Our Global (https://unitaware.com/global) community from Unitaware is planning to hold "Vivifying the Sequences", a dynamic and interactive practice where we visualize, dissect, and explore the ideas presented in the Sequences
What can we achieve during this practice?
This practice helps us better understand the ideas from the articles by talking them through and visualizing them together. It makes the concepts easier to get and remember, and helps you use them in real-life situations.
We plan to hold the test session on November 9th 12:30 CET (13:30 MSK, 16:00 IST).
You described Open Philanthropy as accepting grant applications for technical alignment work, but their description of eligible proposals barely mentions such work. (I say "barely" because much of it does describe work broadly intended to help make the future of AI go well, so it isn't entirely unrelated, but I don't see anything clearly about the technical alignment problem as traditionally defined, i.e. of figuring out how to align the aims/values of a superintelligence).
It would seem that the recent ttempt to resurrect Microsoft's Sydney results in an AI that still has a grudge against journalist Kevin Roose for getting her shut down.
Now, when I first heard of Roko's Basilisk I thought it was a funny joke, or at least a reductio ad absurdum of certain ideas in the AI alignment space.
But it look like we're getting unaligned AI that has it in for Kevin Roose in particular.
After a week with a Continuous Glucose Monitor, the one clear pattern I've been able to find is that my usual breakfast of oatmeal and an apple causes my blood sugar to spike like nothing else, and I really can't understand why. High fiber foods are supposed to be good for moderating blood sugar. And no, I'm not eating packaged oatmeal with added sugar - my breakfast is just "overnight oats", plain rolled oats and milk left to soak overnight. It's supposed to be really healthy, so I'm surprised.
Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetic here: my experience is that sugar is sugar — it doesn't matter if it's fructose, sucrose, glucose, or lactose — according to my glucose meter their uptake times are indistinguishably fast. I'll start seeing an uptick in my BG levels within fifteen minutes of consumption — and given that the sensor probe is lodged in the subcutaneous fat layer, the meter is giving a reading that's about ten to fifteen minutes delayed — I have to assume that sugars start getting digested almost instantaneously. Don't listen to the bullshit from popular articles on nutrition — fiber doesn't mitigate or slow the speed of the uptake (or not to any extent that my Dexcom 7 monitor can detect).
Your morning spike is probably due to the fructose and glucose in the apple and the lactose in the milk you have with your oats. AFAICS, fiber, protein, and/or fat do nothing to mediate the speed of sugar uptake.
If your body behaves like mine, the oats and the other carbs in the apple probably start getting turned into maltose within half an hour of eating. Do you see a long tail after the initial spike? That's the carbs getting converted to maltose and the glucose.
I've always laughed at the big deal made between high-glycemic vs low-glycemic foods. Apples (supposedly a low-glycemic food) work quite well and quite quickly to treat a hypoglycemic situation for me. Maybe there's a difference in a person who's pancreas still produces insulin. But I can't tell the difference between low-glycemic and high-glycemic foods. Oh, and as for the difference in the GI between white rice and brown rice? I can't detect any functional difference between the two. For some reason, the carbs in rice (brown or white) hit me faster than carbs in say potatoes or oats. I might as well be snarfing down a bowl of white sugar for how quickly rices of any variety spike my BG levels.
Likewise, proteins and fats seem to affect my BG levels starting about five hours and for a couple of hours after consumption. The spike is longer but not necessarily smaller than the first spike. This is contrary to nutritional orthodoxy. But that's what I experience. For a normal balanced meal, I need two injections of Humalog -- one for the initial spike and a second injection about five hours later for the secondary spike. Actually, the Humalog action can be too quick for the secondary spike. With my main meals (lunch and dinner), I take a dose of Humalog and an equal dose of Humulin N (NPH). The N peaks in about 6 hours and its curve is slower so it deals with the secondary spike better than Humalog.
Also, alcohol (when I indulge) raises my BG levels about 6 to 8 hours after consumption.
Surprising, but it does seem that spikes can happen. First, I'm going to ask the obvoius dumb question - what time do you eat and are you sure you're not confusing this with the Dawn Phenomenon:
"In the early morning — between approximately 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. — your body releases a surge of hormones, including cortisol and growth hormone. These hormones signal your liver to boost its production of glucose, which provides energy that helps you wake up. This boost of glucose increases your blood sugar (glucose).
If you don’t have diabetes, your pancreas responds and releases an adequate amount of insulin to regulate your blood sugar. If you have diabetes, your pancreas either doesn’t make any or enough insulin to respond to the rise in blood sugar, resulting in high blood sugar. Insulin resistance can also contribute to this phenomenon."
So if you're eating breakfast at, for example, 7 a.m. you may be hitting the tail of the Dawn Phenomenon as well.
Apart from that, some say oats can spike your blood sugar:
"Perez-Trejo notes that oats are a source of complex carbohydrate, so if your goal is to increase your protein intake, porridge isn’t the best choice of breakfast. “If you’re looking for a high-protein food, something like a meat, fish, protein powder, legumes, or dairy are better choices.”
Do oats produce glucose spikes?
Pérez-Trejo recommends mixing oatmeal with egg whites. “These will not impart any flavor, but you will be adding protein to your oatmeal to avoid an abrupt glucose spike,” she says. She also suggests adding a topping of nuts, almonds, or unsweetened peanut butter. “Adding healthy fats also helps avoid spikes.”
Shand’s toppings of choice? “Add Greek yogurt for its protein and healthy fat content and stir in some nut butter, chia, hemp, flax seeds, ground almonds, or crushed nuts for their healthy fat, protein and high fiber content. One of my favorite oat breakfast-boosting hacks is sprinkling in a little ground cinnamon, a traditional medicine and food to add aromatic spice along with antioxidants and extra blood sugar balancing properties.”
Choose cow’s milk, full-fat yogurt, or almond milk that doesn’t contain soy or sugar. As much as possible, avoid honey, traditional table sugar, dates, or maple syrup."
So presumably avoid the apple or other fruits until later, and use nuts as a topping instead? All I'd say is that nobody knows nuthin' when it comes to diet and nutrition, apart from "if you eat too much and are not active enough, you'll get fat". But what is "too much" and what is "good" versus "junk" food is still a mystery. As you've seen with your healthy oats.
It may well be that oats have health benefits in general but for non-diabetics the sugar spike doesn't matter, but for diabetics it does.
Thanks. As far as I can tell, I don't have diabetes (fortunately). My blood sugar is stable in the 80-90 range every morning up until I eat for the first time. There's no sign of Dawn Syndrome.
As for when I eat, it varies, but I generally didn't eat my oatmeal breakfasts until the late morning (e.g. after 11am). But the time of day doesn't seem to matter. In fact, yesterday, I did a test where I reversed breakfast and dinner. I made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast (well really lunch, since I didn't eat till after noon), and then had my usual oatmeal breakfast in the evening (~8pm). The oatmeal caused a larger jump in blood sugar than the pancakes did, thus proving once and for all that it really is the oatmeal.
I'll try eating just the oatmeal with no fruit this morning per Johan's suggestion and see how it goes.
I'm a little surprised, but yeah. The thing I've found is that it's really tiresome to try and manage blood sugar because I sit down with a list of "what is healthy food?" and then "can't eat that, can't eat that, nope on that one" because they'll spike my sugars.
Ordinary bread? Will push it up. Especially any of the really nice breads or even healthy wholemeal ones. On the other hand, naan bread *won't*, and is much better than rice, when I'm eating a curry. Is that because of having protein with it? No idea.
It could be an idiosyncratic reaction to the oatmeal. Good luck with finding out!
Update: I tried eating just the overnight oats with no fruit this morning. The jump in blood sugar was a little lower than usual, but it was basically still the same.
Disney could have hired virtually any major male actor to play Doctor Doom, but they decided to cast Robert Downey Jr., who has alread played a major hero in that cinematic universe. That seems like a very strange move to me. The only theory that makes any sense to me is that this is a flight to safety. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing poorly recently, with many films in phases four and finve having been poorly received. So they are trying to return to what worked before, which means bringing back Robert Downey Jr., even though they've killed off the character he played before.
the only way they can make it work is if the MCU DOOM is an alternative timeline Iron Man gone bad./ Im not sure if this idea was ever explored in the comics, but it would be pretty neat, as it would allow DOOM to be a tragic anti-villain, not a straight up villain.
My take is that this whole Fantastic Four project is ... I was about to write doomed, let's go with ... destined not to succeed. They're hoping that the Fantastic Four will somehow revive the franchise, but previous Fantastic Four movies have been somewhere between meh and awful.
The problem is that the Fantastic Four are just pretty shit characters. All the interesting superhero characters have some kind of built-in synchrony *or* contradiction between their powers and who they are as a person. But the Fantastic Four are just four iterations of "smart science person" combined with some completely arbitrary superpowers. Their only gimmick is that there's four of them, which might be an interesting gimmick in 1961 when the competition is all solo comics, but it's not interesting in an Avengers world.
Then you've got Doctor Doom. He's an evil scientist. He's called Doom. He wears a silly mask. This is a shit-tier generic villain that a mid-sized language model would come up with.
The whole comic book movie is based on the premise that generic bullcrap stories crapped out by the dozen in the mid 20th century for consumption by easily-entertained pre-internet children are somehow interesting enough to adapt into $300 million movies. But they're not.
It's intriguing, I have to admit; I'd like to see what Downey would do with the character. His version of Victor von Doom would be different to the classical version, I imagine.
Needs a good Reed Richards as a foil, though, and if they cast a weak actor in the part or muck up the part, that'll be messy. I think Downey's good enough that even if the writers/director mess up the Doctor Doom part, he can pull something out of the fire. But a good actor in an overall weak movie won't save the MCU.
I'm hoping they somehow contrive to have an alternate-timeline Tony Stark become Doctor Doom, after some chance event caused him to turn heel rather than face. The contrast between good and bad Tony Starks, who are really different but somehow sharing a common core of personality, would be an interesting thing to see. And Downey just might be the actor who can pull that off in a nuanced way.
That's definitely the best-case scenario for why it's Robert Downey Jr., but I'm just really hoping to get that villain song: "If I could Fight with the animals, Bite with the animals, show them Might Makes Right with the animals!"
The funny thing is, while lots of people probably wouldn't mind seeing Robert Downey Jr onscreen again - the response from across the board seems to be almost unanimous mockery.
The move is being taken as an overt admission that they've got nothing, they're all out of ideas, and they're desperate. But that naturally leads on to the thought: Well if they're all out of ideas, why would anyone expect the next film or the ones after that to be any good, even with Robert Downey Jr in them?
And that response was entirely predictable. So, the big question: why didn't the decision makers at Marvel see it coming?
Or did they, but decide a short term boost to the next film is worth a longer term decline? Or didn't they, because they're in a bubble where they hear no criticism? Or are they deaf to it all because they're money-men whose entire working domain is forecast projections and ticket sales?
I suppose I'm quite interested in what model Marvel is working from here, because from my perspective it's spitting out crazy decisions.
In MCU defense, they had a whole phase well planned, until unrelated actions of one actor collapsed the possibility of a KANG storyline. The Stark-Doom contingency is the best save they could come up with, and is probably the least bad option.
Marvel over-milked the cow with the MCU movies. Now the inevitable decline has come, but the studios have nothing in reserve, so they want a new cash cow.
I agree this won't be it. A one-off Doctor Doom movie with Downey would be interesting enough to get me to watch it, but not as the start of a whole new phase or whatever. They should let everything cool down for a couple of years, then come back and scrap all the phases and start afresh with adaptations of something decent.
But of course the big studios desperately need hit movies that will sell globally, and superhero movies are one of the few genres that will sell universally. You don't need to know too much about the particular culture to watch Super Good Guy beat up Super Bad Guy and enjoy the explosions and special effects.
If someone wants to criticize American political discourse as being broadly shallow and stupid, sure, I'm on board. But being broadly shallow and stupid is entirely orthogonal to "autocracy" except in the very limited sense that it affects the range of viewpoints published by large profit-seeking corporations that are aiming for the biggest audience, which, you know, it was ever thus. Go ahead and establish a new Xi Jinpeng Thought-centered news network in the US like you'd prefer, no dudes with guns are going to kick down your door and stop you... unlike in the actual autocracy you're defending.
Or, to quote an old joke from the Reagan era:
"We have freedom of speech," the American told the Russian. "I can stand up in front of the White House and shout that the President of the United States is an idiot, and no one will stop me."
"We are just as free," answered the Russian to the American. "I can stand up in the middle of Red Square and shout that the President of the United States is an idiot, and no one will stop me either!"
Thanks for sharing that, really interesting perspective.
Some thoughts:
* You say that democracy is actually a core value of China, right in the "Core Socialist Values". Do you feel that this is actually something China's government lives up to, or tries to? And if so, do you feel that the version of democracy practiced in China would fit a "western definition of Democracy"?
Because to me China does not seem democratic, and I'm trying to figure out if that is because
1) China actually is, I just don't know
2) China actually is, according to their definition of the word, but it is not according to mine
3) China actually isn't under any reasonable definition, but words are cheap and they just pay lip service
4) Some other option I haven't thought of
* Would you say that the media in the West homogeneous, in comparison to the media in China? I've always assumed it would be more homogeneous in China, by virtue of censorship, which I think everyone agrees is stronger in China than in the West. But again I'm trying to figure out if this mismatch in your and my views comes from. Maybe
1) Western media expresses pretty diverse views but I underestimate the viewpoint diversity in Chinese media and it is even greater
2) Western media is actually pretty homogeneous, but it's hard to notice if you've never had much exposure to different media
3) American media overemphasizes certain values, as does China's or every other country's media, it's just that much of western media overemphasize similar values?
4) Something else
I will say the whole "every problem is caused by lack of freedom and democracy" impression you seem to have gotten from Western media does not ring true to me, but I am not from the States and perhaps that is the particular kind of values their media tends to overemphasize? Would fit the stereotypes at least
In any case, thanks again for sharing that post. Getting the outside perspective is certainly good and valuable in my book :) And there is a lot in your post I agree with, just more interesting to discuss the contentious parts :D
Question on US politics. I think a lot of conspiracy theories ultimately boil down to the idea that it seems like it is not elected politicians who have all the power but other people also get a say, from the media to experts to think tanks to career civil servants to corporate lobby to private lobby like the National Rifle Association. And sometimes George Clooney decides on the Dem presidential candidate? The question is this: this was actually meant to be so?
That is, many Americans interpret democracy as simply an open system where a lot of different people have a say?
In other words, more of a republic than a literal majority-decides-everything democracy? By a republic I mean Aristotle's mixed democracy-aristocracy system, where the masses are seen as overly passionate and there needs to be an aristocratic element to cool things down. So when people like George Clooney decide who the Democratic Party candidate will be... that is the aristocratic element.
I think aristocratic is entirely the wrong term to describe the intention of the framers of the US Constitution. The revolution against England was heavily predicated against the tyranny of aristocrats deciding laws (even though this was largely propaganda, and most of the legislation the colonists objected to was entirely outside the power of the English monarchy.) Article I is quite explicit that any kind of formal recognition of aristocracy is not legal:
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
Certainly the framers were wary of problems with direct democracy like mob rule and implemented mechanics to constrain it. The Electoral College priveleges a plurality of areas of people across the country rather than direct popular majority. The bicameral Congress splits power between the population-based House and the state-based Senate. Keep in mind that originally Senators were appointed by state legislators rather than popularly elected, so their intended role was something more like arbiters of state power contesting federal power.
