People have lots of justified complaints about the Substack UI. But one thing I really appreciate is that when you minimize a comment on the mobile or regular site, it snaps you to the next comment instead of keeping your scroll depth constant (and therefore ending up 25 comments down the page). Such an annoying feature of Reddit, for example.
Question for med-stats people: Can the sensitivity and/or specificity of diagnostic criteria be estimated based on its inter-rater reliability? If so, how? If not, why not?
What innovations have happened in poker strategy in the last 20 years? Are there strategies that are known to be the best now that go against the previous wisdom?
Speaking as somebody who played professionally for a while maybe 15-20 years ago, there have been *significant* changes at the "shark" or "can win several real tournaments a year" level.
Poker could be thought of as "solved" now, in the sense that computer / AI players are stronger than pretty much all human players and are carefully policed, and this has changed and informed things, but I'm actually unsure how much ongoing insight mining is going on there by human players. There's been significant evolution of thought at the top WSOP levels.
Modern Poker Theory by Michael Ossivado is a good intro to some of the new strategies.
I was reading those international IQ posts from January, and my position now is that on a population wide level, intelligence / IQ is kind of overrated.
It's useful for every society to have a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth, and it's generally useful for everyone to be smart enough to e.g manage their own personal budget. But the intelligence you'd need to balance a budget or figure out how to plan an intercity trip is a floor, which can be lowered with technology and design of user friendly systems. It's very much sufficient for the general population to meet the floor but not bother striving for the ceiling.
The truth is, most people who aren't necessarily super smart can live productive and functional lives by leaning on their social strengths, and by copying what successful people do. Not everyone has to be a revolutionary thinker - it's perfectly acceptable to ask someone else for ideas or simply observe what works and ask.
In fact, I'd argue that often, a method or a model passed through and improved by a hundred or so average intelligence people may outperform something derived from first principles by someone who's got high IQ, because outside of very abstract things - pure mathematics or logic - the former can capture lots more real-world edge cases and variations. Maintaining the kind of social relationships where you can comfortably share information and mutually refine methods is much more important than generating good ideas ex-nihilo.
IQ is good for winning chess games. A lot of things may look like chess games in abstract (business strategy! Building a railway!) but upon closer inspection, every single chessboard is unique.
The boards don't always have the same number of squares, sometimes it's not even square shaped overall, sometimes entire bits are missing which you don't realise until you try to move a piece, also you're blindfolded and can't tell what any of your pieces really are, and you think your opponent is eating your pieces when you're not looking but then they accuse you of doing the same thing and then you both realise that there had been a racoon that has been swiping pieces at random the whole time. But also sometimes a Monopoly token clatters onto the board. And someone else drops in and messes up all the pieces every now and again.
It's still better to know chess strategies than not, but by itself it's definitely not going to win the game. If I had a choice between studying chess (as played on normal boards) and talking to other Chaos Chess players, talking to other players will usually be much more fruitful, because there are game states that you cannot derive from first principles unless you literally know everything and even the highest IQ folk among us have to specialise.
I do consider myself to have slightly higher than average IQ. The main personal benefit this confers is that school was a bit easier and as an adult I occasionally game credit card reward programs for fun, redeemable for 1 - 2 interstate return flights each time, and I can guess how much I'll get paid after tax withholding. A lot of these things are trivially reproducible using websites, apps, or copying what my smarter friends do.
A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield, possibly experimenting a little. A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. A sociable farmer is friends with everyone, and receives the best tips everyone else cares to divulge. It's actually not obvious to me that the high IQ farmer is necessarily going to do best - it kind of depends on the model they're using, whereas if Cunning successfully copies everything relevant (in places where that's possible), they'd probably do decent despite having zero understanding of the underlying principles. Similarly, Sociable receives a huge trove of data points to try, also without needing to understand underlying principles.
And as I get more professional experience, I'm finding that understanding underlying principles is a bit overrated - your model ends up needing so many inputs that the effort to measure / monitor / process becomes disproportionate. The black box approach makes a lot of sense most of the time, and black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
I think you're conceptualizing intelligence too narrowly, as something that's only helpful for solving abstract theoretical problems. My intuition is that meta-skills such as "iterate on your successes and learn from your failures", or "learn from the successes and failures of others", or "do things that are conducive to your goals" are all going to correlate with intelligence/IQ.
If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics. Then rent control would not be a policy with any kind of backing. Energy policy would be a lot sharper.
Example: the airplane on a treadmill. If you bring that up in an average space, you end up with interminable arguments and squabbling. If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood. Lots of policy discourse could be that way!
"If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics."
From my life experience spent mostly in environments dominated by high-IQ individuals -- and since I'm old enough to remember rotary telephones this is shall we say a decent-sized sample -- that is a pretty hilarious prediction.
Also I literally LOLed at this: "If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood."
Not trying to sound cynical here, I'm really not, but honestly -- how many actual very-smart people have you observed interacting with each other in real life?
They are human beings not robots; their IQs are just one variable in how they behave and not the dominant one; etc.
Just really here and on DSL. And not once have I seen someone argue that chemtrails are real, or vaccines cause autism, or that the earth is flat, or that you can cure aids by having unprotected sex with a virgin. All things that are believed and debated in lower IQ spaces. I don’t believe I have seen someone argue for rent control either.
I had a college roommate, literally the smartest individual I met in four years at one of the nation's most-selective colleges, who argued seriously and at length that vaccines were the reason Americans were dying of lung cancer and the warnings on cigarette packs were just governmental nonsense. (And he wasn't even a smoker!)
A former colleague of mine holding two PhDs in the hard sciences was calmly certain not only that Area 51 was real but that the film "Independence Day" (featuring a POTUS discovering that Area 51 was real) was in fact a slick deflection/coverup for the actual Area 51.
The single looniest individual I've ever been acquainted with is a former employee of a relative of mine in the tech sector, a brilliant programmer whose sheer brainpower awed experienced software engineers, and who had to be begged to remember to wear both pants and underwear to the company's offices. (He would remember one or the other, at random as far as anyone could tell, but not both.)
My sister attended the University of Chicago as a student and then joined the staff of a highly-prestigious publication headquartered on campus, and has ten stories similar to the three I just mentioned.
Etc etc. People, not robots. That's all of us regardless of IQs.
People don't have the faintest idea how much emotion and presupppositions and the need to portray themselves as a certain type of character and a huge variety of other factors color their ability to understand something intellectually. And I suspect for each mistake a high-IQ person would never make, there are higher-order mistakes they make instead. Not to mention the fact ant self-observant person makes over time which is that we are all often wrong, even on topics we are sure about.
High IQ people do better on Econ and physics tests. They understand Econ and physics better. Are you saying there is zero correlation between understanding economics/physics and having sensible opinions on economics/physics?
How do you reconcile your anecdotes with Mallards linked study?
I am suggesting, apropos of your newest response, that habits such as straw-manning others' statements are common among both high and low IQ persons. Unfortunately.
More broadly about this topic, two followup points:
(a) To what degree such poor habits are more/less common up or down the IQ scale, I have frankly no idea. And no serious study that I'm aware of has offered an answer to that critical question.
(b) IQ tests measure reasoning ability in the _abstract_, on the page of a test, i.e. separate from interacting with other people. That is a crucial real-world ability. Successful reasoning in the context of interacting with others is also a crucial real-world ability, one for which no good term yet exists ("emotional intelligence" for example is not at all what I'm speaking of here). It is my life observation that the two do not, among real-life human beings out in the actual world, strongly correlate.
The ACX/SSC community is largely formed of people with nontypical neurological traits which cause them to prize truthseeking even when it's socially maladaptive, inhibits personal profit, cognitively discomfiting, or otherwise deleterious to the individual, in a way that neurotypical people broadly do not.
I don't see anything patterns here that leap out. Does MA have a better policy environment than HI? TX and NY have about the same averages, and wildly different policy; same for CA and LA.
No, it couldn't. Once money, or personal gain more broadly, becomes involved, the intelligence resources are diverted to inventing new excuses for the policy that will benefit each given speaker, new contrived explanations for why the correct answer about the treadmill actually isn't true in spite of being observable. Otherwise, why do you think concretely totally discredited ideas like socialism are still given credit academically? Or to take an even clearer example, it's blatantly obvious that sex changes are physically impossible, but due to the nature of their mental illness, transsexuals still crave the counterfactual really strongly, so they bend all their ingenuity toward trying to deny the self-evident. The only distinction between the stupidest and the cleverest in this group is the quality and amount of their sophisms.
No offense, but you're making the classic mistake of naive utopianism here.
(EDIT – also, it's arguable that this is the original purpose of intelligence evolutionarily: not truth-seeking, but persuasion as a way to accrue more resources for oneself and one's offspring, at the expense of others.)
Similar to Jonathan Haidt noting something to the effect that college education doesn't make you have better positions, but just makes you better at inventing reasons to maintain the position you prefer. Broad paraphrase because I don't recall the actual quote.
Nearly all people engage in motivated reasoning, and possibly those who aren't aware of that possibility in themselves are most at risk of it.
How does your hypothesis hold up when tested against empirical data? For example, how strong is the correlation between a country's GDP or median income and the average IQ of its citizens?
Personally, I think you have a wrong mental image of people with high IQ, especially when you're saying things like
> […] a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth […]
> IQ is good for winning chess games.
> A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield […]
High IQ entails so much more than being good at games with simple, known rules. A better description would be "ability to solve problems". For example, you say:
> A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. […] successfully copies everything relevant […]
How do you think this "cunning farmer" is able to decide which other farmer used better methods vs. who just got lucky due to circumstance? Or which methods of another farmer are worth copying vs which are ineffective?
> […] black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
Uh, yeah, "just figuring out what to look at and who to talk to" requires intelligence.
1) Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government
Primary Reading
Article (Kahan, Dawson, Peters, Slovic):
Motivated Numeracy & Enlightened Self-Government
Optional Video
TED Talk: on Cognitive Bias and Numeracy
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Context and Rival Hypotheses
The authors probe why we see persistent public controversies—on gun control, climate change, etc.—despite seemingly overwhelming scientific evidence. They pit two main ideas against each other:
Science Comprehension Thesis (SCT): Claims conflict stems from a public deficit in scientific literacy or logical reasoning. Better education in math/science should reduce polarization.
Identity-Protective Cognition Thesis (ICT): Argues that group identity can overshadow even robust analytical skills. People often interpret data to conform with their cultural or partisan affiliations—particularly on issues coded with “tribal” significance.
(B) The Experiment
Setup: Participants had to interpret the results of an (allegedly) data-driven experiment displayed in a 2x2 contingency table. In reality, the data were designed so that the correct interpretation could be easily masked by heuristics.
Conditions:
Skin-Rash (neutral scenario): Showed whether a new cream helped or hurt patients.
Gun-Control (politicized scenario): Showed whether a city’s ban was linked to increased or decreased crime.
By toggling the headings, they made the “correct answer” either more or less politically comfortable for different ideological groups.
(C) Key Findings
Skin-Rash Condition: Higher numeracy correlated with better performance in data interpretation. SCT supporters might say, “Yes, see? More math skill = less error.”
Gun-Control Condition: However, more numerate participants used their quantitative prowess selectively. They were most accurate only if the correct interpretation matched their existing political stance (e.g., “liberal” participants best interpreted data showing a gun ban reduces crime, “conservatives” best interpreted data showing it increases crime).
Numeracy didn’t help cross partisan lines; it often hardened them, as high-math individuals used logic to reinforce identity-aligned conclusions.
This deepens our sense that polarization can be exacerbated by sophisticated reasoning tools when issues become entangled with cultural or partisan identity.
(D) Broader Implications
Simply boosting STEM education or “critical thinking” may not guarantee cross-partisan consensus on contentious topics (climate, health measures, etc.).
De-polarizing an issue—removing its identity-based cues—might be the more critical step to unlock people’s willingness to process data impartially.
The phenomenon highlights “expressive rationality,” where it’s individually beneficial to remain group-aligned, even if collectively it impedes evidence-based policymaking.
Motivated Numeracy Discussion Questions
Math Skills vs. Bias
Have you seen debates in which the most “informed” or data-savvy voices seem the most entrenched? Why might greater expertise sharpen factional divides rather than foster agreement?
Identity and Cost
The authors suggest maintaining identity is crucial for social standing. How might we reduce the “social cost” of accepting facts that differ from your group’s position?
Role of Communicators
If objective evidence alone isn’t enough, how can science communicators, journalists, or educators frame data in ways that mitigate cultural triggers?
Applications Beyond Guns
Do you see parallels in other conflicts (e.g., vaccines, nuclear power, economic stimulus)? Where might the same dynamic appear?
Implications for Self-Government
The paper’s title references “enlightened self-government.” Under what conditions can democracy thrive if so many policy questions can become “identity-charged”?
2) Lynn Stout’s Critique of Shareholder Primacy
Reading Links (Evonomics)
All from Lynn Stout’s collection: Evonomics: Lynn Stout Articles
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Lynn Stout (1957–2018)
An influential figure in corporate law, governance, and business ethics, Stout questioned whether the mantra of “maximize shareholder value” is legally required or even beneficial. She believed:
Shareholders don’t “own” corporations (a corporation is an entity that owns itself); they own shares.
Corporate law seldom mandates boards to single-mindedly chase short-term share price—that’s more an ideology (Friedman/Jensen & Meckling) than a legal fact.
(B) Articles Overview
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Argues we’re not “homo economicus” in everyday life, but the standard corporate message (“focus solely on profit”) can crowd out altruistic or ethical impulses in investing and board decisions.
Mentions “socially responsible funds” as evidence many shareholders care about ethics, yet too many structures and norms push managers and investors into maximizing short-term returns above all else.
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
Critiques the assumption that hyperactive trading always aids “efficient resource allocation.”
Points out only a small fraction of financial activity goes to underwriting new securities (i.e., raising real capital for companies). The vast majority is secondary market trading, which often adds limited societal value but extracts large fees and fosters short-termism.
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
Explores how the “incentive” model of policy (assuming humans are rationally selfish) can overshadow moral suasion and conscience.
Cites experiments on social dilemmas showing how easily contexts can make us either more cooperative or more selfish.
Warns that focusing too heavily on extrinsic rewards can “crowd out” prosocial norms that hold organizations and societies together.
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Chronicles how the concept gained steam in the late 20th century, especially after Friedman’s and Jensen/Meckling’s essays.
Debunks the idea that corporate law requires maximizing share price, or that it’s always beneficial for all shareholders.
Suggests “satisficing” multi-goal governance—balancing stakeholder interests, growth, employee loyalty, R&D, etc.—can yield better long-term outcomes for both society and many shareholders (especially the diversified, patient, or ethically driven ones).
(C) Collective Takeaways
Stout sees “shareholder primacy” as oversimplifying business realities and ignoring humans’ capacity for moral concern, trust, and long-term relationships.
She dissects how the dominant economic paradigm can ironically degrade shareholder returns overall—akin to “fishing with dynamite,” short-term profit for some but harmful to the system’s health.
A broader perspective on corporate purpose might encourage “sustainable capitalism,” robust corporations, and ethical leadership—contrary to one-size-fits-all share price obsession.
Discussion Questions for Lynn Stout’s Critique
Psychopath vs. Prosocial
In daily life, we show empathy and fairness, yet in markets, we act purely self-interested. Why? Are laws and norms pushing different mindsets?
Wall Street’s Real Value
How can we reconcile the claim that modern finance is essential with the reality that speculation can overshadow real capital formation?
Conscience, Law, and Incentives
If overemphasizing extrinsic incentives crowds out altruistic instincts, how can policy or corporate governance harness pro-social motivations?
Satisficing vs. Maximizing
Stout endorses “satisficing” multiple goals (employee welfare, environment, stable relationships, etc.). Critics say that leads to “fuzzy accountability.” Are there ways to measure or structure multi-stakeholder success without devolving into chaos?
Policy Reform or Cultural Shift?
Should laws be changed to end illusions about “shareholder ownership,” or is the deeper fix about corporate culture, board norms, and investor expectations?
Walk & Talk
We will conclude our main discussion around 4 PM, then transition to an hour-long walk. Feel free to join in for an informal extension of the discussion or casual conversation. Everyone’s welcome, whether you prefer to debate economic paradigms or talk about local events.
Share a Surprise
As usual, if you’ve encountered any surprising articles, personal experiences, or side projects that spark intellectual curiosity, bring them along for our open-floor sharing.
Looking Ahead
Future Topics? We love suggestions—be they theoretical readings or real-world case studies.
Guest Contributors: If you’d like to co-facilitate or highlight a specific area of expertise, let Michael or any ACXLW regular know.
We Look Forward to Seeing You on February 8!
Should any questions arise, please contact Michael Michalchik at the email or number above. Both “motivated numeracy” and Lynn Stout’s insights on corporate ethics promise a lively, eye-opening meetup. Join us for an afternoon of deep and wide-ranging discussion. See you soon!
Forget all this "AI will destroy us" silliness: an actual sweet meteor of death is coming for us in 2032. In just the last 24 hrs the impact probability increased from 1% to 2.3%. This is... moving in a wrong direction... and fast.
This looks like a city killer more than a civilization ending meteorite. Still sucks if it ends up landing somewhere in India where the population density is high.
Most likely a pretty light show over the ocean. But we should know the approximate impact area far enough in advance to arrange for local population density to be zero on That Day.
It is the nature of impact-probability math that the impact probability increases at each reevaluation, until suddenly it drops to zero. There is a 2.3% chance that it will instead go to unity, but *only* a 2.3% chance. That the impact probability was ~1% last time we checked, only means that there was then a 50-50 chance that it would go to zero on the next evaluation, which didn't happen.
And if the asteroid does hit, it will be a sub-Tunguska event; the asteroid will not reach the surface, the damage will be localized, and we will have known the approximate impact area for weeks or months ahead of time. No one will die unless they are both massively unlucky and very stupid.
I’m partially jesting, but only partially. Of course it won’t kill us all, but I’m not sure why you think it won’t reach the surface. The bloody thing is 54 meters across! It will be a nuke without the radiation.
The threshold size for asteroids/whatever to survive passage through the Earth's atmosphere is generally given as 50-140 meters, depending mostly on the composition of the body. At fifty meters, it needs to be basically just a mass of nickel-iron metal, which a small fraction of asteroids are but this one doesn't appear to be.
If it "hits" the Earth, it will break apart in the upper atmosphere, the bigger pieces will break up further and ultimately vaporize, and you'll wind up with a big high-altitude explosion.
The altitude will not be high enough to completely eliminate damage at ground level, and it won't just be Chelyabinsk-style broken windows. But the surface damage will be localized, and there won't be a crater (or, from ocean impact and more worrisome, a tsunami).
I just looked up Chelyabinsk. 18m diameter, so let's assume 27 times as big. Chelyabinsk was estimated to be 30 Hiroshimas, so this would be around 900. Not great! OTOH, Chelyabinsk was est. 400-500 kilotons of TNT equivalent, so 30 times that is 12-15 megatons. Tunguska was est. 20-30 megatons as of 2019.
So, still sub-Tunguska (assuming about the same velocity; I don't know how safe that assumption is).
One could imagine the event being extremely destructive if that blast happens to be over a city, but I have it on good authority that cities are even harder to hit than the earth itself.
Tunguska was pretty nasty though, the only saving grave being it happened over the vast Siberian taiga. The earth is of course mostly covered in water so hopefully this thing blows up over the remote Pacific somewhere.
Yeah I don’t think I’ve ever seen the impact probability that high. I agree with J. S. that it’ll likely drop to more typical e-6 level, but… maybe not…
Some of them might actually be good, if you can compartmentalize and ignore the political messaging. Russian Cinema has been amazing since the very beginning, and despite claims to the contrary, Soviet cinema was incredible. You just have to be able to compartmentalize.
I wish I could find the propaganda videos about how all Europeans were freezing and starving during winter 2022.
I remember seeing a video that seemed like an ad, and it showed "European Winter 2022", "European Winter 2023", "European Winter 2024" with progressively less light on the Christmas tree, and I think in the third video the family ate their hamster.
But there was also a serious news report, naming various European countries and their capital cities (including e.g. Paris and Berlin), describing how people living in these cities have no electricity during Christmas, and how all women need to prostitute themselves to get some food.
Due to the brief fake Trump-Canada trade war I was inspired to learn about Canadian whiskey. Here's where I started and what I learned!
Where I started:
- I'm Canadian
- I don't really drink American whiskey anyway, I mostly like scotch (e.g. Glenfiddich for a popular one or Laphroaig for a peat-smoked one), so this was partly just academic, but still I was curious.
- Back in the day when I was 19 I started with e.g. Crown Royal and Canadian Club from the LCBO, but didn't actually like whiskey until I got into scotch.
- I knew that Canadian whiskey is often called rye. I knew that Canadian whiskey doesn't get the respect it once did. I knew that Canadian Club used to be seen as prestige, like it's the stuff Al Capone smuggled during prohibition and that people like Don Draper liked (he's fictional but it was accurate), but now it's the cheap second-shelf stuff in a plastic bottle at LCBO. So what gives?
What I learned (some details vague, double-check any specifics):
- Once upon a time, way back when, Canadians were drinking wheat whiskey (nobody drinks wheat whiskey anymore), but then Dutch and German immigrants started adding a bit of rye and people liked the little bit of a kick it gives. We called it "rye" even though rye was only a minor ingredient.
- Back in the day, I guess up to prohibition and maybe a bit past then(?), American whiskey would have been pretty rough, e.g. moonshine or young corn whiskey, and Canadian blended whiskey was aged longer and was seen as higher quality and smoother. And of course once prohibition started, smuggled Canadian whiskey was the best stuff Americans could get. Canadian whiskey is still seen as being "smooth."
- Canada legally allows you to call your whiskey "rye" as long as it still has the same general taste and character as this tradition, even though it was never mostly-rye, and even whether or not there's actually any rye in it at all. E.g. Don Draper's assistant calls Canadian Club "rye" even though it's actually mostly corn (canonically, I wonder if he knew?). In contrast, American "rye" legally has to be >51% rye.
- In modern times whiskey fans don't care as much about smooth anymore, they want complexity like you get from an old scotch. Also Americans later got good at making whiskey too like bourbon. These, plus the lack of as-strict standards about ingredients, both contributed to Canadian whiskey not getting the respect it used to.
- There are also some more recent high-rye Canadian whiskeys, though, like Lot No. 40 really is a 100% rye and is reputedly one of Canada's best whiskeys. I just bought a bottle and it's delicious.
- Even for the classic smooth style I guess there's variation, like maybe Wiser's or Forty Creek is better than Canadian Club Original (and also brands have different bottlings, like Canadian Club Classic 12 Year is probably better than Canadian Club Original). And even the cheap stuff is fine if you like that, and it's still good for mixing e.g. with soda or ginger ale.
- (Fun fact, what Canadians sometimes drink and call a "Rye & Ginger," New Zealanders love and call a "C. C. & Dry." I don't know why nobody's made it rhyme, calling it a "Rye & Dry"!)
In my 20s I would take a 16’ Lund from Nelson’s Resort on Crane Lake (Minnesota) through the Namakan Narrows to a weird little Canadian liquor store to buy Cutty Sark on the cheap. No US duties so it was a bargain compared to US prices. Probably saved 5 bucks
In my 30s I went through a Glenlivet phase. Occasionally when I’d order it neat in a bar they would try to pass Cutty Sark off as the pricier quaff. Yuk. Who were they trying to kid?
Present day they all taste pretty yucky.
Recently I went to a scotch tasting with work pals at a local joint calling itself Merlin’s Pub. They were going for a British Isles ambience, the sort of place where you could buy shepherds pie for dinner and see a ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ sign on the wall.
The taste organizers were talking about things like ‘maritime notes’ but I was tasting ‘industrial paint thinner’.
I've been thinking about that issue about which prison criminal transpeople should be sent to. I think there probably isn't a single right answer to that question. You can't put a transwoman sexual offender in a woman's prison for example, but you also also can't put a very feminine post-op transwoman in a man's prison.
Seems like an instance where the decision should be left to the judge.
Also, there must be at least a few lesbian rapists, I wonder how the hell they handle that.
This is a no-brainer. Although I'm sure you are merely posting this to be an edgy bad boy, you actually got this one right. All you have to do is let physically separated inmates call each other on the phone and they won't go insane, the way such confined people otherwise tend to do.
Isn't that person at an especially high risk of getting raped? I think "people" here stands for a specific political faction that apparently now thinks they represent all America.
Liberals aren't particularly fond of trans people either. Something about them compromising women's rights, allegedly. They're not going to bend over backwards just to protect them. It's just the progressives that are a problem, and the new administration seems quite intent on purging them from every position of power in the country.
You're talking about a particular subset of liberals that is A: rather small and B: not particularly influential in liberal circles. And I suspect even most of them do not want to see transwomen being raped in men's prisons.
I don't take in much from news commentators. But I have been listening/ (some watching) to the senate confirmation hearings. OMG some great theater. I've lost most of my respect for Bernie. (I mean he's still Bernie, but he's also now a died in the wool Dem.) And John Kennedy from Louisiana is perhaps now my favorite senator. (He reminds me of J. Stewart from "Mr. Smith goes to Washington".) A few days ago, I sent in a request to my state to change my voter registration. I think I'll probably change it to Republican. (I want to send the biggest FU I can to my former Democratic party.) I know this is a mostly anti-Trump space. (And I think Trump is an asshole, (and when I tell my Trump loving friends this, they mostly agree... yeah he's an asshole.)) But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance. (I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. Yes they may have bad ideas, and yes they will all make mistakes, but to first approximation, they are not evil.)
After some thought, I realized that making a serious attempt at talking about the disconnect I see here would be instructive for both of us.
"I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. "
This right here is part of it. I think that is true for the median politician. I think that might even be true for politicians in the 10th percentile of integrity and decency. I don't think it's true for Trump. Or rather, I don't think Donald Trump's brain maintains any sort of a conceptual separation between "what's good for the country" and "what flatters Trump's ego." In particular, I think the idea that he could EVER help the country by stepping down, stepping back, genuinely cooperating with those that oppose him or effacing himself in any manner is utterly alien to his thinking. And that's exactly what it would take for me to "give him a chance." A very rough, non-exhaustive list of the sort of necessary behavior that would be required for "giving him a chance" to be even a morally acceptable thing to do (in my judgement) might look like this:
--Immediately re-enter the U.S. into the Paris Climate agreement, publicly acknowledge the truth and seriousness of climate change and apologize for his error. Start working with congress on a modest-but-serious package of *additional* climate measure the U.S. will take above and beyond what the agreement calls for, as a mea culpa to the rest of the world and an attempt to make up for lost time[1].
--Publicly admit that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, and that his own repeated denials of this fact (long after his legal challenges were dead) were dishonest, self-serving and an unacceptable attack on the integrity of the nation's electoral process. Make monetary restitution (from his own personal funds) to the families of all those killed in the attack on the U.S., including the rioters and the police who later died by suicide. Make it clear that the restitution is intended as an apology for the major roll he played in creating and fueling that dangerous situation.
--Immediately divest himself of all his personal properties and investments, placing them in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest while he was president. Apologize for not doing so in 2016 and work with congress to draft legislation plainly requiring future presidents to do the same.
--Publicly apologize to the people of Panama, Denmark, Canada and Mexico for his various insults and attacks on their sovereignty. Publicly reverse his position on the tariffs on those countries, and pledge not to repeat the error. Disavow his use of emergency powers to circumvent congress' power to levy taxes and duties.
--Make a real, good faith attempt to convince justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to step down from the Supreme Court, and work with BOTH parties in congress to select replacement justices who are highly qualified, have impeccable records of personal and professional conduct and are broadly agreed to be politically moderate.[2] Begin attempting to propose and study (but NOT enact) a solution to extreme the politicization of the Supreme Court, likely involving some sort of more bipartisan and less exploitable justice selection process. Have a recommendation ready before the start of the 2028 primary season so primary candidates can take positions on it and the American people can use it as part of their selection process.
--Work with congress (again, BOTH parties) to attempt to craft a bi-partisan compromise on immigration as should have been done 20 years ago. "Compromise" here meaning that it still includes immigration restrictions, provisions for enforcing them and reasonable border security, but doesn't try to militarize the border or use heavy-handed and inhumane tactics in doing so.
--Retract his proposed plan for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, apologize to the people of Gaza for saying so, and make a real attempt to stay out of the conflict in Gaza, adopting a maximally neutral position anywhere that his presence is unavoidable.
--Apologize to the U.S. victims of COVID for his poor handling of the initial phases of the crisis, work with congress to improve the U.S. future pandemic preparedness and response and work more closely with health organizations elsewhere in the world. Donate a substantial portion of his personal wealth to some sort of charitable cause helping those harmed by COVID, by way of restitution for the lives his incompetence failed to save.
I'm guessing your reaction will run to something like "wow, that's completely unreasonable." But it really, really is not. There a great many things that I could have put on here but didn't. Everything here is chosen to be geared towards amending some specific harm he has personally done to the U.S. body politic, and I certainly wasn't exhaustive when considering all the harms. None of these involve giving wholly to Democrats in a major way (except the climate change one which is LONG overdue), but rather attempt to build the bipartisan cooperation that has largely disappeared in the past 20 years. And no, nothing less would be sufficient. Abusers are very, very good at convincing people to give them one more chance and ignore past behavior. People of real integrity own up to their mistakes, apologize for them and attempt to make them right. The BARE MINIMUM for Trump to be a morally acceptable president is to offer substantial proof that he can act like a person of integrity, and not an abuser.
[1] Alternately, I could be persuaded that anthropocentric climate change is not happening and that Trump's actions here were correct (though not justified at the time). This would, at a minimum, take something in the nature of a worldwide scientific revolution in which large amounts of new evidence and improved models reshape the field. Or it would take me acquiring a serious concussive injury or an RFK style brain worm.
[2] Note that this would still leave the Supreme court with a Republican advantage, but one in which at least one moderate was needed to agree with any ruling.
So... in order for you to believe that Trump is doing what he sees as the right thing for the country... he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? That's what credibility looks like to you, adherence to liberal dogma? Wow, way to fail the idological Turing test, there.
Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?
If you think admitting Joe Biden won the 2020 election is "adherence to liberal dogma" then you are part of the problem.
It is popular with Republicans to claim there was fraud, but "saying what is popular with your base" is a very different thing from "doing what you think is right for the country."
" he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? "
People who are capable of basic reading comprehension will have noticed that this point was already explicitly address. This would not be him abandoning his politics in favor of mine. This would be him attempting to make genuine restitution for the harmful things he's done, and to make a real effort to arrest the bipartisan fissuring that is rapidly poisoning American political life. YES, that means making compromises. The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem.
"Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?"
That Republican politician should
1. Actually educate himself on the realities of climate change in a way that I guarantee that neither Trump nor most of the Republicans in congress have done.
2. If, after educating themselves, they have actual, reality-based criticisms of the Paris Agreement that don't involve brazen denials of established scientific truth, they may present those to the world and try to hash out an alternative that's more acceptable.
Yes, doing a minimally adequate job of governing does indeed require accepting basic truths of reality that have been well-known for four decades. If you cannot do that much than asking ANYONE to "give you a chance" is nothing more than a con-job.
"The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem."
The problem with your suggestions, yes. I did indeed read your assertion that it isn't unreasonable and understand that you meant it, I'm trying to explain to you how extremely preposterous this looks from the other side of the aisle. Out of your suggestions, the *only ones* that could be legitimately called compromise positions are admitting that Biden won 2020 and putting his assets in trust for the duration of his presidency with an apology for not doing it sooner. The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it. In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for and which would have happened regardless of which Republican had beaten Clinton – is wholly absurd and can seemingly only be motivated by blind rage at you/the left losing that contest, not least since Gorsuch especially is a conscientious upholder of the Constitution and its principles, a far better jurist than any one of the last three Democratic appointments to the court and less prone to vote as part of an ideological block. (Sotomayor in particular I can't recall voting against liberal orthodoxy on legal grounds one single time in her entire tenure, although I speak under correction here as I am not a staunch SC watcher.)
As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most. What matters to me is that I and many others with me prefer Trump's stance here because *we have reality-based criticisms* of the accords and he's willing to *act* on that which is what matters when push comes to shove. When you suggest that in order to be credible he would have to abandon acting on our preference in favor of not only acting on yours but prostrating himself, and that this would constitute compromise rather than a humiliating surrender, you're demonstrating a myopia which is exactly the problem.
Agreeing here but I have no upvote option for some reason, perhaps because I'm a new visitor. Don't understand, fir instance, why suddenly Kavanaugh and Gorsuch ought to step down because they aren't near enough to liberal opinion.
I do think Trump badly failed on Covid and, as far as I can determine, there isn't enough substance to the 2020 stolen election narrative. And his character is far from perfect. He does plenty I like and a fair amount I'm not crazy about. But he was a needed correction to the direction our country had taken IMHO.
"As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most."
This right here. This is the ENTIRE problem. ALL of it. 100%.
Not because what you said is true. But because it is false. It is extremely, extremely false and you believing it makes it *quite thoroughly impossible* to have any productive dialog.
YES, people DO have principled beliefs and reality based opinions and YES some of those people are politicians and YES some of them bloody well do use those as a basis for decisionmaking. When you say "none of them on either side" I think that is quite telling. I think you are seeing uncommonly clearly out of one eye. I think you are looking at the people on your side, going "wow, yeah, they're all scumbags who don't care what's true" and projecting that to the other side because if it's true of the people who are FOR you, then how much more true *must* it be of people who are AGAINST you.
Now, don't think for a second from what I said that I don't think many Democratic politicians are also scumbags. I've never been a Democrat. I've never liked the Democrats. When I lived in the U.S. I would grudgingly hold my nose and vote for Democrats fairly often--we'll get to why in a second--but I never thought for a minute they were great people. They were adequate. HOWEVER, they were scumbags in the way that all politicians are scumbags. They'd sometimes do shady deal, dirty tricks, lack spine just when you wanted them to have it, talk out of both sides of their mouths, and have scandals that proved that they lacked moral fiber. I could write quite a number of words on the failings of one Joseph Biden, for example, who I am proud to have never voted for.
But the difference when I looked across the aisle was night and day. Not the difference in run-of-the-mill scumbaggery, mind you. Count up the shady deals and dirty tricks and maybe you'd come out with advantage D and maybe you'd come out with advantage R. The difference was exactly what you say is true of all politicians. Only it isn't. There was an ALARMING lack of reality-based opinions on the right. Climate change denial is the largest, most alarming one of those: this is understanding-the-world on easy mode and you guys are FAILING IT SO BADLY. Fifty years, man. This has been known and studied for fifty years. But no shortage of other examples abound: COVID takes the gold star for the *fastest* retreat from reality that I've ever seen any group do, but things like well-understood facets of American history[1], basic contours of current events...the list goes on. Democratic politicians sometimes waffle or weasel or lack spine, but they tend to stick largely in the vicinity of the truth, and their policies reflect it. Republican politicians will shoot of into cuckooland if their base demands it--not all of them mind you, Mike Pence kept his spine and "his side" literally tried to kill him for it--but far too many. How many "2020 election truthers" are there among today's elected officials? How about sometime Qanon followers or Pizzagate belivers[2]? Fewer, for sure, but one would be too many. I'd have loved to live in a world where I could vote against the scummy Democrats, but the only alternative I was ever offered wasn't just unpalatable, it was downright loony.
And then I talk to the voters that put them in office, and I see why. Anyone with spine gets primaried out. Or, y'know, has an angry mob try to hang them. The thing that I started this with, the "there's no reality-based opinions, just rhetorical bludgeons thing?" That's not the politicians. That's the voters. That's the Trumpers. Literally yesterday there was someone in the comments of Scott's government-spending thread basically saying "well clearly I'm not going to believe it any time a liberal says something will cause a bunch of deaths." That's a damn GOVERNMENT PROGRAM. The records are meticulously kept and open to the public. You can CHECK. Any time of Facebook I see anything posted about climate change or COVID or the scientific process in general there's a *flood* of comments about how "scientists always find whatever they're paid to find." I don't have to ask what party those people are from. And that. View. Is. INSANE. It is nuts. I've spent much of my life around scientists: most of them won't shut up about the minutia of their fields unless you shout at them. Nearly all of them could be making better money elsewhere. And all the really important scientific conclusions are shared by the *worldwide* scientific community. And again, I could go on. A certain fraction of the U.S. right wing seems to have convinced itself that there is NO TRUTH, ONLY POLITICS. The the ONLY thing you need to know about someone to gauge their trustworthiness or evaluate ANY claim they make is their political affiliation. And so *of course* they discover that more and more of the scientists are against them: if you can't even *conceive* of there being objective truth, how can anyone from the community of people who devote their lives to figuring it out *ever* reach you?
"The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it."
Mate, the fact that you believe this is TERRIFYING. Do you know what I would have done if Hillary Clinton had tried to overturn the 2016 election? I'd have denounced her. As loudly and publicly as I could have. A great many people who opposed Trump would have joined me. Do you know what I felt when I heard someone had taken a shot at Trump? Horror and dismay. I hate Trump more than I've hated almost anyone I can think of, and I would have given *absolute hell* to any Democratic politician who did anything other than denounce the assassin. If I discovered Obama or Biden had used the privileges of their office to ply foreign leader for dirt on Trump? I'd have called for THEIR impeachment too. If the Democrats had tried to pack the Supreme court, I'd have been out there writing paragraphs about how "yes, I know they started it, but this is a flatly unacceptable escalation."
" In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for..."
Right, remember where I started? About "wanting what's best for the nation." Sometimes leaders have to fix problems that are *not* their fault. Sometimes they have to take one for the team. Sometimes they have to make it not all about them. And yes, Gorsuch wasn't his fault and has been a decent jurist in many ways: McConnell was still in the wrong when he left that spot open, and hasn't even made a pretense of not being a hypocrite on that one. But Kavanaugh was a Trump pick and the issue isn't "Republicans got another supreme court justice," it was "Republicans decided they were going to ram the appointment through before the midterm, no matter how much basic decency they had to throw away." If Trump had made a different pick from day 1, or withdrawn Kavanaugh and picked someone with a modicum of integrity--who would have been confirmed after the midterm, Republicans kept the senate--he'd not be mentioned here. Again, the issue isn't "Republicans got to pick too many justices," it's "Republicans have been more and more open about manipulating the selection process for political power, and a body that was supposed to be considered somewhat impartial now appears flatly untrustworthy to many" And I'll grant that Republicans also had feeling about the court in the Obama years. Hence "finding some actual moderates to put on the court, while keeping the balance tilted towards Republicans." Hence "offering solutions to help the selection process produce a trustworthy court--trustworthy to *everyone.*" It is really, really BAD if a large portion of Americans (on either side) feel that the deepest root of their justice system is fundamentally unjust.
The things on my list were carefully chosen. The common denominator isn't "Democratic politics" and the fact that you think they were is, once again, terrifying. The point is that I'm watching the country I once called home *tear itself to pieces* and any time I try to COMMUNICATE THAT I get sneers and derision and an insistence that I'm trying to trick you. No, the things that you are calling "Republican politics" are not normal and usual, and OK. Bush was a crappy president in my eyes, but he'd have threatened his allies, denied a deadly pandemic, whipped up a mob to try to steal an election or call for fucking ETHNIC CLEANSING. I'd take eight guaranteed years of Romney or the ghost of McCain over one more year of Trump in a heartbeat. There are lots of issues near and dear to my hear that were nowhere to be seen: nothing about abortion, nothing about guns, nothing about taxes, nothing about the ordinary drop-some-bombs-on-backwater-countries-for-iffy-reasons sort of foreign policy. Republicans are going to do things I don't like in all of those areas, and they *should* if they win: that's what votes are for. But there are lines that should not be crossed, and Trump has spent eight years shitting on every one of those lines he could reach. Everything on that list, EVERYTHING was about one of three things: fundamental truth, basic human decency or bipartisan cooperation. The things that WILL destroy American if you keep treating them as conveniences to be discarded any time you think it will score you another win.
[2] I can already hear the retorts about wacky things Democrats believe. Please stop before you type them. Take a breath. Consider. Are they *really* on the same level as a literal troll story made up by 4chan?
Agreed about the COVID and stolen election, departures from reality on the Republican side. The again, Democrats have bought into the transgenderism narrative despite the ton of evidence against all its core assertions (evidence which is so assiduously kept out of the mainstream media that I grant you they simply aren't aware of it. But are willing to buy into the idea that those who are trans-skeptics are motivated by ignorance and bigotry rather than doing the logical thing and simply reading up on the trans-skeptic position. See the PITT substack for a very incomplete starter read).
And for some reason Democrats take positions on law and order that are not based in reality and permit tons of crime.
As to "ethnic cleansing", these are words, meaning nothing. It's not unreasonable or immoral to think that moving the Gazans elsewhere will be better both for them and Israel. Keeping them in Gaza just guarantees more unending strife for them and their children.
" But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance."
The entire nation already did that. It ended with an attack on the nation's capital, attempting to end a two-century old democratic tradition. I'm generally pretty forgiving, but if you can't look at that and say "uh, maybe no more chances for that guy in particular," you've gone well past forgiving and well into quokka. It's not like there weren't dozens of other people the Republican Party could have tapped who *didn't* have a history of doing that, if that was something they actually found in any way upsetting.
Oh Bernie is right about a lot of things. (Take over by big corporations, which have taken over much of government.) He could easily get on the Trump train... but he's somehow infected with TDS from those around him. I'm perhaps a Bernie bro having watched him on Rogan.
I think it's completely logical for Bernie to hate Trump. Bernie hates people who have a lot of money, that has almost always been his position. He's very consistent that way.
Welcome to the ass end of Hollywood. You work for the least desirable developement company that gets any work at all, so you really can't afford to be choosy.
Your latest assignment is to come up with a film that includes the following bit of dialog.
"Have I served in combat? You should understand that I serve on an Ohio-class submarine. We don't get in gunfights with raghead militias. We're the gatekeepers of the apocalypse. We fire one missile, we wreck a country. We fire the full stack, we destroy the world. So no, I have not served in combat."
Small-town teen comedy featuring wacky neighbors. This line is coming from the absurd redneck stereotype who drunkenly uses his military experience to hog the karaoke machine.
An action movie where terrorists with a stolen nuclear warhead have taken over [insert thing with lots of civilians here], and the only available people who can Save the Day are the brand new Public Affairs lady for [thing with lots of civilians] and Civilian guy Attending [Thing] who happens to be a retired US Navy Chief Missile Technician and thus is the only person who can Disable the Nukes Before the Terrorists Can Use Them
(The MT would have had some weapons training as a member of the security force, so he can be at least somewhat credible threat to the terrorists).
Edited; Thing With Lots of Civilians should be a Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney-like Cruise (good luck getting the Mouse to buy off on this), Attractive Female Lead (formerly Public Affairs Lady) should be one of the assistant producers for all the shows (so you can explain her knowledge of the ship and where to go) and Attractive Male Lead (formerly Civilian Guy) should be there as the Best Man for his Sister's Wedding, who has always loved Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney's shows and wanted to get married on their cruise (so you can explain why he's there but also leave him single for the inevitable romance)
Adaptation of The Producers with a low-end barroom braggart substituted for Hitler. Opening number features corny, earnest Ohio workers on lunch break at the Ohio-sub factory. Nose of the sub sticking out of the building and daisies popping up everywhere. Lying barroom drunk staggers among the singing worker-dancers, and they're popping daisies in his pockets.
The guy who said that is only three ounces below the Navy's upper weight limit, has a neckbeard, and has paid thousands of dollars for Andrew Tate conferences and subscriptions.
A film about a grizzled, down-on-his-luck Hollywood screenwriter who has been forced descent to working on a rewrite of an execrable submarine-themed action movie to make ends meet, who ends up drunk in a bar, quoting the worst lines of dialogue from the original script contemptuously to the bartender, prompting him to start trying to turn his life around with unexpected results.
The first thing that occurs to me is to file the serial numbers off of The Hunt for Red October. Some kind of spy thriller involving submarines and rogue captains, maybe reverse the plot and have an American boomer captain forge false orders and go rogue. Depending on where he's going with it, the heroes could be a CIA/Navy joint team trying to get ahead of the sub, sneak on board somehow when it puts into port, and retake control of it.
Failing that, make a romantic comedy or goofy buddy movie where two of the lead characters are an enthusiastic but naive young man who befriends a jaded submarine crewmember while he's on leave and they get into hijinks together.
"Chief Johnson Goes to Washington puts a bit of backspin on an old formula. Johnson (J.K. Simmons) retires from the Navy after a long career, and runs for office in an obscure congressional district. He wins and heads to DC determined to fix the mess with a bit of directness and common sense, which he has plenty of. Several misadventures later, Johnson has discovered that complicated problems defy simple solutions, and ugly compromises have powerful constituencies defending cherished entitlements on both sides.
"The resulting film is hard to recommend. Simmons does what he can and his younger costars put in the work, but the film is talky and the camera work is static. There are a lot of people monologuing in offices. The one bit that does shine is the fidelity to the underlying material. Both of the script writers are former congressional staffers, and it really shows when they dive deep into obscure details of housing policy and water rights, to name just two areas. This one seems destined to be a cult favorite of armchair policy wonks, but everyone else should go watch something else."
What projects are pushing forward "data structures + algorithms = programs" *with funding*; stl is kinda getting old and I doubt stepov will do a major rewrite, it seems like no one does computer science where the goal is to produce programs with less code gets paid. Its all ai, cryto, new languages with hype, etc.
I strongly suspect rust implements a subset of the stl that they can convince a compiler is memory safe; which truth be told is not a goal I think will be fruitful
"I spend months and wrote a research paper about how to convince a rust compiler to work on my doubly linked list" is less good *by allot* then "I spent an hour on a doubly linked list its over there, heres all my algorithms and data structures that are all in the same style"
It seems like the official death toll for the Bihar Famine was 2353 (maybe the real number is higher), and that seems to be the last famine that caused widespread death in India. The bengal famine caused around 4 million deaths, before that there was 1876 famine that has an 8.2 million deaths, again under the British raj (during which wheat was still being exported to London at regular rates). If you just want a history of all the grievances Indians have towards the British Raj, any school textbook in India will suffice. Countless Indian Historians and economists have written papers and books on this. I think it's more useful to analyze the incentive structure that leads to these extreme misgovernance.
The British people I do not think were uniquely evil, they still valued justice, kindness and all other good virtues that most populations valued. They were racist, that is true, but racism was the norm of that time, and racism alone cannot explain the bad governance of the British Raj. Maybe it can explains the average humiliation they made Indians endure, or the lopsided justice system every time a Brit was involved but there are bigger problems to look at.
The fundamental issue is that the colonial system hired administrators whose career was beholden to a fickle group in London far more than the population they ruled, and once they were done, they left and often went back to London to end their lives, without having to deal with any of the havoc they caused in their territory. If anything good resulted from their administration, it had to happen due to their sense of honor that regularly was at odds with directives from London, or it happened because of their fondness for the land, which while present was clearly not enough as none of them actually chose to live in the country they administered unlike every other king, in human history. If Lee Kuan Yew was administering Singapore for China and went back to China after his 5 year term, he might consider all these policies reasonable:
1. Singapore can best function as an agricultural exporter to China, since China is industrializing well and it doesn't make sense to compete with China that clearly has more resources.
2. He can play the Malays off against the Tamils, so that they are too distracted fighting each other and make his administration easy.
3. During wartimes or emergency, all resources in Singapore need to be diverted to protect the motherland, because that is what matters the most.
If you change the incentives and tell Lee that his faith is forever sealed with Singapore, you end up with the opposite conclusion in each of these policies.
Prior to 1920 or so, irrigation collapsed in British controlled india. The consequences were dire. This was an astonishing fact for me, because maintaining proper irrigation is kind of the main task of any government beyond basic military defense.
The British would build shiny new dams in nodes of their profitable trade network, and leave the rest of the country to rock
To summarize for those who don't like to click links:
Andreas Koureas on X argues that the Bihar Famine was not caused by Churchill's neglect or malice. He claims the famine was caused by a natural disaster, compounded by an inability to bring in food from Singapore, Burma, Malaya, or the Philippines because they were currently occupied by the Japanese. Japanese ships were a significant threat to shipping in the Bay of Bengal, capturing or destroying merchant vessels. The British Empire's shipping capacity was stretched to the limit at the time because of WWII. Despite this, as soon as Churchill heard about the famine he authorized 100,000 tons of grain to be shipped from Australia to India, despite the risk of Japanese raiding. Between August of '43 and the end of '44 1 million tons of grain were shipped to India. In April of '44 Churchill sent a telegram to Roosevelt asking for US assistance in shipping grain to India, which was refused because US shipping was at capacity due to the war. Andreas then argues that while Churchill said several racist things about Indians he did not have malice towards them.
This is a good analysis. Occasionally I see arguments for colonialism from right wing people as a solution to certain third world countries consistent underdevelopment, but it always ignores this (extremely important critique).
Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people. At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule).
"At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule)"
Will he be *your* warlord, though? The kind of place likely to have been colonized also was the kind of place lacking in national identify in the first place, so while their may have been someone who was from nearby, they may not have been of the same ethnicity. In the case of India, I am aware of a defense of the Raj from apparently very right-wing Indian elements that prior the Raj, the Indians suffered from the worst of *both world*: brutal, exploitative, colonial administrators who stayed for 1000 years (eg Muslims). At least the Raj left, after all-the Mughals are still there.
It isn’t that simple. Akbar was a tolerant Mughal Ruler, who decided to invent his own religion when ruling over the land. Mughals had times of relative peace between the religions. It’s just that when the Brits came, they were witnessing Aurangzeb who was probably the worst Mughal ruler in all of India, who decided to wage the most expensive war in Mughal History against South India, not win that war which eventually led to a dissolution of the Mughal empire into the Marathas and other small parts.
There was not an Indian Identity, but there was a civilizational identity. For example Hindus used to still gather for the “Kumbh Mela”, every 4-12 years like clockwork through all the different rulers they’ve had, they often had to cross kingdoms to do this pilgrimage.
The question is were the colonial rulers better/ worse than previous rulers India had. Of course the British view, and the dominant view of the 19th and 20th century is that they were the best rule India ever had. And yet when they left, India was one of the poorest countries in the world, not just Asia. There were few periods in history that had worse Hindu-Muslim Tensions than when British left, which led to the disastrous partition. They also created an Anglicized Socialist Ruling Class, that was determined to convert India into the next Russia or something similar, though to be fair, Russia and China beared the worst of that dynamic. It’s hard to look at the facts and think India was some well ruled country.
The only argument I see that might hold some water, was this was something that even happened to China that was never fully colonized by the west, so it was just something that happened even under capable rule. It’s a counterfactual we won’t know the answer to. I don’t fully buy it.
>Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people.
TBH that doesn't seem like a problem confined to colonialism, at least not any more. Plenty of senior politicians and civil servants in western democracies end up with lucrative positions in international corporations, more or less entirely insulated from conditions in the country they used to help run. When Rishi Sunak unexpectedly called the last British election, there were people suggesting he had a job lined up at some American firm and wanted to leave office quickly so he could take it up; I've no idea if this was true, but the fact it was considered credible tells you a lot.
I can't think of any examples of a prominent US politician who left office and then wound up living and working in a foreign country. I'm certain it has happened occasionally, but I am skeptical that it is common. Working for the US office of a large multinational corporation, yes, *that's* quite common, but that still leaves one pretty strongly coupled to the conditions in the US. As does having your extended family living in the United States.
Yes, it's mostly non-American politicians moving to America, for reasons others have said. But I do think that "conditions in the US" is too broad a brush. The sort of conditions that are good for, say, BlackRock or Goldman Sachs might not be good for your old constituents in Nowheresville, West Virginia.
My mind pretty quickly summoned the example of John C. Breckinridge. Admittedly, that was during a rather unusual time in US history, not at all common, just as you qualified.
As the richest country in the world, we don't need to go overseas to earn big bucks; they come to us and give us the big bucks. And there's no shortage of politicians and Formers that get paid by foreign entities for lobbying (John Allen getting paid by Qatar comes to mind immediately, as does Sue Mi Terry, although she was getting paid shockingly little for her services).
You can make both more money and gain influence in the US than any other Western country. You could work for some NGO in London and have a respectable amount of influence but you won't make a lot of money. You could work for some think tank in Dubai or Singapore and make tons of money but won't have any influence. America is the perfect place for both, so you will see some politicians from other Western countries move to the US but rarely the other way around.
Right, so the "exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people" dynamic being discussed, really doesn't work in the United States. And probably doesn't work terribly well in the rest of the industrialized world. Nobody with any sense is going to "utterly disregard" the people of the country they are going to finish out their career in, and that their grandchildren are probably going to grow up in. That doesn't make them benevolent altruistic civil servants, but it puts a cap on their villainy that isn't there for colonial administrations.
Perhaps there’s something of value when one has strong ethnic and cultural ties to the land. For the same reason a white leader of an African country would be accused of not representing the interests of the people, so is Sunak in the land of the Anglo-Saxons.
British elites loved their empire so much that when they lost the land they just invited in all their former subjects. Don't think they expected that within a generation their former subjects will become their rulers lol(Apparently Indians own more property in London than whites and the British finance sector in my experience nowadays is disproportionately Indian as well).
- my Personal Moral Responsibility for helping avert ASI dystopia
Hear me out.
I am seriously anxious with AGI/ASI. If we were all going to die and it was certain, I could theoretically accept that. But "NOT KNOWING WHETHER OR NOT I CAN use my mind and flesh to help avert catastrophe", that keeps me up at night. No really, it's torturing me. Imagine if you were living in Ukraine and the bombs were falling and you had computer skills... how could you look yourself in the mirror if you didn't work in some "technological warfare" operation?
Meanwhile, there is 1 thing in this world where I have some "unique planning and insight": A simulation game of the Middle Ages. I've been planning it for 4+ years.
How could these possibly be related?
With Alignment, doesn't at least SOME of the problem come down to "weights/opinions/value-judgements" as well as "how to most beneficially conceptualize reality" Doesn't AI Alignment require "keeping more of the AI agents weighted in a 'vaguely-defined beneficial way' than not"?
And won't it be an ongoing problem? And if so, couldn't "we all" contribute, in a way, by molding our concepts, discourse, and cultural-expression in a more pro-social way?
Enter the "game"....................................................................................
If you've ever played historical strategy games, you know they can be overly-focused on hard power: becoming the largest, richest, widest.
While this reflects a certain truth about civilization, it is VERY incomplete. Individuals-and-groups also seek beauty, stability, justice, moral good, truth, honor, reputation, comforts, etc. Not all dreams are so "imperial".
AND
People don't always seek them in the order of Maslow's Pyramid. People can and DO sometimes sacrifice things "at the bottom" for the sake of things "at the top". Sometimes temporarily. Sometimes permanently.
I have plans for a game that's more complex: one that doesn't hide the "brutishness", but is still life-affirming and pro-social. I want a game where it is just as fun and interesting to "build peace", "build justice" or "build culture" as it is to build empires.
It's not that the game would introduce any new views of history that don't already exist on the web... but if it successfully influences other developers and players... maybe it can magnify these particular views... like a sort of "Grand Suggestion" to our culture and AI. Maybe not enormous in impact, but large compared to what I could achieve by commenting on ACX :-P.
If one suffers from war in Ukraine, they might leave. It's not that one's support might allow Ukraine decisively win. Comparing ASI fears to the war is gloomy.
