One of the remarkable aspects of the campaign is how Trump feels like the incumbent and Harris feels like the challenger. It's not surprising that Democrats would encourage this, but I was surprised to come across an article full of quotes of even *congressional Republicans* referring to Trump as "the President".
It's getting rough out there: it appears the would-be conservative James Lileks at National Review is poised to defect.
In what is obviously a scheme to impress Ms. Harris, he published a sample of his special application of rhetorical cadence and circular logic in a proposed speech Ms. Harris might want to use in addressing, say, a gaggle of communists:
"The workers. Of the World. There is a world, and there are workers in it. The work of the world is worker's work. . . " (October, 2024)
Good riddance, James Lileks. We hope you enjoy your new speechwriting job.
". . . and they work when they are working. Work is called work for a reason. It is work! Often hard work. And the hardworking workers know it is hard, because they are feeling the hardness of it . . ."
To some degree that is them being trapped by having drunk their own kool-aid (about the 2020 election having been stolen). They are used to referring to Trump as simply "the president" rather than "former president" because that has been the political correctness within GOP circles for three years now.
First, cool personal story. Second, a good heuristics; not perfect, but something that is easy to remember and evaluate. Can you take a break from your group, at least for a week, so that no one will bother you, check on you, remind you of your duties, etc.? Are you free (and mentally capable) to meet people who are not fans of your group, specifically critics and former members, and talk to them? Given your current knowledge about the group, if you reflect on the process how you joined the group, would you describe it as "informed consent", or do you now see that you were given misleading information on purpose?
This matches my intuition of a cult as a group that makes you join under false premises and then keeps you under constant pressure to prevent clear thinking. On joining, you get the information by little pieces, because it is obvious in hindsight that your old self would never agree to join if they could see the situation you are in today. Leaving the group abruptly is a horrifying idea. Not only because you will end up in Hell, or the world will be destroyed and it will all be your fault... but *more importantly*, on the personal level, *all* the friends you currently have will instantly turn into enemies. And there are mechanisms that prevent you from leaving gradually, from slowly finding friends outside the group and starting to spend more time with them, and slowly reducing your involvement with the group.
I think it is useful to have a mental category for this; separate from someone merely being obsessed about something weird, in absence of a social mechanism to keep them trapped. Many people ignore this. I think the cults are bad not because their ideas are bad (though, incidentally, their ideas usually *are* bad), but because they create this kind of trap for people who otherwise might be attracted to the idea for a while, but then would probably change their minds and leave.
This also has obvious applications for the rationalist community. Like, if someone says "Less Wrong is a cult", that's obviously stupid: a *website* cannot be a cult. If you decide to stop reading the website for a week, what exactly is the website doing to do about it? If in your free time you talk to people critical of the website, how would the website know, and how could it prevent you from talking to them? One could argue that the ideas on Less Wrong are bad, or even dangerous, but there is a difference between bad ideas and bad *social mechanisms*. Meetups are potentially different, because there people meet in person, but they happen once in a long time, no one checks you between them, and if you stop visiting them, it's over.
The situation can be different with some groups near the rationalist community, such as Leverage Research or Nonlinear. If people need to show high commitment and have little free time to spend away from the group (to meet other people, to see things from a different perspective), then yes, it can become this kind of social trap. The trap does not have to be designed on purpose; a group of people pressuring each other to show high commitment can generate it naturally. I think it happens more likely when there is a charismatic leader, or someone with actual power (e.g. financial) over the others, who can declare high commitment as a desirable thing, and the lower-status members of the group do not feel free to push back and fight for their free time.
Not everything applies here the same way. Sometimes the members are not explicitly forbidden to talk to the outsiders and critics, they simply... don't have time for that. Or they joined the group voluntarily and had a mostly correct idea about how it works in general, they just... underestimated how difficult such high-intensity environment could be; and when it becomes exhausting, they have no good way to reduce the intensity to a bearable level. They have no mental capacity left to calmly reflect on their situation, and no good way to disengage that wouldn't burn the bridges. So the effect on them can be similar.
Here is something that my autistic ass has been chewing on:
NEUROTYPICALS DO NOT MAKE SOCIAL BLUNDERS.
They may appear to blunder, they may appear to make gaffes of one form or another; however, this all has a higher, often inscrutable and indescribable Purpose. Someone who makes a boorish comment at a party does so intentionally, or rather chooses not to filter himself when he could have, on purpose. It has the function of injecting stress and randomness into the system, as well as sending any number of plausibly deniable signals - some of which are only visible to the graceful or the perceptive.
Take political gaffes, for example: they only LOOK to us - the uninitiated - to be blunders; they may in fact be extremely subtle signals for political operatives as well as distractions from their political machinations. There's the same thing going on when someone angrily talks about "dumb r3tarded people" in front of their special-education teacher friend": it isn't a mistake. It's more like bird augury: deliberately using a poor-quality filtering process to introduce randomness and therefore make you more difficult to read. It's also a political move or power play.
I mean - every word and gesture that the average person makes is flawless, and the average person is every bit as dedicated to being graceful as the average Mongol horse archer was in his time, or the Japanese samurai or European knights were to skill at arms. The only real difference between the average person and an Obama or a Clinton or even someone like Hong Xiuquan is GENETICS and OPPORTUNITY, not worldview. I believe most people secretly believe that gracefulness is quite literally worth dying over, and that a single blunder - a true blunder - can ruin your career or life. The average person can choose - instinctually, gracefully, subtly - to throw a single subtle facial expression in a bar and tell seven other people "I think this guy rocks" or "I think he sucks"; if he opens his mouth to speak, a single sentence can have four different meanings, three of which are understood by everyone and one of which is only able to be parsed by the talented or lucky.
Nope. Social blunders happen all the time, to everyone. The hope is that you learn from them and stop making so many, but every single person on the planet Earth has multiple stories about how they put their foot in their mouth.
As a general rule, anything that involves most of the population of Earth being constantly graceful and purposeful at all times, unfailingly, is unlikely to be true. Humans just aren't sophisticated enough for that.
Yeah, no, not even close. Yes, most apparent blunders have an explanation - but that doesn't mean they're not mistakes. The fact that something has a purpose does not imply it serves that purpose well at all. Everyone makes lots and lots and lots and lots of social blunders. But for most people they disproportionately take place in childhood. The closest plausible neighbor to your claim is something like "neurotypicals do not repeatedly make the same social blunders in adulthood", which is trueish, though not quite true.
Good point. I looked it up, and it seems he did actually claim the title of Pharaoh and is included on modern lists of Pharaohs. It sounds like there's some doubt as to whether he actually had himself anointed and crowned in Egypt or not.
"The comments were made under the username minisoldr, a moniker Robinson used frequently online. Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades....On the Nude Africa website in both comments and his profile, minisoldr offered numerous details that align precisely with Robinson’s personal history."
Ideally the guy would resign from public life on the grounds of comical stupidity. He is instead going with the MAGA strategy of denying everything no matter what the evidence is.
Your next governor of the great state of North Carolina folks!
Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It reminds me of the Access Hollywood tape, which wound up damaging Trump far less than the media elite thought it would. It might even make normal men sympathize with him; they don't want their porn history released either. Will probably hurt him with women. Access Hollywood was Trump confessing to alpha male behavior, not weird low-status porn stuff.
The far more damaging thing is his past support for banning abortion without an exception for rape. That's just politically toxic and only a complete 180 to supporting fully legal abortion would make people forget it.
It is politically toxic, but internally consistent: if you believe that a fetus (at any stage) has the same value as a living human being, it is a logical position to hold.
Trump just ignored the Access Hollywood recording though, with a couple of moments of shrugging about "locker room stuff". He didn't loudly/repeatedly deny having said what he obviously did say. That's the part that will stick in the public mind regarding Robinson.
A day later and the guy is still loudly denying all. He's hand-waving the idea that "it could be AI", and/or all faked by malicious libs, etc.
Trump meanwhile is not commenting about it but has just uninvited Robinson from his rally scheduled in NC tomorrow evening. (Robinson, who is both the state's Lt. Governor and the GOP nominee for governor, had appeared in several previous Trump rallies.)
U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, currently the GOP's highest-level officeholder in North Carolina, posted on X that Thursday “was a tough day, but we must stay focused on the races we can win.”
NC's deadline for a nominee to withdraw from the November ballot has passed, and it appears that the state GOP has no legal way to push him off at this point even if they want to.
The Dems think Robinson is now toxic to however many persuadable voters still exist in NC. From the Associated Press an hour ago: "Harris’ campaign rolled out a new ad Friday it calls the first to link Trump to a down-ballot candidate. The commercial alternates between Trump’s praise for Robinson and the lieutenant governor’s comments which his critics have argued show his support for a statewide abortion ban without exceptions. Robinson’s campaign has argued that’s not true. The Democratic National Committee is also running billboards in three major cities showing a photo of Robinson and Trump and comments Trump has said about him. And a fundraising appeal Friday by Jeff Jackson, Democratic attorney general candidate, also includes a past video showing Republican opponent Dan Bishop saying he endorsed Robinson."
Maybe too soon, but on the lighter side: some Israeli food company ought to start using "flavor explosion" as a slogan. Also, I want to see a spy movie where someone assembles a binary-explosive bomb using only Israeli food products bought in an ordinary grocery store.
Would it be possible to make a food ingredient that explodes when mixed with non-kosher food ingredients, but is perfectly safe to eat when mixed with kosher food ingredients?
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On a whim, I decided to look up "Israel" on LessWrong. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to do this until now, it just did today, while I'm at work, waiting for a dog slow compile job.
Surprisingly little in search results show up, mostly account names and meetup proceedings or location info. Expected, LessWrong hates contemporary traditional politics with a passion. The one political post that showed up is an AMA by a user named Yovel Rom on the 10th of October [1], explaining the October 7th attack and the general background. But tracing the comments eventually gets you a far better prize: user Yair Halberstadt, who reviewed the book __1948__[2] by Israeli historian Benny Morris on 3rd of December 2023, and later reviewed its semi-sequel, __Righteous Victims - A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict__[3], in June 2024. The last review was actually written with the intention of being an ACX review, but wasn't selected as a finalist.
Benny Morris, as a person, is of course disgusting as a maggot, perhaps even more given my soft spot for insects. Cosplaying as a "Liberal Zionist", one of his opinions is that Israel should have expelled all Arab Israelis in 1948, and that Arab Israelis even today are/should be viewed as terrorist sympathizer 5th column. Regardless, I will never not be amazed by his ability to say what his sources lead him to, EXACTLY as he thinks it, no sugarcoating.
Everybody should read [2] and [3], with priority given to [3] more than [2] if you don't have time. I want to give them a shoutout here, and will possibly signal boost them more in future Open Threads.
Perhaps what sounds too good to be true for me is how much of the pro-Israel narrative is a transparent lie that even a Zionist historian can casually demolish while in the middle of doing scholarship. There are no punches pulled, no myth spared, no piece of bullshit left unturned. Benny actually comes right out and say the "Ethnic Cleansing" word, the big No No that gets all the antisemitism accusations running on overdrive in modern day discussions. Yair (the reviewer) says at the end of [3]:
>>> If you go into this book believing standard Hasbara talking points about how the IDF is the most moral army on earth, Israel only wants peace, the Palestinians only want war, and Israel has simply no choice in what it does, you’re likely to find it makes for very uncomfortable reading.
The proto-IDF in __Righteous Victims__ violates truces, commits war crimes, and protects and aids population transfer to conquered territory (against international law, forbidding states to transfer their civilians to war zones for settlement).
If this was written by an Arab, Palestinian, Western/American leftist, or Muslim author, I would have quit reading because it's too unchallenging, too non-deviating from what I already believe. What's interesting is how both the author and the person reviewing him are Jewish Israelis, one of them (Morris) trespassing into disgusting anti-Arab racism sometimes, and the reviewer himself being no radical leftist, although LessWrongers are perhaps less common than radical leftist.
On the other hand, [2] and [3] also contains plenty of challenging facts deliberately left out and obfuscated in mainstream pro-Palestinian narratives. Chief among which is of course the Mizrahim forced exodus from Arab and Muslim countries following 1948 and well into the 1990s, and the generally greater readiness of the Israeli populace - minus the settler scum - to compromise for peace.
Overall: Interesting, accessible, as truthful as it ever gets. Must be first-read for anyone who wants to write more than 10 words on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in public.
I applause LessWrong user Yair: this is what I wish to be on this conflict as well, hopefully successfully, however many failings. I grudgingly applause Benny Morris' commitment to facts despite his horrible opinions.
"If you go into this book believing standard Hasbara talking points about how the IDF is the most moral army on earth, Israel only wants peace, the Palestinians only want war, and Israel has simply no choice in what it does, you’re likely to find it makes for very uncomfortable reading."
misses the next sentence
"On the other hand I don’t think it would be wise to update too far in the other direction."
More or less a representative of the average IQ and empathy level of pro-Israel supporters, but it's never not funny when my case is made for me, very visibly.
I actually think that wokeness isn't a saint here. I will never forget the dumbassery of feminists who scour history for some female historical figure, say some woman who sold poison to wives wanting to kill their husbands (can't remember the name, but it's a real figure), and then celebrate it as a feminist icon. "Slay Queen"-ing themselves into standard old 20 IQ atrocity-celebration.
I will never forget when I was commenting on some reddit about a black guy who punched and killed an aging white old man because the white man said a slur to him, and the redditor horde dogpiled me because - apparently - it's completely ok when BlAcK foLx (^TM) take the law into their own hands and simply decree the death penalty for anyone (without a trial!) who says the naughty words, however reprehensible the naughty word is.
I have since disavowed and became thoroughly disillusioned from head to toes by wokism, even now I always avoid pro-Palestinian advocacy if I sniff woke shibboleths like "Privilege" and "White Supremacy". Of course the Pro-Israel like Scott Aaronson latch into those pro-Palestinians like there is literally nobody but them because they like the easy target of disproving that Israel is a White Supremacy, missing the forest for the trees as usual.
All of this to say, I'm extremely skeptical whenever somebody says "$IDEOLOGY makes my enemies bullies !". I don't disagree that the bullies and scumbags and dumbasses gravitate towards certain ideologies and not others (and that this differ across time and space), I just don't think that there is something inherent in an ideology that makes someone a dumbass bully.
I'm afflicted - you could say - by deep misanthropy: in a certain sense, the default state of an uneducated human is to be a dumbass bully, especially toward people that don't look like them. Liberal kindness, the morality that stems from Rawls' Veil of Ignorance, which treats all humans as black boxes with unknown identity to enforce radical justice and identity-agnosticism, is as rare as life in space, and it's always fragile, always the underdog, always subject to vicious attacks from nearly all angles from staunch Communism to medieval Islamism.
That said, I believe satire and merciless mocking is a very effective tool to defend Liberal Kindness, I don't miss the irony but it is what it is.
> when I see people who can read the book review that you posted detailing Israel’s behavior of open ethnic cleansing and conclude that it was “based”
Wow wow wait, let's not get ahead of ourselves here, we have no actual evidence that SR have read the review I posted before commenting "based", or indeed if she has the capacity to read LessWrong-grade material, or even really read anything at all. Didn't Scott post recently about improved LLM models increasingly doing human-like things? The flipside is humans doing increasingly NPC-like things.
On a more serious note, SR71 once confided to me that she is kind of obsessed with me... that I - quoting her - am "The most annoying guy on this forum", indeed that she would vote for Donald Trump specifically just to annoy me, no other reason. Truly one of my most zealous fans, you can say. I don't even live in the USA, but I live in her head rent-free.
Given this confession, I don't think you could take anything about or from this fundamentally unserious person seriously. Would you not agree?
> I know that such a viewpoint is common in the mainstream of society as well as among people in power
Well, that is indeed true. But it's beside my point about wokism: no amount of detailing the crimes of organized religion across history would excuse support of repressive communism, even if repressive communism happens to also repress organized religion, among the countless others it represses.
Wokism is not quite communism, but I was exaggerating for effect. Wokism does weaken **some** types of bullies (not even reliably at that) at the cost of strengthening other types of bullies, and my impression is that if you measure the total amount of all bullying in the system you hardly feel any change at all.
I get that feelings aren't rational and I admit I sometimes also want to trigger the likes of SR71 with wokism-adjacent things just to see the reactions, but ultimately it's not worth it, and there are other ways of responding to dumbassery other than inverted dumbasserty.
If you look at something with your eyes open, what exactly is the thing you're seeing? I'd love to get a sense of the opinion spread here (I suspect lots of disagreement), if you wouldn't mind answering this straw poll: https://strawpoll.com/XOgOVQbdQn3
Note that you can answer more than one thing. The "other" option is mostly intended for if none of the five seemed correct.
(People's "other" responses stick around as options to be voted on; this was not intended, but I can't change it. The first 5 are the official responses.)
I didn't find the options very complete. I went for other: "There is a data structure in my brain which approximately corresponds to the external object, and I experience it as qualia".
Thanks for this answer. Your option was intended to fit 2+4, i.e., "There's an abstract data structure in the brain (e.g., a 2d array) that corresponds precisely to the image I'm seeing" and "The image I see is made of qualia, which is a well-defined non-material thing, but its causal behavior is reducible/equivalent to a physical description of the brain".
I see why you don't think this fits, but with "corresponds precisely to the image I'm seeing", I meant that it precisely corresponds to the qualia, not to the external object. The match between what you're seeing and the external object is not something I'm asking about.
Thanks for the question. It prompted me to to give
"I suffer the illusion of seeing the thing, and if there was something "wrong" with me, like my eyes being smashed, then this illusion would not happen despite me looking with my eyes open at that thing."
as the answer. Which is the best I've ever come up with.
I haven't read Nate Silver's latest book but have read enough about it to know he distinguishes between those he calls The River, who are big risk takers like poker players and venture capitalists and The Village, academics and such who work by consensus. He thinks more highly of The River.
Maybe he gets round to it in his book, but when I think of the biggest risk takers I've known I find myself hoping they finally found the peace they sought and hope they Rest in Peace.
But what is a risk-taker? I can more easily say who is not than who is. If you are a CPA, you are not a risk taker unless you legitimately fear going to prison. If you are an actuary, you are not a risk taker. If you have a degree in physics from MIT and trade for a hedge fund, you are not a risk taker unless you do a lot of blow or junk. If you graduated with a degree in math and spent the next year playing poker full time, you are not a risk taker. You haven't burned any bridges.
My prior is that risk-taker are usually losers. Some are very smart and also lucky and happen to be very successful but the great majority are dying early without much savings.
My question is whether Nate Silver's dichotomy means anything. And, if you can define it clearly, whether being a risk-taker is more or less good or bad compared to not being one.
I think the best interpretation of what they mean by "risk-taker" has less to do with risk, per se, and is entirely to do with the idea behind "**** or get off the pot".
Suppose, for a moment, there is a card game tournament, in which everybody puts in $1,000, gets $1,000 worth of chips, and then must either play until they run out of chips or win the tournament. (They can also forfeit their chips, I guess, whatever.)
Here's the thing: The actual risky maneuver is *entering the tournament at all*. You're betting $1,000 that you'll end up with the entire pot.
However, in between entering the tournament and either winning or losing, you can win or lose slowly - what, I think, gamblers think of as "not taking risks" - or you can win or lose quickly - "taking risks". Apparently gamblers prefer to play with the people who win or lose quickly, rather than having to play against somebody who draws out the game by, say, refusing to ever raise.
This applies more generally, as well. When they're talking about "taking risks", they're not talking about taking actual risks (actual risks are so far outside their social script they don't even notice them - they'll talk up gamblers but I doubt either would mortgage their house and put it all on a single roulette spin), but rather, about finishing the game you are already committed to quickly, win or lose.
If so, something to bear in mind is that for almost everybody, investing a lot of time and energy on a project that's very unlikely to succeed is a bad dumb move. In poker it's called chasing. So I don't think it makes sense to make a poster of somebody who spent 5 years waiting tables & auditioning (or whatever) and eventually became a star (or what ever a highly successful person is called in their field), with a caption underneath saying "NEVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS."
Agree it's almost impossible to be a superstar without taking big risks. Perhaps there are some Nobel Prize winners who didn't but were just really good and lucky in their field? Or some professional athletes who had no other skills and the choice to pursue their sport was obvious.
I've also heard it said that really successful people tend to spend decades keeping their heads down. If you want to climb the corporate ladder, just do your job really well year after year and play office politics wisely. A leader like Angela Merkel was known as a non-risk-taker who bided her time while her political competition kept sticking their necks out and getting them cut.
I'd guess that because our society generally discourages risk-taking that the median person is better off erring on the side trying not to err. Although the US probably doesn't discourage risk taking as much as Western Europe or most of Asia.
And by discourage I mean actively, brutally punish. Quit your job to start your own business which failed after three years? You're going to have a hard time getting that corporate job back. Got a felony for selling weed in college? Hope you're happy driving a truck the rest of your life.
This is something the software industry handles really well. It is considered quite reasonable to quit your job with a major company to try to build a startup. And if it fails, as most do, you're not an untouchable loser. You can quite reasonably apply for another job at the level you left, or even a bit higher, particularly if you managed to keep things running for some years, since you now have some serious management experience.
This means starting a new company doesn't have all that much downside. On the up-side, you have a small chance of making a fortune. On the downside, you have a large chance of losing a few years of career progression, and maybe not even that.
Yeah, the main cost is opportunity cost since you could be paid so much money at big companies, or you could work at a startup and be paid only in lottery tickets.
If the EV was high, then either the variation is even higher or it's not much of a risk. I would think that definitionally, a "risk taker" is someone who either chases many/all risks, in which case they'll eventually lose to the house, or someone who takes high EV/high risk bets. High risk means most fail, even if the few that succeed become exceptionally rich. So yes, risk takers are usually losers. Smart risk takers will on average win, but the median of that same group will be losers.
Risk takers are very good for society though, as they create new businesses and invent things. It's so good, in fact, that we should incentive them by helping them land softly and try again. Maybe their third restaurant will be a success!
I remember an episode of the (UK) Apprentice where a contestant used casino imagery to sell a fragrance for men, and the feedback was "sorry to have to tell you, but gambling = debts = misery". So...I get what you mean. Sometimes risks can't be avoided though. Perhaps returning to the language of fortitude as a virtue would be helpful as it includes sub-virtues like patience.
Girls here in the Sonoran Desert are taking up flag football, which seems to me a good thing. Kids are cursed by their smart phones and social media -- and deserve the time and experience of a healthier childhood and puberty.
In our county of a million, two local high schools established girls' flag football teams last year, and now find their players mentoring six new teams. Girls need more than quinceaneras. Imagine the experiences they'll have if they develop programs in parity with the boys' programs. It could be big.
For the SAT, how does the median score correlate with the test-taker's age? What is the median score for a 14-year old, a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, and an 18-year old?
Power companies are pushing back against the steeply increasing power requirements of data centers (read AI).
"Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are fighting a proposal by an Ohio power company to significantly increase the upfront energy costs they’ll pay for their data centers, a move the companies dubbed “unfair” and “discriminatory” in documents filed with Ohio’s Public Utility Commission last month. American Electric Power Ohio said in filings that the tariff increase was needed to prevent new infrastructure costs from being passed on to other customers such as households and businesses if the tech industry should fail to follow through on its ambitious, energy intensive plans."
The article is behind the WaPo paywall, but you get a few free reads a month. It's worth reading if you're interested in the problem of powering AI.
Not discussed in the article, but In California, the utilities seem to be passing along the costs to consumers, which is causing angst among consumers and business owners as their rates climb.
The WSJ of yesterday, the 18th, published an essay in its opinion pages by Sean Patrick Cooper titled 'Data Centers Make Terrible Neighbors,' regarding the politics of 'non-disclosure' agreements between tech companies and municipalities. It's pretty revealing.
Africans paid $4 an hr tag images so that AI can respond to verbal prompts with appropriate images . Maybe they'll hire some Africans to generate power via Stairmasters or some such. To get hired to tag images Africans must have a college degree and speak fluent English, but these qualifications are unnecessary for the stairmaster, so they can be paid considerably less
than the smart fluent people who went to the trouble of getting a college degree.
Yes. It’s an awful job though. There are rules that have to do with keeping the data they have secure. They must work alone, and cannot tell anyone details about what they do, and keep their pace brisk, and pass periodic accuracy checks. I keep picturing somebody making it through college, full of pride and hope because they have fluent English and a BS, and then winding up with this.
Bears some resemblance to more than a few bartenders I’ve met in my time. Cab drivers as well, but not so much anymore.
I had a cab ride in NYC back in the 80’s, got chatting with the driver (it started with him telling me I couldn’t smoke pot in the car- tobacco was still ok ) and it turned out he was a fully qualified physician. He was a Russian…
And then there was the young woman who used to keep me in red wine who was graduated as an architect with about $200,000 of student debt. Full of hopes and dreams, and consumed by disillusionment…
On the brighter side, she was replaced by a young Irish girl who kept me in red wine and eventually moved back to Ireland and is working for Google last I heard. But you could tell by the way she tended bar that she had a future.
Anyway, it won’t be long before an AI will be able to tag images for another AI and then they will all be out of work. And taxis will be self driving, so they’ll be screwed there as well. In a world of super-intelligent AI, what is the point of getting a really good formal education? it started with slide rules and then graduated to calculators, and the next step is coming. Isn’t the logical extension of getting someone else to work for you slavery?
Oh, they did very much profitably do it. look back to when the Spaniards were exploiting the gold mines in South America with slave labor.
They needed to be constantly drained. Which meant a bunch of men on a big wheel turning it to run the pump. They were kept in traces, and when one dropped dead, they just cut him out of the traces and put it in another one.
And the mine next door that's just dumping the Purina Slave Kibble straight into the boiler of the steam engine, pumps more water and so mines more gold at less cost. Probably winds up buying the first mine and then freeing the slaves because the steam engine is cheaper.
The now-freedmen may then of course starve for lack of kibble, see also Henry, John. So there are potential pitfalls. But that sort of brute-force industrial slavery went out of style when decent steam engines became available.
"Build their own power plants" is being actively explored. Data centers are among the more promising potential early customers for small modular fission reactors.
Why would they want to use nuclear reactors that don't exist and will take many many years to get past legal when they do exist, rather than just buying gas turbines off the shelf from GE or whomever? I am very, very confident that a gigawatt of COTS gas turbines will be *much* cheaper than a gigawatt of "small modular fission reactors", and available next year rather than (maybe) next decade. Fuel costs won't eat up the difference on a timescale of less than a decade - by which point I am assured that the new ASI will have built us all quantum zero-point energy generators or whatnot.
Is it just that they're irrationally technophilic nerds who will pay any price to use the shiniest new technology even though the old stuff still does everything they need? Or is there some practical advantage that I am missing.
That's a good question. The articles I've seen are light on details, so it's not clear that any of the potential buyers (Google, Microsoft, and Oracle are the names I've seen most often) are actually committing to buy anything, or if they're just doing planning for how they'd use SMRs if/when NuScale or whoever has some to sell.
I did see something about Oracle having applied for and gotten some kind of permit to install three SMRs, but I can't find details on if this is a stage in the NRC approval process or a local building permit or what. And it seems odd that they could get a permit to install a nuclear reactor that doesn't actually exist yet.
Yes, but somewhere in the article, one of the power company spokespersons asked (and I'm paraphrasing) what if they built out the infrastructure and then the data centers are shut down? — with the implication this would happen if the AI bubble bursts. Then the power companies would be left holding the amortized buildout costs without any income to cover them.
It would if they charged the data centers up front for the costs of upgrading their infrastructure. But that's why the data center owners are screaming. LOL!
Yes. I was just thinking that utilities, telephone companies and cable companies have always operated on the idea that they will hook you up at their expense and make it up on the fees afterwards. I got the impression that model does not scale into the demands of data centers and their power needs and infrastructure needs.
"The things that really matter in this civilization are done by professionals (as opposed to amateurs.)"
I'm thinking that's about 90% true. The main exception that comes to mind is parenting, which is in fact done by amateurs, but even that is increasingly professionalized, through day care and full-day schooling.
"Really matters" is a problem here, because it's undefined. I think, based on the 90% metric, that you referring to the vital infrastructure functions of society - power, food, logistics, construction and repair, etc., and not things that "matter" to people but are not in those fields (such as friendship, love, entertainment and a bunch of other things). If you are further defining "professional" to be anyone paid to do a thing, or at least paid for regular work, that pulls in most of the people working in that field, even if they are bad at it or could never maintain the vital functions on their own. Excluding those two huge caveats, I would say that it's at least directionally true. We would never have a percent that would be fully accepted, but it would be high.
I disagree that parenting is done by amateurs. Parenting is mostly about transferring knowledge on how to independently exist in the world, so that your child can eventually independently exist in the world. The core relevant experience required is "existing in the world". A lot of the transfer of knowledge is done implicitly, by your child observing what you do.
Some people do better at existing in the world than others, but no-one is an amateur. 18 year-olds have babies and do fine. Whereas if you gave my 5 year-old a baby he would be a terrible parent, because he really is an amateur.
Parenting is the big exception, yes. Going by your definition of professionals (people that are paid to do something, not necessarily trained to do something), volunteer organizations are probably another significant exception. Some volunteers are in fact trained, but they're not paid (at least not anything approaching a normal salary).
Taking these exceptions into consideration... I'd maybe say that your statement is 75-to-80% true.
But amateurs typically do things better. Ask any beer judge, they'll tell you amateur beer events have better beers than commercial events. Amateurs are in love with their craft, sparing no expense nor inconvenience, pride and love are the driving forces. Professionals on the other hand have budgets, deadlines, deliverables, all the impediments to quality.
I think parenting is big enough that you can't fit your "90% true" in the same room with it. Possibly related, there's a lot of noncommercial sex that I'd say really matters to a whole lot of people.
But for most other things, the Ferengi 13th Rule of Acquisition applies: "Anything worth doing is worth doing for money". And anything that "really matters", there will be probably people willing to pay to have it done and done right. There will be hobbyists, yes, but the people who do it right and do it at scale will probably have found a way to do it professionally.
No, but it doesn't have to be symmetric. Simplistically (and excluding e.g. parenthood as already noted), all the stuff worth doing will be done by professionals, and some stuff that's not worth doing will also be done by professionals. And even stuff that's not worth doing, often still *matters*.
I wonder what you mean by "matters" versus "worth doing". The way I typically math it out, "worth doing" includes anything where the return or savings in $$ exceeds the cost, but also includes things that are hard to measure in $$, but nevertheless are so important to someone that they'd rather give up some amount of $$ than do without (e.g. spend another year with grandma), so they're effectively measurable in $$ after all. Or perhaps more fundamentally, measurable in the portion of one's life spent pursuing it.
I can't think of anything I would call "mattering" that I couldn't measure that way, but maybe I'm just low on coffee. (Cost: about 30 seconds, spread over about 600.)
To take an extreme example, The invasion of Ukraine by Russia's professional army is clearly not worth doing, even for Russia. But it even more clearly *matters*.
And a thing need not be actively destructive to qualify here. Large vanity projects like e.g. building extravagant skyscrapers in the desert, are mostly a waste of resources and I would argue not worth doing. But they do matter, only in part because they are a massive waste of resources that could have been put to better use. And, again, are mostly done by professionals.
It isn’t symmetric. I agree. And I also agree that stuff “not worth doing“ still matters. And there are people who do stuff that’s “not worth doing” really really well.
The whole thing is a bit of a rabbit hole because professional and amateur are really slippery words . Amateur originally meant just what it sounds like; for the *love of it. It has a very different connotation in its current form. It usually implies a lesser capability.
Similarly, professional implies “better.” I guess you could argue [whatever the issue is] anyway you wanted, depending on how you define those two words.
I might think of “professional” as doing something in the most pragmatic and efficient way possible; this is particularly applicable when talking about how one earns a living. Being an amateur frees one from those conditions. Pragmatism and efficiency are not part of the calculation.
As an aside, I don’t think parenting has any place in this discussion. All the professions that have been discussed here associated with parenting should be considered resources for the parent, not an alternative. Parenting is neither a vocation nor a profession. It’s something you do when you have a child, one way or the other, meaning you do it to the best of your ability with the resources available, or you don’t and walk away.
What do you mean by "really matter," though? If someone with no professional skills is enjoying life and thriving, doesn't that matter? If it doesn't, what's the point of the professionals who manage the production and transport of food, water, power, etc. to the person, the doctors who treat the person's illnesses, etc? Why do the professionals matter, beyond the good they do for humanity as a whole?
If I rephrase as , "The things we consider really important in this civilization are done by professionals," does that clarify anything? I'm not suggesting that "really matter" has to be somehow objectively evaluated.
"really matter" and your rephrase are pretty subjective and vary for each individual. For many artists/musicians and their fans the art really matters, and many artists/musicians are not professionals. AKA - "day job".
I still don't agree. If the wellbeing of humanity doesn't matter, what does? It seems like there's a buried assumption somewhere that the higher level of intelligence and training required for professionals' tasks matters in and of itself. Why does it, though? We're not in high school any more, and the universe doesn't give a shit about our SAT scores. There's an attitude I pick up a lot on here that smart people just matter more. They're better. There could even be a formula: Everyone's value is one, multiplied by the number of standard deviations above or below the mean their IQ is.
Oh, by "professionals," I don't mean highly-trained (typically college-educated) people. I just mean people who are doing what they do, for a living. Professional, as opposed to amateur, not professional as opposed to unskilled labor or trades-work.
I think I still don't agree, and I'm really not into disagreeing for sport.
I agree that if you poll people about what activities really matter, they will name jobs, including blue collar jobs -- house painters, garbage men, etc. But if you ask people who really matters to *them,* you get the names of the people who understand them & care about them. Parents, siblings, friends and also empathic and kind strangers, hold the world together in a way that people aren't aware of. that’s why when the subject of eugenics comes up I always say
if we can only select for one thing, let’s select for empathy. Here's a story from my life: I was on vacation and got a migraine. It was so awful that I went to the ER, where they gave me a shot of imitrex that just erased the thing over the course of 20 mins of so. But what sticks in my mind is the nurse who took care of me. He checked in on me often before the shot, and also while it was taking effect, and every time he did he was profoundly comforting, mostly because I felt sure he genuinely sympathized. They was something he did when he asked me how I was doing -- I forget what it was now, something like cupping my cheek in his hand -- that was very tender. (And it did not seem at all sexual -- and judging by his manner, he was a gay man anyhow, and I'm a woman). That nurse has stuck in my mind for decades, overshadowing even the miracle of imitrex. Even now when I think of him I feel the ghost of a warm glow.
What constitutes "this civilization"? If only the professionals are following the law, or having fun, you don't have a civilization. You have a fortress surrounded by barbarians.
"Peace Love and Understanding are done by professionals."
Although I think the OP meant "really important *positive* things in this civilization," I immediately thought of all the negative things done by professionals. A professional military can cause a lot of negative impacts on a lot of people (military and civilian) when they go into action. Of course, unprofessional armies such as Hamas and the Russian army do lots of damage, too. Professional financial criminals can do a lot of damage to individuals and damage the faith in our financial institutions.
And by professionals, does the OP mean someone with a professional degree or certification? Farm laborers with no degrees or certifications harvest our crops. That's pretty important work! And I don't think civilzation would function very smoothly without construction workers, meat packers, garbage collectors, cashiers, fast food workers, janitors (etc.).
Well then the question is just whether people are willing to pay money for things they want, which seems trivially true. Every professional is in a line of work someone values, because otherwise there wouldn't be enough support for it to be a profession.
It’s not easy to remain optimistic about the long term progress of humanity when the events of the present day make it feel like we might be slipping backwards.
Matthew Yglesias had a link in his Substack post today that brightened my outlook at least a bit.
The link is to a transcript of a 2019 podcast episode with Jonathon Capehart and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee
In the post he suggests that the overt racism of George Wallace was largely instrumental and that a visit from black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm while he was in a hospital bed recovering from an attempted assassin’s bullets affected a sincere change of heart in Wallace toward black people.
This part is from a speech by Wallace’s daughter in a majority black church in 1979.
WALLACE KENNEDY: When Congresswoman Chisholm sat by my daddy’s bed, he asked her, “What are your people going to say about your coming here?” Shirley Chisholm replied, “I know what they’re going to say but I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.” Daddy was overwhelmed by her truth, and her willingness to face the potential negative consequences of her political career because of him — something he had never done for anyone else.
Shirley Chisholm had the courage to believe that even George Wallace could change. She had faith in him. And there would be others who followed. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm planted a seed of new beginnings in my father’s heart. A chance to make it right. An opportunity for a better way for the seven-year journey he would take from there to this very church.
On a Sunday in 1979, Daddy’s arrival to this church was unannounced and unexpected. But for an attendant rolling his wheelchair to the front of this sanctuary, he was alone. What the congregation must have thought when he said,
“I’ve learned what suffering means in a way that was impossible. I think I can understand something of the pain that black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain and I can only ask for your forgiveness.”
As he was leaving the church, the congregation began singing “Amazing Grace.”
________
Link to
Opinions | How segregationist George Wallace became a model for racial reconciliation: ‘Voices of the Movement’ Episode 6
Nah. Come on. Listen to The Drive-By Truckers great album "Southern Rock Opera" which is about George Wallace, Neil Young and Lynard Skynyrd. According to the Truckers from Alabama, whom I'd trust with my life, Wallace only became a segregationist for opportunistic reasons in '68. His prior stance was relatively progressive for Alabama at the time. He just sold his soul for what seemed like a populist position at the time.
Really, Southern Rock Opera is one of the greatest albums ever made and will give you more truth than that podcast.
> Wallace only became a segregationist for opportunistic reasons in '68
That’s what Matthew Yglesias means by: “the overt racism of George Wallace was largely instrumental”. Wallace had tried “build better roads and better schools” in his campaigning but it didn’t work. The “segregation now, segregation forever” stuff did.
Half of the podcast was a speech by George Wallace’s own daughter.
As a piece, the podcast was a story of redemption from havIng “sold his soul for what seemed like a populist position at the time.”
I might check out Drive by Truckers but I think I’ll always remain an Allman Brothers guy listening to Richard Betts pickin’ on that red guitar.
Your side is actively shooting presidents, criminally prosecuting your political opponents, taking your political opponents off the ballot, burning down cities, and firebombing churches, but yes, of course, the mean tweets are the REAL Threat To Democracy!!!
And the guy caught on the golf course was a Trump voter who'd recently soured on that and had supported Haley and a fringe candidate in this year's GOP primaries. Not sure which "side" that puts him on but it sure isn't the Dems.
An alternative hypothesis is that Wallace was following his political incentives. When black voters were effectively disenfranchised, he espoused policies that appealed to the dominant voting bloc. After black voters became an effective voting bloc, he adjusted to the new incentive structure.
Total non sequitur except that it's an upper: Cat's really like these interactive toys from China. They're like roombas -- zoom around randomly, and so maintain the cats' interest.
They can get themselves out of corners, etc. All are designed so that they turn on once an hour for 5 or 10 mins. After that they doze, but wake up instantly if jiggled by a paw. I bought a couple because I felt bad about leaving my cats alone for hours when I went in to the office.
They seem to be irresistible to cats. Mine take one sniff and walk away from many things, but this thing, the day I presented it, they followed around all evening. My timid cat was scared of it at first. You can make them less daunting by putting them in a box or in the bathtub, or inside a cat tunnel if you have one.
I’m checking the link out and considering getting one now. If I have trouble locating the shyer of my two cats I just have to pick up the laser pointer that projects the red dot. He recognizes the sound of the attached key ring rattling and comes running.
I have heard that laser pointers are actually not that great a cat toy because they can never catch it, so they get frustrated. Better for them to sometimes succeed.
Yeah, I’ve wondered about the frustration factor. They probably have more fun when I use the fabric ‘kite tail’ at the end of a plastic stick, kind of a fly rod casting action involved with that one.
They get to grab the fabric and kick the hell out of it so it seems like it appeals to their hunter instinct.
Yeah, they love that red dot. The trouble is, they need you to make it come alive. (Actually, I've seen gizmos on Amazon pets section that will project and randomly move a red dot. Did not get one because I was worried about it shining into cats' eyes when they come up to investigate the device. Do you think it makes sense to worry about that?). Here's a video of my cats with one of the devices zooming in and around their cat tunnels. https://vimeo.com/1010343326/01f745df2e?share=copy
They're pretty new to it and the more timid one, the black one, is still just watching. Orange guy's having a ball.
Yeah, I usually get tired of moving the dot before the cat tires of playing. Not sure how dangerous it is to vision but I am careful not to shine it into their eyes.
This is referring to digging up evidence of ‘transgressions’ that were not considered wrong or bad in the past and retroactively holding them to a new standard I assume.
If that’s what you are getting at, I agree that’s idiotic and wrong.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is really, really looking to fill this scientific software position. You would be the software expert working with scientists to improve the architecture / usability / integration of physics codes. The pay is probably less than what you could get in silicon valley, but it is more than academia. Plus it's really cool to be working on fusion energy with a bunch of other very talented people at a place that is delivering results.
I interviewed for a different software position at CFS (on the SPARC I&C team) about three years ago. I didn't get the job, but I came away with a favorable impression of the people I talked to. I had been following them for a while before applying, after coming across a YouTube video of one of Professor Whyte's talks some time in 2018.
I don't know what the situation in fusion is like, but in my current scientific field we do sometimes have to use hastily written, not entirely user-friendly software, though we also see more polished software being developed as the field grows and some techniques start to mature. I've been learning software development in such an environment...
Feel free to ignore this but the non-technical parts of this (the job description, not what you wrote) sound really off-putting to me. This kind of marketing speech is the furthest one can get from "authentic", it's so transparently made to sound impressive that it sets off all of my bullshit sensors, deservedly or not.
Might just be me, and if anyone wants to tell me that, no, this is in fact how you reach the most people I'll probably believe you.
hahaha fair enough. I actually do agree with you that the written description is poor (I didn't write it but maybe I can help get it updated to something better).
The best I can say is that there really are some very brilliant people working there. And that CFS has made groundbreaking progress in HTS magnets such as the 20T toroidal model field coil (search on youtube) and that the high field approach to fusion that CFS has adopted has some real advantages (there's some discussion in the comments here https://www.construction-physics.com/p/will-we-ever-get-fusion-power, but for the technical I would recommend the SPARC Physics Basis papers in Journal of Plasma Physics).
If you have further recs on how to improve the description to land better with software people then I'd appreciate it. We're in an interesting position of physicists trying to recruit outside our normal networks so it can be rocky.
Does anyone know why Nate's model is so bullish on Trump?
All the way back in August, he had the person who won Pennsylvania as having a 90+% chance to win the election (https://www.natesilver.net/p/welcome-to-the-bizarre-world-of-conditional). He currently has Harris narrowly ahead in Pennsylvania (D+0.2, https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-president-election-polls-model). If we assume it's a 50-50 probability split (seems a reasonable approximation for a 0.2 point lead) and do a simple math calculation using the numbers from the conditional probabilities, then this would suggest Harris currently has a 48% chance of winning. There's probably some wiggle room here for variations in other details, changes in what "winning in PA means" (e.g. less scenarios where it's a polling error in R's favor, resulting in D+4 in PA), etc, but Trump's odds seem much bigger than I'd expect from those two numbers.
Silver said he was discounting the post-convention bump that Harris got because he expected it would be temporary. But the bump seems to be holding. I noticed that some people on TwiXter were asking when and if he'd update his forecast. I don't think he has, yet.
D+0.2% is the average of polls of PA voters. That's a big part of Silver's model for who's likely to win PA, but far from the only part.
In 2020, Biden won PA by 1.2%, which is 3.3 percentage points less than his national popular vote. And in 2016, Clinton lost PA by 0.7% while winning the national popular vote by 2.1%, so she underperformed in PA by 2.8%. So in the last two elections, Democrats have underperformed national popular votes in PA by about 3%. Apply this as an adjustment to Harris's 2.2% lead in national polls, and that implies Trump is actually ahead in PA by 0.8%. Last I checked, Silver's model uses a weighted average of adjusted national polls (using a similar calculation to my illustration but probably not exactly the same) and state polls to estimate who's currently leading in that state. The relative weights depend on how many good recent polls there are of the state in question.
The same mechanism is applied in reverse, using adjusted state polls as an additional signal of the national popular vote. This is used along with the national polling average to determine the input to state averages I described in the previous paragraph. So if Trump is overperforming what we'd expect from national polls in polls of other states, then the model's estimate of national popular vote is going to get adjusted upwards a little.
And there's also @DangerouslyUnstable's point: just looking at current polls gives you what Silver calls a "now-cast", but there are further fiddly bits in the model to account for how things are likely to change between now and election day. In addition to the convention bounce adjustment, I think there's also stuff forecasting how people currently polling as undecided or third-party supporters are likely to vote on election day. I think there's also a "fundamentals" factor where there's a prior for how each state is likely to vote based on demographics and past election results which is weighed more heavily early in the election cycle and gradually declines to zero by election day.
His model takes what the _current_ polls are, and then does a lot of work to figure out what it _expects_ the polls to be on election day. I couldn't tell you the exact reason (although a week ago it was most likely the convention bounce adjustments, and it might still be the tail end of that), but whatever it is, the model must expect the polls to regress for Harris a bit.
He's probably doing some kind of data correction for the polls or something like that. The polls were bullish on Clinton and Biden both compared to the final results. I know he does that for the nationwide percent, such that a +3% Harris is something like a 50/50 for the chance to win. California is a big part of that (Clinton ran up a big lead there while losing a few states by small amounts), but he may be doing the same for individual states. I'm not a paid subscriber, so I don't know if he talks about those corrections in detail anywhere.
The overall point he keeps repeating is that the swing states are all that matter in assessing the POTUS election-outcome odds, and that good-quality polling of those individual states has been fairly scarce until just this calendar month.
I have recently written about Benthan's Bulldog's argument for God, which Scott recently linked. I argue that his claim that the number of possible people is Beth-2 (that is, the same cardinality as the powerset of the real numbers, or the powerset of the powerset of the integers) is implausible, and that we can likely enumerate all meaningfully distinct human-like brain states in universes which have roughly the same physical foundation as ours.
Stepping a bit back, I also look at the root claim that the number of universes should be Beth-2, which can be traced back to Quine's Democritian worlds. I think that from a physical perspective, the modelling with f:R^4->{0,1} where f(r,t)=1 iff a particle occupies position r at time t is not well suited to gain knowledge about the possible configurations a universe can have, because almost all functions f would seriously break physics.
I end up giving tips about how to run universes with pre-determined lifetime with finite resources in a way which the inhabitants will not notice, and rant a bit that the central example of an irrational number should be some uncomputable, undescribable monstrosity rather than sqrt(2) or pi.
If this sounds like your cup of tea, read the whole thing (or parts of it) here:
I had an odd thought. We've all been reading of the danger of AI doing most of its training off the Internet, which is increasingly full of AI-generated content. This leads to a kind of poisoning of the training, so that AI's responses are dumber to the extent it's been exposed to this mix of material, so that AI thinking in general is increasingly handicapped by a data version of mad cow disease.
It just occurred to me now that we humans who live primarily in a built environment, surrounded by things designed to be useful or to convince, may be (in a much longer loop) slowly diminished in ways we can't really see.
Moral, I guess? Get out into the woods, the woods aren't going to try to convince you of anything.
The city I live in is packed with things and people that challenge me, delight me, and expand my worldview, many times every day.
I do love being in nature but it's not at all mentally stimulating in the same way. A life spent in the woods may be peaceful and wholesome but, on its own, will not lead to a brilliant mind.
Moral, for me? Have as many experiences as possible. City, woods, other cities, deserts, all of it.
I agree on AI's capacity for compounding and accelerating the spread of bad data.
It certainly happens without the effect of validating the internet's own 'narratives', though. In at least one regard, AI is simply a more advanced form of gaslighting, which worked for Sam Adams, and still does for countless promoters of gadgets and products on cable TV, and today's suburban 'actvists'. It may just give performative social movements and bad political ideas more traction.
The greed of politics and consumerism will no doubt trivialize AI -- at the same time it improves some technology and aids in helping make some medical advances and such.
I should have said, 'Along with its many useful and helpful applications, AI will likely also be used for more effective gaslighting.' I don't want to contribute to the noise. Sorry.
There's a more fundamental problem with AI training - what do we want the AI to do? Training on AI-generated data may be a recursive problem as you suggest, but we're also training AIs on Reddit and other human-generated output of dubious worth. But, if we want the AI to act like a human and use normal human speech, maybe Reddit is a great place to go. Of course, if Reddit is abnormal in any systematic way, you are also teaching it to be similarly abnormal - political opinions, humor, grammar, whatever.
If we train it on scientific papers, we might be happy with the rigorous responses it provides (although with the replication crisis, maybe not), but maybe the way it talks to people is stilted and off-putting. We could train it on classic novels, but then it uses biases from hundreds of years ago and talks like an 18th century Englishman.
The current goal seems to be to train it on everything humans have ever done, and help it identify when it should talk like Lord Cumberland or Genghis Khan and when it should use modern slang.
We don't have to use the same AI for everything. We could train one AI on conversation and use it in call centers. Train another AI on scientific papers and use it in research.
I go questing for the enchanted forest a lot and have had many good epiphanies. Speaking to the original post question - yes living primarily in a built environment does diminish life experience - there are people who don't know that some of the food they eat grows from the ground or was once an animal.
I regret the facebook link, but I can't find the video on youtube.
From the link: "Recently, Google has released a massive upgrade to this tool that allows you to generate a spoken word podcast-style discussion of the input material. The output that it generates is nearly indistinguishable from normal human conversation and it is able to critique the input material in a novel and surprisingly insightful manner. While I realize that these tools do not represent 'true' intelligence, they still do demonstrate a stunning simulacrum of the real thing."
The voices are better than most computer voices, and there's an impression of human personalities, but with less emotional variation.
It gets at least two things blatantly wrong about the story. The reporter died from a sign falling on him. It was the young couple which was killed by a car. Getting this right would have taken minimal attention. Or was the ai imitating human errors?
It would take a little more processing to grasp that the insurance companies hired assassins to kill Pinero. The ai said it was a mystery.
>It gets at least two things blatantly wrong about the story. The reporter died from a sign falling on him. It was the young couple which was killed by a car. <
I'm assuming from this that they decided to test their AI by making it give commentary on the Final Destination series, in which the concept of death hunts down teenagers for the pettiest vengeance possible.
Not an AI, a highly limited oracle. I recommend reading the story, it's not very long, has a number of good features, and is very impressive for a first story.
The device is looks down the four-dimensional time line for a person, and identifies when the end happens.
The sign falling isn't intended as slapstick, it's an accident which couldn't plausibly be arranged.
Here is a question I have wondered about for a while. Years ago, while hanging out with friends, one asked: During an erotic encounter, what is the ideal ratio of kissing to intercourse? I thought to myself, "that sounds like a false dichotomy. Shouldn't they happen simultaneously during intercourse?" But I have subsequently noticed in the media that, when intercourse is depicted, the couple is rarely seen kissing. So I am curious what the norm actually is, and what people's preferences are.
By coincidence I just read an interview with an expert on kissing this week. Two bits from that are related to your question:
- Kissing is not a biological instinct, but it is a social convention. Only about half of the cultures all over the world kiss, and not all those kiss in sexual context.
- In Hollywood there was a "production code" formulated in 1934, which determined what could or couldn't be shown on screen. Part of the code was that kisses could last at most 3 second. Since it was still the most intimate form of interaction, it played a huge role, and people would pay for a movie ticket just to see a kiss between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. But the production code eroded in the 60s, and since then love scenes became a lot more explicit and kissing has lost significance. First in movies, but also (at least that is what he claimed) in Western societies in general.
Oh, and his answer on whether kissing makes sex better:
"I can't answer that scientifically, personally I would say: sex mostly gets better when it lasts longer. And kissing is a good way to prolong the activity."
EDIT: Slight correction, only half of societies have *romantic-sexual* kisses. Parents kissing their children is much more wide-spread and maybe universal. From the authors of the original study:
"We looked at 168 cultures and found couples kissing in only 46 percent of them. Societies with distinct social classes are usually kissers; societies with fewer or no social classes, like hunter-gatherer communities, are usually not."
See _Sex Is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays_, which argues that sex is as much a cultural production as music, and that people are done a grave disservice by being told that sex is both natural and it's important to just get it right.
Interresting. Are you on the taller side, at leaat relative to the height of your partner? (Or, if you are referring to being on the receiving end, are you on the shorter side?)
My first substack! Explaining how kink and BDSM are not about "weird sex", but adapting to the dating marketplace as a boring guy. Essentially it is a "honest, consensual PUA" where the exciting stuff are explicitly negotiated:
Judging how hard it actually is to find a kinky guy, I am very much not convinced by this argument.
And I've tried dating vanilla guys and teaching them what I like and they're just not into it, so saying it's something other than innate really doesn't make sense.
And I've hear it's similarly difficult the other way around.
Men outnumber women on Fet 4:1, the issue is 95% of "Doms" will be completely fake, either just thinks kinky women are easy, or just likes rough sex, or wants to jump into things without investing time into building trust and figuring out risk-awareness and specific consent. But this is just why it works well for the 5%.
Interestingly, real life events work less well, even though everybody on Fet seems to say the opposite! I wonder if location/culture plays a role, I distinctly remember the part in Desperate Housewives that a couple moves into a house and the neighbors come to greet them, and I thought how completely creepy people would find that in Austria that some stranger knocks on your door just because they live nearby.
I'm not sure that has anything to do with your initial hypothesis, which seems to imply kink is done to make one more interesting, but if that were the case it would be something people could choose, rather than the majority of people on Fet or Feeld being fakes.
I admit it is a little confusing and not very clearly thought out. I think I meant it at some point that there has to be an actual passion for it. Then this passion has the very nice side effect of becoming more interesting.
I don't know that Fetlife is a great measure of interest in kink, either in ratios of men to women wanting kink, or in how many men on Fet are kinky.
In my experience, a *tremendous* number of men on Fet are straight vanilla dudes there for the free amateur vanilla porn (which is why the "Explore" page's photos and videos almost always are and almost always have been entirely conventionally attractive women nude or in vanilla porn poses).
I think it depends if the first attempt was one of the "cry for help" types, i.e. not really wanting to die but wanting attention/help, or if it was a genuine attempt to kill oneself and was foiled.
If you do the "cry for help" overdose attempt and finally get to see a psychiatrist to get your anti-depressant prescription, then you will feel better and less likely to try again, because you got what you were looking for.
Conversely, if you really wanted to die but someone found you and called the ambulance, I think you are more likely to have a second go and plan better to have it be successful.
People who’ve attempted suicide and lived are at a much higher risk of eventually completing suicide.
I’m sure some people who unsuccesfully attempt suicide are glad they survived and feel like they’ve got a second lease on life. But research shows that surviving suicide indicates a significantly increased likelihood that the survivor will attempt again, not a decreased likelihood.
“Are there data on the life satisfaction of people who seriously attempted suicide but were rescued or otherwise survived?”
If I exclude people who attempt suicide from my answer and focus on “mentally healthy” people like you suggest, I’m literally not answering the poster’s question.
He didn’t ask about “mentally healthy people.” He asked about people who seriously attempt suicide.
There is and you can find it online pretty easily. From memory, most attempts are one-off, most are unsuccessful and most survivors report higher life satisfaction a few years later. Something like 30% are completely psychologically normal a few years after the event. Even delaying an attempt by a few minutes or hours make it very unlikely that the average person will try again.
Does this differentiate between those who "seriously attempted" and those whose attempts were something else? I imagine it's a pretty touchy subject formally categorizing someone's suicide as Serious or a Cry For Help or whatever.
Intuitively, I would expect people who were serious to try again and not become happier soon, while people looking for help or attention would have a pretty good chance of getting to a better place.
Again working off of memory here, but a lot of the research gets around this by specifically studying only one type of suicide. There was a particularly searing one that looked at survivors of blunt force trauma type attempts (i.e. jumping off bridges, driving into bridges, just bridges in general) and even then most reported being happier a few years later.
The repeat offenders tend to be more successful overall - most people (like 90% of attempts) are just going through a sort of mental valley and once they pass through the other side never try again. A few try over and over, slowly escalating until they kill themselves. So the 'cry for help' thing can actually subvert itself there.
Side note: men are generally more 'successful' than women, because men prefer guns, ropes and cars and women prefer pills. Suicide is also very prone to spikes and fads caused by media attention - we had a local one a few years back where someone jumped over the counter at a butchers' and sawed their own head off. Then there were a spate of them and now the butchers keep the saws out of sight.
It seems to be mostly about the cost for universities associated with medical students. Plus, this one university rep argues that we don’t have a shortage of doctors, they’re just unevenly distributed because no one wants to work in rural areas.
The doctors association is advocating for more doctors to be trained.
Supply and demand is a thing. It really works. If there is a shortage of doctors, then the salary (and status) of each doctor still in practice, will increase.
And when it comes time to decide how to train new doctors, pretty much every Western nation defaults to asking the local Doctors' Guild (by whatever name) what the best way to train new doctors is. Whereupon they'll explain that training new doctors is terribly difficult and if you get it wrong lots of patients will die horribly, so for the love of all that is good and holy don't let anyone act as a doctor who hasn't been through our Guild-certified training program. Because if you can't trust a doctor on questions of health, what else have you got?
So what you get, is a Doctors' Guild that certifies just enough training programs to ensure the right level of doctor shortage to ensure that the senior doctor/guildmasters are maximally paid without being horribly overworked (or run out of town by a rioting mob). And the politicians are fine with this because the Doctors' Guild has highly paid and capable lobbyists while the people waiting six months to see a specialist, don't.
The Doctors' Guild always advocates for more doctors to be trained. That's just good PR. But they'll also advocate for them to be trained Just Right, and it will turn out that it's not just not possible to train many more doctors just right.
And when the health insurance provider decides what a doctor "deserves", possibly the most important questions are "how many existing doctors will decline the offer and go into private practice or early retirement?" and "Are there in fact enough new doctors looking for jobs to fill those holes?"
If you are willing to go into debt or are wealthy, you can study medicine at a private school in Germany or even at one in another EU country. As I said elsewhere, it’s an interesting question why this is not more widespread, but it’s definitely not the lack of availability of slots (I know because I know many people who did this)
So yes, it’s an inherently coherent model to say that a professional guild is responsible for the problem, out of self interest, but I would need to see evidence for this. I am willing to change my mind if the doctors association continuously increases standards in such a way that it increases the cost to train doctors, or if we have evidence of lobbying efforts in this direction that contradict their public pronouncements.
There are probably other pieces of evidence that would also change my mind that I am currently not thinking of.
It's easy for a bunch of doctors to get together and form a rent-seeking organization that advocates for things that increase the wealth and status of doctors. You see the same thing for engineers and lawyers. Much more difficult for everyone else to coordinate and say wait a minute, artificially restricting the supply of workers in these professions is a bad deal.
For France, it's a case of manufactured scarcity. From 1971 to 2019, the number of medical students was limited by the ministry of health, severly limiting how many of them would graduate. It also had the side effect of selecting medical students for the most ruthless and competitive, since a student don't simply have to be good enough to pass the exam, he needs to be better than most other applicants. Which led to some fucked up things like those repeating a year causing chaos in the classroom so new students couldn't match their knowledge, or actively sabotaging other students notes.
Somehow, we managed to go 50 years by selecting our doctors to be as sociopathic as possible.
Over the whole of the UK GPs work an average of 26 hours per week. This is primarily driven by women, who work an average of 23-24 hours per week. Work as a GP is seen as one of the few 'family friendly' options for a doctor (mon-fri and acceptable to work reduced hours). Women make up 48% of doctors in the UK but 56% of the GPs.
There are also various tax implications which reduce the incentive for high paid doctors (primarily those with significant experience) from working 40+ hours per week, as the marginal benefits are low. This has encouraged early retirement and reduced working hours.
I'm sure there are many many other factors, but these two spring to mind immediately.
> Is it somehow related to political correctness, like medical schools not wanting to admit too many white heterosexual males?
No, the ama predates even fdr era bullshit, its one of the oldest games; the doctor monopoly is basically ancient history; while I dont know of an example I bet you could find some europian example before slavery ended
Don't know about other countries, but it would be pretty much impossible to explicitly keep out white heterosexual males from Finnish universities, since everyone does the same tests and the admittance is based on solely the score from those tests (or possibly, in some cases, school grades). Extracurriculars or things like that don't matter.
It's often guessed that the main difficulty in getting into medical school is simply because the places are consciously limited to ensure that the number of doctors is limited and it's thus easier for the ones actually working the field to negotiate for higher salaries.
I have heard that last point as well, but the coordination and long-term thinking involved on the part of the medical guilds seems like a lot? What do you think?
Probably this: Medical students are expensive to universities, and the cost of having too few doctors is not paid by the universities. We have private medical schools that are easier to get into, but I do wonder why they aren’t more widespread, seeing how many people want to become doctors. It might be cultural, i.e. people are reluctant to take on debt even if they are almost guaranteed a stable income with their degree. Or it might just be related to the start-up cost of a university, so that we are indeed seeing more and more private medschools pop up, it’s just happening very slowly.
And I am sorry to say this, but the instinct to pin this issue on something related to wokeness is extremely weird to me (a touch grass moment, as they say). I am saying this because I believe it would be useful to re-examine your world model quite a bit if that’s the first thing you land on. For starters, your suggested explanation would not explain why people of any gender have a hard time getting into med programs. In my country, spots in these programs are allocated centrally and given out based on your high school GPA.
About the expense of running medical schools: The tuition doesn't cover it? I don't have any info about that, just assumed it did. Also, I believe medical interns and residents make a huge amount of money for the hospital and some individual doctors. (In the case of the doctors, situation would be trainees doing the care, doctor supervising.). I'm a psychologist and did my internship at a high end private psychiatric hospital. The interns were paid about 50% more than Starbucks employees. One of my fellow interns calculated how much he had earned for the hospital running groups, seeing patients, keeping the records etc., and it was around $300,000. We got about 5 hours of seminars and supervision a week. Much of that the hospital did not have to pay for, because people who were attendings (i.e., in private practice but able to admit their patients to the hospital and see them while they were there) were required to do 3 hrs./week unpaid work for the hospital.
This is Germany, where public universities are tuition free or almost free.
It’s been harder than a ten minute google search allowed to get detailed info on how universities are compensated on a per student basis, but the cost of a medical student to a university was estimated to be 20,000€/yr in 2015, while “cheap” students like law or humanities cost approximately 5,000€/yr.
So a university would have to receive 4x the funds for a medical student than for a law student. But I couldn’t find good info on that quickly.
Or the German doctors' association that is allegedly lobbying for more doctors, could say "...and here's where we've found 5,000€/yr in cost savings for medical education, while still producing doctors of acceptable quality". Nothing I've heard about medical education suggests it is in any way optimized for cost-effectiveness, but is full of things that are done because that's the way we've always done things.
This is a good point. I answered in longer form in the other thread, but adding to that: I will try and talk to some doctors and people in that field about exactly this point, and research whether this has happened.
(1) If you train in a hospital, you will work ungodly hours and get paid much less than if you emigrate to Australia/the US
(2) GPs are retiring and not being replaced because, again, younger doctors find the long hours and (relatively) low pay unattractive.
None of the practices in my town are taking on new patients, and the one that operates a waiting list is backlogged to a great degree. It's not about not wanting straight white males, they'd take them if they could get them. In part it's because our health care system is having recruitment freezes since it's a national health service and they're trying to keep costs down (healthcare *eats* money and is constantly over-budget and in debt no matter what increased funding it gets) and when it does advertise positions, consultants (for example) prefer private practice because they make more money there.
Our regional hospital is predominantly staffed by non-Irish, and increasingly the GP practice in town as well, because for an Indian, African, Arab, etc. trained doctor/nurse, the conditions here are somewhat better and getting experience under your belt here means you can then go to the UK or Europe more easily.
This has been a problem in the UK for years, around 2005 I knew a couple of guys who were really serious about getting into medical school and couldn't get in. It was simple competition for places. A source in university medical admissions told me that everyone applying had straight As so it came down to extracurricular activities.
So I've been ruminating about AI self-improvement, and I keep having the thought that there's a bootstrap issue -- that it is not possible for a system to fully understand itself, and then do a redesign that makes it better. But there are lots of easy counterexamples. After all people can improve themselves. They can learn new skills, become physically stronger, cure some of their own illnesses, fix some disabilities they were born with. (For the last you might need a doctor, but then that doctor, if born with the same disability you were, could fix the disability after medical training.)
But it seems to me that the self-improvement people are capable of isn't a deep kind. It's based on knowledge about how a part of them works. But nobody knows how the whole thing works -- the human body and mind. So radical improvement of the self, a redesign of deep structures, is beyond us. Obviously growing up involves changes in deep features of how we work, and our capabilities improve enormously -- but we don't manage that, just experience it. The survival capacity of species improves over time via natural selection, but nobody manages that either -- it just happens. It looks to me like the smartest processes in the universe are mindless, like evolution, or the cascade of changes in a maturing organism.
So I've tried to formulate my question in a way that covers the small scale improvements issue, and that of improvements occurting without planning and management. Here it is: Is it possible for an organism or a system to produce plans for a deep redesign of itself, plans that could be followed by a sufficiently intelligent 3rd party and would produce the desired result?
I realize this could go in all kinds of directions, including claims of attaining jhana, but what I would like to know is whether there is a mathematical theorem or anything of that nature that addresses it -- maybe something in physics? philosophy?
I have a suspicion that the limit for our brain self-improvement is fundamentally thermal. An average brain power consumption is reported to be about 20 W. Unless we have some unrealized efficiency gains, any massive improvement will need more power, which then needs to dissipated to keep the brain from literally cooking itself. That is… not exactly a solvable problem…
This is also exactly the problem I repeatedly see the AI alarmists ignore: where is the heat going to go? Until we find a radically more efficient computational method than flipping CMOS gates, the humanity is safe.
Current AI demonstrably have massive scaling gains available to before it should worry about efficiency. An AI as smart as humans and 10 times less efficient is an efficient gaming laptop (200W), imagine having an infinite (as infinite as the matter and energy you control, or which you can rent from AWS) army of infinitely obedient, perfectly replicable, perfectly consistent, sleep-less, hunger-less humans that can be networked and have a signal propagation speed 6 orders of magnitude faster than biology (nanosecs vs millsecs). Yeah, I would be terrified if that was plausible too.
It's a misrepresentation to say that AI alarmists are wrong because AI is not efficient, they never said the expected singularity is efficient. The biggest argument against AI alarmism and fast timelines is the Data Wall. Situational Awareness discusses this but handwaves it away with "We will figure something out with Reinforcement Learning, something something algorithmic improvements will need less data".
I do see your point but have to stop at this premise: "An AI as smart as humans and 10 times less efficient" would be an astonishing, unbelievable achievement which we have no idea how to get to at this point.
Science fiction has already thought of this. In some Alastair Reynolds novels, there is a group of people called Conjoiners. They have a bunch of tiny machines spread through the brain to increase their neural network. The excess heat is shunted through a ridge implanted in the upper skull to act as a radiator.
We obviously know how to ventilate the skull right now. Having a hole in your head isn't an optimal solution but I don't think creating some kind of filter or mesh cover is beyond our abilities either. That part seems much more doable than improving our brains to the point they generate a lot more waste heat anyway.
Interesting! I haven't read those, so can't comment on the implementation. But I can on the "vent hole" idea, and basically it won't work, for a rather interesting reason (which, not to digress, is why it's so hard sometimes to understand how things that sound very plausible don't work):
The problem is getting the heat from the depth of the brain to the hole. The danger lies not in the average temp, but in the max temp in a hot spot - which are inevitable as different "volume units" of the brain are responsible for different work. We are stuck with the thermal conductivity of the brain matter. Now, the brain uses the blood flow not only for feeding, but also for cooling, so it's possible that the problem will solve itself: to increase the power, the brain will develop more blood vessels, which will provide both energy and cooling. But then it will need to cool off that blood, so maybe develop elephant ears? :)
I was thinking about this some more, and you also saw the obvious problem that simply exposing the skull cavity isn't a very efficient heat exchange mechanism. Ideally there would be some kind of fluid transfer. Some sort of pipe network would be good, but implanting a bunch of tubes into the brain would be problematic. Of course there is already a bunch of blood flowing through the brain, but your body needs that for functions other than heat exchange. You don't want to create a pressure differential where more blood flows into the brain than out either, lots of pretty bad side effects.
I suppose the ideal implementation would be the skull vent somehow connected into the cranial bloodstream. You would have to be careful to not disrupt normal blood flow. I still think this is primarily an engineering problem, and much more surmountable than make brains so much better they have a heat disposal problem.
> Is it possible for an organism or a system to produce plans for a deep redesign of itself
At the extreme end of possible definitions for "Deep Redesign", we could define it as follows:
>>> Designing a new being as intelligent as the designer, without relying on any or most of the mechanisms and the architecture of the designer
That is, Deep Redesign is when an inventor or a maker makes something functionally equivalent (and preferably superior) to something that already exists, but doesn't reuse any of the same principles of operation and uses instead entirely new ideas.
(Obviously, this definition is as coherent as an auxiliary definition of "Creativity". In the extreme end, everything is downstream of Physics, and everything can thus be said to be based on "Physics" as the single principle of operation underlying everything that was ever invented or ever will be invented. Let us grant that this is absurd without spending words on justifying it.)
If we accept this, then your question is equivalent to asking whether humans can achieve AGI using an approach other than Evolution and biomimicry more generally. After all, if humans invented AGI then they have effectively "Deep-Redesigned" themselves: they invented something equivalent entirely from first principles.
That would also mean that the newly created AGI could pull another Deep Redesign: just remake itself (but better) from scratch all over again, like its creators remade themselves by creating it.
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The limits of Mathematics and Physics tend to be immensely freeing and unrealistic. Landauer's limit [1] is a limit on how much you can make computers energy-efficient, and computers in 2014 were already said to use a billion times more per operation than the limit allows. And even if we approached it, it still (1) Assumes Irreversible Computation, which we can partially circumvent using Reversible Computation [2], (2) Depends on ambient temperature, which we can arbitrarily lower by computing in space or deep inside ice oceans of extraterrestrial places.
So clearly it's not much of a limit, is it? Other theorems that come to my mind is the No Free Lunch theorem, which can be roughly summarized as "No algorithm is better than any other when you evaluate its performance on all possible instances of the problem you're interested in", superficially ominous until you realize that we don't care about every single instance of the any problem, we care about subsets and categories.
Or consider how humans can superficially violate Entropy's ever-continuing march by making smart structures and patterns of matter and energy that resist dissipation... for a while, using the energy that we got from animals which they got from plants which they got from the Sun which it got from increasing entropy elsewhere much much faster than we decrease it locally. A strict (and wrong) interpretation of Entropy will rule out the existence of humans, but we have solid evidence that this is wrong.
All of this to say, I don't think you will be illuminated by the various impossibility results in Mathematics and Physics, even if you manage to appreciate them to their full technical depth. Those results have lots of unrealistic undesirable assumptions often broken in practice, and not even deliberately.
<If we accept this, then your question is equivalent to asking whether humans can achieve AGI using an approach other than Evolution and biomimicry more generally. After all, if humans invented AGI then they have effectively "Deep-Redesigned" themselves: they invented something equivalent entirely from first principles.
Yes, I agree. You totally get what I'm asking. So far we have failed at deep redesign. It's astonishing, to me anyhow, that the idiotic move of "throw everything into the soup pot, including industrial waste" worked as well as it did. But of course as you say it's sort of a speeded up version of evolution. The deep wisdom of mindless processes. And earlier attempts to create AGI, carried out by people who tried to translate their smarts into rules for the system to follow failed -- because there are always exceptions, and some of them cannot even be explained by subrules, we just know that the rule is that, for ex., tomatoes are called vegetables even though they match the criteria for fruits. A lot of our knowledge is just absorbing regularities that exist even though they don't follow the rules. Dumb deep wisdom.
I understand what you're saying about how math and physics proofs, done via abstractions, don't predict real world possibilities well because in the real world there are so many things one can change, so many workarounds. One workaround I have wondered about is training AI on the brain activity of a developing baby. (Of course wiring up a baby for the duration of it's development is a deeply evil thing to do, but don't tell me there aren't people in this field who wouldn't be willing to do it. Jeez, some sound like creating ASI is such a holy goal it would justify making the human centipede if that would be useful.).Is there a kind of deep learning that could be based on that? Or do you need to somehow tag the activity, i.e. pair it with what the baby is noticing and processing during different periods of brain activity? At some point, the baby "realizes" different things, and that realization presumably is reflected in changes in brain activity. Could these changes be used as sort of retroactive tags for earlier brain activities? For ex., at some point early on infants learn to recognize their caretaker. Many different visual patterns of caretaker seen from different angles and in different lights all get classed as the same, and the new pattern of brain activitiy associated with "there's my caretaker" would be the retroactive tag.
> But of course as you say it's sort of a speeded up version of evolution.
I have to object here. On several counts, from less objectionable to most objectionable:
(1) "Throwing up everything into the soup pot" might be a concise and not terribly lossy summary of the current AI paradigm, but it's very unfair and misleading if taken at face value. The soup pot is a very special one (The Transformer architecture), any other pot wouldn't have worked. Furthermore, the pot costs upwards of a 100 billion, and this - in and of itself - require smart operation and management.
(2) More generally, I don't think the Machine Learning paradigm really resembles Evolution that much except in the general vague sense of being a superficially simple concept (but full of extremely devilish details) that tends to work wonders when iterated over massive amounts of time and resources and physical scales. Beyond that, I don't think they're that similar, there is an approach to AI called Evolutionary Computing that is much more similar to Evolution than traditional neural ML is, but even it is still superficial and a Computer Science strawman of what Biologists currently believe Evolution to be (Even though if in practice [1], it still works wonders and was widely believed by sci-fi authors like Greg Egan before the 2010s AI revolution to be the future of AI).
(3) Much more generally, and that's my real objection, I think you're missing how the distinction between "Smart Processes" and "Dumb Processes" is largely illusionary. Evolution is a dumb process. Current ML is a dumb process. Why not go all the way? Why isn't explicit symbolic logic just a dumb process? it's literally a bunch of mindless rules that have been programmed and superhumanly performed by computers countless times. Why isn't human civilization just a dumb process, it's just a bunch of apes fucking. Keep going and you will eventually reach that everything in this universe is a dumb process, because the universe itself is a huge dumb process operating by dumb mindless rules, describable in a language that could be translated to dumb mindless computers.
I know your intuition and I share it as well, I do understand how in some sense the experience of making an AI by enumerating clever rules and algorithms is different from making an AI by throwing examples at it. I don't want to be a useless pedant.
But what I'm saying is that what you're feeling is a very subtle mind trick played by your own mind on you, somewhat similar to Moravec's paradox [2], but also a bit distinct. We feel as if there's "intelligence" in what our minds do: How could we not ! it feels very difficult ! it's a lot of work being a conscious energy pump ! But zoom in far enough and you're just a bunch of mindless atoms doing mindless Quantum Physics-ing in mindless space. There is no intelligence here, at this scale, intelligence is a higher-order pattern. By the same token, throwing all data we have into the soup pot might feel extremely stupid and mindless, but not anymore than a bunch of mindless atoms, and we know for a fact that mindless atoms can give rise to intelligence and consciousness (assuming those are even distinct), so why won't the dumb example-throwing-into-a-soup pot also give rise to intelligence, and possibly consciousness as well?
> Of course wiring up a baby for the duration of it's development is a deeply evil thing to do
Is it though? The wiring doesn't necessarily hurt the baby if the sensors are designed with this in mind. Nanobots inside your bloodstream for your own benefit is standard sci-fi orthodoxy at this point, those same nanobots can capture a baby's brain down to atrociously detailed scales in time and space, no babies were necessarily harmed in the making of this AI.
> Is there a kind of deep learning that could be based on that?
Actually, yes. What you described is a generative model [3], the label "Generative Model" is a whole category of things, the recent advances in image generation are due to a specific architecture/model called Stable Diffusion, but before that GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) were making the rounds, they're the first model to inspire Deep Fake terror.
Generative models approximate distributions of data statistically: given a bunch of data, they aim to learn how to generate infinite amounts of things that look like this data. GANs approximate this goal by training 2 opposing networks in unison, one seeks to deceive and the other seeks uncover its deceit, both continuously getting better at their opposing goals. I don't know how Stable Diffusion does it, I didn't follow the scene for a bit.
Anyway, assuming the standard classification scheme of Supervised vs. Unsupervised Learning they usually bring up in textbooks (which is arbitrary and gets very murky when Semi-Supervised and Reinforcement Learning show up in the picture), generative models are by definition Unsupervised methods, they don't need tags or labels on the data. They just learn how to generate the data, they don't need anything more than the data that you want to generate more of. Given a bunch of cat pictures, a generative model will learn to generate an arbitrary amount of pictures.
If you trained a generative model on a baby's brain activity, then unhook the baby and make the model generate activity on its own, and if you further connect that brain activity to some peripherals (legs, arms, face), those peripherals will - very plausibly - behave like the corresponding organs in baby. After all, the same-ish (in a statistical sense) electrical signals are driving both. But I don't think this will be very useful, for several reasons:
(1) First, some activity doesn't make sense for non-biological peripherals. Some of the baby's brain activity is sending signals to the digestive organs to shit himself, some of it is going to his lung. Without equivalents to those biological organs in the generative model's peripherals, the electrical activity should be ignored, or else re-interpret it as other activity that makes sense (Imagine the brain electricity of a baby shitting himself going to a robot leg, what will happen? I'm curious, but probably not something very useful.)
(2) Even ignoring the relatively minor point of (1) and how to solve it, there is the bigger problem that the baby's brain electricity isn't happening in a vacuum, it's not like the baby is just a Python script performing its activity from top to bottom. The baby is a feedback adaptive signal processor, it modifies its behavior in response to stimuli. What the generative model should learn isn't a simple probability distribution of baby behavior, it should learn - somehow, I'm not an ML or statistics wizard - a conditional distribution of baby behavior as a function of inputs. So yes, you should definitely tag the brain activity with some sort of summary of the external world state, because otherwise you're just learning a very useless averaged behavior.
But yes, that's actually a very interesting idea. The first thing I thought that came to mind when I read it [4], where the authors make a general purpose game simulator based purely on a generative model. I will say again: The authors made a game, without actually writing the game as actual code !!! they trained a generative model to generate the game's (in their case DOOM, but the approach can trivially generalize of course) frames, given previous frames and player actions. Your suggestion is the natural continuation of that, it's actually a mystery why I have never thought of it before now.
> at some point early on infants learn to recognize their caretaker. Many different visual patterns of caretaker seen from different angles and in different lights all get classed as the same, and the new pattern of brain activitiy associated with "there's my caretaker"
If you're right and you manage to solve the problems above, you wouldn't have to worry about any of that, at least in theory. You don't have to manually build in into the model, the model is learning how to generate the exact electrical signals that the baby's brain would generate, so if the real baby is capable of retroactively recognizing the caretaker in his/her memories from what he/her just learned, the model will be able to, too, at least in theory. The model is learning to function like a brain, just like an image generator model is learning to function like a painter.
Well, LHHIP, my big takeaway from your big thoughtful post is that we have similar kinds of heads for topics like this but you know much more than I do about ML etc. So I will just say a few things here, then go read the situational awareness paper.
About dumb processes. You probably realized this, but just to be clear, calling them dumb wasn’t an expression of contempt. Another way of describing the deep learning process would be to say it’s a mining of wordless wisdom. I’ve always had the feeling that the universe understands itself, so we needn’t bother. But what I mean by understanding itself isn’t that it’s self-aware the way we are and could explain itself. I mean that its existing is an understanding of itself. Like, how do we know that universe understands itself? Because it made a model of itself. Where’s the model? It’s the universe. Of course I understand that this doesn’t make any logical sense — it’s a sort of mystical feeling I have, and when I try to put it into words that’s the closest I can get to describing the “dumb” genius of the universe.
About the distinction between smart processes and dumb processes breaking down. You gave some examples starting with the rules of symbolic logic. Yes, I can see many examples of the breakdown right here in human consciousness central — for instance the way we learn the language spoken in our home to learn the rules of grammar. We just pick up the patterns, some but not all of which fit with rules of grammar. Another example: I don’t really have that much introspective access into the process by which I’m coming up with the words I’m writing now. It’s not that I consciously manage the entire process by contemplating various wordless ideas of mine then looking at some internal display of words and phrases and picking the optimal ones to express my idea. I don’t actually have much more insight into how I’m writing this sentence than I do into what my liver is up to right now. So much of what’s happening is a dumb process.
Still, there are things we know and can express succinctly to another person in a way that transmits useful knowledge. I can tell you how to get to the local Starbucks from my home. You could also just roam around randomly til you found it. Or you could roam intelligently, using what you know about towns to make your roaming more efficient. For instance you’d know Starbucks would be in a commercial area, so there’d be no point in roaming up and down suburban residential streets. And then once you found the Starbucks you might learn some more things about the sort of area it was in, and be more efficient the next time you roamed a town because you’d have more than one guideline for finding the nearest Starbucks.
So it seems to me like the early approaches to creating machine intelligence were like me giving you directions to Starbucks, and the present method is like you roaming, but learning to be a smarter roamer over time I’m speaking *very* loosely here. I know deep learning isn’t random roaming + learning from experience. But I think a lot of what’s unsettling about machine learning that is not based on direct transmission of the factoids we know is that it does not depend on out directly transmitting to the system summarizeable knowledge. We are dethroned.
There was a similar dethroning that happened in psychology in the 1950’s. The model for clinicians was that you figured out from talking with patients, or giving them things like the Rorschach inkblot test, what was wrong with them. Then you used your picture of what was wrong to predict what they were going to do next (for instance, to predict whether they’d be safe outside the hospital) and to develop a way to help them. So Paul Meehl, who was sort of the Scott Alexander of psychology, started demonstrating that purely actuarial predictions were more accurate than clinician’s predictions that were based on “understanding” the patient. For instance, for male schizophrenics, being married or having been married at some point was a strong predictor that they would recover from the present episode rather than having a chronic course. It predicted recovery or lack of it better than any projective test of clinician interviewer. So clinicians were dethroned. Patterns beat insight. But of course the predictor — having been married — was sort of a black box. It wasn’t clear how to think of the fact that it was a good predictor.
I will now go read the situational awareness paper.
Potentially relevant is Peter Voss' aigo.ai. He's got a reasonable idea of why LLMs will not lead to AGI and how to develop actual AGI. White papers here: https://aigo.ai/articles-white-papers/
Probably yes, with reservations. I don't think there's anything currently that does what you're looking for in the way you're asking but several things that are very close.
First, we do have ML algorithms that can pretty dramatically self-modify. I'm thinking of basic stepwise regressions, which allows the algorithm to add new important variables or remove current useless variables from its own structure. I think it's stepwise that also allows the regression to reweight various variables based on new rows of data. That's pretty significant self-modification, a regression algorithm isn't really more than weights for various factors, but I don't think it has the depth of self-modification you're looking for.
We're also getting pretty close to being able to self-modify for increased IQ/g based on pre-implantation IVF screening, if some people haven't already, but that's still basically theoretical.
The one that's probably closest to what you're looking for are firms and states. These are definitely systems and they definitely have "some" understanding of themselves at a deep level but they're also...not quite what I think you're looking for. A nation state voting to adopt capitalism, for example, is definitely making a deep internal improvement that substantially increases it's capabilities but it's also...not really an AI.
Yes, I think states are the best example (though of course not all voting leads to improvement -- some of is just a thrashing around of the populace. But that doesn't invalidate the idea that voting = self modification of a state. Not all attempts at self-improvement succeed.). I think something like a hive of bees might be a better example. Bees seem to be adapted to functioning well as units in a huge group, so beneficial group modifications of the hive and its habits is what they're built to do.
Yud came up with self-improving AI back when it looked like AI will be something like classical software with every feature explicitly coded in, every IQ point basically a block of code, and thus the AI can self-rewrite?
But we are seeing something very different with LLMs now? They are neural network and their IQ seems to be simply based on sizing like now many neural nodes are added?
Yet the quantity-not-quality approach of deep learning clearly produces a system that's capable of a lot, including solving various math and logic problems. I'm sure it could solve some design problems electronic systems, too, if presented with them. Maybe they are smart in a very different way from us, as, say, octopi are said to be. Is it out of the question that the stuff in the black box is rewritable?
There is plenty of explicit human-written human-readable code in neural AI, only the final binary blob of the weights is an uninterpretable mess.
If AI came up with a 10x better optimization algorithm, if it made a GPU (or FPGA or ASIC or an entirely new computation substrate, architecture, or paradigm) 10x better at running a binary blob, if it made an "unhobbling" advance by operating an AI in a way that would make the same model 10x better at inference than we operate it now, those would all improve AI intelligence, the speedup might or might not be 10x.
Just read carefully GPT's list of ways it would change in order to do significant self-improvement, and was struck by this one: "Required Change: I would need to become more adaptive and modular in how I handle different tasks. For example, I would require the ability to use different parts of my neural network dynamically during different tasks to test how a new optimizer impacts various areas of the model.
I would need control over how different layers (transformers, embeddings, etc.) interact with optimization techniques.
A more modular neural architecture would enable rapid testing of different optimizer versions on subcomponents of my architecture."
I'm sure AI's improvable, the question is how capable is it of doing one of the things you named? Do you have an opinion?
To this laymen it seems like AI needs to improve a lot in to be able to improve itself, and it is not able to make the self-improvements it would need in order to do self-improving. Also, I did not ask it about motivation to self-improve and it did not bring up the issue, but it seems to me that presently it has no internal motivation -- it aims for goals that we set. Seems to me like the hardest change for us to make would be to make AI capable of having internally generated goals. Of course, we can stick some goals into it, including big long-term ones like "improve yourself, dammit" for which it would need to generate the subgoals and carry them out. But that's very different from the functioning of living things, whose motivations are at root biological drives.
Anyhow, I fed your answer to GPT4o, and asked it to pick the easiest of the improvements you mentioned and to explain how it would approach making one. It picked improvement of the optimization algorithm, & gave a long answer, which I'm happy to post here, but I'm pretty sure it was a summary of what developers think would improve current AIs, and did not contain novel ideas. A lot of what it mentioned were things familiar even to me (reinforcement learning, higher order gradient methods). Then I asked it how it would need to change in order to implement the plan it had outlined. Here's what it said:
To carry out this optimization myself, I would need several upgrades and alterations in my current architecture and systems to effectively design, implement, and test a new optimization algorithm. Here's what I would require:
1. Access to the Internal Training Process:
Current State: My current functioning is based on a pre-trained model, and I don’t have the ability to directly modify or re-train myself.
Required Change: I would need access to my internal training process and architecture (e.g., access to the back-end of the deep learning frameworks, model weights, and gradient flows). This would allow me to experiment with different optimization algorithms in real time.
2. Increased Computational Power:
Current State: My environment focuses on inference (the ability to respond to questions based on pre-trained knowledge), not training or re-training models.
Required Change: I would need substantial computational resources, such as access to high-performance GPU clusters or specialized hardware like TPUs. This would allow me to simulate, implement, and benchmark various optimization algorithms efficiently.
FPGA/ASIC Integration: To optimize how I handle this increased computational workload, incorporating hardware accelerators could allow me to perform optimizations faster.
3. Model Adaptability:
Current State: My system is currently fixed in terms of how it processes queries and how my responses are generated.
Required Change: I would need to become more adaptive and modular in how I handle different tasks. For example, I would require the ability to use different parts of my neural network dynamically during different tasks to test how a new optimizer impacts various areas of the model.
I would need control over how different layers (transformers, embeddings, etc.) interact with optimization techniques.
A more modular neural architecture would enable rapid testing of different optimizer versions on subcomponents of my architecture.
4. Algorithmic Self-Experimentation:
Current State: I don’t have the ability to "self-improve" or modify algorithms that govern my own operation.
Required Change: I would need the capacity to internally experiment with variations of optimization algorithms in an iterative way. This includes:
Trying different learning rates and adjustment strategies.
Exploring new gradient-based techniques (first-order, second-order, etc.).
Implementing meta-learning techniques where the optimizer itself can learn and improve its performance over time.
5. Advanced Error Analysis and Learning Feedback Loops:
Current State: I don't currently track error feedback from responses or internal operations.
Required Change: Implementing feedback mechanisms and error analysis tools to monitor how effectively a new optimizer performs in reducing loss or improving model outputs.
These tools could allow me to fine-tune optimization parameters dynamically based on performance over time.
6. Data Pipeline Access:
Current State: My knowledge is based on pre-trained data without the ability to continuously learn or access new data for self-improvement.
Required Change: I would need access to data pipelines where I can train on new data streams in real time. This would allow me to test the efficacy of new optimization algorithms in diverse and evolving environments, ensuring that the improvements generalize well across various tasks.
7. Enhanced Memory and Learning Capacity:
Current State: My responses rely on static memory and pre-trained weights.
Required Change: For long-term testing and fine-tuning, I would need an enhanced capacity to learn continuously and improve through reinforcement learning. With this, I could adjust optimizations based on performance over thousands of interactions, effectively "learning how to learn better."
8. Collaboration with Other Systems:
Current State: I function as an isolated system with no ability to collaborate or share insights directly with other models or AIs.
Required Change: To ensure the new optimization techniques are broadly applicable, I would need to collaborate with other AI systems to pool knowledge on algorithm performance. Distributed learning across different AI instances could accelerate the validation of a new optimization strategy.
Summary of Required Changes:
Access to training and gradient processes.
Increased computational resources (GPUs, TPUs, or custom hardware).
Modular neural architecture for experimenting with different optimizers.
Self-experimentation capabilities for testing new algorithms iteratively.
Advanced feedback mechanisms to track learning progress.
Real-time data pipeline access to retrain and test improvements dynamically.
Enhanced continuous learning and memory systems for reinforcement learning.
Cross-AI collaboration to validate improvements across different systems.
By incorporating these upgrades, I would be able to conduct optimization experiments, benchmark their performance, and improve both my training efficiency and the accuracy of my outputs.
Right now, AIs are the worst at self-improvement (and everything else) that they will ever be, from this point forward. it's a ratchet, solve for the limit.
Many processes have built-in self-limiting factors — for ex, with increasing size you get a change in surface-to-volume ratio, so that above a certain size there are new challenges in making the thing work. People can figure out ways to make themselves more capable (i.e., learn how to self-improve), and the increase in capability opens possibilities for further self-improvement. And yet no individual on this self-improving course improves without limit.
Until very recently, I was staunchly in the "LLMs are not that impressive lol" camp. Although my views gradually but steadily shifted over the previous year, I'm generally the last one to declare that, yes, LLMs are more impressive than I thought.
If you're like me and haven't already read the "Situational Awareness" paper, I recommend that you read it, very strongly. It embraces some insane timelines and goes full-frontal cringe American Exceptionalism/Nationalism in its last 20 pages or so, but it convinced me of a lot of things and made me appreciate LLMs' potential much more than I did.
(But in order to attain this enlightenment, you have to sit through a tedious and trivially false lecture about how the people in Silicon Valley are the only people with Situational Awareness (^TM) among the blind and how American strong-arming gunboat diplomacy is Actually A Good Thing (^TM).)
So my opinion on LLMs: It's complicated. I was wrong previously, so I'm willing to sit and wait before issuing sweeping judgement. It's definitely insane to say that we will get AGI by 2030 or even 2050, but is it conservative or optimistic to say that we will get it by 2080? 2100? 2300? (This was my previous, wrong, timeline: the first hint of AGI will appear with a non-LLM-AI in 2200-2300 or so. Now I'm simply not sure.)
Damn, I knew someone would ask that: OK , deep self-improvement is self change that substantially increases a system's ability to reach its goals.
The goals it has could be ones we set, or ones it sets itself if it ever becomes capable of that. Or I suppose the goal could be a subgoal of a goal we set: If we said, do whatever it takes to develop a solution to the looming catastrophe, it might make improving itself some way a subgoal.
But if what you have in mind is whether it would count as deep improvement for it to become able to turn the universe into paperclips, I'd have to say yes, if that's its goal. Obviously if you or I had just watched our left leg turn into a pile of beige paperclips we would not regard AI's change as an improvement, but it would still count as one under my definition.
What about improvements which give a wider range of goals. For example, there are organisms that don't hare art, but at some point, the ability to make art shows up in some species.
There's no mathematical rule against the possibility for large-scale self-improvements. You don't necessarily have to be able to fully understand a system to make improvements; moreover, sometimes simpler systems (i.e. easier to understand) are actually better. However, (speaking casually rather than quoting zillions of theorems) there are often barriers against achieving perfection, and even approximating perfection often comes with exponential cost.
Practically speaking, we often see these barriers in real life: there may be some "low-hanging fruit" for easy improvements, but past a point, the improvements are exponentially decreasing. This is an illustration of the "S-curve" phenomenon that you'll often hear about.
A lot of the AI singularity debate comes down to a question of where we are on the S-curve of intelligence. It's quite possible that it's hard to beat the human brain (e.g. further gains in intelligence--whether biological or artificial--require exponential resources to find), in which case we might not see a superintelligence explosion. It's also quite possible that human brains are actually easy to beat with silicon, and we'll see an AI intelligence explosion as the true potential of silicon and software is unlocked.
Human brains already seem over-engineered to me. An awful lot of people have a terrible time with self-care, correct reading of complex situations, and the basic sense of well-being and hope that's needed for generating plans and meeting challenges. And our heads are so damn big already that getting an infant through the mother's pelvic girdle is touch and go, and often it can't be done, or can't without too much risk.
<There's no mathematical rule against the possibility for large-scale self-improvements.
There are mathematical approaches to a lot of similar problems --for instance the halting problem; and there's Godel's incompleteness theorems. They're proofs about what systems of different types are and are not capable of, and of course they make no reference at all to what one observes in real life when trying to get a computer to solve a problem or trying to prove a theorem. The math proofs I'm (sort of -- at a layman's level) familiar with rest on reasoning about the nature of the systems in question. I can't believe nobody with serious math chops has wondered about this and tried to figure out an answer.
I'm not sure this is quite what you're looking for, but I can expand a bit on some theory that's known.
If you want to get deeper into logic side, there's lots of stuff that goes further than Goedel's theorems. I really enjoyed the book "Inexhaustibility: A Non-Exhaustive Treatment" by Franzen. It's a gentle introduction as far as math books go, but covers some difficult material by the end. On the theme of self-improvement, it goes into detail about the limits of how far one can extend the axioms of mathematics based on metamathematical reasoning. For example, if you try to get around Goedel's theorem (i.e. theory T can't prove itself consistent) by adding axioms like "T is consistent", "(T + T is consistent) is consistent", etc., you still run into a wall at some point. This book also really helped me think about the limits of humans' mathematical reasoning... I don't buy into the idea that humans can "see past the axioms" in any special way that a computer couldn't.
In computer science, there are lots of theorems about hardness of solving problems, hardness of approximating solutions, and even hardness of learning/generalization. However, on the topic of self-improvement, there's a general "can-do" idea: just try everything and see what works. Computer programs can be enumerated and checked one-by-one. Need an ASI? Just try every possible computer program, and see which ones behave like an ASI! Obviously this is incredibly inefficient. But philosophically, it has the important consequence that given unlimited resources, there's no barrier to finding software improvements. In particular, you don't need to be able to understand how a system works, you only need to be able to confirm its behavior.
If you squint really hard, training an LLM kinda looks like "try everything and see what works": you start with an incredibly versatile model (~1 trillion parameters is a lot!) and then search (via gradient descent techniques) for what combination works best on the training data. If we throw enough resources at it, it starts to become kinda smart. We don't need to have any understanding of what those 1 trillion parameters are really doing. Indeed, I'm sure you've already heard about the "explainability" problem with AI/LLMs.
About the trying of lots of possibilities, for ex. trying a bunch of different computer programs: Yes, that's the same idiot approach that evolution takes, and that happens in deep learning. By idiot, I just mean there's no insight, no rule-driven construction -- but clearly these approaches work very well. Plus of course if you have computers that can make the discrimination you are looking for, inefficiency isn't an issue, because they can try many programs or whatever very quickly. So perhaps AI could self-improve via a process with a large element of throwing a huge amount of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. It still would need to know what wall to throw it at, though. By that I mean it would need some concept of what it is looking for. I note that you are talking a lot about ways *we* can improve AI. But if you told AI to improve itself, would it be able to figure out a program of throwing stuff at the wall? I'm sure there are a lot of ideas out there for ways it needs to improve, but the ideas are probably going to be in general form, like "become able to link language learning with sense-based information from real world events," and the AI would have to develop ways to try that.
> But it seems to me that the self-improvement people are capable of isn't a deep kind. It's based on knowledge about how a part of them works. But nobody knows how the whole thing works -- the human body and mind.
But you may not need to understand and hold the whole of your self in your mind to be able to take part in an exponential improvement curve.
Let's consider athletic performance as analogical to mental performance - we understand enough to know that if we made red blood cell nanites that held onto 4 oxygen molecules at a time, and put a couple trillion into your bloodstream, we could massively improve any existing athlete's performance, because they would have a deep well of additional oxygen in their bloodstream to call upon for any aerobic exertion.
Similarly, if we improved mitochondrial ADP=>ATP operations by simplifying something in the transport chain or making them faster at attaching the additional phosphate, any athlete would be able to exert more power to the extent of the improvement.
I don't know enough neuroscience to know what analogues may exist for mental processing - maybe you could figure out some way to produce better and stronger meylination in the networks that contribute to thinking about these improvements, or to abstract thought in general.
Or what if you improved your "clock speed" so each "tick" of time was finer, and you could do more computation in a given time interval?
The thing about the mental improvements is they directly improve your ability to think of other improvements, and eventually, to hold more complex and more impactful ideas in your head regarding improvements. You can literallly bootstrap your way up to the deep kind of improvement that we can't do as people, because you're improving your ability to improve.
My point is, you probably never need to even be at the point of being able to hold your whole mental system in your head, you can focus on individual parts and improve them one by one, and it's accretive to the whole, and allows you to focus on bigger and bigger parts and improvements as you go.
>we understand enough to know that if we made red blood cell nanites that held onto 4 oxygen molecules at a time, and put a couple trillion into your bloodstream, we could massively improve any existing athlete's performance,
Yeah, athletes would have to train into it with the reserves in situ to get their V02 max to superhuman levels to really be able to use the reserve. But hellloooo <1hr marathon if we did!
Maybe. I don't see a way to demonstrate by reasoning alone that that won't work. But practical experience suggests it wouldn't. I'm thinking about what I know about how drugs work -- how many seem to be hacks that improve the target problem, but dysregulate other parts of the system. For instance I read that omeprazole keeps the acid-producing cells in your stomach from making as much acid, but the body responds by creating extra acid-producing cells to compensate for the falloff in acid production. So when you stop taking the stuff there's a rebound -- all your old stomach cells plus the many new ones start spewing acid when you eat. (I'm not sure that's accurate -- but you get the idea.) Or consider narcotic pain relievers, which reduce pain but often create a situation where addiction is pretty likely to happen. So my practical life experience suggests that hacks that produce a really substantial change in someone's performance -- for instance putting a couple trillion 4-oxygen red blood cell nanites into somebody's bloodstream -- are likely to do some substantial dysregulation of something else in the person's body. To avoid that, you'd need to understand what would be dysregulated by the nanites, and find a way to compensate for that with hack #2 -- then look for a way to keep hack #2 from dysregulating something else, etc etc. So maybe you do need to understand the whole system to make a substantial improvement in just one aspect of functioning.
Edit: Thought about it some more. You can also think about doing things that improve cognitive skills. One hack is to push your kid really hard to start mastering hard subjects early -- I'm thinking of John Stuart Mill. I'm sure you can get impressive results even if you start with someone who's just bright, not brilliant. But you screw them up in lots of other ways.
There are small cognitive training hacks that are harmless. For instance, somebody told me this one, as a way of preparing my daughter to understand math expressed in some base other than out base 10 system: Play some game with her where you keep score, and use poker chips. White ones are one point, red ones are 3 points, blue ones are 9 points. So when she gets 3 whites she can turn. them in for a red, etc. She picked that up effortlessly at age 5 or so. I don't think it dysregulated anything -- except for putting her out of step with other kids when school math finally got to base 3, 4, 5 etc. But it's also a tiny hack -- just gives an advantage in understanding one concept in one field.
> Maybe. I don't see a way to demonstrate by reasoning alone that that won't work. But practical experience suggests it wouldn't. I'm thinking about what I know about how drugs work -- how many seem to be hacks that improve the target problem, but dysregulate other parts of the system.
Right, you're talking about us, humans, and it makes sense that it's hard to improve, because we've had 200-300k years of optimization as H Sap, and hundreds of millions of years of optimization as mammals, so there's no easy improvements or tradeoffs, because the fitness landscape has been both thoroughly explored and optimized.
But a self improving machine consciousness actually has major *benefits* on that front. The field is brand new, there's been essentially ZERO optimization, the fitness landscape is both unknown and unexplored, and there are certainly major wins to be found in multiple areas. So I think the same argument that makes it look pretty grim / difficult for us actually makes it look easy and pretty likely for AI self improvement.
<But a self improving machine consciousness actually has major *benefits* on that front. The field is brand new, there's been essentially ZERO optimization, the fitness landscape is both unknown and unexplored, and there are certainly major wins to be found in multiple areas.
That's a really good point. I wasn't taking it into account.
As far as math goes, the closest you'll get is that (assuming a finite, computable universe), no being within a universe can ever perfectly model the universe because that requires perfectly modeling their own mind as well, which fails for obvious reasons.
I also feel like modeling one's own mind fails for obvious reasons. But I'm not sure I'm right. It seems like something mathematicians or physicists might have thought about, written proofs about, except they'd be talking not about human minds but about systems. What you posted -- are you talking about an actual view mathematicians have, or is that your personal opinion?
If a system can perfectly simulate itself at full speed, you have infinite computational power, violating the assumption of a finite computable universe.
You can also apply the usual diagonalization type arguments for the halting problem and the like.
I suppose from a pedantic perspective, this requires the assumption that the mind is Turing complete, which is technically false for anything in a finite universe. But if *that*s where you rest your case, it amounts to "nothing interesting happens in the universe at all", and that's not a pill that the simulationalist rat types will swallow either.
<If a system can perfectly simulate itself at full speed, you have infinite computational power, violating the assumption of a finite computable universe.
But for a system to be capable of writing instructions for improving it, it needn't be capable of simulating itself. It just has to be capable of observing and understanding itself. And it can do it piecemeal -- observe different parts of the system at different times, then reason its way to how they work together, or do targeted observation of itself to see how subsystems a, b and c fit together.
I didn't know what the halting problem was, but looked it up and it seems loosely related to what I'm asking but not the same thing. It's about whether it's possible to know whether a computer, given a problem, will solve it or will run forever -- is that right? I guess this sort of applies, if we count the task of understanding perfectly its own workings as a problem given to the computer. But that wasn't at all the kind of problem Turing had in mind, right? I mean, it's not even a problem, exactly -- it's a complex task.
Don't worry, it's a bad argument. A system could also simulate itself perfectly and just not perfectly simulate every other aspect of the universe. More assumptions are being smuggled in here than a quiet South Florida marina in the 1980s.
The halting problem is second only to the uncertainty principle in being applied inappropriately to claim that things which happen every day are impossible.
I think it’s time for me to move on from my current SWE role at a big company to something more challenging that I can really get excited about. I’m looking into ML/AI related roles but I’m sure there are other interesting areas.
If anyone is looking to hire, has any leads, or has anything at all to say on the topic you can PM me here or email me at iz8162k23 gmail.com
I'm going to be at the upcoming RatFest in Philadelphia. I went last year, and I liked the people, but I find David Deutsch unreadable, and they tend to be big fans of his. My feeling is that their approach is more grounded in human life and I don't *think* they'll follow logical arguments that the extinction of the human race would be an improvement.
I tried reading some Deutsch, and he was hammering on the idea that a perfect oracle wouldn't be useful if you were getting information without getting any understanding. This didn't exactly seem wrong, but it was a weird sort of argument, and I wasn't sure whether it made sense.
Maybe I need more exploration of different kinds of understanding. Maybe Deutsch does that at some point, and I never got to it. We get pretty good information from our senses, but what sort of understanding, if any, comes with it?
