I just want to know why you’re not going after the billionaires who caused this country to collapse, pharmaceutical industry, billionaires who pay their employees a barely livable wage. Instead you go after addicts themselves? And even people who don’t deserve it at all. Use the money to get help for the millions of homeless people in this country who need it, obviously you have more than enough to make a difference in this world. Why am I being penalized by you guys? For having a disease? Maybe put the money towards rehab facilities that require you to pay 10000 dollars for a month. Give options to the mentally unstable people like myself. I don’t care about money, I care about the people who are not in the right place and have no options for what they need for healthcare. The best people are doing is handing out clean needles? Why not go after the scumbags putting fentanyl in everything (I personally know someone who does this and it makes me sick) but you’re stealing from the American people who don’t have the money to buy groceries let alone to feed Africa. I’m trying to get sober, and since you popped up in my life again I have been in the darkest place I’ve been in in a long time. I just want to be left alone. I’m in a program trying to get help and I am constantly struggling with whatever you think I have to do and extremely mentally unstable because of this. I know you think I’m not a good person but I’m trying to get the help I need to get or I’ll die. But I’m assuming that is what you are trying to make me feel like that. I simply can’t understand why you are doing this to me. It’s been like 6 years now that I’ve been trying to get my life together and this whole situation is not helping me whatsoever. In fact it’s been a nightmare and I’m just so frustrated and depressed. But thank you for making it clear to me that you have no idea what I’m going through right now. I’m sorry for being such an annoying person but I’m just really upset that I can’t get through this because of the way things were going with the other people and I’m trying to trust you, I really am. Even ordered watches so you can monitor me…. But so far I’ve only seen the bad side and I’m really sorry for the things I’ve done to you and the other people that are actually doing this for a good cause but I haven’t seen the good things yet, it’s all been bad for me. I’m really trying my hardest to keep my head on my shoulders but I’m really trying my hardest to make things better for you and I’m being punished for it when I try. Now you’re doing the same thing to my family members that are very sick and tired from their own health issues that they have been suffering from since they were kids and I am sick from my own family genetics. I apologize for rambling here but I’ve never had any opportunity to speak with anyone who is in the group chat here. I’m not saying you are wrong but I’m just trying my hardest and I’m sorry that I don’t live up to your expectation.
Just printed out and made my own insurance card, which is fairly run of the mill in the US, but for those unfamiliar with it, consider a healthcare system so bungled that it actually includes an arts and crafts component.
Re the discussion of "woke" and "woke doesn't exist" below: In political discussions, it often helps to consider the opposite-partisan version of whatever arguments or phenomena you're discussing, since that way your visceral emotional reactions point in the opposite direction, making it easier for you to see the meta level.
In the case of "woke", the closest left wing equivalent is probably "racist". And in fact, you do see rightwingers arguing that "racism doesn't exist", even though it very clearly does, and not just in the bailey sense either - you can easily find actual no-kidding proud racists out there, even today. So why would someone say this? What they probably mean is more like "some of the things you claim to be racist aren't actually problems".
The term "racist" is used for a wide variety of things, everything from "the Ku Klux Klan is racist" down to "math is racist" or whatever. If you happen to be opposed to *everything ever described as racist*, then you don't have to care about precision. But if you're on the other side, you do. If you like math but don't like the KKK, you really want to know what someone actually means by "racist" in a particular context before agreeing with them.
The term "woke" is very similar, just with the opposite political valence. If you oppose anything that has ever been described as "woke", you don't really care about precision, but someone on the other side is going to really want to know what you actually mean by "woke" in any particular context.
Where are you seeing conservatives saying explicitly and absolutely "racism doesn't exist", as opposed to "racism is rare and mostly impotent in 21st century America "? Because the latter is a defensible statement, for the Motte definition of "racism".
I'm certain you can find some self-identified conservative *somewhere* making that claim, but I'm not seeing it as common or influential. The claim that "woke" doesn't exist and is just something conservatives made up to tar the left, is I think much more prevalent.
I've always been confused why right wingers don't just... stop considering racism to be a bad thing. Then they can do whatever they want without guilt or fear of criticism, and leftists no longer have any ammo to use against them. Why did they willingly give up so much ground during the 20th century?
Right wingers don't stop considering racism to be bad, because right wingers believe racism is bad for reasons that aren't "badness is an artificial construct". In other words, racism is bad in se, not merely bad prohibitum.
For this reason, right wingers, like nearly everyone, have an interest in knowing which acts are racist. What they've largely stopped doing is using "a left winger said so" as a strong reason to update in the direction of "it is".
Practically all of this is a post-20th century development, though. It's tempting to infer that during the 20th century, a right-winger probably trusted a left-winger's judgement on what was racist because a left-winger was more likely to tell the truth about that, but the real situation during the 20th century was that right-wingers and left-wingers both had very different attitudes toward racism, and for that matter, were largely different extensional sets.
I agree with your general approach of plugging in different variables, but in this case, I see wokism and racism still differing in key aspects.
I think it's fair to say that the emotional valence left wingers want to convey with "racist" evokes the type of person who wears white hoods and burns crosses, or refuses to hire non-whites because they can't possibly do better than a white. That type of racist does indeed exist, but in the conservative non-racist perspective, it exists in mere thousands of people, scattered around various rural enclaves with no real chance of controlling vast amounts of political power, with the odd white-collar advocate who conservatives only hear about because left wingers give them so much attention.
I think it's fair to say that the emotional valence right wingers want to convey with "woke" evokes the type of person who wants to identify as any gender they wish, and wants kids do likewise even when their parents refuse and when the kid's judgment is underdeveloped on account of being a kid; wants trans-women in womens' sports; and wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost. That type of wokist does indeed exist, but in the progressive non-wokist perspective, it... is actually a majority of progressives? Controls most of academia and some political offices? And commands most of the mainstream media's attention?
Is this characterization fair, or is it mistaken?
If I try to show it's mistaken, the easiest path I see is to say that non-woke progressives only want members of "oppressed groups" to stop being ostracized - passed over for promotions, forbidden from womens' sports, turned away from certain restrooms, or otherwise shunned from mainstream society. But when I look at the types of wokists that conservatives complain about, it's genuinely hard for me to see non-woke progressives seeing those types as rare, let alone "they only hear about them because of conservatives giving them attention".
> I think it's fair to say that the emotional valence right wingers want to convey with "woke" evokes the type of person who wants to identify as any gender they wish, and wants kids do likewise even when their parents refuse and when the kid's judgment is underdeveloped on account of being a kid; wants trans-women in womens' sports; and wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost. That type of wokist does indeed exist, but in the progressive non-wokist perspective, it... is actually a majority of progressives?
I think you're proving my point here. You've built up an extreme stereotype in your head and then convinced yourself that it applies to everyone. Which is common in politics, but not a good way of understanding the world.
In particular, your claim "wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost" seems obviously bonkers. Do you honestly think that a non-negligible amount of people would agree with that statement?
My guess is that that even you realize that hardly anyone would *actually* want that the way you described, and that when you say that, you're inserting a claim about *what *you* think the consequences of their desires are* and trying to pass it off as a claim about what "their desires actually are". It's a bit like saying that Republicans want to see women suffer or want to see innocent black people get shot. It's a logical extrapolation of the policies they propose, not what they actually think to themselves. At best you're doing the same thing here and hoping that people won't notice and the worst part is that you seem to have already fooled yourself.
Incidentally, it's also worth pointing out that you piled a lot of different descriptions into your category. Each qualifier you add makes the stereotype more vivid and so more believable, but if you are talking about actual people, then every qualification you add will inherently *reduce* the size of the group your describing. It's classic Conjunction Fallacy.
Extreme stereotype of what? of woke people? I presented that extreme stereotype *on purpose*, precisely to favor your hypothesis as much as plausible. The more extreme it is, the harder it ought to be to demonstrate that such people actually exist and get lauded on the left - just as the more extreme the racist, the harder it ought to be to prove they're favored by the right.
So, "wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost". I'll concede that left wingers don't want to ruin or destroy lives in order to hire the people they want, so, tell you what: let's scratch that part off the ticket, even if turns out to be the logical extrapolation of their hiring policies.
But I'm less sure about the "even if they're less competent" part. As in, if you present a woke person with a white man who scored 92% on the aptitude test for whatever job we're considering, and a not-white transgender woman who scored 88%, who do you think that woke person is going to say ought to be hired? What if the latter score were 85%? 79%? Do you want to factor in the type of job? Salesperson at a department store? Molbio researcher? Firefighter?
How many woke people do you think would say, "actually, it's okay despite the lower aptitude, because of (reasons)"? Are there only a few thousand? Scattered among communities without any meaningful political power? Disavowed as obviously bonkers by their own side?
It's not a conjunction fallacy, by the way - I'm specifying anyone who wants anything in that set, not all of them at the same time.
> But I'm less sure about the "even if they're less competent" part. As in, if you present a woke person with a white man who scored 92% on the aptitude test for whatever job we're considering, and a not-white transgender woman who scored 88%, who do you think that woke person is going to say ought to be hired? What if the latter score were 85%? 79%? Do you want to factor in the type of job? Salesperson at a department store? Molbio researcher? Firefighter?
> How many woke people do you think would say, "actually, it's okay despite the lower aptitude, because of (reasons)"? Are there only a few thousand? Scattered among communities without any meaningful political power? Disavowed as obviously bonkers by their own side?
You're still failing the ideological Turing test. They don't think they're hiring people with lower aptitude, they think that the tests don't accurately measure aptitude.
It could be interesting to make a survey among the people who use the word "woke" (in the negative sense), give them a list of things and ask how which of them do they mean when they say "woke". Maybe there is a consensus; maybe there isn't.
And until this linguistic puzzle is solved, which word am I supposed to use when I want to talk about the aggressively performative social justice? I guess I could say "aggressively performative social justice", but that is kinda difficult to remember.
The main advantage of using “aggressively performative social justice” in my opinion is that it’s so long you won’t want to say it at all. Or enter any situation where you would have to say it. Think of all the brainpower you’re saving!
Or, recursively, I could get a question: "What do you mean by 'social justice'?" with basically the same objections as against 'woke' -- no one does necessarily agree with all of that, etc.
I wonder if a German (or maybe a member of an American-German couple) could give me some advice in a complicated and stupid situation. I am certainly aware this is better suited for a lawyer than a message board, but maybe this will be interesting to some of you. (Alternatively, I apologize for boring you with a stupid situation.)
I am a US citizen and my partner is a German citizen, we live in Germany and are unmarried. We have two children; the first one has my partner's last name and we wanted the newborn second child to have my last name. (The two children would share a middle name.)
Normally, this is not allowed according to "German naming rights". In particular, under German naming rights, there is a "family name" that all children of the same pair of parents must share. (More on a potential loophole below.) However, we wanted to simply use "American naming rights", which is guaranteed by Article 10 of the EGBGB.
The clerk's office (Standesamt) told us that we are no longer allowed to use American naming rights; there was a court decision, found <https://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bgh&Art=en&Datum=2018-5-9&nr=84763&pos=29&anz=34&Blank=1.pdf>, which basically forbids using the naming rights of a country that allows "fantasy names". Here "fantasy names" means: a last name which is neither of the parents' last names. Note that this in particular bans us using American naming rights, although we want to name our second child with *my last name*.
(Suffice it to say I find this all absurd and miss the abundant formal freedom of the US. Did you know you can't change your last name in Germany unless it is part of getting married/divorce? Isn't this terrible? Like, doesn't it freeze social classes? Also, if both parents are German, at the moment the children can't have a hyphenated last name with both the last names of the parents, though this is changing in a few months.)
Now, I have filled out my Vaterschaftsanerkennung (recognition of paternity) but have not yet completed the "Sorgerechtserklärung" (think of this as "super paternity", or like, custodial rights). If I have understood correctly, currently my partner could in principle give the second child my last name under German naming rights. (Think of this as the claim that I am a different person with the same name... so, in other words, without this extra custodial rights, we don't quite count as the same parent-pair for our second child.) However, once I fill out this Sorgerechtserklärung, the children are forced to have the same name. (Could it even happen automatically? Not clear..)
I normally would just avoid filling this out (not great, but okay, we could make another personal contract ensuring equal rights etc.), BUT for the US citizenship, we need this stupid Sorgerechtserklärung.
So, here's my question: could the following complicated loophole work?
1. Give my second child my last name, given that I haven't completed Sorgerechtserklärung.
2. Travel to the US, get married.
3. Come back to Germany, apply for the US citizenship of my second child using our US marriage license.
4. Maybe one day in the distant future, tell Germany that we're married and bank on it not mattering/the naming laws in this country having changed.
Do you need to get married in the US? Can you do it in Denmark instead? Many people in Germany do this, as the process there is very simple.
I am the German part of a German-American couple and we had a long fight with the Standesamt about our child’s middle name, which we eventually won.
Funnily enough, the story felt extremely related to your struggle, but unfortunately just unrelated enough to not contain any helpful insights whatsoever
Thanks for the Denmark suggestion! The idea with the US is that we'll probably go sometime soon-ish anyways and it is of course comically easy to get married in most cities in the US.
Despite any apparent dissimilarities, I'd be grateful for any details of (1) what you encountered and (2) how you managed to overcome it. (Esp point (2)!!)
Well, it does cut down on the number of baby girls named e.g. "Daenerys Targaryen", who will go through life being mocked as an insane mass murderer.
But I suspect it has more to do with ensuring that everyone's names end up arranged in neat rectangular grids, where you always know where to look for the kids of Bob and Alice Schmidt.
Who is this for? I don’t think it’s for the kids. Anytime parents want to do something “cool”, interesting, etc. with kids’ names, it’s never for the kids, the kids just want to have a normal name, one less thing for other kids to pick on, one less thing to be embarrassed about.
It is all for the parents. For you. “the first one has my partner's last name and we wanted the newborn second child to have my last name”, “we wanted” explains it all.
Your responsibility is to the kids. Anything you do, you have to ask yourself, “will the kids benefit, is it for them?”. Your job isn’t to be a “cool” parent, isn’t even to be a “good” parent, it is to raise good kids with minimal unnecessary suffering (they will get plenty, no need to wantonly add any).
So - since you asked - stop this nonsense, give the siblings the same last name, and worry about how to make their life better, not how to make a cool conversation piece out of them.
Oh get off your high horse. This matter strikes me as basically neutral with regards to the welfare of the children, and the parents are absolutely within their rights to indulge their whim here. People don't actually lose the right to have preferences when they have children, and they absolutely are not required to make every decision according to your idiosyncratic view of what is best for the children.
I know lots of people who have followed this kind of naming pattern.
I did ask for other thoughts, so thank you for the reply!
First of all, this is actually not unheard of in the US: Emily Oster's parents did this. Moreover, it honestly just doesn't seem so "weird" (or "cool" for that matter) to me.
Honestly, part of the reason was *for* the kids. Having one kid: I want to raise a good kid (in all senses), as you explain. Having two: in addition to wanting both kids to be good (in all senses), I want them to have a good and *independent* relationship with each other! I liked the idea that their relationship with each other would nominally be mediated by a (middle) name which neither of their parents directly shared. (In a way, it somewhat solidifies kids v parents?) This isn't necessarily an unambiguous good: they would have the freedom to not *immediately* be seen as siblings, which potentially both positive and negative aspects. But, you know, avoid the "neutral state" fallacy.
Another (less important) reason was for me: then I wouldn't be the outsider, and in fact the multigraph would be connected.
Finally, we found a beautiful first name, which goes much much better with my last name than with my partner's. It is difficult enough to name a being, as any parent knows!
I of course take seriously the issue of getting made fun of, but -- IDK, I have a "long ethnic" name, got made fun of 25 years ago in small town USA, and now I rather like my name. (I understand this prob reflects some selection bias?) I certainly don't want to "wantonly add suffering", but I just have the feeling that kids are super resilient and that this basically won't add any. (Prob people say the same suffering thing about parents having the same last name, or kids always taking the father's name, and I don't take sure concerns seriously.) I actually spent time reading accounts of (fully biological) siblings with different last names, and they all seemed 100% unharmed.
So, like, definitely not a "cool" parent, maybe a sap. But, inasmuch as I can meaningfully self-reflect, this isn't about a conversation piece.
I do think that there are interesting and difficult psychological questions about how to mediate the question of what "one wants from a kid" as opposed to their "well-being", mostly to do with values I guess? I don't yet have anything worthwhile to add to this topic.
Ok, I kind of see your point that there's a possible positive for the kids themselves. I have a strong preference toward "make things that don't matter as close to conventional as possible because it will create fewer complications for the kids as they grow up", and maybe this one isn't too material; it's more the degree of effort toward it that really alarmed me. Again, you asked :)
W.r.t. to the "selection bias" you mentioned: yes absolutely, I'd go as far as calling it "survivorship bias". Bullying is an extremely nonlinear, unpredictable process, and one never knows which factor will kick it from "most kids suffered some, came out ok" to a life-altering nightmare. I always use a personal example for the sneaky nature of survivorship bias: there's a nearly universal acceptance of making fin of the "too-safe" playgrounds of the 90's, but inevitably these playgrounds are derided by those who ended up ok. I suffered a nasty, life-altering injury playing in the older playground, so even though I generally agree with the sentiment, I'd like to point out that there's a balance of risks that is being ignored.
On "the question of what "one wants from a kid" as opposed to their "well-being"": it's both difficult in a sense that we don't get to know the outcomes, and simple in a sense that there's a kind of a check you can do: keep asking yourself "who is this for?". You won't always answer it correctly, it's impossible, but it does present a framework to help guide your decisions. Anything that strokes your ego too much (for example, a "my kid excels at Such-and-Such Elementary" bumper sticker is a terrible idea) is for you and not for the kids, and they do have a giant invisible antennae sensing this, they know.
Wishing you best in your journey of good-kid-raising; here's to this issue being the worst complication you'd have to deal with!
I actually was tempted to write "survivorship bias", but I cautioned away, thinking it too dramatic.
However, I do appreciate/take seriously your point about how it's (1) pretty hard to tell what will cause bullying and (2) bullying can be God awful. My usual interpretation of (1) is: "people will be made fun of for unpredictable reasons, it doesn't make sense to stress out about it re: my children, I should focus on resilience". In particular, this is part of why I generally disagree with European laws about not being allowed to give kids names that are make-fun-of-able.
I'm very sorry to hear about the accident. Before I had kids, I was vehemently in the camp of: "safety-ism is bad". Now, I think I still am, but it's ... harder? From my (perhaps overly anxious) perspective as a relatively new parent, one benefit of the super-safe playgrounds is that I get to pay a lot less attention -- and any relief to the cognitive load is appreciated.
I really agree with the principle/mantra you articulate about asking whether you are doing something "for you" or "for the kids". When I wrote that it was difficult, I didn't just mean: "you'll get it wrong sometimes"; I think it is actually *hard* to, like, know?
So, I think about when my kid is having a tantrum and I try to deal with it. Different forms of discipline have different speeds of resolution, and you can imagine that I prefer the faster ones. But isn't that kinda for me? Like, would it be better for the kid if I helped him "work through big feelings" (ugh I actually think in such phrases now, it makes me want to vomit) as opposed to a swift time out? (I gravitate towards the latter.) Or like, if my kid constantly starts activities and then gives them up. Of course I *think* I'm doing them a favor by forcing them to stick to an activity, but, am I? There are thornier questions, I think related to the fact that some aspect of having a child is narcissistic. With most of my friends/loved ones, I don't exactly primarily want them to be happy; I want them to be "good", e.g., "I'm happy this person exists in the world". With my kid(s), man I really really want them to laugh as much as possible.
I have been reading SSC for probably about 12 years now, I've been on the substack since it started, and I've only started commenting once I had my first child. I'm really hoping that Scott writes more about parenting; what interesting questions.
Man, it’s the toughest assignment of our lives, to raise these rascals, isn’t it.
Re. resilience: yes, we want to teach them to handle adversity, but no, bullying doesn’t teach that, fuck Nietzsche, that which does not kill us maims us for life. To teach them to overcome adversity we need to give them tools to do it. For example, just telling a kid to ‘stand up to bullies, don’t be afraid’ teaches them nothing except ‘well I guess I’m on my own now, this sucks’. Get them into wrestling or judo, then they can learn to not be physically scared, and then they can learn to actually stand up to bullies.
Same with safety. They need to take risks, and we - parents - often naturally err on the side of overprotection, but we shouldn’t ignore obvious safety hazards either. It’s a balance.
Sticking to an activity is a tough call (there’s a theme here, isn’t it). I ended up not pushing mine too hard into music, the spark was clearly not there. But photography ended up being the thing. You just have to pay attention to them, I guess, and make calls to the best of your judgement.
Back to the “for them, not for me” thing - once you’re cognizant of it, and start applying it as the standard, you develop a decent sense of what to do/not to do. For example, I literally have 0 pictures of mine in a public domain. I’m astonished by the casual ease with which parents dump easily identifiable, traceable, sometimes embarrassing photos of their children for everyone to ogle. Why? For likes? Or things like “I’m proud of my [insert some glowing achievement] kid”. And if your kid turns out to be… average? not special? Not wanting to be a lawyer/doctor/engineer, but a c-student who loves tinkering with mechanical things? How many damaged unhappy young adults are still trying to win their parents’ approval, to satisfy their wish to have a “perfect”, “successful” child they can brag about to friends…
As you can probably tell, much of this comes from some tough personal experiences. I’m in a good place with mine now, but… it took a lot of… soul searching… back then.
Or, you know, you can just give your kids the same last name... I cannot imagine what is motivating you to go through so much effort just to give your kids different last names.
Oh this bit is easy to explain. Traditionally, all kids would have had the same last name (the fathers). Enter feminism, and the equalitarian solution is to alternate last names. It seems like a fairly simple hack to preserve harmony in a marriage, and pretty much neutral where the children are concerned. [The older hack of hyphenated last names strikes me as more of a negative from the pov of the children, plus that solution doesn't scale beyond the first generation, whereas this one does].
What's the best way to become really truly rich? If we need a fixed figure, let's try $100 million in assets; I doubt even a very humble hectomillionaire would insist they were merely comfortable. And let's assume we're starting with a very determined twenty-year-old who is capable but not a superstar and from a middle-class first-world background. How should such a person proceed?
As far as I can tell, the two things to emphasize in such a quest are leadership and ownership. It's pretty much impossible to get to nine figures as even the most well-paid solo professional; to get that kind of money you need to be in charge of an organization of some sort, as either a senior executive of a major company, or the outright CEO of a medium-sized firm. And better yet, don't just run the organization, own it, either fully or in part.
But I expect there's more to it.
For what it's worth, the total compensation of top executives at the biggest firms is now in the tens of millions per year. Here are the figures for Google/Alphabet:
Make a lot of money, and save and invest it. If you're 20 years old, put away $10,000 a year for 20 years and make 15% a year (which approximately doubles every five years) you'll have over $100 million after 52 years, and a billion after 69 years.
Your first million would be after 19 years, at which point you may be moved to withdraw some each year so you could stop working, but that will make your nine-figure net worth go further away. After 34 years, you would be making over $1 million in profit, so maybe THAT would be the time to start withdrawing some, but again, it makes your goal further away.
Most CEOs don't make nearly as much money as we tend to think. The very highest paid CEOs at Fortune 500 companies is a weird aberration, not the norm.
I meant according to Johans link the CEO of Google is the 171st highest paid person at Google. So there are 170 people at google paid more than their boss, sometimes substantially more. Isn’t that strange?
ETA: Johans figures were for 2023. Looks like in 2022 the CEO's pay was 30 times higher. So possibly this is just some weirdness of how his compensation package is structured over time, or maybe 2022 was a better year for the stock than 2023 or something.
Ah, okay, sorry I misunderstood. Yes, likely a specific provision in the pay structure. Due to a change in tax rates from back in the 90s and an attempt to make performance matter more to top executives, pay became much less about base cash income and a lot more about stock options and other variable amounts.
Also, looking at that link more I believe he was 171st among CEOs, or CEOs within tech? Not within Google itself.
> What's the best way to become really truly rich?
What does "best" mean? If "easiest", then buying lottery tickets. If "highest probability", then I agree with Mr. Doolittle, you need to found a company. Specifically, a VC-fundable one. From my limited but non-zero experience with trying to get VC funding, these are the steps you should follow:
1. Build a product, found a company, acquire users/customers, demonstrate traction.
2. Pitch to a suitable VC investor and sell them on your vision of the company's path to a 1 billion+ USD valuation. This somewhat limits your options in step 1, but is a necessary condition for most (all?) VCs to match their business model. In simple terms, aim for a high potential valuation, not for high probability.
3. After a few funding rounds, when your company has reached a sufficiently high valuation, sell it to a larger company, or do an IPO. Don't forget to factor in taxes and your remaining fractional share of ownership, so aim for a sales price of, say, 500 million+ USD.
If your only goal in life is to be 9-figures or more rich, you need to start companies. The pipeline for top level executives is long and full of off ramps that divert most people into lower paying final positions. Lots of things outside of your control can permanently force you off of one of those tracks at any stage in your career. Trying to get that rich from an executive path only makes any sense if your dad owns the company or something. Otherwise you're in for a long grind with a EV much lower than your goal.
You don't need to make a lot of money from your first company or companies, but can use what money you do make as seed money for either future companies or rare but high return investments.
The absolute most likely scenario is that you still fail to achieve your goal, but you may end up fairly wealthy and with a lot of assets to sell off or milk for retirement.
California’s recent action to restrict some food dyes and the FDAs very recent action has made me think about food dyes and the alleged link to child behavior. I’m curious how credible this link is and if there’s some mechanism that makes sense. Seems like most behavior altering drugs work just fine in adults as well as children. If red 40 causes hyperactivity in kids at food-level doses, shouldn’t some self experimenter experience effects if they took 10-100 times more? Maybe there is some low ceiling on the magnitude of any effect?
Scott, could be helpful to get your perspective on these studies since it seems adjacent to your core expertise. Have you looked into this issue much?
My take is somewhat different. The paper identifies 25 studies. In half of them, there is no impact estimated. In the other half, most estimated impacts are very small. And even in the studies where there are significant and large impacts estimated, in a number of the cases (like the one I discussed extensively above) the results actually don’t show up consistently across measurements. Adding the issue of publication bias to this, I find the argument for a meaningful effect here implausible. (I will note this is also the conclusion an FDA panel came to in 2011.)
For me, it's usually telling a client an inflated likelihood of them getting caught breaking the law. There are lots of people who will break the law if you let them think that the punishment is light and that the odds of getting away with it are high.
So we routinely tell people that they'll get caught if they even think about trying it.
It's not true that they'll be caught (usually), and I'm usually not particularly kind to them (after all, I need to communicate that crime is socially undesirable). But it is pretty necessary, IMHO.
I actually think it holds generally, but it would be more than difficult to answer that question satisfactorily to either side that it's not worth trying. I think it's much easier to see with children and it seems you may agree with that already.
If you can figure out why lying to kids is a bad idea, you'll begin to see why lying in general is also a bad idea.
To pre-empt another line of thought - not lying doesn't mean always spilling whatever truth you have. You can just not speak on a topic or answer certain questions or otherwise deflect.
To answer another likely objection - yes, lying can offer short term benefits like defections in a prisoner's dilemma-type game. I'm talking about long term and full cost considerations.
If your life or someone else's life depends on it, lying can necessary. To make an extreme example, consider a Jew trying to hide his identity during the Holocaust. When asked by the SS whether he is a Jew, telling the truth will get him and his family killed, and deflecting or staying quiet won't be an option.
Lets say the OP's comment is "Have you ever rescued someone? It happens all the time in movies but I've never even been close to rescuing someone from serious danger." A response that is necessary but untrue and unkind might be "Yes, I've rescued many people from danger*. Here are several examples in long detail. Also I'm surprised and a bit disgusted how few people here have rescued someone. I can only chock it up to the users of this site being particularly self-interested, unable to sacrifice for others."
In the case of the rule of three when applied to comments the "necessary" can be best understood as "on topic" or "contributing to the topic of discussion". After all, no comment is "necessary" in the strict sense that you must post it! But a reply that has little or nothing to do with the current discussion is "unneccesary" because it doesn't further the conversation.
*This is a lie, fulfilling the "untrue" requirement.
Repeating hateful rhetoric to avoid being punished by the dominant group? Crying "Yes, death to the bourgeois pigs!" while packing your bag, or something?
Let's say someone is spouting obvious untruths about some issue of general interest. So calling them out and telling them to stop with the bullshit is necessary, i.e. advances the discussion. But if you respond by \saying "stop with the bullshit, you're a piece of shit and Scott's going to track you down and break your nose "-- that way of objecting to their bullshit is neither kind nor true.
I don't play MTG, but this seems plausible, reading through the steps. But I also know that the Twin Prime Conjecture has been tested for an awful lot of digits (apparently 388,342, 2996863034895 * 2^1290000 ± 1), so if you could play this combination, I assume this means you win by dealing a huge amount of damage.
How credible is this news of Pakistani rape gangs in the UK? Is this completely blown out of proportion, or were there really years of rape and cover ups?
Yes, to the extent that BIg Men generally rape as they please in their little feifs.
Eg, your various Epstein rich guys, college football coaches, CEOs, famous musicians (or authors, as it turns out), athletes, etc and so forth.
If you have a certain amount of cache, you can feel free to rape as long as you maintain some figleaf respectability and pay attention to the common sense guidelines one uses to avoid getting prosecuted for financial crimes (only one crime at a time, never do/talk about illegal stuff on the record or to multiple people simultaneously, always fuck down and never to the side, etc.).
Every neighborhood in every city in every country has years of rapes and "cover ups" (ie nobody reporting it publicly) going back decades. This is nothing abnormal.
Why is this currently in the news? I remember the story from ca. 2016/2017, and I couldn't find material new developments from looking into it briefly.
There’s been a concerted effort by the Conservative Party to resurface this as a culture war wedge issue, with an assist by Elon Musk.
Not to be cynical, but the Tories were in power until 6 months ago and seem to have suddenly gotten religion on this when they see an opportunity to split Muslims away from the Labour Party.
Ironically, PM Starmer actually prosecuted some of these cases in his legal career but seems to be pretty hapless in handling this.
It is pretty weird for the tories to complain about a scandal from over a decade ago when *they were in power for most of the intervening time*. Like why couldn't they have done whatever before? But politics is rarely about making sense.
I just skimmed it for 5 mins. Yes, of course, the events documented are horrible. I did see that most or many kids described their assailants as 'Asian.' But is there any data in the report on what fraction of abusers were described as Asian?
And to draw conclusions from the report regarding "Pakistani rape gangs" in Rotherham a lot of contextual info is needed:
-Is the fraction of rapists described as Asian higher than the fraction of males who are Asian in the area?
-Is there more child sexual assault and exploitation in Rotherham than in other areas -- including areas with few immigrants, or with mostly non-Asian or non-Pakistani immigrants?
-Has there been an increase in child abuse in Rotherham, and if so when did it start, and how closely does it mirror the fraction of Pakistani males residing there?
To summarize the results from that first link for people who don't like clicking links: it looks like 83% of those prosecuted for being part of "grooming gangs" were Muslims, for rapes in general in the UK 7.2% were Pakistani*. For comparison, Pakistanis make up 2.7% of the population.
*32% of prosecuted rapists had no ethnicity information recorded, so the 7.2% number may be off.
Yeah, it's not just about "more or less crime", but also about specific *types* of crimes being over-represented in specific communities.
For example, every society has its rapists. But a typical Western white rapist acts alone. Also, raping little girls is considered shameful; I am not saying it doesn't happen, but the rapists usually don't brag about it.
Then there are cultures where raping little kids is considered a harmless fun activity that cool guys can enjoy together, and a religion where a guy who had a 6 years old wife and lots of sex slaves is considered the perfect human whom all people should strive to emulate. Of course their crime profiles are going to look differently from the usual Western population.
It's worth noting that least one of the cultures which endorses the rape of child brides also embraces the rape of boys and young men (because there is no access to women).
This is truly horrible. Are there any British parents who can elaborate how they lost control of the situation ? Something is fundamentally broken here.
Not a British parent, but I followed the situation pretty closely when it was first revealed. They didn't so much lose control of the situation so much as they never had control of the situation in the first place, because they didn't know there was a situation.
The reason being, perverse incentives on reporting. Nobody can see 1,400 teenage girls being systematically raped, because that is distributed across half a city and half a decade, The problem can only be recognized by looking at the large number of reports of one girl being raped, maybe only once, and doing the math to say "that's an awful lot of rapes and it looks like the same girls keep being victimized by the same rapists".
But the rapists were all Persons of Colour. And an overly simplistic and pervasive culture of what we would now call "DEI" in the British police and social services meant that anyone escalating a report of one or two or five PoCs raping one or two or five white girls, without ironclad proof, was at substantial risk of being reprimanded for "racism" and sent off to remedial DEI training. Also the person they escalated the report to would face the same incentive and so would probably do nothing, so why even bother?
It also didn't help that the teenage girls in question (and their parents) were mostly from what Americans would call the "white trash" demographic, so very nearly at the bottom of the list of people society anybody important cares about, and very easy to silence by telling them to knock it off with the complaining or we'll arrest *you* for disturbing the peace or something, and nobody will care and I won't have to sit through another day of DEI training. The rapists were (eventually) organized, and they knew who they could get away with raping.
So claims of a "coverup" are I think an exaggeration. There weren't a bunch of Evil Masterminds in a smoke-filled room saying "Of course we all know that organized gangs of Pakistani immigrants are raping hundreds of teenage girls, but we're not going to stop it so let's figure out how to keep the rubes from figuring it out". Just a whole lot of people keeping their heads firmly buried in the sand, because of all the cane-wielding wokescolds who would beat anyone who raised their head.
That couldn't last forever, and it didn't, but it did last way too long. At least in Rotherham; a few other British cities seem to have had the start of a similar problem but shut it down at a much earlier stage.
The basic story is that troubled kids were abused, which is a very standard pattern, but it was exacerbated by groups that organized to "industrialize" this practice. The official/government support institutions did not have enough resources to protect the kids or recognize the patterns.
It is unstated, but the parents of the victims probably didn't figure heavily in the victims' lives before the abuse started.
Nosferatu (2024) was a solid entry in the Dracula canon. It's a good story to be occasionally re-made because of its inversion of the hero's journey: the hero ventures forth and returns transformed by his adventure, but here he brings back instead of vanquishing it and his story ends in failure.
I watched Herzog's version Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and I think it does the best of any adaptation to show that Harker has to try very, very hard to get to the evil. He ignores continuous warnings and when obstacles are placed in his path he exerts himself all the more.
Harker isn't tricked or hypnotized by evil. He chooses to seek it out. He climbs a shrieking mountain of doom to an ultra-heightened castle of spook and sits down to dinner with an obvious ghoul, who he then makes his neighbor moments after the eldritch horror fixates on Lucy, dooming the town.
Lucy experiences almost the opposite of Harker's film. He discards excellent advice; she's right and ignored. He seeks out the evil; the evil seeks her out. She sacrifices herself to destroy it; he gains (un)life by resurrecting it through himself.
Horror and/or fantasy - the new version is the former, Herzog's the latter - fans: does anyone else enjoy the 1979 version or have a different favorite?
Etiquette question: what do you do when you post a question on here, several people provide answers, and you want to acknowledge/thank them all, or otherwise reply to them as a group?
If I just answer my own post with a "thanks everyone" message, none of them will get notified about it. The alternative is go through and copy/paste the message one by one to each of their answers, which looks ridiculous and also clutters the thread.
I could just ignore people, and have done in the past when I wasn't sure what to do, but it feels ungrateful and rude.
I am sometimes notified by email that someone has "liked" a post I made, but I don't see a "like" button myself and assume a lot of others don't either.
Plus, "like" works as a generic "thankyou", but doesn't work if what you actually wanted to do was provide further information in your group-reply.
Recently I asked for help translating some Latin, several people expressed interest, but no one responded to my follow-up DMs expect the one guy who I explicitly responded to with "I've sent you a DM". In that case not having a protocol for replying to a group potentially resulted in actual missed connections. Idk tho.
Anyway, bereft of a good answer, this post can double as a generic past-and-future thank you to anyone who helps or answers stuff I post.
I "like" responses to acknowledge them. In a browser, click on "activity" button (a little bell pic), then click on the "Activity" header in the pop-up. This will open a page where all responses to your comment are shown, and underneath each response there's a "heart" button, among other things.
"Likes" are turned off (by default on ACX, I think - some people have a UI that reinstates them). So many people can't do it, and even if they could, many more people wouldn't see it.
My advice: reply to your question comment with a general thank you, and for extra credit, summarize what you learned.
Scott, if my memory serves me right, mentioned a similar theme in a recent post about bureaucracy.
What I found interesting in both cases is that there was a group of comments (here for Scott, on Hacker News for PG), that argued that wokeness doesn't exist or exists merely as a pejorative term to sling at Democrats.
It surprised me because much political discussion I've seen focused on whether woke is good or not, or even what is it exactly. But these take it as a given that it exists. So to question the existence surprised me.
I'm not really plugged into that discourse but even I noticed, in the last decade, things like:
- mandatory DEI trainings, incl. Implict bias testing
- DEI meetings at work
- warnings in books. Eg. The new Harlan Ellison anthology contains a warning about misogynistic language (I think. There was warning, though maybe about another kind of bad language)
- an extreme increase in discussions about race in newspapers and magazines
- many people assuming the illiberal progressive role, eg. punch a Nazi in the face
- changing the label "homeless" to "unhoused"
- land acknowledgements. Saw these in the cinema I used to frequent in Seattle.
Now, it's possible to endlessly talk about what these things are, or whether they're virtuous or not. But to claim that these things don't exist, or that they are not part of a larger cultural theme, seems preposterous.
How can I understand such a stance? Was I just lucky to experience these things and there are people who haven't? Am I drawing a pattern where there is no pattern?
I guess I'm questioning whether I'm unknowingly inside a bubble of some sort. How would I know?
edit: This produced a little more heat than I expected. Mea culpa. But there are some interesting bits in the thread.
The general phenomenon of "woke" obviously exists, but it is a vague term used to describe a wide range of stuff, and also a political slur, meaning that it is extremely subject to motte and bailey arguments. So the particular thing that your interlocutor means by "woke" may in fact be fantasy, even though the broader phenomenon isn't.
He's really talking about a particular aspect of wokeness--not so much the ideas, but the attitude and tactics. The super woke person who is enraged by the presence of Harry Potter books in the library because JK Rowling is anti-trans uses the same basic tactics and often the same attitude as fundamentalist parents demanding they be removed because they glorify witchcraft or something.
Your comment made me laugh because I grew up during the Harry Potter craze and I also witnessed a strong religious push back against it in social circles adjacent to mine exactly because it was promoting witchcraft.
Maybe that's why woke feels so incredibly uncomfortable for me: it feels like I've already seen it before.
Hmm. Would you demand the same rigorous definition of "masculine" or "happy" before accepting that the concepts of masculinity or happiness were useful for expressing meaning? I think you're picking on this one word without recognizing this is the nature of words themselves.
I don't think they are arguing about definitions per se, rather they are trying to wrestle with the idea that some people seemingly don't acknowledge anything is happening (happened?) at all.
If we are both in a room and someone throws a stone into it, crashing the window, then it's one thing to argue whether the stone is of sedimentary or volcanic origin, but it's a whole different thing to say that there is no stone at all.
Not listed: anything that materially improves the lives of people on the bottom (even those on the bottom or the "right" ethnically salient reasons) in any way
If that's what wokeness was, then good fucking riddance; it wasn't politics, it was a PR game.
I might be misremembering, but I am pretty sure that the term 'woke' was invented by the same people that now like to pretend that it is some sort of meaningless, right-wing term.
When I was still working at a University, there was a professor in another department who was going through a lot of effort to entirely revamp his department's curriculum to make it more, well, woke (more "inclusive", no exams, less focus on grading, talk about social issues in every class, etc., etc. This was in engineering, btw). Anyway, I remember very well that in one of the grievance sessions for minority students that were held once in a while, some student gave him a shoutout, saying that 'Prof. xxx was woke,' which made said professor, and others, very proud. Like, I cannot imagine that there was a higher compliment that said person could have received than being called woke by a young black student.
I also think that in the show 'Dear White People' (I think that was the name), the term woke was used as a positive thing by the characters you would expect to be into what is referred as woke stuff.
All of this is to say that I agree, everyone knows what the term means and I don't know what is the point of pretending otherwise.
> I might be misremembering, but I am pretty sure that the term 'woke' was invented by the same people that now like to pretend that it is some sort of meaningless, right-wing term.
The fact that a term had a coherent meaning and was used appropriately back when it was invented doesn't contradict that it's a meaningless term now, when it's successfully appropriated by other people and is completely misused by them.
This is part of standard political terminology cascade.
First some minority group invents a term meaning "being aware of systemic nature of social injustices". It's been used for some time locally, everything is fine and coherent.
Then the term becomes more popular among leftists. A lot of conversations among them are happening about the nature of systemic injustices. The term becomes something as a compliment for them, as being aware of systemic nature of social injustices is what leftists want to be.
Then the other sides of political spectrum cath up. The term is still used mostly appropriately, there is still a nuanced conversation possible on the topic, which things are systemic or not, just or not and so on. But the overal vibe of the term become less clearly positive, the layman meaning muddles to "things that leftists do". As it becomes more mainstream corporations and ther entities are starting to use some form of meaningless signalling associated with the term. This kind of actions become incorporated in the term as well.
Then right wingers start using it in mass for whatever conspiracy theory the could come up with, drawing the category borders in all kind of contradictory ways at the same time. The common meaning derogates to "bad things leftist do", most of them blown out of proportions, misrepresented or not real at all. And then to "ideology that turns normal people into fanatics who would do this kind of things". And then to a buzzword with lots of negative connatations that one can use while pointing fingers at a leftist or even just a democrat, regardless of what the leftist/democrat is saying.
At this point people who originally coined the term, have long ago abandonned it and rightly notice that in the current form the term has lost all meaning and is poorly connected to reality. They may come up with some other term to mean the things they originally wanted to mean, and then the cycle starts anew.
Would someone be kind enough to provide examples of the term 'woke' being so grossly misused that the term has been rendered meaningless? I am not in social media and don't really read the news much either. Something to serious sources as opposed to Twitter lunatics would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
"And then to a buzzword with lots of negative connatations"
Would you mind listing those negative connotations for me? The connotations in my head are things that people "being aware of systemic nature of social injustices" would have agreed with a few years ago. Maybe they have changed their minds, or maybe I am out of the loop and the current connotations are different.
"Would someone be kind enough to provide examples of the term 'woke' being so grossly misused that the term has been rendered meaningless?"
this is obviously not the most important example (except you could also argue it is given Elon runs adjacent to circles like this on X) but there's a list of 'woke' videogames, keeping tabs on non recommended 'woke' games. Woke in this case includes everything from 'has a character lecture another on how they are bigoted against trangender ppl' to 'has body type 1 and body type 2 instead of male and female' to 'video game depicts an interracial family':
woke can be pretty much described as meaningless in this case (except if by woke you mean anyone who isn't an Aryan blonde male)
Over on DSL, there were some people trying to claim that Arcane is "woke" (which was so obviously stupid that even the other conservatives there pushed back on it).
One potential solution is whether you have a good friend who has made this argument and you can actually productively talk to this person. I've got some liberal/lefty friends I can discuss politics with but they get extremely aggressive/defensive around wokism and so I just kind of glide around it.
I can kind of imagine this kind of person, every time they read about "wokeness" it's some rabid right-winger attacking things they treasure or think of as virtuous things and so the whole discourse around the word gets poisoned. That would make sense. *
But, like, people online do not always make honest arguments. Do you know anyone who honestly makes this kind of argument in real life?
* It makes sense, it's just not defensible. If we abandoned certain words when they became so poisonous that they made sensible discourse impossible, we would have abandoned "feminism" in the 90s.
For the record, no, I've only ever met with this argument either in ACX comments or HackerNews comments. I guess I also have to admit that maybe I discounted the bad faith route on account of believing the ACX and HN are at a higher sanity baseline, but maybe I overindexed on it.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist...
I love seeing the wokies run for cover like this. Of course they're like cockroaches: they scatter in the light but will be back as soon as the coast is clear. Still, I'm enjoying the moment.
It definitely is, but it's also a part of a somewhat popular bad faith strategy to dismiss concerns.
First you state that it isn't happening, so you demand proof with which to burden the other side, once the proof is provided then you jump into how it's not a problem anyway. This gets worse the more picky you decide to be with the data.
"Now, it's possible to endlessly talk about what these things are, or whether they're virtuous or not. But to claim that these things don't exist, or that they are not part of a larger cultural theme, seems preposterous"
I think you misunderestand the objection to the word. The claim (at least has been made by me) is not "things referred to as woke don't exist" nor is it "none of those things are bad." It's that "using the same word to point at such an inconsistent sorts of things is confused at best and deliberately disingenuous at worst."
I spend a lot of time in left-wing online spaces. Within those spaces, the word "woke" is treated as a joke, with the general sense of "conservatives have no idea what 'woke' is, but they know they don't like it." And in more mixed spaces, somebody complaining about "woke" only to be asked to define the term is so common as to be cliche. And in my experience nobody ever manages to proffer anything like a working definition, and most of the time they don't try. "Woke means anything conservatives don't like" is the joke on the left, but it also seems like a closer and more useful definition that ANYTHING I've ever seen from anyone using the word seriously. I might take my own stab at defining it in a separate comment: if so it will be more precise than what I just said, but much the same in sentiment because as far as I can glean from the usage *that's what it signifies.*
Here on ACX I've had this discussion a couple of times, and the responses I remember are things like "don't play coy, you know what it means" and "well, I know it when I see it." These are, to put it mildly, not the products of an intellectual position that is both honest and well-considered. They're B+ tribal signals, but solid Fs at communicating anything to anyone not in the loop.
A commenter below likens defending wokeness to a motte-and-bailey, but I see something like the mirror of that. Instead of being used defensively, this seems to be more akin to spreading out to attack as broad a front as possible when resistance is light, but collapsing down to a more defensible position when pressed and then *pretending that's what you meant all along.* I'm strongly reminded of the "demotist/eargreyish bait-and-switch" from this classic (but very long) SSC post:
You can get the full scoop by reading just searching "2.3" and reading just that section, but the executive summary is that various NRX thinkers put forward the claim that "demotist countries were bloodier and more violent than monarchies" where "demotist" was used in a very usual sense to mean "modern democracies PLUS fascism PLUS various socialist governments." Scott reasonably pointed out that the entire purpose of this grouping was to lump thriving democracies in with some of the bloodiest failures in recent history and pretend they were somehow part of the same thing.
It seems fairly obvious to me that this is the purpose of (the most recent explosion of usage of) "woke." Myself and most of the people I know IRL would be generally positive about warnings in books (they take up little space and are useful for some), mostly indifferent about language changes like homeless -> unhoused (language changes all the time) and UTTERLY HORRIFIED about HM's example blow of "consultants recommending the bulk firing of white employees." And yet somehow not only are all of those things "woke," but "woke" is a word that we're all supposed to understand and have opinions on without ever once having an explicit meaning laid out for us. At least the NRX folks came out and said what "demotist" was supposed to mean before trying to pin things on it. Yeesh.
Now, let me be 100% crystal clear here: culture changes. Culture is *always* changing, though generally pretty slowly. One can certainly pull forth a parade of examples of changing culture, and map out various regions where it changes faster or slower or in different directions. And of course there have been cultural shifts in the U.S. and the wider anglosphere in the past few decades, unevenly hitting some places more than others. When people pull out examples of "woke" things, I'll grant that almost all of them are products of recent cultural change, generally things that could never have happened 40 years ago. And they're generally things that are vaguely left-aligned on the left-right axis of politics (but that's almost redundant with the previous, for reasons I may get into later). Do they have a consistent commonality beyond that? Is there a more coherent thread that ties them all together. I'm gonna go with a solid "maybe" there. I kinda get what you mean when you say they're "part of a larger cultural theme" but the fact that neither you nor I nor anyone else I've talked to seems to be willing or able to succinctly DESCRIBE that theme--despite, in many cases being EXTREMELY CERTAIN it exists--is to me a major red flag for confused and disordered thinking.
My current null hypothesis is something like "if you consider your own cultural norms to be the center of the universe, then motion in ANY direction looks like motion away from the center, and different directions and magnitudes can easily blur into the general 'away-from-center' tendency that's your main concern." I'm not entirely satisfied with that, I feel like it's probably leaving something important out. But people who take "woke" as a unified thing seriously seem to be really, REALLY averse to proffering any alternatives.
"And in more mixed spaces, somebody complaining about "woke" only to be asked to define the term is so common as to be cliche. And in my experience nobody ever manages to proffer anything like a working definition, and most of the time they don't try."
There's a reason for this. Every time I referred to "woke" in a conversation, I was criticized for not understanding it or asked with critical tone what I thought it meant. Every time I tried to head that off by explaining what I understood it to mean, I was criticized (and usually blocked) for "mansplaining". This was also what I'd observe when other people tried, unless they were already known to be on the critic's side.
From this, I inferred that any progressive using that word wasn't inviting discussion from opponents, but rather laying a minefield for them. It was linguistic war of aggression.
That sounds like a frustrating experience for sure, and you have my sympathy. But the obvious takeaway from that is, well, exactly what I've been trying to say all along: the word doesn't HAVE a consistent, well-defined meaning. It means a bunch of different things to a bunch of different people (many of whom are unaware of this), and using it is going to be actively antithetical to clear communication.
The obvious solution (if you care about clear communication) is to simply say the things you DO mean clearly in different and less-fraught terminology. But it seems to me that many of the people continuing to use it very decidedly don't care about clear communication: they like the fact that it ruffles feathers, starts fights and intimates at all sorts of bad things without tying them down to any sort of a clear position that one could actually criticize.
"From this, I inferred that any progressive using that word wasn't inviting discussion from opponents, but rather laying a minefield for them. It was linguistic war of aggression."
I notice that I am confused by this paragraph. The previous paragraph implies you were the one using it (or watching others use it in similar fashion) and having your usage criticized. This implies that progressives were the ones using it (which you consider to have been done in bad faith). My experience is that for at least the past three or four years, left-leaning people mostly DON'T use it. If they do, they're using if facetiously: referring sardonically to the muddled-and-mostly-meaningless right-wing usage, rather than attempting to communicate anything overt.
I typically don't bring up "woke" except in response to someone else. That someone else is typically an advocate. That's what I was referring to. And yes, they did use it.
If elaboration would help: when it comes up, it's in casual conversation, as opposed to something more formal such as a discussion involving office policy. There, the term DEI is more often used.
Speaking of office policy, it's just as vague and mine laden there. On multiple occasions, I've seen careful pushback from people I can tell are worried about things like reverse discrimination, or setting the stage for it. They notice that membership in what's considered an oppressed group merits higher degrees of sympathetic scrutiny for past wrongs. Functionally, this results in greater chances for promotion for them, and of disciplinary action for people who even say things they declare as offensive. By itself, this is understandable, but when, say, a Christian attempts to lodge a complaint of offense, I've seen such complaints themselves interpreted as "denying the existence" of members of the former groups, no matter how carefully worded. And while it's possible there's some veiled assertion that someone's existence is in fact being denied, leadership literally shuts the conversation down before it gets resolved.
Even the term "diversity and inclusion" is vague and resistant to resolution. When promotion time arrives, is victim status being considered as a factor even when competence ought to make the decision clear? Anyone who even raises the question gets attacked, and attacks cannot be redressed, and if the question is prefaced with another question to try to innocently resolve meaning, the preface is likewise attacked. "Just Asking Questions".
What would have to be true for use of the word to be neither confused nor disingenuous? My impression is that woke things became more common at a similar time and for similar reasons. Some are benign and some are harmful, but the same is true of the effects of any social phenomenon. The political effects of any changes in them would likely be attributed to the same groups - right-wing demagogues would look powerful if they reduce the level of any of these, even though a given individual would consider some such changes good and others bad. Each of these facts seems sufficient to make this a useful category (I think you know which category you’re trying to argue is incoherent, if not, my post applies to the OP’s list of examples).
>"Woke means anything conservatives don't like" is the joke on the left, but it also seems like a closer and more useful definition that ANYTHING I've ever seen from anyone using the word seriously
Trivially false. American-style conservatives stereotypically don't like communists, socialists, Muslim fundamentalists, the Chinese government, drug dealers, drug users, and immigrants (or at least the illegal Spanish-speaking ones). Yet the actual membership of these groups are rarely described as "woke". Some of their apologists and advocates, yes, but not the actual immigrants, fundamentalists, etc.
I'm not going to bother reposting Freddie DeBoer here, but he's absolutely right. "Woke" has a clearly-understood meaning, it's not that hard to figure out, and if you don't want us to use that label then it's on you to find another one. Honestly, it was a mistake for us all to have stopped calling you all "social justice warriors".
Wow, really? The definition that is put forth AS A JOKE isn't perfectly accurate. Whoda thunk?
If you had bothered to read *the very next sentence* you might have noticed that I indicated that the joking definition was insufficiently precise. I'll agree that Muslim fundamentalists, drug dealers aren't generally described as "woke" by anyone. In fact, I was considering using that very example if I tried to ground my own attempt to define the usage of the word.
"I'm not going to bother reposting Freddie DeBoer here, but he's absolutely right. "Woke" has a clearly-understood meaning, it's not that hard to figure out,"
This is a very, very stupid game, and you continuing to play it despite it being called out repeatedly elsewhere is extremely tiresome. If it has a clearly-understood meaning, the TELL ME. I genuinely don't know what YOU think it means. I can't read your mind, I can't read anyone else's mind, and people *keep saying stuff like this* and then *keep refusing to elaborate.* Anywhere else I'd think that was trolling. But here on SCC I can only conclude that many of you are very confused. Certainly I get that many people feel *quite certain* that the word has a clear meaning, and yet for all their certain seem utterly unable to elaborate on it.
The left-wingers are well aware that conservatives don't like drug users, but that doesn't make drug users "woke".
Mind you, a lot of people on the left think that all of those conservative-hated folks *should* be woke, and some of them deceive themselves into thinking they actually are woke. But they're mostly not.
I was riffing off the idea that "woke" isn't so much a term conservatives use for anything don't like, as it is a term that left-wingers use by proxy for conservatives, for anything *left-wingers* think conservatives don't like. I probably should have left it alone - the phrasing was too clunky for me to get it across.
I made no claim that communism and socialism are or are not woke. Only that American conservatives generally use different adjectives to describe them. Source: repeated observation of American conservatives complaining about things they don't like.
*Marxism*, yes, they'll sometimes describe that as "woke", following the lead of the Woke Marxists themselves. But the actual communists and socialists of the world, generally *don't* get described as "Marxist". The socialists have effectively rejected that branding, and the communists mostly live in places where Marx never had much influence.
Actual socialist countries... Dial back - this is why I effing hate the term when it's used outside of discussing specific implementations like, for example, the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it's in the name of the bloody thing) - everyone just assigns whatever meaning they want to it.
Anyway, the USSR would have been a wokester's nightmare: forget same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships were illegal, with real prison terms attached. Trans issues would have been incomprehensible, the whole bathroom thing even more so. And their "equity" shtick would be laughed out of the room, "from each according to ability, to each according labor" or something like this was the guiding philosophy.
Yeah, I definitely want to hear about how the USSR or Castro's Cuba were woke wrt gay rights, holding powerful men to account for mistreatment of women, etc.
Cultural Marxism (now THAT is an actually abused term) isn't even communist or socialist, it's the result of grabbing the oppressor v oppressed dynamic and applying it to identity politics.
It's the identity politics part which gets into "woke". Unions, for example, aren't "woke", diversity training is. Fighting for a higher minimum wage isn't "woke", a cafeteria having higher prices if you are white is.
Yeah, I think there's an identity-politics frame for thinking about politics. Woke is one subset of that--where the identities that matter are mostly ethnic and sexual minorities.
There are plenty of non-woke identity politics out there, too--white nationalists and black separatists are good examples. I don't know how the Nation of Islam views gay rights issues, but I'm guessing it doesn't sound all that much like what the median sophomore gender studies student at Brown would say.
The other defining feature of woke in practice is the tactics--public shaming, contagious sin (if I associate with you I'm just as bad as you) punished by shunning, trying to get people fired for their beliefs. That's all associated with wokism now, but it's not like the 1980 conservatives getting the lesbian teacher fired by complaining en masse to the school board about her were woke. It's just a tactic.
Communism/socialism and wokeness are orthogonal at best. A goodly proportion of communists and socialists will tell you that woke is a distraction elites came up with to channel left-wing energy in directions which won't threaten their own privileges. And a goodly proportion of the woke will tell you to pay no attention to the Bernie-bros.
Because actual (sort of) Communist countries aren’t described as woke, and neither are socialist countries except to the extent they do things like the ones on the list above. Cultural Marxism might or might not be communist, but the communism pre-dated and is distinct from cultural Marxism. (Maybe its creed should be, “From each according to their privilege, to each according to their oppression”.)
> It's that "using the same word to point at such an inconsistent sorts of things is confused at best and deliberately disingenuous at worst."
For me, the word has a pretty clear meaning that aligns with how PG describes it: " An aggressively performative focus on social justice. "
- Aggressively: the presence of an implicit "or else" statement. For example, mandatory DEI trainings that essentially say that you need to agree with what is being said because questioning it is racist, and racists are very bad people.
- Performative: not having actual impact on the issue it purports to be about. For example, the implicit bias test has been shown not to replicate; adding warnings to books about eg. misogynistic language probably does nothing to diminish misogyny, adding a pride flag to your corporate twitter avatar does nothing to promote LGBTQ rights, etc.
- Social justice: having to do with issues like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
This category describes all of the examples I gave in my original comment. It seems clear to me, even when I was taking my first steps in corporate America in the previous decade.
Again, I don't want to argue whether these things are good or bad. Just that, clearly, there is a common thread running through all of these events, that it's not just "anything conservatives dislike", and that it's also weird for someone to claim that these are uncorrelated events that don't merit a unifying label.
Ooh, thank you for this comment. I'm a little late in reading it (busy week) but this is by far the most productive comment of an otherwise frustrating thread.
Not only is this an actual, explicit definition, but it's one that seems both practically possible to apply, and not obviously contrary to the usage. I think this hits the nail pretty well on the head, which is quite refreshing after watching a lot of people pounding vigorously on the joist.
My main quibble is that a lot of things that get called "woke" in practice fail to hit all three points, and sometimes only hit one or half of one. For example, a certain subset of people are obsessed with criticizing things like casting choices for movies and TV shows as "woke." Likewise stuff like pride flags and land acknowledgments. They all can be seen as having a social justice angle, and can all be viewed as performative, but simply doing your own thing in your own space is about as non-aggressive as it gets. Things like pronoun pins and content warnings don't even check the performative box, IMO, since they do address the issue they purport to address[1] even if people unconcerned with those issues find them silly. And a lot of the legal battles over things like trans rights may be aggressive, but they are *anything but* performative: they still get decried as "woke" with some regularity.
Anyhow, I don't think that quibble is a huge problem for your definition overall: some people can use a word in ways contrary to the definition without that definition being unworkable. But I'd like to propose a second definition that I think covers a lot of the missing ground:
"Woke" means anything red-tribe people consider a cultural signifier of the blue-tribe.
Unfortunately, this definition is much less convenient and easy-to-use than yours because it requires understanding the dynamic between the tribes AND which things people consider blue-tribe signifiers varies a lot by the person. But I think it fits some of the usage patterns that yours doesn't quite cover.
I think this whole conversation would be much simpler if people just used the word in the sense you've laid out. But unfortunately I think it gets used unevenly in both senses. And I think this is part of what makes it so popular and, well, so *convenient* for conservatives: there's both a smaller set of legitimately bad and outrageous things that they can hold up as core examples and an absolutely enormous set of generally silly and insignificant things that they can use to show that "wokeness is everywhere." There are lots of people who will object to many of the more outrageous aggressive-performative-SJW things but who don't actually have a problem with a lot of the benign trappings of blue tribe culture: getting these people uncritically using the term (as Scott unfortunately does) creates momentum and legitimacy that they could never get merely by grousing about pride flags.
I hesitate to call this a motte-and-bailey, because I think genuine motte-and-bailey situations are actually pretty rare: usually its different people understanding the same term differently rather than one person or group deliberately trying to deceive. But that's why it irks me so much when people are so careless about insisting that "no, really, everyone knows what it means" and act affronted when somebody claims not to. And why I'm willing to harp so hard on asking for clarification. So thank you for being part of the solution, not part of the problem!
[1] For those wondering, in both cases their purpose is to allow certain sorts of people to more comfortably navigate cultural spaces that are by-default somewhat hostile to them (much more modest goals than those claimed by a lot of the weapons-grade SJWing people talk about here).
Thanks for writing this out. I think this really gets at the critical point of the matter: that some people use it in the Paul Graham sense and some in the very broad sense that you describe. I think I saw somewhere else in this thread someone (maybe you?) bring up the topic of people calling Arcane woke, which sounds like an eye-rolling type of categorization error.
Hence, I feel reassured that the PG-ian "woke" phenomenon definitely exists. But the red tribe "woke" isn't even a phenomenon but rather an ingroup label for the outgroup.
Somewhat tangential, but I have to wonder if PG, Scott, and me (any many others, too) that subscribe to the PG's definition have this in common that they are grey tribe members living amongst blue tribe. One of the consequences of that is rarely or never being in contact with the red tribe definition of woke, which leads to using the same term as they do but for a very different purpose.
Suffice it to say that there'd be no such thing as wokeness for us to be arguing about, if the woke demanded half as much rigor in their definitions of such words as "racist" or "transphobic" as they do for "woke".
Also "fascist", "white supremacy", and "rape culture".
But being on the other side of those gives me some sympathy for the frustration that a (hypothetical) reasonable leftist might feel upon hearing their opponents criticise "wokeness". It is, the hypothetical reasonable leftist would say, a vague term encompasses a whole bunch of things, some of which are obviously terrible and some of which are actually reasonable, and labelling them all together only makes sense if you're reflexively opposed to all of them, not if you're pro some and anti others.
At this point, debates about "woke" are cliched, and when I saw Paul Graham had written an essay about "woke" I internally groaned as if he'd written ten thousand words on the Is Die Hard A Christmas Movie debate. At this point, righties should focus on coming up with better and more descriptive terms to describe the specific phenomena they're objecting to.
(Similarly, lefties should come up with better terms than "racism", "fascism", "rape culture" et cetera so that we can have meaningful debates in those spaces as well.)
>At this point, righties should focus on coming up with better and more descriptive terms to describe the specific phenomena they're objecting to.
The current term is reasonably well understood by almost everyone who uses it, and entirely fit for purpose. And any alternative term, unless it is a five thousand word essay carefully defining all the edge cases, will be subject to the same baseless criticisms as "woke". So I'm not seeing the point.
I mean, as FdB says, if you want to come up with a better term yourself, we'll probably listen. But it needs to be simple, and it needs to encompass pretty much all the groups that the rest of us feel are sufficiently similar to require a blanket term, and it needs to not have the connotation, "and of course everyone smart enough to know the term will know that we're right about everything". But I don't think you're going to come up with anything better than "woke".
> But being on the other side of those gives me some sympathy for the frustration that a (hypothetical) reasonable leftist might feel upon hearing their opponents criticise "wokeness".
How so? It was their responsibility to not be seen as a plague on society. Whatever way you look at it, they've completely and utterly failed at everything they set out to do. They don't deserve sympathy for that.
> and labelling them all together only makes sense if you're reflexively opposed to all of them
No, I think there are specific factual disagreements that make sense of them. For "fascism", its the belief that Peronism leads to Hitlerism. With "white supremacy", its that we value things like "being on time" *because* black people dont. For rape culture, Im not even sure there is any conflation happening other than in the name.
>For rape culture, Im not even sure there is any conflation happening other than in the name.
Depending on who you ask, "rape culture" can refer to a society justifying, sometimes even promoting rape, to a society that doesn't bend itself backwards in order to punish rapists or to the objectification of women
Wait, do people actually think that "being on time" is something others only care about post-hoc because it allows them to discriminate against black people?
That seems...clearly wrong to me. I mean, factories and other places that involve shift work obviously care about people being on time regardless of the person's race. Or ask anyone who has ever had a cable repairman schedule an appointment between "8am and 4pm" whether being on time matters.
Maybe that could apply in companies where there are a lot of "email jobs" where being particularly punctual isn't all that important.
Political labels are useful in that they collapse a lot of different policy preferences or ideas or something into a single variable. If I tell you Alice is a libertarian and Bob is super-MAGA and Carol is woke and Dave is a centrist Democrat, you can predict their positions on a bunch of issues, and infer a lot about the models of the world they use to understand those issues. That is what makes it useful.
I don't think woke is less useful in that context than MAGA or libertarian--there are variants of each one (JD Vance != Elon Musk, David Friedman != Ron Paul, Kimberlé Crenshaw != Ta-Nahisi Coates, etc.), but you know a lot about someone's views from that label.
If I say "I oppose MAGA/Trumpism in general, I think the whole set of ideas and policies is a trainwreck," you can understand what I'm opposed to. And I think the same is true if I say "I oppose wokeism in general, I think the whole set of ideas and policies is a trainwreck."
Now, when you want to argue for which policies and ideas are good/bad, you need to drill down to the specifics--affirmative action in education is very different from requiring inclusive language in government. But at a high level, it's meaningful to speak of support/opposition at the level of broad ideologies.
I was going to post the exact same FdB link, thanks for posting it.
This whole "it's impossible to discuss "woke" as a thing so you guys should just give up" trope is an exceptionally uncharitable and obfuscatory tactic that should be given no quarter.
"If you don't want me to use the word "woke", fine. Feel free to suggest a better word. Not talking about the topic is not an option."
I feel like I'm going to grow weary of repeating this, but you very clearly and very BADLY missed my point.
The objection was not and never was that "demotist" is somehow a *bad word* and that we should be using a different one. The objection was, and I quote "here's a nickel kid; buy yourself a real category."
I'm perfectly happy to discuss any sweeping cultural or political changes that anyone wants to discuss PROVIDED they can clearly indicate the topic of discussion to me.
So, for example, if you want to discuss some proposed changes to the educational curriculum, feel free to point out those changes, who's proposing them, where they'd be happening and (if the topic is interesting to me) I'll gladly talk about them. Ditto with police reform. Ditto with workplace hiring standards.
If you have *multiple different* proposed changes to the educational curriculum, proposed in multiple different places, by multiple different people at multiple different times, my basic ask would be "as part of your request, could you please do the basic work of tying together what key features you think these proposals have *in common* so we're not confusing ourselves by jumping between many different proposals without any clear direction of discussion." If you can do that, great. If not, I'd respectfully suggest that you either come back when you can or find a more coherent topic.
Now, if instead of this, you've decided that you really, absolutely MUST talk about curriculum reform AND police reform AND workplace hiring standards AND the selection of topics and various medical conferences AND casting and scripting trends in television and movies AND integrity in video game journalism[1] AND changing attitudes towards gender and sexuality AND the various sorts of cringy bullshit that corporate HR departments make their employees sit through and whether they've got more or less cringy (and in what ways) over time AND whatever vapid crap some has-been celebrity just tweeted out to try to become relevant again for 15 minutes...well, at that point I'm going to have to start by asking you "why?" As in "why beneath all the heavens would you POSSIBLY want to try to have a conversation that so unmanageably broad and covers so many different areas of modern life?" And it's possible you have a good answer for me. It's possible you have managed to gaze deep into the warp and weft of modern life and glean secret patterns that escape me explain to me how that seemingly untenably broad array of topics is all joined together by a common thread that is narrow and clear enough that a single human conversation can possibly follow it. And maybe you can. I'll listen if you think you have an answer. But every PREVIOUS time I've asked the question, people have insisted, INSISTED that yes, there definitely is an answer, it's so obvious that there is, how could you deny it, what's wrong with you...and then they never actually tell me. So I'm not holding my breath.
I think now would be a good time to remember this core principle of clear thinking and clear communication:
"The tenth virtue is precision. One comes and says: The quantity is between 1 and 100. Another says: The quantity is between 40 and 50. If the quantity is 42 they are both correct, but the second prediction was more useful and exposed itself to a stricter test. What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world. The narrowest statements slice deepest, the cutting edge of the blade. "
I would really appreciate you trying to approach the topic with some precision instead of telling me I *have* to talk about this topic without ever, EVER telling me what the topic IS.
p.s. The obvious criticism of Freddie's piece is that he is writing it as though he is addressing a single person. Does he think those "sweeping social and political changes" are all being demanded universally by one person or one coherent group? Does he think the push back at the various terms is all coming from the same place? The world is BIG. Even narrowing down to "that subset of Americans who visibly participate in online political life," its still an absolutely enormous and extremely heterogeneous group of people. Why on Earth would you expect them to agree on ANYTHING?
[1] No really, that's definitely the issue, it's not about anything else.
This is simply what happens when you look at a large group from inside vs from outside.
You could similarly argue that there is no such thing as Christianity, because do you know any person who is simultaneously a Catholic *and* a Protestant *and* a Jehovah Witness? No, those are three different groups, they believe that the differences between them are astronomically large, and each of them thinks the other two are going to hell.
And yet, from the perspective of an atheist or a Hindu, it makes sense to describe all of them approximately as "those guys who talk about Jesus". Even if some of them are saying different things about Jesus than the others, and some of them also talk a lot about Mary, etc.
Or consider the "political right". Should we stop using a word that simultaneously describes monarchists, theocrats, classical liberals, libertarians, and (this part is disputed by some) national socialists?
Should there be a word that describes both Stalin and Trotsky? Those guys hated each other, disagreed on many things, and one of them got the other murdered. Clearly, the person who uses a category to describe them both is just talking nonsense.
*
I agree that it is better to discuss individual topics separately, if we want to talk about the individual topics. The correct solution to education is different from the correct solution to police, etc.
But it also makes sense to notice that people who want to start all debates by acknowledging that the place where they are talking belonged to Neanderthals many years ago, the people who believe that math lessons should be about social justice rather than about numbers, the people who keep inventing new pronouns, and the people who insist that Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong, seem to be coming from... approximately the same cluster in the ideology space. (Even if not all of them care about all these topics, and some of them even disagree with others. That's because the cluster consists of sub-clusters.)
It even allows you to make some specific predictions, for example that they will deny that people could legitimately disagree with their ideas, and if you try to explain your position, instead of debating you they will try to get you cancelled. That you should expect their arguments to be emotional and exaggerated; which in real life may involve a student hysterically screaming right in your face, never letting you finish a single sentence; online it means insisting that admins need to ban everyone who disagrees, and that a group where only 99% people agree with their position, but 1% disagrees and is still allowed to participate, is a horrible place that should be avoided by all decent people, because it definitely makes women and minorities feel unsafe. (Again, not all people in the cluster are doing this. Some of them are smart, and nice, and open to debate. But if many people from that cluster are coming near you, this is what you should reasonably expect.)
"This is simply what happens when you look at a large group from inside vs from outside."
In a word, no. There are many large groups that have very clearBut it also makes sense to notice that people who want to start all debates by acknowledging that the place where they are talking belonged to Neanderthals many years ago, the people who believe that math lessons should be about social justice rather than about numbers, the people who keep inventing new pronouns, and the people who insist that Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong, seem to be coming from... approximately the same cluster in the ideology space. (Even if not all of them care about all these topics, and some of them even disagree with others. That's because the cluster consists of sub-clusters.) boundaries, even from the outside. And yes, Christians are one such. No, they don't all have perfectly identical beliefs. But it would be pretty easy to describe a minimal set of beliefs that (nearly) all Christians hold and (almost) no non-Christians hold. I think you'd have a much harder time doing that for "woke people" than you would for "Christians;" that's a large fraction of the point right there. The category boundaries are anything but clean.
But this is an especially bad example because, well, "woke" isn't even referring to a group half the time. It's referring...I dunno, a vibe, I guess? You can't simply describe it based on group membership, because most of the time when people are complaining about "wokeness" they're not complaining about a WHO, they're complaining about a WHAT. A corporate DEI training, for example, could plausibly contain actually zero people that would meet anyone's standards of woke, and yet the event itself would still be referred to that way.
"Or consider the "political right". Should we stop using a word that simultaneously describes monarchists, theocrats, classical liberals, libertarians, and (this part is disputed by some) national socialists?"
Well, yes. This is a much better point than the previous one. "Right wing" does have a lot of the same incoherence that "woke" does[1] and I genuinely think it's a useful exercise to a. try and define it and test how well your definitions work and b. try and express ideas without it and see how well you can do that. To the extent that I think the usage of "right wing" is *less* of a linguistic disaster than the usage of "woke" it's because it's much older and has stayed much more culturally stable over the years, removing a large fraction of the danger of different people talking past each other when they use it.
"Should there be a word that describes both Stalin and Trotsky? Those guys hated each other, disagreed on many things, and one of them got the other murdered. "
Aaaand, we're right back into nonsense again. As with "Christian," it would be very, VERY easy to lay out a set of beliefs that Stalin and Trostsky and Lenin and Mao all shared, but that FDR and Churchill and Truman and Eisenhower and Thatcher did not.
"But it also makes sense to notice that people who want to start all debates by acknowledging that the place where they are talking belonged to Neanderthals many years ago, the people who believe that math lessons should be about social justice rather than about numbers, the people who keep inventing new pronouns, and the people who insist that Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong, seem to be coming from... approximately the same cluster in the ideology space. (Even if not all of them care about all these topics, and some of them even disagree with others. That's because the cluster consists of sub-clusters.)"
And at this point I think we lose each other entirely. From my side it appears that your problems go much, much deeper than not knowing how to define a word that you insist is somehow meaningful, into "not living on the same planet as I do." Pro tip: if you think a particular cultural movement is so important "not talking about the topic is not an option," it would behoove you to try to understand it at a level slightly deeper than "internet shitposter."
[1] And don't get me started on "liberal" which is much worse.
I think "a minimal set of beliefs almost all insiders and almost no outsiders hold" is usually downstream of a uniting organisation. "The hippies" are not a group by those criteria. Im not sure there are any groups with a belief almost no outsiders hold, unless membership is defined by holding that single belief, or its a deliberately strange belief like certain religious ones. And thats for groups that dont even want to avoid being seen as one.
>A corporate DEI training, for example, could plausibly contain actually zero people that would meet anyone's standards of woke, and yet the event itself would still be referred to that way.
Do you find it confusing in general that tasks can be done by people none of whom cares?
> It's possible you have managed to gaze deep into the warp and weft of modern life and glean secret patterns that escape me explain to me how that seemingly untenably broad array of topics is all joined together by a common thread that is narrow and clear enough that a single human conversation can possibly follow it.
I have your answer. It's femininity. Have you ever wondered why every trait considered "evil" is associated with masculinity? Sadism, violence, promiscuity, power-seeking... all inherently masculine traits. And the branding of these traits as evil is all a result of a two millennia-long effort to feminize humanity, culminating in the current state of affairs, where men have paradoxically oppressed themselves from fulfilling the obligations of their sex.
Do you see now why all these men are so angry? All these presidents make these promises about giving people freedom, but Trump is the only one to offer people true freedom: freedom from conscience. Freedom from this false morality that has consumed this world for so long. And now they finally have the chance to truly be free.
Of course I understand that neither I nor the new administration are interested in conserving the status quo. We are entering a brave new future. ...And honestly, what are you going to do about it? You lot don't have the spine to risk your lives for the sake of your beliefs.
I think it's more like typically masculine ways of aggression are publicly recognized as "evil", but typically feminine ways (e.g. bullying someone, mostly verbally, to the point of suicide) are not. Violence against women is discussed a lot, violence against children not that much. Female genital mutilation was a topic (because people in developed countries automatically imagined that it is men hurting women), then people realized that it is actually done by older women, so it suddenly stopped being a topic (complaining about it too much could now get you cancelled for being culturally insensitive).
> Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone and androgen in males. In humans, testosterone plays a key role in the development of male reproductive tissues such as testicles and prostate, as well as promoting secondary sexual characteristics such as increased muscle and bone mass, and the growth of body hair. It is associated with increased aggression, sex drive, dominance, courtship display, and a wide range of behavioral characteristics.
> There are two theories on the role of testosterone in aggression and competition. The first is the challenge hypothesis which states that testosterone would increase during puberty, thus facilitating reproductive and competitive behavior which would include aggression. It is therefore the challenge of competition among males that facilitates aggression and violence. Studies conducted have found direct correlation between testosterone and dominance, especially among the most violent criminals in prison who had the highest testosterone. The same research found fathers (outside competitive environments) had the lowest testosterone levels compared to other males.
> The second theory is similar and known as "evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory of male aggression". Testosterone and other androgens have evolved to masculinize a brain to be competitive, even to the point of risking harm to the person and others. By doing so, individuals with masculinized brains as a result of pre-natal and adult life testosterone and androgens, enhance their resource acquiring abilities to survive, attract and copulate with mates as much as possible.
> The rise in testosterone during competition predicted aggression in males, but not in females. Subjects who interacted with handguns and an experimental game showed rise in testosterone and aggression. Natural selection might have evolved males to be more sensitive to competitive and status challenge situations, and that the interacting roles of testosterone are the essential ingredient for aggressive behaviour in these situations. Testosterone mediates attraction to cruel and violent cues in men by promoting extended viewing of violent stimuli. Testosterone-specific structural brain characteristic can predict aggressive behaviour in individuals.
The definition that comes to mind for me is "anti-white racist and/or anti-male sexist policies/attitudes-leading-to-policies, mislabeled as equality or equity". Likely there are other definitions for other contexts or people, but that's what comes to mind for me. Bit of a mouthful, and probably difficult to articulate for a lot of people. But I think it at least gets at why the label keeps getting applied in hostile fashion, and likewise disputed.
I'll give you significant points for actually trying to answer the question as opposed to dodging it. The smaller problem is that it's scope is rather narrow: a lot of stuff gets labeled as "woke" that doesn't have anything to do with any sort of racism or sexism. The larger problem is that what counts "anti-white racist" and "anti-male sexist" is going to vary really, really, really widely based on who's doing the judging.
I'd guess that very nearly nobody thinks of *themselves* as anti-white racists or anti-male sexists, so one assumes that we'd have to base it on other peoples' judgement of them, rather than peoples' self-judgement of what they're doing. But outside judgements vary a lot too. Personally, I've encountered only a very small (but decidedly nonzero) number of people who seemed in any by anti-white racist or anti-male sexist *in their motivations*, despite spending lots of time in left-wing spaces. I've met a rather larger number who could maybe, possibly be considered that way if one considers the consequences of their preferred policies: but judging large-scale sociopolitical consequences is nightmarishly complex and tricky, even more so than judging unstated motivations. I guess this would sort of produce the pattern where a lot of conservatives seem to think *everyone* on the left is woke, while a lot of left-wingers think the term is meaningless.
At any rate, the last thing I'll note is if that's the way we're defining the word, then certainly any fears about "the spread of wokeness" must be VASTLY overblown. I notice pretty much nothing in the way of laws or other formal rules discriminating against men or white people. No laws prohibiting white people from holding certain jobs, no laws barring men from owning property or opening bank accounts, no restaurants with "no whities" signs in the windows, no restrictions on voting or owning property, no companies with explicit policies of not hiring men into certain roles[1]. In which case there can't really be a problem, can there? Without those, the only ways one could see this anti-white, anti-male discrimination is in the way people talk--which I've been repeatedly assured we must never judge or react negatively to lest we infringe on their sacred freedom of speech--or in more subtle, unstated, informal systems of discrimination invisibly embedded in our culture. But I've also been repeatedly assured by many well-meaning conservatives this last is completely impossible: that the ONLY possible forms of discrimination are overt and rule-based and that it's CERTAINLY not possible for any groups to be systemically disadvantaged merely by people's attitudes, habits and unconscious biases.
[1] Wait, that's not true: there are strip clubs and Hooters and porn films. Are these wokeness at work?
Well, those well-meaning conservatives can certainly have been wrong and/or misexplaining - I'd put it more as "the only *legally actionable* forms of discrimination are overt and rule-based". If you don't like how Disney's implemented its hiring policy, well, you still need to come up with the evidence on the overtness front to get the courts to agree. Or, the direction it looks like they're going, change (or clarify, to be charitable) the laws to make the previous behavior explicitly illegal.
But it nevertheless doesn't have to be formally encoded to be "woke". Black Lives Matter, for instance, is a fairly central example - so far as I know, they haven't been arrested or sued en masse (individually, maybe; embezzlement comes to mind), merely disagreed with regarding the causes of their concerns. I suppose you could argue that they were more anti-black than anti-white given their effects: de-policing resulted in a significantly higher murder rate in the black community, if I remember correctly. But the attitude certainly *looked* anti-white (by some equivocation over cops/whiteness), especially when contrasted with the reactions to counter-slogans "All Lives Matter" or "It's okay to be white".
And what's wrong with that definition? They're in power now, they have no reason to tolerate any of the ridiculous things you mentioned. Culture has changed in the last century, and the point is that every single one of those changes was bad. And they can be reversed, as long as there's the will for it.
" Culture has changed in the last century, and the point is that every single one of those changes was bad."
I will applaud you, at least, for have the courage to come out and SAY that you think the end of segregation, women's rights, gay rights, treating people with disabilities like actual people, and widespread literacy and access to education are all bad things, and that you're willing and indeed eager to roll back all of those changes, no matter how bloody that process is. I'm sadly not able give you similar credit for your understanding of U.S. civics: you seem to have an EXTREMELY poor understanding of the structures of U.S. government, the power they posses and what the practical range of possibilities enabled by narrowly winning one federal election actual are.
Though I'll confess to being a little confused about why I'm seeing this opinion at all: shouldn't you be down at your local coffee house or social club, expounding this to a group of like-minded men over the glasses of non-alcoholic beverage of your choice? It seems the fact that I'm able to read your opinion at all belies your dislike for at least *some* cultural changes: specifically those in the way we communicate.
As an exercise in respecting your opinions and cultural beliefs, I'll do you the favor of correcting for any other such slip-ups you make. From henceforth we can pretend that you shouted them to your mates, in-person and that I--being the sort of human that wouldn't be caught dead with you if my life depended on it--was in no position to hear them.
What value does the US political process have if it fails to give the people what they want? Democracy wasn't invented as a tool for justice. It was initially a tool for compromise, following the idea that the majority has the final say, and that the minority lacks the power to oppose them. A system to prevent needless conflict. It's older than humanity, for god's sake; even beasts like hyenas take votes on action.
Point is, the Constitution is worth less than the parchment it's printed on once it stops serving the needs of the majority. You're free to fight back, of course, but I suspect most of your friends lack the spine to fight for what they believe is right. At the very least, those tech companies were very quick to realize what's good for them. The left is utterly lacking in backbone, and with the knowledge that they don't even have a majority, they've utterly lost the will to fight. The transition will go quite smoothly this time around.
I'll have more to say later if I have time. But the big, obvious, glaring problem with the piece is that it is somewhat over four years old. And they have been four very LONG years. Among other things, the author is living in a world where people on the left still routinely use the word "woke" in a straight-faced, unironic, laudatory sense. Probably somebody out there still talks like this, but I sure don't see it anymore.