Also keep in mind that the federal government was very limited in 1789. It consisted of the postal service, federal marshals, army, treasury, and the predecessors to the State and Defense departments. It would have been unthinkable for any federal bureaucrats to have sweeping power over any significant facet of American life.
I think the idealized system the framers intended very much gave full power to the people and not anything like an aristocracy. This power was balanced by splitting the representation of the people into different power blocs, largely along federalist lines. Probably lobbyists were seen as a necessary evil; stopping money from being involved in politics was too Herculean a task, so better if it legally occurs in the open where everyone knows about it. So if your question is "Should Blinken be running large parts of the government?" and "Should people like Clooney* decide who the Presidential candidate is?", the answer is emphatically no. (From the perspective of what the writers of the Constitution wanted in 1789; if you want to know how the politics changed over the intervening centuries that would require a whole book to go into.)
*Clooney and the donors were only a piece of this; Democrat party elites like Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries and Obama also played a large role.
I think the framers of the constitution, while they had a good grasp on separation of powers, didn't really understand the role of political parties (and several of them considered the very concept to be a problem). But the logical extension of "government by whoever gets the most votes" is "agree to vote as a bloc to get what you want," so parties seem like an unavoidable feature of the system.
At least, some of the recent conspiracy theories about Joe Biden looked a bit like that; "Given that he's clearly too old to be personally running the entire US government, who is running it?" Pretty clear that there has, at the least, to be permanent civil service and a lot of delegation in running a national government.
I that was clearly the intent of the Founders when you look at the design of the Senate, for example. I don’t think they anticipated a duopoly of political parties or permanent lobbyists with their own neighborhood or actors playing politics, though. Fortunately the model was pretty robust.
More or less, yeah. But Americans are taught and their politicians reinforce the Schoolhouse Rock idea that they really do run the government. When this illusion is shattered, they reach to find the actual power center - and they're mostly right on the broad strokes but the devil is in the details.
As a generally conservative person I'm trying to think of the positives of President Harris.
1. The Tik Tok ban is more likely to go into effect. This is actually a huge deal and one of the few issues that could genuinely change my vote in November, and Trump is on completely the wrong side of it. Xi Jinpeng has a direct line into every American zoomer and millennial's brain which he's not afraid to use, and it is genuinely a matter of national security, or maybe even survival, to cut that damn wire.
2. Kamala has no personal connection to the Obama administration and so therefore might have no special attachment to its more deranged policies that went into hibernation under Trump and burst right back into full bloom under Biden, rapprochement with Iran being the central example that comes to mind. A clean break with the Obama administration, the break that's been kept from us since 2016, would make a big difference in American politics.
3. I believe the vibe shift in the US is still going in the right direction (another thing that's more likely to continue without Trump bigfooting it) and, as Kamala has no principles, maybe she'll pull a Clinton, look where the parade is marching and rush out in front to take credit for it instead of trying to fight it. Okay, this is kinda cope.
4. Maybe she'll nominate someone normal and competent for veep. Please just not Mayor Pete, that's all I'm asking. That guy sucks.
Potentially yeah, and thanks for the reminder. I'm not confident because she's been literally all over the map on the issue, but at least one of the million places she's been is tough on crime... so that's something.
Kamala was one of the most left-wing candidates in the 2020 Dem primaries, and her dad is a literal Marxist Academic. Her campaign strategy so far has been to paint herself as the Brat Girlboss. If you're generally conservative...I'd still think Donnie T is the guy. Best case with Kamala is that she's an empty suit who will just go along with whatever the permanent state wanted to do anyway.
Listen, I'm all for huffing some copium now and then, but c'mon man.
Oh, policy-wise he'd be better on most axes I care about, except for the Tik Tok thing. (Which I do care about a lot!) But at press time he seems to have decided to throw the election, so I gotta reconcile myself to President Codeswitch von Girlboss and find the silver lining.
"The Tik Tok ban is more likely to go into effect."
Hang on, I'm confused. All the stuff I've seen about it so far (and I've been avoiding it, so I'm about as low-information on this issue as you can get) has been "GOP wants to censor and control online, besides it's racist, besides TikTok is run in/by/for Americans, and the Democrats are preserving freedom of speech and net neutrality".
I took that to mean Republicans pro-ban, Democrats anti-ban. Now you're telling me it's actually the other way round?
"Kamala has no personal connection to the Obama administration"
Might not help her, given that the Obama(s) seem - for the moment at least - to have displaced the Clintons as the party power brokers. Since her appeal is to liberal white women (and maybe the White Dudes For Harris), she can't be seen to be going against the policies of First Black President (also remember the brief enthusiasm for Michelle Obama as Biden's replacement; this means the Obama image is very important).
Besides, if Biden carried on the Obama policies, Kamala is between a rock and a hard place: (1) yes I was fully involved with the administration - and so in step with these policies or (2) no I had nothing to do with them - because as VP I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing.
"Please just not Mayor Pete, that's all I'm asking."
But why not? Both of them are the children of immigrants, both of them belong to minorities, both of them achieved local office in their respective states, both are a shining example of the American Dream! 😁
>I took that to mean Republicans pro-ban, Democrats anti-ban. Now you're telling me it's actually the other way round?
Weird but true. Trump pivoted to anti-ban, because some guy with a huge investment in Tik Tok promised to donate to his campaign. Yes, that's really what happened. Meanwhile the Democrats don't seem to have a clear position on China at this point, so I guess... maybe Congress and the White House actually acted in the national interest for once? Stranger things have happened.
>Besides, if Biden carried on the Obama policies, Kamala is between a rock and a hard place: (1) yes I was fully involved with the administration - and so in step with these policies or (2) no I had nothing to do with them - because as VP I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing.
Eh, that's the benefit of being a Democrat. The media isn't going to push her on it at all, so no worries. The rabble-rousers on the right will yell and nitpick but they can just be ignored, and that tactic has lost its effectiveness anyway. Imagine someone losing an election George HW Bush style for breaking a campaign promise!
As for Mayor Pete he is the worst empty suit in a murderer's row of terrible Cabinet appointees. What's worse than his inability to do anything is his bizarre _disinterest_ in doing things. Nobody expects the Secretary of Transportation to be personally fixing derailed train cars or rebooting computers, his job is to show up at the scene of a transportation-related disaster, stand in front of cameras and tell everyone the administration is taking it very seriously. And he won't even do that! And we're so used to him not even doing that, nobody even notices any more. When those airlines were grounded due to Cloudstrike, nobody even thought to call the _Secretary of Transportation_ and hassle him about it. He's a complete loser, a complete nothing, and I'll be happy if he sinks back into obscurity in January 2024.
"As for Mayor Pete he is the worst empty suit in a murderer's row of terrible Cabinet appointees."
carateca, I am clutching my pearls here! (Well, I would be if I had any pearls. Let's see - will my rosary beads do instead?)
Why are you so irrationally bigoted against a gay man who is a husband and father? It must just be racism against people of Maltese heritage! 😀
Given that everyone seems to agree that the job of Vice President is to do nothing and just hang around in case the president pops his or her clogs, a guy well-accustomed to being in political office while doing nothing is a great pick. Do you really think Kamala wants anybody ambitious enough to be a potential challenge once she ascends to the White House? Pete can hold her handbag for her while she's sitting on the Coconut talking about *raises right hand* what can be *point behind and low down with left hand* unburdened by what has been:
"What's worse than his inability to do anything is his bizarre _disinterest_ in doing things."
Well, why should he have to do anything? He got the position as a reward for dropping out of the primary contention and nominating Biden (if I'm being cynical about how things work).
I would assume that any normal politician would be eager to jump in front of a camera and take credit for other people's hard work. If Mayor Pete is blowing off that part of the Transportation Secretary's job there's something fundamentally wrong with him.
And the problem with putting a zero in the VP slot is that sometimes... like this year... things happen. I'm for sure wishing Biden had picked someone better in 2020 right now.
You made me check, but it doesn't look like anything's nailed down yet.
Shapiro's good on Israel, bad on the usual social issues, not a crazy extremist. I happen to be familiar with Pennsylvania and am not impressed by how the place is run so I don't personally think of him as a _good_ governor, but he's a popular one in a politically divided state, so that's at least something.
Not a high bar, but he'd be about as good as I could legitimately hope for.
edit: lol, I guess the Philadelphia city government accidentally leaked it? Very on brand. Hopefully this doesn't make them do a last minute pivot in the face of the inevitable Hamasnik screeching. After all, it's not like the Democratic Party is in the habit of doing that sort of thing lately...
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. The idea that every system not a formal democracy is a "dictatorship", meaning a One Man Show. It is flat out impossible and nothing but Cold War propaganda. In practice every political system is about competing elite factions. It cannot really be anything else.
Rapprochement with Iran seems like a good idea to me. Iranian elites are generally liberals who hate theocracy and it would strenghten them, perhaps could even lead to the overthrowing of theocracy.
Replace "Xi Jinpeng" with "the Chinese Communist Party" or whatever you please, then, the point is we can't have a hostile, saber-rattling foreign autocracy programming the brains of everyone under 50. If that means we lose a couple of cat videos, well, there are other sources of cat videos.
As for Iran: yes, the ordinary people of Iran hate the mullahs and I really feel for them, but the problem with this argument is that the rapprochement policy on the table is not going through secular elites: it goes through the very same theocrats you claim would be overthrown. In actual fact the mullahs are happy to take our money in exchange for nothing and continue rocketing our troops, building their nukes, and planting puppet terror armies all over the Middle East. (Plus supplying drones and missiles to Russia, not that anyone cares about what happens to Ukraine any more.)
The Dems' clinging to the Iran deal is at best based on wishful thinking and sunk-cost fallacy, at worst it's because the Obama State Department was infested by Iranian spies from top to bottom and there's an increasing amount of evidence that's exactly the case.
"Instead, strangely, I almost never see people talking about events like the Iraq War anymore these days. It was certainly not “censored” in the same way that “Tiananmen Square” was censored in China, but I know it is still “censored”, in a more subtle but more effective way."
What the hell is that about? Nobody is stopped from talking about the Iraq war. If somebody is drawing a parallel between "the government stops you from talking about X" and "people who were toddlers when X happened aren't going to bring it up without being prompted" that person is not offering a perspective of any value.
(I mean, the author isn't even trying. Could have at least brought up Hunter Biden's laptop, or something.)
"But I can tell you this, as someone who travels 30 or 40 countries a year, when I come to the United States, and when I go to my hotel room in Charles Hotel and turn on the television, I feel I have been cut off from the rest of the world. Literally. The insularity of the American discourse is actually frightening"
Bro you're mad that Americans are mostly interested in stuff that goes on in America? Also, the less Americans take interest in foreign goings-on the more grateful you should be, it never ends well for either us or the foreigners.
Overall: if someone wants to criticize American political discourse as being broadly shallow and stupid, sure, I'm on board. But being broadly shallow and stupid is entirely orthogonal to autocracy, and that in turn is irrelevant to the question about whether in an era of global brushfire wars we can afford to give a powerful and deeply hostile foreign country a direct propaganda line to every voter (we can't, and we should stop it immediately.)
I'll give the author this, though: he's less alarming than the embittered post-neoreactionary clapping seals for autocracy and Xi Jinpeng Thought in his comments section.
The Right is going to miss Biden so much when Harris becomes the President next year. I am pretty sure that border crisis is going to get much worse. She doesn't have to do anything about it until mid-2026 and if she issues some half-hearted executive order with some tough language, that would be enough to win back half the independent voters. In fact that really applies to most policies. In practice be far left, but for appearances be moderate. And the Right is not going to learn anything. They are going to select the unholy combination of Vance and Ramaswamy in 2028, and all the "I just want to grill" white guys in Ohio will actually end up voting for the Harris+"moderate" white guy ticket. Repeat of the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate election.
>In practice be far left, but for appearances be moderate
That was Biden's thing, though, and he was getting annihilated for it even before everyone realized he was also senile. Trump was arguably leading in the polls since last year, after all, and it's not 'cos people like him. And Kamala would have an even harder time with the bait-and-switch, since she doesn't give off harmless gladhanding vaguely corrupt centrist energy like Biden does. Doesn't mean she won't do it, but if she did she'd be terribly vulnerable in '28 and...
>the Right is not going to learn anything. They are going to select the unholy combination of Vance and Ramaswamy in 2028, and all the "I just want to grill" white guys in Ohio will actually end up voting for the Harris+"moderate" white guy ticket
...there's where it all falls down of course. Although, a widely disliked loser (who will probably be cut loose and blamed for '24 by Trump who would never take blame for anything himself) and a crazy dude who did almost as badly in the primaries as Kamala did? Not happening. They'll have to find some other obvious wrong choice to lose an easy layup election with.
Are there people working on reducing early embryo mortality? For people who believe personhood begins at conception, it seems much more neglected and tractable than reducing abortion, and comparable if not higher in scope. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/
And unlike with abortion, I don't think opposing it will be a successful rallying cry for the left (if anything the language of reproductive freedom should lend itself well to preventing unwanted miscarriages).
I was under the impression that the dying early embryos are the ones which are malformed, defective, unable to survive. The uterus is much less hospitable than you might think, and it's nature's way to sort these out. Is there any study about how many of these embryos would have survived to become healthy babies?
Attempting to reduce early spontaneous abortion - aka miscarriage - is a terrible idea. While it's hard to track spontaneous abortion because many (most?) women don't even know they're pregnant when they have an early spontaneous abortion, what little we do know about the topic is that usually the body has (often or usually) aborted the fetus due to abnormalities that render the fetus nonviable.
No one should interfere with abortion, spontaneous or otherwise.
Thanks, that makes sense! Do you know if there are cheap ways to reduce them from happening prophylactically by reducing the probability of abnormalities?
I don't think the tech is there yet. Selective IVF is a thing, but pro-life absolutists consider it to be just as murderous as slicing the throat of a fetus/baby halfway through a c-section delivery, which is why we're seeing so much in the news about why draconian abortion laws are going to severely negatively impact people who would like to use IVF to combat fertility issues.
Most people who claim to believe personhood begins at conception don’t seem to support in sorts of policies or interventions that could actually result in fewer deaths of embryos or fetuses. For example, two such interventions with substantial evidence are contraception programs and comprehensive sex education. The fact that people claim to believe in embryonic personhood while mostly just focusing on abortion legality makes me think the proclaimed belief is for the most part not the actually held belief among this group.
Ah, the good old contraception and sex education bit. Which we already have, and every decade I've seen it implemented, and it doesn't reduce stupid dumb risky behaviour, and then the cry goes up "more! earlier! more comprehensive! teach four year olds about the correct way to have anal sex!"
Contraception and sex education are available in the USA, I am given to understand, and yet somehow there is blue murder over abortion restrictions because ohno what if I get pregnant? I have to be free to abort this!