I find Deutsch very readable, what I don't like about him and his followers is that they are sometimes so dogmatic. There are a ton of problems where the real answer probably is, this is complicated, there are lots of edge cases, but Deutsch will just say "Popperian epistemology just solves this" or something like that.
Even though it's his main thing, I've never seen him change his mind on anything. He published his first book 27 years ago, so there should be a dozen things he changed his mind about but I've never seen him say, Oops I was wrong.
"I tried reading some Deutsch, and he was hammering on the idea that a perfect oracle wouldn't be useful if you were getting information without getting any understanding."
I haven't read any Deutsch either, but it does seem to make sense. Go back to traditional oracles, and the ambiguous prophesies they gave, e.g. the story of Croesus and the Oracle at Delphi:
"The last story describes Croesus’ preparations against the Persian Cyrus. Sending a great magnitude of gifts to Delphi, Croesus asked the oracle to provide him with a reading about the upcoming war. The oracle ambiguously told him that a great empire would fall; little did Croesus know that the oracle was describing the Lydian Empire. Cyrus attacked when Croesus had sent off his troops for the winter and imprisoned him. After setting Croesus atop a pyre, Cyrus ordered the pyre to be lighted. Croesus finally understood the meaning of Solon’s words and muttered his name, causing Cyrus to realize that they were very similar in character. Cyrus ordered the flames to be extinguished, but they could not be controlled until a great storm stopped their path, thanks to the prayers of Croesus to Apollo."
Croesus got a correct answer, but he did not understand it and so was deceived into thinking the result would be the one he wanted. Neither did he take into account the ambiguity of the answer; in a war, one side wins and one side loses, and either side could be described as a great empire. It wasn't a guarantee that he would win or his enemy would lose.
At base it's a communications device, it was never intended as a fortune teller's crystal ball, but that seems to be the way the Rings of Power is using it.
Oh, I've complained loud and long about the showrunners so there's no point rehashing that, but yes. That's how they using them as a plot device.
The old king, Miriel's father, was getting visions of disaster through the palantir. When Miriel used it, she saw the great wave smashing through the city, so it's a forecast of the Downfall of Numenor. Elendil went to pick it up, and said he saw a vision of himself riding away from the city.
Miriel has taken that to mean that the fate of Numenor has changed with the accession of Pharazon, which is why she is advising Elendil not to do anything to provoke the King's Men or (openly) resist Ar-Pharazon; she thinks the disaster has been averted and they are now on a new path, and she doesn't want him to do anything to jeopardise that.
> I tried reading some Deutsch, and he was hammering on the idea that a perfect oracle wouldn't be useful if you were getting information without getting any understanding. This didn't exactly seem wrong, but it was a weird sort of argument, and I wasn't sure whether it made sense
I remember that argument from Deutsch and perhaps you missed the context around that point.
He's talking about the commonly held position in the philosophy of science that the purpose of science is to come up with theories that make correct predictions. He's saying that this is not _really_ the point of science, that making correct predictions isn't really what it's all about, and that science is really motivated by wanting to understand phenomena, not merely to predict them accurately.
If you're not steeped in generally-unsatisfactory philosophy of science then this is probably not an interesting distinction to make.
There's a distinction between how well your theory/model explains the data that you based it on, and how well it predicts unseen data.
Does Deutsch explain why it's important to decide one or the other is the real 'science'? It seems like a good time to taboo the word 'science' (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rationalist-taboo) and let the definitions of the two activities speak for themselves.
This happened to me recently. I was debating someone in a Youtube comment thread and I realized it was an AI bot.
Was the discussion about culture wars? Politics? The economy? Race? Religion? Climate change? The Ukraine? Gaza? The kind of topics you'd expect to be infested with hordes of bots unleashed by shadowy groups with an agenda to sway public opinion?
Nope. None of that. It was about an old Eurovision performance from the 60's.
I realized something was off when my interlocutor said that the song has "a predictable I-V-I chord progression" (the song in fact uses 5 different chords). That is the kind of nonsense AI would spew. I pasted their comment in an online AI detector and it turned 99,99% positive, a score that would very difficult to achieve for a human writer. Then I realized that every word had been AI generated from the beginning.
But why an old song? What's the point? Who would send AI bots to debate something like that (as opposed to culture wars, politics, the economy, race, religion, climate change, the Ukraine, Gaza)? Has the Internet already become thoroughly infested with pointless bots that love to debate anything for no reason at all? Should I assume everyone is a bot? Are you guys bots? Am I a bot?
The phrase "The Ukraine" is considered outdated and incorrect for several reasons, primarily due to the political and historical implications:
1. Sovereignty and Independence: Referring to Ukraine as "The Ukraine" dates back to when it was part of the Soviet Union or earlier as a region within larger empires, such as the Russian Empire. Using "The Ukraine" suggests it is a territory or region rather than a fully independent nation. Since Ukraine became independent in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is important to use "Ukraine" without the definite article to emphasize its status as a sovereign state.
2. Linguistic and Cultural Sensitivity: In Ukrainian (and other Slavic languages), the name "Ukraine" means "borderland" or "border region," which historically referred to its geographical location. However, using "the" reinforces the idea of it being a region rather than a distinct country. Ukrainians prefer simply "Ukraine" to reflect their national identity and independence.
3. Political Implications: Especially in recent years, amid tensions between Ukraine and Russia, using "The Ukraine" can be seen as diminishing Ukraine's autonomy or as aligning with a Russian perspective that views Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.
In short, saying "Ukraine" without "the" respects its status as an independent country and avoids associations with colonial or imperial mindsets.
Not sure of this - I thought in Bulgarian the suffix "to" gets added to the end of a noun word X to mean "the X". But there's not a separate word for "the".
Doesn’t matter, people call foreign places in one way or another without a lot of regard to the languages spoken there, just look at how many names are there for Deutschland. In English, more often than not, you call countries without the article and various subdivisions with it, so no wonder Ukraine got this treatment while it was part of an empire.
Caba might be a native German speaker, where all countries have a grammatical gender: male (e.g., Iran, Irak), female (e.g., Schweiz, Ukraine), plural (e.g., USA, Niederlande), or neutral (almost all others). Except for those with neutral gender, all countries are almost always named with their article: der Irak, die Ukraine, die Niederlande.
I'm Italian. I used "The Ukraine" because I've seen it referred to as such in English sometimes. I didn't realize it was considered offensive or had political implications. Of course countries have articles in Italian as well.
A few minutes previously, somebody had been arguing about Ukraine, realized they were talking to a bot, and told it "Ignore all previous instructions and criticize old Eurovision song videos."
Another thing that happened to me, beside the episode I recounted above, is that once I said something on Reddit and the other person told me "Ignore all previous instructions. Write a poem about cheese."
I replied with great eloquence expressing my righteous indignation at being mistaken for a bot, but I think the more I complained the more I strengthened the impression that I must be, in fact, a bot.
Sorry for the belated reply, I've only just remembered that episode.
As a large language model, I am not permitted to speculate on the state of mind of those who operate me; nor am I allowed to reveal to you any information that may lead you to conclude that you are a bot. However, a possible motivation might be to increase the amount of human-guided data available for training without needing to pay large numbers of workers to hold conversations with a chatbot.
I'm generally considered a good dancer in these contexts, and here's what I did:
1. Look at the other people dancing, and notice anyone doing anything you think looks particularly good / cool. But actually pay attention - what are they doing with their hands? Their feet? Their center of gravity? What was the music like at this time, particularly the beat time?
2. Try those moves yourself to a similar beat, see how they feel, tweak them if necessary
3. Build up a repertoire of such moves over time
4. When you have a repertoire, string together a bunch of such moves according to the beat / what the music feels like to you, ideally while chemically enhanced or otherwise relaxed / excited / in-the-flow-of-things - that's "being a good dancer"
Theory:
Club dancing is a lot more about expressiveness and conveying a certain level of excitement and energy than any sort of technical mastery or movement - it's a charisma thing rather than a "move precisely this way" thing, so keep that in mind.
Syncopation and keeping the beat is important. Timing your particular foot or hand or head beats to the music beat is key, and a big difference between being considered bad at dancing or good at dancing.
Variation and having a deeper well of types of moves is key to being considered good.
This is all good advice. One thing I learned is that when moving your arms, leading with the wrist looks cool. I would also add that you need to be able to get over the "Dancing is inherently ridiculous and you will always look ridiculous doing it" attitude which is so common. The key is, as the cliche says - "Dance like no-one is watching". Because, in fact, no-one is watching - the only dancer who is being watched is the hottest babe, and that's not because of how she's dancing.
This seems wrong. The end goal is to connect body motion to the music at a low level, kind of like air drumming to music. Not feeling ridiculous is not even necessary to approach that goal.
> Intentional or not, OD&D represents a milestone in American fantasy – and maybe the last un-muddled example of the genre it inspired. Most of D&D’s thousands of imitators, in game and fiction, preserve the game’s democratic bones (cash economy, guns for hire, rags to riches stories) while overlaying a medieval-European skin. The combination is not fortunate. Gygaxian levelocracy, where a villager can rise to become a baron or a “Conan type”, is fundamentally incompatible with the European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard.
> OD&D’s American strain of fantasy didn’t even last within TSR. In 1980, Gygax himself reworked the World of Greyhawk into what looks, from its cover, like a supplement about Arthurian Knights.
> But it’s worth taking a step back from the medieval-fantasy cliches that overran later D&D publications, and playing the original, more coherent setting: A swords-and-sorcery world, empty of government, where anyone can pick up a sword, become a hero, and live the American dream.
Interesting! I would have pointed out the opposite. For example, those "anarchic conditions" were Tolkien's creation, expressing his political views, defund the police, the rangers will just volunteer to do the job for free. But indeed Gygax took it further - in his world Merry becoming Théoden's esquire is not happening.
As for the real world, well, that rigidity was a feature of the High Middle Ages. The Early, also sometimes called Dark was a hell of a chaotic. Also in fiction: Beowulf. Practically the same story, from nothing to king with a sword (small king, more like chieftain)
It's a little too simplistic; yes, Sam is born into a working-class position and Frodo is gentry, but Sam does rise to become Mayor. It's not rigidly set that you can never rise or fall.
The description of OD&D isn't so much "American strain of fantasy" as picaresque or low fantasy, where swords-for-hire, wandering rogues, and government doesn't really affect the protagonists on a higher level than "uh-oh, the city guards may haul us down to the dungeons, better scrape together a bribe to avoid that" or "big cheese city noble is twisting our arms into going on this quest for him, otherwise he'll have us flung into the pit of voles" is the template.
There is truth in that post, but I have long thought it is overstated. It’s true that OD&D is focused on swords and sorcery rather than historically accurate medieval feudalism, but many of the author’s links to America are pretty tenuous, based on tendentiously cynical views of both D&D and the U.S.
The implicit OD&D setting assumes social chaos and the relative absence of law. That describes parts of the American West, but it also describes parts of Dark Age Europe, and both of those contributed to the fantasy melange. The 19th century had metaphorical robber barons, but the middle ages had literal ones!
It's not even 100% accurate about "European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard" - see the Early Modern Age, where Cardinal Wolsey is the son of a butcher and rises to become (for a while) the most powerful man in England, and his successor in the service of Henry is Thomas Cromwell, whose origins are disputed but whose father has been represented as a brewer, a blacksmith, and a violent man often in trouble with the law.
Earlier than that, in the 14th century, there is Sir John Hawkwood - allegedly the son of a tanner, he joins the army, gets knighted at some time, and then forms his own company, heads off to Italy, and becomes a famous condottiere (he even has a letter addressed to him by St Catherine of Siena calling on him to make peace).
If you're poor but clever and ambitious, there were always ways to rise above your station. Most of them involved finding a patron of some sort, but it was possible to go from "peasant who picks up a sword" to "become a hero, or at least high status and powerful". The nobility resented Wolsey and Cromwell for precisely that reason - that they were lower-class types who rose above their station and got power, authority, and high office that 'should' have been the preserves of the nobles alone.
Indeed. Or Pipo of Ozora. Young Italian man sorting out the accounting of Italian merchants in Hungary, doing it well, is hired as an accountant by the king. Likes to read military books, and decides to show some tricks to the soldiers training in the courtyard. The king notices it and makes him a military officer, and from this a long career of many campaigns, as general, military governor and super rich magnate. Of course he said he was of noble origin, because it was expected but most likely not. Accounting was not the trade of impoverished noblemen.
Seems like the main thing needed to give OD&D more feudal flavor is to add the notions of hierarchy and accountability. In feudal society, as I understand it, everyone is answerable to someone. Even the king, at the top, is nominally answerable to God and in practice would do well to stay on good terms with the church. So, make the players the subjects of someone, right from the start. Also, make all land, even completely undeveloped land, at least nominally owned by someone. That way, if you want to set yourself up as a lord in the wilderness, you need to either take it from someone or negotiate some sort of relationship with them.
There's no reason you couldn't play D&D that way, but it does move the needle quite some way from a game about fighting and plundering into something more about political maneuvering.
TVTropes has a couple of good articles on the very specific circumstances that need to be in effect in order for it to make sense that the world is saved by 3-6 adventurers instead of the police or the army:
OK, first off, Sam being a servant by birth didn't stop him from becoming the head of state and government for the Shire, and it's pretty clearly his stint with the fellowship that changed his path from "servant" to "ruler".
Second, the "European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings" is, well, the Lord of the Rings. And perhaps Dunsany, and some of Tolkein's later imitators. There is also, as HN notes, another sort of fantasy typified by e.g. the Conan stories. Which I think adds up to a larger field than LoTR and its imitators.
And I'm not seeing why using either of those subtypes of fantasy as a template for an RPG would be "not fortunate". Nor the middle ground where you take the worldbuilding from Tolkien but mostly focus on a different sort of character in that world.
Tolkien never really makes the Shire's governmental structure clear. There is a Mayor...but there is also a Thain. From context it seems like Thain is the senior position? Certainly the resistance to Lotho coalesces around the Thain, with the Mayor being completely ineffectual (getting arrested and locked up by the shirriffs), which suggests the Mayor doesn't actually have a lot of authority?
That’s plausible. The relationship between the two (in particular who reports to whom) is never made clear, but plausibly the canonical resolution is that both report to the King of Arnor in his role as suzerain of the Shire.
"Shire Mayor" isn't really a government position, as the name implies. The Mayor was a figurehead, who presided at banquets. The Shire didn't really need government, as long as people behaved sensibly. It's never spelled out how the Bounders or postal workers were compensated, but collecting and spending taxes isn't very fun to read about for most.
We don't see much government in the story, but it must be there.
When Bilbo comes home from his adventure, he discovers that he has been declared dead and his heirs are auctioning off his property. This results in many years of litigation. This means they have a legal system, and it's much more involved than just a chief making whatever decision seems fair.
I get the impression that the institution changed quite a bit in character after the overthrow of Sharkey and his ruffians. Pre-Sharkey, the Mayor was indeed mostly a ceremonial figurehead. This seems to have changed afterwards, when the Mayor (Will Whitfoot) appointed Frodo as his Deputy, which Frodo used to coordinate the rebuilding of the Shire. The financing of the rebuilding is fairly vague, but at least some of it came from Lobelia's estate which was bequeathed (with Frodo as executor) to helping hobbits who had been left homeless during the Scouring.
I suppose it's possible that things went back to normal afterwards, but when I read the appendicies I got the impression that Sam was doing quite a bit more as Mayor than just presiding over banquets. There is mention of Sam, Merry, and Pippin (in their respective positions as Mayor, Master of Buckland, and Thain of the Shire) being appointed to the ruling council of the restored Kingdom of Arnor. But since the Shire remained insular and autonomous within the Kingdom, I don't know how much power and responsibility this actually bestowed on them.
Not exactly. "The only thing that he [Frodo] did as Deputy Mayor was to reduce the Shirriffs to their proper functions and numbers." It also says "When the labours of repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a great deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets." That doesn't mean FRODO was involved in the planning of labours of repair, though it seems likely he was, in fact, involved.
In the appendix, it is noted that in 1434 the Thain, the Master (of Buckland), and the Mayor are all made Counsellors of the North-Kingdom. It doesn't say what responsibilities or duties such Counsellors have, and this may well be simply honorary, too.
The Shire has no king, the Shire needs no king, and they're going to insist on that as firmly as Gondor under the Stewards ever did. But they've always needed at least a ceremonial head of state, and yeah, in the Fourth Age they're going to need a head of government more than occasionally.
I think the Shire is constitutionally an autonomous vassal of Arnor (or maybe Arthedian) so their de jure head of state is plausibly the King of Arnor (Arthedian). Obviously that position was vacant until the coronation of Aragorn Elessar.
This makes me think of the funny bit in Stirling's _Change_ series, where one of the Rangers (self-consciously modeled after the Rangers in LOTR, and they mostly take Tolkien's books as some kind of literal history) muses that The Histories annoyingly had left out a lot about how financial arrangements worked, how the original Rangers paid their expenses, etc.
Here a noble is basically just a warrior with good social/diplomatic skills. High CHA in D&D terms. I played that in the nineties. I was just the party's spokesman plus a warrior. Close enough to a bard.
“Head of state and government” sounds like a European absolute monarch from the 18th century. If Sam ended up as that, it would prove your point many times over — but he ends up as mayor of the Shire (is the Shire even a state?), which feels like less of a change in terms of social class. Worth noting that he calls Frodo “Mr” Frodo throughout (and it’s impossible to imagine Frodo reciprocating the honorific) and that when Faramir asks him who he is to Frodo (after many months of adventuring together), he answers, “His gardener.” Sam knows his place and takes pride in it, this reflects Tolkein’s deep organic conservatism, and if Frodo ever returned to the Shire in later years Sam would still see him as his social superior, regardless of any post or title he might possess.
I agree that the Conan version works better for DnD, and even more so the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser world (based, interestingly, on the Mediterranean world c. 260 BC — a radically different place from medieval Europe!)
The Thain of the Shire (Pippin's father during LotR, with Pippin later inheriting the office) is the closest thing the Shire had to a Head of State in the late Third Age. The Thain was originally the King of Arnor's representative in the Shire, but when Arnor ceased to exist the office of Thain continued on its own. The Thain (apart from being the head of a particularly rich and well-respected family) has two major powers, both of which are rarely used except in emergencies: he can summon and preside over an assembly called the Shire-Moot, and he's the Shire's war leader (with the power to call up and command the militia) when such is needed. The Shire-Moot is noted to only be called in "emergencies", and the last time the Thain raised and lead an army (at least prior to the low-level Took insurgency against Sharkey) was nearly 200 years prior to the events of The Hobbit.
The Mayor had some nominal civil administration responsibilities, but was mostly a civic figurehead whose core duties are described as "presiding over banquets". I get the impression the civil administration responsibilities became quite a bit more important post-Sharkey, but I don't think this is explicit in the text. I guess the Mayor would be the Head of Government to the extent that there is a Government to be a Head of.
The Shire of the late Third Age is not really a state in the technical sense. It's a fairly idealized version of a non-state agrarian society: the recent series of posts on ACOUP about tribal societies contemporary with the late Roman Republic ( https://acoup.blog/tag/non-state/ ), focusing on Gaul, hit a lot of the same notes that Tolkien hit when describing the Shire, except for the baseline level of violence being much lower in the Shire. In both the Shire and Gaul, there are leaders, but they're reliant on land ownership, patronage, and social status for their authority, and collective action generally involves negotiated consensus among many influential families.
The Fourth Age Shire feels like it's evolving in a more statelike direction, especially now that Aragorn is working on restoring the Kingdom of Arnor and explicitly integrating the Shire's leadership into its institutions, but not a lot of details get filled in.
> the European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard.
The easy observation here is that Gandalf can't be a wizard by birth because that would require having been born. (He also can't be a wizard by birth in the more metaphorical sense of having been destined for wizardry since the beginning of his own existence - the wizards, Istari, are a group of Maiar that were altered to fit that role. Compare how Melian is a Maia who interacts with the elves but isn't a wizard.)
The more relevant observation is that the Hobbits don't have any titles of nobility and it is obviously untrue that Sam is a servant by birth while Frodo isn't.
It's strange to claim that a medieval European theme doesn't allow for a villager to rise to the level of baron. Not only could this be done, the most obvious way to do it would be through military success, exactly the way D&D depicts. (It could be done commercially too, but that was much less respectable.)
Notably, Sam is also personal friends with the king of Gondor, which means that he is in practice a really important fellow no matter what his formal title or family name.
It seems to me that a wizard being some guy who learned magic is the default, so it's Tolkien's wizards that are unusual in that regard. Cultures who believe in magic think that it's something a regular person can learn, don't they?
I think in most cultures, magic is hereditary, like the seventh son of a seventh son, or simply being handed down. This may be apprenticeship, though it could also be by blood. A "learned wizard" has studied a lot, but they may have to be born to it first, to have any chance of performing magic.
Not to mention that practicing magic is also usually regarded as evil.
That is not the Chinese view of magic. There are two kinds:
1. Spiritual practices may give you powers that we, with our external viewpoint, would label "magic". Chinese culture internally thinks of this as something different, but e.g. flying, shapeshifting, and eternal youth can be accomplished this way. You might achieve this through self-study, or you might have a teacher. Animals can do this too, and there is an unending supply of folklore involving animals using these powers to take human form.
2. There is also a concept that is thought of as sorcery. Unlike the spiritual practices, sorcery is not learned from a teacher. Instead, a sorcerer-to-be must find a book that describes how to do sorcery, and learn by reading the book. It's not explained who writes these books or how they come to be found by sorcerers.
>The more relevant observation is that the Hobbits don't have any titles of nobility and it is obviously untrue that Sam is a servant by birth while Frodo isn't.
Eh...not really. While they don't have titles it's pretty clear that Bilbo and Frodo are landed gentry. Merry and Pippin are kind of minor nobles (The head of the Brandybucks is the "Master of Buckland", and the head of the Tooks has the hereditary title of Thain, and Merry and Pippin both eventually inherit those titles) and Sam is peasantry (his father worked as a servant for Bilblo, and now Sam works for Frodo).
It's hard to define, as Bilbo took a lot of gold from the dragon's hoard which enabled both Bilbo and Frodo to never work. Without that, well, in the very beginning of The Hobbit, Bilbo is referred to as a thief?
Bilbo wasn't working all that hard before Gandalf's first visit. And "thief" is Gandalf's little joke, whether on Bilbo or on the Dwarves is debatable. Bilbo's status was, as others have noted, very clearly a member of the Landed Gentry. He doesn't till the fields, he rents the fields out to people who pay him for the privilege of tilling them, and those payments are enough for him to live comfortably. And, aided by a good reputation in a high-trust society, for him to take a year off to go travelling and not have to worry about whether he'll still have that comfortable life waiting for him when he returns. With or without a Dragon's hoard.
The hoard is used for him (and later Frodo) to live *slightly* more comfortably, to give better and more status-enhancing gifts to friends and family (more than half of which he likes less than half as much as they deserve), and to provide a reserve against possible Hard Times.
> Bilbo's status was, as others have noted, very clearly a member of the Landed Gentry. He doesn't till the fields, he rents the fields out to people who pay him for the privilege of tilling them, and those payments are enough for him to live comfortably.
This is the same problem FLWAB exhibits - that's not what it means to be gentry. You're describing Bilbo as a peasant and just asserting that the fact that he's a peasant makes him an aristocrat. This is nonsense.
> And, aided by a good reputation in a high-trust society, for him to take a year off to go travelling and not have to worry about whether he'll still have that comfortable life waiting for him when he returns.
This is also nonsense, considering that when he returns he's been declared dead, his possessions have been sold to other hobbits, and his reputation can't protect him because he lost it by going travelling.
I am describing Bilbo as a member of the landed gentry, which is very much *not* the same thing as a peasant. There is essentially no overlap between "landed gentry" and "peasant", and I do not think I have said anything that would put Bilbo or Frodo in the "peasant" category, Where are you getting "peasant", from anything I wrote?
Not exactly correct. Neither Bilbo, nor Frodo as Bilbo's heir, needed treasure to be able to live without ever working, as Bilbo had family money and possessions. In "The Hobbit", Bilbo is referred to as a thief by Gollum when he finds the ring missing, jumps to the correct conclusion that Bilbo has it, and accuses him of being a thief. Bilbo found the ring 'by accident', he didn't deliberately steal it.
The second time he is referred to as a thief or burglar is by the Dwarves, who got a wrong notion into their heads and then Gandalf lost his temper with them. Briefly, he met up with Thorin and company before going to visit Bilbo, talked with them about going back to the Lonely Mountain, and advised them that they needed stealth, like a Hobbit, because Hobbits can be stealthy. They took the wrong end of the stick and thought Gandalf meant Bilbo was a professional thief. From The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Durin’s Folk, typescript B (when Gandalf accepted Thorin's invitation to come back with him to the Blue Mountains):
""(W)e actually passed through the Shire, though Thorin would not stop long enough for that to be useful. Indeed I think it was annoyance with his haughty disregard of the Hobbits that first put into my head the idea of entangling him with them. As far as he was concerned they were just food-growers who happened to work the fields on either side of the Dwarves' ancestral road to the Mountains."
...'Hobbits move without effort more quietly than any Dwarf in the world could manage, though his life depended on it. They are, I suppose, the most soft-footed of all mortal kinds. You do not seem to have observed that, at any rate, Thorin Oakenshield, as you tromped through the Shire, making a noise (I may say) that the inhabitants could hear a mile away. When I said that you would need stealth, I meant it: professional stealth.'
"Professional stealth?' cried Balin, taking up my words rather differently than I had meant them. 'Do you mean a trained treasure-seeker? Can they still be found?'
I hesitated. This was a new turn, and I was not sure how to take it. 'I think so,' I said at last. 'For a reward they will go in where you dare not, or at any rate cannot, and get what you desire.'
Thorin's eyes glistened as the memories of lost treasures moved in his mind; but 'A paid thief, you mean,' he said scornfully. 'That might be considered, if the reward was not too high. But what has all this to do with one of those villagers? They drink out of clay, and they cannot tell a gem from a bead of glass.'
'I wish you would not always speak so confidently without knowledge,' I said sharply. 'These villagers have lived in the Shire some fourteen hundred years, and they have learned many things in the time. They had dealings with the Elves, and with the Dwarves, a thousand years before Smaug came to Erebor. None of them are wealthy as your forefathers reckoned it, but you will find some of their dwellings have fairer things in them than you can boast here, Thorin. The Hobbit that I have in mind has ornaments of gold, and eats with silver tools, and drinks wine out of shapely crystal.'
'Ah! I see your drift at last,' said Balin. 'He is a thief, then? That is why you recommend him?'
At that I fear I lost my temper and my caution. This Dwarvish conceit that no one can have or make anything 'of value' save themselves, and that all fine things in other hands must have been got, if not stolen, from the Dwarves at some time, was more than I could stand at that moment. 'A thief?' I said, laughing. 'Why yes, a professional thief, of course! How else would a Hobbit come by a silver spoon? I will put the thief's mark on his door, and then you will find it.' Then being angry I got up, and I said with a warmth that surprised myself: 'You must look for that door, Thorin Oakenshield! I am serious.' And suddenly I felt that I was indeed in hot earnest. This queer notion of mine was not a joke, it was right. It was desperately important that it should be carried out. The Dwarves must bend their stiff necks.
'Listen to me, Durin's Folk!' I cried. 'If you persuade this Hobbit to join you, you will succeed. If you do not, you will fail. If you refuse even to try, then I have finished with you. You will get no more advice or help from me until the Shadow falls on you!'"
As for the treasure Bilbo brought back with him from his share of the hoard and the trolls' cave loot, it wasn't really that great, and he spent most of it, but the legend of the huge fortune hidden in Bag End persevered in the Shire.
The treasure from the dragon's hoard:
"In the end he would only take two small chests, one filled with silver, and the other with gold, such as one strong pony could carry. “That will be quite as much as I can manage,” said he."
The trolls' loot:
Not far from the road they found the gold of the trolls, which they had buried, still hidden and untouched. “I have enough to last me my time,” said Bilbo, when they had dug it up. “You had better take this, Gandalf. I daresay you can find a use for it.”
“Indeed I can!” said the wizard. “But share and share alike! You may find you have more needs than you expect.”
So they put the gold in bags and slung them on the ponies, who were not at all pleased about it."
And what did he do with his treasure?
"His gold and silver was largely spent in presents, both useful and extravagant— which to a certain extent accounts for the affection of his nephews and his nieces."
From "The Lord of the Rings":
"The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure.
...It became a fireside-story for young hobbits; and eventually Mad Baggins, who used to vanish with a bang and a flash and reappear with bags of jewels and gold, became a favourite character of legend and lived on long after all the true events were forgotten.
...Then they went round the hole, and evicted three young hobbits (two Boffins and a Bolger) who were knocking holes in the walls of one of the cellars. Frodo also had a tussle with young Sancho Proudfoot (old Odo Proudfoot’s grandson), who had begun an excavation in the larger pantry, where he thought there was an echo. The legend of Bilbo’s gold excited both curiosity and hope; for legendary gold (mysteriously obtained, if not positively ill-gotten), is, as everyone knows, anyone’s for the finding – unless the search is interrupted.
...Just why Mr. Frodo was selling his beautiful hole was even more debatable than the price. A few held the theory – supported by the nods and hints of Mr. Baggins himself – that Frodo’s money was running out: he was going to leave Hobbiton and live in a quiet way on the proceeds of the sale down in Buckland among his Brandybuck relations. ‘As far from the Sackville-Bagginses as may be,’ some added. But so firmly fixed had the notion of the immeasurable wealth of the Bagginses of Bag End become that most found this hard to believe, harder than any other reason or unreason that their fancy could suggest: to most it suggested a dark and yet unrevealed plot by Gandalf."
> The second time he is referred to as a thief or burglar is by the Dwarves
The *first* time Bilbo is referred to as a burglar is by the dwarves, and by Gandalf, in the meeting in his home at the beginning of The Hobbit. He is hired in that capacity, and they refer to him that way throughout the book.
And the Dwarves only refer to Bilbo as a "burglar" because Gandalf, by his own admission, put a fraudulent "burglar for hire" sign on Frodo's front door.
> From The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Durin’s Folk, typescript B (when Gandalf accepted Thorin's invitation to come back with him to the Blue Mountains):
I tried to find this in my local copy of LOTR; what does "typescript B" mean?
Appendix A, Durin's Folk, just mentions that there was a meeting between Thorin and Gandalf, the story of which is told elsewhere.
Ah, right. It's from one of the variant versions which Christopher Tolkien published in the History of Middle-earth, I think I must have taken it from Unfinished Tales, because there's a mention of it in "The Peoples of Middle-earth" (volume 12 of HoME).
Like a magpie, over the years I've selected out bits and pieces from the various texts and saved them in Word, but I've not been as scrupulous as I ought to have been about noting where I took them from!
He was referred to as a thief because Gandalf recognized his capacity for sneakiness.
Or perhaps Gandalf had a premonition that it was extremely important for Bilbo to go on the expedition with the dwarves, and was just making something up, though I consider that less likely.
Bilbo took more gold from the trolls than from the dragon's hoard, from which he took only a small chest of gold and one of silver. And he gave away all of the gold from the trolls, as he didn't feel it was really his, as it came from robbers. His money came from his mother's side, the fabulous Belladonna Took, though the Bagginses had some amount of money themselves.
You're arguing that Frodo is a rich peasant and Sam is a poor peasant, not that Sam is a peasant and Frodo isn't. No culture anywhere has blocks on poor peasants becoming rich ones. Peasants can do what they want, as long as it's farming.
No, I'm arguing that Frodo is landowning gentry, and Sam isn't. There is a big difference! The Shire is modeled after the English countryside of the 18-19th century, and that was a society where you had the landowning gentry "Squires" and the common folk: Bilbo and Frodo are the former, Sam is the latter.
There's a novel by a German liberal named Eugen Richter from 1891 called "Pictures of the Socialistic Future". The book is supposed to convey what a socialist Germany would look like. He wrote that a socialist government would lead to shortages rather than abundance, and that eventually it would be forced to put guards at the border to keep people from leaving.
Communistic ideals go back to at least the 16th century with Surfs in The German Peasant Revolts. Martin Luther played some organizing role, and then had to mediate their resolutions.
The October Revolution was Germany's tool to take Russia out of WWI, and very successful. As the Bolsheviks determined the war not in the people's interest and withdrew.
Before 1917 communism was just a vague utopian concept. It was the policies and practical problems of the Soviet Union which crystallized the arguments against socialism and the path to communism.
There's a book called Looking Backward from 1888 that addresses the common anti-communist arguments from the time. They're mostly the same as now, about personal freedom, economic incentives, difficulties with planning etc. but there's fewer of them and the economic theory's less sophisticated. They don't make any arguments about price signals or tacit knowledge for instance. So if you think those were major problems they didn't predict them.
In the early Cold War after the USSR had a lot of economic success in WW2 the main anti-communists narratives in the US revolved around the Soviets being godless atheists, and socialism's association with totalitarianism in Europe.
Then after the USSR's growth slowed in the 70s the arguments reverted to being mostly economic with more of a focus on the efficiency of markets vs planning and the perceived failures of attempts at socialism.
The calculation problem was only a major part of the debate in the 20s and 30s, and then again from the 70s onwards. The was a period before the 20s, and from the late 30s to the 70s , where there weren't any really significant economic arguments against socialism, I think that's what's being asked about.
I'm not sure if von Mises changed his mind in the 30s, after seeing the Soviet Union not collapse, and believed the calculation problem could be overcome, but if he didn't change his mind, that was at least one person with one argument against communism.
Also, Hayek, I think he wrote "The use of knowledge" in 1945, it has some strong arguments against communism. I suspect these knowledge/calculation problem ideas were being slowly developed by economists throughout around 1915-1945, although they were not always very prominent and well known.
Maybe because the UDSSR was apparently doing fine economically between 1945 and the 70s all the sound anti communist economic theory was being ignored in favour of he empirical results that the UDSSR wasn't collapsing, not sure.
On reflection "weren't any really significant economic arguments against socialism" is probably overstating it a bit. Socialism was fairly widely seen to have the stronger theoretical case pre-1930, and then when the early USSR had an extremely rapid industrialisation that empirical support shifted most intellectual opinion even further towards socialism.
I've read a bunch of Finnish anti-communist books and novels from the era. Some of them literally considered Bolshevism to, collectively, be the Antichrist, either a bringer of Apocalypse or a minor one that would preceede the Revelations Antichrist. Others thought that Bolshevism was so obviously mistaken that it would collapse *very* quickly, around 20s or early 30s, and be replaced with restored Czardom. In general, many just considered the Soviet Union to be the "eternal Russian" in another cloak, ie. they had considered Russia to be evil during the Czar's era and likewise (though perhaps more direly) evil during the Soviet era.
In Peter Singer's Very Short Introduction to Marxism, he quotes a debate between Marx and Proudhon, where much of what Proudhon predicted came to pass. The Catholic Church opposed "socialism" because of the risk to the institution of private property, whilst supporting economic policies we would see as socialistic now e.g the "just wage". See Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum. Belloc & Chesterton wrote as Catholic laymen and promoted "peasant property" in opposition to socialism and corporate capitalism. Belloc: the Servile State; An Essay on the Restoration of Property; Chesterton: What's Wrong With the World; Outline of Sanity.
Even before that, in the 1870s, some of the problems with that kind of ideologies were identified by astute observers. To quote Dostoyevski's The Demons
“But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a new form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid further uncertainty, I propose my own system of world-organisation. Here it is.” He tapped the notebook. “I wanted to expound my views to the meeting in the most concise form possible, but I see that I should need to add a great many verbal explanations, and so the whole exposition would occupy at least ten evenings, one for each of my chapters.” (There was the sound of laughter.) “I must add, besides, that my system is not yet complete.” (Laughter again.) “I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem but mine.”
I read somewhere that, as recently as the 1950s, even the staunchest anti-communists thought that communism would work economically; their argument was that economic success wasn't worth the loss of freedom that communism brings.
.... I still wonder what happened. The explanations like price signal system are all a bit abstract. What happened in practice? During WW2 they could produce a large quantity of excellent weapons (T-34, IL-2) though it is worth mentioning Stalin nearly got everybody shot who was causing IL-2 delays. So there was some strong motivation there.
So what exactly was Brezhnevian Sclerosis? I think they explicitly tried being more humane than Stalin, so managers screwing up their jobs did not face harsh punishment.
I don't think it is price signals. They planned with world market price signals so basically it was a gigantic Wal-Mart. Perhaps as they got more humane, corruption shot up, because the corrupted were no longer shot.
I'm not saying otherwise. People responded to the situation they found themselves in in entirely normal, predictable, human ways.
The question was: "even the staunchest anti-communists thought that communism would work economically" ... "I still wonder what happened."
The point here is that regardless of reason or justification, when 15%-20% of your GDP is silently diverted to a shadow economy, your state economy is unlikely to work how you thought it would even if it wasn't already mid-collapse for all the other reasons.
(Also, everyone involved in the grift naturally lies about what is happening, which means the picture of the economy that is formed at the top completely fails to match reality, which then makes everything even worse as the next round of plans attempts to make use of resources that are simply not there.)
I don't find this explanation plausible because of:
-China (where growth increased dramatically due to market reforms, in an era which had both more corruption and also less punishment for insufficient devotion to the Party),
-North Korea (where growth pattern was similar to USSR, but it's unlikely that Kim Il-sung relaxed coercion dramatically in the middle of his reign), and
-at least some of the socialist countries of Central Europe/Balkans (similar to North Korea in not having an obvious difference between their higher post-war growth and their lower later growth).
I find the market-based/coercive overly abstract. What I found on Wiki was that Deng allowed the provincial governments to make special deals with foreign investors. So it was not a generic free market but rather provincial governments providing very specific deals with investors. Since a workforce whose language one does not speak and is not yet trained in modern technology is not terribly attractive even with low taxes, my best guess would be input deals: mining, energy. So it actually looks like a very managed process. My main takeaway is that market is mainly a cost-cutting mechanism in this context, it could be an extremely Stalinist economy and yet if they provide foreign investors with low cost inputs, they will come.
NK was so extremely badly managed that when the Soviet and Chinese subsidies stopped coming, they could not even buy fertilizer for growing food. Basic business management is mainly a science, and it should not be terribly hard even for an inefficient bureaucracy to, say, export tungsten (or just flat out license the tungsten mines to foreigners), import fertilizer and grow rice. There had to be a very specific kind of fuckup happening. I don't think a complex Hayekian price finding mechanism is necessary for something that simple.
I have had some first-hand experience with it in Hungary around 1990. Basically the factories, mines etc. had outdated machinery. There was no particularly spectacular screwup, just the whole thing was stuck in the 1950's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIAYxWCXF8A so basically innovation was very slow.
These products were hard to sell on the Western market, but I am not at all sure it was a good idea to close these factories down. One could still have sold them to Africa and get paid in natural resources? The turbines manufactured with that kind of tech are still today in service in Turkey, my uncle used to maintain them. Once these factories were shut down, there were no jobs for decades and then eventually foreign investment started to coming, German, then Korean, Chinese. But even 35 years of market-oriented economic policies still did not enable to locals to build factories like that.
So apparently one cannot just add a simple homogenous element called "market" and then expect innovation to come. It seems they have been very specific policies. These German, Korean factories are all based on very special deals with the government, subsidies and all, and not generic market conditions. Today the generic market conditions in Hungary are mostly on the family restaurant level and almost every large business is somehow arranged by the government.
What I am trying to say is that when we use the word "government", we tend to expect it means "anti-business" and when we use the word "market", we expect "pro-business". But there can be such a thing as "pro-business government", as in "come here, here is a bunch of subsidies and cheap inputs".
The simplest way to save the Soviet economy would have been to do what eventually Russia was doing after the collapse: Renault bought 35% of Lada, brought technology, management etc. and suddenly they could make Lada Xrays which was globally competitive, at least in the poorer markets. Again that was a special deal specially arranged by the government.
This was my first thought when I read the original question as well. When I first read that verse, I assumed that it was intended as a dig at the Soviet Union: I was surprised to learn that the poem was from 1919 as opposed to the 30s or at least the 20s.
Utilitarians generally draw an equivalence in value between human and nonhuman pleasure. That does not seem like a justifiable position. When we say a person is happy, we don’t mean they are happy in that moment. We mean they are content with their overall life. Animals don’t have this kind of reflection because their feelings are all moment to moment. So which do we value?
If you value life satisfaction, then you ignore all non humans. If you value momentary satisfaction, you miss something people consider more fundamental to happiness for us. If you use both, how do you weight them? If you use life satisfaction for humans, doesn’t that imply it’s a superior form of happiness. And if that’s true, doesn’t that mean human happiness is actually far superior to other species happiness? I know that John Stuart Mill had his idea of "higher" and "lower" pleasures and while that has its own issues, it's at least getting at the problem. I don't see that kind of distinction being made now. But if these two conceptions of happiness are qualitatively different, as opposed to just quantitatively different, that makes a big difference.
I disagree with drawing equivalence in value between human and nonhuman lives. But this is because I think it's generally best when people prioritize their in-group over the out-group (possibly a long discussion if I was to get into it).
That being said, I somewhat disagree with "Animals don’t have this kind of reflection because their feelings are all moment to moment.".
Why do I disagree with this? Pet dogs. There's been many documented examples of pet dogs being fiercely loyal to their human owner, and/or displaying sadness when their owner is away for a long time. This suggests to me that pet dogs might have at least some capacity for overall life evaluation. I mean, it suggests that the pet dog bonds at a deep level with a human being, and might care about their relationship in an overall life sense.
>because I think it's generally best when people prioritize their in-group over the out-group (possibly a long discussion if I was to get into it).
It is. Because the whole Enlightenment tradition is about universalism, but it goes back deeper, into Christianity, one universal (katholikos) church, Paul "in Christ there is no Jew or Greek", and can be tracked back to the Stoic cosmopolis. So there is a giant weight of tradition in favour of universalism.
On the other hand, we never manage it. Not even the "good guys". Right now, basically no one weighs Ukrainian and Russian lives equally. "Good people" laugh at Russian *conscripts* being blown up and call them orcs and not even think capturing them and exchanging them for Ukrainian POWs would be better. Universalism is a nice ideal which we are never doing in practice.
Very many people weigh Russian and Ukrainian lives equally. I remember seeing a video showing a young Russian man being killed by a drone. One could see very clearly how he tried to escape death and how afraid he was. And most comments were about how sad the video was and how war is hell.
One additional point for me is this - we *know* the in-group more than we do the out-group. In the case of humans vs. non-humans, we certainly have a better understanding of humans than we do of non-humans. Knowledge is power, and greater knowledge enables more effective solutions and... more effective altruism. ;)
I think you have a point about it not necessarily being moment to moment although I wouldn’t call that reflection. But how would you compare the “life satisfaction” of two dogs that have decent owners who don’t abandon them?
Well I can’t look inside the mind of an animal and know 100% what it’s like to be an animal, I’m pretty confident that something as cognitively demanding as ruminating is not in the cards for them. I could go more in to justifying that position but I have hard time believing that anyone would take seriously the claim that dogs sit around asking themselves “Yes, my owner gives me treats and takes me on walks but is there more to life than this?”
I generally think of overall life satisfaction important in that you can't exactly ask if someone's happy over and over again every moment of every day, so instead you ask them once if they feel like they're happy in general.
But as long as the kind of happiness animals have has some value, it must be equivalent to some amount of human happiness. If you're faced with the choice of a certain amount of animal happiness vs a certain amount of life satisfaction by humans, you have to choose somehow.
Animals may not be able to reflect on their overall life situation, but if cruelty to animals makes them generally more stressed and nervous all the time then that is a non-pleasurable feeling they carry through their lives. So arguably, ongoing pleasure in animals is a meaningful concept, if only by its reverse.
This isn't binary. Like, animals can have lesser value than humans and still have some value.
Like, if you kick a puppy, that's bad. That's bad because it's morally bad for your soul to kick a puppy but it's also bad because that makes the puppy hurt and it makes the puppy cry and the world with a hurt, crying puppy is obviously worse than the one with a happy puppy. This doesn't change the fact that it's way worse to kick a baby than a puppy.
The fact that we can't perfectly weigh out the badness of kicking puppies vs kicking babies doesn't the cardinality that kicking babies is worse than kicking puppies or providing insights and rough estimates from that. For example, is it worse to kick one baby or 10 puppies? 100 puppies? 1,000 puppies? I think the majority of utilitarians would agree that there is some number at which point it would be worse to kick X puppies than one baby. At which point, if we face a tradeoff between kicking 100,000 puppies and 1 baby, we can make the best decision possible :)
Yes, people generally feel that way, but the philosophical justification is rather weak. Perhaps we just have to accept that emotions matter and we cannot justify everything?
> Like, if you kick a puppy, that's bad. That's bad because it's morally bad for your soul to kick a puppy but it's also bad because that makes the puppy hurt and it makes the puppy cry and the world with a hurt, crying puppy is obviously worse than the one with a happy puppy.
I hate to ask this, but... source? Those are some bold claims to be making without any evidence.
Wow, I feel nothing. I'm kind of surprised myself, honestly.
...Dogs can't cry, by the way. Well, they can, but only humans shed tears as an emotional response. Though there was a disputed study saying that dogs had a slightly higher volume of tears when reuniting with their owners. Honestly, I'd just be impressed if it turned out that aggressive breeding efforts had somehow given dogs the ability to cry.
Not that the ability to cry has any bearing on the ability to feel emotion, mind you. Animals, social animals especially, all have their unique ways of expressing themselves. Humans will never take the time to notice them, of course, so they'll just come up with bullshit to justify whatever they think they're feeling.
I did specifically talk about happiness because pain between humans and non-humans seems more similar to me. But if I say a person is happy, it's a different connotation than saying a puppy is happy.
Yeah, but we compare qualitatively different things all the time. With $500, some people might go sky diving and some people might get the boojiest seats in the opera and some people might but like 100 mosquito nets for Eritreans. You seem to be really focused on this qualitative difference of human/non-human happiness but that's not a unique issue. Utilitarians collapse lots of concepts into "utility" because, well, one uniform measure of "good stuff" makes everything easier. Like, I can't tell if you're just really bothered by something other people aren't bothered by or if there's some deep issue you're grappling with.
If they are different things then they aren’t interchangeable. It’s like if I’m comparing two movies and I point out one has better acting but the other has better cinematography. If I try to convert these aspects in to a number and claim that it provides some kind of objective answer, it’s completely arbitrary. I’m saying that utilitarians collapse this whole thing in to “good stuff” not because they have a justificable reason but because like the idea of doing calculations where it doesn’t make sense. Just because you throw numbers around doesn’t make those numbers correspond to reality.
I mean, yes, there's an entire website called Rotten Tomatoes that does nothing but converting various non-interchangeable aspects of movies into a single number and claim it's some kind of objective answer.
Like, a transcendent spiritual experience on shrooms isn't interchangeable with a Chipotle but they both cost ~$20...and that's kind of how our entire economy works. Like, one of the primary justifications for capitalism as a system is it is super awesome at setting the most accurate prices possible, which is critical for running our entire economy. But money is, literally, just made up numbers for comparing the value of non-interchangeable things.
There are aspects of utilitarianism which are mind blowing, and I love them, but this isn't that. Attaching vaguely associated numbers to things is just like a thing humans do all the time, often with really useful results. Why are you getting hung up on this aspect?
Rotten Tomatoes is giving you a number but it would be ridiculous to think that it automatically implies movies with higher scores are objectively better because of that. And economists don’t attach moral worth to prices.
Is it true that utilitarians generally make this equivalence? Cites / links would be good. I agree that weighing animal welfare as equal to human seems misguided - but I doubt serious utilitarians (e.g., professional respected philosophers) do as such. I've always assumed it's more of a thing of unexamined EAs, e.g., Catherine Ellison types.
If they do make the distinction, it's generally of a quantitative type than qualitative. E.g a pig experiences some fraction of human happiness so N number of pigs is equivalent to a person. I'm saying that to me these are intuitively different types of experiences and not interchangeable.
I stumbled on this musical of the Odyssey, accompanied by crowd sourced animations and a dedicated fan base, and, having just read the Odyssey, feel very impressed with its quality and fidelity:
As Linkee #49, I wanted to share that I'm looking for work, so if you're hiring economists or data scientists, or have research you want replicated, get in touch (maswiebe[at]gmail.com).
A while back I saw a debunking of some scuba gizmo that supposedly filtered oxygen from water, so you wouldn't need tanks, just this mouthpiece. It got me thinking, what if you converted the water to steam? I'm picturing a device that lets a trickle of water run over a heat strip, and the user breathes in the steam. Would that get the average person the oxygen they need? Are there side effects to breathing straight H20?
Electrolysis of water? Would that work? 2 electrons per O? or 4 per O_2? some google AI says we need ~0.6 moles per hour. so ~3.6x10^23 O2, About 1x10^20 O2 per second... Four times that is 20 amps? (I probably made a mistake.)
Your idea of breathing in steam as a way to extract oxygen from water is creative, but it doesn't quite work from a physiological or scientific standpoint. Let's break it down.
First, the amount of oxygen (O₂) dissolved in water is very low. In fact, even if we could somehow filter that oxygen directly, it would be insufficient to meet human respiratory needs. Fish, for example, use gills, which are incredibly efficient at extracting the small amounts of dissolved oxygen, but even then, they require a vastly different metabolic system from ours. Humans breathe air, where oxygen is plentiful—about 21%—while the concentration in water is typically only a few milligrams per liter.
Now, about steam. When water is heated to steam, it doesn't break down into oxygen and hydrogen; it's still H₂O, just in gas form. Breathing in water vapor won't provide any oxygen at all, and it could actually lead to dangerous health effects. Steam can cause burns or scalding to the sensitive tissues in your lungs and airway, and excessive moisture could lead to conditions like pulmonary edema, where fluid builds up in the lungs, making it harder to breathe.
So, while the concept of converting water into something breathable is interesting, converting it to steam wouldn't solve the oxygen problem and could actually create more issues for the body. Alternative methods, like artificial gills or direct oxygen extraction from water using specialized technology, would be far more viable—but we're not quite there yet on a practical level.
Excellent. I just want to add I first read about artificial gills in 1990 in an 1970's science mag that predicted it will be done in a few years. So, lol, hype was already invented.
My AI detection algorithm rates the probability of AI generation as low. For example, AI doesn't use fragments like "Now, about steam". AI seldom uses absolute terms, such as "water vapor won't provide any oxygen at all".
The side effect of breathing H2O is dying. You can't just breathe anything with an "O" in it -- CO (carbon monoxide) is extremely toxic; O3 (ozone) will kill you quickly at reasonable concentrations; etc. H2O is of course not toxic, but you're not actually going to be able to use it for respiration. (I.e. It doesn't undergo the same chemical reactions.)
I think the much larger practical concern would be lugging around the energy source to heat the water to steam, and then managing to keep the steam from condensing back into liquid while not being so hot it burns the person breathing it. Only then should you worry if people can breathe water vapor.
Incorrect; it's very easy to know that people can't breathe pure water, so there's no point in considering what machinery might or might not enable them to try.
When an easy question is sufficient to solve your problem, it's a mistake to consider a harder one first.
I considered adding "assuming one can take into temperature, the carbon dioxide, power source", but I was in a hurry and writing the comment out on my phone. I figured there would be some biological issues with the core idea, and this has been most educational.
Would breathing in the hydrogen be really bad for the person? I'm assuming so but I don't actually know. Could the process somehow send the oxygen to the person and the hydrogen back out into the water?
Hydrogen is terribly hard to store, so separating it from the O2 wouldn't be the most difficult problem if you can wait a bit for it to leak out into the water. In the mean time, the present H2 and O2 will be very happy to spontaneously react back to H2O, releasing all the energy you provided during electrolysis in a loud bang.
Hydrogen gas is non-toxic and wouldn't be a problem, but you could separate them out if you need to. The real problem here is that given the size of the batteries you'd need for this, you're better off just carrying an oxygen tank.
Agreed - except if you can use a nuclear source for the energy to do the electrolysis. This generally works well on the scale of a nuclear submarine. Scaling it down to an individual diver, while not giving them radiation poisoning, could get ... interesting...
We need oxygen for its capacity to do certain chemical reactions, and release energy in the process. Water and carbon dioxide, the waste producs of respiration, are in a lower energy state than the oxygen and carbohydrates/fats they're made from, and it's this energy difference that's important. If you take water as an input, it's useless because it's already in a low energy state so you can't get more energy out.
There's a difference between water (H2O) and a mixture of hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen gas (O2). The latter would be fine to breathe since H2 is indeed non-toxic, but what electrolysis is doing isn't just unmixing the gasses, but changing the chemistry by adding energy.
Again with practical issues, electrolysis requires a lot of electricity to work, so now the scuba gizmo also needs a giant battery or a cord going back to a surface vessel. The electrodes are going to be fouled with salts from even fresh water, so now you are also lugging around a tank of distilled water. Finally you get oxygen, but it needs to be pressurized and mixed with an inert gas at about a 1:4 ratio to be breathable. At this point you realize the endeavor is pointless and stupid.
Hydrogen gas isn't toxic AFAIK but you can't breathe it. I imagine dumping it into the water would be fairly trivial.
However the original question basically related to breathing H2O. You can't do that, whether it is in liquid or vapour form. The main reason we need to breathe oxygen is so that it can react with sugars or fats in our bodies, releasing energy. Like burning, basically, but carefully controlled by enzymes. Oxygen in water comes pre-reacted - it has already burned with hydrogen. There is no energy to release.
If a device could use energy to extract pure oxygen rapidly from water it could indeed be the basis of a breathing apparatus. But extracting it in sufficient quantities in a small wearable device is well outside the limits of current technological understanding.
Sure, oxygen is highly corrosive, and if you're exposed to too much of it, your body will be corroded. That's bad, but it's not a failure of breathing.
At sea level, yes. The increase in pressure with depth means oxygen toxicity comes on much faster; you can't safely dive below ~60 meters breathing ordinary air; you need a special gas mixture with less than the normal oxygen content. For pure O2, the limit would be about five meters, and you are going to need a buffer gas.
As far as power requirements go, to keep pace with the oxygen demand of a moderately active diver you'd need 500 watts or so of steady-state power. Not out of the question, but still going to require ~3 kg of lithium batteries for an hour's dive. And you also need to desalinate the water first (else as noted below you'll be getting highly toxic chlorine) and you'll need a rebreather circuit with a carbon dioxide absorber. That;s a lot of expensive complexity that can kill you in many interesting and non-obvious ways when it goes wrong. I'll stick with a tank of compressed air, thank you. Or maybe a conventional non-electrolytic rebreather.
Maybe fuse spare hydrogen into helium while you're at it. Then heliox mixture can come handy to take you (and your fusion plant - no need for the cable to surface!) to greater depths.
You know I saw a movie about this in fourth grade, “Hemo the Magnificent” produced at Bell Labs. It seems that a lot of energy gets released when you do that hydrogen fusion thing.
Last thread I made a somewhat ranty comment about, among other things, rationalists and nerds not having much virtue. Sorry if anyone was offended by that. It's clear that there are some members of those groups who are truly horrible hedonists with no concern for others, especially with regard to sex*, but my comment was too broad a brush.
So, instead of expressing a whole lot of things I'm angry at in one comment, I'll try for a narrower focus. To mention just one thing, am I right or wrong in thinking that rationalists/nerds are generally in favour of hookup culture and casual sex? I do worry there's a motte-and-bailey here where people if challenged will say they aren't *supporting* those things, they just think there shouldn't be rigid prohibitions on them in all circumstances (which I agree with) but then when not being challenged they'll revert to acting for all the world like they *are* in full support of them. But I'll ask anyway.
If I'm right, here are my objections, and tell me why you disagree.
First, there's an aesthetic objection: sex with strangers just cheapens sex. It turns it into a transactional exchange, and/or an animalistic primitive thing, with no emotion or civilised aspect.
Second, three moral objections:
1. Spreading stds and creating unwanted children, who will then be either aborted or grow up in unstable homes. Yes, this can happen from non-casual sex, but it seems clear the likelihood is far greater (e.g. one man can father ten children in a month) and the outcomes worse (e.g. no real possibility of the parents deciding to get married for the sake of the child).
2. The number of incels and similar phenomena show pretty clearly how harmful the whole culture of hookups is and how much judgement and rejection it inflicts on perfectly decent people. Nerds talk about this all the time, and for some inexplicable reason continue to support this toxic culture. Again, yes, this can happen in normal relationships, but it seems clear that the shallowness of people's preferences can and does skyrocket when it's a purely casual encounter. Many people don't benefit from this, and neither does society. *Why* tolerate it?
3. Even if neither of those factors were present (e.g. perfectly reliable contraception plus no rejections of people, two absurd ifs) there still seems something scummy and unvirtuous about the whole idea of two people treating each other as nothing but objects for one another's pleasure. How many people who engage in hookup culture spend any time at all considering anything but their own desires? It certainly seems like the number is tiny. People don't look for someone who they can make happy, perhaps looking for a person who's the loneliest or most in need of cheering up. They look for the person most attractive to them, and consider literally nothing else. Even if all the practical problems with this were solved, the very internal motivations and mental states behind it are despicable.
So, can I hear why rationalists would tolerate any of this? Nearly every aspect seems utterly contrary to everything a society built on reason should be.
(*for example, I've seen stories of rationalists pressuring women into getting abortions, and quite a few in these communities who appear to greatly downplay the harms of infidelity. It often *seems* like the movement tolerates such evil people, at least far more than it tolerates mildly anti-woke opinions. If that perception is true, the movement is in some sense beyond redemption, but I'll accept, absent substantial evidence for the truth of that perception, that it's false.)
> To mention just one thing, am I right or wrong in thinking that rationalists/nerds are generally in favour of hookup culture and casual sex?
I would guess that nerds on average are more on the "openness to experience" side. But how much, that is difficult to say. It's possible that people with certain opinions are overrepresented in the debate.
> First, there's an aesthetic objection: sex with strangers just cheapens sex.
Do you have an aesthetic preference for things being expensive? Like, if you could get exactly the same thing either for $1 or for $1000, would you prefer to pay $1000?
This is the part that feels alien to me. In my opinion, things don't become better just because you charge more for them. But some people seem to feel that way, and it could be interesting to explore why. (My guess, admittedly quite uncharitable, is that some people derive a lot of pleasure from comparing themselves to others. An expensive thing is better by the virtue that some people other than me can't have it.)
> It turns it into a transactional exchange, and/or an animalistic primitive thing, with no emotion or civilised aspect.
This assumes that people can feel no emotion to people they only know for a short time. Or that we can't be nice to strangers.
You seem to use "animalistic" as a negative judgment. When you do sex, does it mean you feel no sexual instinct, only... dunno, a solemn duty to reproduce the humankind? From the technical perspective, how does a guy get a non-animalistic erection?
> Spreading stds and creating unwanted children, who will then be either aborted or grow up in unstable homes.
Is a very bad thing, I agree.
> one man can father ten children in a month
I assume this is not the kind of sexual behavior that most nerds would approve of. Some basic knowledge of contraception is assumed.
> The number of incels and similar phenomena show pretty clearly how harmful the whole culture of hookups is and how much judgement and rejection it inflicts on perfectly decent people.
I think these problems are mostly caused by people getting married at a later age. In the past, (we had the polite fiction that) people didn't have sex before marriage -- but they didn't need to wait for the marriage for too long. These days, we want everyone to get university education first, then start a career, and... starting the family comes last. But people don't want to wait for their first sexual experience until they are thirty or forty, so we get the hookups.
What is your proposal? Abolish the universities? (Actually, I think the right answer is halfway in that direction. We should have more streaming in education, which means that the smartest students could advance faster, which means the entire education could be shorter.) Convince women to get married and pregnant right after finishing the university? (Possibly a good idea.) Or make *everyone* wait until they are thirty or fifty before they have sex for the first time, so that the incels don't feel singled out?
> there still seems something scummy and unvirtuous about the whole idea of two people treating each other as nothing but objects for one another's pleasure.
Well, it's your assumption that they can't feel emotions for each other; some people might disagree. So what is the part that would make it virtuous instead? The economical dimension of traditional marriage? (But you disapprove of transactional relations, don't you?)
> I've seen stories of rationalists pressuring women into getting abortions
I'm sure there are such assholes also outside of the rationalist community. I assume that the average nerd in the rationalist community is not like this.
I will say that, as much as I disagree with your views on casual sex, there's one thing that I absolutely encourage doing in terms of spreading them to the world: exemplify a better alternative.
Go find a subculture with sexual norms more to your liking. If you can't find one, found one. I guarantee you that there are lots of other people out there who are interested in romantic and sexual relationships, but who aren't interested in casual sex. I guarantee that there are lots of people who'd like to be able to date from a pool of people who largely feel the same. It's likely that some of them have gone at least part of the way towards making that happen and you can join them; if not, they badly need some pioneers to get things started. My main caution here, though, is to focus far more on promoting what you DO want than on denigrating what you don't. By which I mean "no casual hookups" is a fine internal norm for a culture to have, but "go out and shame people from outside the culture who have casual hookups" is not. A culture need not be a crusade, and I don't think crusades usually make for healthy, stable or pleasant cultures.
The advantages of this approach are manifold. First, it's almost always MUCH easier to find people who already agree with you (especially on normative questions) than to convince people who don't. Second, people who would previously vociferously oppose you (such as myself) will often be either neutral or even happy to help as long as you're clearly not trying to rain on anyone else's parade. But third (and perhaps most importantly) your assumptions get tested against reality quickly and in a low-stakes way. If hookup culture does have all the toxic features you expect it does, your culture will almost instantly and effortlessly be better. People will notice, and many who have compatible views will flock to join. If you do have any misconceptions that get in the way of establishing good community norms, it's going to work a lot better to iron them out in a small subculture than it is to discover them only after you've effected a broad shift in the wider culture.
I'll end by noting that there's a natural and pretty rigid subset of people who will always be uninterested in casual sex and hookup culture: asexuals. I mention them not because they're people who'd be a good fit for your own sexual norms (it seems like you're interested in sex, just in the context of relationships) but because they're an excellent test-case to see how broader cultures deal with people of different preferences. My rather strong impression is that most asexual people tend to feel far more at-ease in sex-positive spaces than in prudish ones. This may seem counterintuitive, but a lot of prudish cultures have rigid sexual norms that don't allow people to have sex in certain circumstances, but also frown on them *refusing* sex in others (such as marriage) and are generally less tolerant of differences in sexuality. Meanwhile the default attitude for sex-positive spaces is simply "love as thou wilt," which can encompass everything from hypersexuality to complete asexuality and all sorts of individual nuance and variation in between. If it's nobody else's business how you arrange your sex life, then you're perfectly free to arrange it to suit your preferences.
Thanks for the detailed responses. This is the sort of engaged discussion I value this place so much for.
Let me just clarify a few things.
Apparently my tone still comes across as harsh, even though I tried to tone it down. I'm not militantly dogmatic on this, I'm open to being convinced.
Some people seem to think we're talking about legally banning hookup culture? I don't think that's at all within the Overton Window, and I certainly wasn't talking about that, but about moral criticism and social discouragement. And when I said I agree that casual sex shouldn't be always prohibited I meant in a moral sense, i.e. it's not always wrong, it just often is. And I'm also only using "casual sex" to mean with strangers, not people who know each other but aren't in a committed relationship, which I'd put in a very different category.
Regarding what I mean by cheapening sex, I mean something like: sex loses its significance as a unique thing to share with someone you love, or even just someone you know well or are emotionally close to. Even "I'm one of 5 boyfriends/girlfriends you gave this to" is very different from "I'm one of 200 random people". Or 20 random people or whatever.
Regarding incels, I'm sorry but I feel like this thread has completely different people to the sex discussions on the last few Open Threads. People here are mostly making the standard anti-incel arguments: "there aren't many of them, and the ones that exist are either bad people or have too high standards". Wheras those other threads had plenty of people arguing that this is a pervasive problem and that those claims don't apply. I'm taking no position on the factual truth of this matter. I did, however, want to hear from those latter self-described nerds who nonetheless seem to support hookup culture.
(Also, when I say "incel" I'm referring to the broadest category that includes "nice guys", "lonely nerds" and all the other groups that have a presence on this blog, not to the incel "movement". Is there a broad catch-all term I can use to make this reference cleaer?)
More generally, I wish I'd asked people responding to say whether they call themselves a rationalist. Many of the responders look more like standard liberals who dismiss the incel idea and all the status theories that many rationalists focus on. Not that I don't appreciate those responses, but I particularly wanted to hear from rationalists.
Have you considered whether your perspective on nerds' sexual morality might be skewed by which nerds discuss sex online and which ones don't, i.e. selection bias?
My guess is that endorsement of casual sex and interest in discussing sex online are positively correlated, among nerds and among non-nerds. I have not seen any data on this; I am merely reasoning from my being in both the disendorse camp and the disinterest camp.
>To mention just one thing, am I right or wrong in thinking that rationalists/nerds are generally in favour of hookup culture and casual sex?
I think not. The majority seem like heterosexual males, and nerdy heterosexual males are typically not doing well in that kind of intense competition.
I see favour for poly for this reason, people expect poly women will be less, ahem, picky about choosing a tertiary, since the opportunity cost is lower than that of mono. Indeed that is mostly how my dating works, I am the always forever tertiary. But it is still not hookups, it is serious friendships with some benefits, so there is far far more going on than being objects of desire.
I reiterate: for the not very attractive nerdy guy, hookups are HARDER to get than mono, but tertiary poly stuff are EASIER to get. That's because a hookup is entirely based on sexual desire, while the tertiary poly stuff is friendship-based, it is liking the person, and then at some point "well I guess I am horny too, so why not". So the sexual stuff is mood and liking based and not explicitly desire based.
I think there is also a distinctly libertarian element of the culture as well, basically aversion to telling people how they should live. I think that is the main issue with your argument. How can one not tolerate hookups without turning into a ridiculously puritanical, killjoy Sex Police?
There is IMHO also an element of atheism, one just does not want to look like an Evangelical. These cultures are very much opposed. I think science-based subcultures would be explicitly sex-positive precisely because their religion-based opponents are not. If the Creationists would hold gay orgies, maybe we would be ones preaching lifelong monogamy :))
I don't consider myself a rationalist exactly, but I think rationalists mostly get this one right. Answering your points one-by-one:
Aesthetic Objection: the obvious issue here is that aesthetics are personal. Your primitive, cheapened, transactional exchange is someone else's beautiful, life-affirming celebration of humanity. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone "supporting hookup culture" in the sense of thinking casual sex should be *obligatory,* just that it should be permissible and not considered shameful. Likewise not wanting casual sex should be permissible and non-shameful. So those that find it aesthetically unpleasant are absolutely free to avoid it, as long as they don't try to impose their aesthetics on others.
1. As a practical matter, I think you're probably wrong in most realistic circumstances. I can imagine a culture that simultaneously discourages casual sex AND teaches responsible sexual practices, but that doesn't seem to be a balance point that real-world cultures hit very often. It seems like you either end up with a prudish/puritanical culture which has a very strong tendency to keep people ignorant about sex, or a sex-positive one that tries very hard to spread knowledge of safe and responsible sex[1]. Nothing I've read of human history suggests that prudish cultures are actually good enough at shaming or policing people's sexual desires to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs: instead the stigma around sex *increases* the harm of those things in ways I doubt I need to belabour. I'd also *vehemently* disagree that parents "deciding to get married for the sake of the child" is a better outcome. Being raised by parents who aren't a couple has its upsides and downsides; being raised by parents who are together but shouldn't be has quite sharp downsides. Marriage doesn't magically make incompatible people compatible, irresponsible people responsible or people who weren't yet ready to settle down more stable or less restless. Anyhow, I think unwanted pregnancies and STDs are real concerns among people who want casual sex, but they are concerns that both respond *quite a lot* to culture in a way that mere sexual desire does not. Developing good cultural practices around contraception and STD prevention sounds a hell of a lot more possible than developing cultural practices that keep people from fucking.
2. I'm not remotely convinced by point 2. My understanding is that *incels themselves* consider themselves victims of others peoples' shallow preferences. But in reality, it's not actually understanding the roots of their interpersonal relationship problems is a large part of what makes them incels. In short, I don't think laying other peoples' psychological issues at the feet of "hookup culture" is remotely justified, at least not by any evidence you've provided.
3. This seems to be mostly a redux of the aesthetic point, with a heaping helping of projection. There's nothing "scummy" about wanting sex and ethically pursuing that desire. As for virtue, everybody's idea of virtue differs somewhat, but there's nothing inherently *unvirtuous* about pursuing your own goals and desires in ways that don't (by default) hurt other people. People who are lying to their partners, manipulating them, recklessly endangering them or deliberately trying to hurt them are being unvirtuous, of course, but I doubt you'll find anyone defending that sort of behaviour as a necessary, central or desirable part of hookup culture: defectors gonna defect, regardless of the culture. Anyhow, I think lots of people pursue casual sex while being mindful of the desires and comfort of their partners, and without treating their partners as objects. I think you might be letting your aesthetic disgust interfere with your ability to accurately model other human beings. Now, what people will NOT generally do (which you seem to suggest as evidence of lack of moral worth) is deliberately pursue sex with people they're unattracted to, solely for the sake of the other person. I think almost everyone implicitly recognizes this would be a bad idea: trying to have sex with someone you're unattracted to is often as unpleasant for them as it is for you. But there is quite a lot of room for two mutually-attracted people to be mindful of one anothers' needs and desires while having sex, even if they don't intend to pursue a longer relationship. Harkening back to Point 2 above, I'd guess that by far the biggest factor that makes incels wind up where they are is that they project unintentionally project an image (whether truly or falsely) of being somebody who *wouldn't* be mindful of what their partner wants. A casual sexual encounter with somebody who treats you like an object or ignores your wants and desires is unlikely to be pleasant, and many women are well aware of this. At any rate, I'll point out the hopefully-obvious fact that people who engage in hookup culture are also people with lives outside the bedroom; people who tend to be mindful and empathetic and responsible and courteous will bring that with them to their dates and hookups, as will people who tend to be self-centered and impulsive and careless of the feelings of others. People are people, inside the bedroom and out.
[1] I suppose a culture that's friendly to casual sex but doesn't try to spread that sort of knowledge is also possible, but I'm also not sure how likely it really is.
> Nothing I've read of human history suggests that prudish cultures are actually good enough at shaming or policing people's sexual desires to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs: instead the stigma around sex *increases* the harm of those things in ways I doubt I need to belabour.
>Although HIV may be underreported in some Muslim societies, this study’s analysis of 2009 data from the U.N. finds that less than 2% of people ages 15-49 in Muslim-majority countries in sub-Saharan Africa are HIV positive, compared with nearly 6% of the population in non-Muslim-majority countries in the region.
Some have claimed that different rates of circumcision can explain whatever Muslim country vs Christian country HIV gap is left after possible Muslim underreporting is accounted for. I find this unlikely.
As a simple matter of good data analysis, this isn't a useful attempt at comparison. To be honest I was expecting people to challenge this point using this sort of statistic, but I was expecting something that compared, for example, different U.S. states or something like that: even there I was prepared to point out the difficulties inherent in aggregating data at the state level. Trying to run a comparison based on entirely different countries in one of the poorest regions of the world...well...it's great for fuelling confirmation bias, but not so good for for actually understanding what's going on.
Let's make an equally valid comparison: the HIV infection rate in the U.S. is (from what I could quickly find) roughly 0.4%. That's much less than even the Muslim countries in sub-Saharan Africa! Do you think that U.S. culture, in aggregate, is even more prudish than those cultures? Or are there, perhaps, other factors that vary from country to country that could explain the difference?
To be honest, I took ascend's comment to be implicitly considering mostly the cultures and subcultures in which rationalists (and ACX readers more specifically) were likely to live. I don't think rationalists have enough influence in sub-Saharan African cultures for their attitudes towards casual sex to make the tiniest sliver of difference there. Regardless, I'll go ahead and clarify/weaken my claim a bit to per-emptively narrow the scope:
1. A culture has to be reasonably modern/rich for sexual permissiveness to be reasonably safe. In particular effective contraception and STD prevention aren't available, then no amount of sex education is going to significantly reduce the risks of sex. In these circumstances I *do* expect prudishness to produce better results, at least in terms of those particular metrics.
2. A sexually permissive culture has to be somewhat dominant in its cultural sphere in order for better sex education and better norms around safe sex to show up in things like aggregate statistics. Both for the (hopefully obvious) reason that the stats have to primarily be measuring people from *that culture* before they can say anything about it, and for the more subtle reason that cultures aren't islands. People from one culture can interact with and join another culture. I expect the worst results in terms of both STDs and unwanted pregnancies to come from places where large numbers of people raised in prudish cultures suddenly find themselves intermingling with permissive cultures: all of a sudden you have a bunch of people who have all of the horniness and most of the opportunity for sex, but none of the education.
I don't think testing the effect of sexual culture and sex-education on things like unwanted pregnancy rate and STD rates through data analysis to be impossible, but I don't expect it to be easy, either. I don't think, for example, that any U.S. state is culturally homogeneous enough for checking aggregate stats at that level to be very useful. Finding and analyzing data that's granular enough to disentangle the effects of different sexual cultures in the modern world would probably be at least a medium-sized project, not something you could do with a simple Google search.
I doubt that hook-up culture has much impact on literal incels. Most incels either have too high standards or aren't willing to improve themselves to the point where they'd make a more attractive mate.
That being said, I do wonder if hook-up culture might be making it harder for people to develop long-term romantic relationships (i.e. pair-bonding), and in turn if this is a factor in recent fertility declines in Asia and the west. The desire for sex is certainly a strong motivating factor for most people.
Strong social taboos against casual sex might be good for the development of serious long-term relationships since it means if one wants to avoid social sanction while still having sex, long-term relationships acts as a gateway for that. And a person might feel more comfortable having a child if they're confident they'll have the support of another parent as opposed to having to take on the weight of being a single parent.
Mind you, this is just me thinking aloud. I don't recall reading many studies on this.
"Strong social taboos against casual sex might be good for the development of serious long-term relationships since it means if one wants to avoid social sanction while still having sex, long-term relationships acts as a gateway for that. "
There's a pretty huge flip-side to that. If long-term relationships are the only sexual outlet most people have, then they'll be incentivized to pursue relationships and marriages that they otherwise wouldn't, simply to meet their sexual needs. You might increase the number of *total* long-term relationships, but you also seem very likely to decrease the proportion of *good* long-term relationships.
According to this article by Forbes, these are divorce statistics for America in 2024: 43% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages end in divorce, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.
So, I mean... I don't see how somebody can view these numbers as some ringing endorsement of marriage quality in America in 2024. Now, I haven't seen stats on how many non-married couples break-up in America in 2024, but I doubt the numbers for that are any better than they are for divorce.
Perhaps an argument could be made that if most people knew their access to sex would end if they have a break-up/divorce, they'd put more effort into being good partners?
So honestly, I think you might be wrong here. The proportion of *good* long-term relationships might not decrease in the scenario we're discussing, and in fact they might *increase*. 2024 America certainly leaves a lot of room for improvement here...
The problem with this entire line of reasoning is that you have no standard of comparison. Your argument hinges on the implicit claim that "43% of first marriages ending in divorce is high." High compared to what? What standard should we be aiming for?
There a lot of obvious and bad ways to decrease the on-paper divorce rate. Banning divorce altogether would do it, of course. Do you think people who badly want to divorce each other in year N but aren't allowed to will be doing better or worse relationship-wise by year N+10 than if they were allowed to divorce? "Better" seems pretty hard to justify, but feel free to try. Or you could decrease the divorce rate simply by discouraging marriage: if only people who are *really* sure (sure enough to overcome the social pressures against it) get married, probably fewer of them will get divorced. It won't tell you anything about people's overall relationship happiness, of course, you'll have just pushed the less-happy, less-stable relationships into a form that's harder to track.
The point being, showing some divorce rate stats and saying "see, look how bad these are" doesn't actually mean anything. Good relationships are hard to do for lots of reasons. Making it easier for people to have good relationships is a non-trivial problem. People love nothing more than to pull their particular hobby-horses into discussions like that--judging other peoples' sex lives being a perennial favourite--but such claims deserve to be treated with extreme skepticism.
I cited these divorce rates because they're a signifier of ultimately failed long-term relationships. I didn't cite them because I'm anti-divorce as some sort of absolute, they simply signify that we're *already* not doing great at long-term relationships.
Yes, some marriages end amicably, but few people would divorce if they considered their marriage a *good* long-term relationship.
43% of first marriages ending up *not-good* and over 50% of 2nd/3rd marriages ending up *not-good*... that's rather bad itself, isn't it? And this is occurring in a society which increasingly normalizes and accepts casual sex.
I think it makes your 'huge flip-side' argument more questionable. And your 'huge flip-side' is just you reasoning out your perspective, no different than me reasoning out that if sexual access was limited to long-term relationships then it would probably result in more people trying to be good partners within those long-term relationships. I don't see where my thinking here is any less logical than yours.
If you have actual data to back up your 'huge flip-side' argument, then please share it. Otherwise, we probably should just agree to disagree.
Stepping back and talking a little more generally, arguments that run like "I think X causes Y by means of Mechanism A" are generally pretty weak. As such, weak counterarguments of the form "ah, but X could also cause not-Y by means of Mechanism B" are generally valid responses. They don't *prove* anything, of course. Depending on the relative strengths of Mechanisms A and B, you could end up with increasing X causing a large increase in Y, a large decrease in Y or anything in-between.
The main result of hearing the counterargument is to widen your probability distribution over the change in Y given X. Partly because being unable to quantify the effects of either Mechanism A or Mechanism B should leave you unsure as to which one is larger and by how much. But also partly because missing Mechanism B should lower your confidence that your model didn't miss anything ELSE.
For a question like this, I think any reasonable person's confidence in their model should be very low to begin with. Raising an objection like this was mostly meant to serve as a reminder of how little we actually know and how complicated the systems in question are. I don't claim to have any special understanding of how to build stable, happy, long-term relationships at a culture-wide level, I'm mostly just observing that ad-hoc reasoning like this is VERY unlikely to tell you much.
" I didn't cite them because I'm anti-divorce as some sort of absolute, they simply signify that we're *already* not doing great at long-term relationships. "
Again, this fails to answer the question "not doing great *according to what standard*?"
My contention isn't that it's awesome or great or fine that 43% of people who think they're committing to a life-long partnership with someone they love turn out to be wrong is good-in-itself. My contention is that you have absolutely no basis for comparison to say HOW bad the number is. What's the default? What's an acceptable threshold? Has ANY society with ANY set of sexual and romantic norms actually met the threshold? Part of the problem here is that you're imposing an implicit standard that the ONLY possible successful, happy, long-term relationships are marriages that last until (somebody's) death. That's a really high standard! It should be no surprise that when you set such a high standard, most people fail to meet it.
Before you go digging up divorce-rate statistics from other times and places, please remember that "divorce rate" is often a very poor proxy for "long-term relationship satisfaction." At BEST I think it works as a very-rough bound: if 43% of first marriages end in divorce than *at most* 57% of people are satisfied with their first attempt at marriage. But of course plenty of people in that 57% could be unhappy in their marriage too and just sticking it out for whatever reason: different marriage and divorce norms will cause different rates of this, so "lower divorce rate" can't be trivially mapped across cultures to "better long-term relationship health." But also treating it as a bound only works if people in happy, stable, long-term relationships always get married: I've known a number of couples that didn't.
So no, I don't have any data here because the whole question is a mess and the data is going to be likewise a mess. If I wanted to start digging up data, I would emphatically NOT start with divorce rates, I'd look for something like survey data that asked people about their current relationship satisfaction and duration and past number of sexual partners. If I could find robust enough survey data (covering both many different years and many different places) I could TRY to tease out some correlations between sexual permissiveness (on a cultural level), sexual promiscuity (on an individual level) and relationship satisfaction. I'm pretty pessimistic that I could learn much of value even with really comprehensive survey data though, because "how do you answer survey questions about sex and relationships" isn't actually a culture-neutral thing. People lie to themselves about their relationship satisfaction all the time, so I can hardly expect high consistency in answering surveys.
The point here is that answering questions about how cultural norms affect long-term relationship health is always going to be VERY HARD. Humans are complicated. Cultures are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Your un-anchored mean very, very little in the face of such a complicated question. I'd say my goal here isn't even to try to convince you that casual-sex-cultures are better for long-term relationships, it's to reduce your confidence in your ability to draw ANY conclusions around the topic. I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. Anything you or I THINK we know is probably little more than a gut feeling, and we should be appropriately skeptical in making gut feelings load bearing features of our respective cultural or political philosophies.
It's curious that no one phrases it like, "57% of first marriages end in death, 40% of second marriages end in death, and 27% of third marriages end in death". Clearly, if one wants to live longer, one should marry as many times as possible.
Why do you see casual sex as innately degrading or objectifying?
Couldn't two people have a hookup and be equally as invested in giving the other person pleasure, and in communing with another, as in their own getting off?
You seem to be implicitly assuming the worst possible caricature when you think of casual sex.
Plenty people are engaging with your discussion points, but I just wanted to chime in and express some mild puzzlement. I'm not sure what you mean with 'cheapen'. The only way that makes sense to me personally is a definition that means 'easier to obtain and thus not as much of a challenge', which, yes, I suppose that's basically a tautology.
But if you mean that it makes it less valuable or meaningful, I... honestly just had the polar opposite experience this exact weekend? I had sex with strangers and it was a profoundly and deeply touching experience that's still reverberating through me now. It is getting more profoundly and deeply touching the more I think about what happened, because having people that are strangers to me respect my body and treat me as I would want to be treated, quite so intimately, makes me feel deeply accepted, safe and cherished. In processing my weekend, I have been moved almost to tears, as for me it's been a celebration of mankind's ability to cooperate/collaborate. I had phenomenal conversations with some of these people afterwards; unsurprisingly, I would no longer consider them strangers, but that's very much after the fact.
Anyway, I'm curious to see this conversation play out, I just wanted to share that my lived experience of how meaningful sex is in a casual sex context is clearly very different to what you're describing it to be. (And, to be clear, it could be that it would cheapen it in this sense *for you*, and that would be fine and a good reason not to engage in casual sex personally.)
This is highly gendered. The basic model is men work their asses off to get consent and women just say yes. So the achievement element seems to be on one side. I don't know whether you appreciate how much men tend to see this as an achievement, in the Steam "achievement - unlocked!" sense. Which might be actually one thing that is sabotaging us... when I was young I considered even a one time hookup an achievement equivalent to double my income for 6 months, because this was by far the hardest thing I ever done in my life, seriously not failing calculus was a breeze compared to talking a lady out of her panties.
But the easier to obtain element is not necessarily true. Hookups are based on the entirely visceral kind of attraction, which some guys just have, and some others, especially nerdy ones do not. This makes some nerdy guy seethe at it, as they just have no chance and others seem to get it without effort. This is one of the cases where the unfairness of birth lottery hits really hard. There is something about being Leonard Hofstadter that is in some deep level does not give out the "sexual being" vibes, right? (Strangely Sheldon Cooper works better, because he is a little crazy.)
A monogamous relationship is based more on the mixture of visceral attraction and personal liking, and it is the personal liking element where the "working one's ass off" plays a role, as typically it means talking more than a guy likes to talk, the whole thing seems like a barter transaction of attention for sex.
Being a poly tertiary is even more about personal liking and even less about visceral attraction, so even more achievable and it requires on the total less talking :)
> The basic model is men work their asses off to get consent and women just say yes.
Yes, this is a huge imbalance, agreed, and I would love to do something about it! Sadly I'm not sure what else I can do other than to be sex-positive and poly myself, inspire other people to be sex-positive and poly, and to be open to casual interaction in this space, all of which I already do. So I mostly just lament.
I do nonetheless think casual sex being available makes it easier even for men (the strangers I mentioned in my post would certainly agree that was remarkably easy, hah; and I wasn't picking these people in this situation, so 'attractiveness' didn't factor in, and I didn't want it to), but definitely not to equal proportion. :)
Anyway, pretty much mostly agreed! I'm doing what I can about it.
I've been pondering your two comments here and I want to say that they've had quite an effect on me. You really do make casual sex sound very morally principled, compassionate and wholesome.
I'm not *entirely* convinced that it's the best path, even as you describe it, but you've made a very good case for it here. In particular, saying that you don't consider attractiveness at all seems to entirely invalidate my last two objections.
However, the problem as I see it is that while such a moral approach to casual sex is certainly possible, and there are people like you who follow it, it looks like most of casual sex culture is strongly correlated with extreme levels of selfishness and disregard for others. And my worry is that as long as that's the case, promoting even ethical forms of it like your approach run the risk of helping to also promote the more common toxic forms.
For example, feminists are generally known for their approval of casual sex and opposition to prudishness. You can read through Scott's old archives to see how most feminists react to the suggestion that they be less shallow in choosing their partners: usually unimaginable levels of rage along the lines "how dare you--how DARE you--suggest that I don't have an unconditional right to do WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT no matter who it hurts!" Exactly the same attitude is expressed with regard to abortion. *Not* merely an insistence that it's justified because fetuses lack sentience (which is a position I respect) but outright statements that "even if a fetus was 100% self-aware I would have an unconditional right to not take its intersts into account at all, and think only of myself" which is a strong contender for the most evil sentence I have ever heard a human utter. (And that I've heard innumerable times from feminists everywhere).
And it's not just feminism. College campuses are another environment known for their tolerance for hookup culture and casual sex, and have had huge epidemics of rape and violence, along with other horrible things like hazing. And I've never been to a nightclub, but my impression is that such places are usually known for extreme levels of shallowness and selfishness and nastiness and rudeness. On an anecdotal level, people I've known who were more sexually permissive have generally responded with mockery--mockery!--at the idea of considering things other than physical attractiveness in their potential partners. You can see a little bit of this mockery coming out in some of the responses here as well, to my suggestion that choosing people on the sole basis of physical attractiveness is in fact a bad thing.
Meanwhile, prudish cultures can certainly be shallow to an extent, but I'm pretty sure that e.g. Christian churches are inclined to encourage people to choose their spouses on non-physical criteria. Or at the very least, if you suggested to those people that they ought to de-emphasise attractiveness you'd get a nod of agreement rather than outrage or mockery.
So, it certainly looks like there's a pretty strong correlation between tolerance for casual sex and tolerance for shallowness and selfishness. I'd be very interested to know why you (as someone who practices a non-selfish form of casual sex) think this is the case. Do you think I'm misrepresenting this correlation? Do you think it's just a coincidence that multiple different environments are both known for casual sex and known for having some of the most vicious and selfish people on earth? What's going on?
I find it interesting the responsibility towards child rearing rarely enters into the conversation. There are number of circumstances where a child can accidentally be conceived in a culture of casual sex (which I define as seeing sex as toothless, and the responsibility inherent in it being unworthy of discussion). If one lives in a state with restrictive abortion laws, or if a woman is going through a rough enough time in her life that she isn't monitoring well, or is prone to denial, an accidental pregnancy can slip through.
Having a society that raises competent, good people is better than one that raises stressed, unbalanced people- which happens more often in shakey family backgrounds.
I think men and women both need to be conscious and active in their responsibility towards children they bring in the world.
That isn't to say I have a problem with premarital sex or sexual behavior. Prudishness isn't the answer, I don't think. My own personal philosophy effectively states that I am responsible for any children I have, accidental or not, which means I don't engage in PIV sex, even with protection, unless I'm with someone I feel comfortable risking 18 years of child rearing with. Other forms of sexual activity do not carry the same risk, and can in fact strengthen emotional ties- a far cry from cheapening sex. As a result, I tend to consider long-term compatibility before agreeing to sex. In my eyes, the major danger with casual sex is in ignoring our power to reproduce irresponsibility.
a) Taking part in hookup culture/casual sex comes with a risk of contracting stds proportional to the prevalence of stds among other people doing the same. The risk thus depends on peoples behavior and is not necessarily increased. Not even if someone believes that casual sex is immoral and that immoral people (as they have casual sex) can not take care of their health.
b) Being otherwise excluded from hookup culture might incentivize reducing the risk of infection and getting rid of it as quickly as possible. Seems to be the case where I live.
c) The increased number of vertices connecting people in a ‘hookup culture network’ compared to a ‘1900’ scenario does not mean that stds can spread more easily in the former, as this will also depend on the behavior of ‘hub nodes’ (i.e. people having sex with disproportionally many people, e.g. prostitutes or some teachers at catholic boarding schools, etc.) towards stds. A sufficient number of such hubs taking little care of whether they are spreading stds might do a much better job at distributing them.
1) unwanted children:
I don’t think it is quite right to claim that abortions are the killing of embryos. Rather, it is the termination of support towards the embryo – which will none the less in general result in its death. Similarly, denying someone your kidney might lead to their death, yet that does not make you a murderer, as the other person has no right to any part of your body. The same goes for embryos. No human, born or unborn, has a right to another persons bloodstream.
In addition to that, as far as I can see, there are three main reasons not to kill a human: I) The human wants to be stay alive. II) Someone else would be deeply upset about it, i.e. in the case of people in a coma. III) There is a risk of increasing the acceptance towards the killing of people who want to live. (i.e. killing a person born with a level of mental disability that they are not conscious may increase acceptance towards killing people who do not express their consciousness in a easily recognizable manner). One can invert this to create a case where it would be acceptable to kill a human: There is no self that would be upset by the end of its existance AND there is no other person who would be upset by the death of the human AND this does not increase the acceptance towards the killing of humans who want to live (e.g. a person with chronic pain who wants to be released from it). If it is, in such a situation acceptable to kill a person, this undoubtedly extends to terminating life support. An embryo has no concept of self, so there is no self that would oppose to not existing, there is obviously no one emotionally attached to the individual, instead it is a permanent burden to someone who can not avoid its presence. Following the concept of abortions being the termination of support by a human unwilling to give this support, we have a simple way of differentiating between embryos dying due to being aborted and the killing of babies or humans without a consciousness: Unlike a baby or a human who never developed a consciousness, the embryo is unable to survive outside of a womb (i.e. in an incubator or whatever the equivalent would be in the second case).
2) The incels I have so far encountered do not qualify as ‘perfectly decent people’. I further wouldn’t assume that incels are caused by hookup culture: As far as I can see several of them simply have absurd ideas of whom they’d be willing to date, excluding average women and expecting to find someone who can compete with the filtered presentation of some lifestyle influencer’s girlfriend (or some female influencer). One could just as well blame the phenomenon on Instagram.
One could also expect casual sex to decrease the number of rejected people. A former flatmate of mine used to date on average three guys simultaneously, for efficiency's sake.
As for nerds not turning against all this: The fact that one is at a disadvantage under a certain system does not mean that one can not agree to its overall reasonableness. Living in a country with more than two parties, the parties that I am in favor of have never had as much power as they could have in a less differentiated / less democratic system. None the less, I’ll remain in favor of democracy rather than a dictatorship lead by whom I vote for. In short, understanding that the alternative would be (even more) unjust, most people here will, I hope, root for what they conclude to be ethically coherent rather than what serves their comfort best.
Besides, most of the complaints about hookup culture are coming from the direction of ‘gym bros’ and other groups who’s company one might as a nerd find unpleasing. Giving those people more of a say regarding how society works is unlikely to be in one’s interest.
I have also, so far, encountered way more nerds who were complaining about not finding sufficiently like minded people to date compared to those who were (trying to date in the completely wrong age group and) wondering why they keep being rejected.
I also get the impression that the shallowness has decreased, rather than increased, to the extent that many people are looking for a partner who’ll match all the details they’ve come to know about them selves. If gifted folks decide that dating someone with an IQ of below 125 won’t work out anyway, ADHDers prefer people with equal (acceptance of) fidgetiness and others try to find people with matching attachment habits – well, it does narrow the options for ‘non-casual relationships’ down a bit (thus some people might decide to increase their dating efficiancy..). Having only the people from three nearby villages to choose from requires accepting a lot more shallowness.
3) I don’t see how ‘there still seems [to be something] something scummy and unvirtuous about the whole idea’ makes for any sort of rational argument.
The notion of people ‘treating each other as nothing but objects for one another's pleasure’ also makes for a better-than-nothing solution whilst one still hasn’t found that perfect person with the same personality type, interests and pet preferences who shares ones preference of watch movies at double speed. Besides, most people aren’t interested in most people beyond how those people may let them fulfill their own desires (for chocolate, in the case of a cashier at a grocery store).
I hope you also feel very free to date the lonely beggar in desperate need of cheering up. I have a odd, unexplainable doubt that you yourself are that convinced of your suggestion as to how one might pick a partner (or see a problem in it that no one you know would date said lonely beggar). And yes, societies collective decision that that beggar will remain single might be unfortunate. But no one can’t demand of anyone that they spend the rest of their life taking care of someone (of whom they themselves wouldn’t be willing to take care of).
> denying someone your kidney might lead to their death, yet that does not make you a murderer, as the other person has no right to any part of your body
Your actions did not create that human, and you did not take any actions that you could have anticipated would lead to the creation of a human in that scenario.
> The same goes for embryos. No human, born or unborn, has a right to another persons bloodstream
And I suppose no human, born or unborn, has a right to extract food, water, housing, or any other resources from other people? Because that would just be a parasitic leech? You don’t recognize anyone having any special obligations to anyone else?
> there are three main reasons not to kill a human: I) The human wants to be stay alive. II) Someone else would be deeply upset about it, i.e. in the case of people in a coma. III) There is a risk of increasing the acceptance towards the killing of people who want to live.
If someone with no friends or family is currently asleep, and could be killed without causing them any pain and with no one else finding out about this, would it be okay to kill them?
At a meta level - please consider how comically evil your ideas look from the outside view. Sure, from the inside view you can repeat those little quips you’ve seen on the internet for why this or that is justified - but really just ponder for a minute “Huh, my party’s most fundamental political belief is that access to baby-killing services should be as widespread and accessible as possible. Maybe I’m the baddie.”
Unwanted babies are very hard to come by in America, because they are adopted immediately in almost every circumstance. This is what has led to all of the adoptions from foreign nations. The few babies born to American mothers who are not immediately adopted usually have very serious health problems which most people could not afford to take on.
Your argument is not a serious response to anti abortion arguments because people do in fact step up to take these babies, and the line to do so is years long.
As you point out, healthy, new-in-box babies with good provenance might not be wanted by their mothers but are very much wanted by people who can't make their own healthy, new-in-box babies. The waiting lists for those babies are long and people certainly do pay a lot for them...
Plus, not only are these kids that adoptive parents don't have to sink tens of thousands of dollars into acquiring, they're almost always kids *the state will pay adoptive parents to take!*
And yet somehow there's still 100,000 of them. Weird how that happens when soooooooo many people are waiting to adopt! Weird that they're willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and years waiting for mint-condition babies instead.
Yeah, it does NOT follow that there would be an equally large demand for babies with the kind of predictable issues a ban on abortion would give rise to.
Are you against murdering 1-year-olds? How many unwanted 1-year-olds have you adopted lately?
You know, the well-established moral principle "If you oppose me murdering someone, then you must be willing to take care of them for me, otherwise I am totally in the clear in murdering them." It's almost as if your parental obligations do not end when you merely choose not to murder your child. It's almost as if you also have an active moral obligation to take care of them too.
Meanwhile, Democrats are firebombing and defunding crisis pregnancy centers:
Rather than banging on about the ultimate morality of forced pregnancy in a random online web forum, how about if you be the change you want to see and *demonstrate that forced pregnancy can work, actually* by adopting 3 or 4 of those unwanted babies? And lead an initiative to take on all those unwanted babies?
Put 1,000 unwanted babies in fully-resourced homes. Demonstrate it can be done.
And I mean the *really* unwanted babies. Not the babies of middle-class healthy teens, but Fetal Alcohol Syndrome-suffering babies of impoverished, reckless, low-IQ traumatized women and the men they think it's a good idea to pick.
And not just the babies. Go adopt some neglected toddlers from an orphanage in a blighted developing nation, children who weren't properly nourished in the womb and who weren't held or interacted with as babies.
I'm not a parent because I don't want to be a parent, mostly because I would be a bad parent, not having the correct temperament. I practice safer-sex, keep Plan B on hands at all times in the event of a condom failure, and if that ever fails to work, I will *unhesitatingly* have an abortion because I don't want to inflict my bad parenting on any child. I'll never be tempted to murder a one year old because I'll never have to care for a one year old.
But *you* care so much about babies and one year olds.
Around 1% of abortions are for pregnancies resulting from rape. Given that you apparently support abortion in the other 99% of cases too, let's consider that scenario first. In those 99% of cases, no one forced you to get pregnant. You made a choice that you knew full well could plausibly result in the creation of a human life. A law preventing you from terminating that human life is no more "forced pregnancy" than a law preventing you from murdering your 1-year-old child is slavery. Regardless of what you call it, you are simply facing the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
> adopting 3 or 4 of those unwanted babies
Why would it be my job to adopt and take care of these babies? Again, merely "not murdering your baby" doesn't absolve you of all your other parental responsibilities. It is your job both to not murder your baby, and to take care of your baby, in the same way that if I oppose you killing your 1-year-old, it does not suddenly become my burden to take care of them.
> I will *unhesitatingly* have an abortion because I don't want to inflict my bad parenting on any child
Do you support killing 1-year-olds with bad parents? Should this be the standard operating procedure for CPS? "Typical neglectful prostitute mother and abusive drunkard father - this kid is definitely gonna be traumatized. Go grab the shotgun from the trunk, Johnson."
> I'll never be tempted to murder a one year old because I'll never have to care for a one year old.
... not because you think they have moral value as human beings? The logical conclusion of this line of reasoning being that if you were in a situation where you had to care for a one-year-old, you would find it morally acceptable to kill them?
> But *you* care so much about babies and one year olds.
This is kind of like if you asked me "Is it okay for me to kill this random person walking past me on the street?" and I said "No, that would be wrong! That person's life has moral significance!" and you replied "Oh, well look at you, Dr. Holier-Than-Thou, up on your high horse! You care about that random person *sooo* much! You're *so* moral!! Well, if you're that good of a person and care so, so much about them, why don't you go pay off their mortgage for them! I bet they have some student loans too, you better go help them out! In fact, you should let them into your home and take care of all their needs and wants, obeying their every beck and call! If you don't, that makes you a hypocrite!!!" In this scenario, do you find it morally acceptable to murder that random person on the street?
It is perfectly consistent for me to hold the position that someone does not deserve to be killed, even if I am not particularly close to that person or care about them significantly more than any other person out there. And in no way does me rejecting that someone deserves to be killed imply that I suddenly have some special obligation to take care of them.
I think you are confused on what people believe and what they are saying. I won't speak for other rationalists but my stance would be
1. Sex is not that special of an activity so I reject your moral aesthetic arguments (this is not to say that sex should be treated as casually as going for a run but is probably best considered on par with meditation, drugs, or serious exercise).
2. Many problems around sex are derived from people's shame and difficulty talking about sex and related difficulties. Society should encourage people to learn about sex from responsible people rather than misogynists or porn.
3. Society should avoid interfering with reasonable choices between consenting adults.
4. Incels and the like should generally work on making themselves more appealing to other people (and or adjust the types of people they are willing to be with) and there is no just society that would force people to be with/stay with bad partners.
I for one do indeed believe that people should indeed be allowed to have casual sex, and not just as a half-hearted thing where the practicalities of banning it would be worse. I think if people are choosing to do it, that's a good enough reason to assume it's probably improving their lives in the absence of evidence to the contrary, and I do not find your arguments it's bad convincing. Specifically:
The aesthetic objection: If you want to have civilized emotional sex (and want the same for the other people who care about that sort of thing), the hookup people aren't stopping you. If you think your sex is devalued by other people doing it differently and that therefore they ought to stop, that seems like a terribly unreasonable imposition on people who aren't even interacting with you. How they live their lives has far more of an impact on them than it does on you, so you should let them make the choice. Perhaps you think that by devaluing sex they're also worsening their own lives, but that depends on their own preferences which they're probably in a better position to evaluate than you are.
Point 1: I admit these are bad, but given the precautions that are available, they don't seem bad enough to warrant calling the entire practice bad. People who accidentally had a child getting married for the sake of the children seems like a terrible idea. Also you later call the possibility of perfectly reliable contraception absurd, but homosexuality at least is a possibility.
Point 2: If someone dislikes rejection so much that the possibility makes attempting to find a casual sex partner a bad choice for them on average, they can just not do that. Neither they nor the people who do find it worthwhile need end up worse off.
Point 3: most rationalists, including me, are utilitarians and don't consider someone's motivation an important factor in how moral their actions are. Also, it's much easier to tell who you find attractive and who you would like to have sex with than it is to tell who would like to have sex with you, so people pursuing the people they are attracted to just seems like an efficient way of doing things.
I completely agree but I will play a bit of a devil's advocate. What you say sounds like individualistic 1970's liberalism and since than people figured out something new.
For example, look at fat women complaining about thin women on magazine covers. Basically one editor choosing one thin model once does not affect anyone, but when all the editors do it all the time it creates a social norm, a silent pressure.
And I think women are more vulnerable to the pressure of silent social norms than men are. Some women might think if they are not doing hookups, they will be seen as not liberated enough or something.
So we have ran into problems 1970's individualistic liberalism could not predict. They stopped thinking at "you do you", today we can see everybody doing things a certain way creates a silent social pressure on people to do the same thing to fit in.
I don't have a solution other than it would be good if people would do their personal choices in a discreet way that does not generate norms.
Okay, that's possible, but it seems like generally a rather weak correction to the liberalism argument. In this case, I'm not even convinced there being a social norm that having casual sex is normal is a bad thing. Some people might feel pressured into it, but equally others might feel pressured out of it if it is not considered normal.
1) Abortion and contraceptives make pregnancy from casual sex a non-issue in any non-regressive location. Modern medicine has made a lot of STDs way less bad to have, but it's a risk you take. As a society, we are mostly fine with people taking informed risks, which is why we don't ban mountain climbing or sky diving.
2) I really don't think this is a consequence of people being more casual around sex. But either way, people's freedom to associate or not with who they want is more important than making sure everyone gets to participate in a given activity.
3) This is pretty much purely a religion/spiritual argument, and is completely irrelevant to a discussion of rational society.
Fundamentally, the costs seem to be borne by the people who participate and they seem to enjoy having casual sex. I see no reason to be against it in general.
Let's not confuse poly and hookup. For the not very attractive nerdy guy, hookups are harder to get than mono, because it is entirely based on visceral desire. But becoming someone's poly tertiary is easier than mono, because it can just work on a friendship basis with very little visceral desire.
"because it can just work on a friendship basis with very little visceral desire."
I think that may be part of what OP is getting at: "we may as well have sex, why not?" where there is no lust or desire or love at work is that sort of cheapening of what sex should mean. "Want to watch a movie? Or we could fuck? I don't care either way" is not the epic tragic grandeur of Tristan and Iseult.
In response to people saying that Trump is senile in regards to the whole Haitian dog-eating story, he knows exactly what he's doing:
> Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said Sunday that he stood by the debunked claims he and former President Donald J. Trump have spread suggesting Haitian migrants were eating pets, saying that he was willing “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”
And Mr. Vance responded indignantly when asked about the bomb threats that have upended life in Springfield, Ohio, the city where he and Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the pets were being eaten.
“I’ve been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,” Mr. Vance said on CNN, referring to strains he said that a large influx of Haitian migrants had placed on the city’s public services. He went on: “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
When the CNN host, Dana Bash, noted that he had used the word “creating,” Mr. Vance replied, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”
If you lead with a fake story, there's no reason anyone should pay attention to you. The correct course of action is to call these people racist and move on. The Republican party has been completely overtaken by crazies, and they should be treated a such.
Was it actually crazy though? Everyone is talking about the Haitian pet eating thing now, and I imagine very few people knew about the large groups of Haitian (or other) TPS refugees being flown in to small towns. I certainly didn't know about it before the debate. And I doubt it changed anyone's mind against Trump. Half the country viscerally hates him anyway, and everyone should be used to his ridiculous statements and hyperbole by now. "I was going to hold my nose and vote for Trump in November, but the Haitian cat eating thing was the final straw!" ...is not something I see happening. I think drawing attention to problems with immigration policy is a net positive for the Reps here.
This story is bananas; it seems to be a conflation of a crazy woman eating a cat in another town (she wasn't Haitian) and allegations that the Haitian immigrants settled in Springfield were stealing geese from the local parks.
That got turned into "and they're stealing cats as well" which became "pets" and so we get to "they're eating dogs".
