**Original Pitch Materials from a YC Company or other VC backed venture? Especially Scale AI or other data-focused companies?**
Hey everyone,
I'm in the process of preparing my own pitch for investors and was wondering if anyone here might have access to original pitch materials (slide decks, white papers, etc.) from a YC-backed (or other VC backed) company, particularly from Scale AI or any other data-focused startups.
Seeing how successful startups presented their ideas would be incredibly helpful for me to understand how to structure and frame my own. Any insights or resources would be greatly appreciated!
Keep in mind that the way you write the pitch deck isn't going to get you funded if you don't tick the boxes that vc investors want to see. That said, I think these are helpful for writing something that has a digestible format: https://kruzeconsulting.com/blog/top-5-venture-capital-pitch-decks/
Also, read the memos from Bessemer to get more of a sense of what the vc check-boxes are:
In theory, early stage funders care about some key pillars:
(1) potential market: if you are able to deliver, is there potential for very large revenue?
(2) product feasibility (sometimes aka your tech capability): can you deliver the product/service?
(3) product-market fit: do you have evidence that customers will actually buy your product/service at a profitable price?
(4) team: can your team make it through the stress of starting something new and does it include the key skills needed to create, produce, and sell the product?
Of course, predicting any of these things in advance is difficult. The more you can pattern match to something that has worked in the past, the easier it is to get an investor to believe. It is especially helpful if someone on your team has prior successful exits.
Finally, getting rejected is extremely common. Take a look at the Bessemer anti-portfolio for a rare example of a fund being candid about some of their misses.
Zelensky is right. Ukraine gave up the Soviet nuclear weapons stored on its soil in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the UK. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, their sovereignty was supposed to be respected. We're forcing them to fight with one arm tied behind their back.
One modest proposal. We've got a couple of billion dollars we haven't released to Ukraine. Why not hire Blackwater to help them out with their manpower shortages? Hey, officially, it wouldn't be US troops.
And another modest proposal: why shouldn't the US give Taiwan, South Korea, and possibly Vietnam nukes? Or maybe we should just leak a whitepaper discussing that option? Wouldn't that put a fox among the PRC chickens!? (I'd include Japan in that offer, but probably wouldn't accept them.)
Honestly, the bullying threats from Russia and China are getting old. I say call their bluff.
I'm feeling a bit hawkish tonight. It must be something I ate...
Foreign mercenaries have been operating in Ukraine for some time now. Probably NATO forces as "observers" as well, though of course their presence would be deniable. But the issue is you need tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand to make a real difference. Blackwater isn't a front line combat outfit like the Condottieri from the old days, they run security. And as Russia showed with Wagner, having a large private army operating under you is maybe not the best idea. It would be pretty embarrassing if the west sent a mercenary army to Ukraine and then they couped Zelenskyy.
True, though with a caveat: Ukraine did not give up any nuclear weapons that it could have actually made any use of. The idea that Ukraine "had nukes" in the sense of being a power that could have threatened others with nuclear attack, is false.
While Ukraine had physical control of those Soviet missiles with nuclear warheads, Russia had operational control of them (the codes with which to fire the missiles). It would have taken years of effort at a level of technical know-how which Ukraine did not then possess, to repurpose the warheads into Ukrainian operational use and control. And, if Ukraine began working on that project the Russians obviously would not have just stood by quietly.
> Ukraine did not give up any nuclear weapons that it could have actually made any use of. The idea that Ukraine "had nukes" in the sense of being a power that could have threatened others with nuclear attack, is false.
In regards to requiring the codes to bypass the security features of the nukes — not having the codes might slow down an independent actor from using the weapon. But less so for a nation-state with technical resources at its disposal. If you remove the fissile material from the bomb, you're halfway there to building a new nuke. More than halfway if you're dealing with a Pu-239-based nuke because Plutonium is much more difficult to refine and handle than U-235. Russian tactical nukes happen to be plutonium-fission bombs. Having the fissile material fall into the hands of technically competent nation-states is why Western analysts were worried about the breakup of the Soviet Union, and why they're now fretting about the possible breakup of Russia should Putin kick the bucket. And the Russian military has shown itself very susceptible to financial inducements. Security codes wouldn't have kept Ukraine from creating new bombs from the old ones.
Likewise, Soviet ICBMs were developed in the Soviet Ukraine. Ukraine still has that engineering talent. But considering the string of failures testing their new Sarmat ICBMs, modern Russia doesn't seem to have that talent. However, as an aside, ICBMs are an unreliable delivery method because fuzes based on impact deform quickly enough to cause the payload to misfire. Barometric fuzes are not very reliable either at speeds at which ICBMs approach the ground. Bombs dropped by bombers have the highest success rate (this is according to a 1990s study from US Strategic Air Command).
First, it's not just the PAL codes on the warheads; the Ukrainians almost certainly didn't have the specialized software and ground support equipment necessary to program trajectories into the missile guidance systems, or even the manuals needed to reconstruct that. Those are the sorts of things the Russians would have taken with them as they left.
Second, yes, Ukraine has a lot of first-rate engineering capability. They built the world's largest airplane, they built space launch vehicles for NASA, and they built all of the Soviet Union's ICBMs. They could have salvaged and rebuilt Russia's abandoned nuclear missiles into something that would work.
They couldn't have done it in less than six months to a year, and they couldn't have done it without outsiders noticing that all the old Russian missiles were being spirited away into the same secretive facilities that a bunch of Ukraine's nuclear and missile experts were now working.
In which case, Ukraine would have been invaded and conquered by the Russian Army in rather less than six months, with the entire Western world cheering them on for preventing a Rogue State from acquiring Illicit Nuclear Weapons. Remember, this was Leonid Kravchuk's Ukraine, not Volodymyr Zelenskyy's, with the (well-justified) expectation that he'd be running a standard-issue corrupt post-Soviet kreptocracy like the one Borat came from.
In the case of US nuclear weapons with permissive action link, it is supposed to be extremely hard to extract the plutonium without triggering protective detonation. No idea if this is true for Russian ones.
Certainly Ukraine could have forcibly seized the weapons, extracted the fissile material and made its own nukes. It would have taken time though. Maybe less than years, but certainly more than days. And it could not have been done in secret. Quite possibly if they had tried, Russia would have invaded right then - and the Russian army in 1991 would not have been suffering from 30 years of post imperial rot, nor would there have been as much opposition from the West over Russia invading to prevent Ukraine stealing Russia's nukes.
Indeed. Those involved in the closed-door negotiations that led to the Budapest Memorandum have said that the Russians behind those closed doors were quite clear and blunt: Ukraine would not be allowed to so much as loosen a bolt on any of those missiles. In the context of the early 1990s that seems entirely plausible, indeed no other attitude seems remotely credible from Russia shortly after the breakup of the USSR.
Given that, the nuclear missiles on Ukrainian soil had no more practical relevance to Ukrainian security than one of those cartoon pistols that shoots a small banner reading "BANG". That Russia ultimately failed to honor the Budapest Memorandum's promises to respect Ukraine's borders is therefore no net loss from Ukraine's perspective. It was worth trying for of course, but not something that is rationally mourned as a "failure".
Technically, the US and UK have lived up to their obligations under the Budapest Memorandum, which were to not invade Ukraine themselves, and to issue a strongly worded letter of protest if anyone else did. Only Russia has violated its obligations.
Also, technically, while Ukraine hosted Soviet nukes, it neither owned nor controlled them. The nukes were controlled by soldiers who took orders from Moscow, and the nuclear codes were, IIUC, also held in Moscow. And it's debatable if you can be said to have `given up' something you neither own nor control.
The statement about the utility of nukes as an ultimate guarantor of your security from invasion, however, is correct. Although I would suggest the truth of that statement has been self-evident to anyone with a brain for decades. (contrast e.g. the fates of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Un).
The modest proposal to send mercenaries to Ukraine...I don't see anything wrong with it, except that it is inefficient. Blackwater mercenaries will cost more than Ukrainian conscripts. Cheaper to just send a few extra billions of weapons.
Now, as for the other `modest proposal'...well, I imagine if Taiwan/ROK/Japan wanted nukes, they could make them themselves in short order. Our actually supplying them wouldn't be necessary, a promise to turn a blind eye would suffice. Vietman, maybe we'd actually need to supply them. But why stop there? We could supply nukes to every country in the UN, extend the pax atomica as far as it will go. Or might that actually have some undesirable risks?
Brett Stephens’ (Republicans) closing argument for Harris:
“It’s time for Kamala Harris to deliver her closing argument for why she deserves to be the next president. Here’s what I think she should say.
My fellow citizens,
When the tumultuous history of this year’s presidential election is written, future generations will note that the choice boiled down to this: the certainty of division versus the possibility of unity.
Whether you love Donald Trump or loathe him, prefer his policies or mine, you can be sure of one thing: If he wins next month, we will be a bitterly, vocally, emotionally, exhaustingly divided country.
There was no getting away from it. Trump is a human jackhammer pounding outside your window at 6:30 a.m. The noise is incessant. It’s in the ad hominem tweets, the nasty nicknames, the disparagement of anyone who disagrees with him as an idiot, a weakling, an enemy of the people. And let’s be honest: The noise also came from the enraged reaction that Trump provoked, whether on cable TV or the streets of many of our cities…
I don't see how Harris is a possibility of unity. This isn't backed up by anything, but contradicted by lots of things, not least of which is the simple difference between conservative and liberal political views. Economists will be against $6000 to families with newborns, $25,000 for first-time homebuyers, quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks, etc. The healthcare industry will be against removing medical debt from credit reports.
Economists will then be even more opposed to Vance's proposal to increase the Child Tax Credit to $5K per year per child (not just $6K once for each newborn). Per the Tax Foundation, Vance's proposal would cost literally _twice_ as much as Harris's. (The CTC is currently $2K per child.)
Harris's proposal for the $25K towards down payments is directly modelled on a program established in 2022 by Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis which DeSantis has been proudly funding in every year's state budget. Like that one, and actually several other state programs that exist, the Harris program would be open to only a small fraction of all first-time homebuyers.
Harris' published economic plan says that it would be for "up to" $25K, with only first-time buyers "whose parents did not own a home" being eligible for the full amount. Harris's campaign in response to questions has quoted a maximum of 100,000 homebuyers per year qualifying for any of this tax credit. No doubt those specifics would be further refined in negotiation with Congress. But anyway the talking point about Harris proposing to give $25K to all of the 1.7M or so first-time home buyers in the US each year, is very far from accurate.
Yes, economists would be opposed to increasing the Child Tax Credit.
I don't understand, though. Are you saying everyone agrees these proposals are a good idea? The question was whether Harris would unite or divide.
I bought my own house, with no help from my parents, in 2013, mostly due to the cost relative to rent. I received no help from anyone to do so. Granted, low interest rates helped a lot, for me, but I also found a lot of people looking to buy houses while interest rates were low and deciding to wait, for various reasons, despite advice to act while interest rates were low.
These financial things don't seem well-thought-out as policies, but proposed to garner votes as campaign promises. Why are homeowners more disadvantaged now than in previous years, so that they need a subsidy?
The stated logic of Harris's housing related policy proposals is the need to jump start US homebuilding. The problem it aims to address is "we don't build anymore". That's why most of the steps she proposes aim to directly enable or incentivize homebuilders to build more homes than has become the US norm. Most of the rhetoric on this subject in her published economic plan is about increasing the supply of new homes. In speeches she sums it up as "we need to build, build, build!"
Under that "increase the supply" focus, the limited subsidy targeted at a subset of first time home buyers intends to expand the range of new customers for homebuilders to build for.
We're off-topic, but on another one. The question is WHY don't we build anymore? I don't KNOW the answer, but have some possibilities:
1. It's NOT lack of demand, for housing prices are unreasonably high.
2. I have heard something about regulations being too burdensome, but have no data on that.
3. For a while, building materials were ridiculously priced, such as wood being about seven times normal price. I understand prices have moderated, but this would greatly increase the cost of new housing.
4. Could there be a labor shortage? Maybe everyone should quit their jobs at Google and go build houses?
Providing a subsidy only addresses the first and third ones, to make prices more attractive, and the first one doesn't apply. Are there other reasons I'm missing?
It's definitely regulation. I've got two RE developers in my immediate family, and know a few more personally - every developer has a number of big projects they'd love to do, but can't do due to political and regulatory hurdles.
Everyone hates developers, everyone tries to saddle them with the cost of roads and utilities and making 20-30% of their units "low income" (ie net-negative in terms of profit), and everyone loves to make permitting and planning more difficult by throwing up roadblocks and environmental studies and the like.
But developers are the only ones that build houses and residential units people can live in.
There are some labor issues too, depending on which part of the country you're in. It's always hard to find good construction crew guys that show up non-drunk-or-high and on time, and lately it's been harder in some markets due to crackdowns on immigrants.
Wasn't this basically the promise of Joe Biden? A return to normalcy, good 'ole Joe? I mean, I didn't believe it, but I know a lot of people who did. It was plausible.
It's been four years. Do you feel less divided? Does the country feel like it healed?
I'm not even saying this to be mean, while I don't think it was likely, there was a genuine opportunity and it sucks that it's gone but...why would we possibly believe that Kamala Harris could heal divisions that Joe Biden couldn't/wouldn't?
I mean, I think the return to normalcy thing was real. I spent 3.5 years not waking up to news articles about outrageous things the President said. (The last 0.5 was sadly spoiled by news articles about Trump saying even more outrageous things on the campaign trail.) I started to see more wonkish articles along the lines of "the Biden administration tightened rules on reticulating splines when making foobar transactions, as part of an improved package of sanctions on Russia."
And I don't just mean this in the sense of "Biden did a bunch of policy things I like," which Republicans might understandably hate. I mean it more in the sense of "when the Biden admin did a policy thing, it happened with minimal chaos and I got the impression a relevant professional had looked over the idea first." Trump would tweet out policy things at random and then the rest of the administration would scramble to make it happen. And then he'd get sued because the lawyers didn't have a chance to check if he could actually do the thing he said he'd do.
As for healing our national divide, I think that's a little above any one man's pay grade, but having an executive branch that functions normally and is actually good at its jobs would be a good start with getting people to trust the government again.
What do you want her to do, kill Trump and all of his supporters? Nothing short of a world war is going to generate the nationalistic fervor necessary to unite this country.
No, she doesn't have to be Jesus and she can't afford to be Jesus, she's a real politician with real constraints. But the world would look a lot different if, after 4 years of Biden, the border was secure and the woke was put away. If Kamala could actually credibly do this, that'd be a step in the right direction. And that's what we need. We've walked a long path of national division, we're not going to get back to Happy Days tomorrow, but we could at least stop walking down it and maybe make a few steps back.
Because if you have anything but the most mild anti-woke position, at least 40% of the population holds the exact opposite position, and the RVTRN would need to be put away.
These are unsolvable problems that will only go away when all the boomers and gen X types die, and new unsolvable problems can take over their niche.
I don't want Harris to kill everyone in a red hat, I just want Brett Stephens to not write Harris speeches under the premise that she will unite the country without killing everyone in a red hat.
( Not that I like Trump. I will always remember him as the president who suggested looking into injecting disinfectant. Could we please have a _little_ common sense? Grr. A pox upon both their houses! )
Many Thanks! Actually, _many_ doubts! It all depends on the terms of the loans, and who they actually go to. The only thing Harris has made clear is which race will be eligible.
I mean, now that I know that those treats are on the table, I'm unclear as to why I shouldn't commit to not voting for her, until I'm promised my share too.
Yup, that would be the way identity politics plays out - and if the total budget for it is fixed, it would be a zero-sum, potently divisive, game. Many Thanks!
They can print as much money as they like, and the beauty of inflation is that it takes the money roughly equally from everyone who's loaned money or keeps cash reserves or has a fixed-payment job. I just want to make sure I'm loaned my share before inflation lowers its value too much.
Firstly, I don't like this genre of journalists writing speeches they think politicians should give. They're also often not as clever as they think they are.
As to the substance: Putting this in maximally uncharitable terms the message is: "We are more intolerant than you so let us have power and accept that you will lose." That might not be fair but I'll bet that's what Trump supporters will hear from this. He is citing the Democratic reaction to Trump as being so bad the Democrats ought to have power. The Republicans have a duty to soothe this by giving up power to the Democrats. And I can't see this getting a positive response from Republicans.
More broadly, the Democrats would have had to eat vegetables for the last four years for this message to carry weight. In order to credibly ask Republicans to suspend their policy preferences to protect democracy they should have suspended their own first. If they really believed this was potentially the last election they should have suspended virtually every policy preference of theirs in favor of defending democracy. They should have given moderate Republicans everything they wanted except for a few key non-negotiables in exchange for defection. And by "a few" I mean "no more than three." Lincoln really only had two: slavery and the union.
Instead they've treated this as an opportunity to run to the left. Now that it's backfired they're running back to the right at the last moment, having already locked in a fair bit of progressive policy. So this will look insincere. They might still win but they're not going to be the unity party this implies unless Kamala then immediately swerves to the right and makes similar concessions. Which she's shown little sign of wanting to do.
Your comment has really made me think. Do you think that the Democrats could have won the 2024 election if they had spend the Biden era "eating vegetables"?
Yes. In fact I think they would have had to concede far less than Lincoln did. There were numerous opportunities for the Biden administration to compromise and they turned most of them down. And in turning them down, and in its actual day to day policy, went further and further left and repeatedly put in giveaways to its supporters. That is the maximalist style of politics of today. But that maximalist style of politics produces swings and narrow victories.
If you think the other side is a real threat to the country then you need to avoid that at almost all costs. Which means compromising on policy preferences to draw over the other party's moderate voters. Going after moderate Republicans is a winning trade unless you lose two progressives for every Republican that defects or the progressives become Trump supporters. And you don't need to abandon the progressives entirely. You don't have to become a Republican. But you also can't be Elizabeth Warren. You don't get to be transformational as Biden said he wanted to be. You just get to make things solidly better (at least from your perspective) and crush Trump at the polls so thoroughly the Republicans move left.
There were smaller and more focused but more bipartisan versions of covid relief, Build Back Better, and the IRA. He rejected the Republican compromise border bill and instead tried to pass a more party line one which had more left wing provisions including a more general amnesty. He rejected the debt ceiling balancing the budget compromises and instead had a debt ceiling standoff. And he rejected the Republican border/national security-and-Ukraine bill. He also turned down compromises on student loans, police reform, gun control, and various agency/regulatory policies around things like oil production or the FTC/SEC.
In general, he ran to the left. Which he and Kamala (and Bernie and Warren) said until it became politically inconvenient this election cycle. You can go back and listen to what they were saying about the border bill Kamala is now using to say she cared about the border at the time. They were very clear it was meant to be a left wing bill that encouraged people to come and was meant to provide a pathway to citizenship for illegals here as well as opening the US to more immigration. (Which actually is something I agree with. But I don't think the politics work well.)
Now, to be clear, I understand that I am saying the Democrats should have showed restraint in an environment where politics is more extreme. But I think that would have helped with avoiding many of their worst mistakes and also won them more in the middle. Delivering moderate left wing reforms while returning to a sense of bipartisanship and normalcy would have been very attractive against Trump.
The gamble they took is that Trump is so uniquely poisonous that they can eat their desert instead and go farther left and they'll still get re-elected because Trump is uniquely obnoxious. Maybe they're right. But maybe they're wrong. We'll find out in about two weeks.
What does eating vegetables mean? I do think if Joe Biden had governed like Bill Clinton (or better, like hypothetical President Romney) then Democrats would be winning in a landslide.
I think it means that if the Dems really thought the biggest threat to the country was the antidemocracy of MAGA, they should have buckled down and compromised with moderate Republicans to get solid election reforms passed and otherwise focused on bipartisan policies even if that was hard and less rewarding to the base. Instead Biden spent political capital on things like student loan relief. Obviously that was divisive! And how could it compare to the threat they claimed to see in Trump's movement?
I asked myself, "How is off-earth habitation different from living on earth?" and the snap answer is "It's a lot more work".
My tentative answer is that human capacity for work would need to be increased. This doesn't mean the result would need to be a leisureless dystopia. I think it would take greatly increased cognitive and sensory capacity and mental endurance, with possibly some increased physical capacity.
It would be an interesting spin if they actually need *more* leisure because burnout is a serious risk.
This would at least be good enough for science fiction, with people running groups of robots and being able to see areas of the biome directly.
There would need to be an excellent tools for avoiding tyranny because they couldn't afford leaders who are seriously wrong.
A City on Mars is a recent book about this (particularly the "it's a lot more work" parts that often get overlooked in discussions of rocketry) which I liked.
The authors advocate a "wait and go big" approach to colonization - do lots of prep work and research on Earth before you put down anything on Mars, then build a big colony with enough people to handle all the complexity that arises from living off world. Like, forget "enough people to grow potatoes," you want "enough people to run a hospital with a maternity ward and a psychiatric clinic."
("How is making babies affected by microgravity and radiation?" is one of many questions the authors suggest figuring out *before* you build the colony, rather than learning the hard way nine months into your colony's life.)
As someone who has studied this for decades, sometimes professionally, I was very much *not* impressed.
The parts where they discuss the challenges of space settlement and development, they correctly identify potential problems, make only a half-hearted and often ill-informed effort at suggesting solutions, and dismiss the matter as Just Too Hard Right Now. For example, on the difficulties of long-term life support, they spend six pages discussion the failures of Biosphere 2, in spite of that project's nearly complete lack of relevance to near-term space settlement, and then one paragraph mentioning some of the work people are *actually* trying to do in this area, acknowledging that they've had a fair deal of success, but since they haven't completely solved the problem as of 2023, no go.
The parts where they discuss the opportunities of space settlement and development, they again raise the right issue, but then set the bar impossibly high at "must completely solve every facet of this problem for Earthbound humanity", then point out that it isn't possible to do that so it's not really worth bothering. For example, regarding the prospect of moving industrial activity into space where it may be more efficient and will cause massively less ecological damage, they point out that it would be massively impractical to move Earth's production of *concrete* into space, and then drop the subject.
Concrete is the classic example of something that pretty much has to be locally manufactured, it *can* be made pretty much everywhere, it's needed in vast quantities, and it's too cheap and too heavy to be worth the bother of shipping. What about rare-earth refining, or semiconductor manufacturing? Low-mass but high-value products, and ones often associated with great environmental damage when done on Earth. There would probably be benefits in moving some part of *those* industries off the Earth. Might they be worth the cost of doing so? Don't ask the Weinersmiths; they have a concrete excuse to ignore the question.
And then there's the bit where they argue that space settlement and development will necessarily result in great political strife, ultimately to bloody wars among the new Colonial powers that will spread back to Earth. How does that work again? They've already argued that space settlement and development is impossibly difficult, and completely worthless if one does it anyway, but somehow China is going to be launching nuclear missiles at the United States because we got there first? Wouldn't that problem be solved by just translating "A City on Mars" into Chinese and sending a copy to Xi, so he can laugh at the silly Americans building cities on Mars?
But that does seem to be their argument. And they show little understanding of the real efforts being made to address that issue, from the Outer Space Treaty to the Artemis Accords. Really, it reads like they got infected with the "Settler Colonialism is Pure Evil" thing, and tried to expand it to Mars just because people use the words "settle" and "colony" in such discussions, Then went looking for excuses to back it up.
I find myself wondering who exactly the "experts" and "advocates" they interviewed in researching this book actually are. Because it sounds like they found a set of people singularly inept at making the case for e.g. cities on Mars, and liked what they heard. How many people did they have to talk to before they found ones who would tell them what they wanted to hear?
I anti-recommend this book in the strongest possible terms, except that people who do want to advocate for space development will need to read it because they'll need to know what to expect. Thanks for nothing, Kelly and Zack.
I mean, a great deal of technological innovation is routinely visualized as a force multiplier on human effort. Esp. the Industrial and Digital Revolutions. And having more autonomous agents at each person's disposal is my idea for that next capacity bump as well.
_Seveneves_ begins with a character running a bunch of bots doing maintenance on the asteroid bolted to the front of the space station in which she resides, watching them crawl around, check in with the centralized generator for more juice, and improving them with software patches as she watches. She seems to enjoy the tinkering. A lot of work can be tolerated by way of being fun.
Also, in that environment, survival often demands too much work and careful monitoring to leave anyone with enough time to go about erecting a tyranny.
Tyrannies aren't the side projects of mustache-twirling men in smoke-filled backrooms, they're a cancer of systems that do not have functions specifically designed to prevent them.
When you have a system wide crisis that prevents the trains (as a symbol of all the systems large societies need to function properly) from running on time. The easiest, fastest way to get the trains to run on time is to give all the power to a dictator. Without checks on power, it will inevitably grow cancerous. Cancer is where a minority of the agents within a system hack the system to allocate more resources to themselves in a way that is detrimental to the system as a whole. In respect to societies, cancer is more commonly known as tyranny.
In an off-earth habitation, survival will be very difficult, especially in the early years, so making sure the trains run on time will be especially important. This will make those societies even more susceptible to the development of cancerous tyrannies.
If off-Earth habitats end up having fewer tyrannies, it will be in the same way that Elephants are less likely to develop cancer. By sheer number of cells, they should be more susceptible to cancer and so have more safe-guards in place to prevent it. Off-Earth habitats will be more susceptible to cancerous tyrannies and so will need more safe-guards to prevent it if they are to survive long term.
My goal is to be the Anthony Bourdain of Cars. That is, I go on youtube and talk about cars (and sometimes other random things) but I also reflect on philosophy, politics, and economics. If you'd be into that, this is the playlist to start with: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA_KEM2YJkctJhl8hcghFpyMN1igPFB0p
ACX meetup this Sunday in Munich! I'm not hosting but I just thought I'd share since it didn't end up in the meetups post. More info here: https://acxmeetup.substack.com/
A week or two ago someone posted a comment either here or on a similar site that mentioned the book Accelerando in passing. Curious, I decided to read the book, discovered it was part of a trilogy, and after finishing the first two have started in on it.
To whoever made the post: thanks for nothing. Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise were just ho hum and meh. 12% in, Accelerando is so far the worst book I can recall reading.
Curse you, Jeff Bezos. I trusted you. Your e-commerce website listed them as a trilogy.
Oh well. I guess you don't get divorce your wife for lip filler money by playing it straight.
My life is hollow enough that I don't mind having read the extra two books, and while they weren't my favorites I'm still much more likely to try other works by Stross than if my only exposure was Accelerando.
Same here, though I also liked both Accelerando and Iron Sunrise, so my tastes are probably a terrible guide to what TK-421 is likely to enjoy (and I'm not the person who wrote the original comment endorsing Accelerando).
"Laundry Files" is a series, and should be read in publication order until you get bored and/or frustrated with it. Because somewhere along the way, Stross got bored and/or frustrated with the original concept and the original protagonists, and it kind of went off the rails. Exactly when that happens is a matter of opinion, but the first time you find yourself not enjoying it, know that it's probably not going to get any better.
> The deficit in construction is historic, by some measures.... Texas building executives are speaking in apocalyptic terms about the labor shortage they’re still facing. Behind closed doors, they bluntly acknowledge that countless new projects won’t get off the ground unless they hire workers who are in the country illegally.
> ....The industry also faces a labor-force problem it cannot address quickly simply by raising pay. For two decades, the number of U.S.-born workers entering the construction trade has nosedived.... Cutting off the supply of undocumented workers, then, would be like cutting off the supply of concrete and lumber.
Another view is that they just don't want to pay what would motivate Americans to do it. It's hidden inflation. If all the prices went up enough to account for paying wages that hiring Americans would require, it would shake the economy.
Yeah, so basically they are looking for people to work for less than the survival wage, because the government is footing a large part of their bills (food, housing, health insurance) and not making them pay taxes.
See the problem? If the government was giving that much financial help to documented workers, they could probably work for less than the survival wage also.
The government of Texas is subsidizing the food and housing costs of illegal immigrant construction workers? I must be out of the loop, but it's been a while since I spent any great amount of time in Texas - can you explain to me how that works exactly?
I saw articles about other states, not Texas, paying big money to house and feed migrants. You are right, except for TANF and SNAP, I don't have any proof of this going on in Texas.
On the other hand, there are non-profits doing just this in Texas, and my attempts to figure out who's funding some of them have come up empty, so I wouldn't put it past the federal government, since we know that a lot of what the federal government does for migrants is not publicized. There may be no official record of federal government funding migrants beyond the regular federal programs, but I don't think you can safely assume they are not doing just that, since, with regards to migrants, the federal government is not acting in good faith.
Health care, absolutely, But I think that's just one more facet of the US (and mostly the states, through Medicaid) subsidizing the health care of basically all low-income families, which means they'll be subsidizing health care for low-tier construction workers whether they're illegal or not. And subsidizing health care for illegals whether they're doing anything useful or not.
Food and housing, for people who make even construction-worker wages, that doesn't get subsidized nearly as much, which is why I was asking. Yeah, a construction worker with half a dozen kids will probably be getting TANF, but again whether illegal or not.
"All services are allowed only for noncitizen migrants within 45 days of their release from DHS. Allowable costs and services must meet the following criteria:
Primary services in the allowable activities include: shelter, food, transportation, acute medical care, and labor for primary services.
Secondary services in the allowable activities include: renovations or modifications to existing facilities, clothing, outreach information, translation services, and labor for secondary services."
I also found the list of organizations getting that money in Texas at https://www.fema.gov/grants/shelter-services-program/ssp-a/fy24-ssp-a-amended-reserve-funding-nofo . As you can see, a bunch of Christian charities (some of them landing multi-million grants), a bunch of cities, El Paso county, and a few entities harder to classify. So that's who's funding some of the nonprofits - the taxpayers are.
I am short on time and currently can't figure out if a migrant released by DHS is technically legal or illegal, though. Also, I think there might be some restrictions on the amount of time people can get this aid - again, I don't have time to go through this now.
I doubt if many kids graduating (or not graduating) from secondary school have the skill sets to enter the building trades.
I'm probably older than most of the peeps on this substack, but I remember when the housing trade offered a livable salary for non-college-bound boy-kids (it was "girls need not apply" in those days). Of course, way back in the pre-Internet dark ages, when I was growing up, shop classes were offered so that students could get a start at learning trades like carpentry, engine repair, basic electrical skills. AFAICT, none of my local high schools teach these skills anymore. There's a satellite school in my district called an "ROP", but it seems to prepare kids for careers as veterinary assistants and dental hygienists.
I'd say (subjectively) that sometime during the 1980s, builders realized the smart move was to jump through the certification hoops to become contractors and to hire cheap labor to do their grunt work. Likewise, new cheap materials flooded the building market, lowering the quality of new homes (but that's another story).
I've been told by my friends south of the border that Mexican secondary schools still offer these old-style building trades classes — probably because there are so many jobs north of the border.
I hate any system that relies on a system of rule breaking. It's not really fair to anyone.
But your proposed solutions don't really work in the current political climate.
If the past year has shown us anything about the national mood, it's that an immigrant's legal status doesn't really matter. The Haitians who settled in Springfield did so perfectly legally and still became the center of a firestorm. Neither party is proposing any sort of increase in legal immigration at the moment.
Raising pay would be the other path, as you say - but this would increase construction costs, and thus housing costs, and housing costs are a big part of inflation which everybody hates.
An honest approach to the problem would be either:
A) "We need to increase legal immigration to keep housing costs down." or
B) "We need to reduce both legal & illegal immigration, even if it means less construction and thus higher inflation."
(A) is generally the Democratic approach, when the political winds blow right (i.e. not now). The Republican approach is to either pretend (B) has no tradeoffs, or to talk about doing (A) and then do the opposite.
Obviously not everyone who is anti-immigration is only anti-illegal, but I think there's a enough who see a distinction for that to matter.
Springfield is a weird case, because of how it was done. If I understand it correctly, they were brought in using a non-standard system that lets them work in the US without becoming permanent citizens. In some sense they bypassed almost all of the hurdles that legal immigrants have to jump through - making them more akin to illegal immigrants in important ways. Also they become de facto second class citizens, an intentional underclass. This should be bad according to both the left and the right, judged by their own rhetoric.
Many on the right see that situation as a defection by the Democrats. Granting a type of legal status that clearly isn't what the Republicans were demanding, just to say that they are there legally.
> Raising pay would be the other path, as you say - but this would increase construction costs, and thus housing costs, and housing costs are a big part of inflation which everybody hates.
Per [0], labor is about 40% of the construction costs. A 1000 square foot (93 square meters) home costs about two years of median household income (80k$) in construction costs. This does not feel excessive, even if costs were to rise by 20% because you increased all wages by 50%.
The reason the rents are too damn high is that in places where people very much prefer to live for some reason (likely jobs), i.e. the big cities, land value is immense. Hence Gergianism and all that.
Why do they need illegal immigrants instead of legal immigrants? I have long been against illegal immigration but in favor of significantly increased legal immigration (and an overall much shorter and easier process).
If they just need immigrants, then the term illegal is misleading (though for practical reasons, there may not be enough legal immigrants to fill the needs). If they are looking specifically for illegal immigrants, I think what I'm hearing is that they want to offer bottom dollar and no benefits and can only get that through hiring illegals. I'm a lot less sympathetic to that, and think it's *really bad* for the country to accept the idea of an underclass. This is an argument for an underclass, rather than an argument for fixing our labor problems (including through increased legal immigration).
Illegal immigrants are preferred for a variety of reasons: you can pay them less (in theory, even if in practice these days even the illegal market operates at or above the minimum wage floor), you don't need to worry as much about worker's comp or other protections, they'll work harder without raising a fuss, they have less recourse if (for whatever reason) you need to treat them outside the normal bounds of the law / norms, faster to ramp up the numbers without dealing with a bureaucracy, zero worry about them ever unionizing, etc.
There's long been the argument that if you're really serious about cutting off illegal immigration the real way to do it isn't through border security or focusing on the immigrants: go after the employers. Strong criminal and civil penalties for businesses employing illegal immigrants with personal liability for those involved.
Of course, there's always the shadow / gig economy. Do those nice ladies from Thumbtack who clean my house every week have work authorization? How draconian will we need to make this enforcement? Not to go assuming anyone's immigration status but they definitely don't speak English.
Stopping diffusion across a porous membrane when there's a powerful gradient is a hard problem no matter the domain.
The system is electronic and verifies someone is eligible to work in the US. It's free to us and already available. It's existed since 1996.
Between business interests and people sympathetic to illegal immigration, it obviously never went mainstream. But, we have the technology to solve a lot of illegal immigration now. It would push more of the work being done to off-the-books locations and the transition would be very painful (and more painful the longer we wait). I'm convinced that such a move is necessary, because the alternative is accepting that underclass and making that more and more unsolvable the longer we wait.
"The federal government came up with a strong system to identify illegal employees, and appeared to be moving towards requiring it for all employers ... Between business interests and people sympathetic to illegal immigration, it obviously never went mainstream."
Yes, that's the point. There's not sufficient political will to effectively clamp down on the hiring side of the equation.
Agreed on all points (albeit with an open question on how much to increase legal immigration - my knee-jerk reaction is that we should aim for approximately the same total population that we have now in the long term, given our TFR of 1.5 or so).
I have no idea why so many people want to scare migrants away.
(Yeah, yeah, all the criminal lazy slackers coming in, yada yada, but with anti-immigrant rhetoric, the first ones to be scared away are the ones who can go find better work opportunities in friendlier environments)
I am massively pro immigration, legal immigration. Being pro illegal immigrantion is really really strange. The country defines the legal immigration process. As such advocating for illegal immigration is literally advocating letting in people the American government has decided shouldn't be there, e.g., letting in criminals, people who drain from the economy, and people who are being exploited (e.g., people being trafficked, people travelling to work for sub-minimum wage, etc...)
If you want more migration, then change the immigration policy; don't advocate for lawlessness!
It is a major major failing of the democratic party that they dismiss valid concerns about immigration by tarring the speaker as being motivated by racism.
Republicans with a longer memory talk about the 1986 amnesty. They felt directly betrayed because it was supposed to be a two step process where current illegal immigrants are allowed to stay and then the border gets closed hard. Since the border never closed, they're waiting on Democrats to uphold their end of the bargain (or more practically, don't trust the Democrats to uphold their end of a new bargain).
So the Republicans feel that only options which close the border (either as a first step or only step) can be on the table. Obviously Democrats don't like this, so there's a stalemate.
Saying that the Republicans have had many opportunities feels either false or misleading. Sure, they could approve of plans like the Gang of Eight plan, but that's a compromise where the Democrats get a good bit of what they want. Republicans don't want that, and specifically don't trust that what they are supposed to get from a compromise will actually happen. Technically all of the millions of border crossings in the last few years should not legally happen either, based on current laws. It's hard to argue that we'll surely enforce new restrictions when current ones aren't followed.
In 1984, according to Wikipedia, Reagan was president and the house and the Senate both went Republican quite seriously. They had that full majority for the next two years and then lost control of the Senate and the house to the Democrats. Two solid years of being completely in charge of the country.
Immigration to this country has been a talking out of both sides of your mouth issue for as long as I can remember and I can remember further back than 1986. There are a lot of Republicans who like the downward pressure on labor costs that immigration brings, even if they at the same time need to squawk about it. I maintain my position that it is a bipartisan problem.
No doubt a lot of Republican leadership, at least prior to Trump, "secretly" wanted more immigration, even if it was the illegal kind. I think they worked out this compromise as much with their own team as with the Democrats. Bottom line, the people then against immigration got hoodwinked. Those same people, or their ideological descendants, want actual border control. They no longer trust the business side to play fair with them. They, quite accurately, also don't trust the Democrats as a whole on this issue.
88% of Republicans say they want immigration reduced. The Republican leadership did not survive this, including Rubio's presidential bid in 2016, considering he was part of the Gang of Eight who tried to get a compromise bill in place.
It looks like we've been steadily increasing funding for border security with little to show for it. The white paper below claims (whines) that "The federal government has already met the border security benchmarks laid down in earlier Senate immigration reform bills"... but ... "Congress continued to fund ever-greater levels of enforcement without significant increases in adjudication or passage of broader reforms to the immigration system."
I'm not sure why Republicans claim the Democrats are neglecting border security. We Dems have cooperated with the Republicans to throw money at the problem. If a left-wing think tank claims we're wasting money, you know something is out of kilter.
> Since 1994, when the current strategy of concentrated border enforcement was first rolled out along the U.S.-Mexico border, the annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has increased nearly 20-fold, rising from $400 million to over $7.3 billion in FY 2024 (Figure 1). Even when adjusted for inflation, that is an increase of over 765 percent.
The problem isn't money, it's policy. Remain In Mexico, which was rescinded under Biden, made a big difference. Releasing people caught along the border *inside the US* while they wait for their asylum hearing is asinine and everyone knows it. EDIT: and the rules for applying for asylum are also nuts, clearly being abused to get people through checkpoints. No amount of money is going to fix that, since these people are being caught by border patrol.
DACA is another example - these are people who do not qualify for legal status under existing laws, but were exempted by executive action. That's a clear defection and Obama was very clear about that at the time - he pleaded with Congress to pass his preferred legislation and when that didn't happen he put much of it into effect anyway. That's not a good faith attempt at fixing the border situation, that's signaling an intention to end-run around the laws.
Please don't put opinions in my mouth. I just found it amusing that Texas home builders (Texas, mind you!) are worried about a shortage of undocumented workers. Irony abounds!
Personally, I believe we need (a) to secure our borders, but (b) we should have a system in place to legally normalize (and track) low-skill immigrant workers (guest workers). Whether those coming in under that system could earn permanent residency and citizenship is another question.
I don't think it's *completely* arbitrary. The difference between legal and illegal is ideally the difference between someone given permission to reside, vote, make use of state services, etc. in return for being checked for "has a contagious deadly disease", "plans to hijack a plane and fly it into a building", "plans to shoot a US official", "plans to scout our infrastructure and report weaknesses to his home country", "is just here for the free bennies", or even "wants to do good here but is so used to a graft-and-bribe economy that he'll drag our system down unless he gets a walkthrough".
Now, exactly how we check for those things involves a list of methods with tradeoffs in expense and accuracy and infringements on civil rights or dignity, and the line between methods used and not *is* arbitrary - but the thing driving those methods is still real enough.
Do you really not know or are you just saying that?
Put another way: would you accept a Gulf or Japan-style guest worker program? Say: You can come, work (potentially under the minimum wage, but better than Bangladesh), and live with the full rights of US law - except: you can't vote, your kids (if you birth them here) aren't citizens, and you have to go back after five years.
I'd take that deal! Would most people who want migrants say the same? I suspect not - the migrant debate *is not about economics* - for either side.
The "your kids aren't citizens" part would require a Constitutional amendment, something we are no longer able to do in the US. So it seems to make that "deal" a nonstarter.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The current SCOTUS majority has contradicted some things that are implied in the Constitution, and/or which previous Supreme Courts had concluded reflect the intentions/purposes of various parts of the Constitution. And I’ve no doubt that they will do so again on multiple subjects.
However they have not tried to reverse anything that is plainly and specifically directed by Constitutional text. The above quotation is about as plain and direct as it gets.
It's not entirely plain and simple. I forget where I read this, but "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was not previously universally understood to imply universal birthright citizenship. (As the child of foreign nationals they're "not subject to the jurisdiction thereof").
Now, is that a totally obvious reading? Not at all, but this is law, not software. It's just words on paper interpreted by people. If you can get Roe from the 14th Amendment, or Wickard from the 10th, this doesn't seem like *that* much of a stretch.
With white collar jobs being outsourced abroad(both F100 companies I have worked at are succesfully working towards a 80/20 India, US workforce split), native-born Americans might have to start doing the dirty jobs.
Prime age labor force participation is at its highest rates since 2001. Who are these Americans loosing their jobs to outsourcing and not being able to get new ones?
Here in Britain a good plumber or other trade would exceed in pay most graduate jobs, including tech which rarely has the outsize wages that exist in the US.
Is that a bad thing? The "people moving away" will need to move somewhere -- encourage them to move to the cities in the 100K-1M range that would benefit from adding more people.
Once a city reaches three million it should be bonsaied to prevent any further growth. We can make an exception for a handful of global-importance megacities, but there's no reason why 3+ million people should be living in, say, Phoenix or San Antonio.
Things like average income, per-capita GDP in a city, and patents scale superlinearly with population, though. There are actually incremental benefits to cramming more people into the same area.
This is from Geoffrey West's book Scale. He began by looking at organisms, circulatory branching, and other things and kept finding nice upward sloping graphs with log y-axes and whatever metric of interest:
What's wrong with Mexico City? It's got more culture (museums, galleries, concert venues) than any US city except New York. Good facilities. Good food. I considered retiring there, but an influx of like-minded Gringos has driven up rental prices there (or at least that's the local explanation I heard for the rise of the cost of living in Mexico D.F.). I heard lots of grousing about us northerners moving in. "Please don't move here," one restauranteur said to me. "We love your tourist dollars, but you estadounidenses are distorting the housing market!"
I wish I had a time machine so that I could take you guys back and you would find that your exact clones 30 years ago, were very interested in preventing a wasteland of sprawl and all its attendant problems.
Why y’all have never thought about it, is interesting in itself. The topic was shut down. Curiously we had the financial meltdown about 10 years later owing to mortgage derivatives and the idea that home building *was* the American economy, and also that everyone should own a little house that would ultimately appreciate less well than a Ford truck. The people who made these foolish decisions were mostly made whole to go out and do it all over again.
I was not discarding the thesis. I internalized it and have been thinking about and appreciate what they said. I assumed the many questions they asked were rhetorical and for me to think about. What you said about trophy hunting is very interesting and I will look into it. I am not sure why you were so hostile in your response. You also projected quite a lot onto me that turns out is not true.
I know this is far from the maximal impact, but you could consider working to improve lives of small farmers. This would increase numbers of farmed animals that are not confined to factories but get to roam on the grass and enjoy the sun (and hopefully, in the end, decrease the numbers of the ones who don't get to live like that).
It's probably a good idea to try to get a mentor who can give you advice. Probably best to just mail impressive EAs working on animal welfare until one says they can have a videocall with you or similar. And then try to stay in contact with that person, telling them your current plans, considerations etc.
There's a lot to be said for the gratification of direct giving. I once had a cat with a heart condition, and discovered that Angell Animal Hospital (famous for doing advanced veterinary medicine) had an animal cardiologist on staff. He had expert knowledge about many different kinds of little animal hearts. During my visits, focused on my cat and his heart with remarkable intensity and kindness. Some vets there also volunteered once a week at a local pay-whatever-you-can clinic that gave shots and other routine care to pets of poor folks.
I just looked up veterinary cardiology salary, and in my area they make about $350K annually. If you wanted to devote some time to large-scale animal welfare work, seems like you might be able to work part time as a vet cardiologist, make half that salary, which is still a pretty good income, and devote the rest of your time to volunteer or low paid work on big animal welfare projects.
This depends heavily on your specific ethical framework.
Let me ask you a question. Who is the most influential animal rights activist of the past 50 years, based purely on actual, current reduced suffering to animals? You might have a few guesses. Peter Singer (the founder of the modern animal rights movement)? Ingrid Newkirk (the founder of PETA, one of the largest animal rights organizations)? Certainly as far as influence in academia, shifting public consciousness, visible activism, etc. they are heavyweights.
But as far as current results go? I'll make the case for Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is, essentially, a slaughterhouse consultant. She goes to meat processing plants and helps redesign them to be more humane, while not interfering in the business of killing animals itself. For example, reducing distractions that can stress out animals, non-slip ramps to reduce injuries during transport, and better restraint systems for cattle to reduce the rate of mishaps during stunning. Over half of all slaughterhouses in North America adopted her innovations. By actual, measurable results, Temple Grandin has likely done far more to improve the welfare of factory-farmed animals than any other human alive. More than PETA, more than Singer, more than any of the countless NGOs and nonprofits and advocacy groups that claim to be making a difference.
Understand that moral change is the single hardest kind of change to accomplish in practice. Philosophers, emperors, and prophets have tried and failed countless times throughout history to change the natural morals of mankind. If you commit to this path, you will be fighting an unwinnable battle. People like me will never be convinced to stop eating meat. Factory farm managers won't read your books or academic papers or listen to your speeches no matter how convincing they might be.
Average people, or politicians, might be open to changing their mind if you're really good, a good lawyer or politician might be able to get some nice laws passed...but don't mistake animal rights laws being passed for less overall suffering. Many times laws have detrimental effects on actual overall animal suffering. The EU ban on fur trapping led to fur farming, which is far worse than killing minks in the wild. California Prop 12, which mandates larger cages for egg-laying hens, increased prices without reducing demand -- this raised egg prices nationwide and drove some producers to export or cut production entirely, which led to worse welfare outcomes globally by creating market gaps that are filled by regions with lower standards, and by pushing smaller producers out of the market altogether. The Swiss law prohibiting the boiling of lobsters alive led to many people freezing their lobsters to death instead, which is possibly more painful than being boiled.
Think about what you would consider progress. Are you a utilitarian? What kind? Define your ethical framework, then define success in as objective terms as possible (Singer is actually a very good example of this if you haven't read his books already). Tiny differences in your ethics can make the difference between a shrimp welfare activist, a slaughterhouse designer, and an eco-terrorist. Figure out your base principles before you evaluate a path forward -- all around you are traps designed to make you "feel" like you're making a difference.
My recommendation? Go into biology, study lab-grown meat. If you're smart enough and driven enough, you might discover the trick that really makes it practical and scalable.
(take this advice with a huge grain of salt! I confess that I am fundamentally your ideological enemy -- I shoot cute furry critters for sport, eagerly eat meat with every meal, and put near-zero weight on animal suffering beyond negative aesthetics and the social stigma of association)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. I very much appreciate it especially considering you do not share my goal. If you don’t mind me asking, why did you take the time write to help me in a mission that you think is wrong? Also, can you explain why you put near-zero weight (as opposed to more and also as opposed to 0) on animal suffering beyond negative aesthetics and the social stigma? Would love to hear your answer and thanks again.
The reason I wrote this comment is because I'm personally interested in the issue on a meta level. The fact that I have an unusually low sensitivity for issues like this has led to some misunderstandings in the past for me, so I spent a while examining and refining my views, and I am somewhat satisfied with the robustness of the conclusions I've come to and enjoy sharing my feelings on topics I am confident and learned about. More broadly, I've also seen a lot of people, not just in this topic but in other activist-centric topics, fall down ideological rabbit holes, get chewed up and spit out by machines that use and abuse their passions for profit or clout. I might glibly say "because I care about humans so much that I think a wasted life is more of a tragedy than all the animal suffering in the world".
As for me putting very low weight on animal suffering, I would guess my morals/ethics are based on a few factors. Whether by upbringing or culture or just plain genetics, in my heart of hearts, I just can't force myself to care about animals in the ways that others do. My faith (Catholicism) teaches that human souls are fundamentally a different quality than animal souls, and gives strong philosophical justifications from first principles for this view through centuries of tradition and writings. And finally, I can't help but ruefully acknowledge that some level of callousness towards animals is convenient for my own lifestyle and hobbies.
The reason why I don't put zero weight on it is because I think there is a case to be made for being kind to animals by looking at Aristotle's "Virtue ethics". Treating animals with compassion fosters virtues such as empathy and kindness, which are essential for good moral character. By practicing cruelty wantonly, one risks degrading their moral integrity, which may harm how they treat other humans as well.
I would focus on the central thesis of @GlacierCow's comment to you, and not (it appears) attempt to subtly discard the inconvenience of that thesis by questioning their motive for writing it.
Because I agree with their assessment that Temple Grandin likely produced far more effective *results* for overall animal welfare than any hard-line animal rights group, just as I agree that many very kindly intended welfare laws can have terrible unintended consequences (the animal welfare rules Cow cited, but also American rent control, etc).
I'll be even more blunt than GlacierCow was.
What's more important to you: Producing measurable, meaningful results for the welfare of animals, or maintaining your righteous ideological purity?
You'll need to think about that if you want to be effective.
Big game hunting brings in far more resources for habitat and animal conservation than simply asking or demanding people care about animals. Sorry, it just does. *It just does.* You can feel revulsion at the idea of trophy hunting, but you can't deny that it pays the habitat and conservation bills. For-profit trophy hunting in Texas has created the largest population of endangered animals in the world, including thriving populations of species which went extinct in the wild: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSvCIOhuxuc . For-profit trophy hunting in Africa is much the same. Places which allow elephant trophy hunting have more elephants (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisdorsey/2024/05/08/recent-us-fish--wildlife-service-ruling-sparks-new-debate-over-elephant-hunting/).
You can think trophy hunting is gross and cruel and monstrous and you would never, ever do it, but sorry, the numbers say it's a good thing for animals in general. That's just the reality of it - trophy hunting creates meaningful incentives and ideology does not.
Do not go into animal welfare if you can't accept these kinds of numbers.
Two paths: become very rich and use your money or become very good at specific fields that have an outsized impact on animal welfare. Either path will depend a lot on your personal aptitudes and tolerance for different kinds of work.
For the non-wealth path, here are some potential suggestions: become a lawyer and fight hard for legal rights for animals, this can have far greater returns than the equivalent amount of money
Become a geneticist and invent livestock that doesn't feel pain
Become a veterinary pharmacologist and invent better treatments for animal diseases
Become a food scientist and invent actually tasty meat substitutes
I'd take a look at (maybe bookmark and re-check every few months) the 80K page on animal welfare jobs, look at the required experience, and optimize your college years to get the experience to land one of those jobs when you graduate.
Also, enjoy college - step #1 for an impactful career is to not work so hard that you burn out, a too-common EA failure mode.
Not really an answer to your question, but I think that the _funniest_ election outcome would be if Trump wins in the Electoral College ... and incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, in her role as Vice President, were to refuse to certify the election results.
Yes, although I have a different take: I suspect there will be major attacks (possibly on infrastructure like the power grid or water) by foreign entities shortly before or during the elections in order to cause maximum possible chaos. Such acts will almost certainly initially be attributed to domestic actors, which will only exacerbate the chaos.
I think this possibility unlikely, as the real actors behind it would get found out in the long run (meaning days to months, not years) and would potentially plunge such actors into a war like we had with Iraq and Afghanistan. This would happen whether either candidate wins, one would think.
Depends on who the actors are, though, doesn't it? I didn't identify a particular actor for a reason; I think there are a few who would hugely benefit from a US in political chaos - especially if the actor remains ambiguous enough for Team Red and Team Blue to point fingers at one another for a while, if not indefinitely. Maybe the truth only comes out after several years, or decades, or never.
I don't necessarily think "major" attacks will be super-flashy bombs or planes flying into buildings; it might just be the lights going out for several days / weeks, which would be pretty goddamned bad. The US has a few truly stunning vulnerabilities and much of the public's trust in both the news media and government is pretty low at the moment. Shut off the power over the election and I think there's major, major chaos, and maybe in that chaos the real culprits are never discovered.
Given that both sides broadly accuse each other of ever-grander lies, I'm not even sure how, in this scenario, the truth can come out in a way that's credible to basically everyone.
Probably yes. If trump loses there will be some amount of stochastic terrorism but he won't be in a position to attempt an idiot coup this time. It will be white trash and delusional dealership owners spasmodically venting their spleens for no reason and then getting a slap on the wrist.
If trump wins (or looses!) there will be more assassination attempts on him from people who might appear to be conservative, but actually are simply disconnected from reality and spiralling off into delusion land on account of 95% of the conspiracy sphere being hard right for some reason.
The liberals will of course do nothing because to be a liberal is to worship the process like a god, the leftists will wail and gnash their teeth but will also do nothing because they are either A: so afraid of conflict they can't order a pizza or
B: obsessively read whatever their favorite 19th century pamphlet about it is and know that it's pointless to try to pick a fight you know you will loose . Some of them want trump to win in an accelerationist way. Giving the hard right cons everything they want is the best way to destroy the state, and they think that when the right swing to conservatism and libertarianism inevitably destroy the comfortable world the proles and burgers have come to expect, they will swing left.
Am I worried about it? Not personally. I have safe money now, I can leave the country if it truly becomes civil war 2, and I am as close to the imperial core as anyone can possibly be. If it truly goes to shit, I will have plenty of time to hit da bricks.
My main worry is that trump is stupid and appoints stupid people to do things that are important to eg. not getting incinerated in a nuclear fireball or similar such things. If he was a bloodless technocrat I'd feel better, but alas.
I'd amend your opening paragraph somewhat to note that there are some groups lined up to file better-drafted LOLsuits this time in various state/federal courts. Also we now do have a couple of real-life examples of Trump-appointed federal judges who are pretty bluntly issuing nutty rulings in service of his perceived preferences. Only a couple though and they are getting smacked down by the appellate courts so, maybe no practical difference in the end.
Regarding your point B, I know a lot of full-bore leftists pretty well and the accelerationist thing isn't present this time around. Was in 2016, also though a bit less in 2020. I don't hear even a bit of it this time.
Your closing paragraph is a very real concern, regardless of how the MAGA worldview lines up with/against one's political/cultural preferences. As Hanania and others have been laying out pretty convincingly MAGA does have a real talent-pool problem. And there are a plenty of very worrying incompetence scenarios well short of any nuclear fireballs.
A new wrinkle now is Trump's obvious incipient dementia. From multiple family experiences I've learned that once the incipient stage is reached there isn't any preventing the slide to full-on dementia; the pace of that slide varies widely among individuals; and there's no particular way to predict that pace in advance nor to medically control it to any meaningful degree. (Not yet anyway, though a lot of medical researchers are working hard on this front.) A person can stay in the incipient stage for years, or slide within months all the way to not knowing the names of his/her own children. No way in advance to know which. We've never had the latter scenario in the Oval Office before (Biden has had the good luck of a slow-burn incipient stage, and he wasn't as far along as of 2020 as Trump is today). So it's a helluva new dice roll that we're all on the verge of now.
No, I'm not worried. Even the notorious January 6th riot was a drop in the bucket compared to the three months of rioting the country faced earlier that summer. The election isn't that special, violence is a year-round holiday.
No. The left has a lot of panicky overheated rhetoric just like they did last time, but the right won't do anything very violent just like they didn't last time.
No. If Trump wins there will likely be some obnoxious sore-loser protests, but those are only relevant for people living in big city downtowns. I think Iran-backed terrorism/assassination attempts might occur, but that's the worst I would imagine. If Harris wins I expect Trump to contest the results but I don't see a J6 2 happening.
Also, not to harp too much on language because it's just language and I hate when other people try to control which words I should or shouldn't use, but Americans almost always call ourselves (and expect to be called by others) "Americans". "USAian" near the bottom of the list of English-language names for Americans and some Americans would even consider it slightly insulting. I know the reason is disambiguation but in English the term "American" is not used to refer to "residents of North and South America" like it is in some other languages, and there's only one country with the word "America" in its name.
Considering that Trump has already been the subject of multiple assassination attempts, and that his supporters rioted in the capital last time he lost, you'd be silly not to expect the possibility of post-election violence, regardless of its result.
That said I don't expect significant violence - if I were an election official I'd certainly want police presence at the various steps you're pointing out, but I'd want that as a standard practice in any election. I'd probably boost that presence as a matter of prudence, but not from a place of fear, if that makes any sense as an emotional barometer.
In 2020 Democrat strongholds boarded up in the event that Trump would win. I'm not in a Democrat stronghold, so that was of little concern to me personally.
I think if Trump wins the Democrats will go off the rails again, J6 rhetoric or not.
I think that there will be isolated issues in individual polling places or counting locations. I could definitely see such issues in places that were identified last year (Atlanta, Maricopa County) as sources for fraud. I do not expect widespread polling issues.
Well, given that we've had two to three assassination attempts around Trump, ordinarily I'd say "no" but this time? maybe some idiot will try shooting up a polling station.
But generally I imagine nothing worse than the usual protests, media talking heads going on about how X or Y is the greatest threat to the nation since Hitler, and social media meltdowns from all over the spectrum.
No, I’m not worried, but mainly because I’m pretty checked out. The state
of the country and the political situation are a vile mess that I can’t do a thing about. It seems to me that the main way this situation harms educated professionals is that they read lots of infuriating stuff about it, and get into intense arguments on the subject. I just skip doing all that stuff.
I was going to say something similar. I'd be upset if bad things happened to people I care about, or even to people I don't actively dislike. But I'm not actually *worrying* about it.
Then I turned on the TV and saw that it wasn't Columbus Day at all; it was Indigenous Peoples' Day. Holy shit. I missed the pageant where we hang Columbus in effigy, burn the corpse, and place the burning stump in a cage at the entrance to the harbor, like Captain Kidd.
Wait. I apologize. I forgot the White People Disclaimer.
Before we get started, I want to pay homage (if not tribute; these aren't Modocs are they?) to Mexicans, who liberated this land from the Spanish, who stole it from the Apache who stole it from the Tohono O'odam who stole it from the Hohokam, those dirty dogs, who cheated the Paleoindians in a card game.
Anyway, we're sorry, but lawyers got the title. How good is that facial recognition software? Will the Thought Police be able to look at a shot of the crowd and tell I wasn't there? I already got my federal ID and QR code tattoo. I'd hate to have my credit rating nicked just because I missed a patriotic Columbus hanging.
I've always been a bit confused why Columbus Day didn't shift towards being a general Hispanic celebration, given that he and his Spanish mission was the starting point of the Hispanic colonisation of the Americas. Columbus himself was probably Italian but he commanded an almost entirely Spanish crew of Spanish ships and claimed the land for Spain.
Columbus Day morphing into Hispanic Day might have been a good compromise between the right and the left for this particular holiday. I could imagine ways that such a day could be appealing to both sides. But... the ship has sailed on that. The clear implication of Columbus Day being *directly* replaced by Indigenous Peoples' Day is that Columbus discovering America was a bad thing actually, because of what it did to... Indigenous People. If we had separate days for Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day, then this implication wouldn't be the same, but as is, it's like if July 4th became Monarchy Day or if February 14th became "Single and Proud" Day. *Everybody* knows what's going on here, whether they agree with it or not.
It's all about political pull. The Nordic Americans never had the voting clout to implement a Lief Erikson Day except in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1937, but the arguments for it were more about making up for the mistreatment of Catholic Americans (which had become a powerful voting block) and Italian immigrants who experienced widespread discrimination in the late 19th century (and peeps of Italian descent becoming a powerful voting block in urban areas).
Native Americans with their new-found wealth from casinos are organized gambling are making their political feelings known, and of course, politicians are listening to them. The political influence of the scandal-ridden Catholic Church and Italian Americans (who no longer remember the old country) is fading.
This doesn't seem like a bad comment to me. It's actually not hateful against anyone, but satirical about the reversal taking place. As an American, I personally think Columbus should in fact be honored for what he did, wrong though he was about so much. I wouldn't be in the country I am if not for Columbus.
Sure, native Americans can be celebrated, too, but how universal is that? Celebrate your own, but don't insist everyone else celebrates you and yours.
This is the cheapest of cheap satire. Woke people are the Thought Police from 1984, woke people are the social credit system from Communist China, woke people hate white people, woke people are so extreme that the only thing we're allowed to talk about is how famous white people in history were evil, land acknowledgements are dumb. Get some new material, this is barely above Godwin-tier.
If this is acceptable satire, I should be allowed to post about how all Republicans are NASCAR-loving rednecks who want to shoot black people and bomb Mexico, that's about the level of humor OP is operating on.
Let me clarify: I thought the comment wasn't close to initiating a ban. I agree it wasn't the highest quality satire, but you're basically correct in its quality assessment. But I don't think it violates posting guidelines.
...I mean, no-one's stopping you celebrating Columbus personally. So long as you're not insisting everyone else celebrates you and yours, go right ahead.
So...the same for MLK day, President's day, and Independence day?
Columbus impacted every American in a way no single native American has. I would argue that even native Americans in general had less impact, as, supposing no people were there when Columbus and crew arrived, and they somehow survived anyway, Europe would have settled the empty territory anyway.
Tisquantum had a more immediate impact on the future colonization of North America than Columbus did. He saw the Pilgrims as useful pawns in his plan to get vengeance against Massasoit. Without his assistance, the Pilgrims would very likely have starved that first year, and Tisquantum's fluency in English and Wampanoag allowed them to communicate with Massasoit—and because neither side was fluent in the others' language he was able to play both sides in a direction he wanted. Massasoit eventually caught on and likely had him poisoned.
He certainly had a great impact on the Boston colony, which in turn had a great impact on the US. But Plymouth wasn't the only colony in the New World, and had it ended up failing, Europe would still have colonized both Americas. It just would have taken longer for the northern parts.
Many individuals impacted the country in large and small ways. It is hard to find someone more fundamental than Columbus, though some Founding Fathers might also qualify. For example, do you think Tisquantum was more influential than Benjamin Franklin, who does NOT have a holiday named after him?
...I have no stake in this specific fight. All I'm saying is - make everyone celebrate Columbus Day, or "don't insist everyone else celebrates you and yours": desire to celebrate Columbus Day is clearly not universal, so you're going to have to pick one of those two positions and surrender the other.
Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day are not actually distinct entities. No one celebrates Indigenous People’s Day any more than Columbus Day. It was a civic custom to note Columbus on Columbus Day but I think “celebrate” is a bit much, unless with a parade if you were Italian or with a mention of Columbus at school, or if a federal worker, with a day off.
So given who or what is celebrated, it really should be called Academia Day, or Harvard Day, etc.
What the argument is really about is whether the desire to have our holidays and familiar touchstones reversed - made shameful, turned into cudgels, used to scold - is limitless. I doubt that would be shown true if so polled (lol). It’s true that new people coming to America will hardly care about these things, and assimilation will be made slightly easier if there is nothing to assimilate to.
Of course, Columbus had nothing whatsoever to do with the Indians of North America so this exercise just makes everyone a little dumber.
I’d like to think that the defeated parties in the Indian Wars would scorn this hollow and cringey act of contrition but who knows? I understand now that to associate some of the tribes with “dignity” is a retro and racist notion.
I am arguing that the desire to celebrate Columbus day ought to be as universal, for Americans, as to celebrate Independence day. If you are insisting that some people would refuse to celebrate one or the other should mean that neither one is a national holiday, then I disagree with that position.
Now, this makes it tricky. You can still burn Columbus in effigy for being a genocidal coloniser if he's Spanish; indeed, that makes him double-plus-ungood instead of just Italian and ungood for genocidal colonisation.
But! If he's *also* Jewish who hid his background due to persecution, then he is himself a persecuted minority and it would be anti-Semitism to burn him in effigy.
Decisions, decisions: are Jews white (or rather, White) in this one particular instance?
>While the initial report said there was “a truckload of militia that was involved,” the statement said, authorities said that they concluded “it was determined that Parsons acted alone and there was no truck loads of militia going to Lake Lure.”
I recently had a back and forth with Bentham's Bulldog about morality. I think his arguments were bad, which is why he stopped engaging before getting to the root of our disagreement but I will let you be the judge by posting it here. It started as a response to a short story posted about a tiger who encounters an ape, and the latter tries to convince the skeptical tiger not to attack him. You should read that first.
Bentham(BB): How in the world is this supposed to be convincing? The fact that you couldn’t convince everyone of your moral views tells us nothing about whether morality is objective, just as the fact that you couldn’t convince everyone of you scientific views or religious views tells us whether they’re objectively true.
Brandon Fishback(BF):If you base the objective truth of morality on common intuitions, it matter if the other guy doesn’t share your intuitions.
Marlon(another commenter, M):Could you please clarify what you mean by "basis"? The validity of objective morality is not dependent on intuitions. While intuitions serve as a means of perceiving their truth value, they do not determine their inherent truth. This concept is analogous to our understanding of the laws of logic. We recognize their veracity through our intuitions, yet their truth exists independently of our perceptions. It is crucial to distinguish between moral epistemology, which pertains to the methods of knowing morality, and moral ontology, which explores the nature of what makes morality true. Intuitions facilitate our comprehension of morality (epistemology), but they do not define its inherent truth (ontology).
BF:Bentham is making his epistemological claim on that basis of intuition. Yes, it “exists” out there independent of what we think, but he claims to know that from our intuitions. We “know” that it exists because we all apparently share a common intuition that morality is a real thing and not just an opinion. And that is where you he gets the presumption that morality exists and anyone who disagrees has to prove it wrong.
M:Certainly, moral realism holds true for an ethical intuitionist unless compelling arguments challenge its validity. Should the tiger lack the moral realist's perspective, it should be presented with the robust arguments against antirealist positions. There is no reason to prioritize its intuitions, as moral antirealist metaethical stances are untenable.
BF:“Untenable”? The tiger is making perfectly logical arguments about why his lifestyle is consistent with his own intuitions and goals.
Bentham again:This is like saying that I can’t be justified in thinking I have a table in front of me on the basis of seeing it because we could imagine a blind person who can’t see tables. Sure, if a person doesn’t have the intuition then they might not be convinced, but that doesn’t tell us if those of us who do have the intuition that, say, torturing babies is wrong and this fact doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks, are justified.
Do you believe in the law of non-contradiction? Can we not imagine a hypothetical lion who doesn’t accept it or find it intuitive. Of course! This tells us nothing important!
BF:The blind person agrees that there is a physical world out there because he keeps stumbling in to stuff. It would clearly help him achieve his goals if he could see. In contrast, the ape is telling the tiger that there are non physical things out there that if followed, would make his life worse. Do you think the tiger is being irrational by not listening to the ape?
BB:It would depend on the Tiger’s intuitions and background beliefs. I think believing the Earth is more than 5 minutes old is rational, even though doing so is not something you can verify by the senses, nor is it beneficial to the achievement of my goals.
BF:Why should the tiger think that moral intuitions of the ape are more valid than his own intuitions? You’re just going off the unjustified assumption that his intuition is faulty but he has no reason to believe that. His reasoning is perfectly logical and the ape is the one making a bad argument.
BB:Well that’s why I said it would depend on various bits of background such as whether the view is fringe, whether there are plausible evolutionary debunking accounts (there are), and whether it really seems that way to the tiger after reflection.
BF:There is no “fringe”. Based off the story, it’s just the tiger and the lion. The tiger gave perfectly valid reasons for his beliefs and there’s no reason to think he would change his mind after reflection. The lion didn’t give him a compelling reason to do so.
BB:Well then perhaps the tiger is justified in his beliefs (unclear given the debunking story) but one can be justified and wrong.
BF:But why should the tiger think he is wrong? What logical error is he making?
BB:Well I don’t know if the tiger should think he is wrong. Is the tiger rational? If so, then I think the tiger would be able to carefully reflect and see the error of his ways. If after doing that, he doesn’t think he’s wrong, then perhaps he’s not being irrational (except insofar as he has defective intuitions). But people can be rational and wrong.
BF:On what basis would the tiger change his mind after reflection? Again, what is the logical error he is making?
And that's where the conversation ended. Moral Intuitionism is supposed to be a respectable position in meta ethics, but he can't even answer the most obvious objection.
Absolute majority of philosophical questions about realism/antirealism objectivism/subjectivism are hopelessly confused because they were formulated long before humans understood epistemology in terms of map-territory relations.
I can't be bothered to read the frame story, because in the real physical world we all currently inhabit, tigers are carnivores who need to hunt and kill and eat meat to survive, so from that point of view the tiger is justified as it wants to live. The ape also wants to live, so trying to persuade the tiger not to eat it is also justified. It's six of one and half a dozen of the other, and we should wait until the ape's descendants become us and now we're the ones hunting tigers, and not even for food. Are we justified in doing that? Is it vengeance for all our ape forebears eaten by tigers?
"Don't kill" is the moral intuition here, but we have no problem holding that as a principle and also "except if it's to get your dinner".
If tigers are humans in furry coats (ditto the apes) then yes. Otherwise, even if the tiger is a sadist, it still needs to eat meat to live. "If I have to do this, I may as well enjoy it" is a position many people hold about tasks they must perform. Is it morally wrong for them?
I don't think we can hold tigers to the same standard as people. However, for a person, they ought not cause needless suffering or more suffering than is necessary for what they need to achieve. Killing prey so that it is maximally painful and long drawn out would be inefficient for a hunting animal, as you always run the risk of letting the prey escape that way.
Do you think that it is possible for there to be objective moral laws without a god? For example, chaos theory was developed when a meteorologist developed a toy model of the world with his own laws physics, and then he found that he couldn't perfectly predict the weather even when he knew all of the laws. What would a comparable toy model look like for objective moral laws? I've asked a few people this and no one seems to have a good answer. It does seem like it presupposes that there will be intelligent creatures who are smart enough to understand the laws. With the laws of physics created by the meteorologist, it had clear impacts on the toy world. What confuses me about the question is that I'm not clear what moral laws would do in an analogous toy world without a god to police those laws?
House cats are known to "play with their food". They obviously enjoy it. One must conclude (at least many) house cats are evil.
...unless it isn't objectively morally wrong. So what IS objectively wrong here? If a cat enjoys torturing the mice it catches, is not depriving the cat of that joy a bad thing (to the cat)?
It seems to me that ethics are relative. A psychopath who enjoys killing other people is wrong to do so, because incarceration and/or death is likely, and that consideration outweighs the pleasure to be obtained through the killing, which is a rational decision.
"219 From a letter to Allen & Unwin 14 October 1959
[A Cambridge cat breeder had asked if she could register a litter of Siamese kittens under names taken from The Lord of the Rings.]
My only comment is that of Puck upon mortals. I fear that to me Siamese cats belong to the fauna of Mordor, but you need not tell the cat breeder that."
Though the very early version of the story of Beren and Luthien, where the villain is Tevildo prince of cats, is funny for the Elvish cat names:
Cats may play with their prey, but I think part of that is learning/practicing hunting techniques. However, cats too are carnivores who need to hunt and kill in order to survive. Human psychopaths don't need to kill other humans for food, so the infliction of pain and suffering there is superfluous and purely for the sake of it. It's much more wrong for a human being to act like that then it is for a cat.
Though most people accept that, is it truly fundamentally wrong? People have accepted it as a postulate which doesn't need proof, but this isn't necessarily true. We only FEEL it is true. So it is possible it can be dis-proven, or an alternative put forth which is contradictory and yet true.
And cats play with food that they don't necessarily end up eating. As such, it seems likely they would be appropriate pets for orcs, though it's odd to think of orcs having pet kitties.
Since you're inviting me to be the judge, you are on the losing end of this exchange on the merits, for more or less the reasons ascend mentions, and the spirit in which you're posting it ("he can't even answer the most obvious objection") makes you come off even worse.
Well isn't this ironic; the guy arguing against objective morality claiming that we're wasting his time, as if that's an objectively wrong thing for us to be doing. Your time is not my time, why shouldn't I waste it?
The argument here seems very confused. It could benefit from some more clarity.
The following are all distinct claims (some subsets of others):
A1: There are moral facts (Success Theory)
A2: There are objective moral facts (Moral Realism)
A3: Some rational agents can know that there are objective moral facts (Moral Non-Skepticism)
A4: All agents can (by being sufficiently rational) know that there are objective moral facts
A5: Some agents can know *what these moral facts are*
A6: All agents can know what these moral facts are (Realist Optimism)
These names may be used differently by different people.
It seems like you're arguing that A6 is false: not everyone can be persuaded of the truth of any particular set of moral facts. Wheras BB is arguing at least three things: most minimally that A2 is true (regardless of the truth of A3-A6), more controversially that A3 is true, and even more controversially that A5 is true. Possibly he also thinks A4 and A6 may be true, though I don't see him arguing for those here.
In other words, he's saying: even if you can't prove the correct moral (normative) positions to *everyone* (A6) doesn't mean you can't prove them to anyone (A5). AND even if you can't prove the correct positions to anyone, doesn't meam you can't prove that there are in fact correct positions (A3) without being sure what they are. AND even if you can't do that, doesn't mean those moral facts don't actually exist (A2).
There's also the additional issue that even while arguing just about the truth of A2, (or alternatively just about its provability, whether A3 or A4) you're arguing that intuitions alone don't prove it, while he and M are arguing that even if you're right, other arguments not from intuition (e.g. from the reality of moral disagreememt, or from the incoherence of alternative non-A2 forms of A1--various forms of relativism) may well prove it nonetheless, which you haven't refuted.
So it seems to me you haven't addressed his arguments, though he hasn't explained those arguments perfectly (but doing so may require thousands of words).
This is a good post. Categorization always carries the possibility that the categorizer is making the categories in a way to lead to a preferred conclusion or accidentally ignoring complexity, but reducing confusion in a discussion shot through with different assumptions / precepts / etc. is laudable.
Now perhaps I can help clear up the rest of these squabbles: A1 is false. Everyone is arguing about nothing.
The problem for me isn't whether the tiger can be persuaded to moral facts. It's that the ape hasn't proven any moral facts at all. In fact, he's not particularly persuasive. He tries to appeal to common intuitions even after the tiger tells him that he doesn't share those intuitions. Bentham says there is something wrong with the way that the tiger is reasoning, that he is suffering some kind of logical flaw. That if just reflected on it long enough, then he could see reason but I don't see it. If two beings are having a debate and they have fundamentally different intuitions on an issue, why privilege one of those intuitions, without resorting to some other shared intuition?
>There's also the additional issue that even while arguing just about the truth of A2, (or alternatively just about its provability, whether A3 or A4) you're arguing that intuitions alone don't prove it, while he and M are arguing that even if you're right, other arguments not from intuition (e.g. from the reality of moral disagreememt, or from the incoherence of alternative non-A2 forms of A1--various forms of relativism) may well prove it nonetheless, which you haven't refuted.
I haven't refuted it because that's not the argument I'm making. I actually think there are some good reasons to believe in objective morality, I just don't think that we can look at our intuitions as axiomatic and deduce universal truths.
I'm sure this is not the point, but the ape in that story is a bad arguer and a hypocrite. Tigers need meat to survive, so "live and let live" is simply impossible, one of the two is dying here. And then it argues that you should prioritize other people's happiness, while neglecting to apply it to itself.
It also makes no appeals to higher purposes. "If you spare me, I can help you to breed rats, and you'll have more meat in the long term." That's an argument worth considering; "this course you're taking will deny you long-term benefits."
In the larger argument, "objective morality" is a game of deduction; you find objective truth by proving the alternatives are false. To convince someone that might shouldn't make right, you need to beat them in a fight, and prove the philosophy is not providing the advantage they're claiming.
The trouble is that the ape is not arguing on the level of moral intuitions, but on a higher level of argumentation based on those intuitions. "Torturing the innocent is wrong" is not a moral intuition, but a moral conclusion that comes from a foundation of intuitions and trying to reason out the implications of those intuitions. "Pain is bad" is a moral intuition. "Life is better than death" is a moral intuition. "Suffering is worse than not suffering" is a moral intuition. From these intuitions we try to build theories of morality that make sense of them.
"These basic moral intuitions are the only element in Conscience which cannot be argued about; if there can be a difference of opinion which does not reveal one of the parties as a moral idiot, then it is not an intuition.
"They are the ultimate preferences of the will for love rather than hatred and happiness rather than misery. There are people so corrupted as to have lost even these, just as there are people who can’t see the simplest proof, but in the main these can be said to be the voice of humanity as such.
"And they are unarguable. But here the trouble begins. People are constantly claiming this unarguable and unanswerable status for moral judgments which are not really intuitions at all but remote consequences or particular applications of them, eminently open to discussion since the consequences may be illogically drawn or the application falsely made."
So the answer to the "most obvious objection" is that while almost all of us share the same moral "facts" (our intuitions), those facts can be fit into a wide variety of theories and models of morality. The facts we observe from looking at the stars can be fit into Ptolemy's geocentric model just fine, if you're willing to abide a few epicycles.
And just as in normal reasoning, we may be biased and corrupt in how we perform moral reasoning. So it isn't surprising that people come to different moral conclusions, even if we share the same moral intuitions. As Lewis writes:
"While the unarguable intuitions on which all depend are liable to be corrupted by passion when we are considering truth and falsehood, they are much more liable, they are almost certain to be corrupted when we are considering good and evil. For then we are concerned with some action to be here and now done or left undone by ourselves. And we should not be considering that action at all unless we had some wish either to do or not to do it, so that in this sphere we are bribed from the very beginning."
...and it is not one that should be left unchallenged. Congenital insensitivity to pain is extremely dangerous; it is highly unusual for people with this condition to survive past their twenties.
In general, arguments from intuition are suspicious: our intuitions can be, and frequently are, wrong; indeed, much of the history of human knowledge is about finding ways to reason that lead us to conclusions which are actually true and not merely intuitive; these are very different things, and intuitions are both insidious and compelling, which makes avoiding problems and dead ends very hard indeed.
Someone with congenital insensitivity to pain is essentially someone who lacks the intuition “pain is bad”: in their case, because they can’t experience pain.
It's unclear what you mean by pain is bad because both "pain" and "bad" have a spectrum of meanings* but pain is bad still seems like a terrible moral intuition.
Pain is a signal conveying important information. It helps prevent damage. It's useful for learning. Pain in the abstract is enormously valuable.
Do you mean that the experience of pain is bad in the sense of unpleasant for the one experiencing it? I guess that's true but how is it a moral intuition? Feeling bad is bad is tautologically true but morally meaningless. And if pain didn't feel bad it wouldn't serve its purpose.
* And let's not even get started on what the meaning of is is.
By "Pain is bad" I mean that when we feel pain, it means something bad is happening. On an abstract level "pain" is good, in that it identifies threats and damage to our body and all that. On the intuitive level the whole point of pain is that we recoil from it. If we didn't find pain bad, then pain wouldn't work.
Feeling bad is bad is not a tautology because we're using two different senses of the word "bad". Pain is "feeling bad", as in, it is an unpleasant sensation. That the unpleasant sensation tells us something true about reality, and that it is good to avoid pain and bad to do things that deliberately cause pain, is both valuable information and known intuitively. Like all our moral intuitions it has to be set against our other intuitions as well: sometimes we need to do painful things in order to seek a higher good, such as setting a broken bone. But if we don't intuitively understand that pain is bad, then we will not only harm our own bodies but are more likely to harm others. It's a foundation stone of moral reasoning. "Why shouldn't I torture a baby?" Well, there are a lot of reasons but if you don't understand that pain is bad then you're not really going to understand any of it.
Fair enough. I could quibble a bit still but I get your gist. You have to base your primitives on something (well, you don't _have_ to but it's considered a best practice) and instinctive reactions are as good as any.
As long as you aren't implying, and I don't think you are, that there's an intrinsic moral dimension to pain (or anything else), I can't disagree with whatever you choose as the basis for your rulebook system.
> "Pain is bad" is a moral intuition. "Life is better than death" is a moral intuition. "Suffering is worse than not suffering" is a moral intuition
...What? Those aren't even correct as universal intuitions. Pain can be pleasurable, there are plenty of fates worse than death, and suffering is preferable to feeling nothing at all. The point is that if we can't even agree on the absolute basics, how can you seriously argue that your morality is objectively correct?
In as much as pain is pleasurable, it is not pain. Things that are painful can also cause pleasure, which is not in dispute with the intuition "Pain is bad".
You are right though, "Life is better than death" is more properly a moral conclusion, not an intuition. It would be a conclusion following from a great many intuitions, such as "please is good", "beauty is good", "knowledge is good", etc, and then concluding that life is necessary for all those good things to exist, therefore life is better than death. But someone who finds that life is more evil than good would come to a different moral conclusion, while having the same moral intuitions.
Is it possible that the words "Pain" and "Suffering" don't actually have the same meaning when applied to myself and others? Words are just sounds or symbols after all, and not necessarily accurate maps of the phenomenal experience.
I think it's very possible to have a foundational intuition that "My-Pain is bad" and not "Other-Pain is bad". The experience I call "My-Pain" is a sharp, burning sensation, but "Other-Pain" is mostly a set of sounds and facial expressions.
The fact that we use the same word for both doesn't necessarily mean that they refer to a single phenomenon
Some people clearly enjoy (low-level?) pain in a sexual context. Perhaps it's a mixture of pleasure and pain, but it's not exactly pleasure alone.
Suffering, I think, has a stronger vibe to it than pain does. Suffering implicitly conveys a sense of "unwanted state of being". So "it's wrong to needlessly cause people to suffer" sounds intuitively correct to me while "it's wrong to needlessly cause people to feel pain" might be generally true but has clear exceptions for certain people in certain contexts.
You can certainly take the foundation intuition "Pain is bad" and craft a theory of morality where my own pain is bad, but the pain of others is not bad. The question is whether such a theory of morality can be "wrong" or not. Under intuitionism it is possible for a moral theory to be wrong (if it does not parsimoniously fit the moral facts we intuit), while in moral non-realism no theory of morality can be wrong.
I don't see why the primary zero-level intuition must be "Pain is bad" and not "My-Pain is bad".
If I understand you correctly, you're saying morality is a "core" of (indisputable) facts + a set of (possibly inconsistent) implications of those facts. "Pain is bad" is in the core, and "My-Pain is bad but Other-Pain is not bad" is an implication.
I think "My-Pain" and "Other-Pain" are distinct phenomena, and that the real primary intuition is "My-Pain is bad". The fact that traditionally the same word is used for both doesn't imply anything about which one is fundamentally involved in the intuition.
Imagine that it was universally accepted that the color of wavelength 500 nm light was the most beautiful color. It would be wrong to say that "Green is the most beautiful color" is a foundational aesthetic principle, because the word green actually refers to a set of things (only one of which applies here). Just because people use the word "Green" to refer to many things doesn't mean that the primary facts must correspond to conventional linguistic usages.
"Pain is bad" is intuitive, "my pain is bad" requires an understanding of the self as opposed to others, and then a decision that pain that applies to the self is different from pain that may apply to others. "Pain is bad" is an intuition, "Other people's pain is not bad" is a conclusion.
In your example, "Green is good" would be an intuition, "green is the most beautiful color" would be a conclusion based on that intuition.
In my example, "Green is good" would not be an intuition. "500-nm light is good" would be, but that would have no bearing on the statements "520-nm light is good" or "580-nm light is good" (which are both colors traditionally classified as green). The word "Green", although the most conventional way to phrase the statement does not perfectly map to the real experience of color. Just because we have a single word does not mean that there is a single experience or concept associated with the word.
I disagree that the statement "My-Pain is bad" is secondary and requires a more developed understanding of the world. I think you're observing that it's a more complicated linguistic construction (extra prefixes are involved) and concluding that it's describing a less primary experience.
Do you feel the same sensation when you break your arm and when I break my arm? There is no such thing as a "disembodied perspective", all observations are performed by a particular observer. I don't think the "non-subjective perspective" really exists at all
You’re doing the same thing Bentham is doing by just assuming the correctness of your intuition without justification. The tiger says he doesn’t share these intuitions. He enjoys causing others pain, and doesn’t see it as wrong. What logical mistake is he making?
"It is wrong to cause other people pain" is not a moral intuition, it's a bit of moral reasoning. The tiger most likely intuits that pain is worse than non pain, but he does not conclude from that intuition that he should avoid causing pain to others, though he likely concludes that he should avoid causing pain to himself. If the tiger loves any other creature (perhaps his cubs, or mate) then he will soon learn from experience the intuition that pain and suffering to loved ones is also bad. He also most likely intuits that other creatures similar to him, like the ape, also find pain and suffering bad. The ape takes these intuitions and decides that because all sentient creatures find pain and suffering bad, and because the pain of others can be pain to himself, then one should limit the amount of pain and suffering they cause to others. The tiger prefers his own pleasure in causing pain in others to preventing pain in others, so he does not follow the ape's moral reasoning, at least not past the tiger's own loved ones.
That one should extend their intuition about loved ones to all others (or, rather, that one should love all other sentient beings) is not intuitive, but something that has been discovered over time like a model of the solar system or a the theory of relativity. It is a real discovery: under the model, we should not enslave people, and when we emancipate the slaves we discover that things are better not only for the slaves, but for society as a whole, for example. We find that a society based on treating everyone as having equal moral worth is a more prosperous and happier society than the society where only kin-members have moral worth. That everyone has equal moral worth is not at all intuitive, but it is founded in intuitions just as our model of the solar system is founded in observations: and once you have the model, you can see if it holds up or not.
> We find that a society based on treating everyone as having equal moral worth is a more prosperous and happier society than the society where only kin-members have moral worth.
Suppose that optimal prosperity and happiness in the society is achieved not through belief of equal moral worth and universal love but through a subtly different one. Something like love inside the society, less love (but still non-zero) for those outside, except hatered towards a specific outgroup.
Suppose we've done a series of experiments and figured beyond any reasonable doubt that such societies perform better than the ones that operate on the principles of universal love. Will you treat is as a reason to change your moral views based on the available evidence? Will you accept that this specific brand of outgroup hatred is part of the objective morality? Or will you still think that such society is morally bad, even it's more prosperous and happy?
If tigers work like humans, he will soon conclude that while pain is always regrettable, the most important kind of pain is felt by large creatures with orange-and-black stripes and that needs to be the top priority in all situations. This naturally applies to tigers, but perhaps other stripy animals as well. It’s a subject of debate at Tiger University. (Go Orange! Go Black!)
What if the tiger doesn’t love any other creature? He is solitary. Why, logically, should he extend the feeling of “my pain is bad” to “others pain is bad”.
What happens if you apply that logic to all carnivores? “My pain is bad. All pain is bad. I cannot live without causing others pain. Therefore, it is necessary for me to kill myself so I will stop causing pain.” The logic is impeccable but it’s not rational to a being that values their own survival.
If the tiger doesn't love any other creature, then he will not be able to observe the moral intuitions that come from loving others. Much in the same way that a blind cavefish can't observe the sun.
"I should kill myself to stop causing pain" is a moral conclusion you could come to, but is not the only moral conclusion that would fit the facts. Morality is always involved in a question of what action I should take, which means we often have to reason based on competing intuitions and moral conclusions. "It is wrong to cause others to suffer" competes against "Life is preferable to death" in the case of the tiger, who can only live by killing others. He could resolve that conflict by killing himself, or by only eating animals who he has reason to believe are not capable of suffering, such as bugs or even fish. Or he could conclude that it is wrong to cause "sentient beings" to suffer, and commit himself to only eating creatures that are not sentient. Just as we can use the same facts and come to different conclusions on what we should do (like who to vote for, or what to build, or which plan is best), so too we can use the same moral facts (intuitions) and come to different conclusions on what we should do.
The ape postulates that it is wrong to harm another sentient being. This is too complex to be a postulate, unless everyone agrees with it. The tiger clearly doesn't, and it doesn't make sense for the tiger to agree with it.
No, objective morality doesn't exist. We can establish rules, such as not to kill each other, that we think will lead to our long-term betterment over time, even if some people are very annoying.
Same. I don't have anything to add, it's just that my position is so simple. I'm crossing my fingers, hoping for a blue landslide, followed by a lot of Republican soul searching.
I feel that Democracts need some soul searching. They keep running on a platform of insulting and belittling voters (e.g., characterizing people who don't vote for them as racists or sexists, etc...). It is what caused Hillary to loose her election with the infamous "basket of deplorables" quip. I think Kamala is being hurt by this strategy too (e.g., Obama attempting to shame black men into voting for her).
Ultimately, both parties need to respect voters, and work out how to persuade them, rather than belittle them. It's one reason I found the VP debate refreshing as JD Vance acknowledged that Republicans have lost the trust of women and that they need to do more for them (e.g., by providing more childcare support as an alternative to abortion).
I don't think any of them have any respect for the voters, except weirdly Trump - he likes the atmosphere of rallies and the praise of the crowd so he likes his supporters.
The party of gun control has its candidate talking about her Glock and garnering the support of Dick Cheney. You remember Dick Cheney, I'm sure? He was the Republican Devil before Trump. Don't talk to me about who respects whom, because I don't believe a word out of any of their mouths (except, again, Trump who has no filter and we all know that he exaggerates, confabulates, and uses rhetoric all over the place):
"The Harris campaign did not specify where and when she bought the Glock, which model she owns or which storage devices she uses. Harris said last month that the gun is for self-defense and that “if somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.” Harris’ current residence is guarded by armed Secret Service agents."
Hmm now I seem to recall some discourse on the liberal/progressive side about those who talk about shooting people who break into their houses and it was *not* terms of praise they were using.
I am getting a *very* strong whiff of Hillary Mark II here, trying to present herself as Tough Strong Woman who will Stand Up to aggressors. Stick with the coconuts, Kamala.
The only thing that saved a Constitutional crisis on January 6, 2021 was Pence putting our founding document, the US Constitution above Trump's narcissism.
Vance has stated he would have obeyed Trump rather than US law.
Pence has said he can't endorse anyone who puts himself above the Constitution so he couldn't endorse Trump.
Yeah, trump puts him in an awkward position on that.
For what it's worth, Republicans have explicitly stated they believe he's just saying that because he hast to as Trump is his running mate. One thing I like about the Republicans compared to the Democratics is that Republicans seem more willing to disagree with each other (e.g., you see Republicans defending Pence for certifying). I mean, obviously that is a low bar, but sometimes it feels like Democrats don't clear it, in terms of calling each other out
As a longtime liberal I can't imagine why you think Democrats agree on anything. Also, it seems like most people who side with Pence, or like Liz Cheney, Justin Amash, etc., are all apostates now, whereas like Nancy Pelosi and AOC somehow get along.
Also Democrats just kicked out their candidate mid-stream.
I don't think they agree necessarily. But I do think they fear voicing many types of disagreement. E.g., I think they were afraid to push back against obviously flawed philosophies like defund the police, for fear of being branded racist by their own party.
The Republicans have some issues like this, but to me, it seems they have significantly less of them.
I think it is generally acknowledged (I could be wrong) that the left does more internal cancelling, and this feature it typical of lefts all around the world.
America has a now-time-honored tradition of every political junkie identifying his or her own tribe as a ragtag band of misfits who squabble about everything but can unite in the breech against a truly common enemy, while the enemy is a bunch of carbon copy monolithic stormtroopers who will turn out anyone who deviates even slightly from their norm.
Pardon me, sir, but do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Fundamental Attribution Error?
I DON'T think the Democratic party can generally unite against a truly common enemy, usually - I've only felt like that was true in this election, and generally I consider the Democratic party bad for the usual "it's a political party" reasons but also generally rather ineffectual at pushing for its stated ideas. I don't find anything about that complementary to "my tribe".
Nancy tolerated Sandy from the block's carry-on for a while, then smacked her down when she got too feisty, and AOC wanting a long-term political career has learned how to get along with the party elders 😃
I'm hoping for a green or yellow landslide, followed by a lot of Republican and Democrat prosecutions. And while I realize that your side will write the history books, I don't think you are on the right side of history.
Sounds like one of those tyranny of logistics problems. You need tens of trillions of dollars worth of gold, but gold is valuable mainly because of scarcity. The more gold you have, the less it's worth, so the more gold you need, etc. Plus the bigger the gold landslide, the more property damage it causes, so you need a bigger landslide to offset that. At the end of the day, you probably run into rapidly diminishing returns after a big enough gold landslide to pay off maybe two weeks worth of the debt.
I’d be good with the green or yellow landslide part of that- Jill Stein and Chase Oliver haven’t given me any reason to doubt they’d concede power if they lost in 2028.
>Something we must all come to realize in our own way: that the simplest things— and these are also the highest and greatest things—cannot be articulated, but can at best be approximated or intimated. Wisdom is, ultimately, silent. The tiniest and greatest converge in their ineffability. Yet it is precisely in that necessary silence that philosophy begins, and ultimately ends.
I disagree. It is natural to think that things which cannot be expressed in _compact_ language cannot be expressed in language at all. But there are many things, e.g. images or photographs, which can be expressed, but not compactly - it takes a million 1s and 0s (or their equivalents) to express one of them.
edit: To put it another way, "ineffability" is a much higher bar than it at first appears. It requires not just that something be inexpressible in a word, or sentence or page, but that it be inexpressible even in a massively detailed description, e.g. even by a synapse-by-synapse description of a nervous system and its current state.
Wrote a post last Thursday on the fluoridated water debate. My focus was on whether fluoridation is effective and safe, but... I was amazed to find that much of the public debate turns on whether it's acceptable for government agencies to force chemicals on us, when (a) nobody is forced to drink unfiltered tap water, and (b) government agencies "force" many things on us, like stoplights. Why are so many people averse to simply discussing the data?
In recent years we've become aware of government mistakes, both accidental and arrogant. Fauci lied about masks. He lied about gain of function research (and helped the guy who was heading it up right a scholarly report saying that a lab leak couldn't be the source to cover their tracks). The vaccines, while overall good, did in fact have side effects. Some people died from taking the vaccine that would have otherwise lived. From an FDA perspective, this was a totally acceptable tradeoff, and I agree with the vaccine being approved. I have a big problem with the government or companies requiring everyone to get vaccinated. Small children shouldn't even have been offered it - too little benefit to outweigh any unknown risks. Young people or people who already had covid should have been given an out regardless or what else happened. Young men in particular were susceptible to some of the side effects. People with 100% work from home should never have been required by their employers to get it. Requiring potentially harmful chemicals be injected in people is not a great way to build goodwill.
Fluoride specifically? I don't know a lot about it and have a well. Given the general lack of trust that some government agencies have caused, by their own intentional actions, I have very little sympathy for them when people don't want fluoride or other chemicals added to their water or food. We know for a fact that chemicals of many kinds can have adverse effects on people. DDT was sprayed right on people when it was in use. Some chemicals are completely mild in regular doses but can cause serious harm at higher levels. There's even a recent push about microplastics that seems to be catching on. I've been seeing recommendations to not use plastic cookware.
1. Fauci initially was of the opinion that masks didn't work because the WHO and CDC were stuck in the outdated consensus that pathogens couldn't airborne (in aerosols). That's why there was all that handwashing advice early on. He eventually came around to masks (long before the WHO did) when the data started to show that masking reduced the spread of exhaled aerosols that carried virions.
2. For various reasons, a gain of function program couldn't have created the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If you sincerely want to learn something, we can go through the reasons—but it will require some knowledge of biochemistry and virology.
3. Serious adverse side effects from the mRNA vaccines occurred at a rate of less than 1 in 100,000 vaccinated individuals. During the first wave (March-June, 2020), the global case fatality rate (CFR) averaged around 2%, and in certain regions, it was even higher.
1. I disagree on that being the order of events, but I don't care enough to hash this out so don't worry about it.
2. I am not making an argument against the science of whether the lab leak was possible. I am making an argument against Fauci promoting the work of someone he was paying for gain of function research, in Wuhan, to claim that it wasn't possibly a lab leak while reporting *no conflict of interest* when submitting his paper.
3. I already agreed that the vaccines were positive. My problem is in the requirements to get vaccinated even in people who would see almost no gain or for whom the side effects were a larger potential problem. Even a very small chance of an adverse reaction is non-zero. Making someone get the vaccine who works 100% remote, already had covid, and is a 20-year-old healthy male is bad policy. If that person also got sick from the vaccine that's evil, even if very rare.
If you use well water, I suggest getting it tested for fluoride content. Some regions in the U.S. (e.g., the southwest) have naturally high levels. The level at which harmful effects on children start to appear is about 1.5 mg/L, or 1.5 parts per million, but as I noted in my post this can't be treated as a clear-cut boundary.
I'll have to correct you on a). What do you think kids drink all day long (school, after-school, gym, camp, etc) outside home? Bottled water? Yeah, good luck with that. They'll drink from the first drinking water fountain as soon as their original water fill runs out, so technically they are forced to drink fluoride in water.
Still don't see how either "technically" or "forced" mean what you imply they do in that last sentence. Technically, the mere existence of a water fountain doesn't force anyone to use it.
What is the word "filtered" doing here? Ordinary household water filters don't remove fluoride; to a first approximation, if the government puts it in the water, you're going to have to go to a lot of expensive trouble to avoid drinking it. But if the idea is to boost bottled water sales....
Good point. (And there is evidence that anti-fluoridation activism increased as the pandemic got underway and existing anti-vaxx sentiments became more prevalent.)
I'm probably overthinking this, but what troubles me is that government agencies do have a lot of control over what does and doesn't get "pushed" into our bodies. For instance, many or most public water supplies are also chlorinated, but nobody seems to get upset about that. (Why not? Because they don't think chlorine is harmful? Fine, I don't think it is either. But why assume that fluoride is worse? As I noted in my post, it's only harmful at levels exceeding what over 99% of Americans are exposed to in drinking water.)
I don't have a strong opinion, but it seems clear to me that adding a chemical meant to purify the water and maintain water systems, is very different from adding a chemical which serves a purpose entirely distinct from conveying safe potable drinking water.
I agree with you Brendan. The question then becomes whether you'd be willing to have a chemical added if you were sure the benefits outweighed the risks. I don't have any special bias toward fluoridation, but as I noted in my post there seem to be risk-free benefits for the roughly 99.5% of American kids exposed to safe levels.
This crowd seems very keen on chemicals and pharmaceuticals for better functioning. They might be convinced to dump fluoride, but I think that would be overshadowed by discussion of what other chemical to put in the water supply - lithium or Ozempic or whatnot.
Also can anyone tell me from experience - I did read Scott’s post - whether melatonin aids in “sleeping through” versus just helping you get to sleep in the first place? I have no trouble with the latter (any book will do) - but like many middle-aged people or at least post-menopausal women, I often lie awake for long periods in the night, fretting. It is both boring and ironically, fatiguing.
I would just say that some of the old school writers in this area were interesting and thought-provoking, but I recommend caution with the contemporary manosphere. It has become very misogynistic and frankly, misanthropic and it will lead you down some very dark paths. Basically an info hazard.
The low-hanging fruit of saying things that were taboo-yet-obvious (to socially savvy men) has already been picked. The new gurus need to find some way to differentiate themselves, usually not in a (mentally) healthy way.
I asked a well-known writer around here his opinion and he told me roughly the same thing.
Honestly, I've decided family life is too risky with the divorce laws (and I'm too old), so I'm debating whether men's activism is a worthwhile path with my remaining estimated 3-4 decades. As you say there may not be a way forward, and as others have said you may need to be a more stereotypically masculine man to get anywhere with it. Sometimes the time isn't right for a cause.
Doesn’t matter - child support is the big item that tends to drain your finances, and courts in the US generally don’t give a shit about whether the parents were married when the child was conceived or born. You can of course do sperm donation, but the likelihood that your sperm will be selected by women when you can’t even get a girlfriend is low. Moreover, sperm donation gets you descendants, but not a family.
You could do a lot worse than Kevin Samuels. There's some genuinely good advice in there, intermixed with a very...salesman, frat, empty materialist philosophy that's healthy in small doses. Like, he's an excellent salesman, I'm not a salesman, I don't like salesmen, but they're important and it's worth learning from a good one.