(and in case it's not clear, deep down I'm seeking answer to the following...)
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO TOWARDS HELPING AVERT ASI DYSTOPIA?
Is there anything REALISTIC that someone ELSE can do? (which I can contribute to?) (granted, I live with a disability and my days can be hell or at least very unproductive sometimes)
Not on that timescale. But I would say his administration's actions since inauguration are a much better support of the flight 93 election case made 9 years ago than his first term. You could reasonably assess what he is doing now as having lots of two way risk ( high rewards actually possible) without being MAGA.
None of that was plausible in his first term. It was more like choosing to masturbate as the plane went down (if you wanted to embrace the premise that the plane was in fact going down)
Yes, I'm actually beginning to like him now. I figured his second term would just be him running in circles giving outrage speeches for 4 years. Who knew a President could actually do things? Lord knows where it'll all end up but it sure is fun to watch for now.
I don't want the US responsible for Gaza, but his proposal is 100% the correct one and it's refreshing to see a President with the balls to actually say it. Palestine is a failed state and will never be viable. Put it in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Yes, forced removal of an entire population is B-A-D. Not the least because it WILL involve murdering a large number of them. Guaranteed. If people with guns come to forcibly remove you and your families from their homes, fighting back is clearly, *obviously* an act of self defense.
If basic human decency is not a reason for you to oppose this, public opinion really ought to be. Much of the rest of the world does not share your cavalier attitude about forcing civilians from their homes at gunpoint and murdering those that resist. The international reputation of the U.S. WILL be badly damaged by such a move. There will be economic, diplomatic and military consequences for many, many years to come.
So is leaving Gazans there going to result in less suffering for them and more thriving than moving them to another location?
Jews moved a lot across the course of history and I for one am glad my ancestors chose (circa 1900) to leave both Russia and Germany and emigrate to the US.
I would posit that the Gazans would be extraordinary better off to move to the US than stay there, even if moved forcibly, though that's not going to be an option and they will be lucky if any decent country takes them.
Moving them to the US is, as you note, not on the table.
Moving them en masse to Egypt, Jordan, and similar countries, which don’t want them, to be housed and fed on those countries’ dime, is quite a different proposition.
A quick google says US per capita gdp is $82,769.40 and we have constant tension over every penny our government spends “helping foreigners” rather than the domestic population.
The per capita gdps of Egypt and Jordan are, respectively, $3,457.50 and $4,455.50
Even when refugees are few and a country is wealthy and accepting the with open arms, they don’t get the best that country has to offer. If we send these people en masse, to countries which lack wealth, over those countries’ objections, it is willfully naive to think they will be well taken care of.
That they will recieve anything remotely like “a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony” is staggeringly unlikely. “Barely resourced tents in the middle of the desert” is the far greater probability.
This is vanishingly unlikely to look anything like your ancestors moving to the US circa 1900. It is, however, uncomfortably likely to resemble my ancestors experience of being internally relocated within the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. “We aren’t *killing* you, just forcibly moving you to barely resourced tents in the middle of the desert, where we are sure you’ll figure things out somehow” is pretty much TLDR for the Armenian Genocide.
Moving them to another location will involve you fighting a bloody war with them, and them spending the next generation holding a grudge of the sort that inspires international terrorist movements and impedes local economic development. This will probably result in a great deal of suffering for them, and a fair bit for you as well.
The idea that, because you explain to them how you are trying to alleviate their suffering and how this will improve their lives in every way, and they then go along with it peacefully rather than picking up every weapon in sight and trying to kill you, is just another version of the hopelessly naive "they will greet us as liberators!" fantasy.
Even if what you are saying is true, it will not work and a great deal of harm will be caused.
If they don't have to die then ethnic cleansing isn't that bad. The only reason it gets a pearl-clutching response is because people view it as a synonym for genocide.
If that's your definition then the partitioning of India was ethnic cleansing.
I hope Gaza gets power-washed. It's a failed state and nothing can change that. Let it die. It's better for the Gazans and it's better for the world.
Ethnic cleansing is very widely regarded as being very very bad. Your saying "it isn't that bad", no matter how confident you are in your moral reasoning, isn't going to change you and it isn't going to isolate you from the real and substantial blowback that will ensue if you do such a thing.
And if you do such a thing while flying the American flag, it isn't going to isolate *me* from the blowback. So I'd very much prefer that you not do that.
The partition of India resulted in about 1 million deaths to displace between 12 and 20 million people, depending on who's counting. That doesn't strike me as an example of good solutions to ethnic tension!
(And also, let's not forget that the Nazis started off by saying "move the Jews somewhere else" and then moved to extermination once they discovered no other countries would take them. Where are you planning to send the Gazans, and what are you going to do to Gazans who don't want to leave or can't find anywhere to go?)
The partition of India was an ethnic cleansing. That isn’t a controversial take and also doesn’t overstate the reality or imply that it was some second Holocaust.
But the real question here is what happens next? Pushing everyone out of Gaza doesn’t remove its problems, just disperses them to other countries. If you think Palestinian terrorism from the Gaza Strip is bad, wait until you have to deal with Palestinian terrorism from all the countries they’re expelled to. It’s happened before and it would happen again.
what if someone said Israel should be in the dustbin of history where it belongs?
oh right, half the Middle East already believes this, and will continue to believe this, and will believe this more adamantly after the ethnic cleansing that's being proposed
better yet, why not leave "apartheid" in the dustbin of history?
>what if someone said Israel should be in the dustbin of history where it belongs?
Then that person would be so stupid they practically drooled and I would be worried about their ability to feed themselves. Israel has 52k of per capita GDP and produces more than terrorism. That's not even approaching a coherent argument.
No one cares about your delicate sensibilities. Be offended all you want, Palestine is still a failed state. All the sob stories in the world won't change the economic reality there. They can't govern, control, or sustain themselves. Just give it up already.
I believe Israel should exist, because there's human beings who live there and it's not their fault they live there. And those people have value.
But otherwise, what is Israel contributing to the World, on balance, other than one crisis after another? And Netanyahu actively funded Hamas as part of his 4-D Chess Realpolitik Superbraining:
> Despite limited natural resources, intensive development of the agricultural and industrial sectors over the past decades has made Israel largely self-sufficient in food production, apart from grains and beef. Imports, totaling $96.5 billion in 2020, include raw materials, military equipment, investment goods, rough diamonds, fuels, grain, and consumer goods. Leading exports include machinery, equipment, software, cut diamonds, agricultural products, chemicals, textiles, and apparel; in 2020, exports reached $114 billion.
Israel has the second-largest number of startup companies after the United States and the third-largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies. It is the world leader for number of start-ups per capita and has been dubbed the "Start-Up Nation". Intel and Microsoft built their first overseas research and development facilities in Israel, and other high-tech multinational corporations have opened research and development centres in the country.
So they have an economy with imports and exports. And they're populated by transplants who could just as easily live in the Bay Area. How does this, on-balance, contribute to the world?
I just had a lot of fun asking chatgpt:
"how much of Israel's wealth is attributable to rich "first world" foreign immigrants with good education?" It was fun and made me feel very smug :-P.
If Israel were never founded but instead all this capital and brain investment stayed in Europe, wouldn't there have been a proportionate rise in "software and start-ups" in Europe by today?
Or, if the Jewish diaspora landed in............... the Island of Timor, and billions (trillions?) of dollars of foreign investment was poured in over decades, would that prove the original Timorese people were always culturally inferior and unfit to rule? (since they couldn't attract waves of brains and capital)
If the whole brainy population of San Francisco decided to relocate to Jamaica, should the inferior Jamaican people get pushed into a ghetto?
(yes, I know the danger of rhetorical questions. someone will answer them)
Israel is smart and wealthy because the smart and wealthy chose Palestine as the national equivalent of Pied-à-terre. But their actions and choices have also caused a lot of suffering and chaos.
Perhaps Israeli history has "subtracted" from the world.
No change, I remain impressed at his ability to actually solve problems instead of talking around them. The two state solution is not going to happen, and neither is the one state. While Trump's proposed plan has a lot of problems it has the benefit that it would actually solve the issue. I have not seen an alternative plan that would plausibly end the cycle of death and destruction in Gaza.
Agreed. Do these critics actually have a better plan? No, they just enjoy criticizing Trump and preening about how moral they are for "supporting" Palestinians. Why not try doing something that addresses the problem?
Ethnic cleansing won't work for the very obvious reason that Palestinians don't want to leave and are intent on destroying Israel, as demonstrated by their refusal to give up on the right to return during past peace negotiations. Those peace negotiations were primarily administered by the US and various peace deals were brokered between Israel and other Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan by the US. Trump's inflammatory remarks undermine decades of US foreign policy and contemporary relations between the US, Israel, and the Middle East countries. It's not just that what he's saying is retarded - it is obviously harmful to anybody not an accelerationist about war.
Calling for ethnic cleansing is an impressive, problem-solving, go-getter attitude now, apparently. Did we go back in time to the 1800s? I'm very glad that I'll never have to travel on an American passport again.
Trump's Gaza comments were so obviously stupid that even his fellow Republicans criticized them and tried to walk them back. Seeing the ACX comment section fawning over it was the last thing I ever expected.
I expected it. The local Trumpers are extremely vocal. I suspect a lack of gainful employment in that sector. Way too much free time. Anomie needs to get a job, especially. Although I'm not sure he's old enough to work.
It would not be about their ethnicity any more than sending members of the Italian Mafia to prison would be. If a people cannot live in peace with its neighbours, I don't see why it should be accorded special inalienable rights to the land it lives on, any more than a murderer has an inalienable right to stay in his home and not be sent off to prison.
Giving people rights that aren't paid for by responsibility is a terrible idea.
No, it’s my position that issues like sovereignty or “ethnic cleansing” rely on treating a body of people as a collective whole. On the individual level, of course not every resident of Gaza is a member of Hamas, but on the collective level, this is what giving a measure of autonomy to the people of Gaza has produced.
"It would not be about their ethnicity any more than sending members of the Italian Mafia to prison would be."
That is rank, stinking bullshit and I think you know it. Arrests are not made on the basis of "being part of the Italian mafia" and CERTAINLY not on the basis of "being Italian." Arrests are made for CRIMES. Against people suspected of committing CRIMES. Further proof is required of ACTUAL CRIMINAL CULPABILITY before decisive action is taken.
Arrests are NOT made against the families, friends and neighbors of people who commit crimes, the are made against ONLY against those who were suspected of actually being involved. They are most certainly not made on the basis of ethnicity and location alone and you are damn well aware of that. Capturing Hamas militants--people who have actually known to have picked up arms or directly aided in attacks--and imprisoning them is WORLDS apart from uprooting families at gunpoint and shipping them off to somewhere they will be less inconvenient.
Collective punishment is explicitly forbidden under the Geneva Convention. There is not the faintest legal question that anything like this would be allowable under international law. If you are genuinely too ignorant to have the faintest clue what you're talking about, better to stay silent.
All your ranting and raving only makes you look insecure. If you had good arguments, you could afford to be civil.
Now, my point was about the relevance of the word ETHNIC in your phrase "ethnic cleansing". If the region were cleansed of the Palestinian people, it would not be because of their ethnicity, but because they couldn't live in peace with their neighbours.
As for the point that has you foaming at the mouth now, you seem to want to have it both ways. When it comes to sovereignty, you want to treat the Palestinians as a single people, with a right to a land. Yet when it comes to responsibility, you want to treat each individual separately, a hopelessly impractical task. That's a double standard. Are they to be treated as one people, or as individuals with no collective identity? If you would have it both ways, any rogue nation could wreak havoc by waging guerilla warfare with fully armed—but unacknowledged—militaries that the "moral" "law-abiding" nations could not retaliate against.
"International law" is a rickety thing that nations abide by as it suits them. It's certainly nothing the Gazan government has ever used as a guide. Nor is it some fount of morality.
"If you had good arguments, you could afford to be civil." This is a common refrain that doesn't bear up under scrutiny. Edgar A. Poe was undeniably a genius and he was constitutionally allergic to civility. I can think of numerous other cases.
"All your ranting and raving only makes you look insecure. If you had good arguments, you could afford to be civil."
If you had good arguments, presenting them without the tone-policing would make me look far worse. Complaining about my tone is a distraction from the fact that your position is utterly morally and intellectually bankrupt and you know it. Like this:
"When it comes to sovereignty, you want to treat the Palestinians as a single people, with a right to a land. Yet when it comes to responsibility, you want to treat each individual separately, a hopelessly impractical task. That's a double standard."
Seriously? Perhaps it WOULD be a double standard in a universe where they DID have sovereignty. But they do not. They. Never. Have. A double standard is saying "this group of people who were forcibly denied statehood, self-determination, sovereignty, who have not even been allowed an ELECTION in 19 years are all considered culpable for the actions of some of them. But Israel, which DOES have all those things and has nevertheless ALSO conspicuously failed to live in peace with its neighbors for its entire existence, is exempt from such considerations."
This is the *fundamental* crux of the matter. Hamas has taken unacceptable and unconscionable actions. So has the IDF. But Hamas can only in the loosest and most tenuous sense be said to represent the Palistinian People, while the Israeli government (of which the IDF is a part) is selected by a prosperous, democratic, safe[1] polity in regular elections. A polity that proceeds to regularly vote for the bombing of hospitals and schools, the denial of Palestinian rights and sovereignty and the continual exercise of Israeli power on *everyone* in Gaza. Despite my distaste for everything Israel has done, I have never once called for the forcible removal of its people from their homes, nor have I had a single kind word for anyone who did. Where, again, is your double standard here?
[1] If you dare complain about that characterization again, please compare to the people you're demanding be ethnically cleansed.
"Arrests are not made on the basis of 'being part of the Italian mafia'"
They absolutely are. In Italy, being a member of a mafia organization is in itself a crime, worth a minimum of three years in prison if they can pin it on you.
This in not remotely what was under discussion, but I can see how you might be confused. "Being part of the Italian mafia" and "being part of a mafia organization, which is located in Italy" are two VERY different things for the purposes of this discussion, and ought not be compared.
Also "if they can pin it on you." makes this whole line doubly irrelevant, as I discussed above.
people tried to say "oh its 4-D chess and helps us" when i wrote below about tariffs, arguing they work in the sense of isolationism, but now Gaza. Yeah.
a funny little thing that got me is if you follow vtubers, fans like to buy merch to support them. Silly things like acrylic standups, keychains, etc.
thanks to trump they are now getting tariffed with processing fees on top of the tariff, lol. trump
is removing the de minimis exception for china. Considering how much storefronts like amazon rely on dropshipping going to be surprised they wont be raging against him.
Trump didn’t have the raw competence to get anything done in his first term, but Elon Musk does. They’re actually gutting the NGO blob this time. If this keeps up, I’ll regret not voting for him in the primaries!
I still don't know if he was. Was he? Is he? Was it a stunt to impress his base, knowing he would back down quickly? Might he still be serious in a month?
For a certain value of "hours." My opinion of Trump has actually gone down in the past few days, and folks, it wasn't high to begin with! I feel like I must have somehow absorbed, over the course of 2024, some of the sanguinity of some of his less rabid supporters--sure, he talks about revenge and retribution and dictatorship, but he won't do that much!
Oddly, my opinion about Musk hasn't changed at all. While I'm genuinely shocked by how many levers of power he was handed and how quickly, I am truly not surprised at all by what he is doing with them. In every case, it's "yeah, sounds like something he would do!" Examining this, I believe it's because my previous opinion of him hovered around "he would have to actually be Hitler for me to think less of him," and, well, so far he does clear that bar.
(I know what you're really asking here, and no, no change. Because I have eyes, I had already seen the ample signals Trump had sent lately suggesting that anyone who still somehow expected him to be some kind of principled isolationist, or to relieve the Gazans' suffering in some way Biden didn't, was likely to be deeply disappointed.)
The last few weeks have been like another Jan 6 moment. For a long time, I thought the left was just being alarmist about Trump, but they keep getting proved right again and again.
Plus, there are a lot of people in the Trump camp practicing Macbeth politics.
It's less painful to make just one more rationalization - take one more step into the bloody river - than it is to turn back and admit that "holy shit my outtribe was actually right and he *is* a uniquely bad leader, and I put him into power. We really were the baddies this time."
Indulging that reflex to self-justify is, of course, deeply human. It's also how you end *up* deep in the bloody river, frantically throwing excuses around about how the ethnic cleansing was never supposed to really happen it was supposed to be a bargaining chip and even when it did happen it was supposed to be done safely and carefully and it's really the fault of Egypt for not providing better housing when the people we forced across the border got there and anyways the blue tribe would have done something worse and Hamas was elected 20 years ago so these people are all culpable and probably deserved what they got I'm not bad I'm not bad I'm not bad.
Hopefully we don't get there, but as long as people have their own personal egos and self-image wrapped up in the equation and are rationalizing backwards from "I'm not bad and I voted for him so he can't be bad or at least the left has has has to be as bad or worse," there'll be no shortage of rationalizations out there.
I changed my mind about my position that he didn't really read Yarvin and the resemblances are coincidental. Trump's peace plan is basically https://graymirror.substack.com/p/gaza-and-the-laws-of-war, and there's no way a second person independently came up with that idea.
They even used similar wording - "the LA of the Mediterranean" vs. "the Riviera of the Middle East" (Trump's version is better).
I highly doubt Trump himself reads Yarvin. Far more likely a staffer that we don’t know about, Musk, (who reads adjacent publications that would occasionally link to Yarvin) or Vance (who has read you, and what Republican reads ACX but not Gray Mirror?).
The toad has a vocabulary of about 500 English words. No way he could pass as anyone but himself.
Just watch for heavy use of anemic adverbs like ‘very’, ‘very very’ and Jeff Spicoli like usage of ‘totally’ plus variations on ‘such as the world has ever seen’.
It wouldn’t take Quantico level profiling skills to pick the semi literate buffoon out of this crowd.
He could be any one of us! He could be you, he could be me, he could even be... Oh gods, why didn't I see it sooner? Obviously no one in this country would be named "Scott Siskin", that's the name of a bird! Someone has a lot of explaining to do...
Many of us, not just Jeff, regard Trump as a (very, very) imperfect instrument of a very necessary change, and are simply determined not to let the perfect be a successful enemy of the good.
If someone in 2015 had asked you to set a floor on "good", would Donald Trump meet that standard today? Or are you the frog not noticing the water being boiled around you?
Frankly speaking, if someone in 2015 had asked me to set a floor on "good" I would probably just have said "as long as he kills some woke people he can do whatever he wants". Ten years ago I was much more sickened by the zeitgeist. I was seething so hard I would've boiled the water, not it me.
But taking your question in the spirit it was intended, I think he would, insofar as even his many catastrophic flaws (74 boxes of classified material, Donald?!) do not overshadow the extreme need for a reckoning with the status quo ante. The ideological capture of the entire managerial class and attendant big-government issues are *the* issue of our lifetime. It's increasingly obvious that no more gentle, rule-following, establishmentarian candidate could – or would even have wanted to – even try to act on this, and in some ways I think Trump is the better alternative to a later candidate with whom the Hitler comparisons would have been more accurate.
The one thing he's done that gives me genuine pause is equivocate on Ukraine. If he'd taken the maximalist Israel-style tack on that, suggested annexing Crimea to the US, and sent Zelensky a gigantic pile of guns, planes and to the point that liberals were worried that he was disarming our borders I would have been certain that he was in all ways the better candidate of the two we got to choose from, but his actual attitude is alarming.
Many Thanks! Well, not all authoritarians are interested in expanding territory. Some just seek to expand their power (and this is typical of most POTUSs, finding Congress pesky is not surprising for a POTUS from either major party).
EDIT: I don't know what fraction "liked" Trump. I view him as not-Kamala-Harris, censor-in-chief, doubler-of-illegal-immigration (as part of the Biden administration and sort-of kind-of, denied-in-retrospect border czar). Marginally lesser evil is still evil.
Yes remember the time the Biden admin forced everyone filing for federal grants to remove a defined list of words from their filings because these were deemed wrong-think?
Many Thanks! Yes, Trump is doing that, and it looks like a meataxe approach to digging the woke crap out of the government.
That said, you are making a _terrible_ argument here. The left is _infamous_ for language policing, including speech codes in academia. _How_ many times have they switched the "polite" term for blacks on us?? Remember "latinx"? That one even pissed off the group the left claimed was being served by it.
Even if i grant you that your imagined language policing is all happening just like you believe it has, how is that the same as scrubbing certain terms from government documents because they are wrong-think?
I mean, just think: if Kamala had been elected, who's to say that she mightn't have plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis by...I don't know, legalizing weed or something?
It astounds me how absolutely obtuse so many people can be. Trump lays out exactly what crimes he wants to do, why he wants to do them, acknowledges they are crime, tries to do them, and yet some people will still be like "oh well i am not sure he really means it and harris was bad too". Total brain rot
Many Thanks! Hey, remember that Kamala was part of the Biden administration, and Biden _DID_ try to unilaterally stick the ERA into the constitution, despite having blown by the time limits on it by decades. Kamala herself is on record as saying, of uncensored free speech on the internet "it has to stop", a direct attack on the First Amendment. She was also very much a piece of shit.
Note what the statement does not include: any language to direct the government to publish the amendment, any changes to policy as a result of his belief, nothing to make it part of the Constitution at all. Not even directing some novelty copies of the Constitution with the new amendment printed up. It was using the bully puppet of the Presidency to try to make the issue salient but there was zero attempt to stick the ERA into the Constitution, unilateral or otherwise.
Note also the date: 3 days before Trump's inauguration. Essentially as lame as that duck was going to get. If he wanted to actually force it through he would have done so when he had time to potentially accomplish something.
Oh, for sure, for sure. We should all be breathing a sigh of relief that we haven't put into power the kind of Presidential administration that would shut down websites just because they contain disfavored sociopolitical content!
The news this evening that Musk and his little gang of tech randos have managed to gain control of the FDIC's systems and shut the actual agency staffers out of it, certainly has me thinking about some new stuff. Such as taking my ID to where we bank and clearing out our household bank accounts.
On a less satirical note, here's the transcript if you want to compare what Trump actually said to any media reporting you're concerned may be inaccurate or alarmist.
"Being in its [referring to Gaza] presence just has not been good and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there. Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly bad luck."
"The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It's right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down.
They're living under fallen concrete that's very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too."
"I do see a long-term ownership position and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East."
Did you love the debates about January 6, but wish there were more dead bodies to look away from while you put forth your technical argument that “it’s only a coup if the military is involved?” Well congratulations! From the fine folks at TrumpCo, who brought you 'I Can't Believe It's Not Coup!'…
...now try, 'I Can't Believe It's Not Genocide!'
Its all the legalistic navel-gazing that you loved from arguments like “you can’t say he refused to transfer power, Biden *did* technically become President after the riots failed” or “well Biden bullied Facebook so I think that makes Kamala the bigger tyrant"... but now just *chock full* with those civilian casualties we all *love* to deny!
“Technically it was up to the *host countries* to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the Palestinians we pressured them into accepting!”
“The UN definition of ‘genocide’ requires acts be ‘committed with intent to destroy’ the victims, and you can clearly see from these statements that our intent was to relocate them to ‘a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony!’ It's a terrible tragedy and a mistake, but let's not debase ourselves with inflammatory language!”
“I’m sure whatever *Kamala Harris* would have done to fix the Middle East would have been even worse!”
Yes, now with 'I Can't Believe It's Not Genocide!' you can distract yourself and others from *both* the damage you’ve done to your republican institutions *and* staggering human suffering and loss of life *at the same time*!
Look for it in stores sometime in the next 4 years! But hopefully not! He's probably bluffing! Let's suspend judgment and alarmism until it's actually tried!
(‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Genocide!' contains authoritarianism as an active ingredient and may destabilize your republic. Peace in the Middle East sold separately.)
Wanting to move them elsewhere is ethnic cleansing, which is often associated with genocide probably because past attempts to move a lot of people involved a lot of them dying due to technological limitations, eg see the British expulsion of Acadians from today's Canadian maritime provinces
The area isn't permanently uninhabitable, like Chernobyl. Someone is going to live there once it's rebuilt, and if that someone isn't the Palestinians, then it's ethnic cleansing.
That would still count in my book. The thing we are trying to prevent is the act of forcing 2 million people out of their homes at gunpoint and giving their land to someone else to build hotels on. The fact that the someone else is Arabic doesn't really change the fact that this would be a horrible thing to do to the people living there.
Maybe there would be a different legal word for it - "forced population transfer" instead of "ethnic cleansing" or something - but on moral grounds I don't see how it would make a difference.
Notable recent occurrences of ethnic cleansing have been comparatively bloodless (eg in Nagorno-Karabakh, less than 300 people died when >100K Armenians-99% of the population-departed).
The conditions in that case were maybe the most favorable in history, eg, short distance, destination being a functioning nation state dominated by your coethnics ready to receive you, aid organizations able to assist, modern technology
Yeah, that's probably a ceiling to how bloodless you can make the process. I reckon trans-shipping the Gazans over the West Bank could look pretty similar, as a logistical undertaking (everything else would be there other than "functioning nation-state", and even the West Bank is probably pretty functional albeit not in a way to handle an extra 2 million people)
Except the West Bank is not a "functioning nation-state dominated by their co-ethnics", it's a dysfunctional occupied territory dominated by their enemies. This is going to make the Gazans much less enthusiastic about the process.
Sometimes I spend a lot of time thinking of just the right comment I could make in one of these threads. I don't think I will ever come close to making a comment as perfect as this one.
Glad you liked it! I don't know if I'd call it a *fun* write, but it felt good to put to paper.
Still processing how quickly the satire became a reality right in front of me on the board. Kinda head-spinning to post a joke about overlooking the human tragedy your president proposes to create in favor of "legalistic navel-gazing" about whether that tragedy technically meets the definitions of particular very-bad words, only to see arguments emerge minutes later about whether this would really count as ethnic cleansing and whether ethnic cleansing is really all that bad.
I think approximately 100% of the people at all familiar with the situation in Gaza going back many years will agree that the existing system is bad/untenable/cyclically full of war.
I wont pretend to know a solution, but "Israel leaves Gaza alone" isn't on the table. If it were on the table, then we would see one or more October 7ths and then Israel would get involved again - which is again obvious to everyone.
Top level politicians giving it their best effort haven't solved this issue. We all also know that.
I'm not sure what end game we would expect here. Either we stay in a deadly cycle that everyone hates, or we fundamentally change the game. It may be that the game change is worse than the cycle, but I don't see how we complain about trying to fix the cycle given all of the complaints about the cycle.
I'd be more sympathetic to the complaints if they came with alternative solutions that were at all tenable.
Tenable is the crux of my objection. I agree that various attempts in the 70s-2000s were genuine and could have worked. But they didn't. A two state solution is not possible, and neither is a one state solution. We can see why - one or both sides will reject it.
If Trump has another option that can work, okay. We should have plenty of reason to doubt his plan will work as well, but people wanting to keep trying the same ideas of the last 50 years aren't being serious in my opinion.
Dang, I was just joking yesterday about turning Gaza into a charter city, and now here we are.
It's hard to know how to evaluate this. As a serious proposal? Or as a bunch of noises designed to possibly achieve some kind of political outcome?
There's some value in putting an even-worse-than-status-quo option on the table. It's also quite nice as a wedge issue that can separate ordinary Gazans (who would love to be resettled somewhere less sucky) from Hamas (who don't want to lose their power).
There's currently no country that will accept these "ordinary Gazans". Arab governments won't accept them for fear of angering their citizens. Is Trump going to settle them some place like TDR Congo?
Am I wrong? Is there some country that will have them? Australia maybe?
US can bribe (or threaten, or both) a country to take Gazans. IMHO, Syria might be a feasible option (new government desperately needs money and recognition...)
Well now the US has a new bargaining chip it can use against every other country.
Hey Mexico, do you want us to send you ten million Mexicans, or two million Gazans?
edit: I've got it! NEOM! The US can pay the Saudis to build NEOM on the condition that they fill it with Gazans. The Saudis get their dumb vanity project, the Gazans get new apartments, the US gets a bunch of beachside real estate which it can sell to offset the cost of building NEOM, everyone is happy.
"We will forcibly move two million people from another country into yours" is only a credible bargaining chip if you're willing to invade both countries and commit ethnic cleansing in at least one.
And okay, Trump's willingness to commit ethnic cleansing is probably not zero, but I'm less certain about the American people's willingness to support an invasion of Mexico for that purpose.
> I just don't see how the US taking ownership over Gaza puts America first. It looks to me like Trump let Bibi fuck him in the ass.
How so? The problem with Gaza is that there are Gazans there. That problem is going to be solved. I'm more doubtful that Israel is going to let him have that piece of land, seeing as they were planning development there themselves...
My personal preference would be to depopulate and terraform the West Bank, so that we can finally build England's green and pleasant land in Jerusalem.
No one's ethnic cleansing anything. Gaza is a failed state. Resettle the people and wipe it from the memory of the Earth. Honestly that would be kindest to the actual Palestinians. Break them out of the hopeless trap that they're currently in.
Under most definitions of the word, forcibly resettling an ethnic group from the area they live in is ethnic cleansing. (Especially if you're then taking the cleared land and resettling it with your own people, like how Trump suggested letting America have the vacated land.) I don't know what definition you're using where this wouldn't fit.
And to be clear, it would have to be done by force. You are not going to get 2 million people to abandon their homes and land without literally sending soldiers to force them out at gunpoint. You are deluding yourself if you think that can be done "cleanly" or "peacefully."
The partition of India is a bad example for you to use (I saw you use it elsewhere also), because it led to a bunch of long-term bad effects, notably two piles of, functionally, Indians who hate each other's guts snarling at each other across nuclear warheads. Might I very humbly suggest that you look at the Greek-Turk population exchange of the 1920s instead?
That's not true. If you had dealt with [him] four years ago, before they had a chance to organize around him... all of this could have been prevented. That would have been possible to accomplish just by yourself. It's too late for that now, obviously. You would only end up stoking the flames, and that's exactly what they want.
Yesterday I saw an interview of a woman that was deported from the US. She said she was fleeing the violence of the Catatumbo in Colombia, her husband was killed and her children threatened. When she took a bus in Mexico to her asylum date she was kidnapped for ransom. I know what people will say, she should come back and make things better in her country. I saw an interview of young men, barely teenagers, soldiers being sent there to try and restore order. They sounded so cheerful, I don't know how many of them will die in the jungle. It's all so senseless. I was originally planning not to post this here as I am afraid of facing hatred, but chatgpt of all things convinced me to amplify this story, it told me letting their suffering go unnoticed can feel like a silent victory to the perpetrators. It brought me to tears honestly, I hope writing this means something however small I guess.
Yes, it is tragic for some individuals but better them than us. We're not the social safety net for the rest of the world. It's like the old joke about the wealthy man who bankrupts himself to save the poor, and then ends up broke without having ended poverty. At some point you have to put yourself first. In my view we're well past that point.
By the way, if anyone wants to help with this, consider donating to the Colombian red cross. They're doing humanitarian help in this region. Hopefully google translate can help you navigate this website, I'm not 100% sure how easy it is to donate as a foreigner though.
Anton, you got quite unfriendly responses. I don't think you should conclude based on this that people here are heartless and have no social conscience. Think about the way you set up this discussion: You saw 2 interviews that stirred your compassion and your anger at the injustice people are suffering. You came here with the goal of having people get how you felt. If you were talking to friends they would probably understand that mostly you wanted them to see how you felt, and share experiences where they felt the same. But the people who read your post are not your close friends, and many of them probably know absolutely nothing about even basic stuff like your interests, your views, your profession, etc. It is not reasonable to expect them to resonate the way a friend would.
Also, it's natural for people who do not know you to take your post as an argument in favor of doing more to help people like this woman, and everyone, even the most liberal, has to come to terms with the fact that there is no way for them or their country to help everyone. So people were pushing back against the implied idea that they or their country should.
You happened to see an interview with one particular person, and felt moved by her situation. There are millions of people on the planet with situations as dire as this woman's, and you do not have for them the kind of sharp heartache you have for this woman. Regarding everyone except this one woman, you are as oblivious as all of are about the woman you saw interviewed.
It is unfair to shove one instance of someone's suffering in front of us and expect us to react to the person as you are. I think some of the irritability you encountered was a reaction to that unfairness.
>So people were pushing back against the implied idea that they or their country should.
I think you're rightly identifying a part of a broader trend where progressives have changed acts of charity into obligations and entitlements, as well as the corresponding reaction of those who don't buy into it
Yeah, that's ok. I expect indifference, people are busy, I understand. I have seen Americans in US social media laughing at people in this situation, this is not something I understand. I have some familiarity of the sort of people that comment here, I used to lurk more a long time ago, so the unfriendliness is entirely expected.
from your views and your choice to post them — I am horrified to hear about chatGPT expressing views about what steps you should take. Also, you should know that it makes no sense to turn to chat GP T when making a decision like whether to put up this
I went to chatgpt in order to find words of kindness. My friends were offline at the moment. It worked, I do not need to fish for kindness from here anymore.
Next time you should just write your own words and read them back to yourself. It would create an item of actual human compassion instead of a twisted simulacrum, and you could always share your creation with other people when they need it in turn.
This twisted simulacrum was pretty good, it gave me the impression of putting into words things I already knew were true, I would not have taken any decision if I thought the output absurd or uncompelling. If nothing else, it's been well trained in soothing platitudes, not unlike myself. Much better to have real human compassion of course, but that's unfortunately in precious little supply.
Sounds like bad situation. Nevertheless, we can’t let our country continue to be a dumping ground for anyone in the world who has problems. She is free to try anywhere else in the hemisphere. Come to think of it, why did she try the US and not some closer country? Perhaps there was some other factor on her mind?
"why did she try the US and not some closer country"
Because our Asylum laws are specifically designed for people in her situation. Because in the distant past (of 12 years ago) the US took pride in welcoming immigrants especially those in greatest need of help. Maybe she should thought a country full of Christians would welcome her and others fleeing terrible poverty, offer charity, and allow her to build a life here contributing to the wonder that is America.
At one point we were "a dumping ground for anyone in the world who has problems". Do you think the Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, Pilgrims, etc that came here in droves were doing it for fun?
The arrival the settlers was ultimately a disaster for the original inhabitants. And your idea of what past immigration policy was like for other groups in simply incorrect. The strictness of immigration policy has varied greatly over our history but has rarely (maybe never?) been this costly, destabilizing, and permissive. The recent large-scale abuse of refugee and asylum programs is a novel phenomenon. We simply do not have the capacity to take every migrant who wants to come here without destroying our society. No country could handle that volume people from all over the world.
>Because our Asylum laws are specifically designed for people in her situation.
Actually no. US asylum laws are based on the UN Refugee Convention, according to which the definition of refugee does not include those who do not face persecution in all parts of their country. It sounds like she could have moved to other parts of Colombia (eg Bogota, the capital, is quite far from Catatumbo) - edited, not sure why I said Caracas other than not having had my coffee yet
One of the problems is that the limits of the asylum system have been eroded over time by leftists, including the aforementioned
Does your assessment also apply to the 300k Venezuelan refugees on TPS that Trump is threatening to send back? They clearly cannot just go somewhere else in Venezuela.
I'm not as familiar with the details of US specific legislation so I'll first state that the following might be based partly on untrue premises
In short, yes. From what I can tell, America's TPS system doesn't actually have anything to do with the asylum system (which, again, is rooted in the UN Convention). The asylum system does not apply to those not at personal risk due to a Convention ground (race, religion, political opinion, nationality, other social group), that is it does not include people who face some other generalized misfortune such as poverty or even war. It was designed this way to not entitle entire countries' populations to a legal right to emigrate to another country. So yea asylum laws were not designed for people like the 300k Venezuelans on TPS - they're not technically refugees, the confusion is from the difference between the legal meaning and how 'refugee' is used in everyday parlance
TPS seems to be a way for the executive to make ad hoc decisions to allow whole countries' populations to stay in the US legally should they manage to get in. Basically, TPS allowances are political decisions directly subject to the desires of the executive
The other factors are most likely economic, but I don't know if she was threatened in other parts of Colombia. If the other factors were economic she does not have a valid asylum claim, but I don't care, I feel for her and mourn our dead all the same.
Note she also claimed she was kidnapped in Mexico. Of course, she has a strong incentive to lie, I am not naive. However people have been killed in the Catatumbo, thousands have been displaced, I have heard reports of Mexican criminal gangs targeting asylum seekers from years back as they know they're a vulnerable population, and of course there's been deportations.
The deportation is not very surprising either, to be eligible for asylum you need to be feeling violence which targets race, religion or politics, being unable or unwilling to pay extortion money or being collateral damage among warring factions is not enough. You also have to be more then 50% likely to be killed, any less will not do. America does not possess the administrative capacity to process all the asylum seekers at the border, so a claimant will have to wait at the border for several months, unable to work legally and worried for her safety from criminal gangs. Once this is all done an extensive interrogation will be conducted looking for any inconsistencies in the story, if any slip through this is proof of lying and a reason to be sent back. It is no surprise that some judges have a 100% denial rate. This was the status quo before Trump, now I've been told no cases are being heard at all, of course.
Since the implication of all this is that the US is responsible to fix this woman's suffering, my Modest Proposal(TM) is that the clear solution is the US should invade Colombia, overthrow the government, annex the country and depose/execute most of the leadership, and appoint Nayib Bukele Lord High Governor and give him unlimited power to fix this. This will undoubtedly make Colombia nice enough for this woman to be happy there.
You are not responsible for her suffering, kindness is given freely or not at all. Colombia has some unique challenges that make a Bukele harder, the geography is more remote so that guerillas can retreat deep into the mountains, and some have support of the communist dictatorship next door that is Venezuela. Expresident Alvaro Uribe managed to improve the security situation, at the cost of things like massacres of civilians, dressed in military fatigues for the purpose of claiming the bonuses, but if someone like him ran for election I would vote for him. This problem has plagued the country in all of living memory so far, and one of the reasons it's been extremely hard to eradicate is the vast amounts of money they have at their disposal, product of American addicts buying drugs they "tax".
Part of the assumptions in my Modest Proposal(TM) is that Bukele would use his Middle Eastern heritage and father's chemical experience to bring their own system for dealing with rebels in difficult provinces, by which I mean using nerve agents on them.
From the American perspective, there are, at a rough guess, more than 7. billion people* whose lives would be greatly improved if they moved to America (or if we moved America to them; it's probably not true in all countries but it probably is true that Latin America would be better run under American rule, which is neither here nor there). Which ones should not be let in?
* the math on this looks like it's closer to 7.25B, based off this this:
-Currently 8.2bn people per World Population Clock
Surely you know gas agents are not a panacea? Assad's regime fell despite use of them. It can be comforting to think that with just enough brutality we could solve all our problems, but it is unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, not the world we live in. The reason I was initially hesitant to post this at all was the prospect of having to defend the idea of refusing such generous proposals as yours, though I did not expect it to involve the use of chemical weapons specifically. I believe I have nothing else constructive to say. This will be my last post, as I have shared everything I know about this case.
The security situation in the cities is different from the rural areas, you will not find guerillas in the cities. If you come as a tourist to Colombia, make sure to stay in the cities or in the towns near the cities. If you must go to a rural part, ask a local if it's a "red zone" in order not to inadvertently walk into one. Even if you stay in the cities, make sure not to go to the bad part of town, hopefully this is common sense everywhere in the world. Walking into a Medellin "comuna" or the south side of Bogota is not a good idea. Stay at the tourist part of town and you should have no problem. I recommend the nature parks in Colombia, as they can possess a stunning beauty, a walk to the Siecha lakes was a spiritual experience to me. This lake is safe because it is very close to the capital, and the reserve provides water to it. Of course, if a guide tells you you can continue at your own risk, turn back. I hope one day we will have peace.
Most people do, hundreds have been killed and thousands have been displaced in this latest bout of violence. If you go to Bogota you may find beggars with signs advertising they have been displaced by the conflict. They have had their lives upended by it, and many struggle finding jobs when all they have known in life is working a farm. This woman is likely trying to find a better life for herself.
Your question has been adopted in many asylum systems around the world as the 'internal flight alternative'. The definition of refugee isn't supposed to include anyone who isn't in danger throughout the entirety of their country. Unfortunately, if my country is any indication, it's been watered down to uselessness. People can just get their relatives back home to write a letter about how the thugs or gangsters or whoever have been asking them for their location and the adjudicators are obliged to find that internal flight alternatives aren't a viable option because they'd have to hide their location from their family
By US asylum law, individuals who seek asylum can't have an option to seek asylum at any intervening country. Someone coming by land from Columbia is going to go through quite a few other countries. Even if they can't stay in their own country, it's quite unlikely they are specifically targeted in every country between.
I'm all for asylum, but if you make "asylum" a free way to get into the US, it's going to get Goodharted and everyone suddenly needs asylum. That's one of the reasons that asylum is supposed to be in the first country they can reach, not the country that they would most prefer and can physically get to.
Yea, that's how it's supposed to be in a lot of countries. Originally the UN refugee agreement was meant to address the massive migrations in Europe after WW2 and got changed to include the entirety of the world beneath people's noses
Much of my professional work has concerned asylum and frankly my experience has made me go from "I'm all for asylum, but..." to Muskian "throw it all out including the baby"
I've got an idea the Dems could put in their "Project 2029." You know how all citizens born on naturalized in the United States are citizens according to the 14th amendment? Well, the Philippines was part of the United states before 1946. They weren't citizens, but that was an outgrowth of the insular cases, which are widely regarded as being wrongly decided. You can say they were in fact, citizens and thus their descendants after 1946 are automatically natural-born citizens too. Thus all 117 million Filipinos are eligible to immigrate to the United States. While the Supreme Court would likely take issue with this interpretation, the President could simply direct the border patrol, DHS, etc., not to deport any Filipino nor turn them away at the border.
Filipinos tend to be mostly Catholic or Evangelicals. The young white lib staffers of the Democratic Administration would oppose this proposal just as much as any Republican for that reason. But when I think more about this proposal, it doesn't sound all that bad lol. Currently, the Filipinos vote about evenly between the GOP and Democrats. I assume these Filipinos are on average more educated, wealthier, and liberal than their brethren back home. Your average Filipino will be more religious and seems to like strongmen(Rodrigo Duterte) so this split might end up slighly more in favor of the Republicans. Add to this the idea of adding 100+ million Christians to the US, and I am sold on your proposal lol.
If I'm paying, roughly 100+ likes, 25-50 matches and 5-10 dates a month on a single app. If I'm not paying, quite a bit worse but still some. (I'm 6'3, a gymrat, and told I'm fairly good looking, but not super hot or anything)
Personal experience: about 10 matches a month. But this was 3 years ago.
But there is a better way to look at online dating. Matches is not the only metric you need to optimize for. You need to actually write message to the women. They need to answer. Then you need to plan and go on a date. If you have 0 matches you need to work on your pictures. Everything >0 you should optimize the later steps. If you can "convert" every match into an actual date, 1-2 matches a week is plenty.
Disagree with that based on a lot of personal experience. Most women will have already decided if they want to meet you based on your profile. Canned humor works as well (or better) as highly personalized, thoughtful conversation.
I am striving to arrange a date within 5 - 10 messages. And if that doesn't happen it most likely isn't going to, it's a numbers game and until they meet you in person you are just another strange dating app man trying to fight against 100 other men for their attention
As someone who is not a 6'3 gymrat our experiences might differ quite a bit. Also age and region changes to game quite a bit. But i agree with the 5-10 messages until date. Everything longer and your window of opportunity closes fast.
My main point was: If you already have 25 matches but get only 5 dates I would optimize to get 10 dates out of 25 matches and not to increase the matches to 50. Big number looks nice but doesn't get you closer to your goal.
Yeah I didn't mean to come across as flippant, there was a time when I didn't know how to present myself at all and experienced how miserable dating apps could be. I still stand by my experience that between matching and getting a date there's not enough play to double your conversion rate as you suggest, did you experience otherwise? (After you meet skill/charisma is indeed a huge factor, it's just the dehumanizing aspect of the apps which is why you need to get off them within a handful of messages)
I expect there might be a lot of variance between different people. So not every advice works for everybody.
If you get a lot of matches and easy responses with canned humor I expect you profile/pictures to be very good. In this case I believe you that there is no room (and no need for) improving the later steps.
In my personal case I maybe messaged about half my matches. Because I was lazy or sometime because I reevaluated the woman's profile and decided against it. Easy room for improvements: only swipe if you really are attracted and then message all matches.
Similar for getting replies. If you are below a certain looks threshold (not bad looking, just below really hot guy) just writing "Hey" will just not work. I took the time to write personalized messages referring to something in her profile or pictures and got a huge boost in replies.
If you already always get replies or women even message you first you really don't need this. But please be aware this is not the experience of the average user.
In the debates about whether what Trump/Musk are doing is even constitutional to begin with, I saw the interesting position that since Congress passed a law saying such and such agency has to be funded and imposing restrictions on what the President can do with the agency, therefore this is illegal.
I think there is something strange about this, as it definitely makes the President seem much less of a chief executive and much more some kind of middle-manager, such that it seems that interpretation can be challenged.
I'm reminded of Yarvin arguing that this sort of "law" Congress passes isn't really a law in a sense the Founding Fathers would have understood it. Google gives me this definition of law:
the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties.
Since the law applies to everyone, it strikes me as strange that Congress gets to use its lawmaking power to micromanage the executive like this. I was wondering if someone could speak more about how this status quo came about.
The constitution spells out the powers of each branch of government. Get an AI to summarize them for you if like. Where those powers intersect there is debate of course.
But "congress power is to pass laws. Laws, according to the dictionary are..." Is not the right process for determining what us congress is empowered to do.
I am not sure Yarvin, a professed monarchist, is the best person to cite on constitutional principles. You should read the Constitution. It's pretty plainly laid out in there that the legislative branch has the power of the purse. Follow that up with a basic summary of the Impoundment act (which Ghillie Dhu provided) and you can answer your question.
At the risk of being rude, this is pretty Civic 101 stuff. Didn't everyone learn this high school? Or watch school house rock?
both his parents worked for the deepstate, and he's argued that the Actual Constitution (how the USG operates in practice) is basically a skeuomorph of the Written Constitution.
I didn't go to school in America. I think it must've been covered in my education in Puerto Rico regardless, but I never paid any attention in any class (speech sucks as a way to transmit information due to slowness and unsearchability).
The history of the US does paint a different picture regarding the relationship of the branches being that straightforward. I was reading in the NYT about the horror of what Trump is doing, and very far down in the article, they mention Truman once tried to seize control of the steel mills. That puts things in perspective, since that sure does seem much more aggressive than what Trump is doing. The Supreme Court struck him down, but not before there was a funny comic about Harry the First. And I don't know how what Trump is doing stacks up to what FDR did.
And there is the Warren Court that Hanania brought up today:
That definitely seems like a period where the Judiciary branch became more powerful than the other branches, or at least, definitely more powerful than we've been used to in recent times.
Hanania interestingly concludes that we haven't seen a president this revolutionary since Lyndon Johnson, so he didn't feel he needed to go as far as FDR to find someone similar. No idea what Johnson did, I should probably check that out.
That things have been as bad or worse in that past isn't justification for today's bad behavior. It is very clear that Trump and Musk are breaking the law and taking unconstitutional actions. It doesn't matter what FDR did almost 100 years ago.
That you grew up in Puerto Rico does explain things and so I apologize for my rudeness. I was, and continue to be, frustrated by more than just your comment. There seems to be a huge deficit of civic knowledge in the US and its leading to a lot of the issues we see right now.
Well, what came before does matter on establishing whether this is unprecedented. Turning the US into a fascist dictatorship would be unprecendented and it is something many are fearing (I feel pretty sure there will continue to be real elections).
I don't feel like the fact that sometimes one branch becomes more powerful than the others is bad or worse. Yarvin sees that as part of the natural process of politics. Governments should be judged more on a performance basis rather than on whether they adhere to some procedure or other.
ACX is a global audience, including some people who've never lived in the US and have about as much reason to understand the relationship between its branches as we have to understand the structure of the government of Nigeria. It might also include a few people who took high school US civics, but not college; some who don't watch TV, or at least not on Saturday mornings when SHR was playing; and probably more than a few who took high school civics and remember some of the catchier SHR lyrics but found a lot of disagreement between their memory and what they read about the US government doing in the news, as well as a *huge* amount of detail that's necessarily left out, and have concluded that things are quite a bit more vague and slippery than advertised in school. So any consensus here about the government is going to have measurable breadth.
Case in point: Congress can declare how much money is going to an agency; how much money is going to a specific project or initiative or contract within that agency; and could *theoretically* declare how much money is going to be spent on the refrigerator to be placed in the second floor break room of the south wing of the OPM building, but in practice they're probably going to say "N thousand to facilities management" and wisely leave finer grains to the manager there. Likewise for a lot of other things, like who exactly gets promoted to the next GS grade or how much time gets spent on adding a feature to the timesheet software versus tracking a bug. And if they tried to manage that small, the executive branch people would Look At Them Funny and hope it's just a misunderstanding and they don't have to tip the press off to shenanigans, and Congress knows that and keeps to a certain altitude.
There turns out to be a lot of discretion at play. There are sums of money Congress cares about strongly enough to itemize in one place, and equal sums they'll routinely allot in another place and leave the details to OPM. It can turn on whether someone gets some Congressional committee's attention, or one US Representative with an axe to grind, or even a sufficiently important journalist.
US Civics 101 and Schoolhouse Rock provide some valuable baselines for people to keep in mind as a sanity check, but they unfortunately often don't extend to a lot of the day to day issues that make the news.
If I didn't have the knowledge of the US governmental system of the good reasons you state, I wouldn't opine on US governmental system as confidently as many commenters here are doing.
If Congress says that certain money *must* be spent, and spent in a certain way, that should be binding. But generally Congress leaves a lot of leeway (or executive branch people take leeway anyway) about the details. For instance, Congress could never say that a specific person must get a Social Security check on April 12, 2025. Instead, the bureaucrats working in the SS office must determine if that person is eligible for SS, what the payment schedule is for April 2025 (maybe they run checks on April 18th instead), and so on.
Some funds have much more flexibility than others, often fully intentionally. $100 million for foreign aid can mean a lot of different things if the details are not spelled out, and they rarely are or can be to that level.
Now, with that said, the chief executive would have all of the power that any individual bureaucrat or agency would have in regards to how that money is or is not spent. In addition to that, any power that comes from oversight of the agency. So if a bureaucrat on any level could decide that we're spending $1 million of that money for X versus Y, then the President can also make that decision. If a bureaucrat at any level could decide *not* to spend that particular money, either at the present moment for a particular reason or generally, then the President could also make that decision. Theoretically that's what Trump and Musk are doing now.
I have no special insight into the details, and it's quite possible that this is an illegal impoundment issue. But I suspect that various people in the executive branch have been making these decisions for many years, and it's fully within Trump's power to make those same decisions without them. USAID, specifically, was not created by Congress - it was created by a JFK executive order. It was in the furtherance of Congress setting up funds that must be spent, but obviously if the actual implementation was as broad as needed to allow an EO to create an entire organization for spending it, then there's a lot of leeway permitted by Congress. Trump using that leeway should be legal. He might say "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" if you will.
Correction: the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961 was Congress telling the executive to create an agency, JFK created it and gave it a name but he was responding to Congressional action.
But do you agree that another President can’t just ignore the law and eliminate the agency? I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me that if the President can do that, he can do anything.
If Trump ultimately eliminates the agency and doesn't replace it with something that still meets the requirements of the law, that would be illegal. But if JFK can create and staff the agency based on the broad law as written (rather than Congress establishing a specific agency as part of the law) then I don't see how a future president can't make adjustments.
I have more recently seen something about a law passed during Biden's time that may place limitations on future presidents, but I'm not sure how that works with what Trump is doing. SCOTUS has already made clear that an Executive Branch agency that is not beholden to the President is unconstitutional, so "hands off don't touch" can't be a constitutional option.
I’m a legal realist and believe that the Constitution “means” whatever 5 of 9 Supreme justices say it does at any given time. At the same time, I don’t see how the government can just pretend that laws like the Impoundment one and the Foreign Assistance Act no longer count without either action by Congress or the Supreme Court.
At that point there are no laws and we might as well go rob our neighborhood liquor store, right?
From Wikipedia: "Impoundment is an act by a President of the United States of not spending money that has been appropriated by the U.S. Congress. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to exercise the power of impoundment in 1801. The power was available to all presidents up to and including Richard Nixon, and was regarded as a power inherent to the office, although one with limits. The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was passed in response to the abuse of power under President Nixon. The Act removed that power, and Train v. City of New York (whose facts predate the 1974 Act, but which was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court after its passage) closed potential loopholes in the 1974 Act. The president's ability to indefinitely reject congressionally approved spending was thus removed." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds)
ISTM that there's a strong case to be made that impoundment is an inherent power of POTUS and the post-Nixon legislation restricting it is unconstitutional (N.B., the SCOTUS that heard Train was the same set of Justices that heard Roe).
This article argues, fairly persuasively in my opinion, that 19th century impoundments were generally authorized by statutory language about e.g. "authorizing and empowering" the President to spend "up to" a certain amount on a particular purpose. And in 1838, SCOTUS ruled that statutory language requiring money to be paid out as specified were binding on executive branch officials. Several 20th century Presidents before Nixon floated the idea of an inherent Presidential power of impoundment, but only Nixon pushed it and Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act shortly afterwards.
The implication of prosecutorial discretion as similarly extraconstitutional does give me pause about the degree to which this line of argument would be sufficiently persuasive to the current SCOTUS (especially given the ruling in the immunity case).
it was intended by the Founding Fathers that the House of Representatives would use their power over finances in order to influence the other branches of government. e.g. a quote from Federalist Paper 58:
"...This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure..."
So it's by design. Many other places where "Publius" makes similar statements. This is a major and well-known part of the system of checks and balances.
On the other hand, if the executive can disregard laws from Congress, particularly on an issue as fundamental as the budget, then the executive would be massively strengthened. This would also be pretty perverse
There are constant complaints that people are pushing local politics into the federal government, where there are massive conflicts because the federal government oversees more than one locality. These complaints are generally accompanied by the observation that you can't get anyone to vote in local elections (for example, state governor; federal senator) because nobody cares about anything but the presidential election.
I suggest conceptualizing this differently than people usually seem to: because no one will vote for any office other than president, that office is where all of the political power exists. Is it a problem for political power to be concentrated in the office that is subject to meaningful elections?
Well, the current approval rating of the Executive is currently 49%, and the approval rating of Congress is 24%. So, maybe it's not perverse? Maybe it's the opposite of perverse?
King is a bridge too far, but if you told me that in 2028 we would all smell what the Rock is cooking, I would believe you. At this point we all have to acknowledge that the WWE-White House pipeline is real.
Congress (well, the House) was elected at the exact same time as Trump was. Should Trump have lost the right to govern in term 1 when his approval rating was terrible?
Well sure if you ignore the text of the Constitution of the United States and think of operating the Republic as if Madison and Hamilton had come up with something similar to Facebook and they wanted to let ‘likes’ from the honeymoon period of a presidency guide us, you might have a point.
So yeah, no, if you give it a moment’s thought it’s pretty perverse.
BTW Trump’s ‘honeymoon’ approval rating is historically low. Biden’s approval rating was 57% at this point in his term. Barack Obama’s was 68%, Jimmy Carter’s was 66%.
A lot of commenters here would gain a lot by just reading the constitution and taking basic civics class. Amazing how many people don't understand the basics of our government.
