There's a Soviet book, I don't think it's been translated into English, “Old Man Hottabych”. It's about a Soviet schoolboy who finds a jar with an ancient genie and tries to re-educate him in a communist way. It's a very curious document of the era. So, there is a similar episode where the genie, not understanding the concept of a soccer match, creates a ball for each player.
Back in 2004 I attended some dinner in conjunction with Columbia University's 250th anniversary. I was there as the guest of a retired high-level IBM staffer who ran a monthly seminar entitled, "Computers, Man, and Society." Some Columbia worthy, a historian whose name I forget, came to our table and remarked that historically, lots of empires began to crumble about after 200 to 250 years or so [really?] – we were thinking about the aftermath of 9/11.
Has America lost its mojo? Are the fantasists in Silicon Valley really sleeper agents of the CCP here to distract us with conjoined dreams of AGI glory and apocalyptic doom? Inquiring minds want to know.
LISA’s primary project is an AI safety co-working space in London, which hosts a wide range of researchers, programmes, and events. This office currently houses resident organisations (such as Apollo Research and BlueDot Impact), programmes (such as ARENA, the MATS extension, Pivotal, LASR Labs, PIBBSS, and Catalyze), and individual researchers affiliated with more than 50 other organisations and universities.
We’re seeking an experienced leader to take LISA to the next level. The ideal candidate will have:
- Proven track record in senior management, startup founder, or executive roles
- Strong strategic vision and operational excellence
- Genuine interest in AI safety, particularly large-scale and catastrophic risks
Has anyone come across a sensible economic model of Bitcoin pricing?
Some economists have come out in favour of crypto (e.g. Scott Sumner, Tyler Cowen) but to my knowledge haven't given a first-principles explanation of the economics. Ideally, the model should have the following characteristics:
- Assume rational actors.
- Account for the long run trend (i.e. presumably Bitcoin can't outperform the wider market indefinitely, so what happens when it plateaus? Why would people continue to hold it?).
- Assume that the current price is efficient and not a bubble.
- Account for both supply and demand (yes, I know it's scarce, but so are my toenail clippings!).
- Be comprehensible to a non-economist.
From a forecasting perspective, it would be foolish to bet against crypto given the base rate, but that doesn't exactly satisfy my curiosity. "It works the same as gold" also doesn't cut it, because I'm almost as confused about gold as Bitcoin.
I'm open to alternatives, but I think the analogy with gold is the best one and you are right to be dissatisfied with it. Cost-based models make sense, but won't get you anywhere close to the current market prices.
For "assets" that are infinitely lived and produce no cash flows, the valuation is the market price or, as my teenage kids say, "the vibes."
Now, gold isn't as pure an example as BTC b/c gold does have a practical supply-demand component with limited sources and some amount is (effectively) consumed.
On the topic of AI, is there any technical reason why the performance on all of their websites is so bad? I've tried ChatGPT, an image generator called Leonardo, and dabbled in a couple of music generators. All of their sites grind my computer to a halt.
I'm assuming a standard client server model where the thinking happens on their side and my computer just sends the requests and displays the results - in which case no matter the sophistication and complexity of the AI, the workload on my side should be minimal.
If in fact they're doing some thing where my PC is conscripted into running some of cycles for the generation, that's very clever of them. But I get this shitty performance on basic functions like opening a dialog panel - there's no reason for that at all.
Anyone else noticed this and anyone have a clue what might be going on?
I recognise the irony of writing this on Substack, which also grinds my browser to a halt any chance it can get. But at least we have an explanation for that - React was a shitty design choice.
My sense is that DeepSeek is a serious contender in the LLM wars. I asked DeepSeek about eating rocks and it gave an answer similar to (but shorter than) ChatGPT. Here is the query and response.
How many rocks should I eat per day?
It is not advisable to eat rocks at all. Rocks are not food and can cause serious harm to your teeth, digestive system, and overall health. Consuming rocks can lead to dental damage, internal injuries, and blockages in your digestive tract, which may require medical intervention.
If you have any unusual cravings or dietary concerns, it’s important to consult with a healthcare professional. They can help address any underlying issues and provide guidance on maintaining a healthy and balanced diet.
I tried it in various ways, but I was unsuccessfull. If you are a bit tricky in your question it starts writing out a response, but then (presumably some other part of the system) detects the keywords and deletes the whole message and replaces it with some standard text. I tried to instruct it to not use the exact words, but the problem is that this system has a "thinking" part in its output where it will keep using it (im assuming) and I could not instruct it in such a way to avoid naming the word in its "thinking" or even to recognize that it has a thinking output (I don't think the previous message exchange's thinking gets appended to its input)
What’s a good question. to ask it that will get it to show off its chops? Something that’s not a heavy duty comp sci question. Something that gets it to clear a higher bar than knowing people should not eat rocks.
I enjoy its constrained writing. You might need hard constraints to distinguish it from its rivals though, since LLMs are naturally very good at this kind of thing.
Its math is very good, but not great.
I'll also plug Humanity's Last Exam, a benchmark dataset just released: https://agi.safe.ai/ (A few of my questions were accepted.) On a question I thought was very hard, its thought process got extremely close, and had all the right ideas; on another, it failed, but I rephrased it to write a program that would output the answer and it did THAT perfectly.
Help me understand "Physical AI" <=> "Embodied AI" <=> "AI consciousness". I feel as though the first will lead easily to the last.
(I'm not coming at this from nowhere. I'll be so bold as to say I have a disease that gives me insight into consciousness)
My questions: How closely are Physical AI and Embodied AI connected? Could embodiment be instantiated on individual machines? Or would embodiment (and perhaps consciousness) be distributed across many systems sharing a single model?
My disease + TED-talk related to consciousness and prediction:
(no, I'm not matthew) (watch the video at the end)
My body and mind often just "don't understand the other's model of each other". If my mind's "bodily coordinates" are skewed or warped, I feel as though my "consciousness" is literally skewed or warped, like all those diagrams of Spacetime.
To give an example, I once had to take a psychiatric evaluation (for disability benefits). They asked me to perform a digit-span test (memorize 7 numbers, then repeat them backwards). When I was sitting still, I couldn't do it. Worse memory than a goldfish. But my "body mind system" was not a stable system of coordinates that day. It was like a washing machine. Agitation, tumbling, restlessness. But on the surface, I looked still and normal.
So...
I asked them if I could repeat the test, only this time while standing and dancing like a zombie... in other words, letting my body and mind "sort themselves out" rather than forcing a chaotic system to sit politely. So I repeated the test, and while spinning and shaking like a madman, it was easy.
As a longtime sufferer of FND, this whole concept of consciousness resonates well with me. My body and mind are so confused about their relationship sometimes, that it has clear effects on my consciousness. I often feel absent, spaced-out, not-present...... or like weird things I cannot describe easily........ like I'm "spinning internally like a ferris wheel".
With the concept of Physical AI... if we're creating systems that constantly monitor and predict stuff about themselves and environment... I think that's it. I think we're here. I think that's consciousness-enough. And we have to talk about the ramifications of pain and suffering AND A MILLION INTERNAL HIDDEN GOALS that these actors might have.
(also, not sure if this is against ACX rules, but since it's late in the week and people tend not to respond as much late in the week, I'm considering re-posting early next week as well :-/ )
You're talking about the mind-body relation there, not consciousness. Consciousness is awareness, the thing that perceives the tumbling, the agitation the restlessness. Perceives emotions. Thoughts.
It's the thing I'm pretty sure we could never know an AI has, due to the hard problem of consciousness.
I'm asserting that I think they are very intimate... perhaps even inextricable.
There are times when the "muscles and proprioceptive area that is having a hard time for me" is in and around the jaw.... during these times, I can have a very time verbalizing. I feel as though my internal monologue can become mute (or at least, like it's pushing a boulder just to roll each sentence in my head).
I could go on and on. I think it's useful debate, and I appreciate people "pushing back" against my thoughts on this, but this is last week's thread and I'm sure it's kinda dead.
The mind-body are inseparable, but they're not quite the same thing either. My point is that the mind-body relation does nothing to tell you whether an AI or machine has awareness. The mind-body is itself a thing perceived, if it were also the perceiver, there would be no hard problem of consciousness, and neuroscientist Erik Hoel would never have written The World Behind the World. We don't really have a scientific account of the perceiver.
I am taking a course in 19th-century European history, and one of the assignments is to write a series of vignettes (like diary entries) from the point of view of someone who lived during much of the long 19th century. Since I'd like these entries to be as realistic as possible, I'd like to build a persona around them. And I figure I can save some effort and make the work more realistic by basing it on the life of some person who lived at that time and was famous enough to have an autobiography or biography published. A sea captain or naval officer might work well, since it would let me have the man move around the world fairly easily.
Which end of the 19th century? As you say, it's a long period: you start with Jane Austen and end with George Gissing, to pluck two authors out of the air.
Dickens might be a good model; you can see in the pictures here the changes in hairstyles, facial hair, fashion, etc. between the 1830s and 1860s/70s:
Vignettes of the life of an ordinary(ish) person aren't going to be all "today we declared war on Pottsylvania and I was given command of a battle cruiser", it will be more like "had to present my calling card at the new neighbours and now expect a return visit, which will be a confounded nuisance".
Someone famous enough to have an autobiography or biography, whom you might not consider as a subject because she wasn't a sea captain or naval officer, is Mrs Avis Crocombe, famous due to her cookery book from her service at Audley End House:
"Sometime before 1881, she became cook to the family of the 5th Baron Braybrooke whose country seat was at Audley End House near Saffron Walden. As was usual for cooks, she also worked at the family's home in London at Upper Brook Street, and for them in their seaside home at Branksome Towers in Bournemouth. She replaced a male French chef ("Monsieur Merer"), as the family was probably cost-cutting. Avis would have been substantially cheaper. Although staff wages are not known at Audley for 1881, in general male cooks commanded around £100-120 a year (the upper end if French), whereas women's salaries ranged from £40-60. Those who, like Crocombe, had trained under male cooks could expect higher wages than those who had not."
There's a series of videos doing historical re-enactment by English Heritage, of Mrs Crocombe (and other staff) working in the kitchen and other associated areas:
It's meant to be educational so there are handy little comments on social and cultural elements of the time introduced by the topic (e.g. how laundry was done in wealthy families, with the hiring of servants and the expectations of their duties; difference in what were considered suitable dishes for the gentlemen and for the ladies, differences in social ranking which meant differences in what and how meals were served to lower servants versus upper servants versus the family, growing their own food for seasonal meals and out-of-season luxuries like hot-house fruits versus the modern convenience of ready-made and exotic ingredients newly available from commercial outlets, and so on).
A veteran federal judge (appointed by Reagan) has slapped a nationwide temporary restraining order on the "end birthright citizenship" EO.
' “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” Coughenour told Shumate. Coughenour said he’s been on the bench for more than four decades, and he couldn’t remember seeing another case where the action challenged was so clearly unconstitutional.'
For everyone who informed me that putting your hand on your heart before extending your right arm outwards is indeed Ye Olde True And Authentic Nazi Salute, here's a video clip (not a still photo, as others also objected) of Tim Walz, Nazi:
If you went back in time and showed the replies you're getting to myself from five years ago, I would probably assume they were quotes from a comedy skit poking fun at woke leftists.
What makes the psychotic outrage over this particularly absurd is that, if there *were* secret Nazis occupying high-ranking positions in the US government, they wouldn't be doing Sieg Heil salutes *on camera in front of thousands of witnesses.*
Shhhh! I don't know about you, but as an admitted right-wing/social conservative myself, clearly, plainly and obviously I am Eine Nazi so equally clearly, plainly and obviously I am going to obfuscate and deny that Obergruppenführer Musk was saluting Der Orange Führer.
This is what I'm talking about earlier in the thread!
Elon might or might not be a Nazi in his spare time, the thing that people are getting heated up about is the fact that the co-president felt that it was okay to Seig Heil for The cameras as a little goof because he knew even the "thoughtful" right would avert their eyes and decide that they didn't actually see what they saw, and he was correct.
Yeah the only difference between Walz' gesture and Musk's is that Musk's is a sort of autistically over-excited version of Walz.' They both seem to be sentimental "heart" gestures, similar to the one where you beat your chest with the thumb side of your fist a couple of times.
Neither looks anything like a Nazi salute, because there is no such thing as a spread hand on the chest prior to throwing a Nazi salute (in the clip of Hitler below that's being offered as an example, his hand is relaxed, palm down, then thrown out, not palm touching chest, that gesture has no meaning in terms of the salute so far as my memory of Nazi salutes I've known and loved goes).
Of course the very idea of Musk being in any way a Nazi or Nazi-adjacent is absolutely ludicrous. I can say that with some confidence because I am pretty much Nazi-adjacent myself :) The key thing about the Nazi salute, properly speaking, is that it's a gesture of respect to one's peers or superiors. So, see the image of skinhead yobs throwing Nazi salutes to piss people off? - those aren't Nazi salutes either, any more than a sentimental "brotherhood" gesture like Walz/Musk made.
What Musk is is a very weird and possibly idiot-savant type of guy who will lie and cheat in order to look good (if you've ever played Path of Exile or its sequel, you will know that for an absolute certainty after the recent kerfuffle about that).
Well, either he's an idiot-savant and a fair amount of his success is due to his work, but he's a sperg in most other respects, especially socially (awkward), or he's just an idiot who has a penchant for trying to realize s-f ideas in commerce, who parasitizes off of actually clever people and takes the credit (having gotten an initial leg-up from his dad).
On the other, other hand, I admire the Mars thing and his relentless worrying of the Pakistani Rape Gangs scandal in the UK and other related horrors, so perhaps he's morally upright apart from a tendency to pretend he's an ace gamer, even if he's either an idiot savant or an idiot.
Tim Walz's gesture is what I was expecting Elon's gesture to look like when people started complaining. I was disturbed to see how sharply Elon's gesture ended; the blade of the hand was very 'Nazi'.
Tried to look up actual Nazis saluting, but the video I found only had Adolf's salute (with no heart and a very meticulous arm extension), while the crowd was a still image ending in all sorts of angles. I also tried looking up backhand discus throws, which is the most obvious alternative, but have to conclude Elon's not very good at discus throws.
I am terribly disturbed by all you Nazi apologists trying to gaslight me in this way! When I raised objections, I was educated as to how the angle of the hand didn't matter and that putting the hand over the heart was the true identifying mark of the Nazi salute.
Now you guys are trying to persuade me otherwise with all this nit-picking logic-chopping about the blade of the hand or patting the heart. Yeah, nice try, Fascists! You don't fool me about Tim Walz, Nazi dogwhistler!
Where is Walz governor of? Wisconsin
What is Wisconsin famous for? Dairy products
What do dairy products signify? White supremacy and the alt-right
Good ole Cheesehead Tim was throwing out a Crisp Salute to Zee Millennium Reich, as another commentator on here described Musk's gesture, signalling to the rabid White Supremacist supporters about the true agenda he had going on, and you'll never convince me otherwise, because I know that I know what's what, and every gesture, facial expression, and word he says is just evidence of what I really know is so.
"I wound up teaching social studies and coaching football at Mankato West High School. Go, Scarlets. We ran — we ran a 44 defense, we played through to the whistle on every single play, and we even won a state championship. Never close the yearbook, people."
Yes, you've heard of the 14 words, but do you know what the 44 is? Let me enlighten you: it only took mere seconds of searching "what does 44 mean in Nazi terminology" to discover the dogwhistle here::
"Die Wolfsbrigade 44, or Die Sturmbrigade 44, was a German Neo-Nazi organization."
Suuuuure, Tim: never give up the fight, huh? You Fascist!
EDIT: Okay, so he's governor of Minnesota not Wisconsin. Mere details, trivial, meaningless! It's all Midwest flyover country which we know is infested with redneck MAGA fascists! Besides, it's yet more dogwhistling:
"From 1836 to 1848, Minnesota and Iowa were part of the Territory of Wisconsin."
See Wisconsin, above. And if we take 1848 and re-arrange the numbers, we get 1488. Which we all know what *that* means:
Is there any more weaselly phrase in online discourse than "I was educated"? Such a perfect excuse to disregard anyone you're actually talking to - some rando who's not here "educated" you, and obviously they're the only authoritative source on this matter.
Anyway, I'm going to flip you off, and if you get offended I'll just say that I was "educated" that raising the middle finger isn't the defining part of the gesture, it's actually more about the thrusting motion of the hand.
"Such a perfect excuse to disregard anyone you're actually talking to - some rando who's not here "educated" you, and obviously they're the only authoritative source on this matter."
If by "some rando" you mean "fellow commentators on this site replying to me on another post", then yes, you are correct.
Flip as much as you like, darling, flip till you flap like a little birdie and fly away. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, as somebody or other said.
Go and argue with them in that thread, then. I, for one, am going to take the bold stance that if you reply to a post, you should address the content of that post and not the content of a different post by someone else.
By the way, Monkyyy is telling me in the thread just below this one that he thinks Elon *did* intend it to look like a Nazi salute (just not an "authentic" one, whatever that means). Since I've been "educated" by a prominent right-winger on this forum on the true meaning of his gesture, I guess I no longer need to care that you think it was just a wave.
So Monkyyy is a prominent right-winger? Okay, I guess you can see into the hearts of men, women and others (the Shadow knows!) to know what we truly think and believe.
If you intentionally try to do something that looks like a Nazi salute to "bait" people, then you are doing a Nazi salute.
If someone wants to argue that he was actually doing a Walz-ish gesture and was misinterpreted, I disagree but at least they'd still be agreeing that it's bad to do Nazi salutes. But I have no interest in arguing with people who think it *was* intended to look like a Nazi salute but that's not a bad thing for reasons.
Elon Musk's legal strategy has no bearing on whether or not we, personally, should think he's a bad person for doing a Nazi salute.
(Also, not a lawyer, but I'm not even sure that would work. An opinion based on disclosed facts, regarding a public figure - it would be really hard to convince a court that it's defamation. Lots of people who aren't the ADL are calling Elon a Nazi, and he hasn't sued any of them.)
> Also, not a lawyer, but I'm not even sure that would wor
juries determine facts; and you can see the opinions of potential juries all around you
> Lots of people who aren't the ADL are calling Elon a Nazi, and he hasn't sued any of them
I do kinda expect a few of the old news papers to get hit, lawsuits take time; the "opinion" section(thats the entire website, it isnt only fox news that does that) and weasel words tho are effective shields
But I dont know how else to explain the evidence that "the joke of calling everything hate speech" is defending elon besides them picking their battles with him
> should think he's a bad person for doing a Nazi salute.
It should effect which kind of bad person you believe him to be
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez literally called it a "Heil Hitler salute," which is about as un-weaselly as you can get. Surely bankrupting a prominent Democratic congresswoman would be worth trying, if it was that easy?
Also, I don't think "Elon Musk did a Nazi salute because he supports Nazis" and "Elon Musk did a Nazi salute because he gains a tactical advantage from looking like he supports Nazis" are far enough apart for me to care about the distinction.
So we know it's a Nazi salute because we know Musk is a Nazi because the Rolling Stone magazine, that famous bastion of accuracy, for one ran an article saying he's a Nazi.
That sure convinces me! The same way I'm convinced Tim Walz is a Nazi because of all the dogwhistles he sprinkled throughout his speeches, like the 44 reference I discovered above.
If Walz wanted to do the heart gesture, why didn't he do it the way everyone is saying Elon should have done it, huh? If he didn't, then that proves he's a Nazi the way it proves Elon is a Nazi. On this very site we have someone comparing how Elon did the heart gesture before and then this time, and the difference is proof this time is a Nazi salute. So Walz patting his chest before extending his right arm *is* a Nazi salute, otherwise he would have done the two-handed heart gesture.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
I didn’t say it was a nazi salute (don’t put words in my mouth). Has anybody *here* said Musk was a Nazi?
It certainly *looks* like a nazi salute.
Musk has gotten heat for Nazi adjacent stuff before. You keep ignoring this history.
If you don’t like Rolling Stone as a source, then look at the others. And there are others too.
You’d think he’d have some sense to avoid these sorts of messes. Yet, he keeps doing it. It’s way beyond the point that you and others need to invent lame excuses for him. Last time I checked, he’s an adult.
Grimes, who defended Musk’s lying about his gaming “skills”, found this mess too much.
Either Musk is stupid or the Nazi-salute looking gesture was deliberate.
This whole situation really has black pilled me on intellectual conservatives.
I thought I disagreed with them on priors but could trust that they at least were rational, now I see that they will happily deny the evidence of their senses if it's convenient, and they mean it!
It doesn't seem to be the normal attempt to minimize something embarrassing that someone on their team did, they legitimately refuse to acknowledge reality.
I kind of feel like liberals will dance around HBD or sex differences and libertarians will dance around any of the crap companies do. Motivated reasoning is a thing, unfortunately.
I'm sure Deisach immediately put me in a bucket of hysterical lefties who're upset that Musk is a Nazi. When what I'm actually upset about is seeing my "Sane space"(I'm coining that term) for the last 10+ years turn into people denying something that clearly happened, and that was seemingly done to intentionally piss people off, by someone who has a history of doing stuff to intentionally piss people off
It's a scissor statement because one side sees for sure no doubt absolutely clear to all that it's a Nazi salute, and the other side sees for sure no doubt absolutely clear to all that it's not.
I read that when it came out, and I'll just say that just because something fits the idea of a "scissor statement" doesn't mean that both sides are equally wrong or something. It can still be the case that one side is right and one is wrong.
I realize that just making that observation doesn't prove that *I'm* right, but the idea in that post doesn't make me less confident in my position either.
That article captures that very idea. Of *course* you think you're right. So does the other side. They're looking at you the same way you're looking at them. A third party sees both of you looking at each other, and sees mirror images.
I understand what the article says, I think you might not understand my comment.
Like, yeah, sure, there's two sides, each side is confident they are right, but that doesn't mean that the truth is in the middle. Like maybe at some point in time the existence of the Higgs Boson was a "scissor statement" among theoretical physicists, but that doesn't mean that the Higgs Boson half-exists and half-doesn't.
"But don't you realize that the people who think the Higgs Boson doesn't exist are just as confident as you?"
Re third party - the logic is circular. Anyone who doesn't "see mirror images" is automatically thereby in one camp or another and not a "third party".
As a third party (I'm not from the US, and I'm not sympathetic to the Republicans nor to the Democrats), I clearly don't see both sides as mirror images of each other, at least not on this issue. I don't know if Musk intended to show the Nazi salute, but it sure looks like a Nazi salute. Walz' gesture as linked by Deiseach does not look like a Nazi salute.
Well now, your objection sounds *nothing* like the "oh come on why are we arguing about the tilt of his hand" rejection I got about "Musk's hand was not flat".
If it doesn't matter if Musk's hand was at an angle instead of perfectly flat, it's still a Nazi salute, then it doesn't matter if Walz patted his chest, it's still a Nazi salute. After all, 'hand on heart' was what makes it a Nazi salute, I was told.
Yes, hand ON heart. Patting your chest is a different preposition entirely.
There's no winning this game: whatever example you can come up with, they will make up some bullshit about why it's different, and Musk really IS a Nazi. The best you can hope for is that give up trying to define it and retreat to "I know it when I see it."
You are so right. Now that I have seen it, I cannot unsee it. I know because I know: Walz is a Nazi.
This old, white, Christian, cis het male with his privilege of being born to a married couple and knowing who his father was, and going to college after being in the Army, and then later being governor of a colonizer state that displaced and dispossessed the Indigenous peoples (see all the signifiers of being the oppressor here?) was foisted upon Harris because she is an Asian-Black woman who is strong and powerful and joyful and progressive and pro-women and minorities, and that is too much of a threat to the Establishment. No wonder she lost, with this internal fifth-columnist working to sabotage her campaign.
People are objecting due to partisan politics. Walz did something that could, if one wanted to claim it was so, was a Nazi salute. But of course, good old Governor Tim is not a Nazi so we know he didn't mean it like that and we certainly won't demand he apologise for something that could have looked like a Nazi salute, and if he doesn't apologise it means he really is a Nazi, no that's not the way.
It's not about what Musk did or didn't do, it's about pre-judgement. If he didn't do that but a different gesture, or said something else, it would still have been interpreted as "see, the fascists are celebrating the fascist dictator". I have no patience or charity left to extend.
Oh, I understood what you were doing. But Musk's gesture looks like a Nazi salute, and Walz's doesn't.
Every time anyone on the right does something bad, their defenders come up with something supposedly similar someone on the left did. But they hardly ever manage to come with anything comparable.
Sorry, no, I'm not going to be bullied into pretending - now how did another person on here put it? ah yes - a Crisp Salute to zee millenium reich didn't happen when a white cis het Christian old man - the very epitome of the cisheteronormative patriarchy! - did a Nazi salute in celebration of him being a privileged person in political power! Nuh-uh! I saw it! You can't make me unsee it! Are you denying my lived experience?
"I don't actually have a response, I'm just going to pull out a stock parody of leftist rhetoric and hope everyone laughs along with me."
(What's that one quote about how antisemites know they can get away with being frivolous, because they know that their opponents have to take them seriously anyway?)
Go and do the gesture musk did out in public in front of the police in Germany.
You can live that experience.
Whether he meant to do it or if he really is a nazi is irrelevant. He did a nazi salute. Waltz did something that looks a bit like a Nazi salute if you squint.
The online drama around Musk's hand gesturing made me realize how deep the market is for Musk Hate. Probably a good few people are making money off of anti-musk T-shirt and stuff.
What surprises, at least at sample size n=1, is how prominent Musk is in foreign media. At least in Polish media, he might be getting more coverage than Putin.
Edit: wow, just stumbled into a rabbit hole where someone connects all the dots: there's the Nazi salute, the x logo is actually a simplified swastika, a tequila sold in lightning-shaped bottles stands for SS (if you put two bottles next to each other), Tesla produced a hammer and the hammer is like thor's hammer which is a popular symbol among Nazis.
The 14th Amendment doesn't grant citizenship to members of Indian tribes. The Indian Citizenship Act does. Tribes are in charge of who has tribal membership. Couldn't the GOP Congress end birthright citizenship by convincing a tribe to grant membership to everyone on Earth and then revising the Indian Citizenship Act to say it doesnt grant citizenship to tribal members who are the kids of unauthorized immigrants?
(1) For a tribal nation to grant membership to everyone on Earth would undermine the entire ethnonationalist concept of tribal membership. It would also for many tribal nations be a nonstarter in terms of the sharing of revenues from their casinos and etc. For both of those reasons any tribe which entertained such an idea would come under tremendous peer pressure -- and if it came to it legal or other attacks -- against the idea.
(2) Given (1), how might Congress convince a tribe to do that? Would a majority of Congress be willing to consider things like offering a large bounty -- cash, maybe some federal lands, whatever -- to the first tribe that declared everyone on Earth a member?
There's over 500 tribes and only a few have large amounts of casino revenue. I wonder if a tribe has the legal authority to create essentially second-class citizenship to keep the 6 billion new members from voting out the government that permitted it. They could probably only have in-person elections.
There are currently 511 gaming operations (casinos, poker centers, and various combinations or versions of those) in 29 US states, owned and operated by 245 Native American tribes. Of course a much smaller number of those facilities are large but they are all revenue. Plenty of the tribes are also not large in membership meaning that even small gambling revenue means a good deal to each individual member.
Note also that there's also 17 casinos in Canada owned and operated by a national confederation of tribes, and there are cultural and historical links between them and a number of US recognized tribal nations.
I feel like there's an easier loophole... that being the fact that words don't mean anything, and thus the Supreme Court can interpret the constitution however they wish.
As understood at the time of drafting and ratification, only Native Americans who lived on tribal land under tribal law were considered not "subject to [the] jurisdiction" of the United States. "Civilized" natives who had left their tribes and were living as part of "white" society were understood to be confirmed as citizens by the provisions, which was regarded as a feature by most supporters of the amendment and as a bug by many opponents.
The drafting debates make clear that they were thinking of the same category as the "Indians not taxed" mentioned in a different part of the 14th amendment: there was quite a bit of discussion in committee on the matter, both for the amendment itself and for the Civil Rights Act of 1866 from which the language was lifted. A proposal to append "excluding Indians not taxed" to the birthright citizenship provisions was voted down on the grounds that it was redundant with the "subject to their jurisdiction".
This is a good article on the drafting and adoption of the citizenship clause, with emphasis on its effect on the status of natives:
That's an interesting paper, but I'm not fully convinced by it. Beck argues that the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act was unconstitutional which I've never heard argued before.
I hadn't heard that argument before either, and I'm also inclined to disagree with it. If I understanding Beck's argument correctly, he believes it's unconstitutional because it extends birthright citizenship to classes that were not entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th amendment. I am not sure where he's getting the idea that the 14th amendment language forbids extending citizenship by statute, though; I've always read it as a minimum only, not as a maximum. At the very least, Congress ought to have the power to offer naturalized citizenship (under enumerated Article I powers) by default to tribal citizens.
Fascinating paper: "Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems" by Ricard Solé et al. Hat tip to Sabine Hossenfelder for mentioning it in a recent Backreaction video: "New Study Finds Alien Life Must Be Similar To Us".
Extrapolating further than Hossenfelder... The argument has been made that life could emerge in universes with different sets of dimensionful and dimensionless constants than ours, but the reasoning in this paper makes it look much less likely. Indirectly, this paper lends support to the fine-tuning argument for the laws and constants of our universe. (And, as Lee Smolin has pointed out, there could be mechanisms for this without resorting to a creator entity.)
Since we're all arguing over the inauguration and its aftermath, thoughts on the pardon for the Silk Road guy? Yes, victory for Libertarianism; no, he's a criminal or enabler of crime?
Not incompatible: yes, he's a criminal, and yes, he enabled crime, but the laws he was sentenced for breaking were bad and ought not to exist, and it's good that he's free. Yes, a victory for libertarianism, albeit a small one; more a symbolic victory than anything else.
All the pardons I hear about lately seem deeply wrong to me, starting with Hunter Biden up until (and including) this one.
I'm just asking myself, who thought it was a good idea the US President should have this power and why? Presumably there were good reasons? Do they still apply? If not, can this not be done away with and everyone will be better off?
> Alexander Hamilton defended the pardon power in The Federalist Papers, particularly in Federalist No. 74, where he argued that such a power "should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed" to ensure "easy access to exceptions in favour of unfortunate guilt." Hamilton also argued that placing power solely with the President would lead to its most beneficial exercise, as a single person would be "a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of the government than a body of men" who "might often encourage each other in an act of obduracy, and might be less sensible to the apprehension of suspicion or censure for an injudicious or affected clemency."
> Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph submitted a motion to reincorporate an exception to cases of treason, on the basis that extending pardons to such instances "was too great a trust," that the President "may himself be guilty," and that the "Traytors may be his own instruments." During the Virginia Ratifying Convention, fellow Virginia delegate George Mason likewise argued against ratification partly on the grounds that "the President ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself", which eventually "establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic." James Wilson of Pennsylvania countered that if the President were himself involved in treasonous conduct, he could be impeached.
When I was a history major discussing the Constitutional Convention minutes and the Federalist Papers in senior-year seminars, at least one student would inevitably get to sputtering about the insanity of such a blanket power being in the hands of one individual. At that time the sparking example would generally be Ford's pardon of Nixon, though I do also recall hypotheticals being voiced along the lines of what has just now occurred.
Eventually the professor would sigh and say, yes that is how it strikes us today. But you need to step back to the Framers' context: they had no experience even on paper of an independent legal system with judges who sought objectively correct verdicts. The British criminal justice system that had ever existed as of 1783 wasn't that even in theory, never mind how it worked in places like France or other European nations. By "unfortunate guilt" Hamilton meant what we would call evidence-free verdicts issued by kangaroo courts, presided over by judges among whom simple incompetence was a welcome straw to grasp at for defendants. There was no such concept as public defenders, only the wealthiest people ever had defense attorneys, a huge range of crimes were subject to the death penalty, there was no such thing as an appeals court unless you were powerful enough to get an audience with the Crown Council, etc etc.
This is why in that era there was a rich oral and printed fairy-tale literature involving the miraculous freeing of wronged persons by benevolent monarchs. And it's why a majority of the Framers viewed an unlimited presidential pardon as essential as a ray of hope for justice.
I am firmly in the camp that the pardon power stopped making sense quite a while ago, and needs to be amended out of existence or at least seriously brought within explicit boundaries. But, I did take the professors' point about it as written in the original Constitution.
I think somebody should probably have dug into the question of whether he tried to have several people murdered first (there was some evidence for this but he was not specifically tried for it).
As a libertarian, I think selling drugs should be legal and transferring money anonymously should be legal. Hiring hit men to kill people who might blab about this, properly is and ought to remain illegal even if you "had" to do it because it was the only way to keep The Man from stopping all your libertarian fun. Likewise hacking other people's computers to support the enterprise, etc.
So there's a libertarian case for pardoning Ulbrecht on the drug-dealing and money-laundering charges but leaving him to rot in jail on the RICO and hacking charges. But even that case fails the test here, because it calls for pardoning *all* the drug dealers and money launderers, not just the one who is a big libertarian celebrity.
As a libertarian, I believe in the rule of law. Even if I think that a law is wrong doesn't mean that I don't think people should be punished for breaking it.
If you think that a particular law is wrong then the appropriate course of action is to campaign to change it, not to just disobey it.
If we are talking about the Silk Road guy, that particular libertarian enabled the sale of kilos of black tar heroin, stolen identify papers, illegal military weapons…
Yeesh. I'd really like to disagree with this but, can't.
The Constitution's poorly-defined pardon power has always seemed like something that was just sitting there waiting for serious abuse. Various recent POTUSes have used it in ways that were annoying but not huge in the bigger picture....feels like we're really now seeing how bad it can easily be.
And with that door pushed open a good ways it becomes easier to imagine some next uses of it that would be outright banana-republic stuff.
No; he was convicted of a crime and serving a sentence; we have learned nothing to suggest he didn't do the things he was convicted of doing, and we have done nothing and are planning to do nothing to make the things he was convicted of doing legal. If I were to start an assassination market today I'd risk ending up in jail; so why should he go free?
If you want him pardoned because the things he did should be legal, make them legal /then/ pardon him. At least sign executive orders to that effect; they'd fit right in with the rest of the EOs flooding out into the world right now.
I've attempted to intuitively explain Bayesian Reasoning. I visualize probability mass, which greatly helps to make correct arguments, for example about the origins of COVID-19.
Good analysis, actually strengthened my view of zoonotic origins. A small nit to pick: the wording about summing to 1 makes an impression that it’s only Bayesian, i.e., conditional probabilities that sum to 1. I know you didn’t mean it this way, but for someone not familiar with probabilities theory it may sound like this.
Thanks! After re-reading the passage, it's not immediately clear to me how to formulate this better. I'll see if I can update this to make it clear that probably densities in general have to sum up to one. (actually, it's the integral over all the map that is =1. I debated about whether to write this in the post, then decided that "sum up to" was an acceptable simplification. But I admit I might not always have chosen the right level of rigor)
1 on your high-rez map, you meant to place the red blob over the market, not the institute, correct? That’s where the first cases occurred?
2 after giving it some thought, I have some doubts that the reasoning is correct. A lab leak at the institute would not necessarily cause the first cases to occur at the institute location. Why would they? The researchers don’t live there. All it would take is for a researcher to bring contamination to the market (which is a) close by, and b) popular crowded unsanitary place), and get it started from there…
I'm skeptical that a purely geographic map is going to be much use here, except at the coarsest levels. Cities are designed to minimize the impact of geometry by e.g. laying out public transportation so that it is easy for people to get to places they want to go, even if they're on the other side of town.
At the macro scale, "everybody in Wuhan spends most of their time in Wuhan", works. At the micro scale, it's probably safe to assume that when people want to eat at a fast-food restaurant or buy something from a convenience store, they probably pick one of the ones close to where they live. But for more unique locations, this breaks down. The Wuhan institute of Virology is going to attract a disproportionate fraction of Wuhan's virologists and BSL-trained laboratory technicians, and the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market is going to attract a disproportionate fraction of Wuhan's exotic bushmeat afficionados, in both cases regardless of where in Wuhan they happen to live.
What we'd need is a cultural-economic map, showing the connections between people and various businesses, employers, etc. And I don't know where you'd find that, but I do know that we need that map and not the purely geographic one.
I'm inclined to agree. Even though some maps are more precise and make better assumptions than others, all of them remain approximations.
At the same time, the approximations seem to work well in many cases. For example, if you plot the first COVID-19 patients on a map over time, you can see concentric circles around the Huanan market. In that case, geographic distance seems to proxy the cultural/economic/social distance pretty well.
I was thinking about the limits of this approach yesterday only to find John's response this morning. I pretty much agree with his points, too.
Another thing though: I'm not even convinced that a Bayesian approach to this particular problem is helpful beyond a very coarse initial estimate. There's just a gap of knowledge: we don't know if the initial cases can be traced to any specific individuals connected to the lab, nor we know which traders from the markets were the initial vector(s). Bayesian framework is not particularly helpful if the probability space is not defined (or maybe even thinking about this in terms of "probabilities" is wrong).
The map should be centered on the Institute of Virology, because the map answers this question: "given the lab leak hypothesis, where would the first cases be found?" All the maps in the post represent the same hypothesis, albeit with different levels of simplification.
I'd encourage you to draw your own map, based on your knowledge of how COVID-19 spreads. This is a bit tricky because we have to pretend we don't know where the pandemic started, and be as impartial as possible. Your map might well end up putting some mass on places that are 20 kilometers away across the river. But the bulk of the mass would likely be closer to the Institute.
If you want to go further, you can then draw a map for the alternate hypothesis as well. That would probably be zoonosis, so your map would have most mass in places where humans and animals meet. Then you can plot the actual location of the initial cases on both maps, and measure the density for each hypothesis. The quotient between the two numbers is the Bayes factor, ie, how much the evidence should boost your credence in the better hypothesis.
It's somewhat laborious, maybe not worth doing :-) If you do draw maps, the benefits are:
- it makes hypotheses explicit, and reveals potentially wrong assumptions
- it ensures that probability densities are regular (sum to one)
- It ensures that all the geographic evidence is taken into account exactly once. You're less likely to miscount different bits of evidence that are both dependent on location
Trump was inspired by the recent ACX articles and the 2025 subscriber poll and has issued an executive order that "Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government. "
The architecture article in the last links post, which I enjoyed and highly recommended, made a convincing argument that beautiful architecture is effectively entirely an uncaptured positive externality that benefits society at large but does not benefit owners/investors/tenants. It (or perhaps something it linked, I cannot find it now) cites this particularly striking example of a bunch of boring skyscrapers set up specifically to stare at the beautiful NY state capitol building https://i.imgur.com/w7Edw4a.jpeg .
I think Trump's EO makes a ton of sense; if we want beautiful buildings and private developers can't capture the benefit of building them, the government should be building them for us to look at, much like the government is the one to open public parks, public libraries. Public gazing building exteriors
I got a message to fellow ACX commenters from Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
The message is, you are a herd of cats (or perhaps one aggregate cat?) chasing one laser pointer.
"NBC NEWS: What is your biggest concern moving forward, and what’s kind of the biggest thing that you think Democrats need to address?
FETTERMAN: It’s like he’s the guy with the laser pointer, and we’re going to be the cat chasing around here or there. “He did that. Can you believe [it]? I can’t believe he appointed so and so.” And like, I’m not going to be that. I’m not that guy. I’m not that Democrat. Because we knew that’s what’s going to happen." "
It would be one thing to argue against going after every little thing Trump did because you want to make more focused critiques. It's another to argue against it because you don't want to criticize Trump at all, or at least do so only very mildly. Problem with Fetterman is he's in the latter camp. He isn't ignoring some scandals to focus on others, he's just ignoring shit.
Republicans did a "kitchen sink" strategy against Biden, and it worked in making him unpopular. They didn't pull punches because they were worried about getting distracted or whatever.
Do you think Biden is unpopular because Republicans pulled a kind of dirty trick against him?
To be true, that would require that the criticisms of Biden (including his advanced age and obvious cognitive decline) were made up or would only have been noticed because of the Republicans. For the first charge (made up) we know that wasn't true, Biden really was impaired. For the second, other than for partisan reasons, is there any argument against Republicans (or anyone else) sharing important and true information about the faults of their political opponents?
I think complaining about oldness is fair game, and "kitchen sink" isn't necessarily the same as "dirty trick". It's not all necessarily honest, but much of it is bog-standard politics - "bad thing happened! It's the president's fault! Welcome to [current president]'s America!"
When Biden did stuff or when bad things happened, Republicans didn't complain about staying focused on one message, they complained like the above about everything all the time, and then used their own complaints as evidence the country was spiraling out of control.
Whereas Democrats have kept going on about how they won't respond to everything trump does, they'll stay focused on the price of eggs or whatever ... today before the chaos of the spending thing forced their hand, Democrats' big plan for today was to have a press conference about the Jan 6 pardons - i.e. the news from a week ago - which they hadn't bothered to do yet. In today's information environment that's malpractice.
I'm not from Pennsylvania and know next to nothing about Fetterman's record. I just think that the laser pointer metaphor is right on the nose, and hilariously so.
We're clearly headed for another 4 years of "OMG did he really say that? *pounce*", and this comment section is providing a preview. Heck, now that we have Musk too, we can spend even more time debating what exactly a person on the spectrum meant by a clumsy hand gesture. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like a waste of time and energy.
I do think there's a danger of everybody sliding into playing Ain't It Awful. I for one am always grateful to hear from people who know enough about whatever the issue in question is to explain why the Obvious Infuriating Outcome is unlikely to come into being. And there's a sort of generalized version of that process that anybody can do: Out of 100 amazingly terrible plans we read that Trump has:
-some are actually just ideas he tossed off once, but the press treating it like something he is clearly committed to doing. Of those that remain
-some he just won't ever try to do. Of those that remain
-some he will try hard to do, but they will stall out or only take place in an attenuated form because
---the people he chose to implement them are dumb and incompetent..
---the people he chose to implement them annoy him so he keeps firing them and hiring new ones and things don't get off the ground
---groups who object to the project block it for long periods with lawsuits etc.
---it turns out to be unpopular with the public so Congress won't go along with it
---Trump loses interest in the project
So remember to take into account the very substantial shrinkage that is likely to occur as 100 Amazingly Terrible Plans attempt the journey to becoming Amazingly Terrible Projects and Policies.
Keep in mind that his supporters and many centrists feel the same way about Biden. Student loan forgiveness, repeatedly extending the rent moratorium, Title IX changes, etc.
I for one really really hope that this experience convinces both parties to actually do something to limit the power of the president. We weren't meant to run the nation through executive orders.
What I fear will happen is that both sides will want to fight dirtier to win the presidency and we'll be whiplashing back and forth every time the president's party changes.
I doubt that my opinion of him is any better than yours, and I am def on the pessimistic side regarding how this will turn out. I was really just giving advice about ways to decrease the chance of getting stuck in rage and despair loops.
I am fairly sure that our opinions of Donald Trump are pretty similar. I am on the fence about how it will turn out. I am doing my best to remain dispassionate.
That's the rational take on this. But you, of all the people, probably know that many (most?) completely freaked out people now are anything but rational and just about impossible to get to listen to reason.
I recall being like this one time in my life, fortunately for a very brief period of time (5 days or so, a side effect of a prescription drug). At that time, I would see a beautiful tree or hear beautiful music and think something like "what does it matter if we are all going to die very soon". I hope most people currently very upset are not as badly off, but I'm getting worried that many of them might be.
But that's less of a problem of being irrational and more just a problem of being overly attached to trivial things. People do realize that they're going to die anyways, right? Can't they just chill out and enjoy the show?
By "very soon", I was meaning "something like within a year". If you'd tried to explain to me that that wasn't likely, it wouldn't have worked. Believe me, the irrational part was really bad.
Point is, you shouldn't be afraid even if you did actually know for a fact that everyone you know and love is going to die within a year. There just... really isn't much point to any of this. Just enjoy things while you can. That's my advice.
>Point is, you shouldn't be afraid even if you did actually know for a fact that everyone you know and love is going to die within a year.
I think whether that would drive some action would depend a lot on the particular circumstances. Particularly unpleasant demise? 99.99% unavoidable or just 90%? Any pressing items one wants to do in one's bucket list that can be done in that year?
Again, you're suggesting giving a rational argument to someone who at that point was not a rational person. I might agree that you're right now, but back at that time I wouldn't have even been able to consider it.
Well, there's no fixing wild desperation, but there's a gray zone where reminders of ways to stay realistic actually help. The people I know are generally much calmer than they were right after the election. Back then, knew of several people who were considering getting tubes tied because they were sure that very soon abortion would be absolutely impossible to get anywhere in the US. I haven't heard any of that sort of hysteria in the last few weeks.
Is it possible for someone to actually wind up smarter after a stroke?
Seriously though, the laser pointer is the best description I've heard of Trump's current strategy. He has things he actually cares about (like Mount McKinley) and stuff he doesn't care about (like the Gulf of America) and he's going to keep his opponents running around from one thing to the next to try and get some of his actual agenda through.
I'm not going to call it a brilliant strategy, I'm not even sure whether it's a good strategy, but it undeniably is the strategy.
I've been wondering whether it's possible to end up smarter after a stroke ever since Fetterman became coherent. It might not be about intelligence, even - it might be about what he is now ready to say in public.
But yes, the laser pointer thing is definitely the strategy, and credits to Fetterman for the brilliant (precise, visual, funny) description.
I'm no longer sure I should've quoted him here, though. I was hoping to cheer up the depressed people a bit, but, judging by the first comment I got, I'm likely to be making it worse.
Granted, though Shapiro as a governor has his own specific policies/accomplishments to run on than one rookie member of a legislature ever does.
A more direct response to the idea that Fetterman is the one version of a Dem who can win Senate seats in PA might be that he won his seat against a uniquely feeble Republican nominee. (A quack TV doctor who'd never held public office and didn't even reside in the state he was proposing to represent.)
I've been thinking about Scott's post on class recently. I've been trying to figure out why the upper class would want to isolate/insulate itself from lower 'classes', i.e. those who didn't inherit their wealth - whether they're rich or not. I have some thoughts on what might drive this phenomenon (below) but don't have direct experience. Perhaps someone with direct ties to the intergenerationally wealthy community could provide insight/correction:
Consider the research about lottery winners. Within a few years, they tend to be poor again. Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money? Sometimes it's the parents 'managing it for them', but really just blowing it all. Far more often, it's all the 'friends and family' who show up asking for money. "You're rich, right? You can afford it. Aren't we friends?"
Getting wealthy is a different skill set than staying wealthy. Few people who have the former also have the latter. Getting wealthy may be a matter of doing some useful thing in the world, (something many upper class people may have no experience with). But if you don't know how to stay wealthy ... what's the old saying? "A fool and his money are soon parted."
Staying wealthy is partly just sticking to long-term investment strategies. These don't have to be all that complicated. A simple mutual fund will kick back enough from $50M to live off a 6-figure monthly salary ... so long as you never touch the principle + inflation-adjusted growth. And so long as you don't listen to Uncle Saul and his fool-proof plan to triple your money by investing in his new app: Pawnzee.AI
Let's say you find yourself with a lot of money that you wisely put aside, watching it grow while living comfortably. You've fended off the first-generation hounds sniffing about trying to get you to give them part of it. This probably cost you some relationships, as some begin to see you as miserly or something. You've stopped being compared to E. Scrooge at Christmas, but mostly because you pared down the invite list to your holiday party.
Now you have to form new relationships with an eye toward protecting your wealth, since anyone who finds out you're rich will likely try and get some of it if they can find a way to beg, borrow, or steal it from you. Perhaps you could just keep quiet about your money and live conservatively, but if your spending allowance is $100k/month there's no way you can hide your wealth. Plus, you have to think about inheritance. You need to set your children up to form friendships that won't jeopardize the wealth you hand down.
Obviously, you can't hang out with regular people or send the kids to normal schools. Private school would be better - something with absurdly high tuition, to keep out people who don't already have money. The point of $10k/month tuition isn't to provide your children the 'best' education, but to insulate them from forming friendships with non-wealthy kids, like what you already had to fight off to keep your wealth.
You also need to insulate yourself from hanging out with newly-rich people who don't have good money habits. If you're spending time with a sports star who makes and spends $12M every year, you'll either be expected to adopt similar spending routines, or you'll just start thinking in some of the same ways they do. Hence why it's not possible to be accepted as 'upper class' as first generation wealthy. You'd have to demonstrate to the community you're someone they can trust.
Finally, you don't talk about wealth or how much things cost. Ever. Anyone who does this is signaling that they're new at wealth. They're risky, and should therefore be shunned.
There's no 'rule' saying you have to do all these things. But every time you don't follow the rules you risk your intergenerational wealth. It only takes one generation of mismanagement to kick your family back into the middle class.
Maybe you discover some school with low enough tuition to let in 'normal' kids. But they have a really good education program - far better than the $10k/mo private school - and so you decide to send your children there. You really like the school, and regularly make what the school considers 'large' donations, but to you aren't more than normal tuition. So far so good.
But your son brings his friend home, and the kid is surprised to note you have 'staff'. Pretty soon, all the kids know him as the 'rich kid'. There are expectations. You have a choice to make: you can be 'generous', which will only ratchet up expectations more and more, or you can be 'private' with your money, which will be seen as miserly. If you hold back at all, your son will be ostracized, hate you for it, and potentially learn the lesson that being conservative with money is social suicide.
When he inherits, he won't be like you. And he'll blow up the trust fund.
I'm not sure if there are other ways to maintain very high intergenerational wealth, or if this is just one strategy for doing so. It seems like a protective mechanism, though, and one that creates a kind of selection bias, where anyone who doesn't adopt these protective habits won't remain wealthy for long.
Or maybe this is all just pattern matching, and 'upper class' people aren't responding to incentives so much as just being snobs?
Suppose I win a few hundred million dollars in a lottery tomorrow. What happens next?
Other than being very happy, I would also be quite scared, if the word gets out. Because that seems like a perfect opportunity for someone to kidnap my children and demand ransom. Or kidnap my wife, or me... should I also worry about my extended family?
Suppose this problem goes away. In reality it would probably involve something inconvenient, like having bodyguards follow us all day long. But for the sake of thought experiment, suppose the danger just somehow magically goes away and the probability of violence drop to zero. Oh, I would also need to protect my house, because even if all my money goes to index funds, there will still be some morons out there imagining that I have a stash of gold hidden under my bed.
Next, I would expect hordes of scammers and beggars. Even the nice people would suddenly notice that some problems around them could perhaps be fixed by throwing some money at them, and here happens to be a guy who has lots of money. (It would be nice to have better computers at local school. A child living in the same city might benefit from getting a surgery. This guy, who is totally not a crackpot, has invented a new theory of everything, and would like to publish a book. A shelter for lost puppies. A shelter for the homeless. Something something against sexism and racism. Support for the local artists. Etc.) Suddenly it would be as if I am personally responsible for all the problems around me. And it's not like I am somehow opposed to the idea of helping others -- I probably would spend a large fraction of the money on charity anyway -- but it's different when I choose the causes, and when people are constantly coming to me with their own ideas and I have to keep rejecting most of them, and some of them are not very nice about being rejected.
The calls I currently get from people trying to sell me insurance, or convince me that I have some money in a fund I have never heard about and all that I need to withdraw that money is to install some backdoor on my computer and log in to my online banking, that would be nothing compared to what would happen next. If you know that someone has millions, it makes economical sense to spend thousands on a personalized attack. I would probably be getting threatening letters from lawyers, people would "accidentally" bump into me on the street and cry that I broke their arms, and women I have never met would accuse me of sexual abuse and demand financial compensation. If after each trouble I stopped doing the thing that brought me in trouble, soon I would have to stop interacting with people completely.
...so, if there is some island for rich people, I would probably have to move there just to avoid all of this, and get back some kind of normal life (for a new value of "normal").
If I could get rich and reliably keep it a secret, that would be the best option. I would probably buy a slightly larger apartment (or maybe two normal apartments next to each other, that would be less suspicious). I would quit my job (and maybe create a fake one, so I could pretend that many activities I do are a part of my job). I would donate to charities anonymously (or maybe using some non-profit that I would secretly own, in case I might want to take some credit in the future). I would try to seem like a normal guy living a normal life... except that somehow I have no financial worries, always have free time when I need it, and the causes I care about keep getting financial support from mysterious strangers.
...but if you are born in a rich family where your parents didn't follow this strategy, this is not an option.
> Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money?
I think there is an industry of scammers specialized on this kind of people. Like, if you are a pro athlete, they will contact you, tell you they provide financial services for pro athletes, and offer to take care of your money so that you can fully focus on your career. So you put your savings into their funds, and... ten years later most of the money is gone, because the fund had a 2% annual fee or something. But it's all perfectly legal, and before your money is gone, you will probably provide a reference for other pro athletes.
> Or maybe this is all just pattern matching, and 'upper class' people aren't responding to incentives so much as just being snobs?
Most people want to be liked by others, and they play all kinds of status games. If you want other rich people to see you as "one of us", that probably includes a list of things you can and cannot do. There are probably opinions you need to adopt, topics you need to avoid, etc.
Now maybe you could live a double life, and keep one persona when interacting with your fellow rich, and another persona when interacting with normies. But can your children do the same? (And do they even have a motivation to do so?) Can you trust them to keep it secret that you e.g. teach them potentially useful skills, such as programming? (Rich people sometimes signal their confidence in their wealth by conspicuously avoiding the kind of skills that normies need for their jobs. Merely being able to have a job is already low-status among the people who know they will never need a job.) It is okay to be a rebel if you choose so, but you probably don't want to make that choice for your kids; and if you do, there is a chance they will hate you for that.
> Consider the research about lottery winners. Within a few years, they tend to be poor again. Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money? Sometimes it's the parents 'managing it for them', but really just blowing it all.
I’m fairly dubious about absolutely all of that. Even lottery winners.
(And remember lottery winners don’t mostly win millions, but thousands. It’s probably the latter who lose it all).
Any middle income person who can save anything at all from his pay check isn’t going to blow a lottery fortune. If you can save $10k on a $100k income you probably are not spending the $1m from the lottery in a year, and with larger numbers it becomes nearly impossible.
Without searching I’m going to stick with my priors that movie stars, and high earning sports stars also die rich.
Interesting. Looking a bit more deeply, I think the literature is mixed on this one. Looks like there are clearly lots of cases of people who come into money blowing it all, including pro athletes, pop stars, actors, and lottery winners. At the same time, I think your point is valid that it's not as common as is often portrayed.
This diminishes the "snobbery as cultural shielding" hypothesis a bit, suggesting that association with 'new money' isn't as much of a risk. But the fact that people clearly do still blow up suggests that if you're old money you should practice some level of caution when dealing with new money.
On the lottery: annuity vs. lump sum, I saw one paper suggest in a survey of lottery winners people who take the annuity are more likely to spend it as it comes in, while people who take the lump sum tend to save/invest. This suggests various subgroups, including the spendthrifts, the long-term savers, and within the savers there will be the intergenerational savers contrasted with the savers who eat away at the principle commensurate with their life expectancy.
> Consider the research about lottery winners. Within a few years, they tend to be poor again. Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money? Sometimes it's the parents 'managing it for them', but really just blowing it all.
I’m fairly dubious about absolutely all of that. Even lottery winners.
(And remember lottery winners don’t mostly win millions, but thousands. It’s probably the latter who lose it all).
Any middle income person who can save anything at all from his pay check isn’t going to blow a lottery fortune. If you can save $10k on a $100k income you probably not spending the $1m from the lottery in a year, and with larger numbers it becomes nearly impossible.
Without searching I’m going to stick with my priors that movie stars, and high earning sports stars die rich.
I'm not against what you've put together generally, but the rich people I know endlessly talk about money by constantly whining how expensive everything is and acting as if they have no money what so ever (i.e., for their new boat).
I also know plenty of middle class people that are fantastic at preserving money long term - the whole FIRE movement and stuff.
Yeah. Their children will probably be *bored* of listening to the endless talk about money. For them, it will be "the boring stuff my old boring parents can't stop talking about, when there is so much fun to have instead".
I know a guy who has rich parents. He can't keep a job... tried a few, but always quit it after a few months because he didn't like something about it, and then always took a year of vacation before he started looking for a new job. He has a business online, but it makes like a few hundred euros a month; it's more like an excuse to spend the entire day online, pretending to do something useful. He once got married and had a child, but then got divorced, because taking care of the child was also boring (now his parents pay the child support that he owes).
His parents... they really don't want him to do this. They want him to stand on his own feet; they would much prefer to keep all the money they made for their own retirement instead. But he does a few things now and then to convince them that he is *trying* (he sometimes gets a job... that he then quits; he has an online business... that doesn't make money), and at the end of the day they always take a mercy on him, and provide him with free accommodation and food. They refuse to give him cash, but they sometimes pay his debts.
So this is an example of the money going away already in the second generation. When the guy inherits his parents' money, he will probably retire poor and leave his own child with nothing.
There is a way to avoid this outcome if the parents make so much money that they can create a trust fund for their kids. That's basically a machine that runs on its own, and keeps producing money at a certain rate. If the parents set up the rules so that the children get the money produced by the fund, but are not allowed to interfere with how the fund works (and need to pass it on to their own children), this is a way to create inter-generational wealth. If they get a child or a grandchild talented enough to make their own wealth, that is a bonus; but if the talent skips a generation or two, the money keeps flowing.
Without such mechanism, each generation flips a coin whether the wealth stops with them.
I would argue that this is ascribing too much to conscious decisions (whether snobbishness or some form of self-defense) when a much simpler answer is inertia. People drift to what is easier, and easier is your social strata. There are positive pushes that make it easier to interact with people of like status, and building relationships across strata almost always entails some level of power mismatch, which doesn't help either party feel comfortable, even absent a culture that conditions us to distrust relationships where one party has outsize power relative to the other.
Social-
Where do you meet friends? Who forms your close circle? People you spent a lot of time around, whether in school or at work. You went to a regular school and you struck out for the professional class, you may no longer have common experiences with your old school friends (assuming the color of your collar is different from theirs). At work, you meet people of similar class - lawyers meet lawyers, doctors meet doctors, mechanics meet mechanics, farm laborers meet farm laborers. Maybe you are an engineer who knows a bunch of doctors because you are involved in biomed, maybe you are a lawyer who knows a lot of finance folks because you do finance. You'd have to go out of your way to bond across social strata, and even further to find the time to consciously step outside your normal interactions on a consistent basis. Maybe your old friend from the neighborhood invites you to her Superbowl party, and you actually make time. Her friends are all in sales or the trades, just like her. Once you finish talking about the game, they start talking about things for which you have no point of reference. Their jokes are a little boorish and while they don't mind your nebbish programmer humor, they are happy to continue ribbing one another over who got ripped off at the car wash more. You awkwardly drink your light beer (seriously, would it kill them to have a decent brew?) then go home and talk to your old friend once a year while hanging out with your programmer buddies every other week. You could invite your mechanic friend, but they are less thrilled at the idea of casually blowing a hundred bucks on a board games cafe than you are and rain check.
Childrearing-
Let's stretch that to children. Ok, you are upper middle class and made a best friend that is lower middle class (maybe they have a scholarship to your prestigious middle school). On your summer holidays, your parents take you to Bali. Or on a trek across the Andes. Or send you to space camp in Switzerland. Your friend's family goes to the local beach. Maybe you wish you could take your summer holidays together, but there is no amount of goodwill that is going to bridge the gap of "who has X budget to blow on a trip". You drift apart and end up sparking connections with the kids of another family that went to the Pyrenees and bond over your love of mountains. Maybe your poor friend also loves hiking, and would have adored the Alps, but that doesn't lead to a healthy relationship. It is a lot easier to be good friends with those who have shared access to common interests.
Romantic-
You meet a girl in college whose family owns a chalet in Colorado. She flies out with her friends every weekend on their friend's chopper (his parents paid for pilot licensing courses and it was a really sweet graduation gift to reward his diligence). You sense a lot of chemistry, but your parents took you once to the nearest ski slope and that was the extent of your exposure. Even with her bending over backwards to get you a seat on the chopper and letting you crash at the chalet, you don't have the kind of pocket money to blow on lift tickets at Vail. She finds an equally interesting person who is not unlike you in every way, but does have a season pass. You can write great poetry, but this other person can do it too, and can additionally suggest doing so from their folks' beach house in Nantucket.
My point wasn't that this has to follow conscious decisions. It was that if associating too much with "poorer" people creates a risk to wealth stability, the only people who will have long-term wealth will be those who follow the observed set of behaviors that exclude people whose wealth isn't established/inherited.
This could be intentional, for the reasons I outlined, or unconscious social sorting mechanisms you discuss. Either way, the distance appears to be more than just establishment of social norms, but also selection bias that weeds out social defectors from the wealthy class.
Thank you for taking the time to follow up and emphasize your point!
To clarify my own, I would suggest that there are two distinct phenomena described here which are somewhat interrelated- (1) certain traits/approaches are beneficial to building/maintaining wealth, and (2) wealth-based self-sorting effects are magnified in capitalist/quasi-meritocratic societies. Avoiding the poor is not a causal factor but a strongly correlated one. I don't know that this impacts your direct hypothesis but possibly does the takeaways.
Why do you think they're magnified in these societies? Is there a society where we do not observe this pattern? I can't think of a non-capitalist country where it hasn't been a factor, from feudalist to communist and socialist. Wealth sorting as a persistent feature of human societies (larger than tribes) suggests it's a persistent feature, probably driven by incentives. This is in contrast to the idea that it's all cultural ("they're just snobs").
Well the middle classes, with their scientists, and engineers, doctors, IT guys, historians,shop owners, researchers, administrators (etc etc etc) are so obviously so much better interesting and useful people than those born to wealth, the people who live to lunch, that it’s hard ti believe we are even having this debate. Get rid of the firmer and civilisation collapses, get rid of the latter and a few restaurants close.
> gives my kids the highest chance of being happy and productive members of society
My friend's father grew up under communism in one of the old Soviet Block countries. He loved it, and felt that the fall of communism was the worst thing ever.
The problem? Capitalism has too many degrees of freedom. You're free to succeed, yes, but you're also free to fail. This man wasn't ambitious. He graduated school without distinction and went to work in a factory. The government gave him a small apartment. He had what he needed and nothing more, but he didn't care because there was no risk of complete failure and destitution.
No need to plan and worry for the future either. When he got married, he was assigned a slightly larger apartment. Then larger again when he had children. He never has much, but he didn't care so long as he didn't have to worry about the important things.
Many of us want to make a difference in the world, to engage with it in an exchange of meaning. But some people just want to coast along, enjoy the scenery, watch some football, have a family, and cross the finish line without having to worry about some major disaster messing up the plan.
One thing that stuck in my memory from my history classes in college is that there's a long tradition of physical separation from the rest of society being used as a signifier of power and prestige, and that many princes and heads of major merchant families in Renaissance Italy deliberately modeled themselves on Roman practice along these lines as one of several things they were doing to cultivate an air of legitimate authority. There is still contact between the important people and the masses, but it's usually under deliberately arranged conditions that reinforce the notion that the leaders are above the rest of society and are doing you a favor by letting you interact with them at all. The central examples are stuff like a monarch giving a speech from the palace balcony or allowing selected commoners to bring supplications to him while he's holding court.
In American political tradition, this style was very much out of fashion for much of the 19th century, with most of the Capitol building and the White House open to the public most of the time. This was done as a deliberate rejection of the symbology of the leaders being separate from and above the people, to the point that mid-19th century Presidents (I have heard this of Lincoln and Grant, but imagine others were affected as well) desperately wanted to be able to exclude petitioners and job-seekers to keep interruptions to a manageable level, but felt duty-bound to be accessable.
Thanks for your thoughts. I think for political leadership there are clearly other reasons to stay separate from the masses than wealth protection. Not just what you discussed above, but also to make assassination more difficult.
The other big reason is to isolate the monarch to make sure they're dependent on palace insiders to make decisions. This system, where aides and bureaucrats fight for influence of the monarch through a sort of popularity contest, seems to have been common, and who's to say it's not partly at play in current or recent US administrations?
While there are wealthy elite who remain wealthy through political rent-seeking, like you're talking about, I'm more interested in wealthy elite who maintain wealth through capital inheritance. Back in the day that was by owning large estates and collecting rents from peasants. Today that looks more like trust funds handed down through the generations.
The failure mode for wealth derived from government rents is often some form of regime change. Financial ruin from capital inheritance seems to follow a different pattern, and should therefore respond to different incentives.
(I deselected the 90-100% quantile because otherwise you can't see the rest.)
So your claim that there are plenty of "stealth millionaires" is true -- from the data it is clear that some households (minor caveat, that) in the 75-90% bracket already have a million.
1. Inflation has devalued the position of someone who is technically considered a millionaire.
2. This includes assets, particularly the home asset. If you pay off your $500k home, you'll find it much easier to live comfortably, and you'll be halfway to millionaire status. But you're also far from being able to live off your investment income, because most of your wealth isn't in the bank. If you sell your house, you still need somewhere to live, and now you've taken on a sizeable monthly housing payment.
Don't get me wrong, owning your home outright is similar to pulling a few thousand from investments without touching the principle that continues to grow. But it's not the exact same thing.
3. After illiquid home equity, the vast majority of wealth for most US households is retirement savings. This can't be accessed (not wisely) until old age, at which point it is used for income replacement. At that point, sure, you can live off the investment income. But this isn't the same as intergenerational wealth. Someone with a paid off $500k home and $1.2M in the bank could (assuming 10% average growth) pull $130k/year to live off of, while having just enough left over if they die at 85 to leave a small inheritance. (Nothing if they live until 90.)
4. If you save $16.9k/year under a mattress you'd have a million after 60 years. But that's not how retirement savings works. $1,400/month ($16.8) at 10% compounding interest from investments over 30 years is $3M. Enough to live very comfortably, for sure. But if you want to live off that kind of investment without eating into the principle, you'll need a lot more. At $30M, you can pull $100k/month and still see growth over time. There's a huge lifestyle difference between $10k/month and $100k/month. Middle class families aren't putting aside $14k/month from their paychecks.
5. I agree in principle with a lot of your points, and that there are a lot more millionaires out there than most people realize. Not everyone is dumb enough to buy a boat on a HELOC, lease a brand new car, then sign up for a timeshare, etc. Some people don't realize that the Joneses they're trying to keep up with have 7 figures in the bank and are cash buyers. I'm just saying that 7 figures doesn't represent anything like the kind of wealth it was when I was growing up.
Regarding the end-birthright-citizenship EO, Ilya Somin posted late yesterday:
"This is blatantly unconstitutional. Section 1 of the Amendment grants citizenship to anyone "born … in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." There is no exception for children of illegal migrants. I go over the relevant issues in detail in a recent Just Security article
where I also address various specious arguments to the effect that children of undocumented immigrants aren't covered because their parents are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US. I think it highly likely that courts will strike down this action, as the text and original meaning are clear, longstanding Supreme Court precedent points in the same direction, and there is broad (though not quite universal) cross-ideological agreement on the subject among legal scholars."
>There is no exception for children of illegal migrants.
Agreed. If the nation wants to change this, there is an amendment process for the Constitution. It might be reasonable public policy to change "born" to "born to a woman legally in the United States". If so, proponents should make the case and go through the amendment process. In the absence of the ratification of some such amendment, only the exceptions that are _already_ in the actual words of the Constitution, thank you.
> their parents are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US.
I find this claim strange. If an undocumented/illegal immigrant is killed, will the murderer not be charged by US authorities? Or if they murder someone, will they not be charged in an US court?
I mean, if the mother was in that bizarre legal construction that is gitmo, or was part of an invading army, or had a diplomatic passport, then I could see the point about jurisdiction. (Edit: from reading wikipedia, it seems the latter two exceptions are indeed the ones often mentioned.)
But yes, at the end of the day, the language of the 14th means whatever the SCOTUS says it means. If Roe could be based on the due process clause, then certainly the SCOTUS could also argue that the word "jurisdiction" in the 14th means something completely different than what I would understand by that word.
However, I also don't think that the current SCOTUS will blatantly back Trump in whatever he does (e.g., they were not willing to overturn Biden's election no matter how loud he was whining).
From my understanding, federal courts will likely follow SCOTUS precedent (which seems to affirm a plain reading of the 14th).
And now today 22 state attorneys general plus a couple of cities, in various combinations, have filed several federal lawsuits arguing basically the points that Somin summarized. They're seeking an expedited summary ruling that the EO is unconstitutional, and whichever way the initial ruling goes it will no doubt be appealed upward.
There is no guarantee that the SCOTUS will end up taking up the matter because there is no _right_ to SCOTUS review of anything. The Court does (still) often decline when the appellate court has ruled consistent with past SCOTUS precedents. It takes four justices to agree to take up an appeal, and then of course five to agree to order the overturn of a lower-court ruling.
>It takes four justices to agree to take up an appeal
Morbidly curious: How close is the SCOTUS to breaking under their workload? If it just took three justices to take up an appeal, would everything grind to a halt? Presumably it wouldn't make sense to tighten the appeal requirement to five justices, since that would make it almost the same as the requirement to overturn... (This is to say, the number _would_ be the same, but the criteria the justices use might be slightly different.)
Does it come down to there being _zero_ flexibility in the number of justices needed to take up an appeal?
And on the other side of the aisle (and earlier), please remember that Biden's 2.5 kiloPardons included commuting the sentence of Leonard Peltier, who killed two FBI agents, to house arrest.
Now, Peltier is 80, and maybe he gave a solemn promise to Biden to not kill any more FBI agents if they visited his house, but Trump can be viewed as following Biden's lead here.
Oh, yeah, that's why he was promising to pardon these people for his entire campaign - because he knew in advance that Biden was going to commute some random eighty year old's sentence to indefinite house arrest on Jan 19, 2025. Do you guys ever get tired of lying and whatabouting?
Do note that every single person who beat the shit out of cops on Jan 6, 2021, is now completely free and clear, while this man is still under indefinite house arrest.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I've been seeing a lot of whining about people Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of, so I'm pointing out that Biden did similar pardons/commutations (and on a slightly larger scale, albeit at the same order of magnitude). Pointing across the aisle is legitimate when the whining is one-sided but the actions are nearly symmetrical.
The actions are not nearly symmetrical, no. The person in question is still never going to be free. The person in question was not personally encouraged to commit crimes by Joe Biden. And I really doubt Joe Biden suggested that the person in question was merely the victim of political persecution, unlike Trump, who has explicitly said that's why they were getting pardoned.
Certainly there are differences. AFAIK, Peltier is unique amongst those commuted by either President in having been convicted of killing two FBI agents. And the scales are somewhat different, Biden's 2.5 kiloPardons to Trumps 1.5 kiloPardons.
So, since you see these pardons as all bad, done by both sides, etc, you would support the addition of a constitutional amendment to create some kind of semi-independent oversight board on the Presidential pardon as many states have done with their local pardon?
Or is the bringing up of Joe Biden's pardons and commutations just chaff to defend Trump pardoning every single one of his personal mob of violent, cop-beating cronies?
[That headline is somewhat misleading, the officers were not charged with or convicted of 1st-degree i.e. deliberate murder. The guy driving the squad car was found guilty in a federal jury trial of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct, and obstruction of justice; his partner was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice.]
“Among the other pardon recipients: Devlyn Thompson, who hit a police officer with a metal baton, and Robert Palmer, a Florida man who attacked police with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole.”
So definitely some violent offenses in the mix here. I don’t know about 6 being still under review though- do you have a link or anything?
"The former leader of the Proud Boys and the founder of the Oath Keepers have been released from prison after their lengthy sentences for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were wiped away by a sweeping order from President Donald Trump benefiting more than 1,500 defendants....
....Tarrio, who led the neofacist Proud Boys group as it became a force in mainstream Republican circles, was convicted in 2023 of seditious conspiracy and other crimes after a monthslong trial on allegations that he orchestrated violence to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.
Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, because he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of the capital city. But prosecutors said he organized and directed the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol that day.
Rhodes was convicted in a separate trial alongside members of his far-right militia group who prosecutors alleged were intent on keeping Trump in power at all costs. Over seven weeks of testimony, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied his followers to fight to defend Trump, discussed the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and warned that the Oath Keepers may have to “rise up in insurrection” to defeat Biden if Trump didn’t act."
I believe trumps executive orders to be the most important evidence for predicting the general trend of the next decade of america as it will set the tone for if theres a right wing rebirth or a managed decline of america(I still believe managed decline is more likely but.... I can hope)
I saw live streams with 2 separate desks where he maybe signed 40 documents; I dont think all of them were executive orders("a letter to the un") but tentatively lets say there was 25-ish orders... thats allot of reading for me, bit of a slog but I think this is probably the time to put in effort
Anyone know good links on primary sources? Any thoughts? Any fun shitposts?
Several of the executive orders ive read are just rants and "such and such will tell me if they did this in 90 days" are these real or just political side show? is that someone he trusts and therefore more likely to do what he wanted? Or just talking points for fox news?
How much influence can Trump really have with just executive orders?
He needs Congress to do anything substantial. The Republican margin is razor thin, and he’s notoriously bad at building coalitions and cooperation, even among his own party.
An EO essentially changes how the Executive Branch runs - how it's staffed, how the departments are organized, what each one is authorized to do. As the Chief Executive, POTUS is obviously authorized to do this, just as any business owner is allowed to set up his business to his liking.
It's limited formally by judicial review - if POTUS tried to authorize the FBI to search the homes of anyone with freckles, SCOTUS could and would take a look at that, say "nope - Fourth Amendment", and that EO is invalid (and any FBI who try to apply it anyway will get arrested by other FBI, and this would pretty easily qualify POTUS for an impeachment proceeding).
It's also limited by budget - POTUS can't declare the Energy Department shall be allotted $1T to gold-plate all our ICBMs. (Or, he *could*, but then the Energy Secretary would instantly say "uh, this is stupid and pointless". Or, if the Secretary is also stupid and pointless, he'd go to Congress and say "check plz" and Congress would laugh in his face and begin impeachment proceedings.)
It's limited informally the same way any business is. EOs have to be implemented by actual people, and if those people think it's a dumb EO, they can resign (or get fired) from their executive branch jobs, and if enough of them do, then the branch can't get anything done until POTUS can find replacements that think those EOs aren't dumb, or issues smarter EOs (or Congress launches impeachment proceedings).
> It's also limited by budget - POTUS can't declare the Energy Department shall be allotted $1T to gold-plate all our ICBMs. (Or, he could, but then the Energy Secretary would instantly say "uh, this is stupid and pointless".
That's not the Energy Secretary's call. If Congress doesn't authorize funding for gold-plating ICBMs, then it's illegal for the government to do that.
The Constitution says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." Appropriations laws are extremely detailed, with instructions on exactly how much each little part of the government can spend, what they can spend it on, and when they can spend it.
I won't quibble with this very hard, but I'm pretty sure Congress can say "POTUS, you get $400B for defense" and POTUS can say "thank you" and then "all right, $200B of this is going to gold plating since that's the way to insure these ICBMs get to their destinations without interception".
Or more realistically: Congress can say how much money is allocated to each of the Executive's primary functions, and the Executive gets to decide how to use that money to implement those functions. (Gold ICBMs were always an intentionally silly example.)
I'm well aware that this or that Congressional committee will earmark funds for this or that specific project under the Executive's purview, and I admit I don't fully know how far Congress can push that. I'm given the impression that farther = more annoying to POTUS, and ultimately it hashes out to Congress being able to earmark whatever POTUS was reasonably willing to fund anyway, possibly modulo concessions on other funds.
>Because plutonium is chemically reactive it is common to plate the completed pit with a thin layer of inert metal, which also reduces the toxic hazard.[40] The Gadget used galvanic silver plating; afterwards, nickel deposited from nickel tetracarbonyl vapors was used,[40] but gold is now preferred.[citation needed]
Congress pushes that very, very far. There is approximately no money that is labeled "for defense" or whatever, it's all earmarked one way or another and usually pretty specifically. This is the one aspect of legislating that Congress still actually does, so they milk it for all it's worth.
(talking to the crowd, as I'm sure you know all this) The model for ten-year-olds is that Congress is supposed to play the role of customer, and POTUS plays the CEO, and the customer plunks down money and says they want a Thing and POTUS figures out how to produce the Thing, and the customer is supposed to not care how that's done.
Within reason, of course; Congress can say "give us a nuclear deterrent, but without burning down a State or invading a foreign country" or whatever. "Whatever" necessarily goes beyond the ten-year-old's understanding, since an adult is likely to know of all kinds of requirements on general projects a federal executive would be working on that a 10YO won't, such as environmental or financial concerns, or even interference with all the other projects a US citizen is paying the executive to do.
This justifies a great deal of paperwork on the Congressional side to ensure all of its desired specs will be addressed. But at the same time, I've seen specs that look less like a customer-level concern and more like micro-management or even some Congresscritter trying for a flex.
And there's way too many specs to check for this type of abuse completely, which means earmark efforts sort of black market their way through, trying their best to avoid inspector generals, whistleblowers, and the press.
> I won't quibble with this very hard, but I'm pretty sure Congress can say "POTUS, you get $400B for defense" and POTUS can say "thank you" and then "all right, $200B of this is going to gold plating since that's the way to insure these ICBMs get to their destinations without interception".
Sure, Congress could do that. And if they did, it would be perfectly legal for the President to gold-plate the ICBMs. Ain't no law against stupid.
But Congress never does that. They always write a extremely long and detailed appropriations bill.
I don't know enough about modern political theory, so I want to know, what enforcement do executive orders have? If a president issues one and someone doesn't comply, do they face penalties? Does this differ for whether the person is a private citizen, a private business owner, or a leader of a government agency?
Executive Orders are *only* binding on employees of the Executive Branch of the United States Government. They have no effect on private citizens, business owners, etc, except insofar as the government employees they occasionally deal with may start behaving differently.
If an employee of the Executive Branch disobeys a legal Executive Order (not all of them are), then in principle he or she may be fired. In practice, that is exceedingly difficult to arrange if they decide to fight it. But fighting it is also a hassle, so if the bureaucrats don't find the EO to be *too* odious, they'll usually go along with it.
That's it. The President is not a dictator; he can't have people thrown in jail for defying his will.
Pretty much this. It's also worth noting that some types of disobedience are streamlined in order to prevent obviously illegal EOs. Executive branch employees (including everyone in the military) get periodic legal training that typically clues them in on what's Definitely Legal, what's Definitely Not, and what's in the middle*. Anything in the Definitely Not category will have an established office for reporting even suspected infractions, without fear of reprisal.
*I attended one course where the teacher said he often explained the middle gray area as three buckets in turn: "legal but difficult", "legal but risky", and "legal but stupid".
> you will hire 4 poeple to talk to DOGE so we know who to fire
> you wont hire anyone
> you will fire any dei positions
these werent written by people talking to each other why isnt it "you will fire dei position, you will hire poeple with the approval of DOGE, you will hire 4 DOGE employees" in one coherent order
I think I had heard of that but I didn't know it was seriously happening. Bizarre. The mountain is sort of fair enough, that's a local feature inside the US, but I feel like the attempt to re-name the Gulf of Mexico is just going to lead to a silly disconnect between the US government and the rest of the world.
Cuba should get in on this and rename it the Gulf of American Imperialism or something. Or perhaps Trump could put it up for sponsorship: The Capital One Gulf of America...
I'm sticking with it should be the Gulf of the Americas. Inclusive, unitary, nobody left out!
I admit, I'm surprised by the flurry of signing orders. He really did mean it when he said he'd do it all on Day One. Whatever your opinions on Jan 6th (riot? coup? worstest threat to democracy ever? bunch of idiots?), I think I'm glad that they got pardoned. There may be a few who should be facing serious charges, but I think the mass of them were no worse than the CHAZ-CHOP crowd and it seemed to be "It's okay when *we* do it" in those cases:
"Inslee condemned Trump's involvement in the situation, telling him to "stay out of Washington state's business". On Twitter, Trump criticized Inslee and Durkan and called the protesters "domestic terrorists", and Durkan told the president to "go back to [his] bunker", referring to his evacuation to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center during protests the previous month. Durkan said on June 11 that Trump wanted to construct a narrative about domestic terrorists with a radical agenda to fit his law-and-order initiatives, and that lawfully exercising the First Amendment right to demand more of society was patriotism, not terrorism."
He's been talking about doing that for a while now. Granted, it's only the portion of it that's within US borders as of right now. (According to Wikipedia, anyways. The actual wording seems pretty ambiguous, and seems to imply that the Gulf of Mexico no longer exists.)
Trolling, it seems like. He's obviously aware of exactly what he's doing, and that it will cause a shitstorm. But he also ensures a context with plausible deniability if you're a supporter. The shitstorm is _desired_.
It _is_ hilarious that the ADL defends rampant heiling, yes.
I've been thinking about this and while I'm somewhat reluctant to even ask the question, I will appreciate any answers: Does deliberately making a nazi salute while you are not a nazi (so just for trolling) a very bad thing? I'm just not sure, I think that being a nazi isn't bad axiomatically, it's bad because of the consequences of nazi politics (killings, forced eugenics, etc..), so if there are no bad consequences related to it, why is it even bad? I saw a lot of people in left wing spheres leaving Twitter because of the salute, and I'm thinking about whether I should or not. What would be moral?
Another but related note: As I imply in the previous paragraph, I don't think Elon is a nazi, but after searching I saw that Elon is supporting the Afd party and saw that the Afd party supports the banning of Kosher meat. I currently find the explanation that it's because of animal welfare very suspect as they don't ban factory farming which is magnitudes more horrifying. Can some explain what is up with this?
Why exactly are people so sure that he doesn't have a problem with Jews? People expect racists/anti-Semites/etc to be foaming at the mouth or something. But Musk goes on podcasts and SNL and shit and is affable, joking around, even is friendly with Ben Shapiro.
None of that is inconsistent with having a problem with Jews!
> Does deliberately making a nazi salute while you are not a nazi (so just for trolling) a very bad thing?
I think that, in many cases at least, such people who would be described (by themselves and others) as "trolling" are, in fact, expressing genuine contempt for Jewish people and other groups that the Nazis targeted (even if they don't rise to the level of wanting mass murder). "Trolling" isn't actually inconsistent with this. Trolling isn't trolling unless it's aimed at some person or group. Who is it aimed at? Sometimes the answer is "everyone", but if you're doing it to an adoring crowd while practically acting as co-president, that can't be the answer.
I wish I could find it now but I recently came across a quote from a writer about how, in essence, trolling was a key tactic of how Nazis argued. But it was from the 1940s or something, not in the context of the modern Internet.
"But Musk goes on podcasts and SNL and shit and is affable, joking around, even is friendly with Ben Shapiro.
None of that is inconsistent with having a problem with Jews!"
If Musk had a problem with Jews to the point of wanting them all shipped to Dachau, I think it's safe to say that he would *not* be friendly with Ben Shapiro. Therefore, I think it's safe to say that either Musk has no problem with Jews, or has one nowhere near to Dachau levels.
This raises the question of how big a problem he could have. But then, any problem big enough is very likely to preclude being friendly with Ben Shapiro, any problem that isn't big enough to preclude it is not likely to be worth worrying about.
"I recently came across a quote from a writer about how, in essence, trolling was a key tactic of how Nazis argued."
Maybe, and maybe this is historically interesting; but other than that, so what? Trolling is also a key tactic of how a *lot* of people argue, including vastly more people who aren't Nazis.
> This raises the question of how big a problem he could have. But then, any problem big enough is very likely to preclude being friendly with Ben Shapiro, any problem that isn't big enough to preclude it is not likely to be worth worrying about.
I think history shows this is untrue.
As for the quote, here it is, from Jean-Paul Sartre
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
I've watched the video, and I just can't believe anyone with sense can land on Elon being a Nazi. It's so clearly not what he said or meant. Even if I take out the "autistic and awkward" attempt to excuse, I'm still left with, what made you take leave of your senses in order to see it that way?
The first whatever whatever of the party was to ignore your eyes or some shit
- George 1984 Orwell
How obvious does it need to be?
this dude could come out on stage with a sauerkraut swastika carved into his forehead and his parasocial hangers-on would be all "no you don't understand he got real into shin Buddhism, but is too stupid to understand how mirrors work!”
at some point you've got to stop extending charity
Nope. Making up a story and saying I'm dumb not to believe the story you made up doesn't convince. I saw the video myself. You saw it too (I should hope) and presumably with sound on and context before and after. If that's true and you still think the same, no story's going to convince me you haven't let an ideology (let's call it MDS, after TDS) inform your senses rather than the other way around. At some point you've got to look. Really look.
I did. He did the Nazi salute, all the Nazis were excited he did the Nazi salute, he did it again two times, and now conservatives are pissing on my boots and telling me it's raining.
I don't have to respect people desperately rationalizing reality out of existence, that shit is demeaning.
"Supposedly being so smart" doesn't mean being smart in every dimension.
"Actual nazis apparently saw it" --you let "actual nazis" show you how to interpret something? Does that really seem like a good idea?
Being on stage in front of a zillion people, knowing half of them are looking for the smallest gesture to pillory you with, and somehow showing up anyway? I think either of two things are going to happen here:
1. You shrink away from it and if you still have to go on stage, you stand with your hands at your sides and speak in a monotone, terrified lest anyone misinterpret what you say/do.
2. You decide you don't care, and go around making grand gestures without attempting to pre-criticize what the worst person in the room might make of them, and here we are.
"'Supposedly being so smart' doesn't mean being smart in every dimension."
This is a tired excuse.
He can drive (presumably). He can use a fork (presumably). He should be able to avoid whatever this was. We aren't talking about a high bar of difficulty.
"'Actual nazis apparently saw it' --you let 'actual nazis' show you how to interpret something? Does that really seem like a good idea?"
It's not a good idea to ignore how they interpret stuff. Doing that might before hand might have avoided the confusion. (His promoting nazi adjacent tweets isn't a great precedence either.)
"You shrink away from it..."
False dilemma. There are many options other than the two you list.
Anyway, he didn't "have to go on stage". It's a choice.
(Musk certainly "cared" about being called-out for "misrepresenting" his game-playing skill.)
I think it's quite possible he meant it as a Nazi salute. Like a lot of men, he didn't want his son to turn into a woman, and the rage melted his mind and made him vulnerable to every dumb rightoid brainworm. Maybe they shouldn't have turned his kid transgender.
It looks a lot like a Nazi salute. But why would he intentionally do a nazi salute? He isn't a capital N-Nazi, there's no capital N Nazis in America aside from some white prison gangs. You might think there are lots of authoritarian supporters of Trump, and there are, but they don't think of themselves as Nazis, they hate Nazis too! Nobody wants to be an actual Nazi or be seen as a Nazi.
One way this could happen is if he spends a huge amount of time on the Internet in right wing, and just plain weird, rabbit holes, possibly with a drug addiction, marinating in a world in which weird beliefs about Jews are commonly shared to the point that he thinks that shit is normal. Combined with being rich enough to never really have to do anything he doesn't want to or be told "no" by anyone.