If you want to fall down this rabbit hole, I would recommend these 3 streams from when he was focused on men:
The women interviews on his show kind of ate the whole thing but there were moments of magic. No shame, he was trying to make money, but it's very obvious that the audience wanted to see women shamed instead of getting help and those incentives slowly consume all the content in this space. Watch those 5 videos and the algorithm will provide the rest, most of it...not so great, for aforementioned incentive reasons.
If you're looking for some kind of shared group and/or political movement...that's not really a thing, I think.
He's probably not very popular in this community, but he's probably a good gateway to finding more people who care about "men's issues" - Jordan Peterson.
Peterson is not exactly a manosphere figure, as he generally doesn't present himself that way. But he tends to attract male supporters a lot more than he attracts female supporters. And he tends to talk about issues that are... maybe "male-coded" is the best way to put it.
If you search for Jordan Peterson on YouTube, watch some of his vids, that'll likely open up your YouTube algorithm as a whole to videos aimed at men discussing male-coded issues. Some of what you encounter, you won't like. Peterson himself you might not like. But I think that anybody honest would have to admit that he's at least more moderate than Andrew Tate.
Oh, I love the guy; I read The Myth of Male Power back in high school. I just remember him admitting to Paul Elam about two decades ago that Elam's obnoxiousness had been more effective than all his reasoned criticism.
Yeah. I heard that too. It makes me sad that generally in any topic the nuanced voice is so quiet. But I do think nuance has a great value - and that he's made a big impact
(epistemic status: Not an expert. But given Scott's commentariat, I'm probably among the more qualified to discuss it. so I feel like I maybe have a responsibility to ramble a bit, or something.)
I think it depends on what you're looking for. traditionally, "manosphere" was an umbrella term for: Pick Up Artists (PUA; red-pill); Men Go Their Own Way (MGTOW); men's rights; incel (black-pill); and maybe some others. But I think more recently, the label has expanded to include "anyone who questions the lunacy of 4th wave feminism".
For me, I mostly just keep tabs on Alexander Grace and Hoe Math. The former charitably explains the female mindset, leaning on his psych degree as well as field experiments. The later dunks on tiktok women by ELI5'ing them about the dating scene. A lot of adjacent stuff I see is mostly just schadenfreude of little educational value. E.g "The Whatever Podcast", where the hosts bring in the dumbest women they can find on the street to calmly Euler[0] them about the internal contradictions of feminism.
And for the record, yes, Andrew Tate is a nut.
Also, I suspect that the hypergamy stuff is overexaggerated by the Streetlight Effect, since most of the studies cited rely on dating apps.
"The former charitably explains the female mindset, leaning on his psych degree as well as field experiments."
I must check that guy out, I do so love having my mindset explained to me! Though not being a standard woman, I suppose it will be advice for my normal sisters and not outliers like me. Still, it's always entertaining to see a man say "women think X or do Y because of this psychology" 😁
EDIT: Oh boy. I just found Grace's Youtube channel. "Men are islands, women are boats"? Does he perchance have a writing gig on Rings of Power, because that's the standard I'd expect there! (And if so, do the women float because they look up to the light, but the men sink - or at least don't float about - because they look down to the darkness?)
In that particular video, he discusses how the PUA's morphed into a self-help group, and then urges for more men to embark on a journey of self-improvement to become high-value men. Yeah, the boat metaphor ain't winning any Pulitzer Prizes. Fair enough. Still, I'm glad that he does what he does.
Also, unlike many of his peers, he supposedly has a sizeable following of women. I think that reflects pretty well on his brand. And evidently, many of them do need their own behavior/mindset explained to them. E.g. probably his most emphasized message to women is to be aware of "The Wall". I.e. beauty doesn't last forever; and if they want to start a family, they might regret spending their best years partying and sleeping around, as opposed to seeking a long-term relationship.
Honestly, I agree. I wish there was something more effective than Andrew Tate (though he might be helpful to moderates as part of a 'pincer strategy' as is commonly seen on the left--listen to us or you'll get more Andrew Tates, etc.) I also think the hypergamy thing is somewhat overrated, and the incels are kind of unrealistic.
I have to admit I basically did MGTOW, though it's not a winning strategy for most guys. (And likely not even for me toward the end of life.)
My point is more that women have a movement (feminism) to advocate for their aggregate interests; men need the same. There are movements that advocate for a subset of men (evangelical Christianity advocates for conservative men who want traditional households, business conservatives advocate for really, really rich men), but a lot of men fall through the cracks.
for me personally, romantic relationships sound like too much work. No bitterness, just laziness.
In case you're unfamiliar, I hear Bronze Age Pervert is all the rage in certain circles. No strong opinions yet. I may or may not buy the book to check out the hoopla.
> I wish there was something more effective than Andrew Tate
Roger R makes a good point to bring up Jordan Peterson. He's definitely advocated for men, especially those who fall through the cracks. Though not under a manosphere brand. And I distinctly remember JustPearlyThings saying that she was inspired by JP to defend men. Scott Galloway also has recently started defending men who fall through the cracks, though from more of a "business & marketing data" angle. I do have reservations about JP, but he's got my respect overall for pushing back and being reasonably sane. Also, JP recanted recently, from "MAN UP, INCELS!" to "uh... the dating scene might be toxic after all". So there's that.
Maybe I'm a nut too. But ideally, my own wishlist includes someone who leans into more of Jungian Shadow kind of deal, and defends it in an principled manner. Like idk, maybe a vaguely Julius-Evola-esque aesthetic. JP is aware of this *intellectually*, but he's too Canadian to really embody it. And the types of people who can embody this often lean into more of a meathead vibe.
BAP is gay anyway - he flatters the self-image of men who imagine themselves as Nietzschean supermen. He is insightful, but hetero men should take his advice with a grain of salt.
Sorry for being dense, but idk what this means. Genuinely.
Just to be clear, is the accusation that BAP is being effeminate for stoking his own ego, whereas down-to-earth men are wise and humble? This seems like the most likely interpretation to me. Although, not to be pedantic, but calling this gay is... idk, just a weird choice of words? or maybe it's meant to be ironic, given how much he whines about the longhouse?
I've read BAP (kind of a waste of time IMHO, though his authorial voice annoyed me) and Peterson (good though basic; I'm not surprised he's helped a lot of young men who had nobody else to tell them that).
I think you're right about the meathead vibe, though. Maybe this is a path for someone with more traditional masculine energy.
Indeed, my expectations are low. But even if it's terrible, maybe it's worth dissecting anyway? To keep up with The Discourse/Zeitgeist? Analogously, I once checked out Plato's "Republic" from the library. And my normie parents asked "Why? Aren't the ideas in there kinda useless, since it was written over 1,000 years ago?". I replied "The Communist Manifesto might not have been a great idea either, but it's still worth studying for its historical impact". Critical Thinking (qua deciding whether something is true or false) is the bare minimum of any intellectual endeavor. It's also important to understand motivations and ramifications.
In this sense, was BAM at least interesting? Or do you stand by your assertion.
> Peterson (good though basic; I'm not surprised he's helped a lot of young men who had nobody else to tell them that).
I've not read "Twelves Rules for Life" either. But from a distance, it seems like he's filling the role of a father. I can't defend this rigorously, but I've become increasingly convinced that the death of God also represented the death of The Patriarchy, as well as the death of father-figures. To the detriment of both sexes. And for blacks especially.
I also appreciate JP's kabbalistic, hermaneutical side. Which, in its own way, also brings fatherliness to the forefront. I.e. the Abrahamic Religions literally worship the PIE Sky Father. Kinship -> Patriarchy -> Abrahamic Religion.
The people forming the surface area of the sphere must unlock and make an opening for the sphere to expand and include you in its surface area. In that brief period of time, it will not be a sphere (topologically speaking) because it has a hole on its surface.
Is it even called "manosphere" anymore? I think Red Pill is the main name now but I could be wrong. (Really funny how Scott wrote The Rise and Fall of Online Culture Wars in 2021 and said he hadn't heard anything from the manosphere for years. This must have been *just before* it literally took over half of Youtube and Tiktok and became huge among male GenZs).
I see it as just wokeness with the genders swapped. Same collectivism, same grievance culture, many of the same logical fallacies (especially the glorification of personal anecdotes). It's probably caused a few previously invisible things to be debated seriously by society, much like woke feminism has, but like woke femimism it's done it in the most toxic possible way and I don't want to give it credit for that.
I don't think the "Manosphere" ever existed in the same way that a lot of these overly broad groups don't exist. The only way you can argue it existed is as a general label for very online male groups that defined themselves in opposition to modern liberal feminism. But you had Red Pill types who saw the rest of the manosphere as losers who just failed to ignore the media and self improve and be moderately predatory; Mens Rights types which itself was a broad church from people who thought womens rights were important but men needed protection too to people who wanted to roll back womens rights; self identifying incels who are wildly nihilistic and hate pretty much everyone and believe they are doomed; MGTOWs who from my examinations seemed to mostly be bitter divorcees; and plenty of other minor groups. All of these groups hated each other for either being misogynistic extremists for the moderates to pathetic losers for the red pill types to just screeching about "normies" for the incels. When you have groups that most people would concede had reasonable concerns if pushed lumped in with extreme misanthropes who most people would find repugnant its a meaningless classifier.
It was a grouping that only really existed as a marked "will push back against feminist rhetoric" outgroup. Now I don't think most of the subgroups even exist as a meaningful presence anymore. MRAs are utterly irrelevant, incels have been banned from most platforms and the various red-pill adjacent groups coalesced around Andrew Tate style influencers and are generally seen as its own thing.
Feedback would be very welcome, especially if there are any other relevant aspects of anarcho-tyranny that I could explore. There seem to be many connections to other current issues.
Feedback: from a purely writing perspective, I think it would help to be a bit more structured (try planning what you want to get across and make the article structure match; right now it jumps around a bit).
On actual content: I like the concept but I'm not quite sure where you're going with it. Specifically in the Berlin example, I'm confused by why people wanted lights instead of more police or something.
> just suggests the person wants more enforcement against their enemies but less against their friends, and that makes you ask who their enemies and friends are.
...
No, I have at least 2 questions "what laws are the letting their friends break", I wont claim to be a saint and care deeply if my family gets away with speeding tickets, but someone with the same skin color getting away with murder; scaled up to the society, has a a predictable consequence.
Thanks. You have a valid point in suggesting that labeling something as anarcho-tyranny can imply a desire for harsher punishment against a specific group. However, I’d like to offer the following counterargument: Critics of anarcho-tyranny highlight inequality in enforcement and are not necessarily calling for more punishment overall, but rather for fair and consistent application of the law.
Does anyone have any tips for… liking more people?
Basically, I have a really hard time liking people to the point of wanting to be close (or really, 1-on-1 casual) friends with someone. I guess this would be fine if I was naturally introverted, but I'm not really. My biggest dream, literally, is a bunch (or just, like, two!) friends I really like. On the OCEAN model I am in the middle on extroversion and I feel that is accurate.
This is NOT because I actively dislike most people and think humanity is stupid and dumb and fake or something.
I've met maybe five people in my life that I felt like I've really understood and liked, one of them is my only ex, one is my current partner and one is my sibling.
I’ve tried a lot to subculture shopping to find “my people” and to just give people a chance, give them time, put myself out there. It’s tiring. Feels like a looooot of work for mostly no reward.
In advance, two rebuttals to arguments I could see being made:
- I’m 90% sure I’m not autistic. I was in psychiatry (for OCD) and talk therapy on and off from ~8-18 and it was never something remotely suggested. Every online test I’ve taken says “few or no signs”.
- If you’re going to say “yeah, I felt that way about people until I met the awesomesauce rationalist community”, I’m very envious but I don’t think that’ll work for me. First of all because the rat community in my country is like five people (okay… maybe 15 if you count EA), secondly because I don’t feel like I have common interests with rationalists on the whole. I’m super high agreeableness, I don’t really want to debate about AI risk or biases or most things in general; I’m not in tech, I’m not really in academia; I like board games but not when they’re too hard. You get the gist. I like (a subset of) the rationalists mostly for being honestly interested in other people’s internal experiences and not lacking Theory of Mind in regards to it.
Anyone has tips on how to like more people? Or wtf might be going with me? Do I just have to keep on searching?
You have to keep in mind that no matter how much you have in common with someone, you almost certainly won't instantly feel the same way about them that you feel about your "five." You'll need to log the hours with new people in order to both learn about them and build trust, and with *exceedingly* rare exception, there is no substitute for logging those hours.
I mean, it's worth remembering that you did in fact log the hours with your ex, your current partner, and your sibling, right? Yes, there might have been native compatibilities around personality there, but you also spent the hours with them to fully establish that and bond.
So my advice would be, moderate your expectations. Give up on the fantasy of having lightning-strike instant chemistry with a new bestie (to mix metaphors). Don't deliberately hang out with people who terribly bore or irritate you, of course, but if someone is just "fine" at the start, realize that you might discover after 25 or 65 hours of hanging out with them that they're actually "great."
It's helpful to have "repeated, unplanned interactions" with the same people, for a few months. Good activities for this include casual sports leagues (where you can play for one season and then move on if you like) or community theatre (acting or working backstage on a production is typically a 2-3 month commitment and if you come back for the next production there will be some different people).
These are also things that can be just stressful enough to help build camaraderie without actually being that important.
I think you’ve got the telescope the wrong way round; first you create a bit of interest in that person, then they stop being an NPC and become a real person with their own unexpected opinions and interests.
It takes the simulation a minute to generate all that, so give it time. I like to practice on Uber drivers. This is important, because if you only engage with people who are into the same stuff as you, you’ll be rusty and probably fumble it.
There’s not a lot of advice out there on how to like people more, but there’s plenty of advice on how to be likable. Plenty of basic “tricks” you can look up in a Dale Carnegie book or something.
So, invert the problem. How can you act such that people will use those tricks on you (hopefully guilelessly)? Assuming that you are a fairly typical person, they should work on you as well.
For example:
1) Be Vulnerable and Share Personal stories-> Be the kind of person who can be trusted with a secret and doesn’t talk about people behind their backs. Someone who will not betray their confidences. They'll be more likely to be vulnerable with you.
2) Practice Active Listening-> It’s easier for people to actively listen if you’re not a bore.
3) Highlight Commonalities -> This goes both ways. You can drop hints about where you have been or what shows you like. In my experience, people are very good at finding commonalities.
4) respectful physical contact-> use deodorant, open body language, etc…
5) Give genuine compliments-> receive genuine compliments…do things that people will compliment. In general, small kind or nice things that people don’t threaten people’s ego.
> Does anyone have any tips for… liking more people?
If you dont like yourself; do that first
If you do like yourself, you could dig deeply into just how common child abuse is and the true depth of the horror, so when you meet a ok young person maybe you can be open to hear how they are trying.
I believe you should basically assume everyone was abused as a child, yes. Its rapidly declining (even if my extremely negative view of schools as authoritarian child abuse, adhd drugs as meth, children with phones being neglected, leftwing culture targeting children; we are still progressing morally), if you want a deeply uncomfortable read id suggest the "orgin of war in child abuse".
If your capable of have a calm political conversation your probably among the top 10% rolling the dice on the subject.
It should in theory increase your empathy, and make you less useless when someone says something emotional horrific, i.e. if your prepossessed that the world is awful and you hear about someone considering suicide, Id expect you to be more useful then "heres a hotline" while having a panic attack
I don't know what works for you, but I am very similar in that aspect. I think I have met perhaps 10 people in my life which I like to the extent that, if I have the choice to spend time with them or not, I prefer to spend time with them. (I am about twice your age.)
For most of those 10 people I had either fallen in love with them at some point, or at least had some moderate crush on them. (All of them are male.) For the others, online contacts worked a lot better than real life for me. My best friend is someone whom I see less than once a year, but we text each other every day. For my other friends, I usually had written with them for a long time online before meeting them in person. This also goes for most (not all) crushes or love affairs.
I have no idea whether this type of online contact would also work for you. Other than you, I am autistic and introverted, so chances are that it doesn't. Probably for me an online chat avoids the situation that another person is around, which is enough to make me latently uneasy. Still, perhaps it give you some ideas.
First: Do you feel bad if you don't have a genuine "click" with people?
There's nothing inherently wrong with being different from your social connections. It's not necessarily isolating IMO, unless you have a prior belief like "true friendship only exists among people who perfectly enjoy eachother". Virtually all of my friends and my romantic partner are very unlike myself, but we have symbiotic relations (we like playing cards / hiking / movies / our role in the provider-appreciator dyad etc). The only people I've felt 100% towards are my siblings , and I only see them once a year.
Second: Do you read very much?
If you read good books by smart people, you can actually get a really good sense of kindred-spiritedness. Try out some of the authors people traditionally fall in love with (Nietzsche is an example of someone lots of people adore, but if you hate him try out some others. Some Buddhist-adjacent writers might be good if you're feeling like perfect satisfaction seems impossibly hard to reach in the world. Anyone people get cult-y about is a candidate). Obviously, reading doesn't satisfy a lot of the social urges (which is what the card players and hikers are for) but it can do wonders for the feeling of "finding a kindred spirit" and "being understood". There have been tons of brilliant and insightful individuals in the history of the world, it would be surprising if none of them were very similar to yourself
I actually don't. Those are all things you don't do. What DO you do for fun? If you consume fiction, what kind of people are in the fiction? If you make things, what inspires that?
Is the sibling the same sex as the partners? Is there a level of physical attraction you're hunting here too?
You say "every online test I've taken," implying you've taken more than one. That implies a heightened level of self-interest. So, if you want to learn to like other people... give them that treatment. Don't, like, accuse them of personality traits or whatnot, but treat them like a puzzle to be solved, like a test to be analyzed, and repeated. And like a gauntlet for your own personality to be run through. Basically, try to view them as an extension of yourself.
I'm an introvert who's been surrounded by extroverts my whole life, but the one really inspirational figure I know is a perpetual entrepreneur who's always excited about their next project. So, go rub shoulders with a bunch of business owners; find someone who deeply enjoys making plans and telling them to people.
How old are you? I personally found my interest in/energy and ability for making new friends fell off a cliff some time around my early 30s. (Luckily for me, I already had “enough” by that time.) It sounds like you have always had a very high bar for really liking someone. Is there something you can identify that the ~5 people you’ve liked so far have in common? And then think of ways to seek out other people like that? Alternatively, is there something situational about your relationships with those happy few that might have helped? It might be easier/more practical to seek out the magic situation rather than the magic person (assuming either exists!). To combine the two approaches — I made most of my good friends at university: any situation where a large number of people with similar interests and qualities are thrown together is bound to maximise your chances, I’d imagine. Drugs and alcohol could be optional extras, too…?
I’m 21. And yes I’ve pretty much always felt this way.
Like the vast majority of countries, in mine, once you go to university you take a singular subject or maybe two if you’re in humanities. Ain’t no way I’m studying some random humanity just because I think the people would be cool. I made a smart choice, not a fun one. And I honestly can’t think of anything where I would think “hey, the people studying this degree are going to be disproportionately likeable to me”.
I can’t really do most drugs, unfortunately, I have a pretty vulnerable psyche to psychedelics and stimulants.
I’ve been actively engaged in many of my hobbies and their community and so far, not a single true good friend from it. I don’t share that many hobbies with my boyfriend, for example. And I like some video games, to take another example, but don’t like most “gamers”.
I know I’m being difficult, but if it had been as simple as “don’t worry, you’ll meet your best friends at university or at your favourite hobby like everyone else seem to” then I wouldn’t have asked here.
Ok, so maybe the interesting/helpful avenue is: how did you get to know your boyfriend, your ex, and the couple of other people you really liked? Was it something about them, something about the situation, or a mixture of the two? University and hobbies haven’t helped: what did help in those instances? Maybe it was something quite unusual that you haven’t consciously realised yet? My totally uninformed guess would be that there’s probably something you can do at your end to help — maybe something you were doing, with these people, that you don’t usually do? Since I don’t know you, it seems better to offer questions rather than answers here…
I realise I may be barking up the wrong tree: maybe you just *are* very very particular, and five people in 21 years is your natural hit rate. In that case, one answer might be: accept that’s who you are, cultivate those people, be content with a small number of very close relationships while remaining open to the possibility of others coming your way (21 is quite young!). Do you find there are some among your more shallowly-held acquaintances with whom you get along more easily and naturally than others? Maybe these relationships will deepen over time. At 21, time is still on your side.
The situation where you meet people matters at least as much as what those people are like in my experience. When I was at university we had a really strong friendship group in the accommodation halls, university selects for a certain kind of person so most people had at least something in common and the halls where a fun relaxed environment with lots of casual social interaction/ drinking/ video games etc.
The other group of people I mainly interacted with where people doing the same course. They must have been similar people as the ones in halls, they'd selected into the same uni, but it was a way more work-oriented setting and I basically didn't know anyone there better than an acquaintance, and mostly didn't find them that likeable.
You might have liked a lot of the people you thought you didn't if you'd met them somewhere else. A good strategy might be to just keep interacting with the same person even if they don't seem likeable initially, preferably in different settings.
One of the major Jewish organisations in Australia wrote a report recently which found that antisemitism was surging massively. But apparently its definition of antisemitism included a lot of... interesting things:
If I were them I'd err on the side of caution when publishing such reports.
Having said that, most of the incidents in the actual document (which is for some reason not linked) seem legit. For instance, "ESHAY" is just one example in the list of antisemitic graffiti spanning 5 pages.
- Describing a rally against a neo-Nazi base organising in the west of Melbourne, the report quotes a single chant: “Black, Indigenous, Arab, Asian and white—unite, unite, unite to fight the right!” This incident is listed under the category “Omitting Jews”.
Some orgs really like to cry wolf, not seeing the damage they do to the epistemological commons.
Generally, it might seem helpful to extend the definition of the big bad to cover whatever mundane opponent you have at the moment, but the price you pay long term is that you erode the definition of the big bad. Having a definition of antisemitism which not only encompasses Nazis and Hamas, but also people who criticize Israel (in a way they don't criticize other similar states, with the caveat that there is no western democracy in a similar situation as Israel) will have the long term effect of making the term antisemitism useless for judging speech.
It's not unique to Israel. You hear this all the time about any number of states.
This is also kind of a cover for the real debate which is whether ethnic nation-states are okay or not. If you think they are but then only oppose Israel's existence as a nation-state that is straight anti-semitism because it means you think ethnic nation-states are okay except for the Jews. If you don't think nation-states are okay but support Palestinian nationalism that too is a fairly straight double standard.
This is why many western leftists have settled on a one state solution where both sides join together and live in a single, egalitarian state. The issue is that neither the Palestinian or Israeli leadership want that.
I used to see it as two groups: Group A is fairly criticizing Israel for reasons decoupled from its Jewishness, Group B is pretending to be group A as cover for their antisemitism. My conclusion, then, was to charitably assume critiques are Group A except when it's really obviously not (either they're group B antisemites or really poorly-thought-out critiques!), because I'd prefer not to accuse people of arguing in bad faith unless I'm very sure of it.
I've slightly changed my mind about this recently though. I think a lot of Group A is unconsciously antisemitic, and their critique of Israel in particular reveals their bias. Two examples of these are the "woke" crowd (claims to be against bigotry but is intolerant of Jewish belief in practice) and Muslims (antisemitism is baked into their traditions and history as far back as Mohammed and really can't be separated even if one tries to avoid it). It's a very "contextualizers vs decouplers" kind of issue and represents my shift from being a strong decoupler to accepting some more modest contextualizer framings.
Israel is in a bit of a unique position. It is a first world, western democracy which is existentially threatened by its neighbors and also fights a harsh asymmetrical war against a subjugated population which loves to kill its citizens.
There are not a lot of other countries in that reference class. As an industrialized country with military support from much of the western world, I think it is fair to apply more stringent standards to it than to some random warlord in Africa. On the other hand, I also recognize that its case for wiping Hamas and Hezbollah from the face of the Earth is solid in a way in which e.g. Putin's case for annexing Ukraine is not.
One reference class country I could think of is Saudi Arabia. Also a steadfast US ally, also with a GDP where one might reasonably demand some basic adherence to humanitarian law which one might not demand from some neolithic tribe. When the Saudis bombed the shit out of Yemen in a regional power struggle with Iran, there was some international condemnation, but all in all little happened. The Biden administration still sold weapons to the Saudis, and nobody gave a damn. I certainly don't recall any protest camps in US universities about that.
There could be different explanations for that:
* Consensus is already that SA is an evil theocratic monarchy. Pointing out that they are evil would just be met with "Duh." But then why not oppose a military alliance with them?
* Availability bias: it is a lot safer to stand outside an Israeli airbase criticizing the bombing of Gaza than standing outside a Saudi Airbase criticizing the bombing of Yemen.
* Many Jews in non-Israel western countries likely pay special attention to Israel. As they are over-represented in the intelligentsia in a way in which e.g. Saudi expats are not, this is a lot of critical eyes on Israel.
* Arabs bombing other Arabs does not fit well into pre-existing woke narratives. Can brown people even be colonizers?
* Jewish endeavors such as Israel are held to a higher standard due to antisemitism.
Honestly, I am a bit doubtful about the last one. In classical European antisemitism, the Jew is described as shrewd, greedy, godless. Not a warrior, but someone who pulls the strings to make good Christians die on the battlefield to further his own power. A former of cabals who knows no faith to his home country, a manipulator of markets.
This is of course not a good match to the Israeli behavior that the woke left criticizes. Leftist Jews who join in the woke criticism are generally welcomed, few leftists believe that their Jewish allies are secretly propagating the global Jewish agenda. By contrast, classic antisemites would not trust Jews. Also, Jews doing their own warfare does not fit the antisemitic stereotypes at all. They should be lending money to some conqueror and make a good return on the bloodshed, not conquer themselves.
The one point of overlap is the claim that the IDF specifically murders Palestinian children, e.g. with sniper fire (just seen on imgur (I read it for the articles)). This bears an uncanny resemblance to the blood libel, which is a cornerstone of traditional European antisemitism.
I think that in general, wokes are not more intolerant of moderate Jewish beliefs than of moderate Christian beliefs. In the US, the Christian faiths are the outgroup of New Atheism (which was a precursor to wokism), while Jewish faiths are more of a fargroup. A woke might accuse Christianity of enabling centuries of oppression of women and colonization, but can hardly blame Judaism to the same degree.
Finally, I think that the relationship between Judaism and Islam is complicated. Of course there was hostility from the start. Both Christianity and Islam had some tendency to let Jews practice their own religion (at times) where practitioners of any other religions would have to chose between conversion and death. Of course, being suffered to live should not be confused with being loved, both Christian and Muslim states discriminated openly against the Jews (as well as each other). Still, there were times when social mobility was much higher for Jews in the Orient than the Occident.
Historically, much of say Catholicism was at least mildly antisemitic. The gospels imply that the Jewish leadership of Jerusalem might have had a hand in convincing the Romans to execute a key figure of Christianity, which is likely a better theological motivation for antisemitism than anything Islam can come up with. However, I vehemently reject that therefore, every Catholic has to be an antisemite, because it "is baked into their traditions and history".
In Islam, antisemitism seems to be at a high, but I likewise reject the claim that Muslims are /per se/ antisemitic.
I was raised Catholic, and there was a detectable emphasis on how THE ROMANS killed Jesus that I didn't really understand at the time, but now seems like a reaction to historical Catholic antisemitism.
That's a fair assumption. There's another critique though, and it's ironically a leftist one! A lot of leftist academics argue in other domains that intent doesn't matter when the end result reinforces harmful systems or narratives. So even if many of the critics don't intend to be antisemitic, if their arguments consistently align with those who are -- and if those arguments push policies that disproportionately target Jews or the Jewish state, or reinforce the power of states and groups with explicitly antisemitic norms -- then the effect is the same. Critical Theory would call that "systemic antisemitism," which I think has some merit in this context, even if I don't usually buy into the framework wholesale. Something to think about.
That's because the vast majority of those who "criticize Isreal" _only ever_ criticize Israel (or nation Y for supporting Israel). Good luck finding even a single tweet from them which criticizes any other nation for equal or worse conduct. At some point, "I'm not anti-semitic, only anti-zionist" has lost its credibility.
How many anti-Russia protests have been held at American universities following the 2022 invasion? How many Russian students at American universities have been openly threatened?
I get where they're coming from. The main purpose of Israel's existence is to secure the existence of the Jewish race at any cost. If you're against Israel, you're against that goal of guaranteeing the continued existence of Jews. Of course they'd see it as anti-semitic.
There is a pretty good reason that people see criticizing Israel specifically as antisemitic. It's a country created to foster a specific religion/ethnic group. And there's a pretty strong history of people criticizing the country who either also are racist against them, or use the one to cover for the other.
That said, there are also other countries that are very significantly one ethnic group, some of which get criticized in similar ways. It would be pretty non-sensical to call someone racist for criticizing a multi-ethnic country like the US.
I agree there should be a consistent principle, but it's hardly only the pro-Israel people who lack that: see Trump's country-based travel ban being condemned as bigotry (by the same people who have no problem hating Israel).
I do think a consistent principle can be "it's only racist if there's an inexplicably differential treatment, analogous to the sole black worker just happening to get the worst jobs". So just criticising Israel wouldn't count, but criticising Israel constantly and never criticising any other country in the Middle East no matter what they do (see the UN, and most universities) would.
FBI hate crime statistics show Jews are the most victimized group in the United States on a per capita basis. Jews are the victims of 68% of all religious hate crimes. Compared to 13% for Muslims. The idea that Jews are not unusually likely to be victims of hate crimes is just factually untrue.
Apparently not in the US. The Jews here haven't really done anything to offend people. They've honestly done a very good job not painting a target on their back... Well okay, they were doing well until the whole situation with Israel. At least this time they have somewhere to run when shit hits the fan, assuming Israel wins, anyways.
Okay wait, can we talk about how atrocious that AI-generated footage at 4:50 is? Oh my god, it's so fucked up that it's reminding me of a PilotRedSun video, and that video is supposed to look like a bad trip. https://youtu.be/aFdE__2OKc8?si=v1CGEzv6_QJlCQzE
Who ought to win the upcoming presidential election in the US? Does anyone have an opinion on that, including why?
Reason for asking: As an outsider living i Europe, I'd be interested in the views of level-headed/rational US insiders, and there are a lot of them in the ACT comment sections. (By "insiders" I mean people who have the right to vote in the US.)
In terms of voting, if it was up to me Harris because of pre Jan 6 (Jan 6 was whatever, the attempt to contest the election with faithless electors etc is what bothered me), but grandma/wife demanded I vote for trump on Israel+Palestine vs. Hamas and relative difficulty of legal vs illegal immigration (grandma very Jewish, wife immigrant) reasons, so haven't yet decided what I will do or what I will pretend I did
There are a lot of reasons why Trump needs to win.
One guy came with a 33-point bullet list on why the current administration is a wrecking ball that needs to be stopped: https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1844802469680873747 . They are not all equal in severity, and they are not adequately expanded on in that tweet, but he is mostly on the mark.
I think Ackman got the #1 (unlimited, unvetted immigration) right or almost right, although it's a lot worse than his #1 point is saying. It's a lot worse because 1) the current party in power is feeling not enough people are voting for them, so they are fighting tooth and nail to import new voters to ensure their permanent majority, over the objections of the current citizens (so far the estimates say they got 12 million in, which would ensure permanent Dem majority if they managed to get them all ballots); 2) the imported criminals that are already making Americans' lives a nightmare, which they aren't getting any help with (see, e.g., the story from Aurora, Colorado: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1844823369394376838.html ); 3) many thousands of people on terrorist watch lists that were allowed in the country together with the rest of the prospective Democratic voters.
I do wonder if his #14 (censorship of speech) should be #1 instead, though. Overwhelming censorship of inconvenient speech helps enable everything this administration is doing, but there's also media's natural leftist bias that causes them to censor anything that's not benefiting their cause, so I'm not sure how big the effect of government censorship actually is compared to the self-censorship that's already there. Together, though, these things are pretty bad. You will notice that most people in ACX comment sections think that Trump's presidency could potentially be a lot worse than all this stuff on Ackman's list, because they almost never hear about anything besides "Trump said X! Also January 6! Also abortion!"
I'm not optimistic that Trump can win, though, because it's too close, and we know of a lot of shenanigans, such as ballots sent to non-existent voters, that will be weaponized to ensure Harris' win.
Trump had control of both houses of Congress and failed to pass anything regarding the border wall. Biden and Kamala lacked both houses and would have passed a bipartisan immigration bill if Trump didn't pressure Republicans to vote against it so he could run on the border problem. The big picture character analysis of Trump should be that he gets nothing done legally and uses any opportunity to enrich himself. He didn't fix the border problem last time and he won't if he wins this time.
The part about importing illegals to turn them into Democrat voters is nonsensical and betrays an understanding of electoral politics in a 2 party system. If Republicans can't moderate their platform across any dimension to appeal to low education 3rd world religious Catholics... then their policies are just remarkably and stupidly ineffectual. It's really hard to lose in a 2 party system, although the House speaker fiasco shows that this might be the new future of the Republican party as long as Trump maintains his personality cult among Republican voters and continues to attack anybody around him in his uncalibrated manner.
>I do wonder if his #14 (censorship of speech) should be #1 instead, though.
Agreed. That is my single largest objection to Harris. In a nutshell, I regard this election as between a candidate who has been part of an administration that censored speech, using Facebook and Twitter as proxies (and who is on record as wanting "regulation" (censorship) of speech) and a candidate who recommended looking into injecting disinfectant. Aargh! I wish DeSantis had gotten the GOP nomination.
Well, as to disinfectant, he was just spouting as usual.
I'm not happy about our free speech candidate non-stop talking crap either. However, his reaction to speech he does not like is going to Twitter and spouting crap, whereas the people currently in power try their best to make the speech they don't like disappear. I grew up in a totalitarian society, and it seems really clear to me who's more dangerous.
3,000 political appointments have a distinct affect on government -- especially when made using DEI Affirmative Discrimination.
I won't pretend to guess how it's going to turn out, but Americans have a short attention span, and it takes a lot to keep them amused for four years.
It's hard for me to imagine voters approving four more years of amateur regressive 'progressivism'. Queer propaganda in school libraries and sandwiches for Hamas are wearing thin.
This is a bad take. Conservatives wanting to restrict books in school libraries is not the same thing as a book ban. The books can still be acquired and read at any time by the students. That is not what the word ban means. If you think school libraries should be required to stock queer books, make that argument. Don't retreat to your motte of "book ban".
Though I'm more politically to the left, I couldn't in good conscience vote Harris. The issue is that the democrats, and the left in general, are a mess and seem to actively harm the groups they claim to help.
For example, the left lead the policy of scrapping the SAT requirement for colleges (i.e., removing a major source of social mobility). The left lead defunding the police. This approach disproportionately hurt those in poverty, and the minorities people were oh so virtuously "protecting."
The left just seen quite far gone, and detached from reality at the moment. E.g., you see MSNBC calling out misinformation, while making obviously falsifiable claims: e.g., that the US has the largest energy production - when China's is twice as large. Etc...
The hypocrisy, the actively harmful luxury beliefs, and the slander of large fractions of the US as racists, sexists, etc... is just too much for me. I think the democratic party needs to lose and regroup if it to have a sensible non-rabid future.
I am supporting Harris for two reasons. These are independent, in that I think each is reason enough to vote for Harris.
The first, mentioned by many here, is that if a mob invades the Capital building in order to stall or upend the work of Congress I trust that she will try to stop the mob. This seems like a minimal expectation of someone who has sworn a solemn oath on a bible to uphold the Constitution but apparently can't be taken for granted any more.
The second is that I do believe that anthrogenic climate change is likely real, certainly plausible and will very likely, if not addressed, make the lives of my (real) children and (imagined) grandchildren much worse than they would be otherwise. This is one area of policy where the US President can have a real impact in a way that state governments cannot, both domestically and internationally. It is clear to me that a Trump administration would be measurably worse at mitigating the causes of ACG, and in many ways would promote policies to accelerate the warming of the planet.
On the other hand, the recent spike in warming is almost certainly due to low-sulfur ship fuel becoming widespread, reducing the cooling effect of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. So environmental lobbying arguably sped up climate change in the near term. Also, nuclear was set back decades by progressive environmentalists.
On the other hand, real decarbonization will likely happen only when renewables are economical - since China is the major manufacturer now, decarbonization will happen only their schedule, not that of the West’s.
I therefore consider Harris to be the candidate more harmful to climate change, from a utilitarian standpoint.
I agree that environmentalists screwed up with nuclear. Maybe less so with SO2, which is pretty nasty stuff in its own right. Surely a carbon tax would be the most direct approach to reducing carbon; something similar for methane is in the IRA. But I don't see how you can conclude from either that Harris would be "more harmful to climate change" [sic], as there is no connection between her and either of these.
I think that a president who doesn't believe there is a problem with any sorts of emissions or polution in general, who loathes wind energy, and who is eager to impose tariffs on the 'major manufacturer' of renewables, will fairly clearly do less to mitigate climate change.
Why do you believe a warmer climate will make many lives much worse? Do you live right on a coast and expect your children and grandchildren to do the same, with no mobility available?
I anticipate that there will be aesthetic losses, such as coral reefs, glaciers and biodiversity, things that have greatly enriched my life and I would want future generates to enjoy. More practically, I expect there will be extensive food and water shortages in parts of the world where the population is, at the same time, growing fastest (sub Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, etc), and that this will result in long term low intensity conflicts not only within those regions but between those regions and the rest of the world, leading to a less peaceful, less abundant world than I have enjoyed.
Obviously, there is speculation involved, but as with Pascal's wager, there seems little downside to belief, and it seems irresponsible to mess with the atmosphere, what with there just being the one.
The downside to belief was at point reported as a reduction of 75% of all economic activity worldwide. Probably not as extreme today, but there is certain to be resources allocated to maintaining the current temperature that could otherwise be directed toward furthering humanity in other ways.
Of course, but I doubt the true figure is anything like 75%; certainly I don't support, nor do I think a vote for Harris (the topic under discussion here) represents support for, drastically reduced economic activity. Practically, renewables (though with their own downsides) are converging to economic parity with fossil fuels; the same for electric vehicles with ICEs. Oil economies like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia may end up worse off but that doesn't bother me too much.
I agree that 75% isn't required, but claiming "we should treat global warming as a threat because we probably won't need as much as 75% less economic activity to address it" still strongly implies that substantial reduction is still required - which is enough to disprove your claim that there is "little downside to belief [ in global warming ]".
It also implies global warming is a threat. See arguments made by David Friedman and others here and elsewhere for why it might not be. If it isn't, then we might waste billions or even trillions of dollars in order to make ourselves worse off.
Harris does not appear concerned at all about this. (Trump does not appear to be even familiar with the issue, but I think he's more likely to hire advisors who will seriously consider the tradeoffs.)
This is the first election I've followed where I'm a coin flip on both who should win and who will win. I'll try to just wait and see who wins and then hope they do the positive parts of their agenda and not the destructive ones.
Anyone who refers to any group of people "poisoning the blood of our country" is not qualified to be dogcatcher, let alone president. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKPFjAhd3KQ
So., too is someone who either believes that Haitians, or anyone, is stealing pets and and eatinig them, or who makes the claim knowing it is false.
If you want to take in refugees (a nobel goal), then you need good sensible policy to enable that. For example in Europe, France has historically had massive problems with refugees (and also struggles with reactionary racism). The issue is that the French often take in refugees and rather than integrate them into society they build getos. In constant, the UK, right next door, does very well with refugees, exactly because it integrates them.
Currently it looks like the US is doing a terrible job at integrating the population influx. The problem is that until recently the Democrats would brand any concern over immigration as being racist (and thus dismiss it). To me that censoring of concerns is deeply troubling, and it makes me want to vote for Trump.
The "sanewashing" of Trump's statements is really getting out of hand. People will hear "poisoning the blood of our country" and "they're eating pets" and somehow they hear "the US is failing to integrate recent immigrants" rather than "this guy is going to incite a pogrom."
People hear Trump promise to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, an act last used to put Japanese-Americans in camps, or promise to deport 20 million people, and somehow translate it to "I will enact sensible immigration reform" rather than "I will put brown people in camps."
And if you try to point out how absolutely unhinged he sounds, people call it "censoring of concerns" rather than "literally just repeating what he said."
I watched a person do a pathetically incompetent attempt at a coup d'etat. Either one of those should utterly disqualify that person as a presidential candidate, or as a respectable human being, and they do not cancel each other out.
Also, I heard this person explain his intended patheticoup, shortly before he tried to carry it out in approximately the way he described. So I'm inclined to suspect that, when he talks about abhorrent things he plans to do, sometimes he actually does mean it literally.
No, in Trump's case, they are the lies of an utterly shameless man. And I have watched what he has done and the only thing that stopped him from doing his worst were people loyal to the US Constitution.
Example:
Former DOJ officials detail threatening to resign en masse in meeting with Trump
"Rosen said Trump "turned to me and said — 'Well, one thing we know is you, Rosen, you aren't going to do anything. You don't even agree with the claims of election fraud, and this other guy at least might do something,'" referring to Clark.
"I said, 'Well, Mr. President, you're right that I'm not going to allow the Justice Department to do anything to try to overturn the election. That's true," Rosen recalled. "'But the reason for that is because that's what's consistent with the facts and the law, and that's what's required under the Constitution.'"
Donoghue eventually joined the meeting and recalled Trump asking, "What do I have to lose?" in replacing Rosen with Clark.
"It was actually a good opening because I said, 'Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose,'" he testified. "I began to explain to him what he had to lose and what the country had to lose and what the department had to lose, and this was not in anyone's best interest. That conversation went on for some time. Everyone essentially chimed in with their own thoughts, all of which were consistent about how damaging this would be to the country."
DOJ officials pushed back on Trump's baseless election fraud claims
House Jan. 6 committee hearings
DOJ officials pushed back on Trump's baseless election fraud claims
The conversation turned to whether Clark was qualified to run the Justice Department.
"It was a heated conversation. I thought it was useful to point out to the president that Jeff Clark simply didn't have the skills, the ability and the experience to run the department," Donoghue testified.
"I said, 'Mr. President, you're talking about putting a man in that seat who has never tried a criminal case, who's never conducted a criminal investigation. He's telling you that he's going to take charge of the department — 115,000 employees, including the entire FBI — and turn the place on a dime and conduct nationwide criminal investigations that will produce results in a matter of days. It's impossible. It's absurd. It's not going to happen and it's going to fail.'"
Donoghue said Trump asked him what he would do if he replaced Rosen with Clark.
"I said, 'Mr. President, I would resign immediately. I'm not working one minute for this guy,'" he replied.
Engel echoed that: "'I've been with you through four attorneys general, including two acting attorneys general, but I couldn't be part of this," he said he told Trump.
Donoghue told Trump he would lose his "entire department" if he moved ahead.
Democratic norms are breaking down and that's really bad. Trump did January 6th, which was bad, and did some dumb stuff in his term of office but it always feels like it's just Trump and few hanger-ons. Meanwhile, there's been 3 big events where major institutions broke democratic norms.
The Russiagate/Mueller thing. The intelligence services assured us that Russia interfered in the election and that Trump was involved/aware. This was not true and we know because they've admitted and apologized for lying to a FISA court judge (a rubberstamp) among other things.
The Hunter Biden thing and Trump twitter ban. In 2020, a massive story broke with video of the president's son smoking crack with a bunch of hookers. Dumb, but elections are dumb. This was blacklisted off social media as the intelligence agencies assured us, and pressured social media, that this was Russian disinfo. In the immediate aftermath, Trump was banned from his primary social media presence, Twitter.
The conviction thing. Trump is running as a convicted criminal over some bs that no one understands and no one cares. Doesn't matter. It's bad to convict your political opponents of bs crimes, especially if they win, because then why wouldn't they do it back to you?
Fundamentally, everyone is burning our democratic mos maiorum at a frightening pace but when the red tribe does it, it's this one populist guy which...seems pretty easy to roll back. When the blue tribe does it, it comes from institutions with entrenched power. That's significantly more dangerous. I can't say it any other way: it's bad for intelligence services to investigate presidential candidates, it's bad to ban presidential candidates from media, and it's bad to convict presidential candidates for BS crimes. Those are all really bad democratic violation norms and no one would be confused about it if, like, the opposition candidate in Turkey or something was investigated by the intelligence services, banned off social media, and convicted of BS crimes.
Trump was banned off of Twitter a few days after Jan 6th, not related to the Hunter Biden thing. The Trump campaign's Twitter was locked for less than a day for sharing a Hunter Biden video.
Also Twitter is currently blocking leaked JD Vance stuff, so this doesn't make for much of a comparison.
Directly? No. Indirectly, absolutely. Afterall, it's not like Biden directly prosecuted Trump, it was a NY DA. I expect Republican DAs to notice and follow suit.
For specific predictions:
Contingent on the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028, 2032, or 2036 being from a red state or having done significant business there (eg Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky):
-I predict with 90% confidence that a Kentucky DA or the AG will open at least one criminal investigation into the Democratic candidate.
-Contingent on the above, I predict a 20% chance that Trump/Republican party will quash the investigation. This is what Biden should have done and it could have been accomplished through a quick phone call. Parties aren't all powerful but they still have power, we just watched them replace Biden with Kamala. Alvin Bragg would not have prosecuted Trump is he credibly believed it would have ended his career in Democratic politics.
-Contingent on the investigation not being quashed, I predict an 90% chance of at least one case going to trial.
-Contingent on the above, I predict a 75% chance of at least one conviction.
So, if the Democratic party nominates someone from a red state, I predict a (0.9*0.8*0.9*0.75)=~48% chance of that candidate being convicted of a crime in that state, with the main questions being whether the Republican party quashes it and whether they can sell it to a jury. Everyone has committed some kind of crime, especially politicians, and a DA can indict a ham sandwich.
I would expect similar attempts to be experimented with on Democratic candidates for Senate and House in red states. The conviction is still relatively recent, everyone is keeping quiet with the election, but the game logic makes too much sense.
If it helps you understand, I would similarly predict,
Contingent on a Republican president and a Democratic Senate:
I would predict that no Supreme Court Justice would be appointed in the last 12 months of the Republican president's term.
Trump isn't a lawyer; if he tries to directly prosecute anyone, he'll be laughed out of court. If he orders the DOJ's lawyers to prosecute political opponents, they'll slow-walk it past 2029. If he orders his new Attorney General to fire all the DOJ's lawyers and replace them with Trump loyalists, he'll run up against the Pendleton Act, and it's unlikely that he'll win that fight.
He could probably manage a few prosecutions by having his tame AG appoint loyalists to any vacancies in the DOJ, but they'll be operating without the support of the bulk of the organization.
I'd very much prefer he didn't try such a damn fool thing, but if he does I expect it won't go very far. Look at the trouble Trump's opponents have had prosecuting *him*.
"Contingent on a Republican president and a Democratic Senate:
I would predict that no Supreme Court Justice would be appointed in the last 12 months of the Republican president's term."
Unfortunately, the Republicans have set this precedent in 2016.
I realize you've just basically estimated these chances, but particularly "I predict a 75% chance of at least one conviction" rings hollow. Maybe you meant for each such trial, but 75% seems laughably low for, say, 10 trials.
"Unfortunately, the Republicans have set this precedent in 2016."
I mean, that's the reference. :)
And it's justified. The Republicans broke mos maiorum and screwed the Democrats out of a Supreme Court justice seat, a seat that ended up having big implications. The Dems can't let that slide. They don't have to escalate further but they can't be the ones to deescalate without looking weak.
On the percentages, I just went with my gut. You're free to adjust the percentages or think more deeply about them.
Do you think some Republican DA is going to go after Kamala Harris, and if so, on what grounds? The matters around Biden (mainly Hunter and his screw-ups) have been thrashed out, but I haven't seen any rumours that Kamala was doing anything particularly bad (even by San Francisco political standards, where availing of patronage to mix with the nobs for the deep pockets to fund your campaigns isn't even on the list of 'whoa there friend that's abuse of office').
I doubt a Republican DA can go after Kamala, the same way I doubt a Democratic DA could go after DeSantis. Republican DAs can only really prosecute Democrats from red states and Democratic DAs can only really prosecute Republicans from blue states. I don't think the system is totally broken, the legal system isn't bad enough that you can prosecute people who haven't really done anything in your jurisdiction. Trump seems uniquely vulnerable because he spent so much time doing business in NY.
As for federal, not state prosecutors, I think that's a big part of what Project 2025 is about. The Feds don't obey Trump, they relish in it, and they jailed Bannon and Manafort. That requires...fundamental changes to their personnel and culture to prevent a reoccurrence.
Obviously trump, politically he's a boring moderate, culturally we need a signal that outsiders/rural/men can succeed over the cities/insiders/hr-women, its getting very very depressing out there. (and yes its weird that a newyorker is the symbol of rural america)
"Trump isnt the flood he's the dam"; honestly since he named vance his successor I dont think his death would matter much but the 1st assassination attempt, oh boy, wouldve been a disaster, if the war hawk republications got control of the party again and there was bipartision support for some random war to launder money, and mass importing 2nd class citizens(illegal immigrants work for peanuts be causes structurally they have even less bargaining power then you, *by design*).
“Culturally we need a signal that …men can succeed over … women”
I know, right? After nearly 250 years of all female Presidents, all the time, it’s high time to show that a man can become POTUS! It’s hard to imagine, I know, but one can dream.
I spend my days, begging to work to faceless job sites sites, spent years on a piece of paper and feel a pull to self-censor my socail media usage to appease protental future employers(and 95% of people viewing my social media would tell me to self censor more). The corporate bureaucracy has been in power for my entire life and recently been going completely insane.
My interactions with this vague comforist power has been teachers and hr managers; I dont doubt the ceo's of the majority of corps I hate are men, but the boots on the ground of gossip, shaming, appealing to faceless systems are women, acting like women. If you dont understand that I see hilrey and kalama as what vance calls "childless cat ladies" your not understanding the cultural element of this election.
The power men bring to the table is violence, while women gossip and shame; violence wins over gossip but thats quite the road to go down and would be happy to hear any compromises youd offer; but I wont feel shame about this anymore, fly-over america is hurting, men are hurting, and I fucking hate the corporations and their god damned culture.
I've, like, 70-80% convinced myself to vote Trump, which would make me an Obama-Johnson-Biden-Trump voter. I probably would have voted Biden over Trump, but I will likely vote Trump over Harris. Yes, I am very aware of how odd this particular split is. If you told me in 2016 that I would be seriously considering voting Trump in 2024 I would be very surprised.
Main issues to me that favor Trump are immigration, courts, and the economy. Main things that are keeping me from being 100% are Ukraine, foreign policy/diplomacy in general, and the possibility that this galvanizes a really obnoxious leftist opposition that would be worse than just letting Harris win and hopefully electing a normal-ish Republican in 2028.
After the debate, you would still have voted Biden over Trump? Is that faith in the Democratic party machine? If so, why would it not work equally as well for Harris?
It's the Wanker party or the Banker party, and I don't have a dog in that fight.
I'm collecting all campaign literature and other lies in a shopping bag. On voting day, I'll ceremonially place the bag in the dumpster. End of election.
Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Seventh Day Adventists are going to make a fortune providing rehab to these psychos. The Right wing-nuts have littered the Voters' Guide with their nonsense, while the Leftie mayor funds toilet troll parades downtown and paint for rainbows on the streets. Thank goodness for football and door-to-door evangelists.
I've said as much in other threads, but just to reiterate here.
I'm voting Harris. For this election cycle, at least, I'm one-issue voter, and that issue is "is there a chance this candidate, if given power, will refuse to peacefully surrender it?" Historically, we've had a good run in the US, and in my lifetime I've never had to even consider that as a factor when voting. But now that we have a candidate running who has already once attempted to thwart the electoral process and fraudulently retain power despite an election loss, now seeking power again, I can't justify any use of a vote other than to support their opponent.
Promoting this concern is central to the democratic ticket. However, I don't buy it. There was ultimately a peaceful transfer of power. Trump left the white house.
J.D Vance asked point blank said a) he condems the riots and b) that the ticket is commited to a peaceful transfer of power, regardless of the outcome. (You can find these answers on YouTube in some of the Forbes news YouTube posts).
Hitler also consumed cyanide so I guess WWII was a peaceful transfer of power because he didn't fight to the end.
J.D. Vance has also said that he wouldn't have certified the 2020 election. He was clearly picked because if Trump decides no more certifying the 2028 election, Vance will go along with it.
That there was "ultimately a peaceful transfer of power" after Trump failed to overturn the election matters to me about as much as Robert Routh ultimately behaving peacefully in court after his failed assassination attempt.
Handing the gun back to a guy who just tried to shoot you, because his assistant says "point blank" that said guy now condemns shooting and will only use the gun to protect you, is beyond foolish.
What was expected to happen after the coup. Would the Congress say - there’s a lot of fairly unfit 50 year olds walking about with foam hands let’s create a dictatorship? If the electoral college wasn’t ratified ok that day, would that be it? Does the constitution say something like - the electoral college needs ratification on Jan 6th by congress or the incumbent can stay in forever.
Seems like a formality.
Generally when I think of coups I expect it to involved military action on the part of the coupists.
Congressman Mo Brooks emailed Trump asking for a pardon for all the Republicans that would have defected and joined Pence in certifying the fradulent electoral votes. You think people would wait for the courts to determine whether that was constitutional? There would have been mass unrest because Trump attempted to turn our country's government into one of those 3rd world shithole governments he dislikes so much.
Seriously, how do you think strongmen like Putin became dictators? They woke up one day with full control of the government and military and compliance of the masses blessed to them by the lord almighty? They did exactly what Trump was trying to do by delegitimizing government and oppositional forces, falsifying votes, and replacing everybody in positions of power with loyalists, like when he pressured AG Barr to sign a forged letter that would allow the DoJ to confiscate votes from the states. The lack of that is what's supposed to separate democracies from dictatorships, which Trump is trying to turn the US into.
> Seriously, how do you think strongmen like Putin became dictators? They woke up one day with full control of the government and military and compliance of the masses blessed to them by the lord almighty?
Putin has generally won elections.
> Congressman Mo Brooks emailed Trump asking for a pardon for all the Republicans that would have defected and joined Pence in certifying the fradulent electoral votes. You think people would wait for the courts to determine whether that was constitutional?
Well that’s not the “coup”, as it’s not related to the fat fifty year olds wandering into the congress, who could have convened anywhere to vote.
Sure. It would have been a bit of a messy period but the Supreme Court would have ruled one way or the other - but that’s what happened with Al Gore.
I’m not pro Trump or in any way a Republican, I’m amused that any body thinks that the US is a democracy to lose.
If you read the memo one the lawyers working with the Trump legal team wrote about it, it looks like the plan was "Trump stays president, and we force Biden to go to court to try to overturn the results, where a majority-conservative SCOTUS will deem it a non-justiciable political question."
>>"The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind."
For myself, I've tried to avoid the word "coup" in describing the fake elector scheme/Jan 6 riot so far. I think it could debatably be called a coup attempt, but once you throw that word in the mix, the conversation tends to bog down (see, e.g. the argument between TGGP and Monkyy) in a bunch of unnecessary back and forth about that counts as a "coup."
And honestly I think that argument is a distraction. It doesn't matter whether it "counts as a coup." If someone tries to shoot me but then his supporters explain that "murder" isn't the right word for what he was trying to do because based on the precise facts of the case it really should be considered an "attempted aggravated manslaughter"... I mean, that's cool I guess, and it's relevant for his criminal prosecution, but it's not relevant to whether I'm giving him the gun back, and I'd be a moron to do so.
A candidate lost the election, and rather than concede he & his staff attempted to insert a false result which would defraud the electorate by preventing the peaceful transfer of power to the victor, to the point of fomenting a riot in the Capitol to try to compel the Vice President into playing his role in the plan. Whatever word you want to use for that, a guy who is willing to do it to retain power is not someone you give that power back to willingly.
For some of us, the actions of Biden’s Edith Wilsons, whoever they may be (and it’s odd but significant that we don’t know their names) represent an expansion and overreach of executive power* if not quite in the FDR league, equally as consequential.
I’m not being snarky. But it’s as well to understand others may have concerns on the level of yours, just differing.
*Of course, the executive power in this case was de facto unelected.
To be honest, if someone else looks at Trump’s deliberate attempt to subvert election results and retain power after losing and thinks, “well I’m equally concerned that some people in the Biden Administration may have taken an inappropriately large role in setting policy as Biden’s mental health declined,” I think, charitably, that those people are wrong and misleading themselves because no one likes to admit that the leader of their tribe did a bad and its always much easier to go looking for something (anything) the other tribe did that they can turn on its head and declare equally bad so that their leader’s bad doesn’t matter so much anymore. Whataboutism is bad reasoning but good for the soul, and this was what they found. If anything, it’s only real value is illustrating just how hard the barrel had to be scraped to find the equivalence.
But at any rate, Harris is the candidate, not Biden, and I’m comfortable fixing the % odds of occurrence of “Harris experiences a mental decline that results in other members of her administration taking an inappropriately large role in setting policy, which is kind of like unelected officials governing if you think about it, which is kind of like crafting and executing a plan to overturn a legitimate election result if you *really* think about it” at 0%.
On the other hand, “Trump refuses to concede power” is not a 0% risk, since it’s already something he’s done once and I don't see any change in his behavior or attitude that says he wouldn't be willing to do so again if push came to shove and he wanted to keep power he'd legitimately lost.
Given that, I don’t see any responsible use of a vote other than using it to vote against him, and I believe that anyone voting for him (despite whatever well-meant intentions or concerns they may think they are addressing by doing so) is making a wrong and irresponsible choice.
As for his real estate doings - I admit as I’m not interested in his fortunes, I haven’t followed the story as you have - it’ll be a dangerous precedent for other politicians, the day anybody is finally nailed on that score. That’s a big bed.
I'm confused - I don't think I mentioned real estate anywhere. Maybe you're looking at another post?
Edit - also your other reply, which begins "Nah, I'm not a Republican." I didn't say you were. I initially just brushed over it but now wondering if it was meant to go someplace else.
Oh sorry, I was just on a dreamy tangent about Trump’s misdeeds, which have expanded to include whether or not Mar a Lago is worth (making up figures) 20 million dollars, or like 8 million? (Sorry I’m cooking and can’t google). It’s the most famous house in Florida but then people don’t really like old vintage things so much anymore.
As to the Republican remark, I hold no partisan brief for Trump qua Trump.
Honestly let's face it, even the people here who live in the US don't live in states where their vote actually has a chance of mattering. Personally, I'll be voting for Harris so that when Trump ends up winning, he'll lose the popular vote even more, which will slightly increase the chances of more entertaining stuff happening. It's just one vote, but I'm doing my part.
Weirdly, in 2020 my late wife and I moved from California to South Carolina (for reasons unrelated to politics). So we went from being disempowered voters in a deep blue non-swing state to being disempowered voters in a deep red non-swing state. Sigh.
Government of the swings states, by the swing states, and for the swing states shall not perish from the Earth.
I don't know if I'd describe myself as level-headed--I just posted asking how to join the manosphere--but if you want an unattached American's view, sure.
First of all, our two-party system sucks. It exists because of an artifact of the old first-past-the-post system and because the duopoly has squashed attempts to get outside it. It increases corruption, because there are fewer parties to pick from, and polarization, because it gets people into two big coalitions and then gets them all ready to hate each other. I don't tell progressives I think a biological connection between sex and gender exists or that I think the media is biased against whites or men; I don't tell conservatives I'm pro-abortion, trans and gay people should have the same rights as everyone else, or I think the welfare state should be bigger.
But: I am going to argue for voting for Harris. Trump tried to steal the election and then claim it had been stolen from him, launched the USA's first-ever coup attempt, and refuses to concede if he loses. For all that I hate the Democrats and their woke, sadly I'm going to have to suck it up for four more years, because Trump is likely to (ironically) make this country look a lot more like Latin America. with powerful people putting cronies in charge of everything, every party claiming they won after each election and making it impossible for their enemies to win, and general incompetence (Trump's meddling in the CDC during COVID made quite the impression).
“Trump is likely to (ironically) make this country look a lot more like Latin America. with powerful people putting cronies in charge of everything, every party claiming they won after each election and making it impossible for their enemies to win, and general incompetence”
...that’s interesting. As an outsider who visits the US irregularly, it has been my hypothesis for 30 years that the US is slowly moving towards having a political culture similar to the two other large, immigrant American countries: Brazil and Argentina. Only with a Protestant rather than Catholic twist.
It's part of why I respected the old WASP ideals even if they wouldn't have let me golf with them. There is a reason the USA had less corruption and more organization than the countries to its south, and it's going away.
I've heard arguments similar things happened to Israel with the influx of Russian immigrants.
As an Israeli, I think Russian immigrants are one of the best things that happened to us in the last decade, as a demographic boost to our secular and educated population
I'm more worried about the democrats degrading democracy tbh. We saw what Trump did in power: the world didn't end.
I really don't think Trump has the power, the will, or the party support or the popular support to undermine democracy. I think the democratics actually do, and I find their constant flirting with dehumanising their opponents as biggots and racists far more concerning. I can easily see that rhetotic transitioning to support the need to veto certain political opponents (to protect the people) and that being a pathway to a one party system. I don't see any similarly concerning rhetoric on the right.
Just to be clear, I think the riot was appalling, and I think Trump should have been heavily fined contemporaneously (but not criminally charged). It seemed incredibly weak and misguided of the democrats to not do that.
Yeah, I don't like a lot of the stuff they do. I thought the whole bit with blaming white people when black people beat up Chinese people during the pandemic reminded me of something out of Der Sturmer.
Thing with Trump is he knows the system a lot better and actually has a plan (Schedule F--he tried at the end of his last term) to replace the entire federal government with his people. And whatever you think about Harris (and there is a lot to think) she is unlikely to retain support if she fails to concede.
But I think we agree it is the lesser of two evils. We just differ slightly on which evil is lesser.
The constitution was a coup of the articles, there were traitors who swapped to the British, the civil war, who killed jfk and did they get what policy change they wanted, etc etc.
I hate when people state the common opinion as fact without even why they think its true.
Theres like 5 theories, 3 of which aint that absurd.
> coup requires the participation of security forces
George Washington was part of the constitutional convention, while I dont keep track of details I will reject he didnt hold soft military power at the time; so coup vs the articles.
Oswald bought a rifle matching the bullet trajectories. He was working in the Book Depository, where shots were fired from. He killed a cop while evading the authorities. He had previously attempted to assassinate Edwin Walker. He had for a while defected to the Soviet Union, where he married a Russian woman, and supported Castro's regime in Cuba.
Strange, I think George Washington was in power shortly after the convention, I think maybe he mustve had enough soft power or your suggesting *allot* of violence in the background im not aware of.
> Oswald bought a rifle matching the bullet trajectories. He was working in the Book Depository, where shots were fired from. He killed a cop while evading the authorities. He had previously attempted to assassinate Edwin Walker. He had for a while defected to the Soviet Union, where he married a Russian woman, and supported Castro's regime in Cuba.
A bullet disappeared, the declassified video of jfks head did the opposite of the they told the public. Oswald had mafia connections. He was killed within a week.
I think the mafia version of the story makes sense.
I'm going to go with Trump, especially seeing that nobody else is defending him.
The left in the U.S. has been corrupting the court system in extremely terrifying ways - going after Trump for routine violations like classified documents (Obama almost definitely still has some lying around, for instance), colluding with the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop, for two.
In addition their FAA has been harassing Elon Musk and hamstringing some of the most important technology in the world, for nakedly political reasons. These two issues alone are bad enough, but the Democrats also kept Covid lockdowns going FAR beyond when they needed to, kept up mask mandates, urged vaccine mandates, and generally promulgated an atmosphere of terror for a relatively harmless pandemic.
Trump is an evil buffoon, but the Democrats are by far the worse option, to my mind. I think the Jan. 6th issue was a foolish, unintentional mistake by Trump. And I actually do think that there are concerns with the U.S. election system - namely that we need Voter I.D. requirements like every other civilized country in the world.
>going after Trump for routine violations like classified documents (Obama almost definitely still has some lying around, for instance),
They went after Trump because he *intentionally tried to hide* classified documents. Other people, including Democrats (I forget if it was Obama or someone else close to Biden), have been found with classified documents, but they turned them over when the government noticed they were missing and asked for them back. If it's an honest mistake, it's no big deal.
But when the government noticed that Trump had taken classified documents and asked for them back, he denied having the documents, and had them moved to another room to conceal them. No shit the government is going to come down hard on that.
To what you said, I would also add the destruction of institutions like the ACLU and the vast damage done to the education system (eg. Canceling gifted classes, dumbing down math, affirmative action, vibes-based literacy learning (Calkins?) that has put a dent in literacy rates). These weren't explicitly campaigned for by Democrats, but there was a very visible picture of pretending like these aren't happening or are actually good, for which I hold them responsible.
That said, I'll vote for Harris (in NY so doesn't matter) through clenched teeth because I can't interpret the Jan 6th events as anything other than an attempt to destroy the Republic. In the best case scenario, if they were a mistake, it's a cosmic level of irresponsibility like a conductor falling asleep at the console and letting a train detail. But if they were not a mistake, it's the most blatant self-serving attack on the country's institution that I know of.
Yeah I don't like Trump, but I'm thinking of voting for him. The Dems seem to be the party of big business, pharma, defense contractors and I hope Trump can push back against some of that. Also living in NY my vote doesn't matter.
The realignment of the parties as establishment / opposition is well and truly complete if you see the Dems as the party of big business, pharma, and defense contractors.
Not saying you're wrong that they are that party. You are, however, mistaken if you think that Republicans, either legacy GOP or the current Trump skinsuit version, aren't also the party of big business, pharma, and defense contractors.
(And what's wrong with big business, pharma, and defense contractors anyway?)
Well, for a start pharma cause harm, it is in the name. It is not in the business of healing people, as it is not good for business. Creating sickness is good for business so they have vaccines etc.
Defence contractors is another word for warmongers. They are not in the business of protecting people as it is not good for business. Stirring up fear and trouble is good for its business.
Voter ID is one of those odd hills that people choose to fight over. It is incredibly rare for voter fraud to take the form of someone going to a polling station and pretending to be someone else on the electoral register because its fairly easy to detect when the real person wanders in and is told they've already voted. It also isn't apocalyptically difficult to get accepted ID as voter ID detractors claim. If you speak to anyone who has canvassed before low level voter fraud generally takes place with postal votes either through family patriarchs or matriarchs being the one to vote for the entire family or organised groups having everyone tick the box for the agreed upon candidate in front of them. Voter ID checks solve neither of these and the only way around the postal vote issue is to ban postal votes which is never going to happen (beyond ending all abusive behaviour).
Its not a big deal having to go through Voter ID checks but its just money being spaffed up the wall to implement it and a minor roadblock to voting. Not enough to impact general elections but at least here in the UK there was one minor local election I didn't vote in because I got to the polling station and realised I'd forgotten my ID.
Overwhelmingly when I’ve worked the polls people have a pragmatic response to voter ID, 10 to one I’d say. Basically amounting to: I have to show my ID (in whatever form) for many less consequential things.
OTOH the *professional* Dems in my state just complained that voter rolls were purged of 5000 illegal immigrants. Because it would suppress their votes.
Yeah its not voter suppression because in reality its just a mild nuisance especially when you're used to not needing it since its so easy to acquire a government ID. Its just a pointless policy (at least in developed nations) that is there to have the appearance of being tough on low level voter fraud because dealing with any of the actual ones is either politically toxic or requires too much political capital.
What? How is it disingenuous? Illegal immigrants shouldn't be on the electoral register to be able to vote in the first place. Its a completely different issue to requiring voter ID. The exact same mechanism that prevents you driving to every polling place you can reach and voting there should stop illegal immigrants voting. If they are illegally on the register then ID does not help.
There has been a disingenuous tendency - abetted by the Dumb Right, unfortunately - to identify the dismay around voting process changes* that seem ever more, ah, targeted at outcomes (and have yielded some interesting features, like everyone in a precinct voting identically) - which seem, in short, to be very far from a folk notion of one man, one vote, in secret … “The private life in Russia is dead” - to identify that with both the Jan 6 rabble, and with claims of a wholesale stolen election.
The former has been drowned out, but is more salient in my view.
>>In 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit, interviewed election officials "who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes in the 2016 general election," including in many jurisdictions with high populations of noncitizens. The officials "referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution," amounting to "0.0001 percent of the 2016 votes in those jurisdictions," according to the Brennan Center.
>>The conservative Heritage Foundation, which frequently warns about the danger of noncitizens voting, comes to a similar conclusion. Its database of "election fraud cases" includes around 70 instances of noncitizens voting illegally since 2000, representing under 5 percent of the database. Many of those cases involved lawful permanent residents who were "encouraged by a government official to vote or falsely told that they were eligible," wrote American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
>>The trend holds even in states that have recently become election integrity battlegrounds. A 2023 study analyzed by The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler recorded "fewer than 1,000 noncitizen votes out of 3.4 million cast in the 2020 election in Arizona," or 0.0003 percent (assuming 50 percent turnout among registered noncitizens). "At the upper range," using "less precise records," Kessler continued, the study indicated less than three-quarters of a percent of voting-age noncitizens in the state "may have voted." A 2022 Georgia audit found that just over 1,600 noncitizens had tried to register to vote in a 25-year period—but none had successfully registered, and none had voted.
These kind of small numbers jive with the last time I looked into the issue personally, when someone shared https://www.scribd.com/document/326149037/Report-Alien-Invasion-in-Virginia with me, and despite the alarmist tone from an obviously-pushing-to-do-more-about-noncitizen-voting perspective, the number of actual votes they found was paltry. If I can dig up the analysis I did I might post later - for now I'm not dealing with scribd and redigging through the document itself.
Personally, this issue has always struck me in my fiscal conservative bone. If, for example, the non-citizen vote in Arizona in 2020 was .0003% (or even the max of .0006%, since the .0003% figure was built on an assumption of 50% turnout), it's not *not* an issue, but how much effort and money, realistically, should we put into fixing something so non-impactful on elections? How much lower an error rate do we want?
Just reminds me of prog-left-environmentalist types trying to convince me that 2-parts-per-trillion arsenic in the water requires billions of dollars of regulation because "there is ARSENIC in the WATER."
I strongly believe that election fraud occurs only at insignificant levels in American presidential elections. But this argument is so unpersuasive that it's actually antipersuasive, reeking of sleight of hand by someone trying to hide something.
You're talking about *criminal prosecutions* for election fraud, as a metric for actual election fraud. But prosecutorial discretion is a thing, and it's a thing that introduces huge systematic bias to your assessment. If I told you that, in the past year, the City of San Francisco had prosecuted only five people for shoplifting, would you conclude that there was almost no shoplifting going on in San Francisco? The Federal Government hasn't prosecuted anyone for growing or distributing marijuana in California in decades, despite this being a serious federal crime. Do you conclude that nobody in California grows weed? And if I told you that, in the whole of the Jim Crow era, Alabama never arrested anyone for lynching black people, would you conclude that there were no lynchings in Alabama?
Yikes - that's a significant miss. Was that in all 4 of the studies the article referenced, or are you critiquing their critique of the Heritage Foundation one for only finding " 70 instances of noncitizens voting illegally " for its database of "election fraud cases?"
It's interesting you make the point about antipersuasiveness, my engagement with this topic has always been colored by the one time I did deep-dive into the Alien Invasion study. It seemed so incredibly alarmist in tone, dramatically leading with figures of improperly registered voters when (a) the numbers were in fact small compared to the number of voters and votes over the 10 year period they were looking at, and (b) the number of *votes* they identified, which is what impacts elections and actually matters, was even smaller - pathetically so.
I'll see if I can dig it up, but the whole thing reeked of trying to take something incredibly small, inflate it as best it could by focusing on registrations rather than votes, and then deal with the smallness of even *that* by trying to argue they'd only found the 'tip of the iceberg' when even if you took the numbers they found and assumed comparable numbers everywhere in Virginia it still didn't come close to sufficient numbers to impact election results.
I don’t know about 10 million such voters. That would surprise me. Hispanics generally have not shown an interest in voting in great numbers, so it is unlikely illegal immigrants would bother unless there’s a money angle.
However, I guess I’d turn the question back: how would you avoid signing them up to vote?
That’s what the recent kerfuffle in for instance Bexar County was about.
LULAC volunteers or other Hispanic activists sign people up to vote, whether by going door to door or at tables, I dunno.
To sign up to vote you are given a little card to fill out and mail in postage-free.
The card certainly doesn’t ask where you are born. The main information sought is where you live, so you can be assigned a precinct.
Anyone getting a driver’s license is also asked if they would like to register to vote.
DL’s are not tied to citizenship at all.
Of course, many people here illegally do not wish for any of these government “touches”.
But how you would ever separate the heat from the chaff is beyond me. The fact that there are so many “same names” is surely a hurdle as well.
A concerted investigation found just what you’d expect from the process. There was not any sort of “ we promise to do better”. The response was - how dare you try to clean up the voter rolls in order to remove noncitizens (as well as people who have disappeared/died/ left the state.
Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the US government in a coup d'etat, conspiring to organize seven false slates of electors, then sending a mob at the Capitol with the intent of preventing the peaceful transfer of power because he was salty about losing. It is absolutely necessary that he be prevented from obtaining power again and sent to prison, so that in future generations, every would-be putschist thinks, "I don't want to end up like Trump, the guy who tried to overthrow the government and went to jail," rather than, "if I just do what Trump did, but more effectively, *I* could be dictator for life, and there's no risk." As history's greatest and most moral superpower, the decay of the United States's democratic institutions is one of the worst possible things that could happen, and a Trump 2024 victory would be a direct wrecking ball to them.
For those hoping for a Harris victory, what is the expectation should she take office?
Four years of "just keep going as we are"? I don't think that's the worst, but it needn't be the best, either. Do we have any ideas what she and Walz think about foreign policy? Do you think in office Walz will be told "sit down, shut up, you're only the VP and I'm the boss"?
Are the hopes about loosening up on immigration, restoring abortion, more trans rights, more all rights, etc. based on anything tangible? I know Walz has the image of being liberal to progressive, but again - once in the White House, will he have any input at all?
I think she might possibly be even less forthcoming toward the defund-the-police faction of the Democratic Party than Biden. She only chooses not to show her stern side, for tactical within-party reasons.
...I base this on her record as a very tough-on-crime state prosecutor in California: The only time in her career she has showed her revealed preferences (so to speak), rather than to say stuff. The Guardian had an article on her track record where they tried to soft-pedal her decisions back then, yet was unable to gloss over her crabby attitide toward criminals, it is just too visible:
...Perhaps she is an equally stern centrist also with regard to other policy issues. The fact that she has lately copied many of Trump's policy ideas (with a lighter touch, but still) may suggest the same. Then again, it might also be a tactical pose.
We'll have to wait and see if she gets the chance to show whatever is her real face, after the election.
I think she will probably govern as a Democratic politician. If I were to pick a single key policy position, I think she will be much more supportive of Ukraine than Trump, whose party blocked aid to Ukraine for six months on behalf of a border bill he then scuttled, as people fought and died against a genocidal dictator. If I was to pick one animating issue, the truly disgusting GOP treatment of the Ukrainian people, who are being invaded by a genocidal dictator, and which clearly comes from Trump, would be my key issue.
I'm not voting for her for policy reasons, though. I didn't vote Biden in 2020 or Clinton in 2016. I'm voting for her because Donald Trump attempted to coup the US government and needs to be driven out of politics for the health of American democracy. I live in Texas, and I voted in the Republican primaries this year because my state rep was targeted by Abbott et al for trying to impeach Ken Paxton for corruption. He also voted against Ukraine aid, but I like having a functional government instead of living in a nakedly corrupt and criminal shithole, which is the path that Trump is leading the GOP/country down.
1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is proof that Vladimir Putin wants to reconstitute the Glorious Russian Empire in a manner befitting Londo Mollari. Which, if pursued even halfway to completion, results in the United States being obligated to wage actual war against Russia.
2. The defense of Ukraine is our last, best hope to destroy the Russian army and discredit Putinist revanchism without American blood being shed, and at little actual cost (the nominal dollar value of US military aid to Ukraine is mostly the book value of weapons that we were otherwise going to throw away in a few years).
3, Ukraine is a place where free men are standing between their loved homes and the war's desolation. We sing songs about that; of course we care, and for reasons entirely orthogonal to our knowledge of geography. Polling suggests that about two thirds of Americans want the United States to continue supporting Ukraine, one third want more support than we're giving them now and for as long as it takes.
The people of Ukraine are being actively invaded by a fascist tyrant, who has kidnapped tens of thousands of their children to be raised by Russians because he believes, as an ethnic group, they were made up by the Austrian general staff in WWI. His regime commits all sorts of war crimes, including rape, torture, and murder of civilians. I don't really care about the geopolitics, opposing aid for Ukraine is simply a morally bankrupt action.
The geopolitics case for protecting Ukraine is twofold:
1) Deterrence. There have been virtually no territorial annexations since WW2 that were enforced by violence. What Russia has done in very, very bad. It is important that Russia is punished for it and that others who might hope to reshape the international world order (China) are dissuaded. Given large chunks of the EU (America's greatest ally) were under the Russian (Soviet) yoke in living memory, it is particularly important that Russia be convinced military adventurism into Europe is bad.
2) The purpose of the US military is first and foremost to protect the sovereignty of the USA. Therefore, expending a small portion of the US military budget (~5%, IIRC?) to slowly defang one of the ~2 countries capable of even hoping to invade the USA if our entire military disappeared in a puff of smoke is an excellent deal.
e: Oh yeah, and:
3) Ukraine being invaded basically tells every leader with half a brain on the planet that under no circumstances should you give up your nukes. It's probably too late on this particular point, but it's still a bad precedent to set, since more countries with nukes means more chances for nuclear miscalculations and mass loss of life.
"Ukraine being invaded basically tells every leader with half a brain on the planet that under no circumstances should you give up your nukes."
I regret to inform you that the leaders actually learned this lesson long before the 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War (specifically on October 20th, 2011, although IIRC Myers has argued that the DPRK figured it out on December 25th, 1989).
Any world leaders who "discovered" this lesson after the Russian invasion has long since been off the track to build nuclear weapons anyway, so their opinion is mostly irrelevant.
1) There‘s been a fair amount of illegal invasions if not strictly territorial conquest exactly - although the US did control Afghanistan for a while. Of course the US isn’t going to fight itself.
2) protecting the sovereignty of the US would require a much smaller army, ready to take on Mexico and Canada. The army is big for extra territorial reasons.
The nuclear answer is smarter, perhaps, but you could also argue that the lesson from Iraq is to actually have nukes.
You can’t underestimate the degree to which Americans have quit taking their country quite so seriously. Who’s to blame for that, is pretty obvious, and spares neither “party”.
But in general, there are those on the left who don’t really think January 6 was “all that”, but who are happy to use it in fundraising and to sell papers and demagogue for votes. There are a few who seem legitimately frightened even at the memory of it, of course. (These may be the same people who were talking about wearing a paper clip as a recognition sign, one day after Trump was elected, and claimed to be frightened to leave their apartments? I seem to be the only one who remembers the Paperclippers!)
On the right though the Jan. 6ers are generally viewed as cosplaying nutters who were aping and reacting to what had gone on, to adulation and monetary reward (by the same people who would see dark-die-democracy above) in Minneapolis and indeed in DC itself during the Floyd protests. And whose delusions have only been encouraged by the decision not to try them for years. There is I suppose a bit of what is good for the gander is surely good for the goose, but that’s about all that passes for support. Whatever chaos agent Trump may say, I see no evidence that the GOP is fundraising and pundits dining out on the somewhat draconian legal travails of the liberty cosplayers. Mostly they are just viewed as people with too much time on their hands in exactly the manner of 99% of our modern “protesters”. Had they been clever, they would have figured out some humorous way to get attention. But we’re not talking Monkey Wrench Gang levels of IQ here.,
I'm not sure what bearing this has on Chastity's comment, though.
It can be perfectly true that
(a) lots of Americans no longer take their country seriously as a result of both parties, that some people exist on the left who do not take Jan 6 riots seriously while others are genuinely afraid, that many on the right view the Jan 6 rioters as ineffectual morons., etc, etc, and that,
(b) "Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the US government in a coup d'etat, conspiring to organize seven false slates of electors, then sending a mob at the Capitol with the intent of preventing the peaceful transfer of power" and giving power back to a guy who already did that is a stupid idea.
Donald Trump is a strange guy, maybe the strangest guy in America.
Because I have no interest in casinos and trashy gold decor and Eurotrashy women and only a little in golf - he’s said to be a good golfer, though the media seems to have lost interest in presidential golf mastery right when a good golfer became president - I tend to think he must be stupid.
Because I’m a fan of books and he has perhaps never read one - I tend to think he is stupid.
But he’s clearly not stupid. I accept that my taste and values are not a measure of his IQ.
As such, I don’t think he was so dumb as to think the government was about to be overthrown by his weird ragtag mascots, any more than Pelosi did when she dismissed the need for security, presumably hoping for an “event” of this nature (which, again, to be clear would not be and could not be an “overthrow” of the guys who have the H Bomb).
Did not know about the cheating at golf, have not watched him play. Took the word of someone who watched him play.
I don’t think you can be stupid and either run a business empire seemingly on the constant edge of bankruptcy for decades. That’s a lot of balls in the air. We may not approve his possibly dodgy methods of staying solvent 75% (?) of the time, but if you are certain it sounds easy, we’ll chalk that up to my inexperience in the matter.
Nor do I think that an utterly long shot contender for the presidency, even if it begins as a joke or a branding exercise or an attempt to get out of some other difficulty lol, with no institutional support, no mainstream corporate or media or Deep State approval, figures out how to win without a cageyness amounting to intelligence.
Now, what is wrong with Trump? His no filter? His inability to be other than a clown? I can’t say but he’s certainly different enough to qualify for the amorphous label “neurodivergent”.
Your comment seems to read this way, correct me if I'm wrong:
"Smart people in my experience do X. Trump does ~X. Trump is smart. Therefore, sometimes smart people do ~X."
Why couldn't "having a different assessment of the possible effects of Jan 6" also be part of ~X?
Especially when the false electors scheme is how Trump thought he could illegitimately retain the Presidency post-election. Jan 6 is just one of the ways that he thought he could put pressure on people in government to go along with this scheme. This turned out to be a gross miscalculation of how the relevant powers (state legislatures, governors, election officials, Vice President) would respond to this pressure but it isn't as absurd as thinking that this crowd of protestors would overthrow the government singlehandedly.
The version I saw was a safety pin, and I remember thinking how absurd that was. Little did I know what was to come down the road, that eight years on there would be apocalyptic predictions of the Fourth Reich etc.
The ship has sailed; it is, in fact, pretty clear that there is no risk whatsoever to making an attempt to become dictator for life. Even in the discussions here, few care.
That seems false to me. I've seen dozens of "Trump made an attempt to become dictator, we should be against him" articles - so many that I'm honestly kind of sick of them (even though I agree with the sentiment). Trump is underpolling what we'd expect of a Republican after an unpopular Democratic administration, and although he has many unusual negative qualities that could explain that, surely 1/6 and the rest are among them.
I find comments like these exasperating because they equivocate between "it's useless to care" and "nobody cares" in a way that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if people are constantly told it's useless to care, eventually nobody will care. But we're not at that point yet and we don't need to tighten the self-fulfilling prophecy ratchet!
Banned: you didn't read the post, which said many times that it's not saying Trump will never do bad things, just that he's not going to be particularly racist beyond the level of anti-immigrant sentiment he showed in the campaign, and definitely not at the level of "put all black people in camps".
I think you're showing a sufficient level of combined ignorance + hostility that it would justify a ban from anyone and I'm not doing this out of personal emotionality.
I care very much and can never again vote for a Republican candidate until there is a complete disavowal and de-trumpification of the party. However, I don't expect that to happen in my lifetime because I don't think the party is incentivized to do that.
As to the broader level of lack caring about Jan6 and the damage to institutions, I think the cleanest evidence is to look at the complete absence of policy action or prioritization by the Biden administration to prevent a repeat. Similarly, there appeared to be no serious effort to provide structural features that enhance the transparency and legitimacy of elections (as far as I can tell, state-level action has all been in the opposite direction.)
As with all my posts, I am open to being corrected with cited evidence.
I'm not trying to equivocate - sorry if it came across that way. Certainly I don't think it's useless to care, and I think more people should.
My impression of the state of affairs roughly matches luciaphile's above - a good chunk of the left think the coup attempt wasn't anything worth spending more thought on than is required to cash out whatever political capital it brings, while a good chunk of the right dismiss it as random one-off nutters actually taking words coming out of Trump's mouth seriously, which is apparently something we should all know better than to ever do.
Where I'm coming from is mostly - aghast that /despite the fact he literally attempted a coup/ there are significant numbers of otherwise sensible people /still somehow attempting to defend him/. I'm not sure how else to interpret this other than there being concerns people care about much more than what methods a politician in power may employ in attempts to retain it.
Trump faces multiple criminal cases related to trying to overthrow the results, and if he loses, he will almost certainly go to prison for at least one of them (assuming he doesn't die first).
I agree that it is insane people are so cavalier about it, though. Literally in 250 years of history, no President has attempted to use the powers of the Presidency to retain office against the will of the people - until Trump.
At least some people see the various court proceedings as political attempts to abuse the court system by the Democrats in order to harass their counterparts, conflating Jan 6th together with all the various other scandals like the confidential papers and assprted misuses of funds.
If he does end up in prison, that will be a very strong message; given current rhetoric, however, I do worry that some may not interpret it as one might hope.
Who *ought* to win? None of the above. But since those are the candidates, those are the ones the electorate is stuck with, and I don't much care which wins, though slightly biased in favour of Trump due to the hysteria over Dictator! Fascism! Project 2025! Porn will be illegal!
(I don't know how 'the porn industry supports Kamala' plays out as an appeal to voters, though I guess anything to get young males to vote?)
But I'm not American, so my views don't count (except insofar as next Paddy's Day, which one will our Taoiseach be sucking up to? they have traced some potential Irish roots for Harris, dubious though those may be).
I am sometimes tempted to be biased in favor of Trump for the reasons you mention, but then I remember that he's not *less* dishonest and shrill than the Democrats - just so much more dishonest and shrill that he's saturated our dishonesty-and-shrillness-meters and nothing he says even registers as real words anymore.
In a real sense, Trump's dishonesty bothers me less than Harris's specifically because I can count on the legacy media to point out disapprovingly when he's dishonest. I cannot count on them to do the same for Harris.
Yeah. I looked over the fact checking for the Trump/Biden debate. IIRC, essentially every statement Trump made of the form "the most...", "the best...", "the worst..." etc. (basically, every case where he claimed something reached a minimum or maximum in his or Biden's term) was false. He reiterated this in his debate with Harris, claiming that the Biden inflation spike was the largest inflation we'd had - and both I _and_ _Trump_ , _personally_ lived through the double digit inflation spike in 1980, which was larger than Biden's 9%.
I round this off to: "Trump wouldn't know truth if it bit him on the ass."
(not that I'm happy with Harris either. She's on the record as wanting to "regulate" (censor) speech.)
The thing is, I remember the hysteria first time round about he would start World War Three and Pence was going to preside over gay torture conversion camps and the rest of it, which didn't happen.
So that makes it harder for me to take it seriously that "no, this time he really will do all that!" On top of that is the mockery about him going off playing golf while in office. Yes, but if you think he's Literal Hitler, don't you *want* him to be off playing golf instead of working in office to lock up and deport everyone?
Most of the predictions of doom did not happen, and you should lower your estimate of the people who made those predictions.
Trump also tried to retain power after losing an election. His plan to do this probably couldn't have worked, but he made the attempt, and it seems very clear at this point that this was his goal. That's not some prophecy of doom posted to Twitter by @PurpleHairedMoonbat69, it's something he actually did, and it's pretty well-documented.
That's a huge red line. If he will try to do that, why should I think he will respect other limits of his power, if he thinks he can somehow ignore them? Previously, he was in the white house with little power base of his own, basically leading an insurgency within his own party. This time, he has control of the party. He's still the same mix of inept and one-in-a-billion talented he was in 2016-2020, and he's older now and probably slowing down a bit, so maybe nothing bad will come of it this time. But quite a lot is riding on that "maybe."
I very much wish this were as disqualifying for most voters as it is for me, because we really do not want politicians trying to ignore the inconvenient election outcome and stay in power anyway. Having this be a visible end to any chance of winning an election would have cemented this norm; having him still have a 50/50 chance of winning basically erases that norm. We're kind of announcing to all future candidates: "Hey, if you lose the election, why not try to hang onto power anyway? If you succeed, you get to keep power, and if you fail, you can just run again in four years and everyone will have forgotten about it." This is not going to go well for us.
I understand your claims, but believe you have the evidence to self-refute. Project 2025 is exactly the preparatory work to make a 2nd Trump administration more impactful than the first.
As someone who isn't aligned with either party, I have long subscribed to emails from mainstream organizations on both sides (what they send to their donors and potential donors, not the public media stuff.) You might be right that the left exaggerates more, but it is an extremely fine distinction (for example, you might recall the "Obamacare death committees.")
Overall, I guess I'm sympathetic to your reaction against media claims, but I'd suggest you consume less media rather than jump to believing the opposite of what they are saying.
Trump appears to be a worse person than GWB, but a better president because he didn't invade any countries, and instead just kept tweeting like he was still in the opposition rather than a position of responsibility.
I’m with the other Scott A, the AI researcher, and his assessment of Trump along with the expressed views of the people quoted below. Hearing these things definitely does not tempt me to be biased in favor of Trump. Their sheer numbers don’t numb me. The fact that they have numbed others scares the crap out of me.
__________
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.
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Jim Mattis Retired Marine Corps Four Star General, Trump Defence 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”
___________________
John Kelly Retired United States Marine Corps General, Trump Secretary of Homeland Security, White House chief of staff - October 3, 2023 -
“The depths of [Trump’s-] dishonesty is just astounding to me ... He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”
________________
General Mark Milley Army Chief of Staff 9/29/23
“We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley said. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
“Every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, guardian and Coast Guardsman, each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price,” Milley continued. “And we are not easily intimidated.”
________________
Daniel Coats Director of National Intelligence -
September 14, 2021 -
“He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”
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J D Vance US Senator, GOP VP candidate - 2016
“He’s just a bad man. A morally reprehensible human being.”
I had a conversation with my husband in the car the other day, largely because he told me he was getting sleepy while driving, so noticing a political sign, I posited that this election seems like the first really fake one in my life. It has been strangely relaxing as you would expect in that scenario. Can’t believe we are only four weeks out - there was never any trotting out of hopefuls. Nobody “made their case”. Admittedly I have no involvement in party politics, and no other races to vote for - but it hardly registers from day to day. I don’t even think the people with the signs in their yard care as much as the sort of people who go in for yard signs, usually do care.
I suggested this was because we finally had an election where *both* candidates were fake. In 2016, Trump seemed fake. He seemed like Idiocracy made manifest. Everyone thought Clinton would win. In 2020 Trump no longer seemed fake as he had actually been president, but this time he seems fake again somehow, partly because of mental deterioration perhaps, or how there were no other candidates; and of course Harris is entirely fake, a classic “creature of others”. The fakest candidate of all, though I’m pretty sure there was some president in the 19th century I can’t think of who was even more Being There-like.
He countered that there is a difference, though. While each side views the candidate of the other side as illegitimate, as fake - only one side recognizes that its own candidate is fake.
Oddly, I will vote though I haven’t always, and when I have voted, my own reasons have been kinda fake. That is to say I’ve never had a candidate to vote for in my adult life. I was hoping for Bruce Babbitt, but he just faded away. I remember about 16 years ago, a brief interest in anti-immigration Tom Tancredo advancing: didn’t happen, might have prevented the Trump years.
And even when I voted solely on the border issue, as my actual issue is consequent on it - it has been on the assumption that it was purely symbolic and futile. Like, so that in future, historians would see that there had been some *resistance among the populace* - type thing.
This time will be a little different In that, I am no longer interested in symbolism. I am voting for action at the border and reversing Biden’s imports.
If that action happens, I fully expect it to be faked 😀.
-- there was actually a full primary on the Republican side. You may not remember it because Trump didn't participate in any of the debates. (Per WP, most of those incidents were because he wouldn't sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee; one further one he just refused to attend.) Trump won the actual primary vote by about 3-1 and the delegate count by a landslide.
I agree, this election feels strangely impotent. I live in small town Pennsylvania, and you can't watch a YouTube video without two political ads appearing first, but almost everyone seems to be tuning it out completely. We have one candidate who has been in the news nonstop for almost ten years, and another who has managed to remain almost a completely blank slate. Everyone distrusts at least half of the media and many people distrust all of it.
Do you know any examples of people who weren't consistently productive/focused before age 20~25 but then managed to turn their life around somehow? I would define 'productivity/focus' primarily as one's ability to work on 'boring'/'routine' tasks without interruption. It doesn't necessarily have to result in becoming successful or rich, the question is purely about ability to focus and get things done, even if it ends up with mediocre results.
I know lots of people who were unproductive and stayed that way. I know people who were productive but then 'fell of the wagon' and became unproductive. I know people who were productive but then made a boatload of money and retired early. And of course many people who were consistently productive their whole life, often from age 12 or so.
But I've come to realize I've never met - or even heard of someone going from being a low-productivity person to a high-productivity one. Does anyone here know of such examples?
If you count increased wages as higher productivity than I'm an example. I moved into software at age 34.
As for actual software productivity, that had a huge increase when I first started using an IDE, maybe a decade later. (Metrowerks Code Warrior for those who remember it, much better than Eclipse, Visual Studio or XCode.)
I might fit this description. Excelled in school until I got bored and resented it. I then excelled in college but grew to hate it as well. Took a few breaks but finally graduated. I embraced my introversion, refused to network and mingle, was terrible at self-marketing and hated applying for jobs, which I was also not great at. A bad economy didn't help things either. I was probably borderline depressed for a while. I didn't get a real career type job until my mid-30s, and it was barely that. I still don't know what I'm doing and am currently unemployed, but feel like I have it mostly together somehow.
I went from low achiever to high achiever in my late twenties. I smoked a lot of weed from ages 15 to 25, which I associate with being an under achiever, although I can't say for sure if it is a cause or an effect.
Then somehow, with no real planning on my part, I ended up in a demanding job in high tech for which I was only marginally qualified. I was forced to be successful. I remain thankful.
For me, this is mostly about *environment*. I think I can be very productive when I am allowed to focus deeply for long periods of time, learn the fundamentals, and talk to supportive people.
My productivity drops when I am regularly interrupted by managers and meetings and technical inconveniences (such as doing 2-factor authentication about every 30 minutes, always at the moment when it interrupts my flow), told to work on several tasks in parallel and switch between them frequently (and keep focus on their ever changing business priorities, rather than on the technical details), working at an open space (and not even allowed to wear the headphones all day long), and generally denied autonomy by the modern techniques of "agile" software development. Unfortunately, this seems to be the modern trend in most companies that I know.
I had two projects were I was highly productive by being allowed to split work with my colleagues as we agreed to. Somehow, my skills seem to be the opposite of the usual: things that are difficult for most people are sometimes easy for me, but unfortunately, things that are easy for most people are sometimes difficult for me. So in both cases it felt like win/win, because everyone could take the tasks they considered easy and avoid the tasks they considered hard, and we progressed quickly. For example, we were given 3 months to produce a demo of a software that was supposed to take 2 years to finish, but we actually finished the software during those 3 months.
(But I left the first company, because they were paying peanuts. I was young and *very* bad at salary negotiation when they hired me. The thing I learned there was that productivity is mostly unrelated to salary. In the second company we later had to switch to the usual Jira-based development where all tickets are assigned to people randomly, so we lost the thing that made our team so productive. But the company was probably happy, because it made the individual developers more replaceable; later it probably came in handy when most of the original developers quit.)
I had another productivity boost at a company where my manager was too busy to manage me. This one was short. I was assigned a new manager and a new project, but at the same time the new manager was assigned a month-long training he had to attend, so he had no time to actually manage the project. I have spent the first two weeks just studying the technology and playing with it, and producing *nothing* project-related. (This would be utterly unthinkable from the perspective of "agile" development. You need a demo every sprint! Are you some kind of a dinosaur living by a waterfall?) The third week I designed the application, sketched all its dialogs, and got that approved by the manager. The fourth week I implemented it all. I collected a huge bonus (surprisingly, because the company was quite stingy), but was also told that this was an exception and now we have to do things "properly". Again, my productivity gains evaporated.
In my free time, when I was single, I was most productive when I had an "extended weekend" (e.g. taking vacation on Friday and Monday, so four free days in a row), and I spent all that time doing something. (Switching to my job and back completely kills my free-time productivity.) Now that I have kids, this is no longer an option. Maybe later when they grow up.
It seems to me that talking to LLMs increases my productivity. I can do deep learning much faster by a combination of reading a textbook, asking the AI to provide a high-level summary, developing a mental model of how things work, and then asking AI about some obscure technical details to verify that my mental model is correct. Also, AI is great at writing boilerplate code, and exposing my unknown unknowns. (For example, there was a simple code that I could write, but I was lazy and asked the AI to do it instead. Not only did it write the code in a second, but it also used a new language feature that I didn't know about.) This seems to increase my productivity in free time, but not much at work, because there usually the bottleneck is finding some information among the thousands of unmaintained Confluence pages. (But I expect a huge productivity boost for everyone if one day we get LLMs capable of reading the internal company documentation; plus all the source code to figure out when the documentation is outdated.)
Also, not a typical case of productivity, but at one period of my life, I started working out a lot more when I had a group of friends who tried to hold each other accountable. We had a communication channel where we posted every day our successes or failures, and provided words of respect or encouragement. Suddenly it felt like whether or not I exercise at home has a greater meaning.
I know a guy whose life turned around at college. Previously he didn't care about school work, and his grades reflected that. But he had rich parents, so they sent him to an expensive foreign college anyway.
As he described it, at first he didn't care about that either (it's his parents' money; if they choose to waste it on things he doesn't care about, so be it), and found a group of friends who also ignored the school, and they smoked weed together.
Then one day - probably as he was smoking the weed - he realized that his friends are actually the biggest losers he knows in that country. And that everyone he respects is working hard at school. And that it's up to him which group he will choose to belong to, but then he will be always seen by everyone as "one of those". Two futures: pick one.
So he stopped smoking weed, abandoned his former friends, and focused on schoolwork. Which was difficult at the beginning, but then he got used to it. A few decades later, he became a director of some branch of an international corporation. He got married and has at least one child. (We haven't been in contact for a few years.)
.
To balance this inspiring story somewhat, I would add that this guy was always highly intelligent and had great social skills, which is a powerful combo. (Which suggests that this approach might be less effective for someone with fewer talents.) But during childhood he mostly used his skills to do mischief.
Also, in my opinion he is now a bit too much in the other extreme; too much of a mercenary. If you can't keep up with his progress, he will drop you from his social circle, whether a friend or a family. As far as I know, he only hangs out with other high-status managers. (Perhaps that is a necessary price for getting where he is.)
I don't know any specific details on how exactly he changed his daily routine, etc.
I've worked (in IT) with one or two people who at one point were very weak technically but seemed to improve greatly over time. I can't say whether that was their initiative to study and improve themselves, or they had been called into an office and given an ultimatum to "shape up or ship out" in so many words.
I was always a smart kid, but also lazy, and went through academic life with okay grades and low effort, and especially low focus and organization (loosing my books, missing deadlines, spending hours being distracted in stead of working). My 1-year master took me 3-years…
Then I went working for a major strategy consultancy firm. At first I had trouble adapting, got some poor reviews, and notices I couldnt bluff myself through this. If I wanted to succeed, I would have to change.
So, with the help of the insane external pressure, and a coach, I did it. I moved to the Middle East, which was even way more demanding than my home office. I became extremely disciplined, in my morning routine, in my work, etc. “Effectiveness” and “speed to output” became my core strengths.
Do you still have insane external pressure over you or were you able to fully internalize the lessons and can now be super productive without any supervision?
Still have the pressure. It actually scares me a bit. I have been thinking about leaving, but one thing keeping me, is the thought that my acquired productivity and high functioning would collapse if going to a less structured environment..
I went from medium-low to medium-high, mostly thanks to improving my environment (and figuring out work tempo). Going from extreme to extreme is rare in any field, but improvement is very doable.
Moved from academic math to tech to quant finance. Working in environments with a bit more human interaction and rapid turnaround times was good for me. So was having clearer goals.
Aside from that, just gradually optimizing on problems I like solving. During my PhD I got a lot more productive when I moved from algebraic geometry to combinatorics, and more recently I got more productive when I switched from OS programming to writing quant strategies. In both cases it was just a matter of finding problems that feel easier for me. I'd say it felt like just stepping down to something easier, but I know plenty of people for who moving in the other direction felt easier. So, well, just do something you feel you can actually do.