And some other commenters would gain a lot by realizing that the constitution is nothing more than a rotting piece of parchment. Don't be surprised when people forsake a system that failed them.
It's one thing for them to openly rebuke that system; but, to support its destruction while claiming to uphold it is a hypocrisy that I just can't stand. If they want an autocrat they should just say that instead of coming up with bogus reasons this is all in accordance with our accepted laws.
When Congress passed that law, there was a president who signed it. That means something about the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch, right? If he decides he can kick that law to the curb, he is not only throwing a finger at Congress, but at the president who was in power when the law was enacted, and at the judicial branch as well because they are the ones who are supposed to sort out laws for us. In other words, he’s throwing his finger at the whole thing.
I think you are starting with a fundamentally flawed model that is something corporate like a board of directors and a CEO/company president. In the corporate model, the board is responsible for high level governance decisions and, to some extent, the overall mission/strategic direction, but the lead operating executive makes the tactical and operational decisions for implementation. (Side note: this is a simplistic model, even in the corporate world)
A better model of the (original) intention is to think of the legislative and executive branches as co-equal, each with specific areas of power only held by that branch and other areas of overlapping responsibility (especially to create checks and balances.)
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I have struggled with my weight my whole life, and I'd appreciate some new ideas/frames of mind on how to approach it.
The story so far:
- Standard-issue fat kid through my teens.
- Got problematically fat in my mid 20's, got catastrophically fat during early months of Covid
- Throughout this time had tried various diets, never with real energy or intensity
- During Covid got diagnosed with sleep apnea, got the CPAP, started sleeping well for the first time in my adult life
- Burst of new energy and fear of dying (I had hit 415 lbs) got me started on calorie counting, took it seriously, lost 130 lbs over the next 2 years. Also started lifting, took it seriously. Overall felt amazing.
- Met my future wife and got married shortly after
- Weight loss plateaued and then reversed due to it becoming much harder to eat at a deficit now that my maintenance calories had dropped so significantly, coupled with a general feeling of complacency and happiness in my new marriage
- Gained 15 pounds in year one of marriage, had a child
- Getting to the gym and taking eating right seriously got really hard due to lack of time and energy, gained 20 pounds in year two
- Had another child, did not make things easier, have gained another 10 pounds so far in year three
- Tried generic Ozempic, did not work at all. Made me sick, did not make me want to eat less or think less about about food
- Am currently on Metformin
I am now 335 lbs. For the sake of my wife and kids, I really want to get this under control. Things I am considering: Name-brand (really expensive!) Zepbound, and failing that, Bariatric surgery.
If you have some suggestions for other tools/methods/ideas I can try, I am very open to them.
As a single data point small piece of the puzzle thing-that-worked-for-me:
Psyllium Husk fibre supplement (ie Metamucil or similar). I dropped 30lbs in a year (starting at 265lbs). Plateaued after that but at least didn't come back on.
Not intentionally, it was recommended for a different issue. For the first time in my life I wasn't hungry all the time.
I'm on Team Bariatric Surgery. It sounds like you'd probably be a good candidate, so probably don't waste anymore time.
I had bariatric surgery (the sleeve, aka stomach stapling) 13 years ago, went from 250 > 145 at my lowest, and have put back on about 25 over the pandemic and my break-up after the pandemic (but have been maintaining 175 for over a year, not gaining. I can live with it, but I'd prefer to get back near my low). The weight gain was from sheer self-indulgence, partly from getting used to eating delicious stuff again with my boyfriend during the pandemic (though I didn't put on any weight while with him), then later not wanting to be bothered with eating inconveniently small portions semi-frequently. Plus some general lethargy from a couple of illnesses. My eating and exercise habits aren't what they should be, but they are still much better than they were before my surgery.
I needed the *very* high stakes of preparing for and complying with a surgical intervention to overcome the temptation of tasty food. Without stakes as high as "my surgery might not go well!" and "I'll feel uncomfortably sick and be malnourished if I don't eat right after the surgery" as dieting motivation, I was really good at procrastinating and rationalizing around just...not dieting in my day-to-day.
Usually bariatric patients have to do 6-12 months of prep work before a surgery, so I say...just get the ball rolling now. The success outcomes of bariatric surgery are much, much higher than white-knuckle diet and exercise, so just go ahead and do what works. Better to "cheat" weight loss with a bariatric surgery and succeed than fail at dieting.
I was in similar spot, lost over 100 lbs. I was lucky to be in a position where I could focus on it, but here's what worked for me:
- low carb diet, and learning variety of food I could eat and cook for myself. wraps, fajitas, pizza on low carb tortilla shells, lots roasted chicken, chicken wings, grilled chicken, lots of stir fry vegetables, cured sliced hams are easy/useful, salad, low carb chili I make regularly (go easy on beans which have the carbs).... probably missing things - bacon / eggs if you do breakfast. radishes are great snacks as are nuts if you don't eat too many.
- environmental control - not having any of the wrong food around, and making sure I didn't put myself in bad situations. (I will eat poorly if I get hungry). Travelling and eating out is very difficult, so I often took stuff with me. Some options I used in restaurant - naked buffalo wings, wendy's chili, meat + salad if sitdown.
- I exercised consistently in the morning for an extended period using exercise bike, I think 45 minutes to an hour. Often did a second ride later in the day. I'm not sure how important that is - diet seemed more important to stay on track, but exercise helps blood sugar. I also went through long period of walking up to 2hrs a day when I lived at a place that permitted. I currently walk each day, and that does help with blood sugar levels also -which helps appetite - but again not messing up the diet is more important to adhere to imho.
- Getting your weight down a bit from where you are will likely help blood sugar alot. Between 330 and down to 280 I noticed big difference in blood sugar stability, and at some point in there I went off metformin.
- drank diet drink, not many fruits work, but strawberries and blueberries are option
Hope this helps, but it did work for me. I weighed regularly to keep myself focused, and I did hit frustrating plateaus, but eventually things kicked back in.
I lost a lot of weight (230->195) when I started lifting weights seriously. I’d highly suggest 2-4 hours a week with a personal trainer. You’ll feel better and your body will work better regardless of what happens with your weight, plus it seems to lead to weight loss—far more than would be accomplished just by the calories burned in the activity itself.
You have to eat a ton of protein to make progress, which might make it easier to eat fewer calories overall.
Another commenter mentioned jumping jacks; I wouldn’t recommend dynamic loads with your body weight until your weight is lower, seems like an easy way to injure your joints. Instead, do kettlebells or another resistance modality where you can gradually increase the weight. A trainer is invaluable to teach good form, make sure you’re not risking injury, and make sure you’re continuing to make progress. Plus it’s way easier to put in the work when you have an appointment and are paying. Finally, a trainer can keep giving you new forms of exercise to keep things fun.
Consider drastic elimination diets? They spray plants with poison, you dont get to know when they swap poisons around, or even would poisons they tend to feed animals in your area and its unlikely you can track one that happens to effect you more then the average over likely weight gain which may take a week to see.
> I am now 335 lbs. For the sake of my wife and kids, I really want to get this under control. Things I am considering: Name-brand (really expensive!) Zepbound, and failing that, Bariatric surgery.
Everyone else has made great suggestions, so I'll just hit the things that nobody else hit upon yet:
1. Get a treadmill desk
Exercise is hard because adherence is hard - but do you know what’s easy? Slowly walking on a treadmill, in your own house, wearing whatever you want, while YOU’RE getting screen time, whether working or recreational.
The treadmill desks I’ve bought are UNDOUBTEDLY the single highest “unit of value in life per dollar spent” things I’ve ever owned in my entire life.
And if you’re like me and are always thinking “eh, I can do a smidge more than last time, why not?” and hit a single up-button on either speed or elevation, over time it can actually burn significant calories too.
I just found out recently I’d *inadvertently* been burning an extra 700-800 calories per day, while walking at an 8-10% incline for a few more hours.
2. Bariatric surgery
Is positive on costs / benefits, but you probably want gastric bypass vs banding.
The Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery study was able to keep track of 83% of a 1500 person sample who had gastric bypass for 7 years, and found that 7 years later, they had maintained a mean weight loss of 38kg (83.6 lbs), or around 28% of body weight.
For gastric banding, 7 years after surgery mean weight loss was 18kg, or 15% of body weight. Both had lower dyslipidemia at the 7 year mark, but only gastric bypass patients had lower rates of diabetes and hypertension.
Risk-wise, bariatric surgeries have a 17% complication rate, a 7% “needs resurgery” rate, and incremental mortality rates of ~.31% after thirty days. This is honestly probably fine. That’s 3.1 out of 1,000, and there’s 250k bariatric surgeries per year, so around 750 annual incremental deaths. The average one-year mortality rate for a 45 year old with a BMI of 45 is ~.9%, so not a ton of incremental risk from the surgery, and there’s some evidence that bariatric surgeries have beneficial effects on all cause mortality - the gastric bypass lowers diabetes rates, hazard ratios for cardiac mortality and myocardial infarction are 0.48—0.53 post surgery, and their 10 year cancer mortality rates are only 0.8% vs 1.4% in controls matched to characteristics who did not receive a surgery.
These are both from a post I did about weight loss, if you want some of the footnotes and studies, they're in there.
Thanks for this. Someone else linked your article, mostly things I knew already but still informative and well sourced.
I actually tried a treadmill desk! My plan was to work on it, but I could never get the ergonomics right for walking and typing comfortably at the same time, and more importantly, walking on the constrained surface of the treadmill exacerbated a persistent foot pain issue (corns). This meant that I eventually avoided going on it.
As for bariatric surgery, a realization that it was my only option to avoid dying is what kicked off my last burst of energy to calorie count and work out seriously. Maybe it'll work again!
> I actually tried a treadmill desk! My plan was to work on it, but I could never get the ergonomics right for walking and typing comfortably at the same time, and more importantly, walking on the constrained surface of the treadmill exacerbated a persistent foot pain issue (corns). This meant that I eventually avoided going on it.
Just one thought here - because it really is a good way to burn significant calories as a "background" thing without active conscious effort - there's a large and noticeable difference between the chintzy Chinese "treadmill desks" most people consider / try, and an actually good set up.
I've bought and used 4 or 5 different treadmill desks at this point. The best one by far has been a giant, 800+ pound commercial-grade Freemotion treadmill I bought from a gym that was going out of business and custom built an adjustable desk around. The difference is huge - the walking surface is wider and longer, and it actually has a suspension which mitigates the impact of footfall. It also has the ability to go up to an 18% incline grade, which is crazy, but incline (at 8%+) is how to actually burn significant calories.
It cost WAY more than a chintzy Chinese desk, but it's quality and ease of use and quality of life is much, much higher.
When comparing treadmill desks, the higher cost gets you second guessing yourself. When considering the costs and risks of surgery or the increased all cause mortality from being obese and sedentary, I think it's a pretty clear win, and might be worth considering.
-Try some of the other drugs in Ozempic family. Seems reasonable to hope one would have fewer side effects and better effects. Also, I read some speculation that the most recent one in use (or maybe it’s one that’s about to come out) looks like it might have stronger weight loss effects. Not sure if that’s valid or just hype, though.
-If you are taking an antidepressant or other psych med with a weight gain side effect, consider stopping drug. Obviously, do not do this if without the drug you are at risk of having major problems. If you have been taking a med for mild to moderate anxiety, try substituting CBT for the med.
-If you do not have any tendency to abuse drugs, consider taking amphetamine at dose prescribed for ADD. These drugs reduce appetite and increase energy for most people You will prob have to claim ADD symptoms to get it. I would not suggest this to someone whose weight problem was not severe.
-Consider spending money to clear more time for you to exercise. For ex, hire someone to help with child care or housework, eat out more, pay for grocery delivery, etc.
-Do something radical to lock yourself in to exercising— for ex, get rid of your car and bike. I did that 5 years ago, for the sake of fitness rather than weight loss, and it has worked out well. Or do some partial version where you simply swear to do something, for ex park car 2 miles from work every single day and walk the remainder. Or get an active dog that will drive the family crazy if not taken for long walks and runs daily.
-Rather than try to exert more willpower, do radical things to reduce temptation. For ex, have absolutely nothing in the house that is either high calorie or a moderate -calorie thing you like enough to eat in large quantities (things like pasta are often in this category). The rest of the family will have to go out for ice cream and favorite hi-cal meals.
Jeez Monkyyy it seems to me you are in a position to answer the question you have asked on your own. You have enough information from my previous posts, my present post, and general knowledge.
(1) I am not an MD.
(2) When I gave the advice I did, I did not mention the degree I do have, because I did not want to claim some extra authority for my ideas, but just to present them as the ideas of a fellow member of the forum.
(3) Even if I were an MD, life furnishes abundant evidence that MD’s are not compelled to toe the party line regarding drugs. Youtube and Twitter and other sites have many MD’s expressing unconventional ideas. Some of these ideas, such as that the covid vax killed more people than covid did, are obviously false and harmful. Some are questionable, ideas that most would disagree with. A few are probably excellent, though unconventional, advice. It is clear from the presence of lots and lots of these MD’s online spouting all kinds of unconventional ideas that US MD’s, at least, do have free speech. How has this escaped your notice?
I do not know what the rules are for MD’s when they are expressing ideas publicly, as opposed to doing a patient consult for which they are paid. My guess is that there are no rules, but that it would be possible for the law or the licensing board to take action against somebody who was spouting godawful harmful nonsense online. In my profession, there are vague guidelines about being a good and honest representative of the professional even in one’s personal life and in communications to the public. Those guidelines are so loose that I would have to be promoting something awful like armed robbery or use of heroin for it to be a violation. And in fact I do think the info I gave, which is that amphetamines might help, but the user risks dependence or addiction, was good.
(4) Even if my statement about amphetamines was questioned, I would be prepared to defend it. It did not say to use amphetamines, I suggested OP consider it, but avoid using them if they had had any problems with drug abuse. When I answer requests for information on this forum I assume OP is a responsible adult unless they sound cracked. I do not think it is wrong to give people like that information about something risky that might be worth the risk, and leave it up to their judgment whether to try what I have told them about. OP sounds intelligent and responsible, so I gave him all the info I have, including info about risks of some approaches. And OP’s weight problem will shorten his life, and meanwhile interfere with quality of life. Under these circumstances, I think it’s reasonable for someone to consider solutions that have some risk.
(5) I also suggested several other things.
Seems to me that all this should have been evident to you.
> Seems to me that all this should have been evident to you.
Im not in favor of the current policy nor advice; but as I understand it, "best practice" hates the old weight lost methods despite them being known to work(granted cigarettes also are known to work, 12 cups of coffee of caffeine with amphetamines pills or whatever the current body builders dose with are just dangerous) and its risky to suggest alternative treatments in light of politically favored ones. See legal troubles of people suggesting ivermectin after the corona vax. While the bone lost drug isnt nearly as pushed as the vax, I would think its politically favored enough and you took a surprising risk here for a hill I wouldn't die on.
> In my profession, there are vague guidelines about being a good and honest representative of the professional even in one’s personal life and in communications to the public. Those guidelines are so loose that I would have to be promoting something awful like armed robbery or use of heroin for it to be a violation.
details can escape me easily but I think this is relivent
I see allot of soft power being wielded towards people I agree with; while I can disregard soft power, Im unhinged by most estimates, and its still hard, and Im quite broke, I cant know how much of that is me picking the wrong battle at the wrong time publicly.
Soft power is still power, chilling effects are still censorship, while if you find yourself willing to face any legal danger to state your opinion, good on you, I would've skipped my least favorite class of drugs.
This forum is a very different place from youtube, etc; I did not deliver my suggestion in the role of an expert; and the idea I suggested that is mildly edgy is way way less extreme and politically hot than what got these 2 guys in trouble. The only soft power move being attempted in this situation is yours.
I suspect that he may have rather idiosyncratic nutritional issues, but you may be interested to check out the guy who writes the Experimental Fat Loss blog: https://www.exfatloss.com. His go-to diet involves a small amount of ground beef with some green leaves and tomato sauce, and pretty much all other calories from as much heavy cream as he wants to eat, which seems to allow him to lose weight without needing to exert superhuman willpower.
His leading hypothesis is that the modern diet contains much more polyunsaturated fatty acids (particularly linoleic acid) than a few generations ago, and that that is what is dysregulating many people’s weight.
First, what you're going through is totally normal. Everyone who has lost significant weight has experienced a bounce back. There's lots of theories why, no one knows why for sure, but it happens to everyone. You've only gained back ~33% of what you lost. Regaining 50-60% of your weight would not be unusual. It's not good, you should try to beat the odds, but it's not unusual.
Second, how heavy is your wife and how does she feel about weight loss? Have you discussed it with her?
Look, you need to eat clean and for that, your wife has to be on board. I can almost guarantee you're eating too much processed food. At 335 lbs, your maintenance calories are probably north of 3000/day. To be adding 1.5-2 pounds a month, you gotta be getting near 4000/day.
For reference, if you ate the McDonald's quarter pounder meal with fries and coke for every meal, you'd be at 3150/day. So you gotta be eating something on top of that.
Conversely, a pound of chicken breast is ~700 calories, 2 pounds of broccoli is ~300 calories, a pound of white rice is ~600 calories, and hot sauce has 0 calories. 4 pounds of food for 1600 calories. I know you're not eating that clean because you're not eating 8-10 pounds of physical matter a day. Your stomach ain't built like that; your sphincter ain't built like that.
But she's probably eating what you're eating. And she's probably comfortable with it. And there's no sustainable future where you're eating clean and she's eating your current diet. Saints can't eat white rice with veggies and chicken breast across the table from a pepperoni pizza.
The good news is that, at your weight and caloric intake, you can probably eat really good and still lose weight. You don't need to eat a pound of broccoli a day. You'd almost certainly lose weight on 2500-2800 calories/day and you can fit steak and ice cream and lots of great stuff in that budget. But you gotta get your wife on board. When I think of 4000 calorie days, I think of crushing a sleeve of Oreos. Your vice might be different but whatever it is, you got one, you probably can't have that in the house, and she's gotta be on board with that.
I eat plenty of junk, and I've taken steps to reduce my access to junk. But my challenge is that I want to eat all the time, and I don't have the option of creating the perfect environment for myself in the place where I spend 35%+ of my waking hours. The office is just stocked with crap.
As WoolyAI says, what you are going through is very typical. And it's unfortunate that your office environment is largely out of your control. I sympathize and hope you can find ways to make progress.
Have you worked with a therapist that specializes in distorted eating? They may be able to help you develop strategies to reset your relationship with food. You don't mention it but if you have any anxiety or past trauma that could be contributing to making a food a source of comfort they could help with this also.
Additionally, a coach or trainer could help with accountability and give you someone else who is "in your corner" and rooting for you. It's hard to make big changes like this alone!
I am also not against the surgical or medical interventions you mention. There is no silver bullet unfortunately.
Also, I think you should take a minute to appreciate that even when going through some very stressful periods over the last few years, you have only gained about 35lbs! I am sure it feels like a failure, but thats not atypical for someone of your age and period of life. I am at a similar point in life and gained 15 pounds last year too. You can do this!
If you want long-term weight loss, you need long-term change of what you eat, how you eat, and how much you exercise. The fundamentals of the whole thing are "calories in, calories out", that's the easy part. Losing weight is mostly a mind game. It's also a marathon, not a sprint, so pace yourself accordingly.
What to eat:
* Research the caloric density of every single food item and meal you typically consume, repeatedly, to get an intuitive feeling for the values so you can properly compare different and new foods. Don't rely on marketing/packaging either, READ THE LABELS for cold, hard numbers. If you live in some backwards, consumer-hating legislation that doesn't require such labels, research on the internet.
* As far as possible, prepare your own meals (within the family), so you have the best control over the ingredients. Look into meal prepping if you don't have time every day of the week. Make restaurant food or other unlabeled food the exception.
* Half the battle is won in the grocery store. You can't eat what you don't have in the house, and you don't have in the house what you don't buy.
How to eat:
* Make rules about eating, and make them effective, but not so restrictive that you can't realistically follow them most of the time. That might cause frustration and regression into the habits that got you into obesity in the first place. Example: Make a caloric goal for the day/week depending on your age, height, physical activity and other pertinent factors, but don't stress about keeping a food or weight diary.
* Reduce the worst offenders (identified above) to "cheat day" treats, especially drinks (e.g. sugary, alcoholic). Don't stress about breaking the rules unless breaking the rules becomes the new, old norm.
Exercise:
* Anything at all will help, as long as you do it somewhat regularly. Take a walk of whatever duration you're comfortable with, every other day. Do basic gymnastics inside your own home if outside is not an option, like sit-ups or jumping jacks. Anything to get the literal juices flowing. Increase intensity as your motivation and physical condition allows. Don't stress about missing a day or two unless it becomes the new, old norm.
* If you need to reframe exercise as something outside your normal life, get some kind of gadget, like a fitness wristwatch, exercise bike, or gym membership.
Mind games:
* Whatever rules about eating you have, question them. For example: Do you really need breakfast, dinner, lunch each day? Or will two of them suffice? Maybe even only one? Example: I do 24 hour fasting: Eat one meal per day, and nothing else.
* Keep the rules you follow simple. The simpler, the better, as long as they're still effective. This will immediately identify any other calorie intake as self-fraudulent and allows you to think of alternative action it before you break them. Don't stress about still breaking a good rule unless it becomes the new, old norm.
* When a hunger pang happens outside of your meal times, you can ride it out: It will typically disappear within minutes, half an hour at most. Or you can prepare a big jug of low-calorie drink (e.g. water, water with a shot of lemon juice, unsweetened tea) and take a big gulp every time just to shut the stomach up.
* Half the battle is won in the grocery store: In my experience, being steadfast in the store is much easier than at home. You can't eat what you don't have, and you don't have what you don't buy.
* Don't stress too much about your every day weight, or what food or exercise might have which effect on it. Weight yourself every couple days and get a gist of where the trend is going. Slow and steady progress is what you're aiming for. Even just 2 pounds per month will be noticable in the long run and tell you that you're doing good at a sustainable rate.
OMAD can suit some preferences, but it's an overkill prescription. Often times those with a weight problem *don't* only consume 3 square meals, they snack, particularly at night. Consuming food earlier in the day has its metabolic benefits. In and of itself there is zero problem with 3 meals, and it more likely suits family-oriented lifestyle.
I agree, OMAD requires much more flexibility than other rules. If you can pull it off, though, the advantage is that it makes it maximally hard to cheat yourself with snacks. With 3 meals a day, it's much easier to convince yourself that if you snack, you can make it up with the next meal or whatever because you still have caloric budget left. With OMAD, that is never the case, and you will always be aware that any snack outside your one meal is just that, a snack that you can then more consciously decide whether you really want it or not. Since weight loss is mostly a mind game, saving a snack from that mental advantage might well outweigh metabolic advantages from eating 2 or 3 meals.
Basically, I try to optimize for the mind game and keep the metabolic side as simple as possible even at the risk of being slightly sub optimal there.
From my own experience with losing weight: Nothing beats counting calories.
As for hunger: that's the feeling of calories leaving your body. Embrace it. Your animal brain will tell you that's a bad thing, and that you need to STOP IT NOW! It's lying to, ignore it.
Some low-hanging fruit if it hasn't applied yet: increase ratio of protein and fiber in your diet (more than you would think), consume whole foods, and restrict the amount of sweet and processed foods in the household (if they are around, you *will* eat them, purchase/make some alternatives). Also when counting calories, opt for a modest deficit to avoid tanking metabolism and keep hunger in check. Don't try to rush it, 0.5-1 lb a week is sufficient.
I've known people who've done all the above (bariatric surgery, drugs) and regained weight. Useful as that may be, it doesn't necessarily work, because a) it does not address emotional catalysts, addiction, habit, and b) it's still trivially easy to overconsume junk food after a recovery period.
A bag of chips is 1200 calories, which is as much as 17 apples. The hit of salty/sugary + fatty is moreish, and overrides satiety signals on top of being non-satiating in the first place.
Don't need to go crazy on exercise, but exercise in general correlated with long-term success. There could be several reasons for this, among: a) it protects lean body mass (muscle *and* organs) when losing weight and by extension metabolism, and b) relieves stress and helps regulate blood sugar and hunger
Highly recommend Layne Norton's book Fat Loss Forever
The best diet is the one you can sustain. Most people who diet *do* lose weight, but they gain it back, because they did not sustain it. This is a complete lifestyle change, once you hit maintenance calories you can't go back to consuming what you were before. Whether you gain weight back will not be a question of "if", it will be a question of "how fast".
edit: you may also benefit from seeing a therapist. They can equip you with tools through e.g. CBT to mitigate things like guilt, perspective, emotional eating, etc.
My cousin tried it and felt extremely sick, then discontinued it.
I tried a shot just for curiosity, but took the absolute minimum. One notch on the pen.
That made me _slightly_ nauseous for a couple of days and not hungry for >1 week.
When I spoke to my cousin, she had taken around 4-5 times what I took. So I wouldn't be surprised if more people try too big an initial dose and give up on it.
I also responded in the survey that I had a very negative experience with Aya.
First ceremony was perfectly nice, very interesting, very unique and beautiful experience.
Second ceremony... I thought I was experiencing a brain aneurism, I sobered up entirely from the pain, I thought I had >80% chance that I was dying that night. No ambulances were coming. No hallucinations or anything like that, only pain.
It is a really intense feeling to be sure you'll die.
It was relatively brief in terms of aftereffects though - maybe a few days of insane hangover, then an upswing of several weeks of diffuse happiness to make up for it.
I have no experience with psychedelics, but even the best stories of taking Ayahuasca I have heard seem very unpleasant to me. So much vomiting and exhaustion and existential dread. Even if I was guaranteed the most amazing divine experience I am not sure I would do it. Especially when alternatives like mushrooms don't appear to have such unpleasantries.
Yes, I have acquaintances that are doing it. One gets it through a wealthy, well-connected friend. One took it with an underground psychedelic therapist. The friend who took it found the woman and the setting to be safe and sane.
Thanks. I had some good contacts with the Psychedelic Society of Minnesota but the head of that group isn’t terribly together and there haven’t been any meet ups in over a year.
I’ll figure it out. It wasn’t that damn hard to cultivate my on psilocybin mushrooms.
I no longer need any SSRIs for my long term OCD after several self guided sessions with those. It’s just no longer an issue. Pretty amazing.
It would be no financial hardship to fly to South America to try the ayawaska. I’d want to find a place that keeps the woo bs to a minimum though.
getting free of OCD. By any chance would you be willing to describe your experience to someone in the field? As you probably know, many professionals are extremely interested in psychedelic experience as a
way of breaking free of painful prisons the mind has generated. I could steer you to a researcher who would be fascinated and not skeptical. And of course you could remain anonymous.
I found out through the friend with the wealthy contacts that in parts of S America ayahuasca is used in conventional churches, and is not thought of as disreputable and dangerous. That seems
promising, tho I expect you would not want to take it at a
church service either. But maybe it’s possible
to buy it legally, and find a local reliable source of advice about dose etc. There may also be ayahuasca retreats for people from the US.
Wait, are you talking about Christian churches, native religions, or something openly syncretistic? Because if those are Christian churches, that's *very* surprising.
Yes, Christian churches. Surprised the person who told me about it, also surprised me. He went to a privately organized ayahuasca retreat, and one of the two retreat leaders was a woman from S America who attended a church that used ayahuasca. My friend actually spoke with her about it. She was a well-educated, friendly person, and explained that what her church did was not uncommon. The doses they used at the church were lower, and very rarely caused the infamous vomiting side effect or made people so high they could not carry on with the prayers etc.
The middle east seems like a difficult to predict place right now. Iran might race for a nuclear weapon, or not. Israel and Saudi might normalize relations, but Saudi wants a Palestinian state on a short timetable and for Israel to do that it needs a Palestinian group willing to give up a claim to Israel proper lands and police against violent Palestinians who do, meanwhile no one has the capability or willingness to get rid of Hamas, and also much of Gaza infrastructure has been leveled but won't be rebuilt without Hamas gone and/or a large civilian displacement, which Jordan/Egypt couldn't risk a regime collapse over to accommodate.
And that's not even mentioning public opinion polarization. Middle East/some of Europe seems to think Gazans survived a genocide and Oct 7th had minimal war crimes, Israel thinks it fought a just war that minimized civilian casualties at tradeoffs to strategic objectives no other country or military in history would have agreed to due to Jewish culture/international pressure. I see virtually no discourse on either side to pressure their politicians to give the other concessions. As in, the people in Israel pushing for a Palestinian state have vanished under the belief it would be eventually used to wage war on Israel proper. And the Arab street seems to think that this war proves Israel needs to be dismantled.
One additional source of uncertainty is UNRWA being forced out; In the short term this will have very unpredictable effects, but in the long term it might be a major driver for peace (since it removes one major financial incentive palestinians have to keep claiming a right to destroy Israel).
I do not believe that UNRWA is in any danger of being "forced out"; it will continue to operate in Gaza and elsewhere for many years to come. And in the vanishingly unlikely event that Trump does manage to ethnically cleanse Gaza, UNRWA will then be working wherever the Gazans wind up. And it will not be working to integrate them into their new "home"; AIUI their charter specifically prohibits that.
A simple model would be: this continues to be a simmering pot of resentment and violence for the next 10...20 years; beyond that things are just unpredictable in general.
Website where you can use gpt4o and claude 3.5 and deepseek r1 & v3 and gemini 1206 anonymously and free. It puts all their answers side by side. https://dontseek.com
I asked "who are you" and deepseek v3 immediately said "I'm ChatGPT, an AI developed by OpenAI."... is this an issue with deepseek or with this dontseek website?
Reply: “Greetings! I'm DeepSeek-V3, an artificial intelligence assistant created by DeepSeek. I'm at your service and would be delighted to assist you with any inquiries or tasks you may have.”
I assume that the DeepSeek V3 training data includes ChatGPT output, so your answer was likely in the training data. Perhaps you got a low probability response. Alternatively, it’s possible that DeepSeek is still being refined using reinforcement learning. OpenAI did that for a while after making ChatGPT public.
> is this an issue with deepseek or with this dontseek website?
Deepseek was fine tuned via OpenAI ChatGPT elicitation. Basically they were piggybacking on OpenAI's work to reduce the "mind space" of the Deepseek LLM in intelligent ways by using GPT elicitation to take advantage of all the knowledge / connections / mindspace paring GPT has already done.
They did have some genuine architectural insights on top of that, they weren't solely riding OpenAI's coat-tails, but they were at least piggybacking on a fair amount of their work by doing this.
Right... but answering "ChatGPT" to "who are you" seems like the very first thing you'd want to paper over when, uh, "piggybacking" like this, no? Have other people been getting that sort of behavior when asking deepseek similar questions?
This is a pretty neat site (minor quibble that sideways scrolling is pretty bad, took me a while to figure out you have to click on the response boxes). But I'm glad you posted it, I haven't used claude-3.5-sonnet (or possibly any Claude) before and an amazed at how bad it is, probably at the level of Gemini which is just dreadful.
Being trad is part of a three-horned trilemma, but I don't know if anyone has ever identified it as such:
1. Follow traditional values! Long-lasting values are likely to be better than new values because they have stood the test of time.
2. Follow new values! If values have changed, it's probably because the old values had been tried and found flawed. Your best shot is to follow the latest trends.
3. Just make up your own mind on a case by case basis. This is the most tempting and yet somehow the dumbest of the three -- instead of relying on the collective wisdom of past or present millions, you're just going to listen to one random jerk with no particular qualifications apart from the fact that he happens to be yourself.
I don't have a good way out of this, but I just wanted to try framing it that way and see what happens.
You’re omitting from 1 one of the problems you put in 3— who’s to say that whoever you’re speaking with is sharing values that have “stood the test of time” and not just something people have done for the past few decades while claiming it’s hundreds of years old? This is a lot more common than you might think in discussions of tradition
3. Isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Most cultures explain and argue for their norms. As such, you can critically evaluate their arguments, and apply the norm when and if the argument is valid.
> Being trad is part of a three-horned trilemma, but I don't know if anyone has ever identified it as such:
One option you didn't articulate:
4. Look at the other people in your social graph who are "winning" by whatever metrics you care about (career, relationship, kids, etc), and then do what they do.
It avoids the arbitrariness of 3, and probably has a dash of 1. And hopefully you're able to discern how alike those people you admire are to you, to understand where you can / should make exceptions in their practices.
At the least, it gives you a direction on "things to try in 3) with a higher probability of success."
Isn't that just displacing the original three options by one degree? In that case, you're hoping that the people around you have already selected and then you're just second-hand choosing 1, 2, or 3. If literally everyone is doing that, then it's probably just 3.
I think it's just straightforward "look at what's working in the world for people like yourself." There is still incremental wisdom and lift you can aggregate from other people's choices and engagement with the same problems. Think of the "rest of the world" as a giant Monte Carlo simulator - if you now select from the "people like you" and have a high enough N to extract signal from the noise, you have actually unearthed truths about what works in the overall environment for people like you.
I don't have any sort of optimal solution, but it seems reasonable to me to mostly follow common practice. We live in a mostly functional society, so the usual way of doing things is mostly ok.
But people occasionally find better ways to do things, either overall, or just something that works better for them. So with that in mind, experiment cautiously with other ways of doing things in areas where common practice seems really dubious or really annoying to you.
This way of doing things means you'll mostly be doing things in a decent way, and allows for the possibility of occasional improvements.
You are missing a crucial point: Being "trad" is a good old flex. For example, a trad wife that makes breakfast cereal from scratch instead of just buying them from the store sends the message that she has all the time in the world for activities that are technically productive but so low-efficiency that they amount to leisure, just without the social stigma of actual leisure. Which in turn means to convey that her husband earns enough money to comfortably support an entire family, which is a distant dream of bygone days for most people.
Point in favor of option 3: You (as in the general "you") probably aren't on the exact median across every relevant character trait, so the averaged wisdom of the masses will never apply without limits and bounds. That "random jerk" might just be the one most qualified to decide which values are best for him in his life situation at his age. Look at where groups of people sharing certain values tend to wind up at different stages of their lives, and judge for yourself if that's where you want to wind up as well.
That being said, following the "latest trends" is almost never a good idea. Let others try out new value combinations first, and see what it gets them.
Can anybody recommend a blog or podcast with a left wing bent? Feel like I've been in a bit of a right wing/liberal/libertarian bubble recently, and all the left wing commentary I've been seeing recently is low effort short form stuff on social media.
I'm looking for something that engages with the best of the arguments against it but still has a confident and clear philosophy. Something that tries to understand the world, not just make you feel depressed at how terrible it is.
Bonus if it's British or global. Obviously America will be a significant topic, but I don't want it to be the only topic.
(Some of you might be of the opinion that I'm asking for an oxymoron because any left-winger that takes seriously the arguments against them will end up not left wing anymore. That's not the topic of discussion of this comment, and I'd be very grateful if you'd keep it to yourself or start a new top level comment to discuss that.)
The Making Sense podcast by Sam Harris. He's a lifelong liberal but is also critical of many aspects of the Democratic party and the identitarian movements.
Thanks. I think he's good, but probably not what I'm after here. In my terms he's a centrist, and he seems to be broadly in line with the other centrist voices I'm exposed to (and trying to diversify from) like Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Scott Alexander etc.
If you're looking for a probable cross section of US right or left, another place to look is probably The Tangle at readtangle.com, run by Isaac Saul. Saul's advertisement is news from 360 degrees; every story gets what the left is saying, and what the right is saying (and then Saul's take). So, look at the sources Saul uses from the left, and look for blogs, and you're there.
I think Tangle is worthwhile, but don't think this isn't going to achieve what OP wants.
Tangle isn't valuable b/c they've found high quality sources. Instead, Saul, and his team, are doing significant work on each issue by distilling the key claims/ideas from the sources, organizing them, and trying to create a synthesis. Most of the sources that they cite, on both sides, are bad, if you go to them straight.
I had the impression that Tangle was collating reasonably high quality sources, since the summaries seemed to avoid vituperative language. If I look at the USAID article, for example, I see WaPo, Slate, and Jacobin, which seems tolerable? (Of course, none of those are blogs or podcasts, either.)
Admittedly, I wouldn't just go with the first three sources I see on Tangle; I expect to poll it for a while to get a dozen or so sources, at least. And I don't know how long it would take to find a blog cited there, either.
If the OP defines a good source as something that recognizes the strongest arguments against their position and engages, then none of the underlying Tangle sources qualify.
What Tangle gives in the summaries is the best of what is available in the sources. Sometimes it is still nonsense, because that's all that was available, but usually they're able to avoid the trash. In any case, you get an overly positive view of the sources, if you are only seeing the bits that get through the Tangle screen.
BTW, I'm not claiming the underlying left sources are worse than the ones on the right.
Haha, good question. Always hard to define! I'm afraid I've never heard of Josh Barro or the B&R guys and have only a vague awareness of Matthew Yglesias.
I listen to The Rest is Politics, and I would put both Stewart and Campbell firmly in the centre. (I do like them, but they're not what I'm looking for here.) I used to read Owen Jones, who is maybe in the correct part of the political spectrum for what I'm asking here, but he's not very intellectually curious. Maybe George Monbiot is close to what I'm looking for, but I find him hard to read without getting very despondent. (Although I realise that trying to find someone on the left who doesn't radiate an air of despondency is perhaps asking a bit much with the current state of the world...) Actually, another problem with Monbiot for what I'm asking here is that I don't think there's much overlap between the issues he talks about and the issues everybody else talks about. He does a good job of saying "YOU SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT THIS" but he doesn't do much of "this person recently made xyz argument. Here's why I disagree".
Highly second the recommendation for Yglesias (his substack is Slow Boring, and his podcast is Politix, with a co-host who is more squarely on the left than he is).
The Ezra Klein Show is also a good podcast--not always political, but always interesting, and Ezra Klein is a great interviewer.
Thanks. Just looked up Politix and it seems to be entirely free previews of paid episodes. Can one get a good experience by just regularly listening to the previews or is it just a hook to get you to pay?
I haven’t paid either, I only listen to the free previews and I find them a good experience. They’re pretty generous, generally between 30-40ish min long (which as far as I’m concerned effectively makes it a standalone full length free podcast, if on the shorter side). They don’t leave on egregious cliffhangers imo but do pique your interest and if I had more disposable income I might pay for the whole thing. I do think, if you’re going to interact with Yglesias in only one way, it’s worth prioritizing his Substack over the podcast though.
Can we recommend ourselves? I've got a small blog that fits those criteria, it's leftist and tries to engage with more mainstream arguments against left-economics, and has a focus on Britain. e.g. here's a post responding to free-market attacks on the viability of central planning: https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/economic-calculation-in-the-rts-commonwealth
In general, I feel there's a lack good left-wing content online, we don't really have anything that compares to the libertarian blog-o-sphere. Basically the only one I come back to regularly is Paul Cockshott's Youtube channel but that's not the kind of thing it sounds like you're looking for.
Another example: the Cass review sounds pretty damning, and maybe there's no evidence that puberty blockers are an effective treatment for teenagers with gender dysphoria. Should it be impossible for trans kids to access this kind of treatment? Seems harsh to trans kids, but then again if the treatment isn't effective...
(This is more of a scientific question than a political one, but I'm just a little bit worried, because the science podcast that first got me questioning my views on this has a clear liberal/right bias so I worry they might've missed something important on this topic as they have on other topics I know more about.)
Please note that concluding there is a lack of evidence for effectiveness is not the same thing as concluding the treatment isn't effective.
Puberty blockers can be used to delay puberty. There is a hypothesis (reasonable, in my humble, non-medical opinion) that delaying puberty for gender dysphoric minors might be beneficial, since that way they can reach age of consent without developing characteristics they don't want to, fitting better with their identity, etc.
All of that is fine! Great even!
The problem is that there is no good evidence for this actually working, medical institutions pretend there is and activists brand anyone presenting objections as a bigot, with all the political fallout involved, involving and causing a plethora of problems I'd rather not talk about without another cup of coffee in me, point is, if you read the review itself (which, if you haven't and are interested, you totally can, it's public and very layman-readable: https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CassReview_Final.pdf) you will note that it doesn't really recommend a ban on puberty blockers, rather is advises caution and, most importantly, tying them to research in order to actually find out whether this works or not. The UK is expected to start clinical trials this year: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/07/delayed-puberty-blocker-clinical-trial-to-start-next-year-in-england
One framing of the puberty blockers for kids/teens debate that I found interesting was a departure from speaking in terms of gender dysphoria entirely and instead a reframing around consent, and in particular, where we place the onus of consent.
Why is it that kids/teens would be incapable of consenting to the *prevention* of major changes happening to their bodies, and we don't care when they *don't* consent to the actual major changes happening to their bodies (puberty)?
I am not an expert on this, but my impression was:
- Puberty blockers are meant to prevent young trans kids from developing adult characteristics of the opposite gender (eg beards).
- They do that.
- This is in no sense a "treatment", because it doesn't make them stop being gender dysphoric, and it doesn't even make them feel better than they felt before (since they also didn't have a beard before).
- But they don't get characteristics they don't want, which would make them worse off.
- I don't know if there are studies comparing them to a control group of trans people who were forced to develop preferred-gender-discongruent features against their will, or whether the difference was clinically meaningful. I wouldn't be too surprised if it wasn't, because clinically meaningful is a high bar. If someone forced me to only eat gruel every day, this would make me worse off, but I'm not sure if it would show up as a statistically significant change on a depression inventory or suicide rate. I think there is some room to trust common sense here.
- Realistically beards are a bad example, it's more like "typically masculine face shape" which can't be reversed. But puberty blockers can be reversed (you just stop taking them). It seems pretty cruel to make teens who feel sure they want to look feminine in the future irreversibly develop masculine features because "oh well, you're only 16 now, can't make your own medical decisions", especially when you could just give them the meds and, if they change their minds later, let them go off the meds.
- My impression is conservatives try to obfuscate this by saying that the meds have side effects, but all meds have side effects and the side effects of these wouldn't make anyone think twice if it weren't being used as a political football.
- For the level of cruel this is, I would imagine irreversibly giving a straight cis man breasts or something - it's going to screw up his ability to look normal for the rest of his life.
"But puberty blockers can be reversed (you just stop taking them)."
Does reversing puberty blockers result in a person going through a normal puberty with normal sexual/reproductive development at whatever age they stop taking the blockers?
I'm pretty sure that's not possible for social reasons alone: puberty involves a lot of awkward behavior that's only really tolerated when it comes from people in the normal age range for puberty. But I'm skeptical that even the purely physiological effects are entirely reversible.
He's talking about the biological effects of puberty, not the social effects. I'm not sure you really want to argue that the social parts of conventional puberty are beneficial to everyone who goes through them.
My understanding of the side effects includes potential sterilization of the patient. It may be that this is an acceptable side effect, especially in extreme cases, but that's exactly the kind of side effect that we may wish to prevent children from accepting.
Have I heard incorrectly that this may be one of the side effects?
There are also really obvious side effects that can hardly be called side effects - a man with a much more feminine face and who is short and thin who was on puberty blockers for most of their teenage years before changing their mind is going to deal with that choice forever. This of course gets into the conversation about rates for desistance and so forth, which is more muddy than clean. But even a low rate of desistance with a low rate of permanent changes is non-zero enough to consider whether children are capable of making informed decisions on the topic.
A libertarian approach (which I'm sympathetic to but no longer accept at face value) would say something like "doesn't matter, let the people decide." But for pretty much all medical care we set regulations and limitations on what people can do, especially for children. I don't know what rate I would choose, but if there is any level of desistance at all it's hard to argue that the government can't or shouldn't consider the matter and protectively refuse to allow some people to get the procedures or take the medication.
"[A]ll meds have side effects and the side effects of these wouldn't make anyone think twice if it weren't being used as a political football."
I have to question this, because the first country to ban or restrict these treatments was Sweden, specifically on the basis of the side effects, and it doesn't seem to have been a political football there.
I am pretty Liberal (maybe center left). It seems to me that, as you say, this is a scientific (or medical) issue. It also seems clear that at the moment we are prescribing too much of this to too many people. Eventually, though, the government should have nothing to do with this, just as they should have nothing to do with any other interaction you have with your personal doctor.
It is unclear, at this moment in time what the government could do, other than making some statements that the medical field needs to figure this out, and possibly throwing some money at the problem. However, part of the problem is that some on the Right believe that Trans people (like Gay people) are mythological and thus any concessions contrary to that are problematic.
It would be good if the medical scientific part of this equation could be separated from the social political side. I say that realizing I have no clue how to do that myself. Practically speaking the really difficult problem seems to be social accommodation; what prison do you go to, what level of sport are you allowed to compete in, and to a much lesser extent, which bathroom are you allowed to use? I do think these problems are solvable without demonizing transgender people or declaring a fatwa on medical interventions that makes sense.
Very much agreed. Since it's political, and many of the medical organizations have said things that can only be recognized as overtly political, it's now impossible to separate at least some of the medical literature from propaganda on behalf of social causes.
I don't like that the conservatives have taken the route of doing the same thing in reverse, but I don't see an alternative based on how the official medical organs made a point of taking political stances.
It’s difficult to believe anything you hear today; the noise level is very high. On one side it’s “THEY are burning America to the ground.” On the other is “WE are just tidying up.”
The whole trans issue is such a great hobby horse. It affects rather few people, and it gets everyone hot and bothered. IMO it was the intersection with sport that made it such a calamity.
I think all of them should be solved by the organization involved and not by the government. If 2 girls want to play D&D with the guy down the street who dresses funny, then they should be able to. If a sports organization thinks it's women's teams should consist solely of biological women (probably the sensible choice most of the time), then that should be their decision to make. Same with bathrooms.
For example, I've recently been coming around to the far-right narrative on Rotherham: that the race/culture of the perpetrators might be relevant (not just Chinese robber fallacy), and that anti-racism in the police might have been a significant contributing factor to refusing to investigate properly. But I've not read or heard anybody argue against this! It seems most people on the left take it as self evidently false and racist and not worth engaging with.
I suspect people on the left know this is one they won't win on. There are a lot of misconceptions about the Pakistani child rape scandal.
First. It was not one incident, in one town ten years ago. It started in the sixties, affected over 50 towns and goes on to this day.
Second. It was not broken like a 'regular' scandal by willing papers. The few journalists interested found it exceptionally difficult to get published and it got a hundred-fold less media attention than BLM or islamophobia.
Third: There were enquiries, but they did not result in any penalties for the authorities who allowed the rape and torture to occur on their watch and the recommendations of the enquiries have not been enacted, so many people believe the enquiries were just attempts to white wash.
Fourth: Most of the victims never got the help or compensation they needed. Many of the dual nationality rapists got no or minimum sentences. None of them got deported. None of the police, social workers, council leaders who ignored or in some cases actively colluded with the rapists got called out or punished. So many people believe justice was not done.
Fifth: There was clearly a systemic issue. This was not rape by random pedos. It was rape by a population imported against the will of the English people, who on the whole cost more in welfare than they contribute, and have a culture and attitude which is very hostile to the indigenous English. It appears it was not just one or two psychos but the majority of the Pakistani population covered up for and sided with the rapists and a substantial minority of Pakistani men, perhaps one in ten were involved in the rapes. That is a systemic problem that requires a systemic enquiry and solution - that never happened.
The Pakistani community were some of the most staunch supporters of the left. The left in England are known to be strongly in favour of immigrants and Muslims and hate and despise the English working class.
No wonder they don't want want to debate the issue. Elon is irrelevant except he drew attention to the ongoing and never resolved scandal.
The relevant immigration statutes (especially for incidents starting 60 years ago) seem quite clear that this was not an “imported” minority, and suggests that there was, in fact, no legal grounds for deporting the perpetrators.
The facts described in rest of your fourth point constitute, of course, a tragedy.
> The left in England are known to be strongly in favour of immigrants and Muslims and hate and despise the English working class.
Source? Was this also true 60 years ago, or even 25?
> it got a hundred-fold less media attention than BLM or islamophobia.
I’m assuming you are being hyperbolic here. Again, it made most of the British press’s news headings for a while.
> the recommendations of the enquiries have not been enacted
Unless I’m mistaken, the UK was quite conservative at the time while Labor was in limbo. Maybe this one is not entirely the left’s fault?
> who on the whole cost more in welfare than they contribute,
Proof?
> and have a culture and attitude which is very hostile to the indigenous English.
If they have to justify their existence to any indigenous English who comes and asks them, that must get annoying pretty fast. Especially if the knee-jerk reaction is “a brown-skinned guy, I’m sure he’s raping little girls when he can get away with it”.
Re Elon: please read Chastity’s link. He only cared about the facts to the extent that they let him attack Starmer.
I am sure you know that wikipedia is not to be trusted on issues very close to the hearts of the liberal elites: immigration is certainly one of these. Various British elites wanted mass immigration for various reasons, but the English people have clearly and consistently been against it. As have all people everywhere. I challenge you to find one country where the working class poor welcomed in mass numbers of foreigners making them minorities in their own communities. I agree it is legally difficult to deport foreign rapists, torturers and criminals. That is because the law is an ass and has been subverted by left elitists who never saw a minority they didn't profess to love.
I am not actually being hyperbolic - Matt Goodwin (partisan I know) - ran the stats and there was literally 40 to 100 times more mentions of BLM and George Floyd (non-Uk issues) than the repeated rape and torture of thousands of little English girls.
Failure to enact recommendations are the failure of both left and right. The right have also been woefully and criminally inadequate in their response but they were not the one's importing the Pakistanis (Tony Blair's government opening up to mass immigration to "rub the right's face in diversity"). Pakistani community were monolithic left-voting before they started to vote for their own pro-Hamas representatives and the left everywhere love immigrants and muslims to a much greater extent than the right do. So not equally at fault. Both bad but left much worse.
For many years, it was claimed that low-skilled immigrants, as most Pakistanis are, are somehow a benefit to the country. Recent good economic studies from Denmark and the Netherlands (google them) clearly show that low-skilled immigrants from poor countries cost far more than they contribute when imported to rich countries with generous welfare states.
Pakistanis don't have to justify their existence in their Pakistan (where most retain citizenship, return regularly, and bring in spouses from). They are uninvited and unwelcome guests in England and yes for sure they should be able to justify their presence here and if they cannot they should go home. I would say the same about English people in Pakistan or Thailand.
Most people on the left view, I believe, Rotherham as a non-story. Not in the sense that it didn’t happen, or that it wasn’t outrageous – but in the sense that it was propelled in a foreign country’s news cycle by a certain powerful individual with twelve figures of net worth who cared first about attacking Starmer.
To the British, the story happened a decade ago, was reported in high-profile newspapers (the Times broke it, I think), and investigated by the government. The British press or commentary of that time might be worth looking into.
Thanks. Just to be clear, when you say "Rotherham" (as in, as a story or non-story), you mean not only the grooming and rapes themselves, but also the cover-up by the police? (I'm ashamed to admit that I am British myself and had very little awareness of the issue ten years ago. I probably vaguely assumed something along the lines of Chinese Robbers was going on. Maybe my own left-wing bias made me not want to take the story seriously. Or maybe I was just distracted by my university studies.)
I definitely agree that it's kind of stupid that when Musk says an issue should be on the agenda we all rush to discuss the issue, but at the same time, I'd like it if *somebody* on the left would discuss it, because otherwise their silence just plays into the hands of the far right, who say that the left just doesn't want to talk about it because it doesn't fit their narrative.
I think Chastity’s answer is worth a read, but yes, by Rotherham I also mean the police’s actions – which, again, wasn’t news in the early 2010s.
Something I’m surprised I didn’t see discussed is that even if the police trusts you, it seems simply hard to prosecute (let alone convict) anyone for rape.
We have (with excellent reason) high standards to prove anyone is guilty – but how would you prove to a court of law, more convincingly than a lawyer whose job is to deny it, that a rape even occurred?
Saw this post discussing the issue a bit back, seemed to deal with the specific claims fairly well.
Overall, as somebody who has read a lot on rape, the whole rightoid narrative seems tough to believe on its face. Rape is an issue that cops/prosecutors ordinarily struggle to deal with (leaves relatively little evidence); children rarely come forward to authorities on their own, lacking the understanding of the seriousness of what's happening; authorities routinely just ignore first line reporting in defiance of regulations or guidance because the supposed perpetrator seems like a nice guy; and everybody really, routinely, regularly seems to think that if they just sweep serial offenders under the rug then they'll look better and it'll all go away (rather than what will actually happen, which is that it will come back in several years' time and they will look 1000x worse for having been told and done nothing).
There's no need to appeal to some special wokeism gone wrong explanation. The timeline also doesn't really work since they were getting reports in 2001 that they ignored (right after 9/11 being a notoriously Woke time, especially for Muslims), and the first trials were in 2010.
Could you be more specific in the quotes you are referring to? This is quite a long article and most of the quotes are from various after-action reports, not the police themselves.
One of the few quotes clearly from an officer was “x didn’t want [the] town to become the child abuse capital of the north. They didn’t want riots.” Which sounds much more "I don't want to deal with the flak of this rape getting out, so I will make the flak 100x worse by pushing it off for years/decades" and not "oh we can't be racist to the Pakistanis by mentioning some of them are rapists."
There were multiple examples of grooming gangs after Rotherham. On the other hand there’s less evidence of cover ups. The government is in a tough position, any inquiry will open old wounds, the abscence of one will allow those wounds to fester.
I'm noticing a drastic increase in calls for political violence on social media. Sometimes when I open Facebook it literally shows me "memes" that are just an image of a gun pointed at Elon Musk with a call to action to murder him. I'm not sure how much of this sentiment is some kind of bubble I'm in vs being a very widespread belief. But it is worrying me that there could be a continued escalation in political violence over what happened last year. Am I overreacting due to online overexposure to these topics or is it really getting that bad?
I mean, depending on the specifics, I believe that is criminal (Google criminal speech). I imagine, explicit calls for violence will be cracked down on in time.
At the moment, the left is just a bit of mess, and I think a lot of people don't understand that there are laws that apply to them, e.g., you saw celebrities saying they wish Trump had been shot (and saying that is a federal offense in America).
I imagine there will be a few test cases / warnings, and everything will chill out.
Saying one wishes Trump had been shot is not a federal offense in America.
It -is- likely to get the attention of the Secret Service. (I recall a teenage girl who wrote a LiveJournal entry some time in 2004 where she said she wished George Bush would die, and got real live agents knocking on her parents' door and a short interview in which they verified that this girl wasn't some adult posing as a girl and passing a secret go code to a crack assassin. The agents were probably a bit bored - this was probably the fiftieth one they had to process that term - but they had to follow up on every tip. They probably can't afford to do that to every social media entry now, but if it's a celebrity, it'll likely get priority.)
Obviously, if the individual responds like someone who would act on that wish, one could expect some maybe-jail time, but the more likely response is a stern lecture. The US is not North Korea.
I agree that: the courts and secret service certainly exercise discretion, and the words I actually quoted likely wouldn't be a federal crime.
I do believe: a lot of speech people engage in pretty freely (particularly the left at the moment) does meet the historic standard of criminal.
Quoting directly from Wikipedia:
Convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 871 have been sustained for declaring that "President Wilson ought to be killed. It is a wonder some one has not done it already. If I had an opportunity, I would do it myself";[15] and for declaring that "Wilson is a wooden-headed son of a bitch. I wish Wilson was in hell, and if I had the power I would put him there."[16] In a later era, a conviction was sustained for displaying posters urging passersby to "hang [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt".[17]
Because the offense consists of pure speech, the courts have issued rulings attempting to balance the government's interest in protecting the president with free speech rights under the First Amendment. According to the book Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures, "Hundreds of celebrity howlers threaten the president of the United States every year, sometimes because they disagree with his policies, but more often just because he is the president."