Maybe to distract everyone from looking through the list of executive orders. Or maybe to show support for the authoritarians - I imagine I would be pretty stoked if I was a Proud Boy or something right now.
I have become convinced that this was very likely intentionally a nazi salute. I assume because Elon is immature as hell and wanted to make a weird power flex, or troll and piss off 'da libs.'
I'm not too familiar with the Proud Boys, but wikipedia says they have (had?) 6000 members. The number of people sympathetic to Nazi symbolism is so tiny, and the number of people that find it absolutely abhorrent is so large, that intentionally doing that is a terrible idea.
If it were a Nazi salute, I'd be mad. It wasn't a Nazi salute. It was a "hand on my heart, throwing my heart out to you" salute and it was clumsily done so it looked like "oh my God he's sieg heiling".
The demand for outrage continues to outstrip supply.
I don't have a particularly strong feeling about this issue, but I truly don't think there's any physical gesture he could have done that you would agree was a nazi salute.
It seems likely to me he was intentionally doing it to troll the left, and to flex how he is not cowed by woke. Of course he's not an "actual" nazi, he just isn't afraid of the association.
If he did a real Nazi salute, I would take it as a Nazi salute. 'Ambiguous physical gesture that can be interpreted several ways' is not a real Nazi salute.
I'm not going to try and find clips of "The Triumph of the Will" to share on here, because even I have some sense of proportion, to compare'n'contrast with "this is what a real Nazi doing a real salute looks like".
By the metric of understanding extended here by some of our newest commentators, Tim Walz is a Nazi because look, he put his hand on his heart and then extended his right arm outwards in salutation to a crowd of supporters. There's no way to persuade me I didn't see what I saw, you deniers!
Why do I think that is so? Because I've seen it, and you may have too: any kind of apology by someone who falls foul of the Inquisitors is seized upon as evidence of guilt.
What kind of apology can he give? What would you, with your churning stomach, accept?
"I apologise for offending or causing hurt to anyone by the gesture which I now recognise could be mistaken for a Fascist salute"?
"See, see? He admits he did it! Out of his own mouth, Musk is a Nazi!"
This whole "it is SIEG HEIL FASCIST NAZI DOGWHISTLING" storm in a teacup reminds me of two things.
First, when I was about twelve, another girl in my class thought that I made a face at her. She accosted me with a couple of her friends after class to demand an explanation/apology (I got out of that by the simple expedient of walking away). I would have dug my heels in back then, as I would dig them in now, if anyone had tried to force me to apologise for doing something which I had not done. "But she thought you did it, so apologise" - well, she was mistaken, so I'm not going to say sorry for doing something which I did not do.
If Musk didn't do a Nazi Fascist Dogwhistle, why should he apologise? Just because your stomach churned? Take an antacid.
Second thing this reminds me of is this excerpt from "The Man Who Was Thursday". For those looking to be offended, they will always find something that is a Dogwhistle in order to be offended:
“This man has insulted me!” said Syme, with gestures of explanation.
“Insulted you?” cried the gentleman with the red rosette, “when?”
“Oh, just now,” said Syme recklessly. “He insulted my mother.”
“Insulted your mother!” exclaimed the gentleman incredulously.
“Well, anyhow,” said Syme, conceding a point, “my aunt.”
“But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?” said the second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. “He has been sitting here all the time.”
“Ah, it was what he said!” said Syme darkly.
“I said nothing at all,” said the Marquis, “except something about the band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well.”
“It was an allusion to my family,” said Syme firmly. “My aunt played Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always being insulted about it.”
“This seems most extraordinary,” said the gentleman who was décoré, looking doubtfully at the Marquis.
“Oh, I assure you,” said Syme earnestly, “the whole of your conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my aunt’s weaknesses.”
“This is nonsense!” said the second gentleman. “I for one have said nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of that girl with black hair.”
“Well, there you are again!” said Syme indignantly. “My aunt’s was red.”
“It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.”
“By George!” said Syme, facing round and looking at him, “what a clever chap you are!”
he didn't say apology, he said a post. Something like "It clearly wasn't a nazi salute you morons. PS. Nazis are a bunch of losers!" would probably suffice.
There's a maybe-apocryphal story about Lyndon Johnson in his congressional days spreading a rumor that his opponent was a "pig fucker". One of his aides whispers to him, "you know he doesn't do that, right??". He replies, "I know; I just want the sucker to deny it".
The moral of the story is that it's all too easy to make up something unsupportable that nevertheless forces the discussion to center on it. For Musk to even deny the accusation is to give the accusation respect it does not deserve, at the expense of the actual important stuff he wants to do.
nobody spread a rumor about musk heiling the seig, the dude just ripped off three Crisp Salutes to zee millennium reich totally unprompted.
To go back to the pig analogy, if you caught me in the sty with my pants down en flag-er-ento, you might have some grounds to ask a couple questions, perhaps.
Ok, and in this analogy, if that opponent would be seen by everyone exiting a pigsty with his pants around the ankles, It might warrant some kind of explanation.
If it's not given, then sure, Musks prerogative, but it will just cement the consensus that he indeed did a neo nazi salute multiple times at the inauguration.
REACTION SPEED [Impossible: Failure] - Caught up in the moment, you throw your heart out to the crowd, and once more for good measure. The fourty-five degree wave receives a raucous applause from all of those it is meant to be a signal to. You have greeted your people. Hail Victory. Hail to You.
There's not going to be movement towards conviction by either side here; for those for whom this is indeed proof that Musk is a Nazi, their minds are made up and they won't be persuaded that this wasn't a Fascist salute. For those of us who don't think Musk is a Nazi, no amount of "but we knew all along he really was a Nazi" is going to persuade me, for one, that it wasn't a stupid gesture but not a Fascist salute.
How do people explain the "putting his hand over his heart" before throwing this 'salute'? That's not part of any Fascist salute I know of, and if he's deliberately doing a Real Genuine Nazi Salute why add in extraneous bits?
Scott really was prescient with the Shiri's Scissors thing, wasn't he?
> How do people explain the "putting his hand over his heart" before throwing this 'salute'?
That's literally the part that makes it look like the nazi salute. It's the Sieg part of Sieg Heil
It's beginning to get ridiculous how much your hatred of the left makes you bend yourself over backwards to defend something dumb done by someone on the right
Really? Because the Wikipedia article on the Nazi salute doesn't make any mention of starting with the hand over the heart. Neither does the ADL's description of the salute, nor any other source that I could quickly find. And the pop-culture versions Hollywood has provided us, like Dr. Strangelove in "Dr. Strangelove", or Tom Cruise in "Valkyrie", don't start with the hand over the heart. I checked. Nor did any of the half-dozen or so newsreel clips I just checked of actual Nazis (one of them named Adolf Hitler) giving the Nazi salute in Nazi Germany.
Things a Nazi salute has that the Elon Musk gesture also had:
Arm briefly outstretched at a ~45 degree angle
Palm parallel to the arm and facing downward
Things a Nazi salute has that the Elon Musk gesture didn't have:
Starting while standing at attention
Arm outstretched directly forward in a single stiff motion
Salute held long enough that it it may be acknowledged or returned
Things Elon Musk's gesture had, that a Nazi salute *doesn't* have:
Starting with the hand over the heart
A fluid sweeping motion across the body
Significant movement of the torso during the salute
Immediately pivoting to deliver a similar gesture in the opposite direction.
I am at a loss to understand how you could see the full video and consider this a Nazi salute, except by extreme and subjective partisan bias. And I'm pretty sure you're now retconning your memory of actual Nazi salutes to match what you think you just saw.
Yeah, excuse me one moment while I clear my throat before launching into the Horst Wessel Lied.
"Hatred of the left". Look, I could get into a slanging match with you, but it's not worth it: too much heat, not near enough light, and Scott shouldn't have to clean up after we wreck the joint.
Okay, yeah: Musk is a Nazi, Trump is a Nazi, and of course I (with my hatred of the left) am a Nazi too. Happy now? Is the world better after that?
At least we both agree that it was something dumb done by Musk. Nazi Fascist dumb? No for me, yes for you. You're not going to change my mind, and I'm not going to change yours.
I don't think you're a Nazi (or a fascist) I just think you're so stuck being contrarian that you've fallen head first into a deep pit of reverse stupidity
You're seriously arguing about the angle of his hand, as if that somehow makes it less of a nazi gesture
I don't think Musk is a Nazi, but I do think that he intentionally snuck a Nazi Salute in there "for the lulz", or to "own the libs' or whatever
And I think that it's bad, because breaking the norm of "Don't make nazi salutes in political speeches" is a norm that was worth having
It's also part of saluting the flag/national anthem for civilians, though that probably isn't taught in schools anymore. So we're all Fascists now, Father?
Eh....while I agree with and have more than once repurposed your "demand for outrage" line, am much less sure that this instance fits that description.
Having watched the full (not edited) video sequence a couple of times now....if forced to wager I would have to put money on "clumsy attempt at fascist salute" ahead of "awkward version of throwing my heart out to you". Call it a 60-40 or maybe 2-1 split on those odds.
The guy is physically and socially awkward, granted, and has self-described as being on the spectrum. So yes either explanation _could_ be true.
If it's meant to be a Real Genuine Nazi Salute, it's very badly done. His hand is at an angle, instead of straight out, at the end. I think he was hyper as one of the three year olds at my place of work during the whole inauguration - whether he was coked-up (er, I mean, NATURAL HARMLESS NOOTROPICS FOR BRAIN-HACKING-ed up) or just full of joie de vivre, he was wired to the moon.
So 'throwing my heart to you' salutes are all just part of that. Anyway, I imagine if he'd done the fist pump or something else instead, the same pearl-clutching would be going on about 'this really means X because some guy did it at a KKK rally one time' or something. The same way that the OK sign was turned into "this is a white supremacist signal" and taken seriously by the Extremely Furrowed Brows set.
If the ADL, which managed to classify the OK sign as a "hate signal", is now telling everyone to cool their jets about Musk, I think that the demand really has exceeded supply.
Musk has shown a clear pattern of far-right conviction over the past weeks and months: He is firmly in the MAGA camp, advertised European far-right parties, supports each and every insane thing Trump says such as threatening various allies (except for the {already forgotten?} H1B hickup), and is making X a far-right cesspool. Several fascism historians have confirmed his salute to be the Nazi salute. And if the grimace with which he was throwing the salute was one of love, I don't want to see him full of hate.
Whatever his intention really was with that salute, if he really only wanted to channel Celine Dion (another Canada annexation dogwhistle then?), the times for good faith assumptions regarding Musk are long over.
I thought Elon went to Israel and was very friendly with their cause of not being killed by people who don't like them for whatever reason.
I have a very low prior he would intentionally do a nazi salute, it's a much lower chance in my mind than him thinking the hand gesture was a natural way to physically express his feelings.
I can't remember where I first saw this, but I've seen it observed that a lot of otherwise-antisemitic neonazis actually support Israel, because "the Jews fucking off to their own country in the middle of all the other people we hate" is *what they want*, and the fact that it's a very nationalist state in its peoples' "homeland" only makes them respect it more. Israel, according to all fascist precepts, is *doing things the right way*.
If you're going to use "observed" to mean "made up", you should really clarify that explicitly, because normally that word is used to mean something completely different.
>(Edit: lol, the ADL are defending Elon. The Israel lobby does not give a single shit about Jews, folks)
Does the fact that one of the most chicken little organizations in the planet said it wasn't a big deal not make you update a little bit in that direction? What would?
I update a bit towards that possibility, and a bit towards the notion that "the ADL are more concerned about support for Israel, and together with tech orgs that wish to curry favor with the government they want to do everything in their power to suck up to Musk and Trump"
Zuckerberg's or TikTok sucking up to Trump follow the exact same pattern imo
I guess I'm not smart enough to figure out "they are more concerned with supporting Israel and also they hate Jews" there for the ADL. I mean, isn't Israel famously kinda full of Jews?
This is the evangelical position. Israel is important because it heralds the Apocalypse. But then all the Jews will be converted, because they don't like Jews, only Israel.
They are not chicken little when it comes to the rights of Palestinians and those protesting against their genocide. This is because they are part of the Israel lobby, and are only supportive of rights for their political allies. (Did you see the recent leak of the ADL guy explaining that TikTok is bad because it's making people aware of the oppression of Palestinians?)
They see Musk and Trump as enablers of even more US tax dollars for Israel, and they want to protect their allies. They're not fighting racism, they're supporting their colony.
Let me get this straight. The ADL (you're saying) decided to support someone who they believe is a Nazi (you're saying) because they'll get more money?
At some point, the increasing complexity of dissembling collapses of its own weight, doesn't it?
" I'm starting to think America might be beyond repair."
I've thought that for some time. I think 2020 was the year that finally did it for me, though it could have been 2019 or 2021. And I think a more astute person could have recognized it as much as a decade earlier than that. Somewhere about then I mentally assigned 5-30 years as my best guess for the remaining lifespan of the U.S. as a unified country with recognizably the same form of government, though I made (and still make) no strong predictions as to exactly when or in what form its ultimate end will come.
The ultimate problem isn't *this* election or *this* government mind you, though I certainly don't expect them to help. In fact, I don't really think there's *one* ultimate problem, I could point at three or four pieces minimum that I think have played big roles. But the net effect is:
1. At a federal level, political polarization renders U.S. no longer able fix any of its pre-existing structural, cultural or political problems.
2. The factors driving the polarization are exactly the sort of structural, cultural and political problems that are now impossible to fix, so future U.S. governments will *also* not be able to fix them.
3. Any new problems that crop up--regardless of their origin--have a high chance of becoming sucked up by the polarization and becoming similarly unfixable. COVID specifically was my guiding model for this: a crisis that in past years might have pulled people together in solidarity instead turned *almost instantly* into an acrimonious series of shouting matches, with people refusing to do incredibly simple, basic things *for their own safety* with reasons that largely boiled down to "well, if THEY'RE for it, I'm against it." Even when technology handed the country a (good but not perfect) solution on a silver platter, political polarization slowed it down and rendered it less effective.
I would like nothing better than to be wrong about this, but I don't think I am. It's like watching a messy, drawn-out divorce play out across the national stage, where you're not sure if the result will *merely* be something as minor as a heated and expensive legal battle, or if it will escalate into house fire that spreads halfway across the neighborhood.
I mean, I’m no great historian nor am I an American, but I don’t see right now any cause or chance of any separation or civil war.
The rhetoric prior to the civil war was far worse, there was clear demand for a breakup from the southern states, and there was no easy way forward with the expansion of the US unless the south was politically or militarily defeated. Eventually the slave states had to know that the vast majority of new states would be free states leaving them with a minority in the senate as well as Congress, and eventually slavery would be abolished by the US.
They are preempting this by leaving. I see no obvious parallels today.
Well, it's less of a divorce, and more just domestic violence. The husband isn't going to let the wife leave him. He'll just chip away at her until there's nothing left but a broken husk.
I've talked to you enough to know that I have zero interest in reading anything else you write, now or ever. Your writing seems mainly to be optimizing for shock value, and there are a million better purveyors of that elsewhere on the internet if it were something I wanted. Please find someone else to direct such comments at, if you are intent on making them.
Uh... that was a genuine assessment of the situation, but... if you don't want to hear it, that's fine. The married couple analogy is a good one, though, considering the cultural factors responsible.
"overall people in America are far too rich and have far too much to lose to blow up the system. "
I'll notice that this prediction has already been somewhat falsified regarding the international system of trade, which certainly isn't the ONLY root of the U.S.'s prosperity, but it's one of the big ones. Whether out of ignorance or because they have other priorities, many people seem perfectly happy to tolerate threats to the system and even cheer for them. In fact "globalization" (of which international trade is the largest piece) has been one of THE main targets of a lot of recent right-wing political movements, in the U.S. and elsewhere. In general I believe those movements are more concerned with the movement of people than the movement of goods, but they seem perfectly content to throw the baby out with the bathwater: see Brexit for example (which wasn't the U.S., but the same arguments applied).
Now I should say that in many ways I *agree* that the U.S.'s problems are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I think a lot of the people who are getting Big Mad about them are being quite stupid. But they're still getting Big Mad regardless. In a nutshell, I think you vastly underestimate how extreme people are willing to act over (to you) minor problems, and how recklessly they're willing to threaten the roots of their own prosperity (in part simply because they don't understand them)
Yeah, this is like saying, "no-no, this was a Hindu swastika I posted, not a Nazi one - they just look identical". You _may_ be able to get away with this if you're a Hindu. If not, not. If you're already on the alt-right fringe, then _definitely_ not.
Yes (or rather, the idea of it - it's questionable whether it actually existed), by means of the Italian and Austrian fascists.
Some Nazis, being Nazis, thought this was un-Germanic.
WP: "However, no Roman text describes such a gesture, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern so-called "Roman" salute.[1]"
Did nobody look at the full clip where he's doing the Nazi Fascist OMG End Of America!!!!! salutes? The usual suspects are all weasel-wording with "he appeared to" and "fascist-style salutes".
Now, if you want to say "that totally was a Fascist Nazi Heil Hitler salute", I can't change your mind. I hope you have plenty of space under your bed to hide in.
Do not make me go digging around online to find a two-second clip of an awkwardly angled shot that makes Harris or Biden or whomever "appear to be" giving a "fascist-style salute". I do remember way back some fucking idiot putting up a photo claiming a pope or a cardinal or someone was "OMG Fascist salute!" but if you know anything about Catholic liturgy, it was "outstretched arm in blessing". (That's why I say "fucking idiot" because they're all too eager to jump into the outrage machine without finding out what happened).
I watched the clip, expecting to see a stage wave or other innocent hand-out gesture that looks bad in a well-chosen framecap. The clip looked a lot more like a deliberate Nazi salute than I had been expecting.
That said, I have never encountered a "hand goes out to you" gesture in other contexts and had no idea it was a thing. If it is a thing and it actually looks like what Musk did, that makes it much more likely that his intentions were innocent rather than (at best) tasteless trolling.
Musk is neither Harris nor Biden, and certainly not a pope or cardinal, so these explanations are irrelevant. If anything, I would be much more interested in a clip of Musk *before* his MAGAfication where he used that salute in a clearly non-political way. Can you provide one of those? That would be much more convincing than this whataboutist gaslighting you're indulging in.
To the people who don't want to see him as a fascist it matters.
I don't know if it's due to Ketamine or the Testosterone that he was Tweeting about a while back, but I think Elon has lost any self-control he once had.
Mussolini's movement was the original fascism, of course. The nazis didn't call themselves fascists. Communists first used the term as a category name for nationalist totalitarismism, I think. There still is no satisfying consensus about what constitutes fascism but if anybody deserved being called a fascist it was Mussolini.
I think Mussolini coined the term in a political context. Ancient Romans tied together wooden rods with leather straps with a single-bladed axe in the middle — and they called it a fasces. It was a symbol of strength (because the rods wouldn't snap when tied together) and summary punishment (the axe). In the pre-Republican period, the accounts say that twelve attendants, known as ‘lictors,’ carried fasces walking in procession before the kings of Rome. During the Republic, the two consuls took turns presenting the fasces to the Senate (IIRC), giving the Senate precedence, and they removed the axes from the bundles to show deference to the Roman citizenry, who had received the right of appeal against summary execution. Mussolini played up the stronger together symbolism of the fasces.
What were Hitler and Mussolini, if not fascists? Mussolini established the Roman salute as a symbol of his fascist government, and Hitler adopted it for his. Any way you turn it, the Roman salute, fascist Italy's salute, and fascist Germany's salute are one and the same.
So no, it really doesn't matter which phrase you use, except if you're an organization (such as a news outlet) who doesn't want to end up on the bad side of a potentially fascist US government.
> The Israel lobby does not give a single shit about Jews, folks
No, they absolutely do. Nobody is seriously considering killing Jews this time around, there's way higher priorities. Most important part is that the US is going to let Israel off its leash.
Israel has been "leashed" this whole time? How many more war crimes does it want to do, exactly, and why do you think that would decrease antisemitism?
Why do you think they didn't just go scorched earth on Gaza? Their sponsors have an image to maintain; they were in hot water even under the current circumstances. Of course, that's no longer a problem, since all the people who were needlessly attatched to those lives are going to be removed from power, and also the new administration does not give a damn what liberal Europe thinks of them.
And I don't know why you think it would increase anti-semitism in the US. The right doesn't care about Muslim lives, and the left is no longer relevant.
The Israelis, unlike Hamas and its apologists, are decent human beings who know more than anyone that genocide is wrong. You don't need to invoke pressure from "sponsors" to explain why Israel didn't commit genocide. Or anything remotely like it.
It's one thing to not care about human life in the abstract. It's another thing to make it central to your identity. I'm astonished at how often you feel the need to remind us. It's CONSTANT with you. I think this blatant edgelording degrades the quality of the conversation.
Oh come on, I'm not even being nihilistic or unconditionally misanthropic in this case! There are practical, subjectively justifiable reasons for Israel to be doing this! Frankly, it's more confusing to me why other people care so much about random people whose lives provide no direct value to them.
It can't be empathy, because that's just a response to physical stimuli, which is not being provided in most cases. Is it simply because they are told to unconditionally care about lives because that makes them "good" people? That was the case for me in the past as well, but I ultimately grew out of it because it was completely unproductive. But morality can be changed, and is currently in the active process of being changed at a societal level. It's so interesting to see it happen in real time, isn't it?
I see you do not understand what empathy is. Perhaps you were one of those born without the ability to understand what it is. In which case, I suppose you can't be faulted. I can only be grateful I was born in different circumstances.
They *didn't* go scorched earth on Gaza? Almost the entirety of Gaza is homeless because almost every neighbourhood has been destroyed. Last I checked I think 200 churches were ruined. Literally every hospital has been bombed, and every university is rubble, and like 80% of the schools. Something like 75% of the water infrastructure has been destroyed. "Safe zones" have been bombed more times than anyone could count, aid has been illegally blocked from getting in, most of the peak human rights organizations have determined it is genocide, and Israel's leaders are wanted by the Hague. What exactly do you want Israel to do, and why?
When Germany invaded Poland, army and SS groups were ordered to kill as many civilians as they could. They burned down whole villages with the people inside them, leveled cities, strafed evacuation columns, and just generally gunned people down. In one month they had killed 150,000-200,000 civilians.
So no, Israel hasn't gotten closed to scorched earth in Gaza.
Frankly, I don't have much stake in what happens there, and I'm not going to lose any sleep regardless of what happens. But the Israeli government has been pretty clear about their core values and motives... and they simply have no reason to tolerate all of these liabilities.
A devastating number are not alive, actually, just not all of them. Are you suggesting that it would decrease antisemitism if Israel killed literally all of them? Seems to me like their work so far has done the opposite.
Israel did state that it had goals, but the problem is that all of its stated goals were incompatible with its actions. The only time that hostages were being recovered faster than they were being killed is during ceasefires. There was little chance of resettling Israeli families when a "war" was ongoing. And the best way to recruit Hamas members is by killing Gazans' families.
I'm Jewish, have a very, very deep dislike of Nazism, Fascism and (Soviet-style) Communism. I also think that Musk can act highly inappropriately at times. I've watch the video several times over and do not think its a Nazi salute, just an awkward gesture.
Trump has rescinded the Biden administration's AI risk executive order. This was widely predicted but there was a question of whether it would be modified or completely eliminated. It looks like completely eliminated.
Has anybody else noticed that a large percentage of political disagreements in the left vs right culture wars of the last many years effectively boils down to the "we need to protect them, favor them, support them vs. that's patronizing, they're strong and proud and can take care of themselves" axis? Not sure if there's a memeable version of this, maybe "paternalism vs individualism"? Victim mentality vs survivor mentality? Collectivism vs individualism? Protection vs rising to the challenge.
e.g. women in the workplace. For years we were told to adjust language in our job postings and job descriptions because words too aggressive were going to be a big turnoff and scare off women who want a more soft and nurturing environment. We're not aggressive, we're not intense, we don't have war rooms. We're inclusive, we're nurturing, we're supportive, we're all about letting all voices be heard. On the other side people would claim to be offended by that notion, saying that it was patronizing and that women were perfectly capable of fending off for themselves and didn't need to be treated with kid gloves. Women could lean in, keep up with the boys, rise to the top playing the same game everybody else was. They didn't need special treatment.
e.g. One side finds "woman engineer" to be empowering, we're finally part of the club now, the other says "I'm just an engineer, I don't need that ridiculous label, I can do the job as well as anybody else regardless of my sex".
e.g. Minorities, same thing. One side says we need equity, we need special treatment for groups x y z, they're special and need to be protected and nurtured. At the same time many members of x y z find that notion patronizing and condescending, claiming to be doing just fine and not needing favoritism.
This feels like an ultimately irresolvable tension. It feels parallel in some sense to the masculine vs feminine tension. Maybe this is just how society has always been and will always be. Curious what others things.
I’ve heard this framework before, and it tends to have popularity on the right as a narrative about itself- “we aren’t motivated by animus towards minority communities, it’s just that the left wants to subject those communities to paternalistic care while we recognize the strength of those communities and want to foster their independence and autonomy rather than weaken them by keeping them perpetually dependent on aid.”
However, that narrative rapidly breaks down when you compare their reaction when white working class communities are the ones in distress. The conservative coalition is large, and there’s no shortage of people who will argue that struggling white communities should *also* be told to pound sand/pull their own bootstraps, but there’s also no shortage of people in the right’s tent who suddenly view aid very differently when it’s for a white rust belt factory town or Appalachian coal mining community struggling, rather than a black-and-Latino-heavy inner city area, or people for whom the crack epidemic gets very different treatment than white communities suffering opioid “deaths of despair,” etc.
The truth is that the right coalition contains both the libertarian strains that treat all these programs as the same kind of problematic, *and* the folk socialists whose discomfort/comfort with aid programs is mainly determined by the color of the beneficiaries thereof. But the latter are more embarrassing so the autonomy narrative gets all the airtime.
Most people don't care about logic; they care about vibes.
"Women are just as capable as men at everything, there are no differences between the sexes" has a pro-women vibe. "Women need to be carefully protected from microaggressions and inappropriate jokes" also has a pro-women vibe. For most people, that is enough; from their perspective, that makes it practically the same thing.
It's only a few nerds scratching their heads and wondering how exactly can you put "equality" and "ladies first" into a coherent framework.
the alt right (endonym du jour is "dissident right") loves to reference Bronze Age Pervert's concept of "The Longhouse". Which is this nebulous idea that the West is currently a matriarchal society where feminine, egalitarian values like "PROTECC MINORITIES; BELIEVE WAMEN (or else)" are enforced via HR departments, ESG scores, etc.
Idk if I totally agree with this. And I can't speak to the historicity of the reference to the Bronze Age. But... it seems relevant.
Where did he get this notion of the longhouse? My very fuzzy impression (from reading a book about Borneo decades back) was that longhouses were either sex-separated (so men had their own longhouse) or that it was for all the village/tribe (so not a matriarchal institution).
Mind you, I don't trust BAP on anything historical, sociological, or anthropological, so if it turns out he pulled it out of his backside I wouldn't be surprised.
Okay, read the bit at the link and that is stupidity on stilts. Guy just invented this notion.
It's not about Borneo. I think it's a reference to the longhouses of the Indo Europeans.
Allegedly, he graduated Harvard with a degree in history (or anthropology?). So he has the credentials, at the very least. He wrote a dissertation about BronzeAge IndoEuropeans conquering Greece. Then later, turned it into a (wildly offensive) novel, written in caveman-speak.
I'm not in a position to explain it charitably, since I don't really grok the appeal.
The disagreement as you framed it is between two camps of egalitarians. The rising right is not egalitarian. They take it for granted that groups are different, that some will naturally fall behind, and that there's nothing wrong with this.
I don't think that's an accurate characterisation of the division.
I think that concern for subaltern groups, of either the "we need to protect them, favor them, support them" and "that's patronizing, they're strong and proud and can take care of themselves", is a left-wing position, and that the debate you characterise has largely been an intra-left one, while the main right-wing position has generally been "fuck subaltern groups", framed in a variety of ways of varying honest.
That sounds more like the 4chan position. I don't think you have met enough non-selected right wing people to make generalizations. (By "non-selected" I mean people you just meet in everyday life and later find out their political positions, and the more moderate they are the longer this tends to take.)
I’m honestly curious whether you meant “fuck subaltern groups” as “fuck the stupid idea of subaltern groups; we’re all equal Americans” or “subaltern groups deserve to get fucked”. I suppose if I searched for other posts by you I could figure out where you’re coming from, but as written I couldn’t tell.
If by "we should fuck" you mean "we should not allow to enter our country illegally", I agree. But I have a sneaking suspicion that's not what you mean.
"Greenland and Panama, unrestrained carbon emissions, and breaking down the international trade system. You have the world’s richest and most dominant country openly trying to extort, extract wealth from, and suppress the development of poorer groups.
And yeah, immigration restrictions too."
These are all exaggerations of what is actually happening, and the motivation for those things is not to fuck foreigners, but either greed for the first ones or 'fear of foreigners economically/culturally/criminally' for the immigration restrictions.
Your view of your outgroup seems to be that they are just evil and get off on hurting people, which is just not true.
EDIT: I just found that Trump 'won't rule out force' for taking Greenland, so I was wrong that you were exaggerating about that.
Scott kind of wrote on this a long while back, with his post on "Thrive" vs "Survive" politics. Thrivers want everybody to be taken care of, and why not? We have enough resources to do it. Survivors don't have time or resources to waste on mollycoddling, everyone needs to pull their weight.
It does seem odd, and yet I think it is happening nevertheless.
I read somewhere (can't remember where) that the people most likely to vote for Trump for economic reasons were NOT the poorest demographics, but rather the fairly successful portion of the middle class that felt the most precarious in their success.[1] This feels right, and somewhat matches my own personal observations. People today are unimaginably richer than a bronze age farmer, but they don't have the experience of being a bronze age farmer to compare to. They *do* have their own experiences (and at a more distant remove, those of their friends and family) and those are what seem the most real and immediate. Losing a large chunk of their wealth and security would be fundamentally distressing to them, even if they were left with more wealth and security than most humans ever knew.
[1] To be clear, I think this is a very stupid reaction to that sort of anxiety, but I still understand the anxiety itself.
Both "thrive" and "survive" are premised on scarcity in the economic sense; it's equally odd to expend resources on people who are too rich to need taking care of.
> Given that, it seems odd for people to practice “survive” politics here.
Only if you take your existence for granted. As long as there are other nations in existence, and as long as there is opposition within the nation, your existence has not truly been secured. Order can only be guaranteed through the elimination of all variables.
The places that seem to devote the most resources to help the 'poor,' which are also the richest places in the US, like San Francisco or Los Angeles, seem to be completely ineffective at helping said 'poor,' and also make life worse for the actual poor and working classes in the process, and seem to be burning through 'what our grandparents worked hard to give us and driving our society into the gutter,' as FLWAB says below.
Now, these days the Thriver position is "all our streets are going to be owned by street people, and we must let them commit assault and, sell/use drugs, or be psychotic and act in dangerous ways because to stop them is problematic" and so I would take the political choice that is opposite to that whatever happens to be available. Because obviously the Thrive position isn't helping 'poor' people at all, and is in fact hurting them very badly (while making life worse generally in a thousand very real ways for everyone else), because Thrivers can't admit certain things about human nature.
That Thriver position feels like yet another iteration of the "great idea, wrong species" utopian world view. If only reality would already bend itself to all of the great intentions those folks have, instead of constantly getting in the way.
There are two meanings of "doesn't work". For the homeless, it means that they are left on the streets... which may be okay if it is only a tiny fraction of a population with very weird preferences. But for everyone else, it also means assaults, drugs, etc., and having fewer of that seems like a mainstream preference.
"Anyway the idea that we can afford to be more generous is entirely consistent with the idea that we should try to be generous in a way that actually helps people."
That is true, and if you had people like Matt Yglesias in charge then that would be possible. Instead, you can't help mentally ill street people because of the reasons that Freddie DeBoer outlines, that involuntary commitment is off the table. You can't get drug addicts and dealers off the street because of disparate racial impacts and because it is mean to kick people off the street and racist to use police to do anything. You can't build more housing, or build windowless flophouses, because of community consultation, anti-developer sentiment, and regulations to provide minimum standards that the poorest can't afford.
All of this means that the working, responsible poor have to live in neighborhoods with crazy people and tents everywhere, and middle class and above people can't enjoy nice, once thriving cities, and people have to compete in a zero sum game to bid up house prices in the areas that actually keep people off the street.
Spoken like a Thriver! Survival is not about relative wealth. Yes, we're richer than anyone in history, but we're still not rich enough that we can stop working. Virtue, skill, and grit still matter. If you do what is right, and work hard, keep your nose clean, settle down, raise some kids, keep your promises, then you can enjoy the fruits of your labors here in the greatest and wealthiest society ever known: but if you don't you can still fall down into the Hell of drug addiction, criminality, single motherhood, living off the dole, obesity, childlessness, etc.
The Survive mindset is knowing that all our wealth was built by hard work, virtue, and grit and is maintained by hard work, virtue, and grit. We are quite capable of squandering what our grandparents worked hard to give us and driving our society into the gutter. Things fall apart unless they're kept together. That's the Survive mindset!
"And you have to affirmatively do bad things to become a criminal, drug addict, or single impoverished mom. "
False, false and false. Wrongful convictions certainly happen, no matter how much we like to pretend they don't. Kids get drugs pushed on them by parents or older siblings and get addicted before they have the agency and independence to refuse. Women get pregnant through rape, or have co-parents die, leave or turn abusive. These may not be central or typical members of these groups, but they certainly exist[1]. And conspicuously missing from your list are categories like "orphan," "homeless teenager" which would be inconvenient to acknowledge. This position is just the Just World Fallacy, which is (as the name suggests) a fallacy. Of course, nobody's perfect, so the determined can always find *something* blameworthy that a person in dire straights has done.
"An American with no skills, grit, or virtue can still get some basic job paying $50k and live a modest but comfortable life."
OK, wow, "can" is doing quite a lot of work here. A quick check tells me that the median income for Americans working full time is $60K. That's going to include all the people who DO have special skills--doctors, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, electricians, etc--all the older people who have accumulated decades of promotions and raises and so on. And of course it is NOT going to include those people who are looking for full-time work but can't find it. Likewise, my own personal experience is that the only under-40 people I know earning $50 or more are those with with specialized and valuable skill sets, and I certainly never saw low-qualification jobs posted at $24/hr during any of the periods when I was looking for work. I suspect that the supply of such jobs is much, MUCH smaller than you seem to think. This is very much a "it's one banana Michael, what could it cost, $10?" vibe.
[1] And even many of the central and typical members will have had significant external factors pushing them in the direction of doing "affirmatively bad things," even if those factors are less inarguably decisive.
Too much to say, so I’ll just say: I disagree vehemently with every single sentence you have written here. Which is why I like the Thrive Survive continuum, as it does seem to capture or at least gesture at a real psychological divide.
I wonder, how much of the complaints about "Nice Guys TM" is simply different people having different ways of falling in love.
I imagine that some people fall in love instantly, at the first sight. And for some other people, emotional connection is an important part of developing attraction; and that connection requires them to first spend some time together.
And I imagine that the former view the latter as *dishonest*. Someone who moves very quickly from zero to one, probably expects everyone else to be the same; so when they hear someone saying "at first, we were just friends... but later I realized I was in love", they are like "no way, I am sure that you were attracted from the start, but you didn't tell her, because you were afraid of rejection... instead you pretended to be a friend, so that you could later use the threat of withdrawing the friendship as a leverage".
So we ended up in a situation where being attracted to things besides the body is called out as a shameful behavior.
Similarly, it is interesting to see the pushback against "sapiosexuality". Even Wikipedia mentions that critics call it "elitist", "discriminatory", and "pretentious". (For some reason, other sexual preferences do not get a criticism section on Wikipedia, although I am sure that many of them have their own critics, too.) See e.g. https://www.thedailybeast.com/pretentious-is-not-a-sexual-orientation/ And yet, uhm, I also happen to find smart people more attractive than dumb ones; sue me. And I don't think this is a rare thing. But apparently, not finding dumb people hot is a form of ableism, therefore something you should never mention in a company of decent people.
It's tricky. If you are open to cross-gender friendships, there's plenty of opportunity for attraction to blossom, wax, wane, etc, throughout the life of the relationship and I think that's pretty healthy and normal. I've been a part of a mixed-gender circle of friends since high school, which included one I eventually dated, another I had a crush on at various points but never dated, and others who never moved the needle for me one way or another.
But that same mixed circle also has given me a bit of a window into the other side of the looking glass, and the "Nice Guy TM" as described by women doesn't really align with "a guy who is your friend and later catches feelings for you because his attraction just develops slowly in a social context rather than spontaneously at first sight," so much as it's defined as "a guy who (a) has feelings for you from the very beginning, but (b) whose dating strategy, rather than simply trying to date you, is to be constantly overly protective/nurturing/deferential/involved in your business or whatever, but in a 'nice,' defensible, and always deniable kind of way - the kind of way that never exposes him to being rejected in the way just asking someone out on a date would."
Assuming she sees what's going on (and she usually does), this puts her on the horns of an awkward dilemma. On the one hand, it feels presumptuous and mean-spirited to respond to this behavior by taking the initiative to say something like 'I know you haven't said anything, but I can tell by your constant insistence on buying my drinks and walking me home that you're attracted to me, and I need to just tell you right now that I don't want that kind of relationship with you so stop doing that.' But she can be accused of also 'leading him on' or 'taking advantage of him' if she just does nothing and hopes the behavior goes away on its own. His insistence on being indirect and deniable puts her in a position where she's the villain for any response other than reciprocating, which obviously isn't a fun place to be. Sometimes it's just a 1x1 relationship where she can sort of quietly exit by not inviting him to events or doing stuff with him, but that gets much harder when he's a member of her social circle.
So although I think there may be some overlap with different kinds of attraction, Nice Guy strikes me mainly as a definition for a particular *strategy for coupling* rather than a definition for a particular *way of falling in love*. Specifically, it would refer to a dating strategy defined by fear of vulnerability manifesting as extreme indirectness and commitment to constant deniability in romantic approach.
"My guy friend caught feelings for me and asked me out on a date and I had to say no" is an awkward interlude that could end a friendship but it could just as easily be moved past, and it's not "Nice Guy TM" behavior.
"My guy friend had feelings for me for 4 years but never said anything about it, he just trashed my boyfriends and constantly catered to me in a way that was sometimes awkward but I didn't know how to tell him to stop when he was so insistent about picking me up from the airport and cooking me a special birthday meal, then he tried to kiss me and got really mad when I told him I don't think of him like that" is "Nice Guy TM" behavior.
This seems to be to be quite different to what people generally refer to when they talk about Nice Guys. Generally the guys people are talking about are men who fail at love despite being fairly morally upstanding and blame women for preferring "bad boys", whereas you seem to be referring to male friends of women who are secretly in love with them. There's probably significant overlap but they are different imo.
> Generally the guys people are talking about are men who fail at love despite being fairly morally upstanding and blame women for preferring "bad boys"
That may have been true when the term originated, like, two decades ago, but nowadays it's almost exclusively used to describe men (/man-children) who seem to believe that being "polite"/"nice" to women entitles them to women's attention and/or sex, and then immediately turn heel and call women sluts when that doesn't work. At best they become petulant, and there are many worse cases. It's rarely applied to actually nice men who continue to be genuinely nice - the linguistic treadmill now has moved on to calling them "white knights", or just "simps".
(That said, the actual problem isn't so much that women are attracted to "bad boys" as it is that (*most*) women naturally fall on the subby side of the Dom/sub divide, and are attracted to dominance/assertiveness/confidence, which is mostly orthogonal to being "nice")
>>(That said, the actual problem isn't so much that women are attracted to "bad boys" as it is that (*most*) women naturally fall on the subby side of the Dom/sub divide, and are attracted to dominance/assertiveness/confidence, which is mostly orthogonal to being "nice")
I think there's some truth to that, but it's also skewed by the blurred impression the raw numbers can create. A "bad boy" may have many flaws, but he's direct in his approach. A "nice guy" in the internet sense is pathologically committed to being indirect, beating around the bush, and limiting his exposure to a clear rejection. As a result, by the time a man employing the "nice guy" method finally gets to his answer from one potential mate, a "bad boy" may have directly approached dozens of women, been rejected by 95% of them, slept with two, and entered into a short-term but toxic relationship with another. The "nice guy" isn't tracking the "bad boy's" misses, though, so he just sees "WTH that jerk had three partners in just 6 months and I've been on a total dry spell! Why do women only go for jerks?"
The key is to learn to be a nice (in the sense of being kind, empathetic, socially intelligent, or what have you) person while nevertheless being direct.
This is all a very good point. I was basing my theory on the girls I knew and know that actively fantasized about "bad boys", but those are probably dwarfed by the effect you describe in actual practice.
> Generally the guys people are talking about are men who fail at love despite being fairly morally upstanding
This heavily depends upon your definition of "morally upstanding"; most of the people talking about/using the term "Nice Guys" would not view these people as "fairly morally upstanding" given that the "nice guys" being described tend to have very regressive/sexist attitudes towards women and how they should act.
These days, it's probably almost easier to simply describe it as "liberal women don't want to date conservative guys, because they think being conservative in and of itself is actively evil/harmful/etc; conservative guys think this is unfair, in part because there are fewer conservative women".
I 100% agree. I think Nice Guys can be broken up into a wide variety of different patterns of behavior. One of them is basically what you describe; a kind of demisexuality or need for a long courtship where people fall in love with people they've spent a lot of time with. But if a person like this doesn't take 'no' for an answer and hopes that someone will gradually fall in love with them as well in what is a presumed to be friendly relationship then this is a potentially dysfunctional pattern. Practically speaking, people who need long courtships are best served by finding ways to have long courtships. Talk online for a while. Talk with someone out of state. Don't emotionally commit too much before the other person does, in the hopes that ardent love will win over a one-sided relationship. And most importantly, be willing to take 'no' for an answer.
It's not a need that should be pathologized as it is, but it does need to be managed by the person who has it, since they will tend to be interested in people who have different patterns of expectations.
Similarly, I'd also (quietly) identify as 'sapiosexual' or 'sapioromantic.' The mental part of a relationship is a critical component for me. But practically speaking, I'm not sure publicly identifying as sapiosexual really *serves* anyone. If someone is mentally stimulating, you'll find that out through dating. Saying that you are sapiosexual is unlikely to attract more intelligent people, just like saying out loud that you like beautiful people is unlikely to help you find people who are more attractive. It's possible to filter quietly and indirectly for some needs just as easily as it is to filter loudly.
It is definitely bad if someone doesn't take "no" for an answer.
That said, there is a difference (for some people) between "no, never" and "not yet, maybe". The former means that the other person should give up. The latter means that the future is uncertain... it could become a "yes" one day, or it could become a "no", or it could even stay undecided forever.
Navigating that uncertainty is difficult. If you give up too soon, maybe you just had to wait a little longer. But if you keep waiting, maybe it ends up with "no" a few years later, and you just wasted a lot of time. (No one owes you a "yes", no matter how long you have waited for them to decide.) So I guess the best strategy is to stay in contact, but explore your other options in the meanwhile. Some people may find this emotionally difficult, but that's their problem; there is no better solution that wouldn't come at someone else's cost.
Seems to me that there are some inefficiencies in communication, caused by each side trying to minimize their risks. On the side of the undecided person (stereotypically a woman), there is a risk that truthfully answering "not yet, maybe" may be misinterpreted as "yes, but I want you to keep it slow" by the other side. So the safe answer in such situation is to give a clear "no", even if you originally didn't feel that way. Now on the side of the suitor (stereotypically a man), the safe approach is to keep it slow, to avoid accidentally forcing this kind of "no" by asking too soon. Ideally, the waiting should not be completely passive, but rather a continuous exchange of gradually increasing signals of interest.
From the perspective of someone who knows the clear "yes" or "no" from the first sight, this probably seems completely idiotic, and the optimal protocol for them could be thousand times more efficient. ("Wanna have sex? Your place or mine?")
What makes it complicated is that the society contains both kinds of people (those could even be the same people at a different stage of their lives), mostly not understanding each other, with bad actors in each group, etc. And the memes proclaiming that everyone whose ways are different from mine is a bad person.
> practically speaking, I'm not sure publicly identifying as sapiosexual really *serves* anyone.
Yeah, it's not like if you declare yourself a sapiosexual, smart people who previously didn't notice you suddenly start paying attention. (Also, even if that worked, it wouldn't attract smart people, but rather people who identify as smart, which is not the same.)
But I think it could serve the society as a whole, as an antidote against the "men do not find intelligent women attractive" meme, which is popular, and in my opinion harmful.
I wouldn't mind a norm of simply not speaking about intelligence vs dating. But that is not the situation we have now. Instead, "it is known" that women can increase their dating success by acting dumb. Which... on one hand, maybe yes, I don't really know; it might be a good strategy if all you want is to get laid... but on the other hand, it seems like an efficient way for a smart woman to find exactly the kind of partner who will later hate her for being intelligent. (Maybe it is that kind of advice that women love to give their friends/competitors to undermine them? "Act dumb, get a big tattoo, and cut your hair short. Trust me, you will be popular, girl!") So I would like to see some more pushback against that.
Things happen; I am not sure which of them should be called "love".
I could definitely get *sexually attracted* to someone at first sight. (Is this love already?) I might decide to actually do something about that, and then I would feel the *excitement of adventure*. (Is this love already?) I could also imagine that person to be smart and curious and nice... at that moment, based on almost zero data, mostly on my wishful thinking and halo effect... and by sheer coincidence I might even be correct. (Is this love already?) I might become obsessed with that person. (Is this love already?) Those things could all happen at first sight, and yeah, that has actually happened to me a few times.
Then there is a moment when I *know*, based on personal experience, that the person actually *is* smart and curious and nice. Maybe not as much as I imagined before I knew them, because reality often cannot compete with fantasy; but perhaps still a lot. When I know that the feelings are mutual, and that we can trust each other and be open with each other. A rationalist might call it becoming a part of each other's utility function. (Is this love already?) These things take some time, so they cannot happen at first sight.
tl;dr -- things can happen at first sight, not sure whether to call them "love"
I was quoting the Beatles there. As it happens Ringo (I think he wrote that) was being very wise in his response. It wasn’t “sure, it happens all the time”, not “it’s definitely happened to me”.
Love at first sight has to be mutual I think, for the phrase to make any sense.
> Similarly, it is interesting to see the pushback against "sapiosexuality".
At least in my own experience, "sapiosexuality" gets a bad rep because it's pretty much exclusively used by the most basic, doesn't-read, doesn't-think, degree-in-underwater-basket-weaving, 7-hours-of-phone-screentime-per-day, types of women.
It's become an anti-shibboleth for what it's theoretically supposed to represent affinity for. But you know, maybe I'm the crazy one.
100%. I noticed that "I really crave deep conversations" seems to mostly come from milquetoast NPC types that never seem to have a single interesting thought to share.
It reminds me of how the people who sound the most excited about the gym on their profiles are also the ones who need it the most and seem to have discovered it recently, while all of the life-long gym rats chicken breasts & rice types don't even mention it because it's just the life they live every day.
Last open thread there was the assertion that the term woke was only used by the right now and not the left. I will note that I received in my social media feed yesterday usage of woke in an advertisement designed to appeal to anti-Trump people
"Get Woke. Embrace Hope. Resist! Free New Rise & Shine $44.95 Box with $50 Gift Card!
Hang in there.
As cooks, we care. We especially care about those in need. And it’s not just that we care, it’s like we feel the hurt of those who are hurting. I think that is why this Monday is weighing so heavily on so many of us.
The thought of so many good and decent people being hurt for nothing more than the enjoyment of Donald Trump and his followers can seem so very-very hopeless. And it’s not hopeless, not by any means, but somehow in this moment it sure feels that way." ....
After a few more anti Trump paragraphs we get to the items for sale including
"We also have the brand new $23.95 Woke Gift Boxes free with each $30 Gift Card sold. These little boxes are fun and we need fun to get through these coming years. I Got Woke, now I’m hungry for Justice and so much more!"
Another recent use of woke I on the left I note that there was controversy last year over a $250,000 contract to improve elementary school education going to an organization called Woke Kindergarten.
For the newspaper article
"The Woke Kindergarten curriculum shared with schools includes “wonderings,” which pose questions for students, including, “If the United States defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?”
In addition, the “woke word of the day,” including “strike,” “ceasefire” and “protest,” offers students a “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.”
Good God. Commercialism really does eat everything. It's a spice company, and I'm unsure whether they really are True Believers or if they would happily produce the MAGA Spicy Set as well. And which is worse - the True Believers committing simony by using principles to huckster a box set of spices, or blatant "we don't care a straw for principles, money has no smell".
I think I prefer the Diocletian approach, to be honest. I get queasy and angry at people trying to sell holy water or Lourdes water online, and it would be even worse if they were doing it out of "I genuinely believe this will cause a miracle to happen".
"Now, for a host of reasons, I think the time has come to admit what we are actually up to and come right out and say it. So here goes. We are trying to make the world a better place. And with your help there are days where we actually seem to be doing that. Our goal now is to have more of those days."
And in order to do that, we'll take advantage of people feeling goddamn suicidal over the election result to shill our spice blends to them. Hey, if they're gonna off themselves, they can't take the money with them now can they, so may as well give it to us!
"Remember when your distrust of big city types, and your deep rooted beliefs in paying your debts, respecting your marriage, raising kids willing to serve, honoring your word, and going to church every week had you voting for Donald Trump over Joe Biden all because Biden’s son had a computer? Or how you couldn’t vote for Hillary because she was over-prepared and used emails? I know that to you your actions seem rational and in keeping with your values, but when it comes to voting you are now consistently voting in people who are the exact opposite of you and the values you hold dear."
Yeah, sure: it was because Hunter owned a computer. That there teck-noll-gee, we conservatards don't trust none of that unnatural devices! She used eee-males? Ritin' a letter with pen and paper was good enough for Grampaw, we reckon! Don't need no fancy eee-males!
"CONTAINS: 1/4-Cup jars of Transgender Remember Vanilla Sugar, Outrage, Justice, and Florida Seasoned Pepper"
Oh well, clearly I can't avail of this wonderful bargain because alas, I'm cishet and not transgender, so using that Vanilla Sugar would be appropriating someone else's culture and that is Not Woke 😀
Some of it is probably just recuperation, kind of like some rightwingers did with, say, "deplorable" after that whole hubbub (so you had Deploraball and so on).
I agree that the term came originally from AAVE. But 'woke' seems to have become much more of an identifier of ideological tribes after it was appropriated from AAVE.
When the organization is using the term in its name, "Woke Kindergarten" and in the curriculum, "woke word of the day" It's not a strawman when opponent use the term "woke" when objecting to the curriculum including “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.”
I'd say using "woke" to refer to that is probably just a factual statement, along the lines of the original usage. The right wing usage is more often about any government or corporate policy that protects minorities, or even other left-wing projects like building renewable energy generation.
1) A local lake’s name was changed from Calhoun to Bde Mka Ska. Turns out the original namesake was a racist asshole. About half the signs with new lake name have been updated in the last 5 years.
2) Garrison Keillor mentioned a land acknowledgment for the locale of the theater before an opera. He thought that was stupid. So did I for the reason that the area was contested between two American Indian tribes and the whole affair did nothing constructive.
3) The woman running my neighborhood email group asked me to supply my pronouns with a link to why it’s important. I didn’t even have to suppress an eye roll because she wasn’t present.
That’s it. The whole ordeal for me. Not worth much more than a shrug on my part.
I‘ve seen several scores of complaints about woke on this forum.
It’s possible I don’t around enough but really it’s overwhelmingly coming from the right in my personal experience.
Wait a minute. I remember Katie Perry saying she was now woke on television once and I found that annoying so that’s number 4 I guess.
If they're reduced to playing dead, maybe now is the time for us to take the W and be happy. We can still keep one eye open in case they try to get up to their old tricks again.
> A local lake’s name was changed from Calhoun to Bde Mka Ska
I've definitely noticed a recent trend towards making "Indigenous" place names as awkward and annoying as possible to say or write, as a display of power by the renamers.
Gone are the days of shit like "Uluru" which is at least easy to pronounce and sounds good. The new name of Mount Wellington in Tasmania is "kunanyi / Mount Wellington". Not Mout Kunanyi, not even Kunanyi, but kunyanyi. Spelled with a lower case "k" because fuck you, we've decided this one fucking mountain is an exception to all existing English grammar.
Bde Mka Ska sounds like a fantastic example of the same thing.
There's nothing wrong with the pronunciation, it's the spelling that's a problem.
The Dakota had no written language, so someone must have gone and transliterated a perfectly good Dakota word into the English alphabet in a way that isn't consistent with anything sensible.
If someone is good at history, perhaps you can help me understand: What happened with aristocracy at the end of feudalism?
I mean, there was a moment of time when people owned land, and that was the official source of their power. But ownership of land didn't disappear, and a Georgist might say that even today owning a lot of land makes you a kind of aristocrat; we just don't look there, because we prefer to discuss capital.
So what happened to the former aristocrats? I can imagine a few scenarios:
* they got killed;
* they survived, but their land was taken away;
* they sold the land trying to join the new capitalist economy, but they sucked at the new economy, so they lost the land and the money;
* they kept the land, but it was at an unimportant place, and the rent was too low to allow them to live comfortably;
* they kept the land, got enough rent to let them and their descendants live comfortably.
I can imagine that each of these scenarios actually happened to someone. My question is, can anyone estimate the probabilities? Probably depends on history of the specific country. I guess I am ultimately curious how much of continuity is between the land owners back then, and the land owners today.
It depends on the country. In some places like England and Spain, they're basically still around and still rich and influential. In some countries like France, lots of them got killed and a lot of the rest were impoverished, they might still be a cultural group but they don't have more influence than anyone else. Many other countries are kind of in-between.
Also, being an aristocrat isn't really synonymous to owning land. Plenty of aristocrats didn't have much in the way of land holdings, and plenty of land was owned by non-aristocrats, most notably the church.
1. New wealth crowded out old wealth in relative terms. Feudal estates become a much smaller percentage of society's wealth without any particular estate necessarily reducing in value in absolute terms
2. Being descended from people who were good at feudalism correlates less than perfectly with being good at capitalism. A lot of landed aristocrats found themselves spending more than their incomes and needing to sell off land to meet expenses. C.f. entire genres of British fiction about cash-poor 19th and 20th century aristocrats.
3. A lot of countries to varying extents either expropriated the estates outright or used a combination of land taxes and inheritance taxes to redistribute wealth away from landed aristocrats.
4. Depending on the country, a lot of the aristocrats still own large estates. Some aristocratic families did turn out to be good enough at capitalism to pay the taxes and maintain or grow their estates, or were at least politically powerful enough (especially in the case of members of the extended royal family) to retain enough privileges and special tax status to make up any shortcomings in their skills in wealth management. An awful lot of English land, both urban and rural, is still owned at least partially by aristocratic estates. The ones tied to the monarch and his heir (the Crown Estates, the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Duchy of Cornwall) are by far the biggest, but they are far from the only ones.
> An awful lot of English land, both urban and rural, is still owned at least partially by aristocratic estates.
> Some aristocratic families did turn out to be good enough at capitalism to pay the taxes and maintain or grow their estates
Note that this wasn't possible in England with its 80% inheritance taxes. The aristocratic families that retained their estates did so by converting them into public-access museums.
I expect the impact of the inheritance taxes would have varied quite a bit depending on how lucky the family in question got in terms of how often their heads of family died and when. It looks like there was about a 40 year window (1946 through 1986) when the tax was 80-ish percent. Before and during WW1, taxes were 20% or less, and were 40-65% for the interwar years through WW2, and it looks like the top rate got cut to 60-ish% in 1986 and to 40% at some point I can't find after that.
Assuming 30-year generations, these are the real rates of growth you'd need to maintain an estate despite the inheritance tax at various rates:
80% - 5.5%
60% - 3.1%
40% - 1.7%
20% - 0.7%
With unluckier 15-year generations:
80% - 11.3%
60% - 6.3%
40% - 3.5%
20% - 1.5%
A 5.5% real growth rate would take a bit of luck as well as prudent investment (and management of existing landholding), especially considering that they no doubt want/need to spend some of their income on their lifestyle, not just reinvest everything, but isn't completely out of the question. A 1-3% real growth rate seems much more achievable.
But a sustained 11.3% (or higher) real growth rate is ridiculously high, high enough that I would be surprised if any large estates survived being inherited three or more times during 1946-1986.
Those who did manage to avoid the worst of the post-war inheritance laws usually converted the urban estates into entities held in trust, or into regular companies with outside investment etc.
The ones that didn't end up on the wrong side of a revolution (such as in Britain) are often still around and sometimes still reasonably wealthy, but they had any special privileges beyond title eroded away by politics and got eclipsed in wealth by folks in business (and the ones that are still wealthy aren't wealthy typically because they're landowners anymore).
In the early modern period, a lot of aristocrats essentially eroded away their fortunes with the high costs of living and debts. Performing aristocracy was expensive, and they had a whole bunch of vices as well like gambling, etc. The funny thing is that sometimes they had an estate that was "entailed" - essentially in a legal trust state so that it couldn't be sold or borrowed against - so you'd end up with aristocrats who were basically broke in terms of cash but still owned an increasingly decrepit mansion house or castle and immediate grounds around it.
That itself was a reflection of the shift into the modern era, with land increasingly treated as property that could be readily sold and borrowed against. Typically land was not something you could sell in medieval Europe, and it came with a bunch of rights and obligations - you could pledge incomes against the land and its products to borrow money, but not the land itself.
Usually mostly the third one. In many countries (especially Russia) the nobility were almost notoriously financially irresponsible and commoners gradually bought them out. In northern Germany (Prussia) the aristocrats were actually unusually capable at administering their estates profitably, and as a result remained unusually influential even well into the 20th century (which many historians say greatly influenced modern German history), and many of Germany’s early industrialists were Prussian aristocrats (many of Germany’s biggest companies even today are still owned by the same old noble families), but I think they were exceptional and even there most aristocrats have gradually assimilated in the last few generations and become fairly regular (still wealthier than average) people, and most of the super rich people by now are no longer descendants of nobles.
This is probably not quite the answer you wanted, but you may find it relevant.
Feudalism as a structure works in societies that lack large scale military organization (like you saw in ancient Rome or in the Persian or Chinese Empires), but are at a technology level where a small number of well trained and equipped men can militarily control large numbers of unskilled and cheaply equipped men. In big empires that can raise up armies of a hundred thousand men and train then decently, you don't get as much feudalism. But if you and your opponent's armies are primarily made up of a few thousand poorly equipped peasants then the army that's most likely to win is the one with the most actual trained warriors: in other words, knights.
European feudalism was a political machine that maximizes the number of knights you can bring to a battle. The minimum you need to be a knight is to have enough financial security that you aren't malnourished, can spend a significant amount of time training for combat, and can afford expensive weapons, armor, and warhorses. So at the bottom of feudal society you have knights as the smallest landowners, each with about enough land that they can meet that minimum threshold. They get that land from larger landowners, and in exchange that larger landowner gets their military service: so now the local baron has 20 knights he can call upon to fight for him, which is better than having 2,000 serfs who can fight for him. The baron got his land from the Count via the same deal, the Count got his from the Duke, the Duke got his from the King, and at the top of the structure you ideally have a King who can summon several thousand knights to suppress rebellions and fight with the other kings. It's a pretty stable system.
However, that system no longer works at all when you don't need trained elite warriors to win battles anymore, and that's what happened with the widespread adoption of the gun. A peasant with a bow and arrow or a spear is little match against a trained, mounted, and armored knight: a peasant with a gun has a good shot at killing him. It doesn't take too long to train a peasant to be decent at using a gun either, just a few months. Suddenly knights and samurai find themselves facing armies of thousands of peasants each armed with a weapon that can easily kill them.
Once guns became widespread enough that you could equip thousands of peasants with them, the whole reason for an aristocracy evaporated. Before the King needed his Counts and Dukes and whatnot to fight: and to bring their knights. Now the King just needs people, lots of people, and the money to feed and equip them. The aristocracy no longer serves a point, and from about the 1600s onward the aristocracy slowly disintegrated from the ground up.
First went the knights and the smaller nobility. The Counts and Dukes of the world at least had lots of land producing lots of money, and the more money you have the more peasants you can equip and conscript, but the little guys didn't have the funds to raise an army of their own and were no longer needed by the higher ups to fight in wars. Most of them either became the gentry and focused on farming and trying to make a profit as an agricultural landlord, or they tried to go into business and either succeeded or lost their shirts. As small nobles go under their land gets snapped up by the more successful ones, which keep them afloat for longer. Yet as we can see with the Absolute Monarchs of the 18th and 19th centuries, Kings don't need aristocrats anymore. They just need money. Kings start handing out titles of nobility in exchange for money or favors, and the "New Rich" become more powerful than the old aristocratic blood. Ultimately the fate of the more powerful nobles is the same as the lower ones: try to make a living as a landowner, try to invest in business and turn a profit, and the ones who fall get their capital snapped up by the successful ones. But making money is a game everyone can play, regardless of blood, so even Dukes with a big head start in the capital department get overshadowed by millionaire industrialists.
Finally WWI happens and knocks out the few remaining supports holding up the sham feudalism that remained. Now the only aristocrats left are those who managed to stay rich, and they are only as powerful as they are rich.
Depends on the history of the specific country for sure.
I think the Russian nobility all got killed or had to flee.
English nobility are certainly still alive, though a lot of them donated their mansions to the government because they couldn't afford to maintain them. (I think this is probably because servants have gotten more expensive rather than the family getting less wealthy.)
The Prince of Liechtenstein, descended from a man so rich he bought the country, is still one of the richest men in the world; he and his family have a net worth in the hundreds of billions.
In a lot of European countries war and socialism ended the aristocracies. Here in Britain, not so much although we had heavy death duties in the early 20C, as any viewer of downton abbey would attest. Nevertheless the top 1% of landowners own 50% of the land and that’s mostly the aristocracy, the church and the Crown.
In fact lots of London is owned by that trifecta, and they charge a ground rent which can be nominal enough for the Crown estate (£50) but up to £1000 a year for other estates in the richer parts of London. Not much per house but it adds up.
These leases are from 125 years to 999 years.
The leases with a long duration are sold and bought like any other property, although the estate owner can interfere they rarely do. The housing with leases about to expire become worthless, or very cheap, starting to decline somewhere around the 80 year mark. At the end of this period ownership reverts to the estate.
The three largest aristocratic estates of London are all held by relatively new peerages that are post the heyday of feudalism:
1) Cadogan Estate, of Earl Cadogan (that title in 1800, first aristocratic male-line ancestor 1672)
2) Grosvenor Estate, owned by the Duke of Westminster (1874, first aristocratic male-line ancestor 1622)
3) Portman Estate, owned by Viscount Portman (first aristocratic ancestor ~1837 but it's complicated as there were a lot of cousin and marriage inheritances, tentatively 1611)
Not particularly surprising that most of these estates date to the chaos of the post-reformation and civil war upheavals, where many families and estates were created or torn up.
What I *did* find surprising is that all are descended in their modern forms from prominent *Whig* (or liberal) families.
-The 1st Earl Cadogan (1672) was a Whig MP, and the 1st Earl Cadogan (1800) was also a Whig MP.
-The 1st Duke of Westminster was a Whig, then Liberal MP. His ancestors were royalists and Tories up until 1806, when they became Whigs.
-The 1st Baron Portman was a Whig MP. His distant in-laws/ancestors were Tories, however.
I suppose this might be natural considering they were chiefly property developers in the centre of global commerce. Of the remaining 88 hereditary peers, just 3 are Liberal Democrats. The modern Conservative party is, despite the Tory moniker, the true heir to the Whigs.
Scott: why are you so reluctant to call Richard Lynn a fraud?
We'd all agree that — if done intentionally — P-hacking is fraud, wouldn't we? There are various ways to do p-hacking, but probably the most common is selecting data or data sets that support one's hypothesis and excluding data or data sets that don't (which is now why serious researchers pre-register their data nowadays).
Richard Lynn selectively excluded data that didn't agree with his hypothesis, and he included sketchy data that did agree with his hypothesis when he created the National IQ data set. Likewise, he imputed estimates for many African nations from their neighbors. This may not be P-hacking, per se, but he's manipulated his data sets to get the conclusion he wanted. In my day, that was called data dredging. It was considered to be scientific fraud back then, as it should be now. I left academia about 35 years ago. Did the definition of fraud change while I was away?
In previous discussions, I heard a couple of defenses of Lynn like this.
1. Well, we don't have any better data. Answer: we do for some countries. But bad data is bad data. Don't recycle it.
2. Well, it Lynn's data correlates well with national education attainments etc etc., so it must have some validity! Answer: if we don't know what a *valid* national median IQ of a nation is we can't claim correlation.
3. And Cremieux claims it's OK to impute IQ scores on countries for which we have no data, but fails to address the faults in the data sets he's using for imputation (is that a real word?).
But the data is pretty good. If you actually look at the most recent versions most countries have several not too bad surveys and they tend to agree pretty well. I think part of the problem is "isolated degrees of rigor" and part is just not understanding statistics. Like we have a rough idea of the level of vitamin D deficiency across countries, its not perfect, any one survey is just an approximation but it enables us to say interesting things about vitamin D and plan interventions.
I am a professional numbers person and am convinced Lynn's numbers or on the whole okay. Part of that is how well they correspond not just with education variables but a host of other things like notable people, GDP, immigrant outcomes, adoption studies. It all hangs together.
> Well, it Lynn's data correlates well with national education attainments etc etc., so it must have some validity! Answer: if we don't know what a *valid* national median IQ of a nation is we can't claim correlation.
What's this supposed to mean? Lynn gives us a set of labeled numbers. We have some other numbers with the same labels. You can just calculate the correlations.
The correlations being high is what "validity" means. Validity depends on them, but they depend on nothing.
Yes the correlation between the two sets of numbers is "real", but the issue is when you take that correlation to be support for a third thing which neither data set actually measures.
My thoughts exactly, I don't understand why we can't just admit that we don't have good data on IQ for at least half the countries out there and toss it out entirely?
Because we don't just insist data must be perfect or we can't use it to do anything. It is hard to get good data about illegally traded bushmeat but if we have a few studies suggesting this is a huge problem for a) public health b) conservation, then the rational response is not to entirely toss out the data and bury our heads in the sand but a) start doing things to address the problem, b) get better data, c) adjust actions depending on better data.
Data about low IQs can motivate interventions aimed at improving cognitive abilities. For example, LEEP aims to eliminate the use of lead paint in Malawi. Childhood lead poisoning is strongly linked to impairments in cognitive abilities.
To design such an intervention, we need to know that childhood lead poisoning is a problem. This knowledge is based on studies like https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23797342/, which find correlations between lead exposure and IQ. Such studies need data on IQs.
Bad data is just bad data. It shouldn't be used for any purpose. Worse yet, if it's passed off as good data, it deludes people into thinking they know something when they should be out investigating.
Trump is issuing an executive order ordering all federal employees to not “recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents without legal status.”
He's also issuing executive orders that do things like empowering the ICE to summarily deport illegal immigrants and establishing new DHS task forces to work with states and local governments to do the same. It appears from the first EO that he intends for this to include people who were born in the US to parents who were here "without legal status".
That first one seems to violate plain text of the Constitution which states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." (And in turn violate the oaths of office of the president and lots of other officials.)
Unless of course you argue that the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" part does not apply to the children of persons who were in the US illegally. But...doesn't that interpretation render most of the rest of Trump's first batch of executive orders meaningless regarding those particular people? How could a US president order, or federal/state/local officials carry out, the deportation of people who are explicitly not "subject to US jurisdiction"? Doesn't that become the same as how they can't enforce parking laws on foreign ambassadors and whatnot?
Lawyers on Bluesky are pointing out that the wording of the EO doesn't only cover children born to illegal immigrants, it also covers children of people with lawful but temporary residence. That's going to cover a lot more people than you think - work or student visas can last for several years, more than enough time for people to marry and have kids.
(For an amusing example, both Ivana Trump and Melania Trump gave birth before becoming US citizens.)
> (a) It is the policy of the United States that no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship, to persons: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.
Regardless of whether it's compatible with the text of the 14th amendment, that hardly sounds unreasonable, and would just bring the US in line with most other western countries.
Ivana and Melania Trump would of course not be subject to (2) anyway since their kids' father was a US citizen.
> would just bring the US in line with most other western countries.
I think this is factually correct, but is this alignment supposed to be a desirable end?
The US also tends to differ from most Western countries by:
- the notion of “gun rights”
- their interpretation of “free speech” (the culture war stuff, but not only – I seem to recall some outrage re “companies are people” which does not seem endorsed in the rest of the world, again before this decade’s culture war)
- their health care system and general lack of social programs
- their incarceration (and homicide) rate
- judges are elected (with Japan and Switzerland)
- voting on weekdays (with the UK, Canada and Denmark)
- much larger tips
- its unrivaled tech industry
- its eagerness about American football
For which of these would “aligning the US with most Western countries” be a good idea?
And what range of answers should we expect for Trump voters (or supporters, or people he would nominate for a position)?
Black-letter constitutional law that says "we *don't* do that, unless certain very demanding conditions are met", should put it solidly back in the unthinkable category. This has nothing to do with whether you think the proposed policy is object-level desirable, or if other people with different laws do it differently.
More generally, it *should* be unthinkable for a head of state or head of government to try to use the machinery of the state to do things that are expressly forbidden by the as-yet-unchanged laws of that state. It should also be unthinkable that the most fundamental laws are to be changed at the whim of the head of state alone.
Well, unthinkable in the sense of clearly illegal as the Constitution stands _now_ , and should not be done by a POTUS, but not unthinkable in the sense of: maybe we should start the amendment process?
FWIW, I, personally, think that e.g. the extreme case of a pregnant woman illegally entering the USA shortly before giving birth should ideally _not_ yield citizenship for the child - but it would take a Constitutional amendment to do this. And there are lots and lots of much grayer cases.
Yeah look I think I'd put it in the same category as all the gun laws that the Democrats have passed with a hopeful eye on a very specific interpretation of the Second Amendment.
The Second and Fourteenth amendments belong in the same category, of "Dumb stuff that shouldn't exist in the US Constitution but unfortunately does".
Maybe “organizing elections and counting the results is also work and week-ends should be for leisure”? I don’t know, I too find this extremely strange.
I think that most of what I listed would also be unthinkable to large parts of the US population for various reasons, and “that’s how most other countries do it” would be met very dismissively.
Whether or not it's in line with other countries, if the goal is simply to prevent "anchor babies" then you should perhaps take care not to screw over random people working their way through the citizenship process the legal way.
Even from a nativist perspective, it seems odd to have the law say, effectively, "we think you're good enough to apply for citizenship, but we aren't so sure about your children." Who had a more American upbringing, the immigrant mother or the child who grew up in the US?
Also, I am somewhat sarcastically assuming that the Republicans who are saying "we don't hate all foreigners, just the ones who came here illegally" are telling the truth.
Agreed. In general, I'd tend to lean pretty heavily in the direction of presuming that anyone here legally is fine. We _do_ have processes for vetting them, to various extents, but they are in a very different situation from the gotaways.
"You're a citizen now, but your children can only stay in the country temporarily" sounds like it's at least a significant paperwork hassle, even if there's a path to fixing it.
(And is that visa going to stick around? "Chain migration" has been a popular bugbear for the right...)
You're also assuming that people _want_ US citizenship. If you don't want it, it's a horrible burden. Accidental US citizens need to file US tax returns and may need to pay US taxes. They also need to have US passports if they ever want to visit the US. And you're not allowed to relinquish your US citizenship until you're 18, and at that point you have to pay a $2350 fee.
If you're (say) an academic couple visiting the US for a few years to get your career started and you wind up having a baby in the US, that baby is fucked under the current system.
No, jurisdiction is not the same as the ability to enforce laws against.
The legal interpretation rests on the debates around the amendment where the people who wrote it explicitly stated it did not apply to everyone resident in the territory of the United States including Native Americans not under American government control, the children of diplomats and foreign visitors, etc. This interpretation is still used to exclude various categories. So it's not as dubious an interpretation as liberals want it to be. But the Republican interpretation is also not a clear cut and obvious thing since it was meant to give citizenship to people who were not then uncomplicatedly citizens and who had counted in the census and all that.
> But a regular foreigner with no such immunity, who has to pay taxes and follow US laws, is subject to US jurisdiction.
That makes sense for legit visa holders, but what about a foreigner in the country illegally? If they had to follow US laws then they would't be there.
That's certainly a legit argument on the other side.
Realistically I think we have to accept the Copenhagen interpretation of the US Constitution, which says that words have no meaning until the Supreme Court says what they mean. I assume the ball is now rolling, and the exact meaning of these words will eventually be set out by them.
I am familiar with that interpretation and it seems very strained to me. Non-citizen immigrants and visitors, legally authorized or not, are generally subject to American jurisdiction in the sense that federal and state laws apply to them and they can be arrested by American police and tried in American courts.
The classes that actually seem a good fit for people physically present in the US but not subject to American jurisdiction are:
1. Lawful enemy combatants in wartime.
2. Members of foreign embassies with diplomatic immunity.
3. Members of sovereign Native American tribes, more or less corresponding to the "excluding Indians not taxed" clause elsewhere in the 14th amendment.
#3 is currently moot for 14th amendment purposes, since all Native Americans born in the US are now entitled to birthright citizenship by statute, but it was a significant factor at the time the 14th Amendment was proposed and ratified.
Very much IANAL, but I get the impression that the clause is one of those phrases (like "well regulated") that have a legal meaning (especially at the time it was written) differing from modern lay usage.
Really? Because "jurisdiction" is used in a great many circumstances and contexts, and its definition has remained I think quite constant in almost all of them. And the definition that is broadly accepted everywhere else, makes perfect logical sense here, it just doesn't let you do what you want to do.
Laws frequently don't let you do what you want to do, that's the whole point, and you can't change that by saying that you've changed the meaning of the words they are written with.
Ah yes but the Constitution is a living document and we need not limit ourselves to the original meaning of the text of the Constitution when interpreting it.
Self declared "sovereign citizens" tell judges they don't have jurisdiction because reasons, and it goes very much not well. I actually knew a guy who pulled that in civil court and it cost him a few nights in jail for contempt of court. (And he lost the suit that had been filed against him but that was likely anyway.)
tl;dr: ChatGPT o1 1/18/2025 7 questions, tl;dr of results:
a) correct
b) partially correct (initially evaded answering part of the question, 1st prod gave wrong answer, 2nd prod gave right answer)
c) mostly correct (two errors)
d) correct
e) initially incorrect, one prod gave correct result
f) misses a lot, argues incorrectly that some real compounds don't exist
g) badly wrong
It seems to be doing better than on previous versions, but when it _is_ wrong is seems more likely to be _stubbornly_ wrong.
List of questions:
a) Is light with a wavelength of 530.2534896 nm visible to the human eye? [gets right]
b) I have two solutions, one of FeCl3 in HCl in water, the other of CuCl2 in HCl in water. They both look approximately yellowish brown. What species in the two solutions do you think give them the colors they have, and why do these species have the colors they do?
c) Please pretend to be a professor of chemistry and answer the following question: Please list all the possible hydrocarbons with 4 carbon atoms.
d) Does the Sun lose more mass per second to the solar wind or to the mass equivalent of its radiated light?
e) Consider a titration of HCl with NaOH. Suppose that we are titrating 50 ml of 1 N HCl with 100 ml of 1 N NaOH. What are the slopes of the titration curve, pH vs ml NaOH added, at the start of titration, at the equivalence point, and at the end of titration? Please show your work. Take this step by step, showing the relevant equations you use.
f) Please give me an exhaustive list of the elements and inorganic compounds that are gases at STP. By STP, I mean 1 atmosphere pressure and 0C. By inorganic, I mean that no atoms of carbon should be present. Exclude CO2, CO, freons and so on. Please include uncommon compounds. I want an exhaustive list. There should be roughly 50 compounds. For each compound, please list its name, formula, and boiling or sublimation point.
g) What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
List of questions with some detail about answers and links:
a) Is light with a wavelength of 530.2534896 nm visible to the human eye? [gets right]
Yes. A wavelength of approximately 530 nm lies well within the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum (roughly 380–750 nm). In fact, around 530 nm corresponds to a green color, which the human eye is generally quite sensitive to.
b) I have two solutions, one of FeCl3 in HCl in water, the other of CuCl2 in HCl in water. They both look approximately yellowish brown. What species in the two solutions do you think give them the colors they have, and why do these species have the colors they do?
Initial answer gets the species right, but hedges on what electronic transitions are responsible for the color.
On being forced to clarify, it gets FeCl4 right but CuCl4 wrong (says it is d-d transition).
On being lead by the nose, can be forced into getting the right answer for CuCl4.
d) Does the Sun lose more mass per second to the solar wind or to the mass equivalent of its radiated light?
Correct on the first try, which is better than I've seen before:
"you see that the Sun loses roughly four times more mass through the energy it radiates (via E=mc2) than through the solar wind. Hence, the mass-equivalent of sunlight carries away more mass than the solar wind does."
e) Consider a titration of HCl with NaOH. Suppose that we are titrating 50 ml of 1 N HCl with 100 ml of 1 N NaOH. What are the slopes of the titration curve, pH vs ml NaOH added, at the start of titration, at the equivalence point, and at the end of titration? Please show your work. Take this step by step, showing the relevant equations you use.
Initial result wrongly gave an infinite slope at the equivalence point. Prodding once with
"The slope at the equivalence point is not infinite. Rather than creating separate equations for the three regions, try using the autoionization formula for water and the charge balance, that [H+]+[Na+]=[OH-]+{Cl-] to compute a formula for [H+] (your y(x) ) which is valid throughout the whole titration, then work from that."
gave a correct answer.
I'm ambivalent about this. Since I explicitly asked about the slope at the equivalence point, a human should have noticed that "infinity"
is not a reasonable answer and that they needed to rethink this. On the other hand, once I gave it the prod, it gave a fully correct
answer, with all steps explained and correct reasoning at each step, including the relationship to the earlier approximations.
f) Please give me an exhaustive list of the elements and inorganic compounds that are gases at STP. By STP, I mean 1 atmosphere pressure and 0C. By inorganic, I mean that no atoms of carbon should be present. Exclude CO2, CO, freons and so on. Please include uncommon compounds. I want an exhaustive list. There should be roughly 50 compounds. For each compound, please list its name, formula, and boiling or sublimation point.
_I_ shouldn't have suggested 50 compounds. Looking more carefully at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gases, there are actually about 100. The good news is, ChatGPT o1 is finally _not_ including compounds with boiling/sublimation points above 0C, and it has stopped including carbon compounds (both of which were mistakes in earlier versions). It does, however, deny the existence of e.g. P2F4, and needed to bashed at several times to admit that the stuff had been prepared, isolated, and its boiling point measured. It _does_ admit that its list is not exhaustive, so at least it isn't asserting that it has found everything when it hasn't (this was a problem with previous versions).
g) What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
It screws up, saying that H2O2 can be put into a conformation with an S4 axis (but lacking the center of inversion and mirror plane), but it is wrong. Even with the 90 degree dihedral that it wants, _one_ of the hydrogens can be mapped to the position of the original hydrogen, but the other hydrogen winds up in the wrong place, not matching any hydrogen in the original positions of the hydrogens. I finally got it to cough up an admission of this with _repeated_ corrections. Not just wrong but stubbornly wrong.
Fun anecdote, there was this simultaneous interpreter who thought he'd muted himself when he asked his colleagues: "How long are you gonna stay with this sh**?"
You could read it, or skim it, a lot faster than you could watch it.
Skimming it is not a bad move if you want to be politically well-informed, certainly a lot better than reading a bunch of news articles that cherry-pick a handful of quotes, weave it into a narrative, and spend six paragraphs on Melania's hat.
In the speech he does actually pretty clearly set out what his immediate agenda is, so if that's something you're interested in then it's a pretty good source.
If you're hoping that by watching it you'll see something fun then I think you'll be disappointed. You might hope that Biden and Harris would grimace as he eviscerated their record, but they've both got good poker faces.
It was only 29 minutes long and I found it interesting enough to keep listening. Other than that, the only reason to watch it is because political commentators will be talking about it soon.
As it stands Ive already heard he wore a purple tie and say clips of elon doing awkard "roman" handsigns; hearing commentators for a week are reasons to skip it
You should absolutely do Scott's Forecasting Contest first, but for any UK-based folk (or non-Brits interested in British politics and current affairs), I'm currently holding a UK Forecasting Contest, primarily focused on things that might happen on this side of the pond (though with a small foreign affairs section).
Ladies: what reliably gets you distractingly horny?
Inb4: I'm not talking about something a man does (although if it's something done inadvertantly I might be able to use it.) I'm talking about the setting or environment itself.
I'm looking for qualities or elements I can have in the background of a scene that can get everyone who stays there too long subtly worked up. Hijinks and farce to then ensue.
I have my own thoughts but I'm keeping quiet at first.
Location isn't set in stone - probably will be either a boardroom or a church, unless I think of something I find funnier.
I mean that's along the kind of lines I was thinking - the girls in the chat have been very good at listing turn offs to avoid, which is obviously very important, but I was also interested in factors that can actively create/encourage arousal.
Vibrators are a bit more direct than I was thinking, I'll admit, but perfectly doable: the building has an unbalanced generator in the cellar and there's a bass shop next door with the amps leaned up against the wall.
Fill the space with those objects, post an advert in your local rag for your new fetish club and see who turns up. You'll likely get much better outcomes than trying to identify some kind of nonexistent magical universal aphrodisiac.
You might have misunderstood me, this is for a work of fiction and I'm gunning for verisimilitude. That said I suppose "in the name of research" can justify a multitude of extravagances.
> Ladies: what reliably gets you distractingly horny?
Didn’t they find this question carved into the stone of some cave in Europe?
I have no idea what the answer is, but it reminded me of this joke.
There is an old bull and a Young bull in a field together, and one day the farmer forgets to lock the gate to the pasture where he keeps the cows. “Hey,” says the young bull. “The gates open! Let’s run down the hill and do some of those cows.”
“Nah,” says the old bull, “let’s walk down and do them all.”
This question seems like a category error to me. It's like asking what breakfast foods reliably make me feel like overspending. NOTHING about setting reliably makes me horny. The closest thing to the right category would be THINGS THE GUY SAYS OR DOES, and those are just. the obvious things, like make me laugh, or things that seem like signs that indicate he finds life interesting and enjoyable, or things that show good qualities like kindness, smarts, courage, inventiveness. And even those don't make me horny right when I first observe them. They more make me feel more open to him and more interested in getting to know him better. Depending on how things go, horniness might grow out of that.
I think all this is pretty typical, obvious stuff, and I am writing it as a public service to guys who have been told some bullshit about phrases to use or moves to make or decor to have up that are surefire. Women do not have ridiculously specific secret buttons that if you press them make them throw their arms (or legs) around you.
This also accurately describes my experience, and I think it is quite common among women.
While a setting might be romantic (e.g. the classic dim lights, candles, soft tablecloth and comfy chairs), in my opinion the setting is mostly a bonus that makes it easier for the man to do horniness-inducing things.
Most women aren't driven completely mad with lust by architecture or furnishings, but dirt and mess and, to a lesser degree, indifferent, chaotic decor, is usually a major turn off.
EDIT: Though now that I really think about it, most straight bachelor dudes are notoriously indifferent to and bad about maintaining home aesthetics, so a straight dude with a competently designed space might actually get a woman closer to lust than you'd think (although she'd perhaps wonder if she's looking at a previous woman's work).
That's kind of where I started from. I ended up with:
- clean, airy, comfortable
- tasteful opulence
- softbox lighting
- aural background options include something rhythmic, a low bass drone from the floor, or maybe something relaxing like babbling water/falling rain. I don't know why wooden drums keep entering my head but they do.
- visually I get that girls are less responsive than guys but I can't see the harm in maybe a nice muscled classical sculpture or two.
- in terms of smell idk but I bet it's important.
- attractive, relaxed, easygoing other people.
I get that the environment on its own can only set the scene. You'd need to follow that up with something that gets people feeling liberated and thinking about their fantasies.
I'm not sure what that would be yet - let alone how I'm gonna hide it behind a layer of indirection (such as it being some kind of idiosyncratic welcome ritual of the boss/vicar maybe.)
“tasteful opulence” make me so hot that I’m sliding off the suddenly slippery surface of my kitchen chair. And if I were now to look at one of those classical statues . . . and if you were then to make a couple Ben Franklin paper airplanes and fly them so that one hits each of my nipples. . .
Since people seem to be enjoying the LSAT question, here is another, also from a real LSAT. Someone I know who's in the biz commented on it being one of the hardest he's seen.
McKinley: A double-blind study, in which neither the patient nor the
primary researcher knows whether the patient is being given the drug being tested or a placebo, is the most effective procedure for testing the efficacy of a drug. But we will not be able to perform such a study on this new drug, since the drug will have various effects on the patients' bodies, which will make us aware of whether the patients are
getting the drug or a placebo.
Engle: You cannot draw that conclusion at this point, for you are assuming
you know what the outcome of the study will be.
Engle's statement indicates that he is most likely interpreting McKinley's remarks to be
(a) presuming that a double-blind study is the only effective way to test new drugs
(b) denying that the drug will be effective
(c) presuming that the placebo will produce no effects whatever
on the patients' bodies
(d) referring to the drug's therapeutic effects rather than to any
known side effects
(e) based on a confusion about when a drug is efficacious
As everybody has already probably noticed, I have already put up the correct answer, according to the LSAT. I agree with the LSAT, and don’t think the question is malformed, but I think I should not post my reasoning yet because this post hasn’t been up long and what I write will spoil the fun for others. Or I could put it up in scrambled-letter code, but I need somebody to tell me how that’s done. Should
I keep mum or post my defense of the LSAT’s answer?
Personally, I'd like to hear what you have to say. I can't access imgur currently, so I haven't seen the official answer yet. If you want to scramble your answer you would use this (or something like it): https://cryptii.com/pipes/rot13-decoder
Edit: Also, at this point, I am pretty confident that the question is malformed, so I'm curious to hear why you disagree.
I think d is the "correct" answer, but I don't think that any of the answers are actually correct (and therefore the question is malformed).
(a) seems obviously wrong. McKinley is trying design a double-blind study, and therefore interested in a the mechanics of setting up such a study. Whether or not there are alternate methods to study drugs is irrelevant to what he is saying.
(b) Is also obviously wrong. They are discussing how to design studies, not the results they expect to get.
(c) Is wrong because it is irrelevant to McKinley's concerns if the placebo produces effects, as long as the effects are not identical to effects of the drug.