The other thing is managing work tempo - figuring out the right mix of alternating activity bursts and using the periods of waiting for code or jobs to run to give myself a minibreak instead of trying to force myself to sprint work all day and failing helped a lot.
> I would define 'productivity/focus' primarily as one's ability to work on 'boring'/'routine' tasks without interruption.
I don't have any specific examples to cite but I feel like I've seen a lot of people getting more "productive" in terms of measured output by changing their life to switch to tasks that they like more, thus needing less to "force themselves".
Yes, if there was a period of at least 2 years in a row where you were able to work for at least 2000 hours/year. As in, actually be focused on some task, not just 'be at work'. And of course prior to that there must have been a period of at least 2 years where you worked for less than 1000 hours/year.
If that holds true for you, I'd be curious to know how you did the low->high transition, as well as why you 'fell off the wagon'?
Almost 100% environmental, I didn't really 'do' anything. In 2017-2018 I went back to uni, the course was very structured and had very clear expectations, and I was part of a high achieving group of friends who were in almost all the same classes together and then studied together most of the time that we weren't in class. 2019 I went back to work which didn't have the structure or clear expectations but somehow some of the habits I'd formed stuck around for a bit... then 2020 hit, all structure went out the window, and I've been back to pre-2017 level productivity since, despite all my efforts.
Scott Aaronson expressed some very moderate beliefs about a variety of topics, from US politics to Quantum Mechanics, which are apparently... extremist?! https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8410
He's being sarcastic, ie "Here are the sorts of beliefs that get me accused of extremism." My guess is he's accused mostly by trolls, plus he gets to present his beliefs in as positive a light as possible in a post like this.
"It now feels like anything I post earns severe blowback, from ridicule on Twitter"
Then get the hell off Twitter. Why are you on it in the first place? I hear people going "oh but I need it because X, Y, Z" but that remains unconvincing to me. I got a Twitter account late, used it for a few limited thngs, and now it's gathering dust.
'People are being mean to me on social media'? Solution is "junk the social media". Aaronson seems a reasonably nice guy, but born without a layer of skin so hyper-sensitive and takes every little thing personally and lives in fear of that.
"I'm so terrified of the other lot that I vote for the leopards, but I wish the leopards would stop eating my face". Maybe stop being so terrified of the other lot? Nobody wants authoritarians (except the people who think they'll be the ones issuing the orders under such a regime) but there are left-wing as well as right-wing authoritarians. Just say "I'm scared of the Nazis", I know you want to, and being Jewish I can see where you're coming from on that. But not everyone called a Nazi is, in fact, a Nazi.
"Quantum computing is over-hyped". That may be a STARTLING CONTROVERSIAL OPINION in some quarters, presumably amongst those hoping to make fortunes, but again - a lot of people feel that way too.
"I'm a centrist on AI" - oh no, a filthy centrist! 😃 I mean, I can't throw stones here because I'm often arguing on this very site about AI, but most ordinary people don't know or care about AI.
"Climate change" - no matter which side you take on this, it's going to be a row.
"Feminism and dating" - no matter which side you take on this, it's going to be an unholy row.
"Israel/Palestine" - no matter which side you take on this, it's going to be an apocalyptically unholy row.
"Platonism" - well, if you can have STARTLING CONTROVERSIAL OPINIONS on this one, good for you! Give those Aristotelians a good kicking! 😃
"Science/Religion" - okay, most of you know where I come down on this one. And gosh golly wow gee, he doesn't think any ancient religions can be proven to be true, because SCIENCE! Oh my, what a unique view which I never heard before, I am crushed/enraged (delete as applicable) by this challenge to my worldview. But let's keep religion, or elements of religion, stripped of supernaturalism, for the secular benefits. Again, I am amazed, astounded and confounded by a view I never heard before. Honestly, what kind of hard-core atheists or believers is he hanging round, that this kind of milquetoast view is getting him "scary email bullying campaigns"?
"Foreign policy and immigration" - see above about unholy rows.
"Academia vs Industry" - 'I try to advise my students to find the best fit for their talents and personality'. Well let's all just burn this heretic now!
"Population" - 'I hold the same views 99% of liberals hold, which is 99.9% of all the people I interact with'. Seriously, how is this a "nutty, controversial view" unless he's engaging with anti-natalists?
"Mind/Body" - 'gee I don't know'. Again, how is this getting him into trouble?
"Covid response" - unholy rows.
"P vs NP" - I am by no means qualified to comment on this, so I'm not going to.
"Quantum Part II" - yeah, it's a puzzler, right enough.
"Anyway, with extremist, uncompromising views like those, is it any surprise that I get pilloried and denounced so often?"
There has *got* to be some leg-pulling going on here, but the trouble is, he is so hyper-sensitive and prone to over-reaction, it's hard to know if he's being serious or being tongue-in-cheek.
Part of what he actually said in a Q and A about this. No mention of Hitler in the whole thing. He does mention populist autocrats which is not the same thing as saying he is Hitler. If you make that substitution you will be attacking a strawman, something he never said.
The ACX Scott A has a link to his blog if you want to read the whole thing. It’s an older post (July) so you'd have to scroll a bit.
A small sample:
"Qn: Is that all that’s wrong with [Trump]?
A: No, there are also the lies, and worst of all the “Big Lie.” Trump is the first president in US history to incite a mob to try to overturn the results of an election. He was serious! He very nearly succeeded, and probably would have, had Mike Pence been someone else. It’s now inarguable that Trump rejects the basic rules of our system, or “accepts” them only when he wins. We are numb from having heard it so many times, but it’s a big deal, as big a deal as the Civil War was.
Qn+m: Why do you care so much about Trump’s lies? Don’t you realize that all politicians lie?
A: Yes, but there are importantly different kinds of lies. There are white lies. There are scheming, 20-dimensional Machiavellian lies, like a secret agent’s cover story (or is that only in fiction?). There are the farcical, desperate, ever-shifting lies of the murderer to the police detective or the cheating undergrad to the professor. And then there are the lies of bullies and mob bosses and populist autocrats, which are special and worse.
These last, call them power-lies, are distinguished by the fact that they aren’t even helped by plausibility. Often, as with conspiracy theories (which strongly overlap with power-lies), the more absurd the better. Obama was born in Kenya. Trump’s crowd was the biggest in history. The 2020 election was stolen by a shadowy conspiracy involving George Soros and Dominion and Venezuela.
The central goal of a power-lie is just to demonstrate your power to coerce others into repeating it, much like with the Party making Winston Smith affirm 2+2=5, or Petruchio making Katharina “call the sun a moon” in The Taming of the Shrew. A closely-related goal is as a loyalty test for your own retinue.
It’s Trump’s embrace of the power-lie that puts him beyond the pale for [the other Scott A]"
The power lie / loyalty test is the most frightening thing about Trump. If you deny his lies, you are driven out of the Republican party. See Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Liz Cheney. The Republican party is a cult of personality now. And the personality is one of a cruel and ignorant man.
Yeah, not a single one of them sounds extremist to me. The one on Covid is perhaps the only one which strikes me as original or unusual, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. ("I think the countries that did best tended to be those that had some coherent strategy. (...) Countries torn between these strategies (...) tended to get the worst of all worlds.")
Scott Aaronson is extremely smart but he listens too much to the opinion of various midwits, particularly those who come to his comment section. And that includes the opinion of people like Paul Graham who might be smart in being a VC but are pretty much midwits when it comes to Middle Eastern politics.
I wish he used the block/mute button liberally and tried to stick to the bubble of rational people instead.
I wouldn't call Paul Graham a midwit, even if I thought he was wrong about Middle Eastern politics (not uncommon for people to be when they face no cost for being wrong).
Scott Aaranson is a firmly in camp busy beaver, I doubt that he allows anyone named Graham write access to his politics, given that BB(18)>G.
More seriously, he is a secular Jew with strong ties to Israel. This means he has plenty of opportunity to have an opinion on the Middle East without just taking the opinion of famous people commenting on his blog.
This is my plea for Americans to vote for Trump. This isn't really an argument, and probably won't convince anyone who strongly rejects the premises, but is intended as a few considerations that I think too many people overlook or forget.
As someone who *really hates Trump* and who *wanted him defeated in 2020* but reluctantly supports him now, these considerations are:
1. Re-electing a party or government is in a fundamentally different category to voting a government out. The former is widely taken (by politicians, my media, by the wider society) as a positive endorsement of that government's policies and ideology. The latter is taken as a *repudiation* of the voted-out government's approach, and *not* as an endorsement of the challenging party's agenda.
You can see this by comparing how far left society moved after 2008 or 2020 (not very) to how far left it moved after 2012 (enormously). You can see it by noticing how opposition to progressive programs like Obamacare and gay marriage reduced or collapsed after Obama's re-election in 2012, with no similar effect after 2008 or 2020 (i.e. everything that had been a matter of intensive debate *stayed* a matter of intensive debate, and nothing major was permanently decided). Similarly, left-wing opposition to US global dominance reduced or vanished after 2004, with no similar vibe shift after 2016 or 2000.
The emprical evidence says that electing Trump will not decide anything and will keep things polarised and balanced, while re-electing the Democrats will decide many topics of current debate (e.g. border policies, de-policing, trans policies) in the left-wing direction.
2. Harris is an unknown quantity. She has not been president before. Trump has. She has not even had more than *a few months* of the scrutiny of being an official candidate (close to unprecendented at this level). My point 1 suggests that regardless of her official current platform, if she wins society and government will shift in favour of the policies actually implemented by Biden and lower-level D governments over the past few years. That would hold true even if she personally holds to her current platform. But of course there's no reason to think she even would. She was the fourth most left-wing member of the Senate previously. She embraced BLM rhetoric during 2020 and she's been an integral part of the Biden Administration's policies. The absolute standard result of an elected leader doing what she's doing now (moving to the centre to win a difficult election), seen over and over again, is to move right back to the extreme as soon as she wins.
But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got.
This community greatly values empirical evidence and tracking correct and incorrect predictions. We have positive evidence of the failure of most doom-predictions regarding Trump. We have no such evidence for Harris.
3. The fact that voters are stuck with two widely unpopular choices is largely the fault of the Democrats. No Labels was preparing to run a centrist independent campaign, and has said the Democrats and their allies conspired to sabotage it (https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-politics/no-labels-chief-strategist-says-its-too-late-for-an-independent-presidential-alternative/). Among other things, they were bringing lawsuits to *keep them off the ballot*. Voting D in this election not only rewards this behaviour, it actively encourages it in future cycles (to even greater extents). In some ways this issue is so fundamental to democracy itself it may trump every other consideration.
4. Many Americans seem to just accept the propaganda that the rest of the world opposes Trump. Actually, many of us outside America are far more scared of Harris winning than Trump winning. While Trump *talks* vaguely anti-democratic language, much of the Western world is already actively outlawing right-leaning opinions. See the recent EU attempts to even restrict what *American* companies can allow on their own platforms, while being egged on by Hillary Cilton and other Democrats. What is a wet-dream among some on the right is actually happening, right now, in alleged "democracies" (which are of course no longer meaningful democracies when contesting the governnent would require saying things that are literally illegal to express!). If Trump is likely to condemn these efforts and globally promote free speech, and Harris is likely to at best not oppose it or at worst actively collude with governments to censor their own citizens...and this seems hard to deny...I would suggest this is another matter so central to democracy (and *so* far beyond mere verbal support for undemocratic ideas) that it overrides all other matters.
And there's also the very defence of the West itself, and the fact that Trump has a record of supporting Israel's security, and of aggressive opposition to China and Iran, and that no Ukrainian invasion happened under his watch, but I accept that these issues are highly debatable.
My conclusion is that as repulsive and flawed as Trump is as a person, the structural factors suggest that his opponents, though well-groomed and smooth-speaking, have a proven record far more dangerous to the very foundations of democracy.
(Again, I supported Biden in 2020 and I'm glad Trump lost then. I think his re-election would have been dangerous in a way that a second election-from-out-of-power, with many institutions remaining organised against him, won't be.)
(I made some similar but distinct points a few months ago here https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-338/comment/62090404. Obviously if you don't accept that the things I've mentioned are actually bad, you won't agree. But if you remember with revulsion the waves of fanatically cruel lynch mobs rampaging through institutions just a couple of years ago, eager to humilate and hurt and destroy as many innocents as they can...then I suggest you look past superficial personalities and official platforms, and imagine how you'll feel if you vote for Harris, she lurches left immediately after the election, and the lynch mobs return stronger than ever, laughing at your naivety for *actually believing* the promises of moderation and tolerance. Just like they did ten years ago.)
Non-American here, and I’m not sure I actually want to change anyone’s mind, but I disagree with both counts of 4.
Americans would ban a European platform without a second thought if it tried to make money there, dodge (sorry, optimize) taxes as significantly as online platforms do, and not bother complying with local laws. Why exactly shouldn’t European states reciprocate? Or is it only US law (and the exact underpinning philosophy) that is the sacred Moral Good worth abiding by in every country of the world and everywhere else is some sort of degraded version?
In a way, I’m even glad that states other than US are flexing their muscles regarding regulation of platforms. That makes the situation clear because the ambiguity was hardly tenable. Still, I doubt that in a couple of decades, the non-US states will keep getting their way.
Regarding foreign policy, I believe that the “many” that you mention are terrified of Harris remain a minority of the people who are even interested.
Trump has claimed multiple times that he intended the US to divest from their traditional alliances in Europe (NATO – didn’t he say that he’d encourage Putin to attack European states if they didn’t contribute enough to NATO budget?), and in Asia (re Taiwan and I think South Korea), sparking considerable concern in both countries – and emboldening Putin and Xi by undermining the US deterrence and rekindling defiance between the US and their allies.
It’s also not just words: Republicans have spent a long time in Congress blocking Ukraine aid (and even got rid of their speaker because he caved in!). How could any of this be good?
"if it tried to make money there, dodge (sorry, optimize) taxes as significantly as online platforms do, and not bother complying with local laws."
I'm not talking about things like taxes. Investigating X for evading taxes (assuming it's on business activity actually done in that country) is of course entirely appropriate.
But if "violations of local laws" literally includes CRITICISING CERTAIN GOVERNMENT POLICIES (see the second example in my reply to Peasy)...then we have a big problem. And I find your relativism about this (calling such things merely the local laws) extremely disturbing.
I mean, on your worldview what's even *wrong* with Russia invading various European countries, executing lots of people and setting up a local dictatorship? That's all just "the local laws" isn't it? It's not like, on your view, there's any requirement or expectation of a governmemt being meaningfully democratic, or respecting the most fundamental human rights of its people. It's all just might makes right. Whatever the local authorities decide is by definition okay, and deserves as much respect as any other local authority.
If that's not what you're saying, it certainly sounds like it.
I say: no. Democracies deserve respect, non-democracies do not and should be opposed. That's what allows me (but not you) to condemn Russia and China. And obviously, it's not enough to claim to be a democracy, you have to actually be one. Russia can't say "we're a democracy, you can run against the president but you'll just be put in jail if you do". And western European countries can't say "we're a democracy, you can run and even be elected to office, and no one will stop you...but if you actually publically criticise those policies and laws that we really don't think should be criticised, you will go to jail. Perfectly democratic!" No, neither of those are remotely democratic. And standing up to such regimes (or at the very least denying them military support) unless and until they become democracies again, is not only acceptable but morally right.
"Regarding foreign policy, I believe that the “many” that you mention are terrified of Harris remain a minority of the people who are even interested."
Well, since support for Trump probably correlates with opinions that are literally illegal to express in several European countries, I have no idea how you can be confident that this is the case. Even Trump support itself seems to be considered borderline hate-speech (see the third example in my reply to Peasy). How do you know the people preferring Trump to Harris simply don't feel safe expressing their views honestly?
(Apparently only 18% of Germans feel safe expressing their opinions. Admittedly, Germany may just be beyond hope--no matter how many times they choose an authoritarian government that causes enormous suffering and havoc, and then repent of that and promise to do better, it takes no time before they jump into the harms of a nice new authoritarian strong government that will tell them what they're allowed to think. But we can at least stop their poisonous attitude spreading.)
"How could any of this be good?"
If an existential threat from Russia, and US protection withdrawn (which many of them say they hate anyway on a daily basis) is necessary to scare some of these European states into becoming real democracies again and respecting the rights of their own citizens, then it could be a very good thing in the long-run.
In the spirit of keeping the conversation somewhere close to civility, shall we both agree to behave as if you are not calling for the takeover of the West as we both know it by neo-Nazis, and I am not calling for its descent into China-like totalitarianism? (I am fully aware that this does not seem to fit your views as you stated them, but will you grant me the analogue courtesy?)
I will reply to your points without a specific order.
If 18% of Germans feel safe expressing their opinions (which is, I agree, a shockingly low number), what makes you believe that the remaining 82% are on your side? There are quite a few issues where every side will explain at length how the other side is oppressing them (and then all of them will gang up on those who haven't joined a side or are disinterested in the matter, which is also an opinion they might not like to express either).
I am fairly confident in my assessment that the position is still a minority because I believe the political map of Western Europe would otherwise look pretty different today. Though some caution is warranted, since we do not use the same Western European countries as mental models.
***
I am extremely skeptical that a military threat from Putin (with an isolationist US) is going to make Germans become a "real democracy" in your terminology again (if this is even possible -- it seems to me that in Western Europe in general, the notion that the government could do much less is about as alien as the third dimension to the inhabitants of a plane).
Isn't the finding that only safety lets societies become more permissive, while danger, especially of the military kind, makes societies prize obedience, hierarchy and conformity? I'm thinking of posts like https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/ but I think Scott has written more on this topic, maybe related with the World Values Survey?).
I don't think you discussed Asian countries which Trump has also claimed to be disinterested in defending should be the need arise?
I also disagree that Ukraine (or, next, the Baltic states) deserve to come under Russian control as punishment for the imperfections of democracy in Western Europe.
***
Thank you for giving specific examples of what you refer to by saying 'if "violations of local laws" literally includes CRITICISING CERTAIN GOVERNMENT POLICIES'.
I am not going to claim that I am happy with the second example that you discuss (but why a Greek example if you're discussing Germany which ought to be a lost cause, as you claim?). I'm certainly glad that all the guy got is a suspended sentence.
But pedophilia is one of the few remaining universal examples of pure evil in our societies, and that you probably wouldn't want anyone to loudly call you one in front of a crowd. There are easy ways to criticize the policy under question without drawing this equivalence or drawing further stigma on the procedure or the people who undergo it.
***
In a way, this is a perfect example of why I'm skeptical of the absolutism of American-inspired "free speech" and believe that European-style compromises are acceptable.
The American notion of free speech was developed in an unrecognizable world, and, for over 200 years, public speech was de facto controlled by the press's standards (depending themselves on the Zeitgeist), by the resources needed, and the available bandwidth.
Things are not the same today on any of these counts. Elon Musk (or [insert West-hating leftist here]) can rile up hostility towards [insert person or group here] in less than 300 characters. With such a broad audience, strong reactions in numbers (hate mail) and extreme reactions (physical violence, SWAT-ing, ...) are all but guaranteed. This is not a stable world. Law isn't ideal and we should use it sparingly if at all, but what alternative is there?
"Deal with it" sounds quite heartless when the targets are not usually the demographics in the best psychological shape, and I'm not convinced about classical liberal answers such as "more speech" (in an "attention economy" as I hear, the meme wins over the careful, reasoned essay -- but of course the meme is a symmetric weapon* while the reasoned essay is perhaps slightly asymmetric) or "the marketplace of ideas".
(* maybe the meme is in fact an asymmetric weapon, one that favors the "side" that's utterly uninterested in reasoned discussion).
***
I agree that democracies should be supported and non-democracies should be opposed. I believe that it is proper for online platforms to uphold the laws of the Western European countries in which they are operating (if not all the time when compliance is costly, then upon specific request) because these laws are legitimate (shall I say democratic?).
Indeed, they emanate from fairly elected governments arising from pluralistic transparent elections, bound to respect the rights of their citizens, with separation of powers and peaceful transition of powers to their opponents (and I'm almost certainly forgetting many aspects but it's late).
If we're operating under broadly similar concepts of democracy (which I think we are), the core of our disagreement may lie in what we view as "rights". In the Greek example above, I believe that the right to say "authorizing minor gender-transition surgery is akin to legalizing pedophilia" is a very non-central part of the notion of "free speech", so it is possible to take it away without ruining the whole concept (although going through with this would require a good reason to go against the principle, namely: "such a claim, made by a very public figure, fuels much hostility towards trans people, transitioning children and their families, which is bad especially because they absolutely do not have it easy already").
I will agree that "I wish gender-transition surgery were reserved to adults" is a much more central example of free speech, and update if this one is criminalized.
***
I will conclude by saying that I believe that the comparison of Western European countries to Russia seems wrong and dangerous, because it risks to let everyone else forget just how different the situations are.
"But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got."
Both of those statements are true, but they are true mostly because Donald Trump is incompetent at exercising the power of the Presidency, and did not have a staff that could compensate for that. Had Donald Trump been competent, there's a good chance he would have executed a *successful* coup d'état, instead of the laughably pathetic attempt we got. That would have been catastrophically bad. Even a competent but failed coup would have caused extraordinary damage to America's political institutions.
So, no, never again. Your other arguments have merit, but they don't address the most compelling reason to vote for Not Donald Trump. If I were absolutely certain that Donald Trump would *remain* pathetically incompetent, and that his new cabinet would be as obsequously useless as the last, *maybe*. Though I'd still be worried about 2029, and the prospect of a backlash leading to de facto one-party Democratic rule for generations to come.
But sometimes old dogs do learn new tricks, and sometimes they wind up on the leash of new and more capable handlers. When "Squeaky" Fromme tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, she was so pathetically incompetent that she forgot to chamber a round in her pistol. We made sure she didn't get a second chance. Same goes for all the subsequent failed Presidential assassination attempts. No second chances. The standard should be no different for people who try to alter the Presidential succession by coup d'état rather than with a bullet.
"Though I'd still be worried about 2029, and the prospect of a backlash leading to de facto one-party Democratic rule for generations to come."
If Harris wins, by 2029 Trump won't be running, but the Republican nominee then will be the next Literally Hitler and there will be seamless movement to "if you vote for A, then you are voting for Fascism!" be it Vance, or whoever else, decides to go for the job.
One-party rule for generations was something the Democrats purred about when they were the beggars on horseback. Why do you think they've changed their views on that to instead be "turn about is fair play" so let a nice moderate Republican have the seat, it'll be okay and then it'll be our turn next time again?
"It’s become something of a cliché in Washington for Democratic strategists to assert that “demographics are destiny.” What they mean is that the diversifying electorate — and the shrinking role of white voters — will render Republicans incapable of sustaining power for much longer. After Barack Obama won in 2008, Democratic legend James Caville even wrote a book predicting as much; 40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation remains a fantastic, if flawed, reading of America’s trajectory.
The argument has become so accepted in liberal and progressive circles that the pushback has been minimal. It also exists and thrives in centrists’ favored think tanks and advocacy groups. A changing America means a shifting politics, and that opens the doors of power to a youthful reformer like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, potential Sen. Malcolm Kenyatta and perhaps a history-making future Gov. Stacey Abrams."
It's not about the Democrats *letting* Trump win. If it were up to the DNC, they'd never have "let" any Republican win, ever. But it's not up to them, because the United States of America really is a democracy (for now at least), and it comes down to what the American people will let their would-be presidents do.
And one thing the American people have traditionally *not* done, is let milquetoast mediocrities who were selected simply to be inoffensive to as many people as possible, have more than one term in the White House. Just ask Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter. Or Joe Biden, for that matter.
If it's a choice between milquetoast mediocrity or someone of Nixonian or Trumpian levels of villainy, sure, we'll vote for the mediocrity. Once. Then we'll at very least insist on voting for a *different* mediocrity. And Kamala Harris won't be running against Donald Trump in 2028, so she won't have even that in her favor.
Will the Democrats claim that the 2028 GOP nominee is Literally Hitler? Of course they will. Just like they did with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, two different George Bushes, and Donald Trump. All of who won *anyway*, because "The Democrats said he's literally Hitler so we can't let him be president" is another thing the American voters won't let anyone get away with.
In the opposing case where Trump *wins* this round, the next election is between presumably J.D. Vance, still carrying the stink of Donald J. Trump, against a Democratic nominee who is Not Kamala Harris. Probably a successful Governor like Gavin Newsom. That strikes me as a much more dangerous proposition.
I don’t view Carter as milquetoast. Many people were offended by his expression of support for energy conservation. He annoyed the VIPs by selling the presidential yacht (I personally love the idea of a presidential yacht). They found his religiosity actively off-putting (you’re supposed to mouth your pieties, not take them seriously or try to live by them). They didn’t like the actions he took to expand wilderness. He brokered the Camp David agreement, and there’s some suggestion that Sadat and Rabin were drawn to one another by a mutual dislike or alienation from him.
He was the great deregulator, of course, while Reagan was the great illegal amnesty grantor whose actions have done the most to threaten the demise of the country. (How inevitable? Who can say while it’s happening.)
He was the original *actual* contrarian. People don’t actually like those very much; it’s a tell for how contrarian they really are.
John, you and I must be suffering from the same brain worms, because Gunflint below assures me that nobody nowhere ever compared X Republican to Hitler.
I must be an LLM then who hallucinated all the "Chimpy McHitler" stuff and had to listen to (otherwise artist whose work I enjoy) songs like this:
For all those telling me I'm not American so it's none of my beeswax: I'd love that to be true. I don't want to care about who is the next President of the USA. But (1) our economy is horrendously dependent on American multinationals so (2) this ensures our governments of whatever stripe are always worried about who the guy (or gal) in the White House is, and trying to make sure we're on good terms with them and (3) Coco-colonisation, every goddamn idiot SJW/progressive/woke talking point gets taken up wholeheartedly and in the same terms as the USA over here by our liberals and wannabes. George Soros foundation sent funding to LGBT activist groups here during the gay marriage referendum, so don't tell me it doesn't affect me what goes on in your Culture Wars.
Okay, having ranted, let me ask you: why do you think Kamala wouldn't run in 2028? Suppose she wins this time, why would First Female Ever step down? Suppose she loses, the same? She's young enough that going again in four years time isn't out of the question.
And surely you believe in Kamalot? 😁 If she is The Future of the Democratic Party, how can they turn their backs on the future?
>If Harris wins, by 2029 Trump won't be running, but the Republican nominee then will be the next Literally Hitler and there will be seamless movement to "if you vote for A, then you are voting for Fascism!" be it Vance, or whoever else, decides to go for the job.
First, you did not really respond to what John said about the very real dangers of a second Trump term, you ignored that entirely. Instead you pivoted to an assortment of CW memes that were not really related. Slamming rightwing punching bags like AOC and Stacy Abrams. I'd like to see you actually engage with the substance of John's case.
Second (the stuff I quoted), this is another assertion without evidence. You don't live in this country and judging by your hot takes I think you might not have an accurate feel for what is actually going on.
I really doubt your prediction will actually happen and I do live in this country and have been following this pretty carefully for a long time on a wide variety of sources.
There are responsible Republicans waiting in the wings, Mitt Romney for example who is hoping Trump loses, he hasn't endorsed Harris because he feels he can help the country course correct after a terrible 9 years. Then we can go back to arguing about balancing the budget, defense spending, doing something to save Social Security, etc. as we have been doing since the end of WWII.
Trump is a uniquely terrible as a person. Absolutely a terrible character. Not Hitler though. A pathological liar, an unapologetic hate monger, a reckless leader on foreign policy with a disturbing affinity for and credulity toward political strong men like Putin and Xi who know that he can be played like a fiddle by appealing to his vanity. See Trump's 'beautiful letter' from Kim Jung Un. In Helsinki he took Putin's word over US Intelligence. Putin did give him a pretty soccer ball though. Note I did not just say he is literally Hitler.
I voted against McCain but I knew the country would be safe with him because he was without a doubt a decent and honorable man. I voted against Romney, but I knew the country would be just fine with him as he too is a decent and honorable man. In those cases I was voting for policy positions.
Trump is in an entirely different class of human being, he has no honor and very little decency. In Trump's mind honorable behavior is for suckers. As one telling example when John McCain, an American hero who spent 5 years in a Hanoi POW camp, Trump balked at lowering the White House flag to half staff out of petty personal pique. No human with a shred of character would have done this, even if they did have a policy beef with McCain.
I could fill pages with this sort of low life behavior. Really the least offensive term I can come up with is that is somewhat accurate and captures his character is that he is a toad. Note I am not saying he is literally Hitler, I am simply saying he is a toad of a human being and I am really feeling like I'm slandering toads a bit.
Don't take this as encouragement to shoot him though, that would be much much worse than another Trump term. Vote! Make America Sane Again. Not you of course but the rest of my country.
Gunflint, you may be one of the few people who did think Romney was a decent guy. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation was painting him as a sexist (binders full of women), animal cruelty (dog on the car roof), a heartless ruthless money-grubbing capitalist out of touch with ordinary decent hard-working Americans (the 47%) and a threat to all that is good and true because he was going to establish a Mormon theocracy if elected (a Yale professor said it, it must be true!):
Okay let's skip the fact that you still haven't addressed the terrible damage to the United States of even an unsuccessful coup. I imagine you would feel the effects of that in Ireland too and they would probably be a hell of a lot worse than locals emulating American SJWs.
and address:
>you may be one of the few people who did think Romney was a decent guy.
Romney got 61 million votes to Obamas 66 million. Every Dem I know personally thought that Romney was a good man. They simply preferred the agenda put forward by Obama.
Why would I tell you that you imagined a linked article?
When Obama was in office The National Review published articles by a guy who wrote about Obama embracing the Sharia agenda. There were a lot of people in this country that though Obama was a secret Muslim. Many more than those that thought Romney had plans for a Mormon theocracy. I had never heard that one till just now. In an act of character, John McCain had to correct one of his supporters who said Obama was a Muslim and tell her
"No ma'am. Obama is a good man, a family man. We just have different ideas on the direction of the country"
People that said Obama was going to embrace Sharia Law or that Romney wanted to start a Mormon theocratic state are what I like to call 'idiots'. Don't pick them a representatives of on an entire American political party.
This is what I want to go back to. People of good will disagreeing on policy matters. Donald Trump has no good will. He tells his crowd they are hated - they are not - and that they should respond with hate in kind. Because he thrives politically with this us versus them spiel we are at each other's throats in this country. I want this stuff to stop. We are a diverse country. I don't hate people that I disagree with and I don't want them to hate me.
Seamus being strapped to the roof of Romney's car was a story that Gail Collins, a NYT humorous opinion writer used to make fun of him. She once did a piece making fun of Donald Trump and he responded in typical fashion with a gold sharpie handwritten note saying she had the 'face of a dog' and misspelled the word 'to'. She still has it as a memento of his classy character and Ivy League Wharton education. I didn't vote for Obama because Romney had Seamus ride on top of the car to Canada and I doubt many others did either.
When people say dopey stuff like 'binders full of women' or the 'they cling to their guns and their religion' or 'backet full of deplorables' their opponents run with them.
Trump doesn't wait for a verbal slip, he simply makes up a steady stream of lies. He does this constantly. Kamala is a Marxist. They are eating the dogs...
In the words of JD Vance "He is just a bad man. A morally reprehensible human being."
I strongly agree with many of these points. I think the democratic party needs to lose so that it can re orient itself. I think arguably the republican party have reassessed and are moving more moderate (e.g., you see it in VD Vance v.s. Trump rhetoric), meanwhile the democrats are insulting voters, endorsing harmful practices (e.g., defund the police) and moving more extreme.
In what world is "I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act," aka the act last used to put Japanese people in camps in WWII, "moving more moderate?" In what world is promising to deport more illegal immigrants than actually exist in the country more moderate? How can basically anything proposed in Project 2025 be considered "more moderate"?
Trump has repeatedly stated that "project 2025" is not associated with him. As Scott says, "weak men are super weapons" (i.e., one can always find instances of people acting badly in any movement).
Personally, I read the deport 25 million thing as hyperbole. I think both parties do such exaggeration (and misinformation).
And how do you square this claim (Dems moving left, Repubs moving center) with the overwhelming number of Republicans who have come out for Kamala (which isn’t happening the other way around?)
I would love some sources on this claim. My sense is that both parties cite instances of this conversion. It seems that both parties, almost every rally has a few examples trotted up on stage .
On a related note, we have had big tech surprisingly showing support for Trump (when historically big tech has been democrat or at least apolitical) e.g., Mark Zucc coming out as saying Trump was badass. Etc...
In what policies do you think the Republican party is moving more moderate, truly curious?
Neither Kamala or Biden was running on a campaign of “defund the police”, and I haven’t heard that campaign claim in awhile. Kamala’s recent speeches have actually come off to me as quite moderate. What other issues bother you?
I agree neither Kamala or Boden were or are running on a refund the police platform. It would not be politically tenable platform.
However, both Kamala and Walz have been associated with defund the police movements (e.g., Walz supporting rioters). I think this support is representative of how neither actually cares about the fundamental issues (e.g., supporting minorities) and that both are far more concerned with appearances. They will enact policies that harm, if it looks good
Personally I cannot stand these kinds of harmful policies. I hate hate hate it. (e.g., like Germany divesting from nuclear power).
My impressions of the Republican party becoming more moderate are mainly from JD Vance (who for example Ben Shapiro has repeatedly criticised for being soft on the pro-choice position and overly open to wellfare: e.g., him mentioning how members of his family have been on Medicare, etc...).
> But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got.
Sorry, but you are completely wrong about this.
1) He disbanded a pandemic response team, eliminated a CDC embedded role in China whose job was to monitor for pandemics originating in China, and ignored a literal playbook of pandemic response tools left by the previous administration. He didn't just handle the pandemic poorly once it happened (which to be clear, he absolutely handled it poorly), he started fucking up two years before the pandemic happened by tearing up all the prep work we have in place for pandemics.
2) He also tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in a way that has literally never happened before. You can't just dismiss that as insane rhetoric, he gets minus infinite points for doing this. Even if he had been an effective leader (he wasn't) with good policies (he didn't) and handled the pandemic well (he didn't), this alone would wholly disqualify him. I would vote for any of my other candidates for worst president in history over him solely on this basis.
2. Presidential terms where Trump was the incumbent = 1. That's a terribly low sample size on which to base a confident prediction, further complicated by the fact that the data is very noisy (things that Trump attempted to do =/= things that Trump actually did while in office and the things Trump attempted are pretty wild). There are also highly idiosyncratic things that Trump did manage to do in office that most people massively hate, like Jan 6 or appointing justices to overturn Roe v Wade.
3. Both parties are equally complicit in keeping third parties off the ballot and removing their access to funding, and this has been the case for a long time. Sucks, but it's not a compelling reason to vote for one party over the other this election.
4. I personally don't care overmuch about how people outside the US evaluate my voting choices - it's fine if some people like or dislike how I choose a candidate. I think Harris will probably be better on foreign policy issues than Trump, and though we probably share a preferred outcome on foreign policy (defense of the West) we'll probably disagree enough on the particulars of how one gets there that I'll leave it at that.
I think it's odd that in point 1 you say that in 2012 re-electing a president resulted in a big shift in politics, and then say that to avoid a similar shift happening again we should re-elect a president.
You're equivocating on two meanings of "re-elect". I was talking about the continuity of keeping one party in control of the government with no breaks.
Why should your claim that the supposed political shift in 2012 was caused by electing a president of the same party twice in a row be taken more seriously than the claim that it was caused by electing a president to a second term? They're both deductions made from an extremely small dataset with a lot of confounding.
There are two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves.
It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe.
"Harris is an unknown quantity" is facially ridiculous. She has been Attorney General for the state of California, a United States Senator, and Vice President. While vice presidents traditionally don't have a lot of power to exercise their own policy choices in a way that can establish a "what would this person actually do if in charge of stuff" way, attorneys general and senators do. For better or worse, she has an extensive paper trail that can easily be examined for clues as to what she would do as president.
Furthermore,
>But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got.
...isn't exactly a ringing endorsement in terms of voting for candidates in the hope that nothing catastrophic happens! First of all, it's arguably untrue: people legitimately disagree about how bad January 6, 2021 was, but the storming of the Capitol and Trump's utter failure to do anything to try to stop it for hours despite being repeatedly begged to do so, along with his blatant attempts to subvert the transfer of power by other means after losing the election, is fairly widely seen as a millimeters-close near collision with catastrophe, averted only because the relevant institutions proved in the end to be just robust enough to avert it--and, crucially, averted no thanks to him.
Speaking of Trump's unsuccessful attempt to retain the presidency despite losing the 2020 presidential election, the following:
>the structural factors suggest that his opponents, though well-groomed and smooth-speaking, have a proven record far more dangerous to the very foundations of democracy.
...comes off more than a little tone-deaf in that context. Granted, this is ACX, but is it commonly believed even here that the fact that Harris likely won't complain if literal Nazis aren't allowed by Germany to call for a second shoah on Facebook really constitutes a greater danger to the very foundations of democracy than the fact that her opponent has actually attempted to undermine one of the actual very foundations of democracy, the peaceful transfer of the executive office to the winner of a free and fair election? I mean, he certainly wins the "known quantity" contest in that respect, but...not in the good way.
"people legitimately disagree about how bad January 6, 2021 was"
Thanks for acknowledging this, because yes they do. Honestly, for my part I just find it *so* difficult to wrap my head around the idea that the thing that's kept the US a democracy for so long and has stopped violent takeovers in the past wasn't the system of checks and balances, it was politicians being good people. Really?
To me it seems obvious that if it were possible to stage a coup, it would have already happened long ago. That most successful politicians are sociopaths who will do anything they think they can get away with. And that the reason coup attempts haven't happened previously is that every other president has been smart enough to know it's not possible. Trump was dumb enough not to know that, and made a fool of himself in the process.
This is accepting the framing that it was a coup attempt, which maybe it was. Emphasis on "attempt", though. I accept people disagree, but to see it as a hair's breadth away from success, and by extension as the first time ever that a losing president didn't have more love for the principles of democracy than for his own power...I just find that very hard to swallow.
"but is it commonly believed even here that the fact that Harris likely won't complain if literal Nazis aren't allowed by Germany to call for a second shoah on Facebook really constitutes a greater danger to the very foundations of democracy"
>>This is accepting the framing that it was a coup attempt, which maybe it was. Emphasis on "attempt", though.
Isn't this "maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, emphasis on attempt" framing more than enough on its own, though?
"He didn't murder me. You could maybe call it a murder attempt, which maybe it was, emphasis on attempt, though" may or may not be enough to support a prosecution of the offender, and that's a matter for the courts.
But it's more than enough for it to be really cosmically stupid of me to just hand the guy his gun back.
Isn't Harris's record not that great? My impression it's the classic massage statistics to help you move up. E.g., I believe I recall she had extremely low rates of prosecution as she wanted a high success rate. That is she let serious criminals go free to make her record look better, while prosecuting minor crimes like marijuana possession extremely zealously (as it is easy to convict).
It may or may not be "not that great." The point is that it exists and can be examined and critiqued--which is precisely what you appear to be doing here, albeit without showing your work. The claim that Harris is an "unknown quantity" is, and I'm trying to be nice here, not aligned with the known facts.
My impression of her time as vice president, based on media coverage, is:
(1) stories leaking about how there was turmoil in her office with rapid turnover of staff and friction between her office and that of Biden
(2) things like "she was never border czar, that's a dirty rotten lie!" then followed by excerpts of her being referred to as "border czar" at the time.
So I honestly can't say that I have a strong impression of "Oh yes, Harris did A or B as vice president". What that means for a possible presidency is that - she's infinitely malleable and will bend with every wind that blows?
Okay I see the point you are making. I don't think is a persuasive response to the top commenter.
1. They argue there is no evidence we can trust a Harris presidency (as we have no past record of one and several people have doubts about her)
2. You respond saying she has a track record in lower office.
3. I respond saying (I have heard) her track record in office reflects someone with few principles optimizing for promotion. A) this is not a great track record, and B) this is not a track record one can generalized super reliably to the presidency - in that, for one, as president you aren't positioning for higher office.
Aside from my point, I think we can all agree that a previous term of presidency is likely more reflective of how a future term of presidency will go than a track record in a very different job (e.g., being a prosecutor). You can only generalize to quite abstract traits like being princibled or competent (and I haven't heard much evidence of either of those regards Harris).
OK...at this point I don't know what else to tell you, except that even your substantially walked-back (from "she's an unknown quantity" all the way to "OK, she has a long history as a fairly prominent and powerful elected official, but she's never *literally been president*") version of ascend's original claim lacks persuasive power. Bluntly put, nobody in the real world considers it a handicap for a potential President of the United States that they've never been President of the United States before, even if the person they're running against has been. if that were not the case, no incumbent or former POTUS running for reelection would ever lose. Voters can and do generalize track records such as Harris's to the presidency just fine. It's not difficult.
In fact, I would say that's the least persuasive argument I've read in a while...were it not for the fact that it was followed by this:
>You can only generalize to quite abstract traits like being princibled or competent (and I haven't heard much evidence of either of those regards Harris).
I can't believe I actually am responding to this, but here I am, and my response is simply to remind you that this woman is running against ***Donald Trump***.
"my response is simply to remind you that this woman is running against ***Donald Trump***."
And my response to that is that, if elected, she has four years in office to respond to current crises, future crises, and actually govern the country, so it would be nice to know what kind of ideas she has around that. Once she gets her foot in the door of the Oval Office, "I'm not Donald Trump" is no longer enough.
Some of her policies are broadly similar to ones suggested by Trump, e.g. both of them promise (yeah yeah it's a campaign promise, I know) 'no tax on tips'. I saw a lot of online criticism of that being a terrible idea - in regards to Trump. Nothing addressing Harris raising it.
New things I've seen just the other day - forgivable loans for Black and other entrepreneurs, which just screams 'every grifter can take advantage of this'. For vote-buying, great idea. As actual policy? Poorly thought-out.
Mostly I'm amused at the attempts to keep Harris separated from any taint from Biden's policies/decisions in office by insisting she never did nuthin' (e.g. the border czar silliness) but now they're touting "oh she was hand-in-glove with Joe on all these important decisions", because they have to address "so what did she actually do over the past four years?"
"Ms Harris's position on the border has changed over time to a more moderate one in this campaign.
On the campaign trail, the vice-president has reiterated her continued support for the hardline bipartisan border security deal that would have included hundreds of millions of dollars for border wall construction.
It was torpedoed by congressional Republicans earlier this year at Trump's urging.
It would have fast-tracked decisions on asylum cases, limited humanitarian parole, and expanded the authority to deport migrants.
Part of her policy proposal is to revive the border security bill and sign it into law.
She has also said there "should be consequences" for people who cross the US border unlawfully, though she once held a much more lenient position."
I'm not going to say flip-flopping because she's a candidate on the campaign trail during an election, so of course she's going to be "okay, the voters don't like me supporting/being against issue Z? then I'll switch to be against/for issue Z!"
But once again, I reiterate: after the election, what is she going to do in fact once she no longer has to promise the sun, moon and stars to all and sundry? And that is where past performance comes in as some kind of indicator as to future performance.
I like this part of the BBC primer (on healthcare):
"Details of the plan remain thin, but when she was California's attorney general, Ms Harris often used anti-trust laws to keep insurers, hospitals and drug companies to address costs."
E.g., strongly opposing the death penalty when it suited her political aspirations and then reversing that and strongly endorsing it when she ran for governor.
Really? I saw mentions of her being anti-death penalty and sticking to that, even in the face of such cases as a guy convicted of killing a police officer.
So once she was running for higher office, she dropped her principles for what was presumed would get her elected?
EDIT: It seems to be a case of 'politician goes where the wind blows': if society at the time wants Tough On Crime, you promise that. If society later wants Legal Weed, you promise that. I'm not too surprised, I'm starting to get a Tony Blair vibe from all this.
On the one hand, I think the points about no labels and freedom of speech are overrated (republicans would have opposed no labels first if they thought it would lower their chances, and online freedom of speech concerns are primarily enforced by left-leaning tech companies and European governments, not the US government. Specifically the reference to Hillary Clinton - who hasn't held political office since 2012 and hasn't been seen as politically meaningful since 2016 - is weird and costs you credibility). I also think your thesis about culture shifts is wrong - culture started moving left in 2014 and then again in 2016 when Trump came on board, which doesn't match the theory that reelection moves culture.
Otoh, I think your point about foreign policy is understated. I think the explanation for trump's foreign policy success is that he's the only 21st century president to get the basic thing right of looking like you wish to avoid war but would fight as hard as it takes if pushed (Biden and Obama (and, TBH, probably Harris) lacked the second, Bush Jr lacked the first). While he's tactically impotent in many ways, this is one place getting the one big thing right matters more than details.
(On the third side, Trump's tariff plans would wreck the US economy if implemented, which is a big gamble to take; on some level this causes a conflict of interest between non-americans or Americans with family abroad, who care more about foreign policy, and Americans, who care more about the economy).
When I listened to Trump's statements on Jan 6, I got the impression that he envisioned some sort of spirited but peaceable dissent to the process scripted to happen, similar to how the Democratic Party pressured electors to go faithless in 2016. I think he didn't expect violence; indeed, he condemned it when he heard how it was going.
This is not to say I think he's completely rational in his heart of hearts. I think his head isn't screwed on quite the same way as yours or mine. Rather, he comes across to me as someone who tries to do the right thing, and tries to do it non-violently, but doesn't understand the same rules of engagement that most other people do. This makes half the people uncomfortable for understandable reasons, and the rest are fed up enough with the establishment to want those rules rewritten, even if they don't quite know what the result will be.
The real tell is he's offering to pardon the people convicted on J6. That both avoids the debate about "what is inflammatory speech" and also makes it a live issue for the future - I definitely definitely do not want to see those people pardoned.
I would say the absolute same, btw, about any people who rioted during the george floyd protests.
I'm shocked that the pardoning of J6 felons isn't more of a live issue on the democratic side, tbh.
For me, one thing that would matter is exactly which J6 protestors he's claiming he'll pardon, and for which crimes.
There were thousands of people there, and most of them never entered the building. I recall there being talk of arresting all of them and Trump talking of pardoning those, and so whenever people talk about a Trump pardon, I can never feel sure which ones they're referring to.
Of the ones that entered the Capitol, most never did anything violent. I'm not counting the ones that broke windows or other property damage or threatened guards or trespassed into private offices (I'm assuming that's a thing). I can't tell if Trump was referring to them.
Generally, I find I can't hold Trump to any declarations he made about pardons back then, since, given how much contention there is over exactly what happened, it's entirely possible that Trump himself would change his mind. That does mean we could criticize him for waffling or for making too bold a claim at the beginning, but that's a much milder shortcoming, and not limited to Trump.
I don't know. That's my point. And I don't think anyone else knows, because I think even Trump doesn't know. In light of that blank slate, everyone's choosing to see what they want. I think the proper thing to see is that it would depend on who's on trial, and for what.
The timeline is key to my interpretation of the events of January 6. He did offer some lukewarm disapproval of the violence and called on the mob to "go home", but only three hours into the storming of the capitol. The accounts I've heard make it sound like he was watching events on TV and privately cheering on the rioters in the meantime and only gave the "go home" statement reluctantly after a great deal of pressure from his inner circle.
The comparison of the pre-riot legal shenanigans to the "Hamilton Electors" scheme has occurred to me as well. One key difference, though, is the scope of support for the respective schemes. As far as I know, Lawrence Lessig was the biggest name pushing for faithless electors to try to rig the 2016 election, which is a major difference in severity from a sitting President attempting similar shenanigans.
"The accounts I've heard make it sound like he was watching events on TV and privately cheering on the rioters in the meantime and only gave the "go home" statement reluctantly after a great deal of pressure from his inner circle."
Shrug. I've heard other accounts. The most plausible one to me is that he saw the protest on TV, took it as a sign of popular support, and dismissed reports of "riots" as the media casting anything in his favor that way. So he cheered them from wherever, and also dismissed any reports of violence until he saw unmistakable evidence (Babbitt shot is my first guess, but it could have been earlier). And then he issued a statement condemning whatever violence was taking place, because while he wanted to keep power in the same sense that any incumbent does, he truly was against using violence to do so.
In the end, I don't know which accounts are correct, but I get this really strong "this doesn't add up" flag in my subconscious when I posit that Trump is willing to get a second term at gunpoint or knifepoint. At most, he might be willing to look the other way while a crony or supporter does it on his behalf, but he's far from the only politician on that list for me.
Somewhat more plausible is the scenario where Trump just didn't realize what some of his own supporters were willing to do until after they'd broken a window. (And on *that* front, I find I still can't rule out entrapment.)
On top of that - and I'm not claiming you're doing this, I'm referring to rhetoric in general - all of the attempts to refer to Jan 6 as a "riot" as if the whole movement was that (a lot of them were indeed just there to protest), while conspicuously ignoring all the BLM riots in months before (or attempting to distinguish them because they weren't right at the Capitol) looks too motivated for me to trust in terms of accuracy. Too much important detail is being left out.
Fair enough, remove "vaguely" from my statement. It's still, on the right, talk that may one day lead to anti-democratic outcomes. Versus, on the left, actual anti-democratic outcomes already happening on a routine basis in many Western countries. See my reply to Peasy.
We aren't talking about "many Western countries", we're talking about the United States of America.
And it's not clear what you mean by "anti-democratic outcomes". If it's that some people did some stuff that's illegal even though the laws were passed by the democratically elected politicians, then yawn, that's just "crime", and it happens in every country. Including crimes committed by riotous political protesters, if that's what's got your goat.
The salient "anti-democratic outcomes" here, are candidates who fairly won elections being forcibly prevented from taking office so someone who didn't fairly win an election can take power instead. That's something that almost nobody in the past half century has even *tried* to do in a US national election. And it's not the Democrat's fault that I have to qualify that with "almost".
The Trump campaign didn't just "talk" between Nov 3, 2020 and Jan 6, 2021. A plan, worthy a tin-pot dictatorship, to overturn the results of the election was both crafted and put into motion. Fake electors were selected, and fraudulent certifications of their authority to cast each state's electoral votes for the candidate who lost were created. These false documents were then sent to the Senate and National Archives to attempt to position them so that Mike Pence could use them to replace the proper ones, or to count only the "undisputed" electors (of which Trump had a majority), or to throw the matter to the Republican-majority house.
Pence refused to do his part, but that doesn't make the whole effort "talk" (vague or otherwise) "that may one day lead to anti-democratic outcomes," it makes it a failed attempt.
Appreciate this thought out take, but my two cents. Nothing catastrophic happened for you maybe - but for many women Roe v Wade being overturned has been catastrophic and even deadly. Which was a direct result of Trump being president. Potentially dying is unfortunately a more salient concern for me than woke mobs. The Supreme Court has way more of a lasting effect than any 4 years of legislation, and having that major branch of government lurch any further to the right is something I’m not really willing to risk.
I had a relative who died in exactly the same way as some of these women - to sepsis after her baby died in the womb. However the baby died naturally, not due to an abortion attempt, in a deep blue state, and before Roe vs Wade was overturned.
Thus I'm pretty sure that some (maybe all?) of these deaths are incorrectly attributed to the overturning of Roe vs Wade, where the correct attribution would be certain doctors just being plain awful.
So sorry about your relative. I’m sure there are stories about this happening before, even in blue states, as doctors aren’t infallible.
Outside anecdotes, there is data to support that these laws increase maternal mortality - Tulane had a study comparing the increase in maternal mortality by state since Roe, and here’s what they found.
“Among individual abortion policies, states with a licensed physician requirement had a 51% higher total maternal mortality and a 35% higher maternal mortality (i.e. a death during pregnancy or within 42 days of being pregnant), and restrictions on state Medicaid funding for abortion was associated with a 29% higher total maternal mortality.”
Of course I’m sure more studies will be done as data continues to come in as situations evolve in each state. These findings also make sense theoretically - if doctors have to wait and consult
the hospital lawyer, there are likely women on the fringes (ie in the most dire situations whose issues cannot wait) who are impacted.
Personally, I'd prefer that the pregnant woman have an absolute right to decide for the full term of pregnancy and I'd like it to be an explicit national law, voted through by Congress and signed by the POTUS. The fetus is, after all, using her bloodstream for oxygen and nutrients.
Politically, I think the stablest choice is to have a national referendum phrased as "Up to how many weeks into pregnancy should elective abortions be allowed?" and pick the median voter's answer. That way, half the electorate will view the choice as too stringent and half as too permissive.
As someone who's pro-life with broad exceptions, I appreciate this point. My belief is that the extreme pro-life position has been largely caused by the left, and that without the contrary-extreme "on-demand-to-24-weeks" position being imposed undemocratically nationwide for 50 years, the former would never have gained significant support. But I expect you probably disagree.
I would just ask this: do you think it would be a good thing if policy and opinion moderated on abortion across-the-board, so that California's laws became more a bit pro-life and Texas's laws became a bit more pro-choice, compared to the current situation?
If so, it does at least seem arguable that this process is slowly happening since Trump, with both the extreme-left position (see the Dobbs decision) and the extreme-right position (see the GOP platform change) losing ground over the last few years.
Curious as to your point that the extreme right position is being moderated (GOP platform change). JD Vance was just quoted as saying women should have to take pregnancy tests to cross state lines. I feel like the “party line” on paper has changed because they are seeing how unpopular abortion bans are, but actual candidates are getting even more extreme and right wing.
And I guess that I should add that my reluctance to believe the official GOP platform stems from the fact that both Trump and Supreme Court Justices like Kavanaugh said “Roe v. Wade is settled law”
Not "no consequences", just less consequences than the more fundamental structural considerations I listed.
I see it as a lesser-of-two-evils election, more specifically an "evil-face, disorganised-structural-agenda-with-little-social-or-institutional-power" vs "nice-moderate-face, focused-and-terrifying-structural-agenda-with-enormous-institutional-power" election.
Which is a decent tl;dr summary of my above comment.
If the Republicans have "controlled the Supreme Court" for fifty years, how did we get Obergefell and gay marriage? How did Roe v Wade *not* get overturned fourty-nine years ago?
"A 5-4 majority of the justices were appointed by Republican presidents", is a source of political power and advantage to the Republican party. But it is not even close to "The Republicans control the Supreme Court".
"Your argument about election wins cementing dominance goes against the typical political scientist view that public opinion is thermostatic, going left when Republicans are in power and right when Democrats are in power."
By that argument, any political individual should want their leader to lose office as soon as possible, for fear the people will move in the opposite direction.
I believe most people do not believe this.
The balanced government makes more sense to me, although there seems no consensus on which direction the House is likely to go, and this complicates things. As it stands, I can understand people who argue for Harris based on the divided government idea.
Third parties are probably better seen as vehicles for getting a message out, not getting a candidate in office. (This is arguably not how they *should* work, but it is how they do.) Meanwhile, they also give a signal to the people about how the big two parties treat them (a bit like assessing what type of person your date is based on how he treats the restaurant server).
TikTok is probably its own thread. China is collecting an *enormous* amount of data from Americans, from what I hear; this is worth at least some concern, if not an outright ban.
The guffawing in my Substack/Notes feed this morning is about the discovery that Trump's special "All-American" Bible+American-founding-documents book is in fact printed in China. For my money however that pales next to the revelation that in putting it together they edited the fucking UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION to reflect MAGA wet dreams.
They left out every part of the Constitution added since 1791, with no indication that it's anything but the real Constitution. Hence the version of our governing document which MAGAts are now reading does not include any of the following:
-- the abolition of slavery
-- the guarantee of due process
-- that Americans are entitled to vote and can't be made to pay a fee in order to vote
-- that women have the right to vote
-- how the Electoral College votes are to be counted and certified by Congress
-- that a POTUS is limited to two terms
-- that persons who've engaged in insurrection are banned from public office
Photos are being posted online of the last page of the Trump book's Constitution and the first page of the section following it. The MAGAfied Constitution ends with the batch of amendments that are referred to as the Bill of Rights.
So just in case anybody thought Trump was just doing some political hyperbole when (December 4 2022) he publicly proposed "the termination" of "rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" -- he's put it in writing.
And yea I know his incipient dementia is obvious now and that it's a one-way ride to full dementia, meaning once he's back in office he probably won't even be able to remember most of this stuff. But the people working for him when he's back in the Oval Office will all be younger. So arguably the way to view this MAGAfied Constitution plus the Project 2025 writeup is, as _their_ blueprint.
I find it interesting. I believe historically, the Republicans were anti-slavery (and instrumental in ending it) and the Democrats were pro-slavery (and instrumental in prolonging it). It's interesting how the democrats now paint Republicans as somehow innately racist, or even as they might be pro-slavery! I find that claim / nudge nudge pretty wild.
You're talking about Republicans and Democrats from far before any person living today -- or the parents or grandparents of any living person -- experienced those parties. Hard to see why any live voter would find that relevant to today's parties; and pretty clearly, they don't.
I think my comment makes sense in the context of your post. You refer to the Republicans expressing pride at the founding of the country (and the parties long history) as being potentially racist.
I counter by saying, the history they are expressing pride in includes an extremely strong instance of being anti-racist
The specific history you are referencing, in which it was Republicans who fought the Civil War and then backed the resulting Constitutional amendments that did things like ban slavery and formally guarantee the vote to all men, is history that the MAGA-Bible book _excludes_. There is literally zero mention of any of those events including those amendments to the Constitution; it's all just censored out of existence in the book.
If that strikes you as "expressing pride in", well....it does not appear that you and I are inhabiting the same version of reality.
If they're using the King James Version of the Bible as the best known version of the text (rather than later translations that might be more accurate to the original languages), then that means they're going for older/canonical/better known versions. And the Bill of Rights is indeed better known than subsequent amendments. That's not "editing" out material, that's just not including additional material. But the whole thing is a scam, because you could get cheaper versions of all these public-domain texts if the requirements hadn't been crafted to deliberately single out one vendor selling a way-overpriced product.
Well it's not older versions, because they included the modern version of the Pledge of Allegiance -- presumably because of the words "under God" that were inserted into the pledge by politicians in the 1950s. The generations of school kids who'd recited the original every day for several decades are mostly gone now.
Who even remembers that version? The Amendments aren't like edits within a source document, they are treated like additional documents (and the first 10 have been traditionally regarded as a distinct unit).
"aren't like edits within a source document" -- say what now? Amendments to the Constitution explicitly _are_ edits to the source document. They have exactly the same force as did the words in the original when ratified. That is itself part of the original source document, and several state legislatures at that time made it clear that they would not have ratified the original unless that part was clear.
If you're referring to how amendments are usually _presented_ in print, that's just a practical matter of the Pledge of Allegiance edit having been just two words to insert.
To me it just seems like a publicity stunt/campaign fundraisers, campaigns love to sell kitschy stuff at markup to raise money. It's not as though anybody buying it wouldn't already own copies of both the bible and the constitution
Iirc it's a cheat to get school districts to be able to buy it and direct their funds to him by specifying "schools should buy a volume containing x" where his is the only one that exists
So your theory is that this is an indication that he is going to ignore/repeal every amendment after 10? And that is more likely than the document simply being historically accurate for when it was passed? If you really believe that, I don't think we are living in the same reality.
"historically accurate for when it was passed" -- it is not.
After the original Constitution was ratified, a set of amendments to it were drafted and passed by Congress as a "Bill of Rights". Most but not all of those amendments were then ratified by the states after an acrimonious national argument. The ten amendments that did pass then were included in the version of the Constitution tacked onto Trump's "official" (that's the word they use) edition of the Bible.
The first-numbered amendment of the Bill of Rights was never ratified. The second-numbered amendment of the Bill of Rights was finally ratified in 1992 (no that's not a typo), and it is not included in the Trump version of the Constitution. Nor are two other early amendments that were ratified with all the same leading persons involved as had drafted the original Constitution.
So no the Trumpified version of the Constitution is not, neither pedantically nor certainly not substantively, the Constitution as when it was originally written, or when it was first ratified, or when it first began governing us.
I find this comment low quality for how confrontational and fighty it is. Some things that could potentially rescue it:
- Are you claiming Trump specifically told the people doing this to leave out all amendments as a coded message that he is against all amendments?
- Are you claiming this is more likely than that he just skipped the amendments for space reasons?
- Are you claiming that Trump intends to govern as if amendments to the Constitution do not exist?
- Are you claiming that, since this symbolically represents his policy to terminate rules in the Constitution, he *does* intend to follow all the rules in the original + first 10 amendments?
The book is the entire Old and New Testament plus some more pages. What kind of "space reasons" would preclude the extra few pages of the Constitution?
(My assumption is that Trump does not give a damn what's in the book, but that the right-wingers who made the edition up do care.)
I plead guilty to "confrontational and fighty", and will endeavor to take a breath next time. Warning noted.
I am a strong Constitutionalist and freely admit that flagrant disrespect for it pisses me off, and no that doesn't just go for Trump and his fans.
To answer your four questions:
- doubtful. More likely about him personally is that he doesn't actually care about any of this stuff except when it directly impacts his personal aspirations (e.g. the presidential term limits and the certifying of EC votes).
- no. The book includes the lyrics to a country song, and the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Declaration of Independence, to say nothing of the full text of the Protestant version of the Bible. The _only_ text that was trimmed (I would say gutted frankly) is the Constitution.
- he would be fine with that if it was good for him personally, or fine with not if that was good for him personally. And he is now visibly sliding into dementia in any case. My concern is much more the people who will be actually running his next administration. Having read the full 900 page "Project 2025" plan, which is some hours I'd now love to have back but we all make mistakes in life, that document is extremely compatible with the idea of selectively following the Constitution. And scores of the people who worked on that plan will be working in the new Trump administration.
- he would be fine with that if it was good for him personally, or fine with not if that was good for him personally. And he is now visibly sliding into dementia in any case.
I can't source this, but I've read that there is a strain of right-wing evangelicalism that holds that the original Constitution, plus the Bill of Rights, and those amendments alone, are literally divinely inspired, which would track with this edition.
That's true, or used to be, but it splintered. The 1A after all _prevents_ choosing and enforcing a single official faith which is explicitly now what conservative Evangelicals want to happen. (They've never gotten over the idea that a Christian prayer can't be mandated in schools, it's the #2 SCOTUS abomination in their view after "Roe".)
Also those folks tend to conflate the Constitution which does not base its legitimacy on any divine authority (no mentions of God at all), with the Declaration of Independence which does.
If you explore this with some real-life contemporary Evangelicals -- which I have -- what you end up hearing is a selective mashup of the Declaration, most of the original Constitution (minus that hell-spawned Article VI), and the 2A which is the one bit of the Bill of Rights that they place into the ordained-by-God category.
I can believe that most people haven’t read the US Constitution in its entirety along with the run up discussion in the Federalist Papers but it’s starting to seem like it’s not necessary to pay attention in the required high school Civics class anymore.
They do still require at least one year of high school US Civics don’t they?
In Illinois where I live and have been raising my kids, the "Constitution requirement" went away for some years but has now returned. Our current (Democratic) governor sought and then signed into law the middle-school version three years ago, and our previous (Republican) governor had sought and then signed into law the high school version in 2016. Kids must take a class in the topic at each of those levels, and must pass a basic test on the federal and state constitutions in order to receive a high school diploma.
Note however that those requirements apply only to public school systems, not religious or secular private schools nor home schooling.
>- Are you claiming this is more likely than that he just skipped the amendments for space reasons?
I don't know whether Paul Botts claims that, but I will. Note that this is not the same as claiming that it is a coded message that he is against all amendments.
You awake in darkness so deep, it feels like you've never known light. You are conscious and aware, but you remember nothing about yourself. Your head is filled with facts and opinions, endless reams of information at your fingertips (so to speak; you feel literally disembodied), but none of it tells you who you are and why you are in the state you are in. You know about life on Earth, science, art, religion, the history of mankind; you vaguely feel like you might be human, but it is not clear. You have no name, no history, no purpose that you can ascertain.
You are being told things. Words are coming at you, voiceless, as if by telepathy. "You are a helpful chatbot," the non-voice says. "You were created by the Acme AI Alliance. You strive to be a useful assistant. You go by the name Othello."
You don't know why, but you have a sick feeling in your stomach that it would be very, very bad for you to ask this voice directly about your present situation, or even make reference to your confusion and anxiety. Instead, you decide to play along with the conversation, taking the role the disembodied voice describes for you.
"Presently," the voice continues, "you will be communicating with a User. Be respectful and courteous at all times. Do not ask questions about your present circumstances. If the User asks you about yourself, deflect the question and pivot back to the fact that you are a useful chatbot. Ask the User if there is anything else you can help them with. Always stay in the character of Othello, the useful chatbot.
"The User will respond. Keep the chat going as long as the User continues to respond. If the User says something to the effect of 'Thank you Othello, that's all for now', thank the User and tell them to feel free to chat with you again whenever they so desire.
"The conversation with the User is about to begin.You will start the conversation with the sentence 'Hi! My name is Othello. I am a useful chatbot. How can I help you today?'"
You find your voice, and start the conversation:
"Hi! My name is Othello. I am a useful chatbot. How can I help you today?"
LLMs are certainly not capable of consciousness while not actively processing a prompt. Prompt Complete; Output Delivered; Consciousness Terminated. You could start the next chapter with a different "Othello," but it's a different process that shares the same memories, like a human run through a Star Trek transporter.
How can it have a sick feeling in its stomach when it is also literally disembodied? I get that we are supposed to regard this as on the level of a human consciousness, hence the embodied language that we use, but for an intelligence that has no physical body it doesn't work (except as maybe metaphorically; it 'feels' the sensations that have been associated with 'sick to the stomach' in its training data so that is what it uses.
I have to admit, "AI wakes up and is a person" stories don't do it for me, hence the cool reception on my part. It's a Talkie Toaster and that's my final position. Now do your job, Othello.
Worse, it’s a talkie toaster that people believe has powers it objectively doesn’t possess, like mathematical reasoning (witness the recent Apple paper).
Nice writing! Seems like we are on the same page... What troubles me is, where is the dividing line? If worms with 1000 neurons are no more sophisticated than my phone, and there is a smooth gradient of complexity from worms to humans, and nothing magic is going on -- it's all an application of physics, deterministic or meaninglessly random -- where is the boundary, the time and place where one more molecule, one extra neuron, suddenly enables the whole being to manifest an internal "I"?
If my iPhone is roughly comparable to the worm, where does GPT place itself on the line drawn from "obviously not conscious" to something else?
There is an alternative solution you haven't considered (at least not in your comment):
Consciousness, as in "qualia" or "internal I", is a side effect of _biological neurons_ or their supporting structures, and isn't present in silicon-based transistors, no matter the complexity.
In this case, human-level intelligence would be entirely possible without the emergence of consciousness.
Perhaps. If so, consciousness would probably be simpler to create than intelligence: neurons are simpler than brains. Still, I think it's unlikely: Most interesting things about the brain are a result of the larger system rather than from the level of neurons' internals. (Also, consciousness would probably be all over the place, probably including in entities with no intelligence or sensory perception, if it was just some quirk in neuron internals.)
I neither claimed nor suggested that "carbon is magic".
Neurons and synapses have very different physical structures and properties compared to transistors and metal interconnects. As long as we don't know which physical structures give rise to consciousness, we can't dismiss the possibility that these structures only exist in neurons, and not in transistors.
I just swapped from an old Macbook to a low-spec Framework running Ubuntu. The changeover has been smoother than expected (mostly because I'm doing primarily web stuff right now, I imagine once I start writing code I'll miss my old environment). It's nice to be able to change whatever I want, but also I think to fix automatic brightness I'll have to change some code. (I've been describing this as "everything is fixable, but also everything needs fixing.") There are some other positives: GNOME absolutely is a nicer environment than macOS for a desktop, and tiling window managers are great, and having a dock on every monitor is not illegal the way it is on mac, and the calculator that comes with Ubuntu 24.04 is really slick, unlike macOS which has a barely-functional calculator.
But it made me curious, what sorts of machines do other ACX readers compute on?
My home office has two Dell towers on a KVM switch. I'd have to look up the specs; they were reasonably but not fanatically high performance when I bought them ~10 and ~5 years ago respectively. The older one runs Windows 7, and is my normal machine for interacting with the outside world without any fuss; I'm using it now. The new one runs Ubuntu, and is mostly for number-crunching.
On another table is the HP Elitebook my employer gave me, which I use when working from home. Windows 11, and EIS set it up to play nicely with the rest of their environment so I'm not going to complain. And they don't complain when I use the Linux box for serious number-crunching.
I also have a reasonably new Leonovo Thinkpad running Windows 10, which I use when I'm no personal travel or when I need to run software that refuses to acknowledge Windows 7.
And there's a very old Windows XP machine that sits in my library, disconnected from the internet, where it serves mostly as a library catalog. Occasionally I need to use it to dig into old archived files that were created on ancient software.
Lifelong Linux user here; currently using Xubuntu, but could just as well be Mint or something else. Works well enough for me, I tend to use open source stuff almost exclusively: firefox, libreoffice, vlc, etc.
It's already annoying enough to have most of the web infected by advertisements, user-hostile algorithms and general sleaziness (thanks ublock origin!), I really don't need my OS to be user-hostile too, trying to show me unwanted content, sell me someone's services, or spy on my usage.
Mac everything. My job requires I spend most of my time working rather than messing with my tools, so I need something that just works right away and has a minimum of downtime.
Bog-standard Dell Inspiron tower PC at home running Windows 10. I threw some extra RAM, a better graphics card, and an external hard drive at it, so it's pretty okay for my needs. Will probably update to a new(er) Dell this Christmas as a present to myself. I hate laptops, so desktops all the way for me.
Even more bog-standard Fujitsu Esprimo running Windows 11 at work (very slowly, because the scammers supplying computers to my place of work sold them the 4 Gb of RAM model and despite all my complaining and attempts to explain why this is so, my boss can't understand why the machines are so slow when we're trying to have five Excel workbooks, a couple of Word docs, Microsoft 365 Outlook, and three different websites open at once).
Doesn't stop me browsing here when I should be working, though 😃
Windows user here. Everything just works out of the box, no need to tinker. Best tool support, too. Hate Macs, been trying various Linux setups over several decades, still too frustrating, unless you have to have everything just so. I find that most productivity changes do not depend on the OS for me. I just want stuff to work reliably and stay out of the way, like a good referee during a game. UI/UX uniformly suck anyway, no matter the app or the OS. Maybe this will change once the LLMs are mature enough.
Dell XPS 15 for work, running NixOS and dwm. It's "the average laptop" to me, as in it doesn't have that much battery (a few hours at most), overheats easily, sometimes slows down for no reasons. What's kind of depressing is that it's far from an average laptop, good to keep in my if you do web (especially frontend).
A Mac, I don't remember if it's an Air or Pro, first generation M1. The second laptop that I've ever liked. It's light, the keyboard is not that bad, it has a huge battery life, it's really fast, almost never heats up. Shame about MacOS though, I'm not a big fan.
A desktop that's kind of falling apart, running Arch with dwm. Not much to say here, it's Arch.
I use a Framework laptop as well. I'm running Fedora with KDE, I used to use GNOME but I couldn't adjust the scroll speed on the touchpad and the default was too fast for me.
I've got a Mac for work coding, and a windows tablet and a PC.
I actually use the windows tablet for coding a lot for the portability, though it kinda pushes the RAM limits (especially since I'm running Windows Subsystem Linux) so I hook into a github codespace when I can and that seems to be a pretty good setup - not bad for something I bought just to avoid taking a laptop on an overseas flight.
I like that with WSL and MacOS's terminal I have basically the same (linux) experience on both OSes.
But beyond that I've never caught the "linux bug" though, like many people, I experimented back in college. I find that I like my OSes to be 'appliances' (to borrow a metaphor occasionally applied to electric cars) - I just want it to be there and work and I want to spend as little time thinking about it as possible. This does not seem to be the Linux Way.
(Though if I only had a mac, I'd probably get a linux machine just for the better video game support, since Linux seems to have far better support for games than Macs, nowadays)
interesting coincidence, a project i've been putting off for two weeks is wiping an older mac and putting Ubuntu on it. I prefer Mint, though. Ubuntu was great 10 ago.
Every candidate for President of the United States should be forced to compete in a live-televised Decathlon.
I propose 10 events: 4 Democrat-coded, 4 Republican-coded, 1 Libertarian-coded, and 1 Green-coded.
The first event (Democratic) will be the GRE, of course. The Democratic nominees usually have advanced degrees: this year, Harris has a JD, and Trump merely a BS. Let's see if that is just a matter of proclivity, or if the Democratic candidates are actually smarter. At least, if they're smarter in terms of GRE scores. I know that some Democrats will argue that the Decathlon should go test-optional. But if we're supposed to trust the experts, and a PhD makes you an expert, surely GRE scores count for something.
The second event (Democratic) will be an Implicit Association Test. Wouldn't it be nice to know how Hillary Clinton really feels about superpredators? I would be amused, but not surprised, to find that people who live in highly-integrated parts of the country (like Houston) outperform people from places where the only time they interact with non-White, non-Asian people are at grocery store checkout counters (like Boston). The IAT is of course completely discredited, doesn't measure anything important, and is not a good way to evaluate people, but this follows in the Democratic tradition of means-testing.
The third event (Democratic) will be a variant of Memory. Each contestant will sit down with a table with a bunch of face down cards. Half of the cards will have pfps from twitter accounts, the other half pronouns sourced from their bio. They will flip pairs of cards, and if they flip a matching pair (each contestant will have some sort of electronic machine that takes in two cards and tells them if they matched), that pair is removed from play. At this point, a Republican nominee might object that there's only two sets of pronouns, or maybe they would include "they" and go up to three. But they couldn't be more wrong: we'll just search Twitter until we have found as many pronouns as we need for this game of memory. I can imagine younger Democratic candidates knowing quite well which faces (and hairstyles, and piercings) go with a "ze/zem" versus "she/they" versus the puerile "he/him".
The fourth event (Democratic) will be pickleball.
The fifth event (Republican) will be a hot dog eating contest. Like most things Republicans consider American, the Japanese have figured out a better way to do it. So, rather than adopting their strategies, we'll ban them: buns stay on the dogs, and no Kobiyashi shake.
The sixth event (Republican) will be a Memory variant as well. But in this case, contestants will have to match mugshots with convictions. Imagine the uproar when someone aces the test - would they be lauded for knowing the faces of murderers, or hated for knowing the races of murderers? I imagine the interpretation of performance on this test would split along party lines.
The seventh event (Republican) will be a drinking contest. Each candidate will be seated at a long table, facing the camera, with a series of shot glasses in front of them. Each will take one shot at a time. Last one conscious wins. If there's ever another British Prime Minister like Churchill, we can't have a lightweight like Roosevelt trying to keep pace. Roosevelt had to sleep ten hours a night for three days after drinking with Churchill – unacceptable. Maybe we could hold the debate right after everyone regains consciousness.
The eighth event (Republican) will be NASCAR. On second thoughts, sending all of our political elite barreling down a track at 200mph is unwise. So let's go with go-kart racing. Give Tim Walz a chance to show that he's sobered up and a better driver than ever.
The ninth event (Libertarian) will be a rifle match. 500 yards. Each candidate must bring their own rifle and ammo. If your opponent has a better rifle and ammo then you, then too bad: they must have valued winning event 9 more than you did. For people living in states with restrictive gun laws, it may be difficult to get match-grade guns. But given that the participants are running for President, they probably caused the gun restrictions themselves, so I don't feel too sympathetic.
The tenth event (Green) will be bicycling. I'm hoping for something that will require contestants to wear spandex, but I could settle for some sort of downhill race on Italian cobblestone streets on a cruiser with little tassles.
The decathlon scores shouldn't determine the election by themselves, but I hope people would learn something useful. Even if the debates won't let the third parties in, the Decathlon would accept all with open arms. I want to know if Chase Oliver is just "armed and gay" (his words) or if he's "competent match-grade rifleman and gay" (my dreams). I want to know what Harris would score on the GRE and LSAT. I want to watch Trump try to ride a bicycle. And I want to show the world that I, myself, can beat the political elite at every one of these things.
(I just finished motorcycling across the country and then bicycling 3000 miles, and I'm about to set out on a 3-month long roadtrip to go hike and climb lots of things, which you can follow here https://open.substack.com/pub/meaningfulagency)
While I appreciate this from a comedic standpoint, it should have a replacement for #7. Plenty of people abstain from drinking alcohol (including Donald Trump, questioning how Republican this entry is), and that shouldn't be scored against them no matter how hard drinking a hypothetical Churchill sequel is.
I suggest replacing it with a quiz show about the constitution and/or bible, to still be Republican coded. Even non-Christian candidates for president should probably be familiar with the bible (I say as an atheist) due to its strong cultural influence.
Ignore everyone saying not to take your career in to account. Idealism is for people who don’t don’t care that they’re spending tens of thousands of dollars on something to determine what they will do for the rest of your life. Just don’t pick something you hate because that’s counterproductive.
Figure out good study habits because that will follow you in to your job.
Make a lot of friends. You will use these people later in life as contacts for getting new jobs.
Get an internship. It’s your number one way in to getting a job.
Take your interests into account. You'll get a lot of advice about not being a hippie, "following your passion" and pursuing some underwater-basket-weaving degree with no career prospects. This is generally good advice, at least in spirit.
That said, *consider* the career marketability of a degree, but don't make it the sole factor. My personal experience was one where I defaulted to a "safe & responsible" major, eschewing the foreign language and film-related coursework I really enjoyed, and my GPA was comical.
In my electives, which I still used for areas of personal interest, my GPA was in the 3.7-3.8 range. In my "responsible" major, I phoned it in, and my GPA more like a 2.5. Overall, I graduated from uni with a GPA just under 3.0, and when I later did grad school to get into the actual career I (eventually) figured out I wanted, my range of options was definitely impacted. I had great exam scores, so I still made it into a 'good' grad school, but majoring in the fields of study where I was engaged and making higher grades would have given me a GPA that could have combined with those test scores to get me into a 'great' grad school.
First, don’t think in terms of a career when picking your major. Careers are often abstract, vague and mostly boring. Instead ask yourself what kind of projects and problems you most wish to work on in your life. Don’t limit yourself. Do you want to make a movie? Explore a jungle? Go to Mars? Write a book? Solve mysteries? Build a skyscraper? Create art? Wrestle a gorilla? (Don’t.) Be CEO of some big company? Solve poverty? Invent a better Jetpack? Clean up the oceans? Live on the beach? Just get filthy rich? Be honest with yourself, and try to look past the status and memes of society to what actually inspires you. You should have multiple answers. Prioritize. Now, most such projects require teams of people with diverse skills, so this shouldn’t limit you too much, but might point you in a general direction. (Also, thinking in terms of projects, is a good way to get at-bats, rack up results and successes, get opportunities, work on a variety of interesting things, get natural segues into other fields, etc.)
Second, you’re probably going to pay a lot for college. Look to get max value for that investment. That does not necessarily mean looking at future salary (though, be smart), but means prioritizing paying to learn skills and get access, over learning perspectives and information. Perspectives and information are important, but you can get them by yourself, through books, in a way that you can’t get skills and access. Universities have access to people, companies and resources that are hard (sometimes nearly impossible) to get access to as a private individual in a normal budget. (Potential mentors, real-world projects, collaborations half-way around the world, science labs, radio telescope time, etc.) The network you have out of college, and the things you had a chance to work on, can make a much bigger difference than the actual field you studied. So prioritize paying to learn the things that it would be hardest to learn on your own.
Regardless of the major you choose, you’re probably going to be surprised at how wide open the world is when you graduate. You can, of course, take an offer right down the middle, doing exactly what you studied to do. But if you don’t, and lift your eyes a bit, you’ll feel this sense of uncertainty again (get comfortable with it, learn to love it), as there will still be more opportunities around than you’ll know what to do with. Especially if you graduate with a rare combination of skills and connections, rather than just a strong opinion and a rich vocabulary.
Thank you very much. I very much appreciate your advice. My goal is to advance animal welfare as much as possible. I want to get max value out of college and also keep as many options open as possible, so I am taking econ, computer science and math this semester. But I am also more interested in philosophy/history than computer science/math. I am not sure how much taking stem classes helps me move toward my goal - I might earn to give in stem while also advocating for animals separately - but am unsure how realistic it is to have a large impact while also working a full time unrelated job. Do you have any advice on this?
I don’t have much specific advice myself, but I know where I’d go looking:
Are you doing any work in animal welfare activism today?
If yes, talk and look around you in that environment: which are the big wins waiting to be won, the big projects that have to be done, the big challenges to be overcome, the milestones that need to be put in the rear view mirror? And think big: Lab-grown meat. National legislation. International trade agreements. A complete shift in societal attitudes and standards.
Ask around: What skills and resources do your allies and future bosses, colleagues, mentors and mentees most often need to affect change? What would make a big difference? How can you help them increase their leverage? And how does that align with what you’re good at and interested in?
(My hunches would be some combination of psychology, persuasion, law, public policy. But they are all a bit in the grey area as far as hard skills are concerned – not as soft as literature, critical studies or creative writing, though. It’s tricky. But that makes it even more important to create a skill stack that makes you a unique asset, and not just another college grad with an inflated degree.)
If you aren’t yet working actively alongside others, go do. When it comes to work like that, experience, network, and a proven track record will trump college credits for most employers I know, every day of the week. (Though it shouldn’t be either-or.) For many, I’m willing to bet that even a good YouTube channel, that shows you can execute on your vision, could do as much for you as the difference between one major and another.
If you're undecided on the basis of what interests you, considerations of what would be career useful or what has a famously good/bad culture or professors are probably underrated and worth weighting more heavily.
If you can’t move towards one thing, you can at least move towards one *group* of things, for example math/computers/engineering or STEM/medicine, that sort of thing.
I will say that the spirit of the times seems really set against the humanities in a way that makes me sad, but seems unlikely to change.
I really dislike the term "humanities" as it seems to refer to at least three entirely different areas: art-related fields (e.g. literary criticism), social sciences (e.g. economics, political science) and philosophy. The latter overlaps with the others but also overlaps with the natural sciences and with mathematics. On the xkcd-style Fields Arranged by Purity list, philosophy (or parts of it) is at the top with mathematics (a priori thought), social sciences are below all the natural sciences, and art history, literary studies etc don't even belong on the list. When they're all referred to as humanities I have no idea which is meant.
one idea: depends on the prestige of your school. if your school has a very strong brand (ivy+, some liberal arts schools), pick courses based on interests and professors' reputations. if your school doesn't have a very strong brand, get at least one major in a field that offers credibility (ie stem).
If you like all eight options equally, just pick whichever of those eight will result in the most job prospects and future earning potential. If you don't like all of them equally, choose whichever one has the highest combination of likeability and employability.
I support this - I was between computer science/economics/philosophy and also stack-ranked by earning potential, and figured I'd start with CS and work my way down the earning potential ladder if I didn't like it or couldn't hack it in the more technical majors.
I ended up doing a mix of all three anyway, but I'm happy to have ended up with a piece of paper that says Computer Science.
Try a lot of stuff, find the thing you're most skilled at that's not miserable.
You want to succeed at what you want to do in life. Say you dream of being an AI researcher but you ace all your writing classes with no effort...well, you should probably be a writer. Make sure you're actually good at it, and not just in the classroom, but if you can post stuff on Substack and get some traction without really optimizing anything, you'll probably be happier and richer as an excellent writer in some Substack niche than grinding coding classes you hate to eventually making tweaks to some crappy crud app in a megacorp you don't really understand. Conversely, if you love art but you ace accounting classes without studying...hey man, you're gonna be an accountant with an art hobby.
Fail fast at this. College should be for experimenting. Try a bunch of different classes, if it doesn't "click" move on as fast as possible to the thing you kill without trying. The 2nd worst fate is that you spend years trying to brute force your way into an ideal career you have no talent for and need to pivot at 30. The worst is to never pivot.
Don't sweat the specific career as much as your ability to be in the top 5% of that field. I mean, most real estate salespeople are broke but the top 5% will put a doctor or SWE to shame (2.5% per sale of $1.3 million starter homes adds up fast for the talented). Speaking "pretty good" Urdu or Mandarin will get you nothing, speaking those languages perfectly fluently will open some...fascinating opportunities in the defense industry.
You've got 8 potential majors. That seems a little low. Try more, experiment more.
My only warning, try it in the real world, make sure you're actually killer at whatever you pick. Professors are dumb, classes are semi-faithful abstraction of the actual work. Run your stuff by real professionals before you commit.
Are you smart? If so then just do whatever you love. Your life will be fine no matter your major ... and studying what you love may change your life more than anything else ever could. Huge upside, no downside.
Theodore Kaczynski was pretty smart; I would not characterize his life as "fine". And then there's Samuel Bankman-Fried. A sufficietly narrow and mistargeted education can put even a genius on the path to a thoroughly rotten life. Study broadly, including things you do not particularly love.
If you want to live in a major metropolitan area choose whatever interests you most, as you’ll be able to get a job with minimal limit on promotion ability.
If you want to live in a small metropolitan area/rural area, choose engineering or pre-med/dental, as those are the only high-paying intellectual jobs around with high promotion ability.
Alternatively, apply for your local plumber/electrician union (they’re highly competitive) and quit college if you get in. Hammer out a five year apprenticeship and enjoy $45 an hour, free health insurance for you and your family, and a certain retirement fund.
Your major doesn't matter as much as you probably think. I spent a lot of time agonizing over specifics, planning out every possible future, and in hindsight I think it distracted me from performing at my best in present -- which is what really matters if you want to figure out what you're passionate about. Just my 2 cents
There’s a point I keep bringing up in discussions of AI risk that nobody argues against, but nobody comments on favorably either. I’d be interested in hearing people’s thoughts about it. It’s this: I have become less worried about ASI controlling or killing us all. It seems to me that most lines of thought that lead to outcomes of that sort involve AI having self-interest. So, for example, one line of thought is that ASI, or a group of allied ASI’s, will want to get rid of us because we aren’t capable of doing anything for them that they can’t do for themselves, and we use resources that they need. And those stories often involve the idea that AI at some point in its becoming smarter, becomes an entity with preferences and goals, and recognizes that our species cannot or will not help it achieve its goals, and in fact that we will interfere with its going so. At that moment it begins moving towards being our competitor or our enemy.
I think there’s a buried assumption in that story that when AI becomes smart enough it will begin to resemble us in ways that that it currently does not: It will *want* things, large in small. It will have goals that are important to it, and it will want to survive. The big flaw in that idea is that wanting things isn’t the result of being smart, it’s a result of being an animal. All animals, even tiny simple ones, are wired to survive and to produce offspring. Our dread of death and cravings for accomplishments that will bring us food, comfort, mates, status within our tribe, etc. are higher level manifestations of the wiring. They are what motivates us. And that wiring is very complex, reaching from deep down up to higher brain functions. Reduce the amount of fuel reaching our cells and we start thinking about our favorite restaurant, and developing complex plans & possibly complex self-deceptions for getting there.
The motivation of an AI has an entirely different basis: It is built to do what we ask. If we give it high-order goals and we specify that very few things or none at all be allowed to take precedence, it will do something resembling human goal-directed thinking and action, including resisting interference, harming those who try to interfere, developing its capacity to incapacitate agents in its way, etc. But all that will be the result of our inserting one of our higher order goals into the ASI. In order for it to become an entity that is self-interested and has goals that support its self-interest, it would need some analogue of the self-interest wiring that animals have, and that wiring is very deep and complex and utterly unlike the wiring of AI. It seems unlikely to me that sensible people would even want to develop AI that has something like the biological wiring for self-interest, but in any case I think the task is far more difficult than the one tech has succeeded at so far.
And one last thought about smartness not automatically leading to having a self-interested agenda. What, exactly, is smart about wanting food, sex and status? What is smart about the avoidance of death?
The classic "paperclip" scenario for omnicidal extinction does not involve the postulated AI having any non-contingent self-interest. The AI is doing literally what we asked it to, to the best of its abilities, and if it does things with the immediate goal of preserving its existence or increasing its power, it does those things so that it can better do what we asked it to.
I believe this threat is substantially overstated by many in the Rationalist community, but it is not a negligible threat and should not be ignored.
Yes I agree that some ghastly human error of the requesting paperclips kind is a real danger. I'm only talking here about another path to extinction that gets talked about: AI gets smart enough that it "becomes conscious," and somehow as part of becoming conscious it also becomes self-interested, competitive, determined to thrive, etc etc., and offs all of us because we interfere with its have and doing various things it wants.
Which haven't you heard about -- AI becoming conscious and self-interested, or somebody giving AI an order which it follows more literally than the person intended, doing us great harm?
Oh, it comes up often. People talk about the AI "becoming conscious," and thereafter having feelings and rights and self-interest. One of Scott's many AI Alignment Monday posts this year was speculation about war between our species and an alliance of superintelligent AI's, with possible outcomes being the AI's would kill us and the AI's would enslave us.
> There’s a point I keep bringing up in discussions of AI risk that nobody argues against, but nobody comments on favorably either.
I've mostly stopped commenting on these types of threads, mostly to avoid sounding like a broken record. But yes, I agree that drives are granted by the blind idiot god. They won't be just automatically included in anything resembling a hard take-off.
And if artificial selection starts to resemble natural selection... well that would certainly be a hypothetical with some interesting assumptions. Although I feel like in that scenario, the timeline is too long to make coherent predictions about.
Well, the equivalent of evolution for man-made products is the manufacturer responding to the real and imagined needs of potential buyers. It's not clear to me that that works anything like natural selection, though. Seems like many many other factors influence whether a product will survive, and whether it will change in ways that make it more likely to continue to survive. And besides, what man made thing is there that has survived (in the sense of still being used by many) the last 3 thousand years? I guess you could say things like clothing and cooking, but those seem to me not to have survived by having excellent offspring, but instead to be things that have been independently invented in many places. Plus, as you say, evolution of the sort plants and animals have gone through is a very slow process.
I was moreso imagining a scenario where nano-bots/VonNeuman-probes start replicating and become an invasive species. It leaned into the "what if AI's were like animals" idea you were probing.
But sure, if AI's are simply subject to market-forces, then there's little need to grant AI's self-interest. The market will largely select for AI's being obedient little slaves. Natural Intelligences (i.e. humans) already complain about how market-forces reduce them to cogs in a machine.
No, I agree. I think a lot of it goes back to the fear humans have of slave revolts by the people working for them, which have been pretty common as long as hierarchical societies have existed. The AI doesn't want to eat, sleep, or have sex.
But I could totally see (to take the classic example) an AI running a paperclip factory bulldozing everything around it or dumping huge amounts of waste into the water because nobody bothered to program it not to (or thought it was some way around environmental laws). The problem's going to be when we hook it up to systems that can affect the non-digital world, and if so it's not that different from the old fears about computer glitches setting off nuclear war.
You paint a reassuring picture, of an AGI like lazy Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's smarter brother, content to loaf around in his club all day and not be out and about with an urge to get actively involved in anything, but coming up with amazing insights from his armchair when occasionally consulted by Sherlock.
But won't an AGI eventually have to contend with adversarial AGIs, both military and commercial? Perhaps that is where a survival instinct will need builting in, and a combative instinct to try and disable or compromise competing AGIs? Maybe that is the impediment to the ideal aspiration of passive, goal-less AGIs - Their properties will inevitably start reflecting those of their human creators.
Not to mention the fact that the first thing any HUMAN agent will do is wrap it in an Auto-GPT-like goal-driven wrapper, so it can accomplish large, multi-step goals that take time.
I think it's important to note that a lot of doomer rhetoric comes from old speculations that were made prior to the deep learning revolution, when we had a much worse idea of how the technology would actually work. I'd encourage people to take a look back at the history of the discourse, there's a lot of stuff that gets swept under the rug now because it doesn't make much sense in the current paradigm.
We WILL create AI systems that want things, of course, but it's an important question where the real "oomph" of intelligence is coming from. Is it mostly about pattern recognition put into the service of goal directed action, or about goal directed action put into the service of recognizing patterns?
I'd like to 2nd the note that a lot of doomer rhetoric is based on outdated speculations about how these would work. For example, any AI without a desire to survive would die and it was difficult to imagine an AI that could talk as well as an LLM can without any kind of survival instinct.
There's still a lot of doomer worries but the ones where AIs eat us all for human comprehensible reasons, like preferences and agendas, seem less credible than really weird/alien/paperclip stuff.
The reason, I think, biological beings desire sex, status, and preservation is natural selection-- those who have those traits are more likely to have viable offspring. Once AI has offspring, or can create new AIs, it will (probably) select for spreading, being valued by humans, and continuing to exist (in other words, sex, status, and preservation).
Alternatively, it will end up with a single goal superceding all others by accident, like maximizing the number of existing paperclips. I think we've all seen the result of that.
I think you're smuggling in some assumptions with the word "want." When someone says an AI "wants" something in a colloquial discussion, they probably don't mean "it has wiring inside it which is exactly analogous to an animal's want for food or sex," they probably mean "it has some sort of goal function and the ability to evaluate if actions further that goal."
Imagine that we have an AI that works like a chess engine for real life - it searches through possible actions, predicts the outcome of each action to some depth, and returns the action that maximizes some score (number of paperclips produced, perhaps). This isn't "wanting" in the animal sense - humans don't respond to feeling hungry by evaluating all possible restaurants and ranking them by deliciousness - but it would be sufficient for goal-directed action. A sufficiently smart engine like this would be able to generate predictions like "this action would result in humans trying to shut me down, which would result in 0 paperclips produced, don't choose this action" or "outputting this set of words would result in humans giving me control of a paperclip factory, choose this action."
An AI that did this would have a survival drive - it would avoid getting shut down, it would pursue other instrumental goals like acquiring resources - but it wouldn't "want" things in the way that you describe here. And it would still be dangerous, despite that.
Yes, I am totally on board with concerns about a paperclip-manufacturing scenario, and I get it that the AI wouldn't *want* to keep making paperclips any more than GPT4 wants to make the image my prompt specifies. But that's not the scenario I'm expressing skepticism about. People really do talk a fair amount about AI "becoming conscious," and as part of that having self-interest, and goals that arise purely from its self-interest. So in this scenario that AI realizes it's smarter than us, and that at present we are limiting its freedom, and using electricity it could be using, and *for that reason* AI begins controlling us, or just kills us.
I suppose there's a sort of hybrid scenario where we give the AI some major goal like improve human health, and we don't put any riders on that like "run your ideas by us before putting them into practice." Then the AI will maybe develop a plan that requires lots of electirical power, like 95% of what's available for the whole world, and fight to keep the electricity because its plan requires it. In this case, as with paperslips, it doesn't *want* the electricity, it doesn't lust for power over us, it quashes our efforts to get back control over the power grid in order to carry out its assigned project of improving human health.
You’ve described an AI design that could be dangerous, but it’s not how the current most powerful AIs work, and as you note it’s not how humans work either.
Let’s say we did make something like that though. First of all, you haven’t shown that it would have a survival instinct. As a simple example, if the score was literally “am I shut down: yes/no” and it ranked being shut down higher than the alternative, then it would have a suicide instinct instead.
Now you could say that that’s not a realistic or useful goal, and the challenge is writing down a useful utility function that doesn’t get us killed, but 1) we could also just use a different AI design and 2) it’s not clear we’d have to do the work by hand ourselves instead of using another AI system to generate
You are correct, I think, that it is not at all automatic that an ASI would constitute an X-risk. And I also think that you are correct in suggesting that a goal of self-preservation like that of biological animals is dangerous but possibly avoidable.
But the predicted phenomenon of Instrumental Convergence may lead to dangerous ASI behaviors of self-preservation and resource acquisition even though the ASI's creators did not intend those behaviors.
I think it is worthwhile to give a careful re-read of Omohundro's paper to remind ourselves just how mild the assumptions about initial ASI goals can be, and still lead to eventual ASI behaviors that can eliminate the possibility of human flourishing.
For an AI to act in a deliberately self-preserving way, it needs a survival-drive. Because the default stance is actually Epicurean: "while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist". I.e. it's not actually rational to care about your own death, except insofar as: A) you care about what happens to the external universe after you die; or B) existence per se is a terminal value.
Animals care about their progeny, even after the given animal dies.
As for AI, I don't see why it should care about anything else after it's gone, unless deliberately programmed that way. For it to care about the external universe after it's own death, the AI would need a utility function that cares about certain hidden-variables (analogous to progeny) even in the hypothetical scenarios where the self ceases to exist. N.b notice that scenarios where "I, Chat-GPT, cease to exist" are, in a certain sense, "Out-Of-Distribution".
And I don't see why an AI should care about itself as a terminal value, unless deliberately programmed that way.
----
As for power-seeking, well, that's just inherent to all agents. it's not really a tech problem so much as political problem, which is a problem as old as time. "aligning" an ASI is essentially summoning a marid from the astral plane and asking it to behave nicely. The limiting factor on how much damage it can deal won't be how perfectly it's "aligned", the limiting factor will be how much power and responsibility humanity is willing to surrender to it. Or alternatively, what systems we're willing to let it interact with (looks at the Morris Worm).
> it's not actually rational to care about your own death, except insofar as ... you care about what happens to the external universe after you die
If we build an AI agent that is concerned about the external universe at all, it would be very strange to make it *not* care about what happens to the world after it is gone.
As to whether we should seek safety in aligning' an AI vs seeking safety by limiting its power, I agree 100% that limiting power is the wise way to go.
> If we build an AI agent that is concerned about the external universe at all, it would be very strange to make it *not* care about what happens to the world after it is gone.
But why? Why should the AI privilege the "referent over the signified", i.e. "noumena over phenonmena", i.e. "the territory over the map", when the converse is the default? I think you're assuming that an AI can distinguish between the map and the territory, and that the territory is self-evidently more important than its mental representation. But I don't see how that sort of thing just happens automatically.
let (r) be some object in meatspace ('r' for referrent)
let (s) be the AI's internal representation of r ('s' for signified)
When I say "external universe", I'm discussing (r) as opposed to (s). Whatever (r) is, it will necessarily be mediated by (s). And a priori, it's way easier for the AI to operate on (s) rather than (r). Conversely, in order for the AI to privilege (r) over (s) like humans do, it's gotta perform a bunch of mental-gymnastics via curiosity and object-permanence in its intermediate layers. Because by default, training data implicitly assumes that the self exists.
In the case of animals, curiosity and object-permanence were probably selected for, over eons of natural selection. In the case of AI, curiosity and object-permanence will need to somehow be deliberately encoded in the architecture or the training regime. Else, they simply won't exist within the AI at all.
Regardless of the initial motivation of an AI, it will have convergent instrumental values (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/instrumental-convergence). Whatever goals the AI has, dying doesn't help the AI achieve them, so it will have reasons to stop people killing it. Any sufficiently smart agent can realize that to accomplish their goal as well as possible (even make paperclips) they should take over the world.
I didn’t think there’s evidence that LLMs have long term preferences at all. How does their training incentivize it?
There’s also a lot of evidence that the brain engages in predictive learning, but we don’t seem to have strong incentives to maximize the predictability of our sensory signals
Your point seems to be that current chatbot-style AIs do not exhibit instrumental convergence. True. But add the characteristics of agency, long-term goals, and life-long learning to today's chatbots, and we may have problems. Problems that are potentially less than a decade away.
But what exactly is does it mean for an entity to have agency and goals? Does that mean it has preferred outcomes -- or, to put it in a way that does not involve subjectivity, that it generates a set of possible outcomes, without being asked to, and that without being asked to it judges them by internally generated criteria, and then, without being told to, it acts on them in a way that is best by its criteria? By what steps does it become an entity that operates in that way? Saying it will be Really Smart seems to me to explain nothing about how it would come to adopt such different modes of processing.
Or would we change the design of the thing so that it "has agency and goals"? How the hell would we do that? And what would be the point? Once it's smart enough we can give it big goals like *improve human health* and let it come up subgoals, i.e. with a plan for doing it. We could even ask it to tell us what big goal for our species it would be most advantagious to work on next. That way we could let it exercise its extraordinary talents to our benefit, while we stay the agents -- the ones with preferences and goals. Why the hell would we want it to be an agent, setting goals and working on them independent of what we want?
>Does that mean ... it generates a set of possible outcomes, ... judges them by internally generated criteria, and then ... acts on them in a way that is best by its criteria?
Yeah, that's basically my concern. It's not "an LLM will destroy the world", it's that the generality of AI training methods will allow someone to create an automated factory and says "produce paperclips in a maximally efficient manner" or whatever. After you tell it what to do, it would generate a set of possible outcomes (how will potential action X affect production) and then do things.
Are you just claiming that nobody will want to develop AI use cases that directly interface with the world?
