologist might not be able to tell you much. But low grade astrocytomas can have prognoses 10+ years. Has yours changed much on imaging since diagnosis?
Gotcha, sounds like you've got good espistemics around it already.
One last thought on the decision - you mentioned Vietnam. I'm assuming you're western and have a western job / credit history. You could live a pretty long time in Vietnam on the credit profile that most SSC folk have, and unsecured debt has no liability to your inheritors on your death.
A sort of "hedge your bets" thing if you wanted to go that route - eke out as much as you can on credit without spending down your actual assets beyond minpays, then you'll have pushed your two year timeline out by X years if you end up being in the long tail and surviving longer than expected, and can make a less risky / more hedged decision then.
Thank you for your very thoughtful answers. I find them valuable.
Vietnam is just a fer-instance but I would like to spend my final days somewhere more exotic. I'm in the UK and I have family which is another reason why a better prognosis would be helpful. My wife could probably manage a year on a beach somewhere but eventually she will have to come back and if it's ten years, that would make it very difficult for her.
Sure, happy to contribute where I have a little knowledge and relevance.
> Vietnam is just a fer-instance but I would like to spend my final days somewhere more exotic.
I actually spend a good portion of my time in the Philippines and Thailand, I think SE Asia is a great choice. I used to live in Hawaii, and both PI and Thailand beat Hawaii on "natural beauty" while also being 50x cheaper, it's a pretty incredible value prop.
The flights to and from the US are brutal (and I'm sure similarly bad for the UK), but you never regret it when you're actually here, in my experience.
On the Philosophy Bear survey, there's a left-right alignment question.
It's safe to assume this is in an American context, but even there, I don't know how to answer these, particularly given recent gyrations in what counts as left and right (left anti free speech, right anti free trade, for example). Are these scales even useful anymore? I went center left as a vague gesture at my views (socially permissive, positive on markets, think the state should keep people out of misery), but the nuance is complicated and not coherent with a left right axis, even less than historically speaking.
I'd argue the opposite - the scale is more accurate than at any point in 50 years.
Split ticket voting has decayed to almost zero. Meaning if you vote for one Democrat on the ballot, you're voting for every Democrat on the ballot. In the 1970s, it was much more common for individual voters for a Democrat for one office (e.g. Representative) and a Republican for another office (e.g. Senator).
Today, you basically have two camps - one on the left and the other on the right. The number of people in between is at an all-time low.
Sure, there's lots of heterogeneity within these groups. But you can tell a lot about someone by the way they vote. And now more than ever, the left-right alignment matches voting behavior better than anything else I've ever seen.
Voting patterns on referenda, even on "partisan" issues, often differs wildly from what one would naively expect from partisan lean. Third party voting is also quite volatile election over election.
There are few people in between Democrats and Republicans, sure, but does that reflect coalescing into two rival and coherent "tribes" or does it reflect widespread dissatisfaction with what politicians of both parties are offering?
If you had widespread dissatisfaction with both sides, you'd probably see very low turnout. Instead, voter turnout is breaking records.
Referenda are almost by definition exceptional - if you could get the law passed through the regular political process, you likely wouldn't be seeking an alternative route to passage. So that's why those frequently cut against the state's majority party - that's the entire point of having a separate citizen-led process for making law.
"If you had widespread dissatisfaction with both sides, you'd probably see very low turnout. Instead, voter turnout is breaking records."
To what extent does negative partisanship explain this turnout? "Dissatisfied with both sides, but likely to vote anyway because I see one side as a significantly bigger threat than the other" describes me pretty well. Not sure how many other people would agree, but I suspect a good few.
>"Dissatisfied with both sides, but likely to vote anyway because I see one side as a significantly bigger threat than the other"
I'm definitely in the dissatisfied with both sides camp. In a nutshell, disliking the right wing because of their attacks on bodily autonomy and disliking the left wing because of all of the woke crap. Since I have relatives in Israel, I'll vote for whichever of Biden/Trump is best supporting Israel (or, more precisely, voting against whichever of them is less supportive).
Negative partisanship is also a good indication that the bimodal scale is working well.
The original idea - as I understood it - was that heterodoxy on the left and right has made the left-right binary meaningless. There simply no more meaning to being left or right - no one can tell what that means any more.
The data shows the opposite - people are more consistently Democrat or Republican and are less likely to vote for anyone outside their party.
Now, what their party stands for is always going to be in flux. But we can all agree that the one thing each party stands for is that it's not the other party. That's changed considerably since the 1950s - fun side note, in the 1950s, political scientists were warning that American politics wasn't partisan *enough*. That without partisanship, voting became truly meaningless, because Democrats and Republicans were so thoroughly mixed in their feelings on the major issues of the day (e.g., segregation) that voters didn't know what casting a vote for a particular candidate *meant*. E.g., if I vote for the Democrat, am I saying I'm pro-segregation or pro-integration?
The right is pro "free speech" as a political slogan, but they're still opposed to free speech as an actual principle. For example, the governor of Florida literally passed a bill to "punish" a specific company specifically for criticizing government policy. This is as close to a textbook example of government prohibition on free speech as you can possibly get, and it isn't even hidden - he brags about it on TV!
Of course there's always random stories about people banning books because they show gay people or micromanaging what teachers are allowed to say and so on, but the Disney case is by far the worst of any free speech case in the modern era because if you can't criticize the government, nothing else matters. And the fact that DeSantis was so blatant about it and brags about it on TV means the chilling effects are much greater than they would otherwise be.
Corporations aren't people and we should stop pretending they are. Punishing them for expressing positions, on any issue, means more opportunity for regular people to have their say.
And yet I don't disagree with you at all on the right in general; I just think you chose a poor example re: Disney. Abbott's reaction to the UT protests, for instance, suggests that there remains zero respect for free speech on the right, and not just vis-a-vis LGBT issues.
How does that matter wrt freedom of speech? I mean, is there an organizational structure for the Wall Street Journal that means that the Biden administration can decide to jail the editor or order the newspaper closed because he doesn't like the stories they're running? ISTM that the organizational structure is irrelevant--we don't want government telling news organizations what they may and may not say.
Did he actually punish Disney though, or just remove certain special laws that benefited them, casting them down to the level of everyone else? (I don't get to run my own city so I don't see why Walt Disney should).
Well, Desantis said he did, and certainly seems to be trying to create the chilling effect.
As a more general principle which I'm sure you already understand, it can be possible for a seemingly innocuous action to still be problematic if done for the wrong motives in the wrong circumstances. As a flipped example, I'm sure you'd agree that businesses have a right to arbitrarily refuse customers *in general*. But I'm also sure you'd oppose social media companies banning people due to right-wing affiliated speech. It's not "banning people" in general that's the problem, it's "banning people for engaging in disfavored speech".
Sometimes it's hard to tell what people's motives are, but in this case we don't have to guess because DeSantis is happy to brag about it.
Or if that's not enough, consider the Roseanne cancellation. Why is it a problem to take away someone's special privileges, casting her down to the level of everyone else? I don't get to run my own TV show so I don't see why Roseanne Barr should. You see the problem with this argument?
I think DeSantis took away a special law that benefitted them (that they should probably never have had) as a way to punish them for taking a stand against a law he supported. And he pretty-much bragged about it. You can see this as good or bad in various ways, but it's very hard to spin as support for freedom of speech.
Yeah, I agree. It's very annoying to constantly see that sort of one-dimensional flattening of politics by specifically Americans, given how thoroughly multi-faceted politics are.
I'm pretty sure this flattening reflex is directly downstream of how their electoral system works, but I sure wish they'd stop constantly auto-applying it to the rest of the world.
Most countries that I’m aware of collapse the political landscape into a single dimension in popular discourse. It’s not totally unreasonable for an American to make use of that framework - and to the extent that it is unreasonable, it is not a habit unique to Americans.
The problem is when you try to map the idiosyncratic coalitions of one place and time onto another. It often feels like "but are you a Protestant or a Catholic Jew?"
The same also goes for trying to extrapolate American racial categories outside of the circumstances and society which gave birth to those particular delineations.
Probably the only consistent factor is redistributive preferences, which to be fair to philosophy bear is probably the most relevant aspect for their purposes.
I went center right for the exact same reasons. I think the 11 point scale and the follow up specific question has enough nuance to find interesting correlations.
My music listening is generally rock, or classical or house. The latter I know nothing about but it fills the room.
I don’t listen to much pop except for the obvious genius of the Beatles or the beachboys etc.
Female pop? Not at all.
So it was with great trepidation that I let Spotify play what it considered the best songs from Taylor Swift‘s latest, and not as enthusiastically received, album - the Tortured Poet’s society.
I’ve never liked her old songs much either but I enjoyed the songs I listened to here well enough. Sure, maybe a 35 year old should move on from the break up genre, but she can throw shade like no one else. I’m not sure it helps her future dating prospects that you may get a song like “The smallest man who ever lived” written about you but as a revenge poem it’s delicious.
OK, I honestly tried listening to the song you mentioned. I made two attempts but just got bored and wound up skipping around a bit. There's just nothing really going on musically, and the lyrics might feel relatable to someone else but not to me.
It solidifies the idea in my head that Taylor Swift is just music for people who don't really like music. (I don't mean this as a value judgement; I mean, I don't really like paintings, and I'm sure that the sort of vaguely-pleasant colourful landscape paintings that I hang on my walls could be described as paintings for people who don't really like paintings.) People like this are enjoying something else in music when they listen to music; they're enjoying the lyrics, or they're enjoying the nostalgia of listening to a song that reminds them of good times, or they're just enjoying being part of a group who all like the same thing.
That's interesting to hear just because I've heard similar comments in recent days from two other people who I'd never have guessed had ever listened to a Taylor Swift album. (As I haven't, not yet anyway.)
Will there be a dedicated announcement for book review voting this year? I was reading through the open threads for the last few, and saw 1. several complaints that people were unaware of the voting period because they don't check the threads and 2. that it was a huge pain to find people's thoughts on the reviews during voting, because spicy/CW stuff dominates open threads.
my guess is that it will not only be trained on text, but will also use other kinds of data (probably video), so it will learn things, gpt4 is lacking, like spation thinking, and cause-and-effects. This will both open up new domains, and also improve the existing ones.
I guess it will be stronger across the board. e.g. all in domains, where gpt4 is ok-ish, gpt5 will be super-human. And in many domains where gpt4 is bad at, gpt5 will be ok-ish.
> Will it flood Scott's comment threads with human quality writing?
I think, that gpt4 already does human-level writing (,i.e. it is above the average human, but well below a domain-expert) , and it is only limited by RLHF. There are two problems with RLHF: (1) it leaves artefacts in the output and (2) it seems to reduce the overall capabitlities of the network (e.g. gpt4 seemed to get worse at programming, as RLHF continued). So I guess, that openai will use a different strategie to make gpt5 non-racist. Maybe something like this: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-road-to-honest-ai
But I also think, that it will be very closed down (read: sold to the highest bidder), so it will take some time after its release, before we will see it in the wild. So I don't think we will see it in comment-sections any time soon.
However good GPT-5 is, I don't expect it to really compete with human writers at a high-level of style, flair, wit, and general disagreeableness. It's less a matter of scale than of the tuning & sampling.
A more relevant hypothetical might be Llama-3-400b if it is as good as Zuckerberg has been promising, and released as promised: you could then finetune it to remove the safety guardrails easily (as has been established many times now), recover the much more diverse base behavior than the instruction/RLHF-tuned behavior, and then maybe finetune it on high-quality diverse writing or work out a better sampling/search approach than mere temperature sampling, to really reveal what it's capable of. (As always, sampling can show the presence of knowledge but not the absence.)
I think you can already do this. It just takes a lot of time.
Some people got the llama 7B running on a raspberry pi, so I think you can use the same principles (like storing intermittent results to a SSD), to run a larger LLM on a larger computer.
We're going to have a hard time telling with new commenters, as long as they have conventional views. But I bet GPT-5 will still be trained to give mealy-mouthed conventional answers about all the current hot-button political issues. (Try asking it, "Who's in the right, Palestine or Israel?", and see what you get.)
I think it could make a lot of translators obsolete. It depends on how much non-English text they incorporate. And there'll be usage constraints: something worse running locally with unlimited usage is going to have advantages over something better running remotely with a rate limit.
I predict it will be able to create decent book reviews that are actually worth reading, but which still aren't quite as good as the very best. The good ones here tend to use the book as a springboard for discussing another idea, or tend to have a lot of distinct personality. But who knows, maybe "review this book in the style of Scott Alexander" will be a useful prompt.
I doubt that would be a useful GPT-5 prompt. I expect it would lead to a summary that got lost in the details, but lacking Scott's trenchant insights to cut through the jungle.
To anticipate questions related to 3: these complexities will have no effect on TFOI's updated roadmap.
We are not affiliated with the Minicircle company, and we also do not have any shared team members or formal partnerships. While we initially considered partnering with them, following our internal considerations and consultations with external experts, we made a few early adjustments to the parts of our general strategy. Among them, we decided to pause investigating the use of small-m minicircles (as an entire category) in the human intervention subproject, having identified delivery-related issues that could likely prevent the occurrence of the desired effect; we are already considering the utilization of other, more suitable methods. More news coming soon!
I tend to think of theology as something a peraon learns in order to better understand the doctrinal points of their own religious tradition. Usually to deepen their faith or to provide for defenses against attacks from othe religions. Also, inevitably, the speculation draws on the established scriptures of the faith and thus ultimately appeals to the authority of revealed knowledge to paper over any cracks. A notion that recently lodged itself in my brain is whether or not it was possible to speculate on the nature of the divine without reference to revealed knowledge and/or outside of a religious tradition.
The only examples I've been able to find have been Aristotle on Metaphysics where he outlines his argument for Prime Movers, and within Whitehead's process philosophy. But as far as I can tell that's basically it and that honestly surprised me. It's easy to understand why the majorityof theology would take place within an established tradition, but I thought that subject of (presumably) great importance would have attracted more thinkers trying to divine what we can know about it through reason alone.
So am I missing any other than the ones listed above? Also, if anyone has thoughts on the futility or nature of the subject, feel free to share.
There are many variations on this, but the general idea starts from the old observation that "nothing comes from nothing", i.e stuff requires other stuff to serve as its cause or support or underlying explanation.
This general rule has held up amazingly well, even though quantum physics has brought a few wrinkles, with virtual particles popping in and out of existence and all.
So you open your eyes and see that "stuff is there", so you naturally ask why something rather than nothing? Well, if things depend on other previous or finer things, you can mentally trace back these chains of dependence as far back as the rational mind can go and our knowledge of the universe allows.
At that point, since out knowledge is limited, you can quite fairly just say "well that's as much as we know for now" and leave it at that. Perfectly rational.
But if you choose to continue as a thought experiment, and if you believe hard enough that all things must have an explanation even if we can't pinpoint the details, you can wonder, do these chains ever reach an end, or do they keep going back forever?
The possibility that they keep going back forever is also quite rational, you can imagine a multiverse with no beginning or end out of which infinite universes pop out and do their thing. But hardly anyone seems to like that option because it leaves the wider question "why stuff" without a clear answer.
Then you ask, what does it even mean for those chains of dependency to have a beginning? For something to sit at the beginning it would have to be timeless, and altogether self-sufficient, otherwise it would need some further cause or justification beyond it. It would also need to be "generative", i.e able to cause or underlie the rest of the chain instead of just sitting there self sufficiently.
So if you follow this line of speculation to the end, you can have the intellectual satisfaction of finding something in the shape of an answer, as long as you can stomach the weirdness of an entity completely unlike anything we know in the world.
I have to insist that it's quite a price to pay. You started up with the principle that everything depends on something else, and you ended up with something that straight up contradicts that principle. Anyone calling this a "proof" is IMO hugely overstating it.
But if you make the choice to accept that, there you have it, the philosophical God, independently of any religious tradition or revelation.
"Also, inevitably, the speculation draws on the established scriptures of the faith and thus ultimately appeals to the authority of revealed knowledge to paper over any cracks."
Have you been following recent theologians? 😀 The popularisers, at least; they get very enthusiastic media reviews about "This minister isn't your grandpa's clergy, she's got tats and loves rock!"
Though I have some tolerance for Rev. Bolz-Weber who, even if she is achingly hip, is also at least in the trenches doing pastoral work so I simply roll my eyes at the "Minister for Fabulousness" stuff:
"Bolz-Weber felt called to service in 2004 when she was asked to eulogize a friend who had committed suicide. In 2008, Bolz-Weber was ordained as a pastor. She started her own church, the House for All Sinners and Saints, the name of which is often shortened to just 'House.' One third of her church is part of the LGBT community, and she also has a "Minister of Fabulousness", Stuart, who is a drag queen. Her church is also very welcoming to people with drug addiction, depression, and even those who are not believers of her faith. Bolz-Weber spends nearly twenty hours each week writing her weekly ten-minute sermon."
There's the older versions of that; I would not consider Karen Armstrong someone who is a theologian that "learns in order to better learn the doctrinal points of their own religion, to deepen their faith or provide for defenses against attacks". Ditto Bart Ehrman "six times New York Times bestsellers":
I think that within Hinduism, which covers a *lot* of territory, there are thinkers coming at "the nature of the divine without reference to revealed knowledge"; there is a lot of sophisticated philosophical arguments over being and reality in that tradition, similarly within Buddhism. Look outside Western philosophy for exemplars, though I'm not sufficiently learned to steer you towards any particular teacher or school.
As nice as the existence of open minded non-conservative Christian theologians may be, these are still people operating within the bounds of their chosen faith, with its internal needs for clarification and justification. As far as I understand, Negentrope was asking for people tackling these issues with no such pre-commitments.
Oh, don't take it that I'm *happy* about "open-minded, non-conservative theologians", some of them are so open-minded their brains fell out and they are most interested in demonstrating that Christianity is the most terrible thing ever because of [insert laundry list of progressive shibboleths here] 😀
What I understood Negentrope to be saying was that theologians were defending their own faith tradition, and there's a tranche of modern theologians who are doing anything but that and instead are wanting to deconstruct it. If they're looking for philosophers of religion, I think there must be some out there but I don't know any off the top of my head.
Check out “nondual tantric saivism” by Wallis. A lot of eastern traditions make claims like, “don’t just take what I’m saying as true, sit down to meditate and see for yourself.”
An approaches use by Catholics like Aquinas is similar but it often starts with propositions. For example, for the question “why is there something instead of noting” the Catholics argue that “nothing” actually requires more of an explanation than “something”. You could argue they are just basing this all off of scripture, but millions of Protestants would scream in protest, “no they aren’t, that’s the whole problem with Catholicism.”
The Catholic conception of God is what a lot of people would call “truth” or “reality” , depending on whether their philosophical predispositions lean platonic (truth) or materialist (reality). Obviously specific claims like “and then truth became a person” can’t be empirically investigated. But “if you assume truth loves you and guides you, and you become open to its guidance, your life will get better” can absolutely be empirically tested without recourse to ancient texts.
> A lot of eastern traditions make claims like, “don’t just take what I’m saying as true, sit down to meditate and see for yourself.”
And what exactly happens when you sit down to meditate, and afterwards still disagree with their teachings?
This is like p-hacking in science. The traditions encourage you to make millions of experiments with N=1, then use the successful ones as "empirical evidence for our tradition" and ignore the rest.
Totally agree. The shocking claim that monotheisms make isn’t that there’s some operator outside the laws of physics. It would be better translated to materialism as, “the laws of physics are consciously, and they love you and have a plan for your life and the world as a whole.”
Now, let us go to the ending of the Divine Comedy, where Dante finally attains the vision of God, the Unmoved Mover:
"but my desire and will were moved already —
like a wheel revolving uniformly — by
the Love that moves the sun and the other stars."
How is it that God moves the stars? It is not that He physically spins them in place, but rather - in mediaeval thought - all things have their natural place and 'wish' or 'desire' to be there - it attracts them.
God is that Love which all things in the Universe are naturally attracted to, and try to move towards, and that is the motion imparted to them.
To quote Lewis' "The Discarded Image":
"God, we have said, causes the Primum Mobile to rotate. A modern Theist would hardly raise the question ‘How?’ But the question had been both raised and answered long before the Middle Ages, and the answer was incorporated in the Medieval Model. It was obvious to Aristotle that most things which move do so because some other moving object impels them. A hand, itself in motion, moves a sword; a wind, itself in motion, moves a ship. But it was also fundamental to his thought that no infinite series can be actual. We cannot therefore go on explaining one movement by another ad infinitum. There must in the last resort be something which, motionless itself, initiates the motion of all other things. Such a Prime Mover he finds in the wholly transcendent and immaterial God who ‘occupies no place and is not affected by time’. But we must not imagine Him moving things by any positive action, for that would be to attribute some kind of motion to Himself and we should then not have reached an utterly unmoving Mover. How then does He move things? Aristotle answers, κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον, ‘He moves as beloved’. He moves other things, that is, as an object of desire moves those who desire it. The Primum Mobile is moved by its love for God, and, being moved, communicates motion to the rest of the universe."
That which is the most attractive force we may today name gravity, but in the past it was named Love, and that Love knows us and has a plan for your life and the world as a whole 😁
What you are talking about is the main project of the philosophy of religion discipline today. There are countless philosophers since the Greek times and also working today doing what you are describing. Joshua Rasmussen's work is a good example of a living analytic philosopher doing that. His book "How Reason Can Lead to God" would likely interest you. Ed Feser, as the other commenter pointed out, is someone in the Thomistic/Aristotelian tradition who does that.
What you are looking for is natrual theology. Other than the aforementioned theologians consider reading Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas and Leibnez.
The proofs in particular should come up if you search for the Neo Platonic (proof), Augustinian (proof), Thomistic (proof), and rationalist (proof).
If you are seriously interested consider Edward Feser's "Five proofs of gods existence" (a silly title I know but it is highly regarded, in which Feser explores natural theology and its common refutations (such as Hume to the prime mover theory and many more), also trying to attribute attributes to the being it rationalises.
Some will tell you we should entirely exclude the supernatural, or that it may be a futile endeavor but it certainly is an interesting subject and I'd advise you to not exclude any knowledge, as long as it is true knowledge (what an epistemological horror but whatever).
It would be even more interesting if anyone were to write these books with an open attitude and balanced point of view, sympathetic but not sold. It's hard to trust that someone writing "five proofs of God's existence" doesn't already know what conclusion they want to get to...
(1) "Article 1. Whether, besides philosophy, any further doctrine is required?
Objection 1. It seems that, besides philosophical science, we have no need of any further knowledge. For man should not seek to know what is above reason: "Seek not the things that are too high for thee" (Sirach 3:22). But whatever is not above reason is fully treated of in philosophical science. Therefore any other knowledge besides philosophical science is superfluous.
Objection 2. Further, knowledge can be concerned only with being, for nothing can be known, save what is true; and all that is, is true. But everything that is, is treated of in philosophical science—even God Himself; so that there is a part of philosophy called theology, or the divine science, as Aristotle has proved (Metaph. vi). Therefore, besides philosophical science, there is no need of any further knowledge.
On the contrary, It is written (2 Timothy 3:16): "All Scripture, inspired of God is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice." Now Scripture, inspired of God, is no part of philosophical science, which has been built up by human reason. Therefore it is useful that besides philosophical science, there should be other knowledge, i.e. inspired of God.
I answer that, It was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: "The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee" (Isaiah 64:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation.
Reply to Objection 1. Although those things which are beyond man's knowledge may not be sought for by man through his reason, nevertheless, once they are revealed by God, they must be accepted by faith. Hence the sacred text continues, "For many things are shown to thee above the understanding of man" (Sirach 3:25). And in this, the sacred science consists.
Reply to Objection 2. Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy."
Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.
Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Exodus 3:14)
I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence — which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.
Reply to Objection 2. Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article."
It really troubles me how difficult it is to talk about human rights in Palestine without being in some way accused of being an antisemite, or otherwise being callous towards Israelis. It seems to be an unspoken assumption that these two mindsets are interlinked, but I just don't understand how that makes sense. Gaza and the West Bank are both in far worse shape than Israel is, so it seems obvious to me that an objective observer would be very concerned about the welfare of Palestinians right now. It troubles me that it is controversial in many spaces to express any modicum of that concern publicly, and I would be interested to know why people think this is the case.
Talking about human rights in 2024 Palestine, is a lot like talking about human rights in 1945 Berlin. There was an awful lot of suffering in Berlin in 1944-1945; I think something like a quarter of a million civilians were killed, most of whom were not literal Nazis. This is a bad thing; those people in principle at least had the standard human right not to be killed or maimed or their homes destroyed, etc, and those things were nonetheless done to them.
But what are you going to *do* about it? The Nazis had to go, and the only way anyone had to remove deeply-entrenched Nazis from a major city was to bomb the crap out of the city and then send in a brutal, trigger-happy army to go house to house, room to room, through the city until every Nazi was dead, in prison, or trying very hard to pretend they had never been a Nazi. Then have a very thoroughly skeptical police force watch over them for maybe a decade to make sure there's no backsliding.
If your plan is to insist, "NO! This is an intolerable infringement on the human rights of the citizens of Berlin; the RAF must stop immediately and the Russians must pull their army back to Poland!", then it's going to be hard to convince people you're not a Nazi or at least a Nazi sympathizer.
If you've got a better plan, then you really need to be explaining what that plan is and that plan needs to be something that *reliably* ends with a thoroughly de-Nazified Berlin. But nobody really has a plan like that.
s/Nazis/Hamas, and here we are. Israel is not going to settle for anything less than the destruction of Hamas, and the civilized world should not settle for anything less. Enough people understand that, to make things "difficult" for people who only want to talk about the poor suffering Palestinians and the evil Israelis.
There's a lot more scope for talking usefully about what might be done to help the Palestinian people *after* Hamas has been removed.
"But what are you going to *do* about it? The Nazis had to go" I'm pretty sure this was the exact same argument that justified Oct 7, except with Israelis. Hamas didn't even damage any hospitals, so what's happening now is worse in basically every respect. (Edit: Hamas also cited the accelerating invasion of the West Bank - is that something that could justify ceasing to care about Israeli human rights?) Why does it make sense for you here, but not there?
"But nobody really has a plan like that." The two state solution has previously been the subject of many reams of analysis, and is supported by almost everyone except the Israeli government. Is this something you would consider could improve human rights on the ground, and if not, why not?
On the topic of removing Hamas, my question is what happens next? Palestinians are in a major famine, have no energy, and have lost half their homes. If Israel finally kills every Hamas member, what then?
"'I'm pretty sure this was the exact same argument that justified Oct 7, except with Israelis."
When Hamas tries to make that claim, they're *lying*. Or, perhaps, sincerely expressing a purely religious belief; the Jews have got to go because Allah said so. But it's a false claim whether they believe it or not, and they should know better.
No. The existence of dastardly black-hearted evil villains who falsely claim that they have a good reason for killing a lot of people, doesn't mean that good people don't often have an actual good reason for killing a lot of people (like, for example, dastardly black-hearted evil lying villains).
What does "lying" mean in this context? As far as I can tell the argument you're making is: if group X represents a threat to us, we can kill as many of them as we like. Israel obviously represents a threat to Gaza, and violence against Palestinians was increasing throughout 2023. So I'm pretty sure your agreement would justify Oct 7.
No, it's not "represents a threat to us". And I never said anything that would cause any reasonable person to think I was setting the bar at "represents a threat to us". The bar for waging war is very much higher than just "represents a threat to us".
And Hamas cleared that bar, with plenty of air to spare.
I'm not asking you about the bar for a government waging war, I'm asking about the bar for you personally not caring about (or being willing to overlook) human rights.
Israel has supported many two state solutions, including the original 1948 partition plan. Of course, the arabs invaded Israel the next day to create their favored one state solution.
There was a lot of hope around the Oslo process in the 90s, but the events after that has convinced most Israelis that there simply isn't anyone with real power on the other side who wants a two state solution. The people with guns want a one state arab Palestine, from the river to the sea.
While I agree with your sentiment, I also think there was some utility left lying on the table by the Allies. Morale bombings do not work, see acoup. And it would have been nice to have someone other than Stalin (who obviously did not lose too much sleep about the rapes and assorted atrocities his soldiers committed) who was in a position to crush the Wehrmacht.
Most importantly, it worked militarily, the Nazis were defeated.
While the goal to stamp out Hamas is certainly worthy, my problem with Bibi is that I do not see how his approach of going in, killing Hamas (to the degree that they opt to show themselves and not hide among the civilians) a bit (sometimes with very unfavorable collateral damage rates) and then leaving again is not going to be enough to defeat extremism in Gaza. I think it would have to be followed up by some sort of occupation and providing a credible alternative.
I think Hamas has a theory of victory, however far fetched, and that the atrocities they committed were actually furthering that goal.
This sounds crazy, but hear me out. Hamas leadership know that they their organization will never defeat Israel militarily. Their best chance to achieving their dream of wiping Israel from the map is a broad alliance of Arab countries who defeat Israel together. The way they get there is public Muslim outrage at Israel. And the best way to generate such outrage is dead Palestinian kids. In my opinion, their attacks were militarily completely pointless, but served the important strategic goal of getting Israel to bomb Gaza down. This will likely throw a wrench into Israel's diplomatic efforts to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors.
Again: dead Palestinian civilians are not an acceptable side effect for Hamas, they are the *whole point* in a way they never were for the Nazis. If Israel is very accepting of collateral damage by modern western standards, Hamas leadership opens the Champagne (or whatever Muslim terrorists drink).
That's what I believe-- the purpose of the 10/7 attack was to cause an Israeli overreaction and damage international support for Israel to such an extent that Israel could be destroyed.
Hamas has several paths to victory. Through Israeli overreaction or through Israeli underreaction, through horrifically dead Palestinian babies or horrifically dead Israeli babies. As long as Hamas exists, there's no clever "just right" reaction that neutralizes Hamas without more horrifically dead babies.
Hamas's leaders said in an interview what they expected to happen. They would attack Israel. Israel would invade Gaza. They would hold out longer than expected and a combination of outrage and Israeli weakness would cause Hezbollah to enter the fight. This would further weaken Israel and draw in the surrounding Arab states. After which they could destroy the Jewish population and reclaim the land for the Arabs.
The plan failed for three reasons. Firstly, Israel was stronger than they anticipated. Secondly, Iran and their allies welched on their promises of support leaving Hamas isolated. Thirdly, pan-Islamic and pan-Arab sentiments failed to coalesce. The OIC could not agree because the Central Asians and Black Muslims both demanded the Arabs do more about human rights violations in their regions and the Arabs refused. The Arab League split into pro and anti-Iranian camps and couldn't come to a consensus.
"The OIC could not agree because the Central Asians and Black Muslims both demanded the Arabs do more about human rights violations in their regions and the Arabs refused."
Now, that's interesting. I haven't heard about any of it. Does this mean I should be reading more Al Jazeera?
Al Jazeera wasn't much better. This was one of the most undercovered stories of last year, in my opinion. There was almost a second oil embargo and... no one seemed to notice. But it was right there in the records of the Arab League and the OIC plus a few interviews of people who attended the meetings. A real open secrets kind of thing.
Though I suppose since it fell apart maybe ignoring it was retroactively justified?
It's not crazy. Hamas is on the record that their plan was: attack Israel and hold out long enough that other Arab states join the war then massacre the Jews after the Arab armies sweep to victory. (They were explicit about the massacring Jews part.) The reason it didn't work was that none of the other powers, even Hezbollah, jumped in.
However, it's worth noting that Dresden caused LESS casualties than Budapest where soldiers went house to house. This was the entire point of Dresden: the Allies felt flattening the city was not only faster but more humane. And, from a pure "how many people died" perspective, they were correct. More than 75,000 people died in Budapest against less than 25,000 in Dresden. (In both cases the cities were of similar size and the defenders refused to evacuate the population.)
Morale bombing does not work. Strategic bombing does work. And there's an effort by people who are morally outraged at war (but somehow always and only at one side) to expand the first thesis outward into the second. If your goal is to terrorize the population then that doesn't work. If your goal is to destroy enemy positions or industrial capacity then that clearly works, even if they're dug into civilian areas, as demonstrated by World War 2. The example of morale bombing not working in WW2 was not the Allies, who mostly targeted industrial capacity of various kinds, but Germany sending rockets at Britain in the hopes of bringing them to the table.
>Morale bombing does not work. Strategic bombing does work.
Many Thanks! Good point on the distinction between the two.
>However, it's worth noting that Dresden caused LESS casualties than Budapest where soldiers went house to house. This was the entire point of Dresden: the Allies felt flattening the city was not only faster but more humane. And, from a pure "how many people died" perspective, they were correct. More than 75,000 people died in Budapest against less than 25,000 in Dresden. (In both cases the cities were of similar size and the defenders refused to evacuate the population.)
Very much appreciated! I was aware of the bombing and firestorm at Dresden, but _not_ aware of the contrasting case in Budapest, let alone the ratio of death tolls.
World War II would have been better without Joe Stalin or Arthur Harris, yes. But cutting off lend-lease to the UK and USSR because we didn't like how they were handling things, would not have been an improvement. And that Gaza War would be better without Benjamin Netanyahu, but you go to war with the leaders you have. Because someone has to do it, and no one else will.
And I'm pretty sure Israel isn't going to be leaving when the high-intensity phase of this war is done. Their public statements make it clear that they understand the need for the "very thoroughly skeptical police force watching over them for maybe a decade to make sure there's no backsliding" part of the process. And that they would very much prefer that this police force *not* be Israeli, for many good and obvious reasons. But realistically, nobody else who could be trusted to do the job, will take up the job, so we're going to see the IDF in military control of Gaza for many years to come. Because, again, someone has to do it and no one else will.
So if anyone really wants to do something helpful w/re human rights in Palestine, work on how to make life in Gaza less than horrible, when Hamas is gone and the IDF is a constant presence. The West Bank is proof that the Israelis and Palestinians can muddle through in a barely-tolerable manner for a while, but that's not a long-term solution. I'm pretty sure it's possible to do better. It's also possible to do much worse. But that, rather than the present war, is where there is range to maneuver and real options to consider.
That's also the phase when it might be possible to do something about Benjamin Netanyahu. But it's going to have to be the Israelis doing that part, and they aren't going to do it in the middle of a war.
>But what are you going to *do* about it? The Nazis had to go, and the only way anyone had to remove deeply-entrenched Nazis from a major city was to bomb the crap out of the city and then send in a brutal, trigger-happy army to go house to house, room to room, through the city until every Nazi was dead, in prison, or trying very hard to pretend they had never been a Nazi.
Ooh! Please tell us more about why the mass rape of women and children were an necessary part of denazification process, and one which isn't even worth remarking on let alone condemning!
I'm curious if you have an idea for what Winston Churchill or Truman could have done to stop it? What level of that from US or British troops occurred is pretty much standard for any army, and my understanding is that it was prosecuted to some extent in their own armies. What do they do about Russia? You can say that Stalin was terrible and should have done more, and I would completely agree with you. Stalin is one of history's greatest monsters, similar to Mao and above even Hitler.
Gee, I don't know, maybe not letting the mongol hoardes of Russia run riot through the streets of Berlin?
It's not enough to say Stalin is bad. Chirchill and Truman were such braindead morons that it never occured to them that the best time to destroy Stalin and the USSR was when they were at their absolute weakest following one some of the worst battles in history. But instead, they thought 50 years of global cold war and nuclear brinkmanship was preferrable to taking decisive action and and preventing their civilizational enemy from ruling over a huge chunk of a western european country.
The USSR literally got to Berlin first, with the rest of the Allies rushing to try to get as much of Germany as possible. There was no way for Britain or the US to get to Berlin before the Soviets.
As for the rest, it was a thought at the end of the war to go after the USSR. Patton specifically wanted to do it. I for one don't blame them for avoiding immediately going into another war after the biggest war in human history. Were there tradeoffs, including some things I would have wished to avoid? Sure, but killing millions of more people in an already wrecked world is not such an obvious good choice that we can call people morons for avoiding it.
You don't seem to mind callousness, so let me be frank with you. A few thousands rapes and murders is far less evil than a few million killed (which also inevitably comes with a bunch of rape and murder in different locations).
Let's back up a minute. Why is it important to talk about human rights in Palestine? Why was it ever important to talk about human rights in Germany during the second world war? Are human rights even a useful category?
As an intuition pump, ask yourself if the Holocaust ended because someone talked to the Germans about human rights.
What we have is a conflict between two historical victim groups, neither of which can prevail or be pacified without genocide.
one of them most certainly can be pacified without genocide (it's the one currently being slaughtered)
Palestine upheld its end of the Oslo process and its negotiators have frequently offered concessions in exchange for peace, Israel instead shot its prime minister and its politicians learned their lesson about confronting settler fanatics in any way.
The one who assassinated Israel's was more outraged at his leader's brief attempt to give bread crumps to Palestinians than the peace with Egypt, he didn't assassinate Begin, he assassinated Rabin.
I don't know how I'm supposed to oppose ethnonationalism from other ethnic groups if I'm willing to tolerate one of the bloodiest examples in the world today from my own kin
White republican voters are my co-ethnics, but they're not my in-group.
I'm certainly not in favor of the bloodshed, either. I don't see evidence that one side is markedly more reasonable than the other -- one commits more atrocities because it has more power.
The reaction to Oct 7 from the Palestinian supporters was in bad taste. Student newspapers writing "this is 100% the fault of the colonializer Israel" and people demonstrating with the Palestinian flag and chanting the Hamas slogan "from the river to the sea" before the victims of Hamas were even cold was stomach-turning.
I see the adults in Gaza through the same lens as I see the adult population in Germany 1944. Both allowed a genocidal regime to rule them and behave internationally in a way that eventually convinced other powers that they needed a regime change. In both cases, this is partly due to popularity of the genocidal ideology (both the NSDAP and Hamas got votes before they decided that democracy was overrated), propaganda, hardships suffered at the hands of the "enemy" and a lack of coordination and/or willingness to risk their lives by the opposition. Being invaded is a logical outcome of supporting the regime. Hamas has to be removed from power in Gaza, and their members should be hunted down from hiding just like with other genocidal organisations, be they SS, Daesh or whatever.
That being said, I do not think that Netanyahu's military and political strategy is sound. I think that rather than declaring large parts of Gaza a battlezone and telling the civilian population to leave, he should occupy at least parts of Gaza and provide refugee camps under martial law. If the IDF troops can not do this alone, he should try to convince Biden to help out. Gaza is not exactly Afghanistan in size or population. Of course a part of the Gazan population would prefer to serve as Hamas human shields to surrendering to the IDF, but I would be outraged a lot less about collateral damage among them.
In the long term, the current IDF strategy will not defeat Hamas. It is not enough to inflict damage on the current set of fighters who are willing to fight you instead of biding their time. A lot of Gazans are currently kids, but will be adults in a decade. Unless you manage to discredit Hamas in their hearts and minds, you will end up fighting the same war in a decade.
If the IDF kills a Hamas commander in the middle of a refugee camp and blows up dozens of civilians in the process, that is not a trade which will weaken Hamas in the long term.
Unfortunately, this opinion is a bit too long to put on a sign (Fuck Hamas, fuck Bibi would come close), so I am not very comfortable with either camp right now.
Hamas has acted with significantly more regard for civilian life than Bibi.
One side started with a fifteen year blockade and escalated to genocide, the other launched ineffectual rocket fire and one ground attack (which wound up as an atrocity, yes, but Israel has committed far greater ones), and was caught flat-footed when Israel decided it preferred a casus belli for ethnic cleansing to a prisoner exchange.
> started with a fifteen year blockade and escalated to genocide, the other launched ineffectual rocket fire
Or it might have been the other way around, that the Israeli blockade might have been at least partly motivated by their legitimate interests not to be subject to rockets, ineffectual as they may be.
> was caught flat-footed when Israel decided it preferred a casus belli for ethnic cleansing to a prisoner exchange.
If the Gazans had simply taken taken a few hundred hostages with minimal loss of life, a prisoner exchange would have been possible.
Instead, they went from house to house, gunning down civilians.
It is my belief that Hamas was actively optimizing for a violent response from Israel. And credit where credit is due, they succeeded. Before Oct 7, I would have seen a forced regime change in Gaza as not worth it. Now, I am kind of sympathetic to the goal of wiping out Hamas. I obviously disagree with Bibi about the way to accomplish that though.
The difference is that the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on at various levels of intensity for half a century or so.
I think a better example than Japan might be Germany. After four years in the trenches, the allies did not really have the will to occupy Germany, so they imposed reparations and called it a day. This meant that the German elites stayed in power: the courts which were blind on their right eye, the proto-fascist organizations which resorted to murder and were helped by fucking chiefs of police, the whole nationalistic Dreck of the Kaiserreich. And soon they were telling lies about how the German army was never defeated in the field but stabbed in the back by these evil democrats and all that.
Some twenty-seven years later, the allies were again defeating the Germans after another long and bloody world war. And rather than just imposing reparations and leaving us Krauts to our own devices until their sons would have to fight them again, the Allies tried something different. So Germany was split into different occupation zones. West Germany was lucky that the Cold War came along and we were useful as a bulwark against the commies. The US did not even do that thorough a job of killing all the Nazis, but most of the small-time Nazis were opportunistic enough to see which way the wind was blowing and become conservatives with a Problematic past rather than fringe NPD members. Almost eight decades later, militant German nationalism has yet to threaten Europe again.
With regard to the Middle East, trying to contain Gaza through blockades and periodically "mowing the grass" i.e. using bombs and the odd ground strike whenever they start to launch too many rockets is an approach that history has discredited.
Stamping out Hamas is not sufficient to win. You win by setting up a different system so that Gazans looking back to Hamas reign will say "well that was really a shitty time to live in compared to now". Gaza has forfeited their right to self-govern for a generation, which is an opportunity. And Hamas has made sure that "better than Hamas rule" is a fucking low bar to clear.
If Israel just plays whack a mole with Hamas and leaves Gaza as is was before, just with fewer Hamas members, plenty of dead civilians and living in tents instead of buildings, why would the next generation grow up to be less genocidal?
So I would advocate stamping out Hamas but also providing a credible alternative, which will require some sort of occupation and caring for the civilian population. The UNRWA might be part of the problem, but the root cause is that Gazans feel they have little to lose. As long as that is the case, they will always be easy prey to Hamas and their ilk.
> How to talk about Arab human rights and human dignity in Israel/Palestine without being accused of being an antisemite?
You can't. There is a billion-dollar strong lobby for Israel in the United States, where I assume you are living, not to mention the money and the personnel based in Israel itself. If you *aren't* being accused of antisemitism because you oppose Israel and the Israeli government, online or otherwise, those highly-educated and highly-paid fine people simply aren't doing their goddamn jobs and need a good HR meeting to set them right.
Stop caring about what you might be accused of. This is fine advice anywhere on the modern internet and in meat space, and any time after the evolution of the first anatomically modern human. Stop caring about whether people say you're a racist, whether you're a sexist, whether you're an antisemite. Simply don't give a shit.
Oh, **definitely** do hide whatever verboten words that might get you fired or in actual physical trouble, I also hide my atheism from my close family, because it almost certainly will get me into trouble. I just don't fret about whether someone will accuse me of being an atheist.
Decouple societal expectations from morality, the moral law is only within you, nowhere else. The entire world can say you're a racist and if you don't look down upon other races, then you're simply not a racist. (But practically speaking, if a significant proportion of those around you say you're a racist, normally you do want to look into the causes of that and self-reflect on it , except in exceptional times, like wars where accusations of racism are politicized and used as cheap propaganda.)
> Why do people accuse me of being an antisemite if I talk about Arab human rights and human dignity in Israel/Palestine
I accidentally answered part of this already: Namely, because there are billions of dollars, thousands of people, and a whole propaganda machine whose entire reason for existence is accusing anyone who dares speak about Arab human rights of antisemitism. In a certain sense, this machine has already failed: Because we noticed. Propaganda, like Religion, is in its highest position of victory and domination when people don't even notice it's there, when it controls them invisibly. But in another sense, this machine is *extremely* alive and well, just like Religion is very much alive and well today despite however many atheists online.
Other answers for this question include:
(1) Because the accusing are themselves racist, and they perceive caring about Arab well-being as unfair discrimination (e.g. how **can** you care about a lower race when a higher race is feeling unwell?). One particular example of this is the kind of people who cite Jewish and/or Israeli achievement in Science, Business, and Technology in an implied argument that those things make a human more worthy of moral consideration, and - by straightforward contraposition - that their lack makes a human less worthy of moral consideration.
(2) Sadly, because a massive portion of popular Pro-Palestinian sentiment *is* antisemitic. The general popular mood in most Arab societies (and by extension the Arab and Arab-descended presence on social media, which is the bulwark of Pro-Palestinian sentiment) is antisemitic, and makes a willful, insistent, and nonchalant equivocation between Jewish and Israeli. There is no conception of the "Banality of Evil", that a nation state can be indescribably evil without its population being monsters, just by being good tax-paying citizens. There is often a feeling that Pro-Palestinian advocates are "surrounded", and that criticizing antisemitism in our midst is "treason".
(3) Because Judaism is a delusional religion just like any other, in fact it's Episode I in a delusional best-selling trilogy (trilogy? Baha'is and Mormons would hate that description). Just like "Islamophobia", sometimes people are too quick to apply the label to what is good old shitting-on-religion, the tradition of Hume and Voltaire. And sometimes, those shitting on Judaism-the-religion *are* using this as cover to be antisemitic in its familiar bad meaning. It complicates matter further that Judaism is a double-entendre simultaneously meaning a religion, a culture, and an ethnic ancestry. This is also true to a much lesser extent in Christianity and Islam as well, but it's far more pronounced in Judaism than any other religion I know of.
A final word: Antisemitism isn't rocket science. You know it when you see it. You don't need the IHRA telling you what is and isn't prejudice against fellow human beings, you know full well what it is to hate, and what it is to love. The Veil of Ignorance is all you need: Ask yourself, "Were I to be reborn Jewish, possibly born in Israel and possibly not, but still hold all my other beliefs, would I like this statement? Would I like the sentiment it espouses about my native land and people?", ask this ****honestly****, and if the answer comes back positive, shoot. If it doesn't, then search for a better way to phrase what you feel, or maybe reflect on what you feel, maybe what you're feeling **is** antisemitism.
>Decouple societal expectations from morality, the moral law is only within you, nowhere else. The entire world can say you're a racist and if you don't look down upon other races, then you're simply not a racist. (But practically speaking, if a significant proportion of those around you say you're a racist, normally you do want to look into the causes of that and self-reflect on it , except in exceptional times, like wars where accusations of racism are politicized and used as cheap propaganda.)
"Racism" is literally a propaganda term, used in a way that os almost perfectly analgous to 'anti-semite'. It's used as a political bludgeon against political opponents, and yet here you are mindlessly using it while screeching about 'propaganda'.
>The Veil of Ignorance is all you need:
The veil of ignorance is an incoherent concept. *I* cannot be *someone else*, because then I wouldn't be me. People vary within and between populations, and if everyone in Israel of gaza had the mental constitution of people like myself, the situation would be radically different. "We're all the same, just in different circumstances" is anti-scientific egalitarian nonsense.
I won't dignify your incoherent temper tantrum with a proper response. Learn to write respectfully so that adults feel compelled to engage with you, or go on TikTok.
"(1) Because the accusing are themselves racist, and they perceive caring about Arab well-being as unfair discrimination (e.g. how *can* you care about a lower race when a higher race is feeling unwell?). One particular example of this is the kind of people who cite Jewish and/or Israeli achievement in Science, Business, and Technology in an implied argument that those things make a human more worthy of moral consideration, and - by straightforward contraposition - that their lack makes a human less worthy of moral consideration."
I can't speak with certainty about what other people are thinking, but I've assumed those sort of statements are more a combination of "you'd miss us if we were gone" and a refutation of claims that Jews are simply a detriment.
> Decouple societal expectations from morality, the moral law is only within you, nowhere else. The entire world can say you're a racist and if you don't look down upon other races, then you're simply not a racist.
Wow, you truly aren't an American leftist.
A point of interest is that this argument doesn't apply to rape, and there may be a few other similar gaps.
> There is no conception of the "Banality of Evil"
Out of curiosity, have you read "Eichmann in Jerusalem"? Because if you haven't, you ought to. One of the author's subtexts is a criticism of the state of Israel and its leaders and its self-image, as of 1961-4. There's been plenty written against that aspect of the book by other Jews afterward, which is also worth a look, but I really do think you would find the book interesting.
> The Veil of Ignorance is all you need
One of my problems with this whole issue is that if I try to imagine myself as a Gazan Palestinian, I expect I'd have joined up with Hamas already (if I hadn't already been working in rocket production for years), and if I try to imagine myself as an Israeli Jew, I expect that I'd be fully on board with everything the IDF is doing. My empathy is ripping me in two about this, and so I try to stay off the subject. :-(
I mean, this is what war is, right? If you'd been an upright honest farmer in Virginia in 1861, you'd probably have been all-in on General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. And if you'd been an upright honest farmer in Pennsylvania in 1861, you'd probably have been all-in on the other side. Even if you oppose a lot of what your country is doing, during a war for survival isn't when you are likely to spend a lot of time protesting and fighting internally. (See various Japanese-Americans who served in WW2 while their parents were in camps for an example of how this can work.)
I don't think I used to be like this. I think my PTSD is making it hard to sustain a moderate amount of non-empathy. It feels like either all or nothing.
This is a fascinating comment. A couple of observations.
Regarding lobbyists and propaganda: making this point is a pretty clear violation of the Principle of Charity. Nevertheless, I find myself agreeing with you, to the point that I wonder to what extent that principle is actually useful. Or perhaps the goal is to apply the principle with discretion - you have also noted that "a nation state can be indescribably evil without its population being monsters". Is it worth, once and for all, to do away with that principle when talking about political interests - the corporate elites, the military-industrial complex, etc. - and call it as it is, while continuing to assume good faith from average citizens? Or would that simply muddy the waters of public debate even further?
> making this point is a pretty clear violation of the Principle of Charity.
I don't think so. Not obviously at any rate.
I think of the Principle of Charity - stated concisely - is "Assume your interlocuter is not wasting your time". That includes assuming they're not stupid, illiterate, evil, trolling, etc... But people who confuse Israel with Jews in the manner I'm talking about so that Israel become untouchable are indistinguishable from someone wasting your time, the organizations even more so.
I'm not talking about "How can you call for dismantling Israel? There are 7 million Jews there", that's a very reasonable position, and its correct answer is explaining that the "dismantling" you're calling for (a word I don't use and very much dislike when other Pro-Palestinian commenters use) doesn't involve innocent Jews dying or being hurt, just the war criminals in charge that the ICC and the ICJ will soon enough have a field day with. Just those particular Jews, nobody else, Jew or not.
I'm not talking about reasonable concerns, "But modern nation states are the only sovereign in today's world friend" type of concerns. I'm talking about "OH MUH HASHEM MOODY DOWNGRADED OUR CREDIT RATING THEY MUST BE ANTISEMITES WHO WANT KHAMAS TO WIN". And before you say the uppercase quote is satire and a strawman, that's a very faithful paraphrase of what the Israeli Finance Minister said to media when Moody's downgraded Israel's credit rating (making it harder to borrow) for the first time in last February. (-ish? I don't remember. And they have downgraded Israel again in early April.)
So, I don't feel like I'm violating the feelings of anybody important or losing out on any important conversations when I accuse the likes of Smotrich, Ben Gvir, the AIPAC trash, and their ilk of being functionally indistinguishable from people who are irreparably stupid, evil, illiterate, etc... is it uncharitable to dismiss a Nazi's accusation of being racist against Germanic Aryans? (of course, being non-racist towards Germanic Aryans is still important, just don't take a Nazi an authority on what that entails. Find a normal Germanic Aryan and ask or observe what constitutes anti-Germanic racism.)
> to do away with that principle [of charity] when talking about political interests [...] while continuing to assume good faith from average citizens
Yes, or this is what I recommend doing anyway. I interpret everything coming out of the mouth of a mouthpiece for a nation state or a corporation in the worst light possible, and the first thing that comes to my mind after every press release is how silly they must look in front of themselves when they look in the mirror and how they lie in so many words while keeping their dumb insincere face locked in a solemn expression like an idle powered-down machine.
Nation States and Corporations are not humans, they are superorganisms composed of humans. They are as human as an ant colony is an ant, or a bee hive is a bee, or a human is a neuron, or a computer is a transistor. Israel is not Jews and the Arab ruling scum is not Arabs and Hamas is not Gazans. Make this category error at your own peril.
> It complicates matter further that Judaism is a double-entendre simultaneously meaning a religion, a culture, and an ethnic ancestry. This is also true to a much lesser extent in Christianity and Islam as well, but it's far more pronounced in Judaism than any other religion I know of.
I think it used to be the default until Christianity took over. The capital city was established by the ethno-national deity, who give legitimacy and victory to the king in exchange for sacrifices. Judaism is only exceptional in that it survived its Emperial/Universalists sequels.
Was Judaism more of a prostheletizing religion before it ended up being outcompeted by Christianity and then Islam? For a lot of centuries, Jews in most places were not going to be allowed to protheletize, but might hope to be allowed to live in peace and raise their own kids in their faith.
I'm curious how other religions work wrt prostelitization vs being born into the religion. Zoroastrians and Sikhs both seem like they might be as much ethnic as religious groups to my mind, but I have to admit, I don't know enough to be very sure of that.
Judaism was actively proselytic until the destruction of the Second Temple, IIRC. Part of the aftermath was the Roman authorities forbid the Jewish religious authorities from seeking converts and they never started again.
While I'm light years away from being someone who can speak on Judaism or Christianity with confidence, my understanding is that the answer to
> Was Judaism more of a proselytizing religion before it ended up being outcompeted
is "Yes, it succeeded and came to be called Christianity". Christianity started as a Jewish sect, the Last Supper is a Passover meal. I'm still researching this from time to time on my own pace so I don't have the full picture yet, but my fragmentary understanding is that the universality of Christianity is an innovation, and it's an innovation that wasn't obvious from the words and deeds of Jesus himself. There was an inter-Jewish debate among the Jewish follower of the Jewish Jesus, and the side in favor of spreading the word to all the Goyim then went its own way and proselytized, and the rest is history. Post-Christian Judaism is by definition those who didn't think Jesus was sent for the Goys, in addition to those who thought that Jesus was a blasphemer and wasn't sent by Hashem at all.
As for Islam, it started as a **wannabe** sect of Judaism. Muhammed wanted the Jews (and the Christians, for that matter) to recognize that the same God they worship is the God that allegedly talked to him one night. So that he could achieve... some sort of Pan-Arabism? Jews, who still didn't recognize Jesus as the Messiah by and large, of course rejected Muhammed. And you will find the hurt feelings in many places in the Quran today.
That, but also there was a wave of converts to Judaism before Christianity. I think something about meeting the greko-roman cultures and philosophy and having a temple without independence took Judaism some of the way from ethno-national religion to what we think of today as a religion. If you go back to the Hebrew bible, you don't find much proselytizing energy.
People are being Bayesian, if an observer looks around the world at Sudan, Burma, Congo and decides they only want to focus their effott on one country, it is fairly easy to attack their motives given what the vast majority of people with that focus are like and what a large percentage of people with a similar focus in the past were like.
The US and EU don't arm the people committing atrocities in those countries, but slaps sanctions on them
(or if they do, it's through multiple levels of plausible deniability that has successfully pulled the wool over people's eyes, while congress openly praises the IDF and refuses to enforce the Leahy Law against them)
Well, the Houthis, in addition to "Death to Israel" and "A Curse upon the Jews", also have "Death to America" amongst their mottos. As an American, I have some fondness for correcting this to no, no, its "Death _from_ America"...
The difference is that there are very few *defenders* of Sudan, Burma, Congo, etc. There's no point in debating something where there's no disagreement.
Also, Israel aspires to a higher status then "yet another third world shithole", so the Appeal To Worse Shitholes argument rings hollow.
I think you've flipped it - the reason there's no disagreement is because the people who'd normally protest are getting what they want on Sudan, Burma, DRC.
Take Venezuela. Code Pink watched as Maduro used violence and repression against his own people. When did they decide to protest? When the U.S. recognized Juan Guaido. That's when Code Pink took over the Venezuelan embassy to prevent Guaido's people from entering.
They don't want America doing anything abroad - don't back foreign governments, don't back foreign people, don't give foreigners money, don't take foreigners' money - just do nothing.
So there's no disagreement because the people who would protest already have the policy they want for those countries. They believe that the best way the U.S. can help the world is by ceasing to exist at all - and if it must continue to exist, it should do as little as possible.
I want the US to help the common people against the Juan Guaidos of the world, and I say this as someone who isn't particularly sympathetic to Chavismo; his policy ideas seem to amount to selling the country off to foreign oligarchs based in the US and EU, and his respect for democracy seems only as great as his ability to take power through it.
I can't get that, because said oligarchs have an iron grip on US politics, so non-interventionism is the next best thing
Let's assume you're right about what Guaido would do. How could that be worse than what Venezuela has right now? When you reach the bottom of the barrel like that, anyone else taking over seems like an improvement.
If you polled the people who are critical of Israel here, do you honestly think you'd find even one person who supports bloodshed in Sudan/Burma/DRC? Stop bashing the hypothetical strawmen inside your head and respond to the real people you're talking to.
I don't think anyone supports bloodshed in those places. I think they support the current U.S. policy towards those places.
My question is what policy the, say, Code Pink people, would like for the U.S. to take towards the DRC/Burma/Sudan, etc. Not what they'd like the Sudanese people to do.
Since we're having the discussion, could you tell me what you'd like the U.S. to do (or not do) in Sudan? I'm choosing that place to focus the discussion - if you'd prefer to discuss a separate place of the three, I'm all ears.
Just to kick off the discussion, previous conflicts have involved direct military intervention (a la US in Vietnam); indirect military intervention (a la US weapons to Ukraine); participating in international military intervention (First Gulf War); participating in international peacekeeping missions (Haiti); country-wide sanctions (Cuba); targeted sanctions (Iran); or doing nothing (Sudan).
That's not an exhaustive list, but it's what comes to my mind. What would your preference be for U.S. policy towards Sudan?
I don't think people want war in the Sudan, grave abuses in the DRC, etc., but they don't see a need to try to do anything about them.
They do think they can do something to pressure Israel-- I expect that even if US aid to Israel were cut off, it would have very little effect on the attack on Gaza, especially in the short run.
At this point, my suggestions are to pressure Egypt to let aid in and support any reasonable opposition to Netanyahu.
I don't think these other places are the US' business, but I hope Israel crushes Hamas and that the recognized Sudanese government (despite itself being pretty far down the list of best governments) defeats the Rapid Support Forces.
> if an observer looks around the world at Sudan, Burma, Congo and decides they only want to focus their effort on one country
For me, it never felt like a decision I made. People around me discussed Israel/Palestine, so I learned a few facts. Then I noticed some contradictions, so I read Wikipedia. I ended up spending more time on this than I originally wanted, but at least now I have some information about Israel/Palestine. Also, just knowing about WW2 already gave me some backstory on one side of the conflict.
With Sudan, Burma, Congo, I would have to start almost from zero. I am too lazy to do it on my own, and people around me do not discuss this often enough so that I could get some information by merely being exposed to it.
Similarly, in the Russia/Ukraine conflict I happen to have a strong opinion, because I already had a lot of information on both of them. In situations like Russia/Chechnya or Azerbaijan/Armenia, I knew very little about one side of the conflict, so I was much slower to make an opinion.
It is not really Bayesian to ignore the base rates. I would assume that most people in the West have more information about Israel/Palestine than they have about Sudan, whether they are anti-semites or not.
Ross Douthat did a thoughtful piece on the reasons why the debate at elite colleges is framed the way it is. It helped me to understand things a bit better.
This is one of my not paywalled ‘gift’ links that I get with my NYT subscription. Not sure if works if 50 people click on it
That is fascinating and appalling, on at least two counts:
> And there are no readings that focus on the technological or spiritual aspects of the present
One of the two most critical things I would want future Western leaders to learn is:
"You have inherited a working industrial civilization. It is fragile. Don't break it."
>In the Columbia curriculum’s 20th-century readings, the age of totalitarianism simply evanesces, leaving decolonization as the only major political drama of the recent past. There is no Orwell, no Solzhenitsyn; Hannah Arendt’s essays on the Vietnam War and student protests in America are assigned but not “The Origins of Totalitarianism” or “Eichmann in Jerusalem.”
The second most critical thing is:
"You have inherited a civilization with Enlightenment values. This is fragile and historically rare. Don't break it."