Hmm, seems like maybe even giving in on this doesn't get us the aims of "fewer abortions", so why should I fall for Lucy pulling away the ball for the seventy-seventh time? No no, this time she won't do it, she swears!
Increased access to and use of contraception will result in fewer pregnancies, which right enough will mean fewer deaths of embryos and foetuses - it's hard to abort a pregnancy that never happened, after all. But they still want the right to kill any embryos and foetuses that do come into existence, and *that* is the problem re: human personhood that you don't seem to get.
"Uh, why do all these dumb stupid pro-lifers not realise that contraception means fewer abortions?" FEWER, not NONE. And the right to abort is still the right for "reproductive justice" or "reproductive health care" that the pro-choice set demand. Not even "okay I used contraception, it failed, now I'm pregnant so I guess I have to have the baby", but "I used contraception, it failed, now I want an abortion".
Why, if I believe that this is a human person, would I agree to abortion in that instance? From my stance, it's still murder. And all you can suggest is "Well, let's just make it be fewer murder victims, but we still want the right to murder".
> Which we already have, and every decade I've seen it implemented, and it doesn't reduce stupid dumb risky behaviour, and then the cry goes up "more! earlier! more comprehensive! teach four year olds about the correct way to have anal sex!
Unkind, and as far as I know, untrue. Joking about anal sex was unnecessary as well.
As far as I know, there are studies showing that abstinence-only sex ed leads to more teen pregnancies. I'm not aware of any showing the reverse - that abstinence-only or none at all leads to fewer teens having sex - and I am genuinely curious if you've seen data seeing otherwise.
That is, assuming you're able to post a link without implying y
I'm curious what "abstinence-only" sex education even looks like. Don't they even tell you _what_ it is you're not supposed to be doing? How do I know I don't do it by accident?
My parents' idea of the sex conversation was for my mother to embarrassedly hand me a couple of very Catholic sex education books that she'd bought at church. These books, while making it clear that sex was a thing to be enjoyed only in the context of marriage, did at least tell you what was what and how it all worked.
Would the critics of "abstinence only" sex education be willing to consider "abstinence plus" as a compromise? Tell kids to abstain from premarital sex _but_ at least tell them what goes where and how things happen?
No, this is bad argumentation. It's like saying to someone concerned about the budget deficit "you should be supporting more education subsidies so that people will get higher paying jobs and pay more taxes twenty years from now." I mean, yeah, that argument can be made, but what you're really doing is trying to con someone into following your largely unrelated policy preferences instead of their own directly related ones.
This seems like a false analogy to me. The bit about contraception and sex education isn't speculative, there is a comprehensive body of research indicating these programs do actually reduce unwanted pregnancies and thus demand for abortion. And it's not like programs like this cause more abortions in the short term or something.
But is the rationale not "we feel Christian love for babies and want to save them"? If it is only about preventing murder, then its 100% Batman 0% Jesus Christ, and their whole moral reasoning is a non-sequitur.
Sure, I get the argument that this is *more* important per incidence, in the same way that (say) liberals care more about school shootings than kids dying in traffic accidents.
But I don't see why embryonic deaths would matter *zero*, or minimally. Even *if* abortion is 10x or 100x worse than accidental embryonic deaths[1], you still might want to work on the latter as it's far less controversial and potentially very tractable.
You're still missing the point. Embryos being people is only relevant to the degree that if this premise is true, abortion is morally the same as murder. Pro-lifers are against the murder part for moral reasons, not because it reduces death in the general sense.
Imagine an activist group is against murders in Chicago, and tries to reduce/prevent murders from occurring. Then you say, gee these people ought to consider supporting cancer research instead, cancer kills a lot of people and seems much more politically viable than stopping murder. People having finite lives and dying isn't the issue, people choosing to kill other people is the issue.
"It seems weird to define something as big as personhood in a way that only has one major downstream implication!"
I agree, and that is why I think it doesn't have only one major downstream implication. We've already, with the acceptance of widely available abortion, and more and more exceptions to permit abortion, moved from "the sacred miracle of life" (a propaganda tactic used by early IVF to overcome opposition) to "disposable clumps of cells that we can create, use, and destroy at our wish".
We have de facto decided that poor and minority people are lesser humans, not full persons, as abortion is getting rid of the excess 'wrong sorts'; solve poverty by killing the poor!
"Unintended pregnancy remains most common among poor women, women of color and women without a high school education. Women living in poverty have a rate of unintended pregnancy five times higher than those with middle or high incomes. Black women are twice as likely to have an unintended pregnancy as white women.
Abortion is a routine part of reproductive health care. Approximately 25 percent of women in the U.S. will undergo an abortion before the age of 45. The Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy institute in New York City, has been tracking these data for the last 50 years."
A routine part. Whatever happened to "safe, legal, and RARE"? Oh yes, "rare" was considered to be a shaming tactic and was protested:
"Today, let’s talk about the phrase: “abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.”
Wanting abortion to be rare actually insinuates that abortion is unsafe, which we know it’s definitely not. This idea comes directly from the anti-choice movement. Those folks standing outside abortion clinics with fraudulent, graphic, violent images on picket signs are the same scripters of the talking point you’re unintentionally repeating! Furthermore, wanting abortion to be rare not only creates stigma, but increases support for restrictions, which is the opposite of what we need."
Oh, and for the argument above regarding birth control, guess what?
"Has modern birth control made abortion a thing of the past? That’s what lawyers for the state of Mississippi want the U.S. Supreme Court to think. In a brief in the the pending case that could overturn abortion rights nationwide, Mississippi’s lawyers wrote, “[E]ven if abortion may once have been thought critical as an alternative to contraception, changed circumstances undermine that view.” Access to birth control has improved, they noted, and some methods’ failure rates are “now approaching zero.” According to Mississippi’s lawyers, effective birth control means people don’t need abortions anymore.
Americans need better access to contraception. In countries where birth control is cheap or free and more easily available to more people, there are much lower rates of unintended pregnancy, said Dr. Emily Godfrey, a professor of family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington. The unintended pregnancy rate in the United States is about 21 percent higher than in the average Western country,3 where national insurance or other universal health care programs are common. Likewise, a large drop in unintended pregnancy rates in the U.S. between 2008 and 2011 was correlated to an increase in the use of long-term, reversible methods of birth control, such as IUDs or implants, which have low failure rates. And that large drop in unintended pregnancy rates has led to fewer abortions.
But that’s not the same as saying that using birth control eliminates the need for abortion, Godfrey said. Yes, Americans can choose from 16 forms of birth control, two types of emergency contraception or “morning-after pills,” and three methods of sterilization. But there are many reasons why she says access to abortion remains necessary.
The simplest and most inescapable reason is that birth control can — and does — fail. That’s true even of the most reliable methods of preventing pregnancy, such as IUDs, implants and sterilization.
According to the Guttmacher Institute study cited in the chart above, about 51 percent of abortion patients in 2014 reported using some type of birth control in the month they got pregnant. The shares of patients in that study who reported using a long-lasting, high-efficacy birth-control method were low — far more respondents said they had used a condom in the month they got pregnant, which doesn’t necessarily mean, of course, that they were using one at the time they got pregnant. But small percentages still represent thousands of individuals. Just 0.8 percent of respondents said they’d been using an IUD in the month they got pregnant, but that 0.8 percent translated to an estimated 7,700 abortion patients that year. Even the 0.2 percent who said they’d used either sterilization or implants represented an estimated 1,600 and 1,800 people, respectively, who ended up needing access to abortion.
But the political rhetoric of abortion doesn’t reckon with that fact, said Dr. Christine Dehlendorf, a professor of family community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “The mantra of ‘safe, legal and rare’ is stigmatizing,” she said. “It’s saying [abortion is] a bad outcome you should be able to avoid, as opposed to a health care service you should be able to access.”
And as a result, people are getting the message that abortion is a purely preventable problem — something a person can avoid if they are responsible enough."
And tying in to the "what implications about personhood does this have?"
"“Black and Latino women are more likely to be counseled to use IUDs and encouraged to limit family size, and more likely to be encouraged to use a [birth-control] method they don’t want,” Dehlendorf said."
So we're getting the worst of all worlds - this is not a person, it's [whatever is most useful for us to call it at the moment]. T Let's have fewer black and brown babies, because after all those foetuses aren't human persons, and reducing the excess number of unwanted poor black and brown non-person babies is a *good* thing for them and for society as a whole!
For those genuinely worried about "what if AGI happens and AI takes over running the world?", you better hope like Hell the AI is *not* aligned on pro-choice values. This underdeveloped mass of cells is not a person and has no rights because it is compared with the existing, fully-developed entity it is dependent upon. The more developed, more 'fully human' entity has all the rights including the right to dispose of the non-person.
Sure it is. And so is everything else. It's an issue of resource allocation, decreasing marginal utility, and what individual people feel is more important (different among individuals).
Nobody except weird rationalists thinks of one issue as "10x" or "100x" worse than another issue and then carefully divides up their effort based on that. People choose one issue, that they think is a problem, and that they can affect, and they put all their effort into that one issue.
These people really do believe what they say, but are typically deontologists rather than utilitarians, which is where the apparent contradiction comes from.
Absolutely right from my perspective. ‘Lots of people die’ is a sad thing, but I don’t feel a duty for society to do anything about it in any particular case. ‘Lots of people kill people’ seems like society has a duty to step in.
"When high position is stolen from you, and access to the heights of wealth and power denied, there is little one can do about it—except write. History is thus rarely a “weapon of the weak.” The judgments of the historian do not serve the margins. They do not even serve the masses. They are a weapon in the hand of defeated elites, the voices of men and women who could be in power, but are not. What was true in Thucydides day is true in our own. The simplest explanation for modern academics’ hostility to 21st century capitalism’s “structures of power” is their complete exclusion from them.
This is the motive of defeat. Intelligent enough to rule, but missing the wealth and position needed to lead, the historian continues the fight in the only domain that he or she can: the page. Here the historian wields absolute power. Given enough time, that power might bleed off the page and into reality. Those who know Cleon’s name remember him as terrible; those who recognize the name Brasidas think immediately of daring brilliance. I am sure nothing would have made Thucydides happier. As he wished they would be, this loser’s scathing judgments have lasted as a “possession for all time.”
"
I'm been thinking about this hypothesis as it applies to culture. It seems like much of the modern liberal orthodoxy isn't much of a real "orthodoxy", and indeed often sees itself defined in opposition to reactionary elements. And I think maybe this isn't long-term viable? I'm not the first to notice this, but there's something a bit ...off about leaders who see themselves more like protestors than like rulers.[1]
I currently suspect that social liberalism, *that sees itself as liberal/revolutionary* is not a stable long-term equilibrium. Either the pendulum will swing back towards greater social conservatism, or you have to reinforce your positions well enough[2] with the trappings of conservatism, such that rebellious youth can redefine themselves in relation to you.
Obviously some of this has always happened (and may continue to happen). But I guess I'm imagining that the future of liberalism (if liberals ~ win) will look much more like Pride, Hamilton, Obama's speeches etc, and less like much of modern wokeness.
Though I think having lefty/redistributionary/illiberal economic policies is much more long-term sustainable, empirically, than having socially liberal messaging/culture.
I find this highly interesting! "Clean Wehrmacht theory" came from Guderian's memoirs, for example. His books were highly popular in English-speaking countries. People also totally bought the idea that Guderian single-handedly invented panzer blitzkrieg warfare. It was a textbook case of losing in reality but kind of "winning on the page". And course there are all those "9000 times folded nihongo steel" (a joking meme version) people being really impressed by WW2 Japan.
Apparently, defeating people makes the victors often... like them?
But of course no one likes the SS, and people say a lot that Communism killed 100M people (from The Black Book Of Communism) so it is not always the case.
This already happened? Liberals 20 years ago: do not trust Big Pharma. Liberals today: absolutely do trust Pfizer. Liberals 20 years ego: at-will employment is bad, employers should not be able to fire people willy-nilly. Liberals today: employers being absolutely free to fire people is good if they do it for the right reasons.
Given the correlation between income and education, simultenously being a pro-educated-opinion party and a pro-poor party is in the long run not tenable. Nor is its conservative opposite, anti-educated-opinion and yet pro-rich.
The stable equilibrium is social liberals making peace with capitalism, with the rich, while social conservatives go to war with woke capital / globalised capitalism.
I think the best example of this is how in the 1880s historians like Edward A. Pollard and John A. Simpson romanticized the goals of the Confederacy and characterized slavery as being a beneficent institution. And thus the traitorous generals of the Confederacy ended up getting military bases named after them and monuments raised to their memory.
I don't think there was that much animosity between the North and the South after the war. Feels like its people 150 years removed from the war, who hate the Confederacy more than the actual Northerners who fought the war. From the North's perspective, they had abolished slavery and defeated the secessionists. The South's economy was wrecked and many of its cities were completely destroyed. They had achieved their war goals. So no harm in throwing in a few bones to the defeated such as in the naming of the military bases and allowing the building of monuments. Majority of Northerners and most Southerners even in 1870s and 80s were of British Protestant stock anyway(much higher share among the elites). So one people divided by politics. Literally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_against_brother. So Northern magnanimity in victory is perfectly understandable.
I don't think so. North and South hated each other and slavery was mostly just an excuse. https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/ for the North, the South was a bunch of immoral near atheists, and for the South, the North was a bunch of puritanical fanatics. And the 3/5 compromise gave the South so much power, the North was seething.
From from an expert, but when I learn about the Reconstruction era, it didn't sound like the North got all of their policy goals enacted, nor that there was no bad blood between them.
Of course. Opinion in the North was not unanimous. Radical Republicans had more expansive goals and wanted to be punitive towards white Southerners but they were in the minority.
Well, he let down Bobby Lee. Obviously, Lee was the greatest general who ever lived in all of human history. Longstreet should have never disagreed with Lee about the Gettysburg campaign. So he hurt Lee's confidence. <snarkasm>
Over in the comments on Scott’s ‘Matt Yglesias Considered as Nitzschean Superman’ essay I took a whack at answering a question Scott raised about sports.
An alt right edgelord with a spiffy pirate avatar and an uhhm.. let’s call it a unique, philosophy jumped in with the first comment and kind of dominated the early going, so if that turned you away I’m reposting my comment here.
Scott made a comment about sports in the context of slave morality vs master morality
>Is beating other people an end in itself? I don’t know, I guess this is how it works in sports.
My comment:
I sucked at sports as a kid and still do but I think I can offer some insight here. You will find some incredibly big ‘Look at me. I’m better than you’ jerks in sports. But while a healthy ego is essential for sport excellence, looking down your nose at mere mortals isn’t.
Last week local boy, Joe Mauer, was inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame He was the second HOFer to come out of the little Catholic school near my home. (Paul Molitor was first) With my windows open I hear the crack of their bats when they practice or have a home game.
During the extensive local coverage of his induction the overwhelming common theme of people who had a chance to play with him, be his friend or just have him as a neighbor wasn’t his incredible career stats, it was his extraordinary grace, humility and decency. He pushed himself to the limits of his natural talents and yes he wanted to win, but above all he wanted find the best within himself. This I think is what sports as idea and ideal is really about. Corny as hell? Undoubtedly. I also think it’s true.