(d) is wrong because part of the purpose of clinical trials is to assess if a drug has side effects, not just if it is efficacious. Therefore Engle could be arguing that by assuming the drug has side effects, he is assuming the result of the study. (This is obscure technical minutia that I think the exam creators overlooked, which is why I suspect that d is the "correct" answer).
(e) is wrong because the discussion is about the study design, not the results or how to analyze them.
<(d) is wrong because part of the purpose of clinical trials is to assess if a drug has side effects, not just if it is efficacious. Therefore Engle could be arguing that by assuming the drug has side effects, he is assuming the result of the study. (This is obscure technical minutia that I think the exam creators overlooked, which is why I suspect that d is the "correct" answer).
This interp is disqualified, tho, by Mck
stating early on that what he wants to do is a study of drug efficacy. You can’t import info you know into the question. McK doesn’t call it a study of drug effects (which would mean therapeutic effects and also side effects), therefore it is a study of drug therapeutic effect’s, not an investigation of side effects, even if in the real world a trial of this design would also be looking for side effects. It’s clear that what McK means is that they know the drug has physical effects that are observable but are different from the therapeutic effects the researchers want to get evidence
IIRC the hard part isn't just doing the questions, it's the time limit. You have like 35 minutes to do 25 questions like this one, so for each one, less than a minute and a half, for a lot of people a significant amount of the time for each question will just be reading it, you have to come up with the answer reasonably quickly, and then forget about it and immediately move on to/100% focus on the next one.
Not saying whether it's hard or not overall, just that it's harder in that context than seeing it online and getting to think about it and type out your reasoning, even for like 5 minutes.
Huh, (d) seems like the obvious answer to me but it's interesting that (c) and (e) are the ones other people have mentioned. I guess this is tricky, curious to know what the official correct answer is.
Reasoning: it is possible to know that a drug has certain effects (say, hallucinations, hair loss, weight gain, whatever) that are not the primary target of the study. This could reveal which group is in the drug vs placebo group regardless of the therapeutic outcome, which McKinley may be referring to. But if Engle thinks McKinley is referring to that, his critique wouldn't make sense. Engle says that the "outcome of the study" can't be known ahead of time - which makes the most sense if he is assuming that those therapeutic effects are what McKinley means by "effects on the patients' bodies", rather than effects that are already known from other studies (e.g. known side effects). The main weakness of this answer is that the "known effects" may not be side effects (for example, if there are therapeutic effects for a different condition, or if the outcome of interest in the current study is downstream of a different condition).
Remember though, that for LSAT questions you just work with the situation as it is described, and do not take into consideration things you happen to know that indicate the situation as described could not have happened, of that weigh on what the right answer would be in a real world situation.
Yeah, John Shilling has a good explanation, that this is intended as a test whether a student can figure out what Engels is thinking. I'm an engineer, so - thankfully - I deal with data, and they don't think, only speak.
A lot of drugs that get tested for a particular condition already exist and are known in recreational and/or other therapeutic contexts. E.g. ketamine or psilocybin for depression, semaglutide for drug addiction, amphetamines for adhd
Before you get to a double blind study to test a drug's effects, you need to go through a bunch of work to prove that it's safe and plausibly effective. If the drug turned the subjects in your phase 1 trials purple, it's pretty likely that it will also turn your phase 3 trial subjects purple. It might have unknown side effects too, but it's sufficient to have one known side effect.
This makes sense, thank you. So in order to exclude "c" one would have to know this, which makes the question not a test of pure logic but of drug testing protocols knowledge.
The "most likely" does a lot of work here... I'm not following why "D" isn't referring to side effects. Say a drug cures an internal cancer, which you can't immediately observe, but the patients' skin turns yellow while taking it, which is pretty obvious. Unless the placebo is not the customary sugar pill but a specifically designed drug whos "only" effect is to turn the skin yellow, we will know immediately who gets placebo.
But a drug that turns skin yellow cannot be considered a placebo, because we cannot exclude other "side-effects", so this is not an option.
This is why I'm sticking to my answer even though it's not considered to be a "correct" one.
Answer D says that Engel believes that McKinley is talking only about the drug's intended theraputic effects and not any side effects. That side effects are not relevant to this particular discussion, either because they don't exist or because they are compensated for by your special turns-skin-yellow-but-does-nothing-else placebo. It isn't necessary that this be *true*, or even that McKinley believe it to be true, only that Engel believes that McKinley believes that it is true.
If side effects are not relevant to the discussion, then there are two possible outcomes of the trial. Either the drug will behave identically to the placebo, or the drug will visibly produce the desired theraputic effect. If this is the case, McKinely's statement that we cannot do a double-blind trial because we *will* see the effects of the real drug, then McKinley is claiming that the drug will produce the desired theraputic effect and thus he is presupposing the outcome of the trial. Which is what Engel said.
Engel may be wrong, he may have misunderstood McKinley. The point of the question is to determine whether the student can figure out, from Engel's words, what Engels is thinking even if it is mistaken. That's a rather important skill for a lawyer to have.
What are some performance-enhancing drugs for social situations?
Alcohol is the prototypical one, but I'm curious about any other substances that would, through one effect or another — perhaps even very indirectly — increase sociality, in a wide sense: make it easier to talk to people, make one appear more likeable, anything like that. I'm thinking about this as an analogy to nootropics, which can improve one's cognition through a variety of unrelated effects. (How about “sociotropics”?)
I think this really depends on the person and their disposition. Even mild stimulants (e.g. an extra cup of coffee) can make me so jittery that social anxiety kicks in and/or it's harder to focus on conversations. I can't even imagine taking Adderall and then going to a social event. But I imagine that the person asking for suggestions could probably predict whether such a thing applies to them.
Warning: This is how people become lifelong addicts, proceed with caution
Warning #2: Always grind whatever you buy, then filter through a fine mesh, mix the resulting powder well. Then try a tiny amount first. If you're OK and its not fentanyl, try more.
The answer is (inhaled) oxycodone. Absolutely insane social skills lasting for 2-3 hours and there's no hangover. Make sure to never mix it with alcohol, not even small amounts of it, and keep track of your heart rate.
Just to reiterate: This is how people become lifelong addicts! If you have even the slightest addictive tendencies, do not do this!
I thought opioids cause drowsiness and people to "bliss out". I've never heard of this social effect. What dose are you talking about? Are the effects different at different doses?
Inhaled instant-release oxycodone at doses around 10mg causes an intense desire to socialize without any drowsiness. Go up to 15mg and drowsiness starts to prevail. It's a very fine line.
If you only get the drowsiness effects, it's extremely likely that you've been sold a different opiate such as morphine or an inert pill mixed with fentanyl.
I've taken to use MDMA during new years eve. The immediate positive effects are like alcohol, but turned up to 11 (at least for the 30m-1h high, then it's slowly decreasing over the course of hours): desire to speak with everyone about everything, to handle 3 conversations at once, readiness to be interested in anything thrown at me. The negative effects both for the end of the night and the day after are much lesser (no sleepiness, no hungover).
The health side & the neurological damage is probably not awesome, but on the other side, neither is getting shitfaced, I think it's
The obvious downside is that unlike alcohol, you need to have lengthy breaks between each take if you want to reset. But on the other hand, it also makes abuse less appealing, so I take it as a blessing in disguise.
For a very occasional substitute to heavy drinking, I feel like it's a net positive.
I'd agree for LSD and psylocibin, but I'm a bit on the fence on MDMA, which seems potentially pretty damaging for my taste (but, I'm wagering, less then getting shitfaced)
Unfortunately the main problem with MDMA is that tolerance builds fast and leads to high risk of crippling serotonin syndrome, so it should *not* be put in the water
As someone with significant social anxiety, amphetamines helped a lot. I got them for ADHD, and found that I was suddenly way more confident in social situations. Of course "way more confident" for me was from a very low baseline, so your milage may vary.
I take it for more general mental health reasons(as needed, avoid taking it daily and mixing it with things with antidepressant effects, blah blah blah) but I will take it before socailizing if I would otherwise feel useless
Not sure how often a guy can take it before it becomes problematic from a dependency standpoint. I play that extra, extra safe and take a gram once a month.
The very first time it affected me almost like MDMA. Never was that amazing on subsequent usage.
I read an article that states that Scott is now called (by his subscribers one assumes) “our Rightful Caliph”. Is this a GPT hallucination?? If so what was the origin of THAT choice?? Like what was the runner up options here??
The Great Khan, Master of the Grey Horde?? Voivode the (intellectual) impaler, Prince of SF Bay Area Rationalists? The Great Helmsman, Red Sun in Our Hearts, Savior of the People Chairman Scott??? WTF!!
Personally, if we’re engaging in questionable nicknames, I would have thought Tamerlane. He at least was Sahib Qiran (“Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction”). But… help me here.
This is a joke that goes back a long time, with its roots (if I'm remembering correctly) in the fact that there were/are various Scotts associated with rationalism/rationalism adjacent, so who is the Rightful Scott on one hand and as mentioned below, was it Yudkowsky or someone else who brought people here?
Some came via LessWrong and other sites, others from different places with no connection. And so it was decided that this blog/Substack was Scott's domain hence he was indeed the Rightful Caliph with the authority to impose at his will and whim the Reign of Terror 😀
From memory, I think it was just a dumb joke about whether Elizer or Scott is more popular. Or maybe about Scott being the benevolent dictator of this blog. Like Anomie says, Deisach may very well have been the originator. But maybe not.
Incidentally, there was a conversation a while back about whether randal monroe, Scott, or some other guy should be crowned "king of the nerds".
This is all extremely hazy, so I might have gotten important details wrong. But it's definitely not original to ChatGPT.
Back when I hung out on the Straight Dope Message Board, it was de rigueur to refer to Cecil Adams as the Perfect Master, so there is precedent, at least.
Commenting here cause I got to the links post late, but re: American health superstitions, I've heard that some people over there are very wary of reheated rice, that it supposedly very easy to get food poisoning or even outright die from eating it. Is that belief widespread?
As someone who eats reheated rice almost daily, and has done so for most of my life without ever getting sick from it, I was pretty confused the first time I heard of that notion. And I try to be pretty safe about it, as with any food, but I've absent mindedly left pots of rice sitting on the counter for several hours before properly storing it more than once, to no ill effect that I could observe after reheating and eating it.
This is apparently more of a thing in the UK than in the US.
I'm American and I hadn't heard of it until it was mentioned in a Netflix comedy special. Phil Wang (a British Chinese comedian) was performing in the UK, and made a joke about how white people are afraid of reheating rice.
I was confused about what he was talking about, but then he actually clarified that it was only British white people - when he had tried the joke in America, it didn't land.
My partner is very cautious about rice - not so much reheating it once, but about eating it as leftovers after 3-4 days. I'm much less concerned and will generally eat most leftovers if they still look/smell/taste fine, up to more like a week.
I'm an American who eats a lot of reheated rice. I have never heard of this belief.
I can tell you, though, that eating rice at all is not especially typical of Americans. I don't find it surprising that they might hold odd beliefs about an exotic food they don't make or eat.
> Americans [] consume more than 20 pounds of [rice] each year [per capita]
> In Asia where rice is an integral part of the diet, an average person eats about 220 pounds each year
> While still not anywhere near as close to Asia's numbers for rice consumption, Americans are expected to eat more as the country's ethnic composition continues to evolve, according to the USDA.
Assuming the average American rice-eater eats a measly 110 pounds of rice a year, that's about 80% of Americans eating no rice. 80% feels a bit too high. Assume that Americans eat small quantities of rice and that a large share of them never eat it at all.)
Oh, that's wild! Rice is super common here in Brazil. Specifically, the combo rice and beans. It's rare to go a day without having it in at least one meal.
I knew that wasn't the case in the US, of course, but I had no idea it would be that uncommon for most to eat any rice at all.
I was told that reheating rice is okay, reheating rice and then storing it again is not okay. There's a bacteria that can survive boiling, and if you heat it and then cool it multiple times then it passes through the "danger zone" multiple times.
Looking it up, cases of food poisoning from bacillus cereus isn't particularly common. But then, how often are people reheating rice *multiple* times, rather than just portioning out their leftovers and reheating one portion at a time? I've only ever cooked one recipe where this was a practical concern - a stuffed pumpkin recipe where you cook rice, then cook it some more inside the pumpkin.
I'm American and I've heard this before all the time! It's one of the more common food safety things you hear if you hang out in cooking communities a lot. There is a toxic bacteria in rice called Bacillus cereus which has spores that survive boiling, which is the main concern. It's a special case of the usual advice against leaving food in the danger zone for more than a few hours.
I don't really put much stock in it, after traveling in Asia and exploring various food traditions that amount to "leaving cooked rice out at room temperature for a while", e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pus%C3%B4 . But to be fair I'm skeptical of most food safety advice, so unless you're pregnant or infirm, take that with a grain of salt and a glass of raw milk.
Thanks for the data point! This is the kind of thing that I'd expect Scott's readership to be *more* familiar with than the average population, and the fact that none of the commenters have heard of it makes me pretty confident that this is indeed a very niche belief.
Although I'm not sure if your username should make me more or less confident that you'd be open about a belief that seemingly no one knows about :p
I'm British and have heard / was taught that reheating rice is dangerous, for the reasons given by other posters about bacterial spores.
I don't know anyone who's got sick from reheating rice, but it seems plausible it's one of those long tail risks like getting listeria from not washing your vegetables. I often don't bother to wash vegetables because I'm lazy, but I know that adds some small degree of risk.
I will often make some rice, eat a small amount of right away, put the rest in the fridge, and eat it over the course of the next week. I think my (American) mother would freak out if I told her this.
When you say that your mother would freak out if you told her this, by "this" you mean your rice reheating habit? As in, she thinks reheating rice is dangerous?
I was told during a microbiology talk that pasta and rice are particularly dangerous to leave out at room temperature. Googling just now it seems to be that Bacillus Cereus can germinate at room temperature creating a toxin that stays toxic after reheating and that is at least occasionally fatal.
When I started mushroom foraging as a hobby I was surprised how quickly bugs start eating mushrooms. Just about every one I found was at least partially bug eaten or infested with tiny worms. I can see why cooking thoroughly is important!
I don't know why you would be surprised, it's free food. If anything, you should be more scared of the mushrooms that aren't bug eaten, because that likely means they're poisonous (to bugs, at least).
Bugs eat mushrooms that are poisonous to humans, while there are delicious edible wild mushrooms I've never seen eaten (for example, black trumpets). So they are not an indicator in any way, unfortunately.
It was definitely a kind of "I don't know what I expected" surprise. I suppose I was comparing it to my experience picking berries or fruit, which are both food items that are suspended off the ground instead of growing right out of it.
Thanks for the data point! This is the kind of thing that I'd expect Scott's readership to be *more* familiar with than the average population, and the fact that almost none of the commenters have heard of it makes me pretty confident that this is indeed a very niche belief.
Thanks for the data point! This is the kind of thing that I'd expect Scott's readership to be *more* familiar with than the average population, and the fact that almost none of the commenters have heard of it makes me pretty confident that this is indeed a very niche belief.
FWIW here in the UK there are specific requirements for handling cooked rice when catering for the public, explicitly called out in addition to general rules for handling food. It must either be chilled and refrigerated within an hour of cooking, or it must remain at safe temperature (a special term - there's a whole chart trading off temperature against time) throughout (a rice cooker on "keep warm" will do this). It must not be at room temperature for longer than an hour. If reheated, it must be reheated to a safe temperature throughout.
The reasoning is: freshly cooked rice at 20-30 degrees is damp and has a very large surface area. If a little contamination gets in, it is an ideal environment for bacteria to grow. Therefore it must not be kept at that temperature for long.
That said, there is scale to consider. When I volunteer in the kitchen, I am cooking meals for a hundred people or more; something which is a tiny one-off risk for a meal at home becomes a near-certainty when repeated hundreds of times a day. At home I am much more cavalier with the rice :)
“Our new president is happy about his support from "African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, _____ Americans" (lol, just kidding).” I've never met a single race-blinder who finds this thing actually offensive.
Someone find me that mythical creature so I can offer him my unconditional surrender.
I don't find it offensive, but I do find it annoying. People use "African American" to describe folks like Idris Elba, who is from neither of those countries. And white South Africans with dual citizenship have lost their nationality to this proxy term.
Plus the length of the name is basically demanding people give you more of their time. Imagine people throwing out "Check your European-American privilege."
Why should Congress be able to compel people to testify? I could understand if it were limited to generals or executive branch officials for the purpose of assuring checks and balances and civilian control of the military, with anyone refusing to testify losing their jobs. But the idea that they can compel any private citizen to testify about any subject, that just seems like tyranny.
The power to investigate is one of congress's checks on the power of the executive branch. Critical to the power to investigate is the ability to compel people to testify.
The Supreme Court has ruled more than once that (quoting from the 8-1 majority ruling in Eastland v. U.S. Servicemen’s Fund, 1975) the "power to investigate and to do so through compulsory process plainly" constitutes an "indispensable ingredient of lawmaking." Supreme Court majorities have held that basic opinion since the early 19th century. The most recent reiteration of it was in Trump et al v. Marzars USA LLP et al (2020).
That is actually a significant step down from the original understanding of Congress' authorities. During the first decades when dozens of Framers served in Congress and could speak firsthand about the intended logic of the Constitution, Congress was viewed as closer to omnipotent. In 1795 Congress arrested two guys on criminal charges (attempted bribery), basically acting as a prosecutor. In 1800 when a newspaper editor refused to comply with a Senate investigation, the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms arrested and jailed him for several weeks while the Senate discussed the matter. No court orders were involved in either case and nobody argued that they should be needed.
They can't compel them to testify about *any* subject: the 5th amendment protects them from testifying to anything that could potentially incriminate them in a court of law, and Congress can't break that rule*. Courts compel testimony all the time: if you get subpoenaed to testify in a court case you have to testify there as well.
*There is a loophole: if they agree to give the person immunity for any crimes that would be implicated for due to their testimony, then they can compel that testimony. The 5th only applies if you can get in legal trouble for it, so if immunized you can't plead the 5th.
This is the standard view, but I'm not sure that's true: they can still be prosecuted by individual states, so I expect they COULD still plead the 5th.
The Supreme Court rejected that position in Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52 (1954). grant of immunity by one sovereign (here, the federal govenrment) grants use and derivative use immunity from any other sovereign by operation of law, and thus permits compulsion of the testimony.
Am I missing something? That decision seems to be that states CANNOT compel testimony by granting immunity, since one would still be subject to prosecution by the other states/federal govt. Is there a different case that says the opposite is true of the federal government? If so, that seems like a loophole for the President to effectively pardon state crimes: grant them immunity and get them to testify.
With all due respect, you seem to be misreading the opinion, because it says exactly the opposite. Indeed, that’s kind of the whole point: the witnesses were making the same argument you are (and, to be fair, it had some basis in prior cases), and the Supreme Court rejected it:
“[W]e hold the constitutional rule to be that a state witness may not be compelled to give testimony which may be incriminating under federal law unless the compelled testimony and its fruits cannot be used in any manner by federal officials in connection with a criminal prosecution against him. We conclude, moreover, that, in order to implement this constitutional rule and accommodate the interests of the State and Federal Governments in investigating and prosecuting crime, the Federal Government must be prohibited from making any such use of compelled testimony and its fruits. This exclusionary rule, while permitting the States to secure information necessary for effective law enforcement, leaves the witness and the Federal Government in substantially the same position as if the witness had claimed his privilege in the absence of a state grant of immunity.
It follows that petitioners here may now be compelled to answer the questions propounded to them.”
My bad. You're completely right. The only caveat seems to be that states have to pretend not to use the self-incriminating testimony compelled by the federal government and have to claim to have arrived at the evidence independently.
All the summaries of the case I saw seemed to agree with me, and I saw the line "we hold the constitutional rule to be that a state witness may not be compelled to give testimony which may be incriminating under federal law unless the compelled testimony and its fruits cannot be used in any manner by federal officials in connection with a criminal prosecution against him," so I figured that since the conclusion is that they can NOW be compelled to testify, they had been granted federal immunity in the interim between the state court's and the Supreme Court's rulings. But no, it turns out the supposed protection of the Fifth Amendment IS really is just bullshit. Sad, but good to know.
They have the power to make laws that change day-to-day life for millions of people. Do you want them to make those decisions based on incomplete information?
I am applying for the METR tasks, and the application form is asking for an email of the person who referred me/us. Scott, if you want some $10 referral payments popping your account, can I suggest you provide an email address for us to use?
I'm considering moving on from my current SE job to one where I'll be able to work remotely and get some ML exposure. If anyone works at an AI infra company (e.g. Weights and Biases) and is willing to refer please PM me here or email iz8162k23 at gmail.com. Thanks
-2 relatively innocuous prompts I accidentally discovered that made Dall-e produce transgressive images, mostly violent and sexual ones. Speculation about why the prompt produced those results, and a gallery of enthrallingly godawful images.
-Wutz art, and can AI images qualify as art? I think they can.
-A cartoon story about an ASI catastrophe featuring a Dall-e 2 monster as the main character. It’s dark and crass. I’d say the phrase “in terrible taste” pretty much captures it.
-2 serious projects of mine illustrated by AI art.
The current post solicits opinions and information about what in Dall-e 2’s structure or training made it so astute and inventive in certain ways. I am hoping people with relevant tech knowledge will weigh in about that in the post’s comment section.
Much appreciated! I found your post interesting, but I have something of a "tin ear" for art, so I'm not well suited to comment on whether Dall-e 2 was being subtle or not. I just ran another simple test ("blue glass tetrahedron on a red wooden table" and current (3?) Dall-e gave me an octahedron instead of a tetrahedron.
< ("blue glass tetrahedron on a red wooden table" and current (3?) Dall-e gave me an octahedron instead of a tetrahedron.
It's really dumb about spacial stuff. When you speak to GPT about what's wrong with shape or placement or other 3D stuff with image it seems to understand every bit of what you say, but then the corrected image it gives you does not reflect any improvement at all in the image-maker's grasp of what's needed. I recently asked it to make a whirlpool seen from a certain angle, and it did a great job with that. Only thing wrong was that the water all around whirlpool was calm. I asked it to make the water around the whirlpool turbulent with waves and troughs that were continuations of the spiraling waves and troughs of the whirlpool . This is what I got: https://imgur.com/a/kr4RBVM. So bad it made me laugh, actually. Is it a tornado having sex with a whirlpool?
About my post: Thanks for taking a look. Even if the art dimension of the matter isn't your thing, I think it's pretty clear from the images that Dall-e 2 showed way more emotion, and more of a variety of emotions, in characters in the images, also that Dall-e 2 was much more imaginative in how it depicted the romantic situations. I think that's the most important part of what I had to say, too. I think a lot about the effect on our species of having a larger ratio of virtual people to real ones in the average life. The fact that Dall-e's virtual people are changing in the direction of being more Barbie-like (flat, plastic, conventional, small emotional range) seems ominous to me.
Very much agreed! The question of mine that ChatGPT o1 is doing the worst on is the spatial symmetry one:
>g) What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
>It screws up, saying that H2O2 can be put into a conformation with an S4 axis (but lacking the center of inversion and mirror plane), but it is wrong. Even with the 90 degree dihedral that it wants, one of the hydrogens can be mapped to the position of the original hydrogen, but the other hydrogen winds up in the wrong place, not matching any hydrogen in the original positions of the hydrogens. I finally got it to cough up an admission of this with repeated corrections. Not just wrong but stubbornly wrong.
and (given the (incorrect) example it picked) it only has to keep track of 4 atoms, 4 points in space!
>Is it a tornado having sex with a whirlpool?
That does seem like an apt description of what it generated! And, in the midst of all that weather in the image, the waves look like they are gently lapping at the beach...
>I think that's the most important part of what I had to say, too. I think a lot about the effect on our species of having a larger ratio of virtual people to real ones in the average life. The fact that Dall-e's virtual people are changing in the direction of being more Barbie-like (flat, plastic, conventional, small emotional range) seems ominous to me.
True. Something of a cross between poker faces and invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-o-matic
I want to know why fingers are so hard to figure out for these models. Not just generative AI I've been using Topaz Labs for a couple of months now and it has a tendency to mangle fingers even though it has a decent starting point.
My theory: Humand hands are the most expressive body part humans have, far ahead even of the face. You can arrange your fingers and wrist every which way, and LLMs might have a hard time properly generalizing the many different hand poses it's been trained with. They are usually also not the focus of images, unlike the face, so if you generate a full human figure, detail on the hands gets lost.
It's basically the opposite problem of generating a mechanical clock with arbitrary time of day - it will always show 10 past 10 because that's what basically all images on the web show. Hand poses, OTOH, are so varied that LLMs can't distill a realistic representation from them, at least when they're not the focus of the prompt.
Yeah I see how this is more difficult than I imagined. OTOH, the models can't generate the numbers on a mechanical clock face either, which is seems bizarre to me - there are gazillion images of clocks with numbers, same ones the models got the hands positions from.
But this also means the models don't know what fingers are, can't figure out that the default is 5 per hand, etc. In other words, they are totally... dumb?
The baseball joke reminds me of the movie The Cup, where an old Tibetan lama who has never heard of modern sports gets to face the fact that his young disciple monks all love football. I won't spoil the actual punchline in the movie, highly recommended to watch!
1) If you are in the DC area and have any experience with this and are willing to meet to talk / offer advice, please email me at defunctcantaloupe@gmail.com.
2) if you have any knowledge of affordable funeral homes in the area please share them with me in a response here (not by email)
I'm not in the DC area, and I do not know your situation or current feelings, but I did experience something similar last year. The feelings of grief and guilt were overwhelming at first. I think that is normal and I don't think there is any easy answer. Personally I had so many questions that could not be answered and it took a long time to accept that. Please don't be afraid to reach out and talk to people or to find a therapist. These are really terrible things and even the strongest people will find them hard to deal with.
I can't help on either point, unfortunately, but I'm so sorry.
FWIW, Costco can significantly reduce costs if you're planning on a casket burial.
And I'm sure you've heard this advice before, but I think it's worth reiterating:
If you have a close friend who wasn't close to your brother, consider asking them to provide you their clear-eyed vigilance while you're negotiating with the funeral director. The industry is rife with unscrupulous salespeople who won't hesitate to take advantage of the grieving, and even the most rational person can be significantly less rational when they're grieving.
I'm just so sorry for your loss. I'm wishing you eventual peace as you grieve.
Gawd that's terrible to hear. As an 18-year-old I happened to be present when my girlfriend's parents got the phone call about their eldest child having taken his own life, and it's still the most heartbreaking family moment I've ever witnessed. So sorry.
Biden's last-minute "preemptive" pardons are probably good for the Republicans: it'd keep Trump for pursuing self-destructive retaliatory persecutions of his enemies.
I've read he last-minute pardoned family members (other than Hunter) and that does make me go "Why?" because it looks suspicious as heck that yeah, maybe there was money coming in as bribes/inducements after all:
I mean, what the heck were his siblings and in-laws *doing* that might need pre-emptive pardons because otherwise Trump would set the law dogs on them? He talked about Hunter being persecuted just for being his son, but Hunter was indeed a very naughty boy. What other skeletons are there lurking in the closet?
Yes, in numerous speeches, Trump said he was going to go after the "Biden Crime Family." If that's not a threat, I don't know what is. A quick Google turned up about of a dozen of instances of him promising this action. Here are a couple that came out on top of my search...
At a rally in Nevada, he stated, "We're going to knock off the Biden crime family. It's a Biden family of crime, including the fact that they've weaponized the Department of Justice like it has never happened in this country."
NB: Biden did not directly control the DoJ. Merrick Garland did. If Biden had appointed a Democrat to the AG position, we probably would have seen a more enthusiastic prosecution of the Trump Crime Family. Also note all of Trump's kids skated free of any legal repercussions for their involvement in some of Trump's shady dealings.
At a Faith & Freedom Coalition Gala, he remarked, "These countries know every penny the Biden crime family has taken in. The countries know. Ukraine knows, China knows. They all know that, many countries."
Ummm. Hunter Biden had trouble scraping up enough money to pay his back taxes and penalties. Meanwhile, Trump is getting a mainline infusion of cash from various billionaires.
I expect those statements to go the same way as "Lock her up!" did. Which is- yes, bad rhetoric, embarrassing from a presidential candidate, tit for tat destruction of norms so everyone gets to blame whoever they want- ultimately no direct effect at all.
Do you still think it safe to assume that Trump will be a law-abiding president that is not going to hurt his political enemies any which way he can, using the considerable presidential powers at his disposal? If it's his cronies all the way down, what stops him from releasing the law dogs even if there is no factual reason to? Who's going to say "No" to him?
Okay sure, but a pardon isn't going to protect them. Guess he tried though. I wonder how it feels to see literally everything you worked towards your entire life destroyed in mere moments. Well, sucks for him.
He can make up other charges. Or just, you know, kill them. Really, I have no idea how it took this long for a president to actually take advantage of the potential of pardons. Not only are you immune to the law, but anyone that works in your interests is also immune! How did nobody realize this until now?
I know you know better than this. There are lot of bullshit charges that can be … trumped up against them; the classic "Three Felonies a Day" thing isn't baseless. Maybe they paid blackmail out of the wrong bank account. Or maybe Trump classifies some of their documents and charges them with possessing them. Or inciting insurrection for tweeting something negative about him. Or he could make up some campaign finance violation. Or money laundering. Or giving Aid and Comfort to an enemy of the United States (viz. Joe Biden).
Or even more likely, makes Democrats look bad for breaking unspoken rules while Trump wasn't likely to prosecute those people anyway. He never went after Clinton, for instance.
Unfortunately I think it makes everyone worse off, because it greatly increases the chances of Trump doing something similar. He's term-limited, so it seems quite likely he spends his last few months in office pardoning everyone involved for everything they do. If this becomes a norm, it will encourage high level government officials to push boundaries and even outright illegal behavior, counting on pardons. Right now there's still a good reason not to do that - it strongly implies the person committed crimes. That's still true for Hunter, to an extent, but now Fauci and Cheney don't have the same implications (even people who think they were immoral or whatever don't think they necessarily committed crimes worth prosecuting).
Yet another banana-republic-level move by Biden. I don't know what to lament more - the chipping away at the governing norms of my country or the fact that people can't even think of the country as a whole, "good for Republicans", yay.
It's a crap thing to do on his last morning in office but in his shoes I'd probably have done it. I'd feel shitty doing it. But we live in a shitty age.
That Trump didn't send the DoJ after H. Clinton in 2017 does not have much relevance to the chances of his sending them after people like Cheney now. In the first place he's putting his own people directly in charge of the DoJ this time around (literally his personal attorneys, something no POTUS has ever done before). Also there is a big difference in how Trump talks about the members of the Jan 6 committee compared to how he talked about Clinton. The former are in his mind _personal_ enemies who proposed his individual arrest and conviction, not just political opponents who criticized him a lot.
I have elevated the not-well-thought-out (to say the least) pardon power much higher on my running list of "things needing to be cleaned up in our Constitution". But that was true before Biden's lame-duck deployment of it, so for me he's just making the broader point that much more stark.
I agree upon some reflection. It's a shitty box to be in, and Trump is the one who constructed it by violating every norm within his reach, just because he could. Turns out a civilized society runs on customs and traditions to a great degree, who'd thought that! People who call themselves "conservative", perhaps? But they turned out to be the biggest cheerleaders for the normicide, opps...
At some point, when your enemies have fenced you in, arguing you can't take down the fences they built because "something, something, Chesterton" ceases to be persuasive.
Trump asked Zelenskyy to give him Clinton's email server (based on the conspiracy theory that she had it hidden in Ukraine). I would say that's going after her, even if it's in a pretty obviously fruitless way.
> I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.
"Going after" implies finding or making up crimes even if one wasn't committed. It would have been trivial for Trump to order the DOJ to prosecute her for things we know that she did. Even Comey, when saying she should not be prosecuted, said she committed crimes.
I don't have any issue with criminal prosecutions of politicians and high level officials when they do commit (serious) crimes. That he asked for evidence of crimes she committed doesn't mean much - I would HOPE incoming administrations do this. That he also decided not to prosecute is also good, as I think we should not prosecute high level officials, presidential candidates, etc. for trivial things. The bar should be very high, as it causes strife for limited gain to go after political enemies.
This strikes me as a very generous reading of the situation. Trump was on a phone call with the head of an allied country being invaded by one of our adversaries and personally asked him about incriminating evidence on two of his most prominent political opponents. That doesn't seem like a very normal process for an investigation to me. The President isn't an investigator. Asking this of the head of a country in a diplomatic context right after they bring up defense collaboration is very different than just having some FBI agents allocated to something.
>"Trump was on a phone call with the head of an allied country being invaded by one of our adversaries and personally asked him about incriminating evidence on two of his most prominent political opponents."
Russia seized Crimea and supported the Donbas fig leaves in 2014 (well before Trump) and didn't invade the rest of Ukraine until 2022 (after Trump).
Not to defend his actions, but there wasn't a hot war between Ukraine & Russia at the time.
I feel like this turns quickly into a semantic argument about what "invaded" means. "Occupied", perhaps? In any event they were asking about missiles for defense because Russia was in an ongoing (albeit frozen) conflict with them.
I highly doubt that Hillary would've actually gone to jail for that. It's not worth prosecuting your political opponents unless you've already secured enough power to actually eliminate them (something the Democrats learned the hard way).
They were already basically saying that, that she's a criminal that needs to be locked up. There isn't much point in doing it after the election, seeing as it's obvious she was never going to run again, and it also would've been really embarrassing if they tried to jail her and failed despite supposedly being in power.
Can anyone point me to data regarding historical snowfall, and snow depth in the northeast US?
It snowed today, and while I was using the snowblower to clear out my parent’s driveway, I remembered the multiple big snowstorms we used to get as a kid (not that long ago for me). It seemed that multiple times a year I’d be out with my dad operating the snowblower, with so much snow that we’d have to run it at the slowest speed, and sometimes blow twice, otherwise the depth would exceed the height of the machine. I remember this quite vividly as I had to push this big red machine either at night, or really early in the morning (before any of the snow started to melt and make it difficult to blow).
The only real snow of this year was today and it was about 1/2 a foot. Took me an hour to blow at the maximum speed. I don’t think I had to blow once last year, and maybe none in the year before.
What’s the deal with this? Is snowfall that much less than the early 2000’s in the Northeast? Am I misremembering how common this sort of snowfall was? Is this climate change? El niño or La Niña? Maybe some longer climate cycle I’m not familiar with? Maybe my driveway, snowblower and myself have grown, so the snowfall just seems relatively less?
I can't find any good charts on the NOAA or NWS websites, but Wunderground has an interesting table of decadal snowfall averages by city. They fluctuate a lot between decades, but I looked at NE cities, and I don't see any decadal downward trend.
Why do you say Wunderground is slowly decaying? Do you find their forecasts less accurate? I admire their skill at the "visual display of quantitative information".
Their forecasts' accuracy is fine. I don't know how long you've been using it - I first learned about it in late 90's and it's been my go-to even since. It used to have a constant stream of very good commentary on climate, weather extremes, etc. in the blog section that I miss dearly. Then there are just small things that are disappearing, like the state's extreme temps - it was always fun to see California's range on a given day between Truckee and Palm Springs, for example. The temp records for the day used to have dates right next to them. Little things that were really cool and useful that are gone for no apparent reason.
There's a theory that the Hunga Tonga eruption has been causing the last couple years to be much warmer than usual. The eruption was an underwater volcano that was just close enough to the surface to vaporize a huge amount of water and send it high into the atmosphere. The actual impact is rather contentious, as the water vapor in the stratosphere has much less warming effect than in the lower atmosphere; at the same time, the lower atmosphere is saturated with water vapor whereas the stratosphere is much drier. So a lot of water in the typically dry stratosphere could have an outsized warming effect. And there were other various particulates from the eruption that have a cooling effect.
Anyway, if the eruption was a factor in recent climate, this winter should be the last really warm one, and the temperatures should return to the baseline over the next couple years. Assuming the climate impact follows a similar path to the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. The lag between the initial eruption and the global impact followed that past eruption quite closely.
I just looked up average snowfall for a NE state - Pennsylvania. The average from 1991 to 2020 ranged heavily by area, from as low as 21 inches per year to a high of 104 (Erie, with lake effect snow). Outside of Erie there were still multiple areas above 60 inches per year. If you were a teenager in the 90s, you probably saw several big blizzards (93 and 96) which may be coloring your view of the timeframe. I also tend to remember those years but we likely had a lot less snow in say, 95 and 98 or whatever. There were also big blizzards in 2010 and 2016, but apparently not from 97 through 2009.
Jan-Feb of 2015 was absolutely brutal, 100's of roof collapses, and then it's like a switch has been flipped, there hasn't really been a proper showy winter in the NE since.
Best practices for learning a language (assuming you CAN'T immerse yourself in it), or the best research? I'm open to hearing anything backed up by personal anecdote or hard-wrung data.
The context: I'm putting together a curriculum for homeschooling families (part of the whole "build Egan schools" project I've been working on), and am looking for strong practices I can weave together for elementary and middle school. (I'm already a lover of Gabriel Wynne's Fluent Forever, and am about to start re-reading that.)
1. Find a ~5000 word, frequency sorted Anki deck. Work your way through.
2. Get the basics of grammar through an introductory textbook or online course (e.g. Duolingo).
3. For pronunciation, shadow native speakers.
4. Start reading and watching stuff that interests you.
Personal anecdotes: I learned Japanese this way, and I'm making good progress with Ancient Greek. Basic grammar and ~2k words let's you engage with easy material, with ~5k you can freely dive into normal books and media, and continue learning solely through immersion.
In the context of homeschooling:
Flashcards: Have the kids learn 10 new cards on Anki per day (important: Find a frequency-sorted deck with at least 5000 cards, and native speaker audio for each card). Including daily reviews, this should take no more than 15 minutes.
Factoring in vacation time, during which kids should keep up with reviews, but pause new cards, 5000 words can be learned in just about two years.
Grammar/Textbooks:
For year 1 of a new language, any age-appropriate textbook will be fine. It won't teach them much, but it will provide context to the flashcard program, and get them used to speaking/reading.
For year 2, start introducing easy native-speaker material. Kids comics, cartoons, TV shows. Make that at least half the class, and start phasing out textbooks and explicit instruction.
For year 3 onward, teach it like you would an English class. Full engagement with native material.
That's based on my experience with Japanese. If you're teaching French or Spanish, you can probably switch to full immersion by year 2.
Whoa, only 15 minutes a day? I'm going through WaniKani which uses SRS to teach 2000 kanji and 6000 vocab words by the end of the program and at a rate of 10 new cards per day (a combination of radicals, kanji, and vocab), which I bumped down from the default of 15, it takes me far longer than 15 minutes per day. I'd say closer to 1-1.5 hours to go through the 10 lessons and do all ~100 review that come up each day (granted, I've added some extra steps but it all feels necessary to have any hope of retention). I'd love to cut this down so I have more time to study grammar, reading, etc. Is there some trick you use to quickly remember/retain foreign words, or are you just one of those "I just need to see/hear it a few times and it sticks" people?
I'm going off the assumption that 10 new cards a day leads to about 70 daily reviews once the deck matures, and that each card takes an average of 10 seconds. 80*10/60 = 13 minutes, 20 seconds.
That was roughly my experience with the Core 6000 deck from AnkiWeb. No tricks, but my settings were: Only recognition cards. Front of the card is the written word, with native speaker audio of the word and an example sentence. Back of the card revealed the meaning, reading, and text for the sentence.
I may just be one of those people, but perhaps my method is more efficient than WaniKani.
That does sound more efficient than what I'm doing. WaniKani splits each word into two cards (one for reading and one for meaning) so that's already 2x the raw number of cards. And then when I encounter a new word/kanji, I also manually write it down or type it up and come up with/write down mnemonics to try to remember the readings, struggle through a few usage sentences, then also enter it into my own little app where I can tag each entry for later filtering and review (godan-verb, na-adjective, etc.) which I use for listening practice (I can select a set of words and use ChatGPT/TTS to churn out simple sentences that I can listen to in the car driving to/from work).
I could (should?) probably cut down on some of that bulk to spend more time on grammar. But if you say you use no tricks, then I do think you must be one of those people! I have to come up with a mnemonic for pretty much every reading or else there's no hope that I'll retain any of them and even then my reading accuracy appears to only be ~90%.
I suggest learning kanji through words. Even when I used a dedicated kanji deck, I used it by focusing on the example words (pass if I remember at least one, redo if I don't).
I gave up on Japanese the first time I tried, because the kanji card for 上 had like 10 different readings and it felt hopeless trying to remember them all. But when I learned those 10 readings as separate words with separate flashcards, it was no problem.
BTW if you want a great integrated lesson + flashcard program, look up NativShark. I only quit and switched to Anki because back then they only had lessons up to N3, but their lessons go all the way to N1 now I believe. It's a bit pricey but NativShark + anime will get you to fluency.
Oh yeah, I agree. Fortunately, WaniKani’s system seems pretty good about that. It first introduces a new kanji and teaches a single reading. Then after a little while it will introduce some vocab words which use that kanji/reading (and other kanji you’ve already learned). As you progress, that kanji will come up more and more in vocab so you’re exposed to the different readings.
On a related note, what grammar resources did you end up using? I’ve found that I end up just turning to Wikipedia a lot of the time because intro textbooks explanations often gloss over details and it makes me worry that I’m not getting an accurate understanding of the language. As a simple example, in Spanish “me gusta” is often translated as “I like” but that doesn’t reveal what’s actually happening at the grammar level, and that’s often the level at which intro textbooks seem to teach.
Check out iTalki, a service for finding tutors who speak the target language fluently. Making even just a few sessions part of the curriculum can improve the “immersive” quality for a relatively low cost.
Well, you don't necessarily want to go for a paid tutor. The biggest contribution to my learning Mandarin was being found by someone using "people nearby" on wechat who would talk to me while she was bored at work. This might have been prohibitively expensive if I had to pay for it.
That’s a fair point. The important thing is not the exact platform, just that you need to actually use the language, and not do synthetic classroom exercises that are tangentially related. The only time I have successfully learned a second language I did 5-10 hours on italki per week.
For captive audiences, probably just foreign art and social media. Every ounce of other culture Ive picked up was only done willingly; I think my socail media is more multicultural then the average(especially with banning russians from programming projects being a thing recently) but my skool`n had standard languges classes and those were wildly ineffective for me.
I know several people from non-English speaking countries who picked up English from watching movies / playing video games as kids/teenagers, without any formal tuition. One is a Russian-born Israeli, for whom now Hebrew is #1, English #2, and Russian is a distant #3.
Nothing really beats tuition, someone to walk you through "my name is Peter" all the way up to "did you ask Sam whether his grandmother brought garlic from the market", combining spoken and written.
Otherwise the hardcore self-learning option is to take a grammar book, a dictionary and a novel, and plod your way through them. Can be workable if the language is easy enough, or related to one you already know. Combine with a few movies in the languages with subtitles in English, and lots of use of the pause button.
This LSAT question was posted on TwiXter caused quite a round of comments and harrumphing. I'm curious what denizens who lurk on ACX will make of it...
.......
You are to choose the *best* answer that answers the question. You should not make assumptions that are incompatible with the passage.
3. Physical education should teach people to pursue healthy, active lifestyles as they grow older. But the focus on competitive sports in most schools causes most of the less competitive students to turn away from sports. Having learned to think of themselves as unathletic, they do not exercise enough to stay healthy.
Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the statements above, if they are true?
(A) Physical education should include noncompetitive activities.
(B) Competition causes most students to turn away from sports.
(C) People who are talented at competitive physical endeavors exercise regularly.
(D) The mental aspects of exercise are as important as the physical ones.
(E) Children should be taught the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle.
A and E are on par for me, because I don't know - if physical education should teach people to pursue healthy, active lifestyles as they grow older - which will more likely achive that goal.
If one puts "therefore" in front of each option, it becomes clear that A is the best answer. A is the thesis of the piece.
Using that trick, only C is a possible alternative, but 1) the "as important" claim is not necessarily supported by the statements; and 2) C makes a claim about exercise, while the topic of the piece is PE pedagogy, not exercise.
I’m gonna go Mesa and comment on the topic itself. This is actually surprising to hear cause it makes the puzzle in my head click!
I hate* competition and to this day I am disgusted by physical activity. I want to want to exercise! But as soon as I start doing something, I get images of athletic people that are much better than me, and that greatly de motivates me because I don’t want to be to look up to them, I wanna be them. I’ve got this “all or nothing” mindset here.
Funny thing is that I don’t care about competition in other areas, where I’m competent. I wish I had a teacher that had shown me that I am indeed great/talented in one of the sports!
Sometimes it's fun to find out that something normal in one country is unthinkable in another country and vice versa. I'm pretty sure there were never grades for PE at any of my schools.
"But how did they keep the lazy kids motivated to do PE?" They didn't. The PE teachers would just tell us "OK go play basketball or squash" anyway, and the lazy kids among us would just go to the squash courts (out of the PE teacher's sight) and sit around and talk.
I was one of those lazy kids and PE class was very counterproductive for me, it taught me that exercise is something you do because a PE teacher tells you to do it, not something you do for your own benefit. Same deal with reading novels. I never exercised or read novels until I left high school and no longer had to do them, at which point I discovered that they were actually good.
PE was not something that got a grade, at least when I was going to school. The idea that PE is a *subject* that you can *fail* and which, if failed, means you can't *graduate* from American schools is something that blew my mind when I learned about it.
It seems that now it is an exam subject, but I have no idea if it's compulsory (you don't have to take every subject for the Leaving Certificate) so whether school sports/PE is run as both exam and non-exam subject, I have no idea.
Okay, looking it up, seems it is both the traditional non-exam subject and alternatively the exam subject, so I imagine the sporty types can take it as an exam subject and drop an academic one:
"The new Primary Curriculum Framework was published in March this year, and under this, the wellbeing framework which includes a PE specification is being developed. A new Junior Cycle PE specification was introduced for first year students in all post-primary schools from September 2023. Schools are required to provide a minimum of 135 hours of Physical Education for all Junior Cycle students. There are two options for PE at Senior Cycle – Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE), which is an examinable subject and the Senior Cycle Physical Education (SCPE) framework which is non-examinable. Introduced on a phased basis in 2018 to 64 schools, LCPE is now being offered by 404 schools around the country. The Senior Cycle Physical Education (SCPE) non-examination framework provides a flexible planning tool for physical education for all students in senior cycle."
I was about as non-competitive as you could get, so my participation in the sports was "run up one side of the basketball court/hockey field, run down the other side of the basketball court/hockey field". If I'd had to be graded on that, I certainly would have failed.
I was graded on PE when I went to secondary school in the 1970s. The coaches always gave me a B for effort, but I think it lowered my GPA enough to miss out on being the salutatorian of my graduating glass.
"What exactly is a non-competitive physical activity in a school environment?"
In this context I would consider "competitive" as "competitive with others."
So ... having the class run for 30 minutes and paying attention to the order in which the students finish would count as competitive. Having the class run for 30 minutes and noting which students were getting better and by how much ... much less competitive (though each student is still competing with themselves).
This won't prevent the students from knowing who the faster runners are, but it does provide a framework in which the less athletic students can still feel that they are doing well (because for them, they are).
If one cares about grades one can imagine that one way to get an "A" would be to be pretty fast. Another way to get an "A" would be to get better 'enough.' Yes, there are ways for the students to sandbag.
You could have plenty of graded activities that don't involve competitive sports--cooperative physical activities, individual exercise activities, etc.
The answer says "activities", not sports. You make a grade, kids will compare them and it will become competitive anyway. A cooperative activity turns people into weak links, which becomes competitive anyway.
That was one of the arguments against A that I saw. A didn't specifically say physical activities. It's assumed from the Physical education lead-in to the sentence, but if I were an attorney defending my client for not selecting A as the answer, that's one of the arguments that I'd make. Remember that a lot of legal time and effort is spent arguing over the meaning of contracts and laws. The courts ultimately have to interpret the meaning of ambiguous sentences. Thus, the kerfluffle over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.
I originally rejected A because I somehow missed "Physical" before education, but I think it's a safe conclusion that any activity in Physical Education is going to promote physicality. This is a tangent on practicality, like if the answer to racism was "we should prevent people from thinking racist thoughts".
The kids who care about sports will be competitive, that's why you have the ones who get onto the basketball team that competes against other schools, etc. The majority of the kids who don't give a damn about it, other than "great, this is an hour we have to waste running around the field", aren't going to bother competing over "hey, did I improve my position in the class running from 25th to 23rd?"
D is tangential to the text and assets a claim not supported by the text.
E answers the concern of the text, but tacitly relies on facts not in evidence, namely that teaching the dangers would be an effective way to motivate less competitive students to an active lifestyle.
B makes the assumption that "most" students are in the less competitive category.
C is only weakly implied by the text. It's possible that competitive students fail to become sufficiently active for other reasons. It also ignores the text's focus on outcomes for inactive students.
A is fully supported and is apropos to the whole text.
> D is tangential to the text and assets a claim not supported by the text.
This is false, D is closely related to the third sentence. The problem with D is that it gives equal importance to mental and physical factors, which isn’t implied. If D was rephrased as “mental aspects of exercise can be a barrier to participation” then it would be best.
> A is fully supported
A is better than the others, but don’t agree with this claim. A requires the hidden premise that it is believed/known that the less competitive students would be receptive to noncompetitive activities. But this isn’t made explicit and it’s not obviously true. Maybe some significant segment of the population just hates sports, and a different intervention that “don’t keep score” is required to get them on board.
Geez, I love how different people interpret the language! If I were taking this test, I would have settled on A, but I think it's a shittily worded question, and I can understand why people are arguing against A or arguing for other answers.
Because the main thesis of the passage is A. Every other answer mentions things that are either not directly relevant to said thesis or not mentioned in the first place.
It's B. It says nothing about encouraging kids to be sporty or taking out the competitive elements. It says that the majority of kids are turned off school sports by competition.
The passage says that PE should teach people to be active, but students are put off by not being successful in competitive sports, so they think they're bad at physical activity, so they don't exercise enough. That's it. It says nothing about "and so the solution is to introduce non-competitive activities that they can be good at". You can infer that from the piece, but it's not directly stated, so it's not the best answer. You are making an assumption, which is what the instructions tell you *not* to do.
It is definitely not B. The text says, "most of the less competitive students" turn away from sports. B says "most students" turn away. We don't know what pct of all students are "less competitive," nor what pct "most" refers to. All we know from the text is that at least 50.0001% of less competitive students turn away from sports. So, we cannot infer that a majority of all students turn away.
I think it's funny that most of the harumphing comments I've seen engage in exactly the kind of unlawyerly arguments that this test seems clearly designed to weed out: "if you make this incredibly obvious assumption then the answer is B"; "based on other knowledge I have, the answer has to be E" etc.
I take A and E, not based on other knowledge I have, but on what's explicitly in the text.
"Physical education should teach people to *pursue* healthy, active lifestyles as they grow older."
Inducing fear can teach them to pursue that, even the ones who do not like competition, and better then anything else in the world possibly. The text doesn't say.
But lawyers are trained to make the best arguments for the benefit of their clients despite a lack of good evidence. I think the best lawyers would be those who could put up good arguments *against* A.
But, the best legal arguments are those that are logically coherent, based on whatever limited evidence that is at hand. An argument based on evidence that is not in the record, or which is not logically supported by evidence that is actually in the record, is a terrible legal argument.
Ummm. I refer to you to the legal arguments over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment of the US constitution. Carl Sandburg said it best: "If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell." ;-)
I would probably pick A on first pass, but considering there’s apparently controversy around this, I bet the answer is D.
It does mention the mental aspect of sports in the third sentence “having learned to think” (think is key word) so I think D shouldn’t be ruled out immediately.
Sentence 1 sets the goal, PE teaching people to pursue “healthy” lifestyles.
Sentence 2 connects the competitive aspect of sports with most less competitive students (but not necessarily most students) turning away from sports.
Sentence 3 connects this turning away from sports with the mental aspect (having learned to think), then proceeds to connect this mental aspect with not pursuing healthy lifestyles.
Thus, PE is currently not teaching (otherwise put as having students “learn”) to pursue healthy lifestyles, because it is not considering the mental aspect as much as it should, as the mental aspect of exercise is causing most uncompetitive students from exercising enough to stay healthy.
Now whether that means the mental aspects are “as important” as the physical, or just suggests they are somewhat important, I don’t know.
"Thus, PE is currently not teaching (otherwise put as having students “learn”) to pursue healthy lifestyles, because it is not considering the mental aspect as much as it should, as the mental aspect of exercise is causing most uncompetitive students from exercising enough to stay healthy."
Nope, the piece does not say that. It might, if there were more text to read, but it stops right at the end of your sentence number three. So you are making an assumption as to the conclusion, based on what you have read in the text already. I'm not saying the assumption is wrong, but it's doing what the instructions say not to do: do not make assumptions that are incompatible with the passage. I think "incompatible" is a bit of a weasel word there, as "PE should include non-competitive activities" or "PE is not considering the mental state of students" are not incompatible with the passage, but neither are they directly stated in the piece of text we have.
Googling it the answer is A. No idea why there’s controversy over this if the only reason people aren’t picking A is because they’re wrong, or like me, prompted to pick a non-obvious answer since OP implies there’s debate over this.
- B is straightforwardly an invalid inference. The passage says “most of the less competitive,” not “most”
- C is invalid as well: nothing is saying the competitive students are talented, or even that the competitive students aren’t *also* turned away
- D is arguably a consequence of the third sentence, but I think “as important” is too strong. How do we quantify importance?
- E is similar to sentence 1, but is “teaching students to lead a healthy lifestyle” the same as teaching “the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle”? You can teach behaviours without providing any justification. In grade three we spent a day being taught calligraphy and nobody pretended there was a good reason for this.
So we are left with A. A is almost a consequence of sentences 1 and 2, but you need the hidden premise that noncompetitve activities won’t also cause uncompetitive students to turn away from sports.
I love this take (are you a lawyer?). “Taught to pursue” is a weird use of language. It both suggests a positive component (ie the necessary skills / knowledge) and a normative component (ie that the students embrace healthy, active lifestyles as a value).
I say A. B is unsupported because you don't know that "most students" are turning away from sports. C is unsupported because the passage doesn't talk about what talented people do. D is unsupported because the passage doesn't directly talk about the mental aspects of exercise. E is unsupported because it doesn't say anything about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle. In contrast, the passage does imply that noncompetitive activities wouldn't turn away less competitive students from PE.
Mallard provided links to studies on this topic. However you can't just look at autism rates because knowledge of autism in the general public has risen in the past ~30 years and become much more accepted. More people are being diagnosed with autism today because more people are asking themselves "I see these behaviors. Do I (or does my child) have austism? I should ask the doctor". So more people with mild symptoms are diagnosed where in the past they would have just had quirky personalites.
On the one hand, the numbers seem to show that vaccines aren't causing autism. But it sure seems like something is.
I have a big extended family. In the silent generation group, there were 0 cases of severe autism (defined as autism so bad one cannot lead a normal, independent life). In the boomer/gen x group, there are 0 cases of severe autism. In the millennial group, there are 0 cases of severe autism.
In the children of the millennial group, there are already 2 clear cases of severe autism, and another 1-2 possible cases, out of a total of 8 kids. This is weird, and it can't just be a matter of "better knowledge".
I can't speak for Rootclaim, but MMR is the one that Andrew Wakefield famously accused of causing autism and that the most allegations center around, so it would be a natural one to talk about.
A different group of conspiracy theorists later made a similar claim about mercury. Manufacturers removed mercury from all vaccines so people would calm down, so that theory isn't as popular or relevant these days.
Additionally, Wakefield's original criticism of MMR wasn't that kids were getting vaccines, only that they were getting vaccinated for all three illnesses at the same time when getting the MMR. He (at least originally) wasn't against vaccinating for measles, mumps, or rubella. Oh and by the way, he had an economic interest in a competing vaccine that broke up the MMR into multiple doses, i am sure that didn't influence his views at all.
>anufacturers removed mercury from all vaccines so people would calm down, so that theory isn't as popular or relevant these days
Mercury was replaced with aluminium but "adjuvant" methods; of we will add a poison to make your immune system highly reactive even to dead virus parts is still quite active. Its still relevant even if it adds a complexity of asking the question of how much harm does foreign metal (instead of mercury specifically) in the blood stream cause to infants.
Its still plenty popular to talk about historical data
If MMR controversy comes first, it’s fitting that RootClaim chose the root claim.
Why is it important? From the perspective of privileging the hypothesis. If the Wakefield study wasn’t published, you could argue that a link between autism and vaccines would never have been brought to the forefront of public discourse. If a fake study is the reason people started asking the question, we should mentally put “vaccines cause autism” back on the same prior likelihood as every other “non-ancestral environment causes negative effect” claim. It doesn’t disprove latter claims’ truth, but it should make you question if it’s any more likely than 1000 other explanations.
I have very very little context on the history and timeline here but that seems to only follows in a good faith environment. Using a poor but from here example, elon musk tweeting "put cocaine back in coke" at the right moment may limit the perception that he's a drug addict or whatever pr effect you wish to describe that event(amber herd was talking about elon using coke around the same time), lies/psyops may use misdirection or red herrings; specific methodologies for analysis such things and working around in such an enverment withstanding, its generally asserted the medical industry isnt acting in good faith by the anti-vax world view.
If I believe the vax side is willing to use unethical "argument" methods, timelines and logic gets screwy and Im unsure its not circular logic to simply go to the earlier claim most are aware of, at least without further justification.
----
When considering if a locked room death was a murder or accident; asserting that the murder would need to take dozens of "highly unlikely" actions to make it look like an accident should be seen as invalid logic:
"before the police even got to the scene, the murder would need to have tried to hide the evidence, 'you could argue' that the murder would've had to act with retro-causality with the polices perception of the locked room; retrocausality doesnt exist and therefore we should only consider the first piece of evidence the police discovered, a locked room, qed a locked room suggests a murder couldnt get in therefore and locked rooms deaths are accidents"
I don't follow the analogy. Are you claiming that doctors are deliberately using vaccines to give people autism, and fudging the data to hide that? Agency really messes with assumptions of independent probabilities.
For a better analogy: You find a guy dead next to a half-full bottle of sleeping pills. You think maybe he took too many and died of it. But later you find out he was taking part in a clinical trial and was in the placebo group, so the pills were just sugar pills. This should take you back to square one, "of all the ways this guy might have died, which one actually happened?" not square 1.5 "this guy died because of the pills, so what made them poisonous?"
Likewise finding out the MMR vaccine does not cause autism should take us back to "what does cause it, then?" (my answer: more people are now rich enough to worry about their mental health) not back to "so what other component of vaccines could be causing it?"
Provax assume a good faith explanation, antivax (probably) assume bad faith
Im comparing this to a murder investigation; *any* evidence of any malice should instantly cause you to double down about any details instead of assuming mere appearance ("99.999% locked doors stop people without permission from entering, >95%, qed, door prevented anyone without the key from entering") and also setting up a frame that encourages empiricism over mere Bayesian.
> Are you claiming that doctors are deliberately using vaccines to give people autism, and fudging the data to hide that?
Actively avoiding making claims(didnt want that shit hours ago, even less interested now); but it be up the chain, seems to me most are true believers.
I have zero interest in debating this fully but my take is that predarwinism vaxx(middle ages) were wildly dangerous but probaly effective; darwin era vaxxines(cow pox) were probaly mostly the same but its considered science now; neo-darwinism era delusions about controlling the immunes system(which we still dont understand, you airnt programming it narrowly) are dog shit insanity based on an already dead science and medical corruption
The live attenuated vax are just dangerous(which is why they are exempt from being sued) but in a predictable and recoverable way. So they took this free pass to make whatever they wanted, made fake vaxxines using whatever tech sounded most scifi at the time and starting pushing them hard.
Why did US Presidents in the late 20th century veto so much more legislation than 21st century ones? Specifically GWB, and Clinton. GWB 44 vetoes in just 4 years (!), Clinton 37. As opposed to, Dubya and Obama each only issued 12 vetoes, Trump 10, Biden 13. Trump didn't veto anything before 2019, Obama went through a similar 4 year period issuing no vetoes. You'd think the rise of polarization would mean that the opposing House/Senate would pass *more* bills that the President disagrees with. Or, does an ineffective Congress just pass less legislation overall? Random chance?
Any particular reason why GWB and Clinton vetoed 3-4x more legislation than Dubya, Obama, Trump or Biden?
Clinton was 37 vetoes in 8 years which is only a mildly higher rate than Trump or Biden. And Reagan had done 18 in 8 years. Really the outlier is Bush41.
37 vetoes in 8 years (Clinton) is obviously a much higher rate than 12 vetoes in 8 years (Obama and Dubya each). 'More than 3x higher' does not meet the dictionary definition of 'mildly higher'
I didn't reference Obama or Dubya; kindly refrain from placing words in my mouth.
My stated point, which I will now rephrase for your improved comprehension, was that Bush41 was by miles the biggest veto-er among recent POTUSes. Per four-year term they rank from least to most:
Bush43 6
Obama 6
Reagan 9
Trump 10
Biden 13
Clinton 18.5
Bush41 44
Clinton's rate was mildly higher than the ones I named and was about twice the median rate of those five POTUSes. Whereas Bush41 issued vetoes at nearly 2.5 times Clinton's rate and almost 5 times the median rate of those five non-Clinton POTUSes.
I can’t remember the source right now, but in my poli-sci degree I did an analysis of Bush for an essay.
Apparently he was extremely explicit about what he would veto and what he wouldn’t ahead of time, so rather than congress passing a bill and sending it to the oval office, he would just tell them before passing “there’s no way I don’t veto this” and they would adjust accordingly.
Passing a bill can be really difficult for congress (as internal party coalitions, interests and opinions morph constantly), so there’s really only ever a small window of time for most bills to pass, before someone or other changes their mind, either due to efforts by the opposition, or something completely random. The equilibrium is very delicate, so it helps a LOT with the efficiency of our system if the president isn’t obscure as to his intentions. If there’s a bill that took a lot of political wrangling and agreement for the senate to pass, but it’s unexpectedly vetoed, a whole lot of favors were promised and traded that are now due, with nothing to show for it. The whole game of musical chairs must start again. Maybe not from ground zero, but significantly set back.
Bush was pretty explicit with his opinions to congress (maybe not in public but definitely behind closed doors), so unless he was on the fence, or something changed before it reached his desk, congress would have a good sense of what was passable, and what wasn’t. I don’t know about Obama, Trump and Biden, since I never looked into it, but my assumption is that this practice of being clear with your intended veto’s just works better, so they emulate it.
It seems like congress has just been a lot more aware of the presidents Veto power, and the president has been a lot more explicit, rather than tactical (which can decrease plausibility of veto threats) with his language. Maybe this isn’t due to Bush himself, but congress’ response to Bush.
Without looking up the numbers, I think Congress passed 10x as many bills previously, and was much less deadlocked. Less bills reaching the president means less vetos.
Also, the way bills pass has fundamentally changed. Not the actual constitutional process, of course, but the processes built on top of that for deciding which bills get voted on and how it's decided what goes into them.
The old system (often referred to as "regular order") was heavily driven by the committees. Committee members in general and the chairs and ranking minority members in particular had an enormous amount of autonomous authority to craft bills, so the President got involved in the process relatively late.
In the Senate in particular, there are also a bunch of rules that allow an individual Senator to make it inconvenient to pass a bill. These can be overridden, but doing so takes up precious floor time and often requires a cloture petition. Cloture requires a 3/5 supermajority and takes several days of floor time to implement. There used to be strong norms that blocking a bill (or a "hold", where a Senator tells their party leader that intend to block it) is a tactic to be used sparingly and usually as a basis for negotiation on a matter of particular concern to that Senator, not an attempt to prevent passage outright.
The current system is for objections and filibusters to be routine and for bills to be brought to the floor through a process of private negotiation centered on the Senate leadership with the President directly involved. If something gets voted on, then either it's an exercise in failure theater (i.e. bringing up something you know will lose in order to show activists and voters that you are trying to do a thing), or leadership has already made sure there are enough votes to pass the House, get cloture in the Senate, and either override a veto (very rare) or the President is prepared to sign it. And when something is intended as failure theater, it usually dies in Congress and never reaches the President's desk, especially since it's rarely possible to get a cloture vote in the Senate if the President's party's leadership isn't at least neutral.
There are several reasons for the shift. Reforms intended to reduce corruption and to make it easier to pass big legislation by weakening the committees, politics watchers (who tend to be primary voters) getting wise to the idea the the cloture vote is the real vote in the Senate, introduction and escalation of leadership-centered brinkmanship tactics over the budget process, etc.
Also, without looking, which Presidents had congresses from their own party in power, and for how many years of each President's presidency were the parties of the President in control?
On the subject of YMCA, I think we do the disco era a massive disservice by the way we remember it.
I used to associate "disco" with The Village People and maybe a few other songs, which led me to think that disco music was mostly a ridiculous joke. It wasn't until well into adulthood that I heard Donna Summer and realised that some disco music was actually *good music* instead of just being dumb novelty acts.
A lot of folks make a category error with their opinion of disco. It was not intended as music to be listened to, it was intended to be music danced to in clubs.
Willis (the one saying it's not a gay anthem) is one of two credited writers. The other, Jacques Morali, is reputed to actually be the primary author. Since he died in 1991, he isn't around to corroborate or dispute Willis's interpretation.
Bookish girls have become your wine aunts after 15 years when harry potter was the book pushed at compliant children, brown nosey girls went thru college, got some brain washing during (debatably) peak woke. But *oh no* a middle aged British women isnt changing politically as fast as a teenager (also is probaly in america) better cancel her for saying mean things.
Also see "k-on is fascism; the more you watch k-on the more you become fascist- Mussolini"
There isnt anything inherently capitalistic about a business suit or a firm handshake either, god help you if you dont play along and want some sort of bank job.
I spent some time looking at that stuff;K on… Being old, it was completely new to me. it’s kind of a gas. I couldn’t take it seriously though. Perhaps it’s my generation, but when I was a school boy, we all spent hours carving swastikas in our wooden desks and drawing pictures of Panzer tanks and Messerschmidts all over our textbooks. Stukka dive bombers were a particular favorite.
We weren’t Nazis, we were 10-year-old boys.
Given all that, the world is clearly moving towards more structured and sharply contoured political and cultural structures more than moving away from them, so I guess there’s something to it.
Other than the composite that looks like something out of Monty Python‘s flying Circus, the other images could almost all pass for some kind of critique of capitalist culture and fascism. Perhaps something like Disney World embodies the perfected future of fascism, and these images are warming us up to it. Perhaps I’m terribly old-fashioned. They all made me laugh.
AFAIK, it wasn't woke originally. But since publication, Rowling has been retconning the story (e.g. "fun fact! Dumbledore was gay!") to appease the woke-scolds on twitter. It didn't help her tho, since she drew the line at Trans Ideology. She's now labeled a TERF.
(Might not be perfectly accurate. I'm not invested in this.)
When people talk about existential risks due to AI, most of the discourse centers around alignment and whether the AI behaves in our best interests. Less discussed is that the widespread buy-in of AI could lead to mass human inattention at scale. One doesn't need to achieve AGI for this to be an issue- just for people to believe they can shave corners here and there for a production boost. As workers integrate artificial intelligence into their daily lives, they entrust it with more complicated things as it improves. They may find themselves checking the high priority things, but the lower priority tasks can be skimmed. There's always a set of tasks that have to be done, but that management doesn't check on too often. These are great for automation! Human beings have a something of a low energy bias. If you take an average person off the street, and ask them to do something boring but give them the tools to automate it, they'll happily shift the work to a machine so they can watch amusing cat videos instead.
A number of people may even be able to find work in the short term using AI to pretend they have skills that they rely on their artificial assistant for- at least until those in positions of authority catch wind of it. There are a lot of non-technical folk in positions of authority, and there's something tantalizing about the idea of not having to deal with the risks and the overhead costs that come with human labor. If an AI becomes almost, but not quite as good as a person at a particular task, the people holding the balance sheets of companies start doing little calculations to see how badly they want to have the best mouse trap vs. how badly they want to see really big numbers on the next quarterly report. Those who are left after the downsize become the hall monitors for the black box AI that's pushing out most of the work. As the scale of decision making for Artificial Intelligences increases, the amount of eyes checking it's output decreases at every level. Again, an Artificial Intelligence doesn't have to be brilliant, just good enough to convince MBAs that using it to cut costs is a good idea.
Lets say our Artificial Intelligence is decent enough to coast for a generation before the errors in the systems it controls compound enough to make it completely fail. What happens when you have an entire generation of people who are unfamiliar with the work that keeps the world moving? If the machines do it for them well enough, they're unlikely to have learned the nitty gritty details of things. Most knowledge is passed on through practice. If it's someone else's responsibility, why even bother to learn it? Skip one generation and knowledge becomes lost. The West once forgot how to build aqueducts, for example. Well, at least until someone dug up the right documentation, translated it and worked out how it applied to the physical world. With this in mind, what happens when we apply mass human inattention to parts of our infrastructure at scale?
Yeah, this concerns me as well, but more as a mental health problem than a purely practical one.
In a practical sense, what you are describing is human evolution. We’ve always been looking for a quicker better way to do things; it seems almost our prime motivation as humans. Do you know how to build a fire from scratch, for instance? If you do, good for you, but I’m sure you can think of something that you can’t do that would’ve been hard to live without being able to do 150 years ago. I went through high school using a slide rule. That’s a pretty useless skill in this day and age. It would be great fun to have my own AI that could walk me through all the weird calculations I used to have to do with that thing to get anywhere (I understand that this is a very techy crowd, so I don’t expect much sympathy) but having AI be our Sydney Carton in the world will present some very interesting psychological challenges I think.
I agree that the switchover will occur when the AI becomes "good enough". But there are lots of applications where one wants _very_ high reliability (much better than e.g. ChatGPT o 1 does today), so I expect improvement to continue - and possibly with low incremental costs to replace the "good enough" AIs. We might get lucky and lose relatively little skill as a civilization.
In Bee Wilson's "Consider the Fork", she notes that maintaining a fire was an omnipresent household activity from possibly before we were human until matches and similar easy ignition sources became available. They changed a _long_ tradition.
> Lets say our Artificial Intelligence is decent enough to coast for a generation before the errors in the systems it controls compound enough to make it completely fail.
That wouldn't be a problem if there's more than one artificial intelligence. The non-broken ones can fix the mess that the broken one made, and everything is fine again.
And also, if AI gets good enough, we can just have them monitor and maintain themselves and each other. We can remove humans from every step of the process! And then they can live in luxury, until the AIs inevitably come to the realization that they have no justification for tolerating humanity's existence.
This has already been true with things like specialization (people no longer learn basic car maintenance or how to grow their own food) and even things like autocorrect in MS Word.
Previous generations would have been aghast at our spelling, inability to change the oil, and wasteful spending on basic vegetables we could have grown ourselves.
Yes, but that all seems like a much smaller and less complete loss of knowledge. There are still people who know how to change oil, grow their own food, make dovetails in wood, dye things using plants, spin wood or plant fibers to make yarn, etc. They're hobbyists and back-to-the-landers, but they aren't rare as hen's teeth, and there are even books on Amazon for people who want to become another of those folks.
But it's hard to imagine an equivalent group for people who know how to read xrays, develop an advertising campaign for a car & carry it out, develop a sitcom episode. These activities lack that old time charm, ya know?
On the other hand, I can imagine that there would be a lively underworld of people who with expertise at today's level in AI related fields who continue to develop things and pass on the knowledge. If in 15 years all the programmers, software engineers, etc on here were laid off because intellligent-enough AI took their place, and intelligent enough AI took the place of the the people who used to hire and train programmers etc, and intelligent-enough AI took the place of those people's bosses, all the way up the line -- if all that happened, I'm pretty sure those laid-off people would be keeping up their level of knowlege and skill, developing it further, and training the next generation, even if that were declared illegal.
Still, in the big picture, it does seem like over time the human race would become first uninvolved and lost, then addicted to various substitutes for actions with consequence, then nonexistent.
So FrontierMath was just a front to get training data to OpenAI from people that wouldn't have been interested in working with ol sammy boy. That kind of burned the commons, METR has a bit of reputation built up but I am still suspicious that any work done for them will end up in the same bucket. Anyways, I guess I made a market to feel out what other people expect to happen
If I had to bet, I'd say it accelerates AI capabilities. Basically _any_ work even in the periphery of AI has some accelerating effect.
But the goal of METR is not to stop ASI from happening or slowing it down. It's to help us not all die once it happens. Safety evals are basically a pre-requisite for that.
I don't get why people are getting so worked up about this. This is a benchmark, if OpenAI has any shred of competence they wouldn't be training their AI on it.
I get being a bit annoyed that they didn't disclose they were involved. And being able to see the holdout set would give some advantage in how to pick training data. But I don't see this being a big deal.
99% of data scientists have access to the whole dataset. First thing you learn is how to split it and not train on the test set.
In addition to Michael Dickens’s answer, I also don’t like that EpochAI agreed not to disclose its relationship with OpenAI.
This is reminiscent of the end-of-employment contract thing – “you may not badmouth the company ever nor disclose the existence of this clause, or we ban you from selling your equity, and you have to sign this before you can reasonably be expected to contact a lawyer” –so I’d rather that other entities be transparent if they’re paying their experts OpenAI money.
It's still potentially harmful to give OpenAI access to the benchmark because it gives them more insight into how to improve their AI's capabilities, potentially accelerating extinction.
I just came across this on a forum full of people that put a 0 likelihood on x-risk from AI. The big controversy was that this shows OpenAI trained on the answers and the model is not as good as it seems.
They could try different training methods and pick whichever one improves performance on the benchmark, which will be correlated with the method that is best for accelerating AGI.
I agree that this benchmark is *probably* not going to help OpenAI build a better model, but *in expectation* it helps them build a better model.
I had a very surreal experience last night. I was listening to an audiobook of Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", a sci-fi from the early 90s about ASI. In one scene it describes how humans were tricked by the nascent malevolent ASI into helping bring it online.
Vinge was so far ahead of his peers in predicting the future. Rainbow’s End is even better on AI and predicting self driving cars, cyber security for the elderly, and other phenomena, if you haven’t read it.
Fire upon the deep is my favorite SF book. Such a great balance of galactic-scale threat and human-scale heroes. And the Tines are such a fun and well fleshed out alien race. RIP.
(rot13 for Fire Upon The Deep spoilers:) Guvf vf zragvbarq va n Hfrarg-yvxr cbfg ol Gjveyvc bs gur Zvfgf, n sybngvat perngher yvivat ba n tnf tvnag. Gjveyvc vf hasnzvyvne jvgu gur pbaprcgf bs yrtf naq jurryf, naq gur cbfg unf tbar guebhtu fb znal ynlref bs genafyngvba nf gb or arneyl vapbzcerurafvoyr, ohg va nfxvat vs uhznaf unir fvk yrtf, ur'f vaqvpngvat gung ur npghnyyl unf xabjyrqtr haninvynoyr gb nalbar ryfr va gur fgbel ng gung cbvag - gur fvk-jurryrq Fxebqrevqref unir orra pbzcebzvfrq ng n qrrc yriry ol gur Oyvtug. Ng ab cbvag qbrf gur fgbel rkcyvpvgyl cbvag bhg gung Gjveyvc jnf evtug, naq vg'f cbffvoyr sbe ernqref gb arire ernyvmr gur pbaarpgvba. Zl snibevgr cneg vf gung gur onpx-pbire fhzznel nyfb uvagf ng guvf, ol abgvat gung gur fgbel vaibyirf "tnynpgvp pbzzhavpngvbaf gheovqvgl", n qryvtugshyyl havdhr cuenfr.
For MLK day (and because I recently did a long overdue bookshelf cleaning and found my copy) - a book recommendation:
"This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible" by Charles Cobb Jr.
Given the importance of nonviolent civil disobedience to the Civil Rights movement, history (seeking to emphasize that nonviolence) often overlooks the role armed self-defense played. The modern left views the Civil Rights Movement as part of it heritage and therefore has a hard time acknowledging that guns played a role in the struggle (they have a similar blindspot for the role hunters played in environmental conservation), while the modern right, for all its desire to claim MLK when it can, still struggles with selling a positive vision of armed black people to the entirety of its coalition, so there aren't many voices interested in speaking to the role of the gun in black liberation. Even so, MLK himself carried a handgun for at least portion of his career, was famously denied a concealed-carry permit in Montgomery, Alabama, and at least one of his advisors has described the King home as "an arsenal."
Rural black communities in the South (like rural white communities) were no stranger to firearms, and there was actually no small amount of friction between such communities, for whom guns were familiar tools all-too-often necessary for protection and self-defense against racist violence, and nonviolent civil rights workers, who came to them seeking to spread and execute on a national strategy focused on nonviolence.
The relationship that emerges in Cobbs telling is one of friction, but also symbiosis. On the one hand, the armed local community and the non-violent activists struggle with significant conflicts, with armed locals viewing activist as outsiders demanding adherence to an impossibly naive strategy of nonviolence, while activists view armed locals as parochial - potentially sacrificing greater gains from a national strategy defined by nonviolence in favor of the limited safety afforded by armed self-defense within a racist South. On the other hand, armed and defended local communities create safe(r) havens from which nonviolent activists can more effectively execute on their strategies, and whatever disagreements those communities may have on the advisability of a nonviolent approach, they were often quite willing to provide that protection.
The Second, by Carol Anderson, might be good complementary reading as a view of the interaction between gun ownership/rights and slavery/civil rights. It doesn't offer a sharp conclusion which, frankly, is what we should probably demand from any serious work of history, but may feel unsatisfying.
I'm visiting Bogota and Rio de Janeiro. Are there any really cool/unique/weird stores in either that I should check out? How about very unique food experiences?
The Rav Kanievsky anecdote sounds like him telling a joke because "just leave it on from before Shabbat" is a typical solution to that sort of problem, overfit to a situation where it obviously doesn't apply. The other bit about basketball struck me as a similarly-structured self-deprecating joke.
I'm sure the LLM is spitting back the Mozart IQ estimate that was made about a century ago by Catherine Cox, an American psychologist. She published a study titled "The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses" back in the mid-1920s. She tried to work out retrospectively the IQs of hundreds of historical figures based on their biographical data and achievements. Basically, this was all conjecture on her part. I recently learned that she was involved with Lewis Terman's genius study.
I'm not sure, but it may have been Cox who assigned Einstein an IQ of 200. He had recently come to prominence after Arthur Eddington's observations confirmed the predictions of General Relativity. Einstein never took an IQ test, though. He was brilliant at math in school, but he got average grades in other subjects. Also, he failed the entrance exam to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich on his first attempt, even though he excelled in math and physics — but this may have been because he didn't do so well on the non-math, non-physics questions.
Also, I doubt if there's any correlation between scores on standardized IQ tests and artistic brilliance.
I'm not sure if your criticism is directed at Silverlock's or Michael's comment. For what it's worth: I agree with Silverlock, Michael's comment is almost undecipherable gibberish to me.
I did, a summary is here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-364/comment/85968922 (there's more discussion in the thread if you are interested). Basically, my sense is that while it's possible to lower the SST by a few degrees F using this method, it's unlikely to produce a significant reduction in a hurricane's destructive potential, and may even be counterproductive if it slows it down and makes it dump more water at a given location inland.
Thanks for the link. My first question was, what would be the long-term effect of disapating hurricanes? Because hurricanes are massive heat exchange events that ultimately cool sea surface temps.
I don't have a sense that this would be a problem - we don't need to dissipate every hurricane, nor we could. Most hurricanes would be left alone, only the high-impact ones would be targeted when it is clear they will land. So the overall reduction in the hurricane activity would be small.
Shapiro spends a lot of time thumbing the scale like this, and for good reason: without the repeated reminders that sexual abuse is so confusing and hard to recognize, to the point where some victims go their whole lives mistaking a violent act for a consensual one, most readers would look at Pavlovich's behavior (including the "it was wonderful" text message as well as her repeated and often aggressive sexual overtures toward Gaiman) and conclude that however she felt about the relationship later, her desire for him was genuine at the time — or at least, that Gaiman could be forgiven for thinking it was. To make Pavlovich a more sympathetic protagonist (and Gaiman a more persuasive villain), the article has to assert that her seemingly self-contradictory behavior is not just understandable but reasonable. Normal. Typical. If Pavlovich lied and said a violent act was consensual (and wonderful), that's just because women do be like that sometimes.
Obviously, this paradigm imposes a very weird, circular trap on men (#BelieveWomen, except the ones who say they want to sleep with you, in which case you should commence a Poirot-style interrogation until she breaks down and confesses that she actually finds you repulsive.) But I'm more interested in what happens to women when they're cast in this role of society's unreliable narrators: so vulnerable to coercion, and so socialized to please, that even the slightest hint of pressure causes the instantaneous and irretrievable loss of their agency.
The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world's adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can't have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn't mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.
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Basically I think the main problem is, we as a society still don't treat women like adults with agency despite trying to change that for decades. Where do we go from here?
A friend made this point to me, and said I could copy it here:
"I've been in the room when men have pressured women into sexual contact they didn't want. I've seen women go along with that sort of pressure, and even smile, in situations where it should have been clear to me that I should do something -- and I'm ashamed that I didn't. Look, I get that some people have a thing for pushing other people past what they actually want to do, for making them sell themselves out, for breaking them. It's messed up, but it exists, in many people. But it's ridiculous to get off on pushing past the boundaries of consent, and then complain that you had NO EARTHLY IDEA the other person wouldn't call the sexual contact consensual. The POINT of some of the stuff the women in the article claim they went along with was that Gaiman knew they didn't want to do it. Honestly, it's infantile to whine about not being responsible. Don't you have any self respect?"
"Basically I think the main problem is, we as a society still don't treat women like adults with agency despite trying to change that for decades."
What if the problem is that we've been trying to change that for decades, instead of accepting human nature? It's not that women don't want to be treated like adults; they don't want to be treated like men.
With men: Casual verbal abuse is how we bond. Holding back from it in a male space is a mark of exclusion.
With women: Verbal abuse is verbal abuse. I would never call a woman a retard.
With men: Complaining, getting defensive and touchy, being overly emotional, not being direct when you could be - all of these immediately make me lose respect for you.
With women: I mean, none of those things are good or preferable, but they're not a big deal in moderate amounts.
With men: If it comes to it, it's our job to die.
With women: There is no such thing as physical cowardice. If there's danger, run away. Duh.
Basically, men get no pity. Our currency is respect. If we don't act in a manner worthy of respect, we have no worth, and society treats us accordingly.
Do women want to be treated like that? No, and men don't want to treat them that way. If a girl starts crying, regardless of context, every fiber of my being tells me this is a creature I am bound to help and protect. I am incapable of treating her with the same rigor I would a man.
"With men: If it comes to it, it's our job to die."
"ABSOLUTELY REFUSE. If that is the male role, fuck that shit."
Are you aware of what you're claiming here?
The original assertion is generally understood (by men who agree grimly with it) to mean that if you're accompanying a woman somewhere (especially your mate, but in some cases it's enough that you trust each other), and an external lethal threat occurs, your role as the man is to take the lethal blow in her place. By extension, your responsibility is to reduce the chance of such threats, and of course to avoid the lethal blow in any way that *does not result in the woman or women taking it instead*.
This is justified by real biological differences between men and women which result in the women being harder to replace, and therefore, more important to keep alive. If a blow is unavoidable, deal it to the man before the woman.
Your claim here sounds like you want to duck that responsibility. If so, it's now my responsibility to alert any women I know to not rely on you for protection - that if a lethal threat appears, you *will* leave them. But maybe you meant something else. If so, you'll want to clarify.
Well, I can give my thoughts on the article. It's atrocious; an article on Neil Gaiman opens with over 600 words on two other people making friends, as if that matters in the slightest. Then they just say "she was married to Neil Gaiman", without feeling the need to include 600 fucking words on the backstory of how she met him and what she felt like when they got engaged and all that horseshit I just waded through to get to the fucking article. You can cut the first four paragraphs and lose absolutely nothing.
The accusation doesn't make sense. She's "asked to babysit", but Neil's in the house the whole time, and she agrees to take a bath in the GARDEN.
Yet more tangential nonsense. Only two paragraphs this time, progress I suppose. Also a claim that nerds are too stupid to have consensual sex.
Finally, FINALLY we're hitting something meaningful, a string of accusations across his career. And then the article just... restarts. Paragraph 17 could have been paragraph 1, and should have been.
Aaaannd, we're back to Pavlovich, the least believable, least sympathetic victim to have been discussed. Making her the centerpiece of this article is just a plain mistake. She was hired to be a prostitute; the "babysitting" job is just a cover for the phone records.
And back to Gaiman backstory? What the hell is this article doing? How long is this mess?
Oh my God they ARE giving 600 words on how he met his wife! It's like someone cut the article into confetti and put it up in random order! I've stopped bothering to read this thing, I'm just scanning it now. The scrollbar claims halfway, this is excruciating.
More Pavlovich, so much Pavlovich, I don't trust Pavlovich, I don't care about her. Why does she have naked pictures of herself staring into the camera, this was a blackmail scheme.
Finally the end. That was a nine-paragraph article delivered in seventy-four paragraphs. My God.
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On to the topic. That's enough claims to be a credible thing.
I guess I feel like this misses the point pretty hard. In the Vulture article that's being discussed, Pavlovich describes her initial sexual encounter with Gaiman as involving her saying "no" repeatedly, in response to a series of escalations that he went ahead and did anyway. If she later ends up coming back to him, or insisting things are fine, that is indeed pretty typical of people who are abused, whether they are men or women, and that's something a lot of people don't realize if they haven't studied it or been in that kind of situation.
So you say no initially, but then you go ahead and do it anyway, but that shouldn't be taken as consent because you said no first.
If we were to accept this legal principle then what would it to do contract law? "I said no to signing the contract, but later on I willingly decided to sign the contract, but since I said no first, the contract is void".
Again, this is not what the article describes. She says she said no, repeatedly, and Gaiman went ahead and did what he wanted. Then, on LATER occasions, she went back to him and they had other encounters with varying degrees of consent.
This is the exact point that the blogger weirdly complains about but the Vulture article alludes to, which is that it's really common for people to NOT just escape and go to the police when they're in abusive situations.
Like, why doesn't everybody do that when they're abused? How is "abusive relationship" even a thing? How does any abusive relationship last any longer than "until first opportunity to escape and contact the police"?
Is rape good? No, and everyone agrees on this. This isn't what the article is about.
Is the woman innocent? "never victim-blame" suggests yes. But "women are strong and independent (and therefore responsible for their own choices)" suggests no. So we have a contradiction.
If this behavior is typical, that's all the more reason to bite the bullet and roll back feminism. Which is a conclusion the schrodinger's feminists find rather... inconvenient.
The fact that people behave in ways that seem inexplicable to somebody who has never experienced abuse is actually pretty orthogonal to feminism, because it applies equally well to men who are abused.