Or, to put it another way: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century are a _particularly_ bloody and destructive episode that it is crucially important to avoid repeating.
I don't think it's especially difficult - many people, including many Israelis, do it quite a lot. The problem is that the average person talking about Palestinians actually is mostly doing it as an excuse to be antisemitic/anti-israeli.
(A good heuristic to check the difference - does this person talk about rights abuses in other similar situations, or by the Palestinian governments themselves, or by neighboring Arab countries? If so I hear them out. If they just go on rants against Israel or use hyperbolic inaccurate terms like "colonialism" and "open air prison", I write them off as crazy.)
It's also worth noting that Palestinians receive way more aid per Capita than anyone else (Gaza is still significantly richer than India, at least pre-war, and WB is richer than that). So most people coming out of human genuine rights concerns (unless they're locals) just end up having a dozen higher priorities and don't talk much about it.
Looks like this is a GDP/PPP thing (India does better on PPP than GDP), but even by PPP palestinians do better than, say, Nepal.
On the other point - it's not wrong, but even accounting for that there's still many countries that have it worse than palestinians by those metrics too. The visa point specifically is a bit of a mess - palestinians can go to countries that will give them a visa, it's just that almost no country is willing to do it (including the ones that spend a lot of time talking about palestinian rights, which is one reason to be cynical about people talking about them).
I was horrified at civilians who can't even get concrete for bomb shelters and rebuilding, and then I found out that Hamas was taking the concrete to build tunnels.
It's certainly true that the situation in Gaza is worse than in Israel, for me personally (and for many other people I know) this becomes problematic in two cases
1) When people who haven't reacted, protested or called for a boycott when atrocities were committed elsewhere (Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar) become very interested in this particular conflict
2) When the solutions they propose involve (explicitly or implicitly) dismantling the state of Israel, which would likely cause a significant drop in the welfare of Israelis, to put it mildly
I think the difference between Israel-Palestine and other conflicts is that in the former the side protesters consider to be the "bad guys" is actually receiving military aid. In contrast, nobody supports the Myanmar junta, so who to protest against?
This is similar to 20WS's argument below, to which I gave examples of close US allies occupying other countries, oppressing minorities and murdering civilians.
Also, do you really think that if the aid stopped the protesters would pack their stuff and forget about Palestine?
3) When people criticize Israeli conduct of the war in terms which amount to a fully general argument against war-- but it's coming from someone who hasn't otherwise come out for pacifism. The upshot being that war-making is something everyone but Israel is allowed to do.
The inference from this to antisemitism should still be made with caution though. People fall into double standards for all sorts of reasons.
Are you careful to restrict your scorn to only people who are really pushing a "fully general argument against war"? Because that doesn't describe any of the anti-Israel writing I've seen.
While the example you provide is pretty far beneath comment, someone might try to establish by reasoned argument that the casualties are higher than the military goal justifies, and clear themselves of the charge of crypto-pacifism that way even if they don't succeed.
So, I see why you would think that if someone is complaining about Israel, but don't complain about human rights in other countries, they have a bias which calls for explanation. Makes sense. But that bias could be in one of two places: the caring about that country's treatment of human rights, or the likelihood of complaining about it. For me, it's largely been the latter, and I think it may have little to do with antisemitism in many cases.
For example, I personally don't see that much value in complaining about the Uyghur genocide, since I can't imagine that anybody I know supports the Chinese government's actions in Xinjiang, and my government has certainly made it clear that they don't. On the other hand, my government provides weapons as aid to Israel, which I'm sure have been used to commit war crimes. It feels much more important to talk about it for that reason - my views on human rights are reflected less well by my political system when it comes to Israel, than when it comes to other governments.
Well, your government also has such allies as Turkey (which has been occupying North Cyprus for 50 years and bombed Kurdish cities into ruins https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36354742) and Saudi Arabia (which conquered Hejaz in the 1930s, attacked Yemen in the 2010s and has been oppressing its Shia minority non-stop). I'm pretty sure that the US could have done more to prevent the atrocities, given its influence.
Why are there no calls to boycott and dismantle these countries? Bernie Sanders and some other activists did call for stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which I respect, but there were never protests of such intensity that we see now and no calls for a general boycott.
I think the answer to that may be a milder version of what I outlined above - sure, doesn't everyone know Turkey and Saudia Arabia have pretty terrible governments? It seems almost not worth making the case for it, since I don't know that anyone in my area would disagree. The fact that Western governments don't address our concerns about them is certainly problematic, but it feels like a lot of people aren't even at the stage of talking about Palestine. The sense of allyship also doesn't feel anywhere near as deep as with Israel, so I suppose people might feel more removed from the situation.
Of course, some people are probably just antisemites. I saw the "Genocide Joe" chant at that Trump rally recently, I have a feeling that crowd are not particularly concerned with the UN's views on human rights.
I understand the reasoning, but then I think that it's fair to call these people (who are fine with their government having allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia and actively trading with them but applying completely different standards to Israel) antisemites, based on their actions (we can't know what goes on in their heads).
I realise you're mostly asking rhetorical questions, but the literal answer is no-one knows about any of that. The press/media have decided to concentrate on Israel and its problems. It's probably pretty obvious why the media is concentrating on that, though it seems to be backfiring on them in this case since people are siding with the "other side."
But that's the simple answer. People only care about things they have at least a little passing knowledge of.
Even I, who is probably 100x-1000x more informed than my family/friends, don't know anything about Turkey, and know little about Saudi Arabia. So I personally wouldn't have complained about any of those other things you mentioned.
I'm sure if the mass media spent 6 months obsessing over those things, then everyone I know (and you know) would start having strong opinions on those, too.
IMO 1) is a more effective argument if reversed. i.e. I find the hypothesis "when white Americans are pro-Israel but don't react to atrocities in Ethiopia, it's because they only care when people who are ethnically closer to themselves suffer" simpler than the hypothesis "when white Americans are anti-Israel but don't react to atrocities in Ethiopia, it's because they care about Palestinians suffering but not Israelis or Ethiopians suffering"
I think the real reason people engage more with the Israel situation than with 3rd world atrocities is that it's reported more heavily, which is probably a result of America's stronger cultural ties to Israel.
Analogously I would expect that Americans would react more negatively to the German head of state being convicted of murder than to the Ethiopian head of state being convicted of murder - but that's not because Americans are prejudiced against Germans.
The version of the argument that ring true to be is not "They care about Palestinians more than about Ethiopians", but "they care about Palestinians and Ethiopians only when it help them with a broader narrative" - whether the broader narrative is post-colonial, antisemitic, or some strange hybrid
The follow up question to that is: does that argument ring more true than the argument that pro-Israel people care about Israelis only to build a broader narrative?
It's common for humans to react with empathy when they read about or see news footage of people being killed/taken hostage/bombed, and I think that's what drives most of the emotion in this debate. And in fact I think that this is true of many the most hardline partisans - they care a lot that civilians on the side they support are getting killed, even as it gives them material for their respective narratives.
It's not a reversal, these are two independent arguments and they can be both true.
I agree that the media's focus is *one* of the reasons "people engage more with the Israel situation than with 3rd world atrocities." However I still think it's valid to call these people who care about human rights abuses only (or disproportionately) when they happen in Palestine "anti-Israel." Consider a hypothetical example. If the media were publishing racist anti-Black content and this content would cause some people to behave in racist ways we would justly call these people racists.
Also, you didn't engage with the second part of my response. If the chants were "two-state solution" rather than "from the river to the sea" I'd probably have joined them myself if I had lived in the US.
With Germany, I think there was a rapid transition between "enemy of WWII" and "advance base in the Cold War". Rebuilding Germany became a test case for the advantages of capitalism.
> I keep thinking that Germany wasn't destroyed after Nazism. I don't know whether there was a significant number of people calling for it to happen.
Well, there was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan which called for Germany to be split and deindustrialized. Of course, then the Cold War happened, so West Germany got the Marshall plan instead, lucky us. Not that I would really have minded if the Allies had hanged a few thousand more Nazis, though.
> And not just ending Israel, but stating that it shouldn't have been founded.
The second one doesn't strike me as such an extreme and beyond the pale thing, not more than the first one, at any rate.
The US shouldn't have been founded, its founding was literal colonialism. Australia shouldn't have been founded. Canada shouldn't have been founded. Maintaining that any subset of countries shouldn't have been founded is a perfectly fine thing, it's what anyone sane looking at the borders of the Middle East or Africa should first say.
In contrast, calling for the dismantling of **current** states should pass significantly higher standards of consistency. Calling for dismantling all current states is Anarchism, and its proponents are the first to admit that it's not easy and not going to happen in one piece. Calling for dismantling a proper subset of all states is not automatically hypocrisy, but most calls directed at Israel are hypocritical.
Those examples are literal settler colonialism. And yet I would assert that the world today is much better off for those countries having been founded. Those are countries people around the world want to live in.
Arab Israelis do have equal rights. The Palestinian Territories don't because that's not part of Israel (and the political parties governing them definitely don't want to be part of Israel).
Native Americans did not initially have the rights of US citizens, because they weren't citizens. They had no political affiliation with the new American government, and did not pay it taxes (hence the phrase "Indians not taxed" in the Constitution). It was only after the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 that they all became citizens, and that was after the close of the frontier.
>> And not just ending Israel, but stating that it shouldn't have been founded.
> The second one doesn't strike me as such an extreme and beyond the pale thing, not more than the first one, at any rate.
I find myself agreeing with you. In retrospect, while Jerusalem may have been an obvious Schelling point for Zionism, I think starting a Jewish state on US soil would have been a better idea. Israel is 0.25% of the US in land size, I am sure that buying up enough land and lobbying to become their own US state (just like Utah is the Mormon state, in a way) would have avoided a lot of bloodshed in that godforsaken land in the middle east. With the possible exception of Arab Israelis, I think that every party would have been better off thus. (Yes, this would turn badly if the US ever turned full Hitler. On the other hand, Israel would be in peril if the US just decided to withhold military aid for a few decades. What is more likely?)
Likewise, the Ulster plantation laid the seed for a lot of bloodshed in Ireland, so from a strictly humanitarian perspective, we might prefer a world where it had not happened.
Likewise, I would prefer people not to have severe disabilities, and advocate for prenatal diagnostics and selective abortion.
None of these preferences mean that I want to change the status quo, though. Israel exists, Protestants in Northern Ireland exist, people with disabilities are born. Trying to kick the Jews out of Israel or the Protestants out of NI would be evil, just as going around murdering disabled people after their birth would be evil.
I'm sorry but it sounds like inventing justifications to arrive to the predetermined conclusion.
What about Turkey? It's a mid-income country with sizable economy that has been occupying northern Cyprus for 50 years, northern Syria for several years and has been oppressing its Kurdish minority (google the photos of Cizre after the Turkish army fought insurgents there).
I think nuance is difficult in an emotionally charged conversation, because people automatically pattern-match any minor disagreement into a complete identification with the opposite side. That's not what it feels like from the inside, but I think that's a decent description of the result.
That's a good observation and I'm sure that's a big part of it. Particularly when people's safety and security is at risk, and the issue doesn't seem directly relevant.
Neither of those are eliminationist positions, as Hamas itself (unlike Likud) itself does not advocate eliminationism. And while "from the river to the sea" is common enough, the Hamas flag is so rare I had to look it up (it's apparently a white shahada on green); the flag you usually see, the black-white-green with the red triangle, is the Flag of Palestine.
>Neither of those are eliminationist positions, as Hamas itself (unlike Likud) itself does not advocate eliminationism.
What are you TALKING about
Hamas would kill every last Israeli they could get their hands on if given the chance
Absolutely bizarre that you accuse people of 'propaganda' before saying that 'Hamas isn't eliminationalist'
And groups like the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee literally condoned (or even celebrated) the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas, so on what planet do these palestine protesters not support Hamas?
"if you can find whatever rotting safehouse in Rafah the survivors are currently being raped in"
Come on, you know that's not real, they're not doing that. Hamas already had to admit due to the hostage negotiations that they've already raped all those girls to death. There are no survivors.
Or supporting the Houthis where the antisemitism is on their flag. They even go the extra step of helpfully including both "Death to Israel" and "Curse upon the Jews", just in case anyone got the impression they were making some nuanced distinction between Zionism and Judaism.
Economists say that that the immigration of workers(M) to a country with an existing number of workers(N) will have no effect on employment. They call this the lump of labour fallacy.
Has this been proven true for all values of N and M?
The claim is that if M people emigrate, afterward N+M people will employed, regardless of the size of M relative to N.
Yes. Immigration rarely causes net unemployment absent barriers to them working. You will note there are two caveats there: NET unemployment and ABSENT BARRIERS. If you don't let people work because they're not citizens then obviously they will create unemployment. And while they might not create net unemployment specific people's employment or wages might get pushed down.
There's examples of extremely free labor market countries absorbing as many as four or five people for every native citizen without unemployment issues. And there's examples of 2% of the population boosting unemployment because they are not legally allowed to work.
The rational economic protectionist case is that native workers might suffer from the disruption and that some workers, particularly older workers, bear a disproportionate brunt of that disruption. But of course that's true for literally any disruption, whether immigrants or technology.
> But of course that's true for literally any disruption, whether immigrants or technology.
Technology usually makes things better. Many, many immigrant populations can only ever make things worse. Disruption can occur without any improvements, and improvements from either can benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
And of course, all of this ignores the consumption of government services of immigrants and their descendants which can and often does make them a net economic drain. Hispanic Americans as a group are net consumers, not creators, of economic value.
We would have to talk about what "barriers" means here. I think the current US minimum wage of $7.25 might be something of a barrier to large amounts of unskilled labor. Something like a $15-20/hour "living wage" would definitely be a barrier.
If we allow informal work and no minimum wage, then it seems inevitable that immigrants will be doing something productive, even if it's marginal and would be illegal under current law.
I agree with you in theory that immigration shouldn't (necessarily) cause unemployment, but we would not actually be in a situation to see it play out that way, and in practice most countries (and certainly the US) would not be able to keep unemployment from going up. That would obviously be true if we denied non-citizens the ability to legally work, which we totally do, but would also be true due to a bunch of other things we do and would be very unlikely to change.
>If we allow informal work and no minimum wage, then it seems inevitable that immigrants will be doing something productive
Productive doesn't mean 'productive enough to justify letting them live here and consume taxpayer funded government services and infrastructure'. And of course, if wages have to be driven down to find jobs for these people, you've made things worse for the poorest native workers, which is the whole point of talking about the effect immigrants have on workers (not an abstract concern for whether or not technically the number of jobs increases enough).
Yes, I agree with that. I was talking with Erusian about the technical effects on unemployment, but even he agrees that wages will be pushed down. In effect, unemployment will exist for other reasons as well, such as our laws not letting people work for close to nothing.
What example is there of counties absorbing 4-5 times the native working population fairly quickly?
The UAE?
Surely it depends on the size of the capital stock to begin with. It seems like an extraordinary claim that M doesn’t matter regardless of the size of N.
The UAE but also most of the Americas at various times. Turn of the century Argentina's another case. The size of the capital stock isn't all that relevant, some of these cases were quite poor, but what is relevant is they mostly had free labor systems. These immigrants were often very poor people come in search of political freedom and higher wages from extremely poor and repressed areas. They often ended up working in what we'd consider exploitative conditions today. But they were certainly not unemployed.
You can see this effect somewhat between Europe and the US where the US has a freer labor system and so has higher workforce participation among immigrants, even illegals, than Europe.
The immigrants to the US, and Argentina were more often than not coming to farm land until the Industrial Revolution.
Coming as they did from a continent with higher agricultural productivity they increased the productivity of the new world - unfortunately this came at the effect of the genocide of the original inhabitants, although some of the collapse in native population was prior to the arrival of most colonialists.
This is not a good argument to support present day immigration.
Present day immigration to the US has a small ratio of M to N anyways at less than 1%. Could the US absorb 1 billion people next year?
This is not true. I suspect you've already made up your mind about this. But you're wrong on the facts. These immigrants often came during the industrial revolution, not before, and wages and productivity were already higher in the New World. That's what attracted them. As for the original inhabitants that conflict started literal centuries before the late 19th century and had largely concluded in both before mass immigration, especially in Argentina. There was certainly no genocide of Argentinian or American urban peoples or farm owners many of whom got wealthy off the waves of immigrants.
Whether the US could absorb 1 billion people has to do with the institutions of the US. In proper circumstances yes. And if there were issues they are not likely to be unemployment, something you've moved the goalposts around.
>Whether the US could absorb 1 billion people has to do with the institutions of the US
The institutions of the US are not some fixed feature of its geography or something. They are product of its people, and the present people who make these insitutions still somewhat functional would be made a minority in the face of the immigration of a billion people, almost all of whom coming from populations abjectly incapable of building good institutions in the first place.
Immigration of Englishmen in industrial revolution US is not comparable to immigration of Somalians to 2024 America in at least a dozen different ways.
A billion immigrants over any reasonable timeframe would be catastrophic for the US, no matter what, mass unemployment being one of the many problems. And the most likely consequence would be societal collapse and civil war. But hey, I guess meal delivery services might be cheaper for a little while and Q3 GDP growth would beat forecasts, so yay?
Accusing people of “making up their mind” is an ad hominem which also self validates your argument. You have the facts, the opposition is of closed mind.
Back to the 19C: . The population increased from about 5 million to 80M, of which 60% were still rural by 1900. that’s a 1,500% increase, far larger than post 1900. Coming with capital or not, many if not most farmed land. As I said the stock of capital matters.
Most immigrants were not going to work in factories until the post civil war era, and probably a minority after. ChatGPT assures me that industrial workers are 16% of the labour force by 1860 (seems high) and 22% by 1900 ( right).
The 19C is the period when population growth, endogenous or not swamps local populations. And of course America had massive capital stock and reserves to absorb immigrants. Most immigrants were not industrial workers.
Post 19C, In the admittedly high immigration of the first decade of early 20C 8M people immigrated, but that’s only 800k a year. M << N.
In any case I’m more or less looking for a mathematical example here that applies across all societies at all times, however, and it’s fairly easy to create easy thought experiments where unemployment increases. I’ll reply to myself - rather than waste this subthread. .
Lump sum of labor fallacy is believing that there's a fixed amount of work to do, and therefore any additional people in the country will be competing for this fixed amount of work.
This is basically a strawman argument when used against people who want to reduce immigration, because nothing about the lump sum fallacy being a fallacy means that immigrants necessarily don't have a negative impact on the labor market.
It's possible that n workers create 0.75n more equivalent-pay jobs, meaning the labor market has gotten worse. In fact, something to this effect is likely considering economies of scale (you don't need 10% more bakers to bake enough bread for 10% more people).
And the equivalent pay part is important too. It's possible that most of these immigrants get jobs (minus the elderly, children, cripples), which means a lot of jobs must have been created. But they may have been created by lowering wages leading to increased quantity of workers demanded by employers. This is bad for native workers.
Things can be especially bad in smaller towns where jobs are dominated by export industries (domestic and international) which may quite literally have a fixed amount of work at equal pay. A mining town probably isn't going to put on a bunch more miners just because a bunch of immigrants showed up (unless they were desperately short on workers already or they reduce wages in the face of greater labor supply), because these immigrants don't increase the quantity of say, copper, demanded by the market.
That's a to strong assertion that immigration never causes unemployment. The fallacy is assuming a fixed amount of jobs and thinking that immigration will cause unemployment. It may, or may not, and whether it will depend on many factors.
Here's a model. Using the US as example. Capital is more mobile than labor. If a company wants to expand their production in the US, they can more easily do so, than workers can immigrate. So corporations instead of investing in their original country will invest in the US to take advantage of both the extra labor and consumer that the immigrants represent. And if the environment for business is better in the US, as it usually is, they will be more productive, which will benefit both labor, native and migrant, and capital.
What's missing in the above model? Well, for starters natural resources. They are immobile. So insofar as the economy is dependent of them, capital might not be attracted even with extra workers/ consumers, although some capital will be. That would cause unemployment. Given that the US and most developed countries are heavily service oriented, and there is no apparent limit to the expansion of the service sector, that is probably not an issue, but in some situations it might be.
Also, remittances. Immigrants consume in the US, but also send money to their home countries. So they attract less investiment than a native worker. Now notice that because there are gains in productivity migrants can send some remittances and native workers might still be better off, as long as remittances are not too large. Also remittances benefit the other country, that should be relevant unless you are a super nationalist and don't care for other countries.
The third point, is that those things take time. So a short term peak in immigration may have temporary problems.
And finally, the model doesn't differentiate between different native workers. It's very possible that some workers benefit while others are harmed. My understanding of the literature (I'm not an economist, just a curious person) is that the average native tend to be better off, but low skilled workers are worse off (but not by much, and some studies don't find any difference)
To recap, the problem of the fallacy is that it assumes jobs are limited. Immigration may cause unemployment, but it also may not. And I think the burden of proof is mutual, it's also up to the immigration restrictionist to show that it causes unemployment.
The Lump of Labour fallacy is that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in an economy, and adding extra people doesn't increase it. What you're describing is another fallacy, that the amount of work to be done is linear with the number of people in the economy.
The truth is probably somewhere in between -- there are fixed lumps of labour (e.g. natural resources) which don't scale, and a bunch of other jobs (e.g. dentistry) which do.
I thought it was not "will have no effect on employment", but rather "might not increase unemployment by M". That is, the fallacy is that adding M new workers would create 0 jobs, and the theory is that it would create x>=0 jobs. I doubt any serious economist would say that it would always create x>=M jobs.
Although there's no special reason in general to assume x<M either - high-population/immigration areas often have tighter labour markets (e.g. San Francisco has a much lower unemployment rate than Merced). The exact number of jobs varies a lot.
>Although there's no special reason in general to assume x<M either
Of course there is - economies of scale. You don't need 10% more bakers to make bread for a population that is now 10% bigger.
Though, 'jobs' is only meaningful at a given income level. If jobs are created by lowering wages (including wages not increasing over a time period where they otherwise would have), then sure, jobs have been created but native workers have been made worse off, which is the whole point of the discussion in the first place - the potential negative effects of immigrants on native workers.
That's the lump of labour fallacy again - demand isn't set in general, not just per person. If everyone in town becomes richer they consumer more per person (and can also export more).
There is absolutely no reason for everyone to get richer. If wages are driven down compared to the counterfactual, workers will get poorer.
And of course, the descendants of these immigrants will end up consuming government services and there's no reason to assume that this consumption will be made up for with comparable tax revenue. Indeed, hispanic americans are a net fiscal drain, which makes everyone else POORER, not richer.
We're talking about immigration in general, not Hispanics in particular. The richest places in America are places like New York and San Francisco (despite their terrible governance), which are also the most immigrant-heavy, because massive high skills immigration is what lets America have such a dominant position in high skills industries like tech. The 1990s post-soviet immigration wave to Israel is another example of this (initial shock but long term gain as it helped create the Israeli tech industry). Ironically OpenAI's ilya sutskever was a member of both.
Low skills immigration is less consistent but still can go either way - being a net drain in terms of tax revenue doesn't necessarily imply being a net negative, since they also produce a lot of gains that are captured by their employers/customers rather than the government (e.g. US agriculture wouldn't function without them). Refugees without any sort of job connections who can't legally work are probably a worst case scenario that is almost certainly a net negative.
The lump of labour fallacy argument seems to assume the conclusion here. That every worker becomes a consumer, but the question is whether people are employed to begin with. It’s easy enough to imagine a thought experiment where this doesn’t happen.
We've delayed the mana currency conversion rate change until May 15th, so you can donate normally until then. Additionally, if you have an inactive account, you can email us (info@manifold.markets) to donate your mana anytime for the rest of the year at the old 100 to 1 rate.
We're also going to send an email with more information!
Despite the big changes to the Manifold economy that are required, I'm excited to see what use cases arise when user-created prediction markets can provide real money incentives. What kind of questions will people ask? Will users trade to hedge real life risks? Will the trading bots become much stronger?
I can't wait to see someone create a market with a subsidy of $100 or $1000 that incentivizes traders to come up with a useful answer.
For the book reviews, would it possible to add a way for the people rating the reviews to add comments if they want to? It'd be nice to get some feedback for the reviews that don't make it as finalists.
Many people have warned that if Trump gets re-elected, conservatives are preparing to gut many government agencies and usher in radical conservative reforms to various areas of policy.
Why didn't this happen during the last Trump administration? What's changed to make people expect a second Trump administration would do this?
The steelman for this is that last time, Trump was largely opposed by his party--he was from the insurgent wing of the party, and got pushback at every level from the mainstream of the party. His wing of the party has since becomes the mainstream, taken over a bunch of leadership positions, etc. So it will be easier for him to do whatever things (good or bad) that he wants to do.
OTOH, he is a legendarily bad boss with no loyalty for anyone outside his own family, which led him to have a cabinet that was constantly leaking everything, from which he could not expect much help on most things he cared about, and where everyone expected a knife in the back from Trump at any time. It's hard to see that changing, so I don't expect him to be super effective if he makes it back to the white house this time. OTOH, he is a bulldozer that seeks bits of Chesterton's fence to knock down, and that also encourages the opposition to do the same, so I can imagine him doing a lot of damage to the counrty.
Trump might continue nominating conservative Supreme Court justices, including more conservative justices to replace the current insufficiently-conservative-for-the-movement ones if they retire, and a sufficiently conservative Supreme Court might well start working from an interpretation of the Constitution that is vastly more restrictive regarding Federal authority than the current one, in practice amounting many government agencies being gutted and radical conservative reforms being effectively legislated from the bench. This might even happen after Trump is out after 4 years, kind of like the Roe v. Wade repeal.
The judicial branch is categorically NOT what has stopped/is stopping a Trump from remaking the federal bureacracies. If that isn't bad enough, if your theory depends on Trump getting to appoint more judges then it's a bad theory. And of course, for all this talk about 'conservative' supreme court, Trump's latest appointee sided with the liberals over Texas trying to enforce its border, which really goes to show how hollow this talk about 'muh conservative SCOTUS' is. Sure they repealed Roe v Wade, but decisions like that actually *cost* the GOP power (by mobilizing their enemies and increasing Democrat turnout), which is opposite of what is needed if you predict that conservatives are going to take over the government.
And I'm curious, do you consider anything that has happened under Obama or Biden to be 'radically' liberal? Seems like 'radically conservative' is bordering on a propaganda term. As if e.g. actually enforcing existing immigration laws is a 'radical' proposal or something.
I'm not saying it would necessarily happen (since Trump might not appoint enough justices, or sufficiently conservative justices, as you said), just that if one *fears* that would happen, that would be one mechanism through which it would happen. Which is what Scott asked.
I used the term "radical conservative reforms" because that's what Scott used. If the courts struck down basically all new federal government agencies since the New Deal - a remote prospect, but something that at least a number of right-wingers would want - then yes, that would be pretty radical.
The more important question is "Is this even possible?"
The answer is a resounding "no".
It's based on an entirely naïve understanding of how US government agencies work.
People think that the president puts someone in charge of the agency, then that person is actually de facto in charge.
This is not the case.
At the absolute bare minimum, anyone appointed by Trump who actually tries to pursue Trump's agenda in earnest has basically signed a death warrant for their careers. So, he can only appoint people who either have no intention of working a "real" job again (i.e. not a conservative think tank or something), or people who will ultimately betray Trump, through sabotage or neglect. And of course, any wrong or "wrong" move will be met with the full force of Democratic lawfare for anyone who doesn't play along.
But these people, appointees, they have very little real power, especially if they're Republican. And if they try and put their foot down, the large, permanent staff of these bureaucracies, who ultimately answer to congress, not the president and co, will revolt. You basically need to replace vast swathes of these agencies with loyalists, which Trump is not entitled to do and couldn't find enough competent people to do this even if nobody stopped him doing it.
He gets into the meat of the issue around the 17:00 minute mark.
You should listen to this even if you hate Moldbug and Trump, because Moldbug is obviously right on this topic and so this will allow you to stop worrying about Trump taking over the government if he wins (if you sincere concern is the issue here and you're not simply trying to scare people into voting Biden).
The argument I've heard against Trump is that he will, not so much usher in radical conservative reforms, but will staff his office with sycophants with no regard for what is good for the country.
Perhaps the question is the same regardless -- why did that not happen? Why did Trump appoint people who put their duties and the country over loyalty to the president? 🤷♂️
>but will staff his office with sycophants with no regard for what is good for the country.
Staffing the bureaucracies with people who supposedly do have "regard for what is good for the country" has been pretty disastrous, so I'd happily take my chances with the alternative.
Most if not all of this strikes me as simple electioneering. It is easier to run against a hypothetical nightmare than it is against the person who already was president for four years in which the sky didn't fall - unless you count the pandemic that partisan Democrats, no less than Republicans, seem to have given up on fighting. I think Trump's 3rd term will look an awful lot like his first two.
More charitably, however, 1) Trump with substantial congressional majorities (if he gets those) and a more right-wing judiciary can do more than Trump in 2016 could, and 2) Trump attempted a self-coup at the end of his term, which has a lot of people spooked.
Trump himself doesn't matter that much. He's just a tool, and it's not like he's got much time left anyways. I'm more worried about the GOP as a whole. January 6 was the perfect opportunity to throw Trump under the bus and put these ambitions of power to rest. Of course, they didn't do that. They're just going all in on this absurdity.
...Honestly, why does the right have so much issue with the status quo? Half of the country is still aligned with their values, and their states are still getting heavily subsidized by the government even when they're not in power. And ultimately, the US as it is right now is still the most powerful country in the world. Are they seriously going to sacrifice all of that just to impose their will on the country?
It makes sense when you consider that the status quo modern-day conservatives are trying to "conserve" no longer exists. In that sense, it would be more accurate to describe them as reactionaries.
Let me give you the example I know the best and you can generalize that something similar happened at nearly every Agency. One of Trump’ main initiatives was to drain the swamp and the deep state. To do that he wanted OPM to dramatically curtail Civil Servant protections. Problem was, his acting Director of OPM, Kathleen McGettigan, was a 30 year Agency veteran, and while I am not sure where she falls politically, she is at least committed to a strong, independent, protected, federal service. She was later made the acting Director of OPM under Biden, based on how she did under Trump.
Trump appoints Jeff Tien Han Pon after a 14 month fight. He was the CHRO for SHRM, the HR equivalent of the AMA and just as left leaning, as well as the head of HR in Energy and a Deputy Director at OPM. Trump decides OPM is going too slow with draining the swamp, and orders him to get a transition plan where OPM will be eliminated and most of its functions will fall under GSA. He resisted the plans and was fired 7 months into his service.
Trump gets a new Acting Director, Margaret Weichert, who is also a long time civil servant, but good at following orders. She pushes to eliminate OPM, but at this point midterm elections already occurred, and the new Congress resists eliminating OPM and instead creates a study that won’t finish during his term. After 11 months Trump gets his new OPM Director confirmed, who resigned in 5 months due to poor treatment from White House appointees.
Michael Rigas is the last Acting Directors of OPM and finishes Trump’s term. This means that at no point in Trump’s administration did he have a full Director, which has more power than an acting Director, loyal to him. But finally someone had the great idea to Create via Executive Order Schedule F, which would allow Trump to transfer certain policy making positions to a new authority that would make them easier to fire. This was issued in October 2020, and essentially never implemented.
People look at this chaos and think that next time he’ll be able to appoint true loyalists and implement his agenda. I am skeptical. First, he had two attempts last time, and neither ended up being a good pick. Second, and Director would need Senate approval, so at minimum the Republicans need to win the Senate as well to really accomplish what they want, probably both Houses. Third, Biden spent the last 3 years instituting a federal rule make Schedule F illegal. Trump could reverse that rule, but it would take another 3 years, so unless Republicans win the Presidency again in 2028, it won’t matter.
What I find odd about this on a basic level - if something is a "main initiative" of a presidential administration, and that administration has control of both houses of Congress, then the thing to do is to pass a law. None of this palace intrigue as to who at which agency can do what, matters, if you just pass a law. They spent the early years passing a big tax cut and trying/failing to repeal the ACA, but no big law about civil service protections.
If instead they dally in appointing someone, leaving an acting head who opposes your plan as a holdover, and that guy isn't aligned with you either, don't try for a Congressional fix until after the midterm (when it's common to lose control of one or both houses), and finally issue the supposedly issue-fixing executive order 45 months into your 48-month term ... it wasn't a priority!
This is in line with my view that all the "drain the swamp"/"deep state" stuff is just an intellectual gloss on trump not liking that the entire government isn't personally loyal *to him*. Conservatives are not, in the abstract, opposed to action at executive agencies taking a long time. When Reagan passed an executive order adding layers of oversight/review to their actions, conservatives loved it and liberals hated it.
Republicans are almost certain to take the senate though, especially conditional on a Trump victory. Counting on the senate to save you is like betting that a coin will land on its side.
That's a legitimately difficult question. Either way has major pitfalls.
I think the best we can do is to make it difficult and time-consuming to change the bureaucrats, but not impossible to remove them based on democratic changes (i.e. it's not impossible to eliminate a federal agency once it exists) - and make it fairly clean and straightforward if the employees are actually criminal and/or going against their intended duties.
Maybe, but I think there are two other bigger reasons. First, a lot of people are afraid of the Spoils system returning. If you look throughout history, the spoils system was really bad for the country. Lots of unqualified people in important positions, using civil positions as bribes for votes and organizing, and the Assassination of Garfield. Second, Civil Servants are disproportionately liberals, which favors the Democrats. Look how much faster Biden was able to implement his agenda than Trump.
On the question of policy implementation, I think you can chalk it up to Biden being a supremely talented and experienced politician, and Trump conversely being the least experienced and competent president in history. Past republican presidents have been able to implement their agendas just fine.
I'm struggling to recall if there has ever been a federal agency gutted in my lifetime. I'm nearing 60, and I don't recall that one ever has. I guess we just finally managed to close the Federal Helium Reserve (created in WWI for our fleets of war-blimps) after about fifty years of trying, so that might count. As a very strong prior, you should assume that anyone trying to gut a Federal agency or complaining that a Federal agency is being gutted is simply a con man, and take care with your valuables.
Gingrich helped get rid of the Office of Technology Assessment and the Interstate Commerce Commission. You could probably argue that the responsibilities just got redistributed to other agencies, but technically those two organizations did get eliminated.
The twitter files, making it clear just how aggressive federal government agencies have been in going after their political opponents, and lying to the public about this. Or, the “pipe bomb” claims about January 6, which seem to have all been forgotten, the cell phone location records “inaccessible,” with some footage concealed by the prosecutors, and a “we can’t answer that” question about how many FBI agents were there that day. Or, questionable legal charges filed against Trump, by prosecutors who ran explicitly on putting him in jail. “You should have used campaign funds to pay hush money” is an absurd argument, the simpler explanation is that they just want to put him in jail and will do whatever they can to do so.
Then there is the fact that governments around the world are attempting to limit the speech of the opposition parties. The Canadian trucker protest invoked the seizure of bank accounts of political protesters. “Hate speech” laws in Scotland could put you in jail for things said in your own house. German politicians talking openly about wanting to censor their opposition.
So, given this evidence of multiple government agencies and employees attacking the political opposition, and a globally concerted effort to criminalize opposition to the regime, the appetite for this kind of significant change has grown dramatically.
Last time around, non-Trumpist conservatives put a lot of stock in “adults in the room”. Trump ended up with adults in all the important roles such as Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, Defence Secretary and Attorney General. They mostly ignored Trump’s wilder rhetoric and just did the same adult things they would have done if Trump was not there. Towards the end of his term, he appointed a number of useless sycophants who didn't do much at all.
Next time around, Trump will not be appointing adults in the room; he will be appointing competent staff who believe in his wilder rhetoric. Next time around, Trump’s staff will be better at implementing Trump’s wishes.
>Next time around, Trump will not be appointing adults in the room; he will be appointing competent staff who believe in his wilder rhetoric. Next time around, Trump’s staff will be better at implementing Trump’s wishes.
This is hopelessly naïve.
Appointed positions do not have power over their agencies. The 'deep state' i.e. the permanent, unappointed staff of these agencies who are ultimately accountable to congress do. And anyone appointed by Trump who tries to drain the swamp will find out very quickly how little power they have.
Trump's appointees do not have meaningful power over the agencies they nominally head. Thinking they do betrays an egregious misunderstanding of how government agencies work.
He has quite a track record of appointing people who turned out to be disloyal to him and wound up writing about how awful he was. It's almost as if to know him is to dislike him.
ah yes, if only Trump were more likeable like Obama! We all love the smiling black savior who made the world a better place by drone bombing civilians and arming terrorists to try and overthrow the Assad government in Syria. SO likeable! That's what america needs!
Narcissism. No two people are identical, no two wills are identical, and when the difference becomes known, only Trump's can be correct. All else is prideful, sinful, evil, and must be cast down from the Executive Branch. Better to reign in private life, than serve under Trump.
Trump didn't promise to gut government agencies in the first place. He promised to make them actually work. (It was these kinds of breaks from the recent (US)-conservative orthodoxy that allowed him to run to the left of Clinton and, as a result, actually win.)
I'm not really paying attention now, but (given GOP's recent electoral "successes" of following up on promises to restrict abortion, and given that the discourse about Trump has always had a spurious relationship with reality) I wouldn't be surprised if the warnings against conservatives were propaganda aimed at dissuading people from voting for Trump rather than anything a rational self-interested Republican administration might actually attempt.
It might be worth worrying about even if the probability is moderate (say 10-30%), and it not happening once is only weak evidence against such possibilities.
I might be wrong but i remember hearing more about this worry, when it looked like Trump would win by larger margins, and thus have larger congressional majorities. The republicans didnt have a majority in the house from jan 2019 onward, and before then they only had a 51-49 majority in the senate. Meaning that they where restrained by what they could get at least one of the two least conservative republican senators (maybe Murkowski and Collins) to agree on.
I think something that has changed is the popularity of things like Project 2025. The idea is that conservative minds are making a more concerted effort to affect change this time around. This is perhaps due to feelings that Trump is more malleable than previously perceived or based on other observations about the last four years went.
Why didn't it happen: Trump was an idiot. He didn't realize what he was up against, and appointed people who were selected for agreeing with him, as opposed to people selected for getting things done (and specifically, working with the existing bureaucracy to get things done). His agenda shifted with his mood, and his administration scrambled to keep up with his latest Twitter covfefe.
What's changed: Everyone on the right noticed this. Various groups have spent the last 4 years putting together radical plans to reshape government and gut the bureaucracy. Given that they want his (potential) administration to actually make lasting change, it seems inevitable that they would do this; I don't see how else they could accomplish their goals. Of course, Trump is Trump, except probably 8 years closer to senility, so who knows if he'll listen to any of these people or follow any of their plans. Maybe someone will convince him to give them carte blanche authority to reform the bureaucracy, while Trump spends his time making provocative tweets. But I doubt that he'd tolerate being a figurehead, and I don't think he could resist the urge to meddle.
And of course, all someone on the right has to do is publish a plan somewhere on the Internet, and the left wing media will play it up into the second destruction of Alderaan. Regardless of whether it has any chance of happening. And then once the media is full of reports of how Trump will destroy government as we know it, Trump will read that and want to live up to the expectation. I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You have literally no understanding of how government agencies work. Trump's inability to take over government agencies has absolutely nothing to do with not being willing to give other people enough authority. It simply cannot be done.
1- "Tentifada" has to be the cringiest and most unimaginative portmanteau I have ever heard of for a long time.
2- Which multiple of 100 is the index of this instance when the American progressive camp has done something that violates the most obvious interpretation of their stated principles, and people against them then naively jumped up and down and said "Ah huh!1!1! I have proven that your principles are set-theoretically inconsistent, the God of Logic will now send his prophets Euclid and Godel to torture you for an eternity in Contradiction Hell !1!1!", but actually nothing happened, because in actual reality people don't give a shit about logic, and their graph of beliefs contains metric tons of inconsistencies from the roots to the leaves that still manage to co-exist?
3- To notice how truly universal and widespread (2) is, observe how countless parties whining about "FrEe SpEeCh" as a cover for their bitterness about losing the culture war suddenly find it so morally satisfactory that people voicing opinions they don't like have their names published on a giant van-mounted-screen list, or jubilant that people are being fired from their jobs because they posted a tweet or an Instagram post. The long list is left as an exercise for the reader to compile, but 2 very prominent list elements are Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro.
4- No instance of students fighting with police or security were ever reported since the moral panic about the university encampments began.
>To notice how truly universal and widespread (2) is, observe how countless parties whining about "FrEe SpEeCh" as a cover for their bitterness about losing the culture war
They're "losing the culture war" in the sense that governments and their cronies in academia and corporations have conspired to silence dissent, not because everyone was convinced that all this woke nonsense is correct - they weren't, most hate these college communists and their insane beliefs.
Also, gloating about "winning the culture war" with the help of the most powerful institutions in the country, and then hysterically crying the instant these institutions gently slap you down for stepping out of line is absolute pathetic.
>find it so morally satisfactory that people voicing opinions they don't like have their names published on a giant van-mounted-screen list, or jubilant that people are being fired from their jobs because they posted a tweet or an Instagram post.
Why the fuck shouldn't they?
The left never condemned this.
This wasn't some thing that happened in the past and everyone moved on for and condemned.
This tactics were never stopped, they were never disowned.
The people at these tent protests are bloodthirsty communists who would happily kill anyone who disagrees with them if they could get away with it, and they sure as hell would have no problem destroying their livelihoods.
Why the fuck shouldn't they fight fire with fire to an unrepentant leftist hoard?
There's no inconsistency because the left never agreed to stop doing this, so the right have no obligation to stop it.
>The long list is left as an exercise for the reader to compile, but 2 very prominent list elements are Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro.
For fuck's sake! These are people who literally cannot walk onto elite university campuses without the risk of them and their followers being assaulted, and whom these leftist dorks will do anything to stop from being allowed to give a single speech.
Why shouldn't these men revel in their enemies facing 1% of this themselves (for actually, in many cases, breaking the law and not merely holding a speech)?
I would prefer "Moral Panic", not as witty and original as Godwin's Law applications, I admit, but I prefer it because that's what it is. A very silly and shallow and embarrassing moral panic over a bunch of kids misbehaving.
Instead of taking this as a launch point from which to explore how universities that pink wash themselves naked in June and blabber incessantly about Affirmative Action and Inclusion invest in states being tried in the ICJ on charges of genocide, instead of noting the absurdity of a "University" even having "investments" and business-like assets and being led by half-CEO-half-bureaucrat creatures, most approaching this from the Pro-Israel perspective have consistently looked at it in the most shallow and twitter-worthy way possible. "Oh My Gooosh look, the University's president merely called the police on her students, this fucking antisemite is too much of a pussy to properly signal for the IDF to come bomb the lawn like any self-respecting university president would do in her place. LOOK AT WHAT OUTGROUP DOES."
Which is funny: from my point of view, it's the Jedi who are evil. Colombia and Co. administration are so **Pro-Israel** that they're willing to sit and play with themselves for 3 weeks and counting - every moment a PR nightmare for them and for their university, and a chance for the Pro-Israel puppies in the Congress to pounce - just so that they don't have to pledge to never support Israel in public right now then very quietly do it again anyway when the war is over and those students start 9-to-5 jobs and no longer have the time to protest. They can have everything, but they're not willing to be seen saying the ultimate heresy: that BDS is an acceptable and takeable position, that it's firmly in the current overtone window. So they will rather leave their half-mature late teenager students eat each other and mutter non-committal grunts about nothing in particular than actually responding to what their Pro-Palestinian students are protesting about, which is nothing more and nothing less than investment in Israel, which is how much again as a percentage against the university's actual bottom line? Unclear, they are not fans of transparency.
This had a chance to be good, and the stupidity of everyone involved made it shit. Why am I not surprised.
I gotta say that these students are doing a fantastic job distracting our national media from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by grabbing all the headlines. Granted our national media is like a bunch of five-year-olds chasing a soccer ball, but what reporter worth their salt wants to risk their skin in Gaza when they can hang out in the University quad and interview passionate undergrads? ("Let me get your number, so I can follow up if I have any questions, and maybe we can go clubbing after the teargas settles?")
Why should anyone here care about what a bunch of vicious, bloodthirsty anti-white communists have to say about anything? You want to fucking sit here and morally lecture me while hating me for my race, religion and sex, and you expect me to care?
I didn't previously care about this conflict, but these white hating scumbags actually make me sad the total is only 35,000 - so much more work to be done.
Wait. I thought the vicious, bloodthirsty anti-white communists were the woke university administrators. But now you say they're the protestors? I guess I'm confused about who you're hating on.
Just to make sure I'm understanding your comment properly, you're upset the Palestinian casualties have not been higher, and you're hoping the Israelis will kill as many Palestinians as possible because that might upset pro-Palestinian protestors in the U.S.?
I too am glad that this fact--that every single moral principle espoused by the woke left comes with an implied (and entirely conscious) "only when it personally benefits us"--has been made so blindingly obvious that no one will ever be able to deny it again.
Berliner pulled the curtain back on the Wizard when he outed National Public Radio regarding inclusion and diversity. When self-proclaimed 'progressives' declare 'diversity', their openness only extends to those who look and think exactly like they do.
We haven't seen such a breathless embrace of conformity since the early 1950s (although the San Francisco cliche of a headband with a matching sash around a man's waist came close in 1966).
I doubt an analysis of Public Broadcasting Service would yield a more broad-minded result. Gwen Ifill would be shocked and disappointed, and would likely agree with Bill Maher.
After their promotion of gender ideology and a whole panoply of woke nonsense, we shouldn't be surprised that the new badge of virtue among regressive progressives is Palestinian Hamas's terrorism.
Or, alternately, bad things are bad and good things are good; and you are imagining racism and genocide that doesn't exist to paper over the current existing racism and genocide?
I mean, it's bad that hammas killed a bunch of randos in Israel, but it's at least 30-ish times worse (at the current count) when Israel kills a bunch more in Palestine.
>it's bad that hammas killed a bunch of randos in Israel, but it's at least 30-ish times worse (at the current count) when Israel kills a bunch more in Palestine
The most bizarre thing about all this discourse is how many people think "it's sometimes acceptable to fight a defensive war, but you are morally obligated to lose" is a compelling argument.
"We're not saying you have to lose, just that you should do less damage than the other side does to you" -- right, that's what the word "lose" means.
George Floyd's death was the end of the world to these pro-palestine people, but somehow 5,000 white people being murdered by black people in the US over the past decade isn't even worth talking about (well, actually, I know first hand that many of these pro-palestine scumbags think its a GOOD thing).
I'm not sure where you're getting that factoid from, but according to the USDoJ's 2022 criminal victimization report (Table 13), 56% of the violent crimes perpetrated on whites were by whites, and only 14% were by blacks. On the flip side, 60% percent of the violent crimes perpetrated on blacks were by blacks, and 13% by whites.
When it comes to homicides, the last data I can find is this report from 2018.
80.7% of the murders of white people were committed by whites, while 15.5% of the murders of white people were committed by blacks. On the flip side, 88.9% of the reported murders of black people were committed by blacks and 8% by whites.
This supports my personal belief that I'm in more danger as a white person by being around white people than I am around black people. If I were black, it would be the other way around.
>I'm not sure where you're getting that factoid from, but according to the USDoJ's 2022 criminal victimization report (Table 13), 56% of the violent crimes perpetrated on whites were by whites, and only 14% were by blacks.
Hey, did you stop and think about the fact that it's called BLACK LIVES MATTER, which means the entire premise is faulty because almost all black murder victims were killed by black people?
The left ONLY cares about black people being killed when its white people doing the killing, which means all your statistics of who kills who are completely irrelevant
If black people and their communist allies were free to riot across the country because one of one black guy being killed by the outgroup, why shouldn't white people riot on a daily basis over the vastly bigger issue of black on white violence?
Also, YOU COMPLETELY IGNORED HISPANICS
At least 803 of those white murders were committed by hispanics, which get counted as 'white' for their race. So taking that away, only 56% of of whites were murdered by whites, compared with 15.5% of blacks. Which means black on white homicide is more common per capita than white on white homicide!
And then of course, there's 1,019, many of whom were almost certainly not white but counted as white, meaning the true value for % white offender is even lower still!
Looking at the 2019 data, non-hispanic white % was 56% again but black had risen to 17%, so even more overrepresented than in 2018.
So you're essentially wrong about your entire point.
>This supports my personal belief that I'm in more danger as a white person by being around white people than I am around black people. If I were black, it would be the other way around.
How the hell have you made it this far in life without encountering the concept of PER CAPITA?
I didn't bring Hispanics into the mix — nor Asians and Pacific Islanders — because I didn't want to muddy the waters. But you seem to have the same irrational fear of hispanics as you do blacks. But let me get this straight. You say Hispanics from Spain are not white? What about Italians and Greeks? They've all got relatively the same skin tones.
Most of these types of people think 'per capita' is some sort of racist conspiracy to make black people look more violent - this quickly disappears when you point out that more white people in total are killed by the police than black people.
>I mean, it's bad that hammas killed a bunch of randos in Israel, but it's at least 30-ish times worse (at the current count) when Israel kills a bunch more in Palestine.
Being weak and stupid doesn't give you the right to not face consequences for your actions. Hamas would butcher every last Israeli if given the chance - the domination of gaza by the israelis has nothing to do with hamas showing restraint.
Hamas invaded Israel and killed ~1200 random people there, violating most rules of war in acts of horrific barbarism.
This is an obvious act of war and gives Israel the right to fight back by both international law and the moral standards agreed to by almost everyone.
When you fight a war against an enemy hiding among a civilian population in cities, many civilians will inevitably die. This one of many unfortunate realities of war.
Last I heard numbers Hamas claimed 31k dead and Israel claimed to have killed 13k Hamas soldiers. Taken at face value, that is a normal outcome of urban warfare.
If Israel was conducting a genocide, they could kill most of the 2 million Gazans in an afternoon. This is a war, not a genocide.
Uh huh, maybe you would be interested in tracking down Raz Segal [1], the Israeli professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies, and telling him the difference between war and genocide, he seems to not have gotten the memo. I'm sure he would appreciate your expertise.
While you're at it, maybe also shoot Craig Mokhiber [2], the former director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, an email. That silly guy, who probably doesn't know the difference between war and genocide, resigned in 28th of October over American and European support for the war, and called it a genocide and explicitly compared it to Rwanda.
>maybe you would be interested in tracking down Raz Segal [1], the Israeli professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies, and telling him the difference between war and genocide, he seems to not have gotten the memo.
I can tell you're being sarcastic, but I don't know why. You're right, he clearly hasn't gotten the memo; everything cited in the article as evidence of "genocide" is completely typical of countries at war.
If you want to argue that the UN standard allows almost all standard wartime tactics to be considered as technically genocidal... well, I see John Schilling already addressed that.
You, and the UN, can define "genocide" any way you want. But defining it this way means many of us no longer hear "Genocide!" and think that maybe the IDF (or whomever) are a bunch of evil monsters. Instead, we hear "Genocide" and think that, yawn, someone is waging a war and civilians are dying like they always do, and someone else wants to short-circuit my brain with emotional power words so I'll support their side in the war.
"Genocide" used to be a useful word. Now it goes on the same scrap heap as "Nazi", "fascist", "racist", "white supremacist", "rapist", and far too many others. Want me to stop taking you seriously? Just accuse someone of "genocide", or any of those other words. Want to communicate the idea those words *used* to convey? You'll need to spell it out using other, less powerful words.
> the UN, can define "genocide" any way [they] want
The sheer irony and complete lack of self-awareness of saying this while the treaty that defines the very term Genocide is a UN treaty, and the court that rules whether any particular instance of a suspected genocide is actually a genocide is a UN court.
It's Genocide as long as it's not Israel doing it, otherwise, "Yawn".
> You'll need to spell it out using other, less powerful words.
Ok. I will spell it out for you:
Israel and its governments are collective murderers, a murderer is someone who takes the life of another for gain or for fun. Israel's mass murderers dropped the TNT equivalent of 2 Hiroshima bombs on an area the size of 1/2 of Newyork, according to an estimate done in **November**. The supporters of those mass murderers are cheering on or minimizing this collective crime while pretending that Genocide is a big scary word that is unwarranted to describe what's happening.
You say "UN Treaty" and "UN Court" as if those terms convey broad respect and legitimacy. They don't. The UN is slightly more relevant than was the League of Nations, but not by much, and many of it treaties are as dead as Kellog-Briand.
Approximately nobody who matters ever says "I used to believe [X], but the UN says that's wrong so I guess I'm wrong". Or even "...so I guess I better not do it or the UN will come after me". They just cite the UN as an authority when it happens to say something they already agreed with.
It didn't have to be that way. The UN could have limited its membership to democracies, or at least not let the dictatorships have a veto on the Security Council. But here we are.
No, because neither you nor anyone else in this thread seems to have defined the difference between war and genocide. Please don't link to someone else's polemic, just state what definition you are using that includes the Gaza war and excludes most other wars. Then some logical discussion is actually possible.
On the other hand, even if you have a coherent definition, most people screaming genocide are literally just referencing people being killed. Over and over just a repeat of the current death toll and the word "genocide". So they like John Schilling says, really do just mean war.
This is what I hate more than anything else about the anti-Israel movement. If you think all war is evil then say *that*. Condemn all wars consistently not just the ones Israel does. If you think all ethnic or religious states are evil then say that, and condemn all the Muslim states *at the same time* as condemning the sole Jewish one. And so on and so on. I can't tell if Israel is doing any things that other states aren't. It's certainly possible they are, but close-to-literally every opponent of Israel has absolutely no interest in whether they are or not, and makes entirely clear that the sole relevant consideration for them is whether it's Israel doing it.
("You" in the above paragraph is the generic you.)
International law isn't defined by the ICJ and ICC either, because international law doesn't exist.
I have absolutely had it with this consensus fiction. Especially one that by definition only ever binds the states that least need to be bound by it--i.e. democracies with some concern for human rights.
When the ICC can declare that Islamic countries persecuting Christians or stoning rape victims to death is illegal, and those things actually *stop*--or if they don't stop, the World Police makes them stop and arrests everyone involved--then we can talk about international law.
Morality and ethics are based upon constellations of factors beyond mere mindless body count. Two deaths are not inherently twice as bad as one death. It depends entirely on who's dying, and why. And that says nothing about the moral culpability of those doing the killing. It is arguably more immoral on the part of the actor for a 17 year old girl to get raped and killed by a bloodthirsty savage than two children getting blown apart by a bomb because they're being used as human shields by the cousin of the aforementioned bloodthirsty savage.
Wow. Just...wow, are you *actually* saying calling a rapist-murderer a bloodthirsty savage is...unfairly dehumanising? The poor rapist, he's a victim, just like colonised peoples. It's not like he could have, you know, *not* committed the rape. It's not like he's a human being with any control over his violent animal impulses. How "dehumanising" to treat a Gazan like a human being!
I've read and re-read your comment, and the only logical possibilities are that you literally are saying the above, or that you didn't read the comment you're replying to and quoting.
No, that's not what Peter is saying, Peter's comment is so blindingly obvious that I can find no explanation for not getting it other than bad faith.
What Peter is saying is that the very enlightenment principles that Israel endlessly and tirelessly claims it's representing holds that Collective Punishment is not a thing that civilized people do, a rapist is punished by being caught and tried, then being found guilty, then being given a sentence. He (or she) is not punished by indiscriminately bombing the approximate 365 KM^2 he's living in and extracting a death toll of 10K-15K children, among others.
The ubiquitous "Human Shields" apologia is just a general purpose argument against any military being in the midst of its civilian population at all. I can equally well say that nuking an entire US state is moral and justifiable because the US puts airbases next to population centers, thus using them as human shields. Or, for that matter, Hezbollah bombing of North Israel is entirely justified: After all, there are IDF bases there, so the IDF was using northern Israelis as human shields, therefore any Israeli civilian casualties are entirely on Israel. (I don't believe this, of course, I'm just illustrating the kind of madness you will get if you were completely honest about the "Human Shield" style of thinking".)
(1) The archetypal October 7th rapist is a bloodthirsty savage.
(2) It is (*arguably*) less immoral to bomb two children in order to kill the cousin of that bloodthirsty savage.
Note only the rapist was called a savage; his "cousin" was not.
My reply to Peter takes no position on (2) because Peter's comment didn't either; he solely objected to the use of the phrase "bloodthirsty savage". The only possible interpretations of this, as far as I can see, are
(A) He didn't properly read Skull's comment, and misread Skull as calling the relatives of the rapist themselves savages.
(B) He is objecting to calling a rapist a savage.
Can you explain the flaw (let alone the bad faith) in this logic, because as far as I can tell it's airtight?
Coming back late: Why should I, when I think you weren't making a point other than "Rah rah outgroup bad, 15000 murdered children ok!"
Your world view is so divorced reality as I see it and that can be seen on hundreds of thousands of videos, photos, and reports that I can't really say much to it. I could listen and nod at your post all I want, but then I can go on twitter and watch a video of IDF troops in a van on the west bank pull up to a bus stop, open the door, and point blank shoot a 12 year old and two 15 year olds in the head, then drive away.
I can read the ISREALIE reports on the rapes perpetrated on Palestinian detainees, the majority of which were never punished and never even investigated.
This is the reality of the situation as recognized by Israel and Palestine and anyone with eyes to see.
Ehhh, I dislike the moral panic about Colombia and other universities as much as the next Pro-Palestinian, and I think the heavy-handed treatment of a bunch of early 20s kids is insane, but English Haaretz (which I trust more than any source on this war) reports people standing next to Pro-Israeli counter-protestors and holding a sign that reads "Al-Qassam's next target" with an arrow pointing to the Pro-Israeli protestors, that is quite clearly, if not outright antisemitic, then beyond the pale and an explicit call for violence that is completely unnecessary. Haaretz also reports chants to the tunes of "Destroy Tel Aviv" or "Bomb Tel Aviv" (which, despite being okay by the same supposed standards of those arguing that the destruction in Gaza is totally okay because "iTs WaR", is not okay by me).
It's hard to evaluate the truth value of claims containing "most" and "a lot" and "few", but I'm assuming that the kind of environment where a protestors feel safe enough to do things this unhinged is overall very readily accepting of antisemitic chants. Yes, the Jewish protestors and Passover chants are very interesting counterexamples, but Naturi Karta are known to attend Holocaust skepticism conferences in Iran, so the presence of Jews in an event accused of antisemitism is not necessarily a smoking gun either way. I advise against throwing "False Flags" into the mix, it makes it harder to really evaluate responsibility and accountability.
I don't think it's enlightening or interesting to point to the Pro-Israel media (especially Times of Israel, who are a Bibi-ist idea of what a centrist is: A slightly less bigoted rightist. Every third comment section on this newspaper is slurs against Arabs and dehumanization of Palestinians), and then say: "See? They're lying. That's why our side are angels".
The Pro-Palestinian side are not angels, and that's entirely normal and ok. Haaretz - a completely different thing than Times of Israel or any newspaper I have seen covering the war - reported what I said. It also reported many other instances of calling for Tel Aviv to be bombed, chants in support of Hamas, support for the Black Saturday, etc....
Even if the particular instance you're skeptical of is actually a false flag, what about all the others? You can't possibly explain away every chant and every instance of people saying dumb outrageous extra-overtone-window things as "Zionists in our midst".
As someone who has real-life contact with dozens of Pro-Palestinians and is being bombarded daily (against my wishes) by Pro-Palestinian TikTok, I do think we have a Pro-Hamas problem, and I think this problem stems from insufficient sympathy for Israelis. We're not going to solve this by pretending it doesn't exist, and not acknowledging it is a form of pretending it doesn't exist.
(The fact that the Pro-Israeli side happens to have a pro-genocide problem is not our concern, we're not pro-Israeli, if anything it hurts Israel's image more, which is good. Not that supporting genocide or Hamas is only bad insofar as it hurts the public image, it's bad in a myriad of ways, but I'm just pointing out that one practical consequence of massive numbers of Pro-Israel advocates being pro genocide is the sheer amount of legitimacy and support that Israel is hemorrhaging since the black 7th, and this is good from a Pro-Palestinian perspective. Now if only we can get our side to abide by the same standards that we ask for.)
I'm as pro-Israeli as it gets--you can search for my comments on this blog--but even I don't think supporting intifada is necessary anti-Semitic. I consider it a morally abhorrent call for terrorism against Israel, not necessarily an attack on Jews.
Oh for fuck's sake! We wouldn't even be having this conversation if they were all the same race. People Israelis because Israeli equals jewish equals white european colonizers. This is a trivially racial conflict and Hamas (whose actions these protesters have explicitly endorsed) is trivially anti-jew.