I was already reasonably well aware of the origins of the term within the black community, though not being part of that community, I first became aware of it as it started to spread in leftist spaces outside the black community. Used in the way it was used then, the word *did indeed* have a fairly clear and narrow meaning. However, it should be unsurprising that when the word was picked up and spread around by people outside the cultural contexts it originated--people who in many cases not only didn't understand the cultures they were taking it from, but were *actively hostile* to understanding those cultures--no great deal of care was taken in ensuring that the existing meaning was preserved.
If one tries to apply the, say, circa 2016 meaning of the word to many 2024 usages of it, the result is...unimpressive. Are corporate PR campaigns 2016!woke? The very idea is laughable: it's not so much "wrong" as it is "complete and utter gobbledygook." It's like asking if the Earth's orbit around the sun is 'erudite.'"
The origin is still the meaning for anyone who wants one. The problem is the Internet is chock full of children with the printing press, who are both too stupid to understand nuance and actively resent the concept, who endeavor to destroy the meaning of every word until it's simply one more variant of "good" or "bad". Giving the children definitional veto power will leave you with no words at all.
It's the usual reaction to (1) new term is adopted by the Right-Thinking (in this case, seemingly by osmosis from AAVE due to the crossover with progressivism and all the CRT stuff) (2) it is used by the in-crowd to (favourably) describe the right way of thinking and behaving (3) it seeps out into the mainstream (4) us normies start to use it disfavourably due to the excesses of the perpetrators (5) the backlash comes (6) the in-crowd now drop that term like a hot potato, scrabble around for a new one, and in the meanwhile react with "there was never any such a thing, you're just making it up" to complaints about the old regime of Political Correctness/Social Justice/Progressivism/Wokeness/whatever new term is coming down the pike.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
By the bye, I see that "disfavourably" is now obsolete usage and that's why I'm getting the wavy red line spellchecking in the comment box. I guess this is what happens when your formative years are shaped by reading 19th century literature!
"There is one meaning in OED's entry for the adverb disfavourably. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.
This word is now obsolete. It is last recorded around the 1800s."
It seems to me, having followed American progressive spaces, that *before* the term seeped out to normies it was actually starting to get used by more moderate lefties to describe more far-out ones, and the reason why the lefties now consider the way it is used by righties confusing is that the righties are using it for both the more moderate and the more far-out lefties.
Looks like we've officially transitioned from the motte-and-bailey stage of defending wokeness, to the gaslighting and memoryholing phase. I would love for people to not forget.
I certainly won't forget in the late 2010s diversity consultants telling our company that bulk firing white employees under some other pretense would be good for social justice and evening the scales. I won't forget the Robin DiAngelo book club. I won't forget having to take the IAT, and the smug "see, hints of racism, you now must do the work". I was told to "hold space", to "sit with it", to "examine my own discomfort". I won't forget the "how are we going to fix racism" biweekly meetings that you were pressured into at work, better show up, or the optics are not going to be in your favor. I won't forget the "make sure you write down who didn't post the black square on their feed so that we can keep a list of the racists" of 2020.
I think you need to separate the ideology from the tactics and treat them separately. The ideas can be good while the tactics are bad, or vice versa. Or both can be good or both can be bad.
Cancelation campaigns in general seem like an overwhelmingly bad tactic, in that they make the world a much worse place for very little benefit. But I don't think that would be any less true if the cancellation mobs had all been Objectivists or Trad Catholics or Old Labor Democrats. The problem there is the tactic. Shutting down scientists for researching things that upset Trotskyites or Reagan Republicans would be just as bad as shutting them down for upsetting 2020-era progressives, or trans activists, or BLM activists, or whomever else.
In practice, people tend to favor any tactics no matter how vile as long as the target is someone on the other side, and vice versa. Heck, there was a post a while back where Scott wrote about conservatives engaging in cancellation campaigns, even people who had previously made a big deal complaining about cancellation.
In this case both the ideology and the coercive tactics to get you to comply with it are both something I find distasteful and want kept as far away from me as possible.
Sure, but they're different bad things. Good ideas can be defended by bad tactics--if young earth creationists are shamed and ridiculed into silence, or intimidated by the threat of losing their jobs, those are bad tactics, even though young earth creationism is obviously wrong.
Similarly, bad ideas can be defended by good tactics--young earth creationists can try to construct good experiments or meaningful observation, engage in rational discussion with their opponents and try to honestly weigh evidence, etc. That's actually more important, because all the time, there are bad ideas that are expert consensus, and only by those good tactics can those bad ideas ever get overturned. Deplatforming, shaming, and getting opponents fired are tactics that ensure that bad ideas never get corrected.
Amen. As much as I hated the BLM riots at the time, at least they created an indelible cultural memory that can't easily be erased. I suspect the transgender fad will soon follow a similar path and in 10 years the average far-left liberal won't know (or will claim to not know) what gender dysphoria even means.
Ah but you see do you have concrete evidence of all that? More than just memories in your brain? Otherwise you're a racist fascist etc. etc. etc. lying about the Good People 😀
I'm old enough now to have lived through a couple of "what do you mean, that never happened" for various things that I pretty much do remember happening.
I'd like to respectfully point out that the rest of us do not have access to your memories. And while claiming something somebody else claims to remember "never happened" is uncharitable and rude and aggressive, it is nevertheless extremely reasonable to want some manner of outside corroboration about and event before taking it into account.
I've had the following happen on multiple occasions:
1. Some person makes outlandish claim about recent history or current events.
2. I challenge the claim by asking them to provide some manner of source
2a. They repeatedly and huffily reply with some variant of "do your own research" (this step isn't strictly necessary, but somehow it happens with near-perfect regularity).
2b. I must repeatedly and with increasing force lecture them about why unsourced claims are B-A-D for any sort of public discussion until they finally relent.
3. They finally share one or more sources for their claim.
4. I read the sources. The sources don't remotely support their claim. In many cases they actively contradict it.
The striking thing about these interactions isn't that people lie: in most cases I'd wager pretty good money that they're NOT deliberately lying. It's that they interpret what they see and here through their own particular lens, often to the point that saying black is white and up is down and *believing it.* That's scary, and it's stripped away what little chill I may originally had around epistemic hygiene. There but for the grace of Veritas go I.
On the other hand, I do get the frustration. I too remember things that are difficult or impossible to source and want to communicate them with others. It's frustrating. The best antidote for the frustration I've found to date is to repeatedly remind myself not to over-update on isolated events: if I'm pushing a viewpoint that depends in detail on some particular isolated incident, dollars to doughnuts it's not a great viewpoint to begin with and I should think about it more carefully.
People's memories tend to be shockingly bad even for ordinary non-political topics (and yes I've experienced this first hand - finding documentary evidence contradicting my memories on many occasions, etc.). Throwing politics and the deliberate distortions of partisans into the mix just makes things that much more hopeless.
I think the more cynical explanation is the correct one here:
Wokeness gained most of its cultural territory while it was a vague, slippery and formless force. When those who objected couldn't verbalise or explain what was happening, there was nothing to oppose it. Grumbling around the subjects of "ethics in games journalism" or "political correctness gone mad" made people sound stupid and did nothing to mobilise resistance.
Then the word "woke" caught on and suddenly all these disparate phenomena could be nailed down and recognised as one single thing. That's pretty much the exact same point that wokeness began slowing down and eventually losing ground. Because once you can actually talk about what's happening, it's very easy to point out how indefensible it is.
Recently I have noticed friends in the centre-left, along with the media personalities they follow, first denying that "wokeness" exists or that the word means anything. As time went on that strategy wasn't really working, so what they're doing now is heaping scorn and derision on the word (and its users) instead - having failed to destroy the word, they are now trying to ostracise it and make it impossible to use in polite company.
If only they could succeed at that, they could go back to gaining cultural ground again instead of losing it.
I do not believe this is something they are consciously aware of and am very interested in the mechanics behind how they all received these marching orders. But I do believe that is exactly what's going on.
I'm confused. It was "vague, slippery and formless," but also capable of being "nailed down and recognized as one single thing?" That sounds...well...pretty nearly contradictory. And you say a single four-letter word did the nailing down? Excuse my skepticism, but it seems like if it actually WAS as vague and formless as you say, then attaching a single word to it really, REALLY seems like running the risk of oversimplifying and under-specifying. Quite the coincidence that both your friends in the centre-left and various figures in the media seem to agree that the word doesn't do nearly as good a job as you're sure it does, eh?
Quoting a classic SCC post:
"I was tempted to call it “spontaneous order” until I remembered the rationalist proverb that if you don’t understand something, you need to call it by a term that reminds you that don’t understand it or else you’ll think you’ve explained it when you’ve just named it. "
It sure seems like there are a lot of people who are VERY satisfied with themselves for having NAMED this supposedly vague, slippery and formless thing, and seem quite convinced that such is all that's required. I've seen far, far less appetite to explain, to bound, to limit or really in any way to elaborate on said name or what it supposedly means. The name does seem to have done a great job at uniting people against...what? It's honestly very, very confusing to watch people do victory dances to celebrate their impending triumph against a word. Did the word really fight back all that much? Isn't taking previously commonplace words and ritually loading them with all the sins of the word and angrily purging them really more of the left's schtick? Are you sure y'all know what you're doing?
>It sure seems like there are a lot of people who are VERY satisfied with themselves for having NAMED this supposedly vague, slippery and formless thing, and seem quite convinced that such is all that's required. I've seen far, far less appetite to explain, to bound, to limit or really in any way to elaborate on said name or what it supposedly means.
It's just really hard to take the objection at face value.
In the realm of politics we have, for the longest time, used vague terminology. This works because it definitely points to a general direction and that's good enough to make a point the vast majority of the time, the objection if anything has been how loaded the words were.
"Violence" for example started getting used to refer to speech. No big deal there. Truckloads of right-wing politicians around the world were called "fascist", and that seemed fair game, same as "alt-right", Elon Musk, the guy with 12 children, often gets called an "Incel" and is also bundled with "techbros", "defund the police" apparently meant something completely different than what one might infer with a dictionary in hand. None of these words have actual definite meanings but we can infer what diffuse category they point to.
It's really, really hard to believe that this is the one time in which there is an actual problem. It's even harder to believe when refusing to define the word woman is a known strategy to evade that debate completely. It requires an immense amount of good faith.
Isn't this just the thing that happens whenever you talk about a broad social and political movement? It's reasonable to say "I oppose woke policies" in the same way it is reasonable to say "I oppose right wing policies."
And it's equally reasonable for someone on the other side to ask for more clarification. A right winger obviously isn't going to categorically opposite right wing policies, so they want to know whether you're talking about the good policies or the bad policies. And vice versa.
> It was "vague, slippery and formless," but also capable of being "nailed down and recognized as one single thing? That sounds...well...pretty nearly contradictory.
It sounds like it is, but it really isn't. No different than the words "good" or "evil". And you people are quite confident in what those words mean, aren't you? It's the same with "woke". The right agrees on what "woke" means, and that it needs to be destroyed. All that's left is to take action.
This was a wonderful post. Can you tell me how you came by your marching orders?
If you are truly concerned about accurate definitions of words, rather than simply wishing to strip me of my ability to speak this one, then I'm sure you're keen to apply the same specificity to every other word you use on a daily basis.
And should you find that certain, most or in fact *all* words break down as The Tails Come Apart, I'm sure you'll conscientiously never use them in conversation again.
Let's take a word at random for you to start with. How about, I don't know: "woman".
Here's my COVID update for epidemiological weeks 1 and 2.
1. Biobot shows wastewater concentrations rising steeply in the South and Midwest. We're five weeks into this XEC wave, and national ww concentrations have risen at approx 2x rate of the previous KP.3x wave.
2. COVID hospitalizations are on the rise, but for some reason, the CDC seems to be predicting that the data, once tabulated, will show a drop in hospitalizations in the final week of December. This seems counterintuitive, with wastewater numbers rising so steeply. But compared to previous waves, hospitalizations are still pretty low — 3.5/100,000.
3. Likewise, COVID ED visits are also rising. But at the end of epi week 52, flu far outweighed COVID at 5.2% of ED visits vs COVID at 1.2% of ED visits. RSV is at 1%. ED test positivity for influenza was highest at 18.7%, RSV was second at 12.8%, and COVID was at 7.1%.
4. COVID deaths have not yet begun to rise, but that may be because reporting slowed over the holidays. We'll see if the past weeks adjust upward over the next few weeks.
5. In A(H5) news, the Louisiana patient with bird flu has died. Reportedly, the patient was 65 years old with other health problems. The BC teen, who was in critical care for the past month, was released from the hospital last week. Both were infected with the D1.1 strain that infects birds.
6. Of the 64 known cases infected with B3.13 genotype of A(H5), which infects cattle, none of those people were hospitalized (AFAIK). According to USDA's Dec Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook, the number of infected herds has dropped from 832 to 142. The A(H5) outbreak in cattle seems to be burning itself out (knock on wood).
7. Meanwhile, according to the same USDA report, close to 6.5 million HPAI-infected hens were culled during Nov & Dec. Ironically, cage-free practices may have allowed the virus to spread to chickens from wild birds. We'll see if cage-free states have a higher incidence of A(H5) outbreaks once the flu season has passed.
8. Note: A(H5) follows a seasonal pattern in birds, so we can expect an increase in wild bird deaths. But, according to WOAH (the World Organization for Animal Health), current world poultry outbreak numbers are below Oct 22-Sept 23 and lower than Dec 2023 numbers. HPAI may be receding compared to previous years. Poultry and wild bird outbreaks are down. Mammal outbreaks are up, but most of that is due to A(H5) jumping to cattle herds.
Construction Physics (Brian Potter), which is among my very favorite Substack reads and I really hope he's building up to a book, has posted a fresh take on "Why skyscrapers became glass boxes". He's responding to the idea that it was "a plot by modernist architects, who had a particular theory of what made a building “good” — “honest” buildings without excessive decoration or ornament — and who successfully foisted that style on an unwilling public." He quotes both from the Tom Wolfe book and Scott's review here of that book.
Potter: "Changing architectural trends were undoubtedly a factor in the rise of the glass box aesthetic, but this explanation misses a huge part of why this transition happened. Notably, this theory completely omits the role of the real estate developer, who has a greater influence than anyone else in how a building comes together. Skyscrapers are designed by architects, but it’s the developer who conceives of the project, arranges the funding, hires the design team, and ultimately decides what the building will be. To me, the question isn’t Why did architects embrace modernism? It’s Why did real estate developers embrace modernism?
Ultimately, it was economics (or at least perceived economics) that drove developers to embrace this style. Glass curtain wall buildings were cheaper to erect than their masonry predecessors, and they allowed developers to squeeze more rentable space from the same building footprint. Ornate, detailed exteriors were increasingly seen as something tenants didn’t particularly care about, making it harder to justify spending money on them. And once this style had taken hold, rational risk aversion encouraged developers and builders to keep using it...."
I don't mainly get "unfeeling avarice-ridden capitalists" from Potter's writeup. Of course there's some of that in real life, people gonna people; and they look for opportunities/innovations that can save on capital costs. At the top level though the primary contrast with the architects seems to be that the entrepreneurs prioritize the revealed preferences of the people who'll be living/working in their product.
> I don't mainly get "unfeeling avarice-ridden capitalists" from Potter's writeup.
I didn't express myself well. I don't get that sense from Potter's article either, nor do I get the "effete socialist academics" sense from Scott's article. I'm pointing at the stereotypical poles at the far end of those groups. The same phenomenon supports a motivated reasoner who wants to pin thing they dislike on their outgroup.
Less personified, there are simultaneously arguments that it was a top-down, cultural change and that it was a bottom-up, economic decision.
(For any persistent, widespread change the answer is generally both where the percentages are sufficiently ambiguous to support thinkpieces across the spectrum.)
>Ornate, detailed exteriors were increasingly seen as something tenants didn’t particularly care about,
This is an underappreciated factor. Huge glass windows might or might not look nice from the outside, depending on taste, but they are pretty unanimously considered attractive from the inside.
I think I commented something like that in the original post. The capitalists (and behind them, Moloch lurking) simply wanted to get rid of the useless ornamentation because that's what optimizing hard demands. They tolerated it because hey, status games! But as soon as someone provided the perfect excuse for marrying off social status with economic efficiency, they jumped on it. Mind, I don't think this was some kind of conspiracy or even wholly intentional - people are simply more inclined to find themselves mysterious agreeing with a whole philosophy that just happens to also make them money.
And so, ironically, the socialist-inspired architects merely became tools in the hands of their greatest enemies. I don't have a lot of sympathy though because every time socialists/communists complain about how good capitalism is at co-opting and eventually emptying out their ideals all I generally see is really obvious traps that everyone involved only fell into due to arrogance and pride. "Make buildings ugly and cheap" was an obviously stupid idea that only benefitted those who profited off the buildings, anyone could tell you that, and twisting yourself in knots to believe it's somehow what the *working class* needs means you're probably just been putting worms in your brain for quite a long time.
>They tolerated it because hey, status games! But as soon as someone provided the perfect excuse for marrying off social status with economic efficiency, they jumped on it.
After reading the substack post, it seems like the development of technology was a bigger driver than the "excuse" of modern architecture. Specifically aluminum and glass became much cheaper to produce after WWII, so that an aluminum framed glass curtain wall was comparable in cost to a traditional masonry wall: and the glass walls were thinner so you got more rentable space in the interior, and lighter so you didn't have to have us much structural support or foundation. So glass curtain wall buildings were cheaper to build and made more money. That wasn't true prior to WWII for purely technological reasons: they weren't "tolerating" masonry exteriors before WWII, at the time they still made the most economic sense.
So it seems to me that the causation goes 1. Technological improvements make glass and aluminum much cheaper>2. Glass curtain walls become more profitable to build than other kinds of exteriors>3. The new demand for glass curtain wall skyscrapers fit the new International Style well, so the International Style took off while other styles (that worked best with non-glass exteriors) were left behind.
as someone who works in architecture --- this is is how it goes--architecture is so expensive to create that its almost entirely driven by cost, and technological advances that lower the cost. Also, most of the things we call "style" now were at one point just technological advances.
One point that usually gets lost is that most people several decades ago thought that sleek, futuristic buildings looked cool. Look at the aesthetic of The Jetsons. Sleek. Glass everywhere is sleek. Apple products still have the same aesthetic and people like it. Same with flat-screened TVs. What people didn't predict in the 1960s was that glass boxes would one day look old and uninspired.
Wow, you are right. Smartphones are sleek glass right rectangular prisms. I wonder what an art nouveau smartphone would look like. Or maybe a gothic smartphone.
Sleek, futuristic buildings DO look cool. For a certain definition of cool. The harsh reality is that much like the flying cars and personal jetpacks they also have in The Jetsons, that doesn't make them always practical. The problem with very sleek and minimalistic designs is that the slightest blemish jumps immediately to the eye and kinda ruins the whole. A pure white wall is really easy to turn into just a shitty dirty grey mess. A wall made of stones exposed to the elements for a while will just look like a slightly dirtier and more weathered wall of stones, but that adds to its organic charm, if anything.
Also concrete without even a plaster cover simply sucks ass. It has to be one of the most disgusting surfaces in existence. Shit colour, shit texture, just terrible.
Concrete looks bad pretty quickly due to blemishes, but pure glass continues to look good. You gotta clean it, but you gotta clean windows anyway, and a sheer glass tower is easier to clean than a bunch of separate windows.
Fair, and I honestly don't think glass buildings look bad in and of themselves, and I don't know that many who do. They may look *out of place* when they're built in the midst of otherwise far older neighbourhoods. But that's more a matter of mixing incongruous styles than its own aesthetic value.
To quote an art critic I heard once... I like apple pie, I like mayonnaise. I do NOT want any mayonnaise on my apple pie.
But I don't think many people thought futuristic buildings made from cement looked cool, whether they were commie block type square buildings or swooping organic shapes
I don't know. I still like glass buildings. They allow a lot of daylight into work areas, and their reflectivity can create all sorts of interesting patterns on their surrounding areas and on other buildings. When they reflect sky, we see sky. When they reflect other buildings, we see fun mirror distortions of other buildings.
I will go further and admit that I actually like living in box-shaped things. (Maybe I was a cat in my previous life.)
My mother's idea of a perfect room is one that contains lots of pretty things. Shelves full of useless but kinda cute things. Tables, tiny cabinets, and many other horizontal areas, where you can put crocheted tablecloth or something like that, and a few nice things on top of that. Thousands of things to collect dust, so you have to clear them regularly, and it takes a whole day if you are working really hard. When you sit down, you have to watch carefully, lest you break something precious. When you want to put a notebook on the table, or when you want to eat something, you need to put those many little things away first. There are many interesting things to look at (when you visit. When you actually live there, they become boring). But I wouldn't want to live there.
My idea of a perfect room is: a rectangular box with lots of free space. One wall is a built-it wardrobe, which contains all stuff. A table with a computer. Optionally, a TV on the wall. A comfortable sofa. But otherwise, big empty space. There, I could sit on the sofa and relax.
Glass buildings can look cool, though I've never lived or worked enough to tell whether they're also practical, especially from the viewpoint of thermal efficiency and regulation.
That said, they can also go hilariously wrong, like that one time someone essentially built a giant burning lens in the centre of London that melted the cars parked below it. Archimedes would be proud!
Well, earthquakes don't play well with stone houses either. Making earthquake-resistant buildings is its own science, and one in fact that is aided, not impeded, by the generous use of steel. When it comes to earthquakes, flexible is better than rigid.
Though I'm also a big ol' history geek. Grew up in an old drafty 19th century house, until recently officed in a 19th-century architectural landmark, etc. In fact 20 years ago I worked for 5-plus years in the "Jewelers' Building" that is pictured near the start of Potter's writeup and loved it, a beautiful building that had been lovingly restored and we had the coolest office suite in the whole pile. [Trivia fact, that building was the tallest skyscraper west of Manhattan for like two months the year it was built.]
Still though: give me light, lots of light. And I've zero interest in helping pay for exterior ornamentation.
I grew up in a 1920s house. There was one room that would get a lot of sun, but the rest of the house was pretty dark. It was a revelation to me when I was six or so, and my dad took me with him to the IIT campus in Chicago, where he was an instructor. He had an office in one of the low, glass Mies van der Rohe buildings. It was a revelation to me see so much glass and so much natural light in a building. I was used to buildings made of brick and wood with small windows. It was raining. The water on the windows distorted the landscapes. I was fascinated by the distortions. I remember dining in the cafeteria with my dad, and I watched the gardens through the windows as evening darkened the lawns and trees. It was like a giant movie I could walk into! When we left the campus, Mies's buildings were all lit up, and it amazed me that we could look into them and see people moving around!
Sixteen years ago, George W Bush was Literally Hitler. Now, Joe Biden is naming an aircraft carrier after him. How times change!
Apart from anything else, it's ridiculous to have aircraft carriers named the George H. W. Bush and the George W. Bush in service at the same time.
Is Joe Biden trying to set a precedent that every President, no matter how shithouse, can have a CVN named after them?
Or is he just doing Trump a favour by setting him up to issue an incredibly popular executive order next week that "Actually, fuck it, the USS Clinton and the USS Dubya will actually be named USS Yorktown and USS Ticonderoga"?
George W. Bush was considered Literally Hitler for one thing, basically: starting a war of aggression on false premises, this being also a thing that Hitler did. Sure, saying that he *was* anything close to Hitler was nevertheless stupid, but the point is: why would Joe Biden, who supported Bush's invasion in 2002 and indeed largely shepherded it through the Senate, consider this a particular reason to *not* name an aircraft carrier after GWB?
Joe Biden seems to be determined to tick every "Let Me Make Sure I Disappoint You, You Morons Who Voted For Me" check box.
W was the worst President in modern history if not ever. The damage his presidency caused to my country and to the world is incalculable and irreversible. I guess he could replicate the "Mission Accomplished" photo shoot on the new carrier named after him just to rub it in.
What's tragic about W's presidency is that he was apparently a serious guy with solid, experienced advisors, he pretty clearly was trying to do a good job, and yet his presidency was a sequence of disasters, many of them self-inflicted.
Clinton spent a great deal of his 8-year administration drawing down our military, giving rise to a "peace dividend". Unfortunately, this also drew down military intelligence efforts, which aren't easily noticed by anyone who doesn't spend their time figuring out how to hijack a plane and run it into our buildings. One way this manifests is by having too many leads to follow, so if someone tells you "some terrorist is planning something big this year", your response can't help but be "oh? which one again?" and continue trying your best to prioritize where you look hardest. If you guess right, no one notices, since it looks like nothing happened. If you guess wrong...
The disaster commonly referred to as Bush's biggest one - 9/11 - was probably handed to him by his predecessor.
How would we tell? Are there good numbers on the relative drawdown of intelligence efforts in the middle east vs other peace dividend stuff (fewer missiles pointed at Moscow, fewer tanks expected to die in the Fulda Gap on the first day of WW3, etc.)?
The rhetoric I remember after 9/11 was a demand for a more aggressive interventionist foreign policy in the middle east, which wasn't a reversal of previous trends, but rather just doing what we were doing before, but harder. I think it is very hard to argue that the resulting wars made the US or the world better off--it's a better world without Saddam and Qadaffi in it, but Iraq went through some very ugly times to get there and Libya is AIUI still a hell of a mess. We burned two decades in Afghanistan, I'm pretty sure there were families where father and son both served in our occupation, and it seems like whatever good we did evaporated the moment we left.
Given that much of the information is locked up in intelligence, we won't be likely to know for (check notes) at least about 2-52 years, where "know" is really "have a moderately good sense of", and where "we" is really whoever gets to look at the relevant material without a journalistic filter in the way. (And where "2-52" is modified by the assessed value of the sources by that time, which probably means more than that.)
The rhetoric I recall at the time was motivated by the requirement to never have another 9/11 happen. This in turn was understood to mean we should address the root cause of the terrorism, rather than just the symptom, which meant starting with the symptom that was Al Qaeda and working our way all the way up to the Ayatollah of Iran. Otherwise we could knock off AQ, declare victory, go home, only to have some other 30-man terrorist group knock over three more buildings in a couple years.
The common explanation for why this didn't happen is a combination of poor calls at the top, and insufficient capacity at the bottom, the latter meaning a military rolled gradually back during the peace dividend years. The top calls are easier to blame on the Bush administration, including things like failing to seal the borders during the Iraq War, suddenly disbanding the Ba'ath Party without a followup plan for handling several thousand unemployed young males, and not recognizing the need for COIN sooner. Having a plan to replace all the non-terrorism services being provided by the Taliban in Afghanistan would also have been wise, but again, that would have required more capacity.
Libya could certainly also have been handled better, but that was mostly the next administration; I'm not aware of anything Bush handed Obama that forced the errors.
I'm sure some of that information is hard to get, but it seems like the broad outline of "where did the peace dividend come from" ought not to be impossible to find out. Lacking access to that classified information, why do you think 9/11 was downstream of it?
I think the "address the root causes of terrorism" was a fundamental error, good rhetoric but poor policy. This led us to decisions like engaging in two decades of nation-building in Afghanistan and invading Iraq, both of which seem to me to have been expensive failures. Like much of what W did, it was based on honestly-held beliefs about the world (that we could change the middle east in ways that would make support for terrorism ultimately evaporate), but like a lot of domestic "address the root causes of crime" reforms, it seems to have been based on a flawed understanding of reality.
Democracy doesn't actually seem to be incompatible with terrorism.Hamas won an election in Gaza and plausibly had a mandate from its people before the 10/7 attacks, we held the lid down on a civil war in Iraq for long enough to get a rickety democracy going there but it didn't stop the rise of ISIS, democratic reforms in Egypt led to electing a president from the Muslim Brotherhood (who was soon removed in a military coup), Pakistan is sorta-kinda a democracy (the military turns out the have a veto on elections) and Al Qaida is/was apparently heavily influenced/supported by the ISI, etc.
Maybe there is some level of economic development and social change that would end terrorism, but that's quite speculative. Would the history of Northern Ireland support that theory?
Really, terrorism is a set of tactics (to the extent it's a meaningful term), and those are largely independent of ideology. The Tamil Tigers, Hamas, the Shining Path, the IRA, and ETA are terrorist organizations with extremely different backgrounds and ideologies and underlying societies.
"Sixteen years ago, George W Bush was Literally Hitler. Now, Joe Biden is naming an aircraft carrier after him. How times change!"
How they change, indeed. Now the campaign for the Democratic presidential candidate thought getting the endorsement of Dick Cheney was a bonus!
But it's the same as the online plaints about Trump and Obama chatting amiably at Carter's funeral - wasn't he a threat to democracy and the worst thing ever and must be fought and defeated? and now they're all like old pals? (well, I did think Kamala was notably cool but I'd expect that).
Yeah, because it's politics. "Nothing personal, just business". X calls Y the devil when campaigning, then they shake hands and have a drink afterwards.
I agree about naming things after living people - it's way too soon and does become a political popularity contest.
"Is Joe Biden trying to set a precedent that every President, no matter how shithouse, can have a CVN named after them?"
Maybe Joe is getting ready to name one the Hunter Biden? 😁
I like how the implication here is that Democrats are these huge hypocrites, and not even acknowledging how Trump does the exact same thing to everyone he meets lol. Zuckerberg, Musk, as long as you are on Trump's good side you've been his friend forever as far as he's concerned, fail to overthrow an election on his behalf and next thing you know Mike Pence and Bill Barr are your enemies lmao.
I cordially dislike the current practice of naming major warships after living politicians. Far too monarchical for my tastes. Especially now that we can't even seem to trust former presidents to stay retired, although term limits make Clinton and Bush the Younger unlikely to return to office.
I've been reading some of Scott's older writing on schooling. I don't think much has changed since he wrote about it, not fundamentally. Can anyone recommend any books that go more in-depth on looking at the education system with a critical eye? Also, for the sake of discussion, how would you fix schools? Assume that they still must fulfill their purpose of state-subsidized daycare / child warehousing.
> Also, for the sake of discussion, how would you fix schools? Assume that they still must fulfill their purpose of state-subsidized daycare / child warehousing.
1. Transferrable Vouchers that work for charter schools and home schooling - you shouldn't be forced to pay for an actively terrible system you hate and know isn't doing anything for your kids.
2. Much more openness to testing out, skipping grades, etc at all levels. It's been shown that there's little negative social impact to letting smart kids skip grades, largely because they're already not great fits with "peers" who happen to be the same age, but in a much different place mentally. You should also be able to test out of way more of high school in an easy and widespread way, like the CLEP examinations. I skipped a year of HS, too, and then I CLEPPED more than 30 credits in undergrad, and I was pissed I was forced to do that instead of just being able to take the math and physics classes I was actually interested in and paying for. High school was about 100x more pointless and wasteful than THAT, largely because they make it harder to skip grades and there aren't standardized tests like CLEP where you can just test out.
3. More magnet schools and actually effective gifted and talented programs / schools. Demand is through the roof and supply is very limited, pretty much everywhere. Why? These kids are literally the future - as in, the great majority of our future economic growth is going to come from them, not people in regular public schools, and more resources should be allocated to them.
4. I honestly think there should be something like a "babysitting track" for kid / parent combos who genuinely don't care. If a kid is totally checked out and just there because they're legally forced to be there, they're much more likely to be disruptive and bring the whole class to a halt. If they don't care and their parents don't care, let them opt into being locked in a room with x-boxes for 8 hours a day (or whatever) and let the teachers focus on the rest of the kids. I got sent to the "bad kids school" in junior high a couple of times and it was GREAT! They gave you all your work at the beginning of the week, so you could just crank it all out in a few hours and then spend the rest of the week socializing and flirting with all the other delinquents. Much better than regular school.
5. On that subject, functional "tracking," like most European and Asian countries have, but which is a forbidden topic in the US due to disparate impact. But you're pretty much always throwing away the majority of the kids without it - you have to tailor things to this middle-of-the-distribution, 1/3 cluster - leaving the worst-off kids totally behind (but advancing them anyways, even when they can't read or do math), and leaving the smart kids disengaged and never learning or trying anything.
The overall problem is a lot of these goals are at cross purposes. Warehousing and babysitting kids would go a lot better if you were just honest about it. Instead, we force kids to sit still and listen to the most boring stuff imaginable, and then are surprised when they act out and make teaching the rest of the kids impossible. Pick a lane.
It would never pass social muster, but I'd 100% support a program where you create two tracks - a "babysitting" track with x-boxes and much lower costs in administration and staff, where you just warehouse kids safely and let them screw around all day, and an "actual teaching" track, where you do tracking of the academically capable kids, and spend extra resources for magnet schools and gifted and talented programs for the upper tiers of that.
> Much more openness to testing out, skipping grades, etc at all levels.
Absolutely. It just doesn't make sense the way it is now.
"The purpose of school is to teach you X." "Great, I already know X, am I free to leave?" "No, you still have to stay here for a few years, while the school pretends to teach you the things you already know. Don't be bored, or we will punish you."
What is the point of that? (Other than keeping the parents of less gifted kids happy, I guess.)
> More magnet schools and actually effective gifted and talented programs / schools. Demand is through the roof and supply is very limited, pretty much everywhere.
Yeah, that was my experience with my kids. There is a school for gifted kids nearby, they give them IQ test, math test, language test, etc. We looked at the requirements and were like "that seems like a lot, but our kid can probably do that". We went to take the tests, everything seemed great, she totally aced the tests. And then it turned out that about 200 kids have aced the test, but the school can only admit 30 of them, sorry our daughter was not among them. OK, no big deal, there is another gifted school in the neighborhood, it just wasn't our primary choice. Again, the same story, 200 kids aced the test, they could only take 30, sorry, goodbye.
So now our kids are in a school for normies, but luckily we live in an expensive neighborhood, so the school is okay. But it's not like the kids are learning there nontrivial things, or something. (By "okay school" I mean nice teachers, nice classmates, no bullying. Yes, that is also important. But I hoped to also get some quality education for my kids on top of that.) They are mostly wasting their time, and then they learn some interesting things during their afternoon activities.
> Warehousing and babysitting kids would go a lot better if you were just honest about it.
If we were honest, we might even figure out a way to somehow find a solution for all. Imagine a warehouse for kids, which also provides classes... all of them optional. So the smart kids could take advanced classes, the average kids could take normie classes, and I guess some "basic reading, writing, and math" would be mandatory for those kids who don't take any of the normie or advanced classes. (Or rather, the "basic reading, writing, and math" would nominally be mandatory for everyone, but you could easily test out, and go to the more advanced optional classes.) Anyone who is currently not in a class is still getting some babysitting, on the playground, or in the library.
This might even be politically acceptable for everyone if the schools in general couldn't provide credentials. They could just give a paper saying "this child spent some time here, and learned basic reading, writing, and math; we are not commenting on their other activities". So everyone would be equally educated, on paper.
Separately, there would institutions providing standardized tests and certificates; you could go there at any time and say e.g. "please test me that I understand calculus". You pass the test, you get the certificate; no one asks you about which school you have attended, or whether you were homeschooled. And then, universities and employers would publish the list of certificates you need to acquire in order to join them.
> What is the point of that? (Other than keeping the parents of less gifted kids happy, I guess.)
The problem is that schools actually have many different purposes and different groups care about different purposes to different extents, making an honest conversation impossible.
Your system sounds pretty good. One issue with the separated testing house is that you want to hire somebody who finishes things and doesn't have behavior issues.
Great, your suggestions cater for the 10% of talented kids. Now what about the other 90% who have to go to school?
The education system does suffer from having to be a 'one size fits all' system *and* the increasing tendency to hand over all parenting duties to the school - now it's the responsibility of the school to feed the kids, teach them manners, fix their psychological problems (if any) and act as a combination social worker and lion tamer. And that's before ever getting near teaching little Johnny to read and write.
The warehousing with X boxes may work nicely - until those kids go out into the world outside of school. Hint: they will end up interacting with you and the other smart kids, and now they're even more feral and illiterate than before, and that doesn't stop them wanting to take the nice stuff you have or (literally) shit in your streets. Unless you intend to euthanise the "screw around all day" kids or pen them in walled-off zones once they hit 18, what do you do with a mass of uneducated NEETs who now expect handouts and to continue being able to screw around all day on government-provided X boxes etc.?
> Great, your suggestions cater for the 10% of talented kids. Now what about the other 90% who have to go to school?
They either opt into the babysitting or the actual teaching tracks - "tracking" in the actual teaching track is literal tracking like Europe or Asia does, kids will be sorted appropriately for their learning speeds, inclusive of the 90%.
> Hint: they will end up interacting with you and the other smart kids, and now they're even more feral and illiterate than before
I honestly don't think there'll be any difference. I mean, you interact with a lot of these kids as adults, right?
Do you REALLY think being forced to sit through Algebra and Shakespeare refined and enculturated them, and they're stabbing people and breaking into houses appreciably less because of that? Or back in their schooldays, if they'd played x-box all day, would it have not even mattered? I'm on team "it wouldn't have mattered."
These kids already get shuffled through and default-graduated even when they can't read, playing x-box all day will just help all the OTHER 80-90% of kids learn more, and the problem kids can go on to stabbing people after a few years of xbox instead of after a few years of disrupting any learning of Algebra.
"Or back in their schooldays, if they'd played x-box all day, would it have not even mattered? I'm on team "it wouldn't have mattered."
Having interacted with the early school leavers in the programme after they dropped out, and the behavioural issues before they dropped out, and following the careers of them after they aged out of such programmes, I'm here to say it damn well *does* matter.
No, they don't need Shakespeare and algebra. Yes, they need *something*. Because the ones who skive off and don't want to learn anything, who would happily be "playing on my government-provided Xbox all day", are the ones who grow up to be druggies, drug-dealers, petty criminals, and all those other fun things.
At the best, they'll be dependent on social welfare from your tax earnings (as one of the Bright Sparks in a good job) while they indulge in drugs and alcohol, drift from baby mama to baby mama (if male) or take up and break up with a string of NEET boyfriends, getting pregnant by each one (if female), and perpetuating the cycle of deprivation and failure.
(I'm seeing that right now with a five year old at work. Happy times!)
At the worst - they'll murder one of those girlfriends, or break into your car, or mug you on the street. And you'll be paying for the costs of incarcerating them, or increased insurance for the shops and public amenities they rob and destroy, and the rest of it.
Trying to do *something* to divert those who can be diverted onto a different path is worth it. Throwing up your hands and just letting them idle all day is sowing the seeds of the bad harvest to be reaped down the line - and that harvest always comes due.
> Having interacted with the early school leavers in the programme after they dropped out, and the behavioural issues before they dropped out, and following the careers of them after they aged out of such programmes, I'm here to say it damn well does matter.
Okay, but for it to matter, don't you need to be relating many stories of "this youth was going off the rails, they nicked some candy and graduated to stabbing a storekeeper, but then, THEN, we forced them to sit in a class about Shakespeare, and that *totally* turned it around, they're model citizens now. In fact, they work in government!"
Because seeing kids dropping out and then become criminals is the norm. Forcing them to sit in Algebra class wasn't going to prevent them becoming criminals, it just hastened their dropping out.
So if being forced to sit still in class all day prevents future criminals, where's the evidence?
You're saying we're gonna be supporting these people either with the Dole or tax dollars funding jail cells, and I agree. I just don't think forcing them to sit still in class is going to prevent that.
Oh man, I'm watching you two debate and all I can think is that free, trivially easy, on-demand vasectomy and abortion would solve a lot of these problems.
I of course acknowledge such things are useful only insomuch as there's uptake for them, and the very worst people are absolutely too emotionally unregulated and/or stupid to understand how much they should *not* be parents.
But you gotta think that incentivizing vasectomies - not only making them free, but paying young men $1500 cash to have the procedure - would vastly reduce many social ills.
Do you think this is a vine type situation where no app really replaces the TikTok market for a year, or will there be any quick moves from companies looking to capitalize?
Does anyone know of any new apps that are really taking over the space/planning to?
Why would anyone enter a space where the incumbents have proven they have the legislative connections to crush all competition, constitutional rights be damned?
I would assume Bytedance will simply sell the US Tiktok business (or maybe the whole non-Chinese business) rather than lose that much value. I assume contracts have been sitting around ready to sign for many months now awaiting last minute legal challenges.
Bytedance is not an unfettered economic actor. The Chinese government gets the most important say and they probably won't let Bytedance sell, or at least not sell to anyone that would actually give up control.
Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have cloned it. I hear about Reels fairly often (although I don't know how much people post original content there as opposed to copying it from TikTok).
Well, there's Youtube. They introduced Shorts a while back, and people do seem to be using it at least a little bit... though it's mostly just reposted Tiktok videos. There is at least some good stuff there, though. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-Tzxx0XFrjI
Not sure if it will take over any space, but I've just started seeing claims that some Tiktok users are (temporarily, maybe just for kicks?) going on to a Chinese site called Rednote (xiaohongshu, literally 'Little Red Book'. yeah). I doubt this is going to be a significant competitor in the US for too long, but it would be intensely funny if people just decided to cut out the middleman and... give their data to another Chinese-owned company? Such generosity of spirit, we must admire it.
Your final sentence, unless I'm misreading, implies that you oppose people giving their data to China or that it's negative if the Chinese government collects the data.
If so, why? It bothers me no more to learn that China hoovers my data than a US tech company. There may be security implications for officials or notable individuals but shouldn't they take precautions rather than everyone having an option taken away?
You're correct, I do think it's negative. That's not unique to China-I'd rather my personal data be in as few hands as possible-but China is relevantly different since there isn't even notional protection for data on Chinese servers.
To your question, data security/privacy has a lot of possible failure points. The company holding your data might be straightforwardly incompetent in securing it (cf the Volkswagen data breach), they might be providing/selling it to governments or other companies in active violation of their own TOS, or they might be forced to provide it by some actor with power over them.
US tech companies are plenty vulnerable in the first two ways, but there are pretty strong legal/procedural boundaries against the third. That is not the case for Chinese tech companies, which can be coerced into providing data to the state basically at will and with full force of law. Tiktok made claims as to the use and privacy of their user data that were straightforwardly untrue and unenforceable. The fact that some users didn't care about the security of their data doesn't mean Tiktok is off the hook. By moving to Rednote, they're moving to a service that more closely matches their (lack of) preferences.
You're fully correct about there being more failure points the more your data is distributed and that the Chinese government has the ability to hoover up that data at will.
I still don't understand the negative impact on me if the Chinese government has my data. Let's say they have every piece of data I've ever created, access to all my private information, etc. Why should that concern me?
I suspect it's not really about the threat to an individual from adversarial possession of data about said individual, rather the threat to the country from collation of many individuals' data.
I have formerly worked in a classified environment, and work product based solely on publicly-available information would sometimes become TS due to the synergistic effects of curation. And that was before Big Data and commodity compute.
I've also worked in classified environments and I'm familiar with the process you're describing.
But I still don't see why that should concern me. One of the tradeoffs on the open vs. closed society slider is how much information leakage you can control. I prefer a leaky freedom.
Has the Chinese government learned things and have data the US government would prefer they not? Certainly. Does that mean that US citizens should broadly have their freedom curtailed to prevent that from continuing? I don't see why.
In the 1960s, folk revival fans got interested in old 20s-40s acoustic Delta etc. blues musicians, in many cases retired from recording after the Depression and having no idea that they had a new bunch of fans, reviving their music careers. E.g. they found Son House working at a train station in Rochester NY; they found Skip James in hospital in Tunica MS; they found Mississippi John Hurt in the hamlet Avalon MS, from a clue in the form of finding a copy of "Avalon Blues." (Blues was also still a living evolving tradition otherwise, e.g. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf had both started in Mississippi before going electric in Chicago. A Robert Johnson compilation was also a big part of kickstarting the Delta blues revival, but he was already dead; he's the one most associated with the legend of selling your soul to the devil at a crossroads for skills.) When Tom Hoskins found Mississippi John Hurt at home in Avalon, he had him play some songs to confirm it was him; that moment was recorded, and you can even hear the rooster in the background!
(A Robert Johnson compilation was part of kickstarting this interest, but he was already dead. He's the one most associated with the legend of selling your soul to the devil at a crossroads for skills.)
Also a fun tidbit: Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Willie McTell were friends! You can hear McTell talking about it in his 1940 Library of Congress recordings. Johnson has a song on the Voyager golden record; it's haunting, and fitting for one of the only artifacts to reach interstellar space.
One of the subtle delights of the Coen Brothers' "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" is the supporting character based on Robert Johnson, who tells the story of his visit to that crossroads.
Yup! I also love the soundtrack's version of "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues," by Chris Thomas King (who played that character); I knew the cover before I knew the original!
Or actually, I just checked and there are layers to this:
Before the legend became linked to Robert Johnson, it was linked to Tommy Johnson (no relation), and it's Tommy Johnson being directly portrayed in the movie!
Has there been any research on whether people without political experience have better results at fulfilling campaign promises than “career politicians”? I feel that the second group should have more realistic expectations of what is possible, but am unsure.
There are three criteria that I can think of for whether a campaign promise can/will be fulfilled.
1) The politician cares about the promise.
2) It's possible to complete the promise.
3) The politician has the political skill and acumen to get the change complete.
A "career" politician is going to be much better at #3. Politicians who have experience are more likely to be able to identify reality when it comes to #2 (which also ties in with #3) and should promise fewer things that cannot be done. All told, this gives a decent edge to career politicians getting things done, contingent on them promising in the first place.
Why do we feel that this answer is wrong?
Because of the reality that politicians lie. Whether it's blatant intentionally lying or feels-good-in-the-moment-but-is-unrealistic, we know that what politicians say is often very far from what actually happens. I think you and I both have the impression that even though career politicians should be better at completing promises, the lying factor overshadows that to the extent the just caring about the outcome is worth more than having skill at doing it. Unexperienced politicians tend to care about, or appear to care about, what they promise more. Often someone first gets into politics in order to move a pet project forward.
Of course, that's also not a fully satisfying answer because every politician learns to pretend to be Change, because incumbents are often unpopular and change is popular. Trump ran as an outsider despite being president before. Harris wanted to run as an outsider despite being the current VP. Obama campaigned on getting us out of Guantanamo and Afghanistan, and then didn't.
Because of the incentives, we cannot trust any of the answers and therefore any of the promises.
They're not realistic, they're overly conservative. Career politicians compulsively try to maintain the establishment because their career depends on it. Outsiders are not held back by such principles. With the will, ambition, and the resolve to do what needs to be done, so much more is possible. The nation can be reshaped, remade.
"With the will, ambition, and the resolve to do what needs to be done, " I notice you didn't say anything about knowledge. Demagogues often fail, because they can't grasp detail,or attempt the impossible -- eg. lower taxes, raise welfare and cut borrowing.
Everyone says stuff like this, but is it actually true historically or does it just “feel” true?
In democracies, it seems like “career politicians” like FDR, LBJ, and Reagan had a lot of success implementing their agendas, while outsiders like Trump fulfilled very few of their campaign promises. (Ike might be an exception, but the 1950’s was an unusually unified time.)
In non-democracies, outsiders can sometimes fulfill their agendas, but the results are not always so great.
I’m also interested in whether peoples’ perception of someone as an outsider is actually correlated with how long they’ve been in politics. Like Bernie Sanders isn’t seen as a “career politician” even though he’s been a politician for over four decades.
The Nazi Party was elected democratically, and they went above and beyond in fulfilling their promises. And they didn't even have a true majority within the government! Just imagine what a modern populist movement could do with actual popular support...
The Nazi Party never won a majority and actually lost seats at the last election. The only reason they managed to seize power is because they teamed up with the Communists to fight against the center, preventing a stable government from forming.
I was a little unclear in my comment, sorry. I’m looking at whether they’re democracies after the new person takes power and tries to make changes.
It seems to me that historically, career politicians have a better record than outsiders at fulfilling their promises, given that we exclude all cases where they removed the checks and balances of democracy. Overthrowing democracy is a great way to fulfill your campaign promises, but doing so tends to have some (to put it mildly) negative side effects.
Well, that's kind of unfair, isn't it? Of course no one can follow up on their campaign promises if you don't count the one method of actually enacting meaningful change. The establishment will not allow itself to be changed by outside forces. The only solution is to burn it down.
My history lessons weren't too convinced of the democratic part - yes they won votes but not an outright majority. There was a Reichstag vote when the building was surrounded by SA militants, and even after that Hitler needed Hindenburg to grant him emergency powers before he could take over, IIRC?
...Look, you know what I meant by "democratically". Point is, they did what they promised they would do by any means necessary. Of course, the transition would have been much more smooth if they did have true majority.
Agreed. Actually Brett Deveraux has made the point that Fascists in general, if they get into power are really effective at delivering what they promise their followers. So if you read what they say and don't like it, you better have some kind of plan.
As far as I can tell, Hitler had zero political experience beyond bringing his party to power. You do need support of a party, of course, that's a given. But the party itself can be an outsider, or you can take control of an existing one.
Does anyone know if it is possible to play Youtube videos at more than 2x speed? There are a lot of websites claiming that you can do it by using the browser console to set the HTML5 playback rate property, but when I tried pasting in the listed code, it didn't work at all.
Hosting costs should be linear with the max speed for your worse users (me)
If I was adblocking at 4x speed, thats 4x the data for zero profit for a low information user whos probably 1x without adblock; and unlike ad's which I will go to war over, setting up pirating networks if I must, I cant justify spending engery making myself more brainrotted to uncap speed.
For stuff like this you can also use Claude to make a bookmarklet (console code turned into a bookmark so that you can run it just by clicking it) - I use this to make a slider for youtube video playback.
The problem for me is that the console code doesn't even work in the first place.
Edit: Nevermind, I got it working after all. My problem turned out to be that Firefox has two different JS consoles and I was pasting it into the wrong one.
if the code is not working at all, read the log above where you type it may say something like "pasting code is dangerous, type 'allow pasting' to paste" then type that, hit enter, then repaste you're snippet.
Alternatively something that hardly requires pasting is to use the little cursor/box icon on the top left of the console/devtools, (it's an element selector), then click the video player, the video html element will be highlighted, then click the console again and type $0.videoPlayback = 5
I use a Chrome extension called Video Speed Controller, it works on most video not just youtube, you can easily turn up or down the speed with hotkeys. Goes from x0.07 to x16
I've been using this for several years, works great. I stream films from any site through Chrome and speed them up (for foreign films with titles this has almost no downside).
The data is just there and its an completely arbitrary restriction on the gui and that will remain true probably past even the more extreme ad block prevention tech youtube could try
I just had an idea that the federal government should change Columbus Day to Salk Day in order to avoid the controversy over Columbus and rebuke RFKJr at the same time. Salk was even born in October, though sadly it's a couple weeks off. But hey, President's day isn't exact either.
It seems like this would just reverse the polarity of the holiday while keeping it near one of the battle lines of the culture war.
It would be nice if we could get federal holidays to bring people together instead. But I definitely don't have any ideas about how we might go about doing that.
A year or two ago I proposed a Rome Day on 21 April to replace Columbus Day.
-Conservatives can be happy because Roman heritage is a richer, more study-able influence on American culture than the replaceable Columbus.
-Italian-Americans can be neutral because one Italian-heritage holiday is swapped for another.
-Progressives can be happy that (classical) Roman violence and colonization is much longer ago than that which Columbus initiated.
-People who say "You can't use reason to design a holiday" can be drowned out by unreasonable festivities possibly rather louder than the dull Columbus Day parade tradition.
Why not just swap Columbus day for Halloween as a federal holiday?
The vast majority of Americans are in agreement that Halloween is better than Columbus day. I expect it's a deal that even the most adamantly pro-Columbus-day people would be willing to agree to.
The useful thing would be to have the day after Halloween (The Feast of All Saints) as a holiday. This would make it easier to deal with up-too-late sugared-up small children and also make getting to Mass for the Holy Day of Obligation easier for Catholics.
American Hallowe'en is completely divorced from its original Irish/Scottish roots, and you can always adopt the argument that "Well ackshully Samhain is pagan" if you needed to shove it through.
I see Thanksgiving is a federal holiday, even though it may be rooted in the Christian harvest festival services, though admittedly those are more Anglican and it's easier to disentangle that due to the Puritans and their tradition of "no Church holidays, those are Romish corruptions!", plus I understand Thanksgiving as it is now was inspired by an American literary lady, Sarah Josepha Hale:
"Hale may be the individual most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States; it had previously been celebrated mostly in New England. Each state scheduled its own holiday, some as early as October and others as late as January; it was largely unknown in the American South. Her advocacy for the national holiday began in 1846 and lasted 17 years before it was successful. In support of the proposed national holiday, Hale wrote presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. Her initial letters failed to persuade, but the letter she wrote to Lincoln convinced him to support legislation establishing a national holiday of Thanksgiving in 1863. The new national holiday was considered a unifying day after the stress of the Civil War."
"In the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the 26th, the final Thursday of November 1863."
There’s even a rationale currently floating: in the hyper-competitive global market, no one who is worth the money spent on them can seriously think they could ever deserve a day off.
(Insert apocryphal citation by an inspiring figure about how success requires 24-7 dedication, not 8 hours a day and 5 days a week.)
This would be wildly impopular, so people would unite and fight this back – together, because, when it comes down to it, what fraction of the population doesn’t like a day off?
> what fraction of the population doesn’t like a day off?
Judging by past conversations here, there would be very significant pushback on people having days off if ever the total number of days off per year were to approach what the French get.
I guess I was unclear – I didn’t mean days off as in “companies have to give workers five weeks’ paid vacation to be spread over an entire year in a way agreeable to the company and the employee” (which I think is French law, and would likely cause backlash in the US due to the infamous c-word).
I meant specific days where one didn’t work, such as MLK Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. There are 11 of them in France and 10 in the US, according to Wikipedia, so this is much more comparable.
I'm thinking of buying 40+ acres of cheap land that will someday be the site of a data center. The problem is, I'd have to pay property taxes on it, perhaps for decades, until the area became ideal for the construction of a data center. What could I do in the meantime to make money off the land to at least offset the property taxes?
I'm envisioning buying a plot of flat land in Washington, Wyoming, Iowa, or southern Colorado that would be next to a highway.
Depending on what sort of clients might be interested in renting space in your data center, there may be advantages of placing it closer to long-haul fiber and IXPs. Most IXPs are in urban areas, though. But I've seen a bunch of data centers in "inner city" locations — like West Oakland and Hunter's Point and Bayview in SF. They're close to long-haul fiber and real estate prices are lower than other urban areas.
How certain are you that you are not overconfident?
If it is affordable, it is likely in some rural location. The reason why such land is affordable is because it is plentiful. Does the property have a (figurative) moat which would make it unattractive to build the data center a mile down the road?
Also, you might have noticed that there has been somewhat of a hype around AI in recent years. In my opinion, this makes long term predictions about the path of IT difficult. It might eventually fizzle out without changing too much except deleting half the jobs, or it might push us to a tech level which makes our current one look like the bronze age by comparison (and kill us in the process, maybe). If an AI invents a data center powered by hydrothermal vents and chilled by sea water, this might make your property (which presumably is above sea level) a lot less attractive.
Even if AI just continues to be a thing without taking over, it is likely that we will see a specialized adaptions of data centers: one small type near your customers which runs LLMs for them, and one big type wherever the operating costs are cheapest which trains new models.
I'm peripherally involved now with construction of a data center, and am on a civic committee through which I've been learning about another. One of those being rural and one urban.
The rural one is on a parcel of several hundred acres and the Tech Company of Unusual Size that's building it is plainly uninterested now in anything nearly as small as 40 acres.
The urban one is on a parcel around that size, actually slightly smaller. But in a big-city context that's a chunk of ground, and wasn't cheap for them to acquire and prepare for this new use.
In both instances the top critical variable for siting is close access to the national power grid of course, with a close number two priority being access to reliable water in quantity. That last is because all the companies building data centers now want to use water for cooling which reduces their energy need for air conditioning.
Rent it as a campground on Hipcamp, which is like Airbnb for campsites. You have to provide very little and people will still willingly rent it. Or put some pretty minimal facilities (a cabin, a shack, whatever), and rent that on Airbnb. There are some amazingly cheap facilities on Airbnb, it's just reflected in the price. So long as renters know upfront that they'll be roughing it in your shack or whatever, the type of people who want to rough it will be fine with that. Outdoors types, hikers, hunters, people traveling by RV or living out of their van who just want somewhere peaceful to park for the night, etc.
I know someone who was grossing over $40k annually renting 3 uninsulated cabins in a rural area, and this was pre-Covid
I've heard that self-storage facilities are sometimes built for this purpose. They are supposedly very easy to build, can have surprisingly high demand, require only rare labor inputs after launch, and can thus effectively hold land for later commercial use. You're not generating a huge amount of revenue, but your costs are extremely low. This is said to be especially handy to avoid taxes on "unimproved" commercial land that some places have.
I haven't found a specific property yet. Right now, I'm looking for general advice. However, many of the lots of land I found ads for were zoned residential, but in sparsely populated areas.
Residential zoning limits your options a lot, unless you can get it re-zoned. Check your local rules for the specific subtype of residential zone, though, since they vary a ton in how strictly the define residential usage and in how much you can build on it.
In my neck of the woods (Santa Clara County, California) most rural residential land outside of built-up areas is zoned to allow two dwelling units (a primary residence and a guest house) per lot, plus non-dwelling outbuildings (sheds, workshops, barns, stables, etc) and minimum lot size varies from an acre or two up to 20 acres. Basic small-scale farming is permitted by right, and a lot of light commercial activity is allowed only with a use permit. I have no idea how difficult it is to get a use permit.
Stuff that is allowed with a use permit includes camps and retreats, bed & breakfast inns, driving ranges, event venues, and medical clinics. But all of those would be significant business undertakings in addition to the permit requirements.
What makes you think this will definitely be the site for a data centre? Unless you have some sure-fire information that Big Corp is looking to expand in that general area, it's a punt. So having "I can sell this/rent this for another purpose" is definitely good sense.
For the 100th Anniversary of Route 66, the 250th Anniversary of the US of A, and the 20th Anniversary of Pixar's Cars, a bunch of us are going to do something in 2026 to celebrate. We're gonna drive down Route 66 from Chicago to LA (or the other direction if you like). You can make whatever schedule you want, but be sure to meet us at the Santa Monica Pier on April 30, 2026, 5pm. I have a few other little fun things planned along the way but that's the summary. Event info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1054613759663097
Long shot, but anyone here know anything about wine?
A friend of mine has recently come into possession of several cases of big expensive high-faluting wine. We can drink some but realistically the thing to do with most of it is sell it.
Thing is, he's not entirely sure how to proceed with that. And one concern (which we're not sure how seriously to take) is that the wine business is a small world and anyone local we ask for advice is themselves buying or selling or both, and could credibly profit from misleading us. He doesn't want to expose his neck while he's unsure of the rules of engagement here.
There's also the question of timing - I understand wines age and get better, but is there a point after which you've missed the window and they've gone off? How do we know when that is?
He'd probably be happy to sit on these things for years - it's not like they're taking up space, they're held by some company in some cellar somewhere and he's never seen them. He says that same company gives him the "current value" of the wine, and I think he was saying that they'll buy it off him at that price at any given time.
But would he be dumb to take that deal? What's the right way to get the best price for this stuff? And is there any time component he needs to get right?
You can generally find the current prices for old vintages with a little googling. Of course, certain key vintages of French wines (especially Burgundy and Bordeaux) are highly prized. OTOH, after some point, they may not be very tasty anymore. Left Bank Grand Cru Bordeaux (e.g., Pauillac, Margaux, Saint-Julien, Saint-Estèphe) from top vintages are *supposed* to be put down for at least 15 to 25 years before they've really developed and are at their best.
Bordeaux from less auspicious vintages and crus probably remain drinkable for 10 or 15 years, while top vintages are *supposed* to be their prime for 30 to 50 years. Having said that, I popped for a 2000 Chateau Margaux for my 65th birthday (Premier Grand Cru from one of the best vintage years), and it was an undistinguished wine. I suspect it would have been better a decade earlier.
Personally, I think most wines, even the most complex ones, begin to fade after ten years. But as with many things, my opinions are outside the mainstream. ;-)
I do because I am an increasingly incoherent mixture of careers and interests.
While there are honest and dishonest wine dealers unless you have something extremely rare it's likely they'll give you a fairly standard mark down and then sell it forward. The fact the cellar is giving you a price means it's probably not going to be handled by an auctioneer type.
The storage company, if it's willing to buy it, is probably giving you a worse deal than a wine dealer. But not much worse. It's basically a bit extra for the convenience. Still, a second opinion is never bad and you can just ask three of them.
While some wines get better as they age others don't. And yes there's a point after which they become worth less. It depends on the wine. Again, you can ask wine dealers and multiple if you don't trust them. Also you can usually see the historical value and if it's not on the website just ask them.
Basically, not unique to wine, you are facing an effort to price trade off and need to decide on your own.
Also happy to give you the specifics if you share the type of wine and age and all that. None of that is usually privileged information so should be fine to say publicly. I can also tell you if the price is reasonable if you're willing to share that but that is usually more privileged.
You're almost certainly going to take a notable loss on the "face" value of the wine to whoever you sell this to. That's how they make their money.
For example, take Magic the Gathering. Let's say you had a Bazaar of Baghdad to sell. If you go to Card Kingdom, they'll buy it from you for about $1,600 and they sell it for $2,000. That's how they make their money and pay for storage, finding customers, etc. I'd expect wine to be pretty similar.
There's also an opportunity cost. Say you've got $10k in wine. Someone offers you 70% of the value, $7k.
In option 1, you sell it, invest in the S&P 500, get 10% return, and two years later you've got ~$8500.
In option 2, you reject the offer, keep looking for a dealer, two years later you find a guy willing to pay you 80% of the value, so $8,000.
Kinda meh.
Maybe the wine has appreciated 10% over those two years so he pays you $8,800. Even in that case, was it worth the time and effort?
One problem with wine as an investment is that there is zero income pre-sale, and a small maintenance cost in the shape of paying cellarage fees.
My broad sense is that for the top essentially ageless wines etc first growth Bordeaux, you don't see much premium in the early years. Then things start to tick up a bit once you get to the point where it becomes reasonable to drink that vintage and so some scarcity kicks in. Even then, the returns don't tend to be spectacular, and they are concentrated in top brands. There's also generally quite a buy-sell spread.
You get the odd shock eg around 2000 Chinese consumers decided they wanted top wines; this has smoothed out.
Can't definitely advise without seeing the list but I'd be inclined to cash out now and put it in assets your friend does understand
While most types wines eventually get too old, one more year shouldn't really matter too much (and it might be far longer depending on their current ages).
This assumes reasonable storage conditions.
You could try to look for the wine and the vintage at this link - it commonly includes cellaring times:
I am curious about what category of investment people think would most effectively persist into a post-AI/post-singularity world. I know this is highly speculative, but I welcome any argument. Land, stocks, gold, rare Pokemon cards? Seems like any of these would probably be better than having your capital simply collect dust, but I am curious about which specifically.
Has Scott any specific advice on this? IIRC he offered some thoughts in his recent article about post-singularity economy, but nothing definitive I think.
The singularity can fail to happen longer than you can stay solvent. Whatever you pick, make it something that still gives some kind of sane return in a traditional non-singularity world.
This is like asking how to internet-proof your portfolio in 1990. How many people would have said "bookstores are dead, invest in search"? No one can predict the future with any level of confidence. Just wait until AI starts changing the landscape and then make reasonable guesses. Presumably the company that invents AGI will be a good investment. Oh and definitely Pokemon cards. Good call.
You shouldn't bet on post-singularity economics if you think post-singularity is coming. You should bet on the factors needed to build the post-singularity economy. So if you think we're going to enter a world where AI has takeoff and that will require a bunch of chips then buy Nvidia or some such. Then when you think it's reaching saturation sell it off and look around at what utopia looks like and invest in hedonic pleasure domes or whatever seems like it's going well.
Assuming a non-FOOM, non-The Culture-like Space Age Utopia scenario (so a singularity, but not THE singularity), my thesis would be "Yes, but..." real estate: In a mostly post-scarcity world, positional goods become obviously very valuable: A beach house in Catalonya or Southern California, a lake-house in the Alps, an appartment in Manhattan, a villa in the Antilles , etc.
The thing is, international capital is already very crowded in these places, making them already incredibly expensive, and hard to get your hands on, they are (usually) very desireable because of a combination of the following:
* Natural beauty / weather not available elsewhere
* First world ammenities and Infrastructure
* Access and or proximity to economic opportunity.
In a post-singularity world, the value of the third item becomes waaay less relevant, and the second one could too (if AI and robots run everything, they can build top rate infrastructure anywhere, and dysfunctional governments lose relevance), so places that are similar to the most desireable ones, but lacking on the two latter points could have massive appreciation.
A few examples of what I mean:
San Diego -> Tijuana or Ensenada
The Alps -> The Patagonia
Catalonya/ The Cote d'Azur -> Beaches in Tunisia and Libya
The European controlled caribbean islands -> the other ones
If AGI takes over the world, then differences between countries and humans become much less relevant since machines will run everything the same way. Ensenada would not be worse than San Diego after awhile as one small example. There would be a global convergence in living standards and infrastructure.
I find the concept of 'capital' post-singularity nonsensical. Capital, defined as assets to be invested for production purposes, is superfluous if we are post-scarcity. If intelligent machines can produce anything at near-zero cost, who needs capital?
Non-fungible assets (and mainly land, since things like pokemon cards or art work will be reproducible in an undetectable way) will have value, but no-one will have a reason to sell - sell for what? Only to trade for other non-fungible assets. I don't see any other possibility?
It's not a question of elites. There's plenty of land for everyone (which can be easily altered in the world of ASI - you can have gardens in the Sahara). And, if anyone isn't happy in the world they're born in, I'm sure they'll have the option to enter hyper-realistic simulations.
As to swapping houses... assuming we live forever (certainly more than 100 years), I'd absolutely expect people to get tired of living in the same place, and decide to move elsewhere (or explore space or whatever).
This is naive. We aren’t going to knock down the cities we have, nor is any house in the deepest Sahara, no matter how big, as desirable as an apartment in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower, an apartment with a view of Central Park, a house in the Cotswolds, a beach front in Malibu.
Hyperreality sounds dystopian to me, at the extreme it’s like the matrix - everybody plugged in and wasting away in real life.
There are other reasons why moneyless systems won’t work, but housing is a big one.
Why is a house in the Sahara not desirable? With ASI, it won't be hard to build cities to cater for different tastes... There's plenty of unused land in the world!
Yes, but I would expect there still to be hard to smooth out status differentials in between a villa in a Saharan garden and a villa on the Riviera, such that there could still be an elite class owning legacy landscape assets. Which problem hyper realistic simulations won't solve for the same reasons, unless the level of simulation is obscured to everyone involved: it will be higher status to own certain simulations over others, and if base reality is known with some confidence, higher status still to own the "real" thing.
Do class differentials even matter? In a world of plenty, what do you care about your class? Are class differentials even a thing when class boundaries are rigid? I don't think people were as obsessed about class when the aristocracy was more rigid as they are now. So if in the future all status is fixed in perpetuity, we'll probably return to that world?
As for simulations, if it's so good you can become permanently immersed in it, do the status games of the real world still matter?
> don't think people were as obsessed about class when the aristocracy was more rigid as they are now.
That’s a fairly naive view of history. They were obsessed with the minutiae of class. How you got served at a dinner table was worked out to the exact rank.
No doubt from some people, but while status seeking might originally have evolved because it is adaptive, humans are meso optimizers, and we have a felt sense for status that we don't have for, e.g., reproductive fitness. Status is a proxy, but it's the proxy that we grok. In a future world of plenty where we can eat, sleep, breed and create art as much as we like, we will still have this status drive which isn't as easy to sate. I think, absent psychological engineering, we will always feel a drive for status.
As for simulations: no doubt many people will be happy wireheading and lose all sense of real world status, but because the drive for status is ineradicable: if you are a god over your own simulation, and you still have your drive for status, wherefrom will you derive it? I suspect that simulation level could be a site that status "gloms" onto, as it were, and so people may want to get to the real world for status-seeking reasons.
I believe it has been established beyond doubt, by brainwave measurements and similar, that all mammals dream, and probably reptiles too. That raises the question of whether they ever remember their dreams after waking and, if they do, the subsidiary question of whether the likely mismatch between their dream and reality confuses or disconcerts them. After all, there is no way they can be explicitly aware of the concept of dreams and that these are not real.
My cat sometimes seems out of sorts, for no apparent reason, and not her usual self for a while after waking, and I wonder if this is because she has just had some lurid dream and is wondering or worrying where (for example) the large dog she was dreaming about may still be lurking!
Humans do this too. Have you ever had a partner dream you did something bad (cheat, be mean to them, etc), and wake up mad at you? Have you ever done that or something similar? Have you ever had a scary dream, and woken up in the middle of it needing to go to the bathroom filled with fear? Or had a dream you had something and then wake up confused about where it is and why you don't have it? Or had a vague memory that you're not sure whether it really happened or not? I remember one dream from when I was a kid that feels as real as some other childhood memories around that time, even though I rationally know it's a dream based on stuff like gravity turning off in it.
A few times I’ve dreamed the my wife behaved in a very un-Mrs Gunflint manner. It took a little while to erase the weird irrational anger I felt on awakening.
Cf “The Indian Story” after the main body of Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game”
Anyone have an opinion on the skirmishes between economists and AI people this week?
Dwarkesh interviewed Tyler Cowen about why he thought AI couldn't accelerate growth much.
Zvi made a post criticising Cowen.
Maxwell Tabarrock responded to Scott arguing that AI couldn't push wages ->0
I think Noah Smith was also involved.
My view is that the economists are being obstinate or small-minded in relying on their standard framework around comparative advantage, lump of labour fallacy etc. But I also would have predicted more growth from AI as it exists already, and so far it's been negligible. The bullish on AI position also runs against the heuristic that nothing ever happens.
I think that the economists have a perspective that AI/LessWrong people should take more seriously.
I often see arguments from AI people that look like: the AI recursively improves its intelligence, becomes infinitely intelligent, unlocks infinite energy resources, and causes infinite transformation. (This may be a stereotype, but it's not so far from what is out there...)
By definition this is impossible-- we live in a finite world with finite resources. Whatever models eventually are produced, they may be 100x more capable than people, but they won't be infinitely more capable. And there are physical (and mathematical) constraints, which are easy to underestimate: no matter the intelligence of a system, many problems will remain too hard.
So any concrete predictions will have to determine how much we expect to be able to increase intelligence, and what the returns to that increased intelligence would be. It is hard to evaluate this, because a key claim of AI-optimists is that we have no idea what technological progress could be unlocked if we had more intelligence. But it's worth considering whether it is lower than you might think.
Which side you take is dependent a lot on how big a deal you think AI will be. If you think it is about as much a deal as the smartphone, then it makes sense to listen to economists who have likely seen their share of tech hypes come and go.
If you think it is more on the importance of inventing the printing press, then you might want to consider that economists might err on the side of favoring status quo ("Of course there will still be economists in the future").
The laws of supply and demand will be valid regardless of how transformative AI is, plus economists have much more exposure to big-picture historical thinking than technologists do. Even if AI completely transforms society I trust economists much more to think through what that will look like. In my experience technologists tend to be hamstrung by narrow "technology is everything" type thinking while economists are much better at understanding the cynical human realities.
The economist argument, based on comparative advantage, is that even if AI is better than humans for everything you would still use humans for some things, as there would be a comparative advantage in giving the harder and more profitable stuff to the AI rather than use the AI for less profitable work. This all assumes that the AI is costly enough relative to humans.
In the short term, obviously humans are cheaper, but you also have to consider the societal costs of raising them, educating them, treating health issues, etc etc. It suddenly makes a lot less sense to pay taxes for the sake of welfare when you don't really need people anymore.
>This all assumes that the AI is costly enough relative to humans.
AI costs + relevant material costs where robots are needed. The latter may cost more than the former. And that still assumes "AI is better than humans for everything".
AI is simply the latest innovation since the start of the Industrial Revolution to increase automation. It's a big deal but no bigger than many other technologies that have come along over the past 250 years.
Then again, predictions are hard. The way to bet is to look at the past.
CGP Grey addressed this point 10 years ago[1], and (almost[2]) everything he says in that video is still true. tl;dw, the IR didn't just "increase automation", it specifically automated manual and farm work, allowing humans to move to service and intellectual work. AI is poised to potentially automate *both* of those away, and we haven't created enough new sectors to move to to have productive labor for everyone.
[2] He said that self-driving cars "don't need to be perfect, just better than your average human" to be rationally better and be adopted, but he recently said on a podcast that he was being foolishly optimistic about how rational humans would be, and *of course* people would hold computers to an unreasonable standard of perfection even when it had a statistical cost in lives.
Software has been automating service and intellectual work for decades, yet growth rates haven't risen above historical averages. AI is a continuation of this trend. Maybe someday all productive labor will be automated away, however that isn't the question here. We want to know if growth rates will increase.
AI as it currently stands is, at best, a way to improve productivity (I've read some posts from programmers that using it was actually negative for their productivity). The same tools we have for analyzing other things that increase productivity will apply just fine, namely the fact that increasing worker productivity leads to *higher* demand and usually, higher wages (but possibly with increased inequality).
The world where humans are completely replaced in most or all work, is possible but there are reasons to be skeptical. There are some clear obstacles that have to be overcome still. AI still scales with parameters and training data well, but inputs like data and energy are becoming more scarce--why else would Google be trying to spin up nuclear reactors? That sort of thing takes time. And changes to algorithms and methods help too, but that also takes more time than just "num_params = num_params*10." Importantly, these things are also expensive. An AI that costs 10x what a human does isn't going to have huge ramifications on the labor market. It's certainly possible that all of these challenges will be overcome, but it's clearly far from certain, and probably will take more than a few years. It's already been almost 2 years since GPT-4's release, with some people claiming it's getting *worse* over time.
What *you're* missing is lag time. Current AI *WILL* have a huge impact on growth or employment, possibly both. But people adapt to new things slowly. (And I'm not sure that growth is where the money will end up, though it could. It could also end up as profit-taking. Consider "maintain production while cutting staff and not reducing prices".)
Probably over time it will lead to an increase in growth, if it doesn't lead to enough social disruption to prevent that growth. But expect things to be distributed quite unevenly.
I feel like we don't yet see where it's biggest impacts are. Insurance and credit providers have been using increasingly sophisticated AI models since the 2000s, and the result is that they do things like avoid catastrophic losses by canceling policies in southern California. It's hard to tie that directly to headcount, but if you look at profit margin per employee measured over 10-20 years, it's obvious in retrospect.
The AI videos and art I see on social media are annoying, the electronic equivalent of a six year old showing mommy his drawing of the family. They're demonstrations of capabilities, not meaningful art.
BUT... the other night it occurred to me that at this very moment there's probably dozens or hundreds of teenagers experimenting with creating entire movies using AI, and that in a few years we'll see some 25 year old's equivalent to Steven Spielberg's Duel, except made entirely with AI.
Yes, fully agree. LLMs are a continuation of the progress made in automating work that's been going on for generations. The question now, as much as in 1987 or any other date, is not whether it's possible to automate work, but whether it's economically feasible.
If LLMs can be easily trained on the specifics of various jobs, and can produce output with a low enough error rate and all the other attendant requirements to make is economical, we will switch to LLMs doing that work. But otherwise it'll be just like 10 years ago, when McDonalds could automate a location but generally decided not to.
Given the United States government is banning Tiktok for reasons of "national security" and foreign influence by the Chinese Communist Party, would the United Kingdom and European Union be justified in moving to ban X? After all, the owner of X has recently called for the overthrow of the democratically elected British government, has made no secret of his efforts to interfere in German elections and seems to be conspiring to use X to destabilize other governments in the region. A ban on national security grounds would seem reasonable.
No because the EU and the US are allies. We share the same basic culture and values and the US doesn't engage in covert operations against its allies. In order for there to be a national security threat there has to actually be a theoretical threat of future military action. China and the US could plausibly be at war in our lifetimes. Europe and the US, not so much.
Musk interferes in European politics much less than, e.g. Soros does in ours.
"The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) used a partnership with Denmark's foreign intelligence unit to spy on senior officials of neighbouring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish state broadcaster DR said.
The findings are the result of a 2015 internal investigation in the Danish Defence Intelligence Service into NSA's role in the partnership, DR said, citing nine unnamed sources with access to the investigation.
According to the investigation, which covered the period from 2012 to 2014, the NSA used Danish information cables to spy on senior officials in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück."
> the US doesn't engage in covert operations against its allies.
🤔 it really does. Everybody is spying on everybody. When they get caught there’s a game where one side is pseudo contrite and the other side pseudo shocked.
> Musk interferes in European politics much less than, e.g. Soros does in ours.
Always amazed that Soros gets a pass for this from people opposed to billionaires and their interference in democracies. It’s even described as conspiratorial.
"Always amazed that Soros gets a pass for this from people opposed to billionaires and their interference in democracies."
Because he/his foundations fund the 'right' causes. They got involved in our abortion referendum by funding activist groups on the repeal side, and I vaguely remember something about funding for the gay marriage referendum as well. At the least, they strongly approved of the 'right' result:
Apologies to Soros, it was a *different* American billionaire and his foundation that funded the pro-equality side in the same-sex marriage referendum:
Oh yeah, and seems the Open Foundation was also funding sex worker activism groups (which I didn't know about until I went looking for links to back up my memory of their activities in Ireland):
"Kate McGrew, speaking to this website, said the SWAI was contacted by the Soros-chaired foundation after the Irish group published a paper titled ‘Realising Sex Workers Rights’ in February. A staff member at Open Society told them funding might be available under a programme it was running.
It was something they “took very seriously,” she said, and the funds were now being used for “all kinds of things” – including an office in Dublin. The campaign group has also hired a number of paid staff to work at its city centre base, which it shares with another organisation."
So it sounds like it wasn't even the prostitution group that applied for funding, but the Foundation reached out to them first. Hmmm, I wonder does that sound like meddling in the internal affairs of another country? No, perish the thought!
"A foundation headed up by George Soros, one of the world's richest people, is providing financial backing to organisations seeking to repeal the constitutional prohibition of abortion.
A leaked strategy document details how Soros's Open Society Foundation planned to fund Amnesty International Ireland, the Abortion Rights Campaign and the Irish Family Planning Association.
The move was said to be part of a strategy to force the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, potentially setting off a chain reaction in other strongly Catholic countries in Europe.
The three organisations confirmed to the Irish Independent they had received grants from the foundation."
The media here and next door pretty much blared about "American right-wing Christian groups" getting involved in the anti-same sex marriage and pro-life side, but were very quiet about funding for the 'right' side until the stories broke of their own accord:
I don't mean spying. I mean covert action designed to inflict actual harm. Of course we spy, but the US poses zero plausible threat to any EU nation. We're formal military allies.
" Three separate investigations were started by Germany, Sweden and Denmark, the latter two were closed without publicly assigned responsibility for the damage in February 2024. In June 2024 German authorities issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national suspected of the sabotage."
Well, spying on someone certainly tends to do them harm. While I am somewhat sure that US spooks will not plot to cause mass death in Western Europe, that does not make spying all that harmless.
Tapping Merkel's phone was uncalled for, IMO, and possibly harmed the ability of NATO to keep info confidential.
Of course, all of this pales against figuring out who the MI6 asset within Al-Qaeda was for shit and giggles, then blabbering to some book author about it, burning the source:
> The British never shared Dean’s identity with the USA, and tried to provide as little revealing detail as possible, but apparently the Americans still figured it out after a while. Then some unknown insider talked to a journalist, who wrote a book, The One Percent Doctrine, containing all sorts of information on the informant
At least they showed these snobby brits upstaging their intelligence efforts. If the CIA does not get to have an asset within AQ, then nobody gets to have one!
All of the big US tech/social media companies (google, facebook, twitter) have had run-ins with EU law in the past over data protection and, more recently, misinformation. The occasional ban threat is thrown out but, given the political realities, is unlikely to actually happen. Fines, however, would be just as effective and, unlike for Chinese companies, actually enforcable. The EU has no qualms about handing out humongous fines and collecting them.
That is changing though. Musk and Zuckerberg are positioning for Trump to use US foreign policy to their benefit against the EU. What's good for Facebook is good for the United States, I suppose. In that case fines may cease to be effective or invite a diplomatic backlash.
What's happening now seems to be a level above misinformation, in that X is deliberately attempting to undermine and destabilize countries. And bans do seem to work - as Brazil demonstrated.
>Musk and Zuckerberg are positioning for Trump to use US foreign policy to their benefit against the EU.
That is what I meant with "political realities", and which make a ban less likely IMHO, not more likely. If Trump were to make X or FB an explicit part of political negotiations, and the EU were to ban them, that would be a very damaging move and could only lead to political escalation. Given Trump's personality especially, I wouldn't want the EU and the US to play a game of chicken, of who needs whom more.
If you bring up Brazil and X, you can see the play as it would really happen: Brazil ordered X to appoint a legal representative, blocked X after they failed to do so, and lifted the ban after compliance and a fine was paid. So blocking was neither the first nor the last step.
Same process in the EU: a ban is only the last resort, if other enforcement mechanisms are ineffective. Forcing compliance through fines is the preferred method, and the EU has demonstrated that they are willing and able with US companies.
It is of course possible that the USA under Trump go full rogue in international relations including her European allies, but the banning of X would be a consequence of that, not a cause.
My understanding is that the national security considerations are the risk that the Chinese government uses user data (collected normally or illicitly) to collect intelligence, not that China uses Tiktok to harm/destabilize the US directly. (It does do that of course, but that's not the major justification.) The equivalent argument would be that American intelligence agencies take data from X and other American social networks, but the UK/EU govts seem pretty okay with the CIA knowing lots of stuff.
I think their viewpoint is closer to “we don’t like it, but trying to do anything significant against it comes with consequences we don’t really want, and we can live with it because the CIA does not in fact view us as genuine enemies”.
What's the career advice you'd give to an early career professional in a pretty standard, non-coding, big city white collar job (data/market analysis) given that AGI will be here soon? My head tells me to quit and try to move into something else.
Very happy to welcome advice in the forms of links to someone else already talking about this. Also would be interested to know if anyone has already made a huge pivot in their career in preparation for the coming death of white collar jobs.
Are you good at communications and public presentations? I think there will always be a role for the human element. In my company they are creating Data Strategists, which is just the portion of the data job that is creating the communication materials, visiting and connecting with people over the data, helping people interpret data, giving presentations, taking data requests, etc. I don't think AI will be able to do that part, because humans will still want to talk to a human. This is especially important if you data job involves external clients, or community members, etc.
If AGI will be here soon, then your choice of career doesn't matter much at all. If it would be economically feasible to replace your job, then it's probably economically feasible to replace most or even all jobs. There's no magic job to hold up in.
So you've got a couple of potentially helpful options.
You can invest in companies, properties, or whatever that you expect to grow significantly in the off chance that AI wins big but also doesn't destroy the world or get rid of all wealth.
Or you can learn how to be a survivalist and grow your own food and take care of the needs of you and your loved ones.
Both are pretty long shot options. My personal approach is to move forward as if AI will not achieve any big goals, and keep the job I have now. If I have specific reason to think that my job, as opposed to specific other nameable jobs, will get replaced then I'll look at options then. There's no point jumping ship from a good job that I can do well and get paid well at, when there's no reason to think that any other job will not get replaced as well. I happen to think that AI will not have nearly the impact that some people think, and that most of us will have jobs for as long as needed.
FWIW, I still put AGI at around 2035. That's "soon" in terms of planning a career.
OTOH, the options that look like they might be "safe" careers aren't very attractive. They not only require a lot of manual work, they're dangerous. (And even those aren't really safe, though the job may need to be redesigned the way "cherry pickers" redesigned the work of "lineman".)