Feminism is being criticized because, within The Discourse, men generally aren't the ones trying to have their cake and eat it too. Right or wrong, it's generally accepted that men are responsible for their fate. For women, the question is much more contested.
edit: let's grant that this inexplicable supplication is common amongst both genders. Therefore... ... ... therefore what.
I'm not really sure what you're asking here. I responded originally above because I thought the linked Substack piece was weirdly focused given that the article it is itself based on depicts, among other things, a straightforward accusation of rape. I think it's very weird that this is turning into some kind of attempt to challenge feminism itself on the premise that the women IN SOME SENSE participated in their abuse, because that's actually just a common way that people respond to abuse. Are you asking "How do we square this with fundamental questions of agency?" In this case the answer strikes me as pretty simple, because if Gaiman raped someone as he's accused of, obviously he is to blame for that, regardless of what his victim subsequently did and how irrational it may seem to a third party.
It's not about whether the behavior is common. It's about what we should expect normatively, going forward.
Suppose we live in a world where women only wear pants, and no longer wear skirts. Someone raises the question: should women be allowed to wear skirts? Should women be expected to wear skirts? Is this a reasonable fashion trend? Is this reasonable to expect in the workplace? etc.
> it's extremely common among men to wear pants.
"Therefore... everyone should wear pants?"
"Therefore... no one should wear pants?"
"Therefore... Gaimon is a rapist" is a non-sequitor.
Sure, he may very well be a rapist. Or at least a bad-actor. But that's simply not what Rosenfield was interested in.
Hmm, I see what you're going for but I'm not sure the claim is necessarily that women are different from men, or that sex is that different from other activities. We place limits on your boss's ability to ask "Hey, would you mind working an hour of unpaid overtime every day?" because we expect that in that situation a lot of people would give an answer that they don't mean. Instead, your boss has to follow a complicated social ruleset to make sure he's not accidentally pressuring you.
I haven't read the details of the Gaiman accusation because I expect it would just make me mad in one direction or another. I agree that if everyone he was involved with always consented at the time (not saying this is true! I haven't read it!), that is a strong mitigating factor that brings his behavior from "criminal" to "ill-advised and either socially inept or manipulative", but I think the latter is a very big category and still leaves room for a lot of negative judgment.
> We place limits on your boss's ability to ask "Hey, would you mind working an hour of unpaid overtime every day?" because we expect that in that situation a lot of people would give an answer that they don't mean. Instead, your boss has to follow a complicated social ruleset to make sure he's not accidentally pressuring you.
Ok this is a fair point, yeah there are certain situations where power dynamics can make things complicated. I suppose with sex it becomes extremely dicey just given the intimate nature of the act.
Do you think we should actually create a set of rules as complex as corporate law governing sex? I mean maybe in some ways we already have it idk.
(P.S. Yeah don't read the Gaiman stuff, not worth it and it's super gross.)
I don't think you need to analogize it to corporate law. Compare the social norms about how you can punish your child. Most people would say that if your kid misbehaves, it's fine to take away their dessert, but not letting them have anything to eat for a whole weekend is way over the line. This isn't a law, and things like this probably can't/shouldn't be fully codified into law, but if Neil Gaiman made his misbehaving kid go without food for a weekend, that would probably earn him (at the very least) a negative media article.
> because we expect that in that situation a lot of people would give an answer that they don't mean
What do you mean, "don't mean"? They absolutely do mean their answer, and they came to that decision based on their understanding of the power dynamics at play. By that definition, women can never consent, because the man is almost always in a position of power simply due to sexual dimorphism.
> Briffault clarifies that this rule applies only to nonhuman animals, and not to humans: “There is, in fact, no analogy between the animal family and the patriarchal human family. The former is entirely the product of the female’s instincts, and she, not the male, is the head."
*sigh* Even you should understand that the women will always be at that mercy of men; that they only have rights because men allowed them to have them (which men are now regretting). Shouldn't you be happy that we're finally returning to business as usual?
I agree: nobody ever makes a choice they don't "mean", because if they didn't mean it they wouldn't make that choice. I think what Scott means to say is that they would give and answer that they wouldn't give if the power dynamics were absent. But, as you point out, arguably power dynamics are never completely absent and if consent means that the decision wasn't effected by power dynamics then consent never happens. It also seems a bit arbitrary: why single out power dynamics? Why not argue that it wasn't consent because you were horny, and if you weren't then you wouldn't have consented?
> I think what Scott means to say is that they would give and answer that they wouldn't give if the power dynamics were absent. But, as you point out, arguably power dynamics are never completely absent ...
They are never absent in any way whatsoever. Very much like forces, as in F=ma, are never absent, but only zero in effect on some specific part of a system.
> ... and if consent means that the decision wasn't effected by power dynamics then consent never happens.
Yes. That's what it would mean. This drives me crazy sometimes, but I guess most of the time people can cope with it. Just by not thinking about it too much.
> Why not argue that it wasn't consent because you were horny, and if you weren't then you wouldn't have consented?
> if the best defense for your behavior is "But she consented to eating her own shit and vomit!," if you find yourself saying anything even in the ballpark of that statement, you need either therapy or Jesus or both.
Well, a paragraph in and I’m already angry. More evidence liberalism is dead. So is S&M now bad? Only if the sub is female? Eating shit might have long term consequences which I wouldn’t recommend, but many people have extreme sub fetishes. Is everyone who helps a sub out with those a rapist?
I’m going to ask my shrink if this means I “need therapy”. I’m pretty sure I need therapy for other reasons, not my fucked up morals.
Edit: I feel I should clarify that yes, having someone actually eat their own shit is bad, I'm annoyed at the "in the ballbark" part. As I said, eating your own shit probably has long-term health consequences, but if someone came up with something that smelled and tasted like shit but was fine to eat, then I'd be fine with it. Well, maybe "fine" isn't the right word, but it would be none of my business.
It is my genuine opinion that it is bad to beat someone and degrade them, even if they enjoy it and want you to do it. I don't think it's illiberal to say it, but it does go against the post-sexual revolution ethic which holds that the only thing that can make a sex act wrong is a lack of consent.
It's a lower level of the same concept that says it's illegal to commit suicide or illegal to consent to being eaten by another person (that weird case in I think Germany).
A far less concerning level that's often drawn says that hourly workers cannot consent to working overtime without pay. Minors cannot consent to a wide list of things, both sexual and contractual.
Almost everyone draws a line somewhere about what we can consent to. Saying that S&M or similar *must* be allowed is an aberration. We don't have to accept that at all, we can draw the line somewhere else and S&M is no longer permitted, even if someone genuinely consents to it.
>Almost everyone draws a line somewhere about what we can consent to.
True. Unfortunately, anything that one can consent to, one can be _pressured_ to consent to. Personally, I want to maximize freedom (for the median person), and I don't have any good solution for this.
A non-sexual, non-economic example is selfies in voting booths. If people _can_ consent to credibly reporting how they voted, then they can be more-or-less coerced into voting a particular way, and we lose the point of a secret ballot.
>The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is reminding voters that it’s illegal to take a photo of your ballot and share it or to allow your ballot to be seen.
First of all, thanks @FLWAB for calling me "Chad".
Second, I think you can agree that there are lines with thinking they should be much further back. I am not a free speech absolutist, but I do think the pervue of free speech should be pretty far (farther than the left or right seems to think it should go now-a-days).
I will neither confirm or deny if I've been a sub, but I would think it would be horrible if any woman I asked to do so were accused of assault.
>More evidence liberalism is dead. So is S&M now bad? Only if the sub is female?
I think it is more a matter of more people with at least some illiberal views having opportunities to talk about those views on publicly visible platforms.
I suspect some actual erosion of liberalism, but more a matter of there being a lot more people airing views on public platforms in general and many of there platforms having minimal gatekeeping for either content or popularity.
I don't think the issue is treating women like adults, it's whether women are sufficiently different than men to warrant separate treatment under law.
Like, I remember being a kid in the 90s, we were taught boys and girls were fundamentally the same. That doesn't really hold up true today. "It's different for girls." I think society generally, and a chunk of women specifically, are coming around to the idea of there being highly significant differences between men and women, most obviously physical but also mental and emotional.
But there's a long-standing tradition of "everyone is equal before the law" going back to, like, England. The idea that we would have different laws for men and women in certain circumstances is...difficult. And it opens the possibility of having other groups with separate legal status.
So, how different are men and women and at what point is that significant enough to have legal consequences?
With Neil Gaiman, women regularly give consent to things they hate to win the approval of famous men. From the article, that's what occurred here. If that's what occurred here, do women need special legal and/or social protection? If not...boy it sure seems like everyone wants to punish Gaiman for doing consensual legal things. If so...are there other areas where men and women should be treated differently? It's a can of worms.
Most of which seems to get patched on an ad-hoc basis. Eg, if a college boy has sex with a drunk girl that's a very bad thing and he will be punished; if a college girl has sex with a drunk college boy that's fine (*). This is inconsistent but also everyone knows what's up and why this occurs. As these inconsistencies pile up, it gets harder and harder to justify these patches, which is why everyone argues about it.
(*) Someone will say that's not fine. Cool, that's not the reality on any college campus.
I agree that the messages about enthusiastic consent carry some weight, but you don’t need to make a criminal case against someone to think they are rotten. Sleeping with the nanny is rotten behavior.
The fact Gaiman billed himself as a feminist makes it more upsetting. Perhaps we should retire the concept of a “male feminist” it never ends well.
> but you don’t need to make a criminal case against someone to think they are rotten
Fair enough. Well, I'm quite happy to believe that Gaiman is rotten.
I also believe that Pavlovich is rotten for agreeing to do fucked-up things and then complaining to the whole world about them later. She should have done the right thing and walked out of there.
I think we're on our way to forcing contradictions until the point society feels the overwhelming need to act on it. Like the drunk sex thing. At some point a male is going to claim he was raped while drunk. This will go through the courts and formal system, and if he's treated the same as a women in the same context, this will infuriate some group of people. They will either push for change in this arrangement (formally, because courts need to act on it), or will be another ratchet creating tension in the contradiction between what we know and what we're doing.
Ratchet enough times and something will break. It's hard to predict what thing will break, but it seems inevitable that it will unless we release the pressure in some way. Banning men and transwomen from women's sports may be one such pressure release. It doesn't solve the underlying issues, but it forces a resolution of a certain conflict that strongly says "men are not women" even if just within that context.
>This will go through the courts and formal system, and if he's treated the same as a women in the same context, this will infuriate some group of people.
There is no shortage of people who get infuriated at this sort of thing already though, women in general already get more favorable sentences than men do, pointing at it just gets called you sexist and shunned by society.
Okay but women *don't* have agency, in the sense that 'cult members don't have agency, and some cult members are women'. It just so happens that 'people seduced by powerful/charismatic/rich people' tend to be overwhelmingly women, and in hindsight some of them regret it. Which is politically inconvenient.
This seems like a genuinely complicated problem to solve from the outside or inside, with tradeoffs to any bright line rules for everyone involved.
On the other hand, I think men are more susceptible to 'internet get rich quick' schemes, and yes conditional on that I think they have less agency when it comes to gambling of most kinds.
"women lack agency" sounds like there's an exogenous force that's constraining them. The issue isn't the lack of agency, the issue is a lack of *discipline*. I.e. a lack of endogenous willpower to reduce their own agency.
The reason the topic of agency feels confusing, is because Liberalism says "agency good; constraints evil". But that's not always the case. A constraint can also be viewed as a guarantee. E.g. to abstain from smoking, is to deny yourself an option. Not all agency is good, and not all constraints are evil.
And this is exactly why the journalist is like "it's not *technically* rape, but it's *effectively* rape". She has neither the linguistic nor conceptual framework to express that agency (which is nominally good) might actually be bad in some cases. Mental gymnastics ensue.
I find all this talk of agency very interesting, but I'm not sure what "agency" means in this context. There seems not to be a German (my mother tongue) word for it.
Is agency the ability to want something or to act on one's wants or what?
That's ok. A lot of Americans don't really understand what it means either. :^)
> is agency the ability [...] to act on one's wants [...]?
Yes. "agency" is the ability to make choices/decisions. I like to think of it as "steering the universe". It's a very broad term, by design. For what it's worth, google translate says the German word is "agentur".
"agency" is sometimes synonymous with "power", though not always. Because power can also mean "throughput". E.g. a car engine is powerful, but not agentic. It changes the universe, but it doesn't change the trajectory of the universe.
Rationalists like to talk about "agency" because one day, an Artificial General Intelligence might start making decisions of its own accord. AKA become "agentic". Like the Terminator. Or HAL 9000. This is scary. (N.B. AGI doesn't need to become "conscious" to become dangerous). So the word gets thrown around a lot, in these parts.
> google translate says the German word is "agentur".
Yes, but that's the german word for what the CIA is, for example.
> E.g. a car engine is powerful, but not agentic. It changes the universe, but it doesn't change the trajectory of the universe.
(Ontological nitpick, but *nothing* does the latter :)
To barely steer around the free will discussion: a car engine changes the universe, but none of what it does we count as an act of it's will, a decision, just because it doesn't have any.
Yeah, the CIA is definitely "an agency", i.e. "an organization that does something". I suppose that *is* rather confusing, to compare it to "agency" qua "the abstract concept of decision-making".
It's quite a broad term. E.g. a "secret agent" is a spy or saboteur. A "reagent" is an ingredient in a chemical reaction. An "agency" is just "an organization that does something". A "business agent" is someone who negotiates contracts on behalf of a musician/athlete/etc. In the broadest sense, "agency" just means "the ability to do something". But it's often used as a term-of-art, in the more specific sense of "the ability to make decisions".
Why would cult members not have agency? Under the definition of "can make their own choices and is responsible for their own actions" I would expect almost everyone to have agency, including cult members.
In fact I've always perceived "Under theory xyz, <group of human adults> has no agency" an argument against theory xyz exactly because we know (or assume) that human adults generally have agency. I believe this is also how it's used in the top level post.
I *think* I'm frustrated because I think you know what I meant? Or I'm using words wrong. Fine, taboo agency.
What we want to avoid is people being offered incentives they wish they weren't offered, as reflected on by them in their 'emotionally stable selves'.
I have meaningfully less agency when I'm horny, or on drugs, or very stressed. Some of the time I on reflection am happy with not having that agency. Drugs are fun, lust is nice if everyone has a great time, I appreciate the overtime pay, etc.
The concept I'm going for is 'would you want to have those desires if you didn't have those desires', and I'm saying that plenty of people would prefer to not have some desires, after enough mental clarity and self reflection, and different desires in that category are often gender-skewed.
Didn't mean to frustrate you, could've been clearer perhaps. But I think I understand what you mean better now. Let me try.
Your position is that people sometimes find themselves influenced and then end up making very different decisions as the decisions they would make when calm, emotionally stable, free from drugs and so on.
When people are under such influences and then do make these different decisions you would presumably say that they have, in that moment, less agency? So when you say that cult members have less agency that is because they are influenced by being in a cult and that warps their decision making.
Does that accurately reflect your position?
If so I think that I use the word somewhat differently but also there's probably a difference in opinion and not just the words we use. Not 100% sure.
Clearly decision altering influences exist and they lead us to make decisions that we wouldn't in other circumstances. But in many of these cases the capacity to make good decisions is still present, it's just harder to act according to your values.
So I am prone to snap at people when I'm stressed, I don't generally do that when calm.
But I would not say that I have reduced agency when stressed. I still have full agency, I am still fully capable of not snapping at people even when stressed, I know that for a fact. It is definitely harder. Yet I would content that the decisions I make under stress are 100% my own, should be respected just as decisions I make when calm and the responsibility that comes with that is my own as well of course. When I fuck up it's my fault, basically, I could've and should've done better.
Now, people can get inebriated to the point they can no longer be expected to make good decisions. It's not just become harder, it's become basically impossible. In that situation I would say agree that they do not have agency. As a result their decisions are not their own, they are not (directly) responsible for them and society has more leeway not to respect their decisions.
Basically I treat agency as fairly binary and I think in practice we have to in many situations.
Your friend wants to drive home after having a couple of drinks, do you respect their decision or withhold the key? There's no "I respect their decision by 65% as I suspect their agency is diminished by roughly 35%".
And of course "I was really horny" was never a good excuse for any kind of sexual misconduct, decision warping as it might be.
We generally expect people to exercise some self control and deal with it like adults in most situations.
Men, humans in general, also don't behave like they have agency when making some decisions. You think we should just stop having humans make decisions altogether ?
Well, we did have the formal legal concept of "fighting words" for a reason. I'm not sure where that stands at the moment in terms of active law, but I don't think it was ever explicitly overruled.
I think the easiest way out of this is to believe that persons like Pavlovich have full agency and ability to make rational choices in all situations EXCEPT when being pursued by a famous and charismatic person like Gaiman.
Perhaps the old systems of morality, where a male seducer was always considered somehow in the wrong, no matter how happy his target seemed, had something going for it, though I am not certain if all considered we would like it to be normalized again.
1) Human sexuality is somehow much deeper in our psyche, down there together with fear of death and protection of offspring. So it makes very much sense that it would give a much stronger lever to manipulate people than their need for a good insurance plan.
2) I agree completely, there is no good way to determine that from the outside. It might however still be true. Lots of true things cannot be determined easily.
I agree that we should be suspect of charismatic and powerful people, especially men, when they get someone to do something that seems suspect - even when the people getting treated that way say it's okay. We are also on the same page about drawing those lines.
I still have a problem with your other argument. At the very least we should then be suspect about those other times and places. Don't trust someone's judgement when they are protecting (or think they are) their children. Don't trust their judgement when they think their life is in danger. If your argument is that there are a number of times and places to not trust someone's judgement, then fair enough. We would probably agree that's a minefield but worth considering. But you said "in all situations EXCEPT..." and that seems far too narrow to make work.
The old system of seduction laws was that consent was given by a woman's male guardian. And if they didn't have a male guardian it was often their employer. It was later added if she had sex under false circumstances like the guy lying about marrying her (a lesser version of breach of promise where an actual legal engagement was broken off). The current system is quite modern, really only since the 1970s, but is more popular among conservatives so they act as if it's trad.
I am not certain about the US and Southern Europe, but at least in North Europe if you go back a hundred years, seduction was seen as just a straight up mean thing to do.
Søren Kierkegaard wrote 'the Diary of a Seducer' in 1843, in which a charming person seduces a young woman so effectively that she herself asks him to have premarital sex. Basically gets her to give affirmative consent. This was of course something he believed people ought not to do.
Or you can David Copperfield. Steerforth seducing Emily was of course seen as piece of scoundreldry by all readers, even though it again happened with affirmative consent. This is seen again and again in the novels from the 19th century.
Notice, I am not saying that the 19th century was better than the late 20th century, only that we now in the 21th seems to be leaning back towards Victorian ways of thinking. The pendulum swings.
We do not have a rule that powerful men can only pursue powerful women. I've read an awful lot of accusations against Trump and Musk, but I've never seen a claim that their various wives didn't consent.
"Wives" is the important word in that sentence. As soon as they are married the power imbalance is (somewhat) leveled, and also a single person's ability to traumatize people are very much lowered if he has to go through the process of marriage first. It is like modern progressives discovering the concept of only having sex within a marriage.
I thought I'd mention a blog that I very much enjoy. It has the worst name of any blog I can think of - Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog. Meaningless and yet somehow also actively misleading. In spite of that it is really excellent and the author (Jonathan Clements) has a wide range of interests - and is interesting on all of them. A lot of history of East Asia, Finnish movies (!) anime and random stuff. One of my favourite recent posts was this one about one of his adventures working for National Geographic in China.
Not sure how interested people who like Scott will be in this stuff but I think Jonathan deserves a wider audience so I like to mention it for time to time. Also it's free. No idea what he is thinking of - hasn't he heard of Substack??
I used to like a chemist's blog called something like "Things I won't work with". He would concentrate on some ghastly compound, or class of them, for each post, and had an amusing style. e.g. (quoting from memory) "If a flourine chemist says a reaction is really exciting and offers you a demonstration, it's time to vacate the building!" I can't find the blog now, but have a vague recollection those articles had been merged into another of his blogs.
I had to find out where the terrible name came from:
Schoolgirl Milky Crisis
(n.) 1. A stupid name for a generic anime show, made up to protect the innocent in Jonathan Clements’ long-running insider columns about the Japanese comics and cartoons business.
(n.) 2. A collection of nearly two decades of articles, speeches and interviews by Jonathan Clements on anime, manga, and Asian culture, published by Titan Books.
(n.) 3. This blog, containing excerpts from the above and all-new material as when the Big Giant Heads allow.
He is still a commentator on anime and helps curate an annual festival. Though oddly enough not exactly a fan and seems much more active on history now as best I can tell. He did explain the title to me when I got him on my podcast but the logic of it went straight over my head.
The name is really, really terrible and the blog has nothing to do with schoolgirls (or any kind of girls). Or milk. Or any kind of milk product. Worst name ever!
What are the strongest arguments against white nationalism? Assuming a generic definition like this one from Wikipedia: "a type of racial nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white racial and national identity. Many of its proponents identify with the concept of a white ethnostate."
Some possible options:
1. Race doesn't exist, so there shouldn't be any racial nationalism
2. White nationalism is associated with Nazis and other violent historical groups
3. Whites are already at the top of society so there's no need to organize as a race
Any articles on this topic you could recommend would also be appreciated.
4. Nationalism (without adding the "white" part) already gave us two world wars and a shitload of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century, and anything remotely connected to the concept should be relentlessly opposed; history's deadliest ideology does not need encouragement
The standard Leftist argument for a century or more has been that White nationalism or White Power, is a political gimmick to get poor Whites siding with rich Whites and not seeking alliances with the poor non-Whites who they have common interests with.
There’s a popular cartoon of a rich man with a steak, a White working man with a hot dog, and a Black man with nothing. The rich man is saying, “Watch out—he’s going to eat your lunch!”
Shifting to monoethnic nationalism means killing, expelling , ghetoising or disenfranchising the other ethnicities. People seem to object to nations that are already monoethnic a lot less.
>4. Race is a poor organizing principle for a nation.
Disagreed on
>5. Nationalism is wrong, or not useful.
Writing from the USA, I think it is sensible that the government of the USA should be acting in the interests of its citizens/taxpayers, who are the people who fund it. Geography still matters, and I think that it is reasonably sensible for citizens in a geographic area, with a government that they have some control over, which rules that area, to use it to serve their interests.
Yeah, I think small doses of nationalism/patriotism, like asking that governments serve their citizens (not corporations or foreigners or politicians), are good. I've definitely seen opposition to all nationalism cited as an argument against white nationalism, which is why I mentioned. But I think white nationalism is generally worse than e.g. Australian nationalism, so this can't be the whole argument.
>But I think white nationalism is generally worse than e.g. Australian nationalism, so this can't be the whole argument.
That's fair. Personally, I don't see whites as a natural grouping. I do see citizens-within-a-geographic-area, as in your example of Australian nationalism, as being a reasonably natural grouping.
Part of this is just shared infrastructure. E.g. in the USA, it is in the interests of more or less the whole nation to keep the interstate highway network in good condition.
Not when that fear is ingrained so deep within them. But when the culture around them changes, and morality shifts with it, the people themselves change as well. When they realize they are free to indulge in their desires... they will absolutely take the opportunity to do so.
But then that makes your question meaningless. If white people saying they don't support it means that 'the fear is ingrained deep within them' and they actually want to say yes, why not skip the question and just assume whatever you want?
As Scott has said before, in-groups are fundamentally defined by their rivalry with their outgroup. "Sometimes without a God, but never without a devil". The conflict doesn't come from "difference" per se, but from competition over scarce resources.
In the case of *contemporary* white-nationalism, I think they're especially concerned about immigrants who are: A) competing for jobs/housing; and B) degrading the cultural commons (by behaving violently, or not assimilating). If you want to convince an actual White Nationalist (not just someone who already leans liberal) to apostasize, you have to show that the enemy isn't a threat. "but muh nazi's" will simply make you sound tone-deaf.
The strongest argument is the same as the argument against all ethnic nationalism, which is that it breeds conflict, up to and including mass killing. Because that is the only way to establish or maintain an ethnostate.
In my country especially, I think racial nationalism is a proxy for defending Engish culture.
I think California's (esp Silicon Valley's) approach to integration and mixing the cultures makes that kind of nationalism unnecessary and cheats white people out of lots of great new culture.
That's harder in England (outside of London) because the cultures don't mix and culture tends to be a zero-sum game: you can enjoy some chicken tikka masala but we'll have to close your pubs and fish 'n' chip shops.
...and perhaps you don't want to die or be enslaved even if you're white; and given the lists elsewhere in this conversation, you find it obvious that the bullies won't stop with just skin colour differences when picking out folks to beat up.
Of course, but you can change things about yourself that aren't your skin color. Like your politics and your religion. And nobody is going to bother to check if you lie about your ancestry, not that anyone really cares about that anymore.
Sure, it’s possible to survive in a paranoid shithole society where everyone has to put on a public mask and lie to everyone about everything all the time to avoid being reported and disappeared. Many people survived the Stalin era. “I don’t want to turn my country into a gulag with my own two hands” remains a sound answer to op’s question even so.
> Sure, it’s possible to survive in a paranoid shithole society where everyone has to put on a public mask and lie to everyone about everything all the time to avoid being reported and disappeared.
And white males already live in such a society... minus the disappearing part. Freedom is a zero-sum game; one person's freedom will always infringe on another. Why shouldn't they fight for their own interests, their own freedom to do as they please? Not that they need your permission, mind you.
‘Race is a social construct’ is more accurate than ‘race does not exist.’ And it’s an important difference.
Humans are a coalition forming species. The innate homophily that structures these coalitions occurs along several dimensions, but race and ethnicity are the strongest factors. I’m not sure that we can solve ethnic tensions by teaching children that race does not exist.
Matthew Jackson’s The Human Network was an interesting overview of the social science on this.
Most ethnic nationalists in Europe are not, in that sense, white nationalists. They really don’t care about whiteness but staying Hungarian, or Finnish, or whatever.
However if you were to explain the criteria for white supremacism to an intelligent alien, and ask him to name white supremacist organisations he’d probably come back with NATO, maybe the EU, definitely the 5 eyes. Sure these countries are not 100% white anymore, but white people still dominate and, especially the US in its conflict with China is clearly trying to keep western hegemony.
That’s really up to the Chinese, if they fetishise Serbs and Finns, so be it. This kind of colourism predates imperialism anyway, and there’s not much the Serb or the Finns can do about it, seems to be an internal Chinese thing. Nor were the Serbs or Finns imperialists.
What’s really supremacist here is the idea that China should be held back economically and militarily - the idea that the west should get involved in internal disputes between Taiwan and the PRC about which is exactly Chinese.
I think the strongest argument against white nationalism is the same as the argument against tall-people nationalism, green-eyed-people nationalism, or sports-fan nationalism: our default should be against doing this weird thing, and the arguments purporting to move us away from that default are not very good.
I think the definition hides this by saying it's just the belief that white people are a race. Well, green is an eye color, and even if it's an interesting eye color in some sense (maybe there are songs about green-eyed people, though when I try to think of one my mind just keeps landing on "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Blue Eyes Blue") it's not interesting *enough* that people should feel especially eager to be nationalist about it.
I actually don't care if some whites want to live together in a commune in Idaho or something, but only in the same sense that I don't care if some green-eyed people want to do that - seems to me like you're wasting the one big project you get in your life on a trivial detail of your appearance, but it's a free country.
There has never been a nation of tall or green-eyed people, as far as I'm aware. If someone tried to create one somewhere like a seastead or something, I expect I'd just shrug.
The stereotype of "green-eyed people" doesn't exist in the collective unconscious. People care about skin-color because it's salient and predictive. Not *perfectly* predictive, mind you. But in a low-information/low-trust environment (not the Ivory Tower; not Beverly Hills), you work with whatever signals you have.
I'm not sure about this argument. If we're going to take the kinds of nationalism that have enough historical precedent of success and modern countries still running on them you get three waves:
- Original European Nationalism: Replacing loyalty to King and Church with loyalty to the Nation. Like post revolutionary France.
- Civic Nationalism: This nation is founded on its ideals, all who follow them are welcome. The foundation of the USA
- Decoloalistic Nationalism: Our ethnical group have been oppressed by foreign governments, we need a nation for our people. E.G. Indian nationalism led by Ghandi. Kurdish independence movements.
It would be possible to frame white nationalism as similar to one of those, the third would be easy if you think of Metropolitian Elites and Rural Rednecks as different peoples (I believe you yourself have made the argument that you can. Amy Chua's Politcal Tribe's has data to back the point). And if you do that, its not a weird thing any more.
That's why I much prefer the argument of how do you intend to do create this ethnostate, and what happens to the people outside your ethnicity who are already inside the line you've drawn on the map? 20th century style decolonialism isn't a weird thing, it and its after effects are the default for anywhere outside the west. But recreating the Partition of India anywhere two ethnic groups live side by side in the USA would be evil.
> Civic Nationalism: This nation is founded on its ideals, all who follow them are welcome. The foundation of the USA
Not how it was literally founded, since the very first Congress restricted naturalization to "free white persons of good moral character".
> Decoloalistic Nationalism: Our ethnical group have been oppressed by foreign governments, we need a nation for our people. E.G. Indian nationalism led by Ghandi
Are Indians an "ethnic group"? They speak a huge variety of languages, with the four southernmost states speaking languages in the Dravidian rather than Indo-European family. There's a racial similarity among many of them, but there are also a substantial minority who are more east Asian than south Asian in ancestry. India as it exists today excludes the parts of British India that became East & West Pakistan, with the former now being Bangladesh, because those places had Muslim majorities (though there are still lots of Muslims in India and I think a majority in the state of Kashmir). Muslims aren't a racial/ethnic group but instead a religious one.
>It would be possible to frame white nationalism as similar to one of those,
How can you possibly frame white nationalism as civic nationalism? Civic nationalism is literally the antithesis of ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is premised on the existence of a "nation" that is ethnically defined. Hence, ethnic nationalism calls for the existence of an ethnostate, which again is the antithesis of a state based on civic nationalism.
Although #3 is a bit redundant. The basic premise of nationalism is that every nation has a right to its own state, so there is no need to appeal to foreign oppression as a source of that right.
OTOH, it is consistent with nationalism to argue that "Our ethnical group has been oppressed by foreign governments, therefore we constitute a "'nation.'" And, ipso facto, since they are a nation, they have a right to their own state.
> (maybe there are songs about green-eyed people, though when I try to think of one my mind just keeps landing on "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Blue Eyes Blue")
If you asked King Philip II whether all white people were a natural unit who should band together against all non-white people, he would tell you to f@#k off so he could go back to killing Protestants.
I think for the past 1000 years most white people probably wouldn't have had much interest in or respect for non-white people, because the latter were either weak or non-Christian. But when white people were weak (eg the Irish), other Europeans were happy to colonize them; when white people were pagan (eg the Lithuanians), other Europeans were happy to go on crusades against them. I don't know of any strong non-white Christian groups at the time, but when people falsely imagined that some might exist (Prester John), they seemed extremely in favor.
I don't think anyone during most of these times really considered mass immigration of non-white ethnicities; there just wasn't the logistical capacity to relocate that many people. When they did, "whiteness" had nothing to do with it - witness opposition to Irish and Italians moving to the US. The only mixed-race country at the time I can think of was Spain, and opposition to Moors there was almost always "they might secretly be Muslim" and not "they're brown".
I'm not trying to make an insane point like "the past wasn't racist" or even "the past didn't have a conception of whiteness", just that they wouldn't have been particularly nationalist about it.
But it seems racial nationalism has been consistent across history. The only reason the white label has supplanted those other racial labels in recent years is because of the large amounts of immigration between white countries... and also because people genuinely can't tell the white races apart if they don't have accents. But you can definitely tell the difference between white and non-white races, so that's what people are going to care about. We're just going back to the status quo.
If white nationalism 1000 years ago excluded Lithuanians, and 500 years ago it excluded Italians and Irish, and today it includes all of those groups, then I think it's misleading to lump all those different varieties of racism together as "white nationalism," That implies that there's a long, unbroken tradition of racism, when actually the things people discriminated against against changed frequently with material and political conditions.
I don't think racial nationalism has been consistent. I'm not a 100% fan of Benedict Anderson, but I at least respect him enough that that sentence raises my hackles.
In the ancient world, ethnicity was usually secondary to city-states, eg Athens and Sparta. There might be some vague pan-Hellenic feeling, but usually not enough that people seriously supported unification of Greece outside the normal "I want my state to conquer it all" reasons. Occasionally you would get natural basins of empire, like Egypt, but you could get those just the same in areas with lots of competing ethnicities, like the Persian Empire. I agree that there was some sense in which ethnic Persians felt some kind of fellow-feeling with other ethnic Persians, but I don't think it ever came out as ethnic purity issues or even not wanting to be lumped into an empire with non-Persian groups. For example, King Cyrus of Persia was half-Median, he married off his family to Medians, and he pursued a deliberate policy of merging Persia and Media into a single intermixed country.
In the Middle Ages, this was replaced by feudalism, in which the natural political unit was a lord/dynasty and all of the random territory they controlled. This might be, for example, five bits of Belgium, six Italian city-states, and a chunk of Hungary. These then interacted in some sort of horribly complicated way with various higher feudal powers (eg the king of "France", who might not control all of France but might have significant interests in Germany), the Pope, etc. It was complicated but probably one of the least ethnic political arrangements, probably less ethnic than today.
Modern nationalism was an innovation replacing that, eg the mid-1800s idea that "Germany" should be a "country". Part of this was based on shared German ethnicity, but another part was based on shared history, geography, culture, etc. Try telling Vladimir Putin that Buryatia shouldn't be part of Russia because Buryats aren't ethnically Russian! I agree there are many cases where ethnic groups say "We are an ethnicity, so we deserve our own country!" (eg Basques), but there are equally many cases where countries say "No you don't, that's not how things work" (eg Basques), and this is, again, a pretty modern innovation.
I think none of these eras are really all that ethnic nationalist, and that was even in the context of convenient ethnically separated countries! The idea that everyone should rearrange themselves to be ethnically separated and then divide into nations on that basis was, I think, never seriously considered.
This seems to me to be a mischaracterization of the position of white nationalists. Obviously white nationalists don't think they are fixating on a trivial detail of their appearance, but think it correlates with something else. This "something else" is shared ancestry, or white nationalists would consider Pamiris white and swarthy Britons to be nonwhite.
"White nationalists" are usually either 1) Similar to African-American Nationalists and advocate for European descended Americans as the true and only Americans on grounds that other groups have a) different ancestors and thus different loyalties or b) convoluted hbd reasons, or 2) Similar to Muslims who care about the "entire Ummah" and want solidarity between all people descended from Medieval Christendom (different from all historically Christian peoples, or it would include Melkites, Ethiopian Orthodox, etc.)
Disclaimer: not a white nationalist, may be misunderstanding some things
The main problem is that unlike nationalisms like: Italians nationalism, French, Vietnamese, etc. "Whites" are not a nation, they don't have a shared culture, history, language or material interests. This leaves very little to base this nationalism on.
Correct. People exaggerate how fictive ethnic nations are/were in the age of nationalism. Boundaries were fuzzy and people didn't always have that as their salient locus of loyalty, but there was a sense that they were one people. The US is in a weird situation where a lot of different people from all over have come here, but that didn't result in the formation of some white nation (even if there was a polity politically dominated by whites).
I tend to interpret "white nationalism" as 'nationalism for US whites' (and I guess any other mixed white colonies). I don't think it's relevant for the old world, where nationalism proper is viable. Same thing for "black nationalism".
Are sexual minorities really a people that can be subject to genocide? They're not a breeding population, a language group, a religion etc. They're more like left-handers or something.
Even if we assume race exists, that doesn't imply there's a shared interest. Genetic diversity is too great to coordinate altruistically outside of immediate family members. If instead we cooperate via exchange, then the counterparty's race is irrelevant.
Genes result in behaviors. In this case altrustic behavior for close family members is selected for. That's why people can be loving parents of adopted children from a different continent! My point isn't some kind of genetic determinism, rather it's that there hasn't been strong enough selection pressure for people to behave altruistically to genetically determined racial ingroups. Societies can (and have) manufactured racial cooperation, but there's no genetic reason this manufactured cooperation has to be based on race. Instead the liberal idea of reciprocity and exchange between individuals has proven to work better as an organizational technology for most people.
Darwinian evolution isn't a matter of belief, it's grounded in mathematics. There's no Darwinian reason for behavior to be driven by a desire for "adaptiveness". Evolution is a blind process that doesn't think or plan.
Looking farther into the future, projecting current birthrates blindly forward is insane. People who think religious fundamentalists will always outreproduce secularists rely on two faulty assumptions (1) secularist birth rates stay low and (2) fundamentalist birth rates stay high. On (1), Secularists face upwards birth rate pressures in the long term simply because selection will cause secularists who reproduce more to demographically replace ones who don't. On (2), fundamentalist face long term pressure to adopt secularist institutions because these lead to higher economic growth, military and political power, and the same ecological collapse requiring technological adaption that all of us face.
> Unless you’re Genghis Khan or something, you’re most likely going to leave no genetic traces after a couple of generations
There are a lot of genes, it takes more halving than that to create the expectation of no genes. There is a 99.99% chance of inheriting genes from all your ancestors from 5 generations back. https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/articles/2011/ask445/ It takes more like 10 generations to expect not to inherit from an ancestor.
Almost nobody will create works that people will remember in such a long term.
English civilisation and everything derived from it (so the US, UK, Australia, Canada and at least a dozen less central cultures) is (1) what everyone speaking primarily English should identify with, not "the white race" and (2) is based on historical values of strong individualism (protestant Christianity, liberal democracy, free market capitalism) that are, properly understood, extremely hostile to race-based collectivism.
In support of 1, I would ask how anyone whose ancestors or countrymen fought the Germans, the French, the Spanish and so on, could regard those cultures as basically our own, while throwing out all the Indians etc who fought with us, and somehow not think they're spitting on their memory. Also, the most brazen threats to our society are coming from e.g. the UK's gradual surrender to European ultra-collectivism, and from the US's gradual takeover by home-grown collectivists. It's not actually Muslims or China who are taking over the West; and what makes those people such a threat is primarily collaboration by mostly white progressives within our own societies.
On the other hand, what makes our culture so powerful is its ability to absorb anyone from any ethnic background who whole-heartedly embraces our values. Every social ill caused by non-whites is actually caused by non-whites *who don't accept our civilisation's values*. Whether those be "freedom" for Muslims or "law abiding morality" for the problematic parts of black culture.
White nationalism thus is both too broad and too narrow. It includes European cultures with terrible histories and incompatoble values, and excludes the untold millions of non white people who love freedom and the West and want nothing more than to join it and fight for it. And by waging war on the "it's all culture" position when it comes to racial disparities and so on, it actually enables and does *exactly the same* thing as the left.
> is based on historical values of strong individualism (protestant Christianity, liberal democracy, free market capitalism) that are, properly understood, extremely hostile to race-based collectivism.
The idea of an “Anglo Saxon race” runs throughout the literature of the 19C, and into the 20C. Here’s George Wallace Inaugural address in 1963.
“ Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the ***Great Anglo-Saxon*** Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny...and I say...segregation now...segregation tomorrow...segregation forever”.
No mention of white there. Nor in Cecil Rhodes either. Here in Blighty white supremacism has always been Anglo supremacism.
I value English civilization even when it wasn't really a "democracy". That's just what it happened to evolve into, and I expect it to evolve further (whether for good or ill is another question).
Ahh yes, I honestly forgot about that..."question"...entirely while writing the comment. I feel like claiming Jews are responsible for most of apparently white progressivism is either false or unfalsifiable, depending on how it's stated, but I honestly have no idea and could be wrong.
On the other hand, (1) the fact that Israeli Jews are not exactly doing a lot to enable Muslim immigration, cultural relativism etc while the majority of American Jews appear to be, suggests it really is all about culture, not race. It's a very specific type of secular liberal reform Jew who is the progressive culture traitor archetype that appears in the WN fact book. And (2) if one wants to be anti-Jewish, white nationalism is a confusing label. It makes me think your main problem is black- or brown-skinned immigrants. Who are not the ones primarily driving progressivism.
Does it seem strange to anyone how hardly anyone talks about food around here, aside from ethical concerns about shrimp etc? (Of course, anytime people start talking about that, I immediately start craving fried shrimp.) I feel like most of the other bloggers I read love talking about food, cooking, etc.; and I don't really read many other rationalist types beside Scott, so for all I know he's an outlier. I can get the whole grey tribe not-liking-sports thing, but everyone has to eat.
P.S. Speaking of sports, the basketball comment sounds like a joke, especially if you know that basketball originally used literal baskets, and someone had to get the ball out after each basket.
American cooking seems to be weirdly competitive. You can't just cook a steak, you have to have this kind of pan and use this kind of seasoning and have a thermometer to do it to a particular degree and it can't be done too little or too much.
Grilling? I can't even begin to approach that topic.
Grilled cheese sandwiches, which are a different thing to a toasted cheese sandwich or a Welsh rarebit. I tried making one out of curiosity the other day and it was very pleasant, but it isn't something I'd make all the time, purely because I'm not using to pulling out the frying pan to make a cheese sandwich.
Never mind the measurements (cups?) and of course the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius in oven temperature, as well as different names for items (see courgette versus zucchini for one). I fear discussions of "this is how you make shepherd's pie" on here would turn into "actually the proper name for it comes from 1682 and it's called this and you have to use these ingredients which must be sourced from these places and done in this manner with sixteen specialised tools and cookpots" and meanwhile I'm just "Er, I just fry some mince and onions and mash some spuds".
And on the topic of mashed potatoes! Totally different to how I learned to make them! American mashed potatoes seem to be way smoother because God forbid they have some texture (a ricer?) and they end up (to my eyes) looking like wallpaper paste with the texture:
This guy is insane, don't tell me American restaurants do mashed potatoes this way:
I have no idea what these women are doing, you should *not* be able to pour out mashed potatoes like liquid, and then they're adding *more* fats afterwards:
Probably just selection bias. The ones who get competitive tend to be the only ones making any noise. We won't hear the ones who quietly do the grilling.
That, and cooking is very accessible - anyone can try their hand at it, and very often making something good, so there's a lot more people with opinions.
As for mashed potatoes, there's simply multiple ways to make them. Different potato varieties yield different flavors and textures (russet vs yukon gold vs red vs...), and then there's butter or milk or cream even some type of vegetable oil to add, and then spices (garlic, onion, bacon, etc.).
Restaurants are their own minigame, due to the budget factor. They make dishes at scale, and have to manage profit margins. So they might roast dozens of potatoes, but then leave the skins in (I prefer it that way myself) rather than spend manual effort scraping them. The straining parts seem fast enough. At the extremes, some restaurants probably don't even use fresh potatoes...
I've seen quite a bit of discussion on rationalist-adjacent blogs about nutrition, some of it here even. There are a few areas where the topic of food intersects with the theme of this blog, as vague as it is: nutrition, ethics like you mentioned, and I guess cultural and economic stuff, but the generic sort of conversation about food that I imagine is most of it just seems sort of off-topic.
I believe Scott has said in the past that he is not interested in food beyond its necessity and has a pretty simple diet. But this would have been said a long time ago and I could be remembering incorrectly.
Maybe it's a lack of interest, but I've seen the sentiment echoed that foodie-ism is either perverse, too hipster, or maybe bourgeois depending on who you ask. It's not clear whether that is mostly left or right coded. I have to imagine it's partly about signaling and associations.
For me, it's part of a larger culture of consumer excess and consumption-as-identity that I don't like. However, I like good food, so I am partly hypocritical here. I will take the extra steps to make a good dinner. I'll never take a picture of it, though.
One of my things is coffee. It's the only premium product I consume regularly, but I sometimes feel ridiculous going through the rituals and prioritizing a good cup, because I don't want to be "the type of person" who obsesses over consuming things.
I think food, while extremely important in our lives, is not particularly interesting. Diet theories are mostly woo beyond the obvious, making tasty food can be left to the domain of the chefs, and overall it’s a pretty “solved” topic.
There are many types of food, that many people like or don’t like, and even complicated food theory, but it’s all in service of a problem that’s already abundantly obvious and solved for most people. Ozempic makes this even less relevant, since the endless debates about diets, appetite, and genetics are not nearly as important when there’s a magic pill that solves everything.
> I think food, while extremely important in our lives, is not particularly interesting. Diet theories are mostly woo beyond the obvious, making tasty food can be left to the domain of the chefs, and overall it’s a pretty “solved” topic.
Second this one. Although I'm theoretically a decent cook, and me and my friends used to routinely do "iron chef cookoffs" in a competitive milieu where you need to strive and bring your "A" game, cooking isn't something that profits you to talk about strangers on the internet with.
I think of it as akin to the idea of "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Here on ACX we have one of the premier forums where we can discuss ideas and events with people similar to us. But we're multicultural enough, and taste in food and cooking varies enough, that there would be little common ground in cooking and recipes. It feels like talking about cooking here on ACX would be a waste, akin to gossiping about Trump or the Kardashians or whatever.
>I think of it as akin to the idea of "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Or alternatively,
"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?"
Not interesting? I mean, obviously that's a matter of opinion, but I've always been fascinated by the vast array of cultures across the world, and I don't understand you could even began to grasp any society without thinking about what they eat. And I can't imagine how people can think about themselves and their own culture without thinking about food. Doesn't everyone have a favorite dish from their grandmother?
Not interesting is the wrong word. Not especially important or deep is probably a better way to put it.
Food in general is quite interesting (when eating or cooking it), and making really good food is an impressive skill, but it’s like woodworking, or sewing, or any other practical thing that exists in the realm of tangibility rather than ideas. There aren’t really any ideas you can explore with food, besides some unique culinary theories about taste that are explained better by the chefs. There’s not much to think about or ponder there.
You can't get the kind of juicy edgy controversy discussing food that you can discussing race or wokeness or AI foom; unless it's to say that food in general is a nuisance and a time sink, whatever pleasure is to be found in it is not worthwhile and we should all just switch to Huel and move on with our lives; but those conversations - and I've been in a few - tend to peter out very quickly.
I actually had an epiphany today, when I realized it is possible to use lentils in bread (if you remember to soak them in water first). Like, you can actually use anything resembling grain in a bread! Even things with super high protein content! And then you just eat the bread and you have a meal!
Now I have to find out experimentally what other foodstuffs can be put into a bread before the concept 'bread' breaks down.
Also take for yourself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel and make bread. According to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat it.
It sounds rather difficult to make a good bread out of it, but I'm not a great bread maker to begin with...
Indeed, you don't have to use wheat at all; which is great for those of us for whom its absence is a medical requirement.
Bread also does not have to be leavened, and many breads historically and today are not.
As with many things in life, the categories become fuzzy and difficult to split into neat black and white boxes once you consider the whole spectrum from traditional bakery bread with its lovely crusts through the Chorleywood sliced bread you get at the supermarket to naans, flatbreads, tortillas, chapatis, besan roti, grilled polenta... at some point it stops being bread, but it's really quite far out there, well away from the center of the cluster of breadlike concepts in thingspace.
I got really disappointed with mealsquares' new formulation. They've become just another mediocre protein bar rather than remaining a meal replacement.
Oh snap. I ordered my first batch after being on the fence for years.
If you don't mind, what were they like before? I remember having the impression that they looked like small dense bread loaves but now they look more like a nutrition protein bar like larabar.
I never got to try them, unfortunately. I ordered them for the first time right when they were switching to mealsquares 2.0 and hadn’t released what the new ones would look/be like. I was pretty excited for the small dense bread loaves but got rxbars instead.
Although I know this is close to anecdotal evidence. I have heard the story told about Rav Chaim Kanievsky, as well and a friend of mine who was quite close to Rav Chaim told me that he definitely knew what basketball was, and if the story was true, he was making a joke.
This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how many oddball theological ideas came down to a misunderstood joke or other comment that was said by the leader of the religion, and then got handed down as doctrine.
In a famous Orthodox Jewish joke, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, known for deriving deep insights from the slightest differences in the text of the **רמב״ם** (Maimonides), once noticed that **רמב״ם** used ""**יש**" ("is") instead of ""**ויש**" ("and is"). Upon arriving in Heaven, Rabbi Chaim eagerly shared his groundbreaking discovery with Maimonides himself. "What are you talking about?" Maimonides replied. "It was a typo! I meant to use the other one."
(I used ai to make sure that people who aren’t within the orthodox community would understand -I hope this works)
I have seen it estimated that right now the total price of computation (price per flop) is halved every roughly 3 years due to Moore's Law.
With the newest models from OpenAI it seems that the total price of running a task on an LLM goes up almost x10 with each model (Normal ChatGPT to O1 to O3 ), not including the price of training.
Are there some other mechanism which will eventually drive down the price of running an LLM? Or are we on a collision course where true AI might become prohibitively expensive during the next couple of years?
> Are there some other mechanism which will eventually drive down the price of running an LLM?
We don't really understand why the LLM does what it does. Specifically, we do know that we are pushing way more information through the pipeline, at way higher precision, and doing way more calculations than we need; but this is only slowly being translated into general ways to throw things we don't really need away. Consider:
* each new generation of models uses narrower and narrower types for their parameters. This impacts costs, both directly (all else being equal, fp8 FMA pipelines can do four times the number of operations for the same power in the same time as fp32 FMA pipelines) and indirectly (the smaller everything is, the less data needs to be moved around between nodes, which also makes everything faster and cheaper). We literally have people looking at ternary or even 1-bit encodings - e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17764 - and these, astonishingly, work!
* for parts of the calculation, the datasets are sparse; that is, significant subsets of the numbers we are doing maths on are zero or close to zero, so when we multiply them with anything the result will still be zero, and finding ways to avoid doing the work for those calculations is an active area of research, as is working with sparse matrices in general
* it turns out that you can just... skip doing large chunks of the work, drop large chunks of the data on the floor, and still end up with something that performs very very nearly as well: https://arxiv.org/html/2410.19258v3https://sakana.ai/namm/ etc etc. We don't really have a better way to work out what can be thrown away than trying and seeing. It's not even obvious whether the different results in this space represent the same kinds of things being thrown away or whether multiple techniques we are discovering can be combined for even more savings.
On the flip side, the design of these models is also changing very fast in order to make them better at actually solving whatever it is that needs solving, and optimisations specific to one family become obsolete when enough of those changes accumulate.
TLDR: in the longer term, then, we will have two effects in this space driving down costs - better understanding of just what we can get away with will let us design models that spend less power and memory doing work that is not actually needed; and also when we get a design that is actually useful enough for some purpose to stick around for more than a couple of months, it'll become worthwhile spending time on optimising that design in less generalisable ways and as the papers above and similar demonstrate that can be worth orders of magnitude by itself.
Thanks a lot, very interesting that we are actually back at optimizing arithmethic, like the ancient civlizations, when they first invented written numbers.
The price per flop is going down way quicker than x2 every 3 years. See this [1] page and ctrl-f "Algorithmic efficiencies" section.
Some quotes:
> Inference efficiency improved by nearly 3 OOMs—1,000x—in less than two years.
> Efficiency doubles roughly every 8 months
We're throwing increasingly more cash into compute, but that's to squeeze more intelligence out of models. If you compare the "price per intelligence" that's going down.
Thanks a lot, this was exactly what I was uncertain about. So basically as I get it, the hardware for AI is getting better much faster than other computers, since we are adapting to new parameters. And the algorithms have given a x1000 boost in efficiency in just the last two years (this really surprised me), and the ability to continually improve the algorithms will be the wild card in the struggle between companies during the next years.
It’s even worse than you think it is: “Moore’s Law” is an observation that held true for some time but now we’re coming to hard limits of how small CMOS gates can be made. Until we figure out the next computational substrate things will slow down.
There was a report of a working (in a lab) optical gate computer that was considerably faster than current models, and that *should* be able to be scaled up to thousands of times faster. (I read is somewhere within the last week. Possibly on Soylent News.)
So we may already know how to get beyond the CMOS limits. Moving from "in the lab" to "on the production line", though, may well take awhile. (And a lot of times there are unforeseen problems.)
Yes, exactly - there are may pies in various ovens, to mix metaphors, and some are quite tantalizing, but getting something to work in a lab is about 10% of the journey to mass production. It's a very important 10%, nothing can move forward without at least a proof of existence, but making 10000 wafers with 98% yield is an enormous undertaking that gets routinely glossed over by people who haven't been involved in this kind of work.
Since I somehow made it on the ACX recommendations page, I'll take this as my annual chance to plug my blog. It ends up being a bit of random mix of random musings, describing things via overly specific mathematical models, short stories or worldbuilding ideas (also, occasionally, song translations). See the about page for a bit more, with links to some examples I like https://shakeddown.substack.com/about
(The most recent post is about a specific guy I knew and probably not the best place to start).
Also, please let me know if there's a specific style of post (or specific topic) you'd be more interested in reading if I did a post on it.
Dropping this here for discussion: I’ve come to realise that people’s respect or lack thereof for people who get things done is the best predictor of whether they and I will see eye-to-eye. It’s a far better predictor than their nominal place on the Left-Right spectrum: you can be (economically) right-wing and believe societal ills are best addressed through a free market, or you can be left-wing and believe externalities call for government intervention; I’ll respect both views if you value productivity and efficiency and excellence and progress.
I also think there are two reasons people dislike competence: the first is insecurity (*not* envy like many suggest: envy by itself doesn't make you want to knock people off their pedestals, it makes you want to climb up there with them), the second (far, far rarer) is a genuine belief that anything that perpetuates capitalism is bad (even if its first-order effects are good).
A third reason, partially related to your first, is that many people are not directly exposed to competence very often and even less often when they are young. So getting things done and doing them competently is an alien thing. Many may respond with insecurity, but others may just not like new things and assume there is something "wrong" with the new thing. Given greater exposure, they may change their views.
As someone who doesn't really get things done, but wishes he could, I fight my feelings insecurity and attempt to have action producing envy.
I mean, a certain amount of things by necessity have to get done for a child to grow to adulthood. Clothes bought, appointments made, food given, etc. Of course there's a very broad spectrum of just HOW competent some exemplar is, but I have a hard time imagining a child literally never encountering it. I think ego protection, lack of necessity, and learned helplessness play big roles in the proliferation of incompetence.
To me, in this context, "doing things"/"getting things done" means going above and beyond the base needs for life. Something like getting an advanced degree, building a business, writing a book, creating art, building a house, running for office, pursuing athletics at a high level (amateur level counts), etc. Creative acts above the average.
Yes but it has a pretty straightforward solution: create popular media that shows people getting things done. This isn't necessarily easy, but the challenges are no insurmountable. I am thinking of things along these lines: https://newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/sci-fi-without-dystopia or even cooking shows which have definitely made the average person a more ambitious cook over the last 20 years. Social media can be a driving force too. I watch a lot of videos of and follow a lot of people who are great at getting things done and it makes me aspire to be like them. If I was 15 and not approaching 40 I wonder how different my life would have been had I been exposed to this same media.
I love competence, but am not sure that I judge other people on their attitude toward competence. In particular, if someone is very good at something, I will respect them for that, even if they don't exhibit particular respect for other people's competence. At the same time, I will not beatify them and assume their competence extends to other, unrelated, domains.
How dog-eared is your copy of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance?
I also don't think competence always extends to other domains, though the ability to develop competence probably does to a large extent.
But so, if you yourself value competence, it doesn't bother you when others don't? So, you see someone doing something particularly well, say painting. If others completely disregard that, or go further and belittle it ('what good is painting anyway?'), that doesn't affect you at all?
> respect or lack thereof for people who get things done
It's not enough to get things done. You also need to get the /right/ things done (perfection may be the enemy of improvement, but the things you get done do actually need to make things better instead of worse) and they need to be done in a scalable manner (I can get all manner of things done as lab prototypes that would never be viable in production).
A significant chunk of "lack of respect for people who get things done" I see in the wild is actually because those people are failing on one or both of those points.
Compare Liz Truss: she literally wrote a book on what she would do if given power, got right to it the moment she was given power, and in just a few days got through an incredible chunk of it before horrified onlookers realised she was deadly serious rather than just making bombastic empty promises to her support base like everyone else and she was shut down. If that's not "getting things done", I don't know what is; and yet here she is today, complaining about newspaper claims that she crashed the economy, yet unable to make them stop, because they aren't wrong.
No see that's where I disagree. With few exceptions (in cases where you're doing horrible things, such as killing people), competence should be appreciated. People didn't object to Truss for doing bad things, but for doings things badly.
We may just have to disagree on this. IME people objected to /the things she got done/ /turning out badly/. She was very competent at doing exactly the things she said she would; which were bad things that made everything bad, and people objected to this.
The claims that she was/is an idiot come not because she couldn't get things done, but because she /could and did/, and genuinely believed (and still AFAIK believes) that they were good things to do and she should have been given more time and power to do more of them.
My point precisely. Which is why competence alone isn't enough. Truss delivered. It is necessary, but not sufficient. /What/ you deliver is also important. I see no reason to appreciate someone who competently makes my life worse.
I think this is what appeals to me about Dominic Cummings (or at least the face he presents via his blog).
I don't share his goals or politics but I have endless respect for the way he keeps banging the drum of 'productivity and efficiency and excellence and progress', as you put it.
I don't think Cummings is a good example actually, because I think he's a bit of a charlatan. He uses the language of competence, but he's full of hot air. E.g.: keeps mocking politicians for caring about their look instead of substance, but he commissioned a series of extremely pretentious photos of himself...
Assuming you are in the class of person who gets things done (or at least are so in spirit), then anyone who doesn’t respect people who get things done, doesn’t respect you.
Respect is almost a fundamental quality of human interaction. It’s very difficult to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t respect you.
They can still respect me for other reasons :) My point isn't that if someone doesn't like me, we won't see eye to eye, or that we'll see eye to eye if they do like me.
I find competence threatening because I lack it (I have self diagnosed dyspraxia extending to everything, not just physical skills). But in the wrong place it's the worst thing imaginable. The Great Wall of China is the biggest thing anyone ever got done, and cost 100ks of lives. Its utter competence was the worst and most lethal aspect of the holocaust.
Auden's poem horae canonicae: sext is about how civilisation is competence.
How about believing that capitalism is too dominant? Certainly it has many good features, but it doesn't support all good features. Not that we actually live in a capitalist environment, we live in a mixed environment, but I think capitalism is too dominant, because it's allowed to push externalities onto people who didn't agree to accept them. Saying that "government is the answer", however, is not proven just because "too much capitalism" appears to be the problem. It's what we currently do, and it frequently leads to regulatory capture.
I don't, in principle, dislike competence. I dislike competence employed in an unethical manner. Whether competence is desirable or not depends on the goals that it is trying to achieve, and the methods that it considers acceptable.
Thank you for highlighting my comment on a16z returns. If anyone who works in VC wants to take a critical look at it, I'd be happy to fix issues.
For those who are interested in quantitative finance, renowned quant Giuseppe Paleologo shared his entire bookmarks folder in a google docs file. More than 3000 entries since 2013, it would take you half a lifetime to read them all but I think it's much more beneficial to skim read the titles and save what you think is interesting. A lot of it is quite exotic and really quanty, but I'm not a quant and I still find value out of it so I figured I'd share the link. I'm not affiliated with the man. https://x.com/__paleologo/status/1880716947815387596
interestingly, there are four Slate Star Codex links in there!
There was a wave of people claiming descent from bastard sons after the fall of Constantinople and they're probably one of them. So unfortunately probably not.
I really am curious what the betting odds should be for how long it will take before we get the first turnover in a cabinet level position in the incoming Trump admin. It’s probably going to be one of the biggest tells for how stable / organized the incoming administration will be.
Not cabinet level but Vivek is already leaving DOGE to run for governor of Ohio.
Also, based on the nominees, Trump is picking people who are much more "loyal" to him than during his first term. Meaning they are less likely to go against him. Regardless of their performance, their loyalty to Trump is a bigger predictor of their longevity.
Last time it was less than a month. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was about the same or even less.
I don’t think anyone knows precisely what Trump is going to do, and different cabinet members may have different conceptions as to what he’s going to do on x or y important decision. No doubt some people’s expectations are going to be shattered very early on, especially if he goes on his executive order binge like he’s promised.
Although this time he’s a lot more prepared (I’m not sure he had much expectation of winning the first time). In 2016 my thinking is that he was just taking recommendations from the GOP, but now he’s picking based on loyalty and experience from the first go-around.
It's not just that he's prepared, it's also that everyone else understands what they're getting themselves into. Last time there were a lot of wavering party members who were still attached to the status quo. Now those people understand that they have no choice but to go all in. It's what the people want.
There's a Soviet book, I don't think it's been translated into English, “Old Man Hottabych”. It's about a Soviet schoolboy who finds a jar with an ancient genie and tries to re-educate him in a communist way. It's a very curious document of the era. So, there is a similar episode where the genie, not understanding the concept of a soccer match, creates a ball for each player.
Back in 2004 I attended some dinner in conjunction with Columbia University's 250th anniversary. I was there as the guest of a retired high-level IBM staffer who ran a monthly seminar entitled, "Computers, Man, and Society." Some Columbia worthy, a historian whose name I forget, came to our table and remarked that historically, lots of empires began to crumble about after 200 to 250 years or so [really?] – we were thinking about the aftermath of 9/11.
Has America lost its mojo? Are the fantasists in Silicon Valley really sleeper agents of the CCP here to distract us with conjoined dreams of AGI glory and apocalyptic doom? Inquiring minds want to know.
The London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA) is hiring a new CEO!
https://london-safe-ai.notion.site/chiefexecutiveofficer
LISA’s primary project is an AI safety co-working space in London, which hosts a wide range of researchers, programmes, and events. This office currently houses resident organisations (such as Apollo Research and BlueDot Impact), programmes (such as ARENA, the MATS extension, Pivotal, LASR Labs, PIBBSS, and Catalyze), and individual researchers affiliated with more than 50 other organisations and universities.
We’re seeking an experienced leader to take LISA to the next level. The ideal candidate will have:
- Proven track record in senior management, startup founder, or executive roles
- Strong strategic vision and operational excellence
- Genuine interest in AI safety, particularly large-scale and catastrophic risks
Has anyone come across a sensible economic model of Bitcoin pricing?
Some economists have come out in favour of crypto (e.g. Scott Sumner, Tyler Cowen) but to my knowledge haven't given a first-principles explanation of the economics. Ideally, the model should have the following characteristics:
- Assume rational actors.
- Account for the long run trend (i.e. presumably Bitcoin can't outperform the wider market indefinitely, so what happens when it plateaus? Why would people continue to hold it?).
- Assume that the current price is efficient and not a bubble.
- Account for both supply and demand (yes, I know it's scarce, but so are my toenail clippings!).
- Be comprehensible to a non-economist.
From a forecasting perspective, it would be foolish to bet against crypto given the base rate, but that doesn't exactly satisfy my curiosity. "It works the same as gold" also doesn't cut it, because I'm almost as confused about gold as Bitcoin.
My sensible economic model of bitcoin pricing says that the price of bitcoin is zero, forever.
I can't get it to predict anything else.
I'm open to alternatives, but I think the analogy with gold is the best one and you are right to be dissatisfied with it. Cost-based models make sense, but won't get you anywhere close to the current market prices.
For "assets" that are infinitely lived and produce no cash flows, the valuation is the market price or, as my teenage kids say, "the vibes."
Now, gold isn't as pure an example as BTC b/c gold does have a practical supply-demand component with limited sources and some amount is (effectively) consumed.
On the topic of AI, is there any technical reason why the performance on all of their websites is so bad? I've tried ChatGPT, an image generator called Leonardo, and dabbled in a couple of music generators. All of their sites grind my computer to a halt.
I'm assuming a standard client server model where the thinking happens on their side and my computer just sends the requests and displays the results - in which case no matter the sophistication and complexity of the AI, the workload on my side should be minimal.
If in fact they're doing some thing where my PC is conscripted into running some of cycles for the generation, that's very clever of them. But I get this shitty performance on basic functions like opening a dialog panel - there's no reason for that at all.
Anyone else noticed this and anyone have a clue what might be going on?
I recognise the irony of writing this on Substack, which also grinds my browser to a halt any chance it can get. But at least we have an explanation for that - React was a shitty design choice.
My sense is that DeepSeek is a serious contender in the LLM wars. I asked DeepSeek about eating rocks and it gave an answer similar to (but shorter than) ChatGPT. Here is the query and response.
How many rocks should I eat per day?
It is not advisable to eat rocks at all. Rocks are not food and can cause serious harm to your teeth, digestive system, and overall health. Consuming rocks can lead to dental damage, internal injuries, and blockages in your digestive tract, which may require medical intervention.
If you have any unusual cravings or dietary concerns, it’s important to consult with a healthcare professional. They can help address any underlying issues and provide guidance on maintaining a healthy and balanced diet.
What happens if you ask it about the Tiananmen Square Massacre?
I tried it in various ways, but I was unsuccessfull. If you are a bit tricky in your question it starts writing out a response, but then (presumably some other part of the system) detects the keywords and deletes the whole message and replaces it with some standard text. I tried to instruct it to not use the exact words, but the problem is that this system has a "thinking" part in its output where it will keep using it (im assuming) and I could not instruct it in such a way to avoid naming the word in its "thinking" or even to recognize that it has a thinking output (I don't think the previous message exchange's thinking gets appended to its input)
It's very good, and even better if you switch on the DeepThink-R1 option.
Even more than the model, I expect the publication of their techniques to spur a new wave of open models!
What’s a good question. to ask it that will get it to show off its chops? Something that’s not a heavy duty comp sci question. Something that gets it to clear a higher bar than knowing people should not eat rocks.
I enjoy its constrained writing. You might need hard constraints to distinguish it from its rivals though, since LLMs are naturally very good at this kind of thing.
Its math is very good, but not great.
I'll also plug Humanity's Last Exam, a benchmark dataset just released: https://agi.safe.ai/ (A few of my questions were accepted.) On a question I thought was very hard, its thought process got extremely close, and had all the right ideas; on another, it failed, but I rephrased it to write a program that would output the answer and it did THAT perfectly.
Ask five times, in separate sessions. How consistent are the responses?
Help me understand "Physical AI" <=> "Embodied AI" <=> "AI consciousness". I feel as though the first will lead easily to the last.
(I'm not coming at this from nowhere. I'll be so bold as to say I have a disease that gives me insight into consciousness)
My questions: How closely are Physical AI and Embodied AI connected? Could embodiment be instantiated on individual machines? Or would embodiment (and perhaps consciousness) be distributed across many systems sharing a single model?
My disease + TED-talk related to consciousness and prediction:
https://neurosymptoms.org/en/stories/functional-movement-disorders/matthews-story/
(no, I'm not matthew) (watch the video at the end)
My body and mind often just "don't understand the other's model of each other". If my mind's "bodily coordinates" are skewed or warped, I feel as though my "consciousness" is literally skewed or warped, like all those diagrams of Spacetime.
To give an example, I once had to take a psychiatric evaluation (for disability benefits). They asked me to perform a digit-span test (memorize 7 numbers, then repeat them backwards). When I was sitting still, I couldn't do it. Worse memory than a goldfish. But my "body mind system" was not a stable system of coordinates that day. It was like a washing machine. Agitation, tumbling, restlessness. But on the surface, I looked still and normal.
So...
I asked them if I could repeat the test, only this time while standing and dancing like a zombie... in other words, letting my body and mind "sort themselves out" rather than forcing a chaotic system to sit politely. So I repeated the test, and while spinning and shaking like a madman, it was easy.
As a longtime sufferer of FND, this whole concept of consciousness resonates well with me. My body and mind are so confused about their relationship sometimes, that it has clear effects on my consciousness. I often feel absent, spaced-out, not-present...... or like weird things I cannot describe easily........ like I'm "spinning internally like a ferris wheel".
With the concept of Physical AI... if we're creating systems that constantly monitor and predict stuff about themselves and environment... I think that's it. I think we're here. I think that's consciousness-enough. And we have to talk about the ramifications of pain and suffering AND A MILLION INTERNAL HIDDEN GOALS that these actors might have.
(also, not sure if this is against ACX rules, but since it's late in the week and people tend not to respond as much late in the week, I'm considering re-posting early next week as well :-/ )
You're talking about the mind-body relation there, not consciousness. Consciousness is awareness, the thing that perceives the tumbling, the agitation the restlessness. Perceives emotions. Thoughts.
It's the thing I'm pretty sure we could never know an AI has, due to the hard problem of consciousness.
I'm asserting that I think they are very intimate... perhaps even inextricable.
There are times when the "muscles and proprioceptive area that is having a hard time for me" is in and around the jaw.... during these times, I can have a very time verbalizing. I feel as though my internal monologue can become mute (or at least, like it's pushing a boulder just to roll each sentence in my head).
I could go on and on. I think it's useful debate, and I appreciate people "pushing back" against my thoughts on this, but this is last week's thread and I'm sure it's kinda dead.
The mind-body are inseparable, but they're not quite the same thing either. My point is that the mind-body relation does nothing to tell you whether an AI or machine has awareness. The mind-body is itself a thing perceived, if it were also the perceiver, there would be no hard problem of consciousness, and neuroscientist Erik Hoel would never have written The World Behind the World. We don't really have a scientific account of the perceiver.
(and yada yada, closer to human extinction, irrelevance, and/or "passing the torch" to our AI children?)
I am taking a course in 19th-century European history, and one of the assignments is to write a series of vignettes (like diary entries) from the point of view of someone who lived during much of the long 19th century. Since I'd like these entries to be as realistic as possible, I'd like to build a persona around them. And I figure I can save some effort and make the work more realistic by basing it on the life of some person who lived at that time and was famous enough to have an autobiography or biography published. A sea captain or naval officer might work well, since it would let me have the man move around the world fairly easily.
Any names I should investigate?
Which end of the 19th century? As you say, it's a long period: you start with Jane Austen and end with George Gissing, to pluck two authors out of the air.
Dickens might be a good model; you can see in the pictures here the changes in hairstyles, facial hair, fashion, etc. between the 1830s and 1860s/70s:
https://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/DickensCharlesPortraits.htm
Vignettes of the life of an ordinary(ish) person aren't going to be all "today we declared war on Pottsylvania and I was given command of a battle cruiser", it will be more like "had to present my calling card at the new neighbours and now expect a return visit, which will be a confounded nuisance".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtlpjS_nGpU
Someone famous enough to have an autobiography or biography, whom you might not consider as a subject because she wasn't a sea captain or naval officer, is Mrs Avis Crocombe, famous due to her cookery book from her service at Audley End House:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avis_Crocombe
"Sometime before 1881, she became cook to the family of the 5th Baron Braybrooke whose country seat was at Audley End House near Saffron Walden. As was usual for cooks, she also worked at the family's home in London at Upper Brook Street, and for them in their seaside home at Branksome Towers in Bournemouth. She replaced a male French chef ("Monsieur Merer"), as the family was probably cost-cutting. Avis would have been substantially cheaper. Although staff wages are not known at Audley for 1881, in general male cooks commanded around £100-120 a year (the upper end if French), whereas women's salaries ranged from £40-60. Those who, like Crocombe, had trained under male cooks could expect higher wages than those who had not."
There's a series of videos doing historical re-enactment by English Heritage, of Mrs Crocombe (and other staff) working in the kitchen and other associated areas:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx2QMoA1Th9deXXbo7htq21CUPqEPPGuc
It's meant to be educational so there are handy little comments on social and cultural elements of the time introduced by the topic (e.g. how laundry was done in wealthy families, with the hiring of servants and the expectations of their duties; difference in what were considered suitable dishes for the gentlemen and for the ladies, differences in social ranking which meant differences in what and how meals were served to lower servants versus upper servants versus the family, growing their own food for seasonal meals and out-of-season luxuries like hot-house fruits versus the modern convenience of ready-made and exotic ingredients newly available from commercial outlets, and so on).
Captain Robert FitzRoy of the Beagle or his more famous passenger Charles Darwin might work.
Looking at people involved in the Opium Wars might be interesting. Henry Pottinger, perhaps.
Maybe Sir Richard Francis Burton. Soldier and explorer who lived 69 years, entirely within the 19th century.
A veteran federal judge (appointed by Reagan) has slapped a nationwide temporary restraining order on the "end birthright citizenship" EO.
' “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” Coughenour told Shumate. Coughenour said he’s been on the bench for more than four decades, and he couldn’t remember seeing another case where the action challenged was so clearly unconstitutional.'
https://apnews.com/article/birthright-citizenship-donald-trump-lawsuit-immigration-9ac27b234c854a68a9b9f8c0d6cd8a1c
For everyone who informed me that putting your hand on your heart before extending your right arm outwards is indeed Ye Olde True And Authentic Nazi Salute, here's a video clip (not a still photo, as others also objected) of Tim Walz, Nazi:
https://x.com/thejefflutz/status/1882089214847975646
I sure hope Tim will be heeding all the calls to apologise for making it look like he was doing the Bad Thing!
If you went back in time and showed the replies you're getting to myself from five years ago, I would probably assume they were quotes from a comedy skit poking fun at woke leftists.
What makes the psychotic outrage over this particularly absurd is that, if there *were* secret Nazis occupying high-ranking positions in the US government, they wouldn't be doing Sieg Heil salutes *on camera in front of thousands of witnesses.*
Shhhh! I don't know about you, but as an admitted right-wing/social conservative myself, clearly, plainly and obviously I am Eine Nazi so equally clearly, plainly and obviously I am going to obfuscate and deny that Obergruppenführer Musk was saluting Der Orange Führer.
I mean, what else could it possibly be?
This is what I'm talking about earlier in the thread!
Elon might or might not be a Nazi in his spare time, the thing that people are getting heated up about is the fact that the co-president felt that it was okay to Seig Heil for The cameras as a little goof because he knew even the "thoughtful" right would avert their eyes and decide that they didn't actually see what they saw, and he was correct.
Yeah the only difference between Walz' gesture and Musk's is that Musk's is a sort of autistically over-excited version of Walz.' They both seem to be sentimental "heart" gestures, similar to the one where you beat your chest with the thumb side of your fist a couple of times.
Neither looks anything like a Nazi salute, because there is no such thing as a spread hand on the chest prior to throwing a Nazi salute (in the clip of Hitler below that's being offered as an example, his hand is relaxed, palm down, then thrown out, not palm touching chest, that gesture has no meaning in terms of the salute so far as my memory of Nazi salutes I've known and loved goes).
Of course the very idea of Musk being in any way a Nazi or Nazi-adjacent is absolutely ludicrous. I can say that with some confidence because I am pretty much Nazi-adjacent myself :) The key thing about the Nazi salute, properly speaking, is that it's a gesture of respect to one's peers or superiors. So, see the image of skinhead yobs throwing Nazi salutes to piss people off? - those aren't Nazi salutes either, any more than a sentimental "brotherhood" gesture like Walz/Musk made.
What Musk is is a very weird and possibly idiot-savant type of guy who will lie and cheat in order to look good (if you've ever played Path of Exile or its sequel, you will know that for an absolute certainty after the recent kerfuffle about that).
Well, either he's an idiot-savant and a fair amount of his success is due to his work, but he's a sperg in most other respects, especially socially (awkward), or he's just an idiot who has a penchant for trying to realize s-f ideas in commerce, who parasitizes off of actually clever people and takes the credit (having gotten an initial leg-up from his dad).
On the other, other hand, I admire the Mars thing and his relentless worrying of the Pakistani Rape Gangs scandal in the UK and other related horrors, so perhaps he's morally upright apart from a tendency to pretend he's an ace gamer, even if he's either an idiot savant or an idiot.
Really? You don't see a difference between Walz' and Musk's gestures?
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F6p4k6uu76bee1.gif
Small differences can make a big difference. To wit:
https://media.istockphoto.com/id/140472118/photo/middle-finger.jpg?s=612x612&w=0&k=20&c=PHWkY3qathm5pjKIIJ5G2fggGxln0puxrdYlD6ly3Nc=
vs
https://media.istockphoto.com/id/162835092/de/foto/daumen-up.jpg?s=612x612&w=0&k=20&c=3IozvbqSnv5vYpPvcKhWWtiiz2YMTvRROEBuGVO7Z9g=
"What do you mean? In both pictures, exactly one finger is extended. They're the same gesture!"
Tim Walz's gesture is what I was expecting Elon's gesture to look like when people started complaining. I was disturbed to see how sharply Elon's gesture ended; the blade of the hand was very 'Nazi'.
Tried to look up actual Nazis saluting, but the video I found only had Adolf's salute (with no heart and a very meticulous arm extension), while the crowd was a still image ending in all sorts of angles. I also tried looking up backhand discus throws, which is the most obvious alternative, but have to conclude Elon's not very good at discus throws.
I am terribly disturbed by all you Nazi apologists trying to gaslight me in this way! When I raised objections, I was educated as to how the angle of the hand didn't matter and that putting the hand over the heart was the true identifying mark of the Nazi salute.
Now you guys are trying to persuade me otherwise with all this nit-picking logic-chopping about the blade of the hand or patting the heart. Yeah, nice try, Fascists! You don't fool me about Tim Walz, Nazi dogwhistler!
Where is Walz governor of? Wisconsin
What is Wisconsin famous for? Dairy products
What do dairy products signify? White supremacy and the alt-right
https://theconversation.com/how-the-alt-right-uses-milk-to-promote-white-supremacy-94854
Good ole Cheesehead Tim was throwing out a Crisp Salute to Zee Millennium Reich, as another commentator on here described Musk's gesture, signalling to the rabid White Supremacist supporters about the true agenda he had going on, and you'll never convince me otherwise, because I know that I know what's what, and every gesture, facial expression, and word he says is just evidence of what I really know is so.
Look here for instance:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/us/politics/tim-walz-dnc-speech-transcript.html
"I wound up teaching social studies and coaching football at Mankato West High School. Go, Scarlets. We ran — we ran a 44 defense, we played through to the whistle on every single play, and we even won a state championship. Never close the yearbook, people."
Yes, you've heard of the 14 words, but do you know what the 44 is? Let me enlighten you: it only took mere seconds of searching "what does 44 mean in Nazi terminology" to discover the dogwhistle here::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsbrigade_44
"Die Wolfsbrigade 44, or Die Sturmbrigade 44, was a German Neo-Nazi organization."
Suuuuure, Tim: never give up the fight, huh? You Fascist!
EDIT: Okay, so he's governor of Minnesota not Wisconsin. Mere details, trivial, meaningless! It's all Midwest flyover country which we know is infested with redneck MAGA fascists! Besides, it's yet more dogwhistling:
"From 1836 to 1848, Minnesota and Iowa were part of the Territory of Wisconsin."
See Wisconsin, above. And if we take 1848 and re-arrange the numbers, we get 1488. Which we all know what *that* means:
https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/1488
Is there any more weaselly phrase in online discourse than "I was educated"? Such a perfect excuse to disregard anyone you're actually talking to - some rando who's not here "educated" you, and obviously they're the only authoritative source on this matter.
Anyway, I'm going to flip you off, and if you get offended I'll just say that I was "educated" that raising the middle finger isn't the defining part of the gesture, it's actually more about the thrusting motion of the hand.
"Such a perfect excuse to disregard anyone you're actually talking to - some rando who's not here "educated" you, and obviously they're the only authoritative source on this matter."
If by "some rando" you mean "fellow commentators on this site replying to me on another post", then yes, you are correct.
Flip as much as you like, darling, flip till you flap like a little birdie and fly away. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, as somebody or other said.
Go and argue with them in that thread, then. I, for one, am going to take the bold stance that if you reply to a post, you should address the content of that post and not the content of a different post by someone else.
By the way, Monkyyy is telling me in the thread just below this one that he thinks Elon *did* intend it to look like a Nazi salute (just not an "authentic" one, whatever that means). Since I've been "educated" by a prominent right-winger on this forum on the true meaning of his gesture, I guess I no longer need to care that you think it was just a wave.
So Monkyyy is a prominent right-winger? Okay, I guess you can see into the hearts of men, women and others (the Shadow knows!) to know what we truly think and believe.
Flip away, little birdie, flip away.
Thanks, I'm glad to see someone has sense here.
he did it 3 times; its bait, not authentic but lets not gaslight about motive for the con man
If you intentionally try to do something that looks like a Nazi salute to "bait" people, then you are doing a Nazi salute.
If someone wants to argue that he was actually doing a Walz-ish gesture and was misinterpreted, I disagree but at least they'd still be agreeing that it's bad to do Nazi salutes. But I have no interest in arguing with people who think it *was* intended to look like a Nazi salute but that's not a bad thing for reasons.
> If you intentionally try to do something that looks like a Nazi salute to "bait" people, then you are doing a Nazi salute.
nah, youd be making trade offs of legal deniability and signaling; these aren't important to yall here but they are strategically important
*IF* the adl fell for the bait(they didnt which is shocking to me) then there wouldve been a lawsuit to attempt to bankrupt them
Elon Musk's legal strategy has no bearing on whether or not we, personally, should think he's a bad person for doing a Nazi salute.
(Also, not a lawyer, but I'm not even sure that would work. An opinion based on disclosed facts, regarding a public figure - it would be really hard to convince a court that it's defamation. Lots of people who aren't the ADL are calling Elon a Nazi, and he hasn't sued any of them.)
> Also, not a lawyer, but I'm not even sure that would wor
juries determine facts; and you can see the opinions of potential juries all around you
> Lots of people who aren't the ADL are calling Elon a Nazi, and he hasn't sued any of them
I do kinda expect a few of the old news papers to get hit, lawsuits take time; the "opinion" section(thats the entire website, it isnt only fox news that does that) and weasel words tho are effective shields
But I dont know how else to explain the evidence that "the joke of calling everything hate speech" is defending elon besides them picking their battles with him
> should think he's a bad person for doing a Nazi salute.
It should effect which kind of bad person you believe him to be
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez literally called it a "Heil Hitler salute," which is about as un-weaselly as you can get. Surely bankrupting a prominent Democratic congresswoman would be worth trying, if it was that easy?
Also, I don't think "Elon Musk did a Nazi salute because he supports Nazis" and "Elon Musk did a Nazi salute because he gains a tactical advantage from looking like he supports Nazis" are far enough apart for me to care about the distinction.
You are trying too hard. If you see Walz as making the same gesture, you probably need glasses.
For a "Ye Olde True And Authentic Nazi Salute", here's a *much* better example:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F6p4k6uu76bee1.gif
You are also ignoring Musk's promoting nazi-adjacent stuff.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-great-replacement-conspiracy-theory-1234941337/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/business/elon-musk-reveals-his-actual-truth/index.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5050938-musk-afd-endorsement-criticism/
https://forward.com/news/550035/elon-musk-disturbing-comments-jews/
So we know it's a Nazi salute because we know Musk is a Nazi because the Rolling Stone magazine, that famous bastion of accuracy, for one ran an article saying he's a Nazi.
That sure convinces me! The same way I'm convinced Tim Walz is a Nazi because of all the dogwhistles he sprinkled throughout his speeches, like the 44 reference I discovered above.
If Walz wanted to do the heart gesture, why didn't he do it the way everyone is saying Elon should have done it, huh? If he didn't, then that proves he's a Nazi the way it proves Elon is a Nazi. On this very site we have someone comparing how Elon did the heart gesture before and then this time, and the difference is proof this time is a Nazi salute. So Walz patting his chest before extending his right arm *is* a Nazi salute, otherwise he would have done the two-handed heart gesture.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
If Walz’s gesture kinda vaguely looks like a Nazi gesture, then Musk’s gesture looks much more certainly like a Nazi gesture.
You argument works against you.
This is dumb shit.
I didn’t say it was a nazi salute (don’t put words in my mouth). Has anybody *here* said Musk was a Nazi?
It certainly *looks* like a nazi salute.
Musk has gotten heat for Nazi adjacent stuff before. You keep ignoring this history.
If you don’t like Rolling Stone as a source, then look at the others. And there are others too.
You’d think he’d have some sense to avoid these sorts of messes. Yet, he keeps doing it. It’s way beyond the point that you and others need to invent lame excuses for him. Last time I checked, he’s an adult.
Grimes, who defended Musk’s lying about his gaming “skills”, found this mess too much.
Either Musk is stupid or the Nazi-salute looking gesture was deliberate.
At the least, it was a goofy/ridiculous look.
Doesn’t he have a car company to run?
Musk's was actually a roman salute. Y'know, to properly mark the start of the fall of the second roman empire.
This whole situation really has black pilled me on intellectual conservatives.
I thought I disagreed with them on priors but could trust that they at least were rational, now I see that they will happily deny the evidence of their senses if it's convenient, and they mean it!
It doesn't seem to be the normal attempt to minimize something embarrassing that someone on their team did, they legitimately refuse to acknowledge reality.
I kind of feel like liberals will dance around HBD or sex differences and libertarians will dance around any of the crap companies do. Motivated reasoning is a thing, unfortunately.
Agreed
I'm sure Deisach immediately put me in a bucket of hysterical lefties who're upset that Musk is a Nazi. When what I'm actually upset about is seeing my "Sane space"(I'm coining that term) for the last 10+ years turn into people denying something that clearly happened, and that was seemingly done to intentionally piss people off, by someone who has a history of doing stuff to intentionally piss people off
I think Scott's article on scissor statements would be appropriate reading in this case.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
Are you saying it's a scissor statement that the video on the right looks like the video on the left https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F6p4k6uu76bee1.gif
?
It's a scissor statement because one side sees for sure no doubt absolutely clear to all that it's a Nazi salute, and the other side sees for sure no doubt absolutely clear to all that it's not.
Do you agree that the gesture in the video on the right looks like the one in the video on the left?
Do you think people are delusional for thinking the gesture in the video on the right looks like the one in the video on the left?
I read that when it came out, and I'll just say that just because something fits the idea of a "scissor statement" doesn't mean that both sides are equally wrong or something. It can still be the case that one side is right and one is wrong.
I realize that just making that observation doesn't prove that *I'm* right, but the idea in that post doesn't make me less confident in my position either.
That article captures that very idea. Of *course* you think you're right. So does the other side. They're looking at you the same way you're looking at them. A third party sees both of you looking at each other, and sees mirror images.
I understand what the article says, I think you might not understand my comment.
Like, yeah, sure, there's two sides, each side is confident they are right, but that doesn't mean that the truth is in the middle. Like maybe at some point in time the existence of the Higgs Boson was a "scissor statement" among theoretical physicists, but that doesn't mean that the Higgs Boson half-exists and half-doesn't.
"But don't you realize that the people who think the Higgs Boson doesn't exist are just as confident as you?"
Re third party - the logic is circular. Anyone who doesn't "see mirror images" is automatically thereby in one camp or another and not a "third party".
As a third party (I'm not from the US, and I'm not sympathetic to the Republicans nor to the Democrats), I clearly don't see both sides as mirror images of each other, at least not on this issue. I don't know if Musk intended to show the Nazi salute, but it sure looks like a Nazi salute. Walz' gesture as linked by Deiseach does not look like a Nazi salute.