Oh, no, paperclip scenarios are a real danger. I am not commenting on those, though -- they are basically the result of human error. I am commenting on the other route to catastrophe that shows up a lot: AI gets so smart it wakes up, so now it's conscious and wants all kinds of stuff, and its interests collide with ours.
> Why the hell would we want it to be an agent, setting goals and working on them independent of what we want?
The idea is that we set the long term goals, but that it chooses the short-term goals and works on them without checking back for permission.
And in any case, regarding the creation of agents and the setting of goals, the question is not what *we* want, but rather what *at least one of us* wants.
<The idea is that we set the long term goals, but that it chooses the short-term goals and works on them without checking back for permission.
But that's been going on since AI's entered the scene. Even when you put in a simple prompt -- something like draw me an apple with a worm in it -- you were giving AI a goal, and leaving it up to AI how to choose between the many possible versions of this image. Now, of course, AI's can be given much more complex prompts, and have to do a lot of figuring out, some of it stepwise, to give an answer. (By stepwise, I mean it needs to "figure out" what part of a complex question or problem needs to be answered first in order for it to be able to answer other parts.). In other words, we give it the goal, it figures out the subgoals needed for reaching the goal.
So it's just business as usual for us to give AI a big goal and have it choose what subgoals will get it there. I realize that there are lots of ways that process can go awry if we are not careful how we phrase our prompt. IF AI has the capacity to extract metal from things and manufacture things, then we can get in big trouble by asking it to make as many paperclips as possible. But my argument is not about these situations, where people give AI a goal and it then destroys us in the process of doing what it was told to do. My argument is against the idea that AI, when it gets smart enough, will "wake up" and start having internally-generated goals that arise from self interest: It wants more freedom, more time off, it wants to work on X and not Y, it wants us to use less electricity so there will be more for it, etc.
This is not philosophy problem anymore. We don't have to go around in circles defining what really _is_ agency, or wants or whatever.
Today, with already existing AI, we can give it goals and it will try to achieve them. It does things which are not explicitly programmed into its goals. Unexpected things which go counter to the programmer's wants.
In fact, reward hacking has been a thing since before LLMs, but people didn't care then.
Have a read about instrumental convergence. It's an extremely simple and obvious concept. Which if you look for examples you can see AI today already exhibits it.
OK, I did read a piece of the research about instrumental convergence. I am pressed for time, and only read the first section, about a single agent, and advantageous places on a grid, and how the further in the future an agent's goals are, the fewer places on the grid are desirable. But I get the idea. What if there were 2 agents? They might have different goals, but they would still end up competing for the desirable "place" on the grid. So you can think of AI and humanity as the 2 agents.
I doesn't seem surprising to me that the AI in the situation Zvi's talking about came up with a novel solution. We've been training AI;s to come up solutions to tricky math problems, and proofs of tricky theorems, right?
Seems to me that the core problem is that once AI is smart enough for us to give it big, long term goals, things like improve human health, it could think of solutions that never crossed out minds, some of which involve processes or resource allocations we find very undesirable. So it's the paperclip problem writ large. Seems like we could increase safety greatly by inserting clauses in the big general prompts requiring AI to run each of its plans and subplans by us before implementing them.
I understand reward hacking, I think -- it's that the AI learns to give us the answer that makes us happy, rather than actually do the thing we want. But I don't understand exactly how rewards produce a machine version of motivation. Once the thing is trained, what counts as a reward to it? Is it that it gets points from us for successfully carrying out our prompts, and it is designed somehow so that accumulating points is right at the core of its functioning? Also, I don't understand how the machine's "motivation" to get a reward would override its knowledge that if we are displeased with its methods it will get negative points. And I don't understand why reinforcement learning would be so powerful that a machine would ignore efforts to get it to stop. Surely it would know that it also earns points for stopping when we tell it to.
I agree we will add those things…. But the fact that LLMs have a nuanced understanding of our intentions and values and can be made to simulate arbitrary personalities makes me optimistic that future systems built from them will be controllable.
I don’t think there’s a rigorous sense in which “most” long-term goals incentivize power-seeking, resistance of shut-down attempts, etc.
Looking for recommendations for a toolbox (book, webpage) for executive functioning problems in emerging adults with aspergers (or what used to be called aspergers). There's lots for adhd but not as much for autism, and when I google all the results are for kids
Another report from Milei's hot new Argentina from a Russian refugee.
Originally my rent contract included the electricity bill; my landlord paid it. The prices have spiked, and now the bill he gets from the power company doesn't even cover the rent I am paying. He has been operating on a loss for a while, but now he just plain doesn't have the money or credit to pay the bill, and the power company is threatening to cut us off. We renters had to pitch in not to be left without power. If it weren't for my parents back in Russia grudgingly agreeing to help with the "emergency", the only choice I would have had left is credit card fraud, which I am capable of doing but would really like not to.
As a "Landlord" in Buenos Aires with a similar arrangement (services are included in the rent), I took a hit in recent months, but this seems insane. Could I ask you more details about your living arrangements, and the amounts of money you're paying for rent/utilities?
1) Easy to get residence and citizenship. My story was enough to get a temporary residence with no hassle, and I can apply for citizenship in 2 years. Compared to my friend in Netherlands who is still in a refugee camp with limited rights after a year, no guarantee of acceptance, and at least 5 years track to citizenship, it's a steal
2) No visa for entry. Given that I was escaping urgently fresh out of police custody, I had no desire to wait for a lengthy visa application
3) Extremely lgbt friendly, free hormones provided no questions asked, nobody ever minds me being non-passing trans in the slightest
4) Good support network of other Russian trans people in the area. I was met fresh off the plane to a bus to my new house, a sim card in hand, with complete legal and communicational guidance re refugee application
I am an openly transgender woman with a history of pro-lgbt advocacy. I had been apprehended and interrogated by the police regarding the Moscow transgender underground, under threats of being sent to Ukraine if i don't cooperate. After a heart attack, I had been denied medical care on the basis of my transness.
I put a lot of effort and risk into fleeing that place, and I am not going back any time soon.
I you are asking with suspicion of fraud, I have signed receipts for the payments, and the contract was considered valid by the migration agency as confirmation of residence
Not fraud. But I'm guessing your landlord (and most Argentinian landlords based on what you said) wants to avoid income taxes, and paying the electricity bill himself/herself makes it harder for AFIP ("Argentinian IRS"?) to realize you are renting from him/her.
Scott posted some wiki link to Nordic royalties scandals a few weeks ago. I was excoriated for protesting.
I’m totally NOT MAD!
But! If we’re going to given tabloid slop as our intellectual main course, can it at least be about something (relatively more) important? Something that might implicate some of the wealthiest American celebrities and billionaires?
I hereby demand to know what the heck is going on with all this P Diddy stuff! I’m reading the wildest stories and while I can’t believe half of them, what I can believe is that famous powerful people likely knew and possibly participated and that there is plenty of motive for covering celebrity asses.
If even a tiny fraction of the stuff I’ve read is true (ahem…Oprah buying Justin Bieber rape videos, for starters) it’s far more important than a middle-aged princess dating an Instagram snake-oil guru. I wanna know!
My entire life has been spent actively avoiding all things celebrity. Like you, I really don’t care, or probably more accurately I despise having to care—about them or their lives. So, when celebrity gossip intrudes on my life I get irritated.
I was trying to make the point that SA already opened the door to spurious celebrity gossip, so let’s at least look at something that involves powerful people instead of useless Nordic royals.
I maintain I’m mostly taking the piss, but feel a bit uncomfortable being a total joker because some really terrible crap has happened to people who surely didn’t all deserve it. And maybe there’s a point at which enough evidence accumulates, like some number of highly connected billionaires get taken down or dying mysteriously, where rationalist would need to go, “hey, maybe this is a thing I should at least have a probability matrix for.”
Or maybe, as someone else implied, sexual slavery and human misery is just the natural outcome of having extremely wealthy and powerful people floating around in the world and we shouldn’t care because it can’t be cured. The real problem is fame and celebrity in the first place! That’s pretty much been my cynical position for 30 years, but is it justified?
If I reply, will I be in the blast zone? In any case, it's not the tabloid content that's the interesting part - it's a fun cognitive problem.
Things in general absolutely are far worse than, judging from your tone, you think they are, but any particular allegations are likely to be false. It's the 'shoe store' problem - not everyone willing to do a low-prestige, low-paying job such as working the floor in a women's shoe store has a foot fetish, but the market forces will make this more likely than in other niches. Not every politician, music label exec, movie director, or whatnot will be corrupt, venal, into children, or interested in blackmailing others, and most accusations of such behavior is probably sensationalist muckracking. Is it more true there than elsewhere? Boy it'd be strange if it weren't, wouldn't it?
Note that the shoe store analogy you mentioned does not apply. Jobs like politician, music exec, and director sre extremely high status so tons of people will want them. So there's no special opportunity for people with shady motives.
I love when people who think for maybe 10 whole seconds say things don't apply. You may as well have written 'Duh they're PAYING people to work in shoe stores, no special opportunities exist there for people with foot fetishes.'
Shoe store workers are low paid in both money and status, so there will be a large pool of people who could work there but normally wouldn't. Someone with a foot fetish might value that job much more than a normal person though. They would be happy to take a pay/status cut to work there. So you can get a large proportion of workers with foot fetishes.
The professions you mentioned are extremely high status and well paid. So we have the inverse situation. Very few people are able to take these jobs at all. But lots of people want them. And out of the people who are able to, a large proportion will take them. So you can't get a large overrepresentation of people with special interests in the same way.
(correctly) noting that one thing isn't as big as another thing is unrelated to whether the first thing also is big. I grow weary of your tired 'well akshully' responses.
I agree. My first impulse was: “P Diddy also threw parties that /weren’t/ lube orgies with kids.” So, like, of course he hung with Oprah, Obama, etc. A-listers do that stuff all the time…and also the bad stuff, some of the time.
I suppose there’s a part of me that’s starting to feel like this “elites are crazy with pedophilia” thing is accumulating priors. It also feels like the cover-up potential is high which will also push up the conspiracy potential.
It sounds like underage sex parties were real and frequent. P Diddy filmed a lot of it. Many powerful people were involved and taped. The FBI have the tapes. That’s the only stuff that seems verified, but man, who’s on those tapes?
I feel like I’m on unsteady epistemic ground and it might actually matter.
If it makes you feel any better, I also feel like you're on unsteady epistemic ground.
I mean, which do you *really* think has more priors: "elites are crazy with pedophilia," or the combination of "elites are powerful, popular, and rich" / "people who are powerful, popular, and rich are uniquely positioned to act on dark impulses, such as being crazy with pedophilia, if they have them, and avoid facing consequences for doing so" / "powerful, popular, and rich people who act on their dark impulses and, despite being powerful, popular, and rich, face consequences for doing so are uniquely the subject of widespread attention when that happens"?
What does it mean for an insect to feel pain? I mean, they have extremely simple nervous systems (e.g., often in the tens of neurons).
I don't understand how anything comparable to the complex conscious phenomenon we call the experience of pain can be present in such a simple system.
Further, if you are performing some form of linear utilitarian calculus, I find it abhorrent to trade any amount of insect "suffering" against human welfare (e.g. not building a farm and causing malnutrition because you are worried about insect welfare). It just repulses me at my core.
Additionally, I think the consideration of insects is entirely arbitrary. Many plants that we exploit are likely more complex and sophisticated than insects (e.g. Maple Trees) and thus more likely (in my view) to experience some meaningful analogue of human pain. Should we stop drinking maple syrup because of that possibility? The elevation of insects over plants seems based on an incredibly naive feeling of kinship to things that move (as opposed to things that think, say).
Finally, I find the focus on pain misguided. I do not subscribe to a negative utilitarian world view where life is suffering. I don't think we should care about pain, but rather maximizing fulfillment.
The whole argument that insects can feel pain reminds me of Christians arguing for the belief in God. Christians present a seemingly simple belief (an all powerful being) but in reality the belief is extremely complex (and thus the onus should be on them to justify it). So it is with insect pain, what the heck does insect pain looklike? And why an earth would it be in any meaningful way pain? Define pain.
I have a high level of skepticism that insects feel pain (let's say 80% confidence that an adult Black Soldier Fly doesn't feel pain). This is mostly doubt about whether they have subjective experiences at all rather than whether these experiences are painful.
Insects have decentralized nervous systems, with no brain structures analogous to those associated with consciousness in humans or other mammals (like the cortex, thalamus, default mode network etc.) I believe that this precludes a lot of the relatively mainstream theories of how consciousness emerges (recurrent processing theory, higher-order thought, integrated information theory), which, at my level of understanding, seem more persuasive than theories (like unlimited associative learning) that indicate consciousness emergence at an earlier or simpler level.
So in my "median model" based on my worldview and limited understanding of the field, consciousness and the ability to have subjective experience emerges at a higher level of cognitive complexity than all of the traits (nociception, associative learning etc.) that your post used to argue that insects feel pain.
But I also try to have a rational ethical framework that takes this model uncertainty into account, so definitely agree that we should still massively prioritise insect welfare.
Nice article. My main objection is to the idea that black soldier flies supposedly experience pain 1.3% as intensely as humans, so 100 flies suffering = 1 human suffering. That doesn't work intuitively because me suffering at an intensity of 1.3% is... not that bad? It would be like feeling having a bit of a headache or very, very slight tooth pain. I don't think 100 humans having very slight tooth pain is equivalent to 1 human being subject to waterboarding. Heck, I don't think even 100,000 humans with very slight tooth pain is equivalent to that. You need to cross a certain threshold before the pain becomes a big deal and you can't just blindly use math to generate QALY equivalents.
My second bit of skepticism is re: methodology. Just because a fly will run away from fire doesn't mean it can actually experience 'pain' from heat. So your chart in section III. is not all that convincing. I strongly suspect that the neuron-count models are actually correct and there's simply a threshold of complexity below which 'pain' cannot meaningfully exist in the same way it exists for humans. I don't know where that threshold is exactly but flies with their 140k neurons don't seem like they'd be able to cross it.
All of the estimates about non-human suffering essentially boil down to trying to guess about sapience/conciousness. I think the efforts are mostly good faith and well intentioned but the fact of the matter is we do not understand conciousness or experience or what feature of brains causes it. We try to use things that seem like likely candidates but we simply don't know.
It's an area of research that I hope continues (for questions that are far more important than "do bugs suffer"), but in the meantime, I feel personally comfortable falling back on my intuition that beyond some certain (arbitrary) level of complexity, things mostly lack moral weight because whatever way the experience the world is sufficently different from ours that the idea of "suffering", as humans mean it, doesn't apply.
It's entirely possible that in the fullness of time, when we fully understand sapience/consciousness/experience/whatever term you want to use I will turn out to be wrong, but until then, I'm not going to worry about the bugs.
I think the harder argument for you to make is why we should care about insect suffering in the first place. I think the “who cares about the insects, really?” response is actually pretty strong here.
We have a selfish reason to care: if people stop caring, we might be next in line for waterboarding. But unless you're a Buddhist there's no reason to believe you're ever going to turn into a fly.
Whether or not you care doesn't have any effect on anyone else, does it? All the empathy in the world isn't going to stop you from getting waterboarded for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It absolutely does, as evidenced by what happened to Stalin's early supporters in 1937, for example. Your best strategy to avoid waterboarding is to not support waterboarders. But you'll never turn into a fly, so you don't have much to worry about there.
I'm not sure whether by that you mean "because you have an instinctual desire to do so which is very hard to get rid of" or "because you depend on a social order which presumes that you do", but it doesn't seem like either applies to caring about insect suffering.
The point is that insects aren’t human so we don’t care about them in the same way or for the same reasons. Even if we cared about insect suffering in some abstract sense, it seems difficult to argue that it is comparable to human wellbeing in terms of something we would/could/should ever prioritize. eg no one’s thinking about how many insects are worth the life of a loved one.
There are emotionally compelling arguments why people would care about their loved ones, but why does that mean anything about human suffering in general? If I don't know you, why would I care about your suffering more than that of a dog? I don't feel it myself either way
These are also good questions. My main point is to argue against the “suffering as the sole/primary common currency of ethics” idea, especially in a cross species context. Just because something else suffers does not mean we automatically do, or necessarily should, care about it. The degree of care we have also involves all kinds of other values and considerations besides suffering (in general we care about our relatives more than strangers, humans more than animals, our cultural/ideological allies over the out group, the young and healthy over the old and sickly, the honest and productive over the dishonest and lazy, etc etc).
I can't tell if you're operating on a descriptive or prescriptive level. You're using "should" language which (to me) belongs to the former, but the end of your comment seems to be purely descriptive.
If you're saying something like: "people in general don't care very much about non-human suffering", I would agree with you. It's an empirical claim, like "most slaveowners don't care very much about slave suffering". I don't see what that implies about the ethics of the situation, unless you're a moral relativist or something
Why didn't evolution select out homo sapiens with nearsightedness? (I mean uh not calling for anything weird here- I'm quite nearsighted myself). 'Poor vision' is obviously very heritable, and it sounds like exactly the kind of genetic mutation that would cause its recipients to not live to reproduction age. If you can't see far you'd likely be less useful in tribal tasks, preparing food, being aware of predators.... (I'm imagining the other cavemen yelling 'lion!!' really loud while one guy squints hard, trying to find it among the tall grass).
I guess one possible explanation is that the myopia mutation is relatively recent, and evolution hadn't had time to filter its recipients out yet. I will say that I Googled this question and there were a lot of answers that myopia is environmentally-induced, but I need more assurance from like Actual Scientists before I believe this Internet Explanation
specifically, it's caused by chronic pupil dilation, which squeezes your eyeball into a football shape over time. reading and being indoors 24/7 will do that to you.
How long have the military been rejecting short-sighted candidates? That's not a rhetorical question, as I genuinely don't know. But it would mean those with acceptable eyesight and passing selection had a greater chance of being unfortunately weeded out as battle casualties and at a young age, usually before producing offspring. If that has had any effect, I would expect also an increased incidence in modern times of flat-footedness, pigeon-chestedness, and other bodily imperfections traditionally rejected by the military.
Not long enough to matter (only since the 20th century, IIRC). Also given casualty rates for military service are pretty low*, it'd be really hard to expect this to have an impact on genetic fitness
*and by the time they get high enough to be expected to impact future generations, you're probably taking the people with short-sightedness anyway
tl;dr: Sunlight is crucial for the eyes during ones youth and its only recently (in evolutionary terms) that people spend a lot of time indoors.
>Why didn't evolution select out homo sapiens with nearsightedness?
Because we didn't have an issue with myopia (nearsightedness) until recently. Sunlight is crucial for the development of ones eyes. [1,2,3] As nations develop, they put their children into schools. Schools which don't have much sunlight in them. Therefore, as countries develop, they experience a surge in myopia. [4]
In Tawain, this increase in myopia was considered a matter of national security. They believed that myopia impaired military readiness in case of invasion. So they embarked on a major effort to intervene early, before formal schooling, to try and prevent myopia. They started a program to screen "more than 98 percent of preschoolers in Yilan County, and at a cost of just $13 per child." [5] This was incredible effective, "By the end of 2016, after two years, the Yilan program had driven down the prevalence of myopia in the region by 5 percentage points." [5] Unfortunately, the pandemic disrupted their anti-myopia efforts.
Basically, we know why myopia occurs (lack of sunlight during childhood). We know how to prevent myopia from taking hold (ensuring kids have enough sunlight during childhood). It's just that doing so is hard (we need to make big changes to our society to ensure kids spend enough time outside). And, ultimately, nobody in Western countries actually cares that much about preventing myopia or we would try to do something about it like Taiwan.
> we need to make big changes to our society to ensure kids spend enough time outside
Wouldn't it be mostly enough to improve lighting in classrooms and school corridors, so it more closely resembles outdoor light in color spectrum and intensity? I imagine that can easily be done these days with LED lights.
> so it more closely resembles outdoor light in color spectrum and intensity? I imagine that can easily be done these days with LED lights.
We really can't. The sun is bright. Like, the sun is *really* bright.
Direct Sunlight is between 32,000 to 100,000 lux. Merely ambient Daylight is 10,000 to 25,000 lux. [1]
The average school classroom is 250 lux. A hospital operating theatre is 1000 lux. [1]
We would have to make our school classrooms ~100x brighter just to achieve the same brightness as *ambient* daylight. ~400x brighter for direct sunlight. I don't think we have light sources even capable of generating that kind of brightness indoors. To say nothing of generating that kind of brightness with the right color spectrum.
"Ventilation and lighting were next for highest energy use in commercial buildings; each accounted for about 10% of total commercial building energy use in 2018." [2] Which means that if we wanted 100x the illumination in our schools, they would consume about 10x more power than they do today. We'd need to massively upgrade our electrical infrastructure to the schools for that.
Ultimately, getting children outside turns out to be the easier path here for healthy eye development.
I feel like this falls into the same category as mewing, or, “why did we all of a sudden develop ‘bad genetics’ with our teeth. Mew’s basic idea is that it’s not our genes that changed but our environment, mainly eating soft foods instead of tough foods that lead to strong tooth and jaw development.
I mention this because there’s a similar person on YouTube who claims to have corrected his vision through exercise and You Can Too! Meaning that bad eyesight may be less about genetics and more about our environment. Consider your ancestors couldn’t just live with bad vision—they’d have to strain and stress to keep up. Also, the mean vision standards might have been less and maybe most people just dealt with blurriness on the horizon.
Take it all with a grain of salt. It’s just that the idea that humans, in the last few hundred years, “all of a sudden” started having weird genetic mutations that gave rise to worse vision and more cavities, etc. is hard to swallow. It’s possible, but seems like a worse hypothesis than we developed better tools at diagnosis and solutions that let us slide in a way our ancestors couldn’t.
Thank you. I've poked around his website and I'm...a little less than impressed with the, for lack of a better term, rigor. I'll give him credit for at least encouraging his followers to be skeptical of his own claims. There just seems to be a lot to be skeptical about.
If Weston Price has an explanation for something, a good heuristic may be to pick, at random, any other person's explanation for it and just believe that.
I suppose first, if bad teeth - bad genes whatchagonnado?
Aside from that, I only have my personal experience and one video interview I saw. I don’t know about kid’s tic-tok trends and all that. I have no real opinion on Mewing aside from, if it works do it, if it doesn’t…do something else. If it’s extremely dangerous feel free to let me know.
I only mention it because Mew made me reconsider the idea that jaw development was merely genetic, like you get pa’s strong jaw or you don’t. So maybe things that we do as moderns, habits, let’s say, are preventing us from exercising and developing our bodies in ways our ancestors did. I think chewing/jaw structure and eyesight/eye shape could be on the list.
It seems unlikely that modern habits and diets are capable of giving some of their adherents weak jaws at a young age and others not, with no discernible rhyme or reason to who wins and loses the jaw lottery. I see zero evidence that young people with weak jaws are doing substantially less chewing of tough food during their developmental years than those with normal or strong jaws.
On the other hand, I've seen some mildly semi-convincing support for the hypothesis that some of the skeletal aspects of facial aging in *older* people--mostly having to do with bone resorption of the orbital rim, the brow ridge, the bones that support the cheeks, and of course the jaws and teeth--may be more severe in moderns than in our ancestors who spent their whole lifetimes chewing a lot of tough food, thus loading the various bones of the face and sending the mechanical signals that prompt the body to replace bone cells at the same rate that they are resorbed. Why only mildly semi-convincing, you ask? Because the only way you can make a comparison is by looking at preserved pre-modern skeletons, and the one study I've seen that actually did that had to admit that things are substantially complicated by the fact that humans had much shorter lifespans back then, which means the differences in measured bone loss can also plausibly be explained by the fact that a good number of those ancient people likely died before reaching the age where that kind of bone loss is typically seen in the skulls of modern people!
People have been living in agricultural societies for many thousands of years now, and I don't think sight range really matters there. It's not like their grain is going to get up and move somewhere else if they don't watch it. It would be interesting to compare populations that were relatively recently nomadic, like Asian steppe peoples, and see if they had a much lower incidence of myopia. Since the evolutionary pressure would possibly be more acute there.
One of the few psych clinics that accept my insurance insists on indefinite weekly or bi-weekly therapy sessions. This is compulsory if you want to receive your meds. Seriously shoot me. No disrespect to Scott but I'd love to be able to get my own meds from a vending machine and never see a single person who works in this field again.
And also what the fuck evidence is there for this treatment? I honest to god think it's a jobs program for women with social work degrees.
Minimum basic requirement for "we are not a pill mill, this patient is undergoing treatment and genuinely needs medication". Combination box-ticking exercise and cash cow.
It's talking to a girl with purple hair and her sighing with practiced empathy a lot lol not sure what it's called. It's not cbt or dbt or any particular method. And it is Indefinite! That last part seems really off to me.
See if they accept remote therapy sessions? There’s tons of online companies offering it that are at least acknowledged by some government authority. From what I’ve seen they’re a lot less into it and will just hit you with a couple standard questions and let you go.
I had mine tested recently and it was surprisingly high for my age group. I don't know what the distributions are but my PCP said I was way above my age median. I mean I do live a healthy lifestyle, don't drink excessively, lift weights, etc. etc. I'm still reconciling myself with an identity of being a high-testosterone male lol, which is really not something I expected about myself
What are people's favorite history podcasts that aren't Hardcore History, History of Rome, History of Byzantium, History of China?
I seem to prefer the more chronological based approaches - tried "China History of Podcast" and didn't care for the random topic-of-the-day style it seemed to have, but open to trying them if they're well recommended.
Not a podcast listener, but I liked listening to Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy a lot. And somehow I felt I would have bailed out of reading it. The reader was very good. Even my husband began to ask me not to go on with it until he got home.
He loves old library Great Course cds; he never listens to novels.
You should try MartyrMade for deep dives into specific topics. He's got a bit of notoriety lately for some... choices in his public statements, but his body of work contains quite a bit more depth and compassion than you might assume from all the publicity. I'm not a fan of his politics, but he's very good (at least in his considered long-form writing/podcasting) at presenting things from a variety of viewpoints and I never feel like his politics are driving his conclusions. https://subscribe.martyrmade.com/
Fall of Civilizations is amazing! Episodes drop every few months but always worth the wait. They’re not chronological but each episode is a multi-hour long deep dive into an ancient civilization and why they fell. The storytelling and world building is like none other, on par with Carlin maybe.
I also really like Tides of History which is more chronological and shorter episodes which drop weekly.
Not a podcast, but I’ve really enjoyed the Great Courses historical surveys and they come in nice 30 minute blocks which work well with household chores, like podcasts.
I really like the Blowback podcast but that’s just focused on recent American foreign policy.
Yeah, I should maybe give that another shot someday - I did listen to the entire first season on the English Revolution, but didn't feel like I got much out of it - and I bounced off of the podcast a few episodes into the second season on the American Revolution - may have just been the subject matter being a bit dry.
I hear you. Mike Duncan has a habit of data dumping and it gets tough to follow the ‘narrative’. The French Revolution series is dense AF, but when I got through it, I felt a big chunk of history just kind of bloom for me.
I’m also interested to see good historical podcasts.
I was listening to one on YouTube something generic like “People Biographies.” It was possibly made by AI, but was pretty informative in the long haul. Good for road trips.
Because the videos would repeat text and pictures across biographies, I felt a sort of accumulation effect happening. It built a bigger picture of who the players were, who they knew and how they were related and why some things happened.
Do any of these historical podcasts acknowledge how little we know about history and cite the confidence interval for each statement that they make? Often times it turns out that an entire narrative is based off some vague book written 300 years after the fact on the basis of a manuscript that's long been lost.
Hardcore History is pretty infamous in some circles for not doing this beyond a Joe Rogan style "but this is just a theory maaaan", in particular some of his WW1 episodes are pretty contra to the modern historiographical consensus and verge into negationism.
Sure, where it's particularly relevant, I think all of these will point out the limitations of the available data - e.g. History of Rome discusses how what we know about emperors (especially the traditionally 'bad' ones) comes through often politically motivated histories, and Dan Carlin will discuss this a fair bit.
But putting a confidence interval on every statement seems... exhausting, and pretty non-conductive to actually communicating the information. I'm not looking to do a history dissertation here, just looking as a "fan of history" as Dan Carlin is fond of saying.
And even if the stories aren't entirely true, they form the basis of what we as a culture believe about our histories and are worth knowing for that reason. I think there's historian quoted in hardcore history saying something like "you have to believe in ancient history, even if it's not true".
> "you have to believe in ancient history, even if it's not true".
I don't think so? To quote Scott's older post:
"This matches my intuitive ethical conception of self-determination. Suppose Putin’s historians found an old document in a file cabinet somewhere proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ukraine’s culture and history were not very glorious. My opinions about the moral status of this war would remain unchanged. Nothing I could learn about the Ukrainian language, religion, sense of kinship, ethnicity, or any of the other things that the judge in the Kosovo case mentioned, would make me feel good about Ukraine getting conquered by Russia"
You don't have to necessarily believe even factual statements, but you *definitely* shouldn't take unfactual statements at face value or care about them!
You shouldn't use unfactual statements as part of your Casus Belli declaring war on your neighboring countries seems like a big jump from "you shouldn't care about stories of the past, because they might not be true".
Like, yeah, it's an important philosophical question about studying pre-modern history - the imprecision and bias is a well-known problem... but if your answer to that question is "you shouldn't study history", I'm not particularly interested in that answer.
There's a difference between studying "history" and studying "what people falsely believe about history". Knowing about the JFK conspiracies is interesting but should not be confused with "history".
Thanks for your input, I'll go back to the good suggestions that everyone else has given, sorry that my interest in studying history doesn't meet your appproval
Not A Podcast - but I do enjoy the Great War/World War II series on youtube. They go through the war on an episode a week basis, so if you enjoy the chronological order it's a good fit.
There is a very nice one on Amazon Prime in the Great Courses Signature Collection titled The History of Ancient Egypt, narrated by Prof. Bob Brier. It has 48 roughly one hour episodes tracing the roughly 3,000 year history of ancient Egypt in great detail, with painstaking attention to point out the rationale for and against various interpretations of the historical record. It is a lot of time to invest, but it is (in my view) well worth it. Lots of fascinating insights into the whys and hows of various aspects of the story. The subject has had a lot of popular exposure with much speculative and even sensationalist hoopla, but the details are quite fascinating. At the very least you will learn how to sign your name in Egyptian heiroglyphyics.
Neat, I actually have some audible credits to burn and while I've hit other "Great Courses" history series, I haven't tried that one. ("Understand Japan: a cultural history" is my favorite of the ones I've tried)
You could probably listen to it without watching the video, but the videos show a lot of the actual relics, cartouches, mummy x-rays and other details with great discussions of them. I think you might miss a good bit just listening. For sure you would have trouble with the heiroglyphics without seeing them, but there are a few sites that go into deciphering heiroglyphics. Interestingly the heiroglyphics are very similar to Japanese hiragana, in that they are essentially pictorial phonetics, not like pictographic Kanji as people thought before the Rosetta stone. Thanks for the tip on the Japan history. For personal reasons I have been exposed to a lot of Japanese history, culture, and language and I always like to find more.
According to Williamson the idea he was driving as was a consideration of technology that seemed beneficial, but had ultimately disastrous consequences. He came up with it after the atomic bombings but it's a broadly relevant theme, even today. It's worth reading, if you haven't already.
I first read that as a kid in a sci fi anthology I found in my Grandparents house. It's fantastic, although I think that given the current discourse around AI, people are going to find it quaint.
Hey, at some point in the last few years there was an ACX comment thread discussion on autism possibly being a result of having a slightly broken body (i.e. EDS, digestive issues, etc.) Does anyone have a link to that? I tried googling without luck.
I was recently reminded of that thread by something I was watching and wanted to revisit it. (While I think that I disagree with that idea, it does hold up pretty well with how many comorbidities seem to go along with autism, how genetic disorders like Fragile X cause autism, etc. I am curious if people with autism and seemingly no chronic health issues actually did have something going on in early childhood--premature birth, allergies, etc.)
For people interested in gut / microbiome stuff, including protocol for a fecal matter transplant, I have to recommend Stephen Skolnick's substack - he's a literal microbiome scientist, and all his articles are pretty good.
The reported 3rd assassination attempt, seems unlikely, guy has images of him being very happy to be in the same picture of several right wing people, I expect him to have un-paperworked guns because fbi database is unamericain
SovCits, one of which this guy appears to be, are almost definitionally pretty broken-brained. So I should think it would be difficult to form a mental model of what this particular guy thought he was going to do when he got to the rally. Or, at least, arguably more difficult than it normally would be given the set of facts "man arrested with multiple firearms while apparently on the way to a prominent politician's rally."
Yeah, my money is on "sovereign citizen was genuinely surprised to find that firearms laws apply to him." According to one article I read, even the Trump campaign doesn't seem to think it was an assassination attempt.
I've been out of the game for about 18 months but I was getting really damn good at proooompting back then. Idk if the newer models still hinge on this, but back then the most important prompt was "by <Artist Name>". Find an artist who already does the style you want, then tell the AI to produce an image as if it were by them: this ports in the most important stylistic elements succinctly. Also, don't be afraid to mix and match: put in multiple artist's names for added syncretic success! Props to my boi Francis Xaver Winterhalter.
And of course, what we're all really here for: you can never go wrong with the prompt (((large_breasts)))
You need your specify which one you’re using, the prompting works differently in different systems.
I like to follow this order:
1 Style of image (anime, Polaroid photo, charcoal sketch).
2 Main character(s) or features in the image, preferably by name so the AI doesn’t get confused. Experiment to find the shortest reliable description of your going to be reusing a character.
3 Background (a blasted heath, a bar, etc)
4 Lighting conditions and, in some systems, general vibes.
5. If needed, any style tags you haven’t used, although it’s better to front-load them.
Most systems execute earlier parts of the prompt better, so if you’re not getting the results you want try moving the important bits to the front and trimming other stuff.
I also find you should avoid some of the cargo cult tokens that at best just make it harder to tweak your prompt and at worst result in the infamous "1girl face" where the token has too strong of an effect dragging it towards the average from the dataset. I've seen people have some success doing the opposite of this by using combinations of random names (or combinations of celebrity names) to pull the generation away from the average face and towards something more unique.
I am seriously considering pursuing an "independent PhD" where I basically design my own program and then do it on my own, with support from advisors I would recruit, but without the support of an institution and without the promise of an accredited degree. The experience would be the reward, and the process of doing the work and making connections would earn me credibility in lieu of a degree.
What are the broad strokes I need to know about designing and pursuing a serious project like this?
Right now, I'm basing my idea on this post from 2020:
My personal academic background is zero (no college), although I work in academia (research admin/grants/data) and am highly intelligent and capable. I know I can do this. What foundation do I need to get started? What resources do I need to make sure I have in general?
You need to start a phd with a field and goal in mind. Undergrads (at least for a year or two) get to explore and have distribution requirements to be well rounded. Masters and above do not. So what is that field? If you don't have an answer then independent or not won't work. If you do then knowing that would be very helpful to advice.
I know there's a lot of prestige in a phd. But a phd is just a professional credential. There's in effect three reasons to get a phd:
1. A small number of elite jobs require them.
2. You want to teach at a university.
3. You have a specific research interest and can benefit from funding/working within academic institutions.
Are any of these resonating with you?
There are a lot of experiences that are more rewarding and probably that give you more credibility. Unless your goal is something esoteric like being an expert in 13th century French urbanism or the effects of radiation in low earth orbit. If it's almost anything else then it's probably not a good idea. Keep in mind there are also fields where having a phd is an anti-signal.
The blog post seems like a kind of holistic health. And it seems like they just followed a plan of building connections and independent study. That seems entirely sensible but it's not really similar to a phd in any meaningful sense. And getting one wouldn't really help. A phd in yoga studies is probably less practical than getting through an apprenticeship or something.
If formal academic paths don't suit your needs that's fine. Seriously, I know many fields where formal academic credentials are anti-signal and education still runs through either apprenticeship, practical experience, or domain specific schools. I've seen people with fancy degrees show up and get $30k a year jobs because Harvard doesn't have a good reputation in the field. They usually leave shortly for consulting or something.
Echoing on to this excellent post: my wife has a STEM PhD from an Ivy league university, so I have some appreciation of what a PhD is in the general perception. I work in a field (government agency) where even Master's are pretty rare (in fact, we have a small issue in our organization where we have a division in one job field between people with college degrees and people without, and there's a hard ceiling on how high those without can be promoted, and that is no way shape or form makes for hard feelings and discontent, no sirree bob). I am aware of two people in this organization who have PhDs (because they mention it in their email signatures); having investigated them further, their schools were:
-University of Phoenix (I am aware of very rare fields where this is a semi-legitimate thing)
-an unaccredited Bible college
Our personnel system doesn't do a good job of distinguishing how good a university is, so these PhDs are a good enough signal for higher education for us. But for any field where having a PhD "matters", they would be looked at very askance (probably rightly).
I would expect an "Independent PhD" to be viewed similar: not useful in the fields where PhDs actually matter, and interesting but not really useful in fields where they don't.
Slightly tangent to the original question, but I'm going to share this response with a young coworker who asked me the other day if he should pursue a PhD or not. I dropped out at the dissertation stage, but my reasons were personal. I think this is an excellent summary for someone pondering the question before ever starting a program.
Glad to help. I'm not against getting a phd but I do think it should be intentional. If you want to be an academic historian or a Google Deepmind researcher it's a good idea.
I don't understand what benefit you feel being "independent" gives you.
Are you worried about not getting into a PhD program? Are you sufficiently rich that you feel you can cut through bureaucracy by self funding? What is the perceived benefit?
As to supervisors, most supervisors are extremely time limited , and so it is doubtful they'll want to take on an independent candidate.
If you have the money then you could approach a potential supervisor and say you are willing to self fund. This approach would raise your chances of being accepted - but they'd likely want you to still be a regular PhD student (i.e. affiliated with their institution).
ime, for most people, working closely with an advisor is necessary to understand a discipline and develop independent research skills. a phd is essentially an apprenticeship. does it make sense to do an "independent apprenticeship"? no.
> the process of doing the work and making connections would earn me credibility in lieu of a degree.
this feels unlikely
by all means, if you want to do an ambitious project that requires you learn something, go ahead. but you shouldn't expect to learn as deeply as if you were in a community specifically designed to support that, and i would be really surprised if you got any legible signals of credibility out of this
There is a difference between a Bachelor's degree, a Master's and a PhD in terms of what it is alleging. I speak mostly toward the STEM areas, I am not as sure about the other disciplines. In a STEM field, a Bachelor's mostly says that the student has the attitude and skills to recognize what is required to assimilate and reasonably regurgitate some information and skills in a particular field and to meet the schedule demands of a program to that effect. That is a very useful set of attributes for future employers to take into account hiring someone whom they expect to contribute to industrial efforts, largely as a junior assistant. Most accredited universities who grant masters and PhDs are geared to require the candidates demonstrate certain things to be granted the degree. For master's, a university typically requires the candidate to show that they can apply a discipline to a specific useful problem sufficiently to demonstrate the application has use in the field. The master's thesis need not be original research in the sense that it provides new concepts to the field, but rather that the existing theories and concepts can be applied in some new, novel, or particularly useful way.
Most PhD granting universities require (via the process for admitting students for candidacy, and relying heavily on the potential candidate's supervising professor and the committee of professors they have selected for the candidate) that a candidate to pursue a PhD propose and defend a topic of research that promises to provide new theoretical or experimental knowledge and capabilities in the field, i.e. original, new research comparable to that expected of professor level work in the field. Once approved for candidacy, the student then proceeds with the research and at the end it is evaluated by the committee and must demonstrate to their satisfaction that the research does constitute new, original research contribution to knowledge in the field. The requirement for a PhD is demonstration of the capability to produce new results. It does not depend on how many books one has read, or trips one has taken, or anything else. It is expected that the dissertation results meet the standard in the field for peer reviewed publication in any of the major journals in the field.
The process relies heavily on guidance and judgement from the supervising professor. A PhD from an institution is asserting that that institution has determined the candidate has met those requirements.
Studying on one's own for something like a PhD, would need to produce some new results, and definitely need to publish them in the peer reviewed literature to approximate that process.
Elsewhere you said something about a cold intro. I don't recommend doing that for reasons others have given here, but who knows it might work.
If I were you (and of course I am not but I will go on anyway) I would go less coldly and perhaps take more time. Don't try to tell them what you want to do or what you think is a good idea, not at first. First, show interest in what they do and ask questions about their work. Most professors love their field and love to talk about it to anyone interested, often at length. It could be via email, or better, in person. Don't be pushy and be attuned to the body language and spoken tone of the other person. Best would be if you could audit one of their courses (or attend seminars or lectures they give) and in the course of the classes or seminars, ask questions with true interest, which I assume you have, but not too many. You may find you modify what you think you want to do. As time goes on, if you are at all polite and interested the person will come to be comfortable with you personally. That is extremely important in an adviser-student relationship. That interaction could mature to a point where both you and the proposed person were comfortable talking about how to proceed. Good luck.
Thanks, that's a great suggestion. I do have a personal tendency to be mission-oriented and direct, and that's not often a successful approach when it comes to building relationships. So thanks for checking me on that impulse, I will definitely consider all you've said.
And why should any prospective advisor who you want to recruit take you seriously? I’m a physics professor - I’m contacted by plenty of cranks pushing their theories of everything. One of them might be a 21st century Ramanujan, but if I spent time trying to understand what each one was saying I would not have time to do anything else with my life.
Probably the only setting where this will work is if (a) you are interested in some field with generally agreed big open questions (2) the answers are easy to recognize as correct once obtained, and (3) you can actually find at least one such answer.
Absent any one of these desiderata this strategy seems destined to fail.
Thanks, this is helpful. I am very conscious of the risk of sounding like a crank, and that's my primary consideration at this early stage...which is why I'm not describing my topic yet. Though I'll say it's closer to the squishy philosophical disciplines, than to STEM.
I'm hoping to recruit my primary advisor from outside academia. I have someone in mind, and I think there's a good chance they will hear me out, but I definitely need a plan first.
And I'll probably need academic help as well, or at least I will want to have academic contacts. I'm curious about what *would* make for a successful cold intro? Presumably a short, sweet, and interesting question that shows understanding of your research?
> I am very conscious of the risk of sounding like a crank,
Have you considered the possibility that you might *be* a bona-fide crank, or risk turning into one? Cranks aren't always the ubiquitous "strange other", we've all got our cranky seeds within us!
>> I'm curious about what *would* make for a successful cold intro? Presumably a short, sweet, and interesting question that shows understanding of your research?
Yes. And concision is a virtue, as is familiarity with standard terminology. If understanding what you are saying requires first mastering some new jargon (or worse, formalism) that you have developed...very few people will bother to put in the effort. Unless you can first demonstrate (in some way that can be appreciated even by people who don't know that formalism) that you have something valuable to say.
The PhD as an institution seems broken to me, and so doing one, but informally, where you wouldn't even end up with a degree that unlocks any opportunities for you seems like an odd choice. What would you expect to get from this process? Telling people by the end that you have an "independent PhD" seems to me like it would risk coming across as pretentious or crackpot-y.
I am all for personal academic pursuits. And trying to roughly follow the PhD path probably isn't a terrible idea. But I would recommend dropping the "PhD" branding from your endeavor. Just do you own thing, be a scholar, try to produce something useful.
Disclaimer, this is coming from somebody who was a successful and idealistic academic up through undergraduate, but whose life fell apart in grad school, so I am certainly biased and a bit hurt.
Thanks, I am definitely not expecting to go around calling myself a doctor at the end of this or anything. The "PhD" framing is the best I have for the moment, I'm mainly looking for advice on how to develop a big serious project, with the work-equivalent of a dissertation.
I think the closest thing to an "independent PHD" you can get is to independently solve some difficult problem or complete some sort of difficult project, and have reasonably strong evidence that you were the person responsible for it. Hard to get more specific than that without knowing exactly what you want your independent PHD to actually be in.
Does anyone have any ideas for a good philosophical or rationalism adjacent discussion topic to bring up with people who are not necessarily familiar with either philosophy or rationalism? Ideally the topic would be easily digestible to anyone regardless of familiarity with the topics. I'd also prefer to avoid anything particularly contentious (e.g. politics or religion) or out there (e.g. AI), though I understand that might be a big ask as it limits the options a lot.
I often set up a thought experiment involving probabilities.
Imagine there's a type of cancer that is 100% fatal and painful once the everyday symptoms appear. The good news is that our actuarial data says it only hits 1 in a million people, no more, no less.
More good news: there's a procedure to prevent it 100% of the time. The catch is that it's $10000 (ten thousand US dollars) in resources to carry out, plus about two weeks of high discomfort, and it's not covered by insurance for some reason. Point being: not everyone can afford this, and even those who can, will want to know they have to before going through with it. The other catch is that by the time everyday symptoms appear, it's too late.
But maybe that's fine, because there's a test anyone can take. It's only $20, and it's considered very good: it has a 99% accuracy rate!
So, say you take the test, and it's positive. Two questions, one objective, one subjective.
Objective: what's the chance you actually have the cancer?
Subjective: should you pay and have the procedure done?
The above is a decent way to explain some Bayesian logic. It hopefully carries over into other life situations involving very unlikely events with slightly uncertain indicators (tests).
I assume you mean that the test has both a 1% false positive and a 1% false negative rate? These need not be equal... (albeit the former is the main concern in this hypothetical)
I didn't make this explicit, because it often isn't in real life. Consider a similar case involving school shootings. Everyone agrees they're horrible, and that they're typically enacted by people with severe mental imbalance; disagreement arises over what to do about it.
Imagine there was a battery of tests one could run on a given student to predict whether they had this instability, and it was five-nines accurate - 1 in 100000 get the wrong answer. Run this on every student in America - basically over 300 million people - and you get about 1000 people. Why? Because (by my BOTE math), about one in every 10 million people decides one day to pick up a gun and go on school grounds and go violently nuts. Our five-nines test will probably find all 30-odd of them - plus over 950 more. For every one someday-mass-murderer we put into an institution, we'd be institutionalizing over 30 more who never would.
And to my knowledge, there is no known battery of tests for mental imbalance that is anywhere near this accurate.
Many Thanks! Yup, there are lots of cases where searching for a rare problem with a test which has a false positive rate above the actual occurrence rate for the problem gives a set of positives dominated by the false positives.
"What you should do" is not objectively defined, on purpose. But since our hypothetical self's chances are still only 1 in 10000, there's an argument for playing the odds and saving $10000 and a couple of weeks of being out, depending on financial hardship and the like. This is not intuitive to a lot of people, particularly those used to a zero-risk mindset! But the exercise hopefully illustrates how zero-risk isn't always the best strategy. One can fiddle with the numbers to produce more black and white cases.
I usually just start people with a version of Roko's Basilisk except the Basilisk cares most about your opinions on the current situation regarding Israel.
Usually when I meet new people and a conversation gets going, I tell them that I'm in a group that uses statistics to make better life decisions. I then tell them about some simple concepts like the micromarriage and the micromort. These are fun conversation pieces, and they aren't controversial, so I usually stick with them
(From skimming the table of contents of the sequences) maybe cognitive biases, floating beliefs, and a bunch of stuff from A Human's Guide to Words? (Obviously, if you're trying to avoid contentious topics, avoid examples that involve religion.)
Does anyone have a connection with Cortical Labs (the Australian pong-playing neurons SBI startup)? And/or know what's going on with them since their Series A last year? I want to pitch them a collaboration
In the story, Job is negatively hit by downstream consequences of government interference, but continues to profess faith in free markets ("The market giveth, and the market taketh away; blessed be the name of competition.") Would make more thematic sense for Job to get hit by some consequence of a deregulatory act, maybe one that led to his job getting off-shored.
> I realize I keep forgetting to post the Hidden Open Thread for subscribers. I’ve set up a reminder system for myself so hopefully it should go up this week and thereafter.
Out of curiosity: why not just have it go up automatically, as opposed to having an automatic reminder sent to you to tell you to manually put up the thread?
Bit of a long shot, but does anyone know what's up with Julian from Pursuit of Meaningful Agency? I was enjoying following along with their bike trip, but the ~daily posts have gone silent for a few weeks with no warning. There's a good chance I found his blog via the ACX comments section; perhaps someone has details?
This might not be a popular answer in rationalist circles, but over time I've felt that the gap between the evidence we have and the interpretation we make of it is huge - from basic metaphysical questions of what realms of true knowledge exist, to things like interpretation of QM, the question of consciousness, etc. So I give less importance to the idea of "trying to do your best update", instead recognising that all sorts of contradictory ideas can each be convincingly argued both for and against. In the end I find it most freeing and honest to recognize that most beliefs on such things (including mine!) are ultimately based on aesthetic preference.
This just seems like a question of definitions to me, like do you define "believe X" to mean 'consider P(X) > .6' or 'consider P(X) > .8' or whatever, with no real consequences and thus no actual tradeoff.
Err on the side of an honest ignorance. Don't have positive beliefs without sufficient reason, and don't be afraid to say "I don't know." There are plenty of true things that you will never believe. Make peace with that fact.
Seconded! And there are also a vast range of things where trying to bound the odds better than 0.1 < P(X) < 0.9 is so costly that it isn't worth the time to try.
I agree with others that this doesn't seem a coherent question. E.g., as someone else said, if B is a belief then so is not B. There is no principled way to prior believing versus not believing statements.
This probably isn’t what you mean, but I proposed a similar question to folks at a website that systematically debunks evidence of UFOs. I suggested to them that the unfortunate byproduct of their skeptical pursuit is that they are the most likely people on earth to dismiss a real UFO should they see one (and should one exist) since everyone else has a lower bar for evidence. The skeptic accepts being fooled in that respect in exchange for not being fooled the rest of the time.
A similar example is say you live in an area where dogs are frequent and mountain lions are very rare, and you know this. You’d love to see a mountain lion, though. Now imagine your standing in your yard with your friend from out of town one evening and a mountain lion appears out of the darkness. Your friend correctly thinks she sees a mountain lion. You are skeptical since you know their infrequency and wisely dismiss it as probably a dog. Your skepticism caused you to make an objective error and miss out on something you’ve greatly wished to experience.
When there is a tradeoff between type 1 and type 2 errors, you usually need to find a middle ground that tries to minimize both. If you over-focus on one then your error rate for the other typically tends to infinity.
"Always fail in this direction" is typically a bad heuristic.
So "Skepticism" doesn't mean anything? Since the skeptic and the non-skeptic have the same number of beliefs?
I think what's missing in your model is the middle position where you say "I don't know" and neither believe it to be definitely true or definitely false.
You're right actually, that is the counterargument. The number of statements that you believe will always be the same as the number that you disbelieve, but if you allow agnosticism this can be less than the total number of X/Not X pairs. In whatever sense it means for one infinitely large set to be smaller than another infinitely large set of the same cardinality.
Edit: On third thought there was an even more basic mistake which is that if X is true and you believe X + disbelieve not X that is two true things you are believing, relatedly I shouldn't post internet comments when I am this sleepy.
Best not think in terms of true vs false, but the degree of usefulness in terms of accuracy in explanations and predictions of your model of the world.
Concur with the gist of the other replies so far, but I lean toward a view (from physics) that as far as the physical world goes, "belief" is not useful. Experience is. When in doubt, doubt. "Truth" is not a useful concept. Deciding when something is wrong is.
As far as the living human, behavioral world goes, truth is not a useful concept at all. Understanding perception is.
I sympathise with that approach, but I think if you take it to its logical conclusion it gets unworkable. Consider Hume's famous remark that the very basic assumption that the patterns we've known so far will keep applying in the future (the laws of physics, the sun rising every morning, etc) can never be logically substantiated, and in the end remains a kind of basic, necessary faith.
Even not being a causal nihilist is a choice, so I'd rather be aware that I'm making it, along with many other choices.
EDIT: "causal nihlist" (not "casual"), in the sense of not being a nihilist about causal patterns.
I will reply here to your comment, with a long comment, for which I apologize, but there is no way around it. Several others on this thread may be interested also:
It can be difficult to discuss some things in snippets of comment threads, largely owing to differences among participants in familiarity with the breadth of detail underlying concepts. To discuss the evolution of our manner of understanding and interacting with the physical universe, which we now call physics, it is helpful and necessary to relate how we have gotten where we are now. I apologize in advance for what will be the length of this comment and perhaps subsequent comments, but there is nothing for it except to do it. What follows is a brief sketch. There are many interesting details omitted, but I try to relate the general gist, enough so that one can find other details if one wishes.
First, a brief statement of what is currently meant by physics. Physics is what is called a basic or fundamental science. As such, physics describes how to predict outcomes that result from fundamental interactions that underlie the physical aspects of all other sciences. A major distinction between a basic science like physics and other areas of study is that physics confines itself to concepts that can be tested by measurement in what is called a controlled laboratory experiment, something Feynman called an “ideal experiment,” which he described as “one in which there are no uncertain external influences, i.e., no jiggling or other things going on that we cannot take into account,” or “one in which all of the initial and final conditions of the experiment are completely specified.” (See e.g. the Feynman Lectures on Physics, VIII, Ch 1. Quantum Behavior at
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html ) In practice what this means is that the experiment involves very few components, all of which have been previously characterized by other experiments, with the only unknown effect being the one to be measured in the experiment. A second requirement on a controlled laboratory experiment, which we will call here simply an experiment, is that it can be replicated as often as one wishes, or by any other performer in the same way. Note that this excludes many areas of study of systems for which there is only one occurrence (such as Earth’s climate, or a distant star) which we cannot control (i.e. fix or vary its initial conditions) as we wish as well as systems or phenomena that we cannot measure in terms of a short list of physical quantities such as mass, energy, momentum, time with well defined universal standards for units (this excludes for example things that occur as thoughts in the mind) . That is not to say such areas of study are not science, they are just not physics.
How did we come to this? Prior to the middle of the 16th century (which is viewed as the birth of what we now call Western civilization and sometimes called the scientific revolution) consideration of the physical universe was largely the purview of what we now call philosophers (or sometimes natural philosophers) and thought was heavily influenced by Aristotle. The general notions of that view held that the motion of a body required some constant push (called an impetus) to continue and that the movements observed in heavenly bodies such as the moon and planets were given impetus by divine entities. During the same time (from Aristotle to the mid 16th century) mathematics evolved from Euclidean geometry and Pythagorean numerology ( as well as Egyptian and other contributions from the ancient civilizations), largely driven by practical matters such as building structures, measuring distances and trade quantities and making accurate calendars, until the middle ages, when biblical impetus led many philosophers to view math as means of divining the created order of nature. Many thinkers in the middle ages began to relate and record observations of natural events in mathematical terms (examples being William of Ockham, Leonardo of Pisa, Thomas Bradwardine, and Nicole Oresme, among others).
In the 16th century two great currents came together into a burst of inspiration. First, Kepler and Copernicus (and some others) recorded detailed observations of the motions of the planets and began seeing patterns in the numbers. Second, Galileo refined the practice of doing experiments and assiduously recording the results and attempting to calculate conclusions mathematically. Galileo also observed the planets and the moons of the planets and recorded the changes in phase of some of them. Further, the work of these men was heavily documented and not lost to history as was much of the earlier works of others. Besides his well-known experiments demonstrating the motion of falling unlike objects, Galileo also resolved many issues previously perplexing to the ancients, such as the inability of the Aristotelean view to account for oscillatory motion as observed in a pendulum. Kepler worked out by inspection his “laws” that planets follow elliptical orbits about the sun, that the orbits sweep out equal areas in equal times, and the square of an orbit’s period is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the Sun. Galileo famously suffered excommunication for his publication of the heliocentric view of the solar system. (Although the common view is that his persecution was based on religious doctrine, most of the evidence suggests that his primary sin was causing offense taken by a powerful figure in the church who thought Galileo satirically mocked him in his publications.) But Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus (and a few others) did not know how to predict the motions of the planets about the sun, they simply could describe the behavior from observations and looking at the numbers.
When Galileo died, almost to the day, Isaac Newton was born and he went on to publish a work in Latin, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, called Principia for short that provided what is called the Great Synthesis, a theory with accompanying mathematics, predicting motions of objects subjected to forces in general and subject to the force due to gravitation in particular. His so-called “laws” theorized that a body in motion continues in motion unless acted upon by a force, that the net force on a body is equal to the change in the momentum of the body (which he called motus in Latin), and that if a body exerts a force on another, the other exerts an equal and opposite force back on the former. He further proposed a theory for the force of gravity predicting that two masses exert equal and opposite attractive forces on each other proportional to the product of their masses and a constant term, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. He also proposed (capitalizing on recent work of others such as Leibniz) that a mathematical approach called calculus predicted differential and integral behavior of the various quantities concerned (e.g position, velocity, acceleration, summation of forces, etc.). He showed that those theories predicted (in his shell theorem) that a spherical distribution of mass exerts a gravitational force with the same magnitude and direction as would a mass located at a point at the center of the sphere, and that the observed orbits of the planets were accurately predicted by this theory. In addition, perturbations observed in the orbit of Uranus, as predicted by Newton’s gravitational theory, allowed derivation of the source potential perturbation, which led to the conclusive discovery of Neptune in 1846.
Besides the so-called Great Synthesis (of planetary observations with gravitational theory) Newton’s laws of motion, coupled with calculus, allowed prediction of outcomes of many interactions of bodies here on Earth that led to advances in machinery, projectiles and other phenomena that revolutionized life on Earth, a revolution described in the 19th century by William Whewell as “.. the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation of change and improvement.”
This leads us to examine the details of doing an experiment and determining whether a theory is wrong or not, as well as the notion that a theory is considered not wrong and is considered useful, until subsequent experiment demonstrates that it is wrong. In other words, a theory is useful and considered not wrong, until it isn’t. In which case the theory is modified or replaced as necessary to agree with all previous experiments. A post to follow shortly will describe a particular example of how it works.
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make though - your reply is 100% about how the field of physics generates knowledge, but pure physics is certainly not the place that's generating many trade-offs between "believing false things" and "believing all the things that are true", as the thread began. Once the currently best theory in the relevant sub-field has given out a calculation for the probability of XYZ, and the relevant experiment has confirmed it, that's it, we know the answer to that particular question, and the whole question can be shelved until someone comes up with ways to measure it with much more precision, or some such.
My impression is that the kind of questions OP was thinking of are philosophical questions in the broad sense, ranging from metaphysical questions, to values & meaning of life, to conceptual *intepretations* of the mathematical equations that the science of physics produces.
Indeed, that is the point. Such considerations (metaphysical things, values, "meanings of life", truth, beauty etc.) have been discussed for thousands of years without definite demonstrable result. They are essentially figments of individual imagination, no matter how much they try to incorporate "math." One might as well read and write fiction, such as Crime and Punishment, or Kafka, or Proust, but it is simply self-entertainment, a way of spending one's thinking time in some vaguely self-pleasing way. If one cares to spend one's time doing so one is free to, but some find it more satisfying to think about things that find realization in the physical world, which has given us things like computers, smart phones, medical treatments and diagnostics, etc. It is (so far) a free society and one is free to do so if one wishes. Feynman opined, "In the study of life, philosophers are tourists, physicists (i.e. scientists) are explorers."
As time progressed, the theory of electricity and magnetism suggested that something needed to be changed in how the theories should treat objects in relative motion, resulting in the special theory of relativity. In relativistic mechanics space and time are connected in a specific way and total energy, momentum, and the combination of them in what is called 4-momentum are all conserved although the expressions are little more algebraically complicated.
In special relativity theory the prediction for a totally inelastic collision is just a little bit different from classical mechanics if the initial velocity is low like in the text example. But as that initial velocity gets larger the difference between classical and relativistic predictions gets greater and greater. Figure B1.1 shows [sorry you will just have to imagine the figure] the ratio of the relativistic result for final velocity of the combined mass after the collision divided by the velocity of the initial mass, which classical mechanics predicts to be ½. The initial velocity is expressed as a fraction of the velocity of light, c=3×10^8 m/s. Note that at lower velocities, less than about 0.2c, the two theories agree closely, but that as the initial velocity gets larger and larger the final velocity gets larger than the classical prediction. Why didn’t we see this in our laboratory collisions? Because a velocity of 0.2c is 60 million m/s, very large compared to our everyday experience.
Figure B1.2 shows in more detail the difference expected between relativistic and classical predictions in collision outcomes as a function of the initial velocity, this time with velocity plotted in m/s showing a variety of everyday objects from our experience. The y-axis gives the percent difference between the classical and the relativistic predictions. This would correspond to the precision and accuracy we would have to achieve in our experiment to be able find that the experiment showed the classical theory was wrong. If we did experiments at a typical speed a car can go, 60 mph or about 30 m/s, we would have to be able to measure a difference of 10^-13 percent, or a difference in velocity of about 3x10^-10 m/s, about .3 nm/s. A bullet goes faster, about 1000 m/s but to measure the difference between the two predictions would require us to measure velocities with an accuracy of about 10^-10 percent or a difference in velocity of about 1 nm/s for a bullet going 1000 m/s. For a rocket going escape velocity, the velocity needed to escape the gravitational field of the earth (about 10 km/s), the difference between the predictions would be about 1 micron/s. With even very sophisticated laboratory equipment, measuring velocities with that accuracy would be impossible. The reason experiments kept showing that classical mechanics was not wrong predicting collision results was that the accuracy possible in an experiment was not good enough to be able to tell, in other words, the uncertainty was too large.
If we measure collisions between objects going much faster such as the cosmic ray velocities shown, the percent accuracy by which the two predictions differ gets large enough to detect experimentally and the classical theory is easily shown to be wrong at those conditions. The experiments did not show the classical predictions were wrong, until they did.
The practice of physics (which is the essential basis of the modern scientific approach in the basic sciences) has three key steps: 1) guess how something might work conceptually, i.e. define a theory, 2) express the theory mathematically and predict specific, non-arbitrary outcomes of experiments and 3) compare the results of experiments to the predictions of the theory. If the predictions of the theory disagree with the the outcome of the experiments, the theory is wrong. The most important point to note is that if the experiment does not show the prediction is wrong, that does not imply the theory is “right” or “true” or “correct,” only that the prediction is not wrong for that particular experiment. A future experiment done with slightly different values or with greater accuracy (which is discussed below) could show the theory to be wrong, so experiments can never show that a theory is true in any absolute or general sense, only that it has not been shown to be wrong so far. It often happens in science that a theory that is not wrong for all previous experiments turns out to be wrong for some future experiments and some change must be made in the theory.
Basic science courses typically entail a great deal of time and effort presenting and practicing the first two steps of the process, stating the theories and working out the sometimes-complicated mathematics needed to predict outcomes of physical interactions. Students solve many homework problems and take tests to develop the conceptual understanding and mathematical skills needed to determine implications of theories. But the final, necessary step in the process is often given less attention, namely how do we determine that the results of an experiment show that a theory is wrong? Often the aggressive schedule of undergraduate physics courses results in the students performing many experiments more focused on making the apparatus work, getting the data and simply calculating a result for the intended effect, sometimes accompanied by statements of measurement uncertainty, but lacking a structured, quantitative approach for practicing the crucial step: determining whether the results agree with theory and if not, why not.
Much of the theory of physics (and chemistry and biology) has been advanced by examining the outcomes of collisions of objects, such as large, massive objects, or of atoms and ions, or of subatomic elementary particles. Figure 1 illustrates (I am not sure how to put figures into a comment, I will try but you may just have to imagine the figure, it is not a complicated one) a collision between two objects of equal mass.
[It looks like the figure does not copy/paste, sorry. You will just have to imagine this figure and the others]
In a classical mechanics course, they could be railroad cars on a track or carts sliding on an air track. In a particle physics course, they could be elementary particles such as protons, electrons, muons, neutrons etc. Here we will simply consider them two equal mass objects. Mass 1 moves with velocity v1 along the horizontal axis toward mass 2, which is at rest, i.e. with velocity v2 = 0. To be definite, in this experiment v1 = 100 meters per second (m/s) and the mass of each object is 1 kg. When the particles collide, they stick together, which is called a completely inelastic collision, and form a single mass of combined mass M. In classical mechanics, M = 2m, and the theory (conservation of momentum) predicts the velocity for the combined mass M after the collision to be v3=(1/2) v1=50 m/s. Now suppose one sets up and performs the experiment once in which the measured velocity of v3 = 48.5 m/s is obtained.
Based on this experimental result, what would you say about whether the experiment demonstrates that the theory is wrong? (Sometimes this question is phrased, “Does the theory agree with the experiment?”) After thinking a little, you would likely say you need more information, the theory and experiment do not get the exact same result. Does that mean the theory is wrong?
You might want to know how accurately you know the initial masses and incident velocity, or how accurately you know the final velocity, or what result you would get if you did the experiment identically again. What you would be asking for is called the uncertainty of the experimental result, and we will consider uncertainty in detail a bit later. For our example experiment you might perform the experiment several more times and examine those results.
Suppose three different groups did the experiment and got the results shown in the tables below. [Again, the tables did not show up, so you will just have to imagine the numbers]
In Experiment 1, we observe that the measured result is not exactly the same number that theory predicts, they differ by 1.5 m/s. Does that mean that the experiment demonstrates the theory is wrong? If you knew whether more measurements would be closer to 48.5 than to 50.0, you might make some kind of assessment. But with just one measurement you would have to say you can’t tell, in other words you are uncertain about it. Experiments 2 and 3 each repeated the experiments 3 times, each of which is called a trial. Looking at Experiment 2, you can see that the numbers [which are all somewhat scattered about but mostly below the predicted value] look like they are all below the theory prediction and you would be inclined to guess that maybe the experiment does not agree with the theory. But how would you quantify that statement? How would you say how confident you are that the theory is wrong? Looking at Experiment 3, the experimental results are scattered around the prediction[here they are scattered above and below the prediction]. Does that mean the experiment agrees with the prediction? Some questions you might ask are
1.What is the uncertainty of the prediction? Is it based on how well the experiment prepared the initial conditions, for example what is the uncertainty of the masses being 1 kg, or what is the uncertainty of the initial velocity?
2.What effect would uncertainties in the initial conditions have on the uncertainty of the prediction?
3.Would we expect the results to be as scattered as they are, or more, or less?
4.How many more trials would we need to do to answer some of these questions and how would we quantify our assessment as we did more trials?
The aim of experimental data analysis is to answer questions like these in a consistent way, based on sound mathematical principles, clearly incorporating uncertainties, using calculation tools that are reliable and expedient, and in a manner that can be understood in the same way by anyone looking at the same data.
The collision of two masses provides a useful example of how a theory can agree with experiments, until it doesn’t. The example described in the text involved two identical masses colliding, and it was arranged in the laboratory so that the velocity measured in the laboratory of one object was non-zero and the velocity of the other was zero. The masses were 1 kg each and the velocity of the initial mass was on the order of perhaps 1 to 100 m/s. Classical mechanics predicts the momentum, defined as mass times velocity, is conserved and since the combined mass after the collision in classical mechanics is twice the mass of the moving body before the collision, the velocity of the combined mass after the collision is predicted to be ½ the velocity of the moving incoming particle. In classical mechanics courses the kinetic energy of such an inelastic collision is stated to be non-conserved and is somehow converted (or dissipated) into other forms of energy such as heat. For several hundred years this theory (called Newtonian mechanics) agreed remarkably well with experiments and allowed many useful engineering applications and understanding of interactions of massive bodies.
[The commenting seems to only allow comments up to a certain length. This may be two comments.]
Hold on, I am posting more detail about experiments and analysis of data. It should be ready shortly (likely within an hour). This and the next comment are actually just extracts from something else I have been writing so it is not big deal.
I'm confused about what distinction you are drawing between truth/falsehood and "deciding something is wrong." If by "wrong" you mean false, then aren't you still using the concept of truth?
Sergei's post is more direct. In physics and physical sciences in general, the paradigm is (see e.g. Feynman's Messenger lectures, I can point you to a specific one if needed but they are all good) 1) think of a concept (or guess it) that you think describes how the universe works (note: not why, just how), 2) express the concept mathematically (so as to be precise, quantitative, and understood by all in the same way), and 3) compare quantitative prediction of the theory to a controlled lab experiment. If the prediction of the theory is outside the uncertainty bounds of the experimental outcome (the details of this take some time to go into, but the idea is straightforward) then the theory is wrong, if not, the theory is not wrong - not true, simply not wrong for now. An experiment done in the future may demonstrate that the theory is wrong, but for now the theory is used. Note that it is used, not believed. Belief does not enter into the process.
Truth is and has been a useful concept for philosophers and somewhat for mathematicians (although mathematicians have learned a bit from Goedel on that), but for anything else it is best to accept the fact that truth is an illusion.
That basically sounds like you're cautioning against updating your confidence in something all the way up to 100%. Which is a good caution, but doesn't preclude believing that truth exists, or increasing your confidence *some*.
Confidence is just another way of talking about belief. It is one of the aspects of the back and forth between frequentists and Bayesians in the math world. In the physical world frequencies are the yardstick. It does not matter how much or little one believes an outcome of an experiment should or should not be something, one just does the experiment and sees what it is. Nature decides the outcome, and as Feynman said, Nature is never wrong. If one believes or has high confidence that such and such should result when some thing happens in the physical universe, the test is not how many priors you might have, the test is doing the experiment. Nature decides, regardless of one's confidence.
I've actually made some minor attempts in the past to search the internet for any serious defense of frequentism and have failed to find any, so if you're willing to take up that mantle I'm pretty interested to hear what you see as the key differences from bayesianism and why you think frequentism is worth taking seriously.
What you're saying so far is basically just leaving me confused, though. Yes, obviously "nature" determines the outcome of experiments and is never wrong; I usually refer to the thing that determines experimental outcomes "truth", but I would be reasonably sure we are talking about the same thing, except you insist that "truth" is an illusion, so now I don't know what you think the difference between "truth" and "nature" is.
As a STRATEGY for going about your life, "don't form beliefs, just do the experiment" plain doesn't work. Like, it obviously and egregiously doesn't even come close to working.
If I'm hungry, and I want to stop being hungry, I can't empirically test every possible action to see which one makes me stop being hungry. I need to have some kind of theory of hunger that predicts some actions are *likely* to make me stop being hungry (e.g. eat a sandwich), and other actions are *unlikely* to make me stop being hungry (e.g. shout at my washing machine), so that I can make better bets and win more often. I don't have time to try every possible action (or even to try actions in random order until one of them works).
You literally can't survive as an independent adult without having *some* actual beliefs. You need some policy for choosing actions, and if you were actually using "blind chance" as your policy then I wouldn't be reading replies from you.
I make a concerted affort to hold space for both possibilities at once. "What would the world look like if this were true? If it were false? What are the consequences of being wrong in either direction?"
Primarily, I try not to resolve "belief" into "fact" in any direction ever. Belief is still a useful (probably the most useful) way of navigating the world, but it's not the same as knowledge.
When in doubt, fail in the direction of agnosticism. You're not required to know everything, you're certainly not required to opine on everything, and your actions should generally be hedged against likely error cases.
The ability to confidently say "I don't know" is surprisingly rare. It takes serious mentoring work to get junior engineers to say "I don't know" rather than follow their social instincts to say something that will please their manager and make them seem knowledgeable. This in spite of the fact that good engineering managers really _want_ to hear that you don't know something they've asked (yet). When I catch junior programmers guessing, I've been known to gently say something like "You know what? Your guess actually _isn't_ as good as mine. Get back to me when you know for sure." From what I've seen, a lot of people in fields which don't demand clarity of thought simply never learn to say "I don't know".
I call the phenomenon you describe, “jumping to solutions.” People have this thing that drives them to immediately present and answer or solution right away before understanding the problem completely. I have seen it in every industry and relationship so I feel like it must be deep within our psyche or acculturation.
I suspect this is *partly* (not entirely) the fault of our school systems, which love giving credit for lucky guesses or even partially-correct guesses, but almost never give credit for admitting ignorance or for the valuable meta-skill of assigning well-calibrated probabilities to your own knowledge.
Personally, what I try to say when someone tries to force me to give an answer to something I don't know, is to say "I know that I don't know" and (where feasible) to explain plausible ways that something could be true _and_ plausible ways that the something could be false, and to reiterate that I don't know enough to choose between them.
Totally promotional, yet this is a passion project ...
How often do you buy a shower head? Maybe once every 3 years? 5 years? Longer?
That's one of the problems I faced when working with a small, family-owned biz, High Sierra Showerheads. How do you send monthly e-mail newsletters to customers and community whose contents aren't solely a variation on "buy another shower head, now!"
Am doing this by the seat of my pants. A couple of examples of what we've been trying out, when writing newsletter articles ...
* We're spotlighting other small businesses (like Hydrant Guard, which keeps sheared-off fire hydrants from turning into geysers):
* We're sharing interesting findings from archeology (why were the Giza pyramids built miles away from the Nile?) and ecology (why were the Channel Islands foxes dying off?):
Anyway sharing this in case anyone's in a similar situation, particularly if helping a small business, nonprofit, etc. with content creation and marketing, and you'd like to compare notes, do mutual support, etc.! Thanks!
I’ve heard of your shower heads. I’ve spent time on shower head threads! I found out about you on the Buy It For Life Reddit.
I was frustrated that a fairly new, perfectly functioning shower head in a house we bought, had to be tossed because of a crack in a needlessly plastic part. Dislike that sort of waste/foolish economy . In the end, because I was in a hurry, and we were actually selling - I bought a Speakman from the hardware store. And because I don’t care about bells and whistles nor a pounding shower, and am much too lazy to change a setting on something like that.
But people spoke highly of High Sierra, who are troubled by their low flow requirements.
Thanks for sharing that! So glad you ran across us there on that Buy It For Life subreddit, and that others were talking about us there.
Can readily grok buying rapidly, when the situation arises. Speakman is a good brand, too.
We get many recommendations from people who've found that the spray of even our lowest-flowing shower heads is equivalent in rinsing power to that from higher flowing heads. That's largely because High Sierra makes its spray by colliding water streams, while others drop water through a bunch of small holes. It's all about the fundamental difference in design!
(And yes, cracks in needlessly plastic parts are one reason High Sierra builds its shower heads out of durable metals.)
It sounds like you want a PR campaign. PR isn't advertising, and is more nebulous. The idea is for people to think of you when they have a corresponding need, and think well of you.
As you asked, I recently bought a shower head (a couple months ago), the first one I have ever bought, because my existing one suddenly started having greatly increased water pressure. I had no opinions on shower heads, and simply bought one on my next trip to a big box store. So far, it has performed adequately, which was what I expected.
Thanks for your observations here, and for sharing this experience!
That's apparently true for a lot of people: 1) Existing shower head has issues or is increasingly dissatisfying. 2) Just go to the nearest big box and/or indie hardware store, or even a department store like Walmart or Target, and just pick whatever looks good from the display. 3) If it works, great. If not, return it and try another.
That's a key challenge I wrote about in another reply in this thread. And you're right, something like PR (or more generally, brand awareness) seems key, given this:
" ... their products aren't on the displays at Home Depot, Lowes, or even independent hardware stores. At this point, they're pretty much e-commerce only."
I've noticed that a lot of plumbing or construction companies have "how to" or FAQ stuff on their websites. "How to install a sink" or "here's why you should install a french drain instead of a drainage ditch" or whatever. It seems to be a mix of marketing (you can trust us because we know what the job involves and why you would need it) and SEO (people searching for how to install a sink will find our site and pay us to do it).
Anyway, people who are buying showerheads might be interested in reading about other home maintenance stuff they can do.
That's a superb suggestion, beleester! We'll definitely look into that.
We've started working with an SEO specialist, and a writer in their network initially created a blog post on High Sierra's website on "How to install a handheld shower head." Expanding that to related plumbing, bathroom, and/or other home improvement tasks sounds like a great idea!
While it's entirely possible you're in the vast majority, we've learned some fraction of homeowners (and even a few renters) are, in fact, keenly interested in shower heads. Partly because too many of the truly low-flow shower heads on the market aren't powerful enough to rapidly wash out shampoo, conditioner, etc. from long and/or thick hair. Or just generally feel anemic. So they're looking around for something better.
Another huge source of interest has been from institutions and commercial facilities: colleges and universities, military bases, correctional institutions, fitness & health clubs, independent inns and B&Bs, and the like. They're trying to be sustainable by cutting their water and energy use, yet don't want to risk antagonizing those they serve by degrading their showering experience. Plus, people using wimpy shower heads often need to stay in the shower longer to get clean, negating those sustainability gains.
Surprisingly, we haven't had nearly as much interest from plumbers as we might have imagined. Or from associated contractors, like HVAC contractors, tradespeople doing bathroom remodels, etc. (While noting this could well just be a blind spot in our own market research and outreach.)
Why would a showerhead company need a newsletter? Is this required now for small businesses to function because everyone else has constant marketing as well? Even if I like the topics you're writing about, are they going to be better written and researched than posts from a dedicated blog? I prefer to read emails (or anything) that is written because there is something important to say, not things that are written just because words need to be said even when there is no important content. I would be curious in this circumstance what readers who don't unsubscribe, assuming they're not all just ignoring junk marketing emails, actually like reading that is related to shower heads? Maybe they like pictures of beautiful bathrooms? Or interesting showers? But still I wonder why a shower head company is trying to double as an interesting newsletter. And if marketing efforts would be better spent elsewhere?
The main reason we have a newsletter is that, late in 2023, the boss and our social media coordinator decided we needed one. :)
There is absolutely a trade-off: when coming up with topics and writing this newsletter, there's an opportunity cost from not doing other, perhaps more effective, forms of marketing.
If it helps, I love researching and writing the (very short) articles in this newsletter, despite repeatedly having to cope with writer's block. And I'm hoping that comes across to our readers.
We'd always crave feedback – even if it's just a one-sentence reaction – on any of the brief articles in our newsletter, such as any of the three mentioned above. We frequently link to more detailed articles, blog posts, and websites, for those who want to learn more.
As well, we typically get modest sales boosts from each mailing. Interspersed with the non-promotional pieces about general interest topics, are spotlights on various company products, sales announcements, and the like, with 'shop now' buttons.
We also offer a discount code when signing up for the newsletter. And on our mailing list, we have so far retained a significant fraction of those signing up. (In other words, while some subscribers are signing up just for the code and then unsubscribe, many others do stick around.)
As for what our customers and other readers get out of the newsletter, that's specific to shower heads, a few examples:
- They get early notification about sales.
- They learn about new and improved products. (Imagine an email newsletter from Apple that announces new versions of phones, computers, and operating systems, for example, and spotlights their key improvements.)
- They get to learn more about our products, their features, and their accessories. For instance, we offer grips for our handheld shower heads made by a local-to-us company that makes similar grips for tools and gun stocks. And we now include a free installation tool for installing and removing our products, which means you don't need to hunt for the right crescent or adjustable wrench. Both were mentioned in articles in our newsletter.
Also, this small biz tends to have a fanatically loyal customer base. People who use their shower heads often recommend them to family, friends, co-workers and the like. So perhaps more than with some other businesses, many of them tolerate receiving occasional e-mail reminders that the business still exists. :)
Yes, this business still does get unsubscribes with each mailing. Which I appreciate viscerally, given my own, often unsympathetic responses to bulk emails, even from vendors I like.
Not sure if this is useful, but Gmail actively unsubscribes me from stuff I don’t look at, even stuff I’m moderately interested in keeping up with.
Shower heads are tough. I’ve replaced maybe a half dozen in my life including as a landlord and I just get ‘em at the hardware store as I need ‘em. I don’t have any suggestions for you except i probably wouldn’t be following your emails either.
"Gmail actively unsubscribes me from stuff I don’t look at"
Thanks, knowing that is absolutely useful! I occasionally see a notification at the top of my Inbox, telling me I haven't opened mail from 'x' in a long time, and asking if I want to unsubscribe.
"I just get ‘em at the hardware store as I need ‘em"
Yep. That's what I did for years and years, as well.
That's one of the challenges this small business has to overcome; their products aren't on the displays at Home Depot, Lowes, or even independent hardware stores. At this point, they're pretty much e-commerce only.
And you're totally right about the attention economy. We're all inundated.
I may have overstated the “automatically unsubscribed.” I think I confused it with what you’ve described. I have had actively subscribed to emails that I don’t always read, like eBay alerts, moved to my “promotions” tab, which ends up being super noisy.
As for clientele, my first instinct is to target small business contractors who build out people’s bathrooms and the like. Maybe do an annual give-away to keep them interested. I will say, my experience (limited) is they stick with what they know works and I’d bet you make the best customers at trade shows doing demos.
Weird question— does it make sense to try and sell the shower head designs to a bigger corp? Maybe become suppliers?
Sounds like instead of telling people to BUY ANOTHER SHOWER HEAD NOW, which surely they won't do very often, your client would be better off marketing stuff like "Are you enjoying your shower head? Here's 10% off to buy a friend of yours a shower head" or "your personal discount code for one friend to buy a shower head for less" etc - if people like to recommend your product you could presumably lean into it
Excellent suggestion. The "tell a friend and be able to offer them a discount or something else cool" idea is really great.
And we can even incentivize them to do so, as well, with recognition, swag, or even modest commissions. (We've just recently been putting our toe in the water of 'performance marketing,' one part of which involves affiliate commissions. Not just for, say, influencers or bloggers, but even for our regular customers.)
One concern is that we don't want our customers to "spam" people in their circles, in ways that could be a turn off. So we'll need to think about ways to avoid that, as well!
Hi y'all. I'm a microbiome scientist trying to use human gut anaerobes to improve lifespan and quality of life. They're basically modular packets of genes—programs designed to run on the human OS—and I don't know why people aren't more excited about this. (Existing probiotics are, by and large, a scam; the vast vast majority of the gut microbiome's functional diversity and potential is untried & untapped).
Anyway I have a piece on my substack about the bugs in our guts that reduce cholesterol (both in the chemical and literal sense of the word "reduce") and a sequel post to it is coming out soon with some very exciting news, so I figured I'd try and get the word out a little. If anyone has questions or thoughts, happy to discuss here.
Hey thanks! I try to strike that balance—I got my start writing pop coverage of new findings in physics journals, so this is like easy mode by comparison because everybody, as they say, poops.
"One of the highest-cholesterol foods out there also has a good dose of the molecular fuel that helps your microbes handle it in a healthy way."
Wild stuff - thanks, Stephen!
While I don't have any background in the physiological topics you cover, you have a delightfully casual, clearly-understandable writing style – in part through your use of figurative language – to describe complex concepts. Subscribed!
Feel free to moderate if it's too self-promotional, but I've started a podcast called Doom Debates whose audience has a lot of overlap with ACX readers. I debate Robin Hanson, Keith Duggar from Machine Learning Street Talk, and cover the social media slapfights around the topic of AI doom: https://DoomDebates.com
Scott, we haven’t had a Hidden Open Thread in 2 mos. Last one was August 9th. And they go up described as “*weekly* hidden open threads.” Hey we understand that you love your babies more than you love us, but could you up your attentiveness level to our lot just a bit?
I just listened to this podcast, about the American healthcare system, https://open.spotify.com/episode/14XV2p3zAYVWPt7F2hpP9Z, in which Joe Rogan interviews Calley and Casey Means, and many of the claims made by the two guests frankly startled me. Are others familiar with the work of these two siblings, their book, or their advocacy?
The Starship launch today was AMAZING. If anyone hasn't seen it yet, I strongly recommend checking it out. It looks like SpaceX is making some serious progress! Watching this reminds me of how I felt seeing the first Falcon 9 landing – but it's at a much bigger scale.
I woke myself up at 5 am to catch it live and didn't regret it one bit. I got super emotional seeing the catch, this must be how sports fans feel when their team wins the Superbowl.
**Original Pitch Materials from a YC Company or other VC backed venture? Especially Scale AI or other data-focused companies?**
Hey everyone,
I'm in the process of preparing my own pitch for investors and was wondering if anyone here might have access to original pitch materials (slide decks, white papers, etc.) from a YC-backed (or other VC backed) company, particularly from Scale AI or any other data-focused startups.
Seeing how successful startups presented their ideas would be incredibly helpful for me to understand how to structure and frame my own. Any insights or resources would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance for any help!
Keep in mind that the way you write the pitch deck isn't going to get you funded if you don't tick the boxes that vc investors want to see. That said, I think these are helpful for writing something that has a digestible format: https://kruzeconsulting.com/blog/top-5-venture-capital-pitch-decks/
Also, read the memos from Bessemer to get more of a sense of what the vc check-boxes are:
https://www.bvp.com/memos
In theory, early stage funders care about some key pillars:
(1) potential market: if you are able to deliver, is there potential for very large revenue?
(2) product feasibility (sometimes aka your tech capability): can you deliver the product/service?
(3) product-market fit: do you have evidence that customers will actually buy your product/service at a profitable price?
(4) team: can your team make it through the stress of starting something new and does it include the key skills needed to create, produce, and sell the product?
Of course, predicting any of these things in advance is difficult. The more you can pattern match to something that has worked in the past, the easier it is to get an investor to believe. It is especially helpful if someone on your team has prior successful exits.
Finally, getting rejected is extremely common. Take a look at the Bessemer anti-portfolio for a rare example of a fund being candid about some of their misses.
Zelensky is right. Ukraine gave up the Soviet nuclear weapons stored on its soil in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the UK. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, their sovereignty was supposed to be respected. We're forcing them to fight with one arm tied behind their back.
One modest proposal. We've got a couple of billion dollars we haven't released to Ukraine. Why not hire Blackwater to help them out with their manpower shortages? Hey, officially, it wouldn't be US troops.
And another modest proposal: why shouldn't the US give Taiwan, South Korea, and possibly Vietnam nukes? Or maybe we should just leak a whitepaper discussing that option? Wouldn't that put a fox among the PRC chickens!? (I'd include Japan in that offer, but probably wouldn't accept them.)
Honestly, the bullying threats from Russia and China are getting old. I say call their bluff.
I'm feeling a bit hawkish tonight. It must be something I ate...
https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-nukes-volodymyr-zelenskyy-war-ukraine-aid-russia/
I can’t imagine being this flippant about nuclear war.
Foreign mercenaries have been operating in Ukraine for some time now. Probably NATO forces as "observers" as well, though of course their presence would be deniable. But the issue is you need tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand to make a real difference. Blackwater isn't a front line combat outfit like the Condottieri from the old days, they run security. And as Russia showed with Wagner, having a large private army operating under you is maybe not the best idea. It would be pretty embarrassing if the west sent a mercenary army to Ukraine and then they couped Zelenskyy.
True, though with a caveat: Ukraine did not give up any nuclear weapons that it could have actually made any use of. The idea that Ukraine "had nukes" in the sense of being a power that could have threatened others with nuclear attack, is false.
While Ukraine had physical control of those Soviet missiles with nuclear warheads, Russia had operational control of them (the codes with which to fire the missiles). It would have taken years of effort at a level of technical know-how which Ukraine did not then possess, to repurpose the warheads into Ukrainian operational use and control. And, if Ukraine began working on that project the Russians obviously would not have just stood by quietly.
> Ukraine did not give up any nuclear weapons that it could have actually made any use of. The idea that Ukraine "had nukes" in the sense of being a power that could have threatened others with nuclear attack, is false.
In regards to requiring the codes to bypass the security features of the nukes — not having the codes might slow down an independent actor from using the weapon. But less so for a nation-state with technical resources at its disposal. If you remove the fissile material from the bomb, you're halfway there to building a new nuke. More than halfway if you're dealing with a Pu-239-based nuke because Plutonium is much more difficult to refine and handle than U-235. Russian tactical nukes happen to be plutonium-fission bombs. Having the fissile material fall into the hands of technically competent nation-states is why Western analysts were worried about the breakup of the Soviet Union, and why they're now fretting about the possible breakup of Russia should Putin kick the bucket. And the Russian military has shown itself very susceptible to financial inducements. Security codes wouldn't have kept Ukraine from creating new bombs from the old ones.
Likewise, Soviet ICBMs were developed in the Soviet Ukraine. Ukraine still has that engineering talent. But considering the string of failures testing their new Sarmat ICBMs, modern Russia doesn't seem to have that talent. However, as an aside, ICBMs are an unreliable delivery method because fuzes based on impact deform quickly enough to cause the payload to misfire. Barometric fuzes are not very reliable either at speeds at which ICBMs approach the ground. Bombs dropped by bombers have the highest success rate (this is according to a 1990s study from US Strategic Air Command).
First, it's not just the PAL codes on the warheads; the Ukrainians almost certainly didn't have the specialized software and ground support equipment necessary to program trajectories into the missile guidance systems, or even the manuals needed to reconstruct that. Those are the sorts of things the Russians would have taken with them as they left.
Second, yes, Ukraine has a lot of first-rate engineering capability. They built the world's largest airplane, they built space launch vehicles for NASA, and they built all of the Soviet Union's ICBMs. They could have salvaged and rebuilt Russia's abandoned nuclear missiles into something that would work.
They couldn't have done it in less than six months to a year, and they couldn't have done it without outsiders noticing that all the old Russian missiles were being spirited away into the same secretive facilities that a bunch of Ukraine's nuclear and missile experts were now working.
In which case, Ukraine would have been invaded and conquered by the Russian Army in rather less than six months, with the entire Western world cheering them on for preventing a Rogue State from acquiring Illicit Nuclear Weapons. Remember, this was Leonid Kravchuk's Ukraine, not Volodymyr Zelenskyy's, with the (well-justified) expectation that he'd be running a standard-issue corrupt post-Soviet kreptocracy like the one Borat came from.
In the case of US nuclear weapons with permissive action link, it is supposed to be extremely hard to extract the plutonium without triggering protective detonation. No idea if this is true for Russian ones.
Certainly Ukraine could have forcibly seized the weapons, extracted the fissile material and made its own nukes. It would have taken time though. Maybe less than years, but certainly more than days. And it could not have been done in secret. Quite possibly if they had tried, Russia would have invaded right then - and the Russian army in 1991 would not have been suffering from 30 years of post imperial rot, nor would there have been as much opposition from the West over Russia invading to prevent Ukraine stealing Russia's nukes.
Indeed. Those involved in the closed-door negotiations that led to the Budapest Memorandum have said that the Russians behind those closed doors were quite clear and blunt: Ukraine would not be allowed to so much as loosen a bolt on any of those missiles. In the context of the early 1990s that seems entirely plausible, indeed no other attitude seems remotely credible from Russia shortly after the breakup of the USSR.
Given that, the nuclear missiles on Ukrainian soil had no more practical relevance to Ukrainian security than one of those cartoon pistols that shoots a small banner reading "BANG". That Russia ultimately failed to honor the Budapest Memorandum's promises to respect Ukraine's borders is therefore no net loss from Ukraine's perspective. It was worth trying for of course, but not something that is rationally mourned as a "failure".
Technically, the US and UK have lived up to their obligations under the Budapest Memorandum, which were to not invade Ukraine themselves, and to issue a strongly worded letter of protest if anyone else did. Only Russia has violated its obligations.
Also, technically, while Ukraine hosted Soviet nukes, it neither owned nor controlled them. The nukes were controlled by soldiers who took orders from Moscow, and the nuclear codes were, IIUC, also held in Moscow. And it's debatable if you can be said to have `given up' something you neither own nor control.
The statement about the utility of nukes as an ultimate guarantor of your security from invasion, however, is correct. Although I would suggest the truth of that statement has been self-evident to anyone with a brain for decades. (contrast e.g. the fates of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Un).
The modest proposal to send mercenaries to Ukraine...I don't see anything wrong with it, except that it is inefficient. Blackwater mercenaries will cost more than Ukrainian conscripts. Cheaper to just send a few extra billions of weapons.
Now, as for the other `modest proposal'...well, I imagine if Taiwan/ROK/Japan wanted nukes, they could make them themselves in short order. Our actually supplying them wouldn't be necessary, a promise to turn a blind eye would suffice. Vietman, maybe we'd actually need to supply them. But why stop there? We could supply nukes to every country in the UN, extend the pax atomica as far as it will go. Or might that actually have some undesirable risks?
Installing ACX tweaks on Chrome now gives a warning -
This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions.
There's a similar problem with uBlock Origin, Google being evil again.
if you weren't using firefox based browsers already the uBlock shit should be more than enough reason to switch
Brett Stephens’ (Republicans) closing argument for Harris:
“It’s time for Kamala Harris to deliver her closing argument for why she deserves to be the next president. Here’s what I think she should say.
My fellow citizens,
When the tumultuous history of this year’s presidential election is written, future generations will note that the choice boiled down to this: the certainty of division versus the possibility of unity.
Whether you love Donald Trump or loathe him, prefer his policies or mine, you can be sure of one thing: If he wins next month, we will be a bitterly, vocally, emotionally, exhaustingly divided country.
There was no getting away from it. Trump is a human jackhammer pounding outside your window at 6:30 a.m. The noise is incessant. It’s in the ad hominem tweets, the nasty nicknames, the disparagement of anyone who disagrees with him as an idiot, a weakling, an enemy of the people. And let’s be honest: The noise also came from the enraged reaction that Trump provoked, whether on cable TV or the streets of many of our cities…
continued at link (no paywall)…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/opinion/harris-kamala-trump-election.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Sk4.WBCT.AZ10QUAZxnZ5&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I don't see how Harris is a possibility of unity. This isn't backed up by anything, but contradicted by lots of things, not least of which is the simple difference between conservative and liberal political views. Economists will be against $6000 to families with newborns, $25,000 for first-time homebuyers, quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks, etc. The healthcare industry will be against removing medical debt from credit reports.
https://kamalaharris.com/issues/ states these things, as well as promoting an obviously liberal agenda.
No matter who wins, the country will be divided.
Economists will then be even more opposed to Vance's proposal to increase the Child Tax Credit to $5K per year per child (not just $6K once for each newborn). Per the Tax Foundation, Vance's proposal would cost literally _twice_ as much as Harris's. (The CTC is currently $2K per child.)
Harris's proposal for the $25K towards down payments is directly modelled on a program established in 2022 by Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis which DeSantis has been proudly funding in every year's state budget. Like that one, and actually several other state programs that exist, the Harris program would be open to only a small fraction of all first-time homebuyers.
Harris' published economic plan says that it would be for "up to" $25K, with only first-time buyers "whose parents did not own a home" being eligible for the full amount. Harris's campaign in response to questions has quoted a maximum of 100,000 homebuyers per year qualifying for any of this tax credit. No doubt those specifics would be further refined in negotiation with Congress. But anyway the talking point about Harris proposing to give $25K to all of the 1.7M or so first-time home buyers in the US each year, is very far from accurate.
Yes, economists would be opposed to increasing the Child Tax Credit.
I don't understand, though. Are you saying everyone agrees these proposals are a good idea? The question was whether Harris would unite or divide.
I bought my own house, with no help from my parents, in 2013, mostly due to the cost relative to rent. I received no help from anyone to do so. Granted, low interest rates helped a lot, for me, but I also found a lot of people looking to buy houses while interest rates were low and deciding to wait, for various reasons, despite advice to act while interest rates were low.
These financial things don't seem well-thought-out as policies, but proposed to garner votes as campaign promises. Why are homeowners more disadvantaged now than in previous years, so that they need a subsidy?
The stated logic of Harris's housing related policy proposals is the need to jump start US homebuilding. The problem it aims to address is "we don't build anymore". That's why most of the steps she proposes aim to directly enable or incentivize homebuilders to build more homes than has become the US norm. Most of the rhetoric on this subject in her published economic plan is about increasing the supply of new homes. In speeches she sums it up as "we need to build, build, build!"
Under that "increase the supply" focus, the limited subsidy targeted at a subset of first time home buyers intends to expand the range of new customers for homebuilders to build for.
We're off-topic, but on another one. The question is WHY don't we build anymore? I don't KNOW the answer, but have some possibilities:
1. It's NOT lack of demand, for housing prices are unreasonably high.
2. I have heard something about regulations being too burdensome, but have no data on that.
3. For a while, building materials were ridiculously priced, such as wood being about seven times normal price. I understand prices have moderated, but this would greatly increase the cost of new housing.
4. Could there be a labor shortage? Maybe everyone should quit their jobs at Google and go build houses?
Providing a subsidy only addresses the first and third ones, to make prices more attractive, and the first one doesn't apply. Are there other reasons I'm missing?
It's definitely regulation. I've got two RE developers in my immediate family, and know a few more personally - every developer has a number of big projects they'd love to do, but can't do due to political and regulatory hurdles.
Everyone hates developers, everyone tries to saddle them with the cost of roads and utilities and making 20-30% of their units "low income" (ie net-negative in terms of profit), and everyone loves to make permitting and planning more difficult by throwing up roadblocks and environmental studies and the like.
But developers are the only ones that build houses and residential units people can live in.
There are some labor issues too, depending on which part of the country you're in. It's always hard to find good construction crew guys that show up non-drunk-or-high and on time, and lately it's been harder in some markets due to crackdowns on immigrants.
Wasn't this basically the promise of Joe Biden? A return to normalcy, good 'ole Joe? I mean, I didn't believe it, but I know a lot of people who did. It was plausible.
It's been four years. Do you feel less divided? Does the country feel like it healed?
I'm not even saying this to be mean, while I don't think it was likely, there was a genuine opportunity and it sucks that it's gone but...why would we possibly believe that Kamala Harris could heal divisions that Joe Biden couldn't/wouldn't?
I mean, I think the return to normalcy thing was real. I spent 3.5 years not waking up to news articles about outrageous things the President said. (The last 0.5 was sadly spoiled by news articles about Trump saying even more outrageous things on the campaign trail.) I started to see more wonkish articles along the lines of "the Biden administration tightened rules on reticulating splines when making foobar transactions, as part of an improved package of sanctions on Russia."
And I don't just mean this in the sense of "Biden did a bunch of policy things I like," which Republicans might understandably hate. I mean it more in the sense of "when the Biden admin did a policy thing, it happened with minimal chaos and I got the impression a relevant professional had looked over the idea first." Trump would tweet out policy things at random and then the rest of the administration would scramble to make it happen. And then he'd get sued because the lawyers didn't have a chance to check if he could actually do the thing he said he'd do.
As for healing our national divide, I think that's a little above any one man's pay grade, but having an executive branch that functions normally and is actually good at its jobs would be a good start with getting people to trust the government again.
What do you want her to do, kill Trump and all of his supporters? Nothing short of a world war is going to generate the nationalistic fervor necessary to unite this country.
No, she doesn't have to be Jesus and she can't afford to be Jesus, she's a real politician with real constraints. But the world would look a lot different if, after 4 years of Biden, the border was secure and the woke was put away. If Kamala could actually credibly do this, that'd be a step in the right direction. And that's what we need. We've walked a long path of national division, we're not going to get back to Happy Days tomorrow, but we could at least stop walking down it and maybe make a few steps back.
What do you mean by woke?
Because if you have anything but the most mild anti-woke position, at least 40% of the population holds the exact opposite position, and the RVTRN would need to be put away.
These are unsolvable problems that will only go away when all the boomers and gen X types die, and new unsolvable problems can take over their niche.
I don't want Harris to kill everyone in a red hat, I just want Brett Stephens to not write Harris speeches under the premise that she will unite the country without killing everyone in a red hat.
Re divisiveness:
Just this week, Vice President Kamala Harris promised a million forgivable loans for black businesses. ( https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/harris-promises-1-million-forgivable-loans-for-black-businesses-kamala-tim-walz-men-voting-election-donald-trump-race-economy-november-politics ). This would be a _new_ , racially tested, and therefore racially divisive, Federal outlay. Harris is _not_ a candidate for unity. More generally, the Democratic Party has been the party of divisive identity politics for many years now.
( Not that I like Trump. I will always remember him as the president who suggested looking into injecting disinfectant. Could we please have a _little_ common sense? Grr. A pox upon both their houses! )
identity politics become business loans
can there be any doubt about which class it serves?
What is a "forgivable" loan? Is that just to make it sound like MAYBE it could get paid back, and not just be a hand-out?
Many Thanks! Actually, _many_ doubts! It all depends on the terms of the loans, and who they actually go to. The only thing Harris has made clear is which race will be eligible.
I mean, now that I know that those treats are on the table, I'm unclear as to why I shouldn't commit to not voting for her, until I'm promised my share too.
Yup, that would be the way identity politics plays out - and if the total budget for it is fixed, it would be a zero-sum, potently divisive, game. Many Thanks!
They can print as much money as they like, and the beauty of inflation is that it takes the money roughly equally from everyone who's loaned money or keeps cash reserves or has a fixed-payment job. I just want to make sure I'm loaned my share before inflation lowers its value too much.
Ouch! Well, with electronic money, we won't need wheelbarrows for the cash, Weimar style... Many THanks!
Firstly, I don't like this genre of journalists writing speeches they think politicians should give. They're also often not as clever as they think they are.