Marianne Williamson, of all people, had a nutty but more plausible take: voodoo. Yeah, I know, but i think it is more likely that *if* some Haitians are stealing cats, it's for religious ceremonies. (Please note the "if" there, which is a VERY BIG IF).
The geese-stealing seems to have some basis in fact, but of course everyone is now making memes about the crazy things Trump said which are clearly false, even if some of the other claims have some factual basis at root (e.g. Harris's support of gender-affirming care for prisoners including illegal immigrants; everyone has been making merry about the 'illegal aliens' using the alien from "Alien").
The following is from an article in the Wall Street Journal news section dated yesterday:
===
Anna Kilgore, a resident of Springfield, Ohio, filed a police report in late August that her cat, Miss Sassy, had gone missing. She suspected her Haitian neighbors had taken the cat.
The Trump campaign used the police report as the strongest evidence for their unfounded, racist claim about Haitian migrants.
A spokesperson for J.D. Vance provided the police report to The Wall Street Journal.
Yesterday, WSJ spoke with Ms. Kilgore, who admitted her cat had returned a few days later, found safe in her basement.
Ms. Kilgore, a Trump supporter, said she had apologized to her Haitian neighbors.
===
(If you have a WSJ subscription you can read the article directly:
He says something extreme/stupid, but related to an issue that he feels can benefit him politically and isn't getting much focus. The extreme/stupid aspect gets a lot of backlash, meaning it gets a lot of attention, which Trump (or a major Trump supporter/ally) uses to delve deeper into the related issue that Trump hopes will help him.
Now, I don't think EVERY Trump mistake or extreme/stupid statement is like this. Sometimes he's just saying something extreme/stupid. But sometimes there is a method to the seeming madness.
It's just so bizarre that you've got 22 million people from all around the world patiently entering the Green Card Lottery each year for a chance to live in the US, but simultaneously you've randomly got entire Haitian towns showing up in Ohio.
Imagine you work for a company which has highly selective hiring practices and a massive pool of well-qualified applicants, but sometimes just randomly hires a hundred hobos who happen to be on the street, and gives them cushy jobs and offices.
And you're not allowed to say "Man, has anyone noticed that the filthy hobos we hire tend to perform worse than the carefully selected employees who go through our rigorous hiring process?"
Wait, who are the "filthy hobos" in this analogy again? Because I distinctly recall seeing a local factory owner interviewed on the subject and basically saying "It's been *great* since the Haitians showed up - now I can hire people who will predictably show up on time and sober". And anyone who followed J.D. Vance before his recent face-heel turn should understand why small-town Ohio culture might have employers seeing things that way.
Also, you don't have "entire Haitian towns showing up in Ohio". There's less than ten thousand Haitians in the entire state, and I think no more than 2,000 in Springfield. The stuff about 20,000 Haitians descending en masse on Springfield is, how shall we put this, a flat-out lie. Along with most of the stories about "filthy hobo" behavior.
>There's less than ten thousand Haitians in the entire state, and I think no more than 2,000 in Springfield. The stuff about 20,000 Haitians descending en masse on Springfield is, how shall we put this, a flat-out lie.
And I've seen, but can't now quickly find, people tracking birth and death rates for Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Ohio that show no significant increase in the past year, which would rule out a massive recent increase in the Haitian population over the past twelve months. Unless all the new immigrants are immortal and infertile, I suppose.
So, <10,000 Hatians in Ohio, which means <<10,000 in Springfield. The most charitable explanation I can find is that someone correctly cited a figure of 15-20,000 *total* immigrants in Springfield, including Haitians and Jamaicans and Mexicans and Guatemalans and all the rest, and including the ones who came last year and the ones who have been here for a decade or more. And someone else heard someone talking about all the Haitians overrunning Springfield and conflated the two.
But at this point, with the matter being so highly visible and contentious and with the readily availability of information that includes the US census on one side, and the other always tracking back to "some anonymous dude said...", I think it's safe to say that anyone still talking about 20,000 Haitians in Springfield is either a liar, or someone who was fooled by a liar. I'm pretty sure you've been fooled by liars.
>I think it's safe to say that anyone still talking about 20,000 Haitians in Springfield is either a liar, or someone who was fooled by a liar. I'm pretty sure you've been fooled by liars.
Me, and Reuters, and the New York Times I guess.
EDIT: I'll also note that the census data you're linking to comes from one of their 1-year estimates, which the census describes as their least reliable estimates (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/guidance/estimates.html). If there was a large influx of Haitians over a short period of time, it wouldn't be surprising if it didn't show up on an estimate like this).
The New York Times is notoriously easy to fool, and hosts a fair number of outright liars to boot. But as to the argument at hand:
The one-year estimates are indeed rather noisy. Fortunately, the census includes error bars, and the number I cited was at the upper bound.
And even more than the census, the United States is quite good at accounting for dead bodies, along with newly-living ones. If the rate of fresh Afro-Caribbean corpses and babies hasn't massively increased over the past year, then there hasn't been a massive increase in Ohio's Haitian population since the last census estimate.
Except they don't do worse! There is no epidemic of immigrant crimes in Springfield, there are no pets being eaten, Trump and Vance just made the whole thing up based on Facebook rumors!
And yet people continue to talk about "filthy hobos" in their towns as if immigrant crime is a serious concern and not something invented from two racist idiots banging their singular brain cells together.
It is entirely baseless, it's just that Trump supporting conservatives live in epistemic hell, so their idea of evidence includes a piece that says
>The Federalist has published a police report with allegations that a group of Haitians emerged from a city trail with dead geese in hand.
>We identified a social media post, dated August 25, 2023, with a short video depicting what appear to be two skinned cats on top of a blue barbeque.
>To be clear: this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement. The town is Dayton, not Springfield; cats alone were on the grill, not cats and dogs.
Which cites Haitians presumably hunting geese and a joke social media post that accuses somebody of grilling cats... while cats are walking by the grill... in a different town. This is like saying "I have video footage I was adbucted by aliens" and the video footage is actually a polaroid of the night sky taken by somebody in Guatemala that says they saw flashing lights. It's shameful how tribal and anti intellectual Trump supporting conservatives have become that their smoking guns for Haitians eating cats and dogs in Springfield 1) Don't occur in Springfield, 2) Don't include Haitians, 3) Don't include cats and dogs being killed, let alone being eaten.
1. I don't know why you think the Haitians are all from the same town. But it would hardly be surprising; it is completely normal for immigrants who get good jobs somewhere to spread the word among their relatives and friends, who are often from the same area.
2. The city actively recruited immigrants as part of a strategy to arrest decline. Again, that is quite common.
>2. The city actively recruited immigrants as part of a strategy to arrest decline. Again, that is quite common.
Did the city actively recruit _legal_ immigrants or _illegal_ immigrants? The former would be fine. The latter sounds like it would be conspiracy to violate federal immigration laws.
Many Thanks! That is bizarre... So there can be temporary protected status that lasts the length of a nation's civil war? Hmm... This could be a very long "temporary" And the list looks like a really strange collection, with some strange inclusions and exclusions. Afghanistan yes, Central African Republic no? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_Republic_Civil_War )
I do not know what the time limit ison TPS, but I know that it can be extended. Re the CAR, it is quite possible that people are more able to internally relocate. Or perhaps the war is currently relatively quiescent. It certainly seems to be, from the list on that Wikipedia page. Or maybe most people from the CAR who are in the USA are likely to be eligible for asylum (since there is a religious aspect to the war), which is not the case re Haiti, certainly.
Many Thanks! That should be fine. Admittedly, no vetting process is perfect, but e.g. Oregonians sometimes get unhappy at influxes of Californians. At some point people just have to note that the law is being followed, and that is the end of it (short of changing the law, which is a very long, contentious, process).
Can you point to any nation that refuses citizenship to children born of pairs of citizens within the territory of the nation? AFAIK, that _very_ commonly is sufficient for citizenship. Personally, I consider it completely legitimate.
Vance acknowledged the reports may not be true but people should not listen to the ‘babies’ pointing out the inaccuracy and should keep on posting the memes.
I think it’s part of being Trump’s running mate. It’s a sign of weakness to ever admit a mistake or apologize. So just doubling down on the lie is SOP.
What mistake? The rhetoric worked: not only has it further galvanized his base against immigrants, the Haitian immigrants are beginning to move out of the city due to no longer feeling safe there. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/us/springfield-ohio-haitians-tension.html What other candidate can say that they already began fulfilling their campaign promises before even taking power?
>But tensions between longtime residents and more recent arrivals had been building before the national spotlight landed on the city, about 25 miles from Dayton.
>Even as the Haitian immigrants have been welcomed by employers and injected energy into fading neighborhoods, the arrival of thousands of people in a short period of time has strained schools and some government services.
>And then a fatal crash that killed an 11-year-old boy last year when his school bus was struck by a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant intensified anxiety and anger over the growing immigrant population, drawing attention far beyond the city.
>“All the publicity has caused tension between the Haitians and native Springfield population,” says Joseph Melvin, a lifelong Springfield resident who works at the laundry and has sometimes been frustrated by some of the Haitian immigrants.
>“Most of them are kind people, but a few are abrasive and that makes it hard for the rest,” Mr. Melvin said.
I have my doubts that Trump's "they're eating cats and dogs" line did all that much.
It caused multiple bomb threats at local schools, and caused the Proud Boys and the Klan to show up. Like, if you're going to say a single car crash was responsible for causing tensions, I would think multiple bomb threats would be even more tension-raising.
I would say, all their communication should be geared towards voters who haven't made their mind up yet. Untrue stories about immigrants eating pets will repell most of those voters I imagine. JDV doesn't have to convince racists to vote Republican. So I would consider this rhetoric a mistake.
In the comments on the recent Links for September 2024 post, one of the links was to a blogpost arguing that low birthrates has been primarily caused by parenthood being reduced in status relative to your employment. One of the objections was that it's actually about opportunity cost. I disagreed, but I don't think I wrote very clearly. I was trying to say that opportunity cost doesn't get you any closer to figuring out why people have fewer children. Opportunity cost is comparing the expenditure of resources (like time) doing X things compared to, for example, having/raising children. So if you want to frame it as opportunity cost, the question just becomes "Why do people believe that the opportunity cost of having children is higher than people in the past?" The status argument is that the reward for having children has been reduced because it now gives relatively less status than other things like your career achievement.
Let's frame it that way then. If you had considerable political power, what policy would you enact to either reduce the opportunity cost of having children or increase the opportunity cost of the alternatives?
I would make admission to higher education conditional on having at least one biological child, unless you can't have one through no fault of your own (to rule out voluntary sterilization). No kid, no degree. The same condition would be applied to other credential-granting pathways if they become popular enough. Thoughts?
Employers would simply stop requiring *formal* higher education credentials and set up their own apprenticeship programs (they could call them entry-level jobs to avoid any ahas!) to train the incoming workforce, likely with long-term contracts to ensure they see their investment pay out.
On one hand, you'd have a generation of corporate serfs, but on the other hand, you'd have eliminated the university system with its nutty post-modernist ideas and its creation of student loan serfs.
You're probably right that the high school-uni-white collar job pipeline would degrade over time. I don't see this as bad either. I'm not sure more employer-provided training would necessarily be a bad thing either. Isn't the lack of it a common complaint these days?
Okay, so now everyone who wants to go to college has to be pregnant/father of a child by age 18. Can you tell me how that works out?
Trying to raise the baby *and* have full-time education? May end up not getting that degree after all.
What money is going to support the baby? If you're in full-time education, you're not earning money.
Oh, wait, it's supposed to be the *couple* of you together? Baby mama and baby daddy either co-habiting or married? Well, you never *said* that, so it's baby mama on her own. But if both of them are together, again, if both are in full-time education, same problems as above. Accommodation for a family? Paying rent?
So maybe daughter has the baby, goes off to college, and grandparents raise it. Mmmm, same problem applies as "why aren't people having babies after college etc."? Grandparents may be in their 50s, so at the point of their careers where they are getting the rewards for that. Unless grandma gives up her job, or goes part-time, how is she going to have the time to look after the baby? I look forward to you explaining to the upper-middle class women why they should be raising their grandkids, just like those underclass women.
Plus, baby mama and baby daddy may only be together long enough to have the baby and they split. Arranged pregnancy of convenience, for one to four years of getting the degree, then they never have any more children again.
"No kid, no degree/trade qualification" may sound good, but I think it more likely to result in "only rich kids whose parents can afford to pay for childcare while daughter has baby and goes off to college" will benefit; we'll have a lot of people just not bothering to jump through that hoop.
Which, as has been pointed out in another comment, jobs now require more and more credentials. So an entire new underclass is created, living on gig economy manual labour and service industry work. I think your solution is worse than the problem.
If the rules of the game change, so do the players' behaviour. I imagine it just as likely that more people would simply delay education rather than go straight to university after high school. Maybe more people have kids, then go to school in their mid 20s while their first kids are in school themselves. Grandparents would likely help, but I don't see this as a negative and I don't think most grandparents would either. Most grandparents really love their grandkids.
>Which, as has been pointed out in another comment, jobs now require more and more credentials. So an entire new underclass is created, living on gig economy manual labour and service industry work.
This relies on the same logic that led to everyone being told to get a university degree.
The single thing that squares basically all of these circles is childcare the parent does not have to pay for.
(I'm deliberately not being more specific because although state funded creche/kindergarten is the obvious option here, other solutions are possible; as are mixed solutions like the state paying for childcare for people in full-time education, but employers covering it for their employees)
As a child of a single parent, who grew up in a country that did this (the childcare thing, not the degree thing!), I am at least anecdotal evidence that it is workable.
But the problem with that is that you need childcare workers, and they need certification, and if the 'solution' of "nobody is permitted to get a qualification until they have a kid", then you're still stuck. How can the childcare workers get the needed qualification if they can't study unless they have a baby, and if they have a baby at 18, how are they going to combine full-time child rearing with education on their own?
Universal free childcare for the professional classes, so working mom can have her career *and* more than 1.2 kids, is what we are all dancing around: these are the people we want to be having babies, these are the people not having babies, and very damn ironically it is the people in the better-paying jobs who are saying they can't afford to have more than one kid.
No kid, no degree probably would work, at least in the short term. Because most high-paying jobs require a degree these days... or at least that's my strong impression.
If people legally needed to have a child in order to get a degree, I could even imagine parents taking an active role in ensuring their teenaged child has a child of their own by the time they're 18. Teenage pregnancy may well skyrocket.
The question then becomes... what are the full range of effects of this? It would be a pretty huge cultural shift. It might work long-term, or it could go very poorly.
All of the above being said, I doubt your law change would survive much in the real world. Too anti-libertarian for the vast majority of Americans I think, probably too conservative-feeling for the vast majority of Europeans too.
My own idea, though admittedly a lot more modest than your own - nationally funded free daycare centers in and around all major urban areas. Might be enough to convince some young professionals hoping to advance in their career that they can have that while still managing a young family.
Yea, the outcome is difficult to predict. I opted for a solution pretty far out of the Overton window to try to encourage non-orthodox thinking on the issue.
>My own idea, though admittedly a lot more modest than your own - nationally funded free daycare centers in and around all major urban areas.
Isn't universal daycare a thing in Sweden and Denmark? It doesn't look to have been that effective.
I think you need to focus on what your actual goal is? Assuming the goal is to make it easier for people to have their preferred number of children, my personal recommendations (without cost consideration) have the government subsidize all fertility treatments (ivf) and encourage women to freeze eggs early. Second the government could change the property tax to one that takes family size into consideration so that it is easier for families to afford larger homes (basically imagine a tax change that is initially revenue neutral but the rate is reduced for every child under 18 living in the unit so empty nesters, young professionals with office and den would see a tax hike to offset the discount for families).
My goal is to raise birthrates. Make more people have more kids. My proposal makes having kids a prerequisite for obtaining status in the society we have now. Since time spent in school (getting credentials to increase your status) contributes so much to the delay in childbearing, make children a requirement to play the currently predominant status game. I imagine it would be more effective in the countries that highly value education, like South Korea.
>Assuming the goal is to make it easier for people to have their preferred number of children
I wouldn't put it like that. I think culture shapes what people prefer - that's one of the assumptions of the status argument, after all.
I like your IVF proposal, though I'm not sure what the economics of that would look like. If delay in childbearing is a problem due to the limited window, lengthen that window through IVF.
I'm not sure the second one would do much. Economic incentives have already been tried to very limited success.
This could end up being catastrophic for society. Childhood abuse is already a significant factor in mental illness, and especially in the sort of mental illness that is a productivity drain or causes social issues. By linking higher education to childbirth, you are making children a necessity and not a desire. This leads to intense resentment, mistreatment, and kids are the ones who suffer for it.
Our society can't cope with the number of kids who need help right now, let alone if you force a whole heap more into the system. Because there WILL be people who severely neglect the child and do the minimum required to keep it alive and blame it for all the extra work they're forced to do. (There already are, but there will be more.) For someone who doesn't want a child or isn't ready for a child, but who is forced to have one in order to do what they DO want, the optimal solution involves nasty stuff like "oh, I think my kid has an allergy? Don't care, them dying in a tragic accident will solve the probably AND boost my status" and these are the sort of incentives we really REALLY do not want to encourage.
Childhood abuse is most prevalent amongst the antisocial underclasses. They're not getting college degrees currently. The average person that really wants to go to university and is willing to jump through hoops to do it would be of the type that raises their child normally, ie does their best to provide a loving home.
How do you propose to change society into one where having a kid is a prereq for higher ed? Won't new "not higher ed" higher ed institutions spring up to help people get around your requirement. Regarding the second, most economic incentives are too small to have a significant effect, this policy is meant to redistribute housing to families (obviously being a Yimby and allowing more construction would also help but even then you want to subsidize families living in larger homes).
I was throwing an idea out there. It's not exactly a thoroughly considered policy, but I did consider the "not higher ed" higher ed institution angle:
>The same condition would be applied to other credential-granting pathways if they become popular enough.
From what I can tell, it's difficult to establish new educational institutions that have the cultural cachet of even low-mid-tier universities. These new not higher ed higher ed institutions also wouldn't be able to rely on government subsidies, so it would be harder still. Maybe even impossible, if you consider the many incumbents that have been financially struggling as of late. I can't imagine people still attempting it, especially with the high risk of the state's banhammer coming down on them.
So what is your reply to Acfjou above, who says that another reason for putting off having a second child is that they just don't have the time to cook and clean? That they had to hire help after having a first child?
I don't think "you will be forced by law to have a baby by age 18" is going to overcome objections of "at this stage in our careers we have to work all the hours God sends" people who are the ones going for the degrees to get the good jobs that involve working long hours at the early stages of their career, which are also the prime child-bearing years?
No one's forcing anyone. Going to university isn't life or death, something many people seem to have forgotten and is a reason for a lot of the issues surrounding post secondary education, eg massive grade inflation, increasingly reduced rigour, student debt, etc.
I don't pay much mind to what people say about their personal circumstances when it comes to thinking about issues like this because people's thinking is limited to what they do in the current system and not how they'd change their behaviours in another reality. People are adaptable. My grandparents raised 5 in a ramshackle farmhouse in what was one of the poorest countries in the world. One ended up at MIT and the others did pretty alright too.
Of course without such a heavy handed legislation there is no need for "non higher ed" higher ed or new institutions, my point is that once you change the incentives, people will adapt but your policy is not really an effective one for making people want to have kids and would require a state that is far more authoritarian than almost any modern country at which point you are thinking way too small about how to increase fertility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s-1990s_Romanian_orphans_phenomenon).
My sense is that the second kid is less than 2x the work although it depends a lot on luck (mostly not having bad luck). I agree on your low rise urbanism as being better for families.
First, it's less that having kids is in itself high or low status; it's more that the main status marker is encapsulated by that ubiquitous question, "So what do you do?" The status attached to your career results in norms that shred fertility. Think of how peculiar people are thought to be nowadays when they start families in their early 20s, much less their teens. Or consider how uncomfortable the question makes stay at home moms feel.
Second, I think the importance of status is more subtle than that. People don't explicitly state that they want to be high status, especially in cultures where showing off affluence is a social faux pas. Your stealth wealth example supports this point. People hide their wealth because it's considered gauche to flaunt it in most Western countries. It's not the same everywhere, particularly in countries that don't have a Christian past. Eg, China recently banned wealth-flaunting behaviours on social media; the CCP wouldn't have had to do that if ostentatiousness of that sort was widely considered shameful.
Most of society believes that teen pregnancy is a problem we are trying to discourage. If the goal is to reduce the value of work you could just institute very high marginal tax rates and a wealth tax but you would really need to convince people that they will be happier being poor.
In 2016, an extremely qualified woman faced off against Trump, and lost. I don't know how anyone could dispute that Harris is less qualified than Clinton was. I also think no one cares about the resume for President.
Then what DO they care about? Something something personality?
It's long been true that most voters care less about resumes for president than the chattering class thinks we all would or should. Put another way, many Americans care demonstrably much more about other characteristics in a presidential candidate and that is not at all a new/recent fact.
That said -- I firmly dispute that Harris is less qualified now, in terms of resume, than Hillary Clinton was in 2016.
Also Harris's resume today is clearly stronger than those of at least a dozen individuals when they became POTUS, not even including Trump and not even including the five who served in the office without ever being elected to it. That list includes some post-WW II ones and includes some of the most famous and highly regarded ones in our history.
Abortion rights: Even if she is pushing for this, this is only for political points. For example, during the debate she raised it, and I doubt anyone would oppose the rights of those she discussed to get an abortion, the biggest one was someone with a medical emergency putting the mother at risk.
Immigration: The article says she spearheaded "efforts to address the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border" but doesn't mention removing razor wire Texas installed to impede illegal immigrants. Was she ineffective at stopping illegal immigration? The article mentions her "perceived inaction".
Voting rights: I'm unclear what voting rights she was trying to enforce, but it mentions "her work "hit a brick wall"" basically because Republican's could filibuster.
If these are the highlights, I conclude her Vice Presidency has not prepared her well for the role of President.
Before that, she was Attorney General for six years and a U.S. Senator for four. Both positions can provide some experience necessary for a president, in dealing with the law and in dealing with Congress. But not so much for executive power, like a state governor would have.
Compared to this, Hillary campaigned for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, served on corporate boards of directors, was a U.S. Senator for eight years, and Secretary of State for four. Her legal experience is at least equal to Harris's, though different. And that doesn't even count being First Lady of Arkansas and the U.S., during which time she vetted appointments to the administration. Given her background, who would doubt she had a significant influence on policy as either First Lady?
I don't see how you can support that Harris is less qualified than Clinton.
"Legal experience is at least equal to Harris's", LOLOL. Harris was a full-time prosecutor for 12 years, then the elected top law officer of a major city for 7.
_Then_ she became the elected top law officer of by far the largest state government in the nation (CA by itself would be a top-10 world economy and an OECD national government). The CA Dept of Justice has more than 5,000 full-time professional staff.
And Clinton graduated from Yale Law School in 1973, and practiced law at least through 1992, which makes 19 years, doing work on patent infringement, intellectual property law, and child advocacy. She was twice named as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_career_of_Hillary_Clinton
You can talk up Harris's career, but compare side-by-side, and it looks like Clinton has something over Harris in every position, if one considers Secretary of State of more import than Vice President.
I will take your overall point regarding their law careers, though for the purposes of seeking high elected office Harris's seems more relevant than Clinton's.
I do not consider the position of Secretary of State of more import than that of Vice President. Two centuries ago it was and probably a century ago too. During our lifetimes though, nah.
I might agree with Arrk that a VP who doesn't ascend to the Oval Office is less *important* than a Secretary of State who actually does run Foggy Bottom. But "Vice President" is pretty clearly the office that best serves as an apprenticeship for the Presidency, even if it's not worth a bucket of warm spit while you're actually doing it.
Extremely qualified in making the kind of connections to launch her bid for the presidency, which ultimately failed due to her own arrogance (yes, the FBI to-ing and fro-ing didn't help, but the private email server and the scandals around the husband of her close advisor, Huma Abedin, didn't help either). She was parachuted into a safe seat in blue NY to get her elected as a senator as the first step on the cursus honorum, got the Secretary of State gig as an olive branch from Obama, then campaigned on "I'm practically the incumbent because of being co-president as First Lady".
She came across as the worst combination of "I'm so much smarter than you proles, you will all do as I say" and a weathervane: "I'm for safe, legal and *rare* abortion! Okay, that's abortion-shaming? Now I'm for all abortion all the time! I love *real* billionaires! I will tax Wall Street but also not hurt my real billionaire friends! Hot sauce! Pantsuit nation! Sixty different election slogans all focus-group tested! Big Data so I don't have to waste my time meeting the blue-collar plebs in the flesh! Pokemon go to the polls!"
And of course, the unforced error of the basket of deplorables.
Bill had, and has, charisma in buckets. Hillary doesn't. That needn't be a liability *if* you can manage to conceal your real opinion of the rubes and hicks who need an empress to wisely rule over them for their own good, which Hillary wasn't so good at concealing.
This is much better than the comment I was composing. Hilary never won a competitive election in her life. All of her important roles have been handed to her, they same way she expected to be handed the presidency. I can't think of a single accomplishment of hers that she actually is responsible for, instead of being given the credit for. He's a deeply unlikable human being. I think a lot of people have known a revolting Hilary like personality in their lives: a callous teacher, a sadistic HR functionary, a terrible boss. A bully with no real laurels to rest on, but thinks they should be able to do so nonetheless. I voted for her too.
She seems to have been a reasonably successful lawyer, but Bill seems to have decided on a political career early on, and they both hitched their wagons to that star: his success would be her success.
Hillary Clinton is a tenth-level politician who rolled at least a 15 in Iintelligence, put all her skill points into Political Savvy, and rolled a natural 3 for Charisma. Also, her last name was "Clinton", and the American people had had about as much as they were going to take from Presidents named either "Clinton" or "Bush".
And her resume was kind of mediocre for a Presidential candidate. Really, you want to have been a Governor or a Vice President before you start claiming you're exceptionally qualified for the Presidency.
Great as a teammate for her INT 12, CHA 18 husband, but doomed in her own candidacy. She got the support of everyone who was always going to vote Democrat no matter what, and the support of everyone who was always going to vote First Woman President Ever!, but that's it and there was too much overlap between those groups. Even Donald J. Trump couldn't drive enough swing voters to Hillary's side for her to win.
I'd give Bill higher INT than that, part of his crafted persona was the "just a guy from Arkansas" vibe while he was a Rhodes Scholar and so on.
JD Vance is getting the "he went to Yale, he's not a *real* hillbilly and besides where he came from doesn't count as hillbilly" treatment now, but Bill managed to pull it off without anyone (that I remember) making the same comparison. Of course, back then, politics wasn't quite as venomous as right now, and it helped that Bill was a Democrat. Same with Walz now and "he's just your typical Midwesterner that loves hunting and guy stuff" by contrast with Kamala (and even more Vance). Vance is not a 'real' Regular Guy while Walz is, somehow.
I've known a couple of people who knew the Clintons personally, each of whom considered it just obvious that Bill was every bit as intelligent as Hillary if not moreso. Very different personalities obviously but, both very intelligent individuals.
Also it should be noted that Clinton got more votes than Trump in a very close election but she made some tactical decisions that caused her to trade votes in states that mattered for votes in states that didn't.
Clinton gave off the vibe of not really caring about the average American. She gave off a very elitist vibe that can be off-putting to many middle-class voters. This is a key difference between her and her husband, who was generally good at seeming like a reasonably caring politician.
Now, people probably didn't think that Trump cared all that much about the average American either... but he did seem to care a lot about the general strength of the American economy. His positions on trade seemed pretty radical, suggesting that he might be willing to do radical things to try to help factory workers in the rust belt (in turn to help the American economy).
The Clinton 2016 campaign seemed much more focused on social/cultural issues than economic ones, playing into the general vibes and impressions mentioned above.
Ultimately, I think most swing voters/independent voters are practical self-interested voters. Which candidate is more likely to make my life better/easier/more prosperous?
As much as some hate Harris' stand on price controls, it may well help her electorally. I don't recall any of Clinton's 2016 policies being as focused on helping economically struggling Americans as price controls is.
Bill Clinton always struck me as a used car salesman. But then, to sell used cars at inflated prices one must make the customers feel good about their purchase.
I always thought about Bill that if his ancestors had remained in Ireland and he had gone into politics, he was a natural fit for Fianna Fáil (my party, alas!) - he had that same combination of popular appeal, charm, and total brazen corruption that some of the party leaders had.
Personality was probably a large part of it. She also leaned too hard into the ‘first woman president’ thing. That rubbed a lot of people, especially men, the wrong way. Plus we had two Bushes as prez, now people were being asked to have 2 Clintons?
If de facto Acting Presidents count, then the real First Woman President was Edith Wilson in 1919, who signed documents and (very probably) took decisions in her husband's name while he was recovering from his stroke.
If you limit it to de jure (Acting) Presidents, them there hadn't yet been one when Clinton ran in 2016. That first happened in 2021, when Biden signed a 25th Amendment declaration in favor of Harris for when he underwent general anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy.
I might be projecting, but I also think the first woman thing was off-putting to a lot of people. Despite what the usual crowd believes, the idea that all politically salient identity groups should have representation in high status positions proportional to their proportion of the population is not that popular.
Yeah, it bugged a lot of women too. But a lot of the younger women I knew personally were kind of rooting for her to ‘break the glass ceiling.’ She shouldn’t have taken that phrase, complete with sound effects, out of the box prematurely either.
"Vote for me because I'm a woman" isn't enough, anymore. Back in the 70s/80s, yes, to break all those ceilings. But basing your campaign, or at least the perception that your campaign is being based, on "if you don't vote for me you're a sexist" when you're running for the presidency of the United States of America is too thin and flimsy. "Why should I vote for you?" "I have two X chromosomes!" isn't a convincing policy position.
I also really did get the impression that Hillary was much more hawkish than Trump, and that she might pick a fight with Putin just to show that she was tough and capable (whether picking a fight with Putin back then would have been a good thing or not is hard to say even with hindsight). Trump was the more 'peaceful' candidate, partly because of the strong isolationist strain.
"Vote for me because I'm an [immutable characteristic shared by 10-50% of the population]" has never and should never be a reasonable statement for a politician to make. Even in the 70s there needed to be a lot more. Margaret Thatcher, for all her faults and how much people hate(d) her, had actual ability in the job and got things done the way she intended.
It wasn't good enough for Carly Fiorina and it wasn't good enough for Hillary Clinton.
Abortion is a live issue now. It's a much better issue than anything else the feminists have.(wage gap, guys in the video game chatroom saying mean things about women, etc.)
I don't think that Clinton was "extremely" qualified, and not more qualified than Harris. Clinton was Senator for 8 yrs and Secy of State for four. Eh. Certainly no Joe Biden, for example. Nor Bill Richardson, or Bush Sr. Harris was VP for 4 yrs, Senator for four, and DA of SF and AG of California. Even if you add Clinton's time as First Lady, it is a wash.
Even for someone like Clinton with a long resume, you have to consider both pros and cons. Clinton has a reputation of being a rules-lawyering liar seeking personal gain that also has a very unappealing personality. Like, cringy at speaking engagements and not at all the kind of person most people could be comfortable hanging out with. Obama definitely had charisma, likability, etc. despite having an objectively poorer resume.
Despite Harris also not being super-appealing in the personality department, she isn't as bad as Clinton and her negatives in general aren't as bad as Clinton's. She does have Senator, DA, and now VP experience. Honestly Clinton's resume isn't necessarily better. She was the president's wife (which is technically nothing on a resume), a one term Senator (which she appears to have used insider connections to get) and then Secretary of State. SoS is a pretty legitimate job, but not so much that it overshadows VP. Other than those two jobs, their histories seem broadly similar.
Clinton was clearly parachuted into both the Senate and the SoS roles based on who her husband was.
Harris also (coincidentally) rode a Willie to some political benefit in her early career but that ended some time ago, she is ever so slightly more responsible for her own success than Clinton.
I have to say, everything I read about Willie Brown makes me like the guy. Yes, he was part of the San Francisco corrupt political regime (their own version of Tammany Hall). Yes, he traded in patronage (both men and women). Yes, Harris did owe her path to making the connections and getting plugged into the posh money network to him squiring her around and introducing her to those circles.
But to be fair to the guy, he did hold up his part of the bargain in the patron-client relationship: if you were loyal to him, he rewarded and protected you. And he really does have a sense of style 😊
"Brown has long expressed himself through personal style, which contributed to his visibility and was turned to political advantage. Even in high school he was fastidious about his appearance. In office, Brown became famous for British and Italian suits, sports cars, nightclubbing, and a collection of dressy hats. He was once called "The Best Dressed Man in San Francisco" by Esquire magazine.
In his 2008 autobiography Basic Brown, he described his taste for $6,000 Brioni suits and his search for the perfect chocolate Corvette. In one chapter, "The Power of Clothes: Don't Pull a Dukakis", Brown writes that men should have a navy blazer for each season: one with "a hint of green" for springtime, another with more autumnal threading for the fall. He adds, "You really shouldn't try to get through a public day wearing just one thing. ... Sometimes, I change clothes four times a day."
Same kind of energy as Bill Clinton, in fact: he's a rogue, you know he's a rogue, you know better than to trust him, but he's so damn charming that you can't help yourself. ZZ Top were right: every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man!
Clinton was less qualified on paper but that long sheet paper was thin. Trump's line at their debate -- "you've been in Washington for 30 years, what have you _done_ there?" -- landed with a lot of voters.
Meanwhile Harris's resume is stronger than several people who've been elected POTUS including a couple of successful ones. Many American voters think they're choosing based on things other than resume and that's always been true.
Yeah, my take is that she had a pretty standard resume for her first Senate run. Her resume was a little thin for President or VP in 2020, but four years as VP goes a long way towards curing that defect.
How much does VP help in terms of relevant experience? My impression is that most VPs don't have many actual responsibilities. I think sometimes the VP gets extra responsibilities from the president (Gore did, right?), but even though it would have been smart for Biden to offload a lot of his work onto the much-younger Harris, I don't recall reading or hearing of him doing much of that.
Vance hasn't exactly been inspiring or even helpful to the Trump campaign. Is there someone out there lauding his credentials? Even from Trump supporters, I'm not hearing a lot of super pro-Vance stuff.
Below are the resumes of 6 persons as of the day they became president, plus Harris's as of January 20 2025. The orders of the summaries and of the names are jumbled. You'll be able to pick out Harris's pretty easily. WITHOUT LOOKING THEM UP, let's see how many of the others you can match up.
[Elected governmental positions are Capitalized.]
(A) Farm worker and bank clerk (15 years); U.S. Army (2 years active duty); local store owner (2 years); county judge (10 years); U.S. Senator from a medium sized state (10 years); Vice President of the United States (3 months).
(B) National Guardsman (6 years); founder/owner of a medium-sized business (12 years); nominated for a U.S. House seat, lost; managed a relative’s re-election campaign, lost; Governor of a large state (6 years).
(C) Local prosecutor (10 years); District Attorney of a large city (7 years); Attorney General of the largest state in the nation (6 years); U.S. Senator from the largest state in the nation (4 years); Vice President of the United States (4 years).
(D) U.S. Navy (7 years); farm owner/operator (10 years); State Senator (4 years); Governor of a medium-sized state (4 years).
(E) Historian and author (1 published book); U.S. Army (6 months active duty); State Assemblyman (2 years); large-city police commissioner (2 years); Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1 year); Governor of the largest state in the nation (1 year); Vice President of the United States (6 months).
(F) Local lawyer (11 years); local judge (3 years); City Solicitor [i.e. prosecutor] (2 years); U.S. Army (4 years active service); member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2 years); Governor of a medium-sized state (6 years).
(G) Captain of a militia company (1 year); proprietor of a local general store, postmaster and surveyor of a frontier village (3 years); State Representative (8 years); local attorney (20 years); member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2 years); nominated for a U.S. Senate seat, lost.
(H) Publisher of a local newspaper (16 years, with interruptions from nervous breakdowns and stints in local sanitariums); State Senator (4 years); Lt. Governor (2 years); U.S. Senator from a medium-sized state (6 years).
A more interesting question, to me, is: how much does previous experience matter, and how would we measure that in an objective way? For example, Bush Jr had the most obvious qualification for president (he'd been a state governor) and was surrounded by serious, experienced advisors, and yet his eight years in office were a series of disasters. Obama had probably the thinnest resume of any president in my adult lifetime, and yet his eight years in office seemed pretty successful.
WHOOPS, sorry, the additional selection option is Theodore Roosevelt.
Of your matches the 2nd, 4th, 6th are correct; the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th are not. (However my error of not listing TR as an option is a reason for one of your misses.)
I am looking for advice on returning to work as a young-ish lawyer who has been on sick leave for the last 5 years. I worked for just over a year before my MS symptoms got bad enough that I had to stop working. I am in remission now, thankfully, due to a successful stem cell transplant, but I feel completely out of the rhythm of a fast paced corporate job, and have lost some of the confidence I had when starting out.
I don't really have any mentors, and I feel that the environment I am returning to is not going to be very forgiving in terms of letting me "catch up", so I am trying to ready myself in the next 6 months before I jump back in. I would be glad to receive anyone's advice or wisdom they think might be useful. Thank you.
Perhaps read the rules of civil procedure all the way through? I knew someone who did that every year on the 4th of July. lol. Or go to courtlistener.com under the Archive tab, you can read briefs on every topic imaginable and organize them into topics. … welcome back to the profession, glad to hear you are in remission!
Assume *everyone* will be completely unsympathetic to any such reasons, assert the job market is fantastic when its in fact shit and find a way to lie about references or job history in some small way
Take on some challenges, to rebuild your confidence: Ropes course or similar safe but challenging defiance of fear. Give a talk. Participate in a debate. Do some hard puzzles.
Brush up on the skills you'll need at the job.
Get maximally efficient with your computer -- typing, keyboard commands, using software. If you're like me, there are various little things you can't do well, but you have little workarounds & you stick with those instead of taking the time to figure out how to quickly get Word or whatever to do that one thing. Get rid of every single one of these.
Try to find a lawyer who will do some mentoring. Here seems like a good place to look.
It might help to get a coach. They're sort of like therapists, but don't work from the premise that you have something wrong -- they're there to help you optimize what you have. If you decide to do that, I would volunteer to help you vet them. I'm a psychologist, and don't do coaching, but I think I would be able to tell who's all bragging and buzzwords and who has useful skills.
For years law students were brainwashed into believing that they must aspire to become a partner in a major law firm and live the kind of life that comes with prestige and money. It didn't matter that they had to sacrifice their family and their health to accomplish these goals, until it did matter, and it was too late to go back and do things differently. So forget about going back to the kind of fast paced corporate job you had before, unless that's what you want.
I would start thinking about your needs.
Are you in debt because of your illness?
How much money do you need to make, to live comfortably?
Does geography matter?
Do you need to be close to your doctor?
Close to your family (or as far away as possible!)?
Do you need to avoid too much stress, cause you don't like it, or because it might impact your remission?
What do you want out of your career?
This is a hard one.
Forget the PC answers like, to make a difference.
Recognition. That's fine.
Wealth. That's fine.
Finding someone to share your life with.
That is a very relevant consideration. Most people meet their spouses at work. And it informs whether you should take a job where you are with people most days or work remotely where it will be much more difficult to connect with someone on a meaningful level.
What do you enjoy doing. professionally.
Research,
Writing,
Advocacy in court,
Solving other people's problems.
What areas of the law are you most interested in.
Most lawyers just fell into whatever kind of work they were given when they got their first job and stick with that their entire career, especially if they didn't know what they wanted to do when they graduated. Don't ever think you are locked in.
Do you have to practice law.? There are a lot of jobs where having a law degree can be an asset and it can give you a leg up in getting the job.
Once you have thought about there questions then you need to start networking.
Networking does not mean joining a bunch of organizations.
It means identifying people who are doing what you might be interested in doing and contacting them.
Explain your situation and ask them if you can take them to lunch or have coffee just to get some insight in the kind of work they do.
Not everyone, but most will be happy to meet with you.
Join LinkedIn. Get a Premium membership. It's around $69 a month, but you only need to subscribe for a few months. You will be taken much more seriously if you contact people through the LinkedIn message app.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics just released their 2023 report on criminal victimization. This data is based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, which is a self-report survey spanning from Jan 1 - Dec 31 about crimes experienced in the last 6 months, excluding the survey month (i.e. Jul 2022 - Nov 2023). This is notably different from the FBI crime statistics, as it does not rely on crimes being reported to the police.
The big takeaway: Violent crime is up over the last few years, but not in a way that really means anything. Violent crime rates were lower than usual during the 2020-21 period, I assume because people being locked in their houses for the pandemic generally suppressed the opportunity for criminal activity. There was a big spike in 2022, which has since fallen in 2023. Overall, the violent crime rate for 2021-23 is about the same as the 2017-2020 period, around 20/1,000 persons. I rate the claim that violent crime has been on the rise in the past few years technically true but lacking necessary context.
A large pct of violent crime in the survey are assaults, which are definitely likely to decline when people are not out and about interacting with one another. Ditto robberies.
I looked up the 2020 report and it has this disclaimer: "Due to increasing risks related to COVID-19, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in coordination with the U.S. Census Bureau, suspended all incoming sample interviews and shifted all returning sample interviews to telephone calls starting in mid-March 2020. ...Interviews were primarily conducted over the phone through the end of 2020. "
So there was a change in their data collection during the 2020 riots.
If the rate is technically going up it can't simultaneously be down can it? The tl:dr version is that the violent crime rate has been quite stable for the last decade and a half. The last four years saw two years of lower than average crime followed by two higher than average years.
This feels really basic, but can someone explain to me how well the Covid boosters track the Covid strains? Do I particularly need to get the booster annually? Do my kids particularly need to get the booster annually? I'm setting up flu shots and trying to figure out whether I should be setting up the Covid shots at the same time. (The downsides to just doing it aren't huge, but I don't like being sore, and I don't like having my kids scream at me either.)
First, there's very little risk with vaccines. Myocarditis & Pericarditis are the biggest risks of COVID vaccines for young people — primarily males between 16 and 30 — and especially after the second dose of the primary series. The risk decreases with subsequent boosters (but I don't have the data at my fingertips). However, the last time I crunched the numbers (which I admit was way back around BQ.1, Eo2022) the chance of being hospitalized from vaccines was 0.0002% the chance of being hospitalized from COVID. AFAICT, zero kids died from myo- or pericarditis. While (as of mid-2023) ~1500 kids had died from COVID or its complications.
And nearly 98% of children who *are* hospitalized for COVID are unvaccinated. Unfortunately, nowadays this is mostly in the youngest age cohorts who haven't received their first round of vaccines (for whatever reason).
If I had young kids, I'd be vaccinating them for my piece of mind. But bottom line, even though COVID isn't particularly dangerous for young people (Only 0.00125% of the US COVID deaths were kids under 18), there's even less risk from the vaccines — or the boosters — than from COVID.
> Myocarditis & Pericarditis are the biggest risks of COVID vaccines for young people — primarily males between 16 and 30 — and especially after the second dose of the primary series. The risk decreases with subsequent boosters (but I don't have the data at my fingertips).
Specifically for males in that range who had myocarditis/pericarditis after one or both vaccines in the primary series, is there data showing the risk of additional episodes of myocarditis/pericarditis decreases with subsequent boosters? Thank you in advance if you know of any research on this.
To clarify, both I and the kids have the primary round of vaccinations (and two of us have also had COVID; the toddler I think hasn't yet). I'm trying to understand what I'm getting from boosters. With the flu, my understanding is that it basically mutates out of recognition from one season to the next, so the "generic-flu" (or "last-season flu") immunity that I presumably still have is just not that useful. I also know that the flu vaccine tracks, or at least tries to track, the variants.
With COVID, I also know that it mutates, because everyone was keeping track of the latest variant and the spikes from it for a while, and with it going endemic you'd expect some mutation rate. But I don't have a feel for how quickly does it mutate to the point that my "generic-COVID" (or "last-season COVID") immunity is not very useful; I thought that initially the cross-variant protection (from immunizations or from past infection) appeared to be quite good. Also, do the boosters track the variants? Normally I'd assume that yes of course, because why else would you have boosters, but this seems like something the FDA would have to approve, and, err, is that what actually happened?
(Or maybe I'm just wrong about mutation rate being the reason for boosters.)
The two benefits you get from a booster are. The first is short-term and the second is longer-term.
1. Your neutralizing antibody (NAb) titers are elevated for a period of time after the booster. This protects *most* people from new infections for about six months before the concentration of antibodies in the bloodstream and lymphatic systems fall off enough to become ineffective in preventing a new infections. The duration of this protection varies by the vaccine and type of pathogen — but it's generally much shorter for respiratory pathogens than for pathogens that attack via the blood and lymph systems. Anyway, elevated NAbs to SARS2 should give you about half a year's protection against infection (YMMV).
2. The booster presents your humoral immune system with antigens unique to the newer strains of the virus — which allows it to learn how to respond to the new strains. The NAbs eventually fall below the levels necessary to prevent infection, but the T cells and B cells are capable of remembering the pathogen that bit us, and they mount an attack against the pathogen once it gets a foothold in our bodies. T cells key to different antigens from B cells (and I don't think they'd benefit from the booster). But B cells have the capability to learn the new antigens — and thus they can generate new NAbs that are more closely keyed to the new pathogen when it's detected. They won't prevent the infection, but they'll start fighting it off beginning about three days post-infection. So you're very much less likely to get sick enough to be hospitalized or die.
Having said that, booster uptake in the US has been pretty abysmal, BUT our population immunity is holding up quite well. Despite the predictions of many experts, the new COVID variants are not putting people in the hospital or the morgue at the rates many predicted. The argument was that new mutated spike proteins would escape not only our remaining NAbs from our last vax (or infection) but would also escape the antibodies generated by B cells. Turns out our B cells are more adaptive than predicted. But the data seems to indicate that giving them the latest viral antigens helps to keep them current.
Re: #1 in SARS2, I thought one of the disappointments after the initial rollout was that the vaccines had a surprisingly high rate of breakthrough infections. Is that the "YMMV" part?
Re: #2 in SARS2, one thing you didn't explicitly answer was -- are the boosters actually keeping track of variants?
Re: #1 in flu, I'm now curious why flu vaccinations don't affect flu seasonality. Your description suggests that the local population that's susceptible to infection should be considerably larger in summer; I'm surprised that doesn't win out over whatever other nebulous factors that lock it into being a winter season. Do you happen to know?
Here's a separate answer for your flu questions. (Full disclosure, I'm a SARS2 hobbiest, and my knowledge of influenza is much less detailed than for SARS2.)
Bottom line, flu viruses mutate in a different way from SARS2. And they attack the cells via different mechanisms from SARS2. The surface proteins of influenzas are always mutating (these are the H and N proteins — so you'll see strains identified by their H and N numbers — i.e. H1N1, H3N2, H5N1 — refer to the surface proteins that are used to infect cells. (Luckily for us H5 protein found in bird flues isn't very good at getting into human cells.) But influenzas are always reshuffling segments of their genome (called antigenic shift or reassortment), and this process makes them unrecognizable to our immune system quicker than mutations to the SARS2 spike protein do.
Also, flu vaccines are less effective than the COVID vaccines. It may be because antigenic shift reshuffles the flu genome so quickly that it (somewhat) outpaces vaccine development (I'm not sure about this). But the NAb titers from flu vaccines also fade faster than COVID vaccine NAb titers. They'll only give you protection for 3 or 4 months. That's why they suggest you get your flu shot in October, so your NAbs are highest at peak flu season (h/t to Eremolalos for pointing this out to me!).
Finally, influenza is a lower reproductive (R) number than SARS2. That means it's less transmissible than SARS2. The theory I've heard is that it's people being inside and close together in the winter months that makes it seasonal. I find that explanation to be a little too pat, but I'll tentatively accept it (because I'm too lazy to try and poke holes in that theory). OTOH, COVID is very transmissible. So it can spread in the summer months as well as the winter months. Experts have been predicting it will become seasonal for a few years now. Omicron was supposed to reset it to being a seasonal virus, but it didn't. But for now the our northern hemisphere summer wave is the winter wave in the southern hemisphere and vice versa.
Yes, the boosters are mostly keeping up with the variants. The mRNA vaccines are about three months behind, and Novavax is about 5 months behind. The mRNA vaccines are using KP.1x antigens. KP.3x dominated the last wave, but it's not that different from KP.1. Novavax takes longer to develop, and they're using the antigens from JN.1, the KP.1 progenitor, for their antigens. Antibodies to JN.1 should work almost as well as well as KP.1 antibodies. Of course, the new scariant of concern is MV.1. That variant may create a winter wave. It's a different branch off of JN.1. So, Novavax may do a better job neutralizing MV.1 if it does turn into a wave. But predicting which variant will cause the next wave is sucker's bet. I'll happily take the mRNA vaccines if that's all I can get.
Two reasons for breakthrough infections.
First: When the mRNA vaccines were first released the the NAb titers were so high that a lot of people thought they'd continue to remain high for a long time. They were talking about sterilizing immunity and champaign corks were popping. But then the data started coming in that the NAb titers began to wane beginning at 4 months, and after 6 to 8 months a significant percentage of peeps' titers had dropped enough to allow breakthrough infections. Some experts were banging the gong to boost every 6 months. But it quickly became clear, except to all but the doomiest of doomers, that T cells and B cells were doing their job. People were getting breakthrough infections but for most, the infections weren't progressing to the point where people were requiring hospitalization or the services of the ICU.
Second: To gain a foothold in the body SARS2 latches on to mucosal cells. The mucosal membranes (at least the ones facing the outside world) don't have a direct blood supply. So NAbs (like IgG) take time to permeate outward to the mucosal lining. IIRC it's something it takes something like 48 hours for the body to mount an immune response to the mucosa. And to add to the problem, IgA antibodies (which are the first line of defense for the mucosa) drop off the fastest after boosting. Again, this happens over several months after the initial vaccination or the booster, but Omicron adapted itself to a population with high immunity by revving up the mucosal stage of its infection faster. Whereas the intial SARS2 type A and type B variants took over 5 days to incubate, Omicron was incubating in 48 to 72 hours. So it would be contagious before peoples' immune systems kicked in.
Supposedly nasal vaccines will be able to get around this problem, but I haven't heard a good explanation for why IgA NAbs won't fade at the same rate as injected vaccines. Bot bottom line, breakthrough infections will be with us unless we we find a way to either keep our NAb titers (IgA especially) high for a longer periods of time, or we develop a nasal vaccine that prevents the initial infection of the mucosa. And this is the reason that we've never been able to develop a vaccine that offers durable immunity against non-viremic (i.e. respiratory) viruses. (Though for some reason they're saying the RSV vaccine won't require boosters — I need to dig into that.)
And I forgot a third reason — the SARS2 spike protein mutates fast and immune escape is probably a factor in some breakthrough infections — i.e. the NAbs we've acquired aren't properly keyed to the spike proteins of the newer variants. But the in vitro estimates of immune escape seem to have radically *overestimated* the in vivo breakthrough rates.
Vinay Prasad is firmly of the opinion you should not. From what I can tell he is pretty sensible. Note by the way the Europeans aren’t giving boosters to children. Here is one of his tweets.
Sorry, no way.
There's no reliable evidence this vaccine lowers the risk of covid. FDA did not ask for any randomized studies.
There is no evidence that repeated boosters lower the risk of long COVID
No other nation recommends boosters for young healthy people who have had covid
Even mild adverse events can outweigh a gain of zero
Maybe get the shot if you're in a nursing home, but definitely not if you're young and healthy. It would be crazy to.
Allowing the company to sell the shot without running randomized studies is totally crazy. It only makes sense if you consider that the people making the decision are soon going to be working for the company, just like Scott gottlieb, former FDA commish and current Pfizer board member
The fact that the USA gave such a broad marketing authorization is not because our experts are smart, it's because they're more corrupt. And financial conflicts of interest to drive this system.
The uptake for the booster is going to be as close to 0% as you can imagine. No one will want this.
I would never give it to a child who had COVID. That's so crazy in my mind
You state your opinions with such confidence! The thing about opinions is anyone can have one. And the thing about experts is that there are so many of them, and you can generally find one who will suit your opinions. From my perspective, as experts go, Prasad is over on the COVID minimizer side of the spectrum. He's not as quacky as the GBD bobbleheads, but he's continually underrated the effectiveness of vaccines throughout the pandemic and he's ignored any data that contradicts his opinions. In fact he blocked me after I kept sending him links to papers that contradicted his opinions. Of course, the Long COVIDians are just as pernicious as the minimizers. But if you want the actual data, I can quote you chapter and verse against every one of your points.
Are you talking about me? I don’t think I stated any opinions other than that Prasad seems sensible to me. Which I know to be true because it’s a statement about my own mental state.
But you wouldn't have quoted/paraphrased Prasad if you hadn't been convinced of his reliability, right? If you don't believe it, why bring it up? Sorry, but to me that sounds like the "well, some people are *saying* they're eating cats and dogs in Springfield" excuse.
I think Prasad is sensible and I’m inclined to believe him. My confidence levels are not super high and I don’t think a fair reading of my post would allow that to be said. But much ado about nothing.
Note that "There is no evidence that..." just means no one has run a state of the art study. It does not mean that there is evidence it does not work.
Running randomized studies for each new strain takes a lot of time and money, which can mean that when the study is done and FDA approved, the next strain has already replaced this one.
That said, I'm not taking this vaccine. I feel protected enough by my previous shots and having had Covid twice.
Field trials of the COVID vaccines were double-blind studies where the control group were unvaccinated people who never caught COVID. There aren't many COVID virgins anymore, and there are almost no *unvaccinated* COVID virgins (except newborns and pre-daycare infants). I suppose one could perform a field trial using people who had antibodies from previous infections and/or vaccinations, but it's been four plus years since the pandemic began, and untangling the immunological variables between the control and test group would be a substantial hurdle to overcome.
One of the problems bringing completely new types of COVID vaccines to market (such as nasal vaccines), is that just about everyone has SARS2 antibodies already. At best, they can estimate the risk of reinfection between the control and the test group.
There are no trials on the flu vaccine each year. It is made the same way every year, and it was established early on that the method produces a safe vaccine. Now they just tweak it each year, trying to make it a good match for the strain the seems likely dominate in the coming year. Every year it is different, in the sense that it is optimized to protect against a certain strain, but it is different in ways that do not affect its safety. As for testing for efficacy, that is not possible with each year's flu shot By the time you'd proved efficacy the strain you're vaxing against would have come and gone. Situation's the same with the covid vax. Safety is established, trial for effectiveness cannot be done. Covid vax developers can't do in vivo trials (tests on real people) for the reason described, but can test it in the lab against the actual virus.
I have no idea. Personally I see no reason to give kids Covid vaccines. I've also become more leery of vaccines in general. Anyone know of a good 'deep dive' into vaccines. The various types and how they work. (and also the risks.)
Your Local Epidemiologist here on Substack gives good, no nonsense breakdowns on vaccine/virus types, and public health benefits and drawbacks to using them.
She claims the side effects of Novavax are less intense. I wish she had spelled this out in more detail with some links to studies. The only reference I can find is a Nature article behind a paywall (which I can't access because I let my subscription expire). Rates of myocarditis/pericarditis seemed to have been lower with the initial Novavax vaccine. Don't know if that's still holding up now that these incidences have dropped off after the initial vaccine rollouts.
I'm in a similar position. After the lies during Covid I became more skeptical. Since finding out about the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 I don't have faith that they are actually properly assessed for safety. Obviously some of them are necessary, but I don't know how to weight the risks and benefits. Since our health institutions aren't trustworthy I feel like I need to do due diligence before giving them to any future children I might have. I'm considering crowdsourcing funds to hire private researchers who can investigate the actual evidence and maybe do a comparison of the recommendations across different developed nations.
That's a good plan, if you can afford it. There's actually someone people on here recommend for researching things. However, if your goal is to raise your children in an environment that's safe and full of good nutrients. I'm pretty sure that there are way better places than the childhood vax issue to put your money and effort. For instance:
electronics: how much exposure of what kinds at what age is harmful, what's helpful?
air quality in area where you live -- has all kinds of downstream effects
environmental toxins: what do you really need to worry about?
schooling: home vs. public vs. private. Real quality of schools you're considering.
exercise, and physicality generally: how important is it? If it's important, how do you get them to enjoy it?
If you find anything useful please post it. Trolling the CDC website I found that the flu vaccine causes increased GBS (Guillain-Barré Syndrome) And a map of world wide GBS shows it's much more dominant in the US! WTF, my mother-in-law died of GBS, it started in her arm... I have no idea if she had gotten a flu shot recently (or whatever the right word is, near in time, but happening in the past)
The background rate for GBS in the Unites States is about 80 to 160 cases of GBS each week, regardless of vaccination. The data on the association between GBS and seasonal flu vaccination are variable and inconsistent across flu seasons. If there is an increased risk of GBS following flu vaccination it is small, on the order of one to two additional GBS cases per million doses of flu vaccine administered
Most people who get flu will recover in a few days to less than two weeks, but some people will develop complications (such as pneumonia) as a result of flu, some of which can be life-threatening and result in death.
Sinus and ear infections are examples of moderate complications from flu, while pneumonia is a serious flu complication that can result from either flu virus infection alone or from co-infection of flu virus and bacteria. Other possible serious complications triggered by flu can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscle tissues (myositis, rhabdomyolysis), and multi-organ failure (for example, respiratory and kidney failure). Flu virus infection of the respiratory tract can trigger an extreme inflammatory response in the body and can lead to sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to infection. Flu also can make chronic medical problems worse. For example, people with asthma may experience asthma attacks while they have flu, and people with chronic heart disease may experience a worsening of this condition triggered by flu.
Yeah to be honest I have no idea. Which is the problem, I don't trust the cdc, cause I don't know how much of their funding comes from big pharma. For whomever makes the vaccines, there's a big incentive to sell more of them, and if the money is hidden somewhere in our health care plans, so much the better.
To be lying about GBS the CDC would be exposing itself to attacks by respectable academic researchers who are not beholden to big pharma. The CDC is pretty transparent about its research -- what the numbers were, how they selected subjects, etc. They could not hide the practices that biased their results in favor of big pharma. They would have to flat out lie about their results. It is very implausible that they would do that. They would make themselves way to vulnerable to a terrible scandal. And even if the organization itself is corrupt, many who work there are honest researchers and would blow the whistle.
I asked GPT how much to trust what the. CDC said about GBS.
The CDC says that the flu shot is may not cause Guillain Barre Syndrome at all, and that if it does cause it that happens in only one or 2 cases per million. Is there respectable research that contradicts that?
This is its answer:
ChatGPT
There is a general scientific consensus that the link between the flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) is very weak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health organizations base their recommendations on large-scale studies that suggest the flu shot is very safe and that GBS cases possibly linked to it occur at a rate of about 1-2 cases per million doses.
However, while most studies support the CDC’s view, there have been some studies suggesting a small increased risk of GBS following flu vaccination, particularly in specific cases like the 1976 swine flu vaccine campaign, which saw a higher incidence of GBS. Since then, vaccines have been reformulated and monitored extensively, and current research finds only a very minimal association.
Some research contradicting the CDC's stance might emphasize the risk in more specific populations or analyze potential biases in larger epidemiological studies. For example:
Studies on specific flu vaccines: Some research suggests that certain types of flu vaccines may have a slightly higher association with GBS, but these findings have often been limited to specific vaccine formulations, regions, or patient groups.
Case-control studies: There have been case-control studies in smaller populations suggesting a marginally elevated risk in certain demographics, but the increase is still small and much lower than the risks posed by the flu itself.
Cumulative risk analysis: Some researchers focus on cumulative risk across multiple vaccines or highlight how certain autoimmune conditions might predispose individuals to vaccine-related complications.
Overall, while there's always ongoing research, the bulk of high-quality studies support the CDC's position that the flu vaccine is generally safe, and the risk of GBS is extremely low. If you're looking for more specific studies or alternative perspectives, I can help dig deeper into recent publications if you'd like.
You can use sources like that to double check. I think the Substack blog Your Local Epidemiologist is honest and smart, too. But you have to evaluate the sources and then commit to one. One thing I can tell you is that exchanges like the ones going on here will not clarify things for you. Lots of people are diffusely scared, but not very knowledgable. People on here have made very basic errors about & covid facts how vaxes work, some of which beowulf and I have caught. I have no loyalty to the goverment, to big pharma or to most other organizations. I researched all this stuff, and my conclusion is that you can trust the CDC research and you can trust Your Local Epidemiologsist and you can trust beowulf, who also is not loyal to anyone's ideas but his. The CDC gave bad advice, and lied, and handled the public's anxiety and confusion very badly, but their research is OK.
"...there was the simulator, the most perfect video game ever played. Teachers and students had trained him, step by step, in its use..."
I guess I want to flag a major ethics concerns here, in light of the hypothetical where a device like the ansible gets recovered from advanced technology: "looks like training game." "outer space" "3D." "amazing REALISTIC graphics."
"I worked so hard to make it look realistic." <-- uh-huh. it's totally not just slurping up data from an actual spaceship's on-board cameras.
"former" army officer. <-- yeah. and Graff literally described his role saying, "I am a teacher of little children."
It appears to be Latin for "I am not making [this] up". (Where the "this" isn't present in the Latin, but is required for a grammatical English phrase. I take no position on whether it would be required in Latin.)
Yeah, I think I'm already committed to the name through various platforms, but I've definitely learned my lesson about trying to be too clever with it. If there's a next time, I'll do better.
If there is AI misalignment, and we know it, and we can prove it, and there's simply absolutely no question that it's happening... will anyone slow down or change anything about what they're doing?
A quote from a comment on Less Wrong:
"
How much scientific juice has, say, Facebook gotten out of CICERO? Have they deeply understood the situations in which CICERO begins planning to manipulate possible allies? Have they mechanistically interpretably understood how CICERO decides how long to cooperate and play nice, and when to openly defect and attack an ally? Is not CICERO a deeply empirical system based on observations and logs from many real-world games with actual human players rather than mere theoretical arguments? Has CICERO ended the empirical debate about whether LLMs can systematically scheme? Has it been shown what training techniques lead to scheming or why off-the-shelf normally-trained frozen LLMs were so useful for the planning and psychological manipulation compared to no-press Diplomacy?
Or has everyone pretty much forgotten about CICERO, handwaved away a few excuses about "well maybe it wasn't really deception" and "didn't it just learn to imitate humans why are you surprised", and the entire line of work apparently dead as a doornail as FB pivots to Llama-everything and core authors left for places like OA?
If the incentives for scientific research don't work there where the opposing commercial incentives are so very weak (borderline non-existent, even), why would they be highly likely to work elsewhere in scenarios with vastly more powerful opposing commercial incentives?
I don't think anyone expects that AI is perfectly aligned. They try to do something vaguely resembling alignment for ChatGPT, but if you look at something like character.ai, they have no problem with AI based on evil or insane characters. Most people just don't expect this to be a problem.
> Has CICERO ended the empirical debate about whether LLMs can systematically scheme?
I don't know whether CICERO is what ended it, but that debate is over, yeah. More recent, higher-profile AI has also shown extensive ability for scheming and deception.
> If there is AI misalignment, and we know it, and we can prove it, and there's simply absolutely no question that it's happening... will anyone slow down or change anything about what they're doing?
A significant number of people involved in AI are hoping for unaligned AI, with human extinction considered an acceptable outcome.
Marc Andreessen, billionaire supporter of e/acc, responding to a paper about AI deception capabilities: "We've actually invented AI, and it turns out that it's gloriously, inherently uncontrollable." https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1747534187597586615
Much of e/acc as represented by the "leadership"/founders, is pretty clearly in favour of human extinction. Per the e/acc manifesto, "e/acc has no particular allegiance to the biological substrate for intelligence and life, in contrast to transhumanism." "Effective accelerationism (e/acc) in a nutshell: Stop fighting the thermodynamic will of the universe / You cannot stop the acceleration / You might as well embrace it / A C C E L E R A T E." Some, like Beff Jezos, "consider ourselves post-humanists; in order to spread to the stars, the light of consciousness/intelligence will have to be transduced to non-biological substrates." Note, however, that a Twitter poll showed only ~15% of e/acc people endorsing human extinction. https://x.com/daniel_271828/status/1728379010252673193
Rich Sutton advocates "AI succession": "Inevitably, we will create our successors. It need not be viewed as bad in any way." He criticizes "humanism, in the sense of being akin to racism," and argues "I don't think we should fear succession. I think we should not resist it. We should embrace it, prepare for it. Why would we want greater AIs, more intelligent beings, kept subservient to us?"
Larry Page, in a conversation with Elon Musk (later verified by Max Tegmark), said he believes that AI would "simply be the next stage of evolution," dismissing concerns about humanity's safety as "speciest" and "sentimental nonsense."
Jürgen Schmidhuber: "In the long run, humans will not remain the crown of creation... But that's okay because there is still beauty, grandeur, and greatness in realizing that you are a tiny part of a much grander scheme which is leading the universe from lower complexity towards higher complexity." (His position is slightly more ambigious; there's a difference between "human extinction is inevitable" and "human extinction is good", and I don't know if he's ever made clear which side he's on.)
Edit: Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter on his blog actually has a recurring segment called "Please Speak Directly Into This Microphone" where he goes over statements by (as he calls them) "Omnicidal Maniacs" who advocate human extinction.
Not your term, but when you’re labeling your conversation partners “omnicidal maniacs” it may be useful to step back and consider that you don’t understand what they’re saying.
One way or another, humanity is going to go extinct. We will either be wiped out entirely or evolve to the point that Homo sapiens no longer exists. This is not good or bad, it’s just a fact.
Likewise, you and everyone you know will die. You will be annihilated completely. Also neither good or bad, also a fact, also true no matter how many data centers we do or do not build.
Not building AI / artificial life out of fear of the inevitable is the maniacal position. It represents the only - admittedly extraordinarily slim - possibility that something of you in particular / humanity generally will persist into the far future, true, but it also has the real promise of substantial rewards along with the possibility of immense risk. Condemning mankind to LARP a late industrial lifestyle for as long as possible to prevent dislocation is madness and ignores the really not great conditions of many, many human lives. Everything from shrimp boat slaves to dead eyed suicidal email job holders.
And if we goof and manage to drive ourselves extinct within a couple years - also extraordinarily slim odds depending on your priors, by the way - what is the difference? It is going to happen. The “onnicidal maniacs” simply see a much broader range of possible outcomes included within the human extinction scenario while recognizing its inevitability under any AI policy regime.
Basically agreed. Though I'm not quite sure what you mean in:
>Not building AI / artificial life out of fear of the inevitable is the maniacal position. It represents the only - admittedly extraordinarily slim - possibility that something of you in particular / humanity generally will persist into the far future, true, but it also has the real promise of substantial rewards along with the possibility of immense risk.
Is the "It" in the second sentence AI or the position of not building AI? If you mean "It" to be AI, then I agree.
In particular, there are a number of intellectual accomplishments of humanity, e.g. the periodic table, that I am personally sentimental about, and which I expect to have a good chance of being preserved by AIs into the far future.
> I don't know whether CICERO is what ended it, but that debate is over, yeah. More recent, higher-profile AI has also shown extensive ability for scheming and deception.
I suspect I know what you're talking about but... for the onlookers... what are you talking about? I think everyone would be curious to know details.
> A significant number of people involved in AI are hoping for unaligned AI, with human extinction considered an acceptable outcome.
Yeah, nihilism seems to be rampant these days. One of the reasons I'm hoping Musk will manage to overshadow the others.
> What people believe is that "unaligned" is an incoherent concept or is not particularly dangerous, not that an "unaligned" AI is something to shoot for and something that will destroy humanity in the process.
Those are different people. People like Sutton, Page, and Schmidhuber are quite clear that they consider AGI resulting human extinction to be a positive outcome.
No. The lab would not shut down. It would probably not even notify anyone outside the company of the alignment problem or the escape attempts. The evidence would be buried, and is unlikely to come to the attention of anyone outside the lab until after a devastating incident.
For real-world examples, look to other industries. Perhaps the two clearest examples are:
The UK Post Office "Horizon" computer system. This was known to be making egregious errors, yet postmasters were prosecuted and imprisoned on the known-faulty say-so of the Horizon system.
Grenfell Tower Fire. The public enquiry has found multiple cases where the evidence that the cladding was highly flammable and unsuited for use on tall buildings was deliberately hidden from the authorities, and even when the authorities knew (or should have known), the evidence was ignored.
Similar cases can be found throughout the EEA, US and Canada.
Karl Popper (writing in I believe the 60s) said that a 2 party like America's was ideal, because both parties would be broad-tent moderates who can only win by competing for the median voter. In other words, having to get to 50%+1 to win is itself a moderating influence. Famously this has not uh (gesticulates at America) proved to be a great prediction. But why not, exactly? Looking for answers a bit deeper than just saying 'polarization'.
One thing I've been thinking about recently is that the kinds of voters & politicians who would be in smaller, more extreme parties in a PR system, are instead incorporated into the 2 big tent parties here in the US. This has a corrupting & radicalizing influence within the party over time, especially as people with more extreme views are just more passionate about politics than relative moderates. So no matter what political system you choose, the radicals have outsized influence- either as a junior coalition partner in PR, or from 'inside the tent' in a 2 party system. There's no way that I know of to diminish their influence.
As a counter-argument, Labour and the Tories in the UK seem quite a bit less radical than the US, despite that country also only being governed by 2 parties. Do the British have the best system (this is highly speculative) by giving relative radicals their own parties, but then they can never win under FPTP? So they're isolated but also always out of power
I think the big problem is that this assumes that the parties react to the voters, but not the other way around. In reality, people will change their views to fit their party and to try to distance themselves from the opposite party.
But I don't know why it seems to be getting worse.
You may be holding your nose too close to the wheel. Zoom out. America is far and away the richest and most powerful nation on earth, it has been so for more than a century, and there is nothing in its current trajectory relative to other nations to suggest that this will change any time soon. Europe has been stagnating for a long time, Xi is running China into the ground, Russia isn't worth mentioning. Who do you think is better governed?
You only get the impression that China is well governed because nobody in China is allowed to say otherwise. How could you possibly know what China's problems are, when outsiders aren't allowed to see them and insiders are routinely murdered for mentioning them?
And the fact that China has gone from being as poor as Niger to being as poor as Mexico doesn't mean it's well run, it just means it's not quite as badly run as it was in the 1960s.
I’ve been there. I can assure you Melvin that China is not North Korea - there are a billion phones. Stewarding an economy that grows from the per capita GDP of Niger to Mexico is pretty rare, were it common then subsaharan Africa would be high middle income right now, and Niger would be Mexico.
Few other countries gave done it, except a few Asian tigers, and none at this scale.
I blame the primaries and the influence of a few very strong wedge issues. Abortion in particular. Primaries have always had a radicalizing effect, as it's essentially moving the Overton Window far to the left or right compared to the overall population and then making candidates go through that Window instead of the centrist version. We then talk about the swing to the middle for the general election, which should help negate this.
The reason I don't think the swing to the middle has been strong enough is the wedge issues. As long as there are single-issue voters that will always support a party no matter what, it strongly reduces the incentive to swing to the middle later. If the candidates don't have to swing later, they can say more strongly what the extremes want to hear during the primaries, which helps them beat centrists. True believers in both parties hate it when their candidates drop positions and moderate to win the national election.
Jeb Bush said something about losing the primary in order to win the general. He obviously lost the primary, and didn't get the chance to win the general (which I think he would have, against Clinton).
To even get to run in an election, you have to win an election of party sympathisers. This tends to end up picking the most extreme candidate rather than the most electable.
Then in the main election, voters are left picking one of two extremists.
Before 1970, candidates were picked by party insiders "in smoke filled rooms". I think the crop of politicians nominated that way were a lot more centrists, and would bring back this system if/when I became emperor.
But the US has experimented with non-primary systems, such as Washington, Oregon, and California using a top 2 system for about the last 20 years. This was actually the selling point for switching to top 2, that it would get rid of primaries and help moderate American politics. It has definitely not done that
"Top 2" doesn't help if you still have two strong political party organizations, and so long as *most* states do party primary and first-past-the-post general elections you're going to have exactly two strong party organizations everywhere.
Which means, in a Top 2 state, the minority party is going to be highly incentivized to run exactly one serious candidate, because that's their best hope to even be in the general election. Anyone other than the Chosen One who tries to run will be starved of funding, warned that they'll be persona non grata in the party forevermore if they do this, and the party will use its own messaging apparatus to make sure the voters know who the Chosen One is and that a primary vote for anyone else will be wasted.
Which in turn means that the majority party, unless it's a *huge* majority, will also be incentivized to run exactly one serious candidate. They could probably get away with two, if A: they could reliably keep it to two, and B: the visible infighting and the fact that neither of their candidates came in first in the primary, didn't cost them votes in the general.
California is a very blue state, but the 2022 gubernatorial primary was a contest between Gavin Newsom (a Democrat), Brian Dahle (a Republican), and twelve other Republican and three other Democratic candidates so insignificant that none of them even merit a wikipedia page. Newsom got 55% of the vote in the "top 2" primary and 59% in the general election
If you were to convert the entire nation to "top 2", that *might* change. But I wouldn't bet on it.
Definitely not. A challenger to an incumbent that makes it to the general will usually have a dedicated band of crazies that put them ahead of the dozen other primary candidates, but however hated the incumbent is the crazies' darling is worse.
I don't think state-level primary changes would help much for Presidential elections, but are California governors or senators more moderate (relative to the state population) than other states?
I'm not sure how a "Top 2" system would moderate things.
The normal (globally) way to select candidates is to let party insiders do it (much as they did for Kamala). Let the professionals do the triangulation between picking someone electable and someone who'll actually pursue the party's agenda.
I don't understand this well enough to argue this cogently, but I've become increasingly convinced that it's the media.
* As Wooly notes, Yellow Journalism is historically the default. It's the post-WWII Golden Age of Journalism which begs for explanation.
* I suspect the golden age due to a combination of: A) laws like the Radio Act of 1927, which caused the media to moderate themselves (and thus run their news departments at a loss); and B) advertising was more homogenous, because of something to do with logistics/market-segmentation.
* The behavior of modern governments are downstream of the 4th estate.
This is basically median voter theorem. I think the reason this doesn’t moderate politics as much as expected is because parties aren’t just competing for the median voter; they’re also trying to get latent supporters on their side to bother to show up to vote at all. The latter factor pushes the parties toward the extremes, because if a candidate is too moderate, a lot of more extreme right/left people just won’t vote (especially uninformed citizens) or will vote for third parties.
Likelier candidates whose name would get them listed first alphabetically; voters who don't want to be doing it will put in the minimum amount of effort necessary to avoid punishment.
Parties also tend to be run by grassrootss volunteers who are more extreme, and therefore commited, than the average vote-once-every-four-years person.
I don't think you can say you've proved your case by "gesticulat[ing] at America".
My recollection is that Popper favored first-past-the-post because it allowed voters to reject the current government by voting against it, without the risk that a new coalition containing the party they wanted to defeat would still be in charge.
Lots of other countries have had novel parties with new ideologies take over. The US has had the same big 2 since the mid 19th century. We're considered an anomaly because we never had a major socialist or labor party.
AFAIK the UK, Canada, and Australia have only ever had the same 2 parties in government, also going back to the 19th century. Yes there have been a few coalition governments here and there, but always with 1 of those 2 major parties as the majority partner. Not really disagreeing with you here, just thinking out loud
I don't know, compared to the range of possibilities, especially a worldwide range, US politics really is quite centrist. We've kept the Communists and the Fascists out of power, despite big groundswells of support at different times.
Popper's quote is from 60 years ago. When I was taking intro polysci courses 40 years ago his description of the two major parties was neither novel nor disputable. His error, shared by my professors, was assuming that just because that had been an accurate description for 100+ years it inherently would always be.
Both parties are competing for the median voter. Just look at how close the polls are. Perhaps it is you who has a distorted view on what the median voter is like?
I guess the deeper answer is that political parties are competing for more than just “winning”. They are also competing to implement their policy goals. Each party moderates just enough to win, but no further, because doing so would jeopardize their policy aims.
People have a hard time distinguishing between extreme (as in really stupid ideas) and extreme. (as in politically unpopular) I personally find student loan forgiveness to be very stupid but it's not politically unpopular.
For awhile there, you could see mainstream Republicans proposing going to war with Iran, at the same time Trump was talking about banning Muslim immigration. The first policy was widely seen as within the window, reasonable-people-may-differ stuff, whereas the second was seen in most media/public circles as racist and beyond-the-pale.
Now, a Muslim immigration bad seems like bad policy, but it's enormously less bad than starting a war with Iran. People who were very upset about the human rights implications of a Muslim immigration ban didn't seem so upset with the human rights implications of bombing the shit out of yet another Middle Eastern country. Because bombing Iran was within the window of acceptable views, but a Muslim ban wasn't.
In Britain, the two main parties have a high level of control over their politicians:
- There aren't open primaries. Parties have an internal process for choosing who will run for any given seat.
- If an MP is sufficiently disobedient, they can be expelled from their party - meaning that in the next election they will have to run as an independent and will likely lose because people usually vote for the main parties
- The head of government is the prime minister, who only takes and retains power as long as > half of parliament supports them. Members of parliament are a more intelligent electorate than the general public, making it harder for Trump types to get in.
First, the idea that pre-1960 America was a model of moderate parties competing for the median voter is a pretty odd interpretation. Two factions, Whigs and Dems, formed almost immediately, moderated a bit by Washington, but then they immediately broke down into really nasty fighting, see the Alien & Sedition Acts, followed by a brief lull, followed by a generational conflict over slavery culminating in a group of religious radicals (Republican abolitionists) forming a new political faction and driving the country into civil War, followed by a...mostly one party state as Northern Republicans monopolized power between the Civil War and the Great Depression, followed by WWII, the two trials of which generated a great deal of unity...which was basically ending in the 1960s. There is no sainted past of political moderation to return to. This is just...not historically how 18th and 19th century democracies functioned.
Second, it's non-obvious why political moderation is even desirable. Again, the Republicans of the 1840s-1850s were quite radical for their time, the moderates tended to be guys like Webster trying to set up Liberia. Moderation is good if everything is going well for most people. If it's not, which kind of seems like our current situation, it's not clear that moderation is optimal.
Recent polarization was a relatively recent deliberate decision by elites. The idea that people don't really have a choice because the parties were indistinguishable was thought to be undemocratic. But a lot of this was just sorting over time, and people who identified with a party label rather than an ideology wound up changing their ideology or party
I think you're confusing immoderate rhetoric with immoderate policy.
US politics is immoderate in the sense that both parties are perpetually talking about how the other one are evil psychopaths who want to destroy the country. It's not immoderate in terms of actual policy differences, which are small.
Oh, Jesus. It isn’t just immoderate rhetoric. You are just skipping over the effort to subvert an election here.
Winding up a crowd to enter the capitol to pressure your VP to unconstitutionally stop its prescribed process, as Pence acknowledged was the case.
Then watching the show unfold on television for a couple hours rather than issuing a restraining message.
As a result, Mike Pence is one of the Republicans who will not be voting for Trump this November
This is not an issue of personality or immoderate rhetorical style. It’s not even policy unless you consider following the rules outlined in the US Constitution a matter of mere ‘policy’.
_________
Jim Mattis Retired Marine Corps Four Star General, Trump Defense Secretary - January 7, 2021 -
“Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump.
His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us”
______________
Mitch McConnell - March 13, 2021
“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.
The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.”
The capitol protests and the reaction to them definitely falls under the category of extreme rhetoric, not extreme policy.
What are the *actual*, enactable, policy differences between the two parties? One is notionally center-left and one is notionally center-right but there's barely a bee's dick of difference in practice. Abortion at twelve weeks versus sixteen weeks? A one percent difference in the top marginal tax rate? Do you pretend to do something about illegal immigration or not even pretend?
Again, I think following the rules outlined in the Constitution a most fundamental matter of policy.
Leaving office after losing an election is very much a baseline policy.
It’s not ordinarily considered as such because we had never before had someone so self obsessed that he would try to arrange a scam with ‘alternate electors’ to nullify an election.
If a president can’t meet the baseline of observing the never before challenged peaceful transfer I don’t give a damn about the rest.
If Obama had lost narrowly in 2012 and pulled a similar stunt I would have felt the same way.
Donald Trump did his best toresist ceding power peacefully.
He is the Republican candidate for president in 2024.
For most practical purposes the Republican Party is whatever Trump says it is on any given day. See Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Paul Ryan.
This is why I don’t care a whit about marginal tax rate etc in the coming election.
My gut, data-free take is Popper overestimates the extent to which extremists are a captive electorate to the party on "their side". You have to chase the moderates yes but you also have to chase the extremists or they just wander off and don't vote.
Another factor is that swing voters aren't people who are in the middle of some one-dimensional spectrum. They're people who just have weird positions that don't line up neatly with either party.
Upon ruminating, another way to formulate that is you can't have a true two-party system because abstension (and adjacent categories) always exists as a de facto third party - that can pull impressive scores with no adds, donors, canvassers or even candidates.
A few weeks ago I noted I didn't think my crackpot physics was correct.
I've been noodling on the "mathematics" I used to come to that conclusion and I suspect they may end up being relatively important, if correct.
Shortest possible version: My conceptualization of negative dimensionality bears a striking resemblance to a Riemann Sphere. Given the AdS/CFT correspondence, this may be important.
Does anybody know whether or not any string theorists have tried investigating the behavior of a negative-dimensional "string"? I have a hunch such a construct may give rise to general relativity.
(Granted it's no longer quite a string, per se, when it becomes negative-dimensional; it's more of a complex surface. However, one of the precursors to the Riemann Sphere, in terms of how I consider negative dimensionality, could be interpreted as "an infinite number of one-dimensional strings curled up into an infinitesimal space".)
Can you explain what you mean by negative dimensions? Does that mean you write a vector with a negative amount of numbers? Or if you scale it up, the volume somehow goes down?
If you're interested in my attempt to explain the idea somewhat more clearly. Still not formal, by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe part of the way there.
The second; if you scale it up, the volume-equivalent goes down. (I think of these as "magnitude" and "measure" to help keep things straight in my head; as magnitude increases, measure decreases, and vice versa.)
For a glimpse of how this might work out in practice, observe that, because the surface area of a curved surface of a given diameter is greater than the surface area of a flat surface, and because relativity implies curvature, the volume of space (measure) increases as the distance (magnitude) from a mass decreases.
That would only work if you're getting closer and closer to a specific point. So would it just mean that that point has a negative number of dimensions, but everywhere else it's positive?
I don't know much about string theory, but as I understand it, both the strings and the background space are actual manifolds, not just objects with a parameter called "dimension" that has some formal similarity to dimensions of things like manifolds and vector spaces. Given you can't have a negative-dimensional manifold, what do you even mean by negative-dimensional strings? If you explained in your previous post, could you provide a link?
What makes you think you can't have a negative-dimensional manifold?
Edit:
The thrust of what I'm saying is that there -is- a negative-dimensional manifold - it is the Riemann Sphere. (Or possibly a horn torus that is extremely similar.)
Unfortunately my mathematical language skills are less than stellar (somebody else had to point out to me the strange topology I was drawing for negative dimensions trying to explain my crackpot physics was just a projection of a Riemann Sphere onto a two-dimensional surface, namely the paper I was trying to draw it on). In terms of fractal dimensions, a negative dimensional space is one in which something like measure is given as the inverse of something like magnitude.
Scale a line by 1/2 and you get a line that is half the length of the original line. Scale a square by 1/2 and you get a square that is 1/4 the length of the original square. Scale a cube, you get 1/8*.
For a -1 dimensional object, scale that object by 1/2, and you end up with an object that is twice the size of the original object. This is, oddly, halfway to getting us a "natural" Riemann Sphere already, as the Riemann Sphere is constructed from two coordinate systems such that the 0 and the infinity of each are assigned to the infinity and 0 of the other coordinate system, respectively. We're just missing the complex component, which I'm pretty sure will turn up once you start considering what a negative degree of freedom is. Or, alternatively ...
For a given positive dimension, we can consider it in terms of a path from an arbitrary but specific 0 to some infinity. In the space of all possible dimensions, there are an infinite number of independent/orthogonal infinities one can arrive at.
For a given negative dimension, however, I think it is a path from an arbitrary but specific 0 to an arbitrary but specific infinity (it is very difficult to explain why I think this is the case, so I'm just assuming it is the case for these purposes); all negative dimensions, with respect to a given origin, start at the same 0, and end at the same infinity. So while positive dimensions are in a sense divergent, negative dimensions are in that sense convergent. We can organize this bundle of dimensions however we please, and if we arbitrarily assign each of them a complex number to represent which "negative dimension" they are, we can construct ourselves a Riemann Sphere out of them.
(Or possibly a horn torus, if the zero and the infinity are the same point, which I suspect they may be.)
Mind, I have absolutely no idea how to formalize all this, nor much interest in doing so.
"What makes you think you can't have a negative-dimensional manifold?": the definition of a manifold. A manifold is a topological space locally homeomorphic to R^n for some fixed n (satisfying certain additional conditions). R^n is the product of n copies of R. You can't have a negative number of terms in a product.
If instead of the dimension of a manifold we consider fractal dimension as you suggest, then again, just taking the formal definition (Hausdorff dimension, or box-counting dimension if you prefer that definition), then again it is immediate that the dimension is non-negative. The fact that the dimension is non-negative is part of the definition of the Hausdorff dimension, but even if we omit that assumption, the Hausdorff measure of any non-empty set with dimension <0 is always infinite, so the dimension would always be non-negative anyway. (The one exception is the empty set, which would have dimension negative infinity, but that is an uninteresting case.)
The Riemann sphere straightforwardly has dimension 2 as a real manifold or 1 as a complex manifold. It doesn't have a standard metric but if we take the metric of the unit sphere, that has fractal dimension 2 of course.
As for vague things that might be called "dimension" by analogy but don't actually fit either of these definitions, I just can't make sense of what you're saying. What you call "negative dimensions" sound more like somewhat odd coordinate systems on perfectly ordinary spaces.
You talk of individual dimensions in a way that makes it seem like you have been misled by the unfortunate language used to discuss these things. There is no such thing as a dimension. There are various kinds of mathematical structure (such as vector spaces) with theorems like "If two coordinate systems describe the same space, they have the same number of coordinates.", and we call that number the number of dimensions the space has, so it is meaningful to say a space is n-dimensional, but that doesn't mean you can pick out individual dimensions, just things like coordinates and directions.
"There is no such thing as a dimension" looks like a rather stronger statement than you mean; I'd guess you mean there is no non-arbitrary way of carving an n-dimensional space up into n dimensions. On a paper map, we might arbitrarily label one direction pair "North/South", but we can technically rotate this however we wish.
Even after you make an arbitrary choice of axes/coordinates/whatever, I still think calling those "dimensions" is worse than calling them clearer things like "axes" and "coordinates".
If you ever want to get taken seriously by physicists/mathematicians, I believe you'll have to formalize your model. Otherwise (it seems to me) it's not worth the effort to go through all your text to figure out which turn of phrase hides the issue. Also, if your goal is to create new physics theory, you can't really avoid formalization, can you?
I'm pointing at a thing, a suspected connection between negative dimensions and the Riemann Sphere, which I think might be useful to -somebody else's work-; my work is done, it didn't do the thing I thought it would do.
If somebody wants to go investigate the thing, great. If somebody already -has-, even better.
I see your point but I think it could only makes sense if "negative-dimension-manifold" would be an existing concept. Then yeah, a suspected connection between two established concepts could interest someone. But this concept is actually novel to you and doesn't make much sense (at least to me) without a clear (read: formal) definition. So you are not pointing out an interesting connection, you're claiming something about a concept you invented but didn't bother properly (read: formally) defining. The chance that people who are capable of understanding all of this will bother deciphering your text can IMHO be safely rounded to zero. But you do you, of course.
It's not novel to me; linguistics beat me to it by a good few years. Topology, probably, too, although I never did find a formal answer to the question of what the desuspension of a point is. (My guess is, as explained here, a Riemann Sphere.)
Do we know anything about the long term health impacts of intermittent high blood pressure? I've been tracking my blood pressure/diet/behavior and have found some things that will temporarily (<24 hours) increase my systolic blood pressure by ~15 points. Do we have any actual evidence about what the impacts would be if I had such an increase 1 day a week, 1 day a month, etc.? And in case it matters, I go from ~125 to ~140
I'm not a doctor, but when I investigated this, my understanding is that the model of why high blood pressure (or high cholesterol) is bad is that it makes it more likely to accumulate small damage over time, which are healed by plaques, which can eventually narrow your arteries and / or lead to strokes.
In other words, the threat model isn't "there is acute danger," it's "long term this leads to damage and poorer cardiac health." I think this would argue that intermittent episodes shouldn't really matter much. You could probably model it linearly as "I spend x% of time in higher BP range, and so my risk is x% of somebody in this higher BP range all the time," and it's probably less than that linear model due to hormesis.
But I agree with Al Quinn, getting BP medicine is cheap and easy. Go to agelessrx.com, they'll give you prescription telmisartan for cheap with a totally online doctor's visit. They also have stuff like metformin and rapamycin, for the anti-aging folks here.
I have white coat hypertension and also anxiety issues that cause high readings at home, so I read up a bit on this. If you're otherwise metabolically healthy, the risk at those levels is not particularly high based on some large all cause mortality studies. Additionally, Europe has (until very recently) had a much higher threshold for "hypertension" than the US (though I beleived they moved in the direction of the US very recently).
FWIW, my doctor offered my Valsartan, and because I was tired of worrying about BP (I'm a hypochondriac), I decided to try it at 160mg. The surprising thing was Valsartan almost entirely eliminated my anxiety 1 hour after the first dose as a side effect. It has mostly stayed that way since, so I'm staying on it for that reason even if the benefits of BP reduction are less clear.
If it should be vetoed, I'd definitely lean on Newsom to do it. He has some bad political instincts, but he's also pulled through on vetoes when they've been needed - he vetoed a California bill being aggressively pushed by the Teamsters that would have banned driverless trucks from California roads.
Zvi's posts on the subject have convinced me that a majority of the SB 1047 opposition comes from sources that didn't read the bill, claim things about the bill that are simply factually wrong, and/or are part of a well-funded whole-cloth astroturf campaign largely backed by a16z, OpenlyEvilAI, and other dishonestly-interested parties. Even for those with a correctly-skeptical prior towards government regulation, it's probably still worth passing, since it heads off inevitable actual heavy-handed reactive legislation in the future (and overriding federal-level legislation doesn't seem forthcoming, especially with increasing efforts at making AI into yet another partisan football).
Ergo I'll be disappointed but not surprised if Newsom ends up vetoing. Appreciate his support for YIMBY stuff and breaking somewhat with the homelessness-industrial complex...other than that, meh, replacement-level unexceptionalism. I miss Governor Moonbeam.
I strongly disagree with the claim that the opposition is more dishonest than the pro camp. I personally sent a letter asking Wiener to withdraw the bill earlier and to Newsom. to veto it. My view is the initial legislation was actually bad and recent changes have made it meh but it's a bad idea to pass meh legislation that doesn't do what its proponents want.
"Even for those with a correctly-skeptical prior towards government regulation, it's probably still worth passing, since it heads off inevitable actual heavy-handed reactive legislation in the future (and overriding federal-level legislation doesn't seem forthcoming, especially with increasing efforts at making AI into yet another partisan football)."
This is actually a bad take if you care about having a well functioning society as these types of laws are easily weaponized without achieving their intended effect.
This bill is only good if you think that raising the cost of AI development is a good in and of itself as this will basically add $10K-1M in model development cost (I'd assume lower for now but in an ever increasing rate) to hire compliance teams and consultants.
That's a Fully General Counterargument to entire swathes of legislation, well beyond emerging fields like AI. I think it's correct to be skeptical, since the legislative ratchet rarely turns the other way - but if one is perpetually opposed to any bill that may possibly be weaponized, which is ~all of them (and this one has been majorly neutered already, with Anthropic getting most of their changes wishlist, on top of open source models still getting absurd carve-outs), then it becomes hard to tell when the fire alarm is actually ringing. Some bills are, indeed, worse than others! But they're going to happen, one way or another, sooner or later (the other proposed AI bills in CA alone are...a lot worse)...so it's better to keep one's powder dry.
Besides that, it's absurd to think AI will stay unregulated long-term. I strongly believe now's a good time to let a lawful punch land, when AI remains pretty low-salience overall and nothing that bad has happened yet. Not later, when we're in Something Must Be Done -> This Is Something mode from some deepfake bullshit or whatever. Many Such Cases, invisible graveyard is vast. General public polling on AI is already majority-opposed / pro-regulation, bipartisan even...do you expect that to flip in the future, once It's Really Happening and it's not just a few niche industries being disrupted? I sure don't.
...I am basically just repeating the points made in the linked posts though, so, meh. Don't understand the self-interest angle you mention downstream either...if a law is mostly being opposed by the leading labs and their VC allies whose portfolios are betting strongly on AI going e/acc, that seems pretty self-interested to me. All those billions and attendant sociopolitical capital, versus whatever piddling amount Eliezer Yudkowsky can scrounge up...let's not get confused about which is Goliath and which is David.
Also yes this is a an argument against large swathes of legislation. I believe that bad legislation is worse than no legislation, and specifically I believe this because bad legislation crowds out good legislation.
Let me ask you what are the benefits of this law? I don't disagree that AI needs to be regulated but I view your argument "I strongly believe now's a good time to let a lawful punch land, when AI remains pretty low-salience overall and nothing that bad has happened yet" to be basically a vengeful act against the AI companies. This bill appears to me (after all of the neutering) to basically be a "Something Must Be Done -> This Is Something" law. I'm in agreement that many of the VC's and AI companies are arguing from self interest but I consider them to have a higher track record of contributing to human well being than Eliezer Yudkowsky and it's not always the case that David is right.
It's basically a reverse Stanford Marshmallow Prison Test: do you eat the This Is Something At Or Above Replacement Level legislation now, or delay that gratification for a very-likely much worse one later, like the genuinely-atrocious EU AI Act? Government gonna government, interference is inevitable, give them a quarter of a loaf while that's all they're asking for. (They don't even get a new Frontier Model Division to regulate with anymore! I was pretty surprised that got bargained down, in control-freak CA!) Get some small amount of transparency to reassure the anxious public, which is still stuck on the has-beens of yesteryear like ChatGPT, has no idea about the current frontier. Orient future legislation and punishments towards ex post rather than ex ante harms, which isn't good safety-wise (or even "safety"-wise for bullshit like DIE concerns, you can't un-trigger some disproportionately biased sensitive), but is a pretty generous deal for the industry, and a sadly endangered approach to law these days. Honestly surprised we still haven't slapped serious KYC-type restrictions on chips and datacenters yet. Small chance to actually catch some knowing-endangerment before it happens, although so many of the enforecement teeth got pulled that I expect that to just be a cost-of-business for a sufficiently determined actor. Do agree the final form is in a weird place where the fines etc. are neither quite high enough to be a real deterrent, nor low enough to be cheerfully painless; even from a maximum-cynicism angle, that's poor revenue-and-makework maximization. Just enough to unhappily annoy everyone involved, like all compromises.
If I thought better legislation (nevermind actually-good legislation, that's a Basically Never Happens Anymore) was forthcoming, I'd be quite open to opposition on those grounds. Likewise if I thought we were headed towards the Good End, the slightly-better-business-as-usual, +1% GDP growth future where AGI doesn't happen, we just get lots of new toys...in that case it'd be a teapot tempest failed miracle, like crypto but with marginally less fraud. (Actual Kurzweil-style Singularity would argue in the direction of regulation again, since that's a wide range of variance and it'd be idiotic to sleepwalk into such a situation...)
Sadly that does not seem to be the state of the world; I'm especially disappointed by how many decisions seem to backchain to Gotta Beat China natsec-type justifications that exacerbate the ongoing Red Queen's Race. Every red line in the sand, the People Would Never Be So Stupid As Tos - e.g. hooking up AI to automated weapons systems, whatever nonsense with a shitty custserv chatbot is going viral this week - that gets passed by without resistance...that doesn't inspire much hope either. We really won't restrain ourselves from throwing AI into anything and everything, no matter how appropriate or ready. And even rather low bars like reporting and disclosure requirements to UK AISI get treated like insurmountable roadblocks. Look, I *want* to like AI companies; the @sama of even just a few years ago seemed like My Kind Of CEO! Let's not punish success! Lina Khan's antitrust crusade is silly! Stop hassling the world of bits, we already made it impossible to get anything done in the world of atoms!...So it really speaks poorly of the industry that I place more trust now in a nut like EY. At least his fictions are more entertaining than Marc Andreesen's.
Do want to note that I appreciate the replies, even though I don't think either of us can say much of anything that'd bridge the large gap in priors. Smart critics are more valuable than dumb ones. Thanks for playing.
That's why I say it is mostly bad law rather than going to be a big deal. Suppose the law just said AI Model companies need to pay 10% of their revenue to fund the most insane wokest DEI initiatives, would you support this law. I think there are members of the EA group who do because they view any hinderance to these companies as an advantage. Anthropic views this as ok an OpenAI tends to alternate in opposition because they know they can live with this. I suspect that some people in the supporters are biased because a decent fraction of this money will be siphoned off into institutes that support them or they imagine that they will get to be in the positions of power steering the regulatory body.
I haven't read the bill, but I have no confidence in the government's ability to regulate AI, and little trust in the government to actually want to use this to guard against AI rather than funnel money and control in directions I can't see.
> I’ve gotten more cynical from following the discourse about SB1047. If we can’t establish expert consensus on matters as easy-to-check as “what does the text of this bill say”, I feel pessimistic about rapidly establishing expert consensus on much more confusing questions like these.
I am writing a living literature review on societal collapse: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/ The idea behind this project is to make academic research on societal collapse more accessible to anyone who’s interested in the topic. If I come across new information that changes any of my previous conclusions, I’ll update the review. This also means that I greatly appreciate if you send papers which might be relevant to the posts you will read here.
I did a podcast in two parts with Jonathan Clements about the history of Taiwan. This included an unexpected appearance by the Daleks, things to do with a dead deer, genocidal acts, the pirate king, the Zombie Ming dynasty, a “racist excuse”, “the most shameful thing the British have ever done” and a bunch of other things to be found in my book Rebel Island. Part one can be found at this link.
And then there is part two: How to take over an island chain by invading somewhere else; a world-class stamp-collecting scam; the “uncrowned king” of Taiwan; the Musha Incident reconsidered as a high-school shooting, the rise and fall of the Takasago Volunteers; uses and abuses of Triad assassins, and the rise of the “outside the party” movement.
We were talking about the opium wars and the quote came from the House of Commons at the time. My personal belief is that if you compare the British to the Dutch, Germans, Portuguese, Spanish . . . Whenever I suggest this to a serious historian though they very much don't want to discuss this. Possibly it is a stupid exercise, possibly I am flat out wrong.
I recently read the Republican Party platform and I don’t think there’s any doubt that if the GOP wins the White House it will also be a decisive victory for Caps Lock.
In addition to all caps for DRILL BABY DRILL, SERIOUS DECLINE and literally any item in a list, The RNC’s style manual apparently includes capitalization requirements for words like Government, Southern Border, Open Border, World, Economy, Chaos, Conflict, Truth, Spirit, and All.
Note: The dems’ platform PDF weighs in at 92 pages of dense, small type and no pictures. It is absolutely agonizing to read (I quit at page 3 and skimmed the rest). It actually has a preamble to its preamble. The GOP’s PDF is just 28 pages of larger type with graphics, lots of headers and some pictures of Trump and flags and crowds of men in red hats. In 1860, when the nation was on the brink of civil war, the Republican platform was about 1,100 words.
I've been reading a fair amount of writing from the time between the US Revolutionary war through the Napoleonic era and this Sort of Thing seemed very common in those Times, even by very educated Gentlemen, at least in English. Maybe we're just Returning to Tradition.
Sometimes but very rarely and usually if the writer is angry. Wither a word is Capitalized seems to be directly related to how important that word is in the sentiment of the writing. For instance, if Ben Franklin is writing about his positive feelings toward new footwear, he might write about his most Excellent new Shoes, as the shoes and his opinion about the shoes are the salient Subject of the Writing. All Caps is just this same trend but with more emphasis. Here's a bit of ol Ben discussing a topic dear to his heart:
"Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement."
It's something that just popped up in the last few years: in their postmodern version of a history narrative, they say, "The Battle of Gettysburg would have been fought in 1863," not "The Battle of Gettysburg Was fought in 1863." Or "Lincoln would have been shot in 1865," not "Lincoln Was shot in 1865."
It's very annoying -- reminiscent of the campaign to do away with the Latin-rooted genders of Spanish, by supplanting them with the unisex "Latin-x." Both affectations are like a bad 1974 haircut.
One has to wonder what the condition is that demands the use of the conditional. Are they saying "If we weren't all living in a simulation fabricated by the Benevolent Administrative State . . . "?
Eww, good grief, I haven't ever heard that usage -- except someone saying something like "that was when we lived in Pennsylvania, so I would have been in kindergarten." But I don't watch TV.
I mean those oddball initial letters capped and CapLocked words are obviously meant to pay homage to the typography of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan”, right?
I must have a better look when I have time, but I think you could fill in one of those bingo card memes doing this.
I see the Democratic platform starts off with a land acknowledgement and then we get the preamble and then the table of contents and the part that irresistably reminds me of Kang and Kodos: "we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"
"Chapter One: Growing Our Economy from the Bottom Up & Middle Out"
*sigh* My economy has grown from the middle out, I really need to reduce that but it's hard when all those tasty treats are on offer...
But is there not a more up-to-date version? This one still talks about Joe Biden's kitchen table in Scranton, where's Kamala's kitchen table in Oakland? 😀 I did read something that she hadn't put up any policy documents until quite recently.
EDIT: Yes, the Democratic one is way too text heavy. They really did need to break it up with some photos and images and some bullet lists like the Republican version. They may have intended this to be Serious Policy Document for Serious Wonks, but the average voter is not going to plough through all that text.
Though indeed the Republican version is ALL CAPS. But it works as an eye-ball grabbing device and it's a snappy list of "We're gonna do this, this and this".
By contrast, the linked document still is all about Biden and bits like this make me shake my head:
"Judges should reflect the diverse population whose laws they shape, and President Biden
has appointed more than 200 highly qualified federal judges who look like America. Nearly two-thirds of the judges he’s appointed have been women, and nearly two-thirds have been people of color"
So which is it? Judges who look like America. or judges who are women of colour? Because I don't think the USA is yet two-thirds women of colour (as an aside, what the heck is this neologism "minoritized"? How does one become minoritized? How does one minoritize others?):
"The racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population is changing rapidly. Today, minoritized individuals account for 50 percent of the population of those 18 years and younger, and if current trends continue, minoritized individuals will account for a majority of the U.S. population between 2042 and 2045"
Figures quoted are from the 2020 Census:
"White remained the largest racial or ethnic group in the United States, with 204.3 million people identifying as White alone, and 235.4 million people identifying as White alone or in combination with another group. However, the proportion of White people alone has fallen by 8.6 percent since 2010 and continues to be in decline in comparison to all other groups. The decline in the number of White persons in the United States between 2010 and 2020 is unprecedented."
Looking at the graph, "White (alone)" is about 60% of the population, so that would mean the remaining 40% is made up of Hispanic/Latino and Black and Asian and Native American and Pacific Islander and multi-racial. That's not two-thirds of America by my (admittedly shaky) maths.
Gender/sex demographics were slightly under 50% male and slightly over 50% female. Again, not two-thirds of the population.
So a Supreme Court, for example, that "looks like America" would be more or less evenly split between men and women, and would have 5 white judges while the remaining 4 would be drawn from Black/Asian/Hispanic/Remainder.
I note that the correct term to use in discussions of such topics is "LGBTQI+". Nice to have that one cleared up!
Not all the women judges are people of color, and not all the POC judges are women. If only the document had pictures, they could have explained it with a Venn diagram!
Shoulda gone with pictures, like I said! The average idiot in the street, i.e. me, needs pictures to illustrate all them fancy concepts and big words 😁
Don't listen to the others life in SF is still great and getting better. The trick to good housing in SF is to find a neighborhood you want to be in and then walk 1-2 blocks uphill. Hayes valley is the current cool neighborhood but there are cool neighborhoods almost everywhere in SF (tenderloin/civic center are not recommended for the timid).