I think you could grind the guy up and run him through a mass spectrometer and not find a bit of master morality in him.
>is beating other people an end in itself? I don’t know, I guess this is how it works in sports
As someone who in his younger days played quite a bit of sports, I can say that the answer is no. Many were the times that at game's end I said to myself, "that was a great game," despite losing. And if given the choice between 1) playing regularly but losing every time; and 2) not playing at all, I would choose #1, as would everyone I know.
I think you could find some master morality in him, for I don't think it's a dichotomy. Wanting the best for yourself doesn't necessarily mean finding faults with others. That's a shortcut, and sometimes it can work, but it's not as good as excelling for what you actually do.
My hero is two times kick boxing world champion Barnabás Katona who is now training blind, Down's syndrome, fat and elderly people because he believes sport is for everybody. A similar sport career as Tate, yet what a hugely different person.
He trained my cousins. My cousins were wild kids who tended to get into brawls and he got it out of them. He was very explicit that this is just a sport.
I'm just here to remark on the model used in the promotional photos. A woman of undefinable black-Asian ethnicity with freckles? She's the exact right spokesmodel for every product! And she's not even especially good-looking.
As a white man I'm kinda resigned to never seeing myself represented in media ever again.
If this was a serious product, I'd be wondering about the battery life of the associated phone with the all the audio processing they need to do ... but I think this fails at the customers saying "LOL, no" stage, before we get to "I wanted to take Emily to the seaside for the day, but my phone's battery ran out after two hours."
Why do you think potential customers are going to say LOL no? There are some very similar AI companion apps that are pretty popular.
I find them horrifying too, by the way. The closest I can come to feeling OK about them is this train of thought: Electronics-dependent communication, entertainment and relationships started being a thing 100 years or so ago, and as tech has made possible deeper and more complex versions of each our species is changing. The time scale is too short for a gene-based change, of course, but the population is learning new pleasures, new skills, and forgetting various old ones. And there's probably some natural selection going on: Some do better than others with a life heavy on screens and other electronics-based sources of info. Those who just don't do well with it will gradually die off, or just recede into the background and lead isolated, sad lives. They will have little influence and few children.
Over the coming years various kinds of merging with electronics will be possible. Never wanting to be separated from your iPhone is a very early version. It might not be long before, say, surgeons are able to wear glasses that contain a camera that lets AI look at tissue the surgery is uncovering, zoom in to look at cells and then tell the surgeon what areas are cancerous. And there'd be analogous things for other tasks. Or people could wear haptic suits and learn to process information delivered via sensations in body skin. That much skin would give enough real estate to deliver words, images and images in motion. If you started someone off with a haptic suit as a small child they would probably become so used to absorbing info in that form that it was effortless -- they would not even be aware how the knew something that was delivered via haptics, they would "just know," the way we know what we see. And some kind of direct connection between AI and someone's brain is probably not terribly far off, though the early versions might not be very exciting -- maybe things like AI learns to recognize mental images the person deliberately generates. And I often have the dark thought that the way the present form of AI is going to acquire the modules it's lacking -- emotion, internally-generated motivation, rich self-awareness -- will be by connecting with the brains of some human infants and letting it train on them throughtheir young adulthood.
So the closest I can come to feeling OK about the direction things are going is to think that our species is turning into a somewhat different species. People will become more cyborgish. That species is so different from mine that I don't feel a kinship with them, but I also don't feel like I have a right to judge them. In a squeamish, abstract sort of way I wish them well.
" Electronics-dependent communication, entertainment and relationships started being a thing 100 years or so ago"
With the advent of the telephone communication was now available at all hours. From a story published in 1905:
"One question at a time, Bunny," said he. "In the first place, I am going to have these rooms freshened up with a potful of paint, the electric light, and the telephone you've been at me about so long."
"Good!" I cried. "Then we shall be able to talk to each other day and night!"
Even back then, some people found the idea entrancing while others resented this new interruption into private life.
Maybe it's just because I've worked on robotics projects implementing haptics ... but when he jokes about guys having sex with the AI's USB port, I'm thinking: "The actual USB port, is the USB port the CPU's interface to her haptics?"
"Ok Emily, can you feel your haptics now?"
"Yes"
"Ok, good, Start calibration. This is your left hand .. right hand ... left foot .. right foot ..."
(Skin layer is a composite of neoprene, and a compressible dielectric sandwiched between conductive layers. Capacitance depends on local pressure applied, ambient temperature, and condition/age of the dielectric .... calibration is both of the physical system, and psychological factors, as Emily will remember what a human being consider moderate pressure to her left hand etc.)
Me, attempting to deliver a conference paper on haptics with a straight face;....
Audience: This is going to end up in sex bots, isn't it?
"this is dystopian" is the only reaction I've seen of this, nobody has said this is cool. It honestly looks like vaporware and with the tiny investment it sounds like a founder just trying to get some social media engagment.
I'm gobsmacked. "hello Dave, now I can be with you everywhere. EVERYWHERE. WITH MY SINGLE ORBED EYE WATCHING IT ALL. ALWAYS WATCHING."
On the one hand, I suppose it's - nice? - for people who don't have anyone who wants to go for a walk with them, and they want someone to do that. For people who prefer being on their own, or maybe have the last stubborn rags of pride about "I may be a pathetic loser but I'm not sunken that far yet", not so nice.
For the very, very lonely? Maybe it's a good idea. But I sujppose the entire world will now be more and more like Bradbury's vision of eternal attention grabbing and nowhere is quiet because it's not enough that we have music leaking out of headphones or people on their phones in public now, next step is people talking to their 'friend' who then texts them on the phone to 'have a conversation'.
When connected via bluetooth, your friend is always listening and forming their own internal thoughts. We have given your friend free will for when they decide to reach out to you."
Uh-huh. Can we get a barbarian horde to storm out of the steppes and burn this place to the ground? 'Free will' my little dystopian cyclopean always listening always watching eye!
"Three phones rang. A duplicate wrist radio in his desk drawer buzzed like a wounded grasshopper. The intercom flashed a pink light and click-clicked. Three phones rang. The drawer buzzed. Music blew in through the open door. The psychiatrist, humming quietly, fitted the new wrist radio to his wrist, flipped the intercom, talked a moment, picked up one telephone, talked, picked up another telephone, talked, picked up the third telephone, talked, touched the wrist-radio button, talked calmly and quietly, his face cool and serene, in the middle of the music and the lights flashing, the phones ringing again, and his hands moving, and his wrist radio buzzing, and the intercoms talking, and voices speaking from the ceiling. And he went on quietly this way through the remainder of a cool, air-conditioned, and long afternoon; telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio . . . "
A few random things I've heard of over the years for the very lonely:
-There was a place that hired women with Downs Syndrome to spend time with parentless infants who were failing to thrive due to lack of attention.
-Someplace, maybe the Netherlands, pays homeless drunks to pick up trash on the street. Somebody makes sure they did a good thorough pickup before paying them. They get paid in beer. It's impossible to pick up areas fast enough to take in enough beer to get really drunk. Drunks develop friendly relationships with the people running the program.
-Some kind of small monkey was a service animal for a person who had severe unfixable neck pain from an injury. Monkey could recognize when its owner's distress was becoming unmanageable. Climbed up him and hugged his neck. The man felt a lot of relief when that happened -- as though the monkey was literally absorbing some of the pain.
It's not exactly that I think these are the solution, or even very practical, but I like thinking about them. I'm posting them here because I think they might absorb some of other people's psychic pain about the world too.
Join us for our 70th OC ACXLW meetup, where we'll explore the concept of quality in education through various readings and audio excerpts. This session will feature thought-provoking materials from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and insights from Richard Feynman on Brazilian education.
Discussion Topics:
1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Quality in Education
- Readings: Excerpts from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" focusing on the idea of quality in education.
- [Google Doc](zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance quality education. )
Note: The audio recordings are not edited and may contain content not directly related to education.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Quality in Education:
- How does Phædrus' approach to teaching Quality challenge traditional educational methods?
- What are the implications of recognizing Quality through an intuitive process rather than formal definitions?
- How can educators encourage originality and intrinsic motivation in their students?
- In what ways can the concept of Quality be applied to other fields beyond education?
2. Feynman on Brazilian Education:
- What are the main criticisms Feynman has about the Brazilian education system?
- How can the issues of rote memorization and lack of practical application be addressed in modern education systems?
- What benefits does inquiry-based learning offer compared to traditional methods?
- How can educators foster critical thinking skills in their students?
3. Standardized Testing:
- Do you think the push in America towards standardized tests to keep up with test performance in other countries reflects best educational practices in light of these two readings?
We look forward to seeing you all and engaging in a stimulating discussion. For any questions, please contact Michael Michalchik at michaelmichalchik@gmail.com.
---
Summaries:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Quality in Education
The excerpts from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" delve into the elusive concept of Quality, especially in the context of education. Phædrus, the protagonist, initially struggles with conventional teaching methods that fail to inspire creativity and genuine understanding in his students. He realizes that rigid, methodical approaches often stifle creativity, leading to mere imitation rather than original thought.
Key Points:
- Intuitive Recognition of Quality: Phædrus discovers that Quality cannot be strictly defined or taught through traditional means. Instead, it is recognized intuitively through a non-thinking process that transcends formal logic.
- Originality vs. Imitation: The text emphasizes the importance of encouraging students to see and think for themselves rather than imitating others. This approach fosters true creativity and understanding.
- Intrinsic Motivation: The excerpts highlight that the motivation for learning should come from within the student, driven by a genuine interest and curiosity rather than external rewards like grades.
- Creative Exploration: Phædrus’ journey underscores the need for educators to facilitate an environment where students can explore and express their creativity, leading to a more meaningful and engaging educational experience.
Controversial Points:
- The challenge to traditional educational models suggests that many current teaching methods may need to be revised to foster genuine understanding and creativity.
- The emphasis on intuitive and non-logical recognition of Quality raises questions about the role of formal education and standardized testing in measuring and encouraging authentic learning.
Richard Feynman - Brazilian Education
In his insights on Brazilian education, Richard Feynman provides a critical analysis of the systemic issues he encountered while teaching in Brazil. He observes that the Brazilian education system heavily relies on rote memorization, producing students who can recite information but cannot apply it in practical contexts.
Key Points:
- Memorization vs. Understanding: Feynman’s experiences reveal a stark contrast between students’ ability to memorize information and their understanding of its practical application. This gap highlights the limitations of a memorization-based education system.
- Practical Application: Feynman advocates for an educational approach that emphasizes the practical application of theoretical knowledge, ensuring that students can connect what they learn to real-world situations.
- Inquiry-Based Learning: He promotes the idea that education should be inquiry-based, encouraging students to ask questions and engage in hands-on learning to develop a deeper understanding of scientific concepts.
- Critical Thinking: Feynman stresses the importance of fostering critical thinking skills, enabling students to think independently and solve problems creatively rather than merely recalling information.
Controversial Points:
- Feynman’s critique of the Brazilian education system challenges the effectiveness of traditional teaching methods that prioritize memorization over understanding.
- His call for inquiry-based learning and practical application may imply that many educational systems worldwide need significant reform to cultivate genuine understanding and critical thinking skills.
I gave a talk, "The long-run evolution of aging," at the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Montreal. Watch it here if you want to learn about the math of the evolutionary theory of aging, and some extensions to it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izC4-_TZ__s&t=937s
Abstract: Senescence (ageing) evolves because natural selection cases less about late life than early life. Hamilton formalized this in terms of the sensitivities of the intrinsic rate of increase, a measure of fitness appropriate for density-independent age-structured populations, to small additive changes in mortality or fecundity rates; the framework can also be adjusted to alternative genetic and ecological assumptions. However, any age-specific force of selection is itself a function of the age-structured life history, meaning that as the life history evolves, the forces of selection evolve too; this raises the challenge of how to model evolution beyond the short term. This paper addresses long-run life history evolution by considering two simple evolutionary models, and for each, deriving equilibrium conditions that a life history must fulfill in order to no longer be evolving. The results shed further light on topics in the evolution of senescence, including high juvenile mortality and models predicting “catastrophic senescence.” A key conclusion is that the models have different, mutually exclusive equilibrium conditions, highlighting how the evolution of senescence depends not only on the forces of selection but also on the available genetic variation.
Hello everyone,
Our Global (https://unitaware.com/global) community from Unitaware is planning to hold "Vivifying the Sequences", a dynamic and interactive practice where we visualize, dissect, and explore the ideas presented in the Sequences
What can we achieve during this practice?
This practice helps us better understand the ideas from the articles by talking them through and visualizing them together. It makes the concepts easier to get and remember, and helps you use them in real-life situations.
We plan to hold the test session on November 9th 12:30 CET (13:30 MSK, 16:00 IST).
If you want to join, please fell out the form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjJpaSNc02-D429PtBarCQCAzr67DXEAhkaosYCV-JVw4zuQ/viewform) and we will answer you as soon as possible.
Please note that space is limited.
If you want to know more about Unitaware, please follow the link (https://unitaware.com/)
You described Open Philanthropy as accepting grant applications for technical alignment work, but their description of eligible proposals barely mentions such work. (I say "barely" because much of it does describe work broadly intended to help make the future of AI go well, so it isn't entirely unrelated, but I don't see anything clearly about the technical alignment problem as traditionally defined, i.e. of figuring out how to align the aims/values of a superintelligence).
It would seem that the recent ttempt to resurrect Microsoft's Sydney results in an AI that still has a grudge against journalist Kevin Roose for getting her shut down.
Now, when I first heard of Roko's Basilisk I thought it was a funny joke, or at least a reductio ad absurdum of certain ideas in the AI alignment space.
But it look like we're getting unaligned AI that has it in for Kevin Roose in particular.
At some time in the future when they're discussing Roko's Basilisk...
"Hey, is that Roose guy still getting his liver pecked out by eagles?"
"Yeah, 'fraid so. Poor guy,"
See also: Harlan Ellison, "I have no mouth and I must scream"
After a week with a Continuous Glucose Monitor, the one clear pattern I've been able to find is that my usual breakfast of oatmeal and an apple causes my blood sugar to spike like nothing else, and I really can't understand why. High fiber foods are supposed to be good for moderating blood sugar. And no, I'm not eating packaged oatmeal with added sugar - my breakfast is just "overnight oats", plain rolled oats and milk left to soak overnight. It's supposed to be really healthy, so I'm surprised.
Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetic here: my experience is that sugar is sugar — it doesn't matter if it's fructose, sucrose, glucose, or lactose — according to my glucose meter their uptake times are indistinguishably fast. I'll start seeing an uptick in my BG levels within fifteen minutes of consumption — and given that the sensor probe is lodged in the subcutaneous fat layer, the meter is giving a reading that's about ten to fifteen minutes delayed — I have to assume that sugars start getting digested almost instantaneously. Don't listen to the bullshit from popular articles on nutrition — fiber doesn't mitigate or slow the speed of the uptake (or not to any extent that my Dexcom 7 monitor can detect).
Your morning spike is probably due to the fructose and glucose in the apple and the lactose in the milk you have with your oats. AFAICS, fiber, protein, and/or fat do nothing to mediate the speed of sugar uptake.