As to the substance: Putting this in maximally uncharitable terms the message is: "We are more intolerant than you so let us have power and accept that you will lose." That might not be fair but I'll bet that's what Trump supporters will hear from this. He is citing the Democratic reaction to Trump as being so bad the Democrats ought to have power. The Republicans have a duty to soothe this by giving up power to the Democrats. And I can't see this getting a positive response from Republicans.
More broadly, the Democrats would have had to eat vegetables for the last four years for this message to carry weight. In order to credibly ask Republicans to suspend their policy preferences to protect democracy they should have suspended their own first. If they really believed this was potentially the last election they should have suspended virtually every policy preference of theirs in favor of defending democracy. They should have given moderate Republicans everything they wanted except for a few key non-negotiables in exchange for defection. And by "a few" I mean "no more than three." Lincoln really only had two: slavery and the union.
Instead they've treated this as an opportunity to run to the left. Now that it's backfired they're running back to the right at the last moment, having already locked in a fair bit of progressive policy. So this will look insincere. They might still win but they're not going to be the unity party this implies unless Kamala then immediately swerves to the right and makes similar concessions. Which she's shown little sign of wanting to do.
Your comment has really made me think. Do you think that the Democrats could have won the 2024 election if they had spend the Biden era "eating vegetables"?
Yes. In fact I think they would have had to concede far less than Lincoln did. There were numerous opportunities for the Biden administration to compromise and they turned most of them down. And in turning them down, and in its actual day to day policy, went further and further left and repeatedly put in giveaways to its supporters. That is the maximalist style of politics of today. But that maximalist style of politics produces swings and narrow victories.
If you think the other side is a real threat to the country then you need to avoid that at almost all costs. Which means compromising on policy preferences to draw over the other party's moderate voters. Going after moderate Republicans is a winning trade unless you lose two progressives for every Republican that defects or the progressives become Trump supporters. And you don't need to abandon the progressives entirely. You don't have to become a Republican. But you also can't be Elizabeth Warren. You don't get to be transformational as Biden said he wanted to be. You just get to make things solidly better (at least from your perspective) and crush Trump at the polls so thoroughly the Republicans move left.
This is interesting. Can you give some examples of the compromises Biden turned down?
There were smaller and more focused but more bipartisan versions of covid relief, Build Back Better, and the IRA. He rejected the Republican compromise border bill and instead tried to pass a more party line one which had more left wing provisions including a more general amnesty. He rejected the debt ceiling balancing the budget compromises and instead had a debt ceiling standoff. And he rejected the Republican border/national security-and-Ukraine bill. He also turned down compromises on student loans, police reform, gun control, and various agency/regulatory policies around things like oil production or the FTC/SEC.
In general, he ran to the left. Which he and Kamala (and Bernie and Warren) said until it became politically inconvenient this election cycle. You can go back and listen to what they were saying about the border bill Kamala is now using to say she cared about the border at the time. They were very clear it was meant to be a left wing bill that encouraged people to come and was meant to provide a pathway to citizenship for illegals here as well as opening the US to more immigration. (Which actually is something I agree with. But I don't think the politics work well.)
Now, to be clear, I understand that I am saying the Democrats should have showed restraint in an environment where politics is more extreme. But I think that would have helped with avoiding many of their worst mistakes and also won them more in the middle. Delivering moderate left wing reforms while returning to a sense of bipartisanship and normalcy would have been very attractive against Trump.
The gamble they took is that Trump is so uniquely poisonous that they can eat their desert instead and go farther left and they'll still get re-elected because Trump is uniquely obnoxious. Maybe they're right. But maybe they're wrong. We'll find out in about two weeks.
Thanks, interesting information and analysis
What does eating vegetables mean? I do think if Joe Biden had governed like Bill Clinton (or better, like hypothetical President Romney) then Democrats would be winning in a landslide.
I think it means that if the Dems really thought the biggest threat to the country was the antidemocracy of MAGA, they should have buckled down and compromised with moderate Republicans to get solid election reforms passed and otherwise focused on bipartisan policies even if that was hard and less rewarding to the base. Instead Biden spent political capital on things like student loan relief. Obviously that was divisive! And how could it compare to the threat they claimed to see in Trump's movement?
Thanks for a thoughtful comment.
I asked myself, "How is off-earth habitation different from living on earth?" and the snap answer is "It's a lot more work".
My tentative answer is that human capacity for work would need to be increased. This doesn't mean the result would need to be a leisureless dystopia. I think it would take greatly increased cognitive and sensory capacity and mental endurance, with possibly some increased physical capacity.
It would be an interesting spin if they actually need *more* leisure because burnout is a serious risk.
This would at least be good enough for science fiction, with people running groups of robots and being able to see areas of the biome directly.
There would need to be an excellent tools for avoiding tyranny because they couldn't afford leaders who are seriously wrong.
A City on Mars is a recent book about this (particularly the "it's a lot more work" parts that often get overlooked in discussions of rocketry) which I liked.
The authors advocate a "wait and go big" approach to colonization - do lots of prep work and research on Earth before you put down anything on Mars, then build a big colony with enough people to handle all the complexity that arises from living off world. Like, forget "enough people to grow potatoes," you want "enough people to run a hospital with a maternity ward and a psychiatric clinic."
("How is making babies affected by microgravity and radiation?" is one of many questions the authors suggest figuring out *before* you build the colony, rather than learning the hard way nine months into your colony's life.)
I really doubt you’re going to figure out space colonization without starting small.
As someone who has studied this for decades, sometimes professionally, I was very much *not* impressed.
The parts where they discuss the challenges of space settlement and development, they correctly identify potential problems, make only a half-hearted and often ill-informed effort at suggesting solutions, and dismiss the matter as Just Too Hard Right Now. For example, on the difficulties of long-term life support, they spend six pages discussion the failures of Biosphere 2, in spite of that project's nearly complete lack of relevance to near-term space settlement, and then one paragraph mentioning some of the work people are *actually* trying to do in this area, acknowledging that they've had a fair deal of success, but since they haven't completely solved the problem as of 2023, no go.
The parts where they discuss the opportunities of space settlement and development, they again raise the right issue, but then set the bar impossibly high at "must completely solve every facet of this problem for Earthbound humanity", then point out that it isn't possible to do that so it's not really worth bothering. For example, regarding the prospect of moving industrial activity into space where it may be more efficient and will cause massively less ecological damage, they point out that it would be massively impractical to move Earth's production of *concrete* into space, and then drop the subject.
Concrete is the classic example of something that pretty much has to be locally manufactured, it *can* be made pretty much everywhere, it's needed in vast quantities, and it's too cheap and too heavy to be worth the bother of shipping. What about rare-earth refining, or semiconductor manufacturing? Low-mass but high-value products, and ones often associated with great environmental damage when done on Earth. There would probably be benefits in moving some part of *those* industries off the Earth. Might they be worth the cost of doing so? Don't ask the Weinersmiths; they have a concrete excuse to ignore the question.
And then there's the bit where they argue that space settlement and development will necessarily result in great political strife, ultimately to bloody wars among the new Colonial powers that will spread back to Earth. How does that work again? They've already argued that space settlement and development is impossibly difficult, and completely worthless if one does it anyway, but somehow China is going to be launching nuclear missiles at the United States because we got there first? Wouldn't that problem be solved by just translating "A City on Mars" into Chinese and sending a copy to Xi, so he can laugh at the silly Americans building cities on Mars?
But that does seem to be their argument. And they show little understanding of the real efforts being made to address that issue, from the Outer Space Treaty to the Artemis Accords. Really, it reads like they got infected with the "Settler Colonialism is Pure Evil" thing, and tried to expand it to Mars just because people use the words "settle" and "colony" in such discussions, Then went looking for excuses to back it up.
I find myself wondering who exactly the "experts" and "advocates" they interviewed in researching this book actually are. Because it sounds like they found a set of people singularly inept at making the case for e.g. cities on Mars, and liked what they heard. How many people did they have to talk to before they found ones who would tell them what they wanted to hear?
I anti-recommend this book in the strongest possible terms, except that people who do want to advocate for space development will need to read it because they'll need to know what to expect. Thanks for nothing, Kelly and Zack.
Some interesting comments in the discussion Charles Stross kicked off a day or two ago here: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/10/conceptual-models-of-space-col.html
(As a near-future SF author he's mainly looking to tell interesting stories, natch, but they do still need some level of plausibility).
I mean, a great deal of technological innovation is routinely visualized as a force multiplier on human effort. Esp. the Industrial and Digital Revolutions. And having more autonomous agents at each person's disposal is my idea for that next capacity bump as well.
_Seveneves_ begins with a character running a bunch of bots doing maintenance on the asteroid bolted to the front of the space station in which she resides, watching them crawl around, check in with the centralized generator for more juice, and improving them with software patches as she watches. She seems to enjoy the tinkering. A lot of work can be tolerated by way of being fun.
Also, in that environment, survival often demands too much work and careful monitoring to leave anyone with enough time to go about erecting a tyranny.
Tyrannies aren't the side projects of mustache-twirling men in smoke-filled backrooms, they're a cancer of systems that do not have functions specifically designed to prevent them.
When you have a system wide crisis that prevents the trains (as a symbol of all the systems large societies need to function properly) from running on time. The easiest, fastest way to get the trains to run on time is to give all the power to a dictator. Without checks on power, it will inevitably grow cancerous. Cancer is where a minority of the agents within a system hack the system to allocate more resources to themselves in a way that is detrimental to the system as a whole. In respect to societies, cancer is more commonly known as tyranny.
In an off-earth habitation, survival will be very difficult, especially in the early years, so making sure the trains run on time will be especially important. This will make those societies even more susceptible to the development of cancerous tyrannies.
If off-Earth habitats end up having fewer tyrannies, it will be in the same way that Elephants are less likely to develop cancer. By sheer number of cells, they should be more susceptible to cancer and so have more safe-guards in place to prevent it. Off-Earth habitats will be more susceptible to cancerous tyrannies and so will need more safe-guards to prevent it if they are to survive long term.
These people obviously didn’t watch Lassie growing up if they this is front page news.
Man, 84, fell outside his home, was rescued by his dog
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2024/10/12/dog-rescues-man-84-cabin/
I… think Lassie should totally be front page news!
Great story!
Awww, thank you for sharing!
My goal is to be the Anthony Bourdain of Cars. That is, I go on youtube and talk about cars (and sometimes other random things) but I also reflect on philosophy, politics, and economics. If you'd be into that, this is the playlist to start with: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA_KEM2YJkctJhl8hcghFpyMN1igPFB0p
Huzzah! The final 40 comical wildlife photos for 2024 are here for your viewing and voting pleasure: https://www.comedywildlifephoto.com/gallery/finalists/2024_finalists.php
"Song of the Zeisel" might be my personal fave, although "Mafia Boss" is also amazing
Thanks. My wife is enjoying them now.
Thank you! I did not know this was a thing and now my life is the better for it.
ACX meetup this Sunday in Munich! I'm not hosting but I just thought I'd share since it didn't end up in the meetups post. More info here: https://acxmeetup.substack.com/
A week or two ago someone posted a comment either here or on a similar site that mentioned the book Accelerando in passing. Curious, I decided to read the book, discovered it was part of a trilogy, and after finishing the first two have started in on it.
To whoever made the post: thanks for nothing. Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise were just ho hum and meh. 12% in, Accelerando is so far the worst book I can recall reading.
I thought Halting State was good.
It's not part of a trilogy, see e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/8avtm4/charles_stross_accelerando_i_want_to_read_it_but/
Curse you, Jeff Bezos. I trusted you. Your e-commerce website listed them as a trilogy.
Oh well. I guess you don't get divorce your wife for lip filler money by playing it straight.
My life is hollow enough that I don't mind having read the extra two books, and while they weren't my favorites I'm still much more likely to try other works by Stross than if my only exposure was Accelerando.
I really liked the Laundry Files.
Seconded, with the caveat that I did not read his other stuff, so my opinion might not be very predictive conditional on hating Accelerando.
Same here, though I also liked both Accelerando and Iron Sunrise, so my tastes are probably a terrible guide to what TK-421 is likely to enjoy (and I'm not the person who wrote the original comment endorsing Accelerando).
The comment didn't endorse Accelerando, it mentioned it in a discussion about AI takeoff (IIRC). Got my curiosity going.
I'll check out Laundry Files once I'm done with it though.
"Laundry Files" is a series, and should be read in publication order until you get bored and/or frustrated with it. Because somewhere along the way, Stross got bored and/or frustrated with the original concept and the original protagonists, and it kind of went off the rails. Exactly when that happens is a matter of opinion, but the first time you find yourself not enjoying it, know that it's probably not going to get any better.
Many Thanks!
The Texas housing industry is hurting because they can't get enough illegal immigrants...
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/border-crisis-texas-solutions/
> The deficit in construction is historic, by some measures.... Texas building executives are speaking in apocalyptic terms about the labor shortage they’re still facing. Behind closed doors, they bluntly acknowledge that countless new projects won’t get off the ground unless they hire workers who are in the country illegally.
> ....The industry also faces a labor-force problem it cannot address quickly simply by raising pay. For two decades, the number of U.S.-born workers entering the construction trade has nosedived.... Cutting off the supply of undocumented workers, then, would be like cutting off the supply of concrete and lumber.
Another view is that they just don't want to pay what would motivate Americans to do it. It's hidden inflation. If all the prices went up enough to account for paying wages that hiring Americans would require, it would shake the economy.
Yeah, so basically they are looking for people to work for less than the survival wage, because the government is footing a large part of their bills (food, housing, health insurance) and not making them pay taxes.
See the problem? If the government was giving that much financial help to documented workers, they could probably work for less than the survival wage also.
The government of Texas is subsidizing the food and housing costs of illegal immigrant construction workers? I must be out of the loop, but it's been a while since I spent any great amount of time in Texas - can you explain to me how that works exactly?
I was not talking about the government of Texas, but about the federal government. But now that you mention it, Texas is complaining about enormous healthcare costs incurred due to illegal immigrants (https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-illegal-immigration-costs-texas-taxpayers-over-850-million-each-year ). Also, aliens paroled into the US for at least one year are eligible for TANF and SNAP, which would be partially paid for by Texas.
I saw articles about other states, not Texas, paying big money to house and feed migrants. You are right, except for TANF and SNAP, I don't have any proof of this going on in Texas.
On the other hand, there are non-profits doing just this in Texas, and my attempts to figure out who's funding some of them have come up empty, so I wouldn't put it past the federal government, since we know that a lot of what the federal government does for migrants is not publicized. There may be no official record of federal government funding migrants beyond the regular federal programs, but I don't think you can safely assume they are not doing just that, since, with regards to migrants, the federal government is not acting in good faith.
Health care, absolutely, But I think that's just one more facet of the US (and mostly the states, through Medicaid) subsidizing the health care of basically all low-income families, which means they'll be subsidizing health care for low-tier construction workers whether they're illegal or not. And subsidizing health care for illegals whether they're doing anything useful or not.
Food and housing, for people who make even construction-worker wages, that doesn't get subsidized nearly as much, which is why I was asking. Yeah, a construction worker with half a dozen kids will probably be getting TANF, but again whether illegal or not.
Just realized - wait a moment, how did I forget the FEMA spending?
https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/shelter-services-program/fy-23-fact-sheet
363.8 million dollars, to be used like this:
"All services are allowed only for noncitizen migrants within 45 days of their release from DHS. Allowable costs and services must meet the following criteria:
Primary services in the allowable activities include: shelter, food, transportation, acute medical care, and labor for primary services.
Secondary services in the allowable activities include: renovations or modifications to existing facilities, clothing, outreach information, translation services, and labor for secondary services."
I also found the list of organizations getting that money in Texas at https://www.fema.gov/grants/shelter-services-program/ssp-a/fy24-ssp-a-amended-reserve-funding-nofo . As you can see, a bunch of Christian charities (some of them landing multi-million grants), a bunch of cities, El Paso county, and a few entities harder to classify. So that's who's funding some of the nonprofits - the taxpayers are.
I am short on time and currently can't figure out if a migrant released by DHS is technically legal or illegal, though. Also, I think there might be some restrictions on the amount of time people can get this aid - again, I don't have time to go through this now.
The idea that illegal immigrants are needed for construction is moronic.
As other have said, if there is a labour shortage either, a) get LEGAL immigrants or b) motivate Americans into the workforce.
I doubt if many kids graduating (or not graduating) from secondary school have the skill sets to enter the building trades.
I'm probably older than most of the peeps on this substack, but I remember when the housing trade offered a livable salary for non-college-bound boy-kids (it was "girls need not apply" in those days). Of course, way back in the pre-Internet dark ages, when I was growing up, shop classes were offered so that students could get a start at learning trades like carpentry, engine repair, basic electrical skills. AFAICT, none of my local high schools teach these skills anymore. There's a satellite school in my district called an "ROP", but it seems to prepare kids for careers as veterinary assistants and dental hygienists.
I'd say (subjectively) that sometime during the 1980s, builders realized the smart move was to jump through the certification hoops to become contractors and to hire cheap labor to do their grunt work. Likewise, new cheap materials flooded the building market, lowering the quality of new homes (but that's another story).
I've been told by my friends south of the border that Mexican secondary schools still offer these old-style building trades classes — probably because there are so many jobs north of the border.
I hate any system that relies on a system of rule breaking. It's not really fair to anyone.
But your proposed solutions don't really work in the current political climate.
If the past year has shown us anything about the national mood, it's that an immigrant's legal status doesn't really matter. The Haitians who settled in Springfield did so perfectly legally and still became the center of a firestorm. Neither party is proposing any sort of increase in legal immigration at the moment.
Raising pay would be the other path, as you say - but this would increase construction costs, and thus housing costs, and housing costs are a big part of inflation which everybody hates.
An honest approach to the problem would be either:
A) "We need to increase legal immigration to keep housing costs down." or
B) "We need to reduce both legal & illegal immigration, even if it means less construction and thus higher inflation."
(A) is generally the Democratic approach, when the political winds blow right (i.e. not now). The Republican approach is to either pretend (B) has no tradeoffs, or to talk about doing (A) and then do the opposite.
Obviously not everyone who is anti-immigration is only anti-illegal, but I think there's a enough who see a distinction for that to matter.
Springfield is a weird case, because of how it was done. If I understand it correctly, they were brought in using a non-standard system that lets them work in the US without becoming permanent citizens. In some sense they bypassed almost all of the hurdles that legal immigrants have to jump through - making them more akin to illegal immigrants in important ways. Also they become de facto second class citizens, an intentional underclass. This should be bad according to both the left and the right, judged by their own rhetoric.
Many on the right see that situation as a defection by the Democrats. Granting a type of legal status that clearly isn't what the Republicans were demanding, just to say that they are there legally.
> Raising pay would be the other path, as you say - but this would increase construction costs, and thus housing costs, and housing costs are a big part of inflation which everybody hates.
Per [0], labor is about 40% of the construction costs. A 1000 square foot (93 square meters) home costs about two years of median household income (80k$) in construction costs. This does not feel excessive, even if costs were to rise by 20% because you increased all wages by 50%.
The reason the rents are too damn high is that in places where people very much prefer to live for some reason (likely jobs), i.e. the big cities, land value is immense. Hence Gergianism and all that.
[0] https://www.homelight.com/blog/buyer-how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-house/
Why do they need illegal immigrants instead of legal immigrants? I have long been against illegal immigration but in favor of significantly increased legal immigration (and an overall much shorter and easier process).
If they just need immigrants, then the term illegal is misleading (though for practical reasons, there may not be enough legal immigrants to fill the needs). If they are looking specifically for illegal immigrants, I think what I'm hearing is that they want to offer bottom dollar and no benefits and can only get that through hiring illegals. I'm a lot less sympathetic to that, and think it's *really bad* for the country to accept the idea of an underclass. This is an argument for an underclass, rather than an argument for fixing our labor problems (including through increased legal immigration).
Illegal immigrants are preferred for a variety of reasons: you can pay them less (in theory, even if in practice these days even the illegal market operates at or above the minimum wage floor), you don't need to worry as much about worker's comp or other protections, they'll work harder without raising a fuss, they have less recourse if (for whatever reason) you need to treat them outside the normal bounds of the law / norms, faster to ramp up the numbers without dealing with a bureaucracy, zero worry about them ever unionizing, etc.
There's long been the argument that if you're really serious about cutting off illegal immigration the real way to do it isn't through border security or focusing on the immigrants: go after the employers. Strong criminal and civil penalties for businesses employing illegal immigrants with personal liability for those involved.
Of course, there's always the shadow / gig economy. Do those nice ladies from Thumbtack who clean my house every week have work authorization? How draconian will we need to make this enforcement? Not to go assuming anyone's immigration status but they definitely don't speak English.
Stopping diffusion across a porous membrane when there's a powerful gradient is a hard problem no matter the domain.
The federal government came up with a strong system to identify illegal employees, and appeared to be moving towards requiring it for all employers. (https://www.e-verify.gov/about-e-verify/what-is-e-verify/e-verify-and-form-i-9)
The system is electronic and verifies someone is eligible to work in the US. It's free to us and already available. It's existed since 1996.
Between business interests and people sympathetic to illegal immigration, it obviously never went mainstream. But, we have the technology to solve a lot of illegal immigration now. It would push more of the work being done to off-the-books locations and the transition would be very painful (and more painful the longer we wait). I'm convinced that such a move is necessary, because the alternative is accepting that underclass and making that more and more unsolvable the longer we wait.
"The federal government came up with a strong system to identify illegal employees, and appeared to be moving towards requiring it for all employers ... Between business interests and people sympathetic to illegal immigration, it obviously never went mainstream."
Yes, that's the point. There's not sufficient political will to effectively clamp down on the hiring side of the equation.
Agreed on all points (albeit with an open question on how much to increase legal immigration - my knee-jerk reaction is that we should aim for approximately the same total population that we have now in the long term, given our TFR of 1.5 or so).
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
https://www.workingnation.com/report-the-u-s-is-facing-its-largest-labor-shortage-in-history/
I have no idea why so many people want to scare migrants away.
(Yeah, yeah, all the criminal lazy slackers coming in, yada yada, but with anti-immigrant rhetoric, the first ones to be scared away are the ones who can go find better work opportunities in friendlier environments)
I am massively pro immigration, legal immigration. Being pro illegal immigrantion is really really strange. The country defines the legal immigration process. As such advocating for illegal immigration is literally advocating letting in people the American government has decided shouldn't be there, e.g., letting in criminals, people who drain from the economy, and people who are being exploited (e.g., people being trafficked, people travelling to work for sub-minimum wage, etc...)
If you want more migration, then change the immigration policy; don't advocate for lawlessness!
It is a major major failing of the democratic party that they dismiss valid concerns about immigration by tarring the speaker as being motivated by racism.
To be fair, this issue been around for a while, and the GOP have had many opportunities to change things but haven’t. It’s a bipartisan fuck up
Republicans with a longer memory talk about the 1986 amnesty. They felt directly betrayed because it was supposed to be a two step process where current illegal immigrants are allowed to stay and then the border gets closed hard. Since the border never closed, they're waiting on Democrats to uphold their end of the bargain (or more practically, don't trust the Democrats to uphold their end of a new bargain).
So the Republicans feel that only options which close the border (either as a first step or only step) can be on the table. Obviously Democrats don't like this, so there's a stalemate.
Saying that the Republicans have had many opportunities feels either false or misleading. Sure, they could approve of plans like the Gang of Eight plan, but that's a compromise where the Democrats get a good bit of what they want. Republicans don't want that, and specifically don't trust that what they are supposed to get from a compromise will actually happen. Technically all of the millions of border crossings in the last few years should not legally happen either, based on current laws. It's hard to argue that we'll surely enforce new restrictions when current ones aren't followed.
In 1984, according to Wikipedia, Reagan was president and the house and the Senate both went Republican quite seriously. They had that full majority for the next two years and then lost control of the Senate and the house to the Democrats. Two solid years of being completely in charge of the country.
Immigration to this country has been a talking out of both sides of your mouth issue for as long as I can remember and I can remember further back than 1986. There are a lot of Republicans who like the downward pressure on labor costs that immigration brings, even if they at the same time need to squawk about it. I maintain my position that it is a bipartisan problem.
No doubt a lot of Republican leadership, at least prior to Trump, "secretly" wanted more immigration, even if it was the illegal kind. I think they worked out this compromise as much with their own team as with the Democrats. Bottom line, the people then against immigration got hoodwinked. Those same people, or their ideological descendants, want actual border control. They no longer trust the business side to play fair with them. They, quite accurately, also don't trust the Democrats as a whole on this issue.
A majority of Americans want immigration reduced - both legal and illegal - https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx
88% of Republicans say they want immigration reduced. The Republican leadership did not survive this, including Rubio's presidential bid in 2016, considering he was part of the Gang of Eight who tried to get a compromise bill in place.
It looks like we've been steadily increasing funding for border security with little to show for it. The white paper below claims (whines) that "The federal government has already met the border security benchmarks laid down in earlier Senate immigration reform bills"... but ... "Congress continued to fund ever-greater levels of enforcement without significant increases in adjudication or passage of broader reforms to the immigration system."
I'm not sure why Republicans claim the Democrats are neglecting border security. We Dems have cooperated with the Republicans to throw money at the problem. If a left-wing think tank claims we're wasting money, you know something is out of kilter.
> Since 1994, when the current strategy of concentrated border enforcement was first rolled out along the U.S.-Mexico border, the annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has increased nearly 20-fold, rising from $400 million to over $7.3 billion in FY 2024 (Figure 1). Even when adjusted for inflation, that is an increase of over 765 percent.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/the-cost-of-immigration-enforcement-and-border-security
The problem isn't money, it's policy. Remain In Mexico, which was rescinded under Biden, made a big difference. Releasing people caught along the border *inside the US* while they wait for their asylum hearing is asinine and everyone knows it. EDIT: and the rules for applying for asylum are also nuts, clearly being abused to get people through checkpoints. No amount of money is going to fix that, since these people are being caught by border patrol.
DACA is another example - these are people who do not qualify for legal status under existing laws, but were exempted by executive action. That's a clear defection and Obama was very clear about that at the time - he pleaded with Congress to pass his preferred legislation and when that didn't happen he put much of it into effect anyway. That's not a good faith attempt at fixing the border situation, that's signaling an intention to end-run around the laws.
Who was advocating for illegal immigration? (which as you correctly point out is determined by an arbitrarily drawn line in the sand).
I believe the top comment of this thread is implicitly arguing for illegal immigrantion.
Please don't put opinions in my mouth. I just found it amusing that Texas home builders (Texas, mind you!) are worried about a shortage of undocumented workers. Irony abounds!
Personally, I believe we need (a) to secure our borders, but (b) we should have a system in place to legally normalize (and track) low-skill immigrant workers (guest workers). Whether those coming in under that system could earn permanent residency and citizenship is another question.
I don't think it's *completely* arbitrary. The difference between legal and illegal is ideally the difference between someone given permission to reside, vote, make use of state services, etc. in return for being checked for "has a contagious deadly disease", "plans to hijack a plane and fly it into a building", "plans to shoot a US official", "plans to scout our infrastructure and report weaknesses to his home country", "is just here for the free bennies", or even "wants to do good here but is so used to a graft-and-bribe economy that he'll drag our system down unless he gets a walkthrough".
Now, exactly how we check for those things involves a list of methods with tradeoffs in expense and accuracy and infringements on civil rights or dignity, and the line between methods used and not *is* arbitrary - but the thing driving those methods is still real enough.
Do you really not know or are you just saying that?
Put another way: would you accept a Gulf or Japan-style guest worker program? Say: You can come, work (potentially under the minimum wage, but better than Bangladesh), and live with the full rights of US law - except: you can't vote, your kids (if you birth them here) aren't citizens, and you have to go back after five years.
I'd take that deal! Would most people who want migrants say the same? I suspect not - the migrant debate *is not about economics* - for either side.
The "your kids aren't citizens" part would require a Constitutional amendment, something we are no longer able to do in the US. So it seems to make that "deal" a nonstarter.
Looks like we'll continue to have labor shortages then. Alas.
(Also it wouldn't, the Supreme Court could just declare immigrants under that visa don't count.)
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The current SCOTUS majority has contradicted some things that are implied in the Constitution, and/or which previous Supreme Courts had concluded reflect the intentions/purposes of various parts of the Constitution. And I’ve no doubt that they will do so again on multiple subjects.
However they have not tried to reverse anything that is plainly and specifically directed by Constitutional text. The above quotation is about as plain and direct as it gets.
It's not entirely plain and simple. I forget where I read this, but "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was not previously universally understood to imply universal birthright citizenship. (As the child of foreign nationals they're "not subject to the jurisdiction thereof").
Now, is that a totally obvious reading? Not at all, but this is law, not software. It's just words on paper interpreted by people. If you can get Roe from the 14th Amendment, or Wickard from the 10th, this doesn't seem like *that* much of a stretch.
If you get all the illegals out of Texas then you probably free up at least a million houses, no need to build any more for a little while.
Probably more like 500,000 units but it would depend on density. The properties are unlikely to be desirable either way.
With white collar jobs being outsourced abroad(both F100 companies I have worked at are succesfully working towards a 80/20 India, US workforce split), native-born Americans might have to start doing the dirty jobs.
Prime age labor force participation is at its highest rates since 2001. Who are these Americans loosing their jobs to outsourcing and not being able to get new ones?
> Cutting off the supply of undocumented workers, then, would be like cutting off the supply of concrete and lumber.
Solution is a H1B visa type for construction workers, not blanket immigration
I mean, I work with a few former tradies that became techies. Why not, the job's easier and pays more. Maybe pay would help with the market imbalance?
Here in Britain a good plumber or other trade would exceed in pay most graduate jobs, including tech which rarely has the outsize wages that exist in the US.
What would we do without more sprawl?
We've run that experiment in blue states. The answer is unaffordable housing and people moving away.
Is that a bad thing? The "people moving away" will need to move somewhere -- encourage them to move to the cities in the 100K-1M range that would benefit from adding more people.
Once a city reaches three million it should be bonsaied to prevent any further growth. We can make an exception for a handful of global-importance megacities, but there's no reason why 3+ million people should be living in, say, Phoenix or San Antonio.
"Once a city reaches three million it should be bonsaied to prevent any further growth."
Why? What's the benefit?
Things like average income, per-capita GDP in a city, and patents scale superlinearly with population, though. There are actually incremental benefits to cramming more people into the same area.
This is from Geoffrey West's book Scale. He began by looking at organisms, circulatory branching, and other things and kept finding nice upward sloping graphs with log y-axes and whatever metric of interest:
https://imgur.com/a/SGlIBVC
I guess that’s why all on this blog are scrambling to get a foothold in Mexico City, or Lagos.
What's wrong with Mexico City? It's got more culture (museums, galleries, concert venues) than any US city except New York. Good facilities. Good food. I considered retiring there, but an influx of like-minded Gringos has driven up rental prices there (or at least that's the local explanation I heard for the rise of the cost of living in Mexico D.F.). I heard lots of grousing about us northerners moving in. "Please don't move here," one restauranteur said to me. "We love your tourist dollars, but you estadounidenses are distorting the housing market!"
Telling you had to use third world countries as examples.
I wish I had a time machine so that I could take you guys back and you would find that your exact clones 30 years ago, were very interested in preventing a wasteland of sprawl and all its attendant problems.
Why y’all have never thought about it, is interesting in itself. The topic was shut down. Curiously we had the financial meltdown about 10 years later owing to mortgage derivatives and the idea that home building *was* the American economy, and also that everyone should own a little house that would ultimately appreciate less well than a Ford truck. The people who made these foolish decisions were mostly made whole to go out and do it all over again.
There’s always park benches. Can’t replace them with the hostile ones if there’s no work crews. *taps nose*
I am a freshman in college. I want to do as much as possible to advance animal welfare. What’s the best way to do this?
I was not discarding the thesis. I internalized it and have been thinking about and appreciate what they said. I assumed the many questions they asked were rhetorical and for me to think about. What you said about trophy hunting is very interesting and I will look into it. I am not sure why you were so hostile in your response. You also projected quite a lot onto me that turns out is not true.
I know this is far from the maximal impact, but you could consider working to improve lives of small farmers. This would increase numbers of farmed animals that are not confined to factories but get to roam on the grass and enjoy the sun (and hopefully, in the end, decrease the numbers of the ones who don't get to live like that).
It's probably a good idea to try to get a mentor who can give you advice. Probably best to just mail impressive EAs working on animal welfare until one says they can have a videocall with you or similar. And then try to stay in contact with that person, telling them your current plans, considerations etc.
lab grown meat researcher/entrepreneur?
There's a lot to be said for the gratification of direct giving. I once had a cat with a heart condition, and discovered that Angell Animal Hospital (famous for doing advanced veterinary medicine) had an animal cardiologist on staff. He had expert knowledge about many different kinds of little animal hearts. During my visits, focused on my cat and his heart with remarkable intensity and kindness. Some vets there also volunteered once a week at a local pay-whatever-you-can clinic that gave shots and other routine care to pets of poor folks.
I just looked up veterinary cardiology salary, and in my area they make about $350K annually. If you wanted to devote some time to large-scale animal welfare work, seems like you might be able to work part time as a vet cardiologist, make half that salary, which is still a pretty good income, and devote the rest of your time to volunteer or low paid work on big animal welfare projects.
This depends heavily on your specific ethical framework.
Let me ask you a question. Who is the most influential animal rights activist of the past 50 years, based purely on actual, current reduced suffering to animals? You might have a few guesses. Peter Singer (the founder of the modern animal rights movement)? Ingrid Newkirk (the founder of PETA, one of the largest animal rights organizations)? Certainly as far as influence in academia, shifting public consciousness, visible activism, etc. they are heavyweights.
But as far as current results go? I'll make the case for Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is, essentially, a slaughterhouse consultant. She goes to meat processing plants and helps redesign them to be more humane, while not interfering in the business of killing animals itself. For example, reducing distractions that can stress out animals, non-slip ramps to reduce injuries during transport, and better restraint systems for cattle to reduce the rate of mishaps during stunning. Over half of all slaughterhouses in North America adopted her innovations. By actual, measurable results, Temple Grandin has likely done far more to improve the welfare of factory-farmed animals than any other human alive. More than PETA, more than Singer, more than any of the countless NGOs and nonprofits and advocacy groups that claim to be making a difference.
Understand that moral change is the single hardest kind of change to accomplish in practice. Philosophers, emperors, and prophets have tried and failed countless times throughout history to change the natural morals of mankind. If you commit to this path, you will be fighting an unwinnable battle. People like me will never be convinced to stop eating meat. Factory farm managers won't read your books or academic papers or listen to your speeches no matter how convincing they might be.
Average people, or politicians, might be open to changing their mind if you're really good, a good lawyer or politician might be able to get some nice laws passed...but don't mistake animal rights laws being passed for less overall suffering. Many times laws have detrimental effects on actual overall animal suffering. The EU ban on fur trapping led to fur farming, which is far worse than killing minks in the wild. California Prop 12, which mandates larger cages for egg-laying hens, increased prices without reducing demand -- this raised egg prices nationwide and drove some producers to export or cut production entirely, which led to worse welfare outcomes globally by creating market gaps that are filled by regions with lower standards, and by pushing smaller producers out of the market altogether. The Swiss law prohibiting the boiling of lobsters alive led to many people freezing their lobsters to death instead, which is possibly more painful than being boiled.
Think about what you would consider progress. Are you a utilitarian? What kind? Define your ethical framework, then define success in as objective terms as possible (Singer is actually a very good example of this if you haven't read his books already). Tiny differences in your ethics can make the difference between a shrimp welfare activist, a slaughterhouse designer, and an eco-terrorist. Figure out your base principles before you evaluate a path forward -- all around you are traps designed to make you "feel" like you're making a difference.
My recommendation? Go into biology, study lab-grown meat. If you're smart enough and driven enough, you might discover the trick that really makes it practical and scalable.
(take this advice with a huge grain of salt! I confess that I am fundamentally your ideological enemy -- I shoot cute furry critters for sport, eagerly eat meat with every meal, and put near-zero weight on animal suffering beyond negative aesthetics and the social stigma of association)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. I very much appreciate it especially considering you do not share my goal. If you don’t mind me asking, why did you take the time write to help me in a mission that you think is wrong? Also, can you explain why you put near-zero weight (as opposed to more and also as opposed to 0) on animal suffering beyond negative aesthetics and the social stigma? Would love to hear your answer and thanks again.
The reason I wrote this comment is because I'm personally interested in the issue on a meta level. The fact that I have an unusually low sensitivity for issues like this has led to some misunderstandings in the past for me, so I spent a while examining and refining my views, and I am somewhat satisfied with the robustness of the conclusions I've come to and enjoy sharing my feelings on topics I am confident and learned about. More broadly, I've also seen a lot of people, not just in this topic but in other activist-centric topics, fall down ideological rabbit holes, get chewed up and spit out by machines that use and abuse their passions for profit or clout. I might glibly say "because I care about humans so much that I think a wasted life is more of a tragedy than all the animal suffering in the world".
As for me putting very low weight on animal suffering, I would guess my morals/ethics are based on a few factors. Whether by upbringing or culture or just plain genetics, in my heart of hearts, I just can't force myself to care about animals in the ways that others do. My faith (Catholicism) teaches that human souls are fundamentally a different quality than animal souls, and gives strong philosophical justifications from first principles for this view through centuries of tradition and writings. And finally, I can't help but ruefully acknowledge that some level of callousness towards animals is convenient for my own lifestyle and hobbies.
The reason why I don't put zero weight on it is because I think there is a case to be made for being kind to animals by looking at Aristotle's "Virtue ethics". Treating animals with compassion fosters virtues such as empathy and kindness, which are essential for good moral character. By practicing cruelty wantonly, one risks degrading their moral integrity, which may harm how they treat other humans as well.
Very interesting. Thanks for explaining and for the advice!
I would focus on the central thesis of @GlacierCow's comment to you, and not (it appears) attempt to subtly discard the inconvenience of that thesis by questioning their motive for writing it.
Because I agree with their assessment that Temple Grandin likely produced far more effective *results* for overall animal welfare than any hard-line animal rights group, just as I agree that many very kindly intended welfare laws can have terrible unintended consequences (the animal welfare rules Cow cited, but also American rent control, etc).
I'll be even more blunt than GlacierCow was.
What's more important to you: Producing measurable, meaningful results for the welfare of animals, or maintaining your righteous ideological purity?
You'll need to think about that if you want to be effective.
Big game hunting brings in far more resources for habitat and animal conservation than simply asking or demanding people care about animals. Sorry, it just does. *It just does.* You can feel revulsion at the idea of trophy hunting, but you can't deny that it pays the habitat and conservation bills. For-profit trophy hunting in Texas has created the largest population of endangered animals in the world, including thriving populations of species which went extinct in the wild: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSvCIOhuxuc . For-profit trophy hunting in Africa is much the same. Places which allow elephant trophy hunting have more elephants (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisdorsey/2024/05/08/recent-us-fish--wildlife-service-ruling-sparks-new-debate-over-elephant-hunting/).
You can think trophy hunting is gross and cruel and monstrous and you would never, ever do it, but sorry, the numbers say it's a good thing for animals in general. That's just the reality of it - trophy hunting creates meaningful incentives and ideology does not.
Do not go into animal welfare if you can't accept these kinds of numbers.
Two paths: become very rich and use your money or become very good at specific fields that have an outsized impact on animal welfare. Either path will depend a lot on your personal aptitudes and tolerance for different kinds of work.
For the non-wealth path, here are some potential suggestions: become a lawyer and fight hard for legal rights for animals, this can have far greater returns than the equivalent amount of money
Become a geneticist and invent livestock that doesn't feel pain
Become a veterinary pharmacologist and invent better treatments for animal diseases
Become a food scientist and invent actually tasty meat substitutes
I'd take a look at (maybe bookmark and re-check every few months) the 80K page on animal welfare jobs, look at the required experience, and optimize your college years to get the experience to land one of those jobs when you graduate.
Also, enjoy college - step #1 for an impactful career is to not work so hard that you burn out, a too-common EA failure mode.
(https://jobs.80000hours.org/?refinementList%5Btags_area%5D%5B0%5D=Animal%20welfare&jobPk=13070&source=email&utm_source=80%2C000%20Hours%20mailing%20list&utm_campaign=66ae824098-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_09_16_10_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-66ae824098-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D)
How about pre-vet and then veterinary school? But I suspect that's not the type of animal welfare you're interested in. ;-)
For USAians and interested parties: are you worried about political violence around the election, vote count, and inauguration?
It feels to me like many people are checked out, but some people are getting angrier and angrier.
Not really an answer to your question, but I think that the _funniest_ election outcome would be if Trump wins in the Electoral College ... and incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, in her role as Vice President, were to refuse to certify the election results.
Yes I would watch a movie about this, everyone would go insane!
Agreed, Many Thanks!
Yes, although I have a different take: I suspect there will be major attacks (possibly on infrastructure like the power grid or water) by foreign entities shortly before or during the elections in order to cause maximum possible chaos. Such acts will almost certainly initially be attributed to domestic actors, which will only exacerbate the chaos.
I really, *really* hope I'm wrong.
I think this possibility unlikely, as the real actors behind it would get found out in the long run (meaning days to months, not years) and would potentially plunge such actors into a war like we had with Iraq and Afghanistan. This would happen whether either candidate wins, one would think.
Depends on who the actors are, though, doesn't it? I didn't identify a particular actor for a reason; I think there are a few who would hugely benefit from a US in political chaos - especially if the actor remains ambiguous enough for Team Red and Team Blue to point fingers at one another for a while, if not indefinitely. Maybe the truth only comes out after several years, or decades, or never.
I don't necessarily think "major" attacks will be super-flashy bombs or planes flying into buildings; it might just be the lights going out for several days / weeks, which would be pretty goddamned bad. The US has a few truly stunning vulnerabilities and much of the public's trust in both the news media and government is pretty low at the moment. Shut off the power over the election and I think there's major, major chaos, and maybe in that chaos the real culprits are never discovered.
Given that both sides broadly accuse each other of ever-grander lies, I'm not even sure how, in this scenario, the truth can come out in a way that's credible to basically everyone.
Exactly.
Probably yes. If trump loses there will be some amount of stochastic terrorism but he won't be in a position to attempt an idiot coup this time. It will be white trash and delusional dealership owners spasmodically venting their spleens for no reason and then getting a slap on the wrist.
If trump wins (or looses!) there will be more assassination attempts on him from people who might appear to be conservative, but actually are simply disconnected from reality and spiralling off into delusion land on account of 95% of the conspiracy sphere being hard right for some reason.
The liberals will of course do nothing because to be a liberal is to worship the process like a god, the leftists will wail and gnash their teeth but will also do nothing because they are either A: so afraid of conflict they can't order a pizza or
B: obsessively read whatever their favorite 19th century pamphlet about it is and know that it's pointless to try to pick a fight you know you will loose . Some of them want trump to win in an accelerationist way. Giving the hard right cons everything they want is the best way to destroy the state, and they think that when the right swing to conservatism and libertarianism inevitably destroy the comfortable world the proles and burgers have come to expect, they will swing left.
Am I worried about it? Not personally. I have safe money now, I can leave the country if it truly becomes civil war 2, and I am as close to the imperial core as anyone can possibly be. If it truly goes to shit, I will have plenty of time to hit da bricks.
My main worry is that trump is stupid and appoints stupid people to do things that are important to eg. not getting incinerated in a nuclear fireball or similar such things. If he was a bloodless technocrat I'd feel better, but alas.
Largely agree with this comment.
I'd amend your opening paragraph somewhat to note that there are some groups lined up to file better-drafted LOLsuits this time in various state/federal courts. Also we now do have a couple of real-life examples of Trump-appointed federal judges who are pretty bluntly issuing nutty rulings in service of his perceived preferences. Only a couple though and they are getting smacked down by the appellate courts so, maybe no practical difference in the end.
Regarding your point B, I know a lot of full-bore leftists pretty well and the accelerationist thing isn't present this time around. Was in 2016, also though a bit less in 2020. I don't hear even a bit of it this time.
Your closing paragraph is a very real concern, regardless of how the MAGA worldview lines up with/against one's political/cultural preferences. As Hanania and others have been laying out pretty convincingly MAGA does have a real talent-pool problem. And there are a plenty of very worrying incompetence scenarios well short of any nuclear fireballs.
A new wrinkle now is Trump's obvious incipient dementia. From multiple family experiences I've learned that once the incipient stage is reached there isn't any preventing the slide to full-on dementia; the pace of that slide varies widely among individuals; and there's no particular way to predict that pace in advance nor to medically control it to any meaningful degree. (Not yet anyway, though a lot of medical researchers are working hard on this front.) A person can stay in the incipient stage for years, or slide within months all the way to not knowing the names of his/her own children. No way in advance to know which. We've never had the latter scenario in the Oval Office before (Biden has had the good luck of a slow-burn incipient stage, and he wasn't as far along as of 2020 as Trump is today). So it's a helluva new dice roll that we're all on the verge of now.
Worried about it as in worried that it will happen, period? Yes.
Worried about it as in it happening in a scale/way that affects me? No, same way I feel about most violence in America.
No, I'm not worried. Even the notorious January 6th riot was a drop in the bucket compared to the three months of rioting the country faced earlier that summer. The election isn't that special, violence is a year-round holiday.
No. The left has a lot of panicky overheated rhetoric just like they did last time, but the right won't do anything very violent just like they didn't last time.
No. If Trump wins there will likely be some obnoxious sore-loser protests, but those are only relevant for people living in big city downtowns. I think Iran-backed terrorism/assassination attempts might occur, but that's the worst I would imagine. If Harris wins I expect Trump to contest the results but I don't see a J6 2 happening.
Also, not to harp too much on language because it's just language and I hate when other people try to control which words I should or shouldn't use, but Americans almost always call ourselves (and expect to be called by others) "Americans". "USAian" near the bottom of the list of English-language names for Americans and some Americans would even consider it slightly insulting. I know the reason is disambiguation but in English the term "American" is not used to refer to "residents of North and South America" like it is in some other languages, and there's only one country with the word "America" in its name.
I, too, am North American!
It’s a habit left over from other online forums.
Considering that Trump has already been the subject of multiple assassination attempts, and that his supporters rioted in the capital last time he lost, you'd be silly not to expect the possibility of post-election violence, regardless of its result.
That said I don't expect significant violence - if I were an election official I'd certainly want police presence at the various steps you're pointing out, but I'd want that as a standard practice in any election. I'd probably boost that presence as a matter of prudence, but not from a place of fear, if that makes any sense as an emotional barometer.
In 2020 Democrat strongholds boarded up in the event that Trump would win. I'm not in a Democrat stronghold, so that was of little concern to me personally.
I think if Trump wins the Democrats will go off the rails again, J6 rhetoric or not.
I think that there will be isolated issues in individual polling places or counting locations. I could definitely see such issues in places that were identified last year (Atlanta, Maricopa County) as sources for fraud. I do not expect widespread polling issues.
Well, given that we've had two to three assassination attempts around Trump, ordinarily I'd say "no" but this time? maybe some idiot will try shooting up a polling station.
But generally I imagine nothing worse than the usual protests, media talking heads going on about how X or Y is the greatest threat to the nation since Hitler, and social media meltdowns from all over the spectrum.
No, I’m not worried, but mainly because I’m pretty checked out. The state
of the country and the political situation are a vile mess that I can’t do a thing about. It seems to me that the main way this situation harms educated professionals is that they read lots of infuriating stuff about it, and get into intense arguments on the subject. I just skip doing all that stuff.
I was going to say something similar. I'd be upset if bad things happened to people I care about, or even to people I don't actively dislike. But I'm not actually *worrying* about it.
Silly me. I thought it was Columbus Day.
Then I turned on the TV and saw that it wasn't Columbus Day at all; it was Indigenous Peoples' Day. Holy shit. I missed the pageant where we hang Columbus in effigy, burn the corpse, and place the burning stump in a cage at the entrance to the harbor, like Captain Kidd.
Wait. I apologize. I forgot the White People Disclaimer.
Before we get started, I want to pay homage (if not tribute; these aren't Modocs are they?) to Mexicans, who liberated this land from the Spanish, who stole it from the Apache who stole it from the Tohono O'odam who stole it from the Hohokam, those dirty dogs, who cheated the Paleoindians in a card game.
Anyway, we're sorry, but lawyers got the title. How good is that facial recognition software? Will the Thought Police be able to look at a shot of the crowd and tell I wasn't there? I already got my federal ID and QR code tattoo. I'd hate to have my credit rating nicked just because I missed a patriotic Columbus hanging.
I've always been a bit confused why Columbus Day didn't shift towards being a general Hispanic celebration, given that he and his Spanish mission was the starting point of the Hispanic colonisation of the Americas. Columbus himself was probably Italian but he commanded an almost entirely Spanish crew of Spanish ships and claimed the land for Spain.
Columbus Day morphing into Hispanic Day might have been a good compromise between the right and the left for this particular holiday. I could imagine ways that such a day could be appealing to both sides. But... the ship has sailed on that. The clear implication of Columbus Day being *directly* replaced by Indigenous Peoples' Day is that Columbus discovering America was a bad thing actually, because of what it did to... Indigenous People. If we had separate days for Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day, then this implication wouldn't be the same, but as is, it's like if July 4th became Monarchy Day or if February 14th became "Single and Proud" Day. *Everybody* knows what's going on here, whether they agree with it or not.
There use to be a statue of Christopher Columbus in Buffalo NY. It was removed in 2020.
I just refer to it as National Holiday Deconstruction Day these days.
It's all about political pull. The Nordic Americans never had the voting clout to implement a Lief Erikson Day except in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1937, but the arguments for it were more about making up for the mistreatment of Catholic Americans (which had become a powerful voting block) and Italian immigrants who experienced widespread discrimination in the late 19th century (and peeps of Italian descent becoming a powerful voting block in urban areas).
Native Americans with their new-found wealth from casinos are organized gambling are making their political feelings known, and of course, politicians are listening to them. The political influence of the scandal-ridden Catholic Church and Italian Americans (who no longer remember the old country) is fading.
Just a heads-up: People have recently been banned for comments that were less bad than this one.
This doesn't seem like a bad comment to me. It's actually not hateful against anyone, but satirical about the reversal taking place. As an American, I personally think Columbus should in fact be honored for what he did, wrong though he was about so much. I wouldn't be in the country I am if not for Columbus.
Sure, native Americans can be celebrated, too, but how universal is that? Celebrate your own, but don't insist everyone else celebrates you and yours.
This is the cheapest of cheap satire. Woke people are the Thought Police from 1984, woke people are the social credit system from Communist China, woke people hate white people, woke people are so extreme that the only thing we're allowed to talk about is how famous white people in history were evil, land acknowledgements are dumb. Get some new material, this is barely above Godwin-tier.
If this is acceptable satire, I should be allowed to post about how all Republicans are NASCAR-loving rednecks who want to shoot black people and bomb Mexico, that's about the level of humor OP is operating on.
Let me clarify: I thought the comment wasn't close to initiating a ban. I agree it wasn't the highest quality satire, but you're basically correct in its quality assessment. But I don't think it violates posting guidelines.
...I mean, no-one's stopping you celebrating Columbus personally. So long as you're not insisting everyone else celebrates you and yours, go right ahead.
So...the same for MLK day, President's day, and Independence day?
Columbus impacted every American in a way no single native American has. I would argue that even native Americans in general had less impact, as, supposing no people were there when Columbus and crew arrived, and they somehow survived anyway, Europe would have settled the empty territory anyway.
I'll draw your attention to Virginia's sadly defunct experiment with "Lee-Jackson-King Day"...
Tisquantum had a more immediate impact on the future colonization of North America than Columbus did. He saw the Pilgrims as useful pawns in his plan to get vengeance against Massasoit. Without his assistance, the Pilgrims would very likely have starved that first year, and Tisquantum's fluency in English and Wampanoag allowed them to communicate with Massasoit—and because neither side was fluent in the others' language he was able to play both sides in a direction he wanted. Massasoit eventually caught on and likely had him poisoned.
He certainly had a great impact on the Boston colony, which in turn had a great impact on the US. But Plymouth wasn't the only colony in the New World, and had it ended up failing, Europe would still have colonized both Americas. It just would have taken longer for the northern parts.
I hadn't known of this individual until you mentioned it, but I read up some on him. Significant reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto
Many individuals impacted the country in large and small ways. It is hard to find someone more fundamental than Columbus, though some Founding Fathers might also qualify. For example, do you think Tisquantum was more influential than Benjamin Franklin, who does NOT have a holiday named after him?
Some - many! - demonstrably - disagree.
...I have no stake in this specific fight. All I'm saying is - make everyone celebrate Columbus Day, or "don't insist everyone else celebrates you and yours": desire to celebrate Columbus Day is clearly not universal, so you're going to have to pick one of those two positions and surrender the other.
Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day are not actually distinct entities. No one celebrates Indigenous People’s Day any more than Columbus Day. It was a civic custom to note Columbus on Columbus Day but I think “celebrate” is a bit much, unless with a parade if you were Italian or with a mention of Columbus at school, or if a federal worker, with a day off.
So given who or what is celebrated, it really should be called Academia Day, or Harvard Day, etc.
What the argument is really about is whether the desire to have our holidays and familiar touchstones reversed - made shameful, turned into cudgels, used to scold - is limitless. I doubt that would be shown true if so polled (lol). It’s true that new people coming to America will hardly care about these things, and assimilation will be made slightly easier if there is nothing to assimilate to.
Of course, Columbus had nothing whatsoever to do with the Indians of North America so this exercise just makes everyone a little dumber.
I’d like to think that the defeated parties in the Indian Wars would scorn this hollow and cringey act of contrition but who knows? I understand now that to associate some of the tribes with “dignity” is a retro and racist notion.
I am arguing that the desire to celebrate Columbus day ought to be as universal, for Americans, as to celebrate Independence day. If you are insisting that some people would refuse to celebrate one or the other should mean that neither one is a national holiday, then I disagree with that position.
It gets better, Cosimo!
Columbus wasn't Italian, but probably Spanish and Jewish (they seem to be claiming he was or might have been a converso):
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg2049ezpko
Now, this makes it tricky. You can still burn Columbus in effigy for being a genocidal coloniser if he's Spanish; indeed, that makes him double-plus-ungood instead of just Italian and ungood for genocidal colonisation.
But! If he's *also* Jewish who hid his background due to persecution, then he is himself a persecuted minority and it would be anti-Semitism to burn him in effigy.
Decisions, decisions: are Jews white (or rather, White) in this one particular instance?
They should declare him a secret lesbian. He'd be bulletproof.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-10-13/armed-militia-hurricane-helene-15497437.html
Armed militias threaten to hunt FEMA employees in North Carolina, cause withdrawal of same. I bet Real Raw News has this covered!
In the same article:
>While the initial report said there was “a truckload of militia that was involved,” the statement said, authorities said that they concluded “it was determined that Parsons acted alone and there was no truck loads of militia going to Lake Lure.”
Don't ever let facts get in the way of a good story.
I recently had a back and forth with Bentham's Bulldog about morality. I think his arguments were bad, which is why he stopped engaging before getting to the root of our disagreement but I will let you be the judge by posting it here. It started as a response to a short story posted about a tiger who encounters an ape, and the latter tries to convince the skeptical tiger not to attack him. You should read that first.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-149819792
Bentham(BB): How in the world is this supposed to be convincing? The fact that you couldn’t convince everyone of your moral views tells us nothing about whether morality is objective, just as the fact that you couldn’t convince everyone of you scientific views or religious views tells us whether they’re objectively true.
Brandon Fishback(BF):If you base the objective truth of morality on common intuitions, it matter if the other guy doesn’t share your intuitions.
Marlon(another commenter, M):Could you please clarify what you mean by "basis"? The validity of objective morality is not dependent on intuitions. While intuitions serve as a means of perceiving their truth value, they do not determine their inherent truth. This concept is analogous to our understanding of the laws of logic. We recognize their veracity through our intuitions, yet their truth exists independently of our perceptions. It is crucial to distinguish between moral epistemology, which pertains to the methods of knowing morality, and moral ontology, which explores the nature of what makes morality true. Intuitions facilitate our comprehension of morality (epistemology), but they do not define its inherent truth (ontology).
BF:Bentham is making his epistemological claim on that basis of intuition. Yes, it “exists” out there independent of what we think, but he claims to know that from our intuitions. We “know” that it exists because we all apparently share a common intuition that morality is a real thing and not just an opinion. And that is where you he gets the presumption that morality exists and anyone who disagrees has to prove it wrong.
M:Certainly, moral realism holds true for an ethical intuitionist unless compelling arguments challenge its validity. Should the tiger lack the moral realist's perspective, it should be presented with the robust arguments against antirealist positions. There is no reason to prioritize its intuitions, as moral antirealist metaethical stances are untenable.
BF:“Untenable”? The tiger is making perfectly logical arguments about why his lifestyle is consistent with his own intuitions and goals.
Bentham again:This is like saying that I can’t be justified in thinking I have a table in front of me on the basis of seeing it because we could imagine a blind person who can’t see tables. Sure, if a person doesn’t have the intuition then they might not be convinced, but that doesn’t tell us if those of us who do have the intuition that, say, torturing babies is wrong and this fact doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks, are justified.
Do you believe in the law of non-contradiction? Can we not imagine a hypothetical lion who doesn’t accept it or find it intuitive. Of course! This tells us nothing important!
BF:The blind person agrees that there is a physical world out there because he keeps stumbling in to stuff. It would clearly help him achieve his goals if he could see. In contrast, the ape is telling the tiger that there are non physical things out there that if followed, would make his life worse. Do you think the tiger is being irrational by not listening to the ape?
BB:It would depend on the Tiger’s intuitions and background beliefs. I think believing the Earth is more than 5 minutes old is rational, even though doing so is not something you can verify by the senses, nor is it beneficial to the achievement of my goals.
BF:Why should the tiger think that moral intuitions of the ape are more valid than his own intuitions? You’re just going off the unjustified assumption that his intuition is faulty but he has no reason to believe that. His reasoning is perfectly logical and the ape is the one making a bad argument.
BB:Well that’s why I said it would depend on various bits of background such as whether the view is fringe, whether there are plausible evolutionary debunking accounts (there are), and whether it really seems that way to the tiger after reflection.
BF:There is no “fringe”. Based off the story, it’s just the tiger and the lion. The tiger gave perfectly valid reasons for his beliefs and there’s no reason to think he would change his mind after reflection. The lion didn’t give him a compelling reason to do so.
BB:Well then perhaps the tiger is justified in his beliefs (unclear given the debunking story) but one can be justified and wrong.
BF:But why should the tiger think he is wrong? What logical error is he making?
BB:Well I don’t know if the tiger should think he is wrong. Is the tiger rational? If so, then I think the tiger would be able to carefully reflect and see the error of his ways. If after doing that, he doesn’t think he’s wrong, then perhaps he’s not being irrational (except insofar as he has defective intuitions). But people can be rational and wrong.
BF:On what basis would the tiger change his mind after reflection? Again, what is the logical error he is making?
And that's where the conversation ended. Moral Intuitionism is supposed to be a respectable position in meta ethics, but he can't even answer the most obvious objection.
Absolute majority of philosophical questions about realism/antirealism objectivism/subjectivism are hopelessly confused because they were formulated long before humans understood epistemology in terms of map-territory relations.
If you want to deconfuse morality, in what sense it's "real" and in what sense it's not, I'd recommend you start here: https://www.lesswrong.com/sequences/W2fkmatEzyrmbbrDt
I can't be bothered to read the frame story, because in the real physical world we all currently inhabit, tigers are carnivores who need to hunt and kill and eat meat to survive, so from that point of view the tiger is justified as it wants to live. The ape also wants to live, so trying to persuade the tiger not to eat it is also justified. It's six of one and half a dozen of the other, and we should wait until the ape's descendants become us and now we're the ones hunting tigers, and not even for food. Are we justified in doing that? Is it vengeance for all our ape forebears eaten by tigers?
"Don't kill" is the moral intuition here, but we have no problem holding that as a principle and also "except if it's to get your dinner".
Something in the frame story is that the tiger actively enjoys others' suffering. Can one show that that mindset is objectively morally wrong?
If tigers are humans in furry coats (ditto the apes) then yes. Otherwise, even if the tiger is a sadist, it still needs to eat meat to live. "If I have to do this, I may as well enjoy it" is a position many people hold about tasks they must perform. Is it morally wrong for them?
I don't think we can hold tigers to the same standard as people. However, for a person, they ought not cause needless suffering or more suffering than is necessary for what they need to achieve. Killing prey so that it is maximally painful and long drawn out would be inefficient for a hunting animal, as you always run the risk of letting the prey escape that way.
Do you think that it is possible for there to be objective moral laws without a god? For example, chaos theory was developed when a meteorologist developed a toy model of the world with his own laws physics, and then he found that he couldn't perfectly predict the weather even when he knew all of the laws. What would a comparable toy model look like for objective moral laws? I've asked a few people this and no one seems to have a good answer. It does seem like it presupposes that there will be intelligent creatures who are smart enough to understand the laws. With the laws of physics created by the meteorologist, it had clear impacts on the toy world. What confuses me about the question is that I'm not clear what moral laws would do in an analogous toy world without a god to police those laws?
House cats are known to "play with their food". They obviously enjoy it. One must conclude (at least many) house cats are evil.
...unless it isn't objectively morally wrong. So what IS objectively wrong here? If a cat enjoys torturing the mice it catches, is not depriving the cat of that joy a bad thing (to the cat)?
It seems to me that ethics are relative. A psychopath who enjoys killing other people is wrong to do so, because incarceration and/or death is likely, and that consideration outweighs the pleasure to be obtained through the killing, which is a rational decision.
Cats are evil. Tolkien agrees with me 😁
"219 From a letter to Allen & Unwin 14 October 1959
[A Cambridge cat breeder had asked if she could register a litter of Siamese kittens under names taken from The Lord of the Rings.]
My only comment is that of Puck upon mortals. I fear that to me Siamese cats belong to the fauna of Mordor, but you need not tell the cat breeder that."
Though the very early version of the story of Beren and Luthien, where the villain is Tevildo prince of cats, is funny for the Elvish cat names:
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Tevildo
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Miaul%C3%AB
Cats may play with their prey, but I think part of that is learning/practicing hunting techniques. However, cats too are carnivores who need to hunt and kill in order to survive. Human psychopaths don't need to kill other humans for food, so the infliction of pain and suffering there is superfluous and purely for the sake of it. It's much more wrong for a human being to act like that then it is for a cat.
Though most people accept that, is it truly fundamentally wrong? People have accepted it as a postulate which doesn't need proof, but this isn't necessarily true. We only FEEL it is true. So it is possible it can be dis-proven, or an alternative put forth which is contradictory and yet true.
And cats play with food that they don't necessarily end up eating. As such, it seems likely they would be appropriate pets for orcs, though it's odd to think of orcs having pet kitties.
Since you're inviting me to be the judge, you are on the losing end of this exchange on the merits, for more or less the reasons ascend mentions, and the spirit in which you're posting it ("he can't even answer the most obvious objection") makes you come off even worse.
If all you can say is that I look bad but you can't even come up with your own reasons why, then you are wasting my time.
Well isn't this ironic; the guy arguing against objective morality claiming that we're wasting his time, as if that's an objectively wrong thing for us to be doing. Your time is not my time, why shouldn't I waste it?
The argument here seems very confused. It could benefit from some more clarity.
The following are all distinct claims (some subsets of others):
A1: There are moral facts (Success Theory)
A2: There are objective moral facts (Moral Realism)
A3: Some rational agents can know that there are objective moral facts (Moral Non-Skepticism)
A4: All agents can (by being sufficiently rational) know that there are objective moral facts
A5: Some agents can know *what these moral facts are*
A6: All agents can know what these moral facts are (Realist Optimism)
These names may be used differently by different people.
It seems like you're arguing that A6 is false: not everyone can be persuaded of the truth of any particular set of moral facts. Wheras BB is arguing at least three things: most minimally that A2 is true (regardless of the truth of A3-A6), more controversially that A3 is true, and even more controversially that A5 is true. Possibly he also thinks A4 and A6 may be true, though I don't see him arguing for those here.
In other words, he's saying: even if you can't prove the correct moral (normative) positions to *everyone* (A6) doesn't mean you can't prove them to anyone (A5). AND even if you can't prove the correct positions to anyone, doesn't meam you can't prove that there are in fact correct positions (A3) without being sure what they are. AND even if you can't do that, doesn't mean those moral facts don't actually exist (A2).
There's also the additional issue that even while arguing just about the truth of A2, (or alternatively just about its provability, whether A3 or A4) you're arguing that intuitions alone don't prove it, while he and M are arguing that even if you're right, other arguments not from intuition (e.g. from the reality of moral disagreememt, or from the incoherence of alternative non-A2 forms of A1--various forms of relativism) may well prove it nonetheless, which you haven't refuted.
So it seems to me you haven't addressed his arguments, though he hasn't explained those arguments perfectly (but doing so may require thousands of words).
This is a good post. Categorization always carries the possibility that the categorizer is making the categories in a way to lead to a preferred conclusion or accidentally ignoring complexity, but reducing confusion in a discussion shot through with different assumptions / precepts / etc. is laudable.
Now perhaps I can help clear up the rest of these squabbles: A1 is false. Everyone is arguing about nothing.
The problem for me isn't whether the tiger can be persuaded to moral facts. It's that the ape hasn't proven any moral facts at all. In fact, he's not particularly persuasive. He tries to appeal to common intuitions even after the tiger tells him that he doesn't share those intuitions. Bentham says there is something wrong with the way that the tiger is reasoning, that he is suffering some kind of logical flaw. That if just reflected on it long enough, then he could see reason but I don't see it. If two beings are having a debate and they have fundamentally different intuitions on an issue, why privilege one of those intuitions, without resorting to some other shared intuition?
>There's also the additional issue that even while arguing just about the truth of A2, (or alternatively just about its provability, whether A3 or A4) you're arguing that intuitions alone don't prove it, while he and M are arguing that even if you're right, other arguments not from intuition (e.g. from the reality of moral disagreememt, or from the incoherence of alternative non-A2 forms of A1--various forms of relativism) may well prove it nonetheless, which you haven't refuted.
I haven't refuted it because that's not the argument I'm making. I actually think there are some good reasons to believe in objective morality, I just don't think that we can look at our intuitions as axiomatic and deduce universal truths.
I'm sure this is not the point, but the ape in that story is a bad arguer and a hypocrite. Tigers need meat to survive, so "live and let live" is simply impossible, one of the two is dying here. And then it argues that you should prioritize other people's happiness, while neglecting to apply it to itself.
It also makes no appeals to higher purposes. "If you spare me, I can help you to breed rats, and you'll have more meat in the long term." That's an argument worth considering; "this course you're taking will deny you long-term benefits."
In the larger argument, "objective morality" is a game of deduction; you find objective truth by proving the alternatives are false. To convince someone that might shouldn't make right, you need to beat them in a fight, and prove the philosophy is not providing the advantage they're claiming.
The trouble is that the ape is not arguing on the level of moral intuitions, but on a higher level of argumentation based on those intuitions. "Torturing the innocent is wrong" is not a moral intuition, but a moral conclusion that comes from a foundation of intuitions and trying to reason out the implications of those intuitions. "Pain is bad" is a moral intuition. "Life is better than death" is a moral intuition. "Suffering is worse than not suffering" is a moral intuition. From these intuitions we try to build theories of morality that make sense of them.
C. S. Lewis wrote about moral reasoning in his essay "Why I Am Not a Pacifist" (https://www.42rulesforlife.com/why-i-am-not-a-pacifist/), and had this to say specifically in regards to moral intuitions:
"These basic moral intuitions are the only element in Conscience which cannot be argued about; if there can be a difference of opinion which does not reveal one of the parties as a moral idiot, then it is not an intuition.
"They are the ultimate preferences of the will for love rather than hatred and happiness rather than misery. There are people so corrupted as to have lost even these, just as there are people who can’t see the simplest proof, but in the main these can be said to be the voice of humanity as such.
"And they are unarguable. But here the trouble begins. People are constantly claiming this unarguable and unanswerable status for moral judgments which are not really intuitions at all but remote consequences or particular applications of them, eminently open to discussion since the consequences may be illogically drawn or the application falsely made."
So the answer to the "most obvious objection" is that while almost all of us share the same moral "facts" (our intuitions), those facts can be fit into a wide variety of theories and models of morality. The facts we observe from looking at the stars can be fit into Ptolemy's geocentric model just fine, if you're willing to abide a few epicycles.
And just as in normal reasoning, we may be biased and corrupt in how we perform moral reasoning. So it isn't surprising that people come to different moral conclusions, even if we share the same moral intuitions. As Lewis writes:
"While the unarguable intuitions on which all depend are liable to be corrupted by passion when we are considering truth and falsehood, they are much more liable, they are almost certain to be corrupted when we are considering good and evil. For then we are concerned with some action to be here and now done or left undone by ourselves. And we should not be considering that action at all unless we had some wish either to do or not to do it, so that in this sphere we are bribed from the very beginning."
> "Pain is bad" is a moral intuition.
...and it is not one that should be left unchallenged. Congenital insensitivity to pain is extremely dangerous; it is highly unusual for people with this condition to survive past their twenties.
In general, arguments from intuition are suspicious: our intuitions can be, and frequently are, wrong; indeed, much of the history of human knowledge is about finding ways to reason that lead us to conclusions which are actually true and not merely intuitive; these are very different things, and intuitions are both insidious and compelling, which makes avoiding problems and dead ends very hard indeed.
Someone with congenital insensitivity to pain is essentially someone who lacks the intuition “pain is bad”: in their case, because they can’t experience pain.
It's unclear what you mean by pain is bad because both "pain" and "bad" have a spectrum of meanings* but pain is bad still seems like a terrible moral intuition.
Pain is a signal conveying important information. It helps prevent damage. It's useful for learning. Pain in the abstract is enormously valuable.
Do you mean that the experience of pain is bad in the sense of unpleasant for the one experiencing it? I guess that's true but how is it a moral intuition? Feeling bad is bad is tautologically true but morally meaningless. And if pain didn't feel bad it wouldn't serve its purpose.
* And let's not even get started on what the meaning of is is.
By "Pain is bad" I mean that when we feel pain, it means something bad is happening. On an abstract level "pain" is good, in that it identifies threats and damage to our body and all that. On the intuitive level the whole point of pain is that we recoil from it. If we didn't find pain bad, then pain wouldn't work.
Feeling bad is bad is not a tautology because we're using two different senses of the word "bad". Pain is "feeling bad", as in, it is an unpleasant sensation. That the unpleasant sensation tells us something true about reality, and that it is good to avoid pain and bad to do things that deliberately cause pain, is both valuable information and known intuitively. Like all our moral intuitions it has to be set against our other intuitions as well: sometimes we need to do painful things in order to seek a higher good, such as setting a broken bone. But if we don't intuitively understand that pain is bad, then we will not only harm our own bodies but are more likely to harm others. It's a foundation stone of moral reasoning. "Why shouldn't I torture a baby?" Well, there are a lot of reasons but if you don't understand that pain is bad then you're not really going to understand any of it.
Fair enough. I could quibble a bit still but I get your gist. You have to base your primitives on something (well, you don't _have_ to but it's considered a best practice) and instinctive reactions are as good as any.
As long as you aren't implying, and I don't think you are, that there's an intrinsic moral dimension to pain (or anything else), I can't disagree with whatever you choose as the basis for your rulebook system.
> "Pain is bad" is a moral intuition. "Life is better than death" is a moral intuition. "Suffering is worse than not suffering" is a moral intuition
...What? Those aren't even correct as universal intuitions. Pain can be pleasurable, there are plenty of fates worse than death, and suffering is preferable to feeling nothing at all. The point is that if we can't even agree on the absolute basics, how can you seriously argue that your morality is objectively correct?
In as much as pain is pleasurable, it is not pain. Things that are painful can also cause pleasure, which is not in dispute with the intuition "Pain is bad".
You are right though, "Life is better than death" is more properly a moral conclusion, not an intuition. It would be a conclusion following from a great many intuitions, such as "please is good", "beauty is good", "knowledge is good", etc, and then concluding that life is necessary for all those good things to exist, therefore life is better than death. But someone who finds that life is more evil than good would come to a different moral conclusion, while having the same moral intuitions.
Is it possible that the words "Pain" and "Suffering" don't actually have the same meaning when applied to myself and others? Words are just sounds or symbols after all, and not necessarily accurate maps of the phenomenal experience.
I think it's very possible to have a foundational intuition that "My-Pain is bad" and not "Other-Pain is bad". The experience I call "My-Pain" is a sharp, burning sensation, but "Other-Pain" is mostly a set of sounds and facial expressions.
The fact that we use the same word for both doesn't necessarily mean that they refer to a single phenomenon
Some people clearly enjoy (low-level?) pain in a sexual context. Perhaps it's a mixture of pleasure and pain, but it's not exactly pleasure alone.
Suffering, I think, has a stronger vibe to it than pain does. Suffering implicitly conveys a sense of "unwanted state of being". So "it's wrong to needlessly cause people to suffer" sounds intuitively correct to me while "it's wrong to needlessly cause people to feel pain" might be generally true but has clear exceptions for certain people in certain contexts.
You can certainly take the foundation intuition "Pain is bad" and craft a theory of morality where my own pain is bad, but the pain of others is not bad. The question is whether such a theory of morality can be "wrong" or not. Under intuitionism it is possible for a moral theory to be wrong (if it does not parsimoniously fit the moral facts we intuit), while in moral non-realism no theory of morality can be wrong.
I don't see why the primary zero-level intuition must be "Pain is bad" and not "My-Pain is bad".
If I understand you correctly, you're saying morality is a "core" of (indisputable) facts + a set of (possibly inconsistent) implications of those facts. "Pain is bad" is in the core, and "My-Pain is bad but Other-Pain is not bad" is an implication.
I think "My-Pain" and "Other-Pain" are distinct phenomena, and that the real primary intuition is "My-Pain is bad". The fact that traditionally the same word is used for both doesn't imply anything about which one is fundamentally involved in the intuition.
Imagine that it was universally accepted that the color of wavelength 500 nm light was the most beautiful color. It would be wrong to say that "Green is the most beautiful color" is a foundational aesthetic principle, because the word green actually refers to a set of things (only one of which applies here). Just because people use the word "Green" to refer to many things doesn't mean that the primary facts must correspond to conventional linguistic usages.
"Pain is bad" is intuitive, "my pain is bad" requires an understanding of the self as opposed to others, and then a decision that pain that applies to the self is different from pain that may apply to others. "Pain is bad" is an intuition, "Other people's pain is not bad" is a conclusion.
In your example, "Green is good" would be an intuition, "green is the most beautiful color" would be a conclusion based on that intuition.
In my example, "Green is good" would not be an intuition. "500-nm light is good" would be, but that would have no bearing on the statements "520-nm light is good" or "580-nm light is good" (which are both colors traditionally classified as green). The word "Green", although the most conventional way to phrase the statement does not perfectly map to the real experience of color. Just because we have a single word does not mean that there is a single experience or concept associated with the word.
I disagree that the statement "My-Pain is bad" is secondary and requires a more developed understanding of the world. I think you're observing that it's a more complicated linguistic construction (extra prefixes are involved) and concluding that it's describing a less primary experience.
Do you feel the same sensation when you break your arm and when I break my arm? There is no such thing as a "disembodied perspective", all observations are performed by a particular observer. I don't think the "non-subjective perspective" really exists at all
You’re doing the same thing Bentham is doing by just assuming the correctness of your intuition without justification. The tiger says he doesn’t share these intuitions. He enjoys causing others pain, and doesn’t see it as wrong. What logical mistake is he making?
"It is wrong to cause other people pain" is not a moral intuition, it's a bit of moral reasoning. The tiger most likely intuits that pain is worse than non pain, but he does not conclude from that intuition that he should avoid causing pain to others, though he likely concludes that he should avoid causing pain to himself. If the tiger loves any other creature (perhaps his cubs, or mate) then he will soon learn from experience the intuition that pain and suffering to loved ones is also bad. He also most likely intuits that other creatures similar to him, like the ape, also find pain and suffering bad. The ape takes these intuitions and decides that because all sentient creatures find pain and suffering bad, and because the pain of others can be pain to himself, then one should limit the amount of pain and suffering they cause to others. The tiger prefers his own pleasure in causing pain in others to preventing pain in others, so he does not follow the ape's moral reasoning, at least not past the tiger's own loved ones.
That one should extend their intuition about loved ones to all others (or, rather, that one should love all other sentient beings) is not intuitive, but something that has been discovered over time like a model of the solar system or a the theory of relativity. It is a real discovery: under the model, we should not enslave people, and when we emancipate the slaves we discover that things are better not only for the slaves, but for society as a whole, for example. We find that a society based on treating everyone as having equal moral worth is a more prosperous and happier society than the society where only kin-members have moral worth. That everyone has equal moral worth is not at all intuitive, but it is founded in intuitions just as our model of the solar system is founded in observations: and once you have the model, you can see if it holds up or not.
> We find that a society based on treating everyone as having equal moral worth is a more prosperous and happier society than the society where only kin-members have moral worth.
Suppose that optimal prosperity and happiness in the society is achieved not through belief of equal moral worth and universal love but through a subtly different one. Something like love inside the society, less love (but still non-zero) for those outside, except hatered towards a specific outgroup.
Suppose we've done a series of experiments and figured beyond any reasonable doubt that such societies perform better than the ones that operate on the principles of universal love. Will you treat is as a reason to change your moral views based on the available evidence? Will you accept that this specific brand of outgroup hatred is part of the objective morality? Or will you still think that such society is morally bad, even it's more prosperous and happy?
It would certainly be a good reason for me to seriously reassess my moral reasoning.
How would you reassess your moral reasoning and to what conclusion would you come?
If tigers work like humans, he will soon conclude that while pain is always regrettable, the most important kind of pain is felt by large creatures with orange-and-black stripes and that needs to be the top priority in all situations. This naturally applies to tigers, but perhaps other stripy animals as well. It’s a subject of debate at Tiger University. (Go Orange! Go Black!)
So it's morally wrong to kill and eat zebras, but apes are still fine. Except the rare striped apes.
What if the tiger doesn’t love any other creature? He is solitary. Why, logically, should he extend the feeling of “my pain is bad” to “others pain is bad”.
What happens if you apply that logic to all carnivores? “My pain is bad. All pain is bad. I cannot live without causing others pain. Therefore, it is necessary for me to kill myself so I will stop causing pain.” The logic is impeccable but it’s not rational to a being that values their own survival.
If the tiger doesn't love any other creature, then he will not be able to observe the moral intuitions that come from loving others. Much in the same way that a blind cavefish can't observe the sun.
"I should kill myself to stop causing pain" is a moral conclusion you could come to, but is not the only moral conclusion that would fit the facts. Morality is always involved in a question of what action I should take, which means we often have to reason based on competing intuitions and moral conclusions. "It is wrong to cause others to suffer" competes against "Life is preferable to death" in the case of the tiger, who can only live by killing others. He could resolve that conflict by killing himself, or by only eating animals who he has reason to believe are not capable of suffering, such as bugs or even fish. Or he could conclude that it is wrong to cause "sentient beings" to suffer, and commit himself to only eating creatures that are not sentient. Just as we can use the same facts and come to different conclusions on what we should do (like who to vote for, or what to build, or which plan is best), so too we can use the same moral facts (intuitions) and come to different conclusions on what we should do.
What if the carnivore can only eat animals that suffer? Is he obligated to kill himself?
The ape postulates that it is wrong to harm another sentient being. This is too complex to be a postulate, unless everyone agrees with it. The tiger clearly doesn't, and it doesn't make sense for the tiger to agree with it.
No, objective morality doesn't exist. We can establish rules, such as not to kill each other, that we think will lead to our long-term betterment over time, even if some people are very annoying.
Same. I don't have anything to add, it's just that my position is so simple. I'm crossing my fingers, hoping for a blue landslide, followed by a lot of Republican soul searching.
I feel that Democracts need some soul searching. They keep running on a platform of insulting and belittling voters (e.g., characterizing people who don't vote for them as racists or sexists, etc...). It is what caused Hillary to loose her election with the infamous "basket of deplorables" quip. I think Kamala is being hurt by this strategy too (e.g., Obama attempting to shame black men into voting for her).
Ultimately, both parties need to respect voters, and work out how to persuade them, rather than belittle them. It's one reason I found the VP debate refreshing as JD Vance acknowledged that Republicans have lost the trust of women and that they need to do more for them (e.g., by providing more childcare support as an alternative to abortion).
It's hard for me to think that J.D. Vance has any respect for Democrat voters given his stated desire not to have certified the 2020 election.
EDIT: Although I meant to say, fundamentally I do think you have a point about Dem politicians being condescending, particularly to rural folks.
I don't think any of them have any respect for the voters, except weirdly Trump - he likes the atmosphere of rallies and the praise of the crowd so he likes his supporters.
The party of gun control has its candidate talking about her Glock and garnering the support of Dick Cheney. You remember Dick Cheney, I'm sure? He was the Republican Devil before Trump. Don't talk to me about who respects whom, because I don't believe a word out of any of their mouths (except, again, Trump who has no filter and we all know that he exaggerates, confabulates, and uses rhetoric all over the place):
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/kamala-harris/kamala-harris-criticism-owning-glock-gun-rcna174534
"The Harris campaign did not specify where and when she bought the Glock, which model she owns or which storage devices she uses. Harris said last month that the gun is for self-defense and that “if somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.” Harris’ current residence is guarded by armed Secret Service agents."
Hmm now I seem to recall some discourse on the liberal/progressive side about those who talk about shooting people who break into their houses and it was *not* terms of praise they were using.
I am getting a *very* strong whiff of Hillary Mark II here, trying to present herself as Tough Strong Woman who will Stand Up to aggressors. Stick with the coconuts, Kamala.
https://apnews.com/article/cheney-gonzales-harris-endorsement-trump-mainstream-republicans-224d7be9ee7ebb6dc699bca5339a4458
The only thing that saved a Constitutional crisis on January 6, 2021 was Pence putting our founding document, the US Constitution above Trump's narcissism.
Vance has stated he would have obeyed Trump rather than US law.
Pence has said he can't endorse anyone who puts himself above the Constitution so he couldn't endorse Trump.
Really? That was the only thing?
Can you imagine the shot show if Pence had gone along with the ‘alternate electors’ scheme?
Hear hear.
Yeah, trump puts him in an awkward position on that.
For what it's worth, Republicans have explicitly stated they believe he's just saying that because he hast to as Trump is his running mate. One thing I like about the Republicans compared to the Democratics is that Republicans seem more willing to disagree with each other (e.g., you see Republicans defending Pence for certifying). I mean, obviously that is a low bar, but sometimes it feels like Democrats don't clear it, in terms of calling each other out
As a longtime liberal I can't imagine why you think Democrats agree on anything. Also, it seems like most people who side with Pence, or like Liz Cheney, Justin Amash, etc., are all apostates now, whereas like Nancy Pelosi and AOC somehow get along.
Also Democrats just kicked out their candidate mid-stream.
I don't think they agree necessarily. But I do think they fear voicing many types of disagreement. E.g., I think they were afraid to push back against obviously flawed philosophies like defund the police, for fear of being branded racist by their own party.
The Republicans have some issues like this, but to me, it seems they have significantly less of them.
I think it is generally acknowledged (I could be wrong) that the left does more internal cancelling, and this feature it typical of lefts all around the world.
America has a now-time-honored tradition of every political junkie identifying his or her own tribe as a ragtag band of misfits who squabble about everything but can unite in the breech against a truly common enemy, while the enemy is a bunch of carbon copy monolithic stormtroopers who will turn out anyone who deviates even slightly from their norm.
Pardon me, sir, but do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Fundamental Attribution Error?
I DON'T think the Democratic party can generally unite against a truly common enemy, usually - I've only felt like that was true in this election, and generally I consider the Democratic party bad for the usual "it's a political party" reasons but also generally rather ineffectual at pushing for its stated ideas. I don't find anything about that complementary to "my tribe".
Nancy tolerated Sandy from the block's carry-on for a while, then smacked her down when she got too feisty, and AOC wanting a long-term political career has learned how to get along with the party elders 😃
I'm hoping for a green or yellow landslide, followed by a lot of Republican and Democrat prosecutions. And while I realize that your side will write the history books, I don't think you are on the right side of history.
I'm hoping for no literal landslides, as we have enough destruction going on with that hurricane.
Why not hope for a gold landslide, which could, with significant force, wipe out the national debt and deficit?
Sounds like one of those tyranny of logistics problems. You need tens of trillions of dollars worth of gold, but gold is valuable mainly because of scarcity. The more gold you have, the less it's worth, so the more gold you need, etc. Plus the bigger the gold landslide, the more property damage it causes, so you need a bigger landslide to offset that. At the end of the day, you probably run into rapidly diminishing returns after a big enough gold landslide to pay off maybe two weeks worth of the debt.
Just ask the Spanish Empire after the New World discovery and the gold and silver started flooding in!
I’d be good with the green or yellow landslide part of that- Jill Stein and Chase Oliver haven’t given me any reason to doubt they’d concede power if they lost in 2028.
A nice exchange I had on the previous open thread got me thinking about philosophy so I wrote this short post if anyone’s interested.
https://open.substack.com/pub/socraticpsychiatrist/p/to-an-aspiring-philosopher?r=44y4c&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for the post. Re one point,
>Something we must all come to realize in our own way: that the simplest things— and these are also the highest and greatest things—cannot be articulated, but can at best be approximated or intimated. Wisdom is, ultimately, silent. The tiniest and greatest converge in their ineffability. Yet it is precisely in that necessary silence that philosophy begins, and ultimately ends.
I disagree. It is natural to think that things which cannot be expressed in _compact_ language cannot be expressed in language at all. But there are many things, e.g. images or photographs, which can be expressed, but not compactly - it takes a million 1s and 0s (or their equivalents) to express one of them.
edit: To put it another way, "ineffability" is a much higher bar than it at first appears. It requires not just that something be inexpressible in a word, or sentence or page, but that it be inexpressible even in a massively detailed description, e.g. even by a synapse-by-synapse description of a nervous system and its current state.
Wrote a post last Thursday on the fluoridated water debate. My focus was on whether fluoridation is effective and safe, but... I was amazed to find that much of the public debate turns on whether it's acceptable for government agencies to force chemicals on us, when (a) nobody is forced to drink unfiltered tap water, and (b) government agencies "force" many things on us, like stoplights. Why are so many people averse to simply discussing the data?
https://statisfied.substack.com/p/fluoridated-water
In recent years we've become aware of government mistakes, both accidental and arrogant. Fauci lied about masks. He lied about gain of function research (and helped the guy who was heading it up right a scholarly report saying that a lab leak couldn't be the source to cover their tracks). The vaccines, while overall good, did in fact have side effects. Some people died from taking the vaccine that would have otherwise lived. From an FDA perspective, this was a totally acceptable tradeoff, and I agree with the vaccine being approved. I have a big problem with the government or companies requiring everyone to get vaccinated. Small children shouldn't even have been offered it - too little benefit to outweigh any unknown risks. Young people or people who already had covid should have been given an out regardless or what else happened. Young men in particular were susceptible to some of the side effects. People with 100% work from home should never have been required by their employers to get it. Requiring potentially harmful chemicals be injected in people is not a great way to build goodwill.
Fluoride specifically? I don't know a lot about it and have a well. Given the general lack of trust that some government agencies have caused, by their own intentional actions, I have very little sympathy for them when people don't want fluoride or other chemicals added to their water or food. We know for a fact that chemicals of many kinds can have adverse effects on people. DDT was sprayed right on people when it was in use. Some chemicals are completely mild in regular doses but can cause serious harm at higher levels. There's even a recent push about microplastics that seems to be catching on. I've been seeing recommendations to not use plastic cookware.
Ummm. You're rewriting history here.
1. Fauci initially was of the opinion that masks didn't work because the WHO and CDC were stuck in the outdated consensus that pathogens couldn't airborne (in aerosols). That's why there was all that handwashing advice early on. He eventually came around to masks (long before the WHO did) when the data started to show that masking reduced the spread of exhaled aerosols that carried virions.
2. For various reasons, a gain of function program couldn't have created the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If you sincerely want to learn something, we can go through the reasons—but it will require some knowledge of biochemistry and virology.
3. Serious adverse side effects from the mRNA vaccines occurred at a rate of less than 1 in 100,000 vaccinated individuals. During the first wave (March-June, 2020), the global case fatality rate (CFR) averaged around 2%, and in certain regions, it was even higher.
1. I disagree on that being the order of events, but I don't care enough to hash this out so don't worry about it.
2. I am not making an argument against the science of whether the lab leak was possible. I am making an argument against Fauci promoting the work of someone he was paying for gain of function research, in Wuhan, to claim that it wasn't possibly a lab leak while reporting *no conflict of interest* when submitting his paper.
3. I already agreed that the vaccines were positive. My problem is in the requirements to get vaccinated even in people who would see almost no gain or for whom the side effects were a larger potential problem. Even a very small chance of an adverse reaction is non-zero. Making someone get the vaccine who works 100% remote, already had covid, and is a 20-year-old healthy male is bad policy. If that person also got sick from the vaccine that's evil, even if very rare.
If you use well water, I suggest getting it tested for fluoride content. Some regions in the U.S. (e.g., the southwest) have naturally high levels. The level at which harmful effects on children start to appear is about 1.5 mg/L, or 1.5 parts per million, but as I noted in my post this can't be treated as a clear-cut boundary.
I'll have to correct you on a). What do you think kids drink all day long (school, after-school, gym, camp, etc) outside home? Bottled water? Yeah, good luck with that. They'll drink from the first drinking water fountain as soon as their original water fill runs out, so technically they are forced to drink fluoride in water.
Still don't see how either "technically" or "forced" mean what you imply they do in that last sentence. Technically, the mere existence of a water fountain doesn't force anyone to use it.
What is the word "filtered" doing here? Ordinary household water filters don't remove fluoride; to a first approximation, if the government puts it in the water, you're going to have to go to a lot of expensive trouble to avoid drinking it. But if the idea is to boost bottled water sales....
Thanks, that's what I thought. If you want fluoride on your teeth get it in your tooth paste. That's what I do.
I think people are very sensitive to have anything "pushed" into their bodies. That's far more sensitive than stop lights will ever be.
Pretty sure this is also a big reason for the anti-vaxx sentiment.
Good point. (And there is evidence that anti-fluoridation activism increased as the pandemic got underway and existing anti-vaxx sentiments became more prevalent.)
I'm probably overthinking this, but what troubles me is that government agencies do have a lot of control over what does and doesn't get "pushed" into our bodies. For instance, many or most public water supplies are also chlorinated, but nobody seems to get upset about that. (Why not? Because they don't think chlorine is harmful? Fine, I don't think it is either. But why assume that fluoride is worse? As I noted in my post, it's only harmful at levels exceeding what over 99% of Americans are exposed to in drinking water.)
I don't have a strong opinion, but it seems clear to me that adding a chemical meant to purify the water and maintain water systems, is very different from adding a chemical which serves a purpose entirely distinct from conveying safe potable drinking water.
I agree with you Brendan. The question then becomes whether you'd be willing to have a chemical added if you were sure the benefits outweighed the risks. I don't have any special bias toward fluoridation, but as I noted in my post there seem to be risk-free benefits for the roughly 99.5% of American kids exposed to safe levels.
We should add a little something to the water supply in order to instantiate New Jerusalem.
https://unsongbook.com/chapter-23-now-descendeth-out-of-heaven-a-city/
This crowd seems very keen on chemicals and pharmaceuticals for better functioning. They might be convinced to dump fluoride, but I think that would be overshadowed by discussion of what other chemical to put in the water supply - lithium or Ozempic or whatnot.
Also can anyone tell me from experience - I did read Scott’s post - whether melatonin aids in “sleeping through” versus just helping you get to sleep in the first place? I have no trouble with the latter (any book will do) - but like many middle-aged people or at least post-menopausal women, I often lie awake for long periods in the night, fretting. It is both boring and ironically, fatiguing.
What is the procedure for joining the manosphere? Where do you go? Who do you follow?
I would just say that some of the old school writers in this area were interesting and thought-provoking, but I recommend caution with the contemporary manosphere. It has become very misogynistic and frankly, misanthropic and it will lead you down some very dark paths. Basically an info hazard.
The low-hanging fruit of saying things that were taboo-yet-obvious (to socially savvy men) has already been picked. The new gurus need to find some way to differentiate themselves, usually not in a (mentally) healthy way.
I asked a well-known writer around here his opinion and he told me roughly the same thing.
Honestly, I've decided family life is too risky with the divorce laws (and I'm too old), so I'm debating whether men's activism is a worthwhile path with my remaining estimated 3-4 decades. As you say there may not be a way forward, and as others have said you may need to be a more stereotypically masculine man to get anywhere with it. Sometimes the time isn't right for a cause.
You can have a family without getting married. Just saying.
Doesn’t matter - child support is the big item that tends to drain your finances, and courts in the US generally don’t give a shit about whether the parents were married when the child was conceived or born. You can of course do sperm donation, but the likelihood that your sperm will be selected by women when you can’t even get a girlfriend is low. Moreover, sperm donation gets you descendants, but not a family.
You could do a lot worse than Kevin Samuels. There's some genuinely good advice in there, intermixed with a very...salesman, frat, empty materialist philosophy that's healthy in small doses. Like, he's an excellent salesman, I'm not a salesman, I don't like salesmen, but they're important and it's worth learning from a good one.
If you want to fall down this rabbit hole, I would recommend these 3 streams from when he was focused on men:
2 hour deep dive on male grooming and hygiene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWbvnrcMtWY
A butt-kicking for young men behind in life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36cNgyB3BpM
A kind of pro-hypergamy argument:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh8sRv4zqKM
Also these two interviews with women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI6XWGKvUrE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTET-kyHM4Y
The women interviews on his show kind of ate the whole thing but there were moments of magic. No shame, he was trying to make money, but it's very obvious that the audience wanted to see women shamed instead of getting help and those incentives slowly consume all the content in this space. Watch those 5 videos and the algorithm will provide the rest, most of it...not so great, for aforementioned incentive reasons.
If you're looking for some kind of shared group and/or political movement...that's not really a thing, I think.
If you have a very sharp scalpel and are allowed to use the Axiom of Choice, here are the steps you will need to follow:
(1) Borrow somebody else's manosphere.
(2) Dissect the manosphere into a finite number of (non-measurable) parts.
(3) Rearrange those parts into two manospheres, each identical to the original one.
(4) Return one of the manospheres to whoever you borrowed it from.
(5) The second manosphere is all yours, nobody can stop you from joining it!
Shades of Banach Tarski, Batman!
Well played.
He's probably not very popular in this community, but he's probably a good gateway to finding more people who care about "men's issues" - Jordan Peterson.
Peterson is not exactly a manosphere figure, as he generally doesn't present himself that way. But he tends to attract male supporters a lot more than he attracts female supporters. And he tends to talk about issues that are... maybe "male-coded" is the best way to put it.
If you search for Jordan Peterson on YouTube, watch some of his vids, that'll likely open up your YouTube algorithm as a whole to videos aimed at men discussing male-coded issues. Some of what you encounter, you won't like. Peterson himself you might not like. But I think that anybody honest would have to admit that he's at least more moderate than Andrew Tate.
My impression is that Warren Farrell is a considered voice. If you just wanted to learn about the perspective you might try reading him
Oh, I love the guy; I read The Myth of Male Power back in high school. I just remember him admitting to Paul Elam about two decades ago that Elam's obnoxiousness had been more effective than all his reasoned criticism.
Yeah. I heard that too. It makes me sad that generally in any topic the nuanced voice is so quiet. But I do think nuance has a great value - and that he's made a big impact
(epistemic status: Not an expert. But given Scott's commentariat, I'm probably among the more qualified to discuss it. so I feel like I maybe have a responsibility to ramble a bit, or something.)
I think it depends on what you're looking for. traditionally, "manosphere" was an umbrella term for: Pick Up Artists (PUA; red-pill); Men Go Their Own Way (MGTOW); men's rights; incel (black-pill); and maybe some others. But I think more recently, the label has expanded to include "anyone who questions the lunacy of 4th wave feminism".
For me, I mostly just keep tabs on Alexander Grace and Hoe Math. The former charitably explains the female mindset, leaning on his psych degree as well as field experiments. The later dunks on tiktok women by ELI5'ing them about the dating scene. A lot of adjacent stuff I see is mostly just schadenfreude of little educational value. E.g "The Whatever Podcast", where the hosts bring in the dumbest women they can find on the street to calmly Euler[0] them about the internal contradictions of feminism.
And for the record, yes, Andrew Tate is a nut.
Also, I suspect that the hypergamy stuff is overexaggerated by the Streetlight Effect, since most of the studies cited rely on dating apps.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/10/getting-eulered/
"The former charitably explains the female mindset, leaning on his psych degree as well as field experiments."
I must check that guy out, I do so love having my mindset explained to me! Though not being a standard woman, I suppose it will be advice for my normal sisters and not outliers like me. Still, it's always entertaining to see a man say "women think X or do Y because of this psychology" 😁
EDIT: Oh boy. I just found Grace's Youtube channel. "Men are islands, women are boats"? Does he perchance have a writing gig on Rings of Power, because that's the standard I'd expect there! (And if so, do the women float because they look up to the light, but the men sink - or at least don't float about - because they look down to the darkness?)
“Women float because they look up to the light”
Yes, exactly! Unless they float because they’re witches, in which case they’re made of wood and they weigh as much as a duck, which also floats.
It gets confusing sometimes.
In that particular video, he discusses how the PUA's morphed into a self-help group, and then urges for more men to embark on a journey of self-improvement to become high-value men. Yeah, the boat metaphor ain't winning any Pulitzer Prizes. Fair enough. Still, I'm glad that he does what he does.
Also, unlike many of his peers, he supposedly has a sizeable following of women. I think that reflects pretty well on his brand. And evidently, many of them do need their own behavior/mindset explained to them. E.g. probably his most emphasized message to women is to be aware of "The Wall". I.e. beauty doesn't last forever; and if they want to start a family, they might regret spending their best years partying and sleeping around, as opposed to seeking a long-term relationship.
Honestly, I agree. I wish there was something more effective than Andrew Tate (though he might be helpful to moderates as part of a 'pincer strategy' as is commonly seen on the left--listen to us or you'll get more Andrew Tates, etc.) I also think the hypergamy thing is somewhat overrated, and the incels are kind of unrealistic.
I have to admit I basically did MGTOW, though it's not a winning strategy for most guys. (And likely not even for me toward the end of life.)
My point is more that women have a movement (feminism) to advocate for their aggregate interests; men need the same. There are movements that advocate for a subset of men (evangelical Christianity advocates for conservative men who want traditional households, business conservatives advocate for really, really rich men), but a lot of men fall through the cracks.
for me personally, romantic relationships sound like too much work. No bitterness, just laziness.
In case you're unfamiliar, I hear Bronze Age Pervert is all the rage in certain circles. No strong opinions yet. I may or may not buy the book to check out the hoopla.
> I wish there was something more effective than Andrew Tate
Roger R makes a good point to bring up Jordan Peterson. He's definitely advocated for men, especially those who fall through the cracks. Though not under a manosphere brand. And I distinctly remember JustPearlyThings saying that she was inspired by JP to defend men. Scott Galloway also has recently started defending men who fall through the cracks, though from more of a "business & marketing data" angle. I do have reservations about JP, but he's got my respect overall for pushing back and being reasonably sane. Also, JP recanted recently, from "MAN UP, INCELS!" to "uh... the dating scene might be toxic after all". So there's that.
Maybe I'm a nut too. But ideally, my own wishlist includes someone who leans into more of Jungian Shadow kind of deal, and defends it in an principled manner. Like idk, maybe a vaguely Julius-Evola-esque aesthetic. JP is aware of this *intellectually*, but he's too Canadian to really embody it. And the types of people who can embody this often lean into more of a meathead vibe.
BAP is gay anyway - he flatters the self-image of men who imagine themselves as Nietzschean supermen. He is insightful, but hetero men should take his advice with a grain of salt.
Sorry for being dense, but idk what this means. Genuinely.
Just to be clear, is the accusation that BAP is being effeminate for stoking his own ego, whereas down-to-earth men are wise and humble? This seems like the most likely interpretation to me. Although, not to be pedantic, but calling this gay is... idk, just a weird choice of words? or maybe it's meant to be ironic, given how much he whines about the longhouse?
No, I mean he’s literally homosexual (“gay” may be ascribing an identity that he doesn’t perceive himself as).