Second the "probably don't" recommendations as a current resident. It's really gone downhill since I moved back here a dozen years ago. Very slowly, and then all at once, as the saying goes.
If you do anyway - Sunset and West Portal are my favourite neighborhoods to pretend that I'm still in Original Flavour SF. Copious money can still make a lot of the, uh, unpleasantness go away. But even out in the quiet residential areas of the west and southwest districts...it's been getting worse, "downtown-ness" has been spreading. Didn't help when the big Westfield Mall shuttered. Now the Stonestown Galleria is sole remaining major mall for a good ways around, so a lot of the unsavouriness has moved there. Bad money (or often, lack of money) crowds out good family-friendly money, with ripple effects on nearby homes and businessess.
You might move there in a few months? I would take advantage of the might-ness of that situation and not.
I lived in SF for... way more years than I should have, and I left because there wasn't any way to get from anywhere in the city to anywhere else in the city without encountering... as a sibling commenter so euphemistally put it... "gritty" things.
If you absolutely must go, for the experience of it or whatever, figure out how to have a 6-month period where you're there full-time but with an option to leave again after that 6 months. If for whatever confusing reason after those 6 months you're not completely disillusioned, then make longer-term plans to stay.
If money was no object Cole Valley would be my first choice. It's right on the N Judah, you can walk to the Haight, the Inner Sunset, and the small block of local shops is very nice. Any neighborhood like that where you don't have all the problems of the city but can still access it very easily is ideal.
Depends on: 1) what you mean by 'cool' 2) how tolerant you are of gritty street life.
The best neighborhoods for active people - especially if you're single and interested in nightlife - would be North Beach, the Marina, the Haight, NoPa and the Alamo Square area, Cole Valley, Duboce Triangle, the Castro (esp. if you're gay), the Sunset, Inner Richmond, the Dogpatch, and the parts of Potrero closer to commercial corridors.
The Mission is a fun place with a lot of cool stuff, but it's kinda gritty right now. It's not as bad as the Tenderlion/Midmarket/Civic Center, which is the part of town most people are talking about when they talk about SF's street conditions. But it's gone backwards a bit.
If you're looking for something quieter and more family oriented: Noe Valley, West Portal, and Glen Park would be great bets. (Plus the Richmond & Sunset).
Parts of SOMA are a good bargain right now - South Beach and the more northern blocks. They can be a little dead at night but they lively by day, especially when sports are happening. You can get great views and access to the waterfront.
Other questions to ask yourself: will you need a car? What's your budget, and can you put up with roommates? Are you planning to WFH or will you be looking for a local job?
There was a debate here earlier about whether Shakespeare was or was not the greatest, based largely on people doing statistics in their heads and not actually reading the bard.
I’m firmly in the greatest camp. It struck me that as a proof of this we could show a medium that people are familiar with - the movies (or even TV) , and issue a challenge.
I like Branagh as an interpreter of Shakespeare as he likes to give it some welly, and isn’t too timid or reverential.
So here’s an example of a speech, the type of which could have been replicated since, either at Agincourt or anywhere really there was a battle pending (like that time Gandalf rallied the rebels to fight the Borg).
And that’s not my favourite from Branagh. Here’s hamlet ruing his own indecision as he watches fortinbras go to war with 20,000 men on a plot not big enough to bury them.
The snowy environment in that example reminds me a bit of Jon Snow on the wall, who had “a father slain” after all. But there’s nothing of this power in there.
Shakespeare, and Hollywood, write battle speeches meant to convince an audience of civilians sitting safely in a theater, that they are watching a group of Supreme Badasses who are about to have an Awesome Adventure. Actual generals are giving speeches to men who don't feel the least bit badass, who need a reason to believe that this isn't about to be the last and worst day of their life. There's a formula for that, and it has little room for "think about the amazing stories you'll be able to tell in thirty years" because they're not sure they're going to be alive thirty hours from now.
But for entertaining the folks in the cheap seats at the Globe, Shakespeare did have the right stuff.
> Shakespeare, and Hollywood, write battle speeches meant to convince an audience of civilians sitting safely in a theater, that they are watching a group of Supreme Badasses who are about to have an Awesome Adventure.
Yeh, that’s not the debate though. We are talking about the use of language, in its own right. Nobody has ever soliloquized suicidal ideation in real life in the way Shakespeare did in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. I was asking for comparisons with Hollywood not real life.
> But for entertaining the folks in the cheap seats at the Globe, Shakespeare did have the right stuff.
I've read some of Shakespeare, and based on actually reading him, I don't think he's very good. I was forced to read it in school, and I understand this is quite common. Yet all these people don't go on to read all his other works.
I said it's quite common. It's not just me. Lots of people were forced to read Shakespeare, and yet even after reading one of his plays, rather than reading the rest, they decided they'd rather read Harry Potter or something. Some people really like Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean he's objectively the best writer. It just means he has a small cult following.
I don't really know what constitutes well-read. I used to read a lot, and even now I have quite a few web novels and fanfics I'm following. But I don't think that's really relevant. If you claim that he's the best in the world, then you'd better have read a lot and not found anyone better before you could reasonably say he's even in the top thousand. But I've read lots of authors that are better. Or at least, better at entertaining me personally, which is really all I can personally bring to the table.
I would argue that the Gettysburg address (which is comparable in that it is a war speech) is superior to all of these, and by a pretty wide margin. I find Shakespeare's use of language kind of alien, but I would consider the counterargument that the ideas in the Gettysburg address are more important than the ones in the St. Crispin's day speech. So one might argue that after modding out by the importance of the ideas expressed Shakespeare's use of language is superior. On the other other hand, quality of writing and quality of ideas can't be totally separated.
Some of Shakespeare’s language is old fashioned. It’s a transitionary period. The St Crispin’s day speech is fairly modern in language, there’s no word there that isn’t in use now. (Perhaps “in his cups” although I have used that to mean drunk).
Yes, Gettysburg is a close call. Maybe even better, however I’ve only read it and never heard it and it’s the flow of Shakespeare’s language when performed that impresses.
Obviously the music helps, as does the actors intonation, the camera work, and so on. But all movies can do that, it’s part of the art of cinema. You can post a link of a better speech with similar effects if you like.
Just to be clear, are we looking for anything that most people think is better, or just you specifically? Because if you tell me that Shakespeare is your favorite author, I believe you. But if you're trying to say that he is objectively the best, we really should be looking at more than one person's opinion.
EDIT: Oh, I see, you were looking for pre-battle rallying speech. None of those have ever inspired me in the slightest, so I won't be able to provide any examples.
That's my impression of literally everything Shakespeare ever wrote. It is okay. Some of it is even a little bit good. None of it great, none of it rises to the level of even some of the average-rated films of the past 50 years.
But it is a good lengthy corpus of OK stuff exploring the human experience.
> Oh, I see, you were looking for pre-battle rallying speech.
Only as an equivalent to the Prince Hal speech. The other one is a soliloquy.
I think that both links there blow absolutely everything written in the last few decades, for movies or TV out of the water.
If I were to pick anything that could approximate the power of either speech - maybe Baldwin in Glengary Glen Ross. I’m partial to the buggy whip speech in Other People’s money.
First one is by Mamet of course, who is excellent.
Independence Day? I take your point. Did that style of patriotic history play continue? I kind of feel it fell out of fashion as playwrights became first religious dissenters then political radicals.
I actually don’t like all his plays, or all the text in all the plays.
In this test I’m doing something else - at his best I believe he’s unbeatable. So looking for counter examples (and of course there far more from Shakespeare than what’s here).
I write a free weekly newsletter that promotes data literacy among lay readers. Mostly it's plain-English discussion of new studies and stats that make the news. https://statisfied.substack.com
I’ve had a rather puzzling experience with Facebook recently.
I signed in for a very specific reason (finding housing in a certain area where it’s difficult) and barely interacted with the website (no friend requests, no posting, just browsing the ads in certain public groups without even responding).
In a few hours, my account was suspended for a suspected “breach of community standards” (the specifics of which were not stated). So I appealed, and, even though I solved a captcha and uploaded a picture of myself to the website (literally all I could do), the platform deactivated my account altogether.
I’m not sure what happened and I thought maybe someone here working in tech would have an idea?
My best guess is that Facebook decided that I was a bot – but still, isn’t suspending the account based on a couple of hours’ worth of behavior rather hasty, especially since I didn’t post anything or contact anyone through the website? If that’s indeed the case, what’s the rationale for banning suspected robots [with no activity] so quickly?
I already took advice from the relevant Reddit (which I could do because you can still browse parts of Reddit without an account).
The basic issue in my case is not savviness as much as supply (and, to some extent, my salary). Rental agencies are overwhelmed with requests for every single ad, of which there simply aren’t enough.
I was hoping to get opportunities for shared housing via Facebook, but the situation is basically the same, but with lower prices and more scams – few ads, many responders, and the people who put up the ads reply to a select few before making a final decision.
These days the detection of automated bots and other adversarial clients is mostly outsourced to AI systems, which are notably opaque. So it's not clear that even a regular FB employee, in the weird case you could get one to pay attention to you, would be able to tell exactly why the system flagged you, except for the basic fact that you were out-of-distribution enough.
And let me add that myself and several people I know were recently flagged as violating Amazon community standards on our reviews of products and were banned from leaving product reviews or ratings anymore.
I called to ask why, and got the run-around. Eventually I just shrugged and updated my understanding of Amazon reviews/ratings as no longer carrying valid signal.
Facebook is not alone in this annoying tendency to just "whatever we give no shits you can fuck off" to legit people for whatever opaque and unappealable reason.
I've left some really nasty Amazon reviews. Do you know what you said that triggered the ban? I've had the Amazon nannybot tell me I couldn't swear, but that's the only thing there's been any objection to.
Republicans have won half of all presidential elections since 2000. They have a slight electoral college advantage, so the popular vote tends to look like 48% R, 52% D, with this being enough to put Republicans above the electoral college threshold about half the time.
Suppose that the US abolished the electoral college. Which of these should we expect?
1. The Republicans get slightly more moderate (or more electable in some other way), until they win on average 50% of the vote. They continue to win about half of presidential elections.
2. Elections continue to average 48% R, 52% D, and Democrats consistently win well above half of elections.
If 2, does that imply that it's a "coincidence" that we have two robust parties that both frequently win now and are balanced on a razor's edge? I understand that in the past there have been larger landslides than we get today, but it still seems weird that the parties are so equally balanced. Median voter theorem doesn't seem to apply to real life but it feels like we can't deviate from it an infinite amount - any thoughts?
The answer is that we have no idea because we have never run our elections based on popular vote. If you live in a deep blue/deep red state you don't care about voting because it's already been decided. If you live in a toss up/swing state then you care about voting. Who votes would completely change. All of a sudden, you'd have Republicans in California being motivated to come out in force (there are millions of them that do not vote now).
The current Republican dominance in the electoral college is the result of the particular characteristics of the Trump coalition. During the Obama years, the Democrats actually had an EC advantage.
3. The Democrats get slightly less moderate, until they win on average 50% of the vote. The Democrats don't *want* to be moderate, they want to be quite liberal and/or leftist, and they will almost certainly overestimate how far left they can go and still win. Empirically, they turn left until they're winning about half the time (nationally), and only then say "OK, that's enough".
4. The swing voters will keep swinging, with amplitude >2% of the total vote. People who aren't firmly committed partisan hacks, will always remember the bad things the incumbent administration did much more strongly than the good things (because loss aversion), and more than the bad things the previous administration did (because recency bias). So prolonged incumbency results in increased anti-incumbent sentiment. Mostly against presidents and governors, but that carries over to legislative elections.
As for the current "razor's edge" vs, the greater variability of past eras: the parties have been getting better at this, And they have better data and better tools to work with.
1, with the twist that they don't actually have to change their policies, they just have to hang around for waiting for people to get sick of the accumulated screw-ups of the other guys.
There's a strong thermostatic element to american voting, so I think even without much moderating the "throw the bums out" voting bloc would still flip control back and forth.
I think the electoral is dumb and bad for a lot of reasons, not least because it does a bad job of accomplishing the (questionable) goals that people justify it with. If there was a perpetual 52% majority, one way to protect minority rights would be to increase people's voting power (or states if we're committed to the dumb EC) every time they vote for a loser. In the long run time in control would then reflect amount of support. But again, with thermostatic voting this isn't really necessary.
I strongly suspect the answer is 1. The fact that the results between reps and dems is 50/50 is evidence that median voter theorem does a pretty good job actually. The parties are just big coalitions that want to win and get goodies for their members. If you change the rules of how to win they will adapt and the composition of those coalitions will change. This is the problem with a lot of reforms suggested in the usa (end gerrymandering, end ec, proportional legislature, etc.) The parties would adapt to win and you would still get right and left coalitions working towards that 50% + 1.
Ending gerrymandering is about changing *how* parties aim for that 50%+1, I think. In a 50-50 district, you have to get support from at least one person in the opposing party to win (realistically more). In a 60-40 district, you can run hard to one extreme and ignore the opposing party completely.
The median voter theorem breaks down because you have a knapsack problem of uneven coalitions. So you might think we're bidding 0 to 100, and you can gradually increment your right or leftness. But it's more like there are a bunch of unevenly sized bricks and some bricks don't work as well with other bricks so you're constantly trying to shove them together but end up with some unpredictable remainder. The next most persuadable brick is unlikely to be gigantic, causing vast swings in outcomes, but also unlikely to be perfectly small to get us to exactly 50/50 too. People aren't on a spectrum, it's clusters, and attracting some loses others in complicated ways.
One related question might be why don't the Dems under the current system keep current positions but also come out wildly pro-corn subsidies.
I don't know. I think it's because it's not so easy to do that, and also in some ways Dems have adopted some Trumpian positions on rust belt labor, but they haven't gone far enough to break sticky coalitions, and going that far would probably have other downsides.
There are definitely oversimplifications in the model, but I don't think it strictly requires everyone is a single issue voter. In a lot of cases multi-issue voters can be modeled as a single issue voter that's just a conjunction or disjunction of the two issues.
Even in more complex cases -- For issues A, B, C... Z, assume each voter has a preferred outcome and a weight, that increases the dimensionality of the problem significantly but you can collapse all those preferences to a vector of the minimum platform (or stylistic) change that would gain or lose their vote.
It just assumes some chunks of these vectors are clustered or run more or less parallel, which should be true so long as all policy issues are not uniformly distributed in salience and preferences, which seems fairly evident.
You could even have complex interactions between these issues, such as somebody wanting A or B but not both, unless C happens, which they weakly desire but if it passes then they no longer care about A or B at all. But mostly you're going to reduce that to some complex satisfiability problem where various policy ideas fill in the variables and the whole equation either holds or doesn't.
One weakness of the model is that there are contagion and peer pressure effects. If 50% of the US suddenly and obviously changed their mind about a candidate positively or negatively, that would probably impact the votes of some additional fraction on the margin, so compiling those effects might allow you to get smaller gradations.
Unpredictable effects like that probably contribute to the murkiness and unknowability of optimal strategy to x decimal places though. Maybe the parties converge under the MVT to the first decimal place, and there's simply too much noise beyond that to be computable by the giant political machines.
This is kind of my take on EMT, markets are efficient for 1-2 digits but there's a lot of noise after that.
So maybe it's not sticky bricks so much as unavoidable error due to noise, I think that's a compelling alternative model.
I think one more concrete consequence of abolishing the EC would be that urban interests would suddenly become more important to Presidential candidates. Smaller, rural states are over-represented in the Electoral College (as they are to an even greater degree in the Senate); that's why even though 80% of Americans live in urban areas you only ever see the candidates in small towns. If the EC were abolished I'd expect to see them showing up a bit more in LA and NYC, because that's where the voters are, and tailoring their messages to match.
Abolishing the EC would require a Constitutional Amendment, which is highly unlikely to clear a Senate dominated by those same states which benefit from the EC. An often touted middle ground would be for states to adopt the approach of ME and NE, where electoral votes are awarded by congressional district, with the two extras being winner take all at the state level. But states are not going to unilaterally disarm, and again Congress is not going to impose it.
> Median voter theorem doesn't seem to apply to real life.
If you mean recently, I’d agree. But it seemed to apply pretty well during the 20th century.
As to your question, I guess I’d expect 1 over 2, but I don’t think the average Republican would necessarily trend more moderate. Instead the party would attract more emerging political demographics, which might be relatively immoderate in more diverse ways.
Maybe the balance of membership between the two parties is in part because they’ve optimized to to do this—capture these politically-motivated emerging demographics—and the minority party is usually better positioned to do that (there’s a better chance for the new group to gain influence in the smaller coalition). Also, the minority party is more willing to sacrifice its current political identity to acquire new members. You could argue that the two parties’ positions have changed a lot over the years primarily due to the minority party’s greater willingness to spend its ideological capital to invest in growing its membership.
I've wondered for decades now why it could be that the R/D divide is so close to evenly split. I've wondered if one side tries slightly harder to get a majority, then relaxes while the other side tries hard, and what we see is the evening-out. That was my one theory.
I have another theory from Scott Adams' podcast (the Dilbert guy, who now does some pretty insightful, IMO, political commentary. Goes like this: the intel agencies are in charge. (The sell for this is: it's their job to overthrow other countries' governments, or destabilize them until that can be done; why stop at the borders with those skills, and the stakes so high, and the risk seemingly so low?). There's cheating, but it can move the needle just a bit, in strategic venues in the US, like swing counties in swing states. So allowing propaganda that keeps things at a balance allows the 'right' candidate to be chosen. Suddenly we have electronic voting machines that provide no advantage over paper voting, and no effective auditing for them.
I know, it looks just like a conspiracy theory. I am finding that argument less and less of a problem as I see politics unfold these days. I wish for the days when I could believe the news.
Speculative since I am not american, but isn't the popular vote artificially "depressed" since most people on deep blue/deep red states do not bother to vote since their vote doesn't matter as much? If you switch to a 1 vote = 1 vote power system aren't there reasons to believe the national popular vote would switch?
>but isn't the popular vote artificially "depressed" since most people on deep blue/deep red states do not bother to vote since their vote doesn't matter as much?
Yup! A 1 vote = 1 vote system would shift power from swing state voters to non-swing-state voters. Now which _direction_ the popular vote would move in consequence is a nontrivial question... And the campaigning would change, since concentrating on swing states would no longer make sense.
I feel like there's a lot of possible mechanisms for (1)
- you mentioned Republicans changing to slightly more moderate
- Democrats getting more extreme, (I think you see this to some degree in some states that are single party dominant now, as broader electability fades in importance more extreme candidates get selected); e.g. if you're an activist and your party never loses an election you aren't pushing hard enough
- Voters adjusting their behavior to restore balance (there's a portion of the electorate that targets mixed results in their voting, or vote contrarianly, or always vote the bums out, or vote entirely on their personal economy and we can't avoid every recession, etc.)
- Voters adjusting their views to be more Republican (it's easier to see the faults of the ideology in power)
Speculative, It's possible that modern communication technologies, polling, the primary process, etc. have sped up some of the above mechanisms which used to be slower acting or less informed and that leads to the current closeness. Possibly these cycles used to take a lot longer with a lot bigger swings and less damping.
That said this doesn't seem to be inherent. There's a cascade possibility too, a party that is reliably losing elections has trouble attracting good candidates and there's a downward spiral there (see e.g. Republicans in California for statewide offices). Presumably the natural progression is eventually the dominant party would split, but perhaps this hampered by the interplay of state and national politics and we can't apply the state level lessons to the federal level.
Also it's unclear the popular vote split is "really" 48/52. Elections and turnout patterns might look quite a bit different in a popular vote regime. The whole more people voted for Trump in California then in Texas meme, even though it was a pointless gesture. The most heavily dominated by one party states are mostly Democrat (especially when population weighted) so there's reason to expect this may favor Republicans. As evidence contrary to the standard narrative Republicans have won the house popular vote approximately half the time since 2000 and not clear why that should be less dispositive then the presidential election.
The razor's edge is presumably because each party works specifically towards the goal of 270+ electoral votes, campaigning in particular swing states to strategically maximize odds of getting over the top. There's no point in trying to get any more than that, so both parties push the right amount in the right places, until electoral college odds are about equal. (Additionally, even within a state, there's no point in trying to increase one's share beyond majority, or to gain votes on a lost cause.)
If the EC were abolished, the entire election map would be scrambled. Probably at least a few "swing states" would stop swinging once they weren't filled with campaign efforts, and there would be sizeable shifts in solid red/blue states, in both directions. The entire game would change, probably leading to a 50/50 divide, as parties refocus on new ways of winning.
Both parties would campaign harder in and cater more to states where they respectively have had no chance in the EC. It's hard to say what that would look like, but I expect elections to become more expensive and for there to be more vote-buying policies.
You can see the parties angling for the middle right now. Trump has publicly moderated on abortion, Harris on immigration.
#1 is the only long term possibility. Things like #2 might happen in a particular election, but then the side that doesn't moderate to chase voters will lose voters and then lose power, which leaves the more moderate politicians in place to effect the future choices.
I believe this has always happened, but as both parties get better at mass marketing, we should expect more and more elections to be very close to 50/50.
As an aside, I don't think we can count on Republicans moderating more in a truly national election. That may happen, in order to get California votes, but it may also be true that by actually contributing to the whole we see "locked in" states become more competitive and both side's current underdogs getting better results in their own states.
It may be true that parties would moderate, but that really means policy shifting according to the whims of the public. Having a policy you think is correct and sticking with it unless it's shown otherwise makes for better government.
The Catholic church seems to be moderating on gays, which aligns better with public opinion. That does seem in accord with your philosophy. But I find it difficult to reconcile with the written word they have been pontificating for thousands of years. Discovering that what they believed is incorrect and adjusting to that is reasonable, but how can that happen? Is this all just a contest to win the hearts, minds, and wallets of as many people as possible?
I agree, but I also agree with Kant about lying so I know I'm an outlier. I think that long term, politicians and religions that have a coherent ideology will outlast those that move around.
Of course, both political parties in the US would have a very hard time arguing that they are the same parties as they were. They went through something of a realignment in the 60s and are going through one right now. The people running under the respective banners are mostly just wearing the skin of the party because it's so hard to create a new party in a first-past-the-post system as entrenched as ours.
Note an option 3: The -voters- shift to a more Republican stance. This doesn't exclude option 1, but I think a significantly underrated factor involved here is that voters tend to get frustrated more by whatever party is in power.
Oh yeah, good point. We do like us some Hope and Change, and it's almost comical both current candidates trying to run as outsiders when one used to be President and the other is the current VP.
See also: many times when a president doesn't have their own party in one or both houses of Congress. I've heard speculation that 2017 was a united Presidency and Congress because voters thought Hillary was going to win and they didn't want her to control Congress.
>I've heard speculation that 2017 was a united Presidency and Congress because voters thought Hillary was going to win and they didn't want her to control Congress.
I've heard that, but it never made much sense. Republicans got 49.1 pct of the House vote in 2016 versus 48 pct for Democrats. Not very far from the Presidential numbers (HillaryClinton also got 48 pct), and given that the Republicans were running many more incumbents, and had won 51-45 in 2014, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for that sort of strategic voting.
At that level I think it would be more of a "my enemy might win the presidency, so I am more likely to vote for [candidate I otherwise wouldn't vote for] in the [Senate/House race]." It's not a broad logical approach so much a feels approach. We often have no idea who our reps are, even if they've been in office for years. So a little more reason to vote for one might shift the vote a few percent (enough for competitive races to lean the other direction) and we see the counterintuitive result of a president being a different party than Congress.
But, were that true, wouldn't we see a general reverse coat tail effect, rather than the opposite? And specific to Clinton, again, 48 pct voted for Clinton, and 48 pct voted for Dem House candidates. After only 45 pct voted for Dem House candidates in 2014.
We're now on Trump assassination attempt #2. Is this spike in credible assassination attempts on public officials as sudden as it seems? I remember reading about an attempted kidnapping plot of the governor of Michigan years ago, but I also recall that that group had been heavily infiltrated by law enforcement before it ever got off the ground.
So is the historic narrative really "no one came close to opening fire on a current/former president since Reagan and then suddenly there's a raft of attempts within a few months", or was this actually a more gradual ramp-up? Or maybe the secret service has gotten worse at its job?
EDIT: Just remembered Gabby Giffords who got shot in the head in 2011
Its easy to forget that Trump was not actually the president during these attempts. He's a former president and prospective future president, but these attempts were made against a candidate. Its been such an odd election. Trump really does *feel* like an incumbent; he has a record to run on, many of his supporters call him "President Trump" etc. In the minds of his would be assassins his current status probably doesn't matter much to them. I'm curious how much of the response of the Secret Service is impacted by the fact that he isn't actually the president right now. I'm sure its being investigated.
Have there been any previous attempts on former presidents?
edit - apparently the answer is yes, Theodore Roosevelt was shot 3 years after leaving office.
I heard that was a big point made about the golf course thing. If Trump were a sitting president, the Secret Service would have had the entire golf course surrounded.
We had two back-to-back whackjobs taking shots at Gerald Ford in 1975, less than a month apart. And Gerald Ford was a milquetoast nobody of a president, chosen for the job on the basis of being the least offensive, least divisive minimally-qualified VP the Republican party could find.
Means nothing. Whackjobs are a thing. Coincidences happen. And copycats happen, particularly among the whackjob demographic.
Is lumping these two categories together helpful? I would expect security for a former president to be mostly performative, on grounds that no one cares enough about them to try to kill them. Trump is different from other ex-presidents in that he's running again.
Worse about the Michigan plot, it was actually *initiated* by an FBI paid informant, intentionally, in order to arrest a fringe group who they thought might be interested/willing to do it. Without the FBI starting it, planning it, organizing it, and provisioning it, it would not have happened at all. Sorry to hijack your thread, but we should all be more informed about such things.
It seems that the rate of incidence is so low generally that's it's hard to pick up on increases or decreases. Obviously two in a few months sounds like a giant escalation, but it's pretty much dividing by zero so we should expect the numbers to feel weird even if they were "normal."
Lots of famous people and government officials get threats made about them. They usually fizzle out or get stopped long before bullets are involved, so that part seems new. I'm not getting the same vibes so far from Florida, but incompetence at the Secret Service seems to have played a big role in the first attempt in PA. If they had caught the guy prior to him firing, then we would be thinking about this very differently.
Yes. Also, the guy in PA was identified by people in the crowd before he had any chance of shooting. He apparently had a shirt on that should have gotten him caught in security? Had they detained him until after the event, it all may have fizzled out and we never would have heard about it. Anyway, I think far far more plots get stopped at the pre-planning stage, where the SS or FBI identifies a potential assassin early and they never even make it to the event. Or so we're meant to believe. One concern I've heard voiced over these events is that more people will realize that it's possible to get a shot at a famous or powerful person, and that someone more competent or with better planning is much more likely to succeed than a single guy sitting in a bush. For instance, if Iran wanted Trump dead, it's extremely likely he would have died back in July. Relevant because there were Iranian threats against Trump at that time, which is why Trump's campaign asked for more security for that event (which was denied).
Could the apparent spike be an improvement in QUALITY more than (merely) quantity? Only the ones that get reasonably close get publicized as the recent ones have.
Trump assassination attempt #1 was noted for its extreme incompetence, with a guy climbing a building wearing a rifle in full view of the public while that same public did its level best to alert the cops. The cops intentionally ignored this, but that doesn't mean we rate the attempt highly on quality.
I tend to agree in principle, but I'm having difficulty imagining what would make an attempt to commit a crime worse than doing it while several bystanders watching you attempt to alert the already-present police.
Hard to really come up with an exact metric for what counts, but three other recent ones that come to mind are the Paul Pelosi incident, a guy arrested staking out Obama's house, and the guy who murdered a federal judge's kid and they found plans to target Sotomayor at his house.
And one would want to exclude attacks that were random rather than politically motivated [the Angie Craig attack appears to just be some dude attacking a conveniently nearby woman] but sometimes it isn't clear.
While no where near the highs of the 70s or other times in the past, political violence has been on the rise in the US for years. Credibly it could be argued to have started pre-2016. Presidential assassination attempts are obviously new, but it looks to me like "unsurprising continuation of trends" rather than something totally unexpected.
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Absolutely. I just came early enough to this thread that I thought it was worth making a post all the same. Current order of affairs is to publish the full vision document, then a few essays and work from others ASAP.
I dimly remember these trackers are based on small differences in air pressure. So I guess aliens make some kind of subsonic sound, that these tracker pick up?
The hard part is that the "Alien" motion trackers explicitly track motion on the far side of floor and ceiling panels, if not walls and doors. So it can't be visual, and it can't be IR or radar if those panels are metal like they appear to be, can't be anything LOS.
At which point we're pretty much out of plausible explanations for anything that gives you blobs of light on a display showing the location of the moving baddies. A passive acoustic or similar device could give you intensity and approximate direction, but not ranging or imaging.
I haven't seen it. My thought is that it would use the parallax from you moving it around to see how far away everything is, and then go off if it sees something that can't be explained by parallax.
It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I think the Alien motion tracker was stated to work on air currents caused by the alien moving around, which was how it could track the alien even when it was out of line of sight. That would indeed require you to hold it really still (since it would detect its own motion through the air).
A camera autofocus works with either image analysis or a little sonar thingy, so it would only warn you about aliens you can already see.
Easier would be to just attach airtags to each alien, then follow them around with an iPhone.
If attaching an airtag to a living alien is too difficult, then just genetically engineer airtags into their DNA so they're born with them.
Honestly the biggest flaw in this system is Apple will probably claim some sort of IP rights over the situation, and the Space Marines won't legally be allowed to operate their iPhone in that context, then they'll get slaughtered anyway.
Safest way to airtag an alien would be to endoscopically insert into fetal alien as soon as the face hugger flops off the host but before he eats dinner.
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I wrote a new post where I argue the calls for government intervention (in the UK especially) are sapping people of their agency.
It really is shocking when you think about it - when someone says something like 'ticketmaster is gouging consumers, the government should do something', many of us respond by trying to show why that's bad economically... But really, our first question should be, if you think the prices here are unfair, and that Ticketmaster is making abnormal profits, and you care so much about it, why don't you build your own platform to compete?
I might not agree with you on government involvement in issues like this one, but I'll say this - I wish more people would fully internalize the ideas of supply and demand and realize how that can empower them.
Put another way... if you feel someone is price gouging? Then don't buy from them.
I'll grant this is hard, maybe even impossible, when we have a (near)monopoly for a necessary good, such as food and clothing. But going to the movies? That's not an essential.
Simply walk away until prices get more reasonable. Find something else to do that isn't price-gouging. And if enough people do the same, the law of supply and demand may well shift prices in your favor.
Other things like this would be video games, DLCs in video games, luxury goods, etc...
In the cases you mention - the near-or-actual monopolies like airlines, electric companies, internet providers in some places, etc, I unironically think we should have assassination markets.
Take airlines - every single airline worldwide is now fully and nakedly adversarial, and treats you like dog shit, and doubles the fares essentially every time by charging you extra for luggage, seats, booking, showing up, using the website, and more. There's no alternative - every airline does it. You can't boycott flying. Paying for business class or the more expensive bundled tickets doesn't really do anything to improve the booking and flying experience all that much. Take a complaint up the chain? All the airlines are in bed at the top levels politically because they're usually national or close-enough-to-that, and have zero accountability to their actual customers.
There's zero incentive to care about customer service, and zero mechanism to enact change.
So obviously, we need a latent threat to keep them in line. That threat is assassination markets.
If airline executives were listed on assassination markets, I would be *POURING* money into them every time I flew.
And true to the Karenopticon making the average Mcdonald's have better operations and customer service, if the markets were sufficiently robust, I'm sure it would alter the operations of airlines / cable companies / whoever in more customer friendly ways.
"But that's crazy, because if they existed, people would immediately put every politician they hate on them! We couldn't get any decent people to be nation-scale politicians any more!"
I mean, first, I've got to stop laughing at the idea of "decent people" as national-scale politicians - that's already not happening. But you know, you can have a principled assassination market owner who doesn't allow politicians or celebrities on there.
And politicians being listed doesn't sound like a BAD outcome to me. Let's let revealed preferences have a say!
If "assassination markets" were a real thing and actually effective (which you'd assume, because "effectiveness" would meet "demand," ie if there's a distributed bounty of $100M for somebody's assassination, a lot of competence can go into making it happen), we'd get *fewer* narcissistic psychopaths in public office, because they'd be at legitimate risk, and the one thing narcissists will never risk is their own precious skin.
In terms of "detachment from the people they're leading," we're already there at the far end of the bell curve in basically every country. Even in the US, the median congress-critter is a 75 year old multi-millionaire - how similar do you think their lives are to an actually median US person? Putting in a feedback mechanism where the median US person across all states can actually have a say sounds like a strict improvement to me.
A much easier and not look-at-my-crazy-idea solution would be to remove barriers to entry, so more people can start airlines. E.g. permit foreign airlines to operate domestic routes in the US.
Maybe "difficult industries" would stop being so difficult if the executives actually had some skin in the game.
Plus you'd get all sorts of fun dynamics! Sacrificial scapegoat CEO's (probably from anyone in the company with a terminal diagnosis, it would be fun to see what their comp would be), lower executives trying to hide their identities, online reddit and 4chan mobs trying to ferret out those identities, etc.
But the problem is that this is the result of organizations expanding in size, and there's no way to turn back the clock absent something like a dark age.
Much less impact. Founders of companies really do behave differently from hired managers with the same CEO position: https://paulgraham.com/foundermode.html
Markets achieve optimal outcomes when all participants are equally free to make informed, rational decisions. The actions of the participants result in feedback that eventually causes bad actors to get outcompeted.
Real world markets are far from this ideal. Sometimes some participants are not free to walk away from a bad deal (e.g. healthcare). Ticketmaster is not one of these situations.
Other times, there is a power and/or information imbalance between the parties. Ticketmaster is absolutely such a situation.
All participants in a market will invest wealth and effort in shaping the environment in which the market exists to aid themselves. The incentives for this are incredibly strong. Marketing/PR to create information imbalance in their favour; predatory tactics to block or destroy smaller competitors; even lobbying governments to alter the legislative environment - corporations do all of these, all the time, and more.
Meanwhile, feedback via trade decisions alone is very slow. Markets can stay unbalanced longer than individual participants can stay solvent.
Just like the corporations, all viable avenues of attack should be open to individuals; otherwise, the imbalance are worse, not better, and the free market optimal outcome assumption is further and further from reality.
Vote with your wallet, outcompete the suboptimal practices if you can, sure, all of those; but we can do multiple things at once. Lobbying for favourable legislation is fair game for the corpos, so it absolutely should be fair game for individuals.
Enough people getting angry enough at your company to actually get the government to step in and do something just as valid and necessary a market feedback mechanism as every other.
You want people to do something effective? To accomplish something? They - demonstrably! - are. I daresay it feels just as good to get what you want through a successful lobbying campaign (cf. people who start PR companies that do this professionally for large corporations!) as any other way.
What I'm heard is that Ticketmaster is actually in the business of *pr arbitrage*. The venues *want* to charge higher prices but don't want to make the fans mad. So instead, they make a deal where they charge artificially low sticker prices, and let Ticketmaster charge the marketclearing price instead. Then Ticketmaster secretly kicks back part of the extra money to the venue and keeps a cut of the profits in exchange for absorbing the resulting public hatred.
How is ticketmaster doing anything bad? Afaict the issue is that the real cost of show tickets has gone up (since music interest, like movies and books, has become more concentrated in a small number of superstar bands), and people are blaming the software used to sell the tickets as a shoot-the-messenger thing.
My intent is not to condemn Ticketmaster. They are acting just exactly as any other market participant of their size and capability is incentivised to, is expected to, and does.
That said, clearly enough people think it worthwhile to lobby on the matter, successfully enough, for OP to take note and become upset by this.
My main thesis is that lobbying government for a beneficial change is just as valid a market engagement tactic as any other, and just as valid for a group of individuals as it is for a corporation; as a counter to OP's assertion that it stems from and/or causes an "almost complete annihilation of a sense of agency and control of one’s destiny in many people".
Corporations lobby for changes that benefit them not out of helplessness or despair, but because it is a tactic that /works/. Same for groups of regular people.
I don't think this is a reasonable argument. Lobbying the government, like threatening a merchant with an AK47, is a usually-net-negative move that relies on use of force to undermine the market.
The state provides alternative, more timely and more effective remedies than the free market. Say the rice seller in the market is selling short measures, I go to the authorities and say Fix this. They could say Start your own rice selling business and sell the right measure, and you will put him out of business. I am not a rice seller, I lack the knowledge how and capital to set up as a rice seller, and if I do his obvious move is to temporarily sell good measures at a price which undercuts me till I go out of business. It's much cheaper, more effective and more just for the authorities to apply a law which says he gets his hand cut off.
> Say the rice seller in the market is selling short measures, I go to the authorities and say Fix this. They could say Start your own rice selling business and sell the right measure, and you will put him out of business. I am not a rice seller
I think that, by far, the most common response you'll get from people who aren't the authorities is "stop buying rice from that guy".
Rice isn't exactly something that's difficult to find in the market. This is just an example of you complaining about a self-inflicted wound.
Are you trying to make my case for me? The state is partly not a source of effective remedy to market failures because it is subject to public choice and governance failures, chief among them being the concentrated cost, diffuse benefit problem, which is what lobbying is a symptom of
I don't want to get too much into the economics argument (which is that state intervention is definitely not more effective than free market, which has been proven time and time again), but that you're then telling people to never bother trying to improve anything themselves. People are happy when they're doing stuff! Not when they're passive. Even if you succeeded in reducing the price of rice, you'd have an enervated, depressed society.
You're making quite bold claims without providing citations. Were people as a society less happy when government introduced laws against child labour? In your scenario, people would just start businesses that don't hire children.
No, that doesn't follow from what I said. People didn't care about paying for services provided by children, so there was no incentive for anyone to start a company that did not employ children.
I don't think any of my claims are bold enough to require citation! What do you challenge? That market economies have invariably performed better and have been wealthier than state-planned ones? Or that people are happy when they're being creative?
I think this is backwards: asking the government for help doesn't cause people to losetheir agency; people having their agency taken away causes them to turn to the government to help.
"Ticketmaster is charging unfair prices" is just another way of saying "Ticketmaster has a deep war-chest and *lots* of headroom to lower their prices if they ever happen to need to undercut and crush an upstart competitor". The big powerful companies aren't being scummy at random: they're specifically and ruthlessly optimising for profits (at the expense of literally every other value on the planet) and if you try to compete with them by being less scummy (and therefore less profitable) they will use their profit-advantage to crush you (cf. Meditations on Moloch: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch )
In cases where a young upstart company becomes the new top dog in an established industry, it's usually because they've got a way to beat the existing companies along a dimension unrelated to how scummy they are - *whilst also being every bit as scummy themselves, if not more so* because young upstarts can't afford to relinquish any tactical advantage whatsoever. For example, the app-based banks know perfectly well that their shoody insecure apps and lack of FCA regulation makes them much riskier for consumers than established banks, but these things enable them to develop/innovate much faster than established banks can. Uber's business practices, which if anything are considerably *more* scummy, tell a very similar story.
At this point, the corps are so powerful, and the optimisation pressure on companies to be scummy in order to succeed is so intense, that there's practically nothing an individual can do to resist them (see the recent failure to stop Amazon busting-up the burgeoning Coventry trade union [ https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/07/19/amazon-union-recognition-vote ] or the sale of the NHS data platform to Palantir despite near-universal criticism and protests from pretty much every quarter [ https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2752 ] - under these conditions, recognising just how little agency one actually has and asking the government to help, in its capacity as pretty much the only organisation big enough to stand-up to such companies - albeit only in theory - seems like basically the least-bad remaining option.
What I've heard is that Ticketmaster is actually in the business of *pr arbitrage*. The venues *want* to charge higher prices but don't want to make the fans mad. So instead, they make a secret deal where they charge artificially low sticker prices, and let Ticketmaster charge the marketclearing price instead. Then Ticketmaster secretly kicks back part of the extra money to the venue and keeps a cut of the profits in exchange for absorbing the resulting public hatred.
If that's true, then the public has misdiagnosed the problem and there's no room for a new entrant in the first place.
> For example, the app-based banks know perfectly well that their shoody insecure apps and lack of FCA regulation makes them much riskier for consumers than established banks, but these things enable them to develop/innovate much faster than established banks can.
They also get a big financial boost from the fact that small banks are excluded from the Durbin amendment.
I think it goes both ways - it's a vicious cycle. Politicians catering to such demands teaches people to expect it.
And I really think incumbent ability to crush new comers is overblown - it's proven wrong time and time again, and not for the reason you suggest (app based banks are very much regulated by the FCA?)
this suffers from persistency bias - we know about the successes. No-one is tracking all the cases where corps successfully crushed upstart competitors.
I'm not suggesting that app-based banks in particular are successful because they are in particular unregulated by the FCA; I suggest, rather, that the reason upstarts-in-general are successful, though perhaps different in every case, is basically always *unrelated to their level of scumminess* and that ultimately they must inevitably (cf. Meditations on Moloch) end up being just as scummy as the incumbents in order to remain competitive.
In other words, I'm certainly not saying that startups can't be successful - just that the story here is absolutely not one of startups outcompeting incumbents *by being less scummy than them*; if you specifically want ethical, non-scummy companies rather than just different-but-equally-scummy ones, petitioning the government for help is a considerably more actionable plan than trying to start your own energy company or bank or minicab firm or whatever.
(And, I hate to make it personal, but I would imagine you're probably not secretly a multimillionaire founder of some super-successful young startup, so presumably you do recognise at least some barriers to entering an established market, here...)
No please, do make it personal! It's fair game :) Let's start with that. No I'm not a founder but I'm not complaining that everything is broken. If I felt there's an industry out there that really is broken, and about which I care, then yes I'd prioritise doing something to fix it, rather than asking the government to do it. And as I keep saying, if I were to start something, I'd be far more worried about my ability to meet regulations, rather than that an incumbent would crush me.
(Actually, I am working on something - tiny, and for a very niche audience, but hey, it's better than nothing. Stay tuned.)
I think your arguments are cherry picked. Neobanks are regulated, and even though they get in trouble some times, so do incumbents. To the (small) extent neobanks have won it's because they have provided some better services. Doing that is possible. So more people should aspire to do it, no?
I entirely understand that you're not motivated to found a startup because of any ethical problem you have with the incumbents - but you do seem to be saying that founding successful startups is much easier than people believe and I would have supposed that this alone is a good "money on the table"-ish reason to become a millionaire startup-founder without needing to also have some ethical angle.
Of course I'm deliberately choosing instances of startups being scummy! You want me to also find articles saying stuff like "Startup Ltd. could have been scummy here but wasn't", for balance? Anyway, I do absolutely and entirely agree that the incumbents are by-and-large just as scummy: my points are that 1) the startups' initial success is *orthogonal* to their level of scumminess and is instead down to other advantages, and that 2) they are inevitably obliged to be just as scummy as the incumbents (for Moloch-related reasons) in order to be competitive.
Re. neobanks providing better services; you don't have to provide better services, just to be *percieved* as doing so, which you can often achieve through a combination of flashy UX (and startups are every bit as famous for how well they do UX as big corps are for how poorly they do it), unscrupulous marketing (which obviously every company of every size is trying to do but which is probably easier to do successfully when you don't have 100 years' worth of reputation to risk), and exploitation of informational asymmetries (eg. you know exactly how many known vulnerabilities your coded-in-a-café banking app has but most of your customers don't even understand what a known-vulnerability is). XKCD's TornadoGuard might count as a cute illustration of this [ https://m.xkcd.com/937 ], but I think Monzo's 6% fraud full-reimbursement rate (vs. Lloyd's TSB's 94%) provides a pretty fair illustration too [ https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/43208/monzo-and-starling-among-worst-performers-for-app-fraud-reimbursements ]
P.S. The very best of luck in your business venture! I look forward to hearing more!
Sorry, it seems I miscommunicated my point. It's not that founding a company and taking on incumbents is easy! Of course it's very, very hard. But, first, if it's hard to beat incumbents, then they can't be as bad as people make them out to be - it's easy to beat a bloated, inefficient organisation. Second, the crux of my argument is that just because something is hard doesn't mean people shouldn't be trying to do it. There is fun to be had trying to do something hard - even if you fail! As I write in my post, people are at their happiest when they're creating, when they're doing stuff. And we're taking this away from them.
I agree that start-ups do not succeed because they are not scummy - but I guess to me it's irrelevant why they succeed; as long as they do, it's proof that beating or at least competing against incumbents is possible. So we should be getting more people to aspire to that.
How generally do you apply this? e.g. when you find all the big social media platforms have cancelled you for your opinions, do you think the first response should be "why don't you build your own platform to compete"?
I think *always* when you see something not working as you'd like it to work your first response should be 'what can *I* do to fix it's, and the very last response should be 'I am *entitled* to having someone do it for me'.
"your first response should be 'what can *I* do to fix it"
Almost always, IME, the most effective response to something not working as I'd like is to get an expert to fix it. (The exceptions are when /I/ am the expert and/or I can't afford to outsource the work.) Life is too short not to focus my time on the things I am actually good at, and let others do the same.
Broken car? I /could/ try and fix it myself, but the garage technician will do a better job, faster, and they already have the tools to do it with.
Broken leg? I /could/ try and fix it myself, but the doctor will do a better job, faster, and they already have the tools to do it with.
Broken late-stage capitalist dystopia? I /could/ try and fix it myself, but getting politicians to tip the weighing scales to counterbalance the capital on the other side will do a better job, faster, and they already have the tools to do it with.
There is nothing which you can do better than an expert in that field, unless there is something at which you're literally the best.
Of course this is exaggerated and you need to factor in cost-benefit etc. But the fact people feel so helpless is tragic. And even for the things you mention - there's something to be said about doing your own chores / fixing your own car / etc. Doing stuff is satisfying!
Not doing things because you are able to choose to do the other things you'd rather be doing instead is the /opposite/ of helplessness.
When I can do what I want /and also/ get other people to fix my problems for me, my utility is maximised.
I am happy for the people who are still able to derive some kind of meager satisfaction from time spent on things which aren't really what they want to be doing but are necessary to fix problems, but I respectfully disagree that my privilege of being able to get someone else to do those things is tragic.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm willing to bet most people do not get as much satisfaction from what they're doing as you think, and that people do feel more helpless than you think. And I think contributing to that by encouraging them to complain and expect others to fix their problems is contributing to this.
(By the way, an important thing to note is that it's one thing for you to hire a plumber to fix your pipes, when there are plumbers around; it's another to demand that someone else do your work for you, paid for by others.)
Long story short and not my specialty, there's a lot of things that a big company can do to make it really hard to compete with them, to the point of breaking down the good qualities of a market that economists like to rave about. Which is why governments the world over have seen it fit to create things like antitrust laws, laws against anti-competitive behavior, abuse of monopoly (resp. monopsony), and the like. In the real world, power often leads to more power leads to abuse of power, which is why we have systems of counterpowers to try to mitigate that. Govt vs corps is one of those.
Umm. Most of the things that corporations can do to make it hard to compete with them operate via government. You would be much better off trying to limit the power of government rather than trying to hand it the dildo that corporates will then use to ram you.
Ah yes, 90s Microsoft, so dangerous that government had to step in to force them to... unbundle internet explorer from windows! Imagine the depths of hell we may have plumbed, had it not been for our anti trust saviours
Another aspect of that that's fairly well known is that Microsoft purchased IE from another company. They didn't develop it themselves.
The reason it's well known is that they got it in exchange for a promise of royalties on all future sales, and the royalties were worth no money when Microsoft never sold any copies.
In this case, we can be pretty sure that they were planning never to sell it and that was the reason they offered a royalty. But theoretically, this could have been reversed - they might have wanted to buy the software, had a royalty agreement forced on them, and realized that the only thing they could afford to do with the software was give it away. And in that case, it seems weird to say that that's "predatory bundling".
As per response below, I address this in my post. Many of the behemoths today have only been founded in the last 20 years, and outcompeted powerful incumbents. Most of the barriers you'll face when founding a company are not created by incumbents, but by regulation.
Barriers to entry is my first thought. I'm not sure how much capital it would need to start a new Ticketmaster, but it is probably in the millions. And why would people, venues or consumers, book with you in particular? Lots of hurdles to clear, I think.
It would help *me* to understand what value Ticketmaster brings to the venues.
Their cut seems large, but I assume that the people running the venues are not stupid.
Still, I note that Taylor Swift released her Eras Tour movie directly to the participating theaters without a studio in the middle to handle distribution so we have an existence proof that sometimes these middlemen aren't necessary.
If the venues just used some other web-site to sell tickets what bad thing would happen?
>If the venues just used some other web-site to sell tickets what bad thing would happen?
For any venue large enough to host a major act, Ticketmaster would sue them for violating the exclusivity agreement. Approx. 70% of all music venues in the US has an exclusive agreement to use only Ticketmaster. 99% of venues that can seat over 5,000 do. In exchange for these agreements the venue gets a % of the fee that TM take. They've spent the last 30 years building one of the most robust "moats" against possible competition in any industry ever. As bad as things got between TM and Taylor Swift, the most successful musician of this century, there are 0 alternatives for her. All the competitors are tiny and entirely incapable of of handling her volume, and exclusive agreements with the venues insure they can never be threatened.
Ticketmaster offers large kickbacks to the venues. It may be a situation like credit card interchange fees, they are much higher then needed but hard to align interests to lower them.
The venues *do* get much of the money paid to Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster's "service" is to be the focus of the fans' ire.
And a Ticketmaster competitor would be DOA because the venues wouldn't be getting paid the kickback so not only wouldn't have a reason to favor the competitor, but would lose money if they did so.
Live Nation's most recent fiscal year (2023) reported $22.7 billion in revenue and a tiny bit more than $1 billion in operating income. Which would make sense if they are sending a lot of that revenue back to the venues.
It’s an arbitrage problem. Live events for very popular acts have a limited number of seats available and a high demand, giving them a high optimal price. However, often acts don’t want to set their tickets at the actual market value, because having tickets costs hundreds of dollars looks bad. So Ticketmaster has made a business out of being the “bad guy”: “Oh, I would love for tickets to my events to be affordable, but that mean nasty Ticketmaster with its fees and whatnot is making it too expensive, oh dear.” If you didn’t put Ticketmaster in the middle every single ticket would be scooped up by scalpers, who would then sell it at the actual price set by supply and demand.
I thought the complaints were that tickets were being scooped up by scalpers? At least, the last couple of times, people were claiming that they had to buy online, and they could only do that when the website permitted the sale, but even when they were there waiting to buy as soon as the site put the tickets on sale, somehow the tickets were all sold out in minutes and they couldn't get any.
There's allegations that the scalpers have bots or what have you to harvest the tickets immediately and then sell them on at inflated prices. That, at least, is what I thought people were asking the government to do: get Ticketmaster not to sell blocks of tickets in one go like that, to avoid scalpers.
If anything these prices are eliminating scalpers who like to pay low and sell high.
Arguably, albeit circularly in reasoning, the actual value of the tickets are now what is being achieved by Ticketmaster. By letting tickets dynamically price the tickets are selling for what people are willing to pay, were always perhaps willing to pay, except they used to pay scalpers the “real price” while the scalpers paid the face value. How do we know that the tickets were underpriced? Because the scalpers made a profit.
A poster in a related thread (at a different site) pointed out a while back that selling tickets locked to individual people (much like airplane tickets) would eliminate most of the scalping.
The claim is that the tickets are worth, say, $100 each and the venue could charge that (because that is what the tickets are worth). The *act* doesn't want to charge more than $50 because they don't want to be seen as gouging their customers. And the venue also doesn't want to charge $100 (which they could by adding a 'venue fee' just like Ticketmaster adds a 'convenience fee') because ... why?
And consumers would book with you presumably because you wouldn't gouge them! But tbh this is exactly my point - we're a society that's training people to say it's too hard to do something new - I'd better ask the state to do it for me. That's just sad, isn't it?
No Aris, it isn’t. Obviously there’s something here that stops startups from challenging TicketMaster, some kind of monopolistic practices that are hard to overcome. Hence the State intervening.
And whatever way you look at it, including your rather simplistic approach, this is a market failure. Blaming the little people is actually blaming market capitalism, since’s it’s only likely to be a certain group of people with access to the talents needed and ability to raise funds who can take on TicketMaster. That they are not trying, or succeeding isn’t the average guys fault.
If people were trying, I'd get your point. But so many people are not - they've given up before even having a go at it. That's sad, whatever way you look at it to use your expression!
And again, super powerful incumbents have been beaten again and again. It's feasible. And so many of the barriers to doing so are because of state intervention - one of the obstacles you'll find if you try to compete with Ticketmaster is that you don't have an army of lawyers to navigate GDPR for you, for instance.
It doesn't help when you misdiagnose the problem. Ticketmaster's true service is acting as a hate sponge while secretly kicking back most of the money to the venue. You can't undercut them because then the venue would be getting less money.
Lack of initiative does make me sad, but sector has very little to do with it. Which sector has done more to promote a lack of initiative in cookery, for example? Meanwhile the military, the police, firefighters and healthcare professionals inspire many people to a life of initiative.
The vast majority of people can’t do this Aris, so the failure is not the people in general, but the venture capitalist system in particular. Is a janitor going to tackle Tickmaster?
This kind of rhetoric reminds me of a sociology student I met at university who claimed that Marxism didn’t fail the people, the people failed Marxism.
Of course it’s the same thing. If we can’t practically be Marxist then the theory sucks.
Similarly if we the people are failing to take on Ticketmaster then the market system itself fails, since what can constitute a market except people.
I suspect though that this isn’t the death knell capitalism but a specific example of one monopoly practice that’s hard to counteract.
Not everyone is capable enough to take on a tech giant, I never argued that. But there are many, many people complaining about pretty much everything in our society, but take zero action themselves to do anything about it - besides asking their MP to do something. This is my point.
I cover that objection in my post. New entrants that challenge massive incumbents appear all the time - even in hard to crack industries like energy and banking.
I have been working on a weird machine learning problem for the last few years. I document it https://www.airza.net/2024/09/04/neural-cryptography-stop-me-before-i-sigkill-again here. In general I have been trying to design a neural network to predict the output of various non-cryptographically secure RNGs and coming up completely blank.
I may be the only subscriber to this blog with no IRL friends working in ML and so I am hoping by posting it here I can find someone who has some advice on how to proceed. (It has nothing to do with LLMs or anything, so some specialized expertise might be needed.)
Have you looked at how the existing algorithms for this work? For example, Berkamp-Massey lets you recover the LFSR state and polynomial from a sequence, and Feigenbaum(?) has an algorithm for reconstructing the LCG state from outputs.
I don't have time to read your entire post but I had a couple comments. Although, like others have said, I think it's very possible that these are just the wrong tool for the job.
1. You describe neural nets as "our beloved universal function approximator". You're likely aware of this, but it's worth noting that while it can be shown that neural nets are universal function approximators, that result has no bearing on either the size of the network needed to approximate a given function nor whether any learning procedure exists to learn it.
2. You say there's no literature about what to do if you can't fit at all. The thing I would do in this situation is make the problem simpler. For instance, I'm not familiar with XORSHIFT128 but can you make a simpler variation of the algorithm, like XORSHIFT8 or something, and try learning that? (Maybe you have already.)
The post addresses both of these - I noted that it might not be possible to learn solutions to these and provides a solution for XORSHIFT128+ that can compute the forward pass to arbitrary accuracy. I would be sort of surprised if the problem was completely intractable, but it's clear to me at this point that the tools I personally have for the job are not adequate.
It's not hard to compute for XORSHIFT 128, and the network can learn to mimic simple combinations of logic gates, but at some point it seems go from "trivial" to "impossible".
My understanding is that neural nets are good at learning when there is the concept of "closer" to the correct answer. The neural net can start off with some error versus the correct answer and slowly get closer until it, hopefully, gets the correct answer. Or at least an answer that is close enough.
So maybe you are trying to classify 1,000 images as 'cat' or 'not cat.' 100 correct answers is 'closer' than 90 correct answers.
Problems with no concept of "closer" seem like a poor fit for neural nets.
And I'm not seeing an obvious way for a neural net to get 'closer' to a sequence from a random number generator. If the sequence is very small then, sure. But if the sequence doesn't repeat for billions of values (or more) then I'm not optimistic that this is realistically doable.
The code and blog (try) to detail this, but I extended the domain/range to try to accept each input bit as a separate number between [0, 1] and output bits for the same. In some sense just having the correct sign for the output (that is, more than .5 or less than .5) would be right enough if it was correct.
There has been some work on SAT problems or other networks that can correctly generate boolean logic and solve simple problems. This network can also solve very simple combinations of logic gates, so i'm not convinced it's completely impossible, but it's not clear to me where to go from here.
I think this observation about neural nets/gradient descent likely gets to the heart of why @jll above has had difficulty with their problem.
However, there are a lot of examples of systems with sharp discontinuities in the reward landscape-- nothing, nothing, nothing, game won. I'm thinking of DeepMind's 2016 results on Montezuma's Revenge, where a simple gradient descent approach would never have accomplished anything because only specific kinds of planning ahead would ever get rewards. Here's a shallow Wired writeup that might be a place to start: https://www.wired.com/story/google-ai-montezuma-revenge/
My other question is if there's a way to characterize the RNG landscape. We know they're not truly random functions, but if it's a flat fitness landscape with essentially randomly placed spikes of predictability, I'm not sure how ML approaches would do much better than just a search of the whole prohibitively large problem space.
Dumb question/comment from a dimly remembered case (which is related to what you said about flat fitness landscapes):
IIRC, one of the original objections to the very earliest perceptron was that a _single_ layer neural network can't learn XOR?
Wild grab at conceivably relevant stuff: Is there theory for how hard it is for a multi-layer neural net to learn a parity function? I _think_ the number of layers only needs to be around the number of inputs - but, if the test cases are randomly sampled, do we need an exponential number of them to properly learn the function? Basically, do we need to see (all? most? some fraction) of the minterms in the expansion of the parity function?
Again, _very_ vague recollection: Is a linear feedback shift register pseudo random (number/bit stream) generator basically parity across a subset of the shift register bits fed back into the shift register input?
I tentatively agree, it might just completely be the wrong tool for the job. Can we ask what motivates you to pursue that approach? Cryptanalysis is a well-established field with plenty of good techniques for cracking non-crypto-secure RNGs already.
I'm pretty naive about ML and really naive about cryptography-- what's a very general overview of exploiting those non-secure RNGs?
I don't know about @JLL, but my general thought process in favor of an ML approach is "Neural nets are really good at identifying patterns from data that humans can't detect. Non-secure RNGs are data that looks random to people but there's actually some kind of pattern there. Maybe neural nets could help?"
I did my best to explain in the article, but often in application security there is something that is downstream of an insecure random number generator in a predictable way. It isn't straightforward to use an SAT solver or another cryptanalysis technique when you as the attacker can't see the RNG that is in use and don't know the transformations. But i am sort of hopeful that if I can produce a neural network that does the right thing I might be able to use transfer learning or some other way of building off that.
Though at this point I am just curious if it is possible as well.
Well, I'm going to object here 😁 But before I get into the kicking, I do appreciate the point you are making about demonising and dehumanising others, and Tolkien would indeed agree.
From a letter of 1945:
"Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolic hour. By which I do not mean that it may not all, in the present situation, mainly (not solely) created by Germany, be necessary and inevitable. But why gloat! We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilisation in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted. The destruction of Germany, be it 100 times merited, is one of the most appalling world-catastrophes."
Okay, enough of the being reasonable and irenic, on with the kicking!
I think the Orc Baby is the lightning rod for the objections to what the showrunners have done in this adaptation. Indeed, I think at this point better not to call it an "adaptation" but rather "an original work based on some elements of Tolkien".
The points you make have also been done in a video review by Just Some Guy:
The major problem is the inconsistency between episodes. That Orc family man there in episode one? Who doesn't want to go to war and just wants to settle down with Orc wife and Orc baby?
At the end of episode four, he's ready to do some throat-slitting of Galadriel (fair enough, we all recognise the temptation) before being stopped by Adar.
See the problem? For plot purposes, Orcs are just persecuted and misunderstood, and then they're back to being wicked killing machines. There's no congruent development of the characters.
The show has done this *all the time*. I have to take issue with what you say here: “Rings of Power” are basically okay."
Um, well. As Generic TV Fantasy Show? Maybe, though it does seem to be shedding viewers. As a Tolkien adaptation? Hell, no!
They've mangled characters and ignored or even directly contradicted canon when it suits them. Yes, you have to make changes when translating from one medium to another. Yes, given the rights to the limited material they have, Amazon can't do much outside those limits and can't refer to anything from the Silmarillion. Yes, compressing the time line is necessary.
But Galadriel isn't like that in the Second Age. Celebrimbor is not a doddering old fool who has to be told what "alloys" are. We don't need an invented daughter of Elendil to create fake discord within his family - "oh no, my fake daughter is on the wrong side for the right if mistaken reasons! this is going to be really emotionally wrenching for me!" Well, maybe if they had spent *any* time setting up Elendil and his daughter and his family. But instead we get "here's new daughter. here's new daughter hanging out with new son of Pharazon. here's new daughter getting her knickers in a twist because she blames the queen for her brother's death, here's new daughter going along as a collaborator with the evil guys, and we know they're evil because look, we're gonna put in a scene of literal back-stabbing".
New daughter is even dumber because her brother isn't dead. Though the Isildur storyline is going nowhere - since we know he has to live, all the "oh no, here he is in peril, will he survive?" set-ups are pointless and have no tension.
I could go into a full rant here, but I'll just end on this note: Sauron the goo-monster/Venom symbiote. Look me in the face and tell me this is good fantasy, much less good Tolkien adaptation.
So I think the Orc baby was just the straw that broke the camel's back and that's why people lost their heads over it. It was just one goddamn dumb change too far. Oh hey, grey morality, are the Orcs really that bad and the good guys really that good, hmmm, bet you never considered that, eh?
Yeah, Tolkien's struggles with the Orc creation problem make this a very murky issue, but "oh lookit the cute (er...) widdle baby!" is not the way to appeal to we book-nerds better natures (if we have any). Especially not when the show has been joyfully ripping up and pissing on canon, and then calling any critics "trolls":
"“The Fellowship had to look to each other, and those who support it, and remember what it’s fighting for,” says J.D. Payne, who is showrunner along with Patrick McKay. “And when we see that millions of people are watching this and responding so positively to it — that’s who we’re fighting for. And those who watch every episode and [negatively] write about it on social media and make YouTube videos, we’re happy to have you guys, too. It wouldn’t be a journey through Middle-earth without some trolls along the way.”
Yes, if we have any complaints, it's not the fault of the show which is perfect in every way, it's because we're trolls and review-bombers. Oh, and racists and sexists who hate strong women of colour in lead roles. And fascist-adjacent, how could I forget that.
I wanted this show to be good. There are bits which could be good. But there's a lot more which is poor, and Orc Baby is just the poster child for that.
EDIT: I see in your replies to comments that you did (somewhat) defend floomp-monster Sauron, to which I can only sigh heavily and shake my head in sorrow 😁 Oooh, perfect opportunity to pull out that phrase Scott parsed recently!
I'm sorry you feel that way.
I mean, the major problem here is that this is supposed to be an adaptation of Tolkien's works, and the showrunners kept banging on in interviews how faithful they were to the works. Ha!
Sauron portrayed as a second-rate sleazy politician trying to stump for the Orc vote as President of Forodwaith after Morgoth suddenly resigned to spend more time with his family (in the Void) is just silly. He does not need to ask for their mandate to rule, it's all part of his character that he assumes power as of right. And he's not going to be Ides of March-ed int he back like that. And if he does get killed in his corporeal form, he does not turn into a goo-puddle that snacks on rats and centipedes for an unknown period, then clambers out of a cavern on the mountainside and floomps down the slope to lie in the road waiting to be run over by a cart.
That's a very small kind of Evil Overlord compared with what Tolkien invented, which is an angelic being of a lesser order than the Valar, but still much mightier than any mortal being in Middle-earth, and certainly not relying on a stray centipede here and there to give him enough mass to grow back into a symbiote until he's big enough to eat a human.
It's way too pedestrian. It's not an epic mythological god, it's one of the Marvel Universe C-list villains.
"I think at this point better not to call it an "adaptation" but rather "an original work based on some elements of Tolkien"."
Has anybody actually managed to nail the feeling of Tolkien when expanding beyond the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit? (I think Jackson did a good job with LotR and Rankin/Bass did a good job with the Hobbit). I enjoyed the Shadow video games as games, but they're obviously bad Tolkien. I just can't think of any good expansions of Tolkien that feel like Tolkien.
Incidentally, your descriptions of Rings of Power are very similar to my feelings on Wheel of Time, so I can understand your pain (granted, I haven't seen Rings of Power, but it seems to be making very similar mistakes).
My feeling is that every Tolkien's book reads differently. They were written in different times of his life, in different historical contexts and with different purposes. Which is why "the feeling of Tolkien" is such a misleading concept.
I think you managed to answer most of your own gripes with the show in the same comment. You seem to be mostly kicking yourself - where is my part?
To the main points you're making:
>>>> See the problem? For plot purposes, Orcs are just persecuted and misunderstood, and then they're back to being wicked killing machines. There's no congruent development of the characters.
No, there is absolutely no problem here. Characters absolutely can be both. Hell, these things happen in the real world all the time. These things happen in Tolkien's world as well (I gave a citation from LoTR in the text). Why wouldn't they also happen in the RoP world?
>>>> They've mangled characters and ignored or even directly contradicted canon when it suits them.
>>>>Yes, you have to make changes when translating from one medium to another. Yes, given the rights to the limited material they have, Amazon can't do much outside those limits and can't refer to anything from the Silmarillion. Yes, compressing the time line is necessary.
I don't even need to add anything here. You have successfully answered yourself.
>>>> But Galadriel isn't like that in the Second Age.
>>>> Sauron portrayed as a second-rate sleazy politician
The showrunners made a decision to give the main characters character arcs. Since we know what Galadriel (Sauron, Elrond, etc.) should be in the end of the series, it makes perfect narrative sense to make them different, in order for them to change toward the end. This is not the show's main problem, it's an interesting decision. Not without its merits. Not the best implementation of this principle, I think, but overall B for effort. Which in my book is "basically ok".
Isildur storyline is boring and silly, for sure. Until now, they made a mess of this one.
>>>> Sauron the goo-monster/Venom symbiote.
>>>> ...and certainly not relying on a stray centipede here and there...
I honestly couldn't give a flying hobbit poo how the animators decided to make the character look like in the three seconds of transition. This is so inconsequential, you and I have already depleted the world's supply of zeroes and ones allotted for this particular issue.
All other problems you have with the show can be easily solved by one advice: just watch the show and don't read the showrunners' interviews. You will enjoy it much better. I am a disciple of Roland Barthes here - after another episode pops up on Amazon, its authors are all dead.
So, a shapeshifter that was a werewolf, a snake, a giant bat, an elf, a human, a giant dude, a spirit, an "edgeless darkness given shape" and a big-ass eye can't be a "goo monster"? That's too much?
Taking a step back, the problem is that the Second Age should never have been filmed.
The Second Age isn't really a story, it's just a mythic backstory for the events of the Third Age. Once you start removing it from the fuzziness of myth it loses its dignity and just becomes silly stories. Sauron is interesting because he's barely glimpsed -- once we've seen him talk and eat and poop and turn into a goo monster he loses the dignity of myth.
It's like trying to film Valinor, where the elves go. What actually happens when the elves get to Valinor? Do you just pull your boat up on shore? Is there some kind of harbour? What do you do all day? Do you still need to eat? Are there farms? Is everything permanently suffused in a gold glow? Where am I going to live when I get there? How do I buy my first starter home in Valinor? Such questions are dumb and they make the whole idea of Valinor dumb, Valinor is much better as a mystery than as something reduced to a filmable reality. Thankfully they don't seem to have tried to film Valinor yet but they've got close and it already looks silly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIrIK6Z8ybg
> It's like trying to film Valinor, where the elves go. What actually happens when the elves get to Valinor? Do you just pull your boat up on shore? Is there some kind of harbour? What do you do all day? Do you still need to eat? Are there farms? Is everything permanently suffused in a gold glow?
This complaint doesn't really work, because Valinor is like Rivendell and Lothlorien. Or rather, the point of Rivendell and Lothlorien is that they are like Valinor, which enables the elves to live there without dying of ennui. If you can show Lothlorien on film, you can also show Valinor, because they're the same.
The initial idea of RoP was a cynical cashgrab, that should not have been made.
But, as we live in a real world where cynical cashgrabs happen every day, nothing prevents us from looking at them as a "thing-in-itself", separate from canon. This is, to me, the way to get the most out of the mediocre series.
But never, you will note, in all those changes a puddle of goo that had to snack on worms after being stabbity-stabbity by a rabble of Orcs.
The eye was the psychic impression that those under the sway of the One Ring had; Sauron was not literally a giant eyeball, but it was his searching, implacable will and eternal surveillance and dominion over his thralls and serfs given form in a way their minds could comprehend it.
As Lord of Werewolves he was defeated by Huan, who was another Maia in beast-form. Not some run-of-the-mill Orc.
It's important that his spirit form *is* the 'real' Sauron. The corporeal body is one assumed by the Valar and the Maiar to interact with Elves and Humans and other physical beings. Once out of the body, he can re-assemble a form from the physical elements of the world, but this takes time. And it's not "and then his blood dripped down into a puddle" sort of re-embodiment.
I know the show has to make changes. But they don't have to be stupid, shoddy, less impressive changes. What the show-runners have done is to make Middle-earth *smaller*, including the characters in it. They show us maps and claim that vast distances have been traversed - but people travel around in days from one place to another without even needing to go by horseback, and when you get there, there's maybe two villages and some ruins inhabited by a maximum of a hundred odds and sods in the entire land. Elrond and Celebrimbor were able to stroll from Eregion to Khazad-dum in an afternoon, without even bringing a back-pack with them or changing into travelling gear!
You tell him. I haven't even seen the show and I agree with you 100%. There are two reasons for me to do this apparently ridiculous thing; First is the assertion by Konstantin that when someone converts a described thing (words on paper - i.e. book) to a series of pictures someone is bound to make it "more stupid, shoddy and less impressive compared to the insides of our heads, or to words on the page that inspire what is inside of our heads."
This assertion is nonsense. As evidence I offer up "The Beauty and the Beast" by Jean Cocteau, and a dozen more, up to and including "True Grit" by the Coen Bros.
The second reason I have quite forgotten while typing out the first one, but I think it had something to do with how spectacularly grumpy you are. Its such fun....
> What the show-runners have done is to make Middle-earth *smaller*, including the characters in it.
As Brett pointed out, why even care whether someone is secretly king of the Southlands when the entire Southlands consists of 50 people in one little village?
>>>> But never, you will note, in all those changes a puddle of goo
>>>> Once out of the body, he can re-assemble a form from the physical elements of the world, but this takes time.
And again, you seem to be perfectly capable of answering yourself. The way the show, hm, showed this particular re-assembly in less than a minute of screen time has zero consequence and importance for the future 10+ hours of story.
>>>> But they don't have to be stupid, shoddy, less impressive changes.
This is literally what "cinematic adaptation" means. Whatever Industrial Light and Magic can draw will always be more stupid, shoddy and less impressive compared to the insides of our heads, or to words on the page that inspire what is inside of our heads. Accept it and you might be a happier man.
"Indeed, I think at this point better not to call it an 'adaptation' but rather 'an original work based on some elements of Tolkien'."
The phrase I tend to use for "adaptations" that don't come close to the original text/whatever is 'based on the *title* of 'whatever'. So here: "Based on the title of the book 'Lord of the Rings'"
> Amazon's female dwarves don't have beards, which directly contradicts Tolkien canon.
To be strictly accurate, it directly contradicts something that Tolkien wrote but never published. It doesn't contradict Tolkien's published work.
I read that one problem with Amazon's series is that they didn't get the rights to the Silmarillion and therefore couldn't represent the history of Middle-Earth that was defined there. They surely didn't get the rights to War of the Jewels either.
And the short hair on the Elves. Has anyone else noticed that this season, Elrond is both growing his hair out *and* getting more cheeky? He's putting Galadriel in her place in the very first episode, and boy does she not like being demoted! Plainly, Elvish self-confidence is in their hair. That is why Gil-galad is High King, because his hair is the longest of all the main Elvish characters, and why this version of Celebrimbor is so doddery, because he's got the short style 😁
I think you're onto something here. Plus the shaving of Cirdan, which I also kinda hated, corresponds with him giving in to the seduction of the rings.
> Plus the shaving of Cirdan, which I also kinda hated, corresponds with him giving in to the seduction of the rings.
Wasn't Cirdan the original user of Narya? If he had given in to the seduction of the rings, the elf rings would have been corrupted. How is this supposed to have worked?
In the show, elf rings have their own seductive allure, despite not being corrupted by Sauron. I think, the idea is that power corrupts by itself, darkness or no darkness.
And his hair (or rather, wig) got blonder. I wasn't sure if that was an effect of this golden glow they're saturating everything Elvish in, but I think he's meant to be getting younger as a kind of parallel to the rings rejuvenating everything, *and* this is also an example of the ring corruption.
It's silly, but at this point? Swallowing camels and straining out gnats to object. Though - a guy who is a shipwright in a harbour that makes ocean-going vessels, shaving with a *shell*? Plenty of axes, adzes and other sharp implements, but nobody invented a razor? Okay, fine, he's the only Elf with a beard, they never needed razors so they didn't invent them, but at least he should have some kind of knife to do the job!
I don't really agree with your overall point but I do in regards to creative works. We're at a low point in artistry. Movies, for example, are increasingly mere content as opposed to anything inspired. AI didn't cause that. The actual problem is that audiences don't go see anything original or interesting(with a few exceptions) and there's not much you can to do to fix that.
> Virtually everyone already chooses what to believe based on their political views and will pounce on the most ridiculous bullshit to justify it.
That's true, but at least I can currently derive some meaningless satisfaction from knowing that the other people are idiots and that I see the light. But when we get full Matrix... when for everything that is reported in the news you will see realistic videos of how it happened and also realistic videos how it didn't happen... when even the most stupid arguments will be made with flawless grammar... when most of the smart people you follow on the internet will actually be bots, but you won't know which ones...
I am not omniscient, and I don't have infinite time to explore all topics that I'm interested in. Currently I have a set of heuristics that seem to serve me well. They will stop working soon, because for every X that I currently use as evidence than something is more likely to be true than not, someone will put "make the argument for my preferred conclusion with lots of X" into the prompt of their LLM.
From some perspective, it's just a difference in quantity, but until now the lack of quantity offered some protection. I could rely on the assumption that some things are just too much work for anyone to do, and no one would spend so much money just to fool me; but this will all get cheaper and automated. Today, how much would it cost e.g. to set up an LLM that will publish a blog on Substack, posting arguments in favor of a predetermined party line? Or hundred such blogs, providing "social proof" to each other?
> If you want an end to “creative” slop, throttle how many books people can upload, or demand know-your-customer rules that would silence human and digital spammers alike.
This would probably create a market where poor people rent their identities to the producers of slop. Or maybe some kind of franchise, where if you have no writing talent, you can sign a contract, get the book generated for you, publish it under your name, and keep 20% of the profits.
But I agree that whining about the LLMs is not helpful; they are here, they will stay here, and they will only get more abused. We need to develop new ways to handle this world. Maybe in future you will never buy a book unless it got recommended by a human, who was certified as a human by some network of trust. And all phone calls will have some kind of identity verification. We already have certificates for HTTPS web pages, we will just have to integrate that into everything.
Not necessarily a given. We are in a venture capital dreamtime right now, where any old random can point a web browser at any of a bunch of models and play with them as they like, largely without paying. However, they are bloody expensive to build and to run. If no killer applications materialise before investors lose interest and call it a day... well, it's not like they'll be gone, but the costs and hurdles to making use of one will be significantly higher.
This feels like a distinction without difference- sure, ai may supercharge scams against old people rather than invent them, but that doesn’t strike me as substantially changing how we engage.
If self driving cars fail to invent the car accident, but drive fatal car accidents up 1000%, people’s collective response will still be something more akin to “holy shit do something” rather than “well to be fair this is a new *degree* of risk rather than a new *kind* of risk.”
I think self-driving cars will lower car fatalities, but make them outside people's control. From an rationalist perspective, I would think that would be a correct trade-off. I have come to think that self-driving cars will be OK drivers, which is better for the road because they will make fewer mistakes, though the kinds of mistakes they will make would not be the ones people would make.
Self-driving cars are probably already much safer most of the time than the average driver and will probably be so superior within 5 years that it would be lunacy to suggest otherwise.
But you’re right that they’ll likely introduce new classes of accidents, especially at first, and people will dramatically overindex on those and demand to let the human driven carnage continue.
Similarly, most people would probably be vastly better off by letting an AI do their grocery shopping, determine their activities, control their spending, etc., but people will resist due their precious freedom. Like privacy advocates early in the internet who were categorically wrong about what all that data harvesting would bring. (All we got was free services.) These people will insist on “making their own choices” while being plum-diddly-puzzled about why their “metabolism” is so different from those who let the AI take the wheel.
Freedom to make bad choices is still freedom, and shouldn't be removed. When your freedom impacts someone else's freedom is when we have a conflict, such as a bad driver causing an accident to someone else. AIs are tools to be used, and all tools can be used improperly.
Since you can’t change other people’s behavior (and the propensity to malice of a certain fraction), you might as well treat it as a fixed constant. As such, your creation already carries the potential for misuse that you’re also ushering in the world.
Let’s go to the extreme and say that you invent a better hunting rifle. Do you believe that you do not share a part of the blame when someone will inevitably use it to better shoot other people? Or are you somehow only praiseworthy for the good uses and not blameworthy for the bad ones? (I’m talking morality here, not law.)
This being said, I believe that in all three of your cases, we had a strained balance, undermined by bad actors, but determined by the fact that scammers needed to expand significant effort to appear somewhat legitimate.
If it makes scammers efficient enough to burn the commons (say, make scam calls actually 90% of calls*, whence making phone lines unusable), I don’t think some measure of blame for AI makers is inappropriate.
There’s also the fact that in your three cases, law enforcement is made difficult by rules about evidence (and lack thereof), due process, wiretaps, by the fact that there are other crimes that law enforcement agencies are more interested in… and because there’s no reason that your bad actors live in the US.
*after a quick google search, I am skeptical of this statistic and expect a scam baseline of less than 20%. This climbs a bit if you allow for telemarketing or political advertising.
"Since you can’t change other people’s behavior..."
Nonsense. People respond to incentives and disincentives all the time. It is absolutely possible to change people's behavior.
Why do you think attending college/university went from something strictly for aristocratic elites to something for most of the entire general population? It's because most well-paying jobs now require having a degree. Now, I'm sure many students benefit intellectually and knowledge-wise from post-secondary institutions, but very few people would pay high tuition costs for that alone.
Anti-smoking campaigns and various law changes to smoking also show how human behavior can be shifted with incentives and disincentives. Society effectively made smoking highly inconvenient and low-status, those drastically reducing the number of smokers.
I respect that most people here are libertarian (at least, that's the impression I get). It's fine to think that certain things should be tolerated since any effective measure against it would be overly harsh and authoritarian. But we shouldn't pretend that human behavior is fixed, just because such a thing would be convenient to libertarian beliefs.
Incentives and disincentives make an impact, and we probably should approach things on a case-by-case basis. Society decided that we were not going to be libertarian when it comes to cigarette smoking, and that was probably for the best. There may be some other things we're overly tolerant of, and it could be argued that scam calls are one of those things.
While you’re correct that we in fact can change people’s behaviors (and thank you for this welcome correction), I can’t see how this affects my point.
Your examples of behavior change occurred over an entire generation rather than the timescales we’re talking about here (a couple of years).
In fact, I very much agree with you on the case-by-case consensus approach. But this consensus depends on a damage/benefit ratio of sorts: how much damage does it do, how much would we suffer if we devoted more effort to fighting it, etc?
The issue is that in the comment’s examples, AI empowers the attackers to do much more damage – without readily improving our ability to “fight back”. Since you’re not removing the scammers (and stuff) and instead make their preying easier, why on earth would they refrain?
(Also, your post seemingly reads as though you believe I am a libertarian. What gave you this idea, if I may ask?)
Perhaps AI should be regulated somewhat. But how to minimize harm while still (mostly) gaining the benefits of the growth in AI technology is a tricky thing.
I'll admit my bias here - I've made a fair bit of AI-generated imagery, and I love how I can essentially get a beautiful free painting rapidly. It's truly wondrous to me that this is happening, beyond what I would have imagined when I was a child. I fear that in the backlash to AI people might be failing to take advantage of all the real beauty it can create. I admittedly never got much into the ChatAI side of things, but when I have used it, I've found it decently rewarding.
If there's a way to regulate away the worst aspects of AI will maintaining (most of) its positives, I would certainly support that. I hope that can be found.
I probably jumped the gun on the libertarian comment, so my apologies for that. Thanks for the good conversation.
I agree that in an ideal world, scammers are in jail. I’m not even above fantasizing that a few are suicided (yes, you read me correctly) “pour encourager les autres”.
But you still sound as though catching scammers is a matter of googling “what is the address of the nearest scammer”, then drive to the address and make the arrest, rather than a delicate investigation at the interface of a technology designed to escape physical location and rules of the legal system made to protect the defendant at every step (or so the cops will claim).
I won’t repeat what I wrote, but your experience is entirely consistent with the hypothesis (which I believe is more plausible) that law enforcement has since long realized that catching a scammer wasn’t worth the effort (because there’s already a lot of wrongdoing perceived as more damaging, and it’s easier to catch and punish than a scammer would be).
You are absolutely right: it sucks that so much cool stuff that could be brought into the world is banned or otherwise denounced because it is seen as disproportionately enabling a minority of bad actors.
But the bad actors are not going anywhere. And if the tool that you release empowers the bad actors relatively to the majority, the majority is *also* right to complain.
That people on different sides of the issue have to be at each others’ throats (denigrating their personal virtue, hygiene or competence), as opposed to politely acknowledging that both sides of the debate have a valid point and respectfully talking price, seems to be an unfortunate fixture of our times – itself a trade-off of otherwise very impressive stuff!
Very good comment. I agree with the vast majority of what you wrote.
That being said, I do feel that deep fake AI-images of real life people are something pretty unique to AI, and I can get it being uniquely bad for something like real life women having porn imagery made of them without their consent. Perhaps there should be a new law (or an editing of an existing law) to address this specifically.
Deep fake images designed to hurt a politician could probably easily be covered by updating libel/slander laws.
For most of what you brought up, I agree that AI is just a tool getting wrongly blamed for the moral failings of some of its users.
One of the remarkable aspects of the campaign is how Trump feels like the incumbent and Harris feels like the challenger. It's not surprising that Democrats would encourage this, but I was surprised to come across an article full of quotes of even *congressional Republicans* referring to Trump as "the President".
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/20/house-gop-trump-shutdown-00180243
It's getting rough out there: it appears the would-be conservative James Lileks at National Review is poised to defect.
In what is obviously a scheme to impress Ms. Harris, he published a sample of his special application of rhetorical cadence and circular logic in a proposed speech Ms. Harris might want to use in addressing, say, a gaggle of communists:
"The workers. Of the World. There is a world, and there are workers in it. The work of the world is worker's work. . . " (October, 2024)
Good riddance, James Lileks. We hope you enjoy your new speechwriting job.
". . . and they work when they are working. Work is called work for a reason. It is work! Often hard work. And the hardworking workers know it is hard, because they are feeling the hardness of it . . ."
There you go. It's not that hard.
Such is the rhetoric of Reality TV Politicians. One doesn't even need a GED, much less a law degree. Some goofy medication would be cheating.
To some degree that is them being trapped by having drunk their own kool-aid (about the 2020 election having been stolen). They are used to referring to Trump as simply "the president" rather than "former president" because that has been the political correctness within GOP circles for three years now.
Wanted to share this video I found recently:
Steve Hassan at TEDx "How to tell if you’re brainwashed?"
https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=JzSwZpHDAaU
First, cool personal story. Second, a good heuristics; not perfect, but something that is easy to remember and evaluate. Can you take a break from your group, at least for a week, so that no one will bother you, check on you, remind you of your duties, etc.? Are you free (and mentally capable) to meet people who are not fans of your group, specifically critics and former members, and talk to them? Given your current knowledge about the group, if you reflect on the process how you joined the group, would you describe it as "informed consent", or do you now see that you were given misleading information on purpose?
This matches my intuition of a cult as a group that makes you join under false premises and then keeps you under constant pressure to prevent clear thinking. On joining, you get the information by little pieces, because it is obvious in hindsight that your old self would never agree to join if they could see the situation you are in today. Leaving the group abruptly is a horrifying idea. Not only because you will end up in Hell, or the world will be destroyed and it will all be your fault... but *more importantly*, on the personal level, *all* the friends you currently have will instantly turn into enemies. And there are mechanisms that prevent you from leaving gradually, from slowly finding friends outside the group and starting to spend more time with them, and slowly reducing your involvement with the group.
I think it is useful to have a mental category for this; separate from someone merely being obsessed about something weird, in absence of a social mechanism to keep them trapped. Many people ignore this. I think the cults are bad not because their ideas are bad (though, incidentally, their ideas usually *are* bad), but because they create this kind of trap for people who otherwise might be attracted to the idea for a while, but then would probably change their minds and leave.
This also has obvious applications for the rationalist community. Like, if someone says "Less Wrong is a cult", that's obviously stupid: a *website* cannot be a cult. If you decide to stop reading the website for a week, what exactly is the website doing to do about it? If in your free time you talk to people critical of the website, how would the website know, and how could it prevent you from talking to them? One could argue that the ideas on Less Wrong are bad, or even dangerous, but there is a difference between bad ideas and bad *social mechanisms*. Meetups are potentially different, because there people meet in person, but they happen once in a long time, no one checks you between them, and if you stop visiting them, it's over.
The situation can be different with some groups near the rationalist community, such as Leverage Research or Nonlinear. If people need to show high commitment and have little free time to spend away from the group (to meet other people, to see things from a different perspective), then yes, it can become this kind of social trap. The trap does not have to be designed on purpose; a group of people pressuring each other to show high commitment can generate it naturally. I think it happens more likely when there is a charismatic leader, or someone with actual power (e.g. financial) over the others, who can declare high commitment as a desirable thing, and the lower-status members of the group do not feel free to push back and fight for their free time.
Not everything applies here the same way. Sometimes the members are not explicitly forbidden to talk to the outsiders and critics, they simply... don't have time for that. Or they joined the group voluntarily and had a mostly correct idea about how it works in general, they just... underestimated how difficult such high-intensity environment could be; and when it becomes exhausting, they have no good way to reduce the intensity to a bearable level. They have no mental capacity left to calmly reflect on their situation, and no good way to disengage that wouldn't burn the bridges. So the effect on them can be similar.
Here is something that my autistic ass has been chewing on:
NEUROTYPICALS DO NOT MAKE SOCIAL BLUNDERS.
They may appear to blunder, they may appear to make gaffes of one form or another; however, this all has a higher, often inscrutable and indescribable Purpose. Someone who makes a boorish comment at a party does so intentionally, or rather chooses not to filter himself when he could have, on purpose. It has the function of injecting stress and randomness into the system, as well as sending any number of plausibly deniable signals - some of which are only visible to the graceful or the perceptive.
Take political gaffes, for example: they only LOOK to us - the uninitiated - to be blunders; they may in fact be extremely subtle signals for political operatives as well as distractions from their political machinations. There's the same thing going on when someone angrily talks about "dumb r3tarded people" in front of their special-education teacher friend": it isn't a mistake. It's more like bird augury: deliberately using a poor-quality filtering process to introduce randomness and therefore make you more difficult to read. It's also a political move or power play.
I mean - every word and gesture that the average person makes is flawless, and the average person is every bit as dedicated to being graceful as the average Mongol horse archer was in his time, or the Japanese samurai or European knights were to skill at arms. The only real difference between the average person and an Obama or a Clinton or even someone like Hong Xiuquan is GENETICS and OPPORTUNITY, not worldview. I believe most people secretly believe that gracefulness is quite literally worth dying over, and that a single blunder - a true blunder - can ruin your career or life. The average person can choose - instinctually, gracefully, subtly - to throw a single subtle facial expression in a bar and tell seven other people "I think this guy rocks" or "I think he sucks"; if he opens his mouth to speak, a single sentence can have four different meanings, three of which are understood by everyone and one of which is only able to be parsed by the talented or lucky.
>Take political gaffes, for example: they only LOOK to us - the uninitiated - to be blunders;<
...are you not old enough to remember Howard Dean? Dude made a loud noise at a political rally and it tanked his career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6i-gYRAwM0
>NEUROTYPICALS DO NOT MAKE SOCIAL BLUNDERS.
Nope. Social blunders happen all the time, to everyone. The hope is that you learn from them and stop making so many, but every single person on the planet Earth has multiple stories about how they put their foot in their mouth.
As a general rule, anything that involves most of the population of Earth being constantly graceful and purposeful at all times, unfailingly, is unlikely to be true. Humans just aren't sophisticated enough for that.
Hello Pine.
> NEUROTYPICALS DO NOT MAKE SOCIAL BLUNDERS.
Yeah, no, not even close. Yes, most apparent blunders have an explanation - but that doesn't mean they're not mistakes. The fact that something has a purpose does not imply it serves that purpose well at all. Everyone makes lots and lots and lots and lots of social blunders. But for most people they disproportionately take place in childhood. The closest plausible neighbor to your claim is something like "neurotypicals do not repeatedly make the same social blunders in adulthood", which is trueish, though not quite true.
More like "neurotypicals do not make social blunders sober more than once per decade or so as adults".
How many pharaohs can you name?
I can't get past seven.
Djoser, Narmer, Khufu, Ramesses, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Cleopatra.
If Cleopatra counts, then Alexander the Great should too.
Rameses, Ptolemy, Amenhotep, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Cleopatra, Hatshepsut, Khufu, Thutmose.
Am I cheating by including the female pharaohs? Also some of those names appear repeatedly iirc.
Rameses and Ptolemy get you to about 20 I think
Cleopatra and Thutmose combine for another ten or eleven.
If Cleopatra counts, then Alexander the Great should too.
Good point. I looked it up, and it seems he did actually claim the title of Pharaoh and is included on modern lists of Pharaohs. It sounds like there's some doubt as to whether he actually had himself anointed and crowned in Egypt or not.
Seem unfair to name pharaohs who only differ by number, if that's all you know about them.
Or maybe the better rule would be to omit pharaohs who you only know as a name.
To be fair, you didn't ask how many pharaohs we know trivia about, you just asked how many we could name.
To answer your new, entirely different question, like three? Ish? Depends on how much I have to know about them
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/kfile-mark-robinson-black-nazi-pro-slavery-porn-forum/index.html
"The comments were made under the username minisoldr, a moniker Robinson used frequently online. Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades....On the Nude Africa website in both comments and his profile, minisoldr offered numerous details that align precisely with Robinson’s personal history."
Ideally the guy would resign from public life on the grounds of comical stupidity. He is instead going with the MAGA strategy of denying everything no matter what the evidence is.
Your next governor of the great state of North Carolina folks!
Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It reminds me of the Access Hollywood tape, which wound up damaging Trump far less than the media elite thought it would. It might even make normal men sympathize with him; they don't want their porn history released either. Will probably hurt him with women. Access Hollywood was Trump confessing to alpha male behavior, not weird low-status porn stuff.
The far more damaging thing is his past support for banning abortion without an exception for rape. That's just politically toxic and only a complete 180 to supporting fully legal abortion would make people forget it.
It is politically toxic, but internally consistent: if you believe that a fetus (at any stage) has the same value as a living human being, it is a logical position to hold.
Trump just ignored the Access Hollywood recording though, with a couple of moments of shrugging about "locker room stuff". He didn't loudly/repeatedly deny having said what he obviously did say. That's the part that will stick in the public mind regarding Robinson.
A day later and the guy is still loudly denying all. He's hand-waving the idea that "it could be AI", and/or all faked by malicious libs, etc.
Trump meanwhile is not commenting about it but has just uninvited Robinson from his rally scheduled in NC tomorrow evening. (Robinson, who is both the state's Lt. Governor and the GOP nominee for governor, had appeared in several previous Trump rallies.)
U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, currently the GOP's highest-level officeholder in North Carolina, posted on X that Thursday “was a tough day, but we must stay focused on the races we can win.”
NC's deadline for a nominee to withdraw from the November ballot has passed, and it appears that the state GOP has no legal way to push him off at this point even if they want to.
The Dems think Robinson is now toxic to however many persuadable voters still exist in NC. From the Associated Press an hour ago: "Harris’ campaign rolled out a new ad Friday it calls the first to link Trump to a down-ballot candidate. The commercial alternates between Trump’s praise for Robinson and the lieutenant governor’s comments which his critics have argued show his support for a statewide abortion ban without exceptions. Robinson’s campaign has argued that’s not true. The Democratic National Committee is also running billboards in three major cities showing a photo of Robinson and Trump and comments Trump has said about him. And a fundraising appeal Friday by Jeff Jackson, Democratic attorney general candidate, also includes a past video showing Republican opponent Dan Bishop saying he endorsed Robinson."
Maybe too soon, but on the lighter side: some Israeli food company ought to start using "flavor explosion" as a slogan. Also, I want to see a spy movie where someone assembles a binary-explosive bomb using only Israeli food products bought in an ordinary grocery store.
Here's a site about building weapons using only items bought at an airport.
http://terminalcornucopia.com/
Would it be possible to make a food ingredient that explodes when mixed with non-kosher food ingredients, but is perfectly safe to eat when mixed with kosher food ingredients?
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---- A Review of a Review
On a whim, I decided to look up "Israel" on LessWrong. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to do this until now, it just did today, while I'm at work, waiting for a dog slow compile job.
Surprisingly little in search results show up, mostly account names and meetup proceedings or location info. Expected, LessWrong hates contemporary traditional politics with a passion. The one political post that showed up is an AMA by a user named Yovel Rom on the 10th of October [1], explaining the October 7th attack and the general background. But tracing the comments eventually gets you a far better prize: user Yair Halberstadt, who reviewed the book __1948__[2] by Israeli historian Benny Morris on 3rd of December 2023, and later reviewed its semi-sequel, __Righteous Victims - A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict__[3], in June 2024. The last review was actually written with the intention of being an ACX review, but wasn't selected as a finalist.
Benny Morris, as a person, is of course disgusting as a maggot, perhaps even more given my soft spot for insects. Cosplaying as a "Liberal Zionist", one of his opinions is that Israel should have expelled all Arab Israelis in 1948, and that Arab Israelis even today are/should be viewed as terrorist sympathizer 5th column. Regardless, I will never not be amazed by his ability to say what his sources lead him to, EXACTLY as he thinks it, no sugarcoating.
Everybody should read [2] and [3], with priority given to [3] more than [2] if you don't have time. I want to give them a shoutout here, and will possibly signal boost them more in future Open Threads.
Perhaps what sounds too good to be true for me is how much of the pro-Israel narrative is a transparent lie that even a Zionist historian can casually demolish while in the middle of doing scholarship. There are no punches pulled, no myth spared, no piece of bullshit left unturned. Benny actually comes right out and say the "Ethnic Cleansing" word, the big No No that gets all the antisemitism accusations running on overdrive in modern day discussions. Yair (the reviewer) says at the end of [3]:
>>> If you go into this book believing standard Hasbara talking points about how the IDF is the most moral army on earth, Israel only wants peace, the Palestinians only want war, and Israel has simply no choice in what it does, you’re likely to find it makes for very uncomfortable reading.
The proto-IDF in __Righteous Victims__ violates truces, commits war crimes, and protects and aids population transfer to conquered territory (against international law, forbidding states to transfer their civilians to war zones for settlement).
If this was written by an Arab, Palestinian, Western/American leftist, or Muslim author, I would have quit reading because it's too unchallenging, too non-deviating from what I already believe. What's interesting is how both the author and the person reviewing him are Jewish Israelis, one of them (Morris) trespassing into disgusting anti-Arab racism sometimes, and the reviewer himself being no radical leftist, although LessWrongers are perhaps less common than radical leftist.
On the other hand, [2] and [3] also contains plenty of challenging facts deliberately left out and obfuscated in mainstream pro-Palestinian narratives. Chief among which is of course the Mizrahim forced exodus from Arab and Muslim countries following 1948 and well into the 1990s, and the generally greater readiness of the Israeli populace - minus the settler scum - to compromise for peace.
Overall: Interesting, accessible, as truthful as it ever gets. Must be first-read for anyone who wants to write more than 10 words on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in public.
I applause LessWrong user Yair: this is what I wish to be on this conflict as well, hopefully successfully, however many failings. I grudgingly applause Benny Morris' commitment to facts despite his horrible opinions.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zJCKn4TSXcCXzc6fi/i-m-a-former-israeli-officer-ama
[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiL95tPaSWJnx5xpB/book-review-1948-by-benny-morris
[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Th4SeayGQyF6pYmZ6/book-review-righteous-victims-a-history-of-the-zionist-arab-1
Your quote
"If you go into this book believing standard Hasbara talking points about how the IDF is the most moral army on earth, Israel only wants peace, the Palestinians only want war, and Israel has simply no choice in what it does, you’re likely to find it makes for very uncomfortable reading."
misses the next sentence
"On the other hand I don’t think it would be wise to update too far in the other direction."
I read [3], very interesting and informative. Good find.
Fuckkkkk, Israel is even more based than I thought....
More or less a representative of the average IQ and empathy level of pro-Israel supporters, but it's never not funny when my case is made for me, very visibly.
I actually think that wokeness isn't a saint here. I will never forget the dumbassery of feminists who scour history for some female historical figure, say some woman who sold poison to wives wanting to kill their husbands (can't remember the name, but it's a real figure), and then celebrate it as a feminist icon. "Slay Queen"-ing themselves into standard old 20 IQ atrocity-celebration.
I will never forget when I was commenting on some reddit about a black guy who punched and killed an aging white old man because the white man said a slur to him, and the redditor horde dogpiled me because - apparently - it's completely ok when BlAcK foLx (^TM) take the law into their own hands and simply decree the death penalty for anyone (without a trial!) who says the naughty words, however reprehensible the naughty word is.
I have since disavowed and became thoroughly disillusioned from head to toes by wokism, even now I always avoid pro-Palestinian advocacy if I sniff woke shibboleths like "Privilege" and "White Supremacy". Of course the Pro-Israel like Scott Aaronson latch into those pro-Palestinians like there is literally nobody but them because they like the easy target of disproving that Israel is a White Supremacy, missing the forest for the trees as usual.
All of this to say, I'm extremely skeptical whenever somebody says "$IDEOLOGY makes my enemies bullies !". I don't disagree that the bullies and scumbags and dumbasses gravitate towards certain ideologies and not others (and that this differ across time and space), I just don't think that there is something inherent in an ideology that makes someone a dumbass bully.
I'm afflicted - you could say - by deep misanthropy: in a certain sense, the default state of an uneducated human is to be a dumbass bully, especially toward people that don't look like them. Liberal kindness, the morality that stems from Rawls' Veil of Ignorance, which treats all humans as black boxes with unknown identity to enforce radical justice and identity-agnosticism, is as rare as life in space, and it's always fragile, always the underdog, always subject to vicious attacks from nearly all angles from staunch Communism to medieval Islamism.
That said, I believe satire and merciless mocking is a very effective tool to defend Liberal Kindness, I don't miss the irony but it is what it is.
> when I see people who can read the book review that you posted detailing Israel’s behavior of open ethnic cleansing and conclude that it was “based”
Wow wow wait, let's not get ahead of ourselves here, we have no actual evidence that SR have read the review I posted before commenting "based", or indeed if she has the capacity to read LessWrong-grade material, or even really read anything at all. Didn't Scott post recently about improved LLM models increasingly doing human-like things? The flipside is humans doing increasingly NPC-like things.
On a more serious note, SR71 once confided to me that she is kind of obsessed with me... that I - quoting her - am "The most annoying guy on this forum", indeed that she would vote for Donald Trump specifically just to annoy me, no other reason. Truly one of my most zealous fans, you can say. I don't even live in the USA, but I live in her head rent-free.
Given this confession, I don't think you could take anything about or from this fundamentally unserious person seriously. Would you not agree?
> I know that such a viewpoint is common in the mainstream of society as well as among people in power
Well, that is indeed true. But it's beside my point about wokism: no amount of detailing the crimes of organized religion across history would excuse support of repressive communism, even if repressive communism happens to also repress organized religion, among the countless others it represses.
Wokism is not quite communism, but I was exaggerating for effect. Wokism does weaken **some** types of bullies (not even reliably at that) at the cost of strengthening other types of bullies, and my impression is that if you measure the total amount of all bullying in the system you hardly feel any change at all.
I get that feelings aren't rational and I admit I sometimes also want to trigger the likes of SR71 with wokism-adjacent things just to see the reactions, but ultimately it's not worth it, and there are other ways of responding to dumbassery other than inverted dumbasserty.
Every day I'm less worried about AI than the day before:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/openai-threatens-bans-for-probing-new-ai-models-reasoning-process/
This story, whatever the reason behind this behaviour is, makes a mockery of OpenAI's mission statements.
"OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."
Yeah maybe, but definitely shareholders first.
"We are building safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome."
So that's why they try to exclude competitors.
I don't get the connection between your first sentence and the remaining comment.
If you look at something with your eyes open, what exactly is the thing you're seeing? I'd love to get a sense of the opinion spread here (I suspect lots of disagreement), if you wouldn't mind answering this straw poll: https://strawpoll.com/XOgOVQbdQn3
Note that you can answer more than one thing. The "other" option is mostly intended for if none of the five seemed correct.
(People's "other" responses stick around as options to be voted on; this was not intended, but I can't change it. The first 5 are the official responses.)
I didn't find the options very complete. I went for other: "There is a data structure in my brain which approximately corresponds to the external object, and I experience it as qualia".
Thanks for this answer. Your option was intended to fit 2+4, i.e., "There's an abstract data structure in the brain (e.g., a 2d array) that corresponds precisely to the image I'm seeing" and "The image I see is made of qualia, which is a well-defined non-material thing, but its causal behavior is reducible/equivalent to a physical description of the brain".
I see why you don't think this fits, but with "corresponds precisely to the image I'm seeing", I meant that it precisely corresponds to the qualia, not to the external object. The match between what you're seeing and the external object is not something I'm asking about.
Thanks for the question. It prompted me to to give
"I suffer the illusion of seeing the thing, and if there was something "wrong" with me, like my eyes being smashed, then this illusion would not happen despite me looking with my eyes open at that thing."
as the answer. Which is the best I've ever come up with.
I have a terrible understanding of consciousness.
I haven't read Nate Silver's latest book but have read enough about it to know he distinguishes between those he calls The River, who are big risk takers like poker players and venture capitalists and The Village, academics and such who work by consensus. He thinks more highly of The River.
Maybe he gets round to it in his book, but when I think of the biggest risk takers I've known I find myself hoping they finally found the peace they sought and hope they Rest in Peace.
But what is a risk-taker? I can more easily say who is not than who is. If you are a CPA, you are not a risk taker unless you legitimately fear going to prison. If you are an actuary, you are not a risk taker. If you have a degree in physics from MIT and trade for a hedge fund, you are not a risk taker unless you do a lot of blow or junk. If you graduated with a degree in math and spent the next year playing poker full time, you are not a risk taker. You haven't burned any bridges.
My prior is that risk-taker are usually losers. Some are very smart and also lucky and happen to be very successful but the great majority are dying early without much savings.
My question is whether Nate Silver's dichotomy means anything. And, if you can define it clearly, whether being a risk-taker is more or less good or bad compared to not being one.
Zvi, IIRC, also talks about this a lot.
I think the best interpretation of what they mean by "risk-taker" has less to do with risk, per se, and is entirely to do with the idea behind "**** or get off the pot".
Suppose, for a moment, there is a card game tournament, in which everybody puts in $1,000, gets $1,000 worth of chips, and then must either play until they run out of chips or win the tournament. (They can also forfeit their chips, I guess, whatever.)