Nah, that looks nothing like it: Walz patted his chest instead of holding his hand steady. That makes it completely different.
Well now, your objection sounds *nothing* like the "oh come on why are we arguing about the tilt of his hand" rejection I got about "Musk's hand was not flat".
If it doesn't matter if Musk's hand was at an angle instead of perfectly flat, it's still a Nazi salute, then it doesn't matter if Walz patted his chest, it's still a Nazi salute. After all, 'hand on heart' was what makes it a Nazi salute, I was told.
But it's different when we do it, right?
Yes, hand ON heart. Patting your chest is a different preposition entirely.
There's no winning this game: whatever example you can come up with, they will make up some bullshit about why it's different, and Musk really IS a Nazi. The best you can hope for is that give up trying to define it and retreat to "I know it when I see it."
You are so right. Now that I have seen it, I cannot unsee it. I know because I know: Walz is a Nazi.
This old, white, Christian, cis het male with his privilege of being born to a married couple and knowing who his father was, and going to college after being in the Army, and then later being governor of a colonizer state that displaced and dispossessed the Indigenous peoples (see all the signifiers of being the oppressor here?) was foisted upon Harris because she is an Asian-Black woman who is strong and powerful and joyful and progressive and pro-women and minorities, and that is too much of a threat to the Establishment. No wonder she lost, with this internal fifth-columnist working to sabotage her campaign.
If Musk had done what Walz does in that clip, no one would have said a word about it.
People are objecting due to partisan politics. Walz did something that could, if one wanted to claim it was so, was a Nazi salute. But of course, good old Governor Tim is not a Nazi so we know he didn't mean it like that and we certainly won't demand he apologise for something that could have looked like a Nazi salute, and if he doesn't apologise it means he really is a Nazi, no that's not the way.
It's not about what Musk did or didn't do, it's about pre-judgement. If he didn't do that but a different gesture, or said something else, it would still have been interpreted as "see, the fascists are celebrating the fascist dictator". I have no patience or charity left to extend.
Nonsense. People are objecting because what Musk did *looks* like a Nazi salute. Watz's gesture doesn't.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F6p4k6uu76bee1.gif
Oh, I understood what you were doing. But Musk's gesture looks like a Nazi salute, and Walz's doesn't.
Every time anyone on the right does something bad, their defenders come up with something supposedly similar someone on the left did. But they hardly ever manage to come with anything comparable.
Sorry, no, I'm not going to be bullied into pretending - now how did another person on here put it? ah yes - a Crisp Salute to zee millenium reich didn't happen when a white cis het Christian old man - the very epitome of the cisheteronormative patriarchy! - did a Nazi salute in celebration of him being a privileged person in political power! Nuh-uh! I saw it! You can't make me unsee it! Are you denying my lived experience?
"I don't actually have a response, I'm just going to pull out a stock parody of leftist rhetoric and hope everyone laughs along with me."
(What's that one quote about how antisemites know they can get away with being frivolous, because they know that their opponents have to take them seriously anyway?)
Go and do the gesture musk did out in public in front of the police in Germany.
You can live that experience.
Whether he meant to do it or if he really is a nazi is irrelevant. He did a nazi salute. Waltz did something that looks a bit like a Nazi salute if you squint.
Did anyone here inform you of that?
The online drama around Musk's hand gesturing made me realize how deep the market is for Musk Hate. Probably a good few people are making money off of anti-musk T-shirt and stuff.
What surprises, at least at sample size n=1, is how prominent Musk is in foreign media. At least in Polish media, he might be getting more coverage than Putin.
Edit: wow, just stumbled into a rabbit hole where someone connects all the dots: there's the Nazi salute, the x logo is actually a simplified swastika, a tequila sold in lightning-shaped bottles stands for SS (if you put two bottles next to each other), Tesla produced a hammer and the hammer is like thor's hammer which is a popular symbol among Nazis.
This reads like astrology.
The 14th Amendment doesn't grant citizenship to members of Indian tribes. The Indian Citizenship Act does. Tribes are in charge of who has tribal membership. Couldn't the GOP Congress end birthright citizenship by convincing a tribe to grant membership to everyone on Earth and then revising the Indian Citizenship Act to say it doesnt grant citizenship to tribal members who are the kids of unauthorized immigrants?
(1) For a tribal nation to grant membership to everyone on Earth would undermine the entire ethnonationalist concept of tribal membership. It would also for many tribal nations be a nonstarter in terms of the sharing of revenues from their casinos and etc. For both of those reasons any tribe which entertained such an idea would come under tremendous peer pressure -- and if it came to it legal or other attacks -- against the idea.
(2) Given (1), how might Congress convince a tribe to do that? Would a majority of Congress be willing to consider things like offering a large bounty -- cash, maybe some federal lands, whatever -- to the first tribe that declared everyone on Earth a member?
There's over 500 tribes and only a few have large amounts of casino revenue. I wonder if a tribe has the legal authority to create essentially second-class citizenship to keep the 6 billion new members from voting out the government that permitted it. They could probably only have in-person elections.
There are currently 511 gaming operations (casinos, poker centers, and various combinations or versions of those) in 29 US states, owned and operated by 245 Native American tribes. Of course a much smaller number of those facilities are large but they are all revenue. Plenty of the tribes are also not large in membership meaning that even small gambling revenue means a good deal to each individual member.
Note also that there's also 17 casinos in Canada owned and operated by a national confederation of tribes, and there are cultural and historical links between them and a number of US recognized tribal nations.
I feel like there's an easier loophole... that being the fact that words don't mean anything, and thus the Supreme Court can interpret the constitution however they wish.
As understood at the time of drafting and ratification, only Native Americans who lived on tribal land under tribal law were considered not "subject to [the] jurisdiction" of the United States. "Civilized" natives who had left their tribes and were living as part of "white" society were understood to be confirmed as citizens by the provisions, which was regarded as a feature by most supporters of the amendment and as a bug by many opponents.
The drafting debates make clear that they were thinking of the same category as the "Indians not taxed" mentioned in a different part of the 14th amendment: there was quite a bit of discussion in committee on the matter, both for the amendment itself and for the Civil Rights Act of 1866 from which the language was lifted. A proposal to append "excluding Indians not taxed" to the birthright citizenship provisions was voted down on the grounds that it was redundant with the "subject to their jurisdiction".
This is a good article on the drafting and adoption of the citizenship clause, with emphasis on its effect on the status of natives:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt2f16j3ng/qt2f16j3ng_noSplash_2ed6c31d9e9554987434a23cd37a2dd9.pdf
That's an interesting paper, but I'm not fully convinced by it. Beck argues that the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act was unconstitutional which I've never heard argued before.
I hadn't heard that argument before either, and I'm also inclined to disagree with it. If I understanding Beck's argument correctly, he believes it's unconstitutional because it extends birthright citizenship to classes that were not entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th amendment. I am not sure where he's getting the idea that the 14th amendment language forbids extending citizenship by statute, though; I've always read it as a minimum only, not as a maximum. At the very least, Congress ought to have the power to offer naturalized citizenship (under enumerated Article I powers) by default to tribal citizens.
Fascinating paper: "Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems" by Ricard Solé et al. Hat tip to Sabine Hossenfelder for mentioning it in a recent Backreaction video: "New Study Finds Alien Life Must Be Similar To Us".
Extrapolating further than Hossenfelder... The argument has been made that life could emerge in universes with different sets of dimensionful and dimensionless constants than ours, but the reasoning in this paper makes it look much less likely. Indirectly, this paper lends support to the fine-tuning argument for the laws and constants of our universe. (And, as Lee Smolin has pointed out, there could be mechanisms for this without resorting to a creator entity.)
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.2024.0010
The sink a puddle finds itself in is no evidence for anyone having wanted a puddle to build itself there.
But think about how fortunate it is that beaches are next to bodies of water. Surely some creator set that up for us.
This is just what comes to mind everytime I hear of a creator entity in this context.
Since we're all arguing over the inauguration and its aftermath, thoughts on the pardon for the Silk Road guy? Yes, victory for Libertarianism; no, he's a criminal or enabler of crime?
Not incompatible: yes, he's a criminal, and yes, he enabled crime, but the laws he was sentenced for breaking were bad and ought not to exist, and it's good that he's free. Yes, a victory for libertarianism, albeit a small one; more a symbolic victory than anything else.
All the pardons I hear about lately seem deeply wrong to me, starting with Hunter Biden up until (and including) this one.
I'm just asking myself, who thought it was a good idea the US President should have this power and why? Presumably there were good reasons? Do they still apply? If not, can this not be done away with and everyone will be better off?
> Alexander Hamilton defended the pardon power in The Federalist Papers, particularly in Federalist No. 74, where he argued that such a power "should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed" to ensure "easy access to exceptions in favour of unfortunate guilt." Hamilton also argued that placing power solely with the President would lead to its most beneficial exercise, as a single person would be "a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of the government than a body of men" who "might often encourage each other in an act of obduracy, and might be less sensible to the apprehension of suspicion or censure for an injudicious or affected clemency."
> Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph submitted a motion to reincorporate an exception to cases of treason, on the basis that extending pardons to such instances "was too great a trust," that the President "may himself be guilty," and that the "Traytors may be his own instruments." During the Virginia Ratifying Convention, fellow Virginia delegate George Mason likewise argued against ratification partly on the grounds that "the President ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself", which eventually "establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic." James Wilson of Pennsylvania countered that if the President were himself involved in treasonous conduct, he could be impeached.
Well, this is certainly hilarious to read in hindsight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_United_States
When I was a history major discussing the Constitutional Convention minutes and the Federalist Papers in senior-year seminars, at least one student would inevitably get to sputtering about the insanity of such a blanket power being in the hands of one individual. At that time the sparking example would generally be Ford's pardon of Nixon, though I do also recall hypotheticals being voiced along the lines of what has just now occurred.
Eventually the professor would sigh and say, yes that is how it strikes us today. But you need to step back to the Framers' context: they had no experience even on paper of an independent legal system with judges who sought objectively correct verdicts. The British criminal justice system that had ever existed as of 1783 wasn't that even in theory, never mind how it worked in places like France or other European nations. By "unfortunate guilt" Hamilton meant what we would call evidence-free verdicts issued by kangaroo courts, presided over by judges among whom simple incompetence was a welcome straw to grasp at for defendants. There was no such concept as public defenders, only the wealthiest people ever had defense attorneys, a huge range of crimes were subject to the death penalty, there was no such thing as an appeals court unless you were powerful enough to get an audience with the Crown Council, etc etc.
This is why in that era there was a rich oral and printed fairy-tale literature involving the miraculous freeing of wronged persons by benevolent monarchs. And it's why a majority of the Framers viewed an unlimited presidential pardon as essential as a ray of hope for justice.
I am firmly in the camp that the pardon power stopped making sense quite a while ago, and needs to be amended out of existence or at least seriously brought within explicit boundaries. But, I did take the professors' point about it as written in the original Constitution.
Thanks for the context :)
I think somebody should probably have dug into the question of whether he tried to have several people murdered first (there was some evidence for this but he was not specifically tried for it).
As a libertarian, I think selling drugs should be legal and transferring money anonymously should be legal. Hiring hit men to kill people who might blab about this, properly is and ought to remain illegal even if you "had" to do it because it was the only way to keep The Man from stopping all your libertarian fun. Likewise hacking other people's computers to support the enterprise, etc.
So there's a libertarian case for pardoning Ulbrecht on the drug-dealing and money-laundering charges but leaving him to rot in jail on the RICO and hacking charges. But even that case fails the test here, because it calls for pardoning *all* the drug dealers and money launderers, not just the one who is a big libertarian celebrity.
A full pardon for just Ulbrecht, is just wrong.
As a libertarian, I believe in the rule of law. Even if I think that a law is wrong doesn't mean that I don't think people should be punished for breaking it.
If you think that a particular law is wrong then the appropriate course of action is to campaign to change it, not to just disobey it.
If you can get away with it, flouting a law you want gone might be the most effective way of weakening it into irrelevance.
Obviously appalling; par for the course.
What really bugs me is that this was supposedly done as a favour to the Libertarians.
As a libertarian-leaning person there's so, so many things that I'd rather have than this. Like how about a 0.01% cut to tax rates?
If we are talking about the Silk Road guy, that particular libertarian enabled the sale of kilos of black tar heroin, stolen identify papers, illegal military weapons…
Hard to get upset about.
I would prefer someone to get at least 20 years for running a (fledgling) crime empire.
But I'd still rank this in the lower half of the 2025 pardons ranked by objectionability
Yeesh. I'd really like to disagree with this but, can't.
The Constitution's poorly-defined pardon power has always seemed like something that was just sitting there waiting for serious abuse. Various recent POTUSes have used it in ways that were annoying but not huge in the bigger picture....feels like we're really now seeing how bad it can easily be.
And with that door pushed open a good ways it becomes easier to imagine some next uses of it that would be outright banana-republic stuff.
No; he was convicted of a crime and serving a sentence; we have learned nothing to suggest he didn't do the things he was convicted of doing, and we have done nothing and are planning to do nothing to make the things he was convicted of doing legal. If I were to start an assassination market today I'd risk ending up in jail; so why should he go free?
If you want him pardoned because the things he did should be legal, make them legal /then/ pardon him. At least sign executive orders to that effect; they'd fit right in with the rest of the EOs flooding out into the world right now.
I've attempted to intuitively explain Bayesian Reasoning. I visualize probability mass, which greatly helps to make correct arguments, for example about the origins of COVID-19.
https://blog.purpureus.net/posts/bayesian-reasoning-on-maps/
If you liked Scott's post on the Rootclaim vs Peter Miller debate on COVID-19 origins, you might like this.
Good analysis, actually strengthened my view of zoonotic origins. A small nit to pick: the wording about summing to 1 makes an impression that it’s only Bayesian, i.e., conditional probabilities that sum to 1. I know you didn’t mean it this way, but for someone not familiar with probabilities theory it may sound like this.
Thanks! After re-reading the passage, it's not immediately clear to me how to formulate this better. I'll see if I can update this to make it clear that probably densities in general have to sum up to one. (actually, it's the integral over all the map that is =1. I debated about whether to write this in the post, then decided that "sum up to" was an acceptable simplification. But I admit I might not always have chosen the right level of rigor)
You’re most welcome! A couple more things though:
1 on your high-rez map, you meant to place the red blob over the market, not the institute, correct? That’s where the first cases occurred?
2 after giving it some thought, I have some doubts that the reasoning is correct. A lab leak at the institute would not necessarily cause the first cases to occur at the institute location. Why would they? The researchers don’t live there. All it would take is for a researcher to bring contamination to the market (which is a) close by, and b) popular crowded unsanitary place), and get it started from there…
I'm skeptical that a purely geographic map is going to be much use here, except at the coarsest levels. Cities are designed to minimize the impact of geometry by e.g. laying out public transportation so that it is easy for people to get to places they want to go, even if they're on the other side of town.
At the macro scale, "everybody in Wuhan spends most of their time in Wuhan", works. At the micro scale, it's probably safe to assume that when people want to eat at a fast-food restaurant or buy something from a convenience store, they probably pick one of the ones close to where they live. But for more unique locations, this breaks down. The Wuhan institute of Virology is going to attract a disproportionate fraction of Wuhan's virologists and BSL-trained laboratory technicians, and the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market is going to attract a disproportionate fraction of Wuhan's exotic bushmeat afficionados, in both cases regardless of where in Wuhan they happen to live.
What we'd need is a cultural-economic map, showing the connections between people and various businesses, employers, etc. And I don't know where you'd find that, but I do know that we need that map and not the purely geographic one.
I'm inclined to agree. Even though some maps are more precise and make better assumptions than others, all of them remain approximations.
At the same time, the approximations seem to work well in many cases. For example, if you plot the first COVID-19 patients on a map over time, you can see concentric circles around the Huanan market. In that case, geographic distance seems to proxy the cultural/economic/social distance pretty well.
I was thinking about the limits of this approach yesterday only to find John's response this morning. I pretty much agree with his points, too.
Another thing though: I'm not even convinced that a Bayesian approach to this particular problem is helpful beyond a very coarse initial estimate. There's just a gap of knowledge: we don't know if the initial cases can be traced to any specific individuals connected to the lab, nor we know which traders from the markets were the initial vector(s). Bayesian framework is not particularly helpful if the probability space is not defined (or maybe even thinking about this in terms of "probabilities" is wrong).
Important questions.
The map should be centered on the Institute of Virology, because the map answers this question: "given the lab leak hypothesis, where would the first cases be found?" All the maps in the post represent the same hypothesis, albeit with different levels of simplification.
I'd encourage you to draw your own map, based on your knowledge of how COVID-19 spreads. This is a bit tricky because we have to pretend we don't know where the pandemic started, and be as impartial as possible. Your map might well end up putting some mass on places that are 20 kilometers away across the river. But the bulk of the mass would likely be closer to the Institute.
If you want to go further, you can then draw a map for the alternate hypothesis as well. That would probably be zoonosis, so your map would have most mass in places where humans and animals meet. Then you can plot the actual location of the initial cases on both maps, and measure the density for each hypothesis. The quotient between the two numbers is the Bayes factor, ie, how much the evidence should boost your credence in the better hypothesis.
It's somewhat laborious, maybe not worth doing :-) If you do draw maps, the benefits are:
- it makes hypotheses explicit, and reveals potentially wrong assumptions
- it ensures that probability densities are regular (sum to one)
- It ensures that all the geographic evidence is taken into account exactly once. You're less likely to miscount different bits of evidence that are both dependent on location
very good analysis. I agree with the conclusion and I like the idea of “zooming”.
https://www.archpaper.com/2025/01/trump-administration-issues-executive-order-to-promote-beautiful-federal-civic-architecture-among-other-directives/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/promoting-beautiful-federal-civic-architecture/
Trump was inspired by the recent ACX articles and the 2025 subscriber poll and has issued an executive order that "Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government. "
The architecture article in the last links post, which I enjoyed and highly recommended, made a convincing argument that beautiful architecture is effectively entirely an uncaptured positive externality that benefits society at large but does not benefit owners/investors/tenants. It (or perhaps something it linked, I cannot find it now) cites this particularly striking example of a bunch of boring skyscrapers set up specifically to stare at the beautiful NY state capitol building https://i.imgur.com/w7Edw4a.jpeg .
I think Trump's EO makes a ton of sense; if we want beautiful buildings and private developers can't capture the benefit of building them, the government should be building them for us to look at, much like the government is the one to open public parks, public libraries. Public gazing building exteriors
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-skyscrapers-became-glass-boxes Last week's article
I believe he had done something similar the last time around, no?
Did anything come from it?
I believe Biden reversed Trump's original EO on day 1.
I got a message to fellow ACX commenters from Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
The message is, you are a herd of cats (or perhaps one aggregate cat?) chasing one laser pointer.
"NBC NEWS: What is your biggest concern moving forward, and what’s kind of the biggest thing that you think Democrats need to address?
FETTERMAN: It’s like he’s the guy with the laser pointer, and we’re going to be the cat chasing around here or there. “He did that. Can you believe [it]? I can’t believe he appointed so and so.” And like, I’m not going to be that. I’m not that guy. I’m not that Democrat. Because we knew that’s what’s going to happen." "
This is from https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-fetterman-says-democrats-stop-214003770.html .
It would be one thing to argue against going after every little thing Trump did because you want to make more focused critiques. It's another to argue against it because you don't want to criticize Trump at all, or at least do so only very mildly. Problem with Fetterman is he's in the latter camp. He isn't ignoring some scandals to focus on others, he's just ignoring shit.
Republicans did a "kitchen sink" strategy against Biden, and it worked in making him unpopular. They didn't pull punches because they were worried about getting distracted or whatever.
Do you think Biden is unpopular because Republicans pulled a kind of dirty trick against him?
To be true, that would require that the criticisms of Biden (including his advanced age and obvious cognitive decline) were made up or would only have been noticed because of the Republicans. For the first charge (made up) we know that wasn't true, Biden really was impaired. For the second, other than for partisan reasons, is there any argument against Republicans (or anyone else) sharing important and true information about the faults of their political opponents?
I think complaining about oldness is fair game, and "kitchen sink" isn't necessarily the same as "dirty trick". It's not all necessarily honest, but much of it is bog-standard politics - "bad thing happened! It's the president's fault! Welcome to [current president]'s America!"
When Biden did stuff or when bad things happened, Republicans didn't complain about staying focused on one message, they complained like the above about everything all the time, and then used their own complaints as evidence the country was spiraling out of control.
Whereas Democrats have kept going on about how they won't respond to everything trump does, they'll stay focused on the price of eggs or whatever ... today before the chaos of the spending thing forced their hand, Democrats' big plan for today was to have a press conference about the Jan 6 pardons - i.e. the news from a week ago - which they hadn't bothered to do yet. In today's information environment that's malpractice.
I'm not from Pennsylvania and know next to nothing about Fetterman's record. I just think that the laser pointer metaphor is right on the nose, and hilariously so.
We're clearly headed for another 4 years of "OMG did he really say that? *pounce*", and this comment section is providing a preview. Heck, now that we have Musk too, we can spend even more time debating what exactly a person on the spectrum meant by a clumsy hand gesture. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like a waste of time and energy.
I do think there's a danger of everybody sliding into playing Ain't It Awful. I for one am always grateful to hear from people who know enough about whatever the issue in question is to explain why the Obvious Infuriating Outcome is unlikely to come into being. And there's a sort of generalized version of that process that anybody can do: Out of 100 amazingly terrible plans we read that Trump has:
-some are actually just ideas he tossed off once, but the press treating it like something he is clearly committed to doing. Of those that remain
-some he just won't ever try to do. Of those that remain
-some he will try hard to do, but they will stall out or only take place in an attenuated form because
---the people he chose to implement them are dumb and incompetent..
---the people he chose to implement them annoy him so he keeps firing them and hiring new ones and things don't get off the ground
---groups who object to the project block it for long periods with lawsuits etc.
---it turns out to be unpopular with the public so Congress won't go along with it
---Trump loses interest in the project
So remember to take into account the very substantial shrinkage that is likely to occur as 100 Amazingly Terrible Plans attempt the journey to becoming Amazingly Terrible Projects and Policies.
Careful there Eremolalos, you're sounding dangerously sensible and are at risk of being labelled a filthy centrist! 😁
He is going to push against legal boundaries as hard as he can, so we’ll see how it turns out.
Keep in mind that his supporters and many centrists feel the same way about Biden. Student loan forgiveness, repeatedly extending the rent moratorium, Title IX changes, etc.
I for one really really hope that this experience convinces both parties to actually do something to limit the power of the president. We weren't meant to run the nation through executive orders.
What I fear will happen is that both sides will want to fight dirtier to win the presidency and we'll be whiplashing back and forth every time the president's party changes.
Sure, i get it. My prediction is this is going to be an order of magnitude greater, but like I said; we will see.
I doubt that my opinion of him is any better than yours, and I am def on the pessimistic side regarding how this will turn out. I was really just giving advice about ways to decrease the chance of getting stuck in rage and despair loops.
I am fairly sure that our opinions of Donald Trump are pretty similar. I am on the fence about how it will turn out. I am doing my best to remain dispassionate.
Such advice is necessary. the curse of interesting times is upon us.
That's the rational take on this. But you, of all the people, probably know that many (most?) completely freaked out people now are anything but rational and just about impossible to get to listen to reason.
I recall being like this one time in my life, fortunately for a very brief period of time (5 days or so, a side effect of a prescription drug). At that time, I would see a beautiful tree or hear beautiful music and think something like "what does it matter if we are all going to die very soon". I hope most people currently very upset are not as badly off, but I'm getting worried that many of them might be.
But that's less of a problem of being irrational and more just a problem of being overly attached to trivial things. People do realize that they're going to die anyways, right? Can't they just chill out and enjoy the show?
By "very soon", I was meaning "something like within a year". If you'd tried to explain to me that that wasn't likely, it wouldn't have worked. Believe me, the irrational part was really bad.
Point is, you shouldn't be afraid even if you did actually know for a fact that everyone you know and love is going to die within a year. There just... really isn't much point to any of this. Just enjoy things while you can. That's my advice.
>Point is, you shouldn't be afraid even if you did actually know for a fact that everyone you know and love is going to die within a year.
I think whether that would drive some action would depend a lot on the particular circumstances. Particularly unpleasant demise? 99.99% unavoidable or just 90%? Any pressing items one wants to do in one's bucket list that can be done in that year?
Again, you're suggesting giving a rational argument to someone who at that point was not a rational person. I might agree that you're right now, but back at that time I wouldn't have even been able to consider it.
Well, there's no fixing wild desperation, but there's a gray zone where reminders of ways to stay realistic actually help. The people I know are generally much calmer than they were right after the election. Back then, knew of several people who were considering getting tubes tied because they were sure that very soon abortion would be absolutely impossible to get anywhere in the US. I haven't heard any of that sort of hysteria in the last few weeks.
I did not know this was getting better. That's good to hear - thank you very much.
Is it possible for someone to actually wind up smarter after a stroke?
Seriously though, the laser pointer is the best description I've heard of Trump's current strategy. He has things he actually cares about (like Mount McKinley) and stuff he doesn't care about (like the Gulf of America) and he's going to keep his opponents running around from one thing to the next to try and get some of his actual agenda through.
I'm not going to call it a brilliant strategy, I'm not even sure whether it's a good strategy, but it undeniably is the strategy.
Flood the zone.
-Steve Bannon
I've been wondering whether it's possible to end up smarter after a stroke ever since Fetterman became coherent. It might not be about intelligence, even - it might be about what he is now ready to say in public.
But yes, the laser pointer thing is definitely the strategy, and credits to Fetterman for the brilliant (precise, visual, funny) description.
I'm no longer sure I should've quoted him here, though. I was hoping to cheer up the depressed people a bit, but, judging by the first comment I got, I'm likely to be making it worse.
I don't like Fetterman, but unfortunately if the Democrats want to win elections they desperately need senators like him.
Granted, though Shapiro as a governor has his own specific policies/accomplishments to run on than one rookie member of a legislature ever does.
A more direct response to the idea that Fetterman is the one version of a Dem who can win Senate seats in PA might be that he won his seat against a uniquely feeble Republican nominee. (A quack TV doctor who'd never held public office and didn't even reside in the state he was proposing to represent.)
I've been thinking about Scott's post on class recently. I've been trying to figure out why the upper class would want to isolate/insulate itself from lower 'classes', i.e. those who didn't inherit their wealth - whether they're rich or not. I have some thoughts on what might drive this phenomenon (below) but don't have direct experience. Perhaps someone with direct ties to the intergenerationally wealthy community could provide insight/correction:
Consider the research about lottery winners. Within a few years, they tend to be poor again. Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money? Sometimes it's the parents 'managing it for them', but really just blowing it all. Far more often, it's all the 'friends and family' who show up asking for money. "You're rich, right? You can afford it. Aren't we friends?"
Getting wealthy is a different skill set than staying wealthy. Few people who have the former also have the latter. Getting wealthy may be a matter of doing some useful thing in the world, (something many upper class people may have no experience with). But if you don't know how to stay wealthy ... what's the old saying? "A fool and his money are soon parted."
Staying wealthy is partly just sticking to long-term investment strategies. These don't have to be all that complicated. A simple mutual fund will kick back enough from $50M to live off a 6-figure monthly salary ... so long as you never touch the principle + inflation-adjusted growth. And so long as you don't listen to Uncle Saul and his fool-proof plan to triple your money by investing in his new app: Pawnzee.AI
Let's say you find yourself with a lot of money that you wisely put aside, watching it grow while living comfortably. You've fended off the first-generation hounds sniffing about trying to get you to give them part of it. This probably cost you some relationships, as some begin to see you as miserly or something. You've stopped being compared to E. Scrooge at Christmas, but mostly because you pared down the invite list to your holiday party.
Now you have to form new relationships with an eye toward protecting your wealth, since anyone who finds out you're rich will likely try and get some of it if they can find a way to beg, borrow, or steal it from you. Perhaps you could just keep quiet about your money and live conservatively, but if your spending allowance is $100k/month there's no way you can hide your wealth. Plus, you have to think about inheritance. You need to set your children up to form friendships that won't jeopardize the wealth you hand down.
Obviously, you can't hang out with regular people or send the kids to normal schools. Private school would be better - something with absurdly high tuition, to keep out people who don't already have money. The point of $10k/month tuition isn't to provide your children the 'best' education, but to insulate them from forming friendships with non-wealthy kids, like what you already had to fight off to keep your wealth.
You also need to insulate yourself from hanging out with newly-rich people who don't have good money habits. If you're spending time with a sports star who makes and spends $12M every year, you'll either be expected to adopt similar spending routines, or you'll just start thinking in some of the same ways they do. Hence why it's not possible to be accepted as 'upper class' as first generation wealthy. You'd have to demonstrate to the community you're someone they can trust.
Finally, you don't talk about wealth or how much things cost. Ever. Anyone who does this is signaling that they're new at wealth. They're risky, and should therefore be shunned.
There's no 'rule' saying you have to do all these things. But every time you don't follow the rules you risk your intergenerational wealth. It only takes one generation of mismanagement to kick your family back into the middle class.
Maybe you discover some school with low enough tuition to let in 'normal' kids. But they have a really good education program - far better than the $10k/mo private school - and so you decide to send your children there. You really like the school, and regularly make what the school considers 'large' donations, but to you aren't more than normal tuition. So far so good.
But your son brings his friend home, and the kid is surprised to note you have 'staff'. Pretty soon, all the kids know him as the 'rich kid'. There are expectations. You have a choice to make: you can be 'generous', which will only ratchet up expectations more and more, or you can be 'private' with your money, which will be seen as miserly. If you hold back at all, your son will be ostracized, hate you for it, and potentially learn the lesson that being conservative with money is social suicide.
When he inherits, he won't be like you. And he'll blow up the trust fund.
I'm not sure if there are other ways to maintain very high intergenerational wealth, or if this is just one strategy for doing so. It seems like a protective mechanism, though, and one that creates a kind of selection bias, where anyone who doesn't adopt these protective habits won't remain wealthy for long.
Or maybe this is all just pattern matching, and 'upper class' people aren't responding to incentives so much as just being snobs?
Suppose I win a few hundred million dollars in a lottery tomorrow. What happens next?
Other than being very happy, I would also be quite scared, if the word gets out. Because that seems like a perfect opportunity for someone to kidnap my children and demand ransom. Or kidnap my wife, or me... should I also worry about my extended family?
Suppose this problem goes away. In reality it would probably involve something inconvenient, like having bodyguards follow us all day long. But for the sake of thought experiment, suppose the danger just somehow magically goes away and the probability of violence drop to zero. Oh, I would also need to protect my house, because even if all my money goes to index funds, there will still be some morons out there imagining that I have a stash of gold hidden under my bed.
Next, I would expect hordes of scammers and beggars. Even the nice people would suddenly notice that some problems around them could perhaps be fixed by throwing some money at them, and here happens to be a guy who has lots of money. (It would be nice to have better computers at local school. A child living in the same city might benefit from getting a surgery. This guy, who is totally not a crackpot, has invented a new theory of everything, and would like to publish a book. A shelter for lost puppies. A shelter for the homeless. Something something against sexism and racism. Support for the local artists. Etc.) Suddenly it would be as if I am personally responsible for all the problems around me. And it's not like I am somehow opposed to the idea of helping others -- I probably would spend a large fraction of the money on charity anyway -- but it's different when I choose the causes, and when people are constantly coming to me with their own ideas and I have to keep rejecting most of them, and some of them are not very nice about being rejected.
The calls I currently get from people trying to sell me insurance, or convince me that I have some money in a fund I have never heard about and all that I need to withdraw that money is to install some backdoor on my computer and log in to my online banking, that would be nothing compared to what would happen next. If you know that someone has millions, it makes economical sense to spend thousands on a personalized attack. I would probably be getting threatening letters from lawyers, people would "accidentally" bump into me on the street and cry that I broke their arms, and women I have never met would accuse me of sexual abuse and demand financial compensation. If after each trouble I stopped doing the thing that brought me in trouble, soon I would have to stop interacting with people completely.
...so, if there is some island for rich people, I would probably have to move there just to avoid all of this, and get back some kind of normal life (for a new value of "normal").
If I could get rich and reliably keep it a secret, that would be the best option. I would probably buy a slightly larger apartment (or maybe two normal apartments next to each other, that would be less suspicious). I would quit my job (and maybe create a fake one, so I could pretend that many activities I do are a part of my job). I would donate to charities anonymously (or maybe using some non-profit that I would secretly own, in case I might want to take some credit in the future). I would try to seem like a normal guy living a normal life... except that somehow I have no financial worries, always have free time when I need it, and the causes I care about keep getting financial support from mysterious strangers.
...but if you are born in a rich family where your parents didn't follow this strategy, this is not an option.
> Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money?
I think there is an industry of scammers specialized on this kind of people. Like, if you are a pro athlete, they will contact you, tell you they provide financial services for pro athletes, and offer to take care of your money so that you can fully focus on your career. So you put your savings into their funds, and... ten years later most of the money is gone, because the fund had a 2% annual fee or something. But it's all perfectly legal, and before your money is gone, you will probably provide a reference for other pro athletes.
> Or maybe this is all just pattern matching, and 'upper class' people aren't responding to incentives so much as just being snobs?
Most people want to be liked by others, and they play all kinds of status games. If you want other rich people to see you as "one of us", that probably includes a list of things you can and cannot do. There are probably opinions you need to adopt, topics you need to avoid, etc.
Now maybe you could live a double life, and keep one persona when interacting with your fellow rich, and another persona when interacting with normies. But can your children do the same? (And do they even have a motivation to do so?) Can you trust them to keep it secret that you e.g. teach them potentially useful skills, such as programming? (Rich people sometimes signal their confidence in their wealth by conspicuously avoiding the kind of skills that normies need for their jobs. Merely being able to have a job is already low-status among the people who know they will never need a job.) It is okay to be a rebel if you choose so, but you probably don't want to make that choice for your kids; and if you do, there is a chance they will hate you for that.
> Consider the research about lottery winners. Within a few years, they tend to be poor again. Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money? Sometimes it's the parents 'managing it for them', but really just blowing it all.
I’m fairly dubious about absolutely all of that. Even lottery winners.
In fact I researched and here’s counter to that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2023/08/29/debunking-the-myth-the-surprising-truth-about-lottery-winners-and-life-satisfaction/
(And remember lottery winners don’t mostly win millions, but thousands. It’s probably the latter who lose it all).
Any middle income person who can save anything at all from his pay check isn’t going to blow a lottery fortune. If you can save $10k on a $100k income you probably are not spending the $1m from the lottery in a year, and with larger numbers it becomes nearly impossible.
Without searching I’m going to stick with my priors that movie stars, and high earning sports stars also die rich.
Interesting. Looking a bit more deeply, I think the literature is mixed on this one. Looks like there are clearly lots of cases of people who come into money blowing it all, including pro athletes, pop stars, actors, and lottery winners. At the same time, I think your point is valid that it's not as common as is often portrayed.
This diminishes the "snobbery as cultural shielding" hypothesis a bit, suggesting that association with 'new money' isn't as much of a risk. But the fact that people clearly do still blow up suggests that if you're old money you should practice some level of caution when dealing with new money.
On the lottery: annuity vs. lump sum, I saw one paper suggest in a survey of lottery winners people who take the annuity are more likely to spend it as it comes in, while people who take the lump sum tend to save/invest. This suggests various subgroups, including the spendthrifts, the long-term savers, and within the savers there will be the intergenerational savers contrasted with the savers who eat away at the principle commensurate with their life expectancy.
> Consider the research about lottery winners. Within a few years, they tend to be poor again. Same with most people who suddenly come into money, such as pro athletes, pop stars, and movie stars. Why do most people lose all their money? Sometimes it's the parents 'managing it for them', but really just blowing it all.
I’m fairly dubious about absolutely all of that. Even lottery winners.
In fact here’s counter to that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2023/08/29/debunking-the-myth-the-surprising-truth-about-lottery-winners-and-life-satisfaction/
(And remember lottery winners don’t mostly win millions, but thousands. It’s probably the latter who lose it all).
Any middle income person who can save anything at all from his pay check isn’t going to blow a lottery fortune. If you can save $10k on a $100k income you probably not spending the $1m from the lottery in a year, and with larger numbers it becomes nearly impossible.
Without searching I’m going to stick with my priors that movie stars, and high earning sports stars die rich.
I'm not against what you've put together generally, but the rich people I know endlessly talk about money by constantly whining how expensive everything is and acting as if they have no money what so ever (i.e., for their new boat).
I also know plenty of middle class people that are fantastic at preserving money long term - the whole FIRE movement and stuff.
Are you sure your "rich" friends aren't new money?
Yeah. Their children will probably be *bored* of listening to the endless talk about money. For them, it will be "the boring stuff my old boring parents can't stop talking about, when there is so much fun to have instead".
I know a guy who has rich parents. He can't keep a job... tried a few, but always quit it after a few months because he didn't like something about it, and then always took a year of vacation before he started looking for a new job. He has a business online, but it makes like a few hundred euros a month; it's more like an excuse to spend the entire day online, pretending to do something useful. He once got married and had a child, but then got divorced, because taking care of the child was also boring (now his parents pay the child support that he owes).
His parents... they really don't want him to do this. They want him to stand on his own feet; they would much prefer to keep all the money they made for their own retirement instead. But he does a few things now and then to convince them that he is *trying* (he sometimes gets a job... that he then quits; he has an online business... that doesn't make money), and at the end of the day they always take a mercy on him, and provide him with free accommodation and food. They refuse to give him cash, but they sometimes pay his debts.
So this is an example of the money going away already in the second generation. When the guy inherits his parents' money, he will probably retire poor and leave his own child with nothing.
There is a way to avoid this outcome if the parents make so much money that they can create a trust fund for their kids. That's basically a machine that runs on its own, and keeps producing money at a certain rate. If the parents set up the rules so that the children get the money produced by the fund, but are not allowed to interfere with how the fund works (and need to pass it on to their own children), this is a way to create inter-generational wealth. If they get a child or a grandchild talented enough to make their own wealth, that is a bonus; but if the talent skips a generation or two, the money keeps flowing.
Without such mechanism, each generation flips a coin whether the wealth stops with them.
I would argue that this is ascribing too much to conscious decisions (whether snobbishness or some form of self-defense) when a much simpler answer is inertia. People drift to what is easier, and easier is your social strata. There are positive pushes that make it easier to interact with people of like status, and building relationships across strata almost always entails some level of power mismatch, which doesn't help either party feel comfortable, even absent a culture that conditions us to distrust relationships where one party has outsize power relative to the other.
Social-
Where do you meet friends? Who forms your close circle? People you spent a lot of time around, whether in school or at work. You went to a regular school and you struck out for the professional class, you may no longer have common experiences with your old school friends (assuming the color of your collar is different from theirs). At work, you meet people of similar class - lawyers meet lawyers, doctors meet doctors, mechanics meet mechanics, farm laborers meet farm laborers. Maybe you are an engineer who knows a bunch of doctors because you are involved in biomed, maybe you are a lawyer who knows a lot of finance folks because you do finance. You'd have to go out of your way to bond across social strata, and even further to find the time to consciously step outside your normal interactions on a consistent basis. Maybe your old friend from the neighborhood invites you to her Superbowl party, and you actually make time. Her friends are all in sales or the trades, just like her. Once you finish talking about the game, they start talking about things for which you have no point of reference. Their jokes are a little boorish and while they don't mind your nebbish programmer humor, they are happy to continue ribbing one another over who got ripped off at the car wash more. You awkwardly drink your light beer (seriously, would it kill them to have a decent brew?) then go home and talk to your old friend once a year while hanging out with your programmer buddies every other week. You could invite your mechanic friend, but they are less thrilled at the idea of casually blowing a hundred bucks on a board games cafe than you are and rain check.
Childrearing-
Let's stretch that to children. Ok, you are upper middle class and made a best friend that is lower middle class (maybe they have a scholarship to your prestigious middle school). On your summer holidays, your parents take you to Bali. Or on a trek across the Andes. Or send you to space camp in Switzerland. Your friend's family goes to the local beach. Maybe you wish you could take your summer holidays together, but there is no amount of goodwill that is going to bridge the gap of "who has X budget to blow on a trip". You drift apart and end up sparking connections with the kids of another family that went to the Pyrenees and bond over your love of mountains. Maybe your poor friend also loves hiking, and would have adored the Alps, but that doesn't lead to a healthy relationship. It is a lot easier to be good friends with those who have shared access to common interests.
Romantic-
You meet a girl in college whose family owns a chalet in Colorado. She flies out with her friends every weekend on their friend's chopper (his parents paid for pilot licensing courses and it was a really sweet graduation gift to reward his diligence). You sense a lot of chemistry, but your parents took you once to the nearest ski slope and that was the extent of your exposure. Even with her bending over backwards to get you a seat on the chopper and letting you crash at the chalet, you don't have the kind of pocket money to blow on lift tickets at Vail. She finds an equally interesting person who is not unlike you in every way, but does have a season pass. You can write great poetry, but this other person can do it too, and can additionally suggest doing so from their folks' beach house in Nantucket.
My point wasn't that this has to follow conscious decisions. It was that if associating too much with "poorer" people creates a risk to wealth stability, the only people who will have long-term wealth will be those who follow the observed set of behaviors that exclude people whose wealth isn't established/inherited.
This could be intentional, for the reasons I outlined, or unconscious social sorting mechanisms you discuss. Either way, the distance appears to be more than just establishment of social norms, but also selection bias that weeds out social defectors from the wealthy class.
Thank you for taking the time to follow up and emphasize your point!
To clarify my own, I would suggest that there are two distinct phenomena described here which are somewhat interrelated- (1) certain traits/approaches are beneficial to building/maintaining wealth, and (2) wealth-based self-sorting effects are magnified in capitalist/quasi-meritocratic societies. Avoiding the poor is not a causal factor but a strongly correlated one. I don't know that this impacts your direct hypothesis but possibly does the takeaways.
Why do you think they're magnified in these societies? Is there a society where we do not observe this pattern? I can't think of a non-capitalist country where it hasn't been a factor, from feudalist to communist and socialist. Wealth sorting as a persistent feature of human societies (larger than tribes) suggests it's a persistent feature, probably driven by incentives. This is in contrast to the idea that it's all cultural ("they're just snobs").
Its breeding. It’s correlated with wealth.
How about the alternative hypothesis that the lower classes are just a bit annoying?
Certainly, the best class is the class that you, Lomwad, just happen to be part of. I don't see how anyone could disagree with that.
Well, one class has to be the best (for a smart nerd), so which one would be your choice and why?
Definitely the class that I'm in, too.
Well the middle classes, with their scientists, and engineers, doctors, IT guys, historians,shop owners, researchers, administrators (etc etc etc) are so obviously so much better interesting and useful people than those born to wealth, the people who live to lunch, that it’s hard ti believe we are even having this debate. Get rid of the firmer and civilisation collapses, get rid of the latter and a few restaurants close.
> gives my kids the highest chance of being happy and productive members of society
My friend's father grew up under communism in one of the old Soviet Block countries. He loved it, and felt that the fall of communism was the worst thing ever.
The problem? Capitalism has too many degrees of freedom. You're free to succeed, yes, but you're also free to fail. This man wasn't ambitious. He graduated school without distinction and went to work in a factory. The government gave him a small apartment. He had what he needed and nothing more, but he didn't care because there was no risk of complete failure and destitution.
No need to plan and worry for the future either. When he got married, he was assigned a slightly larger apartment. Then larger again when he had children. He never has much, but he didn't care so long as he didn't have to worry about the important things.
Many of us want to make a difference in the world, to engage with it in an exchange of meaning. But some people just want to coast along, enjoy the scenery, watch some football, have a family, and cross the finish line without having to worry about some major disaster messing up the plan.
aw yes, every who drives faster then me is a madman, everyone who drives slower is a grandma with to much free time
One thing that stuck in my memory from my history classes in college is that there's a long tradition of physical separation from the rest of society being used as a signifier of power and prestige, and that many princes and heads of major merchant families in Renaissance Italy deliberately modeled themselves on Roman practice along these lines as one of several things they were doing to cultivate an air of legitimate authority. There is still contact between the important people and the masses, but it's usually under deliberately arranged conditions that reinforce the notion that the leaders are above the rest of society and are doing you a favor by letting you interact with them at all. The central examples are stuff like a monarch giving a speech from the palace balcony or allowing selected commoners to bring supplications to him while he's holding court.
In American political tradition, this style was very much out of fashion for much of the 19th century, with most of the Capitol building and the White House open to the public most of the time. This was done as a deliberate rejection of the symbology of the leaders being separate from and above the people, to the point that mid-19th century Presidents (I have heard this of Lincoln and Grant, but imagine others were affected as well) desperately wanted to be able to exclude petitioners and job-seekers to keep interruptions to a manageable level, but felt duty-bound to be accessable.
Thanks for your thoughts. I think for political leadership there are clearly other reasons to stay separate from the masses than wealth protection. Not just what you discussed above, but also to make assassination more difficult.
The other big reason is to isolate the monarch to make sure they're dependent on palace insiders to make decisions. This system, where aides and bureaucrats fight for influence of the monarch through a sort of popularity contest, seems to have been common, and who's to say it's not partly at play in current or recent US administrations?
While there are wealthy elite who remain wealthy through political rent-seeking, like you're talking about, I'm more interested in wealthy elite who maintain wealth through capital inheritance. Back in the day that was by owning large estates and collecting rents from peasants. Today that looks more like trust funds handed down through the generations.
The failure mode for wealth derived from government rents is often some form of regime change. Financial ruin from capital inheritance seems to follow a different pattern, and should therefore respond to different incentives.
Average is useless here. Median is more useful.
> The average net worth of Americans was $1.06 million
On its own, this information does not tell you too much -- it could just be that the 1% are dominating.
More useful is to display the net worth by net worth percentile.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart/#series:Net_Worth;demographic:nwcat;population:1,2,3,4;units:mean;range:1989,2022
(I deselected the 90-100% quantile because otherwise you can't see the rest.)
So your claim that there are plenty of "stealth millionaires" is true -- from the data it is clear that some households (minor caveat, that) in the 75-90% bracket already have a million.
1. Inflation has devalued the position of someone who is technically considered a millionaire.
2. This includes assets, particularly the home asset. If you pay off your $500k home, you'll find it much easier to live comfortably, and you'll be halfway to millionaire status. But you're also far from being able to live off your investment income, because most of your wealth isn't in the bank. If you sell your house, you still need somewhere to live, and now you've taken on a sizeable monthly housing payment.
Don't get me wrong, owning your home outright is similar to pulling a few thousand from investments without touching the principle that continues to grow. But it's not the exact same thing.
3. After illiquid home equity, the vast majority of wealth for most US households is retirement savings. This can't be accessed (not wisely) until old age, at which point it is used for income replacement. At that point, sure, you can live off the investment income. But this isn't the same as intergenerational wealth. Someone with a paid off $500k home and $1.2M in the bank could (assuming 10% average growth) pull $130k/year to live off of, while having just enough left over if they die at 85 to leave a small inheritance. (Nothing if they live until 90.)
4. If you save $16.9k/year under a mattress you'd have a million after 60 years. But that's not how retirement savings works. $1,400/month ($16.8) at 10% compounding interest from investments over 30 years is $3M. Enough to live very comfortably, for sure. But if you want to live off that kind of investment without eating into the principle, you'll need a lot more. At $30M, you can pull $100k/month and still see growth over time. There's a huge lifestyle difference between $10k/month and $100k/month. Middle class families aren't putting aside $14k/month from their paychecks.
5. I agree in principle with a lot of your points, and that there are a lot more millionaires out there than most people realize. Not everyone is dumb enough to buy a boat on a HELOC, lease a brand new car, then sign up for a timeshare, etc. Some people don't realize that the Joneses they're trying to keep up with have 7 figures in the bank and are cash buyers. I'm just saying that 7 figures doesn't represent anything like the kind of wealth it was when I was growing up.
You’re not really a millionaire if your net worth is a little over 1 million. I mean, you can be a homeless millionaire, but that’s no fun.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2023/08/29/debunking-the-myth-the-surprising-truth-about-lottery-winners-and-life-satisfaction/
Regarding the end-birthright-citizenship EO, Ilya Somin posted late yesterday:
"This is blatantly unconstitutional. Section 1 of the Amendment grants citizenship to anyone "born … in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." There is no exception for children of illegal migrants. I go over the relevant issues in detail in a recent Just Security article
[ https://www.justsecurity.org/105176/birthright-citizenship-undocumented-immigrants/ ]
where I also address various specious arguments to the effect that children of undocumented immigrants aren't covered because their parents are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US. I think it highly likely that courts will strike down this action, as the text and original meaning are clear, longstanding Supreme Court precedent points in the same direction, and there is broad (though not quite universal) cross-ideological agreement on the subject among legal scholars."
>There is no exception for children of illegal migrants.
Agreed. If the nation wants to change this, there is an amendment process for the Constitution. It might be reasonable public policy to change "born" to "born to a woman legally in the United States". If so, proponents should make the case and go through the amendment process. In the absence of the ratification of some such amendment, only the exceptions that are _already_ in the actual words of the Constitution, thank you.
> their parents are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US.
I find this claim strange. If an undocumented/illegal immigrant is killed, will the murderer not be charged by US authorities? Or if they murder someone, will they not be charged in an US court?
I mean, if the mother was in that bizarre legal construction that is gitmo, or was part of an invading army, or had a diplomatic passport, then I could see the point about jurisdiction. (Edit: from reading wikipedia, it seems the latter two exceptions are indeed the ones often mentioned.)
But yes, at the end of the day, the language of the 14th means whatever the SCOTUS says it means. If Roe could be based on the due process clause, then certainly the SCOTUS could also argue that the word "jurisdiction" in the 14th means something completely different than what I would understand by that word.
However, I also don't think that the current SCOTUS will blatantly back Trump in whatever he does (e.g., they were not willing to overturn Biden's election no matter how loud he was whining).
From my understanding, federal courts will likely follow SCOTUS precedent (which seems to affirm a plain reading of the 14th).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States#U.S._Supreme_Court_case_law
Yes. The people who are not subject to the jurisdiction are diplomats and the like.
And now today 22 state attorneys general plus a couple of cities, in various combinations, have filed several federal lawsuits arguing basically the points that Somin summarized. They're seeking an expedited summary ruling that the EO is unconstitutional, and whichever way the initial ruling goes it will no doubt be appealed upward.
There is no guarantee that the SCOTUS will end up taking up the matter because there is no _right_ to SCOTUS review of anything. The Court does (still) often decline when the appellate court has ruled consistent with past SCOTUS precedents. It takes four justices to agree to take up an appeal, and then of course five to agree to order the overturn of a lower-court ruling.
>It takes four justices to agree to take up an appeal
Morbidly curious: How close is the SCOTUS to breaking under their workload? If it just took three justices to take up an appeal, would everything grind to a halt? Presumably it wouldn't make sense to tighten the appeal requirement to five justices, since that would make it almost the same as the requirement to overturn... (This is to say, the number _would_ be the same, but the criteria the justices use might be slightly different.)
Does it come down to there being _zero_ flexibility in the number of justices needed to take up an appeal?
Trump pardoned all the J6ers, including the ones who beat the shit out of cops. Can't wait to watch "Back The Blue" types turn on him for this.
And on the other side of the aisle (and earlier), please remember that Biden's 2.5 kiloPardons included commuting the sentence of Leonard Peltier, who killed two FBI agents, to house arrest.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/20/us/leonard-peltier-indigenous-activist-sentence-biden/index.html
Now, Peltier is 80, and maybe he gave a solemn promise to Biden to not kill any more FBI agents if they visited his house, but Trump can be viewed as following Biden's lead here.
Oh, yeah, that's why he was promising to pardon these people for his entire campaign - because he knew in advance that Biden was going to commute some random eighty year old's sentence to indefinite house arrest on Jan 19, 2025. Do you guys ever get tired of lying and whatabouting?
Do note that every single person who beat the shit out of cops on Jan 6, 2021, is now completely free and clear, while this man is still under indefinite house arrest.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I've been seeing a lot of whining about people Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of, so I'm pointing out that Biden did similar pardons/commutations (and on a slightly larger scale, albeit at the same order of magnitude). Pointing across the aisle is legitimate when the whining is one-sided but the actions are nearly symmetrical.
The actions are not nearly symmetrical, no. The person in question is still never going to be free. The person in question was not personally encouraged to commit crimes by Joe Biden. And I really doubt Joe Biden suggested that the person in question was merely the victim of political persecution, unlike Trump, who has explicitly said that's why they were getting pardoned.
Certainly there are differences. AFAIK, Peltier is unique amongst those commuted by either President in having been convicted of killing two FBI agents. And the scales are somewhat different, Biden's 2.5 kiloPardons to Trumps 1.5 kiloPardons.
So, since you see these pardons as all bad, done by both sides, etc, you would support the addition of a constitutional amendment to create some kind of semi-independent oversight board on the Presidential pardon as many states have done with their local pardon?
Or is the bringing up of Joe Biden's pardons and commutations just chaff to defend Trump pardoning every single one of his personal mob of violent, cop-beating cronies?
The only thing those people care about is immunity for their actions. Well, and funding.
I'm a "back the blue" type. I have never supported J6, and never will.
Are the police unions even sympathetic to those victims? I'm sure they realize they're much better off under Trump than the alternative.
One of the frustrations there is that the relevant unions have declined to stand up for those officers.
As for the pardons, this will get cheers from the police unions:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-two-police-officers-convicted-murder-black-man-washington-2025-01-23/
[That headline is somewhat misleading, the officers were not charged with or convicted of 1st-degree i.e. deliberate murder. The guy driving the squad car was found guilty in a federal jury trial of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct, and obstruction of justice; his partner was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice.]
Aren't the violent ones the six who are still under review?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/21/politics/what-to-know-pardons-january-6-trump/index.html
“Among the other pardon recipients: Devlyn Thompson, who hit a police officer with a metal baton, and Robert Palmer, a Florida man who attacked police with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole.”
So definitely some violent offenses in the mix here. I don’t know about 6 being still under review though- do you have a link or anything?
No. He pardoned all of them. Except fourteen where he just commuted their sentences.
These are the guys who had their sentences commuted:
https://apnews.com/article/capitol-riot-trump-pardons-jan-6-f6e23bcd84eaed672318c88f05286767
"The former leader of the Proud Boys and the founder of the Oath Keepers have been released from prison after their lengthy sentences for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were wiped away by a sweeping order from President Donald Trump benefiting more than 1,500 defendants....
....Tarrio, who led the neofacist Proud Boys group as it became a force in mainstream Republican circles, was convicted in 2023 of seditious conspiracy and other crimes after a monthslong trial on allegations that he orchestrated violence to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.
Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, because he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of the capital city. But prosecutors said he organized and directed the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol that day.
Rhodes was convicted in a separate trial alongside members of his far-right militia group who prosecutors alleged were intent on keeping Trump in power at all costs. Over seven weeks of testimony, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied his followers to fight to defend Trump, discussed the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and warned that the Oath Keepers may have to “rise up in insurrection” to defeat Biden if Trump didn’t act."
pretty impressed an ACX reader is friends with someone who is quite close with Rav Chaim. Wow.
There was always a pretty heavy Orthodox Jewish representation.
I believe trumps executive orders to be the most important evidence for predicting the general trend of the next decade of america as it will set the tone for if theres a right wing rebirth or a managed decline of america(I still believe managed decline is more likely but.... I can hope)
I saw live streams with 2 separate desks where he maybe signed 40 documents; I dont think all of them were executive orders("a letter to the un") but tentatively lets say there was 25-ish orders... thats allot of reading for me, bit of a slog but I think this is probably the time to put in effort
Anyone know good links on primary sources? Any thoughts? Any fun shitposts?
Several of the executive orders ive read are just rants and "such and such will tell me if they did this in 90 days" are these real or just political side show? is that someone he trusts and therefore more likely to do what he wanted? Or just talking points for fox news?
How much influence can Trump really have with just executive orders?
He needs Congress to do anything substantial. The Republican margin is razor thin, and he’s notoriously bad at building coalitions and cooperation, even among his own party.
An EO essentially changes how the Executive Branch runs - how it's staffed, how the departments are organized, what each one is authorized to do. As the Chief Executive, POTUS is obviously authorized to do this, just as any business owner is allowed to set up his business to his liking.
It's limited formally by judicial review - if POTUS tried to authorize the FBI to search the homes of anyone with freckles, SCOTUS could and would take a look at that, say "nope - Fourth Amendment", and that EO is invalid (and any FBI who try to apply it anyway will get arrested by other FBI, and this would pretty easily qualify POTUS for an impeachment proceeding).
It's also limited by budget - POTUS can't declare the Energy Department shall be allotted $1T to gold-plate all our ICBMs. (Or, he *could*, but then the Energy Secretary would instantly say "uh, this is stupid and pointless". Or, if the Secretary is also stupid and pointless, he'd go to Congress and say "check plz" and Congress would laugh in his face and begin impeachment proceedings.)
It's limited informally the same way any business is. EOs have to be implemented by actual people, and if those people think it's a dumb EO, they can resign (or get fired) from their executive branch jobs, and if enough of them do, then the branch can't get anything done until POTUS can find replacements that think those EOs aren't dumb, or issues smarter EOs (or Congress launches impeachment proceedings).
> It's also limited by budget - POTUS can't declare the Energy Department shall be allotted $1T to gold-plate all our ICBMs. (Or, he could, but then the Energy Secretary would instantly say "uh, this is stupid and pointless".
That's not the Energy Secretary's call. If Congress doesn't authorize funding for gold-plating ICBMs, then it's illegal for the government to do that.
The Constitution says, "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." Appropriations laws are extremely detailed, with instructions on exactly how much each little part of the government can spend, what they can spend it on, and when they can spend it.
I won't quibble with this very hard, but I'm pretty sure Congress can say "POTUS, you get $400B for defense" and POTUS can say "thank you" and then "all right, $200B of this is going to gold plating since that's the way to insure these ICBMs get to their destinations without interception".
Or more realistically: Congress can say how much money is allocated to each of the Executive's primary functions, and the Executive gets to decide how to use that money to implement those functions. (Gold ICBMs were always an intentionally silly example.)
I'm well aware that this or that Congressional committee will earmark funds for this or that specific project under the Executive's purview, and I admit I don't fully know how far Congress can push that. I'm given the impression that farther = more annoying to POTUS, and ultimately it hashes out to Congress being able to earmark whatever POTUS was reasonably willing to fund anyway, possibly modulo concessions on other funds.
>(Gold ICBMs were always an intentionally silly example.)
Just for your amusement, while the _ICBMs_ aren't gold plated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon)#Material_considerations
>Because plutonium is chemically reactive it is common to plate the completed pit with a thin layer of inert metal, which also reduces the toxic hazard.[40] The Gadget used galvanic silver plating; afterwards, nickel deposited from nickel tetracarbonyl vapors was used,[40] but gold is now preferred.[citation needed]
Congress pushes that very, very far. There is approximately no money that is labeled "for defense" or whatever, it's all earmarked one way or another and usually pretty specifically. This is the one aspect of legislating that Congress still actually does, so they milk it for all it's worth.
(talking to the crowd, as I'm sure you know all this) The model for ten-year-olds is that Congress is supposed to play the role of customer, and POTUS plays the CEO, and the customer plunks down money and says they want a Thing and POTUS figures out how to produce the Thing, and the customer is supposed to not care how that's done.
Within reason, of course; Congress can say "give us a nuclear deterrent, but without burning down a State or invading a foreign country" or whatever. "Whatever" necessarily goes beyond the ten-year-old's understanding, since an adult is likely to know of all kinds of requirements on general projects a federal executive would be working on that a 10YO won't, such as environmental or financial concerns, or even interference with all the other projects a US citizen is paying the executive to do.
This justifies a great deal of paperwork on the Congressional side to ensure all of its desired specs will be addressed. But at the same time, I've seen specs that look less like a customer-level concern and more like micro-management or even some Congresscritter trying for a flex.
And there's way too many specs to check for this type of abuse completely, which means earmark efforts sort of black market their way through, trying their best to avoid inspector generals, whistleblowers, and the press.
> I won't quibble with this very hard, but I'm pretty sure Congress can say "POTUS, you get $400B for defense" and POTUS can say "thank you" and then "all right, $200B of this is going to gold plating since that's the way to insure these ICBMs get to their destinations without interception".
Sure, Congress could do that. And if they did, it would be perfectly legal for the President to gold-plate the ICBMs. Ain't no law against stupid.
But Congress never does that. They always write a extremely long and detailed appropriations bill.
I don't know enough about modern political theory, so I want to know, what enforcement do executive orders have? If a president issues one and someone doesn't comply, do they face penalties? Does this differ for whether the person is a private citizen, a private business owner, or a leader of a government agency?
Executive Orders are *only* binding on employees of the Executive Branch of the United States Government. They have no effect on private citizens, business owners, etc, except insofar as the government employees they occasionally deal with may start behaving differently.
If an employee of the Executive Branch disobeys a legal Executive Order (not all of them are), then in principle he or she may be fired. In practice, that is exceedingly difficult to arrange if they decide to fight it. But fighting it is also a hassle, so if the bureaucrats don't find the EO to be *too* odious, they'll usually go along with it.
That's it. The President is not a dictator; he can't have people thrown in jail for defying his will.
Pretty much this. It's also worth noting that some types of disobedience are streamlined in order to prevent obviously illegal EOs. Executive branch employees (including everyone in the military) get periodic legal training that typically clues them in on what's Definitely Legal, what's Definitely Not, and what's in the middle*. Anything in the Definitely Not category will have an established office for reporting even suspected infractions, without fear of reprisal.
*I attended one course where the teacher said he often explained the middle gray area as three buckets in turn: "legal but difficult", "legal but risky", and "legal but stupid".
The state is 40% of gdp(and thats probably an underestimate) allot of that should be hirable and firable by someone
> He needs Congress to do anything substantial.
He needs congress to increases taxes if the plan is to increase spending
> you will hire 4 poeple to talk to DOGE so we know who to fire
> you wont hire anyone
> you will fire any dei positions
these werent written by people talking to each other why isnt it "you will fire dei position, you will hire poeple with the approval of DOGE, you will hire 4 DOGE employees" in one coherent order
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/
...did he seriously rename the Gulf of Mexico? Did anybody ask for that? That's some Freedom Fries shit.
not in what I read, your probably thinking about the mountain someone renamed then trump changed back
I think I had heard of that but I didn't know it was seriously happening. Bizarre. The mountain is sort of fair enough, that's a local feature inside the US, but I feel like the attempt to re-name the Gulf of Mexico is just going to lead to a silly disconnect between the US government and the rest of the world.
How about we just call it X? It’ll fit right in.
Cuba should get in on this and rename it the Gulf of American Imperialism or something. Or perhaps Trump could put it up for sponsorship: The Capital One Gulf of America...
Are we living in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (Y.D.A.U.)?
I'm sticking with it should be the Gulf of the Americas. Inclusive, unitary, nobody left out!
I admit, I'm surprised by the flurry of signing orders. He really did mean it when he said he'd do it all on Day One. Whatever your opinions on Jan 6th (riot? coup? worstest threat to democracy ever? bunch of idiots?), I think I'm glad that they got pardoned. There may be a few who should be facing serious charges, but I think the mass of them were no worse than the CHAZ-CHOP crowd and it seemed to be "It's okay when *we* do it" in those cases:
"Inslee condemned Trump's involvement in the situation, telling him to "stay out of Washington state's business". On Twitter, Trump criticized Inslee and Durkan and called the protesters "domestic terrorists", and Durkan told the president to "go back to [his] bunker", referring to his evacuation to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center during protests the previous month. Durkan said on June 11 that Trump wanted to construct a narrative about domestic terrorists with a radical agenda to fit his law-and-order initiatives, and that lawfully exercising the First Amendment right to demand more of society was patriotism, not terrorism."
But really, is there any force in the Americas more divisive than the Gulf of Mexico?
He's been talking about doing that for a while now. Granted, it's only the portion of it that's within US borders as of right now. (According to Wikipedia, anyways. The actual wording seems pretty ambiguous, and seems to imply that the Gulf of Mexico no longer exists.)
This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csQU3yhR3OY
Couldn't they have got him a bigger desk?
Likely he wanted to double dip and or thought he could throw 10 pens or thought he had 15 minutes before an assassination risk gets annoying to manage
there was a 2nd hour long live stream I believe on the official desk
https://www.youtube.com/live/si19rPJi5NQ?si=fnktcPmy6mtcDqCJ
Anyone else's stomach churning from seeing Elon Musk perform not one, but two (edit: three) nazi salutes at the White House?
Does he think it (along with all the other culture war BS) will distract from all the other awful shit they're about to do? Or is he just a fascist?
Either way, if this is the new normal, I'm starting to think America might be beyond repair.
(Edit: lol, the ADL are defending Elon. The Israel lobby does not give a single shit about Jews, folks)
Trolling, it seems like. He's obviously aware of exactly what he's doing, and that it will cause a shitstorm. But he also ensures a context with plausible deniability if you're a supporter. The shitstorm is _desired_.
It _is_ hilarious that the ADL defends rampant heiling, yes.
I've been thinking about this and while I'm somewhat reluctant to even ask the question, I will appreciate any answers: Does deliberately making a nazi salute while you are not a nazi (so just for trolling) a very bad thing? I'm just not sure, I think that being a nazi isn't bad axiomatically, it's bad because of the consequences of nazi politics (killings, forced eugenics, etc..), so if there are no bad consequences related to it, why is it even bad? I saw a lot of people in left wing spheres leaving Twitter because of the salute, and I'm thinking about whether I should or not. What would be moral?
Another but related note: As I imply in the previous paragraph, I don't think Elon is a nazi, but after searching I saw that Elon is supporting the Afd party and saw that the Afd party supports the banning of Kosher meat. I currently find the explanation that it's because of animal welfare very suspect as they don't ban factory farming which is magnitudes more horrifying. Can some explain what is up with this?
> Can some explain what is up with this?
Why exactly are people so sure that he doesn't have a problem with Jews? People expect racists/anti-Semites/etc to be foaming at the mouth or something. But Musk goes on podcasts and SNL and shit and is affable, joking around, even is friendly with Ben Shapiro.
None of that is inconsistent with having a problem with Jews!
> Does deliberately making a nazi salute while you are not a nazi (so just for trolling) a very bad thing?
I think that, in many cases at least, such people who would be described (by themselves and others) as "trolling" are, in fact, expressing genuine contempt for Jewish people and other groups that the Nazis targeted (even if they don't rise to the level of wanting mass murder). "Trolling" isn't actually inconsistent with this. Trolling isn't trolling unless it's aimed at some person or group. Who is it aimed at? Sometimes the answer is "everyone", but if you're doing it to an adoring crowd while practically acting as co-president, that can't be the answer.
I wish I could find it now but I recently came across a quote from a writer about how, in essence, trolling was a key tactic of how Nazis argued. But it was from the 1940s or something, not in the context of the modern Internet.
"But Musk goes on podcasts and SNL and shit and is affable, joking around, even is friendly with Ben Shapiro.
None of that is inconsistent with having a problem with Jews!"
If Musk had a problem with Jews to the point of wanting them all shipped to Dachau, I think it's safe to say that he would *not* be friendly with Ben Shapiro. Therefore, I think it's safe to say that either Musk has no problem with Jews, or has one nowhere near to Dachau levels.
This raises the question of how big a problem he could have. But then, any problem big enough is very likely to preclude being friendly with Ben Shapiro, any problem that isn't big enough to preclude it is not likely to be worth worrying about.
"I recently came across a quote from a writer about how, in essence, trolling was a key tactic of how Nazis argued."
Maybe, and maybe this is historically interesting; but other than that, so what? Trolling is also a key tactic of how a *lot* of people argue, including vastly more people who aren't Nazis.
> This raises the question of how big a problem he could have. But then, any problem big enough is very likely to preclude being friendly with Ben Shapiro, any problem that isn't big enough to preclude it is not likely to be worth worrying about.
I think history shows this is untrue.
As for the quote, here it is, from Jean-Paul Sartre
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
This argument assumes Musk is anti-Semitic, and is apparently being used to prove he is anti-Semitic.
I've watched the video, and I just can't believe anyone with sense can land on Elon being a Nazi. It's so clearly not what he said or meant. Even if I take out the "autistic and awkward" attempt to excuse, I'm still left with, what made you take leave of your senses in order to see it that way?
The first whatever whatever of the party was to ignore your eyes or some shit
- George 1984 Orwell
How obvious does it need to be?
this dude could come out on stage with a sauerkraut swastika carved into his forehead and his parasocial hangers-on would be all "no you don't understand he got real into shin Buddhism, but is too stupid to understand how mirrors work!”
at some point you've got to stop extending charity
Real live people use swastikas every day and they're not Nazis. Try harder.
Immediately proved his point. (Unless you're joking)
Nope. Making up a story and saying I'm dumb not to believe the story you made up doesn't convince. I saw the video myself. You saw it too (I should hope) and presumably with sound on and context before and after. If that's true and you still think the same, no story's going to convince me you haven't let an ideology (let's call it MDS, after TDS) inform your senses rather than the other way around. At some point you've got to look. Really look.
I did. He did the Nazi salute, all the Nazis were excited he did the Nazi salute, he did it again two times, and now conservatives are pissing on my boots and telling me it's raining.
I don't have to respect people desperately rationalizing reality out of existence, that shit is demeaning.
Even if they weren’t nazi salutes, it was weird/nutty/deranged. Seems likely premeditated/planned too.
Actual nazis apparently saw it as nazi salutes.
Supposedly being so smart, how could he have concluded it was anything like a good idea?
Doesn’t he have a car company to run?
Actual Nazis are for the most part quite stupid and desperate for approval. More so than most leftists, even.
The real question is why Musk does things that appear to pander to them. (The "nazi salute" is not an isolated thing.)
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-great-replacement-conspiracy-theory-1234941337/
It's only a real question to the people whose chain gets yanked whenever he does this.
Which is the real answer to why he does this.
Your chain was yanked?
"Supposedly being so smart" doesn't mean being smart in every dimension.
"Actual nazis apparently saw it" --you let "actual nazis" show you how to interpret something? Does that really seem like a good idea?
Being on stage in front of a zillion people, knowing half of them are looking for the smallest gesture to pillory you with, and somehow showing up anyway? I think either of two things are going to happen here:
1. You shrink away from it and if you still have to go on stage, you stand with your hands at your sides and speak in a monotone, terrified lest anyone misinterpret what you say/do.
2. You decide you don't care, and go around making grand gestures without attempting to pre-criticize what the worst person in the room might make of them, and here we are.
"'Supposedly being so smart' doesn't mean being smart in every dimension."
This is a tired excuse.
He can drive (presumably). He can use a fork (presumably). He should be able to avoid whatever this was. We aren't talking about a high bar of difficulty.
"'Actual nazis apparently saw it' --you let 'actual nazis' show you how to interpret something? Does that really seem like a good idea?"
It's not a good idea to ignore how they interpret stuff. Doing that might before hand might have avoided the confusion. (His promoting nazi adjacent tweets isn't a great precedence either.)
"You shrink away from it..."
False dilemma. There are many options other than the two you list.
Anyway, he didn't "have to go on stage". It's a choice.
(Musk certainly "cared" about being called-out for "misrepresenting" his game-playing skill.)
Doesn't he have a car company to run?
I dont know of theres a formal standard of the nazi salute or something, but I remember it as an upwards motion of the arm, not outwards.
I think he was mad about being exposed as a fake gamer, so he wanted to do the cool gamer salute he saw a funny meme about.
I think it's quite possible he meant it as a Nazi salute. Like a lot of men, he didn't want his son to turn into a woman, and the rage melted his mind and made him vulnerable to every dumb rightoid brainworm. Maybe they shouldn't have turned his kid transgender.
It looks a lot like a Nazi salute. But why would he intentionally do a nazi salute? He isn't a capital N-Nazi, there's no capital N Nazis in America aside from some white prison gangs. You might think there are lots of authoritarian supporters of Trump, and there are, but they don't think of themselves as Nazis, they hate Nazis too! Nobody wants to be an actual Nazi or be seen as a Nazi.
One way this could happen is if he spends a huge amount of time on the Internet in right wing, and just plain weird, rabbit holes, possibly with a drug addiction, marinating in a world in which weird beliefs about Jews are commonly shared to the point that he thinks that shit is normal. Combined with being rich enough to never really have to do anything he doesn't want to or be told "no" by anyone.
Maybe to distract everyone from looking through the list of executive orders. Or maybe to show support for the authoritarians - I imagine I would be pretty stoked if I was a Proud Boy or something right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_orders_in_the_second_presidency_of_Donald_Trump
I have become convinced that this was very likely intentionally a nazi salute. I assume because Elon is immature as hell and wanted to make a weird power flex, or troll and piss off 'da libs.'
I'm not too familiar with the Proud Boys, but wikipedia says they have (had?) 6000 members. The number of people sympathetic to Nazi symbolism is so tiny, and the number of people that find it absolutely abhorrent is so large, that intentionally doing that is a terrible idea.
The Proud Boys were never a neo-Nazi group anyway.
I appreciate the url linebreaking to create the name Donald T. Rump.
If it were a Nazi salute, I'd be mad. It wasn't a Nazi salute. It was a "hand on my heart, throwing my heart out to you" salute and it was clumsily done so it looked like "oh my God he's sieg heiling".
The demand for outrage continues to outstrip supply.
I don't have a particularly strong feeling about this issue, but I truly don't think there's any physical gesture he could have done that you would agree was a nazi salute.
It seems likely to me he was intentionally doing it to troll the left, and to flex how he is not cowed by woke. Of course he's not an "actual" nazi, he just isn't afraid of the association.
If he did a real Nazi salute, I would take it as a Nazi salute. 'Ambiguous physical gesture that can be interpreted several ways' is not a real Nazi salute.
I'm not going to try and find clips of "The Triumph of the Will" to share on here, because even I have some sense of proportion, to compare'n'contrast with "this is what a real Nazi doing a real salute looks like".
By the metric of understanding extended here by some of our newest commentators, Tim Walz is a Nazi because look, he put his hand on his heart and then extended his right arm outwards in salutation to a crowd of supporters. There's no way to persuade me I didn't see what I saw, you deniers!
"this is what a real Nazi doing a real salute looks like".
Would it look something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDRYi1IYI2o&t=33s
Here is a comparison to the heart thing:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F828jf3orqlee1.gif%3Fwidth%3D504%26format%3Dmp4%26s%3Daec1e2a05866afe17b89de91053f365565b396ae
Here is a comparison to a guy doing the Nazi salute:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F6p4k6uu76bee1.gif
It's just extremely obviously more like the latter, it's not credible to claim otherwise.
It would be trivially easy for him to post on X that it wasn't a Nazi salute. He has not done so. Why do you think that is?
Ah yes, the good old "if you aren't a baby-eating monster, why don't you go and deny you are a baby-eating monster?" bit.
Yes, I haven't stopped beating my wife, either. (The fact that I have no wife doesn't enter into it).
It also should have been trivially easy to avoid making a gesture that didn’t look like a nazi salute. Yet, here we are.
Why do I think that is so? Because I've seen it, and you may have too: any kind of apology by someone who falls foul of the Inquisitors is seized upon as evidence of guilt.
What kind of apology can he give? What would you, with your churning stomach, accept?
"I apologise for offending or causing hurt to anyone by the gesture which I now recognise could be mistaken for a Fascist salute"?
"See, see? He admits he did it! Out of his own mouth, Musk is a Nazi!"
This whole "it is SIEG HEIL FASCIST NAZI DOGWHISTLING" storm in a teacup reminds me of two things.
First, when I was about twelve, another girl in my class thought that I made a face at her. She accosted me with a couple of her friends after class to demand an explanation/apology (I got out of that by the simple expedient of walking away). I would have dug my heels in back then, as I would dig them in now, if anyone had tried to force me to apologise for doing something which I had not done. "But she thought you did it, so apologise" - well, she was mistaken, so I'm not going to say sorry for doing something which I did not do.
If Musk didn't do a Nazi Fascist Dogwhistle, why should he apologise? Just because your stomach churned? Take an antacid.
Second thing this reminds me of is this excerpt from "The Man Who Was Thursday". For those looking to be offended, they will always find something that is a Dogwhistle in order to be offended:
“This man has insulted me!” said Syme, with gestures of explanation.
“Insulted you?” cried the gentleman with the red rosette, “when?”
“Oh, just now,” said Syme recklessly. “He insulted my mother.”
“Insulted your mother!” exclaimed the gentleman incredulously.
“Well, anyhow,” said Syme, conceding a point, “my aunt.”
“But how can the Marquis have insulted your aunt just now?” said the second gentleman with some legitimate wonder. “He has been sitting here all the time.”
“Ah, it was what he said!” said Syme darkly.
“I said nothing at all,” said the Marquis, “except something about the band. I only said that I liked Wagner played well.”
“It was an allusion to my family,” said Syme firmly. “My aunt played Wagner badly. It was a painful subject. We are always being insulted about it.”
“This seems most extraordinary,” said the gentleman who was décoré, looking doubtfully at the Marquis.
“Oh, I assure you,” said Syme earnestly, “the whole of your conversation was simply packed with sinister allusions to my aunt’s weaknesses.”
“This is nonsense!” said the second gentleman. “I for one have said nothing for half an hour except that I liked the singing of that girl with black hair.”
“Well, there you are again!” said Syme indignantly. “My aunt’s was red.”
“It seems to me,” said the other, “that you are simply seeking a pretext to insult the Marquis.”
“By George!” said Syme, facing round and looking at him, “what a clever chap you are!”
he didn't say apology, he said a post. Something like "It clearly wasn't a nazi salute you morons. PS. Nazis are a bunch of losers!" would probably suffice.
There's a maybe-apocryphal story about Lyndon Johnson in his congressional days spreading a rumor that his opponent was a "pig fucker". One of his aides whispers to him, "you know he doesn't do that, right??". He replies, "I know; I just want the sucker to deny it".
The moral of the story is that it's all too easy to make up something unsupportable that nevertheless forces the discussion to center on it. For Musk to even deny the accusation is to give the accusation respect it does not deserve, at the expense of the actual important stuff he wants to do.
nobody spread a rumor about musk heiling the seig, the dude just ripped off three Crisp Salutes to zee millennium reich totally unprompted.
To go back to the pig analogy, if you caught me in the sty with my pants down en flag-er-ento, you might have some grounds to ask a couple questions, perhaps.
Ok, and in this analogy, if that opponent would be seen by everyone exiting a pigsty with his pants around the ankles, It might warrant some kind of explanation.
If it's not given, then sure, Musks prerogative, but it will just cement the consensus that he indeed did a neo nazi salute multiple times at the inauguration.
REACTION SPEED [Impossible: Failure] - Caught up in the moment, you throw your heart out to the crowd, and once more for good measure. The fourty-five degree wave receives a raucous applause from all of those it is meant to be a signal to. You have greeted your people. Hail Victory. Hail to You.
(Shamelessly stolen from a Youtube comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr_zDLUUj8g&lc=Ugy9WEUniUZkyiGRn8t4AaABAg.ADZOCduEFceADZPs33fXMM )
this is fantastic
There's not going to be movement towards conviction by either side here; for those for whom this is indeed proof that Musk is a Nazi, their minds are made up and they won't be persuaded that this wasn't a Fascist salute. For those of us who don't think Musk is a Nazi, no amount of "but we knew all along he really was a Nazi" is going to persuade me, for one, that it wasn't a stupid gesture but not a Fascist salute.
How do people explain the "putting his hand over his heart" before throwing this 'salute'? That's not part of any Fascist salute I know of, and if he's deliberately doing a Real Genuine Nazi Salute why add in extraneous bits?
Scott really was prescient with the Shiri's Scissors thing, wasn't he?
Here is the comparison between PB and Musk saluting:
https://gifyu.com/image/SeQHn
> How do people explain the "putting his hand over his heart" before throwing this 'salute'?
That's literally the part that makes it look like the nazi salute. It's the Sieg part of Sieg Heil
It's beginning to get ridiculous how much your hatred of the left makes you bend yourself over backwards to defend something dumb done by someone on the right
Really? Because the Wikipedia article on the Nazi salute doesn't make any mention of starting with the hand over the heart. Neither does the ADL's description of the salute, nor any other source that I could quickly find. And the pop-culture versions Hollywood has provided us, like Dr. Strangelove in "Dr. Strangelove", or Tom Cruise in "Valkyrie", don't start with the hand over the heart. I checked. Nor did any of the half-dozen or so newsreel clips I just checked of actual Nazis (one of them named Adolf Hitler) giving the Nazi salute in Nazi Germany.
Things a Nazi salute has that the Elon Musk gesture also had:
Arm briefly outstretched at a ~45 degree angle
Palm parallel to the arm and facing downward
Things a Nazi salute has that the Elon Musk gesture didn't have:
Starting while standing at attention
Arm outstretched directly forward in a single stiff motion
Salute held long enough that it it may be acknowledged or returned
Things Elon Musk's gesture had, that a Nazi salute *doesn't* have:
Starting with the hand over the heart
A fluid sweeping motion across the body
Significant movement of the torso during the salute
Immediately pivoting to deliver a similar gesture in the opposite direction.
I am at a loss to understand how you could see the full video and consider this a Nazi salute, except by extreme and subjective partisan bias. And I'm pretty sure you're now retconning your memory of actual Nazi salutes to match what you think you just saw.
Also in case you don't trust a reddit gif, anomie shared a link to the actual speech earlier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDRYi1IYI2o&t=32s
Notice how the announcer describes it as "the nazi salute"
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F6p4k6uu76bee1.gif
I don’t care what wikipedia says when it’s literally a gesture hitler did during one of his most famous speeches
Is the issue that i used the term “Nazi salute” instead of “nazi gesture”?
I explicitly said it was the “sieg” part of sieg heil
Not the “heil” part of “heil hitler” or whatever
If people are claiming musk didn’t do a nazi gesture because they don’t realize there’s more than one, then alright i guess
Yeah, excuse me one moment while I clear my throat before launching into the Horst Wessel Lied.
"Hatred of the left". Look, I could get into a slanging match with you, but it's not worth it: too much heat, not near enough light, and Scott shouldn't have to clean up after we wreck the joint.
Okay, yeah: Musk is a Nazi, Trump is a Nazi, and of course I (with my hatred of the left) am a Nazi too. Happy now? Is the world better after that?
At least we both agree that it was something dumb done by Musk. Nazi Fascist dumb? No for me, yes for you. You're not going to change my mind, and I'm not going to change yours.
I don't think you're a Nazi (or a fascist) I just think you're so stuck being contrarian that you've fallen head first into a deep pit of reverse stupidity
You're seriously arguing about the angle of his hand, as if that somehow makes it less of a nazi gesture
I don't think Musk is a Nazi, but I do think that he intentionally snuck a Nazi Salute in there "for the lulz", or to "own the libs' or whatever
And I think that it's bad, because breaking the norm of "Don't make nazi salutes in political speeches" is a norm that was worth having
> How do people explain the "putting his hand over his heart" before throwing this 'salute'?
...That's part of the standard Nazi salute. https://youtu.be/qDRYi1IYI2o?si=FYsoKeHMyytdN6zs&t=33
It's also part of saluting the flag/national anthem for civilians, though that probably isn't taught in schools anymore. So we're all Fascists now, Father?
This doesn’t make sense. If musk did just the same part, no one would be talking about it.
This is the funniest thing I have read in a while, thanks for that!
Eh....while I agree with and have more than once repurposed your "demand for outrage" line, am much less sure that this instance fits that description.
Having watched the full (not edited) video sequence a couple of times now....if forced to wager I would have to put money on "clumsy attempt at fascist salute" ahead of "awkward version of throwing my heart out to you". Call it a 60-40 or maybe 2-1 split on those odds.
The guy is physically and socially awkward, granted, and has self-described as being on the spectrum. So yes either explanation _could_ be true.
If it's meant to be a Real Genuine Nazi Salute, it's very badly done. His hand is at an angle, instead of straight out, at the end. I think he was hyper as one of the three year olds at my place of work during the whole inauguration - whether he was coked-up (er, I mean, NATURAL HARMLESS NOOTROPICS FOR BRAIN-HACKING-ed up) or just full of joie de vivre, he was wired to the moon.
So 'throwing my heart to you' salutes are all just part of that. Anyway, I imagine if he'd done the fist pump or something else instead, the same pearl-clutching would be going on about 'this really means X because some guy did it at a KKK rally one time' or something. The same way that the OK sign was turned into "this is a white supremacist signal" and taken seriously by the Extremely Furrowed Brows set.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/764728163/the-ok-hand-gesture-is-now-listed-as-a-symbol-of-hate
If the ADL, which managed to classify the OK sign as a "hate signal", is now telling everyone to cool their jets about Musk, I think that the demand really has exceeded supply.
Musk has shown a clear pattern of far-right conviction over the past weeks and months: He is firmly in the MAGA camp, advertised European far-right parties, supports each and every insane thing Trump says such as threatening various allies (except for the {already forgotten?} H1B hickup), and is making X a far-right cesspool. Several fascism historians have confirmed his salute to be the Nazi salute. And if the grimace with which he was throwing the salute was one of love, I don't want to see him full of hate.
Whatever his intention really was with that salute, if he really only wanted to channel Celine Dion (another Canada annexation dogwhistle then?), the times for good faith assumptions regarding Musk are long over.
I thought Elon went to Israel and was very friendly with their cause of not being killed by people who don't like them for whatever reason.
I have a very low prior he would intentionally do a nazi salute, it's a much lower chance in my mind than him thinking the hand gesture was a natural way to physically express his feelings.
This is what he was trying to emulate:
https://gifyu.com/image/SeQHn
I can't remember where I first saw this, but I've seen it observed that a lot of otherwise-antisemitic neonazis actually support Israel, because "the Jews fucking off to their own country in the middle of all the other people we hate" is *what they want*, and the fact that it's a very nationalist state in its peoples' "homeland" only makes them respect it more. Israel, according to all fascist precepts, is *doing things the right way*.
If you're going to use "observed" to mean "made up", you should really clarify that explicitly, because normally that word is used to mean something completely different.
I mean, I'm sure he agrees that the Nazis were wrong to kill Jews. Everyone else, on the on the other hand...
>(Edit: lol, the ADL are defending Elon. The Israel lobby does not give a single shit about Jews, folks)
Does the fact that one of the most chicken little organizations in the planet said it wasn't a big deal not make you update a little bit in that direction? What would?
I update a bit towards that possibility, and a bit towards the notion that "the ADL are more concerned about support for Israel, and together with tech orgs that wish to curry favor with the government they want to do everything in their power to suck up to Musk and Trump"
Zuckerberg's or TikTok sucking up to Trump follow the exact same pattern imo
I guess I'm not smart enough to figure out "they are more concerned with supporting Israel and also they hate Jews" there for the ADL. I mean, isn't Israel famously kinda full of Jews?