It should be clear (with roughly equal provenance) that there exists a difference between just saying one wishes the President were dead and whatever it is that results in sentences such as 90 days in jail (Palmer, a mechEng who blamed FDR for losing his $1M fortune), two to six years in prison (a group of Nazi sympathizers who threatened FDR), or deportation (Buddhi, an Indian immigrant who called for George Bush's assassination and his wife Laura's rape and murder), or 27 months in prison (Miller, a self-proclaimed terrorist who called for Obama's assassination in a Craigslist post). That same article cites a political cartoon that threatened Bush, got a Secret Service visit, but no charges; various Facebook groups that toy with assassination and earn hundreds of followers; and other incidents that result in no charges, or conviction overturned on appeal.
Obviously, threatening a President is not a great life choice, and a pretty good way to get the government's attention. But it's also not an automatic conviction.
I believe the fail assassination attempts drained the left of its energy to an absurd degree; not only was the reality of violence brought to mind(which makes people more right wing, and masculine) unlike a random black owned business reacting to a blm riot, trump has *plenty* of power to shame
We absolutely got lucky, but this could've happened at any time in the past 8 years, trumps been called hitler the whole time
I think it's becoming more normalized recently, although I think it's still kind very much from a certain bubble. I do expect escalation of political violence within the next few years. It feels baked into society. I don't think the loudest people with the most reach or biggest platform will actually do any violence, but as David Hines noted on Twitter, the pattern is for the dumb marks who don't understand it's all kayfabe to actually try.
I do kind of wonder if we'll see a rise in the next few years of leftists getting entrapped by the FBI into being part of plans to commit violence, getting their turns on the Sit-n-Spin.
“ all right wing people just use their rhetorical and intellectual imaginings to cover up for the fact that they really want to exterminate everyone who doesn’t agree with them, or look like them.”
I mean that's a bad example in this context as that's not really a common stereotype. Also it's too absolutist. If the statement was "Republicans are uneducated racists" I wouldn't know it was false. Directionally it's probably true, particularly these days. Most stereotypes are accurate, after all. That doesn't mean they apply to all members of the relevant group. The problem with stereotypes isn't with their inaccuracy, it's applying them in bad faith to individuals on scant evidence.
I just think it's a weak ban. Liberals are, in a relative sense, the party of feminine sensibilities and women generally dislike direct conflict - that's why the Left taboos everything and disinvites speakers rather than defeating them in debate. Anomie's comment was directionally correct (I in fact agree with him) and isn't in the top 10% on the "needlessly provocative" scale IMO. Giving him a week to think about it would be more reasonable in my view. I suspect the indefinite ban comes from a place of "that hit a little too close to home" rather than "this is beyond the pale." But whatever, it's kinda fun to see Scott lose his temper every once in a while. (Not saying that's definitely what happened, it's just how it reads to me.)
Well, when you explain it that way, it all makes perfect sense.
>I mean that's a bad example in this context as that's not really a common stereotype. Also it's too absolutist
I think "leftists are spineless cowards" (or words to that effect) could be considered equal in absolutism to my proposal, and I can only pray that they are both uncommon. They certainly are in my world. A fairer comparison to the statement you offered up would be, "Leftists are all conceited assholes." which is a proposition I can take somewhat seriously. In fact I could apply it to a lot of people of any persuasion who let their politics subsume their reason.
Because liberals and leftists have been on the front lines fighting wars for centuries. And it is my understanding that today, the US military is only slightly more conservative than the general public. Which means there are massive numbers of liberals serving serving in our military.
Speaking only for myself, as an American liberal I stand ready to sacrifice my life for what I believe in. Thinking that your opponent is less sincere in their stated positions than your side is is a well known cognitive bias, with well known catastrophic outcomes ("Once we start (arresting/killing/bombing) them they will fold right away. We can't lose!")
Luigi Mangione is a pretty clear counter example. There were also plenty of people on the left that put their lives on the line during the protests a few years ago, many were arrested, injured, or killed. Going back further, the Uni-Bomber was left wing. Kent State. And quite a few people lost their lives fighting for Civil Rights.
Now will the current leadership of the political left put their lives on the line? Democrats didn't even work through the weekend to fight back against Musk, so I can't imagine any of them risking arrest let alone death.
However, since the civil rights and anti-vietnam war movements ended, the country has mostly been moving left. So the left has been able to achieve their goals without becoming militant. That part of the movement has atrophied.
But the Unabomber spent many pages bashing liberals and their psychology in his Manifesto. His primitivist ideology, which by his own admission would have resulted in the deaths of billions of humans, sought something no liberal would want.
Fine. He's a child who can plan and execute a successful assassination. The left has an awful lot of highly-eductated "children" old enough to legally purchase firearms. And it has a lot of thought leaders who are quite skilled at pointing these children in whatever direction suits their purpose.
This seems like it could be a problem if your plans depend on the left offering only non-violent resistance.
Not child, "chud". This is a piece of pejorative leftist internet slang for right-wing persons, particularly young men, and derives from an old urban legend of C.H.U.D.s in the New York sewer system – Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.
I mean, Donald Trump got elected promising revenge on his allies lol. He released the Jan 6 people who called for hanging Mike Pence. Musk is basically invading government offices at this point to steal data. Trump is threatening war, he's threatening to invade allies, and threatening to put people in Gitmo (read: a camp that concentrates people). I'm sure you disagree heavily with me in either some of these characterizations or with the idea of all of them being that bad, but I feel like the cat's out of the bag already, and it wasn't necessarily JUST the fault of people more to the left of the political spectrum.
It isn't so far-fetched that people who agree with what I said would think and say what you said.
Uh, how long since the last government shutdown? People get locked out of buildings all the time.
> but why would the accomplish them in this manner if they thought what they were doing was legal?
Why do police raid drug houses? The reason they're doing it like this is because the bureaucracy is out of hand and needs to be cut off at the heels. You can't kill bureaucracy by going through bureaucratic channels. This is the only way to do it.
During a government shut down, the doors are locked because there isn't money to pay for them to be open. Right now the doors are shut to prevent anyone from stopping Musk from doing crimes.
Where is the evidence that these agencies aren't doing anything other than what they have been order to do by law? Are you that brain rotted that you believe this lie that the bureaucracy is a criminal conspiracy?
I agree with the objection the other commenter pointed out, which is that you can't make an office called "I Do What I Want" just because you were elected. Musk should not have any authority to do what he is doing right now, and he's getting sued for it in fact.
The problem really just is that even if he is in the wrong, we are in a territory where, even if Musk lost the lawsuit and was given jail time, then
1) the executive, i.e. the one that would have to dole out the punishment wouldn't do anything to stop Musk, bc it's led by Trump
2) Congress wouldn't impeach the president for not following the court's order to impeach Trump, bc they are beholden to Trump
America is undergoing a new Watergate every 2 days since the Trump administration started lol.
If Trump has a certain authority, say to regulate and control the bureaucracy, and he chose to share that authority with another individual, is there something illegal with that? I get that we could hound someone on form - did they sign the appropriate paperwork, etc. If Musk didn't have a security clearance and there was classified information, that could be an issue.
But nobody doubts that Trump asked him to do this and supports what he's doing. Why can't Trump exercise his own authority through a delegate?
If you think Trump has far too much power I would strongly agree. But this is also the case when it was Biden, and Obama, and Bush. We only seem to see that when the other team takes steps we don't think they should have taken. When someone does what we want, then we seem to think that the exercise of power was acceptable or even just.
My go-to example has been DACA, which was not at all permitted or envisioned by the relevant laws but still upheld in court as an appropriate exercise of executive authority. If permitting long term illegal immigrants to get work papers and other documentation and reside in the US is a proper use of the executive authority to deport illegal immigrants, then it's hard to argue that much Trump could authorize *isn't* within his authority.
They get to appoint people to run the actual agencies of the government, subject to Senate signoff. And those people have to be vetted for security clearances for obvious reasons.
Musk has not been appointed to anything except a made-up "DOGE" which does not exist legally or administratively; he's not been approved by the Senate nor does he have security clearance; etc. That's why for instance their "early retirement offer" scam email went out to federal staffers without any government letterhead or authorizing personnel code or anything -- it has no more legal enforceability than those old emails from the "Nigerian Finance Minister".
"Musk has not been appointed to anything except a made-up "DOGE" which does not exist legally or administratively; he's not been approved by the Senate nor does he have security clearance; etc."
DOGE exists within the executive office of the President, most of the positions of which do not require confirmation by the Senate.
Right. It's just a group of presidential advisors having no more legal or regulatory authority than a deputy White House researcher or butler. DOGE can't fire anybody or change actually anything in the government. That's why their "early retirement offer" scam email went out to federal staffers without any government letterhead or authorizing personnel code or anything -- it has no more legal enforceability than those old emails from the "Nigerian Finance Minister". Federal agency employees have belatedly realized this and are now redirecting DOGE emails to their junk folders according to many commenters at reddit/r/fednews.
I suspect part of it is a majority of social media platforms just declining to moderate anymore. Meta and X both made a big deal about ceasing to moderate, Reddit's powermoderater cliques support political violence against right wing figures while TikTok at best doesn't oppose sowing discord in the west. You don't need a particularly large amount of people to keep posting calls to political violence and get away with it to cause large culture shifts on social media.
In other news, some of my libbed up friend group have joined me in the gun club; given current events.
These are all the libest libs to ever lib, 45-65 year old upper middle class vaguely protestant anglo retired teachers and small business owners who think the type of person who owns guns is a couple IQ points short of room temperature and is best kept several hundred miles away from them in one of the shitty states with the other dumb animals. (They still think this, but it's different for them and also me because we aren't dumb animals, you see.)
Interestingly, the thing that tipped them over was a combo of ICE raiding churches and Musk doing coup shit, and the general observed reaction of conservatives around them.
If this is representative: holly shit lol. There are white women who have decided to become armed! White liberals! Teachers with pensions! Not socialists, not communists getting ready to fight against Amerikkka! That is some wild shit. Even last year, this would have been totally inconceivable.
This is probably not good for the fabric of society or whatever, but I think it's very funny and indicative of what we have to look forward to in the coming years (of lead [poisoning]).
Being willing to own a gun when cheap, legal and relatively trivial and the wrong person in power is hardly enough capability of violence to keep yourself free; by all means great the left should be less annoying about guns for maybe upto a decade, but this is hardly ground breaking events; tell me when they start wilderness camping without phones to train up their knife fight skills like the militias
Knife fighting is cosplay stuff IMO. It's fun, but if you've ever done it seriously you'll quickly realise that there is no situation where you stab and don't get stabbed unless you have control of their hands, which is hard when they have a knife in those hands.
Wilderness camping without phones is also cosplay; and this is coming form a dude that walks off into the jungle or the forest or the dessert a couple times a year for the past 20 years, and who refused to get a cell phone until 2019.
Here are the things that matter with guns in order: practicing at the range until the noise isn't scary,
standing in front of a mirror and practicing your draw to ready position over and over and over until it is good enough,
Practicing moving with your gun out while maintaining a good sight picture or awareness,
and finally: actually getting good at hitting things.
Everything else is just something people do to feel all manly and shit. If it isn't boring, it isn't helping.
> Knife fighting is cosplay stuff IMO. It's fun, but if you've ever done it seriously you'll quickly realise that there is no situation where you stab and don't get stabbed unless you have control of their hands, which is hard when they have a knife in those hands.
I wasnt implying fighting fair, Im fuzzy on actual militias but I would focus on time to kill of *attacking* an unarmed man(prehaphs from a hidden position), fighting several unarmed men, fighting people armed with holstered pistol
> Wilderness camping without phones is also cosplay; and this is coming form a dude that walks off into the jungle or the forest or the dessert a couple times a year for the past 20 years, and who refused to get a cell phone until 2019.
This directly contradicts the last two war books ive read that promotes guerrilla warfare; also my rather strong belief that 99.9% of people cant make a computer that is safe from the cia spying, if theres a civil war in america the majority of players should destroy their phones and computers; while this isnt true for blessed cia factions in tech illiterate society's; it will be be true if the true 1st world turns violent.
America isnt the uk, theres allot of wilderness left; the left will have tiny amount of land but the jets while the right will have all the land and grumpa shotgun (and the 80% of the miltery that desserts when the glowies do something undeniable, and wildly unethical), not the clean boarder of north vs south, but instead rural vs city, traveling around road blocks or damage will like be walking a mile around and hoping you dont run into anyone
Just here to chime in on how knife skills are the dark horse of self-defense. Pretty easy learning curve, a few hours of basic training get you from a bumbling fool likely to cut himself to a decent level of skill. And nobody bats an eye at a 3-inch knife in your pocket, looks totally innocent.
Agree. As long as you acknowledge that when you fight someone else with knife, there are usually two losers: He who dies now, and he who dies 15 minutes later.
Sure. Same with a gun? As in, in a shootout? And yet so many people advise guns for self-defense (which I'm not disagreeing with).
But what I'm getting at is a difference between "me with empty hands" and "me with a knife that I know how to get out of my pocket and open up because I practiced it 1000 times". When an angry 250 lb man knocks me down and gets on top, sure I can attempt a mount escape, but, you know... this ain't a BJJ mat. Being able to stab him in the kidney may just make a difference between me having my face bashed in and... not having my face bashed in.
Yeah, shootouts are statistically much safer than knife fights.
You can occasionally live through a couple 9mm holes punched through your meats much more readily than 10++ stab wounds; because once you pop you just don't stop vis. getting stabbed.
Also, Gun is the top of the escalation ladder you can have hidden on your person. If you pull a knife on somebody and they have a gun, you have given them incentive to pop you.
That said, I carry a knife for tool reasons, don't carry a gun, and count on my general wideness and incredibly thick neck to make people think twice.
If I lived in the south or the midwest I might think about car carrying, but in SoCal the gun is gonna make you more likely to get shot by the cops while not deterring any crime in particular, because all the personal crime you run into around here is burglars accidentally robbing a house with somebody in it.
I’d rather get shot than stabbed for sure. And definitely, pulling the knife out as a deterrent is a big no-no. I’ve had two knife instructors; both taught to only get the knife out at the moment you have to use it, and one was very specific about doing it as surreptitiously as possible (he had us practice taking the knife out the pocket). It’s a deadly escalation, the last resort. For example, if they want money, just give it. If you are being kidnapped, survival chances drop to <20%, so that’s when the knife comes out…
If you happen to be under 150 lbs and second place upper body strength and reach (e.g. most women vs. most men), a knife is going to be a much less sure defense than a gun.
A gun also has the large benefit of being enough to scare a man into not even trying.
No argument here. But a gun is much larger than a knife and is not as easy to alway have around. I’m by no means suggesting a knife to be a replacement for a gun, just a small weapon that’s easy to learn to use and always have around, and allowing an extra edge vs nothing.
Your idea of liberals is that they are like little mechanical toys: Wind them up and they start spouting woke shit and squealing
with horror if somebody says they own a gun. Come on! There aren’t any groups like that, and thinking that people in your outgroup are that simply summarized is just dumb. In fact it’s evidence that YOU are behaving like a wind up toy.
I probably count as a liberal. My gun attitudes are not the same as the ones you think are typical I. I have a couple acquaintances that absolutely love hunting, and are skillful at it, and I respect that as a hobby as valid as any of mine. And my mother, who had a career in the navy, was an expert shot with a pistol
I myself have never shot a gun, and never felt any interest in learning to do it as a hobby. I have not considered getting one for self-protection, because I think my risk of being savagely attacked is low — I live in a suburb where there is little crime. The risk of being robbed is probably not terribly low, but I would not want to risk a violent encounter with the robbers to prevent the robbery. What if they had guns too?
But if something in my life changed so that I thought the risk of a violent attack on my person was not low, I would certainly consider getting a gun and
learning to use it.
However, it seem to me now that we are far from the kind of situation where the benefit of guns justifies the risk of being in an armed encounter. In my libtard state the worst thing we are likely to have the way things are now is a protest of some Trump policy, with protest turning into a conflict between factions or between one faction and the police. It is easy to avoid ending up in that situation. And I think it’s a terrible idea for people to come armed to protests. All it does is allow people to weaponize their anger. (Of course, If you think the opposing side is a bunch of wind-up toys then sure, guns are fine. Shoot the hell outta them and watch the springs and gears fly. We should all be on the watch for the wind-up toy illusion in ourselves and other people).
Only to the extent that I have contempt for anyone who is a conservative or a liberal. I can't hold that against them too bad, their whole lives have been built on a structure that itself was built on the air.
It's hard to get over that, realizing that everything you've ever done was based on a lie.
I’m pretty liberal and I wouldn’t give the time of day to anyone having such awful ideas about gun owners.
Do these libs actually articulate these hateful ideas - gun owner are stupid and so on - to you or are you making some assumptions based on your own construct of how they might be thinking?
If they were actually talking like this I’d advise finding new friends.
No, they think gun owners are stupid, because most of the gun owners they've met are mostly stupid.
The reason they went to me, a leftist, for gun advice instead of their con Gun nut friends is because their con gun nut friends a couple IQ points short of a happy meal.
You have to be a couple layers down in the hobby before the majority of people you meet aren't alarmingly incompetent to eg have a drivers licence, let alone a gun.
That's because they are from a place where the cultural milieu doesn't attract idiots to guns.
When I lived in the jungle everybody had a gun to scare off birds and big cats, so guns weren't associated with dummies. Now I live within a 40 minute drive of a major US city. In this environment, owning guns is a better predictor of IQ than educational attainment (citation needed).
It's like owning a big truck in Houston vs. Amarillo: one is an accessory for soft hand idiot cosplay, the other is a tool used for productive labor.
So they mocked the 'to protect myself from a tyrannical government' crowd for decades, but now they have seen the light and agree with the sentiment? Maybe a new era of cohesion and brotherhood is upon us!
before, they were clinging to the liberal delusion that conservatives where somehow confused people, with morals and values just like them. That if you made the right argument or something, they could be convinced.
They have come to the realization that their enemies are anti-humanists who specifically want them to suffer, and who support of a given policy is completely disconnected from what it is or what it does.
This is them starting to shed false consciousness and the liberal tendency to ascribe mistake theory to everybody instead of just to people that share their priors.
If you spend any time in firearms spaces that are not membership only, you'll realize that the majority of gun owners are dumb animals that probably shouldn't it'd be allowed outside without supervision.
I exaggerate for comedic effect, but on the other hand I have been muzzle swept and flagged and had dudes turn around with their AR at hip level finger on the trigger pointed right at me enough times that I refuse to go to any sort of range that isn't membership only at this point.
Hmm. This might be geography dependent. I spent most of my gun-club time in central Texas, and I don't remember *anyone* ever doing any of that. And it was pretty clear that anyone who did would have gotten either called out, mocked, or sternly asked to leave, depending on context.
Same in multiple Boy Scout events I'd been at. Even older Scouts would reprimand newer ones.
I'm sorry that happened to you, though, and I totally don't blame you for your refusal.
I know someone who is currently working as a quant at a hedge fund, and is interested in learning more about investing. He is a math whiz, and is especially interested in developing algorithms that give traders an edge, and curious about AI applications to this problem. He does not do much of that sort of thing at work, where his bosses make the big decisions, and where it is unwise to display one’s personal interests. He came here from another country in his 20’s to get an advanced degree, and does not know many other people in his field. What blogs can he read, what discussion forums join, to meet smart people with similar interests and learn more?
Ricki Heicklen is a former Jane Street trader that runs bootcamps that aim to teach trading to people with quant backgrounds, seems like the kind of thing your friend is looking for.
Note: I have no references for this other than a (friendly) podcast interview she did, so I'd suggest to dig in deeper.
Thank you! He is most interested in statistical methods and adapting AI to the task of predicting & identifying strategies or particular stocks to buy and sell. He really is a math super-whiz — came out on top of various math hierarchies in a large
country with strong competition in that field. I think he is looking for people who are speculating about ways to do this, inventing and trying new approaches , etc. He reads a lot of the technical stuff coming out about new approaches to training AI. In short, he is much more interested in the technical challenge of predicting the market than in becoming a rich invester. He can already make a lot of money as a quant, and is not terribly interested in wealth.
So this sounds like he’s focused on the tools. I strongly believe that if one wants to develop a durable edge in the chosen field, developing a strong intuitional foundation is really useful. There are counterexamples, of course, Simmons’s Renaissance in a famous one, but it’s a bit like using Bill Gates to justify dropping out of college.
You are right. He is focused on the tools. He is one of those people who gets fascinated by intellectual challenges and puzzles, and he *craves* to put all his attention on the puzzles and the tools. His interest in the practical goal of making money via personal investments is small relative to his craving. I think he could get as fascinated by the problem of predicting the weather as he could the one of predicting the stock market, even though the former big chaotic phenom holds no promise for making money. But I agree with you that knowing more facts and practicalities is valuable. In fact it is valuable even if all you really care about is the giant math puzzle, because some of the factoids will give you ideas about new approaches and new models for formulating the problem.
I understand hhow his head is working because I, too, tend to hyperfocus on puzzles. For instance, I have been working on ways to get photoshop to select the delicate fringe of frizz around someone's very messy hair, leaving background out of the selection. Photoshop has a bunch of filters and things that are built for making photos more attractive -- but they are all systematic transformations of the image, and there are clever ways to combine them to do things like select something that's very hard to select. So I get bogged down in trying ideas using clever combos of the filters I'm most comfortable with. If I force myself to play with some new filters until I get fluent with them, I have new ideas about ways to do the selecting. Yet I resist doing the new learning. (Meanwhile, I figured out long ago that the best solution to keeping the fringe is just to give up on making Photoshop actually select it separate from the background. Just let Photoshop not even try to capture the fringe, and paint it in later with a special brush.)
" In fact it is valuable even if all you really care about is the giant math puzzle, because some of the factoids will give you ideas about new approaches and new models for formulating the problem."
- It's even more than that - deep understanding of the fundamentals of the puzzle both opens new approaches and - crucially - prevents one from going down senseless tangents and blind alleys, especially when the models get so complicated that it's impossible to really follow what they are doing.
"Are you prone to getting stuck that way?"
- Rarely. I like poking around but I tend to quickly recognize when I'm out of depth and wasting time. When I got serious about recording music a few years back, I had to learn new tools, and initially I thought, I'm an engineer, I'll figure it out! Well, I quickly discovered that no, everything I do sounds like crap and no amount of tinkering with plugins and filters seem to help - off to the manual and instructional videos.
BTW I'm working with Topaz labs AI package to restore some old photos, Holy-Mother-of-God this thing is powerful!
I'm having a hard time with "he's a quant at a hedge fund but doesn't want his bosses to know that he's interested in investing and especially in algorithms that would give traders an edge".
Friend, buddy, pal, I know we're all a little on edge here, but I think you're assuming too much bad faith here.
It is, undoubtedly, very odd for someone working in a hedge fund to ask complete strangers (via proxy) for info on trading algorithms. This is usually propietary knowledge, which he would do much better trying to get from his workplace than from here. I don't believe Don P. was ascribing nefarious purposes to either you or your friend, just understandably expressing confusion over the situation.
I have pulled back from discussing this with you and Don P. because you both seem like you are doing something that seems pointless to me: Reading through comments til you find somebody whom you think is probably wrong or dumb in some clearcut way. Even if I were seeking a way for someone I know to swap info about trading algorithms with other hedge fund quants, is there much point in wading in to say you disapprove? There are lots of extrememly interesting posts to follow up on on this thread. Why select one that has little interesting intellectual meat to it? At best, you will end up having an argument with me about whether my acquaintance is doing a bad thing or not. It is a hyperspecific issue, not of general interest, and pretty sure to involve an acrimonious exchange.
And there are a couple easy ways to just glide on past my post: One is to think I’m asking for ways to help somebody do something unethical, but just dismiss the matter. My post can hardly be your first exposure to the fact that people do underhanded things to make money. Another way to glide past is to assume that I did not explain the situation clearly, and if I had it would not sound like my acquaintance was being unethical and/or things I’d said that did not not make sense to you would make sense. It actually seems to me that you are actively avoiding thinking of ways where the situation I described could make sense, and not involve unethical swapping of algorithms with other quants. For instance, your summary of what I what I said my friend wanted to do is inaccurate. You say he wanted “to ask complete strangers (via proxy) for info on trading algorithms. “I said he was “interested in developing algorithms that give traders an edge.” See the difference? He wants to develop his own algorithms, using novel methods involving AI. He knows there must be others interested in this. Probably some of them are not quants and not even in finance. It’s an interesting problem in and of itself, plus if you solve it you’ll get rich.
I think you and Dan P did not glide past mostly because my post explains things loosely enough that it was easy to bust me and/or my acquaintance for dumbness or moral wrongness. In the service of that you misremembered at least one bit of my post, and did not make much effort to fill in the gaps I left with explanations that were not hard to come up with.
Like, understanding and/or believing it. I see the words "where it is unwise to display his personal interests", but he doesn't want his bosses to know that he's interested in exactly the kind of the thing they care about? Those aren't personal interests! That's the business!
This one is tough because most of the stuff on the web that deals with investing is really crap. There is more than one trading platform out there available to subscribe to that offer to bring these kinds of tools to you as an investor. One of these platforms might be a place he’d prefer to work at than where he is now. He might want to check out Tradier brokerage. There are a few front ends that you can subscribe to that sound kind of like what he’s talking about. Delving more deeply into them might be of interest to your client. I looked into this because about a year ago I decided I wanted to start trading stock options as kind of a hobby.
This is an ad, but something you might find very useful:
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I have spent the last five years of my life bemoaning the fact that I don't have a circle of friends who are the sort of people who just want to work on cool ideas. I have tons of ideas. I want to be around other people who have tons of ideas. And I want to be around people who want to help each other actually do something about all these ideas.
Yuvraj, anyone who signs up: I want to know where I go to bump into people like this. They are not drinking at my local pub.
@rebelcredential just seeing your comment (didnt get notified). Please reach out to me via linkedin or at oasis.repository@gmail.com —- you’re exactly the kind of person I’m building Oasis of Ideas for.
According to Wired - https://archive.is/VPG8k - events at USAID have effectively shut down PEPFAR, a program credited with saving 25 million lives in 20 years, and one that costs under $7b per year to run.
This is about $5,600 per life saved, about on par with estimates of the Against Malaria Foundation's cost per life saved.
$7b here, $7b there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
Good. Sending money to third world countries is bad when EA does it and it's bad when PEPFAR does it. Those are 25 million people that shouldn't still exist and I'm sure that the world is worse off with them in it. Transferring resources from high-productivity cultures to low-productivity cultures is a deadweight loss of value to the world and we should absolutely stop wasting US tax dollars in mindless feel-good Quixotic quests. Invest in what you want more of. I don't want more sub-Saharan Africans and neither should you.
Wow. The hard-core, "I wish all black people would die" racists are really coming out of their rat holes. They must be feeling safe now, I wonder what changed.
I don't have anything against black people, I'm just a consequentialist and don't want first world dollars going to support cultures that can't support themselves. But hey, it's much easier for you to characterize me as racist so enjoy. This is standard progressive reasoning: you'll accuse your opponents of being evil but never acknowledge that they might have a point. If you did that then you might have to engage in self-reflection; self-righteous certainty is so much more fun.
That's a textbook motte-and-baily your pulling here. In your previous comment you wrote:
> Those are 25 million people that shouldn't still exist and I'm sure that the world is worse off with them in it. […] I don't want more sub-Saharan Africans and neither should you.
This is much stronger than and qualitatively different from what you wrote afterwards:
> I'm just a consequentialist and don't want first world dollars going to support cultures that can't support themselves.
Sounds like a cause that should have no trouble finding EAs to fund it voluntarily in the future, then. No reason for it to be funded through theft and debt.
PEPFAR costs 0.1% of federal outlays. Even if I believed you that people would step in to an equal degree - and I don't - how long would that take to be as effective? A year? Two? What if a million people die as a result of a slow transition? I'm not sure I can imagine being such a Libertarian that I'd risk a million lives to save 0.1% of the federal budget, or about $21 per year for me personally. (Obviously a bad trade, since it implies I'd kill everyone in the US to save a third of expenditures!)
But let's say I can be that much of a Libertarian. What even do I think is the purpose of government? Preventing violence? Preventing theft? Isn't an HIV infection essentially both? It reduces your lifespan and/or forces you to purchase medication for your entire life. And each subsequent infection has some chance of infecting somebody else. Reducing it down as close to zero as possible is definitely a worthy goal under any philosophy other than nihilism.
I don't think you really understand because you can't seem to drop your globalist priors even when trying to get into the headspace of non-globalists. You keep saying people people people as if those against foreign aid assume, as you do, that every life is and should be equivalent in the eyes of the government of the United States of America. People against foreign aid believe that the American government should not be valuing non-American lives the same or similarly to American lives
I will agree that that's a challenge, although I think you need to make a stronger assertion here - for example, I might be perfectly comfortable thinking the US government should value the lives of its citizens more, but still think that PEPFAR represents great value. E.g. if I think the federal government should be willing to spend $50k to save a US citizen but only $10k to save a non-US citizen. (This is not really my perspective, but it would be a valid alternative perspective under which I could still be pro-PEPFAR).
I also think that PEPFAR promotes US interests in other ways:
- It greatly boosts our image around the world.
- It demonstrates the value of allying with us versus opposing us.
- Ultimately, eliminating or dramatically reducing HIV infections worldwide is possible, which in turn reduces the burden of HIV within the US, but also reduces the emergence of novel pathogens, which can evolve more easily in immunocompromised hosts.
I want to clarify that I wasn't, in that response, taking any position on whether or not the US government should fund PEPFAR. I was simply noting that people who are against it likely do not assume that the US government should be valuing non-American lives equally to American lives. Some may even believe that the US government should place no value at all whatsoever on non-American lives - and in my opinion that's a perfectly ethical belief to have and to vote based on
I mean, I don't expect anybody to get argued out of it, but I think very few ethical systems suggest it's valid to consider human life to have literally no value.
>"Preventing violence? Preventing theft? Isn't an HIV infection essentially both?"
Not all physical harm is violence. Not all loss of property is theft. This sort of thing will not generally be perceived as being in good faith by those from whose beliefs you're trying to extrapolate.
From a libertarian perspective, one violates your negative rights, the other does not. Here’s an example.
Suppose that I build a house and don’t get fire insurance for it (and I have no mortgage). Does the government have an obligation to pay for me to install sprinklers and other fire prevention measures to prevent loss of property if I fire occurs? Does the government have an obligation to provide policing to prevent loss of property if arson occurs?
You might not agree with the perspective, but it is the predominant rule in the US of “no” to the former and “yes” to the latter. The explanation is that the government has much more responsibility to prevent others from damaging you than to mitigate other harms.
I follow what you're saying, but I don't think it fully resolves the issue. I am arguing that protecting somebody from disease has some characteristics that are similar to protecting them from violence, more so than, say, protecting them from the weather - the distribution isn't random, you can (sometimes) defeat diseases completely, and you can act to contain them geographically. Also you can realistically prevent people from getting diseases in advance (sometimes) just as you can realistically prevent physical violence (sometimes), not just deal with the effects afterwards. And you can (sometimes) reduce the global burden of disease without forcing every individual to do something, like in your install-sprinklers example.
Okay, so you think I'm not doing a good job simulating a Libertarian, exactly as I suggested, but you don't actually have an explanation for how my point is invalid...?
I can see a few issues there, mostly that there is no continuity.
There simply isn’t enough EA money to run a program on a remotely close scale, so the program is basically going to crash, burn and start anew, most of its institutional knowledge lost.
With, of course, a significantly worse performance profile, because instead of relying on mostly guaranteed funding from a main source, they’re going to have to expand more effort to get far less money.
The Salvation Army and Red Cross combined are about the same size as PEPFAR at $7b. I don't see anything here that says only EAs are capable of contributing, and the existing charity infrastructure is far larger.
So the Salvation Army and Red Cross should abandon their existing missions and completely restructure and re-tool instead of PEPFAR continuing as it is? Is that what you're suggesting as a viable alternative?
No, just that the existing charity infrastructure is much larger than the amounts we're talking about and the US federal government doesn't have to be the ones running it. In fact, the US could donate the $7b to private organizations earmarked for their goals and that would be fine.
If we're really going to reduce "government" to theft, then all "private" property is theft as well, because it was coerced out of other people through always-asymmetric contracts enabled and then enforced by the violence-power of GOVERNMENT.
Remove governments and you'll still have contracts and "norms" (if not written laws) and... yes... violence being used to enforce them. Then we can live in a mafioso utopia like 1800's Sicily.
Libertarianism is a tried-and-true system. After William the Conqueror took over England, he did the most libertarian thing ever: "this is LITERALLY ALL my land". (because who's gonna say it isn't?)
He then EFFECTIVE ALTRUISTICALLY gave 20% of it to an organization focused on the saving of souls.
Many Thanks! Well, at least they nominally share the same party.
It seems a pity. More generally, I _do_ sympathize with Trump's attempt to dig out as much of the Woke crap from the federal government as possible, and I understand that a lot of stuff was _hidden_ - e.g. DEI positions and projects hastily renamed at the last minute by the Biden administration. Still, Trump seems to be trimming using a chainsaw. :-(
This seems incorrect. Trump has been quite consistent about taking a chainsaw to international aid long before using the woke/DEI angle. Here are the first older links I found in my first Google search.
Many Thanks! Trump's 2024 opposition to the aid+border-issues bill looked mostly like politicing in one of its more loathsome forms. If I understood correctly, Trump didn't want to see the southern border successfully plugged on Biden's watch (albeit there are disputes about how helpful the measures in the bill would have been), and the linkage to foreign aid makes disentangling what he was trying to do and what his effect was a mess. The 2018 link looks like it was about putting pressure on Pakistan, which at least seems more like a targeted action than like a chainsaw.
Frankly, I think of foreign aid as a subcategory of defense spending, sometimes helping allies like Ukraine and Israel defend against attacks, sometimes tying more neutral nations in grants-with-strings. And it is relatively cheap as defense spending goes, so targeting it for cuts seems foolish.
I'm more concerned about e.g. the freezes and gag orders at NIH and NSF (and CDC??). Yeah, there is a problem with activism hidden as science, but, if I understand correctly, the Trump administration froze _everything_. It would be a pity to e.g. lose the discovery of the next transistor because some of the projects are really Woke activism hidden as if they were science, and ferreting the activist ones out is going to be difficult and lengthy.
> Frankly, I think of foreign aid as a subcategory of defense spending, sometimes helping allies like Ukraine and Israel defend against attacks, sometimes tying more neutral nations in grants-with-strings.
Don’t forget the power of simple goodwill. “They helped us/help other people in our time of need, now they’re asking for a small favor, sure!”
But this is, as far as I can tell, one of the arguments for foreign aid.
> And it is relatively cheap as defense spending goes, so targeting it for cuts seems foolish.
It’s a bit under 1% of the federal budget, so compared to DoD funding (I think 15-ish times bigger), it’s indeed small.
> I'm more concerned about e.g. the freezes and gag orders at NIH and NSF (and CDC??). Yeah, there is a problem with activism hidden as science, but, if I understand correctly, the Trump administration froze _everything_. It would be a pity to e.g. lose the discovery of the next transistor because some of the projects are really Woke activism hidden as if they were science, and ferreting the activist ones out is going to be difficult and lengthy.
The whole thing is a complete mess and it’s absolutely not clear where, and if, the dust settled. What seems certain is that, read literally, the executive order could ban the agencies from giving money that had already granted (something clearly illegal) so the agencies felt stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Given how broad the wording was, it could also have affected a large number of proposals which had the misfortune of containing a (then basically legally required) pro forma DEI paragraph.
(Or anything involving a “nongovernmental organization” or “woke gender ideology” – for instance, among other legal questions implied, would one of the grantee changing their pronouns invalidate the entire grant if the topic is, say, a completely normal investigation in quantum chemistry? What if the bureaucrat does not think the prosecution will be in good faith?)
The chaos also made clear to potential visiting researchers that the environment in the US was not as stable as they had been led to believe (surprisingly few developed countries end up pulling money they had formally pledged to appropriate). The chilling effect is likely real, although hard to quantify.
What I’ve read is that to avoid much of the uncertainty, the executive order could simply have targeted spending which had not been attributed yet (future grant proposals, to be submitted in the following months…). Very similar results, but a lot less sweating for everyone involved.
I’ve worked in retail management for twenty years - I got a BS in Nutrition in ‘18 & a Masters in Global Management in ‘20 - I still work retail - I’d like to translate my experience and degree into a better career … does anyone have any thoughts on HOW?
I think this is good advice but could be more useful with a bit of specificity.
Step 0 of networking is to think long and hard about What you're good at, What you want to do, and What is valuable enough that someone would pay you to do it. Hopefully the intersection of this Venn diagram is large enough to include a few different types of professions and business models, casting a wide net at this stage is fine.
Step 1 is find someone 2 degrees of separation from you that is working in (one of) your dream jobs. LinkedIn is actually perfect for this. Then you ask your 1st degree contact to introduce you to this person with something like 'Hi there Bob, it's Angela, long time long time. Anywho, Mihow (CCed) is just getting started in Industry X and looking for some advice from an expert, naturally I thought of Bob! Hope you can spare 15m to talk about how you made it to the top of Industry X, I think you'll enjoy chatting with them.' Having a warm introduction is massively more likely to get you a *short* conversation than cold emailing/LinkedIn messaging, you can try that as well but only if you really have no intermediates willing to speak on your behalf
To be clear, the point of step 1 is not to ask for a job, that's crass and it won't work anyway. The point is to *learn* to actually be curious and interested and ask follow up questions of the successful person taking 15m out of their very busy day or precious free time to talk to you. If you go in with the expectation of getting a job out of that first convo, you'll be disappointed and also Bob will smell it out and probably be annoyed at Angela for referring such a needy person to them. It is helpful to prepare some questions ahead of time, doing some research helps demonstrate real interest.
Step 1.5 is revise step 0 as you go, taking what you learned from 1:1 conversations with experienced professionals and updating your previously simple and naïve assumptions. This will happen a lot, especially around the circle of What is valuable. This is fine, and natural, even if it means you have to give up your dream of being a professional lepidopterist or whatever.
Step 2, scour company websites for new job postings that fit your Venn Diagram. Ideally posted within the last week, beyond a month they've likely already been filled or maybe were never a real job in the first place (because the position was already promised to an internal candidate etc.). Once you find a job DO NOT APPLY YET. This is critical. Every decent job posting gets about 3000 barely qualified troglodytes who search replace the company name into their cover letter and hit send. You will not stand out of the pack. Instead, go back to one of the people you had an informational interview with over the last couple months, and ask if they could refer you. This instantly puts your resume, if not at the top of the stack, at least within the first 30 applications or so that might actually get read by a hiring manager.
Step 3. There is no step 3, only luck and diligent preparation (you need to be both, annoyingly). Expect this to take several months to a year depending on how lucky/hard working you are. But hopefully in the end it'll be worth it. Good luck!
You're welcome! FWIW I followed basically these steps when I was laid off in October '23 and wound up starting a new job in my preferred field by April '24. I've had many friends and colleagues take this path and also found new jobs +/- a few months. I can't promise it will work for you but nothing ventured nothing gained!
Does anyone have experience with a BPD partner? Mine had floated the idea that she had it earlier in the relationship. I experienced being in the blast radius of drug abuse, shrieking panic attacks, suicide attempts, admitted lying, "walking on eggshells" all the time, and physical assaults. This experience had crippled my agency for years with her. I was just trying to get through the days but now that it's blown up, with some distance it's been uncanny how consistent descriptions of BPD align with my experience. I've read Scott's https://lorienpsych.com/2021/01/16/borderline/ and r/BPDLovedOnes , but I'm unsure how echo-chambery the subreddit is.
Partner, no. Mother, yes. I was raised by a single drug addicted, alcoholic mother with fairly severe BPD. She was enventually forced into medication by the courts after being charged with attempted murder.
A lot of the kids I grew up with were physically abused by their parents. Compared to them I felt like I was better off. My mother was so wrapped up in her own head that I suffered much more neglect than actual abuse, though she would lash out in anger and hit us sometimes, she never really layed down any of the extended beatings that my friends received from their parents. One of my childhood friends was actually beaten to death by his father, another murdered his father in revenge for past abuse. I spent most of my childhood (mostly successfully) avoiding her.
I didn't really understand how abnormal it was until I got to college and was surrounded by well adjusted peers who had active, engaged parents. I thought they were all just liars and fakes; it took me the better part of a year to realize they were 'normal' people from stable homes.
To be honest my childhood was kind of a blast at the time. I was extremely unsupervised. I ran the streets with my delinquent friends, never really needed to check in with anyone. I would sometimes not even sleep at home for 2-3 nights in a row an no one noticed or really cared all that much. I never really had to worry about things that my peers were afraid of like getting grounded or really ever punished at all. I was basically feeding myself, doing my own laundry, forging my mother's signature on school forms etc by about 11 years old. I didn't get in trouble at school and my grades were pretty good. I knew that it was important that I not do anything that would make the other adults in my life like teachers etc try to get in contact with my mother. The worst thing I could to was be any sort of bother or inconvenience for her. She very much had a "no news is good news" view of her children.
I had a lot of fun at the time. It was only as an adult that I realized there are actually benefits to receiving the 'parenting' that I missed. As an adult I have some unfortunate personality characteristics; I not really capable of trusting other people and have missed out on some good opportunities b/c I couldn't trust the people offering them to me. I'm largely immune to both praise and criticism, and external motivations generally. If I don't want to do something its very difficult to motivate myself to do it. I'm almost entirely emotionally non-demonstrative; I feel things internally but my face and body language almost never change in response, the one exception being a sort of wry but detached amusement. I try to make a point to display positive emotions around people I care about like my wife, but it will always be at least in part a deliberate, artifical thing. I'm severly lacking in empathy for other people generally. My wife says I come off as 'predatory' sometimes, like the way a cat looks at a bird. This has made it hard to have friends. One of my past employees said once that I reminded them of the antogonist from No Country for Old Men. That probably should have been disturbing, but as mentioned I'm largely immune to criticism.
I never learned health dietary habits and started using drugs pretty young. I did manage to get clean as an adult and finish college on my own. I'm a very, very good liar and manipulator or other people generally. I can also cold read people very well, and quickly. I'm lucky I was able to find a career where these traits are useful (anti-fraud and identity theft). Things could have easily gone hard in the other direction.
I don't have experience with a partner, but with a family member, my uncle's ex-wife (my former aunt). She was beautiful and charismatic and believed she could heal AIDS with her prayers (and had followers who believed that, too). She did some very destructive things, including systematically, ritualistically coaching their six year old son into vividly "remembering" being molested by my uncle *and* my grandmother. I know the knee-jerk response is "believe all victims" and "where there's smoke..." but it was not part of a pattern of behavior and multiple state evaluators investigated and concluded the molestation didn't happen.
What did happen was that she was formally diagnosed with BPD.
Oh, and she once called my uncle in the middle of the night and screamingly wept that she was sorry, she made everything up. Then the next day she went right back into her campaign. My cousin, her primary disciple in her cult of personality, changed his name, basically went into hiding, and hasn't seen my uncle in at least 15 years. We had to hire a private investigator to find him to distribute his inheritance when my grandmother died.
It's supposedly best practice to resist the urge to ever diagnose someone if you aren't a doctor and they aren't your patient, but don't let anyone talk you out of diagnosing your ex if labeling her with "unmanageable mental illness" is what keeps you from going back to her or getting into a relationship with someone like her.
And this is outside of the scope of your question, but I'm a little worried for you! Are you seeing anyone yourself, to treat whatever it is that made you feel compatible with this woman?
This no doubt says more about me than you, but the tale of your in-law set me so off kilter that a thought entered my mind to wonder if you'd made the whole thing up in a fit of BPD.
(Point being: I read it, and thank you for sharing it.)
Off kilter because it's a horrible story? Or because I went into too much personal detail? Something else?
And FWIW I sincerely chuckled over the notion of being BPD myself; if I have a pathology, it's BPD's direct opposite. A BPD person doesn't have a strong internal sense of self and thus uses relationships with other people to define themselves, whereas I have such a present and robust sense of self that I'm not *quite* sure that other people *really* exist quite exactly as much as I do. I mean, I know they do, but...*do* they?
Off kilter mostly because I've never personally witnessed a case as extreme as your in-law's. (Your poor cousin! And uncle! And...)
So I deflected it with a little humor.
Your pathology sounds like what I'd call egoist, but I don't think that's an official term. It also sounds like an extreme form of stoicism, approximately. At least, you sound like you'd react to external judgements about the same as a stoic would.
If someone is a horrible person to be around, and being around them is voluntary, does it matter what specific name a psychiatrist might assign to that particular variety of horribleness?
I think people here are naturally pretty curious. I'm trying to understand the why's. Pouring everything you've got into another person for years only to be constantly yo-yo'ed in and out of misery to abandonment; it takes such a toll that you need reassurance it was just a special case that you likely won't run into in the future. Explanation helps.
I know I gently suggested finding a professional to explore why you were able to be in a relationship with your partner, but now I'm going to be less gentle.
With love and alarm,: I think there's great danger in assuming your partner was a one-off meteorite, unexpectedly and unavoidably striking you from the random void of space.
[Insert obligatory prelude about not blaming the victim here], but ultimately, if you want to avoid being with another person like your ex, I think you're going to have to understand with *why* you were with your ex. Ultimately, you were attracted to something about her, and something about you attracted her to you, and there was something about you that didn't let you feel enough contempt and disgust to immediately leave when the love-bombing stopped and the unambiguously unacceptable behavior began.
I'm really afraid that if you don't figure that "something" out, you'll end up picking someone who initially seems to be nothing like your ex but eventually starts coincidentally being a lot like your ex.
Ty for your very thoughtful responses. For the first time in my life I was able to muster attending a therapist the day after a traumatic night where she was caught lying, possibly cheating, stormed off and moved out. I saw the therapist once more but for the first time in my life, I also can't afford it, due to struggling with the relationship.
I am worried about my personality causing myself to be in a situation like this, that's why the other response gave me hope. I've only been in two relationships, both years long, but unfortunately the first one was diagnosed bipolar including the mother. I already thought that was the one off, but BPD or not, the extremely negative behavior isn't normal at all.
It sounds like I need to really dig in with a psychologist why these two were my only partners, lest I end up jumping into the same thing. I think there's some aspect of waiting until I receive immediately intense love in the beginning, making me feel on top of the world and that I hold the cards in the relationship (reassuring me the other person loves me so much more they're gonna stay), but then as the relationship spirals I'm hoping the whole time to to able to turn it around and get to that amazing infatuation they first experienced for me. It's possible I have something like codependency as I haven't been single much, going from 3.5 year rocky relationship to a miserably depressing 5 months single to 8 year rocky relationship with no casual partners.
But an even sadder reason is that I just don't have anything else. I started 2019 on the continual upswing in every way, feeling like my best years were ahead of me. Since then, I've faced calamity after calamity. By the end of 2020 I was completely broken from relationship issues, stress, anhedonia, career derailment, and wanted it to all end. You know how the saying goes, just hang in there it gets better? It hasn't, it only got worse. Career falling behind more than ever. Some of the last things I had, intimacy and affection, I lost 6 months ago. Now I don't even have seeing her. If I had to choice to not live past 2019 I would've taken it in a heartbeat. 5 years of misery waiting to abate. There's no end in sight. So my last hope is being able to turn things around with her.
Also unfortunately, I'm still trying to talk to her to get to the bottom of what happened with her and if the important life changes I'm making (getting job, finally marry) would fix this for us (she stopped the drug abuse 6 months ago and 50% of her anguish was the long wait to get married [religious]). Scott mentioned long term prognosis for BPD is good, and I feel like I can't just give up on someone in crisis where we spent our formative lives with.
I appreciate the clear conclusion. It helps me figure out what to do, but I can't say I can actually do that.
If our relationship is gone forever, I've already been beaten down for years and really have nothing else in life to look forward to. I'll go from 20% life satisfaction to practically 0.
I don't have time to leave a thoughtful reply this morning (I'll be back later), but honestly, I instantly felt less worried for you when I read your reply - you seem to be really introspective and open to analysis/criticism, and that puts you leagues ahead of the “all bitches are crazy” kind of person (pity that person). Even if therapy is out of the budget right now, it sounds like you may be open to considering the opinions/judgment of loved ones (or semi-random internet strangers, haha) when they opine “DANGER DANGER.”
And I am opining DANGER DANGER about your ex; I think you should consider going no contact, no exceptions with her for at least a year and then assess if the lonely peace of being without her is better than the lonely chaos of being in a terrible relationship with her.
EDIT: And yes, you may have to give it a full year; I'll circle back about why I think that.
I know that's exquisitely easy for me to say. But going no contact is very common advice in situations like yours for a reason - it usually helps a lot in the long run, even if it initially feels terrible!
> really introspective and open to analysis/criticism
> it sounds like you may be open to considering the opinions/judgment of loved ones (or semi-random internet strangers
That's my goal here. This is just my side of the story. Friends and family just got hers during the relationship (because I stayed silent and didn't want to blow up their relationships, she needed them). I feel the internet biases to "break up they're awful no contact" because it's missing context of the whole relationship, good and bad. But I do need the outside perspective of what the relationship sounds like when I elaborate why it turned bad. And without a therapist, I just have parents who know half. I'm wary of r/bpdlovedones being one-sided or over-diagnosy. All three commenters are telling me to completely move on, but I thought we already had the lifelong bond marriage is. Obviously she doesn't seem to be holding up that on her side.
> you may have to give it a full year
She would've found someone else and irrevocably destroyed what's left of us. Not something I'm willing to revisit in a year.
It really comes down to, if our relationship is gone forever, I've already been beaten down for years and really have nothing in life to look forward to except misery. 20% recent life satisfaction with her was really bad, but it wasn't 0%. I'll be at 0 without hope
Oh gosh, I really don't want to sound like I'm victim-blaming here, but I honestly don't understrand why people stay with a partner who (in Halley's case) tried emotional manipulation of "come back to me or I'll kill myself".
I suppose I'm hard-hearted enough that after a round or two of that, I'd say "Go right ahead, this has nothing to do with me, if you kill yourself that's on you".
"Some of the last things I had, intimacy and affection, I lost 6 months ago."
The simple thing here is that you didn't have intimacy and affection. You had someone using you as an emotional punching bag. What intimacy and affection is there in someone who was lying to you all the time, possibly cheating, constantly having big blow-up dramatic rows, and making you tip-toe around them?
"if the important life changes I'm making (getting job, finally marry) would fix this for us"
NO. RUN AWAY RIGHT NOW. You can't "fix" this, and if you try and get back together, you are signing up for years more of the same: the first initial blast of intense 'love' will never happen again, and if you are chasing that all the time hoping that if you just turn the screws a *little* bit more then *this* time the clock will work again - it won't. That was (to use the term) New Relationship Energy for you both, and you won't get it again unless and until you have a new relationship with a different person. And it doesn't last - so chasing after it will just make you miserable.
"I feel like I can't just give up on someone in crisis where we spent our formative lives with."
You want to be their saviour. You can't be that. And you can't make someone dependent on you so you will always have that warm feeling of "now they can never leave so I'm okay". You know you have issues, you know you need to work on them. Getting entangled with a mentally ill person because "hey if we're co-dependent then at least I'll never be abandoned" is the worst for both of you.
> The simple thing here is that you didn't have intimacy and affection.
It was some of the time, even when it was really bad the other half. That still improved my well-being enough that without it I'm much worse off.
> you are signing up for years more of the same
I have to have hope that some major life changes for both of us will improve things a year down the line. Scott's BPD prognosis is eventually good. There's already personality changes in her (no drug abuse, less blowups, but very little affection. Stone coldness attempting to stop her previous blowups)
> That was (to use the term) New Relationship Energy for you both
I'm aware what honeymoon phase is like. BPD seems to be extra intense in the beginning and extra bad after (high emotional variability). I'm not chasing what was the first 6 months. I'm not even chasing the highs of BPD (idealization), it's too complimentary and over the top. I think I would be happiest with her just getting to a more normal baselines without the wild wild swings positive and negative.
> Getting entangled with a mentally ill person
I'm already entangled. I spent my entire 20s with this person, they've been my other half. I have to have hope that certain changes in both of us will make us good together again, otherwise there's nothing in life I care about going forward.
I do. Or at least I believe I do; the symptoms are spot on, but he was never diagnosed.
We spent five years "together" (on and off, but never apart for more than a week before he'd come stalking and threatening suicide to make me get back together with him). The first six months were great, and then it gradually, but swiftly, went downhill after that. By the end, he was doing things like locking me into rooms, ripping up my childhood photos, and writing graphic fantasies about murdering me in his diary. I finally went into hiding, secretly left the state, and ultimately fled the country — eating up my savings in the process and leaving behind my friends and family, my job, my belongings, everything.
This unfortunately coincided with the 2008 financial crisis — but after a few years of hardcore struggle, I did eventually find my feet. And I (very cautiously) dated two lovely, easygoing men, which reassured me that I wasn't broken. I'm about to celebrate my 15th anniversary with the second one — and after all these years together, we've still never so much as raised our voices at each other. Our average days together are better than the very best days with my ex.
Some 8 or so years after I got away from the ex, he tried to find me in my new country — but thankfully he was arrested before his flight. Turns out he'd assaulted his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter after the girlfriend broke up with him. He got a 27-year sentence.
I am not familiar with that subreddit or any other community of people who've experienced partner abuse. When I was reeling from the big blow-up, I turned inward and focused only on myself and my immediate needs. When I finally started to feel human again and ready to reconnect with humanity, I felt disconnected from everything that happened with my ex — almost as if it were some 2-hour psychological thriller I'd watched on Netflix, rather than my day-to-day reality for years — and I discovered that all my desire for closure had simply evaporated. Thus I never engaged with any community, therapy, etc., because I was just completely done with him.
Thank you, this helped a lot. It gives me hope about being in a much better place in the future, as I'm currently heavily grappling with the ramifications. In my mind, if I'm still abandoned by someone who I spent 8 years providing for while constantly forgiving all the terrible things, what hope do I have for anyone else. Your story makes me feel I can eventually get there.
I also had a very good first 6 months of "lovebombing", probably nothing will be as good. But also when things kept gradually going downhill, it wasn't long before I was locking myself in bathrooms (only place I could lock to get away) many times as they tried to break it in.
The drowning child argument is stupid. I’m not going to explain what it is because I’m sure everyone is familiar but let’s talk about it real quick. The reason it’s unconvincing to most people is because the drowning child is not like charity at all. It has three things that are obviously different. Urgency, proximity and it’s one off nature. It’s urgent because if you don’t act at that very second, the kid will drown. It’s proximate because it’s right in front of you. And it’s also a weird one off situation. If you save the kid, then your one act made a real difference and you feel good about what you’ve done. Now imagine that the same kid keeps drowning every day. Every day, you walk by and have to save the kid because no one else will do it or prevent him drowning. Now do you have to structure your whole life around saving this kid? Are you never allowed to move to a different city because the kid will drown? If your boss says he’s going to fire you because you are always late and soaking wet, are you still obligated? Where are his parents even at? You as an individual are being tasked with dealing with this systemic issue over a random kid who you didn’t know before you had to start saving him.