I've read BAP (kind of a waste of time IMHO, though his authorial voice annoyed me) and Peterson (good though basic; I'm not surprised he's helped a lot of young men who had nobody else to tell them that).
I think you're right about the meathead vibe, though. Maybe this is a path for someone with more traditional masculine energy.
> BAP (kind of a waste of time IMHO, [...])
Indeed, my expectations are low. But even if it's terrible, maybe it's worth dissecting anyway? To keep up with The Discourse/Zeitgeist? Analogously, I once checked out Plato's "Republic" from the library. And my normie parents asked "Why? Aren't the ideas in there kinda useless, since it was written over 1,000 years ago?". I replied "The Communist Manifesto might not have been a great idea either, but it's still worth studying for its historical impact". Critical Thinking (qua deciding whether something is true or false) is the bare minimum of any intellectual endeavor. It's also important to understand motivations and ramifications.
In this sense, was BAM at least interesting? Or do you stand by your assertion.
> Peterson (good though basic; I'm not surprised he's helped a lot of young men who had nobody else to tell them that).
I've not read "Twelves Rules for Life" either. But from a distance, it seems like he's filling the role of a father. I can't defend this rigorously, but I've become increasingly convinced that the death of God also represented the death of The Patriarchy, as well as the death of father-figures. To the detriment of both sexes. And for blacks especially.
I also appreciate JP's kabbalistic, hermaneutical side. Which, in its own way, also brings fatherliness to the forefront. I.e. the Abrahamic Religions literally worship the PIE Sky Father. Kinship -> Patriarchy -> Abrahamic Religion.
The people forming the surface area of the sphere must unlock and make an opening for the sphere to expand and include you in its surface area. In that brief period of time, it will not be a sphere (topologically speaking) because it has a hole on its surface.
what are you looking for actually? Videos, memes or people? Right wing or just anything pro man?
Is it even called "manosphere" anymore? I think Red Pill is the main name now but I could be wrong. (Really funny how Scott wrote The Rise and Fall of Online Culture Wars in 2021 and said he hadn't heard anything from the manosphere for years. This must have been *just before* it literally took over half of Youtube and Tiktok and became huge among male GenZs).
I see it as just wokeness with the genders swapped. Same collectivism, same grievance culture, many of the same logical fallacies (especially the glorification of personal anecdotes). It's probably caused a few previously invisible things to be debated seriously by society, much like woke feminism has, but like woke femimism it's done it in the most toxic possible way and I don't want to give it credit for that.
I don't think the "Manosphere" ever existed in the same way that a lot of these overly broad groups don't exist. The only way you can argue it existed is as a general label for very online male groups that defined themselves in opposition to modern liberal feminism. But you had Red Pill types who saw the rest of the manosphere as losers who just failed to ignore the media and self improve and be moderately predatory; Mens Rights types which itself was a broad church from people who thought womens rights were important but men needed protection too to people who wanted to roll back womens rights; self identifying incels who are wildly nihilistic and hate pretty much everyone and believe they are doomed; MGTOWs who from my examinations seemed to mostly be bitter divorcees; and plenty of other minor groups. All of these groups hated each other for either being misogynistic extremists for the moderates to pathetic losers for the red pill types to just screeching about "normies" for the incels. When you have groups that most people would concede had reasonable concerns if pushed lumped in with extreme misanthropes who most people would find repugnant its a meaningless classifier.
It was a grouping that only really existed as a marked "will push back against feminist rhetoric" outgroup. Now I don't think most of the subgroups even exist as a meaningful presence anymore. MRAs are utterly irrelevant, incels have been banned from most platforms and the various red-pill adjacent groups coalesced around Andrew Tate style influencers and are generally seen as its own thing.
I have mixed feelings too, which is why I'm asking here.
I recently wrote an article about how anarcho-tyranny is becoming the latest form of governance in Western countries.
https://globalviewdigest.substack.com/p/anarcho-tyranny-the-government-model
Feedback would be very welcome, especially if there are any other relevant aspects of anarcho-tyranny that I could explore. There seem to be many connections to other current issues.
Feedback: from a purely writing perspective, I think it would help to be a bit more structured (try planning what you want to get across and make the article structure match; right now it jumps around a bit).
On actual content: I like the concept but I'm not quite sure where you're going with it. Specifically in the Berlin example, I'm confused by why people wanted lights instead of more police or something.
Thank you, much appreciated!
> just suggests the person wants more enforcement against their enemies but less against their friends, and that makes you ask who their enemies and friends are.
...
No, I have at least 2 questions "what laws are the letting their friends break", I wont claim to be a saint and care deeply if my family gets away with speeding tickets, but someone with the same skin color getting away with murder; scaled up to the society, has a a predictable consequence.
Thanks. You have a valid point in suggesting that labeling something as anarcho-tyranny can imply a desire for harsher punishment against a specific group. However, I’d like to offer the following counterargument: Critics of anarcho-tyranny highlight inequality in enforcement and are not necessarily calling for more punishment overall, but rather for fair and consistent application of the law.
Does anyone have any tips for… liking more people?
Basically, I have a really hard time liking people to the point of wanting to be close (or really, 1-on-1 casual) friends with someone. I guess this would be fine if I was naturally introverted, but I'm not really. My biggest dream, literally, is a bunch (or just, like, two!) friends I really like. On the OCEAN model I am in the middle on extroversion and I feel that is accurate.
This is NOT because I actively dislike most people and think humanity is stupid and dumb and fake or something.
I've met maybe five people in my life that I felt like I've really understood and liked, one of them is my only ex, one is my current partner and one is my sibling.
I’ve tried a lot to subculture shopping to find “my people” and to just give people a chance, give them time, put myself out there. It’s tiring. Feels like a looooot of work for mostly no reward.
In advance, two rebuttals to arguments I could see being made:
- I’m 90% sure I’m not autistic. I was in psychiatry (for OCD) and talk therapy on and off from ~8-18 and it was never something remotely suggested. Every online test I’ve taken says “few or no signs”.
- If you’re going to say “yeah, I felt that way about people until I met the awesomesauce rationalist community”, I’m very envious but I don’t think that’ll work for me. First of all because the rat community in my country is like five people (okay… maybe 15 if you count EA), secondly because I don’t feel like I have common interests with rationalists on the whole. I’m super high agreeableness, I don’t really want to debate about AI risk or biases or most things in general; I’m not in tech, I’m not really in academia; I like board games but not when they’re too hard. You get the gist. I like (a subset of) the rationalists mostly for being honestly interested in other people’s internal experiences and not lacking Theory of Mind in regards to it.
Anyone has tips on how to like more people? Or wtf might be going with me? Do I just have to keep on searching?
Tangential, but probably relevant:
Time.
"...it takes between 40 and 60 hours to form a casual friendship, 80-100 hours to transition to being a friend and more than 200 hours together to become good friends." (https://news.ku.edu/news/article/2018/03/06/study-reveals-number-hours-it-takes-make-friend)
You have to keep in mind that no matter how much you have in common with someone, you almost certainly won't instantly feel the same way about them that you feel about your "five." You'll need to log the hours with new people in order to both learn about them and build trust, and with *exceedingly* rare exception, there is no substitute for logging those hours.
I mean, it's worth remembering that you did in fact log the hours with your ex, your current partner, and your sibling, right? Yes, there might have been native compatibilities around personality there, but you also spent the hours with them to fully establish that and bond.
So my advice would be, moderate your expectations. Give up on the fantasy of having lightning-strike instant chemistry with a new bestie (to mix metaphors). Don't deliberately hang out with people who terribly bore or irritate you, of course, but if someone is just "fine" at the start, realize that you might discover after 25 or 65 hours of hanging out with them that they're actually "great."
It's helpful to have "repeated, unplanned interactions" with the same people, for a few months. Good activities for this include casual sports leagues (where you can play for one season and then move on if you like) or community theatre (acting or working backstage on a production is typically a 2-3 month commitment and if you come back for the next production there will be some different people).
These are also things that can be just stressful enough to help build camaraderie without actually being that important.
I think you’ve got the telescope the wrong way round; first you create a bit of interest in that person, then they stop being an NPC and become a real person with their own unexpected opinions and interests.
It takes the simulation a minute to generate all that, so give it time. I like to practice on Uber drivers. This is important, because if you only engage with people who are into the same stuff as you, you’ll be rusty and probably fumble it.
There’s not a lot of advice out there on how to like people more, but there’s plenty of advice on how to be likable. Plenty of basic “tricks” you can look up in a Dale Carnegie book or something.
So, invert the problem. How can you act such that people will use those tricks on you (hopefully guilelessly)? Assuming that you are a fairly typical person, they should work on you as well.
For example:
1) Be Vulnerable and Share Personal stories-> Be the kind of person who can be trusted with a secret and doesn’t talk about people behind their backs. Someone who will not betray their confidences. They'll be more likely to be vulnerable with you.
2) Practice Active Listening-> It’s easier for people to actively listen if you’re not a bore.
3) Highlight Commonalities -> This goes both ways. You can drop hints about where you have been or what shows you like. In my experience, people are very good at finding commonalities.
4) respectful physical contact-> use deodorant, open body language, etc…
5) Give genuine compliments-> receive genuine compliments…do things that people will compliment. In general, small kind or nice things that people don’t threaten people’s ego.
You get the idea…
I do all this
Do people like you or is it mutual? Do you want to connect 1-1?
Have you tried alcohol?
No, seriously. Best, most honest conversations in life are getting so shit faced with your friends that you're actually honest.
MDMA works well too.
It works particularly well for making friends in the first place.
> Does anyone have any tips for… liking more people?
If you dont like yourself; do that first
If you do like yourself, you could dig deeply into just how common child abuse is and the true depth of the horror, so when you meet a ok young person maybe you can be open to hear how they are trying.
I don't understand this. Would you please explain?
I followed till "so when you meet a ok young person maybe you can ..." but then lost you.
Do you think the original commenter has this experience or that many people arround him do? In which way does that relate to their problem?
I believe you should basically assume everyone was abused as a child, yes. Its rapidly declining (even if my extremely negative view of schools as authoritarian child abuse, adhd drugs as meth, children with phones being neglected, leftwing culture targeting children; we are still progressing morally), if you want a deeply uncomfortable read id suggest the "orgin of war in child abuse".
If your capable of have a calm political conversation your probably among the top 10% rolling the dice on the subject.
Ok, but how would knowing everyone was abused as a child make me friends
It should in theory increase your empathy, and make you less useless when someone says something emotional horrific, i.e. if your prepossessed that the world is awful and you hear about someone considering suicide, Id expect you to be more useful then "heres a hotline" while having a panic attack
I don't know what works for you, but I am very similar in that aspect. I think I have met perhaps 10 people in my life which I like to the extent that, if I have the choice to spend time with them or not, I prefer to spend time with them. (I am about twice your age.)
For most of those 10 people I had either fallen in love with them at some point, or at least had some moderate crush on them. (All of them are male.) For the others, online contacts worked a lot better than real life for me. My best friend is someone whom I see less than once a year, but we text each other every day. For my other friends, I usually had written with them for a long time online before meeting them in person. This also goes for most (not all) crushes or love affairs.
I have no idea whether this type of online contact would also work for you. Other than you, I am autistic and introverted, so chances are that it doesn't. Probably for me an online chat avoids the situation that another person is around, which is enough to make me latently uneasy. Still, perhaps it give you some ideas.
Post removed. Didn't say anything that others haven't said elsewhere in the thread.
First: Do you feel bad if you don't have a genuine "click" with people?
There's nothing inherently wrong with being different from your social connections. It's not necessarily isolating IMO, unless you have a prior belief like "true friendship only exists among people who perfectly enjoy eachother". Virtually all of my friends and my romantic partner are very unlike myself, but we have symbiotic relations (we like playing cards / hiking / movies / our role in the provider-appreciator dyad etc). The only people I've felt 100% towards are my siblings , and I only see them once a year.
Second: Do you read very much?
If you read good books by smart people, you can actually get a really good sense of kindred-spiritedness. Try out some of the authors people traditionally fall in love with (Nietzsche is an example of someone lots of people adore, but if you hate him try out some others. Some Buddhist-adjacent writers might be good if you're feeling like perfect satisfaction seems impossibly hard to reach in the world. Anyone people get cult-y about is a candidate). Obviously, reading doesn't satisfy a lot of the social urges (which is what the card players and hikers are for) but it can do wonders for the feeling of "finding a kindred spirit" and "being understood". There have been tons of brilliant and insightful individuals in the history of the world, it would be surprising if none of them were very similar to yourself
>You get the gist.<
I actually don't. Those are all things you don't do. What DO you do for fun? If you consume fiction, what kind of people are in the fiction? If you make things, what inspires that?
Is the sibling the same sex as the partners? Is there a level of physical attraction you're hunting here too?
You say "every online test I've taken," implying you've taken more than one. That implies a heightened level of self-interest. So, if you want to learn to like other people... give them that treatment. Don't, like, accuse them of personality traits or whatnot, but treat them like a puzzle to be solved, like a test to be analyzed, and repeated. And like a gauntlet for your own personality to be run through. Basically, try to view them as an extension of yourself.
I'm an introvert who's been surrounded by extroverts my whole life, but the one really inspirational figure I know is a perpetual entrepreneur who's always excited about their next project. So, go rub shoulders with a bunch of business owners; find someone who deeply enjoys making plans and telling them to people.
How old are you? I personally found my interest in/energy and ability for making new friends fell off a cliff some time around my early 30s. (Luckily for me, I already had “enough” by that time.) It sounds like you have always had a very high bar for really liking someone. Is there something you can identify that the ~5 people you’ve liked so far have in common? And then think of ways to seek out other people like that? Alternatively, is there something situational about your relationships with those happy few that might have helped? It might be easier/more practical to seek out the magic situation rather than the magic person (assuming either exists!). To combine the two approaches — I made most of my good friends at university: any situation where a large number of people with similar interests and qualities are thrown together is bound to maximise your chances, I’d imagine. Drugs and alcohol could be optional extras, too…?
I’m 21. And yes I’ve pretty much always felt this way.
Like the vast majority of countries, in mine, once you go to university you take a singular subject or maybe two if you’re in humanities. Ain’t no way I’m studying some random humanity just because I think the people would be cool. I made a smart choice, not a fun one. And I honestly can’t think of anything where I would think “hey, the people studying this degree are going to be disproportionately likeable to me”.
I can’t really do most drugs, unfortunately, I have a pretty vulnerable psyche to psychedelics and stimulants.
I’ve been actively engaged in many of my hobbies and their community and so far, not a single true good friend from it. I don’t share that many hobbies with my boyfriend, for example. And I like some video games, to take another example, but don’t like most “gamers”.
I know I’m being difficult, but if it had been as simple as “don’t worry, you’ll meet your best friends at university or at your favourite hobby like everyone else seem to” then I wouldn’t have asked here.
Ok, so maybe the interesting/helpful avenue is: how did you get to know your boyfriend, your ex, and the couple of other people you really liked? Was it something about them, something about the situation, or a mixture of the two? University and hobbies haven’t helped: what did help in those instances? Maybe it was something quite unusual that you haven’t consciously realised yet? My totally uninformed guess would be that there’s probably something you can do at your end to help — maybe something you were doing, with these people, that you don’t usually do? Since I don’t know you, it seems better to offer questions rather than answers here…
I realise I may be barking up the wrong tree: maybe you just *are* very very particular, and five people in 21 years is your natural hit rate. In that case, one answer might be: accept that’s who you are, cultivate those people, be content with a small number of very close relationships while remaining open to the possibility of others coming your way (21 is quite young!). Do you find there are some among your more shallowly-held acquaintances with whom you get along more easily and naturally than others? Maybe these relationships will deepen over time. At 21, time is still on your side.
The situation where you meet people matters at least as much as what those people are like in my experience. When I was at university we had a really strong friendship group in the accommodation halls, university selects for a certain kind of person so most people had at least something in common and the halls where a fun relaxed environment with lots of casual social interaction/ drinking/ video games etc.
The other group of people I mainly interacted with where people doing the same course. They must have been similar people as the ones in halls, they'd selected into the same uni, but it was a way more work-oriented setting and I basically didn't know anyone there better than an acquaintance, and mostly didn't find them that likeable.
You might have liked a lot of the people you thought you didn't if you'd met them somewhere else. A good strategy might be to just keep interacting with the same person even if they don't seem likeable initially, preferably in different settings.
Hope that's actionable advice.
One of the major Jewish organisations in Australia wrote a report recently which found that antisemitism was surging massively. But apparently its definition of antisemitism included a lot of... interesting things:
https://redflag.org.au/article/zionist-groups-are-falsifying-antisemitism-statistics-and-the-media-are-playing-along
(Edit: personally I do feel antisemitism is increasing despite these examples. I've seen alt right-ish protesters with Nazi inginia all over them)
If I were them I'd err on the side of caution when publishing such reports.
Having said that, most of the incidents in the actual document (which is for some reason not linked) seem legit. For instance, "ESHAY" is just one example in the list of antisemitic graffiti spanning 5 pages.
https://www.ecaj.org.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ECAJ-Antisemitism-Report-2023.pdf
- Describing a rally against a neo-Nazi base organising in the west of Melbourne, the report quotes a single chant: “Black, Indigenous, Arab, Asian and white—unite, unite, unite to fight the right!” This incident is listed under the category “Omitting Jews”.
Clearly the hate crime of the century.
Some orgs really like to cry wolf, not seeing the damage they do to the epistemological commons.
Generally, it might seem helpful to extend the definition of the big bad to cover whatever mundane opponent you have at the moment, but the price you pay long term is that you erode the definition of the big bad. Having a definition of antisemitism which not only encompasses Nazis and Hamas, but also people who criticize Israel (in a way they don't criticize other similar states, with the caveat that there is no western democracy in a similar situation as Israel) will have the long term effect of making the term antisemitism useless for judging speech.
It's not unique to Israel. You hear this all the time about any number of states.
This is also kind of a cover for the real debate which is whether ethnic nation-states are okay or not. If you think they are but then only oppose Israel's existence as a nation-state that is straight anti-semitism because it means you think ethnic nation-states are okay except for the Jews. If you don't think nation-states are okay but support Palestinian nationalism that too is a fairly straight double standard.
This is why many western leftists have settled on a one state solution where both sides join together and live in a single, egalitarian state. The issue is that neither the Palestinian or Israeli leadership want that.
I used to see it as two groups: Group A is fairly criticizing Israel for reasons decoupled from its Jewishness, Group B is pretending to be group A as cover for their antisemitism. My conclusion, then, was to charitably assume critiques are Group A except when it's really obviously not (either they're group B antisemites or really poorly-thought-out critiques!), because I'd prefer not to accuse people of arguing in bad faith unless I'm very sure of it.
I've slightly changed my mind about this recently though. I think a lot of Group A is unconsciously antisemitic, and their critique of Israel in particular reveals their bias. Two examples of these are the "woke" crowd (claims to be against bigotry but is intolerant of Jewish belief in practice) and Muslims (antisemitism is baked into their traditions and history as far back as Mohammed and really can't be separated even if one tries to avoid it). It's a very "contextualizers vs decouplers" kind of issue and represents my shift from being a strong decoupler to accepting some more modest contextualizer framings.
Israel is in a bit of a unique position. It is a first world, western democracy which is existentially threatened by its neighbors and also fights a harsh asymmetrical war against a subjugated population which loves to kill its citizens.
There are not a lot of other countries in that reference class. As an industrialized country with military support from much of the western world, I think it is fair to apply more stringent standards to it than to some random warlord in Africa. On the other hand, I also recognize that its case for wiping Hamas and Hezbollah from the face of the Earth is solid in a way in which e.g. Putin's case for annexing Ukraine is not.
One reference class country I could think of is Saudi Arabia. Also a steadfast US ally, also with a GDP where one might reasonably demand some basic adherence to humanitarian law which one might not demand from some neolithic tribe. When the Saudis bombed the shit out of Yemen in a regional power struggle with Iran, there was some international condemnation, but all in all little happened. The Biden administration still sold weapons to the Saudis, and nobody gave a damn. I certainly don't recall any protest camps in US universities about that.
There could be different explanations for that:
* Consensus is already that SA is an evil theocratic monarchy. Pointing out that they are evil would just be met with "Duh." But then why not oppose a military alliance with them?
* Availability bias: it is a lot safer to stand outside an Israeli airbase criticizing the bombing of Gaza than standing outside a Saudi Airbase criticizing the bombing of Yemen.
* Many Jews in non-Israel western countries likely pay special attention to Israel. As they are over-represented in the intelligentsia in a way in which e.g. Saudi expats are not, this is a lot of critical eyes on Israel.
* Arabs bombing other Arabs does not fit well into pre-existing woke narratives. Can brown people even be colonizers?
* Jewish endeavors such as Israel are held to a higher standard due to antisemitism.
Honestly, I am a bit doubtful about the last one. In classical European antisemitism, the Jew is described as shrewd, greedy, godless. Not a warrior, but someone who pulls the strings to make good Christians die on the battlefield to further his own power. A former of cabals who knows no faith to his home country, a manipulator of markets.
This is of course not a good match to the Israeli behavior that the woke left criticizes. Leftist Jews who join in the woke criticism are generally welcomed, few leftists believe that their Jewish allies are secretly propagating the global Jewish agenda. By contrast, classic antisemites would not trust Jews. Also, Jews doing their own warfare does not fit the antisemitic stereotypes at all. They should be lending money to some conqueror and make a good return on the bloodshed, not conquer themselves.
The one point of overlap is the claim that the IDF specifically murders Palestinian children, e.g. with sniper fire (just seen on imgur (I read it for the articles)). This bears an uncanny resemblance to the blood libel, which is a cornerstone of traditional European antisemitism.
I think that in general, wokes are not more intolerant of moderate Jewish beliefs than of moderate Christian beliefs. In the US, the Christian faiths are the outgroup of New Atheism (which was a precursor to wokism), while Jewish faiths are more of a fargroup. A woke might accuse Christianity of enabling centuries of oppression of women and colonization, but can hardly blame Judaism to the same degree.
Finally, I think that the relationship between Judaism and Islam is complicated. Of course there was hostility from the start. Both Christianity and Islam had some tendency to let Jews practice their own religion (at times) where practitioners of any other religions would have to chose between conversion and death. Of course, being suffered to live should not be confused with being loved, both Christian and Muslim states discriminated openly against the Jews (as well as each other). Still, there were times when social mobility was much higher for Jews in the Orient than the Occident.
Historically, much of say Catholicism was at least mildly antisemitic. The gospels imply that the Jewish leadership of Jerusalem might have had a hand in convincing the Romans to execute a key figure of Christianity, which is likely a better theological motivation for antisemitism than anything Islam can come up with. However, I vehemently reject that therefore, every Catholic has to be an antisemite, because it "is baked into their traditions and history".
In Islam, antisemitism seems to be at a high, but I likewise reject the claim that Muslims are /per se/ antisemitic.
I was raised Catholic, and there was a detectable emphasis on how THE ROMANS killed Jesus that I didn't really understand at the time, but now seems like a reaction to historical Catholic antisemitism.
I think that a lot of the anti-Israel people are not antisemitic at all, but many of those lying to them are.
That's a fair assumption. There's another critique though, and it's ironically a leftist one! A lot of leftist academics argue in other domains that intent doesn't matter when the end result reinforces harmful systems or narratives. So even if many of the critics don't intend to be antisemitic, if their arguments consistently align with those who are -- and if those arguments push policies that disproportionately target Jews or the Jewish state, or reinforce the power of states and groups with explicitly antisemitic norms -- then the effect is the same. Critical Theory would call that "systemic antisemitism," which I think has some merit in this context, even if I don't usually buy into the framework wholesale. Something to think about.
That's because the vast majority of those who "criticize Isreal" _only ever_ criticize Israel (or nation Y for supporting Israel). Good luck finding even a single tweet from them which criticizes any other nation for equal or worse conduct. At some point, "I'm not anti-semitic, only anti-zionist" has lost its credibility.
...you're saying the vast majority of people criticizing Israel have no opinion on Russia?
How many anti-Russia protests have been held at American universities following the 2022 invasion? How many Russian students at American universities have been openly threatened?
I get where they're coming from. The main purpose of Israel's existence is to secure the existence of the Jewish race at any cost. If you're against Israel, you're against that goal of guaranteeing the continued existence of Jews. Of course they'd see it as anti-semitic.
There is a pretty good reason that people see criticizing Israel specifically as antisemitic. It's a country created to foster a specific religion/ethnic group. And there's a pretty strong history of people criticizing the country who either also are racist against them, or use the one to cover for the other.
That said, there are also other countries that are very significantly one ethnic group, some of which get criticized in similar ways. It would be pretty non-sensical to call someone racist for criticizing a multi-ethnic country like the US.
I agree there should be a consistent principle, but it's hardly only the pro-Israel people who lack that: see Trump's country-based travel ban being condemned as bigotry (by the same people who have no problem hating Israel).
I do think a consistent principle can be "it's only racist if there's an inexplicably differential treatment, analogous to the sole black worker just happening to get the worst jobs". So just criticising Israel wouldn't count, but criticising Israel constantly and never criticising any other country in the Middle East no matter what they do (see the UN, and most universities) would.
FBI hate crime statistics show Jews are the most victimized group in the United States on a per capita basis. Jews are the victims of 68% of all religious hate crimes. Compared to 13% for Muslims. The idea that Jews are not unusually likely to be victims of hate crimes is just factually untrue.
I think both are true. The western world have some obsessive love-hate relationship with the Jewish people.
The Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Protestants hate the Catholics.
And the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews.
-- Tom Lehrer, National Brotherhood Week
Apparently not in the US. The Jews here haven't really done anything to offend people. They've honestly done a very good job not painting a target on their back... Well okay, they were doing well until the whole situation with Israel. At least this time they have somewhere to run when shit hits the fan, assuming Israel wins, anyways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unDwRsI1Tzw
Okay wait, can we talk about how atrocious that AI-generated footage at 4:50 is? Oh my god, it's so fucked up that it's reminding me of a PilotRedSun video, and that video is supposed to look like a bad trip. https://youtu.be/aFdE__2OKc8?si=v1CGEzv6_QJlCQzE
Woah. Would have predicted some version of Christianity would win a poll like that.
Who ought to win the upcoming presidential election in the US? Does anyone have an opinion on that, including why?
Reason for asking: As an outsider living i Europe, I'd be interested in the views of level-headed/rational US insiders, and there are a lot of them in the ACT comment sections. (By "insiders" I mean people who have the right to vote in the US.)
Deserves, neither
In terms of voting, if it was up to me Harris because of pre Jan 6 (Jan 6 was whatever, the attempt to contest the election with faithless electors etc is what bothered me), but grandma/wife demanded I vote for trump on Israel+Palestine vs. Hamas and relative difficulty of legal vs illegal immigration (grandma very Jewish, wife immigrant) reasons, so haven't yet decided what I will do or what I will pretend I did
There are a lot of reasons why Trump needs to win.
One guy came with a 33-point bullet list on why the current administration is a wrecking ball that needs to be stopped: https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1844802469680873747 . They are not all equal in severity, and they are not adequately expanded on in that tweet, but he is mostly on the mark.
I think Ackman got the #1 (unlimited, unvetted immigration) right or almost right, although it's a lot worse than his #1 point is saying. It's a lot worse because 1) the current party in power is feeling not enough people are voting for them, so they are fighting tooth and nail to import new voters to ensure their permanent majority, over the objections of the current citizens (so far the estimates say they got 12 million in, which would ensure permanent Dem majority if they managed to get them all ballots); 2) the imported criminals that are already making Americans' lives a nightmare, which they aren't getting any help with (see, e.g., the story from Aurora, Colorado: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1844823369394376838.html ); 3) many thousands of people on terrorist watch lists that were allowed in the country together with the rest of the prospective Democratic voters.
I do wonder if his #14 (censorship of speech) should be #1 instead, though. Overwhelming censorship of inconvenient speech helps enable everything this administration is doing, but there's also media's natural leftist bias that causes them to censor anything that's not benefiting their cause, so I'm not sure how big the effect of government censorship actually is compared to the self-censorship that's already there. Together, though, these things are pretty bad. You will notice that most people in ACX comment sections think that Trump's presidency could potentially be a lot worse than all this stuff on Ackman's list, because they almost never hear about anything besides "Trump said X! Also January 6! Also abortion!"
I'm not optimistic that Trump can win, though, because it's too close, and we know of a lot of shenanigans, such as ballots sent to non-existent voters, that will be weaponized to ensure Harris' win.
Trump had control of both houses of Congress and failed to pass anything regarding the border wall. Biden and Kamala lacked both houses and would have passed a bipartisan immigration bill if Trump didn't pressure Republicans to vote against it so he could run on the border problem. The big picture character analysis of Trump should be that he gets nothing done legally and uses any opportunity to enrich himself. He didn't fix the border problem last time and he won't if he wins this time.
The part about importing illegals to turn them into Democrat voters is nonsensical and betrays an understanding of electoral politics in a 2 party system. If Republicans can't moderate their platform across any dimension to appeal to low education 3rd world religious Catholics... then their policies are just remarkably and stupidly ineffectual. It's really hard to lose in a 2 party system, although the House speaker fiasco shows that this might be the new future of the Republican party as long as Trump maintains his personality cult among Republican voters and continues to attack anybody around him in his uncalibrated manner.
>I do wonder if his #14 (censorship of speech) should be #1 instead, though.
Agreed. That is my single largest objection to Harris. In a nutshell, I regard this election as between a candidate who has been part of an administration that censored speech, using Facebook and Twitter as proxies (and who is on record as wanting "regulation" (censorship) of speech) and a candidate who recommended looking into injecting disinfectant. Aargh! I wish DeSantis had gotten the GOP nomination.
Well, as to disinfectant, he was just spouting as usual.
I'm not happy about our free speech candidate non-stop talking crap either. However, his reaction to speech he does not like is going to Twitter and spouting crap, whereas the people currently in power try their best to make the speech they don't like disappear. I grew up in a totalitarian society, and it seems really clear to me who's more dangerous.
That's fair. Many Thanks!
3,000 political appointments have a distinct affect on government -- especially when made using DEI Affirmative Discrimination.
I won't pretend to guess how it's going to turn out, but Americans have a short attention span, and it takes a lot to keep them amused for four years.
It's hard for me to imagine voters approving four more years of amateur regressive 'progressivism'. Queer propaganda in school libraries and sandwiches for Hamas are wearing thin.
> Queer propaganda in school libraries
What a moderate way to say "I support banning books."
This is a bad take. Conservatives wanting to restrict books in school libraries is not the same thing as a book ban. The books can still be acquired and read at any time by the students. That is not what the word ban means. If you think school libraries should be required to stock queer books, make that argument. Don't retreat to your motte of "book ban".
Though I'm more politically to the left, I couldn't in good conscience vote Harris. The issue is that the democrats, and the left in general, are a mess and seem to actively harm the groups they claim to help.
For example, the left lead the policy of scrapping the SAT requirement for colleges (i.e., removing a major source of social mobility). The left lead defunding the police. This approach disproportionately hurt those in poverty, and the minorities people were oh so virtuously "protecting."
The left just seen quite far gone, and detached from reality at the moment. E.g., you see MSNBC calling out misinformation, while making obviously falsifiable claims: e.g., that the US has the largest energy production - when China's is twice as large. Etc...
The hypocrisy, the actively harmful luxury beliefs, and the slander of large fractions of the US as racists, sexists, etc... is just too much for me. I think the democratic party needs to lose and regroup if it to have a sensible non-rabid future.
I am supporting Harris for two reasons. These are independent, in that I think each is reason enough to vote for Harris.
The first, mentioned by many here, is that if a mob invades the Capital building in order to stall or upend the work of Congress I trust that she will try to stop the mob. This seems like a minimal expectation of someone who has sworn a solemn oath on a bible to uphold the Constitution but apparently can't be taken for granted any more.
The second is that I do believe that anthrogenic climate change is likely real, certainly plausible and will very likely, if not addressed, make the lives of my (real) children and (imagined) grandchildren much worse than they would be otherwise. This is one area of policy where the US President can have a real impact in a way that state governments cannot, both domestically and internationally. It is clear to me that a Trump administration would be measurably worse at mitigating the causes of ACG, and in many ways would promote policies to accelerate the warming of the planet.
On the other hand, the recent spike in warming is almost certainly due to low-sulfur ship fuel becoming widespread, reducing the cooling effect of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. So environmental lobbying arguably sped up climate change in the near term. Also, nuclear was set back decades by progressive environmentalists.
On the other hand, real decarbonization will likely happen only when renewables are economical - since China is the major manufacturer now, decarbonization will happen only their schedule, not that of the West’s.
I therefore consider Harris to be the candidate more harmful to climate change, from a utilitarian standpoint.
I agree that environmentalists screwed up with nuclear. Maybe less so with SO2, which is pretty nasty stuff in its own right. Surely a carbon tax would be the most direct approach to reducing carbon; something similar for methane is in the IRA. But I don't see how you can conclude from either that Harris would be "more harmful to climate change" [sic], as there is no connection between her and either of these.
I think that a president who doesn't believe there is a problem with any sorts of emissions or polution in general, who loathes wind energy, and who is eager to impose tariffs on the 'major manufacturer' of renewables, will fairly clearly do less to mitigate climate change.
Why do you believe a warmer climate will make many lives much worse? Do you live right on a coast and expect your children and grandchildren to do the same, with no mobility available?
I anticipate that there will be aesthetic losses, such as coral reefs, glaciers and biodiversity, things that have greatly enriched my life and I would want future generates to enjoy. More practically, I expect there will be extensive food and water shortages in parts of the world where the population is, at the same time, growing fastest (sub Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia, etc), and that this will result in long term low intensity conflicts not only within those regions but between those regions and the rest of the world, leading to a less peaceful, less abundant world than I have enjoyed.
Obviously, there is speculation involved, but as with Pascal's wager, there seems little downside to belief, and it seems irresponsible to mess with the atmosphere, what with there just being the one.
The downside to belief was at point reported as a reduction of 75% of all economic activity worldwide. Probably not as extreme today, but there is certain to be resources allocated to maintaining the current temperature that could otherwise be directed toward furthering humanity in other ways.
Are you aware of that downside?
Of course, but I doubt the true figure is anything like 75%; certainly I don't support, nor do I think a vote for Harris (the topic under discussion here) represents support for, drastically reduced economic activity. Practically, renewables (though with their own downsides) are converging to economic parity with fossil fuels; the same for electric vehicles with ICEs. Oil economies like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia may end up worse off but that doesn't bother me too much.
I agree that 75% isn't required, but claiming "we should treat global warming as a threat because we probably won't need as much as 75% less economic activity to address it" still strongly implies that substantial reduction is still required - which is enough to disprove your claim that there is "little downside to belief [ in global warming ]".
It also implies global warming is a threat. See arguments made by David Friedman and others here and elsewhere for why it might not be. If it isn't, then we might waste billions or even trillions of dollars in order to make ourselves worse off.
Harris does not appear concerned at all about this. (Trump does not appear to be even familiar with the issue, but I think he's more likely to hire advisors who will seriously consider the tradeoffs.)
This is the first election I've followed where I'm a coin flip on both who should win and who will win. I'll try to just wait and see who wins and then hope they do the positive parts of their agenda and not the destructive ones.
Anyone who refers to any group of people "poisoning the blood of our country" is not qualified to be dogcatcher, let alone president. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKPFjAhd3KQ
So., too is someone who either believes that Haitians, or anyone, is stealing pets and and eatinig them, or who makes the claim knowing it is false.
Add to that the fact that, if that person is President for four years, hundreds of thousands of refugees (not asylum seekers; refugees) will languish in refugee camps rather than being resettled https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/us-refugee-resettlement the choice is pretty clear.
If you want to take in refugees (a nobel goal), then you need good sensible policy to enable that. For example in Europe, France has historically had massive problems with refugees (and also struggles with reactionary racism). The issue is that the French often take in refugees and rather than integrate them into society they build getos. In constant, the UK, right next door, does very well with refugees, exactly because it integrates them.
Currently it looks like the US is doing a terrible job at integrating the population influx. The problem is that until recently the Democrats would brand any concern over immigration as being racist (and thus dismiss it). To me that censoring of concerns is deeply troubling, and it makes me want to vote for Trump.
The "sanewashing" of Trump's statements is really getting out of hand. People will hear "poisoning the blood of our country" and "they're eating pets" and somehow they hear "the US is failing to integrate recent immigrants" rather than "this guy is going to incite a pogrom."
People hear Trump promise to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, an act last used to put Japanese-Americans in camps, or promise to deport 20 million people, and somehow translate it to "I will enact sensible immigration reform" rather than "I will put brown people in camps."
And if you try to point out how absolutely unhinged he sounds, people call it "censoring of concerns" rather than "literally just repeating what he said."
I agree that we should at least paritially judge people on what they say.
However, it is complicated. I am very used to trump and other Republicans being taken out of context. My priors reflect this experience.
Many people do not speak literally. It is often actually a sign of social acumen. In many cases the idea is to watch what people do, and have done.
I watched a person do a pathetically incompetent attempt at a coup d'etat. Either one of those should utterly disqualify that person as a presidential candidate, or as a respectable human being, and they do not cancel each other out.
Also, I heard this person explain his intended patheticoup, shortly before he tried to carry it out in approximately the way he described. So I'm inclined to suspect that, when he talks about abhorrent things he plans to do, sometimes he actually does mean it literally.
No, in Trump's case, they are the lies of an utterly shameless man. And I have watched what he has done and the only thing that stopped him from doing his worst were people loyal to the US Constitution.
Example:
Former DOJ officials detail threatening to resign en masse in meeting with Trump
"Rosen said Trump "turned to me and said — 'Well, one thing we know is you, Rosen, you aren't going to do anything. You don't even agree with the claims of election fraud, and this other guy at least might do something,'" referring to Clark.
"I said, 'Well, Mr. President, you're right that I'm not going to allow the Justice Department to do anything to try to overturn the election. That's true," Rosen recalled. "'But the reason for that is because that's what's consistent with the facts and the law, and that's what's required under the Constitution.'"
Donoghue eventually joined the meeting and recalled Trump asking, "What do I have to lose?" in replacing Rosen with Clark.
"It was actually a good opening because I said, 'Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose,'" he testified. "I began to explain to him what he had to lose and what the country had to lose and what the department had to lose, and this was not in anyone's best interest. That conversation went on for some time. Everyone essentially chimed in with their own thoughts, all of which were consistent about how damaging this would be to the country."
DOJ officials pushed back on Trump's baseless election fraud claims
House Jan. 6 committee hearings
DOJ officials pushed back on Trump's baseless election fraud claims
The conversation turned to whether Clark was qualified to run the Justice Department.
"It was a heated conversation. I thought it was useful to point out to the president that Jeff Clark simply didn't have the skills, the ability and the experience to run the department," Donoghue testified.
"I said, 'Mr. President, you're talking about putting a man in that seat who has never tried a criminal case, who's never conducted a criminal investigation. He's telling you that he's going to take charge of the department — 115,000 employees, including the entire FBI — and turn the place on a dime and conduct nationwide criminal investigations that will produce results in a matter of days. It's impossible. It's absurd. It's not going to happen and it's going to fail.'"
Donoghue said Trump asked him what he would do if he replaced Rosen with Clark.
"I said, 'Mr. President, I would resign immediately. I'm not working one minute for this guy,'" he replied.
Engel echoed that: "'I've been with you through four attorneys general, including two acting attorneys general, but I couldn't be part of this," he said he told Trump.
Donoghue told Trump he would lose his "entire department" if he moved ahead.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/23/1107217243/former-doj-officials-detail-threatening-resign-en-masse-trump-meeting
Note that I specifically said that I am referring to refugee resettlement, not asylum seekers. https://www.unhcr.org/us/what-we-do/resettlement-united-states
The UK resettles very few refugees. https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/refugee-resettlement-facts/
Trump, mostly democracy preservation.
Democratic norms are breaking down and that's really bad. Trump did January 6th, which was bad, and did some dumb stuff in his term of office but it always feels like it's just Trump and few hanger-ons. Meanwhile, there's been 3 big events where major institutions broke democratic norms.
The Russiagate/Mueller thing. The intelligence services assured us that Russia interfered in the election and that Trump was involved/aware. This was not true and we know because they've admitted and apologized for lying to a FISA court judge (a rubberstamp) among other things.
The Hunter Biden thing and Trump twitter ban. In 2020, a massive story broke with video of the president's son smoking crack with a bunch of hookers. Dumb, but elections are dumb. This was blacklisted off social media as the intelligence agencies assured us, and pressured social media, that this was Russian disinfo. In the immediate aftermath, Trump was banned from his primary social media presence, Twitter.
The conviction thing. Trump is running as a convicted criminal over some bs that no one understands and no one cares. Doesn't matter. It's bad to convict your political opponents of bs crimes, especially if they win, because then why wouldn't they do it back to you?
Fundamentally, everyone is burning our democratic mos maiorum at a frightening pace but when the red tribe does it, it's this one populist guy which...seems pretty easy to roll back. When the blue tribe does it, it comes from institutions with entrenched power. That's significantly more dangerous. I can't say it any other way: it's bad for intelligence services to investigate presidential candidates, it's bad to ban presidential candidates from media, and it's bad to convict presidential candidates for BS crimes. Those are all really bad democratic violation norms and no one would be confused about it if, like, the opposition candidate in Turkey or something was investigated by the intelligence services, banned off social media, and convicted of BS crimes.
Your sentence is intentionally misleading:
"The intelligence services assured us that Russia interfered in the election and that Trump was involved/aware"
By using the word "AND", you're concealing the fact that Russia DID interfere in the 2020 election. This is well-established.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2020_United_States_elections#Interference_from_the_administration
You can go and edit wikipedia if you disagree.
Trump was banned off of Twitter a few days after Jan 6th, not related to the Hunter Biden thing. The Trump campaign's Twitter was locked for less than a day for sharing a Hunter Biden video.
Also Twitter is currently blocking leaked JD Vance stuff, so this doesn't make for much of a comparison.
Are you making a prediction that if Trump wins after having been convicted, he will retaliate by convicting his political opponents?
Directly? No. Indirectly, absolutely. Afterall, it's not like Biden directly prosecuted Trump, it was a NY DA. I expect Republican DAs to notice and follow suit.
For specific predictions:
Contingent on the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028, 2032, or 2036 being from a red state or having done significant business there (eg Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky):
-I predict with 90% confidence that a Kentucky DA or the AG will open at least one criminal investigation into the Democratic candidate.
-Contingent on the above, I predict a 20% chance that Trump/Republican party will quash the investigation. This is what Biden should have done and it could have been accomplished through a quick phone call. Parties aren't all powerful but they still have power, we just watched them replace Biden with Kamala. Alvin Bragg would not have prosecuted Trump is he credibly believed it would have ended his career in Democratic politics.
-Contingent on the investigation not being quashed, I predict an 90% chance of at least one case going to trial.
-Contingent on the above, I predict a 75% chance of at least one conviction.
So, if the Democratic party nominates someone from a red state, I predict a (0.9*0.8*0.9*0.75)=~48% chance of that candidate being convicted of a crime in that state, with the main questions being whether the Republican party quashes it and whether they can sell it to a jury. Everyone has committed some kind of crime, especially politicians, and a DA can indict a ham sandwich.
I would expect similar attempts to be experimented with on Democratic candidates for Senate and House in red states. The conviction is still relatively recent, everyone is keeping quiet with the election, but the game logic makes too much sense.
If it helps you understand, I would similarly predict,
Contingent on a Republican president and a Democratic Senate:
I would predict that no Supreme Court Justice would be appointed in the last 12 months of the Republican president's term.
Why wouldn't Trump directly prosecute his political opponents? He already tried that nonstop after the 2016 election.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/21/us/trump-opponents-investigations.html
Trump isn't a lawyer; if he tries to directly prosecute anyone, he'll be laughed out of court. If he orders the DOJ's lawyers to prosecute political opponents, they'll slow-walk it past 2029. If he orders his new Attorney General to fire all the DOJ's lawyers and replace them with Trump loyalists, he'll run up against the Pendleton Act, and it's unlikely that he'll win that fight.
He could probably manage a few prosecutions by having his tame AG appoint loyalists to any vacancies in the DOJ, but they'll be operating without the support of the bulk of the organization.
I'd very much prefer he didn't try such a damn fool thing, but if he does I expect it won't go very far. Look at the trouble Trump's opponents have had prosecuting *him*.
"Contingent on a Republican president and a Democratic Senate:
I would predict that no Supreme Court Justice would be appointed in the last 12 months of the Republican president's term."
Unfortunately, the Republicans have set this precedent in 2016.
I realize you've just basically estimated these chances, but particularly "I predict a 75% chance of at least one conviction" rings hollow. Maybe you meant for each such trial, but 75% seems laughably low for, say, 10 trials.
"Unfortunately, the Republicans have set this precedent in 2016."
I mean, that's the reference. :)
And it's justified. The Republicans broke mos maiorum and screwed the Democrats out of a Supreme Court justice seat, a seat that ended up having big implications. The Dems can't let that slide. They don't have to escalate further but they can't be the ones to deescalate without looking weak.
On the percentages, I just went with my gut. You're free to adjust the percentages or think more deeply about them.
Do you think some Republican DA is going to go after Kamala Harris, and if so, on what grounds? The matters around Biden (mainly Hunter and his screw-ups) have been thrashed out, but I haven't seen any rumours that Kamala was doing anything particularly bad (even by San Francisco political standards, where availing of patronage to mix with the nobs for the deep pockets to fund your campaigns isn't even on the list of 'whoa there friend that's abuse of office').
I doubt a Republican DA can go after Kamala, the same way I doubt a Democratic DA could go after DeSantis. Republican DAs can only really prosecute Democrats from red states and Democratic DAs can only really prosecute Republicans from blue states. I don't think the system is totally broken, the legal system isn't bad enough that you can prosecute people who haven't really done anything in your jurisdiction. Trump seems uniquely vulnerable because he spent so much time doing business in NY.
As for federal, not state prosecutors, I think that's a big part of what Project 2025 is about. The Feds don't obey Trump, they relish in it, and they jailed Bannon and Manafort. That requires...fundamental changes to their personnel and culture to prevent a reoccurrence.
Obviously trump, politically he's a boring moderate, culturally we need a signal that outsiders/rural/men can succeed over the cities/insiders/hr-women, its getting very very depressing out there. (and yes its weird that a newyorker is the symbol of rural america)
"Trump isnt the flood he's the dam"; honestly since he named vance his successor I dont think his death would matter much but the 1st assassination attempt, oh boy, wouldve been a disaster, if the war hawk republications got control of the party again and there was bipartision support for some random war to launder money, and mass importing 2nd class citizens(illegal immigrants work for peanuts be causes structurally they have even less bargaining power then you, *by design*).
“Culturally we need a signal that …men can succeed over … women”
I know, right? After nearly 250 years of all female Presidents, all the time, it’s high time to show that a man can become POTUS! It’s hard to imagine, I know, but one can dream.
/s
"hr-women" I even included a - *wags finger*
And this changes my point because... why?
How many hr-women, as opposed to plain garden-variety non-hr women, have been POTUS in the last 250 years?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerial_state
I spend my days, begging to work to faceless job sites sites, spent years on a piece of paper and feel a pull to self-censor my socail media usage to appease protental future employers(and 95% of people viewing my social media would tell me to self censor more). The corporate bureaucracy has been in power for my entire life and recently been going completely insane.
My interactions with this vague comforist power has been teachers and hr managers; I dont doubt the ceo's of the majority of corps I hate are men, but the boots on the ground of gossip, shaming, appealing to faceless systems are women, acting like women. If you dont understand that I see hilrey and kalama as what vance calls "childless cat ladies" your not understanding the cultural element of this election.
The power men bring to the table is violence, while women gossip and shame; violence wins over gossip but thats quite the road to go down and would be happy to hear any compromises youd offer; but I wont feel shame about this anymore, fly-over america is hurting, men are hurting, and I fucking hate the corporations and their god damned culture.
I've, like, 70-80% convinced myself to vote Trump, which would make me an Obama-Johnson-Biden-Trump voter. I probably would have voted Biden over Trump, but I will likely vote Trump over Harris. Yes, I am very aware of how odd this particular split is. If you told me in 2016 that I would be seriously considering voting Trump in 2024 I would be very surprised.
Main issues to me that favor Trump are immigration, courts, and the economy. Main things that are keeping me from being 100% are Ukraine, foreign policy/diplomacy in general, and the possibility that this galvanizes a really obnoxious leftist opposition that would be worse than just letting Harris win and hopefully electing a normal-ish Republican in 2028.
After the debate, you would still have voted Biden over Trump? Is that faith in the Democratic party machine? If so, why would it not work equally as well for Harris?
It's the Wanker party or the Banker party, and I don't have a dog in that fight.
I'm collecting all campaign literature and other lies in a shopping bag. On voting day, I'll ceremonially place the bag in the dumpster. End of election.
Ah, that wonderful time of year when the doorbell rings and you think, "please let it be the Jehovah's Witnesses."
Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Seventh Day Adventists are going to make a fortune providing rehab to these psychos. The Right wing-nuts have littered the Voters' Guide with their nonsense, while the Leftie mayor funds toilet troll parades downtown and paint for rainbows on the streets. Thank goodness for football and door-to-door evangelists.
I've said as much in other threads, but just to reiterate here.
I'm voting Harris. For this election cycle, at least, I'm one-issue voter, and that issue is "is there a chance this candidate, if given power, will refuse to peacefully surrender it?" Historically, we've had a good run in the US, and in my lifetime I've never had to even consider that as a factor when voting. But now that we have a candidate running who has already once attempted to thwart the electoral process and fraudulently retain power despite an election loss, now seeking power again, I can't justify any use of a vote other than to support their opponent.
Promoting this concern is central to the democratic ticket. However, I don't buy it. There was ultimately a peaceful transfer of power. Trump left the white house.
J.D Vance asked point blank said a) he condems the riots and b) that the ticket is commited to a peaceful transfer of power, regardless of the outcome. (You can find these answers on YouTube in some of the Forbes news YouTube posts).
Hitler also consumed cyanide so I guess WWII was a peaceful transfer of power because he didn't fight to the end.
J.D. Vance has also said that he wouldn't have certified the 2020 election. He was clearly picked because if Trump decides no more certifying the 2028 election, Vance will go along with it.
That there was "ultimately a peaceful transfer of power" after Trump failed to overturn the election matters to me about as much as Robert Routh ultimately behaving peacefully in court after his failed assassination attempt.
Handing the gun back to a guy who just tried to shoot you, because his assistant says "point blank" that said guy now condemns shooting and will only use the gun to protect you, is beyond foolish.
What was expected to happen after the coup. Would the Congress say - there’s a lot of fairly unfit 50 year olds walking about with foam hands let’s create a dictatorship? If the electoral college wasn’t ratified ok that day, would that be it? Does the constitution say something like - the electoral college needs ratification on Jan 6th by congress or the incumbent can stay in forever.
Seems like a formality.
Generally when I think of coups I expect it to involved military action on the part of the coupists.
https://www.waff.com/2022/06/24/email-shows-rep-brooks-requested-pardon-former-president-trump/
Congressman Mo Brooks emailed Trump asking for a pardon for all the Republicans that would have defected and joined Pence in certifying the fradulent electoral votes. You think people would wait for the courts to determine whether that was constitutional? There would have been mass unrest because Trump attempted to turn our country's government into one of those 3rd world shithole governments he dislikes so much.
Seriously, how do you think strongmen like Putin became dictators? They woke up one day with full control of the government and military and compliance of the masses blessed to them by the lord almighty? They did exactly what Trump was trying to do by delegitimizing government and oppositional forces, falsifying votes, and replacing everybody in positions of power with loyalists, like when he pressured AG Barr to sign a forged letter that would allow the DoJ to confiscate votes from the states. The lack of that is what's supposed to separate democracies from dictatorships, which Trump is trying to turn the US into.
> Seriously, how do you think strongmen like Putin became dictators? They woke up one day with full control of the government and military and compliance of the masses blessed to them by the lord almighty?
Putin has generally won elections.
> Congressman Mo Brooks emailed Trump asking for a pardon for all the Republicans that would have defected and joined Pence in certifying the fradulent electoral votes. You think people would wait for the courts to determine whether that was constitutional?
Well that’s not the “coup”, as it’s not related to the fat fifty year olds wandering into the congress, who could have convened anywhere to vote.
Sure. It would have been a bit of a messy period but the Supreme Court would have ruled one way or the other - but that’s what happened with Al Gore.
I’m not pro Trump or in any way a Republican, I’m amused that any body thinks that the US is a democracy to lose.
If you read the memo one the lawyers working with the Trump legal team wrote about it, it looks like the plan was "Trump stays president, and we force Biden to go to court to try to overturn the results, where a majority-conservative SCOTUS will deem it a non-justiciable political question."
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/21/politics/read-eastman-memo/index.html
>>"The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind."
For myself, I've tried to avoid the word "coup" in describing the fake elector scheme/Jan 6 riot so far. I think it could debatably be called a coup attempt, but once you throw that word in the mix, the conversation tends to bog down (see, e.g. the argument between TGGP and Monkyy) in a bunch of unnecessary back and forth about that counts as a "coup."
And honestly I think that argument is a distraction. It doesn't matter whether it "counts as a coup." If someone tries to shoot me but then his supporters explain that "murder" isn't the right word for what he was trying to do because based on the precise facts of the case it really should be considered an "attempted aggravated manslaughter"... I mean, that's cool I guess, and it's relevant for his criminal prosecution, but it's not relevant to whether I'm giving him the gun back, and I'd be a moron to do so.
A candidate lost the election, and rather than concede he & his staff attempted to insert a false result which would defraud the electorate by preventing the peaceful transfer of power to the victor, to the point of fomenting a riot in the Capitol to try to compel the Vice President into playing his role in the plan. Whatever word you want to use for that, a guy who is willing to do it to retain power is not someone you give that power back to willingly.
For some of us, the actions of Biden’s Edith Wilsons, whoever they may be (and it’s odd but significant that we don’t know their names) represent an expansion and overreach of executive power* if not quite in the FDR league, equally as consequential.
I’m not being snarky. But it’s as well to understand others may have concerns on the level of yours, just differing.
*Of course, the executive power in this case was de facto unelected.
To be honest, if someone else looks at Trump’s deliberate attempt to subvert election results and retain power after losing and thinks, “well I’m equally concerned that some people in the Biden Administration may have taken an inappropriately large role in setting policy as Biden’s mental health declined,” I think, charitably, that those people are wrong and misleading themselves because no one likes to admit that the leader of their tribe did a bad and its always much easier to go looking for something (anything) the other tribe did that they can turn on its head and declare equally bad so that their leader’s bad doesn’t matter so much anymore. Whataboutism is bad reasoning but good for the soul, and this was what they found. If anything, it’s only real value is illustrating just how hard the barrel had to be scraped to find the equivalence.
But at any rate, Harris is the candidate, not Biden, and I’m comfortable fixing the % odds of occurrence of “Harris experiences a mental decline that results in other members of her administration taking an inappropriately large role in setting policy, which is kind of like unelected officials governing if you think about it, which is kind of like crafting and executing a plan to overturn a legitimate election result if you *really* think about it” at 0%.
On the other hand, “Trump refuses to concede power” is not a 0% risk, since it’s already something he’s done once and I don't see any change in his behavior or attitude that says he wouldn't be willing to do so again if push came to shove and he wanted to keep power he'd legitimately lost.
Given that, I don’t see any responsible use of a vote other than using it to vote against him, and I believe that anyone voting for him (despite whatever well-meant intentions or concerns they may think they are addressing by doing so) is making a wrong and irresponsible choice.
As for his real estate doings - I admit as I’m not interested in his fortunes, I haven’t followed the story as you have - it’ll be a dangerous precedent for other politicians, the day anybody is finally nailed on that score. That’s a big bed.
I'm confused - I don't think I mentioned real estate anywhere. Maybe you're looking at another post?
Edit - also your other reply, which begins "Nah, I'm not a Republican." I didn't say you were. I initially just brushed over it but now wondering if it was meant to go someplace else.
Oh sorry, I was just on a dreamy tangent about Trump’s misdeeds, which have expanded to include whether or not Mar a Lago is worth (making up figures) 20 million dollars, or like 8 million? (Sorry I’m cooking and can’t google). It’s the most famous house in Florida but then people don’t really like old vintage things so much anymore.
As to the Republican remark, I hold no partisan brief for Trump qua Trump.
Nah, I’m not a Republican and would feel this way even were he safely out of the way in federal prison.
Trump - does everything have to be ironic with Trump? - was the most transparent president we’ve had in ages, maybe ever.
Even down to his choice of classified things to hide in his bathroom, which supposedly resembled the sort of thing you might later market on eBay.
The funny thing was thinking that Trump had read any documents and would have any idea of their contents.
Honestly let's face it, even the people here who live in the US don't live in states where their vote actually has a chance of mattering. Personally, I'll be voting for Harris so that when Trump ends up winning, he'll lose the popular vote even more, which will slightly increase the chances of more entertaining stuff happening. It's just one vote, but I'm doing my part.
Why would you think the readership here doesn't live in swing states? I know CA is overrepresented but it's not everyone.
Most people don't live in swing states.
Weirdly, in 2020 my late wife and I moved from California to South Carolina (for reasons unrelated to politics). So we went from being disempowered voters in a deep blue non-swing state to being disempowered voters in a deep red non-swing state. Sigh.
Government of the swings states, by the swing states, and for the swing states shall not perish from the Earth.
I don't know if I'd describe myself as level-headed--I just posted asking how to join the manosphere--but if you want an unattached American's view, sure.
First of all, our two-party system sucks. It exists because of an artifact of the old first-past-the-post system and because the duopoly has squashed attempts to get outside it. It increases corruption, because there are fewer parties to pick from, and polarization, because it gets people into two big coalitions and then gets them all ready to hate each other. I don't tell progressives I think a biological connection between sex and gender exists or that I think the media is biased against whites or men; I don't tell conservatives I'm pro-abortion, trans and gay people should have the same rights as everyone else, or I think the welfare state should be bigger.
But: I am going to argue for voting for Harris. Trump tried to steal the election and then claim it had been stolen from him, launched the USA's first-ever coup attempt, and refuses to concede if he loses. For all that I hate the Democrats and their woke, sadly I'm going to have to suck it up for four more years, because Trump is likely to (ironically) make this country look a lot more like Latin America. with powerful people putting cronies in charge of everything, every party claiming they won after each election and making it impossible for their enemies to win, and general incompetence (Trump's meddling in the CDC during COVID made quite the impression).
“Trump is likely to (ironically) make this country look a lot more like Latin America. with powerful people putting cronies in charge of everything, every party claiming they won after each election and making it impossible for their enemies to win, and general incompetence”
...that’s interesting. As an outsider who visits the US irregularly, it has been my hypothesis for 30 years that the US is slowly moving towards having a political culture similar to the two other large, immigrant American countries: Brazil and Argentina. Only with a Protestant rather than Catholic twist.
Yeah, I'd agree.
It's part of why I respected the old WASP ideals even if they wouldn't have let me golf with them. There is a reason the USA had less corruption and more organization than the countries to its south, and it's going away.
I've heard arguments similar things happened to Israel with the influx of Russian immigrants.
As an Israeli, I think Russian immigrants are one of the best things that happened to us in the last decade, as a demographic boost to our secular and educated population
I'm more worried about the democrats degrading democracy tbh. We saw what Trump did in power: the world didn't end.
I really don't think Trump has the power, the will, or the party support or the popular support to undermine democracy. I think the democratics actually do, and I find their constant flirting with dehumanising their opponents as biggots and racists far more concerning. I can easily see that rhetotic transitioning to support the need to veto certain political opponents (to protect the people) and that being a pathway to a one party system. I don't see any similarly concerning rhetoric on the right.
Just to be clear, I think the riot was appalling, and I think Trump should have been heavily fined contemporaneously (but not criminally charged). It seemed incredibly weak and misguided of the democrats to not do that.
Yeah, I don't like a lot of the stuff they do. I thought the whole bit with blaming white people when black people beat up Chinese people during the pandemic reminded me of something out of Der Sturmer.
Thing with Trump is he knows the system a lot better and actually has a plan (Schedule F--he tried at the end of his last term) to replace the entire federal government with his people. And whatever you think about Harris (and there is a lot to think) she is unlikely to retain support if she fails to concede.
But I think we agree it is the lesser of two evils. We just differ slightly on which evil is lesser.
> launched the USA's first-ever coup attempt
?
The constitution was a coup of the articles, there were traitors who swapped to the British, the civil war, who killed jfk and did they get what policy change they wanted, etc etc.
Oswald killed JFK, and a coup requires the participation of security forces https://x.com/naunihalpublic/status/1346931222208008192
> Oswald killed JFK
I hate when people state the common opinion as fact without even why they think its true.
Theres like 5 theories, 3 of which aint that absurd.
> coup requires the participation of security forces
George Washington was part of the constitutional convention, while I dont keep track of details I will reject he didnt hold soft military power at the time; so coup vs the articles.
Oswald bought a rifle matching the bullet trajectories. He was working in the Book Depository, where shots were fired from. He killed a cop while evading the authorities. He had previously attempted to assassinate Edwin Walker. He had for a while defected to the Soviet Union, where he married a Russian woman, and supported Castro's regime in Cuba.
"Soft power" is not how coups are carried out.
> "Soft power" is not how coups are carried out.
Strange, I think George Washington was in power shortly after the convention, I think maybe he mustve had enough soft power or your suggesting *allot* of violence in the background im not aware of.
> Oswald bought a rifle matching the bullet trajectories. He was working in the Book Depository, where shots were fired from. He killed a cop while evading the authorities. He had previously attempted to assassinate Edwin Walker. He had for a while defected to the Soviet Union, where he married a Russian woman, and supported Castro's regime in Cuba.
A bullet disappeared, the declassified video of jfks head did the opposite of the they told the public. Oswald had mafia connections. He was killed within a week.
I think the mafia version of the story makes sense.
What security force participated in Trump's attempts to stay in office?
None.
I'm going to go with Trump, especially seeing that nobody else is defending him.
The left in the U.S. has been corrupting the court system in extremely terrifying ways - going after Trump for routine violations like classified documents (Obama almost definitely still has some lying around, for instance), colluding with the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop, for two.
In addition their FAA has been harassing Elon Musk and hamstringing some of the most important technology in the world, for nakedly political reasons. These two issues alone are bad enough, but the Democrats also kept Covid lockdowns going FAR beyond when they needed to, kept up mask mandates, urged vaccine mandates, and generally promulgated an atmosphere of terror for a relatively harmless pandemic.
Trump is an evil buffoon, but the Democrats are by far the worse option, to my mind. I think the Jan. 6th issue was a foolish, unintentional mistake by Trump. And I actually do think that there are concerns with the U.S. election system - namely that we need Voter I.D. requirements like every other civilized country in the world.
>going after Trump for routine violations like classified documents (Obama almost definitely still has some lying around, for instance),
They went after Trump because he *intentionally tried to hide* classified documents. Other people, including Democrats (I forget if it was Obama or someone else close to Biden), have been found with classified documents, but they turned them over when the government noticed they were missing and asked for them back. If it's an honest mistake, it's no big deal.
But when the government noticed that Trump had taken classified documents and asked for them back, he denied having the documents, and had them moved to another room to conceal them. No shit the government is going to come down hard on that.
What do you think happened to Hillary Clinton's email server?
If there were a way for me to vote against the American judiciary and attendant figures in the legal establishment, that’s what I would do.
To what you said, I would also add the destruction of institutions like the ACLU and the vast damage done to the education system (eg. Canceling gifted classes, dumbing down math, affirmative action, vibes-based literacy learning (Calkins?) that has put a dent in literacy rates). These weren't explicitly campaigned for by Democrats, but there was a very visible picture of pretending like these aren't happening or are actually good, for which I hold them responsible.
That said, I'll vote for Harris (in NY so doesn't matter) through clenched teeth because I can't interpret the Jan 6th events as anything other than an attempt to destroy the Republic. In the best case scenario, if they were a mistake, it's a cosmic level of irresponsibility like a conductor falling asleep at the console and letting a train detail. But if they were not a mistake, it's the most blatant self-serving attack on the country's institution that I know of.
Yeah I don't like Trump, but I'm thinking of voting for him. The Dems seem to be the party of big business, pharma, defense contractors and I hope Trump can push back against some of that. Also living in NY my vote doesn't matter.
The realignment of the parties as establishment / opposition is well and truly complete if you see the Dems as the party of big business, pharma, and defense contractors.
Not saying you're wrong that they are that party. You are, however, mistaken if you think that Republicans, either legacy GOP or the current Trump skinsuit version, aren't also the party of big business, pharma, and defense contractors.
(And what's wrong with big business, pharma, and defense contractors anyway?)
Well, for a start pharma cause harm, it is in the name. It is not in the business of healing people, as it is not good for business. Creating sickness is good for business so they have vaccines etc.
Defence contractors is another word for warmongers. They are not in the business of protecting people as it is not good for business. Stirring up fear and trouble is good for its business.
Voter ID is one of those odd hills that people choose to fight over. It is incredibly rare for voter fraud to take the form of someone going to a polling station and pretending to be someone else on the electoral register because its fairly easy to detect when the real person wanders in and is told they've already voted. It also isn't apocalyptically difficult to get accepted ID as voter ID detractors claim. If you speak to anyone who has canvassed before low level voter fraud generally takes place with postal votes either through family patriarchs or matriarchs being the one to vote for the entire family or organised groups having everyone tick the box for the agreed upon candidate in front of them. Voter ID checks solve neither of these and the only way around the postal vote issue is to ban postal votes which is never going to happen (beyond ending all abusive behaviour).
Its not a big deal having to go through Voter ID checks but its just money being spaffed up the wall to implement it and a minor roadblock to voting. Not enough to impact general elections but at least here in the UK there was one minor local election I didn't vote in because I got to the polling station and realised I'd forgotten my ID.
Overwhelmingly when I’ve worked the polls people have a pragmatic response to voter ID, 10 to one I’d say. Basically amounting to: I have to show my ID (in whatever form) for many less consequential things.
OTOH the *professional* Dems in my state just complained that voter rolls were purged of 5000 illegal immigrants. Because it would suppress their votes.
Yeah its not voter suppression because in reality its just a mild nuisance especially when you're used to not needing it since its so easy to acquire a government ID. Its just a pointless policy (at least in developed nations) that is there to have the appearance of being tough on low level voter fraud because dealing with any of the actual ones is either politically toxic or requires too much political capital.
No, the point is that illegal immigrants are not allowed to vote if they aren't citizens. This is disingenuous.
What? How is it disingenuous? Illegal immigrants shouldn't be on the electoral register to be able to vote in the first place. Its a completely different issue to requiring voter ID. The exact same mechanism that prevents you driving to every polling place you can reach and voting there should stop illegal immigrants voting. If they are illegally on the register then ID does not help.
There has been a disingenuous tendency - abetted by the Dumb Right, unfortunately - to identify the dismay around voting process changes* that seem ever more, ah, targeted at outcomes (and have yielded some interesting features, like everyone in a precinct voting identically) - which seem, in short, to be very far from a folk notion of one man, one vote, in secret … “The private life in Russia is dead” - to identify that with both the Jan 6 rabble, and with claims of a wholesale stolen election.
The former has been drowned out, but is more salient in my view.
*Vote harvesting for instance.
How do you square this with over 10 million illegal immigrants in the country who can currently vote with little to no issue?
Useful article on this today in (libertarian-aligned) Reason.
https://reason.com/2024/10/15/the-noncitizen-voting-myth/
>>In 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit, interviewed election officials "who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes in the 2016 general election," including in many jurisdictions with high populations of noncitizens. The officials "referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution," amounting to "0.0001 percent of the 2016 votes in those jurisdictions," according to the Brennan Center.
>>The conservative Heritage Foundation, which frequently warns about the danger of noncitizens voting, comes to a similar conclusion. Its database of "election fraud cases" includes around 70 instances of noncitizens voting illegally since 2000, representing under 5 percent of the database. Many of those cases involved lawful permanent residents who were "encouraged by a government official to vote or falsely told that they were eligible," wrote American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
>>The trend holds even in states that have recently become election integrity battlegrounds. A 2023 study analyzed by The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler recorded "fewer than 1,000 noncitizen votes out of 3.4 million cast in the 2020 election in Arizona," or 0.0003 percent (assuming 50 percent turnout among registered noncitizens). "At the upper range," using "less precise records," Kessler continued, the study indicated less than three-quarters of a percent of voting-age noncitizens in the state "may have voted." A 2022 Georgia audit found that just over 1,600 noncitizens had tried to register to vote in a 25-year period—but none had successfully registered, and none had voted.
These kind of small numbers jive with the last time I looked into the issue personally, when someone shared https://www.scribd.com/document/326149037/Report-Alien-Invasion-in-Virginia with me, and despite the alarmist tone from an obviously-pushing-to-do-more-about-noncitizen-voting perspective, the number of actual votes they found was paltry. If I can dig up the analysis I did I might post later - for now I'm not dealing with scribd and redigging through the document itself.
Personally, this issue has always struck me in my fiscal conservative bone. If, for example, the non-citizen vote in Arizona in 2020 was .0003% (or even the max of .0006%, since the .0003% figure was built on an assumption of 50% turnout), it's not *not* an issue, but how much effort and money, realistically, should we put into fixing something so non-impactful on elections? How much lower an error rate do we want?
Just reminds me of prog-left-environmentalist types trying to convince me that 2-parts-per-trillion arsenic in the water requires billions of dollars of regulation because "there is ARSENIC in the WATER."
I strongly believe that election fraud occurs only at insignificant levels in American presidential elections. But this argument is so unpersuasive that it's actually antipersuasive, reeking of sleight of hand by someone trying to hide something.
You're talking about *criminal prosecutions* for election fraud, as a metric for actual election fraud. But prosecutorial discretion is a thing, and it's a thing that introduces huge systematic bias to your assessment. If I told you that, in the past year, the City of San Francisco had prosecuted only five people for shoplifting, would you conclude that there was almost no shoplifting going on in San Francisco? The Federal Government hasn't prosecuted anyone for growing or distributing marijuana in California in decades, despite this being a serious federal crime. Do you conclude that nobody in California grows weed? And if I told you that, in the whole of the Jim Crow era, Alabama never arrested anyone for lynching black people, would you conclude that there were no lynchings in Alabama?
Yikes - that's a significant miss. Was that in all 4 of the studies the article referenced, or are you critiquing their critique of the Heritage Foundation one for only finding " 70 instances of noncitizens voting illegally " for its database of "election fraud cases?"
It's interesting you make the point about antipersuasiveness, my engagement with this topic has always been colored by the one time I did deep-dive into the Alien Invasion study. It seemed so incredibly alarmist in tone, dramatically leading with figures of improperly registered voters when (a) the numbers were in fact small compared to the number of voters and votes over the 10 year period they were looking at, and (b) the number of *votes* they identified, which is what impacts elections and actually matters, was even smaller - pathetically so.
I'll see if I can dig it up, but the whole thing reeked of trying to take something incredibly small, inflate it as best it could by focusing on registrations rather than votes, and then deal with the smallness of even *that* by trying to argue they'd only found the 'tip of the iceberg' when even if you took the numbers they found and assumed comparable numbers everywhere in Virginia it still didn't come close to sufficient numbers to impact election results.
How do illegal immigrants successfully register to vote without being citizens? Can you tell me what the process is, since you think it's so easy?
In NY, you only need a name and address to register to vote. The identity verification includes this bit:
"If you do not have a DMV or social security
number, you may use a valid photo ID, a current
utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government
check or some other government document that
shows your name and address."
So check a box saying you're a citizen, provide name and address, now you can vote. It really is that easy.
https://elections.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2024/06/2023-vr-form-enligh-fillable_deadline-correction.pdf
I don’t know about 10 million such voters. That would surprise me. Hispanics generally have not shown an interest in voting in great numbers, so it is unlikely illegal immigrants would bother unless there’s a money angle.
However, I guess I’d turn the question back: how would you avoid signing them up to vote?
That’s what the recent kerfuffle in for instance Bexar County was about.
LULAC volunteers or other Hispanic activists sign people up to vote, whether by going door to door or at tables, I dunno.
To sign up to vote you are given a little card to fill out and mail in postage-free.
The card certainly doesn’t ask where you are born. The main information sought is where you live, so you can be assigned a precinct.
Anyone getting a driver’s license is also asked if they would like to register to vote.
DL’s are not tied to citizenship at all.
Of course, many people here illegally do not wish for any of these government “touches”.
But how you would ever separate the heat from the chaff is beyond me. The fact that there are so many “same names” is surely a hurdle as well.
A concerted investigation found just what you’d expect from the process. There was not any sort of “ we promise to do better”. The response was - how dare you try to clean up the voter rolls in order to remove noncitizens (as well as people who have disappeared/died/ left the state.
Harris.
Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the US government in a coup d'etat, conspiring to organize seven false slates of electors, then sending a mob at the Capitol with the intent of preventing the peaceful transfer of power because he was salty about losing. It is absolutely necessary that he be prevented from obtaining power again and sent to prison, so that in future generations, every would-be putschist thinks, "I don't want to end up like Trump, the guy who tried to overthrow the government and went to jail," rather than, "if I just do what Trump did, but more effectively, *I* could be dictator for life, and there's no risk." As history's greatest and most moral superpower, the decay of the United States's democratic institutions is one of the worst possible things that could happen, and a Trump 2024 victory would be a direct wrecking ball to them.
For those hoping for a Harris victory, what is the expectation should she take office?
Four years of "just keep going as we are"? I don't think that's the worst, but it needn't be the best, either. Do we have any ideas what she and Walz think about foreign policy? Do you think in office Walz will be told "sit down, shut up, you're only the VP and I'm the boss"?
Are the hopes about loosening up on immigration, restoring abortion, more trans rights, more all rights, etc. based on anything tangible? I know Walz has the image of being liberal to progressive, but again - once in the White House, will he have any input at all?
I think she might possibly be even less forthcoming toward the defund-the-police faction of the Democratic Party than Biden. She only chooses not to show her stern side, for tactical within-party reasons.
...I base this on her record as a very tough-on-crime state prosecutor in California: The only time in her career she has showed her revealed preferences (so to speak), rather than to say stuff. The Guardian had an article on her track record where they tried to soft-pedal her decisions back then, yet was unable to gloss over her crabby attitide toward criminals, it is just too visible:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/24/kamala-harris-california-record-election
...Perhaps she is an equally stern centrist also with regard to other policy issues. The fact that she has lately copied many of Trump's policy ideas (with a lighter touch, but still) may suggest the same. Then again, it might also be a tactical pose.
We'll have to wait and see if she gets the chance to show whatever is her real face, after the election.
I think she will probably govern as a Democratic politician. If I were to pick a single key policy position, I think she will be much more supportive of Ukraine than Trump, whose party blocked aid to Ukraine for six months on behalf of a border bill he then scuttled, as people fought and died against a genocidal dictator. If I was to pick one animating issue, the truly disgusting GOP treatment of the Ukrainian people, who are being invaded by a genocidal dictator, and which clearly comes from Trump, would be my key issue.
I'm not voting for her for policy reasons, though. I didn't vote Biden in 2020 or Clinton in 2016. I'm voting for her because Donald Trump attempted to coup the US government and needs to be driven out of politics for the health of American democracy. I live in Texas, and I voted in the Republican primaries this year because my state rep was targeted by Abbott et al for trying to impeach Ken Paxton for corruption. He also voted against Ukraine aid, but I like having a functional government instead of living in a nakedly corrupt and criminal shithole, which is the path that Trump is leading the GOP/country down.
Why is the Ukraine so important to the US? Surely most people wouldn’t have been able to find it on a map, pre invasion. Maybe not even now.
1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is proof that Vladimir Putin wants to reconstitute the Glorious Russian Empire in a manner befitting Londo Mollari. Which, if pursued even halfway to completion, results in the United States being obligated to wage actual war against Russia.
2. The defense of Ukraine is our last, best hope to destroy the Russian army and discredit Putinist revanchism without American blood being shed, and at little actual cost (the nominal dollar value of US military aid to Ukraine is mostly the book value of weapons that we were otherwise going to throw away in a few years).
3, Ukraine is a place where free men are standing between their loved homes and the war's desolation. We sing songs about that; of course we care, and for reasons entirely orthogonal to our knowledge of geography. Polling suggests that about two thirds of Americans want the United States to continue supporting Ukraine, one third want more support than we're giving them now and for as long as it takes.
The people of Ukraine are being actively invaded by a fascist tyrant, who has kidnapped tens of thousands of their children to be raised by Russians because he believes, as an ethnic group, they were made up by the Austrian general staff in WWI. His regime commits all sorts of war crimes, including rape, torture, and murder of civilians. I don't really care about the geopolitics, opposing aid for Ukraine is simply a morally bankrupt action.
The geopolitics case for protecting Ukraine is twofold:
1) Deterrence. There have been virtually no territorial annexations since WW2 that were enforced by violence. What Russia has done in very, very bad. It is important that Russia is punished for it and that others who might hope to reshape the international world order (China) are dissuaded. Given large chunks of the EU (America's greatest ally) were under the Russian (Soviet) yoke in living memory, it is particularly important that Russia be convinced military adventurism into Europe is bad.
2) The purpose of the US military is first and foremost to protect the sovereignty of the USA. Therefore, expending a small portion of the US military budget (~5%, IIRC?) to slowly defang one of the ~2 countries capable of even hoping to invade the USA if our entire military disappeared in a puff of smoke is an excellent deal.
e: Oh yeah, and:
3) Ukraine being invaded basically tells every leader with half a brain on the planet that under no circumstances should you give up your nukes. It's probably too late on this particular point, but it's still a bad precedent to set, since more countries with nukes means more chances for nuclear miscalculations and mass loss of life.
"Ukraine being invaded basically tells every leader with half a brain on the planet that under no circumstances should you give up your nukes."
I regret to inform you that the leaders actually learned this lesson long before the 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War (specifically on October 20th, 2011, although IIRC Myers has argued that the DPRK figured it out on December 25th, 1989).
Any world leaders who "discovered" this lesson after the Russian invasion has long since been off the track to build nuclear weapons anyway, so their opinion is mostly irrelevant.
1) There‘s been a fair amount of illegal invasions if not strictly territorial conquest exactly - although the US did control Afghanistan for a while. Of course the US isn’t going to fight itself.
2) protecting the sovereignty of the US would require a much smaller army, ready to take on Mexico and Canada. The army is big for extra territorial reasons.
The nuclear answer is smarter, perhaps, but you could also argue that the lesson from Iraq is to actually have nukes.
You can’t underestimate the degree to which Americans have quit taking their country quite so seriously. Who’s to blame for that, is pretty obvious, and spares neither “party”.
But in general, there are those on the left who don’t really think January 6 was “all that”, but who are happy to use it in fundraising and to sell papers and demagogue for votes. There are a few who seem legitimately frightened even at the memory of it, of course. (These may be the same people who were talking about wearing a paper clip as a recognition sign, one day after Trump was elected, and claimed to be frightened to leave their apartments? I seem to be the only one who remembers the Paperclippers!)
On the right though the Jan. 6ers are generally viewed as cosplaying nutters who were aping and reacting to what had gone on, to adulation and monetary reward (by the same people who would see dark-die-democracy above) in Minneapolis and indeed in DC itself during the Floyd protests. And whose delusions have only been encouraged by the decision not to try them for years. There is I suppose a bit of what is good for the gander is surely good for the goose, but that’s about all that passes for support. Whatever chaos agent Trump may say, I see no evidence that the GOP is fundraising and pundits dining out on the somewhat draconian legal travails of the liberty cosplayers. Mostly they are just viewed as people with too much time on their hands in exactly the manner of 99% of our modern “protesters”. Had they been clever, they would have figured out some humorous way to get attention. But we’re not talking Monkey Wrench Gang levels of IQ here.,
I'm not sure what bearing this has on Chastity's comment, though.
It can be perfectly true that
(a) lots of Americans no longer take their country seriously as a result of both parties, that some people exist on the left who do not take Jan 6 riots seriously while others are genuinely afraid, that many on the right view the Jan 6 rioters as ineffectual morons., etc, etc, and that,
(b) "Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the US government in a coup d'etat, conspiring to organize seven false slates of electors, then sending a mob at the Capitol with the intent of preventing the peaceful transfer of power" and giving power back to a guy who already did that is a stupid idea.
Donald Trump is a strange guy, maybe the strangest guy in America.
Because I have no interest in casinos and trashy gold decor and Eurotrashy women and only a little in golf - he’s said to be a good golfer, though the media seems to have lost interest in presidential golf mastery right when a good golfer became president - I tend to think he must be stupid.
Because I’m a fan of books and he has perhaps never read one - I tend to think he is stupid.
But he’s clearly not stupid. I accept that my taste and values are not a measure of his IQ.
As such, I don’t think he was so dumb as to think the government was about to be overthrown by his weird ragtag mascots, any more than Pelosi did when she dismissed the need for security, presumably hoping for an “event” of this nature (which, again, to be clear would not be and could not be an “overthrow” of the guys who have the H Bomb).
>[Pelosi] presumably hoping for an “event” of this nature
Do you have one single bit of evidences for this?
He asked for the National Guard on Jan. 3rd. Nancy P. was the point person. There was no reason not to have them. Unless, unless …
See - Argentina was it? - for a similar coup recently. No, I think it was Ecuador.
Anyway, it will all have been worth it no matter how much seriousness you choose to assign it, or how real it seems, if it helps elect Kamala Harris.
Although I’m guessing there’s no love lost between Nancy and Kamala.
He's not a good golfer, he cheats blatantly.
https://people.com/donald-trump-cheats-golf-rick-reilly-claims-8621189
https://www.indy100.com/politics/trump/donald-trump-golf-cheat-handicap
Why is he "clearly not stupid"? https://www.quora.com/Did-Donald-Trump-really-struggle-in-school-as-a-kid
Did not know about the cheating at golf, have not watched him play. Took the word of someone who watched him play.
I don’t think you can be stupid and either run a business empire seemingly on the constant edge of bankruptcy for decades. That’s a lot of balls in the air. We may not approve his possibly dodgy methods of staying solvent 75% (?) of the time, but if you are certain it sounds easy, we’ll chalk that up to my inexperience in the matter.
Nor do I think that an utterly long shot contender for the presidency, even if it begins as a joke or a branding exercise or an attempt to get out of some other difficulty lol, with no institutional support, no mainstream corporate or media or Deep State approval, figures out how to win without a cageyness amounting to intelligence.
Now, what is wrong with Trump? His no filter? His inability to be other than a clown? I can’t say but he’s certainly different enough to qualify for the amorphous label “neurodivergent”.
Your comment seems to read this way, correct me if I'm wrong:
"Smart people in my experience do X. Trump does ~X. Trump is smart. Therefore, sometimes smart people do ~X."
Why couldn't "having a different assessment of the possible effects of Jan 6" also be part of ~X?
Especially when the false electors scheme is how Trump thought he could illegitimately retain the Presidency post-election. Jan 6 is just one of the ways that he thought he could put pressure on people in government to go along with this scheme. This turned out to be a gross miscalculation of how the relevant powers (state legislatures, governors, election officials, Vice President) would respond to this pressure but it isn't as absurd as thinking that this crowd of protestors would overthrow the government singlehandedly.
I don’t follow but I’m sure you’re right.
The version I saw was a safety pin, and I remember thinking how absurd that was. Little did I know what was to come down the road, that eight years on there would be apocalyptic predictions of the Fourth Reich etc.
You’re absolutely right, that was a verbal glitch on my part.
Ah, it's hard to remember these little details after so long, and maybe some people did use or suggest paperclips!
The ship has sailed; it is, in fact, pretty clear that there is no risk whatsoever to making an attempt to become dictator for life. Even in the discussions here, few care.
It's the reason I'm voting for Harris. I don't even like her or trust her.
That seems false to me. I've seen dozens of "Trump made an attempt to become dictator, we should be against him" articles - so many that I'm honestly kind of sick of them (even though I agree with the sentiment). Trump is underpolling what we'd expect of a Republican after an unpopular Democratic administration, and although he has many unusual negative qualities that could explain that, surely 1/6 and the rest are among them.
I find comments like these exasperating because they equivocate between "it's useless to care" and "nobody cares" in a way that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if people are constantly told it's useless to care, eventually nobody will care. But we're not at that point yet and we don't need to tighten the self-fulfilling prophecy ratchet!
Banned: you didn't read the post, which said many times that it's not saying Trump will never do bad things, just that he's not going to be particularly racist beyond the level of anti-immigrant sentiment he showed in the campaign, and definitely not at the level of "put all black people in camps".
I think you're showing a sufficient level of combined ignorance + hostility that it would justify a ban from anyone and I'm not doing this out of personal emotionality.
I care very much and can never again vote for a Republican candidate until there is a complete disavowal and de-trumpification of the party. However, I don't expect that to happen in my lifetime because I don't think the party is incentivized to do that.
As to the broader level of lack caring about Jan6 and the damage to institutions, I think the cleanest evidence is to look at the complete absence of policy action or prioritization by the Biden administration to prevent a repeat. Similarly, there appeared to be no serious effort to provide structural features that enhance the transparency and legitimacy of elections (as far as I can tell, state-level action has all been in the opposite direction.)
As with all my posts, I am open to being corrected with cited evidence.
I'm not trying to equivocate - sorry if it came across that way. Certainly I don't think it's useless to care, and I think more people should.
My impression of the state of affairs roughly matches luciaphile's above - a good chunk of the left think the coup attempt wasn't anything worth spending more thought on than is required to cash out whatever political capital it brings, while a good chunk of the right dismiss it as random one-off nutters actually taking words coming out of Trump's mouth seriously, which is apparently something we should all know better than to ever do.
Where I'm coming from is mostly - aghast that /despite the fact he literally attempted a coup/ there are significant numbers of otherwise sensible people /still somehow attempting to defend him/. I'm not sure how else to interpret this other than there being concerns people care about much more than what methods a politician in power may employ in attempts to retain it.
Trump faces multiple criminal cases related to trying to overthrow the results, and if he loses, he will almost certainly go to prison for at least one of them (assuming he doesn't die first).
I agree that it is insane people are so cavalier about it, though. Literally in 250 years of history, no President has attempted to use the powers of the Presidency to retain office against the will of the people - until Trump.
At least some people see the various court proceedings as political attempts to abuse the court system by the Democrats in order to harass their counterparts, conflating Jan 6th together with all the various other scandals like the confidential papers and assprted misuses of funds.
If he does end up in prison, that will be a very strong message; given current rhetoric, however, I do worry that some may not interpret it as one might hope.
Who *ought* to win? None of the above. But since those are the candidates, those are the ones the electorate is stuck with, and I don't much care which wins, though slightly biased in favour of Trump due to the hysteria over Dictator! Fascism! Project 2025! Porn will be illegal!
(I don't know how 'the porn industry supports Kamala' plays out as an appeal to voters, though I guess anything to get young males to vote?)
But I'm not American, so my views don't count (except insofar as next Paddy's Day, which one will our Taoiseach be sucking up to? they have traced some potential Irish roots for Harris, dubious though those may be).
I am sometimes tempted to be biased in favor of Trump for the reasons you mention, but then I remember that he's not *less* dishonest and shrill than the Democrats - just so much more dishonest and shrill that he's saturated our dishonesty-and-shrillness-meters and nothing he says even registers as real words anymore.
>just so much more dishonest and shrill that he's saturated our dishonesty-and-shrillness-meters
Ouch! Yes! Reminds me of the radiation meter in Chernobyl.
In a real sense, Trump's dishonesty bothers me less than Harris's specifically because I can count on the legacy media to point out disapprovingly when he's dishonest. I cannot count on them to do the same for Harris.
I mean, it's not like this is a hard job. Many dishonest people are subtle about their lies, Trump just makes stuff up off the top of his head.
Yeah. I looked over the fact checking for the Trump/Biden debate. IIRC, essentially every statement Trump made of the form "the most...", "the best...", "the worst..." etc. (basically, every case where he claimed something reached a minimum or maximum in his or Biden's term) was false. He reiterated this in his debate with Harris, claiming that the Biden inflation spike was the largest inflation we'd had - and both I _and_ _Trump_ , _personally_ lived through the double digit inflation spike in 1980, which was larger than Biden's 9%.
I round this off to: "Trump wouldn't know truth if it bit him on the ass."
(not that I'm happy with Harris either. She's on the record as wanting to "regulate" (censor) speech.)
The thing is, I remember the hysteria first time round about he would start World War Three and Pence was going to preside over gay torture conversion camps and the rest of it, which didn't happen.
So that makes it harder for me to take it seriously that "no, this time he really will do all that!" On top of that is the mockery about him going off playing golf while in office. Yes, but if you think he's Literal Hitler, don't you *want* him to be off playing golf instead of working in office to lock up and deport everyone?
Most of the predictions of doom did not happen, and you should lower your estimate of the people who made those predictions.
Trump also tried to retain power after losing an election. His plan to do this probably couldn't have worked, but he made the attempt, and it seems very clear at this point that this was his goal. That's not some prophecy of doom posted to Twitter by @PurpleHairedMoonbat69, it's something he actually did, and it's pretty well-documented.
That's a huge red line. If he will try to do that, why should I think he will respect other limits of his power, if he thinks he can somehow ignore them? Previously, he was in the white house with little power base of his own, basically leading an insurgency within his own party. This time, he has control of the party. He's still the same mix of inept and one-in-a-billion talented he was in 2016-2020, and he's older now and probably slowing down a bit, so maybe nothing bad will come of it this time. But quite a lot is riding on that "maybe."
I very much wish this were as disqualifying for most voters as it is for me, because we really do not want politicians trying to ignore the inconvenient election outcome and stay in power anyway. Having this be a visible end to any chance of winning an election would have cemented this norm; having him still have a 50/50 chance of winning basically erases that norm. We're kind of announcing to all future candidates: "Hey, if you lose the election, why not try to hang onto power anyway? If you succeed, you get to keep power, and if you fail, you can just run again in four years and everyone will have forgotten about it." This is not going to go well for us.
I understand your claims, but believe you have the evidence to self-refute. Project 2025 is exactly the preparatory work to make a 2nd Trump administration more impactful than the first.
As someone who isn't aligned with either party, I have long subscribed to emails from mainstream organizations on both sides (what they send to their donors and potential donors, not the public media stuff.) You might be right that the left exaggerates more, but it is an extremely fine distinction (for example, you might recall the "Obamacare death committees.")
Overall, I guess I'm sympathetic to your reaction against media claims, but I'd suggest you consume less media rather than jump to believing the opposite of what they are saying.
I mean, he did do his best to not uphold the peaceful transition of power, which I would consider the bedrock of our political institutions.
Trump appears to be a worse person than GWB, but a better president because he didn't invade any countries, and instead just kept tweeting like he was still in the opposition rather than a position of responsibility.
I’m with the other Scott A, the AI researcher, and his assessment of Trump along with the expressed views of the people quoted below. Hearing these things definitely does not tempt me to be biased in favor of Trump. Their sheer numbers don’t numb me. The fact that they have numbed others scares the crap out of me.
__________
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.
_____________
Jim Mattis Retired Marine Corps Four Star General, Trump Defence 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”
___________________
John Kelly Retired United States Marine Corps General, Trump Secretary of Homeland Security, White House chief of staff - October 3, 2023 -
“The depths of [Trump’s-] dishonesty is just astounding to me ... He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”
________________
General Mark Milley Army Chief of Staff 9/29/23
“We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley said. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
“Every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, guardian and Coast Guardsman, each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price,” Milley continued. “And we are not easily intimidated.”
________________
Daniel Coats Director of National Intelligence -
September 14, 2021 -
“He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”
____________
J D Vance US Senator, GOP VP candidate - 2016
“He’s just a bad man. A morally reprehensible human being.”
I had a conversation with my husband in the car the other day, largely because he told me he was getting sleepy while driving, so noticing a political sign, I posited that this election seems like the first really fake one in my life. It has been strangely relaxing as you would expect in that scenario. Can’t believe we are only four weeks out - there was never any trotting out of hopefuls. Nobody “made their case”. Admittedly I have no involvement in party politics, and no other races to vote for - but it hardly registers from day to day. I don’t even think the people with the signs in their yard care as much as the sort of people who go in for yard signs, usually do care.
I suggested this was because we finally had an election where *both* candidates were fake. In 2016, Trump seemed fake. He seemed like Idiocracy made manifest. Everyone thought Clinton would win. In 2020 Trump no longer seemed fake as he had actually been president, but this time he seems fake again somehow, partly because of mental deterioration perhaps, or how there were no other candidates; and of course Harris is entirely fake, a classic “creature of others”. The fakest candidate of all, though I’m pretty sure there was some president in the 19th century I can’t think of who was even more Being There-like.
He countered that there is a difference, though. While each side views the candidate of the other side as illegitimate, as fake - only one side recognizes that its own candidate is fake.
Oddly, I will vote though I haven’t always, and when I have voted, my own reasons have been kinda fake. That is to say I’ve never had a candidate to vote for in my adult life. I was hoping for Bruce Babbitt, but he just faded away. I remember about 16 years ago, a brief interest in anti-immigration Tom Tancredo advancing: didn’t happen, might have prevented the Trump years.
And even when I voted solely on the border issue, as my actual issue is consequent on it - it has been on the assumption that it was purely symbolic and futile. Like, so that in future, historians would see that there had been some *resistance among the populace* - type thing.
This time will be a little different In that, I am no longer interested in symbolism. I am voting for action at the border and reversing Biden’s imports.
If that action happens, I fully expect it to be faked 😀.
"there was never any trotting out of hopefuls"
-- there was actually a full primary on the Republican side. You may not remember it because Trump didn't participate in any of the debates. (Per WP, most of those incidents were because he wouldn't sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee; one further one he just refused to attend.) Trump won the actual primary vote by about 3-1 and the delegate count by a landslide.
You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din, to recall who those folks were.
No question: Trump is a Bad Republican.
I just remembered a campaign existed; the rest I had to look up.
I agree, this election feels strangely impotent. I live in small town Pennsylvania, and you can't watch a YouTube video without two political ads appearing first, but almost everyone seems to be tuning it out completely. We have one candidate who has been in the news nonstop for almost ten years, and another who has managed to remain almost a completely blank slate. Everyone distrusts at least half of the media and many people distrust all of it.
Do you know any examples of people who weren't consistently productive/focused before age 20~25 but then managed to turn their life around somehow? I would define 'productivity/focus' primarily as one's ability to work on 'boring'/'routine' tasks without interruption. It doesn't necessarily have to result in becoming successful or rich, the question is purely about ability to focus and get things done, even if it ends up with mediocre results.
I know lots of people who were unproductive and stayed that way. I know people who were productive but then 'fell of the wagon' and became unproductive. I know people who were productive but then made a boatload of money and retired early. And of course many people who were consistently productive their whole life, often from age 12 or so.
But I've come to realize I've never met - or even heard of someone going from being a low-productivity person to a high-productivity one. Does anyone here know of such examples?
If you count increased wages as higher productivity than I'm an example. I moved into software at age 34.
As for actual software productivity, that had a huge increase when I first started using an IDE, maybe a decade later. (Metrowerks Code Warrior for those who remember it, much better than Eclipse, Visual Studio or XCode.)
Otto von Bismark?
nice
I might fit this description. Excelled in school until I got bored and resented it. I then excelled in college but grew to hate it as well. Took a few breaks but finally graduated. I embraced my introversion, refused to network and mingle, was terrible at self-marketing and hated applying for jobs, which I was also not great at. A bad economy didn't help things either. I was probably borderline depressed for a while. I didn't get a real career type job until my mid-30s, and it was barely that. I still don't know what I'm doing and am currently unemployed, but feel like I have it mostly together somehow.
from a meme "vlad the impaler didn't impale anyone till his mid thirty's"
I went from low achiever to high achiever in my late twenties. I smoked a lot of weed from ages 15 to 25, which I associate with being an under achiever, although I can't say for sure if it is a cause or an effect.
Then somehow, with no real planning on my part, I ended up in a demanding job in high tech for which I was only marginally qualified. I was forced to be successful. I remain thankful.
I'm one of them. My problem was mostly drugs, especially cannabis. As well as depression and anxiety.
For me, this is mostly about *environment*. I think I can be very productive when I am allowed to focus deeply for long periods of time, learn the fundamentals, and talk to supportive people.
My productivity drops when I am regularly interrupted by managers and meetings and technical inconveniences (such as doing 2-factor authentication about every 30 minutes, always at the moment when it interrupts my flow), told to work on several tasks in parallel and switch between them frequently (and keep focus on their ever changing business priorities, rather than on the technical details), working at an open space (and not even allowed to wear the headphones all day long), and generally denied autonomy by the modern techniques of "agile" software development. Unfortunately, this seems to be the modern trend in most companies that I know.
I had two projects were I was highly productive by being allowed to split work with my colleagues as we agreed to. Somehow, my skills seem to be the opposite of the usual: things that are difficult for most people are sometimes easy for me, but unfortunately, things that are easy for most people are sometimes difficult for me. So in both cases it felt like win/win, because everyone could take the tasks they considered easy and avoid the tasks they considered hard, and we progressed quickly. For example, we were given 3 months to produce a demo of a software that was supposed to take 2 years to finish, but we actually finished the software during those 3 months.
(But I left the first company, because they were paying peanuts. I was young and *very* bad at salary negotiation when they hired me. The thing I learned there was that productivity is mostly unrelated to salary. In the second company we later had to switch to the usual Jira-based development where all tickets are assigned to people randomly, so we lost the thing that made our team so productive. But the company was probably happy, because it made the individual developers more replaceable; later it probably came in handy when most of the original developers quit.)
I had another productivity boost at a company where my manager was too busy to manage me. This one was short. I was assigned a new manager and a new project, but at the same time the new manager was assigned a month-long training he had to attend, so he had no time to actually manage the project. I have spent the first two weeks just studying the technology and playing with it, and producing *nothing* project-related. (This would be utterly unthinkable from the perspective of "agile" development. You need a demo every sprint! Are you some kind of a dinosaur living by a waterfall?) The third week I designed the application, sketched all its dialogs, and got that approved by the manager. The fourth week I implemented it all. I collected a huge bonus (surprisingly, because the company was quite stingy), but was also told that this was an exception and now we have to do things "properly". Again, my productivity gains evaporated.
In my free time, when I was single, I was most productive when I had an "extended weekend" (e.g. taking vacation on Friday and Monday, so four free days in a row), and I spent all that time doing something. (Switching to my job and back completely kills my free-time productivity.) Now that I have kids, this is no longer an option. Maybe later when they grow up.
It seems to me that talking to LLMs increases my productivity. I can do deep learning much faster by a combination of reading a textbook, asking the AI to provide a high-level summary, developing a mental model of how things work, and then asking AI about some obscure technical details to verify that my mental model is correct. Also, AI is great at writing boilerplate code, and exposing my unknown unknowns. (For example, there was a simple code that I could write, but I was lazy and asked the AI to do it instead. Not only did it write the code in a second, but it also used a new language feature that I didn't know about.) This seems to increase my productivity in free time, but not much at work, because there usually the bottleneck is finding some information among the thousands of unmaintained Confluence pages. (But I expect a huge productivity boost for everyone if one day we get LLMs capable of reading the internal company documentation; plus all the source code to figure out when the documentation is outdated.)
Also, not a typical case of productivity, but at one period of my life, I started working out a lot more when I had a group of friends who tried to hold each other accountable. We had a communication channel where we posted every day our successes or failures, and provided words of respect or encouragement. Suddenly it felt like whether or not I exercise at home has a greater meaning.
I know a guy whose life turned around at college. Previously he didn't care about school work, and his grades reflected that. But he had rich parents, so they sent him to an expensive foreign college anyway.
As he described it, at first he didn't care about that either (it's his parents' money; if they choose to waste it on things he doesn't care about, so be it), and found a group of friends who also ignored the school, and they smoked weed together.
Then one day - probably as he was smoking the weed - he realized that his friends are actually the biggest losers he knows in that country. And that everyone he respects is working hard at school. And that it's up to him which group he will choose to belong to, but then he will be always seen by everyone as "one of those". Two futures: pick one.
So he stopped smoking weed, abandoned his former friends, and focused on schoolwork. Which was difficult at the beginning, but then he got used to it. A few decades later, he became a director of some branch of an international corporation. He got married and has at least one child. (We haven't been in contact for a few years.)
.
To balance this inspiring story somewhat, I would add that this guy was always highly intelligent and had great social skills, which is a powerful combo. (Which suggests that this approach might be less effective for someone with fewer talents.) But during childhood he mostly used his skills to do mischief.