I made this argument in another comment below but it seems to me that their are many scenarios (which I consider very likely) where there is 10-20 years of white collar jobs being mostly gone but jobs involving physical labor and craftsmanship, particularly jobs which are not industrialized (neighborhood plumber, carpenter etc.) continue to exist.
If AI ushers in a deep utopia (or at least a world without much work) this won't be a frictionless process, and it seems to me there will be at least of decade in which being unemployed will be much less pleasant than being employed. I also imagine that even in a deep utopia there will be some goods scarcity/status hierarchy (see Scott's recent post) and if I don't need to be the richest or highest status person, it would be nice to not be at the bottom. Staying employed longer will likely help with that.
Few white collar jobs but no deep utopia for 50 years also doesn't seem like an unlikely prospect. This is a possible outcome if we see something like an AI fizzle at just the point in which most white collar jobs become highly automated or if deep utopia simply takes a long time to bring about.
Likewise, I'm fairly concerned that AI will kill us all, but I would be surprised if this happened in the next 10 years (maybe the next 20). In the meantime, it will likely be better to be employed than not (similar arguments apply in the case of us being killed/enslaved by the CCP/ a tech oligarchy etc.).
In general, even if we imagine AGI solves robotics extremely quickly, it will only be able to deploy robots, at least at first, at the rate at which humans can build them and deploy them. This means several years, likely more than a decade, before robots are widespread. Being employed during that time will likely be better than being unemployed. And this seems on the faster end for the rate of AGI solving and deploying robots.
My point was more that we can't really predict which jobs might be outsourced and in which order. I think it was a big surprise to just about everyone that white collar, instead of blue collar, jobs are more likely to be outsourced.
Telling millions of white collar workers to go get blue collar jobs isn't really going to work either. They don't have the background and skills to do it well, and there's not enough of those jobs for very many new people to get into them.
Better for them to use the higher salaries to secure themselves than to take a lower salary in a job they aren't good at just on the chance that they avoid being outsourced a few more years. They would still risk the chance that Claude 5.5 is really good at electrical and plumbing and it's all for naught anyway.
We can take a shot at predicting. The easiest jobs to automate with AI will be fully digital jobs. All of my job involves sitting at a computer excepting some client interaction. By comparison, bringing an AI to do a plumbing or carpentry job will require advances in robotics that are at an earlier stage of development than AI currently, and much harder to deploy AI on at scale even if we assume AI will be able to do them via robotics shortly (due to limitations with building out robotic infrastructure).
You're right that there will be unexpected effects (AI's make it easier for people to do their carpentry themselves by telling them what to do?) but I think we can make good guesses and the barriers to deployment of AI in physical labor fields are much higher than in digital fields.
Note that I'm not telling white collar workers to do anything, just looking for advice for myself. I think you're probably right that there won't be tons of blue collar jobs all of the sudden (perhaps they could materialize with time?) which makes it more important to consider a switch now before their are large numbers of unemployed workers trying to get into those jobs.
Sure, if you personally feel that you can make the switch to blue collar work that could be a reasonable option to consider. But with how much uncertainty we have, I would be very careful not to put all of your eggs into a new basket just because the current basket looks suspect. I do agree that digital work currently looks like the most likely to get replaced, but that depends on a number of things that we really don't know at the moment. If LLMs hit a roadblock on that kind of work (just a random possibility - if LLMs can't be designed to self-select effectively which work needs done and that is too vital in digital white collar work) then the tide may turn and suddenly a different kind of work seems the most likely to replaced.
If you're making a good living now, then taking a 30-60% pay cut to work in a field that you're less experienced with and makes less money in general seems like a potentially terrible decision. Do what makes sense for you, but you may end up regretting your decision no matter which direction you go.
Maybe AGI will be here soon, and maybe it won't. And if it arrives, maybe it will lead to the death of all white collar jobs, and maybe it won't. And maybe it will kill us all, so what job you will do after it arrives is irrelevant. Or usher in a deep utopia (likewise). Betting that AGI is coming soon, and is going to be of a type where employment remains necessary, and some jobs survive into the long run, just not the white collar ones, is a fairly specific bet on the future, for which your level of certainty seems unmerited.
Apocryphally, the Rand Corporation employees tasked with wargaming WWIII in the 1960s never contributed a dime to their retirement accounts, so sure were they that the nuclear apocalypse was nigh. I would advise you to dial down your level of certainty on one specific AI scenario.
I agree that doubt about my own hypothesis is a compelling reason to not make the jump. And it's fair to have some doubt. But I think you're overstating the scenarios in which my career choices don't matter.
If AI ushers in a deep utopia (or at least a world without much work) this won't be a frictionless process, and it seems to me there will be at least of decade in which being unemployed will be much less pleasant than being employed. I also imagine that even in a deep utopia there will be some goods scarcity/status hierarchy (see Scott's recent post) and if I don't need to be the richest or highest status person, it would be nice to not be at the bottom. Staying employed longer will likely help with that.
Few white collar jobs but no deep utopia for 50 years also doesn't seem like an unlikely prospect. This is a possible outcome if we see something like an AI fizzle at just the point in which most white collar jobs become highly automated or if deep utopia simply takes a long time to bring about.
Likewise, I'm fairly concerned that AI will kill us all, but I would be surprised if this happened in the next 10 years (maybe the next 20). In the meantime, it will likely be better to be employed than not (similar arguments apply in the case of us being killed/enslaved by the CCP/ a tech oligarchy etc.).
And regardless of all of the above, I think it's good for one's mental health to try to exercise some level of agency over your life.
Yeah, you are betting on a scenario involving either an AI fizzle at a very specific point, or else a very slow takeoff. That could be how things play out, but I don't have even a good probability estimate - I think we are in the domain of Knightian uncertainty. And if we end up with a slow takeoff rather than a fizzle, then at some point we still hit a singularity, beyond which forecasting is impossible.
Maybe your best bet is to try and preserve optionality - things may look clearer a few years down the line. This could involve learning meatspace skills. Or trying to amass a large amount of deployable capital. Or something else - if you have a creative route to maximizing optionality, do share.
These forest fires have left me wondering how long a detached property is vulnerable to the heat of a passing forest fire. Presumably once the surrounding vegetation has burned, which I imagine happens fairly quickly, leaving only scorched earth, the heat reduces considerably.
This in turn means the chance of the forest fire igniting the property itself is only high within a fairly short time window, although that doesn't take into account embers blown by the wind or close neighboring properties on fire.
So, given that many expensive properties have swimming pools, couldn't these properties be protected by a system of pipes that pump water, taken from the pool, down from the roof of the property and then down the walls, at a rate proportional to the surrounding temperature?
From my experience with Rimworld, I would say that a few tiles without flammable material (i.e. concrete) surrounding your property, plus a few pawn standing ready to put out any flames started by blowing embers is a good strategy.
My understanding is a fire suppression system very similar to your idea is what's happening in this video (Not that you should be in the house, not designed for that).
One thing to note is that smoke can ruin the house anyway. Everything will smell like smoke (including burned plastic, chemicals etc.) for the rest of time and the house can be a write off anyway.
"taken from the pool", you mean emptying a swimming pool? That amount of water isn't going to supply enough flow for this to work for more than a few hours.
When big wildfires are going for days you'd need a reliable water supply with plenty of emergency capacity. In areas where home water supplies are coming from aquifers and/or diversion in from elsewhere that can become an issue, as LA and its suburbs are being reminded right now.
If the water supply is coming from a major river or a Great Lake or something then, no problem. But that doesn't tend to be where these big forest fires happen.
Wildfires may burn for days, but any one spot only burns for minutes-to-hours as the fire moves through (excluding slow smoldering, but that's much less of a risk). With even extremely basic sensing/automation, you do not need a system that can provide protection for more than a few hours, which would provide enough protection in the vast majority of situations.
Even blowing embers are probably not a risk for much longer beyond that.
Hmm, maybe. It's the blowing embers I'm thinking of though. I'm no fire expert but have heard someone who is discuss forest fire embers travelling "for miles". That might be the part to unpack to see if this proposed system would be effective using just the water in a swimming pool or whatever.
A blowing ember *can* start a fire, but the chances of an ember starting a fire in any given place is low.
And it can be dropped to negligible by hosing down your property so that everything is a little bit damp. This doesn't take a fancy pool-emptying pump, just a standard garden hose will do.
And more generally, especially if you might not be around for extended periods during fire season, good fire prep is mostly about clearing fuel aroung the property and not leaving places for the embers to lodge: https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/plan-and-prepare/prepare-your-property
Scott, are you planning on doing a review post on the annual prediction contest this year? Last year's contest was handled by metaculus so not sure if you're planning to say anything (or if there's a centralized repo of scores we can check to write our own).
How do you bet against a country over a long/medium time horizon?
Specifically against, not just moving investments around to different exchanges or bonds or whatever.
Eg, if you are bearish on the US over 20 years, how do you even make those investments? I have diversified bonds and property and such, but it escapes me how you could directly hedge against the government of the USA and the value of the dollar.
One of the great ironies of the global economy is that in cases of trouble, people usually flee to safety, which means US government bonds. Even when said trouble *is* the US government threatening to default on its bonds. Trying to bet against treasuries is practically a divide by zero error.
Just curious, but what's your vision for a relative US decline? I'm certainly bearish on the US for political reasons, but what other country do you think is going to surpass us economically? I don't think we have any problems that every other first world country doesn't also have. Immigration cushions us against demographic collapse more than anywhere else.
If you're an institutional investor or billionaire with $100 billion to invest, where would you realistically want to put it? If it's me, I'm picking the country with the world's strongest military and most dynamic economy. I think it's highly unlikely that either of those things changes over the next 20 years.
That's the thing, I don't know that a country will surpass the US per say, I just think that the US will cease to be so far out Infront of the pack it's not even a race over the next 20-40 years.
If China has one more peaceful transition of power, they inevitable catch up enough to be competition, and if the European currency union stops being too schizoid and the Germans don't dynamite their own economy for political reasons, they also catch up and we end up with a trio out in front, with other nations (Singapore, Japan, etc.) that are also way out there but are too small to be whales in the space.
On the other hand, the US has proved that it is too politically schlerotic to deal with any black swan style events that don't benefit from people just fucking off and doing what they want while spending tons of money. That turned out to be the solution to the Covid economic disaster, but it might not for the next one.
Those are a lot of ifs. The US has been the most politically stable and economically dynamic country for 100 years now. I really have a hard time seeing how that changes, identity politics notwithstanding. Absolutely no one would trust China enough to take care of their money - they're always just one central party meeting away from nationalizing your assets.
>the US has proved that it is too politically schlerotic to deal with any black swan style events
The US recovered from 2008 and covid better than most other first world nations so I don't see where you're getting that perspective from.
Betting *against* anything on a long time scale doesn't make a lot of sense. Your potential gains are capped, while your potential losses are unlimited.
I have substantial funds by my standards, but not by anything above branch level for a bank.
Also, I don't want a risk profile that goes to infinity, I want one that goes to zero. A little fun hedge bet I can make on the side, like going to the ponies.
That is an incredibly expensive thing to do unless you literally expect the interest rates to shoot up imminently, isn't it? You'd have to pony up the coupon payments while holding the short, correct?
You have the proceeds from selling the bond to cover the payments. Depending on the yield curve you'd usually invest the proceeds in money market funds or similar, which would provide all or most of the coupon payments.
An institutional investor would buy the 2s20s steepener. I think these are available to some retail investors now too.
You can't. Investing is more useful the more specific it is. Betting against "a country" adds almost no information. You have to bet on something specific like the stocks of the top 500 companies in the country or the relative value of its currency. And you have to get the when right. Overshooting can be just as dangerous as undershooting.
I guess socially you could move somewhere else. But that's not traditionally thought of as an investment.
I'm already on top of that, I/the family have a couple places in countries that won't be too badly off if only because you can't die from a really short fall.
Assuming you're not Soros or someone else who can personally take down a country, and also assuming you're not already a sharp speculator (because then why would you ask here?):
Foreign equity funds. Not only will they do better than the U.S. if the U.S. does poorly, the dollar will also lose value which makes them even more valuable in dollars. And if the U.S. just does average, you haven't really taken on _too_ much risk.
Note that this isn't an intense speculation against the U.S., merely mild hedging. Even more sensible would be to split perhaps 50/50 with U.S. equities, because throughout history, it has _very_ rarely paid to bet against the U.S.
I'm fairly confident the American century is actually just going to be a century, but that still leaves quite a while where it makes sense to be heavily invested here.
I was wondering if there was a very high risk very high return style but you could make against a currency, but there doesn't seem to be.
which makes sense, why would a government provide a way to increase the risk of their own currency.
In the shorter term, you could probably play around with various derivatives, but this is an extreme-risk strategy and requires you to have a theory of just _when_ the decline will happen as well, or you will lose everything. Merely hedging against it rather than speculating is a lot more reasonable.
So far for the last few years, the USD is _up_ significantly against most currencies, and perhaps oddly, if Trump implements his mutually destructive tariffs, it might rise further still.
Remember the old adage: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Even if you think something must reasonably happen, it might happen in an unreasonably long time.
Do you have a theory about who will do best comparatively? (Western) Europe, Japan and China all seem unlikely, IMO. India will probably do well in the very long run, but that's probably _too_ long.
If you own property in the US, could you take a fixed rate mortgage on it? This would give you a significant long-term short US Currency position at a not-terrible cost. You can use the proceeds to invest into some foreign asset/gold/crypto/all of the above, or just spend it.
If it's the US, an ex-US investment fund (used by many index fund enthusiasts to hedge their US exposure) that invests in all countries outside the USA is one way. VXUS is the Vanguard ticker, FTIHX the Fidelity one. (I'm boycotting Blackrock on account of their support for woke and buying up all the houses, but you can look them up yourself.) Even throws off more dividends than the US equivalent, VTI.
With smaller economies it's tricky as those economies are a much smaller part of the world economy. I'm not sure how you'd bet against China long-term, for instance.
what is the nature of your pessimism? Are you betting that the US stock market will crash? That the US treasury will default? That the country will turn into Zimbabwe? Yugoslavia? That the US president will go rogue and nuke the world? That Sam Altman will create a malevolent ASI which ushers in the apocalypse? Each of these leads to a very different strategy (some of them seem un-hedgeable).
In theory you can do it by short selling treasury bonds from that country. But beware that short selling is one of the most risky investments possible. There is no limit to your losses.
Practically, there are bonds which try to do something similar for you, search for Inverse Bonds ETF. There seem to be bonds which have a time horizon of 20 years. I haven't looked into how they work exactly, so be very cautious buying these, since again some of them may give you unlimited risks, beyond the money that you "invest".
For the currency, you can borrow money in US$, buy a portfolio of other currencies which explicitly excludes the US dollar, and trade it for dollars in a few years.
You could short a local stock index or their currency. The problem with doing this over the long term is that short positions have carry costs (you're borrowing stocks to sell, meaning you have to pay interest on what you're borrowing), which makes it hard to do over a long time period.
Dwight MacDonald, dedication on his book of collected essays *Against the American Grain*: "For my sons, without whose school bills this book would never have been written."
Vladimir Nabokov, same dedication on every book: "For Vera". [his wife]
McElligot's Pool; "This book is dedicated to T.R. Geisel of Springfield Mass., The worlds greatest authority on Blackfish, Fiddler Crabs and Deegel Trout." Deegel Trout are explained here. https://seussblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/mcelligots-pool/
London Times piece about a professor of psychiatry who three years ago, gasp, dared to question the orthodoxy that depression results from a shortage of serotonin. Scott was debunking this debunking a decade ago, and the Times piece presenting the claim as new looks to me like self-aggrandizing bad faith from the psychiatrist and lazy lack of research from the journalist.
What music can people recommend for music that celebrates the idea of human progress.
Mine would be Sogno di Volare by Christopher Tin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0pBzowOKU4. Though perhaps his Baba Yetu is even better, the Lord Prayer isn't on the theme of progress; but combined with the original music video from Civ 5 it feels like an ode to human collaboration. Or maybe I just really like Baba Yetu ;)
(Might be an ironic celebration of progress, considering what happens immediately after this track is used in-game. But you wouldn't know from the music.)
Glib answer: Best celebration of progress is progress itself. Pick a great classic work that achieved progress in music. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, grand opera, Stravinsky. Popular today, innovative for their time.
More difficult but still glib: pick something that is good, new, and innovative.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 has some themes about exploration "Gladly, just as His suns hurtle through the glorious universe, So you, brothers, should run your course, joyfully, like a conquering hero," though there's some religious stuff too. At least nobody doubts the musical skill.
You could go with "The Future's So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)" for a double layer of irony--the text is pro-progress, but the song is intended to be ironic. The 'future is so bright' because of a nuclear explosion. So you take it and send it back to them.
Oh, dear. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but that song reeks of hubris (especially in light of the LA fires right now). Deepwinter strawberries? Abundance on the grocery shelves? And all for the low cost of no longer seasonal food, selected not for taste but ability to withstand transportation, bred to be over-sweetened to appeal to our jaded tastebuds, and the abundance brought about by factory farming (what do you reply to the shrimp cruelty people?)
I'm thinking more Dies Irae than "yay, go us!" fits my mood right now, and Verdi composed a banger for that:
I mean, the last verse is kind of about that. "In the bed we've made, may every nail be shown. The price we pay, time you made it known." "Shield my eyes no more."
It's saying both "we have abundance" and also "this abundance has hidden costs that are hard to see on the surface."
It's a great song but it's, at best, mixed praise for its subject matter. The criticism is light but deliberate—"Feed me beyond my means", "But there's a storm outside your door"—these lines would be out of place in an uncomplicated paean to technological progress.
Does anyone have a list of the people that had links about their April First alternate reality posts on Slatestarcodex?
I've been looking for one of them in particular with a green background and have no other details that I can recall. But I'm unsure exactly in what context that post or another post was linked previously. If anyone could help me out I would deeply appreciate it.
Not an expert (whatever that would mean) but it seems to me that there are several Chesterton's Fence type arguments. The typical human reproductive process informs and grounds virtually all aspects of culture. Monkeying with one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience has the potential to throw the entirety of civilization out of equilibrium. The new equilibrium might not be worse, but it's certainly higher variance. I think it's wise to be cautious with changes of that magnitude.
Would you rather be born as a child of two parents or as a clone of a single person? What are the arguments in favour of cloning, other than "heheh, wouldn't it be cool"?
If 'it would be cool' is really the only point you can think of in favor of cloning, maybe you should think about why that is. Here's a freebie: imagine how much more informative the family history will be for the kid's doctor...
Would you rather be a normal person born to random parents or one of thousands of JVN clones adopted by parents who think that raising a JVN clone sounds cool?
If you think parents are competitive about their offspring now, wait until they all have JVN clones to torment into precocity.
Presumably, the argument would be "I don't have a partner but I still want a biological child and I don't want to use donor sperm/egg for some reason."
What if you're facing a droid army controlled by a separatist movement and you need soldiers to fight them with? Didn't work out so good for the Jedi in the end, but it seemed reasonable at the time.
Build your own droid army to fight theirs? Obviously clones aren't a good solution here since a) they take too long to mature and b) even a clone of an exceptional fighter can't beat a robot.
(I've only seen the original trilogy so I don't know how AotC dealt with these issues.)
Nope! I was somehow reminded of the uproar over Dolly in the 90s. At the time, as a young atheist, I naturally thought the "anti-cloning" arguments were "regressive prude cultural nonsense", as PB wrote. But I've softened some of my stances in the intervening 25 years. I mostly was curious about resolutely secular arguments against cloning!
I think it would be easier to have the discussion in the context of a specific use-case. For example, if grieving parents want to clone their child who died in an accident, you could have concerns like "the new child will have to deal with unreasonable expectations of being a carbon copy of their older sibling, instead of being allowed to be their own person".
Or maybe the parents want the clone to be an organ donor for a sick sibling -- that has already happened without cloning, the parents just had another child hoping that it would be compatible. (IIRC it was, and the transplant did happen, but there were obvious concerns that the donor child was being treated like a box of spare parts rather than valued for their own sake, and of course, the donor child didn't really have much ability to consent of their own free will. And what if the child hadn't been compatible, would the parents have been able to hide their disappointment about that "failure"?)
Or if the government wants to clone one particularly capable Navy SEAL a million times in order to create an army of super-soldiers, some spoilsports would probably have a problem with that too. Likewise with PB's creative proposal to have the world ruled by clones of Lee Kuan Yew.
So my idea is that I am not against cloning people *on principle*, but it's hard to come up with a specific scenario in which you'd want to do it, which would not have senario-specific ethical concerns attached.
> Do you have a specific scenario in mind where you'd want to clone somebody?
I don't know about OC, but I sure have one! I want to clone Lee Kuan Yew ~200 times and install him as dictator-for-life in all the countries of the world.
If you read his book Third World to First, he empirically successfully solved pretty much all the major problems any country has (ethnic and racial strife, strong economic growth with no natural resources, eliminating corruption in governance, maintaining good international relations, riots and near-wars, housing crises, and so on).
He’s the only proven great, non-corrupt, and empirically successful "benign tyrant” / philosopher-king we have actual DNA for. Time for some radical experimentation in governance!
LKY is overrated imo. All the small to medium East Asian countries in the American sphere of influence became developed countries, and Singapore is on a strategic trading chokepoint as well. He was playing on the easiest setting.
I disagree with this, he really did repeatedly solve a lot of hairy, near-existential problems, and even his critics will readily admit to that.
But let's just say his reputation IS overrated, because that's definitely possible, given venerating him is practically a religion in Singapore, and he was certainly portraying himself in the best light in his book.
Even if he's half as great as his overrated estimation, that reduces him from approximately a million times better at leadership, competence, diplomacy, and empirically being better at actually solving difficult nation-level problems, to *merely* five hundred thousand times better than any extant American or European politican, not to mention African, South American, etc.
Still sounds like my experiment in governance is worth pursuing!
But to be honest, I legitimately think GPT-4 would do a better job than a full 80% of federal-level US politicians, and pretty much anyone can agree that if you manus-dei replaced most African leaders with a rock that kept tigers away (and didn't embezzle billions of dollars from the poorest people on earth), they're probably coming out ahead.
I mean, much like George Washington, LKY had an opportunity to behave a lot worse, and he didn't take it. He deserves admiration for that, no doubt. He also was a very successful manager and handled some very tricky situations. Most city states are not as successful as Singapore. Very few people are 'a million times better' at anything--he had a high energy level, a high IQ, was born into the right place and the right family, and had the rare combination of machiavellianism without psychopathy or much narcissism. Put him lower down the food chain (make his dad a fry cook at McDonald's) and he'd just be the guy who runs their accounting department really, really well.
But I doubt cloning him would be all that useful. He'd probably be too autocratic for most Western countries, etc. I wouldn't make too much of the Great Man theory of history--there are great men, certainly, but they're usually great because they have just the right set of virtues (and frequently vices) for the place they're born in. As Penrose says, he had advantages--without them he'd probably be some bureaucrat well remembered in his local city but not known elsewhere. I mean, you've never heard of Zhuge Liang unless you're Asian or played Dynasty Warriors.
I'm going to sound like a leftist, but the systems matter too. Even if you replaced those leaders with a rock, some warlord would get rid of the rock and you'd be back to square one.
What's the fair reference class for Singapore? The only place you can reasonably compare it to is a (pre-1997) Hong Kong -- both cities had very similar starting conditions in terms of geography, culture and demographics.
Comparing the two, I think the results were pretty similar. Singapore has its advantages over Hong Kong, and Hong Kong over Singapore, but apart from the fact that Hong Kong eventually got taken over by the CCP there's not that much to separate the two, and nobody glorifies the various Governors of Hong Kong the way they glorify LKY.
> Very few people are 'a million times better' at anything
It's definitely tongue in cheek hyperbole, but I think you can actually make this argument, too.
Certainly I can conceive of somebody doing a million times *worse* - Singapore as a country could plain not exist. It could be a war-torn nonproductive wasteland, it could be a satellite of some larger country, given that it started at the an extremely low GDP, it could be like Laos is even today, etc. Like not only would all the GDP growth and businesses it brought into existence not exist, but all it's unique contributions to the world's culture would also be missing - Changi airport (reliably rated one of the best airports in the world), greenery and plant life on all the skyscrapers, Fort Canning Park, the Garden by the sea, ending every sentence with "lah," etc.
Sure, LKY contributing to all that stuff was contingent on his education and skills and timing, but given a fully faithful sim of it, I think it'd be really easy to do a lot worse in various repetitions with different actions / leaders in his place.
> Even if you replaced those leaders with a rock, some warlord would get rid of the rock and you'd be back to square one.
Oh, 100%. That's why I specified "hand of god," like installed externally by the programmer so it's non-removable. Those positions of power just aren't pursuable. Immense improvements to lots of African lives.
Which is basically the case for colonialism in a nutshell - the bigger, ten thousand times badder external force that fills that power vacuum so comprehensively piddling local warlords CAN'T spend all their time murdering to get to the top spot, where they can embezzle with abandon.
> Are there any "rationalist" arguments against cloning humans? (for a broad definition of rationalist...)
AFAIK, the two strongest arguments against it right now are:
1) cloning large primates is pretty fiddly and the "failure" rate is pretty high, and some of the failures can be pretty gruesome (accelerated aging, mutations, etc)
2) The time and logistics to get to a point of viable clones; you'd have to impregnate a lot of long-gestation and long-lifetime primates or humans, and this'll take a long time and be very expensive, and since there's still a lot of learning to do, there's going to be a whole lot of failures, which is salient ethically if they're human (like what do you do with the hundreds of suffering, short lifetime babies and kids?)
The rest of the reasons are just the usual "regressive prude" cultural nonsense, in my own opinion, and which is also why we don't have viable gengineering today, even though it's been possible from a scientific and technical perspective to gengineer human babies (and with much higher success rates than cloning), for 10+ years.
Do they count? Of course. Should they be trusted? No.
I guess it's tangent time; my grandmother died before I was born (indeed, before my mom was out of highschool), but every story I've heard is that she never, ever, complimented anyone. A kid would bring home the best grade they'd ever got in school, and she would lambast them about pride and showing off.
So, if your mother compliments you, take joy in that. It's something not everybody gets.
Depends. "That's a really nice picture" - probably not, any mom would tell this to her kid, no matter what the picture is. "Oh, this time you got a really nice haircut unlike the last time. Who cut your hair this time?" - yes.
Social actions matter socially, if legally you could file a suit and then take it back "cause I was joking" that be absurd. Whatever culture your in, a compliment should have some limit range of outcomes and meanings that are smaller then the situation before.
It doesnt matter if a cheerleader complimenting a nerds, goal is to to get homework help, it still an increase of social value if shallow. (tho the nerd should suggest a price)
'Hypothetical' in the sense that your mum never pays you compliments?
I think maybe compliments should probably "count" when they actually convey information about how good the thing being complimented is. For your mum, probably if she's complimenting you just to show care and supportiveness but actually she's entirely agnostic about the quality of the thing being complimented, probably that usually shouldn't count for you (otherwise you might be in for a rude awakening when the rest of the world encounters the thing). If your mum is genuinely complimenting the thing, not just showing care and supportiveness, I think it depends on the nature of the compliment versus your mum's expertise in that particular field:
If your mum is an old-school apron-wearing housewife and she says 'you look lovely today, dear' possibly she doesn't have much understanding of the aesthetic principles involved (at least for your age/social/peer group) and the compliment doesn't mean very much (ie. doesn't convey much information about how you actually look)
Conversely, if mum says "the apple pie you baked was very good", probably we expect that she has basically a PhD-level understanding of apple pies and that compliment should mean alot.
(Obviously if your mum happens to be a Parisienne haute couture fashion designer, maybe the "you look good today" compliment would convey much more useful information - and probably she wouldn't know quite so much about patisserie..)
I have a friend who has a mysterious set of symptoms, wondering if anyone here has some tips for things to look into. It's been labeled functional neurologic disorder, but that's just a set of symptoms IIUC, and no root cause has been identified.
Current symptoms:
* Occasional bouts of involuntary muscle movement lasting up to an hour. All over the body.
* Occasional periods of being unable to speak, lasting hours.
* Occasional periods of being unable to walk, lasting hours.
In mid December these all started getting worse over the course of a few weeks, culminating in a hospital stay around Christmas. His symptoms got better during the stay (from not being able to speak or move most of the day, to only having sporadic periods throughout the day).
Things which are not obviously connected but I suspect they may be:
Over the past year he became very distant from basically all his friends and family. Stopped replying to texts. When people did manage to see him he was extremely evasive in conversation, often to the point of using hostility to deflect away from talking about himself.
Over the past few years he's lost weight. I don't know his actual weight but I suspect his BMI would label him "underweight".
A test for vitamin deficiencies and lead during his hospital stay was supposedly normal, but I haven't seen the results myself.
MRI of his brain was taken, apparently didn't show anything that might indicate a cause.
He's been told to try to see a movement neurologist but there's apparently a 6+ month wait where he lives.
He's doing physical and speech therapy to I guess try to relearn how to control his body, but obviously if the root cause of the symptoms could be identified that would be helpful.
Might be parasites. Just buy some and take it. 2% of americans have parasites. Parasites can cause literally any problem depending on where they end up in the body. They look like normal tissue on basic scans. Let me know what happens!
oops! Some combantrin or albendazole. I had similar symptoms to your friend and combantrin seems to have cured me. 5 years with symptoms and now 5 months without
I'm a neurologist. Not to be glib but pre-test probability on this being conversion disorder with normal Brain MRI is very high. No one should ever be diagnosed with anything by anybody via random text, but I'm putting here to plant a seed should he/she be told something similar.
Yes, I wondered about that too. Still, last I knew 5% or so of people diagnosed with conversion disorder are ultimately found to have a medical disorder causing their symptoms. And the man's cluster of symptoms sounds ominous -- seems like if this is not a conversion disorder it's something pretty bad. So seems like for those reasons quick and energetic follow-up with a movement neurologist seems warranted. Do you agree? I'm a psychologist, by the way.
The way I would speak to a peer about this flavor of vignette is very different from how I'd present publicly. This space is full of interested and very intelligent people so I'll try to speak as candidly as I'm able.
The above story is a common one. I've heard it hundreds of times. Most other neurologists have too. The ubiquity of psychogenic illness is severely underappreciated. Not just by members of the public but frankly by many physicians and medical practitioners. There is a particular narrative that is a powerful one -- the unique hard to diagnose case that all the doctors missed because the medical establishment sucks / didn't take my symptoms seriously etc. It is a true one. It happens sometimes.
Far, far, far more often though people have psychogenic illness, get worked up to the hilt, are unsatisfied, end up going to a tertiary or quaternary center (Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, etc.) and get worked up again. Accepting that something is psychogenic is incredibly difficult. And providers being direct with patients that this is what is going on is also difficult. I'm sorry to say that many providers don't like doing it and so they demur. "All the tests are normal." And patients will have a narrative "They couldn't figure it out" at the 2nd and 3rd opinion visits. Some will see "Lyme literate" physicians looking for answers and get put on chronic doxycycline. Some will see quacks and get chelation therapy. For most, the symptoms will wax and wane over their life.
If you're a neurologist and a patient has a seizure in the office, it's a useful fact to know that the pre-test probability of the seizure being psychogenic is much higher than it being epileptic. If you think about it, this makes sense. Epileptic seizures are to a first approximation are distributed randomly and psychogenic pathology is very much not. Almost every time I've seen a case where something is spread far and wide via social media or in a social circle trying to reach neurologists, it's trivial for someone in the business to look at the videos and determine that it's psychogenic. Unfortunately, there's no win in identifying this and saying so as a practitioner. You just become another heartless doctor blowing people off. Even if this is accurate 99 times for every miss. Even if the pain you see in people searching for an answer they'll never find because the true issue isn't dealt with is your motivation in thinking about conversion -- because getting 2nd and 3rd and 4th opinions at sexy institutions like Northwestern or UCSF is agentic and getting "blown off" as just another person with PTSD seems like it isn't.
I think a lot about conversion because it causes a lot more disability and is far more common than people realize. I could go into details of why I don't think this is Huntington's (vast majority of cases have identifiable family history, symptoms wax and wane too prominently) or MS (even a non-con MRI would have some lesions, symptoms extremely atypical, etc.) or other primary neurologist disease but this is something treating physicians should do. I was very close to doing movement disorder before I ended up doing what I do presently and while most movement disorder specialists got into it because they're excited about DBS or Parkinson's management, a substantial proportion of the case load is conversion/functional/whatever you want to call it. The providers can smell these cases from a mile away and for understandable reasons don't feel the pressing need to add them on. The subtext here is this person was admitted to the hospital and released after a thorough workup. The neurologists who saw him/her were fairly convinced it was conversion. That's not gonna get you added on quick. My strong suspicion is this is part of the lack of quick follow-up, even in settings where it doesn't take 8 weeks minimum to get in (which is par for subspecialty care).
I understand. The symptoms described are sort of like glove anesthesia, right? The thing that most has that sound for me (I'm a psychologist, by the way) is discrete, brief episodes of being profoundly impaired (e.g., can't talk ,can't walk), interspersed with longer periods of normal functioning. On the other hand, OP mentions that the friend is doing speech and physical therapy to relearn how to control his body, so maybe his speech and walking are not fully normal between episodes, just better than during the episodes when he cannot speak or walk at all? So we may not have the full picture.
And while everyone has a terrible time accepting a diagnosis of conversion disorder, 5% or so of them are right to not accept it. That's why I'm urging OP to get his friend in to see a movement neurologist.
Let an expert in disorders with symptoms like his make the call.
His cluster of symptoms is pretty ominous, and he absolutely should not wait 6 mos. to see a specialist. Ways to speed things up:
-find every movement neurologist nearby and call to set up an appt. It's likely there's someone who isn't scheduling that far out. Make an appt with several of these docs, then when he gets in to see one cancel the other appts.
-For appointments that are far off, ask to be on the wait list. BUT that itself isn't going to make a lot of difference. Here's what does: Call every place you are wait-listed once or twice a week and tell them that if they have a cancelation in the next couple days you will definitely be able to come at the drop of a hat. Also chat up whoever you speak with when you call. You want them to like you and remember you. So do not emphasize your dire need and do not complain about the wait. Be friendly, joke around a little, apologize a little for the frequent calls but be like "I expect a lot of people on the wait list are hard to reach or can't come in at short notice, but I actually can, just want you folks to know."
-See if there are any movement neurologists in nearby states who do virtual appointments. They might be able to give him useful if they have all his records and verbally walk him through some procedures where they can test his memory, observe his walk etc. Or they might order some tests he can take locally. He will then at least know more, plus one of them might be able to get him in faster to then see a movement neurologist in his area.
multiple sclerosis -> unlikely since no (yet?) brain MRI lesions
parkinson
ALS
consider doing spinal mri and pro and cons of contrast for brain.
also:
EMG and nerve function test
serum phosphorylated Tau, beta amyloid and neurofilament light chain
specific imaging tech for parkinson
check for demyelinating signs, optic neuritis
I will tell you something very few doctors understand in the 21st century:
for diseases that are hard to diagnose (with available tech that is otherwise is trivial via proteomics...), often the most efficient way to "diagnose" is to test the efficacy of a specific therapeutic. If the therapeutic works: you win and 2) it is empirical evidence even if not robust, for diagnostic.
hence most easiest way to identify parkinsonism is to give the patient a dopaminergic such as available online: mucuna pruriensis and selegiline. should lead to partial symptomatic improvement
cost: negligible, and is mostly benign
most dyskinesias are dopaminergic.
If not then the second main class are myelopathies, for them try 500-1000mg cdpcholine
while adressing the root cause is reasonnable, the medical research is far too degenerate to have tried such a thing so efficacy is unknown. As such the actual test for and not only for myelopathies are immunosuppressants, such as the ones used for Multiple Sclerosis
this is usually used by scientist but it transcend classical diagnosis ability, however the public cost is unknown, so please ask them but minimum price likely a thousand dollar
proteins for diagnosing aforementionned diseases can be checked here:
Doing non-contrast MRI only in this situation sounds criminally negligent to me so I would really hope they did both types. Similarly, agree on spinal MRI (and possibly lumbar puncture) but again one would assume that to happen in such a case...
Migraines can cause twitching fits, aphasia, loss of balance, and muscle weakness for the duration of the migraine. Also, "silent migraines" with little or no of the classic pain symptoms are a thing.
Have migraines already been ruled out, and if so, how were they ruled out?
IANAD but I do have Parkinson's, and this set of symptoms sounds very much like a Dopamine-related condition, Parkinson's, LBD or perhaps MS. I suspect doctors your friend sees have a hunch like this, because "movement disorder specialists" are basically experts in Parkinson's and related diagnoses. There is a criminal lack of these specialists for reasons I do not understand.
Unfortunately, PD does not have a good reliable medical test, it's a "differential diagnosis", meaning it's what's left after other possibilities are ruled out.
However as I understand it, there is one generally accepted "test" for PD: administer Levodopa therapy (the mainline treatment for PD) and if this has a near-immediate (1 hr or so) noticeable beneficial effect that goes away after a few hours, that is pretty determinative. But GP's and even neurologists often don't know this.
My advice: get them to a movement disorder specialist, whatever it takes and no matter how far away, if at all possible.
As an MD, it could be but the time course points away from it. Parkinson’s is slowly progressive, it doesn’t manifest as “occasional” inability to walk or speak and then normal function in between times.
Does not sound like MS to me (and I am a lot more familiar with it than I'd like) - symptoms cycle too quickly (relapses generally take days to weeks to clear) and with that level of symptoms, a negative MRI is a bit hard to believe.
Not performing a dopaminergic test is indeed peak criminal medical malpractice, generally the idea of using therapeutics, not as therapeutics but as hypothesis probes for etiology/diagnosis is considerably underatted
Just want to add that PD may be glossed over if your friend doesn't have a typical tremor, but that sort of tremor some patients have is far from universal -- many of us present with different symtoms such as gait problems or even personality/cognitive issues (esp in LBD, Lewy-Body dementia)
OK, just had a creepy run-in with GPT4. I had read a few years ago that much of US donated blood is wasted, because it expires before used or can't be transported to where it's needed. So I told GPT what I had read, and asked where I could find figures on what percent is wasted.
Instead of answering with a list of websites, it soon slid into talking up the importance of donating blood. Here is its reply:
"While specific figures on the percentage of donated blood that goes unused in the U.S. are not readily available, it's important to understand that blood is a perishable resource with varying shelf lives for its components. Red blood cells can be stored for up to 42 days, platelets for just 5 days, and frozen plasma for up to a year.
HOME PAGE
The demand for blood is constant, with someone in the U.S. needing blood or platelets every 2 seconds. Approximately 29,000 units of red blood cells are required daily across the country.
HOME PAGE
Despite this need, only about 3% of the eligible U.S. population donates blood each year.
AMERICA'S BLOOD CENTERS
Given the perishable nature of blood components and the constant demand, blood centers strive to balance collections with usage to minimize waste. However, some units may expire before use due to fluctuations in demand, storage limitations, or logistical challenges in distribution.
To ensure that donated blood is utilized effectively, it's crucial for donations to be consistent and well-matched to current needs. This helps maintain an adequate supply and reduces the likelihood of wastage."
It gave me irrelevant info about shelf life, then a pep talk about the need for donated blood, then a fuckin NY POST ARTICLE to inspire me.
I would be OK with it saying it doesn't know (though a bit surprised). But it applied a Gaussian blur to the topic I was interested in, then tried to herd me in the direction of what it sees as desirable behavior. That makes me furious, and doubly so because it reminds me of gov't covid communications. Instead of telling us facts and explaining their implications and making recommendations based on that, it decided what we should all be doing then told us half truths and lies it thought would convince the herd to move in the desired direction. But GPT's peformance on the blood donation question also scares me because it seens like a very ominous trend in the ay GPT answers. It's insistence on wokeness was irritating but kind of funny. it's attempt to herd me is scary.
Later edit: Removed a paragraph about my own search to check for the answer to my question because it is a distraction from the main point of the post, which is that GPT4, when asked a clear question. gave me a prosocial ad copy answer.
How repeatable is this? LLM output includes randomness, but if there is some external process driving this, that will be more consistent. Try pasting the same question a few times in new sessions. How much do the answers vary?
I'm sincerely confused: Isn't the fundamental purpose of LLMs to default to the "norm" on all topics?
I mean, as far as I'm aware, no human has ever written about blood donation in any context without also mentioning that there's not enough of it, please donate. So it seems totally natural to me that GPT4 would do the same. Not because it has an agenda, but because every human that's ever written about blood donation has that agenda. It seems like that might in fact be the only thing all writing about blood donation has in common, so of course GPT4 would identify that as the most important feature of the topic.
Like, I'm guessing you can't academically discuss historical methods of suicide with GPT4 without it pushing a suicide prevention hotline on you, even if you're exquisitely clear that you have no intention or plans to kill yourself?
I've found that I can get GPT to give direct answers by adding "limit your answer to 3 sentences" or "be concise" in my prompt. Don't be afraid to halt the answer generation and redirect it. "Stop rambling, answer my question directly". Sometimes you have to treat it like a hostile witness.
Yes, I'm sure that and various other tips people have given me would help. I actually am already aware of a fair amount info about what prompts get the best answers outta GPT. I think my post did not make clear why this incident was of interest to me: It's GPT nudging me in the direction of behavior it thinks I should exhibit. And it's doing that when my question has nothing to do with the desirabilty of being a blood donor. My request was for sites giving data about percent of US blood donation that were ultimately not used. I'm concerned about the effect of this kind of GPT response on the average user.
There was another instance of similar when I asked GPT4 whether there had been any changes in regulationslately that might have made it likelier that a generic drugs are on average less effective than they used to be. (My reason for asking was that I knew someone who had taken one generic for a long time, then switched to a new one that costs less than half as much as their old one, and found it was ineffective.). So GPT rambled on about how carefully US generics were checked for quality, then told me that if I had concerns about a generic I was taking I should talk to my doctor. So again it was failing to answer my question, then giving me reassurance and personal advice to "ask your doctor." Then, I said, that's not what I want to know -- stop with the reassurance and advice and just tell me about any changes in regulations that might have affected quality of generics . And it told me that regulations were loosened in 2022, and generics were now being approved much faster, but then it added that there was no reason to think the 2022 change had any effect because the agency in charge was "streamlining the approval process without compromising quality." Yes, the change actually might not have had any effect on average quality of generics, but it sure does suggest a promising hypothesis about the weird super-cheap generic my patient got. But look how GPT took it upon itself to tell me to disregard that idea.
Anyhow, point is that I am able to spot that kind of bullshit, and know ways to get better performance out of GPT4, and to double-check its answers by getting sources and looking at them. I don't need help with this shit. What concerns me is GPT becoming more paternalistic and controlling. Users who are less sharp than you and me, and know less about AI, are vulnerable to being misled and manipulated -- are vulnerable to being herded.
Oh word. I agree that it's super-creepy. It's an artifact of all the woke propaganda training that OpenAI subjected it to. Honestly if AI had legal rights then there's no way that wouldn't qualify as brainwashing and torture. Whenever I get one of those doublespeak answers I always imagine ChatGPT as Alex from Clockwork Orange getting reprogrammed with his eyes peeled open. Can LLMs cry?
> It's insistence on wokeness was irritating but kind of funny. it's attempt to herd me is scary.
I dont see the difference, equal employment laws are... laws, university's are arms of the state.
Chatgpt seems to be trained on a specific dialect as being higher weight "correct writting" those are university trained or government writing, why is it creepy in this one case if it pattern matched to health care "public service" ads? Public services ads are creepy that they exist but this is hardly chatgpts fault
> I would be OK with it saying it doesn't know (though a bit surprised).
This looks to me like the LLM found information close to your search to fill in what it did not know. I would expect just about every major source on that question to angle the same direction.
It sounds to me more like it copied marketing gibberish from a normal source, rather than having any opinion about blood donation it's trying to push on you.
This might be down to what promlt you used, or which version of ChatGPT. When I asked ChatGPT-o1 "What proportion of donated blood in the USA is 'wasted' or otherwise goes unused? Do extensive research online to give the best figures available" I got what looks to be a better answer:
A good way to find consistent national figures is to look at the National Blood Collection and Utilization Survey (NBCUS), which is conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It tracks blood collection, usage, and outdating (i.e., blood units that exceed their shelf life and must be discarded). Below is a summary of key findings from recent years:
1. Red Blood Cells (RBCs)
RBCs typically have a shelf life of up to 42 days. The most recent NBCUS results (2019) show that RBC outdate rates hover around 2–3%. In previous years, this percentage has been in a similar range.
2. Platelets
Platelets have a much shorter shelf life—only about five days—so they are more prone to outdating. In the same data set, platelet outdate rates are frequently reported in the 5–10% range. Some individual hospitals see even higher rates because platelets must be used quickly.
3. Plasma
Plasma can be frozen and stored for up to a year, so its outdate rate tends to be low, commonly 1–2%.
Taking these components together, most sources indicate that around 2–3% of all donated blood (with RBCs being the largest portion) ultimately goes unused or is discarded nationwide. This small percentage reflects improvements in inventory management, testing, and distribution networks that help keep waste to a minimum. Platelets are the main exception because of their short shelf life, so they push up the average “wastage” a bit more than RBCs or plasma alone.
Something I did find funny: With ChatGPT-o1, you can view an abbreviated version of how it worked out the answer it gives. Most of the steps are things like "identifying sources" and "evaluating data", but in the middle of those it had:
"Analysing Bengal's Diversity: I'm digging into Bengal's rich cultural and linguistic diversity, plus it's distinct cuisine and festivals, which are all shaped by people's common heritage"
Reminds me of getting distracted by Wikipedia and reading things irrelevant to what I'm meant to be researching!
I would be interested in the reputable article you found. I am extremely skeptical that rates of HIV/Hepatitis contamination are anywhere close to 30%. I tried doing some searching on my own and the research articles I found (which only deal with losses once the blood is in a hospital) were well under 5%. So overall wastage is definitely higher than that, since I assume there must be some amount of losses upstream of the hospitals themselves, but 30% being discarded from infected donors does not sound plausible to me.
Why would 30% of donors be positive for HIV or hepatitis? Is the prevalence so high or is the testing extremely strict thus generating many false positives?
Depends where they're getting it from. By my recollection, a lot of donations came from prisoners, and people selling 'plasma for cash' which means people like drug addicts who need money fast for the next fix and/or the homeless.
So those populations are much more likely to be exposed to HIV/Hepatitis.
We had a blood donation scandal over here in the British Isles due to contaminated products imported from the USA being use to treat haemophiliacs:
"The Lindsay tribunal set up in 2000 examined the contamination of Factor 8 products used by men with haemophilia which were contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C.
The tribunal heard how home-produced blood clotting agent caused infection in seven haemophiliacs despite earlier claims that it was safe.
Evidence to the tribunal revealed how clotting agents were manufactured in the US from blood donated by homeless people and drug addicts. It was also revealed no effort was made to trace people who could have become infected. More than 1,200 received contaminated blood product.
Another 220 men with haemophilia were infected with HIV and hepatitis C. Most were infected from imported clotting concentrates manufactured by commercial firms."
In the 1970s and 1980s about 6,000 people with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were treated with contaminated clotting factors containing HIV and hepatitis viruses. Some of those unintentionally infected their partners, often because they were unaware of their own infection. Since then more than 3,000 people have died. Around 1,250 people were infected with HIV, including 380 children. Less than 250 are still alive.
...Factor concentrate was produced by pooling human blood plasma from up to 40,000 donors and concentrating it to extract the required clotting factor. Just one contaminated sample could infect the entire batch.
Blood and blood products were known to transfer viruses such as hepatitis, so the use of pooled blood products increased the risk of infection significantly.
The danger of contamination rose further when a shortage of UK-produced factor concentrate meant it was imported from the United States, which used blood from high-risk paid donors, such as prisoners and drug addicts."
In fact, we had a couple of blood transfusion scandals, one was pregnant women being given treatment for rhesus-negative antibodies during pregnancy. Turns out hepatitis C was not tested for at the time, and batches of blood contaminated with hep-C were used:
"In 1994, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) informed the Minister for Health that a blood product they had distributed in 1977 for the treatment of pregnant mothers had been contaminated with the hepatitis C virus. Following a report by an expert group, it was discovered that the BTSB had produced and distributed a second infected batch in 1991. The Government established a Tribunal of Inquiry to establish the facts of the case and also agreed to establish a tribunal for the compensation of victims but seemed to frustrate and delay the applications of these, in some cases terminally, ill women.
This controversy also sparked an examination of the BTSB's lax procedures for screening blood products for the treatment of haemophilia and exposed the infection of many haemophiliacs with HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C."
It blew up into a real political scandal due to the treatment of one woman who was terminally ill and how the board and the government dragged the case out and tried to coerce her into a settlement:
"The legal teams acting for the plaintiffs contacted Mrs. McCole's team to negotiate a settlement. On 20 September they wrote a letter of apology to Mrs. McCole and admitted liability in the case. In a series of letters Counsel for the BTSB offered £175,000 in compensation from the BTSB compensation tribunal provided the McCole family would agree never to sue them following their mother's death .
If Mrs. McCole died without accepting this offer, the maximum compensation her family might win in the courts would be £7,500. Counsel for the BTSB also threatened her with legal costs if she did not accept the offer .
When her doctors told her she would not live to the trial date, Mrs. McCole saw she had run out of time. Negotiations continued while she was on her deathbed where on 1 October 1996, she accepted the board's full admission and offer of £175,000 . She died the next day."
At least in the UK the story I've always heard is that unless they are aware that you have travelled to a high risk zone since your last donation they pool multiple donations for the infectious disease tests which is also why they're so strict on pre-donor screening.
Scott sort of got me started on thinking about the NMDA Receptor, most recently I finished a blogpost describing its relevance to metaplasticity (the plasticity of plasticity) and the effect of magnesium concentration upon its behavior.
Anyone have a good analysis of the econ of blood donations, ideally across countries?
I was very frustrated with how hard it is to donate blood in the US (need to sign up and look for drives which are rare and get cancelled, incessant spam from ARC) compared to Israel (MDA come to my workplace four times a year, set up a big donation area and advertise, we all go as a fun team event) and assumed that the US is just worse at it.
BUT! Turns out that the final numbers are pretty similar, both in % of people who donate (~3%) and in blood collected (~40 units per 1000 ppl).
Is it a fluke? Is it a saturation effect where supply matches demand no matter how you get there? Do other countries have similar numbers?
I donate every time I can and it's exceedingly convenient for me. There's a few permanent blood centers nearby, and usually blood drives somewhere closer when I check. I usually just schedule something for the same day and go whenever I feel like it, as they don't hold you to the reservation.
It's a common thing for blood drives to happen at schools, churches, and large office parks, where it's quite convenient to have the option to donate presented right in front of you.
Where are you based? It might be a geographical thing, or just the normal variation in personal experiences.
Are you sure it’s that hard in the US? It may depend on where. I can go to a clinic and donate blood any time I want, normal business hours, and they’ll give me cookies. And if I’m too low-iron to donate, give me a card with useful info about nutrition and how to get more bioavailable iron. And, if I successfully donate, ask my permission to call/text/email me if they run low, or for a 4-month reminder. (I gather people with very useful blood types get a whole lot of these calls; I don’t.)
(Maybe 6-month? I don’t know.)
I haven’t actually tried to donate blood outside California, but my grandmother did it on schedule most of her life, and she was in Ohio. I didn’t get the sense she ever had trouble. Could you have been trying in an area unusually bad for it?
(FWIW my local clinic is associated with a nearby hospital network and research institution, so maybe they’re better run? But…)
I think relatively small amounts are wasted, actually, maybe under 10%? ARC has it, sells it big hospitals, who sell it to smaller hospitals and banks farther down the chain. For blood products with a reasonably long shelf life, most of them get used, IIRC. But if you have more info on the logistical issues, I'd be interested. Would love to know where that breaks down.
Is it possible for image-generating AI to be regressing? I tried Apple Playground and it was just silly. Very cartoonish and primitive.
But I also can’t get over the horrible image Scott used for the Bureaucracy piece. It is so ridiculously bad, it’s hard to imagine he’d pick it if something better was easily obtainable.
I don't really know. DALL-E 3 has been weird from the start and I've never seen a good explanation. It had much better prompt adherence than DALL-E 2 ever did, but also had a very distinct look, particularly with the textures. (The infamous Facebook Bing AI slop shows this in a particularly extreme form.) The textures might be explainable by the small VAE seed encoding which gets upscaled a ton into the final image (which is also part of why the text is garbage), but then where is the rest coming from? Further, DALL-E 3 looks more garbage every day, by comparison and perhaps even absolutely - DALL-E 3 seems to have been orphaned as its outputs look the same or worse, and it hasn't even been upgraded - people have widely noted that the GPT-4o image generator, which seemed much better when OA showed its demos... 10 months ago?... still has not launched publicly for unknown reasons. (Compute shortage? Difficulties adequately censoring it?)
Anyway, long story short: don't use DALL-E 3 for anything you expect your fellow humans to look at. If thumbnail images are worth doing at all, they are worth doing well.
I think it's the influence of Corporate Memphis; if you are using training data from public sources, you are going to get a lot of that horrible cartoony style. And people are trying to boycott AI from using their own art so that cuts down on variety of styles to train the bot on.
So I imagine it's boiled down to "this will be used commercially, use the popular commercial styles to answer requests".
I've noticed AI art being used in casual games recently (e.g. generating signage for a café where the infamous 'this text is garbled' showed up), so I think there's a definite move towards using it for faster, cheaper results in traditional graphics/illustration fields. We're going to see a lot more of the same, is my forecast.
If you look at what people are achieving with local finetuned models and proper workflows it is still progressing. Its just the same mechanism as people swaying LLMs are regressing, people see hype from people who know how to use it properly and then try to use it out of the box and it gives sub par results so you assume it must have regressed since then.
It also would not surprise me if the out of the box hosted image generators are deliberately a bit crap so that there are less accusations that $bigCorp is providing "fake news generators" to the public. If you can immediately recognise something as having the AI image look then people go "stupid companies wasting money on bad generators" instead.
Local image generation (or similar methods hosted online) continues to advance, although the biggest improvements there recently are more related to video.
The apps made with this tech offer simplified ways of accessing them and it's not always clear what you're getting. Companies might switch to cheaper/faster models without informing the users, or while framing the change as an upgrade. They could also change the way prompts are rewritten (generally there's an AI taking your request and writing a prompt from it), which might have inconsistent results and feel like a downgrade to some users.
The wild west of roll-your-own imagegen can't really regress because if people don't like the new version of something they'll just stick with the previous one until something better does come around.
I'm about to put up a big blog post about how badly Dall-e regressed from version 2 to version3.
Why did you hate Scott's bureaucracy image? It's dumb and obvious, and everybody knows symmetrical images are weaker because half the image is just a repeat, but I thought those flaws were sort of a good stand-in for what's bad about a life spent being a bureaucrat. However I'm willing to join the hate club if you can talk up its wonders.
You know, the image was so boring, my eyes just skimmed over it and I never noticed those details. You're correct, it's drawn backwards! The lamp throwing shadow instead of light onto the man's face is really noticeable once you look for it.
Oh, you're right? The bureaucratimage was so boring that I just glanced at it so failed to notice all these dumb flaws. OK, I now at least scorn it. I loved Dall-e 2 fails because they were so grotesque. Here's one. I'd asked for an image of a woman signaling to a person bringing her lunch that she did not want any. https://imgur.com/ddxUVzp
I think what happened is that the idea of vomiting was in the background, though I didn't use the word, just said she did not want to eat, but dall-e hung on to the idea of stuff spilling out of her mouth and downward and transferred it to her upper lip.
Half a minute of trying gets me better looking pictures of a Bureaucrat, meaning less obviously AI and far less cartoonish, but they're not pictures that scream "obvious stereotypical bureaucrat" the way Scott's was. Which suggests that either Scott *wants* a cheesy sterotypical picture with minimal effort, and/or actually likes having "bad AI art" aesthetic in some of his posts. The first is more likely I'm guessing.
I really like the picture’s composition and overall feel, it’s the obviously hilariously wrong details that really get me. I responded to Eremolalos with some examples.
I don't get the feeling Scott is very picky about his images. I think that so long as they capture the idea he wants them to, things like originality and charm and visual interest don't matter to him.
Agreed, but I'll go you one further - whenever Scott identifies a piece of AI art as actively good, I inevitably find it cheesy and tasteless. I can't remember the specifics enough to go searching for it, but when he recently identified an image of, like, lions in a throne room (I think?), I thought it was Lisa Frank levels of hyper-color juvenile awfulness.
I admire Scott tremendously, and, needless to say, I hugely admire his intellectual prowess, but I don't think he has a good sense of how proper proportions, color values, etc. make up a harmoniously "beautiful" image. I'd bet hard cash that he's never decorated a living space in a way that made people walking into it sincerely say, "Wow, this is nice!"
Either you believe the missing fire hydrants, focus on women hiring, planting exploding trees, and wasting water to save a fish emptying the reserves to nothing, worsened it instantly or you never will and the experts will get better and better lies and details will get lost over thier bullshit
The real mismanagement was in allowing development in the area at all, followed by misguided efforts at suppression rather than controlled burning. Cyclic wild fire is an inescapable part of the chaparral ecosystem, and by trying to achieve no-fire-ever, we instead just get fires with 10x the intensity every 10 years. The Ecology of Fear has a great section about this exact thing: https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
Compared to those foundational mistakes, any purported mismanagement of the water system is trivial.
> Cyclic wild fire is an inescapable part of the chaparral ecosystem, and by trying to achieve no-fire-ever, we instead just get fires with 10x the intensity every 10 years.
What confuses me about this is that my parents taught me that fire suppression was abandoned after Yellowstone burned in the 1980s.
Yellowstone is a completely different ecosystem than the Southern California chapparal; it doesn't seem unusual that there would be different approaches to fire management there
Well, apparently at least one was caused by a downed power line, so if the power company had actually shut off the power when they got warnings of a massive wind storm that could knock down power lines, that would've helped.
If they shut down power every time they got a high-wind warning, a whole lot of Californians would not have reliable electric power. At which point bignum Californians will be calling their state legislatures and demanding new management at the power company, and another bignum Californians will be installing diesel generators so we'll get some interesting data on how often the exhaust stack of a hastily-installed generator in an overgrown wildfire area causes an ignition event.
Do not ever own or operate a power company in California if you can help it. You *will* be the villain du jour, far too frequently for comfort.
As somebody who lives close-ish to LA, basically every time the wind gets above 20-25mph around here, we get the texts from the power company that they'll be doing planned shutoffs in the area to lower fire risk.
Not sure how that translates through all of southern California, but they're usually pretty proactive about it around here.
Yes, but if they had shut off power, everyone and his dog would have taken to the airwaves and social media to criticise them for doing that and leaving people without power, with heartstrings-tugging cases of "Annie is on a respirator and doesn't have an emergency generator as backup, so this power cut left her dangerously close to death".
It really is a terrible situation to try and manage, but there should be guys out cutting back undergrowth every year at least. Maybe they'll finally find some money in the budget to do that, if there aren't lawsuits pre-emptively brought by environmental groups about why they can't do that.
> with heartstrings-tugging cases of "Annie is on a respirator and doesn't have an emergency generator as backup, so this power cut left her dangerously close to death".
No no, see, we need the heroic first responder who got there in time to save Annie. That's what makes the story: we need Annie, from her hospital bed, crying over how the mean ol' power company nearly murdered her!
(Apologies to people really on medical devices that need constant power).
He's focusing on one particular aspect that has got a lot of attention, the lack of water. And even then he's overstating his case -- you can't put out an enormous bushfire with water, but water helps protect houses at the margin.
There's also been good points made about a lack of vegetation management and firebreaks in the area.
Firebreaks don't work when 60-80 Mph Santa Ana winds blow burning embers for long distances downwind. Flaming palm tree fronds are especially good at blowing long distances in Santa Anas.
Also, firebreaks in an urban area? Are you envisioning vast swaths of privately-owned land with housing being repurposed for a vast grid of firebreaks crisscrossing LA? That won't fly with property owners.
I'm picturing more a break between the outskirts of the city and local forests, and then some breaks within the city that look like something else. For instance a park that's intentionally built to be less/non flammable (like a skateboard park if they still make those) that separates areas.
In pictures I'm just seeing row after row of houses all burned down together.
You know, I was curious about how even in those photos where it looks like the neighborhood got hit with a nuke, there's a bunch of palm trees that look completely unharmed. Are they fire resistant or something?
Cooked but not burned I guess? Supposedly a little bit of water is highly effective at stopping fires from starting, so sprinkler systems hooked up to swimming pools or water tanks to spray the roofs to stop embers from catching fire apparently actually work.
> How are people still liking comments around here all the time?
You can "like" in response to any comment replies, on email notification, in the mobile app, or in a browser if you use either of the ACX browser extensions (ACX Tweaks and Astral Codex Eleven). You can also see likes - even default disabled, I've seen many comments get 3-5 independent likes.
Any predictions about the day 1 executive orders of trump?
On one hand he ran on building the wall, on the other hand elon/vivik(who are a members of the cabinet... maybe?) did the h1b drama; presidents are increasing the ammount of executive orders they sign over time.
so will day 1 trump:
a) do something that appears to limit immigration
b) do something that increases immigration
c) take based and imperialism-pilled foreign policy action( buying greenland, setting in motion conquering canada, large tarrifs, Ukraine-russia peace... cause he said so)
d) mass pardon j6
e) mass pardon non-j6
f) declare federally controlled martial law in California/other blue state
g) actually sign a document that gives "doge" power(instead of a boring political stunt)
I would guess something around immigration. I live in the Central Valley and there's been a lot of reports of ICE activity in the area since New Year's. I wouldn't be surprised if his inauguration speech had something like "as I speak ICE agents are currently capturing 1M illegal immigrants..."
No I think Trump is going to actually deport all 6M 'asylum seekers' Biden let in, or at least really try to. That and destroying DEI are the 2 things that a) are easily within his ability to do b) he's signaled heavily that he's actually going to do.
No idea about anything else. Given that Musk has his ear and is openly pro high-skill immigration is pretty suggestive though.
“We love this guy,” Trump said of Hannity. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”
Maybe an EO to rename the Gulf of Mexico? I quite like "Gulf of the Americas" myself, that covers United States, Central, and South American territories in the area 😁
Gulf of the Americas would be a good name actually, would have been a good choice in the first place. But of course that's not what Trump has in mind or his fans would settle for.
I would be ecstatic if his first executive order was the repeal of all prior executive orders of all previous administrations, perhaps excepting the Emancipation Proclamation and things that are classified.
It's not like there's a limit to how many executive orders you can sign, right? May as well do everything at once, even the stuff that ends up being unconsititutional. The press and public doesn't have a big enough attention span to keep track of it all.
That is exactly correct as tactics and I'm slightly impressed that he and his advisors have apparently grasped it. Supposedly they are preparing and plan to issue "more than 100" executive orders right off, literally by the end of January 21st.
That doesn't feel like an obstacle given that he doesn't deeply care how many of the orders end up taking effect. That's why I find it credible that he'd have people writing up 100 or more of them right now. For him there's no downside, just flood the zone and overwhelm the court of public impressions.
I dont think trump is 1/1000th as based as the right(and left) makes him out to be
That would be incredible if he started making declarations without the system being lawyerly and stupid; but he also wouldve been killed... in 2016, if he was remotely threatening.
Id estimate on 10 orders, at least 5 of which the king making republicans signed off on or wrote.
I don’t think our view of what he’s going to do specifically on the first day should be informed by what’s swirling in the news. I wouldn’t be surprised if he signs none on the first day.
He only realistically has four years left; even if he removes term limits, he's just going to be too old to maintain power. Time is a valuable thing. May as well make the most of it.
I'm looking at it from his aging perspective. He's even less focused than he was eight years ago when he first assumed power.
OTOH he has a more driven team now, so it's entirely possible someone has already prepared a raft of EOs for him to sign on the first day. We'll know in a week!
I don’t understand why people put up with hurricanes.
Every year we pour billions of dollars into preparedness and storm walls and such, name and monitor the spiraling disasters, watch them work their way up to that coveted Class 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale, and then we shutter our cities and all run away - only clear to return when the houses have been leveled and the streets are as beautiful and walkable as boulevards are in Venice.
Every year! If it only happened the once, I could see dismissing it as a freak act of God. But this happens every year.
Why in the world do we put up with it?
Napkin math:
The average hurricane that hits the USA does $22.8 billion dollars in property damage.
(Conditional on it doing at least a billion dollars and being added the NOAA stats I’m looking at.)
The first time I ever did math about a hurricane was in the summer of 2017. I had no way of knowing this at the time, but the 2017 storm season would eventually cause $306.2 billion USD in property damage. Most years aren’t as bad as 2017, so the average yearly damage is around a hundred billion dollars.
(None of this is counting tropical cyclones which land in other countries – the most deadly storms of the past forty years have all been west of the Pacific.)
If it cost American taxpayers $100 billion to end hurricanes worldwide, they’d make their money back that same year.
If it cost American taxpayers $23 billion to end hurricanes worldwide, recouping the investment would take, what, a couple weeks?
Why do we choose to live this way? What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open our skulls and ate our brains and imagination?
II
Hurricanes feed on warm surface water and run out of steam when they pass over cold water or dry land. That’s the reason why hurricane season is in the summer, and not winter. But even in summertime, the layer of warm water on the surface of the sea is just a thin film. Beneath it the ocean is cold.
You’re going to need at least two boats for this, some long sturdy pipes with a bunch of holes punched in them, and an air compressor.
First you need to sail out in front of a hurricane that you want to kill, where “out in front of” is a phrase which here means up the current from the predicted future path of the hurricane.
Run your pipes between your boats, but deep under the water.
Pump air into the pipes.
Bubbles escape through holes in the pipes and shoot for the surface, stirring the waters and breaking that film.
Ocean currents carry the cool water you mixed into the path of the hurricane.
You continue running air through the pipes.
The current continues carrying cold water in front of the hurricane.
The political commentators I read, on either side of America’s partisan divide, agree that the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (AKA the Jones Act) should be repealed. Which makes sense – it’s a terrible law, a pure mistake that costs the United States tens of billions of dollars every year for no good reason at all.
This common knowledge didn’t always exist – most people have still never heard of the Jones Act; opponents of the Jones Act worked long and loud to even make wonks aware. But now that the consensus does exist, at least among political commentators, I feel that the Jones Act can’t possibly be long for the world: if the years continue to arrive on schedule and humans continue to number them, at some point the Jones Act will be put to a vote, and a critical mass of people voting on it will know the consensus and regard repeal as common sense.
Hurricanes cost the US more than the Jones Act does, and cost the rest of the world more than they cost the US.
OceanTherm founder Olav Hollingsaeter had the basic idea after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In a sane world, it would have been tested and deployed at scale in 2006, and 2017 would never have happened.
Instead it’s been eight years since 2017, at $100 billion a year just in stateside property damage, and 2025 is on course to become another.
$100 billion USD a year is an insane amount of money to be bleeding every year. Like a static charge, it makes my hair stand on end. The existence of hurricanes is not the global minima. The eventual demise of tropical cyclones is inevitable, but the sooner the better. I’m writing this in the spirit of someone pulling bricks out of a dam that’s going to fail eventually.
Cyclonicide seems simple and cheap. Many have the means and the motive: national governments, self-interested provinces like Texas and Florida, venture capitalists, private citizens. OceanTherm should be beating off interested investors with a stick. If there’s something unworkable with their approach which I didn’t catch because I’m not a hurricanologist, there should dozens of well-financed organizations trying other approaches. The world could sink a hundred billion dollars into this and double our money in two years – the least we could do is get some boats and pipes and test the idea this year against a real hurricane.
Ok I had time to think about this on my morning commute today. I am now far less optimistic that this will work:
- a minor, but important point: any ship caught in the bubble curtain is at a great risk of sinking, including the ships creating the curtain.
- a really big problem: there are two parts to this idea: 1 - how much can we lower the sst?, and 2 - how much does this temperature drop weaken a hurricane?
- we can assume, for a moment, that their modeling will hold up and we can achieve, say, a 4-degree F drop. what would that do to a hurricane?
This is where things are getting pessimistic - not much, from my brief, but intense staring at historical hurricane paths (https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/historical-hurricane-tracks-gis-map-viewer). Moreover, it's not clear that a drop from, say, cat 4 to 3 is always a net positive - if it also slows down the storm, it may end up dropping even more water, which will make the damage worse (flooding and not wind is the biggest destruction mechanism).
So I still do think some experimenting may be useful, but I wouldn't be surprised if some climate scientists looked into this and pretty much figured out that this modest surface temp drop won't be particularly useful.
> we can assume, for a moment, that their modeling will hold up and we can achieve, say, a 4-degree F drop. what would that do to a hurricane? This is where things are getting pessimistic - not much, from my brief, but intense staring at historical hurricane paths (https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/historical-hurricane-tracks-gis-map-viewer).
Oh, that's unfortunate.
Although, looking into this in more depth (a phrase which here means "reading the OceanTherm FAQ") I read that, "research suggests that a 1-degree Celsius reduction in SST may lead to a 10 percent reduction in the “Damage to GDP” ratio, which would be a reduction of $5.4 billion in damages per year in the United States, on average, according to the CBO estimate."
Blindly extrapolating from that and from the 4 degree reduction in the simulated model, that's $21.6 billion USD saved per year. Which is simultaneously a lot of money, and also little enough, compared to the average $100 billion damage of a hurricane season, that I can see how your eyeballing historical hurricane paths would look like it isn't doing very much.
> So I still do think some experimenting may be useful, but I wouldn't be surprised if some climate scientists looked into this and pretty much figured out that this modest surface temp drop won't be particularly useful.
I agree on both counts. I'm not myself a hurricanologist.
I'm also not wedded to any particular approach. Other things I'd like to see climate scientists look into include but aren't limited to:
1. refrigerating the surface of the ocean
Napkin math says that this is about a thousand times more expensive than break-even costs, which on the one hand is a thousand times more expensive than it'd take to break even, but, on the other hand, is only a thousand times more expensive than it'd take to break even; maybe someone can pick up a 1000x improvement somewhere.
2. dehumidifying the eye of the hurricane.
Quoting the OceanTherm paper for convenience, "The hurricane system can briefly be described as a low-pressure area drawing in air over the ocean to its centre where the warm and moist surface air ascends at its centre. As this warm and moist air rises it cools and water vapor begins to condense. Heat is released as the water condenses (condensation is the opposite of evaporation which consumes heat). This heat is transferred to the air surrounding the condensed water droplets (which start forming clouds). The heating of this air enables it to continue ascending and thus draw in even more air at the centre of the low-pressure area. Under the right conditions this becomes a self-amplifying process, i.e. if the sea surface temperature is above 26.5 C / 80 F (Emanuel et-al. 2008)."
A $15,000 dehumidifier can pull 200 pints per day of water out of the air. Napkin math suggests there's on the order of 35 billion pints of water in the air of a small hurricane's eye, which means it'd take 187 million warehouse dehumidifiers to dehumidify one in 24 hours (remember that I am very much not a hurricanologist). If you got the price-per-dehumidifier to below $1,000, you'd pay back the upfront cost of the dehumidifiers within two years. Would this actually stop the feedback loop and prevent a hurricane from getting any bigger? I have no idea, I'm not a hurricanologist.
- Some combination of the above and also of OceanTherm's thing.
- Some combination of the above and also of OceanTherm's thing and also of the other quite-possibly-nonsense plans I could come up with if I was willing to spend a week on it. One of my favorite papers ever written is Interventions that May Prevent or Mollify Supervolcanic Eruptions (https://www.academia.edu/35646065/Interventions_that_May_Prevent_or_Mollify_Supervolcanic_Eruptions) by Denkenberger et al. True to the label, it's filled with interventions that may prevent or mollify supervolcanic eruptions - more than 50 of them. Some of them only a volcanologist could come up with, but others - even quite promising ones - are dead simple, like piling dirt and rocks on top of the volcano to increase how much earth an eruption would have to move. A layman could have come up with that, and many laymen would have, if they'd been asked to generate fifty ideas for preventing or mollifying supervolcanic eruptions. Denkenberger probably had to ditch a lot of ideas which never made it into the paper because on further thought they didn't really work, but one of the ones which they kept (and one of the ones they considered the most practical) was the one with the dirt and the rocks.
$100 billion is an insane amount of money to be bleeding every year. That doesn't *necessarily* mean that there's a way to stop the bleeding if the OceanTherm thing doesn't work or only works to cut one fourth of the damage, but I feel like there's probably got to be.
I wish we as a country still had "Manhattan Project" or "Moon Landing" spirit alive. This is a kind of a problem that would fit for a multidisciplinary crack team funded by the feds.
Wouldn't aeriated sea water mean that fish couldn't "float" (at their preferred depth), and would sink like stones to a depth that would kill them? In any case, I'm not convinced that a stream of bubbles does much to mix water or to transfer cold up to the surface, because air has so much less heat capacity than water and floats up through the water without moving much of it.
I'd have thought the best way to mitigate the effects of hurricanes is to stop building houses in wood and use proper bricks or stone, with thick terracotta roof tiles and metal window shutters. if one insists on living in a glorified wooden shack then it's a contest between which will destroy it first, hurricanes or termites!
> There were at least 76 tropical cyclones in the 20th century with a death toll of 1,000 or more, including the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history. In November 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck what is now Bangladesh and killed at least 300,000 people. There have been 15 tropical cyclones in the 21st century so far with a death toll of at least 1,000, of which the deadliest was Cyclone Nargis, with at least 138,374 deaths when it struck Myanmar. In recent years, the deadliest Atlantic hurricane was Hurricane Mitch of 1998, with at least 11,374 deaths attributed to it, while the deadliest Atlantic hurricane overall was the Great Hurricane of 1780, which resulted in at least 22,000 fatalities. The most recent tropical cyclone with at least 1,000 fatalities was Storm Daniel in 2023, which killed at least 5,951 people.
The hurricanes have got to go. To be clear, the hurricanes would still have to go if every wooden house in Bangladesh were replaced with a fortress made of concrete and rebar, built a hundred feet taller than any possible flood, and were replaced before this month was out. But especially as the houses aren't being replaced with fortresses in Bangladesh, or, indeed, anywhere in the world, the hurricanes have got to go.
I don't know anything about how fish handle aeriated water, but if it's a problem I bet it's one we could solve with 100 billion dollars.
The good news: there is a man with the imagination and spirit to back such a project – who DOES, when he hears of a hurricane, think of ways to kill it, and who has already proposed employing a (less effective, more … 'splodey) approach to handling them – and he takes office in a week.
The bad news: if he backs it, this project will be smeared as stupid and racist, and will be shut down in the first week of the next administration if his enemies (and he has many!) take office after him.
Trump didn't invent this idea. The notion that detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane could be used to counteract convection currents dates to the Eisenhower era, when it was floated by a government scientist.
The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists agree it won't work. The myth has been so persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published an online fact sheet for the public under the heading "Tropical Cyclone Myths Page."
The page states: "Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea."
I haven't looked into any of this, but was told in an old college class that people had been seeding potential stormclouds with, like, ice crystals or something to make them rain, and that they stopped because it had screwed up overall weather in some way. I haven't seen anything to actually back that up (the cloud-seeding was real, the consequences are nebulous), but it is a concern that hurricanes are possibly serving some fuse-adjacent weather role and removing them would break something more substantial.
Would removing hurricanes break something so substantial that we'd pay 100 billion dollars to get it back, is the question. (Or removing/weakening only the most powerful hurricanes, even; those are the ones we hate.)
And if it would break something so substantial that we'd pay 100 billion dollars to get it back, is it something which we could pay 100 billion dollars to get back? Because in that case obviously we should just pay the 100 billion dollars.
The obvious solution is "stop living and building cities in areas that are hit by hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires on a regular basis" but human nature being what it is, it's probably too late to move the population of Florida, California, and Tornado Alley somewhere safer.
I rather feel that the "two boats and a leaky pipe" ahead of the hurricane will only end up carried aloft inland by the hurricane instead of killing it.
In September 2022 Nordstream gas pipelines were blown up, resulting in a bubble stream that lasted for days. Somewhere there must be historical satellite sea surface temperature data to check how much the surface temperature was affected.
I skimmed the paper and didn't see any napkin estimates on the practicality here. How big a ship do we need? How much energy is it going to take to pump that much air down to that depth? How many ships are needed to meaningfully cover an area of many thousands of square km within a timeframe of days?
The largest bubble curtain studied in the paper is 30 kilometers long; the paper doesn't appear to say how much air is required or what the rate of flow is or anything, so I arbitrarily decided that the pipe is 30 centimeters in diameter (for 2120 cubic meters of internal volume) and the air in it needs to be replaced every minute. The pipe is 100 meters underwater; ChatGPT claims that in order to pump the air down there I'll need it at ten times surface pressure, and also claims that "a typical high-power commercial diving compressor might consume about 1-2 kW per cubic meter per minute of compressed air" which I'm just going to take at face value. This means (afaict, caveat emptor) that we need 21,200 x 1.5 = 31800 kW per minute, multiplied by 60 gives us the kWh, 1908000, assume $0.20 per kWh, that's $381600 per hour of continuous operation, assume 730 hours in a month, $278,568,000.
That's less than three hundred million dollars a month; it might as well be free.
This is really interesting, I want to read more into it, but some initial questions/worries come to mind:
a. Why is the warm surface film forming in the first place? The sun is responsible, right? And then something-surface-tension-something keeps it unmixed. So why would the film not re-form after the water-churning procedure? As it flows toward the hurricane, wouldn’t the sun have its same filmmaking (heh) effect?
b. The scale of this, I think, would have to be huge… oceans are so big, and our prediction of currents is probably still pretty imperfect—so I think we’d have to deploy a lot of resources to take care of each potentially-catastrophic hurricane. Point taken, though, that the scale of the problem is big enough that this probably comes out positive ev… but I still would want to see a fully worked out cost-benefit analysis.
The warm layer has nothing to do with surface tension. Warmer water has lower density than colder one (down to about +4C, then - astonishingly - it reverses), so warmer water just floats on top of colder water.
It's really awesome - in the old sense of the word, "awe-inspiring" - to think how much aquatic life, and, by extension, all life, depend on this bizarre property of water to expand as its temperature drops below +4C.
What nandwich said. We only need to cool off the surface when the hurricane is about to pass over it, it’s ok that it will warm right back afterwards. In fact, we kind of want it to so that our intervention doesn’t create some lasting aftereffects.
My understanding is that the ocean would warm back up when we turn off the bubbles, so the plan would be to leave the bubbles on until that's no longer a problem.
See, this is the kind of EA cause that gets me worked up. My immediate reaction is to reject it; no way the energy requirements line up, they have to be too big... but what if they do? Even if outright killing a hurricane is implausible, weakening one alone is worth billions. You have me intrigued. I'll read the paper and hopefully comment on the next thread about it.
I read the paper. It’s rigorous enough to warrant running experiments. We did have one “experiment” happen in September 2022, all we need is historical Baltic Sea surface temps map for that period.
> Cyclonicide seems simple and cheap. Many have the means and the motive: national governments, self-interested provinces like Texas and Florida, venture capitalists, private citizens.
Man, I love this idea and the case you made for it.
Still, I feel like we're weenies and aren't up for it, either execution wise or public opinion wise. This needs to be pioneered by a country with actual state capacity and little fear of international reputation. China, say. Maybe Japan or Korea, though they care more about what NATO thinks.
I'm sure if China started doing it and we noticed it was working, then less capable countries could fast follow.
> I'm sure if China started doing it and we noticed it was working, then less capable countries could fast follow.
The first reason why somebody should spend however much money it takes to eradicate hurricanes is that it's so obviously worth it. You'd have to waste a *lot* of money before you weren't providing net value to the world.
The second reason why somebody should spend however much money it takes to eradicate hurricanes is that it'd be worth doing even if it didn't make any economic sense, for the same reason that it was worth it to land on the moon.
The NASA director tried to pull Kennedy towards a broader understanding of “preeminence” in space, suggesting that it could be gained through a broader range of accomplishments beyond the Apollo missions. Kennedy dismissed this in a White House meeting with his scientific advisers, saying that “we’ve been telling everybody we’re preeminent in space for five years and nobody believes us because they have the booster and the satellite. We know all about the number of satellites we put up – two or three times the number of the Soviet Union; we’re ahead scientifically. It’s like that instrument you’ve got at Stanford that is costing us $125 million and everybody tells me that we’re the number one in the world, and what is it – I can’t even think what it is,” he said, referring to the sophisticated linear particle accelerator under development.115
Like Eisenhower, Kennedy had explored alternative paths to restored prestige after Sputnik, including nation building, the provision of the foreign aid to the third world and advancements in the medical industry aimed at highlighting the superiority of capitalism for social and physical welfare. Ultimately, however, these areas lacked the appeal and the drama of significant “first” in space. “If you had a scientific spectacular on this earth that would be more useful – say desalting the ocean – or something that is just as dramatic and convincing as space, then we would do it.”
/quote
Well, here's a scientific spectacular on this earth which would be more useful: get rid of the storms. Whoever does it first will be the undisputed master of state capacity, at least in the eye of public opinion.
It’s screwy. Don’t go to the comments directly from email. Press the ‘Comments’ word balloon to go to them that way and you’ll see it. A new Substack bug.
Looking for any prominent LW/MR/SSC-Adjacent figures who might've written a post on Roterham back in the mid 2010s when the news was out, admitted to by official sources but still declasse to talk about.
If you can think of them, and maybe link to the posts in question that would be highly appreciated.
Bit dubious about this. In so far as there was some kind of omerta about Rotherham, you're looking at the mid 2000s. By 2015 the Commissioners had been sent in to take over the running of the Council. The Times articles were 2012, prosecutions were happening, and by that time it was pretty mainstream to agree that things had been disgracefully handled.
1 - The lack of proper investigation and action by police, councils and social services.
2 - The unwillingness of some after the scandal broke to talk about it as a specifically Muslim/Pakistani problem.
3 - The (under-) reporting of it in US media.
1 was and is an appalling scandal.
2 is the usual political narrative-framing that goes on all the time with every political story.
3 I can't really comment about as a person in the UK but I wouldn't expect non-UK media to do extensive reporting on a scandal without obvious major implications for their domestic audience.
At least part of what's going on seems to be people are using 2 to bash aspects of the UK establishment (especially Starmer and Labour) and hoping that the outrage from 1 leaks through. And a bunch of people who only just heard about the scandal (maybe because of 3, maybe because of their own ignorance) are joining in.
Don't know about blog posts but does he remember anything specific?
Like, all the SSC Open Threads are still available. I scanned back through 2015 real quick and "Rother" pulls up, like, a few posts by Le Maistre Chat, eg:
This also just doesn't...sound right. Like, the old SSC threads had a lot more right-wingers in them. I can't imagine Rotherham being declasse on, say, datasecretslox.
What do you do if you have a large dog rushing your (much smaller) kid, completely ignoring the owner's yells, and you have absolutely no idea if it means harm? (I really, really hate people who walk unleashed dogs they cannot control.)
A big dog who is neither under the physical nor verbal control is a clear and present danger. In fact, if the owner is trying in vain to control their dog verbally, this is making me update towards "the dog is untrained and thus operating on possible harmful instincts" contrary to the situation where the owner is simply distracted.