Peter Singer had to come up with the drowning child argument because it was the only intuition pump that would obligate you to save random strangers and then he used it to argue for things that are nothing alike. It may be superficially convincing but the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. And I haven’t really even gotten in to the demandingess objection yet.
Personally, I don't find Singer's arguments convincing and I dont find it strange that people act differently to the drowning child vs other problems. It's my view that because most philosophers reject selfishness as a valid ethical reason for doing anything, the have to twist themselves up in knots with these thought experiments.
For me it's simple: I save the child because it reinforces my selfish view of my self and aligns with my virtues. If another issue does that same thing then I will do it. And the things that tickles my ego may change over time or depending on the circumstances. I think this is ok and that a lot of political and societal problems are caused when we trick ourselves into thinking we can make people behave against their egos (instead of using their egoism as a tool to accomplish our goals).
>If you save the kid, then your one act made a real difference and you feel good about what you’ve done
Right. Saving a drowning kid obviously *feels* different from donating to malaria relief in Africa. That's the whole point of the thought experiment!
To consider the ways in which the latter is conceptually similar to the former, in spite of feeling different. Quantifying the elements which cause the former to feel different from the latter isn't sufficient to address the thought experiment.
A drowning kid *feels* urgent, while a kid dying of malaria doesn't feel urgent, but in reality, the latter is roughly similarly urgent. A thousand kids, or so, die a day from drowning, and a thousand kids, or so, die a day from malaria. While you can only save the particular kid from drowning today, and you have a little longer to save particular kids from malaria (maybe a couple of months until the next batch of nets are purchased or distributed), you can be quite certain that if you don't donate to malaria nets within that window that outside donations won't replace them (this is clear as malaria prevention remains underfunded).
The point of the thought experiment is to get the listener to consider: if saving kids is so important, does it really matter if I need to act within a minute or within a month?
True, saving a kid is a one off, but donating to save a kid can also be a one off. It's probably less satisfying, since it's easy to think about the other kids that will still die of malaria, but you could do the same thing when saving a drowning kid. In spite of saving the drowning kid, many other kids will still drown that day. You can "reassure yourself" that you can't save the other drowning kids, which may make it more "satisfying," but if you'd feel an imperative to save the drowning kid, rather than just a source of satisfaction, then you should similarly feel an imperative to save kids from malaria. And if there's no imperative for the latter, since you can't save them all, why should there be an imperative for the former?
The point of the thought experiment is that the average person would save a kid, even at the cost of a few thousand, if they could see the kid and feel satisfied about it. Indeed, the average person would even feel an imperative to. Similarly, one should feel an imperative to donate to save kids from malaria. But the "refutation" about devoting oneself wholly to saving kids from drowning doesn't hold up.
If someone had to save kids from drowning all the time, then the marginal cost per saved life would increase, due to losing their job, etc. Just as a person probably wouldn't feel an imperative to do that, a person could reasonably not feel an imperative to save so many kids from malaria that the marginal cost of saving them starts increasing (since marginal dollars have substantially higher value when a person is poorer).
That's not an argument, however, against saving a small number of children from malaria, such that the marginal cost wouldn't be greater than the few thousand dollars one would lost from a suit.
Furthermore, the thought experiment is useful even if one doesn't focus on the act being an imperative, but simply of the impact of the act.
Ignoring imperatives, and thinking about how a charitable act makes a donor feel, it's hardly trivial that a life can be saved for the cost of a few thousand dollars. Since many people would be very happy to save a life for a few thousand dollars if it involved a drowning kid, for example, a potential donor can examine their own feelings and consider whether they might be similarly motivated to save far away kids for the same cost. As noted, people don't feel this way naturally. But thinking about the thought experiment can help people identify what they fundamentally value and potentially inspire them to shift their behavior accordingly. E.g. if they decide that they don't care about Africans, at all, and if they saw a kid drowning, while wearing a shirt reading "African temporarily in the US," that they wouldn't bother saving them, then fine. Hopefully pondering the thought experiment sharpens the person's values.
If a person thinks that they would save a drowning African, but not a far away one, they could think about variant thought experiments. What if a kid is drowning in a pool in Africa, but you could make a very expensive phone call to a local to save him?
Simply noting that the examples feel different misses the point. The thought experiment can be useful in helping isolate the variables of what a person cares about and helping them act accordingly.
I'm sure you don't mean it but it's a little annoying that you're acting like I centered my argument on it feeling different when that's something I clearly did not do. I didn't say "it feels different and that's why it's different". I said "it's not analogous and here's why." You also use that misunderstanding to explain things I already know. I know what a thought experiment is. I know what an analogy is. You don't have to keep telling me what the purpose of these things is. Now putting all that aside.
First of all, charity is not urgent in the same way that the drowning kid is urgent. The kid is dying right in front of you and if you don't make a split second decision, they will die. On the other hand, the money you are sending is not like that. The money has to get filtered through many layers before it gets applied and then when it does the charity has many things they have to do. It's not a split second difference between life and death.
Second, I'm not going to put aside imperatives. I find this whole idea of doing ethics without obligations very bizarre. How can you say that someone should take an action without them being obligated to. It makes no sense.
Third, the drowning child argument is such a strong deviation from normal ethics that the more you guys try to make it more analogous, the more strained the examples become. For example, there is a child drowning in Africa. Why is my phone call going to save him? Why is the person on the other line not doing anything? These are obviously rhetorical questions and I don't ask them to "fight the hypothetical", but to demonstrate how much different the drowning child example is. But i will go ahead and answer:
"What if a kid is drowning in a pool in Africa, but you could make a very expensive phone call to a local to save him?"
I don't think random people have an obligation to make that phone call.
Here's the thing: if there were drowning children all around me every day, I would not feel like it's obligation to save one. Individuals are just not responsible for systemic issues. It's far too demanding. Sure if a kid is drowning in front of me and I have to pay this one time cost of a couple thousand dollars, that's one thing. But by taking on this responsibility of saving random drowning children in general, the costs shoot up exponentially. It's unending. The reason we have this intuition of the drowning child is because we right assume that it's not going to be this ongoing problem that we are taking responsibility for. Take a more realistic example: I may walk by dozens of homeless people doing drugs every day. It could be the case that I save some of them from overdosing. But no one would claim it's my responsibility and that I know have to spend all my leisure time watching for drug overdoses. That's ridiculous. Again, the drowning child is an exceptional case that has little to do with the normal rules of morality, and it's really the only example that you can come up with to make people feel like charity goes from supererogatory to obligatory.
Scott defined obligations (on twitter) as the sort of thing you will get legally punished for if you don't fulfill. Saving children in Africa at little expense to oneself is a pretty strong should, but it's not an obligation in Scott's sense.
Scott is trying to be precise, and it is worthwhile making a distinction between the sort of error that comes with legal repercussions versus that which comes with just opprobium. Wouldn't get too hungup in the particular word he used to make this distinction.
...So is the goal to convince people that they don't want to save kids, they just want to feel good about themselves? I really don't see how that advances EA causes...
Urgency is a strong consideration for saving the child now rather than later. But suppose a child is caught in extremely slow moving quicksand that will kill him by the end of the week if you don't pull him out (and you're pretty sure that nobody else will be by within a week). To me this means it's fine to wait an hour if you have somewhere to be, but otherwise doesn't change the calculation. Now consider some child who's going to die of disease in one year if you don't donate to charity (and statistically and so on we expect nobody else will save them). This seems like a similar situation - it's fine to wait up to a year, but if you don't help at all, why is this better than if you had a week but chose not to help at all, or a minute but chose not to help at all?
As for one-off situation, it sounds like this just depends how you chunk scenarios. Suppose we track your charitable donations very carefully, and we find that a donation you gave five years ago went to save a child named Mbanga who would otherwise have died of tetanus in 2022. It seems like Mbanga having tetanus in 2022 is a one-off situation, and you fixed it. You can chunk this together with lots of other children in different situations and then say that it's a repeated situation. But how is this better than saying that 5,000 children drown per year, so children drowning is a repeated situation?
I don't share your intuition about this kid in quicksand. If you tell me that something is gradually killing a random stranger, I don't feel an obligation to save them.
For the one off situation, you say that if I track the money, I find out it goes to some this child named Mbanga. But I'm not giving this money to Mbanga, I'm giving it to the set of kids that are at risk of dying from tetanus and then someone distributes it to a worker that saves Mbanga. Giving money to this set is obviously not a one off because my donation is not going to eliminate it.(I think this would be a better argument for someone like Bill Gates to do this kind of thing because that's actually a possibility).
I guess I don't really get your article Newtonian Ethics. You're basically making fun of people who think proximity matters and just saying it's ridiculous but it's common sense to most people. Although it's not really a math equation. It's more of a binary. They are right in front of you or they aren't. It's the same with urgency. Either action needs to be taken at this very second or it doesn't. Outside of that, normal rules of morality apply and you don't have obligations to save strangers. Like I said to Mallard, we only have the intuition about the drowning child because it's such an exceptional case that isn't analogous to most things.
Effective Altruism would be on a lot stronger philosophical ground if it didn't so heavily rely on this analogy. You could say something about how we all generally agree that charity is good and that we should strive to do some good without trying to make the argument that we are all letting children drown because of course any time you eat out or buy new clothes, you are letting children drown. I know you had a twitter post saying something like that but most EA's are still very extreme. It doesn’t help when they talk about how we need to prioritize shrimp over people or get rid of nature.
Wait, are you sure the quicksand case doesn't feel compelling? Imagine walking by in the jungle, when there's a child half drowned in quicksand, screaming for help. You could easily help them with zero risk to yourself. You know if you don't help them, the quicksand will pull them in further and they'll die within a week (or maybe just starve to death because they can't get out). You don't think it would be horrible/monstrous to walk by and not help them?
I can imagine not helping them if it's a very well-frequented quicksand patch, so that I'm pretty sure someone else will come by later and diffuse the responsibility. Maybe a better example would be something like - you accidentally leave your house door open, and a lost child (young enough that he didn't mean any malice by entering a stranger's house) wanders in, trips over the basement stairs, falls into the basement, breaks his leg, can't climb back up, and will die of starvation in one week. You are the only person who ever goes in your house, so definitely nobody else will help. You can lift him out trivially with no problem and bring him to the hospital which is across the street from your house, it would take less than five minutes. Are you saying you wouldn't really feel any moral urge to do this, and might just let him starve and deal with the body later?
In terms of Mbanga, I still think it's arbitrary how you group things. Suppose some enterprising charity teamed up with a hospital so that they could advertise specific real cases to you - "Mbanga is in the hospital now, please donate $50 to pay for his medication!" Actually, I guess GoFundMe is sort of like this. It doesn't really seem like the deep structure of the moral situation has changed in this case, it's just a clever advertising gimmick. If you should do things when there are clever advertising gimmicks, you should do them even without the gimmick.
>are you sure the quicksand case doesn't feel compelling?
Moral philosophy trains people to repackage their moral beliefs and reassert them rhetorically or via calling them theory-laden pseudopsychological "intuitions" that are supposed to be epistemically compelling for poorly defended reasons. This doesn't make the quoted line of questioning pointless - for example I am perauaded by drowning child cases - but it comes across as asking "Are you sure you don't really want to eat your vegetables?" For some people that answer will just be a brute "no" and there's no mistake they're making by disagreeing with what you value or with their understanding of the facts that inform your values. (And I'm not trying to bitch at you, just pointing out the futility of many instances of moral arguments.)
"I can imagine not helping them if it's a very well-frequented quicksand patch, so that I'm pretty sure someone else will come by later and diffuse the responsibility. "
It seems to me that in pretty much all the real-world cases the quicksand- or drowning-child thought experiment is meant to illustrate, the quicksand patch *is* well-traveled. A great many other people watched the same CNN segment or Youtube video or whatever that brought the child and the quicksand to your attention, and some of them will almost certainly take action.
Maybe not enough, or maybe they'll all overwork the problem of saving the first child and be too burnt out to help the second, but that's a different question that requires a different example to illustrate.
I have long had a problem with hypotheticals and intuition pumps that push too far outside of normal expectations. I think trying to extend local against distant moral feelings is pushing the intuition too far.
For me this is not about intuition or even morality. It's about knowledge. I can know, with a reasonably high degree of certainty, how my actions will affect the drowning child. I can also determine if saving that child is not worthwhile, and you and I can both come up with scenarios where you let the child die. For a quick example, if I'm Stephen Hawking or similarly disabled then that child cannot be saved by me, even at very great expense (his wheelchair didn't seem cheap, but driving it into a pond is not going to help).
Okay, so the distance problem. Because I cannot gauge the details on the ground, my understanding of malaria intervention is necessarily multiple steps away from the people being helped. A likely chain would look something like Foreign Child-Local Charity-International Charity-US Marketing-Me. Each step of this chain is going to be filtered through language, culture, expectations, misperceptions, lies, misapplied hope, whatever. My understanding of the situation is necessarily wrong. It may not be so wrong that I cannot help, but it's extremely difficult to have any assurance that my understanding is correct enough that my attempts at helping from this distance will be effective. On some levels this would still be true if I joined a charity and went to go work directly with these families. Maybe they think I'm stupid and bed nets are going to be used for something else or simply discarded (like with the examples of the nets being used for fishing - a better use by local cultural standards).
So my dollars in the US are being converted to lives saved at some kind of inefficiency. Maybe every dollar I send only ends up providing (on average) $0.40 worth of life-saving measures. So I sent $5,000 but only $2,000 worth (on average) gets to the kids. Instead of saving a life, I end up paying part of a life. But it's really worse than that, because "on average" kids are less real than actual kids. Maybe my actual donation gets lost in the mail, stolen by someone along route, or wasted in some way - a fire at the bed net storage facility would do it.
There's no way to guarantee that I've done any good at all, which is significantly different than the example of direct proximity. I may in fact have accidently funded a local warlord who stole money and supplies on their way to be used for my intended good!
None of this is a reason not to give to charity, even in far away lands. It is a really good reason to discount the amount of good we think we are doing. It may be enough of a discount that spending more locally and more legibly is the better option, even from a Peter Singer-type approach. Knowing that my $10,000 saves a life in the US could for many people be a much better option than potentially saving between 0-10 (and maybe making something worse) at $1,000 each.
Without the Peter Singer aspects, most people are going to discount by distance for a lot of really normal reasons that you are getting from people like Brandon, in top of the reasons I mention that I think a lot of us subconsciously consider but may not recognize.
If someone gets injured in my house, I have a responsibility to do something because it’s in my house. The jungle example seems more compelling because it becomes more plausible that no one else will walk by him. This kid is dying right in front of you and no one else will be able to save him is far more compelling than a kid thousands of miles away is dying and someone else could save him but the onus is on you to save him.
And yeah, the charity thing seems like a gimmick. Their purpose isn’t “save Mbanga”, even if that’s what they put on the flyers. Their purpose is to work on a systemic issue. So they are now taking on that responsibility and should work towards it but that doesn’t mean you the individual are obligated to do the same.
I don’t understand why you don’t think something happening right in front of you and something happening far away makes a difference. It obviously does for everyone else and it makes intuitive sense.
What if it is a different child drowning each time? You're using your own intuition pump here - "stupid kid getting himself in danger over and over" - to prime people against the argument.
I don't think "obligation" is a coherent concept in the moral sphere. It's a coherent concept from a social perspective (i.e. if I don't do certain things, I may face social or legal consequences), but it doesn't make sense from a moral one. The reason you jump into the pool to save the child is that saving the child is good, not that others will think less of you; if others were all inured to it, it would still be good to save the child and bad to let the child drown. It was good that people fought against slavery, even when it was popular and widely-accepted, and it was bad when people enslaved others, even when it was normalized, expected, and positively-viewed.
If you just think it's fine that children die, then say that rather than complaining that I'm somehow magically obligating you. If you think it's bad that children die, but don't want to expend the effort, then say that instead. It's important to be honest about these things. If you use confused reasoning about the subject then it just obscures the reality and may make you less inclined to behave in a better way when the situation changes (e.g. you now won the lottery, but will not spend the money on charity because you've decided you aren't obligated to and therefore have no interest in doing so).
I also make that assumption about Chastity. The key thing that brought me up short was ‘I don't think "obligation" is a coherent concept in the moral sphere’ whereas in many ways ‘obligation which isn’t externally enforced’ is what ‘morality’ is.
Yes, I agree that the original argument is stupid, because, as you said, saving a drowning child like this is a very different act then giving to charity.
I'm not sure I share your specific reasoning, but I would not include some "imagine that..." that's not waterproof, because it detracts and gives people a handle to grip on when they don't want to follow you.
That's more akin to having a child with a rare disease, and it's also true that most parents don't completely upend their lives in socially non endorsed ways to find cures. So yeah Brendon has a point: if good things are inconvenient and don't feel good that's a strong argument against doing it.
It might be better to skip the drowning child argument entirely, just get into the number crunching of the real world situation where you're capable of saving a lot of lives (not the same life over and over) through the Giving What We Can Pledge, and so, it's a good idea to do that, it's not like you were going to have a comparable impact by using that 10% domestically (I think I would use it domestically if it were possible to make the impact here similar to what it is in Africa).
Some people get queasy because of the "when does it stop" question, I'm definitely willing to argue it's ok to be 90% selfish.
While that's a better, and more honest, argument, I don't think it really solves the core problem. Brandon is correct that we don't feel the same about distant giving. I think there's more reason for that. See my response to Scott above.
I agree the one-off nature of the scenario changes one's intuitions. It's the reason most people who WOULD pull the trolley lever would not harvest the organs of a healthy patient to save five dying ones.
Do you mean because the organ harvester has bad second order effects? If so, I agree. Many thought experiments stipulate away obvious side effects, then ask you for your “intuition” but then your intuition is still assuming the side effects are there because in any realistic scenario they would be.
He means that "harvesting a healthy person's organs so that you can distribute them to people with failing organs" is a project that scales up seamlessly. If you do it once, there's no reason not to do it again.
Frankly, I take Peter Singer's argument as pretty nearly a reductio ad absurdum of the whole enterprise of ethical/moral argument. I prefer discussions of preferences and alliances and negotiations instead.
Many Thanks! That sounds plausible, though I haven't looked into e.g. some sort of statistical summary of typical ethicists behavior. My main concern is with insanely demanding asks from ethicists/their ethical systems (as in Peter Singer's case). My main response is to cut off the camel's nose the moment it pokes into the tent.
I know they did that one study a while back that showed ethicists weren't really better than non ethicists at doing good.
The demandingness comes from their systematizing. They want a comprehensive theory that will always give them a clear answer so even when it gives insane results, they'll bite the bullet because at least it gives them certainty. Also utilitarianism says mathy things and having math gives an appearance of rigor.
>The demandingness comes from their systematizing. They want a comprehensive theory that will always give them a clear answer so even when it gives insane results, they'll bite the bullet because at least it gives them certainty.
Many Thanks! This matches the impression that I get. ( And then they try to force everyone _else_ to bite the same bullet. )
>I know they did that one study a while back that showed ethicists weren't really better than non ethicists at doing good.
Yes, I think I bumped into a similar study. I actually had a somewhat different kind of behavior in mind when I typed
>I haven't looked into e.g. some sort of statistical summary of typical ethicists behavior.
I was thinking more along the lines of: How aggressive are they at systematizing? Does a typical ethicist try to boil everything down to three axioms, or do they typically allow for more fundamental complexity?
In the case of complying with communal customs, the customs are typically much more complex, and much less systematic. Like preferences or like language, they pick up bits and pieces from a lot of sources. For preferences, at least, that is a perfectly sane way to proceed. One doesn't _just_ care about a comfortable temperature, or _just_ about sufficient salt in one's food. There is a mix of many (hundreds?) of somewhat important ingredients, and they get balanced and traded off against each other, and they aren't derived from three axioms.
Scott, could you review Canon of Medicine by Avicenna? Given that you have reviewed some old medical books before, you're in a good position for this. I'm always curious what kind of content is contained in a book that's claimed to be used for centuries up until modern era.
Yeah this kind of article in this blog is exactly why I'm curious about that book. Given that its written more recently (at 1000) and, I think, still relevant the closest (until 1800?). Maybe other 18th or even 19th century medicine book would be nice too.
How to release oneself of moral anxiety? What can I do to prevent AI misalignment and dystopia? (What can anyone do?!) I'm infinitely less-qualified than most of you. And yet........ when the moral consequences are this severe, it almost feels as though any action I take that isn't in the direction of preventing apocalypse is a waste of being alive.
If it were an asteroid coming, I could at least make peace with my powerlessness.
(I intend to write a longer comment about this, there's a lot missing, especially about "unique circumstances", but I just wanted to release this statement... or rather... "release myself of" this statement)
WHAT CAN THE AVERAGE JOE OR JANE DO TO TIP THE SCALES AGAINST BAD SCENARIOS?
Jesus, just get out of your head and start living your life. AI isn't going to destroy the world. This topic isn't different from any other attention-grabbing topic. People talk about it because it gets clicks. People like to be prophets of dooms because it gives them a vague sheen of credibility in the eyes of naive gullible people.
Most people who obsess over imagined catastrophes are typically just projecting their anxieties about their own failed lives. That's why they're so eager to listen to con men and doom mongers. Treat your anxiety, get some exercise, and move forward.
Imagine you are in a cult that keeps telling you the world is going to end in a few years. What can you do to prevent it, you ask? Not much, you are told.
What you should do in this situation is... leave the cult.
Easy answer. Stop reading blogs that take this AI risk stuff as gospel. We're nowhere close to AGI, let alone "ASI", despite what people would have you believe. These people are either talking their book (in the case of the AI research labs), or they believe in this weird millenarian AI risk religion (which recent AI progress, and its stagnation since ~2023 has mostly invalidated). The End Times are not soon, and everyone in history who has thought they were, were wrong.
This whole website is outdated and gives me low confidence that they will do anything at all, regardless of whether their actions are necessary at all from an x-risk perspective.
"25% chance we'll reach AGI in 2025"
Come on now...with what? That is ridiculous. It is 2025. The LLM paradigm is shaping up to be a resounding failure in both the business and consumer markets, OpenAI is struggling to have its next iteration ready for showtime, and China has shown that it does not take "hordes of engineers with million-dollar paychecks." or "a fully functional and unrestricted supply chain of the most complex hardware." (quotes from their FAQ), meaning "AI" of today is becoming a commodity with plateauing rather than exploding performance.
More from their FAQ:
"Are AI companies pushing the existential risk narrative to manipulate us?
[..]
And would a company like OpenAI dedicate 20% of its compute resources to AI safety if it wouldn’t believe in the risks? [..]"
The OpenAI SuperAlignment team which they're linking to has already been dissolved in early 2024 and its team leads were ousted, no longer even work at OpenAI, so that kind of answers the question. PauseAI lets outdated info stand on their website because of ignorance, or because of neglect, or to push their agenda despite the facts.
Zilch. Frankly, with the USA/PRC race now baked in to the AI landscape, and the rate of progress what it is, all I can say is: We are in for a very wild ride.
Is there anyone else beginning to think this community is underestimating the damage climate change is going to cause? The average global temperature has spiked since 2023 in ways climate scientists don't fully understand. January was over 1.7C warmer than the preindustrial average, during a La Nina. Unless there's a leveling out period of at least half a decade after this spike, it seems global warming is accelerating at a rather alarming rate. If we are hitting 3C closer to 2070 than 2100 then we are severely underestimating the potential damages.
The closer we get to climate catastrophe without actually seeing any meaningful catastrophe, removes the need for urgency in most people’s eyes.
This is especially true if you consider the effects of full decarbonization (absent being an extremely wealthy/blessed country with throttleable renewables) is a real and significant hit to quality of life. Even then, if the entirety of the west fully decarbonized, there are still billions of people with exponentially increasing CO2 emissions who care more for increasing their citizen’s quality of life over long term climate issues.
Well this is the whole problem right? You have to do the work on climate change decades before the effects arrive. Our societies aren't built to deal with that type of problem.
And I absolutely think total decarbonization is a fantasy. Nobody will accept it. But we could be funneling 100s of billions of dollars into emissions reduction/adaptation, and we are not doing that, and part of the reason why is that we don't expect catastrophic things to happen to us in our lifetimes. But if it is accelerating, and worse than we think, then that will change the calculus. But we have to talk about whether that is happening first.
I think part of the argument is that our society has demonstrated a capacity for hyper-adaptability that moots the need for massive preventative action. IPCC reports warn of a degree or so of temperature change over the next century, and the audience notices a change of several degrees of temperature every year. It warns of impacts to crop yields, and the audience already notices rapid changes to crop production on an even more frequent basis. Sea level might rise several centimeters in a century. People already move multiple times in the process. It's admittedly hard to move a skyscraper inland, but almost no one owns their own skyscraper. As fast as the climate is predicted to change, society appears to be changing even faster.
Throw in evidence of exaggerated predictions, unequal distribution of temperature rise, unclear effects of CO2 increase, and other effects, and the urgency retreats even farther.
The IPCC report warns of an average of 2.7C-3C rise over the century, which has a rather high variability. Now, we know we aren't going to get the absolute worse case scenarios anymore. In the 1990s/early 2000s it was still thought possible we could reach even 6C or something by 2100, and that's not going to happen. Which is good, because then billions of people would surely die. But that 2.7C-3C rise still has bounds out to about 4.5C at the upper limit, which would be catastrophic.
And what I'm trying to bring up, is that 2023-2025 has some pretty anomalous warming. Anomalous warming that, if it continues, could put is more in that 4C territory by 2100 than the more optimistic ~2.7C. It may be evidence that we are underestimating the warming to come, for a couple reasons I listed below, though climate scientists still aren't sure why.
Most people think 1-2C of warming is not so much. It doesn't sound like a lot, in pure terms. About 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit. But what most people don't seem to understand is that warming over land is DOUBLE warming over the ocean. So think instead of 3-4, more like 6-7. And that this warming is not equally distributed. It wont just be '6-7' degrees warmer all the time. It will come in heat waves sometimes that can be much higher than that. If crops/animals can survive a heat wave of 105 for three days, they may not be able to survive a heat wave of 115 for six days, and that's what we're potentially talking about here. Rises in heat, plus rises in duration. A particularly brutal heat dome over India could absolutely devastate their crop production.
And I do think changes to crop production in positive directions will happen at the same time. We are developing crops with higher heat tolerances/drought tolerances/etc., and it may be enough to offset whatever is coming. But that depends on what is coming.
We should be paying careful attention to the anomalous warming of the last couple of years, and the challenges they might make to our assumptions about that.
I guess you'd have to specify what damages you expect.
Personally, I don't deny the general claims of climate change. But, I am skeptical that the impact on humans* will be that great, mostly because we have proven to be a very resilient species that can use our big brains to solve problems. I am more concerned with the way that humans are getting in the way of other humans working to solve the problems.
*For animals and probably some populations of humans the impact will be devastating, but in general humans will be fine (or as good as they are now at least).
If warming is accelerating, the greatest impact will be on food availability, and with food instability comes political instability. Globally I don't expect us to come to some point where food is truly scarce, but large local events (droughts, floods, heat waves) are already frequently impacting local agriculture across the globe. This is only going to increase. History is rife with examples where spikes in the price of daily goods lead quickly to political crises. I think the chances of this happening to a country with an already shaky political system and a high vulnerability to climate change, India being the most commonly cited example, though just one of many possible countries that could realize this future, are being grossly underestimated.
And political instability is a contagion. Look the Syrian Civil War for much of the origin of current right wing party support in Europe. I won't try to predict anything about the resultant chaos, only to say that chaos of some sort is thought to be very likely if we hit 3C closer to 2070, and that it could affect the whole globe.
Perhaps warming isn't accelerating in a worrying manner. Maybe it will level out at this point for the rest of the 2020s and the past two years won't look so alarming. But maybe not. And maybe with genetic modification we can develop crops that can withstand the forthcoming heat waves and droughts and floods enough to insulate us from these effects, but we aren't there yet, and there's no guarantee that we will be.
I am optimistic that humanity can find ways to overcome the natural events you mention (or at least minimize their impact). Many of the examples you mention are largely man made by rejecting the technologies we've developed as solutions (technologies also encompassing political and societal ones, not just industrial).
Of course society and culture don't change overnight so perhaps I should be less optimistic.
In general I agree with you. Things are headed in the right direction. We already have ways to minimize the impact of these things, and will continue to develop better ones. We will de-carbonize eventually, even if too slowly.
The trouble is that the last 2 years have shown us that we may be underestimating future warming. If that's the case, all our cost-benefit calculations are skewed in favor of doing less, and that could be a huge mistake.
We've shown we're adaptable. Very adaptable. But the pace of change this century is going to be swift, and global. I hesitate to believe everyone is going to adapt, especially the poor.
Interested to hear your thoughts on https://x.com/StefanFSchubert/status/1886448293489615263 - it gave me the impression that things are overall going better-than-expected rather than worse-than-expected (even granting that the expectations were quite bad).
But where is that report getting its data and how it is estimating future emissions is also unclear.
But what I would say in response regardless, probably, is that this report came out in December 2023, at a time when it was only recently beginning to come clear that the spike in 2023 and 2024 was going to be a major outlier. The report predates the worrying data.
Written in collaboration with James Hansen, a very notable climate scientist since the 1980s, the paper posits that we have been underestimating the amount of masking that aerosols have been doing, essentially reflecting more heat than we thought. So as we lower pollution, and specifically the sulfur emissions from shipping in the early 2020s, we changed the earth's energy imbalance by more than we anticipated and this may be a contributor to the spike in 2023/2024, and lead to more warming throughout the century than we previously thought.
There is also a lot of debate in the climate community about cloud formation and how it will change as the world heats up. Clouds are one of the most important and least understood parts of climate change. They reflect a lot of energy, and if climate change reduces cloud cover more than we estimate, that could have a large effect on future temperature estimates also. A recent paper (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq7280) speculates that a larger reduction than anticipated in low-atmosphere clouds may also be occuring.
In one sentence, I would say any estimates of future warming come with major caveats like these and the last two years have emphasized that we may be missing something important, though nothing is for certain.
I expect the next IPCC report in 2029 will be more gloomy than the previous one.
The last two years were extraordinarily warm, but I think we are pretty much on course with the predicted warming. I would be very careful to extrapolate the trend from just 1-2 years 50 years into the future.
It was predicted in advance that 2023/2024 would be upwards outliers in terms of global warming due to the El Nino/La Nina cycle, just like 2021/2022 were likely downwards outliers. It was surprising how high the outliers were, especially in ocean temperatures, but they were not *that* high above the trendline either, if you take into account the abnormally cold (compared to trendline) years 2021/2022. The reason why the last two years appear so extreme is not just that they were very warm. It's also that the last record was so long ago (2016) that comparing with this old record gives us a wrong impression. The baseline in 2022 should have been at least 0.5° higher than the old 2016 record.
Look at it like this: The temperature has increased from 2016 to 2024 by 0.12 degrees in 8 years. If this trend continues then it will take another ~90 years to increase the remaining 1.3 degrees from +1.7C to +3.0C. So my best bet is that the trendlines are still correct, in which case we will probably not reach +3.0C around 2070.
The last two years have made us slightly less confident in the predictions. But for me they were not enough to change my baseline assumptions.
Finally, there are trends that point towards a decrease in CO2 emissions in the mid-term, most importantly the switch to renewables and electrification. The switch to renewables is likely unstoppable, since it's not a matter of politics anymore, but of economics. They are just cheaper. And it's not restricted to industrialized countries. For example, Pakistan had a capacity of producing 41GW electricity in 2022. Since then, they have added 17GW production capacity in solar. You need to discount the second number by a factor 5 because the average capacity of solar is smaller than max-capacity, but still those changes are huge if your timeline is 50 years, and they happen without government interventions. So it is still plausible that global warming will slow down and will not reach +3.0C by 2100, but rather something in the range +2.3 to +2.8 depending on how optimistic you are.
I generally agree with this, or at least this is the right argument for a more moderate position. But, I think the change from 2016 to 2024 is more like .25C, almost double what you have here, which is more alarming. Unless I'm reading the data wrong, 2016 peaked at about 1.3C above the preindustrial average, and 2024 is about 1.55C. If you extrapolate that instead of 0.12C, you end up with a far more alarming trend.
Dang, you are right, I must have mixed up some numbers. It's even an increase of 0.29C from 2016 to 2014 according to NOAA. Yes, I agree, this is a far more alarming trend, and your timeline with +3C in 2070 now makes sense. And 8 years is already a nontrivial time window.
I don't want to throw out all of what I said above. It's still only two years, and that's not much for long-term extrapolation. But you are certainly right: if this trend gets confirmed then we should really update our timelines. And I agree that the damage in a +3.0 world is probably a lot bigger than the damage in a +2.5C world.
I think the general sentiment of "don't over update on 2 years of data" is a good idea. You could have done the same thing in 2015/2016 and been very alarmed, but then it leveled out until 2023. But I do think when new and potentially alarming data comes in, you should talk about it. And I don't think this community is doing enough talking about it.
Climate change is woke and gay you see, so you can safely dismiss it.
For real though, this community is ideologically committed to market solutions; so there isn't really anything to say about (probably) the biggest market failure.
I agree AGI deserves more attention given the recent acceleration in AI progress over the past 5 years, but I hardly see more than a brief mention of climate change as a threat in these circles. As if it's barely worth talking about. I think that's looking more and more like a mistake.
Many Thanks! I think discussion of climate change comes and goes, depending on the flow of the comments. Scott _has_ spent entire posts on the topic and various subheadings under it, e.g. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/carbon-costs-quantified
Some of the fluctuation just follows what has been in the news. Between OpenAI's o1 release, DeekSeek's R1 release, OpenAI's o3 release, and Trump's endorsement of Stargate, AI has been in the news recently.
Within the past year, fertility decline has been in the news (even called a "crisis", which I think is absurd), and gotten lots of comments here, even though the relevant time scale is glacial.
What are some ways to grow a substack newsletter that don't involve "be so good at the writing that readers are automatically attracted to the blog"?
I like to think I've decent enough content and writing. What steps have other relatively famous Substackers taken to get where they are now? I write about once a week and would ideally like to write my newsletter full time in 2-3 years' time.
Anyone now feeling like relying on the non-profit complex/government funding is a bad idea? And more receptive to the idea that social good businesses are a better way to improve the world than the traditional charity model? Because I can tell you that my world is not really having issues and even where we need legislation it seems like we're going to get it.
I don't want to kick anyone while they're down. But I feel vindicated and I less want an "I told you so" than to convert people. Because I think I'm right and I'd prefer more people do more good.
Of course you should read the ACX post (and maybe it contains the point I’m about to make). It’s also worth pointing out that businesses only work when there’s a value-for-value exchange from equal-to-equal. This is the basic reasoning explaining why the “invisible hand” leads to the Wealth of Nations.
Among the people helped by USAID, many are victims of war, famine, natural catastrophes, disease, plain old poverty, and so on. These people simply do not have much to offer as payment.
I suppose you could ask them to pay in hair, nail, kidneys and lungs (among others), but are you *sure* you want to go this way?
I did read that post. Scott himself said it didn't reply to my points.
Trade does not only work when there's a equal for equal. In fact, trade is more beneficial to poorer nations because of the marginal value of money, and therefore you want to maximize trade between advanced and poor economies.
I didn't bring up USAID. My point here is not that USAID is bad but that government and charitable funding is less reliable than profit interests and less capable of making systemic change. A lot of people said the opposite was true, that government aid was more reliable. This argument looks especially bad right now and I was hoping some people would update based on new evidence.
If you read my reply (linked by Mallard) I point out that this kind of thing doesn't work well for immediate needs like, for example, a famine. But that famine relief does not permanently reduce poverty while development (which is driven more often by private businesses) does.
I don't know of anyone who has an article matching your exact criteria. The closest I can think of is a levelheaded in-depth argument, possibly in article form, possibly spread out among multiple TV interviews and podcasts and tweets, that claims that USAID has done a lot of good and a lot of harm at the same time, and it would be from Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber on X). Would that be of use?
They don't even know this. The condoms that supposedly went for Hamas to build bombs actually went to the Gaza province of Mozambique.
I'm sure there's corruption in USAID, and the extent of it is probably unknown, but you will never know how much good is in the program or if this actually was a significant problem at all, because they are just hellbent on destroying everything lol.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the side of the square facing south should be lowest, at maybe three stories high. The left and right sides of the square should slope up, from three stories high where they connect to the south side, to seven stories where they connect to the north side. The north side of the block should be seven stories high.
This arrangement would let a lot of sunlight into the interior of the square. The sloped, glass roof over it all would trap the heated air inside the interior as well and keep out snow.
The result would be a warm, sunlit, common area in the center that all the apartments would face. The other side of each apartment would face the exterior of the complex.
I think this kind of complex would also cut down on wastage of heat. Furthermore, the first floor would have shops and things like post offices. Residents of the complex would just have to go downstairs to get things and services.
Neighboring blocks would be connected by sealed, elevated walkways, so you could travel between them without going into the freezing cold.
Why aren't these complexes everywhere in places like Sweden and Alaska?
I've never seen such a thing live, but looking at pictures/renderings, it just doesn't look very nice – it seems like the feeling of being outdoors when you're in the courtyard (or on your balcony) would be gone. If I were ever to move back to a cold country, I'd much prefer just having a greenhouse-type structure in the courtyard, such as this: https://www.groundstudio.se/innergard/
i dont know about trump. everyone seems to focus on him destroying the usa but i feel like hes actually burning conservatism to the ground. like if you wanted to make it a minority for decades you do what he is doing.
i don't think he can make his stuff stick; he seems to do the opposite conservatives want. like tariff china maybe, canada? make expansionist noise over greenland? con businessmen and hawks must think he is nuts.
even on reddit it feels like conservatives are quietly aghast. not sure he will have any support soon.
I would agree with you if there was a competent opposition party for people to flea to, but the democrats continue to be so flaccid and impotent they are unlikely to take advantage of this. They already failed to do that during Biden's admin.
I am very curious to see what happens to all this once Trump dies (he's not going to go away until then even if he isn't president). Is this all just a cult of personality? Is there someone else who can sell the same BS to people?
The republican party has lost a huge base of competent political professionals. If this was 2008 or something that could matter, but this is a new age of politics and political communication. Based on 2024 elections, the republicans have figured it out even without the old guard around.
Isn’t what he’s burning to the ground the Overton window of [conservative / liberal]? I think what he is bringing to town is a whole new thing. We are seeing the side of him that Steve Bannon encourages.
...he wants to create a sovereign wealth fund to buy tiktok. he wants to put tariffs on taiwan chips despite it being not feasible to move their chip fabs here in any reasonable time frame.
he thinks canada should be a state. all of canada. when did maga people ask for anything like this?
like even the libertarians are wondering what is up.
what good is regime change when you are acting outright stupid?
it didn't mean "using economic warfare to bully canada and mexico." i think most would argue for curbing illegal immigration and reliance on H1B visas, and maybe tariffs or a harder stance on china.
like threatening denmark lol.
people want more manufacturing in the states but why is he using a massively regressive tax in the form of tariffs that also force retalliation that limit our businesses exports?
you cannot say maga expected or wanted these things. a lot of these make us weaker
Mexico agreed to send 10,000 national guardsman to the border to help enforce the rules there. Trump postponed tariffs on them. Canada said they were going to spend a whole bunch more money modernizing their side of the border and Trump postponed tariffs on them. I have heard that these things were going to be done anyway and Trump just did it this way so he gets the credit. I don’t know if that’s true or not.
Beyond that there is a larger Geo political issue here that might well have short term pain, but in the eyes of the Trump administration is worth it; taking firm control of the western hemisphere and getting a front seat along the Arctic ocean. Denmark and Canada need to play along, and I think after all the noise dies down they will. Did it have to be this ugly? I don’t know.
Both Mexico and Canada have agreed to do things *that they were already doing before the inauguration* (and the US agreed to keep a closer eye on gun smuggling outside the US, a gripe both of its neighbors have).
To anyone paying attention (as you can be sure China is), it looks like Trump is an easy mark.
How can you say people didn't expect this? Trump has always been clear he wants tariffs and he's never been shy about attacking allies. If any of this is really a surprise to you then sorry, but you haven't been paying attention.
Perhaps his most famous line is that he would get Mexico to pay for curbing illegal immigration. I'd expect that to include some level of "bullying." Him doing the same to the Canadians ("Snow Mexicans" as he is apocryphally said to have called them) was unexpected.
i don't remember trump acting nearly so...insane then. Nor doing things no one in
his base asked for, like Greenland.
the tariffs too...they are all stick no carrot and massively regressive to the point where they want to get rid of the $800 exception. its not like they cant just move factories like an RV.
i don't think it's the same. you can't use trump derangement syndrome if he is baffling his own base lol. Who would vote for Vance if Trump gets any more wackier?
The fact that he's not really acting like a true conservative is exactly why he _won't_ be the death of it. He is a unique figure. His unpredictable, will-he-or-won't-he, he's-just-crazy-enough-to-do-it schtick works perfectly for him in a way that it would never for a Vance or DeSantis. Or a Democrat, for that matter.
Trumpism is a potent force that is not transferable to anyone else.
When he leaves the stage, I think a lot of people on both sides are going to be disappointed at how fast things go back to 'normal'. Democrats will hope to see the GOP discredited forever, and this will not happen, because people will understand that Trump was Trump and the next guy is the next guy. Similarly, Republicans will quickly learn that you can't just copy the policy formula or the mannerisms and have people buy it, and that people will go back to not really trusting the GOP on social issues or supporting extreme fiscal conservatism, in a way that holds back their policy agenda.
He seems generally willing to be "offensive" if he sees fit to do so.
Normally, this would mostly be obnoxious but - Woke weaponized politeness requirements. This is most glaringly obvious in their language policing, but I think they used it in other ways too, essentially narrowing the Overton window to make policies that didn't kowtow to them nearly unspeakable.
Deliberate offense is a good counter to that tactic!
Yes, and not only that, but if you make all opposition to your politics inherently offensive, deliberate offense becomes the *only* possible opposition tactic.
The weird thing, in this respect, was that the establishment Republicans played along and worried about being offensive for so long.
That’s not happening. No one else can really pull off Trumps style but Reagan conservativism is dead. Trump didn’t get popular only because of his rhetoric but because Republicans didn’t want the old conservatism.
the difference is he's damaging republicans now by association in a way they can't say its only democrats. The democrats can just say "you voted for DOGE and a leader who trolls Canada by making you all poorer."
like TDS is being proved to not be as much derangement as thought; he is embarrassing in a way republicans cannot deny and thats going to hit hard especially if his isolationist policies and tech libertarianism start to hurt.
Is this really happening? Sure, liberals say "We thought we would hate his policies, we do hate his policies, so we told you so." But are there many conservatives who expected to like his policies but are breaking with him over the latest moves?
i'm not sure, i think people are still in the stunned phase but i should look at public temperament. if he is just bluffing for short term goals maybe not but tariffs hurt big business conservatives and cede free trade to the Dems. not sure how hawks feel about Greenland or bullying ukraine for rare earth metals.
even the slash and burn of public agencies is more radical libertarian, and not sure him
abusing the xo to such an extent is a precedent they want set. idk how radical the base is at heart.
eh, nah, there is a difference between theatrics before and just torpedoing it now. his decisions are as if someone wanted them all reversed and to
actively lose support for his base.
he's eroding the goodwill of people voting for him and will probably get thrown under the bus hard. Elon...good luck when no one wants to stock starlink or rent space to tesla, or senstors start to cut funding to spacex to spite him.
As far as I can tell, many lines of psychology research use individual differences to figure out things about constructs.
Example from cognitive science: collecting a large sample, noticing that people who have stronger spatial reasoning skills have poorer visual imagery, and concluding that this tells us something about how memory/spatial reasoning/etc work.
Example from personality psychology: any discussion of the relationship between Big 5 traits
(Example from health science: People who are more obese have more heart problems, therefore there is a relationship between obesity itself and heart problems. )
My question is, how can we be sure that an individual-differences-based analysis is informative? If methodological problems prevent us from studying constructs in the same person (e.g., you can't "make" someone have better spatial reasoning, so you can't see how the improvement affects imagery), can we even be sure they are related at all? Also, how can you be sure that a construct identified via individual differences is meaningful? Especially for the psychology examples, I'm confused about how something as abstract as a component pulled out of a PCA can be talked about as if it exists and be taken so seriously. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that e.g., the Big 5 trait openness only "exists" via individual differences and doesn't actually exist in a single person at a single time
This is especially confusing to me when the effect sizes are small. Like, you can tell me that, for example (just making stuff up) working memory abilities and trait anxiety are related across individuals, but if the effect size is smaller than something I'd notice by myself just walking around interacting with people, I frankly don't think this tells us anything new or interesting about either working memory or trait anxiety.
I'm considering testing if getting a therapist/psychiatrist can be worth it, though it seems so expensive that I am not sure how the cost/benefit of it pans out. I'm willing to spend a bit to try. I am based in Berlin and looking for recommendations on how to go about getting the most out of it.
B Civil mentions CBT and I agree. Luckily there is some good evidence that self guided CBT, using a workbook usually, is nearly or just as effective as doing it with a therapist. Try the book "Feeling Good" by David Burns. That will cost <$30 and be a good test of your hypothesis.
Well, that sounds somewhat concrete. I can’t help you with the cost benefit analysis because that’s pretty personal. To my unprofessional ear it sounds like a therapist in the CBT camp might be a good start.
Any good books or other readings on how people develop beliefs that are resistant to change (“trapped priors” as Scott would call it)? Curious about this in the context of modern politics
If you are trying to avoid trapped priors, then I suggest not ever lumping things into "true" or "false." If you always keep a kind of analog scale about how strongly you lean in a given direction then you won't have much skin in the game when it comes to adjusting your position. It is a lot more intellectual work though to reevaluate your position and requires really having a good picture of the various components that establish your confidence in a given position.
I don't have books or reading to suggest, but I do have one comment as a result of watching the wet market vs lab leak post and subsequent comments:
As soon as it becomes plausible that some of the evidence is an actual lie, the analysis becomes _vastly_ more complex and ambiguous. It is hard enough to get enough evidence to solidly support a conclusion when there is no plausible case that any of the evidence was fabricated. Once dishonest evidence becomes a live possibility, convincing anyone of anything, disjodging a trapped prior, becomes immensely harder, possibly impossible.
Tangential, but your wording prompted me to add this.
I like to have a better opinion about myself regarding certain characteristics, but as soon as it becomes plausible that some of the reasoning I use to convince myself is wishful thinking - and that's always plausible - I can forget about it.
So I have trapped priors about myself, whether they are correct or not.
Currently I try the new path of being okay about not being okay about me.
I did it in fits and starts, but it took me about seven months. I carried a Kindle and read it on busses, during meals, and during spare time. I haven't systematically read the sequences, though. I didn't know if the link is still live, but someone made an ebook of SSC and posted a link in the subreddit to a download.
I am assembling a small discord group (<12 people) to experiment with the impact of selectively filtering our consumption of digital media to consist of only text, audio or images over the next few months. Think of it as the digital detox equivalent of the potato diet. The aim is to spend each weekend in one of the three filtered states and compare tools and personal reactions to this experience. The ultimate aim is to develop a set of behavioural/cultural tools that allow people to defang the attention sucking mechanisms of the internet while not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I wish you luck on the project. As someone who already does probably >95% text-only, I think it will help if the alternative is the youtube feed. Some text is better than others - text involving social interaction especially (mainly on substack or discord) seems to be the most distracting, resulting in me spending a lot of time that is neither getting things done nor restoring my mental energy so I can get things done later. Though, I would hope some of what I write is at least a little helpful to others, maybe.
Both fiction and nonfiction writings (nonpolitical, nonsocial) seem to be better for either not being distracting, or at least being a fun or worthwhile distraction.
I'm curious: This looks like it is set up to exclude video. Do you have _particular_ video in mind, or do you think that this is universally bad? I watch AI Explained, Sabine Hossenfelder's channel, a a bunch of others and I think my life is better with them.
Images/video are one of the three channels of digital media I hope to experiment with selective digital detoxing. The idea would be to not consume any video/images, or audio, or even text at various times as a part of a deliberate approach to digital media consumption. My gut instinct is that a habit of text only internet most of the time, coupled with dedicated days where audio/images can be consumed will end up being the best balance, but I want to start with small focused experiments first to get a feel for the impact of filtering down to one channel at a time.
Where did Trump get this idea of a permanent, extensive tariff wall?
Best I can figure, there has been a near consensus among the leaders and intellectuals of the West that trade is a good thing that makes everyone more prosperous. Tariffs and exclusions are justified only in narrow areas such as agriculture and defence-related production. But it looks like Trump has other ideas. Based on a recent speech at Davos, he intends to set up a permanent tariff wall around the American market to encourage domestic production.
During the "near consensus", the thing to do has been to use tariffs and other state action with gusto when considered necessary but always hypocritically portray them as expection to the general rule. Trump just does away with the hypocrisy. Is it wise? No, but it is what it is.
Also, it doesn't exactly need particular economist influence to return to a policy that was considered natural and expected for centuries upon centuries.
> a subsidy on exports and a tax on imports would [if of equal size] exactly offset, leaving no effect on trade
You can have a permanent tariff wall around the market "to encourage domestic production", and you can _also_ have an across-the-board export subsidy "to encourage domestic production", and that will eliminate the damage from both policies.
But I remember a bit of a vibe shift during Covid. Everyone took another look at international supply chains with a much more critical eye once they realized that massive supply chain disruptions were a rare event, not an impossible one.
This isn't to say that everyone is on board with a "tariff wall", more like the money agreed that some amount of onshoring was wise, meaning we're debating how much onshoring is wise, not whether to do it at all.
its probably a lazy continuation of "build the wall" "make mexico pay for it" => "how do I do strong arm foreign policy, while decreasing america world police"
Im assuming its all threat to get people to the table quickly, we will see < 1/5 of countries not yield
1.5 million ain't much but it only took a couple minutes on Google to find this. I don't particularly feel like spending more, especially because USAID's website has been nuked off the internet. I think most would agree that this is further left than left of center
>THIS ACTIVITY AIMS TO ADVANCE DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN SERBIA’S WORKPLACES AND BUSINESS COMMUNITIES, BY PROMOTING ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF AND OPPORTUNITY FOR LGBTQI+ PEOPLE IN SERBIA. IT WILL FOSTER AN ENVIRONMENT THAT INCREASES EMPLOYMENT POTENTIAL FOR LGBTQI+ PERSONS, EXPANDS OPPORTUNITIES FOR LGBTQI+ ENTREPRENEURS, AND REDUCES WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION.
Some of this probably depends on whether we are considering anti-authoritarianism to be a Rightist or Leftist position. This could also depend on whether the authoritarian threat is coming from the Right or the Left. Are we considering Freedom of Speech to be a Rightist or Leftist position? Does it depend on the speech being made-free?
Women's rights and LGBT rights and NGOs that support them are an explicit goal of USAID. A lot of the pages have just recently been pulled down but you can find various documents in archives and such. These are about 10% of their budget.
Just to be clear, in this case "LGBT rights" isn't paying for boob jobs or ensuring they can compete in women's sporting events. It is reducing how many of them are beheaded...
It's both. There's some work done on domestic violence but they also fund various kinds of social initiatives and healthcare initiatives that Republicans find controversial.
A quick look at the list of top recipients of "direct" foreign aid suggests little likelihood of "LGBT healthcare." Ukraine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria, Congo, Afghanistan, and Kenya. Like I said, "beheadings."
I do, however, have no doubt though that some Republican politicians would prefer you to focus on healthcare, no matter how many beheadings there are.
Ah yes, Kenya, famous for its beheadings of women. You've got thin evidence so you're relying on stereotypes. And I didn't say "LGBT healthcare" so your use of quotes is, at best, dubious.
What I was specifically referring to is numerous organizations that perform abortions. While most USAID can't go to perform abortions and much of the aid is restricted from going to organizations that perform them at all the Democrats have been pushing various carve outs and Republicans have been complaining about it for a long time. Plus contraceptives. And so on.
And there is some amount of the US government literally funding stuff like lesbian study groups in Eastern Europe. Though I think it tends to be overstated.
Honest apologies. I was not trying to misquote you. My original thread-comment was only about LGBT and not Feminist issues. I thought that was the aspect of my comment you were trying to debunk. I have no doubt that there exists feminist (abortion) aspects of foreign aid that are strongly objected to on the Right. I would, again, expect this to be a small percentage of overall foreign aid. And I think, under virtually every R president, this has been "fixed." "Fixing," does seem a bit more sensible than just blowing the entire thing up.
Presumably the first start step be to check to which countries the money is going? For countries where homosexuality is frowned upon, or women are expected to stay in the kitchen, there’s likely some funding for feminist or pro-LGBT causes, which are unlikely to be led by Evangelical Christian nonprofits.
But my guess is that since there’s always a lot of misery in the world, we’re still overwhelmingly at the food/water/shelter/medicine stage of the pyramid of needs.
I've recently reread David Chapman's post about Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths[0]. I'm trying to fit the rationalist community into this framework, but not in any strict way. Just as a fun exercise.
From where I stand, it looks like rationalists are in a sweet spot where there enough mops to provide the community with energy, but not so much to warrant increasing attention from sociopaths. Thinking about troubles in the community, like the recent Zizian cult stuff, is evidence that some sociopaths do make it in, but it seems like the Geeks and Fanatics have enough power and clarity to minimize such damage. Maybe it's a result of the community's interest in norms and incentives?
Among other communities that I've experienced, the moat around rationalists appears very low. You don't have to buy expensive items or spend years accumulating arcane knowledge to get in. Yet even in today's climate where being a geek is cool, at least compared to how uncool it was in the 90's, one would think that would attract hungry mops. I suspect what's preventing that is the repelling force of strong discussion norms, eg. producing light instead of heat (not that it works 100%, but compared to mainstream culture, it's an extremely demanding norm).
I'm curious what other people think? How do you experience the rationalist community in terms of geeks, mops, and sociopaths?
You could argue that EAs are the sociopaths which is fun because it plays against type. SBF definitely fits the mold there. Also consider how much press EA gets vs the rest of the rationalist community. That's consistent with Chapman's model: you had a large community of awkward nerds with a lot of disposable income and then in swooped the smooth-talking charity PR types to a) put a global spin on a niche community and b) funnel the money while giving interviews to NPR about how they're saving the world.
Also it's just fun to say that the altruists are sociopaths.
Like TGGP said, Chapman's "sociopaths" is an attempt to sound edgy, Ziz seems to be an *actual* sociopath. This is what you get when you use the word "sociopath" for everything you don't like -- you lose the ability to talk meaningfully about actual sociopaths.
Using the Chapman's definition... let me rephrase it as "people who want to exploit the existing community for their own selfish goals, even if it means destroying the very thing that made the community valuable in first place"... it seems to me that there were multiple attacks on the rationalist community, and the community survived them surprisingly well.
The reason is that the rationalist community is mostly centralized, with the Less Wrong website at its center, and the people who have control over the website are smart enough to notice some problems, write a post explaining the situation, and when necessary, enforce the solution with bans.
The only way to avoid this control was to move to another website, or offline. Neoreactionaries made their own blogs. Leverage Research met offline. Zizians made their own blog, and they also met offline. Each of them took some members of the rationality community with them, but they couldn't take over the entire community, or even a sufficiently large fraction of it.