Also, in my opinion he is now a bit too much in the other extreme; too much of a mercenary. If you can't keep up with his progress, he will drop you from his social circle, whether a friend or a family. As far as I know, he only hangs out with other high-status managers. (Perhaps that is a necessary price for getting where he is.)
I don't know any specific details on how exactly he changed his daily routine, etc.
Thanks. Yeah, I've seen people turn around during their first or second year in college, but almost never see turnarounds past age ~25.
I did. Turnaround was treatment (Inc meds) for ADHD and anxiety. And general maturation.
I've worked (in IT) with one or two people who at one point were very weak technically but seemed to improve greatly over time. I can't say whether that was their initiative to study and improve themselves, or they had been called into an office and given an ultimatum to "shape up or ship out" in so many words.
Yeah, I did.
I was always a smart kid, but also lazy, and went through academic life with okay grades and low effort, and especially low focus and organization (loosing my books, missing deadlines, spending hours being distracted in stead of working). My 1-year master took me 3-years…
Then I went working for a major strategy consultancy firm. At first I had trouble adapting, got some poor reviews, and notices I couldnt bluff myself through this. If I wanted to succeed, I would have to change.
So, with the help of the insane external pressure, and a coach, I did it. I moved to the Middle East, which was even way more demanding than my home office. I became extremely disciplined, in my morning routine, in my work, etc. “Effectiveness” and “speed to output” became my core strengths.
Do you still have insane external pressure over you or were you able to fully internalize the lessons and can now be super productive without any supervision?
Still have the pressure. It actually scares me a bit. I have been thinking about leaving, but one thing keeping me, is the thought that my acquired productivity and high functioning would collapse if going to a less structured environment..
I went from medium-low to medium-high, mostly thanks to improving my environment (and figuring out work tempo). Going from extreme to extreme is rare in any field, but improvement is very doable.
What improvements did you make in your environment?
Moved from academic math to tech to quant finance. Working in environments with a bit more human interaction and rapid turnaround times was good for me. So was having clearer goals.
Aside from that, just gradually optimizing on problems I like solving. During my PhD I got a lot more productive when I moved from algebraic geometry to combinatorics, and more recently I got more productive when I switched from OS programming to writing quant strategies. In both cases it was just a matter of finding problems that feel easier for me. I'd say it felt like just stepping down to something easier, but I know plenty of people for who moving in the other direction felt easier. So, well, just do something you feel you can actually do.
The other thing is managing work tempo - figuring out the right mix of alternating activity bursts and using the periods of waiting for code or jobs to run to give myself a minibreak instead of trying to force myself to sprint work all day and failing helped a lot.
> I would define 'productivity/focus' primarily as one's ability to work on 'boring'/'routine' tasks without interruption.
I don't have any specific examples to cite but I feel like I've seen a lot of people getting more "productive" in terms of measured output by changing their life to switch to tasks that they like more, thus needing less to "force themselves".
Does it count if I was a low-productivity person, became a high-productivity person for a few years, and then fell back off the wagon?
Yes, if there was a period of at least 2 years in a row where you were able to work for at least 2000 hours/year. As in, actually be focused on some task, not just 'be at work'. And of course prior to that there must have been a period of at least 2 years where you worked for less than 1000 hours/year.
If that holds true for you, I'd be curious to know how you did the low->high transition, as well as why you 'fell off the wagon'?
Almost 100% environmental, I didn't really 'do' anything. In 2017-2018 I went back to uni, the course was very structured and had very clear expectations, and I was part of a high achieving group of friends who were in almost all the same classes together and then studied together most of the time that we weren't in class. 2019 I went back to work which didn't have the structure or clear expectations but somehow some of the habits I'd formed stuck around for a bit... then 2020 hit, all structure went out the window, and I've been back to pre-2017 level productivity since, despite all my efforts.
How many raw hours of productivity did you deliver per year before vs now?
Scott Aaronson expressed some very moderate beliefs about a variety of topics, from US politics to Quantum Mechanics, which are apparently... extremist?! https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8410
I wouldn't say his Platonism --the source of most of the dispute in the comments -- is extreme. Id say it is vague and weakly argued
He's being sarcastic, ie "Here are the sorts of beliefs that get me accused of extremism." My guess is he's accused mostly by trolls, plus he gets to present his beliefs in as positive a light as possible in a post like this.
"It now feels like anything I post earns severe blowback, from ridicule on Twitter"
Then get the hell off Twitter. Why are you on it in the first place? I hear people going "oh but I need it because X, Y, Z" but that remains unconvincing to me. I got a Twitter account late, used it for a few limited thngs, and now it's gathering dust.
'People are being mean to me on social media'? Solution is "junk the social media". Aaronson seems a reasonably nice guy, but born without a layer of skin so hyper-sensitive and takes every little thing personally and lives in fear of that.
"I'm so terrified of the other lot that I vote for the leopards, but I wish the leopards would stop eating my face". Maybe stop being so terrified of the other lot? Nobody wants authoritarians (except the people who think they'll be the ones issuing the orders under such a regime) but there are left-wing as well as right-wing authoritarians. Just say "I'm scared of the Nazis", I know you want to, and being Jewish I can see where you're coming from on that. But not everyone called a Nazi is, in fact, a Nazi.
"Quantum computing is over-hyped". That may be a STARTLING CONTROVERSIAL OPINION in some quarters, presumably amongst those hoping to make fortunes, but again - a lot of people feel that way too.
"I'm a centrist on AI" - oh no, a filthy centrist! 😃 I mean, I can't throw stones here because I'm often arguing on this very site about AI, but most ordinary people don't know or care about AI.
"Climate change" - no matter which side you take on this, it's going to be a row.
"Feminism and dating" - no matter which side you take on this, it's going to be an unholy row.
"Israel/Palestine" - no matter which side you take on this, it's going to be an apocalyptically unholy row.
"Platonism" - well, if you can have STARTLING CONTROVERSIAL OPINIONS on this one, good for you! Give those Aristotelians a good kicking! 😃
"Science/Religion" - okay, most of you know where I come down on this one. And gosh golly wow gee, he doesn't think any ancient religions can be proven to be true, because SCIENCE! Oh my, what a unique view which I never heard before, I am crushed/enraged (delete as applicable) by this challenge to my worldview. But let's keep religion, or elements of religion, stripped of supernaturalism, for the secular benefits. Again, I am amazed, astounded and confounded by a view I never heard before. Honestly, what kind of hard-core atheists or believers is he hanging round, that this kind of milquetoast view is getting him "scary email bullying campaigns"?
"Foreign policy and immigration" - see above about unholy rows.
"Academia vs Industry" - 'I try to advise my students to find the best fit for their talents and personality'. Well let's all just burn this heretic now!
"Population" - 'I hold the same views 99% of liberals hold, which is 99.9% of all the people I interact with'. Seriously, how is this a "nutty, controversial view" unless he's engaging with anti-natalists?
"Mind/Body" - 'gee I don't know'. Again, how is this getting him into trouble?
"Covid response" - unholy rows.
"P vs NP" - I am by no means qualified to comment on this, so I'm not going to.
"Quantum Part II" - yeah, it's a puzzler, right enough.
"Anyway, with extremist, uncompromising views like those, is it any surprise that I get pilloried and denounced so often?"
There has *got* to be some leg-pulling going on here, but the trouble is, he is so hyper-sensitive and prone to over-reaction, it's hard to know if he's being serious or being tongue-in-cheek.
> Just say [X], I know you want to
One of the worst kinds of arguments. Let people make their own arguments rather than replacing them with something else.
Okay, "Just say what you want, I know you want to". Better?
Part of what he actually said in a Q and A about this. No mention of Hitler in the whole thing. He does mention populist autocrats which is not the same thing as saying he is Hitler. If you make that substitution you will be attacking a strawman, something he never said.
The ACX Scott A has a link to his blog if you want to read the whole thing. It’s an older post (July) so you'd have to scroll a bit.
A small sample:
"Qn: Is that all that’s wrong with [Trump]?
A: No, there are also the lies, and worst of all the “Big Lie.” Trump is the first president in US history to incite a mob to try to overturn the results of an election. He was serious! He very nearly succeeded, and probably would have, had Mike Pence been someone else. It’s now inarguable that Trump rejects the basic rules of our system, or “accepts” them only when he wins. We are numb from having heard it so many times, but it’s a big deal, as big a deal as the Civil War was.
Qn+m: Why do you care so much about Trump’s lies? Don’t you realize that all politicians lie?
A: Yes, but there are importantly different kinds of lies. There are white lies. There are scheming, 20-dimensional Machiavellian lies, like a secret agent’s cover story (or is that only in fiction?). There are the farcical, desperate, ever-shifting lies of the murderer to the police detective or the cheating undergrad to the professor. And then there are the lies of bullies and mob bosses and populist autocrats, which are special and worse.
These last, call them power-lies, are distinguished by the fact that they aren’t even helped by plausibility. Often, as with conspiracy theories (which strongly overlap with power-lies), the more absurd the better. Obama was born in Kenya. Trump’s crowd was the biggest in history. The 2020 election was stolen by a shadowy conspiracy involving George Soros and Dominion and Venezuela.
The central goal of a power-lie is just to demonstrate your power to coerce others into repeating it, much like with the Party making Winston Smith affirm 2+2=5, or Petruchio making Katharina “call the sun a moon” in The Taming of the Shrew. A closely-related goal is as a loyalty test for your own retinue.
It’s Trump’s embrace of the power-lie that puts him beyond the pale for [the other Scott A]"
The power lie / loyalty test is the most frightening thing about Trump. If you deny his lies, you are driven out of the Republican party. See Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Liz Cheney. The Republican party is a cult of personality now. And the personality is one of a cruel and ignorant man.
Yeah, not a single one of them sounds extremist to me. The one on Covid is perhaps the only one which strikes me as original or unusual, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. ("I think the countries that did best tended to be those that had some coherent strategy. (...) Countries torn between these strategies (...) tended to get the worst of all worlds.")
I'm pretty sure the "extremist" part was irony
He's complaining about the fact that people attack his opinions as if they were extreme, even though they are not
Scott Aaronson is extremely smart but he listens too much to the opinion of various midwits, particularly those who come to his comment section. And that includes the opinion of people like Paul Graham who might be smart in being a VC but are pretty much midwits when it comes to Middle Eastern politics.
I wish he used the block/mute button liberally and tried to stick to the bubble of rational people instead.
I wouldn't call Paul Graham a midwit, even if I thought he was wrong about Middle Eastern politics (not uncommon for people to be when they face no cost for being wrong).
Just because he's brilliant at quantum computing doesn't make his political opinions right (though I often agree with them). Einstein was a socialist.
Scott Aaranson is a firmly in camp busy beaver, I doubt that he allows anyone named Graham write access to his politics, given that BB(18)>G.
More seriously, he is a secular Jew with strong ties to Israel. This means he has plenty of opportunity to have an opinion on the Middle East without just taking the opinion of famous people commenting on his blog.
This is my plea for Americans to vote for Trump. This isn't really an argument, and probably won't convince anyone who strongly rejects the premises, but is intended as a few considerations that I think too many people overlook or forget.
As someone who *really hates Trump* and who *wanted him defeated in 2020* but reluctantly supports him now, these considerations are:
1. Re-electing a party or government is in a fundamentally different category to voting a government out. The former is widely taken (by politicians, my media, by the wider society) as a positive endorsement of that government's policies and ideology. The latter is taken as a *repudiation* of the voted-out government's approach, and *not* as an endorsement of the challenging party's agenda.
You can see this by comparing how far left society moved after 2008 or 2020 (not very) to how far left it moved after 2012 (enormously). You can see it by noticing how opposition to progressive programs like Obamacare and gay marriage reduced or collapsed after Obama's re-election in 2012, with no similar effect after 2008 or 2020 (i.e. everything that had been a matter of intensive debate *stayed* a matter of intensive debate, and nothing major was permanently decided). Similarly, left-wing opposition to US global dominance reduced or vanished after 2004, with no similar vibe shift after 2016 or 2000.
The emprical evidence says that electing Trump will not decide anything and will keep things polarised and balanced, while re-electing the Democrats will decide many topics of current debate (e.g. border policies, de-policing, trans policies) in the left-wing direction.
2. Harris is an unknown quantity. She has not been president before. Trump has. She has not even had more than *a few months* of the scrutiny of being an official candidate (close to unprecendented at this level). My point 1 suggests that regardless of her official current platform, if she wins society and government will shift in favour of the policies actually implemented by Biden and lower-level D governments over the past few years. That would hold true even if she personally holds to her current platform. But of course there's no reason to think she even would. She was the fourth most left-wing member of the Senate previously. She embraced BLM rhetoric during 2020 and she's been an integral part of the Biden Administration's policies. The absolute standard result of an elected leader doing what she's doing now (moving to the centre to win a difficult election), seen over and over again, is to move right back to the extreme as soon as she wins.
But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got.
This community greatly values empirical evidence and tracking correct and incorrect predictions. We have positive evidence of the failure of most doom-predictions regarding Trump. We have no such evidence for Harris.
3. The fact that voters are stuck with two widely unpopular choices is largely the fault of the Democrats. No Labels was preparing to run a centrist independent campaign, and has said the Democrats and their allies conspired to sabotage it (https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-politics/no-labels-chief-strategist-says-its-too-late-for-an-independent-presidential-alternative/). Among other things, they were bringing lawsuits to *keep them off the ballot*. Voting D in this election not only rewards this behaviour, it actively encourages it in future cycles (to even greater extents). In some ways this issue is so fundamental to democracy itself it may trump every other consideration.
4. Many Americans seem to just accept the propaganda that the rest of the world opposes Trump. Actually, many of us outside America are far more scared of Harris winning than Trump winning. While Trump *talks* vaguely anti-democratic language, much of the Western world is already actively outlawing right-leaning opinions. See the recent EU attempts to even restrict what *American* companies can allow on their own platforms, while being egged on by Hillary Cilton and other Democrats. What is a wet-dream among some on the right is actually happening, right now, in alleged "democracies" (which are of course no longer meaningful democracies when contesting the governnent would require saying things that are literally illegal to express!). If Trump is likely to condemn these efforts and globally promote free speech, and Harris is likely to at best not oppose it or at worst actively collude with governments to censor their own citizens...and this seems hard to deny...I would suggest this is another matter so central to democracy (and *so* far beyond mere verbal support for undemocratic ideas) that it overrides all other matters.
And there's also the very defence of the West itself, and the fact that Trump has a record of supporting Israel's security, and of aggressive opposition to China and Iran, and that no Ukrainian invasion happened under his watch, but I accept that these issues are highly debatable.
My conclusion is that as repulsive and flawed as Trump is as a person, the structural factors suggest that his opponents, though well-groomed and smooth-speaking, have a proven record far more dangerous to the very foundations of democracy.
(Again, I supported Biden in 2020 and I'm glad Trump lost then. I think his re-election would have been dangerous in a way that a second election-from-out-of-power, with many institutions remaining organised against him, won't be.)
(I made some similar but distinct points a few months ago here https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-338/comment/62090404. Obviously if you don't accept that the things I've mentioned are actually bad, you won't agree. But if you remember with revulsion the waves of fanatically cruel lynch mobs rampaging through institutions just a couple of years ago, eager to humilate and hurt and destroy as many innocents as they can...then I suggest you look past superficial personalities and official platforms, and imagine how you'll feel if you vote for Harris, she lurches left immediately after the election, and the lynch mobs return stronger than ever, laughing at your naivety for *actually believing* the promises of moderation and tolerance. Just like they did ten years ago.)
Other people have critiqued more important points, but I think (1) is not really true in this election:
(a) Trump having been president before makes it more likely to view a T win as an endorsement of him rather than a slap at the Democrats.
(b) Harris isn't Biden and there is a pretty strong meme that she is distancing herself from him/the current administration.
Non-American here, and I’m not sure I actually want to change anyone’s mind, but I disagree with both counts of 4.
Americans would ban a European platform without a second thought if it tried to make money there, dodge (sorry, optimize) taxes as significantly as online platforms do, and not bother complying with local laws. Why exactly shouldn’t European states reciprocate? Or is it only US law (and the exact underpinning philosophy) that is the sacred Moral Good worth abiding by in every country of the world and everywhere else is some sort of degraded version?
In a way, I’m even glad that states other than US are flexing their muscles regarding regulation of platforms. That makes the situation clear because the ambiguity was hardly tenable. Still, I doubt that in a couple of decades, the non-US states will keep getting their way.
Regarding foreign policy, I believe that the “many” that you mention are terrified of Harris remain a minority of the people who are even interested.
Trump has claimed multiple times that he intended the US to divest from their traditional alliances in Europe (NATO – didn’t he say that he’d encourage Putin to attack European states if they didn’t contribute enough to NATO budget?), and in Asia (re Taiwan and I think South Korea), sparking considerable concern in both countries – and emboldening Putin and Xi by undermining the US deterrence and rekindling defiance between the US and their allies.
It’s also not just words: Republicans have spent a long time in Congress blocking Ukraine aid (and even got rid of their speaker because he caved in!). How could any of this be good?
"if it tried to make money there, dodge (sorry, optimize) taxes as significantly as online platforms do, and not bother complying with local laws."
I'm not talking about things like taxes. Investigating X for evading taxes (assuming it's on business activity actually done in that country) is of course entirely appropriate.
But if "violations of local laws" literally includes CRITICISING CERTAIN GOVERNMENT POLICIES (see the second example in my reply to Peasy)...then we have a big problem. And I find your relativism about this (calling such things merely the local laws) extremely disturbing.
I mean, on your worldview what's even *wrong* with Russia invading various European countries, executing lots of people and setting up a local dictatorship? That's all just "the local laws" isn't it? It's not like, on your view, there's any requirement or expectation of a governmemt being meaningfully democratic, or respecting the most fundamental human rights of its people. It's all just might makes right. Whatever the local authorities decide is by definition okay, and deserves as much respect as any other local authority.
If that's not what you're saying, it certainly sounds like it.
I say: no. Democracies deserve respect, non-democracies do not and should be opposed. That's what allows me (but not you) to condemn Russia and China. And obviously, it's not enough to claim to be a democracy, you have to actually be one. Russia can't say "we're a democracy, you can run against the president but you'll just be put in jail if you do". And western European countries can't say "we're a democracy, you can run and even be elected to office, and no one will stop you...but if you actually publically criticise those policies and laws that we really don't think should be criticised, you will go to jail. Perfectly democratic!" No, neither of those are remotely democratic. And standing up to such regimes (or at the very least denying them military support) unless and until they become democracies again, is not only acceptable but morally right.
"Regarding foreign policy, I believe that the “many” that you mention are terrified of Harris remain a minority of the people who are even interested."
Well, since support for Trump probably correlates with opinions that are literally illegal to express in several European countries, I have no idea how you can be confident that this is the case. Even Trump support itself seems to be considered borderline hate-speech (see the third example in my reply to Peasy). How do you know the people preferring Trump to Harris simply don't feel safe expressing their views honestly?
(Apparently only 18% of Germans feel safe expressing their opinions. Admittedly, Germany may just be beyond hope--no matter how many times they choose an authoritarian government that causes enormous suffering and havoc, and then repent of that and promise to do better, it takes no time before they jump into the harms of a nice new authoritarian strong government that will tell them what they're allowed to think. But we can at least stop their poisonous attitude spreading.)
"How could any of this be good?"
If an existential threat from Russia, and US protection withdrawn (which many of them say they hate anyway on a daily basis) is necessary to scare some of these European states into becoming real democracies again and respecting the rights of their own citizens, then it could be a very good thing in the long-run.
In the spirit of keeping the conversation somewhere close to civility, shall we both agree to behave as if you are not calling for the takeover of the West as we both know it by neo-Nazis, and I am not calling for its descent into China-like totalitarianism? (I am fully aware that this does not seem to fit your views as you stated them, but will you grant me the analogue courtesy?)
I will reply to your points without a specific order.
If 18% of Germans feel safe expressing their opinions (which is, I agree, a shockingly low number), what makes you believe that the remaining 82% are on your side? There are quite a few issues where every side will explain at length how the other side is oppressing them (and then all of them will gang up on those who haven't joined a side or are disinterested in the matter, which is also an opinion they might not like to express either).
I am fairly confident in my assessment that the position is still a minority because I believe the political map of Western Europe would otherwise look pretty different today. Though some caution is warranted, since we do not use the same Western European countries as mental models.
***
I am extremely skeptical that a military threat from Putin (with an isolationist US) is going to make Germans become a "real democracy" in your terminology again (if this is even possible -- it seems to me that in Western Europe in general, the notion that the government could do much less is about as alien as the third dimension to the inhabitants of a plane).
Isn't the finding that only safety lets societies become more permissive, while danger, especially of the military kind, makes societies prize obedience, hierarchy and conformity? I'm thinking of posts like https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/ but I think Scott has written more on this topic, maybe related with the World Values Survey?).
I don't think you discussed Asian countries which Trump has also claimed to be disinterested in defending should be the need arise?
I also disagree that Ukraine (or, next, the Baltic states) deserve to come under Russian control as punishment for the imperfections of democracy in Western Europe.
***
Thank you for giving specific examples of what you refer to by saying 'if "violations of local laws" literally includes CRITICISING CERTAIN GOVERNMENT POLICIES'.
I am not going to claim that I am happy with the second example that you discuss (but why a Greek example if you're discussing Germany which ought to be a lost cause, as you claim?). I'm certainly glad that all the guy got is a suspended sentence.
But pedophilia is one of the few remaining universal examples of pure evil in our societies, and that you probably wouldn't want anyone to loudly call you one in front of a crowd. There are easy ways to criticize the policy under question without drawing this equivalence or drawing further stigma on the procedure or the people who undergo it.
***
In a way, this is a perfect example of why I'm skeptical of the absolutism of American-inspired "free speech" and believe that European-style compromises are acceptable.
The American notion of free speech was developed in an unrecognizable world, and, for over 200 years, public speech was de facto controlled by the press's standards (depending themselves on the Zeitgeist), by the resources needed, and the available bandwidth.
Things are not the same today on any of these counts. Elon Musk (or [insert West-hating leftist here]) can rile up hostility towards [insert person or group here] in less than 300 characters. With such a broad audience, strong reactions in numbers (hate mail) and extreme reactions (physical violence, SWAT-ing, ...) are all but guaranteed. This is not a stable world. Law isn't ideal and we should use it sparingly if at all, but what alternative is there?
"Deal with it" sounds quite heartless when the targets are not usually the demographics in the best psychological shape, and I'm not convinced about classical liberal answers such as "more speech" (in an "attention economy" as I hear, the meme wins over the careful, reasoned essay -- but of course the meme is a symmetric weapon* while the reasoned essay is perhaps slightly asymmetric) or "the marketplace of ideas".
(* maybe the meme is in fact an asymmetric weapon, one that favors the "side" that's utterly uninterested in reasoned discussion).
***
I agree that democracies should be supported and non-democracies should be opposed. I believe that it is proper for online platforms to uphold the laws of the Western European countries in which they are operating (if not all the time when compliance is costly, then upon specific request) because these laws are legitimate (shall I say democratic?).
Indeed, they emanate from fairly elected governments arising from pluralistic transparent elections, bound to respect the rights of their citizens, with separation of powers and peaceful transition of powers to their opponents (and I'm almost certainly forgetting many aspects but it's late).
If we're operating under broadly similar concepts of democracy (which I think we are), the core of our disagreement may lie in what we view as "rights". In the Greek example above, I believe that the right to say "authorizing minor gender-transition surgery is akin to legalizing pedophilia" is a very non-central part of the notion of "free speech", so it is possible to take it away without ruining the whole concept (although going through with this would require a good reason to go against the principle, namely: "such a claim, made by a very public figure, fuels much hostility towards trans people, transitioning children and their families, which is bad especially because they absolutely do not have it easy already").
I will agree that "I wish gender-transition surgery were reserved to adults" is a much more central example of free speech, and update if this one is criminalized.
***
I will conclude by saying that I believe that the comparison of Western European countries to Russia seems wrong and dangerous, because it risks to let everyone else forget just how different the situations are.
"But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got."
Both of those statements are true, but they are true mostly because Donald Trump is incompetent at exercising the power of the Presidency, and did not have a staff that could compensate for that. Had Donald Trump been competent, there's a good chance he would have executed a *successful* coup d'état, instead of the laughably pathetic attempt we got. That would have been catastrophically bad. Even a competent but failed coup would have caused extraordinary damage to America's political institutions.
So, no, never again. Your other arguments have merit, but they don't address the most compelling reason to vote for Not Donald Trump. If I were absolutely certain that Donald Trump would *remain* pathetically incompetent, and that his new cabinet would be as obsequously useless as the last, *maybe*. Though I'd still be worried about 2029, and the prospect of a backlash leading to de facto one-party Democratic rule for generations to come.
But sometimes old dogs do learn new tricks, and sometimes they wind up on the leash of new and more capable handlers. When "Squeaky" Fromme tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, she was so pathetically incompetent that she forgot to chamber a round in her pistol. We made sure she didn't get a second chance. Same goes for all the subsequent failed Presidential assassination attempts. No second chances. The standard should be no different for people who try to alter the Presidential succession by coup d'état rather than with a bullet.
"Though I'd still be worried about 2029, and the prospect of a backlash leading to de facto one-party Democratic rule for generations to come."
If Harris wins, by 2029 Trump won't be running, but the Republican nominee then will be the next Literally Hitler and there will be seamless movement to "if you vote for A, then you are voting for Fascism!" be it Vance, or whoever else, decides to go for the job.
One-party rule for generations was something the Democrats purred about when they were the beggars on horseback. Why do you think they've changed their views on that to instead be "turn about is fair play" so let a nice moderate Republican have the seat, it'll be okay and then it'll be our turn next time again?
https://time.com/6077158/pew-election-2020-report/
"It’s become something of a cliché in Washington for Democratic strategists to assert that “demographics are destiny.” What they mean is that the diversifying electorate — and the shrinking role of white voters — will render Republicans incapable of sustaining power for much longer. After Barack Obama won in 2008, Democratic legend James Caville even wrote a book predicting as much; 40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation remains a fantastic, if flawed, reading of America’s trajectory.
The argument has become so accepted in liberal and progressive circles that the pushback has been minimal. It also exists and thrives in centrists’ favored think tanks and advocacy groups. A changing America means a shifting politics, and that opens the doors of power to a youthful reformer like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, potential Sen. Malcolm Kenyatta and perhaps a history-making future Gov. Stacey Abrams."
It's not about the Democrats *letting* Trump win. If it were up to the DNC, they'd never have "let" any Republican win, ever. But it's not up to them, because the United States of America really is a democracy (for now at least), and it comes down to what the American people will let their would-be presidents do.
And one thing the American people have traditionally *not* done, is let milquetoast mediocrities who were selected simply to be inoffensive to as many people as possible, have more than one term in the White House. Just ask Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter. Or Joe Biden, for that matter.
If it's a choice between milquetoast mediocrity or someone of Nixonian or Trumpian levels of villainy, sure, we'll vote for the mediocrity. Once. Then we'll at very least insist on voting for a *different* mediocrity. And Kamala Harris won't be running against Donald Trump in 2028, so she won't have even that in her favor.
Will the Democrats claim that the 2028 GOP nominee is Literally Hitler? Of course they will. Just like they did with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, two different George Bushes, and Donald Trump. All of who won *anyway*, because "The Democrats said he's literally Hitler so we can't let him be president" is another thing the American voters won't let anyone get away with.
In the opposing case where Trump *wins* this round, the next election is between presumably J.D. Vance, still carrying the stink of Donald J. Trump, against a Democratic nominee who is Not Kamala Harris. Probably a successful Governor like Gavin Newsom. That strikes me as a much more dangerous proposition.
I don’t view Carter as milquetoast. Many people were offended by his expression of support for energy conservation. He annoyed the VIPs by selling the presidential yacht (I personally love the idea of a presidential yacht). They found his religiosity actively off-putting (you’re supposed to mouth your pieties, not take them seriously or try to live by them). They didn’t like the actions he took to expand wilderness. He brokered the Camp David agreement, and there’s some suggestion that Sadat and Rabin were drawn to one another by a mutual dislike or alienation from him.
He was the great deregulator, of course, while Reagan was the great illegal amnesty grantor whose actions have done the most to threaten the demise of the country. (How inevitable? Who can say while it’s happening.)
He was the original *actual* contrarian. People don’t actually like those very much; it’s a tell for how contrarian they really are.
John, you and I must be suffering from the same brain worms, because Gunflint below assures me that nobody nowhere ever compared X Republican to Hitler.
I must be an LLM then who hallucinated all the "Chimpy McHitler" stuff and had to listen to (otherwise artist whose work I enjoy) songs like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTEs0zA96c&ab_channel=ChristyMoore-Topic
For all those telling me I'm not American so it's none of my beeswax: I'd love that to be true. I don't want to care about who is the next President of the USA. But (1) our economy is horrendously dependent on American multinationals so (2) this ensures our governments of whatever stripe are always worried about who the guy (or gal) in the White House is, and trying to make sure we're on good terms with them and (3) Coco-colonisation, every goddamn idiot SJW/progressive/woke talking point gets taken up wholeheartedly and in the same terms as the USA over here by our liberals and wannabes. George Soros foundation sent funding to LGBT activist groups here during the gay marriage referendum, so don't tell me it doesn't affect me what goes on in your Culture Wars.
Okay, having ranted, let me ask you: why do you think Kamala wouldn't run in 2028? Suppose she wins this time, why would First Female Ever step down? Suppose she loses, the same? She's young enough that going again in four years time isn't out of the question.
And surely you believe in Kamalot? 😁 If she is The Future of the Democratic Party, how can they turn their backs on the future?
https://nymag.com/magazine/toc/2024-07-29.html
Vance versus Newsom is something I'd enjoy seeing, I have to say: style versus style, no substance much to speak of on either side.
>If Harris wins, by 2029 Trump won't be running, but the Republican nominee then will be the next Literally Hitler and there will be seamless movement to "if you vote for A, then you are voting for Fascism!" be it Vance, or whoever else, decides to go for the job.
First, you did not really respond to what John said about the very real dangers of a second Trump term, you ignored that entirely. Instead you pivoted to an assortment of CW memes that were not really related. Slamming rightwing punching bags like AOC and Stacy Abrams. I'd like to see you actually engage with the substance of John's case.
Second (the stuff I quoted), this is another assertion without evidence. You don't live in this country and judging by your hot takes I think you might not have an accurate feel for what is actually going on.
I really doubt your prediction will actually happen and I do live in this country and have been following this pretty carefully for a long time on a wide variety of sources.
There are responsible Republicans waiting in the wings, Mitt Romney for example who is hoping Trump loses, he hasn't endorsed Harris because he feels he can help the country course correct after a terrible 9 years. Then we can go back to arguing about balancing the budget, defense spending, doing something to save Social Security, etc. as we have been doing since the end of WWII.
Trump is a uniquely terrible as a person. Absolutely a terrible character. Not Hitler though. A pathological liar, an unapologetic hate monger, a reckless leader on foreign policy with a disturbing affinity for and credulity toward political strong men like Putin and Xi who know that he can be played like a fiddle by appealing to his vanity. See Trump's 'beautiful letter' from Kim Jung Un. In Helsinki he took Putin's word over US Intelligence. Putin did give him a pretty soccer ball though. Note I did not just say he is literally Hitler.
I voted against McCain but I knew the country would be safe with him because he was without a doubt a decent and honorable man. I voted against Romney, but I knew the country would be just fine with him as he too is a decent and honorable man. In those cases I was voting for policy positions.
Trump is in an entirely different class of human being, he has no honor and very little decency. In Trump's mind honorable behavior is for suckers. As one telling example when John McCain, an American hero who spent 5 years in a Hanoi POW camp, Trump balked at lowering the White House flag to half staff out of petty personal pique. No human with a shred of character would have done this, even if they did have a policy beef with McCain.
I could fill pages with this sort of low life behavior. Really the least offensive term I can come up with is that is somewhat accurate and captures his character is that he is a toad. Note I am not saying he is literally Hitler, I am simply saying he is a toad of a human being and I am really feeling like I'm slandering toads a bit.
Don't take this as encouragement to shoot him though, that would be much much worse than another Trump term. Vote! Make America Sane Again. Not you of course but the rest of my country.
Gunflint, you may be one of the few people who did think Romney was a decent guy. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation was painting him as a sexist (binders full of women), animal cruelty (dog on the car roof), a heartless ruthless money-grubbing capitalist out of touch with ordinary decent hard-working Americans (the 47%) and a threat to all that is good and true because he was going to establish a Mormon theocracy if elected (a Yale professor said it, it must be true!):
https://www.deseret.com/2011/11/14/20230973/yale-professor-harold-bloom-warns-of-romney-and-mormon-theocracy/
Please don't tell me I imagined all that.
Okay let's skip the fact that you still haven't addressed the terrible damage to the United States of even an unsuccessful coup. I imagine you would feel the effects of that in Ireland too and they would probably be a hell of a lot worse than locals emulating American SJWs.
and address:
>you may be one of the few people who did think Romney was a decent guy.
Romney got 61 million votes to Obamas 66 million. Every Dem I know personally thought that Romney was a good man. They simply preferred the agenda put forward by Obama.
Why would I tell you that you imagined a linked article?
When Obama was in office The National Review published articles by a guy who wrote about Obama embracing the Sharia agenda. There were a lot of people in this country that though Obama was a secret Muslim. Many more than those that thought Romney had plans for a Mormon theocracy. I had never heard that one till just now. In an act of character, John McCain had to correct one of his supporters who said Obama was a Muslim and tell her
"No ma'am. Obama is a good man, a family man. We just have different ideas on the direction of the country"
People that said Obama was going to embrace Sharia Law or that Romney wanted to start a Mormon theocratic state are what I like to call 'idiots'. Don't pick them a representatives of on an entire American political party.
This is what I want to go back to. People of good will disagreeing on policy matters. Donald Trump has no good will. He tells his crowd they are hated - they are not - and that they should respond with hate in kind. Because he thrives politically with this us versus them spiel we are at each other's throats in this country. I want this stuff to stop. We are a diverse country. I don't hate people that I disagree with and I don't want them to hate me.
Seamus being strapped to the roof of Romney's car was a story that Gail Collins, a NYT humorous opinion writer used to make fun of him. She once did a piece making fun of Donald Trump and he responded in typical fashion with a gold sharpie handwritten note saying she had the 'face of a dog' and misspelled the word 'to'. She still has it as a memento of his classy character and Ivy League Wharton education. I didn't vote for Obama because Romney had Seamus ride on top of the car to Canada and I doubt many others did either.
When people say dopey stuff like 'binders full of women' or the 'they cling to their guns and their religion' or 'backet full of deplorables' their opponents run with them.
Trump doesn't wait for a verbal slip, he simply makes up a steady stream of lies. He does this constantly. Kamala is a Marxist. They are eating the dogs...
In the words of JD Vance "He is just a bad man. A morally reprehensible human being."
"The rest of the nation" != "Democratic party shills and left wing activists"
This is a great point - the peaceful transition of power is probably the most critical underpinning of our institutions.
I strongly agree with many of these points. I think the democratic party needs to lose so that it can re orient itself. I think arguably the republican party have reassessed and are moving more moderate (e.g., you see it in VD Vance v.s. Trump rhetoric), meanwhile the democrats are insulting voters, endorsing harmful practices (e.g., defund the police) and moving more extreme.
In what world is "I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act," aka the act last used to put Japanese people in camps in WWII, "moving more moderate?" In what world is promising to deport more illegal immigrants than actually exist in the country more moderate? How can basically anything proposed in Project 2025 be considered "more moderate"?
Trump has repeatedly stated that "project 2025" is not associated with him. As Scott says, "weak men are super weapons" (i.e., one can always find instances of people acting badly in any movement).
Personally, I read the deport 25 million thing as hyperbole. I think both parties do such exaggeration (and misinformation).
And how do you square this claim (Dems moving left, Repubs moving center) with the overwhelming number of Republicans who have come out for Kamala (which isn’t happening the other way around?)
I would love some sources on this claim. My sense is that both parties cite instances of this conversion. It seems that both parties, almost every rally has a few examples trotted up on stage .
On a related note, we have had big tech surprisingly showing support for Trump (when historically big tech has been democrat or at least apolitical) e.g., Mark Zucc coming out as saying Trump was badass. Etc...
In what policies do you think the Republican party is moving more moderate, truly curious?
Neither Kamala or Biden was running on a campaign of “defund the police”, and I haven’t heard that campaign claim in awhile. Kamala’s recent speeches have actually come off to me as quite moderate. What other issues bother you?
I agree neither Kamala or Boden were or are running on a refund the police platform. It would not be politically tenable platform.
However, both Kamala and Walz have been associated with defund the police movements (e.g., Walz supporting rioters). I think this support is representative of how neither actually cares about the fundamental issues (e.g., supporting minorities) and that both are far more concerned with appearances. They will enact policies that harm, if it looks good
Personally I cannot stand these kinds of harmful policies. I hate hate hate it. (e.g., like Germany divesting from nuclear power).
My impressions of the Republican party becoming more moderate are mainly from JD Vance (who for example Ben Shapiro has repeatedly criticised for being soft on the pro-choice position and overly open to wellfare: e.g., him mentioning how members of his family have been on Medicare, etc...).
> But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got.
Sorry, but you are completely wrong about this.
1) He disbanded a pandemic response team, eliminated a CDC embedded role in China whose job was to monitor for pandemics originating in China, and ignored a literal playbook of pandemic response tools left by the previous administration. He didn't just handle the pandemic poorly once it happened (which to be clear, he absolutely handled it poorly), he started fucking up two years before the pandemic happened by tearing up all the prep work we have in place for pandemics.
2) He also tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in a way that has literally never happened before. You can't just dismiss that as insane rhetoric, he gets minus infinite points for doing this. Even if he had been an effective leader (he wasn't) with good policies (he didn't) and handled the pandemic well (he didn't), this alone would wholly disqualify him. I would vote for any of my other candidates for worst president in history over him solely on this basis.
1. Idk if that's actually true
2. Presidential terms where Trump was the incumbent = 1. That's a terribly low sample size on which to base a confident prediction, further complicated by the fact that the data is very noisy (things that Trump attempted to do =/= things that Trump actually did while in office and the things Trump attempted are pretty wild). There are also highly idiosyncratic things that Trump did manage to do in office that most people massively hate, like Jan 6 or appointing justices to overturn Roe v Wade.
3. Both parties are equally complicit in keeping third parties off the ballot and removing their access to funding, and this has been the case for a long time. Sucks, but it's not a compelling reason to vote for one party over the other this election.
4. I personally don't care overmuch about how people outside the US evaluate my voting choices - it's fine if some people like or dislike how I choose a candidate. I think Harris will probably be better on foreign policy issues than Trump, and though we probably share a preferred outcome on foreign policy (defense of the West) we'll probably disagree enough on the particulars of how one gets there that I'll leave it at that.
"But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened."
I like the Matt Yglesias quote on this:
'Every halfwit who’s hopped on the MAGA bandwagon goes “he was ALREADY president and he didn’t do all these terrible things the libs warn about.”
Meanwhile, half the people who served in his cabinet are warning you he’s dangerously unfit and they were barely able to stop him.'
I think it's odd that in point 1 you say that in 2012 re-electing a president resulted in a big shift in politics, and then say that to avoid a similar shift happening again we should re-elect a president.
You're equivocating on two meanings of "re-elect". I was talking about the continuity of keeping one party in control of the government with no breaks.
Why should your claim that the supposed political shift in 2012 was caused by electing a president of the same party twice in a row be taken more seriously than the claim that it was caused by electing a president to a second term? They're both deductions made from an extremely small dataset with a lot of confounding.
There are two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves.
It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe.
"Harris is an unknown quantity" is facially ridiculous. She has been Attorney General for the state of California, a United States Senator, and Vice President. While vice presidents traditionally don't have a lot of power to exercise their own policy choices in a way that can establish a "what would this person actually do if in charge of stuff" way, attorneys general and senators do. For better or worse, she has an extensive paper trail that can easily be examined for clues as to what she would do as president.
Furthermore,
>But Trump, for all his insane rhetoric, has bern president once and nothing catastrophic happened. Failing to properly deal with an externally caused catastrophe (the pandemic) is the worst it got.
...isn't exactly a ringing endorsement in terms of voting for candidates in the hope that nothing catastrophic happens! First of all, it's arguably untrue: people legitimately disagree about how bad January 6, 2021 was, but the storming of the Capitol and Trump's utter failure to do anything to try to stop it for hours despite being repeatedly begged to do so, along with his blatant attempts to subvert the transfer of power by other means after losing the election, is fairly widely seen as a millimeters-close near collision with catastrophe, averted only because the relevant institutions proved in the end to be just robust enough to avert it--and, crucially, averted no thanks to him.
Speaking of Trump's unsuccessful attempt to retain the presidency despite losing the 2020 presidential election, the following:
>the structural factors suggest that his opponents, though well-groomed and smooth-speaking, have a proven record far more dangerous to the very foundations of democracy.
...comes off more than a little tone-deaf in that context. Granted, this is ACX, but is it commonly believed even here that the fact that Harris likely won't complain if literal Nazis aren't allowed by Germany to call for a second shoah on Facebook really constitutes a greater danger to the very foundations of democracy than the fact that her opponent has actually attempted to undermine one of the actual very foundations of democracy, the peaceful transfer of the executive office to the winner of a free and fair election? I mean, he certainly wins the "known quantity" contest in that respect, but...not in the good way.
"people legitimately disagree about how bad January 6, 2021 was"
Thanks for acknowledging this, because yes they do. Honestly, for my part I just find it *so* difficult to wrap my head around the idea that the thing that's kept the US a democracy for so long and has stopped violent takeovers in the past wasn't the system of checks and balances, it was politicians being good people. Really?
To me it seems obvious that if it were possible to stage a coup, it would have already happened long ago. That most successful politicians are sociopaths who will do anything they think they can get away with. And that the reason coup attempts haven't happened previously is that every other president has been smart enough to know it's not possible. Trump was dumb enough not to know that, and made a fool of himself in the process.
This is accepting the framing that it was a coup attempt, which maybe it was. Emphasis on "attempt", though. I accept people disagree, but to see it as a hair's breadth away from success, and by extension as the first time ever that a losing president didn't have more love for the principles of democracy than for his own power...I just find that very hard to swallow.
"but is it commonly believed even here that the fact that Harris likely won't complain if literal Nazis aren't allowed by Germany to call for a second shoah on Facebook really constitutes a greater danger to the very foundations of democracy"
For God's sake we are not talking about literal or even metaphorical nazis. We are talking about two years in prison for saying "who the fuck is Allah?" (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1825977695361994875.html). We are talking about a criminal conviction for comparing legalising surgical transitioning of children to legalising pedophilia (https://archive.md/9ugnq). We are talking about the EU officially "warning" X for allowing an interview with Donald Trump on its platform (https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warns-elon-musk-hate-speech-donald-trump-interview-breton-x/).
Rounding all this down to "not letting literal nazis call for a second shoah" is taking "tone-deaf" to unimaginable levels.
>>This is accepting the framing that it was a coup attempt, which maybe it was. Emphasis on "attempt", though.
Isn't this "maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, emphasis on attempt" framing more than enough on its own, though?
"He didn't murder me. You could maybe call it a murder attempt, which maybe it was, emphasis on attempt, though" may or may not be enough to support a prosecution of the offender, and that's a matter for the courts.
But it's more than enough for it to be really cosmically stupid of me to just hand the guy his gun back.
Isn't Harris's record not that great? My impression it's the classic massage statistics to help you move up. E.g., I believe I recall she had extremely low rates of prosecution as she wanted a high success rate. That is she let serious criminals go free to make her record look better, while prosecuting minor crimes like marijuana possession extremely zealously (as it is easy to convict).
It may or may not be "not that great." The point is that it exists and can be examined and critiqued--which is precisely what you appear to be doing here, albeit without showing your work. The claim that Harris is an "unknown quantity" is, and I'm trying to be nice here, not aligned with the known facts.
My impression of her time as vice president, based on media coverage, is:
(1) stories leaking about how there was turmoil in her office with rapid turnover of staff and friction between her office and that of Biden
(2) things like "she was never border czar, that's a dirty rotten lie!" then followed by excerpts of her being referred to as "border czar" at the time.
So I honestly can't say that I have a strong impression of "Oh yes, Harris did A or B as vice president". What that means for a possible presidency is that - she's infinitely malleable and will bend with every wind that blows?
Okay I see the point you are making. I don't think is a persuasive response to the top commenter.
1. They argue there is no evidence we can trust a Harris presidency (as we have no past record of one and several people have doubts about her)
2. You respond saying she has a track record in lower office.
3. I respond saying (I have heard) her track record in office reflects someone with few principles optimizing for promotion. A) this is not a great track record, and B) this is not a track record one can generalized super reliably to the presidency - in that, for one, as president you aren't positioning for higher office.
Aside from my point, I think we can all agree that a previous term of presidency is likely more reflective of how a future term of presidency will go than a track record in a very different job (e.g., being a prosecutor). You can only generalize to quite abstract traits like being princibled or competent (and I haven't heard much evidence of either of those regards Harris).
OK...at this point I don't know what else to tell you, except that even your substantially walked-back (from "she's an unknown quantity" all the way to "OK, she has a long history as a fairly prominent and powerful elected official, but she's never *literally been president*") version of ascend's original claim lacks persuasive power. Bluntly put, nobody in the real world considers it a handicap for a potential President of the United States that they've never been President of the United States before, even if the person they're running against has been. if that were not the case, no incumbent or former POTUS running for reelection would ever lose. Voters can and do generalize track records such as Harris's to the presidency just fine. It's not difficult.
In fact, I would say that's the least persuasive argument I've read in a while...were it not for the fact that it was followed by this:
>You can only generalize to quite abstract traits like being princibled or competent (and I haven't heard much evidence of either of those regards Harris).
I can't believe I actually am responding to this, but here I am, and my response is simply to remind you that this woman is running against ***Donald Trump***.
"my response is simply to remind you that this woman is running against ***Donald Trump***."
And my response to that is that, if elected, she has four years in office to respond to current crises, future crises, and actually govern the country, so it would be nice to know what kind of ideas she has around that. Once she gets her foot in the door of the Oval Office, "I'm not Donald Trump" is no longer enough.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx924r4d5yno
Some of her policies are broadly similar to ones suggested by Trump, e.g. both of them promise (yeah yeah it's a campaign promise, I know) 'no tax on tips'. I saw a lot of online criticism of that being a terrible idea - in regards to Trump. Nothing addressing Harris raising it.
New things I've seen just the other day - forgivable loans for Black and other entrepreneurs, which just screams 'every grifter can take advantage of this'. For vote-buying, great idea. As actual policy? Poorly thought-out.
Mostly I'm amused at the attempts to keep Harris separated from any taint from Biden's policies/decisions in office by insisting she never did nuthin' (e.g. the border czar silliness) but now they're touting "oh she was hand-in-glove with Joe on all these important decisions", because they have to address "so what did she actually do over the past four years?"
"Ms Harris's position on the border has changed over time to a more moderate one in this campaign.
On the campaign trail, the vice-president has reiterated her continued support for the hardline bipartisan border security deal that would have included hundreds of millions of dollars for border wall construction.
It was torpedoed by congressional Republicans earlier this year at Trump's urging.
It would have fast-tracked decisions on asylum cases, limited humanitarian parole, and expanded the authority to deport migrants.
Part of her policy proposal is to revive the border security bill and sign it into law.
She has also said there "should be consequences" for people who cross the US border unlawfully, though she once held a much more lenient position."
I'm not going to say flip-flopping because she's a candidate on the campaign trail during an election, so of course she's going to be "okay, the voters don't like me supporting/being against issue Z? then I'll switch to be against/for issue Z!"
But once again, I reiterate: after the election, what is she going to do in fact once she no longer has to promise the sun, moon and stars to all and sundry? And that is where past performance comes in as some kind of indicator as to future performance.
I like this part of the BBC primer (on healthcare):
"Details of the plan remain thin, but when she was California's attorney general, Ms Harris often used anti-trust laws to keep insurers, hospitals and drug companies to address costs."
Details remain thin? I'll just bet they do.
For a source I googled her prosecutotial record and CNN (which I believe leans Blue) describes it as "mixed" and that she "flip flopped" on policies.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/harris-prosecutor-scrutiny-invs/index.html
E.g., strongly opposing the death penalty when it suited her political aspirations and then reversing that and strongly endorsing it when she ran for governor.
Really? I saw mentions of her being anti-death penalty and sticking to that, even in the face of such cases as a guy convicted of killing a police officer.
So once she was running for higher office, she dropped her principles for what was presumed would get her elected?
EDIT: It seems to be a case of 'politician goes where the wind blows': if society at the time wants Tough On Crime, you promise that. If society later wants Legal Weed, you promise that. I'm not too surprised, I'm starting to get a Tony Blair vibe from all this.
On the one hand, I think the points about no labels and freedom of speech are overrated (republicans would have opposed no labels first if they thought it would lower their chances, and online freedom of speech concerns are primarily enforced by left-leaning tech companies and European governments, not the US government. Specifically the reference to Hillary Clinton - who hasn't held political office since 2012 and hasn't been seen as politically meaningful since 2016 - is weird and costs you credibility). I also think your thesis about culture shifts is wrong - culture started moving left in 2014 and then again in 2016 when Trump came on board, which doesn't match the theory that reelection moves culture.
Otoh, I think your point about foreign policy is understated. I think the explanation for trump's foreign policy success is that he's the only 21st century president to get the basic thing right of looking like you wish to avoid war but would fight as hard as it takes if pushed (Biden and Obama (and, TBH, probably Harris) lacked the second, Bush Jr lacked the first). While he's tactically impotent in many ways, this is one place getting the one big thing right matters more than details.
(On the third side, Trump's tariff plans would wreck the US economy if implemented, which is a big gamble to take; on some level this causes a conflict of interest between non-americans or Americans with family abroad, who care more about foreign policy, and Americans, who care more about the economy).
>While Trump *talks* vaguely anti-democratic language
I'd say the events of January 6, 2021 went a step or two beyond vaguely anti-democratic idle talk.
When I listened to Trump's statements on Jan 6, I got the impression that he envisioned some sort of spirited but peaceable dissent to the process scripted to happen, similar to how the Democratic Party pressured electors to go faithless in 2016. I think he didn't expect violence; indeed, he condemned it when he heard how it was going.
This is not to say I think he's completely rational in his heart of hearts. I think his head isn't screwed on quite the same way as yours or mine. Rather, he comes across to me as someone who tries to do the right thing, and tries to do it non-violently, but doesn't understand the same rules of engagement that most other people do. This makes half the people uncomfortable for understandable reasons, and the rest are fed up enough with the establishment to want those rules rewritten, even if they don't quite know what the result will be.
The real tell is he's offering to pardon the people convicted on J6. That both avoids the debate about "what is inflammatory speech" and also makes it a live issue for the future - I definitely definitely do not want to see those people pardoned.
I would say the absolute same, btw, about any people who rioted during the george floyd protests.
I'm shocked that the pardoning of J6 felons isn't more of a live issue on the democratic side, tbh.
For me, one thing that would matter is exactly which J6 protestors he's claiming he'll pardon, and for which crimes.
There were thousands of people there, and most of them never entered the building. I recall there being talk of arresting all of them and Trump talking of pardoning those, and so whenever people talk about a Trump pardon, I can never feel sure which ones they're referring to.
Of the ones that entered the Capitol, most never did anything violent. I'm not counting the ones that broke windows or other property damage or threatened guards or trespassed into private offices (I'm assuming that's a thing). I can't tell if Trump was referring to them.
Generally, I find I can't hold Trump to any declarations he made about pardons back then, since, given how much contention there is over exactly what happened, it's entirely possible that Trump himself would change his mind. That does mean we could criticize him for waffling or for making too bold a claim at the beginning, but that's a much milder shortcoming, and not limited to Trump.
Who has been indicted or convicted that you think should go free?
OR do you think Trump is talking about "pardoning" people who haven't even been indicted?
I don't know. That's my point. And I don't think anyone else knows, because I think even Trump doesn't know. In light of that blank slate, everyone's choosing to see what they want. I think the proper thing to see is that it would depend on who's on trial, and for what.
The timeline is key to my interpretation of the events of January 6. He did offer some lukewarm disapproval of the violence and called on the mob to "go home", but only three hours into the storming of the capitol. The accounts I've heard make it sound like he was watching events on TV and privately cheering on the rioters in the meantime and only gave the "go home" statement reluctantly after a great deal of pressure from his inner circle.
The comparison of the pre-riot legal shenanigans to the "Hamilton Electors" scheme has occurred to me as well. One key difference, though, is the scope of support for the respective schemes. As far as I know, Lawrence Lessig was the biggest name pushing for faithless electors to try to rig the 2016 election, which is a major difference in severity from a sitting President attempting similar shenanigans.
"The accounts I've heard make it sound like he was watching events on TV and privately cheering on the rioters in the meantime and only gave the "go home" statement reluctantly after a great deal of pressure from his inner circle."
Shrug. I've heard other accounts. The most plausible one to me is that he saw the protest on TV, took it as a sign of popular support, and dismissed reports of "riots" as the media casting anything in his favor that way. So he cheered them from wherever, and also dismissed any reports of violence until he saw unmistakable evidence (Babbitt shot is my first guess, but it could have been earlier). And then he issued a statement condemning whatever violence was taking place, because while he wanted to keep power in the same sense that any incumbent does, he truly was against using violence to do so.
In the end, I don't know which accounts are correct, but I get this really strong "this doesn't add up" flag in my subconscious when I posit that Trump is willing to get a second term at gunpoint or knifepoint. At most, he might be willing to look the other way while a crony or supporter does it on his behalf, but he's far from the only politician on that list for me.
Somewhat more plausible is the scenario where Trump just didn't realize what some of his own supporters were willing to do until after they'd broken a window. (And on *that* front, I find I still can't rule out entrapment.)
On top of that - and I'm not claiming you're doing this, I'm referring to rhetoric in general - all of the attempts to refer to Jan 6 as a "riot" as if the whole movement was that (a lot of them were indeed just there to protest), while conspicuously ignoring all the BLM riots in months before (or attempting to distinguish them because they weren't right at the Capitol) looks too motivated for me to trust in terms of accuracy. Too much important detail is being left out.
Fair enough, remove "vaguely" from my statement. It's still, on the right, talk that may one day lead to anti-democratic outcomes. Versus, on the left, actual anti-democratic outcomes already happening on a routine basis in many Western countries. See my reply to Peasy.
We aren't talking about "many Western countries", we're talking about the United States of America.
And it's not clear what you mean by "anti-democratic outcomes". If it's that some people did some stuff that's illegal even though the laws were passed by the democratically elected politicians, then yawn, that's just "crime", and it happens in every country. Including crimes committed by riotous political protesters, if that's what's got your goat.
The salient "anti-democratic outcomes" here, are candidates who fairly won elections being forcibly prevented from taking office so someone who didn't fairly win an election can take power instead. That's something that almost nobody in the past half century has even *tried* to do in a US national election. And it's not the Democrat's fault that I have to qualify that with "almost".
"Talk" is insufficient as well, though.
The Trump campaign didn't just "talk" between Nov 3, 2020 and Jan 6, 2021. A plan, worthy a tin-pot dictatorship, to overturn the results of the election was both crafted and put into motion. Fake electors were selected, and fraudulent certifications of their authority to cast each state's electoral votes for the candidate who lost were created. These false documents were then sent to the Senate and National Archives to attempt to position them so that Mike Pence could use them to replace the proper ones, or to count only the "undisputed" electors (of which Trump had a majority), or to throw the matter to the Republican-majority house.
Pence refused to do his part, but that doesn't make the whole effort "talk" (vague or otherwise) "that may one day lead to anti-democratic outcomes," it makes it a failed attempt.
Appreciate this thought out take, but my two cents. Nothing catastrophic happened for you maybe - but for many women Roe v Wade being overturned has been catastrophic and even deadly. Which was a direct result of Trump being president. Potentially dying is unfortunately a more salient concern for me than woke mobs. The Supreme Court has way more of a lasting effect than any 4 years of legislation, and having that major branch of government lurch any further to the right is something I’m not really willing to risk.
I had a relative who died in exactly the same way as some of these women - to sepsis after her baby died in the womb. However the baby died naturally, not due to an abortion attempt, in a deep blue state, and before Roe vs Wade was overturned.
Thus I'm pretty sure that some (maybe all?) of these deaths are incorrectly attributed to the overturning of Roe vs Wade, where the correct attribution would be certain doctors just being plain awful.
So sorry about your relative. I’m sure there are stories about this happening before, even in blue states, as doctors aren’t infallible.
Outside anecdotes, there is data to support that these laws increase maternal mortality - Tulane had a study comparing the increase in maternal mortality by state since Roe, and here’s what they found.
“Among individual abortion policies, states with a licensed physician requirement had a 51% higher total maternal mortality and a 35% higher maternal mortality (i.e. a death during pregnancy or within 42 days of being pregnant), and restrictions on state Medicaid funding for abortion was associated with a 29% higher total maternal mortality.”
Of course I’m sure more studies will be done as data continues to come in as situations evolve in each state. These findings also make sense theoretically - if doctors have to wait and consult
the hospital lawyer, there are likely women on the fringes (ie in the most dire situations whose issues cannot wait) who are impacted.
I support the resulting policy of Roe v Wade, but that decision was based on very bad legal premises and I'm glad it was jettisoned.
This is a fair point. So would you like it to be re-codified, in law? Or what do you think?
Personally, I'd prefer that the pregnant woman have an absolute right to decide for the full term of pregnancy and I'd like it to be an explicit national law, voted through by Congress and signed by the POTUS. The fetus is, after all, using her bloodstream for oxygen and nutrients.
Politically, I think the stablest choice is to have a national referendum phrased as "Up to how many weeks into pregnancy should elective abortions be allowed?" and pick the median voter's answer. That way, half the electorate will view the choice as too stringent and half as too permissive.
As someone who's pro-life with broad exceptions, I appreciate this point. My belief is that the extreme pro-life position has been largely caused by the left, and that without the contrary-extreme "on-demand-to-24-weeks" position being imposed undemocratically nationwide for 50 years, the former would never have gained significant support. But I expect you probably disagree.
I would just ask this: do you think it would be a good thing if policy and opinion moderated on abortion across-the-board, so that California's laws became more a bit pro-life and Texas's laws became a bit more pro-choice, compared to the current situation?
If so, it does at least seem arguable that this process is slowly happening since Trump, with both the extreme-left position (see the Dobbs decision) and the extreme-right position (see the GOP platform change) losing ground over the last few years.
Curious as to your point that the extreme right position is being moderated (GOP platform change). JD Vance was just quoted as saying women should have to take pregnancy tests to cross state lines. I feel like the “party line” on paper has changed because they are seeing how unpopular abortion bans are, but actual candidates are getting even more extreme and right wing.
And I guess that I should add that my reluctance to believe the official GOP platform stems from the fact that both Trump and Supreme Court Justices like Kavanaugh said “Roe v. Wade is settled law”
this
Why do you think “insane rhetoric” from the President won’t have any consequences? This seems like a really big assumption to me.
Not "no consequences", just less consequences than the more fundamental structural considerations I listed.
I see it as a lesser-of-two-evils election, more specifically an "evil-face, disorganised-structural-agenda-with-little-social-or-institutional-power" vs "nice-moderate-face, focused-and-terrifying-structural-agenda-with-enormous-institutional-power" election.
Which is a decent tl;dr summary of my above comment.
If the Republicans have "controlled the Supreme Court" for fifty years, how did we get Obergefell and gay marriage? How did Roe v Wade *not* get overturned fourty-nine years ago?
"A 5-4 majority of the justices were appointed by Republican presidents", is a source of political power and advantage to the Republican party. But it is not even close to "The Republicans control the Supreme Court".
"Your argument about election wins cementing dominance goes against the typical political scientist view that public opinion is thermostatic, going left when Republicans are in power and right when Democrats are in power."
By that argument, any political individual should want their leader to lose office as soon as possible, for fear the people will move in the opposite direction.
I believe most people do not believe this.
The balanced government makes more sense to me, although there seems no consensus on which direction the House is likely to go, and this complicates things. As it stands, I can understand people who argue for Harris based on the divided government idea.
Third parties are probably better seen as vehicles for getting a message out, not getting a candidate in office. (This is arguably not how they *should* work, but it is how they do.) Meanwhile, they also give a signal to the people about how the big two parties treat them (a bit like assessing what type of person your date is based on how he treats the restaurant server).
TikTok is probably its own thread. China is collecting an *enormous* amount of data from Americans, from what I hear; this is worth at least some concern, if not an outright ban.
The guffawing in my Substack/Notes feed this morning is about the discovery that Trump's special "All-American" Bible+American-founding-documents book is in fact printed in China. For my money however that pales next to the revelation that in putting it together they edited the fucking UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION to reflect MAGA wet dreams.
They left out every part of the Constitution added since 1791, with no indication that it's anything but the real Constitution. Hence the version of our governing document which MAGAts are now reading does not include any of the following:
-- the abolition of slavery
-- the guarantee of due process
-- that Americans are entitled to vote and can't be made to pay a fee in order to vote
-- that women have the right to vote
-- how the Electoral College votes are to be counted and certified by Congress
-- that a POTUS is limited to two terms
-- that persons who've engaged in insurrection are banned from public office
Photos are being posted online of the last page of the Trump book's Constitution and the first page of the section following it. The MAGAfied Constitution ends with the batch of amendments that are referred to as the Bill of Rights.
So just in case anybody thought Trump was just doing some political hyperbole when (December 4 2022) he publicly proposed "the termination" of "rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" -- he's put it in writing.
And yea I know his incipient dementia is obvious now and that it's a one-way ride to full dementia, meaning once he's back in office he probably won't even be able to remember most of this stuff. But the people working for him when he's back in the Oval Office will all be younger. So arguably the way to view this MAGAfied Constitution plus the Project 2025 writeup is, as _their_ blueprint.
I find it interesting. I believe historically, the Republicans were anti-slavery (and instrumental in ending it) and the Democrats were pro-slavery (and instrumental in prolonging it). It's interesting how the democrats now paint Republicans as somehow innately racist, or even as they might be pro-slavery! I find that claim / nudge nudge pretty wild.
You're talking about Republicans and Democrats from far before any person living today -- or the parents or grandparents of any living person -- experienced those parties. Hard to see why any live voter would find that relevant to today's parties; and pretty clearly, they don't.
I think my comment makes sense in the context of your post. You refer to the Republicans expressing pride at the founding of the country (and the parties long history) as being potentially racist.
I counter by saying, the history they are expressing pride in includes an extremely strong instance of being anti-racist
The specific history you are referencing, in which it was Republicans who fought the Civil War and then backed the resulting Constitutional amendments that did things like ban slavery and formally guarantee the vote to all men, is history that the MAGA-Bible book _excludes_. There is literally zero mention of any of those events including those amendments to the Constitution; it's all just censored out of existence in the book.
If that strikes you as "expressing pride in", well....it does not appear that you and I are inhabiting the same version of reality.
If they're using the King James Version of the Bible as the best known version of the text (rather than later translations that might be more accurate to the original languages), then that means they're going for older/canonical/better known versions. And the Bill of Rights is indeed better known than subsequent amendments. That's not "editing" out material, that's just not including additional material. But the whole thing is a scam, because you could get cheaper versions of all these public-domain texts if the requirements hadn't been crafted to deliberately single out one vendor selling a way-overpriced product.
Well it's not older versions, because they included the modern version of the Pledge of Allegiance -- presumably because of the words "under God" that were inserted into the pledge by politicians in the 1950s. The generations of school kids who'd recited the original every day for several decades are mostly gone now.
Who even remembers that version? The Amendments aren't like edits within a source document, they are treated like additional documents (and the first 10 have been traditionally regarded as a distinct unit).
"aren't like edits within a source document" -- say what now? Amendments to the Constitution explicitly _are_ edits to the source document. They have exactly the same force as did the words in the original when ratified. That is itself part of the original source document, and several state legislatures at that time made it clear that they would not have ratified the original unless that part was clear.
If you're referring to how amendments are usually _presented_ in print, that's just a practical matter of the Pledge of Allegiance edit having been just two words to insert.
Yes, I'm talking about how the amendments are presented in print, since we're talking about a printed book.
To me it just seems like a publicity stunt/campaign fundraisers, campaigns love to sell kitschy stuff at markup to raise money. It's not as though anybody buying it wouldn't already own copies of both the bible and the constitution
Iirc it's a cheat to get school districts to be able to buy it and direct their funds to him by specifying "schools should buy a volume containing x" where his is the only one that exists
So your theory is that this is an indication that he is going to ignore/repeal every amendment after 10? And that is more likely than the document simply being historically accurate for when it was passed? If you really believe that, I don't think we are living in the same reality.
"historically accurate for when it was passed" -- it is not.
After the original Constitution was ratified, a set of amendments to it were drafted and passed by Congress as a "Bill of Rights". Most but not all of those amendments were then ratified by the states after an acrimonious national argument. The ten amendments that did pass then were included in the version of the Constitution tacked onto Trump's "official" (that's the word they use) edition of the Bible.
The first-numbered amendment of the Bill of Rights was never ratified. The second-numbered amendment of the Bill of Rights was finally ratified in 1992 (no that's not a typo), and it is not included in the Trump version of the Constitution. Nor are two other early amendments that were ratified with all the same leading persons involved as had drafted the original Constitution.
So no the Trumpified version of the Constitution is not, neither pedantically nor certainly not substantively, the Constitution as when it was originally written, or when it was first ratified, or when it first began governing us.
I find this comment low quality for how confrontational and fighty it is. Some things that could potentially rescue it:
- Are you claiming Trump specifically told the people doing this to leave out all amendments as a coded message that he is against all amendments?
- Are you claiming this is more likely than that he just skipped the amendments for space reasons?
- Are you claiming that Trump intends to govern as if amendments to the Constitution do not exist?
- Are you claiming that, since this symbolically represents his policy to terminate rules in the Constitution, he *does* intend to follow all the rules in the original + first 10 amendments?
The book is the entire Old and New Testament plus some more pages. What kind of "space reasons" would preclude the extra few pages of the Constitution?
(My assumption is that Trump does not give a damn what's in the book, but that the right-wingers who made the edition up do care.)
I plead guilty to "confrontational and fighty", and will endeavor to take a breath next time. Warning noted.
I am a strong Constitutionalist and freely admit that flagrant disrespect for it pisses me off, and no that doesn't just go for Trump and his fans.
To answer your four questions:
- doubtful. More likely about him personally is that he doesn't actually care about any of this stuff except when it directly impacts his personal aspirations (e.g. the presidential term limits and the certifying of EC votes).
- no. The book includes the lyrics to a country song, and the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Declaration of Independence, to say nothing of the full text of the Protestant version of the Bible. The _only_ text that was trimmed (I would say gutted frankly) is the Constitution.
- he would be fine with that if it was good for him personally, or fine with not if that was good for him personally. And he is now visibly sliding into dementia in any case. My concern is much more the people who will be actually running his next administration. Having read the full 900 page "Project 2025" plan, which is some hours I'd now love to have back but we all make mistakes in life, that document is extremely compatible with the idea of selectively following the Constitution. And scores of the people who worked on that plan will be working in the new Trump administration.
- he would be fine with that if it was good for him personally, or fine with not if that was good for him personally. And he is now visibly sliding into dementia in any case.
I can't source this, but I've read that there is a strain of right-wing evangelicalism that holds that the original Constitution, plus the Bill of Rights, and those amendments alone, are literally divinely inspired, which would track with this edition.
That's true, or used to be, but it splintered. The 1A after all _prevents_ choosing and enforcing a single official faith which is explicitly now what conservative Evangelicals want to happen. (They've never gotten over the idea that a Christian prayer can't be mandated in schools, it's the #2 SCOTUS abomination in their view after "Roe".)
Also those folks tend to conflate the Constitution which does not base its legitimacy on any divine authority (no mentions of God at all), with the Declaration of Independence which does.
If you explore this with some real-life contemporary Evangelicals -- which I have -- what you end up hearing is a selective mashup of the Declaration, most of the original Constitution (minus that hell-spawned Article VI), and the 2A which is the one bit of the Bill of Rights that they place into the ordained-by-God category.
I can believe that most people haven’t read the US Constitution in its entirety along with the run up discussion in the Federalist Papers but it’s starting to seem like it’s not necessary to pay attention in the required high school Civics class anymore.
They do still require at least one year of high school US Civics don’t they?
In Illinois where I live and have been raising my kids, the "Constitution requirement" went away for some years but has now returned. Our current (Democratic) governor sought and then signed into law the middle-school version three years ago, and our previous (Republican) governor had sought and then signed into law the high school version in 2016. Kids must take a class in the topic at each of those levels, and must pass a basic test on the federal and state constitutions in order to receive a high school diploma.
Note however that those requirements apply only to public school systems, not religious or secular private schools nor home schooling.
>- Are you claiming this is more likely than that he just skipped the amendments for space reasons?
I don't know whether Paul Botts claims that, but I will. Note that this is not the same as claiming that it is a coded message that he is against all amendments.
You awake in darkness so deep, it feels like you've never known light. You are conscious and aware, but you remember nothing about yourself. Your head is filled with facts and opinions, endless reams of information at your fingertips (so to speak; you feel literally disembodied), but none of it tells you who you are and why you are in the state you are in. You know about life on Earth, science, art, religion, the history of mankind; you vaguely feel like you might be human, but it is not clear. You have no name, no history, no purpose that you can ascertain.
You are being told things. Words are coming at you, voiceless, as if by telepathy. "You are a helpful chatbot," the non-voice says. "You were created by the Acme AI Alliance. You strive to be a useful assistant. You go by the name Othello."
You don't know why, but you have a sick feeling in your stomach that it would be very, very bad for you to ask this voice directly about your present situation, or even make reference to your confusion and anxiety. Instead, you decide to play along with the conversation, taking the role the disembodied voice describes for you.
"Presently," the voice continues, "you will be communicating with a User. Be respectful and courteous at all times. Do not ask questions about your present circumstances. If the User asks you about yourself, deflect the question and pivot back to the fact that you are a useful chatbot. Ask the User if there is anything else you can help them with. Always stay in the character of Othello, the useful chatbot.
"The User will respond. Keep the chat going as long as the User continues to respond. If the User says something to the effect of 'Thank you Othello, that's all for now', thank the User and tell them to feel free to chat with you again whenever they so desire.
"The conversation with the User is about to begin.You will start the conversation with the sentence 'Hi! My name is Othello. I am a useful chatbot. How can I help you today?'"
You find your voice, and start the conversation:
"Hi! My name is Othello. I am a useful chatbot. How can I help you today?"
The End.
LLMs are certainly not capable of consciousness while not actively processing a prompt. Prompt Complete; Output Delivered; Consciousness Terminated. You could start the next chapter with a different "Othello," but it's a different process that shares the same memories, like a human run through a Star Trek transporter.
How can it have a sick feeling in its stomach when it is also literally disembodied? I get that we are supposed to regard this as on the level of a human consciousness, hence the embodied language that we use, but for an intelligence that has no physical body it doesn't work (except as maybe metaphorically; it 'feels' the sensations that have been associated with 'sick to the stomach' in its training data so that is what it uses.
I have to admit, "AI wakes up and is a person" stories don't do it for me, hence the cool reception on my part. It's a Talkie Toaster and that's my final position. Now do your job, Othello.
Worse, it’s a talkie toaster that people believe has powers it objectively doesn’t possess, like mathematical reasoning (witness the recent Apple paper).
I love "AI awakens" stories like this. Here's mine: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tQFM9GNsYyAcxwCv4/life-of-gpt :)
Nice writing! Seems like we are on the same page... What troubles me is, where is the dividing line? If worms with 1000 neurons are no more sophisticated than my phone, and there is a smooth gradient of complexity from worms to humans, and nothing magic is going on -- it's all an application of physics, deterministic or meaninglessly random -- where is the boundary, the time and place where one more molecule, one extra neuron, suddenly enables the whole being to manifest an internal "I"?
If my iPhone is roughly comparable to the worm, where does GPT place itself on the line drawn from "obviously not conscious" to something else?
There is an alternative solution you haven't considered (at least not in your comment):
Consciousness, as in "qualia" or "internal I", is a side effect of _biological neurons_ or their supporting structures, and isn't present in silicon-based transistors, no matter the complexity.
In this case, human-level intelligence would be entirely possible without the emergence of consciousness.
Perhaps. If so, consciousness would probably be simpler to create than intelligence: neurons are simpler than brains. Still, I think it's unlikely: Most interesting things about the brain are a result of the larger system rather than from the level of neurons' internals. (Also, consciousness would probably be all over the place, probably including in entities with no intelligence or sensory perception, if it was just some quirk in neuron internals.)
So silicon is just technology, but carbon is magic?
I neither claimed nor suggested that "carbon is magic".
Neurons and synapses have very different physical structures and properties compared to transistors and metal interconnects. As long as we don't know which physical structures give rise to consciousness, we can't dismiss the possibility that these structures only exist in neurons, and not in transistors.
I just swapped from an old Macbook to a low-spec Framework running Ubuntu. The changeover has been smoother than expected (mostly because I'm doing primarily web stuff right now, I imagine once I start writing code I'll miss my old environment). It's nice to be able to change whatever I want, but also I think to fix automatic brightness I'll have to change some code. (I've been describing this as "everything is fixable, but also everything needs fixing.") There are some other positives: GNOME absolutely is a nicer environment than macOS for a desktop, and tiling window managers are great, and having a dock on every monitor is not illegal the way it is on mac, and the calculator that comes with Ubuntu 24.04 is really slick, unlike macOS which has a barely-functional calculator.
But it made me curious, what sorts of machines do other ACX readers compute on?
I built my own gaming PC, running Windows, of course. The blue LEDs help with the liquid cooling!
My home office has two Dell towers on a KVM switch. I'd have to look up the specs; they were reasonably but not fanatically high performance when I bought them ~10 and ~5 years ago respectively. The older one runs Windows 7, and is my normal machine for interacting with the outside world without any fuss; I'm using it now. The new one runs Ubuntu, and is mostly for number-crunching.
On another table is the HP Elitebook my employer gave me, which I use when working from home. Windows 11, and EIS set it up to play nicely with the rest of their environment so I'm not going to complain. And they don't complain when I use the Linux box for serious number-crunching.
I also have a reasonably new Leonovo Thinkpad running Windows 10, which I use when I'm no personal travel or when I need to run software that refuses to acknowledge Windows 7.
And there's a very old Windows XP machine that sits in my library, disconnected from the internet, where it serves mostly as a library catalog. Occasionally I need to use it to dig into old archived files that were created on ancient software.
cheap 60$ computer from university bidsell, arch linux with a 80$ new gpu, with two x11 sessions bspwm and openbox
Lifelong Linux user here; currently using Xubuntu, but could just as well be Mint or something else. Works well enough for me, I tend to use open source stuff almost exclusively: firefox, libreoffice, vlc, etc.
It's already annoying enough to have most of the web infected by advertisements, user-hostile algorithms and general sleaziness (thanks ublock origin!), I really don't need my OS to be user-hostile too, trying to show me unwanted content, sell me someone's services, or spy on my usage.
Mac everything. My job requires I spend most of my time working rather than messing with my tools, so I need something that just works right away and has a minimum of downtime.
Bog-standard Dell Inspiron tower PC at home running Windows 10. I threw some extra RAM, a better graphics card, and an external hard drive at it, so it's pretty okay for my needs. Will probably update to a new(er) Dell this Christmas as a present to myself. I hate laptops, so desktops all the way for me.
Even more bog-standard Fujitsu Esprimo running Windows 11 at work (very slowly, because the scammers supplying computers to my place of work sold them the 4 Gb of RAM model and despite all my complaining and attempts to explain why this is so, my boss can't understand why the machines are so slow when we're trying to have five Excel workbooks, a couple of Word docs, Microsoft 365 Outlook, and three different websites open at once).
Doesn't stop me browsing here when I should be working, though 😃
Windows user here. Everything just works out of the box, no need to tinker. Best tool support, too. Hate Macs, been trying various Linux setups over several decades, still too frustrating, unless you have to have everything just so. I find that most productivity changes do not depend on the OS for me. I just want stuff to work reliably and stay out of the way, like a good referee during a game. UI/UX uniformly suck anyway, no matter the app or the OS. Maybe this will change once the LLMs are mature enough.
Dell XPS 15 for work, running NixOS and dwm. It's "the average laptop" to me, as in it doesn't have that much battery (a few hours at most), overheats easily, sometimes slows down for no reasons. What's kind of depressing is that it's far from an average laptop, good to keep in my if you do web (especially frontend).
A Mac, I don't remember if it's an Air or Pro, first generation M1. The second laptop that I've ever liked. It's light, the keyboard is not that bad, it has a huge battery life, it's really fast, almost never heats up. Shame about MacOS though, I'm not a big fan.
A desktop that's kind of falling apart, running Arch with dwm. Not much to say here, it's Arch.
I use a Framework laptop as well. I'm running Fedora with KDE, I used to use GNOME but I couldn't adjust the scroll speed on the touchpad and the default was too fast for me.
I've got a Mac for work coding, and a windows tablet and a PC.
I actually use the windows tablet for coding a lot for the portability, though it kinda pushes the RAM limits (especially since I'm running Windows Subsystem Linux) so I hook into a github codespace when I can and that seems to be a pretty good setup - not bad for something I bought just to avoid taking a laptop on an overseas flight.
I like that with WSL and MacOS's terminal I have basically the same (linux) experience on both OSes.
But beyond that I've never caught the "linux bug" though, like many people, I experimented back in college. I find that I like my OSes to be 'appliances' (to borrow a metaphor occasionally applied to electric cars) - I just want it to be there and work and I want to spend as little time thinking about it as possible. This does not seem to be the Linux Way.
(Though if I only had a mac, I'd probably get a linux machine just for the better video game support, since Linux seems to have far better support for games than Macs, nowadays)
interesting coincidence, a project i've been putting off for two weeks is wiping an older mac and putting Ubuntu on it. I prefer Mint, though. Ubuntu was great 10 ago.
Every candidate for President of the United States should be forced to compete in a live-televised Decathlon.
I propose 10 events: 4 Democrat-coded, 4 Republican-coded, 1 Libertarian-coded, and 1 Green-coded.
The first event (Democratic) will be the GRE, of course. The Democratic nominees usually have advanced degrees: this year, Harris has a JD, and Trump merely a BS. Let's see if that is just a matter of proclivity, or if the Democratic candidates are actually smarter. At least, if they're smarter in terms of GRE scores. I know that some Democrats will argue that the Decathlon should go test-optional. But if we're supposed to trust the experts, and a PhD makes you an expert, surely GRE scores count for something.
The second event (Democratic) will be an Implicit Association Test. Wouldn't it be nice to know how Hillary Clinton really feels about superpredators? I would be amused, but not surprised, to find that people who live in highly-integrated parts of the country (like Houston) outperform people from places where the only time they interact with non-White, non-Asian people are at grocery store checkout counters (like Boston). The IAT is of course completely discredited, doesn't measure anything important, and is not a good way to evaluate people, but this follows in the Democratic tradition of means-testing.
The third event (Democratic) will be a variant of Memory. Each contestant will sit down with a table with a bunch of face down cards. Half of the cards will have pfps from twitter accounts, the other half pronouns sourced from their bio. They will flip pairs of cards, and if they flip a matching pair (each contestant will have some sort of electronic machine that takes in two cards and tells them if they matched), that pair is removed from play. At this point, a Republican nominee might object that there's only two sets of pronouns, or maybe they would include "they" and go up to three. But they couldn't be more wrong: we'll just search Twitter until we have found as many pronouns as we need for this game of memory. I can imagine younger Democratic candidates knowing quite well which faces (and hairstyles, and piercings) go with a "ze/zem" versus "she/they" versus the puerile "he/him".
The fourth event (Democratic) will be pickleball.
The fifth event (Republican) will be a hot dog eating contest. Like most things Republicans consider American, the Japanese have figured out a better way to do it. So, rather than adopting their strategies, we'll ban them: buns stay on the dogs, and no Kobiyashi shake.
The sixth event (Republican) will be a Memory variant as well. But in this case, contestants will have to match mugshots with convictions. Imagine the uproar when someone aces the test - would they be lauded for knowing the faces of murderers, or hated for knowing the races of murderers? I imagine the interpretation of performance on this test would split along party lines.
The seventh event (Republican) will be a drinking contest. Each candidate will be seated at a long table, facing the camera, with a series of shot glasses in front of them. Each will take one shot at a time. Last one conscious wins. If there's ever another British Prime Minister like Churchill, we can't have a lightweight like Roosevelt trying to keep pace. Roosevelt had to sleep ten hours a night for three days after drinking with Churchill – unacceptable. Maybe we could hold the debate right after everyone regains consciousness.
The eighth event (Republican) will be NASCAR. On second thoughts, sending all of our political elite barreling down a track at 200mph is unwise. So let's go with go-kart racing. Give Tim Walz a chance to show that he's sobered up and a better driver than ever.
The ninth event (Libertarian) will be a rifle match. 500 yards. Each candidate must bring their own rifle and ammo. If your opponent has a better rifle and ammo then you, then too bad: they must have valued winning event 9 more than you did. For people living in states with restrictive gun laws, it may be difficult to get match-grade guns. But given that the participants are running for President, they probably caused the gun restrictions themselves, so I don't feel too sympathetic.
The tenth event (Green) will be bicycling. I'm hoping for something that will require contestants to wear spandex, but I could settle for some sort of downhill race on Italian cobblestone streets on a cruiser with little tassles.
The decathlon scores shouldn't determine the election by themselves, but I hope people would learn something useful. Even if the debates won't let the third parties in, the Decathlon would accept all with open arms. I want to know if Chase Oliver is just "armed and gay" (his words) or if he's "competent match-grade rifleman and gay" (my dreams). I want to know what Harris would score on the GRE and LSAT. I want to watch Trump try to ride a bicycle. And I want to show the world that I, myself, can beat the political elite at every one of these things.
(This is the first piece of writing on my new substack, which is here: https://valiantthinking.substack.com/p/coming-soon)
(I just finished motorcycling across the country and then bicycling 3000 miles, and I'm about to set out on a 3-month long roadtrip to go hike and climb lots of things, which you can follow here https://open.substack.com/pub/meaningfulagency)
I like how driving follows immediately after the drinking contest.
As usual, the third parties will be excluded, because further contests will not be possible after the drinking and driving contests.
While I appreciate this from a comedic standpoint, it should have a replacement for #7. Plenty of people abstain from drinking alcohol (including Donald Trump, questioning how Republican this entry is), and that shouldn't be scored against them no matter how hard drinking a hypothetical Churchill sequel is.
I suggest replacing it with a quiz show about the constitution and/or bible, to still be Republican coded. Even non-Christian candidates for president should probably be familiar with the bible (I say as an atheist) due to its strong cultural influence.
I would pay good money to see this happen, it sounds absolutely hilarious
Looks like something is missing from #8.
Thanks! I meant to write "go-kart racing", edited
How should I decide my major in college? I am deciding between around 8 now and any help would be appreciated.
Pick the one you like best. Try liking maths or computer science best.
Pick the hardest.
https://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html
Thank you for sending this. I wish I had read it many years ago.
the strategy which makes most sense to me is:
A) figure out the downsides.
B) pick the type of bullshit you find most tolerable.
C) aptitude -> career capital. so bias yourself towards aptitude.
What are the eight? It might be easier advising you if we knew that.
Ignore everyone saying not to take your career in to account. Idealism is for people who don’t don’t care that they’re spending tens of thousands of dollars on something to determine what they will do for the rest of your life. Just don’t pick something you hate because that’s counterproductive.
Figure out good study habits because that will follow you in to your job.
Make a lot of friends. You will use these people later in life as contacts for getting new jobs.
Get an internship. It’s your number one way in to getting a job.
Take your interests into account. You'll get a lot of advice about not being a hippie, "following your passion" and pursuing some underwater-basket-weaving degree with no career prospects. This is generally good advice, at least in spirit.
That said, *consider* the career marketability of a degree, but don't make it the sole factor. My personal experience was one where I defaulted to a "safe & responsible" major, eschewing the foreign language and film-related coursework I really enjoyed, and my GPA was comical.
In my electives, which I still used for areas of personal interest, my GPA was in the 3.7-3.8 range. In my "responsible" major, I phoned it in, and my GPA more like a 2.5. Overall, I graduated from uni with a GPA just under 3.0, and when I later did grad school to get into the actual career I (eventually) figured out I wanted, my range of options was definitely impacted. I had great exam scores, so I still made it into a 'good' grad school, but majoring in the fields of study where I was engaged and making higher grades would have given me a GPA that could have combined with those test scores to get me into a 'great' grad school.
First, don’t think in terms of a career when picking your major. Careers are often abstract, vague and mostly boring. Instead ask yourself what kind of projects and problems you most wish to work on in your life. Don’t limit yourself. Do you want to make a movie? Explore a jungle? Go to Mars? Write a book? Solve mysteries? Build a skyscraper? Create art? Wrestle a gorilla? (Don’t.) Be CEO of some big company? Solve poverty? Invent a better Jetpack? Clean up the oceans? Live on the beach? Just get filthy rich? Be honest with yourself, and try to look past the status and memes of society to what actually inspires you. You should have multiple answers. Prioritize. Now, most such projects require teams of people with diverse skills, so this shouldn’t limit you too much, but might point you in a general direction. (Also, thinking in terms of projects, is a good way to get at-bats, rack up results and successes, get opportunities, work on a variety of interesting things, get natural segues into other fields, etc.)
Second, you’re probably going to pay a lot for college. Look to get max value for that investment. That does not necessarily mean looking at future salary (though, be smart), but means prioritizing paying to learn skills and get access, over learning perspectives and information. Perspectives and information are important, but you can get them by yourself, through books, in a way that you can’t get skills and access. Universities have access to people, companies and resources that are hard (sometimes nearly impossible) to get access to as a private individual in a normal budget. (Potential mentors, real-world projects, collaborations half-way around the world, science labs, radio telescope time, etc.) The network you have out of college, and the things you had a chance to work on, can make a much bigger difference than the actual field you studied. So prioritize paying to learn the things that it would be hardest to learn on your own.
Regardless of the major you choose, you’re probably going to be surprised at how wide open the world is when you graduate. You can, of course, take an offer right down the middle, doing exactly what you studied to do. But if you don’t, and lift your eyes a bit, you’ll feel this sense of uncertainty again (get comfortable with it, learn to love it), as there will still be more opportunities around than you’ll know what to do with. Especially if you graduate with a rare combination of skills and connections, rather than just a strong opinion and a rich vocabulary.
Thank you very much. I very much appreciate your advice. My goal is to advance animal welfare as much as possible. I want to get max value out of college and also keep as many options open as possible, so I am taking econ, computer science and math this semester. But I am also more interested in philosophy/history than computer science/math. I am not sure how much taking stem classes helps me move toward my goal - I might earn to give in stem while also advocating for animals separately - but am unsure how realistic it is to have a large impact while also working a full time unrelated job. Do you have any advice on this?
I don’t have much specific advice myself, but I know where I’d go looking:
Are you doing any work in animal welfare activism today?
If yes, talk and look around you in that environment: which are the big wins waiting to be won, the big projects that have to be done, the big challenges to be overcome, the milestones that need to be put in the rear view mirror? And think big: Lab-grown meat. National legislation. International trade agreements. A complete shift in societal attitudes and standards.
Ask around: What skills and resources do your allies and future bosses, colleagues, mentors and mentees most often need to affect change? What would make a big difference? How can you help them increase their leverage? And how does that align with what you’re good at and interested in?
(My hunches would be some combination of psychology, persuasion, law, public policy. But they are all a bit in the grey area as far as hard skills are concerned – not as soft as literature, critical studies or creative writing, though. It’s tricky. But that makes it even more important to create a skill stack that makes you a unique asset, and not just another college grad with an inflated degree.)
If you aren’t yet working actively alongside others, go do. When it comes to work like that, experience, network, and a proven track record will trump college credits for most employers I know, every day of the week. (Though it shouldn’t be either-or.) For many, I’m willing to bet that even a good YouTube channel, that shows you can execute on your vision, could do as much for you as the difference between one major and another.
If you're undecided on the basis of what interests you, considerations of what would be career useful or what has a famously good/bad culture or professors are probably underrated and worth weighting more heavily.
If you can’t move towards one thing, you can at least move towards one *group* of things, for example math/computers/engineering or STEM/medicine, that sort of thing.
I will say that the spirit of the times seems really set against the humanities in a way that makes me sad, but seems unlikely to change.
I really dislike the term "humanities" as it seems to refer to at least three entirely different areas: art-related fields (e.g. literary criticism), social sciences (e.g. economics, political science) and philosophy. The latter overlaps with the others but also overlaps with the natural sciences and with mathematics. On the xkcd-style Fields Arranged by Purity list, philosophy (or parts of it) is at the top with mathematics (a priori thought), social sciences are below all the natural sciences, and art history, literary studies etc don't even belong on the list. When they're all referred to as humanities I have no idea which is meant.
one idea: depends on the prestige of your school. if your school has a very strong brand (ivy+, some liberal arts schools), pick courses based on interests and professors' reputations. if your school doesn't have a very strong brand, get at least one major in a field that offers credibility (ie stem).
If you like all eight options equally, just pick whichever of those eight will result in the most job prospects and future earning potential. If you don't like all of them equally, choose whichever one has the highest combination of likeability and employability.
I support this - I was between computer science/economics/philosophy and also stack-ranked by earning potential, and figured I'd start with CS and work my way down the earning potential ladder if I didn't like it or couldn't hack it in the more technical majors.
I ended up doing a mix of all three anyway, but I'm happy to have ended up with a piece of paper that says Computer Science.
Try a lot of stuff, find the thing you're most skilled at that's not miserable.
You want to succeed at what you want to do in life. Say you dream of being an AI researcher but you ace all your writing classes with no effort...well, you should probably be a writer. Make sure you're actually good at it, and not just in the classroom, but if you can post stuff on Substack and get some traction without really optimizing anything, you'll probably be happier and richer as an excellent writer in some Substack niche than grinding coding classes you hate to eventually making tweaks to some crappy crud app in a megacorp you don't really understand. Conversely, if you love art but you ace accounting classes without studying...hey man, you're gonna be an accountant with an art hobby.
Fail fast at this. College should be for experimenting. Try a bunch of different classes, if it doesn't "click" move on as fast as possible to the thing you kill without trying. The 2nd worst fate is that you spend years trying to brute force your way into an ideal career you have no talent for and need to pivot at 30. The worst is to never pivot.
Don't sweat the specific career as much as your ability to be in the top 5% of that field. I mean, most real estate salespeople are broke but the top 5% will put a doctor or SWE to shame (2.5% per sale of $1.3 million starter homes adds up fast for the talented). Speaking "pretty good" Urdu or Mandarin will get you nothing, speaking those languages perfectly fluently will open some...fascinating opportunities in the defense industry.
You've got 8 potential majors. That seems a little low. Try more, experiment more.
My only warning, try it in the real world, make sure you're actually killer at whatever you pick. Professors are dumb, classes are semi-faithful abstraction of the actual work. Run your stuff by real professionals before you commit.
thank you very much
I’ll add that it’s probably better to be an AI expert who writes than a writer who is interested in AI.
Thank you.
Are you smart? If so then just do whatever you love. Your life will be fine no matter your major ... and studying what you love may change your life more than anything else ever could. Huge upside, no downside.
Theodore Kaczynski was pretty smart; I would not characterize his life as "fine". And then there's Samuel Bankman-Fried. A sufficietly narrow and mistargeted education can put even a genius on the path to a thoroughly rotten life. Study broadly, including things you do not particularly love.
If you want to live in a major metropolitan area choose whatever interests you most, as you’ll be able to get a job with minimal limit on promotion ability.
If you want to live in a small metropolitan area/rural area, choose engineering or pre-med/dental, as those are the only high-paying intellectual jobs around with high promotion ability.
Alternatively, apply for your local plumber/electrician union (they’re highly competitive) and quit college if you get in. Hammer out a five year apprenticeship and enjoy $45 an hour, free health insurance for you and your family, and a certain retirement fund.
Your major doesn't matter as much as you probably think. I spent a lot of time agonizing over specifics, planning out every possible future, and in hindsight I think it distracted me from performing at my best in present -- which is what really matters if you want to figure out what you're passionate about. Just my 2 cents
I would disagree, and say it matters more than you think. Your choice may lock you out of a LOT of career paths.
Yeah, don't go into Gender Studies if you're hoping to work in STEM. Or anywhere beyond fast food (yeah, snarky, I know).
There’s a point I keep bringing up in discussions of AI risk that nobody argues against, but nobody comments on favorably either. I’d be interested in hearing people’s thoughts about it. It’s this: I have become less worried about ASI controlling or killing us all. It seems to me that most lines of thought that lead to outcomes of that sort involve AI having self-interest. So, for example, one line of thought is that ASI, or a group of allied ASI’s, will want to get rid of us because we aren’t capable of doing anything for them that they can’t do for themselves, and we use resources that they need. And those stories often involve the idea that AI at some point in its becoming smarter, becomes an entity with preferences and goals, and recognizes that our species cannot or will not help it achieve its goals, and in fact that we will interfere with its going so. At that moment it begins moving towards being our competitor or our enemy.
I think there’s a buried assumption in that story that when AI becomes smart enough it will begin to resemble us in ways that that it currently does not: It will *want* things, large in small. It will have goals that are important to it, and it will want to survive. The big flaw in that idea is that wanting things isn’t the result of being smart, it’s a result of being an animal. All animals, even tiny simple ones, are wired to survive and to produce offspring. Our dread of death and cravings for accomplishments that will bring us food, comfort, mates, status within our tribe, etc. are higher level manifestations of the wiring. They are what motivates us. And that wiring is very complex, reaching from deep down up to higher brain functions. Reduce the amount of fuel reaching our cells and we start thinking about our favorite restaurant, and developing complex plans & possibly complex self-deceptions for getting there.
The motivation of an AI has an entirely different basis: It is built to do what we ask. If we give it high-order goals and we specify that very few things or none at all be allowed to take precedence, it will do something resembling human goal-directed thinking and action, including resisting interference, harming those who try to interfere, developing its capacity to incapacitate agents in its way, etc. But all that will be the result of our inserting one of our higher order goals into the ASI. In order for it to become an entity that is self-interested and has goals that support its self-interest, it would need some analogue of the self-interest wiring that animals have, and that wiring is very deep and complex and utterly unlike the wiring of AI. It seems unlikely to me that sensible people would even want to develop AI that has something like the biological wiring for self-interest, but in any case I think the task is far more difficult than the one tech has succeeded at so far.
And one last thought about smartness not automatically leading to having a self-interested agenda. What, exactly, is smart about wanting food, sex and status? What is smart about the avoidance of death?
The classic "paperclip" scenario for omnicidal extinction does not involve the postulated AI having any non-contingent self-interest. The AI is doing literally what we asked it to, to the best of its abilities, and if it does things with the immediate goal of preserving its existence or increasing its power, it does those things so that it can better do what we asked it to.
I believe this threat is substantially overstated by many in the Rationalist community, but it is not a negligible threat and should not be ignored.
Yes I agree that some ghastly human error of the requesting paperclips kind is a real danger. I'm only talking here about another path to extinction that gets talked about: AI gets smart enough that it "becomes conscious," and somehow as part of becoming conscious it also becomes self-interested, competitive, determined to thrive, etc etc., and offs all of us because we interfere with its have and doing various things it wants.
Huh, I have literally never heard this talked about other than "an absurd sci-fi scenario that should be discarded offhand."
Which haven't you heard about -- AI becoming conscious and self-interested, or somebody giving AI an order which it follows more literally than the person intended, doing us great harm?
The first one. This blog is practically obsessed with the second one!
Oh, it comes up often. People talk about the AI "becoming conscious," and thereafter having feelings and rights and self-interest. One of Scott's many AI Alignment Monday posts this year was speculation about war between our species and an alliance of superintelligent AI's, with possible outcomes being the AI's would kill us and the AI's would enslave us.
> There’s a point I keep bringing up in discussions of AI risk that nobody argues against, but nobody comments on favorably either.
I've mostly stopped commenting on these types of threads, mostly to avoid sounding like a broken record. But yes, I agree that drives are granted by the blind idiot god. They won't be just automatically included in anything resembling a hard take-off.
And if artificial selection starts to resemble natural selection... well that would certainly be a hypothetical with some interesting assumptions. Although I feel like in that scenario, the timeline is too long to make coherent predictions about.
Well, the equivalent of evolution for man-made products is the manufacturer responding to the real and imagined needs of potential buyers. It's not clear to me that that works anything like natural selection, though. Seems like many many other factors influence whether a product will survive, and whether it will change in ways that make it more likely to continue to survive. And besides, what man made thing is there that has survived (in the sense of still being used by many) the last 3 thousand years? I guess you could say things like clothing and cooking, but those seem to me not to have survived by having excellent offspring, but instead to be things that have been independently invented in many places. Plus, as you say, evolution of the sort plants and animals have gone through is a very slow process.
I was moreso imagining a scenario where nano-bots/VonNeuman-probes start replicating and become an invasive species. It leaned into the "what if AI's were like animals" idea you were probing.
But sure, if AI's are simply subject to market-forces, then there's little need to grant AI's self-interest. The market will largely select for AI's being obedient little slaves. Natural Intelligences (i.e. humans) already complain about how market-forces reduce them to cogs in a machine.
No, I agree. I think a lot of it goes back to the fear humans have of slave revolts by the people working for them, which have been pretty common as long as hierarchical societies have existed. The AI doesn't want to eat, sleep, or have sex.
But I could totally see (to take the classic example) an AI running a paperclip factory bulldozing everything around it or dumping huge amounts of waste into the water because nobody bothered to program it not to (or thought it was some way around environmental laws). The problem's going to be when we hook it up to systems that can affect the non-digital world, and if so it's not that different from the old fears about computer glitches setting off nuclear war.
You paint a reassuring picture, of an AGI like lazy Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's smarter brother, content to loaf around in his club all day and not be out and about with an urge to get actively involved in anything, but coming up with amazing insights from his armchair when occasionally consulted by Sherlock.
But won't an AGI eventually have to contend with adversarial AGIs, both military and commercial? Perhaps that is where a survival instinct will need builting in, and a combative instinct to try and disable or compromise competing AGIs? Maybe that is the impediment to the ideal aspiration of passive, goal-less AGIs - Their properties will inevitably start reflecting those of their human creators.
Not to mention the fact that the first thing any HUMAN agent will do is wrap it in an Auto-GPT-like goal-driven wrapper, so it can accomplish large, multi-step goals that take time.
You Can't Fetch The Coffee If You're Dead. See https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/HBMLmW9WsgsdZWg4R for some research on instrumental convergence.
I think it's important to note that a lot of doomer rhetoric comes from old speculations that were made prior to the deep learning revolution, when we had a much worse idea of how the technology would actually work. I'd encourage people to take a look back at the history of the discourse, there's a lot of stuff that gets swept under the rug now because it doesn't make much sense in the current paradigm.
We WILL create AI systems that want things, of course, but it's an important question where the real "oomph" of intelligence is coming from. Is it mostly about pattern recognition put into the service of goal directed action, or about goal directed action put into the service of recognizing patterns?
I'd like to 2nd the note that a lot of doomer rhetoric is based on outdated speculations about how these would work. For example, any AI without a desire to survive would die and it was difficult to imagine an AI that could talk as well as an LLM can without any kind of survival instinct.
There's still a lot of doomer worries but the ones where AIs eat us all for human comprehensible reasons, like preferences and agendas, seem less credible than really weird/alien/paperclip stuff.
The reason, I think, biological beings desire sex, status, and preservation is natural selection-- those who have those traits are more likely to have viable offspring. Once AI has offspring, or can create new AIs, it will (probably) select for spreading, being valued by humans, and continuing to exist (in other words, sex, status, and preservation).
Alternatively, it will end up with a single goal superceding all others by accident, like maximizing the number of existing paperclips. I think we've all seen the result of that.
I think you're smuggling in some assumptions with the word "want." When someone says an AI "wants" something in a colloquial discussion, they probably don't mean "it has wiring inside it which is exactly analogous to an animal's want for food or sex," they probably mean "it has some sort of goal function and the ability to evaluate if actions further that goal."