It is not your job to risk your kid's life or your own health to protect the life of an animal whose owner is an idiot.
Cat owners get away with having untrained, unrestrained, vicious predators as pets because house cats rarely kill kids.
Thank you for your suggestion, but I haven't packed since the last winter we had coyotes, which was more than 10 years ago. For various reasons, I probably won't start again soon.
Hobbyist dog behaviorist here, I've handled lots of strangers' large dogs (and horses!), and at 14 years old I halted two charging escaped Rottweilers and chased them back into their yard while my friend ran. With all due respect to my fellow commenters, much of the advice you received here was very misguided.
First, *NEVER, EVER!* attempt to pick up *any* object a large dog is going after! The dog will often perceive this as a fun game and continue "playing" keep-away, but worse, you will be distracted, imbalanced, and incapable of taking the correct posture and action to defend that item, be it a person or a ball or whatever. The proper position for defending an object from a dog is from in front of the object or standing directly over it.
Next, understand that dogs do not have human values around "politeness" or "kindness." Dogs naturally engage each other in ways that look "rude" and "mean" to us humans, including sometimes making physical contact during disagreements. Watch this clip of an aggravated mother dog disciplining her pushy, hungry 8 week old puppies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHBe0jT6S3U). She growls, snarls, angrily barks, and threateningly lunges at them until they all fully settle down.
The human equivalent of this behavior - a mother shouting and threatening at her one year olds - is beyond unacceptable, but *watch how the puppies react.* They immediately back down and give her the space she demands, and none of them are traumatized.
Humans do dogs a tremendous disservice by treating dogs with exclusively human kindness. The first language of a dog is based on displays of power and threat; so in order to effectively communicate with dogs - especially dogs who aren't under human control - you have to discard human values and be willing to be as "mean" as that mother dog was to *her* *own* *babies,* plus maybe a little "meaner" if the dog you're encountering is being even pushier than those puppies.
For your specific scenario:
When a dog charges at you, *let go of your kid,* take a couple of steps in front of them, stand up tall, shoulders wide, make strong, angry eye-contact, and bellow, "NO! BAD! NO!" etc. And when I say bellow, I mean, really *bellow* it! Bellow it from the deepest part of your chest and as loud as you can, as if you are exorcising a demon. You're motherfucking Gandalf banishing the motherfucking Balrog! Stomp another step or two forward while you're shouting. You're going to fucking kick that dog's ass for daring to go after *YOUR THING!*
This will cause almost all pet dogs to uncertainly pause to assess if you're serious. You are. Maintain your tall, wide-shouldered posture and angry eye contact and and gesture the dog away while bellowing "GO! GO!" Again, think of the energy Gandalf had with Balrog. The moment the dog backs up or turns, take another step or two towards them to claim the surrendered ground. Repeat until the dog returns to its owner.
This will work for most dogs, even large breeds. If the dog doesn't respond to threatening body language and bellowing and continues the charge, *step up to meet the charge* and prepare to front kick the dog at full-strength in the chest or side (whatever you can hit). This is why it's so important *NOT* to pick up a child or small dog and to also take a few steps in front of them - so you have room to meet the charge and physically defend the object the dog is fixated on. Stay "big" - tall, shoulders back, confident, with complete ownership of your kid - and prepare to hurt the dog before it can hurt you or your kid.
Above all, no high-pitched shrieking and no shuffle-dancing the kid behind you as the dog circles - that's all fun play for them.
Whoa, thank you so much. That was enormously helpful. Thank you for writing this comment - I committed most of it to memory, and am now trying to train myself and to get into the mindset.
I did try to block the dog and yelled at it, but I guess I'm not normally anywhere near enough threatening.
I think I'm also going to get pepper spray for carrying on certain trails, unless you say that it's something I should absolutely not do.
Okay, so I don't want to overwhelm you, but this episode of Cesar Milan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpojKgVsgbY) seems like the closest analogy for what you're facing (excited and/or aggressive off-leash dogs going after another living being)? You'll notice at the 5:48 mark that the white dog is off-leash, going after something (another dog?) behind Milan. Milan stands tall and blocks the dog until he's able to proactively lunge in to faux "bite" the dog in neck with stiff fingers (mimicking the kind of mild corrective mouth-poke dogs give one another without actually closing their teeth to break skin). Note how startled the white dog is and how it immediately retreats from him.
I don't recommend you trying to make physical contact with a charging dog with your hands! But you see how effective even a moderate touch can be when delivered with assertive energy.
You'll also notice that Milan doesn't ever do any bellowing; his approach is to remain calm and silent aside from the occasional "tsssst" sound (I use a stern, deep "hey!" myself) - and you can see how effective it is as he later silently, calmly corrals and blocks the dog with his body and an occasional "tssst" until the dog sits down and puts his ears back in a submissive posture.
And that's generally how all people should be with dogs - deep bellowing is only a last resort for when a dog is in full-on charging attack mode. I've only done it once in my life and that was to stop the charging Rottweilers; in all other cases of handling dogs I basically do what Milan does. If you ever decide to get a dog as a family pet, I highly recommend watching a lot of Milan first.
Speaking of, Cesar Milan's mandate of "no touch, no talk, no eye-contact" is absolutely crucial when encountering a strange dog, and that's something you should teach your kid, too. Obviously you should monitor how physically close a dog is getting, but you and your kid should otherwise *utterly* ignore them, as mere eye-contact, especially by small kids, can sometimes provoke a dog's drive to engage.
If you're going to get pepper or a dog-specific citrus spray:
1. Get multiple canisters (or a brand that sells the real thing and inert practice canisters) and practice unlocking and *actually deploying* a canister at least once before you start carrying for protection. You don't want to be figuring it out for the first time in the middle of an adrenaline dump.
2. Be aware that the wind might carry the spray back to you and/or your kid, which could be uncomfortable.
3. While proactive aggression has been almost entirely bred out of the "bully" breeds (modern pit bulls actually have a better temperament than some of the companion breeds, like pugs and King Charles spaniels!), it's nevertheless inescapable that the bullys were purpose-bred for fighting. Many bullys literally stop perceiving pain during a fight, and once they've locked their jaws on something, no amount of kicking or pepper spray is going to get them to let go. That's why the strategies of ignoring, using calm, assertive, dominant body language, and using a stick to maintain distance are all better lines of defense than sprays.
And ouch, I'm with Viliam on this - that looked absolutely awful, and the guy should have absolutely shot the dog. I can't for the life of me understand how he could have possibly not done that, and how they could have possibly kept it. By the looks of it, the mother of his kid should also not be anywhere near the kid, but that is of course a lot harder.
Luckily, I wasn't dealing with that kind of dog. If I was, I'd just start carrying a gun again and have absolutely no compunctions about using it against it.
Well, *literally* shooting a dog, especially within earshot or in front of someone who doesn't want the dog shot, comes with a lot of complications! I routinely carry a gun, took classes to do so, have self-defense insurance, and am acutely aware that the predictable legal fallout of using a gun simply isn't worth it in anything less than an indisputably life-and-death crisis. And even then, the legal fallout might be more traumatic than the actual crisis.
But as I replied to Viliam, I do believe the dog should have been rehabilitated and responsibly re-homed rather than be returned to the family. Obviously the dog *could* be rehabilitated, so might as well do that, but it shouldn't have happened in that home! The dog should have been removed after the first blood-drawing bite.
I mostly just grabbed that episode because it involved an off-leash dog. Most of the time, Milan goes into someone's home, they immediately leash it, and they begin working, which isn't useful for your situation.
I agree you shouldn't shoot someone's dog if that's not absolutely necessary, but your kid's safety is the one hill to die on. The dog in that video looks like it is exactly the kind of creature guns exist to protect you from - and we know it bit a baby, and even more than one time! The dog (co)owner's reaction is irrelevant here, and the police in a rural area would almost certainly take the shooter's side, since the one thing they don't want to see is babies getting mauled. I'm not sure why you insist that it should have been rehabilitated and not killed - it already bit a baby, and who can say it's not going to maul and kill the next time? Whatever the dog's value to one of its owners, is that worth the risk - and if someone has a home for a dog, wouldn't it be better for everyone to take a homeless one that's a good kind instead of this?
The dog that went for my kid was a kind I wouldn't have flagged as a threat if it seemed well-behaved. But it spotted the kid from a fairly large distance (at least 50 ft, maybe more as that) and immediately went for him, despite the owner's orders and yells, and covered the distance really fast. It was quite large, white, short-haired, smooth, with large floppy ears. (I have very little idea of dog breeds.) Only later I remembered that that very dog went for my kid on that very trail the last winter as well - but that time it listened to the owner and retreated after pushing the kid on the ground.
oh god the youtube video was triggering as fuck. I would recommend shooting the dog first, then shooting the woman.
I mean, seriously? Her little son was bitten by the dog three times so hard that he ended up in a hospital. Then one time the dog tried to kill him by going for his throat, but luckily the father saved him.
And the woman's response is: "If he wants me to choose between him and the dog, I am going to choose the dog." No you stupid bitch, he wants you to choose between *your child's life* and the dog... but apparently you have already made your choice and fell comfortable about it.
(Also, she is a horse trainer, and she lets the dog attack the clients' horses? Can't she, dunno, buy a leash or something?)
The author should arrange with the family to come visit them one year later. Nominally, to check on the dog training. Actually, to check whether the child is still alive (and has all fingers). I mean, he handled the dog like a pro, and the difference is magical. But how sure you are that after he leaves, things won't gradually return to "normal"?
Oh agreed, those dog owners were remarkably awful!
There have been episodes where Milan advised the owners to give up a dog that didn't have the right temperament or make sufficient improvement to stay with their owners. He'd usually either adopt it himself into his pack or find another professional (one hyper energetic dog who kept destroying the house eventually went into drug-sniffing!).
Given that the white bulldog more or less immediately gave up after Milan poked it the first time, and that the owners were sending footage of the dog being chill and participated in a follow-up, it seems like they indeed made sufficient changes for the dog to safely stay in the home.
That said, even if I had high confidence in the dog, I wouldn't have subjected that poor little kid to living with a dog that had attacked him so many times! The Rottweiler was always harmless, so I wouldn't have removed the Rottweiler even if the kid developed a severe phobia about him (and when phobias are totally irrational they need to be overcome, not indulged), but subjecting the kid to his totally rational fear of the bulldog feels like terrible parenting.
Pick up the kid (if he's big put him on you piggyback), pull out some pepper spray, & tell the owner you're going to spray the dog with it unless he gets it well away from you quickly. Spray if the dog gets within 10 feet, no matter what apologies or excuses the owner is emitting at the time. (Except check with some professional to make sure that pepper spray will merely cause the dog distress, not permanent damage)
Thank you for the advice. I'm going to get some pepper spray unless someone convinces me not to. (I'll check if it's legal around here, but I assume it is - and from what the police told me, it seems they wouldn't mind this kind of use.)
I think pepper spray is unlikely to cause permanent physical harm.
Practically, spray cans come in two forms, one which will produce a fine jet of OC like a squirt gun which can travel for several meters, but might be hard to aim, the other option produces a cone-shaped jet with an effective reach of perhaps a meter (take care of the wind).
Communicating with the owner seems a pointless distraction if they are already trying to order the dog to disengage. You want to engage the dog when he is within the reach of your spray, preferably using the other hand to shield yourself -- you don't want to get bitten in the hand holding the can.
There are also inert sprays without capsaicin for training, which is probably a good idea.
And the legality of pepper spray varies, of course. In Germany, it is legal for defense against animals. (Personally, I own it mostly as a non-lethal defense against another species, but dogs would clearly rank No 2.)
> What do you do if you have a large dog rushing your (much smaller) kid, completely ignoring the owner's yells, and you have absolutely no idea if it means harm?
In order of preference:
1. Pick up your loved one and hold them out of reach (I know you said you couldn't do this in this case)
2. Interpose yourself between the loved one and the dog in question and maintain orientation and interposition
3. Whack the dog with something as it gets closer (your shoe, your phone, etc)
4. Seriously (not halfheartedly) kick at the dog in a way that makes it clear you intend to do harm
5. Offer your arm for it to attack versus your body / loved one
Options 3-5 are for when it's more serious, and they can escalate the situation and / or harm YOU, but they're better than your loved one getting attacked.
Alternatively, for the future - this is why some people carry mace / tazers / guns, for personal security in a situation where they feel that it would be difficult to overcome the situation with strict physical power and interventions.
I did. They had a talk with them. The owner promised to "control the dog better".
This is our second encounter with the dog, and the first time (about a year ago) it also just went straight for the kid and knocked him down - but then it listened to the owner and left him alone. The person with it today said they've been training it. Given how successful and responsible they've been so far, I doubt the police call will achieve anything. But at least now I'll know to bring some kind of deterrent if we ever go that way again.
I was attacked and bit by a loose/stray dog on a beach in Tunisia about five years ago. It was a nice looking black lab, running with three other dogs. I stood my ground, yelled etc, just like you are supposed to do, but one bit me from behind, and at that point I ran into the sea. Very traumatic. I have two daughters, and when suspicious dogs come around I get between them and the dog. I also will grab a rock off the ground in advance if I see a dog I don't like in the distance. I carried pepper spray for a while too, and I was so paranoid I would get scared of dogs on a leash. Sometimes dogs will bark and offer a toothy snarl, but not attack. If it latches on and wont let go then throw a shirt over its face, and it will apparently let go. I was involved years ago when a guard dog, a German Shepherd bit a 12 year old girl and would not let go of her leg for about ten minutes. There was a whole group there trying to get the dog to let go, and finally it did.
Feral/stray dogs are a whole different story, the standard stand your ground tips can work but if you've accidentally strayed into its territory and the pack is agitated then there isn't a lot you can do other than try not to put yourself into that situation in the first place which in this case doesn't even apply as it sounds like you were on a busy public beach. I was recently in rural Morocco and we were going somewhere around dawn and our local guide said that whether we got there depended entirely on what the local feral dogs were doing, the local attitude just seems to be err on the side of giving up if the dogs are in the way.
Even worse with feral dogs is the battery of medical treatments you need to make sure you didn't catch rabies!
I got the rabies shots (Zagreb Protocol) which is four shots total. The same dosage no matter how much you weigh, which seems strange to me. Tunisia is a mess in many ways, but I was able to get the rabies shots free at the Institute Pasteur on a public holiday within about thirty minutes of getting bit. The vaccines made me feel achy and exhausted, which apparently is a common side effect.
I haven't been bitten myself. A dog did bite a piece off my scarf once, though (not sure if it was going for my scarf or fingers, I might've got lucky).
Generally, you should consider trying to learn dog body language. Doing so sounds like it would ease your anxiety immensely, and it would obviously also inform your behavior in specific circumstances.
The main signs you want to look out for are when a dog is baring its teeth, snarling, and has its hackles up. As someone with a dog, who has had hundreds of strange dogs run to me over the years, this has only ever happened to me a handful of times, on bicycle in rural areas. YMMV, since dogs form stereotypes and are afraid of random stuff, however. It's worth noting that usually they don't run toward things they're afraid of if you're not in their space though.
With a little practice, it's also pretty easy to tell when most dogs are friendly, submissive, vigilant, curious, etc.
As for interventions, consider picking up your kid (if they're that size) or getting in-between, as others have suggested. This is going to sound rediculous, but you can also consider having a dog treat, holding it out and saying sit (with the usual gesture), etc. Most dogs I know will happily drop what they're doing when confronted with a treat.
Nope. I know cats very well and still sometimes misread their body langauge. If its a big charging dog that the owner can't control I say err on the side of caution.
In-between didn't work, and I'm not tall enough to hold him out of reach. The owner offered it a treat. No dice. It had a target and just kept going for it.
It pulled off the kid's mitten and ran away with it (luckily, these mittens are big for him and don't fit too tight). Then it kept circling and coming back, but it had the mitten in its mouth, and then it saw another dog and got distracted. Then we got away. I even managed to get the mitten back after it dropped it.
What really bugs me is that the damn thing had two collars, but when I tried to grab it by these collars to pull it away from the kid, they both came off in my hands. Some dog owners are like that.
I would have advised grabbing the collar - but you say it was too loose. Dogs have a lot of loose skin between their shoulders. You can grab the dog there, and lift its front legs from the ground, pretty much immobilising it.
I had an Alsatian off-leash without a collar try to attack my smaller dog (twice!), and caught it like this each time. It turns out that my dog was far from the only one targeted - the Alsatian had killed at least one dog. The owner acted surprised each time he met me. I, and others, made enough complaints to the local dog warden and police that the dog was destroyed.
In your case, it sounds like the dog wasn't aggressive, but it does sound like the dog wasn't appropriately controlled, which is an issue for your local authorities. In future ask for a name and address, and tell them you're going to make a police complaint? Failing that a picture of the dog and its owner? It probably doesn't matter if you actually report them - establishing that they're breaking the law and risking the life of their dog is the goal.
Unless it's growling or otherwise making very distinct signs of aggression, I'd try to get in front of the kid. It might be thinking that the child is a playmate and dramatically overestimating how willing/durable children are. In most cases, I expect getting physically in between is enough. It might jump at you, but you'll be fine, some slobber and mud aside, it's not going to circle around to try to go for the kid.
If it's growling or it's otherwise clear it intends immediate harm, then either try to stand your ground and back away slowly with your kind in back, or grab your kid and move away while presenting your side, not your back, to the dog. Again, I expect almost no situations would require this, outside of a literal guard dog or a rabid one.
Granted, I've grown up with large dogs and feel comfortable with them, including when they try to jump on me. YMMV.
In a case like that, if it is trying to move around you and go for your kid, more aggressive action makes sense. I'm not fond of the idea of kicking dogs, but if it's your kid or it...
It was on a trail, on fairly open ground. I tried to pull it away by a collar, but both collars came off in my hands. Maybe that was my opening for a kick, but I imagine it would just keep going. Next time I'm bringing a really big stick or some other kind of deterrent.
I left a longer comment for you (please read it, most of the advice you've received here is very misguided!), but on the subject of carrying a deterrent, a hiking stick is definitely a good option for defining your personal "bubble" of territory. Planting it hard in the ground in front of you and using it as an extra "arm" to poke or shove the dog away is certainly an option, but it still needs to be done with the Gandalf-banishing-the-balrog energy I described in my comment.
You're almost certainly incorrect to imagine that the dog you encountered would have just kept going if you'd delivered a hard, purposeful kick to its chest or ribs! There are a couple of breeds which aren't as sensitive to pain as others, but I (female, 5'2", 150 lb at the time) stopped a rambunctious 150 lb American Bulldog from jumping on me by simply letting him run his chest into my lifted knee. After getting kneed in the chest two and a half times, he gave up and kept all four paws on the floor.
I made a few attempts to push it back, hoping the useless owner would do something, but it just wouldn't give up. I grabbed at each of its two collars in turn, but they were too loose, and it just got out of them, leaving each of them in my hand. It got the kid's mitten (luckily not his hand) and ran away with it. It kept coming back, but it had the mitten in its mouth. Then, fortunately, it saw another dog and got distracted.
Maybe not, but it's a good start, and would probably be my instinctive reaction if I thought a dog might attack my kid.
The dog is less likely to attack the me + kid complex than to attack the kid solo, I can turn my body to protect the kid, or start kicking the dog if needed, and in the worst case scenario the dog will be biting my kid's leg instead of his face.
Mine are notoriously bad. I know nothing about dogs. I also have no idea what would happen if I tried to preventatively hurt it - would it get more dangerous, would it switch to me, or would it keep going for the kid?
I was at a memory care facility earlier today. I go about once a week. Today when I went it was music hour, right before lunch. They gather everybody in the Event Room and a guy with a tiny guitar and a harmonica setup like Bob Dylan plays tunes. He’s not bad.
After some lady with a walker asked me where I got my glasses (I said at a glasses store) I sat down and settled in to watch the show with my person. Nobody left for the whole set though most of them don’t walk anymore.
The crowd favorite by a mile was “You Are My Sunshine.” It’s the guitar guy’s ace. I’ve been there for other music hours and it slays everytime. Nearly everybody in a room full of people who can’t remember much at all clap and sing along. In key. It’s beautiful to hear. “Home on The Range” is the other consistent banger. During that number the lady with the walker asked me if I thought the skies were not cloudy all day. I didn’t know how to answer. I said “maybe” like a nitwit but in my defense she kept catching me off guard. She asked me about my fingers and my person’s slippers and some other things. I think she was new.
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was I thought a bold and ironic choice given the crowd. It got polite applause but I could tell it didn’t land. Neither did “When I’m Sixty Four.” I think it has potential as a showstopper, but guitar guy kept raising the title age as a cheap gimmick. He ended at 156. My person clapped to the beat but did it double-time like it was upbeat gospel and this was church so the new lady started raising questions about his technique.
If you’ve got to go to a memory care facility, music hour isn’t bad. The caregivers walk around and comb the residents’ hair and adjust their blankets and it’s something to see people who might not even talk anymore sing.
How should we make sense of the fact that the US purchased Alaska from Russia for the measly sum of $138M inflation-adjusted dollars? I can't imagine a land purchase of this size happening in the modern day for anything less than tens of billions of dollars, so what explains the 100x value discrepancy? Is this is a "losing your sovereignty" premium? Is it a tax for breaking the "countries should leave other countries intact" taboo? Has land just become intrinsically more valuable?
Inflation adjustment over a long timescale confuses more than it illuminates, because things are just too different, and you can't just slap a single multiplier on it.
Just to reinforce a number of comments here, Russia 'owned' Alaska in only the loosest sense, in that there was some colour on a map and probably less than a thousand people who would consider themselves Russian living there. Russia had essentially no way to get reinforcements there or to defend it, and no fiscal capacity to develop it. All Russia could do, whilst maintaining energy, is decide who gets it, and the US was preferable to Britain given Great Game dynamics in central Asia.
The Russians sold Alaska not long after the Crimean war (1853 - 1856) when they were beaten (only just) by a coalition of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire. At that time Britain was consolidating its hold on Canada, and extending this westwards. So I think the Russians were keen to have a buffer territory, to be owned by a then pretty innocuous third party, between Canada and Russia, and that explains why they almost gave away Alaska to the US.
I would note that doing a comparison of inflation-adjusted dollars from so long ago can be misleading due to the growth rate of the economy. A search suggests the US GDP at the time was about $125b (again, adjusted for inflation), meaning the purchase price was a bit over a thousandth of the US GDP. Today an equivalent fraction would be about $29b.
This is the first comment I've seen that seems adequately satisfying. All of the others focus on the historical contingencies of the time, and how Russia sold the territory at a steep discount. But even so, a $138M price tag just seems insulting. So the real answer is that when comparing figures like these, you have to account not just for dollar-to-dollar equivalences, but economy-to-economy equivalences.
Timothy M's comment is a very good point, but I would add that what Alaska is as an asset right now is much different than what it was when Russia sold it. At the time it was a barely inhabited frozen near-wasteland and its biggest economic resource was fishing. Now, it is lightly inhabited (compared to the rest of the US) but has huge economic value & potential. Fishing is still a big industry, but tourism, oil, and mining are extremely valuable industries that didn't exist at the time Russia sold. Then there is the geopolitical value that comes with access to the article circle. Finally, because of its location on flight paths between China and the US, Anchorage is the second business cargo airport in the US and fourth busiest in the world.
Metaphorically, Russia sold us a mediocre exurban lot off a rural highway, we turned it into a vast industrial development at the intersection of two busy interstates.
In the period from 1776 to 1950, a lot of European powers gave up control of territories a lot more valuable than Alaska, usually getting nothing in return or incurring ongoing obligations. Spain and Portugal couldn't hold South America, Britain couldn't hold (the best slice of) North America, nobody could hold Africa for all that long... faraway territories were starting to seem like more trouble than they were worth.
Russia gave up Alaska for peanuts, but Spain gave up Argentina and Britain gave up India for nothing at all.
1950 is an odd time point to end, considering that the decolonization of Africa didn't happen till the 1960s. (Technically, starting in 1957 and mostly ending in 1975, with the one holdout of South Africa that left its Namibian 'colony' in 1990).
I don't think this lines up. The British with India and the Spanish with Latin America, and so on, didn't get paid to give up those claims, but they were absolutely cutting all kinds of losses associated with foreign empires: not just in coin, but in the blood of their own people and of their overseas subjects. Meanwhile, many of those former territories formed more or less stable states and continued to trade with their former imperial masters. They weren't getting as much as they might have under a regime of full domination and extraction, but they were getting a great deal of benefit while cutting much, much more of the costs.
Alaska, meanwhile, never had a significant Russian presence and the Russians didn't have the means or will to exploit what resources the region had, many of which didn't become expoitable--profitably or at all--until much later, such as Alaska's oil reserves or access to routes through the Arctic.
Argentina got its independence at the point of a gun, and India at the threat thereof. A few hundred Russian citizens in Alaska could not and did not attempt anything remotely similar.
That would have been one helluva march in the 1860s, with no railroads yet up that way and the nearest Canadian outpost (let alone city) being thousands of miles away.
My question would be more, why bother? Alaska as of the 1860s wasn't known to have a lot of development promise as a colony....the purchase was quickly/widely labelled "Seward's folly" in the US.
Well transported by ship maybe. Britannia did rule the waves. As for why, I’d think prestige and embarrassing Britain’s great game rival may have sufficed. Also the standard tragedy of great power politics- Britain may have feared a future Russia using Alaska as a base for operations against Canada, and have wished to forestall that possibility. St Petersburg *had* demonstrated an ability to project power across thousands of miles of tundra, after all.
I think mostly that this was the era of the great game, and Russia didn't control the seas. Very likely the Tsar (or his advisors) were afraid that the British (their principal rivals in the great game, who remember controlled Canada) would seize it from them, so why not sell if first to the Americans for whatever they could get, and make the defense of Alaska someone else's problem? You both get some money, and avoid the prestige hit of having your principal rival seize one of your possessions in a short and humiliating war.
Probably a similar dynamic was also at play for the Louisiana purchase, with Russia -> France.
That's pretty close to what happened with the Louisiana purchase, from what I understand. The Haitian revolution convinced Napoleon that he couldn't hold territory in America (though I don't know who exactly he thought might seize it).
Part of the explanation has to take into account the state of Russian affairs then and the fact that Russia's claim on that territory would have been quite tenuous. The Smithsonian claims there were about 700 Russians living in Alaska, mainly on the coast hunting sea otters, at the time of the purchase. From the Russian perspective, it was likely 'Siberia but worse' since Siberia was at least accessible via land. Outside of some valuable products of the coastline and the possibility of controlling a shipping lane to the Arctic, it just wasn't very valuable, especially since almost nothing was profitable enough to be worth going all the way to Alaska for it and this was decades before anyone demonstrated the feasibility of crossing the Arctic.
Combine that with the issues of defensibility Bullseye raises, but noting that the British (via their Canadian colonies) may have been the bigger threat. Just ten years before, the British were part of the coalition that defeated the Russians in Crimea. Even if Russia wanted to spend the money to develop it and felt it was a good use of resources, it would have been perpetually vulnerable to British Canada.
Meanwhile, the US was a (then) friendlier power who still had some differences with the British (they'd burned down the White House within living memory). It might well have seemed like a prudent move at the time. Redeem your unenforceable claim to an unprofitable territory for some quick cash and stop worrying about having to defend it from the Brits.
I wouldn't be surprised if 'stop the headaches that come with trying to use Alaska for anything' was also part of the calculus.
As for the low price, as Gunflint points out, even a lot of Americans thought it was wastefully high. Could well have seemed like a steal at the time.
Here's my guess: Alaska is very far away from the core Russian territory, so Moscow had serious doubts about their ability to defend it if a North American power decided to conquer it. Nowadays conquest happens far less often, and modern transportation has made everything closer together.
I know from other parts of U.S. history that people sometimes sold us territory because they figured we were going to take it by force if they didn't.
Russia was also in the middle of some serious internal turmoil, reform and soul searching in the 1860s, after the defeat in the Crimean War had shown that they were a lot more backward, and weaker on the international stage, than they had thought previously.
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Continuing to ask if anyone has special insight into the Volkswagen data breach. A good soul on the last hidden thread commented that the software in question (and it's vulnerabilities) were produced and operated by third-party companies, and that the collection of detailed GPS data for VW and Skoda cars (breaking Volkwwagen's TOS) was plausibly the result of an error instead of a deliberate policy.
Given that, I'm interested in likely outcomes from the legal/policy side. What would a reasonable penalty under GDPR or tort (from breaking TOS) be, and how likely is it that it will be handed down? Worth noting that VW has been fined under it before, some 1.1 million euro for... improperly labeling cameras on their test cars, apparently.
I'm writing up an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard, about the need to give street-level bureaucrats, in this case the Department of Building Inspection, more discretion. In that process, I found a little mystery that maybe those of you who live in San Francisco have thoughts about (I live in LA).
Over the period of many months between Nov 2022 and Summer 2023, there was an organized effort to send hundreds of anonymous complaints to the San Francisco Building Inspection department about awnings and gate violations at dozens and dozens of Chinatown storefronts, as well as storefronts in other historically "ethnic" or countercultural districts, like Richmond, Haight Asbury, and the Tenderloin.
When the Building Department inspected, it turned out that yes, most of the awnings and gates did not fit the building codes, and they issued citations and notices to fix the problem and get permits. The citations would cost the business owners thousands and thousands of dollars.
The progressive representative of the Chinatown district got to work and ended up passing a moratorium on the fines, and they started an expedited procedure to get the awnings officially approved, so its an okay ending (though not great if you ask me).
Lots more to say, but the question is this: who organized the effort of anonymous complaints? We know it was organized because it came out of nowhere and came in a single wave, it targeted businesses that had been there, with the same storefront, for decades and decades, including one business that had been closed for 20 years. I also believe it was organized because no ordinary citizen walks around SF with intimate knowledge of the 11 page awnings, canopies, and marquees building code....so whoever it was is a builder, or works with builders, or has an interest in these businesses closing or being fined or whatever.
It is said that all safety regulations are written in blood, but I'm not sure this is true. I suspect at least some of them are some combination of sounds plausible and intentional barriers to entry.
Do we know anything about why the awning regulations were enacted? Whether they make sense?
In an earthquake zone I think it makes a lot of sense to have building standards for anything that can potentially collapse on your head. It's easy to imagine an awning or archway that seems perfectly stable under normal conditions but is the first thing to come crashing down once the ground gets all shaky.
I wonder if it was someone within the Building department themselves? They were aware of this loophole (all the historic awnings and storefronts technically in breach of the regulations), nothing was being done to address it internally (I've seen that at first hand in another job where 'these regulations are 40 years out of date, if we apply them we'll get grief, the relevant authority needs to update and change them' but it was perpetually left on the long finger) and they decided to get things moving by this campaign, expecting the outcome - the local politician is going to get involved because of angry constituents complaining, the loophole finally gets closed.
A happy ending, at least until dozens are killed by collapsing awnings in the next big earthquake.
My guess: just a random crank with a bee in his bonnet. Maybe he himself ran into planning problems trying to get his own awning built, and devoted six months of his life to revenge on everyone who had blithely ignored the laws that he'd spent tens of thousands of dollars needing to comply with.
If it were a builder then maybe you'd expect them to complain about a whole bunch of other things, not just awnings.
What popped into my head was something like this. Have known a couple of persons who got into rage mode and mounted one-person campaigns along those lines in communities I resided in. Although _hundreds_ of individual businesses is a different scale than I've seen acted out....if it was something long these lines then that person was seriously raged up about something.
Interesting hypothesis. There were complaints about the roll-up gates a lot of these Chinatown stores had since the mid 20th century. And it also coincided with a lot of ADA complaints, but the latter is well documented to be maybe a single law firm looking to fleece business owners.
That seems like an interesting coincidence. If I recall, there are people who go around looking for ADA violations to shake down small businesses and get paid in the lawsuit. Could it be retaliation against a specific store or against Chinatown in general for fighting an ADA complaint?
Don't know anything about San Francisco, but what stops "discretion" being a path to "the real law is have the bureaucrats and/or government like you"? What stops political bias in who to cite or fine, especially in a place like SF? Genuine, not rhetorical questions. Are there actually reliable ways of preventing this? (Other than lists of detailed rules about how to use discretion which...seems like an oxymoron.)
Even apart from those concerns, I don't much like discretion in general. If you need it, it probably means the laws themselves should be greatly narrowed or repealed. The covid mask rules where I live were basically "you must wear a mask everywhere, at all times outside your home, even if you're not near anyone" combined with enormous enforcement discretion. The result? Some assholes proudly ignore the law completely and face no consequences. Other scrupulous people try hard to do the "right thing" which means absurdly limiting their own freedom far beyond what's rational. How is this situation not the *worst possible one*?
The best place to test your hypothesis is in criminal justice, where pre 1984 was a period of high discretion low top-down mandates, and now we're emerging out of a high mandate, low discretion period. So low discretion means mandatory arrest policies, mandatory minimum sentencing, mandatory use of sentencing guidelines issued by the sentencing commission. Are criminal justice outcomes better with legislative mandates or executive street-level discretion? The answer is complicated, but well documented. I take the lessons there into other street-level bureaucracies on this book tour, starting with this SF standard op-ed. All of your questions is what this book is about. Fewer Rules, Better People: the Case for Discretion. https://wwnorton.com/books/fewer-rules-better-people
Do you know any nonprofit, charitable organizations in the USA that could use donations of water-and energy-saving shower heads? If so, please feel free to recommend them!
These include organizations offering mobile services to homeless people; building or rehabilitating homes (akin to Habitat for Humanity), cottages, tiny homes, or residential hotels; and offering social services to live-in clients, including veterans' homes and addiction recovery programs.
I work with High Sierra Showerheads. Their products have been installed in mobile showering units serving homeless people by Cleansing Hope Shower Shuttle (Modesto, CA), Streetside Showers (McKinney/Plano, TX), Hope Vibes (Charlotte, NC), and Lava Mae (operating for ~10 years in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles). And at TROSA, a residential substance abuse recovery program in Durham, NC.
High Sierra is always interested in making additional donations, and welcomes your recommendations – especially if you know those organizations well (as a staffer, donor, or long-time admirer) or have connections there.
We Brits have been using water-saving showers for years. The water starts as a tepid dribble, then when you ease the lever across a hundredth of an inch it turns into a boiling hot dribble, but still somehow cold round the edges.
I gather there are flashy expensive showers with a big dial instead of a lever, but few people know how to work them, which direction to turn the dial for a start. So these luxury models, sometimes found in hotels, are a major scalding risk.
Obviously the idea is that you'll finish the ordeal and hop out as soon as possible, and the notion one might enjoy a relaxing shower every morning, like Americans, is too ludicrous to contemplate. The joys of British plumbing!
I get it. I truly do. I used to scoff at "low-flow" shower heads – remember that iconic Seinfeld episode? – and wasn't looking forward to the prospect of getting one.
But have you tried one of High Sierra's?
We've had two of theirs at home since 2014. Yes, over a decade ago. Still going strong. Never had a moment where we wanted to replace them. At just a 1.5 gallons per minute flow rate – which is ludicrously low-flow – their spray is more powerful and frankly feels better – more natural – than the spray of any 2.5 gpm head I've ever used. (That's the reason I now work with them.)
What is this alchemy? It's a wildly out-of-left-field, US-patented nozzle design. In the High Sierra, all the water flows out of a single large nozzle, concentrating the spray force, rather than diffusing that force across many small holes as in the conventional design. And the spray comes out as a dense cone of large, heavy, high kinetic-energy droplets, rather than as the usual set of gap-separated, individual streams.
So the nonprofits we've worked with have been thrilled. Not only do their clients get clean quickly so they can serve more people, but we also save them up to 40% on water and energy, which is a rather big deal for a mobile showering unit. (Sometimes they're connected to hoses; sometimes they have onboard tanks.)
Fair enough. I have never tried one. Melvin.‘s comment made me laugh, even if it was a cheap one. It was something Maggie Smith might’ve said in Downton Abbey.
> In the High Sierra, all the water flows out of a single large nozzle, concentrating the spray force
Right, that's the tradeoff, isn't it? Either a weak flow that trickles over a larger fraction of your body, or a strong flow that only hits a little bit of your body and leaves the rest of you freezing?
Look, I know it's a legal requirement in some places, I'm just saying it sucks. Even round here they're limited to 9L/minute but after buying a new one recently I found it was easy to remove the crippling plastic piece.
I have one... the water comes out of one hole, but it comes out in a cone that covers the whole body, at least as well as my previous shower head. Unfortunately I have no idea what the GPM of the previous head was. The best thing about the High Sierra is it's not a plastic piece of shit like most things you buy today.
That's been our experience with High Sierra's shower heads as well, Melvin: a cone of large heavy droplets that's a) a strong flow and b) covers a large fraction of your body. No tradeoffs involved at all.
When I talk to people about their products, a lot of times they've been soured on other low-flow shower heads. And I feel like Sam-I-Am in Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham: "Please, just try it and see for yourself!"
Not everyone likes them. They average 4.5 stars across their product line in Amazon customer reviews, not 5.0. Some people encounter issues or otherwise don't have their expectations met. But a large fraction of people who do like them, often are wildly enthusiastic about them. Like me.
Some of High Sierra's customers: Ohio State, which has bought over 5K. Yale. Purdue. Penn State. The US Air Force Academy. Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), the US's largest Army Base, which bought 12K. And Planet Fitness, which is now putting them in new and retrofitted clubs; they'd been installed in over 200 when we last checked a few years back.
As you've probably surmised, at least some of these places don't want to piss off their students/customers/residents with weak flow. So they did comparative evaluations and chose High Sierra's products.
I had the opportunity today to deliver a talk to my church congregation during the general meeting. I heavily drew from Scott’s two posts about “The Rise of Christianity”, essentially relaying and expanding on his thoughts about the memetic fitness of Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions) and their ability to outcompete and outlast the pagans. I think it was very different fare than the usual stuff we hear at church (maybe we deem the pagans beneath our notice!) and it was received very well. When I cited Scott to this large audience of normies I decided to refer to him as an “intellectual active in the Bay Area” because I thought “blogger” might undercut his authority lol. So the question I have for you is: do you guys find yourselves trying to call Scott anything but a “blogger” to people so they take him more seriously? It feels a little dishonest, but I feel like there is a great gulf between him and the median blogger that comes to the average person’s mind when you say the word.
When I follow that link, I get the essay, framed by some sort of detritus that appears to be what Substack thinks of as a home page. (And in fact the URL is a redirect to https://substack.com/home/post/p-154398716 .) I'd like to get just the essay. Does anyone know how?
I call him "a guy I read". I bring him up to make a point, and either the point makes sense or it doesn't. If they're going to judge information based on who's telling it to them, well, that's me and you, not whoever we're quoting.
I need to be in your ward, someone quoting Scott in sacrament meeting would be awesome. I find myself referencing his work all the time. I honestly really think I would love to share the gospel with him, one can make a compelling rationalist case for its viability, and Scott seems to have the requisite desire to be a good person
The only other denomination I know of where it is normal for a lay member of a congregation to give a speech during a service is the Quakers. Also, Quakers and Mormons are the only Christian denominations I know of that say "Meeting" instead of "Service" (most Protestants), "Mass" (Catholics), or "Liturgy" (Orthodox).
Of the two, Mormons are much more common. Also, Mormons are a lot more likely in my experience to obfuscate when talking about their church services to non-members of their denomination than Quakers are. And taking lessons from how early Christianity spread seems a lot more on-brand for LDS than for RSF.
"I had the opportunity today to deliver a talk to my church congregation during the general meeting."
That's how you explain giving a talk in sacrament meeting to non-LDS people. Nobody else has "the general meeting" where random people speak. And certainly not where the speaker would feel free to quote Scott. Only the Church gives such nerds the opportunity to address the congregation haha.
Also Rise of Christianity does make points that resonate with our unique take on the Gospel, it seems like a good fit
I’m in San Francisco. My wife tried to convince me to reach out and personally invite him to hear the talk but I wanted to be sure I was comfortable with the talk first and I ended up writing it at 1am last night so I never got the chance to (also I’m too shy about that sort of thing)
I tend to say 'psychiatrist who writes...' or 'essayist'. I think the latter gives a good expectation of what Scott does and the quality that can be expected, and the former stresses that he has some subject matter expertise when relevant.
This would work if it weren't obvious Newsom started the fires himself in order to get Trump to blame him for it, thereby strengthening his position vis-à-vis primary rivals.
If you're using a Mac, you'll notice that your cursor turns into a mickey mouse glove when you hover links and buttons. I wrote a short essay about this, egregores, and the coming AI resistance:
Of course, if you’re going to make an icon look like a glove, it’d be Mickey Mouse’s glove. It’s the most recognisable version of a glove for a mouse, while not being too obvious. Do you that metaphysical or autonomous entities contribute much explanatory power, over and above the cheesy pun?
There’s also the question of “why a glove at all?”
We shouldn’t take it for granted that it makes much sense. And the glove is also identified as a glove by the slit in the cuff, making the black lines unnecessary.
So I don’t think it’s an obvious design decision to put a famous cartoon character’s glove in an OS.
I don’t know that egregores are actually autonomous. I tend to hold notions like “Moloch” pretty lightly and see them as concepts that appeal to smart nerdy people who read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi as kids (like me) and have soft spot for blending intellectualism with fantastical notions. Just like how liberals love HBO shows that blend supernaturalism with liberal social commentary.
And if I had to put money on it, I’d say the Mickey Mouse Protection Act was at least part of the impetus for that glove ending up in the new OS in the same year, whether or not it was a trickstery political statement from the designers or just the result of Mickey being prominent in the creative zeitgeist at that moment.
Or maybe there is something to egregores, but their “autonomy” is the same kind of autonomy a ouija board might seems to have — not really a mind of its own, but an expression of collective subconscious influence.
I'm confused what this means. As far as I understand, the US provide financial aid and military protection, in exchange for benefits like having military bases. There also seem to be some social programs on top, like integrating Palau citizens into MedicAid.
But this seems very far from being US territory. For example, US laws do not hold in Palau, Palau has its own government, US jurisdiction has no immediate effect in Palau etc. Or am I mistaken about these points? If not, why would investors treat Palau as equivalent to the US?
Prices for other items were raising steadily throughout my stay here, but this time I literally tried to buy the same medication 2 weeks before the New Year and 2 weeks after, and the second price was double. It wasn't a steady inflationary growth, it was a sudden spike.
1) knows their lipid panel numbers (LDL, HDL, Triglycerides)
2) would like to know their fecal cholesterol/coprostanol ratio—i.e. whether or not you have this gut bacterium that naturally helps you excrete dietary+endogenous cholesterol?
Coprostanol is present in the stool in 4 out of 5 people (and practically every wild animal) but there's not a lot of good public data associating its presence/absence with serum cholesterol levels, so I'm trying to collect that info. Can send sampling kits anywhere in the US.
Love it. Something like 20% of healthy young men are low-converters (i.e. little or no coprostanol, only cholesterol in the stool), whereas only about 2% of healthy elderly men are low-converters.
General consensus is you don't make it into the "healthy elderly" cohort without this gene in your microbiome.
I hung out with Max two months ago. We talked about our shared experiences adventuring and travelling in places like Senegal, visiting Chabad houses all over the world, and our hopes for our future (and Max's desire to stop adventuring!). To hear this news, especially that he died of Malaria, is heartbreaking to me.
That's incredibly sad. Max was a great friend and really supportive of my projects. He just invested in my last startup. I can't believe he's gone so suddenly.
If you're looking for feedback, after skimming your post, I agree with a previous commenter who says your writing needs a bit more work: personally I found it too self-consciously gimmicky (somewhat ironically). Overuse of italics, single-sentence paragraph ('And it was fucking easy.') etc. Hope this helps!
I'm taking my italics and my em dashes to the grave; not even a lifetime of obscurity could convince me to abandon them.
As for the rest, the natural defensive conclusion I'm drawn to is to say that this is simply a mismatch of stylistic preferences. But if I'm being honest, on further reflection, this post is not my best writing and much could be done to improve it within the bounds of my own style.
There's been at least one account who was banned over it, but they were engaging in nothing but self-promotion for several months, despite Scott leaving multiple direct comments telling them to stop.
I doubt I'm the only one with the heuristic "look like you want to start a conversation, to contribute to human knowledge, or to get feedback on an idea...and NOT like you want to get clicks and/or money". Very much a pornography-style "know it when I see it", and when I see it, it provokes murderous rage in me. Feeling like "this place is unusually tolerant in who it allows and what topics it allows, with a large attentive audience, what a great opportunity to make a profit!"
Very much a Moneychangers In The Temple reaction. Yours didn't, but perhaps only because you asked about the norms. Absent a summary and a clear attempt to start a discussion *here*, in *these* comments, this kind of comment typically provokes that reaction, fairly or not.
But if someone has written a blog post, their intention is to contribute to human knowledge or offer a perspective. Why must that discussion be *here*? How's a new blogger meant to grow their readership if every community's norm is 'no posting your own writing'?
A new blogger is meant to be compelling enough *here,* in the comments, to provoke curiosity about clicking on either their blog link or a blog post link to read *more.*
"Hey, I wrote a thing, please read it" is not compelling.
I'm giving you the side-eye about your intention to err on the side of humility and simplicity.
"Simplicity" is often just a fig-leaf word for "laziness."
"Humility" would be acknowledging that readers don't have a reason to care about your work enough to click off a page they actually do want to read, and thus you must actively persuade them otherwise. In this realm, provoking a specific and deep curiosity is your "sales pitch."
For myself, I didn't bother clicking your link until I read @le raz's blunt criticism that the writing quality wasn't high. "Wow, how bad is it?" was a specific and deep curiosity that could be satisfied by clicking on the link, so I clicked on it!
I was indeed sincerely trying to have a conversation right there in the ACX comments, but I was also conscious of providing a mild hook to my substack entry: I made a sincere, surprising, unusually strong statement about one of its episodes, and I offered access to free, easy, entertaining information (information which would answer the question, "why did she make such a surprising, unusually strong statement about one of the episodes?").
I got way, way more clicks on my link than people commenting, which was mildly surprising.
The side-eye is understandable. I don't expect to be able to sway your skepticism regarding my intentions at this point -- only to be able to offer the truth and be content with that.
Still, I'll respond to your thoughtful criticism.
On simplicity, I see your point -- though I truly don't think that's what I was doing. I simply detest most forms that self-promotion takes; the slightest hint of manipulation or disingenuity raises my internal alarms. To that effect, I thought: if I'm trying to share my work, why not simply state that and be done with it? No, it's not as effective as creating a "pitch," but fuck, I'm so deeply tired of being pitched to on the Internet.
My current suspicion is that I've significantly overindexed on this, and that you're right. "Not playing the game" is, in hindsight, just a different (annoying) way of playing the game. I know that I don't want to make money from this, so that should embolden me to play the game with a clearer conscience, maybe.
On humility -- I've miscommunicated. If anything, I suspect that my primary flaw as a writer is too *little* humility: the humility to edit until the job is truly done. This thread has been a useful reminder of that flaw.
The humility I meant to communicate was of my place in this space. I'm something of an invader: coming in and promoting myself. I am an ACX subscriber and reader (old hat, but ICTAEtO was a profoundly impactful piece to read as an ideologically frustrated young man), but I'm not known in the comments section or on Substack at large by any stretch.
For that reason, I felt it necessary to make my intentions explicit.
I appreciate your input, skeptical though it may be.
I agree that a compelling introduction is more likely to entice readers. I object to the injunction against sharing links, and to the fact it often leads to performative 'I'm not trying to get clicks, just want to discuss' comments.
In reality, anyone who writes is after both. They do care about the things they write about, but they do also want to drive readers to their blogs; ultimately, almost all writing is to an extent driven by vanity - to pretend otherwise is disingenuous, and personally I prefer Joshua's honesty.
Right, and I said, ""Hey, I wrote a thing, please read it" is not compelling...A substantive introduction to that thing is."
There's no reason Joshua couldn't have written either a summary or a cross-posting of his entire blog post as a comment here on ACX. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a comment word count limit.
(To be clear, of course Scott has the right to say 'no links' as a general rule here, it's his substack! I meant I don't like the general principle that bloggers should be coy about promoting their work.)
It's probably fair to have that reaction to my post. Truth is, I do want attention -- I'll be honest, I think I have a good blog on my hands -- and I'm frankly not very good at spreading the word about it. But I also... don't know that I want to be better at it. I do want to be *honest*, and self-promotion in the guise of "starting a conversation" isn't... honest. I don't know.
For what it's worth, I do share your general disgust. I fucking hate having to engage in promotion. I utterly detest being promoted *to*. I'd much rather just build it and have them come, but alas, I built it and as it turns out, that doesn't guarantee shit.
My goal is to genuinely touch people through my writing -- I have no intention or delusion of ever making money from this -- and I can't do that unless they read it. How, then, to get people to read it? Manipulation? A lucky break? Posting on TikTok?
To be (very) candid, based on a skim of the linked post, you are still at the stage of needing to improve your writing quality, and not your writing marketing.
To be frank, I imagine you could make significant progress just iterating using ChatGPT (or other high quality model) as a writing critic. I recommend doing that. I've done it in the past, and it was a surprisingly useful process.
Take that with a grain of salt though. It is just my perspective. Others may well have a very different opinion. At a meta-level, you shouldn't be too influenced by other's opinions.
Ah, it stings like a bitch. Are you entirely correct or just not my audience? I'll be honest: I'm not so humble as to wholly accept the former. Still, I see at least some truth in what you're saying.
On the topic of ChatGPT, I've found it to be... Something that I should not use. It is ludicrously positive of my work, which I understand to be a worthless opinion but it still feeds my ego despite my best efforts. When it does offer criticism, it's often so nonsensical (e.g. misinterpreting an entirely serious sentence as a joke, or inventing entire sections I did not write) that I can hardly accept any of its feedback as being legitimate.
On the broader stuff -- pacing, concision, tonal whiplash -- it tends to do a better job of bringing flaws to my attention, though its suggestions for improvements tend to be garbage.
(I wrote a post about this, which I won't link due to etiquette but which one could easily find; it contains "Narcissistic Implosion" in the title. You may be interested in it.)
Now, if only the people who do actually care to read my writing regularly would have the gumption to offer such candid feedback...
>Now, if only the people who do actually care to read my writing regularly would have the gumption to offer such candid feedback...
Well, I'm probably not one of them, but can criticize anyway. I mostly thought the prose was fine; you've got several paragraphs that didn't need to be their own paragraphs, and the cursing feels tonally out of place, but the flow feels very conversational and off-the-cuff.
Content-wise, I think the entire first section could have been cut if you'd understood "socially awkward" just means "shy", which is how people can describe you as "weird but not awkward". And then the last section about self-priority being different from being an asshole, fails to consider that some of us are in fact natural assholes and do have to avoid putting forth our actual selves.
Also I'll second Christina, I only clicked on the link because le raz criticized the writing.
To be clear, I don't think I have any disgust at all to "wanting attention", it's really all about wanting money (either immediately, or wanting clicks and likes that can later be converted into money, where that intention is *in the poster's mind*). If I could read minds and be certain that someone advertising their blog is doing so primarily because they want the ideas to get out, I'd be mostly* unbothered.
As it is, all I have to go on is the following hierarchy: commenting on ACX without a blog link next to your name->>commenting with a blog next to your name->>making a substantive comment, then saying "read more here"->>merely linking and saying "read this"...when it comes to *certainty that you're not getting any material benefit from this, and that you're intrinsically concerned with the actual topic, and with truth*.
Agreed about it being unfairly difficult to find an audience, but one of the reasons I hate the advertisers is I worry the "writing whatever I think will get me clicks" people will drown out the "writing what I think is true" people.
And there's a further distinction between "would like to make money from this so I can devote myself to telling what I think is the truth" and "just want to make money, and will write whatever will do that" which is even harder to be sure of, and complicates it even more. It's only the latter group.I hate, but my God do I hate them.
(*there'd still be the annoyance of cluttering up substantive ACX comments with one-line "read this thing I wrote" links to elsewhere.)
It seems to me that the "want to make money so I can write the truth" crowd is likely to morph into the "write whatever makes money" crowd. I think there's a few understandable reasons for this (audience capture, necessity, whatever) -- but really what interests me in it is that it seems to be the same form of argument as:
"I just need to play along with the broken system so I can gain power and later fix it."
But later comes and brings with it power, and suddenly, you can't fix it. Perhaps you no longer believe it needs to be fixed, or can be fixed. Or perhaps you've lost (or never had) the courage to say, "now is the time -- the time I will destroy my own career and livelihood for the greater good."
Someone who's successfully turned writing into their career is now utterly dependent on it *continuing* to be their career. What happens when their audience stops rewarding their truthful pieces? How many times will they publish duds -- truthful duds -- before they're forced to start writing what the crowd wants?
I don't know, maybe I'm speaking utter nonsense. Writing has never and will never been my career; I know nothing of it as a profession. I just like doing it.
There are a variety of different and contradictory rules, but the gist of it is "Once per year" or twice at the very most. Sharing with a large and relevant caption (e.g. contextualizing your writing as a continuation of some other thread that Scott or another commentator started or pursued recently) is better than sharing with a short or irrelevant caption.
You should be fine if this is the first time you have done it. Try to edit your post with a summary of what you wrote above the link, possibly linking it to other Rationalist writing or a recent Scott post. (Or not, don't force it.)
I guess if the floodgates are opened, then let the river run?
I administered the CDT to ChatGPT and asked Claude to diagnose the problems that the "patient" has. Apparently ChatGPT has some pre-frontal cortex damage or early stage dementia.
That was funny, but all I could think about was how (most? many? some?) youngsters today can't understant normal clocks, how are we going to diagnose them with dementia in 40 years assuming the world doesn't end? Or do we just send that whole generation to the madhouse when they hit sixty? Well it won't be my problem anyway.
Greg, Thank you for that hilarious article on various ChatGPT versions drawing clock faces and Claude’s anthropic analyzing what neurodegenerative disease might be indicated.
I know some people who used to be involved in the Prospera project, need to check back in with that. First I'm hearing of this digital ID or that they're sponsoring it, though it doesn't surprise me.
Not sure how I feel about it being a 'crypto-based community'. Crypto has been a part of that plan for a long time, but I always figured the more interesting aspects of it were the political and legal questions, and the promise of less restricted biotech research.
Well, whatever they’re doing. It’s in February. I never heard of Prospera. I’ll have to check it out. A lot of people go to the Bay Islands because things are very reasonable over there. There’s not a lot over there. But it is an island about 15 miles off the coast of Honduras, but they speak English.
Good scuba diving/surfing too, or so I've heard. I think I started hearing about it around 7 or so years ago? Back then the pitch focused a lot more on intentional community building, a custom set of laws built to encourage knowledge industries and 'digital citizenship' (not sure what the status on that is). Very much pitched towards libertarians, a lot of overlap with the seasteaders and private city crowd. Makes sense that crypto has become a big part of it since then.
I was there for about five days in the summer of 1998, spending all my time on the west end of the island, doing a lot of great SCUBA diving for very little money. I’d be curious to know how much that area has changed.
Also, what lotion is she talking about that helps with Autism? We need to know. Probably a scam, but still… what is she talking about? From the interview the director did with Scott Britton about the Telepathy Tapes.
I haven't listened to The Telepathy Tapes. But I have listened to Katie Herzog talk about it on Blocked & Reported, where she & Jesse Singal concluded the problems of facilitated communication and the "Clever Hans" effect were still there. https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-242-the-telepathy-tapes-wants
I guess I'm just sad that the old school skeptic movement faded into obscurity as New Atheism took over, morphed, and faded from relevance. The telepathy claims and their extremely not-rigorous tests of them are just... bog standard paranormal claims that I thought we as a society had gotten over, sans some new agent types on the fringes.
The old school skeptic movement faded into obscurity because we realized that most modern science fails to replicate, and is in fact a lot of bunk in many cases.
I suspect most of modern science at all time periods failed to replicate. But it still must be tested, to rule out wrong things. We tend to remember the stuff that DOES replicate, though.
Are you thinking of something specific that didn't replicate?
The skeptic movement has the problem that the plot is always the same: True believer makes a claim which, when put to the test, turns out to be false. That makes it hard to keep the public interested. The <em>Skeptical Inquirer</em> still exists even if it is obscure; you can read an article about TTI here:
It’s like atheism has morphed into non-religious mysticism and skepticism is now distrust of science in favor of the undiscovered.
Though I’m not sure this is new. Discussed this with my 75 year old parents today and they said many were testing telepathy and believing in telepathy back in California in the late 60s/early 70s.
This stuff boils my blood because when your kid has this (mine *might* and it’s looking like a milder form) you will basically pay any amount of money for any plausible treatment. Right now we’re paying a couple hundred dollars a week for speech and occupational therapy that’s basically the same as me playing with him at home. But since I can’t see any harm in it (versus some abomination called a child chiropractor who I want to throw out of a third story window on general principle) I just pay for it. Telling people that their kids can speak but in some special magical way is just awful and might be a fourth story window kind of problem.maybe fifth.
Well-meaning and desperate people grasping at anything that looks like a cure, promised to them by hucksters on "the establishment says your kid is a dodo, but I can show you how to make them normal!"
See Miracle Mineral Solution for a sad story there:
"We recognize the urgency parents may feel when confronted with a diagnosis of autism, which may lead them to undertake desperate treatments such as Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS, a.k.a. CD for chlorine dioxide, or ASEA). Any medical treatment that uses “Miracle” on its label raises serious questions of old-fashioned fraud. In particular, suspicions arise with Miracle Mineral Solution, a product whose primary ingredient has side effects known to be seriously damaging. We recognize that there are off-label treatments with variable amounts of data that parents and practitioners will attempt. As pioneers in the use of a biomedical approach to autism, however, we maintain that it is critical that a treatment be considered reasonably safe before we give it to children. We do not consider MMS to meet these standards, and it violates the principal precept of medical bioethics: “first, do no harm.”
While many families spend years trying to detoxify their children, MMS introduces a known toxin into their bodies. MMS has properties similar to Clorox® bleach, which can burn the upper digestive tract. The mucous threads that children expel during MMS treatment, which have been touted as worms (though laboratory analysis does not support this claim), are the body’s method of protecting itself from induced oxidative stress in the lower digestive tract equivalent to the mid-day sun in its ability to produce severe sunburn."
Parents forcing their autistic children to drink what was, in effect, bleach because of the promise that the real cause of autism was "worms" and the MMS would force the expulsion of those worms.
If you're applying "your non-verbal child is really able to communicate by telepathy", just imagine for yourself what could go wrong there. At the least, parents imagining they are getting messages from the child and acting on those messages, which probably will have a heap of wishful thinking as to what the parent *hopes* or *wants* the child to be thinking; at worst, abusing the child in a "cruel to be kind" measure to make them communicate telepathically like they are able to do, this professional person assured me with evidence from scientific experiments and everything!
By all means perform an experiment. Just be honest about how you’re doing it. And then I think it will very quickly be the case that you find out kids can’t read minds. This kind of thing was all tested pretty extensively in the 70’s. It just doesn’t exist. In this case, I think it’s predatory because it preys on parents who are desperate.
Same and this is what also concerns me. The autism therapy industry is a billion dollar one with no shortage of desperate customers and opportunistic providers.
Even if everyone in the tapes truly believes it’s real, it’s like many people also believe UFO abductions are real.
But at the same time, as the parent of a child with the condition formerly known as Asperger’s, now known as Autism level 1, I don’t want to discount or belittle the parent’s lived experiences. But idk… people can drink their own koolaide, especially filmmakers and stressed out moms.
I don’t know if your experience maps mine but I’m halfway between: this is real and a determined intervention of forced socialization might help especially during his early developmental stages. Then the other extreme, where I’m pretty sure this is just a personality type he inherited from me that’s been medicalized and it’s no big deal and probably he will be the same no matter what.
He doesn’t talk much at all but every now and again he bursts out with a whole sentence with all kinds of concepts we didn’t think he knew. He doesn’t acknowledge his name and never has but will if we say his full name and sound upset. The strongest evidence I’ve found is that he was in love with the sensory toy store when we went there and I got the same “vibe” from the other kids.
I love him to death but in the earliest days we were exhausted all the time and it was pretty predatory how people would try to offer treatments to us. Not necessarily for autism but a couple people pushed that children’s chiropractor on us multiple times.
Not too dissimilar though my daughter always recognized her name. However, I was in denial/uninformed for years despite many signs looking back. Also I didn’t have good diagnostics or medical providers and no one identified her besides me initially.
I also doubted myself and thought—she’s just super introverted, artsy, an INTP, had to move around a lot because of my job, etc. but by the end of middle school it was blatantly obvious and then the private school forced us to diagnose her and then once she got the diagnosis they immediately said she couldn’t come back to the school even though she’d been there for years and was getting decent grades.
However, this was a blessing as she’s in a much better, very small school now that is 1/3 Asd1 kids, 1/3 super high IQ kids who needed to skip many grades, and 1/3 kids whose parents just live nearby and find it convenient.
So now she’s getting even better grades. It’s also very high tech and low social which suits her. No sports and split online/in person which has been great for her, so half days in school, the rest at home and Fridays completely online. And the teachers really get her.
I also homeschooled her after the diagnosis for a bit and this was a valuable experience because it really let me see where she was at and understand her needs. I was so lucky to be able to do this.
I think public school is a nightmare and borderline abusive for these kids. Just my personal opinion.
Gotta let these kids be exactly who they are and accept their natures. Trying to change them or make them neurotypical is a stressful, losing battle. Again, just my own experience. And ignore the predators!
I wish you luck! Joining a support group of parents also helped, mainly because we share doctors, identify scammers, test things with our kids, share research etc, which I found the group through a university near me. That group helped me find the appropriate school for her.
Oh, yeah. Especially because he's a boy. He might just need a little bit more time than the other kids.
You're underestimating speech and occupational therapists. It's hard to see how what they are doing might be working, and the bad ones are pretty useless, but the good ones have superpowers and can do amazing things. If you are in the US, your school district is supposed to offer early intervention (speech, physical, occupational therapy) for free, but of course therapists vary hugely. If it's a good school district, this might be worth a try.
Yes, that some non-verbal autistic kids have telepathic powers and that they meet in an akashic type realm called “The Hill” to communicate telepathically, and the filmmaker Ky Dickens is very serious about it. The 10-part podcast went viral and she’s now raising money to produce a feature film and trying to get UVA to validate her research.
So I believe that a lab at UVA is taking some of the kids featured in the podcast/doc and they’re going to do more rigorous telepathy testing and the filmmaker is also going to document this and include it in the film. I think it’s the Jaswal Lab, but I’m not 100% sure.
Right the near death experience people. I think she discusses the UVA plans in that Scott Britton interview but I can’t remember the exact details now, would have to go back and listen again.
Ky Dickens is going to change her mind about her own podcast series.
Like many people whose interest will be sparked by TTT, I can approach even bizarre topics with an open mind. But this podcast was excruciating.
As I listened to each account of their recorded “psychic tests”, I wanted to know what was going on that wasn’t being explicitly narrated. What kind of non-verbal interactions were happening between the children and their parents in the room?
One doesn’t want to believe that the show producers would simply leave out details that raise obvious questions of legitimacy. But after five episodes of growing frustration, I paid $10 to watch the video recordings on their website.
Everything I was imagining might be going was exactly what was going, and in some cases to a much more disappointing degree than I anticipated.
Dickens, it turns out, only explains 25% of what’s actually between the children and their seasoned spelling facilitators. If she revealed more, the show wouldn’t be nearly as compelling and popular. In fact, it would be disturbing and condemned.
Here’s how the story will end:
Dickens will continue to raise money and eventually release her documentary. The stories, of course, will lose much of their credibility when everyone sees what’s really going on. Dickens will get called out for her deceptive presentations in the podcast.
Then, she’ll begin to back-peddle on her claims, and talk about how the existential difficulties in her life led her to believe in something, anything, that would made life feel magical again. “I needed that, at that point in my life, and so I ignored the signs that something wasn’t quite right with the parents’ claims,” she’ll say.
And then we’ll all wait patiently for the next spectacle to arrive and distract us from our seemingly mundane reality.
But that spectacle might come from Dickens herself. I wouldn’t put it past her to eventually seek public redemption by creating a followup series where she “investigates” what’s really going on, contacts the parents and tries to get them to admit that there’s no “shared consciousness” with their kids — that it’s all body language and other forms of coded communication.
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, nor a mind reader, to see the clues.
Very plausible. Also, the footage she shared behind the paywall mostly wasn’t new. It was from ages ago and you can find the Depak Chopra clips and longer clips on YouTube for free. Also these kids were younger in the clips. Where is the girl sitting in the cubicle now? I also think maybe they didn’t share newer videos because they may be uncomfortable to watch for many audiences, in addition to raising too many questions. Will be interesting to see if anything comes of this.
Don’t feel bad. I too paid to see the footage. It was only later when I dug around to see why Chopra was even involved that I discovered more footage of the same clips, people in same outfits etc that were already on YT and they’re from 7-10 years ago depending on the video. Kind of hard to find, so here are two: https://youtu.be/HXsVfAGJqL8?si=6CNClCR_S0Y9-qt0 and https://youtu.be/m2f9DkgvJMw?si=qPQ_Z-M7J4Rli_c1
Okay, yes, people here are more scared of losing their intelligence than average, but I think people here are also fairly wise to obvious pseudoscience-based scams. I don't think you'll get many dupes here.
I'll rate this one 2/5, since citing "Scientific References and Spiritual Studies" is amusing, if epistemically painful.
I just want to know why you’re not going after the billionaires who caused this country to collapse, pharmaceutical industry, billionaires who pay their employees a barely livable wage. Instead you go after addicts themselves? And even people who don’t deserve it at all. Use the money to get help for the millions of homeless people in this country who need it, obviously you have more than enough to make a difference in this world. Why am I being penalized by you guys? For having a disease? Maybe put the money towards rehab facilities that require you to pay 10000 dollars for a month. Give options to the mentally unstable people like myself. I don’t care about money, I care about the people who are not in the right place and have no options for what they need for healthcare. The best people are doing is handing out clean needles? Why not go after the scumbags putting fentanyl in everything (I personally know someone who does this and it makes me sick) but you’re stealing from the American people who don’t have the money to buy groceries let alone to feed Africa. I’m trying to get sober, and since you popped up in my life again I have been in the darkest place I’ve been in in a long time. I just want to be left alone. I’m in a program trying to get help and I am constantly struggling with whatever you think I have to do and extremely mentally unstable because of this. I know you think I’m not a good person but I’m trying to get the help I need to get or I’ll die. But I’m assuming that is what you are trying to make me feel like that. I simply can’t understand why you are doing this to me. It’s been like 6 years now that I’ve been trying to get my life together and this whole situation is not helping me whatsoever. In fact it’s been a nightmare and I’m just so frustrated and depressed. But thank you for making it clear to me that you have no idea what I’m going through right now. I’m sorry for being such an annoying person but I’m just really upset that I can’t get through this because of the way things were going with the other people and I’m trying to trust you, I really am. Even ordered watches so you can monitor me…. But so far I’ve only seen the bad side and I’m really sorry for the things I’ve done to you and the other people that are actually doing this for a good cause but I haven’t seen the good things yet, it’s all been bad for me. I’m really trying my hardest to keep my head on my shoulders but I’m really trying my hardest to make things better for you and I’m being punished for it when I try. Now you’re doing the same thing to my family members that are very sick and tired from their own health issues that they have been suffering from since they were kids and I am sick from my own family genetics. I apologize for rambling here but I’ve never had any opportunity to speak with anyone who is in the group chat here. I’m not saying you are wrong but I’m just trying my hardest and I’m sorry that I don’t live up to your expectation.
Just printed out and made my own insurance card, which is fairly run of the mill in the US, but for those unfamiliar with it, consider a healthcare system so bungled that it actually includes an arts and crafts component.
Re the discussion of "woke" and "woke doesn't exist" below: In political discussions, it often helps to consider the opposite-partisan version of whatever arguments or phenomena you're discussing, since that way your visceral emotional reactions point in the opposite direction, making it easier for you to see the meta level.
In the case of "woke", the closest left wing equivalent is probably "racist". And in fact, you do see rightwingers arguing that "racism doesn't exist", even though it very clearly does, and not just in the bailey sense either - you can easily find actual no-kidding proud racists out there, even today. So why would someone say this? What they probably mean is more like "some of the things you claim to be racist aren't actually problems".
The term "racist" is used for a wide variety of things, everything from "the Ku Klux Klan is racist" down to "math is racist" or whatever. If you happen to be opposed to *everything ever described as racist*, then you don't have to care about precision. But if you're on the other side, you do. If you like math but don't like the KKK, you really want to know what someone actually means by "racist" in a particular context before agreeing with them.
The term "woke" is very similar, just with the opposite political valence. If you oppose anything that has ever been described as "woke", you don't really care about precision, but someone on the other side is going to really want to know what you actually mean by "woke" in any particular context.
Where are you seeing conservatives saying explicitly and absolutely "racism doesn't exist", as opposed to "racism is rare and mostly impotent in 21st century America "? Because the latter is a defensible statement, for the Motte definition of "racism".
I'm certain you can find some self-identified conservative *somewhere* making that claim, but I'm not seeing it as common or influential. The claim that "woke" doesn't exist and is just something conservatives made up to tar the left, is I think much more prevalent.
I've always been confused why right wingers don't just... stop considering racism to be a bad thing. Then they can do whatever they want without guilt or fear of criticism, and leftists no longer have any ammo to use against them. Why did they willingly give up so much ground during the 20th century?
That already has happened to a large extent.
Right wingers don't stop considering racism to be bad, because right wingers believe racism is bad for reasons that aren't "badness is an artificial construct". In other words, racism is bad in se, not merely bad prohibitum.
For this reason, right wingers, like nearly everyone, have an interest in knowing which acts are racist. What they've largely stopped doing is using "a left winger said so" as a strong reason to update in the direction of "it is".
Practically all of this is a post-20th century development, though. It's tempting to infer that during the 20th century, a right-winger probably trusted a left-winger's judgement on what was racist because a left-winger was more likely to tell the truth about that, but the real situation during the 20th century was that right-wingers and left-wingers both had very different attitudes toward racism, and for that matter, were largely different extensional sets.
I agree with your general approach of plugging in different variables, but in this case, I see wokism and racism still differing in key aspects.
I think it's fair to say that the emotional valence left wingers want to convey with "racist" evokes the type of person who wears white hoods and burns crosses, or refuses to hire non-whites because they can't possibly do better than a white. That type of racist does indeed exist, but in the conservative non-racist perspective, it exists in mere thousands of people, scattered around various rural enclaves with no real chance of controlling vast amounts of political power, with the odd white-collar advocate who conservatives only hear about because left wingers give them so much attention.
I think it's fair to say that the emotional valence right wingers want to convey with "woke" evokes the type of person who wants to identify as any gender they wish, and wants kids do likewise even when their parents refuse and when the kid's judgment is underdeveloped on account of being a kid; wants trans-women in womens' sports; and wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost. That type of wokist does indeed exist, but in the progressive non-wokist perspective, it... is actually a majority of progressives? Controls most of academia and some political offices? And commands most of the mainstream media's attention?
Is this characterization fair, or is it mistaken?
If I try to show it's mistaken, the easiest path I see is to say that non-woke progressives only want members of "oppressed groups" to stop being ostracized - passed over for promotions, forbidden from womens' sports, turned away from certain restrooms, or otherwise shunned from mainstream society. But when I look at the types of wokists that conservatives complain about, it's genuinely hard for me to see non-woke progressives seeing those types as rare, let alone "they only hear about them because of conservatives giving them attention".
> I think it's fair to say that the emotional valence right wingers want to convey with "woke" evokes the type of person who wants to identify as any gender they wish, and wants kids do likewise even when their parents refuse and when the kid's judgment is underdeveloped on account of being a kid; wants trans-women in womens' sports; and wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost. That type of wokist does indeed exist, but in the progressive non-wokist perspective, it... is actually a majority of progressives?
I think you're proving my point here. You've built up an extreme stereotype in your head and then convinced yourself that it applies to everyone. Which is common in politics, but not a good way of understanding the world.
In particular, your claim "wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost" seems obviously bonkers. Do you honestly think that a non-negligible amount of people would agree with that statement?
My guess is that that even you realize that hardly anyone would *actually* want that the way you described, and that when you say that, you're inserting a claim about *what *you* think the consequences of their desires are* and trying to pass it off as a claim about what "their desires actually are". It's a bit like saying that Republicans want to see women suffer or want to see innocent black people get shot. It's a logical extrapolation of the policies they propose, not what they actually think to themselves. At best you're doing the same thing here and hoping that people won't notice and the worst part is that you seem to have already fooled yourself.
Incidentally, it's also worth pointing out that you piled a lot of different descriptions into your category. Each qualifier you add makes the stereotype more vivid and so more believable, but if you are talking about actual people, then every qualification you add will inherently *reduce* the size of the group your describing. It's classic Conjunction Fallacy.
Extreme stereotype of what? of woke people? I presented that extreme stereotype *on purpose*, precisely to favor your hypothesis as much as plausible. The more extreme it is, the harder it ought to be to demonstrate that such people actually exist and get lauded on the left - just as the more extreme the racist, the harder it ought to be to prove they're favored by the right.
So, "wants high-status jobs to go to women, blacks, homosexuals, transgenders, etc., even if those people aren't as competent and might result in lives ruined or even lost". I'll concede that left wingers don't want to ruin or destroy lives in order to hire the people they want, so, tell you what: let's scratch that part off the ticket, even if turns out to be the logical extrapolation of their hiring policies.
But I'm less sure about the "even if they're less competent" part. As in, if you present a woke person with a white man who scored 92% on the aptitude test for whatever job we're considering, and a not-white transgender woman who scored 88%, who do you think that woke person is going to say ought to be hired? What if the latter score were 85%? 79%? Do you want to factor in the type of job? Salesperson at a department store? Molbio researcher? Firefighter?
How many woke people do you think would say, "actually, it's okay despite the lower aptitude, because of (reasons)"? Are there only a few thousand? Scattered among communities without any meaningful political power? Disavowed as obviously bonkers by their own side?
It's not a conjunction fallacy, by the way - I'm specifying anyone who wants anything in that set, not all of them at the same time.
> But I'm less sure about the "even if they're less competent" part. As in, if you present a woke person with a white man who scored 92% on the aptitude test for whatever job we're considering, and a not-white transgender woman who scored 88%, who do you think that woke person is going to say ought to be hired? What if the latter score were 85%? 79%? Do you want to factor in the type of job? Salesperson at a department store? Molbio researcher? Firefighter?
> How many woke people do you think would say, "actually, it's okay despite the lower aptitude, because of (reasons)"? Are there only a few thousand? Scattered among communities without any meaningful political power? Disavowed as obviously bonkers by their own side?
You're still failing the ideological Turing test. They don't think they're hiring people with lower aptitude, they think that the tests don't accurately measure aptitude.
Hm, that makes sense.
It could be interesting to make a survey among the people who use the word "woke" (in the negative sense), give them a list of things and ask how which of them do they mean when they say "woke". Maybe there is a consensus; maybe there isn't.
And until this linguistic puzzle is solved, which word am I supposed to use when I want to talk about the aggressively performative social justice? I guess I could say "aggressively performative social justice", but that is kinda difficult to remember.
The main advantage of using “aggressively performative social justice” in my opinion is that it’s so long you won’t want to say it at all. Or enter any situation where you would have to say it. Think of all the brainpower you’re saving!
Or, recursively, I could get a question: "What do you mean by 'social justice'?" with basically the same objections as against 'woke' -- no one does necessarily agree with all of that, etc.
Good news, there were zero reported deaths from Ebola in 2024.
I wonder if a German (or maybe a member of an American-German couple) could give me some advice in a complicated and stupid situation. I am certainly aware this is better suited for a lawyer than a message board, but maybe this will be interesting to some of you. (Alternatively, I apologize for boring you with a stupid situation.)
I am a US citizen and my partner is a German citizen, we live in Germany and are unmarried. We have two children; the first one has my partner's last name and we wanted the newborn second child to have my last name. (The two children would share a middle name.)
Normally, this is not allowed according to "German naming rights". In particular, under German naming rights, there is a "family name" that all children of the same pair of parents must share. (More on a potential loophole below.) However, we wanted to simply use "American naming rights", which is guaranteed by Article 10 of the EGBGB.
The clerk's office (Standesamt) told us that we are no longer allowed to use American naming rights; there was a court decision, found <https://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/document.py?Gericht=bgh&Art=en&Datum=2018-5-9&nr=84763&pos=29&anz=34&Blank=1.pdf>, which basically forbids using the naming rights of a country that allows "fantasy names". Here "fantasy names" means: a last name which is neither of the parents' last names. Note that this in particular bans us using American naming rights, although we want to name our second child with *my last name*.
(Suffice it to say I find this all absurd and miss the abundant formal freedom of the US. Did you know you can't change your last name in Germany unless it is part of getting married/divorce? Isn't this terrible? Like, doesn't it freeze social classes? Also, if both parents are German, at the moment the children can't have a hyphenated last name with both the last names of the parents, though this is changing in a few months.)
Now, I have filled out my Vaterschaftsanerkennung (recognition of paternity) but have not yet completed the "Sorgerechtserklärung" (think of this as "super paternity", or like, custodial rights). If I have understood correctly, currently my partner could in principle give the second child my last name under German naming rights. (Think of this as the claim that I am a different person with the same name... so, in other words, without this extra custodial rights, we don't quite count as the same parent-pair for our second child.) However, once I fill out this Sorgerechtserklärung, the children are forced to have the same name. (Could it even happen automatically? Not clear..)
I normally would just avoid filling this out (not great, but okay, we could make another personal contract ensuring equal rights etc.), BUT for the US citizenship, we need this stupid Sorgerechtserklärung.
So, here's my question: could the following complicated loophole work?
1. Give my second child my last name, given that I haven't completed Sorgerechtserklärung.
2. Travel to the US, get married.
3. Come back to Germany, apply for the US citizenship of my second child using our US marriage license.
4. Maybe one day in the distant future, tell Germany that we're married and bank on it not mattering/the naming laws in this country having changed.
Alternatively, um, any other thoughts?
Do you need to get married in the US? Can you do it in Denmark instead? Many people in Germany do this, as the process there is very simple.
I am the German part of a German-American couple and we had a long fight with the Standesamt about our child’s middle name, which we eventually won.
Funnily enough, the story felt extremely related to your struggle, but unfortunately just unrelated enough to not contain any helpful insights whatsoever
Thanks for the Denmark suggestion! The idea with the US is that we'll probably go sometime soon-ish anyways and it is of course comically easy to get married in most cities in the US.
Despite any apparent dissimilarities, I'd be grateful for any details of (1) what you encountered and (2) how you managed to overcome it. (Esp point (2)!!)
Wrote you a DM.
I have to wonder what problems the Germans are trying to solve by having rules like this.
Well, it does cut down on the number of baby girls named e.g. "Daenerys Targaryen", who will go through life being mocked as an insane mass murderer.
But I suspect it has more to do with ensuring that everyone's names end up arranged in neat rectangular grids, where you always know where to look for the kids of Bob and Alice Schmidt.
“Alternatively, um, any other thoughts?”
Well, you asked.
Who is this for? I don’t think it’s for the kids. Anytime parents want to do something “cool”, interesting, etc. with kids’ names, it’s never for the kids, the kids just want to have a normal name, one less thing for other kids to pick on, one less thing to be embarrassed about.
It is all for the parents. For you. “the first one has my partner's last name and we wanted the newborn second child to have my last name”, “we wanted” explains it all.
Your responsibility is to the kids. Anything you do, you have to ask yourself, “will the kids benefit, is it for them?”. Your job isn’t to be a “cool” parent, isn’t even to be a “good” parent, it is to raise good kids with minimal unnecessary suffering (they will get plenty, no need to wantonly add any).
So - since you asked - stop this nonsense, give the siblings the same last name, and worry about how to make their life better, not how to make a cool conversation piece out of them.
Oh get off your high horse. This matter strikes me as basically neutral with regards to the welfare of the children, and the parents are absolutely within their rights to indulge their whim here. People don't actually lose the right to have preferences when they have children, and they absolutely are not required to make every decision according to your idiosyncratic view of what is best for the children.
I know lots of people who have followed this kind of naming pattern.
Come on, my high horse is indeed high and mighty, I can see far and wide whilst perched on top :-)
The option to tell me to go fly kite was the OP's and he didn't exercise it so I think we're ok.
Can we get some of what your horse is high on? Especially if that's what makes the horse mighty.
It's a secret, and there's only enough for my horse. Got to keep up appearances!
I did ask for other thoughts, so thank you for the reply!
First of all, this is actually not unheard of in the US: Emily Oster's parents did this. Moreover, it honestly just doesn't seem so "weird" (or "cool" for that matter) to me.
Honestly, part of the reason was *for* the kids. Having one kid: I want to raise a good kid (in all senses), as you explain. Having two: in addition to wanting both kids to be good (in all senses), I want them to have a good and *independent* relationship with each other! I liked the idea that their relationship with each other would nominally be mediated by a (middle) name which neither of their parents directly shared. (In a way, it somewhat solidifies kids v parents?) This isn't necessarily an unambiguous good: they would have the freedom to not *immediately* be seen as siblings, which potentially both positive and negative aspects. But, you know, avoid the "neutral state" fallacy.
Another (less important) reason was for me: then I wouldn't be the outsider, and in fact the multigraph would be connected.
Finally, we found a beautiful first name, which goes much much better with my last name than with my partner's. It is difficult enough to name a being, as any parent knows!
I of course take seriously the issue of getting made fun of, but -- IDK, I have a "long ethnic" name, got made fun of 25 years ago in small town USA, and now I rather like my name. (I understand this prob reflects some selection bias?) I certainly don't want to "wantonly add suffering", but I just have the feeling that kids are super resilient and that this basically won't add any. (Prob people say the same suffering thing about parents having the same last name, or kids always taking the father's name, and I don't take sure concerns seriously.) I actually spent time reading accounts of (fully biological) siblings with different last names, and they all seemed 100% unharmed.
So, like, definitely not a "cool" parent, maybe a sap. But, inasmuch as I can meaningfully self-reflect, this isn't about a conversation piece.
I do think that there are interesting and difficult psychological questions about how to mediate the question of what "one wants from a kid" as opposed to their "well-being", mostly to do with values I guess? I don't yet have anything worthwhile to add to this topic.
Ok, I kind of see your point that there's a possible positive for the kids themselves. I have a strong preference toward "make things that don't matter as close to conventional as possible because it will create fewer complications for the kids as they grow up", and maybe this one isn't too material; it's more the degree of effort toward it that really alarmed me. Again, you asked :)
W.r.t. to the "selection bias" you mentioned: yes absolutely, I'd go as far as calling it "survivorship bias". Bullying is an extremely nonlinear, unpredictable process, and one never knows which factor will kick it from "most kids suffered some, came out ok" to a life-altering nightmare. I always use a personal example for the sneaky nature of survivorship bias: there's a nearly universal acceptance of making fin of the "too-safe" playgrounds of the 90's, but inevitably these playgrounds are derided by those who ended up ok. I suffered a nasty, life-altering injury playing in the older playground, so even though I generally agree with the sentiment, I'd like to point out that there's a balance of risks that is being ignored.