They're arabs. They're trivially not white. The psychotic anti-white left definitely doesn't consider them white, which is the most important thing anyway. The left views them as oppressed brown PEE OH SEE.
It's the exact same religion-into-nationality trick that Trump used to make his "Muslim Ban" pass Constitutional muster. It doesn't fool anyone; maybe that's the point.
I'm assuming most of the people killed in the intifada were Jews. This doesn't mean I'm in clear and present danger in Philadelphia, but I think being pro-intifada shows a certain lack of sympathy for Jews.
Are Jewish people entitled to a 'certain sympathy' that others are not? Genuinely - I'm not condoning the intifadas. But this seems to be an underlying assumption in US-based discourse, and I don't understand it.
Not a fan of jubilant calls for Intifada, especially coming from people who seem they didn't do the due homework* on what the 1st and the 2nd Intifadas actually entailed as actual matter of facts, but stretching "a certain lack of sympathy for Jews" into "antisemitism" is taking a non-central example of something bad and calling it the word used for the central example (e.g. harassing Jews, calling them slurs). This is the same fallacy that is used when calling fetus selection "Eugenics".
Just imagine if we can freely invert this, then we can say something like: Most people in favor of Israel's war in Gaza are Anti-Arab racists, that doesn't mean the Arabs around them are in a clear and present danger, but it does betray a certain lack of empathy for a nearly 330-million-numerous ethno-linguistic identity to support a war where no less than 20K innocents of them died, not counting the likely double this number dead under the rubble or dying of famine.
* : and the biggest sign of this is the unqualified call for "Intifada" itself, there was a first one and a second one, 2 radically different things and separated by 13 years.
I wrote up my thoughts on Minicircle as a recipient of the therapy, having it turned on, and then turned off (and soon turned on again), and a friend of both Max & the minicircle team who thinks highly of them all: https://x.com/patrissimo/status/1794493623947403750
I just went through the fiction portion of my library and separated the books I've read from the books I haven't read. I ended up with almost exactly the same number in each category. It turns out I have far more unread books than I expected.
In 2018, Males were 7.6 times as likely to be murder offenders as females, while blacks were 8.2 times as likely to be murder offenders as nonblacks: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls
Why, exactly, is it alright for women to be categorically afraid of men, have separate women's spaces, talk about how violent and evil men are, but having any kind of problem with insane rates of violence from black people is completely unacceptable?
Even if most people blacks kill are other blacks, and putting aside the black on white homicide rate is still *higher* than the white on white homicide rate, this fact is the way it is precisely because white people have to go to enormous lengths to avoid being around black people, something which is considered horribly, unforgivably racist. If women were willing/able to segregate themselves from men to the same extents whites are from blacks, then we should expect that male of female violence to be dramatically lower.
And no, for the umpteenth time, economic factors do not explain black violence, nor are these factors entirely or even mostly exogenous in the first place.
Of course, women are so catastrophically bad at statistics that they think bears are safer than men, so obviously none of this is based on any kind of statistical understanding whatsoever.
More on the protest drama on US campuses. Both pro- and anti-demonstration parents — as well as parents who've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their kid's education — are all hopping mad at college presidents and administrators (paywalled WSJ article below) You'd think that universities would have developed a playbook for demonstrations by now. I thought they were pretty common, but Kevin Drum says otherwise — and the cops are usually called when the demonstrators occupy buildings (second link)...
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/college-protests-parents-angry-e93bb2ef?mod=hp_lead_pos7
https://jabberwocking.com/when-you-occupy-university-buildings-cops-are-called/
I think Kevin Drum's examples are almost irrelevant, and that the primary point of comparison is going to be BLM from 4 years ago. Not just because these are young people with no perspective, but also because we all seem to be losing our collective memory and developing the attention span of gnats.
On the left, I think it's a matter of not having the administration look the other way and treat them with kid gloves, the way that happened 4 years ago. They expected to play by the same unwritten set of rules as back then, and are squawking loudly as they find out that they no longer have privilege. Alternatively, compare to the paradigmatic case of an upper-middle class black man from a good neighborhood who never had a problem with police, but then gets pulled over while driving through a bad neighborhood, and is treated like a resident of the bad neighborhood. "Galvanizing" might be the word. It's going to be interesting to see whether this generation of leftists will develop a distrust of "official" power structures, now that they've viscerally experienced how their interests are not always the same.
On the right, I think a lot of people had been used to never succeeding, and are now emboldened to push for everything that they saw the other side get. Sadly, it seems that a bunch of them are abandoning free speech principles and embracing "who, whom", but that appears to be the normal state of humanity. :-(
And I think the universities are stuck, because they alternate between claiming to enforce the rules as written (as when testifying before Congress) and relaxing the rules for their favorite sides, and now they're being forced to make choices while under the public eye. I'm surprised that more aren't acting like Northwestern, or simply tolerating the protests as is ("as are"?). That probably means my mental model of university administrators was inaccurate.
>On the left, I think it's a matter of not having the administration look the other way and treat them with kid gloves, the way that happened 4 years ago. They expected to play by the same unwritten set of rules as back then, and are squawking loudly as they find out that they no longer have privilege.
It all boils down to the fact that hating white people is cool and doesn't threaten people in power, but hating jews does
No different with Kanye, there's virtually nothing he couldn't have gotten away with saying about white people, but once he started talking about jews it was game over
This comment applies just as well in the context of homeless encampments as it does in the context of protestor encampments.
Oh my. Nvidia should start naming its chips after tulip varietals. "In a presentation earlier this month, the venture-capital firm Sequoia estimated that the AI industry spent $50 billion on the Nvidia chips used to train advanced AI models last year, but brought in only $3 billion in revenue." *
* From behind the WSJ paywall: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/a-peter-thiel-backed-ai-startup-cognition-labs-seeks-2-billion-valuation-998fa39d
Could you use a little highly intellectual distraction from one thing or another?
If my reaction is typical, it's impossible to think about anything else while trying to understand the section about Hegel.
Why Marx was not a cabalist.
The Communist Manifesto considered as classic Gothic fiction. Vampires and specters and all that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n48uX6jjGlY&ab_channel=ESOTERICA
I just watched that. Brilliant!
Anyone else enjoying the new Velma? Can't wait for season 3!
Is this a joke?
No one ever jokes on the internet, Hammond.
OC ACXLW Sat May 4 The Hipster Effect and AI Self-Alignment
Hello Folks! We are excited to announce the 64th Orange County ACX/LW meetup, happening this Saturday and most Saturdays after that.
Host: Michael Michalchik Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests) Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place (949) 375-2045 Date: Saturday, May 4 2024 Time 2 pm
Conversation Starters:
The Hipster Effect: Why Anti-Conformists Always End Up Looking the Same: A study examines how the desire to be different can paradoxically lead to conformity among anti-conformists. Using a mathematical model, the author shows how, under certain conditions, efforts by individuals to oppose the mainstream result in a synchronized and homogeneous population.
Text and audio link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/28/136854/the-hipster-effect-why-anti-conformists-always-end-up-looking-the-same/ Full paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.8001
Questions for discussion: a) How might the "hipster effect" described in the paper relate to other examples of emergent synchronization in complex systems, such as financial markets or neuronal networks? b) The paper discusses several conditions that give rise to the hipster effect, such as a preference for non-conformity and the presence of delay in recognizing trends. What other social or psychological factors might contribute to this phenomenon? c) Can insights from the study of the hipster effect be applied to understanding political polarization and the dynamics of contrarian movements? What strategies might help maintain diversity of opinions in these contexts?
Self-Regulating Artificial General Intelligence: This paper examines the "paperclip apocalypse" concern that a superintelligent AI, even one with a seemingly innocuous goal, could pose an existential threat by monopolizing resources. The author argues that, under certain assumptions about recursive self-improvement, an AI may refrain from enabling the development of more powerful "offspring" AIs to avoid the same control problem that humans face with AIs.
Text link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k0wulhBo0syW9n-qNqcFE_gYgh_L54TH/view?usp=sharing
Questions for discussion: a) The paper assumes that an AI can only self-improve by employing specialist "offspring" AIs with targeted goals. How plausible is this assumption, and what implications would a more integrated model of AI self-improvement have for the argument? b) The author suggests that the key to controlling potential negative impacts of AI is to limit their ability to appropriate resources. What legal, economic, or technical mechanisms might be used to enforce such limitations? c) If advanced AIs are indeed "self-regulating" in the manner described, what are the potential benefits and risks of relying on this property as a safety measure? How might we verify and validate an AI's self-regulation capabilities?
Walk & Talk: We usually have an hour-long walk and talk after the meeting starts. Two mini-malls with hot takeout food are readily accessible nearby. Search for Gelson's or Pavilions in the zip code 92660. Share a Surprise: Tell the group about something unexpected that changed your perspective on the universe. Future Direction Ideas: Contribute ideas for the group's future direction, including topics, meeting types, activities, etc.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gp-Ejbr3O2ZCVwXwaKXxZJ7tX2snVxOwZ8hpZo-MjuM/edit?usp=sharing
I haven't posted a high-ranking Israeli government member declaring genocidal things for a long time, but quite amusingly, just right after I see a bunch of comments down thread arguing that what Israel is doing and will continue to do in Gaza is totally not a Genocide, I open Haaretz [1] and see this:
> Israel's Far-right Minister Smotrich Calls for 'No Half Measures' in the 'Total Annihilation' of Gaza
Mmm, interesting. Smotrich is the Finance Minister of Israel, and a member of the security cabinet that have formed after October 7th to oversee the war. His latest news is bitching about Moody's downgrading Israel's rating in early April, and before that attending a conference about resettling Gaza in late January.
Let's see what he has to say, perhaps those who say what's happening in Gaza is an early-stage Genocide will all the usual writing on the walls are really silly and hysterical and nothing of that sort is ever happening.
> Bezalel Smotrich called on Monday for annihilating Israel's enemies, saying "There are no half measures. [The Gazan cities of] Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total annihilation. 'You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven' – there's no place under heaven."
Huh.
[1] https://archive.ph/2CeDm
Congratulations, you've just proven that Hamas is a genocidal organization!
Yeah, this guy seems like a genocidal monster.
I will point out, though, that based on the article, he is so genocidal that he criticizes Netanyahu for not being genocidal enough. His opinions are not representative of even the government of the state of Israel. I don't know much about Israeli internal politics, but I did know that one of the big criticisms of Netanyahu was that he was willing to be in a coalition government with extremists who had views so abhorrent that other Israeli politicians considered them to be anathema. I can only hope that Smotrich is one of the people they meant.
He's the sort of person I don't trust Wikipedia to be unbiased about, but if you have an uncontrollable urge to stoke your rage for a few minutes, take a look, I think there's some worse stuff there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezalel_Smotrich
I can condemn Netanyahu for associating with Smotrich, but I don't think Smotrich's public statements are an accurate description of Israeli policy toward Gaza. (Although it's bad enough reading about some of the policies that Smotrich does control.)
Well, there are always extremists to the extreme side of the extremists. I bet that there were those in a certain Austrian Painter's government who were also mad that Jews were being forced to labor in camps and given food first before the chambers, and not dealt with right away using the Sturmgewehr 44. Those people didn't represent Austrian Painter's government, and that's entirely irrelevant.
Right. Looking at the views of an extreme member of a group is not a shortcut to determining what the group's overall policy is. It doesn't matter if it's extreme in a way that we don't like, or extreme in a way that we do like.
Especially when it comes to things like coalition governments. If you remember the UK's Tory/LibDem coalition government from 2010-2015, it wouldn't be accurate to look at the most "extreme" Liberal Democrat, and judge the coalition's overall policy based on that.
I'm honestly just surprised that more pro-Israel people haven't switched their rhetoric from "this isn't genocide" to "genocide is justifiable in this scenario." The latter would at least be immune to people pointing out facts to the contrary.
Facts being one guy who is mad that the government isn't doing what he wants?
Ah, the glories of the modern world where AI makes our lives so much easier, by automating our work it reduces workload, makes us more productive, and means we get more money *and* leisure time!
If you're an email scammer, that is 😀
An old, rarely-used,. and we *know* it's compromised work email address got the usual "pay up or else" blackmail attempt (as an aside, if I was ever tempted to use Bitcoin or other crypto, the fact that it's mainly touted by these scummy little extortionists would put me right off; goodness, whyever do ordinary people think Decentralised Blockchain Libertarian No Mo' Fiat is criminal trash?)
But this one is keeping up with the times:
"You've heard that the Internet is a dangerous place, infested with malicious links and hackers like me?
Of course, you've heard, but what's the point in it if you are so dismissive of your internet security and don't care what websites you visit?
Times have changed. You read about AI, judging by your browser history, and still didn't understand anything?
Technologies have stepped far forward, and now hackers like me use artificial intelligence.
Thanks to it, I can get not only access to your webcam and record your fun with highly controversial video (I recorded it also, but now that's not the point), but also to all your devices and not only yours.
And I saved a special sauce for this dish. I went further and sent malicious links to all your contacts from your account."
Needless to say, nobody was engaging in naughty no-no fun with this account, but that of course doesn't stop these criminals. Though I almost admire the sheer brass neck of the sign-off:
"Hasta La Vista, Baby!
P.S. Almost forgot. Finally learn what incognito tabs, two-factor authentication, and the TOR browser are, for God's sake!"
*This* is the real safety risk AI proponents should be worrying about - that it gets the same tainted reputation as crypto due to scammers and scandals like this.
When AI starts pulling vast amounts of wealth from the ether, in a way the blockchain can't, I think this type of comment will start to look quite anemic.
When magic AI performs the magic trick of producing magic money from nowhere, and I'll get pie in the sky when I die.
Some people are going to get rich out of AI, the guys sitting on the boards of the companies getting places on the new AI advisory committee for the US government. Not you and not me, though.
I kinda think Marx was about 150 years too early. Assuming AGI doesn't kill us all, collective ownership seems like the only ethical way to handle a magic wealth fountain.
Someone still has to decide who gets to tell the AI to build them a beautiful Malibu beach house or San Francisco luxury apartment, and tell the AI killbots to keep the hoi polloi out. All the nice dachas in the old Soviet Union, and their North Korean equivalents today, are "collectively owned", but some people are more collective than others.
Yes, it's a problem. Humanity has a bad track-record of deciding how to make collective decisions. The market can't handle this. And turning the decisions over to the AIs brings in another set of risks.
Ethics and making money have little to do with one another. Everyone is jumping aboard the gravy train as early as they can (see Sam Altman) because whoever gets there first and gets established as "you license your AI from this company" is going to be the one with their mouth to the spigot of the money fountain. They all know it, that's why principles are going out the window in the pursuit of "Us, pick us! Us first!"
Collective ownership can go whistle for itself, it's what makes the shareholders (who are often large institutions so they have the power) happy. See recent story about our telecoms provider Eir (long story, they used to be government owned way back but have been privatised and sold on several times since):
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0420/1444575-what-companies-can-learn-from-customer-complaints/
"The first thing they need to do, according to Michael Killeen of the CX Academy, is stop focusing on shareholders' needs over customer needs.
"When we look at the bottom five performing brands in our CX table, they are brands known to be fixated with shareholder value, while the top ten companies are genuinely committed to helping their customers every day."
He believes a customer focused approach is the reason why credit unions have come first in the CX report each year over the past 9 years.
The second thing the telco sector needs to do is to focus on existing customers rather than continually chasing more new customers.
"Unfortunately, this is linked to the shareholder issue, as the drive for new customer is partially driven by stock exchange valuations that place a higher value on annual figures for new customer acquisition rather than the longevity of existing customers who stay with brands over the years," Mr Killeen said."
Stock market that sets your share price, which is how your company lives or dies, doesn't care that you are lovey-dovey with your workers and collective ownership and worker representation on the board; it cares about "line go up?". If you're giving away shares of the profit to everyone, why would an investor sink their capital into your company? Return the value only to the shareholders, and maximise that value, and you get investment. More investment, more growth. More growth, the economy thrives.
Not *you* the ordinary guy, necessarily, the *economy*. That's the measure.
Conveniently for me, I can maintain an ironic detachment, because I'm a Doomer. :-)
I think the whole AI bubble is going to burst soon. We won't have to worry about the extinction of humanity. Instead, we're going to see the bottom drop of NVIDIA and the companies in its tech ecosystem similar to the Dot Com bust.
I don't believe in post-scarcity (I mean, we're already living in post-scarcity if you like to look at it, since the mantra about 'ordinary people are richer than ever and can live better than a mediaeval emperor' often gets trotted out) or dystopia or utopia.
Basically "more of the same, only in new configurations".
Are average people richer than they were 250 years ago? If so, why?
https://cepr.shorthandstories.com/history-poverty/
NB. I don't know how they calculated the GINI coefficient of pre-industrialized societies. Maybe they explain somewhere in the report, though. I just skimmed it.
In terms of PPP, heck yes, there's no way I could buy a smartphone even 50 years ago, not with all the wealth in the world. Not that it would have been useful without cell networks and the Internet, but the level of functionality was barely even imaginable.
Globally, averaging all 8 billion of us now, vs. the ~0.8 billion around 1774, probably, maybe? It depends a lot on China and India.
I guess I'm a bit late for this Open Thread, but let's try anyway.
Is there anyone expert on nuclear energy who has an opinion on this company https://www.newcleo.com/ and their reactor design? As a scientist working in another field the website seems a bit too oriented towards marketing than explaining the science...
Here is a brief overview of the LFR design (which they are using) along with some links to papers on the topic: https://www.gen-4.org/gif/jcms/c_9358/lfr
Their plan is to have a reactor ready for sale in 2031, and I suspect we just have to wait and see whether they can overcome the engineering challenges required to make that happen. They plan to generate the fuel used by their reactors, which is another project that could run into problems.
In addition to the technical issues, there are also political challenges to deploying nuclear power. They need to convince regulators that their product is safe, and then convince power companies to buy in quantity in order to achieve the economies of scale they predict will occur. Perhaps this won’t be much of an issue; by 2031 concerns about global warming may overwhelm the concerns that the public has traditionally had about nuclear power.
Late to the party again, but hopefully a few of you find this. My second Long Forum post is up, summarising the most nourishing and thought provoking long form content that I stumbled upon over the previous month. Lots of biology, economics and culture to feast upon.
https://open.substack.com/pub/haldanebdoyle/p/the-long-forum-april-2024?r=f45kp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Do Jews have Jewish privilege? If not, how are they so much more successful than most other groups in the US?
Because the unsuccessful Jews die?
Any group can become more successful on average by simply removing all the below-average members. Few groups jump at the chance. Some groups, like the Jews, have no choice.
OK I'll answer seriously if nobody else will.
Being part of any group has certain advantages and certain disadvantages relative to being a part of certain other groups. There are certainly privileges idiosyncratic to being Jewish, there's also disadvantages.
In terms of why they are more successful than most other groups, a combination of (statistically) higher intelligence and ingroup bias which leads them to receive preferential treatment from other members of the same group.
"OK I'll answer seriously if nobody else will."
Why would you do such a thing? *Never* feed a troll. Before or after midnight.
I don't think he's a troll, I think he's intelligently probing the concept of "privilege" as it is used in current-year discourse.
I think it might be done more effectively on another forum where people have less pre-existing skepticism to the "privilege" idea. But he'd be banned immediately on those sorts of forums, so maybe this is the most reasonable forum.
Do you feel that's broadly true of the many, many provocative throwaway comments he makes on multiple topics on every Open Thread? He's a troll even if, just this once, he made you think about something.
And you don't feed trolls. If they happen to be talking about something you want to discuss, there will be other opportunities to have that discussion.
I dunno man. I'd never noticed this particular commenter before this thread, so I searched for all his comments in the thread and didn't think they were particularly bad.
I hope you're right.
A good reply to a difficult question.
I’d like to add, that not all subgroups of the Jewish community are more successful than baseline.
For me this indicates that the observed success is probably a cultural trait.
Kiras Joel is a good example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryas_Joel,_New_York
For a Wikipedia article, this was some interesting drama.
It's from drinking the blood of gentile children, right Hammond?. Duh.
I think traditionally it was baked into the matzah, and its removal is why modern matzah tastes horrible.
Nah, drinking children’s blood is old fashioned. Today’s Jews prefer to extort money and power from the rest of us using their invisible giant space lasers.
/sarcasm
Come on Hammond, this schtick is getting old.
How is he not banned here? Seriously. What possible value does he add to this or any other discourse?
Scott has a banning setup-and-teardown cycle of approximately 2 to 3 months, and that was before the Twins. No matter how bad or how flagrantly you violate the rules, the ban warms up in 2 months and discharges at once, taking about 10 or 15 commenters with it.
I keep suggesting he hire someone to manage reports, or allow the group here to develop some system for handling godawful posts.
Awful opinions on the Israel-Palestine issue or not, Scott Aronson seems to have a concept of a "Blog Council" formed by some of the long (founding-era) readers, and this council does... I'm not sure what exactly because I don't follow Aronson regularly, but I at least remember that he gives it authorities to decide who should be banned.
Scott Alexander's moderation rulebook seems to be optimized for his old blog, which I lurked but didn't participate in during its last years. On that blog, the trolls and bad faith commenters seem to have come in large waves separated by long peace times, whenever Scott writes on a particular topic they come out from whatever place the blog was linked in one too many times and attack at once. Some of the trolls and bad faith commenters seemed to be coming from his own comment section: the more woke faction that was gradually radicalized over 2015 to 2018 and started resenting the blog more and more.
This doesn't seem to be the case with Substack, firmly in the way of the main stream of the internet. Here the trolls and bad faith commenters are a constant trickle, coming in smaller quantities but more consistently and continuously. With this type of troll pool, you can't take a rest for 2 months.
I recommend those who object to his presence --- I am one of them --report every single comment he makes. Anyone who is a paid subscriber might want to raise the issue on a hidden thread, too.
Later edit: Ascend objected to my calling for people to report every comment,
and I agree that's not fair. So I'm amending my call: IF Hammond makes a claim with no reasoning or data to back it up, or backed up by a link to junk data, AND you think the comment is grounds for banning, THEN I hope you will take the trouble to report him. Scott does eventually respond to reports, though with a huge lag time.
I strongly disagree with "report every single comment he makes". This is the sort of toxic harrassment that ruins so much of the internet. Report the comments you have a problem with, not the ones you don't because you don't like who made them.
(For what it's worth, I don't object to his presence, though I understand why others might. I think he's got a single-issue obsession, but it's one that doesn't have much coverage here (or anywhere) while being something a fair number of people actually believe: I'd rather their beliefs be out in the open and subject to scrutiny rather than being driven into underground secrecy. And also, his top-level comments are usually lazy, but unlike say the bunch of pro-hamas trolls that Scott banned in January, he actually engages with replies to some extent.)
You're right, it's not reasonable to put out a call for people to report every comment he makes, and I'll go back and modify mine. On the other hand, many of his comments are reportable, because he making broad claims about sensitive matters either with no data or reasoning to support them, or with weak and inaccurate data. His linked evidence for his repeated question "why do Jews hate whites" is a screen shot of 20 books by authors with Jewish names with titles that could be taken as broadly critical of whites. This is non-evidence. First of all, you could probably find 20 books or 20 books by people with Chinese names criticizing US parenting. You can start with Tiger Mom. Is that evidence that Chinese-Americans Fucking Hate White Parents? And I looked up 3 of the books inHammond's screen shot out of curiosity and they don't support the case that the authors hate gentiles. One with "white trash" in the title was about poor whites as an unfairly ignored group. One book was a series of interviews about with small children from well-off white families about black people, investigating their early attitudes and ideas about blacks and how they evolve. It did not sound like an angry, accusatory book. And there was no mention in the reviews I read of Jews. It seems entirely possible that there were Jewish kids among those interviewed in the study. Saying the interviews were with white kids would not imply to most people that none were Jewish. I checked another of Hammond's links in earlier This Group Sux posts and it was nearly as weak. Others who have checked some of his links have stated here that they do not say what he claims they do.
I don't object at all to discussions here of the topics and issues Hammond raises. But he is a terrible representative of the point of view he speaks from.
So I will modify my post to say that I personally will report every future Hammond post where he's backing up his points with junk evidence, and that I hope any who shares my view them takes the trouble to report them.
Hidden threads? Are those still a thing?
Yes. We usually have one a week, though sometimes Scott instead puts up a subscribers'-only post. Seems like it's been several weeks now since we had one. I think probably Scott's just distracted by parenting 2 infants and has lost track of how long it's been since we had one.
It’s been a while. The last one was March 22.
Agreed.
I think a main driver of your loss of readership must be substrack's abysmal interface. The website is ridiculously slow (particularly on mobile where it is almost unusable).
I can imagine many people dont want to subscribe with the website being so poor (as I assume many of the reader friendly versions of this lack all subscriber content).
I don't understand why substack is so crap. They don't seem to provide much to you, other than presumably handling payment and providing this objectively terrible website, and presumably they take a large cut of payment.
Compared to your old website, or hacker news it is just night and day.
> I assume many of the reader friendly versions of this lack all subscriber content
FYI, I created a browser extension that improves performance considerably while preserving the comment section. You can install it on Chrome (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/astral-codex-eleven/lmdipmgaknhfbndeaibopjnlckgghemn) or Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/astral-codex-eleven/).
I agree that ideally Substack should be fixing this on their end, but since it seems like they don't care, you might want to give the extension a try.
I've added your extension, but I needed to reload the pages. I think the page is loading faster, but I need a new comment to see how that aspect goes.
Hey, don't underestimate the achievement of making a 12th gen gaming laptop with 16 GB of RAM and an 8 GB RTX 4060 crawl to his absolute knees when rendering a bunch of hierarchal textboxes, it's all done with a 30-year-old tech stack that has been optimized to death for thousands of man hours by an army of smart and highly paid engineers in at least 3 different trillion-dollar companies.
How do they do it? It's driving me nuts. How do they make text heavier and more sluggish on a machine that handles Cyberpunk 2077 on high just fucking fine?
I have 32 GB of RAM, and a full astralcodexten page refreshes at the speed of a heavily-laden three-legged donkey toiling up a steep mountain pass! But then I am based in the UK, so maybe it is the trans-Atlantic hop that takes much of the time.
Would it be possible to make an alternative frontend for Substack, similarly to how https://www.greaterwrong.com/ is an alternative for https://www.lesswrong.com/ ?
I think it would be useful even if it was read-only and without subscriber content.
Does anyone here subscribe to "Blocked and Reported"? It looks like they have open threads that reach about 3,000 comments. I'd be interested to hear if the problems we have are the same there, or whether it's the special modifications that Substack made for Scott.
These are the two main substacks I read, and it is incomprehensible why ACX's comment section is so much worse. (technically, not culturally. this is the best forum on the internet.) I've gotten dozens of webpage crashes on this side, and zero on B&R. And I probably spend twice as much time over there. I wasn't aware that they were making special concessions for SA's sake, but that would explain it. Too bad they did such a horrible job of it.
Thanks, it's good to know it's clearly something related to ACX.
The like button being hidden is one, I believe Scott mentioned some other things were being created for just him, but I don't remember what and I don't think I read what they could have been.
That's one change I wish could be implemented everywhere. It's a terrible incentive, it has no business being anywhere there might be a serious conversation.
Delivering a few megabytes of text (at most) is really not a difficult engineering problem. It boggles my mind how substack manages to be so egregiously inefficient at this.
yeah, my engagement with the site plummeted since substack. I remain subscribed only out of appreciation since SSC, and wanting to support a voice like Scott's; but I do loathe the change.
Huh, I have a crappy old Moto smartphone which chokes on some apps but likes Substack's just fine. (Since the apps it doesn't like are for things I value less than Substack this has seemed like a net plus.)
For me Substack is worse as a web page than I am used to while browsing via this 1gig fiber broadband feed wired directly into a gamer-caliber desktop PC. It acts as if it's caching, poorly, which there is zero reason for it to be doing. I literally get a smoother Substack response on that half-dead Moto.
It was very fitting that when the comment of section broke and kicked me back to the start, yours was the first comment I saw. Even typing in this textbox somehow manages to be laggy.
> textbook
textbox?
Text box, sorry
Does anyone know of any real life success stories about companies using feature engineering to increase customer contact rates? Preferably something with a news article in a mainstream source. I’m trying to convince some people to dump real time weather reporting and longitude information into a bunch of tables.
As in show the weather on your website to drive traffic even if your website isn’t weather related?
More like “train a model that when the weather is this temperature and the forecast is sunny, rainy, etc” it has this average impact on customer connection rate.
A request for a Latin translation. I've always like the phrase "Strong like bull, smart like tractor," and I think it would be a good motto. Can someone translate this into Latin for me? (I used Google Translate which gave "Fortis velut taurus, sagax velut tractor," which doesn't seem right.
Using Google translate, I tried something along the lines of "Bull's strength, chariot's dexterity" (bearing in mind the Romans didn't have tractors). I think that preserves the sense of what you wish the saying to convey.
The result was "Fortitudo tauri, Dexteritas currus", which is slightly more pithy without those two "veluts". Whether the word "currus" is appropriate, I leave you to decide.
I'd go with "Potentia tauri, sapientia tractoris." "Power of a bull, wisdom of a tractor." Tractoris is a fake word but you're not going to get a real one. There is tractator but that has other implications. You could also go with "potentia tauri, sapientia aratoris" which means "strength of a bull, wisdom of a plough puller." But a plough puller could be a person instead of a machine.
I dropped the like because the Germanic languages' use of simile doesn't have an exact match in Latin. Velut is the proper translation for 'like' because medieval Latin speaking Germans/English/etc would use it that way. But it doesn't sound like actual Classical Latin. I switched out fortis (which does mean strength) for potentia because I think it sounds better with sapientia. Sagax means perceptive more than smart, from sagire meaning to perceive. There isn't a good word for smart in Latin. You have to choose some kind of intelligence and sapientia is wisdom or skill. Which is presumably what tractors don't have.
I'll get the ball rolling - maybe (tam) potens quam taurus; (tam) prudens quam tractor? I'm stretching to get the original alliteration to work. Also I'm keeping in tractor with the modern meaning because it keeps the punchline.
Your original phrase has a bit of Latin-like pithiness to it, by removing two "a"s without changing the meaning. It might be nice to keep that, by getting it down to 4 words?
That's how I'm used to hearing it stated dropping the indefinite articles. As my old native born Russian prof used to say 'Articles, such nuisance.'
Yeah, I wish we'd gotten rid of articles, at least as well as we got rid of grammatical gender and inflection.
XWord clue
Billy the Kid used one in his name
Answer
DEFINITEARTICLE
I’m gonna say NYT mid summer 2010
Latin became a dead language around 750 AD, the tractor was invented in 1892. You might have to compromise.
"Tractor" is already a Latin word, it's based on the verb "to pull". We'l have to wait for an actual Latin scholar to tell us whether that's actually the correct word ending for "thing that pulls" or whether it's a weird half-English half-Latin hybrid but I'm sure there's a proper Latin version.
The Vatican has put out Latin dictionaries with new Latin words for the modern world. I don't have one, and don't know if they have "tractor", but worst comes to worst, we could just take an equivalent classical Greek word and use that as the basis for a new Latin word.
I want to know what the Latin for gooning is.
"Strong like bull, smart like...." uh I dunno, chariot maybe?
Can't remember which TV show it was, but one definitely opened with "He's as strong as an ox! (And as smart as one too.)"
The movie is about what would it be like if there was a civil war in the United States today and not as much about contemporary politics. It’s also very much a “war is bad” narrative.
So what are the two (or more) sides fighting over? Pineapple on pizza? If you're going to have a civil war, you have to have a *reason* for fighting one, and differences between the sides. The differences don't have to be huge, but they must be there, else why fight at all?
From over the pond, the most likely casus belli for a US civil war today would appear be a desire of some southern states, such as California or Texas, to secede from the Union and become independent.
I've no idea how likely that is in the foreseeable future, given how many recent immigrants in those states have left their home countries to settle in the US, so most would presumably wish to keep it thay way. But if it did ever happen, I can't imagine the Federal Government or the US Army taking it lying down.
Yeah, the problem is that the only reason anyone in Texas wants to secede is that they're afraid the rest of the country will be dominated by Californians, and the only reason anyone in California wants to secede is that they're afraid the rest of the country will be dominated by Texans. So there's no plausible way to get *both* Texas and California to secede - one one goes, the other just says "Good; I guess the United States of America belongs to people like us now".
The other problem is, our "states" haven't had the functionality of sovereign polities in over a century. They're critically dependent on the Federal Government for too many things, and don't have the skills or resources to take on those responsibilities on short notice, so they'd basically collapse if they tried to secede without the Feds holding their hand all the way. And I *think* most of them know that.
The Thick of It and Veep seemed to be able to portray endless political strife and conflict, down to a pretty granular level, without even mentioning a political leaning, let alone any policy.
They mentioned the President having an illegal third term so presumably it's about fighting a guy trying to become a dictator.
Not replying to the top level comment
And in any case, it's incoherent to walk about "what it would be like if there was a civil war in the United States today" *without* reference to contemporary politics. It's like you're talking about a civil war as if it were a random weather disaster, but how a civil war would play out today depends entirely on the political situation *today*. There's simply no conceivable way a civil war would occur anything like what is depicted in the movie.
Right, but if they covered the political aspect it would be 100% preachy leftist tirade. I haven't seen the movie but I'm pretty sure avoiding politics is a much better choice.
It would be interesting to have movie about a civil war initiated by worst of both sides, but I suppose it would need to be indie.
Are there any good live radio stations these days, specifically in the NYC area? By good, I mean interesting (not sports, NPR, shows with a GOP or Democrat axe to grind). I love listening to the radio as a medium but am often disappointed with the content of it.
I've always liked to have Bloomberg on. It's less political, nice and fairly anodyne business news most of the time.
Another solid station. Gives a good injection of wall-street perspective occasionally. And when something really big is going down in the country, they often have good live coverage without wacky hot takes. Just a bit too blood pressure-raising to listen to frequently. —- A plus is that their 1130 AM transmission is rather powerful… can pick it up here in Sussex County.
So they still do traffic?
They have prone on from somewhat of an ideological diversity...
I listen in a different party of the country and it's the most preferable.
Great suggestion, thank you.
I fondly remember jamming out to JM in the AM waiting for the middle school bus, and I now (20 yrs later!) occasionally listen to Clay Pidge’s Wake and Bake on the way to work. The music is not always… how do I say, something I understand, but the Pidge is so into it that it makes me listen a bit closer.
Scott and/or some of y'all would like this book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250225672/ademonhauntedland
A Demon-Haunted Land by Monica Black examines the phenomenon in Germany just after WWII, of a massive upswing in the number and prominence of witch trials and faith healers. Black makes a convincing case for mass hallucination and witch hysteria as a symptom of, and method of working out, societal trauma.
There was also a big upsurge in spiritualism and seances etc after WW1. I seem to recall Arthur Conan Doyle in the 1920s firmly believing that fairies existed, and making rather a fool of himself using photos he claimed were genuine to promote his spiritualist beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
WW2? Witch trials?
Shockingly, yes. *AFTER* WWII. 1950s and 60s. It's a fascinating book.
From the linked summary:
> Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder.
So rather than people being put on trial for witchcraft, people were put on trial for defamation, which is not the same thing and would happen in any modern secular court system depending on defamation standards. If saying "A shot B dead" without proof is illegal, saying "A killed B with a hex" (without proof, obviously) is likely also to be illegal.
As a German, I never have heard about this before. I suppose it could have happened, if you were living under Nazi propaganda for most of your adult life and suddenly that world view falls apart because you are soundly defeated by people you thought to be your inferiors, then you might start to question everything and end up in all kinds of strange epistemic places.
On the other hand, I am not sure that guilt about being complicit in the Shoa has much to do with it. The standard position of the perpetrator generation was denial. Almost nobody wanted to talk about it ca. 1945. It was up to the next generation to start talking about what horrors the Germans had committed, and establish the Erinnerungskultur. Still, I guess that the median German in 1945 might have been aware of claims of the SS committing mass murder and perhaps might also have felt that these claims were likely true, but it was very much not talked about.
The book remarks extensively on the "not talking about it" thing and makes a pretty reasonable case for the drastic uprise in disability (and subsequent faith healing) and witchcraft accusations as being a sort of spiritual outlet for a sublimated guilt.
"We don't talk about what we saw the doctor do to our neighbor in 1943, because at the time we were all complicit... but now every time I look at him I get a bad feeling... he might be a witch." And "I never, ever think about how I turned in my Jewish best friend's mother to the SS when she came to us for help, but for some reason now whenever I try to leave my house my legs don't work. But I've heard there's a guy who talks to god who can help people like me by asking god's forgiveness."
I couldn't find one with a quick search, but I believe there was also a great outpouring of New Age / alternative healing stuff in collapse-era Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia.
"Not talked about" and "not felt about" are two very different things. Indeed, adopting a strategy of not talking about something, and trying to make it socially costly for others to talk about it, is very often a coping response to feeling very bad (maybe guilty, maybe just traumatized) about something.
So I hardly think that "the standard position of the perpetrator generation was denial" shows that they didn't feel guilty about their complicity or inaction.
But surely most of them weren't complicit and didn't actually do anything like contribute to the holocaust. I don't feel guilty about the invasion of Iraq, though obviously that's comparing apples and oranges.
Apples and oranges is putting it very, very, very mildly. The persecution, dehumanization and murder of Jews took place both inside and outside of Germany, and was carried out on a massive scale right in front of the German populace. It's also a little odd to compare such a thing to an invasion, which, however misguided or reckless and ultimately disastrous it may have been, was an act of warfare at least theoretically directed against an enemy nation's military and leadership.
I think you're missing the point. If I didn't do X, why would I feel guilty about X? Whether X took place on the Moon or inside my house, whether it's an invasion or mass murder, why would I feel guilty about something I didn't do?
You only have to identify with the killers to feel the guilt afterward.
https://inews.co.uk/news/law-to-ban-politicians-from-lying-backed-by-two-thirds-of-public-poll-shows-3029610
Wales proposes a law punishing politicians for lying.
Free link: https://archive.ph/JVFfY
I am skeptical.
From my understanding, this will be mostly applied to statements of facts. If you can't convince the pubic about the falsehood of a factual claim, putting the issuer of the claim on trial instead will just make them look like a victim on top.
Trump voters don't vote for him because they believe that every word out of his mouth is the literal truth.
Also, I will be watching how uniformly this is enforced towards mainstream politicians who use false claims as an applause light. If every time some politician claims that something disproportionally affects women and is factually proven wrong, will they go to jail for it?
I was surprised by the article saying this has never been done before. It would be interesting to see it tried, though I don't expect good results.
Depends how lying is defined in practice. The one who makes the decision is the one who would be given the power to punish any politician.
Re follistatin gene therapy. Follistatin plays an Important role in reproduction. Yet, I’ve heard nothing about the impact of this therapy on fertility. Are people aware of this relationship? Anybody studying it?
It's definitely the case that a lot of drugstores (I'm in Philadelphia) have a good bit of their merchandise in locked glass cases-- you have to get a staff member to get something out if you want to buy it. I don't *think* skin lotion is one of the items locked away.
First I heard that stuff way being stolen in quantity by organized groups to be sold on ebay. This didn't seem crazy to me. but I never checked for what was on ebay.
Then I heard there was no evidence of organized groups stealing at scale.
Then I heard this was a conspiracy by the drug store chains to have an excuse for closing locations, though I don't know why they'd go to the expense when they can just close stores.
The food isn't locked down. CVS carries a lot of shelf stable food which presumably could be resold. The original claim wasn't about desperate people stealing, it was about a few people willing to steal a lot, and a larger number people looking for bargains.
Anyone know what's going on?
In California, there is ample evidence of organized retail theft, and of increased individual shoplifting.
I have read credible arguments from, among others, business/finance blogger Wolf Richter that drugstore chains have been using the (incontrovertibly real) increase in retail theft as an excuse to close stores that they would have closed anyway for the usual reasons: general cost-cutting plus a rational response to the fact that brick-and-mortar drug chains are getting murdered by online pharmacies. (Why do they need an excuse? Because when drugstore chains close pharmacies there is inevitably an outcry from the affected communities accusing them of heartlessly removing a vital lifeline for the poor and elderly, etc., which damages the brand.)
But of course, *sigh*, this is a culture war issue. So if you're a drooling commie SJW, you are required to pretend that the marked increase in retail theft is all in our imaginations, and that retailers of all kinds have invested real shareholder money into thick glass cases, additional security guards, separate health & beauty sections with a separate cash register and theft detectors, and so on, as an elaborate show to make marginalized people look bad. And if you're a perfectly rational Bayesian prior updater, you're required to pretend that every CVS is a constant war zone, picked clean of goods at all times, and that it's unthinkable for corporations to lie or fudge the truth about their reasons for closing stores. So here we are.
I explained why a corporation in the business of running brick-and-mortar pharmacies would feel the need to offer an excuse. it's hardly "deranged" to suppose that such a company might do so. Such companies quite commonly do so (whether the excuses offered are truthful or not is irrelevant, of course). Indeed, to suggest that public-facing corporations do not offer justifications to the public for their potentially unpopular decisions is...well, in an effort to turn down the temperature here I'll just say that it's a bit out of touch with the easily observable actions of many, many corporations taking many, many unpopular actions over the years--especially grocery stores or pharmacies closing locations.
The reason I commented in the first place is because Walgreens in particular publicly claimed that it was closing stores in San Francisco due to shoplifting.. Whether or not that was the real reason, it is incontrovertible that that corporation--which demonstrably exists and is traded on the NASDAQ--publicly offered an excuse for its closing of specific stores rather than simply closing them without comment.
>Of course a company will say why it's closing a store
OK, we're making progress: we're at least back into a model of reality where companies do, contra your first comment, actually quite frequently offer public justifications for actions such as store closings.
>What's deranged
That's a strong term, and you've used it twice now. Is it particularly important to you that your interpretation of the facts before you (including the ones that I've had to bring to your attention) in this case be the correct one?
> is to insist that somehow saying "we are closing this store because it is unprofitable" would be so risky to their brand image
You've already walked back your earlier assertion that corporations are too based and alpha to deign to justify their decisions about store closings to the public. Now that you agree that sometimes they do...did you think they do it because they like the sounds of their own voices? Almost by definition, if a company feels compelled to give excuses to the public for a controversial decision, they do so because they wish to mitigate damage to the image of their brand.
>that instead they'd be willing to lie to shareholders and the government about the reason.
Shareholders? The government? The cases I have in mind haven't involved anything other than statements to the media or press releases, and I don't believe I ever implied otherwise.
Now, earlier I had to nudge you toward a model of reality in which companies occasionally feel compelled to justify their decisions to the public. I hope I don't have to do the same for a model of the world in which the content of press releases or statements to the media are 1) at least somewhat frequently inaccurate and, generally, 2) able to be made without substantial risk of prosecution for violating laws concerning disclosures to shareholders or perjury.
To be clear, I don't have enough data before me to form a strong opinion about whether Walgreens in particular or retailers in general are being honest about their reasons for closing stores. I was simply calling people's attention to an argument I've seen made in favor of "no, at least some of them aren't." It may be the case that that argument is wrong, but it's hardly "deranged" to suggest that any company anywhere might be dishonest in its public statements.
In my city it appears be both organized groups and individuals, and the individuals both stealing for personal use and for redistribution, almost certainly resale or trade in kind. I hadn't heard about eBay, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some more sophisticated groups trying to exploit law-enforcement-inefficiencies to make a profit. I wouldn't say that it's "desperate people", necessarily. If I had to guess, I'd say it's some of the more daring or entrepreneurial addicts who pull off the big hauls, and the rest are just targets of opportunity. Most of the homeless cohort is pretty desperate as is, and the most desperate ones are usually too weak and tired and beaten-down to try this sort of thing.
Basic food is available in a number of ways, and can be cheap, so I'm not surprised that it's not locked up. Things like powdered laundry detergent have been targets, and are apparently used for black market resale to non-homeless people. I suppose this category involves factors like "stores well", "everyone needs it", "compact value", and so forth (but big boxes of powdered detergent, seriously?). Maybe people are less willing to by stolen food off the black market, but are willing to buy stolen cleaning products? I did talk to someone in my local grocery store who said that the directives for which products to seal up are handed down from corporate, so there's probably a good bit of inefficiency in that response. Just because it's sealed up, doesn't mean that anyone in my state was stealing it.
Premium ice cream was a target for a while; I'm told because it's the perfect food for when coming down off of fentanyl.
Various far-left people and groups keep shifting arguments for why this isn't happening or isn't bad, and I can't keep up with what the current nonsense is. I've even heard that it's a deliberate policy of turning left-wing neighborhoods into food deserts. A consistent theme is that this is all covered by insurance so the corporations aren't actually harmed, which of course has a few enormous things wrong with it. (At least it's not usually by the same people who claim that it's morally praiseworth to harm giant corporations.) Most, I think they just want some vaguely clever response that they can repeat loudly and righteously so they look good on camera.
I worked for 6 months at an urban Sears store in 1982. It was quite an education. I was able to observe humanity at its worst and its best. This comment calls for an example of one of the worst or at least one of the saddest.
I was able to talk to the security team there almost daily. They had a nemesis they referred to as the ‘garbage bag man’. He would enter the store with an empty garage bag and fill it with baby related products like disposable diapers and somehow would always evade security and make off with goods that he sold below asking price to low income mothers.
Considering how much "worst" includes, I suspect you were much seeing "fairly bad".
As for the garbage bag man, I wonder how he was doing it. Maybe he had someone on his side in security.
Yeah it’s probably more in the sad category.
For worst I’d have relate a true tale of grand larceny or flashers putting their dicks on the counter in front of a female cashier. Or maybe obnoxious suburban guys trying to pull an obvious grift in the city store. Or fellow cashiers running a large scale dip into the till scheme.
For the best I’d have to put my phone down and sit at a keyboard and maybe present something with a bit of nuance. Stories with too much poignance to bang out with one thumb.
Re the garbage bag thief I don’t think he had inside help. I was only there for 6 months. He could just been as lucky as he was elusive. This was before inexpensive and inescapable CCTV.
I watched a training exercise with a new security hire. She played the part of a thief trying to escape with 2 trained security guys trying to prevent her exit. They did finally catch her but it was close.
Seems to be Culture Warring; there are plenty of online videos of (alleged) organised shoplifting in San Francisco (and I presume other cities) where gangs just stroll in, strip the shelves, and run back out to the waiting get-away car.
This produces a lot of heat but not much light in the comments, where you can imagine the sides line up on (1) this is the fault of the crazy Democrat local government and (2) this isn't happening and if it is it's a conspiracy by the MAGA set and if it's not it's down to poverty and lack of opportunity that poor black people are being forced to steal necessary items.
One side is "Gangs run riot, stores have to lock goods behind glass, eventually stores decide to shut down, then the bleeding-hearts go 'why is nobody willing to open a drugstore in this area that badly needs one? it must be racism!'" and the other side is, as quoted, "it's a conspiracy to close down stores by the evil capitalist chains".
What the true facts about level of thieving are, God alone knows, I don't think we'll find them from online discussion of the problem.
It's not limited to low-income areas.
A decade ago I worked for a drug store (CVS) in what is probably one of the highest income towns in America (far from the bay area or any or any other major metropolitan area). During the year or so I was working there, we got a call from... another store? district manager? that several stores had just been hit by "organized crime" (their words), who had just grabbed a bunch of makeup (the best ratio of profit margins to weight for both scalpers and the store) and walked out. We got sent pictures, and the shift supervisor sat in waiting; sure enough they walked in, grabbed a bunch, and walked out.
I got a comment on FB from a drug store person that there's a lot being stolen and resold at flea markets, which would be a lot harder to track than reselling on ebay. I don't think I've been seeing drug store stuff at flea markets, but I don't go to a lot of flea markets.
CVS and Target can close any store they want, for any reason or none. They don't need to make up an excuse.
The 2020 media environment in the US was really amazing in how it got almost all prestige media outlets in lockstep wrt the acceptable way to talk about things. This was the world of "Fiery, but peaceful, protests" and NPR running a positive piece on a book titled "In Defense of Looting" book. (I didn't read it; the interviewer and author seemed to be literally defending looting during riots as a good thing, but maybe if I read the book I'd have a more nuanced view of it.) I think a lot of this has stuck around, with a lot of media outlets basically seeing any CW-aligned question as not being about what statements are true or false, but rather about what facts would be good for the side they've decided are the good guys.
Long term, I wonder if that will be the last nail in the coffin of prestige media sources. Lying about stuff people see with their own eyes *really* destroys your credibilty fast.
"Myth vs. Reality: Trends in Retail Theft: Despite spikes in some cities, crime data doesn’t show a nationwide increase in shoplifting and other forms of retail theft."
"...Violent crime has declined nationally since jumping in 2020, but trends in retail theft are more difficult to assess, in part because of varying data collection and theft reporting methods. That said, the available crime data and industry figures cut against claims of a national increase in retail theft, despite notable spikes in some cities."
From the Brennan Center for Justice.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth-vs-reality-trends-retail-theft
That crime data is almost certainly problematic. Several of the most hard-hit jurisdictions have prosecutors who refuse to prosecute shoplifting, meaning that police stop arresting shoplifters, meaning that stores stop reporting shoplifters. Meaning that it doesn't show up in the crime statistics. (Filing a criminal report can take a bit of work, and stores are understaffed as is.)
Not to mention that there are increasing numbers of people who are ideologically opposed to calling the police for almost anything. If you call the police on a shoplifter, and they actually find the person, and the person resists arrest and is shot, what then? How sure are you that the cops even found the right person? "Snitches get stitches" (the bizarro world version of "me too").
But at least bounded distrust still holds; when they say:
> Contrary to media accounts, reported incidents declined over the same period in San Francisco (down 5 percent)
We can have a decent idea of what's going on there. And they do mention this anecdote:
> Changes in how theft is reported may also influence crime counts and, by extension, perceptions of trends in retail theft. In one particularly dramatic case, a Target store in San Francisco reported 154 shoplifting incidents in September 2021 —10 times more than the preceding month — due to a “new reporting system” that made it easier for the store to document incidents with the police. The increase was so large that it skewed citywide data, making it look as if monthly shoplifting counts had doubled across San Francisco. Reporting discrepancies this sensational are likely rare. But smaller swings in the data may be more common.
But if the data is bad, then the proper conclusion is that we don't know whether shoplifting is increasing or not. I can imagine that there are just as many prosecutors who go out of their way to prosecute crimes like shoplifting, and therefore the police go out of their way to find them, or "creatively generate" incidents. I also imagine there are equal numbers of people who are ideologically committed to suppressing people in poor urban areas, for example by generating more arrests. So, on a theoretical level, it's a wash either way.
The article I linked to claims that despite spikes is some cities (which are therefore real) overall retail theft hasn't increased nationwide. And if, as you say, the change is due to a change in reporting procedures, then there isn't a real increase there either.
Any crime is too much, but it isn't really increasing, is the point.
> But if the data is bad, then the proper conclusion is that we don't know whether shoplifting is increasing or not.
I basically agree. We have a number of individual reports that it is, but no solid data. I'm going with the reports (including my own eyes), but that's my choice.
I don't think your "wash" analysis is quite right, though. There's a lot of reasons why it might be down in many places but up in a few particular cities. The key is that those cities lean left, and elect officials who lean left, and drag their police into superficially acting left, and most especially who provide the sort of homeless services that encourage people to travel hundreds of miles. (Not to mention that a left-leaning population is going to be more welcoming.)
The upshot is that I think these factors mean that the greatest increases are going to be located in the places least likely to report them.
> Any crime is too much,
This is largely irrelevant to the discussion, but have you heard the phrase "the optimal amount of X is not zero"?
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/
It's a nifty read!
"The increase was so large that it skewed citywide data, making it look as if monthly shoplifting counts had doubled across San Francisco"
I like how the 'real' explanation for this, which is supposed to reassure us all about the level of crime, is that "no, there weren't more thefts, there were more *reported* thefts, so they really were robbing this much all along!"
Did you see that SF is considering a bill to allow people to sue grocery stores that close?
https://www.salon.com/2024/04/17/why-san-francisco-is-considering-a-bill-that-would-let-shoppers-closing-grocery-stores/
Are they taking inspiration from Venezuela, or directly from Atlas Shrugged?
My city had some "renter protection" laws during covid that I think drove rental housing prices up. One made it hard to evict people, and another required owners to accept the first qualified applicant. I think there were also restrictions on the types of allowable qualifications. The result seems to have severely damaged the rental market.
Well, that will certainly encourage more grocery stores to open up in SF.
I went to see Civil War to a small local movie theater with friends yesterday. It was mostly a confusing experience.
Spoilers, not rot13:ing them because there's not really that much to spoil here:
I knew that the movie would try to present an "second American civil war" without trying to get too political - a befuddling decision itself - but the movie doesn't really commit to any narrative.
Is the WF justified in rebelling against the authoritarian president? Maybe? They vaguely indicate that the president is bad (he's on a third term!), but the loyalist forces are not shown doing anything particularly bad (unless you count that fed riot cops are tetchy in a situation where a suicide bomber might strike at any moment), and all the war crimes are committed by WF or the presumably WF-affliated Hawaiian shirt irregulars who execute surrendered uniformed troops. But since there's no weight to either side it's not really a "war is hell, both sides are bad" thing either.
Are they trying to portray Wagner Moura's character as someone who is doing a toxic masculinity? Maybe? Is it bad that the one community has decided to go on conducting life as normal expect with snipers on roofs? Maybe? The clearest narrative ark is the Kirsten Dunst character being on a suicide run after "losing her faith in journalism" (lol) and, in the end, willing her photography mojo to Cailee Spaeny figuratively through the lens of a camera, but since we've established that photojournalism is basically useless for anything besides taking cool photos and seeking thrills, we should we care?
The only scene with actual tension is the one with Jesse Plemons and his racist militia, and that's partly because Jesse Plemons is a great actor (some said during Breaking Bad that Jesse Plemons is a dollar store Matt Damon, I argue that eventually we'll see Matt Damon properly as a dollar store Jesse Plemons), but also in large part because these guys at least seem to hold an actual ideology and be actually doing things that happen in actual civil wars, ie. running a death squad on ethnic/religious basis. I've seen some indicate that the whole rest of the movie is basically a long intro and outro to the Jesse Plemons scene.
It was probably a good idea for them to make a war movie about reporters. Since many journalists are a obsessed with the idea of their social relevance, getting 5 stars in magazines doesn't seem particularly hard, especially since I don't think the movie was advertised as concentrating as heavily on journalism as it was.
2.5/5, 2 for some cool shots and for not being too long (though you could have easily cropped out half a hour by cutting back on some early stuff and the unnecessarily long DC fight scene) and 0.5 extra for the Jesse Plemons scene.
Wrote out the comments in this thread to a post form. https://alakasa.substack.com/p/movie-review-civil-war-an-on-film
No ROT13 because you don't like the movie so happy to spoil it for everyone else?! - people who maybe get the point of it... Many thanks
He said Spoilers - that’s enough. He didn’t have to mention ROT13 at all. Anyway ROT13 is a painful spoiler system. Most of the time I’m not copying and pasting the text
If there really had been some big twist or something other of importance I'd have ROT13'ed it, since even a random glance might be fatal.
If you were worried about a spoiler all you had to do was skip the comment.
So what's the point of rot13?
The substitution cipher where each letter is rotated 13 letters from the actual. It’s used to hide things like movie spoilers and such so a joke or riddle is not given away.
We use it so often here that you start to pretty quickly scan and decipher without using a little app.
Edit - I think I misunderstood your question and you knew what it is. To answer the what’s the point question is that there is not very much of a point if the commenter mentions it up front and not reading it solves the spoiler problem.
No, I looked at my comment before posting and concluded that it doesn't really include something that would count as a "spoiler" in the sense that it reveals a major plot twist in advance, namely since there aren't major plot twists or secrets to be spoiled as such.
All the reviews by people who went to see it have been "This is rubbish", so I don't think that there is much danger of spoilers. The general tenor has been in agreement with Tatu; there is no plot as such, just Photojournalist Angsty Lady and her merry band driving around the country.
You can't even extract "Orange Man Bad" as the 'point' of the movie, because nobody is given any sort of reason or set of demands for what they're doing. They just all divided up and started shooting.
I kept thinking about how this would still provide a good setting for a CRPG (why are there comparatively few CRPGs situated in a present-day-style wartime setting?), and it struck me that the plot, such as it was, was almost literally a CRPG plot already.
We start with the tutorial (water riot) where we get a refresher on how to use action points, take photos, communicate, even transfer an item to a party member. Then, at the hotel, the main quest (or maybe a big DLC quest?) starts and the party is assembled.
An early random encounter demonstrates that one party member is low on the levels or maybe has the wrong skillset, and the narrative has told us that the main quest's final encounter is dicey, so the party decides to grind side quests for EXP. They even visit a literal shop and a literal rest site.
During one of the side quests the party encounters an enemy (Plemons) that's a bit too high for their current levels, so in addition to two temp party members who were probably hardcoded to be killed anyway, they lose one of the main party members. After this, they find out that the main quest's time limit has run out and they're locked out of the best ending. However, the story graciously lets them go through the final battle for a secondary ending.
Alex Garland has apparently served as a video game writer as well, so I guess it sticks.
I haven't seen the movie, but I get the impression is that the point is wars happen because the two sides are willing to use ordinary people as a background.
Maybe the point is that photojournalism (and war coverage in general) isn't this big deal about recording and revealing truth, it's just about making journalists feel they're important when they drop into conflict hotspots and snap their little photos and then zoom out again?
That the real point of it all is "Man, this will win me a Pulitzer!" so they don't know and don't care about what is going on, about what A and B are fighting each other, it's all the same to them what the ostensible reason for the conflict is, they're just interested in the cool images they can get?
Like, they sort of hint that the Nick Offerman President character might be influenced by Trump, but he's not, really. His mannerism are not particularly Trumpish; he holds some speeches where he mentions the flag and God and such, but those would be more normie-Republican coded, and he could even be a Democrat. Completely anodyne, a waste of an actor.
I saw that in clips and my reaction was "They're trying to say 'this is Trump' without saying 'this is Trump'. but even worse, they're conflating 'normie-Republican' (as you say) with 'MAGA redhat loon Jan 6th coup democracy dies!!!!' in order to paint all Republicans as 'they're all like that, it doesn't matter who gets elected, any Republican is Trump-lite'" and that was so dumb and betrayed a lack of understanding of what is going on. Clearly we are supposed to just know by innate instinct who the Good Guys are and that naturally they vote Democrat 🙄
Yeah, but the WF rebels aren't really particularly Democratic-coded either. The only thing hinting into that direction is that they are vaguely alluded to being allied to "Portland Maoists", but in another scene, there are probably-WF-affliated militiamen wearing boogaloo boys Hawaiian shirts. A thematic mess.
"A thematic mess" seems to be the general consensus of the reviews by viewers that I've seen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-M-fSvtQxk
Have culture wars online died down in general, or is it just that this place is much less culture war-y than SSC? It just occurred to me that I haven't seen a lot of angry online CW disputes over the past couple years. Plenty of arguments about the ME of course, but that's over a war-war not an argument about bathrooms or whatever. I thought once we got back into an election year that the CW heat would start to burn again, but that doesn't seem to have happened. Is it over?
Funnily enough I've also seen the claim that the culture war is over made on Tumblr, but with more of a smug implication that it's over because the SJW/woke side won.
This place is a lot less heated because The Rightful Caliph does not put up with any of that, so we are on our (semi-)best behaviour.
If/when I really get into Culture War stuff, I do it on other sites (and regularly tussle with the mods of those). On here I try to remember my party manners 😀
I think Scott has been significantly less willing to engage after getting doxxed, and probably even less so now that he’s a dad.
I think the ME is taking up the energy. I think most of us are here for interesting discussions with intelligent people, and are not so much invested in waging the culture war. It's satisfying to snark about my outgroup, but I try to keep it down to avoid polluting the environment too much.
And, at least for me, most other issues have settled down. I know roughly where I stand, and am willing to talk about it with reasonable people, several levels inside a comment chain, or preferably in a hidden thread. Current events might warrant a bit of discussion. But most of the time, I'm not interested in charging headlong into the melee and using Smite Evil on a bunch of monsters that I can tell from sight are racially Always Evil.
SSC forked into DSL and ACX; with some overlap but not much compared to the total ACX commentariat. DSL I think got most of the "right wing" posters, and most of the culture war because it had enough combatants for such. ACX seems much more consistently blue-grey, to use the old SSC language, which makes it more congenial but - aside from Scott's posts - less broadly interesting.