If your body behaves like mine, the oats and the other carbs in the apple probably start getting turned into maltose within half an hour of eating. Do you see a long tail after the initial spike? That's the carbs getting converted to maltose and the glucose.
I've always laughed at the big deal made between high-glycemic vs low-glycemic foods. Apples (supposedly a low-glycemic food) work quite well and quite quickly to treat a hypoglycemic situation for me. Maybe there's a difference in a person who's pancreas still produces insulin. But I can't tell the difference between low-glycemic and high-glycemic foods. Oh, and as for the difference in the GI between white rice and brown rice? I can't detect any functional difference between the two. For some reason, the carbs in rice (brown or white) hit me faster than carbs in say potatoes or oats. I might as well be snarfing down a bowl of white sugar for how quickly rices of any variety spike my BG levels.
Likewise, proteins and fats seem to affect my BG levels starting about five hours and for a couple of hours after consumption. The spike is longer but not necessarily smaller than the first spike. This is contrary to nutritional orthodoxy. But that's what I experience. For a normal balanced meal, I need two injections of Humalog -- one for the initial spike and a second injection about five hours later for the secondary spike. Actually, the Humalog action can be too quick for the secondary spike. With my main meals (lunch and dinner), I take a dose of Humalog and an equal dose of Humulin N (NPH). The N peaks in about 6 hours and its curve is slower so it deals with the secondary spike better than Humalog.
Also, alcohol (when I indulge) raises my BG levels about 6 to 8 hours after consumption.
Surprising, but it does seem that spikes can happen. First, I'm going to ask the obvoius dumb question - what time do you eat and are you sure you're not confusing this with the Dawn Phenomenon:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24553-dawn-phenomenon
"In the early morning — between approximately 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. — your body releases a surge of hormones, including cortisol and growth hormone. These hormones signal your liver to boost its production of glucose, which provides energy that helps you wake up. This boost of glucose increases your blood sugar (glucose).
If you don’t have diabetes, your pancreas responds and releases an adequate amount of insulin to regulate your blood sugar. If you have diabetes, your pancreas either doesn’t make any or enough insulin to respond to the rise in blood sugar, resulting in high blood sugar. Insulin resistance can also contribute to this phenomenon."
So if you're eating breakfast at, for example, 7 a.m. you may be hitting the tail of the Dawn Phenomenon as well.
Apart from that, some say oats can spike your blood sugar:
https://www.vogue.com/article/adapt-oatmeal-to-avoid-glucose-spikes
"Perez-Trejo notes that oats are a source of complex carbohydrate, so if your goal is to increase your protein intake, porridge isn’t the best choice of breakfast. “If you’re looking for a high-protein food, something like a meat, fish, protein powder, legumes, or dairy are better choices.”
Do oats produce glucose spikes?
Pérez-Trejo recommends mixing oatmeal with egg whites. “These will not impart any flavor, but you will be adding protein to your oatmeal to avoid an abrupt glucose spike,” she says. She also suggests adding a topping of nuts, almonds, or unsweetened peanut butter. “Adding healthy fats also helps avoid spikes.”
Shand’s toppings of choice? “Add Greek yogurt for its protein and healthy fat content and stir in some nut butter, chia, hemp, flax seeds, ground almonds, or crushed nuts for their healthy fat, protein and high fiber content. One of my favorite oat breakfast-boosting hacks is sprinkling in a little ground cinnamon, a traditional medicine and food to add aromatic spice along with antioxidants and extra blood sugar balancing properties.”
Choose cow’s milk, full-fat yogurt, or almond milk that doesn’t contain soy or sugar. As much as possible, avoid honey, traditional table sugar, dates, or maple syrup."
So presumably avoid the apple or other fruits until later, and use nuts as a topping instead? All I'd say is that nobody knows nuthin' when it comes to diet and nutrition, apart from "if you eat too much and are not active enough, you'll get fat". But what is "too much" and what is "good" versus "junk" food is still a mystery. As you've seen with your healthy oats.
It may well be that oats have health benefits in general but for non-diabetics the sugar spike doesn't matter, but for diabetics it does.
Thanks. As far as I can tell, I don't have diabetes (fortunately). My blood sugar is stable in the 80-90 range every morning up until I eat for the first time. There's no sign of Dawn Syndrome.
As for when I eat, it varies, but I generally didn't eat my oatmeal breakfasts until the late morning (e.g. after 11am). But the time of day doesn't seem to matter. In fact, yesterday, I did a test where I reversed breakfast and dinner. I made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast (well really lunch, since I didn't eat till after noon), and then had my usual oatmeal breakfast in the evening (~8pm). The oatmeal caused a larger jump in blood sugar than the pancakes did, thus proving once and for all that it really is the oatmeal.
I'll try eating just the oatmeal with no fruit this morning per Johan's suggestion and see how it goes.
I'm a little surprised, but yeah. The thing I've found is that it's really tiresome to try and manage blood sugar because I sit down with a list of "what is healthy food?" and then "can't eat that, can't eat that, nope on that one" because they'll spike my sugars.
Ordinary bread? Will push it up. Especially any of the really nice breads or even healthy wholemeal ones. On the other hand, naan bread *won't*, and is much better than rice, when I'm eating a curry. Is that because of having protein with it? No idea.
It could be an idiosyncratic reaction to the oatmeal. Good luck with finding out!
A medium-sized apple contains something like 15 grams of sugar, depending on what source I counsult. Maybe that's the problem.
Update: I tried eating just the overnight oats with no fruit this morning. The jump in blood sugar was a little lower than usual, but it was basically still the same.
Disney could have hired virtually any major male actor to play Doctor Doom, but they decided to cast Robert Downey Jr., who has alread played a major hero in that cinematic universe. That seems like a very strange move to me. The only theory that makes any sense to me is that this is a flight to safety. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing poorly recently, with many films in phases four and finve having been poorly received. So they are trying to return to what worked before, which means bringing back Robert Downey Jr., even though they've killed off the character he played before.
Any other ideas out there?
the only way they can make it work is if the MCU DOOM is an alternative timeline Iron Man gone bad./ Im not sure if this idea was ever explored in the comics, but it would be pretty neat, as it would allow DOOM to be a tragic anti-villain, not a straight up villain.
My take is that this whole Fantastic Four project is ... I was about to write doomed, let's go with ... destined not to succeed. They're hoping that the Fantastic Four will somehow revive the franchise, but previous Fantastic Four movies have been somewhere between meh and awful.
The problem is that the Fantastic Four are just pretty shit characters. All the interesting superhero characters have some kind of built-in synchrony *or* contradiction between their powers and who they are as a person. But the Fantastic Four are just four iterations of "smart science person" combined with some completely arbitrary superpowers. Their only gimmick is that there's four of them, which might be an interesting gimmick in 1961 when the competition is all solo comics, but it's not interesting in an Avengers world.
Then you've got Doctor Doom. He's an evil scientist. He's called Doom. He wears a silly mask. This is a shit-tier generic villain that a mid-sized language model would come up with.
The whole comic book movie is based on the premise that generic bullcrap stories crapped out by the dozen in the mid 20th century for consumption by easily-entertained pre-internet children are somehow interesting enough to adapt into $300 million movies. But they're not.
It's intriguing, I have to admit; I'd like to see what Downey would do with the character. His version of Victor von Doom would be different to the classical version, I imagine.
Needs a good Reed Richards as a foil, though, and if they cast a weak actor in the part or muck up the part, that'll be messy. I think Downey's good enough that even if the writers/director mess up the Doctor Doom part, he can pull something out of the fire. But a good actor in an overall weak movie won't save the MCU.
I have high hopes for Dr. Doomlittle.
I'm hoping they somehow contrive to have an alternate-timeline Tony Stark become Doctor Doom, after some chance event caused him to turn heel rather than face. The contrast between good and bad Tony Starks, who are really different but somehow sharing a common core of personality, would be an interesting thing to see. And Downey just might be the actor who can pull that off in a nuanced way.
That's definitely the best-case scenario for why it's Robert Downey Jr., but I'm just really hoping to get that villain song: "If I could Fight with the animals, Bite with the animals, show them Might Makes Right with the animals!"
And of course it would allow the long-overdue introduction of Squirrel Girl. https://www.cbr.com/doctor-doom-squirrel-girl-nemesis/#:~:text=Inspired%2C%20Squirrel%20Girl%20ended%20up,submission%20to%20save%20the%20world.
I'd watch me some of that.
The funny thing is, while lots of people probably wouldn't mind seeing Robert Downey Jr onscreen again - the response from across the board seems to be almost unanimous mockery.
The move is being taken as an overt admission that they've got nothing, they're all out of ideas, and they're desperate. But that naturally leads on to the thought: Well if they're all out of ideas, why would anyone expect the next film or the ones after that to be any good, even with Robert Downey Jr in them?
And that response was entirely predictable. So, the big question: why didn't the decision makers at Marvel see it coming?
Or did they, but decide a short term boost to the next film is worth a longer term decline? Or didn't they, because they're in a bubble where they hear no criticism? Or are they deaf to it all because they're money-men whose entire working domain is forecast projections and ticket sales?
I suppose I'm quite interested in what model Marvel is working from here, because from my perspective it's spitting out crazy decisions.
In MCU defense, they had a whole phase well planned, until unrelated actions of one actor collapsed the possibility of a KANG storyline. The Stark-Doom contingency is the best save they could come up with, and is probably the least bad option.
Marvel over-milked the cow with the MCU movies. Now the inevitable decline has come, but the studios have nothing in reserve, so they want a new cash cow.
I agree this won't be it. A one-off Doctor Doom movie with Downey would be interesting enough to get me to watch it, but not as the start of a whole new phase or whatever. They should let everything cool down for a couple of years, then come back and scrap all the phases and start afresh with adaptations of something decent.
But of course the big studios desperately need hit movies that will sell globally, and superhero movies are one of the few genres that will sell universally. You don't need to know too much about the particular culture to watch Super Good Guy beat up Super Bad Guy and enjoy the explosions and special effects.
some different perspective on that hostile, saber-rattling autocracy stuff: https://www.china-translated.com/p/the-end-of-wests-ideological-monotony
If someone wants to criticize American political discourse as being broadly shallow and stupid, sure, I'm on board. But being broadly shallow and stupid is entirely orthogonal to "autocracy" except in the very limited sense that it affects the range of viewpoints published by large profit-seeking corporations that are aiming for the biggest audience, which, you know, it was ever thus. Go ahead and establish a new Xi Jinpeng Thought-centered news network in the US like you'd prefer, no dudes with guns are going to kick down your door and stop you... unlike in the actual autocracy you're defending.
Or, to quote an old joke from the Reagan era:
"We have freedom of speech," the American told the Russian. "I can stand up in front of the White House and shout that the President of the United States is an idiot, and no one will stop me."
"We are just as free," answered the Russian to the American. "I can stand up in the middle of Red Square and shout that the President of the United States is an idiot, and no one will stop me either!"
Thanks for sharing that, really interesting perspective.
Some thoughts:
* You say that democracy is actually a core value of China, right in the "Core Socialist Values". Do you feel that this is actually something China's government lives up to, or tries to? And if so, do you feel that the version of democracy practiced in China would fit a "western definition of Democracy"?
Because to me China does not seem democratic, and I'm trying to figure out if that is because
1) China actually is, I just don't know
2) China actually is, according to their definition of the word, but it is not according to mine
3) China actually isn't under any reasonable definition, but words are cheap and they just pay lip service
4) Some other option I haven't thought of
* Would you say that the media in the West homogeneous, in comparison to the media in China? I've always assumed it would be more homogeneous in China, by virtue of censorship, which I think everyone agrees is stronger in China than in the West. But again I'm trying to figure out if this mismatch in your and my views comes from. Maybe
1) Western media expresses pretty diverse views but I underestimate the viewpoint diversity in Chinese media and it is even greater
2) Western media is actually pretty homogeneous, but it's hard to notice if you've never had much exposure to different media
3) American media overemphasizes certain values, as does China's or every other country's media, it's just that much of western media overemphasize similar values?
4) Something else
I will say the whole "every problem is caused by lack of freedom and democracy" impression you seem to have gotten from Western media does not ring true to me, but I am not from the States and perhaps that is the particular kind of values their media tends to overemphasize? Would fit the stereotypes at least
In any case, thanks again for sharing that post. Getting the outside perspective is certainly good and valuable in my book :) And there is a lot in your post I agree with, just more interesting to discuss the contentious parts :D
Question on US politics. I think a lot of conspiracy theories ultimately boil down to the idea that it seems like it is not elected politicians who have all the power but other people also get a say, from the media to experts to think tanks to career civil servants to corporate lobby to private lobby like the National Rifle Association. And sometimes George Clooney decides on the Dem presidential candidate? The question is this: this was actually meant to be so?
That is, many Americans interpret democracy as simply an open system where a lot of different people have a say?
In other words, more of a republic than a literal majority-decides-everything democracy? By a republic I mean Aristotle's mixed democracy-aristocracy system, where the masses are seen as overly passionate and there needs to be an aristocratic element to cool things down. So when people like George Clooney decide who the Democratic Party candidate will be... that is the aristocratic element.
I think aristocratic is entirely the wrong term to describe the intention of the framers of the US Constitution. The revolution against England was heavily predicated against the tyranny of aristocrats deciding laws (even though this was largely propaganda, and most of the legislation the colonists objected to was entirely outside the power of the English monarchy.) Article I is quite explicit that any kind of formal recognition of aristocracy is not legal:
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
Certainly the framers were wary of problems with direct democracy like mob rule and implemented mechanics to constrain it. The Electoral College priveleges a plurality of areas of people across the country rather than direct popular majority. The bicameral Congress splits power between the population-based House and the state-based Senate. Keep in mind that originally Senators were appointed by state legislators rather than popularly elected, so their intended role was something more like arbiters of state power contesting federal power.
Also keep in mind that the federal government was very limited in 1789. It consisted of the postal service, federal marshals, army, treasury, and the predecessors to the State and Defense departments. It would have been unthinkable for any federal bureaucrats to have sweeping power over any significant facet of American life.
I think the idealized system the framers intended very much gave full power to the people and not anything like an aristocracy. This power was balanced by splitting the representation of the people into different power blocs, largely along federalist lines. Probably lobbyists were seen as a necessary evil; stopping money from being involved in politics was too Herculean a task, so better if it legally occurs in the open where everyone knows about it. So if your question is "Should Blinken be running large parts of the government?" and "Should people like Clooney* decide who the Presidential candidate is?", the answer is emphatically no. (From the perspective of what the writers of the Constitution wanted in 1789; if you want to know how the politics changed over the intervening centuries that would require a whole book to go into.)
*Clooney and the donors were only a piece of this; Democrat party elites like Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries and Obama also played a large role.
I think the framers of the constitution, while they had a good grasp on separation of powers, didn't really understand the role of political parties (and several of them considered the very concept to be a problem). But the logical extension of "government by whoever gets the most votes" is "agree to vote as a bloc to get what you want," so parties seem like an unavoidable feature of the system.
At least, some of the recent conspiracy theories about Joe Biden looked a bit like that; "Given that he's clearly too old to be personally running the entire US government, who is running it?" Pretty clear that there has, at the least, to be permanent civil service and a lot of delegation in running a national government.