On "the question of what "one wants from a kid" as opposed to their "well-being"": it's both difficult in a sense that we don't get to know the outcomes, and simple in a sense that there's a kind of a check you can do: keep asking yourself "who is this for?". You won't always answer it correctly, it's impossible, but it does present a framework to help guide your decisions. Anything that strokes your ego too much (for example, a "my kid excels at Such-and-Such Elementary" bumper sticker is a terrible idea) is for you and not for the kids, and they do have a giant invisible antennae sensing this, they know.
Wishing you best in your journey of good-kid-raising; here's to this issue being the worst complication you'd have to deal with!
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I actually was tempted to write "survivorship bias", but I cautioned away, thinking it too dramatic.
However, I do appreciate/take seriously your point about how it's (1) pretty hard to tell what will cause bullying and (2) bullying can be God awful. My usual interpretation of (1) is: "people will be made fun of for unpredictable reasons, it doesn't make sense to stress out about it re: my children, I should focus on resilience". In particular, this is part of why I generally disagree with European laws about not being allowed to give kids names that are make-fun-of-able.
I'm very sorry to hear about the accident. Before I had kids, I was vehemently in the camp of: "safety-ism is bad". Now, I think I still am, but it's ... harder? From my (perhaps overly anxious) perspective as a relatively new parent, one benefit of the super-safe playgrounds is that I get to pay a lot less attention -- and any relief to the cognitive load is appreciated.
I really agree with the principle/mantra you articulate about asking whether you are doing something "for you" or "for the kids". When I wrote that it was difficult, I didn't just mean: "you'll get it wrong sometimes"; I think it is actually *hard* to, like, know?
So, I think about when my kid is having a tantrum and I try to deal with it. Different forms of discipline have different speeds of resolution, and you can imagine that I prefer the faster ones. But isn't that kinda for me? Like, would it be better for the kid if I helped him "work through big feelings" (ugh I actually think in such phrases now, it makes me want to vomit) as opposed to a swift time out? (I gravitate towards the latter.) Or like, if my kid constantly starts activities and then gives them up. Of course I *think* I'm doing them a favor by forcing them to stick to an activity, but, am I? There are thornier questions, I think related to the fact that some aspect of having a child is narcissistic. With most of my friends/loved ones, I don't exactly primarily want them to be happy; I want them to be "good", e.g., "I'm happy this person exists in the world". With my kid(s), man I really really want them to laugh as much as possible.
I have been reading SSC for probably about 12 years now, I've been on the substack since it started, and I've only started commenting once I had my first child. I'm really hoping that Scott writes more about parenting; what interesting questions.
Man, it’s the toughest assignment of our lives, to raise these rascals, isn’t it.
Re. resilience: yes, we want to teach them to handle adversity, but no, bullying doesn’t teach that, fuck Nietzsche, that which does not kill us maims us for life. To teach them to overcome adversity we need to give them tools to do it. For example, just telling a kid to ‘stand up to bullies, don’t be afraid’ teaches them nothing except ‘well I guess I’m on my own now, this sucks’. Get them into wrestling or judo, then they can learn to not be physically scared, and then they can learn to actually stand up to bullies.
Same with safety. They need to take risks, and we - parents - often naturally err on the side of overprotection, but we shouldn’t ignore obvious safety hazards either. It’s a balance.
Sticking to an activity is a tough call (there’s a theme here, isn’t it). I ended up not pushing mine too hard into music, the spark was clearly not there. But photography ended up being the thing. You just have to pay attention to them, I guess, and make calls to the best of your judgement.
Back to the “for them, not for me” thing - once you’re cognizant of it, and start applying it as the standard, you develop a decent sense of what to do/not to do. For example, I literally have 0 pictures of mine in a public domain. I’m astonished by the casual ease with which parents dump easily identifiable, traceable, sometimes embarrassing photos of their children for everyone to ogle. Why? For likes? Or things like “I’m proud of my [insert some glowing achievement] kid”. And if your kid turns out to be… average? not special? Not wanting to be a lawyer/doctor/engineer, but a c-student who loves tinkering with mechanical things? How many damaged unhappy young adults are still trying to win their parents’ approval, to satisfy their wish to have a “perfect”, “successful” child they can brag about to friends…
As you can probably tell, much of this comes from some tough personal experiences. I’m in a good place with mine now, but… it took a lot of… soul searching… back then.
Or, you know, you can just give your kids the same last name... I cannot imagine what is motivating you to go through so much effort just to give your kids different last names.
Oh this bit is easy to explain. Traditionally, all kids would have had the same last name (the fathers). Enter feminism, and the equalitarian solution is to alternate last names. It seems like a fairly simple hack to preserve harmony in a marriage, and pretty much neutral where the children are concerned. [The older hack of hyphenated last names strikes me as more of a negative from the pov of the children, plus that solution doesn't scale beyond the first generation, whereas this one does].
Honestly, the above isn't actually any more effort than normal German bureaucracy, given that we might get married anyways.
What's the best way to become really truly rich? If we need a fixed figure, let's try $100 million in assets; I doubt even a very humble hectomillionaire would insist they were merely comfortable. And let's assume we're starting with a very determined twenty-year-old who is capable but not a superstar and from a middle-class first-world background. How should such a person proceed?
As far as I can tell, the two things to emphasize in such a quest are leadership and ownership. It's pretty much impossible to get to nine figures as even the most well-paid solo professional; to get that kind of money you need to be in charge of an organization of some sort, as either a senior executive of a major company, or the outright CEO of a medium-sized firm. And better yet, don't just run the organization, own it, either fully or in part.
But I expect there's more to it.
For what it's worth, the total compensation of top executives at the biggest firms is now in the tens of millions per year. Here are the figures for Google/Alphabet:
https://www1.salary.com/ALPHABET-INC-Executive-Salaries.html
Make a lot of money, and save and invest it. If you're 20 years old, put away $10,000 a year for 20 years and make 15% a year (which approximately doubles every five years) you'll have over $100 million after 52 years, and a billion after 69 years.
Your first million would be after 19 years, at which point you may be moved to withdraw some each year so you could stop working, but that will make your nine-figure net worth go further away. After 34 years, you would be making over $1 million in profit, so maybe THAT would be the time to start withdrawing some, but again, it makes your goal further away.
Tangent, but I am surprised that the CEO is #171 in the pay ranking. I wonder what is going on there.
Most CEOs don't make nearly as much money as we tend to think. The very highest paid CEOs at Fortune 500 companies is a weird aberration, not the norm.
I meant according to Johans link the CEO of Google is the 171st highest paid person at Google. So there are 170 people at google paid more than their boss, sometimes substantially more. Isn’t that strange?
ETA: Johans figures were for 2023. Looks like in 2022 the CEO's pay was 30 times higher. So possibly this is just some weirdness of how his compensation package is structured over time, or maybe 2022 was a better year for the stock than 2023 or something.
Ah, okay, sorry I misunderstood. Yes, likely a specific provision in the pay structure. Due to a change in tax rates from back in the 90s and an attempt to make performance matter more to top executives, pay became much less about base cash income and a lot more about stock options and other variable amounts.
Also, looking at that link more I believe he was 171st among CEOs, or CEOs within tech? Not within Google itself.
For some reason he goes from $218,000,000 in stock in 2022, to $0 in 2023. Everyone else kept theirs; I think it might be an error in their recording.
> What's the best way to become really truly rich?
What does "best" mean? If "easiest", then buying lottery tickets. If "highest probability", then I agree with Mr. Doolittle, you need to found a company. Specifically, a VC-fundable one. From my limited but non-zero experience with trying to get VC funding, these are the steps you should follow:
1. Build a product, found a company, acquire users/customers, demonstrate traction.
2. Pitch to a suitable VC investor and sell them on your vision of the company's path to a 1 billion+ USD valuation. This somewhat limits your options in step 1, but is a necessary condition for most (all?) VCs to match their business model. In simple terms, aim for a high potential valuation, not for high probability.
3. After a few funding rounds, when your company has reached a sufficiently high valuation, sell it to a larger company, or do an IPO. Don't forget to factor in taxes and your remaining fractional share of ownership, so aim for a sales price of, say, 500 million+ USD.
Internet says there are under 30,000 people worth $100,000,000. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-cities-with-the-most-centi-millionaires/#:~:text=According%20to%20estimates%20from%20New,Partners%20as%20of%20December%202023.
I don't know the best way of looking up how they all made their money, but with 30,000 people it seems like you should be able to.
Probably running a scam is the "best" way.
"You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."
Then again, that didn't end all too well for L. Ron Hubbard...
If your only goal in life is to be 9-figures or more rich, you need to start companies. The pipeline for top level executives is long and full of off ramps that divert most people into lower paying final positions. Lots of things outside of your control can permanently force you off of one of those tracks at any stage in your career. Trying to get that rich from an executive path only makes any sense if your dad owns the company or something. Otherwise you're in for a long grind with a EV much lower than your goal.
You don't need to make a lot of money from your first company or companies, but can use what money you do make as seed money for either future companies or rare but high return investments.
The absolute most likely scenario is that you still fail to achieve your goal, but you may end up fairly wealthy and with a lot of assets to sell off or milk for retirement.
California’s recent action to restrict some food dyes and the FDAs very recent action has made me think about food dyes and the alleged link to child behavior. I’m curious how credible this link is and if there’s some mechanism that makes sense. Seems like most behavior altering drugs work just fine in adults as well as children. If red 40 causes hyperactivity in kids at food-level doses, shouldn’t some self experimenter experience effects if they took 10-100 times more? Maybe there is some low ceiling on the magnitude of any effect?
Scott, could be helpful to get your perspective on these studies since it seems adjacent to your core expertise. Have you looked into this issue much?
Emily Oster has an article about it here: https://parentdata.org/is-red-food-dye-dangerous/.
She concludes:
My take is somewhat different. The paper identifies 25 studies. In half of them, there is no impact estimated. In the other half, most estimated impacts are very small. And even in the studies where there are significant and large impacts estimated, in a number of the cases (like the one I discussed extensively above) the results actually don’t show up consistently across measurements. Adding the issue of publication bias to this, I find the argument for a meaningful effect here implausible. (I will note this is also the conclusion an FDA panel came to in 2011.)
Are we living through another "Roaring 20s"?
Yes every asset class is up a ton since 2020
What do you hope to infer from the answer?
What is an example of a statement that is necessary but neither kind nor true, and should you make it (after all, it's necessary!) or keep quiet?
For me, it's usually telling a client an inflated likelihood of them getting caught breaking the law. There are lots of people who will break the law if you let them think that the punishment is light and that the odds of getting away with it are high.
So we routinely tell people that they'll get caught if they even think about trying it.
It's not true that they'll be caught (usually), and I'm usually not particularly kind to them (after all, I need to communicate that crime is socially undesirable). But it is pretty necessary, IMHO.
I have wondered before what "necessary" is supposed to mean in the context of commenting. Necessary for what?
"Storm that machinegun nest or I will shoot you myself."
Pick any random political statement from "your side" (whichever it may be), and it's better than even odds you've found one.
"if your life sucks enough, you could always play Russian roulette before suicide"
"If you don't stop that right now I'm turning this car around and there'll be no Disneyland for anyone!" And related overblown bluff threats.
I'd quibble on "necessary" with that, because lying is never necessary and this particular instance will almost certainly blow up on you.
> […] lying is never necessary […]
Really, "never"? Are you absolutely sure this holds without qualifications? Or do you mean that specifically in the context of dealing with children?
I actually think it holds generally, but it would be more than difficult to answer that question satisfactorily to either side that it's not worth trying. I think it's much easier to see with children and it seems you may agree with that already.
If you can figure out why lying to kids is a bad idea, you'll begin to see why lying in general is also a bad idea.
To pre-empt another line of thought - not lying doesn't mean always spilling whatever truth you have. You can just not speak on a topic or answer certain questions or otherwise deflect.
To answer another likely objection - yes, lying can offer short term benefits like defections in a prisoner's dilemma-type game. I'm talking about long term and full cost considerations.
If your life or someone else's life depends on it, lying can necessary. To make an extreme example, consider a Jew trying to hide his identity during the Holocaust. When asked by the SS whether he is a Jew, telling the truth will get him and his family killed, and deflecting or staying quiet won't be an option.
Lets say the OP's comment is "Have you ever rescued someone? It happens all the time in movies but I've never even been close to rescuing someone from serious danger." A response that is necessary but untrue and unkind might be "Yes, I've rescued many people from danger*. Here are several examples in long detail. Also I'm surprised and a bit disgusted how few people here have rescued someone. I can only chock it up to the users of this site being particularly self-interested, unable to sacrifice for others."
In the case of the rule of three when applied to comments the "necessary" can be best understood as "on topic" or "contributing to the topic of discussion". After all, no comment is "necessary" in the strict sense that you must post it! But a reply that has little or nothing to do with the current discussion is "unneccesary" because it doesn't further the conversation.
*This is a lie, fulfilling the "untrue" requirement.
'Morality is true and you're a bad person if you don't act prosocially as defined by local customs', might qualify I think?
Possibly self-shaming as effective self improvement technique, also?
Repeating hateful rhetoric to avoid being punished by the dominant group? Crying "Yes, death to the bourgeois pigs!" while packing your bag, or something?
Let's say someone is spouting obvious untruths about some issue of general interest. So calling them out and telling them to stop with the bullshit is necessary, i.e. advances the discussion. But if you respond by \saying "stop with the bullshit, you're a piece of shit and Scott's going to track you down and break your nose "-- that way of objecting to their bullshit is neither kind nor true.
A lie told by a salesman to feed his hungry children?
https://lovkush.substack.com/p/52-things-i-learnt-in-2024
For those interested, list of random stuff I learnt last year. Enjoy!
"10. Somebody found a 19-card combination in Magic the Gathering that deals infinite damage if and only if the Twin Prime Conjecture is true. https://lovkush.substack.com/p/52-things-i-learnt-in-2024"
I don't play MTG, but this seems plausible, reading through the steps. But I also know that the Twin Prime Conjecture has been tested for an awful lot of digits (apparently 388,342, 2996863034895 * 2^1290000 ± 1), so if you could play this combination, I assume this means you win by dealing a huge amount of damage.
Half way through because I kept following links, other half tomorrow. Very interesting indeed.
Very interesting, thank you!
How credible is this news of Pakistani rape gangs in the UK? Is this completely blown out of proportion, or were there really years of rape and cover ups?
The only non-credible part is calling a 13-year old story "news".
Yes, to the extent that BIg Men generally rape as they please in their little feifs.
Eg, your various Epstein rich guys, college football coaches, CEOs, famous musicians (or authors, as it turns out), athletes, etc and so forth.
If you have a certain amount of cache, you can feel free to rape as long as you maintain some figleaf respectability and pay attention to the common sense guidelines one uses to avoid getting prosecuted for financial crimes (only one crime at a time, never do/talk about illegal stuff on the record or to multiple people simultaneously, always fuck down and never to the side, etc.).
It's the way of the world, unfortunately.
Every neighborhood in every city in every country has years of rapes and "cover ups" (ie nobody reporting it publicly) going back decades. This is nothing abnormal.
Why is this currently in the news? I remember the story from ca. 2016/2017, and I couldn't find material new developments from looking into it briefly.
There’s been a concerted effort by the Conservative Party to resurface this as a culture war wedge issue, with an assist by Elon Musk.
Not to be cynical, but the Tories were in power until 6 months ago and seem to have suddenly gotten religion on this when they see an opportunity to split Muslims away from the Labour Party.
Ironically, PM Starmer actually prosecuted some of these cases in his legal career but seems to be pretty hapless in handling this.
It is pretty weird for the tories to complain about a scandal from over a decade ago when *they were in power for most of the intervening time*. Like why couldn't they have done whatever before? But politics is rarely about making sense.
Here is an example, the Jay report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham:
https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/download/31/independent-inquiry-into-child-sexual-exploitation-in-rotherham-1997---2013
I just skimmed it for 5 mins. Yes, of course, the events documented are horrible. I did see that most or many kids described their assailants as 'Asian.' But is there any data in the report on what fraction of abusers were described as Asian?
And to draw conclusions from the report regarding "Pakistani rape gangs" in Rotherham a lot of contextual info is needed:
-Is the fraction of rapists described as Asian higher than the fraction of males who are Asian in the area?
-Is there more child sexual assault and exploitation in Rotherham than in other areas -- including areas with few immigrants, or with mostly non-Asian or non-Pakistani immigrants?
-Has there been an increase in child abuse in Rotherham, and if so when did it start, and how closely does it mirror the fraction of Pakistani males residing there?
I agree with what you wrote. Whether this is accurately summarized by the phrases used by the OP is arguable.
https://unherd.com/newsroom/are-pakistani-muslims-overrepresented-in-sexual-abuse-of-girls/
https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1875007472316084692
https://x.com/Marc_Vanguard_i/status/1876318376777113825
To summarize the results from that first link for people who don't like clicking links: it looks like 83% of those prosecuted for being part of "grooming gangs" were Muslims, for rapes in general in the UK 7.2% were Pakistani*. For comparison, Pakistanis make up 2.7% of the population.
*32% of prosecuted rapists had no ethnicity information recorded, so the 7.2% number may be off.
Yeah, it's not just about "more or less crime", but also about specific *types* of crimes being over-represented in specific communities.
For example, every society has its rapists. But a typical Western white rapist acts alone. Also, raping little girls is considered shameful; I am not saying it doesn't happen, but the rapists usually don't brag about it.
Then there are cultures where raping little kids is considered a harmless fun activity that cool guys can enjoy together, and a religion where a guy who had a 6 years old wife and lots of sex slaves is considered the perfect human whom all people should strive to emulate. Of course their crime profiles are going to look differently from the usual Western population.
It's worth noting that least one of the cultures which endorses the rape of child brides also embraces the rape of boys and young men (because there is no access to women).
This is truly horrible. Are there any British parents who can elaborate how they lost control of the situation ? Something is fundamentally broken here.
Not a British parent, but I followed the situation pretty closely when it was first revealed. They didn't so much lose control of the situation so much as they never had control of the situation in the first place, because they didn't know there was a situation.
The reason being, perverse incentives on reporting. Nobody can see 1,400 teenage girls being systematically raped, because that is distributed across half a city and half a decade, The problem can only be recognized by looking at the large number of reports of one girl being raped, maybe only once, and doing the math to say "that's an awful lot of rapes and it looks like the same girls keep being victimized by the same rapists".
But the rapists were all Persons of Colour. And an overly simplistic and pervasive culture of what we would now call "DEI" in the British police and social services meant that anyone escalating a report of one or two or five PoCs raping one or two or five white girls, without ironclad proof, was at substantial risk of being reprimanded for "racism" and sent off to remedial DEI training. Also the person they escalated the report to would face the same incentive and so would probably do nothing, so why even bother?
It also didn't help that the teenage girls in question (and their parents) were mostly from what Americans would call the "white trash" demographic, so very nearly at the bottom of the list of people society anybody important cares about, and very easy to silence by telling them to knock it off with the complaining or we'll arrest *you* for disturbing the peace or something, and nobody will care and I won't have to sit through another day of DEI training. The rapists were (eventually) organized, and they knew who they could get away with raping.
So claims of a "coverup" are I think an exaggeration. There weren't a bunch of Evil Masterminds in a smoke-filled room saying "Of course we all know that organized gangs of Pakistani immigrants are raping hundreds of teenage girls, but we're not going to stop it so let's figure out how to keep the rubes from figuring it out". Just a whole lot of people keeping their heads firmly buried in the sand, because of all the cane-wielding wokescolds who would beat anyone who raised their head.
That couldn't last forever, and it didn't, but it did last way too long. At least in Rotherham; a few other British cities seem to have had the start of a similar problem but shut it down at a much earlier stage.
The basic story is that troubled kids were abused, which is a very standard pattern, but it was exacerbated by groups that organized to "industrialize" this practice. The official/government support institutions did not have enough resources to protect the kids or recognize the patterns.
It is unstated, but the parents of the victims probably didn't figure heavily in the victims' lives before the abuse started.
Nosferatu (2024) was a solid entry in the Dracula canon. It's a good story to be occasionally re-made because of its inversion of the hero's journey: the hero ventures forth and returns transformed by his adventure, but here he brings back instead of vanquishing it and his story ends in failure.
I watched Herzog's version Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and I think it does the best of any adaptation to show that Harker has to try very, very hard to get to the evil. He ignores continuous warnings and when obstacles are placed in his path he exerts himself all the more.
Harker isn't tricked or hypnotized by evil. He chooses to seek it out. He climbs a shrieking mountain of doom to an ultra-heightened castle of spook and sits down to dinner with an obvious ghoul, who he then makes his neighbor moments after the eldritch horror fixates on Lucy, dooming the town.
Lucy experiences almost the opposite of Harker's film. He discards excellent advice; she's right and ignored. He seeks out the evil; the evil seeks her out. She sacrifices herself to destroy it; he gains (un)life by resurrecting it through himself.
Horror and/or fantasy - the new version is the former, Herzog's the latter - fans: does anyone else enjoy the 1979 version or have a different favorite?
The new one is worth seeing if you want to see 5000 trained rats (plus some some CGI rats), which you should.
Hot damn, that takes me from maybe to definitely.
Etiquette question: what do you do when you post a question on here, several people provide answers, and you want to acknowledge/thank them all, or otherwise reply to them as a group?
If I just answer my own post with a "thanks everyone" message, none of them will get notified about it. The alternative is go through and copy/paste the message one by one to each of their answers, which looks ridiculous and also clutters the thread.
I could just ignore people, and have done in the past when I wasn't sure what to do, but it feels ungrateful and rude.
I am sometimes notified by email that someone has "liked" a post I made, but I don't see a "like" button myself and assume a lot of others don't either.
Plus, "like" works as a generic "thankyou", but doesn't work if what you actually wanted to do was provide further information in your group-reply.
Recently I asked for help translating some Latin, several people expressed interest, but no one responded to my follow-up DMs expect the one guy who I explicitly responded to with "I've sent you a DM". In that case not having a protocol for replying to a group potentially resulted in actual missed connections. Idk tho.
Anyway, bereft of a good answer, this post can double as a generic past-and-future thank you to anyone who helps or answers stuff I post.
They found the original post without independent notification, a "thanks" post on yourself should be fine.
I "like" responses to acknowledge them. In a browser, click on "activity" button (a little bell pic), then click on the "Activity" header in the pop-up. This will open a page where all responses to your comment are shown, and underneath each response there's a "heart" button, among other things.
"Likes" are turned off (by default on ACX, I think - some people have a UI that reinstates them). So many people can't do it, and even if they could, many more people wouldn't see it.
My advice: reply to your question comment with a general thank you, and for extra credit, summarize what you learned.
Paul Graham, a well known Silicon Valley VC, recently wrote about receding wokeness: https://paulgraham.com/woke.html
Scott, if my memory serves me right, mentioned a similar theme in a recent post about bureaucracy.
What I found interesting in both cases is that there was a group of comments (here for Scott, on Hacker News for PG), that argued that wokeness doesn't exist or exists merely as a pejorative term to sling at Democrats.
It surprised me because much political discussion I've seen focused on whether woke is good or not, or even what is it exactly. But these take it as a given that it exists. So to question the existence surprised me.
I'm not really plugged into that discourse but even I noticed, in the last decade, things like:
- mandatory DEI trainings, incl. Implict bias testing
- DEI meetings at work
- warnings in books. Eg. The new Harlan Ellison anthology contains a warning about misogynistic language (I think. There was warning, though maybe about another kind of bad language)
- an extreme increase in discussions about race in newspapers and magazines
- many people assuming the illiberal progressive role, eg. punch a Nazi in the face
- changing the label "homeless" to "unhoused"
- land acknowledgements. Saw these in the cinema I used to frequent in Seattle.
Now, it's possible to endlessly talk about what these things are, or whether they're virtuous or not. But to claim that these things don't exist, or that they are not part of a larger cultural theme, seems preposterous.
How can I understand such a stance? Was I just lucky to experience these things and there are people who haven't? Am I drawing a pattern where there is no pattern?
I guess I'm questioning whether I'm unknowingly inside a bubble of some sort. How would I know?
edit: This produced a little more heat than I expected. Mea culpa. But there are some interesting bits in the thread.
See my more in depth response here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-364?r=izqzp&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=86752034
The general phenomenon of "woke" obviously exists, but it is a vague term used to describe a wide range of stuff, and also a political slur, meaning that it is extremely subject to motte and bailey arguments. So the particular thing that your interlocutor means by "woke" may in fact be fantasy, even though the broader phenomenon isn't.
He's really talking about a particular aspect of wokeness--not so much the ideas, but the attitude and tactics. The super woke person who is enraged by the presence of Harry Potter books in the library because JK Rowling is anti-trans uses the same basic tactics and often the same attitude as fundamentalist parents demanding they be removed because they glorify witchcraft or something.
Your comment made me laugh because I grew up during the Harry Potter craze and I also witnessed a strong religious push back against it in social circles adjacent to mine exactly because it was promoting witchcraft.
Maybe that's why woke feels so incredibly uncomfortable for me: it feels like I've already seen it before.
Hmm. Would you demand the same rigorous definition of "masculine" or "happy" before accepting that the concepts of masculinity or happiness were useful for expressing meaning? I think you're picking on this one word without recognizing this is the nature of words themselves.
I don't think they are arguing about definitions per se, rather they are trying to wrestle with the idea that some people seemingly don't acknowledge anything is happening (happened?) at all.
If we are both in a room and someone throws a stone into it, crashing the window, then it's one thing to argue whether the stone is of sedimentary or volcanic origin, but it's a whole different thing to say that there is no stone at all.
How can this happen? I'd like to know too.
Not listed: anything that materially improves the lives of people on the bottom (even those on the bottom or the "right" ethnically salient reasons) in any way
If that's what wokeness was, then good fucking riddance; it wasn't politics, it was a PR game.
I might be misremembering, but I am pretty sure that the term 'woke' was invented by the same people that now like to pretend that it is some sort of meaningless, right-wing term.
When I was still working at a University, there was a professor in another department who was going through a lot of effort to entirely revamp his department's curriculum to make it more, well, woke (more "inclusive", no exams, less focus on grading, talk about social issues in every class, etc., etc. This was in engineering, btw). Anyway, I remember very well that in one of the grievance sessions for minority students that were held once in a while, some student gave him a shoutout, saying that 'Prof. xxx was woke,' which made said professor, and others, very proud. Like, I cannot imagine that there was a higher compliment that said person could have received than being called woke by a young black student.
I also think that in the show 'Dear White People' (I think that was the name), the term woke was used as a positive thing by the characters you would expect to be into what is referred as woke stuff.
All of this is to say that I agree, everyone knows what the term means and I don't know what is the point of pretending otherwise.
> I might be misremembering, but I am pretty sure that the term 'woke' was invented by the same people that now like to pretend that it is some sort of meaningless, right-wing term.
The fact that a term had a coherent meaning and was used appropriately back when it was invented doesn't contradict that it's a meaningless term now, when it's successfully appropriated by other people and is completely misused by them.
This is part of standard political terminology cascade.
First some minority group invents a term meaning "being aware of systemic nature of social injustices". It's been used for some time locally, everything is fine and coherent.
Then the term becomes more popular among leftists. A lot of conversations among them are happening about the nature of systemic injustices. The term becomes something as a compliment for them, as being aware of systemic nature of social injustices is what leftists want to be.
Then the other sides of political spectrum cath up. The term is still used mostly appropriately, there is still a nuanced conversation possible on the topic, which things are systemic or not, just or not and so on. But the overal vibe of the term become less clearly positive, the layman meaning muddles to "things that leftists do". As it becomes more mainstream corporations and ther entities are starting to use some form of meaningless signalling associated with the term. This kind of actions become incorporated in the term as well.
Then right wingers start using it in mass for whatever conspiracy theory the could come up with, drawing the category borders in all kind of contradictory ways at the same time. The common meaning derogates to "bad things leftist do", most of them blown out of proportions, misrepresented or not real at all. And then to "ideology that turns normal people into fanatics who would do this kind of things". And then to a buzzword with lots of negative connatations that one can use while pointing fingers at a leftist or even just a democrat, regardless of what the leftist/democrat is saying.
At this point people who originally coined the term, have long ago abandonned it and rightly notice that in the current form the term has lost all meaning and is poorly connected to reality. They may come up with some other term to mean the things they originally wanted to mean, and then the cycle starts anew.
Would someone be kind enough to provide examples of the term 'woke' being so grossly misused that the term has been rendered meaningless? I am not in social media and don't really read the news much either. Something to serious sources as opposed to Twitter lunatics would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
"And then to a buzzword with lots of negative connatations"
Would you mind listing those negative connotations for me? The connotations in my head are things that people "being aware of systemic nature of social injustices" would have agreed with a few years ago. Maybe they have changed their minds, or maybe I am out of the loop and the current connotations are different.
"Would someone be kind enough to provide examples of the term 'woke' being so grossly misused that the term has been rendered meaningless?"
this is obviously not the most important example (except you could also argue it is given Elon runs adjacent to circles like this on X) but there's a list of 'woke' videogames, keeping tabs on non recommended 'woke' games. Woke in this case includes everything from 'has a character lecture another on how they are bigoted against trangender ppl' to 'has body type 1 and body type 2 instead of male and female' to 'video game depicts an interracial family':
woke can be pretty much described as meaningless in this case (except if by woke you mean anyone who isn't an Aryan blonde male)
Over on DSL, there were some people trying to claim that Arcane is "woke" (which was so obviously stupid that even the other conservatives there pushed back on it).
One potential solution is whether you have a good friend who has made this argument and you can actually productively talk to this person. I've got some liberal/lefty friends I can discuss politics with but they get extremely aggressive/defensive around wokism and so I just kind of glide around it.
I can kind of imagine this kind of person, every time they read about "wokeness" it's some rabid right-winger attacking things they treasure or think of as virtuous things and so the whole discourse around the word gets poisoned. That would make sense. *
But, like, people online do not always make honest arguments. Do you know anyone who honestly makes this kind of argument in real life?
* It makes sense, it's just not defensible. If we abandoned certain words when they became so poisonous that they made sensible discourse impossible, we would have abandoned "feminism" in the 90s.
For the record, no, I've only ever met with this argument either in ACX comments or HackerNews comments. I guess I also have to admit that maybe I discounted the bad faith route on account of believing the ACX and HN are at a higher sanity baseline, but maybe I overindexed on it.
> surprised me because much political discussion I've seen focused on whether woke is good or not,
"It isnt happening and if it was its a good thing"; at some point you can accuse others of bad faith
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist...
I love seeing the wokies run for cover like this. Of course they're like cockroaches: they scatter in the light but will be back as soon as the coast is clear. Still, I'm enjoying the moment.
Are you saying I'm a quokka?
yes you look adorable and am taking you as a pet
"It isnt happening and if it was its a good thing"
I'm not sure about the tenses here, but "it isn't happening, and if it were to it would be a good thing" is a totally consistent position.
AKA Argument From Professed Inability To Understand Conditional Statements.
It definitely is, but it's also a part of a somewhat popular bad faith strategy to dismiss concerns.
First you state that it isn't happening, so you demand proof with which to burden the other side, once the proof is provided then you jump into how it's not a problem anyway. This gets worse the more picky you decide to be with the data.
"Now, it's possible to endlessly talk about what these things are, or whether they're virtuous or not. But to claim that these things don't exist, or that they are not part of a larger cultural theme, seems preposterous"
I think you misunderestand the objection to the word. The claim (at least has been made by me) is not "things referred to as woke don't exist" nor is it "none of those things are bad." It's that "using the same word to point at such an inconsistent sorts of things is confused at best and deliberately disingenuous at worst."
I spend a lot of time in left-wing online spaces. Within those spaces, the word "woke" is treated as a joke, with the general sense of "conservatives have no idea what 'woke' is, but they know they don't like it." And in more mixed spaces, somebody complaining about "woke" only to be asked to define the term is so common as to be cliche. And in my experience nobody ever manages to proffer anything like a working definition, and most of the time they don't try. "Woke means anything conservatives don't like" is the joke on the left, but it also seems like a closer and more useful definition that ANYTHING I've ever seen from anyone using the word seriously. I might take my own stab at defining it in a separate comment: if so it will be more precise than what I just said, but much the same in sentiment because as far as I can glean from the usage *that's what it signifies.*
Here on ACX I've had this discussion a couple of times, and the responses I remember are things like "don't play coy, you know what it means" and "well, I know it when I see it." These are, to put it mildly, not the products of an intellectual position that is both honest and well-considered. They're B+ tribal signals, but solid Fs at communicating anything to anyone not in the loop.
A commenter below likens defending wokeness to a motte-and-bailey, but I see something like the mirror of that. Instead of being used defensively, this seems to be more akin to spreading out to attack as broad a front as possible when resistance is light, but collapsing down to a more defensible position when pressed and then *pretending that's what you meant all along.* I'm strongly reminded of the "demotist/eargreyish bait-and-switch" from this classic (but very long) SSC post:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/
You can get the full scoop by reading just searching "2.3" and reading just that section, but the executive summary is that various NRX thinkers put forward the claim that "demotist countries were bloodier and more violent than monarchies" where "demotist" was used in a very usual sense to mean "modern democracies PLUS fascism PLUS various socialist governments." Scott reasonably pointed out that the entire purpose of this grouping was to lump thriving democracies in with some of the bloodiest failures in recent history and pretend they were somehow part of the same thing.
It seems fairly obvious to me that this is the purpose of (the most recent explosion of usage of) "woke." Myself and most of the people I know IRL would be generally positive about warnings in books (they take up little space and are useful for some), mostly indifferent about language changes like homeless -> unhoused (language changes all the time) and UTTERLY HORRIFIED about HM's example blow of "consultants recommending the bulk firing of white employees." And yet somehow not only are all of those things "woke," but "woke" is a word that we're all supposed to understand and have opinions on without ever once having an explicit meaning laid out for us. At least the NRX folks came out and said what "demotist" was supposed to mean before trying to pin things on it. Yeesh.
Now, let me be 100% crystal clear here: culture changes. Culture is *always* changing, though generally pretty slowly. One can certainly pull forth a parade of examples of changing culture, and map out various regions where it changes faster or slower or in different directions. And of course there have been cultural shifts in the U.S. and the wider anglosphere in the past few decades, unevenly hitting some places more than others. When people pull out examples of "woke" things, I'll grant that almost all of them are products of recent cultural change, generally things that could never have happened 40 years ago. And they're generally things that are vaguely left-aligned on the left-right axis of politics (but that's almost redundant with the previous, for reasons I may get into later). Do they have a consistent commonality beyond that? Is there a more coherent thread that ties them all together. I'm gonna go with a solid "maybe" there. I kinda get what you mean when you say they're "part of a larger cultural theme" but the fact that neither you nor I nor anyone else I've talked to seems to be willing or able to succinctly DESCRIBE that theme--despite, in many cases being EXTREMELY CERTAIN it exists--is to me a major red flag for confused and disordered thinking.
My current null hypothesis is something like "if you consider your own cultural norms to be the center of the universe, then motion in ANY direction looks like motion away from the center, and different directions and magnitudes can easily blur into the general 'away-from-center' tendency that's your main concern." I'm not entirely satisfied with that, I feel like it's probably leaving something important out. But people who take "woke" as a unified thing seriously seem to be really, REALLY averse to proffering any alternatives.
"And in more mixed spaces, somebody complaining about "woke" only to be asked to define the term is so common as to be cliche. And in my experience nobody ever manages to proffer anything like a working definition, and most of the time they don't try."
There's a reason for this. Every time I referred to "woke" in a conversation, I was criticized for not understanding it or asked with critical tone what I thought it meant. Every time I tried to head that off by explaining what I understood it to mean, I was criticized (and usually blocked) for "mansplaining". This was also what I'd observe when other people tried, unless they were already known to be on the critic's side.
From this, I inferred that any progressive using that word wasn't inviting discussion from opponents, but rather laying a minefield for them. It was linguistic war of aggression.
That sounds like a frustrating experience for sure, and you have my sympathy. But the obvious takeaway from that is, well, exactly what I've been trying to say all along: the word doesn't HAVE a consistent, well-defined meaning. It means a bunch of different things to a bunch of different people (many of whom are unaware of this), and using it is going to be actively antithetical to clear communication.
The obvious solution (if you care about clear communication) is to simply say the things you DO mean clearly in different and less-fraught terminology. But it seems to me that many of the people continuing to use it very decidedly don't care about clear communication: they like the fact that it ruffles feathers, starts fights and intimates at all sorts of bad things without tying them down to any sort of a clear position that one could actually criticize.
"From this, I inferred that any progressive using that word wasn't inviting discussion from opponents, but rather laying a minefield for them. It was linguistic war of aggression."
I notice that I am confused by this paragraph. The previous paragraph implies you were the one using it (or watching others use it in similar fashion) and having your usage criticized. This implies that progressives were the ones using it (which you consider to have been done in bad faith). My experience is that for at least the past three or four years, left-leaning people mostly DON'T use it. If they do, they're using if facetiously: referring sardonically to the muddled-and-mostly-meaningless right-wing usage, rather than attempting to communicate anything overt.
I typically don't bring up "woke" except in response to someone else. That someone else is typically an advocate. That's what I was referring to. And yes, they did use it.
If elaboration would help: when it comes up, it's in casual conversation, as opposed to something more formal such as a discussion involving office policy. There, the term DEI is more often used.
Speaking of office policy, it's just as vague and mine laden there. On multiple occasions, I've seen careful pushback from people I can tell are worried about things like reverse discrimination, or setting the stage for it. They notice that membership in what's considered an oppressed group merits higher degrees of sympathetic scrutiny for past wrongs. Functionally, this results in greater chances for promotion for them, and of disciplinary action for people who even say things they declare as offensive. By itself, this is understandable, but when, say, a Christian attempts to lodge a complaint of offense, I've seen such complaints themselves interpreted as "denying the existence" of members of the former groups, no matter how carefully worded. And while it's possible there's some veiled assertion that someone's existence is in fact being denied, leadership literally shuts the conversation down before it gets resolved.
Even the term "diversity and inclusion" is vague and resistant to resolution. When promotion time arrives, is victim status being considered as a factor even when competence ought to make the decision clear? Anyone who even raises the question gets attacked, and attacks cannot be redressed, and if the question is prefaced with another question to try to innocently resolve meaning, the preface is likewise attacked. "Just Asking Questions".
What would have to be true for use of the word to be neither confused nor disingenuous? My impression is that woke things became more common at a similar time and for similar reasons. Some are benign and some are harmful, but the same is true of the effects of any social phenomenon. The political effects of any changes in them would likely be attributed to the same groups - right-wing demagogues would look powerful if they reduce the level of any of these, even though a given individual would consider some such changes good and others bad. Each of these facts seems sufficient to make this a useful category (I think you know which category you’re trying to argue is incoherent, if not, my post applies to the OP’s list of examples).
>"Woke means anything conservatives don't like" is the joke on the left, but it also seems like a closer and more useful definition that ANYTHING I've ever seen from anyone using the word seriously
Trivially false. American-style conservatives stereotypically don't like communists, socialists, Muslim fundamentalists, the Chinese government, drug dealers, drug users, and immigrants (or at least the illegal Spanish-speaking ones). Yet the actual membership of these groups are rarely described as "woke". Some of their apologists and advocates, yes, but not the actual immigrants, fundamentalists, etc.
I'm not going to bother reposting Freddie DeBoer here, but he's absolutely right. "Woke" has a clearly-understood meaning, it's not that hard to figure out, and if you don't want us to use that label then it's on you to find another one. Honestly, it was a mistake for us all to have stopped calling you all "social justice warriors".
Wow, really? The definition that is put forth AS A JOKE isn't perfectly accurate. Whoda thunk?
If you had bothered to read *the very next sentence* you might have noticed that I indicated that the joking definition was insufficiently precise. I'll agree that Muslim fundamentalists, drug dealers aren't generally described as "woke" by anyone. In fact, I was considering using that very example if I tried to ground my own attempt to define the usage of the word.
"I'm not going to bother reposting Freddie DeBoer here, but he's absolutely right. "Woke" has a clearly-understood meaning, it's not that hard to figure out,"
This is a very, very stupid game, and you continuing to play it despite it being called out repeatedly elsewhere is extremely tiresome. If it has a clearly-understood meaning, the TELL ME. I genuinely don't know what YOU think it means. I can't read your mind, I can't read anyone else's mind, and people *keep saying stuff like this* and then *keep refusing to elaborate.* Anywhere else I'd think that was trolling. But here on SCC I can only conclude that many of you are very confused. Certainly I get that many people feel *quite certain* that the word has a clear meaning, and yet for all their certain seem utterly unable to elaborate on it.
So you're saying that "woke" really means anything left-wingers think conservatives don't like?
The left-wingers are well aware that conservatives don't like drug users, but that doesn't make drug users "woke".
Mind you, a lot of people on the left think that all of those conservative-hated folks *should* be woke, and some of them deceive themselves into thinking they actually are woke. But they're mostly not.
I was riffing off the idea that "woke" isn't so much a term conservatives use for anything don't like, as it is a term that left-wingers use by proxy for conservatives, for anything *left-wingers* think conservatives don't like. I probably should have left it alone - the phrasing was too clunky for me to get it across.
Fair enough; I see what you were going for.
> Yet the actual membership of these groups are rarely described as "woke".
Wait what? Where did you get the idea that communism and socialism aren't woke? Why do you think leftist doctrine is described as "cultural Marxism"?
I made no claim that communism and socialism are or are not woke. Only that American conservatives generally use different adjectives to describe them. Source: repeated observation of American conservatives complaining about things they don't like.
*Marxism*, yes, they'll sometimes describe that as "woke", following the lead of the Woke Marxists themselves. But the actual communists and socialists of the world, generally *don't* get described as "Marxist". The socialists have effectively rejected that branding, and the communists mostly live in places where Marx never had much influence.
Actual socialist countries... Dial back - this is why I effing hate the term when it's used outside of discussing specific implementations like, for example, the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it's in the name of the bloody thing) - everyone just assigns whatever meaning they want to it.
Anyway, the USSR would have been a wokester's nightmare: forget same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships were illegal, with real prison terms attached. Trans issues would have been incomprehensible, the whole bathroom thing even more so. And their "equity" shtick would be laughed out of the room, "from each according to ability, to each according labor" or something like this was the guiding philosophy.
Yeah, I definitely want to hear about how the USSR or Castro's Cuba were woke wrt gay rights, holding powerful men to account for mistreatment of women, etc.
Cultural Marxism (now THAT is an actually abused term) isn't even communist or socialist, it's the result of grabbing the oppressor v oppressed dynamic and applying it to identity politics.
It's the identity politics part which gets into "woke". Unions, for example, aren't "woke", diversity training is. Fighting for a higher minimum wage isn't "woke", a cafeteria having higher prices if you are white is.
Yeah, I think there's an identity-politics frame for thinking about politics. Woke is one subset of that--where the identities that matter are mostly ethnic and sexual minorities.
There are plenty of non-woke identity politics out there, too--white nationalists and black separatists are good examples. I don't know how the Nation of Islam views gay rights issues, but I'm guessing it doesn't sound all that much like what the median sophomore gender studies student at Brown would say.
The other defining feature of woke in practice is the tactics--public shaming, contagious sin (if I associate with you I'm just as bad as you) punished by shunning, trying to get people fired for their beliefs. That's all associated with wokism now, but it's not like the 1980 conservatives getting the lesbian teacher fired by complaining en masse to the school board about her were woke. It's just a tactic.
Communism/socialism and wokeness are orthogonal at best. A goodly proportion of communists and socialists will tell you that woke is a distraction elites came up with to channel left-wing energy in directions which won't threaten their own privileges. And a goodly proportion of the woke will tell you to pay no attention to the Bernie-bros.
Because actual (sort of) Communist countries aren’t described as woke, and neither are socialist countries except to the extent they do things like the ones on the list above. Cultural Marxism might or might not be communist, but the communism pre-dated and is distinct from cultural Marxism. (Maybe its creed should be, “From each according to their privilege, to each according to their oppression”.)
> It's that "using the same word to point at such an inconsistent sorts of things is confused at best and deliberately disingenuous at worst."
For me, the word has a pretty clear meaning that aligns with how PG describes it: " An aggressively performative focus on social justice. "
- Aggressively: the presence of an implicit "or else" statement. For example, mandatory DEI trainings that essentially say that you need to agree with what is being said because questioning it is racist, and racists are very bad people.
- Performative: not having actual impact on the issue it purports to be about. For example, the implicit bias test has been shown not to replicate; adding warnings to books about eg. misogynistic language probably does nothing to diminish misogyny, adding a pride flag to your corporate twitter avatar does nothing to promote LGBTQ rights, etc.
- Social justice: having to do with issues like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
This category describes all of the examples I gave in my original comment. It seems clear to me, even when I was taking my first steps in corporate America in the previous decade.
Again, I don't want to argue whether these things are good or bad. Just that, clearly, there is a common thread running through all of these events, that it's not just "anything conservatives dislike", and that it's also weird for someone to claim that these are uncorrelated events that don't merit a unifying label.
Ooh, thank you for this comment. I'm a little late in reading it (busy week) but this is by far the most productive comment of an otherwise frustrating thread.
Not only is this an actual, explicit definition, but it's one that seems both practically possible to apply, and not obviously contrary to the usage. I think this hits the nail pretty well on the head, which is quite refreshing after watching a lot of people pounding vigorously on the joist.
My main quibble is that a lot of things that get called "woke" in practice fail to hit all three points, and sometimes only hit one or half of one. For example, a certain subset of people are obsessed with criticizing things like casting choices for movies and TV shows as "woke." Likewise stuff like pride flags and land acknowledgments. They all can be seen as having a social justice angle, and can all be viewed as performative, but simply doing your own thing in your own space is about as non-aggressive as it gets. Things like pronoun pins and content warnings don't even check the performative box, IMO, since they do address the issue they purport to address[1] even if people unconcerned with those issues find them silly. And a lot of the legal battles over things like trans rights may be aggressive, but they are *anything but* performative: they still get decried as "woke" with some regularity.
Anyhow, I don't think that quibble is a huge problem for your definition overall: some people can use a word in ways contrary to the definition without that definition being unworkable. But I'd like to propose a second definition that I think covers a lot of the missing ground:
"Woke" means anything red-tribe people consider a cultural signifier of the blue-tribe.
Unfortunately, this definition is much less convenient and easy-to-use than yours because it requires understanding the dynamic between the tribes AND which things people consider blue-tribe signifiers varies a lot by the person. But I think it fits some of the usage patterns that yours doesn't quite cover.
I think this whole conversation would be much simpler if people just used the word in the sense you've laid out. But unfortunately I think it gets used unevenly in both senses. And I think this is part of what makes it so popular and, well, so *convenient* for conservatives: there's both a smaller set of legitimately bad and outrageous things that they can hold up as core examples and an absolutely enormous set of generally silly and insignificant things that they can use to show that "wokeness is everywhere." There are lots of people who will object to many of the more outrageous aggressive-performative-SJW things but who don't actually have a problem with a lot of the benign trappings of blue tribe culture: getting these people uncritically using the term (as Scott unfortunately does) creates momentum and legitimacy that they could never get merely by grousing about pride flags.
I hesitate to call this a motte-and-bailey, because I think genuine motte-and-bailey situations are actually pretty rare: usually its different people understanding the same term differently rather than one person or group deliberately trying to deceive. But that's why it irks me so much when people are so careless about insisting that "no, really, everyone knows what it means" and act affronted when somebody claims not to. And why I'm willing to harp so hard on asking for clarification. So thank you for being part of the solution, not part of the problem!
[1] For those wondering, in both cases their purpose is to allow certain sorts of people to more comfortably navigate cultural spaces that are by-default somewhat hostile to them (much more modest goals than those claimed by a lot of the weapons-grade SJWing people talk about here).
Thanks for writing this out. I think this really gets at the critical point of the matter: that some people use it in the Paul Graham sense and some in the very broad sense that you describe. I think I saw somewhere else in this thread someone (maybe you?) bring up the topic of people calling Arcane woke, which sounds like an eye-rolling type of categorization error.
Hence, I feel reassured that the PG-ian "woke" phenomenon definitely exists. But the red tribe "woke" isn't even a phenomenon but rather an ingroup label for the outgroup.
Somewhat tangential, but I have to wonder if PG, Scott, and me (any many others, too) that subscribe to the PG's definition have this in common that they are grey tribe members living amongst blue tribe. One of the consequences of that is rarely or never being in contact with the red tribe definition of woke, which leads to using the same term as they do but for a very different purpose.
Suffice it to say that there'd be no such thing as wokeness for us to be arguing about, if the woke demanded half as much rigor in their definitions of such words as "racist" or "transphobic" as they do for "woke".
Also "fascist", "white supremacy", and "rape culture".
But being on the other side of those gives me some sympathy for the frustration that a (hypothetical) reasonable leftist might feel upon hearing their opponents criticise "wokeness". It is, the hypothetical reasonable leftist would say, a vague term encompasses a whole bunch of things, some of which are obviously terrible and some of which are actually reasonable, and labelling them all together only makes sense if you're reflexively opposed to all of them, not if you're pro some and anti others.
At this point, debates about "woke" are cliched, and when I saw Paul Graham had written an essay about "woke" I internally groaned as if he'd written ten thousand words on the Is Die Hard A Christmas Movie debate. At this point, righties should focus on coming up with better and more descriptive terms to describe the specific phenomena they're objecting to.
(Similarly, lefties should come up with better terms than "racism", "fascism", "rape culture" et cetera so that we can have meaningful debates in those spaces as well.)
>At this point, righties should focus on coming up with better and more descriptive terms to describe the specific phenomena they're objecting to.
The current term is reasonably well understood by almost everyone who uses it, and entirely fit for purpose. And any alternative term, unless it is a five thousand word essay carefully defining all the edge cases, will be subject to the same baseless criticisms as "woke". So I'm not seeing the point.
I mean, as FdB says, if you want to come up with a better term yourself, we'll probably listen. But it needs to be simple, and it needs to encompass pretty much all the groups that the rest of us feel are sufficiently similar to require a blanket term, and it needs to not have the connotation, "and of course everyone smart enough to know the term will know that we're right about everything". But I don't think you're going to come up with anything better than "woke".
> But being on the other side of those gives me some sympathy for the frustration that a (hypothetical) reasonable leftist might feel upon hearing their opponents criticise "wokeness".
How so? It was their responsibility to not be seen as a plague on society. Whatever way you look at it, they've completely and utterly failed at everything they set out to do. They don't deserve sympathy for that.
> and labelling them all together only makes sense if you're reflexively opposed to all of them
No, I think there are specific factual disagreements that make sense of them. For "fascism", its the belief that Peronism leads to Hitlerism. With "white supremacy", its that we value things like "being on time" *because* black people dont. For rape culture, Im not even sure there is any conflation happening other than in the name.
>For rape culture, Im not even sure there is any conflation happening other than in the name.
Depending on who you ask, "rape culture" can refer to a society justifying, sometimes even promoting rape, to a society that doesn't bend itself backwards in order to punish rapists or to the objectification of women
Wait, do people actually think that "being on time" is something others only care about post-hoc because it allows them to discriminate against black people?
That seems...clearly wrong to me. I mean, factories and other places that involve shift work obviously care about people being on time regardless of the person's race. Or ask anyone who has ever had a cable repairman schedule an appointment between "8am and 4pm" whether being on time matters.
Maybe that could apply in companies where there are a lot of "email jobs" where being particularly punctual isn't all that important.
Relevant: https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what
EDIT:
Oops, this was already posted. Well, that only shows ow relevant it is.
If you don't want me to use the word "woke", fine. Feel free to suggest a better word. Not talking about the topic is not an option.
Political labels are useful in that they collapse a lot of different policy preferences or ideas or something into a single variable. If I tell you Alice is a libertarian and Bob is super-MAGA and Carol is woke and Dave is a centrist Democrat, you can predict their positions on a bunch of issues, and infer a lot about the models of the world they use to understand those issues. That is what makes it useful.
I don't think woke is less useful in that context than MAGA or libertarian--there are variants of each one (JD Vance != Elon Musk, David Friedman != Ron Paul, Kimberlé Crenshaw != Ta-Nahisi Coates, etc.), but you know a lot about someone's views from that label.
If I say "I oppose MAGA/Trumpism in general, I think the whole set of ideas and policies is a trainwreck," you can understand what I'm opposed to. And I think the same is true if I say "I oppose wokeism in general, I think the whole set of ideas and policies is a trainwreck."
Now, when you want to argue for which policies and ideas are good/bad, you need to drill down to the specifics--affirmative action in education is very different from requiring inclusive language in government. But at a high level, it's meaningful to speak of support/opposition at the level of broad ideologies.
I was going to post the exact same FdB link, thanks for posting it.
This whole "it's impossible to discuss "woke" as a thing so you guys should just give up" trope is an exceptionally uncharitable and obfuscatory tactic that should be given no quarter.
"If you don't want me to use the word "woke", fine. Feel free to suggest a better word. Not talking about the topic is not an option."
I feel like I'm going to grow weary of repeating this, but you very clearly and very BADLY missed my point.
The objection was not and never was that "demotist" is somehow a *bad word* and that we should be using a different one. The objection was, and I quote "here's a nickel kid; buy yourself a real category."
I'm perfectly happy to discuss any sweeping cultural or political changes that anyone wants to discuss PROVIDED they can clearly indicate the topic of discussion to me.
So, for example, if you want to discuss some proposed changes to the educational curriculum, feel free to point out those changes, who's proposing them, where they'd be happening and (if the topic is interesting to me) I'll gladly talk about them. Ditto with police reform. Ditto with workplace hiring standards.
If you have *multiple different* proposed changes to the educational curriculum, proposed in multiple different places, by multiple different people at multiple different times, my basic ask would be "as part of your request, could you please do the basic work of tying together what key features you think these proposals have *in common* so we're not confusing ourselves by jumping between many different proposals without any clear direction of discussion." If you can do that, great. If not, I'd respectfully suggest that you either come back when you can or find a more coherent topic.
Now, if instead of this, you've decided that you really, absolutely MUST talk about curriculum reform AND police reform AND workplace hiring standards AND the selection of topics and various medical conferences AND casting and scripting trends in television and movies AND integrity in video game journalism[1] AND changing attitudes towards gender and sexuality AND the various sorts of cringy bullshit that corporate HR departments make their employees sit through and whether they've got more or less cringy (and in what ways) over time AND whatever vapid crap some has-been celebrity just tweeted out to try to become relevant again for 15 minutes...well, at that point I'm going to have to start by asking you "why?" As in "why beneath all the heavens would you POSSIBLY want to try to have a conversation that so unmanageably broad and covers so many different areas of modern life?" And it's possible you have a good answer for me. It's possible you have managed to gaze deep into the warp and weft of modern life and glean secret patterns that escape me explain to me how that seemingly untenably broad array of topics is all joined together by a common thread that is narrow and clear enough that a single human conversation can possibly follow it. And maybe you can. I'll listen if you think you have an answer. But every PREVIOUS time I've asked the question, people have insisted, INSISTED that yes, there definitely is an answer, it's so obvious that there is, how could you deny it, what's wrong with you...and then they never actually tell me. So I'm not holding my breath.
I think now would be a good time to remember this core principle of clear thinking and clear communication:
"The tenth virtue is precision. One comes and says: The quantity is between 1 and 100. Another says: The quantity is between 40 and 50. If the quantity is 42 they are both correct, but the second prediction was more useful and exposed itself to a stricter test. What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world. The narrowest statements slice deepest, the cutting edge of the blade. "
I would really appreciate you trying to approach the topic with some precision instead of telling me I *have* to talk about this topic without ever, EVER telling me what the topic IS.
p.s. The obvious criticism of Freddie's piece is that he is writing it as though he is addressing a single person. Does he think those "sweeping social and political changes" are all being demanded universally by one person or one coherent group? Does he think the push back at the various terms is all coming from the same place? The world is BIG. Even narrowing down to "that subset of Americans who visibly participate in online political life," its still an absolutely enormous and extremely heterogeneous group of people. Why on Earth would you expect them to agree on ANYTHING?
[1] No really, that's definitely the issue, it's not about anything else.
This is simply what happens when you look at a large group from inside vs from outside.
You could similarly argue that there is no such thing as Christianity, because do you know any person who is simultaneously a Catholic *and* a Protestant *and* a Jehovah Witness? No, those are three different groups, they believe that the differences between them are astronomically large, and each of them thinks the other two are going to hell.
And yet, from the perspective of an atheist or a Hindu, it makes sense to describe all of them approximately as "those guys who talk about Jesus". Even if some of them are saying different things about Jesus than the others, and some of them also talk a lot about Mary, etc.
Or consider the "political right". Should we stop using a word that simultaneously describes monarchists, theocrats, classical liberals, libertarians, and (this part is disputed by some) national socialists?
Should there be a word that describes both Stalin and Trotsky? Those guys hated each other, disagreed on many things, and one of them got the other murdered. Clearly, the person who uses a category to describe them both is just talking nonsense.
*
I agree that it is better to discuss individual topics separately, if we want to talk about the individual topics. The correct solution to education is different from the correct solution to police, etc.
But it also makes sense to notice that people who want to start all debates by acknowledging that the place where they are talking belonged to Neanderthals many years ago, the people who believe that math lessons should be about social justice rather than about numbers, the people who keep inventing new pronouns, and the people who insist that Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong, seem to be coming from... approximately the same cluster in the ideology space. (Even if not all of them care about all these topics, and some of them even disagree with others. That's because the cluster consists of sub-clusters.)
It even allows you to make some specific predictions, for example that they will deny that people could legitimately disagree with their ideas, and if you try to explain your position, instead of debating you they will try to get you cancelled. That you should expect their arguments to be emotional and exaggerated; which in real life may involve a student hysterically screaming right in your face, never letting you finish a single sentence; online it means insisting that admins need to ban everyone who disagrees, and that a group where only 99% people agree with their position, but 1% disagrees and is still allowed to participate, is a horrible place that should be avoided by all decent people, because it definitely makes women and minorities feel unsafe. (Again, not all people in the cluster are doing this. Some of them are smart, and nice, and open to debate. But if many people from that cluster are coming near you, this is what you should reasonably expect.)
"This is simply what happens when you look at a large group from inside vs from outside."
In a word, no. There are many large groups that have very clearBut it also makes sense to notice that people who want to start all debates by acknowledging that the place where they are talking belonged to Neanderthals many years ago, the people who believe that math lessons should be about social justice rather than about numbers, the people who keep inventing new pronouns, and the people who insist that Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong, seem to be coming from... approximately the same cluster in the ideology space. (Even if not all of them care about all these topics, and some of them even disagree with others. That's because the cluster consists of sub-clusters.) boundaries, even from the outside. And yes, Christians are one such. No, they don't all have perfectly identical beliefs. But it would be pretty easy to describe a minimal set of beliefs that (nearly) all Christians hold and (almost) no non-Christians hold. I think you'd have a much harder time doing that for "woke people" than you would for "Christians;" that's a large fraction of the point right there. The category boundaries are anything but clean.
But this is an especially bad example because, well, "woke" isn't even referring to a group half the time. It's referring...I dunno, a vibe, I guess? You can't simply describe it based on group membership, because most of the time when people are complaining about "wokeness" they're not complaining about a WHO, they're complaining about a WHAT. A corporate DEI training, for example, could plausibly contain actually zero people that would meet anyone's standards of woke, and yet the event itself would still be referred to that way.
"Or consider the "political right". Should we stop using a word that simultaneously describes monarchists, theocrats, classical liberals, libertarians, and (this part is disputed by some) national socialists?"
Well, yes. This is a much better point than the previous one. "Right wing" does have a lot of the same incoherence that "woke" does[1] and I genuinely think it's a useful exercise to a. try and define it and test how well your definitions work and b. try and express ideas without it and see how well you can do that. To the extent that I think the usage of "right wing" is *less* of a linguistic disaster than the usage of "woke" it's because it's much older and has stayed much more culturally stable over the years, removing a large fraction of the danger of different people talking past each other when they use it.
"Should there be a word that describes both Stalin and Trotsky? Those guys hated each other, disagreed on many things, and one of them got the other murdered. "
Aaaand, we're right back into nonsense again. As with "Christian," it would be very, VERY easy to lay out a set of beliefs that Stalin and Trostsky and Lenin and Mao all shared, but that FDR and Churchill and Truman and Eisenhower and Thatcher did not.
"But it also makes sense to notice that people who want to start all debates by acknowledging that the place where they are talking belonged to Neanderthals many years ago, the people who believe that math lessons should be about social justice rather than about numbers, the people who keep inventing new pronouns, and the people who insist that Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong, seem to be coming from... approximately the same cluster in the ideology space. (Even if not all of them care about all these topics, and some of them even disagree with others. That's because the cluster consists of sub-clusters.)"
And at this point I think we lose each other entirely. From my side it appears that your problems go much, much deeper than not knowing how to define a word that you insist is somehow meaningful, into "not living on the same planet as I do." Pro tip: if you think a particular cultural movement is so important "not talking about the topic is not an option," it would behoove you to try to understand it at a level slightly deeper than "internet shitposter."
[1] And don't get me started on "liberal" which is much worse.
I think "a minimal set of beliefs almost all insiders and almost no outsiders hold" is usually downstream of a uniting organisation. "The hippies" are not a group by those criteria. Im not sure there are any groups with a belief almost no outsiders hold, unless membership is defined by holding that single belief, or its a deliberately strange belief like certain religious ones. And thats for groups that dont even want to avoid being seen as one.
>A corporate DEI training, for example, could plausibly contain actually zero people that would meet anyone's standards of woke, and yet the event itself would still be referred to that way.
Do you find it confusing in general that tasks can be done by people none of whom cares?
> It's possible you have managed to gaze deep into the warp and weft of modern life and glean secret patterns that escape me explain to me how that seemingly untenably broad array of topics is all joined together by a common thread that is narrow and clear enough that a single human conversation can possibly follow it.
I have your answer. It's femininity. Have you ever wondered why every trait considered "evil" is associated with masculinity? Sadism, violence, promiscuity, power-seeking... all inherently masculine traits. And the branding of these traits as evil is all a result of a two millennia-long effort to feminize humanity, culminating in the current state of affairs, where men have paradoxically oppressed themselves from fulfilling the obligations of their sex.
Do you see now why all these men are so angry? All these presidents make these promises about giving people freedom, but Trump is the only one to offer people true freedom: freedom from conscience. Freedom from this false morality that has consumed this world for so long. And now they finally have the chance to truly be free.
Sadism and violence being bad is a false morality to you? I guess you're just an average "conservative".
Of course I understand that neither I nor the new administration are interested in conserving the status quo. We are entering a brave new future. ...And honestly, what are you going to do about it? You lot don't have the spine to risk your lives for the sake of your beliefs.
I think it's more like typically masculine ways of aggression are publicly recognized as "evil", but typically feminine ways (e.g. bullying someone, mostly verbally, to the point of suicide) are not. Violence against women is discussed a lot, violence against children not that much. Female genital mutilation was a topic (because people in developed countries automatically imagined that it is men hurting women), then people realized that it is actually done by older women, so it suddenly stopped being a topic (complaining about it too much could now get you cancelled for being culturally insensitive).
“Sadism, violence, promiscuity, power-seeking... all inherently masculine traits.”
I’ll give you violence as “leaning masculine”, but for the other three… “citation very much needed”, as they say.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone
> Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone and androgen in males. In humans, testosterone plays a key role in the development of male reproductive tissues such as testicles and prostate, as well as promoting secondary sexual characteristics such as increased muscle and bone mass, and the growth of body hair. It is associated with increased aggression, sex drive, dominance, courtship display, and a wide range of behavioral characteristics.
> There are two theories on the role of testosterone in aggression and competition. The first is the challenge hypothesis which states that testosterone would increase during puberty, thus facilitating reproductive and competitive behavior which would include aggression. It is therefore the challenge of competition among males that facilitates aggression and violence. Studies conducted have found direct correlation between testosterone and dominance, especially among the most violent criminals in prison who had the highest testosterone. The same research found fathers (outside competitive environments) had the lowest testosterone levels compared to other males.
> The second theory is similar and known as "evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory of male aggression". Testosterone and other androgens have evolved to masculinize a brain to be competitive, even to the point of risking harm to the person and others. By doing so, individuals with masculinized brains as a result of pre-natal and adult life testosterone and androgens, enhance their resource acquiring abilities to survive, attract and copulate with mates as much as possible.
> The rise in testosterone during competition predicted aggression in males, but not in females. Subjects who interacted with handguns and an experimental game showed rise in testosterone and aggression. Natural selection might have evolved males to be more sensitive to competitive and status challenge situations, and that the interacting roles of testosterone are the essential ingredient for aggressive behaviour in these situations. Testosterone mediates attraction to cruel and violent cues in men by promoting extended viewing of violent stimuli. Testosterone-specific structural brain characteristic can predict aggressive behaviour in individuals.
The definition that comes to mind for me is "anti-white racist and/or anti-male sexist policies/attitudes-leading-to-policies, mislabeled as equality or equity". Likely there are other definitions for other contexts or people, but that's what comes to mind for me. Bit of a mouthful, and probably difficult to articulate for a lot of people. But I think it at least gets at why the label keeps getting applied in hostile fashion, and likewise disputed.
I'll give you significant points for actually trying to answer the question as opposed to dodging it. The smaller problem is that it's scope is rather narrow: a lot of stuff gets labeled as "woke" that doesn't have anything to do with any sort of racism or sexism. The larger problem is that what counts "anti-white racist" and "anti-male sexist" is going to vary really, really, really widely based on who's doing the judging.
I'd guess that very nearly nobody thinks of *themselves* as anti-white racists or anti-male sexists, so one assumes that we'd have to base it on other peoples' judgement of them, rather than peoples' self-judgement of what they're doing. But outside judgements vary a lot too. Personally, I've encountered only a very small (but decidedly nonzero) number of people who seemed in any by anti-white racist or anti-male sexist *in their motivations*, despite spending lots of time in left-wing spaces. I've met a rather larger number who could maybe, possibly be considered that way if one considers the consequences of their preferred policies: but judging large-scale sociopolitical consequences is nightmarishly complex and tricky, even more so than judging unstated motivations. I guess this would sort of produce the pattern where a lot of conservatives seem to think *everyone* on the left is woke, while a lot of left-wingers think the term is meaningless.
At any rate, the last thing I'll note is if that's the way we're defining the word, then certainly any fears about "the spread of wokeness" must be VASTLY overblown. I notice pretty much nothing in the way of laws or other formal rules discriminating against men or white people. No laws prohibiting white people from holding certain jobs, no laws barring men from owning property or opening bank accounts, no restaurants with "no whities" signs in the windows, no restrictions on voting or owning property, no companies with explicit policies of not hiring men into certain roles[1]. In which case there can't really be a problem, can there? Without those, the only ways one could see this anti-white, anti-male discrimination is in the way people talk--which I've been repeatedly assured we must never judge or react negatively to lest we infringe on their sacred freedom of speech--or in more subtle, unstated, informal systems of discrimination invisibly embedded in our culture. But I've also been repeatedly assured by many well-meaning conservatives this last is completely impossible: that the ONLY possible forms of discrimination are overt and rule-based and that it's CERTAINLY not possible for any groups to be systemically disadvantaged merely by people's attitudes, habits and unconscious biases.
[1] Wait, that's not true: there are strip clubs and Hooters and porn films. Are these wokeness at work?
Well, those well-meaning conservatives can certainly have been wrong and/or misexplaining - I'd put it more as "the only *legally actionable* forms of discrimination are overt and rule-based". If you don't like how Disney's implemented its hiring policy, well, you still need to come up with the evidence on the overtness front to get the courts to agree. Or, the direction it looks like they're going, change (or clarify, to be charitable) the laws to make the previous behavior explicitly illegal.
But it nevertheless doesn't have to be formally encoded to be "woke". Black Lives Matter, for instance, is a fairly central example - so far as I know, they haven't been arrested or sued en masse (individually, maybe; embezzlement comes to mind), merely disagreed with regarding the causes of their concerns. I suppose you could argue that they were more anti-black than anti-white given their effects: de-policing resulted in a significantly higher murder rate in the black community, if I remember correctly. But the attitude certainly *looked* anti-white (by some equivocation over cops/whiteness), especially when contrasted with the reactions to counter-slogans "All Lives Matter" or "It's okay to be white".
> "Woke means anything conservatives don't like"
And what's wrong with that definition? They're in power now, they have no reason to tolerate any of the ridiculous things you mentioned. Culture has changed in the last century, and the point is that every single one of those changes was bad. And they can be reversed, as long as there's the will for it.
" Culture has changed in the last century, and the point is that every single one of those changes was bad."
I will applaud you, at least, for have the courage to come out and SAY that you think the end of segregation, women's rights, gay rights, treating people with disabilities like actual people, and widespread literacy and access to education are all bad things, and that you're willing and indeed eager to roll back all of those changes, no matter how bloody that process is. I'm sadly not able give you similar credit for your understanding of U.S. civics: you seem to have an EXTREMELY poor understanding of the structures of U.S. government, the power they posses and what the practical range of possibilities enabled by narrowly winning one federal election actual are.
Though I'll confess to being a little confused about why I'm seeing this opinion at all: shouldn't you be down at your local coffee house or social club, expounding this to a group of like-minded men over the glasses of non-alcoholic beverage of your choice? It seems the fact that I'm able to read your opinion at all belies your dislike for at least *some* cultural changes: specifically those in the way we communicate.
As an exercise in respecting your opinions and cultural beliefs, I'll do you the favor of correcting for any other such slip-ups you make. From henceforth we can pretend that you shouted them to your mates, in-person and that I--being the sort of human that wouldn't be caught dead with you if my life depended on it--was in no position to hear them.
What value does the US political process have if it fails to give the people what they want? Democracy wasn't invented as a tool for justice. It was initially a tool for compromise, following the idea that the majority has the final say, and that the minority lacks the power to oppose them. A system to prevent needless conflict. It's older than humanity, for god's sake; even beasts like hyenas take votes on action.
Point is, the Constitution is worth less than the parchment it's printed on once it stops serving the needs of the majority. You're free to fight back, of course, but I suspect most of your friends lack the spine to fight for what they believe is right. At the very least, those tech companies were very quick to realize what's good for them. The left is utterly lacking in backbone, and with the knowledge that they don't even have a majority, they've utterly lost the will to fight. The transition will go quite smoothly this time around.
>And in my experience nobody ever manages to proffer anything like a working definition
Vox has you covered.
https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy
I'll have more to say later if I have time. But the big, obvious, glaring problem with the piece is that it is somewhat over four years old. And they have been four very LONG years. Among other things, the author is living in a world where people on the left still routinely use the word "woke" in a straight-faced, unironic, laudatory sense. Probably somebody out there still talks like this, but I sure don't see it anymore.
I was already reasonably well aware of the origins of the term within the black community, though not being part of that community, I first became aware of it as it started to spread in leftist spaces outside the black community. Used in the way it was used then, the word *did indeed* have a fairly clear and narrow meaning. However, it should be unsurprising that when the word was picked up and spread around by people outside the cultural contexts it originated--people who in many cases not only didn't understand the cultures they were taking it from, but were *actively hostile* to understanding those cultures--no great deal of care was taken in ensuring that the existing meaning was preserved.
If one tries to apply the, say, circa 2016 meaning of the word to many 2024 usages of it, the result is...unimpressive. Are corporate PR campaigns 2016!woke? The very idea is laughable: it's not so much "wrong" as it is "complete and utter gobbledygook." It's like asking if the Earth's orbit around the sun is 'erudite.'"
The origin is still the meaning for anyone who wants one. The problem is the Internet is chock full of children with the printing press, who are both too stupid to understand nuance and actively resent the concept, who endeavor to destroy the meaning of every word until it's simply one more variant of "good" or "bad". Giving the children definitional veto power will leave you with no words at all.
It's the usual reaction to (1) new term is adopted by the Right-Thinking (in this case, seemingly by osmosis from AAVE due to the crossover with progressivism and all the CRT stuff) (2) it is used by the in-crowd to (favourably) describe the right way of thinking and behaving (3) it seeps out into the mainstream (4) us normies start to use it disfavourably due to the excesses of the perpetrators (5) the backlash comes (6) the in-crowd now drop that term like a hot potato, scrabble around for a new one, and in the meanwhile react with "there was never any such a thing, you're just making it up" to complaints about the old regime of Political Correctness/Social Justice/Progressivism/Wokeness/whatever new term is coming down the pike.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
By the bye, I see that "disfavourably" is now obsolete usage and that's why I'm getting the wavy red line spellchecking in the comment box. I guess this is what happens when your formative years are shaped by reading 19th century literature!
"There is one meaning in OED's entry for the adverb disfavourably. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.
This word is now obsolete. It is last recorded around the 1800s."
It seems to me, having followed American progressive spaces, that *before* the term seeped out to normies it was actually starting to get used by more moderate lefties to describe more far-out ones, and the reason why the lefties now consider the way it is used by righties confusing is that the righties are using it for both the more moderate and the more far-out lefties.
The classic FDB piece on this subject, "Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand" is a must-read : https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/please-just-fucking-tell-me-what
Looks like we've officially transitioned from the motte-and-bailey stage of defending wokeness, to the gaslighting and memoryholing phase. I would love for people to not forget.
I certainly won't forget in the late 2010s diversity consultants telling our company that bulk firing white employees under some other pretense would be good for social justice and evening the scales. I won't forget the Robin DiAngelo book club. I won't forget having to take the IAT, and the smug "see, hints of racism, you now must do the work". I was told to "hold space", to "sit with it", to "examine my own discomfort". I won't forget the "how are we going to fix racism" biweekly meetings that you were pressured into at work, better show up, or the optics are not going to be in your favor. I won't forget the "make sure you write down who didn't post the black square on their feed so that we can keep a list of the racists" of 2020.
I think you need to separate the ideology from the tactics and treat them separately. The ideas can be good while the tactics are bad, or vice versa. Or both can be good or both can be bad.
Cancelation campaigns in general seem like an overwhelmingly bad tactic, in that they make the world a much worse place for very little benefit. But I don't think that would be any less true if the cancellation mobs had all been Objectivists or Trad Catholics or Old Labor Democrats. The problem there is the tactic. Shutting down scientists for researching things that upset Trotskyites or Reagan Republicans would be just as bad as shutting them down for upsetting 2020-era progressives, or trans activists, or BLM activists, or whomever else.
In practice, people tend to favor any tactics no matter how vile as long as the target is someone on the other side, and vice versa. Heck, there was a post a while back where Scott wrote about conservatives engaging in cancellation campaigns, even people who had previously made a big deal complaining about cancellation.
In this case both the ideology and the coercive tactics to get you to comply with it are both something I find distasteful and want kept as far away from me as possible.
Sure, but they're different bad things. Good ideas can be defended by bad tactics--if young earth creationists are shamed and ridiculed into silence, or intimidated by the threat of losing their jobs, those are bad tactics, even though young earth creationism is obviously wrong.
Similarly, bad ideas can be defended by good tactics--young earth creationists can try to construct good experiments or meaningful observation, engage in rational discussion with their opponents and try to honestly weigh evidence, etc. That's actually more important, because all the time, there are bad ideas that are expert consensus, and only by those good tactics can those bad ideas ever get overturned. Deplatforming, shaming, and getting opponents fired are tactics that ensure that bad ideas never get corrected.
Amen. As much as I hated the BLM riots at the time, at least they created an indelible cultural memory that can't easily be erased. I suspect the transgender fad will soon follow a similar path and in 10 years the average far-left liberal won't know (or will claim to not know) what gender dysphoria even means.
Ah but you see do you have concrete evidence of all that? More than just memories in your brain? Otherwise you're a racist fascist etc. etc. etc. lying about the Good People 😀
I'm old enough now to have lived through a couple of "what do you mean, that never happened" for various things that I pretty much do remember happening.
I'd like to respectfully point out that the rest of us do not have access to your memories. And while claiming something somebody else claims to remember "never happened" is uncharitable and rude and aggressive, it is nevertheless extremely reasonable to want some manner of outside corroboration about and event before taking it into account.
I've had the following happen on multiple occasions:
1. Some person makes outlandish claim about recent history or current events.
2. I challenge the claim by asking them to provide some manner of source
2a. They repeatedly and huffily reply with some variant of "do your own research" (this step isn't strictly necessary, but somehow it happens with near-perfect regularity).
2b. I must repeatedly and with increasing force lecture them about why unsourced claims are B-A-D for any sort of public discussion until they finally relent.
3. They finally share one or more sources for their claim.
4. I read the sources. The sources don't remotely support their claim. In many cases they actively contradict it.
The striking thing about these interactions isn't that people lie: in most cases I'd wager pretty good money that they're NOT deliberately lying. It's that they interpret what they see and here through their own particular lens, often to the point that saying black is white and up is down and *believing it.* That's scary, and it's stripped away what little chill I may originally had around epistemic hygiene. There but for the grace of Veritas go I.
On the other hand, I do get the frustration. I too remember things that are difficult or impossible to source and want to communicate them with others. It's frustrating. The best antidote for the frustration I've found to date is to repeatedly remind myself not to over-update on isolated events: if I'm pushing a viewpoint that depends in detail on some particular isolated incident, dollars to doughnuts it's not a great viewpoint to begin with and I should think about it more carefully.
People's memories tend to be shockingly bad even for ordinary non-political topics (and yes I've experienced this first hand - finding documentary evidence contradicting my memories on many occasions, etc.). Throwing politics and the deliberate distortions of partisans into the mix just makes things that much more hopeless.
Can you share some examples?
I think the more cynical explanation is the correct one here:
Wokeness gained most of its cultural territory while it was a vague, slippery and formless force. When those who objected couldn't verbalise or explain what was happening, there was nothing to oppose it. Grumbling around the subjects of "ethics in games journalism" or "political correctness gone mad" made people sound stupid and did nothing to mobilise resistance.
Then the word "woke" caught on and suddenly all these disparate phenomena could be nailed down and recognised as one single thing. That's pretty much the exact same point that wokeness began slowing down and eventually losing ground. Because once you can actually talk about what's happening, it's very easy to point out how indefensible it is.
Recently I have noticed friends in the centre-left, along with the media personalities they follow, first denying that "wokeness" exists or that the word means anything. As time went on that strategy wasn't really working, so what they're doing now is heaping scorn and derision on the word (and its users) instead - having failed to destroy the word, they are now trying to ostracise it and make it impossible to use in polite company.
If only they could succeed at that, they could go back to gaining cultural ground again instead of losing it.
I do not believe this is something they are consciously aware of and am very interested in the mechanics behind how they all received these marching orders. But I do believe that is exactly what's going on.
I'm confused. It was "vague, slippery and formless," but also capable of being "nailed down and recognized as one single thing?" That sounds...well...pretty nearly contradictory. And you say a single four-letter word did the nailing down? Excuse my skepticism, but it seems like if it actually WAS as vague and formless as you say, then attaching a single word to it really, REALLY seems like running the risk of oversimplifying and under-specifying. Quite the coincidence that both your friends in the centre-left and various figures in the media seem to agree that the word doesn't do nearly as good a job as you're sure it does, eh?
Quoting a classic SCC post:
"I was tempted to call it “spontaneous order” until I remembered the rationalist proverb that if you don’t understand something, you need to call it by a term that reminds you that don’t understand it or else you’ll think you’ve explained it when you’ve just named it. "
It sure seems like there are a lot of people who are VERY satisfied with themselves for having NAMED this supposedly vague, slippery and formless thing, and seem quite convinced that such is all that's required. I've seen far, far less appetite to explain, to bound, to limit or really in any way to elaborate on said name or what it supposedly means. The name does seem to have done a great job at uniting people against...what? It's honestly very, very confusing to watch people do victory dances to celebrate their impending triumph against a word. Did the word really fight back all that much? Isn't taking previously commonplace words and ritually loading them with all the sins of the word and angrily purging them really more of the left's schtick? Are you sure y'all know what you're doing?
>It sure seems like there are a lot of people who are VERY satisfied with themselves for having NAMED this supposedly vague, slippery and formless thing, and seem quite convinced that such is all that's required. I've seen far, far less appetite to explain, to bound, to limit or really in any way to elaborate on said name or what it supposedly means.
It's just really hard to take the objection at face value.
In the realm of politics we have, for the longest time, used vague terminology. This works because it definitely points to a general direction and that's good enough to make a point the vast majority of the time, the objection if anything has been how loaded the words were.
"Violence" for example started getting used to refer to speech. No big deal there. Truckloads of right-wing politicians around the world were called "fascist", and that seemed fair game, same as "alt-right", Elon Musk, the guy with 12 children, often gets called an "Incel" and is also bundled with "techbros", "defund the police" apparently meant something completely different than what one might infer with a dictionary in hand. None of these words have actual definite meanings but we can infer what diffuse category they point to.
It's really, really hard to believe that this is the one time in which there is an actual problem. It's even harder to believe when refusing to define the word woman is a known strategy to evade that debate completely. It requires an immense amount of good faith.
Isn't this just the thing that happens whenever you talk about a broad social and political movement? It's reasonable to say "I oppose woke policies" in the same way it is reasonable to say "I oppose right wing policies."
And it's equally reasonable for someone on the other side to ask for more clarification. A right winger obviously isn't going to categorically opposite right wing policies, so they want to know whether you're talking about the good policies or the bad policies. And vice versa.
> It was "vague, slippery and formless," but also capable of being "nailed down and recognized as one single thing? That sounds...well...pretty nearly contradictory.
It sounds like it is, but it really isn't. No different than the words "good" or "evil". And you people are quite confident in what those words mean, aren't you? It's the same with "woke". The right agrees on what "woke" means, and that it needs to be destroyed. All that's left is to take action.
This was a wonderful post. Can you tell me how you came by your marching orders?
If you are truly concerned about accurate definitions of words, rather than simply wishing to strip me of my ability to speak this one, then I'm sure you're keen to apply the same specificity to every other word you use on a daily basis.
And should you find that certain, most or in fact *all* words break down as The Tails Come Apart, I'm sure you'll conscientiously never use them in conversation again.
Let's take a word at random for you to start with. How about, I don't know: "woman".
I *literally* laughed out loud at your final sentence. That was great.
Is there a 2025 China invades Taiwan polymarket? I only see one for 2024. Im going to travel there this year and want to buy some insurance.
What notional are you looking for. I may visit in 2026, we could make a small offsetting bet?
Here's my COVID update for epidemiological weeks 1 and 2.
1. Biobot shows wastewater concentrations rising steeply in the South and Midwest. We're five weeks into this XEC wave, and national ww concentrations have risen at approx 2x rate of the previous KP.3x wave.
2. COVID hospitalizations are on the rise, but for some reason, the CDC seems to be predicting that the data, once tabulated, will show a drop in hospitalizations in the final week of December. This seems counterintuitive, with wastewater numbers rising so steeply. But compared to previous waves, hospitalizations are still pretty low — 3.5/100,000.
3. Likewise, COVID ED visits are also rising. But at the end of epi week 52, flu far outweighed COVID at 5.2% of ED visits vs COVID at 1.2% of ED visits. RSV is at 1%. ED test positivity for influenza was highest at 18.7%, RSV was second at 12.8%, and COVID was at 7.1%.
4. COVID deaths have not yet begun to rise, but that may be because reporting slowed over the holidays. We'll see if the past weeks adjust upward over the next few weeks.
5. In A(H5) news, the Louisiana patient with bird flu has died. Reportedly, the patient was 65 years old with other health problems. The BC teen, who was in critical care for the past month, was released from the hospital last week. Both were infected with the D1.1 strain that infects birds.