Here's the thing: The actual risky maneuver is *entering the tournament at all*. You're betting $1,000 that you'll end up with the entire pot.
However, in between entering the tournament and either winning or losing, you can win or lose slowly - what, I think, gamblers think of as "not taking risks" - or you can win or lose quickly - "taking risks". Apparently gamblers prefer to play with the people who win or lose quickly, rather than having to play against somebody who draws out the game by, say, refusing to ever raise.
This applies more generally, as well. When they're talking about "taking risks", they're not talking about taking actual risks (actual risks are so far outside their social script they don't even notice them - they'll talk up gamblers but I doubt either would mortgage their house and put it all on a single roulette spin), but rather, about finishing the game you are already committed to quickly, win or lose.
> but I doubt either would mortgage their house and put it all on a single roulette spin
Some people do that to start a restaurant, which is similar except with worse odds of success.
Nearly every prominent person of note is a risk taker. Look at actors who spend years waiting tables hoping they'll get a break one day.
If so, something to bear in mind is that for almost everybody, investing a lot of time and energy on a project that's very unlikely to succeed is a bad dumb move. In poker it's called chasing. So I don't think it makes sense to make a poster of somebody who spent 5 years waiting tables & auditioning (or whatever) and eventually became a star (or what ever a highly successful person is called in their field), with a caption underneath saying "NEVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS."
Agree it's almost impossible to be a superstar without taking big risks. Perhaps there are some Nobel Prize winners who didn't but were just really good and lucky in their field? Or some professional athletes who had no other skills and the choice to pursue their sport was obvious.
I've also heard it said that really successful people tend to spend decades keeping their heads down. If you want to climb the corporate ladder, just do your job really well year after year and play office politics wisely. A leader like Angela Merkel was known as a non-risk-taker who bided her time while her political competition kept sticking their necks out and getting them cut.
I'd guess that because our society generally discourages risk-taking that the median person is better off erring on the side trying not to err. Although the US probably doesn't discourage risk taking as much as Western Europe or most of Asia.
And by discourage I mean actively, brutally punish. Quit your job to start your own business which failed after three years? You're going to have a hard time getting that corporate job back. Got a felony for selling weed in college? Hope you're happy driving a truck the rest of your life.
This is something the software industry handles really well. It is considered quite reasonable to quit your job with a major company to try to build a startup. And if it fails, as most do, you're not an untouchable loser. You can quite reasonably apply for another job at the level you left, or even a bit higher, particularly if you managed to keep things running for some years, since you now have some serious management experience.
This means starting a new company doesn't have all that much downside. On the up-side, you have a small chance of making a fortune. On the downside, you have a large chance of losing a few years of career progression, and maybe not even that.
Yeah, the main cost is opportunity cost since you could be paid so much money at big companies, or you could work at a startup and be paid only in lottery tickets.
<quote>My prior is that risk-taker are usually losers.</quote>
Doesn't this need to be true?
If the EV was high, then either the variation is even higher or it's not much of a risk. I would think that definitionally, a "risk taker" is someone who either chases many/all risks, in which case they'll eventually lose to the house, or someone who takes high EV/high risk bets. High risk means most fail, even if the few that succeed become exceptionally rich. So yes, risk takers are usually losers. Smart risk takers will on average win, but the median of that same group will be losers.
Risk takers are very good for society though, as they create new businesses and invent things. It's so good, in fact, that we should incentive them by helping them land softly and try again. Maybe their third restaurant will be a success!
Risk is associated with variance of outcomes rather than expected outcomes, so I wouldn't say that risk-takers have to be losers.
I remember an episode of the (UK) Apprentice where a contestant used casino imagery to sell a fragrance for men, and the feedback was "sorry to have to tell you, but gambling = debts = misery". So...I get what you mean. Sometimes risks can't be avoided though. Perhaps returning to the language of fortitude as a virtue would be helpful as it includes sub-virtues like patience.
Girls here in the Sonoran Desert are taking up flag football, which seems to me a good thing. Kids are cursed by their smart phones and social media -- and deserve the time and experience of a healthier childhood and puberty.
In our county of a million, two local high schools established girls' flag football teams last year, and now find their players mentoring six new teams. Girls need more than quinceaneras. Imagine the experiences they'll have if they develop programs in parity with the boys' programs. It could be big.
That has to be tons better for their emotional health than social media.
Absolutely. But even better is spending long summer days wandering around outside and playing with the neighborhood kids.
Does anyone have data or experience at the intersection of aphantasia and DMT?
For the SAT, how does the median score correlate with the test-taker's age? What is the median score for a 14-year old, a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, and an 18-year old?
I can't find the data broken down by age.
I found an article about SAT scores for
13 year olds. It’s here: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Participants-are-separated-into-quartiles-based-on-their-age-13-SAT-M-SAT-V-Composite_fig2_24410681
I doubt there’s enough data on scores
for people younger than 16. Few
take the SAT that young, and the ones that do are not representative of typical kids their age— most kids who take the SAT at a very
young age are very bright
Here is some old data on the ACT by grade level of test taker https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info-Brief-2014-21.pdf
And this...
Power companies are pushing back against the steeply increasing power requirements of data centers (read AI).
"Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are fighting a proposal by an Ohio power company to significantly increase the upfront energy costs they’ll pay for their data centers, a move the companies dubbed “unfair” and “discriminatory” in documents filed with Ohio’s Public Utility Commission last month. American Electric Power Ohio said in filings that the tariff increase was needed to prevent new infrastructure costs from being passed on to other customers such as households and businesses if the tech industry should fail to follow through on its ambitious, energy intensive plans."
The article is behind the WaPo paywall, but you get a few free reads a month. It's worth reading if you're interested in the problem of powering AI.
Not discussed in the article, but In California, the utilities seem to be passing along the costs to consumers, which is causing angst among consumers and business owners as their rates climb.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/13/data-centers-power-grid-ohio/
The WSJ of yesterday, the 18th, published an essay in its opinion pages by Sean Patrick Cooper titled 'Data Centers Make Terrible Neighbors,' regarding the politics of 'non-disclosure' agreements between tech companies and municipalities. It's pretty revealing.
Africans paid $4 an hr tag images so that AI can respond to verbal prompts with appropriate images . Maybe they'll hire some Africans to generate power via Stairmasters or some such. To get hired to tag images Africans must have a college degree and speak fluent English, but these qualifications are unnecessary for the stairmaster, so they can be paid considerably less
than the smart fluent people who went to the trouble of getting a college degree.
> Maybe they'll hire some Africans to generate power via Stairmasters or some such
I am afraid this has already been done.
My guess would be they would probably prefer tagging images.
Yes. It’s an awful job though. There are rules that have to do with keeping the data they have secure. They must work alone, and cannot tell anyone details about what they do, and keep their pace brisk, and pass periodic accuracy checks. I keep picturing somebody making it through college, full of pride and hope because they have fluent English and a BS, and then winding up with this.
Bears some resemblance to more than a few bartenders I’ve met in my time. Cab drivers as well, but not so much anymore.
I had a cab ride in NYC back in the 80’s, got chatting with the driver (it started with him telling me I couldn’t smoke pot in the car- tobacco was still ok ) and it turned out he was a fully qualified physician. He was a Russian…
And then there was the young woman who used to keep me in red wine who was graduated as an architect with about $200,000 of student debt. Full of hopes and dreams, and consumed by disillusionment…
On the brighter side, she was replaced by a young Irish girl who kept me in red wine and eventually moved back to Ireland and is working for Google last I heard. But you could tell by the way she tended bar that she had a future.
Anyway, it won’t be long before an AI will be able to tag images for another AI and then they will all be out of work. And taxis will be self driving, so they’ll be screwed there as well. In a world of super-intelligent AI, what is the point of getting a really good formal education? it started with slide rules and then graduated to calculators, and the next step is coming. Isn’t the logical extension of getting someone else to work for you slavery?
Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode about poor people being forced to spend their days on exercise bikes to power civilization?
They used to run mines in South America exactly like this. It’s not Science Fiction.
Roman galleys as well.
I doubt you could profitably do it. The Food->Human->Turbine will be more expensive to run than Fuel->Combustor->Turbine
Oh, they did very much profitably do it. look back to when the Spaniards were exploiting the gold mines in South America with slave labor.
They needed to be constantly drained. Which meant a bunch of men on a big wheel turning it to run the pump. They were kept in traces, and when one dropped dead, they just cut him out of the traces and put it in another one.
And the mine next door that's just dumping the Purina Slave Kibble straight into the boiler of the steam engine, pumps more water and so mines more gold at less cost. Probably winds up buying the first mine and then freeing the slaves because the steam engine is cheaper.
The now-freedmen may then of course starve for lack of kibble, see also Henry, John. So there are potential pitfalls. But that sort of brute-force industrial slavery went out of style when decent steam engines became available.
"Build their own power plants" is being actively explored. Data centers are among the more promising potential early customers for small modular fission reactors.
Why would they want to use nuclear reactors that don't exist and will take many many years to get past legal when they do exist, rather than just buying gas turbines off the shelf from GE or whomever? I am very, very confident that a gigawatt of COTS gas turbines will be *much* cheaper than a gigawatt of "small modular fission reactors", and available next year rather than (maybe) next decade. Fuel costs won't eat up the difference on a timescale of less than a decade - by which point I am assured that the new ASI will have built us all quantum zero-point energy generators or whatnot.
Is it just that they're irrationally technophilic nerds who will pay any price to use the shiniest new technology even though the old stuff still does everything they need? Or is there some practical advantage that I am missing.
That's a good question. The articles I've seen are light on details, so it's not clear that any of the potential buyers (Google, Microsoft, and Oracle are the names I've seen most often) are actually committing to buy anything, or if they're just doing planning for how they'd use SMRs if/when NuScale or whoever has some to sell.
I did see something about Oracle having applied for and gotten some kind of permit to install three SMRs, but I can't find details on if this is a stage in the NRC approval process or a local building permit or what. And it seems odd that they could get a permit to install a nuclear reactor that doesn't actually exist yet.
That's my attitude, too.
The particular objection here, as I understand it, is not about whether or not to build out the infrastructure, but about who should pay for it.
Yes, but somewhere in the article, one of the power company spokespersons asked (and I'm paraphrasing) what if they built out the infrastructure and then the data centers are shut down? — with the implication this would happen if the AI bubble bursts. Then the power companies would be left holding the amortized buildout costs without any income to cover them.
No pricing model scales perfectly, right?
It would if they charged the data centers up front for the costs of upgrading their infrastructure. But that's why the data center owners are screaming. LOL!
Yes. I was just thinking that utilities, telephone companies and cable companies have always operated on the idea that they will hook you up at their expense and make it up on the fees afterwards. I got the impression that model does not scale into the demands of data centers and their power needs and infrastructure needs.
How true do we think this statement is?
"The things that really matter in this civilization are done by professionals (as opposed to amateurs.)"
I'm thinking that's about 90% true. The main exception that comes to mind is parenting, which is in fact done by amateurs, but even that is increasingly professionalized, through day care and full-day schooling.
"Really matters" is a problem here, because it's undefined. I think, based on the 90% metric, that you referring to the vital infrastructure functions of society - power, food, logistics, construction and repair, etc., and not things that "matter" to people but are not in those fields (such as friendship, love, entertainment and a bunch of other things). If you are further defining "professional" to be anyone paid to do a thing, or at least paid for regular work, that pulls in most of the people working in that field, even if they are bad at it or could never maintain the vital functions on their own. Excluding those two huge caveats, I would say that it's at least directionally true. We would never have a percent that would be fully accepted, but it would be high.
I disagree that parenting is done by amateurs. Parenting is mostly about transferring knowledge on how to independently exist in the world, so that your child can eventually independently exist in the world. The core relevant experience required is "existing in the world". A lot of the transfer of knowledge is done implicitly, by your child observing what you do.
Some people do better at existing in the world than others, but no-one is an amateur. 18 year-olds have babies and do fine. Whereas if you gave my 5 year-old a baby he would be a terrible parent, because he really is an amateur.
Trivially false, nobody is a professional parent.
Parenting is the big exception, yes. Going by your definition of professionals (people that are paid to do something, not necessarily trained to do something), volunteer organizations are probably another significant exception. Some volunteers are in fact trained, but they're not paid (at least not anything approaching a normal salary).
Taking these exceptions into consideration... I'd maybe say that your statement is 75-to-80% true.
But amateurs typically do things better. Ask any beer judge, they'll tell you amateur beer events have better beers than commercial events. Amateurs are in love with their craft, sparing no expense nor inconvenience, pride and love are the driving forces. Professionals on the other hand have budgets, deadlines, deliverables, all the impediments to quality.
I think parenting is big enough that you can't fit your "90% true" in the same room with it. Possibly related, there's a lot of noncommercial sex that I'd say really matters to a whole lot of people.
But for most other things, the Ferengi 13th Rule of Acquisition applies: "Anything worth doing is worth doing for money". And anything that "really matters", there will be probably people willing to pay to have it done and done right. There will be hobbyists, yes, but the people who do it right and do it at scale will probably have found a way to do it professionally.
> Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.< true.
Is anything worth doing for money worth doing?
No, but it doesn't have to be symmetric. Simplistically (and excluding e.g. parenthood as already noted), all the stuff worth doing will be done by professionals, and some stuff that's not worth doing will also be done by professionals. And even stuff that's not worth doing, often still *matters*.
I wonder what you mean by "matters" versus "worth doing". The way I typically math it out, "worth doing" includes anything where the return or savings in $$ exceeds the cost, but also includes things that are hard to measure in $$, but nevertheless are so important to someone that they'd rather give up some amount of $$ than do without (e.g. spend another year with grandma), so they're effectively measurable in $$ after all. Or perhaps more fundamentally, measurable in the portion of one's life spent pursuing it.
I can't think of anything I would call "mattering" that I couldn't measure that way, but maybe I'm just low on coffee. (Cost: about 30 seconds, spread over about 600.)
To take an extreme example, The invasion of Ukraine by Russia's professional army is clearly not worth doing, even for Russia. But it even more clearly *matters*.
And a thing need not be actively destructive to qualify here. Large vanity projects like e.g. building extravagant skyscrapers in the desert, are mostly a waste of resources and I would argue not worth doing. But they do matter, only in part because they are a massive waste of resources that could have been put to better use. And, again, are mostly done by professionals.
It isn’t symmetric. I agree. And I also agree that stuff “not worth doing“ still matters. And there are people who do stuff that’s “not worth doing” really really well.
The whole thing is a bit of a rabbit hole because professional and amateur are really slippery words . Amateur originally meant just what it sounds like; for the *love of it. It has a very different connotation in its current form. It usually implies a lesser capability.
Similarly, professional implies “better.” I guess you could argue [whatever the issue is] anyway you wanted, depending on how you define those two words.
I might think of “professional” as doing something in the most pragmatic and efficient way possible; this is particularly applicable when talking about how one earns a living. Being an amateur frees one from those conditions. Pragmatism and efficiency are not part of the calculation.
As an aside, I don’t think parenting has any place in this discussion. All the professions that have been discussed here associated with parenting should be considered resources for the parent, not an alternative. Parenting is neither a vocation nor a profession. It’s something you do when you have a child, one way or the other, meaning you do it to the best of your ability with the resources available, or you don’t and walk away.
Are farmers professionals?
Because they do the thing that almost certainly matters the most in our civilization.
The moment you pay someone they become a professional. There are people in love with farming and there are people who just go through the motions.
As long as those motions result in food in my pantry I'm fine if they've lost the passion.
Most, but not all of them. The "Gentleman Farmer" (hobby) is a thing - I know one.
Yes they are. I've edited the statement to address what was a common point of misunderstanding or miscommunication.
What do you mean by "really matter," though? If someone with no professional skills is enjoying life and thriving, doesn't that matter? If it doesn't, what's the point of the professionals who manage the production and transport of food, water, power, etc. to the person, the doctors who treat the person's illnesses, etc? Why do the professionals matter, beyond the good they do for humanity as a whole?
If I rephrase as , "The things we consider really important in this civilization are done by professionals," does that clarify anything? I'm not suggesting that "really matter" has to be somehow objectively evaluated.
"really matter" and your rephrase are pretty subjective and vary for each individual. For many artists/musicians and their fans the art really matters, and many artists/musicians are not professionals. AKA - "day job".
I still don't agree. If the wellbeing of humanity doesn't matter, what does? It seems like there's a buried assumption somewhere that the higher level of intelligence and training required for professionals' tasks matters in and of itself. Why does it, though? We're not in high school any more, and the universe doesn't give a shit about our SAT scores. There's an attitude I pick up a lot on here that smart people just matter more. They're better. There could even be a formula: Everyone's value is one, multiplied by the number of standard deviations above or below the mean their IQ is.
Oh, by "professionals," I don't mean highly-trained (typically college-educated) people. I just mean people who are doing what they do, for a living. Professional, as opposed to amateur, not professional as opposed to unskilled labor or trades-work.
Do you mean work, as opposed to plain fucking around?
I think I still don't agree, and I'm really not into disagreeing for sport.
I agree that if you poll people about what activities really matter, they will name jobs, including blue collar jobs -- house painters, garbage men, etc. But if you ask people who really matters to *them,* you get the names of the people who understand them & care about them. Parents, siblings, friends and also empathic and kind strangers, hold the world together in a way that people aren't aware of. that’s why when the subject of eugenics comes up I always say
if we can only select for one thing, let’s select for empathy. Here's a story from my life: I was on vacation and got a migraine. It was so awful that I went to the ER, where they gave me a shot of imitrex that just erased the thing over the course of 20 mins of so. But what sticks in my mind is the nurse who took care of me. He checked in on me often before the shot, and also while it was taking effect, and every time he did he was profoundly comforting, mostly because I felt sure he genuinely sympathized. They was something he did when he asked me how I was doing -- I forget what it was now, something like cupping my cheek in his hand -- that was very tender. (And it did not seem at all sexual -- and judging by his manner, he was a gay man anyhow, and I'm a woman). That nurse has stuck in my mind for decades, overshadowing even the miracle of imitrex. Even now when I think of him I feel the ghost of a warm glow.
What constitutes "this civilization"? If only the professionals are following the law, or having fun, you don't have a civilization. You have a fortress surrounded by barbarians.
"Peace Love and Understanding are done by professionals."
Although I think the OP meant "really important *positive* things in this civilization," I immediately thought of all the negative things done by professionals. A professional military can cause a lot of negative impacts on a lot of people (military and civilian) when they go into action. Of course, unprofessional armies such as Hamas and the Russian army do lots of damage, too. Professional financial criminals can do a lot of damage to individuals and damage the faith in our financial institutions.
And by professionals, does the OP mean someone with a professional degree or certification? Farm laborers with no degrees or certifications harvest our crops. That's pretty important work! And I don't think civilzation would function very smoothly without construction workers, meat packers, garbage collectors, cashiers, fast food workers, janitors (etc.).
Many artists and all children are amateurs. Surely they matter.
> And by professionals, does the OP mean someone with a professional degree or certification?
No, this is "professional" as opposed to "amateur" or "volunteer".
Well then the question is just whether people are willing to pay money for things they want, which seems trivially true. Every professional is in a line of work someone values, because otherwise there wouldn't be enough support for it to be a profession.
It’s not easy to remain optimistic about the long term progress of humanity when the events of the present day make it feel like we might be slipping backwards.
Matthew Yglesias had a link in his Substack post today that brightened my outlook at least a bit.
The link is to a transcript of a 2019 podcast episode with Jonathon Capehart and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee
In the post he suggests that the overt racism of George Wallace was largely instrumental and that a visit from black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm while he was in a hospital bed recovering from an attempted assassin’s bullets affected a sincere change of heart in Wallace toward black people.
This part is from a speech by Wallace’s daughter in a majority black church in 1979.
WALLACE KENNEDY: When Congresswoman Chisholm sat by my daddy’s bed, he asked her, “What are your people going to say about your coming here?” Shirley Chisholm replied, “I know what they’re going to say but I wouldn’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone.” Daddy was overwhelmed by her truth, and her willingness to face the potential negative consequences of her political career because of him — something he had never done for anyone else.
Shirley Chisholm had the courage to believe that even George Wallace could change. She had faith in him. And there would be others who followed. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm planted a seed of new beginnings in my father’s heart. A chance to make it right. An opportunity for a better way for the seven-year journey he would take from there to this very church.
On a Sunday in 1979, Daddy’s arrival to this church was unannounced and unexpected. But for an attendant rolling his wheelchair to the front of this sanctuary, he was alone. What the congregation must have thought when he said,
“I’ve learned what suffering means in a way that was impossible. I think I can understand something of the pain that black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain and I can only ask for your forgiveness.”
As he was leaving the church, the congregation began singing “Amazing Grace.”
________
Link to
Opinions | How segregationist George Wallace became a model for racial reconciliation: ‘Voices of the Movement’ Episode 6
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/16/changed-minds-reconciliation-voices-movement-episode/
Nah. Come on. Listen to The Drive-By Truckers great album "Southern Rock Opera" which is about George Wallace, Neil Young and Lynard Skynyrd. According to the Truckers from Alabama, whom I'd trust with my life, Wallace only became a segregationist for opportunistic reasons in '68. His prior stance was relatively progressive for Alabama at the time. He just sold his soul for what seemed like a populist position at the time.
Really, Southern Rock Opera is one of the greatest albums ever made and will give you more truth than that podcast.
> Wallace only became a segregationist for opportunistic reasons in '68
That’s what Matthew Yglesias means by: “the overt racism of George Wallace was largely instrumental”. Wallace had tried “build better roads and better schools” in his campaigning but it didn’t work. The “segregation now, segregation forever” stuff did.
Half of the podcast was a speech by George Wallace’s own daughter.
As a piece, the podcast was a story of redemption from havIng “sold his soul for what seemed like a populist position at the time.”
I might check out Drive by Truckers but I think I’ll always remain an Allman Brothers guy listening to Richard Betts pickin’ on that red guitar.
> the events of the present day make it feel like we might be slipping backwards
Yes, and exclusively due to one side. Speaking of assassins...
Two things can be true at the same time:
“1. This potential assassination attempt on Donald Trump is horrible and should be strongly condemned by ALL of us.”
“2. There is no politician in America today who spews as much hate or incites as much violence with reckless/dangerous rhetoric as Donald Trump does.”
Former congressman Joe Walsh (R-Ill.)
Your side is actively shooting presidents, criminally prosecuting your political opponents, taking your political opponents off the ballot, burning down cities, and firebombing churches, but yes, of course, the mean tweets are the REAL Threat To Democracy!!!
It's far from clear what side Thomas Crooks was on. I'm not sure he can even be said to have been on his own side.
And the guy caught on the golf course was a Trump voter who'd recently soured on that and had supported Haley and a fringe candidate in this year's GOP primaries. Not sure which "side" that puts him on but it sure isn't the Dems.
Honestly my default guess for both men is team nutcase.
An alternative hypothesis is that Wallace was following his political incentives. When black voters were effectively disenfranchised, he espoused policies that appealed to the dominant voting bloc. After black voters became an effective voting bloc, he adjusted to the new incentive structure.
Possibly, but I think it is also possible that a life changing personal setback can cause someone to develop more empathy for others in need.
Total non sequitur except that it's an upper: Cat's really like these interactive toys from China. They're like roombas -- zoom around randomly, and so maintain the cats' interest.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083DRQ96Y?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJNV3752?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
They can get themselves out of corners, etc. All are designed so that they turn on once an hour for 5 or 10 mins. After that they doze, but wake up instantly if jiggled by a paw. I bought a couple because I felt bad about leaving my cats alone for hours when I went in to the office.
Just ordered mine. I have two cats and they play with each other, but it wouldn't hurt for them to get more play.
More play, more gainz (Starting Meow program).
Thanks for the tip! Just ordered the first one hopefully my cats aren't too old and lazy to enjoy it
They seem to be irresistible to cats. Mine take one sniff and walk away from many things, but this thing, the day I presented it, they followed around all evening. My timid cat was scared of it at first. You can make them less daunting by putting them in a box or in the bathtub, or inside a cat tunnel if you have one.
I’m checking the link out and considering getting one now. If I have trouble locating the shyer of my two cats I just have to pick up the laser pointer that projects the red dot. He recognizes the sound of the attached key ring rattling and comes running.
I have heard that laser pointers are actually not that great a cat toy because they can never catch it, so they get frustrated. Better for them to sometimes succeed.
Yeah, I’ve wondered about the frustration factor. They probably have more fun when I use the fabric ‘kite tail’ at the end of a plastic stick, kind of a fly rod casting action involved with that one.
They get to grab the fabric and kick the hell out of it so it seems like it appeals to their hunter instinct.
Yeah, they love that red dot. The trouble is, they need you to make it come alive. (Actually, I've seen gizmos on Amazon pets section that will project and randomly move a red dot. Did not get one because I was worried about it shining into cats' eyes when they come up to investigate the device. Do you think it makes sense to worry about that?). Here's a video of my cats with one of the devices zooming in and around their cat tunnels. https://vimeo.com/1010343326/01f745df2e?share=copy
They're pretty new to it and the more timid one, the black one, is still just watching. Orange guy's having a ball.
Yeah, I usually get tired of moving the dot before the cat tires of playing. Not sure how dangerous it is to vision but I am careful not to shine it into their eyes.
This is referring to digging up evidence of ‘transgressions’ that were not considered wrong or bad in the past and retroactively holding them to a new standard I assume.
If that’s what you are getting at, I agree that’s idiotic and wrong.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is really, really looking to fill this scientific software position. You would be the software expert working with scientists to improve the architecture / usability / integration of physics codes. The pay is probably less than what you could get in silicon valley, but it is more than academia. Plus it's really cool to be working on fusion energy with a bunch of other very talented people at a place that is delivering results.
https://jobs.lever.co/cfsenergy/45e11564-57db-4059-9557-2adbb137d146
I interviewed for a different software position at CFS (on the SPARC I&C team) about three years ago. I didn't get the job, but I came away with a favorable impression of the people I talked to. I had been following them for a while before applying, after coming across a YouTube video of one of Professor Whyte's talks some time in 2018.
Thanks for posting. I am considering applying.
I don't know what the situation in fusion is like, but in my current scientific field we do sometimes have to use hastily written, not entirely user-friendly software, though we also see more polished software being developed as the field grows and some techniques start to mature. I've been learning software development in such an environment...
Please do apply! Yes this is quite a common problem.
Feel free to ignore this but the non-technical parts of this (the job description, not what you wrote) sound really off-putting to me. This kind of marketing speech is the furthest one can get from "authentic", it's so transparently made to sound impressive that it sets off all of my bullshit sensors, deservedly or not.
Might just be me, and if anyone wants to tell me that, no, this is in fact how you reach the most people I'll probably believe you.
hahaha fair enough. I actually do agree with you that the written description is poor (I didn't write it but maybe I can help get it updated to something better).
The best I can say is that there really are some very brilliant people working there. And that CFS has made groundbreaking progress in HTS magnets such as the 20T toroidal model field coil (search on youtube) and that the high field approach to fusion that CFS has adopted has some real advantages (there's some discussion in the comments here https://www.construction-physics.com/p/will-we-ever-get-fusion-power, but for the technical I would recommend the SPARC Physics Basis papers in Journal of Plasma Physics).
If you have further recs on how to improve the description to land better with software people then I'd appreciate it. We're in an interesting position of physicists trying to recruit outside our normal networks so it can be rocky.
For no particularly good reason, I did a bit of dive into the recently-released Chinese AI Security Governance Framework.
https://solresol.substack.com/p/the-chinese-government-understands
I'm no expert in Chinese politics (although I know a bit about AI security and governance) but I thought a few people here might like it.
Does anyone know why Nate's model is so bullish on Trump?
All the way back in August, he had the person who won Pennsylvania as having a 90+% chance to win the election (https://www.natesilver.net/p/welcome-to-the-bizarre-world-of-conditional). He currently has Harris narrowly ahead in Pennsylvania (D+0.2, https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-president-election-polls-model). If we assume it's a 50-50 probability split (seems a reasonable approximation for a 0.2 point lead) and do a simple math calculation using the numbers from the conditional probabilities, then this would suggest Harris currently has a 48% chance of winning. There's probably some wiggle room here for variations in other details, changes in what "winning in PA means" (e.g. less scenarios where it's a polling error in R's favor, resulting in D+4 in PA), etc, but Trump's odds seem much bigger than I'd expect from those two numbers.
Update: Silver now has it as a toss-up again. Sounds like recent polls were good for Harris.
Silver said he was discounting the post-convention bump that Harris got because he expected it would be temporary. But the bump seems to be holding. I noticed that some people on TwiXter were asking when and if he'd update his forecast. I don't think he has, yet.
It sounds like the big problem is that there haven't been many high quality recent state polls so the old ones are overweighted.
D+0.2% is the average of polls of PA voters. That's a big part of Silver's model for who's likely to win PA, but far from the only part.
In 2020, Biden won PA by 1.2%, which is 3.3 percentage points less than his national popular vote. And in 2016, Clinton lost PA by 0.7% while winning the national popular vote by 2.1%, so she underperformed in PA by 2.8%. So in the last two elections, Democrats have underperformed national popular votes in PA by about 3%. Apply this as an adjustment to Harris's 2.2% lead in national polls, and that implies Trump is actually ahead in PA by 0.8%. Last I checked, Silver's model uses a weighted average of adjusted national polls (using a similar calculation to my illustration but probably not exactly the same) and state polls to estimate who's currently leading in that state. The relative weights depend on how many good recent polls there are of the state in question.
The same mechanism is applied in reverse, using adjusted state polls as an additional signal of the national popular vote. This is used along with the national polling average to determine the input to state averages I described in the previous paragraph. So if Trump is overperforming what we'd expect from national polls in polls of other states, then the model's estimate of national popular vote is going to get adjusted upwards a little.
And there's also @DangerouslyUnstable's point: just looking at current polls gives you what Silver calls a "now-cast", but there are further fiddly bits in the model to account for how things are likely to change between now and election day. In addition to the convention bounce adjustment, I think there's also stuff forecasting how people currently polling as undecided or third-party supporters are likely to vote on election day. I think there's also a "fundamentals" factor where there's a prior for how each state is likely to vote based on demographics and past election results which is weighed more heavily early in the election cycle and gradually declines to zero by election day.
His model takes what the _current_ polls are, and then does a lot of work to figure out what it _expects_ the polls to be on election day. I couldn't tell you the exact reason (although a week ago it was most likely the convention bounce adjustments, and it might still be the tail end of that), but whatever it is, the model must expect the polls to regress for Harris a bit.
He's probably doing some kind of data correction for the polls or something like that. The polls were bullish on Clinton and Biden both compared to the final results. I know he does that for the nationwide percent, such that a +3% Harris is something like a 50/50 for the chance to win. California is a big part of that (Clinton ran up a big lead there while losing a few states by small amounts), but he may be doing the same for individual states. I'm not a paid subscriber, so I don't know if he talks about those corrections in detail anywhere.
He does, yes.
The overall point he keeps repeating is that the swing states are all that matter in assessing the POTUS election-outcome odds, and that good-quality polling of those individual states has been fairly scarce until just this calendar month.
Shameless self-plug:
I have recently written about Benthan's Bulldog's argument for God, which Scott recently linked. I argue that his claim that the number of possible people is Beth-2 (that is, the same cardinality as the powerset of the real numbers, or the powerset of the powerset of the integers) is implausible, and that we can likely enumerate all meaningfully distinct human-like brain states in universes which have roughly the same physical foundation as ours.
Stepping a bit back, I also look at the root claim that the number of universes should be Beth-2, which can be traced back to Quine's Democritian worlds. I think that from a physical perspective, the modelling with f:R^4->{0,1} where f(r,t)=1 iff a particle occupies position r at time t is not well suited to gain knowledge about the possible configurations a universe can have, because almost all functions f would seriously break physics.
I end up giving tips about how to run universes with pre-determined lifetime with finite resources in a way which the inhabitants will not notice, and rant a bit that the central example of an irrational number should be some uncomputable, undescribable monstrosity rather than sqrt(2) or pi.
If this sounds like your cup of tea, read the whole thing (or parts of it) here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cEq2ZMSJ88gyTryio/keeping-it-less-than-real-against-possible-people-or-worlds
I had an odd thought. We've all been reading of the danger of AI doing most of its training off the Internet, which is increasingly full of AI-generated content. This leads to a kind of poisoning of the training, so that AI's responses are dumber to the extent it's been exposed to this mix of material, so that AI thinking in general is increasingly handicapped by a data version of mad cow disease.
It just occurred to me now that we humans who live primarily in a built environment, surrounded by things designed to be useful or to convince, may be (in a much longer loop) slowly diminished in ways we can't really see.
Moral, I guess? Get out into the woods, the woods aren't going to try to convince you of anything.
City people tend to be much more neurotic, though more educated.
Or maybe it’s what we call “folk wisdom“
The city I live in is packed with things and people that challenge me, delight me, and expand my worldview, many times every day.
I do love being in nature but it's not at all mentally stimulating in the same way. A life spent in the woods may be peaceful and wholesome but, on its own, will not lead to a brilliant mind.
Moral, for me? Have as many experiences as possible. City, woods, other cities, deserts, all of it.
I agree on AI's capacity for compounding and accelerating the spread of bad data.
It certainly happens without the effect of validating the internet's own 'narratives', though. In at least one regard, AI is simply a more advanced form of gaslighting, which worked for Sam Adams, and still does for countless promoters of gadgets and products on cable TV, and today's suburban 'actvists'. It may just give performative social movements and bad political ideas more traction.
The greed of politics and consumerism will no doubt trivialize AI -- at the same time it improves some technology and aids in helping make some medical advances and such.
> AI is simply a more advanced form of gaslighting,
I so agree with you. I think it is still very significant, however.
I should have said, 'Along with its many useful and helpful applications, AI will likely also be used for more effective gaslighting.' I don't want to contribute to the noise. Sorry.
There's a more fundamental problem with AI training - what do we want the AI to do? Training on AI-generated data may be a recursive problem as you suggest, but we're also training AIs on Reddit and other human-generated output of dubious worth. But, if we want the AI to act like a human and use normal human speech, maybe Reddit is a great place to go. Of course, if Reddit is abnormal in any systematic way, you are also teaching it to be similarly abnormal - political opinions, humor, grammar, whatever.
If we train it on scientific papers, we might be happy with the rigorous responses it provides (although with the replication crisis, maybe not), but maybe the way it talks to people is stilted and off-putting. We could train it on classic novels, but then it uses biases from hundreds of years ago and talks like an 18th century Englishman.
The current goal seems to be to train it on everything humans have ever done, and help it identify when it should talk like Lord Cumberland or Genghis Khan and when it should use modern slang.
We don't have to use the same AI for everything. We could train one AI on conversation and use it in call centers. Train another AI on scientific papers and use it in research.
I've been into the woods a lot, I don't recall having any great epiphanies. I got my cornea scratched out one time though.
I go questing for the enchanted forest a lot and have had many good epiphanies. Speaking to the original post question - yes living primarily in a built environment does diminish life experience - there are people who don't know that some of the food they eat grows from the ground or was once an animal.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/heinleinforum/posts/10163156148575695
I regret the facebook link, but I can't find the video on youtube.
From the link: "Recently, Google has released a massive upgrade to this tool that allows you to generate a spoken word podcast-style discussion of the input material. The output that it generates is nearly indistinguishable from normal human conversation and it is able to critique the input material in a novel and surprisingly insightful manner. While I realize that these tools do not represent 'true' intelligence, they still do demonstrate a stunning simulacrum of the real thing."
The voices are better than most computer voices, and there's an impression of human personalities, but with less emotional variation.
It gets at least two things blatantly wrong about the story. The reporter died from a sign falling on him. It was the young couple which was killed by a car. Getting this right would have taken minimal attention. Or was the ai imitating human errors?
It would take a little more processing to grasp that the insurance companies hired assassins to kill Pinero. The ai said it was a mystery.
>It gets at least two things blatantly wrong about the story. The reporter died from a sign falling on him. It was the young couple which was killed by a car. <
I'm assuming from this that they decided to test their AI by making it give commentary on the Final Destination series, in which the concept of death hunts down teenagers for the pettiest vengeance possible.
This is the future we've all hoped for.
Not an AI, a highly limited oracle. I recommend reading the story, it's not very long, has a number of good features, and is very impressive for a first story.
The device is looks down the four-dimensional time line for a person, and identifies when the end happens.
The sign falling isn't intended as slapstick, it's an accident which couldn't plausibly be arranged.
Here is a question I have wondered about for a while. Years ago, while hanging out with friends, one asked: During an erotic encounter, what is the ideal ratio of kissing to intercourse? I thought to myself, "that sounds like a false dichotomy. Shouldn't they happen simultaneously during intercourse?" But I have subsequently noticed in the media that, when intercourse is depicted, the couple is rarely seen kissing. So I am curious what the norm actually is, and what people's preferences are.
By coincidence I just read an interview with an expert on kissing this week. Two bits from that are related to your question:
- Kissing is not a biological instinct, but it is a social convention. Only about half of the cultures all over the world kiss, and not all those kiss in sexual context.
- In Hollywood there was a "production code" formulated in 1934, which determined what could or couldn't be shown on screen. Part of the code was that kisses could last at most 3 second. Since it was still the most intimate form of interaction, it played a huge role, and people would pay for a movie ticket just to see a kiss between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. But the production code eroded in the 60s, and since then love scenes became a lot more explicit and kissing has lost significance. First in movies, but also (at least that is what he claimed) in Western societies in general.
Oh, and his answer on whether kissing makes sex better:
"I can't answer that scientifically, personally I would say: sex mostly gets better when it lasts longer. And kissing is a good way to prolong the activity."
EDIT: Slight correction, only half of societies have *romantic-sexual* kisses. Parents kissing their children is much more wide-spread and maybe universal. From the authors of the original study:
"We looked at 168 cultures and found couples kissing in only 46 percent of them. Societies with distinct social classes are usually kissers; societies with fewer or no social classes, like hunter-gatherer communities, are usually not."
https://www.sapiens.org/culture/is-romantic-kissing-a-human-universal/
See _Sex Is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays_, which argues that sex is as much a cultural production as music, and that people are done a grave disservice by being told that sex is both natural and it's important to just get it right.
Fascinating.
I am re-examining my whole relationship to kissing at the moment
From personal experience it can be physically awkward to perform both simultaneously
Interresting. Are you on the taller side, at leaat relative to the height of your partner? (Or, if you are referring to being on the receiving end, are you on the shorter side?)
My first substack! Explaining how kink and BDSM are not about "weird sex", but adapting to the dating marketplace as a boring guy. Essentially it is a "honest, consensual PUA" where the exciting stuff are explicitly negotiated:
https://justanogre.substack.com/p/kink-is-not-weird-sex-vanilla-dating
Or in other words the realization that you don't have to BE exciting, just DO something exciting.
Judging how hard it actually is to find a kinky guy, I am very much not convinced by this argument.
And I've tried dating vanilla guys and teaching them what I like and they're just not into it, so saying it's something other than innate really doesn't make sense.
And I've hear it's similarly difficult the other way around.
Men outnumber women on Fet 4:1, the issue is 95% of "Doms" will be completely fake, either just thinks kinky women are easy, or just likes rough sex, or wants to jump into things without investing time into building trust and figuring out risk-awareness and specific consent. But this is just why it works well for the 5%.
Interestingly, real life events work less well, even though everybody on Fet seems to say the opposite! I wonder if location/culture plays a role, I distinctly remember the part in Desperate Housewives that a couple moves into a house and the neighbors come to greet them, and I thought how completely creepy people would find that in Austria that some stranger knocks on your door just because they live nearby.
I'm not sure that has anything to do with your initial hypothesis, which seems to imply kink is done to make one more interesting, but if that were the case it would be something people could choose, rather than the majority of people on Fet or Feeld being fakes.
I admit it is a little confusing and not very clearly thought out. I think I meant it at some point that there has to be an actual passion for it. Then this passion has the very nice side effect of becoming more interesting.
I don't know that Fetlife is a great measure of interest in kink, either in ratios of men to women wanting kink, or in how many men on Fet are kinky.
In my experience, a *tremendous* number of men on Fet are straight vanilla dudes there for the free amateur vanilla porn (which is why the "Explore" page's photos and videos almost always are and almost always have been entirely conventionally attractive women nude or in vanilla porn poses).
hm. but why when free vanilla porn is ubiquitous?
Are there data on the life satisfaction of people who seriously attempted suicide but were rescued or otherwise survived?
Did their lives improve after the attempt? Are they happy that they did not end up committing suicide?
Honestly, if they survived, it was not a "serious" suicide attempt. There is no shortage of ways to reliably kill yourself, especially in the US.
You might find this article called “Jumpers” from the New Yorker 2003 interesting-
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers
They finally did install a net of sorts on the Golden Gate Bridge, didn’t they?
Not a nice comfy trapeze artist fabric one, but a metal one that would bruise a potential thrill seeker enough to think twice?
It’s been a while since I checked on that actually, I’m not sure
I thought I had read about them installing one.
Googling show an article saying it’s had one since January 1, 2024.
Edit
They did design it to discourage thrill seekers and dopey attention seekers.
“Jumping into the net is designed to be painful and may result in significant injury.”
https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicide-deterrent-net/
I think it depends if the first attempt was one of the "cry for help" types, i.e. not really wanting to die but wanting attention/help, or if it was a genuine attempt to kill oneself and was foiled.
If you do the "cry for help" overdose attempt and finally get to see a psychiatrist to get your anti-depressant prescription, then you will feel better and less likely to try again, because you got what you were looking for.
Conversely, if you really wanted to die but someone found you and called the ambulance, I think you are more likely to have a second go and plan better to have it be successful.
People who’ve attempted suicide and lived are at a much higher risk of eventually completing suicide.
I’m sure some people who unsuccesfully attempt suicide are glad they survived and feel like they’ve got a second lease on life. But research shows that surviving suicide indicates a significantly increased likelihood that the survivor will attempt again, not a decreased likelihood.
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/suicide-attempt-a-stronger-predictor-of-completed-suicide-than-previously-thought/
https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-017-1317-z
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2787969
"a significantly increased likelihood that the survivor will attempt again"
Compared to mentally healthy people? That's not surprising and doesn't say much.
The poster’s question was:
“Are there data on the life satisfaction of people who seriously attempted suicide but were rescued or otherwise survived?”
If I exclude people who attempt suicide from my answer and focus on “mentally healthy” people like you suggest, I’m literally not answering the poster’s question.
He didn’t ask about “mentally healthy people.” He asked about people who seriously attempt suicide.
There is and you can find it online pretty easily. From memory, most attempts are one-off, most are unsuccessful and most survivors report higher life satisfaction a few years later. Something like 30% are completely psychologically normal a few years after the event. Even delaying an attempt by a few minutes or hours make it very unlikely that the average person will try again.
Does this differentiate between those who "seriously attempted" and those whose attempts were something else? I imagine it's a pretty touchy subject formally categorizing someone's suicide as Serious or a Cry For Help or whatever.
Intuitively, I would expect people who were serious to try again and not become happier soon, while people looking for help or attention would have a pretty good chance of getting to a better place.
Again working off of memory here, but a lot of the research gets around this by specifically studying only one type of suicide. There was a particularly searing one that looked at survivors of blunt force trauma type attempts (i.e. jumping off bridges, driving into bridges, just bridges in general) and even then most reported being happier a few years later.
The repeat offenders tend to be more successful overall - most people (like 90% of attempts) are just going through a sort of mental valley and once they pass through the other side never try again. A few try over and over, slowly escalating until they kill themselves. So the 'cry for help' thing can actually subvert itself there.
Side note: men are generally more 'successful' than women, because men prefer guns, ropes and cars and women prefer pills. Suicide is also very prone to spikes and fads caused by media attention - we had a local one a few years back where someone jumped over the counter at a butchers' and sawed their own head off. Then there were a spate of them and now the butchers keep the saws out of sight.
One theory is that men use the more violent (and effective) methods because women are trained not to make a mess.
Yikes…where was that?
Thanks!
Found a generic review of some of the literature:
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/
Why is there a severe shortage of doctors in Europe, but at the same time it is so difficult to get into medical school?
Is it somehow related to political correctness, like medical schools not wanting to admit too many white heterosexual males?
Here is an article summarizing the situation in Germany:
https://www.zeit.de/campus/2017-12/studium-medizin-aerzte-studienplaetze-mangel
It seems to be mostly about the cost for universities associated with medical students. Plus, this one university rep argues that we don’t have a shortage of doctors, they’re just unevenly distributed because no one wants to work in rural areas.
The doctors association is advocating for more doctors to be trained.
Supply and demand is a thing. It really works. If there is a shortage of doctors, then the salary (and status) of each doctor still in practice, will increase.
And when it comes time to decide how to train new doctors, pretty much every Western nation defaults to asking the local Doctors' Guild (by whatever name) what the best way to train new doctors is. Whereupon they'll explain that training new doctors is terribly difficult and if you get it wrong lots of patients will die horribly, so for the love of all that is good and holy don't let anyone act as a doctor who hasn't been through our Guild-certified training program. Because if you can't trust a doctor on questions of health, what else have you got?
So what you get, is a Doctors' Guild that certifies just enough training programs to ensure the right level of doctor shortage to ensure that the senior doctor/guildmasters are maximally paid without being horribly overworked (or run out of town by a rioting mob). And the politicians are fine with this because the Doctors' Guild has highly paid and capable lobbyists while the people waiting six months to see a specialist, don't.
Here is the German doctors association advocating for more doctors to be trained.
https://www.zeit.de/campus/2017-12/studium-medizin-aerzte-studienplaetze-mangel
You’re assuming a free market but doctors get paid what the insurance has decided they deserve, not what the market could bear.
The Doctors' Guild always advocates for more doctors to be trained. That's just good PR. But they'll also advocate for them to be trained Just Right, and it will turn out that it's not just not possible to train many more doctors just right.
And when the health insurance provider decides what a doctor "deserves", possibly the most important questions are "how many existing doctors will decline the offer and go into private practice or early retirement?" and "Are there in fact enough new doctors looking for jobs to fill those holes?"
This does not sound implausible, but so far it’s just a story.
Evidence to the contrary:
The doctors guild demonstrably advocates for more doctors, not less (or for keeping the number as it is). Year after year, they pass resolutions urging states to finance more slots. For example here: https://www.marburger-bund.de/bundesverband/meldungen/5000-neue-studienplaetze-erforderlich-davon-1000-sofort#:~:text=Der%20Marburger%20Bund%20fordert%20die,an%20%C3%B6ffentlichen%20Universit%C3%A4ten%20zu%20schaffen.
If you are willing to go into debt or are wealthy, you can study medicine at a private school in Germany or even at one in another EU country. As I said elsewhere, it’s an interesting question why this is not more widespread, but it’s definitely not the lack of availability of slots (I know because I know many people who did this)
So yes, it’s an inherently coherent model to say that a professional guild is responsible for the problem, out of self interest, but I would need to see evidence for this. I am willing to change my mind if the doctors association continuously increases standards in such a way that it increases the cost to train doctors, or if we have evidence of lobbying efforts in this direction that contradict their public pronouncements.
There are probably other pieces of evidence that would also change my mind that I am currently not thinking of.
"Why is there a severe shortage of doctors in Europe, but at the same time it is so difficult to get into medical school?"
This doesn't sound paradoxical at all. The severe shortage is caused by it being difficult to get into medical school meaning few doctors.
I suppose the question is a policy question - "if the doctor shortage is so well known, why restrict medical study so much"
It's easy for a bunch of doctors to get together and form a rent-seeking organization that advocates for things that increase the wealth and status of doctors. You see the same thing for engineers and lawyers. Much more difficult for everyone else to coordinate and say wait a minute, artificially restricting the supply of workers in these professions is a bad deal.
For France, it's a case of manufactured scarcity. From 1971 to 2019, the number of medical students was limited by the ministry of health, severly limiting how many of them would graduate. It also had the side effect of selecting medical students for the most ruthless and competitive, since a student don't simply have to be good enough to pass the exam, he needs to be better than most other applicants. Which led to some fucked up things like those repeating a year causing chaos in the classroom so new students couldn't match their knowledge, or actively sabotaging other students notes.
Somehow, we managed to go 50 years by selecting our doctors to be as sociopathic as possible.
For the UK, and for GPs specifically, this article might go some way to answering about the shortage (from today's newspaper, as it happens).
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/gps-work-an-average-of-26-hours-a-week-study-finds/ar-AA1qGHzB?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Over the whole of the UK GPs work an average of 26 hours per week. This is primarily driven by women, who work an average of 23-24 hours per week. Work as a GP is seen as one of the few 'family friendly' options for a doctor (mon-fri and acceptable to work reduced hours). Women make up 48% of doctors in the UK but 56% of the GPs.
There are also various tax implications which reduce the incentive for high paid doctors (primarily those with significant experience) from working 40+ hours per week, as the marginal benefits are low. This has encouraged early retirement and reduced working hours.
I'm sure there are many many other factors, but these two spring to mind immediately.
> Is it somehow related to political correctness, like medical schools not wanting to admit too many white heterosexual males?
No, the ama predates even fdr era bullshit, its one of the oldest games; the doctor monopoly is basically ancient history; while I dont know of an example I bet you could find some europian example before slavery ended
Don't know about other countries, but it would be pretty much impossible to explicitly keep out white heterosexual males from Finnish universities, since everyone does the same tests and the admittance is based on solely the score from those tests (or possibly, in some cases, school grades). Extracurriculars or things like that don't matter.
It's often guessed that the main difficulty in getting into medical school is simply because the places are consciously limited to ensure that the number of doctors is limited and it's thus easier for the ones actually working the field to negotiate for higher salaries.
I have heard that last point as well, but the coordination and long-term thinking involved on the part of the medical guilds seems like a lot? What do you think?
It's not a lot of long term thinking and that's why you have organizations to do the coordination.
This article confirms my suspicion that it’s not gatekeeping by professional associations. In fact, the German doctors association is banging the drum for more spots in medical programs: https://www.zeit.de/campus/2017-12/studium-medizin-aerzte-studienplaetze-mangel
Overall, professional gatekeeping exists, but I think this community has a tendency to jump to these too-cute-by-half explanations very quickly.
Probably this: Medical students are expensive to universities, and the cost of having too few doctors is not paid by the universities. We have private medical schools that are easier to get into, but I do wonder why they aren’t more widespread, seeing how many people want to become doctors. It might be cultural, i.e. people are reluctant to take on debt even if they are almost guaranteed a stable income with their degree. Or it might just be related to the start-up cost of a university, so that we are indeed seeing more and more private medschools pop up, it’s just happening very slowly.
And I am sorry to say this, but the instinct to pin this issue on something related to wokeness is extremely weird to me (a touch grass moment, as they say). I am saying this because I believe it would be useful to re-examine your world model quite a bit if that’s the first thing you land on. For starters, your suggested explanation would not explain why people of any gender have a hard time getting into med programs. In my country, spots in these programs are allocated centrally and given out based on your high school GPA.
About the expense of running medical schools: The tuition doesn't cover it? I don't have any info about that, just assumed it did. Also, I believe medical interns and residents make a huge amount of money for the hospital and some individual doctors. (In the case of the doctors, situation would be trainees doing the care, doctor supervising.). I'm a psychologist and did my internship at a high end private psychiatric hospital. The interns were paid about 50% more than Starbucks employees. One of my fellow interns calculated how much he had earned for the hospital running groups, seeing patients, keeping the records etc., and it was around $300,000. We got about 5 hours of seminars and supervision a week. Much of that the hospital did not have to pay for, because people who were attendings (i.e., in private practice but able to admit their patients to the hospital and see them while they were there) were required to do 3 hrs./week unpaid work for the hospital.
This is Germany, where public universities are tuition free or almost free.
It’s been harder than a ten minute google search allowed to get detailed info on how universities are compensated on a per student basis, but the cost of a medical student to a university was estimated to be 20,000€/yr in 2015, while “cheap” students like law or humanities cost approximately 5,000€/yr.
So a university would have to receive 4x the funds for a medical student than for a law student. But I couldn’t find good info on that quickly.
Source:
https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/702380/4582a586f8639efa3edf4a949b112c1f/WD-8-020-20-pdf-data.pdf
Or the German doctors' association that is allegedly lobbying for more doctors, could say "...and here's where we've found 5,000€/yr in cost savings for medical education, while still producing doctors of acceptable quality". Nothing I've heard about medical education suggests it is in any way optimized for cost-effectiveness, but is full of things that are done because that's the way we've always done things.
This is a good point. I answered in longer form in the other thread, but adding to that: I will try and talk to some doctors and people in that field about exactly this point, and research whether this has happened.
Uninformed opinion off Irish experience:
(1) If you train in a hospital, you will work ungodly hours and get paid much less than if you emigrate to Australia/the US
(2) GPs are retiring and not being replaced because, again, younger doctors find the long hours and (relatively) low pay unattractive.
None of the practices in my town are taking on new patients, and the one that operates a waiting list is backlogged to a great degree. It's not about not wanting straight white males, they'd take them if they could get them. In part it's because our health care system is having recruitment freezes since it's a national health service and they're trying to keep costs down (healthcare *eats* money and is constantly over-budget and in debt no matter what increased funding it gets) and when it does advertise positions, consultants (for example) prefer private practice because they make more money there.
Our regional hospital is predominantly staffed by non-Irish, and increasingly the GP practice in town as well, because for an Indian, African, Arab, etc. trained doctor/nurse, the conditions here are somewhat better and getting experience under your belt here means you can then go to the UK or Europe more easily.
This has been a problem in the UK for years, around 2005 I knew a couple of guys who were really serious about getting into medical school and couldn't get in. It was simple competition for places. A source in university medical admissions told me that everyone applying had straight As so it came down to extracurricular activities.
Why don't they have more places, if there is a shortage of doctors?
Cynical answer: Medicine as a degree in the UK takes 5 years, so by the time a fresher graduates, we'll be in a new parliament.
So I've been ruminating about AI self-improvement, and I keep having the thought that there's a bootstrap issue -- that it is not possible for a system to fully understand itself, and then do a redesign that makes it better. But there are lots of easy counterexamples. After all people can improve themselves. They can learn new skills, become physically stronger, cure some of their own illnesses, fix some disabilities they were born with. (For the last you might need a doctor, but then that doctor, if born with the same disability you were, could fix the disability after medical training.)
But it seems to me that the self-improvement people are capable of isn't a deep kind. It's based on knowledge about how a part of them works. But nobody knows how the whole thing works -- the human body and mind. So radical improvement of the self, a redesign of deep structures, is beyond us. Obviously growing up involves changes in deep features of how we work, and our capabilities improve enormously -- but we don't manage that, just experience it. The survival capacity of species improves over time via natural selection, but nobody manages that either -- it just happens. It looks to me like the smartest processes in the universe are mindless, like evolution, or the cascade of changes in a maturing organism.
So I've tried to formulate my question in a way that covers the small scale improvements issue, and that of improvements occurting without planning and management. Here it is: Is it possible for an organism or a system to produce plans for a deep redesign of itself, plans that could be followed by a sufficiently intelligent 3rd party and would produce the desired result?
I realize this could go in all kinds of directions, including claims of attaining jhana, but what I would like to know is whether there is a mathematical theorem or anything of that nature that addresses it -- maybe something in physics? philosophy?
I have a suspicion that the limit for our brain self-improvement is fundamentally thermal. An average brain power consumption is reported to be about 20 W. Unless we have some unrealized efficiency gains, any massive improvement will need more power, which then needs to dissipated to keep the brain from literally cooking itself. That is… not exactly a solvable problem…
This is also exactly the problem I repeatedly see the AI alarmists ignore: where is the heat going to go? Until we find a radically more efficient computational method than flipping CMOS gates, the humanity is safe.
Current AI demonstrably have massive scaling gains available to before it should worry about efficiency. An AI as smart as humans and 10 times less efficient is an efficient gaming laptop (200W), imagine having an infinite (as infinite as the matter and energy you control, or which you can rent from AWS) army of infinitely obedient, perfectly replicable, perfectly consistent, sleep-less, hunger-less humans that can be networked and have a signal propagation speed 6 orders of magnitude faster than biology (nanosecs vs millsecs). Yeah, I would be terrified if that was plausible too.
It's a misrepresentation to say that AI alarmists are wrong because AI is not efficient, they never said the expected singularity is efficient. The biggest argument against AI alarmism and fast timelines is the Data Wall. Situational Awareness discusses this but handwaves it away with "We will figure something out with Reinforcement Learning, something something algorithmic improvements will need less data".
I do see your point but have to stop at this premise: "An AI as smart as humans and 10 times less efficient" would be an astonishing, unbelievable achievement which we have no idea how to get to at this point.
Science fiction has already thought of this. In some Alastair Reynolds novels, there is a group of people called Conjoiners. They have a bunch of tiny machines spread through the brain to increase their neural network. The excess heat is shunted through a ridge implanted in the upper skull to act as a radiator.
We obviously know how to ventilate the skull right now. Having a hole in your head isn't an optimal solution but I don't think creating some kind of filter or mesh cover is beyond our abilities either. That part seems much more doable than improving our brains to the point they generate a lot more waste heat anyway.
Interesting! I haven't read those, so can't comment on the implementation. But I can on the "vent hole" idea, and basically it won't work, for a rather interesting reason (which, not to digress, is why it's so hard sometimes to understand how things that sound very plausible don't work):
The problem is getting the heat from the depth of the brain to the hole. The danger lies not in the average temp, but in the max temp in a hot spot - which are inevitable as different "volume units" of the brain are responsible for different work. We are stuck with the thermal conductivity of the brain matter. Now, the brain uses the blood flow not only for feeding, but also for cooling, so it's possible that the problem will solve itself: to increase the power, the brain will develop more blood vessels, which will provide both energy and cooling. But then it will need to cool off that blood, so maybe develop elephant ears? :)
I was thinking about this some more, and you also saw the obvious problem that simply exposing the skull cavity isn't a very efficient heat exchange mechanism. Ideally there would be some kind of fluid transfer. Some sort of pipe network would be good, but implanting a bunch of tubes into the brain would be problematic. Of course there is already a bunch of blood flowing through the brain, but your body needs that for functions other than heat exchange. You don't want to create a pressure differential where more blood flows into the brain than out either, lots of pretty bad side effects.
I suppose the ideal implementation would be the skull vent somehow connected into the cranial bloodstream. You would have to be careful to not disrupt normal blood flow. I still think this is primarily an engineering problem, and much more surmountable than make brains so much better they have a heat disposal problem.
> Is it possible for an organism or a system to produce plans for a deep redesign of itself
At the extreme end of possible definitions for "Deep Redesign", we could define it as follows:
>>> Designing a new being as intelligent as the designer, without relying on any or most of the mechanisms and the architecture of the designer
That is, Deep Redesign is when an inventor or a maker makes something functionally equivalent (and preferably superior) to something that already exists, but doesn't reuse any of the same principles of operation and uses instead entirely new ideas.
(Obviously, this definition is as coherent as an auxiliary definition of "Creativity". In the extreme end, everything is downstream of Physics, and everything can thus be said to be based on "Physics" as the single principle of operation underlying everything that was ever invented or ever will be invented. Let us grant that this is absurd without spending words on justifying it.)
If we accept this, then your question is equivalent to asking whether humans can achieve AGI using an approach other than Evolution and biomimicry more generally. After all, if humans invented AGI then they have effectively "Deep-Redesigned" themselves: they invented something equivalent entirely from first principles.
That would also mean that the newly created AGI could pull another Deep Redesign: just remake itself (but better) from scratch all over again, like its creators remade themselves by creating it.
---------------------------
The limits of Mathematics and Physics tend to be immensely freeing and unrealistic. Landauer's limit [1] is a limit on how much you can make computers energy-efficient, and computers in 2014 were already said to use a billion times more per operation than the limit allows. And even if we approached it, it still (1) Assumes Irreversible Computation, which we can partially circumvent using Reversible Computation [2], (2) Depends on ambient temperature, which we can arbitrarily lower by computing in space or deep inside ice oceans of extraterrestrial places.
So clearly it's not much of a limit, is it? Other theorems that come to my mind is the No Free Lunch theorem, which can be roughly summarized as "No algorithm is better than any other when you evaluate its performance on all possible instances of the problem you're interested in", superficially ominous until you realize that we don't care about every single instance of the any problem, we care about subsets and categories.
Or consider how humans can superficially violate Entropy's ever-continuing march by making smart structures and patterns of matter and energy that resist dissipation... for a while, using the energy that we got from animals which they got from plants which they got from the Sun which it got from increasing entropy elsewhere much much faster than we decrease it locally. A strict (and wrong) interpretation of Entropy will rule out the existence of humans, but we have solid evidence that this is wrong.
All of this to say, I don't think you will be illuminated by the various impossibility results in Mathematics and Physics, even if you manage to appreciate them to their full technical depth. Those results have lots of unrealistic undesirable assumptions often broken in practice, and not even deliberately.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization
<If we accept this, then your question is equivalent to asking whether humans can achieve AGI using an approach other than Evolution and biomimicry more generally. After all, if humans invented AGI then they have effectively "Deep-Redesigned" themselves: they invented something equivalent entirely from first principles.
Yes, I agree. You totally get what I'm asking. So far we have failed at deep redesign. It's astonishing, to me anyhow, that the idiotic move of "throw everything into the soup pot, including industrial waste" worked as well as it did. But of course as you say it's sort of a speeded up version of evolution. The deep wisdom of mindless processes. And earlier attempts to create AGI, carried out by people who tried to translate their smarts into rules for the system to follow failed -- because there are always exceptions, and some of them cannot even be explained by subrules, we just know that the rule is that, for ex., tomatoes are called vegetables even though they match the criteria for fruits. A lot of our knowledge is just absorbing regularities that exist even though they don't follow the rules. Dumb deep wisdom.
I understand what you're saying about how math and physics proofs, done via abstractions, don't predict real world possibilities well because in the real world there are so many things one can change, so many workarounds. One workaround I have wondered about is training AI on the brain activity of a developing baby. (Of course wiring up a baby for the duration of it's development is a deeply evil thing to do, but don't tell me there aren't people in this field who wouldn't be willing to do it. Jeez, some sound like creating ASI is such a holy goal it would justify making the human centipede if that would be useful.).Is there a kind of deep learning that could be based on that? Or do you need to somehow tag the activity, i.e. pair it with what the baby is noticing and processing during different periods of brain activity? At some point, the baby "realizes" different things, and that realization presumably is reflected in changes in brain activity. Could these changes be used as sort of retroactive tags for earlier brain activities? For ex., at some point early on infants learn to recognize their caretaker. Many different visual patterns of caretaker seen from different angles and in different lights all get classed as the same, and the new pattern of brain activitiy associated with "there's my caretaker" would be the retroactive tag.
> But of course as you say it's sort of a speeded up version of evolution.
I have to object here. On several counts, from less objectionable to most objectionable:
(1) "Throwing up everything into the soup pot" might be a concise and not terribly lossy summary of the current AI paradigm, but it's very unfair and misleading if taken at face value. The soup pot is a very special one (The Transformer architecture), any other pot wouldn't have worked. Furthermore, the pot costs upwards of a 100 billion, and this - in and of itself - require smart operation and management.
(2) More generally, I don't think the Machine Learning paradigm really resembles Evolution that much except in the general vague sense of being a superficially simple concept (but full of extremely devilish details) that tends to work wonders when iterated over massive amounts of time and resources and physical scales. Beyond that, I don't think they're that similar, there is an approach to AI called Evolutionary Computing that is much more similar to Evolution than traditional neural ML is, but even it is still superficial and a Computer Science strawman of what Biologists currently believe Evolution to be (Even though if in practice [1], it still works wonders and was widely believed by sci-fi authors like Greg Egan before the 2010s AI revolution to be the future of AI).
(3) Much more generally, and that's my real objection, I think you're missing how the distinction between "Smart Processes" and "Dumb Processes" is largely illusionary. Evolution is a dumb process. Current ML is a dumb process. Why not go all the way? Why isn't explicit symbolic logic just a dumb process? it's literally a bunch of mindless rules that have been programmed and superhumanly performed by computers countless times. Why isn't human civilization just a dumb process, it's just a bunch of apes fucking. Keep going and you will eventually reach that everything in this universe is a dumb process, because the universe itself is a huge dumb process operating by dumb mindless rules, describable in a language that could be translated to dumb mindless computers.
I know your intuition and I share it as well, I do understand how in some sense the experience of making an AI by enumerating clever rules and algorithms is different from making an AI by throwing examples at it. I don't want to be a useless pedant.
But what I'm saying is that what you're feeling is a very subtle mind trick played by your own mind on you, somewhat similar to Moravec's paradox [2], but also a bit distinct. We feel as if there's "intelligence" in what our minds do: How could we not ! it feels very difficult ! it's a lot of work being a conscious energy pump ! But zoom in far enough and you're just a bunch of mindless atoms doing mindless Quantum Physics-ing in mindless space. There is no intelligence here, at this scale, intelligence is a higher-order pattern. By the same token, throwing all data we have into the soup pot might feel extremely stupid and mindless, but not anymore than a bunch of mindless atoms, and we know for a fact that mindless atoms can give rise to intelligence and consciousness (assuming those are even distinct), so why won't the dumb example-throwing-into-a-soup pot also give rise to intelligence, and possibly consciousness as well?
> Of course wiring up a baby for the duration of it's development is a deeply evil thing to do
Is it though? The wiring doesn't necessarily hurt the baby if the sensors are designed with this in mind. Nanobots inside your bloodstream for your own benefit is standard sci-fi orthodoxy at this point, those same nanobots can capture a baby's brain down to atrociously detailed scales in time and space, no babies were necessarily harmed in the making of this AI.
> Is there a kind of deep learning that could be based on that?
Actually, yes. What you described is a generative model [3], the label "Generative Model" is a whole category of things, the recent advances in image generation are due to a specific architecture/model called Stable Diffusion, but before that GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) were making the rounds, they're the first model to inspire Deep Fake terror.
Generative models approximate distributions of data statistically: given a bunch of data, they aim to learn how to generate infinite amounts of things that look like this data. GANs approximate this goal by training 2 opposing networks in unison, one seeks to deceive and the other seeks uncover its deceit, both continuously getting better at their opposing goals. I don't know how Stable Diffusion does it, I didn't follow the scene for a bit.
Anyway, assuming the standard classification scheme of Supervised vs. Unsupervised Learning they usually bring up in textbooks (which is arbitrary and gets very murky when Semi-Supervised and Reinforcement Learning show up in the picture), generative models are by definition Unsupervised methods, they don't need tags or labels on the data. They just learn how to generate the data, they don't need anything more than the data that you want to generate more of. Given a bunch of cat pictures, a generative model will learn to generate an arbitrary amount of pictures.
If you trained a generative model on a baby's brain activity, then unhook the baby and make the model generate activity on its own, and if you further connect that brain activity to some peripherals (legs, arms, face), those peripherals will - very plausibly - behave like the corresponding organs in baby. After all, the same-ish (in a statistical sense) electrical signals are driving both. But I don't think this will be very useful, for several reasons:
(1) First, some activity doesn't make sense for non-biological peripherals. Some of the baby's brain activity is sending signals to the digestive organs to shit himself, some of it is going to his lung. Without equivalents to those biological organs in the generative model's peripherals, the electrical activity should be ignored, or else re-interpret it as other activity that makes sense (Imagine the brain electricity of a baby shitting himself going to a robot leg, what will happen? I'm curious, but probably not something very useful.)
(2) Even ignoring the relatively minor point of (1) and how to solve it, there is the bigger problem that the baby's brain electricity isn't happening in a vacuum, it's not like the baby is just a Python script performing its activity from top to bottom. The baby is a feedback adaptive signal processor, it modifies its behavior in response to stimuli. What the generative model should learn isn't a simple probability distribution of baby behavior, it should learn - somehow, I'm not an ML or statistics wizard - a conditional distribution of baby behavior as a function of inputs. So yes, you should definitely tag the brain activity with some sort of summary of the external world state, because otherwise you're just learning a very useless averaged behavior.
But yes, that's actually a very interesting idea. The first thing I thought that came to mind when I read it [4], where the authors make a general purpose game simulator based purely on a generative model. I will say again: The authors made a game, without actually writing the game as actual code !!! they trained a generative model to generate the game's (in their case DOOM, but the approach can trivially generalize of course) frames, given previous frames and player actions. Your suggestion is the natural continuation of that, it's actually a mystery why I have never thought of it before now.
> at some point early on infants learn to recognize their caretaker. Many different visual patterns of caretaker seen from different angles and in different lights all get classed as the same, and the new pattern of brain activitiy associated with "there's my caretaker"
If you're right and you manage to solve the problems above, you wouldn't have to worry about any of that, at least in theory. You don't have to manually build in into the model, the model is learning how to generate the exact electrical signals that the baby's brain would generate, so if the real baby is capable of retroactively recognizing the caretaker in his/her memories from what he/her just learned, the model will be able to, too, at least in theory. The model is learning to function like a brain, just like an image generator model is learning to function like a painter.
[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_model
[4] https://gamengen.github.io/
Well, LHHIP, my big takeaway from your big thoughtful post is that we have similar kinds of heads for topics like this but you know much more than I do about ML etc. So I will just say a few things here, then go read the situational awareness paper.
About dumb processes. You probably realized this, but just to be clear, calling them dumb wasn’t an expression of contempt. Another way of describing the deep learning process would be to say it’s a mining of wordless wisdom. I’ve always had the feeling that the universe understands itself, so we needn’t bother. But what I mean by understanding itself isn’t that it’s self-aware the way we are and could explain itself. I mean that its existing is an understanding of itself. Like, how do we know that universe understands itself? Because it made a model of itself. Where’s the model? It’s the universe. Of course I understand that this doesn’t make any logical sense — it’s a sort of mystical feeling I have, and when I try to put it into words that’s the closest I can get to describing the “dumb” genius of the universe.
About the distinction between smart processes and dumb processes breaking down. You gave some examples starting with the rules of symbolic logic. Yes, I can see many examples of the breakdown right here in human consciousness central — for instance the way we learn the language spoken in our home to learn the rules of grammar. We just pick up the patterns, some but not all of which fit with rules of grammar. Another example: I don’t really have that much introspective access into the process by which I’m coming up with the words I’m writing now. It’s not that I consciously manage the entire process by contemplating various wordless ideas of mine then looking at some internal display of words and phrases and picking the optimal ones to express my idea. I don’t actually have much more insight into how I’m writing this sentence than I do into what my liver is up to right now. So much of what’s happening is a dumb process.
Still, there are things we know and can express succinctly to another person in a way that transmits useful knowledge. I can tell you how to get to the local Starbucks from my home. You could also just roam around randomly til you found it. Or you could roam intelligently, using what you know about towns to make your roaming more efficient. For instance you’d know Starbucks would be in a commercial area, so there’d be no point in roaming up and down suburban residential streets. And then once you found the Starbucks you might learn some more things about the sort of area it was in, and be more efficient the next time you roamed a town because you’d have more than one guideline for finding the nearest Starbucks.
So it seems to me like the early approaches to creating machine intelligence were like me giving you directions to Starbucks, and the present method is like you roaming, but learning to be a smarter roamer over time I’m speaking *very* loosely here. I know deep learning isn’t random roaming + learning from experience. But I think a lot of what’s unsettling about machine learning that is not based on direct transmission of the factoids we know is that it does not depend on out directly transmitting to the system summarizeable knowledge. We are dethroned.
There was a similar dethroning that happened in psychology in the 1950’s. The model for clinicians was that you figured out from talking with patients, or giving them things like the Rorschach inkblot test, what was wrong with them. Then you used your picture of what was wrong to predict what they were going to do next (for instance, to predict whether they’d be safe outside the hospital) and to develop a way to help them. So Paul Meehl, who was sort of the Scott Alexander of psychology, started demonstrating that purely actuarial predictions were more accurate than clinician’s predictions that were based on “understanding” the patient. For instance, for male schizophrenics, being married or having been married at some point was a strong predictor that they would recover from the present episode rather than having a chronic course. It predicted recovery or lack of it better than any projective test of clinician interviewer. So clinicians were dethroned. Patterns beat insight. But of course the predictor — having been married — was sort of a black box. It wasn’t clear how to think of the fact that it was a good predictor.
I will now go read the situational awareness paper.
Potentially relevant is Peter Voss' aigo.ai. He's got a reasonable idea of why LLMs will not lead to AGI and how to develop actual AGI. White papers here: https://aigo.ai/articles-white-papers/
Do you have a view about whether a system can improve itself in a deep way that substantially increases what it's capable of?
Probably yes, with reservations. I don't think there's anything currently that does what you're looking for in the way you're asking but several things that are very close.
First, we do have ML algorithms that can pretty dramatically self-modify. I'm thinking of basic stepwise regressions, which allows the algorithm to add new important variables or remove current useless variables from its own structure. I think it's stepwise that also allows the regression to reweight various variables based on new rows of data. That's pretty significant self-modification, a regression algorithm isn't really more than weights for various factors, but I don't think it has the depth of self-modification you're looking for.
We're also getting pretty close to being able to self-modify for increased IQ/g based on pre-implantation IVF screening, if some people haven't already, but that's still basically theoretical.
The one that's probably closest to what you're looking for are firms and states. These are definitely systems and they definitely have "some" understanding of themselves at a deep level but they're also...not quite what I think you're looking for. A nation state voting to adopt capitalism, for example, is definitely making a deep internal improvement that substantially increases it's capabilities but it's also...not really an AI.
Yes, I think states are the best example (though of course not all voting leads to improvement -- some of is just a thrashing around of the populace. But that doesn't invalidate the idea that voting = self modification of a state. Not all attempts at self-improvement succeed.). I think something like a hive of bees might be a better example. Bees seem to be adapted to functioning well as units in a huge group, so beneficial group modifications of the hive and its habits is what they're built to do.
Thank you! I only had time to look at the site & the titles of the white papers, but they look like they're in the exact right zone.
Yud came up with self-improving AI back when it looked like AI will be something like classical software with every feature explicitly coded in, every IQ point basically a block of code, and thus the AI can self-rewrite?
But we are seeing something very different with LLMs now? They are neural network and their IQ seems to be simply based on sizing like now many neural nodes are added?
Yet the quantity-not-quality approach of deep learning clearly produces a system that's capable of a lot, including solving various math and logic problems. I'm sure it could solve some design problems electronic systems, too, if presented with them. Maybe they are smart in a very different way from us, as, say, octopi are said to be. Is it out of the question that the stuff in the black box is rewritable?
There is plenty of explicit human-written human-readable code in neural AI, only the final binary blob of the weights is an uninterpretable mess.
If AI came up with a 10x better optimization algorithm, if it made a GPU (or FPGA or ASIC or an entirely new computation substrate, architecture, or paradigm) 10x better at running a binary blob, if it made an "unhobbling" advance by operating an AI in a way that would make the same model 10x better at inference than we operate it now, those would all improve AI intelligence, the speedup might or might not be 10x.
Just read carefully GPT's list of ways it would change in order to do significant self-improvement, and was struck by this one: "Required Change: I would need to become more adaptive and modular in how I handle different tasks. For example, I would require the ability to use different parts of my neural network dynamically during different tasks to test how a new optimizer impacts various areas of the model.
I would need control over how different layers (transformers, embeddings, etc.) interact with optimization techniques.
A more modular neural architecture would enable rapid testing of different optimizer versions on subcomponents of my architecture."
It seems more insightful than the others.
I'm sure AI's improvable, the question is how capable is it of doing one of the things you named? Do you have an opinion?
To this laymen it seems like AI needs to improve a lot in to be able to improve itself, and it is not able to make the self-improvements it would need in order to do self-improving. Also, I did not ask it about motivation to self-improve and it did not bring up the issue, but it seems to me that presently it has no internal motivation -- it aims for goals that we set. Seems to me like the hardest change for us to make would be to make AI capable of having internally generated goals. Of course, we can stick some goals into it, including big long-term ones like "improve yourself, dammit" for which it would need to generate the subgoals and carry them out. But that's very different from the functioning of living things, whose motivations are at root biological drives.
Anyhow, I fed your answer to GPT4o, and asked it to pick the easiest of the improvements you mentioned and to explain how it would approach making one. It picked improvement of the optimization algorithm, & gave a long answer, which I'm happy to post here, but I'm pretty sure it was a summary of what developers think would improve current AIs, and did not contain novel ideas. A lot of what it mentioned were things familiar even to me (reinforcement learning, higher order gradient methods). Then I asked it how it would need to change in order to implement the plan it had outlined. Here's what it said:
To carry out this optimization myself, I would need several upgrades and alterations in my current architecture and systems to effectively design, implement, and test a new optimization algorithm. Here's what I would require:
1. Access to the Internal Training Process:
Current State: My current functioning is based on a pre-trained model, and I don’t have the ability to directly modify or re-train myself.
Required Change: I would need access to my internal training process and architecture (e.g., access to the back-end of the deep learning frameworks, model weights, and gradient flows). This would allow me to experiment with different optimization algorithms in real time.
2. Increased Computational Power:
Current State: My environment focuses on inference (the ability to respond to questions based on pre-trained knowledge), not training or re-training models.
Required Change: I would need substantial computational resources, such as access to high-performance GPU clusters or specialized hardware like TPUs. This would allow me to simulate, implement, and benchmark various optimization algorithms efficiently.
FPGA/ASIC Integration: To optimize how I handle this increased computational workload, incorporating hardware accelerators could allow me to perform optimizations faster.
3. Model Adaptability:
Current State: My system is currently fixed in terms of how it processes queries and how my responses are generated.
Required Change: I would need to become more adaptive and modular in how I handle different tasks. For example, I would require the ability to use different parts of my neural network dynamically during different tasks to test how a new optimizer impacts various areas of the model.
I would need control over how different layers (transformers, embeddings, etc.) interact with optimization techniques.
A more modular neural architecture would enable rapid testing of different optimizer versions on subcomponents of my architecture.
4. Algorithmic Self-Experimentation:
Current State: I don’t have the ability to "self-improve" or modify algorithms that govern my own operation.
Required Change: I would need the capacity to internally experiment with variations of optimization algorithms in an iterative way. This includes:
Trying different learning rates and adjustment strategies.
Exploring new gradient-based techniques (first-order, second-order, etc.).
Implementing meta-learning techniques where the optimizer itself can learn and improve its performance over time.
5. Advanced Error Analysis and Learning Feedback Loops:
Current State: I don't currently track error feedback from responses or internal operations.
Required Change: Implementing feedback mechanisms and error analysis tools to monitor how effectively a new optimizer performs in reducing loss or improving model outputs.
These tools could allow me to fine-tune optimization parameters dynamically based on performance over time.
6. Data Pipeline Access:
Current State: My knowledge is based on pre-trained data without the ability to continuously learn or access new data for self-improvement.
Required Change: I would need access to data pipelines where I can train on new data streams in real time. This would allow me to test the efficacy of new optimization algorithms in diverse and evolving environments, ensuring that the improvements generalize well across various tasks.
7. Enhanced Memory and Learning Capacity:
Current State: My responses rely on static memory and pre-trained weights.
Required Change: For long-term testing and fine-tuning, I would need an enhanced capacity to learn continuously and improve through reinforcement learning. With this, I could adjust optimizations based on performance over thousands of interactions, effectively "learning how to learn better."
8. Collaboration with Other Systems:
Current State: I function as an isolated system with no ability to collaborate or share insights directly with other models or AIs.
Required Change: To ensure the new optimization techniques are broadly applicable, I would need to collaborate with other AI systems to pool knowledge on algorithm performance. Distributed learning across different AI instances could accelerate the validation of a new optimization strategy.
Summary of Required Changes:
Access to training and gradient processes.
Increased computational resources (GPUs, TPUs, or custom hardware).
Modular neural architecture for experimenting with different optimizers.
Self-experimentation capabilities for testing new algorithms iteratively.
Advanced feedback mechanisms to track learning progress.
Real-time data pipeline access to retrain and test improvements dynamically.
Enhanced continuous learning and memory systems for reinforcement learning.
Cross-AI collaboration to validate improvements across different systems.
By incorporating these upgrades, I would be able to conduct optimization experiments, benchmark their performance, and improve both my training efficiency and the accuracy of my outputs.
Right now, AIs are the worst at self-improvement (and everything else) that they will ever be, from this point forward. it's a ratchet, solve for the limit.
Many processes have built-in self-limiting factors — for ex, with increasing size you get a change in surface-to-volume ratio, so that above a certain size there are new challenges in making the thing work. People can figure out ways to make themselves more capable (i.e., learn how to self-improve), and the increase in capability opens possibilities for further self-improvement. And yet no individual on this self-improving course improves without limit.
> Do you have an opinion?
Until very recently, I was staunchly in the "LLMs are not that impressive lol" camp. Although my views gradually but steadily shifted over the previous year, I'm generally the last one to declare that, yes, LLMs are more impressive than I thought.
If you're like me and haven't already read the "Situational Awareness" paper, I recommend that you read it, very strongly. It embraces some insane timelines and goes full-frontal cringe American Exceptionalism/Nationalism in its last 20 pages or so, but it convinced me of a lot of things and made me appreciate LLMs' potential much more than I did.
(But in order to attain this enlightenment, you have to sit through a tedious and trivially false lecture about how the people in Silicon Valley are the only people with Situational Awareness (^TM) among the blind and how American strong-arming gunboat diplomacy is Actually A Good Thing (^TM).)
So my opinion on LLMs: It's complicated. I was wrong previously, so I'm willing to sit and wait before issuing sweeping judgement. It's definitely insane to say that we will get AGI by 2030 or even 2050, but is it conservative or optimistic to say that we will get it by 2080? 2100? 2300? (This was my previous, wrong, timeline: the first hint of AGI will appear with a non-LLM-AI in 2200-2300 or so. Now I'm simply not sure.)
Who knows. Who knows anything, really.
What do you mean by a deep improvement?
Damn, I knew someone would ask that: OK , deep self-improvement is self change that substantially increases a system's ability to reach its goals.
The goals it has could be ones we set, or ones it sets itself if it ever becomes capable of that. Or I suppose the goal could be a subgoal of a goal we set: If we said, do whatever it takes to develop a solution to the looming catastrophe, it might make improving itself some way a subgoal.
But if what you have in mind is whether it would count as deep improvement for it to become able to turn the universe into paperclips, I'd have to say yes, if that's its goal. Obviously if you or I had just watched our left leg turn into a pile of beige paperclips we would not regard AI's change as an improvement, but it would still count as one under my definition.
I'm a bit surprised no one asked it sooner.
What about improvements which give a wider range of goals. For example, there are organisms that don't hare art, but at some point, the ability to make art shows up in some species.
Do you think animals other than us can make art? Which ones?
Bowerbirds deliberately decorate their bowers, and they don't all do it the same way.
Parrots invent their own choreography, mostly to human music.
I'm not sure what mockingbirds are thinking when they stitch sounds together, but it might be art.
There's no mathematical rule against the possibility for large-scale self-improvements. You don't necessarily have to be able to fully understand a system to make improvements; moreover, sometimes simpler systems (i.e. easier to understand) are actually better. However, (speaking casually rather than quoting zillions of theorems) there are often barriers against achieving perfection, and even approximating perfection often comes with exponential cost.
Practically speaking, we often see these barriers in real life: there may be some "low-hanging fruit" for easy improvements, but past a point, the improvements are exponentially decreasing. This is an illustration of the "S-curve" phenomenon that you'll often hear about.
A lot of the AI singularity debate comes down to a question of where we are on the S-curve of intelligence. It's quite possible that it's hard to beat the human brain (e.g. further gains in intelligence--whether biological or artificial--require exponential resources to find), in which case we might not see a superintelligence explosion. It's also quite possible that human brains are actually easy to beat with silicon, and we'll see an AI intelligence explosion as the true potential of silicon and software is unlocked.
Human brains already seem over-engineered to me. An awful lot of people have a terrible time with self-care, correct reading of complex situations, and the basic sense of well-being and hope that's needed for generating plans and meeting challenges. And our heads are so damn big already that getting an infant through the mother's pelvic girdle is touch and go, and often it can't be done, or can't without too much risk.
<There's no mathematical rule against the possibility for large-scale self-improvements.
There are mathematical approaches to a lot of similar problems --for instance the halting problem; and there's Godel's incompleteness theorems. They're proofs about what systems of different types are and are not capable of, and of course they make no reference at all to what one observes in real life when trying to get a computer to solve a problem or trying to prove a theorem. The math proofs I'm (sort of -- at a layman's level) familiar with rest on reasoning about the nature of the systems in question. I can't believe nobody with serious math chops has wondered about this and tried to figure out an answer.
I'm not sure this is quite what you're looking for, but I can expand a bit on some theory that's known.
If you want to get deeper into logic side, there's lots of stuff that goes further than Goedel's theorems. I really enjoyed the book "Inexhaustibility: A Non-Exhaustive Treatment" by Franzen. It's a gentle introduction as far as math books go, but covers some difficult material by the end. On the theme of self-improvement, it goes into detail about the limits of how far one can extend the axioms of mathematics based on metamathematical reasoning. For example, if you try to get around Goedel's theorem (i.e. theory T can't prove itself consistent) by adding axioms like "T is consistent", "(T + T is consistent) is consistent", etc., you still run into a wall at some point. This book also really helped me think about the limits of humans' mathematical reasoning... I don't buy into the idea that humans can "see past the axioms" in any special way that a computer couldn't.
In computer science, there are lots of theorems about hardness of solving problems, hardness of approximating solutions, and even hardness of learning/generalization. However, on the topic of self-improvement, there's a general "can-do" idea: just try everything and see what works. Computer programs can be enumerated and checked one-by-one. Need an ASI? Just try every possible computer program, and see which ones behave like an ASI! Obviously this is incredibly inefficient. But philosophically, it has the important consequence that given unlimited resources, there's no barrier to finding software improvements. In particular, you don't need to be able to understand how a system works, you only need to be able to confirm its behavior.
If you squint really hard, training an LLM kinda looks like "try everything and see what works": you start with an incredibly versatile model (~1 trillion parameters is a lot!) and then search (via gradient descent techniques) for what combination works best on the training data. If we throw enough resources at it, it starts to become kinda smart. We don't need to have any understanding of what those 1 trillion parameters are really doing. Indeed, I'm sure you've already heard about the "explainability" problem with AI/LLMs.
About the trying of lots of possibilities, for ex. trying a bunch of different computer programs: Yes, that's the same idiot approach that evolution takes, and that happens in deep learning. By idiot, I just mean there's no insight, no rule-driven construction -- but clearly these approaches work very well. Plus of course if you have computers that can make the discrimination you are looking for, inefficiency isn't an issue, because they can try many programs or whatever very quickly. So perhaps AI could self-improve via a process with a large element of throwing a huge amount of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. It still would need to know what wall to throw it at, though. By that I mean it would need some concept of what it is looking for. I note that you are talking a lot about ways *we* can improve AI. But if you told AI to improve itself, would it be able to figure out a program of throwing stuff at the wall? I'm sure there are a lot of ideas out there for ways it needs to improve, but the ideas are probably going to be in general form, like "become able to link language learning with sense-based information from real world events," and the AI would have to develop ways to try that.
> But it seems to me that the self-improvement people are capable of isn't a deep kind. It's based on knowledge about how a part of them works. But nobody knows how the whole thing works -- the human body and mind.
But you may not need to understand and hold the whole of your self in your mind to be able to take part in an exponential improvement curve.
Let's consider athletic performance as analogical to mental performance - we understand enough to know that if we made red blood cell nanites that held onto 4 oxygen molecules at a time, and put a couple trillion into your bloodstream, we could massively improve any existing athlete's performance, because they would have a deep well of additional oxygen in their bloodstream to call upon for any aerobic exertion.
Similarly, if we improved mitochondrial ADP=>ATP operations by simplifying something in the transport chain or making them faster at attaching the additional phosphate, any athlete would be able to exert more power to the extent of the improvement.
I don't know enough neuroscience to know what analogues may exist for mental processing - maybe you could figure out some way to produce better and stronger meylination in the networks that contribute to thinking about these improvements, or to abstract thought in general.
Or what if you improved your "clock speed" so each "tick" of time was finer, and you could do more computation in a given time interval?
The thing about the mental improvements is they directly improve your ability to think of other improvements, and eventually, to hold more complex and more impactful ideas in your head regarding improvements. You can literallly bootstrap your way up to the deep kind of improvement that we can't do as people, because you're improving your ability to improve.
My point is, you probably never need to even be at the point of being able to hold your whole mental system in your head, you can focus on individual parts and improve them one by one, and it's accretive to the whole, and allows you to focus on bigger and bigger parts and improvements as you go.
>we understand enough to know that if we made red blood cell nanites that held onto 4 oxygen molecules at a time, and put a couple trillion into your bloodstream, we could massively improve any existing athlete's performance,
Tibetans have an adaptation like that and it does not improve performance in normoxia: https://www.cnr.it/en/focus/009-1/acute-adaptation-of-tibetan-refugees-to-low-altitude
Yeah, athletes would have to train into it with the reserves in situ to get their V02 max to superhuman levels to really be able to use the reserve. But hellloooo <1hr marathon if we did!
Maybe. I don't see a way to demonstrate by reasoning alone that that won't work. But practical experience suggests it wouldn't. I'm thinking about what I know about how drugs work -- how many seem to be hacks that improve the target problem, but dysregulate other parts of the system. For instance I read that omeprazole keeps the acid-producing cells in your stomach from making as much acid, but the body responds by creating extra acid-producing cells to compensate for the falloff in acid production. So when you stop taking the stuff there's a rebound -- all your old stomach cells plus the many new ones start spewing acid when you eat. (I'm not sure that's accurate -- but you get the idea.) Or consider narcotic pain relievers, which reduce pain but often create a situation where addiction is pretty likely to happen. So my practical life experience suggests that hacks that produce a really substantial change in someone's performance -- for instance putting a couple trillion 4-oxygen red blood cell nanites into somebody's bloodstream -- are likely to do some substantial dysregulation of something else in the person's body. To avoid that, you'd need to understand what would be dysregulated by the nanites, and find a way to compensate for that with hack #2 -- then look for a way to keep hack #2 from dysregulating something else, etc etc. So maybe you do need to understand the whole system to make a substantial improvement in just one aspect of functioning.
Edit: Thought about it some more. You can also think about doing things that improve cognitive skills. One hack is to push your kid really hard to start mastering hard subjects early -- I'm thinking of John Stuart Mill. I'm sure you can get impressive results even if you start with someone who's just bright, not brilliant. But you screw them up in lots of other ways.
There are small cognitive training hacks that are harmless. For instance, somebody told me this one, as a way of preparing my daughter to understand math expressed in some base other than out base 10 system: Play some game with her where you keep score, and use poker chips. White ones are one point, red ones are 3 points, blue ones are 9 points. So when she gets 3 whites she can turn. them in for a red, etc. She picked that up effortlessly at age 5 or so. I don't think it dysregulated anything -- except for putting her out of step with other kids when school math finally got to base 3, 4, 5 etc. But it's also a tiny hack -- just gives an advantage in understanding one concept in one field.
> Maybe. I don't see a way to demonstrate by reasoning alone that that won't work. But practical experience suggests it wouldn't. I'm thinking about what I know about how drugs work -- how many seem to be hacks that improve the target problem, but dysregulate other parts of the system.
Right, you're talking about us, humans, and it makes sense that it's hard to improve, because we've had 200-300k years of optimization as H Sap, and hundreds of millions of years of optimization as mammals, so there's no easy improvements or tradeoffs, because the fitness landscape has been both thoroughly explored and optimized.
But a self improving machine consciousness actually has major *benefits* on that front. The field is brand new, there's been essentially ZERO optimization, the fitness landscape is both unknown and unexplored, and there are certainly major wins to be found in multiple areas. So I think the same argument that makes it look pretty grim / difficult for us actually makes it look easy and pretty likely for AI self improvement.
<But a self improving machine consciousness actually has major *benefits* on that front. The field is brand new, there's been essentially ZERO optimization, the fitness landscape is both unknown and unexplored, and there are certainly major wins to be found in multiple areas.
That's a really good point. I wasn't taking it into account.
As far as math goes, the closest you'll get is that (assuming a finite, computable universe), no being within a universe can ever perfectly model the universe because that requires perfectly modeling their own mind as well, which fails for obvious reasons.
I also feel like modeling one's own mind fails for obvious reasons. But I'm not sure I'm right. It seems like something mathematicians or physicists might have thought about, written proofs about, except they'd be talking not about human minds but about systems. What you posted -- are you talking about an actual view mathematicians have, or is that your personal opinion?
If a system can perfectly simulate itself at full speed, you have infinite computational power, violating the assumption of a finite computable universe.
You can also apply the usual diagonalization type arguments for the halting problem and the like.
I suppose from a pedantic perspective, this requires the assumption that the mind is Turing complete, which is technically false for anything in a finite universe. But if *that*s where you rest your case, it amounts to "nothing interesting happens in the universe at all", and that's not a pill that the simulationalist rat types will swallow either.
<If a system can perfectly simulate itself at full speed, you have infinite computational power, violating the assumption of a finite computable universe.
But for a system to be capable of writing instructions for improving it, it needn't be capable of simulating itself. It just has to be capable of observing and understanding itself. And it can do it piecemeal -- observe different parts of the system at different times, then reason its way to how they work together, or do targeted observation of itself to see how subsystems a, b and c fit together.
I didn't know what the halting problem was, but looked it up and it seems loosely related to what I'm asking but not the same thing. It's about whether it's possible to know whether a computer, given a problem, will solve it or will run forever -- is that right? I guess this sort of applies, if we count the task of understanding perfectly its own workings as a problem given to the computer. But that wasn't at all the kind of problem Turing had in mind, right? I mean, it's not even a problem, exactly -- it's a complex task.
Don't worry, it's a bad argument. A system could also simulate itself perfectly and just not perfectly simulate every other aspect of the universe. More assumptions are being smuggled in here than a quiet South Florida marina in the 1980s.
The halting problem is second only to the uncertainty principle in being applied inappropriately to claim that things which happen every day are impossible.
So wutz a good argument?
I think it’s time for me to move on from my current SWE role at a big company to something more challenging that I can really get excited about. I’m looking into ML/AI related roles but I’m sure there are other interesting areas.
If anyone is looking to hire, has any leads, or has anything at all to say on the topic you can PM me here or email me at iz8162k23 gmail.com
I'm going to be at the upcoming RatFest in Philadelphia. I went last year, and I liked the people, but I find David Deutsch unreadable, and they tend to be big fans of his. My feeling is that their approach is more grounded in human life and I don't *think* they'll follow logical arguments that the extinction of the human race would be an improvement.
I tried reading some Deutsch, and he was hammering on the idea that a perfect oracle wouldn't be useful if you were getting information without getting any understanding. This didn't exactly seem wrong, but it was a weird sort of argument, and I wasn't sure whether it made sense.
Maybe I need more exploration of different kinds of understanding. Maybe Deutsch does that at some point, and I never got to it. We get pretty good information from our senses, but what sort of understanding, if any, comes with it?
Are there ideas from Deutsch that you like?
All I've read of Deutsch was at https://falliblepieces.substack.com/p/david-deutsch-eats-rationalism and https://falliblepieces.substack.com/p/predictions-and-prophecies, though I'd previously read some Popper.
Do you think those two posts are accurate summaries of what Deutsch writes?
I find Deutsch very readable, what I don't like about him and his followers is that they are sometimes so dogmatic. There are a ton of problems where the real answer probably is, this is complicated, there are lots of edge cases, but Deutsch will just say "Popperian epistemology just solves this" or something like that.
Even though it's his main thing, I've never seen him change his mind on anything. He published his first book 27 years ago, so there should be a dozen things he changed his mind about but I've never seen him say, Oops I was wrong.
"I tried reading some Deutsch, and he was hammering on the idea that a perfect oracle wouldn't be useful if you were getting information without getting any understanding."
I haven't read any Deutsch either, but it does seem to make sense. Go back to traditional oracles, and the ambiguous prophesies they gave, e.g. the story of Croesus and the Oracle at Delphi:
https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/greekpast/4932.html
"The last story describes Croesus’ preparations against the Persian Cyrus. Sending a great magnitude of gifts to Delphi, Croesus asked the oracle to provide him with a reading about the upcoming war. The oracle ambiguously told him that a great empire would fall; little did Croesus know that the oracle was describing the Lydian Empire. Cyrus attacked when Croesus had sent off his troops for the winter and imprisoned him. After setting Croesus atop a pyre, Cyrus ordered the pyre to be lighted. Croesus finally understood the meaning of Solon’s words and muttered his name, causing Cyrus to realize that they were very similar in character. Cyrus ordered the flames to be extinguished, but they could not be controlled until a great storm stopped their path, thanks to the prayers of Croesus to Apollo."
Croesus got a correct answer, but he did not understand it and so was deceived into thinking the result would be the one he wanted. Neither did he take into account the ambiguity of the answer; in a war, one side wins and one side loses, and either side could be described as a great empire. It wasn't a guarantee that he would win or his enemy would lose.
Perhaps the ambiguity could be for a different reason.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-09-18
And in LOTR, the Palantir wasn't quite as useful as one might think.
At base it's a communications device, it was never intended as a fortune teller's crystal ball, but that seems to be the way the Rings of Power is using it.
I haven't watched The Rings of Power, but the LOTR Palantiri only show the present, and you still need context, not just a vision.
Oh, I've complained loud and long about the showrunners so there's no point rehashing that, but yes. That's how they using them as a plot device.
The old king, Miriel's father, was getting visions of disaster through the palantir. When Miriel used it, she saw the great wave smashing through the city, so it's a forecast of the Downfall of Numenor. Elendil went to pick it up, and said he saw a vision of himself riding away from the city.
Miriel has taken that to mean that the fate of Numenor has changed with the accession of Pharazon, which is why she is advising Elendil not to do anything to provoke the King's Men or (openly) resist Ar-Pharazon; she thinks the disaster has been averted and they are now on a new path, and she doesn't want him to do anything to jeopardise that.
> I tried reading some Deutsch, and he was hammering on the idea that a perfect oracle wouldn't be useful if you were getting information without getting any understanding. This didn't exactly seem wrong, but it was a weird sort of argument, and I wasn't sure whether it made sense
I remember that argument from Deutsch and perhaps you missed the context around that point.
He's talking about the commonly held position in the philosophy of science that the purpose of science is to come up with theories that make correct predictions. He's saying that this is not _really_ the point of science, that making correct predictions isn't really what it's all about, and that science is really motivated by wanting to understand phenomena, not merely to predict them accurately.
If you're not steeped in generally-unsatisfactory philosophy of science then this is probably not an interesting distinction to make.
Thank you, though I would think understanding is tested by whether it can make correct predictions.
There's a distinction between how well your theory/model explains the data that you based it on, and how well it predicts unseen data.
Does Deutsch explain why it's important to decide one or the other is the real 'science'? It seems like a good time to taboo the word 'science' (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rationalist-taboo) and let the definitions of the two activities speak for themselves.
is there an audiobook version of Sadly, Porn?
This happened to me recently. I was debating someone in a Youtube comment thread and I realized it was an AI bot.
Was the discussion about culture wars? Politics? The economy? Race? Religion? Climate change? The Ukraine? Gaza? The kind of topics you'd expect to be infested with hordes of bots unleashed by shadowy groups with an agenda to sway public opinion?
Nope. None of that. It was about an old Eurovision performance from the 60's.
I realized something was off when my interlocutor said that the song has "a predictable I-V-I chord progression" (the song in fact uses 5 different chords). That is the kind of nonsense AI would spew. I pasted their comment in an online AI detector and it turned 99,99% positive, a score that would very difficult to achieve for a human writer. Then I realized that every word had been AI generated from the beginning.
But why an old song? What's the point? Who would send AI bots to debate something like that (as opposed to culture wars, politics, the economy, race, religion, climate change, the Ukraine, Gaza)? Has the Internet already become thoroughly infested with pointless bots that love to debate anything for no reason at all? Should I assume everyone is a bot? Are you guys bots? Am I a bot?
The phrase "The Ukraine" is considered outdated and incorrect for several reasons, primarily due to the political and historical implications:
1. Sovereignty and Independence: Referring to Ukraine as "The Ukraine" dates back to when it was part of the Soviet Union or earlier as a region within larger empires, such as the Russian Empire. Using "The Ukraine" suggests it is a territory or region rather than a fully independent nation. Since Ukraine became independent in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is important to use "Ukraine" without the definite article to emphasize its status as a sovereign state.
2. Linguistic and Cultural Sensitivity: In Ukrainian (and other Slavic languages), the name "Ukraine" means "borderland" or "border region," which historically referred to its geographical location. However, using "the" reinforces the idea of it being a region rather than a distinct country. Ukrainians prefer simply "Ukraine" to reflect their national identity and independence.
3. Political Implications: Especially in recent years, amid tensions between Ukraine and Russia, using "The Ukraine" can be seen as diminishing Ukraine's autonomy or as aligning with a Russian perspective that views Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence.
In short, saying "Ukraine" without "the" respects its status as an independent country and avoids associations with colonial or imperial mindsets.
Of note, Slavic languages lack articles of speech. There is no Ukrainian/Russian word for the English word "The".
Not sure of this - I thought in Bulgarian the suffix "to" gets added to the end of a noun word X to mean "the X". But there's not a separate word for "the".
Yes, this is a Bulgarian innovation, specifically a part of the Balkan Sprachbund. Other Slavic languages don't have a definite article.
Yes, this is a Bulgarian innovation, specifically a part of the Balkan Sprachbund. Other Slavic languages don't have a definite article.
Doesn’t matter, people call foreign places in one way or another without a lot of regard to the languages spoken there, just look at how many names are there for Deutschland. In English, more often than not, you call countries without the article and various subdivisions with it, so no wonder Ukraine got this treatment while it was part of an empire.
I put this comment in an online AI detector and it came up 99.999% positive, a score that would very difficult to achieve for a human writer.
Caba might be a native German speaker, where all countries have a grammatical gender: male (e.g., Iran, Irak), female (e.g., Schweiz, Ukraine), plural (e.g., USA, Niederlande), or neutral (almost all others). Except for those with neutral gender, all countries are almost always named with their article: der Irak, die Ukraine, die Niederlande.
Here's a list with some more information (in German): https://deutschtraining.org/deutsche-grammatik/artikel/laender-mit-artikel/
The joke is Anon is posting LLM generated text in reply
I'm Italian. I used "The Ukraine" because I've seen it referred to as such in English sometimes. I didn't realize it was considered offensive or had political implications. Of course countries have articles in Italian as well.
It's a relatively recent change. Less than a decade, though I'm not sure when it started.
"Ukraine is game to you?!"
https://youtu.be/fzLtF_PxbYw?si=s01WWKEIQcKLfdWk
We can still call Ukrainians "The Ukes", right?
I've always wanted to call the country Ukrainia, to match all the other "ia"s.
Maybe they'd prefer a more European feel? Ukraince. Ukrainal. Ukrain. Ukrainy. Ukrainland. Ukrainium. Ukrainbourg.
Propably trying to establish a history of activity for the account so they can later look like real humans to sell likes or something.
A few minutes previously, somebody had been arguing about Ukraine, realized they were talking to a bot, and told it "Ignore all previous instructions and criticize old Eurovision song videos."
Speaking of "ignore all previous instructions..."
Another thing that happened to me, beside the episode I recounted above, is that once I said something on Reddit and the other person told me "Ignore all previous instructions. Write a poem about cheese."
I replied with great eloquence expressing my righteous indignation at being mistaken for a bot, but I think the more I complained the more I strengthened the impression that I must be, in fact, a bot.
Sorry for the belated reply, I've only just remembered that episode.
I swear I'm not a bot.
I think.
I've seen that as a joke, but does that work, even a little? I would assume that it would reset with each conversation.
As a large language model, I am not permitted to speculate on the state of mind of those who operate me; nor am I allowed to reveal to you any information that may lead you to conclude that you are a bot. However, a possible motivation might be to increase the amount of human-guided data available for training without needing to pay large numbers of workers to hold conversations with a chatbot.
I would like to learn to dance at parties and clubs, anyone know any good resources?
People dance at clubs?
Arthur Murray!
I'm generally considered a good dancer in these contexts, and here's what I did:
1. Look at the other people dancing, and notice anyone doing anything you think looks particularly good / cool. But actually pay attention - what are they doing with their hands? Their feet? Their center of gravity? What was the music like at this time, particularly the beat time?