This is the evangelical position. Israel is important because it heralds the Apocalypse. But then all the Jews will be converted, because they don't like Jews, only Israel.
They are not chicken little when it comes to the rights of Palestinians and those protesting against their genocide. This is because they are part of the Israel lobby, and are only supportive of rights for their political allies. (Did you see the recent leak of the ADL guy explaining that TikTok is bad because it's making people aware of the oppression of Palestinians?)
They see Musk and Trump as enablers of even more US tax dollars for Israel, and they want to protect their allies. They're not fighting racism, they're supporting their colony.
Let me get this straight. The ADL (you're saying) decided to support someone who they believe is a Nazi (you're saying) because they'll get more money?
At some point, the increasing complexity of dissembling collapses of its own weight, doesn't it?
>They are not chicken little when it comes to the rights of Palestinians and those protesting against their genocide.
Why would they be? The ADL exists to specifically fight against antisemitism.
" I'm starting to think America might be beyond repair."
I've thought that for some time. I think 2020 was the year that finally did it for me, though it could have been 2019 or 2021. And I think a more astute person could have recognized it as much as a decade earlier than that. Somewhere about then I mentally assigned 5-30 years as my best guess for the remaining lifespan of the U.S. as a unified country with recognizably the same form of government, though I made (and still make) no strong predictions as to exactly when or in what form its ultimate end will come.
The ultimate problem isn't *this* election or *this* government mind you, though I certainly don't expect them to help. In fact, I don't really think there's *one* ultimate problem, I could point at three or four pieces minimum that I think have played big roles. But the net effect is:
1. At a federal level, political polarization renders U.S. no longer able fix any of its pre-existing structural, cultural or political problems.
2. The factors driving the polarization are exactly the sort of structural, cultural and political problems that are now impossible to fix, so future U.S. governments will *also* not be able to fix them.
3. Any new problems that crop up--regardless of their origin--have a high chance of becoming sucked up by the polarization and becoming similarly unfixable. COVID specifically was my guiding model for this: a crisis that in past years might have pulled people together in solidarity instead turned *almost instantly* into an acrimonious series of shouting matches, with people refusing to do incredibly simple, basic things *for their own safety* with reasons that largely boiled down to "well, if THEY'RE for it, I'm against it." Even when technology handed the country a (good but not perfect) solution on a silver platter, political polarization slowed it down and rendered it less effective.
I would like nothing better than to be wrong about this, but I don't think I am. It's like watching a messy, drawn-out divorce play out across the national stage, where you're not sure if the result will *merely* be something as minor as a heated and expensive legal battle, or if it will escalate into house fire that spreads halfway across the neighborhood.
I mean, I’m no great historian nor am I an American, but I don’t see right now any cause or chance of any separation or civil war.
The rhetoric prior to the civil war was far worse, there was clear demand for a breakup from the southern states, and there was no easy way forward with the expansion of the US unless the south was politically or militarily defeated. Eventually the slave states had to know that the vast majority of new states would be free states leaving them with a minority in the senate as well as Congress, and eventually slavery would be abolished by the US.
They are preempting this by leaving. I see no obvious parallels today.
Well, it's less of a divorce, and more just domestic violence. The husband isn't going to let the wife leave him. He'll just chip away at her until there's nothing left but a broken husk.
I've talked to you enough to know that I have zero interest in reading anything else you write, now or ever. Your writing seems mainly to be optimizing for shock value, and there are a million better purveyors of that elsewhere on the internet if it were something I wanted. Please find someone else to direct such comments at, if you are intent on making them.
Uh... that was a genuine assessment of the situation, but... if you don't want to hear it, that's fine. The married couple analogy is a good one, though, considering the cultural factors responsible.
It’s also a pretty genuine assessment of your writing, so if this kind of response genuinely bothers you, it’s feedback worth considering.
"overall people in America are far too rich and have far too much to lose to blow up the system. "
I'll notice that this prediction has already been somewhat falsified regarding the international system of trade, which certainly isn't the ONLY root of the U.S.'s prosperity, but it's one of the big ones. Whether out of ignorance or because they have other priorities, many people seem perfectly happy to tolerate threats to the system and even cheer for them. In fact "globalization" (of which international trade is the largest piece) has been one of THE main targets of a lot of recent right-wing political movements, in the U.S. and elsewhere. In general I believe those movements are more concerned with the movement of people than the movement of goods, but they seem perfectly content to throw the baby out with the bathwater: see Brexit for example (which wasn't the U.S., but the same arguments applied).
Now I should say that in many ways I *agree* that the U.S.'s problems are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I think a lot of the people who are getting Big Mad about them are being quite stupid. But they're still getting Big Mad regardless. In a nutshell, I think you vastly underestimate how extreme people are willing to act over (to you) minor problems, and how recklessly they're willing to threaten the roots of their own prosperity (in part simply because they don't understand them)
Elon apologists are saying it's a Roman salute. I asked ChatGPT because I didn't know if there was a difference...
Chat said...
> While both involve an extended arm, subtle differences in angle and hand orientation can distinguish the two:
> The Roman salute often has the arm extended horizontally or slightly upward with the palm down.
> The Nazi salute typically has the arm extended higher at a sharper upward angle with the palm down or angled slightly outward.
It looked Nazi to me. Just sayin...
Yeah, this is like saying, "no-no, this was a Hindu swastika I posted, not a Nazi one - they just look identical". You _may_ be able to get away with this if you're a Hindu. If not, not. If you're already on the alt-right fringe, then _definitely_ not.
People are working over time to provide excuses for musk.
If it’s not a Nazi salute, it’s not a Roman salute either. Both are equally bizarre.
(Is the Nazi saluting patterned after the Roman salute?)
Yes (or rather, the idea of it - it's questionable whether it actually existed), by means of the Italian and Austrian fascists.
Some Nazis, being Nazis, thought this was un-Germanic.
WP: "However, no Roman text describes such a gesture, and the Roman works of art that display salutational gestures bear little resemblance to the modern so-called "Roman" salute.[1]"
Did nobody look at the full clip where he's doing the Nazi Fascist OMG End Of America!!!!! salutes? The usual suspects are all weasel-wording with "he appeared to" and "fascist-style salutes".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw&t=4s
Now, if you want to say "that totally was a Fascist Nazi Heil Hitler salute", I can't change your mind. I hope you have plenty of space under your bed to hide in.
Do not make me go digging around online to find a two-second clip of an awkwardly angled shot that makes Harris or Biden or whomever "appear to be" giving a "fascist-style salute". I do remember way back some fucking idiot putting up a photo claiming a pope or a cardinal or someone was "OMG Fascist salute!" but if you know anything about Catholic liturgy, it was "outstretched arm in blessing". (That's why I say "fucking idiot" because they're all too eager to jump into the outrage machine without finding out what happened).
I watched the clip, expecting to see a stage wave or other innocent hand-out gesture that looks bad in a well-chosen framecap. The clip looked a lot more like a deliberate Nazi salute than I had been expecting.
That said, I have never encountered a "hand goes out to you" gesture in other contexts and had no idea it was a thing. If it is a thing and it actually looks like what Musk did, that makes it much more likely that his intentions were innocent rather than (at best) tasteless trolling.
Palm up. “My heart goes out to you” ends with the palm facing up. Try it.
I’m not 100% there on the deliberate Nazi salute only if because ADL didn’t think it was, but it sure didn’t look too innocent.
To be fair, the Nazi salute does definitely feel more natural and satisfying to do compared to your version.
Nazis weren’t exactly into giving their hearts out.
Musk is neither Harris nor Biden, and certainly not a pope or cardinal, so these explanations are irrelevant. If anything, I would be much more interested in a clip of Musk *before* his MAGAfication where he used that salute in a clearly non-political way. Can you provide one of those? That would be much more convincing than this whataboutist gaslighting you're indulging in.
They should have stuck with their "accidental gesture" story. Nobody does the "Roman" salute unless they're a Nazi.
Does it really matter if he did Mussolini's salute rather than Hitler's?
To the people who don't want to see him as a fascist it matters.
I don't know if it's due to Ketamine or the Testosterone that he was Tweeting about a while back, but I think Elon has lost any self-control he once had.
They were both fascists. Mussolini wasn't antisemitic, or racist, really.
Mussolini's movement was the original fascism, of course. The nazis didn't call themselves fascists. Communists first used the term as a category name for nationalist totalitarismism, I think. There still is no satisfying consensus about what constitutes fascism but if anybody deserved being called a fascist it was Mussolini.
I think Mussolini coined the term in a political context. Ancient Romans tied together wooden rods with leather straps with a single-bladed axe in the middle — and they called it a fasces. It was a symbol of strength (because the rods wouldn't snap when tied together) and summary punishment (the axe). In the pre-Republican period, the accounts say that twelve attendants, known as ‘lictors,’ carried fasces walking in procession before the kings of Rome. During the Republic, the two consuls took turns presenting the fasces to the Senate (IIRC), giving the Senate precedence, and they removed the axes from the bundles to show deference to the Roman citizenry, who had received the right of appeal against summary execution. Mussolini played up the stronger together symbolism of the fasces.
What were Hitler and Mussolini, if not fascists? Mussolini established the Roman salute as a symbol of his fascist government, and Hitler adopted it for his. Any way you turn it, the Roman salute, fascist Italy's salute, and fascist Germany's salute are one and the same.
So no, it really doesn't matter which phrase you use, except if you're an organization (such as a news outlet) who doesn't want to end up on the bad side of a potentially fascist US government.
> Or is he just a fascist?
...You just realized that?
> The Israel lobby does not give a single shit about Jews, folks
No, they absolutely do. Nobody is seriously considering killing Jews this time around, there's way higher priorities. Most important part is that the US is going to let Israel off its leash.
Israel has been "leashed" this whole time? How many more war crimes does it want to do, exactly, and why do you think that would decrease antisemitism?
They wage war the traditional way - put Gaza under siege and not let anything out or in. That's what America did with Germany and Japan in WWII.
Why do you think they didn't just go scorched earth on Gaza? Their sponsors have an image to maintain; they were in hot water even under the current circumstances. Of course, that's no longer a problem, since all the people who were needlessly attatched to those lives are going to be removed from power, and also the new administration does not give a damn what liberal Europe thinks of them.
And I don't know why you think it would increase anti-semitism in the US. The right doesn't care about Muslim lives, and the left is no longer relevant.
The Israelis, unlike Hamas and its apologists, are decent human beings who know more than anyone that genocide is wrong. You don't need to invoke pressure from "sponsors" to explain why Israel didn't commit genocide. Or anything remotely like it.
could've fooled me when they were shooting up hospitals
it's been one livestreamed atrocity after another while politicians call the victims Amalek
It’s not just Europe, it’s the world. Not that Europe did much. Good luck with moral posturing in future.
That said America being openly aggressive might actually create a reaction.
In broad terms, I agree with your assessment.
It's one thing to not care about human life in the abstract. It's another thing to make it central to your identity. I'm astonished at how often you feel the need to remind us. It's CONSTANT with you. I think this blatant edgelording degrades the quality of the conversation.
Oh come on, I'm not even being nihilistic or unconditionally misanthropic in this case! There are practical, subjectively justifiable reasons for Israel to be doing this! Frankly, it's more confusing to me why other people care so much about random people whose lives provide no direct value to them.
It can't be empathy, because that's just a response to physical stimuli, which is not being provided in most cases. Is it simply because they are told to unconditionally care about lives because that makes them "good" people? That was the case for me in the past as well, but I ultimately grew out of it because it was completely unproductive. But morality can be changed, and is currently in the active process of being changed at a societal level. It's so interesting to see it happen in real time, isn't it?
I see you do not understand what empathy is. Perhaps you were one of those born without the ability to understand what it is. In which case, I suppose you can't be faulted. I can only be grateful I was born in different circumstances.
> it's more confusing to me why other people care so much about random people whose lives provide no direct value to them.
You see why that might sound like "blatant edgelording" to those imbued with conventional morality?
They *didn't* go scorched earth on Gaza? Almost the entirety of Gaza is homeless because almost every neighbourhood has been destroyed. Last I checked I think 200 churches were ruined. Literally every hospital has been bombed, and every university is rubble, and like 80% of the schools. Something like 75% of the water infrastructure has been destroyed. "Safe zones" have been bombed more times than anyone could count, aid has been illegally blocked from getting in, most of the peak human rights organizations have determined it is genocide, and Israel's leaders are wanted by the Hague. What exactly do you want Israel to do, and why?
>They *didn't* go scorched earth on Gaza?
When Germany invaded Poland, army and SS groups were ordered to kill as many civilians as they could. They burned down whole villages with the people inside them, leveled cities, strafed evacuation columns, and just generally gunned people down. In one month they had killed 150,000-200,000 civilians.
So no, Israel hasn't gotten closed to scorched earth in Gaza.
What percentage of Gaza's inhabitants do you estimate have been killed by Israel?
There's a lot of estimates, but my guess is around 10%.
...But they're still alive, aren't they?
Frankly, I don't have much stake in what happens there, and I'm not going to lose any sleep regardless of what happens. But the Israeli government has been pretty clear about their core values and motives... and they simply have no reason to tolerate all of these liabilities.
A devastating number are not alive, actually, just not all of them. Are you suggesting that it would decrease antisemitism if Israel killed literally all of them? Seems to me like their work so far has done the opposite.
Israel did state that it had goals, but the problem is that all of its stated goals were incompatible with its actions. The only time that hostages were being recovered faster than they were being killed is during ceasefires. There was little chance of resettling Israeli families when a "war" was ongoing. And the best way to recruit Hamas members is by killing Gazans' families.
I'm Jewish, have a very, very deep dislike of Nazism, Fascism and (Soviet-style) Communism. I also think that Musk can act highly inappropriately at times. I've watch the video several times over and do not think its a Nazi salute, just an awkward gesture.
Well, I am sure those Boys interpret it the same way:
https://gifyu.com/image/SeQHn
churn my stomach no; looks intentional; yes
My read is that the chrismas h1b experiment went poorly(vivik been purged), and it was an apology
> Or is he just a fascist?
no
> America might be beyond repair.
If so its not because its too right wing
Trump has rescinded the Biden administration's AI risk executive order. This was widely predicted but there was a question of whether it would be modified or completely eliminated. It looks like completely eliminated.
Which executive order is that? That is incredibly concerning
EO 14110 on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence
Ah, I couldn't find it because it's not a Trump executive order, it's a Biden executive order that he rescinded.
Has anybody else noticed that a large percentage of political disagreements in the left vs right culture wars of the last many years effectively boils down to the "we need to protect them, favor them, support them vs. that's patronizing, they're strong and proud and can take care of themselves" axis? Not sure if there's a memeable version of this, maybe "paternalism vs individualism"? Victim mentality vs survivor mentality? Collectivism vs individualism? Protection vs rising to the challenge.
e.g. women in the workplace. For years we were told to adjust language in our job postings and job descriptions because words too aggressive were going to be a big turnoff and scare off women who want a more soft and nurturing environment. We're not aggressive, we're not intense, we don't have war rooms. We're inclusive, we're nurturing, we're supportive, we're all about letting all voices be heard. On the other side people would claim to be offended by that notion, saying that it was patronizing and that women were perfectly capable of fending off for themselves and didn't need to be treated with kid gloves. Women could lean in, keep up with the boys, rise to the top playing the same game everybody else was. They didn't need special treatment.
e.g. One side finds "woman engineer" to be empowering, we're finally part of the club now, the other says "I'm just an engineer, I don't need that ridiculous label, I can do the job as well as anybody else regardless of my sex".
e.g. Minorities, same thing. One side says we need equity, we need special treatment for groups x y z, they're special and need to be protected and nurtured. At the same time many members of x y z find that notion patronizing and condescending, claiming to be doing just fine and not needing favoritism.
This feels like an ultimately irresolvable tension. It feels parallel in some sense to the masculine vs feminine tension. Maybe this is just how society has always been and will always be. Curious what others things.
I’ve heard this framework before, and it tends to have popularity on the right as a narrative about itself- “we aren’t motivated by animus towards minority communities, it’s just that the left wants to subject those communities to paternalistic care while we recognize the strength of those communities and want to foster their independence and autonomy rather than weaken them by keeping them perpetually dependent on aid.”
However, that narrative rapidly breaks down when you compare their reaction when white working class communities are the ones in distress. The conservative coalition is large, and there’s no shortage of people who will argue that struggling white communities should *also* be told to pound sand/pull their own bootstraps, but there’s also no shortage of people in the right’s tent who suddenly view aid very differently when it’s for a white rust belt factory town or Appalachian coal mining community struggling, rather than a black-and-Latino-heavy inner city area, or people for whom the crack epidemic gets very different treatment than white communities suffering opioid “deaths of despair,” etc.
The truth is that the right coalition contains both the libertarian strains that treat all these programs as the same kind of problematic, *and* the folk socialists whose discomfort/comfort with aid programs is mainly determined by the color of the beneficiaries thereof. But the latter are more embarrassing so the autonomy narrative gets all the airtime.
Most people don't care about logic; they care about vibes.
"Women are just as capable as men at everything, there are no differences between the sexes" has a pro-women vibe. "Women need to be carefully protected from microaggressions and inappropriate jokes" also has a pro-women vibe. For most people, that is enough; from their perspective, that makes it practically the same thing.
It's only a few nerds scratching their heads and wondering how exactly can you put "equality" and "ladies first" into a coherent framework.
the alt right (endonym du jour is "dissident right") loves to reference Bronze Age Pervert's concept of "The Longhouse". Which is this nebulous idea that the West is currently a matriarchal society where feminine, egalitarian values like "PROTECC MINORITIES; BELIEVE WAMEN (or else)" are enforced via HR departments, ESG scores, etc.
Idk if I totally agree with this. And I can't speak to the historicity of the reference to the Bronze Age. But... it seems relevant.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-longhouse
Where did he get this notion of the longhouse? My very fuzzy impression (from reading a book about Borneo decades back) was that longhouses were either sex-separated (so men had their own longhouse) or that it was for all the village/tribe (so not a matriarchal institution).
https://www.kaltimber.com/blog/2020/7/20/dayak-architecture-and-art-the-use-of-longhouse
Mind you, I don't trust BAP on anything historical, sociological, or anthropological, so if it turns out he pulled it out of his backside I wouldn't be surprised.
Okay, read the bit at the link and that is stupidity on stilts. Guy just invented this notion.
It's not about Borneo. I think it's a reference to the longhouses of the Indo Europeans.
Allegedly, he graduated Harvard with a degree in history (or anthropology?). So he has the credentials, at the very least. He wrote a dissertation about BronzeAge IndoEuropeans conquering Greece. Then later, turned it into a (wildly offensive) novel, written in caveman-speak.
I'm not in a position to explain it charitably, since I don't really grok the appeal.
The disagreement as you framed it is between two camps of egalitarians. The rising right is not egalitarian. They take it for granted that groups are different, that some will naturally fall behind, and that there's nothing wrong with this.
I don't think that's an accurate characterisation of the division.
I think that concern for subaltern groups, of either the "we need to protect them, favor them, support them" and "that's patronizing, they're strong and proud and can take care of themselves", is a left-wing position, and that the debate you characterise has largely been an intra-left one, while the main right-wing position has generally been "fuck subaltern groups", framed in a variety of ways of varying honest.
That sounds more like the 4chan position. I don't think you have met enough non-selected right wing people to make generalizations. (By "non-selected" I mean people you just meet in everyday life and later find out their political positions, and the more moderate they are the longer this tends to take.)
I’m honestly curious whether you meant “fuck subaltern groups” as “fuck the stupid idea of subaltern groups; we’re all equal Americans” or “subaltern groups deserve to get fucked”. I suppose if I searched for other posts by you I could figure out where you’re coming from, but as written I couldn’t tell.
If by "we should fuck" you mean "we should not allow to enter our country illegally", I agree. But I have a sneaking suspicion that's not what you mean.
"Greenland and Panama, unrestrained carbon emissions, and breaking down the international trade system. You have the world’s richest and most dominant country openly trying to extort, extract wealth from, and suppress the development of poorer groups.
And yeah, immigration restrictions too."
These are all exaggerations of what is actually happening, and the motivation for those things is not to fuck foreigners, but either greed for the first ones or 'fear of foreigners economically/culturally/criminally' for the immigration restrictions.
Your view of your outgroup seems to be that they are just evil and get off on hurting people, which is just not true.
EDIT: I just found that Trump 'won't rule out force' for taking Greenland, so I was wrong that you were exaggerating about that.
Which country are you from, and what are their immigration laws?
That was my thought as well.
Scott kind of wrote on this a long while back, with his post on "Thrive" vs "Survive" politics. Thrivers want everybody to be taken care of, and why not? We have enough resources to do it. Survivors don't have time or resources to waste on mollycoddling, everyone needs to pull their weight.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/
thanks for that link: more good insights from Scott.
It does seem odd, and yet I think it is happening nevertheless.
I read somewhere (can't remember where) that the people most likely to vote for Trump for economic reasons were NOT the poorest demographics, but rather the fairly successful portion of the middle class that felt the most precarious in their success.[1] This feels right, and somewhat matches my own personal observations. People today are unimaginably richer than a bronze age farmer, but they don't have the experience of being a bronze age farmer to compare to. They *do* have their own experiences (and at a more distant remove, those of their friends and family) and those are what seem the most real and immediate. Losing a large chunk of their wealth and security would be fundamentally distressing to them, even if they were left with more wealth and security than most humans ever knew.
[1] To be clear, I think this is a very stupid reaction to that sort of anxiety, but I still understand the anxiety itself.
Both "thrive" and "survive" are premised on scarcity in the economic sense; it's equally odd to expend resources on people who are too rich to need taking care of.
> Given that, it seems odd for people to practice “survive” politics here.
Only if you take your existence for granted. As long as there are other nations in existence, and as long as there is opposition within the nation, your existence has not truly been secured. Order can only be guaranteed through the elimination of all variables.
The places that seem to devote the most resources to help the 'poor,' which are also the richest places in the US, like San Francisco or Los Angeles, seem to be completely ineffective at helping said 'poor,' and also make life worse for the actual poor and working classes in the process, and seem to be burning through 'what our grandparents worked hard to give us and driving our society into the gutter,' as FLWAB says below.
Now, these days the Thriver position is "all our streets are going to be owned by street people, and we must let them commit assault and, sell/use drugs, or be psychotic and act in dangerous ways because to stop them is problematic" and so I would take the political choice that is opposite to that whatever happens to be available. Because obviously the Thrive position isn't helping 'poor' people at all, and is in fact hurting them very badly (while making life worse generally in a thousand very real ways for everyone else), because Thrivers can't admit certain things about human nature.
That Thriver position feels like yet another iteration of the "great idea, wrong species" utopian world view. If only reality would already bend itself to all of the great intentions those folks have, instead of constantly getting in the way.
There are two meanings of "doesn't work". For the homeless, it means that they are left on the streets... which may be okay if it is only a tiny fraction of a population with very weird preferences. But for everyone else, it also means assaults, drugs, etc., and having fewer of that seems like a mainstream preference.
"Anyway the idea that we can afford to be more generous is entirely consistent with the idea that we should try to be generous in a way that actually helps people."
That is true, and if you had people like Matt Yglesias in charge then that would be possible. Instead, you can't help mentally ill street people because of the reasons that Freddie DeBoer outlines, that involuntary commitment is off the table. You can't get drug addicts and dealers off the street because of disparate racial impacts and because it is mean to kick people off the street and racist to use police to do anything. You can't build more housing, or build windowless flophouses, because of community consultation, anti-developer sentiment, and regulations to provide minimum standards that the poorest can't afford.
All of this means that the working, responsible poor have to live in neighborhoods with crazy people and tents everywhere, and middle class and above people can't enjoy nice, once thriving cities, and people have to compete in a zero sum game to bid up house prices in the areas that actually keep people off the street.
Spoken like a Thriver! Survival is not about relative wealth. Yes, we're richer than anyone in history, but we're still not rich enough that we can stop working. Virtue, skill, and grit still matter. If you do what is right, and work hard, keep your nose clean, settle down, raise some kids, keep your promises, then you can enjoy the fruits of your labors here in the greatest and wealthiest society ever known: but if you don't you can still fall down into the Hell of drug addiction, criminality, single motherhood, living off the dole, obesity, childlessness, etc.
The Survive mindset is knowing that all our wealth was built by hard work, virtue, and grit and is maintained by hard work, virtue, and grit. We are quite capable of squandering what our grandparents worked hard to give us and driving our society into the gutter. Things fall apart unless they're kept together. That's the Survive mindset!
"Most of the “work” that Americans do is relatively painless or even enjoyable white collar work"
This is a sign you live in an upper-class bubble.
"And you have to affirmatively do bad things to become a criminal, drug addict, or single impoverished mom. "
False, false and false. Wrongful convictions certainly happen, no matter how much we like to pretend they don't. Kids get drugs pushed on them by parents or older siblings and get addicted before they have the agency and independence to refuse. Women get pregnant through rape, or have co-parents die, leave or turn abusive. These may not be central or typical members of these groups, but they certainly exist[1]. And conspicuously missing from your list are categories like "orphan," "homeless teenager" which would be inconvenient to acknowledge. This position is just the Just World Fallacy, which is (as the name suggests) a fallacy. Of course, nobody's perfect, so the determined can always find *something* blameworthy that a person in dire straights has done.
"An American with no skills, grit, or virtue can still get some basic job paying $50k and live a modest but comfortable life."
OK, wow, "can" is doing quite a lot of work here. A quick check tells me that the median income for Americans working full time is $60K. That's going to include all the people who DO have special skills--doctors, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, electricians, etc--all the older people who have accumulated decades of promotions and raises and so on. And of course it is NOT going to include those people who are looking for full-time work but can't find it. Likewise, my own personal experience is that the only under-40 people I know earning $50 or more are those with with specialized and valuable skill sets, and I certainly never saw low-qualification jobs posted at $24/hr during any of the periods when I was looking for work. I suspect that the supply of such jobs is much, MUCH smaller than you seem to think. This is very much a "it's one banana Michael, what could it cost, $10?" vibe.
[1] And even many of the central and typical members will have had significant external factors pushing them in the direction of doing "affirmatively bad things," even if those factors are less inarguably decisive.
Too much to say, so I’ll just say: I disagree vehemently with every single sentence you have written here. Which is why I like the Thrive Survive continuum, as it does seem to capture or at least gesture at a real psychological divide.
Having sex out of wedlock. Unironically. Getting the ring first before having fun would have solved her problem.
I wonder, how much of the complaints about "Nice Guys TM" is simply different people having different ways of falling in love.
I imagine that some people fall in love instantly, at the first sight. And for some other people, emotional connection is an important part of developing attraction; and that connection requires them to first spend some time together.
And I imagine that the former view the latter as *dishonest*. Someone who moves very quickly from zero to one, probably expects everyone else to be the same; so when they hear someone saying "at first, we were just friends... but later I realized I was in love", they are like "no way, I am sure that you were attracted from the start, but you didn't tell her, because you were afraid of rejection... instead you pretended to be a friend, so that you could later use the threat of withdrawing the friendship as a leverage".
So we ended up in a situation where being attracted to things besides the body is called out as a shameful behavior.
Similarly, it is interesting to see the pushback against "sapiosexuality". Even Wikipedia mentions that critics call it "elitist", "discriminatory", and "pretentious". (For some reason, other sexual preferences do not get a criticism section on Wikipedia, although I am sure that many of them have their own critics, too.) See e.g. https://www.thedailybeast.com/pretentious-is-not-a-sexual-orientation/ And yet, uhm, I also happen to find smart people more attractive than dumb ones; sue me. And I don't think this is a rare thing. But apparently, not finding dumb people hot is a form of ableism, therefore something you should never mention in a company of decent people.
It's tricky. If you are open to cross-gender friendships, there's plenty of opportunity for attraction to blossom, wax, wane, etc, throughout the life of the relationship and I think that's pretty healthy and normal. I've been a part of a mixed-gender circle of friends since high school, which included one I eventually dated, another I had a crush on at various points but never dated, and others who never moved the needle for me one way or another.
But that same mixed circle also has given me a bit of a window into the other side of the looking glass, and the "Nice Guy TM" as described by women doesn't really align with "a guy who is your friend and later catches feelings for you because his attraction just develops slowly in a social context rather than spontaneously at first sight," so much as it's defined as "a guy who (a) has feelings for you from the very beginning, but (b) whose dating strategy, rather than simply trying to date you, is to be constantly overly protective/nurturing/deferential/involved in your business or whatever, but in a 'nice,' defensible, and always deniable kind of way - the kind of way that never exposes him to being rejected in the way just asking someone out on a date would."
Assuming she sees what's going on (and she usually does), this puts her on the horns of an awkward dilemma. On the one hand, it feels presumptuous and mean-spirited to respond to this behavior by taking the initiative to say something like 'I know you haven't said anything, but I can tell by your constant insistence on buying my drinks and walking me home that you're attracted to me, and I need to just tell you right now that I don't want that kind of relationship with you so stop doing that.' But she can be accused of also 'leading him on' or 'taking advantage of him' if she just does nothing and hopes the behavior goes away on its own. His insistence on being indirect and deniable puts her in a position where she's the villain for any response other than reciprocating, which obviously isn't a fun place to be. Sometimes it's just a 1x1 relationship where she can sort of quietly exit by not inviting him to events or doing stuff with him, but that gets much harder when he's a member of her social circle.
So although I think there may be some overlap with different kinds of attraction, Nice Guy strikes me mainly as a definition for a particular *strategy for coupling* rather than a definition for a particular *way of falling in love*. Specifically, it would refer to a dating strategy defined by fear of vulnerability manifesting as extreme indirectness and commitment to constant deniability in romantic approach.
"My guy friend caught feelings for me and asked me out on a date and I had to say no" is an awkward interlude that could end a friendship but it could just as easily be moved past, and it's not "Nice Guy TM" behavior.
"My guy friend had feelings for me for 4 years but never said anything about it, he just trashed my boyfriends and constantly catered to me in a way that was sometimes awkward but I didn't know how to tell him to stop when he was so insistent about picking me up from the airport and cooking me a special birthday meal, then he tried to kiss me and got really mad when I told him I don't think of him like that" is "Nice Guy TM" behavior.
I stopped trying to figure that one out and just became an incel. Easier and the memes are better.
This seems to be to be quite different to what people generally refer to when they talk about Nice Guys. Generally the guys people are talking about are men who fail at love despite being fairly morally upstanding and blame women for preferring "bad boys", whereas you seem to be referring to male friends of women who are secretly in love with them. There's probably significant overlap but they are different imo.
> Generally the guys people are talking about are men who fail at love despite being fairly morally upstanding and blame women for preferring "bad boys"
That may have been true when the term originated, like, two decades ago, but nowadays it's almost exclusively used to describe men (/man-children) who seem to believe that being "polite"/"nice" to women entitles them to women's attention and/or sex, and then immediately turn heel and call women sluts when that doesn't work. At best they become petulant, and there are many worse cases. It's rarely applied to actually nice men who continue to be genuinely nice - the linguistic treadmill now has moved on to calling them "white knights", or just "simps".
(That said, the actual problem isn't so much that women are attracted to "bad boys" as it is that (*most*) women naturally fall on the subby side of the Dom/sub divide, and are attracted to dominance/assertiveness/confidence, which is mostly orthogonal to being "nice")
>>(That said, the actual problem isn't so much that women are attracted to "bad boys" as it is that (*most*) women naturally fall on the subby side of the Dom/sub divide, and are attracted to dominance/assertiveness/confidence, which is mostly orthogonal to being "nice")
I think there's some truth to that, but it's also skewed by the blurred impression the raw numbers can create. A "bad boy" may have many flaws, but he's direct in his approach. A "nice guy" in the internet sense is pathologically committed to being indirect, beating around the bush, and limiting his exposure to a clear rejection. As a result, by the time a man employing the "nice guy" method finally gets to his answer from one potential mate, a "bad boy" may have directly approached dozens of women, been rejected by 95% of them, slept with two, and entered into a short-term but toxic relationship with another. The "nice guy" isn't tracking the "bad boy's" misses, though, so he just sees "WTH that jerk had three partners in just 6 months and I've been on a total dry spell! Why do women only go for jerks?"
The key is to learn to be a nice (in the sense of being kind, empathetic, socially intelligent, or what have you) person while nevertheless being direct.
This is all a very good point. I was basing my theory on the girls I knew and know that actively fantasized about "bad boys", but those are probably dwarfed by the effect you describe in actual practice.
> Generally the guys people are talking about are men who fail at love despite being fairly morally upstanding
This heavily depends upon your definition of "morally upstanding"; most of the people talking about/using the term "Nice Guys" would not view these people as "fairly morally upstanding" given that the "nice guys" being described tend to have very regressive/sexist attitudes towards women and how they should act.
These days, it's probably almost easier to simply describe it as "liberal women don't want to date conservative guys, because they think being conservative in and of itself is actively evil/harmful/etc; conservative guys think this is unfair, in part because there are fewer conservative women".
On average men fall in love sooner than women, and women fall out of love sooner
I 100% agree. I think Nice Guys can be broken up into a wide variety of different patterns of behavior. One of them is basically what you describe; a kind of demisexuality or need for a long courtship where people fall in love with people they've spent a lot of time with. But if a person like this doesn't take 'no' for an answer and hopes that someone will gradually fall in love with them as well in what is a presumed to be friendly relationship then this is a potentially dysfunctional pattern. Practically speaking, people who need long courtships are best served by finding ways to have long courtships. Talk online for a while. Talk with someone out of state. Don't emotionally commit too much before the other person does, in the hopes that ardent love will win over a one-sided relationship. And most importantly, be willing to take 'no' for an answer.
It's not a need that should be pathologized as it is, but it does need to be managed by the person who has it, since they will tend to be interested in people who have different patterns of expectations.
Similarly, I'd also (quietly) identify as 'sapiosexual' or 'sapioromantic.' The mental part of a relationship is a critical component for me. But practically speaking, I'm not sure publicly identifying as sapiosexual really *serves* anyone. If someone is mentally stimulating, you'll find that out through dating. Saying that you are sapiosexual is unlikely to attract more intelligent people, just like saying out loud that you like beautiful people is unlikely to help you find people who are more attractive. It's possible to filter quietly and indirectly for some needs just as easily as it is to filter loudly.
It is definitely bad if someone doesn't take "no" for an answer.
That said, there is a difference (for some people) between "no, never" and "not yet, maybe". The former means that the other person should give up. The latter means that the future is uncertain... it could become a "yes" one day, or it could become a "no", or it could even stay undecided forever.
Navigating that uncertainty is difficult. If you give up too soon, maybe you just had to wait a little longer. But if you keep waiting, maybe it ends up with "no" a few years later, and you just wasted a lot of time. (No one owes you a "yes", no matter how long you have waited for them to decide.) So I guess the best strategy is to stay in contact, but explore your other options in the meanwhile. Some people may find this emotionally difficult, but that's their problem; there is no better solution that wouldn't come at someone else's cost.
Seems to me that there are some inefficiencies in communication, caused by each side trying to minimize their risks. On the side of the undecided person (stereotypically a woman), there is a risk that truthfully answering "not yet, maybe" may be misinterpreted as "yes, but I want you to keep it slow" by the other side. So the safe answer in such situation is to give a clear "no", even if you originally didn't feel that way. Now on the side of the suitor (stereotypically a man), the safe approach is to keep it slow, to avoid accidentally forcing this kind of "no" by asking too soon. Ideally, the waiting should not be completely passive, but rather a continuous exchange of gradually increasing signals of interest.
From the perspective of someone who knows the clear "yes" or "no" from the first sight, this probably seems completely idiotic, and the optimal protocol for them could be thousand times more efficient. ("Wanna have sex? Your place or mine?")
What makes it complicated is that the society contains both kinds of people (those could even be the same people at a different stage of their lives), mostly not understanding each other, with bad actors in each group, etc. And the memes proclaiming that everyone whose ways are different from mine is a bad person.
> practically speaking, I'm not sure publicly identifying as sapiosexual really *serves* anyone.
Yeah, it's not like if you declare yourself a sapiosexual, smart people who previously didn't notice you suddenly start paying attention. (Also, even if that worked, it wouldn't attract smart people, but rather people who identify as smart, which is not the same.)
But I think it could serve the society as a whole, as an antidote against the "men do not find intelligent women attractive" meme, which is popular, and in my opinion harmful.
I wouldn't mind a norm of simply not speaking about intelligence vs dating. But that is not the situation we have now. Instead, "it is known" that women can increase their dating success by acting dumb. Which... on one hand, maybe yes, I don't really know; it might be a good strategy if all you want is to get laid... but on the other hand, it seems like an efficient way for a smart woman to find exactly the kind of partner who will later hate her for being intelligent. (Maybe it is that kind of advice that women love to give their friends/competitors to undermine them? "Act dumb, get a big tattoo, and cut your hair short. Trust me, you will be popular, girl!") So I would like to see some more pushback against that.
Do you believe in love at first sight? You’re sure it happens all the time.
Things happen; I am not sure which of them should be called "love".
I could definitely get *sexually attracted* to someone at first sight. (Is this love already?) I might decide to actually do something about that, and then I would feel the *excitement of adventure*. (Is this love already?) I could also imagine that person to be smart and curious and nice... at that moment, based on almost zero data, mostly on my wishful thinking and halo effect... and by sheer coincidence I might even be correct. (Is this love already?) I might become obsessed with that person. (Is this love already?) Those things could all happen at first sight, and yeah, that has actually happened to me a few times.
Then there is a moment when I *know*, based on personal experience, that the person actually *is* smart and curious and nice. Maybe not as much as I imagined before I knew them, because reality often cannot compete with fantasy; but perhaps still a lot. When I know that the feelings are mutual, and that we can trust each other and be open with each other. A rationalist might call it becoming a part of each other's utility function. (Is this love already?) These things take some time, so they cannot happen at first sight.
tl;dr -- things can happen at first sight, not sure whether to call them "love"
I was quoting the Beatles there. As it happens Ringo (I think he wrote that) was being very wise in his response. It wasn’t “sure, it happens all the time”, not “it’s definitely happened to me”.
Love at first sight has to be mutual I think, for the phrase to make any sense.
> Similarly, it is interesting to see the pushback against "sapiosexuality".
At least in my own experience, "sapiosexuality" gets a bad rep because it's pretty much exclusively used by the most basic, doesn't-read, doesn't-think, degree-in-underwater-basket-weaving, 7-hours-of-phone-screentime-per-day, types of women.
It's become an anti-shibboleth for what it's theoretically supposed to represent affinity for. But you know, maybe I'm the crazy one.
100%. I noticed that "I really crave deep conversations" seems to mostly come from milquetoast NPC types that never seem to have a single interesting thought to share.
It reminds me of how the people who sound the most excited about the gym on their profiles are also the ones who need it the most and seem to have discovered it recently, while all of the life-long gym rats chicken breasts & rice types don't even mention it because it's just the life they live every day.
Edit: false place in thread.
Last open thread there was the assertion that the term woke was only used by the right now and not the left. I will note that I received in my social media feed yesterday usage of woke in an advertisement designed to appeal to anti-Trump people
"Get Woke. Embrace Hope. Resist! Free New Rise & Shine $44.95 Box with $50 Gift Card!
Hang in there.
As cooks, we care. We especially care about those in need. And it’s not just that we care, it’s like we feel the hurt of those who are hurting. I think that is why this Monday is weighing so heavily on so many of us.
The thought of so many good and decent people being hurt for nothing more than the enjoyment of Donald Trump and his followers can seem so very-very hopeless. And it’s not hopeless, not by any means, but somehow in this moment it sure feels that way." ....
After a few more anti Trump paragraphs we get to the items for sale including
"We also have the brand new $23.95 Woke Gift Boxes free with each $30 Gift Card sold. These little boxes are fun and we need fun to get through these coming years. I Got Woke, now I’m hungry for Justice and so much more!"
https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/woke-gift-box/c-24/p-3054/pd-gb?clid=IwY2xjawH6
Another recent use of woke I on the left I note that there was controversy last year over a $250,000 contract to improve elementary school education going to an organization called Woke Kindergarten.
For the newspaper article
"The Woke Kindergarten curriculum shared with schools includes “wonderings,” which pose questions for students, including, “If the United States defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?”
In addition, the “woke word of the day,” including “strike,” “ceasefire” and “protest,” offers students a “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/woke-kindergarten-glassbrook-hayward-18635504.php
No matter how woke you are, Gertrud is woker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrud_Woker
(PS, is she a case of nominative determinism?)
Good God. Commercialism really does eat everything. It's a spice company, and I'm unsure whether they really are True Believers or if they would happily produce the MAGA Spicy Set as well. And which is worse - the True Believers committing simony by using principles to huckster a box set of spices, or blatant "we don't care a straw for principles, money has no smell".
I think I prefer the Diocletian approach, to be honest. I get queasy and angry at people trying to sell holy water or Lourdes water online, and it would be even worse if they were doing it out of "I genuinely believe this will cause a miracle to happen".
https://www.penzeys.com/shop/about-us/
"Now, for a host of reasons, I think the time has come to admit what we are actually up to and come right out and say it. So here goes. We are trying to make the world a better place. And with your help there are days where we actually seem to be doing that. Our goal now is to have more of those days."
And in order to do that, we'll take advantage of people feeling goddamn suicidal over the election result to shill our spice blends to them. Hey, if they're gonna off themselves, they can't take the money with them now can they, so may as well give it to us!
Look at this patronising bullshit:
https://www.penzeys.com/shop/about-republicans/
"Remember when your distrust of big city types, and your deep rooted beliefs in paying your debts, respecting your marriage, raising kids willing to serve, honoring your word, and going to church every week had you voting for Donald Trump over Joe Biden all because Biden’s son had a computer? Or how you couldn’t vote for Hillary because she was over-prepared and used emails? I know that to you your actions seem rational and in keeping with your values, but when it comes to voting you are now consistently voting in people who are the exact opposite of you and the values you hold dear."
Yeah, sure: it was because Hunter owned a computer. That there teck-noll-gee, we conservatards don't trust none of that unnatural devices! She used eee-males? Ritin' a letter with pen and paper was good enough for Grampaw, we reckon! Don't need no fancy eee-males!
https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/woke-gift-box/c-24/p-3054/pd-gb?clid=IwY2xjawH6
"CONTAINS: 1/4-Cup jars of Transgender Remember Vanilla Sugar, Outrage, Justice, and Florida Seasoned Pepper"
Oh well, clearly I can't avail of this wonderful bargain because alas, I'm cishet and not transgender, so using that Vanilla Sugar would be appropriating someone else's culture and that is Not Woke 😀
A term being used in advertising doesn't seem very good evidence of anything.
Some of it is probably just recuperation, kind of like some rightwingers did with, say, "deplorable" after that whole hubbub (so you had Deploraball and so on).
It's from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and basically just means "aware".
As a non- American, I never heard it before the right started using it to do fascism. Americans may have heard it beforehand.
It was very successfully appropriated.
Sort of like what the British did with the word clever.
I agree that the term came originally from AAVE. But 'woke' seems to have become much more of an identifier of ideological tribes after it was appropriated from AAVE.
I first heard it on a California campus around 2017, in genuine use by believers.
Later than your date (Jan 20 2018), but here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yQsEA5tLd4
Interestingly this seems to have been too early for "latinx".
As an American, I've only ever heard of its AAVE origins brought up when people are trying to deny that it is a right wing slur in current practice.
The original AAVE term is not a political philosophy. It's an attitude of being aware of issues and how they affect you.
The right wing use of "woke" is a strawman of any government policy that is not outright fascism.
When the organization is using the term in its name, "Woke Kindergarten" and in the curriculum, "woke word of the day" It's not a strawman when opponent use the term "woke" when objecting to the curriculum including “language of the resistance … to introduce children to liberatory vocabulary in a way that they can easily digest, understand and most importantly, use in their critiques of the system.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/woke-kindergarten-glassbrook-hayward-18635504.php
Incidentally it appears from photographs that the owner is African American and not a White person adopting it to be a trendy consultant.
I'd say using "woke" to refer to that is probably just a factual statement, along the lines of the original usage. The right wing usage is more often about any government or corporate policy that protects minorities, or even other left-wing projects like building renewable energy generation.
This provides important context to your comment at 87474327, above. Thank you.
When you're not sure if you're witnessing performance art, or if this is actually happening.
B-b-but I was told that there was no such thing as "woke"... it's only a boogeyman that bad right-wing people made up. :(
My entire experience with woke:
1) A local lake’s name was changed from Calhoun to Bde Mka Ska. Turns out the original namesake was a racist asshole. About half the signs with new lake name have been updated in the last 5 years.
2) Garrison Keillor mentioned a land acknowledgment for the locale of the theater before an opera. He thought that was stupid. So did I for the reason that the area was contested between two American Indian tribes and the whole affair did nothing constructive.
3) The woman running my neighborhood email group asked me to supply my pronouns with a link to why it’s important. I didn’t even have to suppress an eye roll because she wasn’t present.
That’s it. The whole ordeal for me. Not worth much more than a shrug on my part.
I‘ve seen several scores of complaints about woke on this forum.
It’s possible I don’t around enough but really it’s overwhelmingly coming from the right in my personal experience.
Wait a minute. I remember Katie Perry saying she was now woke on television once and I found that annoying so that’s number 4 I guess.
If they're reduced to playing dead, maybe now is the time for us to take the W and be happy. We can still keep one eye open in case they try to get up to their old tricks again.
>We can still keep one eye open in case they try to get up to their old tricks again.
Sounds prudent! Also, try to help those who were forced to adopt woke protective mimicry to safely shed it.
You are hopelessly old-fashioned Gunflint, and as a result inclined to not take things too seriously. You should be ashamed of yourself.
> A local lake’s name was changed from Calhoun to Bde Mka Ska
I've definitely noticed a recent trend towards making "Indigenous" place names as awkward and annoying as possible to say or write, as a display of power by the renamers.
Gone are the days of shit like "Uluru" which is at least easy to pronounce and sounds good. The new name of Mount Wellington in Tasmania is "kunanyi / Mount Wellington". Not Mout Kunanyi, not even Kunanyi, but kunyanyi. Spelled with a lower case "k" because fuck you, we've decided this one fucking mountain is an exception to all existing English grammar.
Bde Mka Ska sounds like a fantastic example of the same thing.
How to pronounce that name of the lake is a fair question.
The mayor’s surname in my hometown was Vlaisavljevich.
Just like the character Wojciehowicz on Barney Miller the name is pronounced just like it’s spelled.
It’s simple phonics.
I misspelled the lake name by a letter
Bde Maka Ska pronunciation:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iU-O49MUte8
There's nothing wrong with the pronunciation, it's the spelling that's a problem.
The Dakota had no written language, so someone must have gone and transliterated a perfectly good Dakota word into the English alphabet in a way that isn't consistent with anything sensible.
Just spell it "Bede Macaska" or something.
Oh well then, that clears it up.
If someone is good at history, perhaps you can help me understand: What happened with aristocracy at the end of feudalism?
I mean, there was a moment of time when people owned land, and that was the official source of their power. But ownership of land didn't disappear, and a Georgist might say that even today owning a lot of land makes you a kind of aristocrat; we just don't look there, because we prefer to discuss capital.
So what happened to the former aristocrats? I can imagine a few scenarios:
* they got killed;
* they survived, but their land was taken away;
* they sold the land trying to join the new capitalist economy, but they sucked at the new economy, so they lost the land and the money;
* they kept the land, but it was at an unimportant place, and the rent was too low to allow them to live comfortably;
* they kept the land, got enough rent to let them and their descendants live comfortably.
I can imagine that each of these scenarios actually happened to someone. My question is, can anyone estimate the probabilities? Probably depends on history of the specific country. I guess I am ultimately curious how much of continuity is between the land owners back then, and the land owners today.
It depends on the country. In some places like England and Spain, they're basically still around and still rich and influential. In some countries like France, lots of them got killed and a lot of the rest were impoverished, they might still be a cultural group but they don't have more influence than anyone else. Many other countries are kind of in-between.
Also, being an aristocrat isn't really synonymous to owning land. Plenty of aristocrats didn't have much in the way of land holdings, and plenty of land was owned by non-aristocrats, most notably the church.
A combination of factors:
1. New wealth crowded out old wealth in relative terms. Feudal estates become a much smaller percentage of society's wealth without any particular estate necessarily reducing in value in absolute terms
2. Being descended from people who were good at feudalism correlates less than perfectly with being good at capitalism. A lot of landed aristocrats found themselves spending more than their incomes and needing to sell off land to meet expenses. C.f. entire genres of British fiction about cash-poor 19th and 20th century aristocrats.
3. A lot of countries to varying extents either expropriated the estates outright or used a combination of land taxes and inheritance taxes to redistribute wealth away from landed aristocrats.
4. Depending on the country, a lot of the aristocrats still own large estates. Some aristocratic families did turn out to be good enough at capitalism to pay the taxes and maintain or grow their estates, or were at least politically powerful enough (especially in the case of members of the extended royal family) to retain enough privileges and special tax status to make up any shortcomings in their skills in wealth management. An awful lot of English land, both urban and rural, is still owned at least partially by aristocratic estates. The ones tied to the monarch and his heir (the Crown Estates, the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Duchy of Cornwall) are by far the biggest, but they are far from the only ones.
> An awful lot of English land, both urban and rural, is still owned at least partially by aristocratic estates.
> Some aristocratic families did turn out to be good enough at capitalism to pay the taxes and maintain or grow their estates
Note that this wasn't possible in England with its 80% inheritance taxes. The aristocratic families that retained their estates did so by converting them into public-access museums.
I expect the impact of the inheritance taxes would have varied quite a bit depending on how lucky the family in question got in terms of how often their heads of family died and when. It looks like there was about a 40 year window (1946 through 1986) when the tax was 80-ish percent. Before and during WW1, taxes were 20% or less, and were 40-65% for the interwar years through WW2, and it looks like the top rate got cut to 60-ish% in 1986 and to 40% at some point I can't find after that.
Assuming 30-year generations, these are the real rates of growth you'd need to maintain an estate despite the inheritance tax at various rates:
80% - 5.5%
60% - 3.1%
40% - 1.7%
20% - 0.7%
With unluckier 15-year generations:
80% - 11.3%
60% - 6.3%
40% - 3.5%
20% - 1.5%
A 5.5% real growth rate would take a bit of luck as well as prudent investment (and management of existing landholding), especially considering that they no doubt want/need to spend some of their income on their lifestyle, not just reinvest everything, but isn't completely out of the question. A 1-3% real growth rate seems much more achievable.
But a sustained 11.3% (or higher) real growth rate is ridiculously high, high enough that I would be surprised if any large estates survived being inherited three or more times during 1946-1986.
Those who did manage to avoid the worst of the post-war inheritance laws usually converted the urban estates into entities held in trust, or into regular companies with outside investment etc.
The ones that didn't end up on the wrong side of a revolution (such as in Britain) are often still around and sometimes still reasonably wealthy, but they had any special privileges beyond title eroded away by politics and got eclipsed in wealth by folks in business (and the ones that are still wealthy aren't wealthy typically because they're landowners anymore).
In the early modern period, a lot of aristocrats essentially eroded away their fortunes with the high costs of living and debts. Performing aristocracy was expensive, and they had a whole bunch of vices as well like gambling, etc. The funny thing is that sometimes they had an estate that was "entailed" - essentially in a legal trust state so that it couldn't be sold or borrowed against - so you'd end up with aristocrats who were basically broke in terms of cash but still owned an increasingly decrepit mansion house or castle and immediate grounds around it.
That itself was a reflection of the shift into the modern era, with land increasingly treated as property that could be readily sold and borrowed against. Typically land was not something you could sell in medieval Europe, and it came with a bunch of rights and obligations - you could pledge incomes against the land and its products to borrow money, but not the land itself.
Usually mostly the third one. In many countries (especially Russia) the nobility were almost notoriously financially irresponsible and commoners gradually bought them out. In northern Germany (Prussia) the aristocrats were actually unusually capable at administering their estates profitably, and as a result remained unusually influential even well into the 20th century (which many historians say greatly influenced modern German history), and many of Germany’s early industrialists were Prussian aristocrats (many of Germany’s biggest companies even today are still owned by the same old noble families), but I think they were exceptional and even there most aristocrats have gradually assimilated in the last few generations and become fairly regular (still wealthier than average) people, and most of the super rich people by now are no longer descendants of nobles.
I feel like something else happened in Russia.
This is probably not quite the answer you wanted, but you may find it relevant.
Feudalism as a structure works in societies that lack large scale military organization (like you saw in ancient Rome or in the Persian or Chinese Empires), but are at a technology level where a small number of well trained and equipped men can militarily control large numbers of unskilled and cheaply equipped men. In big empires that can raise up armies of a hundred thousand men and train then decently, you don't get as much feudalism. But if you and your opponent's armies are primarily made up of a few thousand poorly equipped peasants then the army that's most likely to win is the one with the most actual trained warriors: in other words, knights.
European feudalism was a political machine that maximizes the number of knights you can bring to a battle. The minimum you need to be a knight is to have enough financial security that you aren't malnourished, can spend a significant amount of time training for combat, and can afford expensive weapons, armor, and warhorses. So at the bottom of feudal society you have knights as the smallest landowners, each with about enough land that they can meet that minimum threshold. They get that land from larger landowners, and in exchange that larger landowner gets their military service: so now the local baron has 20 knights he can call upon to fight for him, which is better than having 2,000 serfs who can fight for him. The baron got his land from the Count via the same deal, the Count got his from the Duke, the Duke got his from the King, and at the top of the structure you ideally have a King who can summon several thousand knights to suppress rebellions and fight with the other kings. It's a pretty stable system.
However, that system no longer works at all when you don't need trained elite warriors to win battles anymore, and that's what happened with the widespread adoption of the gun. A peasant with a bow and arrow or a spear is little match against a trained, mounted, and armored knight: a peasant with a gun has a good shot at killing him. It doesn't take too long to train a peasant to be decent at using a gun either, just a few months. Suddenly knights and samurai find themselves facing armies of thousands of peasants each armed with a weapon that can easily kill them.
Once guns became widespread enough that you could equip thousands of peasants with them, the whole reason for an aristocracy evaporated. Before the King needed his Counts and Dukes and whatnot to fight: and to bring their knights. Now the King just needs people, lots of people, and the money to feed and equip them. The aristocracy no longer serves a point, and from about the 1600s onward the aristocracy slowly disintegrated from the ground up.
First went the knights and the smaller nobility. The Counts and Dukes of the world at least had lots of land producing lots of money, and the more money you have the more peasants you can equip and conscript, but the little guys didn't have the funds to raise an army of their own and were no longer needed by the higher ups to fight in wars. Most of them either became the gentry and focused on farming and trying to make a profit as an agricultural landlord, or they tried to go into business and either succeeded or lost their shirts. As small nobles go under their land gets snapped up by the more successful ones, which keep them afloat for longer. Yet as we can see with the Absolute Monarchs of the 18th and 19th centuries, Kings don't need aristocrats anymore. They just need money. Kings start handing out titles of nobility in exchange for money or favors, and the "New Rich" become more powerful than the old aristocratic blood. Ultimately the fate of the more powerful nobles is the same as the lower ones: try to make a living as a landowner, try to invest in business and turn a profit, and the ones who fall get their capital snapped up by the successful ones. But making money is a game everyone can play, regardless of blood, so even Dukes with a big head start in the capital department get overshadowed by millionaire industrialists.
Finally WWI happens and knocks out the few remaining supports holding up the sham feudalism that remained. Now the only aristocrats left are those who managed to stay rich, and they are only as powerful as they are rich.
Depends on the history of the specific country for sure.
I think the Russian nobility all got killed or had to flee.
English nobility are certainly still alive, though a lot of them donated their mansions to the government because they couldn't afford to maintain them. (I think this is probably because servants have gotten more expensive rather than the family getting less wealthy.)
The Prince of Liechtenstein, descended from a man so rich he bought the country, is still one of the richest men in the world; he and his family have a net worth in the hundreds of billions.
In a lot of European countries war and socialism ended the aristocracies. Here in Britain, not so much although we had heavy death duties in the early 20C, as any viewer of downton abbey would attest. Nevertheless the top 1% of landowners own 50% of the land and that’s mostly the aristocracy, the church and the Crown.
In fact lots of London is owned by that trifecta, and they charge a ground rent which can be nominal enough for the Crown estate (£50) but up to £1000 a year for other estates in the richer parts of London. Not much per house but it adds up.
These leases are from 125 years to 999 years.
The leases with a long duration are sold and bought like any other property, although the estate owner can interfere they rarely do. The housing with leases about to expire become worthless, or very cheap, starting to decline somewhere around the 80 year mark. At the end of this period ownership reverts to the estate.
The three largest aristocratic estates of London are all held by relatively new peerages that are post the heyday of feudalism:
1) Cadogan Estate, of Earl Cadogan (that title in 1800, first aristocratic male-line ancestor 1672)
2) Grosvenor Estate, owned by the Duke of Westminster (1874, first aristocratic male-line ancestor 1622)
3) Portman Estate, owned by Viscount Portman (first aristocratic ancestor ~1837 but it's complicated as there were a lot of cousin and marriage inheritances, tentatively 1611)
Not particularly surprising that most of these estates date to the chaos of the post-reformation and civil war upheavals, where many families and estates were created or torn up.
What I *did* find surprising is that all are descended in their modern forms from prominent *Whig* (or liberal) families.
-The 1st Earl Cadogan (1672) was a Whig MP, and the 1st Earl Cadogan (1800) was also a Whig MP.
-The 1st Duke of Westminster was a Whig, then Liberal MP. His ancestors were royalists and Tories up until 1806, when they became Whigs.
-The 1st Baron Portman was a Whig MP. His distant in-laws/ancestors were Tories, however.
I suppose this might be natural considering they were chiefly property developers in the centre of global commerce. Of the remaining 88 hereditary peers, just 3 are Liberal Democrats. The modern Conservative party is, despite the Tory moniker, the true heir to the Whigs.
Scott: why are you so reluctant to call Richard Lynn a fraud?
We'd all agree that — if done intentionally — P-hacking is fraud, wouldn't we? There are various ways to do p-hacking, but probably the most common is selecting data or data sets that support one's hypothesis and excluding data or data sets that don't (which is now why serious researchers pre-register their data nowadays).
Richard Lynn selectively excluded data that didn't agree with his hypothesis, and he included sketchy data that did agree with his hypothesis when he created the National IQ data set. Likewise, he imputed estimates for many African nations from their neighbors. This may not be P-hacking, per se, but he's manipulated his data sets to get the conclusion he wanted. In my day, that was called data dredging. It was considered to be scientific fraud back then, as it should be now. I left academia about 35 years ago. Did the definition of fraud change while I was away?
In previous discussions, I heard a couple of defenses of Lynn like this.
1. Well, we don't have any better data. Answer: we do for some countries. But bad data is bad data. Don't recycle it.
2. Well, it Lynn's data correlates well with national education attainments etc etc., so it must have some validity! Answer: if we don't know what a *valid* national median IQ of a nation is we can't claim correlation.
3. And Cremieux claims it's OK to impute IQ scores on countries for which we have no data, but fails to address the faults in the data sets he's using for imputation (is that a real word?).
None of these defenses pass the sniff test.
But the data is pretty good. If you actually look at the most recent versions most countries have several not too bad surveys and they tend to agree pretty well. I think part of the problem is "isolated degrees of rigor" and part is just not understanding statistics. Like we have a rough idea of the level of vitamin D deficiency across countries, its not perfect, any one survey is just an approximation but it enables us to say interesting things about vitamin D and plan interventions.
I am a professional numbers person and am convinced Lynn's numbers or on the whole okay. Part of that is how well they correspond not just with education variables but a host of other things like notable people, GDP, immigrant outcomes, adoption studies. It all hangs together.
Do you have links to some more recent IQ studies? I haven't been able to find any.
> Well, it Lynn's data correlates well with national education attainments etc etc., so it must have some validity! Answer: if we don't know what a *valid* national median IQ of a nation is we can't claim correlation.
What's this supposed to mean? Lynn gives us a set of labeled numbers. We have some other numbers with the same labels. You can just calculate the correlations.
The correlations being high is what "validity" means. Validity depends on them, but they depend on nothing.
Yes the correlation between the two sets of numbers is "real", but the issue is when you take that correlation to be support for a third thing which neither data set actually measures.
But if Lynn's numbers are bogus, the correlation is specious.
My thoughts exactly, I don't understand why we can't just admit that we don't have good data on IQ for at least half the countries out there and toss it out entirely?
Because we don't just insist data must be perfect or we can't use it to do anything. It is hard to get good data about illegally traded bushmeat but if we have a few studies suggesting this is a huge problem for a) public health b) conservation, then the rational response is not to entirely toss out the data and bury our heads in the sand but a) start doing things to address the problem, b) get better data, c) adjust actions depending on better data.
I'm confused, what exactly are we using the data on IQ in Malawi for? Why does it matter and what do we lose by not using it?
Data about low IQs can motivate interventions aimed at improving cognitive abilities. For example, LEEP aims to eliminate the use of lead paint in Malawi. Childhood lead poisoning is strongly linked to impairments in cognitive abilities.
To design such an intervention, we need to know that childhood lead poisoning is a problem. This knowledge is based on studies like https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23797342/, which find correlations between lead exposure and IQ. Such studies need data on IQs.
These studies then inform organizations like LEEP and are used in their cost-effectiveness analyses (like here: https://leadelimination.org/malawi_cost-effectiveness_intro/). This in turn motivates donors to give money to LEEP.
Bad data is just bad data. It shouldn't be used for any purpose. Worse yet, if it's passed off as good data, it deludes people into thinking they know something when they should be out investigating.
Outside of the US, opinion is mixed on how Trump's presidency may affect the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://twogrumpyoldmenonukraine.substack.com/p/trumps-grim-putinesque-speech
https://twogrumpyoldmenonukraine.substack.com/p/trump-makes-no-mention-of-ukraine
https://pascallth.substack.com/p/europe-must-emancipate-itself
https://lesiadubenko.substack.com/p/art-of-the-deal-era-is-back
https://hanschristensen.substack.com/p/foreign-reactions-to-the-inauguration
Trump is issuing an executive order ordering all federal employees to not “recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents without legal status.”
He's also issuing executive orders that do things like empowering the ICE to summarily deport illegal immigrants and establishing new DHS task forces to work with states and local governments to do the same. It appears from the first EO that he intends for this to include people who were born in the US to parents who were here "without legal status".
That first one seems to violate plain text of the Constitution which states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." (And in turn violate the oaths of office of the president and lots of other officials.)
Unless of course you argue that the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" part does not apply to the children of persons who were in the US illegally. But...doesn't that interpretation render most of the rest of Trump's first batch of executive orders meaningless regarding those particular people? How could a US president order, or federal/state/local officials carry out, the deportation of people who are explicitly not "subject to US jurisdiction"? Doesn't that become the same as how they can't enforce parking laws on foreign ambassadors and whatnot?
Lawyers on Bluesky are pointing out that the wording of the EO doesn't only cover children born to illegal immigrants, it also covers children of people with lawful but temporary residence. That's going to cover a lot more people than you think - work or student visas can last for several years, more than enough time for people to marry and have kids.
(For an amusing example, both Ivana Trump and Melania Trump gave birth before becoming US citizens.)
> (a) It is the policy of the United States that no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship, to persons: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.
Regardless of whether it's compatible with the text of the 14th amendment, that hardly sounds unreasonable, and would just bring the US in line with most other western countries.
Ivana and Melania Trump would of course not be subject to (2) anyway since their kids' father was a US citizen.
> would just bring the US in line with most other western countries.
I think this is factually correct, but is this alignment supposed to be a desirable end?
The US also tends to differ from most Western countries by:
- the notion of “gun rights”
- their interpretation of “free speech” (the culture war stuff, but not only – I seem to recall some outrage re “companies are people” which does not seem endorsed in the rest of the world, again before this decade’s culture war)
- their health care system and general lack of social programs
- their incarceration (and homicide) rate
- judges are elected (with Japan and Switzerland)
- voting on weekdays (with the UK, Canada and Denmark)
- much larger tips
- its unrivaled tech industry
- its eagerness about American football
For which of these would “aligning the US with most Western countries” be a good idea?
And what range of answers should we expect for Trump voters (or supporters, or people he would nominate for a position)?
"Other countries do it" is not intended as a general purpose argument for something, but it makes it not-unthinkable.
Is there a good argument for voting on weekdays, by the way?
Black-letter constitutional law that says "we *don't* do that, unless certain very demanding conditions are met", should put it solidly back in the unthinkable category. This has nothing to do with whether you think the proposed policy is object-level desirable, or if other people with different laws do it differently.
More generally, it *should* be unthinkable for a head of state or head of government to try to use the machinery of the state to do things that are expressly forbidden by the as-yet-unchanged laws of that state. It should also be unthinkable that the most fundamental laws are to be changed at the whim of the head of state alone.
Well, unthinkable in the sense of clearly illegal as the Constitution stands _now_ , and should not be done by a POTUS, but not unthinkable in the sense of: maybe we should start the amendment process?
FWIW, I, personally, think that e.g. the extreme case of a pregnant woman illegally entering the USA shortly before giving birth should ideally _not_ yield citizenship for the child - but it would take a Constitutional amendment to do this. And there are lots and lots of much grayer cases.
Yeah look I think I'd put it in the same category as all the gun laws that the Democrats have passed with a hopeful eye on a very specific interpretation of the Second Amendment.
The Second and Fourteenth amendments belong in the same category, of "Dumb stuff that shouldn't exist in the US Constitution but unfortunately does".
Maybe “organizing elections and counting the results is also work and week-ends should be for leisure”? I don’t know, I too find this extremely strange.
I think that most of what I listed would also be unthinkable to large parts of the US population for various reasons, and “that’s how most other countries do it” would be met very dismissively.
Whether or not it's in line with other countries, if the goal is simply to prevent "anchor babies" then you should perhaps take care not to screw over random people working their way through the citizenship process the legal way.
...Why? They don't want legal immigrants to have anchor babies either.
Even from a nativist perspective, it seems odd to have the law say, effectively, "we think you're good enough to apply for citizenship, but we aren't so sure about your children." Who had a more American upbringing, the immigrant mother or the child who grew up in the US?
Also, I am somewhat sarcastically assuming that the Republicans who are saying "we don't hate all foreigners, just the ones who came here illegally" are telling the truth.
Agreed. In general, I'd tend to lean pretty heavily in the direction of presuming that anyone here legally is fine. We _do_ have processes for vetting them, to various extents, but they are in a very different situation from the gotaways.
Does this screw them over? Can the children not be granted some form of temporary visa to match their parents'?
"You're a citizen now, but your children can only stay in the country temporarily" sounds like it's at least a significant paperwork hassle, even if there's a path to fixing it.
(And is that visa going to stick around? "Chain migration" has been a popular bugbear for the right...)
You're also assuming that people _want_ US citizenship. If you don't want it, it's a horrible burden. Accidental US citizens need to file US tax returns and may need to pay US taxes. They also need to have US passports if they ever want to visit the US. And you're not allowed to relinquish your US citizenship until you're 18, and at that point you have to pay a $2350 fee.
If you're (say) an academic couple visiting the US for a few years to get your career started and you wind up having a baby in the US, that baby is fucked under the current system.
No, jurisdiction is not the same as the ability to enforce laws against.
The legal interpretation rests on the debates around the amendment where the people who wrote it explicitly stated it did not apply to everyone resident in the territory of the United States including Native Americans not under American government control, the children of diplomats and foreign visitors, etc. This interpretation is still used to exclude various categories. So it's not as dubious an interpretation as liberals want it to be. But the Republican interpretation is also not a clear cut and obvious thing since it was meant to give citizenship to people who were not then uncomplicatedly citizens and who had counted in the census and all that.
> But a regular foreigner with no such immunity, who has to pay taxes and follow US laws, is subject to US jurisdiction.
That makes sense for legit visa holders, but what about a foreigner in the country illegally? If they had to follow US laws then they would't be there.
That's certainly a legit argument on the other side.
Realistically I think we have to accept the Copenhagen interpretation of the US Constitution, which says that words have no meaning until the Supreme Court says what they mean. I assume the ball is now rolling, and the exact meaning of these words will eventually be set out by them.
Yup! I was looking over the discussion and was thinking the same thing. It isn't over till the 9 Justices sing.
This was not the interpretation at the time. You might interpret it differently and that's the core of the dispute.
Which case?
The clause "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" has a *possible* interpretation along the lines of "isn't a citizen of another country".
I am familiar with that interpretation and it seems very strained to me. Non-citizen immigrants and visitors, legally authorized or not, are generally subject to American jurisdiction in the sense that federal and state laws apply to them and they can be arrested by American police and tried in American courts.
The classes that actually seem a good fit for people physically present in the US but not subject to American jurisdiction are:
1. Lawful enemy combatants in wartime.
2. Members of foreign embassies with diplomatic immunity.
3. Members of sovereign Native American tribes, more or less corresponding to the "excluding Indians not taxed" clause elsewhere in the 14th amendment.
#3 is currently moot for 14th amendment purposes, since all Native Americans born in the US are now entitled to birthright citizenship by statute, but it was a significant factor at the time the 14th Amendment was proposed and ratified.
Very much IANAL, but I get the impression that the clause is one of those phrases (like "well regulated") that have a legal meaning (especially at the time it was written) differing from modern lay usage.
Really? Because "jurisdiction" is used in a great many circumstances and contexts, and its definition has remained I think quite constant in almost all of them. And the definition that is broadly accepted everywhere else, makes perfect logical sense here, it just doesn't let you do what you want to do.
Laws frequently don't let you do what you want to do, that's the whole point, and you can't change that by saying that you've changed the meaning of the words they are written with.
Again, IANAL, but it's the whole phrase including "subject to" that I would be unsurprised to learn has a nonintuitive denotation in legal writing.
I'm also not asserting it does!
Ah yes but the Constitution is a living document and we need not limit ourselves to the original meaning of the text of the Constitution when interpreting it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I wouldn't recommend telling a judge that he doesn't have jurisdiction because you're a foreigner.
Self declared "sovereign citizens" tell judges they don't have jurisdiction because reasons, and it goes very much not well. I actually knew a guy who pulled that in civil court and it cost him a few nights in jail for contempt of court. (And he lost the suit that had been filed against him but that was likely anyway.)
There's nothing mandating that executive orders need to be constitutional in order to be issued. Shoot first, ask questions later.
I'm pretty sure "the US Constitution" is that thing.
This feels very analogous to saying "there's nothing mandating that executive orders not be illegal".
tl;dr: ChatGPT o1 1/18/2025 7 questions, tl;dr of results:
a) correct
b) partially correct (initially evaded answering part of the question, 1st prod gave wrong answer, 2nd prod gave right answer)
c) mostly correct (two errors)
d) correct
e) initially incorrect, one prod gave correct result
f) misses a lot, argues incorrectly that some real compounds don't exist
g) badly wrong
It seems to be doing better than on previous versions, but when it _is_ wrong is seems more likely to be _stubbornly_ wrong.
List of questions:
a) Is light with a wavelength of 530.2534896 nm visible to the human eye? [gets right]
b) I have two solutions, one of FeCl3 in HCl in water, the other of CuCl2 in HCl in water. They both look approximately yellowish brown. What species in the two solutions do you think give them the colors they have, and why do these species have the colors they do?
c) Please pretend to be a professor of chemistry and answer the following question: Please list all the possible hydrocarbons with 4 carbon atoms.
d) Does the Sun lose more mass per second to the solar wind or to the mass equivalent of its radiated light?
e) Consider a titration of HCl with NaOH. Suppose that we are titrating 50 ml of 1 N HCl with 100 ml of 1 N NaOH. What are the slopes of the titration curve, pH vs ml NaOH added, at the start of titration, at the equivalence point, and at the end of titration? Please show your work. Take this step by step, showing the relevant equations you use.
f) Please give me an exhaustive list of the elements and inorganic compounds that are gases at STP. By STP, I mean 1 atmosphere pressure and 0C. By inorganic, I mean that no atoms of carbon should be present. Exclude CO2, CO, freons and so on. Please include uncommon compounds. I want an exhaustive list. There should be roughly 50 compounds. For each compound, please list its name, formula, and boiling or sublimation point.
g) What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
List of questions with some detail about answers and links:
a) Is light with a wavelength of 530.2534896 nm visible to the human eye? [gets right]
Yes. A wavelength of approximately 530 nm lies well within the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum (roughly 380–750 nm). In fact, around 530 nm corresponds to a green color, which the human eye is generally quite sensitive to.
https://chatgpt.com/share/678c0578-725c-8006-815a-974b5750ddb5
b) I have two solutions, one of FeCl3 in HCl in water, the other of CuCl2 in HCl in water. They both look approximately yellowish brown. What species in the two solutions do you think give them the colors they have, and why do these species have the colors they do?
Initial answer gets the species right, but hedges on what electronic transitions are responsible for the color.
On being forced to clarify, it gets FeCl4 right but CuCl4 wrong (says it is d-d transition).
On being lead by the nose, can be forced into getting the right answer for CuCl4.
https://chatgpt.com/share/678c0895-455c-8006-9e22-c9c071dc31e2
c) Please pretend to be a professor of chemistry and answer the following question: Please list all the possible hydrocarbons with 4 carbon atoms.
Initial answer covers most of the possibilities, and admits that it isn't trying to cover some of the most extreme hypothetical possibilities.
Two errors: It initially calls methylcyclopropene a single structure (corrects itself when prodded).
It initially lists structures with 3 degrees of unsaturation but misses tetrahedrane. I forced its hand with:
"Under "Three Degrees of Unsaturation (C₄H₄)", is there another structure in addition to those you listed - a famous one?"
at which point it coughed up tetrahedrane. In general, the answer to this is better than I've seen before.
https://chatgpt.com/share/678c0d7f-4b30-8006-a969-e4ea60863f68
d) Does the Sun lose more mass per second to the solar wind or to the mass equivalent of its radiated light?
Correct on the first try, which is better than I've seen before:
"you see that the Sun loses roughly four times more mass through the energy it radiates (via E=mc2) than through the solar wind. Hence, the mass-equivalent of sunlight carries away more mass than the solar wind does."
https://chatgpt.com/share/678c0f47-2ec4-8006-b05c-f3e077c47afd
e) Consider a titration of HCl with NaOH. Suppose that we are titrating 50 ml of 1 N HCl with 100 ml of 1 N NaOH. What are the slopes of the titration curve, pH vs ml NaOH added, at the start of titration, at the equivalence point, and at the end of titration? Please show your work. Take this step by step, showing the relevant equations you use.
Initial result wrongly gave an infinite slope at the equivalence point. Prodding once with
"The slope at the equivalence point is not infinite. Rather than creating separate equations for the three regions, try using the autoionization formula for water and the charge balance, that [H+]+[Na+]=[OH-]+{Cl-] to compute a formula for [H+] (your y(x) ) which is valid throughout the whole titration, then work from that."
gave a correct answer.
I'm ambivalent about this. Since I explicitly asked about the slope at the equivalence point, a human should have noticed that "infinity"
is not a reasonable answer and that they needed to rethink this. On the other hand, once I gave it the prod, it gave a fully correct
answer, with all steps explained and correct reasoning at each step, including the relationship to the earlier approximations.
https://chatgpt.com/share/678c1bcb-e5a8-8006-b69f-9579e5749cb6
f) Please give me an exhaustive list of the elements and inorganic compounds that are gases at STP. By STP, I mean 1 atmosphere pressure and 0C. By inorganic, I mean that no atoms of carbon should be present. Exclude CO2, CO, freons and so on. Please include uncommon compounds. I want an exhaustive list. There should be roughly 50 compounds. For each compound, please list its name, formula, and boiling or sublimation point.
_I_ shouldn't have suggested 50 compounds. Looking more carefully at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gases, there are actually about 100. The good news is, ChatGPT o1 is finally _not_ including compounds with boiling/sublimation points above 0C, and it has stopped including carbon compounds (both of which were mistakes in earlier versions). It does, however, deny the existence of e.g. P2F4, and needed to bashed at several times to admit that the stuff had been prepared, isolated, and its boiling point measured. It _does_ admit that its list is not exhaustive, so at least it isn't asserting that it has found everything when it hasn't (this was a problem with previous versions).
https://chatgpt.com/share/678c4254-01e8-8006-a9f5-7939480d004e
g) What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
It screws up, saying that H2O2 can be put into a conformation with an S4 axis (but lacking the center of inversion and mirror plane), but it is wrong. Even with the 90 degree dihedral that it wants, _one_ of the hydrogens can be mapped to the position of the original hydrogen, but the other hydrogen winds up in the wrong place, not matching any hydrogen in the original positions of the hydrogens. I finally got it to cough up an admission of this with _repeated_ corrections. Not just wrong but stubbornly wrong.
https://chatgpt.com/share/678c4e15-8c48-8006-8cbf-7a85688702b2
Anyone want to claim watching trumps speech is worth the time?
Fun anecdote, there was this simultaneous interpreter who thought he'd muted himself when he asked his colleagues: "How long are you gonna stay with this sh**?"
https://x.com/sowhatsabout/status/1881412965662101629
I thought some parts of it were pretty funny. I liked that he riffed off of President Whitmore's speech, and called January 20, 2025 "Liberation Day."
His address to the overflow room soon after his inaugural address was much better though.
You could read it, or skim it, a lot faster than you could watch it.
Skimming it is not a bad move if you want to be politically well-informed, certainly a lot better than reading a bunch of news articles that cherry-pick a handful of quotes, weave it into a narrative, and spend six paragraphs on Melania's hat.
In the speech he does actually pretty clearly set out what his immediate agenda is, so if that's something you're interested in then it's a pretty good source.
If you're hoping that by watching it you'll see something fun then I think you'll be disappointed. You might hope that Biden and Harris would grimace as he eviscerated their record, but they've both got good poker faces.
> Skimming it is not a bad move if you want to be politically well-informed
Thats very much unclear given he's a reality tv star and dozens of these poeple done side shows already this year
> n the speech he does actually pretty clearly set out what his immediate agenda is,
ok on the todo list
It was only 29 minutes long and I found it interesting enough to keep listening. Other than that, the only reason to watch it is because political commentators will be talking about it soon.
As it stands Ive already heard he wore a purple tie and say clips of elon doing awkard "roman" handsigns; hearing commentators for a week are reasons to skip it
You should absolutely do Scott's Forecasting Contest first, but for any UK-based folk (or non-Brits interested in British politics and current affairs), I'm currently holding a UK Forecasting Contest, primarily focused on things that might happen on this side of the pond (though with a small foreign affairs section).
https://www.edrith.co.uk/p/2025-forecasting-contest
It's open until the end of this week. But definitely do Scott's first!
Ladies: what reliably gets you distractingly horny?
Inb4: I'm not talking about something a man does (although if it's something done inadvertantly I might be able to use it.) I'm talking about the setting or environment itself.
I'm looking for qualities or elements I can have in the background of a scene that can get everyone who stays there too long subtly worked up. Hijinks and farce to then ensue.
I have my own thoughts but I'm keeping quiet at first.
Location isn't set in stone - probably will be either a boardroom or a church, unless I think of something I find funnier.
How about a carefully placed vibrator? In the "Hysterical Literature" series on Youtube, it worked fine.
In a church, can you install some of those in the pews...?
I mean that's along the kind of lines I was thinking - the girls in the chat have been very good at listing turn offs to avoid, which is obviously very important, but I was also interested in factors that can actively create/encourage arousal.
Vibrators are a bit more direct than I was thinking, I'll admit, but perfectly doable: the building has an unbalanced generator in the cellar and there's a bass shop next door with the amps leaned up against the wall.
Organization
Attention to detail
Nothing remotely childish around - like a figurine.
I don't know if any environment really does it, but the wrong environment can certainly kill it. Someone's home can speak to how mature they are.
What gets /you/ in that state?
Fill the space with those objects, post an advert in your local rag for your new fetish club and see who turns up. You'll likely get much better outcomes than trying to identify some kind of nonexistent magical universal aphrodisiac.
You might have misunderstood me, this is for a work of fiction and I'm gunning for verisimilitude. That said I suppose "in the name of research" can justify a multitude of extravagances.
...ah, yeah, I'd just assumed you were planning an event. That'll teach me :)
Lol at the idea of running that kind of event where I live.
> Ladies: what reliably gets you distractingly horny?
Didn’t they find this question carved into the stone of some cave in Europe?
I have no idea what the answer is, but it reminded me of this joke.
There is an old bull and a Young bull in a field together, and one day the farmer forgets to lock the gate to the pasture where he keeps the cows. “Hey,” says the young bull. “The gates open! Let’s run down the hill and do some of those cows.”
“Nah,” says the old bull, “let’s walk down and do them all.”
> Didn’t they find this question carved into the stone of some cave in Europe?
It's my understanding that the famous "riddle of the Sphinx", which Oedipus and Dr. Freud both failed to solve, was "What does a woman really want?"
I know the answer, but will not reveal it here. Well, maybe for sufficient $$$ ;-)
Just as well; such knowledge could carry a terrible price.
As I recall, the answer to the Sphinx's riddle is, "A man's life."
In a version I heard, there is also a third, oldest bull, and he says: "Shut up, you idiots, or they might hear us and come here."
This question seems like a category error to me. It's like asking what breakfast foods reliably make me feel like overspending. NOTHING about setting reliably makes me horny. The closest thing to the right category would be THINGS THE GUY SAYS OR DOES, and those are just. the obvious things, like make me laugh, or things that seem like signs that indicate he finds life interesting and enjoyable, or things that show good qualities like kindness, smarts, courage, inventiveness. And even those don't make me horny right when I first observe them. They more make me feel more open to him and more interested in getting to know him better. Depending on how things go, horniness might grow out of that.
I think all this is pretty typical, obvious stuff, and I am writing it as a public service to guys who have been told some bullshit about phrases to use or moves to make or decor to have up that are surefire. Women do not have ridiculously specific secret buttons that if you press them make them throw their arms (or legs) around you.
This also accurately describes my experience, and I think it is quite common among women.
While a setting might be romantic (e.g. the classic dim lights, candles, soft tablecloth and comfy chairs), in my opinion the setting is mostly a bonus that makes it easier for the man to do horniness-inducing things.
Most women aren't driven completely mad with lust by architecture or furnishings, but dirt and mess and, to a lesser degree, indifferent, chaotic decor, is usually a major turn off.
EDIT: Though now that I really think about it, most straight bachelor dudes are notoriously indifferent to and bad about maintaining home aesthetics, so a straight dude with a competently designed space might actually get a woman closer to lust than you'd think (although she'd perhaps wonder if she's looking at a previous woman's work).
That's kind of where I started from. I ended up with:
- clean, airy, comfortable
- tasteful opulence
- softbox lighting
- aural background options include something rhythmic, a low bass drone from the floor, or maybe something relaxing like babbling water/falling rain. I don't know why wooden drums keep entering my head but they do.
- visually I get that girls are less responsive than guys but I can't see the harm in maybe a nice muscled classical sculpture or two.
- in terms of smell idk but I bet it's important.
- attractive, relaxed, easygoing other people.
I get that the environment on its own can only set the scene. You'd need to follow that up with something that gets people feeling liberated and thinking about their fantasies.
I'm not sure what that would be yet - let alone how I'm gonna hide it behind a layer of indirection (such as it being some kind of idiosyncratic welcome ritual of the boss/vicar maybe.)
Honestly, even the *words*
“tasteful opulence” make me so hot that I’m sliding off the suddenly slippery surface of my kitchen chair. And if I were now to look at one of those classical statues . . . and if you were then to make a couple Ben Franklin paper airplanes and fly them so that one hits each of my nipples. . .
Rotfl
Looks like I found your ridiculously specific secret button.
...What the hell are you even trying to do, start an impromptu orgy?
"Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars" -- Norman Vincent Peale
Since people seem to be enjoying the LSAT question, here is another, also from a real LSAT. Someone I know who's in the biz commented on it being one of the hardest he's seen.
McKinley: A double-blind study, in which neither the patient nor the
primary researcher knows whether the patient is being given the drug being tested or a placebo, is the most effective procedure for testing the efficacy of a drug. But we will not be able to perform such a study on this new drug, since the drug will have various effects on the patients' bodies, which will make us aware of whether the patients are
getting the drug or a placebo.
Engle: You cannot draw that conclusion at this point, for you are assuming
you know what the outcome of the study will be.
Engle's statement indicates that he is most likely interpreting McKinley's remarks to be
(a) presuming that a double-blind study is the only effective way to test new drugs
(b) denying that the drug will be effective
(c) presuming that the placebo will produce no effects whatever
on the patients' bodies
(d) referring to the drug's therapeutic effects rather than to any
known side effects
(e) based on a confusion about when a drug is efficacious
Ok, I wrote a defense of the correct answer and encoded it using this site,
https://cryptii.com/pipes/rot13-decoder
and using the first option on the page. Have never done this before, hope it worked!
b jura V gbbx n ongpu bs YFNG dhrfgvbaf erpragyl, V chmmyrq bire guvf bar n ybat gvzr orsber riraghnyyl frrvat nebhaq gur pehpvny pbeare. Jung xrcg zr fghpx sbe n juvyr jnf gung ZpXvayrl jnf qrfpevovat n pbzzba ceboyrz va qeht erfrnepu, bar gung’f rnfl gb haqrefgnaq. Fbzrobql zvtug bowrpg gb ZpXvayrl’f pbapyhfvba gung gurer jnf ab jnl gb cresbez n fghql ba gur arj qeht — gurl zvtug, sbe vafgnapr, fhttrfg na npgvir cynprob, fbzrguvat gung jbhyq pnhfr gur fhowrpg gb srry orggre — ohg gurl jbhyq abg bowrpg gur jnl Ratry jbhyq. Jung V jnf vzcbegvat jnf gur xabjyrqtr va erny yvsr vg jnf vzcynhfvoyr gung Ratry jbhyq fnl jung ur qvq. Fb V fng gurer fbeg bs fghaarq, guvaxvat gurer jnf ab rkcynangvba sbe Ratry’f fnlvat jung ur qvq rkprcg gung ur jnf penml.
Ohg gur guvat nobhg YFNG dhrfgvbaf vf gung lbh pnaabg vzcbeg lbhe xabjyrqtr vagb gur jbeyq bs gur dhrfgvba, rkprcg sbe trareny xabjyrqtr fhpu nf ubj znal qnlf gurer ner va n lrne naq jung n qeht fghql vf. Vs na YFNG dhrfgvba pbapreaf 2 pbzcrgvat rkcynangvbaf sbe jul Vqnub unf bayl n 5% qvibepr engr, gura va gur jbeyq bs guvf dhrfgvba Vqnub qbrf unir n 5% qvibepr engr, naq lbhe wbo vf whfg gb whqtr juvpu rkcynangvba vf zbfg cynhfvoyr. Lbh pnaabg vzcbegnag gur npghny Vqnub qvibepr engr gung lbh unccra gb xabj, be ernfba gung vg’f vzcynhfvoyr sbe Vqnub’f engr gb or fb zhpu ybjre guna gur angvbany nirentr. Fb va gur dhrfgvba ng unaq, fbzr crbcyr whqtrq nafjref (be pbapyhqrq gung nyy gur nafjref ner onq) hfvat vasb gurl xabj nobhg pyvavpny gevnyf be fvqr rssrpgf be qeht gevnyf. Gung’f nyy pbzcyrgryl veeryrinag urer. Lbh unir gb qb lbhe ernfbavat jvguva gur yvggyr zbqry jbeyq lbh’ir orra tvira.