6. Of the 64 known cases infected with B3.13 genotype of A(H5), which infects cattle, none of those people were hospitalized (AFAIK). According to USDA's Dec Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook, the number of infected herds has dropped from 832 to 142. The A(H5) outbreak in cattle seems to be burning itself out (knock on wood).
7. Meanwhile, according to the same USDA report, close to 6.5 million HPAI-infected hens were culled during Nov & Dec. Ironically, cage-free practices may have allowed the virus to spread to chickens from wild birds. We'll see if cage-free states have a higher incidence of A(H5) outbreaks once the flu season has passed.
8. Note: A(H5) follows a seasonal pattern in birds, so we can expect an increase in wild bird deaths. But, according to WOAH (the World Organization for Animal Health), current world poultry outbreak numbers are below Oct 22-Sept 23 and lower than Dec 2023 numbers. HPAI may be receding compared to previous years. Poultry and wild bird outbreaks are down. Mammal outbreaks are up, but most of that is due to A(H5) jumping to cattle herds.
Slides and links here...
https://t.co/yyJD6fbLa4
Construction Physics (Brian Potter), which is among my very favorite Substack reads and I really hope he's building up to a book, has posted a fresh take on "Why skyscrapers became glass boxes". He's responding to the idea that it was "a plot by modernist architects, who had a particular theory of what made a building “good” — “honest” buildings without excessive decoration or ornament — and who successfully foisted that style on an unwilling public." He quotes both from the Tom Wolfe book and Scott's review here of that book.
Potter: "Changing architectural trends were undoubtedly a factor in the rise of the glass box aesthetic, but this explanation misses a huge part of why this transition happened. Notably, this theory completely omits the role of the real estate developer, who has a greater influence than anyone else in how a building comes together. Skyscrapers are designed by architects, but it’s the developer who conceives of the project, arranges the funding, hires the design team, and ultimately decides what the building will be. To me, the question isn’t Why did architects embrace modernism? It’s Why did real estate developers embrace modernism?
Ultimately, it was economics (or at least perceived economics) that drove developers to embrace this style. Glass curtain wall buildings were cheaper to erect than their masonry predecessors, and they allowed developers to squeeze more rentable space from the same building footprint. Ornate, detailed exteriors were increasingly seen as something tenants didn’t particularly care about, making it harder to justify spending money on them. And once this style had taken hold, rational risk aversion encouraged developers and builders to keep using it...."
The whole thing is well worth the read:
https://substack.com/inbox/post/154617516
For every theory blaming some set of elites for a complex situation there is an equally plausible one blaming their opposite along some axis.
From one set of facts, two villains: effete socialist academics or unfeeling avarice-ridden capitalists.
I don't mainly get "unfeeling avarice-ridden capitalists" from Potter's writeup. Of course there's some of that in real life, people gonna people; and they look for opportunities/innovations that can save on capital costs. At the top level though the primary contrast with the architects seems to be that the entrepreneurs prioritize the revealed preferences of the people who'll be living/working in their product.
> I don't mainly get "unfeeling avarice-ridden capitalists" from Potter's writeup.
I didn't express myself well. I don't get that sense from Potter's article either, nor do I get the "effete socialist academics" sense from Scott's article. I'm pointing at the stereotypical poles at the far end of those groups. The same phenomenon supports a motivated reasoner who wants to pin thing they dislike on their outgroup.
Less personified, there are simultaneously arguments that it was a top-down, cultural change and that it was a bottom-up, economic decision.
(For any persistent, widespread change the answer is generally both where the percentages are sufficiently ambiguous to support thinkpieces across the spectrum.)
>Ornate, detailed exteriors were increasingly seen as something tenants didn’t particularly care about,
This is an underappreciated factor. Huge glass windows might or might not look nice from the outside, depending on taste, but they are pretty unanimously considered attractive from the inside.
I think I commented something like that in the original post. The capitalists (and behind them, Moloch lurking) simply wanted to get rid of the useless ornamentation because that's what optimizing hard demands. They tolerated it because hey, status games! But as soon as someone provided the perfect excuse for marrying off social status with economic efficiency, they jumped on it. Mind, I don't think this was some kind of conspiracy or even wholly intentional - people are simply more inclined to find themselves mysterious agreeing with a whole philosophy that just happens to also make them money.
And so, ironically, the socialist-inspired architects merely became tools in the hands of their greatest enemies. I don't have a lot of sympathy though because every time socialists/communists complain about how good capitalism is at co-opting and eventually emptying out their ideals all I generally see is really obvious traps that everyone involved only fell into due to arrogance and pride. "Make buildings ugly and cheap" was an obviously stupid idea that only benefitted those who profited off the buildings, anyone could tell you that, and twisting yourself in knots to believe it's somehow what the *working class* needs means you're probably just been putting worms in your brain for quite a long time.
>They tolerated it because hey, status games! But as soon as someone provided the perfect excuse for marrying off social status with economic efficiency, they jumped on it.
After reading the substack post, it seems like the development of technology was a bigger driver than the "excuse" of modern architecture. Specifically aluminum and glass became much cheaper to produce after WWII, so that an aluminum framed glass curtain wall was comparable in cost to a traditional masonry wall: and the glass walls were thinner so you got more rentable space in the interior, and lighter so you didn't have to have us much structural support or foundation. So glass curtain wall buildings were cheaper to build and made more money. That wasn't true prior to WWII for purely technological reasons: they weren't "tolerating" masonry exteriors before WWII, at the time they still made the most economic sense.
So it seems to me that the causation goes 1. Technological improvements make glass and aluminum much cheaper>2. Glass curtain walls become more profitable to build than other kinds of exteriors>3. The new demand for glass curtain wall skyscrapers fit the new International Style well, so the International Style took off while other styles (that worked best with non-glass exteriors) were left behind.
as someone who works in architecture --- this is is how it goes--architecture is so expensive to create that its almost entirely driven by cost, and technological advances that lower the cost. Also, most of the things we call "style" now were at one point just technological advances.
Good link.
One point that usually gets lost is that most people several decades ago thought that sleek, futuristic buildings looked cool. Look at the aesthetic of The Jetsons. Sleek. Glass everywhere is sleek. Apple products still have the same aesthetic and people like it. Same with flat-screened TVs. What people didn't predict in the 1960s was that glass boxes would one day look old and uninspired.
Wow, you are right. Smartphones are sleek glass right rectangular prisms. I wonder what an art nouveau smartphone would look like. Or maybe a gothic smartphone.
Sleek, futuristic buildings DO look cool. For a certain definition of cool. The harsh reality is that much like the flying cars and personal jetpacks they also have in The Jetsons, that doesn't make them always practical. The problem with very sleek and minimalistic designs is that the slightest blemish jumps immediately to the eye and kinda ruins the whole. A pure white wall is really easy to turn into just a shitty dirty grey mess. A wall made of stones exposed to the elements for a while will just look like a slightly dirtier and more weathered wall of stones, but that adds to its organic charm, if anything.
Also concrete without even a plaster cover simply sucks ass. It has to be one of the most disgusting surfaces in existence. Shit colour, shit texture, just terrible.
Concrete looks bad pretty quickly due to blemishes, but pure glass continues to look good. You gotta clean it, but you gotta clean windows anyway, and a sheer glass tower is easier to clean than a bunch of separate windows.
Fair, and I honestly don't think glass buildings look bad in and of themselves, and I don't know that many who do. They may look *out of place* when they're built in the midst of otherwise far older neighbourhoods. But that's more a matter of mixing incongruous styles than its own aesthetic value.
To quote an art critic I heard once... I like apple pie, I like mayonnaise. I do NOT want any mayonnaise on my apple pie.
Plain walls of glass and minimal framing, look meh at best. But mostly glass with something else for contrast can be very good.
But flat surfaces are easier to.clean than decorated ones.
But I don't think many people thought futuristic buildings made from cement looked cool, whether they were commie block type square buildings or swooping organic shapes
I agree, but we built way more glass boxes than brutalist structures.
I don't know. I still like glass buildings. They allow a lot of daylight into work areas, and their reflectivity can create all sorts of interesting patterns on their surrounding areas and on other buildings. When they reflect sky, we see sky. When they reflect other buildings, we see fun mirror distortions of other buildings.
I will go further and admit that I actually like living in box-shaped things. (Maybe I was a cat in my previous life.)
My mother's idea of a perfect room is one that contains lots of pretty things. Shelves full of useless but kinda cute things. Tables, tiny cabinets, and many other horizontal areas, where you can put crocheted tablecloth or something like that, and a few nice things on top of that. Thousands of things to collect dust, so you have to clear them regularly, and it takes a whole day if you are working really hard. When you sit down, you have to watch carefully, lest you break something precious. When you want to put a notebook on the table, or when you want to eat something, you need to put those many little things away first. There are many interesting things to look at (when you visit. When you actually live there, they become boring). But I wouldn't want to live there.
My idea of a perfect room is: a rectangular box with lots of free space. One wall is a built-it wardrobe, which contains all stuff. A table with a computer. Optionally, a TV on the wall. A comfortable sofa. But otherwise, big empty space. There, I could sit on the sofa and relax.
Adding to the I-like-glass-buildings pile-on.
Glass buildings can look cool, though I've never lived or worked enough to tell whether they're also practical, especially from the viewpoint of thermal efficiency and regulation.
That said, they can also go hilariously wrong, like that one time someone essentially built a giant burning lens in the centre of London that melted the cars parked below it. Archimedes would be proud!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23930675
And aesthetics aside, earthquakes and high winds can cause the plate glass to fall from skyscrapers...
https://youtu.be/g87kosrpyTw?t=32
Well, earthquakes don't play well with stone houses either. Making earthquake-resistant buildings is its own science, and one in fact that is aided, not impeded, by the generous use of steel. When it comes to earthquakes, flexible is better than rigid.
I generally like them as well.
Same.
Though I'm also a big ol' history geek. Grew up in an old drafty 19th century house, until recently officed in a 19th-century architectural landmark, etc. In fact 20 years ago I worked for 5-plus years in the "Jewelers' Building" that is pictured near the start of Potter's writeup and loved it, a beautiful building that had been lovingly restored and we had the coolest office suite in the whole pile. [Trivia fact, that building was the tallest skyscraper west of Manhattan for like two months the year it was built.]
Still though: give me light, lots of light. And I've zero interest in helping pay for exterior ornamentation.
I grew up in a 1920s house. There was one room that would get a lot of sun, but the rest of the house was pretty dark. It was a revelation to me when I was six or so, and my dad took me with him to the IIT campus in Chicago, where he was an instructor. He had an office in one of the low, glass Mies van der Rohe buildings. It was a revelation to me see so much glass and so much natural light in a building. I was used to buildings made of brick and wood with small windows. It was raining. The water on the windows distorted the landscapes. I was fascinated by the distortions. I remember dining in the cafeteria with my dad, and I watched the gardens through the windows as evening darkened the lawns and trees. It was like a giant movie I could walk into! When we left the campus, Mies's buildings were all lit up, and it amazed me that we could look into them and see people moving around!
Sixteen years ago, George W Bush was Literally Hitler. Now, Joe Biden is naming an aircraft carrier after him. How times change!
Apart from anything else, it's ridiculous to have aircraft carriers named the George H. W. Bush and the George W. Bush in service at the same time.
Is Joe Biden trying to set a precedent that every President, no matter how shithouse, can have a CVN named after them?
Or is he just doing Trump a favour by setting him up to issue an incredibly popular executive order next week that "Actually, fuck it, the USS Clinton and the USS Dubya will actually be named USS Yorktown and USS Ticonderoga"?
George W. Bush was considered Literally Hitler for one thing, basically: starting a war of aggression on false premises, this being also a thing that Hitler did. Sure, saying that he *was* anything close to Hitler was nevertheless stupid, but the point is: why would Joe Biden, who supported Bush's invasion in 2002 and indeed largely shepherded it through the Senate, consider this a particular reason to *not* name an aircraft carrier after GWB?
Joe Biden seems to be determined to tick every "Let Me Make Sure I Disappoint You, You Morons Who Voted For Me" check box.
W was the worst President in modern history if not ever. The damage his presidency caused to my country and to the world is incalculable and irreversible. I guess he could replicate the "Mission Accomplished" photo shoot on the new carrier named after him just to rub it in.
What's tragic about W's presidency is that he was apparently a serious guy with solid, experienced advisors, he pretty clearly was trying to do a good job, and yet his presidency was a sequence of disasters, many of them self-inflicted.
Yep, he had a good reputation as a Texas governor.
Clinton spent a great deal of his 8-year administration drawing down our military, giving rise to a "peace dividend". Unfortunately, this also drew down military intelligence efforts, which aren't easily noticed by anyone who doesn't spend their time figuring out how to hijack a plane and run it into our buildings. One way this manifests is by having too many leads to follow, so if someone tells you "some terrorist is planning something big this year", your response can't help but be "oh? which one again?" and continue trying your best to prioritize where you look hardest. If you guess right, no one notices, since it looks like nothing happened. If you guess wrong...
The disaster commonly referred to as Bush's biggest one - 9/11 - was probably handed to him by his predecessor.
How would we tell? Are there good numbers on the relative drawdown of intelligence efforts in the middle east vs other peace dividend stuff (fewer missiles pointed at Moscow, fewer tanks expected to die in the Fulda Gap on the first day of WW3, etc.)?
The rhetoric I remember after 9/11 was a demand for a more aggressive interventionist foreign policy in the middle east, which wasn't a reversal of previous trends, but rather just doing what we were doing before, but harder. I think it is very hard to argue that the resulting wars made the US or the world better off--it's a better world without Saddam and Qadaffi in it, but Iraq went through some very ugly times to get there and Libya is AIUI still a hell of a mess. We burned two decades in Afghanistan, I'm pretty sure there were families where father and son both served in our occupation, and it seems like whatever good we did evaporated the moment we left.
Given that much of the information is locked up in intelligence, we won't be likely to know for (check notes) at least about 2-52 years, where "know" is really "have a moderately good sense of", and where "we" is really whoever gets to look at the relevant material without a journalistic filter in the way. (And where "2-52" is modified by the assessed value of the sources by that time, which probably means more than that.)
The rhetoric I recall at the time was motivated by the requirement to never have another 9/11 happen. This in turn was understood to mean we should address the root cause of the terrorism, rather than just the symptom, which meant starting with the symptom that was Al Qaeda and working our way all the way up to the Ayatollah of Iran. Otherwise we could knock off AQ, declare victory, go home, only to have some other 30-man terrorist group knock over three more buildings in a couple years.
The common explanation for why this didn't happen is a combination of poor calls at the top, and insufficient capacity at the bottom, the latter meaning a military rolled gradually back during the peace dividend years. The top calls are easier to blame on the Bush administration, including things like failing to seal the borders during the Iraq War, suddenly disbanding the Ba'ath Party without a followup plan for handling several thousand unemployed young males, and not recognizing the need for COIN sooner. Having a plan to replace all the non-terrorism services being provided by the Taliban in Afghanistan would also have been wise, but again, that would have required more capacity.
Libya could certainly also have been handled better, but that was mostly the next administration; I'm not aware of anything Bush handed Obama that forced the errors.
I'm sure some of that information is hard to get, but it seems like the broad outline of "where did the peace dividend come from" ought not to be impossible to find out. Lacking access to that classified information, why do you think 9/11 was downstream of it?
I think the "address the root causes of terrorism" was a fundamental error, good rhetoric but poor policy. This led us to decisions like engaging in two decades of nation-building in Afghanistan and invading Iraq, both of which seem to me to have been expensive failures. Like much of what W did, it was based on honestly-held beliefs about the world (that we could change the middle east in ways that would make support for terrorism ultimately evaporate), but like a lot of domestic "address the root causes of crime" reforms, it seems to have been based on a flawed understanding of reality.
Democracy doesn't actually seem to be incompatible with terrorism.Hamas won an election in Gaza and plausibly had a mandate from its people before the 10/7 attacks, we held the lid down on a civil war in Iraq for long enough to get a rickety democracy going there but it didn't stop the rise of ISIS, democratic reforms in Egypt led to electing a president from the Muslim Brotherhood (who was soon removed in a military coup), Pakistan is sorta-kinda a democracy (the military turns out the have a veto on elections) and Al Qaida is/was apparently heavily influenced/supported by the ISI, etc.
Maybe there is some level of economic development and social change that would end terrorism, but that's quite speculative. Would the history of Northern Ireland support that theory?
Really, terrorism is a set of tactics (to the extent it's a meaningful term), and those are largely independent of ideology. The Tamil Tigers, Hamas, the Shining Path, the IRA, and ETA are terrorist organizations with extremely different backgrounds and ideologies and underlying societies.
I don't fault Bush for 9/11 itself, but for his response to it.
"Sixteen years ago, George W Bush was Literally Hitler. Now, Joe Biden is naming an aircraft carrier after him. How times change!"
How they change, indeed. Now the campaign for the Democratic presidential candidate thought getting the endorsement of Dick Cheney was a bonus!
But it's the same as the online plaints about Trump and Obama chatting amiably at Carter's funeral - wasn't he a threat to democracy and the worst thing ever and must be fought and defeated? and now they're all like old pals? (well, I did think Kamala was notably cool but I'd expect that).
Yeah, because it's politics. "Nothing personal, just business". X calls Y the devil when campaigning, then they shake hands and have a drink afterwards.
I agree about naming things after living people - it's way too soon and does become a political popularity contest.
"Is Joe Biden trying to set a precedent that every President, no matter how shithouse, can have a CVN named after them?"
Maybe Joe is getting ready to name one the Hunter Biden? 😁
I like how the implication here is that Democrats are these huge hypocrites, and not even acknowledging how Trump does the exact same thing to everyone he meets lol. Zuckerberg, Musk, as long as you are on Trump's good side you've been his friend forever as far as he's concerned, fail to overthrow an election on his behalf and next thing you know Mike Pence and Bill Barr are your enemies lmao.
"I like how the implication here is that Democrats are these huge hypocrites."
Oh, it's not an implication. It's an outright statement.
My question is how much cocaine the USS George W Bush will keep onboard.
I cordially dislike the current practice of naming major warships after living politicians. Far too monarchical for my tastes. Especially now that we can't even seem to trust former presidents to stay retired, although term limits make Clinton and Bush the Younger unlikely to return to office.
The ‘cordially dislike’ formulation jarred me enough to Google it. Ah, Tolkien.
I think it's a better norm to only name ships after dead people, but that ship (*ahem*) has sailed.
My facebook feed told me both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are also literally hitler. Times-a-changin' indeed.
Just wait until you hear about Obama, who was Hitler, the Joker, AND the Antichrist!
Well, then it's pretty easy to see how they'd get along....
I still think that breaking the norm of not naming ships after living people was a mistake.
I've been reading some of Scott's older writing on schooling. I don't think much has changed since he wrote about it, not fundamentally. Can anyone recommend any books that go more in-depth on looking at the education system with a critical eye? Also, for the sake of discussion, how would you fix schools? Assume that they still must fulfill their purpose of state-subsidized daycare / child warehousing.
> Also, for the sake of discussion, how would you fix schools? Assume that they still must fulfill their purpose of state-subsidized daycare / child warehousing.
1. Transferrable Vouchers that work for charter schools and home schooling - you shouldn't be forced to pay for an actively terrible system you hate and know isn't doing anything for your kids.
2. Much more openness to testing out, skipping grades, etc at all levels. It's been shown that there's little negative social impact to letting smart kids skip grades, largely because they're already not great fits with "peers" who happen to be the same age, but in a much different place mentally. You should also be able to test out of way more of high school in an easy and widespread way, like the CLEP examinations. I skipped a year of HS, too, and then I CLEPPED more than 30 credits in undergrad, and I was pissed I was forced to do that instead of just being able to take the math and physics classes I was actually interested in and paying for. High school was about 100x more pointless and wasteful than THAT, largely because they make it harder to skip grades and there aren't standardized tests like CLEP where you can just test out.
3. More magnet schools and actually effective gifted and talented programs / schools. Demand is through the roof and supply is very limited, pretty much everywhere. Why? These kids are literally the future - as in, the great majority of our future economic growth is going to come from them, not people in regular public schools, and more resources should be allocated to them.
4. I honestly think there should be something like a "babysitting track" for kid / parent combos who genuinely don't care. If a kid is totally checked out and just there because they're legally forced to be there, they're much more likely to be disruptive and bring the whole class to a halt. If they don't care and their parents don't care, let them opt into being locked in a room with x-boxes for 8 hours a day (or whatever) and let the teachers focus on the rest of the kids. I got sent to the "bad kids school" in junior high a couple of times and it was GREAT! They gave you all your work at the beginning of the week, so you could just crank it all out in a few hours and then spend the rest of the week socializing and flirting with all the other delinquents. Much better than regular school.
5. On that subject, functional "tracking," like most European and Asian countries have, but which is a forbidden topic in the US due to disparate impact. But you're pretty much always throwing away the majority of the kids without it - you have to tailor things to this middle-of-the-distribution, 1/3 cluster - leaving the worst-off kids totally behind (but advancing them anyways, even when they can't read or do math), and leaving the smart kids disengaged and never learning or trying anything.
The overall problem is a lot of these goals are at cross purposes. Warehousing and babysitting kids would go a lot better if you were just honest about it. Instead, we force kids to sit still and listen to the most boring stuff imaginable, and then are surprised when they act out and make teaching the rest of the kids impossible. Pick a lane.
It would never pass social muster, but I'd 100% support a program where you create two tracks - a "babysitting" track with x-boxes and much lower costs in administration and staff, where you just warehouse kids safely and let them screw around all day, and an "actual teaching" track, where you do tracking of the academically capable kids, and spend extra resources for magnet schools and gifted and talented programs for the upper tiers of that.
> Much more openness to testing out, skipping grades, etc at all levels.
Absolutely. It just doesn't make sense the way it is now.
"The purpose of school is to teach you X." "Great, I already know X, am I free to leave?" "No, you still have to stay here for a few years, while the school pretends to teach you the things you already know. Don't be bored, or we will punish you."
What is the point of that? (Other than keeping the parents of less gifted kids happy, I guess.)
> More magnet schools and actually effective gifted and talented programs / schools. Demand is through the roof and supply is very limited, pretty much everywhere.
Yeah, that was my experience with my kids. There is a school for gifted kids nearby, they give them IQ test, math test, language test, etc. We looked at the requirements and were like "that seems like a lot, but our kid can probably do that". We went to take the tests, everything seemed great, she totally aced the tests. And then it turned out that about 200 kids have aced the test, but the school can only admit 30 of them, sorry our daughter was not among them. OK, no big deal, there is another gifted school in the neighborhood, it just wasn't our primary choice. Again, the same story, 200 kids aced the test, they could only take 30, sorry, goodbye.
So now our kids are in a school for normies, but luckily we live in an expensive neighborhood, so the school is okay. But it's not like the kids are learning there nontrivial things, or something. (By "okay school" I mean nice teachers, nice classmates, no bullying. Yes, that is also important. But I hoped to also get some quality education for my kids on top of that.) They are mostly wasting their time, and then they learn some interesting things during their afternoon activities.
> Warehousing and babysitting kids would go a lot better if you were just honest about it.
If we were honest, we might even figure out a way to somehow find a solution for all. Imagine a warehouse for kids, which also provides classes... all of them optional. So the smart kids could take advanced classes, the average kids could take normie classes, and I guess some "basic reading, writing, and math" would be mandatory for those kids who don't take any of the normie or advanced classes. (Or rather, the "basic reading, writing, and math" would nominally be mandatory for everyone, but you could easily test out, and go to the more advanced optional classes.) Anyone who is currently not in a class is still getting some babysitting, on the playground, or in the library.
This might even be politically acceptable for everyone if the schools in general couldn't provide credentials. They could just give a paper saying "this child spent some time here, and learned basic reading, writing, and math; we are not commenting on their other activities". So everyone would be equally educated, on paper.
Separately, there would institutions providing standardized tests and certificates; you could go there at any time and say e.g. "please test me that I understand calculus". You pass the test, you get the certificate; no one asks you about which school you have attended, or whether you were homeschooled. And then, universities and employers would publish the list of certificates you need to acquire in order to join them.
> What is the point of that? (Other than keeping the parents of less gifted kids happy, I guess.)
The problem is that schools actually have many different purposes and different groups care about different purposes to different extents, making an honest conversation impossible.
Your system sounds pretty good. One issue with the separated testing house is that you want to hire somebody who finishes things and doesn't have behavior issues.
Every grade I skipped I got less popular. Still worth it but there are some negative social effects
Great, your suggestions cater for the 10% of talented kids. Now what about the other 90% who have to go to school?
The education system does suffer from having to be a 'one size fits all' system *and* the increasing tendency to hand over all parenting duties to the school - now it's the responsibility of the school to feed the kids, teach them manners, fix their psychological problems (if any) and act as a combination social worker and lion tamer. And that's before ever getting near teaching little Johnny to read and write.
The warehousing with X boxes may work nicely - until those kids go out into the world outside of school. Hint: they will end up interacting with you and the other smart kids, and now they're even more feral and illiterate than before, and that doesn't stop them wanting to take the nice stuff you have or (literally) shit in your streets. Unless you intend to euthanise the "screw around all day" kids or pen them in walled-off zones once they hit 18, what do you do with a mass of uneducated NEETs who now expect handouts and to continue being able to screw around all day on government-provided X boxes etc.?
> Great, your suggestions cater for the 10% of talented kids. Now what about the other 90% who have to go to school?
They either opt into the babysitting or the actual teaching tracks - "tracking" in the actual teaching track is literal tracking like Europe or Asia does, kids will be sorted appropriately for their learning speeds, inclusive of the 90%.
> Hint: they will end up interacting with you and the other smart kids, and now they're even more feral and illiterate than before
I honestly don't think there'll be any difference. I mean, you interact with a lot of these kids as adults, right?
Do you REALLY think being forced to sit through Algebra and Shakespeare refined and enculturated them, and they're stabbing people and breaking into houses appreciably less because of that? Or back in their schooldays, if they'd played x-box all day, would it have not even mattered? I'm on team "it wouldn't have mattered."
These kids already get shuffled through and default-graduated even when they can't read, playing x-box all day will just help all the OTHER 80-90% of kids learn more, and the problem kids can go on to stabbing people after a few years of xbox instead of after a few years of disrupting any learning of Algebra.
"Or back in their schooldays, if they'd played x-box all day, would it have not even mattered? I'm on team "it wouldn't have mattered."
Having interacted with the early school leavers in the programme after they dropped out, and the behavioural issues before they dropped out, and following the careers of them after they aged out of such programmes, I'm here to say it damn well *does* matter.
No, they don't need Shakespeare and algebra. Yes, they need *something*. Because the ones who skive off and don't want to learn anything, who would happily be "playing on my government-provided Xbox all day", are the ones who grow up to be druggies, drug-dealers, petty criminals, and all those other fun things.
At the best, they'll be dependent on social welfare from your tax earnings (as one of the Bright Sparks in a good job) while they indulge in drugs and alcohol, drift from baby mama to baby mama (if male) or take up and break up with a string of NEET boyfriends, getting pregnant by each one (if female), and perpetuating the cycle of deprivation and failure.
(I'm seeing that right now with a five year old at work. Happy times!)
At the worst - they'll murder one of those girlfriends, or break into your car, or mug you on the street. And you'll be paying for the costs of incarcerating them, or increased insurance for the shops and public amenities they rob and destroy, and the rest of it.
Maybe they'll even shoot you dead:
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/irish-man-dies-after-being-shot-outside-his-kansas-city-restaurant-1666440.html
Trying to do *something* to divert those who can be diverted onto a different path is worth it. Throwing up your hands and just letting them idle all day is sowing the seeds of the bad harvest to be reaped down the line - and that harvest always comes due.
> Having interacted with the early school leavers in the programme after they dropped out, and the behavioural issues before they dropped out, and following the careers of them after they aged out of such programmes, I'm here to say it damn well does matter.
Okay, but for it to matter, don't you need to be relating many stories of "this youth was going off the rails, they nicked some candy and graduated to stabbing a storekeeper, but then, THEN, we forced them to sit in a class about Shakespeare, and that *totally* turned it around, they're model citizens now. In fact, they work in government!"
Because seeing kids dropping out and then become criminals is the norm. Forcing them to sit in Algebra class wasn't going to prevent them becoming criminals, it just hastened their dropping out.
So if being forced to sit still in class all day prevents future criminals, where's the evidence?
You're saying we're gonna be supporting these people either with the Dole or tax dollars funding jail cells, and I agree. I just don't think forcing them to sit still in class is going to prevent that.
Oh man, I'm watching you two debate and all I can think is that free, trivially easy, on-demand vasectomy and abortion would solve a lot of these problems.
I of course acknowledge such things are useful only insomuch as there's uptake for them, and the very worst people are absolutely too emotionally unregulated and/or stupid to understand how much they should *not* be parents.
But you gotta think that incentivizing vasectomies - not only making them free, but paying young men $1500 cash to have the procedure - would vastly reduce many social ills.
Hello. Anyone at Yale? I met some folks here last semester, and we quickly became friends. Would love to extend the circle if anyone is in New Haven
Anyone have any info on the TikTok ban?
Do you think this is a vine type situation where no app really replaces the TikTok market for a year, or will there be any quick moves from companies looking to capitalize?
Does anyone know of any new apps that are really taking over the space/planning to?
Why would anyone enter a space where the incumbents have proven they have the legislative connections to crush all competition, constitutional rights be damned?
Americans are gonna have to get used to VPNs
I would assume Bytedance will simply sell the US Tiktok business (or maybe the whole non-Chinese business) rather than lose that much value. I assume contracts have been sitting around ready to sign for many months now awaiting last minute legal challenges.
Bytedance is not an unfettered economic actor. The Chinese government gets the most important say and they probably won't let Bytedance sell, or at least not sell to anyone that would actually give up control.
who would they sell to? I'm hearing rumors of Meta but I'm not sure if that would raise monopoly concerns.
Anyone with money. Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Musk... the only large tech entity that would really surprise me is Apple.
Bloomberg says Musk is talking to TikTok. Or rather TikTok is talking to Musk.
Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have cloned it. I hear about Reels fairly often (although I don't know how much people post original content there as opposed to copying it from TikTok).
Well, there's Youtube. They introduced Shorts a while back, and people do seem to be using it at least a little bit... though it's mostly just reposted Tiktok videos. There is at least some good stuff there, though. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-Tzxx0XFrjI
Not sure if it will take over any space, but I've just started seeing claims that some Tiktok users are (temporarily, maybe just for kicks?) going on to a Chinese site called Rednote (xiaohongshu, literally 'Little Red Book'. yeah). I doubt this is going to be a significant competitor in the US for too long, but it would be intensely funny if people just decided to cut out the middleman and... give their data to another Chinese-owned company? Such generosity of spirit, we must admire it.
Your final sentence, unless I'm misreading, implies that you oppose people giving their data to China or that it's negative if the Chinese government collects the data.
If so, why? It bothers me no more to learn that China hoovers my data than a US tech company. There may be security implications for officials or notable individuals but shouldn't they take precautions rather than everyone having an option taken away?
You're correct, I do think it's negative. That's not unique to China-I'd rather my personal data be in as few hands as possible-but China is relevantly different since there isn't even notional protection for data on Chinese servers.
To your question, data security/privacy has a lot of possible failure points. The company holding your data might be straightforwardly incompetent in securing it (cf the Volkswagen data breach), they might be providing/selling it to governments or other companies in active violation of their own TOS, or they might be forced to provide it by some actor with power over them.
US tech companies are plenty vulnerable in the first two ways, but there are pretty strong legal/procedural boundaries against the third. That is not the case for Chinese tech companies, which can be coerced into providing data to the state basically at will and with full force of law. Tiktok made claims as to the use and privacy of their user data that were straightforwardly untrue and unenforceable. The fact that some users didn't care about the security of their data doesn't mean Tiktok is off the hook. By moving to Rednote, they're moving to a service that more closely matches their (lack of) preferences.
You're fully correct about there being more failure points the more your data is distributed and that the Chinese government has the ability to hoover up that data at will.
I still don't understand the negative impact on me if the Chinese government has my data. Let's say they have every piece of data I've ever created, access to all my private information, etc. Why should that concern me?
I suspect it's not really about the threat to an individual from adversarial possession of data about said individual, rather the threat to the country from collation of many individuals' data.
I have formerly worked in a classified environment, and work product based solely on publicly-available information would sometimes become TS due to the synergistic effects of curation. And that was before Big Data and commodity compute.
I've also worked in classified environments and I'm familiar with the process you're describing.
But I still don't see why that should concern me. One of the tradeoffs on the open vs. closed society slider is how much information leakage you can control. I prefer a leaky freedom.
Has the Chinese government learned things and have data the US government would prefer they not? Certainly. Does that mean that US citizens should broadly have their freedom curtailed to prevent that from continuing? I don't see why.
Some fun blues stuff!
In the 1960s, folk revival fans got interested in old 20s-40s acoustic Delta etc. blues musicians, in many cases retired from recording after the Depression and having no idea that they had a new bunch of fans, reviving their music careers. E.g. they found Son House working at a train station in Rochester NY; they found Skip James in hospital in Tunica MS; they found Mississippi John Hurt in the hamlet Avalon MS, from a clue in the form of finding a copy of "Avalon Blues." (Blues was also still a living evolving tradition otherwise, e.g. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf had both started in Mississippi before going electric in Chicago. A Robert Johnson compilation was also a big part of kickstarting the Delta blues revival, but he was already dead; he's the one most associated with the legend of selling your soul to the devil at a crossroads for skills.) When Tom Hoskins found Mississippi John Hurt at home in Avalon, he had him play some songs to confirm it was him; that moment was recorded, and you can even hear the rooster in the background!
(A Robert Johnson compilation was part of kickstarting this interest, but he was already dead. He's the one most associated with the legend of selling your soul to the devil at a crossroads for skills.)
Also a fun tidbit: Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Willie McTell were friends! You can hear McTell talking about it in his 1940 Library of Congress recordings. Johnson has a song on the Voyager golden record; it's haunting, and fitting for one of the only artifacts to reach interstellar space.
Some songs:
Blind Willie Johnson
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground (1927). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud74hhPqISo
Mississippi John Hurt
Spike Driver's Blues (1928) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S285wi73f8
Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor (1966) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHE_E14vpgE
"Discovery" recordings (1963) - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kmKy-dRuV7ho9SkAlnfDUjUSNLIlhnJNQ
Blind Willie McTell
I Got to Cross the River Jordan (1949 version) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNo-0_kmb2s
Monologue on History of the Blues (1940) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_rbP9LL3CY
Son House
My Black Mama (1930) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjFyl8UOsac
Grinnin' In Your Face (1965) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx67wTRhSX4
Death Letter (1960s live) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrWhlmYJvVM
Skip James
Devil Got My Woman (1930) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uidPWwbUjY0
Hard Time Killing Floor Blues (1930 version) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NPUfBpr0RE; compare to (1966 version) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tzvaZ3x9tI
Muddy Waters
I Can't Be Satisfied (1948) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG95MseHfgA; reworked from
I Be's Troubled (1941) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWyTfeH2vpc
Howlin' Wolf
Smokestack Lightning (1956) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnXTpkugcHo
Robert Johnson
Cross Road Blues (1936/7) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ_7nYEpkBo
Hellhound on my Trail (1936/7) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ezbsj_qpY
One of the subtle delights of the Coen Brothers' "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" is the supporting character based on Robert Johnson, who tells the story of his visit to that crossroads.
Yup! I also love the soundtrack's version of "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues," by Chris Thomas King (who played that character); I knew the cover before I knew the original!
https://youtu.be/mk_g3_o_ELs
Or actually, I just checked and there are layers to this:
Before the legend became linked to Robert Johnson, it was linked to Tommy Johnson (no relation), and it's Tommy Johnson being directly portrayed in the movie!
Tommy Johnson
Cool Drink of Water Blues (1928) - https://youtu.be/GG8vkWnv368
Canned Heat Blues (1928) - https://youtu.be/RHw1ugBLS5g
Oh I'll be, that is totally news to me.
Has there been any research on whether people without political experience have better results at fulfilling campaign promises than “career politicians”? I feel that the second group should have more realistic expectations of what is possible, but am unsure.
There are three criteria that I can think of for whether a campaign promise can/will be fulfilled.
1) The politician cares about the promise.
2) It's possible to complete the promise.
3) The politician has the political skill and acumen to get the change complete.
A "career" politician is going to be much better at #3. Politicians who have experience are more likely to be able to identify reality when it comes to #2 (which also ties in with #3) and should promise fewer things that cannot be done. All told, this gives a decent edge to career politicians getting things done, contingent on them promising in the first place.
Why do we feel that this answer is wrong?
Because of the reality that politicians lie. Whether it's blatant intentionally lying or feels-good-in-the-moment-but-is-unrealistic, we know that what politicians say is often very far from what actually happens. I think you and I both have the impression that even though career politicians should be better at completing promises, the lying factor overshadows that to the extent the just caring about the outcome is worth more than having skill at doing it. Unexperienced politicians tend to care about, or appear to care about, what they promise more. Often someone first gets into politics in order to move a pet project forward.
Of course, that's also not a fully satisfying answer because every politician learns to pretend to be Change, because incumbents are often unpopular and change is popular. Trump ran as an outsider despite being president before. Harris wanted to run as an outsider despite being the current VP. Obama campaigned on getting us out of Guantanamo and Afghanistan, and then didn't.
Because of the incentives, we cannot trust any of the answers and therefore any of the promises.
They're not realistic, they're overly conservative. Career politicians compulsively try to maintain the establishment because their career depends on it. Outsiders are not held back by such principles. With the will, ambition, and the resolve to do what needs to be done, so much more is possible. The nation can be reshaped, remade.
"With the will, ambition, and the resolve to do what needs to be done, " I notice you didn't say anything about knowledge. Demagogues often fail, because they can't grasp detail,or attempt the impossible -- eg. lower taxes, raise welfare and cut borrowing.
Everyone says stuff like this, but is it actually true historically or does it just “feel” true?
In democracies, it seems like “career politicians” like FDR, LBJ, and Reagan had a lot of success implementing their agendas, while outsiders like Trump fulfilled very few of their campaign promises. (Ike might be an exception, but the 1950’s was an unusually unified time.)
In non-democracies, outsiders can sometimes fulfill their agendas, but the results are not always so great.
I’m also interested in whether peoples’ perception of someone as an outsider is actually correlated with how long they’ve been in politics. Like Bernie Sanders isn’t seen as a “career politician” even though he’s been a politician for over four decades.
The Nazi Party was elected democratically, and they went above and beyond in fulfilling their promises. And they didn't even have a true majority within the government! Just imagine what a modern populist movement could do with actual popular support...
> The Nazi Party was elected democratically
That is not very accurate.
The Nazi Party never won a majority and actually lost seats at the last election. The only reason they managed to seize power is because they teamed up with the Communists to fight against the center, preventing a stable government from forming.
One might argue that Hitler didn't actually have a good sense of what was possible, given how WWII ended up going for him.
I was a little unclear in my comment, sorry. I’m looking at whether they’re democracies after the new person takes power and tries to make changes.
It seems to me that historically, career politicians have a better record than outsiders at fulfilling their promises, given that we exclude all cases where they removed the checks and balances of democracy. Overthrowing democracy is a great way to fulfill your campaign promises, but doing so tends to have some (to put it mildly) negative side effects.
Well, that's kind of unfair, isn't it? Of course no one can follow up on their campaign promises if you don't count the one method of actually enacting meaningful change. The establishment will not allow itself to be changed by outside forces. The only solution is to burn it down.
My history lessons weren't too convinced of the democratic part - yes they won votes but not an outright majority. There was a Reichstag vote when the building was surrounded by SA militants, and even after that Hitler needed Hindenburg to grant him emergency powers before he could take over, IIRC?
...Look, you know what I meant by "democratically". Point is, they did what they promised they would do by any means necessary. Of course, the transition would have been much more smooth if they did have true majority.
Agreed. Actually Brett Deveraux has made the point that Fascists in general, if they get into power are really effective at delivering what they promise their followers. So if you read what they say and don't like it, you better have some kind of plan.
They were also career politicians for the most part, from what I know.
As far as I can tell, Hitler had zero political experience beyond bringing his party to power. You do need support of a party, of course, that's a given. But the party itself can be an outsider, or you can take control of an existing one.
According to Wikipedia, "Hitler was discharged from the Army on 31 March 1920 and began working full-time for the party."
So by the time of 1930 elections, he already spent 10 years doing nothing but politics (and prison time).
Does anyone know if it is possible to play Youtube videos at more than 2x speed? There are a lot of websites claiming that you can do it by using the browser console to set the HTML5 playback rate property, but when I tried pasting in the listed code, it didn't work at all.
The NewPipe app on my phone does 3x
Does youtube download still work?
If so, download, then play at whatever speed you like with VLC, mplayer or the like.
For mobile, I recently learned that you can use ReVanced to build an alternate app, which offers playback speeds up to 5x.
I'm surprised YT hasn't implemented this feature. Seems like so many people would want it.
Hosting costs should be linear with the max speed for your worse users (me)
If I was adblocking at 4x speed, thats 4x the data for zero profit for a low information user whos probably 1x without adblock; and unlike ad's which I will go to war over, setting up pirating networks if I must, I cant justify spending engery making myself more brainrotted to uncap speed.
For stuff like this you can also use Claude to make a bookmarklet (console code turned into a bookmark so that you can run it just by clicking it) - I use this to make a slider for youtube video playback.
The problem for me is that the console code doesn't even work in the first place.
Edit: Nevermind, I got it working after all. My problem turned out to be that Firefox has two different JS consoles and I was pasting it into the wrong one.
if the code is not working at all, read the log above where you type it may say something like "pasting code is dangerous, type 'allow pasting' to paste" then type that, hit enter, then repaste you're snippet.
Alternatively something that hardly requires pasting is to use the little cursor/box icon on the top left of the console/devtools, (it's an element selector), then click the video player, the video html element will be highlighted, then click the console again and type $0.videoPlayback = 5
My problem turned out to be that Firefox has two different JS consoles and I was pasting it into the wrong one.
Shouldn't be the case if you use Chrome. Claude got it right first try for me.
I use a Chrome extension called Video Speed Controller, it works on most video not just youtube, you can easily turn up or down the speed with hotkeys. Goes from x0.07 to x16
I've been using this for several years, works great. I stream films from any site through Chrome and speed them up (for foreign films with titles this has almost no downside).
Yup, I frequently listen at >2x speed, via the browser extension "Enhancer for Youtube" available for both Chrome and Firefox.
I use an extension thats buggy, its one of those things youtube breaks from time to time; if all else fails you can ytdl
https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/youtube%20speed?hl=en
as far as I know they all kinda suck
The data is just there and its an completely arbitrary restriction on the gui and that will remain true probably past even the more extreme ad block prevention tech youtube could try
Paste this into the address bar:
javascript:document.querySelector('video').playbackRate+=0.5
Change 0.5 to whatever you like (including negative numbers) to add that amount to the playback speed
The address bar didn't work, but I did manage to get it to work by pasting into the browser console.
I just had an idea that the federal government should change Columbus Day to Salk Day in order to avoid the controversy over Columbus and rebuke RFKJr at the same time. Salk was even born in October, though sadly it's a couple weeks off. But hey, President's day isn't exact either.
Just bite the bullet and rename it Political Polarization Day.
Or Holiday Deconstruction Day.
It seems like this would just reverse the polarity of the holiday while keeping it near one of the battle lines of the culture war.
It would be nice if we could get federal holidays to bring people together instead. But I definitely don't have any ideas about how we might go about doing that.
A year or two ago I proposed a Rome Day on 21 April to replace Columbus Day.
-Conservatives can be happy because Roman heritage is a richer, more study-able influence on American culture than the replaceable Columbus.
-Italian-Americans can be neutral because one Italian-heritage holiday is swapped for another.
-Progressives can be happy that (classical) Roman violence and colonization is much longer ago than that which Columbus initiated.
-People who say "You can't use reason to design a holiday" can be drowned out by unreasonable festivities possibly rather louder than the dull Columbus Day parade tradition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natale_di_Roma
Why not just swap Columbus day for Halloween as a federal holiday?
The vast majority of Americans are in agreement that Halloween is better than Columbus day. I expect it's a deal that even the most adamantly pro-Columbus-day people would be willing to agree to.
The useful thing would be to have the day after Halloween (The Feast of All Saints) as a holiday. This would make it easier to deal with up-too-late sugared-up small children and also make getting to Mass for the Holy Day of Obligation easier for Catholics.
It’d be establishment clause-ily dubious (less so than Christmas though).
American Hallowe'en is completely divorced from its original Irish/Scottish roots, and you can always adopt the argument that "Well ackshully Samhain is pagan" if you needed to shove it through.
I see Thanksgiving is a federal holiday, even though it may be rooted in the Christian harvest festival services, though admittedly those are more Anglican and it's easier to disentangle that due to the Puritans and their tradition of "no Church holidays, those are Romish corruptions!", plus I understand Thanksgiving as it is now was inspired by an American literary lady, Sarah Josepha Hale:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Josepha_Hale#Thanksgiving
"Hale may be the individual most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States; it had previously been celebrated mostly in New England. Each state scheduled its own holiday, some as early as October and others as late as January; it was largely unknown in the American South. Her advocacy for the national holiday began in 1846 and lasted 17 years before it was successful. In support of the proposed national holiday, Hale wrote presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. Her initial letters failed to persuade, but the letter she wrote to Lincoln convinced him to support legislation establishing a national holiday of Thanksgiving in 1863. The new national holiday was considered a unifying day after the stress of the Civil War."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)#Lincoln_and_the_Civil_War
"In the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the 26th, the final Thursday of November 1863."
Maybe it’s worth threatening to suppress them?
There’s even a rationale currently floating: in the hyper-competitive global market, no one who is worth the money spent on them can seriously think they could ever deserve a day off.
(Insert apocryphal citation by an inspiring figure about how success requires 24-7 dedication, not 8 hours a day and 5 days a week.)
This would be wildly impopular, so people would unite and fight this back – together, because, when it comes down to it, what fraction of the population doesn’t like a day off?
> what fraction of the population doesn’t like a day off?
Judging by past conversations here, there would be very significant pushback on people having days off if ever the total number of days off per year were to approach what the French get.
I guess I was unclear – I didn’t mean days off as in “companies have to give workers five weeks’ paid vacation to be spread over an entire year in a way agreeable to the company and the employee” (which I think is French law, and would likely cause backlash in the US due to the infamous c-word).
I meant specific days where one didn’t work, such as MLK Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. There are 11 of them in France and 10 in the US, according to Wikipedia, so this is much more comparable.
I'm thinking of buying 40+ acres of cheap land that will someday be the site of a data center. The problem is, I'd have to pay property taxes on it, perhaps for decades, until the area became ideal for the construction of a data center. What could I do in the meantime to make money off the land to at least offset the property taxes?
I'm envisioning buying a plot of flat land in Washington, Wyoming, Iowa, or southern Colorado that would be next to a highway.
Depending on what sort of clients might be interested in renting space in your data center, there may be advantages of placing it closer to long-haul fiber and IXPs. Most IXPs are in urban areas, though. But I've seen a bunch of data centers in "inner city" locations — like West Oakland and Hunter's Point and Bayview in SF. They're close to long-haul fiber and real estate prices are lower than other urban areas.
How certain are you that you are not overconfident?
If it is affordable, it is likely in some rural location. The reason why such land is affordable is because it is plentiful. Does the property have a (figurative) moat which would make it unattractive to build the data center a mile down the road?
Also, you might have noticed that there has been somewhat of a hype around AI in recent years. In my opinion, this makes long term predictions about the path of IT difficult. It might eventually fizzle out without changing too much except deleting half the jobs, or it might push us to a tech level which makes our current one look like the bronze age by comparison (and kill us in the process, maybe). If an AI invents a data center powered by hydrothermal vents and chilled by sea water, this might make your property (which presumably is above sea level) a lot less attractive.
Even if AI just continues to be a thing without taking over, it is likely that we will see a specialized adaptions of data centers: one small type near your customers which runs LLMs for them, and one big type wherever the operating costs are cheapest which trains new models.
I'm peripherally involved now with construction of a data center, and am on a civic committee through which I've been learning about another. One of those being rural and one urban.
The rural one is on a parcel of several hundred acres and the Tech Company of Unusual Size that's building it is plainly uninterested now in anything nearly as small as 40 acres.
The urban one is on a parcel around that size, actually slightly smaller. But in a big-city context that's a chunk of ground, and wasn't cheap for them to acquire and prepare for this new use.
In both instances the top critical variable for siting is close access to the national power grid of course, with a close number two priority being access to reliable water in quantity. That last is because all the companies building data centers now want to use water for cooling which reduces their energy need for air conditioning.
Rent it as a campground on Hipcamp, which is like Airbnb for campsites. You have to provide very little and people will still willingly rent it. Or put some pretty minimal facilities (a cabin, a shack, whatever), and rent that on Airbnb. There are some amazingly cheap facilities on Airbnb, it's just reflected in the price. So long as renters know upfront that they'll be roughing it in your shack or whatever, the type of people who want to rough it will be fine with that. Outdoors types, hikers, hunters, people traveling by RV or living out of their van who just want somewhere peaceful to park for the night, etc.
I know someone who was grossing over $40k annually renting 3 uninsulated cabins in a rural area, and this was pre-Covid
I've heard that self-storage facilities are sometimes built for this purpose. They are supposedly very easy to build, can have surprisingly high demand, require only rare labor inputs after launch, and can thus effectively hold land for later commercial use. You're not generating a huge amount of revenue, but your costs are extremely low. This is said to be especially handy to avoid taxes on "unimproved" commercial land that some places have.
What is it currently zoned for?
I haven't found a specific property yet. Right now, I'm looking for general advice. However, many of the lots of land I found ads for were zoned residential, but in sparsely populated areas.
Residential zoning limits your options a lot, unless you can get it re-zoned. Check your local rules for the specific subtype of residential zone, though, since they vary a ton in how strictly the define residential usage and in how much you can build on it.
In my neck of the woods (Santa Clara County, California) most rural residential land outside of built-up areas is zoned to allow two dwelling units (a primary residence and a guest house) per lot, plus non-dwelling outbuildings (sheds, workshops, barns, stables, etc) and minimum lot size varies from an acre or two up to 20 acres. Basic small-scale farming is permitted by right, and a lot of light commercial activity is allowed only with a use permit. I have no idea how difficult it is to get a use permit.
Stuff that is allowed with a use permit includes camps and retreats, bed & breakfast inns, driving ranges, event venues, and medical clinics. But all of those would be significant business undertakings in addition to the permit requirements.
Given that your plan is to construct something decades in the future, why a data center?
Depending on the nature of the soil and existing vegetation, you could lease to a farmer or rancher.
Yeah, I was thinking grazing land, too.
What makes you think this will definitely be the site for a data centre? Unless you have some sure-fire information that Big Corp is looking to expand in that general area, it's a punt. So having "I can sell this/rent this for another purpose" is definitely good sense.
Can you install solar panels and sell energy?
For the 100th Anniversary of Route 66, the 250th Anniversary of the US of A, and the 20th Anniversary of Pixar's Cars, a bunch of us are going to do something in 2026 to celebrate. We're gonna drive down Route 66 from Chicago to LA (or the other direction if you like). You can make whatever schedule you want, but be sure to meet us at the Santa Monica Pier on April 30, 2026, 5pm. I have a few other little fun things planned along the way but that's the summary. Event info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1054613759663097
Cool idea.
Long shot, but anyone here know anything about wine?
A friend of mine has recently come into possession of several cases of big expensive high-faluting wine. We can drink some but realistically the thing to do with most of it is sell it.
Thing is, he's not entirely sure how to proceed with that. And one concern (which we're not sure how seriously to take) is that the wine business is a small world and anyone local we ask for advice is themselves buying or selling or both, and could credibly profit from misleading us. He doesn't want to expose his neck while he's unsure of the rules of engagement here.
There's also the question of timing - I understand wines age and get better, but is there a point after which you've missed the window and they've gone off? How do we know when that is?
He'd probably be happy to sit on these things for years - it's not like they're taking up space, they're held by some company in some cellar somewhere and he's never seen them. He says that same company gives him the "current value" of the wine, and I think he was saying that they'll buy it off him at that price at any given time.
But would he be dumb to take that deal? What's the right way to get the best price for this stuff? And is there any time component he needs to get right?
I'll point my chap to this thread and let him read it through. Thanks everyone for your answers!
You can generally find the current prices for old vintages with a little googling. Of course, certain key vintages of French wines (especially Burgundy and Bordeaux) are highly prized. OTOH, after some point, they may not be very tasty anymore. Left Bank Grand Cru Bordeaux (e.g., Pauillac, Margaux, Saint-Julien, Saint-Estèphe) from top vintages are *supposed* to be put down for at least 15 to 25 years before they've really developed and are at their best.
Bordeaux from less auspicious vintages and crus probably remain drinkable for 10 or 15 years, while top vintages are *supposed* to be their prime for 30 to 50 years. Having said that, I popped for a 2000 Chateau Margaux for my 65th birthday (Premier Grand Cru from one of the best vintage years), and it was an undistinguished wine. I suspect it would have been better a decade earlier.
Personally, I think most wines, even the most complex ones, begin to fade after ten years. But as with many things, my opinions are outside the mainstream. ;-)
I do because I am an increasingly incoherent mixture of careers and interests.
While there are honest and dishonest wine dealers unless you have something extremely rare it's likely they'll give you a fairly standard mark down and then sell it forward. The fact the cellar is giving you a price means it's probably not going to be handled by an auctioneer type.
The storage company, if it's willing to buy it, is probably giving you a worse deal than a wine dealer. But not much worse. It's basically a bit extra for the convenience. Still, a second opinion is never bad and you can just ask three of them.
While some wines get better as they age others don't. And yes there's a point after which they become worth less. It depends on the wine. Again, you can ask wine dealers and multiple if you don't trust them. Also you can usually see the historical value and if it's not on the website just ask them.
Basically, not unique to wine, you are facing an effort to price trade off and need to decide on your own.
Also happy to give you the specifics if you share the type of wine and age and all that. None of that is usually privileged information so should be fine to say publicly. I can also tell you if the price is reasonable if you're willing to share that but that is usually more privileged.
Two points to consider:
You're almost certainly going to take a notable loss on the "face" value of the wine to whoever you sell this to. That's how they make their money.
For example, take Magic the Gathering. Let's say you had a Bazaar of Baghdad to sell. If you go to Card Kingdom, they'll buy it from you for about $1,600 and they sell it for $2,000. That's how they make their money and pay for storage, finding customers, etc. I'd expect wine to be pretty similar.
There's also an opportunity cost. Say you've got $10k in wine. Someone offers you 70% of the value, $7k.
In option 1, you sell it, invest in the S&P 500, get 10% return, and two years later you've got ~$8500.
In option 2, you reject the offer, keep looking for a dealer, two years later you find a guy willing to pay you 80% of the value, so $8,000.
Kinda meh.
Maybe the wine has appreciated 10% over those two years so he pays you $8,800. Even in that case, was it worth the time and effort?
One problem with wine as an investment is that there is zero income pre-sale, and a small maintenance cost in the shape of paying cellarage fees.
My broad sense is that for the top essentially ageless wines etc first growth Bordeaux, you don't see much premium in the early years. Then things start to tick up a bit once you get to the point where it becomes reasonable to drink that vintage and so some scarcity kicks in. Even then, the returns don't tend to be spectacular, and they are concentrated in top brands. There's also generally quite a buy-sell spread.
You get the odd shock eg around 2000 Chinese consumers decided they wanted top wines; this has smoothed out.
Can't definitely advise without seeing the list but I'd be inclined to cash out now and put it in assets your friend does understand
While most types wines eventually get too old, one more year shouldn't really matter too much (and it might be far longer depending on their current ages).
This assumes reasonable storage conditions.
You could try to look for the wine and the vintage at this link - it commonly includes cellaring times:
https://www.cellartracker.com/
I am curious about what category of investment people think would most effectively persist into a post-AI/post-singularity world. I know this is highly speculative, but I welcome any argument. Land, stocks, gold, rare Pokemon cards? Seems like any of these would probably be better than having your capital simply collect dust, but I am curious about which specifically.
Has Scott any specific advice on this? IIRC he offered some thoughts in his recent article about post-singularity economy, but nothing definitive I think.
PS: Inb4 "my venmo". Har har, next please.
The singularity can fail to happen longer than you can stay solvent. Whatever you pick, make it something that still gives some kind of sane return in a traditional non-singularity world.
This is like asking how to internet-proof your portfolio in 1990. How many people would have said "bookstores are dead, invest in search"? No one can predict the future with any level of confidence. Just wait until AI starts changing the landscape and then make reasonable guesses. Presumably the company that invents AGI will be a good investment. Oh and definitely Pokemon cards. Good call.
You shouldn't bet on post-singularity economics if you think post-singularity is coming. You should bet on the factors needed to build the post-singularity economy. So if you think we're going to enter a world where AI has takeoff and that will require a bunch of chips then buy Nvidia or some such. Then when you think it's reaching saturation sell it off and look around at what utopia looks like and invest in hedonic pleasure domes or whatever seems like it's going well.
Assuming a non-FOOM, non-The Culture-like Space Age Utopia scenario (so a singularity, but not THE singularity), my thesis would be "Yes, but..." real estate: In a mostly post-scarcity world, positional goods become obviously very valuable: A beach house in Catalonya or Southern California, a lake-house in the Alps, an appartment in Manhattan, a villa in the Antilles , etc.
The thing is, international capital is already very crowded in these places, making them already incredibly expensive, and hard to get your hands on, they are (usually) very desireable because of a combination of the following:
* Natural beauty / weather not available elsewhere
* First world ammenities and Infrastructure
* Access and or proximity to economic opportunity.
In a post-singularity world, the value of the third item becomes waaay less relevant, and the second one could too (if AI and robots run everything, they can build top rate infrastructure anywhere, and dysfunctional governments lose relevance), so places that are similar to the most desireable ones, but lacking on the two latter points could have massive appreciation.
A few examples of what I mean:
San Diego -> Tijuana or Ensenada
The Alps -> The Patagonia
Catalonya/ The Cote d'Azur -> Beaches in Tunisia and Libya
The European controlled caribbean islands -> the other ones
If AGI takes over the world, then differences between countries and humans become much less relevant since machines will run everything the same way. Ensenada would not be worse than San Diego after awhile as one small example. There would be a global convergence in living standards and infrastructure.
I find the concept of 'capital' post-singularity nonsensical. Capital, defined as assets to be invested for production purposes, is superfluous if we are post-scarcity. If intelligent machines can produce anything at near-zero cost, who needs capital?
Non-fungible assets (and mainly land, since things like pokemon cards or art work will be reproducible in an undetectable way) will have value, but no-one will have a reason to sell - sell for what? Only to trade for other non-fungible assets. I don't see any other possibility?
Yes exactly that. Trade for other assets. That’s all you can do in a moneyless society. Which, of course, entrenches privilege and stratification.
Likely people won’t trade their homes for good, though. I can imagine elites swapping housing.
It's not a question of elites. There's plenty of land for everyone (which can be easily altered in the world of ASI - you can have gardens in the Sahara). And, if anyone isn't happy in the world they're born in, I'm sure they'll have the option to enter hyper-realistic simulations.
As to swapping houses... assuming we live forever (certainly more than 100 years), I'd absolutely expect people to get tired of living in the same place, and decide to move elsewhere (or explore space or whatever).
This is naive. We aren’t going to knock down the cities we have, nor is any house in the deepest Sahara, no matter how big, as desirable as an apartment in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower, an apartment with a view of Central Park, a house in the Cotswolds, a beach front in Malibu.
Hyperreality sounds dystopian to me, at the extreme it’s like the matrix - everybody plugged in and wasting away in real life.
There are other reasons why moneyless systems won’t work, but housing is a big one.
Why is a house in the Sahara not desirable? With ASI, it won't be hard to build cities to cater for different tastes... There's plenty of unused land in the world!
Yes, but I would expect there still to be hard to smooth out status differentials in between a villa in a Saharan garden and a villa on the Riviera, such that there could still be an elite class owning legacy landscape assets. Which problem hyper realistic simulations won't solve for the same reasons, unless the level of simulation is obscured to everyone involved: it will be higher status to own certain simulations over others, and if base reality is known with some confidence, higher status still to own the "real" thing.
Do class differentials even matter? In a world of plenty, what do you care about your class? Are class differentials even a thing when class boundaries are rigid? I don't think people were as obsessed about class when the aristocracy was more rigid as they are now. So if in the future all status is fixed in perpetuity, we'll probably return to that world?
As for simulations, if it's so good you can become permanently immersed in it, do the status games of the real world still matter?
> don't think people were as obsessed about class when the aristocracy was more rigid as they are now.
That’s a fairly naive view of history. They were obsessed with the minutiae of class. How you got served at a dinner table was worked out to the exact rank.
> In a world of plenty, what do you care about your class?
In a world of plenty, this is all anyone will care about.
No doubt from some people, but while status seeking might originally have evolved because it is adaptive, humans are meso optimizers, and we have a felt sense for status that we don't have for, e.g., reproductive fitness. Status is a proxy, but it's the proxy that we grok. In a future world of plenty where we can eat, sleep, breed and create art as much as we like, we will still have this status drive which isn't as easy to sate. I think, absent psychological engineering, we will always feel a drive for status.
As for simulations: no doubt many people will be happy wireheading and lose all sense of real world status, but because the drive for status is ineradicable: if you are a god over your own simulation, and you still have your drive for status, wherefrom will you derive it? I suspect that simulation level could be a site that status "gloms" onto, as it were, and so people may want to get to the real world for status-seeking reasons.
I believe it has been established beyond doubt, by brainwave measurements and similar, that all mammals dream, and probably reptiles too. That raises the question of whether they ever remember their dreams after waking and, if they do, the subsidiary question of whether the likely mismatch between their dream and reality confuses or disconcerts them. After all, there is no way they can be explicitly aware of the concept of dreams and that these are not real.
My cat sometimes seems out of sorts, for no apparent reason, and not her usual self for a while after waking, and I wonder if this is because she has just had some lurid dream and is wondering or worrying where (for example) the large dog she was dreaming about may still be lurking!
I was under the impression that the brain goes out of its way to forget dreams, specifically so it doesn't interfere with memory.
That’s why people write them down. I can’t remember a dream, unless it’s very disturbing, past the shower.
"After all, there is no way they can be explicitly aware of the concept of dreams and that these are not real."
I don't see why not.
Humans do this too. Have you ever had a partner dream you did something bad (cheat, be mean to them, etc), and wake up mad at you? Have you ever done that or something similar? Have you ever had a scary dream, and woken up in the middle of it needing to go to the bathroom filled with fear? Or had a dream you had something and then wake up confused about where it is and why you don't have it? Or had a vague memory that you're not sure whether it really happened or not? I remember one dream from when I was a kid that feels as real as some other childhood memories around that time, even though I rationally know it's a dream based on stuff like gravity turning off in it.
A few times I’ve dreamed the my wife behaved in a very un-Mrs Gunflint manner. It took a little while to erase the weird irrational anger I felt on awakening.
Cf “The Indian Story” after the main body of Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game”
It was all just maya, Dasa.
Anyone have an opinion on the skirmishes between economists and AI people this week?
Dwarkesh interviewed Tyler Cowen about why he thought AI couldn't accelerate growth much.
Zvi made a post criticising Cowen.
Maxwell Tabarrock responded to Scott arguing that AI couldn't push wages ->0
I think Noah Smith was also involved.
My view is that the economists are being obstinate or small-minded in relying on their standard framework around comparative advantage, lump of labour fallacy etc. But I also would have predicted more growth from AI as it exists already, and so far it's been negligible. The bullish on AI position also runs against the heuristic that nothing ever happens.
I think that the economists have a perspective that AI/LessWrong people should take more seriously.
I often see arguments from AI people that look like: the AI recursively improves its intelligence, becomes infinitely intelligent, unlocks infinite energy resources, and causes infinite transformation. (This may be a stereotype, but it's not so far from what is out there...)
By definition this is impossible-- we live in a finite world with finite resources. Whatever models eventually are produced, they may be 100x more capable than people, but they won't be infinitely more capable. And there are physical (and mathematical) constraints, which are easy to underestimate: no matter the intelligence of a system, many problems will remain too hard.
So any concrete predictions will have to determine how much we expect to be able to increase intelligence, and what the returns to that increased intelligence would be. It is hard to evaluate this, because a key claim of AI-optimists is that we have no idea what technological progress could be unlocked if we had more intelligence. But it's worth considering whether it is lower than you might think.
In a fight between economists and bloggers over economic predictions, I'm gonna side with the economists.
Which side you take is dependent a lot on how big a deal you think AI will be. If you think it is about as much a deal as the smartphone, then it makes sense to listen to economists who have likely seen their share of tech hypes come and go.
If you think it is more on the importance of inventing the printing press, then you might want to consider that economists might err on the side of favoring status quo ("Of course there will still be economists in the future").
The laws of supply and demand will be valid regardless of how transformative AI is, plus economists have much more exposure to big-picture historical thinking than technologists do. Even if AI completely transforms society I trust economists much more to think through what that will look like. In my experience technologists tend to be hamstrung by narrow "technology is everything" type thinking while economists are much better at understanding the cynical human realities.
The economist argument, based on comparative advantage, is that even if AI is better than humans for everything you would still use humans for some things, as there would be a comparative advantage in giving the harder and more profitable stuff to the AI rather than use the AI for less profitable work. This all assumes that the AI is costly enough relative to humans.
In the short term, obviously humans are cheaper, but you also have to consider the societal costs of raising them, educating them, treating health issues, etc etc. It suddenly makes a lot less sense to pay taxes for the sake of welfare when you don't really need people anymore.
They're not cheaper. I get ChatGPT for $10/month.
>This all assumes that the AI is costly enough relative to humans.
AI costs + relevant material costs where robots are needed. The latter may cost more than the former. And that still assumes "AI is better than humans for everything".
AI is simply the latest innovation since the start of the Industrial Revolution to increase automation. It's a big deal but no bigger than many other technologies that have come along over the past 250 years.
Then again, predictions are hard. The way to bet is to look at the past.
CGP Grey addressed this point 10 years ago[1], and (almost[2]) everything he says in that video is still true. tl;dw, the IR didn't just "increase automation", it specifically automated manual and farm work, allowing humans to move to service and intellectual work. AI is poised to potentially automate *both* of those away, and we haven't created enough new sectors to move to to have productive labor for everyone.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
[2] He said that self-driving cars "don't need to be perfect, just better than your average human" to be rationally better and be adopted, but he recently said on a podcast that he was being foolishly optimistic about how rational humans would be, and *of course* people would hold computers to an unreasonable standard of perfection even when it had a statistical cost in lives.
Software has been automating service and intellectual work for decades, yet growth rates haven't risen above historical averages. AI is a continuation of this trend. Maybe someday all productive labor will be automated away, however that isn't the question here. We want to know if growth rates will increase.
AI as it currently stands is, at best, a way to improve productivity (I've read some posts from programmers that using it was actually negative for their productivity). The same tools we have for analyzing other things that increase productivity will apply just fine, namely the fact that increasing worker productivity leads to *higher* demand and usually, higher wages (but possibly with increased inequality).
The world where humans are completely replaced in most or all work, is possible but there are reasons to be skeptical. There are some clear obstacles that have to be overcome still. AI still scales with parameters and training data well, but inputs like data and energy are becoming more scarce--why else would Google be trying to spin up nuclear reactors? That sort of thing takes time. And changes to algorithms and methods help too, but that also takes more time than just "num_params = num_params*10." Importantly, these things are also expensive. An AI that costs 10x what a human does isn't going to have huge ramifications on the labor market. It's certainly possible that all of these challenges will be overcome, but it's clearly far from certain, and probably will take more than a few years. It's already been almost 2 years since GPT-4's release, with some people claiming it's getting *worse* over time.
What *you're* missing is lag time. Current AI *WILL* have a huge impact on growth or employment, possibly both. But people adapt to new things slowly. (And I'm not sure that growth is where the money will end up, though it could. It could also end up as profit-taking. Consider "maintain production while cutting staff and not reducing prices".)
Probably over time it will lead to an increase in growth, if it doesn't lead to enough social disruption to prevent that growth. But expect things to be distributed quite unevenly.
I feel like we don't yet see where it's biggest impacts are. Insurance and credit providers have been using increasingly sophisticated AI models since the 2000s, and the result is that they do things like avoid catastrophic losses by canceling policies in southern California. It's hard to tie that directly to headcount, but if you look at profit margin per employee measured over 10-20 years, it's obvious in retrospect.
The AI videos and art I see on social media are annoying, the electronic equivalent of a six year old showing mommy his drawing of the family. They're demonstrations of capabilities, not meaningful art.
BUT... the other night it occurred to me that at this very moment there's probably dozens or hundreds of teenagers experimenting with creating entire movies using AI, and that in a few years we'll see some 25 year old's equivalent to Steven Spielberg's Duel, except made entirely with AI.
If we're lumping algorithms from 2005 in with "AI" I feel like we're overestimating how much AI - at least modern LLMs - are able to achieve.
It's a continuum, not an A/B switch.
Yes, fully agree. LLMs are a continuation of the progress made in automating work that's been going on for generations. The question now, as much as in 1987 or any other date, is not whether it's possible to automate work, but whether it's economically feasible.
If LLMs can be easily trained on the specifics of various jobs, and can produce output with a low enough error rate and all the other attendant requirements to make is economical, we will switch to LLMs doing that work. But otherwise it'll be just like 10 years ago, when McDonalds could automate a location but generally decided not to.
What do you mean by "AI people"? The people themselves aren't AIs.
Just anyone who thinks AI will be transformational. Scott, Zvi etc.
Well if you're defining the set based on their position in the dispute, naturally you'll find them at rhetorical odds with others outside the set.
Given the United States government is banning Tiktok for reasons of "national security" and foreign influence by the Chinese Communist Party, would the United Kingdom and European Union be justified in moving to ban X? After all, the owner of X has recently called for the overthrow of the democratically elected British government, has made no secret of his efforts to interfere in German elections and seems to be conspiring to use X to destabilize other governments in the region. A ban on national security grounds would seem reasonable.
Thoughts?
No because the EU and the US are allies. We share the same basic culture and values and the US doesn't engage in covert operations against its allies. In order for there to be a national security threat there has to actually be a theoretical threat of future military action. China and the US could plausibly be at war in our lifetimes. Europe and the US, not so much.
Musk interferes in European politics much less than, e.g. Soros does in ours.
"the US doesn't engage in covert operations against its allies"
Funny, I seem to remember this story from a while back:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spied-merkel-other-top-european-officials-through-danish-2021-05-30/
"The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) used a partnership with Denmark's foreign intelligence unit to spy on senior officials of neighbouring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish state broadcaster DR said.
The findings are the result of a 2015 internal investigation in the Danish Defence Intelligence Service into NSA's role in the partnership, DR said, citing nine unnamed sources with access to the investigation.
According to the investigation, which covered the period from 2012 to 2014, the NSA used Danish information cables to spy on senior officials in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück."
Yeah but there's no way that's a prelude to invasion or other military action.
> the US doesn't engage in covert operations against its allies.
🤔 it really does. Everybody is spying on everybody. When they get caught there’s a game where one side is pseudo contrite and the other side pseudo shocked.
> Musk interferes in European politics much less than, e.g. Soros does in ours.
Always amazed that Soros gets a pass for this from people opposed to billionaires and their interference in democracies. It’s even described as conspiratorial.
"Always amazed that Soros gets a pass for this from people opposed to billionaires and their interference in democracies."
Because he/his foundations fund the 'right' causes. They got involved in our abortion referendum by funding activist groups on the repeal side, and I vaguely remember something about funding for the gay marriage referendum as well. At the least, they strongly approved of the 'right' result:
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/ireland-wakes-brave-new-world-civil-marriage-equality
Apologies to Soros, it was a *different* American billionaire and his foundation that funded the pro-equality side in the same-sex marriage referendum:
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/american-chuck-feeney-the-key-backer-for-gay-marriage-in-ireland
Oh yeah, and seems the Open Foundation was also funding sex worker activism groups (which I didn't know about until I went looking for links to back up my memory of their activities in Ireland):
https://www.thejournal.ie/george-soros-sex-workers-ireland-2516105-Dec2015/
"Kate McGrew, speaking to this website, said the SWAI was contacted by the Soros-chaired foundation after the Irish group published a paper titled ‘Realising Sex Workers Rights’ in February. A staff member at Open Society told them funding might be available under a programme it was running.
It was something they “took very seriously,” she said, and the funds were now being used for “all kinds of things” – including an office in Dublin. The campaign group has also hired a number of paid staff to work at its city centre base, which it shares with another organisation."
So it sounds like it wasn't even the prostitution group that applied for funding, but the Foundation reached out to them first. Hmmm, I wonder does that sound like meddling in the internal affairs of another country? No, perish the thought!
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/billionaire-soros-funding-groups-fighting-to-repeal-irish-abortion-ban/34980624.html
"A foundation headed up by George Soros, one of the world's richest people, is providing financial backing to organisations seeking to repeal the constitutional prohibition of abortion.
A leaked strategy document details how Soros's Open Society Foundation planned to fund Amnesty International Ireland, the Abortion Rights Campaign and the Irish Family Planning Association.
The move was said to be part of a strategy to force the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, potentially setting off a chain reaction in other strongly Catholic countries in Europe.
The three organisations confirmed to the Irish Independent they had received grants from the foundation."
The media here and next door pretty much blared about "American right-wing Christian groups" getting involved in the anti-same sex marriage and pro-life side, but were very quiet about funding for the 'right' side until the stories broke of their own accord:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/16/us-christians-no-campaign-ireland-gay-marriage-referendum
I don't mean spying. I mean covert action designed to inflict actual harm. Of course we spy, but the US poses zero plausible threat to any EU nation. We're formal military allies.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
Sounds like that's unsubstantiated conspiracy theory nonsense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
" Three separate investigations were started by Germany, Sweden and Denmark, the latter two were closed without publicly assigned responsibility for the damage in February 2024. In June 2024 German authorities issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national suspected of the sabotage."
In any case it was in international waters.
Well, spying on someone certainly tends to do them harm. While I am somewhat sure that US spooks will not plot to cause mass death in Western Europe, that does not make spying all that harmless.
Tapping Merkel's phone was uncalled for, IMO, and possibly harmed the ability of NATO to keep info confidential.
Likewise, paying someone from the BND to send them data (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_Markus_R. ) seems a bit on the 'hostile' side.
Of course, all of this pales against figuring out who the MI6 asset within Al-Qaeda was for shit and giggles, then blabbering to some book author about it, burning the source:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-nine-lives
> The British never shared Dean’s identity with the USA, and tried to provide as little revealing detail as possible, but apparently the Americans still figured it out after a while. Then some unknown insider talked to a journalist, who wrote a book, The One Percent Doctrine, containing all sorts of information on the informant
At least they showed these snobby brits upstaging their intelligence efforts. If the CIA does not get to have an asset within AQ, then nobody gets to have one!
All of the big US tech/social media companies (google, facebook, twitter) have had run-ins with EU law in the past over data protection and, more recently, misinformation. The occasional ban threat is thrown out but, given the political realities, is unlikely to actually happen. Fines, however, would be just as effective and, unlike for Chinese companies, actually enforcable. The EU has no qualms about handing out humongous fines and collecting them.
That is changing though. Musk and Zuckerberg are positioning for Trump to use US foreign policy to their benefit against the EU. What's good for Facebook is good for the United States, I suppose. In that case fines may cease to be effective or invite a diplomatic backlash.
What's happening now seems to be a level above misinformation, in that X is deliberately attempting to undermine and destabilize countries. And bans do seem to work - as Brazil demonstrated.
The fines could also cease to be effective if they're so big that they keep companies out of the EU entirely. https://stratechery.com/2024/the-e-u-goes-too-far/
>Musk and Zuckerberg are positioning for Trump to use US foreign policy to their benefit against the EU.
That is what I meant with "political realities", and which make a ban less likely IMHO, not more likely. If Trump were to make X or FB an explicit part of political negotiations, and the EU were to ban them, that would be a very damaging move and could only lead to political escalation. Given Trump's personality especially, I wouldn't want the EU and the US to play a game of chicken, of who needs whom more.
If you bring up Brazil and X, you can see the play as it would really happen: Brazil ordered X to appoint a legal representative, blocked X after they failed to do so, and lifted the ban after compliance and a fine was paid. So blocking was neither the first nor the last step.
Same process in the EU: a ban is only the last resort, if other enforcement mechanisms are ineffective. Forcing compliance through fines is the preferred method, and the EU has demonstrated that they are willing and able with US companies.
It is of course possible that the USA under Trump go full rogue in international relations including her European allies, but the banning of X would be a consequence of that, not a cause.
My understanding is that the national security considerations are the risk that the Chinese government uses user data (collected normally or illicitly) to collect intelligence, not that China uses Tiktok to harm/destabilize the US directly. (It does do that of course, but that's not the major justification.) The equivalent argument would be that American intelligence agencies take data from X and other American social networks, but the UK/EU govts seem pretty okay with the CIA knowing lots of stuff.
I think their viewpoint is closer to “we don’t like it, but trying to do anything significant against it comes with consequences we don’t really want, and we can live with it because the CIA does not in fact view us as genuine enemies”.
Thus Anonymous Dude’s answer seems spot-on.
That might change as US/EU relations deteriorate.
What's the career advice you'd give to an early career professional in a pretty standard, non-coding, big city white collar job (data/market analysis) given that AGI will be here soon? My head tells me to quit and try to move into something else.
Very happy to welcome advice in the forms of links to someone else already talking about this. Also would be interested to know if anyone has already made a huge pivot in their career in preparation for the coming death of white collar jobs.
Are you good at communications and public presentations? I think there will always be a role for the human element. In my company they are creating Data Strategists, which is just the portion of the data job that is creating the communication materials, visiting and connecting with people over the data, helping people interpret data, giving presentations, taking data requests, etc. I don't think AI will be able to do that part, because humans will still want to talk to a human. This is especially important if you data job involves external clients, or community members, etc.
If AGI will be here soon, then your choice of career doesn't matter much at all. If it would be economically feasible to replace your job, then it's probably economically feasible to replace most or even all jobs. There's no magic job to hold up in.
So you've got a couple of potentially helpful options.
You can invest in companies, properties, or whatever that you expect to grow significantly in the off chance that AI wins big but also doesn't destroy the world or get rid of all wealth.
Or you can learn how to be a survivalist and grow your own food and take care of the needs of you and your loved ones.
Both are pretty long shot options. My personal approach is to move forward as if AI will not achieve any big goals, and keep the job I have now. If I have specific reason to think that my job, as opposed to specific other nameable jobs, will get replaced then I'll look at options then. There's no point jumping ship from a good job that I can do well and get paid well at, when there's no reason to think that any other job will not get replaced as well. I happen to think that AI will not have nearly the impact that some people think, and that most of us will have jobs for as long as needed.
FWIW, I still put AGI at around 2035. That's "soon" in terms of planning a career.
OTOH, the options that look like they might be "safe" careers aren't very attractive. They not only require a lot of manual work, they're dangerous. (And even those aren't really safe, though the job may need to be redesigned the way "cherry pickers" redesigned the work of "lineman".)
I made this argument in another comment below but it seems to me that their are many scenarios (which I consider very likely) where there is 10-20 years of white collar jobs being mostly gone but jobs involving physical labor and craftsmanship, particularly jobs which are not industrialized (neighborhood plumber, carpenter etc.) continue to exist.
If AI ushers in a deep utopia (or at least a world without much work) this won't be a frictionless process, and it seems to me there will be at least of decade in which being unemployed will be much less pleasant than being employed. I also imagine that even in a deep utopia there will be some goods scarcity/status hierarchy (see Scott's recent post) and if I don't need to be the richest or highest status person, it would be nice to not be at the bottom. Staying employed longer will likely help with that.
Few white collar jobs but no deep utopia for 50 years also doesn't seem like an unlikely prospect. This is a possible outcome if we see something like an AI fizzle at just the point in which most white collar jobs become highly automated or if deep utopia simply takes a long time to bring about.
Likewise, I'm fairly concerned that AI will kill us all, but I would be surprised if this happened in the next 10 years (maybe the next 20). In the meantime, it will likely be better to be employed than not (similar arguments apply in the case of us being killed/enslaved by the CCP/ a tech oligarchy etc.).
In general, even if we imagine AGI solves robotics extremely quickly, it will only be able to deploy robots, at least at first, at the rate at which humans can build them and deploy them. This means several years, likely more than a decade, before robots are widespread. Being employed during that time will likely be better than being unemployed. And this seems on the faster end for the rate of AGI solving and deploying robots.
My point was more that we can't really predict which jobs might be outsourced and in which order. I think it was a big surprise to just about everyone that white collar, instead of blue collar, jobs are more likely to be outsourced.
Telling millions of white collar workers to go get blue collar jobs isn't really going to work either. They don't have the background and skills to do it well, and there's not enough of those jobs for very many new people to get into them.
Better for them to use the higher salaries to secure themselves than to take a lower salary in a job they aren't good at just on the chance that they avoid being outsourced a few more years. They would still risk the chance that Claude 5.5 is really good at electrical and plumbing and it's all for naught anyway.
We can take a shot at predicting. The easiest jobs to automate with AI will be fully digital jobs. All of my job involves sitting at a computer excepting some client interaction. By comparison, bringing an AI to do a plumbing or carpentry job will require advances in robotics that are at an earlier stage of development than AI currently, and much harder to deploy AI on at scale even if we assume AI will be able to do them via robotics shortly (due to limitations with building out robotic infrastructure).
You're right that there will be unexpected effects (AI's make it easier for people to do their carpentry themselves by telling them what to do?) but I think we can make good guesses and the barriers to deployment of AI in physical labor fields are much higher than in digital fields.
Note that I'm not telling white collar workers to do anything, just looking for advice for myself. I think you're probably right that there won't be tons of blue collar jobs all of the sudden (perhaps they could materialize with time?) which makes it more important to consider a switch now before their are large numbers of unemployed workers trying to get into those jobs.
Sure, if you personally feel that you can make the switch to blue collar work that could be a reasonable option to consider. But with how much uncertainty we have, I would be very careful not to put all of your eggs into a new basket just because the current basket looks suspect. I do agree that digital work currently looks like the most likely to get replaced, but that depends on a number of things that we really don't know at the moment. If LLMs hit a roadblock on that kind of work (just a random possibility - if LLMs can't be designed to self-select effectively which work needs done and that is too vital in digital white collar work) then the tide may turn and suddenly a different kind of work seems the most likely to replaced.
If you're making a good living now, then taking a 30-60% pay cut to work in a field that you're less experienced with and makes less money in general seems like a potentially terrible decision. Do what makes sense for you, but you may end up regretting your decision no matter which direction you go.
What market analysis indicates that AGI will be here soon?
Maybe AGI will be here soon, and maybe it won't. And if it arrives, maybe it will lead to the death of all white collar jobs, and maybe it won't. And maybe it will kill us all, so what job you will do after it arrives is irrelevant. Or usher in a deep utopia (likewise). Betting that AGI is coming soon, and is going to be of a type where employment remains necessary, and some jobs survive into the long run, just not the white collar ones, is a fairly specific bet on the future, for which your level of certainty seems unmerited.