(Scott also made his own blog... hehe, just kidding. Unlike the other groups mentioned here, Scott is *not* banned on Less Wrong; many of his articles are reposted there and highly upvoted.)
Neoreactionaries tried to take over Less Wrong; they got banned. Some people yelled at Less Wrong that all unwoke content should be banned; they were ignored. Geoff from Leverage Research shared his psychological theories on Less Wrong; the readers were unimpressed. Athene (a YouTube celebrity) tried to promote some of his scams on Less Wrong; was banned so quickly that most readers probably didn't even notice that he exists. Elliot Temple tried to promote his crackpottery on Less Wrong; the readers were unimpressed. Hundreds of new users keep bringing their own versions of "actually, true rationality means..."; they get downvoted, and gradually lose the ability to post more comments.
Less Wrong is not just some average walled garden -- it is a fucking *fortress*! Once it got burned down, but in 2017 it rose again from the ashes, stronger than ever before.
The thing about Zizians is tragic, but at no moment of history were Zizians anywhere near the position to take over the rationalist community, which is what "Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths" is about.
I don't think the Zizian sociopaths are the same as Chapman's sociopaths. The Zizians didn't glom on because rationalism was popular & lucrative, they have no intention of doing what's popular and are willing to throw their own lives away rather than make lots of money.
I have seen it asserted that AI-generated images do not have First Amendment protection and can be freely regulated by US states under obscenity law. Is there any good legal evidence to back up this view?
those are pretty dead rn; there maybe a cycle( porn websites being banned) america has rapid gained more freedom of speech with the internet, theres plenty of historical *lies* about limits of freedom of speech, also see: any gun law ever, any cop interaction, cops stealing from people; but the amendments airnt nearly as hard to understand as the willful ignorance of lawyers would imply.
In the 70's ish gay rights got all the old laws around limiting speech by mail to the supreme court(while the post office is "private" it has a monopoly, so no opening people mail to censor) as far as I know email looks and sounds like mail this ruling is if its encrypted "packed up" and sent to adults, nothing can touch it.
The implication was that as AI-generated images are not created by an "artist," no one's rights would be infringed if California defined all AI images to be obscene, so the Supreme Court wouldn't interfere.
Presumably they'd then prosecute people for possession and/or distribution of these "obscene" images, and I expect that'd confer standing. And I'd expect the state to lose in the Supreme Court any case resting on deeming innocuous images of astronauts riding horses on the moon or whatever to be obscene; they lose little by trying though.
Someone I'm close to has a problem with intense, frequent nightmares. These leave them fatigued during the day and often mean that the morning is a time of anxiety. Otherwise, they have no trouble falling or staying asleep. Additionally, they report occasionally muttering in their sleep and, on a few rare occasions, crying out. This has been going on for a few years.
I'm looking for advice for what they could try to reduce either the frequency or intensity of them. Has anyone encountered this problem before? Has anyone had success in dealing with it?
Perhaps practicing lucid dreaming? Figuring out I'm having a nightmare and deliberately rewriting it to have a good ending helps me. Maybe check first that practicing lucid dreaming won't make things worse in the short term, since it includes deliberately remembering the dreams upon waking up.
Does this person have PTSD or could they feasibly be at risk of PTSD? Do they act out their dreams at night or have difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality? How old are they? Do they consume any substances, especially at night? What is their baseline mental health status?
They have no diagnosed PTSD. They do have diagnosed depression and are on SSRIs, though I don't know which ones. They vape marijuana but have been decreasing the dosage for the past few months (eg. 50mg edibles -> 5mg). They're in their mid 30s. Depression has been around for a few years, nightmares too but it's hard to say if one started alongside the other. They have no difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality. Sometimes they talk at night and occasionally they cry out.
When I hear nightmares, I think first about trauma/PTSD. Could be worth exploring that angle further with them.
Above, people say marijuana helped suppress their dreams, which I hadn’t heard before. Usually it actually worsens sleep quality, so I would have guessed that it might be a contributing factor and I’d think it good to continue to decrease the dose.
Unfortunately I don’t know much about side effects of SSRIs or if they cause bad dreams.
Is there any particular theme or recurrent content to the nightmares? Do they have panic attacks during the daytime? Do they meet any of the STOP-BANG criteria for sleep apnea (which can contribute to both depression and nightmares)? What is their gender? (There is a sleep apnea variant called UARS that primarily affects thin women and can have more mood-based effects)
A lot of people will give you a very reductive story about nightmares and recommend drugs to supress dreams, but this level of anxiety during the night is most likely indicative that something in their life is genuinely bothering them. Before doing anything else I would advise them to reflect on whether the content of the nightmares mean anything to them.
It's meaningful family-related content. They are taking part in talk therapy and talking about these issues (family past). There seems to be no ebb and flow in the intensity or regularity of the dreams though.
Cannabis tends to suppress dreams, at least it does for me and most people I know who partake. If they're in a legal state, may be worth a try? 5mg edible before bed might do wonders.
I've found the suppressive effect only takes hold if you are taking it regularly and as soon as you stop the dreams come back with a vengeance. An occasional edible or vape before a big day to try and suppress dreams does not seem to reliably work. Developing a cannabis dependence probably isn't a particularly great solution either.
Caveat: gabapentin (for the first month I was on it) dramatically *increased* the length, vividness, intensity, and post-waking recall of my dreams. To the point where I considered going back to the joys of neuropathy for the sake of my mental health.
Hmm, strange. To clarify, I'm pretty sure that the anti-depressants were what's causing the dreams to stop, seeing as they stopped even after I started taking it without gabapentin. I have no idea why it has that effect, though...
It's not like this is solely Trump suffering from this idea. Tariffs are a traditional hammer for any protectionist up for doing a little nail watching, and both major US parties feature a share of protectionists (with Democrats even holding the edge).
Trump made the argument on his first term that a tariff against China (at the time) would, yes, hurt Americans, but it would hurt China more. Assuming that's true, there is some sense to that - set yourself back a little in order to set the other party back even further, relying on your leverage, until the other party cries uncle. And the US certainly has a lot of trade leverage.
Some of the point here - at least, as the protectionist argument goes - is to defend American workers from unfair foreign practices. A common example is a nation subjecting its own workers to poorer conditions than US workers have (sometimes to the point of lethal), in order to reduce labor costs, which permit lower prices on products, which US consumers buy instead of US goods. Given the choice, US workers prefer to force foreign goods to cost more than to worsen their own conditions or take pay cuts in order to reduce their own labor costs. This hurts US consumers, who are often US workers, but not always. (One imagines a fat tariff on yachts and imported marble bathroom tile, and the public largely doesn't care. They presumably care if it's washers and dryers, but maybe the workers who want the tariffs don't buy the specific brands the tariff targets. Also, if you're a US worker, maybe your reasoning is you pay extra only once for a new dryer for yourself, but you sell thousands more.)
So some US consumers suffer, but specific foreign businesses suffer more. Foreseeing that, those businesses capitulate and agree to US terms, whatever they happen to be. For China in the late 2010s, it was rectifying unfair trading practices. For Canada and Mexico today, it's blocking illegal immigration and fentanyl.
I think these arguments are at least partially unsupported, but this is what I understand them to be.
I get the impression that he is using the tariffs as a bargaining chip. I view this as playing with fire, but better than _actually_ imposing the tariffs. ( Some _very_ carefully chosen and _limited_ tariffs on China might be sane, as a way of disentangling the network of suppliers who ultimately build our military hardware from the CCP, which has been hovering on the edge of a hot conflict with the USA over Taiwan for several years now. )
In Trump's case it works great, because it gives you the flexibility of being able to claim that whatever random concession you manage to wrangle out of Trudeau was what you wanted in the first place.
At this point, Trump has created a precedent whereby he threatens tariffs and other countries rush to make a minor concession to him. So far the concessions don't add up to much, but will they in the future?
Other countries aren't stupid. If you keep playing that game they will just stop "giving in", implement their own tariffs and find new trading partners.
At least in the case of Canada, they're very limited in their ability to make real concessions for game theory reasons (see the talk of Danegeld in the previous open thread). As long as Trump is ok with imaginary solutions to imaginary problems, it's fine, but he's not going to be able to get real action this way.
The amount of fentanyl coming through the Canadian border is negligible, and the talk about it is blatantly obviously a pretext to everyone. And even if that weren't the case, Trump never made any specific demands in relation to it. Usually when you want people to do something, you tell them what you want to do, whereas Trump seems to think that tariffs are a positive good in and of themselves, and has often indicated so in public.
>Trump seems to think that tariffs are a positive good in and of themselves, and has often indicated so in public.
Yetch. Admittedly my undergraduate economics class was half a century ago, but my impression is that one of the contenders for a cause of the Great Depression was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (yeah, I know, this was after the crash). _Not_ something we want to repeat.
> one of the contenders for a cause of the Great Depression was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (yeah, I know, this was after the crash). _Not_ something we want to repeat.
Obviously, but good luck convincing Trump of anything.
> We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use. Without this massive subsidy, Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!
My understanding was that with the exception of the "fentanyl czar" there were no actually new concessions. The "extra funding" had already been agreed a month or two ago and Canada has announced nothing outside of the "fentanyl czar" that wasn't already included in that package.
Pure theatrics. Canada has already "backed down" by committing to "improve border policing" by appointing a "Fentanyl czar." Trump has now paused the tariffs and is claiming it as a win. That's it.
The tariff story is already over. It was never serious policy. The only real point of interest here is musk and trump competing to see who can get more front page headlines.
Idk why you believe this. Trump really believes in tariffs being good. This is a man who has posted on social media "trade wars are good, and easy to win." He thinks a trade deficit is the same thing as a budget deficit.
Trump's fundamental idea is that every transaction is a zero-sum transaction, and that one party is always ripping another off. Therefore, if another country sells the U.S. stuff, they are almost by definition cheating the U.S. This leads to a kind of insane neo-mercantilism, exemplified by the current tariffs.
He's a narcissist first and a businessman second. Narcissist usually approach the world as zero sum and will actively engage in conflict because that is the only way they believe they can't benefit.
hmmm such as? While Im willing to say hotels shouldnt exist, nor reality tv shows, I would probably expect most people here to be "consoomers", I think people know what they are getting into with trash tv show and are willfully ignorant of illegal labor being preferred because they are 2nd class citizens
Trump University, his recent shitcoin, and all the times he said "work for me and I'll pay you" to various contractors and then did not pay them (this is a form of fraud).
Ordinary people are capable of acting economically rational in their daily lives when they hire Mexican immigrants to take care of their lawn or buy gizmos from China. But put them in a political context, like a voting booth or even just a discussion, and they start going insane.
Trump showing the same two faces in business vs politics would seem perfectly normal to me? At least it shows him to be a man of the people, warts and all.
The furore about DeepSeek is unfounded. It seems ridiculously slow to me and its reasoning ability needs a kick up the arse.
I asked it this.
Assume a country has 3 generations of equal size and 150m people. Assuming from then on the fertility per woman is 1, so the population halves each time. How long until the population is ~ 10M. Show a list for each passing generation. For instance the first would be: 50,50,50 = 150
Anyway it took 149 seconds of “reasoning” to come up with the answer with ridiculous asides about how long a generation was. It even admits it’s getting confusing and clearly - panics.
ChatGPT 4o produced a result in 1-2 seconds and a nice spiffy table of the results to the 10th generation.
The fuss wasn't really about the capability so much as the efficiency in training. It's not quite as good as 1o, let alone the newer models. But half the quality for a tenth of the price isn't a bad business model. And the MoE structure means it's a lot easier to run - only the relevant expert model needed for a particular problem is loaded. People on reddit have a build to run the model locally - the entire 670B parameter version, for about $6K. The whole thing is loaded on RAM and run through the CPU with no GPU/VRAM, which is the only way it's so cheap. At 5 tokens/sec, it isn't that fast, but basically anyone could run it on their own machine.
The issue might be with the wording of the question, TBH I'm not sure I get it.
To see if I understand it: the 3 generations are 50(young) 50(middle age) 50(old). At each time-step, the old generation dies, and a new young generation is born, half the size of the previous young generation. So next step would be 25,50,50 = 125, right?
I mean, note that we don't actually see the chain-of-thought for OpenAI's models -- they might seem equally neurotic if you actually saw them.
It's an anthropomorphization error to imagine that the craziness (and I agree they do seem crazy) of the chain of thought means the same thing that it would if that were the thoughts of an actual person.
My understanding is that that is not in fact the genuine chain of thought that the models used -- it is a perhaps summarized or sanitized version of it.
It shocked me that I had never heard any of this before - it really, really sounds like a conspiracy theory, and I had seen literally nothing about this in the media - but her sources seem pretty legit, and it seems kind of plausible now that Musk/Trump have gotten to work. Is this an accurate reading of the new administration's goals and plans to achieve them?
Some wide-eyed blonde Brit EDIT: she's Australian goes all DARK TECH MILLIONAIRES DARK MAGA DARK DARK DARK TECHBROS DESTROY DARK online.
It's a clickbait video. Just another one of the I CAN TELL YOU THE REAL TRUTH stuff out there. I can't be bothered. She seems to be an academic turned actor/comedian, so there you go. Besides, her eyes are too staring, that kind of opened too wide eyes is the sign of someone who is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
In my country, men dressing up in drag and entertaining children and families is an ancient and widely beloved tradition that many thousands of people pay money to witness. They even make bawdy jokes for the parents.
From our perspective, the American reaction to drag queen story-hour is certainly bizarre. We're free to engage with it or not and no one bats an eyelid.
American definitions of freedom seem to be unique.
Many Thanks! In the USA, men dressing up in drag is usually considered a form of somewhat-erotic adult entertainment. In that particular context, and in the USA's context of very harshly condemning anything that intermixes sexuality and children, promoting interaction of children and drag queens is a major departure from typical community standards here.
I'm _not_ saying that the USA is "right" to have these community reactions, or that this is in any way universal, just that, given those community reactions, promoting drag queen story hour _here_ is a _very_ weird thing to do.
>American definitions of freedom seem to be unique.
Yes. In particular the First Amendment protects free speech much more securely than in most other nations. I treasure that particular bit of American exceptionalism.
Pantomime dames (who are traditionally played by men) are very different to drag queens. For one thing, although they might make the odd bawdy, parent-friendly joke, they aren't the least bit erotic.
He's being disingenuous. No man on the street would lump pantomime and drag queens into the same category. Pantomime is ancient, entirely unrelated to sexuality, gender identity or anything modern. When the town blacksmith puts on a frock to play Widow Twanky, no one draws any conclusions about his orientation. It's more about taking men and women taking the piss out of each other.
The UK. It's called Pantomime and its a big christmas and winter tradition. The men in drag are called "Dames". I saw a panto last year with Sir Ian McKellan as the dame. Also often young male lead characters are played by women.
Drag in the UK also has a long history of being on television, with Dame Edna being a very famous primetime television star in the past as well as Lily Savage. There has been some attempt to import the American culture war against drag but it hasn't been as successful as the anti trans stuff because drag is well understood as a comedic artform here.
Thanks for the reply. Musk has his downsides, but Biden and company, are pure poison. His administration built a whole censorship infrastructure. This last election was a choice between evils (as usual), but Trump and company looked to me, and still looks to me, like the marginally lesser evil.
Yes, more or less. At least that's what it seems. Seems it shifted in this direction when Musk and the rest of the tech crew swung to Trump after the assassination attempt - after which they pushed for Vance as VP.
Vance in 2021 on the podcast Jack Murphy Live:
"There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin. Who's written about some of these things. A lot of concerns that said we should deconstruct the administrative state. We should basically eliminate the administrative state. And I'm sympathetic to that project. But another option is that we should just seize the administrative state for our own purposes.
I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And then when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the 'Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.'"
Vance's campaign was funded by largely by Thiel, who has long been associated with this line of thought - I believe even funding Yarvin's crypto/web3 startup Urbit directly (along with Marc Andreessen).
Yes, seems like an accurate assessment of what the tech right enabled by Trump wants to achieve. Whether they will achieve it is an open question, though it seems they have a surprisingly strong will to power, and no one is opposing them as they break one norm after another, so maybe they can remake the government in their image to a surprising extent. If you’ve been following tech right circles, you would have heard of this plan being said out loud multiple times, so it’s not a big surprise.
We should always be suspicious of billionaires, but, it seems nonsense. I doubt any of these guys are influenced by Curtis Yavin, who doesn’t expect to be taken seriously. He’s a polemicist.
By and large silicon valley has voted overwhelmingly left, although it’s more of a libertarian leftism.
It's known that members of this administration have read Yarvin. For what it's worth, Yarvin does think his American Caesar needs to have broad bipartisan popularity, so neither Trump nor Musk are it.
Trump picked tariff fights with Canada and Mexico, then claimed victory in public . . . in exchange for "concessions" that the Mexican and Canadian governments had already publicly been planning to do before the tariff fight. That's not really good transactional politics - but it does make sense if your primary "goal" is to be the center of attention and be Seen Winning Big, regardless of what actually gets done.*
Interestingly, China seems to be quiet about this whole affair. Either they figured that bit of it out and aren't playing that game, or don't think there's actually a fake deal to postpone them.
* That's not exclusively a Trump thing. Patrick Wyman's "Tides of History" podcast did the Greek and Persian wars a while back, and talked about how from the perspective of the "Great King" of the Persian Empire, "winning" wasn't necessarily about actually winning concrete gains or territories. You could "win" by showing that you could mobilize a big army and reprimand an enemy by force, and then withdraw leaving it all behind.
I don't think you even need to make it about personal attention; from a political perspective, it's obviously better to have people attribute good things to you, even if they were going to happen anyway.
>That's not exclusively a Trump thing. Patrick Wyman's "Tides of History" podcast did the Greek and Persian wars a while back, and talked about how from the perspective of the "Great King" of the Persian Empire, "winning" wasn't necessarily about actually winning concrete gains or territories. You could "win" by showing that you could mobilize a big army and reprimand an enemy by force, and then withdraw leaving it all behind.
TBH that seems like modern revisionism to me. Xerxes seems to have struggled with rebellions and palace intrigues after his Greek expedition, which doesn't exactly suggest the Persians saw it as a great victory.
"Brinkmanship" might be a misleading term because of the asymmetry in power. It is a threat, just one that you'd prefer not to have to carry out because you don't want to bruise your knuckles bashing the other guy's face in.
Can anyone point me to openly Anti-Immigration and Pro-Colonialism Effective Altruists and their public statements? Would appreciate it. As one of the more humanitarian inclined members of the Far Right I'd like to see if some kind of arrangement can be reached on foreign aid questions.
When you say pro-colonialism what do you mean by that? More uninhabited/sparsely inhabited places should be settled (like say the arctic), more inhabited settlements should be brought under imperial rule, existing colonies like Mayotte are good and should remain, or historical colonial projects were largely good - albeit shouldn't be reenacted. Or something else entirely? Those positions might all be described as pro-colonial but are pretty different from each other.
I think there seem to be people who mistakenly equate a colonial government like say The British Raj, with a well administered state like Singapore. The British raj of Singapore was far poorer and worse administered than modern day Singapore. The British raj of India, had a GDP growth average of 0.3% a year and multiple famines causing millions of deaths while modern day India has had no widespread deaths in famines and is now growing close to 6.5% a year. On top of this, colonial governments were racist, robbed local populations of their dignity, respect and let criminal elements of their society run free without impunity. Not sure why anyone in EA would support colonialism. In some of those countries, democracy has turned out to be worse, maybe they need a Paul Kagame or Lee Kuan Yew, they certainly don’t need a Leopold.
I'm not sure it's reasonable to compare a 21st century state with an 18th century state. You didn't have US PL-480 food aid programmes in 1890, like that which limited the 1967-9 Bihar famine to just 70,000 deaths. Plus technologies, forecasting, management techniques make the ability of governments to cope with famines far greater.
Compared to the non-colonised Asian countries the Raj had less growth than Thailand, but more than China (per Maddison project data looking between 1820 and 1938, Thailand 465% growth, India 204%, China 153%).
It seems like the official death toll for the Bihar Famine was 2353 (maybe the real number is higher), and that seems to be the last famine that caused widespread death in India. The Bengal famine of 1942 caused around 4 million deaths perhaps exacerbated by WW2, the 1876 famine that has an estimated 8.2 million deaths, again under the British Raj (during which wheat was still being exported to London at regular rates). If you just want a history of all the grievances Indians have towards the British Raj, any school textbook in India will suffice. Countless Indian Historians and economists have written papers and books on this. I think it's more useful to analyze the incentive structure that leads to these extreme cases of mis-governance.
The British people I do not think were uniquely evil, they still valued justice, kindness and all other good virtues that most populations valued. They were racist, that is true, but racism was the norm of that time, and racism alone cannot explain the bad governance of the British Raj. Maybe it can explain the average daily humiliation they meted out to Indians, or the lopsided justice system every time a Brit was involved but there are bigger problems to look at.
The fundamental issue is that the colonial system hired administrators whose career was beholden to a fickle group in London far more than the population they ruled, and once they were done, they left and often went back to London to end their lives, without having to deal with any of the havoc they caused in their territory. If anything good resulted from their administration, it had to happen due to their sense of honor that regularly was at odds with directives from London, or it happened because of their fondness for the land, which while present was clearly not enough as none of them actually chose to live in the country they administered unlike every other king, in human history. If Lee Kuan Yew was administering Singapore for China and went back to China after his 5 year term, he might consider all these policies reasonable:
1. Singapore can best function as an agricultural exporter to China, since China is industrializing well and it doesn't make sense to compete with China that clearly has more resources.
2. He can play the Malays off against the Tamils, so that they are too distracted fighting each other and make his administration easy.
3. During wartimes or emergency, all resources in Singapore need to be diverted to protect the motherland, because that is what matters the most.
If you change the incentives and tell Lee that his faith is forever sealed with Singapore, you end up with the opposite conclusion in each of these policies.
Fair correction, that's what I get relying on wikipedia for a source. From a quick google 70,000 seems to be the excess deaths, which is quite a different thing. It isn't the last famine in the former Raj, Bangladesh had a major famine in 1974 that seems to have killed between 26,000 and 1.5 million people (which is a stunningly unhelpful range, but there you go).
I'm not convinced by your explanation of administrators being beholden to London rather than the local population makes sense for the fundamental issue of colonialism - isn't that just how bureaucracy works. As in the civil service in say Cornwall will be made up of people whose career is beholden to a fickle group in London, but Cornwall hardly seems the worse for it. Even at the city state level you are still going to have principal-agent problems.
A brief historical aside, many administrators did choose to live in the Raj and many kings didn't live in a country they administered (take James VII of Scotland).
That all said is does seem indicative that India has had a higher GDP growth rate in period since independence as the Raj - when a country has GDP growth in the double digits, you are unlikely to find a much better system. Also I am sympathetic to your points about humiliation, basically people do like a sense of national/racial pride even if it makes them poorer and probably nationalism as a positive good is the strongest argument against colonialism.
Thanks for the correction. I don't think it substantially changes my point that modern India is doing quite well for a developing country to the extent it seems hard to do much better.
Thank you for the link, however lack of ill-intent does not resolve the question for us. If say membership of the Commonwealth dragged the Raj into wars it otherwise would not have been involved in that would still I think be a serious failing of colonialism. Generating more wars or wider involvement in wars seems to be a bad thing in itself.
A look at modern day colonialism would probably be best to look at the Comoro Islands, 4 islands in an archipelago, in 1975 3 become independant as Comoros, one (Mayotte) remains a French colony. Fast forward to today and Mayotte is now about 8x richer than the independent Comoros
Hello, I'm relatively new to SSC/ACX and currently attempting to work my way through as much content as possible (and the sequences to boot!) and maybe write about the experience if it doesn't completely atomize my brain. I noticed that the about page for ACX currently reads "Once this blog is up and running, it’ll have more interesting places to start" -- is it safe to say that this blog is now meets any reasonable definition of "up and running" and, as such, is there any plan to make a guide on what to read on ACX?
The LessWrong Codex guide, for example, is a great entry point for SSC, but Substack is frankly a bit harder to navigate. Browsing "Top" under Archive is okay, but it would be helpful to separate some of the more transient pieces that were more about Current Thing from the general ones, and I don't think the Top filter really manages to do that. Ideal world would be some way to navigate by topic, but I realize that may be a herculean task (something something try asking an LLM something something).
Also, any chance you'll do an even LONGER write up on ACX for the "whole theory of morality and charity" post you shared on Twitter? I know it's mostly a summary of ideas explained elsewhere, but again, as a recent follower it's nice to have a new user guide. Plus it was just a good read.
I only see one comment, so you're good! And 7 months shouldn't be too bad--sounds like a good belated New Years Resolution then. Also for ACX, someone else linked this below and it includes all the old ACX content. The tagging system and simple summaries help a LOT imo. https://readscottalexander.com/
I found it extremely helpful. I sideloaded it onto my Kindle and and read slate star codex offline. Having it as an ebook allowed me to read it on an e-paper device, which I find a bit easier, and allowed me to highlight and search more easily.
Hi Scott, you mentioned at the end of last year's review contest that you're thinking of having an "anything but book reviews" contest this year. Is that still the plan? (I'm planning out what I might want to write)
Max Read has a new piece on "rationalist death cults" which struck me as surprisingly negative about rationalism overall -- I don't live in the Bay Area and am not terminally online enough to be kept up at night by fears of Roko's Basilisk; is there a genuine over-representation of culty weirdos in the rationalist scene?
Or is this a case of base-rate fallacy / "look at these awful cardiologists, they must be terrible people!" (Scott has a post about this called cardiologists and chinese robbers). I live a pretty normal middle-America life and can name several people I know who've fallen into things on the (non-rational) culty spectrum, ranging from modestly alarming health-related spiritual woo-woo to genuinely disturbing criminal behavior.
In other words, what's the base rate of joining a death cult?
The internet rationalist community grew out of a focus on cognitive biases and errors. This topic is more interesting, more relevant, and more comprehensible to people with mental illnesses than to the general population. If your brain routinely overtly lies to you, you're more likely to be interested in the "look at all the ways brains lie to people" community.
I don't know any statistics on this, but I strongly suspect both of these traits overlap with the kinds of behaviours that lead to starting/joining death cults and other dangerous edge-cases.
I was wondering when the blowback from the Zizians would commence. Read makes some good points, but I think his conclusions are overblown. While I don't believe there is a "genuine over-representation of culty weirdos in the rationalist scene," Read gave some examples of culty behaviors in some rationalist adjacent organizations.
Read makes the case that you can fall into culty behaviors if you're obsessed with perfecting the art of human rationality. But let's face it. If someone labels themselves a rationalist, they're implying that their reasoning skills (and implicitly their intelligence) differentiate themselves from the rest of humanity.
He then goes on to claim that rationalists qua rationalists are recapitulating Scientology and Dianetics, Werner Erhard and EST, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Manson Family. Worse yet, rationalism may lead to polyamory!
"The most famous version of this Rationalist impulse is reasoning yourself into a belief that a godlike computer-based super-intelligence is inevitably coming..." I snorted my dinner wine when I read that. Luckily, it was white wine and didn't stain my carpet.
Can't find it now with a quick search, but I remember reading someone's substack about how there are a lot fewer cults around these days than there used to be. Which agrees with my perception.
Seems right -- if you dig a bit, you'll find that in the '60s and '70s there were cults and communes somewhere on the culty spectrum EVERYWHERE. Only a few of them drank kool-aid in the jungle or butchered celebrities, the rest mostly just did weird polygamy stuff and took lots of drugs.
In my experience, yes, there's an overrepresentation of culty weirdos. If you attend real life events, you will notice, it's not subtle.
This isn't because rationalism is bad, it's because most people who attend events are extreme outliers. You get way more death cultists...you also get way more millionaires and rocket scientists and obsessive-compulsive uber drivers and people with serious mental illness. The entire culture is composed of two standard deviation outliers.
We joke about autism a lot around here but if you hang around you'll notice that very minor intellectual and personality differences result in dramatically different life outcomes. Like, congratulations, your Autism Power Level is 70 and you became obsessed with cryptography, you get to be an adorkable multi-millionaire. Sorry, your Autism Power Level is 73 and you became obsessed with early 20th century jazz, you will die penniless and Forever Alone.
The "most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people" SSC subreddit post comes to mind. The average person in the rationalist sphere will read a few blogs or forum posts, maybe fire a comment off once in a while and then continue living normally. Maybe adjusting some behaviour like being more charitable.
Ah, maybe I was unclear. The average reader on, like, the internet, is pretty normal. The average person who consistently shows up to real-life events is noticeably different.
I think that there's some difficult fine-tuning for every person to do between "be willing to consider arguments that are not popular/seem counter to established morality at first glance," and "follow consensus morality." And I think that different people should be at different places for them.
Rationalism is heavily weighted towards, "Don't reject arguments at first glance, give serious consideration to arguments even if they seem abhorrent." And I think that for some people, if you spend a long period of time letting people throw every abhorrent argument they can think of at you, they'll find one that gets past your defenses and inducts you into a cult.
Conversely, like the dominant bay area paradigm was, "Don't even consider anything even slightly askew from the Official Narrative," and that was also bad, both for the epistemics of the people caught up in it, and for the causes of the Official Narrative.
My take is that different people should have different calibrations for when to just retreat to the wisdom of the crowd and say, "Look, I'm not going to take seriously the 1,000th different argument for why it's okay to murder people," and when they should push against the Official Narrative. And it's hard to discover where your own calibration should be.
> Rationalism is heavily weighted towards, "Don't reject arguments at first glance, give serious consideration to arguments even if they seem abhorrent." And I think that for some people, if you spend a long period of time letting people throw every abhorrent argument they can think of at you, they'll find one that gets past your defenses and inducts you into a cult.
Or, if you already believe things that seem abhorrent, then Rationalism is an ideology that provides you with a somewhat socially acceptable justification for why you spend so much time thinking about those things.
Sometimes you congratulate people on their superior rationality skills, because they can properly steelman "the moon is made of cheese".
Then you become a bit suspicious when you notice that they are unable and unwilling to steelman any other statement.
Finally, you realize that they actually *believe* that the moon is made of cheese, and what seemed to you like an amazing mental flexibility was mere craziness.
(If you want to experiment with steelmanning safely, you always have to make people steelman both "the moon is made of cheese" and "the moon is *not* made of cheese". Only those who can pass *both* tests are the true mental athletes.)
Interestingly, this is how science-based medicine differs from the merely evidence-based one. Science-based medicine says ”We actually don’t need any more studies about homeopathy - not only is it physically impossible, but we also have studies already. It’s pointless and a waste of resources to even investigate the 1000th claim.”
Does anyone know any weight loss methods that are specifically good if you need to work around medication that induces weight gain? In my case it's Seroquel, but many psychiatric meds make you baloon. I gained 50kg since I started it, and I don't like it.
I work in a busy field. Things like gym/training are not as feasible. Portion control aka plate control has been extremely helpful. More obvious is also walking everywhere and stairs at work!
Lastly, If weight gain is surely medication-induced, speak to your prescriber about weaning or switching to another option.
Not medical advice, but if weaning/stopping is not realistic could always look into adding a medication with an opposite effect on weight. For example Wellbutrin or a dedicated start of a GLP-1a (many other indications)
Random topic here but I’m curious whether I sound like a whack job to you— I’m struggling with the back sleeping recommendation for babies (infants are supposed to sleep on their backs to reduce SIDS risk, which back sleeping seems to do, significantly). But back sleeping recommendations, which started in the 90s, seem like a pretty good candidate for explaining increased autism incidence, especially for those who are predisposed (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4978628/). In a nutshell: sleep is still a fairly mysterious set of processes, babies strongly prefer stomach/side sleeping (like most mammals!), and we’re overriding evolution on a massive scale by forcing them on their backs during early brain development without a clear read on long term consequences (which are so hard to measure for practical / legal /ethical reasons). And yet the recommendation is emphatic and questioning it seems to be taboo. Reducing SIDS risk from .13% to .04% while possibly 10x’ing the risk of lifelong social difficulties and god knows what other cognitive deficiencies is a non-obvious call and I wish public health officials were a little more circumspect in their guidance on this topic
Ya sorry I think it’s a good candidate because it makes a lot more intuitive sense to me than anything else I’ve thought of. The research all sucks (which is mind blowing - this is a universal and extreme public health intervention that has deprived whole generations of quality sleep in the first 12 months). So to be clear It’s a crackpot theory of mine!
That feeling we get when we’re dozing off that suddenly tells us ‘the other side would be more comfortable’ - I suspect that’s a mechanism for targeting sleep’s benefits at a certain brain region (gravity ensures distribution of cerebrospinal fluid and blood is more abundant in side facing pillow?). My understanding is the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex) is responsible for, among other things, top down emotional regulation, decision making, abstract reasoning - robbing that region of sleep’s benefits (whatever those may be!) in the first 12 months of life, when neural circuitry is proliferating like wild fire, is (I think) batshit crazy and the timing of increased autism incidence is eerie in this context…having said all this, I admit I may not be thinking very clearly, as I have not been getting much sleep :)
I'm not sure about the autism link, but a lot of the anti-SIDS messaging is too hardline in its recommendations and ends up setting new parents up for unnecessary misery. Falling asleep with a child on the sofa is risky. And so getting so sleep deprived doing unnatural stuff like repositioning babies on their back and avoiding (well-planned) co-sleeping makes everyone more tired, which increases the risk of risky behaviour like sofa sleeping.
My understanding is that while you need to put the baby down on their back, if they're able to roll themselves back to front, it's okay to leave them in that position. A baby who's strong enough to roll is also strong enough to move themselves into a position where they can breathe.
I think that this is not exactly correct. I think it is assumed that the risk is dramatically less when they can return to their back (something that happens a bit after being able to roll onto their front). Conceptually, it also seems likely that just being able to lift their head and reposition their face to fix a position problematic to breathing. This(in my sample size of 2 study) happens before any rolling if you give babies "tummy time."
I think it's mostly parsed as the way beleester phrased it though (certainly how my wife interpreted it for our three; IIRC we discussed head-lifting as the standard but they were able to do that pretty early and we weren't comfortable letting them sleep on their bellies until they could roll over). Pelorus is right though, that there are definitely discourage belly-sleeping well past the point where it's okay (up until they're toddlers, actually), and insist that you need to go in an roll poor little sleepers onto their back up throughout, sacrificing your sleep to protect your DL.
The other "interesting" thing about SIDS is how IIRC not discussed among the major risk factors is maternal obesity and maternal smoking/drug use. There's an argument that SIDS is a compassionate diagnosis to reassure women that no, you didn't in fact just roll over and kill your child at night, it's a syndrome whose cause we don't know.
Not just maternal smoking. Apparently, an extremely strong link to any smoker in the house, even if they do 100% of their smoking, outdoors. I believe I got that tidbit from a previous piece by Scott.
This study examines five countries that have different time periods for campaigns to promote back sleeping... which all start within the same five-year period. And their five graphs don't have similar trends and in several cases the trend starts before the sleep campaign. This doesn't seem to me like anything more than a coincidence.
I read a tweet once that estimated parents lose 48,620 hours of sleep per SIDS death prevented by back sleeping. The kids lose more, based on the estimate
I wonder what negative effects there are from parents not sleeping as well...seems like there have to be at least a few more accidents due to lack of sleep.
I think many of us here share a concern about AI safety. But many of the articles on the topic are a bit technical. I made an attempt today to create a lecture on the topic which would be accessible to a broader audience, feedback welcome
Does anyone know any weight loss methods that are specifically good if you need to work around medication that induces weight gain? In my case it's Seroquel, but many psychiatric meds make you baloon. I gained 50kg since I started it, and I don't like it.
> Does anyone know any weight loss methods that are specifically good if you need to work around medication that induces weight gain?
Unfortunately, weight loss even for non-medicine induced cases is supremely hard, with 80-98% failure rates.
Medically-induced weight gain is typically due to changes in appetite or metabolism (or both), which are generally hard to fight against.
There is a subset of people who have lost significant weight and kept it off, who are part of the National Weight Control Registry. The interventions they've done are:
1. Average 1hr / day of physical activity
2. Eat a low calorie, low fat diet - so you are counting both calories and macros
3. Eat breakfast
4. Self-monitor weight regularly
5. Maintain a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends
"Easy mode" is 'tides, GLP-1's, or bariatric surgery.
I would just like to add, not disagreeing with you, but just add, that I’ve seen the best results from people when they skipped breakfast, ate more fat, and cut back on the carbs.
I know we’re both really reinventing the wheel here haha
At least one of the requirements is that it's a joke about form rather than substance. Puns and stuff like that. Low brow is a synonym but not exactly the same. I wouldn't consider slapstick or fart jokes to be dad jokes.
Anyone have any good ideas about how to stop the federal government from ceasing any basic function Elon doesn't like? He appears to have gotten direct control of all federal payments at the moment, at a time when all basic scientific and medical research had already ground to a halt due to Trump's Day 1 EOs forbidding DEI and foreign aid.
If enough do this, perhaps those who are left will take note that they don't have any serfs left to lord it over. But even if they don't, the fallout doesn't have to be your problem.
I was talking about the US and I should have said research is grinding to a halt. It hasn't completely come to a dead stop yet, but is in the process of doing so.
Every single NSF grant is being reviewed for non-compliance with the anti-DEI executive order (http://nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00365-z), and I think the same is happening at NIH, though there's been less reporting. The way this review is proceeding is by asking NSF officers to flag all grants that include any words from a very long list, including "bias", "female", and "barrier" -- which will amount to flagging literally all research with human subjects (https://bsky.app/profile/darbysaxbe.bsky.social). New grants that were supposed to start have been delayed for an unknown amount of time (guess how I know).
All of this amounts to taking a sledgehammer to American science, which has led the world since WW2. You can scoff all you like, but if this persists for 4 years (let alone longer), American science (and consequently, all science) will be set back tremendously. Any country smart enough to fund science is likely to poach many top researchers, and they won't come back.
Premier research institutions take a long time to build, but can be destroyed very quickly. Despite massive investment for decades, Germany's research institutions are still nowhere near where they were 90 years ago.
Surely this inspection for compliance is a one-time cost, and then people will stop DEI-ing their research with human subjects? At some point there must have been a similar executive or congressional decree concerning the content of research, and that didn't grind anything to a permanent halt, evidently.
Or are you suggesting that a permanent prohibition on academics barfing fringe ideologies all over their science amounts to a lasting, total halt? Pretty grim, if so.
First, "Since 1980, Congress has mandated that the agency seek to broaden participation of underrepresented groups, including women and other minorities, within science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)" (from the Nature piece linked above). So this is less modern day wokeness and more a longstanding requirement for what scientists should be trying to do.
Second, no, there has never been a similar executive or congressional decree concerning content research. Funding priorities change all the time (not just with changes in administrations), but they change for new solicitations, not for existing already-funded research. There has never been a culling of research based on keywords before in the US.
Third, if you think mentioning the word "female" in a grant is "barfing a fringe ideology", then the fringe ideology isn't where you think it is.
"So this is less modern day wokeness and more a longstanding requirement for what scientists should be trying to do."
I mean... the fact that it's *old* woke and they used a different word for it at the time doesn't make it any less bad. That it's long-standing makes it more bad.
Apologies for the typo also, that should have read "content OF research".
"Third, if you think mentioning the word 'female' in a grant is 'barfing a fringe ideology', then the fringe ideology isn't where you think it is."
No, and I didn't say that (obviously). The point is that once the fringe ideology is removed all the rest should be smooth sailing, with nothing but wholly justifiable mentions of the trigger words, and then we can stop checking. The only scenario where this is *not* the case is if academics are clinging white-knuckled to their horrible deranged ideology and continue to try to force it in no matter what, in which case checks will have to remain in place.
Ok. All I can say is good luck having a functioning national scientific research enterprise when you start subjecting academics to government scrutiny about whether their research is too woke for your tastes. The nazis and the soviets both tried it, and both destroyed their academic research enterprises for generations.
I want to feel sympathetic for you, but (1) if you can't explain why the word "female" is in your grant application because "we're testing a new drug for ovarian cancer, this is nothing to do with DEI or trans stuff" then I think you need to work on that and (2) oh no, oh gosh, you mean if you don't get a grant, you will lose your job and have to go find another?
Like every other working person when the factory closes down? Like I've had to do when I've been out of a job?
I want science to go on. I want research to go on. But this kind of complaining does sound like "for years we've been in a comfortable little bubble and now reality is biting".
What if I *can* explain the bit about ovarian cancer, but I don't get paid for three months and also the electric bill for the lab fridge isn't being paid so the tissue samples are all worthess, because it takes three months for my explanation to work its way up DOGE's inbox?
Yeah, I'll be getting a different job. It probably won't be curing ovarian cancer, and I won't be available when you decide to restart the ovarian-cancer research project.
> Like every other working person when the factory closes down? Like I've had to do when I've been out of a job?
You’re Irish, aren’t you? Aren’t you entitled to a bit of compensation in this case (Redundancy Payments Act, the Internet suggests)?
> But this kind of complaining does sound like "for years we've been in a comfortable little bubble and now reality is biting".
I’m sure you were so thrilled when people threw that line at you when you lost your job?
More on the object level:
First, the academic job market is very international – what this means is that a postdoc or PhD student who took up an offer to go work in America for a limited period (funded on a grant) could lose their job and have to relocate in a different continent. For instance, postdocs visiting to America have to use a J-1 visa, which does not come with an authorization to work.
They also accepted the contract on the implicit and fairly reasonable assumption that grant money is actually due to their PIs and that the university will not go under in the meantime (I will grant you that many people do not have this luxury, but it is part of the implicit contract as well).
Second, the current traditions in academia are only 80-ish years old in the US, easily 150 in Western Europe. At this point, the bubble is more like a concrete wall and someone has just blown explosive through it. A measure of annoyance does not seem unwarranted.
The implicit contract of academia has remained broadly similar – the money is well under what you can get in industry, the work-life balance is a joke, your literal job involves wrestling with failure all the time (your own, because you’re neither Einstein nor your more successful next-office colleague; your students’; your department’s; the bureaucracy’s), and you may be forced to give it up anyway because there’s not enough room for everyone. The counterpart is the lifestyle, the relative freedom, and the fact that you can spend part of the week working on something you truly like.
It is not clear that anyone is offering grantees the chance to explain anything. When USAID got shut down wholesale the other day, there was no chance for aid recipients to explain how what they’re doing is worthwhile. Again, nobody expects this administration to use a scalpel, and so far all evidence points to killdozer, which you were arguing would be a good thing anyway, a few posts ago.
If you don’t mind federal funding of science being arbitrarily cut off based on the presence of suddenly forbidden keywords, then that is in direct opposition to your stated desire of wanting science to continue. “I want science to continue but we should killdoze the government first” is not a possible world or a coherent position.
You probably can't stop it, but you can *document* it.
When a bad thing happens, write it down. A short explanation of what was done, a short explanation of consequences, some links to prove that you didn't just make it up.
Publish the entire report when the next election is near. Or maybe a chapter each month or two, and then a list of links to all of it.
Also, when people complain about something, you can remind them of the action this is a consequence of.
Because if you won't do it, this is what happens -- there will be so many bad things that most people won't be able to remember all of them, and they will also become the new normal. So right before the election, most people will only remember two or three recent things, and even those won't feel very unusual, so they will round it to "actually, not that bad".
Sorry, I don’t have that luxury. I’m a scientist with a grant that has been thrown into limbo, like every other grant in the country right now, while Trump officials do a search in grant text for forbidden words like “female” and “barrier” (I wish I was kidding, you can look it up). No one knows if all grants with words like that (which would amount to all grants for human subjects research) are about to be cancelled. No one expects Trump appointees to be taking a scalpel. Everyone I know is panicking about either not being able to eat if they’re on soft money, or not being able to pay their staff to eat. So maybe the machine will win eventually, but there is a very good chance that much of science in the US will be destroyed by then. Universities as a whole will soon follow, since they depend on grant dollars to keep the doors open.
Changing a system thoughtfully is slow. Taking a sledgehammer to it can be very fast.
If you're a scientist wondering if your grant will survive and you'll be able to put food on your table, then your competition is all the taxpayers who couldn't food on -their- table because they kept being forced to fund science projects they didn't approve.
And many of them are indeed bright enough to tell real science from stuff that isn't real but has the "science!" label slapped on it (or worse, actively harmed them while flying the "science" flag). The catch is that they have to inspect it for a little while, and there are a lot of projects, so it's going to take lots of little whiles.
Meanwhile, your argument in defense of science and researchers and universities is very easily made - indeed, even likely to be made - by someone running a fake (or actively harmful) science project, and if it turns out to be actively harmful, they're going to wish they had an even bigger sledgehammer, so that argument isn't doing what you want, either.
There's an argument here that your real beef ought to be with the people who were running fake or harmful projects alongside you.
"all the taxpayers who couldn't food on -their- table because they kept being forced to fund science projects they didn't approve"
A ford class aircraft carrier cost $13 billion. How much food does that take off peoples tables?
I personally, don't think the federal gov should be spending as much money as they do on pretty much everything, but all government spending is open to the same criticism you wage. And the answer isn't to just shut the taps off with no warning. It's to follow the constitutional legislative process to eliminate funding. Should be easy considering trump controls every branch of government.
It's true that all government spending can be criticized this way. In fact, there are people who criticized Biden administration expenditures this way. And now there are people criticizing the critics. It's a free country.
What's special in this case is the response to a longstanding problem with the legislative process you mention. Namely, to a rough approximation, it's broken at the incentive level; criticisms of spending stretch back as far as there's been a US, and have even been accompanied with official legislative processes for the past 80 or so years, and they've been met not only with even more spending, but in the last 10 or so years, they've also been getting "and you're a bigot racist for criticizing" sprinkled on top.
Apparently enough people got hustled into that camp, and decided that the solution was to try something other than the usual process. We're about to find out to what extent that works.
I feel bad for the honest people who are going to get squished by this (I know a lot of them personally), but it's hard to feel bad for the people who thought the process was so solidly in their favor that they could heap insults on top of it. And I hope the people coming out of the ensuing dust cloud figure out a more lasting solution to addressing government waste than saying "legislative processes".
The only way these cuts will address your complaint that this spending creates a deadweight loss and makes the public poorer, is if the funds are redirected to spending that doesn't cause that or results in a tax cut. I have seen no evidence that Trump is going to do either. His proposed Tax Cuts benefit this in the highest income brackets, not the people struggling to put food on the table.
It's fine if you want to celebrate cuts in government spending, I applaud them as well, but the manner in which the cuts happen does matter. And what is done with the freed up money matters as well. I have no reason to trust that Trump will do anything with the money besides things that benefit himself.
See this is where you really tick me off. Because I've been fortunate enough to be close to people whose job it is to evaluate the grant proposals for one of the major Federal departments, and I can't tell you how seriously they take their job to evaluate the methodology and to weed out bias. That's the thing that's generally missing from this conversation, you can say that you don't think government can be doing certain things, that's fair ideologically speaking, you can't abstract the process by which government does things away from the people who work in government, and in my experience those folks really, really care about providing the highest quality good they are able and labeling them all as corrupt or incompetent is malicious and stupid.
If it makes you feel any better: I work in a different part of the government, staffed by people I know personally, who take their work seriously and genuinely for the good of Americans, and are nevertheless vilified by some subset of those same Americans who don't fully understand what they do and suspect they're up to no good and would like to see them all unemployed (and in a few cases, even incarcerated).
Earlier this week, I had a long conversation with another friend who worked like hell to get what he thought was a pretty stable position, just in time to have to worry about it going away, and I tried to give him advice on what would most likely preserve that work. So I think I know how you feel.
Thing is, I'm trying to look through more than one pair of glasses. There's the honest government worker. There's also the civilian who believes honest government workers exist. But there's also the government lifer (common phrase we use: RIP - "retired in place") who deadweights their way through an entire career and is virtually impossible to fire due to all the rules in the way, as well as the mid-level government manager who has plenty of energy that -could- go toward serving the people, but instead goes toward their own bureaucratic fiefdom and future position on some lobbyist board and McMansion deep in Rappahannock or the Eastern Shore. And there's civilians well aware of that type as well. A -lot- of them.
You can complain to me all you like about the fact that there are good people; but you'd be wasting your time, because I already know. And I'm going to say yes, but also there's all this deadweight, and while I could conceivably perform surgery on a few departments and save some real money if I was authorized to do so, I'm going to question whatever system gave me that authority and who else also got it and would I approve of whatever -they- would cut, and anyway, whatever I cut is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to all the rest of the waste, which means that's not going to be good enough for the taxpayers who are also struggling. You can't ignore them and then also get indignant when they vote to axe your pet government program, any more than I can ignore them when they vote for someone who isn't a libertarian.
I can blame the taxpayers who are struggling for thinking that any of the cutting is going to benefit them. All we are seeing is avenues of government aid being even more cut off or obstructed than before. It would be one thing if the money saved were going towards some kind of direct subsidy to the American people or even a broad tax cut or tax credit, but there's no evidence that's going to happen. The last time Trump authorized a tax cut, it was specifically for the benefit of large corporate tax payers over everyone else and I don't know why this time would be any different.
I can understand people's frustration with an inefficient government, although I think a lot more of that inefficiency is due to constant Republican obstructionism than people normally grant. And I can certainly understand people's skepticism with the idea that more government spending in the name of efficiency isn't actually going to speed things up, because that's pretty understandable even though I think it might actually be the solution in at least some cases. But what I can't understand is being mad at democrats or government officials because the government isn't benefitting them the way it should when they are the only side who believes that's the governments job. Most of the people think that Trump should be empowered to help them on an individual level, that means they aren't really libertarians. They've just been conned into thinking that somehow the money we aren't spending to keep babies from getting AIDS in Africa is going to come back to them. And I think being conned that way makes them stupid marks, no matter how justified their general anger is.
If your default assumption is that every bit of federal spending, including every NSF grant, is guilty until proven innocent, then no one is going to be able to convince you that all the worthwhile things are worthwhile one by one. First, there are just too many of them to go through. Second, no one person is qualified to understand the reason that most grants in most fields are worthwhile (I'm including myself, a science professor. I'm not competent to evaluate the vast majority of grants in any field outside my own).
What you should be aware of is that making the assumption that it's majority wasteful just... making an assumption. There's lots of empirical evidence of specific instances of waste or fraud, but there's zero evidence that most federal spending is "waste" or that it would not be able to win public support if exposed to careful scrutiny by experts who understand it. In fact, most federal spending IS exposed to careful scrutiny at different times, at which points it's most often found to be worthwhile after all. That's why, e.g. congress has kept voting to fund USAID even despite the difficulty of justifying it to non-experts, and despite the presence of killdozer proponents who couldn't care less about any spending details at all.
Already aware. I didn't bother going into it because I was certain you were aware as well.
Notice the pattern here? If we assume grants are wasteful until proven productive, we have the current scenario. But if it we assume grants are productive until proven wasteful, we have the scenario I described earlier. I wouldn't call either of these good enough to celebrate at the next Nobel Prize dinner.
I don't have the literature in front of me, but I don't think your claim of "zero evidence of most federal spending being wasteful" is beyond question. The method for showing it is itself questionable (who chooses the evaluation experts? What are their motivations?). Multiple instances of fraud have been unearthed (replication crisis; p-hacking; plagiarism; peer review corruption; faked data). Alternate methods for funding are available, with different tradeoffs, including some very likely preferable. And if we're using the continued approval of Congress as a metric for whether something is worth doing, I think you'll find a great many people on this forum alone will have issue, even those who (like me) will defend real science.
The reason to assume that grants are productive until proven wasteful is that in order to get funded in the first place, every grant already has to go through
multiple layers of serious content-level review by many actual experts. There are still going to be problems with this approach, sometimes systematic problems when an entire field is wrong, but I'm not aware of any system that would consistently work better.
If there are some "very likely preferable" alternatives, what are they? What's the evidence that they're preferable? Without details, this is hand-waiving of the classic "I bet we could build this better from scratch" variety. Well, as long as we're just placing bets, I bet you couldn't. And I definitely bet that Elon can't.
You’re not completely wrong, but I just wanted to check: you are aware that (say) the NSF’s budget is less than 0.2% of the federal budget, right? And that together with the NIH they’re still under 1%?
But this is similar to the older conflict over the NEA: tiny amount of funding relative to the entire budget, given to something a lot of people really didn't like. The usual gripes come up. 0.2% of the funding takes up 20% of the public awareness (blame sensationalism if you like). That funding could have gone to something a lot more people would approve of, like cancer research (ironically, maybe that's now frozen as well).
Meanwhile, if you have two instances of wasteful spending, one tiny but easy to get rid of, the other larger but much more entrenched, it's often wiser to go after the tiny pot rather than tackle the bigger one in the name of Making A Difference and getting no progress at all.
A fair bit of this freeze is motivated by anger, and so there's going to be mistakes, and we'll doubtless hear of them. OTOH, I don't think the anger is completely unfounded, and whether it is or not, ignoring the root causes seems unwise.
There are court cases and injunctions in place around the "spending freeze" from last week. Not clear if they are being followed. There will probably be more court cases around anything Musk does, especially usurping the power of the purse.
When (as I'm guessing he will) Musk ignores court orders, then I guess the constitutional crisis will escalate and we'll see what happens.
Whatever you think of Trump and USAID, I doubt every Republican Congressman will want to cede their own power, and the power of the courts.
The Republican calculus seems to be consistent since 2016: hope Trump implodes, but say nothing against him as long as he’s popular with their base. If that last part doesn’t change, I can’t see any Republican in congress opposing Trump to assert their own power. They know that their base will pick Trump over them, and they’ll (personally, if not congress as an institution) be left without power anyway
They might not say anything against him, but they have often proved remarkably good at just imploding into internal strife that makes it impossible to implement his strategies. See what happened with Matt Gaetz, no one is really mad at the Republicans who blocked his nomination, I think because they framed it as "we love Trump, we just really have beef with this jackass). I don't know why that works, and I'm not sure its entirely conscious of their part, but I hope it continues.
Just on the basis of left-right stuff they should want it.
In particular, the supreme court is likely to be majority Republican appointees for at least several decades. If SCOTUS blocks Musk's actions and trump pulls an Andrew Jackson then it will be a huge win in the long run for liberals, who see SCOTUS as a block on their agenda that will, again, not go away for decades absent some norm-breaking action from someone. And if you're an R Congressman who wants to have conservatism even after trump is out of the picture, not that hard to figure this out.
To a smaller degree, Congress favors Republicans more than the presidency does.
They are willing to do a lot of shit to benefit Republicans, but I really don't think they want to kneecap their *own* power. They all see themselves as philosopher-kings who should run everything and lecture everyone else about how wise and noble they are compared to the unwashed masses. Nor do I think them being "compromised" is necessary to explain their actions, fun as it might be to speculate about.
You should not attempt to stop it. Civil service obstructionism is antidemocratic. They won an election on this plank and they aren't doing anything worse or dodgier with respect to the limits of the office than FDR ever did. If this kills off boondoggle government for even one generation, it's a great act and will even make up for all the stupid shit they're doing with respect to Ukraine and so on.
Vote for someone else in four years, see how keen the Democrat candidate then will be to rebuild all the superfluous shit.
So, if civil service obstructionism is antidemocratic, what do you call it when a "special government employee" arbitrarily decides to shut down funding for an entire government agency against the wishes of Congress?
It's the opposite of efficient functioning! Congress ordered the Executive Branch to do various things (send out foreign aid, give money to the states for social services, etc.) and the executive branch is not doing those things efficiently, because Elon Musk, unelected civil servant, has unilaterally decided that they shouldn't happen!