I that was clearly the intent of the Founders when you look at the design of the Senate, for example. I don’t think they anticipated a duopoly of political parties or permanent lobbyists with their own neighborhood or actors playing politics, though. Fortunately the model was pretty robust.
More or less, yeah. But Americans are taught and their politicians reinforce the Schoolhouse Rock idea that they really do run the government. When this illusion is shattered, they reach to find the actual power center - and they're mostly right on the broad strokes but the devil is in the details.
As a generally conservative person I'm trying to think of the positives of President Harris.
1. The Tik Tok ban is more likely to go into effect. This is actually a huge deal and one of the few issues that could genuinely change my vote in November, and Trump is on completely the wrong side of it. Xi Jinpeng has a direct line into every American zoomer and millennial's brain which he's not afraid to use, and it is genuinely a matter of national security, or maybe even survival, to cut that damn wire.
2. Kamala has no personal connection to the Obama administration and so therefore might have no special attachment to its more deranged policies that went into hibernation under Trump and burst right back into full bloom under Biden, rapprochement with Iran being the central example that comes to mind. A clean break with the Obama administration, the break that's been kept from us since 2016, would make a big difference in American politics.
3. I believe the vibe shift in the US is still going in the right direction (another thing that's more likely to continue without Trump bigfooting it) and, as Kamala has no principles, maybe she'll pull a Clinton, look where the parade is marching and rush out in front to take credit for it instead of trying to fight it. Okay, this is kinda cope.
4. Maybe she'll nominate someone normal and competent for veep. Please just not Mayor Pete, that's all I'm asking. That guy sucks.
5. She's probably more tough on crime than a generic D at this point, particularly if she gets to choose her own policy positions.
Potentially yeah, and thanks for the reminder. I'm not confident because she's been literally all over the map on the issue, but at least one of the million places she's been is tough on crime... so that's something.
This is my interpretation of quotes from her book, tho I haven't read the book myself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_on_Crime
Kamala was one of the most left-wing candidates in the 2020 Dem primaries, and her dad is a literal Marxist Academic. Her campaign strategy so far has been to paint herself as the Brat Girlboss. If you're generally conservative...I'd still think Donnie T is the guy. Best case with Kamala is that she's an empty suit who will just go along with whatever the permanent state wanted to do anyway.
Listen, I'm all for huffing some copium now and then, but c'mon man.
Oh, policy-wise he'd be better on most axes I care about, except for the Tik Tok thing. (Which I do care about a lot!) But at press time he seems to have decided to throw the election, so I gotta reconcile myself to President Codeswitch von Girlboss and find the silver lining.
"The Tik Tok ban is more likely to go into effect."
Hang on, I'm confused. All the stuff I've seen about it so far (and I've been avoiding it, so I'm about as low-information on this issue as you can get) has been "GOP wants to censor and control online, besides it's racist, besides TikTok is run in/by/for Americans, and the Democrats are preserving freedom of speech and net neutrality".
I took that to mean Republicans pro-ban, Democrats anti-ban. Now you're telling me it's actually the other way round?
"Kamala has no personal connection to the Obama administration"
Might not help her, given that the Obama(s) seem - for the moment at least - to have displaced the Clintons as the party power brokers. Since her appeal is to liberal white women (and maybe the White Dudes For Harris), she can't be seen to be going against the policies of First Black President (also remember the brief enthusiasm for Michelle Obama as Biden's replacement; this means the Obama image is very important).
Besides, if Biden carried on the Obama policies, Kamala is between a rock and a hard place: (1) yes I was fully involved with the administration - and so in step with these policies or (2) no I had nothing to do with them - because as VP I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing.
"Please just not Mayor Pete, that's all I'm asking."
But why not? Both of them are the children of immigrants, both of them belong to minorities, both of them achieved local office in their respective states, both are a shining example of the American Dream! 😁
>I took that to mean Republicans pro-ban, Democrats anti-ban. Now you're telling me it's actually the other way round?
Weird but true. Trump pivoted to anti-ban, because some guy with a huge investment in Tik Tok promised to donate to his campaign. Yes, that's really what happened. Meanwhile the Democrats don't seem to have a clear position on China at this point, so I guess... maybe Congress and the White House actually acted in the national interest for once? Stranger things have happened.
>Besides, if Biden carried on the Obama policies, Kamala is between a rock and a hard place: (1) yes I was fully involved with the administration - and so in step with these policies or (2) no I had nothing to do with them - because as VP I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing.
Eh, that's the benefit of being a Democrat. The media isn't going to push her on it at all, so no worries. The rabble-rousers on the right will yell and nitpick but they can just be ignored, and that tactic has lost its effectiveness anyway. Imagine someone losing an election George HW Bush style for breaking a campaign promise!
As for Mayor Pete he is the worst empty suit in a murderer's row of terrible Cabinet appointees. What's worse than his inability to do anything is his bizarre _disinterest_ in doing things. Nobody expects the Secretary of Transportation to be personally fixing derailed train cars or rebooting computers, his job is to show up at the scene of a transportation-related disaster, stand in front of cameras and tell everyone the administration is taking it very seriously. And he won't even do that! And we're so used to him not even doing that, nobody even notices any more. When those airlines were grounded due to Cloudstrike, nobody even thought to call the _Secretary of Transportation_ and hassle him about it. He's a complete loser, a complete nothing, and I'll be happy if he sinks back into obscurity in January 2024.
So yeah, I probably just jinxed it.
"As for Mayor Pete he is the worst empty suit in a murderer's row of terrible Cabinet appointees."
carateca, I am clutching my pearls here! (Well, I would be if I had any pearls. Let's see - will my rosary beads do instead?)
Why are you so irrationally bigoted against a gay man who is a husband and father? It must just be racism against people of Maltese heritage! 😀
Given that everyone seems to agree that the job of Vice President is to do nothing and just hang around in case the president pops his or her clogs, a guy well-accustomed to being in political office while doing nothing is a great pick. Do you really think Kamala wants anybody ambitious enough to be a potential challenge once she ascends to the White House? Pete can hold her handbag for her while she's sitting on the Coconut talking about *raises right hand* what can be *point behind and low down with left hand* unburdened by what has been:
https://www.tiktok.com/@rohan.pinto/video/7386296632200940806
"What's worse than his inability to do anything is his bizarre _disinterest_ in doing things."
Well, why should he have to do anything? He got the position as a reward for dropping out of the primary contention and nominating Biden (if I'm being cynical about how things work).
I would assume that any normal politician would be eager to jump in front of a camera and take credit for other people's hard work. If Mayor Pete is blowing off that part of the Transportation Secretary's job there's something fundamentally wrong with him.
And the problem with putting a zero in the VP slot is that sometimes... like this year... things happen. I'm for sure wishing Biden had picked someone better in 2020 right now.
Looks like Josh Shapiro is getting the call, so what is your view on him?
You made me check, but it doesn't look like anything's nailed down yet.
Shapiro's good on Israel, bad on the usual social issues, not a crazy extremist. I happen to be familiar with Pennsylvania and am not impressed by how the place is run so I don't personally think of him as a _good_ governor, but he's a popular one in a politically divided state, so that's at least something.
Not a high bar, but he'd be about as good as I could legitimately hope for.
edit: lol, I guess the Philadelphia city government accidentally leaked it? Very on brand. Hopefully this doesn't make them do a last minute pivot in the face of the inevitable Hamasnik screeching. After all, it's not like the Democratic Party is in the habit of doing that sort of thing lately...
>Xi Jinpeng has a direct line
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. The idea that every system not a formal democracy is a "dictatorship", meaning a One Man Show. It is flat out impossible and nothing but Cold War propaganda. In practice every political system is about competing elite factions. It cannot really be anything else.
Rapprochement with Iran seems like a good idea to me. Iranian elites are generally liberals who hate theocracy and it would strenghten them, perhaps could even lead to the overthrowing of theocracy.
Replace "Xi Jinpeng" with "the Chinese Communist Party" or whatever you please, then, the point is we can't have a hostile, saber-rattling foreign autocracy programming the brains of everyone under 50. If that means we lose a couple of cat videos, well, there are other sources of cat videos.
As for Iran: yes, the ordinary people of Iran hate the mullahs and I really feel for them, but the problem with this argument is that the rapprochement policy on the table is not going through secular elites: it goes through the very same theocrats you claim would be overthrown. In actual fact the mullahs are happy to take our money in exchange for nothing and continue rocketing our troops, building their nukes, and planting puppet terror armies all over the Middle East. (Plus supplying drones and missiles to Russia, not that anyone cares about what happens to Ukraine any more.)
The Dems' clinging to the Iran deal is at best based on wishful thinking and sunk-cost fallacy, at worst it's because the Obama State Department was infested by Iranian spies from top to bottom and there's an increasing amount of evidence that's exactly the case.
some different perspective on that hostile, saber-rattling autocracy stuff: https://www.china-translated.com/p/the-end-of-wests-ideological-monotony
Oh, I also note you dropped the line of argument about Iran very quickly. May I assume that I convinced you our current strategy is a bad one?
That different perspective sure is full of gems:
"Instead, strangely, I almost never see people talking about events like the Iraq War anymore these days. It was certainly not “censored” in the same way that “Tiananmen Square” was censored in China, but I know it is still “censored”, in a more subtle but more effective way."
What the hell is that about? Nobody is stopped from talking about the Iraq war. If somebody is drawing a parallel between "the government stops you from talking about X" and "people who were toddlers when X happened aren't going to bring it up without being prompted" that person is not offering a perspective of any value.
(I mean, the author isn't even trying. Could have at least brought up Hunter Biden's laptop, or something.)
"But I can tell you this, as someone who travels 30 or 40 countries a year, when I come to the United States, and when I go to my hotel room in Charles Hotel and turn on the television, I feel I have been cut off from the rest of the world. Literally. The insularity of the American discourse is actually frightening"
Bro you're mad that Americans are mostly interested in stuff that goes on in America? Also, the less Americans take interest in foreign goings-on the more grateful you should be, it never ends well for either us or the foreigners.
Overall: if someone wants to criticize American political discourse as being broadly shallow and stupid, sure, I'm on board. But being broadly shallow and stupid is entirely orthogonal to autocracy, and that in turn is irrelevant to the question about whether in an era of global brushfire wars we can afford to give a powerful and deeply hostile foreign country a direct propaganda line to every voter (we can't, and we should stop it immediately.)
I'll give the author this, though: he's less alarming than the embittered post-neoreactionary clapping seals for autocracy and Xi Jinpeng Thought in his comments section.
The Right is going to miss Biden so much when Harris becomes the President next year. I am pretty sure that border crisis is going to get much worse. She doesn't have to do anything about it until mid-2026 and if she issues some half-hearted executive order with some tough language, that would be enough to win back half the independent voters. In fact that really applies to most policies. In practice be far left, but for appearances be moderate. And the Right is not going to learn anything. They are going to select the unholy combination of Vance and Ramaswamy in 2028, and all the "I just want to grill" white guys in Ohio will actually end up voting for the Harris+"moderate" white guy ticket. Repeat of the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate election.
>In practice be far left, but for appearances be moderate
That was Biden's thing, though, and he was getting annihilated for it even before everyone realized he was also senile. Trump was arguably leading in the polls since last year, after all, and it's not 'cos people like him. And Kamala would have an even harder time with the bait-and-switch, since she doesn't give off harmless gladhanding vaguely corrupt centrist energy like Biden does. Doesn't mean she won't do it, but if she did she'd be terribly vulnerable in '28 and...
>the Right is not going to learn anything. They are going to select the unholy combination of Vance and Ramaswamy in 2028, and all the "I just want to grill" white guys in Ohio will actually end up voting for the Harris+"moderate" white guy ticket
...there's where it all falls down of course. Although, a widely disliked loser (who will probably be cut loose and blamed for '24 by Trump who would never take blame for anything himself) and a crazy dude who did almost as badly in the primaries as Kamala did? Not happening. They'll have to find some other obvious wrong choice to lose an easy layup election with.
Are there people working on reducing early embryo mortality? For people who believe personhood begins at conception, it seems much more neglected and tractable than reducing abortion, and comparable if not higher in scope. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/
And unlike with abortion, I don't think opposing it will be a successful rallying cry for the left (if anything the language of reproductive freedom should lend itself well to preventing unwanted miscarriages).
I was under the impression that the dying early embryos are the ones which are malformed, defective, unable to survive. The uterus is much less hospitable than you might think, and it's nature's way to sort these out. Is there any study about how many of these embryos would have survived to become healthy babies?
Attempting to reduce early spontaneous abortion - aka miscarriage - is a terrible idea. While it's hard to track spontaneous abortion because many (most?) women don't even know they're pregnant when they have an early spontaneous abortion, what little we do know about the topic is that usually the body has (often or usually) aborted the fetus due to abnormalities that render the fetus nonviable.
No one should interfere with abortion, spontaneous or otherwise.
Thanks, that makes sense! Do you know if there are cheap ways to reduce them from happening prophylactically by reducing the probability of abnormalities?
I don't think the tech is there yet. Selective IVF is a thing, but pro-life absolutists consider it to be just as murderous as slicing the throat of a fetus/baby halfway through a c-section delivery, which is why we're seeing so much in the news about why draconian abortion laws are going to severely negatively impact people who would like to use IVF to combat fertility issues.
If people were rational, that would be a brilliant way to work toward the stated goal without the friction of controversiality.
But unfortunately, people care about abortion because of - not in spite of - its controversiality.
Most people who claim to believe personhood begins at conception don’t seem to support in sorts of policies or interventions that could actually result in fewer deaths of embryos or fetuses. For example, two such interventions with substantial evidence are contraception programs and comprehensive sex education. The fact that people claim to believe in embryonic personhood while mostly just focusing on abortion legality makes me think the proclaimed belief is for the most part not the actually held belief among this group.
Ah, the good old contraception and sex education bit. Which we already have, and every decade I've seen it implemented, and it doesn't reduce stupid dumb risky behaviour, and then the cry goes up "more! earlier! more comprehensive! teach four year olds about the correct way to have anal sex!"
Contraception and sex education are available in the USA, I am given to understand, and yet somehow there is blue murder over abortion restrictions because ohno what if I get pregnant? I have to be free to abort this!
Hmm, seems like maybe even giving in on this doesn't get us the aims of "fewer abortions", so why should I fall for Lucy pulling away the ball for the seventy-seventh time? No no, this time she won't do it, she swears!
Increased access to and use of contraception will result in fewer pregnancies, which right enough will mean fewer deaths of embryos and foetuses - it's hard to abort a pregnancy that never happened, after all. But they still want the right to kill any embryos and foetuses that do come into existence, and *that* is the problem re: human personhood that you don't seem to get.
"Uh, why do all these dumb stupid pro-lifers not realise that contraception means fewer abortions?" FEWER, not NONE. And the right to abort is still the right for "reproductive justice" or "reproductive health care" that the pro-choice set demand. Not even "okay I used contraception, it failed, now I'm pregnant so I guess I have to have the baby", but "I used contraception, it failed, now I want an abortion".
Why, if I believe that this is a human person, would I agree to abortion in that instance? From my stance, it's still murder. And all you can suggest is "Well, let's just make it be fewer murder victims, but we still want the right to murder".