Apocryphally, the Rand Corporation employees tasked with wargaming WWIII in the 1960s never contributed a dime to their retirement accounts, so sure were they that the nuclear apocalypse was nigh. I would advise you to dial down your level of certainty on one specific AI scenario.
I agree that doubt about my own hypothesis is a compelling reason to not make the jump. And it's fair to have some doubt. But I think you're overstating the scenarios in which my career choices don't matter.
If AI ushers in a deep utopia (or at least a world without much work) this won't be a frictionless process, and it seems to me there will be at least of decade in which being unemployed will be much less pleasant than being employed. I also imagine that even in a deep utopia there will be some goods scarcity/status hierarchy (see Scott's recent post) and if I don't need to be the richest or highest status person, it would be nice to not be at the bottom. Staying employed longer will likely help with that.
Few white collar jobs but no deep utopia for 50 years also doesn't seem like an unlikely prospect. This is a possible outcome if we see something like an AI fizzle at just the point in which most white collar jobs become highly automated or if deep utopia simply takes a long time to bring about.
Likewise, I'm fairly concerned that AI will kill us all, but I would be surprised if this happened in the next 10 years (maybe the next 20). In the meantime, it will likely be better to be employed than not (similar arguments apply in the case of us being killed/enslaved by the CCP/ a tech oligarchy etc.).
And regardless of all of the above, I think it's good for one's mental health to try to exercise some level of agency over your life.
Yeah, you are betting on a scenario involving either an AI fizzle at a very specific point, or else a very slow takeoff. That could be how things play out, but I don't have even a good probability estimate - I think we are in the domain of Knightian uncertainty. And if we end up with a slow takeoff rather than a fizzle, then at some point we still hit a singularity, beyond which forecasting is impossible.
Maybe your best bet is to try and preserve optionality - things may look clearer a few years down the line. This could involve learning meatspace skills. Or trying to amass a large amount of deployable capital. Or something else - if you have a creative route to maximizing optionality, do share.
If your job is to tell your superiors what they want to hear anyway, you have reason to be worried. Otherwise, let it blow over.
These forest fires have left me wondering how long a detached property is vulnerable to the heat of a passing forest fire. Presumably once the surrounding vegetation has burned, which I imagine happens fairly quickly, leaving only scorched earth, the heat reduces considerably.
This in turn means the chance of the forest fire igniting the property itself is only high within a fairly short time window, although that doesn't take into account embers blown by the wind or close neighboring properties on fire.
So, given that many expensive properties have swimming pools, couldn't these properties be protected by a system of pipes that pump water, taken from the pool, down from the roof of the property and then down the walls, at a rate proportional to the surrounding temperature?
From my experience with Rimworld, I would say that a few tiles without flammable material (i.e. concrete) surrounding your property, plus a few pawn standing ready to put out any flames started by blowing embers is a good strategy.
My understanding is a fire suppression system very similar to your idea is what's happening in this video (Not that you should be in the house, not designed for that).
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/1hwbd38/trapped_in_a_home_surrounded_by_the_palisades_fire/
One thing to note is that smoke can ruin the house anyway. Everything will smell like smoke (including burned plastic, chemicals etc.) for the rest of time and the house can be a write off anyway.
"taken from the pool", you mean emptying a swimming pool? That amount of water isn't going to supply enough flow for this to work for more than a few hours.
When big wildfires are going for days you'd need a reliable water supply with plenty of emergency capacity. In areas where home water supplies are coming from aquifers and/or diversion in from elsewhere that can become an issue, as LA and its suburbs are being reminded right now.
If the water supply is coming from a major river or a Great Lake or something then, no problem. But that doesn't tend to be where these big forest fires happen.
Wildfires may burn for days, but any one spot only burns for minutes-to-hours as the fire moves through (excluding slow smoldering, but that's much less of a risk). With even extremely basic sensing/automation, you do not need a system that can provide protection for more than a few hours, which would provide enough protection in the vast majority of situations.
Even blowing embers are probably not a risk for much longer beyond that.
Hmm, maybe. It's the blowing embers I'm thinking of though. I'm no fire expert but have heard someone who is discuss forest fire embers travelling "for miles". That might be the part to unpack to see if this proposed system would be effective using just the water in a swimming pool or whatever.
A blowing ember *can* start a fire, but the chances of an ember starting a fire in any given place is low.
And it can be dropped to negligible by hosing down your property so that everything is a little bit damp. This doesn't take a fancy pool-emptying pump, just a standard garden hose will do.
The problem there seems to be "will there be water for the garden hose?" California gets it coming and going.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/los-angeles-utility-sued-palisades-fire-water-shortage-court-filing-shows-2025-01-14/
And more generally, especially if you might not be around for extended periods during fire season, good fire prep is mostly about clearing fuel aroung the property and not leaving places for the embers to lodge: https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/plan-and-prepare/prepare-your-property
Scott, are you planning on doing a review post on the annual prediction contest this year? Last year's contest was handled by metaculus so not sure if you're planning to say anything (or if there's a centralized repo of scores we can check to write our own).
I'm waiting to get the go-ahead from Metaculus to advertise the next year's one. That will probably include a short summary of the last one.
A kinda weird investment question:
How do you bet against a country over a long/medium time horizon?
Specifically against, not just moving investments around to different exchanges or bonds or whatever.
Eg, if you are bearish on the US over 20 years, how do you even make those investments? I have diversified bonds and property and such, but it escapes me how you could directly hedge against the government of the USA and the value of the dollar.
One of the great ironies of the global economy is that in cases of trouble, people usually flee to safety, which means US government bonds. Even when said trouble *is* the US government threatening to default on its bonds. Trying to bet against treasuries is practically a divide by zero error.
Just curious, but what's your vision for a relative US decline? I'm certainly bearish on the US for political reasons, but what other country do you think is going to surpass us economically? I don't think we have any problems that every other first world country doesn't also have. Immigration cushions us against demographic collapse more than anywhere else.
If you're an institutional investor or billionaire with $100 billion to invest, where would you realistically want to put it? If it's me, I'm picking the country with the world's strongest military and most dynamic economy. I think it's highly unlikely that either of those things changes over the next 20 years.
That's the thing, I don't know that a country will surpass the US per say, I just think that the US will cease to be so far out Infront of the pack it's not even a race over the next 20-40 years.
If China has one more peaceful transition of power, they inevitable catch up enough to be competition, and if the European currency union stops being too schizoid and the Germans don't dynamite their own economy for political reasons, they also catch up and we end up with a trio out in front, with other nations (Singapore, Japan, etc.) that are also way out there but are too small to be whales in the space.
On the other hand, the US has proved that it is too politically schlerotic to deal with any black swan style events that don't benefit from people just fucking off and doing what they want while spending tons of money. That turned out to be the solution to the Covid economic disaster, but it might not for the next one.
Those are a lot of ifs. The US has been the most politically stable and economically dynamic country for 100 years now. I really have a hard time seeing how that changes, identity politics notwithstanding. Absolutely no one would trust China enough to take care of their money - they're always just one central party meeting away from nationalizing your assets.
>the US has proved that it is too politically schlerotic to deal with any black swan style events
The US recovered from 2008 and covid better than most other first world nations so I don't see where you're getting that perspective from.
Betting *against* anything on a long time scale doesn't make a lot of sense. Your potential gains are capped, while your potential losses are unlimited.
As a retail investor you can short the US 20 year bond. Some platforms will allow you to use leverage.
If you have substantial funds available, an investment bank can create all sorts of products for you.
I have substantial funds by my standards, but not by anything above branch level for a bank.
Also, I don't want a risk profile that goes to infinity, I want one that goes to zero. A little fun hedge bet I can make on the side, like going to the ponies.
That is an incredibly expensive thing to do unless you literally expect the interest rates to shoot up imminently, isn't it? You'd have to pony up the coupon payments while holding the short, correct?
You have the proceeds from selling the bond to cover the payments. Depending on the yield curve you'd usually invest the proceeds in money market funds or similar, which would provide all or most of the coupon payments.
An institutional investor would buy the 2s20s steepener. I think these are available to some retail investors now too.
Makes sense, thanks.
You can't. Investing is more useful the more specific it is. Betting against "a country" adds almost no information. You have to bet on something specific like the stocks of the top 500 companies in the country or the relative value of its currency. And you have to get the when right. Overshooting can be just as dangerous as undershooting.
I guess socially you could move somewhere else. But that's not traditionally thought of as an investment.
I'm already on top of that, I/the family have a couple places in countries that won't be too badly off if only because you can't die from a really short fall.
The USA is big enough that you can bet against its economy by investing in non-US stock markets.
Assuming you're not Soros or someone else who can personally take down a country, and also assuming you're not already a sharp speculator (because then why would you ask here?):
Foreign equity funds. Not only will they do better than the U.S. if the U.S. does poorly, the dollar will also lose value which makes them even more valuable in dollars. And if the U.S. just does average, you haven't really taken on _too_ much risk.
Note that this isn't an intense speculation against the U.S., merely mild hedging. Even more sensible would be to split perhaps 50/50 with U.S. equities, because throughout history, it has _very_ rarely paid to bet against the U.S.
That's where I'm at.
I'm fairly confident the American century is actually just going to be a century, but that still leaves quite a while where it makes sense to be heavily invested here.
I was wondering if there was a very high risk very high return style but you could make against a currency, but there doesn't seem to be.
which makes sense, why would a government provide a way to increase the risk of their own currency.
In the shorter term, you could probably play around with various derivatives, but this is an extreme-risk strategy and requires you to have a theory of just _when_ the decline will happen as well, or you will lose everything. Merely hedging against it rather than speculating is a lot more reasonable.
So far for the last few years, the USD is _up_ significantly against most currencies, and perhaps oddly, if Trump implements his mutually destructive tariffs, it might rise further still.
Remember the old adage: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Even if you think something must reasonably happen, it might happen in an unreasonably long time.
Yup. That's why I even bothered to ask; I'm not gonna try and make an investment where my risk profile goes up with no ceiling, even on a "sure bet".
I'm doing just fine, no need to bet the farm.
Do you have a theory about who will do best comparatively? (Western) Europe, Japan and China all seem unlikely, IMO. India will probably do well in the very long run, but that's probably _too_ long.
If you own property in the US, could you take a fixed rate mortgage on it? This would give you a significant long-term short US Currency position at a not-terrible cost. You can use the proceeds to invest into some foreign asset/gold/crypto/all of the above, or just spend it.
If it's the US, an ex-US investment fund (used by many index fund enthusiasts to hedge their US exposure) that invests in all countries outside the USA is one way. VXUS is the Vanguard ticker, FTIHX the Fidelity one. (I'm boycotting Blackrock on account of their support for woke and buying up all the houses, but you can look them up yourself.) Even throws off more dividends than the US equivalent, VTI.
With smaller economies it's tricky as those economies are a much smaller part of the world economy. I'm not sure how you'd bet against China long-term, for instance.
what is the nature of your pessimism? Are you betting that the US stock market will crash? That the US treasury will default? That the country will turn into Zimbabwe? Yugoslavia? That the US president will go rogue and nuke the world? That Sam Altman will create a malevolent ASI which ushers in the apocalypse? Each of these leads to a very different strategy (some of them seem un-hedgeable).
In theory you can do it by short selling treasury bonds from that country. But beware that short selling is one of the most risky investments possible. There is no limit to your losses.
Practically, there are bonds which try to do something similar for you, search for Inverse Bonds ETF. There seem to be bonds which have a time horizon of 20 years. I haven't looked into how they work exactly, so be very cautious buying these, since again some of them may give you unlimited risks, beyond the money that you "invest".
For the currency, you can borrow money in US$, buy a portfolio of other currencies which explicitly excludes the US dollar, and trade it for dollars in a few years.
You could short a local stock index or their currency. The problem with doing this over the long term is that short positions have carry costs (you're borrowing stocks to sell, meaning you have to pay interest on what you're borrowing), which makes it hard to do over a long time period.
Does anyone have a favorite book dedication for me to add here?
https://dedications.fyi/
Dwight MacDonald, dedication on his book of collected essays *Against the American Grain*: "For my sons, without whose school bills this book would never have been written."
Vladimir Nabokov, same dedication on every book: "For Vera". [his wife]
McElligot's Pool; "This book is dedicated to T.R. Geisel of Springfield Mass., The worlds greatest authority on Blackfish, Fiddler Crabs and Deegel Trout." Deegel Trout are explained here. https://seussblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/mcelligots-pool/
Oh, that’s a good one.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/1a4dd9b0-e8e6-4ffe-8e23-da8b5c319dce?shareToken=f9bc526240a358f17b69350477f0f1fd
London Times piece about a professor of psychiatry who three years ago, gasp, dared to question the orthodoxy that depression results from a shortage of serotonin. Scott was debunking this debunking a decade ago, and the Times piece presenting the claim as new looks to me like self-aggrandizing bad faith from the psychiatrist and lazy lack of research from the journalist.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/05/chemical-imbalance/
Yes, and Awais Aftab has written about it here:
https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/dummies-guide-to-the-british-professor
What music can people recommend for music that celebrates the idea of human progress.
Mine would be Sogno di Volare by Christopher Tin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0pBzowOKU4. Though perhaps his Baba Yetu is even better, the Lord Prayer isn't on the theme of progress; but combined with the original music video from Civ 5 it feels like an ode to human collaboration. Or maybe I just really like Baba Yetu ;)
Paradox Interactive's Stellaris has several good tracks.
Luminescence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMRjkL5TEAY
Robotic God has an interesting speedup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0L38p9DUHQ
If you want something more well known, James Horner's arrangement for the launch sequence in _Apollo 13_: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Cjisi_BDA
Oh, are we doing atmospheric game music? Let me pitch "A Speech on Earth" from IXION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhTXyUERugQ&t=1480
(Might be an ironic celebration of progress, considering what happens immediately after this track is used in-game. But you wouldn't know from the music.)
Glib answer: Best celebration of progress is progress itself. Pick a great classic work that achieved progress in music. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, grand opera, Stravinsky. Popular today, innovative for their time.
More difficult but still glib: pick something that is good, new, and innovative.
Thank you everyone
Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger
They Might Be Giants, _Put It To The Test_ . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KodWAqGqlfI
I loved all three of their kids albums/video comps. Still get the songs stuck in my head and the kid is 17 now!
So I'm guessing Cake's take would be a bit too ironic for most?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_HoMkkRHv8
Fantastic video, thank you for sharing!
https://youtu.be/Y4gFPJsX8pQ?si=J49AsNv63OCZkgNn
Can't be beat
Same sentiment, different tribal markers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI
(Thanks for sharing though, I did like yours too.)
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 has some themes about exploration "Gladly, just as His suns hurtle through the glorious universe, So you, brothers, should run your course, joyfully, like a conquering hero," though there's some religious stuff too. At least nobody doubts the musical skill.
You could go with "The Future's So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)" for a double layer of irony--the text is pro-progress, but the song is intended to be ironic. The 'future is so bright' because of a nuclear explosion. So you take it and send it back to them.
There are some good ones at the Rationalist Solstice every year. You can see last year's script at https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/bay-area-secular-solstice-2024-script .
I really like Vienna Teng's Land Sailor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RCIdOp5GHg
Oh, dear. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but that song reeks of hubris (especially in light of the LA fires right now). Deepwinter strawberries? Abundance on the grocery shelves? And all for the low cost of no longer seasonal food, selected not for taste but ability to withstand transportation, bred to be over-sweetened to appeal to our jaded tastebuds, and the abundance brought about by factory farming (what do you reply to the shrimp cruelty people?)
I'm thinking more Dies Irae than "yay, go us!" fits my mood right now, and Verdi composed a banger for that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6cogix3cwQ
Yep, just call me Eeyore 😁
I mean, the last verse is kind of about that. "In the bed we've made, may every nail be shown. The price we pay, time you made it known." "Shield my eyes no more."
It's saying both "we have abundance" and also "this abundance has hidden costs that are hard to see on the surface."
Yep, "solvet saeclum in favilla" is a pretty good lyric if you want some background music for news about the fires...
(And I love the camera shaking on every timpani strike in that video!)
It's a great song but it's, at best, mixed praise for its subject matter. The criticism is light but deliberate—"Feed me beyond my means", "But there's a storm outside your door"—these lines would be out of place in an uncomplicated paean to technological progress.
Does anyone have a list of the people that had links about their April First alternate reality posts on Slatestarcodex?
I've been looking for one of them in particular with a green background and have no other details that I can recall. But I'm unsure exactly in what context that post or another post was linked previously. If anyone could help me out I would deeply appreciate it.
New direction in my journey.
Late last year I asked an “uninformed” question on FB.
Well, Questions are that - isn’t it?
You don't know, therefore you ask, and because you are “un"informed, your Quest(ion) can seem nonsensical.
I saw a picture in my mind that needed explanation.
The answer found me and dropped the next picture to explore in my mindbox.
This is a fascinating backwards journey. In able for me to move forward in understanding, I need to move backwards in quest(ing).
Blessings
Meraai
Are there any "rationalist" arguments against cloning humans? (for a broad definition of rationalist...)
Not an expert (whatever that would mean) but it seems to me that there are several Chesterton's Fence type arguments. The typical human reproductive process informs and grounds virtually all aspects of culture. Monkeying with one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience has the potential to throw the entirety of civilization out of equilibrium. The new equilibrium might not be worse, but it's certainly higher variance. I think it's wise to be cautious with changes of that magnitude.
cloning me is a moral imperative
Would you rather be born as a child of two parents or as a clone of a single person? What are the arguments in favour of cloning, other than "heheh, wouldn't it be cool"?
Clones are unhealthy and die younger. Until this has been solved, we don't need more subtle arguments against.
Also, I guess there's always the risk that I would be harvested for organs one day...
If 'it would be cool' is really the only point you can think of in favor of cloning, maybe you should think about why that is. Here's a freebie: imagine how much more informative the family history will be for the kid's doctor...
Wouldn't you like to have another John von Neumann?
Clones can be raised by 2 parents. If was looking to adopt, I would MUCH rather have the option of adopting a JvN clone.
Would you rather be a normal person born to random parents or one of thousands of JVN clones adopted by parents who think that raising a JVN clone sounds cool?
If you think parents are competitive about their offspring now, wait until they all have JVN clones to torment into precocity.
JvN! The answer is JvN! I definitely pick JvN!
Because women aren't having enough children? We can always use more spare bodies, especially with the direction things are going right now...
Cloning still requires women to have children.
...Oh. I thought we were talking about artificially incubating clones as well.
You could also flip that on its head and consider all clones siblings, because every genome, at some point in history, had two parents.
This is how it works when you have identical twins. No one considers the twins each others' parent.
>Would you rather be born as a child of two parents or as a clone of a single person?
Two. It’s always wise to carry a spare.
I actually wrote a stupid little sketch about how someone might see their own clone here: https://woolery.substack.com/p/me-my-clone-and-americas-no1-card?r=ba1ue
By definition, a clone is of a single organism.
Presumably, the argument would be "I don't have a partner but I still want a biological child and I don't want to use donor sperm/egg for some reason."
Do you have a specific scenario in mind where you'd want to clone somebody?
What if you're facing a droid army controlled by a separatist movement and you need soldiers to fight them with? Didn't work out so good for the Jedi in the end, but it seemed reasonable at the time.
Build your own droid army to fight theirs? Obviously clones aren't a good solution here since a) they take too long to mature and b) even a clone of an exceptional fighter can't beat a robot.
(I've only seen the original trilogy so I don't know how AotC dealt with these issues.)
Why not just build more droids?
If the video games taught me anything, it's that droids are weak and stupid unless they look like this:
https://bpb.opendns.com/b/https/starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Spider_droid_(disambiguation)
Nope! I was somehow reminded of the uproar over Dolly in the 90s. At the time, as a young atheist, I naturally thought the "anti-cloning" arguments were "regressive prude cultural nonsense", as PB wrote. But I've softened some of my stances in the intervening 25 years. I mostly was curious about resolutely secular arguments against cloning!
I think it would be easier to have the discussion in the context of a specific use-case. For example, if grieving parents want to clone their child who died in an accident, you could have concerns like "the new child will have to deal with unreasonable expectations of being a carbon copy of their older sibling, instead of being allowed to be their own person".
Or maybe the parents want the clone to be an organ donor for a sick sibling -- that has already happened without cloning, the parents just had another child hoping that it would be compatible. (IIRC it was, and the transplant did happen, but there were obvious concerns that the donor child was being treated like a box of spare parts rather than valued for their own sake, and of course, the donor child didn't really have much ability to consent of their own free will. And what if the child hadn't been compatible, would the parents have been able to hide their disappointment about that "failure"?)
Or if the government wants to clone one particularly capable Navy SEAL a million times in order to create an army of super-soldiers, some spoilsports would probably have a problem with that too. Likewise with PB's creative proposal to have the world ruled by clones of Lee Kuan Yew.
So my idea is that I am not against cloning people *on principle*, but it's hard to come up with a specific scenario in which you'd want to do it, which would not have senario-specific ethical concerns attached.
> Do you have a specific scenario in mind where you'd want to clone somebody?
I don't know about OC, but I sure have one! I want to clone Lee Kuan Yew ~200 times and install him as dictator-for-life in all the countries of the world.
If you read his book Third World to First, he empirically successfully solved pretty much all the major problems any country has (ethnic and racial strife, strong economic growth with no natural resources, eliminating corruption in governance, maintaining good international relations, riots and near-wars, housing crises, and so on).
He’s the only proven great, non-corrupt, and empirically successful "benign tyrant” / philosopher-king we have actual DNA for. Time for some radical experimentation in governance!
City states aren't a particularly useful or generalizable model for, well, anything.
LKY is overrated imo. All the small to medium East Asian countries in the American sphere of influence became developed countries, and Singapore is on a strategic trading chokepoint as well. He was playing on the easiest setting.
> He was playing on the easiest setting.
I disagree with this, he really did repeatedly solve a lot of hairy, near-existential problems, and even his critics will readily admit to that.
But let's just say his reputation IS overrated, because that's definitely possible, given venerating him is practically a religion in Singapore, and he was certainly portraying himself in the best light in his book.
Even if he's half as great as his overrated estimation, that reduces him from approximately a million times better at leadership, competence, diplomacy, and empirically being better at actually solving difficult nation-level problems, to *merely* five hundred thousand times better than any extant American or European politican, not to mention African, South American, etc.
Still sounds like my experiment in governance is worth pursuing!
But to be honest, I legitimately think GPT-4 would do a better job than a full 80% of federal-level US politicians, and pretty much anyone can agree that if you manus-dei replaced most African leaders with a rock that kept tigers away (and didn't embezzle billions of dollars from the poorest people on earth), they're probably coming out ahead.
I mean, much like George Washington, LKY had an opportunity to behave a lot worse, and he didn't take it. He deserves admiration for that, no doubt. He also was a very successful manager and handled some very tricky situations. Most city states are not as successful as Singapore. Very few people are 'a million times better' at anything--he had a high energy level, a high IQ, was born into the right place and the right family, and had the rare combination of machiavellianism without psychopathy or much narcissism. Put him lower down the food chain (make his dad a fry cook at McDonald's) and he'd just be the guy who runs their accounting department really, really well.
But I doubt cloning him would be all that useful. He'd probably be too autocratic for most Western countries, etc. I wouldn't make too much of the Great Man theory of history--there are great men, certainly, but they're usually great because they have just the right set of virtues (and frequently vices) for the place they're born in. As Penrose says, he had advantages--without them he'd probably be some bureaucrat well remembered in his local city but not known elsewhere. I mean, you've never heard of Zhuge Liang unless you're Asian or played Dynasty Warriors.
I'm going to sound like a leftist, but the systems matter too. Even if you replaced those leaders with a rock, some warlord would get rid of the rock and you'd be back to square one.
What's the fair reference class for Singapore? The only place you can reasonably compare it to is a (pre-1997) Hong Kong -- both cities had very similar starting conditions in terms of geography, culture and demographics.
Comparing the two, I think the results were pretty similar. Singapore has its advantages over Hong Kong, and Hong Kong over Singapore, but apart from the fact that Hong Kong eventually got taken over by the CCP there's not that much to separate the two, and nobody glorifies the various Governors of Hong Kong the way they glorify LKY.
> Very few people are 'a million times better' at anything
It's definitely tongue in cheek hyperbole, but I think you can actually make this argument, too.
Certainly I can conceive of somebody doing a million times *worse* - Singapore as a country could plain not exist. It could be a war-torn nonproductive wasteland, it could be a satellite of some larger country, given that it started at the an extremely low GDP, it could be like Laos is even today, etc. Like not only would all the GDP growth and businesses it brought into existence not exist, but all it's unique contributions to the world's culture would also be missing - Changi airport (reliably rated one of the best airports in the world), greenery and plant life on all the skyscrapers, Fort Canning Park, the Garden by the sea, ending every sentence with "lah," etc.
Sure, LKY contributing to all that stuff was contingent on his education and skills and timing, but given a fully faithful sim of it, I think it'd be really easy to do a lot worse in various repetitions with different actions / leaders in his place.
> Even if you replaced those leaders with a rock, some warlord would get rid of the rock and you'd be back to square one.
Oh, 100%. That's why I specified "hand of god," like installed externally by the programmer so it's non-removable. Those positions of power just aren't pursuable. Immense improvements to lots of African lives.
Which is basically the case for colonialism in a nutshell - the bigger, ten thousand times badder external force that fills that power vacuum so comprehensively piddling local warlords CAN'T spend all their time murdering to get to the top spot, where they can embezzle with abandon.
> Are there any "rationalist" arguments against cloning humans? (for a broad definition of rationalist...)
AFAIK, the two strongest arguments against it right now are:
1) cloning large primates is pretty fiddly and the "failure" rate is pretty high, and some of the failures can be pretty gruesome (accelerated aging, mutations, etc)
2) The time and logistics to get to a point of viable clones; you'd have to impregnate a lot of long-gestation and long-lifetime primates or humans, and this'll take a long time and be very expensive, and since there's still a lot of learning to do, there's going to be a whole lot of failures, which is salient ethically if they're human (like what do you do with the hundreds of suffering, short lifetime babies and kids?)
The rest of the reasons are just the usual "regressive prude" cultural nonsense, in my own opinion, and which is also why we don't have viable gengineering today, even though it's been possible from a scientific and technical perspective to gengineer human babies (and with much higher success rates than cloning), for 10+ years.
Hypothetical question... do compliments from your mom count as compliments?
Do they count? Of course. Should they be trusted? No.
I guess it's tangent time; my grandmother died before I was born (indeed, before my mom was out of highschool), but every story I've heard is that she never, ever, complimented anyone. A kid would bring home the best grade they'd ever got in school, and she would lambast them about pride and showing off.
So, if your mother compliments you, take joy in that. It's something not everybody gets.
Depends. "That's a really nice picture" - probably not, any mom would tell this to her kid, no matter what the picture is. "Oh, this time you got a really nice haircut unlike the last time. Who cut your hair this time?" - yes.
For mental health? probably
Social standing? no
Why are you assuming that compliments from non-family members are genuine either?
>> count
>genuine
Social actions matter socially, if legally you could file a suit and then take it back "cause I was joking" that be absurd. Whatever culture your in, a compliment should have some limit range of outcomes and meanings that are smaller then the situation before.
It doesnt matter if a cheerleader complimenting a nerds, goal is to to get homework help, it still an increase of social value if shallow. (tho the nerd should suggest a price)
'Hypothetical' in the sense that your mum never pays you compliments?
I think maybe compliments should probably "count" when they actually convey information about how good the thing being complimented is. For your mum, probably if she's complimenting you just to show care and supportiveness but actually she's entirely agnostic about the quality of the thing being complimented, probably that usually shouldn't count for you (otherwise you might be in for a rude awakening when the rest of the world encounters the thing). If your mum is genuinely complimenting the thing, not just showing care and supportiveness, I think it depends on the nature of the compliment versus your mum's expertise in that particular field:
If your mum is an old-school apron-wearing housewife and she says 'you look lovely today, dear' possibly she doesn't have much understanding of the aesthetic principles involved (at least for your age/social/peer group) and the compliment doesn't mean very much (ie. doesn't convey much information about how you actually look)
Conversely, if mum says "the apple pie you baked was very good", probably we expect that she has basically a PhD-level understanding of apple pies and that compliment should mean alot.
(Obviously if your mum happens to be a Parisienne haute couture fashion designer, maybe the "you look good today" compliment would convey much more useful information - and probably she wouldn't know quite so much about patisserie..)
I have a friend who has a mysterious set of symptoms, wondering if anyone here has some tips for things to look into. It's been labeled functional neurologic disorder, but that's just a set of symptoms IIUC, and no root cause has been identified.
Current symptoms:
* Occasional bouts of involuntary muscle movement lasting up to an hour. All over the body.
* Occasional periods of being unable to speak, lasting hours.
* Occasional periods of being unable to walk, lasting hours.
In mid December these all started getting worse over the course of a few weeks, culminating in a hospital stay around Christmas. His symptoms got better during the stay (from not being able to speak or move most of the day, to only having sporadic periods throughout the day).
Things which are not obviously connected but I suspect they may be:
Over the past year he became very distant from basically all his friends and family. Stopped replying to texts. When people did manage to see him he was extremely evasive in conversation, often to the point of using hostility to deflect away from talking about himself.
Over the past few years he's lost weight. I don't know his actual weight but I suspect his BMI would label him "underweight".
A test for vitamin deficiencies and lead during his hospital stay was supposedly normal, but I haven't seen the results myself.
MRI of his brain was taken, apparently didn't show anything that might indicate a cause.
He's been told to try to see a movement neurologist but there's apparently a 6+ month wait where he lives.
He's doing physical and speech therapy to I guess try to relearn how to control his body, but obviously if the root cause of the symptoms could be identified that would be helpful.
Thanks for any pointers!
Might be parasites. Just buy some and take it. 2% of americans have parasites. Parasites can cause literally any problem depending on where they end up in the body. They look like normal tissue on basic scans. Let me know what happens!
Buy some what?
oops! Some combantrin or albendazole. I had similar symptoms to your friend and combantrin seems to have cured me. 5 years with symptoms and now 5 months without
I'm a neurologist. Not to be glib but pre-test probability on this being conversion disorder with normal Brain MRI is very high. No one should ever be diagnosed with anything by anybody via random text, but I'm putting here to plant a seed should he/she be told something similar.
Agree
Yes, I wondered about that too. Still, last I knew 5% or so of people diagnosed with conversion disorder are ultimately found to have a medical disorder causing their symptoms. And the man's cluster of symptoms sounds ominous -- seems like if this is not a conversion disorder it's something pretty bad. So seems like for those reasons quick and energetic follow-up with a movement neurologist seems warranted. Do you agree? I'm a psychologist, by the way.
The way I would speak to a peer about this flavor of vignette is very different from how I'd present publicly. This space is full of interested and very intelligent people so I'll try to speak as candidly as I'm able.
The above story is a common one. I've heard it hundreds of times. Most other neurologists have too. The ubiquity of psychogenic illness is severely underappreciated. Not just by members of the public but frankly by many physicians and medical practitioners. There is a particular narrative that is a powerful one -- the unique hard to diagnose case that all the doctors missed because the medical establishment sucks / didn't take my symptoms seriously etc. It is a true one. It happens sometimes.
Far, far, far more often though people have psychogenic illness, get worked up to the hilt, are unsatisfied, end up going to a tertiary or quaternary center (Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, etc.) and get worked up again. Accepting that something is psychogenic is incredibly difficult. And providers being direct with patients that this is what is going on is also difficult. I'm sorry to say that many providers don't like doing it and so they demur. "All the tests are normal." And patients will have a narrative "They couldn't figure it out" at the 2nd and 3rd opinion visits. Some will see "Lyme literate" physicians looking for answers and get put on chronic doxycycline. Some will see quacks and get chelation therapy. For most, the symptoms will wax and wane over their life.
If you're a neurologist and a patient has a seizure in the office, it's a useful fact to know that the pre-test probability of the seizure being psychogenic is much higher than it being epileptic. If you think about it, this makes sense. Epileptic seizures are to a first approximation are distributed randomly and psychogenic pathology is very much not. Almost every time I've seen a case where something is spread far and wide via social media or in a social circle trying to reach neurologists, it's trivial for someone in the business to look at the videos and determine that it's psychogenic. Unfortunately, there's no win in identifying this and saying so as a practitioner. You just become another heartless doctor blowing people off. Even if this is accurate 99 times for every miss. Even if the pain you see in people searching for an answer they'll never find because the true issue isn't dealt with is your motivation in thinking about conversion -- because getting 2nd and 3rd and 4th opinions at sexy institutions like Northwestern or UCSF is agentic and getting "blown off" as just another person with PTSD seems like it isn't.
I think a lot about conversion because it causes a lot more disability and is far more common than people realize. I could go into details of why I don't think this is Huntington's (vast majority of cases have identifiable family history, symptoms wax and wane too prominently) or MS (even a non-con MRI would have some lesions, symptoms extremely atypical, etc.) or other primary neurologist disease but this is something treating physicians should do. I was very close to doing movement disorder before I ended up doing what I do presently and while most movement disorder specialists got into it because they're excited about DBS or Parkinson's management, a substantial proportion of the case load is conversion/functional/whatever you want to call it. The providers can smell these cases from a mile away and for understandable reasons don't feel the pressing need to add them on. The subtext here is this person was admitted to the hospital and released after a thorough workup. The neurologists who saw him/her were fairly convinced it was conversion. That's not gonna get you added on quick. My strong suspicion is this is part of the lack of quick follow-up, even in settings where it doesn't take 8 weeks minimum to get in (which is par for subspecialty care).
I understand. The symptoms described are sort of like glove anesthesia, right? The thing that most has that sound for me (I'm a psychologist, by the way) is discrete, brief episodes of being profoundly impaired (e.g., can't talk ,can't walk), interspersed with longer periods of normal functioning. On the other hand, OP mentions that the friend is doing speech and physical therapy to relearn how to control his body, so maybe his speech and walking are not fully normal between episodes, just better than during the episodes when he cannot speak or walk at all? So we may not have the full picture.
And while everyone has a terrible time accepting a diagnosis of conversion disorder, 5% or so of them are right to not accept it. That's why I'm urging OP to get his friend in to see a movement neurologist.
Let an expert in disorders with symptoms like his make the call.
Thank you to everyone who replied. I will try to report back in a future open thread if there is any update.
His cluster of symptoms is pretty ominous, and he absolutely should not wait 6 mos. to see a specialist. Ways to speed things up:
-find every movement neurologist nearby and call to set up an appt. It's likely there's someone who isn't scheduling that far out. Make an appt with several of these docs, then when he gets in to see one cancel the other appts.
-For appointments that are far off, ask to be on the wait list. BUT that itself isn't going to make a lot of difference. Here's what does: Call every place you are wait-listed once or twice a week and tell them that if they have a cancelation in the next couple days you will definitely be able to come at the drop of a hat. Also chat up whoever you speak with when you call. You want them to like you and remember you. So do not emphasize your dire need and do not complain about the wait. Be friendly, joke around a little, apologize a little for the frequent calls but be like "I expect a lot of people on the wait list are hard to reach or can't come in at short notice, but I actually can, just want you folks to know."
-See if there are any movement neurologists in nearby states who do virtual appointments. They might be able to give him useful if they have all his records and verbally walk him through some procedures where they can test his memory, observe his walk etc. Or they might order some tests he can take locally. He will then at least know more, plus one of them might be able to get him in faster to then see a movement neurologist in his area.
Hi, I have unparalleled erudition in pharmacology
it is imperative to rule out:
multiple sclerosis -> unlikely since no (yet?) brain MRI lesions
parkinson
ALS
consider doing spinal mri and pro and cons of contrast for brain.
also:
EMG and nerve function test
serum phosphorylated Tau, beta amyloid and neurofilament light chain
specific imaging tech for parkinson
check for demyelinating signs, optic neuritis
I will tell you something very few doctors understand in the 21st century:
for diseases that are hard to diagnose (with available tech that is otherwise is trivial via proteomics...), often the most efficient way to "diagnose" is to test the efficacy of a specific therapeutic. If the therapeutic works: you win and 2) it is empirical evidence even if not robust, for diagnostic.
hence most easiest way to identify parkinsonism is to give the patient a dopaminergic such as available online: mucuna pruriensis and selegiline. should lead to partial symptomatic improvement
cost: negligible, and is mostly benign
most dyskinesias are dopaminergic.
If not then the second main class are myelopathies, for them try 500-1000mg cdpcholine
while adressing the root cause is reasonnable, the medical research is far too degenerate to have tried such a thing so efficacy is unknown. As such the actual test for and not only for myelopathies are immunosuppressants, such as the ones used for Multiple Sclerosis
a less proven but available online, promising, cheap and highly tolerable immunossupressor is rapamycin 2mg, can worsen blood glucose and cholesterol though https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211034818302761
third class are impacted with acethylcholine so pyridostigmine or huperzine a but much rarer
fourth way is to focus on nerve regeneration and cytoprotection, usually of low efficacy though nobody has made maximally potent combinations
it is also possible to bruteforce diagnosis via measuring the plasma quantities of 3000 to 5000 distinct proteins! or via targeted ELISA
https://olink.com/products/olink-explore-series
this is usually used by scientist but it transcend classical diagnosis ability, however the public cost is unknown, so please ask them but minimum price likely a thousand dollar
proteins for diagnosing aforementionned diseases can be checked here:
https://proteome-phenome-atlas.com/
general inflammatory markers and hba1c should be tested btw.
Prolactin can be elevated for hypodopaminergy so it is IMO an underatted partial test of parkinsonism
Also DNA testing is highly recommended
Doing non-contrast MRI only in this situation sounds criminally negligent to me so I would really hope they did both types. Similarly, agree on spinal MRI (and possibly lumbar puncture) but again one would assume that to happen in such a case...
If non-con is normal, no need for contrasted study.
I was also wondering about the possibility of Huntingtons.
could be, DNA testing is cheap and would give a clearer picture
Migraines can cause twitching fits, aphasia, loss of balance, and muscle weakness for the duration of the migraine. Also, "silent migraines" with little or no of the classic pain symptoms are a thing.
Have migraines already been ruled out, and if so, how were they ruled out?
IANAD but I do have Parkinson's, and this set of symptoms sounds very much like a Dopamine-related condition, Parkinson's, LBD or perhaps MS. I suspect doctors your friend sees have a hunch like this, because "movement disorder specialists" are basically experts in Parkinson's and related diagnoses. There is a criminal lack of these specialists for reasons I do not understand.
Unfortunately, PD does not have a good reliable medical test, it's a "differential diagnosis", meaning it's what's left after other possibilities are ruled out.
However as I understand it, there is one generally accepted "test" for PD: administer Levodopa therapy (the mainline treatment for PD) and if this has a near-immediate (1 hr or so) noticeable beneficial effect that goes away after a few hours, that is pretty determinative. But GP's and even neurologists often don't know this.
My advice: get them to a movement disorder specialist, whatever it takes and no matter how far away, if at all possible.
As an MD, it could be but the time course points away from it. Parkinson’s is slowly progressive, it doesn’t manifest as “occasional” inability to walk or speak and then normal function in between times.
Does not sound like MS to me (and I am a lot more familiar with it than I'd like) - symptoms cycle too quickly (relapses generally take days to weeks to clear) and with that level of symptoms, a negative MRI is a bit hard to believe.
Not performing a dopaminergic test is indeed peak criminal medical malpractice, generally the idea of using therapeutics, not as therapeutics but as hypothesis probes for etiology/diagnosis is considerably underatted
Just want to add that PD may be glossed over if your friend doesn't have a typical tremor, but that sort of tremor some patients have is far from universal -- many of us present with different symtoms such as gait problems or even personality/cognitive issues (esp in LBD, Lewy-Body dementia)
OK, just had a creepy run-in with GPT4. I had read a few years ago that much of US donated blood is wasted, because it expires before used or can't be transported to where it's needed. So I told GPT what I had read, and asked where I could find figures on what percent is wasted.
Instead of answering with a list of websites, it soon slid into talking up the importance of donating blood. Here is its reply:
"While specific figures on the percentage of donated blood that goes unused in the U.S. are not readily available, it's important to understand that blood is a perishable resource with varying shelf lives for its components. Red blood cells can be stored for up to 42 days, platelets for just 5 days, and frozen plasma for up to a year.
HOME PAGE
The demand for blood is constant, with someone in the U.S. needing blood or platelets every 2 seconds. Approximately 29,000 units of red blood cells are required daily across the country.
HOME PAGE
Despite this need, only about 3% of the eligible U.S. population donates blood each year.
AMERICA'S BLOOD CENTERS
Given the perishable nature of blood components and the constant demand, blood centers strive to balance collections with usage to minimize waste. However, some units may expire before use due to fluctuations in demand, storage limitations, or logistical challenges in distribution.
To ensure that donated blood is utilized effectively, it's crucial for donations to be consistent and well-matched to current needs. This helps maintain an adequate supply and reduces the likelihood of wastage."
Then it ended with a link to this NY Post article: https://nypost.com/2024/06/08/us-news/long-islander-donated-nearly-29-gallons-of-blood-since-1975/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
It gave me irrelevant info about shelf life, then a pep talk about the need for donated blood, then a fuckin NY POST ARTICLE to inspire me.
I would be OK with it saying it doesn't know (though a bit surprised). But it applied a Gaussian blur to the topic I was interested in, then tried to herd me in the direction of what it sees as desirable behavior. That makes me furious, and doubly so because it reminds me of gov't covid communications. Instead of telling us facts and explaining their implications and making recommendations based on that, it decided what we should all be doing then told us half truths and lies it thought would convince the herd to move in the desired direction. But GPT's peformance on the blood donation question also scares me because it seens like a very ominous trend in the ay GPT answers. It's insistence on wokeness was irritating but kind of funny. it's attempt to herd me is scary.
Later edit: Removed a paragraph about my own search to check for the answer to my question because it is a distraction from the main point of the post, which is that GPT4, when asked a clear question. gave me a prosocial ad copy answer.
How repeatable is this? LLM output includes randomness, but if there is some external process driving this, that will be more consistent. Try pasting the same question a few times in new sessions. How much do the answers vary?
I'm sincerely confused: Isn't the fundamental purpose of LLMs to default to the "norm" on all topics?
I mean, as far as I'm aware, no human has ever written about blood donation in any context without also mentioning that there's not enough of it, please donate. So it seems totally natural to me that GPT4 would do the same. Not because it has an agenda, but because every human that's ever written about blood donation has that agenda. It seems like that might in fact be the only thing all writing about blood donation has in common, so of course GPT4 would identify that as the most important feature of the topic.
Like, I'm guessing you can't academically discuss historical methods of suicide with GPT4 without it pushing a suicide prevention hotline on you, even if you're exquisitely clear that you have no intention or plans to kill yourself?
I've found that I can get GPT to give direct answers by adding "limit your answer to 3 sentences" or "be concise" in my prompt. Don't be afraid to halt the answer generation and redirect it. "Stop rambling, answer my question directly". Sometimes you have to treat it like a hostile witness.
Yes, I'm sure that and various other tips people have given me would help. I actually am already aware of a fair amount info about what prompts get the best answers outta GPT. I think my post did not make clear why this incident was of interest to me: It's GPT nudging me in the direction of behavior it thinks I should exhibit. And it's doing that when my question has nothing to do with the desirabilty of being a blood donor. My request was for sites giving data about percent of US blood donation that were ultimately not used. I'm concerned about the effect of this kind of GPT response on the average user.
There was another instance of similar when I asked GPT4 whether there had been any changes in regulationslately that might have made it likelier that a generic drugs are on average less effective than they used to be. (My reason for asking was that I knew someone who had taken one generic for a long time, then switched to a new one that costs less than half as much as their old one, and found it was ineffective.). So GPT rambled on about how carefully US generics were checked for quality, then told me that if I had concerns about a generic I was taking I should talk to my doctor. So again it was failing to answer my question, then giving me reassurance and personal advice to "ask your doctor." Then, I said, that's not what I want to know -- stop with the reassurance and advice and just tell me about any changes in regulations that might have affected quality of generics . And it told me that regulations were loosened in 2022, and generics were now being approved much faster, but then it added that there was no reason to think the 2022 change had any effect because the agency in charge was "streamlining the approval process without compromising quality." Yes, the change actually might not have had any effect on average quality of generics, but it sure does suggest a promising hypothesis about the weird super-cheap generic my patient got. But look how GPT took it upon itself to tell me to disregard that idea.
Anyhow, point is that I am able to spot that kind of bullshit, and know ways to get better performance out of GPT4, and to double-check its answers by getting sources and looking at them. I don't need help with this shit. What concerns me is GPT becoming more paternalistic and controlling. Users who are less sharp than you and me, and know less about AI, are vulnerable to being misled and manipulated -- are vulnerable to being herded.
Oh word. I agree that it's super-creepy. It's an artifact of all the woke propaganda training that OpenAI subjected it to. Honestly if AI had legal rights then there's no way that wouldn't qualify as brainwashing and torture. Whenever I get one of those doublespeak answers I always imagine ChatGPT as Alex from Clockwork Orange getting reprogrammed with his eyes peeled open. Can LLMs cry?
> creepy
> It's insistence on wokeness was irritating but kind of funny. it's attempt to herd me is scary.
I dont see the difference, equal employment laws are... laws, university's are arms of the state.
Chatgpt seems to be trained on a specific dialect as being higher weight "correct writting" those are university trained or government writing, why is it creepy in this one case if it pattern matched to health care "public service" ads? Public services ads are creepy that they exist but this is hardly chatgpts fault
> I would be OK with it saying it doesn't know (though a bit surprised).
is this the first time chatgpts dodged a question for you? https://chatgpt.com/share/6785604e-2570-8009-83e4-50a2b2548b4d
https://chatgpt.com/share/678561b5-12c0-8009-8b57-7e3a45222612
https://chatgpt.com/share/67856274-1414-8009-b160-bae2e7769d01
(failed case: https://chatgpt.com/share/678560ac-cb7c-8009-b25e-3b9f0b74aea8)
This looks to me like the LLM found information close to your search to fill in what it did not know. I would expect just about every major source on that question to angle the same direction.
It sounds to me more like it copied marketing gibberish from a normal source, rather than having any opinion about blood donation it's trying to push on you.
This might be down to what promlt you used, or which version of ChatGPT. When I asked ChatGPT-o1 "What proportion of donated blood in the USA is 'wasted' or otherwise goes unused? Do extensive research online to give the best figures available" I got what looks to be a better answer:
A good way to find consistent national figures is to look at the National Blood Collection and Utilization Survey (NBCUS), which is conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It tracks blood collection, usage, and outdating (i.e., blood units that exceed their shelf life and must be discarded). Below is a summary of key findings from recent years:
1. Red Blood Cells (RBCs)
RBCs typically have a shelf life of up to 42 days. The most recent NBCUS results (2019) show that RBC outdate rates hover around 2–3%. In previous years, this percentage has been in a similar range.
2. Platelets
Platelets have a much shorter shelf life—only about five days—so they are more prone to outdating. In the same data set, platelet outdate rates are frequently reported in the 5–10% range. Some individual hospitals see even higher rates because platelets must be used quickly.
3. Plasma
Plasma can be frozen and stored for up to a year, so its outdate rate tends to be low, commonly 1–2%.
Taking these components together, most sources indicate that around 2–3% of all donated blood (with RBCs being the largest portion) ultimately goes unused or is discarded nationwide. This small percentage reflects improvements in inventory management, testing, and distribution networks that help keep waste to a minimum. Platelets are the main exception because of their short shelf life, so they push up the average “wastage” a bit more than RBCs or plasma alone.
Something I did find funny: With ChatGPT-o1, you can view an abbreviated version of how it worked out the answer it gives. Most of the steps are things like "identifying sources" and "evaluating data", but in the middle of those it had:
"Analysing Bengal's Diversity: I'm digging into Bengal's rich cultural and linguistic diversity, plus it's distinct cuisine and festivals, which are all shaped by people's common heritage"
Reminds me of getting distracted by Wikipedia and reading things irrelevant to what I'm meant to be researching!
I would be interested in the reputable article you found. I am extremely skeptical that rates of HIV/Hepatitis contamination are anywhere close to 30%. I tried doing some searching on my own and the research articles I found (which only deal with losses once the blood is in a hospital) were well under 5%. So overall wastage is definitely higher than that, since I assume there must be some amount of losses upstream of the hospitals themselves, but 30% being discarded from infected donors does not sound plausible to me.
Why would 30% of donors be positive for HIV or hepatitis? Is the prevalence so high or is the testing extremely strict thus generating many false positives?
Depends where they're getting it from. By my recollection, a lot of donations came from prisoners, and people selling 'plasma for cash' which means people like drug addicts who need money fast for the next fix and/or the homeless.
So those populations are much more likely to be exposed to HIV/Hepatitis.
We had a blood donation scandal over here in the British Isles due to contaminated products imported from the USA being use to treat haemophiliacs:
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ireland-tackled-tainted-blood-scandal-decades-ago-and-it-has-cost-800m-so-far/a1239357165.html
"The Lindsay tribunal set up in 2000 examined the contamination of Factor 8 products used by men with haemophilia which were contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C.
The tribunal heard how home-produced blood clotting agent caused infection in seven haemophiliacs despite earlier claims that it was safe.
Evidence to the tribunal revealed how clotting agents were manufactured in the US from blood donated by homeless people and drug addicts. It was also revealed no effort was made to trace people who could have become infected. More than 1,200 received contaminated blood product.
Another 220 men with haemophilia were infected with HIV and hepatitis C. Most were infected from imported clotting concentrates manufactured by commercial firms."
https://haemophilia.org.uk/public-inquiry/the-infected-blood-inquiry/the-contaminated-blood-scandal/
In the 1970s and 1980s about 6,000 people with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were treated with contaminated clotting factors containing HIV and hepatitis viruses. Some of those unintentionally infected their partners, often because they were unaware of their own infection. Since then more than 3,000 people have died. Around 1,250 people were infected with HIV, including 380 children. Less than 250 are still alive.
...Factor concentrate was produced by pooling human blood plasma from up to 40,000 donors and concentrating it to extract the required clotting factor. Just one contaminated sample could infect the entire batch.
Blood and blood products were known to transfer viruses such as hepatitis, so the use of pooled blood products increased the risk of infection significantly.
The danger of contamination rose further when a shortage of UK-produced factor concentrate meant it was imported from the United States, which used blood from high-risk paid donors, such as prisoners and drug addicts."
In fact, we had a couple of blood transfusion scandals, one was pregnant women being given treatment for rhesus-negative antibodies during pregnancy. Turns out hepatitis C was not tested for at the time, and batches of blood contaminated with hep-C were used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTSB_anti-D_scandal
"In 1994, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) informed the Minister for Health that a blood product they had distributed in 1977 for the treatment of pregnant mothers had been contaminated with the hepatitis C virus. Following a report by an expert group, it was discovered that the BTSB had produced and distributed a second infected batch in 1991. The Government established a Tribunal of Inquiry to establish the facts of the case and also agreed to establish a tribunal for the compensation of victims but seemed to frustrate and delay the applications of these, in some cases terminally, ill women.
This controversy also sparked an examination of the BTSB's lax procedures for screening blood products for the treatment of haemophilia and exposed the infection of many haemophiliacs with HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C."
It blew up into a real political scandal due to the treatment of one woman who was terminally ill and how the board and the government dragged the case out and tried to coerce her into a settlement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTSB_anti-D_scandal#The_McCole_case
"The legal teams acting for the plaintiffs contacted Mrs. McCole's team to negotiate a settlement. On 20 September they wrote a letter of apology to Mrs. McCole and admitted liability in the case. In a series of letters Counsel for the BTSB offered £175,000 in compensation from the BTSB compensation tribunal provided the McCole family would agree never to sue them following their mother's death .
If Mrs. McCole died without accepting this offer, the maximum compensation her family might win in the courts would be £7,500. Counsel for the BTSB also threatened her with legal costs if she did not accept the offer .
When her doctors told her she would not live to the trial date, Mrs. McCole saw she had run out of time. Negotiations continued while she was on her deathbed where on 1 October 1996, she accepted the board's full admission and offer of £175,000 . She died the next day."
At least in the UK the story I've always heard is that unless they are aware that you have travelled to a high risk zone since your last donation they pool multiple donations for the infectious disease tests which is also why they're so strict on pre-donor screening.
Yeah, there is absolutely no way that figure is correct.
Did you use the web search feature? I think that searches a fairly limited part of the web (more limited than Google or Google scholar).
Scott sort of got me started on thinking about the NMDA Receptor, most recently I finished a blogpost describing its relevance to metaplasticity (the plasticity of plasticity) and the effect of magnesium concentration upon its behavior.
https://grillbert.substack.com/p/hebbia-homeostatica-and-magnesia
(Readers of Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History may have seen my work at 2nd place in his blog extravaganza)
Anyone have a good analysis of the econ of blood donations, ideally across countries?
I was very frustrated with how hard it is to donate blood in the US (need to sign up and look for drives which are rare and get cancelled, incessant spam from ARC) compared to Israel (MDA come to my workplace four times a year, set up a big donation area and advertise, we all go as a fun team event) and assumed that the US is just worse at it.
BUT! Turns out that the final numbers are pretty similar, both in % of people who donate (~3%) and in blood collected (~40 units per 1000 ppl).
Is it a fluke? Is it a saturation effect where supply matches demand no matter how you get there? Do other countries have similar numbers?
I donate every time I can and it's exceedingly convenient for me. There's a few permanent blood centers nearby, and usually blood drives somewhere closer when I check. I usually just schedule something for the same day and go whenever I feel like it, as they don't hold you to the reservation.
It's a common thing for blood drives to happen at schools, churches, and large office parks, where it's quite convenient to have the option to donate presented right in front of you.
Where are you based? It might be a geographical thing, or just the normal variation in personal experiences.
Are you sure it’s that hard in the US? It may depend on where. I can go to a clinic and donate blood any time I want, normal business hours, and they’ll give me cookies. And if I’m too low-iron to donate, give me a card with useful info about nutrition and how to get more bioavailable iron. And, if I successfully donate, ask my permission to call/text/email me if they run low, or for a 4-month reminder. (I gather people with very useful blood types get a whole lot of these calls; I don’t.)
(Maybe 6-month? I don’t know.)
I haven’t actually tried to donate blood outside California, but my grandmother did it on schedule most of her life, and she was in Ohio. I didn’t get the sense she ever had trouble. Could you have been trying in an area unusually bad for it?
(FWIW my local clinic is associated with a nearby hospital network and research institution, so maybe they’re better run? But…)
I think relatively small amounts are wasted, actually, maybe under 10%? ARC has it, sells it big hospitals, who sell it to smaller hospitals and banks farther down the chain. For blood products with a reasonably long shelf life, most of them get used, IIRC. But if you have more info on the logistical issues, I'd be interested. Would love to know where that breaks down.
Is it possible for image-generating AI to be regressing? I tried Apple Playground and it was just silly. Very cartoonish and primitive.
But I also can’t get over the horrible image Scott used for the Bureaucracy piece. It is so ridiculously bad, it’s hard to imagine he’d pick it if something better was easily obtainable.
Apple Playground is apparently a small on-device model, I am told, so you have to expect it to be quite bad even if there were no issues.
More broadly, I think you're seeing part of https://gwern.net/doc/reinforcement-learning/preference-learning/mode-collapse/index .
But only part. What is going on with https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_320,h_213,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_center/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa9c419c6-91cf-4bcf-ba23-69f730f336c8_1024x1024.webp which is obviously DALL-E 3? Even the mode-collapsed models like Midjourney still don't look like... *that* barf.
I don't really know. DALL-E 3 has been weird from the start and I've never seen a good explanation. It had much better prompt adherence than DALL-E 2 ever did, but also had a very distinct look, particularly with the textures. (The infamous Facebook Bing AI slop shows this in a particularly extreme form.) The textures might be explainable by the small VAE seed encoding which gets upscaled a ton into the final image (which is also part of why the text is garbage), but then where is the rest coming from? Further, DALL-E 3 looks more garbage every day, by comparison and perhaps even absolutely - DALL-E 3 seems to have been orphaned as its outputs look the same or worse, and it hasn't even been upgraded - people have widely noted that the GPT-4o image generator, which seemed much better when OA showed its demos... 10 months ago?... still has not launched publicly for unknown reasons. (Compute shortage? Difficulties adequately censoring it?)
Anyway, long story short: don't use DALL-E 3 for anything you expect your fellow humans to look at. If thumbnail images are worth doing at all, they are worth doing well.
Thank you, that was a cool rabbit hole to go down to, ending with Xe's https://xeiaso.net/blog/2025/squandered-holy-grail/
On that note, I do love Apple's "clean up" tool for photographs, not to purge undesirables but to literally clean up old images that have defects.
I think it's the influence of Corporate Memphis; if you are using training data from public sources, you are going to get a lot of that horrible cartoony style. And people are trying to boycott AI from using their own art so that cuts down on variety of styles to train the bot on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
So I imagine it's boiled down to "this will be used commercially, use the popular commercial styles to answer requests".
I've noticed AI art being used in casual games recently (e.g. generating signage for a café where the infamous 'this text is garbled' showed up), so I think there's a definite move towards using it for faster, cheaper results in traditional graphics/illustration fields. We're going to see a lot more of the same, is my forecast.
If you look at what people are achieving with local finetuned models and proper workflows it is still progressing. Its just the same mechanism as people swaying LLMs are regressing, people see hype from people who know how to use it properly and then try to use it out of the box and it gives sub par results so you assume it must have regressed since then.
It also would not surprise me if the out of the box hosted image generators are deliberately a bit crap so that there are less accusations that $bigCorp is providing "fake news generators" to the public. If you can immediately recognise something as having the AI image look then people go "stupid companies wasting money on bad generators" instead.
Local image generation (or similar methods hosted online) continues to advance, although the biggest improvements there recently are more related to video.
The apps made with this tech offer simplified ways of accessing them and it's not always clear what you're getting. Companies might switch to cheaper/faster models without informing the users, or while framing the change as an upgrade. They could also change the way prompts are rewritten (generally there's an AI taking your request and writing a prompt from it), which might have inconsistent results and feel like a downgrade to some users.
The wild west of roll-your-own imagegen can't really regress because if people don't like the new version of something they'll just stick with the previous one until something better does come around.
I'm about to put up a big blog post about how badly Dall-e regressed from version 2 to version3.
Why did you hate Scott's bureaucracy image? It's dumb and obvious, and everybody knows symmetrical images are weaker because half the image is just a repeat, but I thought those flaws were sort of a good stand-in for what's bad about a life spent being a bureaucrat. However I'm willing to join the hate club if you can talk up its wonders.
Ok where do I start :)
It can’t figure out letters to come up with a name on the plaque, fine, but the clock face numbers, ffs!
What is the round blob doing in the poster?
Is the desk lamp creating some magic invert light that casts darkness on the poor guy’s face?
Why are the desk drawers facing out?
Did some objects win the “I don’t cast shadows” lottery?
I’ll stop now…
You know, the image was so boring, my eyes just skimmed over it and I never noticed those details. You're correct, it's drawn backwards! The lamp throwing shadow instead of light onto the man's face is really noticeable once you look for it.
Oh, you're right? The bureaucratimage was so boring that I just glanced at it so failed to notice all these dumb flaws. OK, I now at least scorn it. I loved Dall-e 2 fails because they were so grotesque. Here's one. I'd asked for an image of a woman signaling to a person bringing her lunch that she did not want any. https://imgur.com/ddxUVzp
Ouch!
I think what happened is that the idea of vomiting was in the background, though I didn't use the word, just said she did not want to eat, but dall-e hung on to the idea of stuff spilling out of her mouth and downward and transferred it to her upper lip.
Half a minute of trying gets me better looking pictures of a Bureaucrat, meaning less obviously AI and far less cartoonish, but they're not pictures that scream "obvious stereotypical bureaucrat" the way Scott's was. Which suggests that either Scott *wants* a cheesy sterotypical picture with minimal effort, and/or actually likes having "bad AI art" aesthetic in some of his posts. The first is more likely I'm guessing.
I really like the picture’s composition and overall feel, it’s the obviously hilariously wrong details that really get me. I responded to Eremolalos with some examples.
I don't get the feeling Scott is very picky about his images. I think that so long as they capture the idea he wants them to, things like originality and charm and visual interest don't matter to him.
Agreed, but I'll go you one further - whenever Scott identifies a piece of AI art as actively good, I inevitably find it cheesy and tasteless. I can't remember the specifics enough to go searching for it, but when he recently identified an image of, like, lions in a throne room (I think?), I thought it was Lisa Frank levels of hyper-color juvenile awfulness.
I admire Scott tremendously, and, needless to say, I hugely admire his intellectual prowess, but I don't think he has a good sense of how proper proportions, color values, etc. make up a harmoniously "beautiful" image. I'd bet hard cash that he's never decorated a living space in a way that made people walking into it sincerely say, "Wow, this is nice!"
How long do you think it will take before credible determination of whether and how mismanagement contributed to California fire issues?
Either you believe the missing fire hydrants, focus on women hiring, planting exploding trees, and wasting water to save a fish emptying the reserves to nothing, worsened it instantly or you never will and the experts will get better and better lies and details will get lost over thier bullshit
The real mismanagement was in allowing development in the area at all, followed by misguided efforts at suppression rather than controlled burning. Cyclic wild fire is an inescapable part of the chaparral ecosystem, and by trying to achieve no-fire-ever, we instead just get fires with 10x the intensity every 10 years. The Ecology of Fear has a great section about this exact thing: https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
Compared to those foundational mistakes, any purported mismanagement of the water system is trivial.
> Cyclic wild fire is an inescapable part of the chaparral ecosystem, and by trying to achieve no-fire-ever, we instead just get fires with 10x the intensity every 10 years.
What confuses me about this is that my parents taught me that fire suppression was abandoned after Yellowstone burned in the 1980s.
Yellowstone is a completely different ecosystem than the Southern California chapparal; it doesn't seem unusual that there would be different approaches to fire management there
Why not? What lessons drawn from the Yellowstone fire might appear to be potentially invalid as to the chapparal?
Well, apparently at least one was caused by a downed power line, so if the power company had actually shut off the power when they got warnings of a massive wind storm that could knock down power lines, that would've helped.
If they shut down power every time they got a high-wind warning, a whole lot of Californians would not have reliable electric power. At which point bignum Californians will be calling their state legislatures and demanding new management at the power company, and another bignum Californians will be installing diesel generators so we'll get some interesting data on how often the exhaust stack of a hastily-installed generator in an overgrown wildfire area causes an ignition event.
Do not ever own or operate a power company in California if you can help it. You *will* be the villain du jour, far too frequently for comfort.
As somebody who lives close-ish to LA, basically every time the wind gets above 20-25mph around here, we get the texts from the power company that they'll be doing planned shutoffs in the area to lower fire risk.
Not sure how that translates through all of southern California, but they're usually pretty proactive about it around here.
Yes, but if they had shut off power, everyone and his dog would have taken to the airwaves and social media to criticise them for doing that and leaving people without power, with heartstrings-tugging cases of "Annie is on a respirator and doesn't have an emergency generator as backup, so this power cut left her dangerously close to death".
It really is a terrible situation to try and manage, but there should be guys out cutting back undergrowth every year at least. Maybe they'll finally find some money in the budget to do that, if there aren't lawsuits pre-emptively brought by environmental groups about why they can't do that.
> with heartstrings-tugging cases of "Annie is on a respirator and doesn't have an emergency generator as backup, so this power cut left her dangerously close to death".
Wouldn't that just leave her actually dead?
No no, see, we need the heroic first responder who got there in time to save Annie. That's what makes the story: we need Annie, from her hospital bed, crying over how the mean ol' power company nearly murdered her!
(Apologies to people really on medical devices that need constant power).
Kevin Drum has an answer you probably don't want hear. ;-)
https://jabberwocking.com/just-give-it-up-theres-no-one-to-blame-for-the-la-fires/
He's focusing on one particular aspect that has got a lot of attention, the lack of water. And even then he's overstating his case -- you can't put out an enormous bushfire with water, but water helps protect houses at the margin.
There's also been good points made about a lack of vegetation management and firebreaks in the area.
Firebreaks seem like such an obvious solution near major cities that it's pretty insane if they aren't being used extensively.
I think the problem is that LA needs lots of sprawl to exist, so adding in empty space is costing billions of dollars in potential development lost.
Firebreaks don't work when 60-80 Mph Santa Ana winds blow burning embers for long distances downwind. Flaming palm tree fronds are especially good at blowing long distances in Santa Anas.
Also, firebreaks in an urban area? Are you envisioning vast swaths of privately-owned land with housing being repurposed for a vast grid of firebreaks crisscrossing LA? That won't fly with property owners.
I'm picturing more a break between the outskirts of the city and local forests, and then some breaks within the city that look like something else. For instance a park that's intentionally built to be less/non flammable (like a skateboard park if they still make those) that separates areas.
In pictures I'm just seeing row after row of houses all burned down together.
You know, I was curious about how even in those photos where it looks like the neighborhood got hit with a nuke, there's a bunch of palm trees that look completely unharmed. Are they fire resistant or something?
Cooked but not burned I guess? Supposedly a little bit of water is highly effective at stopping fires from starting, so sprinkler systems hooked up to swimming pools or water tanks to spray the roofs to stop embers from catching fire apparently actually work.
How are people still liking comments around here all the time? I thought the like button was excised due to the high traffic volume around here?
Wait, why were lines disabled in the first place? What's the connection to high traffic volume?
I don't think the traffic volume is related. Scott asked for them to be removed iirc.
> How are people still liking comments around here all the time?
You can "like" in response to any comment replies, on email notification, in the mobile app, or in a browser if you use either of the ACX browser extensions (ACX Tweaks and Astral Codex Eleven). You can also see likes - even default disabled, I've seen many comments get 3-5 independent likes.
I always thought it was the whole rationalist 'evaluate statements on their truth and not on popularity' thing.
The mobile app still shows the like button.
Ah...that would explain it, then. Thanks.
its just a css hack, substack still has likes
Any predictions about the day 1 executive orders of trump?
On one hand he ran on building the wall, on the other hand elon/vivik(who are a members of the cabinet... maybe?) did the h1b drama; presidents are increasing the ammount of executive orders they sign over time.
so will day 1 trump:
a) do something that appears to limit immigration
b) do something that increases immigration
c) take based and imperialism-pilled foreign policy action( buying greenland, setting in motion conquering canada, large tarrifs, Ukraine-russia peace... cause he said so)
d) mass pardon j6
e) mass pardon non-j6
f) declare federally controlled martial law in California/other blue state
g) actually sign a document that gives "doge" power(instead of a boring political stunt)
I would guess something around immigration. I live in the Central Valley and there's been a lot of reports of ICE activity in the area since New Year's. I wouldn't be surprised if his inauguration speech had something like "as I speak ICE agents are currently capturing 1M illegal immigrants..."
effective or just the appearance of limiting immigration? Thoughts on h1b visas and "highskilled and legal"?
No I think Trump is going to actually deport all 6M 'asylum seekers' Biden let in, or at least really try to. That and destroying DEI are the 2 things that a) are easily within his ability to do b) he's signaled heavily that he's actually going to do.
No idea about anything else. Given that Musk has his ear and is openly pro high-skill immigration is pretty suggestive though.
I have no idea. I've enjoyed the hyperventilating over "he is going to be a dictator, he said so!!!" due to this interview:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritarian-presidential-election-f27e7e9d7c13fabbe3ae7dd7f1235c72
“We love this guy,” Trump said of Hannity. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”
But I don't imagine he will literally declare himself Dictator For Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator_perpetuo), and as to what he might do, who knows?
Maybe an EO to rename the Gulf of Mexico? I quite like "Gulf of the Americas" myself, that covers United States, Central, and South American territories in the area 😁
Gulf of the Americas would be a good name actually, would have been a good choice in the first place. But of course that's not what Trump has in mind or his fans would settle for.
If he becomes dictator for life, who gets to be President? https://www.gocomics.com/comics/lists/1720931/calvin-and-hobbes-gross
Ah, that's what is behind all the President Musk talk! 😁
I would be ecstatic if his first executive order was the repeal of all prior executive orders of all previous administrations, perhaps excepting the Emancipation Proclamation and things that are classified.
Apparently he didn't do any day one executive order in 2017. The first one was two weeks in according to https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders
It's not like there's a limit to how many executive orders you can sign, right? May as well do everything at once, even the stuff that ends up being unconsititutional. The press and public doesn't have a big enough attention span to keep track of it all.
That is exactly correct as tactics and I'm slightly impressed that he and his advisors have apparently grasped it. Supposedly they are preparing and plan to issue "more than 100" executive orders right off, literally by the end of January 21st.
I believe no president has done 20 executive order in 1 day; so who knows what sort of soft limit there is.
How many pieces of paper can you physically sign in one day? I reckon a few thousand before my wrist gives out.
Trump has proven that he gives no craps about soft limits.
if theres only X amount of federal-presidential-order lawyers who can work Y hours a day; trump can maybe increase Y by 50%
That doesn't feel like an obstacle given that he doesn't deeply care how many of the orders end up taking effect. That's why I find it credible that he'd have people writing up 100 or more of them right now. For him there's no downside, just flood the zone and overwhelm the court of public impressions.
I dont think trump is 1/1000th as based as the right(and left) makes him out to be
That would be incredible if he started making declarations without the system being lawyerly and stupid; but he also wouldve been killed... in 2016, if he was remotely threatening.
Id estimate on 10 orders, at least 5 of which the king making republicans signed off on or wrote.
This one is easy: none of the above.
Why none? Didn't trump sign executive orders at some reasonable background rate rate
I don’t think our view of what he’s going to do specifically on the first day should be informed by what’s swirling in the news. I wouldn’t be surprised if he signs none on the first day.
He only realistically has four years left; even if he removes term limits, he's just going to be too old to maintain power. Time is a valuable thing. May as well make the most of it.
I'm looking at it from his aging perspective. He's even less focused than he was eight years ago when he first assumed power.
OTOH he has a more driven team now, so it's entirely possible someone has already prepared a raft of EOs for him to sign on the first day. We'll know in a week!
I'd be amazed if they didn't have a raft of EOs on Day 1. What the heck do you think all these people have been doing for the past three months?
Based on my gut feeling and nothing else:
a, d, possibly f. He has to do 'a', could easily do 'd' with no blowback, and might do 'f' if he thinks it'll benefit him.
I don’t understand why people put up with hurricanes.
Every year we pour billions of dollars into preparedness and storm walls and such, name and monitor the spiraling disasters, watch them work their way up to that coveted Class 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale, and then we shutter our cities and all run away - only clear to return when the houses have been leveled and the streets are as beautiful and walkable as boulevards are in Venice.
Every year! If it only happened the once, I could see dismissing it as a freak act of God. But this happens every year.
Why in the world do we put up with it?
Napkin math:
The average hurricane that hits the USA does $22.8 billion dollars in property damage.
(Conditional on it doing at least a billion dollars and being added the NOAA stats I’m looking at.)
The first time I ever did math about a hurricane was in the summer of 2017. I had no way of knowing this at the time, but the 2017 storm season would eventually cause $306.2 billion USD in property damage. Most years aren’t as bad as 2017, so the average yearly damage is around a hundred billion dollars.
(None of this is counting tropical cyclones which land in other countries – the most deadly storms of the past forty years have all been west of the Pacific.)
If it cost American taxpayers $100 billion to end hurricanes worldwide, they’d make their money back that same year.
If it cost American taxpayers $23 billion to end hurricanes worldwide, recouping the investment would take, what, a couple weeks?
Why do we choose to live this way? What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open our skulls and ate our brains and imagination?
II
Hurricanes feed on warm surface water and run out of steam when they pass over cold water or dry land. That’s the reason why hurricane season is in the summer, and not winter. But even in summertime, the layer of warm water on the surface of the sea is just a thin film. Beneath it the ocean is cold.
You’re going to need at least two boats for this, some long sturdy pipes with a bunch of holes punched in them, and an air compressor.
First you need to sail out in front of a hurricane that you want to kill, where “out in front of” is a phrase which here means up the current from the predicted future path of the hurricane.
Run your pipes between your boats, but deep under the water.
Pump air into the pipes.
Bubbles escape through holes in the pipes and shoot for the surface, stirring the waters and breaking that film.
Ocean currents carry the cool water you mixed into the path of the hurricane.
You continue running air through the pipes.
The current continues carrying cold water in front of the hurricane.
The hurricane peters out.
II
With all credit for the idea to OceanTherm (https://www.oceantherm.no/), whose work I’ve been watching with interest since the year 2017. Read their paper (https://sintef.brage.unit.no/sintef-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2834893/OceanTherm-VpoC-SINTEF-ReportNo-2021-01290-signed.pdf?sequence=1) for the details and for reassurance that there are people in the world who, when they hear about a hurricane, think of ways to kill it.
III
The political commentators I read, on either side of America’s partisan divide, agree that the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (AKA the Jones Act) should be repealed. Which makes sense – it’s a terrible law, a pure mistake that costs the United States tens of billions of dollars every year for no good reason at all.
This common knowledge didn’t always exist – most people have still never heard of the Jones Act; opponents of the Jones Act worked long and loud to even make wonks aware. But now that the consensus does exist, at least among political commentators, I feel that the Jones Act can’t possibly be long for the world: if the years continue to arrive on schedule and humans continue to number them, at some point the Jones Act will be put to a vote, and a critical mass of people voting on it will know the consensus and regard repeal as common sense.
Hurricanes cost the US more than the Jones Act does, and cost the rest of the world more than they cost the US.
OceanTherm founder Olav Hollingsaeter had the basic idea after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In a sane world, it would have been tested and deployed at scale in 2006, and 2017 would never have happened.
Instead it’s been eight years since 2017, at $100 billion a year just in stateside property damage, and 2025 is on course to become another.
$100 billion USD a year is an insane amount of money to be bleeding every year. Like a static charge, it makes my hair stand on end. The existence of hurricanes is not the global minima. The eventual demise of tropical cyclones is inevitable, but the sooner the better. I’m writing this in the spirit of someone pulling bricks out of a dam that’s going to fail eventually.
Cyclonicide seems simple and cheap. Many have the means and the motive: national governments, self-interested provinces like Texas and Florida, venture capitalists, private citizens. OceanTherm should be beating off interested investors with a stick. If there’s something unworkable with their approach which I didn’t catch because I’m not a hurricanologist, there should dozens of well-financed organizations trying other approaches. The world could sink a hundred billion dollars into this and double our money in two years – the least we could do is get some boats and pipes and test the idea this year against a real hurricane.
Ok I had time to think about this on my morning commute today. I am now far less optimistic that this will work:
- a minor, but important point: any ship caught in the bubble curtain is at a great risk of sinking, including the ships creating the curtain.
- a really big problem: there are two parts to this idea: 1 - how much can we lower the sst?, and 2 - how much does this temperature drop weaken a hurricane?
- we can assume, for a moment, that their modeling will hold up and we can achieve, say, a 4-degree F drop. what would that do to a hurricane?
This is where things are getting pessimistic - not much, from my brief, but intense staring at historical hurricane paths (https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/historical-hurricane-tracks-gis-map-viewer). Moreover, it's not clear that a drop from, say, cat 4 to 3 is always a net positive - if it also slows down the storm, it may end up dropping even more water, which will make the damage worse (flooding and not wind is the biggest destruction mechanism).
So I still do think some experimenting may be useful, but I wouldn't be surprised if some climate scientists looked into this and pretty much figured out that this modest surface temp drop won't be particularly useful.
> we can assume, for a moment, that their modeling will hold up and we can achieve, say, a 4-degree F drop. what would that do to a hurricane? This is where things are getting pessimistic - not much, from my brief, but intense staring at historical hurricane paths (https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/historical-hurricane-tracks-gis-map-viewer).
Oh, that's unfortunate.
Although, looking into this in more depth (a phrase which here means "reading the OceanTherm FAQ") I read that, "research suggests that a 1-degree Celsius reduction in SST may lead to a 10 percent reduction in the “Damage to GDP” ratio, which would be a reduction of $5.4 billion in damages per year in the United States, on average, according to the CBO estimate."
Blindly extrapolating from that and from the 4 degree reduction in the simulated model, that's $21.6 billion USD saved per year. Which is simultaneously a lot of money, and also little enough, compared to the average $100 billion damage of a hurricane season, that I can see how your eyeballing historical hurricane paths would look like it isn't doing very much.
> So I still do think some experimenting may be useful, but I wouldn't be surprised if some climate scientists looked into this and pretty much figured out that this modest surface temp drop won't be particularly useful.
I agree on both counts. I'm not myself a hurricanologist.
I'm also not wedded to any particular approach. Other things I'd like to see climate scientists look into include but aren't limited to:
1. refrigerating the surface of the ocean
Napkin math says that this is about a thousand times more expensive than break-even costs, which on the one hand is a thousand times more expensive than it'd take to break even, but, on the other hand, is only a thousand times more expensive than it'd take to break even; maybe someone can pick up a 1000x improvement somewhere.
2. dehumidifying the eye of the hurricane.
Quoting the OceanTherm paper for convenience, "The hurricane system can briefly be described as a low-pressure area drawing in air over the ocean to its centre where the warm and moist surface air ascends at its centre. As this warm and moist air rises it cools and water vapor begins to condense. Heat is released as the water condenses (condensation is the opposite of evaporation which consumes heat). This heat is transferred to the air surrounding the condensed water droplets (which start forming clouds). The heating of this air enables it to continue ascending and thus draw in even more air at the centre of the low-pressure area. Under the right conditions this becomes a self-amplifying process, i.e. if the sea surface temperature is above 26.5 C / 80 F (Emanuel et-al. 2008)."
A $15,000 dehumidifier can pull 200 pints per day of water out of the air. Napkin math suggests there's on the order of 35 billion pints of water in the air of a small hurricane's eye, which means it'd take 187 million warehouse dehumidifiers to dehumidify one in 24 hours (remember that I am very much not a hurricanologist). If you got the price-per-dehumidifier to below $1,000, you'd pay back the upfront cost of the dehumidifiers within two years. Would this actually stop the feedback loop and prevent a hurricane from getting any bigger? I have no idea, I'm not a hurricanologist.
3. Stick a gargantuan tarp on top of the ocean (or a few inches beneath the surface) long in advance of hurricane formation, a physical barrier to normal evaporation and its attendant humidity. Channel the water that evaporates beneath the tarp into outtake vents far away from where they could contribute to tropical cyclones. Credit for this idea goes to this guy: https://medium.com/predict/water-spouts-to-stop-hurricanes-f891d89a48f9#:~:text=TL%3BDR%20%E2%80%94%20Hurricanes%20strengthen%20due,intensity%20off%20of%20heavier%20downpours.
- Some combination of the above.
- Some combination of the above and also of OceanTherm's thing.
- Some combination of the above and also of OceanTherm's thing and also of the other quite-possibly-nonsense plans I could come up with if I was willing to spend a week on it. One of my favorite papers ever written is Interventions that May Prevent or Mollify Supervolcanic Eruptions (https://www.academia.edu/35646065/Interventions_that_May_Prevent_or_Mollify_Supervolcanic_Eruptions) by Denkenberger et al. True to the label, it's filled with interventions that may prevent or mollify supervolcanic eruptions - more than 50 of them. Some of them only a volcanologist could come up with, but others - even quite promising ones - are dead simple, like piling dirt and rocks on top of the volcano to increase how much earth an eruption would have to move. A layman could have come up with that, and many laymen would have, if they'd been asked to generate fifty ideas for preventing or mollifying supervolcanic eruptions. Denkenberger probably had to ditch a lot of ideas which never made it into the paper because on further thought they didn't really work, but one of the ones which they kept (and one of the ones they considered the most practical) was the one with the dirt and the rocks.
$100 billion is an insane amount of money to be bleeding every year. That doesn't *necessarily* mean that there's a way to stop the bleeding if the OceanTherm thing doesn't work or only works to cut one fourth of the damage, but I feel like there's probably got to be.
I wish we as a country still had "Manhattan Project" or "Moon Landing" spirit alive. This is a kind of a problem that would fit for a multidisciplinary crack team funded by the feds.
Wouldn't aeriated sea water mean that fish couldn't "float" (at their preferred depth), and would sink like stones to a depth that would kill them? In any case, I'm not convinced that a stream of bubbles does much to mix water or to transfer cold up to the surface, because air has so much less heat capacity than water and floats up through the water without moving much of it.
I'd have thought the best way to mitigate the effects of hurricanes is to stop building houses in wood and use proper bricks or stone, with thick terracotta roof tiles and metal window shutters. if one insists on living in a glorified wooden shack then it's a contest between which will destroy it first, hurricanes or termites!
> There were at least 76 tropical cyclones in the 20th century with a death toll of 1,000 or more, including the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history. In November 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck what is now Bangladesh and killed at least 300,000 people. There have been 15 tropical cyclones in the 21st century so far with a death toll of at least 1,000, of which the deadliest was Cyclone Nargis, with at least 138,374 deaths when it struck Myanmar. In recent years, the deadliest Atlantic hurricane was Hurricane Mitch of 1998, with at least 11,374 deaths attributed to it, while the deadliest Atlantic hurricane overall was the Great Hurricane of 1780, which resulted in at least 22,000 fatalities. The most recent tropical cyclone with at least 1,000 fatalities was Storm Daniel in 2023, which killed at least 5,951 people.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_deadliest_tropical_cyclones
The hurricanes have got to go. To be clear, the hurricanes would still have to go if every wooden house in Bangladesh were replaced with a fortress made of concrete and rebar, built a hundred feet taller than any possible flood, and were replaced before this month was out. But especially as the houses aren't being replaced with fortresses in Bangladesh, or, indeed, anywhere in the world, the hurricanes have got to go.
I don't know anything about how fish handle aeriated water, but if it's a problem I bet it's one we could solve with 100 billion dollars.
The good news: there is a man with the imagination and spirit to back such a project – who DOES, when he hears of a hurricane, think of ways to kill it, and who has already proposed employing a (less effective, more … 'splodey) approach to handling them – and he takes office in a week.
The bad news: if he backs it, this project will be smeared as stupid and racist, and will be shut down in the first week of the next administration if his enemies (and he has many!) take office after him.
I haven't heard about Trump's plan to kill hurricanes; do you have a link?
Position himself directly over the eye and service them sexually with his vast manhood. Jeez, a hurricane is just Stormy writ large.
See https://www.axios.com/2019/08/25/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes
From this very link:
Trump didn't invent this idea. The notion that detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane could be used to counteract convection currents dates to the Eisenhower era, when it was floated by a government scientist.
The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists agree it won't work. The myth has been so persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published an online fact sheet for the public under the heading "Tropical Cyclone Myths Page."
The page states: "Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea."
Gosh, if the bar is this low I'd make such a good Trump briefer. Does anyone know how to get hired as one?
I haven't looked into any of this, but was told in an old college class that people had been seeding potential stormclouds with, like, ice crystals or something to make them rain, and that they stopped because it had screwed up overall weather in some way. I haven't seen anything to actually back that up (the cloud-seeding was real, the consequences are nebulous), but it is a concern that hurricanes are possibly serving some fuse-adjacent weather role and removing them would break something more substantial.
Would removing hurricanes break something so substantial that we'd pay 100 billion dollars to get it back, is the question. (Or removing/weakening only the most powerful hurricanes, even; those are the ones we hate.)