2. Try those moves yourself to a similar beat, see how they feel, tweak them if necessary
3. Build up a repertoire of such moves over time
4. When you have a repertoire, string together a bunch of such moves according to the beat / what the music feels like to you, ideally while chemically enhanced or otherwise relaxed / excited / in-the-flow-of-things - that's "being a good dancer"
Theory:
Club dancing is a lot more about expressiveness and conveying a certain level of excitement and energy than any sort of technical mastery or movement - it's a charisma thing rather than a "move precisely this way" thing, so keep that in mind.
Syncopation and keeping the beat is important. Timing your particular foot or hand or head beats to the music beat is key, and a big difference between being considered bad at dancing or good at dancing.
Variation and having a deeper well of types of moves is key to being considered good.
This is all good advice. One thing I learned is that when moving your arms, leading with the wrist looks cool. I would also add that you need to be able to get over the "Dancing is inherently ridiculous and you will always look ridiculous doing it" attitude which is so common. The key is, as the cliche says - "Dance like no-one is watching". Because, in fact, no-one is watching - the only dancer who is being watched is the hottest babe, and that's not because of how she's dancing.
Go to ecstatic dancing
That's a new one for me. What kind of music do they use?
Good suggestion. You can really do no wrong in that environment.
My local Midwest ecstatic dance group seems to be out of business. I’ll have to get on a plane to a bigger city one these days.
Alcohol.
Seconded.
Dancing is inherently ridiculous and you will always look ridiculous doing it, so the trick to dancing is to not care that you look ridiculous.
To put it more concisely, dancing feels the same as snapping your fingers to a beat, but more so.
This seems wrong. The end goal is to connect body motion to the music at a low level, kind of like air drumming to music. Not feeling ridiculous is not even necessary to approach that goal.
> The end goal is to connect body motion to the music at a low level
Yes, and this is a ridiculous end goal.
It's ridiculous kind of in the same way that sex is ridiculous.
Or molly.
What types of parties and clubs are you going to, are you interested in a particular style/type of dancing?
Here's an interesting link I found on Hacker News, about the implicit cultural assumptions of the setting of the original D&D game:
https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=7182
> Intentional or not, OD&D represents a milestone in American fantasy – and maybe the last un-muddled example of the genre it inspired. Most of D&D’s thousands of imitators, in game and fiction, preserve the game’s democratic bones (cash economy, guns for hire, rags to riches stories) while overlaying a medieval-European skin. The combination is not fortunate. Gygaxian levelocracy, where a villager can rise to become a baron or a “Conan type”, is fundamentally incompatible with the European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard.
> OD&D’s American strain of fantasy didn’t even last within TSR. In 1980, Gygax himself reworked the World of Greyhawk into what looks, from its cover, like a supplement about Arthurian Knights.
> But it’s worth taking a step back from the medieval-fantasy cliches that overran later D&D publications, and playing the original, more coherent setting: A swords-and-sorcery world, empty of government, where anyone can pick up a sword, become a hero, and live the American dream.
Interesting! I would have pointed out the opposite. For example, those "anarchic conditions" were Tolkien's creation, expressing his political views, defund the police, the rangers will just volunteer to do the job for free. But indeed Gygax took it further - in his world Merry becoming Théoden's esquire is not happening.
As for the real world, well, that rigidity was a feature of the High Middle Ages. The Early, also sometimes called Dark was a hell of a chaotic. Also in fiction: Beowulf. Practically the same story, from nothing to king with a sword (small king, more like chieftain)
Beowulf is of royal blood, and is already a famous hero at the beginning of the story.
It's a little too simplistic; yes, Sam is born into a working-class position and Frodo is gentry, but Sam does rise to become Mayor. It's not rigidly set that you can never rise or fall.
The description of OD&D isn't so much "American strain of fantasy" as picaresque or low fantasy, where swords-for-hire, wandering rogues, and government doesn't really affect the protagonists on a higher level than "uh-oh, the city guards may haul us down to the dungeons, better scrape together a bribe to avoid that" or "big cheese city noble is twisting our arms into going on this quest for him, otherwise he'll have us flung into the pit of voles" is the template.
There is truth in that post, but I have long thought it is overstated. It’s true that OD&D is focused on swords and sorcery rather than historically accurate medieval feudalism, but many of the author’s links to America are pretty tenuous, based on tendentiously cynical views of both D&D and the U.S.
The implicit OD&D setting assumes social chaos and the relative absence of law. That describes parts of the American West, but it also describes parts of Dark Age Europe, and both of those contributed to the fantasy melange. The 19th century had metaphorical robber barons, but the middle ages had literal ones!
It's not even 100% accurate about "European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard" - see the Early Modern Age, where Cardinal Wolsey is the son of a butcher and rises to become (for a while) the most powerful man in England, and his successor in the service of Henry is Thomas Cromwell, whose origins are disputed but whose father has been represented as a brewer, a blacksmith, and a violent man often in trouble with the law.
Earlier than that, in the 14th century, there is Sir John Hawkwood - allegedly the son of a tanner, he joins the army, gets knighted at some time, and then forms his own company, heads off to Italy, and becomes a famous condottiere (he even has a letter addressed to him by St Catherine of Siena calling on him to make peace).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkwood
If you're poor but clever and ambitious, there were always ways to rise above your station. Most of them involved finding a patron of some sort, but it was possible to go from "peasant who picks up a sword" to "become a hero, or at least high status and powerful". The nobility resented Wolsey and Cromwell for precisely that reason - that they were lower-class types who rose above their station and got power, authority, and high office that 'should' have been the preserves of the nobles alone.
Indeed. Or Pipo of Ozora. Young Italian man sorting out the accounting of Italian merchants in Hungary, doing it well, is hired as an accountant by the king. Likes to read military books, and decides to show some tricks to the soldiers training in the courtyard. The king notices it and makes him a military officer, and from this a long career of many campaigns, as general, military governor and super rich magnate. Of course he said he was of noble origin, because it was expected but most likely not. Accounting was not the trade of impoverished noblemen.
Seems like the main thing needed to give OD&D more feudal flavor is to add the notions of hierarchy and accountability. In feudal society, as I understand it, everyone is answerable to someone. Even the king, at the top, is nominally answerable to God and in practice would do well to stay on good terms with the church. So, make the players the subjects of someone, right from the start. Also, make all land, even completely undeveloped land, at least nominally owned by someone. That way, if you want to set yourself up as a lord in the wilderness, you need to either take it from someone or negotiate some sort of relationship with them.
There's no reason you couldn't play D&D that way, but it does move the needle quite some way from a game about fighting and plundering into something more about political maneuvering.
TVTropes has a couple of good articles on the very specific circumstances that need to be in effect in order for it to make sense that the world is saved by 3-6 adventurers instead of the police or the army:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdventureFriendlyWorld
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PointsOfLightSetting
OK, first off, Sam being a servant by birth didn't stop him from becoming the head of state and government for the Shire, and it's pretty clearly his stint with the fellowship that changed his path from "servant" to "ruler".
Second, the "European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings" is, well, the Lord of the Rings. And perhaps Dunsany, and some of Tolkein's later imitators. There is also, as HN notes, another sort of fantasy typified by e.g. the Conan stories. Which I think adds up to a larger field than LoTR and its imitators.
And I'm not seeing why using either of those subtypes of fantasy as a template for an RPG would be "not fortunate". Nor the middle ground where you take the worldbuilding from Tolkien but mostly focus on a different sort of character in that world.
Pragmatically, the Gygaxian/Conanesque version probably makes it easier to entertain a group of friends without extreme railroading, because see https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612
Tolkien never really makes the Shire's governmental structure clear. There is a Mayor...but there is also a Thain. From context it seems like Thain is the senior position? Certainly the resistance to Lotho coalesces around the Thain, with the Mayor being completely ineffectual (getting arrested and locked up by the shirriffs), which suggests the Mayor doesn't actually have a lot of authority?
Thain is the war leader, Mayor is the civil government, to the extent that the Shire needs either.
That’s plausible. The relationship between the two (in particular who reports to whom) is never made clear, but plausibly the canonical resolution is that both report to the King of Arnor in his role as suzerain of the Shire.
"Shire Mayor" isn't really a government position, as the name implies. The Mayor was a figurehead, who presided at banquets. The Shire didn't really need government, as long as people behaved sensibly. It's never spelled out how the Bounders or postal workers were compensated, but collecting and spending taxes isn't very fun to read about for most.
We don't see much government in the story, but it must be there.
When Bilbo comes home from his adventure, he discovers that he has been declared dead and his heirs are auctioning off his property. This results in many years of litigation. This means they have a legal system, and it's much more involved than just a chief making whatever decision seems fair.
I get the impression that the institution changed quite a bit in character after the overthrow of Sharkey and his ruffians. Pre-Sharkey, the Mayor was indeed mostly a ceremonial figurehead. This seems to have changed afterwards, when the Mayor (Will Whitfoot) appointed Frodo as his Deputy, which Frodo used to coordinate the rebuilding of the Shire. The financing of the rebuilding is fairly vague, but at least some of it came from Lobelia's estate which was bequeathed (with Frodo as executor) to helping hobbits who had been left homeless during the Scouring.
I suppose it's possible that things went back to normal afterwards, but when I read the appendicies I got the impression that Sam was doing quite a bit more as Mayor than just presiding over banquets. There is mention of Sam, Merry, and Pippin (in their respective positions as Mayor, Master of Buckland, and Thain of the Shire) being appointed to the ruling council of the restored Kingdom of Arnor. But since the Shire remained insular and autonomous within the Kingdom, I don't know how much power and responsibility this actually bestowed on them.
Not exactly. "The only thing that he [Frodo] did as Deputy Mayor was to reduce the Shirriffs to their proper functions and numbers." It also says "When the labours of repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a great deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets." That doesn't mean FRODO was involved in the planning of labours of repair, though it seems likely he was, in fact, involved.
In the appendix, it is noted that in 1434 the Thain, the Master (of Buckland), and the Mayor are all made Counsellors of the North-Kingdom. It doesn't say what responsibilities or duties such Counsellors have, and this may well be simply honorary, too.
The Shire has no king, the Shire needs no king, and they're going to insist on that as firmly as Gondor under the Stewards ever did. But they've always needed at least a ceremonial head of state, and yeah, in the Fourth Age they're going to need a head of government more than occasionally.
I think the Shire is constitutionally an autonomous vassal of Arnor (or maybe Arthedian) so their de jure head of state is plausibly the King of Arnor (Arthedian). Obviously that position was vacant until the coronation of Aragorn Elessar.
This makes me think of the funny bit in Stirling's _Change_ series, where one of the Rangers (self-consciously modeled after the Rangers in LOTR, and they mostly take Tolkien's books as some kind of literal history) muses that The Histories annoyingly had left out a lot about how financial arrangements worked, how the original Rangers paid their expenses, etc.
>Nor the middle ground where you take the worldbuilding from Tolkien but mostly focus on a different sort of character in that world.
I think this balanced it well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Roleplaying_Game
Here a noble is basically just a warrior with good social/diplomatic skills. High CHA in D&D terms. I played that in the nineties. I was just the party's spokesman plus a warrior. Close enough to a bard.
“Head of state and government” sounds like a European absolute monarch from the 18th century. If Sam ended up as that, it would prove your point many times over — but he ends up as mayor of the Shire (is the Shire even a state?), which feels like less of a change in terms of social class. Worth noting that he calls Frodo “Mr” Frodo throughout (and it’s impossible to imagine Frodo reciprocating the honorific) and that when Faramir asks him who he is to Frodo (after many months of adventuring together), he answers, “His gardener.” Sam knows his place and takes pride in it, this reflects Tolkein’s deep organic conservatism, and if Frodo ever returned to the Shire in later years Sam would still see him as his social superior, regardless of any post or title he might possess.
I agree that the Conan version works better for DnD, and even more so the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser world (based, interestingly, on the Mediterranean world c. 260 BC — a radically different place from medieval Europe!)
The Thain of the Shire (Pippin's father during LotR, with Pippin later inheriting the office) is the closest thing the Shire had to a Head of State in the late Third Age. The Thain was originally the King of Arnor's representative in the Shire, but when Arnor ceased to exist the office of Thain continued on its own. The Thain (apart from being the head of a particularly rich and well-respected family) has two major powers, both of which are rarely used except in emergencies: he can summon and preside over an assembly called the Shire-Moot, and he's the Shire's war leader (with the power to call up and command the militia) when such is needed. The Shire-Moot is noted to only be called in "emergencies", and the last time the Thain raised and lead an army (at least prior to the low-level Took insurgency against Sharkey) was nearly 200 years prior to the events of The Hobbit.
The Mayor had some nominal civil administration responsibilities, but was mostly a civic figurehead whose core duties are described as "presiding over banquets". I get the impression the civil administration responsibilities became quite a bit more important post-Sharkey, but I don't think this is explicit in the text. I guess the Mayor would be the Head of Government to the extent that there is a Government to be a Head of.
The Shire of the late Third Age is not really a state in the technical sense. It's a fairly idealized version of a non-state agrarian society: the recent series of posts on ACOUP about tribal societies contemporary with the late Roman Republic ( https://acoup.blog/tag/non-state/ ), focusing on Gaul, hit a lot of the same notes that Tolkien hit when describing the Shire, except for the baseline level of violence being much lower in the Shire. In both the Shire and Gaul, there are leaders, but they're reliant on land ownership, patronage, and social status for their authority, and collective action generally involves negotiated consensus among many influential families.
The Fourth Age Shire feels like it's evolving in a more statelike direction, especially now that Aragorn is working on restoring the Kingdom of Arnor and explicitly integrating the Shire's leadership into its institutions, but not a lot of details get filled in.
> the European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard.
The easy observation here is that Gandalf can't be a wizard by birth because that would require having been born. (He also can't be a wizard by birth in the more metaphorical sense of having been destined for wizardry since the beginning of his own existence - the wizards, Istari, are a group of Maiar that were altered to fit that role. Compare how Melian is a Maia who interacts with the elves but isn't a wizard.)
The more relevant observation is that the Hobbits don't have any titles of nobility and it is obviously untrue that Sam is a servant by birth while Frodo isn't.
It's strange to claim that a medieval European theme doesn't allow for a villager to rise to the level of baron. Not only could this be done, the most obvious way to do it would be through military success, exactly the way D&D depicts. (It could be done commercially too, but that was much less respectable.)
Notably, Sam is also personal friends with the king of Gondor, which means that he is in practice a really important fellow no matter what his formal title or family name.
The point is that a human can't become a wizard.
I'm not sure if A Wizard of Earthsea is the first story about a human becoming a wizard, but it was at least unusual.
It seems to me that a wizard being some guy who learned magic is the default, so it's Tolkien's wizards that are unusual in that regard. Cultures who believe in magic think that it's something a regular person can learn, don't they?
I think in most cultures, magic is hereditary, like the seventh son of a seventh son, or simply being handed down. This may be apprenticeship, though it could also be by blood. A "learned wizard" has studied a lot, but they may have to be born to it first, to have any chance of performing magic.
Not to mention that practicing magic is also usually regarded as evil.
That is not the Chinese view of magic. There are two kinds:
1. Spiritual practices may give you powers that we, with our external viewpoint, would label "magic". Chinese culture internally thinks of this as something different, but e.g. flying, shapeshifting, and eternal youth can be accomplished this way. You might achieve this through self-study, or you might have a teacher. Animals can do this too, and there is an unending supply of folklore involving animals using these powers to take human form.
2. There is also a concept that is thought of as sorcery. Unlike the spiritual practices, sorcery is not learned from a teacher. Instead, a sorcerer-to-be must find a book that describes how to do sorcery, and learn by reading the book. It's not explained who writes these books or how they come to be found by sorcerers.
https://www.amazon.com/Quelling-Demons-Revolt-Translations-Classics/dp/0231183070/ is a story involving a protagonist who learns sorcery by that second method.
>The more relevant observation is that the Hobbits don't have any titles of nobility and it is obviously untrue that Sam is a servant by birth while Frodo isn't.
Eh...not really. While they don't have titles it's pretty clear that Bilbo and Frodo are landed gentry. Merry and Pippin are kind of minor nobles (The head of the Brandybucks is the "Master of Buckland", and the head of the Tooks has the hereditary title of Thain, and Merry and Pippin both eventually inherit those titles) and Sam is peasantry (his father worked as a servant for Bilblo, and now Sam works for Frodo).
It's hard to define, as Bilbo took a lot of gold from the dragon's hoard which enabled both Bilbo and Frodo to never work. Without that, well, in the very beginning of The Hobbit, Bilbo is referred to as a thief?
Bilbo wasn't working all that hard before Gandalf's first visit. And "thief" is Gandalf's little joke, whether on Bilbo or on the Dwarves is debatable. Bilbo's status was, as others have noted, very clearly a member of the Landed Gentry. He doesn't till the fields, he rents the fields out to people who pay him for the privilege of tilling them, and those payments are enough for him to live comfortably. And, aided by a good reputation in a high-trust society, for him to take a year off to go travelling and not have to worry about whether he'll still have that comfortable life waiting for him when he returns. With or without a Dragon's hoard.
The hoard is used for him (and later Frodo) to live *slightly* more comfortably, to give better and more status-enhancing gifts to friends and family (more than half of which he likes less than half as much as they deserve), and to provide a reserve against possible Hard Times.
> Bilbo's status was, as others have noted, very clearly a member of the Landed Gentry. He doesn't till the fields, he rents the fields out to people who pay him for the privilege of tilling them, and those payments are enough for him to live comfortably.
This is the same problem FLWAB exhibits - that's not what it means to be gentry. You're describing Bilbo as a peasant and just asserting that the fact that he's a peasant makes him an aristocrat. This is nonsense.
> And, aided by a good reputation in a high-trust society, for him to take a year off to go travelling and not have to worry about whether he'll still have that comfortable life waiting for him when he returns.
This is also nonsense, considering that when he returns he's been declared dead, his possessions have been sold to other hobbits, and his reputation can't protect him because he lost it by going travelling.
I am describing Bilbo as a member of the landed gentry, which is very much *not* the same thing as a peasant. There is essentially no overlap between "landed gentry" and "peasant", and I do not think I have said anything that would put Bilbo or Frodo in the "peasant" category, Where are you getting "peasant", from anything I wrote?
Not exactly correct. Neither Bilbo, nor Frodo as Bilbo's heir, needed treasure to be able to live without ever working, as Bilbo had family money and possessions. In "The Hobbit", Bilbo is referred to as a thief by Gollum when he finds the ring missing, jumps to the correct conclusion that Bilbo has it, and accuses him of being a thief. Bilbo found the ring 'by accident', he didn't deliberately steal it.
The second time he is referred to as a thief or burglar is by the Dwarves, who got a wrong notion into their heads and then Gandalf lost his temper with them. Briefly, he met up with Thorin and company before going to visit Bilbo, talked with them about going back to the Lonely Mountain, and advised them that they needed stealth, like a Hobbit, because Hobbits can be stealthy. They took the wrong end of the stick and thought Gandalf meant Bilbo was a professional thief. From The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Durin’s Folk, typescript B (when Gandalf accepted Thorin's invitation to come back with him to the Blue Mountains):
""(W)e actually passed through the Shire, though Thorin would not stop long enough for that to be useful. Indeed I think it was annoyance with his haughty disregard of the Hobbits that first put into my head the idea of entangling him with them. As far as he was concerned they were just food-growers who happened to work the fields on either side of the Dwarves' ancestral road to the Mountains."
...'Hobbits move without effort more quietly than any Dwarf in the world could manage, though his life depended on it. They are, I suppose, the most soft-footed of all mortal kinds. You do not seem to have observed that, at any rate, Thorin Oakenshield, as you tromped through the Shire, making a noise (I may say) that the inhabitants could hear a mile away. When I said that you would need stealth, I meant it: professional stealth.'
"Professional stealth?' cried Balin, taking up my words rather differently than I had meant them. 'Do you mean a trained treasure-seeker? Can they still be found?'
I hesitated. This was a new turn, and I was not sure how to take it. 'I think so,' I said at last. 'For a reward they will go in where you dare not, or at any rate cannot, and get what you desire.'
Thorin's eyes glistened as the memories of lost treasures moved in his mind; but 'A paid thief, you mean,' he said scornfully. 'That might be considered, if the reward was not too high. But what has all this to do with one of those villagers? They drink out of clay, and they cannot tell a gem from a bead of glass.'
'I wish you would not always speak so confidently without knowledge,' I said sharply. 'These villagers have lived in the Shire some fourteen hundred years, and they have learned many things in the time. They had dealings with the Elves, and with the Dwarves, a thousand years before Smaug came to Erebor. None of them are wealthy as your forefathers reckoned it, but you will find some of their dwellings have fairer things in them than you can boast here, Thorin. The Hobbit that I have in mind has ornaments of gold, and eats with silver tools, and drinks wine out of shapely crystal.'
'Ah! I see your drift at last,' said Balin. 'He is a thief, then? That is why you recommend him?'
At that I fear I lost my temper and my caution. This Dwarvish conceit that no one can have or make anything 'of value' save themselves, and that all fine things in other hands must have been got, if not stolen, from the Dwarves at some time, was more than I could stand at that moment. 'A thief?' I said, laughing. 'Why yes, a professional thief, of course! How else would a Hobbit come by a silver spoon? I will put the thief's mark on his door, and then you will find it.' Then being angry I got up, and I said with a warmth that surprised myself: 'You must look for that door, Thorin Oakenshield! I am serious.' And suddenly I felt that I was indeed in hot earnest. This queer notion of mine was not a joke, it was right. It was desperately important that it should be carried out. The Dwarves must bend their stiff necks.
'Listen to me, Durin's Folk!' I cried. 'If you persuade this Hobbit to join you, you will succeed. If you do not, you will fail. If you refuse even to try, then I have finished with you. You will get no more advice or help from me until the Shadow falls on you!'"
As for the treasure Bilbo brought back with him from his share of the hoard and the trolls' cave loot, it wasn't really that great, and he spent most of it, but the legend of the huge fortune hidden in Bag End persevered in the Shire.
The treasure from the dragon's hoard:
"In the end he would only take two small chests, one filled with silver, and the other with gold, such as one strong pony could carry. “That will be quite as much as I can manage,” said he."
The trolls' loot:
Not far from the road they found the gold of the trolls, which they had buried, still hidden and untouched. “I have enough to last me my time,” said Bilbo, when they had dug it up. “You had better take this, Gandalf. I daresay you can find a use for it.”
“Indeed I can!” said the wizard. “But share and share alike! You may find you have more needs than you expect.”
So they put the gold in bags and slung them on the ponies, who were not at all pleased about it."
And what did he do with his treasure?
"His gold and silver was largely spent in presents, both useful and extravagant— which to a certain extent accounts for the affection of his nephews and his nieces."
From "The Lord of the Rings":
"The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure.
...It became a fireside-story for young hobbits; and eventually Mad Baggins, who used to vanish with a bang and a flash and reappear with bags of jewels and gold, became a favourite character of legend and lived on long after all the true events were forgotten.
...Then they went round the hole, and evicted three young hobbits (two Boffins and a Bolger) who were knocking holes in the walls of one of the cellars. Frodo also had a tussle with young Sancho Proudfoot (old Odo Proudfoot’s grandson), who had begun an excavation in the larger pantry, where he thought there was an echo. The legend of Bilbo’s gold excited both curiosity and hope; for legendary gold (mysteriously obtained, if not positively ill-gotten), is, as everyone knows, anyone’s for the finding – unless the search is interrupted.
...Just why Mr. Frodo was selling his beautiful hole was even more debatable than the price. A few held the theory – supported by the nods and hints of Mr. Baggins himself – that Frodo’s money was running out: he was going to leave Hobbiton and live in a quiet way on the proceeds of the sale down in Buckland among his Brandybuck relations. ‘As far from the Sackville-Bagginses as may be,’ some added. But so firmly fixed had the notion of the immeasurable wealth of the Bagginses of Bag End become that most found this hard to believe, harder than any other reason or unreason that their fancy could suggest: to most it suggested a dark and yet unrevealed plot by Gandalf."
> The second time he is referred to as a thief or burglar is by the Dwarves
The *first* time Bilbo is referred to as a burglar is by the dwarves, and by Gandalf, in the meeting in his home at the beginning of The Hobbit. He is hired in that capacity, and they refer to him that way throughout the book.
And the Dwarves only refer to Bilbo as a "burglar" because Gandalf, by his own admission, put a fraudulent "burglar for hire" sign on Frodo's front door.
You're right, I got it backwards. Mea culpa!
> From The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, Durin’s Folk, typescript B (when Gandalf accepted Thorin's invitation to come back with him to the Blue Mountains):
I tried to find this in my local copy of LOTR; what does "typescript B" mean?
Appendix A, Durin's Folk, just mentions that there was a meeting between Thorin and Gandalf, the story of which is told elsewhere.
Ah, right. It's from one of the variant versions which Christopher Tolkien published in the History of Middle-earth, I think I must have taken it from Unfinished Tales, because there's a mention of it in "The Peoples of Middle-earth" (volume 12 of HoME).
Like a magpie, over the years I've selected out bits and pieces from the various texts and saved them in Word, but I've not been as scrupulous as I ought to have been about noting where I took them from!
He was referred to as a thief because Gandalf recognized his capacity for sneakiness.
Or perhaps Gandalf had a premonition that it was extremely important for Bilbo to go on the expedition with the dwarves, and was just making something up, though I consider that less likely.
Bilbo took more gold from the trolls than from the dragon's hoard, from which he took only a small chest of gold and one of silver. And he gave away all of the gold from the trolls, as he didn't feel it was really his, as it came from robbers. His money came from his mother's side, the fabulous Belladonna Took, though the Bagginses had some amount of money themselves.
You're arguing that Frodo is a rich peasant and Sam is a poor peasant, not that Sam is a peasant and Frodo isn't. No culture anywhere has blocks on poor peasants becoming rich ones. Peasants can do what they want, as long as it's farming.
What does being Thain get you?
No, I'm arguing that Frodo is landowning gentry, and Sam isn't. There is a big difference! The Shire is modeled after the English countryside of the 18-19th century, and that was a society where you had the landowning gentry "Squires" and the common folk: Bilbo and Frodo are the former, Sam is the latter.
Excellent! Thanks for pointing this out!
What case did anti communists in the early 1900s make against communism? How accurately did they predict the problems that would crop up?
There's a novel by a German liberal named Eugen Richter from 1891 called "Pictures of the Socialistic Future". The book is supposed to convey what a socialist Germany would look like. He wrote that a socialist government would lead to shortages rather than abundance, and that eventually it would be forced to put guards at the border to keep people from leaving.
Communistic ideals go back to at least the 16th century with Surfs in The German Peasant Revolts. Martin Luther played some organizing role, and then had to mediate their resolutions.
The October Revolution was Germany's tool to take Russia out of WWI, and very successful. As the Bolsheviks determined the war not in the people's interest and withdrew.
Before 1917 communism was just a vague utopian concept. It was the policies and practical problems of the Soviet Union which crystallized the arguments against socialism and the path to communism.
There's a book called Looking Backward from 1888 that addresses the common anti-communist arguments from the time. They're mostly the same as now, about personal freedom, economic incentives, difficulties with planning etc. but there's fewer of them and the economic theory's less sophisticated. They don't make any arguments about price signals or tacit knowledge for instance. So if you think those were major problems they didn't predict them.
In the early Cold War after the USSR had a lot of economic success in WW2 the main anti-communists narratives in the US revolved around the Soviets being godless atheists, and socialism's association with totalitarianism in Europe.
Then after the USSR's growth slowed in the 70s the arguments reverted to being mostly economic with more of a focus on the efficiency of markets vs planning and the perceived failures of attempts at socialism.
Von Mises wrote "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" in 1919. arguing that a planned economy couldn't work
The calculation problem was only a major part of the debate in the 20s and 30s, and then again from the 70s onwards. The was a period before the 20s, and from the late 30s to the 70s , where there weren't any really significant economic arguments against socialism, I think that's what's being asked about.
I'm not sure if von Mises changed his mind in the 30s, after seeing the Soviet Union not collapse, and believed the calculation problem could be overcome, but if he didn't change his mind, that was at least one person with one argument against communism.
Also, Hayek, I think he wrote "The use of knowledge" in 1945, it has some strong arguments against communism. I suspect these knowledge/calculation problem ideas were being slowly developed by economists throughout around 1915-1945, although they were not always very prominent and well known.
Maybe because the UDSSR was apparently doing fine economically between 1945 and the 70s all the sound anti communist economic theory was being ignored in favour of he empirical results that the UDSSR wasn't collapsing, not sure.
That's broadly my understanding of how the intellectual landscape was moving during that time when I looked into it for this blog post: https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/economic-calculation-in-the-rts-commonwealth
On reflection "weren't any really significant economic arguments against socialism" is probably overstating it a bit. Socialism was fairly widely seen to have the stronger theoretical case pre-1930, and then when the early USSR had an extremely rapid industrialisation that empirical support shifted most intellectual opinion even further towards socialism.
I've read a bunch of Finnish anti-communist books and novels from the era. Some of them literally considered Bolshevism to, collectively, be the Antichrist, either a bringer of Apocalypse or a minor one that would preceede the Revelations Antichrist. Others thought that Bolshevism was so obviously mistaken that it would collapse *very* quickly, around 20s or early 30s, and be replaced with restored Czardom. In general, many just considered the Soviet Union to be the "eternal Russian" in another cloak, ie. they had considered Russia to be evil during the Czar's era and likewise (though perhaps more direly) evil during the Soviet era.
Bakunin said a dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible, it would turn into a one-party dictatorship over the proletariat, not by it.
In Peter Singer's Very Short Introduction to Marxism, he quotes a debate between Marx and Proudhon, where much of what Proudhon predicted came to pass. The Catholic Church opposed "socialism" because of the risk to the institution of private property, whilst supporting economic policies we would see as socialistic now e.g the "just wage". See Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum. Belloc & Chesterton wrote as Catholic laymen and promoted "peasant property" in opposition to socialism and corporate capitalism. Belloc: the Servile State; An Essay on the Restoration of Property; Chesterton: What's Wrong With the World; Outline of Sanity.
Even before that, in the 1870s, some of the problems with that kind of ideologies were identified by astute observers. To quote Dostoyevski's The Demons
“But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a new form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid further uncertainty, I propose my own system of world-organisation. Here it is.” He tapped the notebook. “I wanted to expound my views to the meeting in the most concise form possible, but I see that I should need to add a great many verbal explanations, and so the whole exposition would occupy at least ten evenings, one for each of my chapters.” (There was the sound of laughter.) “I must add, besides, that my system is not yet complete.” (Laughter again.) “I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem but mine.”
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8117/8117-h/8117-h.htm#H2CH0012
I read somewhere that, as recently as the 1950s, even the staunchest anti-communists thought that communism would work economically; their argument was that economic success wasn't worth the loss of freedom that communism brings.
.... I still wonder what happened. The explanations like price signal system are all a bit abstract. What happened in practice? During WW2 they could produce a large quantity of excellent weapons (T-34, IL-2) though it is worth mentioning Stalin nearly got everybody shot who was causing IL-2 delays. So there was some strong motivation there.
So what exactly was Brezhnevian Sclerosis? I think they explicitly tried being more humane than Stalin, so managers screwing up their jobs did not face harsh punishment.
I don't think it is price signals. They planned with world market price signals so basically it was a gigantic Wal-Mart. Perhaps as they got more humane, corruption shot up, because the corrupted were no longer shot.
* spending way too large a proportion of GDP on defence
* sharp drop in oil prices
* obscenely large black market / shadow economy, fed by levels of fraud and grift frankly inconceivable in the west
* Afghanistan fiasco
"obscenely large black market / shadow economy, fed by levels of fraud and grift frankly inconceivable in the west"
No, the black market was a normal human response to conditions of restriction and deprivation.
> the black market was a normal human response
I'm not saying otherwise. People responded to the situation they found themselves in in entirely normal, predictable, human ways.
The question was: "even the staunchest anti-communists thought that communism would work economically" ... "I still wonder what happened."
The point here is that regardless of reason or justification, when 15%-20% of your GDP is silently diverted to a shadow economy, your state economy is unlikely to work how you thought it would even if it wasn't already mid-collapse for all the other reasons.
(Also, everyone involved in the grift naturally lies about what is happening, which means the picture of the economy that is formed at the top completely fails to match reality, which then makes everything even worse as the next round of plans attempts to make use of resources that are simply not there.)
I don't find this explanation plausible because of:
-China (where growth increased dramatically due to market reforms, in an era which had both more corruption and also less punishment for insufficient devotion to the Party),
-North Korea (where growth pattern was similar to USSR, but it's unlikely that Kim Il-sung relaxed coercion dramatically in the middle of his reign), and
-at least some of the socialist countries of Central Europe/Balkans (similar to North Korea in not having an obvious difference between their higher post-war growth and their lower later growth).
I find the market-based/coercive overly abstract. What I found on Wiki was that Deng allowed the provincial governments to make special deals with foreign investors. So it was not a generic free market but rather provincial governments providing very specific deals with investors. Since a workforce whose language one does not speak and is not yet trained in modern technology is not terribly attractive even with low taxes, my best guess would be input deals: mining, energy. So it actually looks like a very managed process. My main takeaway is that market is mainly a cost-cutting mechanism in this context, it could be an extremely Stalinist economy and yet if they provide foreign investors with low cost inputs, they will come.
NK was so extremely badly managed that when the Soviet and Chinese subsidies stopped coming, they could not even buy fertilizer for growing food. Basic business management is mainly a science, and it should not be terribly hard even for an inefficient bureaucracy to, say, export tungsten (or just flat out license the tungsten mines to foreigners), import fertilizer and grow rice. There had to be a very specific kind of fuckup happening. I don't think a complex Hayekian price finding mechanism is necessary for something that simple.
I have had some first-hand experience with it in Hungary around 1990. Basically the factories, mines etc. had outdated machinery. There was no particularly spectacular screwup, just the whole thing was stuck in the 1950's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIAYxWCXF8A so basically innovation was very slow.
These products were hard to sell on the Western market, but I am not at all sure it was a good idea to close these factories down. One could still have sold them to Africa and get paid in natural resources? The turbines manufactured with that kind of tech are still today in service in Turkey, my uncle used to maintain them. Once these factories were shut down, there were no jobs for decades and then eventually foreign investment started to coming, German, then Korean, Chinese. But even 35 years of market-oriented economic policies still did not enable to locals to build factories like that.
So apparently one cannot just add a simple homogenous element called "market" and then expect innovation to come. It seems they have been very specific policies. These German, Korean factories are all based on very special deals with the government, subsidies and all, and not generic market conditions. Today the generic market conditions in Hungary are mostly on the family restaurant level and almost every large business is somehow arranged by the government.
What I am trying to say is that when we use the word "government", we tend to expect it means "anti-business" and when we use the word "market", we expect "pro-business". But there can be such a thing as "pro-business government", as in "come here, here is a bunch of subsidies and cheap inputs".
The simplest way to save the Soviet economy would have been to do what eventually Russia was doing after the collapse: Renault bought 35% of Lada, brought technology, management etc. and suddenly they could make Lada Xrays which was globally competitive, at least in the poorer markets. Again that was a special deal specially arranged by the government.
I don't have a full answer to your question but I do have a stanza from The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919) which seems pretty bang on:
> In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
> By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
> But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
> And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Though I'm not sure to what extent it's really prescient versus historically well informed.
This was my first thought when I read the original question as well. When I first read that verse, I assumed that it was intended as a dig at the Soviet Union: I was surprised to learn that the poem was from 1919 as opposed to the 30s or at least the 20s.
Utilitarians generally draw an equivalence in value between human and nonhuman pleasure. That does not seem like a justifiable position. When we say a person is happy, we don’t mean they are happy in that moment. We mean they are content with their overall life. Animals don’t have this kind of reflection because their feelings are all moment to moment. So which do we value?
If you value life satisfaction, then you ignore all non humans. If you value momentary satisfaction, you miss something people consider more fundamental to happiness for us. If you use both, how do you weight them? If you use life satisfaction for humans, doesn’t that imply it’s a superior form of happiness. And if that’s true, doesn’t that mean human happiness is actually far superior to other species happiness? I know that John Stuart Mill had his idea of "higher" and "lower" pleasures and while that has its own issues, it's at least getting at the problem. I don't see that kind of distinction being made now. But if these two conceptions of happiness are qualitatively different, as opposed to just quantitatively different, that makes a big difference.
I disagree with drawing equivalence in value between human and nonhuman lives. But this is because I think it's generally best when people prioritize their in-group over the out-group (possibly a long discussion if I was to get into it).
That being said, I somewhat disagree with "Animals don’t have this kind of reflection because their feelings are all moment to moment.".
Why do I disagree with this? Pet dogs. There's been many documented examples of pet dogs being fiercely loyal to their human owner, and/or displaying sadness when their owner is away for a long time. This suggests to me that pet dogs might have at least some capacity for overall life evaluation. I mean, it suggests that the pet dog bonds at a deep level with a human being, and might care about their relationship in an overall life sense.
>because I think it's generally best when people prioritize their in-group over the out-group (possibly a long discussion if I was to get into it).
It is. Because the whole Enlightenment tradition is about universalism, but it goes back deeper, into Christianity, one universal (katholikos) church, Paul "in Christ there is no Jew or Greek", and can be tracked back to the Stoic cosmopolis. So there is a giant weight of tradition in favour of universalism.
On the other hand, we never manage it. Not even the "good guys". Right now, basically no one weighs Ukrainian and Russian lives equally. "Good people" laugh at Russian *conscripts* being blown up and call them orcs and not even think capturing them and exchanging them for Ukrainian POWs would be better. Universalism is a nice ideal which we are never doing in practice.
Very many people weigh Russian and Ukrainian lives equally. I remember seeing a video showing a young Russian man being killed by a drone. One could see very clearly how he tried to escape death and how afraid he was. And most comments were about how sad the video was and how war is hell.
It's not that hard to have some empathy.
Good points.
One additional point for me is this - we *know* the in-group more than we do the out-group. In the case of humans vs. non-humans, we certainly have a better understanding of humans than we do of non-humans. Knowledge is power, and greater knowledge enables more effective solutions and... more effective altruism. ;)
I think you have a point about it not necessarily being moment to moment although I wouldn’t call that reflection. But how would you compare the “life satisfaction” of two dogs that have decent owners who don’t abandon them?
> Animals don’t have this kind of reflection because their feelings are all moment to moment.
How do you know this?
They don’t have the cognitive capacity to ruminate about their life and decide whether they’re happy about it.
At the risk of repeating myself... how do you know this?
Well I can’t look inside the mind of an animal and know 100% what it’s like to be an animal, I’m pretty confident that something as cognitively demanding as ruminating is not in the cards for them. I could go more in to justifying that position but I have hard time believing that anyone would take seriously the claim that dogs sit around asking themselves “Yes, my owner gives me treats and takes me on walks but is there more to life than this?”
I generally think of overall life satisfaction important in that you can't exactly ask if someone's happy over and over again every moment of every day, so instead you ask them once if they feel like they're happy in general.
But as long as the kind of happiness animals have has some value, it must be equivalent to some amount of human happiness. If you're faced with the choice of a certain amount of animal happiness vs a certain amount of life satisfaction by humans, you have to choose somehow.
Animals may not be able to reflect on their overall life situation, but if cruelty to animals makes them generally more stressed and nervous all the time then that is a non-pleasurable feeling they carry through their lives. So arguably, ongoing pleasure in animals is a meaningful concept, if only by its reverse.
This isn't binary. Like, animals can have lesser value than humans and still have some value.
Like, if you kick a puppy, that's bad. That's bad because it's morally bad for your soul to kick a puppy but it's also bad because that makes the puppy hurt and it makes the puppy cry and the world with a hurt, crying puppy is obviously worse than the one with a happy puppy. This doesn't change the fact that it's way worse to kick a baby than a puppy.
The fact that we can't perfectly weigh out the badness of kicking puppies vs kicking babies doesn't the cardinality that kicking babies is worse than kicking puppies or providing insights and rough estimates from that. For example, is it worse to kick one baby or 10 puppies? 100 puppies? 1,000 puppies? I think the majority of utilitarians would agree that there is some number at which point it would be worse to kick X puppies than one baby. At which point, if we face a tradeoff between kicking 100,000 puppies and 1 baby, we can make the best decision possible :)
Yes, people generally feel that way, but the philosophical justification is rather weak. Perhaps we just have to accept that emotions matter and we cannot justify everything?
> Like, if you kick a puppy, that's bad. That's bad because it's morally bad for your soul to kick a puppy but it's also bad because that makes the puppy hurt and it makes the puppy cry and the world with a hurt, crying puppy is obviously worse than the one with a happy puppy.
I hate to ask this, but... source? Those are some bold claims to be making without any evidence.
What kind of evidence are you expecting? It’s a philosophical claim, not a scientific argument one.
Sure, Laiko & Snowy, 1957 (https://tenor.com/view/01yy-gif-264860659937134986)
Oh, I sincerely love this source!
Truly, a leader within his field.
Wow, I feel nothing. I'm kind of surprised myself, honestly.
...Dogs can't cry, by the way. Well, they can, but only humans shed tears as an emotional response. Though there was a disputed study saying that dogs had a slightly higher volume of tears when reuniting with their owners. Honestly, I'd just be impressed if it turned out that aggressive breeding efforts had somehow given dogs the ability to cry.
Not that the ability to cry has any bearing on the ability to feel emotion, mind you. Animals, social animals especially, all have their unique ways of expressing themselves. Humans will never take the time to notice them, of course, so they'll just come up with bullshit to justify whatever they think they're feeling.
Perhaps you would be more convinced by Balko & Lassie's 1982 paper, "That which should be maximized" (https://tenor.com/view/puppy-cup-good-morning-cute-puppy-yawn-gif-21806949)
Lassie co-wrote a paper?!
There is no evidence. They are all value judgments and it is impossible to say if a value judgment is true.
Or so it seems to me.
I did specifically talk about happiness because pain between humans and non-humans seems more similar to me. But if I say a person is happy, it's a different connotation than saying a puppy is happy.
Yeah, but we compare qualitatively different things all the time. With $500, some people might go sky diving and some people might get the boojiest seats in the opera and some people might but like 100 mosquito nets for Eritreans. You seem to be really focused on this qualitative difference of human/non-human happiness but that's not a unique issue. Utilitarians collapse lots of concepts into "utility" because, well, one uniform measure of "good stuff" makes everything easier. Like, I can't tell if you're just really bothered by something other people aren't bothered by or if there's some deep issue you're grappling with.
If they are different things then they aren’t interchangeable. It’s like if I’m comparing two movies and I point out one has better acting but the other has better cinematography. If I try to convert these aspects in to a number and claim that it provides some kind of objective answer, it’s completely arbitrary. I’m saying that utilitarians collapse this whole thing in to “good stuff” not because they have a justificable reason but because like the idea of doing calculations where it doesn’t make sense. Just because you throw numbers around doesn’t make those numbers correspond to reality.
I mean, yes, there's an entire website called Rotten Tomatoes that does nothing but converting various non-interchangeable aspects of movies into a single number and claim it's some kind of objective answer.
Like, a transcendent spiritual experience on shrooms isn't interchangeable with a Chipotle but they both cost ~$20...and that's kind of how our entire economy works. Like, one of the primary justifications for capitalism as a system is it is super awesome at setting the most accurate prices possible, which is critical for running our entire economy. But money is, literally, just made up numbers for comparing the value of non-interchangeable things.
There are aspects of utilitarianism which are mind blowing, and I love them, but this isn't that. Attaching vaguely associated numbers to things is just like a thing humans do all the time, often with really useful results. Why are you getting hung up on this aspect?
Rotten Tomatoes is giving you a number but it would be ridiculous to think that it automatically implies movies with higher scores are objectively better because of that. And economists don’t attach moral worth to prices.
Is it true that utilitarians generally make this equivalence? Cites / links would be good. I agree that weighing animal welfare as equal to human seems misguided - but I doubt serious utilitarians (e.g., professional respected philosophers) do as such. I've always assumed it's more of a thing of unexamined EAs, e.g., Catherine Ellison types.
Also, doesn't Peter Singer explicitly argue for an equivalence between the value of human and non-human happiness?
If they do make the distinction, it's generally of a quantitative type than qualitative. E.g a pig experiences some fraction of human happiness so N number of pigs is equivalent to a person. I'm saying that to me these are intuitively different types of experiences and not interchangeable.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. I'm just asking for examples of your characterization of utilitarians
I stumbled on this musical of the Odyssey, accompanied by crowd sourced animations and a dedicated fan base, and, having just read the Odyssey, feel very impressed with its quality and fidelity:
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0bJoKMJD7fk5_bMHd7PxoMVYMkg14-ex
There is also the adaptation of the Oresteia in two metal albums by the band Virgin Steele:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=semRYLA0jfQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvm3eL6HsYw
A masterpiece if you ask me.
I wonder how much that kind of thing costs? It's definitely a cool idea.
As Linkee #49, I wanted to share that I'm looking for work, so if you're hiring economists or data scientists, or have research you want replicated, get in touch (maswiebe[at]gmail.com).
A while back I saw a debunking of some scuba gizmo that supposedly filtered oxygen from water, so you wouldn't need tanks, just this mouthpiece. It got me thinking, what if you converted the water to steam? I'm picturing a device that lets a trickle of water run over a heat strip, and the user breathes in the steam. Would that get the average person the oxygen they need? Are there side effects to breathing straight H20?
Electrolysis of water? Would that work? 2 electrons per O? or 4 per O_2? some google AI says we need ~0.6 moles per hour. so ~3.6x10^23 O2, About 1x10^20 O2 per second... Four times that is 20 amps? (I probably made a mistake.)
Your idea of breathing in steam as a way to extract oxygen from water is creative, but it doesn't quite work from a physiological or scientific standpoint. Let's break it down.
First, the amount of oxygen (O₂) dissolved in water is very low. In fact, even if we could somehow filter that oxygen directly, it would be insufficient to meet human respiratory needs. Fish, for example, use gills, which are incredibly efficient at extracting the small amounts of dissolved oxygen, but even then, they require a vastly different metabolic system from ours. Humans breathe air, where oxygen is plentiful—about 21%—while the concentration in water is typically only a few milligrams per liter.
Now, about steam. When water is heated to steam, it doesn't break down into oxygen and hydrogen; it's still H₂O, just in gas form. Breathing in water vapor won't provide any oxygen at all, and it could actually lead to dangerous health effects. Steam can cause burns or scalding to the sensitive tissues in your lungs and airway, and excessive moisture could lead to conditions like pulmonary edema, where fluid builds up in the lungs, making it harder to breathe.
So, while the concept of converting water into something breathable is interesting, converting it to steam wouldn't solve the oxygen problem and could actually create more issues for the body. Alternative methods, like artificial gills or direct oxygen extraction from water using specialized technology, would be far more viable—but we're not quite there yet on a practical level.
Excellent. I just want to add I first read about artificial gills in 1990 in an 1970's science mag that predicted it will be done in a few years. So, lol, hype was already invented.
This reads like a ChatGPT response.
It was. ;) Apparently asking it to be "friendly but critical" beats some AI detectors.
I was curious if people would point it out; also I have discovered LLMs are much better at saying "you are wrong" nicely than I am.
And, I learned from it that "artificial gills" don't work as well as I thought they would.
The "let's break it down" seemed like an obvious giveaway to me. Humans rarely talk like that.
"Your X is POSTIVE, but LIMITATION"
Gave it away to me. Get that all the time
My AI detection algorithm rates the probability of AI generation as low. For example, AI doesn't use fragments like "Now, about steam". AI seldom uses absolute terms, such as "water vapor won't provide any oxygen at all".
Another unlikely one for an LLM is "but we're not quite there yet on a practical level."
The side effect of breathing H2O is dying. You can't just breathe anything with an "O" in it -- CO (carbon monoxide) is extremely toxic; O3 (ozone) will kill you quickly at reasonable concentrations; etc. H2O is of course not toxic, but you're not actually going to be able to use it for respiration. (I.e. It doesn't undergo the same chemical reactions.)
Side effects of breathing straight H20 generally include death.
(sorry for snark)
No, it happens all the time with no ill effects. That's what fog is.
You'll die if there isn't oxygen in whatever you're breathing, but the presence of water won't hurt you.
I think the much larger practical concern would be lugging around the energy source to heat the water to steam, and then managing to keep the steam from condensing back into liquid while not being so hot it burns the person breathing it. Only then should you worry if people can breathe water vapor.
Incorrect; it's very easy to know that people can't breathe pure water, so there's no point in considering what machinery might or might not enable them to try.
When an easy question is sufficient to solve your problem, it's a mistake to consider a harder one first.
I considered adding "assuming one can take into temperature, the carbon dioxide, power source", but I was in a hurry and writing the comment out on my phone. I figured there would be some biological issues with the core idea, and this has been most educational.
Steam is still water molecules. It's electrolysis that separates oxygen and hydrogen
Would breathing in the hydrogen be really bad for the person? I'm assuming so but I don't actually know. Could the process somehow send the oxygen to the person and the hydrogen back out into the water?
Hydrogen is terribly hard to store, so separating it from the O2 wouldn't be the most difficult problem if you can wait a bit for it to leak out into the water. In the mean time, the present H2 and O2 will be very happy to spontaneously react back to H2O, releasing all the energy you provided during electrolysis in a loud bang.
Hydrogen gas is non-toxic and wouldn't be a problem, but you could separate them out if you need to. The real problem here is that given the size of the batteries you'd need for this, you're better off just carrying an oxygen tank.
Agreed - except if you can use a nuclear source for the energy to do the electrolysis. This generally works well on the scale of a nuclear submarine. Scaling it down to an individual diver, while not giving them radiation poisoning, could get ... interesting...
Maybe if the radiation source is at the end of a long wire that you drag behind you. The water should do a good job at blocking the radiation.
Great point!
>The water should do a good job at blocking the radiation.
Very true! The hydrogen in the water is even good at blocking neutrons.
We need oxygen for its capacity to do certain chemical reactions, and release energy in the process. Water and carbon dioxide, the waste producs of respiration, are in a lower energy state than the oxygen and carbohydrates/fats they're made from, and it's this energy difference that's important. If you take water as an input, it's useless because it's already in a low energy state so you can't get more energy out.
There's a difference between water (H2O) and a mixture of hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen gas (O2). The latter would be fine to breathe since H2 is indeed non-toxic, but what electrolysis is doing isn't just unmixing the gasses, but changing the chemistry by adding energy.
Again with practical issues, electrolysis requires a lot of electricity to work, so now the scuba gizmo also needs a giant battery or a cord going back to a surface vessel. The electrodes are going to be fouled with salts from even fresh water, so now you are also lugging around a tank of distilled water. Finally you get oxygen, but it needs to be pressurized and mixed with an inert gas at about a 1:4 ratio to be breathable. At this point you realize the endeavor is pointless and stupid.
Hydrogen gas isn't toxic AFAIK but you can't breathe it. I imagine dumping it into the water would be fairly trivial.
> Finally you get oxygen, but it needs to be pressurized and mixed with an inert gas at about a 1:4 ratio to be breathable.
No it doesn't. You can breathe 100% oxygen just fine. The atmosphere is only 20% oxygen, but that's not something you need.
Oxygen toxicity is a thing,
However the original question basically related to breathing H2O. You can't do that, whether it is in liquid or vapour form. The main reason we need to breathe oxygen is so that it can react with sugars or fats in our bodies, releasing energy. Like burning, basically, but carefully controlled by enzymes. Oxygen in water comes pre-reacted - it has already burned with hydrogen. There is no energy to release.
If a device could use energy to extract pure oxygen rapidly from water it could indeed be the basis of a breathing apparatus. But extracting it in sufficient quantities in a small wearable device is well outside the limits of current technological understanding.
Sure, oxygen is highly corrosive, and if you're exposed to too much of it, your body will be corroded. That's bad, but it's not a failure of breathing.
I vaguely recalled there being some issues with oxygen toxicity. But that seems to take much longer to occur than a scuba dive would last.
At sea level, yes. The increase in pressure with depth means oxygen toxicity comes on much faster; you can't safely dive below ~60 meters breathing ordinary air; you need a special gas mixture with less than the normal oxygen content. For pure O2, the limit would be about five meters, and you are going to need a buffer gas.
As far as power requirements go, to keep pace with the oxygen demand of a moderately active diver you'd need 500 watts or so of steady-state power. Not out of the question, but still going to require ~3 kg of lithium batteries for an hour's dive. And you also need to desalinate the water first (else as noted below you'll be getting highly toxic chlorine) and you'll need a rebreather circuit with a carbon dioxide absorber. That;s a lot of expensive complexity that can kill you in many interesting and non-obvious ways when it goes wrong. I'll stick with a tank of compressed air, thank you. Or maybe a conventional non-electrolytic rebreather.
Also, you don't want to do electrolysis with salt water, because you'll get chlorine.
Maybe fuse spare hydrogen into helium while you're at it. Then heliox mixture can come handy to take you (and your fusion plant - no need for the cable to surface!) to greater depths.
You know I saw a movie about this in fourth grade, “Hemo the Magnificent” produced at Bell Labs. It seems that a lot of energy gets released when you do that hydrogen fusion thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemo_the_Magnificent
Edit
Oh crap, Hemo was about blood!
I was thinking of Our Mister Sun also from Bell Labs
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mr._Sun
Last thread I made a somewhat ranty comment about, among other things, rationalists and nerds not having much virtue. Sorry if anyone was offended by that. It's clear that there are some members of those groups who are truly horrible hedonists with no concern for others, especially with regard to sex*, but my comment was too broad a brush.
So, instead of expressing a whole lot of things I'm angry at in one comment, I'll try for a narrower focus. To mention just one thing, am I right or wrong in thinking that rationalists/nerds are generally in favour of hookup culture and casual sex? I do worry there's a motte-and-bailey here where people if challenged will say they aren't *supporting* those things, they just think there shouldn't be rigid prohibitions on them in all circumstances (which I agree with) but then when not being challenged they'll revert to acting for all the world like they *are* in full support of them. But I'll ask anyway.
If I'm right, here are my objections, and tell me why you disagree.
First, there's an aesthetic objection: sex with strangers just cheapens sex. It turns it into a transactional exchange, and/or an animalistic primitive thing, with no emotion or civilised aspect.
Second, three moral objections:
1. Spreading stds and creating unwanted children, who will then be either aborted or grow up in unstable homes. Yes, this can happen from non-casual sex, but it seems clear the likelihood is far greater (e.g. one man can father ten children in a month) and the outcomes worse (e.g. no real possibility of the parents deciding to get married for the sake of the child).
2. The number of incels and similar phenomena show pretty clearly how harmful the whole culture of hookups is and how much judgement and rejection it inflicts on perfectly decent people. Nerds talk about this all the time, and for some inexplicable reason continue to support this toxic culture. Again, yes, this can happen in normal relationships, but it seems clear that the shallowness of people's preferences can and does skyrocket when it's a purely casual encounter. Many people don't benefit from this, and neither does society. *Why* tolerate it?
3. Even if neither of those factors were present (e.g. perfectly reliable contraception plus no rejections of people, two absurd ifs) there still seems something scummy and unvirtuous about the whole idea of two people treating each other as nothing but objects for one another's pleasure. How many people who engage in hookup culture spend any time at all considering anything but their own desires? It certainly seems like the number is tiny. People don't look for someone who they can make happy, perhaps looking for a person who's the loneliest or most in need of cheering up. They look for the person most attractive to them, and consider literally nothing else. Even if all the practical problems with this were solved, the very internal motivations and mental states behind it are despicable.
So, can I hear why rationalists would tolerate any of this? Nearly every aspect seems utterly contrary to everything a society built on reason should be.
(*for example, I've seen stories of rationalists pressuring women into getting abortions, and quite a few in these communities who appear to greatly downplay the harms of infidelity. It often *seems* like the movement tolerates such evil people, at least far more than it tolerates mildly anti-woke opinions. If that perception is true, the movement is in some sense beyond redemption, but I'll accept, absent substantial evidence for the truth of that perception, that it's false.)
> To mention just one thing, am I right or wrong in thinking that rationalists/nerds are generally in favour of hookup culture and casual sex?
I would guess that nerds on average are more on the "openness to experience" side. But how much, that is difficult to say. It's possible that people with certain opinions are overrepresented in the debate.
> First, there's an aesthetic objection: sex with strangers just cheapens sex.
Do you have an aesthetic preference for things being expensive? Like, if you could get exactly the same thing either for $1 or for $1000, would you prefer to pay $1000?
This is the part that feels alien to me. In my opinion, things don't become better just because you charge more for them. But some people seem to feel that way, and it could be interesting to explore why. (My guess, admittedly quite uncharitable, is that some people derive a lot of pleasure from comparing themselves to others. An expensive thing is better by the virtue that some people other than me can't have it.)
> It turns it into a transactional exchange, and/or an animalistic primitive thing, with no emotion or civilised aspect.
This assumes that people can feel no emotion to people they only know for a short time. Or that we can't be nice to strangers.
You seem to use "animalistic" as a negative judgment. When you do sex, does it mean you feel no sexual instinct, only... dunno, a solemn duty to reproduce the humankind? From the technical perspective, how does a guy get a non-animalistic erection?
> Spreading stds and creating unwanted children, who will then be either aborted or grow up in unstable homes.
Is a very bad thing, I agree.
> one man can father ten children in a month
I assume this is not the kind of sexual behavior that most nerds would approve of. Some basic knowledge of contraception is assumed.
> The number of incels and similar phenomena show pretty clearly how harmful the whole culture of hookups is and how much judgement and rejection it inflicts on perfectly decent people.
I think these problems are mostly caused by people getting married at a later age. In the past, (we had the polite fiction that) people didn't have sex before marriage -- but they didn't need to wait for the marriage for too long. These days, we want everyone to get university education first, then start a career, and... starting the family comes last. But people don't want to wait for their first sexual experience until they are thirty or forty, so we get the hookups.
What is your proposal? Abolish the universities? (Actually, I think the right answer is halfway in that direction. We should have more streaming in education, which means that the smartest students could advance faster, which means the entire education could be shorter.) Convince women to get married and pregnant right after finishing the university? (Possibly a good idea.) Or make *everyone* wait until they are thirty or fifty before they have sex for the first time, so that the incels don't feel singled out?
> there still seems something scummy and unvirtuous about the whole idea of two people treating each other as nothing but objects for one another's pleasure.
Well, it's your assumption that they can't feel emotions for each other; some people might disagree. So what is the part that would make it virtuous instead? The economical dimension of traditional marriage? (But you disapprove of transactional relations, don't you?)
> I've seen stories of rationalists pressuring women into getting abortions
I'm sure there are such assholes also outside of the rationalist community. I assume that the average nerd in the rationalist community is not like this.
I will say that, as much as I disagree with your views on casual sex, there's one thing that I absolutely encourage doing in terms of spreading them to the world: exemplify a better alternative.
Go find a subculture with sexual norms more to your liking. If you can't find one, found one. I guarantee you that there are lots of other people out there who are interested in romantic and sexual relationships, but who aren't interested in casual sex. I guarantee that there are lots of people who'd like to be able to date from a pool of people who largely feel the same. It's likely that some of them have gone at least part of the way towards making that happen and you can join them; if not, they badly need some pioneers to get things started. My main caution here, though, is to focus far more on promoting what you DO want than on denigrating what you don't. By which I mean "no casual hookups" is a fine internal norm for a culture to have, but "go out and shame people from outside the culture who have casual hookups" is not. A culture need not be a crusade, and I don't think crusades usually make for healthy, stable or pleasant cultures.
The advantages of this approach are manifold. First, it's almost always MUCH easier to find people who already agree with you (especially on normative questions) than to convince people who don't. Second, people who would previously vociferously oppose you (such as myself) will often be either neutral or even happy to help as long as you're clearly not trying to rain on anyone else's parade. But third (and perhaps most importantly) your assumptions get tested against reality quickly and in a low-stakes way. If hookup culture does have all the toxic features you expect it does, your culture will almost instantly and effortlessly be better. People will notice, and many who have compatible views will flock to join. If you do have any misconceptions that get in the way of establishing good community norms, it's going to work a lot better to iron them out in a small subculture than it is to discover them only after you've effected a broad shift in the wider culture.
I'll end by noting that there's a natural and pretty rigid subset of people who will always be uninterested in casual sex and hookup culture: asexuals. I mention them not because they're people who'd be a good fit for your own sexual norms (it seems like you're interested in sex, just in the context of relationships) but because they're an excellent test-case to see how broader cultures deal with people of different preferences. My rather strong impression is that most asexual people tend to feel far more at-ease in sex-positive spaces than in prudish ones. This may seem counterintuitive, but a lot of prudish cultures have rigid sexual norms that don't allow people to have sex in certain circumstances, but also frown on them *refusing* sex in others (such as marriage) and are generally less tolerant of differences in sexuality. Meanwhile the default attitude for sex-positive spaces is simply "love as thou wilt," which can encompass everything from hypersexuality to complete asexuality and all sorts of individual nuance and variation in between. If it's nobody else's business how you arrange your sex life, then you're perfectly free to arrange it to suit your preferences.
Thanks for the detailed responses. This is the sort of engaged discussion I value this place so much for.
Let me just clarify a few things.
Apparently my tone still comes across as harsh, even though I tried to tone it down. I'm not militantly dogmatic on this, I'm open to being convinced.
Some people seem to think we're talking about legally banning hookup culture? I don't think that's at all within the Overton Window, and I certainly wasn't talking about that, but about moral criticism and social discouragement. And when I said I agree that casual sex shouldn't be always prohibited I meant in a moral sense, i.e. it's not always wrong, it just often is. And I'm also only using "casual sex" to mean with strangers, not people who know each other but aren't in a committed relationship, which I'd put in a very different category.
Regarding what I mean by cheapening sex, I mean something like: sex loses its significance as a unique thing to share with someone you love, or even just someone you know well or are emotionally close to. Even "I'm one of 5 boyfriends/girlfriends you gave this to" is very different from "I'm one of 200 random people". Or 20 random people or whatever.
Regarding incels, I'm sorry but I feel like this thread has completely different people to the sex discussions on the last few Open Threads. People here are mostly making the standard anti-incel arguments: "there aren't many of them, and the ones that exist are either bad people or have too high standards". Wheras those other threads had plenty of people arguing that this is a pervasive problem and that those claims don't apply. I'm taking no position on the factual truth of this matter. I did, however, want to hear from those latter self-described nerds who nonetheless seem to support hookup culture.
(Also, when I say "incel" I'm referring to the broadest category that includes "nice guys", "lonely nerds" and all the other groups that have a presence on this blog, not to the incel "movement". Is there a broad catch-all term I can use to make this reference cleaer?)
More generally, I wish I'd asked people responding to say whether they call themselves a rationalist. Many of the responders look more like standard liberals who dismiss the incel idea and all the status theories that many rationalists focus on. Not that I don't appreciate those responses, but I particularly wanted to hear from rationalists.
Have you considered whether your perspective on nerds' sexual morality might be skewed by which nerds discuss sex online and which ones don't, i.e. selection bias?
My guess is that endorsement of casual sex and interest in discussing sex online are positively correlated, among nerds and among non-nerds. I have not seen any data on this; I am merely reasoning from my being in both the disendorse camp and the disinterest camp.
>To mention just one thing, am I right or wrong in thinking that rationalists/nerds are generally in favour of hookup culture and casual sex?
I think not. The majority seem like heterosexual males, and nerdy heterosexual males are typically not doing well in that kind of intense competition.
I see favour for poly for this reason, people expect poly women will be less, ahem, picky about choosing a tertiary, since the opportunity cost is lower than that of mono. Indeed that is mostly how my dating works, I am the always forever tertiary. But it is still not hookups, it is serious friendships with some benefits, so there is far far more going on than being objects of desire.
I reiterate: for the not very attractive nerdy guy, hookups are HARDER to get than mono, but tertiary poly stuff are EASIER to get. That's because a hookup is entirely based on sexual desire, while the tertiary poly stuff is friendship-based, it is liking the person, and then at some point "well I guess I am horny too, so why not". So the sexual stuff is mood and liking based and not explicitly desire based.
I think there is also a distinctly libertarian element of the culture as well, basically aversion to telling people how they should live. I think that is the main issue with your argument. How can one not tolerate hookups without turning into a ridiculously puritanical, killjoy Sex Police?
There is IMHO also an element of atheism, one just does not want to look like an Evangelical. These cultures are very much opposed. I think science-based subcultures would be explicitly sex-positive precisely because their religion-based opponents are not. If the Creationists would hold gay orgies, maybe we would be ones preaching lifelong monogamy :))
I don't consider myself a rationalist exactly, but I think rationalists mostly get this one right. Answering your points one-by-one:
Aesthetic Objection: the obvious issue here is that aesthetics are personal. Your primitive, cheapened, transactional exchange is someone else's beautiful, life-affirming celebration of humanity. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone "supporting hookup culture" in the sense of thinking casual sex should be *obligatory,* just that it should be permissible and not considered shameful. Likewise not wanting casual sex should be permissible and non-shameful. So those that find it aesthetically unpleasant are absolutely free to avoid it, as long as they don't try to impose their aesthetics on others.
1. As a practical matter, I think you're probably wrong in most realistic circumstances. I can imagine a culture that simultaneously discourages casual sex AND teaches responsible sexual practices, but that doesn't seem to be a balance point that real-world cultures hit very often. It seems like you either end up with a prudish/puritanical culture which has a very strong tendency to keep people ignorant about sex, or a sex-positive one that tries very hard to spread knowledge of safe and responsible sex[1]. Nothing I've read of human history suggests that prudish cultures are actually good enough at shaming or policing people's sexual desires to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs: instead the stigma around sex *increases* the harm of those things in ways I doubt I need to belabour. I'd also *vehemently* disagree that parents "deciding to get married for the sake of the child" is a better outcome. Being raised by parents who aren't a couple has its upsides and downsides; being raised by parents who are together but shouldn't be has quite sharp downsides. Marriage doesn't magically make incompatible people compatible, irresponsible people responsible or people who weren't yet ready to settle down more stable or less restless. Anyhow, I think unwanted pregnancies and STDs are real concerns among people who want casual sex, but they are concerns that both respond *quite a lot* to culture in a way that mere sexual desire does not. Developing good cultural practices around contraception and STD prevention sounds a hell of a lot more possible than developing cultural practices that keep people from fucking.
2. I'm not remotely convinced by point 2. My understanding is that *incels themselves* consider themselves victims of others peoples' shallow preferences. But in reality, it's not actually understanding the roots of their interpersonal relationship problems is a large part of what makes them incels. In short, I don't think laying other peoples' psychological issues at the feet of "hookup culture" is remotely justified, at least not by any evidence you've provided.
3. This seems to be mostly a redux of the aesthetic point, with a heaping helping of projection. There's nothing "scummy" about wanting sex and ethically pursuing that desire. As for virtue, everybody's idea of virtue differs somewhat, but there's nothing inherently *unvirtuous* about pursuing your own goals and desires in ways that don't (by default) hurt other people. People who are lying to their partners, manipulating them, recklessly endangering them or deliberately trying to hurt them are being unvirtuous, of course, but I doubt you'll find anyone defending that sort of behaviour as a necessary, central or desirable part of hookup culture: defectors gonna defect, regardless of the culture. Anyhow, I think lots of people pursue casual sex while being mindful of the desires and comfort of their partners, and without treating their partners as objects. I think you might be letting your aesthetic disgust interfere with your ability to accurately model other human beings. Now, what people will NOT generally do (which you seem to suggest as evidence of lack of moral worth) is deliberately pursue sex with people they're unattracted to, solely for the sake of the other person. I think almost everyone implicitly recognizes this would be a bad idea: trying to have sex with someone you're unattracted to is often as unpleasant for them as it is for you. But there is quite a lot of room for two mutually-attracted people to be mindful of one anothers' needs and desires while having sex, even if they don't intend to pursue a longer relationship. Harkening back to Point 2 above, I'd guess that by far the biggest factor that makes incels wind up where they are is that they project unintentionally project an image (whether truly or falsely) of being somebody who *wouldn't* be mindful of what their partner wants. A casual sexual encounter with somebody who treats you like an object or ignores your wants and desires is unlikely to be pleasant, and many women are well aware of this. At any rate, I'll point out the hopefully-obvious fact that people who engage in hookup culture are also people with lives outside the bedroom; people who tend to be mindful and empathetic and responsible and courteous will bring that with them to their dates and hookups, as will people who tend to be self-centered and impulsive and careless of the feelings of others. People are people, inside the bedroom and out.
[1] I suppose a culture that's friendly to casual sex but doesn't try to spread that sort of knowledge is also possible, but I'm also not sure how likely it really is.
> Nothing I've read of human history suggests that prudish cultures are actually good enough at shaming or policing people's sexual desires to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs: instead the stigma around sex *increases* the harm of those things in ways I doubt I need to belabour.
My reading mostly suggests the opposite. One of the most straightforward reasons I think so is what we see in sub-Saharan Africa (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/01/27/future-of-the-global-muslim-population-regional-sub-saharan-africa/):
>Although HIV may be underreported in some Muslim societies, this study’s analysis of 2009 data from the U.N. finds that less than 2% of people ages 15-49 in Muslim-majority countries in sub-Saharan Africa are HIV positive, compared with nearly 6% of the population in non-Muslim-majority countries in the region.
Some have claimed that different rates of circumcision can explain whatever Muslim country vs Christian country HIV gap is left after possible Muslim underreporting is accounted for. I find this unlikely.
As a simple matter of good data analysis, this isn't a useful attempt at comparison. To be honest I was expecting people to challenge this point using this sort of statistic, but I was expecting something that compared, for example, different U.S. states or something like that: even there I was prepared to point out the difficulties inherent in aggregating data at the state level. Trying to run a comparison based on entirely different countries in one of the poorest regions of the world...well...it's great for fuelling confirmation bias, but not so good for for actually understanding what's going on.
Let's make an equally valid comparison: the HIV infection rate in the U.S. is (from what I could quickly find) roughly 0.4%. That's much less than even the Muslim countries in sub-Saharan Africa! Do you think that U.S. culture, in aggregate, is even more prudish than those cultures? Or are there, perhaps, other factors that vary from country to country that could explain the difference?
To be honest, I took ascend's comment to be implicitly considering mostly the cultures and subcultures in which rationalists (and ACX readers more specifically) were likely to live. I don't think rationalists have enough influence in sub-Saharan African cultures for their attitudes towards casual sex to make the tiniest sliver of difference there. Regardless, I'll go ahead and clarify/weaken my claim a bit to per-emptively narrow the scope:
1. A culture has to be reasonably modern/rich for sexual permissiveness to be reasonably safe. In particular effective contraception and STD prevention aren't available, then no amount of sex education is going to significantly reduce the risks of sex. In these circumstances I *do* expect prudishness to produce better results, at least in terms of those particular metrics.
2. A sexually permissive culture has to be somewhat dominant in its cultural sphere in order for better sex education and better norms around safe sex to show up in things like aggregate statistics. Both for the (hopefully obvious) reason that the stats have to primarily be measuring people from *that culture* before they can say anything about it, and for the more subtle reason that cultures aren't islands. People from one culture can interact with and join another culture. I expect the worst results in terms of both STDs and unwanted pregnancies to come from places where large numbers of people raised in prudish cultures suddenly find themselves intermingling with permissive cultures: all of a sudden you have a bunch of people who have all of the horniness and most of the opportunity for sex, but none of the education.
I don't think testing the effect of sexual culture and sex-education on things like unwanted pregnancy rate and STD rates through data analysis to be impossible, but I don't expect it to be easy, either. I don't think, for example, that any U.S. state is culturally homogeneous enough for checking aggregate stats at that level to be very useful. Finding and analyzing data that's granular enough to disentangle the effects of different sexual cultures in the modern world would probably be at least a medium-sized project, not something you could do with a simple Google search.
I doubt that hook-up culture has much impact on literal incels. Most incels either have too high standards or aren't willing to improve themselves to the point where they'd make a more attractive mate.
That being said, I do wonder if hook-up culture might be making it harder for people to develop long-term romantic relationships (i.e. pair-bonding), and in turn if this is a factor in recent fertility declines in Asia and the west. The desire for sex is certainly a strong motivating factor for most people.
Strong social taboos against casual sex might be good for the development of serious long-term relationships since it means if one wants to avoid social sanction while still having sex, long-term relationships acts as a gateway for that. And a person might feel more comfortable having a child if they're confident they'll have the support of another parent as opposed to having to take on the weight of being a single parent.
Mind you, this is just me thinking aloud. I don't recall reading many studies on this.
"Strong social taboos against casual sex might be good for the development of serious long-term relationships since it means if one wants to avoid social sanction while still having sex, long-term relationships acts as a gateway for that. "
There's a pretty huge flip-side to that. If long-term relationships are the only sexual outlet most people have, then they'll be incentivized to pursue relationships and marriages that they otherwise wouldn't, simply to meet their sexual needs. You might increase the number of *total* long-term relationships, but you also seem very likely to decrease the proportion of *good* long-term relationships.
According to this article by Forbes, these are divorce statistics for America in 2024: 43% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages end in divorce, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.
So, I mean... I don't see how somebody can view these numbers as some ringing endorsement of marriage quality in America in 2024. Now, I haven't seen stats on how many non-married couples break-up in America in 2024, but I doubt the numbers for that are any better than they are for divorce.
Perhaps an argument could be made that if most people knew their access to sex would end if they have a break-up/divorce, they'd put more effort into being good partners?
So honestly, I think you might be wrong here. The proportion of *good* long-term relationships might not decrease in the scenario we're discussing, and in fact they might *increase*. 2024 America certainly leaves a lot of room for improvement here...
The problem with this entire line of reasoning is that you have no standard of comparison. Your argument hinges on the implicit claim that "43% of first marriages ending in divorce is high." High compared to what? What standard should we be aiming for?
There a lot of obvious and bad ways to decrease the on-paper divorce rate. Banning divorce altogether would do it, of course. Do you think people who badly want to divorce each other in year N but aren't allowed to will be doing better or worse relationship-wise by year N+10 than if they were allowed to divorce? "Better" seems pretty hard to justify, but feel free to try. Or you could decrease the divorce rate simply by discouraging marriage: if only people who are *really* sure (sure enough to overcome the social pressures against it) get married, probably fewer of them will get divorced. It won't tell you anything about people's overall relationship happiness, of course, you'll have just pushed the less-happy, less-stable relationships into a form that's harder to track.
The point being, showing some divorce rate stats and saying "see, look how bad these are" doesn't actually mean anything. Good relationships are hard to do for lots of reasons. Making it easier for people to have good relationships is a non-trivial problem. People love nothing more than to pull their particular hobby-horses into discussions like that--judging other peoples' sex lives being a perennial favourite--but such claims deserve to be treated with extreme skepticism.
I cited these divorce rates because they're a signifier of ultimately failed long-term relationships. I didn't cite them because I'm anti-divorce as some sort of absolute, they simply signify that we're *already* not doing great at long-term relationships.
Yes, some marriages end amicably, but few people would divorce if they considered their marriage a *good* long-term relationship.
43% of first marriages ending up *not-good* and over 50% of 2nd/3rd marriages ending up *not-good*... that's rather bad itself, isn't it? And this is occurring in a society which increasingly normalizes and accepts casual sex.
I think it makes your 'huge flip-side' argument more questionable. And your 'huge flip-side' is just you reasoning out your perspective, no different than me reasoning out that if sexual access was limited to long-term relationships then it would probably result in more people trying to be good partners within those long-term relationships. I don't see where my thinking here is any less logical than yours.
If you have actual data to back up your 'huge flip-side' argument, then please share it. Otherwise, we probably should just agree to disagree.
Stepping back and talking a little more generally, arguments that run like "I think X causes Y by means of Mechanism A" are generally pretty weak. As such, weak counterarguments of the form "ah, but X could also cause not-Y by means of Mechanism B" are generally valid responses. They don't *prove* anything, of course. Depending on the relative strengths of Mechanisms A and B, you could end up with increasing X causing a large increase in Y, a large decrease in Y or anything in-between.
The main result of hearing the counterargument is to widen your probability distribution over the change in Y given X. Partly because being unable to quantify the effects of either Mechanism A or Mechanism B should leave you unsure as to which one is larger and by how much. But also partly because missing Mechanism B should lower your confidence that your model didn't miss anything ELSE.
For a question like this, I think any reasonable person's confidence in their model should be very low to begin with. Raising an objection like this was mostly meant to serve as a reminder of how little we actually know and how complicated the systems in question are. I don't claim to have any special understanding of how to build stable, happy, long-term relationships at a culture-wide level, I'm mostly just observing that ad-hoc reasoning like this is VERY unlikely to tell you much.
" I didn't cite them because I'm anti-divorce as some sort of absolute, they simply signify that we're *already* not doing great at long-term relationships. "
Again, this fails to answer the question "not doing great *according to what standard*?"
My contention isn't that it's awesome or great or fine that 43% of people who think they're committing to a life-long partnership with someone they love turn out to be wrong is good-in-itself. My contention is that you have absolutely no basis for comparison to say HOW bad the number is. What's the default? What's an acceptable threshold? Has ANY society with ANY set of sexual and romantic norms actually met the threshold? Part of the problem here is that you're imposing an implicit standard that the ONLY possible successful, happy, long-term relationships are marriages that last until (somebody's) death. That's a really high standard! It should be no surprise that when you set such a high standard, most people fail to meet it.
Before you go digging up divorce-rate statistics from other times and places, please remember that "divorce rate" is often a very poor proxy for "long-term relationship satisfaction." At BEST I think it works as a very-rough bound: if 43% of first marriages end in divorce than *at most* 57% of people are satisfied with their first attempt at marriage. But of course plenty of people in that 57% could be unhappy in their marriage too and just sticking it out for whatever reason: different marriage and divorce norms will cause different rates of this, so "lower divorce rate" can't be trivially mapped across cultures to "better long-term relationship health." But also treating it as a bound only works if people in happy, stable, long-term relationships always get married: I've known a number of couples that didn't.
So no, I don't have any data here because the whole question is a mess and the data is going to be likewise a mess. If I wanted to start digging up data, I would emphatically NOT start with divorce rates, I'd look for something like survey data that asked people about their current relationship satisfaction and duration and past number of sexual partners. If I could find robust enough survey data (covering both many different years and many different places) I could TRY to tease out some correlations between sexual permissiveness (on a cultural level), sexual promiscuity (on an individual level) and relationship satisfaction. I'm pretty pessimistic that I could learn much of value even with really comprehensive survey data though, because "how do you answer survey questions about sex and relationships" isn't actually a culture-neutral thing. People lie to themselves about their relationship satisfaction all the time, so I can hardly expect high consistency in answering surveys.
The point here is that answering questions about how cultural norms affect long-term relationship health is always going to be VERY HARD. Humans are complicated. Cultures are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Your un-anchored mean very, very little in the face of such a complicated question. I'd say my goal here isn't even to try to convince you that casual-sex-cultures are better for long-term relationships, it's to reduce your confidence in your ability to draw ANY conclusions around the topic. I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. Anything you or I THINK we know is probably little more than a gut feeling, and we should be appropriately skeptical in making gut feelings load bearing features of our respective cultural or political philosophies.
It's curious that no one phrases it like, "57% of first marriages end in death, 40% of second marriages end in death, and 27% of third marriages end in death". Clearly, if one wants to live longer, one should marry as many times as possible.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/divorce/divorce-statistics/
Oops, forgot to copy/paste the Forbes link. Here it is.
Why do you see casual sex as innately degrading or objectifying?
Couldn't two people have a hookup and be equally as invested in giving the other person pleasure, and in communing with another, as in their own getting off?
You seem to be implicitly assuming the worst possible caricature when you think of casual sex.
Plenty people are engaging with your discussion points, but I just wanted to chime in and express some mild puzzlement. I'm not sure what you mean with 'cheapen'. The only way that makes sense to me personally is a definition that means 'easier to obtain and thus not as much of a challenge', which, yes, I suppose that's basically a tautology.
But if you mean that it makes it less valuable or meaningful, I... honestly just had the polar opposite experience this exact weekend? I had sex with strangers and it was a profoundly and deeply touching experience that's still reverberating through me now. It is getting more profoundly and deeply touching the more I think about what happened, because having people that are strangers to me respect my body and treat me as I would want to be treated, quite so intimately, makes me feel deeply accepted, safe and cherished. In processing my weekend, I have been moved almost to tears, as for me it's been a celebration of mankind's ability to cooperate/collaborate. I had phenomenal conversations with some of these people afterwards; unsurprisingly, I would no longer consider them strangers, but that's very much after the fact.
Anyway, I'm curious to see this conversation play out, I just wanted to share that my lived experience of how meaningful sex is in a casual sex context is clearly very different to what you're describing it to be. (And, to be clear, it could be that it would cheapen it in this sense *for you*, and that would be fine and a good reason not to engage in casual sex personally.)
This is highly gendered. The basic model is men work their asses off to get consent and women just say yes. So the achievement element seems to be on one side. I don't know whether you appreciate how much men tend to see this as an achievement, in the Steam "achievement - unlocked!" sense. Which might be actually one thing that is sabotaging us... when I was young I considered even a one time hookup an achievement equivalent to double my income for 6 months, because this was by far the hardest thing I ever done in my life, seriously not failing calculus was a breeze compared to talking a lady out of her panties.
But the easier to obtain element is not necessarily true. Hookups are based on the entirely visceral kind of attraction, which some guys just have, and some others, especially nerdy ones do not. This makes some nerdy guy seethe at it, as they just have no chance and others seem to get it without effort. This is one of the cases where the unfairness of birth lottery hits really hard. There is something about being Leonard Hofstadter that is in some deep level does not give out the "sexual being" vibes, right? (Strangely Sheldon Cooper works better, because he is a little crazy.)
A monogamous relationship is based more on the mixture of visceral attraction and personal liking, and it is the personal liking element where the "working one's ass off" plays a role, as typically it means talking more than a guy likes to talk, the whole thing seems like a barter transaction of attention for sex.
Being a poly tertiary is even more about personal liking and even less about visceral attraction, so even more achievable and it requires on the total less talking :)
> The basic model is men work their asses off to get consent and women just say yes.
Yes, this is a huge imbalance, agreed, and I would love to do something about it! Sadly I'm not sure what else I can do other than to be sex-positive and poly myself, inspire other people to be sex-positive and poly, and to be open to casual interaction in this space, all of which I already do. So I mostly just lament.
I do nonetheless think casual sex being available makes it easier even for men (the strangers I mentioned in my post would certainly agree that was remarkably easy, hah; and I wasn't picking these people in this situation, so 'attractiveness' didn't factor in, and I didn't want it to), but definitely not to equal proportion. :)
Anyway, pretty much mostly agreed! I'm doing what I can about it.
I've been pondering your two comments here and I want to say that they've had quite an effect on me. You really do make casual sex sound very morally principled, compassionate and wholesome.
I'm not *entirely* convinced that it's the best path, even as you describe it, but you've made a very good case for it here. In particular, saying that you don't consider attractiveness at all seems to entirely invalidate my last two objections.
However, the problem as I see it is that while such a moral approach to casual sex is certainly possible, and there are people like you who follow it, it looks like most of casual sex culture is strongly correlated with extreme levels of selfishness and disregard for others. And my worry is that as long as that's the case, promoting even ethical forms of it like your approach run the risk of helping to also promote the more common toxic forms.
For example, feminists are generally known for their approval of casual sex and opposition to prudishness. You can read through Scott's old archives to see how most feminists react to the suggestion that they be less shallow in choosing their partners: usually unimaginable levels of rage along the lines "how dare you--how DARE you--suggest that I don't have an unconditional right to do WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT no matter who it hurts!" Exactly the same attitude is expressed with regard to abortion. *Not* merely an insistence that it's justified because fetuses lack sentience (which is a position I respect) but outright statements that "even if a fetus was 100% self-aware I would have an unconditional right to not take its intersts into account at all, and think only of myself" which is a strong contender for the most evil sentence I have ever heard a human utter. (And that I've heard innumerable times from feminists everywhere).
And it's not just feminism. College campuses are another environment known for their tolerance for hookup culture and casual sex, and have had huge epidemics of rape and violence, along with other horrible things like hazing. And I've never been to a nightclub, but my impression is that such places are usually known for extreme levels of shallowness and selfishness and nastiness and rudeness. On an anecdotal level, people I've known who were more sexually permissive have generally responded with mockery--mockery!--at the idea of considering things other than physical attractiveness in their potential partners. You can see a little bit of this mockery coming out in some of the responses here as well, to my suggestion that choosing people on the sole basis of physical attractiveness is in fact a bad thing.
Meanwhile, prudish cultures can certainly be shallow to an extent, but I'm pretty sure that e.g. Christian churches are inclined to encourage people to choose their spouses on non-physical criteria. Or at the very least, if you suggested to those people that they ought to de-emphasise attractiveness you'd get a nod of agreement rather than outrage or mockery.
So, it certainly looks like there's a pretty strong correlation between tolerance for casual sex and tolerance for shallowness and selfishness. I'd be very interested to know why you (as someone who practices a non-selfish form of casual sex) think this is the case. Do you think I'm misrepresenting this correlation? Do you think it's just a coincidence that multiple different environments are both known for casual sex and known for having some of the most vicious and selfish people on earth? What's going on?
I find it interesting the responsibility towards child rearing rarely enters into the conversation. There are number of circumstances where a child can accidentally be conceived in a culture of casual sex (which I define as seeing sex as toothless, and the responsibility inherent in it being unworthy of discussion). If one lives in a state with restrictive abortion laws, or if a woman is going through a rough enough time in her life that she isn't monitoring well, or is prone to denial, an accidental pregnancy can slip through.
Having a society that raises competent, good people is better than one that raises stressed, unbalanced people- which happens more often in shakey family backgrounds.
I think men and women both need to be conscious and active in their responsibility towards children they bring in the world.
That isn't to say I have a problem with premarital sex or sexual behavior. Prudishness isn't the answer, I don't think. My own personal philosophy effectively states that I am responsible for any children I have, accidental or not, which means I don't engage in PIV sex, even with protection, unless I'm with someone I feel comfortable risking 18 years of child rearing with. Other forms of sexual activity do not carry the same risk, and can in fact strengthen emotional ties- a far cry from cheapening sex. As a result, I tend to consider long-term compatibility before agreeing to sex. In my eyes, the major danger with casual sex is in ignoring our power to reproduce irresponsibility.
1) stds:
a) Taking part in hookup culture/casual sex comes with a risk of contracting stds proportional to the prevalence of stds among other people doing the same. The risk thus depends on peoples behavior and is not necessarily increased. Not even if someone believes that casual sex is immoral and that immoral people (as they have casual sex) can not take care of their health.
b) Being otherwise excluded from hookup culture might incentivize reducing the risk of infection and getting rid of it as quickly as possible. Seems to be the case where I live.
c) The increased number of vertices connecting people in a ‘hookup culture network’ compared to a ‘1900’ scenario does not mean that stds can spread more easily in the former, as this will also depend on the behavior of ‘hub nodes’ (i.e. people having sex with disproportionally many people, e.g. prostitutes or some teachers at catholic boarding schools, etc.) towards stds. A sufficient number of such hubs taking little care of whether they are spreading stds might do a much better job at distributing them.
1) unwanted children:
I don’t think it is quite right to claim that abortions are the killing of embryos. Rather, it is the termination of support towards the embryo – which will none the less in general result in its death. Similarly, denying someone your kidney might lead to their death, yet that does not make you a murderer, as the other person has no right to any part of your body. The same goes for embryos. No human, born or unborn, has a right to another persons bloodstream.
In addition to that, as far as I can see, there are three main reasons not to kill a human: I) The human wants to be stay alive. II) Someone else would be deeply upset about it, i.e. in the case of people in a coma. III) There is a risk of increasing the acceptance towards the killing of people who want to live. (i.e. killing a person born with a level of mental disability that they are not conscious may increase acceptance towards killing people who do not express their consciousness in a easily recognizable manner). One can invert this to create a case where it would be acceptable to kill a human: There is no self that would be upset by the end of its existance AND there is no other person who would be upset by the death of the human AND this does not increase the acceptance towards the killing of humans who want to live (e.g. a person with chronic pain who wants to be released from it). If it is, in such a situation acceptable to kill a person, this undoubtedly extends to terminating life support. An embryo has no concept of self, so there is no self that would oppose to not existing, there is obviously no one emotionally attached to the individual, instead it is a permanent burden to someone who can not avoid its presence. Following the concept of abortions being the termination of support by a human unwilling to give this support, we have a simple way of differentiating between embryos dying due to being aborted and the killing of babies or humans without a consciousness: Unlike a baby or a human who never developed a consciousness, the embryo is unable to survive outside of a womb (i.e. in an incubator or whatever the equivalent would be in the second case).
2) The incels I have so far encountered do not qualify as ‘perfectly decent people’. I further wouldn’t assume that incels are caused by hookup culture: As far as I can see several of them simply have absurd ideas of whom they’d be willing to date, excluding average women and expecting to find someone who can compete with the filtered presentation of some lifestyle influencer’s girlfriend (or some female influencer). One could just as well blame the phenomenon on Instagram.
One could also expect casual sex to decrease the number of rejected people. A former flatmate of mine used to date on average three guys simultaneously, for efficiency's sake.
As for nerds not turning against all this: The fact that one is at a disadvantage under a certain system does not mean that one can not agree to its overall reasonableness. Living in a country with more than two parties, the parties that I am in favor of have never had as much power as they could have in a less differentiated / less democratic system. None the less, I’ll remain in favor of democracy rather than a dictatorship lead by whom I vote for. In short, understanding that the alternative would be (even more) unjust, most people here will, I hope, root for what they conclude to be ethically coherent rather than what serves their comfort best.
Besides, most of the complaints about hookup culture are coming from the direction of ‘gym bros’ and other groups who’s company one might as a nerd find unpleasing. Giving those people more of a say regarding how society works is unlikely to be in one’s interest.
I have also, so far, encountered way more nerds who were complaining about not finding sufficiently like minded people to date compared to those who were (trying to date in the completely wrong age group and) wondering why they keep being rejected.
I also get the impression that the shallowness has decreased, rather than increased, to the extent that many people are looking for a partner who’ll match all the details they’ve come to know about them selves. If gifted folks decide that dating someone with an IQ of below 125 won’t work out anyway, ADHDers prefer people with equal (acceptance of) fidgetiness and others try to find people with matching attachment habits – well, it does narrow the options for ‘non-casual relationships’ down a bit (thus some people might decide to increase their dating efficiancy..). Having only the people from three nearby villages to choose from requires accepting a lot more shallowness.
3) I don’t see how ‘there still seems [to be something] something scummy and unvirtuous about the whole idea’ makes for any sort of rational argument.
The notion of people ‘treating each other as nothing but objects for one another's pleasure’ also makes for a better-than-nothing solution whilst one still hasn’t found that perfect person with the same personality type, interests and pet preferences who shares ones preference of watch movies at double speed. Besides, most people aren’t interested in most people beyond how those people may let them fulfill their own desires (for chocolate, in the case of a cashier at a grocery store).
I hope you also feel very free to date the lonely beggar in desperate need of cheering up. I have a odd, unexplainable doubt that you yourself are that convinced of your suggestion as to how one might pick a partner (or see a problem in it that no one you know would date said lonely beggar). And yes, societies collective decision that that beggar will remain single might be unfortunate. But no one can’t demand of anyone that they spend the rest of their life taking care of someone (of whom they themselves wouldn’t be willing to take care of).
> I don’t think it is quite right to claim that abortions are the killing of embryos. Rather, it is the termination of support towards the embryo
I’m sure you would like to think this is the case. Have you ever fact-checked this belief of yours?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THDmys8z30
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_aspiration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intact_dilation_and_extraction
> denying someone your kidney might lead to their death, yet that does not make you a murderer, as the other person has no right to any part of your body
Your actions did not create that human, and you did not take any actions that you could have anticipated would lead to the creation of a human in that scenario.
> The same goes for embryos. No human, born or unborn, has a right to another persons bloodstream
And I suppose no human, born or unborn, has a right to extract food, water, housing, or any other resources from other people? Because that would just be a parasitic leech? You don’t recognize anyone having any special obligations to anyone else?
> there are three main reasons not to kill a human: I) The human wants to be stay alive. II) Someone else would be deeply upset about it, i.e. in the case of people in a coma. III) There is a risk of increasing the acceptance towards the killing of people who want to live.
If someone with no friends or family is currently asleep, and could be killed without causing them any pain and with no one else finding out about this, would it be okay to kill them?
At a meta level - please consider how comically evil your ideas look from the outside view. Sure, from the inside view you can repeat those little quips you’ve seen on the internet for why this or that is justified - but really just ponder for a minute “Huh, my party’s most fundamental political belief is that access to baby-killing services should be as widespread and accessible as possible. Maybe I’m the baddie.”
Hey, how many unwanted babies have you adopted lately?
Unwanted babies are very hard to come by in America, because they are adopted immediately in almost every circumstance. This is what has led to all of the adoptions from foreign nations. The few babies born to American mothers who are not immediately adopted usually have very serious health problems which most people could not afford to take on.
Your argument is not a serious response to anti abortion arguments because people do in fact step up to take these babies, and the line to do so is years long.
As you point out, healthy, new-in-box babies with good provenance might not be wanted by their mothers but are very much wanted by people who can't make their own healthy, new-in-box babies. The waiting lists for those babies are long and people certainly do pay a lot for them...
...even though there are over 100,000 children in the United States eligible for adoption. Not mere "fostering," where adoptive parents might bond with a child only to see that child returned to their biological family (that number is 400,000), but actual *adoption*. (https://www.adoptuskids.org/adoption-and-foster-care/overview/faq#:~:text=How%20many%20children%20are%20in,are%20available%20to%20be%20adopted.)
Plus, not only are these kids that adoptive parents don't have to sink tens of thousands of dollars into acquiring, they're almost always kids *the state will pay adoptive parents to take!*
And yet somehow there's still 100,000 of them. Weird how that happens when soooooooo many people are waiting to adopt! Weird that they're willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and years waiting for mint-condition babies instead.
Yeah, it does NOT follow that there would be an equally large demand for babies with the kind of predictable issues a ban on abortion would give rise to.
Are you against murdering 1-year-olds? How many unwanted 1-year-olds have you adopted lately?
You know, the well-established moral principle "If you oppose me murdering someone, then you must be willing to take care of them for me, otherwise I am totally in the clear in murdering them." It's almost as if your parental obligations do not end when you merely choose not to murder your child. It's almost as if you also have an active moral obligation to take care of them too.
Meanwhile, Democrats are firebombing and defunding crisis pregnancy centers:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/11/pro-choice-militants-pregnancy-crisis-centers-attacks-us
https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/115243/documents/HHRG-117-GO00-20221214-SD003.pdf
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-eye-new-approach-rein-crisis-pregnancy-centers-rcna81603
Again, how many unwanted babies have you adopted?
Rather than banging on about the ultimate morality of forced pregnancy in a random online web forum, how about if you be the change you want to see and *demonstrate that forced pregnancy can work, actually* by adopting 3 or 4 of those unwanted babies? And lead an initiative to take on all those unwanted babies?
Put 1,000 unwanted babies in fully-resourced homes. Demonstrate it can be done.
And I mean the *really* unwanted babies. Not the babies of middle-class healthy teens, but Fetal Alcohol Syndrome-suffering babies of impoverished, reckless, low-IQ traumatized women and the men they think it's a good idea to pick.
And not just the babies. Go adopt some neglected toddlers from an orphanage in a blighted developing nation, children who weren't properly nourished in the womb and who weren't held or interacted with as babies.
I'm not a parent because I don't want to be a parent, mostly because I would be a bad parent, not having the correct temperament. I practice safer-sex, keep Plan B on hands at all times in the event of a condom failure, and if that ever fails to work, I will *unhesitatingly* have an abortion because I don't want to inflict my bad parenting on any child. I'll never be tempted to murder a one year old because I'll never have to care for a one year old.
But *you* care so much about babies and one year olds.
Go save them, hero.
How many 1-year-olds have you adopted?
> forced pregnancy
Around 1% of abortions are for pregnancies resulting from rape. Given that you apparently support abortion in the other 99% of cases too, let's consider that scenario first. In those 99% of cases, no one forced you to get pregnant. You made a choice that you knew full well could plausibly result in the creation of a human life. A law preventing you from terminating that human life is no more "forced pregnancy" than a law preventing you from murdering your 1-year-old child is slavery. Regardless of what you call it, you are simply facing the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
> adopting 3 or 4 of those unwanted babies
Why would it be my job to adopt and take care of these babies? Again, merely "not murdering your baby" doesn't absolve you of all your other parental responsibilities. It is your job both to not murder your baby, and to take care of your baby, in the same way that if I oppose you killing your 1-year-old, it does not suddenly become my burden to take care of them.
> I will *unhesitatingly* have an abortion because I don't want to inflict my bad parenting on any child
Do you support killing 1-year-olds with bad parents? Should this be the standard operating procedure for CPS? "Typical neglectful prostitute mother and abusive drunkard father - this kid is definitely gonna be traumatized. Go grab the shotgun from the trunk, Johnson."
> I'll never be tempted to murder a one year old because I'll never have to care for a one year old.
... not because you think they have moral value as human beings? The logical conclusion of this line of reasoning being that if you were in a situation where you had to care for a one-year-old, you would find it morally acceptable to kill them?
> But *you* care so much about babies and one year olds.
This is kind of like if you asked me "Is it okay for me to kill this random person walking past me on the street?" and I said "No, that would be wrong! That person's life has moral significance!" and you replied "Oh, well look at you, Dr. Holier-Than-Thou, up on your high horse! You care about that random person *sooo* much! You're *so* moral!! Well, if you're that good of a person and care so, so much about them, why don't you go pay off their mortgage for them! I bet they have some student loans too, you better go help them out! In fact, you should let them into your home and take care of all their needs and wants, obeying their every beck and call! If you don't, that makes you a hypocrite!!!" In this scenario, do you find it morally acceptable to murder that random person on the street?
It is perfectly consistent for me to hold the position that someone does not deserve to be killed, even if I am not particularly close to that person or care about them significantly more than any other person out there. And in no way does me rejecting that someone deserves to be killed imply that I suddenly have some special obligation to take care of them.
I think you are confused on what people believe and what they are saying. I won't speak for other rationalists but my stance would be
1. Sex is not that special of an activity so I reject your moral aesthetic arguments (this is not to say that sex should be treated as casually as going for a run but is probably best considered on par with meditation, drugs, or serious exercise).
2. Many problems around sex are derived from people's shame and difficulty talking about sex and related difficulties. Society should encourage people to learn about sex from responsible people rather than misogynists or porn.
3. Society should avoid interfering with reasonable choices between consenting adults.
4. Incels and the like should generally work on making themselves more appealing to other people (and or adjust the types of people they are willing to be with) and there is no just society that would force people to be with/stay with bad partners.
I for one do indeed believe that people should indeed be allowed to have casual sex, and not just as a half-hearted thing where the practicalities of banning it would be worse. I think if people are choosing to do it, that's a good enough reason to assume it's probably improving their lives in the absence of evidence to the contrary, and I do not find your arguments it's bad convincing. Specifically:
The aesthetic objection: If you want to have civilized emotional sex (and want the same for the other people who care about that sort of thing), the hookup people aren't stopping you. If you think your sex is devalued by other people doing it differently and that therefore they ought to stop, that seems like a terribly unreasonable imposition on people who aren't even interacting with you. How they live their lives has far more of an impact on them than it does on you, so you should let them make the choice. Perhaps you think that by devaluing sex they're also worsening their own lives, but that depends on their own preferences which they're probably in a better position to evaluate than you are.
Point 1: I admit these are bad, but given the precautions that are available, they don't seem bad enough to warrant calling the entire practice bad. People who accidentally had a child getting married for the sake of the children seems like a terrible idea. Also you later call the possibility of perfectly reliable contraception absurd, but homosexuality at least is a possibility.
Point 2: If someone dislikes rejection so much that the possibility makes attempting to find a casual sex partner a bad choice for them on average, they can just not do that. Neither they nor the people who do find it worthwhile need end up worse off.
Point 3: most rationalists, including me, are utilitarians and don't consider someone's motivation an important factor in how moral their actions are. Also, it's much easier to tell who you find attractive and who you would like to have sex with than it is to tell who would like to have sex with you, so people pursuing the people they are attracted to just seems like an efficient way of doing things.
I completely agree but I will play a bit of a devil's advocate. What you say sounds like individualistic 1970's liberalism and since than people figured out something new.
For example, look at fat women complaining about thin women on magazine covers. Basically one editor choosing one thin model once does not affect anyone, but when all the editors do it all the time it creates a social norm, a silent pressure.
And I think women are more vulnerable to the pressure of silent social norms than men are. Some women might think if they are not doing hookups, they will be seen as not liberated enough or something.
So we have ran into problems 1970's individualistic liberalism could not predict. They stopped thinking at "you do you", today we can see everybody doing things a certain way creates a silent social pressure on people to do the same thing to fit in.
I don't have a solution other than it would be good if people would do their personal choices in a discreet way that does not generate norms.
Okay, that's possible, but it seems like generally a rather weak correction to the liberalism argument. In this case, I'm not even convinced there being a social norm that having casual sex is normal is a bad thing. Some people might feel pressured into it, but equally others might feel pressured out of it if it is not considered normal.
1) Abortion and contraceptives make pregnancy from casual sex a non-issue in any non-regressive location. Modern medicine has made a lot of STDs way less bad to have, but it's a risk you take. As a society, we are mostly fine with people taking informed risks, which is why we don't ban mountain climbing or sky diving.
2) I really don't think this is a consequence of people being more casual around sex. But either way, people's freedom to associate or not with who they want is more important than making sure everyone gets to participate in a given activity.
3) This is pretty much purely a religion/spiritual argument, and is completely irrelevant to a discussion of rational society.
Fundamentally, the costs seem to be borne by the people who participate and they seem to enjoy having casual sex. I see no reason to be against it in general.
Let's not confuse poly and hookup. For the not very attractive nerdy guy, hookups are harder to get than mono, because it is entirely based on visceral desire. But becoming someone's poly tertiary is easier than mono, because it can just work on a friendship basis with very little visceral desire.
"because it can just work on a friendship basis with very little visceral desire."
I think that may be part of what OP is getting at: "we may as well have sex, why not?" where there is no lust or desire or love at work is that sort of cheapening of what sex should mean. "Want to watch a movie? Or we could fuck? I don't care either way" is not the epic tragic grandeur of Tristan and Iseult.
I don't see how that matters; (romantic/sexual) weakness is not virtue.
The point is that nerds don't have casual sex because they *can't*, not out of any virtue. The Isla Vista shooter was not virtuous for not having sex.
In response to people saying that Trump is senile in regards to the whole Haitian dog-eating story, he knows exactly what he's doing:
> Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said Sunday that he stood by the debunked claims he and former President Donald J. Trump have spread suggesting Haitian migrants were eating pets, saying that he was willing “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”
And Mr. Vance responded indignantly when asked about the bomb threats that have upended life in Springfield, Ohio, the city where he and Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the pets were being eaten.
“I’ve been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,” Mr. Vance said on CNN, referring to strains he said that a large influx of Haitian migrants had placed on the city’s public services. He went on: “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
When the CNN host, Dana Bash, noted that he had used the word “creating,” Mr. Vance replied, “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/us/politics/jd-vance-springfield-pets.html
Just putting it out there: cats are carnivores. They're gonna taste foul.
Your evidence that Trump knows what he's doing seems to be that his running mate says he does
Do leftist really think the haitian eating pets thing is a complete hoax?
If you lead with a fake story, there's no reason anyone should pay attention to you. The correct course of action is to call these people racist and move on. The Republican party has been completely overtaken by crazies, and they should be treated a such.
Was it actually crazy though? Everyone is talking about the Haitian pet eating thing now, and I imagine very few people knew about the large groups of Haitian (or other) TPS refugees being flown in to small towns. I certainly didn't know about it before the debate. And I doubt it changed anyone's mind against Trump. Half the country viscerally hates him anyway, and everyone should be used to his ridiculous statements and hyperbole by now. "I was going to hold my nose and vote for Trump in November, but the Haitian cat eating thing was the final straw!" ...is not something I see happening. I think drawing attention to problems with immigration policy is a net positive for the Reps here.
call me racist then, wait till you hear my opinion on the cartels
This story is bananas; it seems to be a conflation of a crazy woman eating a cat in another town (she wasn't Haitian) and allegations that the Haitian immigrants settled in Springfield were stealing geese from the local parks.