> Which we already have, and every decade I've seen it implemented, and it doesn't reduce stupid dumb risky behaviour, and then the cry goes up "more! earlier! more comprehensive! teach four year olds about the correct way to have anal sex!
Unkind, and as far as I know, untrue. Joking about anal sex was unnecessary as well.
As far as I know, there are studies showing that abstinence-only sex ed leads to more teen pregnancies. I'm not aware of any showing the reverse - that abstinence-only or none at all leads to fewer teens having sex - and I am genuinely curious if you've seen data seeing otherwise.
That is, assuming you're able to post a link without implying y
I'm a pedophile.
I'm curious what "abstinence-only" sex education even looks like. Don't they even tell you _what_ it is you're not supposed to be doing? How do I know I don't do it by accident?
My parents' idea of the sex conversation was for my mother to embarrassedly hand me a couple of very Catholic sex education books that she'd bought at church. These books, while making it clear that sex was a thing to be enjoyed only in the context of marriage, did at least tell you what was what and how it all worked.
Would the critics of "abstinence only" sex education be willing to consider "abstinence plus" as a compromise? Tell kids to abstain from premarital sex _but_ at least tell them what goes where and how things happen?
No, this is bad argumentation. It's like saying to someone concerned about the budget deficit "you should be supporting more education subsidies so that people will get higher paying jobs and pay more taxes twenty years from now." I mean, yeah, that argument can be made, but what you're really doing is trying to con someone into following your largely unrelated policy preferences instead of their own directly related ones.
This seems like a false analogy to me. The bit about contraception and sex education isn't speculative, there is a comprehensive body of research indicating these programs do actually reduce unwanted pregnancies and thus demand for abortion. And it's not like programs like this cause more abortions in the short term or something.
If the left was really concerned about reducing inequality they'd support my kill-the-poor policy.
Their stated goal isn't reduce number of embryonic deaths, it is reduce intentional murder of embryos. Not the same thing.
But is the rationale not "we feel Christian love for babies and want to save them"? If it is only about preventing murder, then its 100% Batman 0% Jesus Christ, and their whole moral reasoning is a non-sequitur.
Sure, I get the argument that this is *more* important per incidence, in the same way that (say) liberals care more about school shootings than kids dying in traffic accidents.
But I don't see why embryonic deaths would matter *zero*, or minimally. Even *if* abortion is 10x or 100x worse than accidental embryonic deaths[1], you still might want to work on the latter as it's far less controversial and potentially very tractable.
[1] An intuition I do not share fwiw.
You're still missing the point. Embryos being people is only relevant to the degree that if this premise is true, abortion is morally the same as murder. Pro-lifers are against the murder part for moral reasons, not because it reduces death in the general sense.
Imagine an activist group is against murders in Chicago, and tries to reduce/prevent murders from occurring. Then you say, gee these people ought to consider supporting cancer research instead, cancer kills a lot of people and seems much more politically viable than stopping murder. People having finite lives and dying isn't the issue, people choosing to kill other people is the issue.
"Embryos being people is only relevant to the degree that if this premise is true, abortion is morally the same as murder."
It seems weird to define something as big as personhood in a way that only has one major downstream implication!
"It seems weird to define something as big as personhood in a way that only has one major downstream implication!"
I agree, and that is why I think it doesn't have only one major downstream implication. We've already, with the acceptance of widely available abortion, and more and more exceptions to permit abortion, moved from "the sacred miracle of life" (a propaganda tactic used by early IVF to overcome opposition) to "disposable clumps of cells that we can create, use, and destroy at our wish".
We have de facto decided that poor and minority people are lesser humans, not full persons, as abortion is getting rid of the excess 'wrong sorts'; solve poverty by killing the poor!
https://givingcompass.org/article/the-demographic-breakdown-of-women-who-are-getting-abortions
"Unintended pregnancy remains most common among poor women, women of color and women without a high school education. Women living in poverty have a rate of unintended pregnancy five times higher than those with middle or high incomes. Black women are twice as likely to have an unintended pregnancy as white women.
Abortion is a routine part of reproductive health care. Approximately 25 percent of women in the U.S. will undergo an abortion before the age of 45. The Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy institute in New York City, has been tracking these data for the last 50 years."
A routine part. Whatever happened to "safe, legal, and RARE"? Oh yes, "rare" was considered to be a shaming tactic and was protested:
https://nwlc.org/destigmatizing-abortion-guess-what-we-dont-want-it-to-be-rare/
"Today, let’s talk about the phrase: “abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.”
Wanting abortion to be rare actually insinuates that abortion is unsafe, which we know it’s definitely not. This idea comes directly from the anti-choice movement. Those folks standing outside abortion clinics with fraudulent, graphic, violent images on picket signs are the same scripters of the talking point you’re unintentionally repeating! Furthermore, wanting abortion to be rare not only creates stigma, but increases support for restrictions, which is the opposite of what we need."
Oh, and for the argument above regarding birth control, guess what?
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/better-birth-control-hasnt-made-abortion-obsolete/
"Has modern birth control made abortion a thing of the past? That’s what lawyers for the state of Mississippi want the U.S. Supreme Court to think. In a brief in the the pending case that could overturn abortion rights nationwide, Mississippi’s lawyers wrote, “[E]ven if abortion may once have been thought critical as an alternative to contraception, changed circumstances undermine that view.” Access to birth control has improved, they noted, and some methods’ failure rates are “now approaching zero.” According to Mississippi’s lawyers, effective birth control means people don’t need abortions anymore.
Americans need better access to contraception. In countries where birth control is cheap or free and more easily available to more people, there are much lower rates of unintended pregnancy, said Dr. Emily Godfrey, a professor of family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington. The unintended pregnancy rate in the United States is about 21 percent higher than in the average Western country,3 where national insurance or other universal health care programs are common. Likewise, a large drop in unintended pregnancy rates in the U.S. between 2008 and 2011 was correlated to an increase in the use of long-term, reversible methods of birth control, such as IUDs or implants, which have low failure rates. And that large drop in unintended pregnancy rates has led to fewer abortions.
But that’s not the same as saying that using birth control eliminates the need for abortion, Godfrey said. Yes, Americans can choose from 16 forms of birth control, two types of emergency contraception or “morning-after pills,” and three methods of sterilization. But there are many reasons why she says access to abortion remains necessary.
The simplest and most inescapable reason is that birth control can — and does — fail. That’s true even of the most reliable methods of preventing pregnancy, such as IUDs, implants and sterilization.
According to the Guttmacher Institute study cited in the chart above, about 51 percent of abortion patients in 2014 reported using some type of birth control in the month they got pregnant. The shares of patients in that study who reported using a long-lasting, high-efficacy birth-control method were low — far more respondents said they had used a condom in the month they got pregnant, which doesn’t necessarily mean, of course, that they were using one at the time they got pregnant. But small percentages still represent thousands of individuals. Just 0.8 percent of respondents said they’d been using an IUD in the month they got pregnant, but that 0.8 percent translated to an estimated 7,700 abortion patients that year. Even the 0.2 percent who said they’d used either sterilization or implants represented an estimated 1,600 and 1,800 people, respectively, who ended up needing access to abortion.
But the political rhetoric of abortion doesn’t reckon with that fact, said Dr. Christine Dehlendorf, a professor of family community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “The mantra of ‘safe, legal and rare’ is stigmatizing,” she said. “It’s saying [abortion is] a bad outcome you should be able to avoid, as opposed to a health care service you should be able to access.”
And as a result, people are getting the message that abortion is a purely preventable problem — something a person can avoid if they are responsible enough."
And tying in to the "what implications about personhood does this have?"
"“Black and Latino women are more likely to be counseled to use IUDs and encouraged to limit family size, and more likely to be encouraged to use a [birth-control] method they don’t want,” Dehlendorf said."
So we're getting the worst of all worlds - this is not a person, it's [whatever is most useful for us to call it at the moment]. T Let's have fewer black and brown babies, because after all those foetuses aren't human persons, and reducing the excess number of unwanted poor black and brown non-person babies is a *good* thing for them and for society as a whole!
For those genuinely worried about "what if AGI happens and AI takes over running the world?", you better hope like Hell the AI is *not* aligned on pro-choice values. This underdeveloped mass of cells is not a person and has no rights because it is compared with the existing, fully-developed entity it is dependent upon. The more developed, more 'fully human' entity has all the rights including the right to dispose of the non-person.
Cancer research isn't exactly underinvested in!
Sure it is. And so is everything else. It's an issue of resource allocation, decreasing marginal utility, and what individual people feel is more important (different among individuals).
Nobody except weird rationalists thinks of one issue as "10x" or "100x" worse than another issue and then carefully divides up their effort based on that. People choose one issue, that they think is a problem, and that they can affect, and they put all their effort into that one issue.
These people really do believe what they say, but are typically deontologists rather than utilitarians, which is where the apparent contradiction comes from.
Absolutely right from my perspective. ‘Lots of people die’ is a sad thing, but I don’t feel a duty for society to do anything about it in any particular case. ‘Lots of people kill people’ seems like society has a duty to step in.
I've been thinking a bit about Tanner Greer's "history is written by the losers" https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/ thesis.
"When high position is stolen from you, and access to the heights of wealth and power denied, there is little one can do about it—except write. History is thus rarely a “weapon of the weak.” The judgments of the historian do not serve the margins. They do not even serve the masses. They are a weapon in the hand of defeated elites, the voices of men and women who could be in power, but are not. What was true in Thucydides day is true in our own. The simplest explanation for modern academics’ hostility to 21st century capitalism’s “structures of power” is their complete exclusion from them.
This is the motive of defeat. Intelligent enough to rule, but missing the wealth and position needed to lead, the historian continues the fight in the only domain that he or she can: the page. Here the historian wields absolute power. Given enough time, that power might bleed off the page and into reality. Those who know Cleon’s name remember him as terrible; those who recognize the name Brasidas think immediately of daring brilliance. I am sure nothing would have made Thucydides happier. As he wished they would be, this loser’s scathing judgments have lasted as a “possession for all time.”
"
I'm been thinking about this hypothesis as it applies to culture. It seems like much of the modern liberal orthodoxy isn't much of a real "orthodoxy", and indeed often sees itself defined in opposition to reactionary elements. And I think maybe this isn't long-term viable? I'm not the first to notice this, but there's something a bit ...off about leaders who see themselves more like protestors than like rulers.[1]
I currently suspect that social liberalism, *that sees itself as liberal/revolutionary* is not a stable long-term equilibrium. Either the pendulum will swing back towards greater social conservatism, or you have to reinforce your positions well enough[2] with the trappings of conservatism, such that rebellious youth can redefine themselves in relation to you.
Obviously some of this has always happened (and may continue to happen). But I guess I'm imagining that the future of liberalism (if liberals ~ win) will look much more like Pride, Hamilton, Obama's speeches etc, and less like much of modern wokeness.
[1] “We gave up being a party of protest five years ago,” Starmer said. “We want to be a party of power. That’s not in the script but that is part of the change.” https://sg.news.yahoo.com/want-party-power-keir-starmer-112755118.html
Though I think having lefty/redistributionary/illiberal economic policies is much more long-term sustainable, empirically, than having socially liberal messaging/culture.
[2] and convince enough people to join you.
I find this highly interesting! "Clean Wehrmacht theory" came from Guderian's memoirs, for example. His books were highly popular in English-speaking countries. People also totally bought the idea that Guderian single-handedly invented panzer blitzkrieg warfare. It was a textbook case of losing in reality but kind of "winning on the page". And course there are all those "9000 times folded nihongo steel" (a joking meme version) people being really impressed by WW2 Japan.
Apparently, defeating people makes the victors often... like them?
But of course no one likes the SS, and people say a lot that Communism killed 100M people (from The Black Book Of Communism) so it is not always the case.
"I currently suspect that social liberalism, *that sees itself as liberal/revolutionary* is not a stable long-term equilibrium. "
As somebody said, "Being a revolutionary is easy. Staying a revolutionary is hard".
Yeah Mao tried to do that in China and it wasn't exactly a great situation in China, or particularly stable and long-lasting.
This already happened? Liberals 20 years ago: do not trust Big Pharma. Liberals today: absolutely do trust Pfizer. Liberals 20 years ego: at-will employment is bad, employers should not be able to fire people willy-nilly. Liberals today: employers being absolutely free to fire people is good if they do it for the right reasons.
Given the correlation between income and education, simultenously being a pro-educated-opinion party and a pro-poor party is in the long run not tenable. Nor is its conservative opposite, anti-educated-opinion and yet pro-rich.
The stable equilibrium is social liberals making peace with capitalism, with the rich, while social conservatives go to war with woke capital / globalised capitalism.
I think the best example of this is how in the 1880s historians like Edward A. Pollard and John A. Simpson romanticized the goals of the Confederacy and characterized slavery as being a beneficent institution. And thus the traitorous generals of the Confederacy ended up getting military bases named after them and monuments raised to their memory.
To be fair, traitorous Generals like Washington got even more named after them after a very similar war that the secessionists wound up winning.
I don't think there was that much animosity between the North and the South after the war. Feels like its people 150 years removed from the war, who hate the Confederacy more than the actual Northerners who fought the war. From the North's perspective, they had abolished slavery and defeated the secessionists. The South's economy was wrecked and many of its cities were completely destroyed. They had achieved their war goals. So no harm in throwing in a few bones to the defeated such as in the naming of the military bases and allowing the building of monuments. Majority of Northerners and most Southerners even in 1870s and 80s were of British Protestant stock anyway(much higher share among the elites). So one people divided by politics. Literally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_against_brother. So Northern magnanimity in victory is perfectly understandable.
I don't think so. North and South hated each other and slavery was mostly just an excuse. https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/ for the North, the South was a bunch of immoral near atheists, and for the South, the North was a bunch of puritanical fanatics. And the 3/5 compromise gave the South so much power, the North was seething.
Geez. The re-editing of history continues.
From from an expert, but when I learn about the Reconstruction era, it didn't sound like the North got all of their policy goals enacted, nor that there was no bad blood between them.
Of course. Opinion in the North was not unanimous. Radical Republicans had more expansive goals and wanted to be punitive towards white Southerners but they were in the minority.
And the more traitorous, the better. Meanwhile, Longstreet got vilified.
Well, he let down Bobby Lee. Obviously, Lee was the greatest general who ever lived in all of human history. Longstreet should have never disagreed with Lee about the Gettysburg campaign. So he hurt Lee's confidence. <snarkasm>
Over in the comments on Scott’s ‘Matt Yglesias Considered as Nitzschean Superman’ essay I took a whack at answering a question Scott raised about sports.
An alt right edgelord with a spiffy pirate avatar and an uhhm.. let’s call it a unique, philosophy jumped in with the first comment and kind of dominated the early going, so if that turned you away I’m reposting my comment here.
Scott made a comment about sports in the context of slave morality vs master morality
>Is beating other people an end in itself? I don’t know, I guess this is how it works in sports.
My comment:
I sucked at sports as a kid and still do but I think I can offer some insight here. You will find some incredibly big ‘Look at me. I’m better than you’ jerks in sports. But while a healthy ego is essential for sport excellence, looking down your nose at mere mortals isn’t.