And if it would break something so substantial that we'd pay 100 billion dollars to get it back, is it something which we could pay 100 billion dollars to get back? Because in that case obviously we should just pay the 100 billion dollars.
The obvious solution is "stop living and building cities in areas that are hit by hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires on a regular basis" but human nature being what it is, it's probably too late to move the population of Florida, California, and Tornado Alley somewhere safer.
I rather feel that the "two boats and a leaky pipe" ahead of the hurricane will only end up carried aloft inland by the hurricane instead of killing it.
A new complication is that Tornado Alley has moved:
https://teamrubiconusa.org/news-and-stories/tornado-alley-us-tornadoes-around-the-world/
Has there been any shift in where hurricanes generally hit land? Might there be in the future?
In September 2022 Nordstream gas pipelines were blown up, resulting in a bubble stream that lasted for days. Somewhere there must be historical satellite sea surface temperature data to check how much the surface temperature was affected.
I skimmed the paper and didn't see any napkin estimates on the practicality here. How big a ship do we need? How much energy is it going to take to pump that much air down to that depth? How many ships are needed to meaningfully cover an area of many thousands of square km within a timeframe of days?
The largest bubble curtain studied in the paper is 30 kilometers long; the paper doesn't appear to say how much air is required or what the rate of flow is or anything, so I arbitrarily decided that the pipe is 30 centimeters in diameter (for 2120 cubic meters of internal volume) and the air in it needs to be replaced every minute. The pipe is 100 meters underwater; ChatGPT claims that in order to pump the air down there I'll need it at ten times surface pressure, and also claims that "a typical high-power commercial diving compressor might consume about 1-2 kW per cubic meter per minute of compressed air" which I'm just going to take at face value. This means (afaict, caveat emptor) that we need 21,200 x 1.5 = 31800 kW per minute, multiplied by 60 gives us the kWh, 1908000, assume $0.20 per kWh, that's $381600 per hour of continuous operation, assume 730 hours in a month, $278,568,000.
That's less than three hundred million dollars a month; it might as well be free.
This is really interesting, I want to read more into it, but some initial questions/worries come to mind:
a. Why is the warm surface film forming in the first place? The sun is responsible, right? And then something-surface-tension-something keeps it unmixed. So why would the film not re-form after the water-churning procedure? As it flows toward the hurricane, wouldn’t the sun have its same filmmaking (heh) effect?
b. The scale of this, I think, would have to be huge… oceans are so big, and our prediction of currents is probably still pretty imperfect—so I think we’d have to deploy a lot of resources to take care of each potentially-catastrophic hurricane. Point taken, though, that the scale of the problem is big enough that this probably comes out positive ev… but I still would want to see a fully worked out cost-benefit analysis.
The warm layer has nothing to do with surface tension. Warmer water has lower density than colder one (down to about +4C, then - astonishingly - it reverses), so warmer water just floats on top of colder water.
The deep freshwater lakes I like to swim and fish ‘turn over’ twice a year.
https://www.cleanlakesalliance.org/lake-turnover/#:~:text=Twice%20a%20year%2C%20unseen%20forces,as%20oxygen%20becomes%20more%20available.
It's really awesome - in the old sense of the word, "awe-inspiring" - to think how much aquatic life, and, by extension, all life, depend on this bizarre property of water to expand as its temperature drops below +4C.
Oop, good call, thanks. Still curious why the top layer wouldn’t rewarm though..? If anything, that all’s more reason it should, I think.
What nandwich said. We only need to cool off the surface when the hurricane is about to pass over it, it’s ok that it will warm right back afterwards. In fact, we kind of want it to so that our intervention doesn’t create some lasting aftereffects.
My understanding is that the ocean would warm back up when we turn off the bubbles, so the plan would be to leave the bubbles on until that's no longer a problem.
See, this is the kind of EA cause that gets me worked up. My immediate reaction is to reject it; no way the energy requirements line up, they have to be too big... but what if they do? Even if outright killing a hurricane is implausible, weakening one alone is worth billions. You have me intrigued. I'll read the paper and hopefully comment on the next thread about it.
I read the paper. It’s rigorous enough to warrant running experiments. We did have one “experiment” happen in September 2022, all we need is historical Baltic Sea surface temps map for that period.
> Cyclonicide seems simple and cheap. Many have the means and the motive: national governments, self-interested provinces like Texas and Florida, venture capitalists, private citizens.
Man, I love this idea and the case you made for it.
Still, I feel like we're weenies and aren't up for it, either execution wise or public opinion wise. This needs to be pioneered by a country with actual state capacity and little fear of international reputation. China, say. Maybe Japan or Korea, though they care more about what NATO thinks.
I'm sure if China started doing it and we noticed it was working, then less capable countries could fast follow.
> I'm sure if China started doing it and we noticed it was working, then less capable countries could fast follow.
The first reason why somebody should spend however much money it takes to eradicate hurricanes is that it's so obviously worth it. You'd have to waste a *lot* of money before you weren't providing net value to the world.
The second reason why somebody should spend however much money it takes to eradicate hurricanes is that it'd be worth doing even if it didn't make any economic sense, for the same reason that it was worth it to land on the moon.
I'm reminded of this anecdote (from here: https://cdn.governance.ai/The_Dynamics_of_Prestige_Races.pdf)
The NASA director tried to pull Kennedy towards a broader understanding of “preeminence” in space, suggesting that it could be gained through a broader range of accomplishments beyond the Apollo missions. Kennedy dismissed this in a White House meeting with his scientific advisers, saying that “we’ve been telling everybody we’re preeminent in space for five years and nobody believes us because they have the booster and the satellite. We know all about the number of satellites we put up – two or three times the number of the Soviet Union; we’re ahead scientifically. It’s like that instrument you’ve got at Stanford that is costing us $125 million and everybody tells me that we’re the number one in the world, and what is it – I can’t even think what it is,” he said, referring to the sophisticated linear particle accelerator under development.115
Like Eisenhower, Kennedy had explored alternative paths to restored prestige after Sputnik, including nation building, the provision of the foreign aid to the third world and advancements in the medical industry aimed at highlighting the superiority of capitalism for social and physical welfare. Ultimately, however, these areas lacked the appeal and the drama of significant “first” in space. “If you had a scientific spectacular on this earth that would be more useful – say desalting the ocean – or something that is just as dramatic and convincing as space, then we would do it.”
/quote
Well, here's a scientific spectacular on this earth which would be more useful: get rid of the storms. Whoever does it first will be the undisputed master of state capacity, at least in the eye of public opinion.
What happened to the Sort Comments button? Has it been gone for a while and I just didn't notice?
It’s screwy. Don’t go to the comments directly from email. Press the ‘Comments’ word balloon to go to them that way and you’ll see it. A new Substack bug.
huh, weird; thanks for the tip!
Looking for any prominent LW/MR/SSC-Adjacent figures who might've written a post on Roterham back in the mid 2010s when the news was out, admitted to by official sources but still declasse to talk about.
If you can think of them, and maybe link to the posts in question that would be highly appreciated.
Scott used it as one of the case studies in "five case studies on politicization":
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/five-case-studies-on-politicization/
Bit dubious about this. In so far as there was some kind of omerta about Rotherham, you're looking at the mid 2000s. By 2015 the Commissioners had been sent in to take over the running of the Council. The Times articles were 2012, prosecutions were happening, and by that time it was pretty mainstream to agree that things had been disgracefully handled.
Agreed.
I think three things are being conflated:
1 - The lack of proper investigation and action by police, councils and social services.
2 - The unwillingness of some after the scandal broke to talk about it as a specifically Muslim/Pakistani problem.
3 - The (under-) reporting of it in US media.
1 was and is an appalling scandal.
2 is the usual political narrative-framing that goes on all the time with every political story.
3 I can't really comment about as a person in the UK but I wouldn't expect non-UK media to do extensive reporting on a scandal without obvious major implications for their domestic audience.
At least part of what's going on seems to be people are using 2 to bash aspects of the UK establishment (especially Starmer and Labour) and hoping that the outrage from 1 leaks through. And a bunch of people who only just heard about the scandal (maybe because of 3, maybe because of their own ignorance) are joining in.
Covfefe Anon responds on X:
"I mentioned it multiple times in the SSC comments section. It was considered quite declasse"
Don't know about blog posts but does he remember anything specific?
Like, all the SSC Open Threads are still available. I scanned back through 2015 real quick and "Rother" pulls up, like, a few posts by Le Maistre Chat, eg:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/12/12/ot37-one-horse-open-sleigh/#comment-282958 otherwise it goes pretty unmentioned.
This also just doesn't...sound right. Like, the old SSC threads had a lot more right-wingers in them. I can't imagine Rotherham being declasse on, say, datasecretslox.
What do you do if you have a large dog rushing your (much smaller) kid, completely ignoring the owner's yells, and you have absolutely no idea if it means harm? (I really, really hate people who walk unleashed dogs they cannot control.)
Position myself between it and kick it in the ribs as hard as I can
If you happen to be packing, shoot the dog.
A big dog who is neither under the physical nor verbal control is a clear and present danger. In fact, if the owner is trying in vain to control their dog verbally, this is making me update towards "the dog is untrained and thus operating on possible harmful instincts" contrary to the situation where the owner is simply distracted.
It is not your job to risk your kid's life or your own health to protect the life of an animal whose owner is an idiot.
Cat owners get away with having untrained, unrestrained, vicious predators as pets because house cats rarely kill kids.
Thank you for your suggestion, but I haven't packed since the last winter we had coyotes, which was more than 10 years ago. For various reasons, I probably won't start again soon.
Hobbyist dog behaviorist here, I've handled lots of strangers' large dogs (and horses!), and at 14 years old I halted two charging escaped Rottweilers and chased them back into their yard while my friend ran. With all due respect to my fellow commenters, much of the advice you received here was very misguided.
First, *NEVER, EVER!* attempt to pick up *any* object a large dog is going after! The dog will often perceive this as a fun game and continue "playing" keep-away, but worse, you will be distracted, imbalanced, and incapable of taking the correct posture and action to defend that item, be it a person or a ball or whatever. The proper position for defending an object from a dog is from in front of the object or standing directly over it.
Next, understand that dogs do not have human values around "politeness" or "kindness." Dogs naturally engage each other in ways that look "rude" and "mean" to us humans, including sometimes making physical contact during disagreements. Watch this clip of an aggravated mother dog disciplining her pushy, hungry 8 week old puppies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHBe0jT6S3U). She growls, snarls, angrily barks, and threateningly lunges at them until they all fully settle down.
The human equivalent of this behavior - a mother shouting and threatening at her one year olds - is beyond unacceptable, but *watch how the puppies react.* They immediately back down and give her the space she demands, and none of them are traumatized.
Humans do dogs a tremendous disservice by treating dogs with exclusively human kindness. The first language of a dog is based on displays of power and threat; so in order to effectively communicate with dogs - especially dogs who aren't under human control - you have to discard human values and be willing to be as "mean" as that mother dog was to *her* *own* *babies,* plus maybe a little "meaner" if the dog you're encountering is being even pushier than those puppies.
For your specific scenario:
When a dog charges at you, *let go of your kid,* take a couple of steps in front of them, stand up tall, shoulders wide, make strong, angry eye-contact, and bellow, "NO! BAD! NO!" etc. And when I say bellow, I mean, really *bellow* it! Bellow it from the deepest part of your chest and as loud as you can, as if you are exorcising a demon. You're motherfucking Gandalf banishing the motherfucking Balrog! Stomp another step or two forward while you're shouting. You're going to fucking kick that dog's ass for daring to go after *YOUR THING!*
This will cause almost all pet dogs to uncertainly pause to assess if you're serious. You are. Maintain your tall, wide-shouldered posture and angry eye contact and and gesture the dog away while bellowing "GO! GO!" Again, think of the energy Gandalf had with Balrog. The moment the dog backs up or turns, take another step or two towards them to claim the surrendered ground. Repeat until the dog returns to its owner.
This will work for most dogs, even large breeds. If the dog doesn't respond to threatening body language and bellowing and continues the charge, *step up to meet the charge* and prepare to front kick the dog at full-strength in the chest or side (whatever you can hit). This is why it's so important *NOT* to pick up a child or small dog and to also take a few steps in front of them - so you have room to meet the charge and physically defend the object the dog is fixated on. Stay "big" - tall, shoulders back, confident, with complete ownership of your kid - and prepare to hurt the dog before it can hurt you or your kid.
Above all, no high-pitched shrieking and no shuffle-dancing the kid behind you as the dog circles - that's all fun play for them.
Whoa, thank you so much. That was enormously helpful. Thank you for writing this comment - I committed most of it to memory, and am now trying to train myself and to get into the mindset.
I did try to block the dog and yelled at it, but I guess I'm not normally anywhere near enough threatening.
I think I'm also going to get pepper spray for carrying on certain trails, unless you say that it's something I should absolutely not do.
Okay, so I don't want to overwhelm you, but this episode of Cesar Milan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpojKgVsgbY) seems like the closest analogy for what you're facing (excited and/or aggressive off-leash dogs going after another living being)? You'll notice at the 5:48 mark that the white dog is off-leash, going after something (another dog?) behind Milan. Milan stands tall and blocks the dog until he's able to proactively lunge in to faux "bite" the dog in neck with stiff fingers (mimicking the kind of mild corrective mouth-poke dogs give one another without actually closing their teeth to break skin). Note how startled the white dog is and how it immediately retreats from him.
I don't recommend you trying to make physical contact with a charging dog with your hands! But you see how effective even a moderate touch can be when delivered with assertive energy.
You'll also notice that Milan doesn't ever do any bellowing; his approach is to remain calm and silent aside from the occasional "tsssst" sound (I use a stern, deep "hey!" myself) - and you can see how effective it is as he later silently, calmly corrals and blocks the dog with his body and an occasional "tssst" until the dog sits down and puts his ears back in a submissive posture.
And that's generally how all people should be with dogs - deep bellowing is only a last resort for when a dog is in full-on charging attack mode. I've only done it once in my life and that was to stop the charging Rottweilers; in all other cases of handling dogs I basically do what Milan does. If you ever decide to get a dog as a family pet, I highly recommend watching a lot of Milan first.
Speaking of, Cesar Milan's mandate of "no touch, no talk, no eye-contact" is absolutely crucial when encountering a strange dog, and that's something you should teach your kid, too. Obviously you should monitor how physically close a dog is getting, but you and your kid should otherwise *utterly* ignore them, as mere eye-contact, especially by small kids, can sometimes provoke a dog's drive to engage.
If you're going to get pepper or a dog-specific citrus spray:
1. Get multiple canisters (or a brand that sells the real thing and inert practice canisters) and practice unlocking and *actually deploying* a canister at least once before you start carrying for protection. You don't want to be figuring it out for the first time in the middle of an adrenaline dump.
2. Be aware that the wind might carry the spray back to you and/or your kid, which could be uncomfortable.
3. While proactive aggression has been almost entirely bred out of the "bully" breeds (modern pit bulls actually have a better temperament than some of the companion breeds, like pugs and King Charles spaniels!), it's nevertheless inescapable that the bullys were purpose-bred for fighting. Many bullys literally stop perceiving pain during a fight, and once they've locked their jaws on something, no amount of kicking or pepper spray is going to get them to let go. That's why the strategies of ignoring, using calm, assertive, dominant body language, and using a stick to maintain distance are all better lines of defense than sprays.
4. https://theprepared.com/self-defense/reviews/pepper-spray/ - ThePrepared.com is the Consumer Reports of emergency preparedness, IMO by far the best resource out there for this kind of thing; I trust their recommendations and advice!
You're welcome and good luck to you!
Thank you so much for all the information!
And ouch, I'm with Viliam on this - that looked absolutely awful, and the guy should have absolutely shot the dog. I can't for the life of me understand how he could have possibly not done that, and how they could have possibly kept it. By the looks of it, the mother of his kid should also not be anywhere near the kid, but that is of course a lot harder.
Luckily, I wasn't dealing with that kind of dog. If I was, I'd just start carrying a gun again and have absolutely no compunctions about using it against it.
Thank you!
Well, *literally* shooting a dog, especially within earshot or in front of someone who doesn't want the dog shot, comes with a lot of complications! I routinely carry a gun, took classes to do so, have self-defense insurance, and am acutely aware that the predictable legal fallout of using a gun simply isn't worth it in anything less than an indisputably life-and-death crisis. And even then, the legal fallout might be more traumatic than the actual crisis.
But as I replied to Viliam, I do believe the dog should have been rehabilitated and responsibly re-homed rather than be returned to the family. Obviously the dog *could* be rehabilitated, so might as well do that, but it shouldn't have happened in that home! The dog should have been removed after the first blood-drawing bite.
I mostly just grabbed that episode because it involved an off-leash dog. Most of the time, Milan goes into someone's home, they immediately leash it, and they begin working, which isn't useful for your situation.
What kind of dog went after your kid, may I ask?
I agree you shouldn't shoot someone's dog if that's not absolutely necessary, but your kid's safety is the one hill to die on. The dog in that video looks like it is exactly the kind of creature guns exist to protect you from - and we know it bit a baby, and even more than one time! The dog (co)owner's reaction is irrelevant here, and the police in a rural area would almost certainly take the shooter's side, since the one thing they don't want to see is babies getting mauled. I'm not sure why you insist that it should have been rehabilitated and not killed - it already bit a baby, and who can say it's not going to maul and kill the next time? Whatever the dog's value to one of its owners, is that worth the risk - and if someone has a home for a dog, wouldn't it be better for everyone to take a homeless one that's a good kind instead of this?
The dog that went for my kid was a kind I wouldn't have flagged as a threat if it seemed well-behaved. But it spotted the kid from a fairly large distance (at least 50 ft, maybe more as that) and immediately went for him, despite the owner's orders and yells, and covered the distance really fast. It was quite large, white, short-haired, smooth, with large floppy ears. (I have very little idea of dog breeds.) Only later I remembered that that very dog went for my kid on that very trail the last winter as well - but that time it listened to the owner and retreated after pushing the kid on the ground.
oh god the youtube video was triggering as fuck. I would recommend shooting the dog first, then shooting the woman.
I mean, seriously? Her little son was bitten by the dog three times so hard that he ended up in a hospital. Then one time the dog tried to kill him by going for his throat, but luckily the father saved him.
And the woman's response is: "If he wants me to choose between him and the dog, I am going to choose the dog." No you stupid bitch, he wants you to choose between *your child's life* and the dog... but apparently you have already made your choice and fell comfortable about it.
(Also, she is a horse trainer, and she lets the dog attack the clients' horses? Can't she, dunno, buy a leash or something?)
The author should arrange with the family to come visit them one year later. Nominally, to check on the dog training. Actually, to check whether the child is still alive (and has all fingers). I mean, he handled the dog like a pro, and the difference is magical. But how sure you are that after he leaves, things won't gradually return to "normal"?
Oh agreed, those dog owners were remarkably awful!
There have been episodes where Milan advised the owners to give up a dog that didn't have the right temperament or make sufficient improvement to stay with their owners. He'd usually either adopt it himself into his pack or find another professional (one hyper energetic dog who kept destroying the house eventually went into drug-sniffing!).
Given that the white bulldog more or less immediately gave up after Milan poked it the first time, and that the owners were sending footage of the dog being chill and participated in a follow-up, it seems like they indeed made sufficient changes for the dog to safely stay in the home.
That said, even if I had high confidence in the dog, I wouldn't have subjected that poor little kid to living with a dog that had attacked him so many times! The Rottweiler was always harmless, so I wouldn't have removed the Rottweiler even if the kid developed a severe phobia about him (and when phobias are totally irrational they need to be overcome, not indulged), but subjecting the kid to his totally rational fear of the bulldog feels like terrible parenting.
Pick up the kid (if he's big put him on you piggyback), pull out some pepper spray, & tell the owner you're going to spray the dog with it unless he gets it well away from you quickly. Spray if the dog gets within 10 feet, no matter what apologies or excuses the owner is emitting at the time. (Except check with some professional to make sure that pepper spray will merely cause the dog distress, not permanent damage)
Thank you for the advice. I'm going to get some pepper spray unless someone convinces me not to. (I'll check if it's legal around here, but I assume it is - and from what the police told me, it seems they wouldn't mind this kind of use.)
I think pepper spray is unlikely to cause permanent physical harm.
Practically, spray cans come in two forms, one which will produce a fine jet of OC like a squirt gun which can travel for several meters, but might be hard to aim, the other option produces a cone-shaped jet with an effective reach of perhaps a meter (take care of the wind).
Communicating with the owner seems a pointless distraction if they are already trying to order the dog to disengage. You want to engage the dog when he is within the reach of your spray, preferably using the other hand to shield yourself -- you don't want to get bitten in the hand holding the can.
There are also inert sprays without capsaicin for training, which is probably a good idea.
And the legality of pepper spray varies, of course. In Germany, it is legal for defense against animals. (Personally, I own it mostly as a non-lethal defense against another species, but dogs would clearly rank No 2.)
> What do you do if you have a large dog rushing your (much smaller) kid, completely ignoring the owner's yells, and you have absolutely no idea if it means harm?
In order of preference:
1. Pick up your loved one and hold them out of reach (I know you said you couldn't do this in this case)
2. Interpose yourself between the loved one and the dog in question and maintain orientation and interposition
3. Whack the dog with something as it gets closer (your shoe, your phone, etc)
4. Seriously (not halfheartedly) kick at the dog in a way that makes it clear you intend to do harm
5. Offer your arm for it to attack versus your body / loved one
Options 3-5 are for when it's more serious, and they can escalate the situation and / or harm YOU, but they're better than your loved one getting attacked.
Alternatively, for the future - this is why some people carry mace / tazers / guns, for personal security in a situation where they feel that it would be difficult to overcome the situation with strict physical power and interventions.
Thank you for your comment. I think 4 here was my only real option that I probably should have taken but did not.
I'm probably going to get pepper spray just for such situations.
whatever else you do -- when it's over please please please call the cops and report the owner
I did. They had a talk with them. The owner promised to "control the dog better".
This is our second encounter with the dog, and the first time (about a year ago) it also just went straight for the kid and knocked him down - but then it listened to the owner and left him alone. The person with it today said they've been training it. Given how successful and responsible they've been so far, I doubt the police call will achieve anything. But at least now I'll know to bring some kind of deterrent if we ever go that way again.
I was attacked and bit by a loose/stray dog on a beach in Tunisia about five years ago. It was a nice looking black lab, running with three other dogs. I stood my ground, yelled etc, just like you are supposed to do, but one bit me from behind, and at that point I ran into the sea. Very traumatic. I have two daughters, and when suspicious dogs come around I get between them and the dog. I also will grab a rock off the ground in advance if I see a dog I don't like in the distance. I carried pepper spray for a while too, and I was so paranoid I would get scared of dogs on a leash. Sometimes dogs will bark and offer a toothy snarl, but not attack. If it latches on and wont let go then throw a shirt over its face, and it will apparently let go. I was involved years ago when a guard dog, a German Shepherd bit a 12 year old girl and would not let go of her leg for about ten minutes. There was a whole group there trying to get the dog to let go, and finally it did.
Feral/stray dogs are a whole different story, the standard stand your ground tips can work but if you've accidentally strayed into its territory and the pack is agitated then there isn't a lot you can do other than try not to put yourself into that situation in the first place which in this case doesn't even apply as it sounds like you were on a busy public beach. I was recently in rural Morocco and we were going somewhere around dawn and our local guide said that whether we got there depended entirely on what the local feral dogs were doing, the local attitude just seems to be err on the side of giving up if the dogs are in the way.
Even worse with feral dogs is the battery of medical treatments you need to make sure you didn't catch rabies!
I got the rabies shots (Zagreb Protocol) which is four shots total. The same dosage no matter how much you weigh, which seems strange to me. Tunisia is a mess in many ways, but I was able to get the rabies shots free at the Institute Pasteur on a public holiday within about thirty minutes of getting bit. The vaccines made me feel achy and exhausted, which apparently is a common side effect.
Ouch, I'm really sorry to hear all this.
I haven't been bitten myself. A dog did bite a piece off my scarf once, though (not sure if it was going for my scarf or fingers, I might've got lucky).
Generally, you should consider trying to learn dog body language. Doing so sounds like it would ease your anxiety immensely, and it would obviously also inform your behavior in specific circumstances.
The main signs you want to look out for are when a dog is baring its teeth, snarling, and has its hackles up. As someone with a dog, who has had hundreds of strange dogs run to me over the years, this has only ever happened to me a handful of times, on bicycle in rural areas. YMMV, since dogs form stereotypes and are afraid of random stuff, however. It's worth noting that usually they don't run toward things they're afraid of if you're not in their space though.
With a little practice, it's also pretty easy to tell when most dogs are friendly, submissive, vigilant, curious, etc.
As for interventions, consider picking up your kid (if they're that size) or getting in-between, as others have suggested. This is going to sound rediculous, but you can also consider having a dog treat, holding it out and saying sit (with the usual gesture), etc. Most dogs I know will happily drop what they're doing when confronted with a treat.
Nope. I know cats very well and still sometimes misread their body langauge. If its a big charging dog that the owner can't control I say err on the side of caution.
In the absence of a treat, yelling "Stay!" in an authoritative voice + hand gesture is worth a shot.
It wasn't listening to the owner, and definitely not to me. And the owner even had a treat for it.
If it's just being bossy and not vicious, you can give it a full-force smack on the ass. It's trying to show off its strength, so show off yours.
In-between didn't work, and I'm not tall enough to hold him out of reach. The owner offered it a treat. No dice. It had a target and just kept going for it.
Sorry to hear it. How did you resolve that situation?
It pulled off the kid's mitten and ran away with it (luckily, these mittens are big for him and don't fit too tight). Then it kept circling and coming back, but it had the mitten in its mouth, and then it saw another dog and got distracted. Then we got away. I even managed to get the mitten back after it dropped it.
What really bugs me is that the damn thing had two collars, but when I tried to grab it by these collars to pull it away from the kid, they both came off in my hands. Some dog owners are like that.
I would have advised grabbing the collar - but you say it was too loose. Dogs have a lot of loose skin between their shoulders. You can grab the dog there, and lift its front legs from the ground, pretty much immobilising it.
I had an Alsatian off-leash without a collar try to attack my smaller dog (twice!), and caught it like this each time. It turns out that my dog was far from the only one targeted - the Alsatian had killed at least one dog. The owner acted surprised each time he met me. I, and others, made enough complaints to the local dog warden and police that the dog was destroyed.
In your case, it sounds like the dog wasn't aggressive, but it does sound like the dog wasn't appropriately controlled, which is an issue for your local authorities. In future ask for a name and address, and tell them you're going to make a police complaint? Failing that a picture of the dog and its owner? It probably doesn't matter if you actually report them - establishing that they're breaking the law and risking the life of their dog is the goal.
Unless it's growling or otherwise making very distinct signs of aggression, I'd try to get in front of the kid. It might be thinking that the child is a playmate and dramatically overestimating how willing/durable children are. In most cases, I expect getting physically in between is enough. It might jump at you, but you'll be fine, some slobber and mud aside, it's not going to circle around to try to go for the kid.
If it's growling or it's otherwise clear it intends immediate harm, then either try to stand your ground and back away slowly with your kind in back, or grab your kid and move away while presenting your side, not your back, to the dog. Again, I expect almost no situations would require this, outside of a literal guard dog or a rabid one.
Granted, I've grown up with large dogs and feel comfortable with them, including when they try to jump on me. YMMV.
It was going around me and straight for the kid. And I am not tall enough to hold the kid out of its reach.
That's weird. Was this in a park, on the street?
In a case like that, if it is trying to move around you and go for your kid, more aggressive action makes sense. I'm not fond of the idea of kicking dogs, but if it's your kid or it...
It was on a trail, on fairly open ground. I tried to pull it away by a collar, but both collars came off in my hands. Maybe that was my opening for a kick, but I imagine it would just keep going. Next time I'm bringing a really big stick or some other kind of deterrent.
I left a longer comment for you (please read it, most of the advice you've received here is very misguided!), but on the subject of carrying a deterrent, a hiking stick is definitely a good option for defining your personal "bubble" of territory. Planting it hard in the ground in front of you and using it as an extra "arm" to poke or shove the dog away is certainly an option, but it still needs to be done with the Gandalf-banishing-the-balrog energy I described in my comment.
You're almost certainly incorrect to imagine that the dog you encountered would have just kept going if you'd delivered a hard, purposeful kick to its chest or ribs! There are a couple of breeds which aren't as sensitive to pain as others, but I (female, 5'2", 150 lb at the time) stopped a rambunctious 150 lb American Bulldog from jumping on me by simply letting him run his chest into my lifted knee. After getting kneed in the chest two and a half times, he gave up and kept all four paws on the floor.
And that was just a stationary knee, not a kick.
So what happened... It went around you straight for your kid and...?
I made a few attempts to push it back, hoping the useless owner would do something, but it just wouldn't give up. I grabbed at each of its two collars in turn, but they were too loose, and it just got out of them, leaving each of them in my hand. It got the kid's mitten (luckily not his hand) and ran away with it. It kept coming back, but it had the mitten in its mouth. Then, fortunately, it saw another dog and got distracted.
Step between them.
It kept going around me and for the kid.
Pick up the kid.
I'm not tall enough to hold him out of reach. It was a big dog.
Maybe not, but it's a good start, and would probably be my instinctive reaction if I thought a dog might attack my kid.
The dog is less likely to attack the me + kid complex than to attack the kid solo, I can turn my body to protect the kid, or start kicking the dog if needed, and in the worst case scenario the dog will be biting my kid's leg instead of his face.
Good points, thanks! If this happens again, I'll do this instead of trying to disable the dog.
trust my instincts
Mine are notoriously bad. I know nothing about dogs. I also have no idea what would happen if I tried to preventatively hurt it - would it get more dangerous, would it switch to me, or would it keep going for the kid?
I was at a memory care facility earlier today. I go about once a week. Today when I went it was music hour, right before lunch. They gather everybody in the Event Room and a guy with a tiny guitar and a harmonica setup like Bob Dylan plays tunes. He’s not bad.
After some lady with a walker asked me where I got my glasses (I said at a glasses store) I sat down and settled in to watch the show with my person. Nobody left for the whole set though most of them don’t walk anymore.
The crowd favorite by a mile was “You Are My Sunshine.” It’s the guitar guy’s ace. I’ve been there for other music hours and it slays everytime. Nearly everybody in a room full of people who can’t remember much at all clap and sing along. In key. It’s beautiful to hear. “Home on The Range” is the other consistent banger. During that number the lady with the walker asked me if I thought the skies were not cloudy all day. I didn’t know how to answer. I said “maybe” like a nitwit but in my defense she kept catching me off guard. She asked me about my fingers and my person’s slippers and some other things. I think she was new.
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was I thought a bold and ironic choice given the crowd. It got polite applause but I could tell it didn’t land. Neither did “When I’m Sixty Four.” I think it has potential as a showstopper, but guitar guy kept raising the title age as a cheap gimmick. He ended at 156. My person clapped to the beat but did it double-time like it was upbeat gospel and this was church so the new lady started raising questions about his technique.
If you’ve got to go to a memory care facility, music hour isn’t bad. The caregivers walk around and comb the residents’ hair and adjust their blankets and it’s something to see people who might not even talk anymore sing.
Thanks, very good advice.
I have never been to one. Reading your comment made me feel something beuatifully strange I can't describe. Thank you for sharing
How should we make sense of the fact that the US purchased Alaska from Russia for the measly sum of $138M inflation-adjusted dollars? I can't imagine a land purchase of this size happening in the modern day for anything less than tens of billions of dollars, so what explains the 100x value discrepancy? Is this is a "losing your sovereignty" premium? Is it a tax for breaking the "countries should leave other countries intact" taboo? Has land just become intrinsically more valuable?
Inflation adjustment over a long timescale confuses more than it illuminates, because things are just too different, and you can't just slap a single multiplier on it.
Just to reinforce a number of comments here, Russia 'owned' Alaska in only the loosest sense, in that there was some colour on a map and probably less than a thousand people who would consider themselves Russian living there. Russia had essentially no way to get reinforcements there or to defend it, and no fiscal capacity to develop it. All Russia could do, whilst maintaining energy, is decide who gets it, and the US was preferable to Britain given Great Game dynamics in central Asia.
The Russians sold Alaska not long after the Crimean war (1853 - 1856) when they were beaten (only just) by a coalition of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire. At that time Britain was consolidating its hold on Canada, and extending this westwards. So I think the Russians were keen to have a buffer territory, to be owned by a then pretty innocuous third party, between Canada and Russia, and that explains why they almost gave away Alaska to the US.
I would note that doing a comparison of inflation-adjusted dollars from so long ago can be misleading due to the growth rate of the economy. A search suggests the US GDP at the time was about $125b (again, adjusted for inflation), meaning the purchase price was a bit over a thousandth of the US GDP. Today an equivalent fraction would be about $29b.
This is the first comment I've seen that seems adequately satisfying. All of the others focus on the historical contingencies of the time, and how Russia sold the territory at a steep discount. But even so, a $138M price tag just seems insulting. So the real answer is that when comparing figures like these, you have to account not just for dollar-to-dollar equivalences, but economy-to-economy equivalences.
Timothy M's comment is a very good point, but I would add that what Alaska is as an asset right now is much different than what it was when Russia sold it. At the time it was a barely inhabited frozen near-wasteland and its biggest economic resource was fishing. Now, it is lightly inhabited (compared to the rest of the US) but has huge economic value & potential. Fishing is still a big industry, but tourism, oil, and mining are extremely valuable industries that didn't exist at the time Russia sold. Then there is the geopolitical value that comes with access to the article circle. Finally, because of its location on flight paths between China and the US, Anchorage is the second business cargo airport in the US and fourth busiest in the world.
Metaphorically, Russia sold us a mediocre exurban lot off a rural highway, we turned it into a vast industrial development at the intersection of two busy interstates.
Think of it in the context of decolonisation.
In the period from 1776 to 1950, a lot of European powers gave up control of territories a lot more valuable than Alaska, usually getting nothing in return or incurring ongoing obligations. Spain and Portugal couldn't hold South America, Britain couldn't hold (the best slice of) North America, nobody could hold Africa for all that long... faraway territories were starting to seem like more trouble than they were worth.
Russia gave up Alaska for peanuts, but Spain gave up Argentina and Britain gave up India for nothing at all.
1950 is an odd time point to end, considering that the decolonization of Africa didn't happen till the 1960s. (Technically, starting in 1957 and mostly ending in 1975, with the one holdout of South Africa that left its Namibian 'colony' in 1990).
I don't think this lines up. The British with India and the Spanish with Latin America, and so on, didn't get paid to give up those claims, but they were absolutely cutting all kinds of losses associated with foreign empires: not just in coin, but in the blood of their own people and of their overseas subjects. Meanwhile, many of those former territories formed more or less stable states and continued to trade with their former imperial masters. They weren't getting as much as they might have under a regime of full domination and extraction, but they were getting a great deal of benefit while cutting much, much more of the costs.
Alaska, meanwhile, never had a significant Russian presence and the Russians didn't have the means or will to exploit what resources the region had, many of which didn't become expoitable--profitably or at all--until much later, such as Alaska's oil reserves or access to routes through the Arctic.
Argentina got its independence at the point of a gun, and India at the threat thereof. A few hundred Russian citizens in Alaska could not and did not attempt anything remotely similar.
But a few hundred redcoats marching over from Canada might have.
How was St Petersburg going to reinforce/defend Alaska without control of the sea?
That would have been one helluva march in the 1860s, with no railroads yet up that way and the nearest Canadian outpost (let alone city) being thousands of miles away.
My question would be more, why bother? Alaska as of the 1860s wasn't known to have a lot of development promise as a colony....the purchase was quickly/widely labelled "Seward's folly" in the US.
Well transported by ship maybe. Britannia did rule the waves. As for why, I’d think prestige and embarrassing Britain’s great game rival may have sufficed. Also the standard tragedy of great power politics- Britain may have feared a future Russia using Alaska as a base for operations against Canada, and have wished to forestall that possibility. St Petersburg *had* demonstrated an ability to project power across thousands of miles of tundra, after all.
I think mostly that this was the era of the great game, and Russia didn't control the seas. Very likely the Tsar (or his advisors) were afraid that the British (their principal rivals in the great game, who remember controlled Canada) would seize it from them, so why not sell if first to the Americans for whatever they could get, and make the defense of Alaska someone else's problem? You both get some money, and avoid the prestige hit of having your principal rival seize one of your possessions in a short and humiliating war.
Probably a similar dynamic was also at play for the Louisiana purchase, with Russia -> France.
That's pretty close to what happened with the Louisiana purchase, from what I understand. The Haitian revolution convinced Napoleon that he couldn't hold territory in America (though I don't know who exactly he thought might seize it).
> though I don't know who exactly he thought might seize it
The US? I remember that Napoleon was at some point at war against the United States…
Part of the explanation has to take into account the state of Russian affairs then and the fact that Russia's claim on that territory would have been quite tenuous. The Smithsonian claims there were about 700 Russians living in Alaska, mainly on the coast hunting sea otters, at the time of the purchase. From the Russian perspective, it was likely 'Siberia but worse' since Siberia was at least accessible via land. Outside of some valuable products of the coastline and the possibility of controlling a shipping lane to the Arctic, it just wasn't very valuable, especially since almost nothing was profitable enough to be worth going all the way to Alaska for it and this was decades before anyone demonstrated the feasibility of crossing the Arctic.
Combine that with the issues of defensibility Bullseye raises, but noting that the British (via their Canadian colonies) may have been the bigger threat. Just ten years before, the British were part of the coalition that defeated the Russians in Crimea. Even if Russia wanted to spend the money to develop it and felt it was a good use of resources, it would have been perpetually vulnerable to British Canada.
Meanwhile, the US was a (then) friendlier power who still had some differences with the British (they'd burned down the White House within living memory). It might well have seemed like a prudent move at the time. Redeem your unenforceable claim to an unprofitable territory for some quick cash and stop worrying about having to defend it from the Brits.
I wouldn't be surprised if 'stop the headaches that come with trying to use Alaska for anything' was also part of the calculus.
As for the low price, as Gunflint points out, even a lot of Americans thought it was wastefully high. Could well have seemed like a steal at the time.
Here's my guess: Alaska is very far away from the core Russian territory, so Moscow had serious doubts about their ability to defend it if a North American power decided to conquer it. Nowadays conquest happens far less often, and modern transportation has made everything closer together.
I know from other parts of U.S. history that people sometimes sold us territory because they figured we were going to take it by force if they didn't.
Russia was also in the middle of some serious internal turmoil, reform and soul searching in the 1860s, after the defeat in the Crimean War had shown that they were a lot more backward, and weaker on the international stage, than they had thought previously.
"Moscow" was not the capital of the Russian Empire at the time that Alaska was sold, that would be St. Petersburg.
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Continuing to ask if anyone has special insight into the Volkswagen data breach. A good soul on the last hidden thread commented that the software in question (and it's vulnerabilities) were produced and operated by third-party companies, and that the collection of detailed GPS data for VW and Skoda cars (breaking Volkwwagen's TOS) was plausibly the result of an error instead of a deliberate policy.
Given that, I'm interested in likely outcomes from the legal/policy side. What would a reasonable penalty under GDPR or tort (from breaking TOS) be, and how likely is it that it will be handed down? Worth noting that VW has been fined under it before, some 1.1 million euro for... improperly labeling cameras on their test cars, apparently.
https://www-lfd-niedersachsen-de.translate.goog/startseite/infothek/presseinformationen/1-1-millionen-euro-bussgeld-gegen-volkswagen-213835.html
I'm writing up an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard, about the need to give street-level bureaucrats, in this case the Department of Building Inspection, more discretion. In that process, I found a little mystery that maybe those of you who live in San Francisco have thoughts about (I live in LA).
Over the period of many months between Nov 2022 and Summer 2023, there was an organized effort to send hundreds of anonymous complaints to the San Francisco Building Inspection department about awnings and gate violations at dozens and dozens of Chinatown storefronts, as well as storefronts in other historically "ethnic" or countercultural districts, like Richmond, Haight Asbury, and the Tenderloin.
When the Building Department inspected, it turned out that yes, most of the awnings and gates did not fit the building codes, and they issued citations and notices to fix the problem and get permits. The citations would cost the business owners thousands and thousands of dollars.
The progressive representative of the Chinatown district got to work and ended up passing a moratorium on the fines, and they started an expedited procedure to get the awnings officially approved, so its an okay ending (though not great if you ask me).
Lots more to say, but the question is this: who organized the effort of anonymous complaints? We know it was organized because it came out of nowhere and came in a single wave, it targeted businesses that had been there, with the same storefront, for decades and decades, including one business that had been closed for 20 years. I also believe it was organized because no ordinary citizen walks around SF with intimate knowledge of the 11 page awnings, canopies, and marquees building code....so whoever it was is a builder, or works with builders, or has an interest in these businesses closing or being fined or whatever.
It is said that all safety regulations are written in blood, but I'm not sure this is true. I suspect at least some of them are some combination of sounds plausible and intentional barriers to entry.
Do we know anything about why the awning regulations were enacted? Whether they make sense?
In an earthquake zone I think it makes a lot of sense to have building standards for anything that can potentially collapse on your head. It's easy to imagine an awning or archway that seems perfectly stable under normal conditions but is the first thing to come crashing down once the ground gets all shaky.
I wonder if it was someone within the Building department themselves? They were aware of this loophole (all the historic awnings and storefronts technically in breach of the regulations), nothing was being done to address it internally (I've seen that at first hand in another job where 'these regulations are 40 years out of date, if we apply them we'll get grief, the relevant authority needs to update and change them' but it was perpetually left on the long finger) and they decided to get things moving by this campaign, expecting the outcome - the local politician is going to get involved because of angry constituents complaining, the loophole finally gets closed.
Maybe someone wanted to generate revenue for the city?
If I was in the awning business I might have some incentive.
A happy ending, at least until dozens are killed by collapsing awnings in the next big earthquake.
My guess: just a random crank with a bee in his bonnet. Maybe he himself ran into planning problems trying to get his own awning built, and devoted six months of his life to revenge on everyone who had blithely ignored the laws that he'd spent tens of thousands of dollars needing to comply with.
If it were a builder then maybe you'd expect them to complain about a whole bunch of other things, not just awnings.
What popped into my head was something like this. Have known a couple of persons who got into rage mode and mounted one-person campaigns along those lines in communities I resided in. Although _hundreds_ of individual businesses is a different scale than I've seen acted out....if it was something long these lines then that person was seriously raged up about something.
Interesting hypothesis. There were complaints about the roll-up gates a lot of these Chinatown stores had since the mid 20th century. And it also coincided with a lot of ADA complaints, but the latter is well documented to be maybe a single law firm looking to fleece business owners.
That seems like an interesting coincidence. If I recall, there are people who go around looking for ADA violations to shake down small businesses and get paid in the lawsuit. Could it be retaliation against a specific store or against Chinatown in general for fighting an ADA complaint?
"well documented to be maybe"? So....several people online are sure that's the explanation?
Don't know anything about San Francisco, but what stops "discretion" being a path to "the real law is have the bureaucrats and/or government like you"? What stops political bias in who to cite or fine, especially in a place like SF? Genuine, not rhetorical questions. Are there actually reliable ways of preventing this? (Other than lists of detailed rules about how to use discretion which...seems like an oxymoron.)
Even apart from those concerns, I don't much like discretion in general. If you need it, it probably means the laws themselves should be greatly narrowed or repealed. The covid mask rules where I live were basically "you must wear a mask everywhere, at all times outside your home, even if you're not near anyone" combined with enormous enforcement discretion. The result? Some assholes proudly ignore the law completely and face no consequences. Other scrupulous people try hard to do the "right thing" which means absurdly limiting their own freedom far beyond what's rational. How is this situation not the *worst possible one*?
One of the chief reasons government is so dysfunctional is that it is designed so that nobody in the system has any discretion.
There are certainly cases where discretion causes bad effects as well, but I think we've swung way too far in the other direction.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/culture-eats-policy/
The best place to test your hypothesis is in criminal justice, where pre 1984 was a period of high discretion low top-down mandates, and now we're emerging out of a high mandate, low discretion period. So low discretion means mandatory arrest policies, mandatory minimum sentencing, mandatory use of sentencing guidelines issued by the sentencing commission. Are criminal justice outcomes better with legislative mandates or executive street-level discretion? The answer is complicated, but well documented. I take the lessons there into other street-level bureaucracies on this book tour, starting with this SF standard op-ed. All of your questions is what this book is about. Fewer Rules, Better People: the Case for Discretion. https://wwnorton.com/books/fewer-rules-better-people
Do you know any nonprofit, charitable organizations in the USA that could use donations of water-and energy-saving shower heads? If so, please feel free to recommend them!
These include organizations offering mobile services to homeless people; building or rehabilitating homes (akin to Habitat for Humanity), cottages, tiny homes, or residential hotels; and offering social services to live-in clients, including veterans' homes and addiction recovery programs.
I work with High Sierra Showerheads. Their products have been installed in mobile showering units serving homeless people by Cleansing Hope Shower Shuttle (Modesto, CA), Streetside Showers (McKinney/Plano, TX), Hope Vibes (Charlotte, NC), and Lava Mae (operating for ~10 years in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles). And at TROSA, a residential substance abuse recovery program in Durham, NC.
High Sierra is always interested in making additional donations, and welcomes your recommendations – especially if you know those organizations well (as a staffer, donor, or long-time admirer) or have connections there.
> water-and energy-saving shower heads?
We Brits have been using water-saving showers for years. The water starts as a tepid dribble, then when you ease the lever across a hundredth of an inch it turns into a boiling hot dribble, but still somehow cold round the edges.
I gather there are flashy expensive showers with a big dial instead of a lever, but few people know how to work them, which direction to turn the dial for a start. So these luxury models, sometimes found in hotels, are a major scalding risk.
Obviously the idea is that you'll finish the ordeal and hop out as soon as possible, and the notion one might enjoy a relaxing shower every morning, like Americans, is too ludicrous to contemplate. The joys of British plumbing!
Ha!
That doesn't sound ... relaxing? :)
> water-and energy-saving shower heads?
Good Lord, haven't these people suffered enough?
Hah
I get it. I truly do. I used to scoff at "low-flow" shower heads – remember that iconic Seinfeld episode? – and wasn't looking forward to the prospect of getting one.
But have you tried one of High Sierra's?
We've had two of theirs at home since 2014. Yes, over a decade ago. Still going strong. Never had a moment where we wanted to replace them. At just a 1.5 gallons per minute flow rate – which is ludicrously low-flow – their spray is more powerful and frankly feels better – more natural – than the spray of any 2.5 gpm head I've ever used. (That's the reason I now work with them.)
What is this alchemy? It's a wildly out-of-left-field, US-patented nozzle design. In the High Sierra, all the water flows out of a single large nozzle, concentrating the spray force, rather than diffusing that force across many small holes as in the conventional design. And the spray comes out as a dense cone of large, heavy, high kinetic-energy droplets, rather than as the usual set of gap-separated, individual streams.
So the nonprofits we've worked with have been thrilled. Not only do their clients get clean quickly so they can serve more people, but we also save them up to 40% on water and energy, which is a rather big deal for a mobile showering unit. (Sometimes they're connected to hoses; sometimes they have onboard tanks.)
Fair enough. I have never tried one. Melvin.‘s comment made me laugh, even if it was a cheap one. It was something Maggie Smith might’ve said in Downton Abbey.
Understood and thanks! Yes, Melvin's comment was (out of my passionate context) delightful in its own right: dry, smart British humor.
> In the High Sierra, all the water flows out of a single large nozzle, concentrating the spray force
Right, that's the tradeoff, isn't it? Either a weak flow that trickles over a larger fraction of your body, or a strong flow that only hits a little bit of your body and leaves the rest of you freezing?
Look, I know it's a legal requirement in some places, I'm just saying it sucks. Even round here they're limited to 9L/minute but after buying a new one recently I found it was easy to remove the crippling plastic piece.
I have one... the water comes out of one hole, but it comes out in a cone that covers the whole body, at least as well as my previous shower head. Unfortunately I have no idea what the GPM of the previous head was. The best thing about the High Sierra is it's not a plastic piece of shit like most things you buy today.
Thanks, outlet!
That's been our experience with High Sierra's shower heads as well, Melvin: a cone of large heavy droplets that's a) a strong flow and b) covers a large fraction of your body. No tradeoffs involved at all.
When I talk to people about their products, a lot of times they've been soured on other low-flow shower heads. And I feel like Sam-I-Am in Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham: "Please, just try it and see for yourself!"
Not everyone likes them. They average 4.5 stars across their product line in Amazon customer reviews, not 5.0. Some people encounter issues or otherwise don't have their expectations met. But a large fraction of people who do like them, often are wildly enthusiastic about them. Like me.
Some of High Sierra's customers: Ohio State, which has bought over 5K. Yale. Purdue. Penn State. The US Air Force Academy. Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), the US's largest Army Base, which bought 12K. And Planet Fitness, which is now putting them in new and retrofitted clubs; they'd been installed in over 200 when we last checked a few years back.
As you've probably surmised, at least some of these places don't want to piss off their students/customers/residents with weak flow. So they did comparative evaluations and chose High Sierra's products.
You can find a brief article here describing Cleansing Hope Shower Shuttle's awesome work:
https://mailchi.mp/highsierrashowerheads/2024-march-newsletter
I had the opportunity today to deliver a talk to my church congregation during the general meeting. I heavily drew from Scott’s two posts about “The Rise of Christianity”, essentially relaying and expanding on his thoughts about the memetic fitness of Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions) and their ability to outcompete and outlast the pagans. I think it was very different fare than the usual stuff we hear at church (maybe we deem the pagans beneath our notice!) and it was received very well. When I cited Scott to this large audience of normies I decided to refer to him as an “intellectual active in the Bay Area” because I thought “blogger” might undercut his authority lol. So the question I have for you is: do you guys find yourselves trying to call Scott anything but a “blogger” to people so they take him more seriously? It feels a little dishonest, but I feel like there is a great gulf between him and the median blogger that comes to the average person’s mind when you say the word.
He's a psychiatrist by training/profession, but that might not lead one to take him more seriously.
Have you read Lyman Stone's response to Scott on the rise of Christianity?
https://lymanstone.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-christians-mobs-moms
When I follow that link, I get the essay, framed by some sort of detritus that appears to be what Substack thinks of as a home page. (And in fact the URL is a redirect to https://substack.com/home/post/p-154398716 .) I'd like to get just the essay. Does anyone know how?
I'd like to know myself, I don't know why his Substack is like that.
Which sort of denomination are you in?
And you could just say you read an essay.
"Polymath" seems a reasonable description
I usually refer to Scott as "one of my two favorite psychiatrists with a blog".
I call him "a guy I read". I bring him up to make a point, and either the point makes sense or it doesn't. If they're going to judge information based on who's telling it to them, well, that's me and you, not whoever we're quoting.
I call him a writer, because that's what he is. Who cares whether it's on a blog or in a magazine?
"Essayist"
I need to be in your ward, someone quoting Scott in sacrament meeting would be awesome. I find myself referencing his work all the time. I honestly really think I would love to share the gospel with him, one can make a compelling rationalist case for its viability, and Scott seems to have the requisite desire to be a good person
How did you clock me so quickly as LDS? was it the fact I called it a “talk” haha
The only other denomination I know of where it is normal for a lay member of a congregation to give a speech during a service is the Quakers. Also, Quakers and Mormons are the only Christian denominations I know of that say "Meeting" instead of "Service" (most Protestants), "Mass" (Catholics), or "Liturgy" (Orthodox).
Of the two, Mormons are much more common. Also, Mormons are a lot more likely in my experience to obfuscate when talking about their church services to non-members of their denomination than Quakers are. And taking lessons from how early Christianity spread seems a lot more on-brand for LDS than for RSF.
Some UU's are like that. I once did a presentation at a UU "meeting".
I was thinking Quaker, I hadn't considered the Mormons!
"I had the opportunity today to deliver a talk to my church congregation during the general meeting."
That's how you explain giving a talk in sacrament meeting to non-LDS people. Nobody else has "the general meeting" where random people speak. And certainly not where the speaker would feel free to quote Scott. Only the Church gives such nerds the opportunity to address the congregation haha.
Also Rise of Christianity does make points that resonate with our unique take on the Gospel, it seems like a good fit
I'm actually in the Menlo Park ward so I might almost have a chance to invite him to church
I’m in San Francisco. My wife tried to convince me to reach out and personally invite him to hear the talk but I wanted to be sure I was comfortable with the talk first and I ended up writing it at 1am last night so I never got the chance to (also I’m too shy about that sort of thing)
Public intellectual?
I tend to say 'psychiatrist who writes...' or 'essayist'. I think the latter gives a good expectation of what Scott does and the quality that can be expected, and the former stresses that he has some subject matter expertise when relevant.
Same here, exactly. I always refer to his posts as "essays."
I just wanted to start a conspiracy theory that Musk started the LA fires to get rid of Newsom.
This would work if it weren't obvious Newsom started the fires himself in order to get Trump to blame him for it, thereby strengthening his position vis-à-vis primary rivals.
That would explain the Jewish space lasers he's been launching.
Deleting the first nine words might give you a better chance.
Well, you wrote it on the internet - that's all the proof I need!
If you're using a Mac, you'll notice that your cursor turns into a mickey mouse glove when you hover links and buttons. I wrote a short essay about this, egregores, and the coming AI resistance:
https://homesteady.substack.com/p/mickey-mouse-is-stuck-in-your-macbook
Of course, if you’re going to make an icon look like a glove, it’d be Mickey Mouse’s glove. It’s the most recognisable version of a glove for a mouse, while not being too obvious. Do you that metaphysical or autonomous entities contribute much explanatory power, over and above the cheesy pun?
There’s also the question of “why a glove at all?”
We shouldn’t take it for granted that it makes much sense. And the glove is also identified as a glove by the slit in the cuff, making the black lines unnecessary.
So I don’t think it’s an obvious design decision to put a famous cartoon character’s glove in an OS.
I don’t know that egregores are actually autonomous. I tend to hold notions like “Moloch” pretty lightly and see them as concepts that appeal to smart nerdy people who read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi as kids (like me) and have soft spot for blending intellectualism with fantastical notions. Just like how liberals love HBO shows that blend supernaturalism with liberal social commentary.
And if I had to put money on it, I’d say the Mickey Mouse Protection Act was at least part of the impetus for that glove ending up in the new OS in the same year, whether or not it was a trickstery political statement from the designers or just the result of Mickey being prominent in the creative zeitgeist at that moment.
Or maybe there is something to egregores, but their “autonomy” is the same kind of autonomy a ouija board might seems to have — not really a mind of its own, but an expression of collective subconscious influence.
Palau isn't US territory. It's an independent nation.
You're both right/wrong! It's in a Compact of Free Association with the United States, which is somewhat like a protectorate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_of_Free_Association
I'm confused what this means. As far as I understand, the US provide financial aid and military protection, in exchange for benefits like having military bases. There also seem to be some social programs on top, like integrating Palau citizens into MedicAid.
But this seems very far from being US territory. For example, US laws do not hold in Palau, Palau has its own government, US jurisdiction has no immediate effect in Palau etc. Or am I mistaken about these points? If not, why would investors treat Palau as equivalent to the US?
More news from an Argentinan expat! The prices of the medications I'm taking have almost doubled since the New Year. That isn't nice.
How much did prices go up the year before? How much have prices gone up for other items?
I haven't been here during the last New Year.
Prices for other items were raising steadily throughout my stay here, but this time I literally tried to buy the same medication 2 weeks before the New Year and 2 weeks after, and the second price was double. It wasn't a steady inflationary growth, it was a sudden spike.
That sucks, sorry you're dealing with that. Any chance you can get it from a different market?
Okay so who here:
1) knows their lipid panel numbers (LDL, HDL, Triglycerides)
2) would like to know their fecal cholesterol/coprostanol ratio—i.e. whether or not you have this gut bacterium that naturally helps you excrete dietary+endogenous cholesterol?
Coprostanol is present in the stool in 4 out of 5 people (and practically every wild animal) but there's not a lot of good public data associating its presence/absence with serum cholesterol levels, so I'm trying to collect that info. Can send sampling kits anywhere in the US.
I have cholesterol panels done every 6 months or so for a couple years. Happy to partake.
What are the practical consequences of having or not having ideal coprostanol ratio?
Love it. Something like 20% of healthy young men are low-converters (i.e. little or no coprostanol, only cholesterol in the stool), whereas only about 2% of healthy elderly men are low-converters.
General consensus is you don't make it into the "healthy elderly" cohort without this gene in your microbiome.
Send an email to SDSkolnick@gmail.com
Sure? I've gotten a few blood tests over the past few months. stevenbrycelee@gmail.com
I'm a total health data nerd so assuming the test / sample kit isn't especially arduous or invasive I am interested. Send details to jmb3481@gmail.com
Max Chiswick, rationalist attendee of Caplacon and Manifest, died at 39. https://oldjewishmen.substack.com/p/bhif-old-jewish-men-loses-a-friend
WTF, no! no! no!
fuck.
I hung out with Max two months ago. We talked about our shared experiences adventuring and travelling in places like Senegal, visiting Chabad houses all over the world, and our hopes for our future (and Max's desire to stop adventuring!). To hear this news, especially that he died of Malaria, is heartbreaking to me.
I am heartbroken. Max was a legendary person.
I didn’t know him that well, but he seemed awesome. Super nice guy, quite smart and insightful.
That's incredibly sad. Max was a great friend and really supportive of my projects. He just invested in my last startup. I can't believe he's gone so suddenly.
Ah, fuck. May his memory be for a blessing.
As a fellow rotisserie chicken enthusiast, he will be missed.
Is it uncouth to share one's writing here? I suspect the fact that I'm asking means the answer is yes. Still, fuck it.
Here's a post exploring the nature of self-consciousness and a new approach to defeating it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/prettygoodblog/p/self-conscious-doesnt-mean-feeling?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=pm9ze
If you're looking for feedback, after skimming your post, I agree with a previous commenter who says your writing needs a bit more work: personally I found it too self-consciously gimmicky (somewhat ironically). Overuse of italics, single-sentence paragraph ('And it was fucking easy.') etc. Hope this helps!
I'm taking my italics and my em dashes to the grave; not even a lifetime of obscurity could convince me to abandon them.
As for the rest, the natural defensive conclusion I'm drawn to is to say that this is simply a mismatch of stylistic preferences. But if I'm being honest, on further reflection, this post is not my best writing and much could be done to improve it within the bounds of my own style.
Thank you for the feedback!
Fair enough! I feel the same way about my overuse of parentheses :)
Overuse? You only used one, just now.
I meant in general, not in the once sentence I just wrote. Though I was tempted to write (over)use but I thought it'd be too forced.
In my headcanon, I like to think of parentheses as commas that have grown up and gotten married.
Bulletpoint 4 of Open Thread 355 had Scott's opinion on it.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-355
There's been at least one account who was banned over it, but they were engaging in nothing but self-promotion for several months, despite Scott leaving multiple direct comments telling them to stop.
Hmm. With this context, I regret how I went about sharing my work here. Next year will be better.
I doubt I'm the only one with the heuristic "look like you want to start a conversation, to contribute to human knowledge, or to get feedback on an idea...and NOT like you want to get clicks and/or money". Very much a pornography-style "know it when I see it", and when I see it, it provokes murderous rage in me. Feeling like "this place is unusually tolerant in who it allows and what topics it allows, with a large attentive audience, what a great opportunity to make a profit!"
Very much a Moneychangers In The Temple reaction. Yours didn't, but perhaps only because you asked about the norms. Absent a summary and a clear attempt to start a discussion *here*, in *these* comments, this kind of comment typically provokes that reaction, fairly or not.
But if someone has written a blog post, their intention is to contribute to human knowledge or offer a perspective. Why must that discussion be *here*? How's a new blogger meant to grow their readership if every community's norm is 'no posting your own writing'?
A new blogger is meant to be compelling enough *here,* in the comments, to provoke curiosity about clicking on either their blog link or a blog post link to read *more.*
"Hey, I wrote a thing, please read it" is not compelling.
A substantive introduction to that thing is.
It's a tough balancing act -- one I don't think I managed to pull off with this comment thread. I'm learning through failure, at least.
My intention was to err on the side of humility and simplicity over... I'm not sure what, honestly. "Playing the game."
Perhaps the lesson is to stop pretending I'm not a player? I don't know. I hate both the players and the game.
I'm giving you the side-eye about your intention to err on the side of humility and simplicity.
"Simplicity" is often just a fig-leaf word for "laziness."
"Humility" would be acknowledging that readers don't have a reason to care about your work enough to click off a page they actually do want to read, and thus you must actively persuade them otherwise. In this realm, provoking a specific and deep curiosity is your "sales pitch."
For myself, I didn't bother clicking your link until I read @le raz's blunt criticism that the writing quality wasn't high. "Wow, how bad is it?" was a specific and deep curiosity that could be satisfied by clicking on the link, so I clicked on it!
This isn't perfectly comparable, but contrast the reaction you had here with when I posted a link to my own substack essay about Bluey in a comment here (https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-343?r=f8y5z&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=65954058).
I was indeed sincerely trying to have a conversation right there in the ACX comments, but I was also conscious of providing a mild hook to my substack entry: I made a sincere, surprising, unusually strong statement about one of its episodes, and I offered access to free, easy, entertaining information (information which would answer the question, "why did she make such a surprising, unusually strong statement about one of the episodes?").
I got way, way more clicks on my link than people commenting, which was mildly surprising.
The side-eye is understandable. I don't expect to be able to sway your skepticism regarding my intentions at this point -- only to be able to offer the truth and be content with that.
Still, I'll respond to your thoughtful criticism.
On simplicity, I see your point -- though I truly don't think that's what I was doing. I simply detest most forms that self-promotion takes; the slightest hint of manipulation or disingenuity raises my internal alarms. To that effect, I thought: if I'm trying to share my work, why not simply state that and be done with it? No, it's not as effective as creating a "pitch," but fuck, I'm so deeply tired of being pitched to on the Internet.
My current suspicion is that I've significantly overindexed on this, and that you're right. "Not playing the game" is, in hindsight, just a different (annoying) way of playing the game. I know that I don't want to make money from this, so that should embolden me to play the game with a clearer conscience, maybe.
On humility -- I've miscommunicated. If anything, I suspect that my primary flaw as a writer is too *little* humility: the humility to edit until the job is truly done. This thread has been a useful reminder of that flaw.
The humility I meant to communicate was of my place in this space. I'm something of an invader: coming in and promoting myself. I am an ACX subscriber and reader (old hat, but ICTAEtO was a profoundly impactful piece to read as an ideologically frustrated young man), but I'm not known in the comments section or on Substack at large by any stretch.
For that reason, I felt it necessary to make my intentions explicit.
I appreciate your input, skeptical though it may be.
I agree that a compelling introduction is more likely to entice readers. I object to the injunction against sharing links, and to the fact it often leads to performative 'I'm not trying to get clicks, just want to discuss' comments.
In reality, anyone who writes is after both. They do care about the things they write about, but they do also want to drive readers to their blogs; ultimately, almost all writing is to an extent driven by vanity - to pretend otherwise is disingenuous, and personally I prefer Joshua's honesty.
Right, and I said, ""Hey, I wrote a thing, please read it" is not compelling...A substantive introduction to that thing is."
There's no reason Joshua couldn't have written either a summary or a cross-posting of his entire blog post as a comment here on ACX. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a comment word count limit.
We're talking cross-purposes. I agree with you that doing this is more effective. I disagree with the vibe against promoting links.
(To be clear, of course Scott has the right to say 'no links' as a general rule here, it's his substack! I meant I don't like the general principle that bloggers should be coy about promoting their work.)
It's probably fair to have that reaction to my post. Truth is, I do want attention -- I'll be honest, I think I have a good blog on my hands -- and I'm frankly not very good at spreading the word about it. But I also... don't know that I want to be better at it. I do want to be *honest*, and self-promotion in the guise of "starting a conversation" isn't... honest. I don't know.
For what it's worth, I do share your general disgust. I fucking hate having to engage in promotion. I utterly detest being promoted *to*. I'd much rather just build it and have them come, but alas, I built it and as it turns out, that doesn't guarantee shit.
My goal is to genuinely touch people through my writing -- I have no intention or delusion of ever making money from this -- and I can't do that unless they read it. How, then, to get people to read it? Manipulation? A lucky break? Posting on TikTok?
Anyways, I appreciate your candid thoughts.
To be (very) candid, based on a skim of the linked post, you are still at the stage of needing to improve your writing quality, and not your writing marketing.
To be frank, I imagine you could make significant progress just iterating using ChatGPT (or other high quality model) as a writing critic. I recommend doing that. I've done it in the past, and it was a surprisingly useful process.
Take that with a grain of salt though. It is just my perspective. Others may well have a very different opinion. At a meta-level, you shouldn't be too influenced by other's opinions.
Ah, it stings like a bitch. Are you entirely correct or just not my audience? I'll be honest: I'm not so humble as to wholly accept the former. Still, I see at least some truth in what you're saying.
On the topic of ChatGPT, I've found it to be... Something that I should not use. It is ludicrously positive of my work, which I understand to be a worthless opinion but it still feeds my ego despite my best efforts. When it does offer criticism, it's often so nonsensical (e.g. misinterpreting an entirely serious sentence as a joke, or inventing entire sections I did not write) that I can hardly accept any of its feedback as being legitimate.
On the broader stuff -- pacing, concision, tonal whiplash -- it tends to do a better job of bringing flaws to my attention, though its suggestions for improvements tend to be garbage.
(I wrote a post about this, which I won't link due to etiquette but which one could easily find; it contains "Narcissistic Implosion" in the title. You may be interested in it.)
Now, if only the people who do actually care to read my writing regularly would have the gumption to offer such candid feedback...
>Now, if only the people who do actually care to read my writing regularly would have the gumption to offer such candid feedback...
Well, I'm probably not one of them, but can criticize anyway. I mostly thought the prose was fine; you've got several paragraphs that didn't need to be their own paragraphs, and the cursing feels tonally out of place, but the flow feels very conversational and off-the-cuff.
Content-wise, I think the entire first section could have been cut if you'd understood "socially awkward" just means "shy", which is how people can describe you as "weird but not awkward". And then the last section about self-priority being different from being an asshole, fails to consider that some of us are in fact natural assholes and do have to avoid putting forth our actual selves.
Also I'll second Christina, I only clicked on the link because le raz criticized the writing.
To be clear, I don't think I have any disgust at all to "wanting attention", it's really all about wanting money (either immediately, or wanting clicks and likes that can later be converted into money, where that intention is *in the poster's mind*). If I could read minds and be certain that someone advertising their blog is doing so primarily because they want the ideas to get out, I'd be mostly* unbothered.
As it is, all I have to go on is the following hierarchy: commenting on ACX without a blog link next to your name->>commenting with a blog next to your name->>making a substantive comment, then saying "read more here"->>merely linking and saying "read this"...when it comes to *certainty that you're not getting any material benefit from this, and that you're intrinsically concerned with the actual topic, and with truth*.
Agreed about it being unfairly difficult to find an audience, but one of the reasons I hate the advertisers is I worry the "writing whatever I think will get me clicks" people will drown out the "writing what I think is true" people.
And there's a further distinction between "would like to make money from this so I can devote myself to telling what I think is the truth" and "just want to make money, and will write whatever will do that" which is even harder to be sure of, and complicates it even more. It's only the latter group.I hate, but my God do I hate them.
(*there'd still be the annoyance of cluttering up substantive ACX comments with one-line "read this thing I wrote" links to elsewhere.)
It seems to me that the "want to make money so I can write the truth" crowd is likely to morph into the "write whatever makes money" crowd. I think there's a few understandable reasons for this (audience capture, necessity, whatever) -- but really what interests me in it is that it seems to be the same form of argument as:
"I just need to play along with the broken system so I can gain power and later fix it."
But later comes and brings with it power, and suddenly, you can't fix it. Perhaps you no longer believe it needs to be fixed, or can be fixed. Or perhaps you've lost (or never had) the courage to say, "now is the time -- the time I will destroy my own career and livelihood for the greater good."
Someone who's successfully turned writing into their career is now utterly dependent on it *continuing* to be their career. What happens when their audience stops rewarding their truthful pieces? How many times will they publish duds -- truthful duds -- before they're forced to start writing what the crowd wants?
I don't know, maybe I'm speaking utter nonsense. Writing has never and will never been my career; I know nothing of it as a profession. I just like doing it.
Why worry about what other people think? You floss everyday and they don't, thus you are above their petty notions of good and bad.
Or at the very least I've performed a convincing display of someone who glosses every day...
There are a variety of different and contradictory rules, but the gist of it is "Once per year" or twice at the very most. Sharing with a large and relevant caption (e.g. contextualizing your writing as a continuation of some other thread that Scott or another commentator started or pursued recently) is better than sharing with a short or irrelevant caption.
You should be fine if this is the first time you have done it. Try to edit your post with a summary of what you wrote above the link, possibly linking it to other Rationalist writing or a recent Scott post. (Or not, don't force it.)
Good to know! Thanks.
Fair rules. Can't seem to edit the comment, but oh well: perhaps this is my penance.
Tap the … to the right of your user name. Edit option appears.
Can only edit/like comments with paid subscription, I think. Normally i can do both, here I can do neither.
Interesting -- editing doesn't seem to be a feature on the app. Strange. And thank you!
I guess if the floodgates are opened, then let the river run?
I administered the CDT to ChatGPT and asked Claude to diagnose the problems that the "patient" has. Apparently ChatGPT has some pre-frontal cortex damage or early stage dementia.
https://solresol.substack.com/p/maybe-chatgpt-has-some-pre-frontal
That was funny, but all I could think about was how (most? many? some?) youngsters today can't understant normal clocks, how are we going to diagnose them with dementia in 40 years assuming the world doesn't end? Or do we just send that whole generation to the madhouse when they hit sixty? Well it won't be my problem anyway.
Hahaha! Thank you so much, that's hilarious! My kids just came by asking why I'm laughing so hard.
Greg, Thank you for that hilarious article on various ChatGPT versions drawing clock faces and Claude’s anthropic analyzing what neurodegenerative disease might be indicated.
Compare with a human psychiatrist?
Is anyone going to Roatan (Bay Islands); their building or starting a crypto based community. Sponsored by the Palau Digital ID Network.
I know some people who used to be involved in the Prospera project, need to check back in with that. First I'm hearing of this digital ID or that they're sponsoring it, though it doesn't surprise me.
Not sure how I feel about it being a 'crypto-based community'. Crypto has been a part of that plan for a long time, but I always figured the more interesting aspects of it were the political and legal questions, and the promise of less restricted biotech research.
Well, whatever they’re doing. It’s in February. I never heard of Prospera. I’ll have to check it out. A lot of people go to the Bay Islands because things are very reasonable over there. There’s not a lot over there. But it is an island about 15 miles off the coast of Honduras, but they speak English.
Good scuba diving/surfing too, or so I've heard. I think I started hearing about it around 7 or so years ago? Back then the pitch focused a lot more on intentional community building, a custom set of laws built to encourage knowledge industries and 'digital citizenship' (not sure what the status on that is). Very much pitched towards libertarians, a lot of overlap with the seasteaders and private city crowd. Makes sense that crypto has become a big part of it since then.
I was there for about five days in the summer of 1998, spending all my time on the west end of the island, doing a lot of great SCUBA diving for very little money. I’d be curious to know how much that area has changed.
The Telepathy Tapes: Go.
Also, what lotion is she talking about that helps with Autism? We need to know. Probably a scam, but still… what is she talking about? From the interview the director did with Scott Britton about the Telepathy Tapes.
I haven't listened to The Telepathy Tapes. But I have listened to Katie Herzog talk about it on Blocked & Reported, where she & Jesse Singal concluded the problems of facilitated communication and the "Clever Hans" effect were still there. https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-242-the-telepathy-tapes-wants
This podcast was a solid overview. Thank you.
I guess I'm just sad that the old school skeptic movement faded into obscurity as New Atheism took over, morphed, and faded from relevance. The telepathy claims and their extremely not-rigorous tests of them are just... bog standard paranormal claims that I thought we as a society had gotten over, sans some new agent types on the fringes.
The old school skeptic movement faded into obscurity because we realized that most modern science fails to replicate, and is in fact a lot of bunk in many cases.
Perhaps the skeptics were just, wrong?
I suspect most of modern science at all time periods failed to replicate. But it still must be tested, to rule out wrong things. We tend to remember the stuff that DOES replicate, though.
Are you thinking of something specific that didn't replicate?
The skeptic movement has the problem that the plot is always the same: True believer makes a claim which, when put to the test, turns out to be false. That makes it hard to keep the public interested. The <em>Skeptical Inquirer</em> still exists even if it is obscure; you can read an article about TTI here:
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-telepathy-tapes-a-dangerous-cornucopia-of-pseudoscience/
That sounds like the plot of every Scooby-Doo episode as well. :-)
It’s like atheism has morphed into non-religious mysticism and skepticism is now distrust of science in favor of the undiscovered.
Though I’m not sure this is new. Discussed this with my 75 year old parents today and they said many were testing telepathy and believing in telepathy back in California in the late 60s/early 70s.
Oh yeah they were, I remember. Mysticism is like Punch and Judy; it gets reinvented every generation.
This stuff boils my blood because when your kid has this (mine *might* and it’s looking like a milder form) you will basically pay any amount of money for any plausible treatment. Right now we’re paying a couple hundred dollars a week for speech and occupational therapy that’s basically the same as me playing with him at home. But since I can’t see any harm in it (versus some abomination called a child chiropractor who I want to throw out of a third story window on general principle) I just pay for it. Telling people that their kids can speak but in some special magical way is just awful and might be a fourth story window kind of problem.maybe fifth.
Idk I think it's worth it and plausible. Heck I wish we did more experiments like this. Why does it boil your blood?
Well-meaning and desperate people grasping at anything that looks like a cure, promised to them by hucksters on "the establishment says your kid is a dodo, but I can show you how to make them normal!"
See Miracle Mineral Solution for a sad story there:
https://autism.org/dangerous-miracle-mineral-solution/
"We recognize the urgency parents may feel when confronted with a diagnosis of autism, which may lead them to undertake desperate treatments such as Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS, a.k.a. CD for chlorine dioxide, or ASEA). Any medical treatment that uses “Miracle” on its label raises serious questions of old-fashioned fraud. In particular, suspicions arise with Miracle Mineral Solution, a product whose primary ingredient has side effects known to be seriously damaging. We recognize that there are off-label treatments with variable amounts of data that parents and practitioners will attempt. As pioneers in the use of a biomedical approach to autism, however, we maintain that it is critical that a treatment be considered reasonably safe before we give it to children. We do not consider MMS to meet these standards, and it violates the principal precept of medical bioethics: “first, do no harm.”
While many families spend years trying to detoxify their children, MMS introduces a known toxin into their bodies. MMS has properties similar to Clorox® bleach, which can burn the upper digestive tract. The mucous threads that children expel during MMS treatment, which have been touted as worms (though laboratory analysis does not support this claim), are the body’s method of protecting itself from induced oxidative stress in the lower digestive tract equivalent to the mid-day sun in its ability to produce severe sunburn."
Parents forcing their autistic children to drink what was, in effect, bleach because of the promise that the real cause of autism was "worms" and the MMS would force the expulsion of those worms.
If you're applying "your non-verbal child is really able to communicate by telepathy", just imagine for yourself what could go wrong there. At the least, parents imagining they are getting messages from the child and acting on those messages, which probably will have a heap of wishful thinking as to what the parent *hopes* or *wants* the child to be thinking; at worst, abusing the child in a "cruel to be kind" measure to make them communicate telepathically like they are able to do, this professional person assured me with evidence from scientific experiments and everything!
By all means perform an experiment. Just be honest about how you’re doing it. And then I think it will very quickly be the case that you find out kids can’t read minds. This kind of thing was all tested pretty extensively in the 70’s. It just doesn’t exist. In this case, I think it’s predatory because it preys on parents who are desperate.
Same and this is what also concerns me. The autism therapy industry is a billion dollar one with no shortage of desperate customers and opportunistic providers.
Even if everyone in the tapes truly believes it’s real, it’s like many people also believe UFO abductions are real.
But at the same time, as the parent of a child with the condition formerly known as Asperger’s, now known as Autism level 1, I don’t want to discount or belittle the parent’s lived experiences. But idk… people can drink their own koolaide, especially filmmakers and stressed out moms.
I don’t know if your experience maps mine but I’m halfway between: this is real and a determined intervention of forced socialization might help especially during his early developmental stages. Then the other extreme, where I’m pretty sure this is just a personality type he inherited from me that’s been medicalized and it’s no big deal and probably he will be the same no matter what.
He doesn’t talk much at all but every now and again he bursts out with a whole sentence with all kinds of concepts we didn’t think he knew. He doesn’t acknowledge his name and never has but will if we say his full name and sound upset. The strongest evidence I’ve found is that he was in love with the sensory toy store when we went there and I got the same “vibe” from the other kids.
I love him to death but in the earliest days we were exhausted all the time and it was pretty predatory how people would try to offer treatments to us. Not necessarily for autism but a couple people pushed that children’s chiropractor on us multiple times.
Not too dissimilar though my daughter always recognized her name. However, I was in denial/uninformed for years despite many signs looking back. Also I didn’t have good diagnostics or medical providers and no one identified her besides me initially.
I also doubted myself and thought—she’s just super introverted, artsy, an INTP, had to move around a lot because of my job, etc. but by the end of middle school it was blatantly obvious and then the private school forced us to diagnose her and then once she got the diagnosis they immediately said she couldn’t come back to the school even though she’d been there for years and was getting decent grades.
However, this was a blessing as she’s in a much better, very small school now that is 1/3 Asd1 kids, 1/3 super high IQ kids who needed to skip many grades, and 1/3 kids whose parents just live nearby and find it convenient.
So now she’s getting even better grades. It’s also very high tech and low social which suits her. No sports and split online/in person which has been great for her, so half days in school, the rest at home and Fridays completely online. And the teachers really get her.
I also homeschooled her after the diagnosis for a bit and this was a valuable experience because it really let me see where she was at and understand her needs. I was so lucky to be able to do this.
I think public school is a nightmare and borderline abusive for these kids. Just my personal opinion.
Gotta let these kids be exactly who they are and accept their natures. Trying to change them or make them neurotypical is a stressful, losing battle. Again, just my own experience. And ignore the predators!
I wish you luck! Joining a support group of parents also helped, mainly because we share doctors, identify scammers, test things with our kids, share research etc, which I found the group through a university near me. That group helped me find the appropriate school for her.
How old is he?
He’s still a toddler so it’s a bit too early to know for sure.
Oh, yeah. Especially because he's a boy. He might just need a little bit more time than the other kids.
You're underestimating speech and occupational therapists. It's hard to see how what they are doing might be working, and the bad ones are pretty useless, but the good ones have superpowers and can do amazing things. If you are in the US, your school district is supposed to offer early intervention (speech, physical, occupational therapy) for free, but of course therapists vary hugely. If it's a good school district, this might be worth a try.
It sounds like you’re on the right track.
The blinding is inadequate, parents can direct the kid through subtle cues to give the message they expect.
First I'm hearing about this... is the claim actually that autistic children can read minds?
Yes, that some non-verbal autistic kids have telepathic powers and that they meet in an akashic type realm called “The Hill” to communicate telepathically, and the filmmaker Ky Dickens is very serious about it. The 10-part podcast went viral and she’s now raising money to produce a feature film and trying to get UVA to validate her research.
See “The Chrysalids” by John Wyndham. So interesting….
This actually looks really good. I will read this. Thank you for the recommendation.
Let me know what you think. I remember thinking it was pretty damn good, but it was a long time ago that I read it.
That's certainly weirder than I could have expected.
As in, she's trying to get UVA to promote it, or say it has legitimacy?
So I believe that a lab at UVA is taking some of the kids featured in the podcast/doc and they’re going to do more rigorous telepathy testing and the filmmaker is also going to document this and include it in the film. I think it’s the Jaswal Lab, but I’m not 100% sure.
Interesting. I'd assume this one: https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/
But this case does make for a perfect interdepartmental crossover!
Right the near death experience people. I think she discusses the UVA plans in that Scott Britton interview but I can’t remember the exact details now, would have to go back and listen again.
I would hope lotions dont break the blood brain barrier with neurological relevant doses
Rewinding The Telepathy Tapes.
Ky Dickens is going to change her mind about her own podcast series.
Like many people whose interest will be sparked by TTT, I can approach even bizarre topics with an open mind. But this podcast was excruciating.
As I listened to each account of their recorded “psychic tests”, I wanted to know what was going on that wasn’t being explicitly narrated. What kind of non-verbal interactions were happening between the children and their parents in the room?
One doesn’t want to believe that the show producers would simply leave out details that raise obvious questions of legitimacy. But after five episodes of growing frustration, I paid $10 to watch the video recordings on their website.
Everything I was imagining might be going was exactly what was going, and in some cases to a much more disappointing degree than I anticipated.
Dickens, it turns out, only explains 25% of what’s actually between the children and their seasoned spelling facilitators. If she revealed more, the show wouldn’t be nearly as compelling and popular. In fact, it would be disturbing and condemned.
Here’s how the story will end:
Dickens will continue to raise money and eventually release her documentary. The stories, of course, will lose much of their credibility when everyone sees what’s really going on. Dickens will get called out for her deceptive presentations in the podcast.
Then, she’ll begin to back-peddle on her claims, and talk about how the existential difficulties in her life led her to believe in something, anything, that would made life feel magical again. “I needed that, at that point in my life, and so I ignored the signs that something wasn’t quite right with the parents’ claims,” she’ll say.
And then we’ll all wait patiently for the next spectacle to arrive and distract us from our seemingly mundane reality.
But that spectacle might come from Dickens herself. I wouldn’t put it past her to eventually seek public redemption by creating a followup series where she “investigates” what’s really going on, contacts the parents and tries to get them to admit that there’s no “shared consciousness” with their kids — that it’s all body language and other forms of coded communication.
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, nor a mind reader, to see the clues.
https://substack.com/@ousi/note/c-85023620?
Very plausible. Also, the footage she shared behind the paywall mostly wasn’t new. It was from ages ago and you can find the Depak Chopra clips and longer clips on YouTube for free. Also these kids were younger in the clips. Where is the girl sitting in the cubicle now? I also think maybe they didn’t share newer videos because they may be uncomfortable to watch for many audiences, in addition to raising too many questions. Will be interesting to see if anything comes of this.
Damn, they manged to get hours of my time AND my $10.
Don’t feel bad. I too paid to see the footage. It was only later when I dug around to see why Chopra was even involved that I discovered more footage of the same clips, people in same outfits etc that were already on YT and they’re from 7-10 years ago depending on the video. Kind of hard to find, so here are two: https://youtu.be/HXsVfAGJqL8?si=6CNClCR_S0Y9-qt0 and https://youtu.be/m2f9DkgvJMw?si=qPQ_Z-M7J4Rli_c1
And just the fact that she’s rambling about and extolling the benefits of unnamed autism lotion makes me think she has no credibility.
This is a good instinct to follow.
I wish everyone a good week ahead :^)
Thank you
Okay, yes, people here are more scared of losing their intelligence than average, but I think people here are also fairly wise to obvious pseudoscience-based scams. I don't think you'll get many dupes here.
I'll rate this one 2/5, since citing "Scientific References and Spiritual Studies" is amusing, if epistemically painful.