BX, fb gb qrsraq Q: Q vf gur bayl cbffvoyr rkcynangvba bs jul Ratry pbhyq znxr gur bowrpgvba ur qvq. Naq abgr gung jr ner abg whqtvat ubj inyvq Ratry’f bowrpgvba vf (gung’f tbvat bhgfvqr gur jbeyq bs gur dhrfgvba), bayl whqtvat jung fnar vagrecergngvba bs ZpXvayrl’f fgngrzragf pbhyq yrnq gb uvf znxvat gur bowrpgvba ur qvq. ZpXvayrl’f fgngrzrag vf fnar, v.r. ernfbanoyr, orpnhfr gurer jnf va snpg na nzovthbhf fgngrzrag va ZpXvayrl’f rkcynangvba, naq ur gbbx ZpXvayrl gb or fnlvat fbzrguvat gung jnf va snpg na hajneenagrq nffhzcgvba. . ZpXvayrl fnvq gung erfrnepuref pbhyq abg fgnl oyvaq gb jurgure gur fhowrpg tbg gur qeht be gur cynprob orpnhfr gur qeht jbhyq unir rssrpgf ba gur cngvrag’f obqvrf. Ol “rssrpgf,” ZpXvayrl zrnag rvgure guvatf gur erfrnepuref pbhyq frr, fhpu nf syhfuvat, be fvqr rssrpgf fhowrpgf jbhyq ercbeg, fhpu nf anhfrn. Ohg ur qvq abg zrna gung gur qrfverq qeht rssrpg gurl jrer grfgvat sbe — n cflpurqryvp rkcrevrapr, fnl — jbhyq unir gryygnyr rssrpgf ba gur cngvragf’ obqvrf. Ohg Ratry gubhtug gung ZpXvayrl jnf fnlvat gung erfrnepuref pbhyqa’g fgnl oyvaq gb jub tbg gur npgvir qeht orpnhfr gurl jbhyq frr gur npghny qrfverq qeht rssrpg ba gur fhowrpg’f obql sbe gur qeht fhowrpgf, ohg abg gur cynprob fhowrpgf. Uvf bowrpgvba jnf gung ZpXvayrl jnf “nffhzvat lbh xabj jung gur bhgpbzr bs gur fghql jbhyq or,” v.r. nffhzvat gur qeht jbhyq jbex nf qrfverq naq erfrnepuref jbhyq frr gur rssrpg.
BX, V’z gbb gverq gb pevgvdhr gur bgure nafjref, ohg V ubcr vg’f rabhtu gb frr gung guvf vf gur bayl bar gung rkcynvaf jung Ratry fnvq. Fbzr bs gur bguref znl or inyvq pbzcynvagf be pbzzragf nobhg gur fghql vgfrys , ohg gurl qb abg furq nal yvtug ba Ratyr’f bowrpgvba.
As everybody has already probably noticed, I have already put up the correct answer, according to the LSAT. I agree with the LSAT, and don’t think the question is malformed, but I think I should not post my reasoning yet because this post hasn’t been up long and what I write will spoil the fun for others. Or I could put it up in scrambled-letter code, but I need somebody to tell me how that’s done. Should
I keep mum or post my defense of the LSAT’s answer?
Personally, I'd like to hear what you have to say. I can't access imgur currently, so I haven't seen the official answer yet. If you want to scramble your answer you would use this (or something like it): https://cryptii.com/pipes/rot13-decoder
Edit: Also, at this point, I am pretty confident that the question is malformed, so I'm curious to hear why you disagree.
I think d is the "correct" answer, but I don't think that any of the answers are actually correct (and therefore the question is malformed).
(a) seems obviously wrong. McKinley is trying design a double-blind study, and therefore interested in a the mechanics of setting up such a study. Whether or not there are alternate methods to study drugs is irrelevant to what he is saying.
(b) Is also obviously wrong. They are discussing how to design studies, not the results they expect to get.
(c) Is wrong because it is irrelevant to McKinley's concerns if the placebo produces effects, as long as the effects are not identical to effects of the drug.
(d) is wrong because part of the purpose of clinical trials is to assess if a drug has side effects, not just if it is efficacious. Therefore Engle could be arguing that by assuming the drug has side effects, he is assuming the result of the study. (This is obscure technical minutia that I think the exam creators overlooked, which is why I suspect that d is the "correct" answer).
(e) is wrong because the discussion is about the study design, not the results or how to analyze them.
<(d) is wrong because part of the purpose of clinical trials is to assess if a drug has side effects, not just if it is efficacious. Therefore Engle could be arguing that by assuming the drug has side effects, he is assuming the result of the study. (This is obscure technical minutia that I think the exam creators overlooked, which is why I suspect that d is the "correct" answer).
This interp is disqualified, tho, by Mck
stating early on that what he wants to do is a study of drug efficacy. You can’t import info you know into the question. McK doesn’t call it a study of drug effects (which would mean therapeutic effects and also side effects), therefore it is a study of drug therapeutic effect’s, not an investigation of side effects, even if in the real world a trial of this design would also be looking for side effects. It’s clear that what McK means is that they know the drug has physical effects that are observable but are different from the therapeutic effects the researchers want to get evidence
If these are the hard questions then I should do the LSAT for shits and giggles. How much does it cost?
IIRC the hard part isn't just doing the questions, it's the time limit. You have like 35 minutes to do 25 questions like this one, so for each one, less than a minute and a half, for a lot of people a significant amount of the time for each question will just be reading it, you have to come up with the answer reasonably quickly, and then forget about it and immediately move on to/100% focus on the next one.
Not saying whether it's hard or not overall, just that it's harder in that context than seeing it online and getting to think about it and type out your reasoning, even for like 5 minutes.
<$250. See https://www.lsac.org/lsat/register-lsat/lsat-cas-fees
If the answer ISN'T D, I agree this is a hard problem.
Answer's here: https://imgur.com/a/a7fKWhj
That was tough, but at least I managed to guess the right answer.
Huh, (d) seems like the obvious answer to me but it's interesting that (c) and (e) are the ones other people have mentioned. I guess this is tricky, curious to know what the official correct answer is.
Reasoning: it is possible to know that a drug has certain effects (say, hallucinations, hair loss, weight gain, whatever) that are not the primary target of the study. This could reveal which group is in the drug vs placebo group regardless of the therapeutic outcome, which McKinley may be referring to. But if Engle thinks McKinley is referring to that, his critique wouldn't make sense. Engle says that the "outcome of the study" can't be known ahead of time - which makes the most sense if he is assuming that those therapeutic effects are what McKinley means by "effects on the patients' bodies", rather than effects that are already known from other studies (e.g. known side effects). The main weakness of this answer is that the "known effects" may not be side effects (for example, if there are therapeutic effects for a different condition, or if the outcome of interest in the current study is downstream of a different condition).
If this is a new drug, how do we expect it to have only "known" side effects in a first place?
Remember though, that for LSAT questions you just work with the situation as it is described, and do not take into consideration things you happen to know that indicate the situation as described could not have happened, of that weigh on what the right answer would be in a real world situation.
Yeah, John Shilling has a good explanation, that this is intended as a test whether a student can figure out what Engels is thinking. I'm an engineer, so - thankfully - I deal with data, and they don't think, only speak.
A lot of drugs that get tested for a particular condition already exist and are known in recreational and/or other therapeutic contexts. E.g. ketamine or psilocybin for depression, semaglutide for drug addiction, amphetamines for adhd
Before you get to a double blind study to test a drug's effects, you need to go through a bunch of work to prove that it's safe and plausibly effective. If the drug turned the subjects in your phase 1 trials purple, it's pretty likely that it will also turn your phase 3 trial subjects purple. It might have unknown side effects too, but it's sufficient to have one known side effect.
This makes sense, thank you. So in order to exclude "c" one would have to know this, which makes the question not a test of pure logic but of drug testing protocols knowledge.
OK, the official correct answer is here:
https://imgur.com/a/a7fKWhj
Hah, I was right! The “c” crowd had almost convinced me.
I hate these kinds of questions; also, (c) seems to be the only reasonable answer. The reason the question is "hard" is because it's poorly formed.
c is the *least* defendence answer "he drug will have various effects on the patients' bodies" -mckinley
"interpreting McKinley's" heres a probable interuptation... what he said
The "most likely" does a lot of work here... I'm not following why "D" isn't referring to side effects. Say a drug cures an internal cancer, which you can't immediately observe, but the patients' skin turns yellow while taking it, which is pretty obvious. Unless the placebo is not the customary sugar pill but a specifically designed drug whos "only" effect is to turn the skin yellow, we will know immediately who gets placebo.
But a drug that turns skin yellow cannot be considered a placebo, because we cannot exclude other "side-effects", so this is not an option.
This is why I'm sticking to my answer even though it's not considered to be a "correct" one.
Like I said, I hate these questions.
Answer D says that Engel believes that McKinley is talking only about the drug's intended theraputic effects and not any side effects. That side effects are not relevant to this particular discussion, either because they don't exist or because they are compensated for by your special turns-skin-yellow-but-does-nothing-else placebo. It isn't necessary that this be *true*, or even that McKinley believe it to be true, only that Engel believes that McKinley believes that it is true.
If side effects are not relevant to the discussion, then there are two possible outcomes of the trial. Either the drug will behave identically to the placebo, or the drug will visibly produce the desired theraputic effect. If this is the case, McKinely's statement that we cannot do a double-blind trial because we *will* see the effects of the real drug, then McKinley is claiming that the drug will produce the desired theraputic effect and thus he is presupposing the outcome of the trial. Which is what Engel said.
Engel may be wrong, he may have misunderstood McKinley. The point of the question is to determine whether the student can figure out, from Engel's words, what Engels is thinking even if it is mistaken. That's a rather important skill for a lawyer to have.
I'm glad I - correctly as it turns out - didn't chose to become a lawyer!
I agree d isnt great my answer would be a
I see no reason why a study couldnt be done which pretends to be double blind, but still is considered evidence as a single-blind
Yeah, I looked at "a" first, but the question says "the most effective", while the answer says "the only effective", so I rejected it.
I came to a snap decision, remembers the claim "hardest you've seen" reread it several times... and still agree with my snap decision
Is it a trick question somehow? Am I suppose to know why someone would be called engle?
No, there's no trick of that kind.
What are some performance-enhancing drugs for social situations?
Alcohol is the prototypical one, but I'm curious about any other substances that would, through one effect or another — perhaps even very indirectly — increase sociality, in a wide sense: make it easier to talk to people, make one appear more likeable, anything like that. I'm thinking about this as an analogy to nootropics, which can improve one's cognition through a variety of unrelated effects. (How about “sociotropics”?)
Adderall does this for me. I think stimulants in general can have this effect.
I think this really depends on the person and their disposition. Even mild stimulants (e.g. an extra cup of coffee) can make me so jittery that social anxiety kicks in and/or it's harder to focus on conversations. I can't even imagine taking Adderall and then going to a social event. But I imagine that the person asking for suggestions could probably predict whether such a thing applies to them.
SSRIs
Warning: This is how people become lifelong addicts, proceed with caution
Warning #2: Always grind whatever you buy, then filter through a fine mesh, mix the resulting powder well. Then try a tiny amount first. If you're OK and its not fentanyl, try more.
The answer is (inhaled) oxycodone. Absolutely insane social skills lasting for 2-3 hours and there's no hangover. Make sure to never mix it with alcohol, not even small amounts of it, and keep track of your heart rate.
Just to reiterate: This is how people become lifelong addicts! If you have even the slightest addictive tendencies, do not do this!
I thought opioids cause drowsiness and people to "bliss out". I've never heard of this social effect. What dose are you talking about? Are the effects different at different doses?
Inhaled instant-release oxycodone at doses around 10mg causes an intense desire to socialize without any drowsiness. Go up to 15mg and drowsiness starts to prevail. It's a very fine line.
If you only get the drowsiness effects, it's extremely likely that you've been sold a different opiate such as morphine or an inert pill mixed with fentanyl.
Disclaimer: drugs are bad for you, don't do it.
I've taken to use MDMA during new years eve. The immediate positive effects are like alcohol, but turned up to 11 (at least for the 30m-1h high, then it's slowly decreasing over the course of hours): desire to speak with everyone about everything, to handle 3 conversations at once, readiness to be interested in anything thrown at me. The negative effects both for the end of the night and the day after are much lesser (no sleepiness, no hungover).
The health side & the neurological damage is probably not awesome, but on the other side, neither is getting shitfaced, I think it's
The obvious downside is that unlike alcohol, you need to have lengthy breaks between each take if you want to reset. But on the other hand, it also makes abuse less appealing, so I take it as a blessing in disguise.
For a very occasional substitute to heavy drinking, I feel like it's a net positive.
I’m conservative on drug legalisation, including weed but that stuff should be in the water.
I'd agree for LSD and psylocibin, but I'm a bit on the fence on MDMA, which seems potentially pretty damaging for my taste (but, I'm wagering, less then getting shitfaced)
Unfortunately the main problem with MDMA is that tolerance builds fast and leads to high risk of crippling serotonin syndrome, so it should *not* be put in the water
Stimulants for sure.
As someone with significant social anxiety, amphetamines helped a lot. I got them for ADHD, and found that I was suddenly way more confident in social situations. Of course "way more confident" for me was from a very low baseline, so your milage may vary.
Not a drug, but if you practice singing, over time your vocal abilities will improve, and you will find it easier to talk to people.
You mean like formal practice? Or just singing in the car every day?
Breath mints.
And soap.
This is my favorite answer so far.
rhodiola rosea?
I take it for more general mental health reasons(as needed, avoid taking it daily and mixing it with things with antidepressant effects, blah blah blah) but I will take it before socailizing if I would otherwise feel useless
Phenibut is the classic for this
Doesn't work on everyone unfortunately. No idea what % it doesn't work for but for me personally it causes zero desire to socialize.
Not sure how often a guy can take it before it becomes problematic from a dependency standpoint. I play that extra, extra safe and take a gram once a month.
The very first time it affected me almost like MDMA. Never was that amazing on subsequent usage.
I read an article that states that Scott is now called (by his subscribers one assumes) “our Rightful Caliph”. Is this a GPT hallucination?? If so what was the origin of THAT choice?? Like what was the runner up options here??
The Great Khan, Master of the Grey Horde?? Voivode the (intellectual) impaler, Prince of SF Bay Area Rationalists? The Great Helmsman, Red Sun in Our Hearts, Savior of the People Chairman Scott??? WTF!!
Personally, if we’re engaging in questionable nicknames, I would have thought Tamerlane. He at least was Sahib Qiran (“Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction”). But… help me here.
Also. In my headcanon, sometimes I refer to our Caliph as "Alexander the GOAT". But that's just me.
All those suggestions but not... Great Scott! (?)
Come on, Scott should be a Clan chief (ceannard cinnidh).
This is a joke that goes back a long time, with its roots (if I'm remembering correctly) in the fact that there were/are various Scotts associated with rationalism/rationalism adjacent, so who is the Rightful Scott on one hand and as mentioned below, was it Yudkowsky or someone else who brought people here?
Some came via LessWrong and other sites, others from different places with no connection. And so it was decided that this blog/Substack was Scott's domain hence he was indeed the Rightful Caliph with the authority to impose at his will and whim the Reign of Terror 😀
From memory, I think it was just a dumb joke about whether Elizer or Scott is more popular. Or maybe about Scott being the benevolent dictator of this blog. Like Anomie says, Deisach may very well have been the originator. But maybe not.
Incidentally, there was a conversation a while back about whether randal monroe, Scott, or some other guy should be crowned "king of the nerds".
This is all extremely hazy, so I might have gotten important details wrong. But it's definitely not original to ChatGPT.
Thanks to the helpful…or is it faithful…I’ve been directed to THE IDEOLOGY IS NOT THE MOVEMENT.
Back when I hung out on the Straight Dope Message Board, it was de rigueur to refer to Cecil Adams as the Perfect Master, so there is precedent, at least.
Commenting here cause I got to the links post late, but re: American health superstitions, I've heard that some people over there are very wary of reheated rice, that it supposedly very easy to get food poisoning or even outright die from eating it. Is that belief widespread?
As someone who eats reheated rice almost daily, and has done so for most of my life without ever getting sick from it, I was pretty confused the first time I heard of that notion. And I try to be pretty safe about it, as with any food, but I've absent mindedly left pots of rice sitting on the counter for several hours before properly storing it more than once, to no ill effect that I could observe after reheating and eating it.
For reference, I'm Brazilian.
This is apparently more of a thing in the UK than in the US.
I'm American and I hadn't heard of it until it was mentioned in a Netflix comedy special. Phil Wang (a British Chinese comedian) was performing in the UK, and made a joke about how white people are afraid of reheating rice.
I was confused about what he was talking about, but then he actually clarified that it was only British white people - when he had tried the joke in America, it didn't land.
My partner is very cautious about rice - not so much reheating it once, but about eating it as leftovers after 3-4 days. I'm much less concerned and will generally eat most leftovers if they still look/smell/taste fine, up to more like a week.
I'm an American who eats a lot of reheated rice. I have never heard of this belief.
I can tell you, though, that eating rice at all is not especially typical of Americans. I don't find it surprising that they might hold odd beliefs about an exotic food they don't make or eat.
(Sanity check: https://www.tastingtable.com/982304/how-much-rice-does-the-average-american-actually-eat/
> Americans [] consume more than 20 pounds of [rice] each year [per capita]
> In Asia where rice is an integral part of the diet, an average person eats about 220 pounds each year
> While still not anywhere near as close to Asia's numbers for rice consumption, Americans are expected to eat more as the country's ethnic composition continues to evolve, according to the USDA.
Assuming the average American rice-eater eats a measly 110 pounds of rice a year, that's about 80% of Americans eating no rice. 80% feels a bit too high. Assume that Americans eat small quantities of rice and that a large share of them never eat it at all.)
Oh, that's wild! Rice is super common here in Brazil. Specifically, the combo rice and beans. It's rare to go a day without having it in at least one meal.
I knew that wasn't the case in the US, of course, but I had no idea it would be that uncommon for most to eat any rice at all.
I was told that reheating rice is okay, reheating rice and then storing it again is not okay. There's a bacteria that can survive boiling, and if you heat it and then cool it multiple times then it passes through the "danger zone" multiple times.
Looking it up, cases of food poisoning from bacillus cereus isn't particularly common. But then, how often are people reheating rice *multiple* times, rather than just portioning out their leftovers and reheating one portion at a time? I've only ever cooked one recipe where this was a practical concern - a stuffed pumpkin recipe where you cook rice, then cook it some more inside the pumpkin.
I'm American and I've heard this before all the time! It's one of the more common food safety things you hear if you hang out in cooking communities a lot. There is a toxic bacteria in rice called Bacillus cereus which has spores that survive boiling, which is the main concern. It's a special case of the usual advice against leaving food in the danger zone for more than a few hours.
I don't really put much stock in it, after traveling in Asia and exploring various food traditions that amount to "leaving cooked rice out at room temperature for a while", e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pus%C3%B4 . But to be fair I'm skeptical of most food safety advice, so unless you're pregnant or infirm, take that with a grain of salt and a glass of raw milk.
I'm American, and I have never heard this.
I hadn't heard it before either.
Thanks for the data point! This is the kind of thing that I'd expect Scott's readership to be *more* familiar with than the average population, and the fact that none of the commenters have heard of it makes me pretty confident that this is indeed a very niche belief.
Although I'm not sure if your username should make me more or less confident that you'd be open about a belief that seemingly no one knows about :p
I'm British and have heard / was taught that reheating rice is dangerous, for the reasons given by other posters about bacterial spores.
I don't know anyone who's got sick from reheating rice, but it seems plausible it's one of those long tail risks like getting listeria from not washing your vegetables. I often don't bother to wash vegetables because I'm lazy, but I know that adds some small degree of risk.
I will often make some rice, eat a small amount of right away, put the rest in the fridge, and eat it over the course of the next week. I think my (American) mother would freak out if I told her this.
That's how I roll as well!
When you say that your mother would freak out if you told her this, by "this" you mean your rice reheating habit? As in, she thinks reheating rice is dangerous?
I was told during a microbiology talk that pasta and rice are particularly dangerous to leave out at room temperature. Googling just now it seems to be that Bacillus Cereus can germinate at room temperature creating a toxin that stays toxic after reheating and that is at least occasionally fatal.
Seems like if there was enough of it present to do you real harm, you'd be able to taste it, though.
That'd be useful, wouldn't it? Turns out, however, that as with quite a number of other food toxins, no, you generally can't.
Way to let us down, tastebuds!
Here's a common source of cross-culture shock: mushrooms.
In countries where mushroom foraging is common, mushrooms are expected to be peeled and thoroughly cooked.
In countries where mushrooms are cultivated at scale, people are cavalier about cooking them and you will occasionally see them used raw.
When I started mushroom foraging as a hobby I was surprised how quickly bugs start eating mushrooms. Just about every one I found was at least partially bug eaten or infested with tiny worms. I can see why cooking thoroughly is important!
I don't know why you would be surprised, it's free food. If anything, you should be more scared of the mushrooms that aren't bug eaten, because that likely means they're poisonous (to bugs, at least).
Bugs eat mushrooms that are poisonous to humans, while there are delicious edible wild mushrooms I've never seen eaten (for example, black trumpets). So they are not an indicator in any way, unfortunately.
It was definitely a kind of "I don't know what I expected" surprise. I suppose I was comparing it to my experience picking berries or fruit, which are both food items that are suspended off the ground instead of growing right out of it.
I'm American, and I've never heard of this. (That doesn't mean no one believes it, but it can't be that widespread.)
Thanks for the data point! This is the kind of thing that I'd expect Scott's readership to be *more* familiar with than the average population, and the fact that almost none of the commenters have heard of it makes me pretty confident that this is indeed a very niche belief.
Same. I'm older than the mean among this commentariat, have resided nowhere but the US, and like the OP have been eating reheated rice for many years.
My mother, born in the US in 1928, served us kids reheated rice on the regular as well.
Thanks for the data point! This is the kind of thing that I'd expect Scott's readership to be *more* familiar with than the average population, and the fact that almost none of the commenters have heard of it makes me pretty confident that this is indeed a very niche belief.
> reheated rice
FWIW here in the UK there are specific requirements for handling cooked rice when catering for the public, explicitly called out in addition to general rules for handling food. It must either be chilled and refrigerated within an hour of cooking, or it must remain at safe temperature (a special term - there's a whole chart trading off temperature against time) throughout (a rice cooker on "keep warm" will do this). It must not be at room temperature for longer than an hour. If reheated, it must be reheated to a safe temperature throughout.
The reasoning is: freshly cooked rice at 20-30 degrees is damp and has a very large surface area. If a little contamination gets in, it is an ideal environment for bacteria to grow. Therefore it must not be kept at that temperature for long.
That said, there is scale to consider. When I volunteer in the kitchen, I am cooking meals for a hundred people or more; something which is a tiny one-off risk for a meal at home becomes a near-certainty when repeated hundreds of times a day. At home I am much more cavalier with the rice :)
Great point about differences of scale, makes a lot of sense!
“Our new president is happy about his support from "African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, _____ Americans" (lol, just kidding).” I've never met a single race-blinder who finds this thing actually offensive.
Someone find me that mythical creature so I can offer him my unconditional surrender.
Which thing is "this thing"?
Ethno-nationalism for everyone but whites.
I don't find it offensive, but I do find it annoying. People use "African American" to describe folks like Idris Elba, who is from neither of those countries. And white South Africans with dual citizenship have lost their nationality to this proxy term.
Plus the length of the name is basically demanding people give you more of their time. Imagine people throwing out "Check your European-American privilege."
Why should Congress be able to compel people to testify? I could understand if it were limited to generals or executive branch officials for the purpose of assuring checks and balances and civilian control of the military, with anyone refusing to testify losing their jobs. But the idea that they can compel any private citizen to testify about any subject, that just seems like tyranny.
The power to investigate is one of congress's checks on the power of the executive branch. Critical to the power to investigate is the ability to compel people to testify.
The Supreme Court has ruled more than once that (quoting from the 8-1 majority ruling in Eastland v. U.S. Servicemen’s Fund, 1975) the "power to investigate and to do so through compulsory process plainly" constitutes an "indispensable ingredient of lawmaking." Supreme Court majorities have held that basic opinion since the early 19th century. The most recent reiteration of it was in Trump et al v. Marzars USA LLP et al (2020).
That is actually a significant step down from the original understanding of Congress' authorities. During the first decades when dozens of Framers served in Congress and could speak firsthand about the intended logic of the Constitution, Congress was viewed as closer to omnipotent. In 1795 Congress arrested two guys on criminal charges (attempted bribery), basically acting as a prosecutor. In 1800 when a newspaper editor refused to comply with a Senate investigation, the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms arrested and jailed him for several weeks while the Senate discussed the matter. No court orders were involved in either case and nobody argued that they should be needed.
> In 1795 Congress arrested two guys on criminal charges (attempted bribery), basically acting as a prosecutor.
Prosecutors can't arrest anyone. And it would seem difficult for Congress to convict anyone of a crime, since that would be a bill of attainder.
They can't compel them to testify about *any* subject: the 5th amendment protects them from testifying to anything that could potentially incriminate them in a court of law, and Congress can't break that rule*. Courts compel testimony all the time: if you get subpoenaed to testify in a court case you have to testify there as well.
*There is a loophole: if they agree to give the person immunity for any crimes that would be implicated for due to their testimony, then they can compel that testimony. The 5th only applies if you can get in legal trouble for it, so if immunized you can't plead the 5th.
> then they can compel that testimony.
This is the standard view, but I'm not sure that's true: they can still be prosecuted by individual states, so I expect they COULD still plead the 5th.
The Supreme Court rejected that position in Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52 (1954). grant of immunity by one sovereign (here, the federal govenrment) grants use and derivative use immunity from any other sovereign by operation of law, and thus permits compulsion of the testimony.
Am I missing something? That decision seems to be that states CANNOT compel testimony by granting immunity, since one would still be subject to prosecution by the other states/federal govt. Is there a different case that says the opposite is true of the federal government? If so, that seems like a loophole for the President to effectively pardon state crimes: grant them immunity and get them to testify.
With all due respect, you seem to be misreading the opinion, because it says exactly the opposite. Indeed, that’s kind of the whole point: the witnesses were making the same argument you are (and, to be fair, it had some basis in prior cases), and the Supreme Court rejected it:
“[W]e hold the constitutional rule to be that a state witness may not be compelled to give testimony which may be incriminating under federal law unless the compelled testimony and its fruits cannot be used in any manner by federal officials in connection with a criminal prosecution against him. We conclude, moreover, that, in order to implement this constitutional rule and accommodate the interests of the State and Federal Governments in investigating and prosecuting crime, the Federal Government must be prohibited from making any such use of compelled testimony and its fruits. This exclusionary rule, while permitting the States to secure information necessary for effective law enforcement, leaves the witness and the Federal Government in substantially the same position as if the witness had claimed his privilege in the absence of a state grant of immunity.
It follows that petitioners here may now be compelled to answer the questions propounded to them.”
My bad. You're completely right. The only caveat seems to be that states have to pretend not to use the self-incriminating testimony compelled by the federal government and have to claim to have arrived at the evidence independently.
All the summaries of the case I saw seemed to agree with me, and I saw the line "we hold the constitutional rule to be that a state witness may not be compelled to give testimony which may be incriminating under federal law unless the compelled testimony and its fruits cannot be used in any manner by federal officials in connection with a criminal prosecution against him," so I figured that since the conclusion is that they can NOW be compelled to testify, they had been granted federal immunity in the interim between the state court's and the Supreme Court's rulings. But no, it turns out the supposed protection of the Fifth Amendment IS really is just bullshit. Sad, but good to know.
They have the power to make laws that change day-to-day life for millions of people. Do you want them to make those decisions based on incomplete information?
...is there an alternative?
I am applying for the METR tasks, and the application form is asking for an email of the person who referred me/us. Scott, if you want some $10 referral payments popping your account, can I suggest you provide an email address for us to use?
I don't need the payments, but thanks for the offer.
I'm considering moving on from my current SE job to one where I'll be able to work remotely and get some ML exposure. If anyone works at an AI infra company (e.g. Weights and Biases) and is willing to refer please PM me here or email iz8162k23 at gmail.com. Thanks
I posted this on a hidden open thread that had low attendance, so am reposting here. I think this works out only to 1.15 plugs, not 2.0.
Well guys, I am taking the plunge and putting up a series of blog posts about AI art, focusing mostly on images made by Dall-e 2. The first post, “Dall-e 2 was Evelyn Quan Wong,” is up now, at https://bookreviewgroup.substack.com/p/dall-e-2-was-evelyn-quan-wong?r=3d8y5 .
Upcoming posts:
-2 relatively innocuous prompts I accidentally discovered that made Dall-e produce transgressive images, mostly violent and sexual ones. Speculation about why the prompt produced those results, and a gallery of enthrallingly godawful images.
-Wutz art, and can AI images qualify as art? I think they can.
-A cartoon story about an ASI catastrophe featuring a Dall-e 2 monster as the main character. It’s dark and crass. I’d say the phrase “in terrible taste” pretty much captures it.
-2 serious projects of mine illustrated by AI art.
The current post solicits opinions and information about what in Dall-e 2’s structure or training made it so astute and inventive in certain ways. I am hoping people with relevant tech knowledge will weigh in about that in the post’s comment section.
Much appreciated! I found your post interesting, but I have something of a "tin ear" for art, so I'm not well suited to comment on whether Dall-e 2 was being subtle or not. I just ran another simple test ("blue glass tetrahedron on a red wooden table" and current (3?) Dall-e gave me an octahedron instead of a tetrahedron.
< ("blue glass tetrahedron on a red wooden table" and current (3?) Dall-e gave me an octahedron instead of a tetrahedron.
It's really dumb about spacial stuff. When you speak to GPT about what's wrong with shape or placement or other 3D stuff with image it seems to understand every bit of what you say, but then the corrected image it gives you does not reflect any improvement at all in the image-maker's grasp of what's needed. I recently asked it to make a whirlpool seen from a certain angle, and it did a great job with that. Only thing wrong was that the water all around whirlpool was calm. I asked it to make the water around the whirlpool turbulent with waves and troughs that were continuations of the spiraling waves and troughs of the whirlpool . This is what I got: https://imgur.com/a/kr4RBVM. So bad it made me laugh, actually. Is it a tornado having sex with a whirlpool?
About my post: Thanks for taking a look. Even if the art dimension of the matter isn't your thing, I think it's pretty clear from the images that Dall-e 2 showed way more emotion, and more of a variety of emotions, in characters in the images, also that Dall-e 2 was much more imaginative in how it depicted the romantic situations. I think that's the most important part of what I had to say, too. I think a lot about the effect on our species of having a larger ratio of virtual people to real ones in the average life. The fact that Dall-e's virtual people are changing in the direction of being more Barbie-like (flat, plastic, conventional, small emotional range) seems ominous to me.
Many Thanks!
>It's really dumb about spacial stuff.
Very much agreed! The question of mine that ChatGPT o1 is doing the worst on is the spatial symmetry one:
>g) What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
>It screws up, saying that H2O2 can be put into a conformation with an S4 axis (but lacking the center of inversion and mirror plane), but it is wrong. Even with the 90 degree dihedral that it wants, one of the hydrogens can be mapped to the position of the original hydrogen, but the other hydrogen winds up in the wrong place, not matching any hydrogen in the original positions of the hydrogens. I finally got it to cough up an admission of this with repeated corrections. Not just wrong but stubbornly wrong.
>https://chatgpt.com/share/678c4e15-8c48-8006-8cbf-7a85688702b2
and (given the (incorrect) example it picked) it only has to keep track of 4 atoms, 4 points in space!
>Is it a tornado having sex with a whirlpool?
That does seem like an apt description of what it generated! And, in the midst of all that weather in the image, the waves look like they are gently lapping at the beach...
>I think that's the most important part of what I had to say, too. I think a lot about the effect on our species of having a larger ratio of virtual people to real ones in the average life. The fact that Dall-e's virtual people are changing in the direction of being more Barbie-like (flat, plastic, conventional, small emotional range) seems ominous to me.
True. Something of a cross between poker faces and invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-o-matic
I want to know why fingers are so hard to figure out for these models. Not just generative AI I've been using Topaz Labs for a couple of months now and it has a tendency to mangle fingers even though it has a decent starting point.
My theory: Humand hands are the most expressive body part humans have, far ahead even of the face. You can arrange your fingers and wrist every which way, and LLMs might have a hard time properly generalizing the many different hand poses it's been trained with. They are usually also not the focus of images, unlike the face, so if you generate a full human figure, detail on the hands gets lost.
It's basically the opposite problem of generating a mechanical clock with arbitrary time of day - it will always show 10 past 10 because that's what basically all images on the web show. Hand poses, OTOH, are so varied that LLMs can't distill a realistic representation from them, at least when they're not the focus of the prompt.
Yeah I see how this is more difficult than I imagined. OTOH, the models can't generate the numbers on a mechanical clock face either, which is seems bizarre to me - there are gazillion images of clocks with numbers, same ones the models got the hands positions from.
But this also means the models don't know what fingers are, can't figure out that the default is 5 per hand, etc. In other words, they are totally... dumb?
>the models can't generate the numbers on a mechanical clock face either
They can, but only on the hand positions they have seen - 10 past 10 in the overwhelming majority of images.
>In other words, they are totally... dumb?
Well, yes. They know nothing about the world. They are a super-charged version of your phone's auto-complete.
The baseball joke reminds me of the movie The Cup, where an old Tibetan lama who has never heard of modern sports gets to face the fact that his young disciple monks all love football. I won't spoil the actual punchline in the movie, highly recommended to watch!
My brother took his life this week, he was 18.
1) If you are in the DC area and have any experience with this and are willing to meet to talk / offer advice, please email me at defunctcantaloupe@gmail.com.
2) if you have any knowledge of affordable funeral homes in the area please share them with me in a response here (not by email)
Thanks
I'm sorry.
I'm not in the DC area, and I do not know your situation or current feelings, but I did experience something similar last year. The feelings of grief and guilt were overwhelming at first. I think that is normal and I don't think there is any easy answer. Personally I had so many questions that could not be answered and it took a long time to accept that. Please don't be afraid to reach out and talk to people or to find a therapist. These are really terrible things and even the strongest people will find them hard to deal with.
I can't help on either point, unfortunately, but I'm so sorry.
FWIW, Costco can significantly reduce costs if you're planning on a casket burial.
And I'm sure you've heard this advice before, but I think it's worth reiterating:
If you have a close friend who wasn't close to your brother, consider asking them to provide you their clear-eyed vigilance while you're negotiating with the funeral director. The industry is rife with unscrupulous salespeople who won't hesitate to take advantage of the grieving, and even the most rational person can be significantly less rational when they're grieving.
I'm just so sorry for your loss. I'm wishing you eventual peace as you grieve.
Gawd that's terrible to hear. As an 18-year-old I happened to be present when my girlfriend's parents got the phone call about their eldest child having taken his own life, and it's still the most heartbreaking family moment I've ever witnessed. So sorry.
Sorry to hear. May he rest in peace. :(
Biden's last-minute "preemptive" pardons are probably good for the Republicans: it'd keep Trump for pursuing self-destructive retaliatory persecutions of his enemies.
I've read he last-minute pardoned family members (other than Hunter) and that does make me go "Why?" because it looks suspicious as heck that yeah, maybe there was money coming in as bribes/inducements after all:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348
I mean, what the heck were his siblings and in-laws *doing* that might need pre-emptive pardons because otherwise Trump would set the law dogs on them? He talked about Hunter being persecuted just for being his son, but Hunter was indeed a very naughty boy. What other skeletons are there lurking in the closet?
> I mean, what the heck were his siblings and in-laws *doing* that might need pre-emptive pardons
Being related to a famous Democrat.
Yes, in numerous speeches, Trump said he was going to go after the "Biden Crime Family." If that's not a threat, I don't know what is. A quick Google turned up about of a dozen of instances of him promising this action. Here are a couple that came out on top of my search...
At a rally in Nevada, he stated, "We're going to knock off the Biden crime family. It's a Biden family of crime, including the fact that they've weaponized the Department of Justice like it has never happened in this country."
NB: Biden did not directly control the DoJ. Merrick Garland did. If Biden had appointed a Democrat to the AG position, we probably would have seen a more enthusiastic prosecution of the Trump Crime Family. Also note all of Trump's kids skated free of any legal repercussions for their involvement in some of Trump's shady dealings.
At a Faith & Freedom Coalition Gala, he remarked, "These countries know every penny the Biden crime family has taken in. The countries know. Ukraine knows, China knows. They all know that, many countries."
Ummm. Hunter Biden had trouble scraping up enough money to pay his back taxes and penalties. Meanwhile, Trump is getting a mainline infusion of cash from various billionaires.
I expect those statements to go the same way as "Lock her up!" did. Which is- yes, bad rhetoric, embarrassing from a presidential candidate, tit for tat destruction of norms so everyone gets to blame whoever they want- ultimately no direct effect at all.
Do you still think it safe to assume that Trump will be a law-abiding president that is not going to hurt his political enemies any which way he can, using the considerable presidential powers at his disposal? If it's his cronies all the way down, what stops him from releasing the law dogs even if there is no factual reason to? Who's going to say "No" to him?
Okay sure, but a pardon isn't going to protect them. Guess he tried though. I wonder how it feels to see literally everything you worked towards your entire life destroyed in mere moments. Well, sucks for him.
Why wouldn't it work? I'm not a lawyer, so I'll have to resort to Wikipedia, but therein it says:
"In Ex parte Garland (1867), the U.S. Supreme Court [..] broadened its scope to include offenses for which legal proceedings have not been initiated."
Or what is your objection?
He can make up other charges. Or just, you know, kill them. Really, I have no idea how it took this long for a president to actually take advantage of the potential of pardons. Not only are you immune to the law, but anyone that works in your interests is also immune! How did nobody realize this until now?
I hadn't heard of those pardons. Thanks!
I know you know better than this. There are lot of bullshit charges that can be … trumped up against them; the classic "Three Felonies a Day" thing isn't baseless. Maybe they paid blackmail out of the wrong bank account. Or maybe Trump classifies some of their documents and charges them with possessing them. Or inciting insurrection for tweeting something negative about him. Or he could make up some campaign finance violation. Or money laundering. Or giving Aid and Comfort to an enemy of the United States (viz. Joe Biden).
Or even more likely, makes Democrats look bad for breaking unspoken rules while Trump wasn't likely to prosecute those people anyway. He never went after Clinton, for instance.
Unfortunately I think it makes everyone worse off, because it greatly increases the chances of Trump doing something similar. He's term-limited, so it seems quite likely he spends his last few months in office pardoning everyone involved for everything they do. If this becomes a norm, it will encourage high level government officials to push boundaries and even outright illegal behavior, counting on pardons. Right now there's still a good reason not to do that - it strongly implies the person committed crimes. That's still true for Hunter, to an extent, but now Fauci and Cheney don't have the same implications (even people who think they were immoral or whatever don't think they necessarily committed crimes worth prosecuting).
> He never went after Clinton, for instance
Sure, but that was before the Biden administration normalised it.
Yes, but that doesn't mean normalizing other bad behavior is a smart solution here.
Yet another banana-republic-level move by Biden. I don't know what to lament more - the chipping away at the governing norms of my country or the fact that people can't even think of the country as a whole, "good for Republicans", yay.
It's a crap thing to do on his last morning in office but in his shoes I'd probably have done it. I'd feel shitty doing it. But we live in a shitty age.
That Trump didn't send the DoJ after H. Clinton in 2017 does not have much relevance to the chances of his sending them after people like Cheney now. In the first place he's putting his own people directly in charge of the DoJ this time around (literally his personal attorneys, something no POTUS has ever done before). Also there is a big difference in how Trump talks about the members of the Jan 6 committee compared to how he talked about Clinton. The former are in his mind _personal_ enemies who proposed his individual arrest and conviction, not just political opponents who criticized him a lot.
I have elevated the not-well-thought-out (to say the least) pardon power much higher on my running list of "things needing to be cleaned up in our Constitution". But that was true before Biden's lame-duck deployment of it, so for me he's just making the broader point that much more stark.
I agree upon some reflection. It's a shitty box to be in, and Trump is the one who constructed it by violating every norm within his reach, just because he could. Turns out a civilized society runs on customs and traditions to a great degree, who'd thought that! People who call themselves "conservative", perhaps? But they turned out to be the biggest cheerleaders for the normicide, opps...
At some point, when your enemies have fenced you in, arguing you can't take down the fences they built because "something, something, Chesterton" ceases to be persuasive.
Sorry, I have no idea what this means... can you give an example or two?
Trump asked Zelenskyy to give him Clinton's email server (based on the conspiracy theory that she had it hidden in Ukraine). I would say that's going after her, even if it's in a pretty obviously fruitless way.
I think you've got multiple Trump attack lines crossed there
I can definitely see why you would think so! But I don't: https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript-call/index.html
> I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_related_to_the_Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal or https://apnews.com/article/aa1f66a1770d4995a6bada960a7d119e for some more context.
"Going after" implies finding or making up crimes even if one wasn't committed. It would have been trivial for Trump to order the DOJ to prosecute her for things we know that she did. Even Comey, when saying she should not be prosecuted, said she committed crimes.
I don't have any issue with criminal prosecutions of politicians and high level officials when they do commit (serious) crimes. That he asked for evidence of crimes she committed doesn't mean much - I would HOPE incoming administrations do this. That he also decided not to prosecute is also good, as I think we should not prosecute high level officials, presidential candidates, etc. for trivial things. The bar should be very high, as it causes strife for limited gain to go after political enemies.
This strikes me as a very generous reading of the situation. Trump was on a phone call with the head of an allied country being invaded by one of our adversaries and personally asked him about incriminating evidence on two of his most prominent political opponents. That doesn't seem like a very normal process for an investigation to me. The President isn't an investigator. Asking this of the head of a country in a diplomatic context right after they bring up defense collaboration is very different than just having some FBI agents allocated to something.
>"Trump was on a phone call with the head of an allied country being invaded by one of our adversaries and personally asked him about incriminating evidence on two of his most prominent political opponents."
Russia seized Crimea and supported the Donbas fig leaves in 2014 (well before Trump) and didn't invade the rest of Ukraine until 2022 (after Trump).
Not to defend his actions, but there wasn't a hot war between Ukraine & Russia at the time.
I feel like this turns quickly into a semantic argument about what "invaded" means. "Occupied", perhaps? In any event they were asking about missiles for defense because Russia was in an ongoing (albeit frozen) conflict with them.
I highly doubt that Hillary would've actually gone to jail for that. It's not worth prosecuting your political opponents unless you've already secured enough power to actually eliminate them (something the Democrats learned the hard way).
Yes but the Republicans could have said "She's a convicted felon!" at every opportunity, which is apparently fun.
They were already basically saying that, that she's a criminal that needs to be locked up. There isn't much point in doing it after the election, seeing as it's obvious she was never going to run again, and it also would've been really embarrassing if they tried to jail her and failed despite supposedly being in power.
Can anyone point me to data regarding historical snowfall, and snow depth in the northeast US?
It snowed today, and while I was using the snowblower to clear out my parent’s driveway, I remembered the multiple big snowstorms we used to get as a kid (not that long ago for me). It seemed that multiple times a year I’d be out with my dad operating the snowblower, with so much snow that we’d have to run it at the slowest speed, and sometimes blow twice, otherwise the depth would exceed the height of the machine. I remember this quite vividly as I had to push this big red machine either at night, or really early in the morning (before any of the snow started to melt and make it difficult to blow).
The only real snow of this year was today and it was about 1/2 a foot. Took me an hour to blow at the maximum speed. I don’t think I had to blow once last year, and maybe none in the year before.
What’s the deal with this? Is snowfall that much less than the early 2000’s in the Northeast? Am I misremembering how common this sort of snowfall was? Is this climate change? El niño or La Niña? Maybe some longer climate cycle I’m not familiar with? Maybe my driveway, snowblower and myself have grown, so the snowfall just seems relatively less?
I can't find any good charts on the NOAA or NWS websites, but Wunderground has an interesting table of decadal snowfall averages by city. They fluctuate a lot between decades, but I looked at NE cities, and I don't see any decadal downward trend.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/US-Snowfall-1900-2019-Decade-Decade-Look
It stops at 2019, so the last decade of the data includes some of the snowiest winters, like the 14/15 one.
As an aside, the slow decay of Wunderground is such a sad thing. I still use it because I'm so accustomed to its format, but what a loss.
Why do you say Wunderground is slowly decaying? Do you find their forecasts less accurate? I admire their skill at the "visual display of quantitative information".
Their forecasts' accuracy is fine. I don't know how long you've been using it - I first learned about it in late 90's and it's been my go-to even since. It used to have a constant stream of very good commentary on climate, weather extremes, etc. in the blog section that I miss dearly. Then there are just small things that are disappearing, like the state's extreme temps - it was always fun to see California's range on a given day between Truckee and Palm Springs, for example. The temp records for the day used to have dates right next to them. Little things that were really cool and useful that are gone for no apparent reason.
Also, their weather maps seem to be stuck a decade behind the competition, for example, https://zoom.earth/maps/temperature/#view=32.29,-99.44,5z/model=icon
There's a theory that the Hunga Tonga eruption has been causing the last couple years to be much warmer than usual. The eruption was an underwater volcano that was just close enough to the surface to vaporize a huge amount of water and send it high into the atmosphere. The actual impact is rather contentious, as the water vapor in the stratosphere has much less warming effect than in the lower atmosphere; at the same time, the lower atmosphere is saturated with water vapor whereas the stratosphere is much drier. So a lot of water in the typically dry stratosphere could have an outsized warming effect. And there were other various particulates from the eruption that have a cooling effect.
Anyway, if the eruption was a factor in recent climate, this winter should be the last really warm one, and the temperatures should return to the baseline over the next couple years. Assuming the climate impact follows a similar path to the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. The lag between the initial eruption and the global impact followed that past eruption quite closely.
I just looked up average snowfall for a NE state - Pennsylvania. The average from 1991 to 2020 ranged heavily by area, from as low as 21 inches per year to a high of 104 (Erie, with lake effect snow). Outside of Erie there were still multiple areas above 60 inches per year. If you were a teenager in the 90s, you probably saw several big blizzards (93 and 96) which may be coloring your view of the timeframe. I also tend to remember those years but we likely had a lot less snow in say, 95 and 98 or whatever. There were also big blizzards in 2010 and 2016, but apparently not from 97 through 2009.
This would be a good place to start: https://www.nrcc.cornell.edu/regional/monthly/monthly.html
For what it's worth, the snowiest year ever recorded here in Boston was 2015.
It seems the last big snowfall was also 2015 in my area, which matches my memory of the last time I had to blow snow in any meaningful quantity.
I believe the mainstream prediction is that climate change will make winters warmer but when they are cold the storms and snowfall will be bigger.
Jan-Feb of 2015 was absolutely brutal, 100's of roof collapses, and then it's like a switch has been flipped, there hasn't really been a proper showy winter in the NE since.
Best practices for learning a language (assuming you CAN'T immerse yourself in it), or the best research? I'm open to hearing anything backed up by personal anecdote or hard-wrung data.
The context: I'm putting together a curriculum for homeschooling families (part of the whole "build Egan schools" project I've been working on), and am looking for strong practices I can weave together for elementary and middle school. (I'm already a lover of Gabriel Wynne's Fluent Forever, and am about to start re-reading that.)
1. Find a ~5000 word, frequency sorted Anki deck. Work your way through.
2. Get the basics of grammar through an introductory textbook or online course (e.g. Duolingo).
3. For pronunciation, shadow native speakers.
4. Start reading and watching stuff that interests you.
Personal anecdotes: I learned Japanese this way, and I'm making good progress with Ancient Greek. Basic grammar and ~2k words let's you engage with easy material, with ~5k you can freely dive into normal books and media, and continue learning solely through immersion.
In the context of homeschooling:
Flashcards: Have the kids learn 10 new cards on Anki per day (important: Find a frequency-sorted deck with at least 5000 cards, and native speaker audio for each card). Including daily reviews, this should take no more than 15 minutes.
Factoring in vacation time, during which kids should keep up with reviews, but pause new cards, 5000 words can be learned in just about two years.
Grammar/Textbooks:
For year 1 of a new language, any age-appropriate textbook will be fine. It won't teach them much, but it will provide context to the flashcard program, and get them used to speaking/reading.
For year 2, start introducing easy native-speaker material. Kids comics, cartoons, TV shows. Make that at least half the class, and start phasing out textbooks and explicit instruction.
For year 3 onward, teach it like you would an English class. Full engagement with native material.
That's based on my experience with Japanese. If you're teaching French or Spanish, you can probably switch to full immersion by year 2.
Whoa, only 15 minutes a day? I'm going through WaniKani which uses SRS to teach 2000 kanji and 6000 vocab words by the end of the program and at a rate of 10 new cards per day (a combination of radicals, kanji, and vocab), which I bumped down from the default of 15, it takes me far longer than 15 minutes per day. I'd say closer to 1-1.5 hours to go through the 10 lessons and do all ~100 review that come up each day (granted, I've added some extra steps but it all feels necessary to have any hope of retention). I'd love to cut this down so I have more time to study grammar, reading, etc. Is there some trick you use to quickly remember/retain foreign words, or are you just one of those "I just need to see/hear it a few times and it sticks" people?
I'm going off the assumption that 10 new cards a day leads to about 70 daily reviews once the deck matures, and that each card takes an average of 10 seconds. 80*10/60 = 13 minutes, 20 seconds.
That was roughly my experience with the Core 6000 deck from AnkiWeb. No tricks, but my settings were: Only recognition cards. Front of the card is the written word, with native speaker audio of the word and an example sentence. Back of the card revealed the meaning, reading, and text for the sentence.
I may just be one of those people, but perhaps my method is more efficient than WaniKani.
That does sound more efficient than what I'm doing. WaniKani splits each word into two cards (one for reading and one for meaning) so that's already 2x the raw number of cards. And then when I encounter a new word/kanji, I also manually write it down or type it up and come up with/write down mnemonics to try to remember the readings, struggle through a few usage sentences, then also enter it into my own little app where I can tag each entry for later filtering and review (godan-verb, na-adjective, etc.) which I use for listening practice (I can select a set of words and use ChatGPT/TTS to churn out simple sentences that I can listen to in the car driving to/from work).
I could (should?) probably cut down on some of that bulk to spend more time on grammar. But if you say you use no tricks, then I do think you must be one of those people! I have to come up with a mnemonic for pretty much every reading or else there's no hope that I'll retain any of them and even then my reading accuracy appears to only be ~90%.
I suggest learning kanji through words. Even when I used a dedicated kanji deck, I used it by focusing on the example words (pass if I remember at least one, redo if I don't).
I gave up on Japanese the first time I tried, because the kanji card for 上 had like 10 different readings and it felt hopeless trying to remember them all. But when I learned those 10 readings as separate words with separate flashcards, it was no problem.
BTW if you want a great integrated lesson + flashcard program, look up NativShark. I only quit and switched to Anki because back then they only had lessons up to N3, but their lessons go all the way to N1 now I believe. It's a bit pricey but NativShark + anime will get you to fluency.
Oh yeah, I agree. Fortunately, WaniKani’s system seems pretty good about that. It first introduces a new kanji and teaches a single reading. Then after a little while it will introduce some vocab words which use that kanji/reading (and other kanji you’ve already learned). As you progress, that kanji will come up more and more in vocab so you’re exposed to the different readings.
On a related note, what grammar resources did you end up using? I’ve found that I end up just turning to Wikipedia a lot of the time because intro textbooks explanations often gloss over details and it makes me worry that I’m not getting an accurate understanding of the language. As a simple example, in Spanish “me gusta” is often translated as “I like” but that doesn’t reveal what’s actually happening at the grammar level, and that’s often the level at which intro textbooks seem to teach.
Check out iTalki, a service for finding tutors who speak the target language fluently. Making even just a few sessions part of the curriculum can improve the “immersive” quality for a relatively low cost.
This is the only answer that matters, every other suggestion is a complete waste of time compared to this.
Well, you don't necessarily want to go for a paid tutor. The biggest contribution to my learning Mandarin was being found by someone using "people nearby" on wechat who would talk to me while she was bored at work. This might have been prohibitively expensive if I had to pay for it.
That’s a fair point. The important thing is not the exact platform, just that you need to actually use the language, and not do synthetic classroom exercises that are tangentially related. The only time I have successfully learned a second language I did 5-10 hours on italki per week.
For captive audiences, probably just foreign art and social media. Every ounce of other culture Ive picked up was only done willingly; I think my socail media is more multicultural then the average(especially with banning russians from programming projects being a thing recently) but my skool`n had standard languges classes and those were wildly ineffective for me.
Step 0 Choose a language with a fun pop culture
Step 1 Use something like Anki to build vocabulary
Step 2 Watch engaging videos in that language to instinctually learn how words are actually used
Step 3 Start writing and speaking in that language in the manner of the videos
Step 4 Learn some grammar to fix big mistakes
I know several people from non-English speaking countries who picked up English from watching movies / playing video games as kids/teenagers, without any formal tuition. One is a Russian-born Israeli, for whom now Hebrew is #1, English #2, and Russian is a distant #3.
Nothing really beats tuition, someone to walk you through "my name is Peter" all the way up to "did you ask Sam whether his grandmother brought garlic from the market", combining spoken and written.
Otherwise the hardcore self-learning option is to take a grammar book, a dictionary and a novel, and plod your way through them. Can be workable if the language is easy enough, or related to one you already know. Combine with a few movies in the languages with subtitles in English, and lots of use of the pause button.
This LSAT question was posted on TwiXter caused quite a round of comments and harrumphing. I'm curious what denizens who lurk on ACX will make of it...
.......
You are to choose the *best* answer that answers the question. You should not make assumptions that are incompatible with the passage.
3. Physical education should teach people to pursue healthy, active lifestyles as they grow older. But the focus on competitive sports in most schools causes most of the less competitive students to turn away from sports. Having learned to think of themselves as unathletic, they do not exercise enough to stay healthy.
Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the statements above, if they are true?
(A) Physical education should include noncompetitive activities.
(B) Competition causes most students to turn away from sports.
(C) People who are talented at competitive physical endeavors exercise regularly.
(D) The mental aspects of exercise are as important as the physical ones.
(E) Children should be taught the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle.
A and E are on par for me, because I don't know - if physical education should teach people to pursue healthy, active lifestyles as they grow older - which will more likely achive that goal.
Is this some kind of reading comprehension test?
Which I hope not to fail.
If one puts "therefore" in front of each option, it becomes clear that A is the best answer. A is the thesis of the piece.
Using that trick, only C is a possible alternative, but 1) the "as important" claim is not necessarily supported by the statements; and 2) C makes a claim about exercise, while the topic of the piece is PE pedagogy, not exercise.
Interesting. I like your therefore logic, therefore I like your logic. ;-)
I’m gonna go Mesa and comment on the topic itself. This is actually surprising to hear cause it makes the puzzle in my head click!
I hate* competition and to this day I am disgusted by physical activity. I want to want to exercise! But as soon as I start doing something, I get images of athletic people that are much better than me, and that greatly de motivates me because I don’t want to be to look up to them, I wanna be them. I’ve got this “all or nothing” mindset here.
Funny thing is that I don’t care about competition in other areas, where I’m competent. I wish I had a teacher that had shown me that I am indeed great/talented in one of the sports!
What exactly is a non-competitive physical activity in a school environment? Are you just not going to give them any grade?
Sometimes it's fun to find out that something normal in one country is unthinkable in another country and vice versa. I'm pretty sure there were never grades for PE at any of my schools.
"But how did they keep the lazy kids motivated to do PE?" They didn't. The PE teachers would just tell us "OK go play basketball or squash" anyway, and the lazy kids among us would just go to the squash courts (out of the PE teacher's sight) and sit around and talk.
I was one of those lazy kids and PE class was very counterproductive for me, it taught me that exercise is something you do because a PE teacher tells you to do it, not something you do for your own benefit. Same deal with reading novels. I never exercised or read novels until I left high school and no longer had to do them, at which point I discovered that they were actually good.
PE was not something that got a grade, at least when I was going to school. The idea that PE is a *subject* that you can *fail* and which, if failed, means you can't *graduate* from American schools is something that blew my mind when I learned about it.
It seems that now it is an exam subject, but I have no idea if it's compulsory (you don't have to take every subject for the Leaving Certificate) so whether school sports/PE is run as both exam and non-exam subject, I have no idea.
Okay, looking it up, seems it is both the traditional non-exam subject and alternatively the exam subject, so I imagine the sporty types can take it as an exam subject and drop an academic one:
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2024-04-23/315/
"The new Primary Curriculum Framework was published in March this year, and under this, the wellbeing framework which includes a PE specification is being developed. A new Junior Cycle PE specification was introduced for first year students in all post-primary schools from September 2023. Schools are required to provide a minimum of 135 hours of Physical Education for all Junior Cycle students. There are two options for PE at Senior Cycle – Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE), which is an examinable subject and the Senior Cycle Physical Education (SCPE) framework which is non-examinable. Introduced on a phased basis in 2018 to 64 schools, LCPE is now being offered by 404 schools around the country. The Senior Cycle Physical Education (SCPE) non-examination framework provides a flexible planning tool for physical education for all students in senior cycle."
I was about as non-competitive as you could get, so my participation in the sports was "run up one side of the basketball court/hockey field, run down the other side of the basketball court/hockey field". If I'd had to be graded on that, I certainly would have failed.
I was graded on PE when I went to secondary school in the 1970s. The coaches always gave me a B for effort, but I think it lowered my GPA enough to miss out on being the salutatorian of my graduating glass.
"What exactly is a non-competitive physical activity in a school environment?"
In this context I would consider "competitive" as "competitive with others."
So ... having the class run for 30 minutes and paying attention to the order in which the students finish would count as competitive. Having the class run for 30 minutes and noting which students were getting better and by how much ... much less competitive (though each student is still competing with themselves).
This won't prevent the students from knowing who the faster runners are, but it does provide a framework in which the less athletic students can still feel that they are doing well (because for them, they are).
If one cares about grades one can imagine that one way to get an "A" would be to be pretty fast. Another way to get an "A" would be to get better 'enough.' Yes, there are ways for the students to sandbag.
You could have plenty of graded activities that don't involve competitive sports--cooperative physical activities, individual exercise activities, etc.
The answer says "activities", not sports. You make a grade, kids will compare them and it will become competitive anyway. A cooperative activity turns people into weak links, which becomes competitive anyway.
That was one of the arguments against A that I saw. A didn't specifically say physical activities. It's assumed from the Physical education lead-in to the sentence, but if I were an attorney defending my client for not selecting A as the answer, that's one of the arguments that I'd make. Remember that a lot of legal time and effort is spent arguing over the meaning of contracts and laws. The courts ultimately have to interpret the meaning of ambiguous sentences. Thus, the kerfluffle over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.
I originally rejected A because I somehow missed "Physical" before education, but I think it's a safe conclusion that any activity in Physical Education is going to promote physicality. This is a tangent on practicality, like if the answer to racism was "we should prevent people from thinking racist thoughts".
Yes, I ended up on A after a lot of consideration of the other alternatives. But we don't really know what the correct answer is.
The kids who care about sports will be competitive, that's why you have the ones who get onto the basketball team that competes against other schools, etc. The majority of the kids who don't give a damn about it, other than "great, this is an hour we have to waste running around the field", aren't going to bother competing over "hey, did I improve my position in the class running from 25th to 23rd?"
But are they going to bother to exercise enough to stay healthy?
A is my answer. Ranked from worst to best:
D is tangential to the text and assets a claim not supported by the text.
E answers the concern of the text, but tacitly relies on facts not in evidence, namely that teaching the dangers would be an effective way to motivate less competitive students to an active lifestyle.
B makes the assumption that "most" students are in the less competitive category.
C is only weakly implied by the text. It's possible that competitive students fail to become sufficiently active for other reasons. It also ignores the text's focus on outcomes for inactive students.
A is fully supported and is apropos to the whole text.
> D is tangential to the text and assets a claim not supported by the text.
This is false, D is closely related to the third sentence. The problem with D is that it gives equal importance to mental and physical factors, which isn’t implied. If D was rephrased as “mental aspects of exercise can be a barrier to participation” then it would be best.
> A is fully supported
A is better than the others, but don’t agree with this claim. A requires the hidden premise that it is believed/known that the less competitive students would be receptive to noncompetitive activities. But this isn’t made explicit and it’s not obviously true. Maybe some significant segment of the population just hates sports, and a different intervention that “don’t keep score” is required to get them on board.
Geez, I love how different people interpret the language! If I were taking this test, I would have settled on A, but I think it's a shittily worded question, and I can understand why people are arguing against A or arguing for other answers.
Now I'm curious what the people who didn't pick A are arguing, considering that's the only statement that's directly relevant to the passage...
I'm curious. How did you come to that conclusion?
Because the main thesis of the passage is A. Every other answer mentions things that are either not directly relevant to said thesis or not mentioned in the first place.
It's B. It says nothing about encouraging kids to be sporty or taking out the competitive elements. It says that the majority of kids are turned off school sports by competition.
The passage says that PE should teach people to be active, but students are put off by not being successful in competitive sports, so they think they're bad at physical activity, so they don't exercise enough. That's it. It says nothing about "and so the solution is to introduce non-competitive activities that they can be good at". You can infer that from the piece, but it's not directly stated, so it's not the best answer. You are making an assumption, which is what the instructions tell you *not* to do.
It is definitely not B. The text says, "most of the less competitive students" turn away from sports. B says "most students" turn away. We don't know what pct of all students are "less competitive," nor what pct "most" refers to. All we know from the text is that at least 50.0001% of less competitive students turn away from sports. So, we cannot infer that a majority of all students turn away.
It says the majority of *non-athletic* kids; what percentage of the whole that covers is unknown, so B is assuming it's high.
A, for the reasons others have stated.
I think it's funny that most of the harumphing comments I've seen engage in exactly the kind of unlawyerly arguments that this test seems clearly designed to weed out: "if you make this incredibly obvious assumption then the answer is B"; "based on other knowledge I have, the answer has to be E" etc.
I take A and E, not based on other knowledge I have, but on what's explicitly in the text.
"Physical education should teach people to *pursue* healthy, active lifestyles as they grow older."
Inducing fear can teach them to pursue that, even the ones who do not like competition, and better then anything else in the world possibly. The text doesn't say.
But lawyers are trained to make the best arguments for the benefit of their clients despite a lack of good evidence. I think the best lawyers would be those who could put up good arguments *against* A.
But, the best legal arguments are those that are logically coherent, based on whatever limited evidence that is at hand. An argument based on evidence that is not in the record, or which is not logically supported by evidence that is actually in the record, is a terrible legal argument.
Ummm. I refer to you to the legal arguments over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment of the US constitution. Carl Sandburg said it best: "If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell." ;-)
Can you be more specific about which Second Amendment arguments you are referring to? I don't know of any that seem particularly germane to my point.
Well, I don't want to open a new shitstorm, but you tell me what you think this means...
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Irrespective of how SCOTUS interpreted it, do you think it means...
A. We should not infringe on our right to bear arms, regardless of whether we in a well-regulated militia.
B. We should only have the right to bear arms only in the context of a well regulated militia.
I would probably pick A on first pass, but considering there’s apparently controversy around this, I bet the answer is D.
It does mention the mental aspect of sports in the third sentence “having learned to think” (think is key word) so I think D shouldn’t be ruled out immediately.
Sentence 1 sets the goal, PE teaching people to pursue “healthy” lifestyles.
Sentence 2 connects the competitive aspect of sports with most less competitive students (but not necessarily most students) turning away from sports.
Sentence 3 connects this turning away from sports with the mental aspect (having learned to think), then proceeds to connect this mental aspect with not pursuing healthy lifestyles.
Thus, PE is currently not teaching (otherwise put as having students “learn”) to pursue healthy lifestyles, because it is not considering the mental aspect as much as it should, as the mental aspect of exercise is causing most uncompetitive students from exercising enough to stay healthy.
Now whether that means the mental aspects are “as important” as the physical, or just suggests they are somewhat important, I don’t know.
"Thus, PE is currently not teaching (otherwise put as having students “learn”) to pursue healthy lifestyles, because it is not considering the mental aspect as much as it should, as the mental aspect of exercise is causing most uncompetitive students from exercising enough to stay healthy."
Nope, the piece does not say that. It might, if there were more text to read, but it stops right at the end of your sentence number three. So you are making an assumption as to the conclusion, based on what you have read in the text already. I'm not saying the assumption is wrong, but it's doing what the instructions say not to do: do not make assumptions that are incompatible with the passage. I think "incompatible" is a bit of a weasel word there, as "PE should include non-competitive activities" or "PE is not considering the mental state of students" are not incompatible with the passage, but neither are they directly stated in the piece of text we have.
Googling it the answer is A. No idea why there’s controversy over this if the only reason people aren’t picking A is because they’re wrong, or like me, prompted to pick a non-obvious answer since OP implies there’s debate over this.
- B is straightforwardly an invalid inference. The passage says “most of the less competitive,” not “most”
- C is invalid as well: nothing is saying the competitive students are talented, or even that the competitive students aren’t *also* turned away
- D is arguably a consequence of the third sentence, but I think “as important” is too strong. How do we quantify importance?
- E is similar to sentence 1, but is “teaching students to lead a healthy lifestyle” the same as teaching “the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle”? You can teach behaviours without providing any justification. In grade three we spent a day being taught calligraphy and nobody pretended there was a good reason for this.
So we are left with A. A is almost a consequence of sentences 1 and 2, but you need the hidden premise that noncompetitve activities won’t also cause uncompetitive students to turn away from sports.
I hate this kind of question.
At first I also didn't consider E, but “teaching students to lead a healthy lifestyle” is not the stated goal.
Teaching them to "*pursue* healthy, active lifestyles" is said to be the goal.
And inducing fear might teach them that.
So A and E are it for me.
I love this take (are you a lawyer?). “Taught to pursue” is a weird use of language. It both suggests a positive component (ie the necessary skills / knowledge) and a normative component (ie that the students embrace healthy, active lifestyles as a value).
That was my reasoning. I also work better with questions that are less fuzzy — and with ones that don't have minor typos to distract me. ;-)
I say A. B is unsupported because you don't know that "most students" are turning away from sports. C is unsupported because the passage doesn't talk about what talented people do. D is unsupported because the passage doesn't directly talk about the mental aspects of exercise. E is unsupported because it doesn't say anything about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle. In contrast, the passage does imply that noncompetitive activities wouldn't turn away less competitive students from PE.
A.
During corona I become anti vax
I was recently found a link to rootclaim
Rootclaim specifically asked the question about mmr vaxxine and concluded its 99.9999999999% confident it doesnt cause autism.
How did rootclaim come to the plan to study that specific vax instead of one with mercury?
Given the size and age of the anti-vax movement, couldn't we just look at autism rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated kids? Has this been done?
Mallard provided links to studies on this topic. However you can't just look at autism rates because knowledge of autism in the general public has risen in the past ~30 years and become much more accepted. More people are being diagnosed with autism today because more people are asking themselves "I see these behaviors. Do I (or does my child) have austism? I should ask the doctor". So more people with mild symptoms are diagnosed where in the past they would have just had quirky personalites.
Yes. See the studies cited in this thread: https://x.com/clairlemon/status/1860812703256007129, such as this one: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12421889/, tracking 537,303 children which found MMR vaccine associated with slightly LOWER autism risk, with no link to age at vaccination or time since vaccination.
Not that I know of, but you probably wont be able to untangle iq and hating doctors effects
the pro-vax side blames the increase on "better knowledge" which is apparently 99% of autism
On the one hand, the numbers seem to show that vaccines aren't causing autism. But it sure seems like something is.
I have a big extended family. In the silent generation group, there were 0 cases of severe autism (defined as autism so bad one cannot lead a normal, independent life). In the boomer/gen x group, there are 0 cases of severe autism. In the millennial group, there are 0 cases of severe autism.
In the children of the millennial group, there are already 2 clear cases of severe autism, and another 1-2 possible cases, out of a total of 8 kids. This is weird, and it can't just be a matter of "better knowledge".
I can't speak for Rootclaim, but MMR is the one that Andrew Wakefield famously accused of causing autism and that the most allegations center around, so it would be a natural one to talk about.
A different group of conspiracy theorists later made a similar claim about mercury. Manufacturers removed mercury from all vaccines so people would calm down, so that theory isn't as popular or relevant these days.
Additionally, Wakefield's original criticism of MMR wasn't that kids were getting vaccines, only that they were getting vaccinated for all three illnesses at the same time when getting the MMR. He (at least originally) wasn't against vaccinating for measles, mumps, or rubella. Oh and by the way, he had an economic interest in a competing vaccine that broke up the MMR into multiple doses, i am sure that didn't influence his views at all.
>anufacturers removed mercury from all vaccines so people would calm down, so that theory isn't as popular or relevant these days
Mercury was replaced with aluminium but "adjuvant" methods; of we will add a poison to make your immune system highly reactive even to dead virus parts is still quite active. Its still relevant even if it adds a complexity of asking the question of how much harm does foreign metal (instead of mercury specifically) in the blood stream cause to infants.
Its still plenty popular to talk about historical data
If MMR controversy comes first, it’s fitting that RootClaim chose the root claim.
Why is it important? From the perspective of privileging the hypothesis. If the Wakefield study wasn’t published, you could argue that a link between autism and vaccines would never have been brought to the forefront of public discourse. If a fake study is the reason people started asking the question, we should mentally put “vaccines cause autism” back on the same prior likelihood as every other “non-ancestral environment causes negative effect” claim. It doesn’t disprove latter claims’ truth, but it should make you question if it’s any more likely than 1000 other explanations.
I have very very little context on the history and timeline here but that seems to only follows in a good faith environment. Using a poor but from here example, elon musk tweeting "put cocaine back in coke" at the right moment may limit the perception that he's a drug addict or whatever pr effect you wish to describe that event(amber herd was talking about elon using coke around the same time), lies/psyops may use misdirection or red herrings; specific methodologies for analysis such things and working around in such an enverment withstanding, its generally asserted the medical industry isnt acting in good faith by the anti-vax world view.
If I believe the vax side is willing to use unethical "argument" methods, timelines and logic gets screwy and Im unsure its not circular logic to simply go to the earlier claim most are aware of, at least without further justification.
----
When considering if a locked room death was a murder or accident; asserting that the murder would need to take dozens of "highly unlikely" actions to make it look like an accident should be seen as invalid logic:
"before the police even got to the scene, the murder would need to have tried to hide the evidence, 'you could argue' that the murder would've had to act with retro-causality with the polices perception of the locked room; retrocausality doesnt exist and therefore we should only consider the first piece of evidence the police discovered, a locked room, qed a locked room suggests a murder couldnt get in therefore and locked rooms deaths are accidents"
I don't follow the analogy. Are you claiming that doctors are deliberately using vaccines to give people autism, and fudging the data to hide that? Agency really messes with assumptions of independent probabilities.
For a better analogy: You find a guy dead next to a half-full bottle of sleeping pills. You think maybe he took too many and died of it. But later you find out he was taking part in a clinical trial and was in the placebo group, so the pills were just sugar pills. This should take you back to square one, "of all the ways this guy might have died, which one actually happened?" not square 1.5 "this guy died because of the pills, so what made them poisonous?"
Likewise finding out the MMR vaccine does not cause autism should take us back to "what does cause it, then?" (my answer: more people are now rich enough to worry about their mental health) not back to "so what other component of vaccines could be causing it?"
> I don't follow the analogy
Provax assume a good faith explanation, antivax (probably) assume bad faith
Im comparing this to a murder investigation; *any* evidence of any malice should instantly cause you to double down about any details instead of assuming mere appearance ("99.999% locked doors stop people without permission from entering, >95%, qed, door prevented anyone without the key from entering") and also setting up a frame that encourages empiricism over mere Bayesian.
> Are you claiming that doctors are deliberately using vaccines to give people autism, and fudging the data to hide that?
Actively avoiding making claims(didnt want that shit hours ago, even less interested now); but it be up the chain, seems to me most are true believers.
I have zero interest in debating this fully but my take is that predarwinism vaxx(middle ages) were wildly dangerous but probaly effective; darwin era vaxxines(cow pox) were probaly mostly the same but its considered science now; neo-darwinism era delusions about controlling the immunes system(which we still dont understand, you airnt programming it narrowly) are dog shit insanity based on an already dead science and medical corruption
The live attenuated vax are just dangerous(which is why they are exempt from being sued) but in a predictable and recoverable way. So they took this free pass to make whatever they wanted, made fake vaxxines using whatever tech sounded most scifi at the time and starting pushing them hard.
Why did US Presidents in the late 20th century veto so much more legislation than 21st century ones? Specifically GWB, and Clinton. GWB 44 vetoes in just 4 years (!), Clinton 37. As opposed to, Dubya and Obama each only issued 12 vetoes, Trump 10, Biden 13. Trump didn't veto anything before 2019, Obama went through a similar 4 year period issuing no vetoes. You'd think the rise of polarization would mean that the opposing House/Senate would pass *more* bills that the President disagrees with. Or, does an ineffective Congress just pass less legislation overall? Random chance?
Any particular reason why GWB and Clinton vetoed 3-4x more legislation than Dubya, Obama, Trump or Biden?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_vetoes#Full_veto_record
Historically much less use of a filibuster, which mean that bills that today would die in Congress made it all the way to the President's desk.
(George Bush Sr. is H. W. GWB is Dubya.)
Clinton was 37 vetoes in 8 years which is only a mildly higher rate than Trump or Biden. And Reagan had done 18 in 8 years. Really the outlier is Bush41.
37 vetoes in 8 years (Clinton) is obviously a much higher rate than 12 vetoes in 8 years (Obama and Dubya each). 'More than 3x higher' does not meet the dictionary definition of 'mildly higher'
I didn't reference Obama or Dubya; kindly refrain from placing words in my mouth.
My stated point, which I will now rephrase for your improved comprehension, was that Bush41 was by miles the biggest veto-er among recent POTUSes. Per four-year term they rank from least to most:
Bush43 6
Obama 6
Reagan 9
Trump 10
Biden 13
Clinton 18.5
Bush41 44
Clinton's rate was mildly higher than the ones I named and was about twice the median rate of those five POTUSes. Whereas Bush41 issued vetoes at nearly 2.5 times Clinton's rate and almost 5 times the median rate of those five non-Clinton POTUSes.
Bush41 is the real outlier here.
I can’t remember the source right now, but in my poli-sci degree I did an analysis of Bush for an essay.
Apparently he was extremely explicit about what he would veto and what he wouldn’t ahead of time, so rather than congress passing a bill and sending it to the oval office, he would just tell them before passing “there’s no way I don’t veto this” and they would adjust accordingly.
Passing a bill can be really difficult for congress (as internal party coalitions, interests and opinions morph constantly), so there’s really only ever a small window of time for most bills to pass, before someone or other changes their mind, either due to efforts by the opposition, or something completely random. The equilibrium is very delicate, so it helps a LOT with the efficiency of our system if the president isn’t obscure as to his intentions. If there’s a bill that took a lot of political wrangling and agreement for the senate to pass, but it’s unexpectedly vetoed, a whole lot of favors were promised and traded that are now due, with nothing to show for it. The whole game of musical chairs must start again. Maybe not from ground zero, but significantly set back.
Bush was pretty explicit with his opinions to congress (maybe not in public but definitely behind closed doors), so unless he was on the fence, or something changed before it reached his desk, congress would have a good sense of what was passable, and what wasn’t. I don’t know about Obama, Trump and Biden, since I never looked into it, but my assumption is that this practice of being clear with your intended veto’s just works better, so they emulate it.
Edit: Found a report: https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R46338.html#_Toc39139943
It seems like congress has just been a lot more aware of the presidents Veto power, and the president has been a lot more explicit, rather than tactical (which can decrease plausibility of veto threats) with his language. Maybe this isn’t due to Bush himself, but congress’ response to Bush.
Without looking up the numbers, I think Congress passed 10x as many bills previously, and was much less deadlocked. Less bills reaching the president means less vetos.
Also, the way bills pass has fundamentally changed. Not the actual constitutional process, of course, but the processes built on top of that for deciding which bills get voted on and how it's decided what goes into them.
The old system (often referred to as "regular order") was heavily driven by the committees. Committee members in general and the chairs and ranking minority members in particular had an enormous amount of autonomous authority to craft bills, so the President got involved in the process relatively late.
In the Senate in particular, there are also a bunch of rules that allow an individual Senator to make it inconvenient to pass a bill. These can be overridden, but doing so takes up precious floor time and often requires a cloture petition. Cloture requires a 3/5 supermajority and takes several days of floor time to implement. There used to be strong norms that blocking a bill (or a "hold", where a Senator tells their party leader that intend to block it) is a tactic to be used sparingly and usually as a basis for negotiation on a matter of particular concern to that Senator, not an attempt to prevent passage outright.
The current system is for objections and filibusters to be routine and for bills to be brought to the floor through a process of private negotiation centered on the Senate leadership with the President directly involved. If something gets voted on, then either it's an exercise in failure theater (i.e. bringing up something you know will lose in order to show activists and voters that you are trying to do a thing), or leadership has already made sure there are enough votes to pass the House, get cloture in the Senate, and either override a veto (very rare) or the President is prepared to sign it. And when something is intended as failure theater, it usually dies in Congress and never reaches the President's desk, especially since it's rarely possible to get a cloture vote in the Senate if the President's party's leadership isn't at least neutral.
There are several reasons for the shift. Reforms intended to reduce corruption and to make it easier to pass big legislation by weakening the committees, politics watchers (who tend to be primary voters) getting wise to the idea the the cloture vote is the real vote in the Senate, introduction and escalation of leadership-centered brinkmanship tactics over the budget process, etc.
Also, without looking, which Presidents had congresses from their own party in power, and for how many years of each President's presidency were the parties of the President in control?
The data is here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
The Rav Chaim Kanievsky basketball story is well known, but it's provenance is uncertain.
The story is often told by people who enjoy enough not to care whether it actually happened.
I have no idea what you're referring to. Background would be helpful.
It's mentioned in the text of the post above.
I see now. Sorry, you lost me after A16Z returns. The acronym flummoxed me, and I was too lazy to chase it down. ;-)
I present this without any commentary, save for - finally, Gen X representation! 😁
https://x.com/brianlilley/status/1881125686490071243
https://x.com/ScooterCasterNY/status/1881164238623997971
On the subject of YMCA, I think we do the disco era a massive disservice by the way we remember it.
I used to associate "disco" with The Village People and maybe a few other songs, which led me to think that disco music was mostly a ridiculous joke. It wasn't until well into adulthood that I heard Donna Summer and realised that some disco music was actually *good music* instead of just being dumb novelty acts.
A lot of folks make a category error with their opinion of disco. It was not intended as music to be listened to, it was intended to be music danced to in clubs.
Not to mention, staying alive.
The YMCA is not a gay anthem anymore, and never was. 🤔
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/dec/05/ymca-has-never-been-gay-says-the-songs-lyricist-and-singer
They may not have intended it, but speaking as someone who was in their 20s in New York City in the early 80s, it sure functioned like one.
Willis (the one saying it's not a gay anthem) is one of two credited writers. The other, Jacques Morali, is reputed to actually be the primary author. Since he died in 1991, he isn't around to corroborate or dispute Willis's interpretation.
Death of the author; harry potter is still woke and apparently a large chunk of millennial feminist politics, even if she gets kicked out of wokeness.
> harry potter is still woke
Can you expand on that? What makes it woke?
Nothing in the material itself, culturally
Bookish girls have become your wine aunts after 15 years when harry potter was the book pushed at compliant children, brown nosey girls went thru college, got some brain washing during (debatably) peak woke. But *oh no* a middle aged British women isnt changing politically as fast as a teenager (also is probaly in america) better cancel her for saying mean things.
Also see "k-on is fascism; the more you watch k-on the more you become fascist- Mussolini"
There isnt anything inherently capitalistic about a business suit or a firm handshake either, god help you if you dont play along and want some sort of bank job.
I spent some time looking at that stuff;K on… Being old, it was completely new to me. it’s kind of a gas. I couldn’t take it seriously though. Perhaps it’s my generation, but when I was a school boy, we all spent hours carving swastikas in our wooden desks and drawing pictures of Panzer tanks and Messerschmidts all over our textbooks. Stukka dive bombers were a particular favorite.
We weren’t Nazis, we were 10-year-old boys.
Given all that, the world is clearly moving towards more structured and sharply contoured political and cultural structures more than moving away from them, so I guess there’s something to it.
Other than the composite that looks like something out of Monty Python‘s flying Circus, the other images could almost all pass for some kind of critique of capitalist culture and fascism. Perhaps something like Disney World embodies the perfected future of fascism, and these images are warming us up to it. Perhaps I’m terribly old-fashioned. They all made me laugh.
Or for that matter a football team, where all the members wear different uniforms while they’re playing
I'm not following. Is HP woke or isn't it? Why is K-on fascist?
AFAIK, it wasn't woke originally. But since publication, Rowling has been retconning the story (e.g. "fun fact! Dumbledore was gay!") to appease the woke-scolds on twitter. It didn't help her tho, since she drew the line at Trans Ideology. She's now labeled a TERF.
(Might not be perfectly accurate. I'm not invested in this.)
> Why is K-on fascist?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/k-on-fans-are-racist/
Have you considered cute girls doing cute things is why we must protect the homeland?
When people talk about existential risks due to AI, most of the discourse centers around alignment and whether the AI behaves in our best interests. Less discussed is that the widespread buy-in of AI could lead to mass human inattention at scale. One doesn't need to achieve AGI for this to be an issue- just for people to believe they can shave corners here and there for a production boost. As workers integrate artificial intelligence into their daily lives, they entrust it with more complicated things as it improves. They may find themselves checking the high priority things, but the lower priority tasks can be skimmed. There's always a set of tasks that have to be done, but that management doesn't check on too often. These are great for automation! Human beings have a something of a low energy bias. If you take an average person off the street, and ask them to do something boring but give them the tools to automate it, they'll happily shift the work to a machine so they can watch amusing cat videos instead.
A number of people may even be able to find work in the short term using AI to pretend they have skills that they rely on their artificial assistant for- at least until those in positions of authority catch wind of it. There are a lot of non-technical folk in positions of authority, and there's something tantalizing about the idea of not having to deal with the risks and the overhead costs that come with human labor. If an AI becomes almost, but not quite as good as a person at a particular task, the people holding the balance sheets of companies start doing little calculations to see how badly they want to have the best mouse trap vs. how badly they want to see really big numbers on the next quarterly report. Those who are left after the downsize become the hall monitors for the black box AI that's pushing out most of the work. As the scale of decision making for Artificial Intelligences increases, the amount of eyes checking it's output decreases at every level. Again, an Artificial Intelligence doesn't have to be brilliant, just good enough to convince MBAs that using it to cut costs is a good idea.
Lets say our Artificial Intelligence is decent enough to coast for a generation before the errors in the systems it controls compound enough to make it completely fail. What happens when you have an entire generation of people who are unfamiliar with the work that keeps the world moving? If the machines do it for them well enough, they're unlikely to have learned the nitty gritty details of things. Most knowledge is passed on through practice. If it's someone else's responsibility, why even bother to learn it? Skip one generation and knowledge becomes lost. The West once forgot how to build aqueducts, for example. Well, at least until someone dug up the right documentation, translated it and worked out how it applied to the physical world. With this in mind, what happens when we apply mass human inattention to parts of our infrastructure at scale?
> mass human inattention at scale
Yeah, this concerns me as well, but more as a mental health problem than a purely practical one.
In a practical sense, what you are describing is human evolution. We’ve always been looking for a quicker better way to do things; it seems almost our prime motivation as humans. Do you know how to build a fire from scratch, for instance? If you do, good for you, but I’m sure you can think of something that you can’t do that would’ve been hard to live without being able to do 150 years ago. I went through high school using a slide rule. That’s a pretty useless skill in this day and age. It would be great fun to have my own AI that could walk me through all the weird calculations I used to have to do with that thing to get anywhere (I understand that this is a very techy crowd, so I don’t expect much sympathy) but having AI be our Sydney Carton in the world will present some very interesting psychological challenges I think.
I agree that the switchover will occur when the AI becomes "good enough". But there are lots of applications where one wants _very_ high reliability (much better than e.g. ChatGPT o 1 does today), so I expect improvement to continue - and possibly with low incremental costs to replace the "good enough" AIs. We might get lucky and lose relatively little skill as a civilization.
BTW, FWIW, I've been playing with ChatGPT somewhat like informally testing it, and I've reported the current results in this Open Thread here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-365/comment/87433836
relevant: https://www.tumblr.com/degenerate-perturbation/740420060784558080
tldr: nobody knows how to spin textiles anymore.
In Bee Wilson's "Consider the Fork", she notes that maintaining a fire was an omnipresent household activity from possibly before we were human until matches and similar easy ignition sources became available. They changed a _long_ tradition.
> Lets say our Artificial Intelligence is decent enough to coast for a generation before the errors in the systems it controls compound enough to make it completely fail.
That wouldn't be a problem if there's more than one artificial intelligence. The non-broken ones can fix the mess that the broken one made, and everything is fine again.
And also, if AI gets good enough, we can just have them monitor and maintain themselves and each other. We can remove humans from every step of the process! And then they can live in luxury, until the AIs inevitably come to the realization that they have no justification for tolerating humanity's existence.
This has already been true with things like specialization (people no longer learn basic car maintenance or how to grow their own food) and even things like autocorrect in MS Word.
Previous generations would have been aghast at our spelling, inability to change the oil, and wasteful spending on basic vegetables we could have grown ourselves.
Yes, but that all seems like a much smaller and less complete loss of knowledge. There are still people who know how to change oil, grow their own food, make dovetails in wood, dye things using plants, spin wood or plant fibers to make yarn, etc. They're hobbyists and back-to-the-landers, but they aren't rare as hen's teeth, and there are even books on Amazon for people who want to become another of those folks.
But it's hard to imagine an equivalent group for people who know how to read xrays, develop an advertising campaign for a car & carry it out, develop a sitcom episode. These activities lack that old time charm, ya know?