I will grant that Elon Musk is very efficient in his attempts to break the law, and that the President is supporting his attempts to break the law, but if you're complaining about unelected civil servants getting in the way of the laws being executed, well, Congress is the one that writes the laws, not the President.
You and I both know that Musk isn't a career civil servant of the kind that bends government leftward even when (as now) there's a rightwing majority in every branch of government. This is a sophistic gotcha attempt and not worthy of real engagement.
If you want me to take you at all seriously on this you can start by expanding on your lasting detestation of FDR and the New Deal era of government for his violation of political norms and executive overreach. As of right now I'm not impressed.
It's not really a sophistic gotcha to say "you only dislike unelected civil servants ignoring all the laws when they are on the other side of the aisle" and then you say, "Yes, I only dislike unelected civil servants ignoring all the laws when they are on the other side of the aisle." It's just admitting you're a partisan hack, in which case, stop blithering about how undemocratic unelected civil servants are and just say you want power.
The people have decided Congress is corrupt and have entrusted the executive branch with doing an end-run around the Oligarchy on the Hill - in defiance of the "law", as is their right as the People, who art sovereign.
In accordance with the Constitution, if Congress does not like this turn of events, they are free to impeach and remove the executive.
If "the people" have decided that Congress is corrupt, wouldn't they have voted them out of office a couple months ago? Well, a third of the Senators and all of the Representatives at least.
A good chunk of the people have perhaps decided that the *bureaucracy* is corrupt, in which case it's understandable that many of them would vote for Donald Trump. But they really should have voted for similarly-inclined congressmen to back his play, because the Constitution is pretty clear that much of what they want to do is properly the job of the (democratically elected) Congress.
But, OK, "the people" will have a chance to reconsider that in just under two years; we'll see what they do.
The people decided no such thing. This is no more than the language authoritarians use to grab power. Every authoritarian in history claimed to be executing “the will of the people”, which just happened to be whatever they want to do, long before democracies even existed.
Civil servants, just like the president and other elected officials take an oath to uphold the constitution above all else. Refusing to do unconstitutional things is not antidemocratic.
Many Thanks! Bluntly, I'd find that position a lot more believable if there were widespread refusal by civil servants to implement the thinly disguised racial quotas of Didn't Earn It as violating the equal protection clause of the constitution.
Can you please describe to me what you think the DEI policies of the federal government were and what was their impact? The outrage seems to be so out of scale with the actual reality of the policies.
Many Thanks! See the extensive discussion of DEI in https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke . Ultimately, the _effect_ (after regulators and regulatees finish dancing around ambiguous language) is, as I said, thinly disguised racial quotas.
If you read his X feed, he has been bragging about turning off payments “in real time” all weekend. In particular, he has bragged about shutting down payments by USAID and closing that agency. The email that told USAID employees not to come into work today was written by one of his DOGE “employees” (unclear what position or credentials or clearance, if any, any of them actually have). Trump clearly found out about these things from reporters asking him what he thought — the interviews make it clear he didn’t order those moves. It’s possible Musk is bragging/lying and is really just conducting an audit, but I’ve never heard of an auditing that required telling the organization being audited to pause all payments…
Don't remember where, so take it FWIW, but I saw or heard Elon say Trump had agreed to shutting down USAID. I imagine Trump then set the wheels in motion.
If there have been some miscommunications and/or shortcuts taken in the process, I wouldn't be completely stunned, of course...
Trump is the leader of the executive branch asserting his authority under Article II of the Constitution. If you don't like what he's doing, you need to convince 1/2 of Congressmen, and 2/3 of Senators to remove him. The first is probably pretty easy, the second seems very hard.
Note that if you pull that off you end up with President JD Vance, and a *very* upset Elon Musk and GOP base, so uhh....yeah. Idk what to tell you man.
In context of the discussion, I think it would be very angry President Trump, Vice-President (edited: Vance), MAGA and X base. It would certainly not be much better, that’s for certain.
There’s 200 years of precedent of congress and the executive arguing over the exact limits of their respective powers. To act like impeachment is the only remedy is silly.
And if the executive says "yeah lol we don't care" - what do you propose happens? What's the remedy?
(Also, much of this is pushing back on pretty modern precedent. The Impoundments Control Act (which stops the President from declining to spend money Congress appropriated) is only from 1974. )
>asserting his authority under Article II of the Constitution.
Surely the point is that his actual authority is less than what he asserts it is. The extent to which that position is the correct one is, of course, contested, but one can't simply wave it away.
You can't wave it away, I agree, but if the Congress does not act to correct it, well...de facto that's his authority. Article II is asserting Article I does not have the authority over Article II it assets - so we're at a bit of an impasse. Who will win? Tune into X.com to find out!
Yes, and if the courts say "you must stop", and they don't, well...
In that event, Congress would need to step in, impeach, and remove. There are 47 Democratic Senators, so you need 20 GOP Senators to remove him. Can you get 20 GOP Senators to do that? That's the question.
There are, historically, many ways to push back on government (and non-government, in the case of Elon) excesses that are still far short of impeachment
Oh, they have, a hundred times already. Honestly, you have to give them some credit for not backing down like the other papers. I wonder though, do they not actually think he's fascist, and thus feel safe saying it? Or do they actually believe what they're saying, and they really are just suicidal enough to die on this hill? Time will tell...
Weirdly enough, there are laws in place for when and how and under what circumstances those kinds of decisions get made. What those laws do NOT say is "the president has full authority over all disbursal of government funds, full stop."
So the question really isn't whether the government is doing more or less than it should. The question is, do you want the government--as an institution of laws based on democratic processes--to exist at all? Or do you want it replaced with something that does not respect laws and does not answer in any fashion to the will of the people?
p.s. You might try cracking a history book or three and reading up on the past examples of the exercise of autocratic power. If you think "making the government do less stuff" is a guaranteed (or even likely) outcome, you're in for just a bit of a surprise.
Maybe, but if so that should be something discussed and considered, and not just some unelected billionaire cancelling the things he disagrees with. I highly doubt we'll see an of his government funding removed.
The correct way to solve for that, I earnestly believe, is not to glance over a $50b-a-year agency for a couple of weeks and then abruptly destroy it. Doubly so when it's the "try to fight Ebola and famines" agency.
1. I don't want the world to have more famine and Ebola in it.
2. It improves the standing of the US, for a tiny portion of the federal budget.
3. It has funding properly appropriated to it by Congress.
And "I think any given Federal agency is utterly useless and should be summarily destroyed, with little analysis" isn't a very reasonable default position. Elon Musk is tearing through the government way faster than anybody could be while actually understanding what they're doing.
I think one can justify money toward fighting epidemics on defending our nation against foreign enemies, and famine as a domestic one. Although this is fraught territory in which it's tempting to slap the E word on anything a fed wants to charge everyone for defending against.
Or appearing to defend against, which brings us back to what I think is the crux of the problem: whether said federal agency is actually defending effectively with the money given it. The whole issue here isn't so much with whether it's right to coordinate federally to fight epidemics and famine, but rather whether it's being being done well enough. The side that thinks it isn't, sees the side that thinks it is insisting that this is a referendum on the first question, in a way that looks like justifying {disease and famine defense at any expense, and boy are we gonna lean into 'any'}. And they're really, really tired of that, especially after the COVID fiasco and a couple of FEMA chasers.
The latter party, being one which also prides itself on holding the lion's share of advanced education degrees, ought to be able to notice this argument and speak to it pretty easily, even if they acknowledge the problem is hard; and yet, they don't. The former party sees -this-, too, and concludes that either they're not as bright as advertised, or they are and deliberately choose to frame it the other way in order to bully the former party into acquiescence. And either way, the former party isn't getting its diseases and famines fought, or is paying more than tolerable, and many of them know how to stay healthy and grow food on their own.
This is probably going to lead to some disease and food shortages that a federal agency -could- have prevented, but every time the question comes up as to how to distinguish wasteful spending from useful, and the latter party claimed the mantle of expertise, they proceeded to random-walk back into pouring intolerable amounts of wealth into questionable expenses. So it's now come to a shakeout.
At almost no point in the life of a very complex system is the correct way to handle its issues "take a sledgehammer to it, destroy it completely and then rebuild it from scratch".
And I say this as a software engineer who often acutely feels the "I just want to refactor our entire codebase, it's so ugly I can't look at it" instinct.
That's obviously a wild exaggeration - the Federal Register lists 438 agencies, and this one is a bit less than 1% of the Federal budget so it's larger than the average one.
But also, if we want to consolidate Federal agencies, fine, but we shouldn't just shut off the one that's trying to prevent people from dying in plagues and famines before we have something in place to replace it.
The significant majority of complaints about Trump & co. I've heard over the last week or so deal precisely with the ways in which he's unilaterally made government smaller.
Well Biden unilaterally blew like $1T+ as executive by canceling student loans and expanding food stamps and all sorts of very pricy giveaways by reinterpreting existing laws (and would have done more if the SCOTUS didn’t stop him on the student vote buying front).
Whoever told you size does not matter was lying to you. Size does matter and it matters a lot. In fact it is one of the most fundamental disagreements that define politics. Those right of center believe the government should be smaller and do less and those left of center believe the government should be bigger and do more. It's a core principal that you can find a the core of almost all political discussions if you dig deep enough. Yes, it's not the only dimension but it may be the single most important dimension.
Someone has to pay for everything the government does, but if you shrug at Trump's trillion-dollar tax plan while demanding every last bit of foreign aid go under the microscope, you do not actually care about saving money.
Also, this bears repeating - what Elon is doing is almost certainly illegal. It is illegal regardless of the size of the government, so saying "but what if the government is too big?" is a complete red herring.
Count me skeptical. “Government waste and inefficiency” are useless buzzwords. There’s no budget item called “waste and inefficiency, here for Mask to cut”. “Most important […] this century” is downright preposterous in the year #25.
Live by the largess of the state, die by the largess of the state (or lack thereof). If your cause or organization is dependent on federal dollars to survive, then its continued existence is a political issue, whether you want it to be or not.
Very very regrettably, quite a bit of work that _could_ have been largely apolitical has been made quite political by the people in the field. I've read arguments for scientists to mix activism in with the science. Live by activism, die by activism.
This isn't a political issue so much as a legal issue - neither Elon Musk not Donald Trump is allowed to order government agencies to not spend money that Congress has told them to spend. But Elon Musk can issue orders a lot faster than a court can tell him to stop.
If this political issue was actually being fought over in political channels, there wouldn't be remotely as much drama.
The agencies are part of the Executive Branch, i.e., the person of the President, Donald Trump. Congress does not give them orders, just funding and the right to spend it as earmarked in the budget.
1. The executive branch is not "the person of the President." There are all sorts of constraints on how the executive branch operates, both statutory and constitutional.
2. It is manifestly untrue that "Congress does not give them orders." The fact that the executive can largely only act pursuant to statutory authority has been the basis for a whole series of Supreme Court cases. Eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine
And it was just months ago that SCOTUS ended Chevron deference.
I know liberals who continue to bitch about this, because their heads are stuck up their asses. But it's about to become the most important ruling they have to say "no, the Executive branch can't just order the administrative apparatus to do whatever the hell it wants."
2. I think that misunderstands the doctrine: that is mainly a limit on how much the executive branch can LEGISLATE, through the regulations of the administrative agencies. At best it delegates authority. That is not the same as giving them orders.
1. Plenty of statutes, yes, with so-called "independent" agencies. Blatantly unconstitutional ones though, but I suppose the Supreme Court can just make shit up if a case goes to them.
That would be fine, but my understanding is that Congress is being completely bypassed here by an actor (Musk) who was appointed without confirmation to lead an agency with apparently far-reaching authority that was not approved by Congress. Seems like a problem, especialy since Musk is a megalomanic bullshit artist with massive conflicts of interest.
People round here seemed to like unelected actors when it was Dominic Cummings, for instance. I don't like Cummings (I don't much like Musk for that matter) but if "the government of the US was being run by everyone except the president in the last months of Biden's term, and that's okay" is acceptable, than having a guy appointed by and acting on behalf of the president should also be okay.
Yes, that's my point. This is all Congress's job. Congress can write a law tomorrow to eliminate hundreds of federal agencies. It's completely straightforward and legal, if they do that.
I think the interconnected web of state and private economies in any developed country is so dense one expects to find such a dependence in most unexpected places. Shutting down accounts payable operations does nothing to reduce the underlying liabilities, although I admit it could be fun for a billionaire who thinks he's somehow not "dependent on federal dollars" to, well, still being a billionaire, to find out otherwise.
"I think the interconnected web of state and private economies in any developed country is so dense one expects to find such a dependence in most unexpected places."
...And you understand that that's a *bad* thing, right? Almost anything that can be done to thwart this sort of interconnection is on the side of the angels. Yeah, sure, if you rip out part of a highly enmeshed system no doubt you'll damage some other pieces – but the whole point of enmeshing those things so tightly in the first place was the other side trying to prevent them ever being removed with this sort of argument, so ripping them out first and surveying the consequences later is the only sensible response.
" but the whole point of enmeshing those things so tightly in the first place was the other side trying to prevent them ever being removed with this sort of argument, so ripping them out first and surveying the consequences later is the only sensible response."
Not being accusatory here, I swear. People pick up ideas from all over the place and need not have any malicious intent. But I notice when I paraphrase this just a little bit I get "thinking carefully about these things is a deceptive tool of the enemy! Don't think, act! You can stop and think only after you've taken irreversible action!"
This could not be more clearly a tool of Dark Side Epistemology. On the one side there is an outright admission that the consequences are unknown and very difficult to know and on the other side there is a very strong declaration that they will Definitely Be Good, even across a very broad range of possible actions. And then on top of that is time pressure! Why is there time pressure? This state of affairs is not remotely new and many millions of human-hours have been devoted to thinking and writing about it. Saying that there's no time to work out the probable consequences is both clearly false, and clearly intended to route around the sort of epistemic defenses that would otherwise catch the other contradictions here.
Let's be clear: Donald Trump, the man at the head of this effort, knew with certainty he was going to be president some 10 weeks in advance of taking the office. Before that he spent four straight years planning and preparing to get back into the office, and before THAT he spent four years in the office the first time, with unprecedented levels of access to all of the departments he is now trying to alter, and virtually unlimited resources in terms of planning, interpreting and information gathering. To say there has been ample opportunity to plan ahead and do these things (which are know being done recklessly and wantonly) with methodical and deliberate action would be an enormous understatement. It is hard to imagine how anyone in the world *could* have a better opportunity to prepare for this moment than he has had.
So when you present the meme that says that attempts careful action and deliberate damage-mitigation are counterproductive, and that the sledgehammer approach is the only viable one, it is certainly false. Not only is it certainly false, it's pretty definitely intended (by whoever originated it) to smuggle faulty reasoning into the brains of people who might otherwise notice and object to such.
"Let's be clear: Donald Trump, the man at the head of this effort, knew with certainty he was going to be president some 10 weeks in advance of taking the office. "
There are a lot of pollsters who would very much like to subscribe to your newsletter where you expand upon this. I can think of one lady in Iowa, for instance:
I am surprised by how fast Trump is moving and all the things he wants - and is getting - done. I think some of that may be a reaction to accusations that in his first term he did nothing and wasn't able to achieve his goals and aims, if he had any. Well, this time round, he's prepared and getting it done straight out of the gate.
A touch histrionic, friend! No, what you're missing is something very simple: the scale of the benefit and the possible consequences are of different orders of magnitude. What I'm saying is we should remove the barnacles right now and not worry about exactly who might stub his toe in the process. That toe will hurt the one guy, but it won't make the ship go any slower, whereas removing the barnacles is guaranteed to make it go faster and sail smoother.
Anybody who demands a full toe-stubbing study at a cost of years of time and ten times the scraping in money is an obstructionist, pure and simple. The toe just isn't that important.
"but the whole point of enmeshing those things so tightly in the first place was the other side trying to prevent them ever being removed with this sort of argument"
There are many things here that seem erroneous, but this seems to be straying near to conspiracy theory territory. There is literally nobody with the sort of god's-eye-view and extended time horizons that this implies. Individual humans are really quite limited in both our ability to retain and process information, and our lifespan. The interactions between government and business that were built up over 250 years in a country of 300 million people were certainly not shaped by ANY singular purpose or intent.
The actual reasons that state and private economies are entertwined are neither so simple nor so sinister:
People sometimes work together to get stuff done. When a bunch of them work together in certain very specific ways--campaigning, voting, lobbying--they can direct public money towards common goals. They can do this because of a set of agreements that all of us are invested in, that says very explicitly that they get to do this. But since there are many different people, with many different goals, spread across fifty states, thousands of towns and 250 years of history, they'll direct such money in a great many different directions. And sometimes as part of achieving those goals they will--working within a largely capitalist economy as they do--give it to private companies in exchange for services. Sometimes, when some such flow of money seems particularly stable, a private company won't just happen by to offer services, it will grow up around it. Like parasites feeding on a host, now that you mention it. Or are they private companies heroically offering valuable and in-demand services and civic framework that makes practicing their trade possible the real parasite? Hmm...maybe this metaphor is optimized more for heat than light.
Lastly, I can't help but be struck by your one allowable exception being "funnel[ing] tax dollars directly into the military." I'd invite you to take a loot at how the military in the U.S. does business. Because if all your entertwined-enmeshed-entagled-parasite rhetoric applies to ANY part of the relationship between government and private enterprise, surely it applies to this one.
"Sometimes, when some such flow of money seems particularly stable, a private company won't just happen by to offer services, it will grow up around it. Like parasites feeding on a host, now that you mention it. Or are they private companies heroically offering valuable and in-demand services and civic framework that makes practicing their trade possible the real parasite?"
The problem is that there are real needs for private companies to provide services and meet demand as agents/contractors for state bodies. That's legit (we're one ourselves!)
*But* there are also private enterprises who see "big pot of government money for the taking", and set up to get that big pot, and don't provide the services but are more interested in enriching the directors. This is why the "effective" in Effective Altruism, after all: charities that spend money efficiently and not on "we need to pay CEO business salaries to attract the right calibre of person to be the manager, so that's why all your donations are going on our salaries and not the cause". And leaving aside the BLM lot who seem to have done well for themselves out of being Oppressed Victims (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html), there are several examples in my own country of people on state and semi-state bodies who treated them like their own private piggy-banks.
I think we all agree that the piggy-banks need to be cut away, and DOGE is at least an attempt to do that. What we're arguing over is how to distinguish between the effective agencies and the piggy-banks, and is DOGE too much of a blunt instrument.
"Lastly, I can't help but be struck by your one allowable exception"
It's the one allowable exception because it's necessary. As Bastiat says, the ideal state of being is one where nobody plunders anybody; but we need to pay for a military or we get plundered to fuck and back by roving bandits slash foreign tyrants. That's just reality. This should not be read to say that I am massively on board with the US military-industrial complex. In fact, someone with some willingness to think past kneejerk outrage might identify the by no means original line of argument and suspect the opposite would be more likely!
Mate, while I pretty much agree with the substance of your arguments, your tone... you do catch more flies with honey. Sarcastic tone pretty much shuts any chance your arguments would be heard, much less considered. Ask me how I know...
First of all, the state ideally should not *have* an economy in any meaningful sense. It should funnel tax dollars directly into the military and that's about it. It shouldn't be meddling in any economic affairs that can be handled on either the private or the local-government level.
Secondly, the entanglement is, as noted, a way for parasites to prevent their own removal, thus anything that prevents such a web of interconnection from existing is to the good, the way that coppering the bottom of an old ship prevented barnacles. Keeping a firebreak between the two operations as much as possible is both necessary and desirable.
And not only the best places to live feature this kind of enmeshing, the bad places have plenty of it too, but then we call it by its right name, corruption. And the reason the good places keep having it is because rich countries are better to leech off: fat, healthy bodies with plenty of blood to suck. The incentives are enormous, and successful parasites are then rich with ill gains they can use to push the state to permit more of the same.
The best time to act would have been three months ago. The second-best time is...well, you get the picture.
Coordinated pressure on your members of Congress -- write them letters, call their offices, send them free faxes via FaxZero (if their office accepts faxes, you can type text as a message to be included in your cover sheet or fax them PDF attachments). Some members of Congress are actually out there in front of the cameras trying to enter USAID (and being turned away by federal agents) -- tell them to keep it up. Some government officials actually care when their constituents might be impacted (the response to the federal grant freeze seems to show that).
Is there anything else I'm forgetting? Unless you've already got the ear of elected officials, that's about that.
I would recommend calling - but only your congressmen. If you're a member of any kind of civic group, play that up as well. A bunch of calls like that can really weigh on representatives to do something.
Shitposts are the primordial ooze from which AI evolved.
That's my bon mot summarizing an AI-generated argument that changed my mind about something. The broad question I've been exploring is: in nearby alternate timelines, how soon could the deep learning revolution have happened? I came in thinking that chip technology would be the bottleneck at most every step. But I noticed one place where that clearly wasn't true: word2vec.
Word2vec was a critical stepping stone on the innovation path to GPTs. But when its research team published the seminal papers about it in 2013, it took them only one CPU-day to train their network. Feedforward neural nets had been known since 2003 to be a promising approach to language modeling, and everything else in those papers seems pretty simple in hindsight. So why did we have to wait until 2013 for it to happen?
I challenged GPT-o1 to refute my claim that word2vec was low-hanging fruit which had been ripe for a decade, and one counterargument it came up with was extremely persuasive: in 2003, the largest English corpora available were only on the order of billions of words, and that wouldn't have been enough for word2vec to be able to prove its superiority over other approaches. By 2013, the word2vec team had a 100-billion word corpus available, and today's leading LLMs are trained on trillions of words.
What made these huge corpora possible was social media, and more generally, the growth of the web. In 2003, Wikipedia was in its infancy, Google Books had not yet launched, and social media was still in the blogosphere era. A high-quality digitization of the library of congress might have been enough to produce an adequate corpus, but that was impossible because OCR sucked in 2003 and stuff like word2vec was a prerequisite for improving it. The explosion of social media which began circa 2008 was what broke this impasse.
In short, what held AI back for a decade is that we just didn't have enough shitposts.
You'll have to be more clear on what you're asking for. There are lots of base models of various sizes which have had no particular effort put into censoring their pretraining corpus. https://huggingface.co/tiiuae/Falcon3-10B-Base is a good one that's small enough to run locally, and https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3-Base is the biggest I know of. Yes, you read that right: DeepSeek's base model isn't particularly censored and has plenty of knowledge about all the topics that the CCP is sensitive about. I'm using the weasel-word "particularly" here because when training a base model there's no bright line between censorship and curation: an LLM trained on the entire Library of Babel is useful to nobody. But, keep in mind what a base model is: it's strictly a next-token predictor, not a chatbot that's been trained in instruction-following. This makes them not-terrible-useful either for day-to-day work or for your stated goal.
So, perhaps more in line with what you're asking for is a chatbot that's been fine-tuned for instruction-following, but has not been tuned to refuse certain instructions. This refusal-training is where most of the censorship happens. There are many such models, in two varieties. The first, straightforward, variety just never had any refusals included in its training data. https://huggingface.co/abacusai/Liberated-Qwen1.5-72B is an example of this. The other variety has had these refusals removed through a technique called abliteration. https://huggingface.co/blog/mlabonne/abliteration has a thorough description, but the layman's version is that you detect which neurons light up particularly when it's deciding to issue a refusal, and kill those. Just search HF for models with "abliterated" in their name and you'll find lots of them.
Like many people, I've joked before that social media is destroying the world. But if a few years down the line we get an Earth-shattering foom from a malevolent AI, my last though as the nanobots start to render me into paperclips is now definitely going to be "wow, so I guess that was more literally true than any of us expected, eh?"
>in 2003, the largest English corpora available were only on the order of billions of words
That sounds plausible. The largest corpus I know of off the top of my head that would have been available at the time is Project Gutenberg, which probably would have been in the mid-to-high hundreds of millions of word tokens. As of 2020, it has about 3 billion tokens and was about a factor of five larger in terms of number of works than it was c. 2004. I wouldn't be surprised if you could pad that out with USENET and FIDONET archives into the low billions of tokens.
>and that wouldn't have been enough for word2vec to be able to prove its superiority over other approaches
I am somewhat skeptical of this. It's been a long time since I've done hands-on machine learning work (since roughly 2003, as it happens), but my recollection was that the important things were training sets being significantly larger than the model itself (to force generalization) and covering a reasonable approximation of territory you want the model to be able to handle. More training data gets you better results, but with declining marginal returns. Unless word2vec is a much larger model than I'm assuming, hundreds of millions of word tokens seems like it would be enough to demonstrate the viability, strengths, and weaknesses of the concept.
After writing the above, I looked up the word2vec paper to check my intuitions about model size. It doesn't come out and say how many trainable weights there were, and it's a little over my head to quickly parse, but they're talking about three layers with 20-100 nodes in the output layer, 640 in the hidden layer, and a "projection layer size" of 640*8. If the projection layer size is in weights, that works out to 17k - 70k weights in the model. If the projection layer size is in nodes, that works out to about 3 million weights in the model. I think the former is more likely but my confidence of that is only moderate. Either way, the model is a lot smaller than the Project Gutenberg corpus.
While looking over the model, I also noticed that the training set for word2vec consisted of 6 billion word tokens, harvested from Google News archives. Looks like o1 was very wrong about the corpus size for word2vec, and also the corpus for word2vec only depended on shitposting from the perspective of an observer with a very low opinion of mainstream media outlets.
Also, if I'm reading the paper correctly, word2vec was conceptually similar to several other approaches already in the literature (in terms of treating words as atomic token inputs to a neural network and outputting a vector with on the order of 100 dimensions), which had been trained with corpuses of tens or hundreds of millions of tokens. The innovation of word2vec was that it was actually a dumber model than the existing models, and the paper demonstrated that it could make up for the dumber design by being cheaper to train on large data sets and thus yielding as good or better performance for a given training cost.
This does actually reinforce a major aspect of your revised thesis, that corpus size was the rate-limiting step for post-word2vec LLM development, as word2vec allowed trading less hardware for larger training sets.
The older models are referenced to papers ranging from 2007 to 2011. Heck, I did something that waved very vaguely in the direction of word2vec as an undergraduate class project in 2001, using fortune files as my training set. I think I got a B.
Mine was missing several critical pieces, especially properly defining the problem: I was trying to highlight key words in a sentence and was using word length as my input parameter rather than assigning token values. Still, it was shaped just enough like word2vec that in hindsight I'm kicking myself a little for doing my thesis on missile interception problems instead of following up on that project.
Perhaps the most interesting case here is WW2 Japan, they probably did much better out of defeat than they could have done out of victory. Trade and enterprise was better for Japanese prosperity than imperialism and plunder.
I'm not sure we can say this without having a good model of what "Victorious Imperial Japan (VIJ)" in the post WW2 world looks like. I'm assuming they retain Korea and large chunks of China, as well (maybe are still fighting an insurgeny against Communists or Nationalist dead-enders), along with a lot of the former Dutch East Indies. Do they retain the Philippines?
My initial thought is that VIJ is probably a pretty strong player in the Non-Aligned Movement and probably has pretty close ties with newly-independent India, actually. If they win, they probably have most of their industry intact, along with a newly expanded empire to gain resources. They might have done way better than they ended up doing.
Yes, my assumption would be hegemony in Korea, China, SEA, probably up to India. Probably ends up something similar to Korea pre-war, with increasing degrees of autonomy as you get further away.
Thing is you don't need an empire to gain resources like oil - you can trade. As far as I know Japan didn't face any dramatic resource shortages (besides 70s oil shock I guess but East Asian empire isn't fixing that).
Japanese Industry recovered to pre-war levels in about 5 years I think, but the costs of running an empire (which frankly they weren't very good at) I think would have been much more harmful to their economy. In the modern era industry is what builds wealth not land or people.
Certainly they would have more international influence in the 20th century, but frankly that wouldn't be worth the cost, they reaped a large peace dividend from relying on American defence.
Interesting point. But it might not have been the defeat itself, it might have been more a matter of the US needing to prop up Japan during the cold war.
Anyone have info on the sources of Japanese reconstruction funding?
True, Japan had "won the peace" by the grace of the United States - but their military defeat was real and thorough. It wasn't a case of US forces barely holding out long enough for Japan to agree to some minor concession in return for an end to hostilities.
Scott, I really like the tweet you made in response to the thought experiment of the children drowning and how much of a moral incentive we have to strangers (did I understand it correctly?), and it makes me wonder how you choose what you make your blog posts on.
The responses to the original tweet were absolutely moronic. I want to attribute it to how bad twitter is, but even some people I've seen around made replies that patently missed Scott's fairly basic point about the drowning child thought experiment. I've never seen a lower IQ discussion involving Scott (not on Scott's side) before and was kinda shocked tbh.
I also really liked Scott's response, but I feel like it's engaging with the issue at a way higher level than the commenters he's responding to are going to be able to appreciate.
That's a good tweet. It makes a lot of solid points. I think it's broadly compatible with my "altruism makes you feel good" thesis up above, but obviously Scott goes way past that.
I might dispute his definition of "obligation", but that's really a quibble.
You've probably read some clever arguments for effective altruism, but what about altruism itself? What are the arguments in favor of (and against) acting with the motivation of promoting the welfare of someone else, even at cost to yourself?
The main argument for altruism is that it's a psychological motivator for many people, much like curiosity. As such, it's a terminal value, that is, something one does in and for itself, not as a means to something else. You act altruistically because it makes you feel good (like everything else one does in life).
Getting better is a matter of satisfying oneself. Again like curiosity, there are broad techniques for pursuing altruism, mostly centered around cultivating one's empathy. By paying attention to social cues, one develops experience in observing, then imagining, the happiness many people feel when someone does something nice for them. By imagining yourself in their place, yourself receiving the favor or gift, one can vicariously experience their happiness, thereby elevating your own happiness. This is a skill one can acquire by practice, although there may be neurological differences between people in terms of how much empathy they can experience (again like intellectual stimulation).
Obviously, different types of favors or gifts deliver varying amounts of happiness. I find it isn't much correlated to the size of the gift, but according to how much the gift is needed, given the circumstances they are in. Finding an unemployed person a job might be worth more to them than, say, a free house, when they already have one. Helping a lonely person meet a new friend (yourself?) might mean more to them than any amount of money. Gaining insight into "appropriateness" is also a skill one acquires via practice.
Institutionalized altruism (charity) is tricky. Due to bureaucracy, it isn't unheard of for people in some sort of need to receive services they don't actually want, or in the wrong amount, or only at a personal cost of some kind, so it's a good idea to check reviews of a non-profit service delivery organization before donating money, even if you like and appreciate the services they deliver.
"Sharing happiness" is very difficult to measure, though, so it will always require some degree of personal judgement.
I mean, I don't believe in it. Makes me sort of a bad person.
But there is no reason to, really. There's no a priori reason to be an altruist or egoist or any other -ist. Generally societies need to convince people to act in the collective interest of the society rather than their own or society falls apart, so ethical systems based on egoism haven't really been fleshed out too well. (Ayn Rand kind of tried.) You can act only to serve yourself--most sociopaths and narcissists do. It's perfectly logically consistent.
Heck, among the dark tetrad, sadism even raises the possibility of an effective *maltruism* (I'm going with this one), where you aim to *minimize* the welfare of others, usually an enemy. I can see why people don't want to announce they're doing this, but I think it motivates people in everyday life a lot more than anyone wants to admit. What else do you call 'owning the libs'? (Or 'afflicting the comfortable', though that one's kind of old.)
Obviously moral philosophy is fun and interesting, but it really reduces to: be nice and don't be a c**t. Because obviously. And I am much more comfortable having dealings of any kind with someone who thinks that is a complete statement of morality, than someone whose conduct is guided by divine instruction or by their interpretation of Shafer-Landau.
Altruism is a paradigm case of "because obviously" morality. And incidentally having the concept adopted by a bunch of SF tech bros is like them discovering the bicycle and bragging about their invention of effective rotarianismTM.
Omelas, walk away. Trolley problem no right answer: there are wrong ones like not doing anything to protect oneself from prosecution, or because you want to see as many deaths as possible. If you act in good faith but get the wrong answer that's a philosophical error not a moral one
"Altruism is a paradigm case of "because obviously" morality."
Nothing obvious about it. Why shouldn't I be nasty and be a cunt? People who are bad do bad things and get ahead of the nice people, and there certainly isn't any justice in the world where they will inevitably get their come-uppance, instead of dying rich and at an advanced age in a comfortable bed.
I don't have any native instinct telling me "help that person", outside of what I have absorbed from being taught to be nice and don't be a cunt. Were it not for "guided by divine instruction", I'd happily let you all die in a ditch.
Hard cases make bad law, but there are always edge cases, and that means that there isn't a simple, one-sentence, uncontested reduction of morality down to "be nice".
I'm not angered I am an admirer, just amused by the implied claim that nobody thought of it before. In fact the good Samaritan is an effective altruist in that he doesn't say to the innkeeper Here's all my money, not Here's a lot of money but you can account to me for the balance. He gives him 2 denarii with more to come if he runs through that.
effective is a value judgement, and rationalist values tend to abstract or elegant solutions. This leads to ineffective charity in general, stepping over homeless people on the way to send malaria nets to africa.
telescopic philanthropism and mrs jellyby, and given how much rationalism may be a form of neo-Victorianism, well.
This seems a bit extreme. Can you precisely quantify the good and bad of your action? Probably not down to arbitrary significant digits, but there is little question than "giving $10 dollars to the homeless man under your house" and "curing cancer forever" for example would be very different amounts of "good" done in the world. If EA does not get something right, you're at liberty to make an argument for why, where and how and I'm sure at least some will agree if it's sensible. And you can well argue that past a certain scale comparisons just aren't very realistic so may as well go with your gut. But it's not like the principle is completely untenable.
I guess i'd argue only local and small scale interventions really work in the long run, and can resist ideal capture. you have a local homeless guy, its concrete what to do with him.
but the more abstract you go its tougher and its tough now. curing cancer is actually "giving money to smart people you don't know." and even on the local level doing that seems to be harmful.
lot of people go further and try to solve problems 100 years down the line when we couldn't even anticipate or prevent problems five years ahead.
I do accept the general argument - I think longtermism of the sort "we must do X in order to guarantee there exist a fantastillion more people 10,000 years from now" is nonsense. But I think denying you can ever predict the consequences of your actions meaningfully enough to have any kind of guarantee that anything more complex than "give money to this local homeless guy" will have a net good effect is downright not grounded in reality.
Like, for example, "giving money to smart people you don't know" might not be a 100% guarantee of good. But overall medicine has certainly done a lot of good in the last 150 years, some bad too but overall way more good. If everyone thought and spent their efforts just on the small scale like you say, because anything else might risk doing something else than the exact intended purpose, we would overall be worse off. It would look like a rather petty and provincial world. There is a balance. If I donate to purchase malaria nets in countries beset by malaria I need to trust an intermediary organization based on the information I have, but if they CAN be trusted then I can save lots of lives with my money in a way I couldn't as easily if I just looked for people in danger near me.
I find emotions come very easily; one would simply have to disagree that effective altruism isn't just a 1 sentence argument and perhaphs aware vaguely of political movements and peoples as... political movements and people, with tradeoffs and flaws
You definitely started the sentence with I, moved to using the formal One, and then it’s relatively common in English to assume that the One is thus a more formal personal pronoun.
Anyway I’m not sure what you or whomever “One” is, is objecting too as the sentence wasn’t that clear on its own.
I'm going to subscribe for my deal with the Devil ( https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/subscrive-drive-25-free-unlocked ); is there a way to filter the archive by subscriber-only posts?
People have lots of justified complaints about the Substack UI. But one thing I really appreciate is that when you minimize a comment on the mobile or regular site, it snaps you to the next comment instead of keeping your scroll depth constant (and therefore ending up 25 comments down the page). Such an annoying feature of Reddit, for example.
Question for med-stats people: Can the sensitivity and/or specificity of diagnostic criteria be estimated based on its inter-rater reliability? If so, how? If not, why not?
What innovations have happened in poker strategy in the last 20 years? Are there strategies that are known to be the best now that go against the previous wisdom?
Speaking as somebody who played professionally for a while maybe 15-20 years ago, there have been *significant* changes at the "shark" or "can win several real tournaments a year" level.
Poker could be thought of as "solved" now, in the sense that computer / AI players are stronger than pretty much all human players and are carefully policed, and this has changed and informed things, but I'm actually unsure how much ongoing insight mining is going on there by human players. There's been significant evolution of thought at the top WSOP levels.
Modern Poker Theory by Michael Ossivado is a good intro to some of the new strategies.
I was reading those international IQ posts from January, and my position now is that on a population wide level, intelligence / IQ is kind of overrated.
It's useful for every society to have a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth, and it's generally useful for everyone to be smart enough to e.g manage their own personal budget. But the intelligence you'd need to balance a budget or figure out how to plan an intercity trip is a floor, which can be lowered with technology and design of user friendly systems. It's very much sufficient for the general population to meet the floor but not bother striving for the ceiling.
The truth is, most people who aren't necessarily super smart can live productive and functional lives by leaning on their social strengths, and by copying what successful people do. Not everyone has to be a revolutionary thinker - it's perfectly acceptable to ask someone else for ideas or simply observe what works and ask.
In fact, I'd argue that often, a method or a model passed through and improved by a hundred or so average intelligence people may outperform something derived from first principles by someone who's got high IQ, because outside of very abstract things - pure mathematics or logic - the former can capture lots more real-world edge cases and variations. Maintaining the kind of social relationships where you can comfortably share information and mutually refine methods is much more important than generating good ideas ex-nihilo.
IQ is good for winning chess games. A lot of things may look like chess games in abstract (business strategy! Building a railway!) but upon closer inspection, every single chessboard is unique.
The boards don't always have the same number of squares, sometimes it's not even square shaped overall, sometimes entire bits are missing which you don't realise until you try to move a piece, also you're blindfolded and can't tell what any of your pieces really are, and you think your opponent is eating your pieces when you're not looking but then they accuse you of doing the same thing and then you both realise that there had been a racoon that has been swiping pieces at random the whole time. But also sometimes a Monopoly token clatters onto the board. And someone else drops in and messes up all the pieces every now and again.
It's still better to know chess strategies than not, but by itself it's definitely not going to win the game. If I had a choice between studying chess (as played on normal boards) and talking to other Chaos Chess players, talking to other players will usually be much more fruitful, because there are game states that you cannot derive from first principles unless you literally know everything and even the highest IQ folk among us have to specialise.
I do consider myself to have slightly higher than average IQ. The main personal benefit this confers is that school was a bit easier and as an adult I occasionally game credit card reward programs for fun, redeemable for 1 - 2 interstate return flights each time, and I can guess how much I'll get paid after tax withholding. A lot of these things are trivially reproducible using websites, apps, or copying what my smarter friends do.
A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield, possibly experimenting a little. A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. A sociable farmer is friends with everyone, and receives the best tips everyone else cares to divulge. It's actually not obvious to me that the high IQ farmer is necessarily going to do best - it kind of depends on the model they're using, whereas if Cunning successfully copies everything relevant (in places where that's possible), they'd probably do decent despite having zero understanding of the underlying principles. Similarly, Sociable receives a huge trove of data points to try, also without needing to understand underlying principles.
And as I get more professional experience, I'm finding that understanding underlying principles is a bit overrated - your model ends up needing so many inputs that the effort to measure / monitor / process becomes disproportionate. The black box approach makes a lot of sense most of the time, and black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
I think you're conceptualizing intelligence too narrowly, as something that's only helpful for solving abstract theoretical problems. My intuition is that meta-skills such as "iterate on your successes and learn from your failures", or "learn from the successes and failures of others", or "do things that are conducive to your goals" are all going to correlate with intelligence/IQ.
If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics. Then rent control would not be a policy with any kind of backing. Energy policy would be a lot sharper.
Example: the airplane on a treadmill. If you bring that up in an average space, you end up with interminable arguments and squabbling. If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood. Lots of policy discourse could be that way!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289610001133
"If people had higher IQ on average they would have a better understanding of economics and physics."
From my life experience spent mostly in environments dominated by high-IQ individuals -- and since I'm old enough to remember rotary telephones this is shall we say a decent-sized sample -- that is a pretty hilarious prediction.
Also I literally LOLed at this: "If you bring it up in a higher IQ space then it settles very quickly once the key arguments are presented and understood."
Not trying to sound cynical here, I'm really not, but honestly -- how many actual very-smart people have you observed interacting with each other in real life?
They are human beings not robots; their IQs are just one variable in how they behave and not the dominant one; etc.
Just really here and on DSL. And not once have I seen someone argue that chemtrails are real, or vaccines cause autism, or that the earth is flat, or that you can cure aids by having unprotected sex with a virgin. All things that are believed and debated in lower IQ spaces. I don’t believe I have seen someone argue for rent control either.
I have seen all of those things argued in the open threads here!
I had a college roommate, literally the smartest individual I met in four years at one of the nation's most-selective colleges, who argued seriously and at length that vaccines were the reason Americans were dying of lung cancer and the warnings on cigarette packs were just governmental nonsense. (And he wasn't even a smoker!)
A former colleague of mine holding two PhDs in the hard sciences was calmly certain not only that Area 51 was real but that the film "Independence Day" (featuring a POTUS discovering that Area 51 was real) was in fact a slick deflection/coverup for the actual Area 51.
The single looniest individual I've ever been acquainted with is a former employee of a relative of mine in the tech sector, a brilliant programmer whose sheer brainpower awed experienced software engineers, and who had to be begged to remember to wear both pants and underwear to the company's offices. (He would remember one or the other, at random as far as anyone could tell, but not both.)
My sister attended the University of Chicago as a student and then joined the staff of a highly-prestigious publication headquartered on campus, and has ten stories similar to the three I just mentioned.
Etc etc. People, not robots. That's all of us regardless of IQs.
People don't have the faintest idea how much emotion and presupppositions and the need to portray themselves as a certain type of character and a huge variety of other factors color their ability to understand something intellectually. And I suspect for each mistake a high-IQ person would never make, there are higher-order mistakes they make instead. Not to mention the fact ant self-observant person makes over time which is that we are all often wrong, even on topics we are sure about.
Too smart for their own good. That saying has been around a long time.
High IQ people do better on Econ and physics tests. They understand Econ and physics better. Are you saying there is zero correlation between understanding economics/physics and having sensible opinions on economics/physics?
How do you reconcile your anecdotes with Mallards linked study?
> Are you saying there is zero correlation between understanding economics/physics and having sensible opinions on economics/physics?
Are you familiar with the saying “it is hard to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on not understanding it?“
I am suggesting, apropos of your newest response, that habits such as straw-manning others' statements are common among both high and low IQ persons. Unfortunately.
More broadly about this topic, two followup points:
(a) To what degree such poor habits are more/less common up or down the IQ scale, I have frankly no idea. And no serious study that I'm aware of has offered an answer to that critical question.
(b) IQ tests measure reasoning ability in the _abstract_, on the page of a test, i.e. separate from interacting with other people. That is a crucial real-world ability. Successful reasoning in the context of interacting with others is also a crucial real-world ability, one for which no good term yet exists ("emotional intelligence" for example is not at all what I'm speaking of here). It is my life observation that the two do not, among real-life human beings out in the actual world, strongly correlate.
The ACX/SSC community is largely formed of people with nontypical neurological traits which cause them to prize truthseeking even when it's socially maladaptive, inhibits personal profit, cognitively discomfiting, or otherwise deleterious to the individual, in a way that neurotypical people broadly do not.
Basically, autism causes vaccines.
ACX commenters comprise a subculture within a subculture. Not representative.
I think Anonymous has the right read here.
Just by small way of illustration; it's hardly authoritative, but here's average IQ by state.
https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/average-iq-by-state#map
I don't see anything patterns here that leap out. Does MA have a better policy environment than HI? TX and NY have about the same averages, and wildly different policy; same for CA and LA.
Those are pretty small differences in IQ. Does Papua New Guinea have worse policy discourse than New Zealand?
"Lots of policy discourse could be that way!"
No, it couldn't. Once money, or personal gain more broadly, becomes involved, the intelligence resources are diverted to inventing new excuses for the policy that will benefit each given speaker, new contrived explanations for why the correct answer about the treadmill actually isn't true in spite of being observable. Otherwise, why do you think concretely totally discredited ideas like socialism are still given credit academically? Or to take an even clearer example, it's blatantly obvious that sex changes are physically impossible, but due to the nature of their mental illness, transsexuals still crave the counterfactual really strongly, so they bend all their ingenuity toward trying to deny the self-evident. The only distinction between the stupidest and the cleverest in this group is the quality and amount of their sophisms.
No offense, but you're making the classic mistake of naive utopianism here.
(EDIT – also, it's arguable that this is the original purpose of intelligence evolutionarily: not truth-seeking, but persuasion as a way to accrue more resources for oneself and one's offspring, at the expense of others.)
Similar to Jonathan Haidt noting something to the effect that college education doesn't make you have better positions, but just makes you better at inventing reasons to maintain the position you prefer. Broad paraphrase because I don't recall the actual quote.
Nearly all people engage in motivated reasoning, and possibly those who aren't aware of that possibility in themselves are most at risk of it.
I didn’t say ALL policy, I said “lots of policy.”
And, many of the things that are currently tribal shiboleths would have been nipped in the bud with a higher IQ population.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that second point.
How does your hypothesis hold up when tested against empirical data? For example, how strong is the correlation between a country's GDP or median income and the average IQ of its citizens?
Personally, I think you have a wrong mental image of people with high IQ, especially when you're saying things like
> […] a handful of people who are amazing at abstract reasoning and logic and so forth […]
> IQ is good for winning chess games.
> A high IQ farmer probably designs the farm based on best scientific principles to maximise yield […]
High IQ entails so much more than being good at games with simple, known rules. A better description would be "ability to solve problems". For example, you say:
> A cunning farmer goes around the place near harvest time and copies what the highest yield farm is doing. […] successfully copies everything relevant […]
How do you think this "cunning farmer" is able to decide which other farmer used better methods vs. who just got lucky due to circumstance? Or which methods of another farmer are worth copying vs which are ineffective?
> […] black box approaches don't really need much IQ, you just need to figure out what to look at and who to talk to.
Uh, yeah, "just figuring out what to look at and who to talk to" requires intelligence.
OC ACXLW Meetup 86 1) Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government & 2) Lynn Stout on the Dominant Business Paradigm
Saturday, February 8, 2025
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Location:
1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
Host & Contact:
Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com
Phone: (949) 375-2045
1) Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government
Primary Reading
Article (Kahan, Dawson, Peters, Slovic):
Motivated Numeracy & Enlightened Self-Government
Optional Video
TED Talk: on Cognitive Bias and Numeracy
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Context and Rival Hypotheses
The authors probe why we see persistent public controversies—on gun control, climate change, etc.—despite seemingly overwhelming scientific evidence. They pit two main ideas against each other:
Science Comprehension Thesis (SCT): Claims conflict stems from a public deficit in scientific literacy or logical reasoning. Better education in math/science should reduce polarization.
Identity-Protective Cognition Thesis (ICT): Argues that group identity can overshadow even robust analytical skills. People often interpret data to conform with their cultural or partisan affiliations—particularly on issues coded with “tribal” significance.
(B) The Experiment
Setup: Participants had to interpret the results of an (allegedly) data-driven experiment displayed in a 2x2 contingency table. In reality, the data were designed so that the correct interpretation could be easily masked by heuristics.
Conditions:
Skin-Rash (neutral scenario): Showed whether a new cream helped or hurt patients.
Gun-Control (politicized scenario): Showed whether a city’s ban was linked to increased or decreased crime.
By toggling the headings, they made the “correct answer” either more or less politically comfortable for different ideological groups.
(C) Key Findings
Skin-Rash Condition: Higher numeracy correlated with better performance in data interpretation. SCT supporters might say, “Yes, see? More math skill = less error.”
Gun-Control Condition: However, more numerate participants used their quantitative prowess selectively. They were most accurate only if the correct interpretation matched their existing political stance (e.g., “liberal” participants best interpreted data showing a gun ban reduces crime, “conservatives” best interpreted data showing it increases crime).
Numeracy didn’t help cross partisan lines; it often hardened them, as high-math individuals used logic to reinforce identity-aligned conclusions.
This deepens our sense that polarization can be exacerbated by sophisticated reasoning tools when issues become entangled with cultural or partisan identity.
(D) Broader Implications
Simply boosting STEM education or “critical thinking” may not guarantee cross-partisan consensus on contentious topics (climate, health measures, etc.).
De-polarizing an issue—removing its identity-based cues—might be the more critical step to unlock people’s willingness to process data impartially.
The phenomenon highlights “expressive rationality,” where it’s individually beneficial to remain group-aligned, even if collectively it impedes evidence-based policymaking.
Motivated Numeracy Discussion Questions
Math Skills vs. Bias
Have you seen debates in which the most “informed” or data-savvy voices seem the most entrenched? Why might greater expertise sharpen factional divides rather than foster agreement?
Identity and Cost
The authors suggest maintaining identity is crucial for social standing. How might we reduce the “social cost” of accepting facts that differ from your group’s position?
Role of Communicators
If objective evidence alone isn’t enough, how can science communicators, journalists, or educators frame data in ways that mitigate cultural triggers?
Applications Beyond Guns
Do you see parallels in other conflicts (e.g., vaccines, nuclear power, economic stimulus)? Where might the same dynamic appear?
Implications for Self-Government
The paper’s title references “enlightened self-government.” Under what conditions can democracy thrive if so many policy questions can become “identity-charged”?
2) Lynn Stout’s Critique of Shareholder Primacy
Reading Links (Evonomics)
All from Lynn Stout’s collection: Evonomics: Lynn Stout Articles
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Background & Extended Summary
(A) Lynn Stout (1957–2018)
An influential figure in corporate law, governance, and business ethics, Stout questioned whether the mantra of “maximize shareholder value” is legally required or even beneficial. She believed:
Shareholders don’t “own” corporations (a corporation is an entity that owns itself); they own shares.
Corporate law seldom mandates boards to single-mindedly chase short-term share price—that’s more an ideology (Friedman/Jensen & Meckling) than a legal fact.
(B) Articles Overview
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths
Argues we’re not “homo economicus” in everyday life, but the standard corporate message (“focus solely on profit”) can crowd out altruistic or ethical impulses in investing and board decisions.
Mentions “socially responsible funds” as evidence many shareholders care about ethics, yet too many structures and norms push managers and investors into maximizing short-term returns above all else.
Why Wall Street Isn’t Useful for the Real Economy
Critiques the assumption that hyperactive trading always aids “efficient resource allocation.”
Points out only a small fraction of financial activity goes to underwriting new securities (i.e., raising real capital for companies). The vast majority is secondary market trading, which often adds limited societal value but extracts large fees and fosters short-termism.
How Economists Turned Us Blind to Our Own Goodness
Explores how the “incentive” model of policy (assuming humans are rationally selfish) can overshadow moral suasion and conscience.
Cites experiments on social dilemmas showing how easily contexts can make us either more cooperative or more selfish.
Warns that focusing too heavily on extrinsic rewards can “crowd out” prosocial norms that hold organizations and societies together.
The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value
Chronicles how the concept gained steam in the late 20th century, especially after Friedman’s and Jensen/Meckling’s essays.
Debunks the idea that corporate law requires maximizing share price, or that it’s always beneficial for all shareholders.
Suggests “satisficing” multi-goal governance—balancing stakeholder interests, growth, employee loyalty, R&D, etc.—can yield better long-term outcomes for both society and many shareholders (especially the diversified, patient, or ethically driven ones).
(C) Collective Takeaways
Stout sees “shareholder primacy” as oversimplifying business realities and ignoring humans’ capacity for moral concern, trust, and long-term relationships.
She dissects how the dominant economic paradigm can ironically degrade shareholder returns overall—akin to “fishing with dynamite,” short-term profit for some but harmful to the system’s health.
A broader perspective on corporate purpose might encourage “sustainable capitalism,” robust corporations, and ethical leadership—contrary to one-size-fits-all share price obsession.
Discussion Questions for Lynn Stout’s Critique
Psychopath vs. Prosocial
In daily life, we show empathy and fairness, yet in markets, we act purely self-interested. Why? Are laws and norms pushing different mindsets?
Wall Street’s Real Value
How can we reconcile the claim that modern finance is essential with the reality that speculation can overshadow real capital formation?
Conscience, Law, and Incentives
If overemphasizing extrinsic incentives crowds out altruistic instincts, how can policy or corporate governance harness pro-social motivations?
Satisficing vs. Maximizing
Stout endorses “satisficing” multiple goals (employee welfare, environment, stable relationships, etc.). Critics say that leads to “fuzzy accountability.” Are there ways to measure or structure multi-stakeholder success without devolving into chaos?
Policy Reform or Cultural Shift?
Should laws be changed to end illusions about “shareholder ownership,” or is the deeper fix about corporate culture, board norms, and investor expectations?
Walk & Talk
We will conclude our main discussion around 4 PM, then transition to an hour-long walk. Feel free to join in for an informal extension of the discussion or casual conversation. Everyone’s welcome, whether you prefer to debate economic paradigms or talk about local events.
Share a Surprise
As usual, if you’ve encountered any surprising articles, personal experiences, or side projects that spark intellectual curiosity, bring them along for our open-floor sharing.
Looking Ahead
Future Topics? We love suggestions—be they theoretical readings or real-world case studies.
Guest Contributors: If you’d like to co-facilitate or highlight a specific area of expertise, let Michael or any ACXLW regular know.
We Look Forward to Seeing You on February 8!
Should any questions arise, please contact Michael Michalchik at the email or number above. Both “motivated numeracy” and Lynn Stout’s insights on corporate ethics promise a lively, eye-opening meetup. Join us for an afternoon of deep and wide-ranging discussion. See you soon!
Forget all this "AI will destroy us" silliness: an actual sweet meteor of death is coming for us in 2032. In just the last 24 hrs the impact probability increased from 1% to 2.3%. This is... moving in a wrong direction... and fast.
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2024%20YR4
This looks like a city killer more than a civilization ending meteorite. Still sucks if it ends up landing somewhere in India where the population density is high.
Most likely a pretty light show over the ocean. But we should know the approximate impact area far enough in advance to arrange for local population density to be zero on That Day.
It is the nature of impact-probability math that the impact probability increases at each reevaluation, until suddenly it drops to zero. There is a 2.3% chance that it will instead go to unity, but *only* a 2.3% chance. That the impact probability was ~1% last time we checked, only means that there was then a 50-50 chance that it would go to zero on the next evaluation, which didn't happen.
And if the asteroid does hit, it will be a sub-Tunguska event; the asteroid will not reach the surface, the damage will be localized, and we will have known the approximate impact area for weeks or months ahead of time. No one will die unless they are both massively unlucky and very stupid.
I’m partially jesting, but only partially. Of course it won’t kill us all, but I’m not sure why you think it won’t reach the surface. The bloody thing is 54 meters across! It will be a nuke without the radiation.
The threshold size for asteroids/whatever to survive passage through the Earth's atmosphere is generally given as 50-140 meters, depending mostly on the composition of the body. At fifty meters, it needs to be basically just a mass of nickel-iron metal, which a small fraction of asteroids are but this one doesn't appear to be.
If it "hits" the Earth, it will break apart in the upper atmosphere, the bigger pieces will break up further and ultimately vaporize, and you'll wind up with a big high-altitude explosion.