That got turned into "and they're stealing cats as well" which became "pets" and so we get to "they're eating dogs".
Marianne Williamson, of all people, had a nutty but more plausible take: voodoo. Yeah, I know, but i think it is more likely that *if* some Haitians are stealing cats, it's for religious ceremonies. (Please note the "if" there, which is a VERY BIG IF).
The geese-stealing seems to have some basis in fact, but of course everyone is now making memes about the crazy things Trump said which are clearly false, even if some of the other claims have some factual basis at root (e.g. Harris's support of gender-affirming care for prisoners including illegal immigrants; everyone has been making merry about the 'illegal aliens' using the alien from "Alien").
Re geese-stealing, there is no evidence for that either:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ohio-geese-eating-trump-claims-revealed-b2612904.html
The following is from an article in the Wall Street Journal news section dated yesterday:
===
Anna Kilgore, a resident of Springfield, Ohio, filed a police report in late August that her cat, Miss Sassy, had gone missing. She suspected her Haitian neighbors had taken the cat.
The Trump campaign used the police report as the strongest evidence for their unfounded, racist claim about Haitian migrants.
A spokesperson for J.D. Vance provided the police report to The Wall Street Journal.
Yesterday, WSJ spoke with Ms. Kilgore, who admitted her cat had returned a few days later, found safe in her basement.
Ms. Kilgore, a Trump supporter, said she had apologized to her Haitian neighbors.
===
(If you have a WSJ subscription you can read the article directly:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/springfield-ohio-pet-eating-claims-haitian-migrants-04598d48?reflink=article_copyURL_share&st=n5zqPV )
I agree. He knows what he's doing.
He says something extreme/stupid, but related to an issue that he feels can benefit him politically and isn't getting much focus. The extreme/stupid aspect gets a lot of backlash, meaning it gets a lot of attention, which Trump (or a major Trump supporter/ally) uses to delve deeper into the related issue that Trump hopes will help him.
Now, I don't think EVERY Trump mistake or extreme/stupid statement is like this. Sometimes he's just saying something extreme/stupid. But sometimes there is a method to the seeming madness.
It's just so bizarre that you've got 22 million people from all around the world patiently entering the Green Card Lottery each year for a chance to live in the US, but simultaneously you've randomly got entire Haitian towns showing up in Ohio.
Imagine you work for a company which has highly selective hiring practices and a massive pool of well-qualified applicants, but sometimes just randomly hires a hundred hobos who happen to be on the street, and gives them cushy jobs and offices.
And you're not allowed to say "Man, has anyone noticed that the filthy hobos we hire tend to perform worse than the carefully selected employees who go through our rigorous hiring process?"
Wait, who are the "filthy hobos" in this analogy again? Because I distinctly recall seeing a local factory owner interviewed on the subject and basically saying "It's been *great* since the Haitians showed up - now I can hire people who will predictably show up on time and sober". And anyone who followed J.D. Vance before his recent face-heel turn should understand why small-town Ohio culture might have employers seeing things that way.
Also, you don't have "entire Haitian towns showing up in Ohio". There's less than ten thousand Haitians in the entire state, and I think no more than 2,000 in Springfield. The stuff about 20,000 Haitians descending en masse on Springfield is, how shall we put this, a flat-out lie. Along with most of the stories about "filthy hobo" behavior.
>There's less than ten thousand Haitians in the entire state, and I think no more than 2,000 in Springfield. The stuff about 20,000 Haitians descending en masse on Springfield is, how shall we put this, a flat-out lie.
Is it? The Springfield News-Sun reported back in July, regarding Haitians moving to the city over the last five years, "city officials now saying the number could be 15,000 to 20,000". (https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/thousands-of-haitian-immigrants-now-in-springfield-5-takeaways-from-our-reporting/QQFDZR6JAVCBNC6TGZGAEKE2JU/). Reuters a couple days ago said it was "as many as 15,000" (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/haitian-immigrants-fueled-springfields-growth-now-us-presidential-debate-2024-09-11/). The New York Times is reporting "between 12,000 and 20,000, according to city officials who have spoken with The Times" (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/us/haitian-migrants-springfield-ohio.html). Where are you getting the information that it's no more than 2,000?
Here's the US Census showing no more than 7,851 Haitians in *all of Ohio* last year: https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2023.B05006?q=Place%20of%20Birth&g=040XX00US39&y=2023
And I've seen, but can't now quickly find, people tracking birth and death rates for Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Ohio that show no significant increase in the past year, which would rule out a massive recent increase in the Haitian population over the past twelve months. Unless all the new immigrants are immortal and infertile, I suppose.
So, <10,000 Hatians in Ohio, which means <<10,000 in Springfield. The most charitable explanation I can find is that someone correctly cited a figure of 15-20,000 *total* immigrants in Springfield, including Haitians and Jamaicans and Mexicans and Guatemalans and all the rest, and including the ones who came last year and the ones who have been here for a decade or more. And someone else heard someone talking about all the Haitians overrunning Springfield and conflated the two.
But at this point, with the matter being so highly visible and contentious and with the readily availability of information that includes the US census on one side, and the other always tracking back to "some anonymous dude said...", I think it's safe to say that anyone still talking about 20,000 Haitians in Springfield is either a liar, or someone who was fooled by a liar. I'm pretty sure you've been fooled by liars.
>I think it's safe to say that anyone still talking about 20,000 Haitians in Springfield is either a liar, or someone who was fooled by a liar. I'm pretty sure you've been fooled by liars.
Me, and Reuters, and the New York Times I guess.
EDIT: I'll also note that the census data you're linking to comes from one of their 1-year estimates, which the census describes as their least reliable estimates (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/guidance/estimates.html). If there was a large influx of Haitians over a short period of time, it wouldn't be surprising if it didn't show up on an estimate like this).
The New York Times is notoriously easy to fool, and hosts a fair number of outright liars to boot. But as to the argument at hand:
The one-year estimates are indeed rather noisy. Fortunately, the census includes error bars, and the number I cited was at the upper bound.
And even more than the census, the United States is quite good at accounting for dead bodies, along with newly-living ones. If the rate of fresh Afro-Caribbean corpses and babies hasn't massively increased over the past year, then there hasn't been a massive increase in Ohio's Haitian population since the last census estimate.
Except they don't do worse! There is no epidemic of immigrant crimes in Springfield, there are no pets being eaten, Trump and Vance just made the whole thing up based on Facebook rumors!
And yet people continue to talk about "filthy hobos" in their towns as if immigrant crime is a serious concern and not something invented from two racist idiots banging their singular brain cells together.
There may not be an epidemic, but it seems the claim isn't entirely baseless:
https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-cat-eaters-of-ohio
It is entirely baseless, it's just that Trump supporting conservatives live in epistemic hell, so their idea of evidence includes a piece that says
>The Federalist has published a police report with allegations that a group of Haitians emerged from a city trail with dead geese in hand.
>We identified a social media post, dated August 25, 2023, with a short video depicting what appear to be two skinned cats on top of a blue barbeque.
>To be clear: this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement. The town is Dayton, not Springfield; cats alone were on the grill, not cats and dogs.
Which cites Haitians presumably hunting geese and a joke social media post that accuses somebody of grilling cats... while cats are walking by the grill... in a different town. This is like saying "I have video footage I was adbucted by aliens" and the video footage is actually a polaroid of the night sky taken by somebody in Guatemala that says they saw flashing lights. It's shameful how tribal and anti intellectual Trump supporting conservatives have become that their smoking guns for Haitians eating cats and dogs in Springfield 1) Don't occur in Springfield, 2) Don't include Haitians, 3) Don't include cats and dogs being killed, let alone being eaten.
1. I don't know why you think the Haitians are all from the same town. But it would hardly be surprising; it is completely normal for immigrants who get good jobs somewhere to spread the word among their relatives and friends, who are often from the same area.
2. The city actively recruited immigrants as part of a strategy to arrest decline. Again, that is quite common.
>2. The city actively recruited immigrants as part of a strategy to arrest decline. Again, that is quite common.
Did the city actively recruit _legal_ immigrants or _illegal_ immigrants? The former would be fine. The latter sounds like it would be conspiracy to violate federal immigration laws.
Haitians have temporary protected status, which comes with employment authorization. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status/temporary-protected-status-designated-country-haiti
.
Many Thanks! That is bizarre... So there can be temporary protected status that lasts the length of a nation's civil war? Hmm... This could be a very long "temporary" And the list looks like a really strange collection, with some strange inclusions and exclusions. Afghanistan yes, Central African Republic no? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_Republic_Civil_War )
I do not know what the time limit ison TPS, but I know that it can be extended. Re the CAR, it is quite possible that people are more able to internally relocate. Or perhaps the war is currently relatively quiescent. It certainly seems to be, from the list on that Wikipedia page. Or maybe most people from the CAR who are in the USA are likely to be eligible for asylum (since there is a religious aspect to the war), which is not the case re Haiti, certainly.
The Haitians are here legally.
Many Thanks! That should be fine. Admittedly, no vetting process is perfect, but e.g. Oregonians sometimes get unhappy at influxes of Californians. At some point people just have to note that the law is being followed, and that is the end of it (short of changing the law, which is a very long, contentious, process).
Can you point to any nation that refuses citizenship to children born of pairs of citizens within the territory of the nation? AFAIK, that _very_ commonly is sufficient for citizenship. Personally, I consider it completely legitimate.
Vance acknowledged the reports may not be true but people should not listen to the ‘babies’ pointing out the inaccuracy and should keep on posting the memes.
I think it’s part of being Trump’s running mate. It’s a sign of weakness to ever admit a mistake or apologize. So just doubling down on the lie is SOP.
What mistake? The rhetoric worked: not only has it further galvanized his base against immigrants, the Haitian immigrants are beginning to move out of the city due to no longer feeling safe there. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/us/springfield-ohio-haitians-tension.html What other candidate can say that they already began fulfilling their campaign promises before even taking power?
>But tensions between longtime residents and more recent arrivals had been building before the national spotlight landed on the city, about 25 miles from Dayton.
>Even as the Haitian immigrants have been welcomed by employers and injected energy into fading neighborhoods, the arrival of thousands of people in a short period of time has strained schools and some government services.
>And then a fatal crash that killed an 11-year-old boy last year when his school bus was struck by a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant intensified anxiety and anger over the growing immigrant population, drawing attention far beyond the city.
>“All the publicity has caused tension between the Haitians and native Springfield population,” says Joseph Melvin, a lifelong Springfield resident who works at the laundry and has sometimes been frustrated by some of the Haitian immigrants.
>“Most of them are kind people, but a few are abrasive and that makes it hard for the rest,” Mr. Melvin said.
I have my doubts that Trump's "they're eating cats and dogs" line did all that much.
It caused multiple bomb threats at local schools, and caused the Proud Boys and the Klan to show up. Like, if you're going to say a single car crash was responsible for causing tensions, I would think multiple bomb threats would be even more tension-raising.
I would say, all their communication should be geared towards voters who haven't made their mind up yet. Untrue stories about immigrants eating pets will repell most of those voters I imagine. JDV doesn't have to convince racists to vote Republican. So I would consider this rhetoric a mistake.
Are they moving to Haiti?
They're moving to bigger, Democrat-run cities. Basically the same thing.
In the comments on the recent Links for September 2024 post, one of the links was to a blogpost arguing that low birthrates has been primarily caused by parenthood being reduced in status relative to your employment. One of the objections was that it's actually about opportunity cost. I disagreed, but I don't think I wrote very clearly. I was trying to say that opportunity cost doesn't get you any closer to figuring out why people have fewer children. Opportunity cost is comparing the expenditure of resources (like time) doing X things compared to, for example, having/raising children. So if you want to frame it as opportunity cost, the question just becomes "Why do people believe that the opportunity cost of having children is higher than people in the past?" The status argument is that the reward for having children has been reduced because it now gives relatively less status than other things like your career achievement.
Let's frame it that way then. If you had considerable political power, what policy would you enact to either reduce the opportunity cost of having children or increase the opportunity cost of the alternatives?
I would make admission to higher education conditional on having at least one biological child, unless you can't have one through no fault of your own (to rule out voluntary sterilization). No kid, no degree. The same condition would be applied to other credential-granting pathways if they become popular enough. Thoughts?
This is an extremely silly idea.
Employers would simply stop requiring *formal* higher education credentials and set up their own apprenticeship programs (they could call them entry-level jobs to avoid any ahas!) to train the incoming workforce, likely with long-term contracts to ensure they see their investment pay out.
On one hand, you'd have a generation of corporate serfs, but on the other hand, you'd have eliminated the university system with its nutty post-modernist ideas and its creation of student loan serfs.
...actually, not a bad idea!
You're probably right that the high school-uni-white collar job pipeline would degrade over time. I don't see this as bad either. I'm not sure more employer-provided training would necessarily be a bad thing either. Isn't the lack of it a common complaint these days?
No, I think removing the university grift for most professions would probably be a net positive.
Okay, so now everyone who wants to go to college has to be pregnant/father of a child by age 18. Can you tell me how that works out?
Trying to raise the baby *and* have full-time education? May end up not getting that degree after all.
What money is going to support the baby? If you're in full-time education, you're not earning money.
Oh, wait, it's supposed to be the *couple* of you together? Baby mama and baby daddy either co-habiting or married? Well, you never *said* that, so it's baby mama on her own. But if both of them are together, again, if both are in full-time education, same problems as above. Accommodation for a family? Paying rent?
So maybe daughter has the baby, goes off to college, and grandparents raise it. Mmmm, same problem applies as "why aren't people having babies after college etc."? Grandparents may be in their 50s, so at the point of their careers where they are getting the rewards for that. Unless grandma gives up her job, or goes part-time, how is she going to have the time to look after the baby? I look forward to you explaining to the upper-middle class women why they should be raising their grandkids, just like those underclass women.
Plus, baby mama and baby daddy may only be together long enough to have the baby and they split. Arranged pregnancy of convenience, for one to four years of getting the degree, then they never have any more children again.
"No kid, no degree/trade qualification" may sound good, but I think it more likely to result in "only rich kids whose parents can afford to pay for childcare while daughter has baby and goes off to college" will benefit; we'll have a lot of people just not bothering to jump through that hoop.
Which, as has been pointed out in another comment, jobs now require more and more credentials. So an entire new underclass is created, living on gig economy manual labour and service industry work. I think your solution is worse than the problem.
If the rules of the game change, so do the players' behaviour. I imagine it just as likely that more people would simply delay education rather than go straight to university after high school. Maybe more people have kids, then go to school in their mid 20s while their first kids are in school themselves. Grandparents would likely help, but I don't see this as a negative and I don't think most grandparents would either. Most grandparents really love their grandkids.
>Which, as has been pointed out in another comment, jobs now require more and more credentials. So an entire new underclass is created, living on gig economy manual labour and service industry work.
This relies on the same logic that led to everyone being told to get a university degree.
The single thing that squares basically all of these circles is childcare the parent does not have to pay for.
(I'm deliberately not being more specific because although state funded creche/kindergarten is the obvious option here, other solutions are possible; as are mixed solutions like the state paying for childcare for people in full-time education, but employers covering it for their employees)
As a child of a single parent, who grew up in a country that did this (the childcare thing, not the degree thing!), I am at least anecdotal evidence that it is workable.
But the problem with that is that you need childcare workers, and they need certification, and if the 'solution' of "nobody is permitted to get a qualification until they have a kid", then you're still stuck. How can the childcare workers get the needed qualification if they can't study unless they have a baby, and if they have a baby at 18, how are they going to combine full-time child rearing with education on their own?
Universal free childcare for the professional classes, so working mom can have her career *and* more than 1.2 kids, is what we are all dancing around: these are the people we want to be having babies, these are the people not having babies, and very damn ironically it is the people in the better-paying jobs who are saying they can't afford to have more than one kid.
No kid, no degree probably would work, at least in the short term. Because most high-paying jobs require a degree these days... or at least that's my strong impression.
If people legally needed to have a child in order to get a degree, I could even imagine parents taking an active role in ensuring their teenaged child has a child of their own by the time they're 18. Teenage pregnancy may well skyrocket.
The question then becomes... what are the full range of effects of this? It would be a pretty huge cultural shift. It might work long-term, or it could go very poorly.
All of the above being said, I doubt your law change would survive much in the real world. Too anti-libertarian for the vast majority of Americans I think, probably too conservative-feeling for the vast majority of Europeans too.
My own idea, though admittedly a lot more modest than your own - nationally funded free daycare centers in and around all major urban areas. Might be enough to convince some young professionals hoping to advance in their career that they can have that while still managing a young family.
Yea, the outcome is difficult to predict. I opted for a solution pretty far out of the Overton window to try to encourage non-orthodox thinking on the issue.
>My own idea, though admittedly a lot more modest than your own - nationally funded free daycare centers in and around all major urban areas.
Isn't universal daycare a thing in Sweden and Denmark? It doesn't look to have been that effective.
I think you need to focus on what your actual goal is? Assuming the goal is to make it easier for people to have their preferred number of children, my personal recommendations (without cost consideration) have the government subsidize all fertility treatments (ivf) and encourage women to freeze eggs early. Second the government could change the property tax to one that takes family size into consideration so that it is easier for families to afford larger homes (basically imagine a tax change that is initially revenue neutral but the rate is reduced for every child under 18 living in the unit so empty nesters, young professionals with office and den would see a tax hike to offset the discount for families).
My goal is to raise birthrates. Make more people have more kids. My proposal makes having kids a prerequisite for obtaining status in the society we have now. Since time spent in school (getting credentials to increase your status) contributes so much to the delay in childbearing, make children a requirement to play the currently predominant status game. I imagine it would be more effective in the countries that highly value education, like South Korea.
>Assuming the goal is to make it easier for people to have their preferred number of children
I wouldn't put it like that. I think culture shapes what people prefer - that's one of the assumptions of the status argument, after all.
I like your IVF proposal, though I'm not sure what the economics of that would look like. If delay in childbearing is a problem due to the limited window, lengthen that window through IVF.
I'm not sure the second one would do much. Economic incentives have already been tried to very limited success.
This could end up being catastrophic for society. Childhood abuse is already a significant factor in mental illness, and especially in the sort of mental illness that is a productivity drain or causes social issues. By linking higher education to childbirth, you are making children a necessity and not a desire. This leads to intense resentment, mistreatment, and kids are the ones who suffer for it.
Our society can't cope with the number of kids who need help right now, let alone if you force a whole heap more into the system. Because there WILL be people who severely neglect the child and do the minimum required to keep it alive and blame it for all the extra work they're forced to do. (There already are, but there will be more.) For someone who doesn't want a child or isn't ready for a child, but who is forced to have one in order to do what they DO want, the optimal solution involves nasty stuff like "oh, I think my kid has an allergy? Don't care, them dying in a tragic accident will solve the probably AND boost my status" and these are the sort of incentives we really REALLY do not want to encourage.
Childhood abuse is most prevalent amongst the antisocial underclasses. They're not getting college degrees currently. The average person that really wants to go to university and is willing to jump through hoops to do it would be of the type that raises their child normally, ie does their best to provide a loving home.
> Economic incentives have already been tried to very limited success.
Barely. The economic incentives would need to be a lot higher.
I would definitely have an extra kid in exchange for a permanent 10% reduction in my tax bracket.
How do you propose to change society into one where having a kid is a prereq for higher ed? Won't new "not higher ed" higher ed institutions spring up to help people get around your requirement. Regarding the second, most economic incentives are too small to have a significant effect, this policy is meant to redistribute housing to families (obviously being a Yimby and allowing more construction would also help but even then you want to subsidize families living in larger homes).
I was throwing an idea out there. It's not exactly a thoroughly considered policy, but I did consider the "not higher ed" higher ed institution angle:
>The same condition would be applied to other credential-granting pathways if they become popular enough.
From what I can tell, it's difficult to establish new educational institutions that have the cultural cachet of even low-mid-tier universities. These new not higher ed higher ed institutions also wouldn't be able to rely on government subsidies, so it would be harder still. Maybe even impossible, if you consider the many incumbents that have been financially struggling as of late. I can't imagine people still attempting it, especially with the high risk of the state's banhammer coming down on them.
So what is your reply to Acfjou above, who says that another reason for putting off having a second child is that they just don't have the time to cook and clean? That they had to hire help after having a first child?
I don't think "you will be forced by law to have a baby by age 18" is going to overcome objections of "at this stage in our careers we have to work all the hours God sends" people who are the ones going for the degrees to get the good jobs that involve working long hours at the early stages of their career, which are also the prime child-bearing years?
No one's forcing anyone. Going to university isn't life or death, something many people seem to have forgotten and is a reason for a lot of the issues surrounding post secondary education, eg massive grade inflation, increasingly reduced rigour, student debt, etc.
I don't pay much mind to what people say about their personal circumstances when it comes to thinking about issues like this because people's thinking is limited to what they do in the current system and not how they'd change their behaviours in another reality. People are adaptable. My grandparents raised 5 in a ramshackle farmhouse in what was one of the poorest countries in the world. One ended up at MIT and the others did pretty alright too.
Of course without such a heavy handed legislation there is no need for "non higher ed" higher ed or new institutions, my point is that once you change the incentives, people will adapt but your policy is not really an effective one for making people want to have kids and would require a state that is far more authoritarian than almost any modern country at which point you are thinking way too small about how to increase fertility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s-1990s_Romanian_orphans_phenomenon).
My sense is that the second kid is less than 2x the work although it depends a lot on luck (mostly not having bad luck). I agree on your low rise urbanism as being better for families.
First, it's less that having kids is in itself high or low status; it's more that the main status marker is encapsulated by that ubiquitous question, "So what do you do?" The status attached to your career results in norms that shred fertility. Think of how peculiar people are thought to be nowadays when they start families in their early 20s, much less their teens. Or consider how uncomfortable the question makes stay at home moms feel.
Second, I think the importance of status is more subtle than that. People don't explicitly state that they want to be high status, especially in cultures where showing off affluence is a social faux pas. Your stealth wealth example supports this point. People hide their wealth because it's considered gauche to flaunt it in most Western countries. It's not the same everywhere, particularly in countries that don't have a Christian past. Eg, China recently banned wealth-flaunting behaviours on social media; the CCP wouldn't have had to do that if ostentatiousness of that sort was widely considered shameful.
Most of society believes that teen pregnancy is a problem we are trying to discourage. If the goal is to reduce the value of work you could just institute very high marginal tax rates and a wealth tax but you would really need to convince people that they will be happier being poor.
In 2016, an extremely qualified woman faced off against Trump, and lost. I don't know how anyone could dispute that Harris is less qualified than Clinton was. I also think no one cares about the resume for President.
Then what DO they care about? Something something personality?
It's long been true that most voters care less about resumes for president than the chattering class thinks we all would or should. Put another way, many Americans care demonstrably much more about other characteristics in a presidential candidate and that is not at all a new/recent fact.
That said -- I firmly dispute that Harris is less qualified now, in terms of resume, than Hillary Clinton was in 2016.
Also Harris's resume today is clearly stronger than those of at least a dozen individuals when they became POTUS, not even including Trump and not even including the five who served in the office without ever being elected to it. That list includes some post-WW II ones and includes some of the most famous and highly regarded ones in our history.
Harris was hidden away until July. Doing what? According to this apparently liberal-biased report, the following things (https://theweek.com/in-depth/1023057/kamala-harris-vice-presidential-track-record):
Abortion rights: Even if she is pushing for this, this is only for political points. For example, during the debate she raised it, and I doubt anyone would oppose the rights of those she discussed to get an abortion, the biggest one was someone with a medical emergency putting the mother at risk.
Immigration: The article says she spearheaded "efforts to address the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border" but doesn't mention removing razor wire Texas installed to impede illegal immigrants. Was she ineffective at stopping illegal immigration? The article mentions her "perceived inaction".
Voting rights: I'm unclear what voting rights she was trying to enforce, but it mentions "her work "hit a brick wall"" basically because Republican's could filibuster.
If these are the highlights, I conclude her Vice Presidency has not prepared her well for the role of President.
Before that, she was Attorney General for six years and a U.S. Senator for four. Both positions can provide some experience necessary for a president, in dealing with the law and in dealing with Congress. But not so much for executive power, like a state governor would have.
Compared to this, Hillary campaigned for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, served on corporate boards of directors, was a U.S. Senator for eight years, and Secretary of State for four. Her legal experience is at least equal to Harris's, though different. And that doesn't even count being First Lady of Arkansas and the U.S., during which time she vetted appointments to the administration. Given her background, who would doubt she had a significant influence on policy as either First Lady?
I don't see how you can support that Harris is less qualified than Clinton.
"Legal experience is at least equal to Harris's", LOLOL. Harris was a full-time prosecutor for 12 years, then the elected top law officer of a major city for 7.
_Then_ she became the elected top law officer of by far the largest state government in the nation (CA by itself would be a top-10 world economy and an OECD national government). The CA Dept of Justice has more than 5,000 full-time professional staff.
And Clinton graduated from Yale Law School in 1973, and practiced law at least through 1992, which makes 19 years, doing work on patent infringement, intellectual property law, and child advocacy. She was twice named as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_career_of_Hillary_Clinton
You can talk up Harris's career, but compare side-by-side, and it looks like Clinton has something over Harris in every position, if one considers Secretary of State of more import than Vice President.
I will take your overall point regarding their law careers, though for the purposes of seeking high elected office Harris's seems more relevant than Clinton's.
I do not consider the position of Secretary of State of more import than that of Vice President. Two centuries ago it was and probably a century ago too. During our lifetimes though, nah.
I might agree with Arrk that a VP who doesn't ascend to the Oval Office is less *important* than a Secretary of State who actually does run Foggy Bottom. But "Vice President" is pretty clearly the office that best serves as an apprenticeship for the Presidency, even if it's not worth a bucket of warm spit while you're actually doing it.
Extremely qualified in making the kind of connections to launch her bid for the presidency, which ultimately failed due to her own arrogance (yes, the FBI to-ing and fro-ing didn't help, but the private email server and the scandals around the husband of her close advisor, Huma Abedin, didn't help either). She was parachuted into a safe seat in blue NY to get her elected as a senator as the first step on the cursus honorum, got the Secretary of State gig as an olive branch from Obama, then campaigned on "I'm practically the incumbent because of being co-president as First Lady".
She came across as the worst combination of "I'm so much smarter than you proles, you will all do as I say" and a weathervane: "I'm for safe, legal and *rare* abortion! Okay, that's abortion-shaming? Now I'm for all abortion all the time! I love *real* billionaires! I will tax Wall Street but also not hurt my real billionaire friends! Hot sauce! Pantsuit nation! Sixty different election slogans all focus-group tested! Big Data so I don't have to waste my time meeting the blue-collar plebs in the flesh! Pokemon go to the polls!"
And of course, the unforced error of the basket of deplorables.
Bill had, and has, charisma in buckets. Hillary doesn't. That needn't be a liability *if* you can manage to conceal your real opinion of the rubes and hicks who need an empress to wisely rule over them for their own good, which Hillary wasn't so good at concealing.
This is much better than the comment I was composing. Hilary never won a competitive election in her life. All of her important roles have been handed to her, they same way she expected to be handed the presidency. I can't think of a single accomplishment of hers that she actually is responsible for, instead of being given the credit for. He's a deeply unlikable human being. I think a lot of people have known a revolting Hilary like personality in their lives: a callous teacher, a sadistic HR functionary, a terrible boss. A bully with no real laurels to rest on, but thinks they should be able to do so nonetheless. I voted for her too.
She seems to have been a reasonably successful lawyer, but Bill seems to have decided on a political career early on, and they both hitched their wagons to that star: his success would be her success.
I hadn't realized it before, but Ms. Clinton was just being honest -- a rarity for politicians.
She despises proles, 'deplorable' or not. Government is for elites.
She did give off that unfortunate Leona Helmsley impression 😁
Hillary Clinton is a tenth-level politician who rolled at least a 15 in Iintelligence, put all her skill points into Political Savvy, and rolled a natural 3 for Charisma. Also, her last name was "Clinton", and the American people had had about as much as they were going to take from Presidents named either "Clinton" or "Bush".
And her resume was kind of mediocre for a Presidential candidate. Really, you want to have been a Governor or a Vice President before you start claiming you're exceptionally qualified for the Presidency.
Great as a teammate for her INT 12, CHA 18 husband, but doomed in her own candidacy. She got the support of everyone who was always going to vote Democrat no matter what, and the support of everyone who was always going to vote First Woman President Ever!, but that's it and there was too much overlap between those groups. Even Donald J. Trump couldn't drive enough swing voters to Hillary's side for her to win.
I'd give Bill higher INT than that, part of his crafted persona was the "just a guy from Arkansas" vibe while he was a Rhodes Scholar and so on.
JD Vance is getting the "he went to Yale, he's not a *real* hillbilly and besides where he came from doesn't count as hillbilly" treatment now, but Bill managed to pull it off without anyone (that I remember) making the same comparison. Of course, back then, politics wasn't quite as venomous as right now, and it helped that Bill was a Democrat. Same with Walz now and "he's just your typical Midwesterner that loves hunting and guy stuff" by contrast with Kamala (and even more Vance). Vance is not a 'real' Regular Guy while Walz is, somehow.
I've known a couple of people who knew the Clintons personally, each of whom considered it just obvious that Bill was every bit as intelligent as Hillary if not moreso. Very different personalities obviously but, both very intelligent individuals.
Also it should be noted that Clinton got more votes than Trump in a very close election but she made some tactical decisions that caused her to trade votes in states that mattered for votes in states that didn't.
Clinton gave off the vibe of not really caring about the average American. She gave off a very elitist vibe that can be off-putting to many middle-class voters. This is a key difference between her and her husband, who was generally good at seeming like a reasonably caring politician.
Now, people probably didn't think that Trump cared all that much about the average American either... but he did seem to care a lot about the general strength of the American economy. His positions on trade seemed pretty radical, suggesting that he might be willing to do radical things to try to help factory workers in the rust belt (in turn to help the American economy).
The Clinton 2016 campaign seemed much more focused on social/cultural issues than economic ones, playing into the general vibes and impressions mentioned above.
Ultimately, I think most swing voters/independent voters are practical self-interested voters. Which candidate is more likely to make my life better/easier/more prosperous?
As much as some hate Harris' stand on price controls, it may well help her electorally. I don't recall any of Clinton's 2016 policies being as focused on helping economically struggling Americans as price controls is.
Bill Clinton always struck me as a used car salesman. But then, to sell used cars at inflated prices one must make the customers feel good about their purchase.
Sure, that comparison works, ha ha.
I always thought about Bill that if his ancestors had remained in Ireland and he had gone into politics, he was a natural fit for Fianna Fáil (my party, alas!) - he had that same combination of popular appeal, charm, and total brazen corruption that some of the party leaders had.
Personality was probably a large part of it. She also leaned too hard into the ‘first woman president’ thing. That rubbed a lot of people, especially men, the wrong way. Plus we had two Bushes as prez, now people were being asked to have 2 Clintons?
If de facto Acting Presidents count, then the real First Woman President was Edith Wilson in 1919, who signed documents and (very probably) took decisions in her husband's name while he was recovering from his stroke.
If you limit it to de jure (Acting) Presidents, them there hadn't yet been one when Clinton ran in 2016. That first happened in 2021, when Biden signed a 25th Amendment declaration in favor of Harris for when he underwent general anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy.
Pardon me, I couldn't help but overhear...
I was rooting for the First Lady commemorative coins to proceed Barbara Bush -> Hillary Clinton -> Laura Bush -> Bill Clinton.
I might be projecting, but I also think the first woman thing was off-putting to a lot of people. Despite what the usual crowd believes, the idea that all politically salient identity groups should have representation in high status positions proportional to their proportion of the population is not that popular.
Yeah, it bugged a lot of women too. But a lot of the younger women I knew personally were kind of rooting for her to ‘break the glass ceiling.’ She shouldn’t have taken that phrase, complete with sound effects, out of the box prematurely either.
"Vote for me because I'm a woman" isn't enough, anymore. Back in the 70s/80s, yes, to break all those ceilings. But basing your campaign, or at least the perception that your campaign is being based, on "if you don't vote for me you're a sexist" when you're running for the presidency of the United States of America is too thin and flimsy. "Why should I vote for you?" "I have two X chromosomes!" isn't a convincing policy position.
I also really did get the impression that Hillary was much more hawkish than Trump, and that she might pick a fight with Putin just to show that she was tough and capable (whether picking a fight with Putin back then would have been a good thing or not is hard to say even with hindsight). Trump was the more 'peaceful' candidate, partly because of the strong isolationist strain.
"Vote for me because I'm an [immutable characteristic shared by 10-50% of the population]" has never and should never be a reasonable statement for a politician to make. Even in the 70s there needed to be a lot more. Margaret Thatcher, for all her faults and how much people hate(d) her, had actual ability in the job and got things done the way she intended.
It wasn't good enough for Carly Fiorina and it wasn't good enough for Hillary Clinton.
Abortion is a live issue now. It's a much better issue than anything else the feminists have.(wage gap, guys in the video game chatroom saying mean things about women, etc.)
I don't think that Clinton was "extremely" qualified, and not more qualified than Harris. Clinton was Senator for 8 yrs and Secy of State for four. Eh. Certainly no Joe Biden, for example. Nor Bill Richardson, or Bush Sr. Harris was VP for 4 yrs, Senator for four, and DA of SF and AG of California. Even if you add Clinton's time as First Lady, it is a wash.
Even for someone like Clinton with a long resume, you have to consider both pros and cons. Clinton has a reputation of being a rules-lawyering liar seeking personal gain that also has a very unappealing personality. Like, cringy at speaking engagements and not at all the kind of person most people could be comfortable hanging out with. Obama definitely had charisma, likability, etc. despite having an objectively poorer resume.
Despite Harris also not being super-appealing in the personality department, she isn't as bad as Clinton and her negatives in general aren't as bad as Clinton's. She does have Senator, DA, and now VP experience. Honestly Clinton's resume isn't necessarily better. She was the president's wife (which is technically nothing on a resume), a one term Senator (which she appears to have used insider connections to get) and then Secretary of State. SoS is a pretty legitimate job, but not so much that it overshadows VP. Other than those two jobs, their histories seem broadly similar.
Clinton was clearly parachuted into both the Senate and the SoS roles based on who her husband was.
Harris also (coincidentally) rode a Willie to some political benefit in her early career but that ended some time ago, she is ever so slightly more responsible for her own success than Clinton.
I have to say, everything I read about Willie Brown makes me like the guy. Yes, he was part of the San Francisco corrupt political regime (their own version of Tammany Hall). Yes, he traded in patronage (both men and women). Yes, Harris did owe her path to making the connections and getting plugged into the posh money network to him squiring her around and introducing her to those circles.
But to be fair to the guy, he did hold up his part of the bargain in the patron-client relationship: if you were loyal to him, he rewarded and protected you. And he really does have a sense of style 😊
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Brown_(politician)
"Brown has long expressed himself through personal style, which contributed to his visibility and was turned to political advantage. Even in high school he was fastidious about his appearance. In office, Brown became famous for British and Italian suits, sports cars, nightclubbing, and a collection of dressy hats. He was once called "The Best Dressed Man in San Francisco" by Esquire magazine.
In his 2008 autobiography Basic Brown, he described his taste for $6,000 Brioni suits and his search for the perfect chocolate Corvette. In one chapter, "The Power of Clothes: Don't Pull a Dukakis", Brown writes that men should have a navy blazer for each season: one with "a hint of green" for springtime, another with more autumnal threading for the fall. He adds, "You really shouldn't try to get through a public day wearing just one thing. ... Sometimes, I change clothes four times a day."
Same kind of energy as Bill Clinton, in fact: he's a rogue, you know he's a rogue, you know better than to trust him, but he's so damn charming that you can't help yourself. ZZ Top were right: every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man!
Clinton was less qualified on paper but that long sheet paper was thin. Trump's line at their debate -- "you've been in Washington for 30 years, what have you _done_ there?" -- landed with a lot of voters.
Meanwhile Harris's resume is stronger than several people who've been elected POTUS including a couple of successful ones. Many American voters think they're choosing based on things other than resume and that's always been true.
What's her resume? Attorney general of CA and then a senator from CA for a pretty short time. Is there anything else?
I think you are forgetting Vice President. And District Attorney.
Yeah, my take is that she had a pretty standard resume for her first Senate run. Her resume was a little thin for President or VP in 2020, but four years as VP goes a long way towards curing that defect.
And not that anyone here would ever argue in bad faith, but no one seems to have any complaints about J.D. Vance's paper-thin resume.
How much does VP help in terms of relevant experience? My impression is that most VPs don't have many actual responsibilities. I think sometimes the VP gets extra responsibilities from the president (Gore did, right?), but even though it would have been smart for Biden to offload a lot of his work onto the much-younger Harris, I don't recall reading or hearing of him doing much of that.
Vance hasn't exactly been inspiring or even helpful to the Trump campaign. Is there someone out there lauding his credentials? Even from Trump supporters, I'm not hearing a lot of super pro-Vance stuff.
Tell you what, let's play a little game.
Below are the resumes of 6 persons as of the day they became president, plus Harris's as of January 20 2025. The orders of the summaries and of the names are jumbled. You'll be able to pick out Harris's pretty easily. WITHOUT LOOKING THEM UP, let's see how many of the others you can match up.
[Elected governmental positions are Capitalized.]
(A) Farm worker and bank clerk (15 years); U.S. Army (2 years active duty); local store owner (2 years); county judge (10 years); U.S. Senator from a medium sized state (10 years); Vice President of the United States (3 months).
(B) National Guardsman (6 years); founder/owner of a medium-sized business (12 years); nominated for a U.S. House seat, lost; managed a relative’s re-election campaign, lost; Governor of a large state (6 years).
(C) Local prosecutor (10 years); District Attorney of a large city (7 years); Attorney General of the largest state in the nation (6 years); U.S. Senator from the largest state in the nation (4 years); Vice President of the United States (4 years).
(D) U.S. Navy (7 years); farm owner/operator (10 years); State Senator (4 years); Governor of a medium-sized state (4 years).
(E) Historian and author (1 published book); U.S. Army (6 months active duty); State Assemblyman (2 years); large-city police commissioner (2 years); Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1 year); Governor of the largest state in the nation (1 year); Vice President of the United States (6 months).
(F) Local lawyer (11 years); local judge (3 years); City Solicitor [i.e. prosecutor] (2 years); U.S. Army (4 years active service); member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2 years); Governor of a medium-sized state (6 years).
(G) Captain of a militia company (1 year); proprietor of a local general store, postmaster and surveyor of a frontier village (3 years); State Representative (8 years); local attorney (20 years); member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2 years); nominated for a U.S. Senate seat, lost.
(H) Publisher of a local newspaper (16 years, with interruptions from nervous breakdowns and stints in local sanitariums); State Senator (4 years); Lt. Governor (2 years); U.S. Senator from a medium-sized state (6 years).
(1) Rutherford B. Hayes
(2) Warren G. Harding
(3) Abraham Lincoln
(4) Kamala Harris
(5) Jimmy Carter
(6) George W. Bush
(7) Harry S Truman
A more interesting question, to me, is: how much does previous experience matter, and how would we measure that in an objective way? For example, Bush Jr had the most obvious qualification for president (he'd been a state governor) and was surrounded by serious, experienced advisors, and yet his eight years in office were a series of disasters. Obama had probably the thinnest resume of any president in my adult lifetime, and yet his eight years in office seemed pretty successful.
This is a great game
md5 of letter number with newlines e.g
x1
y2
z3
813a9b5af253c1043c311e61db5ae276
Sorry, not familiar with unscrambling md5. If you put your choices into rot13 I'm happy to tell you the results.
You can't unscramble md5 what you do is md5 the solution and see if it matches
NFRIRA
OFVK
PSBHE
QSVIR
RRVTUG
SBAR
TGUERR
UGJB
You have eight resumes but only 7 people. I'm confident about a couple of these, but probably mixed up a few
-Rot13-
Bar T
Gjb U
Guerr S
Sbhe P
Svir N
Fvk O
Frira R
WHOOPS, sorry, the additional selection option is Theodore Roosevelt.
Of your matches the 2nd, 4th, 6th are correct; the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th are not. (However my error of not listing TR as an option is a reason for one of your misses.)
Why are your "subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board" unofficial? Or put another way, how would they be different if they were official?
The board would have to be datasecretslo(n)x or something to be official.
They're unofficial in the sense that Scott doesn't actually run any of them.
I am looking for advice on returning to work as a young-ish lawyer who has been on sick leave for the last 5 years. I worked for just over a year before my MS symptoms got bad enough that I had to stop working. I am in remission now, thankfully, due to a successful stem cell transplant, but I feel completely out of the rhythm of a fast paced corporate job, and have lost some of the confidence I had when starting out.
I don't really have any mentors, and I feel that the environment I am returning to is not going to be very forgiving in terms of letting me "catch up", so I am trying to ready myself in the next 6 months before I jump back in. I would be glad to receive anyone's advice or wisdom they think might be useful. Thank you.
Perhaps read the rules of civil procedure all the way through? I knew someone who did that every year on the 4th of July. lol. Or go to courtlistener.com under the Archive tab, you can read briefs on every topic imaginable and organize them into topics. … welcome back to the profession, glad to hear you are in remission!
> sick leave for the last 5 years
Assume *everyone* will be completely unsympathetic to any such reasons, assert the job market is fantastic when its in fact shit and find a way to lie about references or job history in some small way
Take on some challenges, to rebuild your confidence: Ropes course or similar safe but challenging defiance of fear. Give a talk. Participate in a debate. Do some hard puzzles.
Brush up on the skills you'll need at the job.
Get maximally efficient with your computer -- typing, keyboard commands, using software. If you're like me, there are various little things you can't do well, but you have little workarounds & you stick with those instead of taking the time to figure out how to quickly get Word or whatever to do that one thing. Get rid of every single one of these.
Try to find a lawyer who will do some mentoring. Here seems like a good place to look.
It might help to get a coach. They're sort of like therapists, but don't work from the premise that you have something wrong -- they're there to help you optimize what you have. If you decide to do that, I would volunteer to help you vet them. I'm a psychologist, and don't do coaching, but I think I would be able to tell who's all bragging and buzzwords and who has useful skills.
Zarko,
I am so glad to hear about your remission.
For years law students were brainwashed into believing that they must aspire to become a partner in a major law firm and live the kind of life that comes with prestige and money. It didn't matter that they had to sacrifice their family and their health to accomplish these goals, until it did matter, and it was too late to go back and do things differently. So forget about going back to the kind of fast paced corporate job you had before, unless that's what you want.
I would start thinking about your needs.
Are you in debt because of your illness?
How much money do you need to make, to live comfortably?
Does geography matter?
Do you need to be close to your doctor?
Close to your family (or as far away as possible!)?
Do you need to avoid too much stress, cause you don't like it, or because it might impact your remission?
What do you want out of your career?
This is a hard one.
Forget the PC answers like, to make a difference.
Recognition. That's fine.
Wealth. That's fine.
Finding someone to share your life with.
That is a very relevant consideration. Most people meet their spouses at work. And it informs whether you should take a job where you are with people most days or work remotely where it will be much more difficult to connect with someone on a meaningful level.
What do you enjoy doing. professionally.
Research,
Writing,
Advocacy in court,
Solving other people's problems.
What areas of the law are you most interested in.
Most lawyers just fell into whatever kind of work they were given when they got their first job and stick with that their entire career, especially if they didn't know what they wanted to do when they graduated. Don't ever think you are locked in.
Do you have to practice law.? There are a lot of jobs where having a law degree can be an asset and it can give you a leg up in getting the job.
Once you have thought about there questions then you need to start networking.
Networking does not mean joining a bunch of organizations.
It means identifying people who are doing what you might be interested in doing and contacting them.
Explain your situation and ask them if you can take them to lunch or have coffee just to get some insight in the kind of work they do.
Not everyone, but most will be happy to meet with you.
Join LinkedIn. Get a Premium membership. It's around $69 a month, but you only need to subscribe for a few months. You will be taken much more seriously if you contact people through the LinkedIn message app.
Good luck.
You'll do fine.
Jon
Can you get a job in a government agency or in a non profit? These are normally more forgiving than a role in a private law firm.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics just released their 2023 report on criminal victimization. This data is based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, which is a self-report survey spanning from Jan 1 - Dec 31 about crimes experienced in the last 6 months, excluding the survey month (i.e. Jul 2022 - Nov 2023). This is notably different from the FBI crime statistics, as it does not rely on crimes being reported to the police.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv23.pdf
The big takeaway: Violent crime is up over the last few years, but not in a way that really means anything. Violent crime rates were lower than usual during the 2020-21 period, I assume because people being locked in their houses for the pandemic generally suppressed the opportunity for criminal activity. There was a big spike in 2022, which has since fallen in 2023. Overall, the violent crime rate for 2021-23 is about the same as the 2017-2020 period, around 20/1,000 persons. I rate the claim that violent crime has been on the rise in the past few years technically true but lacking necessary context.
Many Thanks!
Spiked in 2022, not May 2020? I don't believe that.
A large pct of violent crime in the survey are assaults, which are definitely likely to decline when people are not out and about interacting with one another. Ditto robberies.
And things like burning down a supermarket don't count because supermarkets don't answer phone surveys.
Hardly likely to be numerous enough to affect the total. Compare the totals here https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/arson-table-2.xls with the total of assaults here https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv22.pdf
I looked up the 2020 report and it has this disclaimer: "Due to increasing risks related to COVID-19, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in coordination with the U.S. Census Bureau, suspended all incoming sample interviews and shifted all returning sample interviews to telephone calls starting in mid-March 2020. ...Interviews were primarily conducted over the phone through the end of 2020. "
So there was a change in their data collection during the 2020 riots.
This is all crime, not just the specific ones that were reported in the news and/or screamed about online.
Isn't that claim based in part on 2024?
If the rate is technically going up it can't simultaneously be down can it? The tl:dr version is that the violent crime rate has been quite stable for the last decade and a half. The last four years saw two years of lower than average crime followed by two higher than average years.
I was under the impression that most stats showed the reverse - a spike in 2020 that has since fallen back down.
This feels really basic, but can someone explain to me how well the Covid boosters track the Covid strains? Do I particularly need to get the booster annually? Do my kids particularly need to get the booster annually? I'm setting up flu shots and trying to figure out whether I should be setting up the Covid shots at the same time. (The downsides to just doing it aren't huge, but I don't like being sore, and I don't like having my kids scream at me either.)
First, there's very little risk with vaccines. Myocarditis & Pericarditis are the biggest risks of COVID vaccines for young people — primarily males between 16 and 30 — and especially after the second dose of the primary series. The risk decreases with subsequent boosters (but I don't have the data at my fingertips). However, the last time I crunched the numbers (which I admit was way back around BQ.1, Eo2022) the chance of being hospitalized from vaccines was 0.0002% the chance of being hospitalized from COVID. AFAICT, zero kids died from myo- or pericarditis. While (as of mid-2023) ~1500 kids had died from COVID or its complications.
And nearly 98% of children who *are* hospitalized for COVID are unvaccinated. Unfortunately, nowadays this is mostly in the youngest age cohorts who haven't received their first round of vaccines (for whatever reason).
If I had young kids, I'd be vaccinating them for my piece of mind. But bottom line, even though COVID isn't particularly dangerous for young people (Only 0.00125% of the US COVID deaths were kids under 18), there's even less risk from the vaccines — or the boosters — than from COVID.
> Myocarditis & Pericarditis are the biggest risks of COVID vaccines for young people — primarily males between 16 and 30 — and especially after the second dose of the primary series. The risk decreases with subsequent boosters (but I don't have the data at my fingertips).
Specifically for males in that range who had myocarditis/pericarditis after one or both vaccines in the primary series, is there data showing the risk of additional episodes of myocarditis/pericarditis decreases with subsequent boosters? Thank you in advance if you know of any research on this.
Thank you for bringing in data!
To clarify, both I and the kids have the primary round of vaccinations (and two of us have also had COVID; the toddler I think hasn't yet). I'm trying to understand what I'm getting from boosters. With the flu, my understanding is that it basically mutates out of recognition from one season to the next, so the "generic-flu" (or "last-season flu") immunity that I presumably still have is just not that useful. I also know that the flu vaccine tracks, or at least tries to track, the variants.
With COVID, I also know that it mutates, because everyone was keeping track of the latest variant and the spikes from it for a while, and with it going endemic you'd expect some mutation rate. But I don't have a feel for how quickly does it mutate to the point that my "generic-COVID" (or "last-season COVID") immunity is not very useful; I thought that initially the cross-variant protection (from immunizations or from past infection) appeared to be quite good. Also, do the boosters track the variants? Normally I'd assume that yes of course, because why else would you have boosters, but this seems like something the FDA would have to approve, and, err, is that what actually happened?
(Or maybe I'm just wrong about mutation rate being the reason for boosters.)
The two benefits you get from a booster are. The first is short-term and the second is longer-term.
1. Your neutralizing antibody (NAb) titers are elevated for a period of time after the booster. This protects *most* people from new infections for about six months before the concentration of antibodies in the bloodstream and lymphatic systems fall off enough to become ineffective in preventing a new infections. The duration of this protection varies by the vaccine and type of pathogen — but it's generally much shorter for respiratory pathogens than for pathogens that attack via the blood and lymph systems. Anyway, elevated NAbs to SARS2 should give you about half a year's protection against infection (YMMV).
2. The booster presents your humoral immune system with antigens unique to the newer strains of the virus — which allows it to learn how to respond to the new strains. The NAbs eventually fall below the levels necessary to prevent infection, but the T cells and B cells are capable of remembering the pathogen that bit us, and they mount an attack against the pathogen once it gets a foothold in our bodies. T cells key to different antigens from B cells (and I don't think they'd benefit from the booster). But B cells have the capability to learn the new antigens — and thus they can generate new NAbs that are more closely keyed to the new pathogen when it's detected. They won't prevent the infection, but they'll start fighting it off beginning about three days post-infection. So you're very much less likely to get sick enough to be hospitalized or die.
Having said that, booster uptake in the US has been pretty abysmal, BUT our population immunity is holding up quite well. Despite the predictions of many experts, the new COVID variants are not putting people in the hospital or the morgue at the rates many predicted. The argument was that new mutated spike proteins would escape not only our remaining NAbs from our last vax (or infection) but would also escape the antibodies generated by B cells. Turns out our B cells are more adaptive than predicted. But the data seems to indicate that giving them the latest viral antigens helps to keep them current.
Thank you, that's helpful!
Re: #1 in SARS2, I thought one of the disappointments after the initial rollout was that the vaccines had a surprisingly high rate of breakthrough infections. Is that the "YMMV" part?
Re: #2 in SARS2, one thing you didn't explicitly answer was -- are the boosters actually keeping track of variants?
Re: #1 in flu, I'm now curious why flu vaccinations don't affect flu seasonality. Your description suggests that the local population that's susceptible to infection should be considerably larger in summer; I'm surprised that doesn't win out over whatever other nebulous factors that lock it into being a winter season. Do you happen to know?
Here's a separate answer for your flu questions. (Full disclosure, I'm a SARS2 hobbiest, and my knowledge of influenza is much less detailed than for SARS2.)
Bottom line, flu viruses mutate in a different way from SARS2. And they attack the cells via different mechanisms from SARS2. The surface proteins of influenzas are always mutating (these are the H and N proteins — so you'll see strains identified by their H and N numbers — i.e. H1N1, H3N2, H5N1 — refer to the surface proteins that are used to infect cells. (Luckily for us H5 protein found in bird flues isn't very good at getting into human cells.) But influenzas are always reshuffling segments of their genome (called antigenic shift or reassortment), and this process makes them unrecognizable to our immune system quicker than mutations to the SARS2 spike protein do.
Also, flu vaccines are less effective than the COVID vaccines. It may be because antigenic shift reshuffles the flu genome so quickly that it (somewhat) outpaces vaccine development (I'm not sure about this). But the NAb titers from flu vaccines also fade faster than COVID vaccine NAb titers. They'll only give you protection for 3 or 4 months. That's why they suggest you get your flu shot in October, so your NAbs are highest at peak flu season (h/t to Eremolalos for pointing this out to me!).
Finally, influenza is a lower reproductive (R) number than SARS2. That means it's less transmissible than SARS2. The theory I've heard is that it's people being inside and close together in the winter months that makes it seasonal. I find that explanation to be a little too pat, but I'll tentatively accept it (because I'm too lazy to try and poke holes in that theory). OTOH, COVID is very transmissible. So it can spread in the summer months as well as the winter months. Experts have been predicting it will become seasonal for a few years now. Omicron was supposed to reset it to being a seasonal virus, but it didn't. But for now the our northern hemisphere summer wave is the winter wave in the southern hemisphere and vice versa.
Yes, the boosters are mostly keeping up with the variants. The mRNA vaccines are about three months behind, and Novavax is about 5 months behind. The mRNA vaccines are using KP.1x antigens. KP.3x dominated the last wave, but it's not that different from KP.1. Novavax takes longer to develop, and they're using the antigens from JN.1, the KP.1 progenitor, for their antigens. Antibodies to JN.1 should work almost as well as well as KP.1 antibodies. Of course, the new scariant of concern is MV.1. That variant may create a winter wave. It's a different branch off of JN.1. So, Novavax may do a better job neutralizing MV.1 if it does turn into a wave. But predicting which variant will cause the next wave is sucker's bet. I'll happily take the mRNA vaccines if that's all I can get.
Two reasons for breakthrough infections.
First: When the mRNA vaccines were first released the the NAb titers were so high that a lot of people thought they'd continue to remain high for a long time. They were talking about sterilizing immunity and champaign corks were popping. But then the data started coming in that the NAb titers began to wane beginning at 4 months, and after 6 to 8 months a significant percentage of peeps' titers had dropped enough to allow breakthrough infections. Some experts were banging the gong to boost every 6 months. But it quickly became clear, except to all but the doomiest of doomers, that T cells and B cells were doing their job. People were getting breakthrough infections but for most, the infections weren't progressing to the point where people were requiring hospitalization or the services of the ICU.
Second: To gain a foothold in the body SARS2 latches on to mucosal cells. The mucosal membranes (at least the ones facing the outside world) don't have a direct blood supply. So NAbs (like IgG) take time to permeate outward to the mucosal lining. IIRC it's something it takes something like 48 hours for the body to mount an immune response to the mucosa. And to add to the problem, IgA antibodies (which are the first line of defense for the mucosa) drop off the fastest after boosting. Again, this happens over several months after the initial vaccination or the booster, but Omicron adapted itself to a population with high immunity by revving up the mucosal stage of its infection faster. Whereas the intial SARS2 type A and type B variants took over 5 days to incubate, Omicron was incubating in 48 to 72 hours. So it would be contagious before peoples' immune systems kicked in.
Supposedly nasal vaccines will be able to get around this problem, but I haven't heard a good explanation for why IgA NAbs won't fade at the same rate as injected vaccines. Bot bottom line, breakthrough infections will be with us unless we we find a way to either keep our NAb titers (IgA especially) high for a longer periods of time, or we develop a nasal vaccine that prevents the initial infection of the mucosa. And this is the reason that we've never been able to develop a vaccine that offers durable immunity against non-viremic (i.e. respiratory) viruses. (Though for some reason they're saying the RSV vaccine won't require boosters — I need to dig into that.)
And I forgot a third reason — the SARS2 spike protein mutates fast and immune escape is probably a factor in some breakthrough infections — i.e. the NAbs we've acquired aren't properly keyed to the spike proteins of the newer variants. But the in vitro estimates of immune escape seem to have radically *overestimated* the in vivo breakthrough rates.
Vinay Prasad is firmly of the opinion you should not. From what I can tell he is pretty sensible. Note by the way the Europeans aren’t giving boosters to children. Here is one of his tweets.
Sorry, no way.
There's no reliable evidence this vaccine lowers the risk of covid. FDA did not ask for any randomized studies.
There is no evidence that repeated boosters lower the risk of long COVID
No other nation recommends boosters for young healthy people who have had covid
Even mild adverse events can outweigh a gain of zero
Maybe get the shot if you're in a nursing home, but definitely not if you're young and healthy. It would be crazy to.
Allowing the company to sell the shot without running randomized studies is totally crazy. It only makes sense if you consider that the people making the decision are soon going to be working for the company, just like Scott gottlieb, former FDA commish and current Pfizer board member
The fact that the USA gave such a broad marketing authorization is not because our experts are smart, it's because they're more corrupt. And financial conflicts of interest to drive this system.
The uptake for the booster is going to be as close to 0% as you can imagine. No one will want this.
I would never give it to a child who had COVID. That's so crazy in my mind
This seems sensible to me, too.
You state your opinions with such confidence! The thing about opinions is anyone can have one. And the thing about experts is that there are so many of them, and you can generally find one who will suit your opinions. From my perspective, as experts go, Prasad is over on the COVID minimizer side of the spectrum. He's not as quacky as the GBD bobbleheads, but he's continually underrated the effectiveness of vaccines throughout the pandemic and he's ignored any data that contradicts his opinions. In fact he blocked me after I kept sending him links to papers that contradicted his opinions. Of course, the Long COVIDians are just as pernicious as the minimizers. But if you want the actual data, I can quote you chapter and verse against every one of your points.
Are you talking about me? I don’t think I stated any opinions other than that Prasad seems sensible to me. Which I know to be true because it’s a statement about my own mental state.
But you wouldn't have quoted/paraphrased Prasad if you hadn't been convinced of his reliability, right? If you don't believe it, why bring it up? Sorry, but to me that sounds like the "well, some people are *saying* they're eating cats and dogs in Springfield" excuse.
I think Prasad is sensible and I’m inclined to believe him. My confidence levels are not super high and I don’t think a fair reading of my post would allow that to be said. But much ado about nothing.
Note that "There is no evidence that..." just means no one has run a state of the art study. It does not mean that there is evidence it does not work.
Running randomized studies for each new strain takes a lot of time and money, which can mean that when the study is done and FDA approved, the next strain has already replaced this one.
That said, I'm not taking this vaccine. I feel protected enough by my previous shots and having had Covid twice.
100%. Though I do feel there is someone right there who has enough money to do the trial!
To add to what Eremolalos said...
Field trials of the COVID vaccines were double-blind studies where the control group were unvaccinated people who never caught COVID. There aren't many COVID virgins anymore, and there are almost no *unvaccinated* COVID virgins (except newborns and pre-daycare infants). I suppose one could perform a field trial using people who had antibodies from previous infections and/or vaccinations, but it's been four plus years since the pandemic began, and untangling the immunological variables between the control and test group would be a substantial hurdle to overcome.
One of the problems bringing completely new types of COVID vaccines to market (such as nasal vaccines), is that just about everyone has SARS2 antibodies already. At best, they can estimate the risk of reinfection between the control and the test group.
There are no trials on the flu vaccine each year. It is made the same way every year, and it was established early on that the method produces a safe vaccine. Now they just tweak it each year, trying to make it a good match for the strain the seems likely dominate in the coming year. Every year it is different, in the sense that it is optimized to protect against a certain strain, but it is different in ways that do not affect its safety. As for testing for efficacy, that is not possible with each year's flu shot By the time you'd proved efficacy the strain you're vaxing against would have come and gone. Situation's the same with the covid vax. Safety is established, trial for effectiveness cannot be done. Covid vax developers can't do in vivo trials (tests on real people) for the reason described, but can test it in the lab against the actual virus.
I have no idea. Personally I see no reason to give kids Covid vaccines. I've also become more leery of vaccines in general. Anyone know of a good 'deep dive' into vaccines. The various types and how they work. (and also the risks.)
Your Local Epidemiologist here on Substack gives good, no nonsense breakdowns on vaccine/virus types, and public health benefits and drawbacks to using them.
This? https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-fall-2024-vaccines
I can't find any mention of drawbacks... but dang a lot of stuff.
I know she talks about planning to use the upcoming non-mRNA vaccine (Novavax?) because it has fewer side effects
She claims the side effects of Novavax are less intense. I wish she had spelled this out in more detail with some links to studies. The only reference I can find is a Nature article behind a paywall (which I can't access because I let my subscription expire). Rates of myocarditis/pericarditis seemed to have been lower with the initial Novavax vaccine. Don't know if that's still holding up now that these incidences have dropped off after the initial vaccine rollouts.
I'm in a similar position. After the lies during Covid I became more skeptical. Since finding out about the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 I don't have faith that they are actually properly assessed for safety. Obviously some of them are necessary, but I don't know how to weight the risks and benefits. Since our health institutions aren't trustworthy I feel like I need to do due diligence before giving them to any future children I might have. I'm considering crowdsourcing funds to hire private researchers who can investigate the actual evidence and maybe do a comparison of the recommendations across different developed nations.
That's a good plan, if you can afford it. There's actually someone people on here recommend for researching things. However, if your goal is to raise your children in an environment that's safe and full of good nutrients. I'm pretty sure that there are way better places than the childhood vax issue to put your money and effort. For instance:
electronics: how much exposure of what kinds at what age is harmful, what's helpful?
air quality in area where you live -- has all kinds of downstream effects
environmental toxins: what do you really need to worry about?
schooling: home vs. public vs. private. Real quality of schools you're considering.
exercise, and physicality generally: how important is it? If it's important, how do you get them to enjoy it?
how hard to push kids
how strict to be about various things
If you find anything useful please post it. Trolling the CDC website I found that the flu vaccine causes increased GBS (Guillain-Barré Syndrome) And a map of world wide GBS shows it's much more dominant in the US! WTF, my mother-in-law died of GBS, it started in her arm... I have no idea if she had gotten a flu shot recently (or whatever the right word is, near in time, but happening in the past)
Here's what CDC says about flu shot and GBS:
The background rate for GBS in the Unites States is about 80 to 160 cases of GBS each week, regardless of vaccination. The data on the association between GBS and seasonal flu vaccination are variable and inconsistent across flu seasons. If there is an increased risk of GBS following flu vaccination it is small, on the order of one to two additional GBS cases per million doses of flu vaccine administered
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/guillainbarre.htm
Here's what it says about flu complications:
Most people who get flu will recover in a few days to less than two weeks, but some people will develop complications (such as pneumonia) as a result of flu, some of which can be life-threatening and result in death.
Sinus and ear infections are examples of moderate complications from flu, while pneumonia is a serious flu complication that can result from either flu virus infection alone or from co-infection of flu virus and bacteria. Other possible serious complications triggered by flu can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscle tissues (myositis, rhabdomyolysis), and multi-organ failure (for example, respiratory and kidney failure). Flu virus infection of the respiratory tract can trigger an extreme inflammatory response in the body and can lead to sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to infection. Flu also can make chronic medical problems worse. For example, people with asthma may experience asthma attacks while they have flu, and people with chronic heart disease may experience a worsening of this condition triggered by flu.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/complications.htm
Yeah to be honest I have no idea. Which is the problem, I don't trust the cdc, cause I don't know how much of their funding comes from big pharma. For whomever makes the vaccines, there's a big incentive to sell more of them, and if the money is hidden somewhere in our health care plans, so much the better.
To be lying about GBS the CDC would be exposing itself to attacks by respectable academic researchers who are not beholden to big pharma. The CDC is pretty transparent about its research -- what the numbers were, how they selected subjects, etc. They could not hide the practices that biased their results in favor of big pharma. They would have to flat out lie about their results. It is very implausible that they would do that. They would make themselves way to vulnerable to a terrible scandal. And even if the organization itself is corrupt, many who work there are honest researchers and would blow the whistle.
I asked GPT how much to trust what the. CDC said about GBS.
The CDC says that the flu shot is may not cause Guillain Barre Syndrome at all, and that if it does cause it that happens in only one or 2 cases per million. Is there respectable research that contradicts that?
This is its answer:
ChatGPT
There is a general scientific consensus that the link between the flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) is very weak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health organizations base their recommendations on large-scale studies that suggest the flu shot is very safe and that GBS cases possibly linked to it occur at a rate of about 1-2 cases per million doses.
However, while most studies support the CDC’s view, there have been some studies suggesting a small increased risk of GBS following flu vaccination, particularly in specific cases like the 1976 swine flu vaccine campaign, which saw a higher incidence of GBS. Since then, vaccines have been reformulated and monitored extensively, and current research finds only a very minimal association.
Some research contradicting the CDC's stance might emphasize the risk in more specific populations or analyze potential biases in larger epidemiological studies. For example:
Studies on specific flu vaccines: Some research suggests that certain types of flu vaccines may have a slightly higher association with GBS, but these findings have often been limited to specific vaccine formulations, regions, or patient groups.
Case-control studies: There have been case-control studies in smaller populations suggesting a marginally elevated risk in certain demographics, but the increase is still small and much lower than the risks posed by the flu itself.
Cumulative risk analysis: Some researchers focus on cumulative risk across multiple vaccines or highlight how certain autoimmune conditions might predispose individuals to vaccine-related complications.
Overall, while there's always ongoing research, the bulk of high-quality studies support the CDC's position that the flu vaccine is generally safe, and the risk of GBS is extremely low. If you're looking for more specific studies or alternative perspectives, I can help dig deeper into recent publications if you'd like.
You can use sources like that to double check. I think the Substack blog Your Local Epidemiologist is honest and smart, too. But you have to evaluate the sources and then commit to one. One thing I can tell you is that exchanges like the ones going on here will not clarify things for you. Lots of people are diffusely scared, but not very knowledgable. People on here have made very basic errors about & covid facts how vaxes work, some of which beowulf and I have caught. I have no loyalty to the goverment, to big pharma or to most other organizations. I researched all this stuff, and my conclusion is that you can trust the CDC research and you can trust Your Local Epidemiologsist and you can trust beowulf, who also is not loyal to anyone's ideas but his. The CDC gave bad advice, and lied, and handled the public's anxiety and confusion very badly, but their research is OK.
Right! If I google vaccines, I get what I take to be the company line. And at the other end I get the skeptics like RFK Jr.
A deep dive by someone on sub stack maybe. I want to be informed and then make my own decision.
I know it's not the classifieds thread, but time is of the essence. If you like VR and spaceships, consider backing my kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nonfingovr/non-fingo-vr-realistic-multiplayer-space-sim
"...there was the simulator, the most perfect video game ever played. Teachers and students had trained him, step by step, in its use..."
I guess I want to flag a major ethics concerns here, in light of the hypothetical where a device like the ansible gets recovered from advanced technology: "looks like training game." "outer space" "3D." "amazing REALISTIC graphics."
"I worked so hard to make it look realistic." <-- uh-huh. it's totally not just slurping up data from an actual spaceship's on-board cameras.
"former" army officer. <-- yeah. and Graff literally described his role saying, "I am a teacher of little children."
(Anyway--this game looks AMAZING!!)
I make no guarantees regarding the sapience of things that get exploded.
I actually found the "If there is a next time, I'll do better." 😮 in the other comment more ominous....
It appears to be Latin for "I am not making [this] up". (Where the "this" isn't present in the Latin, but is required for a grammatical English phrase. I take no position on whether it would be required in Latin.)
Yeah, I think I'm already committed to the name through various platforms, but I've definitely learned my lesson about trying to be too clever with it. If there's a next time, I'll do better.
If there is AI misalignment, and we know it, and we can prove it, and there's simply absolutely no question that it's happening... will anyone slow down or change anything about what they're doing?
A quote from a comment on Less Wrong:
"
How much scientific juice has, say, Facebook gotten out of CICERO? Have they deeply understood the situations in which CICERO begins planning to manipulate possible allies? Have they mechanistically interpretably understood how CICERO decides how long to cooperate and play nice, and when to openly defect and attack an ally? Is not CICERO a deeply empirical system based on observations and logs from many real-world games with actual human players rather than mere theoretical arguments? Has CICERO ended the empirical debate about whether LLMs can systematically scheme? Has it been shown what training techniques lead to scheming or why off-the-shelf normally-trained frozen LLMs were so useful for the planning and psychological manipulation compared to no-press Diplomacy?
Or has everyone pretty much forgotten about CICERO, handwaved away a few excuses about "well maybe it wasn't really deception" and "didn't it just learn to imitate humans why are you surprised", and the entire line of work apparently dead as a doornail as FB pivots to Llama-everything and core authors left for places like OA?
If the incentives for scientific research don't work there where the opposing commercial incentives are so very weak (borderline non-existent, even), why would they be highly likely to work elsewhere in scenarios with vastly more powerful opposing commercial incentives?
Perhaps it would help if rationalists didn't look down on psychology so much as a "soft science".
I don't think anyone expects that AI is perfectly aligned. They try to do something vaguely resembling alignment for ChatGPT, but if you look at something like character.ai, they have no problem with AI based on evil or insane characters. Most people just don't expect this to be a problem.
> Has CICERO ended the empirical debate about whether LLMs can systematically scheme?
I don't know whether CICERO is what ended it, but that debate is over, yeah. More recent, higher-profile AI has also shown extensive ability for scheming and deception.
> If there is AI misalignment, and we know it, and we can prove it, and there's simply absolutely no question that it's happening... will anyone slow down or change anything about what they're doing?
A significant number of people involved in AI are hoping for unaligned AI, with human extinction considered an acceptable outcome.
Could you provide some examples of people explicitly "hoping for unaligned AI"? I find that to be a slightly surprising claim.
Marc Andreessen, billionaire supporter of e/acc, responding to a paper about AI deception capabilities: "We've actually invented AI, and it turns out that it's gloriously, inherently uncontrollable." https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1747534187597586615
Much of e/acc as represented by the "leadership"/founders, is pretty clearly in favour of human extinction. Per the e/acc manifesto, "e/acc has no particular allegiance to the biological substrate for intelligence and life, in contrast to transhumanism." "Effective accelerationism (e/acc) in a nutshell: Stop fighting the thermodynamic will of the universe / You cannot stop the acceleration / You might as well embrace it / A C C E L E R A T E." Some, like Beff Jezos, "consider ourselves post-humanists; in order to spread to the stars, the light of consciousness/intelligence will have to be transduced to non-biological substrates." Note, however, that a Twitter poll showed only ~15% of e/acc people endorsing human extinction. https://x.com/daniel_271828/status/1728379010252673193
Rich Sutton advocates "AI succession": "Inevitably, we will create our successors. It need not be viewed as bad in any way." He criticizes "humanism, in the sense of being akin to racism," and argues "I don't think we should fear succession. I think we should not resist it. We should embrace it, prepare for it. Why would we want greater AIs, more intelligent beings, kept subservient to us?"
Larry Page, in a conversation with Elon Musk (later verified by Max Tegmark), said he believes that AI would "simply be the next stage of evolution," dismissing concerns about humanity's safety as "speciest" and "sentimental nonsense."
Jürgen Schmidhuber: "In the long run, humans will not remain the crown of creation... But that's okay because there is still beauty, grandeur, and greatness in realizing that you are a tiny part of a much grander scheme which is leading the universe from lower complexity towards higher complexity." (His position is slightly more ambigious; there's a difference between "human extinction is inevitable" and "human extinction is good", and I don't know if he's ever made clear which side he's on.)
Edit: Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter on his blog actually has a recurring segment called "Please Speak Directly Into This Microphone" where he goes over statements by (as he calls them) "Omnicidal Maniacs" who advocate human extinction.
Hm, I wouldn't really characterize this as "hoping for unaligned AI", except for Marc Andreesen's statement.
The other ones are more that they don't care about alignment?
It feels to me like they rank Aligned ASI > Non-Aligned ASI > No ASI
While most EA's would rank Aligned ASI > No ASI > Non-Aligned ASI
Regardless, I get your point now, thank you for clarifying.
Not your term, but when you’re labeling your conversation partners “omnicidal maniacs” it may be useful to step back and consider that you don’t understand what they’re saying.
One way or another, humanity is going to go extinct. We will either be wiped out entirely or evolve to the point that Homo sapiens no longer exists. This is not good or bad, it’s just a fact.
Likewise, you and everyone you know will die. You will be annihilated completely. Also neither good or bad, also a fact, also true no matter how many data centers we do or do not build.
Not building AI / artificial life out of fear of the inevitable is the maniacal position. It represents the only - admittedly extraordinarily slim - possibility that something of you in particular / humanity generally will persist into the far future, true, but it also has the real promise of substantial rewards along with the possibility of immense risk. Condemning mankind to LARP a late industrial lifestyle for as long as possible to prevent dislocation is madness and ignores the really not great conditions of many, many human lives. Everything from shrimp boat slaves to dead eyed suicidal email job holders.
And if we goof and manage to drive ourselves extinct within a couple years - also extraordinarily slim odds depending on your priors, by the way - what is the difference? It is going to happen. The “onnicidal maniacs” simply see a much broader range of possible outcomes included within the human extinction scenario while recognizing its inevitability under any AI policy regime.
Basically agreed. Though I'm not quite sure what you mean in:
>Not building AI / artificial life out of fear of the inevitable is the maniacal position. It represents the only - admittedly extraordinarily slim - possibility that something of you in particular / humanity generally will persist into the far future, true, but it also has the real promise of substantial rewards along with the possibility of immense risk.
Is the "It" in the second sentence AI or the position of not building AI? If you mean "It" to be AI, then I agree.
In particular, there are a number of intellectual accomplishments of humanity, e.g. the periodic table, that I am personally sentimental about, and which I expect to have a good chance of being preserved by AIs into the far future.
> I don't know whether CICERO is what ended it, but that debate is over, yeah. More recent, higher-profile AI has also shown extensive ability for scheming and deception.
I suspect I know what you're talking about but... for the onlookers... what are you talking about? I think everyone would be curious to know details.
> A significant number of people involved in AI are hoping for unaligned AI, with human extinction considered an acceptable outcome.
Yeah, nihilism seems to be rampant these days. One of the reasons I'm hoping Musk will manage to overshadow the others.
> What people believe is that "unaligned" is an incoherent concept or is not particularly dangerous, not that an "unaligned" AI is something to shoot for and something that will destroy humanity in the process.
Those are different people. People like Sutton, Page, and Schmidhuber are quite clear that they consider AGI resulting human extinction to be a positive outcome.
Another Less Wrong comment:
"
No. The lab would not shut down. It would probably not even notify anyone outside the company of the alignment problem or the escape attempts. The evidence would be buried, and is unlikely to come to the attention of anyone outside the lab until after a devastating incident.
For real-world examples, look to other industries. Perhaps the two clearest examples are:
The UK Post Office "Horizon" computer system. This was known to be making egregious errors, yet postmasters were prosecuted and imprisoned on the known-faulty say-so of the Horizon system.
Grenfell Tower Fire. The public enquiry has found multiple cases where the evidence that the cladding was highly flammable and unsuited for use on tall buildings was deliberately hidden from the authorities, and even when the authorities knew (or should have known), the evidence was ignored.
Similar cases can be found throughout the EEA, US and Canada.
Karl Popper (writing in I believe the 60s) said that a 2 party like America's was ideal, because both parties would be broad-tent moderates who can only win by competing for the median voter. In other words, having to get to 50%+1 to win is itself a moderating influence. Famously this has not uh (gesticulates at America) proved to be a great prediction. But why not, exactly? Looking for answers a bit deeper than just saying 'polarization'.
One thing I've been thinking about recently is that the kinds of voters & politicians who would be in smaller, more extreme parties in a PR system, are instead incorporated into the 2 big tent parties here in the US. This has a corrupting & radicalizing influence within the party over time, especially as people with more extreme views are just more passionate about politics than relative moderates. So no matter what political system you choose, the radicals have outsized influence- either as a junior coalition partner in PR, or from 'inside the tent' in a 2 party system. There's no way that I know of to diminish their influence.
As a counter-argument, Labour and the Tories in the UK seem quite a bit less radical than the US, despite that country also only being governed by 2 parties. Do the British have the best system (this is highly speculative) by giving relative radicals their own parties, but then they can never win under FPTP? So they're isolated but also always out of power
I think the difference in between UK and US is because of the populations temperament and beliefs rather than the political system.
I think the big problem is that this assumes that the parties react to the voters, but not the other way around. In reality, people will change their views to fit their party and to try to distance themselves from the opposite party.
But I don't know why it seems to be getting worse.
You think gesturing at the richest and most stably governed nation in all of history is sufficient evidence for your theory? Think again
I think you are alone on planet Earth in believing that present-day America is the 'most stably governed nation in all of history'
You may be holding your nose too close to the wheel. Zoom out. America is far and away the richest and most powerful nation on earth, it has been so for more than a century, and there is nothing in its current trajectory relative to other nations to suggest that this will change any time soon. Europe has been stagnating for a long time, Xi is running China into the ground, Russia isn't worth mentioning. Who do you think is better governed?
China. I get the impression that the way the US is coping with China’s imminent ascendancy is to ignore it.
China was immensely lucky to have gotten Deng. That luck is running out.
You only get the impression that China is well governed because nobody in China is allowed to say otherwise. How could you possibly know what China's problems are, when outsiders aren't allowed to see them and insiders are routinely murdered for mentioning them?
And the fact that China has gone from being as poor as Niger to being as poor as Mexico doesn't mean it's well run, it just means it's not quite as badly run as it was in the 1960s.
I’ve been there. I can assure you Melvin that China is not North Korea - there are a billion phones. Stewarding an economy that grows from the per capita GDP of Niger to Mexico is pretty rare, were it common then subsaharan Africa would be high middle income right now, and Niger would be Mexico.
Few other countries gave done it, except a few Asian tigers, and none at this scale.
I blame the primaries and the influence of a few very strong wedge issues. Abortion in particular. Primaries have always had a radicalizing effect, as it's essentially moving the Overton Window far to the left or right compared to the overall population and then making candidates go through that Window instead of the centrist version. We then talk about the swing to the middle for the general election, which should help negate this.
The reason I don't think the swing to the middle has been strong enough is the wedge issues. As long as there are single-issue voters that will always support a party no matter what, it strongly reduces the incentive to swing to the middle later. If the candidates don't have to swing later, they can say more strongly what the extremes want to hear during the primaries, which helps them beat centrists. True believers in both parties hate it when their candidates drop positions and moderate to win the national election.
Jeb Bush said something about losing the primary in order to win the general. He obviously lost the primary, and didn't get the chance to win the general (which I think he would have, against Clinton).
How party *leaders* are elected -- by an open vote, a members only vote, or smoke filled rooms -- is very important as well.
It’s grossly inaccurate to speak of the UK as having “only 2 parties”, third parties play an important role, sometimes as spoilers.
Also, Liz Truss was pretty radical, but under the UK system the government changed quickly instead of being into four years of Liz.
I think the US primary system is a big reason.
To even get to run in an election, you have to win an election of party sympathisers. This tends to end up picking the most extreme candidate rather than the most electable.
Then in the main election, voters are left picking one of two extremists.
Before 1970, candidates were picked by party insiders "in smoke filled rooms". I think the crop of politicians nominated that way were a lot more centrists, and would bring back this system if/when I became emperor.
But the US has experimented with non-primary systems, such as Washington, Oregon, and California using a top 2 system for about the last 20 years. This was actually the selling point for switching to top 2, that it would get rid of primaries and help moderate American politics. It has definitely not done that
"Top 2" doesn't help if you still have two strong political party organizations, and so long as *most* states do party primary and first-past-the-post general elections you're going to have exactly two strong party organizations everywhere.
Which means, in a Top 2 state, the minority party is going to be highly incentivized to run exactly one serious candidate, because that's their best hope to even be in the general election. Anyone other than the Chosen One who tries to run will be starved of funding, warned that they'll be persona non grata in the party forevermore if they do this, and the party will use its own messaging apparatus to make sure the voters know who the Chosen One is and that a primary vote for anyone else will be wasted.
Which in turn means that the majority party, unless it's a *huge* majority, will also be incentivized to run exactly one serious candidate. They could probably get away with two, if A: they could reliably keep it to two, and B: the visible infighting and the fact that neither of their candidates came in first in the primary, didn't cost them votes in the general.
California is a very blue state, but the 2022 gubernatorial primary was a contest between Gavin Newsom (a Democrat), Brian Dahle (a Republican), and twelve other Republican and three other Democratic candidates so insignificant that none of them even merit a wikipedia page. Newsom got 55% of the vote in the "top 2" primary and 59% in the general election
If you were to convert the entire nation to "top 2", that *might* change. But I wouldn't bet on it.
Definitely not. A challenger to an incumbent that makes it to the general will usually have a dedicated band of crazies that put them ahead of the dozen other primary candidates, but however hated the incumbent is the crazies' darling is worse.
I don't think state-level primary changes would help much for Presidential elections, but are California governors or senators more moderate (relative to the state population) than other states?
I'm not sure how a "Top 2" system would moderate things.
The normal (globally) way to select candidates is to let party insiders do it (much as they did for Kamala). Let the professionals do the triangulation between picking someone electable and someone who'll actually pursue the party's agenda.
I don't understand this well enough to argue this cogently, but I've become increasingly convinced that it's the media.
* As Wooly notes, Yellow Journalism is historically the default. It's the post-WWII Golden Age of Journalism which begs for explanation.
* I suspect the golden age due to a combination of: A) laws like the Radio Act of 1927, which caused the media to moderate themselves (and thus run their news departments at a loss); and B) advertising was more homogenous, because of something to do with logistics/market-segmentation.
* The behavior of modern governments are downstream of the 4th estate.
This is basically median voter theorem. I think the reason this doesn’t moderate politics as much as expected is because parties aren’t just competing for the median voter; they’re also trying to get latent supporters on their side to bother to show up to vote at all. The latter factor pushes the parties toward the extremes, because if a candidate is too moderate, a lot of more extreme right/left people just won’t vote (especially uninformed citizens) or will vote for third parties.
Does this imply that mandatory voting would result in more moderate candidates?
Likelier candidates whose name would get them listed first alphabetically; voters who don't want to be doing it will put in the minimum amount of effort necessary to avoid punishment.
Parties also tend to be run by grassrootss volunteers who are more extreme, and therefore commited, than the average vote-once-every-four-years person.
They're also run by big donors, whose interests are often orthogonal to those of the little people.
I don't think you can say you've proved your case by "gesticulat[ing] at America".
My recollection is that Popper favored first-past-the-post because it allowed voters to reject the current government by voting against it, without the risk that a new coalition containing the party they wanted to defeat would still be in charge.
Your argument is that the 2 American political parties are relatively moderate, I take it. I'm always interested in hearing contrarian takes
Lots of other countries have had novel parties with new ideologies take over. The US has had the same big 2 since the mid 19th century. We're considered an anomaly because we never had a major socialist or labor party.
AFAIK the UK, Canada, and Australia have only ever had the same 2 parties in government, also going back to the 19th century. Yes there have been a few coalition governments here and there, but always with 1 of those 2 major parties as the majority partner. Not really disagreeing with you here, just thinking out loud
The Liberals used to be the left-wing rivals to the Tories, but were displaced by Labour.
I don't know, compared to the range of possibilities, especially a worldwide range, US politics really is quite centrist. We've kept the Communists and the Fascists out of power, despite big groundswells of support at different times.
Popper's quote is from 60 years ago. When I was taking intro polysci courses 40 years ago his description of the two major parties was neither novel nor disputable. His error, shared by my professors, was assuming that just because that had been an accurate description for 100+ years it inherently would always be.
Both parties are competing for the median voter. Just look at how close the polls are. Perhaps it is you who has a distorted view on what the median voter is like?
I guess the deeper answer is that political parties are competing for more than just “winning”. They are also competing to implement their policy goals. Each party moderates just enough to win, but no further, because doing so would jeopardize their policy aims.
People have a hard time distinguishing between extreme (as in really stupid ideas) and extreme. (as in politically unpopular) I personally find student loan forgiveness to be very stupid but it's not politically unpopular.
+1
For awhile there, you could see mainstream Republicans proposing going to war with Iran, at the same time Trump was talking about banning Muslim immigration. The first policy was widely seen as within the window, reasonable-people-may-differ stuff, whereas the second was seen in most media/public circles as racist and beyond-the-pale.
Now, a Muslim immigration bad seems like bad policy, but it's enormously less bad than starting a war with Iran. People who were very upset about the human rights implications of a Muslim immigration ban didn't seem so upset with the human rights implications of bombing the shit out of yet another Middle Eastern country. Because bombing Iran was within the window of acceptable views, but a Muslim ban wasn't.
In Britain, the two main parties have a high level of control over their politicians:
- There aren't open primaries. Parties have an internal process for choosing who will run for any given seat.
- If an MP is sufficiently disobedient, they can be expelled from their party - meaning that in the next election they will have to run as an independent and will likely lose because people usually vote for the main parties
- The head of government is the prime minister, who only takes and retains power as long as > half of parliament supports them. Members of parliament are a more intelligent electorate than the general public, making it harder for Trump types to get in.
Two comments.
First, the idea that pre-1960 America was a model of moderate parties competing for the median voter is a pretty odd interpretation. Two factions, Whigs and Dems, formed almost immediately, moderated a bit by Washington, but then they immediately broke down into really nasty fighting, see the Alien & Sedition Acts, followed by a brief lull, followed by a generational conflict over slavery culminating in a group of religious radicals (Republican abolitionists) forming a new political faction and driving the country into civil War, followed by a...mostly one party state as Northern Republicans monopolized power between the Civil War and the Great Depression, followed by WWII, the two trials of which generated a great deal of unity...which was basically ending in the 1960s. There is no sainted past of political moderation to return to. This is just...not historically how 18th and 19th century democracies functioned.
Second, it's non-obvious why political moderation is even desirable. Again, the Republicans of the 1840s-1850s were quite radical for their time, the moderates tended to be guys like Webster trying to set up Liberia. Moderation is good if everything is going well for most people. If it's not, which kind of seems like our current situation, it's not clear that moderation is optimal.
Recent polarization was a relatively recent deliberate decision by elites. The idea that people don't really have a choice because the parties were indistinguishable was thought to be undemocratic. But a lot of this was just sorting over time, and people who identified with a party label rather than an ideology wound up changing their ideology or party
I think you're confusing immoderate rhetoric with immoderate policy.
US politics is immoderate in the sense that both parties are perpetually talking about how the other one are evil psychopaths who want to destroy the country. It's not immoderate in terms of actual policy differences, which are small.
That’s very true. And the opposite is true in some countries, the far left is not really despised by centrists - although the far right is.
Oh, Jesus. It isn’t just immoderate rhetoric. You are just skipping over the effort to subvert an election here.
Winding up a crowd to enter the capitol to pressure your VP to unconstitutionally stop its prescribed process, as Pence acknowledged was the case.
Then watching the show unfold on television for a couple hours rather than issuing a restraining message.
As a result, Mike Pence is one of the Republicans who will not be voting for Trump this November
This is not an issue of personality or immoderate rhetorical style. It’s not even policy unless you consider following the rules outlined in the US Constitution a matter of mere ‘policy’.
_________
Jim Mattis Retired Marine Corps Four Star General, Trump Defense Secretary - January 7, 2021 -
“Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump.
His use of the Presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us”
______________
Mitch McConnell - March 13, 2021
“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.
The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.”
The capitol protests and the reaction to them definitely falls under the category of extreme rhetoric, not extreme policy.
What are the *actual*, enactable, policy differences between the two parties? One is notionally center-left and one is notionally center-right but there's barely a bee's dick of difference in practice. Abortion at twelve weeks versus sixteen weeks? A one percent difference in the top marginal tax rate? Do you pretend to do something about illegal immigration or not even pretend?
Again, I think following the rules outlined in the Constitution a most fundamental matter of policy.
Leaving office after losing an election is very much a baseline policy.
It’s not ordinarily considered as such because we had never before had someone so self obsessed that he would try to arrange a scam with ‘alternate electors’ to nullify an election.
If a president can’t meet the baseline of observing the never before challenged peaceful transfer I don’t give a damn about the rest.
If Obama had lost narrowly in 2012 and pulled a similar stunt I would have felt the same way.
> Again, I think following the rules outlined in the Constitution a most fundamental matter of policy.
Well, as you'll notice, the Republicans did. A bunch of screaming 4channers is not the Republican Party.
Donald Trump did his best toresist ceding power peacefully.
He is the Republican candidate for president in 2024.
For most practical purposes the Republican Party is whatever Trump says it is on any given day. See Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Paul Ryan.
This is why I don’t care a whit about marginal tax rate etc in the coming election.
My gut, data-free take is Popper overestimates the extent to which extremists are a captive electorate to the party on "their side". You have to chase the moderates yes but you also have to chase the extremists or they just wander off and don't vote.
Another factor is that swing voters aren't people who are in the middle of some one-dimensional spectrum. They're people who just have weird positions that don't line up neatly with either party.
Upon ruminating, another way to formulate that is you can't have a true two-party system because abstension (and adjacent categories) always exists as a de facto third party - that can pull impressive scores with no adds, donors, canvassers or even candidates.
I was thinking the same thing, as I've seen a lot of arguments among leftists about whether the Democrats are worth voting for.
A few weeks ago I noted I didn't think my crackpot physics was correct.
I've been noodling on the "mathematics" I used to come to that conclusion and I suspect they may end up being relatively important, if correct.
Shortest possible version: My conceptualization of negative dimensionality bears a striking resemblance to a Riemann Sphere. Given the AdS/CFT correspondence, this may be important.
Does anybody know whether or not any string theorists have tried investigating the behavior of a negative-dimensional "string"? I have a hunch such a construct may give rise to general relativity.
(Granted it's no longer quite a string, per se, when it becomes negative-dimensional; it's more of a complex surface. However, one of the precursors to the Riemann Sphere, in terms of how I consider negative dimensionality, could be interpreted as "an infinite number of one-dimensional strings curled up into an infinitesimal space".)
Can you explain what you mean by negative dimensions? Does that mean you write a vector with a negative amount of numbers? Or if you scale it up, the volume somehow goes down?
https://thegnskald.substack.com/p/negative-dimensionality
If you're interested in my attempt to explain the idea somewhat more clearly. Still not formal, by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe part of the way there.
The second; if you scale it up, the volume-equivalent goes down. (I think of these as "magnitude" and "measure" to help keep things straight in my head; as magnitude increases, measure decreases, and vice versa.)
For a glimpse of how this might work out in practice, observe that, because the surface area of a curved surface of a given diameter is greater than the surface area of a flat surface, and because relativity implies curvature, the volume of space (measure) increases as the distance (magnitude) from a mass decreases.
That would only work if you're getting closer and closer to a specific point. So would it just mean that that point has a negative number of dimensions, but everywhere else it's positive?
I conceptualize it more as being inside the point, if that description makes any sense at all. Or perhaps if you turned the point inside out?
The point only contains one point. And one point will always be zero-dimensional.
An infinity of what produces a point? What internal structure of a point is lost in the transition from 0d to -1d?
No physicist can investigate a negative dimensional thingy unless it is mathematically specified.
I don't know much about string theory, but as I understand it, both the strings and the background space are actual manifolds, not just objects with a parameter called "dimension" that has some formal similarity to dimensions of things like manifolds and vector spaces. Given you can't have a negative-dimensional manifold, what do you even mean by negative-dimensional strings? If you explained in your previous post, could you provide a link?
What makes you think you can't have a negative-dimensional manifold?
Edit:
The thrust of what I'm saying is that there -is- a negative-dimensional manifold - it is the Riemann Sphere. (Or possibly a horn torus that is extremely similar.)
Unfortunately my mathematical language skills are less than stellar (somebody else had to point out to me the strange topology I was drawing for negative dimensions trying to explain my crackpot physics was just a projection of a Riemann Sphere onto a two-dimensional surface, namely the paper I was trying to draw it on). In terms of fractal dimensions, a negative dimensional space is one in which something like measure is given as the inverse of something like magnitude.
Scale a line by 1/2 and you get a line that is half the length of the original line. Scale a square by 1/2 and you get a square that is 1/4 the length of the original square. Scale a cube, you get 1/8*.
For a -1 dimensional object, scale that object by 1/2, and you end up with an object that is twice the size of the original object. This is, oddly, halfway to getting us a "natural" Riemann Sphere already, as the Riemann Sphere is constructed from two coordinate systems such that the 0 and the infinity of each are assigned to the infinity and 0 of the other coordinate system, respectively. We're just missing the complex component, which I'm pretty sure will turn up once you start considering what a negative degree of freedom is. Or, alternatively ...
For a given positive dimension, we can consider it in terms of a path from an arbitrary but specific 0 to some infinity. In the space of all possible dimensions, there are an infinite number of independent/orthogonal infinities one can arrive at.
For a given negative dimension, however, I think it is a path from an arbitrary but specific 0 to an arbitrary but specific infinity (it is very difficult to explain why I think this is the case, so I'm just assuming it is the case for these purposes); all negative dimensions, with respect to a given origin, start at the same 0, and end at the same infinity. So while positive dimensions are in a sense divergent, negative dimensions are in that sense convergent. We can organize this bundle of dimensions however we please, and if we arbitrarily assign each of them a complex number to represent which "negative dimension" they are, we can construct ourselves a Riemann Sphere out of them.
(Or possibly a horn torus, if the zero and the infinity are the same point, which I suspect they may be.)
Mind, I have absolutely no idea how to formalize all this, nor much interest in doing so.
"What makes you think you can't have a negative-dimensional manifold?": the definition of a manifold. A manifold is a topological space locally homeomorphic to R^n for some fixed n (satisfying certain additional conditions). R^n is the product of n copies of R. You can't have a negative number of terms in a product.
If instead of the dimension of a manifold we consider fractal dimension as you suggest, then again, just taking the formal definition (Hausdorff dimension, or box-counting dimension if you prefer that definition), then again it is immediate that the dimension is non-negative. The fact that the dimension is non-negative is part of the definition of the Hausdorff dimension, but even if we omit that assumption, the Hausdorff measure of any non-empty set with dimension <0 is always infinite, so the dimension would always be non-negative anyway. (The one exception is the empty set, which would have dimension negative infinity, but that is an uninteresting case.)
The Riemann sphere straightforwardly has dimension 2 as a real manifold or 1 as a complex manifold. It doesn't have a standard metric but if we take the metric of the unit sphere, that has fractal dimension 2 of course.
As for vague things that might be called "dimension" by analogy but don't actually fit either of these definitions, I just can't make sense of what you're saying. What you call "negative dimensions" sound more like somewhat odd coordinate systems on perfectly ordinary spaces.
You talk of individual dimensions in a way that makes it seem like you have been misled by the unfortunate language used to discuss these things. There is no such thing as a dimension. There are various kinds of mathematical structure (such as vector spaces) with theorems like "If two coordinate systems describe the same space, they have the same number of coordinates.", and we call that number the number of dimensions the space has, so it is meaningful to say a space is n-dimensional, but that doesn't mean you can pick out individual dimensions, just things like coordinates and directions.
"There is no such thing as a dimension" looks like a rather stronger statement than you mean; I'd guess you mean there is no non-arbitrary way of carving an n-dimensional space up into n dimensions. On a paper map, we might arbitrarily label one direction pair "North/South", but we can technically rotate this however we wish.
Even after you make an arbitrary choice of axes/coordinates/whatever, I still think calling those "dimensions" is worse than calling them clearer things like "axes" and "coordinates".
If you ever want to get taken seriously by physicists/mathematicians, I believe you'll have to formalize your model. Otherwise (it seems to me) it's not worth the effort to go through all your text to figure out which turn of phrase hides the issue. Also, if your goal is to create new physics theory, you can't really avoid formalization, can you?
Why would I want to be taken seriously?
I'm pointing at a thing, a suspected connection between negative dimensions and the Riemann Sphere, which I think might be useful to -somebody else's work-; my work is done, it didn't do the thing I thought it would do.
If somebody wants to go investigate the thing, great. If somebody already -has-, even better.
I see your point but I think it could only makes sense if "negative-dimension-manifold" would be an existing concept. Then yeah, a suspected connection between two established concepts could interest someone. But this concept is actually novel to you and doesn't make much sense (at least to me) without a clear (read: formal) definition. So you are not pointing out an interesting connection, you're claiming something about a concept you invented but didn't bother properly (read: formally) defining. The chance that people who are capable of understanding all of this will bother deciphering your text can IMHO be safely rounded to zero. But you do you, of course.
https://thegnskald.substack.com/p/negative-dimensionality
A half-formalization.
It's not novel to me; linguistics beat me to it by a good few years. Topology, probably, too, although I never did find a formal answer to the question of what the desuspension of a point is. (My guess is, as explained here, a Riemann Sphere.)
If what you think you're pointing at is even real, it can't be useful to anyone's work if you don't explain it in a way that makes sense.
https://thegnskald.substack.com/p/negative-dimensionality
Curious to get feedback on whether or not this might make some kind of sense.
Do we know anything about the long term health impacts of intermittent high blood pressure? I've been tracking my blood pressure/diet/behavior and have found some things that will temporarily (<24 hours) increase my systolic blood pressure by ~15 points. Do we have any actual evidence about what the impacts would be if I had such an increase 1 day a week, 1 day a month, etc.? And in case it matters, I go from ~125 to ~140
I'm not a doctor, but when I investigated this, my understanding is that the model of why high blood pressure (or high cholesterol) is bad is that it makes it more likely to accumulate small damage over time, which are healed by plaques, which can eventually narrow your arteries and / or lead to strokes.
In other words, the threat model isn't "there is acute danger," it's "long term this leads to damage and poorer cardiac health." I think this would argue that intermittent episodes shouldn't really matter much. You could probably model it linearly as "I spend x% of time in higher BP range, and so my risk is x% of somebody in this higher BP range all the time," and it's probably less than that linear model due to hormesis.
But I agree with Al Quinn, getting BP medicine is cheap and easy. Go to agelessrx.com, they'll give you prescription telmisartan for cheap with a totally online doctor's visit. They also have stuff like metformin and rapamycin, for the anti-aging folks here.
I have white coat hypertension and also anxiety issues that cause high readings at home, so I read up a bit on this. If you're otherwise metabolically healthy, the risk at those levels is not particularly high based on some large all cause mortality studies. Additionally, Europe has (until very recently) had a much higher threshold for "hypertension" than the US (though I beleived they moved in the direction of the US very recently).
FWIW, my doctor offered my Valsartan, and because I was tired of worrying about BP (I'm a hypochondriac), I decided to try it at 160mg. The surprising thing was Valsartan almost entirely eliminated my anxiety 1 hour after the first dose as a side effect. It has mostly stayed that way since, so I'm staying on it for that reason even if the benefits of BP reduction are less clear.
If it should be vetoed, I'd definitely lean on Newsom to do it. He has some bad political instincts, but he's also pulled through on vetoes when they've been needed - he vetoed a California bill being aggressively pushed by the Teamsters that would have banned driverless trucks from California roads.
Zvi's posts on the subject have convinced me that a majority of the SB 1047 opposition comes from sources that didn't read the bill, claim things about the bill that are simply factually wrong, and/or are part of a well-funded whole-cloth astroturf campaign largely backed by a16z, OpenlyEvilAI, and other dishonestly-interested parties. Even for those with a correctly-skeptical prior towards government regulation, it's probably still worth passing, since it heads off inevitable actual heavy-handed reactive legislation in the future (and overriding federal-level legislation doesn't seem forthcoming, especially with increasing efforts at making AI into yet another partisan football).
Ergo I'll be disappointed but not surprised if Newsom ends up vetoing. Appreciate his support for YIMBY stuff and breaking somewhat with the homelessness-industrial complex...other than that, meh, replacement-level unexceptionalism. I miss Governor Moonbeam.
*https://thezvi.substack.com/p/sb-1047-final-takes-and-also-ab-3211
*https://thezvi.substack.com/p/guide-to-sb-1047
I strongly disagree with the claim that the opposition is more dishonest than the pro camp. I personally sent a letter asking Wiener to withdraw the bill earlier and to Newsom. to veto it. My view is the initial legislation was actually bad and recent changes have made it meh but it's a bad idea to pass meh legislation that doesn't do what its proponents want.
"Even for those with a correctly-skeptical prior towards government regulation, it's probably still worth passing, since it heads off inevitable actual heavy-handed reactive legislation in the future (and overriding federal-level legislation doesn't seem forthcoming, especially with increasing efforts at making AI into yet another partisan football)."
This is actually a bad take if you care about having a well functioning society as these types of laws are easily weaponized without achieving their intended effect.
This bill is only good if you think that raising the cost of AI development is a good in and of itself as this will basically add $10K-1M in model development cost (I'd assume lower for now but in an ever increasing rate) to hire compliance teams and consultants.
That's a Fully General Counterargument to entire swathes of legislation, well beyond emerging fields like AI. I think it's correct to be skeptical, since the legislative ratchet rarely turns the other way - but if one is perpetually opposed to any bill that may possibly be weaponized, which is ~all of them (and this one has been majorly neutered already, with Anthropic getting most of their changes wishlist, on top of open source models still getting absurd carve-outs), then it becomes hard to tell when the fire alarm is actually ringing. Some bills are, indeed, worse than others! But they're going to happen, one way or another, sooner or later (the other proposed AI bills in CA alone are...a lot worse)...so it's better to keep one's powder dry.
Besides that, it's absurd to think AI will stay unregulated long-term. I strongly believe now's a good time to let a lawful punch land, when AI remains pretty low-salience overall and nothing that bad has happened yet. Not later, when we're in Something Must Be Done -> This Is Something mode from some deepfake bullshit or whatever. Many Such Cases, invisible graveyard is vast. General public polling on AI is already majority-opposed / pro-regulation, bipartisan even...do you expect that to flip in the future, once It's Really Happening and it's not just a few niche industries being disrupted? I sure don't.
...I am basically just repeating the points made in the linked posts though, so, meh. Don't understand the self-interest angle you mention downstream either...if a law is mostly being opposed by the leading labs and their VC allies whose portfolios are betting strongly on AI going e/acc, that seems pretty self-interested to me. All those billions and attendant sociopolitical capital, versus whatever piddling amount Eliezer Yudkowsky can scrounge up...let's not get confused about which is Goliath and which is David.
Also yes this is a an argument against large swathes of legislation. I believe that bad legislation is worse than no legislation, and specifically I believe this because bad legislation crowds out good legislation.
Let me ask you what are the benefits of this law? I don't disagree that AI needs to be regulated but I view your argument "I strongly believe now's a good time to let a lawful punch land, when AI remains pretty low-salience overall and nothing that bad has happened yet" to be basically a vengeful act against the AI companies. This bill appears to me (after all of the neutering) to basically be a "Something Must Be Done -> This Is Something" law. I'm in agreement that many of the VC's and AI companies are arguing from self interest but I consider them to have a higher track record of contributing to human well being than Eliezer Yudkowsky and it's not always the case that David is right.
It's basically a reverse Stanford Marshmallow Prison Test: do you eat the This Is Something At Or Above Replacement Level legislation now, or delay that gratification for a very-likely much worse one later, like the genuinely-atrocious EU AI Act? Government gonna government, interference is inevitable, give them a quarter of a loaf while that's all they're asking for. (They don't even get a new Frontier Model Division to regulate with anymore! I was pretty surprised that got bargained down, in control-freak CA!) Get some small amount of transparency to reassure the anxious public, which is still stuck on the has-beens of yesteryear like ChatGPT, has no idea about the current frontier. Orient future legislation and punishments towards ex post rather than ex ante harms, which isn't good safety-wise (or even "safety"-wise for bullshit like DIE concerns, you can't un-trigger some disproportionately biased sensitive), but is a pretty generous deal for the industry, and a sadly endangered approach to law these days. Honestly surprised we still haven't slapped serious KYC-type restrictions on chips and datacenters yet. Small chance to actually catch some knowing-endangerment before it happens, although so many of the enforecement teeth got pulled that I expect that to just be a cost-of-business for a sufficiently determined actor. Do agree the final form is in a weird place where the fines etc. are neither quite high enough to be a real deterrent, nor low enough to be cheerfully painless; even from a maximum-cynicism angle, that's poor revenue-and-makework maximization. Just enough to unhappily annoy everyone involved, like all compromises.
If I thought better legislation (nevermind actually-good legislation, that's a Basically Never Happens Anymore) was forthcoming, I'd be quite open to opposition on those grounds. Likewise if I thought we were headed towards the Good End, the slightly-better-business-as-usual, +1% GDP growth future where AGI doesn't happen, we just get lots of new toys...in that case it'd be a teapot tempest failed miracle, like crypto but with marginally less fraud. (Actual Kurzweil-style Singularity would argue in the direction of regulation again, since that's a wide range of variance and it'd be idiotic to sleepwalk into such a situation...)