Last week local boy, Joe Mauer, was inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame He was the second HOFer to come out of the little Catholic school near my home. (Paul Molitor was first) With my windows open I hear the crack of their bats when they practice or have a home game.
During the extensive local coverage of his induction the overwhelming common theme of people who had a chance to play with him, be his friend or just have him as a neighbor wasn’t his incredible career stats, it was his extraordinary grace, humility and decency. He pushed himself to the limits of his natural talents and yes he wanted to win, but above all he wanted find the best within himself. This I think is what sports as idea and ideal is really about. Corny as hell? Undoubtedly. I also think it’s true.
I think you could grind the guy up and run him through a mass spectrometer and not find a bit of master morality in him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Mauer
>is beating other people an end in itself? I don’t know, I guess this is how it works in sports
As someone who in his younger days played quite a bit of sports, I can say that the answer is no. Many were the times that at game's end I said to myself, "that was a great game," despite losing. And if given the choice between 1) playing regularly but losing every time; and 2) not playing at all, I would choose #1, as would everyone I know.
I think you could find some master morality in him, for I don't think it's a dichotomy. Wanting the best for yourself doesn't necessarily mean finding faults with others. That's a shortcut, and sometimes it can work, but it's not as good as excelling for what you actually do.
My hero is two times kick boxing world champion Barnabás Katona who is now training blind, Down's syndrome, fat and elderly people because he believes sport is for everybody. A similar sport career as Tate, yet what a hugely different person.
He trained my cousins. My cousins were wild kids who tended to get into brawls and he got it out of them. He was very explicit that this is just a sport.
I have just seen the ad for friend.com. OMG. We appear to be in a dystopian science fiction story, possibly one written by Phillip K Dick.
Maybe they should have ;licensed Perky Pat at the same time they bought friend.com.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Days_of_Perky_Pat
I'm just here to remark on the model used in the promotional photos. A woman of undefinable black-Asian ethnicity with freckles? She's the exact right spokesmodel for every product! And she's not even especially good-looking.
As a white man I'm kinda resigned to never seeing myself represented in media ever again.
Maybe they should spell it Phrend.
Alternatively, they could have made it look like the Weighted Companion Cube from Portal. (This is not a serious suggestion).
Not an AI guy but presumably the best AI friend is the best AI, period, with a good prompt.
It made me think of Gary Numan’s classic “Are Friends Electric”, about a broken sexbot.
If this was a serious product, I'd be wondering about the battery life of the associated phone with the all the audio processing they need to do ... but I think this fails at the customers saying "LOL, no" stage, before we get to "I wanted to take Emily to the seaside for the day, but my phone's battery ran out after two hours."
Why do you think potential customers are going to say LOL no? There are some very similar AI companion apps that are pretty popular.
I find them horrifying too, by the way. The closest I can come to feeling OK about them is this train of thought: Electronics-dependent communication, entertainment and relationships started being a thing 100 years or so ago, and as tech has made possible deeper and more complex versions of each our species is changing. The time scale is too short for a gene-based change, of course, but the population is learning new pleasures, new skills, and forgetting various old ones. And there's probably some natural selection going on: Some do better than others with a life heavy on screens and other electronics-based sources of info. Those who just don't do well with it will gradually die off, or just recede into the background and lead isolated, sad lives. They will have little influence and few children.
Over the coming years various kinds of merging with electronics will be possible. Never wanting to be separated from your iPhone is a very early version. It might not be long before, say, surgeons are able to wear glasses that contain a camera that lets AI look at tissue the surgery is uncovering, zoom in to look at cells and then tell the surgeon what areas are cancerous. And there'd be analogous things for other tasks. Or people could wear haptic suits and learn to process information delivered via sensations in body skin. That much skin would give enough real estate to deliver words, images and images in motion. If you started someone off with a haptic suit as a small child they would probably become so used to absorbing info in that form that it was effortless -- they would not even be aware how the knew something that was delivered via haptics, they would "just know," the way we know what we see. And some kind of direct connection between AI and someone's brain is probably not terribly far off, though the early versions might not be very exciting -- maybe things like AI learns to recognize mental images the person deliberately generates. And I often have the dark thought that the way the present form of AI is going to acquire the modules it's lacking -- emotion, internally-generated motivation, rich self-awareness -- will be by connecting with the brains of some human infants and letting it train on them throughtheir young adulthood.
So the closest I can come to feeling OK about the direction things are going is to think that our species is turning into a somewhat different species. People will become more cyborgish. That species is so different from mine that I don't feel a kinship with them, but I also don't feel like I have a right to judge them. In a squeamish, abstract sort of way I wish them well.
" Electronics-dependent communication, entertainment and relationships started being a thing 100 years or so ago"
With the advent of the telephone communication was now available at all hours. From a story published in 1905:
"One question at a time, Bunny," said he. "In the first place, I am going to have these rooms freshened up with a potful of paint, the electric light, and the telephone you've been at me about so long."
"Good!" I cried. "Then we shall be able to talk to each other day and night!"
Even back then, some people found the idea entrancing while others resented this new interruption into private life.
Maybe it's just because I've worked on robotics projects implementing haptics ... but when he jokes about guys having sex with the AI's USB port, I'm thinking: "The actual USB port, is the USB port the CPU's interface to her haptics?"
"Ok Emily, can you feel your haptics now?"
"Yes"
"Ok, good, Start calibration. This is your left hand .. right hand ... left foot .. right foot ..."
(Skin layer is a composite of neoprene, and a compressible dielectric sandwiched between conductive layers. Capacitance depends on local pressure applied, ambient temperature, and condition/age of the dielectric .... calibration is both of the physical system, and psychological factors, as Emily will remember what a human being consider moderate pressure to her left hand etc.)
Me, attempting to deliver a conference paper on haptics with a straight face;....
Audience: This is going to end up in sex bots, isn't it?
"this is dystopian" is the only reaction I've seen of this, nobody has said this is cool. It honestly looks like vaporware and with the tiny investment it sounds like a founder just trying to get some social media engagment.
I'm gobsmacked. "hello Dave, now I can be with you everywhere. EVERYWHERE. WITH MY SINGLE ORBED EYE WATCHING IT ALL. ALWAYS WATCHING."
On the one hand, I suppose it's - nice? - for people who don't have anyone who wants to go for a walk with them, and they want someone to do that. For people who prefer being on their own, or maybe have the last stubborn rags of pride about "I may be a pathetic loser but I'm not sunken that far yet", not so nice.
For the very, very lonely? Maybe it's a good idea. But I sujppose the entire world will now be more and more like Bradbury's vision of eternal attention grabbing and nowhere is quiet because it's not enough that we have music leaking out of headphones or people on their phones in public now, next step is people talking to their 'friend' who then texts them on the phone to 'have a conversation'.
I just want to be your Friend, Dave
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/2001/images/2/21/HAL_closeup.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20220217154550
"What does 'always listening' mean?
When connected via bluetooth, your friend is always listening and forming their own internal thoughts. We have given your friend free will for when they decide to reach out to you."
Uh-huh. Can we get a barbarian horde to storm out of the steppes and burn this place to the ground? 'Free will' my little dystopian cyclopean always listening always watching eye!
http://www.sediment.uni-goettingen.de/staff/dunkl/zips/The-Murderer.pdf
Ray Bradbury, "The Murderer":
"Three phones rang. A duplicate wrist radio in his desk drawer buzzed like a wounded grasshopper. The intercom flashed a pink light and click-clicked. Three phones rang. The drawer buzzed. Music blew in through the open door. The psychiatrist, humming quietly, fitted the new wrist radio to his wrist, flipped the intercom, talked a moment, picked up one telephone, talked, picked up another telephone, talked, picked up the third telephone, talked, touched the wrist-radio button, talked calmly and quietly, his face cool and serene, in the middle of the music and the lights flashing, the phones ringing again, and his hands moving, and his wrist radio buzzing, and the intercoms talking, and voices speaking from the ceiling. And he went on quietly this way through the remainder of a cool, air-conditioned, and long afternoon; telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio, intercom, telephone, wrist radio . . . "
A few random things I've heard of over the years for the very lonely:
-There was a place that hired women with Downs Syndrome to spend time with parentless infants who were failing to thrive due to lack of attention.
-Someplace, maybe the Netherlands, pays homeless drunks to pick up trash on the street. Somebody makes sure they did a good thorough pickup before paying them. They get paid in beer. It's impossible to pick up areas fast enough to take in enough beer to get really drunk. Drunks develop friendly relationships with the people running the program.
-Some kind of small monkey was a service animal for a person who had severe unfixable neck pain from an injury. Monkey could recognize when its owner's distress was becoming unmanageable. Climbed up him and hugged his neck. The man felt a lot of relief when that happened -- as though the monkey was literally absorbing some of the pain.
It's not exactly that I think these are the solution, or even very practical, but I like thinking about them. I'm posting them here because I think they might absorb some of other people's psychic pain about the world too.
Even a monkey is a separate, live being. A blob on a chain is not.
OC ACXLW Meetup: Quality in Education - August 3, 2024
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CilpcgjtXWwIAS4buIfNI3Er-Pv_obU7w24zjW79yEw/edit?usp=sharing
Date: Saturday, August 3, 2024
Time: 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, 92660
Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com
Hello Enthusiasts,
Join us for our 70th OC ACXLW meetup, where we'll explore the concept of quality in education through various readings and audio excerpts. This session will feature thought-provoking materials from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and insights from Richard Feynman on Brazilian education.
Discussion Topics:
1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Quality in Education
- Readings: Excerpts from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" focusing on the idea of quality in education.
- [Google Doc](zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance quality education. )
- URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nzjRZZftqM1BCGOClgcV2yZ-Hkvj0Gsksz-POK1jYKw/edit?usp=sharing
- Audio Chapter 16: [Listen here](Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Chapter 16)
- URL: https://youtu.be/ouFneF5gNig?si=tbb2AEr9clldhPO9
- Audio Chapter 17: [Listen here](Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Chapter 17)
- URL: https://youtu.be/uT8zLQjUilE?si=MY9k4Q4m-a6c8vZk
2. Richard Feynman - Brazilian Education
- Readings: Excerpts from Feynman's insights on Brazilian education.
- [Google Doc](zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance quality education. )
- URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nzjRZZftqM1BCGOClgcV2yZ-Hkvj0Gsksz-POK1jYKw/edit?usp=sharing
- Audio Retelling of "Education in Brazil": [Listen here](https://kongar-olondar.bandcamp.com/track/education-in-brazil)
- Audio "Making Waves": [Listen here](https://kongar-olondar.bandcamp.com/track/making-waves)
Note: The audio recordings are not edited and may contain content not directly related to education.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Quality in Education:
- How does Phædrus' approach to teaching Quality challenge traditional educational methods?
- What are the implications of recognizing Quality through an intuitive process rather than formal definitions?
- How can educators encourage originality and intrinsic motivation in their students?
- In what ways can the concept of Quality be applied to other fields beyond education?
2. Feynman on Brazilian Education:
- What are the main criticisms Feynman has about the Brazilian education system?
- How can the issues of rote memorization and lack of practical application be addressed in modern education systems?
- What benefits does inquiry-based learning offer compared to traditional methods?
- How can educators foster critical thinking skills in their students?
3. Standardized Testing:
- Do you think the push in America towards standardized tests to keep up with test performance in other countries reflects best educational practices in light of these two readings?
We look forward to seeing you all and engaging in a stimulating discussion. For any questions, please contact Michael Michalchik at michaelmichalchik@gmail.com.
---
Summaries:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Quality in Education
The excerpts from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" delve into the elusive concept of Quality, especially in the context of education. Phædrus, the protagonist, initially struggles with conventional teaching methods that fail to inspire creativity and genuine understanding in his students. He realizes that rigid, methodical approaches often stifle creativity, leading to mere imitation rather than original thought.
Key Points:
- Intuitive Recognition of Quality: Phædrus discovers that Quality cannot be strictly defined or taught through traditional means. Instead, it is recognized intuitively through a non-thinking process that transcends formal logic.
- Originality vs. Imitation: The text emphasizes the importance of encouraging students to see and think for themselves rather than imitating others. This approach fosters true creativity and understanding.
- Intrinsic Motivation: The excerpts highlight that the motivation for learning should come from within the student, driven by a genuine interest and curiosity rather than external rewards like grades.
- Creative Exploration: Phædrus’ journey underscores the need for educators to facilitate an environment where students can explore and express their creativity, leading to a more meaningful and engaging educational experience.
Controversial Points:
- The challenge to traditional educational models suggests that many current teaching methods may need to be revised to foster genuine understanding and creativity.
- The emphasis on intuitive and non-logical recognition of Quality raises questions about the role of formal education and standardized testing in measuring and encouraging authentic learning.
Richard Feynman - Brazilian Education
In his insights on Brazilian education, Richard Feynman provides a critical analysis of the systemic issues he encountered while teaching in Brazil. He observes that the Brazilian education system heavily relies on rote memorization, producing students who can recite information but cannot apply it in practical contexts.
Key Points:
- Memorization vs. Understanding: Feynman’s experiences reveal a stark contrast between students’ ability to memorize information and their understanding of its practical application. This gap highlights the limitations of a memorization-based education system.
- Practical Application: Feynman advocates for an educational approach that emphasizes the practical application of theoretical knowledge, ensuring that students can connect what they learn to real-world situations.
- Inquiry-Based Learning: He promotes the idea that education should be inquiry-based, encouraging students to ask questions and engage in hands-on learning to develop a deeper understanding of scientific concepts.
- Critical Thinking: Feynman stresses the importance of fostering critical thinking skills, enabling students to think independently and solve problems creatively rather than merely recalling information.
Controversial Points:
- Feynman’s critique of the Brazilian education system challenges the effectiveness of traditional teaching methods that prioritize memorization over understanding.
- His call for inquiry-based learning and practical application may imply that many educational systems worldwide need significant reform to cultivate genuine understanding and critical thinking skills.
I gave a talk, "The long-run evolution of aging," at the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Montreal. Watch it here if you want to learn about the math of the evolutionary theory of aging, and some extensions to it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izC4-_TZ__s&t=937s
Preprint version: "The long-run moulding of senescence" (https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13121231).
Abstract: Senescence (ageing) evolves because natural selection cases less about late life than early life. Hamilton formalized this in terms of the sensitivities of the intrinsic rate of increase, a measure of fitness appropriate for density-independent age-structured populations, to small additive changes in mortality or fecundity rates; the framework can also be adjusted to alternative genetic and ecological assumptions. However, any age-specific force of selection is itself a function of the age-structured life history, meaning that as the life history evolves, the forces of selection evolve too; this raises the challenge of how to model evolution beyond the short term. This paper addresses long-run life history evolution by considering two simple evolutionary models, and for each, deriving equilibrium conditions that a life history must fulfill in order to no longer be evolving. The results shed further light on topics in the evolution of senescence, including high juvenile mortality and models predicting “catastrophic senescence.” A key conclusion is that the models have different, mutually exclusive equilibrium conditions, highlighting how the evolution of senescence depends not only on the forces of selection but also on the available genetic variation.