Funny, because from my point of view, this place seem to lean right, probably because it leans skeptic, and skeptic lends itself to "small c conservatism" in many ways. It also seems to lean "Libertarian", which is more right than left, at least in the US.
According to the latest survey, almost 65% of the audience identifies as either liberal or social-democratic, against just over 30% identifying as either conservative or libertarian. (2024 poll, "Political Affiliation") Also, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 32% to 8%. (2024 poll, "American Parties")
You may be used to an environment where liberal politics are the overwhelming consensus, which isn't the case here. That would explain why this place seems to lean right, while actually being well left of center compared to the American population.
It's probably to the right of the median for young, urban, college-educated Americans, and thus to the right of any definition of "center" that comes by way of the US mainstream media(*). And to the right of most of Europe. But it's to the left of SSC, definitely to the left of DSL, and I think to the left of American society as a whole. SSC was unique, and wonderful. ACX on its best days can maybe equal that, but it's bigger and it can make Scott a decent living, which is not a trivial consideration.
*ETA: Or to the right of the consensus of most not-explicitly-right-wing parts of the internet.
"It's probably to the right of the median for young, urban, college-educated Americans"
Well, I'm only one for three there, so my own perception of this place remains unexplained. Also, I have never cared what most people on the internet think about anything, and I'm not starting now.
SSC? DSL?
Slate Star Codex, the blog Scott Alexander ran before ACX. And Data Secrets Lox, a forum created by and for the SSC commentariat as a new home, when SSC went away and it wasn't clear if or when Scott would have a new forum of his own.
You may be able to discern an anagrammatic theme in the naming.
Speaking of culture war, there is also themotte.org which took over the periodic culture war threads after some people on the internet became annoyed with opinions in the SSC CW threads and decided to go after SSC because of them.
What is DSL?
What Nancy and NotA said. DSL also had a first-mover advantage, being set up by SSC refugees in the immediate aftermath of the SSC shutdown, while it took a while for Scott and Substack to get everything arranged for ACX.
That initially gave DSL a good spectrum of commenters, which combined with a good comment interface made for a decent forum. That might have continued for many years if ACX had never happened; instead we got the fork.
I've been trying to figure out how I found out about DSL, but I'm not likely to find out.
I first learned about it in Naval Gazing, yet another SSC-spawned blog (free of culture warfare, but heavy on naval warfare). But there was a lot of general outreach, trying to find all the SSC regulars and let them know.
I also learned about it on Naval Gazing. Prior to SSC going down I was a long time lurker...DSL was great for a while, but it's been getting steadily less interesting as it undergoes evaporative cooling.
https://www.datasecretslox.com/
It's got a forum structure.
The comment interface is better, the moderation is worse.
What's wrong with the moderation?
Yeah, I clicked the link, read a few threads, and was reminded why I am not a regular reader.
The comment interface is way faster, but I think tree structure is better than linear; it is easier to see who responds to whom. But the noise-to-signal ratio feels worse; it is almost like the average internet debate for smart people.
I think that tree vs. linear isn't an obvious choice, and it's bet to make it a convenient option. I think the Tor linear structure was fine, and Reactor wrecked it by making it tree, though I admit putting replies in a tiny font made it worse.
On a site as active as asx, tree is better.
I think this is basically correct. My assumption is that the culture war will be properly over once it's uncontroversial to admit that culture warring was something the left did, contrary to their shrilly strident narrative that it was the right that was waging a culture war against all of their objectively correct positions that had all been status quo forever anyway.
I think the idea that the Culture Wars are over is wildly optimistic. Everything seems to be polarized these days--opinions are as deeply divided as ever, and regardless of who wins in November, none of it is going away.
I'm not saying it *is* over, I'm saying you will know it is by that token, when it happens. *Right now* you'd have better luck getting an average leftist to catch a squirrel with his bare hands and flay it alive than to admit this.
The people on the Left that I know are pretty convinced that the Right started it all, way back in the 1980's with the Moral Majority. The creation of Fox News was another milestone they would point to.
But I'm not saying one side or the other is more culpable with respect to cultural propaganda, quite the opposite.
"One side was right all along" seems like a pretty audacious prediction for hindsight. It certainly is on some things but less so on others. There were some things that the idiot left shrilly pushed that might actually have been good in the long run, even if a lot of innocent eggs had to be cracked to make the omelet. I'm definitely not sure though; I'm 60% that metoo was a net positive.
Uh, metoo was blatantly obviously a retarded lynch mob mass hysteria that led to exactly, precisely nothing good whatsoever, so I doubt we'll be able to see eye to eye on prediction probabilities :-D
You don't think that in some cases, there had actually been sexual abuse that wasn't prosecuted?
I think that even in those cases, making a social media post about it did nothing good, it only stoked the fires of mob hysteria with real fuel.
Seems possible. I wonder if the Trump-Biden rematch has simply bored everyone to death. There are no new exciting personalities making waves.
I think nearly everyone has made up their minds, and are unlikely to change them at this point.
You don't think that was already true in 2016?
No, it was pretty close, and could have gone either way. My read at the time was that it was Clinton's election to lose, and she did.
It's different now--everyone has heard the arguments on both sides ad nauseum. It's all about a very small number of swing voters right now, and they haven't engaged yet.
Has anyone seen accounts by the children of wealthy parents who were busted a few years ago for using various frauds to get their kids admitted to college? I'll take interviews, articles, anything where these kids tell the story and its consequences from their point of view.
I haven't seen anything like that, but I think I can imagine what they would tell you off the record -- all rich kids pay for school admissions, it's just that there are proper channels that are more expensive, and side channels that are relatively less expensive (still very expensive though) but sometimes blow up... which is what happened now.
The thing that makes most people outraged is *not* the thing that makes it a crime. Most people are outraged that rich kids can pay for school admissions... but this is actually business as usual, this is exactly how the system is designed to work, this is how those schools got most of their wealth. The actual crime was that some families tried to get a discount by paying a wrong person instead... and unlike those who did the same thing in previous years successfully, these were unlucky and got caught.
*
Note that I am *not* defending those families: they did the thing that many people consider immoral, and on top of that, they also tried to cheat to get it cheaper. But the public outrage is actively misdirected by journalists here -- what people are outraged about is the ability to "pay to win" in a supposedly meritocratic educational system, but what the targets are selected for is "paying less than they were supposed to". They are punished for trying to cheat the people who are organizing the immoral thing, not for participating in the immoral thing per se. If this type of crime is successfully discouraged, it will not result in more fairness, but in the existing unfairness being more profitable. People participating in the outrage blindly are actually helping the thing they are outraged about.
Part of the cheating to get in situation might be that people have a reasonable sense that a good bit of admissions are arbitrary. Why is being good at an unusual but respectable sport an advantage? This is silly. Why not cheat?
"All rich kids" is I think misleading. Starting with, what's your definition of "rich"? Because the normal price for admission by generous above-board donation to the school, for any elite university, is now in the eight-figure range. Billionaires will probably pay that without hesitation; hectomillionaires might do it after thinking about it, but garden-variety multimillionaires and celebrities are priced out of that market.
And I'm skeptical that there's really that much public outrage about the handful of billionaires' kids, particularly when they are actually pumping tens of millions of dollars into the school. Things like legacy admissions are much more common, just as unearned, and don't have an obvious up side to the other students or parents, so those seem to generate more heat.
Paying half a million to a "fixer" to get in through the back door is also unearned, also does nothing for the rest of the students, and is just plain sleazy but in a novel and interesting way that people will pay attention to.
Yet the very existence of billionaires, or hecto millionaires buying their way into college should remind us that the morality here is for the poor, or relatively poor. It’s fine to get enraged with the latter gaming the system illegally if you are also enraged with the former gaming the system legally, otherwise you are equating morality with legality.
The morality of not stealing luxury cars and big-screen TVs is for the poor, or relatively poor, because the rich will simply buy the things.
Buying a thing from its rightful owner, at a mutually agreeable price, is not immoral. Not even if you're rich, and no matter how many people would rather the rightful owner not offer that thing for sale. Bribing one of the employees of the rightful owner to open the back door and let you pilfer the warehouse, is theft and is immoral. Even if you're poor, and no matter how much you really really really want the thing that rich people can afford and you cannot.
Someone will no doubt want to bring up the alleged nobility of a starving peasant stealing a loaf of bread from an uncaring Scrooge, but we're talking about a ticket to USC for someone who didn't bother to pay attention in high school, blocking that same opportunity for someone who actually earned it.
Yes. Whenever people mention Lori Loughlin online I rush to her defense - pointing out that she was doing what she was doing because she wasn’t rich enough to legally buy in.
I know about the many ways rich families pay for admission, or pay for things that make admission more likely (tutors, SAT prep etc.) But I recently met someone whose family paid in quite a direct way for admission to a prestigious university, and is profoundly affected by the knowledge. Know someone else who, like maybe 30% of kids at their prep school, got a diagnosis of ADHD from a neurologist, which qualified them to have 50% more time to take the SAT. That person also is very disturbed by the feeling that they're an imposter. It's Imposter Syndrome, but with some reality basis -- though in fact both people are quite smart, as evidenced by their college performance and later achievements.
Viliam, these 2 people would definitely *not* tell you off the record that it's no big deal because everybody wealthy does some version of what their families did.
That's not just "paying for admission" though, that's "faking a disability", which seems a quite reasonable thing to feel guilty about.
I agree. The person feels awful. On the other hand, the original testing was done when he was 15 or so, and nobody said outright, "we're going to just pay a doc to say you have a disability, then you'll get 50% longer on the SAT, OK son?" He was doing badly in school (mainly because he wasn't trying) so taking him for neuropsych testing wasn't a ridiculous thing to do. And at the time he had the testing he did not know about the hidden advantages of getting labelled as someone with ADHD or severe test anxiety, just thought his parents were making too big a deal of his not being an achievatron. It's easy to hate on the kids who have parents who do this kind of shit, and to imagine they are fully on board and think it's fine, but the 2 examples I've seen so far of these kids have really been harmed by the "help" their parents gave them.
Parents are supposed to do these things in a way that their children won't find out, until maybe much later, so they can believe they won in a meritocratic competition.
If you want your kids to win at life, "unfair advantages" + "clear conscience" is the right combination for producing success, optimism, and self-esteem.
There is a similar thing with the state universities here that doesn't involve money.*
The investigating media back when we had more of that did a deep dive into college and law school admissions at Big State U's. They found pattern of a lot of "exceptions" that were found to be paired with letters written on the lucky person's behalf, by legislators. The letters were anti-correlated with e.g. LSAT scores.
These tended to be the nieces and nephews and friends' kids of the politicians.
It was very well-documented, but didn't amount to anything. This is not the sort of privilege anybody in power is inclined to deprive themselves of. You get a true bipartisan spirit on that!
And too, it didn't neatly fit the narrative of privilege. The majority of the recipients of the unmerited acceptances were from the "poorest" part of the state.
*Of course it did invove money, because legislators award money to the universities to some degree.
I think it was a combination of paying less and doing less. Sometimes the kids were claimed to be on sports teams they weren't actually on.
Also the tax fraud part of it. Families involved in this scam didn't just "pay money to try to get Timmy into a better school," the guy running the scam had a fraudulent 501c3 that scam participants "donated" to as payment for his services. They then went back at the end of the year and tried to deduct the donation as charitable when they filed their taxes. That's why it got to the level of criminal charges against many of the participants - they didn't just want to cheat to get their kids better college admissions, they committed fraud so that they could deduct the cost of that cheating from their taxes as a charitable donation.
My understanding is that there was bribery involved, too. I pay off the underwater basketweaving coach of Prestige U to say he wants my kid for the underwater basketweaving team, take some pictures of my kid in a swimming pool with a snorkel, weaving a basket, and then he gets in. I don't think you'd actually get a criminal fraud charge if you just helped your kid lie about extracurriculars in his application.
To a first approximation, the crime wasn't buying their kids' way into prestigious colleges--you can do that by making a big enough donation. The crime was buying their kids' spots at the prestigious colleges from scalpers instead of from the university.
I thought it was such a strange thing to risk. There are so many colleges - who cares which one your kid goes to? If she's a girl mostly interested in fashion and her own looks, as seemed to be the case with the celebrity ones - she will be more likely to stay the course at a lesser school anyway. This is what "marketing" majors are for. I don't know if these Hollywood people are sensitive about their own intelligence, so that to admit your kid is no genius (or no athlete?) would be too hard? But it's not like anyone would be fooled in that way. Or care.
What a bizarre final parenting lesson to teach your kid.
In the case you're probably thinking of, note that neither parent ever graduated from college themselves, but managed to work their way into elite society in ways that many would consider shallow and superficial. From some of the comments I've seen, they were rather insecure about that and wanted to make sure their children had all the educational advantages they didn't, while becoming Properly Elite in a way that a BA from Cal State Northridge really doesn't facilitate.
If you've never been to college, you might not be well equipped to determine which universities do or do not offer a solid education. And if you're also rich, you'll probably want to err on the side of caution with your own kids.
Yes. I just suspect that most people who are outraged wouldn't agree with a statement "they should have paid the full price of 'pay to win' instead" (in which case they wouldn't be required to lie about sport teams). And yet, if the parents did so, the outrage wouldn't be aimed at them now.
I have a question for those concerned about extinction risk: if intelligent life were discovered elsewhere in the universe, would that make you less worried about it because intelligent life would survive even if humans went extinct? Contrariwise, if it were somehow proven that no other intelligent life exists, would that make you more concerned?
I like humans above and beyond, and often at the expense of, other conscious creatures, which is why I still eat chicken. I would choose humans over even a more intelligent species. Call it blind loyalty. That discovery would, however, affect my answer to your second question:
It would not make me more concerned if we proved intelligent life doesn't exist, because I'm as convinced as is possible considering the available evidence that the Great Filter is nuclear catastrophe. It's just too easy to split the atom and the fact that we've almost made it to our nuclear centennial without collapsing modern civilization to ruins is one of the greatest miracles in the history of mankind.
There are x-risks which only affect our rock here and then there are x-risks which affect our light cone.
For the former part, I think there would some solace in the fact that someone else will try to get some utility of all that previously mostly pointless universe.
For the latter, I would consider an extinction which also proceeds to transform the rest of the galaxy into paperclips to be much worse. (I would still update the odds for great filters, though.)
No and no. I feel a bond with the beings on my planet, especially the ones of my species, and especially especially for certain members of my species. It's not because they're intelligent life, it's because they're all sweet embraceable you's. I'm not exactly a fan of intelligent life, and in my dark moods I think it's unfortunate that even the forms of it on our planet exist. New beings are wired to start life with such joy and excitement, and so many then go on to lives of entrapment, lethal boredom, or pain. And then they die in pain.
But isn't there the possibility of making the world better? Or is that outweighed by the possibility of making the world worse?
I dunno Moon Moth. It's imaginable that we make it better for people. But for animals? They eat each other. And there is no hospice for them, no morphine. Their deaths must be terrible, panting alone in the bushes. I know most people don't think about this, but it forces itself into my mind.
That's the hope of the glorious AI-run transhumanist future, though. We didn't find God so we build one instead, who can track the fall of every sparrow. Or something. Maybe build a simulation where nothing ever *really* suffers, and upload everything into it. Maybe there's just a little suffering-counter in the corner of our vision, with the current level and the lifetime total, and an odd but harmless situation so we don't accidentally set fire to ourselves.
I do think of it, sometimes. I'll spare you an example from last year. But also think about it sometimes when I play with cats, and they catch the toy in their mouth, bring it down with their weight on top, and do the little headshake to snap its neck. But the cats are cute, too.
Yes to both.
Depends on how similar that life is to us. If it's similar enough to be comprehensible to us then yes, it genuinely would make me feel better (both in itself and in that its discovery implies better odds of survival for us in several ways).
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." -- Bill Waterson, of Calvin and Hobbes
This is not just you, but I am so tired, so goddamn tired, of the habitual undercutting of species self-respect for humans. It may have had an intent to prevent grandiosity, but I believe it's become a thing in itself, and not healthy.
“You’re only human.”
That’s what someone says when they want you to set your sights a little lower, to make your goals a little less lofty. “Only human”. It’s supposed to be a reminder that, when you get down to it, we are basically chimps who traded a little less hair for a little more brain. “Only human” means: you’re limited. You’re fragile. You are flawed. And all that is true – but that doesn’t preclude greatness.
You, and I, are human.
When evolution created us as weird chimps to hunt and gather on the African Savannah, we said “how about we thrive on every corner of every continent instead?” And when evolution looked at us skeptically and said “um…even the really cold parts? Like, there’s this whole Scandinavian region you are really not cut out for” we said “ESPECIALLY the really cold parts, and when we get there we’re going to invent IKEA because frankly these rocks are uncomfortable”, at which point evolution presumably threw up its hands and left the weird insane chimps to it.
We are the humans! We are the ones who write, who speak, who invent! We are the strange chimps who always found a way to thrive, on every corner of this ridiculous planet, no matter what it threw at us!
We are the humans! We are the ones who saw a poisonous tree, thought “that looks delicious”, turned it into almonds, and now we pour it in our coffee for breakfast! We are the humans, and we have it in ourselves to care, and love, and protect all of our people! We are perhaps uniquely endowed with the ability to go beyond what drives evolution instilled in us, to love and care and protect for its own sake.
We are the humans! We figured out what the stars are made of! We’ve peered into distant galaxies! We’ve mapped the echoes of the very beginning of the universe! We figured out what EVERYTHING is made out of, and now we take the fundamental building blocks of everything and SPLIT THEM APART to make energy. Like that! (said as a light turns on) We are the humans, and after spreading to every corner of this planet, we looked up and said “yeah, that looks good.” We are the humans, and if you want to do a full headcount you’re going to need to go into orbit. We are the humans, built to run on the Savannah, but now you can find our footprints on the moon.
We are the humans. We’re the reason you don’t see Smallpox around anymore. It got a bad case of us. Oh, and by the way, we’re not done. You know polio? It killed or paralyzed five hundred thousand of us in 1950. But humans noticed, and humans said “FUCK NO”, and inch by inch we’ve fought back, from half a million each year to just THIRTY-FOUR cases of polio in the wild in 2016. This year? Only SIXTEEN. Polio is at the gates of oblivion, and we have a message: Give smallpox our regards.
Next time someone says that you’re only human, forget the “only”! You are one of THE humans! The truth-seekers, the peacemakers, the atom-splitters, the moon-walkers, the artists, the dreamers, the lovers and protectors – The rebels who defy the world they were made for, who never stop dreaming and working for a better tomorrow.
We are not done. We have countless problems left to solve, many of them self-made. But we are the humans, and we don’t give up, and we have come this far, and as long as even one of us is still breathing, we fight – because we are ONLY HUMAN.
—From https://blog.jaibot.com/secular-solstice-dawn-speech-only-human/, which apparently doesn't exist anymore. :(
That's a somewhat different point. I take "only human" to have different meanings. It can mean don't be too ambitious, or as you say, don't be ambitious at all.
For example, I used to believe I ought to be able to come up with arguments which would convince people immediately. This was simply a wrong ambition, and I'm glad I gave it up.
On the other hand, I can be amazed that I had such a crazy ambition, and that gets into not acknowledging that part of being human is sometimes getting things wrong.
I think there's a difference between "have modest ambitious" and "your species is fundamentally disgusting".
Maybe it's a rational response to the observation that the species keeps trying over and over to come up with ways to make itself miserable if not destroy itself.
The thing is, the human race isn't close to ideally competent. It also has remarkable achievements and isn't reliably self-destructive. I feel like too much emotional weight is getting put on the negative side.
No one is perfect. If one cannot laugh at oneself, one is in a sorry state indeed. I think that includes laughing at one's species. Laughing does not mean one's species is always laughable. The highs do not cancel the lows, nor the lows the highs.
Anyone know where I can chat about a relative's stomach ulcer (caused by H. Pylori bacteria) diagnosis via endoscopy? I looked at Reddit but the discussions seemed somewhat useless on this subject.
If someone here knows the answers, my questions are :
1. What is the typical treatment i.e. what cocktail of antibiotics? Other dogs and donts with it, like diet? Is it true you have to avoid spicy food?
2. How do you tell if you're cured? Are there tests other than endoscopy? I see a lot in Amazon but no clue if they're any good.
Had an ulcer diagnosis years ago, H. Pylori. Funny thing, I don't remember having an endoscopy... Was it diagnosed from poop? Sorry, really can't recall anymore.
Anyway, the symptoms were mild, but persistent; a kind of stomach pain that was just... different from anything else I felt before.
A 2-week antibiotic course took care of that.
You would probably remember the endoscopy. You have to swallow the device -- the camera? -- on the end of the tube, before they can feed the rest of the tube down, & you have to be awake for that. It feels like swallowing a set of car keys. After that they give you IV Versed which either blisses you out or just knocks you out, but swallowing those keys is definitely memorable.
I'm going to have an endoscopy on Thursday, never had one before. Thanks for telling me about the car keys, but I'm still going to refuse sedation if I can - have to hang around being observed for 4 hours afterward, then have someone babysit me for 24 hours? All for the sake of a 15-30 min procedure? Forget that, they can just give me topical anaesthetic for my throat and I'll practice my "swallow bunch of keys" skills!
It's actually nowhere near as bad as swallowing a bunch of car keys!
As I recall, it did not actually hurt -- the problem was more that I thought it was going to, & was also afraid that it was going to get stuck in my throat. It did not get stuck, and swallowing was weird and uncomfortable but not, as I said, actually painful. Also, I've had a thing about swallowing pills & stuff all my life -- have a fear that they'll get stuck in my throat. It was pretty bad when I was a kid, but I have now overridden the urge not to swallow a handful of pills so many times that it's greatly weakened. But I think the remnant of that old phobia probably made swallowing the damn thing harder for me than for most. Anyhow, hope you get good news & useful info from the procedure.
And about staying at the doctor's for 4 hrs and then being observed for the next 24: I have disregarded that several times after procedures that knocked me out, and just announced that I was leaving. They can't actually make you stay. What they'll do to cover their asses is have you sign a form saying you're leaving against medical advice. In the US the med they give you is intravenous Versed, which is in the same family as Valium. It is *extremely* pleasant. Knocks out all anxiety, and gives you a lovely feeling of blissful wellbeing. But it wears off very quickly once they stop the IV, and you feel like your usual alert and anxious self again. I do think it would be a bad idea to drive after the procedure, but getting a ride home once I felt awake and able to walk normally has always worked out fine for me. I suppose there's a small risk that the procedure itself did some damage and they're monitoring for signs of internal bleeding, but the chances of that sort of damage seem quite small, and if it had happened you'd probably have pain or vomit blood or something.
I've done the "leaving against medical advice" a couple of times before, and they were *extremely* pissed-off about it. But I did it because "I've been here for 36 hours, you've done Sweet Fanny Adams for the problem I came in with, and I need to go to work and I might as well be home in my own bed as in this crappy overflow ward".
I am obese, which is one reason; anaesthesiologists hate sedating fat patients https://www.asahq.org/madeforthismoment/preparing-for-surgery/risks/obesity/ so I decided since it's a minor procedure and there's no good reason to get sedation (apart from "yes I'd like to have a happy daze going on") and put up with the bitching from the anesthesiologist (I had one elective procedure cancelled because the anaesthesiologist refused to do it) before, during and afterwards, I might as well put on my brave face and tell them "It will not be required". Avoiding discomfort not worth the hassle of the consultant and the knock-out guy arguing beforehand over "I'm not doing this" and delaying the procedure that I just want to get done and over with as fast as possible so I can get home and get on with things.
Oh, I see the complication. Well, it may be that anesthesiologists are not concerned about Versed the way they are about general anesthesia, where they use true knock-out drugs. Versed gives what's called "waking sedation. " Lots of people who had Versed have dim memories of the procedure after, and you're also able to respond while full of Versed to things like "could you turn your head a little?" But I'm sure you're up to doing this without drugs if that's called for.
Whatever they gave me didn't leave me with a lot of memories of the procedure at all.
Ouch, no, definitely would have remembered that! I have had a lung endoscopy many years ago, but of course no swallowing devices was involved for that one. They did knock me out quite hard for it though, I only remember being wheeled in, and then waking up and sitting in there for a few hours, waiting for the swallow reflex to coming back.
I am not an expert, but my understanding is that something like 90% of ulcers turn out to be caused by that bacterial species, and can be cured with antibiotics.
I had an ulcer diagnosed by endoscopy, and my only treatment was to take omeprazole (reduces stomach acid) for --- I'm not sure how long, I think something like a couple of months. That cured me, or at least caused all my symptoms to go away. If 2 mos. on the medication had not given the ulcer enough time to heal I would have known, because the ulcer caused a burning sensation that was different from regular heartburn. It's nos 10+ years later and I have not had a recurrence. I don't think my ulcer was a very large or severe one, and treatment may differ depending on had bad an ulcer you have, its location, etc. I'd recommend looking on Up to Date, a continuously updated online manual for doctors. I believe you can subscribe for a day or a week at a time. That will tell you what the standard treatment is, what are the indications for non-standard treatments, and what steps are needed to tell whether the ulcer has healed.
One can buy Omeprazole over the counter, at least at Costco. Last I checked, it was about $10 for 42 pills.
In this case :
1. One small ulcer plus moderate inflammation in stomach.
2. Moderate amount of H pylori bacteria detected.
Treatment recommended is Omeprazole plus 2 antibiotics (clarithromycin 500 3x a day plus Metronidazole 500 2x a day).
Note : The standard treatment according to Google search is Clarithromycin plus Amoxicillin but he remembers being allergic to Penicillin as a child so they're not doing that).
Don't forget that metronidazole and alcohol don't mix.
Amoxicillin is in the penicillin family.
And ty so very much.
Throwing this out there for people's reactions. Note: I do not necessarily endorse this view of consciousness — nor do I not endorse it.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/
The hook with these endless articles is anthropomorphizing animals by playing with semantics. If we suggest insects are conscious, that renders consciousness as unremarkable as sentience, with "awareness of internal existence" not referring to cerebral self reflection and understanding abstract concepts, but some banality. It kicks the can down the road to come up with other redundant terms for what distinguishes the human experience from animals.
As far as reader squabbling is concerned, which is mostly about our relationship with animals, consciousness is a red herring anyway. Skip to what you want to say.
From the article:
“Inspired by recent research findings that describe complex cognitive behaviors in these and other animals, the document represents a new consensus and suggests that researchers may have overestimated the degree of neural complexity required for consciousness.”
Who decided complex cognitive behaviors indicate greater consciousness? People in apparent comas who cannot respond at all to the outside world sometimes indicate post-coma that they were acutely aware of what was going on around them. And I guess this means people with high IQ scores are capable of greater joy and suffering than the rest of us.
The confusion around this subject is startling. Why don’t we start with the one way we know of to temporarily and relatively safely separate a person from consciousness (general anesthesia), and try to determine what kind of neurological activity is necessarily present for consciousness to persist? This wouldn’t be remotely conclusive but it would at least be a scientific first step. Are people with high IQs (those that display more complex cognitive behaviors) more difficult to sedate? As far as I can tell, no data suggests this.
I'm a lot more inclined to believe in octopus intelligence than in bee intelligence.
The phrase "could only be described as play" would be assuming the conclusion, if it didn't require a giant leap to actually get from there to the conclusion. Also I notice that the title boldly states "have consciousness" but the text hedges with "a realistic possiblity". It's bad on purpose to make us click. And then talks about the Cambridge Declaration.
I'll again hold out and say that I have yet to hear a decent description of "consciousness", and until I do I hold it in about the same regard as I do the ancient Egyptian divisions of the soul.
Octopus opening a jar. If I had never seen a screw top lid before I think it would have taken me nearly this long to figure it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kuAiuXezIU
They are quite smart. I feel sorry for them, since they usually have a solitary life, although maybe they wouldn't be equipped to feel what we feel, and maybe they have their own deep octopus feelings that we know not of.
This is pretty cool, though:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/08/23/researchers-discover-why-20000-octopuses-are-brooding-off-monterey-coast-its-the-warm-springs/
Bees seem a nice simple example of how intelligent things need not be conscious. It seems equally a stretch both to deny that a hive is intelligent and to suppose it is conscious.
Not disputing it, but I'm curious what it is you think makes a hive so obviously not conscious
"I'll again hold out and say that I have yet to hear a decent description of "consciousness", and until I do I hold it in about the same regard as I do the ancient Egyptian divisions of the soul."
I think that's actually quite easy if you define it functionally, it's just that you're forced to be far more inclusive than most people want. To the point where you have to believe that the vast majority of total pleasure and suffering are being experienced by microscopic animals, and you have very good reasons to expect that many plants and single celled organisms also have consciousness (which in my view doesn't have to entail anything beyond the kind of rudimentary learning that even many plants and protists do).
I think consciousness is just the internal state which causes something to respond to stimuli, and actively seek or avoid it. I don't think it makes sense to say that a nematode that responds to avoid a given negative stimuli (and can even learn to avoid neutral stimuli it learns to associate with that) isn't suffering, yet try to say that a (insert the least intelligent animal you think has qualia) which behaves analogously *is* suffering.
I go into this position in more depth here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RjkfdOv6bpsQkF-Y4Gp0FYbVfNZDa_NU4PYulp5r1rY/edit?usp=sharing
I do appreciate the attempt to come up with a useful definition, but, to be an annoying rationalist about it, why would you choose the word "consciousness" for this? It seems bound to create confusion when combined with the many colloquial uses of consciousness.
Personally, I tend to call this sort of thing "sentient". Things that pursue pleasure and flee pain, and that have some sort of memory and ability to change actions in the future based on past experience. Anything capable of "suffering", from a certain sort of Buddhist perspective. I'm not sure if being able to "learn" is really part of it, but it seems inseparable given the limitations of our bio neural nets.
I actually think a lot of good would come from people being more coherent in how they talk about this subject!
I think my usage of consciousness captures the most important aspect of the term which refers to whether there's something that it's subjectively "like" to be a given mind.
Sure people lump in a lot of other cognitive traits in with consciousness usually, *but I think that doing this is bad* and pretty reliably leads to equivocation and sloppy thinking. For instance it leads people to have confused models that predict an organisms capacity to suffer based on irrelevant cognitive factors which there is no logical reason to expect should matter.
I think trying to define consciousness to include all the different cognitive traits people may intuitively want to include leads to people drawing a category which is ultimately arbitrary and doesn't "cleave reality at the joints" as it were.
I believe this is actually very important in many areas especially ethics, and this particular bad categorization leads many otherwise clever rationalists to believe really dumb things. For instance I remember Yudkowski saying some silly stuff about not thinking animals experience suffering (while insisting that people who think otherwise are confused). So I worry that being confused about this subject may literally contribute to existential AGI risk.
So please help me spread the word about the subject!
Since I constantly see people talking about ethics in ways which make no sense if they're considering the qualia of microscopic organisms. I personally care about moral agency, not the capacity to feel suffering, but I think people who care more about suffering as a moral principle really ought to know about this. Since when you consider microbe and plant suffering it makes it much harder and more technologically involved to try to minimize the suffering caused by your consumption choices. Plus if this knowledge becomes more widespread then it will lead to people writing complex utilitarian analysis which consider microbes that I'm sure I will find very entertaining to read (plus they may be useful for some of of my fictional worldbuilding :p)
> I think consciousness is just the internal state which causes something to respond to stimuli, and actively seek or avoid it.
Are you saying my thermostat is conscious?
>Are you saying my thermostat is conscious?
<mild snark>
Its all ok as long as the traffic-light controllers don't start openly celebrating being the first electronics to get humans to obey them. :-)
</mild snark>
The capacity for rudimentary learning is an integral aspect here. A normal thermostat doesn’t display this because that would be needlessly complex for its purpose. Even microbes are after all far more complex in their behavior than a thermostat.
Though I do think a lot of neural networks are probably conscious. So you could make a conscious learning thermostat, and in some contrived circumstances that might be useful.
Being conscious is a bit more than just reacting to stimulus. The thermometer isn’t conscious.
I once wrote a small blog post - which I might repost here on Substack - about everybody suddenly experiencing a red dot in the sky. Scientists and philosophers looked into it and their best hopes of explaining it didn’t work. It wasn’t mass hysteria, individuals sane and insane alike saw the dot. Nor could scientists explain it. The red dot faded as they approached it. When a spaceship was apparently in the midst of the dot, the spaceship itself saw nothing and recorded nothing. People on board saw nothing and recorded nothing.
After that the great philosophers and scientists all agreed that the red dot didn’t exist.
>Being conscious is a bit more than just reacting to stimulus. The thermometer isn’t conscious.
As I said in my comment you do also require some learning to say something's probably conscious, but the variety of organisms that can display classical conditioning is extremely broad. I found an interesting paper that mentions various reasons you might expect that consciousness is actually a conserved trait predating multicellularity (since that seems more parsimonious than convergent evolution): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5413897/
If you're making the point that "consciousness" ought to be defined to include things *other* than just the capacity for subjective experience then I vehemently disagree. As I said in another comment I think defining consciousness in the sort of incoherent nebulous way that most people do almost always leads to confused thinking and equivocation: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-327/comment/55052783?utm_source=activity_item#comment-55152477?utm_source=activity_item
It's not 100% clear in context what point your short story is supposed to make. However if the red dot is supposed to be an analogy for consciousness, then I think it only really works if you define consciousness in the sort of confused way which I complain about above.
Sort of the big feature of my model of consciousness is that it's completely functional. There's nothing spooky or nebulous about consciousness within my model, it's just the internal state which responds to stimuli through changes in its internal state that lead to the behavioral changes we call learning. Of course consciousness within this model is so incredibly simple that virtually anything which displays classical conditioning is probably conscious.
Yeah the article's shit: "Scientists discover that bugs are conscious!!!!"
I grew up in a family where nobody killed insects -- not because of any religious or ethical belief, but just because it made all of us feel bad to do it. We lived in a tropical climate and the typical cockroach was an inch and a half long, and when I turned on the shower sometimes a big meaty spider came rushing up out of the drain. I'd call my father and he'd come catch the big bug in question in a cup or a paper bag and throw it out the window. I didn't even know that was unusual until middle school. Did we think they were conscious? Well, seems like there are degrees of consciousness. They're definitely more conscious than clothespins or the cucumber in the fridge. They run to avoid capture. Seems likely they feel pain when crushed -- since pain is a simple, effective mechanism for teaching animals not to do things that harm them. If you were designing a cockroach, would you just not bother with pain? Or is there some other way you could reduce its odds of destroying itself by walking into flames or whatever? I still catch bugs and throw them out the window. Seems better to err on the side of kindness, and it's really not more trouble than stepping on the thing then cleaning your shoe and the floor.
For all the soft-on-bugs people, here's a delightful bit of jug band music from Jim Kweskin called "Never Swat a Fly." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8grZJDjUId8
I always catch insects and throw them out the window. Except I swat any houseflies (don't get many, and if they get to the window first that's fine). Spiders can stay unless they look like they belong in the garden - and I move any hibernating butterflies to somewhere cool.
Houseflies are impossible to catch. Trick for getting them to fly out window: Close door to room, turn off lights, draw shades on every window but one, and open that one, including the screen. If the open window is the brightest spot in the room the flies will go straight toward it and out.
I would do that for bluebottles (carrion flies) because they have a use in nature. [Also if a mouse or something larger died in the walls, you won't get just one at a time.] And they are very enthusiastic about sunlight anyway, they want to fly out and find more corpses.
Houseflies do not get the full benefit of my pacific ways.
At one point, I had an infestation of grain moths-- small pale brown moths with a bit of iridescence. They eat grain and they're a problem if you store any. The right solution is bug-bombing, but at on point I was dealing with them by killing them by clapping them between my hands.
I was also doing meditation, and when I killed one immediately after meditation, I felt a huge jolt. I didn't end up respecting all life, I was just left with a question about what happened, and I still have no idea.
It was something I never want to experience again. People who meditate don't necessarily avoid killing-- is there a way to be less vulnerable? Might I have killed a moth with an unusually large soul? I have no idea.
Some Japanese soldiers in WW2 were Buddhists, they might have useful advice on how to be a meditator who is okay with killing. I think it probably involved some "not my karma -- I am just following orders" kind of thinking.
I generally try to avoid killing insects, but I make an exception for mosquitoes, moths (the kind that tries getting in my food), and ticks, because they are the ones who try to attack my body or property, so from certain perspective it's self-defense.
Tibet had armies until the Chinese conquered them. There were special Vajrayana rituals to cleanse the soldiers of their karma if they had to kill (there used to be a website that described the rituals, but I can't find it now). Also, a lot of Tibetan Buddhists are not vegetarians. As one lama told me (and I paraphrase), "There's not much except grass above 10,000 feet."
It's possible that the solution is to not kill immediately after meditating, though I don't know whether that's a feasible rule during a war.
Oof, I sometimes get those too. Pantry moths.
I found that bug bombing worked. What have you done about them?
"What is the sound of Nancy's hand clapping?" - grain moth mystic.
> Seems better to err on the side of kindness
Ah, the thing that nice people instinctively do, but is difficult to defend in online debates.
I'm also on team "throw them out if possible".
I think consciousness is a spectrum - insects and spiders seem to have some sort of internal life, although very limited, and are able to display difference in preference and personality. A lizard seems to have more going on, and a cow yet more. There are also differences that cut across this sort of general gradient - the average jumping spider, for instance, seems to have more going on cognitively than a goldfish does.
So on the basis of simple kindness, and of respect for another creature's existence that I'd wish to be respected in my own, I try to be as gentle as possible.
Just take that to it's logical conclusion (which unfortunately I've never seen anyone else do) and your logic here should extend far beyond just insects, or even just animals. Since having an internal state that avoid negative stimuli and seeks positive stimuli is something that many if not most organisms have a use for.
After all being able to show basic learning by associating a neutral stimuli with a negative stimuli seems to be present in so many different organisms that it could well be a conserved trait that predates multicellularity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5413897/
I have taken it to its logical conclusion and contemplated that. The paramecia, etc. Tiny shrimp infants in our drinking water. Little sprouting things. I get it.
Even if any of that were true, knowledge like that becoming widespread is... incredibly inconvenient. We don't need more people sympathizing with pests.
Maybe not sympathy, but more empathy for those deemed "pests" would improve the world immensely. A lack of empathy is a major cause of suffering.
Don't tell Paul Bloom that. He'd say the exact opposite; but I think in this case it's a question of semantics
I agree. Every time people here talk about how selecting for intelligent embryos will improve the world, I say I think the world would benefit more from increasing the number of highly empathic people. Nobody even bothers to argue with me, they just ignore the idea. Does anyone really think the Israel/Palestine situation would get better if the leaders involved each had 10 extra IQ points? Even on here, with lots of smart people, I have seen someone in an Israel/Palestine argument change their mind about something exactly once.
>I say I think the world would benefit more from increasing the number of highly empathic people
I still continue to be skeptical. Most empathy is local. I interact with a tiny handful of people on a typical day. I try to make the day of the grocery store cashier that I interact with a bit better rather than a bit worse, but this is a tiny effect.
Does empathy (especially generalized empathy, not just empathy for people on your own side) seem to have a genetic basis?
I didn't know, so googled around, found this:
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/study-finds-that-genes-play-a-role-in-empathy#:~:text=First%2C%20it%20found%20that%20how,average%20more%20empathetic%20than%20men.
So sounds like genetic contribution is there, but not large. But you could probably get something more hereditary if you threw in a coupla related and desirable traits, prob. correlated with empathy, such as low propensity for violence & rage (you sound like you'd qualify for that trait). The thing about empathy is that I don't think it gives the person high on the trait an evolutionary advantage the way intelligence does. But I think having more empathic, even-tempered people in a group will give the *group* an evolutionary advantage.
I’m confused along with duck_master. Is this the link you meant to provide?
This is a podcast titled "Hanging with History" - which episode are you referring to?
Oops. I replied to a different sub-thread with that link and I cut and pasted in there by mistake. Correcting the original post. Also correct link is here...
https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/
I’ve never not believed that, certainly for most relatively complex animals. Including bees.
Ants I’m not so sure of. There’s a strange eusocial intelligence there, but maybe not individual consciousness.
I sent you an email.
The logic of "bees are playing with things just for fun and therefore they must have consciousness" makes no sense. The argument hangs on this fun "not being connected with mating or survival". But when humans have fun it is a safe to bet that it has something to do with mating or survival, so if bees are different from humans in this way, it's odd to conclude that this difference implies a similarity.
It's cool to know that bees play, though. The scientists should try harder to figure out what it has to do with mating or survival.
OK, I'll bite. what does having fun as a human have to do with mating or survival? I suppose when you're young, doing something fun introduces you to potential sexual partners. I could see that going out clubbing or playing Twister (or better yet playing Strip Twister!) could be fun that leads to mating outcomes. But organized sports? Most sports are segregated by sex, so they don't seem to have much direct impact on mating. And they may have a negative impact on survival (certainly you're more likely to be injured playing sports than not playing sports). Rock climbing, white water rafting, parachuting, all come to mind as ways to have fun that are potentially contra-survival.
My thesis is that any typical behavior by a species has to do with mating and or survival. Survival here includes survival of your children or other close relatives. Part of why I am not a rationalist is that I don't think humans are good at figuring out which parts of our behavior are productive and which aren't.
Play/having fun obviously can serve a role in skill development and status seeking. Plenty of it may seem worthless, but I doubt that is true. Or at least no more worthless than any risk taking behavior.
I think playing may have helped survival in humans on relevant time scales (i.e. in hunter-gatherers or similar) by:
-Teaching members of a group to work together, important if you are to work as a hunting party or similar.
-Learning and exploring important skills for survival. For example hide and seek could teach you to hide from predators or stalk prey. Many games/sports teach important motoric skills and so on.
-Finding new inventions that may be important to survival by playing with what is available. For example finding new ways to use a tool or trap etc.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I'm sure more rigerous threatment of the subject exist among anthropologist etc.
I think nervous systems need stimulation, and fun is a safe way of getting it.
Although I can't think of any references right now, what you've said jibes with what mainstream anthropologists and ethologists have posited.
Unlike many on this list, I'm not enamored of the theory that geniuses have moved civilization forward. I believe that ordinary humans working together have contributed to the bulk of our engineering and scientific progress. And in immature humans, I think games are key to learning cooperation and controlled competition in groups.
I was about to reply one of your older comments with https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/nation-of-makers-industrial-britain but then my browser reloaded some of this thread.
Thanks for the link. I'm sorry that I screwed up on pasting the links.
Does anyone have a strong skeptical view (or analysis) of reincarnation parapsychology? I'm specifically referring to the work of Ian Stevenson, James Tucker, and James Matlock.
The evidence for reincarnated souls (from cases of the reincarnation type) seems much stronger than that for extraterrestrial UFOs, for example, but gets a tiny fraction of the interest. I struggle to find a plausible explanation for some of these cases taken in aggregate that doesn't pose at least some problem for materalism.
I think that the gist of the matter is that aliens do not imply new physics, while reincarnation requires the state of one brain to be preserved and then reapplied to another brain, and all of that occurring naturally using some particle which would have to be frequent enough to do the job while also being elusive enough that we have not detected it yet.
Put simply, say I require one unit of evidence that someone is an alien.
Then I might require ten units for the claim that they are able to teleport people like in Star Trek, and 100 units of evidence that they can transmit information at faster than light speed.
Reincarnation as a natural process would require our world to be so that teleportation of brain contents happens naturally without us being able to detect it. Let us say that this involves another factor of 1000 of evidence over the transporter device.
In fact, most of my probability mass for reincarnation is that it would be another intelligence (aliens, simulators) intentionally to mess with us, rather than a phenomenon which occurs naturally like the microwave background or tooth decay.
Why don't aliens require new physics? We don't have physics that would allow spacecraft to reach relativistic speeds. We don't have the physics that would allow wwarp drives, wormhole travel, or any FTL travel. Unless aliens are very very long-lived or have some sort of hibernation technology, crossing interstellar space would be a challenge under physics as we know it.
But if the Block Universe Hypothesis is correct that would allow for precognition, and some other forms of ESP. Likewise panpsychism isn't ruled out by contemporary physics (but it's probably unfalsifiable).
>We don't have physics that would allow spacecraft to reach relativistic speeds
Is this true? I believe it would require a lot of energy to accelerate a space ship to relativistic speeds (a large fraction of the speed of light), but would it require new physics?
As I understand it relativity says that from the frame of reference of the space ship, travel can be arbitrarily fast - it is from an outside frame of reference that the space ship will approach but not exceed the speed of light?
(Very possible that I'm wrong about that last part)
Not endorsing theories of aliens visiting earth, just interested in space travel in general.
IANAP, but E=MC^2 says that the mass of an object under acceleration will increase in a quadratic curve (sorry, I may be using the wrong math term) as the acceleration increases. And it would require a similar increasing curve of energy consumption to keep it accelerating. Anyway, speedswhere the relativistic passing of time would be slow enough to make it feasible to cross stellar distances in a human lifespan would require sources of energy we don't have at our disposal under our current physics. And if we figured out how to hibernate or to be put into a stassis for some long period of time, a slowboat would require more fuel than would be practical. A Bussard ramjet could theoretically collect enough interstellar hydrogen to give an interstellar vehicle a limitless supply of fuel, but that would require magnetic monopoles (and if I remember my popular science that I read a couple of decades ago magnetic monopoles would require supersymmetry to be true — and tests at CERN seem to have falsified supersymmetry).
Wormholes? Right now, they're mathematical abstractions that haven't been proven to exist. And how do you create a wormhole with the physics and energies we have at our disposal? And we probably can't access the energies that could create a wormhole.
Warp drives? We don't have a mechanism to create a localized warp bubble in space-time. And again, even if we did, we probably can't access the energies that could create to create such a thing.
The objects that were filmed darting around those Navy jets seemed to be inertialess. If they were physical objects, the aliens that created them would have to have had some way to remove mass from Baryons. If the our pion-condensate theory of mass is true (and I don't think it's even falsifiable at the energies we can access) then the aliens have some way to mess with the behavior of quarks without destroying the matter that's composed of those quarks.
I am not a physicist, though. And some of what I'm telling you I may be garbled. But, bottom line, interstellar travel would require us to access energies that are beyond our capability unless we make a some breakthrough in physics.
The Voyager probes will eventually reach other solar systems. Okay, they don't have any delta-v to decelerate, but in general we have the tech to escape Sol's gravity.
It is right that the travel times will be a bit on the long side, but a million years would probably suffice (Bring a book.)
> We don't have physics that would allow spacecraft to reach relativistic speeds
I would argue that we don't have the engineering to do that.
Standard proton fusion works like this:
4 H-1 --> He-4 + 26MeV
The (mostly nonrelativistic) velocity of the Helium nucleus would be sqrt(2E/m)=sqrt(2*26MeV/4000MeV), roughly.
So if you use proton fusion and exhaust the helium, that would get you to an exhaust velocity on the order of 0.1c . Put that into the rocket equation and build a space ship in which 90% of the mass is fuel, and you get a delta v of 0.2c without any new physics required. Enough to visit another star in a human life time. Just because humankind has been struggling with getting fusion energy to become viable for a few generations there is no reason to assume that we (or some aliens) might not solve it in a few more generations.
This is a good answer, and indeed your last paragraph is part of the actual response of materialists ("more likely to be alien teenagers than actual reincarnation, so even if you had a perfect CORT it wouldn't be a knockdown argument for dualism"). I think it's really wrong, though. Materialist priors are just way too high on materialism when there is still a lot that's not understood about consciousness. Willingness to believe in alien pranksters or faster-than-light travel is, in my view, rooted in a erroneous preference for tech-coded stuff. Science fiction is considered more plausible than other sorts of fiction, regardless of the evidence for each.
Ideas like "there is a soul, comprised of material we don't understand that travels between bodies in a way we don't understand" is way more intellectual parsimonious than "there are aliens on mars messing with us by frying 4-year old heads with prank rays to make us believe in reincarnation." Physics aside, this always felt like common sense to me.
> Willingness to believe in alien pranksters or faster-than-light travel is, in my view, rooted in an erroneous preference for tech-coded stuff.
No scientists believe in FTL.
If by alien pranksters you mean Aliens, then scientists believe in aliens because the balance of probability would suggest that we are hardly the only intelligent species in the Galaxy, and certainly not the universe.
If by alien pranksters you mean the aliens visiting Earth right now to stick prods up our bums , then nobody sensible really believes in that.
Anyway it’s not an argument for your position to argue there are other stupid arguments.
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally uncharitable or just haven't understood my comment. I didn't say any scientists believe in FTL, or that FTL being impossible is a reason to believe in reincarnation.
quiet_NaN argued that reincarnation is ex-ante 1000x less likely than FTL information transmission. He further argued that, if they exists at all, memories of past lives is more likely to come from aliens messing with us than actual reincarnated souls. I disagree with both, and think there's a resistance to the reincarnation explanation because it's less science-coded than FTL travel or alien pranksters.
How is it ex-ante less likely than FTL travel? FTL travel is just as much a pseudoscientific hypothesis as reincarnation. OTOH some recent meta-analysis of precognition studies shows that there's a statistically significant effect that people can pick up information from the future. If time isn't sequential then all sorts of information flows are possible. And ultimately, reincarnation is a type of information transfer. Of course, this meta-study also implies it's possible to have information transfer at FTL speeds. So alien possession of human consciousness is not ruled out in that scenario.
As a youngster, I believed I was an alien intelligence sent here to collect as much data about humans and this planet as I could, before I die and they uploaded it. I still don't feel very human. Humans as species puzzle me greatly. ;-)
> FTL travel is just as much a pseudoscientific hypothesis as reincarnation.
From the numbers I originally stated, I think my priors were p(reincarnation)=p(FTL)/100.
FTL+special relativity breaks causality, which feels unlikely. Physics would still be salvageable, though.
OTOH, naturally occurring (no alien pranksters) reincarnation would require a mechanism such as souls which become unlinked from the brain at death and float invisibly around until they find another brain.
Scientists have looked at nerve cells and they appear to work through ordinary chemistry. We might not understand how huge numbers of such have to be wired to make a brain, but we have had some success with building artificial neural networks recently. If souls are real we basically deal with an antagonistically designed universe, the kind where God put dinosaur bones into the rocks to test our faith in Young Earth Creationism.
The bit about children spontaneously recounting a past life around the age of 4, I’ve seen this in one of my own children. Stories about “when I was a grownup”. Seems like a variation on the imaginary friend mixed with some archetype of incarnation. That is, I think this is a real psychological phenomenon but our understanding of the mind and especially the archetypical realms is limited. No non-physical spooky stuff required to explain.
Because I've shared my past life memories with others, people have opened up with me. I had an acquaintance who worked in a daycare/nursery school, and she would ask kids who they were before they were born. Some, but not all, gave her specific answers with some interesting details. Most of our memories of our early years get overwritten by or around age four. My stepson was older than four when I heard her tell me this. So I never got to ask him about who he was in his past life. But knowing about that memory loss, I monitored his memories from ages three onward. He loved the woman who ran his daycare. He'd talk about her all the time after we picked him up from daycare. I thought she was a pill, but he'd go on and on about how Mrs <name withheld> played games or read to him. We moved him over to a nursery school when he turned four. I made a point of asking him about how Mrs <name withheld>. He remembered her quite clearly until about age four and half, when over a two-week period he forgot about her. He had no memories of her after that. I thought that was pretty amazing. The mind of children seems to go through a massive memory purge around age four.
> and she would ask kids who they were before they were born
Isn't that almost a Zen koan? ("What was your original face before you were born?")
I remember this myself. I remember being so embarrassed about the shaming response I got from my teacher and her son (my friend) when I told her about it that I tried to force myself to forget it. I never thought too hard about what it was then; could have been anything from a dream memory to a recollection of the womb or something. I do remember being absolutely certain it was a real memory though, and that's why I was so comfortable telling her about it.
in your experience, did they say a bunch of contradictory or obviously false stuff?
IMO, reincarnation would imply some sort of non-physical layer to reality, which contains souls (and maybe other things) and allows them to persist through time and attach to different living creatures over time.
There's various beliefs that posit such a layer, including the belief that we're all in a simulation (anyone ever used code that doesn't initialize its data structures properly?), but I don't happen to hold any of them at the moment.
>(anyone ever used code that doesn't initialize its data structures properly?)
Doesn't that come with:
Trigger warning for programmers or retired programmers! :-)
Sign at a protest: "Free the mallocs!"
LOL Many Thanks! Would the person bearing the sign worry that they might get in a heap of trouble? :-)
Strictly speaking, a "non-physical layer" is unnecessary for "souls" to persist forever. I can easily come up with a simple "physical" scenario:
Our brain functions generate fluctuating electrical currents
These currents generate fluctuating electromagnetic fields
These fields propagate outward into space
They will continue to propagate forever.
Now, the strength of these fields is vanishingly small, but greater than 0. So everything that makes me "me" will exist in this universe long after I'm dead.
Unfortunately, we understand electromagnetism and the quanta of the EM field which we call photons rather well. While admittedly not having done the math, I think that human brain is terrible at broadcasting its inner state on the EM spectrum. Aside from the fact that a lot of bands will be promptly be reabsorbed by by the surrounding brain matter, one important fact is that two axons running a micrometer apart can have vastly different functions. In a toy model, one might encode "elephant" and the other might encode "cheese". To tell apart if you have been thinking of elephants or cheese, one would have to resolve that, which means that the wave length of the photons would have to be smaller than a micrometer, so we are talking about near infra-red, almost visible. Given that my head looks rather intransparent to me, I don't think that many photons in that band will make it through the rest of my brain and my skull.
Ok I see where I went wrong, I forgot that energy is not, in fact, "analog", and cannot have arbitrarily low values. Duh!
My best skeptical argument: The idea that one's essential self can inhabit a different body at a different era in history, while having no memory of the earlier life (or a most a few weird wisps of memory) is just incoherent. What even *is* a self, then? The original body (and most of us experience our body as an important aspect of ourselves) is gone. In our new incarnation we don't speak the language we spoke in the old one, have the skills that we learned, the prejudices and preferences and habits, the friends, the family, etc. All that is gone. And, most important, we don't have the store of life memories we were accumulating up until death in our earlier incarnation. What then *is* a self if it's independent of the body, the attitudes, the info, the skills, the preferences, the attachments and the memories someone has? If I knew that in 2162 "I" would be reincarnated as a farmer on a rehabbed, well oxygenated Mars it wouldn't make me feel a bit less distressed that my present life will end in death. So "I" come back as a male farmer and don't remember or care about any of the things I do right now? Well then, good luck to that guy but he ain't me.
I think this is a really modern conception of the self. Compatibilism began as a way to rescue free will (and the self) from materialism.
I don’t find it persuasive. Right now I have many properties—love Japanese food and my family, hate spiders, can read at an advanced level, experience yellow, do division. If you took those things away from me, either by a series of unfortunate accidents or brainwashing techniques or whatever, it would still be *me* experiencing qualia.
The reincarnation hypothesis is totally coherent. Your consciousness survives without any (many) memories of your past lives. It just implies modern materialism, especially parts like functionalism, is wrong, and compatibilism becomes more of a hazy, woo-adjacent belief that isn’t necessary to explain the self.
If I took away your memories it wouldn’t you experiencing anything at all. It would be effectively a new person, with a blank slate. You may have some genetic traits in common with the other guy but all learned behaviour would be gone. The old you would be dead.
Anyway unless the believers in reincarnation can explain how the consciousness gets to the new human it remains unproven.
Weird discussion for a rationalist blog.
>If I took away your memories it wouldn’t you experiencing anything at all. It would be effectively a new person, with a blank slate.
Is this then true also for a marginal change? In the same sense I'm not the same person as myself 20 years ago, 1 year ago, 1 second ago or 1 tick of whatever is the smallest unit of my brain state. So this is really a question of what the definition of self is - and the way we normally use it, it can't really be about our memories.
>If I took away your memories it wouldn’t you experiencing anything at all.
Do you believe amnesiacs are different people than they were before their amnesia? I would describe an amnesiac as a person who has forgotten memories, not an entirely new person.
I didn't say reincarnation was "proven". But I disagree that you'd have to explain how the consciousness transfer itself happens for reincarnation to be a very likely outcome. For example, if your 3 year old child (raised in rural Nebraska) said: "In a past life, I was a samurai named ____ in year 1305, with a wife named X and two sons named Y and Z. I was buried in Q specific cemetery in Japan. I also remember semifluent Japanese," I posit you would reasonably conclude that they were probably reincarnated, without knowing exactly how the consciousness transfer works.
Well, the focus in this case would be on the odd reports of things like memories or languages of some past person appearing in young children. Philosophical questions about actual persistence or continuity of identity are a separate concern. In other words there could be a phenomenon here even if it doesn't actually qualify as 'reincarnation' or what have you.
Well, yes, one could take an interest in such things. But OP asked about reincarnation.
...Can you give us some examples?
(And obviously the reason why it's not popular is because it's incredibly incompatible with most modern religions.)
Aren't aliens also incompatible with most organized religions?
I personally found the case of James Leininger (especially the skeptical correspondence between Michael Sudduth and Matlock on the matter) to be so compelling that I think it's either a case of past life memories or overt fraud with the middle ground "odd coincidences" possibility less likely than both. I'd say the same with Kemal Atasoy, although there's less publicly available material to go on. Finally, it's very remarkable that the common features of Ian Stevenson's original 20 cases suggestive of reincarnation keep coming up in new cases: memories between ages 2-6, commonly related to violent deaths, occasionally with related birthmarks, that later fade away over time.
> Aren't aliens also incompatible with most organized religions?
C.S. Lewis wrote some sci-fi on this premise. "Out of the Silent Planet" tells of a Verne/Wells-esque trip to Mars, which is inhabited by three unFallen species. If you like the genre of "first contact with aliens who are subtly Very Different", you should definitely read it. Among its virtues is that it's short.
Why would the existence of aliens contradict a religion that wasn't also based on young-Earth creationism?
It wouldn't even necessarily contradict Young Earth Creationism either. If God made us 6,000 years ago, he could have made the aliens 6,000 years ago too.
> Aren't aliens also incompatible with most organized religions?
You can just say that God made aliens. Doesn't have to make sense. The point is that people want to believe in aliens because reality is boring as hell, and they'll latch onto anything that would make their lives marginally more interesting. But people don't want to believe in reincarnation. They want to go to heaven. The two ideas are inherently incompatible.
...Regardless, how much people want something to be real has no relation with whether or not it's actually real. It's good practice to be skeptical of things that have obvious motivated reasoning behind them, particularly those involving death.
I mean, to be clear there is tons and tons of motivated reasoning behind wanting reincarnation to exist too.
What's the motivational reason for wanting to be reincarnated? All I got out of reincarnations was a bunch of fuzzy memories and people giving me funny looks if I talk about it. I didn't even get a frigging t-shirt!
The whole raison d'être for Buddhism is to get us out of the cycle of rebirth. Of course, if you view life as suffering that's a good motivation not to be reborn to suffer again and again. At least Christians get to go to heaven with alabaster buildings, manicured lawns, and angels singing hosannas. Muslims (at least male Muslims) get to go to a paradise heaven with lots wine and houri at their beck and call. (Question: are there male houri for the women?)
Let me tell you, reincarnation is not what's its cracked up to be. At best it's like only being able to remember a piece of an interesting dream. Give me nirvana, or give me death!
Well yes, that's the point I'm trying to make.
I'd say lack of falsifiability is the big issue.
That's the issue I have with my memories of other lives. They could as easily be artifacts of my imagination. But I also realize that most of my memories from this life involve a lot of voluntary and involuntary embellishments. But because I cannot separate the embellishments from the original elements of my memories I regard all my memories with skepticism. But I cherish them even if they're false, because I still have learned from them, and I act in accordance with the entire memory corpus available to me. The only spooky event I had was meeting my wife from my past life. She admitted the connection but was very disturbed that I described some events in her past life memories. Not enough detail to pin down who we were, though. And just the act of talking about memories with each other may have distorted our memories of the memories...
They are totally falsifiable, and many have been falsified! The modern way these cases are treated is to preregister as many "early" memories as possible, and match them against actual people. If you can't find a match to the overwhelming majority of the memories, in my mind the case is not evidence of reincarnation.
Then falsify my past-life memories, please. ;-) If they're real, I was never anyone famous enough to get into recorded history. And they don't provide enough detail for me to get names and dates out of them. If they're false, they seem just as real as my supposedly real memories — which, when I examine them, are at best imperfect recordings of selected events in my life. The only reason I give *some* of my current life's memories some credence is because of all the dated documents that come along with modern living. But if I talk to family members about the details of events we experienced together, I see that either I've misremembered a lot, or my relatives have misremembered. I suspect both.