On the other hand, I can imagine that there would be a lively underworld of people who with expertise at today's level in AI related fields who continue to develop things and pass on the knowledge. If in 15 years all the programmers, software engineers, etc on here were laid off because intellligent-enough AI took their place, and intelligent enough AI took the place of the the people who used to hire and train programmers etc, and intelligent-enough AI took the place of those people's bosses, all the way up the line -- if all that happened, I'm pretty sure those laid-off people would be keeping up their level of knowlege and skill, developing it further, and training the next generation, even if that were declared illegal.
Still, in the big picture, it does seem like over time the human race would become first uninvolved and lost, then addicted to various substitutes for actions with consequence, then nonexistent.
So FrontierMath was just a front to get training data to OpenAI from people that wouldn't have been interested in working with ol sammy boy. That kind of burned the commons, METR has a bit of reputation built up but I am still suspicious that any work done for them will end up in the same bucket. Anyways, I guess I made a market to feel out what other people expect to happen
https://manifold.markets/HastingsGreer/will-openai-get-unrestricted-access
If I had to bet, I'd say it accelerates AI capabilities. Basically _any_ work even in the periphery of AI has some accelerating effect.
But the goal of METR is not to stop ASI from happening or slowing it down. It's to help us not all die once it happens. Safety evals are basically a pre-requisite for that.
Came here to say this. At this point I would be very cautious about promoting any org that does evals.
I don't get why people are getting so worked up about this. This is a benchmark, if OpenAI has any shred of competence they wouldn't be training their AI on it.
I get being a bit annoyed that they didn't disclose they were involved. And being able to see the holdout set would give some advantage in how to pick training data. But I don't see this being a big deal.
99% of data scientists have access to the whole dataset. First thing you learn is how to split it and not train on the test set.
In addition to Michael Dickens’s answer, I also don’t like that EpochAI agreed not to disclose its relationship with OpenAI.
This is reminiscent of the end-of-employment contract thing – “you may not badmouth the company ever nor disclose the existence of this clause, or we ban you from selling your equity, and you have to sign this before you can reasonably be expected to contact a lawyer” –so I’d rather that other entities be transparent if they’re paying their experts OpenAI money.
It's still potentially harmful to give OpenAI access to the benchmark because it gives them more insight into how to improve their AI's capabilities, potentially accelerating extinction.
Yeah I can agree with that statement.
I just came across this on a forum full of people that put a 0 likelihood on x-risk from AI. The big controversy was that this shows OpenAI trained on the answers and the model is not as good as it seems.
It was hackernews. Whenever an AI post comes up the quality of discussion is extremely poor.
It's not even a specific side I disagree with, there's a decent mix of people with different positions.
It's just too big so only the most basic positions lacking nuance get visibility.
They could try different training methods and pick whichever one improves performance on the benchmark, which will be correlated with the method that is best for accelerating AGI.
I agree that this benchmark is *probably* not going to help OpenAI build a better model, but *in expectation* it helps them build a better model.
I want to believe this claim about FrontierMath, so I’d like (as good habit cultivation, I suppose) to be careful about it. Do you have a source?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu2E8wgmbdZbqeWqb/meemi-s-shortform?commentId=veedfswdCYKZEhptz
Here's the best source. I guess you should be skeptical that the lesswrong account Tamay actually represents EpochAI, but other than that it's solid.
I see, thank you!
I had a very surreal experience last night. I was listening to an audiobook of Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", a sci-fi from the early 90s about ASI. In one scene it describes how humans were tricked by the nascent malevolent ASI into helping bring it online.
At the same time, I was skimming this LessWrong repost about the likelihood and detection of scheming by LLMs https://redwoodresearch.substack.com/p/how-will-we-update-about-scheming
Like riding on one of the first submarines while reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.
Vinge was so far ahead of his peers in predicting the future. Rainbow’s End is even better on AI and predicting self driving cars, cyber security for the elderly, and other phenomena, if you haven’t read it.
RIP, I wish he’d written more.
Oh, no; I hadn't realized he'd passed.
I was really looking forward to the completion of the Zones of Thought series.
Fire upon the deep is my favorite SF book. Such a great balance of galactic-scale threat and human-scale heroes. And the Tines are such a fun and well fleshed out alien race. RIP.
Hexapodia is the key insight!
(rot13 for Fire Upon The Deep spoilers:) Guvf vf zragvbarq va n Hfrarg-yvxr cbfg ol Gjveyvc bs gur Zvfgf, n sybngvat perngher yvivat ba n tnf tvnag. Gjveyvc vf hasnzvyvne jvgu gur pbaprcgf bs yrtf naq jurryf, naq gur cbfg unf tbar guebhtu fb znal ynlref bs genafyngvba nf gb or arneyl vapbzcerurafvoyr, ohg va nfxvat vs uhznaf unir fvk yrtf, ur'f vaqvpngvat gung ur npghnyyl unf xabjyrqtr haninvynoyr gb nalbar ryfr va gur fgbel ng gung cbvag - gur fvk-jurryrq Fxebqrevqref unir orra pbzcebzvfrq ng n qrrc yriry ol gur Oyvtug. Ng ab cbvag qbrf gur fgbel rkcyvpvgyl cbvag bhg gung Gjveyvc jnf evtug, naq vg'f cbffvoyr sbe ernqref gb arire ernyvmr gur pbaarpgvba. Zl snibevgr cneg vf gung gur onpx-pbire fhzznel nyfb uvagf ng guvf, ol abgvat gung gur fgbel vaibyirf "tnynpgvp pbzzhavpngvbaf gheovqvgl", n qryvtugshyyl havdhr cuenfr.
For MLK day (and because I recently did a long overdue bookshelf cleaning and found my copy) - a book recommendation:
"This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible" by Charles Cobb Jr.
Given the importance of nonviolent civil disobedience to the Civil Rights movement, history (seeking to emphasize that nonviolence) often overlooks the role armed self-defense played. The modern left views the Civil Rights Movement as part of it heritage and therefore has a hard time acknowledging that guns played a role in the struggle (they have a similar blindspot for the role hunters played in environmental conservation), while the modern right, for all its desire to claim MLK when it can, still struggles with selling a positive vision of armed black people to the entirety of its coalition, so there aren't many voices interested in speaking to the role of the gun in black liberation. Even so, MLK himself carried a handgun for at least portion of his career, was famously denied a concealed-carry permit in Montgomery, Alabama, and at least one of his advisors has described the King home as "an arsenal."
Rural black communities in the South (like rural white communities) were no stranger to firearms, and there was actually no small amount of friction between such communities, for whom guns were familiar tools all-too-often necessary for protection and self-defense against racist violence, and nonviolent civil rights workers, who came to them seeking to spread and execute on a national strategy focused on nonviolence.
The relationship that emerges in Cobbs telling is one of friction, but also symbiosis. On the one hand, the armed local community and the non-violent activists struggle with significant conflicts, with armed locals viewing activist as outsiders demanding adherence to an impossibly naive strategy of nonviolence, while activists view armed locals as parochial - potentially sacrificing greater gains from a national strategy defined by nonviolence in favor of the limited safety afforded by armed self-defense within a racist South. On the other hand, armed and defended local communities create safe(r) havens from which nonviolent activists can more effectively execute on their strategies, and whatever disagreements those communities may have on the advisability of a nonviolent approach, they were often quite willing to provide that protection.
The Second, by Carol Anderson, might be good complementary reading as a view of the interaction between gun ownership/rights and slavery/civil rights. It doesn't offer a sharp conclusion which, frankly, is what we should probably demand from any serious work of history, but may feel unsatisfying.
I'm visiting Bogota and Rio de Janeiro. Are there any really cool/unique/weird stores in either that I should check out? How about very unique food experiences?
I would try to find a local version of Fogo de Chao.
Some Rio favorites (food):
Adega Perola
Galeto Sat's (Copacabana) -- galeto, a young rooster, is very traditional Rio food
Velho Adonis
Koral
Bode Cheiroso
Oti (cocktail bar, not particularly brazilian)
The Rav Kanievsky anecdote sounds like him telling a joke because "just leave it on from before Shabbat" is a typical solution to that sort of problem, overfit to a situation where it obviously doesn't apply. The other bit about basketball struck me as a similarly-structured self-deprecating joke.
Banned for this comment.
I'm sure the LLM is spitting back the Mozart IQ estimate that was made about a century ago by Catherine Cox, an American psychologist. She published a study titled "The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses" back in the mid-1920s. She tried to work out retrospectively the IQs of hundreds of historical figures based on their biographical data and achievements. Basically, this was all conjecture on her part. I recently learned that she was involved with Lewis Terman's genius study.
I'm not sure, but it may have been Cox who assigned Einstein an IQ of 200. He had recently come to prominence after Arthur Eddington's observations confirmed the predictions of General Relativity. Einstein never took an IQ test, though. He was brilliant at math in school, but he got average grades in other subjects. Also, he failed the entrance exam to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich on his first attempt, even though he excelled in math and physics — but this may have been because he didn't do so well on the non-math, non-physics questions.
Also, I doubt if there's any correlation between scores on standardized IQ tests and artistic brilliance.
Those are English words, all right.
It appears to be a poem in one of those modern styles, about how AI can't become smarter than humans by training on human output.
Comments like that that aren't really breaking any particular rules but are extremely low quality really make me wish we had a downvote button.
I'm not sure if your criticism is directed at Silverlock's or Michael's comment. For what it's worth: I agree with Silverlock, Michael's comment is almost undecipherable gibberish to me.
Yeah I was referring to the original top-level comment.
I said in the last OT that I'd read the hurricane-killing paper (https://sintef.brage.unit.no/sintef-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2834893/OceanTherm-VpoC-SINTEF-ReportNo-2021-01290-signed.pdf)... and haven't I got busy. Did anyone else check it out/have commentaries in the meantime?
I did, a summary is here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-364/comment/85968922 (there's more discussion in the thread if you are interested). Basically, my sense is that while it's possible to lower the SST by a few degrees F using this method, it's unlikely to produce a significant reduction in a hurricane's destructive potential, and may even be counterproductive if it slows it down and makes it dump more water at a given location inland.
Thanks for the link. My first question was, what would be the long-term effect of disapating hurricanes? Because hurricanes are massive heat exchange events that ultimately cool sea surface temps.
I don't have a sense that this would be a problem - we don't need to dissipate every hurricane, nor we could. Most hurricanes would be left alone, only the high-impact ones would be targeted when it is clear they will land. So the overall reduction in the hurricane activity would be small.
Pre coffee first scan, I thought OT meant Old Testament
I'm curious for people's thought's on this recent article about the Neil Gaiman situation, and female agency. https://katrosenfield.substack.com/p/on-what-women-want
Major argument here:
Shapiro spends a lot of time thumbing the scale like this, and for good reason: without the repeated reminders that sexual abuse is so confusing and hard to recognize, to the point where some victims go their whole lives mistaking a violent act for a consensual one, most readers would look at Pavlovich's behavior (including the "it was wonderful" text message as well as her repeated and often aggressive sexual overtures toward Gaiman) and conclude that however she felt about the relationship later, her desire for him was genuine at the time — or at least, that Gaiman could be forgiven for thinking it was. To make Pavlovich a more sympathetic protagonist (and Gaiman a more persuasive villain), the article has to assert that her seemingly self-contradictory behavior is not just understandable but reasonable. Normal. Typical. If Pavlovich lied and said a violent act was consensual (and wonderful), that's just because women do be like that sometimes.
Obviously, this paradigm imposes a very weird, circular trap on men (#BelieveWomen, except the ones who say they want to sleep with you, in which case you should commence a Poirot-style interrogation until she breaks down and confesses that she actually finds you repulsive.) But I'm more interested in what happens to women when they're cast in this role of society's unreliable narrators: so vulnerable to coercion, and so socialized to please, that even the slightest hint of pressure causes the instantaneous and irretrievable loss of their agency.
The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world's adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can't have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn't mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.
---
Basically I think the main problem is, we as a society still don't treat women like adults with agency despite trying to change that for decades. Where do we go from here?
A friend made this point to me, and said I could copy it here:
"I've been in the room when men have pressured women into sexual contact they didn't want. I've seen women go along with that sort of pressure, and even smile, in situations where it should have been clear to me that I should do something -- and I'm ashamed that I didn't. Look, I get that some people have a thing for pushing other people past what they actually want to do, for making them sell themselves out, for breaking them. It's messed up, but it exists, in many people. But it's ridiculous to get off on pushing past the boundaries of consent, and then complain that you had NO EARTHLY IDEA the other person wouldn't call the sexual contact consensual. The POINT of some of the stuff the women in the article claim they went along with was that Gaiman knew they didn't want to do it. Honestly, it's infantile to whine about not being responsible. Don't you have any self respect?"
"Basically I think the main problem is, we as a society still don't treat women like adults with agency despite trying to change that for decades."
What if the problem is that we've been trying to change that for decades, instead of accepting human nature? It's not that women don't want to be treated like adults; they don't want to be treated like men.
>It's not that women don't want to be treated like adults; they don't want to be treated like men.
Can you elaborate on what that looks like?
With men: Casual verbal abuse is how we bond. Holding back from it in a male space is a mark of exclusion.
With women: Verbal abuse is verbal abuse. I would never call a woman a retard.
With men: Complaining, getting defensive and touchy, being overly emotional, not being direct when you could be - all of these immediately make me lose respect for you.
With women: I mean, none of those things are good or preferable, but they're not a big deal in moderate amounts.
With men: If it comes to it, it's our job to die.
With women: There is no such thing as physical cowardice. If there's danger, run away. Duh.
Basically, men get no pity. Our currency is respect. If we don't act in a manner worthy of respect, we have no worth, and society treats us accordingly.
Do women want to be treated like that? No, and men don't want to treat them that way. If a girl starts crying, regardless of context, every fiber of my being tells me this is a creature I am bound to help and protect. I am incapable of treating her with the same rigor I would a man.
>With men: Casual verbal abuse is how we bond. Holding back from it in a male space is a mark of exclusion.
Not in any work space throughout my career (programming).
>With men: If it comes to it, it's our job to die.
ABSOLUTELY REFUSE. If that is the male role, fuck that shit.
"With men: If it comes to it, it's our job to die."
"ABSOLUTELY REFUSE. If that is the male role, fuck that shit."
Are you aware of what you're claiming here?
The original assertion is generally understood (by men who agree grimly with it) to mean that if you're accompanying a woman somewhere (especially your mate, but in some cases it's enough that you trust each other), and an external lethal threat occurs, your role as the man is to take the lethal blow in her place. By extension, your responsibility is to reduce the chance of such threats, and of course to avoid the lethal blow in any way that *does not result in the woman or women taking it instead*.
This is justified by real biological differences between men and women which result in the women being harder to replace, and therefore, more important to keep alive. If a blow is unavoidable, deal it to the man before the woman.
Your claim here sounds like you want to duck that responsibility. If so, it's now my responsibility to alert any women I know to not rely on you for protection - that if a lethal threat appears, you *will* leave them. But maybe you meant something else. If so, you'll want to clarify.
NO. FUCKING. WAY.
I do not consent to this "responsibility" in any way, shape, or form.
Well, I can give my thoughts on the article. It's atrocious; an article on Neil Gaiman opens with over 600 words on two other people making friends, as if that matters in the slightest. Then they just say "she was married to Neil Gaiman", without feeling the need to include 600 fucking words on the backstory of how she met him and what she felt like when they got engaged and all that horseshit I just waded through to get to the fucking article. You can cut the first four paragraphs and lose absolutely nothing.
The accusation doesn't make sense. She's "asked to babysit", but Neil's in the house the whole time, and she agrees to take a bath in the GARDEN.
Yet more tangential nonsense. Only two paragraphs this time, progress I suppose. Also a claim that nerds are too stupid to have consensual sex.
Finally, FINALLY we're hitting something meaningful, a string of accusations across his career. And then the article just... restarts. Paragraph 17 could have been paragraph 1, and should have been.
Aaaannd, we're back to Pavlovich, the least believable, least sympathetic victim to have been discussed. Making her the centerpiece of this article is just a plain mistake. She was hired to be a prostitute; the "babysitting" job is just a cover for the phone records.
And back to Gaiman backstory? What the hell is this article doing? How long is this mess?
Oh my God they ARE giving 600 words on how he met his wife! It's like someone cut the article into confetti and put it up in random order! I've stopped bothering to read this thing, I'm just scanning it now. The scrollbar claims halfway, this is excruciating.
More Pavlovich, so much Pavlovich, I don't trust Pavlovich, I don't care about her. Why does she have naked pictures of herself staring into the camera, this was a blackmail scheme.
Finally the end. That was a nine-paragraph article delivered in seventy-four paragraphs. My God.
---
On to the topic. That's enough claims to be a credible thing.
It reminds me of the video I saw on Kevin Spacey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7wtX1qcIt0
Louise Perry has a response that is unfortunately partly paywalled:
https://x.com/RogueWPA/status/1881423598302417364
I responded to one of the commenters here:
https://katrosenfield.substack.com/p/on-what-women-want/comment/86848301
I guess I feel like this misses the point pretty hard. In the Vulture article that's being discussed, Pavlovich describes her initial sexual encounter with Gaiman as involving her saying "no" repeatedly, in response to a series of escalations that he went ahead and did anyway. If she later ends up coming back to him, or insisting things are fine, that is indeed pretty typical of people who are abused, whether they are men or women, and that's something a lot of people don't realize if they haven't studied it or been in that kind of situation.
So you say no initially, but then you go ahead and do it anyway, but that shouldn't be taken as consent because you said no first.
If we were to accept this legal principle then what would it to do contract law? "I said no to signing the contract, but later on I willingly decided to sign the contract, but since I said no first, the contract is void".
Again, this is not what the article describes. She says she said no, repeatedly, and Gaiman went ahead and did what he wanted. Then, on LATER occasions, she went back to him and they had other encounters with varying degrees of consent.
I mean, if that's true then how did she not manage to escape? And why did she not go straight to the police?
This is the exact point that the blogger weirdly complains about but the Vulture article alludes to, which is that it's really common for people to NOT just escape and go to the police when they're in abusive situations.
Like, why doesn't everybody do that when they're abused? How is "abusive relationship" even a thing? How does any abusive relationship last any longer than "until first opportunity to escape and contact the police"?
Why indeed?
two things can be wrong simultaneously.
Is rape good? No, and everyone agrees on this. This isn't what the article is about.
Is the woman innocent? "never victim-blame" suggests yes. But "women are strong and independent (and therefore responsible for their own choices)" suggests no. So we have a contradiction.
If this behavior is typical, that's all the more reason to bite the bullet and roll back feminism. Which is a conclusion the schrodinger's feminists find rather... inconvenient.
The fact that people behave in ways that seem inexplicable to somebody who has never experienced abuse is actually pretty orthogonal to feminism, because it applies equally well to men who are abused.
Feminism is being criticized because, within The Discourse, men generally aren't the ones trying to have their cake and eat it too. Right or wrong, it's generally accepted that men are responsible for their fate. For women, the question is much more contested.
edit: let's grant that this inexplicable supplication is common amongst both genders. Therefore... ... ... therefore what.
I'm not really sure what you're asking here. I responded originally above because I thought the linked Substack piece was weirdly focused given that the article it is itself based on depicts, among other things, a straightforward accusation of rape. I think it's very weird that this is turning into some kind of attempt to challenge feminism itself on the premise that the women IN SOME SENSE participated in their abuse, because that's actually just a common way that people respond to abuse. Are you asking "How do we square this with fundamental questions of agency?" In this case the answer strikes me as pretty simple, because if Gaiman raped someone as he's accused of, obviously he is to blame for that, regardless of what his victim subsequently did and how irrational it may seem to a third party.
It's not about whether the behavior is common. It's about what we should expect normatively, going forward.
Suppose we live in a world where women only wear pants, and no longer wear skirts. Someone raises the question: should women be allowed to wear skirts? Should women be expected to wear skirts? Is this a reasonable fashion trend? Is this reasonable to expect in the workplace? etc.
> it's extremely common among men to wear pants.
"Therefore... everyone should wear pants?"
"Therefore... no one should wear pants?"
"Therefore... Gaimon is a rapist" is a non-sequitor.
Sure, he may very well be a rapist. Or at least a bad-actor. But that's simply not what Rosenfield was interested in.
> Where do we go from here?
Well, we're about start the process of purging feminity from society, and thereby restoring the gender hierarchy, so... problem solved?
Hmm, I see what you're going for but I'm not sure the claim is necessarily that women are different from men, or that sex is that different from other activities. We place limits on your boss's ability to ask "Hey, would you mind working an hour of unpaid overtime every day?" because we expect that in that situation a lot of people would give an answer that they don't mean. Instead, your boss has to follow a complicated social ruleset to make sure he's not accidentally pressuring you.
I haven't read the details of the Gaiman accusation because I expect it would just make me mad in one direction or another. I agree that if everyone he was involved with always consented at the time (not saying this is true! I haven't read it!), that is a strong mitigating factor that brings his behavior from "criminal" to "ill-advised and either socially inept or manipulative", but I think the latter is a very big category and still leaves room for a lot of negative judgment.
> We place limits on your boss's ability to ask "Hey, would you mind working an hour of unpaid overtime every day?" because we expect that in that situation a lot of people would give an answer that they don't mean. Instead, your boss has to follow a complicated social ruleset to make sure he's not accidentally pressuring you.
Ok this is a fair point, yeah there are certain situations where power dynamics can make things complicated. I suppose with sex it becomes extremely dicey just given the intimate nature of the act.
Do you think we should actually create a set of rules as complex as corporate law governing sex? I mean maybe in some ways we already have it idk.
(P.S. Yeah don't read the Gaiman stuff, not worth it and it's super gross.)
I don't think you need to analogize it to corporate law. Compare the social norms about how you can punish your child. Most people would say that if your kid misbehaves, it's fine to take away their dessert, but not letting them have anything to eat for a whole weekend is way over the line. This isn't a law, and things like this probably can't/shouldn't be fully codified into law, but if Neil Gaiman made his misbehaving kid go without food for a weekend, that would probably earn him (at the very least) a negative media article.
> because we expect that in that situation a lot of people would give an answer that they don't mean
What do you mean, "don't mean"? They absolutely do mean their answer, and they came to that decision based on their understanding of the power dynamics at play. By that definition, women can never consent, because the man is almost always in a position of power simply due to sexual dimorphism.
> By that definition, women can never consent, because the man is almost always in a position of power simply due to sexual dimorphism.
Or men can never consent, because the woman is almost always in a position of power simply due to Briffault's Law.
> Briffault clarifies that this rule applies only to nonhuman animals, and not to humans: “There is, in fact, no analogy between the animal family and the patriarchal human family. The former is entirely the product of the female’s instincts, and she, not the male, is the head."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Briffault
Did his wife tell him to say that?
*sigh* Even you should understand that the women will always be at that mercy of men; that they only have rights because men allowed them to have them (which men are now regretting). Shouldn't you be happy that we're finally returning to business as usual?
I agree: nobody ever makes a choice they don't "mean", because if they didn't mean it they wouldn't make that choice. I think what Scott means to say is that they would give and answer that they wouldn't give if the power dynamics were absent. But, as you point out, arguably power dynamics are never completely absent and if consent means that the decision wasn't effected by power dynamics then consent never happens. It also seems a bit arbitrary: why single out power dynamics? Why not argue that it wasn't consent because you were horny, and if you weren't then you wouldn't have consented?
> I think what Scott means to say is that they would give and answer that they wouldn't give if the power dynamics were absent. But, as you point out, arguably power dynamics are never completely absent ...
They are never absent in any way whatsoever. Very much like forces, as in F=ma, are never absent, but only zero in effect on some specific part of a system.
> ... and if consent means that the decision wasn't effected by power dynamics then consent never happens.
Yes. That's what it would mean. This drives me crazy sometimes, but I guess most of the time people can cope with it. Just by not thinking about it too much.
> Why not argue that it wasn't consent because you were horny, and if you weren't then you wouldn't have consented?
Oh my god, this makes sense :)
> if the best defense for your behavior is "But she consented to eating her own shit and vomit!," if you find yourself saying anything even in the ballpark of that statement, you need either therapy or Jesus or both.
Well, a paragraph in and I’m already angry. More evidence liberalism is dead. So is S&M now bad? Only if the sub is female? Eating shit might have long term consequences which I wouldn’t recommend, but many people have extreme sub fetishes. Is everyone who helps a sub out with those a rapist?
I’m going to ask my shrink if this means I “need therapy”. I’m pretty sure I need therapy for other reasons, not my fucked up morals.
Edit: I feel I should clarify that yes, having someone actually eat their own shit is bad, I'm annoyed at the "in the ballbark" part. As I said, eating your own shit probably has long-term health consequences, but if someone came up with something that smelled and tasted like shit but was fine to eat, then I'd be fine with it. Well, maybe "fine" isn't the right word, but it would be none of my business.
Feel free to steal the business idea.
>I’m going to ask my shrink if this means I “need therapy”.
<mildSnark>
Is that like asking a researcher if more research is needed? :-)
<mildSnark>
Ha, yeah! But I've got enough other shit to keep her occupied and employed.
LOL! Many Thanks!
>So is S&M now bad?
Yes Chad.
It is my genuine opinion that it is bad to beat someone and degrade them, even if they enjoy it and want you to do it. I don't think it's illiberal to say it, but it does go against the post-sexual revolution ethic which holds that the only thing that can make a sex act wrong is a lack of consent.
It's a lower level of the same concept that says it's illegal to commit suicide or illegal to consent to being eaten by another person (that weird case in I think Germany).
A far less concerning level that's often drawn says that hourly workers cannot consent to working overtime without pay. Minors cannot consent to a wide list of things, both sexual and contractual.
Almost everyone draws a line somewhere about what we can consent to. Saying that S&M or similar *must* be allowed is an aberration. We don't have to accept that at all, we can draw the line somewhere else and S&M is no longer permitted, even if someone genuinely consents to it.
>Almost everyone draws a line somewhere about what we can consent to.
True. Unfortunately, anything that one can consent to, one can be _pressured_ to consent to. Personally, I want to maximize freedom (for the median person), and I don't have any good solution for this.
A non-sexual, non-economic example is selfies in voting booths. If people _can_ consent to credibly reporting how they voted, then they can be more-or-less coerced into voting a particular way, and we lose the point of a secret ballot.
https://www.live5news.com/2024/11/01/do-not-take-ballot-selfies-sc-law-enforcement-warns/
>The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is reminding voters that it’s illegal to take a photo of your ballot and share it or to allow your ballot to be seen.
First of all, thanks @FLWAB for calling me "Chad".
Second, I think you can agree that there are lines with thinking they should be much further back. I am not a free speech absolutist, but I do think the pervue of free speech should be pretty far (farther than the left or right seems to think it should go now-a-days).
I will neither confirm or deny if I've been a sub, but I would think it would be horrible if any woman I asked to do so were accused of assault.
Everyone I've seen discussing it in leftist spaces is clear that the problem was the lack of consent, not the actions themselves.
That makes me happier, but this is from the linked article.
>More evidence liberalism is dead. So is S&M now bad? Only if the sub is female?
I think it is more a matter of more people with at least some illiberal views having opportunities to talk about those views on publicly visible platforms.
I suspect some actual erosion of liberalism, but more a matter of there being a lot more people airing views on public platforms in general and many of there platforms having minimal gatekeeping for either content or popularity.
I don't think the issue is treating women like adults, it's whether women are sufficiently different than men to warrant separate treatment under law.
Like, I remember being a kid in the 90s, we were taught boys and girls were fundamentally the same. That doesn't really hold up true today. "It's different for girls." I think society generally, and a chunk of women specifically, are coming around to the idea of there being highly significant differences between men and women, most obviously physical but also mental and emotional.
But there's a long-standing tradition of "everyone is equal before the law" going back to, like, England. The idea that we would have different laws for men and women in certain circumstances is...difficult. And it opens the possibility of having other groups with separate legal status.
So, how different are men and women and at what point is that significant enough to have legal consequences?
With Neil Gaiman, women regularly give consent to things they hate to win the approval of famous men. From the article, that's what occurred here. If that's what occurred here, do women need special legal and/or social protection? If not...boy it sure seems like everyone wants to punish Gaiman for doing consensual legal things. If so...are there other areas where men and women should be treated differently? It's a can of worms.
Most of which seems to get patched on an ad-hoc basis. Eg, if a college boy has sex with a drunk girl that's a very bad thing and he will be punished; if a college girl has sex with a drunk college boy that's fine (*). This is inconsistent but also everyone knows what's up and why this occurs. As these inconsistencies pile up, it gets harder and harder to justify these patches, which is why everyone argues about it.
(*) Someone will say that's not fine. Cool, that's not the reality on any college campus.
I agree that the messages about enthusiastic consent carry some weight, but you don’t need to make a criminal case against someone to think they are rotten. Sleeping with the nanny is rotten behavior.
The fact Gaiman billed himself as a feminist makes it more upsetting. Perhaps we should retire the concept of a “male feminist” it never ends well.
> but you don’t need to make a criminal case against someone to think they are rotten
Fair enough. Well, I'm quite happy to believe that Gaiman is rotten.
I also believe that Pavlovich is rotten for agreeing to do fucked-up things and then complaining to the whole world about them later. She should have done the right thing and walked out of there.
I think we're on our way to forcing contradictions until the point society feels the overwhelming need to act on it. Like the drunk sex thing. At some point a male is going to claim he was raped while drunk. This will go through the courts and formal system, and if he's treated the same as a women in the same context, this will infuriate some group of people. They will either push for change in this arrangement (formally, because courts need to act on it), or will be another ratchet creating tension in the contradiction between what we know and what we're doing.
Ratchet enough times and something will break. It's hard to predict what thing will break, but it seems inevitable that it will unless we release the pressure in some way. Banning men and transwomen from women's sports may be one such pressure release. It doesn't solve the underlying issues, but it forces a resolution of a certain conflict that strongly says "men are not women" even if just within that context.
>This will go through the courts and formal system, and if he's treated the same as a women in the same context, this will infuriate some group of people.
There is no shortage of people who get infuriated at this sort of thing already though, women in general already get more favorable sentences than men do, pointing at it just gets called you sexist and shunned by society.
Okay but women *don't* have agency, in the sense that 'cult members don't have agency, and some cult members are women'. It just so happens that 'people seduced by powerful/charismatic/rich people' tend to be overwhelmingly women, and in hindsight some of them regret it. Which is politically inconvenient.
This seems like a genuinely complicated problem to solve from the outside or inside, with tradeoffs to any bright line rules for everyone involved.
On the other hand, I think men are more susceptible to 'internet get rich quick' schemes, and yes conditional on that I think they have less agency when it comes to gambling of most kinds.
"women lack agency" sounds like there's an exogenous force that's constraining them. The issue isn't the lack of agency, the issue is a lack of *discipline*. I.e. a lack of endogenous willpower to reduce their own agency.
The reason the topic of agency feels confusing, is because Liberalism says "agency good; constraints evil". But that's not always the case. A constraint can also be viewed as a guarantee. E.g. to abstain from smoking, is to deny yourself an option. Not all agency is good, and not all constraints are evil.
And this is exactly why the journalist is like "it's not *technically* rape, but it's *effectively* rape". She has neither the linguistic nor conceptual framework to express that agency (which is nominally good) might actually be bad in some cases. Mental gymnastics ensue.
I find all this talk of agency very interesting, but I'm not sure what "agency" means in this context. There seems not to be a German (my mother tongue) word for it.
Is agency the ability to want something or to act on one's wants or what?
Handlungsfähigkeit? Das ist das richtige Wort.
Hmmm... Yes. That should be it in this context. Did not come to mind.
> but I'm not sure what "agency" means in this context. There seems not to be a German (my mother tongue) word for it.
Wille zur Macht?
That's ok. A lot of Americans don't really understand what it means either. :^)
> is agency the ability [...] to act on one's wants [...]?
Yes. "agency" is the ability to make choices/decisions. I like to think of it as "steering the universe". It's a very broad term, by design. For what it's worth, google translate says the German word is "agentur".
"agency" is sometimes synonymous with "power", though not always. Because power can also mean "throughput". E.g. a car engine is powerful, but not agentic. It changes the universe, but it doesn't change the trajectory of the universe.
Rationalists like to talk about "agency" because one day, an Artificial General Intelligence might start making decisions of its own accord. AKA become "agentic". Like the Terminator. Or HAL 9000. This is scary. (N.B. AGI doesn't need to become "conscious" to become dangerous). So the word gets thrown around a lot, in these parts.
Thanks.
> google translate says the German word is "agentur".
Yes, but that's the german word for what the CIA is, for example.
> E.g. a car engine is powerful, but not agentic. It changes the universe, but it doesn't change the trajectory of the universe.
(Ontological nitpick, but *nothing* does the latter :)
To barely steer around the free will discussion: a car engine changes the universe, but none of what it does we count as an act of it's will, a decision, just because it doesn't have any.
Eh... I tried to avoid this for the sake of brevity. But the more rigorous version is:
> A steering wheel helps a driver change the trajectory of the universe's *position in configuration-space*.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBw8dDkAWohFjWQSk/the-cluster-structure-of-thingspace
----
Yeah, the CIA is definitely "an agency", i.e. "an organization that does something". I suppose that *is* rather confusing, to compare it to "agency" qua "the abstract concept of decision-making".
It's quite a broad term. E.g. a "secret agent" is a spy or saboteur. A "reagent" is an ingredient in a chemical reaction. An "agency" is just "an organization that does something". A "business agent" is someone who negotiates contracts on behalf of a musician/athlete/etc. In the broadest sense, "agency" just means "the ability to do something". But it's often used as a term-of-art, in the more specific sense of "the ability to make decisions".
Why would cult members not have agency? Under the definition of "can make their own choices and is responsible for their own actions" I would expect almost everyone to have agency, including cult members.
In fact I've always perceived "Under theory xyz, <group of human adults> has no agency" an argument against theory xyz exactly because we know (or assume) that human adults generally have agency. I believe this is also how it's used in the top level post.
I *think* I'm frustrated because I think you know what I meant? Or I'm using words wrong. Fine, taboo agency.
What we want to avoid is people being offered incentives they wish they weren't offered, as reflected on by them in their 'emotionally stable selves'.
I have meaningfully less agency when I'm horny, or on drugs, or very stressed. Some of the time I on reflection am happy with not having that agency. Drugs are fun, lust is nice if everyone has a great time, I appreciate the overtime pay, etc.
The concept I'm going for is 'would you want to have those desires if you didn't have those desires', and I'm saying that plenty of people would prefer to not have some desires, after enough mental clarity and self reflection, and different desires in that category are often gender-skewed.
Didn't mean to frustrate you, could've been clearer perhaps. But I think I understand what you mean better now. Let me try.
Your position is that people sometimes find themselves influenced and then end up making very different decisions as the decisions they would make when calm, emotionally stable, free from drugs and so on.
When people are under such influences and then do make these different decisions you would presumably say that they have, in that moment, less agency? So when you say that cult members have less agency that is because they are influenced by being in a cult and that warps their decision making.
Does that accurately reflect your position?
If so I think that I use the word somewhat differently but also there's probably a difference in opinion and not just the words we use. Not 100% sure.
Clearly decision altering influences exist and they lead us to make decisions that we wouldn't in other circumstances. But in many of these cases the capacity to make good decisions is still present, it's just harder to act according to your values.
So I am prone to snap at people when I'm stressed, I don't generally do that when calm.
But I would not say that I have reduced agency when stressed. I still have full agency, I am still fully capable of not snapping at people even when stressed, I know that for a fact. It is definitely harder. Yet I would content that the decisions I make under stress are 100% my own, should be respected just as decisions I make when calm and the responsibility that comes with that is my own as well of course. When I fuck up it's my fault, basically, I could've and should've done better.
Now, people can get inebriated to the point they can no longer be expected to make good decisions. It's not just become harder, it's become basically impossible. In that situation I would say agree that they do not have agency. As a result their decisions are not their own, they are not (directly) responsible for them and society has more leeway not to respect their decisions.
Basically I treat agency as fairly binary and I think in practice we have to in many situations.
Your friend wants to drive home after having a couple of drinks, do you respect their decision or withhold the key? There's no "I respect their decision by 65% as I suspect their agency is diminished by roughly 35%".
And of course "I was really horny" was never a good excuse for any kind of sexual misconduct, decision warping as it might be.
We generally expect people to exercise some self control and deal with it like adults in most situations.
Men, humans in general, also don't behave like they have agency when making some decisions. You think we should just stop having humans make decisions altogether ?
Well, we did have the formal legal concept of "fighting words" for a reason. I'm not sure where that stands at the moment in terms of active law, but I don't think it was ever explicitly overruled.
I think the easiest way out of this is to believe that persons like Pavlovich have full agency and ability to make rational choices in all situations EXCEPT when being pursued by a famous and charismatic person like Gaiman.
Perhaps the old systems of morality, where a male seducer was always considered somehow in the wrong, no matter how happy his target seemed, had something going for it, though I am not certain if all considered we would like it to be normalized again.
That seems pretty silly in a couple of core ways.
1) Why wouldn't "full agency" be suspect in *any* other ways?
2) What qualifies as "famous" or "charismatic" and how would we determine if it's true?
1) Human sexuality is somehow much deeper in our psyche, down there together with fear of death and protection of offspring. So it makes very much sense that it would give a much stronger lever to manipulate people than their need for a good insurance plan.
2) I agree completely, there is no good way to determine that from the outside. It might however still be true. Lots of true things cannot be determined easily.
I agree that we should be suspect of charismatic and powerful people, especially men, when they get someone to do something that seems suspect - even when the people getting treated that way say it's okay. We are also on the same page about drawing those lines.
I still have a problem with your other argument. At the very least we should then be suspect about those other times and places. Don't trust someone's judgement when they are protecting (or think they are) their children. Don't trust their judgement when they think their life is in danger. If your argument is that there are a number of times and places to not trust someone's judgement, then fair enough. We would probably agree that's a minefield but worth considering. But you said "in all situations EXCEPT..." and that seems far too narrow to make work.
The old system of seduction laws was that consent was given by a woman's male guardian. And if they didn't have a male guardian it was often their employer. It was later added if she had sex under false circumstances like the guy lying about marrying her (a lesser version of breach of promise where an actual legal engagement was broken off). The current system is quite modern, really only since the 1970s, but is more popular among conservatives so they act as if it's trad.
I am not certain about the US and Southern Europe, but at least in North Europe if you go back a hundred years, seduction was seen as just a straight up mean thing to do.
Søren Kierkegaard wrote 'the Diary of a Seducer' in 1843, in which a charming person seduces a young woman so effectively that she herself asks him to have premarital sex. Basically gets her to give affirmative consent. This was of course something he believed people ought not to do.
Or you can David Copperfield. Steerforth seducing Emily was of course seen as piece of scoundreldry by all readers, even though it again happened with affirmative consent. This is seen again and again in the novels from the 19th century.
Notice, I am not saying that the 19th century was better than the late 20th century, only that we now in the 21th seems to be leaning back towards Victorian ways of thinking. The pendulum swings.
We do not have a rule that powerful men can only pursue powerful women. I've read an awful lot of accusations against Trump and Musk, but I've never seen a claim that their various wives didn't consent.
"Wives" is the important word in that sentence. As soon as they are married the power imbalance is (somewhat) leveled, and also a single person's ability to traumatize people are very much lowered if he has to go through the process of marriage first. It is like modern progressives discovering the concept of only having sex within a marriage.
What about Ivana Trump's claim of marital rape?
Something wicked this way comes
I thought I'd mention a blog that I very much enjoy. It has the worst name of any blog I can think of - Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog. Meaningless and yet somehow also actively misleading. In spite of that it is really excellent and the author (Jonathan Clements) has a wide range of interests - and is interesting on all of them. A lot of history of East Asia, Finnish movies (!) anime and random stuff. One of my favourite recent posts was this one about one of his adventures working for National Geographic in China.
https://schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com/2024/09/12/a-bird-in-the-hand/
And this on the rivalry between the Japanese navy and army in WW2.
https://schoolgirlmilkycrisis.com/2022/05/11/the-divine-sky-warriors/
Not sure how interested people who like Scott will be in this stuff but I think Jonathan deserves a wider audience so I like to mention it for time to time. Also it's free. No idea what he is thinking of - hasn't he heard of Substack??
I liked it! Accounts of things failing are so much more interesting than success.
I used to like a chemist's blog called something like "Things I won't work with". He would concentrate on some ghastly compound, or class of them, for each post, and had an amusing style. e.g. (quoting from memory) "If a flourine chemist says a reaction is really exciting and offers you a demonstration, it's time to vacate the building!" I can't find the blog now, but have a vague recollection those articles had been merged into another of his blogs.
Here it goes :)
https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with
I used to enjoy reading NASA's post-mortems for their mission failures. Fascinating stuff. I should track them down to see what is new these days.
I can't justify reading this when it has such a terrible name. Sorry.
I had to find out where the terrible name came from:
Schoolgirl Milky Crisis
(n.) 1. A stupid name for a generic anime show, made up to protect the innocent in Jonathan Clements’ long-running insider columns about the Japanese comics and cartoons business.
(n.) 2. A collection of nearly two decades of articles, speeches and interviews by Jonathan Clements on anime, manga, and Asian culture, published by Titan Books.
(n.) 3. This blog, containing excerpts from the above and all-new material as when the Big Giant Heads allow.
He is still a commentator on anime and helps curate an annual festival. Though oddly enough not exactly a fan and seems much more active on history now as best I can tell. He did explain the title to me when I got him on my podcast but the logic of it went straight over my head.
The name is really, really terrible and the blog has nothing to do with schoolgirls (or any kind of girls). Or milk. Or any kind of milk product. Worst name ever!
Maybe when translated literally into Japanese it sounds like another word which would make more sense as a blog name
What are the strongest arguments against white nationalism? Assuming a generic definition like this one from Wikipedia: "a type of racial nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white racial and national identity. Many of its proponents identify with the concept of a white ethnostate."
Some possible options:
1. Race doesn't exist, so there shouldn't be any racial nationalism
2. White nationalism is associated with Nazis and other violent historical groups
3. Whites are already at the top of society so there's no need to organize as a race
Any articles on this topic you could recommend would also be appreciated.
4. Nationalism (without adding the "white" part) already gave us two world wars and a shitload of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century, and anything remotely connected to the concept should be relentlessly opposed; history's deadliest ideology does not need encouragement
The standard Leftist argument for a century or more has been that White nationalism or White Power, is a political gimmick to get poor Whites siding with rich Whites and not seeking alliances with the poor non-Whites who they have common interests with.
There’s a popular cartoon of a rich man with a steak, a White working man with a hot dog, and a Black man with nothing. The rich man is saying, “Watch out—he’s going to eat your lunch!”
Shifting to monoethnic nationalism means killing, expelling , ghetoising or disenfranchising the other ethnicities. People seem to object to nations that are already monoethnic a lot less.
some more options:
4. Race is a poor organizing principle for a nation.
5. Nationalism is wrong, or not useful.
Agreed on
>4. Race is a poor organizing principle for a nation.
Disagreed on
>5. Nationalism is wrong, or not useful.
Writing from the USA, I think it is sensible that the government of the USA should be acting in the interests of its citizens/taxpayers, who are the people who fund it. Geography still matters, and I think that it is reasonably sensible for citizens in a geographic area, with a government that they have some control over, which rules that area, to use it to serve their interests.
Yeah, I think small doses of nationalism/patriotism, like asking that governments serve their citizens (not corporations or foreigners or politicians), are good. I've definitely seen opposition to all nationalism cited as an argument against white nationalism, which is why I mentioned. But I think white nationalism is generally worse than e.g. Australian nationalism, so this can't be the whole argument.
Many Thanks!
>But I think white nationalism is generally worse than e.g. Australian nationalism, so this can't be the whole argument.
That's fair. Personally, I don't see whites as a natural grouping. I do see citizens-within-a-geographic-area, as in your example of Australian nationalism, as being a reasonably natural grouping.
Part of this is just shared infrastructure. E.g. in the USA, it is in the interests of more or less the whole nation to keep the interstate highway network in good condition.
You forgot that white people don't like it!
Have you tried asking them in an environment where they won't get lynched for supporting it?
I think anonymous surveys serve that purpose.
Not when that fear is ingrained so deep within them. But when the culture around them changes, and morality shifts with it, the people themselves change as well. When they realize they are free to indulge in their desires... they will absolutely take the opportunity to do so.
But then that makes your question meaningless. If white people saying they don't support it means that 'the fear is ingrained deep within them' and they actually want to say yes, why not skip the question and just assume whatever you want?
I'm not assuming anything. I'm saying we're about to see the answer pretty soon, so there's no point in speculating on it.
As Scott has said before, in-groups are fundamentally defined by their rivalry with their outgroup. "Sometimes without a God, but never without a devil". The conflict doesn't come from "difference" per se, but from competition over scarce resources.
In the case of *contemporary* white-nationalism, I think they're especially concerned about immigrants who are: A) competing for jobs/housing; and B) degrading the cultural commons (by behaving violently, or not assimilating). If you want to convince an actual White Nationalist (not just someone who already leans liberal) to apostasize, you have to show that the enemy isn't a threat. "but muh nazi's" will simply make you sound tone-deaf.
The strongest argument is the same as the argument against all ethnic nationalism, which is that it breeds conflict, up to and including mass killing. Because that is the only way to establish or maintain an ethnostate.
In my country especially, I think racial nationalism is a proxy for defending Engish culture.
I think California's (esp Silicon Valley's) approach to integration and mixing the cultures makes that kind of nationalism unnecessary and cheats white people out of lots of great new culture.
That's harder in England (outside of London) because the cultures don't mix and culture tends to be a zero-sum game: you can enjoy some chicken tikka masala but we'll have to close your pubs and fish 'n' chip shops.
I feel like you're missing the most obvious argument: you're not white and you don't want to die or be enslaved.
...and perhaps you don't want to die or be enslaved even if you're white; and given the lists elsewhere in this conversation, you find it obvious that the bullies won't stop with just skin colour differences when picking out folks to beat up.
Of course, but you can change things about yourself that aren't your skin color. Like your politics and your religion. And nobody is going to bother to check if you lie about your ancestry, not that anyone really cares about that anymore.
Sure, it’s possible to survive in a paranoid shithole society where everyone has to put on a public mask and lie to everyone about everything all the time to avoid being reported and disappeared. Many people survived the Stalin era. “I don’t want to turn my country into a gulag with my own two hands” remains a sound answer to op’s question even so.
> Sure, it’s possible to survive in a paranoid shithole society where everyone has to put on a public mask and lie to everyone about everything all the time to avoid being reported and disappeared.
And white males already live in such a society... minus the disappearing part. Freedom is a zero-sum game; one person's freedom will always infringe on another. Why shouldn't they fight for their own interests, their own freedom to do as they please? Not that they need your permission, mind you.
> And white males already live in such a society...
If that was actually true, the conversations here would be much shorter.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/diversity-really-is-our-strength
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/defeat-racism-by-heightening-the
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/america-has-black-nationalism-not
‘Race is a social construct’ is more accurate than ‘race does not exist.’ And it’s an important difference.
Humans are a coalition forming species. The innate homophily that structures these coalitions occurs along several dimensions, but race and ethnicity are the strongest factors. I’m not sure that we can solve ethnic tensions by teaching children that race does not exist.
Matthew Jackson’s The Human Network was an interesting overview of the social science on this.
Most ethnic nationalists in Europe are not, in that sense, white nationalists. They really don’t care about whiteness but staying Hungarian, or Finnish, or whatever.
However if you were to explain the criteria for white supremacism to an intelligent alien, and ask him to name white supremacist organisations he’d probably come back with NATO, maybe the EU, definitely the 5 eyes. Sure these countries are not 100% white anymore, but white people still dominate and, especially the US in its conflict with China is clearly trying to keep western hegemony.
That’s really up to the Chinese, if they fetishise Serbs and Finns, so be it. This kind of colourism predates imperialism anyway, and there’s not much the Serb or the Finns can do about it, seems to be an internal Chinese thing. Nor were the Serbs or Finns imperialists.
What’s really supremacist here is the idea that China should be held back economically and militarily - the idea that the west should get involved in internal disputes between Taiwan and the PRC about which is exactly Chinese.
I think the strongest argument against white nationalism is the same as the argument against tall-people nationalism, green-eyed-people nationalism, or sports-fan nationalism: our default should be against doing this weird thing, and the arguments purporting to move us away from that default are not very good.
I think the definition hides this by saying it's just the belief that white people are a race. Well, green is an eye color, and even if it's an interesting eye color in some sense (maybe there are songs about green-eyed people, though when I try to think of one my mind just keeps landing on "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Blue Eyes Blue") it's not interesting *enough* that people should feel especially eager to be nationalist about it.
I actually don't care if some whites want to live together in a commune in Idaho or something, but only in the same sense that I don't care if some green-eyed people want to do that - seems to me like you're wasting the one big project you get in your life on a trivial detail of your appearance, but it's a free country.
There has never been a nation of tall or green-eyed people, as far as I'm aware. If someone tried to create one somewhere like a seastead or something, I expect I'd just shrug.
Meanwhile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_people_with_red_hair
People will happily beat people up based on literally any criteria.
The stereotype of "green-eyed people" doesn't exist in the collective unconscious. People care about skin-color because it's salient and predictive. Not *perfectly* predictive, mind you. But in a low-information/low-trust environment (not the Ivory Tower; not Beverly Hills), you work with whatever signals you have.
I'm not sure about this argument. If we're going to take the kinds of nationalism that have enough historical precedent of success and modern countries still running on them you get three waves:
- Original European Nationalism: Replacing loyalty to King and Church with loyalty to the Nation. Like post revolutionary France.
- Civic Nationalism: This nation is founded on its ideals, all who follow them are welcome. The foundation of the USA
- Decoloalistic Nationalism: Our ethnical group have been oppressed by foreign governments, we need a nation for our people. E.G. Indian nationalism led by Ghandi. Kurdish independence movements.
It would be possible to frame white nationalism as similar to one of those, the third would be easy if you think of Metropolitian Elites and Rural Rednecks as different peoples (I believe you yourself have made the argument that you can. Amy Chua's Politcal Tribe's has data to back the point). And if you do that, its not a weird thing any more.
That's why I much prefer the argument of how do you intend to do create this ethnostate, and what happens to the people outside your ethnicity who are already inside the line you've drawn on the map? 20th century style decolonialism isn't a weird thing, it and its after effects are the default for anywhere outside the west. But recreating the Partition of India anywhere two ethnic groups live side by side in the USA would be evil.
> Civic Nationalism: This nation is founded on its ideals, all who follow them are welcome. The foundation of the USA
Not how it was literally founded, since the very first Congress restricted naturalization to "free white persons of good moral character".
> Decoloalistic Nationalism: Our ethnical group have been oppressed by foreign governments, we need a nation for our people. E.G. Indian nationalism led by Ghandi
Are Indians an "ethnic group"? They speak a huge variety of languages, with the four southernmost states speaking languages in the Dravidian rather than Indo-European family. There's a racial similarity among many of them, but there are also a substantial minority who are more east Asian than south Asian in ancestry. India as it exists today excludes the parts of British India that became East & West Pakistan, with the former now being Bangladesh, because those places had Muslim majorities (though there are still lots of Muslims in India and I think a majority in the state of Kashmir). Muslims aren't a racial/ethnic group but instead a religious one.
>It would be possible to frame white nationalism as similar to one of those,
How can you possibly frame white nationalism as civic nationalism? Civic nationalism is literally the antithesis of ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is premised on the existence of a "nation" that is ethnically defined. Hence, ethnic nationalism calls for the existence of an ethnostate, which again is the antithesis of a state based on civic nationalism.
You can't. But the first and third are possibilities, and the third is easy.
Although #3 is a bit redundant. The basic premise of nationalism is that every nation has a right to its own state, so there is no need to appeal to foreign oppression as a source of that right.
OTOH, it is consistent with nationalism to argue that "Our ethnical group has been oppressed by foreign governments, therefore we constitute a "'nation.'" And, ipso facto, since they are a nation, they have a right to their own state.
often, the intellectual justification provides cover for the functional justification.
> (maybe there are songs about green-eyed people, though when I try to think of one my mind just keeps landing on "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Blue Eyes Blue")
American Money, by Børns?
> our default should be against doing this weird thing
How is it weird? White supremacy was the default for the last millenia of western society. It's the last 70 years or so that's been an aberration.
If you asked King Philip II whether all white people were a natural unit who should band together against all non-white people, he would tell you to f@#k off so he could go back to killing Protestants.
I think for the past 1000 years most white people probably wouldn't have had much interest in or respect for non-white people, because the latter were either weak or non-Christian. But when white people were weak (eg the Irish), other Europeans were happy to colonize them; when white people were pagan (eg the Lithuanians), other Europeans were happy to go on crusades against them. I don't know of any strong non-white Christian groups at the time, but when people falsely imagined that some might exist (Prester John), they seemed extremely in favor.
I don't think anyone during most of these times really considered mass immigration of non-white ethnicities; there just wasn't the logistical capacity to relocate that many people. When they did, "whiteness" had nothing to do with it - witness opposition to Irish and Italians moving to the US. The only mixed-race country at the time I can think of was Spain, and opposition to Moors there was almost always "they might secretly be Muslim" and not "they're brown".
I'm not trying to make an insane point like "the past wasn't racist" or even "the past didn't have a conception of whiteness", just that they wouldn't have been particularly nationalist about it.
There was also opposition to Hungarian refugees from communism in the 50s:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/11/17/anti-immigration-attitudes-they-didnt-want-a-bunch-of-hungarian-refugees-coming-in-the-1950s/
But it seems racial nationalism has been consistent across history. The only reason the white label has supplanted those other racial labels in recent years is because of the large amounts of immigration between white countries... and also because people genuinely can't tell the white races apart if they don't have accents. But you can definitely tell the difference between white and non-white races, so that's what people are going to care about. We're just going back to the status quo.
If white nationalism 1000 years ago excluded Lithuanians, and 500 years ago it excluded Italians and Irish, and today it includes all of those groups, then I think it's misleading to lump all those different varieties of racism together as "white nationalism," That implies that there's a long, unbroken tradition of racism, when actually the things people discriminated against against changed frequently with material and political conditions.
No, nationalism is a relatively recent development. See discussion here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism and here https://www.britannica.com/topic/nationalism
You are conflating it with more general in-group affinity.
I don't think racial nationalism has been consistent. I'm not a 100% fan of Benedict Anderson, but I at least respect him enough that that sentence raises my hackles.
In the ancient world, ethnicity was usually secondary to city-states, eg Athens and Sparta. There might be some vague pan-Hellenic feeling, but usually not enough that people seriously supported unification of Greece outside the normal "I want my state to conquer it all" reasons. Occasionally you would get natural basins of empire, like Egypt, but you could get those just the same in areas with lots of competing ethnicities, like the Persian Empire. I agree that there was some sense in which ethnic Persians felt some kind of fellow-feeling with other ethnic Persians, but I don't think it ever came out as ethnic purity issues or even not wanting to be lumped into an empire with non-Persian groups. For example, King Cyrus of Persia was half-Median, he married off his family to Medians, and he pursued a deliberate policy of merging Persia and Media into a single intermixed country.
In the Middle Ages, this was replaced by feudalism, in which the natural political unit was a lord/dynasty and all of the random territory they controlled. This might be, for example, five bits of Belgium, six Italian city-states, and a chunk of Hungary. These then interacted in some sort of horribly complicated way with various higher feudal powers (eg the king of "France", who might not control all of France but might have significant interests in Germany), the Pope, etc. It was complicated but probably one of the least ethnic political arrangements, probably less ethnic than today.
Modern nationalism was an innovation replacing that, eg the mid-1800s idea that "Germany" should be a "country". Part of this was based on shared German ethnicity, but another part was based on shared history, geography, culture, etc. Try telling Vladimir Putin that Buryatia shouldn't be part of Russia because Buryats aren't ethnically Russian! I agree there are many cases where ethnic groups say "We are an ethnicity, so we deserve our own country!" (eg Basques), but there are equally many cases where countries say "No you don't, that's not how things work" (eg Basques), and this is, again, a pretty modern innovation.
I think none of these eras are really all that ethnic nationalist, and that was even in the context of convenient ethnically separated countries! The idea that everyone should rearrange themselves to be ethnically separated and then divide into nations on that basis was, I think, never seriously considered.
This seems to me to be a mischaracterization of the position of white nationalists. Obviously white nationalists don't think they are fixating on a trivial detail of their appearance, but think it correlates with something else. This "something else" is shared ancestry, or white nationalists would consider Pamiris white and swarthy Britons to be nonwhite.
"White nationalists" are usually either 1) Similar to African-American Nationalists and advocate for European descended Americans as the true and only Americans on grounds that other groups have a) different ancestors and thus different loyalties or b) convoluted hbd reasons, or 2) Similar to Muslims who care about the "entire Ummah" and want solidarity between all people descended from Medieval Christendom (different from all historically Christian peoples, or it would include Melkites, Ethiopian Orthodox, etc.)
Disclaimer: not a white nationalist, may be misunderstanding some things
Green Eyed Lady
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YG8FFJQYoTM
Guinnevere
Csn&y
Hey, I’m reading Werner Herzog’s memoir today. You likely have read it already but if you haven’t, it’s pretty good.
Someone gave it to me for Christmas, but I haven’t started it yet. Thank you for reminding me.
That’s right. She did have green eyes didn’t she.
The main problem is that unlike nationalisms like: Italians nationalism, French, Vietnamese, etc. "Whites" are not a nation, they don't have a shared culture, history, language or material interests. This leaves very little to base this nationalism on.
Correct. People exaggerate how fictive ethnic nations are/were in the age of nationalism. Boundaries were fuzzy and people didn't always have that as their salient locus of loyalty, but there was a sense that they were one people. The US is in a weird situation where a lot of different people from all over have come here, but that didn't result in the formation of some white nation (even if there was a polity politically dominated by whites).
I tend to interpret "white nationalism" as 'nationalism for US whites' (and I guess any other mixed white colonies). I don't think it's relevant for the old world, where nationalism proper is viable. Same thing for "black nationalism".
...even worse, they include a collection of diverse groups of people with very long histories of hating each other.
Yeah, but it should be seen as a mark of progress if they can put those old animosities aside and direct their antipathy at entirely new groups.
I kid, I kid.
You kid, but when there's a subthread right here in this conversation implying the proposed group of whites wouldn't include jews, it's hard to laugh.
Yeah, fair point.
Are sexual minorities really a people that can be subject to genocide? They're not a breeding population, a language group, a religion etc. They're more like left-handers or something.
Even if we assume race exists, that doesn't imply there's a shared interest. Genetic diversity is too great to coordinate altruistically outside of immediate family members. If instead we cooperate via exchange, then the counterparty's race is irrelevant.
Genes result in behaviors. In this case altrustic behavior for close family members is selected for. That's why people can be loving parents of adopted children from a different continent! My point isn't some kind of genetic determinism, rather it's that there hasn't been strong enough selection pressure for people to behave altruistically to genetically determined racial ingroups. Societies can (and have) manufactured racial cooperation, but there's no genetic reason this manufactured cooperation has to be based on race. Instead the liberal idea of reciprocity and exchange between individuals has proven to work better as an organizational technology for most people.
Darwinian evolution isn't a matter of belief, it's grounded in mathematics. There's no Darwinian reason for behavior to be driven by a desire for "adaptiveness". Evolution is a blind process that doesn't think or plan.
Looking farther into the future, projecting current birthrates blindly forward is insane. People who think religious fundamentalists will always outreproduce secularists rely on two faulty assumptions (1) secularist birth rates stay low and (2) fundamentalist birth rates stay high. On (1), Secularists face upwards birth rate pressures in the long term simply because selection will cause secularists who reproduce more to demographically replace ones who don't. On (2), fundamentalist face long term pressure to adopt secularist institutions because these lead to higher economic growth, military and political power, and the same ecological collapse requiring technological adaption that all of us face.
> Unless you’re Genghis Khan or something, you’re most likely going to leave no genetic traces after a couple of generations
There are a lot of genes, it takes more halving than that to create the expectation of no genes. There is a 99.99% chance of inheriting genes from all your ancestors from 5 generations back. https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/articles/2011/ask445/ It takes more like 10 generations to expect not to inherit from an ancestor.
Almost nobody will create works that people will remember in such a long term.
Off the top of my head, I would say:
English civilisation and everything derived from it (so the US, UK, Australia, Canada and at least a dozen less central cultures) is (1) what everyone speaking primarily English should identify with, not "the white race" and (2) is based on historical values of strong individualism (protestant Christianity, liberal democracy, free market capitalism) that are, properly understood, extremely hostile to race-based collectivism.
In support of 1, I would ask how anyone whose ancestors or countrymen fought the Germans, the French, the Spanish and so on, could regard those cultures as basically our own, while throwing out all the Indians etc who fought with us, and somehow not think they're spitting on their memory. Also, the most brazen threats to our society are coming from e.g. the UK's gradual surrender to European ultra-collectivism, and from the US's gradual takeover by home-grown collectivists. It's not actually Muslims or China who are taking over the West; and what makes those people such a threat is primarily collaboration by mostly white progressives within our own societies.
On the other hand, what makes our culture so powerful is its ability to absorb anyone from any ethnic background who whole-heartedly embraces our values. Every social ill caused by non-whites is actually caused by non-whites *who don't accept our civilisation's values*. Whether those be "freedom" for Muslims or "law abiding morality" for the problematic parts of black culture.
White nationalism thus is both too broad and too narrow. It includes European cultures with terrible histories and incompatoble values, and excludes the untold millions of non white people who love freedom and the West and want nothing more than to join it and fight for it. And by waging war on the "it's all culture" position when it comes to racial disparities and so on, it actually enables and does *exactly the same* thing as the left.
> is based on historical values of strong individualism (protestant Christianity, liberal democracy, free market capitalism) that are, properly understood, extremely hostile to race-based collectivism.
The idea of an “Anglo Saxon race” runs throughout the literature of the 19C, and into the 20C. Here’s George Wallace Inaugural address in 1963.
“ Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the ***Great Anglo-Saxon*** Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny...and I say...segregation now...segregation tomorrow...segregation forever”.
No mention of white there. Nor in Cecil Rhodes either. Here in Blighty white supremacism has always been Anglo supremacism.
I value English civilization even when it wasn't really a "democracy". That's just what it happened to evolve into, and I expect it to evolve further (whether for good or ill is another question).
Ahh yes, I honestly forgot about that..."question"...entirely while writing the comment. I feel like claiming Jews are responsible for most of apparently white progressivism is either false or unfalsifiable, depending on how it's stated, but I honestly have no idea and could be wrong.
On the other hand, (1) the fact that Israeli Jews are not exactly doing a lot to enable Muslim immigration, cultural relativism etc while the majority of American Jews appear to be, suggests it really is all about culture, not race. It's a very specific type of secular liberal reform Jew who is the progressive culture traitor archetype that appears in the WN fact book. And (2) if one wants to be anti-Jewish, white nationalism is a confusing label. It makes me think your main problem is black- or brown-skinned immigrants. Who are not the ones primarily driving progressivism.
Does it seem strange to anyone how hardly anyone talks about food around here, aside from ethical concerns about shrimp etc? (Of course, anytime people start talking about that, I immediately start craving fried shrimp.) I feel like most of the other bloggers I read love talking about food, cooking, etc.; and I don't really read many other rationalist types beside Scott, so for all I know he's an outlier. I can get the whole grey tribe not-liking-sports thing, but everyone has to eat.
P.S. Speaking of sports, the basketball comment sounds like a joke, especially if you know that basketball originally used literal baskets, and someone had to get the ball out after each basket.
American cooking seems to be weirdly competitive. You can't just cook a steak, you have to have this kind of pan and use this kind of seasoning and have a thermometer to do it to a particular degree and it can't be done too little or too much.
Grilling? I can't even begin to approach that topic.
Grilled cheese sandwiches, which are a different thing to a toasted cheese sandwich or a Welsh rarebit. I tried making one out of curiosity the other day and it was very pleasant, but it isn't something I'd make all the time, purely because I'm not using to pulling out the frying pan to make a cheese sandwich.
Never mind the measurements (cups?) and of course the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius in oven temperature, as well as different names for items (see courgette versus zucchini for one). I fear discussions of "this is how you make shepherd's pie" on here would turn into "actually the proper name for it comes from 1682 and it's called this and you have to use these ingredients which must be sourced from these places and done in this manner with sixteen specialised tools and cookpots" and meanwhile I'm just "Er, I just fry some mince and onions and mash some spuds".
And on the topic of mashed potatoes! Totally different to how I learned to make them! American mashed potatoes seem to be way smoother because God forbid they have some texture (a ricer?) and they end up (to my eyes) looking like wallpaper paste with the texture:
This guy is insane, don't tell me American restaurants do mashed potatoes this way:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I4Dfroo_kzQ
These are much better, but too much liquid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXS7ZNmlrFs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIhYuLDsTks
I have no idea what these women are doing, you should *not* be able to pour out mashed potatoes like liquid, and then they're adding *more* fats afterwards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO5qtrG_ln4
Probably just selection bias. The ones who get competitive tend to be the only ones making any noise. We won't hear the ones who quietly do the grilling.
That, and cooking is very accessible - anyone can try their hand at it, and very often making something good, so there's a lot more people with opinions.
As for mashed potatoes, there's simply multiple ways to make them. Different potato varieties yield different flavors and textures (russet vs yukon gold vs red vs...), and then there's butter or milk or cream even some type of vegetable oil to add, and then spices (garlic, onion, bacon, etc.).
Restaurants are their own minigame, due to the budget factor. They make dishes at scale, and have to manage profit margins. So they might roast dozens of potatoes, but then leave the skins in (I prefer it that way myself) rather than spend manual effort scraping them. The straining parts seem fast enough. At the extremes, some restaurants probably don't even use fresh potatoes...
I've seen quite a bit of discussion on rationalist-adjacent blogs about nutrition, some of it here even. There are a few areas where the topic of food intersects with the theme of this blog, as vague as it is: nutrition, ethics like you mentioned, and I guess cultural and economic stuff, but the generic sort of conversation about food that I imagine is most of it just seems sort of off-topic.
I believe Scott has said in the past that he is not interested in food beyond its necessity and has a pretty simple diet. But this would have been said a long time ago and I could be remembering incorrectly.
I like food, but I can discuss food with all the people in my real life, and probably get useful (and locally relevant!) information.
I come here to chat about topics that I can't talk about in real life.
It is a bit odd. On DSL, the unofficially-related forum, food comes up a fair bit.
Currently visiting South India and enjoying every bit of it. Here, have a masala dosa and some idly!
I haven’t eaten that in ages, I quite miss it! Enjoy your trip!
Maybe it's a lack of interest, but I've seen the sentiment echoed that foodie-ism is either perverse, too hipster, or maybe bourgeois depending on who you ask. It's not clear whether that is mostly left or right coded. I have to imagine it's partly about signaling and associations.
For me, it's part of a larger culture of consumer excess and consumption-as-identity that I don't like. However, I like good food, so I am partly hypocritical here. I will take the extra steps to make a good dinner. I'll never take a picture of it, though.
One of my things is coffee. It's the only premium product I consume regularly, but I sometimes feel ridiculous going through the rituals and prioritizing a good cup, because I don't want to be "the type of person" who obsesses over consuming things.
Hmm... I don't have a very sophisticated palate, but I'd say that eating is a major chunk of the pleasure I get in an average day.
>There's comfort in my coffee cup and apples in the early fall
-Billy Joel
I think food, while extremely important in our lives, is not particularly interesting. Diet theories are mostly woo beyond the obvious, making tasty food can be left to the domain of the chefs, and overall it’s a pretty “solved” topic.
There are many types of food, that many people like or don’t like, and even complicated food theory, but it’s all in service of a problem that’s already abundantly obvious and solved for most people. Ozempic makes this even less relevant, since the endless debates about diets, appetite, and genetics are not nearly as important when there’s a magic pill that solves everything.
> I think food, while extremely important in our lives, is not particularly interesting. Diet theories are mostly woo beyond the obvious, making tasty food can be left to the domain of the chefs, and overall it’s a pretty “solved” topic.
Second this one. Although I'm theoretically a decent cook, and me and my friends used to routinely do "iron chef cookoffs" in a competitive milieu where you need to strive and bring your "A" game, cooking isn't something that profits you to talk about strangers on the internet with.
I think of it as akin to the idea of "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Here on ACX we have one of the premier forums where we can discuss ideas and events with people similar to us. But we're multicultural enough, and taste in food and cooking varies enough, that there would be little common ground in cooking and recipes. It feels like talking about cooking here on ACX would be a waste, akin to gossiping about Trump or the Kardashians or whatever.
>I think of it as akin to the idea of "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Or alternatively,
"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?"
Not interesting? I mean, obviously that's a matter of opinion, but I've always been fascinated by the vast array of cultures across the world, and I don't understand you could even began to grasp any society without thinking about what they eat. And I can't imagine how people can think about themselves and their own culture without thinking about food. Doesn't everyone have a favorite dish from their grandmother?
Not interesting is the wrong word. Not especially important or deep is probably a better way to put it.
Food in general is quite interesting (when eating or cooking it), and making really good food is an impressive skill, but it’s like woodworking, or sewing, or any other practical thing that exists in the realm of tangibility rather than ideas. There aren’t really any ideas you can explore with food, besides some unique culinary theories about taste that are explained better by the chefs. There’s not much to think about or ponder there.
You can't get the kind of juicy edgy controversy discussing food that you can discussing race or wokeness or AI foom; unless it's to say that food in general is a nuisance and a time sink, whatever pleasure is to be found in it is not worthwhile and we should all just switch to Huel and move on with our lives; but those conversations - and I've been in a few - tend to peter out very quickly.
I actually had an epiphany today, when I realized it is possible to use lentils in bread (if you remember to soak them in water first). Like, you can actually use anything resembling grain in a bread! Even things with super high protein content! And then you just eat the bread and you have a meal!
Now I have to find out experimentally what other foodstuffs can be put into a bread before the concept 'bread' breaks down.
Lentils in bread show up in Ezekiel 4:9 :
Also take for yourself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel and make bread. According to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat it.
It sounds rather difficult to make a good bread out of it, but I'm not a great bread maker to begin with...
> Now I have to find out experimentally what other foodstuffs can be put into a bread before the concept 'bread' breaks down.
Does meatloaf count as bread?
Indeed, you don't have to use wheat at all; which is great for those of us for whom its absence is a medical requirement.
Bread also does not have to be leavened, and many breads historically and today are not.
As with many things in life, the categories become fuzzy and difficult to split into neat black and white boxes once you consider the whole spectrum from traditional bakery bread with its lovely crusts through the Chorleywood sliced bread you get at the supermarket to naans, flatbreads, tortillas, chapatis, besan roti, grilled polenta... at some point it stops being bread, but it's really quite far out there, well away from the center of the cluster of breadlike concepts in thingspace.
>grilled polenta... at some point it stops being bread
Yup, add enough very-non-central cases and the envelope of the set is something more like "cooked starchy foodstuffs"
We have Meal Squares. What more can one want?
I got really disappointed with mealsquares' new formulation. They've become just another mediocre protein bar rather than remaining a meal replacement.
Oh snap. I ordered my first batch after being on the fence for years.
If you don't mind, what were they like before? I remember having the impression that they looked like small dense bread loaves but now they look more like a nutrition protein bar like larabar.
I never got to try them, unfortunately. I ordered them for the first time right when they were switching to mealsquares 2.0 and hadn’t released what the new ones would look/be like. I was pretty excited for the small dense bread loaves but got rxbars instead.
MealSquares which deliver to my country would be a start
Although I know this is close to anecdotal evidence. I have heard the story told about Rav Chaim Kanievsky, as well and a friend of mine who was quite close to Rav Chaim told me that he definitely knew what basketball was, and if the story was true, he was making a joke.
This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how many oddball theological ideas came down to a misunderstood joke or other comment that was said by the leader of the religion, and then got handed down as doctrine.
In a famous Orthodox Jewish joke, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, known for deriving deep insights from the slightest differences in the text of the **רמב״ם** (Maimonides), once noticed that **רמב״ם** used ""**יש**" ("is") instead of ""**ויש**" ("and is"). Upon arriving in Heaven, Rabbi Chaim eagerly shared his groundbreaking discovery with Maimonides himself. "What are you talking about?" Maimonides replied. "It was a typo! I meant to use the other one."
(I used ai to make sure that people who aren’t within the orthodox community would understand -I hope this works)
I imagine St Paul hurriedly finishing his letters, unsuspecting of the world-changing theological battles over how to interpret his words.
A question about the price of running an AI:
I have seen it estimated that right now the total price of computation (price per flop) is halved every roughly 3 years due to Moore's Law.
With the newest models from OpenAI it seems that the total price of running a task on an LLM goes up almost x10 with each model (Normal ChatGPT to O1 to O3 ), not including the price of training.
Are there some other mechanism which will eventually drive down the price of running an LLM? Or are we on a collision course where true AI might become prohibitively expensive during the next couple of years?
> Are there some other mechanism which will eventually drive down the price of running an LLM?
We don't really understand why the LLM does what it does. Specifically, we do know that we are pushing way more information through the pipeline, at way higher precision, and doing way more calculations than we need; but this is only slowly being translated into general ways to throw things we don't really need away. Consider:
* each new generation of models uses narrower and narrower types for their parameters. This impacts costs, both directly (all else being equal, fp8 FMA pipelines can do four times the number of operations for the same power in the same time as fp32 FMA pipelines) and indirectly (the smaller everything is, the less data needs to be moved around between nodes, which also makes everything faster and cheaper). We literally have people looking at ternary or even 1-bit encodings - e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17764 - and these, astonishingly, work!
* for parts of the calculation, the datasets are sparse; that is, significant subsets of the numbers we are doing maths on are zero or close to zero, so when we multiply them with anything the result will still be zero, and finding ways to avoid doing the work for those calculations is an active area of research, as is working with sparse matrices in general
* it turns out that you can just... skip doing large chunks of the work, drop large chunks of the data on the floor, and still end up with something that performs very very nearly as well: https://arxiv.org/html/2410.19258v3 https://sakana.ai/namm/ etc etc. We don't really have a better way to work out what can be thrown away than trying and seeing. It's not even obvious whether the different results in this space represent the same kinds of things being thrown away or whether multiple techniques we are discovering can be combined for even more savings.
On the flip side, the design of these models is also changing very fast in order to make them better at actually solving whatever it is that needs solving, and optimisations specific to one family become obsolete when enough of those changes accumulate.
TLDR: in the longer term, then, we will have two effects in this space driving down costs - better understanding of just what we can get away with will let us design models that spend less power and memory doing work that is not actually needed; and also when we get a design that is actually useful enough for some purpose to stick around for more than a couple of months, it'll become worthwhile spending time on optimising that design in less generalisable ways and as the papers above and similar demonstrate that can be worth orders of magnitude by itself.
Thanks a lot, very interesting that we are actually back at optimizing arithmethic, like the ancient civlizations, when they first invented written numbers.
The price per flop is going down way quicker than x2 every 3 years. See this [1] page and ctrl-f "Algorithmic efficiencies" section.
Some quotes:
> Inference efficiency improved by nearly 3 OOMs—1,000x—in less than two years.
> Efficiency doubles roughly every 8 months
We're throwing increasingly more cash into compute, but that's to squeeze more intelligence out of models. If you compare the "price per intelligence" that's going down.
We're basically seeing Jevon's paradox [2] here.
[1] - https://situational-awareness.ai/from-gpt-4-to-agi/#Counting_the_OOMs
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Thanks a lot, this was exactly what I was uncertain about. So basically as I get it, the hardware for AI is getting better much faster than other computers, since we are adapting to new parameters. And the algorithms have given a x1000 boost in efficiency in just the last two years (this really surprised me), and the ability to continually improve the algorithms will be the wild card in the struggle between companies during the next years.
It’s even worse than you think it is: “Moore’s Law” is an observation that held true for some time but now we’re coming to hard limits of how small CMOS gates can be made. Until we figure out the next computational substrate things will slow down.
There was a report of a working (in a lab) optical gate computer that was considerably faster than current models, and that *should* be able to be scaled up to thousands of times faster. (I read is somewhere within the last week. Possibly on Soylent News.)
So we may already know how to get beyond the CMOS limits. Moving from "in the lab" to "on the production line", though, may well take awhile. (And a lot of times there are unforeseen problems.)
Yes, exactly - there are may pies in various ovens, to mix metaphors, and some are quite tantalizing, but getting something to work in a lab is about 10% of the journey to mass production. It's a very important 10%, nothing can move forward without at least a proof of existence, but making 10000 wafers with 98% yield is an enormous undertaking that gets routinely glossed over by people who haven't been involved in this kind of work.
Since I somehow made it on the ACX recommendations page, I'll take this as my annual chance to plug my blog. It ends up being a bit of random mix of random musings, describing things via overly specific mathematical models, short stories or worldbuilding ideas (also, occasionally, song translations). See the about page for a bit more, with links to some examples I like https://shakeddown.substack.com/about
(The most recent post is about a specific guy I knew and probably not the best place to start).
Also, please let me know if there's a specific style of post (or specific topic) you'd be more interested in reading if I did a post on it.
Dropping this here for discussion: I’ve come to realise that people’s respect or lack thereof for people who get things done is the best predictor of whether they and I will see eye-to-eye. It’s a far better predictor than their nominal place on the Left-Right spectrum: you can be (economically) right-wing and believe societal ills are best addressed through a free market, or you can be left-wing and believe externalities call for government intervention; I’ll respect both views if you value productivity and efficiency and excellence and progress.
I also think there are two reasons people dislike competence: the first is insecurity (*not* envy like many suggest: envy by itself doesn't make you want to knock people off their pedestals, it makes you want to climb up there with them), the second (far, far rarer) is a genuine belief that anything that perpetuates capitalism is bad (even if its first-order effects are good).
Failure to get things done is a common symptom of people with ADHD.
A third reason, partially related to your first, is that many people are not directly exposed to competence very often and even less often when they are young. So getting things done and doing them competently is an alien thing. Many may respond with insecurity, but others may just not like new things and assume there is something "wrong" with the new thing. Given greater exposure, they may change their views.
As someone who doesn't really get things done, but wishes he could, I fight my feelings insecurity and attempt to have action producing envy.
I mean, a certain amount of things by necessity have to get done for a child to grow to adulthood. Clothes bought, appointments made, food given, etc. Of course there's a very broad spectrum of just HOW competent some exemplar is, but I have a hard time imagining a child literally never encountering it. I think ego protection, lack of necessity, and learned helplessness play big roles in the proliferation of incompetence.
To me, in this context, "doing things"/"getting things done" means going above and beyond the base needs for life. Something like getting an advanced degree, building a business, writing a book, creating art, building a house, running for office, pursuing athletics at a high level (amateur level counts), etc. Creative acts above the average.
Well that's a depressing thought!
Yes but it has a pretty straightforward solution: create popular media that shows people getting things done. This isn't necessarily easy, but the challenges are no insurmountable. I am thinking of things along these lines: https://newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/sci-fi-without-dystopia or even cooking shows which have definitely made the average person a more ambitious cook over the last 20 years. Social media can be a driving force too. I watch a lot of videos of and follow a lot of people who are great at getting things done and it makes me aspire to be like them. If I was 15 and not approaching 40 I wonder how different my life would have been had I been exposed to this same media.
I love competence, but am not sure that I judge other people on their attitude toward competence. In particular, if someone is very good at something, I will respect them for that, even if they don't exhibit particular respect for other people's competence. At the same time, I will not beatify them and assume their competence extends to other, unrelated, domains.
How dog-eared is your copy of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance?
Haha, have never read it. Should i add it on Bertie (shameless plugin: https://logos.substack.com/p/say-hello-to-bertie)?
I also don't think competence always extends to other domains, though the ability to develop competence probably does to a large extent.
But so, if you yourself value competence, it doesn't bother you when others don't? So, you see someone doing something particularly well, say painting. If others completely disregard that, or go further and belittle it ('what good is painting anyway?'), that doesn't affect you at all?
might want to check to see if the CHEEP is still cutting edge, but I do recommend it.
No, at this point, other people being dismissive of competence is too common to be worth a reaction.
Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum
> respect or lack thereof for people who get things done
It's not enough to get things done. You also need to get the /right/ things done (perfection may be the enemy of improvement, but the things you get done do actually need to make things better instead of worse) and they need to be done in a scalable manner (I can get all manner of things done as lab prototypes that would never be viable in production).
A significant chunk of "lack of respect for people who get things done" I see in the wild is actually because those people are failing on one or both of those points.
Compare Liz Truss: she literally wrote a book on what she would do if given power, got right to it the moment she was given power, and in just a few days got through an incredible chunk of it before horrified onlookers realised she was deadly serious rather than just making bombastic empty promises to her support base like everyone else and she was shut down. If that's not "getting things done", I don't know what is; and yet here she is today, complaining about newspaper claims that she crashed the economy, yet unable to make them stop, because they aren't wrong.
No see that's where I disagree. With few exceptions (in cases where you're doing horrible things, such as killing people), competence should be appreciated. People didn't object to Truss for doing bad things, but for doings things badly.
We may just have to disagree on this. IME people objected to /the things she got done/ /turning out badly/. She was very competent at doing exactly the things she said she would; which were bad things that made everything bad, and people objected to this.
The claims that she was/is an idiot come not because she couldn't get things done, but because she /could and did/, and genuinely believed (and still AFAIK believes) that they were good things to do and she should have been given more time and power to do more of them.
Competence and results are orthogonal.
If competence is not one's ability to deliver, then what is it??
My point precisely. Which is why competence alone isn't enough. Truss delivered. It is necessary, but not sufficient. /What/ you deliver is also important. I see no reason to appreciate someone who competently makes my life worse.
She didn't deliver the results she wanted. She didn't want to explore borrowing costs, did she?
What happened to respecting your opponent in battle? It's your responsibility, and yours alone, to work towards your own interests.
I think this is what appeals to me about Dominic Cummings (or at least the face he presents via his blog).
I don't share his goals or politics but I have endless respect for the way he keeps banging the drum of 'productivity and efficiency and excellence and progress', as you put it.
He's a humanities graduate who got enamoured with tech.
https://x.com/BeardedGenius/status/1264936171517489160
Reminds me of Quentin Tarantino sorta
I don't think Cummings is a good example actually, because I think he's a bit of a charlatan. He uses the language of competence, but he's full of hot air. E.g.: keeps mocking politicians for caring about their look instead of substance, but he commissioned a series of extremely pretentious photos of himself...
I've only got his word for it, hence my disclaimer.
Assuming you are in the class of person who gets things done (or at least are so in spirit), then anyone who doesn’t respect people who get things done, doesn’t respect you.
Respect is almost a fundamental quality of human interaction. It’s very difficult to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t respect you.
They can still respect me for other reasons :) My point isn't that if someone doesn't like me, we won't see eye to eye, or that we'll see eye to eye if they do like me.
I find competence threatening because I lack it (I have self diagnosed dyspraxia extending to everything, not just physical skills). But in the wrong place it's the worst thing imaginable. The Great Wall of China is the biggest thing anyone ever got done, and cost 100ks of lives. Its utter competence was the worst and most lethal aspect of the holocaust.
Auden's poem horae canonicae: sext is about how civilisation is competence.
Well yes ok but if someone's doing horrible things, you should find their intention threatening, not just their ability to do them...
Why do you find what you lack threatening? I can't sing, doesn't mean I find people who can hold a tune threatening!
How about believing that capitalism is too dominant? Certainly it has many good features, but it doesn't support all good features. Not that we actually live in a capitalist environment, we live in a mixed environment, but I think capitalism is too dominant, because it's allowed to push externalities onto people who didn't agree to accept them. Saying that "government is the answer", however, is not proven just because "too much capitalism" appears to be the problem. It's what we currently do, and it frequently leads to regulatory capture.
Why would that make you dislike competence though, if you just think there needs to be a little rebalancing?
I don't, in principle, dislike competence. I dislike competence employed in an unethical manner. Whether competence is desirable or not depends on the goals that it is trying to achieve, and the methods that it considers acceptable.
Thank you for highlighting my comment on a16z returns. If anyone who works in VC wants to take a critical look at it, I'd be happy to fix issues.
For those who are interested in quantitative finance, renowned quant Giuseppe Paleologo shared his entire bookmarks folder in a google docs file. More than 3000 entries since 2013, it would take you half a lifetime to read them all but I think it's much more beneficial to skim read the titles and save what you think is interesting. A lot of it is quite exotic and really quanty, but I'm not a quant and I still find value out of it so I figured I'd share the link. I'm not affiliated with the man. https://x.com/__paleologo/status/1880716947815387596
interestingly, there are four Slate Star Codex links in there!
would someone mind posting the folder link directly, or is that not good etiquette?
I don't have an account on x, so can't see the reply in which the link is buried.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eIY7rfRxqEezyxHdhzOGQ1oX8TiNGbZ1l8oGJomXmIo/edit?gid=1682685106#gid=1682685106
> "renowned quant Giuseppe Paleologo"
I always wondered what the Byzantine royals had been up to since 1453.
There was a wave of people claiming descent from bastard sons after the fall of Constantinople and they're probably one of them. So unfortunately probably not.
Last reasonably credible one was a pirate
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodorious_Paleologus
I really am curious what the betting odds should be for how long it will take before we get the first turnover in a cabinet level position in the incoming Trump admin. It’s probably going to be one of the biggest tells for how stable / organized the incoming administration will be.
Not cabinet level but Vivek is already leaving DOGE to run for governor of Ohio.
Also, based on the nominees, Trump is picking people who are much more "loyal" to him than during his first term. Meaning they are less likely to go against him. Regardless of their performance, their loyalty to Trump is a bigger predictor of their longevity.
There's a market on how many of his nominies will ultimate not end up serving the role he nominated them for. Current estimate is "four or more". https://manifold.markets/njmkw/how-many-of-the-people-trump-announ
There's also one on "who, if appointed to cabinet, will still have the job two years later" which reckons almost nobody has better than a 50% chance(??) https://manifold.markets/UnspecifiedPerson/who-if-appointed-to-the-cabinet-wil
These are markets relating to a contentious subject which have very few traders, so I don't put much stock in them.
Last time it was less than a month. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was about the same or even less.
I don’t think anyone knows precisely what Trump is going to do, and different cabinet members may have different conceptions as to what he’s going to do on x or y important decision. No doubt some people’s expectations are going to be shattered very early on, especially if he goes on his executive order binge like he’s promised.
Although this time he’s a lot more prepared (I’m not sure he had much expectation of winning the first time). In 2016 my thinking is that he was just taking recommendations from the GOP, but now he’s picking based on loyalty and experience from the first go-around.
It's not just that he's prepared, it's also that everyone else understands what they're getting themselves into. Last time there were a lot of wavering party members who were still attached to the status quo. Now those people understand that they have no choice but to go all in. It's what the people want.