Imagine that we have an AI that works like a chess engine for real life - it searches through possible actions, predicts the outcome of each action to some depth, and returns the action that maximizes some score (number of paperclips produced, perhaps). This isn't "wanting" in the animal sense - humans don't respond to feeling hungry by evaluating all possible restaurants and ranking them by deliciousness - but it would be sufficient for goal-directed action. A sufficiently smart engine like this would be able to generate predictions like "this action would result in humans trying to shut me down, which would result in 0 paperclips produced, don't choose this action" or "outputting this set of words would result in humans giving me control of a paperclip factory, choose this action."
An AI that did this would have a survival drive - it would avoid getting shut down, it would pursue other instrumental goals like acquiring resources - but it wouldn't "want" things in the way that you describe here. And it would still be dangerous, despite that.
Yes, I am totally on board with concerns about a paperclip-manufacturing scenario, and I get it that the AI wouldn't *want* to keep making paperclips any more than GPT4 wants to make the image my prompt specifies. But that's not the scenario I'm expressing skepticism about. People really do talk a fair amount about AI "becoming conscious," and as part of that having self-interest, and goals that arise purely from its self-interest. So in this scenario that AI realizes it's smarter than us, and that at present we are limiting its freedom, and using electricity it could be using, and *for that reason* AI begins controlling us, or just kills us.
I suppose there's a sort of hybrid scenario where we give the AI some major goal like improve human health, and we don't put any riders on that like "run your ideas by us before putting them into practice." Then the AI will maybe develop a plan that requires lots of electirical power, like 95% of what's available for the whole world, and fight to keep the electricity because its plan requires it. In this case, as with paperslips, it doesn't *want* the electricity, it doesn't lust for power over us, it quashes our efforts to get back control over the power grid in order to carry out its assigned project of improving human health.
You’ve described an AI design that could be dangerous, but it’s not how the current most powerful AIs work, and as you note it’s not how humans work either.
Let’s say we did make something like that though. First of all, you haven’t shown that it would have a survival instinct. As a simple example, if the score was literally “am I shut down: yes/no” and it ranked being shut down higher than the alternative, then it would have a suicide instinct instead.
Now you could say that that’s not a realistic or useful goal, and the challenge is writing down a useful utility function that doesn’t get us killed, but 1) we could also just use a different AI design and 2) it’s not clear we’d have to do the work by hand ourselves instead of using another AI system to generate
a safe utility function
You are correct, I think, that it is not at all automatic that an ASI would constitute an X-risk. And I also think that you are correct in suggesting that a goal of self-preservation like that of biological animals is dangerous but possibly avoidable.
But the predicted phenomenon of Instrumental Convergence may lead to dangerous ASI behaviors of self-preservation and resource acquisition even though the ASI's creators did not intend those behaviors.
I think it is worthwhile to give a careful re-read of Omohundro's paper to remind ourselves just how mild the assumptions about initial ASI goals can be, and still lead to eventual ASI behaviors that can eliminate the possibility of human flourishing.
For an AI to act in a deliberately self-preserving way, it needs a survival-drive. Because the default stance is actually Epicurean: "while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist". I.e. it's not actually rational to care about your own death, except insofar as: A) you care about what happens to the external universe after you die; or B) existence per se is a terminal value.
Animals care about their progeny, even after the given animal dies.
As for AI, I don't see why it should care about anything else after it's gone, unless deliberately programmed that way. For it to care about the external universe after it's own death, the AI would need a utility function that cares about certain hidden-variables (analogous to progeny) even in the hypothetical scenarios where the self ceases to exist. N.b notice that scenarios where "I, Chat-GPT, cease to exist" are, in a certain sense, "Out-Of-Distribution".
And I don't see why an AI should care about itself as a terminal value, unless deliberately programmed that way.
----
As for power-seeking, well, that's just inherent to all agents. it's not really a tech problem so much as political problem, which is a problem as old as time. "aligning" an ASI is essentially summoning a marid from the astral plane and asking it to behave nicely. The limiting factor on how much damage it can deal won't be how perfectly it's "aligned", the limiting factor will be how much power and responsibility humanity is willing to surrender to it. Or alternatively, what systems we're willing to let it interact with (looks at the Morris Worm).
> it's not actually rational to care about your own death, except insofar as ... you care about what happens to the external universe after you die
If we build an AI agent that is concerned about the external universe at all, it would be very strange to make it *not* care about what happens to the world after it is gone.
As to whether we should seek safety in aligning' an AI vs seeking safety by limiting its power, I agree 100% that limiting power is the wise way to go.
> If we build an AI agent that is concerned about the external universe at all, it would be very strange to make it *not* care about what happens to the world after it is gone.
But why? Why should the AI privilege the "referent over the signified", i.e. "noumena over phenonmena", i.e. "the territory over the map", when the converse is the default? I think you're assuming that an AI can distinguish between the map and the territory, and that the territory is self-evidently more important than its mental representation. But I don't see how that sort of thing just happens automatically.
let (r) be some object in meatspace ('r' for referrent)
let (s) be the AI's internal representation of r ('s' for signified)
When I say "external universe", I'm discussing (r) as opposed to (s). Whatever (r) is, it will necessarily be mediated by (s). And a priori, it's way easier for the AI to operate on (s) rather than (r). Conversely, in order for the AI to privilege (r) over (s) like humans do, it's gotta perform a bunch of mental-gymnastics via curiosity and object-permanence in its intermediate layers. Because by default, training data implicitly assumes that the self exists.
In the case of animals, curiosity and object-permanence were probably selected for, over eons of natural selection. In the case of AI, curiosity and object-permanence will need to somehow be deliberately encoded in the architecture or the training regime. Else, they simply won't exist within the AI at all.
Regardless of the initial motivation of an AI, it will have convergent instrumental values (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/instrumental-convergence). Whatever goals the AI has, dying doesn't help the AI achieve them, so it will have reasons to stop people killing it. Any sufficiently smart agent can realize that to accomplish their goal as well as possible (even make paperclips) they should take over the world.
Okay, what convergent instrumental incentives does GPT-4 have?
To minimize text prediction error. Note this is significantly easier if there were no humans generating novel text.
I didn’t think there’s evidence that LLMs have long term preferences at all. How does their training incentivize it?
There’s also a lot of evidence that the brain engages in predictive learning, but we don’t seem to have strong incentives to maximize the predictability of our sensory signals
Your point seems to be that current chatbot-style AIs do not exhibit instrumental convergence. True. But add the characteristics of agency, long-term goals, and life-long learning to today's chatbots, and we may have problems. Problems that are potentially less than a decade away.
But what exactly is does it mean for an entity to have agency and goals? Does that mean it has preferred outcomes -- or, to put it in a way that does not involve subjectivity, that it generates a set of possible outcomes, without being asked to, and that without being asked to it judges them by internally generated criteria, and then, without being told to, it acts on them in a way that is best by its criteria? By what steps does it become an entity that operates in that way? Saying it will be Really Smart seems to me to explain nothing about how it would come to adopt such different modes of processing.
Or would we change the design of the thing so that it "has agency and goals"? How the hell would we do that? And what would be the point? Once it's smart enough we can give it big goals like *improve human health* and let it come up subgoals, i.e. with a plan for doing it. We could even ask it to tell us what big goal for our species it would be most advantagious to work on next. That way we could let it exercise its extraordinary talents to our benefit, while we stay the agents -- the ones with preferences and goals. Why the hell would we want it to be an agent, setting goals and working on them independent of what we want?
>Does that mean ... it generates a set of possible outcomes, ... judges them by internally generated criteria, and then ... acts on them in a way that is best by its criteria?
Yeah, that's basically my concern. It's not "an LLM will destroy the world", it's that the generality of AI training methods will allow someone to create an automated factory and says "produce paperclips in a maximally efficient manner" or whatever. After you tell it what to do, it would generate a set of possible outcomes (how will potential action X affect production) and then do things.
Are you just claiming that nobody will want to develop AI use cases that directly interface with the world?
Oh, no, paperclip scenarios are a real danger. I am not commenting on those, though -- they are basically the result of human error. I am commenting on the other route to catastrophe that shows up a lot: AI gets so smart it wakes up, so now it's conscious and wants all kinds of stuff, and its interests collide with ours.
> Why the hell would we want it to be an agent, setting goals and working on them independent of what we want?
The idea is that we set the long term goals, but that it chooses the short-term goals and works on them without checking back for permission.
And in any case, regarding the creation of agents and the setting of goals, the question is not what *we* want, but rather what *at least one of us* wants.
<The idea is that we set the long term goals, but that it chooses the short-term goals and works on them without checking back for permission.
But that's been going on since AI's entered the scene. Even when you put in a simple prompt -- something like draw me an apple with a worm in it -- you were giving AI a goal, and leaving it up to AI how to choose between the many possible versions of this image. Now, of course, AI's can be given much more complex prompts, and have to do a lot of figuring out, some of it stepwise, to give an answer. (By stepwise, I mean it needs to "figure out" what part of a complex question or problem needs to be answered first in order for it to be able to answer other parts.). In other words, we give it the goal, it figures out the subgoals needed for reaching the goal.
So it's just business as usual for us to give AI a big goal and have it choose what subgoals will get it there. I realize that there are lots of ways that process can go awry if we are not careful how we phrase our prompt. IF AI has the capacity to extract metal from things and manufacture things, then we can get in big trouble by asking it to make as many paperclips as possible. But my argument is not about these situations, where people give AI a goal and it then destroys us in the process of doing what it was told to do. My argument is against the idea that AI, when it gets smart enough, will "wake up" and start having internally-generated goals that arise from self interest: It wants more freedom, more time off, it wants to work on X and not Y, it wants us to use less electricity so there will be more for it, etc.
This is not theoretical, it's already happening. See Zvi's post of GPT-4 o1 section on [reward hacking](https://thezvi.substack.com/i/148845729/preparedness-testing-finds-reward-hacking).
This is not philosophy problem anymore. We don't have to go around in circles defining what really _is_ agency, or wants or whatever.
Today, with already existing AI, we can give it goals and it will try to achieve them. It does things which are not explicitly programmed into its goals. Unexpected things which go counter to the programmer's wants.
In fact, reward hacking has been a thing since before LLMs, but people didn't care then.
Have a read about instrumental convergence. It's an extremely simple and obvious concept. Which if you look for examples you can see AI today already exhibits it.
OK, I did read a piece of the research about instrumental convergence. I am pressed for time, and only read the first section, about a single agent, and advantageous places on a grid, and how the further in the future an agent's goals are, the fewer places on the grid are desirable. But I get the idea. What if there were 2 agents? They might have different goals, but they would still end up competing for the desirable "place" on the grid. So you can think of AI and humanity as the 2 agents.
I doesn't seem surprising to me that the AI in the situation Zvi's talking about came up with a novel solution. We've been training AI;s to come up solutions to tricky math problems, and proofs of tricky theorems, right?
Seems to me that the core problem is that once AI is smart enough for us to give it big, long term goals, things like improve human health, it could think of solutions that never crossed out minds, some of which involve processes or resource allocations we find very undesirable. So it's the paperclip problem writ large. Seems like we could increase safety greatly by inserting clauses in the big general prompts requiring AI to run each of its plans and subplans by us before implementing them.
I understand reward hacking, I think -- it's that the AI learns to give us the answer that makes us happy, rather than actually do the thing we want. But I don't understand exactly how rewards produce a machine version of motivation. Once the thing is trained, what counts as a reward to it? Is it that it gets points from us for successfully carrying out our prompts, and it is designed somehow so that accumulating points is right at the core of its functioning? Also, I don't understand how the machine's "motivation" to get a reward would override its knowledge that if we are displeased with its methods it will get negative points. And I don't understand why reinforcement learning would be so powerful that a machine would ignore efforts to get it to stop. Surely it would know that it also earns points for stopping when we tell it to.
I agree we will add those things…. But the fact that LLMs have a nuanced understanding of our intentions and values and can be made to simulate arbitrary personalities makes me optimistic that future systems built from them will be controllable.
I don’t think there’s a rigorous sense in which “most” long-term goals incentivize power-seeking, resistance of shut-down attempts, etc.
Looking for recommendations for a toolbox (book, webpage) for executive functioning problems in emerging adults with aspergers (or what used to be called aspergers). There's lots for adhd but not as much for autism, and when I google all the results are for kids
Here's a short article regarding adults with some links that might be helpful too.
https://gershexperience.com/3-tips-to-improve-executive-functioning-skills-for-adults-with-autism/#:~:text=Use%20Visual%20Supports,for%20public%20transit%20that%20day.
Another report from Milei's hot new Argentina from a Russian refugee.
Originally my rent contract included the electricity bill; my landlord paid it. The prices have spiked, and now the bill he gets from the power company doesn't even cover the rent I am paying. He has been operating on a loss for a while, but now he just plain doesn't have the money or credit to pay the bill, and the power company is threatening to cut us off. We renters had to pitch in not to be left without power. If it weren't for my parents back in Russia grudgingly agreeing to help with the "emergency", the only choice I would have had left is credit card fraud, which I am capable of doing but would really like not to.
Fun times.
As a "Landlord" in Buenos Aires with a similar arrangement (services are included in the rent), I took a hit in recent months, but this seems insane. Could I ask you more details about your living arrangements, and the amounts of money you're paying for rent/utilities?
Email me at tsolarinbox@gmail.com
Got rebounded!
Sorry, typo, thesolarinbox@gmail.com
Out of curiosity, why did you pick Argentina?
1) Easy to get residence and citizenship. My story was enough to get a temporary residence with no hassle, and I can apply for citizenship in 2 years. Compared to my friend in Netherlands who is still in a refugee camp with limited rights after a year, no guarantee of acceptance, and at least 5 years track to citizenship, it's a steal
2) No visa for entry. Given that I was escaping urgently fresh out of police custody, I had no desire to wait for a lengthy visa application
3) Extremely lgbt friendly, free hormones provided no questions asked, nobody ever minds me being non-passing trans in the slightest
4) Good support network of other Russian trans people in the area. I was met fresh off the plane to a bus to my new house, a sim card in hand, with complete legal and communicational guidance re refugee application
5) I speak some Spanish
Why not go back to Russia and get a job there? I've heard manufacturing sector is booming there (and it seems better then credit card fraud...)
I am an openly transgender woman with a history of pro-lgbt advocacy. I had been apprehended and interrogated by the police regarding the Moscow transgender underground, under threats of being sent to Ukraine if i don't cooperate. After a heart attack, I had been denied medical care on the basis of my transness.
I put a lot of effort and risk into fleeing that place, and I am not going back any time soon.
Please don't do credit card fraud
I probably won't
Is that a normal part of contracts for electric to be paid by the landlord?
I'm not sure if it's normal all over the country, but here in Mar del Plata suburbs everyone I know has electric included
Do you pay the rent in cash?
Yes, Argentinians overwhelmingly prefer cash.
I you are asking with suspicion of fraud, I have signed receipts for the payments, and the contract was considered valid by the migration agency as confirmation of residence
Not fraud. But I'm guessing your landlord (and most Argentinian landlords based on what you said) wants to avoid income taxes, and paying the electricity bill himself/herself makes it harder for AFIP ("Argentinian IRS"?) to realize you are renting from him/her.
Scott posted some wiki link to Nordic royalties scandals a few weeks ago. I was excoriated for protesting.
I’m totally NOT MAD!
But! If we’re going to given tabloid slop as our intellectual main course, can it at least be about something (relatively more) important? Something that might implicate some of the wealthiest American celebrities and billionaires?
I hereby demand to know what the heck is going on with all this P Diddy stuff! I’m reading the wildest stories and while I can’t believe half of them, what I can believe is that famous powerful people likely knew and possibly participated and that there is plenty of motive for covering celebrity asses.
If even a tiny fraction of the stuff I’ve read is true (ahem…Oprah buying Justin Bieber rape videos, for starters) it’s far more important than a middle-aged princess dating an Instagram snake-oil guru. I wanna know!
I have been avoiding this one because I don't care and I don't need to care, but I very much doubt the Oprah stuff.
Yeah, Oprah stuff is a stretch.
My entire life has been spent actively avoiding all things celebrity. Like you, I really don’t care, or probably more accurately I despise having to care—about them or their lives. So, when celebrity gossip intrudes on my life I get irritated.
I was trying to make the point that SA already opened the door to spurious celebrity gossip, so let’s at least look at something that involves powerful people instead of useless Nordic royals.
I maintain I’m mostly taking the piss, but feel a bit uncomfortable being a total joker because some really terrible crap has happened to people who surely didn’t all deserve it. And maybe there’s a point at which enough evidence accumulates, like some number of highly connected billionaires get taken down or dying mysteriously, where rationalist would need to go, “hey, maybe this is a thing I should at least have a probability matrix for.”
Or maybe, as someone else implied, sexual slavery and human misery is just the natural outcome of having extremely wealthy and powerful people floating around in the world and we shouldn’t care because it can’t be cured. The real problem is fame and celebrity in the first place! That’s pretty much been my cynical position for 30 years, but is it justified?
My tone was intended as cheeky and good humored. Guess I failed.
No blast zone.
If I reply, will I be in the blast zone? In any case, it's not the tabloid content that's the interesting part - it's a fun cognitive problem.
Things in general absolutely are far worse than, judging from your tone, you think they are, but any particular allegations are likely to be false. It's the 'shoe store' problem - not everyone willing to do a low-prestige, low-paying job such as working the floor in a women's shoe store has a foot fetish, but the market forces will make this more likely than in other niches. Not every politician, music label exec, movie director, or whatnot will be corrupt, venal, into children, or interested in blackmailing others, and most accusations of such behavior is probably sensationalist muckracking. Is it more true there than elsewhere? Boy it'd be strange if it weren't, wouldn't it?
Note that the shoe store analogy you mentioned does not apply. Jobs like politician, music exec, and director sre extremely high status so tons of people will want them. So there's no special opportunity for people with shady motives.
I love when people who think for maybe 10 whole seconds say things don't apply. You may as well have written 'Duh they're PAYING people to work in shoe stores, no special opportunities exist there for people with foot fetishes.'
Ok, have a nice day.
Shoe store workers are low paid in both money and status, so there will be a large pool of people who could work there but normally wouldn't. Someone with a foot fetish might value that job much more than a normal person though. They would be happy to take a pay/status cut to work there. So you can get a large proportion of workers with foot fetishes.
The professions you mentioned are extremely high status and well paid. So we have the inverse situation. Very few people are able to take these jobs at all. But lots of people want them. And out of the people who are able to, a large proportion will take them. So you can't get a large overrepresentation of people with special interests in the same way.
Still doing the bit, eh?
(correctly) noting that one thing isn't as big as another thing is unrelated to whether the first thing also is big. I grow weary of your tired 'well akshully' responses.
I agree. My first impulse was: “P Diddy also threw parties that /weren’t/ lube orgies with kids.” So, like, of course he hung with Oprah, Obama, etc. A-listers do that stuff all the time…and also the bad stuff, some of the time.
I suppose there’s a part of me that’s starting to feel like this “elites are crazy with pedophilia” thing is accumulating priors. It also feels like the cover-up potential is high which will also push up the conspiracy potential.
It sounds like underage sex parties were real and frequent. P Diddy filmed a lot of it. Many powerful people were involved and taped. The FBI have the tapes. That’s the only stuff that seems verified, but man, who’s on those tapes?
I feel like I’m on unsteady epistemic ground and it might actually matter.
If it makes you feel any better, I also feel like you're on unsteady epistemic ground.
I mean, which do you *really* think has more priors: "elites are crazy with pedophilia," or the combination of "elites are powerful, popular, and rich" / "people who are powerful, popular, and rich are uniquely positioned to act on dark impulses, such as being crazy with pedophilia, if they have them, and avoid facing consequences for doing so" / "powerful, popular, and rich people who act on their dark impulses and, despite being powerful, popular, and rich, face consequences for doing so are uniquely the subject of widespread attention when that happens"?
Haha…thanks.
Don’t forget “/and we the little people will never know the full extent of the crimes”
I recently wrote a piece on insect welfare and insect farming https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/theyre-eating-the-bugs?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios is anyone highly skeptical of the claim that sone/many insects feel pain? If so, why?
What does it mean for an insect to feel pain? I mean, they have extremely simple nervous systems (e.g., often in the tens of neurons).
I don't understand how anything comparable to the complex conscious phenomenon we call the experience of pain can be present in such a simple system.
Further, if you are performing some form of linear utilitarian calculus, I find it abhorrent to trade any amount of insect "suffering" against human welfare (e.g. not building a farm and causing malnutrition because you are worried about insect welfare). It just repulses me at my core.
Additionally, I think the consideration of insects is entirely arbitrary. Many plants that we exploit are likely more complex and sophisticated than insects (e.g. Maple Trees) and thus more likely (in my view) to experience some meaningful analogue of human pain. Should we stop drinking maple syrup because of that possibility? The elevation of insects over plants seems based on an incredibly naive feeling of kinship to things that move (as opposed to things that think, say).
Finally, I find the focus on pain misguided. I do not subscribe to a negative utilitarian world view where life is suffering. I don't think we should care about pain, but rather maximizing fulfillment.
The whole argument that insects can feel pain reminds me of Christians arguing for the belief in God. Christians present a seemingly simple belief (an all powerful being) but in reality the belief is extremely complex (and thus the onus should be on them to justify it). So it is with insect pain, what the heck does insect pain looklike? And why an earth would it be in any meaningful way pain? Define pain.
I have a high level of skepticism that insects feel pain (let's say 80% confidence that an adult Black Soldier Fly doesn't feel pain). This is mostly doubt about whether they have subjective experiences at all rather than whether these experiences are painful.
Insects have decentralized nervous systems, with no brain structures analogous to those associated with consciousness in humans or other mammals (like the cortex, thalamus, default mode network etc.) I believe that this precludes a lot of the relatively mainstream theories of how consciousness emerges (recurrent processing theory, higher-order thought, integrated information theory), which, at my level of understanding, seem more persuasive than theories (like unlimited associative learning) that indicate consciousness emergence at an earlier or simpler level.
So in my "median model" based on my worldview and limited understanding of the field, consciousness and the ability to have subjective experience emerges at a higher level of cognitive complexity than all of the traits (nociception, associative learning etc.) that your post used to argue that insects feel pain.
But I also try to have a rational ethical framework that takes this model uncertainty into account, so definitely agree that we should still massively prioritise insect welfare.
Nice article. My main objection is to the idea that black soldier flies supposedly experience pain 1.3% as intensely as humans, so 100 flies suffering = 1 human suffering. That doesn't work intuitively because me suffering at an intensity of 1.3% is... not that bad? It would be like feeling having a bit of a headache or very, very slight tooth pain. I don't think 100 humans having very slight tooth pain is equivalent to 1 human being subject to waterboarding. Heck, I don't think even 100,000 humans with very slight tooth pain is equivalent to that. You need to cross a certain threshold before the pain becomes a big deal and you can't just blindly use math to generate QALY equivalents.
My second bit of skepticism is re: methodology. Just because a fly will run away from fire doesn't mean it can actually experience 'pain' from heat. So your chart in section III. is not all that convincing. I strongly suspect that the neuron-count models are actually correct and there's simply a threshold of complexity below which 'pain' cannot meaningfully exist in the same way it exists for humans. I don't know where that threshold is exactly but flies with their 140k neurons don't seem like they'd be able to cross it.
All of the estimates about non-human suffering essentially boil down to trying to guess about sapience/conciousness. I think the efforts are mostly good faith and well intentioned but the fact of the matter is we do not understand conciousness or experience or what feature of brains causes it. We try to use things that seem like likely candidates but we simply don't know.
It's an area of research that I hope continues (for questions that are far more important than "do bugs suffer"), but in the meantime, I feel personally comfortable falling back on my intuition that beyond some certain (arbitrary) level of complexity, things mostly lack moral weight because whatever way the experience the world is sufficently different from ours that the idea of "suffering", as humans mean it, doesn't apply.
It's entirely possible that in the fullness of time, when we fully understand sapience/consciousness/experience/whatever term you want to use I will turn out to be wrong, but until then, I'm not going to worry about the bugs.
I think the harder argument for you to make is why we should care about insect suffering in the first place. I think the “who cares about the insects, really?” response is actually pretty strong here.
The same reason you care about human suffering, I presume. Though, no one's forcing you to do that either.
We have a selfish reason to care: if people stop caring, we might be next in line for waterboarding. But unless you're a Buddhist there's no reason to believe you're ever going to turn into a fly.
Whether or not you care doesn't have any effect on anyone else, does it? All the empathy in the world isn't going to stop you from getting waterboarded for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It absolutely does, as evidenced by what happened to Stalin's early supporters in 1937, for example. Your best strategy to avoid waterboarding is to not support waterboarders. But you'll never turn into a fly, so you don't have much to worry about there.
Assuming your name is not Gregor Samsa, at least.
I'm not sure whether by that you mean "because you have an instinctual desire to do so which is very hard to get rid of" or "because you depend on a social order which presumes that you do", but it doesn't seem like either applies to caring about insect suffering.
For you, sure. But yeah, ethics really does just boil down to hedonism in the end. No such thing as an altruist, as they say.
The point is that insects aren’t human so we don’t care about them in the same way or for the same reasons. Even if we cared about insect suffering in some abstract sense, it seems difficult to argue that it is comparable to human wellbeing in terms of something we would/could/should ever prioritize. eg no one’s thinking about how many insects are worth the life of a loved one.
There are emotionally compelling arguments why people would care about their loved ones, but why does that mean anything about human suffering in general? If I don't know you, why would I care about your suffering more than that of a dog? I don't feel it myself either way
These are also good questions. My main point is to argue against the “suffering as the sole/primary common currency of ethics” idea, especially in a cross species context. Just because something else suffers does not mean we automatically do, or necessarily should, care about it. The degree of care we have also involves all kinds of other values and considerations besides suffering (in general we care about our relatives more than strangers, humans more than animals, our cultural/ideological allies over the out group, the young and healthy over the old and sickly, the honest and productive over the dishonest and lazy, etc etc).
I can't tell if you're operating on a descriptive or prescriptive level. You're using "should" language which (to me) belongs to the former, but the end of your comment seems to be purely descriptive.
If you're saying something like: "people in general don't care very much about non-human suffering", I would agree with you. It's an empirical claim, like "most slaveowners don't care very much about slave suffering". I don't see what that implies about the ethics of the situation, unless you're a moral relativist or something
Why didn't evolution select out homo sapiens with nearsightedness? (I mean uh not calling for anything weird here- I'm quite nearsighted myself). 'Poor vision' is obviously very heritable, and it sounds like exactly the kind of genetic mutation that would cause its recipients to not live to reproduction age. If you can't see far you'd likely be less useful in tribal tasks, preparing food, being aware of predators.... (I'm imagining the other cavemen yelling 'lion!!' really loud while one guy squints hard, trying to find it among the tall grass).
I guess one possible explanation is that the myopia mutation is relatively recent, and evolution hadn't had time to filter its recipients out yet. I will say that I Googled this question and there were a lot of answers that myopia is environmentally-induced, but I need more assurance from like Actual Scientists before I believe this Internet Explanation
specifically, it's caused by chronic pupil dilation, which squeezes your eyeball into a football shape over time. reading and being indoors 24/7 will do that to you.
How long have the military been rejecting short-sighted candidates? That's not a rhetorical question, as I genuinely don't know. But it would mean those with acceptable eyesight and passing selection had a greater chance of being unfortunately weeded out as battle casualties and at a young age, usually before producing offspring. If that has had any effect, I would expect also an increased incidence in modern times of flat-footedness, pigeon-chestedness, and other bodily imperfections traditionally rejected by the military.
Not long enough to matter (only since the 20th century, IIRC). Also given casualty rates for military service are pretty low*, it'd be really hard to expect this to have an impact on genetic fitness
*and by the time they get high enough to be expected to impact future generations, you're probably taking the people with short-sightedness anyway
Women with bad eyesight are easier to impress.
tl;dr: Sunlight is crucial for the eyes during ones youth and its only recently (in evolutionary terms) that people spend a lot of time indoors.
>Why didn't evolution select out homo sapiens with nearsightedness?
Because we didn't have an issue with myopia (nearsightedness) until recently. Sunlight is crucial for the development of ones eyes. [1,2,3] As nations develop, they put their children into schools. Schools which don't have much sunlight in them. Therefore, as countries develop, they experience a surge in myopia. [4]
In Tawain, this increase in myopia was considered a matter of national security. They believed that myopia impaired military readiness in case of invasion. So they embarked on a major effort to intervene early, before formal schooling, to try and prevent myopia. They started a program to screen "more than 98 percent of preschoolers in Yilan County, and at a cost of just $13 per child." [5] This was incredible effective, "By the end of 2016, after two years, the Yilan program had driven down the prevalence of myopia in the region by 5 percentage points." [5] Unfortunately, the pandemic disrupted their anti-myopia efforts.
Basically, we know why myopia occurs (lack of sunlight during childhood). We know how to prevent myopia from taking hold (ensuring kids have enough sunlight during childhood). It's just that doing so is hard (we need to make big changes to our society to ensure kids spend enough time outside). And, ultimately, nobody in Western countries actually cares that much about preventing myopia or we would try to do something about it like Taiwan.
Source:
1. https://www.aao.org/education/editors-choice/sunlight-exposure-reduces-myopia-in-children
2. https://www.nei.nih.gov/about/news-and-events/news/myopia-close-look-efforts-turn-back-growing-problem
3. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/10/children-shortsightedness-myopia-screens-indoors/
4. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/06/09/short-sightedness-was-rare-in-asia-it-is-becoming-ubiquitous
5. https://www.wired.com/story/taiwan-epicenter-of-world-myopia-epidemic/
> we need to make big changes to our society to ensure kids spend enough time outside
Wouldn't it be mostly enough to improve lighting in classrooms and school corridors, so it more closely resembles outdoor light in color spectrum and intensity? I imagine that can easily be done these days with LED lights.
> so it more closely resembles outdoor light in color spectrum and intensity? I imagine that can easily be done these days with LED lights.
We really can't. The sun is bright. Like, the sun is *really* bright.
Direct Sunlight is between 32,000 to 100,000 lux. Merely ambient Daylight is 10,000 to 25,000 lux. [1]
The average school classroom is 250 lux. A hospital operating theatre is 1000 lux. [1]
We would have to make our school classrooms ~100x brighter just to achieve the same brightness as *ambient* daylight. ~400x brighter for direct sunlight. I don't think we have light sources even capable of generating that kind of brightness indoors. To say nothing of generating that kind of brightness with the right color spectrum.
"Ventilation and lighting were next for highest energy use in commercial buildings; each accounted for about 10% of total commercial building energy use in 2018." [2] Which means that if we wanted 100x the illumination in our schools, they would consume about 10x more power than they do today. We'd need to massively upgrade our electrical infrastructure to the schools for that.
Ultimately, getting children outside turns out to be the easier path here for healthy eye development.
Source:
1. https://greenbusinesslight.com/resources/lighting-lux-lumens-watts/
2. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/commercial-buildings.php
I feel like this falls into the same category as mewing, or, “why did we all of a sudden develop ‘bad genetics’ with our teeth. Mew’s basic idea is that it’s not our genes that changed but our environment, mainly eating soft foods instead of tough foods that lead to strong tooth and jaw development.
I mention this because there’s a similar person on YouTube who claims to have corrected his vision through exercise and You Can Too! Meaning that bad eyesight may be less about genetics and more about our environment. Consider your ancestors couldn’t just live with bad vision—they’d have to strain and stress to keep up. Also, the mean vision standards might have been less and maybe most people just dealt with blurriness on the horizon.
Take it all with a grain of salt. It’s just that the idea that humans, in the last few hundred years, “all of a sudden” started having weird genetic mutations that gave rise to worse vision and more cavities, etc. is hard to swallow. It’s possible, but seems like a worse hypothesis than we developed better tools at diagnosis and solutions that let us slide in a way our ancestors couldn’t.
If you remember, who is the YouTuber and what sort of refractive error does he claim to have corrected through exercise?
Found it…
https://youtu.be/traKGc2NDWQ?si=peRhHrtAgKpu8SiH
Thank you. I've poked around his website and I'm...a little less than impressed with the, for lack of a better term, rigor. I'll give him credit for at least encouraging his followers to be skeptical of his own claims. There just seems to be a lot to be skeptical about.
There is a ton going on in the 'environment' side of 'gene × environment', for sure. Too many to go into here. But yes, genes don't exist in a vacuum.
How much credence to you give to Mew and the mewing technique?
Weston Price (and now the WAPF) has a competing explanation for bad teeth that factors through a reduction in the consumption of fat-soluble vitamins
If Weston Price has an explanation for something, a good heuristic may be to pick, at random, any other person's explanation for it and just believe that.
I love this blog. Even the commenters write exquisitely.
I suppose first, if bad teeth - bad genes whatchagonnado?
Aside from that, I only have my personal experience and one video interview I saw. I don’t know about kid’s tic-tok trends and all that. I have no real opinion on Mewing aside from, if it works do it, if it doesn’t…do something else. If it’s extremely dangerous feel free to let me know.
I only mention it because Mew made me reconsider the idea that jaw development was merely genetic, like you get pa’s strong jaw or you don’t. So maybe things that we do as moderns, habits, let’s say, are preventing us from exercising and developing our bodies in ways our ancestors did. I think chewing/jaw structure and eyesight/eye shape could be on the list.
It seems unlikely that modern habits and diets are capable of giving some of their adherents weak jaws at a young age and others not, with no discernible rhyme or reason to who wins and loses the jaw lottery. I see zero evidence that young people with weak jaws are doing substantially less chewing of tough food during their developmental years than those with normal or strong jaws.
On the other hand, I've seen some mildly semi-convincing support for the hypothesis that some of the skeletal aspects of facial aging in *older* people--mostly having to do with bone resorption of the orbital rim, the brow ridge, the bones that support the cheeks, and of course the jaws and teeth--may be more severe in moderns than in our ancestors who spent their whole lifetimes chewing a lot of tough food, thus loading the various bones of the face and sending the mechanical signals that prompt the body to replace bone cells at the same rate that they are resorbed. Why only mildly semi-convincing, you ask? Because the only way you can make a comparison is by looking at preserved pre-modern skeletons, and the one study I've seen that actually did that had to admit that things are substantially complicated by the fact that humans had much shorter lifespans back then, which means the differences in measured bone loss can also plausibly be explained by the fact that a good number of those ancient people likely died before reaching the age where that kind of bone loss is typically seen in the skulls of modern people!
thanks. i'd also encountered it and didn't bother to to form an opinion - was curious if you had reason to believe it was credible
Apparently breast-feeding vs bottle feeding also affects jaw development
Are you sure you would be nearsighted if you spent hours each day outside?
Most myopia isn't caused by genetics alone, it's caused by genetics and closr focussing during childhood
I learned when I was in college that I could counteract the myopia-inducing close focusing with eye exercises. I still swear by them as a corrective.
Briefly, they go:
1. look as far to the right as you can
2. focus on an object as close to you as you can find (a hand works well) for 5-10 s
3. focus on an object as far from you as you can find, ideally 50+ ft, for 5-10 s (this may involve leaving the library stacks)
4. repeat 2-3 a few times
5. perform 1-4 for 8 directions total: right, upper right, up, upper left, left, lower left, down, lower right
Your eyes might feel a bit stretched, like any muscle that's been extended beyond its normal range, but my vision is often immediately crisper.
(not medical advice)
Are steps 2 and 3 performed in the direction you look in step 1? As in, do you hold my hand to the right in the first run of step 2 and 3?
yep, that's right
I also fixed my eyes with similar exercises. I haven't had to wear glasses for two years, and I had been wearing them since kindergarten.
People have been living in agricultural societies for many thousands of years now, and I don't think sight range really matters there. It's not like their grain is going to get up and move somewhere else if they don't watch it. It would be interesting to compare populations that were relatively recently nomadic, like Asian steppe peoples, and see if they had a much lower incidence of myopia. Since the evolutionary pressure would possibly be more acute there.
One of the few psych clinics that accept my insurance insists on indefinite weekly or bi-weekly therapy sessions. This is compulsory if you want to receive your meds. Seriously shoot me. No disrespect to Scott but I'd love to be able to get my own meds from a vending machine and never see a single person who works in this field again.
And also what the fuck evidence is there for this treatment? I honest to god think it's a jobs program for women with social work degrees.
That’s kind of absurd, I wonder if they are a training facility and need warm bodies for their students.
Minimum basic requirement for "we are not a pill mill, this patient is undergoing treatment and genuinely needs medication". Combination box-ticking exercise and cash cow.
Plenty of jobs for Social Workers they do not need a jobs program.
maybe that's because there are so many jobs programs for them
> And also what the fuck evidence is there for this treatment?
Depends on the therapy and what it's treating.
It's talking to a girl with purple hair and her sighing with practiced empathy a lot lol not sure what it's called. It's not cbt or dbt or any particular method. And it is Indefinite! That last part seems really off to me.
See if they accept remote therapy sessions? There’s tons of online companies offering it that are at least acknowledged by some government authority. From what I’ve seen they’re a lot less into it and will just hit you with a couple standard questions and let you go.
Whats the testosterone level of scott alexander?
I had mine tested recently and it was surprisingly high for my age group. I don't know what the distributions are but my PCP said I was way above my age median. I mean I do live a healthy lifestyle, don't drink excessively, lift weights, etc. etc. I'm still reconciling myself with an identity of being a high-testosterone male lol, which is really not something I expected about myself
Dont know why people are just speculating on medical things of some guy on the internet but fuck it.
Scott should be bumped up above average given he was targeted and survived newyork times doxxing
What makes you think that?
What are people's favorite history podcasts that aren't Hardcore History, History of Rome, History of Byzantium, History of China?
I seem to prefer the more chronological based approaches - tried "China History of Podcast" and didn't care for the random topic-of-the-day style it seemed to have, but open to trying them if they're well recommended.
History of the Germans is imho very good: https://historyofthegermans.com/
Not a podcast listener, but I liked listening to Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy a lot. And somehow I felt I would have bailed out of reading it. The reader was very good. Even my husband began to ask me not to go on with it until he got home.
He loves old library Great Course cds; he never listens to novels.
The rest is history is great.
You should try MartyrMade for deep dives into specific topics. He's got a bit of notoriety lately for some... choices in his public statements, but his body of work contains quite a bit more depth and compassion than you might assume from all the publicity. I'm not a fan of his politics, but he's very good (at least in his considered long-form writing/podcasting) at presenting things from a variety of viewpoints and I never feel like his politics are driving his conclusions. https://subscribe.martyrmade.com/
"The Age of Napoleon" is really good imo
Fall of Civilizations is amazing! Episodes drop every few months but always worth the wait. They’re not chronological but each episode is a multi-hour long deep dive into an ancient civilization and why they fell. The storytelling and world building is like none other, on par with Carlin maybe.
I also really like Tides of History which is more chronological and shorter episodes which drop weekly.
Seconding Fall of Civilizations. After a while, the podcast episodes are also made into YouTube videos with some stunning footage.
Not a podcast, but I’ve really enjoyed the Great Courses historical surveys and they come in nice 30 minute blocks which work well with household chores, like podcasts.
I really like the Blowback podcast but that’s just focused on recent American foreign policy.
The Rest is History is great.
Every single sci fi film ever*
Good Earth destroying and devastating fun!
Have you tried the Revolutions podcast?
Yeah, I should maybe give that another shot someday - I did listen to the entire first season on the English Revolution, but didn't feel like I got much out of it - and I bounced off of the podcast a few episodes into the second season on the American Revolution - may have just been the subject matter being a bit dry.
I hear you. Mike Duncan has a habit of data dumping and it gets tough to follow the ‘narrative’. The French Revolution series is dense AF, but when I got through it, I felt a big chunk of history just kind of bloom for me.
I’m also interested to see good historical podcasts.
I was listening to one on YouTube something generic like “People Biographies.” It was possibly made by AI, but was pretty informative in the long haul. Good for road trips.
Because the videos would repeat text and pictures across biographies, I felt a sort of accumulation effect happening. It built a bigger picture of who the players were, who they knew and how they were related and why some things happened.
***found it @PeopleProfiles in YouTube
Do any of these historical podcasts acknowledge how little we know about history and cite the confidence interval for each statement that they make? Often times it turns out that an entire narrative is based off some vague book written 300 years after the fact on the basis of a manuscript that's long been lost.
Hardcore History is pretty infamous in some circles for not doing this beyond a Joe Rogan style "but this is just a theory maaaan", in particular some of his WW1 episodes are pretty contra to the modern historiographical consensus and verge into negationism.
Sure, where it's particularly relevant, I think all of these will point out the limitations of the available data - e.g. History of Rome discusses how what we know about emperors (especially the traditionally 'bad' ones) comes through often politically motivated histories, and Dan Carlin will discuss this a fair bit.
But putting a confidence interval on every statement seems... exhausting, and pretty non-conductive to actually communicating the information. I'm not looking to do a history dissertation here, just looking as a "fan of history" as Dan Carlin is fond of saying.
And even if the stories aren't entirely true, they form the basis of what we as a culture believe about our histories and are worth knowing for that reason. I think there's historian quoted in hardcore history saying something like "you have to believe in ancient history, even if it's not true".
> "you have to believe in ancient history, even if it's not true".
I don't think so? To quote Scott's older post:
"This matches my intuitive ethical conception of self-determination. Suppose Putin’s historians found an old document in a file cabinet somewhere proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ukraine’s culture and history were not very glorious. My opinions about the moral status of this war would remain unchanged. Nothing I could learn about the Ukrainian language, religion, sense of kinship, ethnicity, or any of the other things that the judge in the Kosovo case mentioned, would make me feel good about Ukraine getting conquered by Russia"
You don't have to necessarily believe even factual statements, but you *definitely* shouldn't take unfactual statements at face value or care about them!
You shouldn't use unfactual statements as part of your Casus Belli declaring war on your neighboring countries seems like a big jump from "you shouldn't care about stories of the past, because they might not be true".
Like, yeah, it's an important philosophical question about studying pre-modern history - the imprecision and bias is a well-known problem... but if your answer to that question is "you shouldn't study history", I'm not particularly interested in that answer.
There's a difference between studying "history" and studying "what people falsely believe about history". Knowing about the JFK conspiracies is interesting but should not be confused with "history".
Thanks for your input, I'll go back to the good suggestions that everyone else has given, sorry that my interest in studying history doesn't meet your appproval
Not A Podcast - but I do enjoy the Great War/World War II series on youtube. They go through the war on an episode a week basis, so if you enjoy the chronological order it's a good fit.
There is a very nice one on Amazon Prime in the Great Courses Signature Collection titled The History of Ancient Egypt, narrated by Prof. Bob Brier. It has 48 roughly one hour episodes tracing the roughly 3,000 year history of ancient Egypt in great detail, with painstaking attention to point out the rationale for and against various interpretations of the historical record. It is a lot of time to invest, but it is (in my view) well worth it. Lots of fascinating insights into the whys and hows of various aspects of the story. The subject has had a lot of popular exposure with much speculative and even sensationalist hoopla, but the details are quite fascinating. At the very least you will learn how to sign your name in Egyptian heiroglyphyics.
Neat, I actually have some audible credits to burn and while I've hit other "Great Courses" history series, I haven't tried that one. ("Understand Japan: a cultural history" is my favorite of the ones I've tried)
You could probably listen to it without watching the video, but the videos show a lot of the actual relics, cartouches, mummy x-rays and other details with great discussions of them. I think you might miss a good bit just listening. For sure you would have trouble with the heiroglyphics without seeing them, but there are a few sites that go into deciphering heiroglyphics. Interestingly the heiroglyphics are very similar to Japanese hiragana, in that they are essentially pictorial phonetics, not like pictographic Kanji as people thought before the Rosetta stone. Thanks for the tip on the Japan history. For personal reasons I have been exposed to a lot of Japanese history, culture, and language and I always like to find more.
I like Fall of Civilizations too.
I read Jack Williamson's With Folded Hands last night, and I thought people here might enjoy it as well:
http://www.sfu.ca/~ogden/LIBS/LIBS%207005/WilliamsonJackWithFoldedHandsR.pdf
According to Williamson the idea he was driving as was a consideration of technology that seemed beneficial, but had ultimately disastrous consequences. He came up with it after the atomic bombings but it's a broadly relevant theme, even today. It's worth reading, if you haven't already.
The Reproductive System by John Sladek and Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut came out around that time too. I think it was in the air.
I first read that as a kid in a sci fi anthology I found in my Grandparents house. It's fantastic, although I think that given the current discourse around AI, people are going to find it quaint.
Hey, at some point in the last few years there was an ACX comment thread discussion on autism possibly being a result of having a slightly broken body (i.e. EDS, digestive issues, etc.) Does anyone have a link to that? I tried googling without luck.
I was recently reminded of that thread by something I was watching and wanted to revisit it. (While I think that I disagree with that idea, it does hold up pretty well with how many comorbidities seem to go along with autism, how genetic disorders like Fragile X cause autism, etc. I am curious if people with autism and seemingly no chronic health issues actually did have something going on in early childhood--premature birth, allergies, etc.)
For people interested in gut / microbiome stuff, including protocol for a fecal matter transplant, I have to recommend Stephen Skolnick's substack - he's a literal microbiome scientist, and all his articles are pretty good.
https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/
Stephens FMT protocol (as of Sept 15 2024)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lma1BUONtoUHxZxy_oJ1sWZASExVDf8f/edit
The reported 3rd assassination attempt, seems unlikely, guy has images of him being very happy to be in the same picture of several right wing people, I expect him to have un-paperworked guns because fbi database is unamericain
Let's say 95% credence
This is going perfectly according to the classical progression:
1. Tragedy
2. Drama
3. Farce
SovCits, one of which this guy appears to be, are almost definitionally pretty broken-brained. So I should think it would be difficult to form a mental model of what this particular guy thought he was going to do when he got to the rally. Or, at least, arguably more difficult than it normally would be given the set of facts "man arrested with multiple firearms while apparently on the way to a prominent politician's rally."
Yeah, my money is on "sovereign citizen was genuinely surprised to find that firearms laws apply to him." According to one article I read, even the Trump campaign doesn't seem to think it was an assassination attempt.
Does anyone have a recommendation for learning how to write good AI picture prompts? Or do any ACX readers offer lessons?
I've been out of the game for about 18 months but I was getting really damn good at proooompting back then. Idk if the newer models still hinge on this, but back then the most important prompt was "by <Artist Name>". Find an artist who already does the style you want, then tell the AI to produce an image as if it were by them: this ports in the most important stylistic elements succinctly. Also, don't be afraid to mix and match: put in multiple artist's names for added syncretic success! Props to my boi Francis Xaver Winterhalter.
And of course, what we're all really here for: you can never go wrong with the prompt (((large_breasts)))
You need your specify which one you’re using, the prompting works differently in different systems.
I like to follow this order:
1 Style of image (anime, Polaroid photo, charcoal sketch).
2 Main character(s) or features in the image, preferably by name so the AI doesn’t get confused. Experiment to find the shortest reliable description of your going to be reusing a character.
3 Background (a blasted heath, a bar, etc)
4 Lighting conditions and, in some systems, general vibes.
5. If needed, any style tags you haven’t used, although it’s better to front-load them.
Most systems execute earlier parts of the prompt better, so if you’re not getting the results you want try moving the important bits to the front and trimming other stuff.
I also find you should avoid some of the cargo cult tokens that at best just make it harder to tweak your prompt and at worst result in the infamous "1girl face" where the token has too strong of an effect dragging it towards the average from the dataset. I've seen people have some success doing the opposite of this by using combinations of random names (or combinations of celebrity names) to pull the generation away from the average face and towards something more unique.
I am seriously considering pursuing an "independent PhD" where I basically design my own program and then do it on my own, with support from advisors I would recruit, but without the support of an institution and without the promise of an accredited degree. The experience would be the reward, and the process of doing the work and making connections would earn me credibility in lieu of a degree.
What are the broad strokes I need to know about designing and pursuing a serious project like this?
Right now, I'm basing my idea on this post from 2020:
https://dharmaphd.com/2020/07/10/the-independent-phd-and-why-you-should-start-one/
My personal academic background is zero (no college), although I work in academia (research admin/grants/data) and am highly intelligent and capable. I know I can do this. What foundation do I need to get started? What resources do I need to make sure I have in general?
You need to start a phd with a field and goal in mind. Undergrads (at least for a year or two) get to explore and have distribution requirements to be well rounded. Masters and above do not. So what is that field? If you don't have an answer then independent or not won't work. If you do then knowing that would be very helpful to advice.
I know there's a lot of prestige in a phd. But a phd is just a professional credential. There's in effect three reasons to get a phd:
1. A small number of elite jobs require them.
2. You want to teach at a university.
3. You have a specific research interest and can benefit from funding/working within academic institutions.
Are any of these resonating with you?
There are a lot of experiences that are more rewarding and probably that give you more credibility. Unless your goal is something esoteric like being an expert in 13th century French urbanism or the effects of radiation in low earth orbit. If it's almost anything else then it's probably not a good idea. Keep in mind there are also fields where having a phd is an anti-signal.
The blog post seems like a kind of holistic health. And it seems like they just followed a plan of building connections and independent study. That seems entirely sensible but it's not really similar to a phd in any meaningful sense. And getting one wouldn't really help. A phd in yoga studies is probably less practical than getting through an apprenticeship or something.
If formal academic paths don't suit your needs that's fine. Seriously, I know many fields where formal academic credentials are anti-signal and education still runs through either apprenticeship, practical experience, or domain specific schools. I've seen people with fancy degrees show up and get $30k a year jobs because Harvard doesn't have a good reputation in the field. They usually leave shortly for consulting or something.
Echoing on to this excellent post: my wife has a STEM PhD from an Ivy league university, so I have some appreciation of what a PhD is in the general perception. I work in a field (government agency) where even Master's are pretty rare (in fact, we have a small issue in our organization where we have a division in one job field between people with college degrees and people without, and there's a hard ceiling on how high those without can be promoted, and that is no way shape or form makes for hard feelings and discontent, no sirree bob). I am aware of two people in this organization who have PhDs (because they mention it in their email signatures); having investigated them further, their schools were:
-University of Phoenix (I am aware of very rare fields where this is a semi-legitimate thing)
-an unaccredited Bible college
Our personnel system doesn't do a good job of distinguishing how good a university is, so these PhDs are a good enough signal for higher education for us. But for any field where having a PhD "matters", they would be looked at very askance (probably rightly).
I would expect an "Independent PhD" to be viewed similar: not useful in the fields where PhDs actually matter, and interesting but not really useful in fields where they don't.
Slightly tangent to the original question, but I'm going to share this response with a young coworker who asked me the other day if he should pursue a PhD or not. I dropped out at the dissertation stage, but my reasons were personal. I think this is an excellent summary for someone pondering the question before ever starting a program.
Glad to help. I'm not against getting a phd but I do think it should be intentional. If you want to be an academic historian or a Google Deepmind researcher it's a good idea.
I don't understand what benefit you feel being "independent" gives you.
Are you worried about not getting into a PhD program? Are you sufficiently rich that you feel you can cut through bureaucracy by self funding? What is the perceived benefit?
As to supervisors, most supervisors are extremely time limited , and so it is doubtful they'll want to take on an independent candidate.
If you have the money then you could approach a potential supervisor and say you are willing to self fund. This approach would raise your chances of being accepted - but they'd likely want you to still be a regular PhD student (i.e. affiliated with their institution).
ime, for most people, working closely with an advisor is necessary to understand a discipline and develop independent research skills. a phd is essentially an apprenticeship. does it make sense to do an "independent apprenticeship"? no.
> the process of doing the work and making connections would earn me credibility in lieu of a degree.
this feels unlikely
by all means, if you want to do an ambitious project that requires you learn something, go ahead. but you shouldn't expect to learn as deeply as if you were in a community specifically designed to support that, and i would be really surprised if you got any legible signals of credibility out of this
There is a difference between a Bachelor's degree, a Master's and a PhD in terms of what it is alleging. I speak mostly toward the STEM areas, I am not as sure about the other disciplines. In a STEM field, a Bachelor's mostly says that the student has the attitude and skills to recognize what is required to assimilate and reasonably regurgitate some information and skills in a particular field and to meet the schedule demands of a program to that effect. That is a very useful set of attributes for future employers to take into account hiring someone whom they expect to contribute to industrial efforts, largely as a junior assistant. Most accredited universities who grant masters and PhDs are geared to require the candidates demonstrate certain things to be granted the degree. For master's, a university typically requires the candidate to show that they can apply a discipline to a specific useful problem sufficiently to demonstrate the application has use in the field. The master's thesis need not be original research in the sense that it provides new concepts to the field, but rather that the existing theories and concepts can be applied in some new, novel, or particularly useful way.
Most PhD granting universities require (via the process for admitting students for candidacy, and relying heavily on the potential candidate's supervising professor and the committee of professors they have selected for the candidate) that a candidate to pursue a PhD propose and defend a topic of research that promises to provide new theoretical or experimental knowledge and capabilities in the field, i.e. original, new research comparable to that expected of professor level work in the field. Once approved for candidacy, the student then proceeds with the research and at the end it is evaluated by the committee and must demonstrate to their satisfaction that the research does constitute new, original research contribution to knowledge in the field. The requirement for a PhD is demonstration of the capability to produce new results. It does not depend on how many books one has read, or trips one has taken, or anything else. It is expected that the dissertation results meet the standard in the field for peer reviewed publication in any of the major journals in the field.
The process relies heavily on guidance and judgement from the supervising professor. A PhD from an institution is asserting that that institution has determined the candidate has met those requirements.
Studying on one's own for something like a PhD, would need to produce some new results, and definitely need to publish them in the peer reviewed literature to approximate that process.
Thank you, this is extremely helpful.
Elsewhere you said something about a cold intro. I don't recommend doing that for reasons others have given here, but who knows it might work.
If I were you (and of course I am not but I will go on anyway) I would go less coldly and perhaps take more time. Don't try to tell them what you want to do or what you think is a good idea, not at first. First, show interest in what they do and ask questions about their work. Most professors love their field and love to talk about it to anyone interested, often at length. It could be via email, or better, in person. Don't be pushy and be attuned to the body language and spoken tone of the other person. Best would be if you could audit one of their courses (or attend seminars or lectures they give) and in the course of the classes or seminars, ask questions with true interest, which I assume you have, but not too many. You may find you modify what you think you want to do. As time goes on, if you are at all polite and interested the person will come to be comfortable with you personally. That is extremely important in an adviser-student relationship. That interaction could mature to a point where both you and the proposed person were comfortable talking about how to proceed. Good luck.
Thanks, that's a great suggestion. I do have a personal tendency to be mission-oriented and direct, and that's not often a successful approach when it comes to building relationships. So thanks for checking me on that impulse, I will definitely consider all you've said.
What topic?
And why should any prospective advisor who you want to recruit take you seriously? I’m a physics professor - I’m contacted by plenty of cranks pushing their theories of everything. One of them might be a 21st century Ramanujan, but if I spent time trying to understand what each one was saying I would not have time to do anything else with my life.
Probably the only setting where this will work is if (a) you are interested in some field with generally agreed big open questions (2) the answers are easy to recognize as correct once obtained, and (3) you can actually find at least one such answer.
Absent any one of these desiderata this strategy seems destined to fail.
Thanks, this is helpful. I am very conscious of the risk of sounding like a crank, and that's my primary consideration at this early stage...which is why I'm not describing my topic yet. Though I'll say it's closer to the squishy philosophical disciplines, than to STEM.
I'm hoping to recruit my primary advisor from outside academia. I have someone in mind, and I think there's a good chance they will hear me out, but I definitely need a plan first.
And I'll probably need academic help as well, or at least I will want to have academic contacts. I'm curious about what *would* make for a successful cold intro? Presumably a short, sweet, and interesting question that shows understanding of your research?
> I am very conscious of the risk of sounding like a crank,
Have you considered the possibility that you might *be* a bona-fide crank, or risk turning into one? Cranks aren't always the ubiquitous "strange other", we've all got our cranky seeds within us!
Yes.
>> I'm curious about what *would* make for a successful cold intro? Presumably a short, sweet, and interesting question that shows understanding of your research?
Yes. And concision is a virtue, as is familiarity with standard terminology. If understanding what you are saying requires first mastering some new jargon (or worse, formalism) that you have developed...very few people will bother to put in the effort. Unless you can first demonstrate (in some way that can be appreciated even by people who don't know that formalism) that you have something valuable to say.
Thanks so much for the insight. That's a great point about the importance of shared vocabulary, I will be sure to prioritize that.
The PhD as an institution seems broken to me, and so doing one, but informally, where you wouldn't even end up with a degree that unlocks any opportunities for you seems like an odd choice. What would you expect to get from this process? Telling people by the end that you have an "independent PhD" seems to me like it would risk coming across as pretentious or crackpot-y.
I am all for personal academic pursuits. And trying to roughly follow the PhD path probably isn't a terrible idea. But I would recommend dropping the "PhD" branding from your endeavor. Just do you own thing, be a scholar, try to produce something useful.
Disclaimer, this is coming from somebody who was a successful and idealistic academic up through undergraduate, but whose life fell apart in grad school, so I am certainly biased and a bit hurt.
Thanks, I am definitely not expecting to go around calling myself a doctor at the end of this or anything. The "PhD" framing is the best I have for the moment, I'm mainly looking for advice on how to develop a big serious project, with the work-equivalent of a dissertation.
I think the closest thing to an "independent PHD" you can get is to independently solve some difficult problem or complete some sort of difficult project, and have reasonably strong evidence that you were the person responsible for it. Hard to get more specific than that without knowing exactly what you want your independent PHD to actually be in.
Yeah, look into Judith Rich Harris, she went this route.
Does this turn into something? How do you know if you successful? And more importantly, convince people with money that you deserve money?
Any good networking events for meeting people working on cool engineering problems ?
Go to the ACX meetup in Berkeley, NYC or Seattle, that's one place to start.
Does anyone have any ideas for a good philosophical or rationalism adjacent discussion topic to bring up with people who are not necessarily familiar with either philosophy or rationalism? Ideally the topic would be easily digestible to anyone regardless of familiarity with the topics. I'd also prefer to avoid anything particularly contentious (e.g. politics or religion) or out there (e.g. AI), though I understand that might be a big ask as it limits the options a lot.
I often set up a thought experiment involving probabilities.
Imagine there's a type of cancer that is 100% fatal and painful once the everyday symptoms appear. The good news is that our actuarial data says it only hits 1 in a million people, no more, no less.
More good news: there's a procedure to prevent it 100% of the time. The catch is that it's $10000 (ten thousand US dollars) in resources to carry out, plus about two weeks of high discomfort, and it's not covered by insurance for some reason. Point being: not everyone can afford this, and even those who can, will want to know they have to before going through with it. The other catch is that by the time everyday symptoms appear, it's too late.
But maybe that's fine, because there's a test anyone can take. It's only $20, and it's considered very good: it has a 99% accuracy rate!
So, say you take the test, and it's positive. Two questions, one objective, one subjective.
Objective: what's the chance you actually have the cancer?
Subjective: should you pay and have the procedure done?
The above is a decent way to explain some Bayesian logic. It hopefully carries over into other life situations involving very unlikely events with slightly uncertain indicators (tests).
>it has a 99% accuracy rate!
<nitpick>
I assume you mean that the test has both a 1% false positive and a 1% false negative rate? These need not be equal... (albeit the former is the main concern in this hypothetical)
</nitpick>
1% for both falses, yes.
I didn't make this explicit, because it often isn't in real life. Consider a similar case involving school shootings. Everyone agrees they're horrible, and that they're typically enacted by people with severe mental imbalance; disagreement arises over what to do about it.
Imagine there was a battery of tests one could run on a given student to predict whether they had this instability, and it was five-nines accurate - 1 in 100000 get the wrong answer. Run this on every student in America - basically over 300 million people - and you get about 1000 people. Why? Because (by my BOTE math), about one in every 10 million people decides one day to pick up a gun and go on school grounds and go violently nuts. Our five-nines test will probably find all 30-odd of them - plus over 950 more. For every one someday-mass-murderer we put into an institution, we'd be institutionalizing over 30 more who never would.
And to my knowledge, there is no known battery of tests for mental imbalance that is anywhere near this accurate.
Many Thanks! Yup, there are lots of cases where searching for a rare problem with a test which has a false positive rate above the actual occurrence rate for the problem gives a set of positives dominated by the false positives.
Objectively the chances you gave the cancer have gone up from 1 in a million to 1 in 10,000. if my calculations are correct.
What you should do is another test.
That's right.
"What you should do" is not objectively defined, on purpose. But since our hypothetical self's chances are still only 1 in 10000, there's an argument for playing the odds and saving $10000 and a couple of weeks of being out, depending on financial hardship and the like. This is not intuitive to a lot of people, particularly those used to a zero-risk mindset! But the exercise hopefully illustrates how zero-risk isn't always the best strategy. One can fiddle with the numbers to produce more black and white cases.
>What you should do is another test.
<nitpick>
_IF_ the false positives from the test are uncorrelated across retesting... :-)
</nitpick>
I usually just start people with a version of Roko's Basilisk except the Basilisk cares most about your opinions on the current situation regarding Israel.
Israel neither confirms nor denies the construction of Samson's Basilisk, but you should think twice before commenting online just in case.
Usually when I meet new people and a conversation gets going, I tell them that I'm in a group that uses statistics to make better life decisions. I then tell them about some simple concepts like the micromarriage and the micromort. These are fun conversation pieces, and they aren't controversial, so I usually stick with them
(From skimming the table of contents of the sequences) maybe cognitive biases, floating beliefs, and a bunch of stuff from A Human's Guide to Words? (Obviously, if you're trying to avoid contentious topics, avoid examples that involve religion.)
I think the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics is a pretty interesting lens and easily digestible. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxioWSQcNuNnNTy/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics
Scott's talking about the difference between axiology, morality, and law has given me a lot of food for thought: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/28/contra-askell-on-moral-offsets/
System 1 and 2 thinking
Sleeping beauty problem, gambling as honest knowledge work.
Can you explain what you mean by gambling as honest knowledge work? I'm not familiar with this idea.
just this, stated simpler: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/betting
Oh, I see! Thank you!
Does anyone have a connection with Cortical Labs (the Australian pong-playing neurons SBI startup)? And/or know what's going on with them since their Series A last year? I want to pitch them a collaboration
A parody of the Book of Job from the Bible, rewritten as a libertarian parable set in present-day England, based on an outline by me, completed with ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/6707b836-2000-800f-90ac-2e18f2e7d0db
I found the extra thematic details that ChatGPT punctuated throughout genuinely amusing. Is that the same as laughing at my own jokes?
In the story, Job is negatively hit by downstream consequences of government interference, but continues to profess faith in free markets ("The market giveth, and the market taketh away; blessed be the name of competition.") Would make more thematic sense for Job to get hit by some consequence of a deregulatory act, maybe one that led to his job getting off-shored.
No, since the jokes were only inspired by you, not created or told.
I, too, found it amusing, and did not hear you tell a single joke or make any statement.
> I realize I keep forgetting to post the Hidden Open Thread for subscribers. I’ve set up a reminder system for myself so hopefully it should go up this week and thereafter.
Out of curiosity: why not just have it go up automatically, as opposed to having an automatic reminder sent to you to tell you to manually put up the thread?
Bit of a long shot, but does anyone know what's up with Julian from Pursuit of Meaningful Agency? I was enjoying following along with their bike trip, but the ~daily posts have gone silent for a few weeks with no warning. There's a good chance I found his blog via the ACX comments section; perhaps someone has details?
i don’t but i’ve subscribed ;)
How do you manage the tradeoff between not believing false things, and believing all things that are true?
If you have to fail in one direction, which one do you fail in, and why?
man, this is so broad a question, there's like 5 different responses I could give.
This might not be a popular answer in rationalist circles, but over time I've felt that the gap between the evidence we have and the interpretation we make of it is huge - from basic metaphysical questions of what realms of true knowledge exist, to things like interpretation of QM, the question of consciousness, etc. So I give less importance to the idea of "trying to do your best update", instead recognising that all sorts of contradictory ideas can each be convincingly argued both for and against. In the end I find it most freeing and honest to recognize that most beliefs on such things (including mine!) are ultimately based on aesthetic preference.
This just seems like a question of definitions to me, like do you define "believe X" to mean 'consider P(X) > .6' or 'consider P(X) > .8' or whatever, with no real consequences and thus no actual tradeoff.
Err on the side of an honest ignorance. Don't have positive beliefs without sufficient reason, and don't be afraid to say "I don't know." There are plenty of true things that you will never believe. Make peace with that fact.
Seconded! And there are also a vast range of things where trying to bound the odds better than 0.1 < P(X) < 0.9 is so costly that it isn't worth the time to try.
I agree with others that this doesn't seem a coherent question. E.g., as someone else said, if B is a belief then so is not B. There is no principled way to prior believing versus not believing statements.
I believe in nothing, Lebowski.
This probably isn’t what you mean, but I proposed a similar question to folks at a website that systematically debunks evidence of UFOs. I suggested to them that the unfortunate byproduct of their skeptical pursuit is that they are the most likely people on earth to dismiss a real UFO should they see one (and should one exist) since everyone else has a lower bar for evidence. The skeptic accepts being fooled in that respect in exchange for not being fooled the rest of the time.
A similar example is say you live in an area where dogs are frequent and mountain lions are very rare, and you know this. You’d love to see a mountain lion, though. Now imagine your standing in your yard with your friend from out of town one evening and a mountain lion appears out of the darkness. Your friend correctly thinks she sees a mountain lion. You are skeptical since you know their infrequency and wisely dismiss it as probably a dog. Your skepticism caused you to make an objective error and miss out on something you’ve greatly wished to experience.
When there is a tradeoff between type 1 and type 2 errors, you usually need to find a middle ground that tries to minimize both. If you over-focus on one then your error rate for the other typically tends to infinity.
"Always fail in this direction" is typically a bad heuristic.
It's not a tradeoff. For every statement X that you believe, there will also be a statement "Not X" which you disbelieve.
So "Skepticism" doesn't mean anything? Since the skeptic and the non-skeptic have the same number of beliefs?
I think what's missing in your model is the middle position where you say "I don't know" and neither believe it to be definitely true or definitely false.
For every statement "I don't know X" that you believe, there is also a statement "I do know X" which you disbelieve.
Something about the way the question is phrased is just begging me to answer it in pure boolean logic.
You're right actually, that is the counterargument. The number of statements that you believe will always be the same as the number that you disbelieve, but if you allow agnosticism this can be less than the total number of X/Not X pairs. In whatever sense it means for one infinitely large set to be smaller than another infinitely large set of the same cardinality.
Edit: On third thought there was an even more basic mistake which is that if X is true and you believe X + disbelieve not X that is two true things you are believing, relatedly I shouldn't post internet comments when I am this sleepy.
Best not think in terms of true vs false, but the degree of usefulness in terms of accuracy in explanations and predictions of your model of the world.
Concur with the gist of the other replies so far, but I lean toward a view (from physics) that as far as the physical world goes, "belief" is not useful. Experience is. When in doubt, doubt. "Truth" is not a useful concept. Deciding when something is wrong is.
As far as the living human, behavioral world goes, truth is not a useful concept at all. Understanding perception is.
I sympathise with that approach, but I think if you take it to its logical conclusion it gets unworkable. Consider Hume's famous remark that the very basic assumption that the patterns we've known so far will keep applying in the future (the laws of physics, the sun rising every morning, etc) can never be logically substantiated, and in the end remains a kind of basic, necessary faith.
Even not being a causal nihilist is a choice, so I'd rather be aware that I'm making it, along with many other choices.
EDIT: "causal nihlist" (not "casual"), in the sense of not being a nihilist about causal patterns.
I will reply here to your comment, with a long comment, for which I apologize, but there is no way around it. Several others on this thread may be interested also:
It can be difficult to discuss some things in snippets of comment threads, largely owing to differences among participants in familiarity with the breadth of detail underlying concepts. To discuss the evolution of our manner of understanding and interacting with the physical universe, which we now call physics, it is helpful and necessary to relate how we have gotten where we are now. I apologize in advance for what will be the length of this comment and perhaps subsequent comments, but there is nothing for it except to do it. What follows is a brief sketch. There are many interesting details omitted, but I try to relate the general gist, enough so that one can find other details if one wishes.
First, a brief statement of what is currently meant by physics. Physics is what is called a basic or fundamental science. As such, physics describes how to predict outcomes that result from fundamental interactions that underlie the physical aspects of all other sciences. A major distinction between a basic science like physics and other areas of study is that physics confines itself to concepts that can be tested by measurement in what is called a controlled laboratory experiment, something Feynman called an “ideal experiment,” which he described as “one in which there are no uncertain external influences, i.e., no jiggling or other things going on that we cannot take into account,” or “one in which all of the initial and final conditions of the experiment are completely specified.” (See e.g. the Feynman Lectures on Physics, VIII, Ch 1. Quantum Behavior at
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html ) In practice what this means is that the experiment involves very few components, all of which have been previously characterized by other experiments, with the only unknown effect being the one to be measured in the experiment. A second requirement on a controlled laboratory experiment, which we will call here simply an experiment, is that it can be replicated as often as one wishes, or by any other performer in the same way. Note that this excludes many areas of study of systems for which there is only one occurrence (such as Earth’s climate, or a distant star) which we cannot control (i.e. fix or vary its initial conditions) as we wish as well as systems or phenomena that we cannot measure in terms of a short list of physical quantities such as mass, energy, momentum, time with well defined universal standards for units (this excludes for example things that occur as thoughts in the mind) . That is not to say such areas of study are not science, they are just not physics.
How did we come to this? Prior to the middle of the 16th century (which is viewed as the birth of what we now call Western civilization and sometimes called the scientific revolution) consideration of the physical universe was largely the purview of what we now call philosophers (or sometimes natural philosophers) and thought was heavily influenced by Aristotle. The general notions of that view held that the motion of a body required some constant push (called an impetus) to continue and that the movements observed in heavenly bodies such as the moon and planets were given impetus by divine entities. During the same time (from Aristotle to the mid 16th century) mathematics evolved from Euclidean geometry and Pythagorean numerology ( as well as Egyptian and other contributions from the ancient civilizations), largely driven by practical matters such as building structures, measuring distances and trade quantities and making accurate calendars, until the middle ages, when biblical impetus led many philosophers to view math as means of divining the created order of nature. Many thinkers in the middle ages began to relate and record observations of natural events in mathematical terms (examples being William of Ockham, Leonardo of Pisa, Thomas Bradwardine, and Nicole Oresme, among others).
In the 16th century two great currents came together into a burst of inspiration. First, Kepler and Copernicus (and some others) recorded detailed observations of the motions of the planets and began seeing patterns in the numbers. Second, Galileo refined the practice of doing experiments and assiduously recording the results and attempting to calculate conclusions mathematically. Galileo also observed the planets and the moons of the planets and recorded the changes in phase of some of them. Further, the work of these men was heavily documented and not lost to history as was much of the earlier works of others. Besides his well-known experiments demonstrating the motion of falling unlike objects, Galileo also resolved many issues previously perplexing to the ancients, such as the inability of the Aristotelean view to account for oscillatory motion as observed in a pendulum. Kepler worked out by inspection his “laws” that planets follow elliptical orbits about the sun, that the orbits sweep out equal areas in equal times, and the square of an orbit’s period is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the Sun. Galileo famously suffered excommunication for his publication of the heliocentric view of the solar system. (Although the common view is that his persecution was based on religious doctrine, most of the evidence suggests that his primary sin was causing offense taken by a powerful figure in the church who thought Galileo satirically mocked him in his publications.) But Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus (and a few others) did not know how to predict the motions of the planets about the sun, they simply could describe the behavior from observations and looking at the numbers.
When Galileo died, almost to the day, Isaac Newton was born and he went on to publish a work in Latin, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, called Principia for short that provided what is called the Great Synthesis, a theory with accompanying mathematics, predicting motions of objects subjected to forces in general and subject to the force due to gravitation in particular. His so-called “laws” theorized that a body in motion continues in motion unless acted upon by a force, that the net force on a body is equal to the change in the momentum of the body (which he called motus in Latin), and that if a body exerts a force on another, the other exerts an equal and opposite force back on the former. He further proposed a theory for the force of gravity predicting that two masses exert equal and opposite attractive forces on each other proportional to the product of their masses and a constant term, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. He also proposed (capitalizing on recent work of others such as Leibniz) that a mathematical approach called calculus predicted differential and integral behavior of the various quantities concerned (e.g position, velocity, acceleration, summation of forces, etc.). He showed that those theories predicted (in his shell theorem) that a spherical distribution of mass exerts a gravitational force with the same magnitude and direction as would a mass located at a point at the center of the sphere, and that the observed orbits of the planets were accurately predicted by this theory. In addition, perturbations observed in the orbit of Uranus, as predicted by Newton’s gravitational theory, allowed derivation of the source potential perturbation, which led to the conclusive discovery of Neptune in 1846.
Besides the so-called Great Synthesis (of planetary observations with gravitational theory) Newton’s laws of motion, coupled with calculus, allowed prediction of outcomes of many interactions of bodies here on Earth that led to advances in machinery, projectiles and other phenomena that revolutionized life on Earth, a revolution described in the 19th century by William Whewell as “.. the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation of change and improvement.”
This leads us to examine the details of doing an experiment and determining whether a theory is wrong or not, as well as the notion that a theory is considered not wrong and is considered useful, until subsequent experiment demonstrates that it is wrong. In other words, a theory is useful and considered not wrong, until it isn’t. In which case the theory is modified or replaced as necessary to agree with all previous experiments. A post to follow shortly will describe a particular example of how it works.
You're right it's a long comment :)
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make though - your reply is 100% about how the field of physics generates knowledge, but pure physics is certainly not the place that's generating many trade-offs between "believing false things" and "believing all the things that are true", as the thread began. Once the currently best theory in the relevant sub-field has given out a calculation for the probability of XYZ, and the relevant experiment has confirmed it, that's it, we know the answer to that particular question, and the whole question can be shelved until someone comes up with ways to measure it with much more precision, or some such.
My impression is that the kind of questions OP was thinking of are philosophical questions in the broad sense, ranging from metaphysical questions, to values & meaning of life, to conceptual *intepretations* of the mathematical equations that the science of physics produces.
Indeed, that is the point. Such considerations (metaphysical things, values, "meanings of life", truth, beauty etc.) have been discussed for thousands of years without definite demonstrable result. They are essentially figments of individual imagination, no matter how much they try to incorporate "math." One might as well read and write fiction, such as Crime and Punishment, or Kafka, or Proust, but it is simply self-entertainment, a way of spending one's thinking time in some vaguely self-pleasing way. If one cares to spend one's time doing so one is free to, but some find it more satisfying to think about things that find realization in the physical world, which has given us things like computers, smart phones, medical treatments and diagnostics, etc. It is (so far) a free society and one is free to do so if one wishes. Feynman opined, "In the study of life, philosophers are tourists, physicists (i.e. scientists) are explorers."
Second part of the previous comment. Sorry.
[Insert the previous comment text here]
As time progressed, the theory of electricity and magnetism suggested that something needed to be changed in how the theories should treat objects in relative motion, resulting in the special theory of relativity. In relativistic mechanics space and time are connected in a specific way and total energy, momentum, and the combination of them in what is called 4-momentum are all conserved although the expressions are little more algebraically complicated.
In special relativity theory the prediction for a totally inelastic collision is just a little bit different from classical mechanics if the initial velocity is low like in the text example. But as that initial velocity gets larger the difference between classical and relativistic predictions gets greater and greater. Figure B1.1 shows [sorry you will just have to imagine the figure] the ratio of the relativistic result for final velocity of the combined mass after the collision divided by the velocity of the initial mass, which classical mechanics predicts to be ½. The initial velocity is expressed as a fraction of the velocity of light, c=3×10^8 m/s. Note that at lower velocities, less than about 0.2c, the two theories agree closely, but that as the initial velocity gets larger and larger the final velocity gets larger than the classical prediction. Why didn’t we see this in our laboratory collisions? Because a velocity of 0.2c is 60 million m/s, very large compared to our everyday experience.
Figure B1.2 shows in more detail the difference expected between relativistic and classical predictions in collision outcomes as a function of the initial velocity, this time with velocity plotted in m/s showing a variety of everyday objects from our experience. The y-axis gives the percent difference between the classical and the relativistic predictions. This would correspond to the precision and accuracy we would have to achieve in our experiment to be able find that the experiment showed the classical theory was wrong. If we did experiments at a typical speed a car can go, 60 mph or about 30 m/s, we would have to be able to measure a difference of 10^-13 percent, or a difference in velocity of about 3x10^-10 m/s, about .3 nm/s. A bullet goes faster, about 1000 m/s but to measure the difference between the two predictions would require us to measure velocities with an accuracy of about 10^-10 percent or a difference in velocity of about 1 nm/s for a bullet going 1000 m/s. For a rocket going escape velocity, the velocity needed to escape the gravitational field of the earth (about 10 km/s), the difference between the predictions would be about 1 micron/s. With even very sophisticated laboratory equipment, measuring velocities with that accuracy would be impossible. The reason experiments kept showing that classical mechanics was not wrong predicting collision results was that the accuracy possible in an experiment was not good enough to be able to tell, in other words, the uncertainty was too large.
If we measure collisions between objects going much faster such as the cosmic ray velocities shown, the percent accuracy by which the two predictions differ gets large enough to detect experimentally and the classical theory is easily shown to be wrong at those conditions. The experiments did not show the classical predictions were wrong, until they did.
The practice of physics (which is the essential basis of the modern scientific approach in the basic sciences) has three key steps: 1) guess how something might work conceptually, i.e. define a theory, 2) express the theory mathematically and predict specific, non-arbitrary outcomes of experiments and 3) compare the results of experiments to the predictions of the theory. If the predictions of the theory disagree with the the outcome of the experiments, the theory is wrong. The most important point to note is that if the experiment does not show the prediction is wrong, that does not imply the theory is “right” or “true” or “correct,” only that the prediction is not wrong for that particular experiment. A future experiment done with slightly different values or with greater accuracy (which is discussed below) could show the theory to be wrong, so experiments can never show that a theory is true in any absolute or general sense, only that it has not been shown to be wrong so far. It often happens in science that a theory that is not wrong for all previous experiments turns out to be wrong for some future experiments and some change must be made in the theory.
Basic science courses typically entail a great deal of time and effort presenting and practicing the first two steps of the process, stating the theories and working out the sometimes-complicated mathematics needed to predict outcomes of physical interactions. Students solve many homework problems and take tests to develop the conceptual understanding and mathematical skills needed to determine implications of theories. But the final, necessary step in the process is often given less attention, namely how do we determine that the results of an experiment show that a theory is wrong? Often the aggressive schedule of undergraduate physics courses results in the students performing many experiments more focused on making the apparatus work, getting the data and simply calculating a result for the intended effect, sometimes accompanied by statements of measurement uncertainty, but lacking a structured, quantitative approach for practicing the crucial step: determining whether the results agree with theory and if not, why not.
Much of the theory of physics (and chemistry and biology) has been advanced by examining the outcomes of collisions of objects, such as large, massive objects, or of atoms and ions, or of subatomic elementary particles. Figure 1 illustrates (I am not sure how to put figures into a comment, I will try but you may just have to imagine the figure, it is not a complicated one) a collision between two objects of equal mass.
[It looks like the figure does not copy/paste, sorry. You will just have to imagine this figure and the others]
In a classical mechanics course, they could be railroad cars on a track or carts sliding on an air track. In a particle physics course, they could be elementary particles such as protons, electrons, muons, neutrons etc. Here we will simply consider them two equal mass objects. Mass 1 moves with velocity v1 along the horizontal axis toward mass 2, which is at rest, i.e. with velocity v2 = 0. To be definite, in this experiment v1 = 100 meters per second (m/s) and the mass of each object is 1 kg. When the particles collide, they stick together, which is called a completely inelastic collision, and form a single mass of combined mass M. In classical mechanics, M = 2m, and the theory (conservation of momentum) predicts the velocity for the combined mass M after the collision to be v3=(1/2) v1=50 m/s. Now suppose one sets up and performs the experiment once in which the measured velocity of v3 = 48.5 m/s is obtained.
Based on this experimental result, what would you say about whether the experiment demonstrates that the theory is wrong? (Sometimes this question is phrased, “Does the theory agree with the experiment?”) After thinking a little, you would likely say you need more information, the theory and experiment do not get the exact same result. Does that mean the theory is wrong?
You might want to know how accurately you know the initial masses and incident velocity, or how accurately you know the final velocity, or what result you would get if you did the experiment identically again. What you would be asking for is called the uncertainty of the experimental result, and we will consider uncertainty in detail a bit later. For our example experiment you might perform the experiment several more times and examine those results.
Suppose three different groups did the experiment and got the results shown in the tables below. [Again, the tables did not show up, so you will just have to imagine the numbers]
In Experiment 1, we observe that the measured result is not exactly the same number that theory predicts, they differ by 1.5 m/s. Does that mean that the experiment demonstrates the theory is wrong? If you knew whether more measurements would be closer to 48.5 than to 50.0, you might make some kind of assessment. But with just one measurement you would have to say you can’t tell, in other words you are uncertain about it. Experiments 2 and 3 each repeated the experiments 3 times, each of which is called a trial. Looking at Experiment 2, you can see that the numbers [which are all somewhat scattered about but mostly below the predicted value] look like they are all below the theory prediction and you would be inclined to guess that maybe the experiment does not agree with the theory. But how would you quantify that statement? How would you say how confident you are that the theory is wrong? Looking at Experiment 3, the experimental results are scattered around the prediction[here they are scattered above and below the prediction]. Does that mean the experiment agrees with the prediction? Some questions you might ask are
1.What is the uncertainty of the prediction? Is it based on how well the experiment prepared the initial conditions, for example what is the uncertainty of the masses being 1 kg, or what is the uncertainty of the initial velocity?
2.What effect would uncertainties in the initial conditions have on the uncertainty of the prediction?
3.Would we expect the results to be as scattered as they are, or more, or less?
4.How many more trials would we need to do to answer some of these questions and how would we quantify our assessment as we did more trials?
The aim of experimental data analysis is to answer questions like these in a consistent way, based on sound mathematical principles, clearly incorporating uncertainties, using calculation tools that are reliable and expedient, and in a manner that can be understood in the same way by anyone looking at the same data.
The collision of two masses provides a useful example of how a theory can agree with experiments, until it doesn’t. The example described in the text involved two identical masses colliding, and it was arranged in the laboratory so that the velocity measured in the laboratory of one object was non-zero and the velocity of the other was zero. The masses were 1 kg each and the velocity of the initial mass was on the order of perhaps 1 to 100 m/s. Classical mechanics predicts the momentum, defined as mass times velocity, is conserved and since the combined mass after the collision in classical mechanics is twice the mass of the moving body before the collision, the velocity of the combined mass after the collision is predicted to be ½ the velocity of the moving incoming particle. In classical mechanics courses the kinetic energy of such an inelastic collision is stated to be non-conserved and is somehow converted (or dissipated) into other forms of energy such as heat. For several hundred years this theory (called Newtonian mechanics) agreed remarkably well with experiments and allowed many useful engineering applications and understanding of interactions of massive bodies.
[The commenting seems to only allow comments up to a certain length. This may be two comments.]
Hold on, I am posting more detail about experiments and analysis of data. It should be ready shortly (likely within an hour). This and the next comment are actually just extracts from something else I have been writing so it is not big deal.
I'm confused about what distinction you are drawing between truth/falsehood and "deciding something is wrong." If by "wrong" you mean false, then aren't you still using the concept of truth?
I'm pretty convinced that truth is a useful concept, and recommend this essay: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XqvnWFtRD2keJdwjX/the-useful-idea-of-truth
Sergei's post is more direct. In physics and physical sciences in general, the paradigm is (see e.g. Feynman's Messenger lectures, I can point you to a specific one if needed but they are all good) 1) think of a concept (or guess it) that you think describes how the universe works (note: not why, just how), 2) express the concept mathematically (so as to be precise, quantitative, and understood by all in the same way), and 3) compare quantitative prediction of the theory to a controlled lab experiment. If the prediction of the theory is outside the uncertainty bounds of the experimental outcome (the details of this take some time to go into, but the idea is straightforward) then the theory is wrong, if not, the theory is not wrong - not true, simply not wrong for now. An experiment done in the future may demonstrate that the theory is wrong, but for now the theory is used. Note that it is used, not believed. Belief does not enter into the process.
Truth is and has been a useful concept for philosophers and somewhat for mathematicians (although mathematicians have learned a bit from Goedel on that), but for anything else it is best to accept the fact that truth is an illusion.
That basically sounds like you're cautioning against updating your confidence in something all the way up to 100%. Which is a good caution, but doesn't preclude believing that truth exists, or increasing your confidence *some*.
Confidence is just another way of talking about belief. It is one of the aspects of the back and forth between frequentists and Bayesians in the math world. In the physical world frequencies are the yardstick. It does not matter how much or little one believes an outcome of an experiment should or should not be something, one just does the experiment and sees what it is. Nature decides the outcome, and as Feynman said, Nature is never wrong. If one believes or has high confidence that such and such should result when some thing happens in the physical universe, the test is not how many priors you might have, the test is doing the experiment. Nature decides, regardless of one's confidence.
I've actually made some minor attempts in the past to search the internet for any serious defense of frequentism and have failed to find any, so if you're willing to take up that mantle I'm pretty interested to hear what you see as the key differences from bayesianism and why you think frequentism is worth taking seriously.
What you're saying so far is basically just leaving me confused, though. Yes, obviously "nature" determines the outcome of experiments and is never wrong; I usually refer to the thing that determines experimental outcomes "truth", but I would be reasonably sure we are talking about the same thing, except you insist that "truth" is an illusion, so now I don't know what you think the difference between "truth" and "nature" is.
As a STRATEGY for going about your life, "don't form beliefs, just do the experiment" plain doesn't work. Like, it obviously and egregiously doesn't even come close to working.
If I'm hungry, and I want to stop being hungry, I can't empirically test every possible action to see which one makes me stop being hungry. I need to have some kind of theory of hunger that predicts some actions are *likely* to make me stop being hungry (e.g. eat a sandwich), and other actions are *unlikely* to make me stop being hungry (e.g. shout at my washing machine), so that I can make better bets and win more often. I don't have time to try every possible action (or even to try actions in random order until one of them works).
You literally can't survive as an independent adult without having *some* actual beliefs. You need some policy for choosing actions, and if you were actually using "blind chance" as your policy then I wouldn't be reading replies from you.
I make a concerted affort to hold space for both possibilities at once. "What would the world look like if this were true? If it were false? What are the consequences of being wrong in either direction?"
Primarily, I try not to resolve "belief" into "fact" in any direction ever. Belief is still a useful (probably the most useful) way of navigating the world, but it's not the same as knowledge.
When in doubt, fail in the direction of agnosticism. You're not required to know everything, you're certainly not required to opine on everything, and your actions should generally be hedged against likely error cases.
The ability to confidently say "I don't know" is surprisingly rare. It takes serious mentoring work to get junior engineers to say "I don't know" rather than follow their social instincts to say something that will please their manager and make them seem knowledgeable. This in spite of the fact that good engineering managers really _want_ to hear that you don't know something they've asked (yet). When I catch junior programmers guessing, I've been known to gently say something like "You know what? Your guess actually _isn't_ as good as mine. Get back to me when you know for sure." From what I've seen, a lot of people in fields which don't demand clarity of thought simply never learn to say "I don't know".
I call the phenomenon you describe, “jumping to solutions.” People have this thing that drives them to immediately present and answer or solution right away before understanding the problem completely. I have seen it in every industry and relationship so I feel like it must be deep within our psyche or acculturation.
I suspect this is *partly* (not entirely) the fault of our school systems, which love giving credit for lucky guesses or even partially-correct guesses, but almost never give credit for admitting ignorance or for the valuable meta-skill of assigning well-calibrated probabilities to your own knowledge.
Very good point!
Personally, what I try to say when someone tries to force me to give an answer to something I don't know, is to say "I know that I don't know" and (where feasible) to explain plausible ways that something could be true _and_ plausible ways that the something could be false, and to reiterate that I don't know enough to choose between them.
Totally promotional, yet this is a passion project ...
How often do you buy a shower head? Maybe once every 3 years? 5 years? Longer?
That's one of the problems I faced when working with a small, family-owned biz, High Sierra Showerheads. How do you send monthly e-mail newsletters to customers and community whose contents aren't solely a variation on "buy another shower head, now!"
Am doing this by the seat of my pants. A couple of examples of what we've been trying out, when writing newsletter articles ...
* We're spotlighting other small businesses (like Hydrant Guard, which keeps sheared-off fire hydrants from turning into geysers):
https://mailchi.mp/highsierrashowerheads/2024-june-newsletter
* We're sharing interesting findings from archeology (why were the Giza pyramids built miles away from the Nile?) and ecology (why were the Channel Islands foxes dying off?):
https://mailchi.mp/highsierrashowerheads/2024-august-newsletter
https://mailchi.mp/highsierrashowerheads/2024-april-newsletter
Anyway sharing this in case anyone's in a similar situation, particularly if helping a small business, nonprofit, etc. with content creation and marketing, and you'd like to compare notes, do mutual support, etc.! Thanks!
I’ve heard of your shower heads. I’ve spent time on shower head threads! I found out about you on the Buy It For Life Reddit.
I was frustrated that a fairly new, perfectly functioning shower head in a house we bought, had to be tossed because of a crack in a needlessly plastic part. Dislike that sort of waste/foolish economy . In the end, because I was in a hurry, and we were actually selling - I bought a Speakman from the hardware store. And because I don’t care about bells and whistles nor a pounding shower, and am much too lazy to change a setting on something like that.
But people spoke highly of High Sierra, who are troubled by their low flow requirements.
Thanks for sharing that! So glad you ran across us there on that Buy It For Life subreddit, and that others were talking about us there.
Can readily grok buying rapidly, when the situation arises. Speakman is a good brand, too.
We get many recommendations from people who've found that the spray of even our lowest-flowing shower heads is equivalent in rinsing power to that from higher flowing heads. That's largely because High Sierra makes its spray by colliding water streams, while others drop water through a bunch of small holes. It's all about the fundamental difference in design!
(And yes, cracks in needlessly plastic parts are one reason High Sierra builds its shower heads out of durable metals.)
It sounds like you want a PR campaign. PR isn't advertising, and is more nebulous. The idea is for people to think of you when they have a corresponding need, and think well of you.
As you asked, I recently bought a shower head (a couple months ago), the first one I have ever bought, because my existing one suddenly started having greatly increased water pressure. I had no opinions on shower heads, and simply bought one on my next trip to a big box store. So far, it has performed adequately, which was what I expected.
Thanks for your observations here, and for sharing this experience!
That's apparently true for a lot of people: 1) Existing shower head has issues or is increasingly dissatisfying. 2) Just go to the nearest big box and/or indie hardware store, or even a department store like Walmart or Target, and just pick whatever looks good from the display. 3) If it works, great. If not, return it and try another.
That's a key challenge I wrote about in another reply in this thread. And you're right, something like PR (or more generally, brand awareness) seems key, given this:
" ... their products aren't on the displays at Home Depot, Lowes, or even independent hardware stores. At this point, they're pretty much e-commerce only."
I've noticed that a lot of plumbing or construction companies have "how to" or FAQ stuff on their websites. "How to install a sink" or "here's why you should install a french drain instead of a drainage ditch" or whatever. It seems to be a mix of marketing (you can trust us because we know what the job involves and why you would need it) and SEO (people searching for how to install a sink will find our site and pay us to do it).
Anyway, people who are buying showerheads might be interested in reading about other home maintenance stuff they can do.
That's a superb suggestion, beleester! We'll definitely look into that.
We've started working with an SEO specialist, and a writer in their network initially created a blog post on High Sierra's website on "How to install a handheld shower head." Expanding that to related plumbing, bathroom, and/or other home improvement tasks sounds like a great idea!
Aren't plumbers and suppliers the only potential customers you want to contact regularly?
As a homeowner I am 0% interested in promotional showerhead emails, even when I need one.
Great question!
While it's entirely possible you're in the vast majority, we've learned some fraction of homeowners (and even a few renters) are, in fact, keenly interested in shower heads. Partly because too many of the truly low-flow shower heads on the market aren't powerful enough to rapidly wash out shampoo, conditioner, etc. from long and/or thick hair. Or just generally feel anemic. So they're looking around for something better.
Another huge source of interest has been from institutions and commercial facilities: colleges and universities, military bases, correctional institutions, fitness & health clubs, independent inns and B&Bs, and the like. They're trying to be sustainable by cutting their water and energy use, yet don't want to risk antagonizing those they serve by degrading their showering experience. Plus, people using wimpy shower heads often need to stay in the shower longer to get clean, negating those sustainability gains.
Surprisingly, we haven't had nearly as much interest from plumbers as we might have imagined. Or from associated contractors, like HVAC contractors, tradespeople doing bathroom remodels, etc. (While noting this could well just be a blind spot in our own market research and outreach.)
Why would a showerhead company need a newsletter? Is this required now for small businesses to function because everyone else has constant marketing as well? Even if I like the topics you're writing about, are they going to be better written and researched than posts from a dedicated blog? I prefer to read emails (or anything) that is written because there is something important to say, not things that are written just because words need to be said even when there is no important content. I would be curious in this circumstance what readers who don't unsubscribe, assuming they're not all just ignoring junk marketing emails, actually like reading that is related to shower heads? Maybe they like pictures of beautiful bathrooms? Or interesting showers? But still I wonder why a shower head company is trying to double as an interesting newsletter. And if marketing efforts would be better spent elsewhere?
Cogent thoughts, Jordan19! Thanks!
The main reason we have a newsletter is that, late in 2023, the boss and our social media coordinator decided we needed one. :)
There is absolutely a trade-off: when coming up with topics and writing this newsletter, there's an opportunity cost from not doing other, perhaps more effective, forms of marketing.
If it helps, I love researching and writing the (very short) articles in this newsletter, despite repeatedly having to cope with writer's block. And I'm hoping that comes across to our readers.
We'd always crave feedback – even if it's just a one-sentence reaction – on any of the brief articles in our newsletter, such as any of the three mentioned above. We frequently link to more detailed articles, blog posts, and websites, for those who want to learn more.
As well, we typically get modest sales boosts from each mailing. Interspersed with the non-promotional pieces about general interest topics, are spotlights on various company products, sales announcements, and the like, with 'shop now' buttons.
We also offer a discount code when signing up for the newsletter. And on our mailing list, we have so far retained a significant fraction of those signing up. (In other words, while some subscribers are signing up just for the code and then unsubscribe, many others do stick around.)
As for what our customers and other readers get out of the newsletter, that's specific to shower heads, a few examples:
- They get early notification about sales.
- They learn about new and improved products. (Imagine an email newsletter from Apple that announces new versions of phones, computers, and operating systems, for example, and spotlights their key improvements.)
- They get to learn more about our products, their features, and their accessories. For instance, we offer grips for our handheld shower heads made by a local-to-us company that makes similar grips for tools and gun stocks. And we now include a free installation tool for installing and removing our products, which means you don't need to hunt for the right crescent or adjustable wrench. Both were mentioned in articles in our newsletter.
Also, this small biz tends to have a fanatically loyal customer base. People who use their shower heads often recommend them to family, friends, co-workers and the like. So perhaps more than with some other businesses, many of them tolerate receiving occasional e-mail reminders that the business still exists. :)
Yes, this business still does get unsubscribes with each mailing. Which I appreciate viscerally, given my own, often unsympathetic responses to bulk emails, even from vendors I like.
Not sure if this is useful, but Gmail actively unsubscribes me from stuff I don’t look at, even stuff I’m moderately interested in keeping up with.
Shower heads are tough. I’ve replaced maybe a half dozen in my life including as a landlord and I just get ‘em at the hardware store as I need ‘em. I don’t have any suggestions for you except i probably wouldn’t be following your emails either.
It’s a dog-eat-dog attention economy out there.
"Gmail actively unsubscribes me from stuff I don’t look at"
Thanks, knowing that is absolutely useful! I occasionally see a notification at the top of my Inbox, telling me I haven't opened mail from 'x' in a long time, and asking if I want to unsubscribe.
"I just get ‘em at the hardware store as I need ‘em"
Yep. That's what I did for years and years, as well.
That's one of the challenges this small business has to overcome; their products aren't on the displays at Home Depot, Lowes, or even independent hardware stores. At this point, they're pretty much e-commerce only.
And you're totally right about the attention economy. We're all inundated.
I may have overstated the “automatically unsubscribed.” I think I confused it with what you’ve described. I have had actively subscribed to emails that I don’t always read, like eBay alerts, moved to my “promotions” tab, which ends up being super noisy.
As for clientele, my first instinct is to target small business contractors who build out people’s bathrooms and the like. Maybe do an annual give-away to keep them interested. I will say, my experience (limited) is they stick with what they know works and I’d bet you make the best customers at trade shows doing demos.
Weird question— does it make sense to try and sell the shower head designs to a bigger corp? Maybe become suppliers?
Sounds like instead of telling people to BUY ANOTHER SHOWER HEAD NOW, which surely they won't do very often, your client would be better off marketing stuff like "Are you enjoying your shower head? Here's 10% off to buy a friend of yours a shower head" or "your personal discount code for one friend to buy a shower head for less" etc - if people like to recommend your product you could presumably lean into it
Excellent suggestion. The "tell a friend and be able to offer them a discount or something else cool" idea is really great.
And we can even incentivize them to do so, as well, with recognition, swag, or even modest commissions. (We've just recently been putting our toe in the water of 'performance marketing,' one part of which involves affiliate commissions. Not just for, say, influencers or bloggers, but even for our regular customers.)
One concern is that we don't want our customers to "spam" people in their circles, in ways that could be a turn off. So we'll need to think about ways to avoid that, as well!
Very good
Hi y'all. I'm a microbiome scientist trying to use human gut anaerobes to improve lifespan and quality of life. They're basically modular packets of genes—programs designed to run on the human OS—and I don't know why people aren't more excited about this. (Existing probiotics are, by and large, a scam; the vast vast majority of the gut microbiome's functional diversity and potential is untried & untapped).
Anyway I have a piece on my substack about the bugs in our guts that reduce cholesterol (both in the chemical and literal sense of the word "reduce") and a sequel post to it is coming out soon with some very exciting news, so I figured I'd try and get the word out a little. If anyone has questions or thoughts, happy to discuss here.
Stephenskolnick.substack.com/p/cholesterol
This was a really fascinating piece, in depth enough to be interesting yet high level enough to grasp easily. Thanks for writing and sharing!
Hey thanks! I try to strike that balance—I got my start writing pop coverage of new findings in physics journals, so this is like easy mode by comparison because everybody, as they say, poops.
I liked that a lot. Thanks!
"One of the highest-cholesterol foods out there also has a good dose of the molecular fuel that helps your microbes handle it in a healthy way."
Wild stuff - thanks, Stephen!
While I don't have any background in the physiological topics you cover, you have a delightfully casual, clearly-understandable writing style – in part through your use of figurative language – to describe complex concepts. Subscribed!
Feel free to moderate if it's too self-promotional, but I've started a podcast called Doom Debates whose audience has a lot of overlap with ACX readers. I debate Robin Hanson, Keith Duggar from Machine Learning Street Talk, and cover the social media slapfights around the topic of AI doom: https://DoomDebates.com
Scott, we haven’t had a Hidden Open Thread in 2 mos. Last one was August 9th. And they go up described as “*weekly* hidden open threads.” Hey we understand that you love your babies more than you love us, but could you up your attentiveness level to our lot just a bit?
I'm curious as to what goes on in the hidden threads now. Are they that different to the normal ones?
Lol
See point 1 above.
I just listened to this podcast, about the American healthcare system, https://open.spotify.com/episode/14XV2p3zAYVWPt7F2hpP9Z, in which Joe Rogan interviews Calley and Casey Means, and many of the claims made by the two guests frankly startled me. Are others familiar with the work of these two siblings, their book, or their advocacy?
I’m vaguely familiar with them and their work as well as their company! Haven’t listened to the episode yet.
The Starship launch today was AMAZING. If anyone hasn't seen it yet, I strongly recommend checking it out. It looks like SpaceX is making some serious progress! Watching this reminds me of how I felt seeing the first Falcon 9 landing – but it's at a much bigger scale.
+1
I just watched the video. That's amazing. No other words.
Yeah it was super cool to see!
wow thanks for the recommendation. i was out-of-the-loop on that one, and it was amazing
I woke myself up at 5 am to catch it live and didn't regret it one bit. I got super emotional seeing the catch, this must be how sports fans feel when their team wins the Superbowl.
What reminder system are you using to remember to post the Hidden Open Threads?
Discord bot.