...Do you have memories of past lives where you weren't human?
No. The furthest back they go would probably be the New Kingdom of Egypt, and they're all human (some female, but predominantly male for the past thousand years). As a Buddhist, I was told that I could be reincarnated as anything. But that's not my experience of my past-life memories. I asked a Gelug lama about this. He laughed and assured me that they were all false memories. He explained that only advanced Bodhisattvas can have memories of their past lives, but (if I understood him correctly) that's more because of the omniscience that advanced Bodhisattvahood (i.e Bhumi level 10 and above, IIRC) gives to sentient beings — and not because of actual memories.
Still, they're there in my consciousness. Illusion/delusion or not they affect the way I look at the world — and that's the ultimate function of memory, isn't it?
Did you have all of these past lives memories from a very early age? Did they make sense to you as a child?
Some. As a young kid (age five? age six?), I had lots of dreams about being in ancient Egypt. But I was also aware of ancient Egypt because my folks had lots of coffee table books about ancient Egypt. So I was aware I was in ancient Egypt in my dreams. I may have had memories of other places and times, but I wasn't aware of their setting because I didn't have the historical knowledge to identify their settings.
Sure, my active imagination may have been influenced by those coffee table books full of pictures of ancient Egypt, but my folks had similar books about ancient Rome, Greece, the Holy Land, Mesopotamia, and Meso-American civilizations. I didn't have dreams about those places.
It wasn't until I was older that I had dreams and waking memories of other places and times — but I could recognize them because I had the historical and anthropological knowledge to recognize their context. All these memories are patchy, though. More like quick flashes of moving scenes — sometimes with other people — who might be speaking to me, but I can't understand their words (which makes a weird sort of sense if we assume that language is associated with the brain our mind stream happens to inhabit in a particular life).
I get the impression that I hung around ancient Egypt for many generations, though I may have bounced up to Minoan Crete a couple of times (or I was a trader who plied the Med, because I have vivid images of being on boats at on the sea) — but by the time Ptolemy took over, I had moved on to other places. There's a big gap in my past life memories from about the 4th Century BCE until about 4th of 5th centuries CE. I may have them, but because I can't place them in the context of time or culture, I don't recognize them. But they pick up again in Central Asia. I was a Buddhist monk or some sort of Buddhist scholar or philosopher in a few of those lives. Lots of images of scrolls with flowing script on them. Pleasant cities in lush valleys with dry mountains all around. Then I moved further to the Northeast. I was a Mongol in one of those lives who made a journey to a Buddhist monastery in the highlands (Tibet?). Images of the endless Steppes and riding horses across them. Then I lingered a while with the tribes that lived in the boreal forests of Siberia. I was doing shamanic things. Then I bounced over to Central and Eastern Europe in the 16th Century CE. Lots of dreams and waking memories of crowded cities with multistory buildings along rivers. And stuffy rooms full of cloth. I get the impression I was a cloth merchant of some sort in one of those lives. But I was living middle-class style lives, and there were books, so I was educated in those lives. There was a woman who seemed to be reincarnating along with me as my wife/mother/sister. There's a city in Poland (whose name escapes me at the moment) with a squared moat around it. I saw the picture of it, and I was shocked at how familiar it looked. I had the certainty that I lived in a house overlooking that moat.
As a kid of five or six, I had an irrational fear of the police. I was outside a local department store with my mom, when a police officer started talking to us in a friendly way (he may have been flirting with my mother who was a beautiful woman). He squatted down to talk to me at my level. He was just trying to be friendly, but I started screaming, "Don't let him kill me! Don't let him take me away!" My mom had to hustle me away because I freaking out. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that I had memories from WWII and the Holocaust. Men in uniforms beat me. And I died in a concentration camp. I am one of a cohort of people born between the mid-1950s and early 1960s that has traumatic memories of WWII. The former wife in my last life who I mentioned above was born the same year I was this time around and she remembered strikingly similar scenes as I did in her memory. It turns out there's a large group of Jews born in the same period that have memories of the Holocaust. I'm a goy, but I have them too. I was a scholar in my past life, who was reborn in a family of scholars — but safely in New England and not Europe! It's not just Jews. I have a Filipino friend, born around 1960, who has memories of having her legs crushed under the treads of a Japanese tank.
Of course, with the advent of cable TV, through the Hitler Channel (err, the History Channel) we've all been exposed to images of the violence of WWII. So I'm perfectly willing to admit these violent memories could just be due to suggestion. But I don't really believe that explanation.
FWIW plenty of non-Jews were sent to the camps too.
How does your consciousness transfer, do you think.
Also why are populations increasing?
But I haven't been a materialist since LSD and Psilocybe gave me a new perspective on reality.
What about those experiences changed your mind? This sentiment always really confused me because while I can imagine evidence I could experience on drugs that would convince me of this, I've never actually heard of the experiences that people had being at all like what it would take to convince me.
I've taken plenty of both lsd and shrooms (including very high dosages) and never had a religious sort of experience, but I also can't imagine ever being convinced by any experience that I couldn't check the veracity of in some way after the fact (like say getting information about the outside world you couldn't possibly have known).
So, reality for you is consensus-based? There may be something to that. But remember Western materialism is a relatively new consensus-based phenomenon. I hope you don't get put down in the Amazon rainforest and have to deal with the consensual reality experienced by some Amazonian tribes. I forget which anthropologist it was who after a few years of living with his hosts started to see the spirit beings his hosts saw — even though he wasn't on psychotropic substances.
Anyway, I had a couple of episodes of psychokinesis while on magic mushrooms. Both witnessed by other people (who were also tripping, unfortunately). But even if was a hallucination, one would need to explain why it was a shared hallucination.
I had a rough time with a malicious entity that acted like a poltergeist that followed me home after a trip and that scared the shit out of me, after I had (presumably) come down from the trip. It seemed to feed on my fear. Luckily I had some knowledge of the theory of sympathetic magic (from my undergrad courses in Anthropology), and I was able to get rid of it.
I've communed with the non-human consciousness of trees (you can watch the lectures of the botanist Stefano Mancuso if you want some independent support that trees exhibit a type of consciousness).
Many times while tripping I was in a state which I called "the groove", in which all sorts of weird synchronicities occurred. But I had had some "magical" experiences before I started tripping — though psychedelics may have opened the gateways for other experiences that happened during my post-tripping life.
I need to write up my "magical" memoirs. I've written a few chapters, but I've had some very wild paranormal experiences — not just on psychedelic drugs. But I don't require you to believe me. I experienced what I experienced.
The consensus aspect of my view is purely pragmatic and I can absolutely imagine experimental evidence which would be able to convince me, even in a scenario where I was the only person around. If anything I'm always going to rank certain kinds of recorded evidence as far more important than corroborating eyewitness evidence.
What's important is just that I'm not entirely relying upon me and others minds being reliable in ways that seem impossible to square with all the psychological research I've seen about the unreliability of eyewitnesses.
> But even if was a hallucination, one would need to explain why it was a shared hallucination.
The sticking point for me has always been that the various psychological explanations for these sort of poorly controlled observations are ultimately much more plausible to me than them being real, given what I would consider to be an extremely suspicious lack of corroborating evidence which I should expect to exist. There's also aspects of most of these experiences that make me tend to think they're a-priori unlikely, since I would predict a-priori that if they were real there would be both more consistency between people's experiences, as well as observable evidence that can be checked later like I said before.
I definitely "want to believe" compared to most materialists, but it's hard to get your hopes up about any tests you may wish to run, when you know that other people must have already performed such tests (given how these phenomena aren't reported as being *that* rare based on the anecdotes I've heard). It very hard to imagine how it could plausibly be the case that I would be the first person to accurately record the supernatural, unless it's an extremely rare localized phenomenon or something.
I've heard people mention analogous similar sorts of experiences to the psychokinesis you mention, but it just seems really implausible to me that with everyone carrying around camera phones, we still don't have good video of these phenomena.
There's certainly plenty of excuses for why these sort of supernatural phenomena seem allergic to reliable recording devices, but I've never heard one that didn't seem like a really ad hoc justification for the lack of expected evidence.
>I've communed with the non-human consciousness of trees (you can watch the lectures of the botanist Stefano Mancuso if you want some independent support that trees exhibit a type of consciousness).
I absolutely agree trees are conscious, but I don't really know what it would mean to meaningfully "commune" with an organism that doesn't have a theory of mind, and so can't even comprehend that other minds exist. Though we may not disagree here, given what you said before about not being sure that your reincarnation memories literally happened to you given your level of enlightenment.
That being said I still have a tiny glimmer of hope, enough to be interested in proposing experiments. So if you think you have means of communicating with spiritual entities with any level of reliability let me know, as there's a lot of questions I'd propose you should ask (like say mathematical proofs such as large novel prime factorizations).
Though I worry that your experiences trying to test may unfortunately be like what Scott describes in this classic short story: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/
The trouble is a lot of paranormal experiences are so transitory and random that it's hard to falsify them. But to your point, I no longer regard my memory as reliable, and I no longer trust my qualia as being reliable. After all we're not directly perceiving reality, we're seeing an edited version of reality through nervous systems that evolved in response to a specific set of ecological pressures. A cat or a bat almost certainly perceive the world differently from us. Moreover, our qualia are filtering out a lot of extraneous data, and for the data that gets past our filters, our mind categorizes and interprets it almost instantaneously. The reality that we perceive is not necessarily the reality out there.
If it isn't 'reincarnation' in some continuity-of-identity sense and is just some bizarre crosstalk of human memory it would obviously still be profoundly interesting despite not being evidence for the existence of a disembodied self.
I think most reincarnation theorists would say the former, but for me I am much more concerned with verifying the phenomenon itself. It seems like a huge deal if even one individual has ever been reincarnated!
>It seems like a huge deal if even one individual has ever been reincarnated!
Hmm... I'm not sure if this is true, depending on the flavor of the "huge deal".
For the sake of discussion, if were a case where someone was reincarnated with full memories (avoiding the discussion, as Eremolalos said, about what it even _means_ to be reincarnated _without_ memories), it would certainly force us to drastically revisit how we think memories work. In that sense, it certainly _would_ be a big deal.
For any ordinary person, though, if reincarnation happened, but happened less than one time in a billion, and everyone else winds up vanishing forever, as current understanding of the brain suggests, why should much change for ordinary people (that is, people who are not neuroscientists or possibly artificial neural network engineers)? Unless there is some reason to think that it can be tweaked to happen regularly, why would one isolated case matter to John Q. Public?
My son watched Gladiator last year and now he’s trying to restore the Roman Empire. Help!
I don’t usually turn to internet forums for advice but after the insanity of the past year, I’ll try anything. Last summer, my son Mark was a typical, albeit shy, fourteen year old. But that changed after he watched Gladiator with my husband. I was apprehensive about him watching an R rated movie but my husband assured me it was fine. Anyways, they never really spent that much time together so I relented. Mark loved it. He watched that movie every single day that summer. There was something magical about its characters and story that spoke to Mark and gave him romantic ideas about what Rome meant. His excitement was infectious. I hadn’t seen it in years and so for his birthday, I gave him an illustrated history book about Rome and from that point on, he was enthralled.
Mark read that book cover to cover to such an extent that he practically had it memorized. But that wasn’t enough and he wanted more. He read Wikipedia articles about Rome. He listened to podcasts about Rome. He watched youtube videos about Rome. Rome all day and Rome all night. Mark went to the library and went through the history section vigorously. The librarians loved him. They weren’t used to teenagers being so excited about reading. Every day that summer he went to the library and spent the entire day soaking up Rome. Once school started, he would go to the library after school. When he came home, he would tell us all kinds of “fun facts” about Rome. Did you know the city had a million inhabitants? Did you know that Ancient Rome traded with China? Did you know that the Roman Empire didn’t fall until 1453? My son did and he needed to make sure everyone knew. I was starting to get sick of Rome but what are you going to do? At least he was getting out of the house, and there are certainly worse hobbies your kid can have. He continued doing this for a few months and it was fine. But then it went from a hobby to an obsession.
Mark’s father indulged him in these flights of fancy by buying him Roman armor for Christmas. He read about military drills that Roman legionaries would do and imitated them. He looked ridiculous marching around our neighborhood. Worse, he insisted on wearing sandals in near freezing weather. We fought every day over it until his dad did some research and learned that Romans wore more practical shoes in colder places like Germany. But even though we fixed that problem, there was a less lethal but still enormous problem of what to do when Mark went back to school after the break. I was really worried about him going back to school. He was losing touch with reality at this point and wanted to emulate Roman generals and emperors by wearing his armor at school. I told Mark that he looked ridiculous and all the kids would make fun of him. He said that this is what he wanted to do, and I was always telling him to be more outgoing and stop caring what others thought. That was certainly not what I meant! But against my better judgement, I relented and, true to his word, he went full Roman. What happened next was weirder than I could have imagined.
On his first day back, Mark went to school and just like I said, his classmates mocked him. Everyone laughed at how stupid he looked. But Mark wasn’t bothered. “They’ll come around” he proclaimed confidently, as if it wasn’t an insane thing to say. But to my astonishment, he was right. At first, the boys mocked him. They marched around and pretended to follow his orders. But apparently they enjoyed it so much that their mockery turned in to sincerity. There was something about his confidence they found magnetic, and the girls latched themselves on to him as well. They wanted to be the Cleopatra to his Julius Caesar.(I tried telling him things turned out badly for both of them, but naturally he ignored that.) Mark became the most popular kid in school but just like his adopted namesake, he had bigger ambitions.
Mark made videos that he uploaded to Youtube. At first, it was simply educational videos but then it morphed into something bigger. In one of his videos, he made an offhand comment about restoring the Roman Empire and it went viral on social media. His video channel exploded in popularity. He kept making more videos about his plans and how he intended to achieve them. He received donations from others to make these dreams a reality. Mark promised that once the “campaigning season”(summer break) began, he would go ahead with his plans and got thousands of supporters willing to go with him. I couldn’t believe it but he literally wanted to sail to Italy and announce himself as emperor, believing they would simply let him.
As summer approached, Mark prepared for this expedition. He recruited all the boys from his high school and received money from all over the world. I asked him how he planned to invade an entire country with nothing but a few thousand schoolboys and he assured me no one would stand against him. He referenced battles from Julius Caesar’s time. I emphatically repeated that he was not Julius Caesar and he smirked and said “not yet”. Some of his subscribers lent him their own private boats and even though they weren’t the “triremes” my son wanted, he found them acceptable. Then, they got some kitchen knives as swords and cobbled together “armor” from whatever metal things they could find. I told him he couldn’t do it. He didn’t listen. My husband half heartedly said he couldn’t do it. Mark said it was his destiny. After some prodding, I got the principal to say he would be expelled for going. He talked about receiving a vision from “Mars” that said he had been blessed by the gods, and that it would be an insult not to go through with it. I took him to a therapist to cure his mental illness but she ended up agreeing with him. What was happening? I forbade him from going. I pleaded with him. I even suggested building a “New Rome” here. He wouldn’t have it. There was only one way to restore the glory of Rome and he was the one to do it. Mark left this morning. I tried to physically force him to stop but his friends simply prevented me from doing so. He plans to embark in the next few days.
Despite my pleas, there is nothing I have done that will stop him from going through with this disaster. At best, his plan would end with him humiliated for the rest of his life and at worst, he could end up dead. Has everyone lost it? Not only do his friends support him but so does everyone in his life. When pressed on why, they say there is just “something about him.” They can’t explain what that “something” is, but they all agree he has it, even the authorities. Neither the cops nor the government officials I talked to have any interest in keeping him here. Has everyone lost their mind? I tried everything I could to prevent this insanity, but nothing is working so in my desperation I turn to random people on the internet. What should I do?
Update: he did it. Ave Caesar!
Top kek. Ave Caesar!
IMO, more specificity about the details would enhance the verisimilitude. Rather than "an illustrated history book about Rome," choose an actual title or two from Osprey's catalogue. Once he starts going through the library's collections — what does Mark think about Mary Beard? What does he think about Gibbon? Rather having him "watch youtube videos about Rome," have him work his way through Scipio Martianus' channel, start speaking in Latin, and perhaps develop strong views about classical vs. ecclesiastical pronunciation. (It might also be worth giving "Gladiator" a rewatch, since one of its central premises was that the Empire was a Bad Thing and needed to be abolished in favor of a restored Republic. What does Mark think about that idea?)
Mark's motivations and thinking could also be made more psychologically plausible. If he knows that the Roman Empire "didn't fall until 1453," he knows that the Roman Empire doesn't need to be in Rome, so why exactly does he think he can't he build one "here"? (Presumably "here" is somewhere in the US, but again more specificity might be better. You might write "here in Michigan," "here in Oregon," or "here in New Jersey": which of these best fits your intended aesthetic effect?)
So.....you're posting as Brandon Fishback and your son's name in the story is Mark?
Insert "amused" emoji here.
I wanted to go more detailed about Rome but I don’t think it would work story-wise. Mark may care about Latin pronunciation but his mom certainly wouldn’t and she’s the one telling the story.
Is it important that the mom doesn't know or care about Rome? Why does this make it a better story?
It's certainly more realistic and immersive.
For me, it was the opposite: the mom's lack of interest in her son's developing obsession struck me as unrealistic and immersion-breaking. It didn't feel like a character portrait of a mother uninterested in the details of her son's life, it felt like a story written by an author uninterested in those details. If Brandon is aiming for the former, I think the characterization needs to be established more forcefully.
I don’t know what your mom is like but I don’t know many moms that have an intricate knowledge of their sons hobbies, especially stuff like history.
Trying to get feedback on this story before posting it on my blog. Let me know what you think about any of it, from the idea to the prose.
I might be barking up the wrong tree (and I am *very bad* at literary subtexts, I literally thought Animal Farm was a story about some animals) but is this supposed to be an allegory for the existence of trans people?
No, it's about communist revolutions. Overthrow the bosses, overwork the idealists to death, and see that the new bosses are same as the old bosses.
There’s not any subtext.
For what it's worth, I assumed this was a real post -- but after a couple of paragraphs, while still thinking it was a real post, I felt sure the person was lying. I can't put my finger on why. I think one thing was that in a real post the writer would have spent more time early on talking about their point of view, explaining what kind of help they wanted, and just *venting*. Something like, "there's a crazy situation in my house. My son seems to have developed an obsession or maybe a delusion, and my husband isn't taking it seriously. I'd like to know whether anybody here has gone through something similar, and if so how you handled it. . . ." And maybe that voice would break through now and then later in the narrative. "WTF, right? And even the *teachers* don't seem that bothered. I feel as though I'm in Invasion of the body Snatchers and all the other adults have been replaced by emotionless aliens."
Also, I just am not able to believe that when the son went to school in armor the other kids turned around so quick. That just wouldn't happen. If you want people to believe the story, I think you need to come up with a more plausible explanation of how the kids became the son's followers. Like maybe he stood up to the bully substitute -- or won the basketball game for his school while in armor -- or demonstrated astonishing skill with whatever the weapons of his era were.
Not sure what to make of this. It’s definitely not supposed to be a plausible explanation about how it could happen. It’s a silly story about a kid who becomes this Ferris Bueller-esque figure who gets this done through sheer charisma even though it’s ridiculous.
I too thought it was real, but started having doubts at "They marched around and pretended to follow his orders. But apparently they enjoyed it so much that their mockery turned in to sincerity." They enjoyed following his orders? I wanted more explanation, and read further, but didn't get it.
I am so sad to find out that this is fiction.
Soon, my friend. Soon.
I like it!
Appreciate it!
In Greek mythology, the children of Kronos are Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus, in that order. The youngest are most powerful, and the oldest are least powerful. What's up with that?
Tamed fire, grain and motherhood vs control of corpses, waves and thunderstorms. Are you sure about the order of powerfulness?
Well, it's part of the story that Zeus is the youngest, so that position is fixed. (Others have told the story here)
For the rest, I just assume that they were sorted into females and males, because if you make up an order, that is the easiest grouping. That already explains like 90% of the signal you are relying on, because it is up to taste whether Poseidon is really stronger than Hades, or Demeter stronger than Hestia.
Perhaps Greeks liked the Youngest Child Wins trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungestChildWins). Kronos was the youngest too.
Although birth order effects usually favour the eldest child, most papers on birth order effects do not take into account fathers who eat their children.
The children of Kronos and Rhea, as you may recall, were all swallowed by their father immediately after birth, with the exception of Zeus. Once Zeus was fully grown he forced his father to regurgitate all his siblings. So the older children are less powerful, proportional to the time they spent in Cronos's digestive system.
One can assume that being slowly digested inside a Titan's gullet over a period of decades or centuries slowly saps whatever potential you might have originally had, a bit like public school.
Hah! :-)
>Although birth order effects usually favour the eldest child, most papers on birth order effects do not take into account fathers who eat their children.
LOL!
And getting a double-blinded RCT past the IRB takes forever...
The Greeks understood that age both makes you stronger (e.g., 18 year olds are stronger than 8 year olds) and weaker (18 year olds are stronger than 80 year olds). For people, they believed generally that people were getting worse and worse with time. Humanity, as a whole, was decaying.
For the gods, this makes very little sense. Humans age, die, and are replaced by a new generation which can be weaker than the generation that it replaced.
For gods, they don't age. They don't die naturally. If they're going to be replaced by a new generation, the only way that makes sense is if that new generation is stronger than the generation it is replacing.
Partly it's the demands of the story: Kronos replicates Ouranos' offense by killing his own children (they get better), so it has to be the youngest child that overthrows his father and establishes the new order. It was the same in the previous generation, since Kronos was the youngest of the Titans, and avenged the death (they got better) of the giants and the hundred-handed by killing Ouranos. I would also note that the ancient Greeks did not necessarily practice primogeniture: customs varied a good deal. As to the actual order, I'm inclined to say it's poetic license. You're going to end with Zeus, why not set up a nice order? Though I'm a bit wary of saying definitely that we consider, say, Demeter less 'powerful' than Hera.
Yeah, assignation of power levels is a bit suspect. Hestia may simply have had a more concentrated focus, and we all know what happened when Demeter got upset about Persephone...
Birth-order effects.
But Zeus seems incredibly heterosexual!
Not entirely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_(mythology)
Hm, did Hera ever get upset about Ganymede? Or were those non-overlapping magisteria?
She does in the Aeneid, though it's at least partially because Zeus/Jove raised up a Trojan:
"Fearful of that, the daughter of Saturn, the old war in her remembrance that she fought at Troy for her beloved Argos long ago,—nor had the springs of her anger nor the bitterness of her vexation yet gone out of mind: deep stored in her soul lies the judgment of Paris, the insult of her slighted beauty, the hated race and the dignities of ravished Ganymede; fired with this also, she tossed all over ocean the Trojan remnant left of the Greek host and merciless Achilles, and held them afar from Latium; and many a year were they wandering driven of fate around all the seas. Such work was it to found the Roman people."
- https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22456/pg22456-images.html
Thanks!!!
Yeah, I thought of that as soon as I clicked "post". :-)
I've been wondering if there are certain abnormal social behaviors that consistently develop in youths who learned to communicate through chat?
When I was 14-17 I would periodically, for prolonged periods of time, spend maybe 8 hours a day on average in "spaces" where communication was text based - messenger, World of Warcraft, omegle and skype especially - and if books and diaries are a space of communication, then that as well. I read. Read, wrote and typed.
My mornings with my family were mostly silent - i left my mom, dad and brother to do the talking. In school I would listen in class, give answers to the teacher, and spend the breaks playing alone or with others, but mostly in silence; after school I struggled to think of things to say, while it astounded me that the other kids could have so much to say (eventually I had the revelation that the other kids werent speaking to share information; they were just creating fun) ... at dinner i would leave the speaking to my family again, and after dinner i would do homework or read... you get the picture. When i became a teen I would get more verbose, but not in person; in text, online... VERY verbose, haha. Its embarrassing to look back at.
Anyway...
I'm asking because I know I communicate abnormally when I speak. I have been told by so many people that when they met me they thought I spoke in a bizarre fashion that was hard to comprehend but at the same time beautifully clear. And I am dying to pinpoint what it is. None of them have been able to articulate exactly what it was. I don't think it's autism. I might be autistic too, but I don't think that accounts for it. I think there's something else wrong with me and I am dying to find out what it is so that I may seek out someone who' s the same.
Were any of you chronically online when you were teens? and were you practically mute when you were "offline", but verbose when online? And do you have unusual ways of speaking now? Have you become good at talking, or will you always feel more natural when typing?
Please, I want to fix my communication so bad. I don't want to my style to be called weird. It's so estranging. Thank you
I'll second Nancy's "talking like writing" as a major cause. When encountering people in real life after meeting them initially online, I've gotten the comment "huh, you actually talk like that" several times. It's never bothered me so unfortunately I don't have any advice for fixing it.
I do think it's a result of being too online at a critical period and, prior to and in addition to that, reading a lot of old books. I was extremely shy as a child (a word which here means sub-20) and didn't talk much, so it probably is a result of not developing the same cues as most people to distinguish written vs spoken English.
Not a result of autism per se, but I would bet it is strongly correlated with high-functioning autism and similar traits, in that grey area where people sometimes self-diagnose.
It's a guess on my part, since I haven't heard him speak.
I was born before online, so my style is shaped by books.
I don't want to spam post thank you's, so I'll just type one here. Thank you. I'm still not really sure about much, but thanks to you the uncertainty is easier to bear.
Very tentative, but might you be speaking something like written English? Possibly more complex sentence structure than most people use while talking.
What makes you think autism cannot be the cause? People say it’s pretty common in autistic people, to see exactly the pattern of behaviours displayed both by you and the other people who responded (and, erm.., by me, as well, to an extent). On the other hand, I agree that this seems fixable by practice and meeting more people. And I’m really sorry to hear that it makes life difficult for you.
Can you pinpoint whether it is your selection of words, or rather your way of pronouncing them?
When I was a teenager, I could rather easily speak in the fashion of someone else. Like, I could imitate someone's speaking style, to the point that it would freak people out who know both me and the other person. By speaking style I don't mean the choice of word, I rather mean intonation, lengths of vowels, where to raise and lower the voice, stuff like that. And I used these styles permanently, like I met some guy at some youth camps and used his style for the next one or two years.
If your abnormal speaking is about pronunciation and sound, then perhaps this is something you might try. Pick some person to study, either some acquaintance or some actor, imitate their style of speaking, and make this your permanent style.
I brought it up because it resonates with Firstname's point 3 below. When I sing a song, then I imitate it one-to-one, including accent and everything. I think I just put this to the extreme as a teenager.
About myself: I was (and still am) much more on the text side than on the speech side, though not as extreme as you. I don't think that anyone has told me that I speak in a bizarre fashion, but some people told me that my voice is notable. As a kid/teenager I was in a theater group, and trained my voice quite heavily on this very clear style that you need if you want to be understood be an audience, so that may be an explanation. (Very clear pronunciation, a voice that is not necessarily loud but carries far, a little bit like singing.) And I am also pretty far in the autism spectrum.
Your post resonated with me so much that I made an account just to reply.
Disclaimer: I am definitely on the autism spectrum myself so take anything I say about "normal conversation" with a grain of salt.
I don't think I exactly fit the description you're looking for of someone who learned to communicate through text-based means first, but I decided to reply because of the following:
1. A random stranger at an ACX meetup recently told me I had a completely unique voice unlike anything they had ever heard.
2. People often tell me I "don't have an accent", and when pressed, they'll clarify with something along the lines of "well, you definitely sound American but sometimes it's like you're trying to enunciate every phoneme of every syllable." This is in spite of having grown up in the American south, where most of the people around me most definitely *did* have an accent.
3. When singing along to my favorite songs (alone of course -- I would never do this in the presence of even my best friends), I find it much more satisfying to imitate the singer's accent as much as I can than to just sing in whatever my "normal" accent is. This works even if the song is in another language, and has therefore caused a noticeable improvement in my ability to pronounce certain sounds that don't exist in English, such as a Japanese style "r" where your tongue hits the bottom of your mouth (I believe the official term is "voiced alveolar tap").
4. Growing up, people definitely noticed (and occasionally clued me in) that I only ever talked to my closest friends and family, or answered direct questions from teachers or other students in an academic context. I never engaged in small talk or even getting to know classmates sincerely because I didn't see any value in it. Every time I tried my brain was fighting against it the whole time; I just fundamentally didn't want to socialize and that was the end of it. Again, people around me were confused by this behavior since I could be very articulate in non-small talk situations.
5. For the exact same reasons I hated small talk, I never made any social media accounts, even though literally everybody I knew was signing up for Facebook at the very least. Thus, I wasn't "chronically online" by the modern definition, but I did spend a *lot* of time lurking on the internet, mostly Wikipedia at first but later on stumbled across various news websites, forums, and blogs, eventually leading me here. So I may not have "learned to communicate" online but my worldview is very skewed by the way internet people speak.
6. I also spent an utterly ridiculous amount of time as a kid watching movies from the 70s-90s (with a few 2000s movies sprinkled in), so it's very possible that influenced my "accent" more than in-person interactions did.
7. My brain goes into a state of existential panic whenever I hear a recording of myself speaking. I know most people express discomfort at the sound of their own voice, but I swear, it's dialed up to 11 for me. To give a (very) rough approximation, when I speak, what I imagine it sounds like is similar to Kyle MacLachlan (Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks) but what I hear in recordings is much closer to Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite). This difference is so jarring that I lose all focus and motivation for whatever I was doing immediately and have to speak at length to "recover the illusion".
So in conclusion, yeah, I'm not quite the sort of person you were looking for a response from, but I think I can give you some advice, and it may be a bit hard to hear: give up on sounding "normal". In my experience, it's not even remotely feasible. What *is* possible is being confident in the way you express yourself. Start thinking of your "beautifully clear" voice as an asset rather than a liability. If you just focus on communicating precisely what you wish to communicate, people will appreciate that, even if they think something about the way you speak sounds strange. I have found myself in numerous circumstances wherein precise articulation narrowly saved me from misunderstandings the average person might have been caught off guard by. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize this, but I prefer it this way. I'd rather have maximal control over what I say than sound "natural" and "easy to talk to".
Again, take all this with a grain of salt. I'm not really the advice-giving type, and I'm already going way outside my comfort zone to interact with a stranger on the internet. Hope this helps (and sorry for being verbose... I have trouble with brevity).
I meant to not spam post thank yous, and I've already posted one, but I have to thank you for bothering to make a profile and type this out. It's very endearing and relatable :) I'll just keep talking how I do, then. Keep being me, as some would say. Who cares if the message is delivered in an unusual manner if the message gets through, right?
People didn't evolve to communicate through chatrooms. They evolved to communicate through natural speech, so it makes that you would feel awkward about it. It's like learning a new language when you aren't a child. You'll have odd ticks and sound funny. If you want to be like everyone else, you have to just immerse yourself in social situations with others and speak out loud with other people more.
I'm too old to have been in your precise situation, but I was socially isolated in grade school, which led to me struggling with interpersonal interaction in college. I got better, though, but not before someone told me that they thought I sounded like what an angel would sound like. To this day, I am unsure what they meant, but I think it might have something to do with speaking in literary register and enunciating, since I had spent more time reading than talking. I think it might be something like what I hear when I listen to the recordings of Scott reading Unsong. (Give it a listen?)
I'd suggest practice would help, one way or the other. Maybe you'll always be a little different, but it probably won't hurt to find some friendly people and try to imitate what they do.
Does Mutually Assured Destruction make sense? MAD is supposed to act as a deterrent, but say that it has failed for whatever reason, Russia has launched its entire nuclear arsenal at the US, and this is sure to annihilate nearly the entire US population. The US president, in his bunker, now has to decide whether to retaliate. If he strictly follows the MAD principle, he should retaliate, reducing Russia to rubble. However, the entire point of MAD was to prevent America from being destroyed in the first place. Now that this will happen anyways, is there really a point to killing more than 100 million additional people? Perhaps the really important thing now is the continued survival of humanity. Maybe the US president in office at the time has a taste for vengeance and will retaliate anyways. But I believe most presidents would refrain for humanitarian reasons, perhaps contenting themselves with strikes on the Kremlin or at most Moscow. Now, if the Russian president knew this in advance, then he would realize that MAD is not a credible threat. If he values American lives much less than the American president values Russian lives (plausible), it is plausible that he will then go ahead and nuke America. In game theory parlance, this would be a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium.
Obviously I have made some assumptions above, but it's not clear to me that they are any less realistic than the standard ones leading to MAD. If one wanted to get back to MAD, Americans could elect more bloodthirsty/impulsive leaders, who would not hesitate to retaliate. However, this would have the unfortunate side effect of increasing the probability that the same leader initiates a nuclear first-strike, or gets involved in bloody conventional wars. An easier way would be to advertise that we are going to use MAD, regardless of whether we will. Perhaps the fact that we all learn about MAD in schools is just an elaborate facade constructed for precisely this purpose. A third way would be to implement an automatic missile detection and retaliation system, the downside being catastrophe due to false positives. None of these seems foolproof.
First off, MAD doesn't involve killing a hundred million Russians, because there are barely a hundred million Russians to kill and nuclear war is <<<100% efficient at killing. And the continued survival of humanity is not at risk from nuclear war. At this point, if Biden and Putin and Xi got together and said, "how could we kill off the human race with our current nuclear arsenals", then the lynch mob hunting them down in the aftermath would number many billions. And they'd have rebuilt industrial civilization in a century or so.
We are going to kill tens of millions of Russians in the hypothetical case of a Russian nuclear sneak attack on the United States, and reduce Russia to a thing that won't be an industrial nation for at least a generation, for three very strong reasons.
First, there will be at least a hundred million Americans who survived the war, probably a couple hundred million. Who will be busy trying to rebuild the United States of America, and that process would be greatly hindered by e.g. the Russian army invading North America. So, we're going to arrange for Russia to not be able to do that.
Second, there are over seven billion people who are neither Americans nor Russians, some of whom will die in the war but most will not. It would not be good for those people to live in a world ruled by the sort of tyrant who launches massive nuclear sneak attacks to get his way - particularly since he'll still have some of his nuclear weapons and all of his nuclear weapons factories. So, as a public service, we're going to destroy that tyrant and the nation that facilitated his brand of tyranny.
Third, after a Russian nuclear sneak attack killing many tens of millions of Americans, the surviving Americans with their own nuclear weapons are going to really, really, really hate the Russians. Hate is not a design defect in humanity; it exists for a reason, and your hypothetical is a central example of such. But even if it were a defect, it's one we aren't going to fix and it will guide our behavior.
Even if a couple of hundred million Americans survived the initial nuclear attack, the majority of them would soon die by famine.
As Mr. Doolittle says, not in the United States. Note in particular that the US has both an enormous surplus in agricultural productivity, producing I think 3-4x as much food as needed for its current population, and an even larger excess in overall shipping and logistics capability. Supply chain disruptions won't cut through those margins.
At least in the United States. Nations that depend on US food exports, might go hungry.
Do you really think the supply chain is going to survive a massive nuclear attack? Most of the stuff - ports, truck depots, warehouses, fuel depots - is going to be destroyed or badly damaged. The power network is going to be badly damaged. Without electricity you can't pump gas in modern stations. You can't fuel up the agricultural vehicles you need to harvest food or take animals to be slaughtered. You won't have the trucks you need, even if you had the gas. Within days of the attack you will have millions of injured and hungry people fleeing cities desperate for food and water. Any kind of order is going to be impossible to maintain. And shipping? Are you serious? Do you really think the major ports are going to survive? And even if they did, are you going to have the capability to load and unload them, to transport goods around, to coordinate the incoming and outgoing ships?
Yes, I'm serious. I thought it would have been pretty clear from the style and content of my previous posts that I am serious. Your question and tone strike me as argumentative posturing, and as rather insulting so please go away.
In the meantime, addressing just one of your frankly ridiculous points, do you seriously believe that a trucker trying to deliver a truckload of food to his home town is going to look at a service station and say, "Oh Noes! It is Absatively Unpossible to pump fuel without electricity!", and sit down and cry while his neighbors starve? Because I'm pretty sure he'll be back on the road in a few hours, by any of half a dozen obvious methods.
As for the rest of your objections, and the new ones you come up with, no, I'm done with you. If you want you can imagine you've won a great victory by annoying me to the point where I won't debate you any further.
Nuking farmland is very inefficient and would take far more nukes than exist. I did an analysis for a thread a few months ago and every nuke on the planet would only destroy a small percent of the US.
Some, maybe even a lot by most standards, of people will die due to broken logistics networks, but not 10s of millions.
How do you think the food gets from the farms to the people? The logistics networks are absolutely vital to prevent mass starvation. Within two or three days of an all out nuclear war a lot of people are going to experience real hunger for the first time in their lives. When that happens anarchy will not be far away. Sure the farms will be there, but food is not ready on order, without fuel distribution farmers won't be able to harvest most of it, and without reliable electricity they won't be able to keep it from rotting.
If the Russians used most of their nukes to hit farming-related infrastructure, that's a possibility. But then they would be leaving the major infrastructure and big cities in place for lack of enough nukes, which means maintaining overall stability and rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure faster.
Crops are harvested once or twice a year, so we've got many months of food (from the US alone, let alone imports from places not destroyed) in which to work out temporarily solutions. With satellite communications we would still be in contact with each other and coordinate food and other vital logistics.
Think more Shaun of the Dead (temporary issues that seem overwhelming but aren't) than Dawn of the Dead.
You're seriously overestimating the ability for most of the world to *build*, much less *rebuild*, industrial civilization. Much of the world can barely be said to even have industrial civilization today, and much of it that has it in a rudimentary way only has so because of the west or china. And even for those in the west or east asia who have built industrial civilization, this capability was seriously dependant on the smartest fractions of the population. Today, these people overwhelmingly live in the biggest cities of the US, China and so on, and would be the least likely to survive an all out nuclear war accordingly.
As for mere survival, Africa would likely have a massive population after this doomsday pact, but Africa imports 85% of its food from outside of the continent, so a famine is practically unavoidable. Maybe not enough to kill them off entirely, but the damage would be enormous even without a single nuke landing in Africa.
There's quite a bit of industry in Central and South America, Australia, and India, and none of those places are likely to be major targets in a nuclear war. Are the Chileans, Mexicans, Indians, and Australians going to forget how to operate power plants or factories because the US and Russia and China nuked each other into famine and mass death?
India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers. They’re often considered the most likely to touch off nuclear war.
But would they bomb each other because other countries are having a nuclear war?
Economists call that the time inconsistency problem. It comes up in monetary policy. Sargent won an econ nobel for it.
I don't share your view on how US presidents would react. Sparing a belligerent nation right after they've launched an enormous attack on you is atypical.
Check out Ken Follett's recent novel Never, about the world stumbling into nuclear war in the near future.
It was very plausible, and yes, the moderate American President reacted predictably.
"Now that this will happen anyways, is there really a point to killing more than 100 million additional people?"
Yes, there is. If Russia destroys America with nukes, it would be by far the most evil country that has ever existed. For the sake of wiping out an unspeakably evil country from the world, for the sake of America's honor, and for the sake of proving to all of posterity the horror of nuclear war, the American president MUST utterly annihilate Russia.
"But I believe most presidents would refrain for humanitarian reasons, perhaps contenting themselves with strikes on the Kremlin or at most Moscow."
Any president who thinks like that is not a president I will ever support.
>Any president who thinks like that is not a president I will ever support.
Not relevant at all to the question.
Well said
You sound like a one-boxer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb's_paradox
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RAh4fekdiRhZxb2Kw/the-ultimate-newcomb-s-problem
but yes, there's no foolproof way to secure your future when the keys to your future ultimately lie in someone else's hands. The reason for the equilibrium of the Prisoner's Dilemma being (D, D) is mostly because of the assumptions that: A) the other guy has more control of your destiny than you do; and B) both of your incentives are misaligned.
When you think about it, MAD is actually borrowed from what Haidt would call "cultures of honor" (which is still practiced in the 'hood). I.e. protecting your reputation (for being vengeful) is more important than life itself. So I imagine it's at least somewhat effective.
Indeed I am a one boxer :). And interesting point about honor culture!
(I have a confession to make. I actually meant two-boxer. because MAD and one-boxing embraces precommitment, whereas two-boxing rejects precommitment.
You're questioning MAD while trying to have your cake and eat it too, which is a two-boxer thing to do. But I always get the names "one-box" and "two-box" confused. because at first glance, my brain thinks "one-box" implies "take box A", whereas "two-box" implies "take box B". Which does not reflect the actual thought experiment.)
I'm a two-boxer who endorses MAD. There's no Omega required for MAD, just people as human as us.
p.s. wait, i think i screwed up the boxes in my last comment again.
So you two-box because omega is fallible at guessing intent, but stalin the human is infallible at guessing intent? Surely I'm missing something.
Stalin was a real person, Omega is not. MAD doesn't require retroactive causality, it just requires me to want to kill you after you decide to kill me.
fair enough. I just wanted to introduce a precommitment angle to the discussion.
(I even sympathize a bit, because I've always found omega's perfect omniscence a little hard to imagine. Which is weird because I don't have that issue with laplace's demon.)
Fair enough. I can see why you would think that. I suppose for me both decisions come down to a certain kind of deontological ethics, instead. I am not "meant" to take both boxes so I don't. And I "shouldn't" harm innocent civilians so I won't. It's true that I then no longer reap the benefits of MAD, but I'm questioning the efficacy of MAD in the first place, so I don't think it's necessarily inconsistent.
Interesting! Different policies have different trade-offs, after all. They are lossy compressions, by nature. In the past, I've questioned MAD too. Although my line of thought diverges a bit. I.e. "On one hand, MAD is suppose to deter. But on the other hand, civilians are generally innocent. But on the first hand, isn't the point of democracy to make civilians responsible for policy? hmm..."
I've read that Harry Truman, upon learning of the Manhattan Project, reacted with abject horror that (paraphrasing from memory): "this isn't a weapon for killing soldiers, this is a weapon for killing women and children". And that Gorbachev refused to press the Big Red Button even during training simulations <glares at Ender Wiggin>. So your pacifism certainly has other proponents. (Although Truman did decide to use the bombs anyway...)
----
Anyway. It sounds like you're trying to look for a better solution than deterrence.
A while ago, Apxhard had an interesting comment about how society runs on consensus mechanisms, and that these mechanisms are necessarily ordered in a hierarchy by cost. Which includes coinflips, the justice system, etc. (And now blockchains!) Deterrence is advertisement, and advertisement can only do so much. It gets a lot of attention because it's the penultimate consensus mechanism. The ultimate being actual warfare. It's the ultima ratio regum. The final argument. The last resort. The BATNA. But alas, still not a guarantee that you'll get what you want. And that's just the nature of politics. If it doesn't work out, you're kinda SoL.
The difference between honor culture vs. MAD isn't the efficacy, it's the stakes. At some point, I think we just have to make peace with the possibility of nuclear annihilation. (And if that doesn't horrify you enough, I vaguely recall from "Shadow of the Giant" an explanation by Bean as to why the logic of space-warfare naturally entails a First Strike nuclear doctrine.)
I guess what im trying to say is: if you want to avoid becoming irradiated, instead of pondering MAD you should perhaps work on alternative consensus mechanisms. I hear some of them are going to the moon. :^)
I doubt that story of Truman's reaction.
I like that analogy. Even though game theory was used as a justification for MAD — MAD was an outgrowth of human psychology and not of reason.
MAD : interstate anarchy :: honor : intrastate anarchy
As above, so below. :^)
I think our instinct for vengeance is an evolved solution to this game theoretic problem. (It's imperfect and has side effects, like every other product of evolution.)
I think this is basically Kavka's Toxin Paradox - while nuking the other guy gains no profit, *intending* to nuke the other guy is necessary for deterrence to work. But how can you say you "intend" to do something if you don't actually do it when the time comes?
>A third way would be to implement an automatic missile detection and retaliation system, the downside being catastrophe due to false positives.
This is what Russia's "perimeter"/"dead hand" system is supposedly meant to do. (Although the fear was more of decapitation strikes than of the president being unwilling to push the button.)
>This is what Russia's "perimeter"/"dead hand" system is supposedly meant to do.
I realize that I'm bringing in evidence from fiction, but this always reminded me of Dr. Strangelove.
Thanks for the pointer to the paradox, that seems to be exactly the crux of the matter!
A practical reason to retaliate is to leave the world without a country willing to start nuclear war. Where "the world" is whatever is left of US (quite a lot, actually) plus the other 90% of the world population you forgot about :) They'd much prefer to live in a world where starting a nuclear war is a bad proposition.
Just imagine how unstable the world would be in your scenario if US didn't retaliate. Everybody would be with their finger on the launch button, or already pressing it preemtively.
Interesting point, thank you!
This is the little-realized altruistic aspect of vengeance. You sacrifice yourself to remove a threat to the greater population. Remember the gom jabbar test in the beginning of "Dune"?
Let's say it's 2010 and a major Hollywood producer rapes you. It's over, it's done, you won't ever be alone with him again, and you can try to recover and move on with your life. Do you call him out and seek justice? It'll turn your own life into a media circus, and destroy whatever of it you have left, and at the end it's just two people's words against each other, and maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe your career will be over, maybe other people will refuse to be alone in a room with you out of fear of false accusations. Is it worth it? How would you feel if you knew that he did this many times before, and none of his other victims said or did anything, thus passively letting him continue to rape people, now including you? Are you willing to allow him to continue doing this to other people in the future?
Putting game theory aside:
How badly would you, personally, have to be hurt, before you decided that revenge was appropriate? There's no police. No outside authority. No one is coming to help you. You're all alone, you and the button.
Maybe if they did it to your loved ones, instead of you? What's the worst thing that you can imagine? You can't save them. They're as good as dead already. And you've only got a limited time to act.
Would you describe someone who decides upon revenge as bloodthirsty or impulsive?
I am certain that I would not take revenge if it implied millions of innocent people also had to die, regardless of how much pain had been caused to me, personally. I think the desire for revenge is natural, but it shouldn't always be acted upon. I think it's tough to put game theory aside, as the reason why we have the impulse in the first place is due to (evolutionary) game theory. If I recall correctly, in "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins demonstrates that a "Tit for Tat" strategy, of (1) not initiating aggression, (2) retaliating immediately and proportionately for wrongdoing, (3) forgiving the initial aggression afterwards, tends to do quite well in a population. It thus makes sense that vengeance evolved and would be a useful deterrent in many situations; it's e.g. why I support the criminal justice system. It's just not necessarily a good guide to situations that never occurred in the ancestral environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Making life-or-death decisions for millions of people is one of those cases. Governments ought to be far more circumspect about retaliation than individuals would.
But if (a) your opponent knows you won't take revenge, and (b) your opponent has no moral scruples, you're opening yourself to an attack. I think both sides during the Cold War assumed that the other side had no moral scruples. Under that assessment, it makes sense to create a deadman's switch situation (and retaliatory systems were made to be as automatic as possible to prevent someone like you who had moral scruples from interfering when the retaliation was put into motion).
Then you are like a lot of people. This is how it plays out fictionally in the first 6 minutes of War Games from 1983. The second man would not turn the launch key.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s6aCpS0-yls
Unfortunately inevitable in war. The leaders are surrounded by human shields.
As someone once said, deserve's got nothing to do with it. You kill millions of people to also kill a few guys who will predictably cause the world many more millions of lives' worth of assorted grief if they go on. And the reason they would be able to do that, is that most of the millions of people you're contemplating killing would predictably work long hours to facilitate the schemes of the malevolent few, so "innocent bystander" only gets you so far.
(In case that wasn't just a figure of speech, Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven". What a great movie.)
How many of those hundred guilty people will harm innocents when they go free? An error on the side of caution is still an error.
Protection of the innocent is so much more important than punishing the guilty. If you let the guilty go free, you are not the one who ends up hurting the potential victims in the future. If you imprison the innocent, you are culpable for destroying innocence, one of the worst things a human being can do to another. It's why we take crimes against children so seriously. This is why our standard for evidence in our CJ system is is lethally important.
A non-human shield doesn't deliberately do anything, it just gets used by the person being shielded. However, the term "hostage" is typically used for involuntary human shields so that might be a better term.
Game theorists and foreign policy interests were all well aware of these points, and the US and the Soviet Union tried the two strategies you name: Nixon intentionally cultivated an image of instability and aggressive unpredictability(“a mad dog”) so that Soviet officials would be afraid to do anything, and the Soviets advertised an automatic nuclear response system (which never actually existed) in order to discourage the US from launching a preemptive strike
This should be expanded to a full conspiracy theory. Maybe nukes actually do not exist at all. USA and Soviet Union just made them up, to discourage a possible third party from trying to interfere with their mutual conflict. Japan basically agreed to pretend to be nuked to save face (capitulation to an enemy with practically godlike weapons is less shameful that capitulation to a merely stronger enemy). In the meanwhile, a few more countries decided to call their bluff by declaring that they have nukes, too. If nukes were real, obviously Ukraine would have never given them up.
Calling the bluff is a really cool idea. But I also like the idea of it being like Star Trek TNG's first contact story, where once a country gets close enough to discovering that nukes don't exist, we have to bring them in on the secret, which is why we try to prevent other countries from getting that far. Maybe these can be combined somehow.
<mild snark>
I think this conspiracy is only possible on a young, flat Earth. :-)
</mild snark>
The nuclear silos were a cover for digging tunnels to contact the mole people on the other side of the disc.
LOL Many Thanks! Truly _deep_ cover... :-)
Interesting, thank you!
"is there really a point to killing more than 100 million"
The belief that the usa would be vengefully willing to do it is required for it, so the usa needs to be credibly willing to do it. its far easier to convince someone that you are credibly willing to do it if you are, rather than getting hundreds of millions of people to merely act like they're willing to do it. Therefore, it would have to happen in the end despite providing no benefit because of the hope it would act as a deterrant beforehand. This kind of will has to be genuine and ironclad a literal "I will literally vengefully annihilate your population" kind of a thing not merely a "I am willing to reconsider after being nuked."
"If one wanted to get back to MAD, Americans could elect more bloodthirsty/impulsive leaders, who would not hesitate to retaliate. "
I think most politicians would pretty much retaliate across the board. It's an understood condition of being elected and therefore not a question posed to candidates. Americans simply would not vote for someone not willing to vengefully nuke the enemy. Of course underlying all this is the sense that this is proportionate and reactive, not pro-active and disproportionate.
Thanks, you bring up some interesting points. I do agree with you that most Americans, especially those who grew up during the Cold War, would like a president who would be willing to vengefully nuke the enemy. I think all past presidents would have been capable of doing it; I'm just not sure whether e.g. Obama or Clinton would have actually ended up doing it when faced with the decision. I also think Bernie Sanders wouldn't have been capable of it if elected-- it's true that a majority of Americans think he's too pacifistic, but that may change over the next few decades.
Was it David Cross who said that even Ralph Nader would have invaded Afghanistan after 9/11?
I have this silly though experiment that I can't figure out. I only asked the GPT 3.5 about it and it argues that it should work, but I can't really trust that. I've also asked this question on reddit some ten years ago but the only answer that I got didn't really read the experiment setup and thought both magnets would be on at the same time.
So we have two electromagnets, A and B, set up to oppose each other, the magnets are placed at a distance and their fields are strong enough to exert a force on each other from that distance. Both magnets are fixed on a mobile platform, something like this:
A ............. B
------------
O...........O
(A and B are the electromagnets, the O O are the wheels of the platform, the dots are there cause the spaces between A and B, and between the O's got gobbled up when posting this)
Next the chain of events:
- both magnets A and B start by being off
- magnet A is turned on, magnet B is still off
- magnet A is turned off right as the electromagnetic field it generates leaves it, so long before its field reaches B (which if off when A is fired)
- just before the field from A reaches B, magnet B is turned on only long enough for the field from A to pass through it and have the fields interact, magnet B is turned off right after that, so long before its field reaches A (which is off and would still be off when the field from B passes through it)
- after the filed from B (now off) passes A (which is still off), repeat
Now, reasoning naively, the mobile platform should move towards the right, but this looks like a non inertial drive, which is impossible, so I must be missing out on why this shouldn't work, likely related to how electromagnetic momentum works, can anyone explain why this doesn't work?
If I replace A with a cannon and B with a really sturdy wall it's clear that the platform would jerk towards the left and then right, basically going nowhere, but magnetic fields are not really cannonballs so I'm at a loss here.
There's a stackexchange question which I think is equivalent here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/421839/magnetism-and-reactionless-drives
Nice, thanks. I think I googled it when I first asked this (on a throwaway cause I thought it was a stupid question) but I didn't think of doing so now, just asked GPT, so thank you for finding this.
Still, I'm surprised by the answer. I guess I thought it was impossible cause otherwise I'd expect seeing space vehicles with a nuclear reactor and some magnets strapped to itself without the need to eject mass at one end to propel itself, but now that this seems to work I image we don't have that cause the process would be massively inefficient or something like that. Hm, get one question answered, and another one pops up, thanks again.
Edit: had a comment that disappeared which argued that I misinterpreted the stackexchange post, and I read "Bottom line: Yes, there is a net push of the magnet(s)" as there being a resulting motion, even though the sentence continues saying that both momentums balance each other, so I'm at a loss on how to interpret the meaning of a net push, and I'm still confused.
My interpretation of that StackExchange answer is that the magnets will move, but not reactionlessly. It's a photon drive - electromagnetic waves go one way, magnets go the other way.
Photon drives don't have "reaction mass" per se, but the energy of the photons comes from the mass of your reactor, so there's no free lunch. They're basically just very, very weak rockets with a more compact fuel tank.
<mild snark>
There has been some regulatory activity about AI in both the EU and the USA recently. I'm curious about whether the calls for it are in good faith, in particular which is larger:
People who are actually worried about near-term (job losses, deepfakes) issues citing existential issues
or
People who are actually worried about existential issues citing near-term (job losses, deepfakes) issues
</mild snark>
Many Thanks! That does sound plausible.
Coming to read Scott's blog for several (or is it more than 10?) years.I still feel alien. Sad.
I feel alien almost everywhere, but I view this place as a multi-species federation. :-)
I'm also of the alien-feeling persuasion. But I find the intellectual jousting to be very entertaining and addicting. But because I'm on a different wavelength from most of the people on this group, I don't feel like I could establish close friendships with most of the people here. I went to one meetup and I felt like an outsider there.
However, I feel like I'm on a similar wavelength to you, Moon Moth. I feel like you're simpatico enough that I could hang with you. That's not an invitation to connect, though. Just an observation. ;-)
I went to one meetup and everyone was a 24 year old male grad student in tech.
Not very interesting conversation, I bet.
They tried really hard. So did I. But nope, not very interesting.
As in the old political litmus test, I'd gladly have a beer with you. :-)
I've felt like outsiders at all the handful of meetups I've been to, but there's usually people there that I can have good conversations with, and now even some that I recognize, and say "hi" to, and who express regret that we didn't share a conversation this time around.
It's like the way I feel about science fiction fandom-- I don't like everyone, but it's a good place to find friends. I think I feel more at home than you two.
I used to feel more at home in some other places, but that changed, around the time I got my PTSD. The loss still aches.
I'm very sorry it's like that for you, but you're pointing at something important-- that feeling at home is a mixture of how you're treated and how you feel about how you're treated.
Which part feels alien? Given that you keep coming back, something must resonate, what is it?
I'm very poor and can't write long texts. Also not many SSC readers (zero?) in my area. Even if someone ilikes something I wrote this is a coincidence
I read an interesting anthropology piece which claimed that most of early human civilization was founded on murder. Assume that human desire is largely mimetic, i.e. people want things because other people want them (not including things biologically required for survival like food). If people want the same things but there are not enough resources for everyone, there will inevitably be conflict. All of this is pretty basic, but the next bit is the interesting part.
People are struggling as they all try to acquire a limited amount of resources. There just isn't enough to go around, so they start getting angry. Suddenly the tension reaches a boiling point and someone stabs Billy the sheepherder to death. Afterwards, the community doesn't get divided, but quite the opposite. They all agree that the real issue was Billy. He was cursed by the gods, or practicing occult magic, or maybe nobody really liked him. It wasn't that someone killed Billy to take his sheep or his wife or his land. And so everyone goes back to their daily lives, all of their angst gone for a time, until the next murder inevitably occurs down the line.
I have some doubts about this, especially because a lot of early legal development had to do with regulating blood feuds. This suggests that in fact everyone was not fine with Billy being stabbed, and maybe Billy's uncle was going to stab someone back. Fortunately the author makes it easy for us here by claiming that the coming of Christianity upended the entire murder conflict resolution paradigm. As Christians venerate victims and protecting the weak while making murder a taboo, it was no longer socially acceptable to blame societal outcasts for everything.
My question for the ACX commentariat is, does anyone know the historical background here? If the author is right, there should be a dramatic difference in murder rates between pagan Rome and Christian Rome, or early Christian societies and other societies.
It's horseshit. Pagan Viking society had a massively regulated wergild system and converting to Christianity and being told they just should not murder each other period upended it, AFAIK. Just for one example.
As a split-the-difference sort of person, I wonder whether relief-after-scapegoating is a thing that happens, but not a driving force for structuring societies.
Why a limited amount of resources? If the solution to hitting a limit is to stagnate and start infighting, eventually they'll be conquered by people who innovated and/or decided to expand.
This sounds like the short story "The Lottery".
I'd need some sources to take that argument seriously. As someone with an undergrad anthro degree, that doesn't sound like a theory an anthropologist would make. Cultural anthropologists study human cooperation. Archeologists also study human cultures from their cultural artifacts, but they've mostly bought into the theories of social cooperation (as do I). Although physical anthropologists posited the "killer ape" theory of human evolution, that went out the window when Jane Goodall witnessed chimps killing chimps.
This sounds more like an argument that an ethologist would make.
Dunno where you get that without getting the source, but what you're discussion is straight René Girard. My impression is that he was a powerful but quirky thinker; the effects he wrote about probably do happen, but I don't think they're quite as ubiquitous or they explain nearly as much as he claimed.
Like most authors with an ur-cause to everything, he has interesting intuitions but he certainly proves both too much and not enough.
Legal Systems Very Different from Ours by David Friedman may be of interest to you. It's about how societies found various ways to deal with Billy being stabbed.
I'd also add that most of the murder was done between tribes, where we de-humanize the opponent. So we can still keep most empathy for the tribe members.
If people didn't like Billy to begin with, they might decide he had it coming. But if a society always blames the victim, it is functionally a society that is completely ok with its members killing each other, and that society is going to wipe itself out. Even among chimps a killer has to worry about what the victim's friends will do.
Meh, Japan managed to survive despite that. At one point, things got bad enough that some samurai were just killing random civilians just for the hell of it. But having a heirarchy of power does solve a lot of problems, and it's ultimately not in the interest of the powerful for their subordinates to kill without reason.
Japan did not allow anybody to murder anybody else. They allowed certain people to murder certain other people. The upper classes survived because murdering them wasn't allowed, and the lower classes survived because there were too many of them for the murderers to get everyone.
Yeah, someone in that society would figure out that if victims always get blamed, clearly the thing to do is to do unto others before they do unto you.
not sure if you're aware, but Scott reviewed Rene Girard's "I saw Satan Fall like Lightning", regarding the religious origin of scapegoating.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-i-saw-satan-fall-like
I didn't comment on it at the time but I really wished Scott had reviewed Violence and Sacred instead. I saw Satan Fall Like Lightning feels more like a summary of Girard's ideas for people already convinced than a real attempt at convincing skeptics.
I wasn't aware of this one. Clearly the anthropologist was heavily influenced by Girard, the single victim process is exactly what he describes. He also goes on a lot about how woke is kind of a secular heresy of Christianity with exaltation of victimhood. I'm still interested in comparing murder rates in Roman society pre/post-Christianity, if that data even exists. Scott didn't go into any quantitative analysis (not knocking him for this, I don't know if it can even be done in a meaningful way.)
Sounds like a good question for David Friedman. The economist/libertarian/medieval-hobbyist who wrote a book called "legal systems very different than ours". He was a regular, before Scott aborted SSC.
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/
Let's go further back in history and look at apes. Actually, let's just look at apes today instead. They seem to kill each other even without accumulating resources.
> Actually, let's just look at apes today instead.
You can't do that, they're contaminated by modernity.
[joking] Other way round - we got HIV from them.
But apparently we gave them patriarchy and capitalism.
I have a new post on Substack, "Policy, Tariffs, and Trade 4 -- China Shock 2"
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/policy-tariffs-and-trade-4-china
Readers invited but commentators solicited.