Sadly that does not seem to be the state of the world; I'm especially disappointed by how many decisions seem to backchain to Gotta Beat China natsec-type justifications that exacerbate the ongoing Red Queen's Race. Every red line in the sand, the People Would Never Be So Stupid As Tos - e.g. hooking up AI to automated weapons systems, whatever nonsense with a shitty custserv chatbot is going viral this week - that gets passed by without resistance...that doesn't inspire much hope either. We really won't restrain ourselves from throwing AI into anything and everything, no matter how appropriate or ready. And even rather low bars like reporting and disclosure requirements to UK AISI get treated like insurmountable roadblocks. Look, I *want* to like AI companies; the @sama of even just a few years ago seemed like My Kind Of CEO! Let's not punish success! Lina Khan's antitrust crusade is silly! Stop hassling the world of bits, we already made it impossible to get anything done in the world of atoms!...So it really speaks poorly of the industry that I place more trust now in a nut like EY. At least his fictions are more entertaining than Marc Andreesen's.
Do want to note that I appreciate the replies, even though I don't think either of us can say much of anything that'd bridge the large gap in priors. Smart critics are more valuable than dumb ones. Thanks for playing.
An extra “$10K-1M in model development cost” seems not a big deal for models that cost over $100MM to train?
That's why I say it is mostly bad law rather than going to be a big deal. Suppose the law just said AI Model companies need to pay 10% of their revenue to fund the most insane wokest DEI initiatives, would you support this law. I think there are members of the EA group who do because they view any hinderance to these companies as an advantage. Anthropic views this as ok an OpenAI tends to alternate in opposition because they know they can live with this. I suspect that some people in the supporters are biased because a decent fraction of this money will be siphoned off into institutes that support them or they imagine that they will get to be in the positions of power steering the regulatory body.
I haven't read the bill, but I have no confidence in the government's ability to regulate AI, and little trust in the government to actually want to use this to guard against AI rather than funnel money and control in directions I can't see.
To riff on your theme, a fun quote:
> I’ve gotten more cynical from following the discourse about SB1047. If we can’t establish expert consensus on matters as easy-to-check as “what does the text of this bill say”, I feel pessimistic about rapidly establishing expert consensus on much more confusing questions like these.
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YTZAmJKydD5hdRSeG/would-catching-your-ais-trying-to-escape-convince-ai
IDK. I mean politicans, laywers, lit profs and many others have made a living for centuries arguing about the meaning of words...
I am writing a living literature review on societal collapse: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/ The idea behind this project is to make academic research on societal collapse more accessible to anyone who’s interested in the topic. If I come across new information that changes any of my previous conclusions, I’ll update the review. This also means that I greatly appreciate if you send papers which might be relevant to the posts you will read here.
Some examples of what I cover:
An overview of the different theories of societal collapse: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/mapping-out-collapse-research
What factors allow a society to survive a crisis: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/what-factors-allow-societies-to-survive
The role of famine in societal collapse: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/famines-role-in-societal-collapse
The best places to weather global catastrophes: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/the-best-places-to-weather-global
What are the best books/literature on ‘Bayesian Search Theory’ with practical examples?
I did a podcast in two parts with Jonathan Clements about the history of Taiwan. This included an unexpected appearance by the Daleks, things to do with a dead deer, genocidal acts, the pirate king, the Zombie Ming dynasty, a “racist excuse”, “the most shameful thing the British have ever done” and a bunch of other things to be found in my book Rebel Island. Part one can be found at this link.
https://pod.link/1436447503/episode/92f1d1aabdeca1c5c29efc68f6992a62
And then there is part two: How to take over an island chain by invading somewhere else; a world-class stamp-collecting scam; the “uncrowned king” of Taiwan; the Musha Incident reconsidered as a high-school shooting, the rise and fall of the Takasago Volunteers; uses and abuses of Triad assassins, and the rise of the “outside the party” movement.
https://pod.link/1436447503/episode/2603940cff0e16a5c8a112a077fcabc0
And I really should mention his highly entertaining blog. It is the weirdly named Schoolgirl Milky Crisis but has some absolute bangers.
https://schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com/2024/09/12/a-bird-in-the-hand/
“the most shameful thing the British have ever done”
A high bar to clear, considering the list of shameful things they have done in their colonial career!
We were talking about the opium wars and the quote came from the House of Commons at the time. My personal belief is that if you compare the British to the Dutch, Germans, Portuguese, Spanish . . . Whenever I suggest this to a serious historian though they very much don't want to discuss this. Possibly it is a stupid exercise, possibly I am flat out wrong.
"My personal belief is that if you compare the British to the Dutch, Germans, Portuguese, Spanish . . . " -- then what?
Sorry. I meant that the British empire did fewer/less shameful things.
I recently read the Republican Party platform and I don’t think there’s any doubt that if the GOP wins the White House it will also be a decisive victory for Caps Lock.
https://prod-static.gop.com/media/RNC2024-Platform.pdf
In addition to all caps for DRILL BABY DRILL, SERIOUS DECLINE and literally any item in a list, The RNC’s style manual apparently includes capitalization requirements for words like Government, Southern Border, Open Border, World, Economy, Chaos, Conflict, Truth, Spirit, and All.
Note: The dems’ platform PDF weighs in at 92 pages of dense, small type and no pictures. It is absolutely agonizing to read (I quit at page 3 and skimmed the rest). It actually has a preamble to its preamble. The GOP’s PDF is just 28 pages of larger type with graphics, lots of headers and some pictures of Trump and flags and crowds of men in red hats. In 1860, when the nation was on the brink of civil war, the Republican platform was about 1,100 words.
Dem’s Platform: https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024_Democratic_Party_Platform_8a2cf8.pdf
I've been reading a fair amount of writing from the time between the US Revolutionary war through the Napoleonic era and this Sort of Thing seemed very common in those Times, even by very educated Gentlemen, at least in English. Maybe we're just Returning to Tradition.
“Returning to Tradition” would likely be the precise impression the GOP wants this document to make.
In your readings, do you see ALL CAPS outside of headlines and document titles?
Sometimes but very rarely and usually if the writer is angry. Wither a word is Capitalized seems to be directly related to how important that word is in the sentiment of the writing. For instance, if Ben Franklin is writing about his positive feelings toward new footwear, he might write about his most Excellent new Shoes, as the shoes and his opinion about the shoes are the salient Subject of the Writing. All Caps is just this same trend but with more emphasis. Here's a bit of ol Ben discussing a topic dear to his heart:
"Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement."
Thanks for that. The Capitalization in this passage seems to correlate most closely with the word simply being a Noun.
I doubt ALL CAPS can be used in legal documents. It's comically illiterate.
Like TV historians who refer to the past using the conditional -- effin creepy.
What is using the conditional when talking about the past? Can you give an example?
It's something that just popped up in the last few years: in their postmodern version of a history narrative, they say, "The Battle of Gettysburg would have been fought in 1863," not "The Battle of Gettysburg Was fought in 1863." Or "Lincoln would have been shot in 1865," not "Lincoln Was shot in 1865."
It's very annoying -- reminiscent of the campaign to do away with the Latin-rooted genders of Spanish, by supplanting them with the unisex "Latin-x." Both affectations are like a bad 1974 haircut.
One has to wonder what the condition is that demands the use of the conditional. Are they saying "If we weren't all living in a simulation fabricated by the Benevolent Administrative State . . . "?
Eww, good grief, I haven't ever heard that usage -- except someone saying something like "that was when we lived in Pennsylvania, so I would have been in kindergarten." But I don't watch TV.
I mean those oddball initial letters capped and CapLocked words are obviously meant to pay homage to the typography of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan”, right?
No. Words are penises, and capitalizing them = making them erect.
Possibly that is what they are going for.
I must have a better look when I have time, but I think you could fill in one of those bingo card memes doing this.
I see the Democratic platform starts off with a land acknowledgement and then we get the preamble and then the table of contents and the part that irresistably reminds me of Kang and Kodos: "we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"
"Chapter One: Growing Our Economy from the Bottom Up & Middle Out"
*sigh* My economy has grown from the middle out, I really need to reduce that but it's hard when all those tasty treats are on offer...
But is there not a more up-to-date version? This one still talks about Joe Biden's kitchen table in Scranton, where's Kamala's kitchen table in Oakland? 😀 I did read something that she hadn't put up any policy documents until quite recently.
EDIT: Yes, the Democratic one is way too text heavy. They really did need to break it up with some photos and images and some bullet lists like the Republican version. They may have intended this to be Serious Policy Document for Serious Wonks, but the average voter is not going to plough through all that text.
Though indeed the Republican version is ALL CAPS. But it works as an eye-ball grabbing device and it's a snappy list of "We're gonna do this, this and this".
By contrast, the linked document still is all about Biden and bits like this make me shake my head:
"Judges should reflect the diverse population whose laws they shape, and President Biden
has appointed more than 200 highly qualified federal judges who look like America. Nearly two-thirds of the judges he’s appointed have been women, and nearly two-thirds have been people of color"
So which is it? Judges who look like America. or judges who are women of colour? Because I don't think the USA is yet two-thirds women of colour (as an aside, what the heck is this neologism "minoritized"? How does one become minoritized? How does one minoritize others?):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK593023/
"The racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population is changing rapidly. Today, minoritized individuals account for 50 percent of the population of those 18 years and younger, and if current trends continue, minoritized individuals will account for a majority of the U.S. population between 2042 and 2045"
Figures quoted are from the 2020 Census:
"White remained the largest racial or ethnic group in the United States, with 204.3 million people identifying as White alone, and 235.4 million people identifying as White alone or in combination with another group. However, the proportion of White people alone has fallen by 8.6 percent since 2010 and continues to be in decline in comparison to all other groups. The decline in the number of White persons in the United States between 2010 and 2020 is unprecedented."
Looking at the graph, "White (alone)" is about 60% of the population, so that would mean the remaining 40% is made up of Hispanic/Latino and Black and Asian and Native American and Pacific Islander and multi-racial. That's not two-thirds of America by my (admittedly shaky) maths.
Gender/sex demographics were slightly under 50% male and slightly over 50% female. Again, not two-thirds of the population.
So a Supreme Court, for example, that "looks like America" would be more or less evenly split between men and women, and would have 5 white judges while the remaining 4 would be drawn from Black/Asian/Hispanic/Remainder.
I note that the correct term to use in discussions of such topics is "LGBTQI+". Nice to have that one cleared up!
Not all the women judges are people of color, and not all the POC judges are women. If only the document had pictures, they could have explained it with a Venn diagram!
Shoulda gone with pictures, like I said! The average idiot in the street, i.e. me, needs pictures to illustrate all them fancy concepts and big words 😁
Needs more exclamation marks! Sad!
Looking at it briefly, I rather Think It Will Be More Of A Victory For Pascal Casing, Though ALL CAPS Will Certainly Have A Place.
So, Karkat and Kanaya are Republican?
It’s a big tent.
Republicans will not represent me until they embrace StudlyCapsStyling or camelCaseStyling. StopWastingWhitespace!
Whoever promotes snake_case gets_my_vote. I'd even favor snake-case but that's-a-lost-cause so there goes.
I thought this-was-usually called kebab-case.
What are good neighborhoods in SF? I might move there in a few months and I’d like to be able to walk cool places
lol, the primary recommendation is don't. You can't fool me, you're trying to steal all the good SF for yourselves
Don't listen to the others life in SF is still great and getting better. The trick to good housing in SF is to find a neighborhood you want to be in and then walk 1-2 blocks uphill. Hayes valley is the current cool neighborhood but there are cool neighborhoods almost everywhere in SF (tenderloin/civic center are not recommended for the timid).
Second the "probably don't" recommendations as a current resident. It's really gone downhill since I moved back here a dozen years ago. Very slowly, and then all at once, as the saying goes.
If you do anyway - Sunset and West Portal are my favourite neighborhoods to pretend that I'm still in Original Flavour SF. Copious money can still make a lot of the, uh, unpleasantness go away. But even out in the quiet residential areas of the west and southwest districts...it's been getting worse, "downtown-ness" has been spreading. Didn't help when the big Westfield Mall shuttered. Now the Stonestown Galleria is sole remaining major mall for a good ways around, so a lot of the unsavouriness has moved there. Bad money (or often, lack of money) crowds out good family-friendly money, with ripple effects on nearby homes and businessess.
You might move there in a few months? I would take advantage of the might-ness of that situation and not.
I lived in SF for... way more years than I should have, and I left because there wasn't any way to get from anywhere in the city to anywhere else in the city without encountering... as a sibling commenter so euphemistally put it... "gritty" things.
If you absolutely must go, for the experience of it or whatever, figure out how to have a 6-month period where you're there full-time but with an option to leave again after that 6 months. If for whatever confusing reason after those 6 months you're not completely disillusioned, then make longer-term plans to stay.
If money was no object Cole Valley would be my first choice. It's right on the N Judah, you can walk to the Haight, the Inner Sunset, and the small block of local shops is very nice. Any neighborhood like that where you don't have all the problems of the city but can still access it very easily is ideal.
Depends on: 1) what you mean by 'cool' 2) how tolerant you are of gritty street life.
The best neighborhoods for active people - especially if you're single and interested in nightlife - would be North Beach, the Marina, the Haight, NoPa and the Alamo Square area, Cole Valley, Duboce Triangle, the Castro (esp. if you're gay), the Sunset, Inner Richmond, the Dogpatch, and the parts of Potrero closer to commercial corridors.
The Mission is a fun place with a lot of cool stuff, but it's kinda gritty right now. It's not as bad as the Tenderlion/Midmarket/Civic Center, which is the part of town most people are talking about when they talk about SF's street conditions. But it's gone backwards a bit.
If you're looking for something quieter and more family oriented: Noe Valley, West Portal, and Glen Park would be great bets. (Plus the Richmond & Sunset).
Parts of SOMA are a good bargain right now - South Beach and the more northern blocks. They can be a little dead at night but they lively by day, especially when sports are happening. You can get great views and access to the waterfront.
Other questions to ask yourself: will you need a car? What's your budget, and can you put up with roommates? Are you planning to WFH or will you be looking for a local job?
Glen Park and Bernal Heights are what came to mind, yea.
I just published a piece semi-critiquing longtermism by graphing out the effects of different modeling assumptions on the value of existential risk mitigation: https://open.substack.com/pub/ohmurphy/p/sensitive-assumptions-in-longtermist?r=bhqc9&utm_medium=ios
There was a debate here earlier about whether Shakespeare was or was not the greatest, based largely on people doing statistics in their heads and not actually reading the bard.
I’m firmly in the greatest camp. It struck me that as a proof of this we could show a medium that people are familiar with - the movies (or even TV) , and issue a challenge.
I like Branagh as an interpreter of Shakespeare as he likes to give it some welly, and isn’t too timid or reverential.
So here’s an example of a speech, the type of which could have been replicated since, either at Agincourt or anywhere really there was a battle pending (like that time Gandalf rallied the rebels to fight the Borg).
Try find better.
https://youtu.be/A-yZNMWFqvM?si=QxtlecaPT7-FixPv
And that’s not my favourite from Branagh. Here’s hamlet ruing his own indecision as he watches fortinbras go to war with 20,000 men on a plot not big enough to bury them.
https://youtu.be/easWqy08wr8?si=hEs2XNClc09HLgub
The snowy environment in that example reminds me a bit of Jon Snow on the wall, who had “a father slain” after all. But there’s nothing of this power in there.
https://youtu.be/easWqy08wr8?si=nJkkQhRl88BKaGJU
It’s all fairly modern English too, so comparisons can be made.
As a speech before battle, https://youtu.be/fQ7IKM-jiJI
If you need something more cinematic, https://youtu.be/PS5yfhPGaWE
Brett Devereaux explains it better than I could, at https://acoup.blog/2020/06/12/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-vii-hanging-by-a-thread/
Shakespeare, and Hollywood, write battle speeches meant to convince an audience of civilians sitting safely in a theater, that they are watching a group of Supreme Badasses who are about to have an Awesome Adventure. Actual generals are giving speeches to men who don't feel the least bit badass, who need a reason to believe that this isn't about to be the last and worst day of their life. There's a formula for that, and it has little room for "think about the amazing stories you'll be able to tell in thirty years" because they're not sure they're going to be alive thirty hours from now.
But for entertaining the folks in the cheap seats at the Globe, Shakespeare did have the right stuff.
Patton’s speech is pretty good.
> Shakespeare, and Hollywood, write battle speeches meant to convince an audience of civilians sitting safely in a theater, that they are watching a group of Supreme Badasses who are about to have an Awesome Adventure.
Yeh, that’s not the debate though. We are talking about the use of language, in its own right. Nobody has ever soliloquized suicidal ideation in real life in the way Shakespeare did in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. I was asking for comparisons with Hollywood not real life.
> But for entertaining the folks in the cheap seats at the Globe, Shakespeare did have the right stuff.
And scholars of English ever since.
I've read some of Shakespeare, and based on actually reading him, I don't think he's very good. I was forced to read it in school, and I understand this is quite common. Yet all these people don't go on to read all his other works.
We’ve all read Shakespeare in school, you seem to imply that it was just you. Would you describe yourself as well read, in any case.
I said it's quite common. It's not just me. Lots of people were forced to read Shakespeare, and yet even after reading one of his plays, rather than reading the rest, they decided they'd rather read Harry Potter or something. Some people really like Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean he's objectively the best writer. It just means he has a small cult following.
I don't really know what constitutes well-read. I used to read a lot, and even now I have quite a few web novels and fanfics I'm following. But I don't think that's really relevant. If you claim that he's the best in the world, then you'd better have read a lot and not found anyone better before you could reasonably say he's even in the top thousand. But I've read lots of authors that are better. Or at least, better at entertaining me personally, which is really all I can personally bring to the table.
I would argue that the Gettysburg address (which is comparable in that it is a war speech) is superior to all of these, and by a pretty wide margin. I find Shakespeare's use of language kind of alien, but I would consider the counterargument that the ideas in the Gettysburg address are more important than the ones in the St. Crispin's day speech. So one might argue that after modding out by the importance of the ideas expressed Shakespeare's use of language is superior. On the other other hand, quality of writing and quality of ideas can't be totally separated.
Some of Shakespeare’s language is old fashioned. It’s a transitionary period. The St Crispin’s day speech is fairly modern in language, there’s no word there that isn’t in use now. (Perhaps “in his cups” although I have used that to mean drunk).
Yes, Gettysburg is a close call. Maybe even better, however I’ve only read it and never heard it and it’s the flow of Shakespeare’s language when performed that impresses.
Easy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20
That’s really not up there with the flow or use of language. It’s a nice sentiment though.
If the flow and use of language were really that good, they wouldn't have needed to put that cheesy uplifting violin music under it.
Obviously the music helps, as does the actors intonation, the camera work, and so on. But all movies can do that, it’s part of the art of cinema. You can post a link of a better speech with similar effects if you like.
Just to be clear, are we looking for anything that most people think is better, or just you specifically? Because if you tell me that Shakespeare is your favorite author, I believe you. But if you're trying to say that he is objectively the best, we really should be looking at more than one person's opinion.
Sure. I'll bite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GY3sO47YYo
EDIT: Oh, I see, you were looking for pre-battle rallying speech. None of those have ever inspired me in the slightest, so I won't be able to provide any examples.
That’s ok, I guess.
That's my impression of literally everything Shakespeare ever wrote. It is okay. Some of it is even a little bit good. None of it great, none of it rises to the level of even some of the average-rated films of the past 50 years.
But it is a good lengthy corpus of OK stuff exploring the human experience.
> Oh, I see, you were looking for pre-battle rallying speech.
Only as an equivalent to the Prince Hal speech. The other one is a soliloquy.
I think that both links there blow absolutely everything written in the last few decades, for movies or TV out of the water.
If I were to pick anything that could approximate the power of either speech - maybe Baldwin in Glengary Glen Ross. I’m partial to the buggy whip speech in Other People’s money.
First one is by Mamet of course, who is excellent.
Independence Day? I take your point. Did that style of patriotic history play continue? I kind of feel it fell out of fashion as playwrights became first religious dissenters then political radicals.
I actually don’t like all his plays, or all the text in all the plays.
In this test I’m doing something else - at his best I believe he’s unbeatable. So looking for counter examples (and of course there far more from Shakespeare than what’s here).
I write a free weekly newsletter that promotes data literacy among lay readers. Mostly it's plain-English discussion of new studies and stats that make the news. https://statisfied.substack.com
I respond to Regan Arntz-Gray and Bryan Caplan on the definition of “feminism”: https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/mansplaining-the-definition-of-feminism?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios (see also: the discussion afterwards between Regan and myself on Notes)
I’ve had a rather puzzling experience with Facebook recently.
I signed in for a very specific reason (finding housing in a certain area where it’s difficult) and barely interacted with the website (no friend requests, no posting, just browsing the ads in certain public groups without even responding).
In a few hours, my account was suspended for a suspected “breach of community standards” (the specifics of which were not stated). So I appealed, and, even though I solved a captcha and uploaded a picture of myself to the website (literally all I could do), the platform deactivated my account altogether.
I’m not sure what happened and I thought maybe someone here working in tech would have an idea?
My best guess is that Facebook decided that I was a bot – but still, isn’t suspending the account based on a couple of hours’ worth of behavior rather hasty, especially since I didn’t post anything or contact anyone through the website? If that’s indeed the case, what’s the rationale for banning suspected robots [with no activity] so quickly?
You might find housing advice on a Reddit sub. There are subs for different cities and states.
I already took advice from the relevant Reddit (which I could do because you can still browse parts of Reddit without an account).
The basic issue in my case is not savviness as much as supply (and, to some extent, my salary). Rental agencies are overwhelmed with requests for every single ad, of which there simply aren’t enough.
I was hoping to get opportunities for shared housing via Facebook, but the situation is basically the same, but with lower prices and more scams – few ads, many responders, and the people who put up the ads reply to a select few before making a final decision.
Oh, I see. Craigslist has a shared housing category in real estate. Also there are roommate finder sites online. All of which you may already know.
Reddit also has a serious problem with over hasty banning of new accounts.
Also LessWrong, in my experience.
Yeah, so I hear. I have an old account, no problems.
These days the detection of automated bots and other adversarial clients is mostly outsourced to AI systems, which are notably opaque. So it's not clear that even a regular FB employee, in the weird case you could get one to pay attention to you, would be able to tell exactly why the system flagged you, except for the basic fact that you were out-of-distribution enough.
Yep. What Skaladom said.
And let me add that myself and several people I know were recently flagged as violating Amazon community standards on our reviews of products and were banned from leaving product reviews or ratings anymore.
I called to ask why, and got the run-around. Eventually I just shrugged and updated my understanding of Amazon reviews/ratings as no longer carrying valid signal.
Facebook is not alone in this annoying tendency to just "whatever we give no shits you can fuck off" to legit people for whatever opaque and unappealable reason.
I've left some really nasty Amazon reviews. Do you know what you said that triggered the ban? I've had the Amazon nannybot tell me I couldn't swear, but that's the only thing there's been any objection to.
Republicans have won half of all presidential elections since 2000. They have a slight electoral college advantage, so the popular vote tends to look like 48% R, 52% D, with this being enough to put Republicans above the electoral college threshold about half the time.
Suppose that the US abolished the electoral college. Which of these should we expect?
1. The Republicans get slightly more moderate (or more electable in some other way), until they win on average 50% of the vote. They continue to win about half of presidential elections.
2. Elections continue to average 48% R, 52% D, and Democrats consistently win well above half of elections.
If 2, does that imply that it's a "coincidence" that we have two robust parties that both frequently win now and are balanced on a razor's edge? I understand that in the past there have been larger landslides than we get today, but it still seems weird that the parties are so equally balanced. Median voter theorem doesn't seem to apply to real life but it feels like we can't deviate from it an infinite amount - any thoughts?
The answer is that we have no idea because we have never run our elections based on popular vote. If you live in a deep blue/deep red state you don't care about voting because it's already been decided. If you live in a toss up/swing state then you care about voting. Who votes would completely change. All of a sudden, you'd have Republicans in California being motivated to come out in force (there are millions of them that do not vote now).
The current Republican dominance in the electoral college is the result of the particular characteristics of the Trump coalition. During the Obama years, the Democrats actually had an EC advantage.
3. The Democrats get slightly less moderate, until they win on average 50% of the vote. The Democrats don't *want* to be moderate, they want to be quite liberal and/or leftist, and they will almost certainly overestimate how far left they can go and still win. Empirically, they turn left until they're winning about half the time (nationally), and only then say "OK, that's enough".
4. The swing voters will keep swinging, with amplitude >2% of the total vote. People who aren't firmly committed partisan hacks, will always remember the bad things the incumbent administration did much more strongly than the good things (because loss aversion), and more than the bad things the previous administration did (because recency bias). So prolonged incumbency results in increased anti-incumbent sentiment. Mostly against presidents and governors, but that carries over to legislative elections.
As for the current "razor's edge" vs, the greater variability of past eras: the parties have been getting better at this, And they have better data and better tools to work with.
1, with the twist that they don't actually have to change their policies, they just have to hang around for waiting for people to get sick of the accumulated screw-ups of the other guys.
There's a strong thermostatic element to american voting, so I think even without much moderating the "throw the bums out" voting bloc would still flip control back and forth.
I think the electoral is dumb and bad for a lot of reasons, not least because it does a bad job of accomplishing the (questionable) goals that people justify it with. If there was a perpetual 52% majority, one way to protect minority rights would be to increase people's voting power (or states if we're committed to the dumb EC) every time they vote for a loser. In the long run time in control would then reflect amount of support. But again, with thermostatic voting this isn't really necessary.
I strongly suspect the answer is 1. The fact that the results between reps and dems is 50/50 is evidence that median voter theorem does a pretty good job actually. The parties are just big coalitions that want to win and get goodies for their members. If you change the rules of how to win they will adapt and the composition of those coalitions will change. This is the problem with a lot of reforms suggested in the usa (end gerrymandering, end ec, proportional legislature, etc.) The parties would adapt to win and you would still get right and left coalitions working towards that 50% + 1.
Ending gerrymandering is about changing *how* parties aim for that 50%+1, I think. In a 50-50 district, you have to get support from at least one person in the opposing party to win (realistically more). In a 60-40 district, you can run hard to one extreme and ignore the opposing party completely.
The median voter theorem breaks down because you have a knapsack problem of uneven coalitions. So you might think we're bidding 0 to 100, and you can gradually increment your right or leftness. But it's more like there are a bunch of unevenly sized bricks and some bricks don't work as well with other bricks so you're constantly trying to shove them together but end up with some unpredictable remainder. The next most persuadable brick is unlikely to be gigantic, causing vast swings in outcomes, but also unlikely to be perfectly small to get us to exactly 50/50 too. People aren't on a spectrum, it's clusters, and attracting some loses others in complicated ways.
One related question might be why don't the Dems under the current system keep current positions but also come out wildly pro-corn subsidies.
I don't know. I think it's because it's not so easy to do that, and also in some ways Dems have adopted some Trumpian positions on rust belt labor, but they haven't gone far enough to break sticky coalitions, and going that far would probably have other downsides.
I think this knapsack problem metaphor only holds if you assume a majority of the electorate are dedicated single issue voters.
There are definitely oversimplifications in the model, but I don't think it strictly requires everyone is a single issue voter. In a lot of cases multi-issue voters can be modeled as a single issue voter that's just a conjunction or disjunction of the two issues.
Even in more complex cases -- For issues A, B, C... Z, assume each voter has a preferred outcome and a weight, that increases the dimensionality of the problem significantly but you can collapse all those preferences to a vector of the minimum platform (or stylistic) change that would gain or lose their vote.
It just assumes some chunks of these vectors are clustered or run more or less parallel, which should be true so long as all policy issues are not uniformly distributed in salience and preferences, which seems fairly evident.
You could even have complex interactions between these issues, such as somebody wanting A or B but not both, unless C happens, which they weakly desire but if it passes then they no longer care about A or B at all. But mostly you're going to reduce that to some complex satisfiability problem where various policy ideas fill in the variables and the whole equation either holds or doesn't.
One weakness of the model is that there are contagion and peer pressure effects. If 50% of the US suddenly and obviously changed their mind about a candidate positively or negatively, that would probably impact the votes of some additional fraction on the margin, so compiling those effects might allow you to get smaller gradations.
Unpredictable effects like that probably contribute to the murkiness and unknowability of optimal strategy to x decimal places though. Maybe the parties converge under the MVT to the first decimal place, and there's simply too much noise beyond that to be computable by the giant political machines.
This is kind of my take on EMT, markets are efficient for 1-2 digits but there's a lot of noise after that.
So maybe it's not sticky bricks so much as unavoidable error due to noise, I think that's a compelling alternative model.
1. For sure.
I think one more concrete consequence of abolishing the EC would be that urban interests would suddenly become more important to Presidential candidates. Smaller, rural states are over-represented in the Electoral College (as they are to an even greater degree in the Senate); that's why even though 80% of Americans live in urban areas you only ever see the candidates in small towns. If the EC were abolished I'd expect to see them showing up a bit more in LA and NYC, because that's where the voters are, and tailoring their messages to match.
Abolishing the EC would require a Constitutional Amendment, which is highly unlikely to clear a Senate dominated by those same states which benefit from the EC. An often touted middle ground would be for states to adopt the approach of ME and NE, where electoral votes are awarded by congressional district, with the two extras being winner take all at the state level. But states are not going to unilaterally disarm, and again Congress is not going to impose it.
> Median voter theorem doesn't seem to apply to real life.
If you mean recently, I’d agree. But it seemed to apply pretty well during the 20th century.
As to your question, I guess I’d expect 1 over 2, but I don’t think the average Republican would necessarily trend more moderate. Instead the party would attract more emerging political demographics, which might be relatively immoderate in more diverse ways.
Maybe the balance of membership between the two parties is in part because they’ve optimized to to do this—capture these politically-motivated emerging demographics—and the minority party is usually better positioned to do that (there’s a better chance for the new group to gain influence in the smaller coalition). Also, the minority party is more willing to sacrifice its current political identity to acquire new members. You could argue that the two parties’ positions have changed a lot over the years primarily due to the minority party’s greater willingness to spend its ideological capital to invest in growing its membership.
I've wondered for decades now why it could be that the R/D divide is so close to evenly split. I've wondered if one side tries slightly harder to get a majority, then relaxes while the other side tries hard, and what we see is the evening-out. That was my one theory.
I have another theory from Scott Adams' podcast (the Dilbert guy, who now does some pretty insightful, IMO, political commentary. Goes like this: the intel agencies are in charge. (The sell for this is: it's their job to overthrow other countries' governments, or destabilize them until that can be done; why stop at the borders with those skills, and the stakes so high, and the risk seemingly so low?). There's cheating, but it can move the needle just a bit, in strategic venues in the US, like swing counties in swing states. So allowing propaganda that keeps things at a balance allows the 'right' candidate to be chosen. Suddenly we have electronic voting machines that provide no advantage over paper voting, and no effective auditing for them.
I know, it looks just like a conspiracy theory. I am finding that argument less and less of a problem as I see politics unfold these days. I wish for the days when I could believe the news.
..and they don't have fixed party preferences about who the right candidates are...,?
Well if Jean Fuqtarde believes it so do I.
Speculative since I am not american, but isn't the popular vote artificially "depressed" since most people on deep blue/deep red states do not bother to vote since their vote doesn't matter as much? If you switch to a 1 vote = 1 vote power system aren't there reasons to believe the national popular vote would switch?
>but isn't the popular vote artificially "depressed" since most people on deep blue/deep red states do not bother to vote since their vote doesn't matter as much?
Yup! A 1 vote = 1 vote system would shift power from swing state voters to non-swing-state voters. Now which _direction_ the popular vote would move in consequence is a nontrivial question... And the campaigning would change, since concentrating on swing states would no longer make sense.
I feel like there's a lot of possible mechanisms for (1)
- you mentioned Republicans changing to slightly more moderate
- Democrats getting more extreme, (I think you see this to some degree in some states that are single party dominant now, as broader electability fades in importance more extreme candidates get selected); e.g. if you're an activist and your party never loses an election you aren't pushing hard enough
- Voters adjusting their behavior to restore balance (there's a portion of the electorate that targets mixed results in their voting, or vote contrarianly, or always vote the bums out, or vote entirely on their personal economy and we can't avoid every recession, etc.)
- Voters adjusting their views to be more Republican (it's easier to see the faults of the ideology in power)
Speculative, It's possible that modern communication technologies, polling, the primary process, etc. have sped up some of the above mechanisms which used to be slower acting or less informed and that leads to the current closeness. Possibly these cycles used to take a lot longer with a lot bigger swings and less damping.
That said this doesn't seem to be inherent. There's a cascade possibility too, a party that is reliably losing elections has trouble attracting good candidates and there's a downward spiral there (see e.g. Republicans in California for statewide offices). Presumably the natural progression is eventually the dominant party would split, but perhaps this hampered by the interplay of state and national politics and we can't apply the state level lessons to the federal level.
Also it's unclear the popular vote split is "really" 48/52. Elections and turnout patterns might look quite a bit different in a popular vote regime. The whole more people voted for Trump in California then in Texas meme, even though it was a pointless gesture. The most heavily dominated by one party states are mostly Democrat (especially when population weighted) so there's reason to expect this may favor Republicans. As evidence contrary to the standard narrative Republicans have won the house popular vote approximately half the time since 2000 and not clear why that should be less dispositive then the presidential election.
The razor's edge is presumably because each party works specifically towards the goal of 270+ electoral votes, campaigning in particular swing states to strategically maximize odds of getting over the top. There's no point in trying to get any more than that, so both parties push the right amount in the right places, until electoral college odds are about equal. (Additionally, even within a state, there's no point in trying to increase one's share beyond majority, or to gain votes on a lost cause.)
If the EC were abolished, the entire election map would be scrambled. Probably at least a few "swing states" would stop swinging once they weren't filled with campaign efforts, and there would be sizeable shifts in solid red/blue states, in both directions. The entire game would change, probably leading to a 50/50 divide, as parties refocus on new ways of winning.
Both parties would campaign harder in and cater more to states where they respectively have had no chance in the EC. It's hard to say what that would look like, but I expect elections to become more expensive and for there to be more vote-buying policies.
You can see the parties angling for the middle right now. Trump has publicly moderated on abortion, Harris on immigration.
#1 is the only long term possibility. Things like #2 might happen in a particular election, but then the side that doesn't moderate to chase voters will lose voters and then lose power, which leaves the more moderate politicians in place to effect the future choices.
I believe this has always happened, but as both parties get better at mass marketing, we should expect more and more elections to be very close to 50/50.
As an aside, I don't think we can count on Republicans moderating more in a truly national election. That may happen, in order to get California votes, but it may also be true that by actually contributing to the whole we see "locked in" states become more competitive and both side's current underdogs getting better results in their own states.
It may be true that parties would moderate, but that really means policy shifting according to the whims of the public. Having a policy you think is correct and sticking with it unless it's shown otherwise makes for better government.
The Catholic church seems to be moderating on gays, which aligns better with public opinion. That does seem in accord with your philosophy. But I find it difficult to reconcile with the written word they have been pontificating for thousands of years. Discovering that what they believed is incorrect and adjusting to that is reasonable, but how can that happen? Is this all just a contest to win the hearts, minds, and wallets of as many people as possible?
I agree, but I also agree with Kant about lying so I know I'm an outlier. I think that long term, politicians and religions that have a coherent ideology will outlast those that move around.
Of course, both political parties in the US would have a very hard time arguing that they are the same parties as they were. They went through something of a realignment in the 60s and are going through one right now. The people running under the respective banners are mostly just wearing the skin of the party because it's so hard to create a new party in a first-past-the-post system as entrenched as ours.
They went through a massive realignment just in 2016.
Note an option 3: The -voters- shift to a more Republican stance. This doesn't exclude option 1, but I think a significantly underrated factor involved here is that voters tend to get frustrated more by whatever party is in power.
Oh yeah, good point. We do like us some Hope and Change, and it's almost comical both current candidates trying to run as outsiders when one used to be President and the other is the current VP.
See also: many times when a president doesn't have their own party in one or both houses of Congress. I've heard speculation that 2017 was a united Presidency and Congress because voters thought Hillary was going to win and they didn't want her to control Congress.
>I've heard speculation that 2017 was a united Presidency and Congress because voters thought Hillary was going to win and they didn't want her to control Congress.
I've heard that, but it never made much sense. Republicans got 49.1 pct of the House vote in 2016 versus 48 pct for Democrats. Not very far from the Presidential numbers (HillaryClinton also got 48 pct), and given that the Republicans were running many more incumbents, and had won 51-45 in 2014, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for that sort of strategic voting.
At that level I think it would be more of a "my enemy might win the presidency, so I am more likely to vote for [candidate I otherwise wouldn't vote for] in the [Senate/House race]." It's not a broad logical approach so much a feels approach. We often have no idea who our reps are, even if they've been in office for years. So a little more reason to vote for one might shift the vote a few percent (enough for competitive races to lean the other direction) and we see the counterintuitive result of a president being a different party than Congress.
But, were that true, wouldn't we see a general reverse coat tail effect, rather than the opposite? And specific to Clinton, again, 48 pct voted for Clinton, and 48 pct voted for Dem House candidates. After only 45 pct voted for Dem House candidates in 2014.
We're now on Trump assassination attempt #2. Is this spike in credible assassination attempts on public officials as sudden as it seems? I remember reading about an attempted kidnapping plot of the governor of Michigan years ago, but I also recall that that group had been heavily infiltrated by law enforcement before it ever got off the ground.
So is the historic narrative really "no one came close to opening fire on a current/former president since Reagan and then suddenly there's a raft of attempts within a few months", or was this actually a more gradual ramp-up? Or maybe the secret service has gotten worse at its job?
EDIT: Just remembered Gabby Giffords who got shot in the head in 2011
Its easy to forget that Trump was not actually the president during these attempts. He's a former president and prospective future president, but these attempts were made against a candidate. Its been such an odd election. Trump really does *feel* like an incumbent; he has a record to run on, many of his supporters call him "President Trump" etc. In the minds of his would be assassins his current status probably doesn't matter much to them. I'm curious how much of the response of the Secret Service is impacted by the fact that he isn't actually the president right now. I'm sure its being investigated.
Have there been any previous attempts on former presidents?
edit - apparently the answer is yes, Theodore Roosevelt was shot 3 years after leaving office.
I heard that was a big point made about the golf course thing. If Trump were a sitting president, the Secret Service would have had the entire golf course surrounded.
There was also the 2017 congressional baseball shooting.
We had two back-to-back whackjobs taking shots at Gerald Ford in 1975, less than a month apart. And Gerald Ford was a milquetoast nobody of a president, chosen for the job on the basis of being the least offensive, least divisive minimally-qualified VP the Republican party could find.
Means nothing. Whackjobs are a thing. Coincidences happen. And copycats happen, particularly among the whackjob demographic.
Maybe a nobody would be less likely to go with the institutional flow.
> current/former president
Is lumping these two categories together helpful? I would expect security for a former president to be mostly performative, on grounds that no one cares enough about them to try to kill them. Trump is different from other ex-presidents in that he's running again.
Wikipedia has it as attempt #7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_incidents_involving_Donald_Trump
Also, here's a list of presidential assassination attempts and plots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots
There's been a lot of assassination attempts since Reagan. It's just that most aren't that high profile.
Worse about the Michigan plot, it was actually *initiated* by an FBI paid informant, intentionally, in order to arrest a fringe group who they thought might be interested/willing to do it. Without the FBI starting it, planning it, organizing it, and provisioning it, it would not have happened at all. Sorry to hijack your thread, but we should all be more informed about such things.
It seems that the rate of incidence is so low generally that's it's hard to pick up on increases or decreases. Obviously two in a few months sounds like a giant escalation, but it's pretty much dividing by zero so we should expect the numbers to feel weird even if they were "normal."
Lots of famous people and government officials get threats made about them. They usually fizzle out or get stopped long before bullets are involved, so that part seems new. I'm not getting the same vibes so far from Florida, but incompetence at the Secret Service seems to have played a big role in the first attempt in PA. If they had caught the guy prior to him firing, then we would be thinking about this very differently.
>If they had caught the guy prior to him firing, then we would be thinking about this very differently.
It seems like that may have happened in Florida, though it's hard to find information. In any case, no injuries were reported.
Yes. Also, the guy in PA was identified by people in the crowd before he had any chance of shooting. He apparently had a shirt on that should have gotten him caught in security? Had they detained him until after the event, it all may have fizzled out and we never would have heard about it. Anyway, I think far far more plots get stopped at the pre-planning stage, where the SS or FBI identifies a potential assassin early and they never even make it to the event. Or so we're meant to believe. One concern I've heard voiced over these events is that more people will realize that it's possible to get a shot at a famous or powerful person, and that someone more competent or with better planning is much more likely to succeed than a single guy sitting in a bush. For instance, if Iran wanted Trump dead, it's extremely likely he would have died back in July. Relevant because there were Iranian threats against Trump at that time, which is why Trump's campaign asked for more security for that event (which was denied).
Could the apparent spike be an improvement in QUALITY more than (merely) quantity? Only the ones that get reasonably close get publicized as the recent ones have.
Trump assassination attempt #1 was noted for its extreme incompetence, with a guy climbing a building wearing a rifle in full view of the public while that same public did its level best to alert the cops. The cops intentionally ignored this, but that doesn't mean we rate the attempt highly on quality.
Yes, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn there were dozens of foiled attempts that were somehow even worse.
I tend to agree in principle, but I'm having difficulty imagining what would make an attempt to commit a crime worse than doing it while several bystanders watching you attempt to alert the already-present police.
Well, you could alert the the police yourself by detailing your plan in a threatening email/blog post well in advance of attempting to execute it.
I cannot resist: http://narbonic.com/comic/august-14-19-2000/
Here's a page listing a bunch of would-be assassins that never made the news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots
My list is:
*) Trump attempt #2 [2024]
*) Trump attempt #1 [2024]
*) Brett Kavenaugh [2022]
*) Republican House Baseball [2017]
*) Gabby Giffords [2011]
But I'm not sure how to build a list like this with confidence about what to include and exclude
Hard to really come up with an exact metric for what counts, but three other recent ones that come to mind are the Paul Pelosi incident, a guy arrested staking out Obama's house, and the guy who murdered a federal judge's kid and they found plans to target Sotomayor at his house.
Yes.
And one would want to exclude attacks that were random rather than politically motivated [the Angie Craig attack appears to just be some dude attacking a conveniently nearby woman] but sometimes it isn't clear.
While no where near the highs of the 70s or other times in the past, political violence has been on the rise in the US for years. Credibly it could be argued to have started pre-2016. Presidential assassination attempts are obviously new, but it looks to me like "unsurprising continuation of trends" rather than something totally unexpected.
My sister has been working at a small lab since finishing her undergrad and is interested in working for a biotech startup in NYC. If anyone has any leads feel free to PM here or email iz8162k23 at gmail.com
I am starting a publication melange.substack.com (very brief overview at the end), inspired in so many ways by years of reading SSC.
If people want to write for me, I'd love it. If people want to offer advice and mentorship, I'd love it. You can even sign up to be a benefactor right now.
Reply here or message me via the 'Got Questions?' thread on Melange.
"Melange is the world’s most prescient publication. Or at least, that’s the mission. We pursue that mission by telling compelling stories about possible worlds, especially the best ones. In a complex and uncertain world, prescience is not about prediction and short-term missions. Prescience is about vision." -- ‘None of us has eyes,’ Paul said. ‘They have taken my eyes, but not my vision.’
Can you remind us after you've posted a couple articles? Thanks and godspeed!
Absolutely. I just came early enough to this thread that I thought it was worth making a post all the same. Current order of affairs is to publish the full vision document, then a few essays and work from others ASAP.
Could the handheld motion trackers from the Alien movies be made in real life? If yes, what principles of operation would they use?
I dimly remember these trackers are based on small differences in air pressure. So I guess aliens make some kind of subsonic sound, that these tracker pick up?
The hard part is that the "Alien" motion trackers explicitly track motion on the far side of floor and ceiling panels, if not walls and doors. So it can't be visual, and it can't be IR or radar if those panels are metal like they appear to be, can't be anything LOS.
At which point we're pretty much out of plausible explanations for anything that gives you blobs of light on a display showing the location of the moving baddies. A passive acoustic or similar device could give you intensity and approximate direction, but not ranging or imaging.
I haven't seen it. My thought is that it would use the parallax from you moving it around to see how far away everything is, and then go off if it sees something that can't be explained by parallax.
You haven't seen the Aliens movies? What calamity has happened in your life?
Yes but you'd have to hold them really still.
I don't quite see why. It's basically what camera autofocus does. You only need to hold it like a fairly calm person, not a statue.
It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I think the Alien motion tracker was stated to work on air currents caused by the alien moving around, which was how it could track the alien even when it was out of line of sight. That would indeed require you to hold it really still (since it would detect its own motion through the air).
A camera autofocus works with either image analysis or a little sonar thingy, so it would only warn you about aliens you can already see.
Easier would be to just attach airtags to each alien, then follow them around with an iPhone.
If attaching an airtag to a living alien is too difficult, then just genetically engineer airtags into their DNA so they're born with them.
Honestly the biggest flaw in this system is Apple will probably claim some sort of IP rights over the situation, and the Space Marines won't legally be allowed to operate their iPhone in that context, then they'll get slaughtered anyway.
Lawyers destroy everything good.
Safest way to airtag an alien would be to endoscopically insert into fetal alien as soon as the face hugger flops off the host but before he eats dinner.
That's why you should always opt for an open source solution.
I installed Arch on my sentry guns, btw.
I've posted nothing new since 7/30 but nevertheless I invite you to subscribe (for free) to my substack, "Radical Centrist?" https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/
I write mainly about US monetary policy, US fiscal policy, trade/industrial policy, and climate change policy.
I have my opinions about which party is least bad and it’s not hard to figure out, but I try to keep my analysis non-partisan.
I wrote a new post where I argue the calls for government intervention (in the UK especially) are sapping people of their agency.
It really is shocking when you think about it - when someone says something like 'ticketmaster is gouging consumers, the government should do something', many of us respond by trying to show why that's bad economically... But really, our first question should be, if you think the prices here are unfair, and that Ticketmaster is making abnormal profits, and you care so much about it, why don't you build your own platform to compete?
https://logos.substack.com/p/why-dont-you-fix-it-yourself-then
I might not agree with you on government involvement in issues like this one, but I'll say this - I wish more people would fully internalize the ideas of supply and demand and realize how that can empower them.
Put another way... if you feel someone is price gouging? Then don't buy from them.
I'll grant this is hard, maybe even impossible, when we have a (near)monopoly for a necessary good, such as food and clothing. But going to the movies? That's not an essential.
Simply walk away until prices get more reasonable. Find something else to do that isn't price-gouging. And if enough people do the same, the law of supply and demand may well shift prices in your favor.
Other things like this would be video games, DLCs in video games, luxury goods, etc...
In the cases you mention - the near-or-actual monopolies like airlines, electric companies, internet providers in some places, etc, I unironically think we should have assassination markets.
Take airlines - every single airline worldwide is now fully and nakedly adversarial, and treats you like dog shit, and doubles the fares essentially every time by charging you extra for luggage, seats, booking, showing up, using the website, and more. There's no alternative - every airline does it. You can't boycott flying. Paying for business class or the more expensive bundled tickets doesn't really do anything to improve the booking and flying experience all that much. Take a complaint up the chain? All the airlines are in bed at the top levels politically because they're usually national or close-enough-to-that, and have zero accountability to their actual customers.
There's zero incentive to care about customer service, and zero mechanism to enact change.
So obviously, we need a latent threat to keep them in line. That threat is assassination markets.
If airline executives were listed on assassination markets, I would be *POURING* money into them every time I flew.
And true to the Karenopticon making the average Mcdonald's have better operations and customer service, if the markets were sufficiently robust, I'm sure it would alter the operations of airlines / cable companies / whoever in more customer friendly ways.
"But that's crazy, because if they existed, people would immediately put every politician they hate on them! We couldn't get any decent people to be nation-scale politicians any more!"
I mean, first, I've got to stop laughing at the idea of "decent people" as national-scale politicians - that's already not happening. But you know, you can have a principled assassination market owner who doesn't allow politicians or celebrities on there.
And politicians being listed doesn't sound like a BAD outcome to me. Let's let revealed preferences have a say!
If "assassination markets" were a real thing and actually effective (which you'd assume, because "effectiveness" would meet "demand," ie if there's a distributed bounty of $100M for somebody's assassination, a lot of competence can go into making it happen), we'd get *fewer* narcissistic psychopaths in public office, because they'd be at legitimate risk, and the one thing narcissists will never risk is their own precious skin.
In terms of "detachment from the people they're leading," we're already there at the far end of the bell curve in basically every country. Even in the US, the median congress-critter is a 75 year old multi-millionaire - how similar do you think their lives are to an actually median US person? Putting in a feedback mechanism where the median US person across all states can actually have a say sounds like a strict improvement to me.
A much easier and not look-at-my-crazy-idea solution would be to remove barriers to entry, so more people can start airlines. E.g. permit foreign airlines to operate domestic routes in the US.
Who would ever choose to work in a difficult industry or in a visible role in your scenario?
Maybe "difficult industries" would stop being so difficult if the executives actually had some skin in the game.
Plus you'd get all sorts of fun dynamics! Sacrificial scapegoat CEO's (probably from anyone in the company with a terminal diagnosis, it would be fun to see what their comp would be), lower executives trying to hide their identities, online reddit and 4chan mobs trying to ferret out those identities, etc.
You , the ordinary member of the public?
"By the time the ‘50s rolled around, ours was a nation of managers and managed. Americans were masters of their fate no more."
https://scholars-stage.org/thoughts-on-post-liberalism-i/
But the problem is that this is the result of organizations expanding in size, and there's no way to turn back the clock absent something like a dark age.
Being a manager, or a part of a larger organisation, doesn't mean you can't have impact and get things done!
Much less impact. Founders of companies really do behave differently from hired managers with the same CEO position: https://paulgraham.com/foundermode.html
I guarantee that a mid level manager at a large company has x1000 the impact of your median start up.
...Not if you want to keep your job.
Markets achieve optimal outcomes when all participants are equally free to make informed, rational decisions. The actions of the participants result in feedback that eventually causes bad actors to get outcompeted.
Real world markets are far from this ideal. Sometimes some participants are not free to walk away from a bad deal (e.g. healthcare). Ticketmaster is not one of these situations.
Other times, there is a power and/or information imbalance between the parties. Ticketmaster is absolutely such a situation.
All participants in a market will invest wealth and effort in shaping the environment in which the market exists to aid themselves. The incentives for this are incredibly strong. Marketing/PR to create information imbalance in their favour; predatory tactics to block or destroy smaller competitors; even lobbying governments to alter the legislative environment - corporations do all of these, all the time, and more.
Meanwhile, feedback via trade decisions alone is very slow. Markets can stay unbalanced longer than individual participants can stay solvent.
Just like the corporations, all viable avenues of attack should be open to individuals; otherwise, the imbalance are worse, not better, and the free market optimal outcome assumption is further and further from reality.
Vote with your wallet, outcompete the suboptimal practices if you can, sure, all of those; but we can do multiple things at once. Lobbying for favourable legislation is fair game for the corpos, so it absolutely should be fair game for individuals.
Enough people getting angry enough at your company to actually get the government to step in and do something just as valid and necessary a market feedback mechanism as every other.
You want people to do something effective? To accomplish something? They - demonstrably! - are. I daresay it feels just as good to get what you want through a successful lobbying campaign (cf. people who start PR companies that do this professionally for large corporations!) as any other way.
What I'm heard is that Ticketmaster is actually in the business of *pr arbitrage*. The venues *want* to charge higher prices but don't want to make the fans mad. So instead, they make a deal where they charge artificially low sticker prices, and let Ticketmaster charge the marketclearing price instead. Then Ticketmaster secretly kicks back part of the extra money to the venue and keeps a cut of the profits in exchange for absorbing the resulting public hatred.
How is ticketmaster doing anything bad? Afaict the issue is that the real cost of show tickets has gone up (since music interest, like movies and books, has become more concentrated in a small number of superstar bands), and people are blaming the software used to sell the tickets as a shoot-the-messenger thing.
My intent is not to condemn Ticketmaster. They are acting just exactly as any other market participant of their size and capability is incentivised to, is expected to, and does.
That said, clearly enough people think it worthwhile to lobby on the matter, successfully enough, for OP to take note and become upset by this.
My main thesis is that lobbying government for a beneficial change is just as valid a market engagement tactic as any other, and just as valid for a group of individuals as it is for a corporation; as a counter to OP's assertion that it stems from and/or causes an "almost complete annihilation of a sense of agency and control of one’s destiny in many people".
Corporations lobby for changes that benefit them not out of helplessness or despair, but because it is a tactic that /works/. Same for groups of regular people.
I don't think this is a reasonable argument. Lobbying the government, like threatening a merchant with an AK47, is a usually-net-negative move that relies on use of force to undermine the market.
The merchants are the ones with the AK47s: https://www.investopedia.com/investing/which-industry-spends-most-lobbying-antm-so/
People like you and me just have little toy water pistols from a Christmas cracker. Still, when enough get together, some kind of balance is possible.
The state provides alternative, more timely and more effective remedies than the free market. Say the rice seller in the market is selling short measures, I go to the authorities and say Fix this. They could say Start your own rice selling business and sell the right measure, and you will put him out of business. I am not a rice seller, I lack the knowledge how and capital to set up as a rice seller, and if I do his obvious move is to temporarily sell good measures at a price which undercuts me till I go out of business. It's much cheaper, more effective and more just for the authorities to apply a law which says he gets his hand cut off.
> Say the rice seller in the market is selling short measures, I go to the authorities and say Fix this. They could say Start your own rice selling business and sell the right measure, and you will put him out of business. I am not a rice seller
I think that, by far, the most common response you'll get from people who aren't the authorities is "stop buying rice from that guy".
Rice isn't exactly something that's difficult to find in the market. This is just an example of you complaining about a self-inflicted wound.
This is a ridiculous post. The idea that the state provides more timely remedies than the market is laughable on the face of it
> The idea that the state provides more timely remedies than the market is laughable on the face of it
These corporations beg to differ: https://www.investopedia.com/investing/which-industry-spends-most-lobbying-antm-so/
They have invested signficant amounts of money and effort on this bet.
Are you trying to make my case for me? The state is partly not a source of effective remedy to market failures because it is subject to public choice and governance failures, chief among them being the concentrated cost, diffuse benefit problem, which is what lobbying is a symptom of
I don't want to get too much into the economics argument (which is that state intervention is definitely not more effective than free market, which has been proven time and time again), but that you're then telling people to never bother trying to improve anything themselves. People are happy when they're doing stuff! Not when they're passive. Even if you succeeded in reducing the price of rice, you'd have an enervated, depressed society.
You're making quite bold claims without providing citations. Were people as a society less happy when government introduced laws against child labour? In your scenario, people would just start businesses that don't hire children.
There's no need to provide citations for the claim that markets are better at providing goods and services than state interventions
No, that doesn't follow from what I said. People didn't care about paying for services provided by children, so there was no incentive for anyone to start a company that did not employ children.
I don't think any of my claims are bold enough to require citation! What do you challenge? That market economies have invariably performed better and have been wealthier than state-planned ones? Or that people are happy when they're being creative?
I think this is backwards: asking the government for help doesn't cause people to losetheir agency; people having their agency taken away causes them to turn to the government to help.
"Ticketmaster is charging unfair prices" is just another way of saying "Ticketmaster has a deep war-chest and *lots* of headroom to lower their prices if they ever happen to need to undercut and crush an upstart competitor". The big powerful companies aren't being scummy at random: they're specifically and ruthlessly optimising for profits (at the expense of literally every other value on the planet) and if you try to compete with them by being less scummy (and therefore less profitable) they will use their profit-advantage to crush you (cf. Meditations on Moloch: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch )
In cases where a young upstart company becomes the new top dog in an established industry, it's usually because they've got a way to beat the existing companies along a dimension unrelated to how scummy they are - *whilst also being every bit as scummy themselves, if not more so* because young upstarts can't afford to relinquish any tactical advantage whatsoever. For example, the app-based banks know perfectly well that their shoody insecure apps and lack of FCA regulation makes them much riskier for consumers than established banks, but these things enable them to develop/innovate much faster than established banks can. Uber's business practices, which if anything are considerably *more* scummy, tell a very similar story.
At this point, the corps are so powerful, and the optimisation pressure on companies to be scummy in order to succeed is so intense, that there's practically nothing an individual can do to resist them (see the recent failure to stop Amazon busting-up the burgeoning Coventry trade union [ https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/07/19/amazon-union-recognition-vote ] or the sale of the NHS data platform to Palantir despite near-universal criticism and protests from pretty much every quarter [ https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2752 ] - under these conditions, recognising just how little agency one actually has and asking the government to help, in its capacity as pretty much the only organisation big enough to stand-up to such companies - albeit only in theory - seems like basically the least-bad remaining option.
What I've heard is that Ticketmaster is actually in the business of *pr arbitrage*. The venues *want* to charge higher prices but don't want to make the fans mad. So instead, they make a secret deal where they charge artificially low sticker prices, and let Ticketmaster charge the marketclearing price instead. Then Ticketmaster secretly kicks back part of the extra money to the venue and keeps a cut of the profits in exchange for absorbing the resulting public hatred.
If that's true, then the public has misdiagnosed the problem and there's no room for a new entrant in the first place.
> For example, the app-based banks know perfectly well that their shoody insecure apps and lack of FCA regulation makes them much riskier for consumers than established banks, but these things enable them to develop/innovate much faster than established banks can.
They also get a big financial boost from the fact that small banks are excluded from the Durbin amendment.
I think it goes both ways - it's a vicious cycle. Politicians catering to such demands teaches people to expect it.
And I really think incumbent ability to crush new comers is overblown - it's proven wrong time and time again, and not for the reason you suggest (app based banks are very much regulated by the FCA?)
this suffers from persistency bias - we know about the successes. No-one is tracking all the cases where corps successfully crushed upstart competitors.
Of course this will happen, it's hard to beat other companies! That doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
I'm not suggesting that app-based banks in particular are successful because they are in particular unregulated by the FCA; I suggest, rather, that the reason upstarts-in-general are successful, though perhaps different in every case, is basically always *unrelated to their level of scumminess* and that ultimately they must inevitably (cf. Meditations on Moloch) end up being just as scummy as the incumbents in order to remain competitive.
But to be specific on the FCA-regulation, what I ought to have said was that app-based banks are ill-regulated, being registered by the FCA as "e-money institutions" offering "e-money accounts" rather than banks offering bank accounts - and therefore with no FSCS protections on customer deposits (eg. Monese and Revolut); or else found to be systematically and comprehensively failing to reimburse fraud victims whilst simultaneously enabling league-topping levels of financial fraud (eg. Monzo and Starling: https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/43208/monzo-and-starling-among-worst-performers-for-app-fraud-reimbursements ) or else just plain failing to comply with arbitary banking rules (eg. Monzo: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-orders-monzo-to-comply-with-banking-rules ) and, orthogonally to their levels of compliance, have breathtakingly shoddy and insecure apps [ https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3236024.3275523 , https://www.ptsecurity.com/ww-en/analytics/vulnerabilities-mobile-banks-2020 ].
We could look at the energy sector, with OVO's record-breaking levels of unlawful overcharging (£3m in 2021; the worst in the UK and £1m worse than the next-worst supplier: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19128320.regret-scottishpower-sse-scottish-gas-ordered-pay-millions-compensation-overcharging and a further £2.5m in 2023: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65631546 ) and failing to honour credit refunds: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/martin-lewis-issues-ovo-energy-160736153.html )
In other words, I'm certainly not saying that startups can't be successful - just that the story here is absolutely not one of startups outcompeting incumbents *by being less scummy than them*; if you specifically want ethical, non-scummy companies rather than just different-but-equally-scummy ones, petitioning the government for help is a considerably more actionable plan than trying to start your own energy company or bank or minicab firm or whatever.
(And, I hate to make it personal, but I would imagine you're probably not secretly a multimillionaire founder of some super-successful young startup, so presumably you do recognise at least some barriers to entering an established market, here...)
No please, do make it personal! It's fair game :) Let's start with that. No I'm not a founder but I'm not complaining that everything is broken. If I felt there's an industry out there that really is broken, and about which I care, then yes I'd prioritise doing something to fix it, rather than asking the government to do it. And as I keep saying, if I were to start something, I'd be far more worried about my ability to meet regulations, rather than that an incumbent would crush me.
(Actually, I am working on something - tiny, and for a very niche audience, but hey, it's better than nothing. Stay tuned.)
I think your arguments are cherry picked. Neobanks are regulated, and even though they get in trouble some times, so do incumbents. To the (small) extent neobanks have won it's because they have provided some better services. Doing that is possible. So more people should aspire to do it, no?
(Thanks for being understanding!)
I entirely understand that you're not motivated to found a startup because of any ethical problem you have with the incumbents - but you do seem to be saying that founding successful startups is much easier than people believe and I would have supposed that this alone is a good "money on the table"-ish reason to become a millionaire startup-founder without needing to also have some ethical angle.
Of course I'm deliberately choosing instances of startups being scummy! You want me to also find articles saying stuff like "Startup Ltd. could have been scummy here but wasn't", for balance? Anyway, I do absolutely and entirely agree that the incumbents are by-and-large just as scummy: my points are that 1) the startups' initial success is *orthogonal* to their level of scumminess and is instead down to other advantages, and that 2) they are inevitably obliged to be just as scummy as the incumbents (for Moloch-related reasons) in order to be competitive.
Re. neobanks providing better services; you don't have to provide better services, just to be *percieved* as doing so, which you can often achieve through a combination of flashy UX (and startups are every bit as famous for how well they do UX as big corps are for how poorly they do it), unscrupulous marketing (which obviously every company of every size is trying to do but which is probably easier to do successfully when you don't have 100 years' worth of reputation to risk), and exploitation of informational asymmetries (eg. you know exactly how many known vulnerabilities your coded-in-a-café banking app has but most of your customers don't even understand what a known-vulnerability is). XKCD's TornadoGuard might count as a cute illustration of this [ https://m.xkcd.com/937 ], but I think Monzo's 6% fraud full-reimbursement rate (vs. Lloyd's TSB's 94%) provides a pretty fair illustration too [ https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/43208/monzo-and-starling-among-worst-performers-for-app-fraud-reimbursements ]
P.S. The very best of luck in your business venture! I look forward to hearing more!
Sorry, it seems I miscommunicated my point. It's not that founding a company and taking on incumbents is easy! Of course it's very, very hard. But, first, if it's hard to beat incumbents, then they can't be as bad as people make them out to be - it's easy to beat a bloated, inefficient organisation. Second, the crux of my argument is that just because something is hard doesn't mean people shouldn't be trying to do it. There is fun to be had trying to do something hard - even if you fail! As I write in my post, people are at their happiest when they're creating, when they're doing stuff. And we're taking this away from them.
I agree that start-ups do not succeed because they are not scummy - but I guess to me it's irrelevant why they succeed; as long as they do, it's proof that beating or at least competing against incumbents is possible. So we should be getting more people to aspire to that.
How generally do you apply this? e.g. when you find all the big social media platforms have cancelled you for your opinions, do you think the first response should be "why don't you build your own platform to compete"?
I think *always* when you see something not working as you'd like it to work your first response should be 'what can *I* do to fix it's, and the very last response should be 'I am *entitled* to having someone do it for me'.
"your first response should be 'what can *I* do to fix it"
Almost always, IME, the most effective response to something not working as I'd like is to get an expert to fix it. (The exceptions are when /I/ am the expert and/or I can't afford to outsource the work.) Life is too short not to focus my time on the things I am actually good at, and let others do the same.
Broken car? I /could/ try and fix it myself, but the garage technician will do a better job, faster, and they already have the tools to do it with.
Broken leg? I /could/ try and fix it myself, but the doctor will do a better job, faster, and they already have the tools to do it with.
Broken late-stage capitalist dystopia? I /could/ try and fix it myself, but getting politicians to tip the weighing scales to counterbalance the capital on the other side will do a better job, faster, and they already have the tools to do it with.
A key difference is that politicians are only experts at getting & keeping power, not applying it well.
There is nothing which you can do better than an expert in that field, unless there is something at which you're literally the best.
Of course this is exaggerated and you need to factor in cost-benefit etc. But the fact people feel so helpless is tragic. And even for the things you mention - there's something to be said about doing your own chores / fixing your own car / etc. Doing stuff is satisfying!
Not doing things because you are able to choose to do the other things you'd rather be doing instead is the /opposite/ of helplessness.
When I can do what I want /and also/ get other people to fix my problems for me, my utility is maximised.
I am happy for the people who are still able to derive some kind of meager satisfaction from time spent on things which aren't really what they want to be doing but are necessary to fix problems, but I respectfully disagree that my privilege of being able to get someone else to do those things is tragic.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm willing to bet most people do not get as much satisfaction from what they're doing as you think, and that people do feel more helpless than you think. And I think contributing to that by encouraging them to complain and expect others to fix their problems is contributing to this.
(By the way, an important thing to note is that it's one thing for you to hire a plumber to fix your pipes, when there are plumbers around; it's another to demand that someone else do your work for you, paid for by others.)
Long story short and not my specialty, there's a lot of things that a big company can do to make it really hard to compete with them, to the point of breaking down the good qualities of a market that economists like to rave about. Which is why governments the world over have seen it fit to create things like antitrust laws, laws against anti-competitive behavior, abuse of monopoly (resp. monopsony), and the like. In the real world, power often leads to more power leads to abuse of power, which is why we have systems of counterpowers to try to mitigate that. Govt vs corps is one of those.
Umm. Most of the things that corporations can do to make it hard to compete with them operate via government. You would be much better off trying to limit the power of government rather than trying to hand it the dildo that corporates will then use to ram you.
Buying up and shutting down competitors , a la 90s Microsoft, does not depend on government. Rather the contrary.
Ah yes, 90s Microsoft, so dangerous that government had to step in to force them to... unbundle internet explorer from windows! Imagine the depths of hell we may have plumbed, had it not been for our anti trust saviours
Another aspect of that that's fairly well known is that Microsoft purchased IE from another company. They didn't develop it themselves.
The reason it's well known is that they got it in exchange for a promise of royalties on all future sales, and the royalties were worth no money when Microsoft never sold any copies.
In this case, we can be pretty sure that they were planning never to sell it and that was the reason they offered a royalty. But theoretically, this could have been reversed - they might have wanted to buy the software, had a royalty agreement forced on them, and realized that the only thing they could afford to do with the software was give it away. And in that case, it seems weird to say that that's "predatory bundling".
As per response below, I address this in my post. Many of the behemoths today have only been founded in the last 20 years, and outcompeted powerful incumbents. Most of the barriers you'll face when founding a company are not created by incumbents, but by regulation.
Barriers to entry is my first thought. I'm not sure how much capital it would need to start a new Ticketmaster, but it is probably in the millions. And why would people, venues or consumers, book with you in particular? Lots of hurdles to clear, I think.
It would help *me* to understand what value Ticketmaster brings to the venues.
Their cut seems large, but I assume that the people running the venues are not stupid.
Still, I note that Taylor Swift released her Eras Tour movie directly to the participating theaters without a studio in the middle to handle distribution so we have an existence proof that sometimes these middlemen aren't necessary.
If the venues just used some other web-site to sell tickets what bad thing would happen?
>If the venues just used some other web-site to sell tickets what bad thing would happen?
For any venue large enough to host a major act, Ticketmaster would sue them for violating the exclusivity agreement. Approx. 70% of all music venues in the US has an exclusive agreement to use only Ticketmaster. 99% of venues that can seat over 5,000 do. In exchange for these agreements the venue gets a % of the fee that TM take. They've spent the last 30 years building one of the most robust "moats" against possible competition in any industry ever. As bad as things got between TM and Taylor Swift, the most successful musician of this century, there are 0 alternatives for her. All the competitors are tiny and entirely incapable of of handling her volume, and exclusive agreements with the venues insure they can never be threatened.
Ticketmaster offers large kickbacks to the venues. It may be a situation like credit card interchange fees, they are much higher then needed but hard to align interests to lower them.
Thanks.,
So that's the answer then.
The venues *do* get much of the money paid to Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster's "service" is to be the focus of the fans' ire.
And a Ticketmaster competitor would be DOA because the venues wouldn't be getting paid the kickback so not only wouldn't have a reason to favor the competitor, but would lose money if they did so.
Live Nation's most recent fiscal year (2023) reported $22.7 billion in revenue and a tiny bit more than $1 billion in operating income. Which would make sense if they are sending a lot of that revenue back to the venues.
It’s an arbitrage problem. Live events for very popular acts have a limited number of seats available and a high demand, giving them a high optimal price. However, often acts don’t want to set their tickets at the actual market value, because having tickets costs hundreds of dollars looks bad. So Ticketmaster has made a business out of being the “bad guy”: “Oh, I would love for tickets to my events to be affordable, but that mean nasty Ticketmaster with its fees and whatnot is making it too expensive, oh dear.” If you didn’t put Ticketmaster in the middle every single ticket would be scooped up by scalpers, who would then sell it at the actual price set by supply and demand.
Oh right... love business consultants who advise downsizing, and then it's their idea,not yours
I thought the complaints were that tickets were being scooped up by scalpers? At least, the last couple of times, people were claiming that they had to buy online, and they could only do that when the website permitted the sale, but even when they were there waiting to buy as soon as the site put the tickets on sale, somehow the tickets were all sold out in minutes and they couldn't get any.
There's allegations that the scalpers have bots or what have you to harvest the tickets immediately and then sell them on at inflated prices. That, at least, is what I thought people were asking the government to do: get Ticketmaster not to sell blocks of tickets in one go like that, to avoid scalpers.
This is real, and not just with tickets. Shopping bots are a thing....
If anything these prices are eliminating scalpers who like to pay low and sell high.
Arguably, albeit circularly in reasoning, the actual value of the tickets are now what is being achieved by Ticketmaster. By letting tickets dynamically price the tickets are selling for what people are willing to pay, were always perhaps willing to pay, except they used to pay scalpers the “real price” while the scalpers paid the face value. How do we know that the tickets were underpriced? Because the scalpers made a profit.
A poster in a related thread (at a different site) pointed out a while back that selling tickets locked to individual people (much like airplane tickets) would eliminate most of the scalping.
There's s case for selling tickets to persons not otherwise specified, because then you can invite random mates. But it's an open goal for touts.
To apply some arbitrary values to illustrate:
The claim is that the tickets are worth, say, $100 each and the venue could charge that (because that is what the tickets are worth). The *act* doesn't want to charge more than $50 because they don't want to be seen as gouging their customers. And the venue also doesn't want to charge $100 (which they could by adding a 'venue fee' just like Ticketmaster adds a 'convenience fee') because ... why?
Ticketmaster's service is acting as a hate sponge so that people blame it instead of the venue.
And consumers would book with you presumably because you wouldn't gouge them! But tbh this is exactly my point - we're a society that's training people to say it's too hard to do something new - I'd better ask the state to do it for me. That's just sad, isn't it?
No Aris, it isn’t. Obviously there’s something here that stops startups from challenging TicketMaster, some kind of monopolistic practices that are hard to overcome. Hence the State intervening.
And whatever way you look at it, including your rather simplistic approach, this is a market failure. Blaming the little people is actually blaming market capitalism, since’s it’s only likely to be a certain group of people with access to the talents needed and ability to raise funds who can take on TicketMaster. That they are not trying, or succeeding isn’t the average guys fault.
If people were trying, I'd get your point. But so many people are not - they've given up before even having a go at it. That's sad, whatever way you look at it to use your expression!
And again, super powerful incumbents have been beaten again and again. It's feasible. And so many of the barriers to doing so are because of state intervention - one of the obstacles you'll find if you try to compete with Ticketmaster is that you don't have an army of lawyers to navigate GDPR for you, for instance.
It doesn't help when you misdiagnose the problem. Ticketmaster's true service is acting as a hate sponge while secretly kicking back most of the money to the venue. You can't undercut them because then the venue would be getting less money.
Lack of initiative does make me sad, but sector has very little to do with it. Which sector has done more to promote a lack of initiative in cookery, for example? Meanwhile the military, the police, firefighters and healthcare professionals inspire many people to a life of initiative.
The vast majority of people can’t do this Aris, so the failure is not the people in general, but the venture capitalist system in particular. Is a janitor going to tackle Tickmaster?
This kind of rhetoric reminds me of a sociology student I met at university who claimed that Marxism didn’t fail the people, the people failed Marxism.
Of course it’s the same thing. If we can’t practically be Marxist then the theory sucks.
Similarly if we the people are failing to take on Ticketmaster then the market system itself fails, since what can constitute a market except people.
I suspect though that this isn’t the death knell capitalism but a specific example of one monopoly practice that’s hard to counteract.
Not everyone is capable enough to take on a tech giant, I never argued that. But there are many, many people complaining about pretty much everything in our society, but take zero action themselves to do anything about it - besides asking their MP to do something. This is my point.
I cover that objection in my post. New entrants that challenge massive incumbents appear all the time - even in hard to crack industries like energy and banking.
Any Canadians have a recommendation for an xborder accountant? I've been procrastinating on my us taxes and need to settle them ASAP
I've recommended https://www.mnp.ca/en/personnel/kathy-bonazew to several clients of mine and heard good things back. I am a CFP professional in Alberta/BC.
I have been working on a weird machine learning problem for the last few years. I document it https://www.airza.net/2024/09/04/neural-cryptography-stop-me-before-i-sigkill-again here. In general I have been trying to design a neural network to predict the output of various non-cryptographically secure RNGs and coming up completely blank.
I may be the only subscriber to this blog with no IRL friends working in ML and so I am hoping by posting it here I can find someone who has some advice on how to proceed. (It has nothing to do with LLMs or anything, so some specialized expertise might be needed.)
Is this at all related to what you are working on?
https://news.mit.edu/2017/explained-neural-networks-deep-learning-0414
Have you looked at how the existing algorithms for this work? For example, Berkamp-Massey lets you recover the LFSR state and polynomial from a sequence, and Feigenbaum(?) has an algorithm for reconstructing the LCG state from outputs.
I covered some of it in undergrad but it's a little fuzzy. I appreciate the idea; I'll go take a look.
I don't have time to read your entire post but I had a couple comments. Although, like others have said, I think it's very possible that these are just the wrong tool for the job.
1. You describe neural nets as "our beloved universal function approximator". You're likely aware of this, but it's worth noting that while it can be shown that neural nets are universal function approximators, that result has no bearing on either the size of the network needed to approximate a given function nor whether any learning procedure exists to learn it.
2. You say there's no literature about what to do if you can't fit at all. The thing I would do in this situation is make the problem simpler. For instance, I'm not familiar with XORSHIFT128 but can you make a simpler variation of the algorithm, like XORSHIFT8 or something, and try learning that? (Maybe you have already.)
The post addresses both of these - I noted that it might not be possible to learn solutions to these and provides a solution for XORSHIFT128+ that can compute the forward pass to arbitrary accuracy. I would be sort of surprised if the problem was completely intractable, but it's clear to me at this point that the tools I personally have for the job are not adequate.
It's not hard to compute for XORSHIFT 128, and the network can learn to mimic simple combinations of logic gates, but at some point it seems go from "trivial" to "impossible".
My understanding is that neural nets are good at learning when there is the concept of "closer" to the correct answer. The neural net can start off with some error versus the correct answer and slowly get closer until it, hopefully, gets the correct answer. Or at least an answer that is close enough.
So maybe you are trying to classify 1,000 images as 'cat' or 'not cat.' 100 correct answers is 'closer' than 90 correct answers.
Problems with no concept of "closer" seem like a poor fit for neural nets.
And I'm not seeing an obvious way for a neural net to get 'closer' to a sequence from a random number generator. If the sequence is very small then, sure. But if the sequence doesn't repeat for billions of values (or more) then I'm not optimistic that this is realistically doable.
The code and blog (try) to detail this, but I extended the domain/range to try to accept each input bit as a separate number between [0, 1] and output bits for the same. In some sense just having the correct sign for the output (that is, more than .5 or less than .5) would be right enough if it was correct.
There has been some work on SAT problems or other networks that can correctly generate boolean logic and solve simple problems. This network can also solve very simple combinations of logic gates, so i'm not convinced it's completely impossible, but it's not clear to me where to go from here.
I think this observation about neural nets/gradient descent likely gets to the heart of why @jll above has had difficulty with their problem.
However, there are a lot of examples of systems with sharp discontinuities in the reward landscape-- nothing, nothing, nothing, game won. I'm thinking of DeepMind's 2016 results on Montezuma's Revenge, where a simple gradient descent approach would never have accomplished anything because only specific kinds of planning ahead would ever get rewards. Here's a shallow Wired writeup that might be a place to start: https://www.wired.com/story/google-ai-montezuma-revenge/
My other question is if there's a way to characterize the RNG landscape. We know they're not truly random functions, but if it's a flat fitness landscape with essentially randomly placed spikes of predictability, I'm not sure how ML approaches would do much better than just a search of the whole prohibitively large problem space.
Dumb question/comment from a dimly remembered case (which is related to what you said about flat fitness landscapes):
IIRC, one of the original objections to the very earliest perceptron was that a _single_ layer neural network can't learn XOR?
Wild grab at conceivably relevant stuff: Is there theory for how hard it is for a multi-layer neural net to learn a parity function? I _think_ the number of layers only needs to be around the number of inputs - but, if the test cases are randomly sampled, do we need an exponential number of them to properly learn the function? Basically, do we need to see (all? most? some fraction) of the minterms in the expansion of the parity function?
Again, _very_ vague recollection: Is a linear feedback shift register pseudo random (number/bit stream) generator basically parity across a subset of the shift register bits fed back into the shift register input?
You’ve definitely passed my threshold of knowledge there. Thanks for pointing me to some more good stuff there.
Many Thanks!
I tentatively agree, it might just completely be the wrong tool for the job. Can we ask what motivates you to pursue that approach? Cryptanalysis is a well-established field with plenty of good techniques for cracking non-crypto-secure RNGs already.
I'm pretty naive about ML and really naive about cryptography-- what's a very general overview of exploiting those non-secure RNGs?
I don't know about @JLL, but my general thought process in favor of an ML approach is "Neural nets are really good at identifying patterns from data that humans can't detect. Non-secure RNGs are data that looks random to people but there's actually some kind of pattern there. Maybe neural nets could help?"
> what's a very general overview of exploiting those non-secure RNGs?
1) Find out the algorithm
2) Obtain a bunch of outputs, ideally consecutive complete outputs
3) reverse to get the seed
4) profit
Step 3 is not something that requires AI. In fact, I'd be surprised if AI even helped there.
Excellent. Thanks!
I did my best to explain in the article, but often in application security there is something that is downstream of an insecure random number generator in a predictable way. It isn't straightforward to use an SAT solver or another cryptanalysis technique when you as the attacker can't see the RNG that is in use and don't know the transformations. But i am sort of hopeful that if I can produce a neural network that does the right thing I might be able to use transfer learning or some other way of building off that.
Though at this point I am just curious if it is possible as well.
It's a lot easier to just guess the algorithm in use then to try to teach an LLM to do cryptography.
I wrote a small essay about the orc baby in the recent "Rings of Power" episode, and why it's noteworthy, but not necessarily in a bad way.
https://tapwatersommelier.substack.com/p/tolkien-would-appreciate-the-orc
Well, I'm going to object here 😁 But before I get into the kicking, I do appreciate the point you are making about demonising and dehumanising others, and Tolkien would indeed agree.
From a letter of 1945:
"Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolic hour. By which I do not mean that it may not all, in the present situation, mainly (not solely) created by Germany, be necessary and inevitable. But why gloat! We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilisation in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted. The destruction of Germany, be it 100 times merited, is one of the most appalling world-catastrophes."
Okay, enough of the being reasonable and irenic, on with the kicking!
I think the Orc Baby is the lightning rod for the objections to what the showrunners have done in this adaptation. Indeed, I think at this point better not to call it an "adaptation" but rather "an original work based on some elements of Tolkien".
The points you make have also been done in a video review by Just Some Guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QkLCSy8tI
The major problem is the inconsistency between episodes. That Orc family man there in episode one? Who doesn't want to go to war and just wants to settle down with Orc wife and Orc baby?
At the end of episode four, he's ready to do some throat-slitting of Galadriel (fair enough, we all recognise the temptation) before being stopped by Adar.
See the problem? For plot purposes, Orcs are just persecuted and misunderstood, and then they're back to being wicked killing machines. There's no congruent development of the characters.
The show has done this *all the time*. I have to take issue with what you say here: “Rings of Power” are basically okay."
Um, well. As Generic TV Fantasy Show? Maybe, though it does seem to be shedding viewers. As a Tolkien adaptation? Hell, no!
They've mangled characters and ignored or even directly contradicted canon when it suits them. Yes, you have to make changes when translating from one medium to another. Yes, given the rights to the limited material they have, Amazon can't do much outside those limits and can't refer to anything from the Silmarillion. Yes, compressing the time line is necessary.
But Galadriel isn't like that in the Second Age. Celebrimbor is not a doddering old fool who has to be told what "alloys" are. We don't need an invented daughter of Elendil to create fake discord within his family - "oh no, my fake daughter is on the wrong side for the right if mistaken reasons! this is going to be really emotionally wrenching for me!" Well, maybe if they had spent *any* time setting up Elendil and his daughter and his family. But instead we get "here's new daughter. here's new daughter hanging out with new son of Pharazon. here's new daughter getting her knickers in a twist because she blames the queen for her brother's death, here's new daughter going along as a collaborator with the evil guys, and we know they're evil because look, we're gonna put in a scene of literal back-stabbing".
New daughter is even dumber because her brother isn't dead. Though the Isildur storyline is going nowhere - since we know he has to live, all the "oh no, here he is in peril, will he survive?" set-ups are pointless and have no tension.
I could go into a full rant here, but I'll just end on this note: Sauron the goo-monster/Venom symbiote. Look me in the face and tell me this is good fantasy, much less good Tolkien adaptation.
So I think the Orc baby was just the straw that broke the camel's back and that's why people lost their heads over it. It was just one goddamn dumb change too far. Oh hey, grey morality, are the Orcs really that bad and the good guys really that good, hmmm, bet you never considered that, eh?
Yeah, Tolkien's struggles with the Orc creation problem make this a very murky issue, but "oh lookit the cute (er...) widdle baby!" is not the way to appeal to we book-nerds better natures (if we have any). Especially not when the show has been joyfully ripping up and pissing on canon, and then calling any critics "trolls":
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/house-of-the-dragon-rings-of-power-1235997632/
"“The Fellowship had to look to each other, and those who support it, and remember what it’s fighting for,” says J.D. Payne, who is showrunner along with Patrick McKay. “And when we see that millions of people are watching this and responding so positively to it — that’s who we’re fighting for. And those who watch every episode and [negatively] write about it on social media and make YouTube videos, we’re happy to have you guys, too. It wouldn’t be a journey through Middle-earth without some trolls along the way.”
Yes, if we have any complaints, it's not the fault of the show which is perfect in every way, it's because we're trolls and review-bombers. Oh, and racists and sexists who hate strong women of colour in lead roles. And fascist-adjacent, how could I forget that.
I wanted this show to be good. There are bits which could be good. But there's a lot more which is poor, and Orc Baby is just the poster child for that.
EDIT: I see in your replies to comments that you did (somewhat) defend floomp-monster Sauron, to which I can only sigh heavily and shake my head in sorrow 😁 Oooh, perfect opportunity to pull out that phrase Scott parsed recently!
I'm sorry you feel that way.
I mean, the major problem here is that this is supposed to be an adaptation of Tolkien's works, and the showrunners kept banging on in interviews how faithful they were to the works. Ha!
Sauron portrayed as a second-rate sleazy politician trying to stump for the Orc vote as President of Forodwaith after Morgoth suddenly resigned to spend more time with his family (in the Void) is just silly. He does not need to ask for their mandate to rule, it's all part of his character that he assumes power as of right. And he's not going to be Ides of March-ed int he back like that. And if he does get killed in his corporeal form, he does not turn into a goo-puddle that snacks on rats and centipedes for an unknown period, then clambers out of a cavern on the mountainside and floomps down the slope to lie in the road waiting to be run over by a cart.
That's a very small kind of Evil Overlord compared with what Tolkien invented, which is an angelic being of a lesser order than the Valar, but still much mightier than any mortal being in Middle-earth, and certainly not relying on a stray centipede here and there to give him enough mass to grow back into a symbiote until he's big enough to eat a human.
It's way too pedestrian. It's not an epic mythological god, it's one of the Marvel Universe C-list villains.
"I think at this point better not to call it an "adaptation" but rather "an original work based on some elements of Tolkien"."
Has anybody actually managed to nail the feeling of Tolkien when expanding beyond the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit? (I think Jackson did a good job with LotR and Rankin/Bass did a good job with the Hobbit). I enjoyed the Shadow video games as games, but they're obviously bad Tolkien. I just can't think of any good expansions of Tolkien that feel like Tolkien.
Incidentally, your descriptions of Rings of Power are very similar to my feelings on Wheel of Time, so I can understand your pain (granted, I haven't seen Rings of Power, but it seems to be making very similar mistakes).
> Has anybody actually managed to nail the feeling of Tolkien when expanding beyond the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit?
Is that something that Tolkien managed to do when expanding beyond The Hobbit?
The Hobbit was a great book; I've never actually liked The Lord of the Rings.
My feeling is that every Tolkien's book reads differently. They were written in different times of his life, in different historical contexts and with different purposes. Which is why "the feeling of Tolkien" is such a misleading concept.
I think you managed to answer most of your own gripes with the show in the same comment. You seem to be mostly kicking yourself - where is my part?
To the main points you're making:
>>>> See the problem? For plot purposes, Orcs are just persecuted and misunderstood, and then they're back to being wicked killing machines. There's no congruent development of the characters.
No, there is absolutely no problem here. Characters absolutely can be both. Hell, these things happen in the real world all the time. These things happen in Tolkien's world as well (I gave a citation from LoTR in the text). Why wouldn't they also happen in the RoP world?
>>>> They've mangled characters and ignored or even directly contradicted canon when it suits them.
>>>>Yes, you have to make changes when translating from one medium to another. Yes, given the rights to the limited material they have, Amazon can't do much outside those limits and can't refer to anything from the Silmarillion. Yes, compressing the time line is necessary.
I don't even need to add anything here. You have successfully answered yourself.
>>>> But Galadriel isn't like that in the Second Age.
>>>> Sauron portrayed as a second-rate sleazy politician
The showrunners made a decision to give the main characters character arcs. Since we know what Galadriel (Sauron, Elrond, etc.) should be in the end of the series, it makes perfect narrative sense to make them different, in order for them to change toward the end. This is not the show's main problem, it's an interesting decision. Not without its merits. Not the best implementation of this principle, I think, but overall B for effort. Which in my book is "basically ok".
Isildur storyline is boring and silly, for sure. Until now, they made a mess of this one.
>>>> Sauron the goo-monster/Venom symbiote.
>>>> ...and certainly not relying on a stray centipede here and there...
I honestly couldn't give a flying hobbit poo how the animators decided to make the character look like in the three seconds of transition. This is so inconsequential, you and I have already depleted the world's supply of zeroes and ones allotted for this particular issue.
All other problems you have with the show can be easily solved by one advice: just watch the show and don't read the showrunners' interviews. You will enjoy it much better. I am a disciple of Roland Barthes here - after another episode pops up on Amazon, its authors are all dead.
>>>> I wanted this show to be good
I... am not so sure you have.
Sauron is not. and never has been, a goo monster in any incarnation.
The showrunners are writing shitty rip-off Marvel Universe tropes, okay. But it's not Tolkien and let's not pretend it is.
So, a shapeshifter that was a werewolf, a snake, a giant bat, an elf, a human, a giant dude, a spirit, an "edgeless darkness given shape" and a big-ass eye can't be a "goo monster"? That's too much?
Taking a step back, the problem is that the Second Age should never have been filmed.
The Second Age isn't really a story, it's just a mythic backstory for the events of the Third Age. Once you start removing it from the fuzziness of myth it loses its dignity and just becomes silly stories. Sauron is interesting because he's barely glimpsed -- once we've seen him talk and eat and poop and turn into a goo monster he loses the dignity of myth.
It's like trying to film Valinor, where the elves go. What actually happens when the elves get to Valinor? Do you just pull your boat up on shore? Is there some kind of harbour? What do you do all day? Do you still need to eat? Are there farms? Is everything permanently suffused in a gold glow? Where am I going to live when I get there? How do I buy my first starter home in Valinor? Such questions are dumb and they make the whole idea of Valinor dumb, Valinor is much better as a mystery than as something reduced to a filmable reality. Thankfully they don't seem to have tried to film Valinor yet but they've got close and it already looks silly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIrIK6Z8ybg
> It's like trying to film Valinor, where the elves go. What actually happens when the elves get to Valinor? Do you just pull your boat up on shore? Is there some kind of harbour? What do you do all day? Do you still need to eat? Are there farms? Is everything permanently suffused in a gold glow?
This complaint doesn't really work, because Valinor is like Rivendell and Lothlorien. Or rather, the point of Rivendell and Lothlorien is that they are like Valinor, which enables the elves to live there without dying of ennui. If you can show Lothlorien on film, you can also show Valinor, because they're the same.
+10
I fully agree with that.
The initial idea of RoP was a cynical cashgrab, that should not have been made.
But, as we live in a real world where cynical cashgrabs happen every day, nothing prevents us from looking at them as a "thing-in-itself", separate from canon. This is, to me, the way to get the most out of the mediocre series.
But never, you will note, in all those changes a puddle of goo that had to snack on worms after being stabbity-stabbity by a rabble of Orcs.
The eye was the psychic impression that those under the sway of the One Ring had; Sauron was not literally a giant eyeball, but it was his searching, implacable will and eternal surveillance and dominion over his thralls and serfs given form in a way their minds could comprehend it.
As Lord of Werewolves he was defeated by Huan, who was another Maia in beast-form. Not some run-of-the-mill Orc.
It's important that his spirit form *is* the 'real' Sauron. The corporeal body is one assumed by the Valar and the Maiar to interact with Elves and Humans and other physical beings. Once out of the body, he can re-assemble a form from the physical elements of the world, but this takes time. And it's not "and then his blood dripped down into a puddle" sort of re-embodiment.
I know the show has to make changes. But they don't have to be stupid, shoddy, less impressive changes. What the show-runners have done is to make Middle-earth *smaller*, including the characters in it. They show us maps and claim that vast distances have been traversed - but people travel around in days from one place to another without even needing to go by horseback, and when you get there, there's maybe two villages and some ruins inhabited by a maximum of a hundred odds and sods in the entire land. Elrond and Celebrimbor were able to stroll from Eregion to Khazad-dum in an afternoon, without even bringing a back-pack with them or changing into travelling gear!
You tell him. I haven't even seen the show and I agree with you 100%. There are two reasons for me to do this apparently ridiculous thing; First is the assertion by Konstantin that when someone converts a described thing (words on paper - i.e. book) to a series of pictures someone is bound to make it "more stupid, shoddy and less impressive compared to the insides of our heads, or to words on the page that inspire what is inside of our heads."
This assertion is nonsense. As evidence I offer up "The Beauty and the Beast" by Jean Cocteau, and a dozen more, up to and including "True Grit" by the Coen Bros.
The second reason I have quite forgotten while typing out the first one, but I think it had something to do with how spectacularly grumpy you are. Its such fun....
> What the show-runners have done is to make Middle-earth *smaller*, including the characters in it.
As Brett pointed out, why even care whether someone is secretly king of the Southlands when the entire Southlands consists of 50 people in one little village?
>>>> But never, you will note, in all those changes a puddle of goo
>>>> Once out of the body, he can re-assemble a form from the physical elements of the world, but this takes time.
And again, you seem to be perfectly capable of answering yourself. The way the show, hm, showed this particular re-assembly in less than a minute of screen time has zero consequence and importance for the future 10+ hours of story.
>>>> But they don't have to be stupid, shoddy, less impressive changes.
This is literally what "cinematic adaptation" means. Whatever Industrial Light and Magic can draw will always be more stupid, shoddy and less impressive compared to the insides of our heads, or to words on the page that inspire what is inside of our heads. Accept it and you might be a happier man.
"Indeed, I think at this point better not to call it an 'adaptation' but rather 'an original work based on some elements of Tolkien'."
The phrase I tend to use for "adaptations" that don't come close to the original text/whatever is 'based on the *title* of 'whatever'. So here: "Based on the title of the book 'Lord of the Rings'"
> Amazon's female dwarves don't have beards, which directly contradicts Tolkien canon.
To be strictly accurate, it directly contradicts something that Tolkien wrote but never published. It doesn't contradict Tolkien's published work.
I read that one problem with Amazon's series is that they didn't get the rights to the Silmarillion and therefore couldn't represent the history of Middle-Earth that was defined there. They surely didn't get the rights to War of the Jewels either.
Yeah, I guess, seeing female dwarves with beards would have been kinda cool. Misssed opportunity, for sure.
And the short hair on the Elves. Has anyone else noticed that this season, Elrond is both growing his hair out *and* getting more cheeky? He's putting Galadriel in her place in the very first episode, and boy does she not like being demoted! Plainly, Elvish self-confidence is in their hair. That is why Gil-galad is High King, because his hair is the longest of all the main Elvish characters, and why this version of Celebrimbor is so doddery, because he's got the short style 😁
I think you're onto something here. Plus the shaving of Cirdan, which I also kinda hated, corresponds with him giving in to the seduction of the rings.
> Plus the shaving of Cirdan, which I also kinda hated, corresponds with him giving in to the seduction of the rings.
Wasn't Cirdan the original user of Narya? If he had given in to the seduction of the rings, the elf rings would have been corrupted. How is this supposed to have worked?
In the show, elf rings have their own seductive allure, despite not being corrupted by Sauron. I think, the idea is that power corrupts by itself, darkness or no darkness.
And his hair (or rather, wig) got blonder. I wasn't sure if that was an effect of this golden glow they're saturating everything Elvish in, but I think he's meant to be getting younger as a kind of parallel to the rings rejuvenating everything, *and* this is also an example of the ring corruption.
It's silly, but at this point? Swallowing camels and straining out gnats to object. Though - a guy who is a shipwright in a harbour that makes ocean-going vessels, shaving with a *shell*? Plenty of axes, adzes and other sharp implements, but nobody invented a razor? Okay, fine, he's the only Elf with a beard, they never needed razors so they didn't invent them, but at least he should have some kind of knife to do the job!
Probably to stress the "connectedness with nature" aspect.
"we live on a planet with hundreds of millions of people already doing the thing AI is blamed for"
I think the planet would be meaningfully worse if it were trillions of "people" doing it, rather than hundreds of millions.
I might be swamped by a million scam attempts each day, rather than one or two.
I don't really agree with your overall point but I do in regards to creative works. We're at a low point in artistry. Movies, for example, are increasingly mere content as opposed to anything inspired. AI didn't cause that. The actual problem is that audiences don't go see anything original or interesting(with a few exceptions) and there's not much you can to do to fix that.
> Virtually everyone already chooses what to believe based on their political views and will pounce on the most ridiculous bullshit to justify it.
That's true, but at least I can currently derive some meaningless satisfaction from knowing that the other people are idiots and that I see the light. But when we get full Matrix... when for everything that is reported in the news you will see realistic videos of how it happened and also realistic videos how it didn't happen... when even the most stupid arguments will be made with flawless grammar... when most of the smart people you follow on the internet will actually be bots, but you won't know which ones...
I am not omniscient, and I don't have infinite time to explore all topics that I'm interested in. Currently I have a set of heuristics that seem to serve me well. They will stop working soon, because for every X that I currently use as evidence than something is more likely to be true than not, someone will put "make the argument for my preferred conclusion with lots of X" into the prompt of their LLM.
From some perspective, it's just a difference in quantity, but until now the lack of quantity offered some protection. I could rely on the assumption that some things are just too much work for anyone to do, and no one would spend so much money just to fool me; but this will all get cheaper and automated. Today, how much would it cost e.g. to set up an LLM that will publish a blog on Substack, posting arguments in favor of a predetermined party line? Or hundred such blogs, providing "social proof" to each other?
> If you want an end to “creative” slop, throttle how many books people can upload, or demand know-your-customer rules that would silence human and digital spammers alike.
This would probably create a market where poor people rent their identities to the producers of slop. Or maybe some kind of franchise, where if you have no writing talent, you can sign a contract, get the book generated for you, publish it under your name, and keep 20% of the profits.
But I agree that whining about the LLMs is not helpful; they are here, they will stay here, and they will only get more abused. We need to develop new ways to handle this world. Maybe in future you will never buy a book unless it got recommended by a human, who was certified as a human by some network of trust. And all phone calls will have some kind of identity verification. We already have certificates for HTTPS web pages, we will just have to integrate that into everything.
> they will stay here
Not necessarily a given. We are in a venture capital dreamtime right now, where any old random can point a web browser at any of a bunch of models and play with them as they like, largely without paying. However, they are bloody expensive to build and to run. If no killer applications materialise before investors lose interest and call it a day... well, it's not like they'll be gone, but the costs and hurdles to making use of one will be significantly higher.
"when even the most stupid arguments will be made with flawless grammar..."
When all statements will be available in whatever register is theoretically optimized for whatever purpose.
Cost makes a difference. It's one thing when steel is expensive and used for watch springs, and another when it's cheap and used for girders.
This feels like a distinction without difference- sure, ai may supercharge scams against old people rather than invent them, but that doesn’t strike me as substantially changing how we engage.
If self driving cars fail to invent the car accident, but drive fatal car accidents up 1000%, people’s collective response will still be something more akin to “holy shit do something” rather than “well to be fair this is a new *degree* of risk rather than a new *kind* of risk.”
I think self-driving cars will lower car fatalities, but make them outside people's control. From an rationalist perspective, I would think that would be a correct trade-off. I have come to think that self-driving cars will be OK drivers, which is better for the road because they will make fewer mistakes, though the kinds of mistakes they will make would not be the ones people would make.
Self-driving cars are probably already much safer most of the time than the average driver and will probably be so superior within 5 years that it would be lunacy to suggest otherwise.
But you’re right that they’ll likely introduce new classes of accidents, especially at first, and people will dramatically overindex on those and demand to let the human driven carnage continue.
Similarly, most people would probably be vastly better off by letting an AI do their grocery shopping, determine their activities, control their spending, etc., but people will resist due their precious freedom. Like privacy advocates early in the internet who were categorically wrong about what all that data harvesting would bring. (All we got was free services.) These people will insist on “making their own choices” while being plum-diddly-puzzled about why their “metabolism” is so different from those who let the AI take the wheel.
Freedom to make bad choices is still freedom, and shouldn't be removed. When your freedom impacts someone else's freedom is when we have a conflict, such as a bad driver causing an accident to someone else. AIs are tools to be used, and all tools can be used improperly.
Since you can’t change other people’s behavior (and the propensity to malice of a certain fraction), you might as well treat it as a fixed constant. As such, your creation already carries the potential for misuse that you’re also ushering in the world.
Let’s go to the extreme and say that you invent a better hunting rifle. Do you believe that you do not share a part of the blame when someone will inevitably use it to better shoot other people? Or are you somehow only praiseworthy for the good uses and not blameworthy for the bad ones? (I’m talking morality here, not law.)
This being said, I believe that in all three of your cases, we had a strained balance, undermined by bad actors, but determined by the fact that scammers needed to expand significant effort to appear somewhat legitimate.
If it makes scammers efficient enough to burn the commons (say, make scam calls actually 90% of calls*, whence making phone lines unusable), I don’t think some measure of blame for AI makers is inappropriate.
There’s also the fact that in your three cases, law enforcement is made difficult by rules about evidence (and lack thereof), due process, wiretaps, by the fact that there are other crimes that law enforcement agencies are more interested in… and because there’s no reason that your bad actors live in the US.
*after a quick google search, I am skeptical of this statistic and expect a scam baseline of less than 20%. This climbs a bit if you allow for telemarketing or political advertising.
"Since you can’t change other people’s behavior..."
Nonsense. People respond to incentives and disincentives all the time. It is absolutely possible to change people's behavior.
Why do you think attending college/university went from something strictly for aristocratic elites to something for most of the entire general population? It's because most well-paying jobs now require having a degree. Now, I'm sure many students benefit intellectually and knowledge-wise from post-secondary institutions, but very few people would pay high tuition costs for that alone.
Anti-smoking campaigns and various law changes to smoking also show how human behavior can be shifted with incentives and disincentives. Society effectively made smoking highly inconvenient and low-status, those drastically reducing the number of smokers.
I respect that most people here are libertarian (at least, that's the impression I get). It's fine to think that certain things should be tolerated since any effective measure against it would be overly harsh and authoritarian. But we shouldn't pretend that human behavior is fixed, just because such a thing would be convenient to libertarian beliefs.
Incentives and disincentives make an impact, and we probably should approach things on a case-by-case basis. Society decided that we were not going to be libertarian when it comes to cigarette smoking, and that was probably for the best. There may be some other things we're overly tolerant of, and it could be argued that scam calls are one of those things.
While you’re correct that we in fact can change people’s behaviors (and thank you for this welcome correction), I can’t see how this affects my point.
Your examples of behavior change occurred over an entire generation rather than the timescales we’re talking about here (a couple of years).
In fact, I very much agree with you on the case-by-case consensus approach. But this consensus depends on a damage/benefit ratio of sorts: how much damage does it do, how much would we suffer if we devoted more effort to fighting it, etc?
The issue is that in the comment’s examples, AI empowers the attackers to do much more damage – without readily improving our ability to “fight back”. Since you’re not removing the scammers (and stuff) and instead make their preying easier, why on earth would they refrain?
(Also, your post seemingly reads as though you believe I am a libertarian. What gave you this idea, if I may ask?)
Perhaps AI should be regulated somewhat. But how to minimize harm while still (mostly) gaining the benefits of the growth in AI technology is a tricky thing.
I'll admit my bias here - I've made a fair bit of AI-generated imagery, and I love how I can essentially get a beautiful free painting rapidly. It's truly wondrous to me that this is happening, beyond what I would have imagined when I was a child. I fear that in the backlash to AI people might be failing to take advantage of all the real beauty it can create. I admittedly never got much into the ChatAI side of things, but when I have used it, I've found it decently rewarding.
If there's a way to regulate away the worst aspects of AI will maintaining (most of) its positives, I would certainly support that. I hope that can be found.
I probably jumped the gun on the libertarian comment, so my apologies for that. Thanks for the good conversation.
I agree that in an ideal world, scammers are in jail. I’m not even above fantasizing that a few are suicided (yes, you read me correctly) “pour encourager les autres”.
But you still sound as though catching scammers is a matter of googling “what is the address of the nearest scammer”, then drive to the address and make the arrest, rather than a delicate investigation at the interface of a technology designed to escape physical location and rules of the legal system made to protect the defendant at every step (or so the cops will claim).
I won’t repeat what I wrote, but your experience is entirely consistent with the hypothesis (which I believe is more plausible) that law enforcement has since long realized that catching a scammer wasn’t worth the effort (because there’s already a lot of wrongdoing perceived as more damaging, and it’s easier to catch and punish than a scammer would be).
You are absolutely right: it sucks that so much cool stuff that could be brought into the world is banned or otherwise denounced because it is seen as disproportionately enabling a minority of bad actors.
But the bad actors are not going anywhere. And if the tool that you release empowers the bad actors relatively to the majority, the majority is *also* right to complain.
That people on different sides of the issue have to be at each others’ throats (denigrating their personal virtue, hygiene or competence), as opposed to politely acknowledging that both sides of the debate have a valid point and respectfully talking price, seems to be an unfortunate fixture of our times – itself a trade-off of otherwise very impressive stuff!
Very good comment. I agree with the vast majority of what you wrote.
That being said, I do feel that deep fake AI-images of real life people are something pretty unique to AI, and I can get it being uniquely bad for something like real life women having porn imagery made of them without their consent. Perhaps there should be a new law (or an editing of an existing law) to address this specifically.
Deep fake images designed to hurt a politician could probably easily be covered by updating libel/slander laws.
For most of what you brought up, I agree that AI is just a tool getting wrongly blamed for the moral failings of some of its users.