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
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?