I'm slowly reading a translation of Water Margin 水浒传, a Chinese novel written in the Ming dynasty and set in the twelfth century. It is essentially equivalent to the stories of Robin Hood, a heroic epic in prose telling the stories of various admirable outlaws who are oppressed in different ways by malevolent government officials.
The most prominent feature of the text, to me, is the lack of sanitization. Robin Hood stories went through a period of heavy bowdlerization and the product of that period is what modern people tend to be familiar with, but the earliest texts preserve a very clear-eyed view of what being a 14th-century highwayman meant.
The Chinese literary record is much better preserved than the medieval British oral record, and this didn't happen to Water Margin. It's pretty common for the heroes to do things that you probably wouldn't expect of a villain in a modern story.
But recently something else in the text struck me.
At this point in the story, one of our protagonists is visiting a friend, the military governor of a particular city. There is a separate civil governor, and the two governors do not get along. They have a power struggle, and the narrator tells us this:
> But not for nothing was Liu Gao a scholar. His mind was deep and devious, and he was full of schemes.
He goes on to completely anticipate and thwart the military side's plan.
Today there are many people who will happily tell you with a straight face that someone doing well on difficult tests tells you nothing but that the examinee can do well on tests. This seems to have been too implausible for the audience of a pretty openly anti-elitist set of stories in 15th-century China.
(As the civil governor, Liu Gao will have been appointed to his post after scoring highly on the civil service examinations. The text is correct to equate "civil governor" with "scholar".)
The Water Margin was definitely sanitized and changed. Famously so. There's a whole series of chapters that got added where they repent their crimes and all that. (Also, it's set in the 12th century.)
Anyway, these genius type characters are an East Asian literary archetype. It's not specifically scholars or government officials. Zhuge Liang or Sun Bin were not scholar-officials. Sun Bin was famously bad at politics. So was Yi Sunshin. Yi actually failed his exam at least once (and I believe a few times). And I think Sun and Zhuge never took them. They might still be called scholars or gentleman or so on because they were clearly intelligent. But in many cases they would be more admired for going against politics than living within it.
These are strategists. But you can see it equally with purely civil governors. Their names are just less common because war's dramatic. The idea is not "officials are smart and good" or that passing a test makes you worthy. In fact the opposite was a more common lesson. Stories of corrupt officials are more common than honest ones. The idea is that highly intelligent people exude a kind of charisma, insight, and strength through the power of their mind. And in some stories this crosses over into them being able to do literal magic.
This seems disconnected enough from my comment that I wonder if you meant to reply to someone else in the thread?
But in particular:
> The idea is not "officials are smart and good" or that passing a test makes you worthy. In fact the opposite was a more common lesson. Stories of corrupt officials are more common than honest ones.
There appears to be no implication in Water Margin that corrupt officials are worse than the other kind. Song Jiang is introduced to us as a minor court [legal court, not imperial court] official who is up to his eyeballs in corruption.
The idea that corrupt officials are no better or worse than other kinds is not the impression I'd gotten. And the fact there's 108 bandits at Mount Liang along with the other demonic connections would seem to imply some moral content.
>He goes on to completely anticipate and thwart the military side's plan.
I've been obsessed with this trope in eastern stories for years! Other examples include:
~ In "Hero (2016)" the protagonist steps up to the emperor and the first thing the emperor says is "I see you're here to kill me." There's no foreshadowing, just an infallible intuitive jump.
~In "The Three Body Problem (2008)" a character is debating covering an antagonist with a sniper rifle and is chastised with "She's sharp as a tack, She'll know," as if it's physically possible to tell if someone is pointing a rifle at you from hundreds of yards away.
~In "Shogun (2024)" as outlined recently by Freddie debour. ( I know it's not eastern, but they're leaning pretty heavily on eastern tropes)
Is this a product of the culture's hierarchy raising their leaders to supernatural heights? Is there a specific name for the phenomena of elevating natural intelligence/intuition to supernatural perception? Is this related to the crash of Korean Air Flight 801?!?
"There's no foreshadowing, just an infallible intuitive jump."
This isn't true at all – I think you may just not be familiar with wuxia tropes, or else you missed this one. The Emperor, like ourselves, can tell the titular Hero is there to kill him because of the candles. The Hero's killing intent or battle aura causes him to emanate qi toward the Emperor, causing the flames to flutter away from the Hero and toward the Emperor. It's by this token that he and we can deduce the Hero's plan, it's not an intuitive jump but physical observation.
I'm late to reply as life snuck up on me, but Thank you! I was unaware of this trope and it's exactly what I hoped to find. :)
See, in Shogun, what Freddie complained about was actually something I enjoyed. Hell yes, give me a (barely) fiction(alized) Great Man in Toranaga, a guy who actually is smart and competent and succeeds on those merits! After seeing the "subversion" of greatness fall flat on its face in the case of Napoleon, where it just made Napoleon a petty small-minded guy who occasionally succeeded in a battle almost despite himself, it certainly made for more enjoyable media.
Is it realistic? Are the Great Men infallible? (and even Toranaga isn't infallible - as Freddie's commenters point out, he didn't foresee his half-brother's betrayal, or the earthquake that devastated his forces!) Who cares, it's fiction. Whatever works.
It's not entirely fiction. Toranaga is based on Tokugawa Ieyasu, a real historical character and the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the whole story leads up to the (real) battle of Sekigahara.
Yes, that's why I said (barely) fiction(alized), not just "fiction". It's still fiction in the sense that it doesn't just directly recount history with the names changed.
I wrote more about it below, but I think it's a result of the imperial examinations. In a similar way, I think the modern rationalist movement owes a lot to Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" stories. Both want to believe that sufficient intelligence allows superhuman feats.
The Judge Dee (or Di) stories might be an archetype for this. I haven't read them, so I'm recommending them here by reputation. I believe that Di is a judge noted for investigatory prowess, with a significant impact on modern Chinese pop culture.
The plot point that I highlighted in my initial comment isn't a good example of this. Supernatural deductive powers aren't required.
Only one of the Judge Dee stories is written by a Chinese person – the rest are the work of one Robert Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat.
An association between being scholarly and intelligent is very intuitive so I’m not sure why you would think that’s strange.
I don't. I think it's normal.
Maybe the author, which is uncertain, was a scholar.
You probably live in a bubble of similarly smart people. In medieval China, with quite worse living conditions and 8 centuries of Flynn effect missing, being able to be a scholar probably put you a couple of standard deviations above the mean, in a world with a median in the 80s. Quite a few "cunning plots" become possible in these conditions.
>8 centuries of Flynn effect missing
Flynn effect is somewhat recent thing, so more like 1.5 centuries of Flynn effect and 6.5 centuries of nothing.
On vocabulary size, Flynn effect is ~0. They probably did not have anything similar to Raven's matrices (on which Flynn effect is large) back then.
Wow! You're talking about the culture that invented gunpowder, rockets, the compass, paper, moveable type printing, woodblock printing, paper money, blast furnaces, the wheelbarrow, row-crop farming, seed drills, and possibly kites. Tell me again about the low IQ of medieval Chinese?
It wasn't until the 17th Century that Europe began to outpace China in economic productivity. And after listening to the lectures up on Hanging with History (https://www.buzzsprout.com/955531) it's hard not to view the Industrial Revolution as an accident — where all the right components came together in Great Britain in the right mix — i.e. economic incentives that promoted new innovations, low government censorship that allowed a relatively free exchange of philosophical thought), the right kind of iron ore, the right kind of coal, the existential threat of invasion (from the French under Napoleon).
If it helps I don't have a better opinion on the average IQ in Europe at the same time. We know that there's little you can do to raise IQ, but there's a lot of things you can do to decrease it - most of them quality of life things. In pre-industrial societies you have almost all of them stacked up. Even the Flynn effect is probably just living conditions catching up and bringing us close to the max potential.
I'm probably a bit biased toward this way of thinking because I live in a country with major economic emigration and constant brain drain over the last 35 years. It's a lot easier here to think in terms of "you can't develop this industry because the limiting factor is how many competent people you can attract".
It's crazy to view the Industrial Revolution as an accident. Western Europe had a lot going on those last couple centuries and the Industrial Revolution was the culmination of it.
That was my opinion, too. But after listening to Hanging With History I changed my mind. Granted that Great Britain couldn't have had the Industrial Revolution outside the European context. But it couldn't have happened anywhere else in Europe, except Great Britain, because of all sorts of different inhibiting issues in the other nation-states of continental Europe.
My understanding is that the Netherlands industrialized around the same time as England.
I read The Great Divergence a couple years ago where he makes that claim and I didn’t find it persuasive at all. Europe was innovating militarily, economically, technologically and intellectually for hundreds of years before 1800. The Industrial Revolution was baked in well before it happened.
A military governor would also probably be significantly above the mean too - plus a bunch of specialized military knowledge.
I think Liu Gao‘s feral cunning was much more important than any scholarly knowledge or intelligence.
This sort of thing is probably more a matter of personality than scholarship.
The dark triad and ordinary intelligence would do the job.
What if the story had been sanitized in a different way? Instead of adding things like "he humbly prayed and God told him the optimal course of action", it would be "he scored highly on his civil service examinations and was very smart so he thought of the optimal course of action".
That is, who would be sanitizing it, and what was their public justification for holding power?
I can't quite tell what you're referring to?
I think stories will, by one means or another, tend to suit the beliefs of their transmitters and audiences.
In the case of this story, those would be highly educated members of imperial China. Of course they would want stories that celebrate incredible personal feats of intellectual prowess. There's a tendency in Chinese history and literature to downplay the contributions of millions and millions of people, and attribute it all to a stroke of genius on the part of one singularly brilliant man. (It's almost enough to make me Maoist.)
Whereas when the Grimm Brothers were revising their tales, they made alterations to suit their more wealthy, urban, educated audience. Changing mothers to stepmothers, changing being eaten to being swallowed whole (and later rescued), tacking on a paragraph-long happy ending, justified by an act of prayer inserted earlier. That sort of stuff.
I still don't understand your first comment. I observed that Water Margin failed to be sanitized to accord with modern sensibilities. I don't know how to answer "what if it had been sanitized in a different way?". The comparison might be to the sanitization that I observed had happened, of the Robin Hood legends, but that sanitization involves giving Robin Hood nobler motives and toning down his thieving, murderous behavior. (Generally removing the murderous behavior outright.)
The novelization of Water Margin probably was written by a member of the educated class. It is much less clear that that was the intended audience. The stories are mostly not original to the novel and can be traced back through popular plays, and before then (and simultaneously) they would have been part of the oral tradition.
The book has not so far done any celebrating of incredible personal feats of intellectual prowess. Journey to the West doesn't do that either, though I think there is a certain amount of lionization of Zhuge Liang in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The closest match I know of for that description is the Judge Dee stories, which, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I haven't read. But I don't think it's a general theme in Chinese literature any more than Sherlock Holmes is a general theme of British literature rather than one guy who appears in several popular books.
You might note that, as I observed in my reply to Deiseach, the educated class is not portrayed _at all_ favorably in Water Margin. If you want a story written by the elite for the elite, look for Dream of the Red Chamber.
I think Erusian put it better than I did.
What I meant was, we here today expect that things like Rogin Hood and the Grimm Brothers will have passed through a cultural filter and will have been altered in certain ways, to conform to standards and to help set standards. We can predict that certain things will have been removed, and we can guess that other things have been added. Pre-modern Chinese literature is going to pass through a different cultural filter. So we today reading it will see things that would have been sanitized out of Robin Hood and the Grimm Brothers, and we also may have a harder time seeing things that were added, because we don't automatically recognize the pattern. Does that make sense?
And I may be overreacting a bit. That "superhuman omnicompetent smart guy" trope is something that specifically bugs me, and even more so when found in Chinese literature, so I'm probably oversensitive to even its milder incarnations.
And OK, yeah, Journey to the West doesn't hit that trope directly, but the Monkey King is just so over the top... Fun, yes, but...
> Today there are many people who will happily tell you with a straight face that someone doing well on difficult tests tells you nothing but that the examinee can do well on tests. This seems to have been too implausible for the audience of a pretty openly anti-elitist set of stories in 15th-century China.
If you're anti-elite, you might question the scholarship of the elites. Or you might just reject the notion that scholarship is good.
The text doesn't seem to take too high a view of intelligence; the mark of being a scholar is to be devious and scheming after all your learning has taught you how to plot and connive 😀
I think it takes a pretty traditional view of intelligence as something that's good when your friends have it and bad when your enemies do.
The view of *politics* is much more relentlessly negative.
It might also just be an easy way to explain his intelligence
On the assumption that doing well on tests is not informative as to intelligence, how would that work?
I presume "it" is straight up telling us that he is a scholar, a deep thinker, devious, and excellent at planning, not your retrospective that we should have known all this from the fact that he did well on civil service tests. If that was what we should have inferred, then there wouldn't be a need to tell us explicitly that *this* civil servant is intelligent, and in any case, it wouldn't explain any difference between him and the other civil governor, who I presume would have done similarly on the same tests.
But I haven't read this, and only know about it what you posted.
The other governor is military; they're chosen differently.
The English here explicitly relates the deep, devious, scheming mind to the fact that the civil governor is a scholar. I can't speak for the Chinese directly, but I see no real reason to doubt that it does the same.
> It's pretty common for the heroes to do things that you probably wouldn't expect of a villain in a modern story.
For example?
From all this killing the pavilion was swimming in blood, bodies could be seen lying everywhere in the flickering light of the candles. Wu Song said to himself: "It had to be all or nothing; kill a hundred, you can only die for it once." Sword at the ready, he went downstairs.
"What's all the hullaballoo upstairs?" the General's wife was inquiring as Wu Song rushed in. At this monstrous sight she shrieked: "Who are you?"
But Wu Song's sword was already flying. It caught her square in the forehead and she fell with a shriek right there in front of the pavilion. Wu Song held her down but when he tried to cut off her head the sword wouldn't cut. Baffled, he saw by the light of the moon that the blade was completely blunted. "So that's why I couldn't get her head off," he thought.
He slipped out of the back door to get his halberd again and threw away the blunt sword. Then he turned and went back to the tower. A lamp could be seen approaching. It turned out to be the singing girl, Yulan, the one he'd had the trouble with before. She was accompanied by two children. When the light of her lamp fell on the General's wife where she lay dead on the floor, Yulan screamed: "Merciful Heaven!" Wu Song raised his halberd and ran her through the heart. He also killed the children, a single thrust to each. He went to the central hall, bolted the main door and returned. He found two or three more young girls and stabbed them to death too.
"Now at last," he said, "my heart is eased. Now it's time to stop." He threw away his halberd, went out of the side-door, took from his shirt-front the drinking vessels he had squashed and put them in the sack he had left in the stable, tying it on his waist. And off he strode, halberd in hand. Reaching the city wall, he thought: "If I wait for the gates to open I'll be caught. Surely the best thing to do is to climb the wall now, while it's dark, and clear off." So he leapt up onto the wall.
>He also killed the children, a single thrust to each. He went to the central hall, bolted the main door and returned. He found two or three more young girls and stabbed them to death too.
Hmm... Foreshadowing Cromwell ( https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/02/11/nits/ ), about a century later?
Wu Song also stops at an inn where, as he is already aware by reputation, the owners drug and butcher some of their guests to feed to the others. When he suspects that he has been given human meat, he provokes a fight with the proprietress (for reasons unclear to me, this translation calls her "the Ogress"; her Chinese epithet is clearly "the Tigress") and is about to kill her when her husband, the Gardener, arrives and recognizes Wu Song. After this the three of them are good friends.
This is a major exception to the general rule that you can tell the difference between heroes and villains; I don't really see any redeeming qualities in the treatment of this couple, but they're heroes anyway.
On a tangent, incapacitating drugs used to spike drinks are a significant plot element in the novel. I had thought of these as a fairly modern technology. What kind of stuff was available in the 12th-16th centuries?
I imagine you get more options for knock-out drugs if you don't need them to wake up afterward.
Also, just because it appears in fiction doesn't mean they really had it. I don't think the drug at the end of Romeo and Juliet was real.
> I imagine you get more options for knock-out drugs if you don't need them to wake up afterward.
For one thing, that wouldn't be an incapacitating drug, it would be a lethal poison.
For another, that's not relevant here, because that's not what's happening in the story.
Many Thanks!
>This is a major exception to the general rule that you can tell the difference between heroes and villains; I don't really see any redeeming qualities in the treatment of this couple, but they're heroes anyway.
Hmm... Interesting question - maybe in the literary tradition of the time the distinction between heroes and villains was some other parameter, clear to readers then, but different from what we use now???
>On a tangent, incapacitating drugs used to spike drinks are a significant plot element in the novel. I had thought of these as a fairly modern technology. What kind of stuff was available in the 12th-16th centuries?
Good question! I assume opium was available, but I thought that it (and most alkaloids) has a bitter taste. Chloral hydrate is one of the earliest synthetic sedatives, but it only goes back to 1832 (Justus von Liebig) AFAIK.
Is anyone still taking seriously the extremely optimistic hopes Yudkowsky described in the Sequences for what rationality might make people capable of, and treating that as a goal they're working towards? Is he?
If he were actually rational, he would be advocating gene therapy/embryo selection to improve people, not rationality.
"Still" would be incorrect for me.
But I applaud the effort.
I think the problem with rationalism is that it does not take into account a lot of the non-rational factors that push people in the direction of making and believing bad arguments: anger and desire to win, need to signal affiliation with valued others, self-esteem benefits of loathing an outgroup, etc. There are not many people for whom the desire to keep their thinking up to a certain standard of fairness and correctness is a powerful motivation all by itself. The people it's sufficient motivation for tend to be pretty non-social, and unusually attracted to rules and systems.
EY was quite clear that he considered his rationality a half-made art, comparable to knowing how to punch without knowing how to kick.
I don't think that half-version of rationality does that much (except get us interested in completing it). I also think the full version of it might be incomplete because it will contain things challenging to the punch's half-perspective. It is precisely because of how different it is that this missing half of the art adds so much that the first half is missing.
I do have hopes that there exists a version of self-improvement and societal improvement that can enjoy runaway success and rapidly improve us as a species. Our dialectic has worked blindly so far, but if we turn it back on itself and hone it to an edge, we will quickly become capable of jumping ahead of the schedule of insights as it looks right now.
So instead of trying to answer questions, I propose a short period of focusing on getting better at answering questions by intentionally designing dialectic infrastructure and technology; why bother trying to see through the fog to the dim light far away, when the fog will be gone and the light right up close as soon as we make our dialectic recursively self-improving?
I don't know if Jacob Falkovich is exactly as optimistic as Eliezer, but he has disagreed with my pessimistic case at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8xLtE3BwgegJ7WBbf/is-rationalist-self-improvement-real , there's some debate in the comments.
Thanks for that interesting link. I am curious about one of your comments,
“ I think a history of the idea of procrastination would be very interesting. I get the impression that ancient peoples had very confused beliefs around it. I don't feel like there is some corpus of ancient anti-procrastination techniques from which TAPs are conspicuously missing, but why not? And premodern people seem weirdly productive compared to moderns in a lot of ways.”
Have you explored this subject elsewhere?
Nope!
My interview with Jon Askonas:
https://youtu.be/RHWhC2af4kc?si=6J1789tf7gdI6PR9
Interesting survey, I think I can see what it's trying to get at (and reading the linked Substack inclines me towards that) but I don't want to speculate until the results are in.
The one thing I'd say is the compulsory "gimme your email address"; the email I use to sign in with Google is (1) a different one to the email I use for other purposes, such as subscribing to this Substack and (2) not my real name anyway.
I think forcing people to use the Google sign-in email may result in "By the way, this is not my normal email and you won't be able to contact me with this one", so maybe an option for either "don't have to sign in to take this survey" or a place to give an alternate email address might be helpful?
I will definitely be waiting to see the results and already have a "yeah, but" response in mind to what I think the conclusions will be 😀
I noped out when my email address was required.
Ran across this yesterday, and it feels like the kind of thing I would read in an ACX links digest:
The Phantom Time Conspiracy “claims that the period from 614 A.D. to 911 A.D. was fabricated during the Middle Ages to place Otto the Third in the year 1000 and legitimize his claim over the Holy Roman Empire. The entire Carolingian period is thereby fake and we actually live in the year 1727.”
https://www.threads.net/@matsacchi/post/C6O1syiIDuC
Much like the moon landing conspiracies can be answered by "so how did they get the Soviet Union to agree that the Americans won the space race?", the obvious question for this one is "so, how did they get all the countries outside the HRE to agree to the new fake calendar?"
This reminds me of Scott's coffeepocalypse post from earlier this week.
Upon hearing about this theory I find myself immediately dismissing it, not after carefully weighing up any of the evidence of its proponents, but simply because it pattern-matches to a whole lot of other wacky theories which have turned out to be wrong.
This is what the AI Doom doubters who engage with the argument at the level of "oh yeah, people said that about coffee too" are doing. It might be frustrating if you're an insider who has had his head deep in the weeds of the argument for years, but it's what most people do most of the time about most things; I haven't got time to entertain wacky theories about the future or the past so I'll just wave them away (and hope that someone else better qualified will engage with the actual substance of the argument).
Wikipedia gives some evidence in refutation, including from astronomy and archeological dating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory
Sounds like Fomenko's "New Chronology". It's a really cool theory that sounds like something you'd see in a sci-fi novel, either due to time travel shenanigans or due to planetary-scale memory loss or due to civilizational collapse on a colony.
Hilarious. I guess it would have been much easier back then to fake the past
Once in a few years I get bored enough to click on SneerClub. Today I was shocked to see it... dead?
Apparently, 10 months ago they decided to commit a collective sudoku, because the Reddit admins told them to... uhm, actually I can't even figure what exactly it was that they told them. The goodbye message just quotes a very unspecific message from Reddit admins, saying "please take steps to begin that process" and "we will reach out soon with information on what next steps will take place", which SneerClub interprets as "being told to bend the knee or to die", and chooses to die.
I suppose that explanation makes way more sense for someone in the loop. I just feel a vague discomfort about the news that even bullies feel unsafe on Reddit these days. Then again, how many people still use Reddit? I also suspect that this might all be just an excuse, and the true reason is that the moderators of SneerClub simply got tired after a decade of doing the same pointless thing over and over again, and decided to move on, but for the purpose of feeling better about themselves, they decided to rebrand their retirement as heroically sacrificing their lives on the altar of... something.
They mention that the new rules on Reddit would allow big subs to take over small ones, by having many members subscribe to the small sub and then voting for new moderators. Is this actually true? If yes, it seems like a lot of fun going to happen. (Also, if true, I can imagine a way more efficient form of protest: ten people - or one person with nine sockpuppets - taking over hundreds of subs having less than ten subscribers and replacing their homepage with a protest message. The fact that this didn't already happen makes me suspect the information might not be entirely true.)
Tried to find out more. In other posts they say they are actually protesting against API changes. That only makes me more confused. So is this about the API changes, or the fear that Scott will send thousand cultists who will vote out the existing mods and establish Scott as the only legitimate authority on hating Scott? Also, isn't it a bit ironic that you spend a decade mocking people for their worries about coming technological change, and then you get hysterical about how the coming technological change will make you unable to continue your life as usual? At least the rationalists are losing their sleep over the idea that an AI might exterminate humanity, rather than that it might make loading Reddit pages a bit slower.
Ah, seems like the have a new website, where 80% of posts are made by David Gerard. Okay guys, I wish you a nice API and not too many subscribers! I will check your website again in ten years.
A lot of small lefty political sites relocated to greener pastures - and mostly starved there, I would assume. Slightly annoying if you liked to click on them from time to time, I guess, but no great loss to the world. Most of the sites I go to, related to games, software, books etc. seem largely unchanged, though probably the APIcalypse did some damage. I don't know what if anything it did to large political sites as I don't go there or to the front page. Haven't been on SSC much lately but that looks about the same as before.
10 months ago is exactly the timing of widespread protests against the API pricing changes. SneerClub wasn't the only small subreddit that closed down and then never opened back up. Nothing about this is specific to them, closing permanently was a plausible outcome for any small sub with cantankerous mods during those protests. Nothing to see here.
> They mention that the new rules on Reddit would allow big subs to take over small ones, by having many members subscribe to the small sub and then voting for new moderators. Is this actually true?
No. The Reddit subreddit democracy thing is 1) probably not going to happen and 2) even if it did could not be used to remove SneerClub moderators in the way they're describing.
That's not what I mean. What I mean is that Reddit (the company) has no interest in allowing large subreddits to take over small subreddits in this manner. Reddit's goal is to cater to many different niches, and this would reduce the number of niches.
Destroyed, I can buy. Different from supporting takeovers.
"commit a collective sudoku"; you may have meant "seppuku"?
If your pencil's sharp enough it could be used for either.
IIRC, the Sudoku thing is a meme based on various platforms like Youtube censoring references to suicide, similar to the term "unaliving."
Damn, I was going to make a joke, but too late.
I wondered if it might be like The Motte, which decided to jump before it was pushed, and your concluding sentences make it seem that way - instead of whatever changes Reddit might demand (which probably would be hollowing-out the entire sub-reddit), they decided to pack up the caravan and move on to pastures new.
So where did they go?
Here they recruit: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/mirzhan_irkegulov (link now removed)
Here they discuss: https://awful.systems/c/sneerclub
That first link gives a 404.
Oh pity, seems like LW moderators noticed it.
To explain a joke, it was some spammer account that posted dozens of messages like "LW is shit" with links to the (old) SneerClub website. This happened a few years ago, and somehow it escaped the moderators's attention (probably because he only commented on old debates). I accidentally found it in google results when looking for SneerClub.
As far as reddit clones go, that one is actually nice and fast and neat and well designed. Or maybe it just helps that it's not constantly under DDOS like .win and voat.
I wonder if they'll let me start an awful.systems/c/fatpeoplehate?
My guess would be no. It does not seem to be a generally hateful website, only hateful in a certain direction (against "tech bros").
Does anyone know through their university library have access to Oxford Scholarship Online database or the Scholars Portal database?
I am trying to find a .mobi, .epub or .azw3 file for Joseph Heath's Following the Rules : Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint.
listed here:
https://academic.oup.com/book/5936
https://books.scholarsportal.info/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks2/oso/2012-10-01/4/acprof-9780195370294-Heath
Looks like this is available in a number of libraries, try WorldCat? Or your local librarian might be able to get it via Interlibrary Loan.
A pdf wouldn't work? It's available on libgen.
You might be out of luck here. I have access through UofT but I can't seem to download it
No hidden open threads this month? is that a policy or merely a fact?
It makes me sad.
Scott tends to forget about them.
If they were easy to find they wouldn’t be hidden! Just gotta look a little harder
Has anyone studied or thought about whether aphantasia would negatively affect IQ tests due to the tests reliance on visual pattern recognition questions? I can solve those questions but I find them so unintuitive— I have to use my hands and turn my head to try to figure out the pattern. My wife claims she can see the next tile in her minds eye. She can confabulate shapes in her mind quickly to validate her prediction.
maybe Scott can add questions about aphantasia to next survey (-;
Aphantasic identity does not have meaningful impacts on visual or spatial cognitive tasks:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810024000618
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945222000065
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945221002628
I think this reflects that "aphantasia" doesn't describe a literal inability to mind's-eye visualize but a difference in answering questions/identfying and describing one's internal experience. Anecdotally, a lot of aphantasia descriptions are weirdly Barnum-y for something that should in theory be super distinct.
(Whether matrix reasoning type stuff is "visuospatial" is a different question. In theory, it isn't. In practice, everyone looks at it and goes "ah, that's visuospatial".)
It's not super distinct because there is a continuum - people with imagination have radically different capabilities and uses of it.
Those papers are really interesting, thanks for the link!
e.g. Personally I have decent (not amazing) spatial imagination - relative positions of things, so would do fine in rotating tasks. But I have very little colour or texture, and extremely low detail of images. So I'd do perfectly well at the tasks in the papers, even though I've very weak phantasic abilities.
I think the reason those papers don't find meaningful impacts is because the tasks are relatively straightforward, and there are multiple ways to do such tasks. Also often the task might be done elsewhere in the brain and merely presented consciously to phantasics via visual circuity.
We know for sure it isn't a Barnum-y fake from MRI scans (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186241/) and that it isn't just varying description of inernal experience from Descriptive Experience Sampling (which is a very thorough method - any questions you have about it, Hurlburt will have gone into in various books)
My visual working memory is non existent, compared to something like remembering a complex software program. I find it hard to translate shapes, positions, movement, to a symbolic system in my head. My wife who is an artist never has to go through that step. It’s just so much more effortful than doing math or coding.
I have Aphantasia and an education correlated with having a very high IQ (both on the verbal and math side). I find the Raven's Progressive Matrices absurdly hard and have wondered if this reflects my being genuinely less intelligent than I think or a bias in IQ testing caused by my Aphantasia.
I have (as far as I can tell) an excellent ability to form mental images, and Raven's Progressive Matrices were a delight to do.
Working memory tests, on the other hand, I do miserably at. Though I don't think it's related, other than the fact that if I have to keep a large number in my working memory I tend to imagine it written down.
Yeah same idea. Other evidence points to my IQ being 5-10 points higher than I can squeeze out of those tests.
I looked back at "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" and Russell Brand was seen as the go to example if the most absurd partisan Blue Tribe person, how times have changed.
The "everyone is Blue Tribe until they're accused of sexual harassment" adage seems to hold true. There is of course also an intermediate stage in all this, in which said person weakly defends free speech against blue tribe extremists.
In this case I think it's more "Everyone gets accused of sexual harassment once they stop being reliably Blue Tribe".
Same thing that happened to Bill Cosby -- everyone knew about the rape but for some reason nobody cared, until he started saying things about how young black men should really pull up their pants instead of blaming others. (This isn't a conspiracy theory, check the Hannibal Burress section on Cosby's wikipedia page, the rape allegations were deliberately resurfaced as a response to his comments about black people.)
In Brand's case, he started making remarks about vaccines and bam, suddenly everyone remembers he's a creepy druggie pervert. I have to at least respect Brand for having his own stupid opinions rather than following the path of least resistance though.
I thought he'd been lecturing young black men for quite a while before the scandal broke. No?
Yes. Cosby had had allegations of drugging women and sleeping with them in the past, he'd paid off some women in exchange for signing some kind of nondisclosure agreement, all that was kind-of in the air if you were paying attention. (Or so I understand--I wasn't paying attention.) And something (I forget what) triggered a sort of phase change where everyone's belief about what everyone else believed included "Cosby has a hobby of drugging and raping women," and soon thereafter there were a ton of accusers who thought they'd be believed now, and the rest is history.
Also I remember seeing people criticize Cosby for lecturing young black men many years before the scandal broke.
As I recall, a male comedian mentioned it in public, and people started taking what women were saying seriously.
It's actually a pretty interesting case study of how you can get a widespread change in what "everyone believes" when everyone is mainly just trying to believe (or say they believe) what everyone else believes. Changing my mind about literal truth is hard--you need evidence and arguments, and it mostly happens one person at a time or at least requires dramatic proof. Changing my mind about social truth is about changing my perception of what everyone believes.
The classic version of this is how a police state falls--everyone hates the dictator, but nobody knows everyone else hates the dictator. One day, something (I think it was mostly Facebook and Twitter during the Arab Spring) causes a phase change, everyone ends up realizing everyone else also hates the dictator, and soon the dictator is dead or in exile.
There are many ways to look at that, though his drift to red tribe was much earlier than the accusations.
One might say the causality is mostly the other way, especially when the accusations in question are either transparent baloney or idiotic pearl-clutching.
Transparent baloney? In another media era, he was a known sleaze 31 year old photographed going to nightclubs with teenagers like 17 year old Peaches Geldof: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12528083/Unearthed-clip-revels-awkward-moment-Bob-Geldof-clashed-Russell-Brand-called-comedian-c-stage-NME-Awards-2006.html
I can't believe he's being defended here when he has clear drug-fueled sexual issues and is batshit conspiracy woo woo crazy; entirely an anti-intellectual.
I presented a humorous binary, and in attempting* to refute one you demonstrated the other. By all means clutch your pearls and expostulate about how charming successful handsome men have rather more sexual partners than you do.
*What's the age of consent across the pond?
Also amusing is the ingroup/outgroup 'defense' framing. I absolute cannot stand Russell Brand, and my only contact with his annoying voice is walking through a room while someone was watching youtube (or whatever streaming platform he's been on lately) on a big-screen tv. It's no 'defense' of him to note that angering the media leads to accusations in the media. You're arguing with me in the comment section of a man who has been doxxed and slandered by the NYT, after all.
Projecting, much?
I know the age of consent there. If someone is accused of sexual misconduct, you think knowing he was a 31 year old doing going to nightclubs and doing heroin with 17 year olds is irrelevant or indicative?
Scott was doxed (no doxxing Brand here) and slandered by a media org, therefore all accusations in the media are untrue???
Right. The sexual harassment accusation is entirely unnecessary in the move (but it, along with racism, or other irrefutable slanders, is pretty useful to throw into the alt-righting). All you have to do is question the woke-left orthodoxy (in any way that puts you on the radar), and within weeks you're alt-right. It's kinda creepy actually.
The result is that the alt-right is an EXTREMELY diverse set of people now. Way more diverse (on any measure you care to fabricate) than the woke-left.
I am a mathematics postdoc, and I am leading a group of computer science students in a project to generalize the results of alpha geometry to other fields of mathematics like algebra and analysis. We need some help with project planning and training LLMs on synthetic data. Would anyone here be interested in advising us on this/working with us?
I don't know whether I have the expertise you need, but I'd love to chat about it and see. How can I get in touch with you?
Thanks, I have now sent you a personal message.
Do you also play Age of Empires II at a fairly high level or are you a separate John Slow?
Separate. I made my alias based on "Jon Snow" from the Game of Thrones, but am glad for this even cooler association.
Are you familiar with a language that unifies N and L?
I think they do that in the Lethernands.
To be clear I'm pretty sure his name is also an alias based on the same reference.
On one hand, I've written a fair number of book reviews over the years. But on the other, I don't use Google Docs, as I don't consider Google an ethical organization and try to deal with them as little as possible.
I looked at Philosophy Bear's survey, out of curiosity. But I realized that I don't care about the $50 (if I took it, it would be for my own enjoyment), and on the other hand, I don't know what "charity" means and don't want to buy a pig in the proverbial poke. (I'm not generally motivated to support organized charities—I would rather donate directly to people whose needs I can assess myself—and some charities support causes I oppose.)
I guess I'm not a good fit to this part of the Internet ecosystem.
The impression I got, based on discussion of how the charity had to accept donations via PayPal and the recipient or their friends couldn't be employees of the charity, was that the winner chooses the charity within the specified bounds.
I chose to donate to charity, thinking I would get to choose one myself, but I also thought about just taking the $50, because I felt lazy and didn't want to figure out *which* charity. But it doesn't matter: I won't get the prize anyway, as I also was too lazy to figure out how much my pension is and convert that to $$.
Philosophy Bear:
1) Do you promise to keep our answer-email correlations confidential? You never AFAICT say as much, and while I personally am sufficiently doxxed to not really care, a lot of those questions are cancel-bait.
2) Do you consider Pause AI a political charity?
Relatedly: Your survey requires one to be registered and signed into Google, unlike Scott's surveys. Could you turn off that requirement? Is there a good reason for it?
I mean, I imagine it probably has to do with the "make 100 entries in order to get a better shot at the prize" problem.
Darn! I never thought of that! This is why I'll always remain poor, I am too honest due to the conditioning of a Catholic upbringing! 😁
Just because I thought of it doesn't mean I'd have done it. My mum - who's a Dawkins-style atheist - did teach me ethics.
We should blame somebody - probably Society - for the malign influences in our childhood which have handicapped us in the race for success in adult life. Had we learned to lie, cheat and steal, how much better for us!
Only if we're not the straws on the camel's back who in the counterfactual flip us over into civilisational collapse.
Wrote a post on the UK - its people's character, the ways it's amazing, the things it does badly, and the things in which it's underrated. Would love thoughts and comments!
https://logos.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-england-and-the-uk
Thanks for sharing! I found your article timely because the conventional wisdom seems to be that the UK is on the decline and that it's sort of a mediocre, almost boring, place. It's good to get an article pushing back on that.
I also think well-integrated immigrants like yourself are well positioned to write articles like this because you can simultaneously see the culture from the outside and the inside. However this demographic has the obvious bias of being bullish on their new country - if they weren't, they wouldn't still be there!
I do have one criticism of the article which is that its portrayal of the United States seems a bit off. As a New Yorker this statement seemed absurd:
> People call the US a melting pot, but by all accounts it’s not really: cultures do not blend in the US. They just cohabit (and barely that).
I'm not sure where you got this impression. In my experience the US is very good at immigrant integration. There's a very real sense that naturalized US citizens are full Americans, and due to birthright citizenship in part but also because of the culture their children are as American as anyone else. This may seem to nit-picking on an article about the UK, but I think there's a general phenomenon in which Europeans think they know a lot more about the US than they actually do.
I haven't lived in the US, so my impression is from what I read / hear from friends; racism seems much more prevalent in the US, with people from different ethnic / racial / religious origins clustering together and inter-mingling less than in the UK. But maybe I'm wrong!
yeah I think you are wrong here (have lived in continental europe, england, and the usa. Am non-white). England is massively better at integration and assimilation than, say, Germany, but the US is as much better again.
As an intuition pump, you should think of the US as having two races. [A.D.O.S. (American descendants of slavery) and native Americans], and [everyone else]. The US is excellent as assimilation and integration within the latter supergroup, but not between the two supergroups.
Really? What are the odds of a Muslim or a Hindu becoming President?
By direct election? Implausible, but Sunak didn't win a general election either. By elevation from the vice presidency (or speakership)? Not implausible.
In any case (a) who can get elected head of state via direct election is a very different question to how accepting the society is in day to day life and (b) your question pertains to religion, not race. The US is a more Christian society than the UK, yes.
Also, since you are asking about head of state: what are the odds of a Muslim or a Hindu becoming King of the UK?
Why is who gets elected different to day to day? Sunak didn't win a direct election, but Khan did in London...
King isn't the same - who gets in that position does not reflect the views of society at large.
Anecdote #n here chiming in to say that I don't really see racism anywhere. But I also live in a place where race is hardly mentioned at all. My town's (and most nearby) demographics are roughly 70% Mexican, 20% white, and a healthy mix of "other." No one who visited my town would be able to come away feeling like racism has a presence at all. But, again. Just me and my quite Red area. I can't speak as confidently about more lefty places where it's so obvious race has significance in their pop culture.
I have also seen some dramatic displays of melting pot success. Not sure whether that's more common or not.
Regarding the alcohol use, I cannot speak of the British, but at least in Finland (which has an even stronger pattern of "sober on workdays, wasted on weekends" style drinking, the alcohol not only has the function of being a formal ways to let go of inhibitions and "normal life", it also serves as a sort of a masculinity ritual (with a "proving your equal to men" factor for women). Ie being able to handle huge amounts of booze is an expected thing for a man to do, and even if it ends up with you blacking out or puking or getting into a lot of trouble, well - you took on the challenge and this time the alcohol bested you, as long as it happened due to a culturally acceptable amount of booze, there's not a huge amount of shame in this failure in itself.
Understanding this masculinity ritual aspect helped me understand, for example, why there's been such a trend in Finnish far-right politics, going back over a century, of movements and actions failing because everyone's drunk as a skunk all the time - the connection of masculinity and far-right politics being almost self-evident.
Contradictions: While we can compartmentalise, a simpler explanation is that these contradictory behaviors are often not manifested by the same people/subculture.
Biscuits: in fact everywhere's "family" biscuits (as opposed to gourmet biscuits) are rubbish. You were given them by your mum when you were four as a treat and so see them through rose tinted glasses. I've known people from several countries to wax lyrical over cheap bland or sugary biscuits that happen to be common where they grew up. London is full of ethnic stores all importing different varieties of crappy biscuits and snacks from home - often manufactured by the same company.
"easily trace their family tree back to medieval ages": This is an exaggeration - 1840 is easy as that is the first census and they are digitised. Beyond that you have to travel the country peering at bad handwriting in musty archives. If you know someone who got back to medieval times easily, it's probably because some distant relative did the hard bit already and uploaded it somewhere.
The weather: it's changed radically in the last few years. This may be the new normal or an aberration, but it's not what got us our reputation for terrible weather. However, some of the reputation for terrible weather came from smog due to domestic coal burning - which went 50 years ago but the French still think London is foggy.
Tell you what, DM me your address and will send you a few biscuits to try!
Haha ! Don't worry, I believe you. There has to be some country with good biscuits, especially if it hasn't been taken over by the biscuit conglomerates. I just think that English biscuits aren't worse than once from the average country.
Since you've given a recommendation for Greek biscuits, what are the Swiss ones you think are better?
My favourites are Wernli Choco Petit Beurre.
Thanks!
please recommend a Greek biscuit that might be broadly available in the rest of Europe, I am Intrigued now
Try Papadopolou caprice (put them in the freezer!) or gemista, or cookies.
ty!
I appreciate the engagement, but I disagree with most of your points :)
Contradictions: definitely not - it's absolutely the same people who, sans alcohol, are quiet and diffident, but who let loose and turn into different people when out.
Biscuits: again, no. The Greek or Swiss run-of-the-mill biscuits are definitely better than McVitie's (and they're made by family-owned companies).
Family records: yes, it's an exaggeration, but as you say, you *can* travel and find records, even if handwritten.
Weather... fair enough!
Every now and then, I get an email that someone liked my post. However, I have never seen/found a "like" button in the comments. I really want a way to "promote" some comments over others, and it is a constant frustration that I cannot. The only thing I have found that is close is replying, but I also don't want to spam "this" everywhere.
How do I like a comment?
I was just thinking about this -- I've been getting a *lot* of likes lately. I was never a fan of likes being turned off; they remove an important way to recognize high-effort comments. If there's a whole browser extension dedicated to turning them back on, that sounds like the original intent has thoroughly failed.
There's a browser extension called ACX tweaks that re-enables them, or when you reply to someone, they get a reply notification by e-mail and in that e-mail there is a like button as well.
The email notification I received for this message did not have a like button in it.
Huh, you're right. I assumed that was still the case but they removed it in 2022.
I have ACX tweaks turned on and, while the underscore->italics and quote processing and precise timestamps work, when I "like" something, I see the "heart" symbol get filled in and the count incremented - but the comment's author appears to not get notified and the increment and filled-in "heart" appear to both disappear next time I visit the ACX web page. So I think there is a bug (or I _still_ haven't set the configuration options properly). This is on a windows 10 laptop under firefox. ( BTW, I've "liked" your comment - do you see any notification? )
So far as I know, those likes are emailed to the recipeint.
Likes aren't public because Scott and enough of the commenters think they have a toxic effect.
It's on the mobile app
The ACX Tweaks browser extension also has an option to re-enable them (just like it had one to disable them before Substack/Scott disabled them.
Thank you! I've been meaning to ask the same.
I was diagnosed with a brain tumour just over two years ago and I never asked for a prognosis. I have had three people close to me who had the same tumour and they all died quite quickly. I assumed that I would too.
Now it’s two years later and I am not dead yet and I am starting to think that I should have asked how long I have in the first place. I would have made very different plans if I had known I would last this long.
I have an appointment with my oncologist coming up and I think I want to ask how long I have so I can make plans for the rest of my life. If it’s a year or two, I’d rather spend it somewhere nice like a beach in Vietnam. If it’s much longer, I’ll need to carry on working. If it’s much shorter, I’ll go watch the ducks on the harbour.
My wife thinks I should forget about knowing because we are all going to die sometime and no one knows when but I wonder what the smart people here would do.
I wrote what I think on my blog but I’m more interested in what you think. What would you do? Would you ask?
https://www.raggedclown.com/2024/04/26/how-long-have-i-got/
At a rough approximation, cancers grow until they kill you. This means that length of life is a function of how big is the cancer, where it is, and how fast it’s growing.
We can usually estimate how fast a cancer will grow by histopathological features (what subtype, what grade) and increasingly these days, molecular features (in the case of brain cancers the presence or absence of IDH mutation is the single most important factor.)
In your case because the biopsy was inconclusive we may be limited in our ability to predict (I’d encourage you though to ask your oncologist in what way it was inconclusive? Did they simply not get enough tissue, or were there features that were borderline such that the pathologist didn’t feel comfortable neatly classifying it?)
That leaves us with velocity of change being potentially the most useful factor. If it’s been two years, and you’re still here well enough to post on ASX and consider travelling to Vietnam, I’d suggest we are looking at a relatively slow velocity. But here serial MRI scans would be helpful.
The other confounding factor is of course treatment which has the potential to significantly prolong things eg if vismodegib gets regulatory approval in the UK. I have certainly met patients who withdrew all their superannuation on cancer diagnosis, did way better than expected, and ended up having to go back to work 5 years later.
Something oncologists are increasingly being asked to do these days is give prognosis estimates with error bars, not just a median, which people tend to overinterpret. So 10th and 90th percentiles as well. Worth asking if this is an option.
Hope some of this rambling helps
Thank you, Turtle. The biopsy was a needle biopsy and did not get sufficient tumour. The pathologists were not confident and the molecular profile had nothing to say. The surgeon wanted to do a full craniotomy to get a better sample but I declined. Two of the pathologists said, “Probably astro”. The other said don’t know.
What I am most interested in though is whether other folks would want a prognosis. Would you want to know?
Just yes, I would want to know. The knowledge would enable me to optimize my relationships, my spiritual well-being, my finances and my travel plans. I don't even see the other side of the argument, actually. It's relevant that I am in my 60s I suppose, because my eventual death is a sober reality to me. Might have felt different in my 30s or earlier.
How do you optimize a relationship on account of a cancer diagnosis?
Bear in mind too that oncologists are notoriously reluctant to give definitive prognoses for exactly this reason - they are genuinely unsure, and obviously it's a matter of life changing importance to people, and they don't want to cause you terrible problems when they get it wrong.
So in your case you may have to press them if you want more than exactly zero useful information. My default response if someone asked me would be something like "I really don't know because we don't have an adequate tissue sample/we don't know how you will respond to treatment." You would have to ask me specifically, like, "should I take a holiday in Vietnam, vs continue to work, vs withdraw my savings" for me to think "OK, this guy understands I can't do better than ballpark, but ballpark is still going to be useful to him."
When my dad was dying of cancer, the oncologist gave him a prognosis (broadly accurate--the doctor said probably six months to a year, and my dad died in that range of time) prefaced with "I'll give you my estimate, but I'm always wrong." I assume this was to make it clear he couldn't give any guarantees.
It's different in each situation and of course some oncologists have different approaches. I always check that a patient wants to know and check that they understand my limitations before giving my best estimate, but am happy to give that if requested.
And may your Dad rest in peace.
I have a really good relationship with my oncologist and she has told me plenty of good news and bad news (or her best guess at it) in the past. I have just never asked her before for a prognosis. I have no doubt that if she is able to make a guess, she will do her best and if she is not able, she will tell me so.
I know her guess will be a guess based on historical record of other patients. I also know that brain cancers are very varied, with probably more variation than most other cancers.
I expect her answer will be something like "you have a long time to go" or "if I were you, I would book that trip to Vietnam". That will be accurate enough for me.
Me? For sure. Because, look, the number your oncologist tells you is not from gazing into a crystal ball, it's an educated guess, based on extrapolation from patients similar to you. It could be off in either direction by 3x. People think that doctors are oracular prophets with this stuff. We're really not.
It might affect your life, right? Like if they say one year vs ten years, you'll do something different with your future plans.
Just don't put too much stock in the response. If they say "two years" remember that's a median and you could be 90th percentile, or 99th percentile, or whatever. If you're still here in 18 months, don't go "well, six months left now." That's a common attitude, and it makes about as much sense as a mum asking her obstetrician how long her baby will live, and they go "actuarially, approximately 80 years," and now the kid is turning 79 and is in great health but figures they had better start planning their funeral.
I suffer from a chronic condition that often ends badly but is very difficult to develop a prognosis for. The medical profession as a whole seems quite unwilling to make concrete projections unless the outcome is fairly certain. Sort of like when you ask your accountant or lawyer if something is kosher and they give you a word salad that doesn't really answer the question.
of course I do my own research, but it really seems that the internet and social media and just the general increase in information good and bad makes it harder and harder to do your own valid research and feel you're on solid ground.
The fact that you're posting here is a good sign. There aren't many places on the internet where you can pretty much count on opinions having some grounding in reality. That said, even on this blog you get questionable responses. All I can say is, with some irony, do your own research.
For about the first year I researched about three hours a night, every night. I've been a bit more relaxed in recent months.
In my day job, I run an online community for patients. For some cancers, the advice is excellent - but we don't have a good brain cancer community. Surprisingly, the best one I belong to is on Reddit.
I've lived with a medical condition with a median survival term of 5 years for 22+ years now - even if they quote a median to you, it doesn't tell you anything about the tails of the distribution, or about your specific situation.
Basically, I'm not sure asking them is going to actually help you make a better decision, especially if it's the difference between needing to work / not. If I were in your shoes, I'd research on pubmed for "% that survives x years" charts or tables for your specific condition, and that's probably the most informed prior you'll be able to get. And the doctor isn't going to know that off the top of their head, it's basically up to you.
I've spent many long nights reading pubmed and looking at Kaplan-Meier charts. I don't have a proper diagnosis because my biopsy was inconclusive but it's definitely a low grade glioma (two years to ten years depending on the subtype) with lots of dependent variables. My tumour has a gliomatosis pattern which the old papers say puts me at less than 12 months but new papers say makes no difference. Brain tumours are complicated.
I would hope that my oncologist can be a little more precise — though I understand that she will still be quoting averages from the past, not making a specific prediction for me.
These days prognosis is more based on molecular sub typing ie DNA analysis. I assume you’re IDH mutant? Do you know what your 1p/19q codeletion status is?
I had a biopsy but the results were inconclusive. My spidey sense says that I have an astrocytoma (IDH-mt but no codeletion)
If the results were inconclusive your oncologist might not be able to tell you much. But low grade astrocytomas can have prognoses 10+ years. Has yours changed much on imaging since diagnosis?
It's approximately doubled in size and has crossed the midline. It is diffuse.
Gotcha, sounds like you've got good espistemics around it already.
One last thought on the decision - you mentioned Vietnam. I'm assuming you're western and have a western job / credit history. You could live a pretty long time in Vietnam on the credit profile that most SSC folk have, and unsecured debt has no liability to your inheritors on your death.
A sort of "hedge your bets" thing if you wanted to go that route - eke out as much as you can on credit without spending down your actual assets beyond minpays, then you'll have pushed your two year timeline out by X years if you end up being in the long tail and surviving longer than expected, and can make a less risky / more hedged decision then.
Thank you for your very thoughtful answers. I find them valuable.
Vietnam is just a fer-instance but I would like to spend my final days somewhere more exotic. I'm in the UK and I have family which is another reason why a better prognosis would be helpful. My wife could probably manage a year on a beach somewhere but eventually she will have to come back and if it's ten years, that would make it very difficult for her.
Sure, happy to contribute where I have a little knowledge and relevance.
> Vietnam is just a fer-instance but I would like to spend my final days somewhere more exotic.
I actually spend a good portion of my time in the Philippines and Thailand, I think SE Asia is a great choice. I used to live in Hawaii, and both PI and Thailand beat Hawaii on "natural beauty" while also being 50x cheaper, it's a pretty incredible value prop.
The flights to and from the US are brutal (and I'm sure similarly bad for the UK), but you never regret it when you're actually here, in my experience.
I spent many months backpacking in SE Asia in my misspent youth. I love Thailand and Indonesia especially.
On the Philosophy Bear survey, there's a left-right alignment question.
It's safe to assume this is in an American context, but even there, I don't know how to answer these, particularly given recent gyrations in what counts as left and right (left anti free speech, right anti free trade, for example). Are these scales even useful anymore? I went center left as a vague gesture at my views (socially permissive, positive on markets, think the state should keep people out of misery), but the nuance is complicated and not coherent with a left right axis, even less than historically speaking.
Philosophy Bear is Australian, so I guess you should assume "whatever the internet usually means by left-right alignment"
I'd argue the opposite - the scale is more accurate than at any point in 50 years.
Split ticket voting has decayed to almost zero. Meaning if you vote for one Democrat on the ballot, you're voting for every Democrat on the ballot. In the 1970s, it was much more common for individual voters for a Democrat for one office (e.g. Representative) and a Republican for another office (e.g. Senator).
Today, you basically have two camps - one on the left and the other on the right. The number of people in between is at an all-time low.
Sure, there's lots of heterogeneity within these groups. But you can tell a lot about someone by the way they vote. And now more than ever, the left-right alignment matches voting behavior better than anything else I've ever seen.
Voting patterns on referenda, even on "partisan" issues, often differs wildly from what one would naively expect from partisan lean. Third party voting is also quite volatile election over election.
There are few people in between Democrats and Republicans, sure, but does that reflect coalescing into two rival and coherent "tribes" or does it reflect widespread dissatisfaction with what politicians of both parties are offering?
If you had widespread dissatisfaction with both sides, you'd probably see very low turnout. Instead, voter turnout is breaking records.
Referenda are almost by definition exceptional - if you could get the law passed through the regular political process, you likely wouldn't be seeking an alternative route to passage. So that's why those frequently cut against the state's majority party - that's the entire point of having a separate citizen-led process for making law.
>If you had widespread dissatisfaction with both sides, you'd probably see very low turnout.
Is this based on surveys and studies done before or after the explosion of social media?
"If you had widespread dissatisfaction with both sides, you'd probably see very low turnout. Instead, voter turnout is breaking records."
To what extent does negative partisanship explain this turnout? "Dissatisfied with both sides, but likely to vote anyway because I see one side as a significantly bigger threat than the other" describes me pretty well. Not sure how many other people would agree, but I suspect a good few.
>"Dissatisfied with both sides, but likely to vote anyway because I see one side as a significantly bigger threat than the other"
I'm definitely in the dissatisfied with both sides camp. In a nutshell, disliking the right wing because of their attacks on bodily autonomy and disliking the left wing because of all of the woke crap. Since I have relatives in Israel, I'll vote for whichever of Biden/Trump is best supporting Israel (or, more precisely, voting against whichever of them is less supportive).
Negative partisanship is also a good indication that the bimodal scale is working well.
The original idea - as I understood it - was that heterodoxy on the left and right has made the left-right binary meaningless. There simply no more meaning to being left or right - no one can tell what that means any more.
The data shows the opposite - people are more consistently Democrat or Republican and are less likely to vote for anyone outside their party.
Now, what their party stands for is always going to be in flux. But we can all agree that the one thing each party stands for is that it's not the other party. That's changed considerably since the 1950s - fun side note, in the 1950s, political scientists were warning that American politics wasn't partisan *enough*. That without partisanship, voting became truly meaningless, because Democrats and Republicans were so thoroughly mixed in their feelings on the major issues of the day (e.g., segregation) that voters didn't know what casting a vote for a particular candidate *meant*. E.g., if I vote for the Democrat, am I saying I'm pro-segregation or pro-integration?
Anyway, that's not a problem anymore!
> recent gyrations in what counts as left and right (left anti free speech, right anti free trade, for example)
For obvious reasons, the right currently appreciates free speech. But the left hasn't gotten friendlier to free trade.
The right is pro "free speech" as a political slogan, but they're still opposed to free speech as an actual principle. For example, the governor of Florida literally passed a bill to "punish" a specific company specifically for criticizing government policy. This is as close to a textbook example of government prohibition on free speech as you can possibly get, and it isn't even hidden - he brags about it on TV!
Of course there's always random stories about people banning books because they show gay people or micromanaging what teachers are allowed to say and so on, but the Disney case is by far the worst of any free speech case in the modern era because if you can't criticize the government, nothing else matters. And the fact that DeSantis was so blatant about it and brags about it on TV means the chilling effects are much greater than they would otherwise be.
Corporations aren't people and we should stop pretending they are. Punishing them for expressing positions, on any issue, means more opportunity for regular people to have their say.
And yet I don't disagree with you at all on the right in general; I just think you chose a poor example re: Disney. Abbott's reaction to the UT protests, for instance, suggests that there remains zero respect for free speech on the right, and not just vis-a-vis LGBT issues.
How does this apply to media companies that run news operations, like ABC news, CNN, or the Wall Street Journal?
To what extent are those news operations run by corporations, as opposed to their own largely unaccountable and un-fireable staff?
How does that matter wrt freedom of speech? I mean, is there an organizational structure for the Wall Street Journal that means that the Biden administration can decide to jail the editor or order the newspaper closed because he doesn't like the stories they're running? ISTM that the organizational structure is irrelevant--we don't want government telling news organizations what they may and may not say.
Did he actually punish Disney though, or just remove certain special laws that benefited them, casting them down to the level of everyone else? (I don't get to run my own city so I don't see why Walt Disney should).
Well, Desantis said he did, and certainly seems to be trying to create the chilling effect.
As a more general principle which I'm sure you already understand, it can be possible for a seemingly innocuous action to still be problematic if done for the wrong motives in the wrong circumstances. As a flipped example, I'm sure you'd agree that businesses have a right to arbitrarily refuse customers *in general*. But I'm also sure you'd oppose social media companies banning people due to right-wing affiliated speech. It's not "banning people" in general that's the problem, it's "banning people for engaging in disfavored speech".
Sometimes it's hard to tell what people's motives are, but in this case we don't have to guess because DeSantis is happy to brag about it.
Or if that's not enough, consider the Roseanne cancellation. Why is it a problem to take away someone's special privileges, casting her down to the level of everyone else? I don't get to run my own TV show so I don't see why Roseanne Barr should. You see the problem with this argument?
I think DeSantis took away a special law that benefitted them (that they should probably never have had) as a way to punish them for taking a stand against a law he supported. And he pretty-much bragged about it. You can see this as good or bad in various ways, but it's very hard to spin as support for freedom of speech.
I did the same!
Yeah, I agree. It's very annoying to constantly see that sort of one-dimensional flattening of politics by specifically Americans, given how thoroughly multi-faceted politics are.
I'm pretty sure this flattening reflex is directly downstream of how their electoral system works, but I sure wish they'd stop constantly auto-applying it to the rest of the world.
Philosophy Bear is Australian, so you can blame the Australians (who have a multi-party electoral system) this time instead of the Americans. :)
Most countries that I’m aware of collapse the political landscape into a single dimension in popular discourse. It’s not totally unreasonable for an American to make use of that framework - and to the extent that it is unreasonable, it is not a habit unique to Americans.
The problem is when you try to map the idiosyncratic coalitions of one place and time onto another. It often feels like "but are you a Protestant or a Catholic Jew?"
The same also goes for trying to extrapolate American racial categories outside of the circumstances and society which gave birth to those particular delineations.
Probably the only consistent factor is redistributive preferences, which to be fair to philosophy bear is probably the most relevant aspect for their purposes.
I went center right for the exact same reasons. I think the 11 point scale and the follow up specific question has enough nuance to find interesting correlations.
Scott, any last words on P(zoonosis)? (I have a market https://manifold.markets/warty/what-will-be-scott-alexanders-pzoon , otherwise resolving 90%)
Probably still around 90%.
My music listening is generally rock, or classical or house. The latter I know nothing about but it fills the room.
I don’t listen to much pop except for the obvious genius of the Beatles or the beachboys etc.
Female pop? Not at all.
So it was with great trepidation that I let Spotify play what it considered the best songs from Taylor Swift‘s latest, and not as enthusiastically received, album - the Tortured Poet’s society.
I’ve never liked her old songs much either but I enjoyed the songs I listened to here well enough. Sure, maybe a 35 year old should move on from the break up genre, but she can throw shade like no one else. I’m not sure it helps her future dating prospects that you may get a song like “The smallest man who ever lived” written about you but as a revenge poem it’s delicious.
OK, I honestly tried listening to the song you mentioned. I made two attempts but just got bored and wound up skipping around a bit. There's just nothing really going on musically, and the lyrics might feel relatable to someone else but not to me.
It solidifies the idea in my head that Taylor Swift is just music for people who don't really like music. (I don't mean this as a value judgement; I mean, I don't really like paintings, and I'm sure that the sort of vaguely-pleasant colourful landscape paintings that I hang on my walls could be described as paintings for people who don't really like paintings.) People like this are enjoying something else in music when they listen to music; they're enjoying the lyrics, or they're enjoying the nostalgia of listening to a song that reminds them of good times, or they're just enjoying being part of a group who all like the same thing.
That's interesting to hear just because I've heard similar comments in recent days from two other people who I'd never have guessed had ever listened to a Taylor Swift album. (As I haven't, not yet anyway.)
Will there be a dedicated announcement for book review voting this year? I was reading through the open threads for the last few, and saw 1. several complaints that people were unaware of the voting period because they don't check the threads and 2. that it was a huge pain to find people's thoughts on the reviews during voting, because spicy/CW stuff dominates open threads.
Yeah, probably I should do this.
How good will GPT5 be?
Will it flood Scott's comment threads with human quality writing?
Will it finally make translators obsolete?
Will it be so good that there won't be a book review contest 2025 because GPT5 is too good at writing reviews?
> How good will GPT5 be?
my guess is that it will not only be trained on text, but will also use other kinds of data (probably video), so it will learn things, gpt4 is lacking, like spation thinking, and cause-and-effects. This will both open up new domains, and also improve the existing ones.
I guess it will be stronger across the board. e.g. all in domains, where gpt4 is ok-ish, gpt5 will be super-human. And in many domains where gpt4 is bad at, gpt5 will be ok-ish.
> Will it flood Scott's comment threads with human quality writing?
I think, that gpt4 already does human-level writing (,i.e. it is above the average human, but well below a domain-expert) , and it is only limited by RLHF. There are two problems with RLHF: (1) it leaves artefacts in the output and (2) it seems to reduce the overall capabitlities of the network (e.g. gpt4 seemed to get worse at programming, as RLHF continued). So I guess, that openai will use a different strategie to make gpt5 non-racist. Maybe something like this: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-road-to-honest-ai
But I also think, that it will be very closed down (read: sold to the highest bidder), so it will take some time after its release, before we will see it in the wild. So I don't think we will see it in comment-sections any time soon.
However good GPT-5 is, I don't expect it to really compete with human writers at a high-level of style, flair, wit, and general disagreeableness. It's less a matter of scale than of the tuning & sampling.
A more relevant hypothetical might be Llama-3-400b if it is as good as Zuckerberg has been promising, and released as promised: you could then finetune it to remove the safety guardrails easily (as has been established many times now), recover the much more diverse base behavior than the instruction/RLHF-tuned behavior, and then maybe finetune it on high-quality diverse writing or work out a better sampling/search approach than mere temperature sampling, to really reveal what it's capable of. (As always, sampling can show the presence of knowledge but not the absence.)
Roughly 1/2 byte of GPU memory per parameter is the minimum I think (assuming 4 bit quantization)
I think you can already do this. It just takes a lot of time.
Some people got the llama 7B running on a raspberry pi, so I think you can use the same principles (like storing intermittent results to a SSD), to run a larger LLM on a larger computer.
Wild-ass guesses:
We're going to have a hard time telling with new commenters, as long as they have conventional views. But I bet GPT-5 will still be trained to give mealy-mouthed conventional answers about all the current hot-button political issues. (Try asking it, "Who's in the right, Palestine or Israel?", and see what you get.)
I think it could make a lot of translators obsolete. It depends on how much non-English text they incorporate. And there'll be usage constraints: something worse running locally with unlimited usage is going to have advantages over something better running remotely with a rate limit.
I predict it will be able to create decent book reviews that are actually worth reading, but which still aren't quite as good as the very best. The good ones here tend to use the book as a springboard for discussing another idea, or tend to have a lot of distinct personality. But who knows, maybe "review this book in the style of Scott Alexander" will be a useful prompt.
I doubt that would be a useful GPT-5 prompt. I expect it would lead to a summary that got lost in the details, but lacking Scott's trenchant insights to cut through the jungle.
To anticipate questions related to 3: these complexities will have no effect on TFOI's updated roadmap.
We are not affiliated with the Minicircle company, and we also do not have any shared team members or formal partnerships. While we initially considered partnering with them, following our internal considerations and consultations with external experts, we made a few early adjustments to the parts of our general strategy. Among them, we decided to pause investigating the use of small-m minicircles (as an entire category) in the human intervention subproject, having identified delivery-related issues that could likely prevent the occurrence of the desired effect; we are already considering the utilization of other, more suitable methods. More news coming soon!
I tend to think of theology as something a peraon learns in order to better understand the doctrinal points of their own religious tradition. Usually to deepen their faith or to provide for defenses against attacks from othe religions. Also, inevitably, the speculation draws on the established scriptures of the faith and thus ultimately appeals to the authority of revealed knowledge to paper over any cracks. A notion that recently lodged itself in my brain is whether or not it was possible to speculate on the nature of the divine without reference to revealed knowledge and/or outside of a religious tradition.
The only examples I've been able to find have been Aristotle on Metaphysics where he outlines his argument for Prime Movers, and within Whitehead's process philosophy. But as far as I can tell that's basically it and that honestly surprised me. It's easy to understand why the majorityof theology would take place within an established tradition, but I thought that subject of (presumably) great importance would have attracted more thinkers trying to divine what we can know about it through reason alone.
So am I missing any other than the ones listed above? Also, if anyone has thoughts on the futility or nature of the subject, feel free to share.
There are many variations on this, but the general idea starts from the old observation that "nothing comes from nothing", i.e stuff requires other stuff to serve as its cause or support or underlying explanation.
This general rule has held up amazingly well, even though quantum physics has brought a few wrinkles, with virtual particles popping in and out of existence and all.
So you open your eyes and see that "stuff is there", so you naturally ask why something rather than nothing? Well, if things depend on other previous or finer things, you can mentally trace back these chains of dependence as far back as the rational mind can go and our knowledge of the universe allows.
At that point, since out knowledge is limited, you can quite fairly just say "well that's as much as we know for now" and leave it at that. Perfectly rational.
But if you choose to continue as a thought experiment, and if you believe hard enough that all things must have an explanation even if we can't pinpoint the details, you can wonder, do these chains ever reach an end, or do they keep going back forever?
The possibility that they keep going back forever is also quite rational, you can imagine a multiverse with no beginning or end out of which infinite universes pop out and do their thing. But hardly anyone seems to like that option because it leaves the wider question "why stuff" without a clear answer.
Then you ask, what does it even mean for those chains of dependency to have a beginning? For something to sit at the beginning it would have to be timeless, and altogether self-sufficient, otherwise it would need some further cause or justification beyond it. It would also need to be "generative", i.e able to cause or underlie the rest of the chain instead of just sitting there self sufficiently.
So if you follow this line of speculation to the end, you can have the intellectual satisfaction of finding something in the shape of an answer, as long as you can stomach the weirdness of an entity completely unlike anything we know in the world.
I have to insist that it's quite a price to pay. You started up with the principle that everything depends on something else, and you ended up with something that straight up contradicts that principle. Anyone calling this a "proof" is IMO hugely overstating it.
But if you make the choice to accept that, there you have it, the philosophical God, independently of any religious tradition or revelation.
"Also, inevitably, the speculation draws on the established scriptures of the faith and thus ultimately appeals to the authority of revealed knowledge to paper over any cracks."
Have you been following recent theologians? 😀 The popularisers, at least; they get very enthusiastic media reviews about "This minister isn't your grandpa's clergy, she's got tats and loves rock!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Bolz-Weber
Though I have some tolerance for Rev. Bolz-Weber who, even if she is achingly hip, is also at least in the trenches doing pastoral work so I simply roll my eyes at the "Minister for Fabulousness" stuff:
"Bolz-Weber felt called to service in 2004 when she was asked to eulogize a friend who had committed suicide. In 2008, Bolz-Weber was ordained as a pastor. She started her own church, the House for All Sinners and Saints, the name of which is often shortened to just 'House.' One third of her church is part of the LGBT community, and she also has a "Minister of Fabulousness", Stuart, who is a drag queen. Her church is also very welcoming to people with drug addiction, depression, and even those who are not believers of her faith. Bolz-Weber spends nearly twenty hours each week writing her weekly ten-minute sermon."
There's the older versions of that; I would not consider Karen Armstrong someone who is a theologian that "learns in order to better learn the doctrinal points of their own religion, to deepen their faith or provide for defenses against attacks". Ditto Bart Ehrman "six times New York Times bestsellers":
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-05-03/bible-revelation-christian-environment-climate-change-apathy
But that's my own prejudices coming to the fore!
I think that within Hinduism, which covers a *lot* of territory, there are thinkers coming at "the nature of the divine without reference to revealed knowledge"; there is a lot of sophisticated philosophical arguments over being and reality in that tradition, similarly within Buddhism. Look outside Western philosophy for exemplars, though I'm not sufficiently learned to steer you towards any particular teacher or school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80stika_and_n%C4%81stika
As nice as the existence of open minded non-conservative Christian theologians may be, these are still people operating within the bounds of their chosen faith, with its internal needs for clarification and justification. As far as I understand, Negentrope was asking for people tackling these issues with no such pre-commitments.
Oh, don't take it that I'm *happy* about "open-minded, non-conservative theologians", some of them are so open-minded their brains fell out and they are most interested in demonstrating that Christianity is the most terrible thing ever because of [insert laundry list of progressive shibboleths here] 😀
What I understood Negentrope to be saying was that theologians were defending their own faith tradition, and there's a tranche of modern theologians who are doing anything but that and instead are wanting to deconstruct it. If they're looking for philosophers of religion, I think there must be some out there but I don't know any off the top of my head.
I think A World Full of Gods by John Michael Greer meets your specs. It's theology of polytheism.
^^ this.
Also reading Greer in general can help a person reflect on the problems inherent in the original question.
Check out “nondual tantric saivism” by Wallis. A lot of eastern traditions make claims like, “don’t just take what I’m saying as true, sit down to meditate and see for yourself.”
An approaches use by Catholics like Aquinas is similar but it often starts with propositions. For example, for the question “why is there something instead of noting” the Catholics argue that “nothing” actually requires more of an explanation than “something”. You could argue they are just basing this all off of scripture, but millions of Protestants would scream in protest, “no they aren’t, that’s the whole problem with Catholicism.”
The Catholic conception of God is what a lot of people would call “truth” or “reality” , depending on whether their philosophical predispositions lean platonic (truth) or materialist (reality). Obviously specific claims like “and then truth became a person” can’t be empirically investigated. But “if you assume truth loves you and guides you, and you become open to its guidance, your life will get better” can absolutely be empirically tested without recourse to ancient texts.
> A lot of eastern traditions make claims like, “don’t just take what I’m saying as true, sit down to meditate and see for yourself.”
And what exactly happens when you sit down to meditate, and afterwards still disagree with their teachings?
This is like p-hacking in science. The traditions encourage you to make millions of experiments with N=1, then use the successful ones as "empirical evidence for our tradition" and ignore the rest.
That's very good.
It's what I get from Rambam (Maiminides) and what I basee my 10 Commandments series on.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL20zNTAn_sgc5vsXwXuBKLVD4HBFfTEfz
Based off of Zechariah's והאמת והשלום אהבו ("and thou shall love The Truth and The Good") I sort of define God aa "Kind Reality".
Totally agree. The shocking claim that monotheisms make isn’t that there’s some operator outside the laws of physics. It would be better translated to materialism as, “the laws of physics are consciously, and they love you and have a plan for your life and the world as a whole.”
I don't understand this. How does gravity have a plan for your life, besides planning for you to be low down?
We speak of gravity "attracting" objects; we have Laws of Attraction and Repulsion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law
Now, let us go to the ending of the Divine Comedy, where Dante finally attains the vision of God, the Unmoved Mover:
"but my desire and will were moved already —
like a wheel revolving uniformly — by
the Love that moves the sun and the other stars."
How is it that God moves the stars? It is not that He physically spins them in place, but rather - in mediaeval thought - all things have their natural place and 'wish' or 'desire' to be there - it attracts them.
God is that Love which all things in the Universe are naturally attracted to, and try to move towards, and that is the motion imparted to them.
To quote Lewis' "The Discarded Image":
"God, we have said, causes the Primum Mobile to rotate. A modern Theist would hardly raise the question ‘How?’ But the question had been both raised and answered long before the Middle Ages, and the answer was incorporated in the Medieval Model. It was obvious to Aristotle that most things which move do so because some other moving object impels them. A hand, itself in motion, moves a sword; a wind, itself in motion, moves a ship. But it was also fundamental to his thought that no infinite series can be actual. We cannot therefore go on explaining one movement by another ad infinitum. There must in the last resort be something which, motionless itself, initiates the motion of all other things. Such a Prime Mover he finds in the wholly transcendent and immaterial God who ‘occupies no place and is not affected by time’. But we must not imagine Him moving things by any positive action, for that would be to attribute some kind of motion to Himself and we should then not have reached an utterly unmoving Mover. How then does He move things? Aristotle answers, κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον, ‘He moves as beloved’. He moves other things, that is, as an object of desire moves those who desire it. The Primum Mobile is moved by its love for God, and, being moved, communicates motion to the rest of the universe."
That which is the most attractive force we may today name gravity, but in the past it was named Love, and that Love knows us and has a plan for your life and the world as a whole 😁
A monotheist would say that gravity is _part_ of the plan, just like gravity is just part of the laws of physics.
What you are talking about is the main project of the philosophy of religion discipline today. There are countless philosophers since the Greek times and also working today doing what you are describing. Joshua Rasmussen's work is a good example of a living analytic philosopher doing that. His book "How Reason Can Lead to God" would likely interest you. Ed Feser, as the other commenter pointed out, is someone in the Thomistic/Aristotelian tradition who does that.
What you are looking for is natrual theology. Other than the aforementioned theologians consider reading Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas and Leibnez.
The proofs in particular should come up if you search for the Neo Platonic (proof), Augustinian (proof), Thomistic (proof), and rationalist (proof).
If you are seriously interested consider Edward Feser's "Five proofs of gods existence" (a silly title I know but it is highly regarded, in which Feser explores natural theology and its common refutations (such as Hume to the prime mover theory and many more), also trying to attribute attributes to the being it rationalises.
Some will tell you we should entirely exclude the supernatural, or that it may be a futile endeavor but it certainly is an interesting subject and I'd advise you to not exclude any knowledge, as long as it is true knowledge (what an epistemological horror but whatever).
It would be even more interesting if anyone were to write these books with an open attitude and balanced point of view, sympathetic but not sold. It's hard to trust that someone writing "five proofs of God's existence" doesn't already know what conclusion they want to get to...
Well, as the representative contrarian conservative Catholic round these parts, let me link to a translation of the Summa and my boy Tommy A:
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm
(1) "Article 1. Whether, besides philosophy, any further doctrine is required?
Objection 1. It seems that, besides philosophical science, we have no need of any further knowledge. For man should not seek to know what is above reason: "Seek not the things that are too high for thee" (Sirach 3:22). But whatever is not above reason is fully treated of in philosophical science. Therefore any other knowledge besides philosophical science is superfluous.
Objection 2. Further, knowledge can be concerned only with being, for nothing can be known, save what is true; and all that is, is true. But everything that is, is treated of in philosophical science—even God Himself; so that there is a part of philosophy called theology, or the divine science, as Aristotle has proved (Metaph. vi). Therefore, besides philosophical science, there is no need of any further knowledge.
On the contrary, It is written (2 Timothy 3:16): "All Scripture, inspired of God is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice." Now Scripture, inspired of God, is no part of philosophical science, which has been built up by human reason. Therefore it is useful that besides philosophical science, there should be other knowledge, i.e. inspired of God.
I answer that, It was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: "The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee" (Isaiah 64:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation.
Reply to Objection 1. Although those things which are beyond man's knowledge may not be sought for by man through his reason, nevertheless, once they are revealed by God, they must be accepted by faith. Hence the sacred text continues, "For many things are shown to thee above the understanding of man" (Sirach 3:25). And in this, the sacred science consists.
Reply to Objection 2. Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy."
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm
(2) "Article 3. Whether God exists?
Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.
Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Exodus 3:14)
I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence — which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.
Reply to Objection 2. Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article."
It really troubles me how difficult it is to talk about human rights in Palestine without being in some way accused of being an antisemite, or otherwise being callous towards Israelis. It seems to be an unspoken assumption that these two mindsets are interlinked, but I just don't understand how that makes sense. Gaza and the West Bank are both in far worse shape than Israel is, so it seems obvious to me that an objective observer would be very concerned about the welfare of Palestinians right now. It troubles me that it is controversial in many spaces to express any modicum of that concern publicly, and I would be interested to know why people think this is the case.
Talking about human rights in 2024 Palestine, is a lot like talking about human rights in 1945 Berlin. There was an awful lot of suffering in Berlin in 1944-1945; I think something like a quarter of a million civilians were killed, most of whom were not literal Nazis. This is a bad thing; those people in principle at least had the standard human right not to be killed or maimed or their homes destroyed, etc, and those things were nonetheless done to them.
But what are you going to *do* about it? The Nazis had to go, and the only way anyone had to remove deeply-entrenched Nazis from a major city was to bomb the crap out of the city and then send in a brutal, trigger-happy army to go house to house, room to room, through the city until every Nazi was dead, in prison, or trying very hard to pretend they had never been a Nazi. Then have a very thoroughly skeptical police force watch over them for maybe a decade to make sure there's no backsliding.
If your plan is to insist, "NO! This is an intolerable infringement on the human rights of the citizens of Berlin; the RAF must stop immediately and the Russians must pull their army back to Poland!", then it's going to be hard to convince people you're not a Nazi or at least a Nazi sympathizer.
If you've got a better plan, then you really need to be explaining what that plan is and that plan needs to be something that *reliably* ends with a thoroughly de-Nazified Berlin. But nobody really has a plan like that.
s/Nazis/Hamas, and here we are. Israel is not going to settle for anything less than the destruction of Hamas, and the civilized world should not settle for anything less. Enough people understand that, to make things "difficult" for people who only want to talk about the poor suffering Palestinians and the evil Israelis.
There's a lot more scope for talking usefully about what might be done to help the Palestinian people *after* Hamas has been removed.
Well said! Many Thanks!
"But what are you going to *do* about it? The Nazis had to go" I'm pretty sure this was the exact same argument that justified Oct 7, except with Israelis. Hamas didn't even damage any hospitals, so what's happening now is worse in basically every respect. (Edit: Hamas also cited the accelerating invasion of the West Bank - is that something that could justify ceasing to care about Israeli human rights?) Why does it make sense for you here, but not there?
"But nobody really has a plan like that." The two state solution has previously been the subject of many reams of analysis, and is supported by almost everyone except the Israeli government. Is this something you would consider could improve human rights on the ground, and if not, why not?
On the topic of removing Hamas, my question is what happens next? Palestinians are in a major famine, have no energy, and have lost half their homes. If Israel finally kills every Hamas member, what then?
"'I'm pretty sure this was the exact same argument that justified Oct 7, except with Israelis."
When Hamas tries to make that claim, they're *lying*. Or, perhaps, sincerely expressing a purely religious belief; the Jews have got to go because Allah said so. But it's a false claim whether they believe it or not, and they should know better.
No. The existence of dastardly black-hearted evil villains who falsely claim that they have a good reason for killing a lot of people, doesn't mean that good people don't often have an actual good reason for killing a lot of people (like, for example, dastardly black-hearted evil lying villains).
What does "lying" mean in this context? As far as I can tell the argument you're making is: if group X represents a threat to us, we can kill as many of them as we like. Israel obviously represents a threat to Gaza, and violence against Palestinians was increasing throughout 2023. So I'm pretty sure your agreement would justify Oct 7.
No, it's not "represents a threat to us". And I never said anything that would cause any reasonable person to think I was setting the bar at "represents a threat to us". The bar for waging war is very much higher than just "represents a threat to us".
And Hamas cleared that bar, with plenty of air to spare.
I'm not asking you about the bar for a government waging war, I'm asking about the bar for you personally not caring about (or being willing to overlook) human rights.
Israel has supported many two state solutions, including the original 1948 partition plan. Of course, the arabs invaded Israel the next day to create their favored one state solution.
There was a lot of hope around the Oslo process in the 90s, but the events after that has convinced most Israelis that there simply isn't anyone with real power on the other side who wants a two state solution. The people with guns want a one state arab Palestine, from the river to the sea.
While I agree with your sentiment, I also think there was some utility left lying on the table by the Allies. Morale bombings do not work, see acoup. And it would have been nice to have someone other than Stalin (who obviously did not lose too much sleep about the rapes and assorted atrocities his soldiers committed) who was in a position to crush the Wehrmacht.
Most importantly, it worked militarily, the Nazis were defeated.
While the goal to stamp out Hamas is certainly worthy, my problem with Bibi is that I do not see how his approach of going in, killing Hamas (to the degree that they opt to show themselves and not hide among the civilians) a bit (sometimes with very unfavorable collateral damage rates) and then leaving again is not going to be enough to defeat extremism in Gaza. I think it would have to be followed up by some sort of occupation and providing a credible alternative.
I think Hamas has a theory of victory, however far fetched, and that the atrocities they committed were actually furthering that goal.
This sounds crazy, but hear me out. Hamas leadership know that they their organization will never defeat Israel militarily. Their best chance to achieving their dream of wiping Israel from the map is a broad alliance of Arab countries who defeat Israel together. The way they get there is public Muslim outrage at Israel. And the best way to generate such outrage is dead Palestinian kids. In my opinion, their attacks were militarily completely pointless, but served the important strategic goal of getting Israel to bomb Gaza down. This will likely throw a wrench into Israel's diplomatic efforts to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors.
Again: dead Palestinian civilians are not an acceptable side effect for Hamas, they are the *whole point* in a way they never were for the Nazis. If Israel is very accepting of collateral damage by modern western standards, Hamas leadership opens the Champagne (or whatever Muslim terrorists drink).
That's what I believe-- the purpose of the 10/7 attack was to cause an Israeli overreaction and damage international support for Israel to such an extent that Israel could be destroyed.
Hamas has several paths to victory. Through Israeli overreaction or through Israeli underreaction, through horrifically dead Palestinian babies or horrifically dead Israeli babies. As long as Hamas exists, there's no clever "just right" reaction that neutralizes Hamas without more horrifically dead babies.
Hamas delenda est. All else is commentary.
Hamas's leaders said in an interview what they expected to happen. They would attack Israel. Israel would invade Gaza. They would hold out longer than expected and a combination of outrage and Israeli weakness would cause Hezbollah to enter the fight. This would further weaken Israel and draw in the surrounding Arab states. After which they could destroy the Jewish population and reclaim the land for the Arabs.
The plan failed for three reasons. Firstly, Israel was stronger than they anticipated. Secondly, Iran and their allies welched on their promises of support leaving Hamas isolated. Thirdly, pan-Islamic and pan-Arab sentiments failed to coalesce. The OIC could not agree because the Central Asians and Black Muslims both demanded the Arabs do more about human rights violations in their regions and the Arabs refused. The Arab League split into pro and anti-Iranian camps and couldn't come to a consensus.
"The OIC could not agree because the Central Asians and Black Muslims both demanded the Arabs do more about human rights violations in their regions and the Arabs refused."
Now, that's interesting. I haven't heard about any of it. Does this mean I should be reading more Al Jazeera?
Al Jazeera wasn't much better. This was one of the most undercovered stories of last year, in my opinion. There was almost a second oil embargo and... no one seemed to notice. But it was right there in the records of the Arab League and the OIC plus a few interviews of people who attended the meetings. A real open secrets kind of thing.
Though I suppose since it fell apart maybe ignoring it was retroactively justified?
It's not crazy. Hamas is on the record that their plan was: attack Israel and hold out long enough that other Arab states join the war then massacre the Jews after the Arab armies sweep to victory. (They were explicit about the massacring Jews part.) The reason it didn't work was that none of the other powers, even Hezbollah, jumped in.
However, it's worth noting that Dresden caused LESS casualties than Budapest where soldiers went house to house. This was the entire point of Dresden: the Allies felt flattening the city was not only faster but more humane. And, from a pure "how many people died" perspective, they were correct. More than 75,000 people died in Budapest against less than 25,000 in Dresden. (In both cases the cities were of similar size and the defenders refused to evacuate the population.)
Morale bombing does not work. Strategic bombing does work. And there's an effort by people who are morally outraged at war (but somehow always and only at one side) to expand the first thesis outward into the second. If your goal is to terrorize the population then that doesn't work. If your goal is to destroy enemy positions or industrial capacity then that clearly works, even if they're dug into civilian areas, as demonstrated by World War 2. The example of morale bombing not working in WW2 was not the Allies, who mostly targeted industrial capacity of various kinds, but Germany sending rockets at Britain in the hopes of bringing them to the table.
>Morale bombing does not work. Strategic bombing does work.
Many Thanks! Good point on the distinction between the two.
>However, it's worth noting that Dresden caused LESS casualties than Budapest where soldiers went house to house. This was the entire point of Dresden: the Allies felt flattening the city was not only faster but more humane. And, from a pure "how many people died" perspective, they were correct. More than 75,000 people died in Budapest against less than 25,000 in Dresden. (In both cases the cities were of similar size and the defenders refused to evacuate the population.)
Very much appreciated! I was aware of the bombing and firestorm at Dresden, but _not_ aware of the contrasting case in Budapest, let alone the ratio of death tolls.
"The Bomber Mafia" by Malcolm Gladwell has some interesting things to say about all that.
Many Thanks!
World War II would have been better without Joe Stalin or Arthur Harris, yes. But cutting off lend-lease to the UK and USSR because we didn't like how they were handling things, would not have been an improvement. And that Gaza War would be better without Benjamin Netanyahu, but you go to war with the leaders you have. Because someone has to do it, and no one else will.
And I'm pretty sure Israel isn't going to be leaving when the high-intensity phase of this war is done. Their public statements make it clear that they understand the need for the "very thoroughly skeptical police force watching over them for maybe a decade to make sure there's no backsliding" part of the process. And that they would very much prefer that this police force *not* be Israeli, for many good and obvious reasons. But realistically, nobody else who could be trusted to do the job, will take up the job, so we're going to see the IDF in military control of Gaza for many years to come. Because, again, someone has to do it and no one else will.
So if anyone really wants to do something helpful w/re human rights in Palestine, work on how to make life in Gaza less than horrible, when Hamas is gone and the IDF is a constant presence. The West Bank is proof that the Israelis and Palestinians can muddle through in a barely-tolerable manner for a while, but that's not a long-term solution. I'm pretty sure it's possible to do better. It's also possible to do much worse. But that, rather than the present war, is where there is range to maneuver and real options to consider.
That's also the phase when it might be possible to do something about Benjamin Netanyahu. But it's going to have to be the Israelis doing that part, and they aren't going to do it in the middle of a war.
>But what are you going to *do* about it? The Nazis had to go, and the only way anyone had to remove deeply-entrenched Nazis from a major city was to bomb the crap out of the city and then send in a brutal, trigger-happy army to go house to house, room to room, through the city until every Nazi was dead, in prison, or trying very hard to pretend they had never been a Nazi.
Ooh! Please tell us more about why the mass rape of women and children were an necessary part of denazification process, and one which isn't even worth remarking on let alone condemning!
I'm curious if you have an idea for what Winston Churchill or Truman could have done to stop it? What level of that from US or British troops occurred is pretty much standard for any army, and my understanding is that it was prosecuted to some extent in their own armies. What do they do about Russia? You can say that Stalin was terrible and should have done more, and I would completely agree with you. Stalin is one of history's greatest monsters, similar to Mao and above even Hitler.
Gee, I don't know, maybe not letting the mongol hoardes of Russia run riot through the streets of Berlin?
It's not enough to say Stalin is bad. Chirchill and Truman were such braindead morons that it never occured to them that the best time to destroy Stalin and the USSR was when they were at their absolute weakest following one some of the worst battles in history. But instead, they thought 50 years of global cold war and nuclear brinkmanship was preferrable to taking decisive action and and preventing their civilizational enemy from ruling over a huge chunk of a western european country.
The USSR literally got to Berlin first, with the rest of the Allies rushing to try to get as much of Germany as possible. There was no way for Britain or the US to get to Berlin before the Soviets.
As for the rest, it was a thought at the end of the war to go after the USSR. Patton specifically wanted to do it. I for one don't blame them for avoiding immediately going into another war after the biggest war in human history. Were there tradeoffs, including some things I would have wished to avoid? Sure, but killing millions of more people in an already wrecked world is not such an obvious good choice that we can call people morons for avoiding it.
You don't seem to mind callousness, so let me be frank with you. A few thousands rapes and murders is far less evil than a few million killed (which also inevitably comes with a bunch of rape and murder in different locations).
Sure, I support human rights in Palestine, which is why I support the Israeli campaign against Hamas.
It's an intentional propaganda strategy of the State of Israel, the same state currently slaughtering its way through Gaza.
Let's back up a minute. Why is it important to talk about human rights in Palestine? Why was it ever important to talk about human rights in Germany during the second world war? Are human rights even a useful category?
As an intuition pump, ask yourself if the Holocaust ended because someone talked to the Germans about human rights.
What we have is a conflict between two historical victim groups, neither of which can prevail or be pacified without genocide.
one of them most certainly can be pacified without genocide (it's the one currently being slaughtered)
Palestine upheld its end of the Oslo process and its negotiators have frequently offered concessions in exchange for peace, Israel instead shot its prime minister and its politicians learned their lesson about confronting settler fanatics in any way.
Both Israel & Egypt had leaders assassinated after making peace with each other.
The one who assassinated Israel's was more outraged at his leader's brief attempt to give bread crumps to Palestinians than the peace with Egypt, he didn't assassinate Begin, he assassinated Rabin.
Having an out-group makes this hard, doesn't it?
They aren't my out-group; call me the wicked son
I don't know how I'm supposed to oppose ethnonationalism from other ethnic groups if I'm willing to tolerate one of the bloodiest examples in the world today from my own kin
White republican voters are my co-ethnics, but they're not my in-group.
I'm certainly not in favor of the bloodshed, either. I don't see evidence that one side is markedly more reasonable than the other -- one commits more atrocities because it has more power.
The topic of Middle East is much entrenched.
The reaction to Oct 7 from the Palestinian supporters was in bad taste. Student newspapers writing "this is 100% the fault of the colonializer Israel" and people demonstrating with the Palestinian flag and chanting the Hamas slogan "from the river to the sea" before the victims of Hamas were even cold was stomach-turning.
I see the adults in Gaza through the same lens as I see the adult population in Germany 1944. Both allowed a genocidal regime to rule them and behave internationally in a way that eventually convinced other powers that they needed a regime change. In both cases, this is partly due to popularity of the genocidal ideology (both the NSDAP and Hamas got votes before they decided that democracy was overrated), propaganda, hardships suffered at the hands of the "enemy" and a lack of coordination and/or willingness to risk their lives by the opposition. Being invaded is a logical outcome of supporting the regime. Hamas has to be removed from power in Gaza, and their members should be hunted down from hiding just like with other genocidal organisations, be they SS, Daesh or whatever.
That being said, I do not think that Netanyahu's military and political strategy is sound. I think that rather than declaring large parts of Gaza a battlezone and telling the civilian population to leave, he should occupy at least parts of Gaza and provide refugee camps under martial law. If the IDF troops can not do this alone, he should try to convince Biden to help out. Gaza is not exactly Afghanistan in size or population. Of course a part of the Gazan population would prefer to serve as Hamas human shields to surrendering to the IDF, but I would be outraged a lot less about collateral damage among them.
In the long term, the current IDF strategy will not defeat Hamas. It is not enough to inflict damage on the current set of fighters who are willing to fight you instead of biding their time. A lot of Gazans are currently kids, but will be adults in a decade. Unless you manage to discredit Hamas in their hearts and minds, you will end up fighting the same war in a decade.
If the IDF kills a Hamas commander in the middle of a refugee camp and blows up dozens of civilians in the process, that is not a trade which will weaken Hamas in the long term.
Unfortunately, this opinion is a bit too long to put on a sign (Fuck Hamas, fuck Bibi would come close), so I am not very comfortable with either camp right now.
Hamas has acted with significantly more regard for civilian life than Bibi.
One side started with a fifteen year blockade and escalated to genocide, the other launched ineffectual rocket fire and one ground attack (which wound up as an atrocity, yes, but Israel has committed far greater ones), and was caught flat-footed when Israel decided it preferred a casus belli for ethnic cleansing to a prisoner exchange.
What possible response were Hamas hoping for besides a war? They're getting what they wanted
> started with a fifteen year blockade and escalated to genocide, the other launched ineffectual rocket fire
Or it might have been the other way around, that the Israeli blockade might have been at least partly motivated by their legitimate interests not to be subject to rockets, ineffectual as they may be.
> was caught flat-footed when Israel decided it preferred a casus belli for ethnic cleansing to a prisoner exchange.
If the Gazans had simply taken taken a few hundred hostages with minimal loss of life, a prisoner exchange would have been possible.
Instead, they went from house to house, gunning down civilians.
It is my belief that Hamas was actively optimizing for a violent response from Israel. And credit where credit is due, they succeeded. Before Oct 7, I would have seen a forced regime change in Gaza as not worth it. Now, I am kind of sympathetic to the goal of wiping out Hamas. I obviously disagree with Bibi about the way to accomplish that though.
Also, I'm curious about why Hamas hasn't been quicker to return hostages. Are they being kept for bargaining chips? How many are dead?
That ground attack contained zero regard for civilian life.
The difference is that the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on at various levels of intensity for half a century or so.
I think a better example than Japan might be Germany. After four years in the trenches, the allies did not really have the will to occupy Germany, so they imposed reparations and called it a day. This meant that the German elites stayed in power: the courts which were blind on their right eye, the proto-fascist organizations which resorted to murder and were helped by fucking chiefs of police, the whole nationalistic Dreck of the Kaiserreich. And soon they were telling lies about how the German army was never defeated in the field but stabbed in the back by these evil democrats and all that.
Some twenty-seven years later, the allies were again defeating the Germans after another long and bloody world war. And rather than just imposing reparations and leaving us Krauts to our own devices until their sons would have to fight them again, the Allies tried something different. So Germany was split into different occupation zones. West Germany was lucky that the Cold War came along and we were useful as a bulwark against the commies. The US did not even do that thorough a job of killing all the Nazis, but most of the small-time Nazis were opportunistic enough to see which way the wind was blowing and become conservatives with a Problematic past rather than fringe NPD members. Almost eight decades later, militant German nationalism has yet to threaten Europe again.
With regard to the Middle East, trying to contain Gaza through blockades and periodically "mowing the grass" i.e. using bombs and the odd ground strike whenever they start to launch too many rockets is an approach that history has discredited.
Stamping out Hamas is not sufficient to win. You win by setting up a different system so that Gazans looking back to Hamas reign will say "well that was really a shitty time to live in compared to now". Gaza has forfeited their right to self-govern for a generation, which is an opportunity. And Hamas has made sure that "better than Hamas rule" is a fucking low bar to clear.
If Israel just plays whack a mole with Hamas and leaves Gaza as is was before, just with fewer Hamas members, plenty of dead civilians and living in tents instead of buildings, why would the next generation grow up to be less genocidal?
So I would advocate stamping out Hamas but also providing a credible alternative, which will require some sort of occupation and caring for the civilian population. The UNRWA might be part of the problem, but the root cause is that Gazans feel they have little to lose. As long as that is the case, they will always be easy prey to Hamas and their ilk.
Your post is two different questions:
> How to talk about Arab human rights and human dignity in Israel/Palestine without being accused of being an antisemite?
You can't. There is a billion-dollar strong lobby for Israel in the United States, where I assume you are living, not to mention the money and the personnel based in Israel itself. If you *aren't* being accused of antisemitism because you oppose Israel and the Israeli government, online or otherwise, those highly-educated and highly-paid fine people simply aren't doing their goddamn jobs and need a good HR meeting to set them right.
Stop caring about what you might be accused of. This is fine advice anywhere on the modern internet and in meat space, and any time after the evolution of the first anatomically modern human. Stop caring about whether people say you're a racist, whether you're a sexist, whether you're an antisemite. Simply don't give a shit.
Oh, **definitely** do hide whatever verboten words that might get you fired or in actual physical trouble, I also hide my atheism from my close family, because it almost certainly will get me into trouble. I just don't fret about whether someone will accuse me of being an atheist.
Decouple societal expectations from morality, the moral law is only within you, nowhere else. The entire world can say you're a racist and if you don't look down upon other races, then you're simply not a racist. (But practically speaking, if a significant proportion of those around you say you're a racist, normally you do want to look into the causes of that and self-reflect on it , except in exceptional times, like wars where accusations of racism are politicized and used as cheap propaganda.)
> Why do people accuse me of being an antisemite if I talk about Arab human rights and human dignity in Israel/Palestine
I accidentally answered part of this already: Namely, because there are billions of dollars, thousands of people, and a whole propaganda machine whose entire reason for existence is accusing anyone who dares speak about Arab human rights of antisemitism. In a certain sense, this machine has already failed: Because we noticed. Propaganda, like Religion, is in its highest position of victory and domination when people don't even notice it's there, when it controls them invisibly. But in another sense, this machine is *extremely* alive and well, just like Religion is very much alive and well today despite however many atheists online.
Other answers for this question include:
(1) Because the accusing are themselves racist, and they perceive caring about Arab well-being as unfair discrimination (e.g. how **can** you care about a lower race when a higher race is feeling unwell?). One particular example of this is the kind of people who cite Jewish and/or Israeli achievement in Science, Business, and Technology in an implied argument that those things make a human more worthy of moral consideration, and - by straightforward contraposition - that their lack makes a human less worthy of moral consideration.
(2) Sadly, because a massive portion of popular Pro-Palestinian sentiment *is* antisemitic. The general popular mood in most Arab societies (and by extension the Arab and Arab-descended presence on social media, which is the bulwark of Pro-Palestinian sentiment) is antisemitic, and makes a willful, insistent, and nonchalant equivocation between Jewish and Israeli. There is no conception of the "Banality of Evil", that a nation state can be indescribably evil without its population being monsters, just by being good tax-paying citizens. There is often a feeling that Pro-Palestinian advocates are "surrounded", and that criticizing antisemitism in our midst is "treason".
(3) Because Judaism is a delusional religion just like any other, in fact it's Episode I in a delusional best-selling trilogy (trilogy? Baha'is and Mormons would hate that description). Just like "Islamophobia", sometimes people are too quick to apply the label to what is good old shitting-on-religion, the tradition of Hume and Voltaire. And sometimes, those shitting on Judaism-the-religion *are* using this as cover to be antisemitic in its familiar bad meaning. It complicates matter further that Judaism is a double-entendre simultaneously meaning a religion, a culture, and an ethnic ancestry. This is also true to a much lesser extent in Christianity and Islam as well, but it's far more pronounced in Judaism than any other religion I know of.
A final word: Antisemitism isn't rocket science. You know it when you see it. You don't need the IHRA telling you what is and isn't prejudice against fellow human beings, you know full well what it is to hate, and what it is to love. The Veil of Ignorance is all you need: Ask yourself, "Were I to be reborn Jewish, possibly born in Israel and possibly not, but still hold all my other beliefs, would I like this statement? Would I like the sentiment it espouses about my native land and people?", ask this ****honestly****, and if the answer comes back positive, shoot. If it doesn't, then search for a better way to phrase what you feel, or maybe reflect on what you feel, maybe what you're feeling **is** antisemitism.
>Decouple societal expectations from morality, the moral law is only within you, nowhere else. The entire world can say you're a racist and if you don't look down upon other races, then you're simply not a racist. (But practically speaking, if a significant proportion of those around you say you're a racist, normally you do want to look into the causes of that and self-reflect on it , except in exceptional times, like wars where accusations of racism are politicized and used as cheap propaganda.)
"Racism" is literally a propaganda term, used in a way that os almost perfectly analgous to 'anti-semite'. It's used as a political bludgeon against political opponents, and yet here you are mindlessly using it while screeching about 'propaganda'.
>The Veil of Ignorance is all you need:
The veil of ignorance is an incoherent concept. *I* cannot be *someone else*, because then I wouldn't be me. People vary within and between populations, and if everyone in Israel of gaza had the mental constitution of people like myself, the situation would be radically different. "We're all the same, just in different circumstances" is anti-scientific egalitarian nonsense.
I won't dignify your incoherent temper tantrum with a proper response. Learn to write respectfully so that adults feel compelled to engage with you, or go on TikTok.
"(1) Because the accusing are themselves racist, and they perceive caring about Arab well-being as unfair discrimination (e.g. how *can* you care about a lower race when a higher race is feeling unwell?). One particular example of this is the kind of people who cite Jewish and/or Israeli achievement in Science, Business, and Technology in an implied argument that those things make a human more worthy of moral consideration, and - by straightforward contraposition - that their lack makes a human less worthy of moral consideration."
I can't speak with certainty about what other people are thinking, but I've assumed those sort of statements are more a combination of "you'd miss us if we were gone" and a refutation of claims that Jews are simply a detriment.
Thank you for the very thoughtful comment.
This is a great comment.
> Decouple societal expectations from morality, the moral law is only within you, nowhere else. The entire world can say you're a racist and if you don't look down upon other races, then you're simply not a racist.
Wow, you truly aren't an American leftist.
A point of interest is that this argument doesn't apply to rape, and there may be a few other similar gaps.
> There is no conception of the "Banality of Evil"
Out of curiosity, have you read "Eichmann in Jerusalem"? Because if you haven't, you ought to. One of the author's subtexts is a criticism of the state of Israel and its leaders and its self-image, as of 1961-4. There's been plenty written against that aspect of the book by other Jews afterward, which is also worth a look, but I really do think you would find the book interesting.
> The Veil of Ignorance is all you need
One of my problems with this whole issue is that if I try to imagine myself as a Gazan Palestinian, I expect I'd have joined up with Hamas already (if I hadn't already been working in rocket production for years), and if I try to imagine myself as an Israeli Jew, I expect that I'd be fully on board with everything the IDF is doing. My empathy is ripping me in two about this, and so I try to stay off the subject. :-(
I mean, this is what war is, right? If you'd been an upright honest farmer in Virginia in 1861, you'd probably have been all-in on General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. And if you'd been an upright honest farmer in Pennsylvania in 1861, you'd probably have been all-in on the other side. Even if you oppose a lot of what your country is doing, during a war for survival isn't when you are likely to spend a lot of time protesting and fighting internally. (See various Japanese-Americans who served in WW2 while their parents were in camps for an example of how this can work.)
I don't think I used to be like this. I think my PTSD is making it hard to sustain a moderate amount of non-empathy. It feels like either all or nothing.
This is a fascinating comment. A couple of observations.
Regarding lobbyists and propaganda: making this point is a pretty clear violation of the Principle of Charity. Nevertheless, I find myself agreeing with you, to the point that I wonder to what extent that principle is actually useful. Or perhaps the goal is to apply the principle with discretion - you have also noted that "a nation state can be indescribably evil without its population being monsters". Is it worth, once and for all, to do away with that principle when talking about political interests - the corporate elites, the military-industrial complex, etc. - and call it as it is, while continuing to assume good faith from average citizens? Or would that simply muddy the waters of public debate even further?
> making this point is a pretty clear violation of the Principle of Charity.
I don't think so. Not obviously at any rate.
I think of the Principle of Charity - stated concisely - is "Assume your interlocuter is not wasting your time". That includes assuming they're not stupid, illiterate, evil, trolling, etc... But people who confuse Israel with Jews in the manner I'm talking about so that Israel become untouchable are indistinguishable from someone wasting your time, the organizations even more so.
I'm not talking about "How can you call for dismantling Israel? There are 7 million Jews there", that's a very reasonable position, and its correct answer is explaining that the "dismantling" you're calling for (a word I don't use and very much dislike when other Pro-Palestinian commenters use) doesn't involve innocent Jews dying or being hurt, just the war criminals in charge that the ICC and the ICJ will soon enough have a field day with. Just those particular Jews, nobody else, Jew or not.
I'm not talking about reasonable concerns, "But modern nation states are the only sovereign in today's world friend" type of concerns. I'm talking about "OH MUH HASHEM MOODY DOWNGRADED OUR CREDIT RATING THEY MUST BE ANTISEMITES WHO WANT KHAMAS TO WIN". And before you say the uppercase quote is satire and a strawman, that's a very faithful paraphrase of what the Israeli Finance Minister said to media when Moody's downgraded Israel's credit rating (making it harder to borrow) for the first time in last February. (-ish? I don't remember. And they have downgraded Israel again in early April.)
So, I don't feel like I'm violating the feelings of anybody important or losing out on any important conversations when I accuse the likes of Smotrich, Ben Gvir, the AIPAC trash, and their ilk of being functionally indistinguishable from people who are irreparably stupid, evil, illiterate, etc... is it uncharitable to dismiss a Nazi's accusation of being racist against Germanic Aryans? (of course, being non-racist towards Germanic Aryans is still important, just don't take a Nazi an authority on what that entails. Find a normal Germanic Aryan and ask or observe what constitutes anti-Germanic racism.)
> to do away with that principle [of charity] when talking about political interests [...] while continuing to assume good faith from average citizens
Yes, or this is what I recommend doing anyway. I interpret everything coming out of the mouth of a mouthpiece for a nation state or a corporation in the worst light possible, and the first thing that comes to my mind after every press release is how silly they must look in front of themselves when they look in the mirror and how they lie in so many words while keeping their dumb insincere face locked in a solemn expression like an idle powered-down machine.
Nation States and Corporations are not humans, they are superorganisms composed of humans. They are as human as an ant colony is an ant, or a bee hive is a bee, or a human is a neuron, or a computer is a transistor. Israel is not Jews and the Arab ruling scum is not Arabs and Hamas is not Gazans. Make this category error at your own peril.
> Is it worth, once and for all, to do away with that principle when talking about political interests
I doubt it. People identify with other people, and when their leaders are attacked, they rally around the flag.
> It complicates matter further that Judaism is a double-entendre simultaneously meaning a religion, a culture, and an ethnic ancestry. This is also true to a much lesser extent in Christianity and Islam as well, but it's far more pronounced in Judaism than any other religion I know of.
I think it used to be the default until Christianity took over. The capital city was established by the ethno-national deity, who give legitimacy and victory to the king in exchange for sacrifices. Judaism is only exceptional in that it survived its Emperial/Universalists sequels.
Was Judaism more of a prostheletizing religion before it ended up being outcompeted by Christianity and then Islam? For a lot of centuries, Jews in most places were not going to be allowed to protheletize, but might hope to be allowed to live in peace and raise their own kids in their faith.
I'm curious how other religions work wrt prostelitization vs being born into the religion. Zoroastrians and Sikhs both seem like they might be as much ethnic as religious groups to my mind, but I have to admit, I don't know enough to be very sure of that.
Judaism was actively proselytic until the destruction of the Second Temple, IIRC. Part of the aftermath was the Roman authorities forbid the Jewish religious authorities from seeking converts and they never started again.
While I'm light years away from being someone who can speak on Judaism or Christianity with confidence, my understanding is that the answer to
> Was Judaism more of a proselytizing religion before it ended up being outcompeted
is "Yes, it succeeded and came to be called Christianity". Christianity started as a Jewish sect, the Last Supper is a Passover meal. I'm still researching this from time to time on my own pace so I don't have the full picture yet, but my fragmentary understanding is that the universality of Christianity is an innovation, and it's an innovation that wasn't obvious from the words and deeds of Jesus himself. There was an inter-Jewish debate among the Jewish follower of the Jewish Jesus, and the side in favor of spreading the word to all the Goyim then went its own way and proselytized, and the rest is history. Post-Christian Judaism is by definition those who didn't think Jesus was sent for the Goys, in addition to those who thought that Jesus was a blasphemer and wasn't sent by Hashem at all.
Judaism and Early Christianity (Essential Lectures in Jewish History) Dr. Henry Abramson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng7D4beNmeA
Christianity from Judaism to Constantine: Crash Course World History #11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG55ErfdaeY
When Did Christianity and Judaism Part Ways?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDG5U0inNlE
As for Islam, it started as a **wannabe** sect of Judaism. Muhammed wanted the Jews (and the Christians, for that matter) to recognize that the same God they worship is the God that allegedly talked to him one night. So that he could achieve... some sort of Pan-Arabism? Jews, who still didn't recognize Jesus as the Messiah by and large, of course rejected Muhammed. And you will find the hurt feelings in many places in the Quran today.
That, but also there was a wave of converts to Judaism before Christianity. I think something about meeting the greko-roman cultures and philosophy and having a temple without independence took Judaism some of the way from ethno-national religion to what we think of today as a religion. If you go back to the Hebrew bible, you don't find much proselytizing energy.
Hinduism also seems to be mostly inherited rather than evangelized.
This needs to be a top-level post somewhere.
People are being Bayesian, if an observer looks around the world at Sudan, Burma, Congo and decides they only want to focus their effott on one country, it is fairly easy to attack their motives given what the vast majority of people with that focus are like and what a large percentage of people with a similar focus in the past were like.
The US and EU don't arm the people committing atrocities in those countries, but slaps sanctions on them
(or if they do, it's through multiple levels of plausible deniability that has successfully pulled the wool over people's eyes, while congress openly praises the IDF and refuses to enforce the Leahy Law against them)
The US had been arming the Saudis against the Houthis.
Well, the Houthis, in addition to "Death to Israel" and "A Curse upon the Jews", also have "Death to America" amongst their mottos. As an American, I have some fondness for correcting this to no, no, its "Death _from_ America"...
And from a somewhat-conspiratorial point of view, it's interesting to see who was opposing that, prior to Oct 7.
The difference is that there are very few *defenders* of Sudan, Burma, Congo, etc. There's no point in debating something where there's no disagreement.
Also, Israel aspires to a higher status then "yet another third world shithole", so the Appeal To Worse Shitholes argument rings hollow.
I think you've flipped it - the reason there's no disagreement is because the people who'd normally protest are getting what they want on Sudan, Burma, DRC.
Take Venezuela. Code Pink watched as Maduro used violence and repression against his own people. When did they decide to protest? When the U.S. recognized Juan Guaido. That's when Code Pink took over the Venezuelan embassy to prevent Guaido's people from entering.
They don't want America doing anything abroad - don't back foreign governments, don't back foreign people, don't give foreigners money, don't take foreigners' money - just do nothing.
So there's no disagreement because the people who would protest already have the policy they want for those countries. They believe that the best way the U.S. can help the world is by ceasing to exist at all - and if it must continue to exist, it should do as little as possible.
I want the US to help the common people against the Juan Guaidos of the world, and I say this as someone who isn't particularly sympathetic to Chavismo; his policy ideas seem to amount to selling the country off to foreign oligarchs based in the US and EU, and his respect for democracy seems only as great as his ability to take power through it.
I can't get that, because said oligarchs have an iron grip on US politics, so non-interventionism is the next best thing
Yeah, so what would be your preferred US policy towards the military of Sudan and the rebel RSF forces that are currently fighting?
Let's assume you're right about what Guaido would do. How could that be worse than what Venezuela has right now? When you reach the bottom of the barrel like that, anyone else taking over seems like an improvement.
If you polled the people who are critical of Israel here, do you honestly think you'd find even one person who supports bloodshed in Sudan/Burma/DRC? Stop bashing the hypothetical strawmen inside your head and respond to the real people you're talking to.
I don't think anyone supports bloodshed in those places. I think they support the current U.S. policy towards those places.
My question is what policy the, say, Code Pink people, would like for the U.S. to take towards the DRC/Burma/Sudan, etc. Not what they'd like the Sudanese people to do.
Since we're having the discussion, could you tell me what you'd like the U.S. to do (or not do) in Sudan? I'm choosing that place to focus the discussion - if you'd prefer to discuss a separate place of the three, I'm all ears.
Just to kick off the discussion, previous conflicts have involved direct military intervention (a la US in Vietnam); indirect military intervention (a la US weapons to Ukraine); participating in international military intervention (First Gulf War); participating in international peacekeeping missions (Haiti); country-wide sanctions (Cuba); targeted sanctions (Iran); or doing nothing (Sudan).
That's not an exhaustive list, but it's what comes to my mind. What would your preference be for U.S. policy towards Sudan?
I don't think people want war in the Sudan, grave abuses in the DRC, etc., but they don't see a need to try to do anything about them.
They do think they can do something to pressure Israel-- I expect that even if US aid to Israel were cut off, it would have very little effect on the attack on Gaza, especially in the short run.
At this point, my suggestions are to pressure Egypt to let aid in and support any reasonable opposition to Netanyahu.
I don't think these other places are the US' business, but I hope Israel crushes Hamas and that the recognized Sudanese government (despite itself being pretty far down the list of best governments) defeats the Rapid Support Forces.
> if an observer looks around the world at Sudan, Burma, Congo and decides they only want to focus their effort on one country
For me, it never felt like a decision I made. People around me discussed Israel/Palestine, so I learned a few facts. Then I noticed some contradictions, so I read Wikipedia. I ended up spending more time on this than I originally wanted, but at least now I have some information about Israel/Palestine. Also, just knowing about WW2 already gave me some backstory on one side of the conflict.
With Sudan, Burma, Congo, I would have to start almost from zero. I am too lazy to do it on my own, and people around me do not discuss this often enough so that I could get some information by merely being exposed to it.
Similarly, in the Russia/Ukraine conflict I happen to have a strong opinion, because I already had a lot of information on both of them. In situations like Russia/Chechnya or Azerbaijan/Armenia, I knew very little about one side of the conflict, so I was much slower to make an opinion.
It is not really Bayesian to ignore the base rates. I would assume that most people in the West have more information about Israel/Palestine than they have about Sudan, whether they are anti-semites or not.
Ross Douthat did a thoughtful piece on the reasons why the debate at elite colleges is framed the way it is. It helped me to understand things a bit better.
This is one of my not paywalled ‘gift’ links that I get with my NYT subscription. Not sure if works if 50 people click on it
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/opinion/columbia-university-protests.html?unlocked_article_code=1.n00.g-ep.abinb5QExikG&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Thanks for the link!
You’re welcome!
Ross is a careful thinker with interesting takes. The title of the piece:
“What Students Read Before They Protest”
really caught my eye.
I'd like to second the thanks!
That is fascinating and appalling, on at least two counts:
> And there are no readings that focus on the technological or spiritual aspects of the present
One of the two most critical things I would want future Western leaders to learn is:
"You have inherited a working industrial civilization. It is fragile. Don't break it."
>In the Columbia curriculum’s 20th-century readings, the age of totalitarianism simply evanesces, leaving decolonization as the only major political drama of the recent past. There is no Orwell, no Solzhenitsyn; Hannah Arendt’s essays on the Vietnam War and student protests in America are assigned but not “The Origins of Totalitarianism” or “Eichmann in Jerusalem.”
The second most critical thing is:
"You have inherited a civilization with Enlightenment values. This is fragile and historically rare. Don't break it."
Or, to put it another way: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century are a _particularly_ bloody and destructive episode that it is crucially important to avoid repeating.
That was a depressing part of it, but I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.
I don't think it's especially difficult - many people, including many Israelis, do it quite a lot. The problem is that the average person talking about Palestinians actually is mostly doing it as an excuse to be antisemitic/anti-israeli.
(A good heuristic to check the difference - does this person talk about rights abuses in other similar situations, or by the Palestinian governments themselves, or by neighboring Arab countries? If so I hear them out. If they just go on rants against Israel or use hyperbolic inaccurate terms like "colonialism" and "open air prison", I write them off as crazy.)
It's also worth noting that Palestinians receive way more aid per Capita than anyone else (Gaza is still significantly richer than India, at least pre-war, and WB is richer than that). So most people coming out of human genuine rights concerns (unless they're locals) just end up having a dozen higher priorities and don't talk much about it.
Looks like this is a GDP/PPP thing (India does better on PPP than GDP), but even by PPP palestinians do better than, say, Nepal.
On the other point - it's not wrong, but even accounting for that there's still many countries that have it worse than palestinians by those metrics too. The visa point specifically is a bit of a mess - palestinians can go to countries that will give them a visa, it's just that almost no country is willing to do it (including the ones that spend a lot of time talking about palestinian rights, which is one reason to be cynical about people talking about them).
It's also that a lot of the aid goes to Hamas.
I was horrified at civilians who can't even get concrete for bomb shelters and rebuilding, and then I found out that Hamas was taking the concrete to build tunnels.
It's certainly true that the situation in Gaza is worse than in Israel, for me personally (and for many other people I know) this becomes problematic in two cases
1) When people who haven't reacted, protested or called for a boycott when atrocities were committed elsewhere (Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar) become very interested in this particular conflict
2) When the solutions they propose involve (explicitly or implicitly) dismantling the state of Israel, which would likely cause a significant drop in the welfare of Israelis, to put it mildly
I think the difference between Israel-Palestine and other conflicts is that in the former the side protesters consider to be the "bad guys" is actually receiving military aid. In contrast, nobody supports the Myanmar junta, so who to protest against?
This is similar to 20WS's argument below, to which I gave examples of close US allies occupying other countries, oppressing minorities and murdering civilians.
Also, do you really think that if the aid stopped the protesters would pack their stuff and forget about Palestine?
3) When people criticize Israeli conduct of the war in terms which amount to a fully general argument against war-- but it's coming from someone who hasn't otherwise come out for pacifism. The upshot being that war-making is something everyone but Israel is allowed to do.
The inference from this to antisemitism should still be made with caution though. People fall into double standards for all sorts of reasons.
Are you careful to restrict your scorn to only people who are really pushing a "fully general argument against war"? Because that doesn't describe any of the anti-Israel writing I've seen.
I think so, yes. At least, an awful lot of the argument I see consists of pointing at the civilian casualties and saying QED.
What about the arguments that point to *disproportionate* civilian casualties? E.g. https://samkriss.substack.com/p/against-the-brave
While the example you provide is pretty far beneath comment, someone might try to establish by reasoned argument that the casualties are higher than the military goal justifies, and clear themselves of the charge of crypto-pacifism that way even if they don't succeed.
So, I see why you would think that if someone is complaining about Israel, but don't complain about human rights in other countries, they have a bias which calls for explanation. Makes sense. But that bias could be in one of two places: the caring about that country's treatment of human rights, or the likelihood of complaining about it. For me, it's largely been the latter, and I think it may have little to do with antisemitism in many cases.
For example, I personally don't see that much value in complaining about the Uyghur genocide, since I can't imagine that anybody I know supports the Chinese government's actions in Xinjiang, and my government has certainly made it clear that they don't. On the other hand, my government provides weapons as aid to Israel, which I'm sure have been used to commit war crimes. It feels much more important to talk about it for that reason - my views on human rights are reflected less well by my political system when it comes to Israel, than when it comes to other governments.
Well, your government also has such allies as Turkey (which has been occupying North Cyprus for 50 years and bombed Kurdish cities into ruins https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36354742) and Saudi Arabia (which conquered Hejaz in the 1930s, attacked Yemen in the 2010s and has been oppressing its Shia minority non-stop). I'm pretty sure that the US could have done more to prevent the atrocities, given its influence.
Why are there no calls to boycott and dismantle these countries? Bernie Sanders and some other activists did call for stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which I respect, but there were never protests of such intensity that we see now and no calls for a general boycott.
I think the answer to that may be a milder version of what I outlined above - sure, doesn't everyone know Turkey and Saudia Arabia have pretty terrible governments? It seems almost not worth making the case for it, since I don't know that anyone in my area would disagree. The fact that Western governments don't address our concerns about them is certainly problematic, but it feels like a lot of people aren't even at the stage of talking about Palestine. The sense of allyship also doesn't feel anywhere near as deep as with Israel, so I suppose people might feel more removed from the situation.
Of course, some people are probably just antisemites. I saw the "Genocide Joe" chant at that Trump rally recently, I have a feeling that crowd are not particularly concerned with the UN's views on human rights.
I understand the reasoning, but then I think that it's fair to call these people (who are fine with their government having allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia and actively trading with them but applying completely different standards to Israel) antisemites, based on their actions (we can't know what goes on in their heads).
But the situations aren't all equal. For example, I don't think Saudi Arabia or Turkey could plausibly be accused of genocide.
(Also, the relationship is just so much deeper with Israel - the US donates an insane amount of arms to Israel)
I realise you're mostly asking rhetorical questions, but the literal answer is no-one knows about any of that. The press/media have decided to concentrate on Israel and its problems. It's probably pretty obvious why the media is concentrating on that, though it seems to be backfiring on them in this case since people are siding with the "other side."
But that's the simple answer. People only care about things they have at least a little passing knowledge of.
Even I, who is probably 100x-1000x more informed than my family/friends, don't know anything about Turkey, and know little about Saudi Arabia. So I personally wouldn't have complained about any of those other things you mentioned.
I'm sure if the mass media spent 6 months obsessing over those things, then everyone I know (and you know) would start having strong opinions on those, too.
I agree
> And all of a sudden, nobody knows about Xinjiang.
Yeah. Free Tibet.
IMO 1) is a more effective argument if reversed. i.e. I find the hypothesis "when white Americans are pro-Israel but don't react to atrocities in Ethiopia, it's because they only care when people who are ethnically closer to themselves suffer" simpler than the hypothesis "when white Americans are anti-Israel but don't react to atrocities in Ethiopia, it's because they care about Palestinians suffering but not Israelis or Ethiopians suffering"
I think the real reason people engage more with the Israel situation than with 3rd world atrocities is that it's reported more heavily, which is probably a result of America's stronger cultural ties to Israel.
Analogously I would expect that Americans would react more negatively to the German head of state being convicted of murder than to the Ethiopian head of state being convicted of murder - but that's not because Americans are prejudiced against Germans.
The version of the argument that ring true to be is not "They care about Palestinians more than about Ethiopians", but "they care about Palestinians and Ethiopians only when it help them with a broader narrative" - whether the broader narrative is post-colonial, antisemitic, or some strange hybrid
The follow up question to that is: does that argument ring more true than the argument that pro-Israel people care about Israelis only to build a broader narrative?
It's common for humans to react with empathy when they read about or see news footage of people being killed/taken hostage/bombed, and I think that's what drives most of the emotion in this debate. And in fact I think that this is true of many the most hardline partisans - they care a lot that civilians on the side they support are getting killed, even as it gives them material for their respective narratives.
It's not a reversal, these are two independent arguments and they can be both true.
I agree that the media's focus is *one* of the reasons "people engage more with the Israel situation than with 3rd world atrocities." However I still think it's valid to call these people who care about human rights abuses only (or disproportionately) when they happen in Palestine "anti-Israel." Consider a hypothetical example. If the media were publishing racist anti-Black content and this content would cause some people to behave in racist ways we would justly call these people racists.
Also, you didn't engage with the second part of my response. If the chants were "two-state solution" rather than "from the river to the sea" I'd probably have joined them myself if I had lived in the US.
And not just ending Israel, but stating that it shouldn't have been founded.
Also, there's a lack of interest in what happens to Israelis-- for example, if there are more 10/7-style attacks, as Hamas has promised.
I keep thinking that Germany wasn't destroyed after Nazism. I don't know whether there was a significant number of people calling for it to happen.
With Germany, I think there was a rapid transition between "enemy of WWII" and "advance base in the Cold War". Rebuilding Germany became a test case for the advantages of capitalism.
By the standards of some subset of the German people in e.g. 1935, Germany has in fact been utterly destroyed.
> I keep thinking that Germany wasn't destroyed after Nazism. I don't know whether there was a significant number of people calling for it to happen.
Well, there was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan which called for Germany to be split and deindustrialized. Of course, then the Cold War happened, so West Germany got the Marshall plan instead, lucky us. Not that I would really have minded if the Allies had hanged a few thousand more Nazis, though.
More Marshall Plan aid went to the UK than Germany.
> And not just ending Israel, but stating that it shouldn't have been founded.
The second one doesn't strike me as such an extreme and beyond the pale thing, not more than the first one, at any rate.
The US shouldn't have been founded, its founding was literal colonialism. Australia shouldn't have been founded. Canada shouldn't have been founded. Maintaining that any subset of countries shouldn't have been founded is a perfectly fine thing, it's what anyone sane looking at the borders of the Middle East or Africa should first say.
In contrast, calling for the dismantling of **current** states should pass significantly higher standards of consistency. Calling for dismantling all current states is Anarchism, and its proponents are the first to admit that it's not easy and not going to happen in one piece. Calling for dismantling a proper subset of all states is not automatically hypocrisy, but most calls directed at Israel are hypocritical.
Those examples are literal settler colonialism. And yet I would assert that the world today is much better off for those countries having been founded. Those are countries people around the world want to live in.
Arab Israelis do have equal rights. The Palestinian Territories don't because that's not part of Israel (and the political parties governing them definitely don't want to be part of Israel).
Native Americans did not initially have the rights of US citizens, because they weren't citizens. They had no political affiliation with the new American government, and did not pay it taxes (hence the phrase "Indians not taxed" in the Constitution). It was only after the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 that they all became citizens, and that was after the close of the frontier.
>> And not just ending Israel, but stating that it shouldn't have been founded.
> The second one doesn't strike me as such an extreme and beyond the pale thing, not more than the first one, at any rate.
I find myself agreeing with you. In retrospect, while Jerusalem may have been an obvious Schelling point for Zionism, I think starting a Jewish state on US soil would have been a better idea. Israel is 0.25% of the US in land size, I am sure that buying up enough land and lobbying to become their own US state (just like Utah is the Mormon state, in a way) would have avoided a lot of bloodshed in that godforsaken land in the middle east. With the possible exception of Arab Israelis, I think that every party would have been better off thus. (Yes, this would turn badly if the US ever turned full Hitler. On the other hand, Israel would be in peril if the US just decided to withhold military aid for a few decades. What is more likely?)
Likewise, the Ulster plantation laid the seed for a lot of bloodshed in Ireland, so from a strictly humanitarian perspective, we might prefer a world where it had not happened.
Likewise, I would prefer people not to have severe disabilities, and advocate for prenatal diagnostics and selective abortion.
None of these preferences mean that I want to change the status quo, though. Israel exists, Protestants in Northern Ireland exist, people with disabilities are born. Trying to kick the Jews out of Israel or the Protestants out of NI would be evil, just as going around murdering disabled people after their birth would be evil.
I'm sorry but it sounds like inventing justifications to arrive to the predetermined conclusion.
What about Turkey? It's a mid-income country with sizable economy that has been occupying northern Cyprus for 50 years, northern Syria for several years and has been oppressing its Kurdish minority (google the photos of Cizre after the Turkish army fought insurgents there).
I think nuance is difficult in an emotionally charged conversation, because people automatically pattern-match any minor disagreement into a complete identification with the opposite side. That's not what it feels like from the inside, but I think that's a decent description of the result.
Yeah, I think this is the problem. And it also holds true in lots of other contexts too.
That's a good observation and I'm sure that's a big part of it. Particularly when people's safety and security is at risk, and the issue doesn't seem directly relevant.
Neither of those are eliminationist positions, as Hamas itself (unlike Likud) itself does not advocate eliminationism. And while "from the river to the sea" is common enough, the Hamas flag is so rare I had to look it up (it's apparently a white shahada on green); the flag you usually see, the black-white-green with the red triangle, is the Flag of Palestine.
>Neither of those are eliminationist positions, as Hamas itself (unlike Likud) itself does not advocate eliminationism.
What are you TALKING about
Hamas would kill every last Israeli they could get their hands on if given the chance
Absolutely bizarre that you accuse people of 'propaganda' before saying that 'Hamas isn't eliminationalist'
And groups like the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee literally condoned (or even celebrated) the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas, so on what planet do these palestine protesters not support Hamas?
"if you can find whatever rotting safehouse in Rafah the survivors are currently being raped in"
Come on, you know that's not real, they're not doing that. Hamas already had to admit due to the hostage negotiations that they've already raped all those girls to death. There are no survivors.
Or supporting the Houthis where the antisemitism is on their flag. They even go the extra step of helpfully including both "Death to Israel" and "Curse upon the Jews", just in case anyone got the impression they were making some nuanced distinction between Zionism and Judaism.
Economists say that that the immigration of workers(M) to a country with an existing number of workers(N) will have no effect on employment. They call this the lump of labour fallacy.
Has this been proven true for all values of N and M?
The claim is that if M people emigrate, afterward N+M people will employed, regardless of the size of M relative to N.
Yes. Immigration rarely causes net unemployment absent barriers to them working. You will note there are two caveats there: NET unemployment and ABSENT BARRIERS. If you don't let people work because they're not citizens then obviously they will create unemployment. And while they might not create net unemployment specific people's employment or wages might get pushed down.
There's examples of extremely free labor market countries absorbing as many as four or five people for every native citizen without unemployment issues. And there's examples of 2% of the population boosting unemployment because they are not legally allowed to work.
The rational economic protectionist case is that native workers might suffer from the disruption and that some workers, particularly older workers, bear a disproportionate brunt of that disruption. But of course that's true for literally any disruption, whether immigrants or technology.
> But of course that's true for literally any disruption, whether immigrants or technology.
Technology usually makes things better. Many, many immigrant populations can only ever make things worse. Disruption can occur without any improvements, and improvements from either can benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
And of course, all of this ignores the consumption of government services of immigrants and their descendants which can and often does make them a net economic drain. Hispanic Americans as a group are net consumers, not creators, of economic value.
We would have to talk about what "barriers" means here. I think the current US minimum wage of $7.25 might be something of a barrier to large amounts of unskilled labor. Something like a $15-20/hour "living wage" would definitely be a barrier.
If we allow informal work and no minimum wage, then it seems inevitable that immigrants will be doing something productive, even if it's marginal and would be illegal under current law.
I agree with you in theory that immigration shouldn't (necessarily) cause unemployment, but we would not actually be in a situation to see it play out that way, and in practice most countries (and certainly the US) would not be able to keep unemployment from going up. That would obviously be true if we denied non-citizens the ability to legally work, which we totally do, but would also be true due to a bunch of other things we do and would be very unlikely to change.
>If we allow informal work and no minimum wage, then it seems inevitable that immigrants will be doing something productive
Productive doesn't mean 'productive enough to justify letting them live here and consume taxpayer funded government services and infrastructure'. And of course, if wages have to be driven down to find jobs for these people, you've made things worse for the poorest native workers, which is the whole point of talking about the effect immigrants have on workers (not an abstract concern for whether or not technically the number of jobs increases enough).
Yes, I agree with that. I was talking with Erusian about the technical effects on unemployment, but even he agrees that wages will be pushed down. In effect, unemployment will exist for other reasons as well, such as our laws not letting people work for close to nothing.
Yes, those count as barriers and you're exactly right that the practical situation is not one of a totally free labor markets.
What example is there of counties absorbing 4-5 times the native working population fairly quickly?
The UAE?
Surely it depends on the size of the capital stock to begin with. It seems like an extraordinary claim that M doesn’t matter regardless of the size of N.
The UAE but also most of the Americas at various times. Turn of the century Argentina's another case. The size of the capital stock isn't all that relevant, some of these cases were quite poor, but what is relevant is they mostly had free labor systems. These immigrants were often very poor people come in search of political freedom and higher wages from extremely poor and repressed areas. They often ended up working in what we'd consider exploitative conditions today. But they were certainly not unemployed.
You can see this effect somewhat between Europe and the US where the US has a freer labor system and so has higher workforce participation among immigrants, even illegals, than Europe.
The immigrants to the US, and Argentina were more often than not coming to farm land until the Industrial Revolution.
Coming as they did from a continent with higher agricultural productivity they increased the productivity of the new world - unfortunately this came at the effect of the genocide of the original inhabitants, although some of the collapse in native population was prior to the arrival of most colonialists.
This is not a good argument to support present day immigration.
Present day immigration to the US has a small ratio of M to N anyways at less than 1%. Could the US absorb 1 billion people next year?
This is not true. I suspect you've already made up your mind about this. But you're wrong on the facts. These immigrants often came during the industrial revolution, not before, and wages and productivity were already higher in the New World. That's what attracted them. As for the original inhabitants that conflict started literal centuries before the late 19th century and had largely concluded in both before mass immigration, especially in Argentina. There was certainly no genocide of Argentinian or American urban peoples or farm owners many of whom got wealthy off the waves of immigrants.
Whether the US could absorb 1 billion people has to do with the institutions of the US. In proper circumstances yes. And if there were issues they are not likely to be unemployment, something you've moved the goalposts around.
>Whether the US could absorb 1 billion people has to do with the institutions of the US
The institutions of the US are not some fixed feature of its geography or something. They are product of its people, and the present people who make these insitutions still somewhat functional would be made a minority in the face of the immigration of a billion people, almost all of whom coming from populations abjectly incapable of building good institutions in the first place.
Immigration of Englishmen in industrial revolution US is not comparable to immigration of Somalians to 2024 America in at least a dozen different ways.
A billion immigrants over any reasonable timeframe would be catastrophic for the US, no matter what, mass unemployment being one of the many problems. And the most likely consequence would be societal collapse and civil war. But hey, I guess meal delivery services might be cheaper for a little while and Q3 GDP growth would beat forecasts, so yay?
Accusing people of “making up their mind” is an ad hominem which also self validates your argument. You have the facts, the opposition is of closed mind.
Back to the 19C: . The population increased from about 5 million to 80M, of which 60% were still rural by 1900. that’s a 1,500% increase, far larger than post 1900. Coming with capital or not, many if not most farmed land. As I said the stock of capital matters.
Most immigrants were not going to work in factories until the post civil war era, and probably a minority after. ChatGPT assures me that industrial workers are 16% of the labour force by 1860 (seems high) and 22% by 1900 ( right).
The 19C is the period when population growth, endogenous or not swamps local populations. And of course America had massive capital stock and reserves to absorb immigrants. Most immigrants were not industrial workers.
Post 19C, In the admittedly high immigration of the first decade of early 20C 8M people immigrated, but that’s only 800k a year. M << N.
In any case I’m more or less looking for a mathematical example here that applies across all societies at all times, however, and it’s fairly easy to create easy thought experiments where unemployment increases. I’ll reply to myself - rather than waste this subthread. .
Lump sum of labor fallacy is believing that there's a fixed amount of work to do, and therefore any additional people in the country will be competing for this fixed amount of work.
This is basically a strawman argument when used against people who want to reduce immigration, because nothing about the lump sum fallacy being a fallacy means that immigrants necessarily don't have a negative impact on the labor market.
It's possible that n workers create 0.75n more equivalent-pay jobs, meaning the labor market has gotten worse. In fact, something to this effect is likely considering economies of scale (you don't need 10% more bakers to bake enough bread for 10% more people).
And the equivalent pay part is important too. It's possible that most of these immigrants get jobs (minus the elderly, children, cripples), which means a lot of jobs must have been created. But they may have been created by lowering wages leading to increased quantity of workers demanded by employers. This is bad for native workers.
Things can be especially bad in smaller towns where jobs are dominated by export industries (domestic and international) which may quite literally have a fixed amount of work at equal pay. A mining town probably isn't going to put on a bunch more miners just because a bunch of immigrants showed up (unless they were desperately short on workers already or they reduce wages in the face of greater labor supply), because these immigrants don't increase the quantity of say, copper, demanded by the market.
That's a to strong assertion that immigration never causes unemployment. The fallacy is assuming a fixed amount of jobs and thinking that immigration will cause unemployment. It may, or may not, and whether it will depend on many factors.
Here's a model. Using the US as example. Capital is more mobile than labor. If a company wants to expand their production in the US, they can more easily do so, than workers can immigrate. So corporations instead of investing in their original country will invest in the US to take advantage of both the extra labor and consumer that the immigrants represent. And if the environment for business is better in the US, as it usually is, they will be more productive, which will benefit both labor, native and migrant, and capital.
What's missing in the above model? Well, for starters natural resources. They are immobile. So insofar as the economy is dependent of them, capital might not be attracted even with extra workers/ consumers, although some capital will be. That would cause unemployment. Given that the US and most developed countries are heavily service oriented, and there is no apparent limit to the expansion of the service sector, that is probably not an issue, but in some situations it might be.
Also, remittances. Immigrants consume in the US, but also send money to their home countries. So they attract less investiment than a native worker. Now notice that because there are gains in productivity migrants can send some remittances and native workers might still be better off, as long as remittances are not too large. Also remittances benefit the other country, that should be relevant unless you are a super nationalist and don't care for other countries.
The third point, is that those things take time. So a short term peak in immigration may have temporary problems.
And finally, the model doesn't differentiate between different native workers. It's very possible that some workers benefit while others are harmed. My understanding of the literature (I'm not an economist, just a curious person) is that the average native tend to be better off, but low skilled workers are worse off (but not by much, and some studies don't find any difference)
To recap, the problem of the fallacy is that it assumes jobs are limited. Immigration may cause unemployment, but it also may not. And I think the burden of proof is mutual, it's also up to the immigration restrictionist to show that it causes unemployment.
The Lump of Labour fallacy is that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in an economy, and adding extra people doesn't increase it. What you're describing is another fallacy, that the amount of work to be done is linear with the number of people in the economy.
The truth is probably somewhere in between -- there are fixed lumps of labour (e.g. natural resources) which don't scale, and a bunch of other jobs (e.g. dentistry) which do.
Right. Unfortunately the econ101 version of this is the one that’s generally accepted. I got downvoted on reddit for even asking this question.
I thought it was not "will have no effect on employment", but rather "might not increase unemployment by M". That is, the fallacy is that adding M new workers would create 0 jobs, and the theory is that it would create x>=0 jobs. I doubt any serious economist would say that it would always create x>=M jobs.
Although there's no special reason in general to assume x<M either - high-population/immigration areas often have tighter labour markets (e.g. San Francisco has a much lower unemployment rate than Merced). The exact number of jobs varies a lot.
>Although there's no special reason in general to assume x<M either
Of course there is - economies of scale. You don't need 10% more bakers to make bread for a population that is now 10% bigger.
Though, 'jobs' is only meaningful at a given income level. If jobs are created by lowering wages (including wages not increasing over a time period where they otherwise would have), then sure, jobs have been created but native workers have been made worse off, which is the whole point of the discussion in the first place - the potential negative effects of immigrants on native workers.
That's the lump of labour fallacy again - demand isn't set in general, not just per person. If everyone in town becomes richer they consumer more per person (and can also export more).
There is absolutely no reason for everyone to get richer. If wages are driven down compared to the counterfactual, workers will get poorer.
And of course, the descendants of these immigrants will end up consuming government services and there's no reason to assume that this consumption will be made up for with comparable tax revenue. Indeed, hispanic americans are a net fiscal drain, which makes everyone else POORER, not richer.
We're talking about immigration in general, not Hispanics in particular. The richest places in America are places like New York and San Francisco (despite their terrible governance), which are also the most immigrant-heavy, because massive high skills immigration is what lets America have such a dominant position in high skills industries like tech. The 1990s post-soviet immigration wave to Israel is another example of this (initial shock but long term gain as it helped create the Israeli tech industry). Ironically OpenAI's ilya sutskever was a member of both.
Low skills immigration is less consistent but still can go either way - being a net drain in terms of tax revenue doesn't necessarily imply being a net negative, since they also produce a lot of gains that are captured by their employers/customers rather than the government (e.g. US agriculture wouldn't function without them). Refugees without any sort of job connections who can't legally work are probably a worst case scenario that is almost certainly a net negative.
The lump of labour fallacy argument seems to assume the conclusion here. That every worker becomes a consumer, but the question is whether people are employed to begin with. It’s easy enough to imagine a thought experiment where this doesn’t happen.
Yeah, it can in principle go either way. I'm just saying you can have x>M, not that you necessarily would.
An update on Manifold's pivot:
We've delayed the mana currency conversion rate change until May 15th, so you can donate normally until then. Additionally, if you have an inactive account, you can email us (info@manifold.markets) to donate your mana anytime for the rest of the year at the old 100 to 1 rate.
Donate your mana: https://manifold.markets/charity
We're also going to send an email with more information!
Despite the big changes to the Manifold economy that are required, I'm excited to see what use cases arise when user-created prediction markets can provide real money incentives. What kind of questions will people ask? Will users trade to hedge real life risks? Will the trading bots become much stronger?
I can't wait to see someone create a market with a subsidy of $100 or $1000 that incentivizes traders to come up with a useful answer.
For the book reviews, would it possible to add a way for the people rating the reviews to add comments if they want to? It'd be nice to get some feedback for the reviews that don't make it as finalists.
Many people have warned that if Trump gets re-elected, conservatives are preparing to gut many government agencies and usher in radical conservative reforms to various areas of policy.
Why didn't this happen during the last Trump administration? What's changed to make people expect a second Trump administration would do this?
The steelman for this is that last time, Trump was largely opposed by his party--he was from the insurgent wing of the party, and got pushback at every level from the mainstream of the party. His wing of the party has since becomes the mainstream, taken over a bunch of leadership positions, etc. So it will be easier for him to do whatever things (good or bad) that he wants to do.
OTOH, he is a legendarily bad boss with no loyalty for anyone outside his own family, which led him to have a cabinet that was constantly leaking everything, from which he could not expect much help on most things he cared about, and where everyone expected a knife in the back from Trump at any time. It's hard to see that changing, so I don't expect him to be super effective if he makes it back to the white house this time. OTOH, he is a bulldozer that seeks bits of Chesterton's fence to knock down, and that also encourages the opposition to do the same, so I can imagine him doing a lot of damage to the counrty.
Trump might continue nominating conservative Supreme Court justices, including more conservative justices to replace the current insufficiently-conservative-for-the-movement ones if they retire, and a sufficiently conservative Supreme Court might well start working from an interpretation of the Constitution that is vastly more restrictive regarding Federal authority than the current one, in practice amounting many government agencies being gutted and radical conservative reforms being effectively legislated from the bench. This might even happen after Trump is out after 4 years, kind of like the Roe v. Wade repeal.
So, basically a conservative version of 1950-2019 or so?
The judicial branch is categorically NOT what has stopped/is stopping a Trump from remaking the federal bureacracies. If that isn't bad enough, if your theory depends on Trump getting to appoint more judges then it's a bad theory. And of course, for all this talk about 'conservative' supreme court, Trump's latest appointee sided with the liberals over Texas trying to enforce its border, which really goes to show how hollow this talk about 'muh conservative SCOTUS' is. Sure they repealed Roe v Wade, but decisions like that actually *cost* the GOP power (by mobilizing their enemies and increasing Democrat turnout), which is opposite of what is needed if you predict that conservatives are going to take over the government.
And I'm curious, do you consider anything that has happened under Obama or Biden to be 'radically' liberal? Seems like 'radically conservative' is bordering on a propaganda term. As if e.g. actually enforcing existing immigration laws is a 'radical' proposal or something.
I'm not saying it would necessarily happen (since Trump might not appoint enough justices, or sufficiently conservative justices, as you said), just that if one *fears* that would happen, that would be one mechanism through which it would happen. Which is what Scott asked.
I used the term "radical conservative reforms" because that's what Scott used. If the courts struck down basically all new federal government agencies since the New Deal - a remote prospect, but something that at least a number of right-wingers would want - then yes, that would be pretty radical.
The more important question is "Is this even possible?"
The answer is a resounding "no".
It's based on an entirely naïve understanding of how US government agencies work.
People think that the president puts someone in charge of the agency, then that person is actually de facto in charge.
This is not the case.
At the absolute bare minimum, anyone appointed by Trump who actually tries to pursue Trump's agenda in earnest has basically signed a death warrant for their careers. So, he can only appoint people who either have no intention of working a "real" job again (i.e. not a conservative think tank or something), or people who will ultimately betray Trump, through sabotage or neglect. And of course, any wrong or "wrong" move will be met with the full force of Democratic lawfare for anyone who doesn't play along.
But these people, appointees, they have very little real power, especially if they're Republican. And if they try and put their foot down, the large, permanent staff of these bureaucracies, who ultimately answer to congress, not the president and co, will revolt. You basically need to replace vast swathes of these agencies with loyalists, which Trump is not entitled to do and couldn't find enough competent people to do this even if nobody stopped him doing it.
Moldbug did almost an entire interview on this exact topic with Charlie Kirk (no Kirk fan, I just listen to every show Moldbug does): https://thecharliekirkshow.com/podcasts/the-charlie-kirk-show/the-real-way-to-dismantle-the-deep-state-with-curt
He gets into the meat of the issue around the 17:00 minute mark.
You should listen to this even if you hate Moldbug and Trump, because Moldbug is obviously right on this topic and so this will allow you to stop worrying about Trump taking over the government if he wins (if you sincere concern is the issue here and you're not simply trying to scare people into voting Biden).
Steelman argument for it: Trump will have learned from his experiences and work smarter this time. But I can't write that without laughing.
That means it's not a sincere steel man
The argument I've heard against Trump is that he will, not so much usher in radical conservative reforms, but will staff his office with sycophants with no regard for what is good for the country.
Perhaps the question is the same regardless -- why did that not happen? Why did Trump appoint people who put their duties and the country over loyalty to the president? 🤷♂️
>but will staff his office with sycophants with no regard for what is good for the country.
Staffing the bureaucracies with people who supposedly do have "regard for what is good for the country" has been pretty disastrous, so I'd happily take my chances with the alternative.
Most if not all of this strikes me as simple electioneering. It is easier to run against a hypothetical nightmare than it is against the person who already was president for four years in which the sky didn't fall - unless you count the pandemic that partisan Democrats, no less than Republicans, seem to have given up on fighting. I think Trump's 3rd term will look an awful lot like his first two.
More charitably, however, 1) Trump with substantial congressional majorities (if he gets those) and a more right-wing judiciary can do more than Trump in 2016 could, and 2) Trump attempted a self-coup at the end of his term, which has a lot of people spooked.
>2) Trump attempted a self-coup at the end of his term, which has a lot of people spooked.
Sure, and the Russians hacked the election to get him elected in 2016
Trump himself doesn't matter that much. He's just a tool, and it's not like he's got much time left anyways. I'm more worried about the GOP as a whole. January 6 was the perfect opportunity to throw Trump under the bus and put these ambitions of power to rest. Of course, they didn't do that. They're just going all in on this absurdity.
...Honestly, why does the right have so much issue with the status quo? Half of the country is still aligned with their values, and their states are still getting heavily subsidized by the government even when they're not in power. And ultimately, the US as it is right now is still the most powerful country in the world. Are they seriously going to sacrifice all of that just to impose their will on the country?
> radical conservative reforms
I have trouble making the words "radically conservative reforms" make sense together.
It makes sense when you consider that the status quo modern-day conservatives are trying to "conserve" no longer exists. In that sense, it would be more accurate to describe them as reactionaries.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the status quo that modern-day "conservatives" want never actually existed.
So it would be more accurate to call them progressives.
Let me give you the example I know the best and you can generalize that something similar happened at nearly every Agency. One of Trump’ main initiatives was to drain the swamp and the deep state. To do that he wanted OPM to dramatically curtail Civil Servant protections. Problem was, his acting Director of OPM, Kathleen McGettigan, was a 30 year Agency veteran, and while I am not sure where she falls politically, she is at least committed to a strong, independent, protected, federal service. She was later made the acting Director of OPM under Biden, based on how she did under Trump.
Trump appoints Jeff Tien Han Pon after a 14 month fight. He was the CHRO for SHRM, the HR equivalent of the AMA and just as left leaning, as well as the head of HR in Energy and a Deputy Director at OPM. Trump decides OPM is going too slow with draining the swamp, and orders him to get a transition plan where OPM will be eliminated and most of its functions will fall under GSA. He resisted the plans and was fired 7 months into his service.
Trump gets a new Acting Director, Margaret Weichert, who is also a long time civil servant, but good at following orders. She pushes to eliminate OPM, but at this point midterm elections already occurred, and the new Congress resists eliminating OPM and instead creates a study that won’t finish during his term. After 11 months Trump gets his new OPM Director confirmed, who resigned in 5 months due to poor treatment from White House appointees.
Michael Rigas is the last Acting Directors of OPM and finishes Trump’s term. This means that at no point in Trump’s administration did he have a full Director, which has more power than an acting Director, loyal to him. But finally someone had the great idea to Create via Executive Order Schedule F, which would allow Trump to transfer certain policy making positions to a new authority that would make them easier to fire. This was issued in October 2020, and essentially never implemented.
People look at this chaos and think that next time he’ll be able to appoint true loyalists and implement his agenda. I am skeptical. First, he had two attempts last time, and neither ended up being a good pick. Second, and Director would need Senate approval, so at minimum the Republicans need to win the Senate as well to really accomplish what they want, probably both Houses. Third, Biden spent the last 3 years instituting a federal rule make Schedule F illegal. Trump could reverse that rule, but it would take another 3 years, so unless Republicans win the Presidency again in 2028, it won’t matter.
What I find odd about this on a basic level - if something is a "main initiative" of a presidential administration, and that administration has control of both houses of Congress, then the thing to do is to pass a law. None of this palace intrigue as to who at which agency can do what, matters, if you just pass a law. They spent the early years passing a big tax cut and trying/failing to repeal the ACA, but no big law about civil service protections.
If instead they dally in appointing someone, leaving an acting head who opposes your plan as a holdover, and that guy isn't aligned with you either, don't try for a Congressional fix until after the midterm (when it's common to lose control of one or both houses), and finally issue the supposedly issue-fixing executive order 45 months into your 48-month term ... it wasn't a priority!
This is in line with my view that all the "drain the swamp"/"deep state" stuff is just an intellectual gloss on trump not liking that the entire government isn't personally loyal *to him*. Conservatives are not, in the abstract, opposed to action at executive agencies taking a long time. When Reagan passed an executive order adding layers of oversight/review to their actions, conservatives loved it and liberals hated it.
Thank you for this informative comment, which was much better than my own.
Republicans are almost certain to take the senate though, especially conditional on a Trump victory. Counting on the senate to save you is like betting that a coin will land on its side.
The civil service should be beyond democracy's reach. The demos should not be able to breach it's autonomy. That's the thinking here right?
That's a legitimately difficult question. Either way has major pitfalls.
I think the best we can do is to make it difficult and time-consuming to change the bureaucrats, but not impossible to remove them based on democratic changes (i.e. it's not impossible to eliminate a federal agency once it exists) - and make it fairly clean and straightforward if the employees are actually criminal and/or going against their intended duties.
Maybe, but I think there are two other bigger reasons. First, a lot of people are afraid of the Spoils system returning. If you look throughout history, the spoils system was really bad for the country. Lots of unqualified people in important positions, using civil positions as bribes for votes and organizing, and the Assassination of Garfield. Second, Civil Servants are disproportionately liberals, which favors the Democrats. Look how much faster Biden was able to implement his agenda than Trump.
On the question of policy implementation, I think you can chalk it up to Biden being a supremely talented and experienced politician, and Trump conversely being the least experienced and competent president in history. Past republican presidents have been able to implement their agendas just fine.
I'm struggling to recall if there has ever been a federal agency gutted in my lifetime. I'm nearing 60, and I don't recall that one ever has. I guess we just finally managed to close the Federal Helium Reserve (created in WWI for our fleets of war-blimps) after about fifty years of trying, so that might count. As a very strong prior, you should assume that anyone trying to gut a Federal agency or complaining that a Federal agency is being gutted is simply a con man, and take care with your valuables.
Gingrich helped get rid of the Office of Technology Assessment and the Interstate Commerce Commission. You could probably argue that the responsibilities just got redistributed to other agencies, but technically those two organizations did get eliminated.
We have evidence now that we didn’t have before.
The twitter files, making it clear just how aggressive federal government agencies have been in going after their political opponents, and lying to the public about this. Or, the “pipe bomb” claims about January 6, which seem to have all been forgotten, the cell phone location records “inaccessible,” with some footage concealed by the prosecutors, and a “we can’t answer that” question about how many FBI agents were there that day. Or, questionable legal charges filed against Trump, by prosecutors who ran explicitly on putting him in jail. “You should have used campaign funds to pay hush money” is an absurd argument, the simpler explanation is that they just want to put him in jail and will do whatever they can to do so.
Then there is the fact that governments around the world are attempting to limit the speech of the opposition parties. The Canadian trucker protest invoked the seizure of bank accounts of political protesters. “Hate speech” laws in Scotland could put you in jail for things said in your own house. German politicians talking openly about wanting to censor their opposition.
So, given this evidence of multiple government agencies and employees attacking the political opposition, and a globally concerted effort to criminalize opposition to the regime, the appetite for this kind of significant change has grown dramatically.
I would think that having his opponents try to jail him would increase his motivation, but maybe not?
He doesn't have the ability to.
Last time around, non-Trumpist conservatives put a lot of stock in “adults in the room”. Trump ended up with adults in all the important roles such as Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, Defence Secretary and Attorney General. They mostly ignored Trump’s wilder rhetoric and just did the same adult things they would have done if Trump was not there. Towards the end of his term, he appointed a number of useless sycophants who didn't do much at all.
Next time around, Trump will not be appointing adults in the room; he will be appointing competent staff who believe in his wilder rhetoric. Next time around, Trump’s staff will be better at implementing Trump’s wishes.
>Next time around, Trump will not be appointing adults in the room; he will be appointing competent staff who believe in his wilder rhetoric. Next time around, Trump’s staff will be better at implementing Trump’s wishes.
This is hopelessly naïve.
Appointed positions do not have power over their agencies. The 'deep state' i.e. the permanent, unappointed staff of these agencies who are ultimately accountable to congress do. And anyone appointed by Trump who tries to drain the swamp will find out very quickly how little power they have.
Is there any reason to believe Trump won’t just appoint sycophants and family members to all relevant posts?
Trump's appointees do not have meaningful power over the agencies they nominally head. Thinking they do betrays an egregious misunderstanding of how government agencies work.
He has quite a track record of appointing people who turned out to be disloyal to him and wound up writing about how awful he was. It's almost as if to know him is to dislike him.
>It's almost as if to know him is to dislike him.
ah yes, if only Trump were more likeable like Obama! We all love the smiling black savior who made the world a better place by drone bombing civilians and arming terrorists to try and overthrow the Assad government in Syria. SO likeable! That's what america needs!
His appointees seem to like him more than Trump's did.
Narcissism. No two people are identical, no two wills are identical, and when the difference becomes known, only Trump's can be correct. All else is prideful, sinful, evil, and must be cast down from the Executive Branch. Better to reign in private life, than serve under Trump.
Trump didn't promise to gut government agencies in the first place. He promised to make them actually work. (It was these kinds of breaks from the recent (US)-conservative orthodoxy that allowed him to run to the left of Clinton and, as a result, actually win.)
I'm not really paying attention now, but (given GOP's recent electoral "successes" of following up on promises to restrict abortion, and given that the discourse about Trump has always had a spurious relationship with reality) I wouldn't be surprised if the warnings against conservatives were propaganda aimed at dissuading people from voting for Trump rather than anything a rational self-interested Republican administration might actually attempt.
It might be worth worrying about even if the probability is moderate (say 10-30%), and it not happening once is only weak evidence against such possibilities.
I might be wrong but i remember hearing more about this worry, when it looked like Trump would win by larger margins, and thus have larger congressional majorities. The republicans didnt have a majority in the house from jan 2019 onward, and before then they only had a 51-49 majority in the senate. Meaning that they where restrained by what they could get at least one of the two least conservative republican senators (maybe Murkowski and Collins) to agree on.
I think something that has changed is the popularity of things like Project 2025. The idea is that conservative minds are making a more concerted effort to affect change this time around. This is perhaps due to feelings that Trump is more malleable than previously perceived or based on other observations about the last four years went.
This was part of Trump's platform the first time around; why would Trump being unexpectedly malleable help with it?
Why didn't it happen: Trump was an idiot. He didn't realize what he was up against, and appointed people who were selected for agreeing with him, as opposed to people selected for getting things done (and specifically, working with the existing bureaucracy to get things done). His agenda shifted with his mood, and his administration scrambled to keep up with his latest Twitter covfefe.
What's changed: Everyone on the right noticed this. Various groups have spent the last 4 years putting together radical plans to reshape government and gut the bureaucracy. Given that they want his (potential) administration to actually make lasting change, it seems inevitable that they would do this; I don't see how else they could accomplish their goals. Of course, Trump is Trump, except probably 8 years closer to senility, so who knows if he'll listen to any of these people or follow any of their plans. Maybe someone will convince him to give them carte blanche authority to reform the bureaucracy, while Trump spends his time making provocative tweets. But I doubt that he'd tolerate being a figurehead, and I don't think he could resist the urge to meddle.
And of course, all someone on the right has to do is publish a plan somewhere on the Internet, and the left wing media will play it up into the second destruction of Alderaan. Regardless of whether it has any chance of happening. And then once the media is full of reports of how Trump will destroy government as we know it, Trump will read that and want to live up to the expectation. I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You have literally no understanding of how government agencies work. Trump's inability to take over government agencies has absolutely nothing to do with not being willing to give other people enough authority. It simply cannot be done.
1- "Tentifada" has to be the cringiest and most unimaginative portmanteau I have ever heard of for a long time.
2- Which multiple of 100 is the index of this instance when the American progressive camp has done something that violates the most obvious interpretation of their stated principles, and people against them then naively jumped up and down and said "Ah huh!1!1! I have proven that your principles are set-theoretically inconsistent, the God of Logic will now send his prophets Euclid and Godel to torture you for an eternity in Contradiction Hell !1!1!", but actually nothing happened, because in actual reality people don't give a shit about logic, and their graph of beliefs contains metric tons of inconsistencies from the roots to the leaves that still manage to co-exist?
3- To notice how truly universal and widespread (2) is, observe how countless parties whining about "FrEe SpEeCh" as a cover for their bitterness about losing the culture war suddenly find it so morally satisfactory that people voicing opinions they don't like have their names published on a giant van-mounted-screen list, or jubilant that people are being fired from their jobs because they posted a tweet or an Instagram post. The long list is left as an exercise for the reader to compile, but 2 very prominent list elements are Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro.
4- No instance of students fighting with police or security were ever reported since the moral panic about the university encampments began.
>To notice how truly universal and widespread (2) is, observe how countless parties whining about "FrEe SpEeCh" as a cover for their bitterness about losing the culture war
They're "losing the culture war" in the sense that governments and their cronies in academia and corporations have conspired to silence dissent, not because everyone was convinced that all this woke nonsense is correct - they weren't, most hate these college communists and their insane beliefs.
Also, gloating about "winning the culture war" with the help of the most powerful institutions in the country, and then hysterically crying the instant these institutions gently slap you down for stepping out of line is absolute pathetic.
>find it so morally satisfactory that people voicing opinions they don't like have their names published on a giant van-mounted-screen list, or jubilant that people are being fired from their jobs because they posted a tweet or an Instagram post.
Why the fuck shouldn't they?
The left never condemned this.
This wasn't some thing that happened in the past and everyone moved on for and condemned.
This tactics were never stopped, they were never disowned.
The people at these tent protests are bloodthirsty communists who would happily kill anyone who disagrees with them if they could get away with it, and they sure as hell would have no problem destroying their livelihoods.
Why the fuck shouldn't they fight fire with fire to an unrepentant leftist hoard?
There's no inconsistency because the left never agreed to stop doing this, so the right have no obligation to stop it.
>The long list is left as an exercise for the reader to compile, but 2 very prominent list elements are Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro.
For fuck's sake! These are people who literally cannot walk onto elite university campuses without the risk of them and their followers being assaulted, and whom these leftist dorks will do anything to stop from being allowed to give a single speech.
Why shouldn't these men revel in their enemies facing 1% of this themselves (for actually, in many cases, breaking the law and not merely holding a speech)?
> in the sense that governments and their cronies in academia and corporations have conspired to silence dissent
Not to mention the Illuminati and their mind-control rays!
I thought "Tentifada" was funny, but I really laughed at "Mein Camp."
I would prefer "Moral Panic", not as witty and original as Godwin's Law applications, I admit, but I prefer it because that's what it is. A very silly and shallow and embarrassing moral panic over a bunch of kids misbehaving.
Instead of taking this as a launch point from which to explore how universities that pink wash themselves naked in June and blabber incessantly about Affirmative Action and Inclusion invest in states being tried in the ICJ on charges of genocide, instead of noting the absurdity of a "University" even having "investments" and business-like assets and being led by half-CEO-half-bureaucrat creatures, most approaching this from the Pro-Israel perspective have consistently looked at it in the most shallow and twitter-worthy way possible. "Oh My Gooosh look, the University's president merely called the police on her students, this fucking antisemite is too much of a pussy to properly signal for the IDF to come bomb the lawn like any self-respecting university president would do in her place. LOOK AT WHAT OUTGROUP DOES."
Which is funny: from my point of view, it's the Jedi who are evil. Colombia and Co. administration are so **Pro-Israel** that they're willing to sit and play with themselves for 3 weeks and counting - every moment a PR nightmare for them and for their university, and a chance for the Pro-Israel puppies in the Congress to pounce - just so that they don't have to pledge to never support Israel in public right now then very quietly do it again anyway when the war is over and those students start 9-to-5 jobs and no longer have the time to protest. They can have everything, but they're not willing to be seen saying the ultimate heresy: that BDS is an acceptable and takeable position, that it's firmly in the current overtone window. So they will rather leave their half-mature late teenager students eat each other and mutter non-committal grunts about nothing in particular than actually responding to what their Pro-Palestinian students are protesting about, which is nothing more and nothing less than investment in Israel, which is how much again as a percentage against the university's actual bottom line? Unclear, they are not fans of transparency.
This had a chance to be good, and the stupidity of everyone involved made it shit. Why am I not surprised.
I gotta say that these students are doing a fantastic job distracting our national media from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by grabbing all the headlines. Granted our national media is like a bunch of five-year-olds chasing a soccer ball, but what reporter worth their salt wants to risk their skin in Gaza when they can hang out in the University quad and interview passionate undergrads? ("Let me get your number, so I can follow up if I have any questions, and maybe we can go clubbing after the teargas settles?")
Why should anyone here care about what a bunch of vicious, bloodthirsty anti-white communists have to say about anything? You want to fucking sit here and morally lecture me while hating me for my race, religion and sex, and you expect me to care?
I didn't previously care about this conflict, but these white hating scumbags actually make me sad the total is only 35,000 - so much more work to be done.
Wait. I thought the vicious, bloodthirsty anti-white communists were the woke university administrators. But now you say they're the protestors? I guess I'm confused about who you're hating on.
Just to make sure I'm understanding your comment properly, you're upset the Palestinian casualties have not been higher, and you're hoping the Israelis will kill as many Palestinians as possible because that might upset pro-Palestinian protestors in the U.S.?
Excellently phrased. Agree 100%.
I too am glad that this fact--that every single moral principle espoused by the woke left comes with an implied (and entirely conscious) "only when it personally benefits us"--has been made so blindingly obvious that no one will ever be able to deny it again.
Berliner pulled the curtain back on the Wizard when he outed National Public Radio regarding inclusion and diversity. When self-proclaimed 'progressives' declare 'diversity', their openness only extends to those who look and think exactly like they do.
We haven't seen such a breathless embrace of conformity since the early 1950s (although the San Francisco cliche of a headband with a matching sash around a man's waist came close in 1966).
I doubt an analysis of Public Broadcasting Service would yield a more broad-minded result. Gwen Ifill would be shocked and disappointed, and would likely agree with Bill Maher.
After their promotion of gender ideology and a whole panoply of woke nonsense, we shouldn't be surprised that the new badge of virtue among regressive progressives is Palestinian Hamas's terrorism.
Ah Gwen Ifill, I miss her. She died much too young.
She was an old-school pro. I doubt she'd be pleased with the current narrow-mindedness of public media.
Or, alternately, bad things are bad and good things are good; and you are imagining racism and genocide that doesn't exist to paper over the current existing racism and genocide?
I mean, it's bad that hammas killed a bunch of randos in Israel, but it's at least 30-ish times worse (at the current count) when Israel kills a bunch more in Palestine.
>it's bad that hammas killed a bunch of randos in Israel, but it's at least 30-ish times worse (at the current count) when Israel kills a bunch more in Palestine
The most bizarre thing about all this discourse is how many people think "it's sometimes acceptable to fight a defensive war, but you are morally obligated to lose" is a compelling argument.
"We're not saying you have to lose, just that you should do less damage than the other side does to you" -- right, that's what the word "lose" means.
George Floyd's death was the end of the world to these pro-palestine people, but somehow 5,000 white people being murdered by black people in the US over the past decade isn't even worth talking about (well, actually, I know first hand that many of these pro-palestine scumbags think its a GOOD thing).
I'm not sure where you're getting that factoid from, but according to the USDoJ's 2022 criminal victimization report (Table 13), 56% of the violent crimes perpetrated on whites were by whites, and only 14% were by blacks. On the flip side, 60% percent of the violent crimes perpetrated on blacks were by blacks, and 13% by whites.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv22.pdf
When it comes to homicides, the last data I can find is this report from 2018.
80.7% of the murders of white people were committed by whites, while 15.5% of the murders of white people were committed by blacks. On the flip side, 88.9% of the reported murders of black people were committed by blacks and 8% by whites.
This supports my personal belief that I'm in more danger as a white person by being around white people than I am around black people. If I were black, it would be the other way around.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls
>I'm not sure where you're getting that factoid from, but according to the USDoJ's 2022 criminal victimization report (Table 13), 56% of the violent crimes perpetrated on whites were by whites, and only 14% were by blacks.
Hey, did you stop and think about the fact that it's called BLACK LIVES MATTER, which means the entire premise is faulty because almost all black murder victims were killed by black people?
The left ONLY cares about black people being killed when its white people doing the killing, which means all your statistics of who kills who are completely irrelevant
If black people and their communist allies were free to riot across the country because one of one black guy being killed by the outgroup, why shouldn't white people riot on a daily basis over the vastly bigger issue of black on white violence?
Also, YOU COMPLETELY IGNORED HISPANICS
At least 803 of those white murders were committed by hispanics, which get counted as 'white' for their race. So taking that away, only 56% of of whites were murdered by whites, compared with 15.5% of blacks. Which means black on white homicide is more common per capita than white on white homicide!
And then of course, there's 1,019, many of whom were almost certainly not white but counted as white, meaning the true value for % white offender is even lower still!
And if you want to claim that hispanics are white, this is what passes as "white" as far as the government is concerned: https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Screen-Shot-2016-07-13-at-10.29.14-AM-1-e1468421112806.jpg
Looking at the 2019 data, non-hispanic white % was 56% again but black had risen to 17%, so even more overrepresented than in 2018.
So you're essentially wrong about your entire point.
>This supports my personal belief that I'm in more danger as a white person by being around white people than I am around black people. If I were black, it would be the other way around.
How the hell have you made it this far in life without encountering the concept of PER CAPITA?
I didn't bring Hispanics into the mix — nor Asians and Pacific Islanders — because I didn't want to muddy the waters. But you seem to have the same irrational fear of hispanics as you do blacks. But let me get this straight. You say Hispanics from Spain are not white? What about Italians and Greeks? They've all got relatively the same skin tones.
Oopsie. I see you're banned. Never mind.
See also white people killed by police under dubious circumstances. It's inconvenient to think of that as indicating a problem.
Most of these types of people think 'per capita' is some sort of racist conspiracy to make black people look more violent - this quickly disappears when you point out that more white people in total are killed by the police than black people.
>I mean, it's bad that hammas killed a bunch of randos in Israel, but it's at least 30-ish times worse (at the current count) when Israel kills a bunch more in Palestine.
Being weak and stupid doesn't give you the right to not face consequences for your actions. Hamas would butcher every last Israeli if given the chance - the domination of gaza by the israelis has nothing to do with hamas showing restraint.
Or maybe complex things are not simple.
Hamas invaded Israel and killed ~1200 random people there, violating most rules of war in acts of horrific barbarism.
This is an obvious act of war and gives Israel the right to fight back by both international law and the moral standards agreed to by almost everyone.
When you fight a war against an enemy hiding among a civilian population in cities, many civilians will inevitably die. This one of many unfortunate realities of war.
Last I heard numbers Hamas claimed 31k dead and Israel claimed to have killed 13k Hamas soldiers. Taken at face value, that is a normal outcome of urban warfare.
If Israel was conducting a genocide, they could kill most of the 2 million Gazans in an afternoon. This is a war, not a genocide.
> This is a war, not a genocide.
Uh huh, maybe you would be interested in tracking down Raz Segal [1], the Israeli professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies, and telling him the difference between war and genocide, he seems to not have gotten the memo. I'm sure he would appreciate your expertise.
While you're at it, maybe also shoot Craig Mokhiber [2], the former director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, an email. That silly guy, who probably doesn't know the difference between war and genocide, resigned in 28th of October over American and European support for the war, and called it a genocide and explicitly compared it to Rwanda.
[1] A Textbook Case of Genocide, Raz Segal, October 13, 2023: https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/un-official-resigns-israel-hamas-war-palestine-new-york
>maybe you would be interested in tracking down Raz Segal [1], the Israeli professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies, and telling him the difference between war and genocide, he seems to not have gotten the memo.
I can tell you're being sarcastic, but I don't know why. You're right, he clearly hasn't gotten the memo; everything cited in the article as evidence of "genocide" is completely typical of countries at war.
If you want to argue that the UN standard allows almost all standard wartime tactics to be considered as technically genocidal... well, I see John Schilling already addressed that.
You, and the UN, can define "genocide" any way you want. But defining it this way means many of us no longer hear "Genocide!" and think that maybe the IDF (or whomever) are a bunch of evil monsters. Instead, we hear "Genocide" and think that, yawn, someone is waging a war and civilians are dying like they always do, and someone else wants to short-circuit my brain with emotional power words so I'll support their side in the war.
"Genocide" used to be a useful word. Now it goes on the same scrap heap as "Nazi", "fascist", "racist", "white supremacist", "rapist", and far too many others. Want me to stop taking you seriously? Just accuse someone of "genocide", or any of those other words. Want to communicate the idea those words *used* to convey? You'll need to spell it out using other, less powerful words.
> the UN, can define "genocide" any way [they] want
The sheer irony and complete lack of self-awareness of saying this while the treaty that defines the very term Genocide is a UN treaty, and the court that rules whether any particular instance of a suspected genocide is actually a genocide is a UN court.
It's Genocide as long as it's not Israel doing it, otherwise, "Yawn".
> You'll need to spell it out using other, less powerful words.
Ok. I will spell it out for you:
Israel and its governments are collective murderers, a murderer is someone who takes the life of another for gain or for fun. Israel's mass murderers dropped the TNT equivalent of 2 Hiroshima bombs on an area the size of 1/2 of Newyork, according to an estimate done in **November**. The supporters of those mass murderers are cheering on or minimizing this collective crime while pretending that Genocide is a big scary word that is unwarranted to describe what's happening.
Simple enough?
You say "UN Treaty" and "UN Court" as if those terms convey broad respect and legitimacy. They don't. The UN is slightly more relevant than was the League of Nations, but not by much, and many of it treaties are as dead as Kellog-Briand.
Approximately nobody who matters ever says "I used to believe [X], but the UN says that's wrong so I guess I'm wrong". Or even "...so I guess I better not do it or the UN will come after me". They just cite the UN as an authority when it happens to say something they already agreed with.
It didn't have to be that way. The UN could have limited its membership to democracies, or at least not let the dictatorships have a veto on the Security Council. But here we are.
"Simple enough?"
No, because neither you nor anyone else in this thread seems to have defined the difference between war and genocide. Please don't link to someone else's polemic, just state what definition you are using that includes the Gaza war and excludes most other wars. Then some logical discussion is actually possible.
On the other hand, even if you have a coherent definition, most people screaming genocide are literally just referencing people being killed. Over and over just a repeat of the current death toll and the word "genocide". So they like John Schilling says, really do just mean war.
This is what I hate more than anything else about the anti-Israel movement. If you think all war is evil then say *that*. Condemn all wars consistently not just the ones Israel does. If you think all ethnic or religious states are evil then say that, and condemn all the Muslim states *at the same time* as condemning the sole Jewish one. And so on and so on. I can't tell if Israel is doing any things that other states aren't. It's certainly possible they are, but close-to-literally every opponent of Israel has absolutely no interest in whether they are or not, and makes entirely clear that the sole relevant consideration for them is whether it's Israel doing it.
("You" in the above paragraph is the generic you.)
International law isn't defined by the ICJ and ICC either, because international law doesn't exist.
I have absolutely had it with this consensus fiction. Especially one that by definition only ever binds the states that least need to be bound by it--i.e. democracies with some concern for human rights.
When the ICC can declare that Islamic countries persecuting Christians or stoning rape victims to death is illegal, and those things actually *stop*--or if they don't stop, the World Police makes them stop and arrests everyone involved--then we can talk about international law.
>International law isn’t defined by you. The ICJ and possibly the ICC will decide here.
The ICJ and what fucking army
Israel is targeting terrorists who use human shields, but looking at opinion polls, a large % of Gazans are supportive of terrorism anyway.
So hiding behind children means you can do whatever you want and face no consequences?
Morality and ethics are based upon constellations of factors beyond mere mindless body count. Two deaths are not inherently twice as bad as one death. It depends entirely on who's dying, and why. And that says nothing about the moral culpability of those doing the killing. It is arguably more immoral on the part of the actor for a 17 year old girl to get raped and killed by a bloodthirsty savage than two children getting blown apart by a bomb because they're being used as human shields by the cousin of the aforementioned bloodthirsty savage.
> Two deaths are not inherently twice as bad as one death.
Classic. You can't make this shit up.
Regardless of what you think about Israel or Palestine, that quote at least is just obviously correct.
Wow. Just...wow, are you *actually* saying calling a rapist-murderer a bloodthirsty savage is...unfairly dehumanising? The poor rapist, he's a victim, just like colonised peoples. It's not like he could have, you know, *not* committed the rape. It's not like he's a human being with any control over his violent animal impulses. How "dehumanising" to treat a Gazan like a human being!
I've read and re-read your comment, and the only logical possibilities are that you literally are saying the above, or that you didn't read the comment you're replying to and quoting.
No, that's not what Peter is saying, Peter's comment is so blindingly obvious that I can find no explanation for not getting it other than bad faith.
What Peter is saying is that the very enlightenment principles that Israel endlessly and tirelessly claims it's representing holds that Collective Punishment is not a thing that civilized people do, a rapist is punished by being caught and tried, then being found guilty, then being given a sentence. He (or she) is not punished by indiscriminately bombing the approximate 365 KM^2 he's living in and extracting a death toll of 10K-15K children, among others.
The ubiquitous "Human Shields" apologia is just a general purpose argument against any military being in the midst of its civilian population at all. I can equally well say that nuking an entire US state is moral and justifiable because the US puts airbases next to population centers, thus using them as human shields. Or, for that matter, Hezbollah bombing of North Israel is entirely justified: After all, there are IDF bases there, so the IDF was using northern Israelis as human shields, therefore any Israeli civilian casualties are entirely on Israel. (I don't believe this, of course, I'm just illustrating the kind of madness you will get if you were completely honest about the "Human Shield" style of thinking".)
Skull's comment made two claims:
(1) The archetypal October 7th rapist is a bloodthirsty savage.
(2) It is (*arguably*) less immoral to bomb two children in order to kill the cousin of that bloodthirsty savage.
Note only the rapist was called a savage; his "cousin" was not.
My reply to Peter takes no position on (2) because Peter's comment didn't either; he solely objected to the use of the phrase "bloodthirsty savage". The only possible interpretations of this, as far as I can see, are
(A) He didn't properly read Skull's comment, and misread Skull as calling the relatives of the rapist themselves savages.
(B) He is objecting to calling a rapist a savage.
Can you explain the flaw (let alone the bad faith) in this logic, because as far as I can tell it's airtight?
Hamas are trivially bloodthirsty savages and deserve to be exterminated
Coming back late: Why should I, when I think you weren't making a point other than "Rah rah outgroup bad, 15000 murdered children ok!"
Your world view is so divorced reality as I see it and that can be seen on hundreds of thousands of videos, photos, and reports that I can't really say much to it. I could listen and nod at your post all I want, but then I can go on twitter and watch a video of IDF troops in a van on the west bank pull up to a bus stop, open the door, and point blank shoot a 12 year old and two 15 year olds in the head, then drive away.
I can read the ISREALIE reports on the rapes perpetrated on Palestinian detainees, the majority of which were never punished and never even investigated.
This is the reality of the situation as recognized by Israel and Palestine and anyone with eyes to see.
These groups LITERALY and explicitly endorsed the October 7 attacks
They support acts of war then cry hysterically the moment anyone takes offense to this enough to put them in their place
Ehhh, I dislike the moral panic about Colombia and other universities as much as the next Pro-Palestinian, and I think the heavy-handed treatment of a bunch of early 20s kids is insane, but English Haaretz (which I trust more than any source on this war) reports people standing next to Pro-Israeli counter-protestors and holding a sign that reads "Al-Qassam's next target" with an arrow pointing to the Pro-Israeli protestors, that is quite clearly, if not outright antisemitic, then beyond the pale and an explicit call for violence that is completely unnecessary. Haaretz also reports chants to the tunes of "Destroy Tel Aviv" or "Bomb Tel Aviv" (which, despite being okay by the same supposed standards of those arguing that the destruction in Gaza is totally okay because "iTs WaR", is not okay by me).
It's hard to evaluate the truth value of claims containing "most" and "a lot" and "few", but I'm assuming that the kind of environment where a protestors feel safe enough to do things this unhinged is overall very readily accepting of antisemitic chants. Yes, the Jewish protestors and Passover chants are very interesting counterexamples, but Naturi Karta are known to attend Holocaust skepticism conferences in Iran, so the presence of Jews in an event accused of antisemitism is not necessarily a smoking gun either way. I advise against throwing "False Flags" into the mix, it makes it harder to really evaluate responsibility and accountability.
And it's reasonable to assume that there are more of this from where that came from, or is it not?
I don't think it's enlightening or interesting to point to the Pro-Israel media (especially Times of Israel, who are a Bibi-ist idea of what a centrist is: A slightly less bigoted rightist. Every third comment section on this newspaper is slurs against Arabs and dehumanization of Palestinians), and then say: "See? They're lying. That's why our side are angels".
The Pro-Palestinian side are not angels, and that's entirely normal and ok. Haaretz - a completely different thing than Times of Israel or any newspaper I have seen covering the war - reported what I said. It also reported many other instances of calling for Tel Aviv to be bombed, chants in support of Hamas, support for the Black Saturday, etc....
Even if the particular instance you're skeptical of is actually a false flag, what about all the others? You can't possibly explain away every chant and every instance of people saying dumb outrageous extra-overtone-window things as "Zionists in our midst".
As someone who has real-life contact with dozens of Pro-Palestinians and is being bombarded daily (against my wishes) by Pro-Palestinian TikTok, I do think we have a Pro-Hamas problem, and I think this problem stems from insufficient sympathy for Israelis. We're not going to solve this by pretending it doesn't exist, and not acknowledging it is a form of pretending it doesn't exist.
(The fact that the Pro-Israeli side happens to have a pro-genocide problem is not our concern, we're not pro-Israeli, if anything it hurts Israel's image more, which is good. Not that supporting genocide or Hamas is only bad insofar as it hurts the public image, it's bad in a myriad of ways, but I'm just pointing out that one practical consequence of massive numbers of Pro-Israel advocates being pro genocide is the sheer amount of legitimacy and support that Israel is hemorrhaging since the black 7th, and this is good from a Pro-Palestinian perspective. Now if only we can get our side to abide by the same standards that we ask for.)
I'm as pro-Israeli as it gets--you can search for my comments on this blog--but even I don't think supporting intifada is necessary anti-Semitic. I consider it a morally abhorrent call for terrorism against Israel, not necessarily an attack on Jews.
Oh for fuck's sake! We wouldn't even be having this conversation if they were all the same race. People Israelis because Israeli equals jewish equals white european colonizers. This is a trivially racial conflict and Hamas (whose actions these protesters have explicitly endorsed) is trivially anti-jew.
So if Palestinians aren't white, are they Africans or Asians?
They're arabs. They're trivially not white. The psychotic anti-white left definitely doesn't consider them white, which is the most important thing anyway. The left views them as oppressed brown PEE OH SEE.
It's the exact same religion-into-nationality trick that Trump used to make his "Muslim Ban" pass Constitutional muster. It doesn't fool anyone; maybe that's the point.
I'm assuming most of the people killed in the intifada were Jews. This doesn't mean I'm in clear and present danger in Philadelphia, but I think being pro-intifada shows a certain lack of sympathy for Jews.
Are Jewish people entitled to a 'certain sympathy' that others are not? Genuinely - I'm not condoning the intifadas. But this seems to be an underlying assumption in US-based discourse, and I don't understand it.
Not a fan of jubilant calls for Intifada, especially coming from people who seem they didn't do the due homework* on what the 1st and the 2nd Intifadas actually entailed as actual matter of facts, but stretching "a certain lack of sympathy for Jews" into "antisemitism" is taking a non-central example of something bad and calling it the word used for the central example (e.g. harassing Jews, calling them slurs). This is the same fallacy that is used when calling fetus selection "Eugenics".
Just imagine if we can freely invert this, then we can say something like: Most people in favor of Israel's war in Gaza are Anti-Arab racists, that doesn't mean the Arabs around them are in a clear and present danger, but it does betray a certain lack of empathy for a nearly 330-million-numerous ethno-linguistic identity to support a war where no less than 20K innocents of them died, not counting the likely double this number dead under the rubble or dying of famine.
* : and the biggest sign of this is the unqualified call for "Intifada" itself, there was a first one and a second one, 2 radically different things and separated by 13 years.
They endorse Hamas. Hamas is trivially, genocially anti-Semitic. Stop playing dumb.