The altitude will not be high enough to completely eliminate damage at ground level, and it won't just be Chelyabinsk-style broken windows. But the surface damage will be localized, and there won't be a crater (or, from ocean impact and more worrisome, a tsunami).
I just looked up Chelyabinsk. 18m diameter, so let's assume 27 times as big. Chelyabinsk was estimated to be 30 Hiroshimas, so this would be around 900. Not great! OTOH, Chelyabinsk was est. 400-500 kilotons of TNT equivalent, so 30 times that is 12-15 megatons. Tunguska was est. 20-30 megatons as of 2019.
So, still sub-Tunguska (assuming about the same velocity; I don't know how safe that assumption is).
One could imagine the event being extremely destructive if that blast happens to be over a city, but I have it on good authority that cities are even harder to hit than the earth itself.
Tunguska was pretty nasty though, the only saving grave being it happened over the vast Siberian taiga. The earth is of course mostly covered in water so hopefully this thing blows up over the remote Pacific somewhere.
Up to 2.4% today.
> 12-15 megatons
Good guess. The estimate on NASA's website says 7.8 megatons (see link shared by 1123581321, look at "Energy").
We should race to ASI so that it can build a meteor-destroying super-laser!
… or maybe not. 2,3% is indeed worryingly high, I wonder what it would take to mitigate damage if we knew for certain it was headed to hit the Earth?
Yeah I don’t think I’ve ever seen the impact probability that high. I agree with J. S. that it’ll likely drop to more typical e-6 level, but… maybe not…
apparently back in 2004, the impact probability of 99942 Apophis got as high as 2.7%...
Where could I find these Russian propaganda movies?
https://united24media.com/anti-fake/why-russian-cringe-propaganda-painting-the-usa-as-the-main-enemy-is-on-the-rise-in-russia-2435
They sound like good candidates for "so bad, it is actually good".
Some of them might actually be good, if you can compartmentalize and ignore the political messaging. Russian Cinema has been amazing since the very beginning, and despite claims to the contrary, Soviet cinema was incredible. You just have to be able to compartmentalize.
Here's an example: Russian air defense shoots down Santa Claus (no I'm not making this up) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEuF3uXHug4
The sick irony is that this came out right at the same time as they shot down an actual passenger plane (Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243).
I wish I could find the propaganda videos about how all Europeans were freezing and starving during winter 2022.
I remember seeing a video that seemed like an ad, and it showed "European Winter 2022", "European Winter 2023", "European Winter 2024" with progressively less light on the Christmas tree, and I think in the third video the family ate their hamster.
But there was also a serious news report, naming various European countries and their capital cities (including e.g. Paris and Berlin), describing how people living in these cities have no electricity during Christmas, and how all women need to prostitute themselves to get some food.
EDIT: I found the second one: https://old.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkraineWar2022/comments/zl2dhp/russian_propagandists_report_that_european/
Due to the brief fake Trump-Canada trade war I was inspired to learn about Canadian whiskey. Here's where I started and what I learned!
Where I started:
- I'm Canadian
- I don't really drink American whiskey anyway, I mostly like scotch (e.g. Glenfiddich for a popular one or Laphroaig for a peat-smoked one), so this was partly just academic, but still I was curious.
- Back in the day when I was 19 I started with e.g. Crown Royal and Canadian Club from the LCBO, but didn't actually like whiskey until I got into scotch.
- I knew that Canadian whiskey is often called rye. I knew that Canadian whiskey doesn't get the respect it once did. I knew that Canadian Club used to be seen as prestige, like it's the stuff Al Capone smuggled during prohibition and that people like Don Draper liked (he's fictional but it was accurate), but now it's the cheap second-shelf stuff in a plastic bottle at LCBO. So what gives?
What I learned (some details vague, double-check any specifics):
- Once upon a time, way back when, Canadians were drinking wheat whiskey (nobody drinks wheat whiskey anymore), but then Dutch and German immigrants started adding a bit of rye and people liked the little bit of a kick it gives. We called it "rye" even though rye was only a minor ingredient.
- Back in the day, I guess up to prohibition and maybe a bit past then(?), American whiskey would have been pretty rough, e.g. moonshine or young corn whiskey, and Canadian blended whiskey was aged longer and was seen as higher quality and smoother. And of course once prohibition started, smuggled Canadian whiskey was the best stuff Americans could get. Canadian whiskey is still seen as being "smooth."
- Canada legally allows you to call your whiskey "rye" as long as it still has the same general taste and character as this tradition, even though it was never mostly-rye, and even whether or not there's actually any rye in it at all. E.g. Don Draper's assistant calls Canadian Club "rye" even though it's actually mostly corn (canonically, I wonder if he knew?). In contrast, American "rye" legally has to be >51% rye.
- In modern times whiskey fans don't care as much about smooth anymore, they want complexity like you get from an old scotch. Also Americans later got good at making whiskey too like bourbon. These, plus the lack of as-strict standards about ingredients, both contributed to Canadian whiskey not getting the respect it used to.
- There are also some more recent high-rye Canadian whiskeys, though, like Lot No. 40 really is a 100% rye and is reputedly one of Canada's best whiskeys. I just bought a bottle and it's delicious.
- Even for the classic smooth style I guess there's variation, like maybe Wiser's or Forty Creek is better than Canadian Club Original (and also brands have different bottlings, like Canadian Club Classic 12 Year is probably better than Canadian Club Original). And even the cheap stuff is fine if you like that, and it's still good for mixing e.g. with soda or ginger ale.
- (Fun fact, what Canadians sometimes drink and call a "Rye & Ginger," New Zealanders love and call a "C. C. & Dry." I don't know why nobody's made it rhyme, calling it a "Rye & Dry"!)
In my 20s I would take a 16’ Lund from Nelson’s Resort on Crane Lake (Minnesota) through the Namakan Narrows to a weird little Canadian liquor store to buy Cutty Sark on the cheap. No US duties so it was a bargain compared to US prices. Probably saved 5 bucks
In my 30s I went through a Glenlivet phase. Occasionally when I’d order it neat in a bar they would try to pass Cutty Sark off as the pricier quaff. Yuk. Who were they trying to kid?
Present day they all taste pretty yucky.
Recently I went to a scotch tasting with work pals at a local joint calling itself Merlin’s Pub. They were going for a British Isles ambience, the sort of place where you could buy shepherds pie for dinner and see a ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ sign on the wall.
The taste organizers were talking about things like ‘maritime notes’ but I was tasting ‘industrial paint thinner’.
Fun tangent about an early 2000s Canadian Club ad campaign, where originally they wanted to avoid any mention of dads and it being an old brand, but then leaned into it: https://www.printmag.com/branding-identity-design/sex-design-behind-canadian-club-whiskeys-brand-revival/
I've been thinking about that issue about which prison criminal transpeople should be sent to. I think there probably isn't a single right answer to that question. You can't put a transwoman sexual offender in a woman's prison for example, but you also also can't put a very feminine post-op transwoman in a man's prison.
Seems like an instance where the decision should be left to the judge.
Also, there must be at least a few lesbian rapists, I wonder how the hell they handle that.
Maybe, and I know this is crazy but just hear me out: we should try to prevent all people from being raped in prison
What's the path for that in America?
I don’t know. But if we are ok with cisgender people being raped then why not trans people?
Making all prisons exclusively solitary confinement would be a start.
This is a no-brainer. Although I'm sure you are merely posting this to be an edgy bad boy, you actually got this one right. All you have to do is let physically separated inmates call each other on the phone and they won't go insane, the way such confined people otherwise tend to do.
Well yeah, I'm not even the first person here to suggest that.
And I really am not just trying to be edgy. If I was, I would've said what that other commenter posted...
How old are you?
> but you also also can't put a very feminine post-op transwoman in a man's prison
I mean, you absolutely can. People would be pretty happy with that solution.
Isn't that person at an especially high risk of getting raped? I think "people" here stands for a specific political faction that apparently now thinks they represent all America.
Liberals aren't particularly fond of trans people either. Something about them compromising women's rights, allegedly. They're not going to bend over backwards just to protect them. It's just the progressives that are a problem, and the new administration seems quite intent on purging them from every position of power in the country.
You're talking about a particular subset of liberals that is A: rather small and B: not particularly influential in liberal circles. And I suspect even most of them do not want to see transwomen being raped in men's prisons.
I think people here stands for the prisoners. Anomie likes to be edgy like that.
I don't take in much from news commentators. But I have been listening/ (some watching) to the senate confirmation hearings. OMG some great theater. I've lost most of my respect for Bernie. (I mean he's still Bernie, but he's also now a died in the wool Dem.) And John Kennedy from Louisiana is perhaps now my favorite senator. (He reminds me of J. Stewart from "Mr. Smith goes to Washington".) A few days ago, I sent in a request to my state to change my voter registration. I think I'll probably change it to Republican. (I want to send the biggest FU I can to my former Democratic party.) I know this is a mostly anti-Trump space. (And I think Trump is an asshole, (and when I tell my Trump loving friends this, they mostly agree... yeah he's an asshole.)) But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance. (I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. Yes they may have bad ideas, and yes they will all make mistakes, but to first approximation, they are not evil.)
After some thought, I realized that making a serious attempt at talking about the disconnect I see here would be instructive for both of us.
"I think the first thing we should agree on when talking about politicians is that they all are doing what they see as the right thing for our country. "
This right here is part of it. I think that is true for the median politician. I think that might even be true for politicians in the 10th percentile of integrity and decency. I don't think it's true for Trump. Or rather, I don't think Donald Trump's brain maintains any sort of a conceptual separation between "what's good for the country" and "what flatters Trump's ego." In particular, I think the idea that he could EVER help the country by stepping down, stepping back, genuinely cooperating with those that oppose him or effacing himself in any manner is utterly alien to his thinking. And that's exactly what it would take for me to "give him a chance." A very rough, non-exhaustive list of the sort of necessary behavior that would be required for "giving him a chance" to be even a morally acceptable thing to do (in my judgement) might look like this:
--Immediately re-enter the U.S. into the Paris Climate agreement, publicly acknowledge the truth and seriousness of climate change and apologize for his error. Start working with congress on a modest-but-serious package of *additional* climate measure the U.S. will take above and beyond what the agreement calls for, as a mea culpa to the rest of the world and an attempt to make up for lost time[1].
--Publicly admit that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, and that his own repeated denials of this fact (long after his legal challenges were dead) were dishonest, self-serving and an unacceptable attack on the integrity of the nation's electoral process. Make monetary restitution (from his own personal funds) to the families of all those killed in the attack on the U.S., including the rioters and the police who later died by suicide. Make it clear that the restitution is intended as an apology for the major roll he played in creating and fueling that dangerous situation.
--Immediately divest himself of all his personal properties and investments, placing them in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest while he was president. Apologize for not doing so in 2016 and work with congress to draft legislation plainly requiring future presidents to do the same.
--Publicly apologize to the people of Panama, Denmark, Canada and Mexico for his various insults and attacks on their sovereignty. Publicly reverse his position on the tariffs on those countries, and pledge not to repeat the error. Disavow his use of emergency powers to circumvent congress' power to levy taxes and duties.
--Make a real, good faith attempt to convince justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to step down from the Supreme Court, and work with BOTH parties in congress to select replacement justices who are highly qualified, have impeccable records of personal and professional conduct and are broadly agreed to be politically moderate.[2] Begin attempting to propose and study (but NOT enact) a solution to extreme the politicization of the Supreme Court, likely involving some sort of more bipartisan and less exploitable justice selection process. Have a recommendation ready before the start of the 2028 primary season so primary candidates can take positions on it and the American people can use it as part of their selection process.
--Work with congress (again, BOTH parties) to attempt to craft a bi-partisan compromise on immigration as should have been done 20 years ago. "Compromise" here meaning that it still includes immigration restrictions, provisions for enforcing them and reasonable border security, but doesn't try to militarize the border or use heavy-handed and inhumane tactics in doing so.
--Retract his proposed plan for ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, apologize to the people of Gaza for saying so, and make a real attempt to stay out of the conflict in Gaza, adopting a maximally neutral position anywhere that his presence is unavoidable.
--Apologize to the U.S. victims of COVID for his poor handling of the initial phases of the crisis, work with congress to improve the U.S. future pandemic preparedness and response and work more closely with health organizations elsewhere in the world. Donate a substantial portion of his personal wealth to some sort of charitable cause helping those harmed by COVID, by way of restitution for the lives his incompetence failed to save.
I'm guessing your reaction will run to something like "wow, that's completely unreasonable." But it really, really is not. There a great many things that I could have put on here but didn't. Everything here is chosen to be geared towards amending some specific harm he has personally done to the U.S. body politic, and I certainly wasn't exhaustive when considering all the harms. None of these involve giving wholly to Democrats in a major way (except the climate change one which is LONG overdue), but rather attempt to build the bipartisan cooperation that has largely disappeared in the past 20 years. And no, nothing less would be sufficient. Abusers are very, very good at convincing people to give them one more chance and ignore past behavior. People of real integrity own up to their mistakes, apologize for them and attempt to make them right. The BARE MINIMUM for Trump to be a morally acceptable president is to offer substantial proof that he can act like a person of integrity, and not an abuser.
[1] Alternately, I could be persuaded that anthropocentric climate change is not happening and that Trump's actions here were correct (though not justified at the time). This would, at a minimum, take something in the nature of a worldwide scientific revolution in which large amounts of new evidence and improved models reshape the field. Or it would take me acquiring a serious concussive injury or an RFK style brain worm.
[2] Note that this would still leave the Supreme court with a Republican advantage, but one in which at least one moderate was needed to agree with any ruling.
So... in order for you to believe that Trump is doing what he sees as the right thing for the country... he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? That's what credibility looks like to you, adherence to liberal dogma? Wow, way to fail the idological Turing test, there.
Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?
If you think admitting Joe Biden won the 2020 election is "adherence to liberal dogma" then you are part of the problem.
It is popular with Republicans to claim there was fraud, but "saying what is popular with your base" is a very different thing from "doing what you think is right for the country."
" he would basically have to abandon his politics and those of the people who voted for him, in favor of your politics? "
People who are capable of basic reading comprehension will have noticed that this point was already explicitly address. This would not be him abandoning his politics in favor of mine. This would be him attempting to make genuine restitution for the harmful things he's done, and to make a real effort to arrest the bipartisan fissuring that is rapidly poisoning American political life. YES, that means making compromises. The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem.
"Or if not, explain what e.g. a Republican politician who does not countenance rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement but does have the best for America as he sees it foremost in his mind would look like to you?"
That Republican politician should
1. Actually educate himself on the realities of climate change in a way that I guarantee that neither Trump nor most of the Republicans in congress have done.
2. If, after educating themselves, they have actual, reality-based criticisms of the Paris Agreement that don't involve brazen denials of established scientific truth, they may present those to the world and try to hash out an alternative that's more acceptable.
Yes, doing a minimally adequate job of governing does indeed require accepting basic truths of reality that have been well-known for four decades. If you cannot do that much than asking ANYONE to "give you a chance" is nothing more than a con-job.
"The fact that you cannot tell the difference between a compromise and a capitulation is exactly the problem."
The problem with your suggestions, yes. I did indeed read your assertion that it isn't unreasonable and understand that you meant it, I'm trying to explain to you how extremely preposterous this looks from the other side of the aisle. Out of your suggestions, the *only ones* that could be legitimately called compromise positions are admitting that Biden won 2020 and putting his assets in trust for the duration of his presidency with an apology for not doing it sooner. The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it. In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for and which would have happened regardless of which Republican had beaten Clinton – is wholly absurd and can seemingly only be motivated by blind rage at you/the left losing that contest, not least since Gorsuch especially is a conscientious upholder of the Constitution and its principles, a far better jurist than any one of the last three Democratic appointments to the court and less prone to vote as part of an ideological block. (Sotomayor in particular I can't recall voting against liberal orthodoxy on legal grounds one single time in her entire tenure, although I speak under correction here as I am not a staunch SC watcher.)
As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most. What matters to me is that I and many others with me prefer Trump's stance here because *we have reality-based criticisms* of the accords and he's willing to *act* on that which is what matters when push comes to shove. When you suggest that in order to be credible he would have to abandon acting on our preference in favor of not only acting on yours but prostrating himself, and that this would constitute compromise rather than a humiliating surrender, you're demonstrating a myopia which is exactly the problem.
Agreeing here but I have no upvote option for some reason, perhaps because I'm a new visitor. Don't understand, fir instance, why suddenly Kavanaugh and Gorsuch ought to step down because they aren't near enough to liberal opinion.
I do think Trump badly failed on Covid and, as far as I can determine, there isn't enough substance to the 2020 stolen election narrative. And his character is far from perfect. He does plenty I like and a fair amount I'm not crazy about. But he was a needed correction to the direction our country had taken IMHO.
"As to your other point, I think you grossly overestimate the importance of politicians educating themselves and having reality-based opinions, because approximately none of them on either side use that as a basis for decisionmaking – a rhetorical bludgeon at most."
This right here. This is the ENTIRE problem. ALL of it. 100%.
Not because what you said is true. But because it is false. It is extremely, extremely false and you believing it makes it *quite thoroughly impossible* to have any productive dialog.
YES, people DO have principled beliefs and reality based opinions and YES some of those people are politicians and YES some of them bloody well do use those as a basis for decisionmaking. When you say "none of them on either side" I think that is quite telling. I think you are seeing uncommonly clearly out of one eye. I think you are looking at the people on your side, going "wow, yeah, they're all scumbags who don't care what's true" and projecting that to the other side because if it's true of the people who are FOR you, then how much more true *must* it be of people who are AGAINST you.
Now, don't think for a second from what I said that I don't think many Democratic politicians are also scumbags. I've never been a Democrat. I've never liked the Democrats. When I lived in the U.S. I would grudgingly hold my nose and vote for Democrats fairly often--we'll get to why in a second--but I never thought for a minute they were great people. They were adequate. HOWEVER, they were scumbags in the way that all politicians are scumbags. They'd sometimes do shady deal, dirty tricks, lack spine just when you wanted them to have it, talk out of both sides of their mouths, and have scandals that proved that they lacked moral fiber. I could write quite a number of words on the failings of one Joseph Biden, for example, who I am proud to have never voted for.
But the difference when I looked across the aisle was night and day. Not the difference in run-of-the-mill scumbaggery, mind you. Count up the shady deals and dirty tricks and maybe you'd come out with advantage D and maybe you'd come out with advantage R. The difference was exactly what you say is true of all politicians. Only it isn't. There was an ALARMING lack of reality-based opinions on the right. Climate change denial is the largest, most alarming one of those: this is understanding-the-world on easy mode and you guys are FAILING IT SO BADLY. Fifty years, man. This has been known and studied for fifty years. But no shortage of other examples abound: COVID takes the gold star for the *fastest* retreat from reality that I've ever seen any group do, but things like well-understood facets of American history[1], basic contours of current events...the list goes on. Democratic politicians sometimes waffle or weasel or lack spine, but they tend to stick largely in the vicinity of the truth, and their policies reflect it. Republican politicians will shoot of into cuckooland if their base demands it--not all of them mind you, Mike Pence kept his spine and "his side" literally tried to kill him for it--but far too many. How many "2020 election truthers" are there among today's elected officials? How about sometime Qanon followers or Pizzagate belivers[2]? Fewer, for sure, but one would be too many. I'd have loved to live in a world where I could vote against the scummy Democrats, but the only alternative I was ever offered wasn't just unpalatable, it was downright loony.
And then I talk to the voters that put them in office, and I see why. Anyone with spine gets primaried out. Or, y'know, has an angry mob try to hang them. The thing that I started this with, the "there's no reality-based opinions, just rhetorical bludgeons thing?" That's not the politicians. That's the voters. That's the Trumpers. Literally yesterday there was someone in the comments of Scott's government-spending thread basically saying "well clearly I'm not going to believe it any time a liberal says something will cause a bunch of deaths." That's a damn GOVERNMENT PROGRAM. The records are meticulously kept and open to the public. You can CHECK. Any time of Facebook I see anything posted about climate change or COVID or the scientific process in general there's a *flood* of comments about how "scientists always find whatever they're paid to find." I don't have to ask what party those people are from. And that. View. Is. INSANE. It is nuts. I've spent much of my life around scientists: most of them won't shut up about the minutia of their fields unless you shout at them. Nearly all of them could be making better money elsewhere. And all the really important scientific conclusions are shared by the *worldwide* scientific community. And again, I could go on. A certain fraction of the U.S. right wing seems to have convinced itself that there is NO TRUTH, ONLY POLITICS. The the ONLY thing you need to know about someone to gauge their trustworthiness or evaluate ANY claim they make is their political affiliation. And so *of course* they discover that more and more of the scientists are against them: if you can't even *conceive* of there being objective truth, how can anyone from the community of people who devote their lives to figuring it out *ever* reach you?
"The rest legitimately just look like demands for Democratic politics from a Republican because you're angry that he's too Republican, no matter how you try to lampshade it."
Mate, the fact that you believe this is TERRIFYING. Do you know what I would have done if Hillary Clinton had tried to overturn the 2016 election? I'd have denounced her. As loudly and publicly as I could have. A great many people who opposed Trump would have joined me. Do you know what I felt when I heard someone had taken a shot at Trump? Horror and dismay. I hate Trump more than I've hated almost anyone I can think of, and I would have given *absolute hell* to any Democratic politician who did anything other than denounce the assassin. If I discovered Obama or Biden had used the privileges of their office to ply foreign leader for dirt on Trump? I'd have called for THEIR impeachment too. If the Democrats had tried to pack the Supreme court, I'd have been out there writing paragraphs about how "yes, I know they started it, but this is a flatly unacceptable escalation."
" In particular, the bit about trying to reverse the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh – something which he wasn't even particularly responsible for..."
Right, remember where I started? About "wanting what's best for the nation." Sometimes leaders have to fix problems that are *not* their fault. Sometimes they have to take one for the team. Sometimes they have to make it not all about them. And yes, Gorsuch wasn't his fault and has been a decent jurist in many ways: McConnell was still in the wrong when he left that spot open, and hasn't even made a pretense of not being a hypocrite on that one. But Kavanaugh was a Trump pick and the issue isn't "Republicans got another supreme court justice," it was "Republicans decided they were going to ram the appointment through before the midterm, no matter how much basic decency they had to throw away." If Trump had made a different pick from day 1, or withdrawn Kavanaugh and picked someone with a modicum of integrity--who would have been confirmed after the midterm, Republicans kept the senate--he'd not be mentioned here. Again, the issue isn't "Republicans got to pick too many justices," it's "Republicans have been more and more open about manipulating the selection process for political power, and a body that was supposed to be considered somewhat impartial now appears flatly untrustworthy to many" And I'll grant that Republicans also had feeling about the court in the Obama years. Hence "finding some actual moderates to put on the court, while keeping the balance tilted towards Republicans." Hence "offering solutions to help the selection process produce a trustworthy court--trustworthy to *everyone.*" It is really, really BAD if a large portion of Americans (on either side) feel that the deepest root of their justice system is fundamentally unjust.
The things on my list were carefully chosen. The common denominator isn't "Democratic politics" and the fact that you think they were is, once again, terrifying. The point is that I'm watching the country I once called home *tear itself to pieces* and any time I try to COMMUNICATE THAT I get sneers and derision and an insistence that I'm trying to trick you. No, the things that you are calling "Republican politics" are not normal and usual, and OK. Bush was a crappy president in my eyes, but he'd have threatened his allies, denied a deadly pandemic, whipped up a mob to try to steal an election or call for fucking ETHNIC CLEANSING. I'd take eight guaranteed years of Romney or the ghost of McCain over one more year of Trump in a heartbeat. There are lots of issues near and dear to my hear that were nowhere to be seen: nothing about abortion, nothing about guns, nothing about taxes, nothing about the ordinary drop-some-bombs-on-backwater-countries-for-iffy-reasons sort of foreign policy. Republicans are going to do things I don't like in all of those areas, and they *should* if they win: that's what votes are for. But there are lines that should not be crossed, and Trump has spent eight years shitting on every one of those lines he could reach. Everything on that list, EVERYTHING was about one of three things: fundamental truth, basic human decency or bipartisan cooperation. The things that WILL destroy American if you keep treating them as conveniences to be discarded any time you think it will score you another win.
[2] I can already hear the retorts about wacky things Democrats believe. Please stop before you type them. Take a breath. Consider. Are they *really* on the same level as a literal troll story made up by 4chan?
Agreed about the COVID and stolen election, departures from reality on the Republican side. The again, Democrats have bought into the transgenderism narrative despite the ton of evidence against all its core assertions (evidence which is so assiduously kept out of the mainstream media that I grant you they simply aren't aware of it. But are willing to buy into the idea that those who are trans-skeptics are motivated by ignorance and bigotry rather than doing the logical thing and simply reading up on the trans-skeptic position. See the PITT substack for a very incomplete starter read).
And for some reason Democrats take positions on law and order that are not based in reality and permit tons of crime.
As to "ethnic cleansing", these are words, meaning nothing. It's not unreasonable or immoral to think that moving the Gazans elsewhere will be better both for them and Israel. Keeping them in Gaza just guarantees more unending strife for them and their children.
" But I want to just ask you all to give him and team Trump a chance."
The entire nation already did that. It ended with an attack on the nation's capital, attempting to end a two-century old democratic tradition. I'm generally pretty forgiving, but if you can't look at that and say "uh, maybe no more chances for that guy in particular," you've gone well past forgiving and well into quokka. It's not like there weren't dozens of other people the Republican Party could have tapped who *didn't* have a history of doing that, if that was something they actually found in any way upsetting.
Why did you respect Bernie at all in the first place? The guy has always been a loon in my view.
Oh Bernie is right about a lot of things. (Take over by big corporations, which have taken over much of government.) He could easily get on the Trump train... but he's somehow infected with TDS from those around him. I'm perhaps a Bernie bro having watched him on Rogan.
I think it's completely logical for Bernie to hate Trump. Bernie hates people who have a lot of money, that has almost always been his position. He's very consistent that way.
Yeah sure, But I thought he'd have a lot in common with Bobby.
During the Space Race, what was the general opinion that Soviet intelligence held about the U.S. space program and how accurate was it?
Welcome to the ass end of Hollywood. You work for the least desirable developement company that gets any work at all, so you really can't afford to be choosy.
Your latest assignment is to come up with a film that includes the following bit of dialog.
"Have I served in combat? You should understand that I serve on an Ohio-class submarine. We don't get in gunfights with raghead militias. We're the gatekeepers of the apocalypse. We fire one missile, we wreck a country. We fire the full stack, we destroy the world. So no, I have not served in combat."
What do you have in mind?
Small-town teen comedy featuring wacky neighbors. This line is coming from the absurd redneck stereotype who drunkenly uses his military experience to hog the karaoke machine.
An action movie where terrorists with a stolen nuclear warhead have taken over [insert thing with lots of civilians here], and the only available people who can Save the Day are the brand new Public Affairs lady for [thing with lots of civilians] and Civilian guy Attending [Thing] who happens to be a retired US Navy Chief Missile Technician and thus is the only person who can Disable the Nukes Before the Terrorists Can Use Them
(The MT would have had some weapons training as a member of the security force, so he can be at least somewhat credible threat to the terrorists).
COOL Card for MT, to describe the skills they get in training: https://www.cool.osd.mil/usn/rating_info_cards/mt.pdf
So, Die Hard meets Crimson Tide, basically
Edited; Thing With Lots of Civilians should be a Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney-like Cruise (good luck getting the Mouse to buy off on this), Attractive Female Lead (formerly Public Affairs Lady) should be one of the assistant producers for all the shows (so you can explain her knowledge of the ship and where to go) and Attractive Male Lead (formerly Civilian Guy) should be there as the Best Man for his Sister's Wedding, who has always loved Entertainment Company That is Definitely Not Disney's shows and wanted to get married on their cruise (so you can explain why he's there but also leave him single for the inevitable romance)
So now it's Speed 2 meets Crimson Tide
Adaptation of The Producers with a low-end barroom braggart substituted for Hitler. Opening number features corny, earnest Ohio workers on lunch break at the Ohio-sub factory. Nose of the sub sticking out of the building and daisies popping up everywhere. Lying barroom drunk staggers among the singing worker-dancers, and they're popping daisies in his pockets.
A remake of the Last Detail, except the Navy guys are all submariners for some reason.
The guy who said that is only three ounces below the Navy's upper weight limit, has a neckbeard, and has paid thousands of dollars for Andrew Tate conferences and subscriptions.
A film about a grizzled, down-on-his-luck Hollywood screenwriter who has been forced descent to working on a rewrite of an execrable submarine-themed action movie to make ends meet, who ends up drunk in a bar, quoting the worst lines of dialogue from the original script contemptuously to the bartender, prompting him to start trying to turn his life around with unexpected results.
"No one ever got kicked off a rationalist forum for taking the meta option."
The first thing that occurs to me is to file the serial numbers off of The Hunt for Red October. Some kind of spy thriller involving submarines and rogue captains, maybe reverse the plot and have an American boomer captain forge false orders and go rogue. Depending on where he's going with it, the heroes could be a CIA/Navy joint team trying to get ahead of the sub, sneak on board somehow when it puts into port, and retake control of it.
Failing that, make a romantic comedy or goofy buddy movie where two of the lead characters are an enthusiastic but naive young man who befriends a jaded submarine crewmember while he's on leave and they get into hijinks together.
"Chief Johnson Goes to Washington puts a bit of backspin on an old formula. Johnson (J.K. Simmons) retires from the Navy after a long career, and runs for office in an obscure congressional district. He wins and heads to DC determined to fix the mess with a bit of directness and common sense, which he has plenty of. Several misadventures later, Johnson has discovered that complicated problems defy simple solutions, and ugly compromises have powerful constituencies defending cherished entitlements on both sides.
"The resulting film is hard to recommend. Simmons does what he can and his younger costars put in the work, but the film is talky and the camera work is static. There are a lot of people monologuing in offices. The one bit that does shine is the fidelity to the underlying material. Both of the script writers are former congressional staffers, and it really shows when they dive deep into obscure details of housing policy and water rights, to name just two areas. This one seems destined to be a cult favorite of armchair policy wonks, but everyone else should go watch something else."
What projects are pushing forward "data structures + algorithms = programs" *with funding*; stl is kinda getting old and I doubt stepov will do a major rewrite, it seems like no one does computer science where the goal is to produce programs with less code gets paid. Its all ai, cryto, new languages with hype, etc.
Nobody working on eg Rust std lib has the same philosophy and is getting paid?
I strongly suspect rust implements a subset of the stl that they can convince a compiler is memory safe; which truth be told is not a goal I think will be fruitful
"I spend months and wrote a research paper about how to convince a rust compiler to work on my doubly linked list" is less good *by allot* then "I spent an hour on a doubly linked list its over there, heres all my algorithms and data structures that are all in the same style"
I’m old school. I still occasionally pull a volume of Knuth’s off the shelf.
The guy wrote the book(s)
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Programming-Volumes-1-4B-Boxed/dp/0137935102/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=203P61BSKKPNN&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.W1yshZHh5h7sw9X5XePy5MffIFE1vIz_nl8Mp033lujlC5xx-mSlcN0uNASshclQD6KS11JAVyk05r0t2lx3vz6Riugr2QgELsfA3dxYDPDMlJ7yNUZkLLAbqUqzBrVg9BKj2n7lw7LynOs8z0Caw1gtK7ZQa42VxSc6pWoGpKM7r9rg4taoo5259UN_3BpCEORrzLX-qHyb9x30UW47_g.5eri0hUhJneyzENQUFygN62b7h6fijvVFVmJzV_pSUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=donald+knuth+algorithms&qid=1738789074&sprefix=donald+kn%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-1
I’ll write my own damn doubly linked list, thank you.
It seems like the official death toll for the Bihar Famine was 2353 (maybe the real number is higher), and that seems to be the last famine that caused widespread death in India. The bengal famine caused around 4 million deaths, before that there was 1876 famine that has an 8.2 million deaths, again under the British raj (during which wheat was still being exported to London at regular rates). If you just want a history of all the grievances Indians have towards the British Raj, any school textbook in India will suffice. Countless Indian Historians and economists have written papers and books on this. I think it's more useful to analyze the incentive structure that leads to these extreme misgovernance.
The British people I do not think were uniquely evil, they still valued justice, kindness and all other good virtues that most populations valued. They were racist, that is true, but racism was the norm of that time, and racism alone cannot explain the bad governance of the British Raj. Maybe it can explains the average humiliation they made Indians endure, or the lopsided justice system every time a Brit was involved but there are bigger problems to look at.
The fundamental issue is that the colonial system hired administrators whose career was beholden to a fickle group in London far more than the population they ruled, and once they were done, they left and often went back to London to end their lives, without having to deal with any of the havoc they caused in their territory. If anything good resulted from their administration, it had to happen due to their sense of honor that regularly was at odds with directives from London, or it happened because of their fondness for the land, which while present was clearly not enough as none of them actually chose to live in the country they administered unlike every other king, in human history. If Lee Kuan Yew was administering Singapore for China and went back to China after his 5 year term, he might consider all these policies reasonable:
1. Singapore can best function as an agricultural exporter to China, since China is industrializing well and it doesn't make sense to compete with China that clearly has more resources.
2. He can play the Malays off against the Tamils, so that they are too distracted fighting each other and make his administration easy.
3. During wartimes or emergency, all resources in Singapore need to be diverted to protect the motherland, because that is what matters the most.
If you change the incentives and tell Lee that his faith is forever sealed with Singapore, you end up with the opposite conclusion in each of these policies.
Prior to 1920 or so, irrigation collapsed in British controlled india. The consequences were dire. This was an astonishing fact for me, because maintaining proper irrigation is kind of the main task of any government beyond basic military defense.
The British would build shiny new dams in nodes of their profitable trade network, and leave the rest of the country to rock
https://x.com/AndreasKoureas_/status/1639329604996325379
https://xcancel.com/AndreasKoureas_/status/1639329604996325379#m
To summarize for those who don't like to click links:
Andreas Koureas on X argues that the Bihar Famine was not caused by Churchill's neglect or malice. He claims the famine was caused by a natural disaster, compounded by an inability to bring in food from Singapore, Burma, Malaya, or the Philippines because they were currently occupied by the Japanese. Japanese ships were a significant threat to shipping in the Bay of Bengal, capturing or destroying merchant vessels. The British Empire's shipping capacity was stretched to the limit at the time because of WWII. Despite this, as soon as Churchill heard about the famine he authorized 100,000 tons of grain to be shipped from Australia to India, despite the risk of Japanese raiding. Between August of '43 and the end of '44 1 million tons of grain were shipped to India. In April of '44 Churchill sent a telegram to Roosevelt asking for US assistance in shipping grain to India, which was refused because US shipping was at capacity due to the war. Andreas then argues that while Churchill said several racist things about Indians he did not have malice towards them.
I pine for a time like the 1950s when conservative Americans were implacably opposed to colonialism.
The right truly got cucked.
>Andreas Koureas on X argues that the Bihar Famine was not...
*Bengal famine.
This is a good analysis. Occasionally I see arguments for colonialism from right wing people as a solution to certain third world countries consistent underdevelopment, but it always ignores this (extremely important critique).
Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people. At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule).
"At least if your local warlord is ruling over and exploiting you, it’s *your* local warlord, who presumably can’t easily flee to luxury overseas if things go bad (although a lot of African dictators seem to do this with billions at the end of their rule)"
Will he be *your* warlord, though? The kind of place likely to have been colonized also was the kind of place lacking in national identify in the first place, so while their may have been someone who was from nearby, they may not have been of the same ethnicity. In the case of India, I am aware of a defense of the Raj from apparently very right-wing Indian elements that prior the Raj, the Indians suffered from the worst of *both world*: brutal, exploitative, colonial administrators who stayed for 1000 years (eg Muslims). At least the Raj left, after all-the Mughals are still there.
It isn’t that simple. Akbar was a tolerant Mughal Ruler, who decided to invent his own religion when ruling over the land. Mughals had times of relative peace between the religions. It’s just that when the Brits came, they were witnessing Aurangzeb who was probably the worst Mughal ruler in all of India, who decided to wage the most expensive war in Mughal History against South India, not win that war which eventually led to a dissolution of the Mughal empire into the Marathas and other small parts.
There was not an Indian Identity, but there was a civilizational identity. For example Hindus used to still gather for the “Kumbh Mela”, every 4-12 years like clockwork through all the different rulers they’ve had, they often had to cross kingdoms to do this pilgrimage.
The question is were the colonial rulers better/ worse than previous rulers India had. Of course the British view, and the dominant view of the 19th and 20th century is that they were the best rule India ever had. And yet when they left, India was one of the poorest countries in the world, not just Asia. There were few periods in history that had worse Hindu-Muslim Tensions than when British left, which led to the disastrous partition. They also created an Anglicized Socialist Ruling Class, that was determined to convert India into the next Russia or something similar, though to be fair, Russia and China beared the worst of that dynamic. It’s hard to look at the facts and think India was some well ruled country.
The only argument I see that might hold some water, was this was something that even happened to China that was never fully colonized by the west, so it was just something that happened even under capable rule. It’s a counterfactual we won’t know the answer to. I don’t fully buy it.
>Even if extremely competent and just administrators are put in charge, there’s literally nothing stopping them from exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people.
TBH that doesn't seem like a problem confined to colonialism, at least not any more. Plenty of senior politicians and civil servants in western democracies end up with lucrative positions in international corporations, more or less entirely insulated from conditions in the country they used to help run. When Rishi Sunak unexpectedly called the last British election, there were people suggesting he had a job lined up at some American firm and wanted to leave office quickly so he could take it up; I've no idea if this was true, but the fact it was considered credible tells you a lot.
I can't think of any examples of a prominent US politician who left office and then wound up living and working in a foreign country. I'm certain it has happened occasionally, but I am skeptical that it is common. Working for the US office of a large multinational corporation, yes, *that's* quite common, but that still leaves one pretty strongly coupled to the conditions in the US. As does having your extended family living in the United States.
Yes, it's mostly non-American politicians moving to America, for reasons others have said. But I do think that "conditions in the US" is too broad a brush. The sort of conditions that are good for, say, BlackRock or Goldman Sachs might not be good for your old constituents in Nowheresville, West Virginia.
My mind pretty quickly summoned the example of John C. Breckinridge. Admittedly, that was during a rather unusual time in US history, not at all common, just as you qualified.
As the richest country in the world, we don't need to go overseas to earn big bucks; they come to us and give us the big bucks. And there's no shortage of politicians and Formers that get paid by foreign entities for lobbying (John Allen getting paid by Qatar comes to mind immediately, as does Sue Mi Terry, although she was getting paid shockingly little for her services).
You can make both more money and gain influence in the US than any other Western country. You could work for some NGO in London and have a respectable amount of influence but you won't make a lot of money. You could work for some think tank in Dubai or Singapore and make tons of money but won't have any influence. America is the perfect place for both, so you will see some politicians from other Western countries move to the US but rarely the other way around.
Right, so the "exploiting the colonial nation in ways that utterly disregard the colonized people" dynamic being discussed, really doesn't work in the United States. And probably doesn't work terribly well in the rest of the industrialized world. Nobody with any sense is going to "utterly disregard" the people of the country they are going to finish out their career in, and that their grandchildren are probably going to grow up in. That doesn't make them benevolent altruistic civil servants, but it puts a cap on their villainy that isn't there for colonial administrations.
Perhaps there’s something of value when one has strong ethnic and cultural ties to the land. For the same reason a white leader of an African country would be accused of not representing the interests of the people, so is Sunak in the land of the Anglo-Saxons.
British elites loved their empire so much that when they lost the land they just invited in all their former subjects. Don't think they expected that within a generation their former subjects will become their rulers lol(Apparently Indians own more property in London than whites and the British finance sector in my experience nowadays is disproportionately Indian as well).
no shortage of English or Canadian politicians using America as a potential bolthole though
I have braided together 2 delusions:
- the Perfect Grand Strategy Game
- my Personal Moral Responsibility for helping avert ASI dystopia
Hear me out.
I am seriously anxious with AGI/ASI. If we were all going to die and it was certain, I could theoretically accept that. But "NOT KNOWING WHETHER OR NOT I CAN use my mind and flesh to help avert catastrophe", that keeps me up at night. No really, it's torturing me. Imagine if you were living in Ukraine and the bombs were falling and you had computer skills... how could you look yourself in the mirror if you didn't work in some "technological warfare" operation?
Meanwhile, there is 1 thing in this world where I have some "unique planning and insight": A simulation game of the Middle Ages. I've been planning it for 4+ years.
How could these possibly be related?
With Alignment, doesn't at least SOME of the problem come down to "weights/opinions/value-judgements" as well as "how to most beneficially conceptualize reality" Doesn't AI Alignment require "keeping more of the AI agents weighted in a 'vaguely-defined beneficial way' than not"?
And won't it be an ongoing problem? And if so, couldn't "we all" contribute, in a way, by molding our concepts, discourse, and cultural-expression in a more pro-social way?
Enter the "game"....................................................................................
If you've ever played historical strategy games, you know they can be overly-focused on hard power: becoming the largest, richest, widest.
While this reflects a certain truth about civilization, it is VERY incomplete. Individuals-and-groups also seek beauty, stability, justice, moral good, truth, honor, reputation, comforts, etc. Not all dreams are so "imperial".
AND
People don't always seek them in the order of Maslow's Pyramid. People can and DO sometimes sacrifice things "at the bottom" for the sake of things "at the top". Sometimes temporarily. Sometimes permanently.
I have plans for a game that's more complex: one that doesn't hide the "brutishness", but is still life-affirming and pro-social. I want a game where it is just as fun and interesting to "build peace", "build justice" or "build culture" as it is to build empires.
It's not that the game would introduce any new views of history that don't already exist on the web... but if it successfully influences other developers and players... maybe it can magnify these particular views... like a sort of "Grand Suggestion" to our culture and AI. Maybe not enormous in impact, but large compared to what I could achieve by commenting on ACX :-P.
If one suffers from war in Ukraine, they might leave. It's not that one's support might allow Ukraine decisively win. Comparing ASI fears to the war is gloomy.
One can also leave the crazy cult convincing one that AI is going to kill everyone. It's a choice to stay in the cult.
I find this offensive and nonsensical as climate change denial.
It's 100% my true opinion after giving the issue very much considered thought.
Sometimes I don't know whether the best thing I can do is "work on my game project",
or if there's something more substantial I can do... and hence the project is a waste of this One Life.
The phrase “a waste of this One Life” suggests that your conception of the value of life has gone septic
(and in case it's not clear, deep down I'm seeking answer to the following...)
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO TOWARDS HELPING AVERT ASI DYSTOPIA?
Is there anything REALISTIC that someone ELSE can do? (which I can contribute to?) (granted, I live with a disability and my days can be hell or at least very unproductive sometimes)
Has anyone changed their mind about Trump in the past few hours?
Not on that timescale. But I would say his administration's actions since inauguration are a much better support of the flight 93 election case made 9 years ago than his first term. You could reasonably assess what he is doing now as having lots of two way risk ( high rewards actually possible) without being MAGA.
None of that was plausible in his first term. It was more like choosing to masturbate as the plane went down (if you wanted to embrace the premise that the plane was in fact going down)
Yeah I agree. He actually seems to be TRYING this time, and has built a cadre of at least seemingly competent people that can get things done.
I actually really don't like the whole Gaza thing, but I have to admit he's far more agentic in his second term, so far.
This is basically my vibe
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ8WmiD4WUk
Yes, I'm actually beginning to like him now. I figured his second term would just be him running in circles giving outrage speeches for 4 years. Who knew a President could actually do things? Lord knows where it'll all end up but it sure is fun to watch for now.
I don't want the US responsible for Gaza, but his proposal is 100% the correct one and it's refreshing to see a President with the balls to actually say it. Palestine is a failed state and will never be viable. Put it in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
I don't see how you go from "Palestine is a failed state" or "the two-state solution is not viable" to "and therefore, ethnic cleansing is justified."
It's not ethnic cleansing. No one is suggesting murdering everyone. The population would be resettled and the horrible mess erased.
Stop misusing inflammatory terms just because you don't like the proposed outcome.
Literally the first line of the Wikipedia article. Feel free to check the edit history if you think that's a recent addition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
Yes, forced removal of an entire population is B-A-D. Not the least because it WILL involve murdering a large number of them. Guaranteed. If people with guns come to forcibly remove you and your families from their homes, fighting back is clearly, *obviously* an act of self defense.
If basic human decency is not a reason for you to oppose this, public opinion really ought to be. Much of the rest of the world does not share your cavalier attitude about forcing civilians from their homes at gunpoint and murdering those that resist. The international reputation of the U.S. WILL be badly damaged by such a move. There will be economic, diplomatic and military consequences for many, many years to come.
So is leaving Gazans there going to result in less suffering for them and more thriving than moving them to another location?
Jews moved a lot across the course of history and I for one am glad my ancestors chose (circa 1900) to leave both Russia and Germany and emigrate to the US.
I would posit that the Gazans would be extraordinary better off to move to the US than stay there, even if moved forcibly, though that's not going to be an option and they will be lucky if any decent country takes them.
Moving them to the US is, as you note, not on the table.
Moving them en masse to Egypt, Jordan, and similar countries, which don’t want them, to be housed and fed on those countries’ dime, is quite a different proposition.
A quick google says US per capita gdp is $82,769.40 and we have constant tension over every penny our government spends “helping foreigners” rather than the domestic population.
The per capita gdps of Egypt and Jordan are, respectively, $3,457.50 and $4,455.50
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=US
Even when refugees are few and a country is wealthy and accepting the with open arms, they don’t get the best that country has to offer. If we send these people en masse, to countries which lack wealth, over those countries’ objections, it is willfully naive to think they will be well taken care of.
That they will recieve anything remotely like “a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony” is staggeringly unlikely. “Barely resourced tents in the middle of the desert” is the far greater probability.
This is vanishingly unlikely to look anything like your ancestors moving to the US circa 1900. It is, however, uncomfortably likely to resemble my ancestors experience of being internally relocated within the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. “We aren’t *killing* you, just forcibly moving you to barely resourced tents in the middle of the desert, where we are sure you’ll figure things out somehow” is pretty much TLDR for the Armenian Genocide.
Moving them to another location will involve you fighting a bloody war with them, and them spending the next generation holding a grudge of the sort that inspires international terrorist movements and impedes local economic development. This will probably result in a great deal of suffering for them, and a fair bit for you as well.
The idea that, because you explain to them how you are trying to alleviate their suffering and how this will improve their lives in every way, and they then go along with it peacefully rather than picking up every weapon in sight and trying to kill you, is just another version of the hopelessly naive "they will greet us as liberators!" fantasy.
Even if what you are saying is true, it will not work and a great deal of harm will be caused.
Forcibly relocating an entire population based on ethnicity is a form of ethnic cleansing. They don't have to all die for it to be ethnic cleansing.
If they don't have to die then ethnic cleansing isn't that bad. The only reason it gets a pearl-clutching response is because people view it as a synonym for genocide.
If that's your definition then the partitioning of India was ethnic cleansing.
I hope Gaza gets power-washed. It's a failed state and nothing can change that. Let it die. It's better for the Gazans and it's better for the world.
How many of the 2 million people in Gaza would need to die in the process of power-washing it for you to think it was a bad decision?
E.g. people with guns come to move a family, the family resists, and some of the family dies?
Ethnic cleansing is very widely regarded as being very very bad. Your saying "it isn't that bad", no matter how confident you are in your moral reasoning, isn't going to change you and it isn't going to isolate you from the real and substantial blowback that will ensue if you do such a thing.
And if you do such a thing while flying the American flag, it isn't going to isolate *me* from the blowback. So I'd very much prefer that you not do that.
The partition of India resulted in about 1 million deaths to displace between 12 and 20 million people, depending on who's counting. That doesn't strike me as an example of good solutions to ethnic tension!
(And also, let's not forget that the Nazis started off by saying "move the Jews somewhere else" and then moved to extermination once they discovered no other countries would take them. Where are you planning to send the Gazans, and what are you going to do to Gazans who don't want to leave or can't find anywhere to go?)
The partition of India was an ethnic cleansing. That isn’t a controversial take and also doesn’t overstate the reality or imply that it was some second Holocaust.
But the real question here is what happens next? Pushing everyone out of Gaza doesn’t remove its problems, just disperses them to other countries. If you think Palestinian terrorism from the Gaza Strip is bad, wait until you have to deal with Palestinian terrorism from all the countries they’re expelled to. It’s happened before and it would happen again.
beyond offensive.
what if someone said Israel should be in the dustbin of history where it belongs?
oh right, half the Middle East already believes this, and will continue to believe this, and will believe this more adamantly after the ethnic cleansing that's being proposed
better yet, why not leave "apartheid" in the dustbin of history?
If the rest of the Middle East believes that... maybe it is time for one last war.
>what if someone said Israel should be in the dustbin of history where it belongs?
Then that person would be so stupid they practically drooled and I would be worried about their ability to feed themselves. Israel has 52k of per capita GDP and produces more than terrorism. That's not even approaching a coherent argument.
No one cares about your delicate sensibilities. Be offended all you want, Palestine is still a failed state. All the sob stories in the world won't change the economic reality there. They can't govern, control, or sustain themselves. Just give it up already.
I believe Israel should exist, because there's human beings who live there and it's not their fault they live there. And those people have value.
But otherwise, what is Israel contributing to the World, on balance, other than one crisis after another? And Netanyahu actively funded Hamas as part of his 4-D Chess Realpolitik Superbraining:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#:~:text=Israeli%20Prime%20Minister%20Benjamin%20Netanyahu,the%20education%20minister%20Naftali%20Bennet.
> Despite limited natural resources, intensive development of the agricultural and industrial sectors over the past decades has made Israel largely self-sufficient in food production, apart from grains and beef. Imports, totaling $96.5 billion in 2020, include raw materials, military equipment, investment goods, rough diamonds, fuels, grain, and consumer goods. Leading exports include machinery, equipment, software, cut diamonds, agricultural products, chemicals, textiles, and apparel; in 2020, exports reached $114 billion.
Israel has the second-largest number of startup companies after the United States and the third-largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies. It is the world leader for number of start-ups per capita and has been dubbed the "Start-Up Nation". Intel and Microsoft built their first overseas research and development facilities in Israel, and other high-tech multinational corporations have opened research and development centres in the country.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel#Economy
So they have an economy with imports and exports. And they're populated by transplants who could just as easily live in the Bay Area. How does this, on-balance, contribute to the world?
I just had a lot of fun asking chatgpt:
"how much of Israel's wealth is attributable to rich "first world" foreign immigrants with good education?" It was fun and made me feel very smug :-P.
If Israel were never founded but instead all this capital and brain investment stayed in Europe, wouldn't there have been a proportionate rise in "software and start-ups" in Europe by today?
Or, if the Jewish diaspora landed in............... the Island of Timor, and billions (trillions?) of dollars of foreign investment was poured in over decades, would that prove the original Timorese people were always culturally inferior and unfit to rule? (since they couldn't attract waves of brains and capital)
If the whole brainy population of San Francisco decided to relocate to Jamaica, should the inferior Jamaican people get pushed into a ghetto?
(yes, I know the danger of rhetorical questions. someone will answer them)
Israel is smart and wealthy because the smart and wealthy chose Palestine as the national equivalent of Pied-à-terre. But their actions and choices have also caused a lot of suffering and chaos.
Perhaps Israeli history has "subtracted" from the world.
No change, I remain impressed at his ability to actually solve problems instead of talking around them. The two state solution is not going to happen, and neither is the one state. While Trump's proposed plan has a lot of problems it has the benefit that it would actually solve the issue. I have not seen an alternative plan that would plausibly end the cycle of death and destruction in Gaza.
Agreed. Do these critics actually have a better plan? No, they just enjoy criticizing Trump and preening about how moral they are for "supporting" Palestinians. Why not try doing something that addresses the problem?
Ethnic cleansing won't work for the very obvious reason that Palestinians don't want to leave and are intent on destroying Israel, as demonstrated by their refusal to give up on the right to return during past peace negotiations. Those peace negotiations were primarily administered by the US and various peace deals were brokered between Israel and other Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan by the US. Trump's inflammatory remarks undermine decades of US foreign policy and contemporary relations between the US, Israel, and the Middle East countries. It's not just that what he's saying is retarded - it is obviously harmful to anybody not an accelerationist about war.
Calling for ethnic cleansing is an impressive, problem-solving, go-getter attitude now, apparently. Did we go back in time to the 1800s? I'm very glad that I'll never have to travel on an American passport again.
Trump's Gaza comments were so obviously stupid that even his fellow Republicans criticized them and tried to walk them back. Seeing the ACX comment section fawning over it was the last thing I ever expected.
It's actually not surprising at all, Yarvin is absolutely jubilant about the current state of affairs. https://graymirror.substack.com/p/gaza-inc
I expected it. The local Trumpers are extremely vocal. I suspect a lack of gainful employment in that sector. Way too much free time. Anomie needs to get a job, especially. Although I'm not sure he's old enough to work.
It would not be about their ethnicity any more than sending members of the Italian Mafia to prison would be. If a people cannot live in peace with its neighbours, I don't see why it should be accorded special inalienable rights to the land it lives on, any more than a murderer has an inalienable right to stay in his home and not be sent off to prison.
Giving people rights that aren't paid for by responsibility is a terrible idea.
>> It would not be about their ethnicity any more than sending members of the Italian Mafia to prison would be.
Is it your position that all 2 million people in Gaza, right down to the toddlers, are members of Hamas?
Because that seems like it’s the only way this analogy works, and it’s staggeringly obvious how wrong it is.
No, it’s my position that issues like sovereignty or “ethnic cleansing” rely on treating a body of people as a collective whole. On the individual level, of course not every resident of Gaza is a member of Hamas, but on the collective level, this is what giving a measure of autonomy to the people of Gaza has produced.
"It would not be about their ethnicity any more than sending members of the Italian Mafia to prison would be."
That is rank, stinking bullshit and I think you know it. Arrests are not made on the basis of "being part of the Italian mafia" and CERTAINLY not on the basis of "being Italian." Arrests are made for CRIMES. Against people suspected of committing CRIMES. Further proof is required of ACTUAL CRIMINAL CULPABILITY before decisive action is taken.
Arrests are NOT made against the families, friends and neighbors of people who commit crimes, the are made against ONLY against those who were suspected of actually being involved. They are most certainly not made on the basis of ethnicity and location alone and you are damn well aware of that. Capturing Hamas militants--people who have actually known to have picked up arms or directly aided in attacks--and imprisoning them is WORLDS apart from uprooting families at gunpoint and shipping them off to somewhere they will be less inconvenient.
Collective punishment is explicitly forbidden under the Geneva Convention. There is not the faintest legal question that anything like this would be allowable under international law. If you are genuinely too ignorant to have the faintest clue what you're talking about, better to stay silent.
All your ranting and raving only makes you look insecure. If you had good arguments, you could afford to be civil.
Now, my point was about the relevance of the word ETHNIC in your phrase "ethnic cleansing". If the region were cleansed of the Palestinian people, it would not be because of their ethnicity, but because they couldn't live in peace with their neighbours.
As for the point that has you foaming at the mouth now, you seem to want to have it both ways. When it comes to sovereignty, you want to treat the Palestinians as a single people, with a right to a land. Yet when it comes to responsibility, you want to treat each individual separately, a hopelessly impractical task. That's a double standard. Are they to be treated as one people, or as individuals with no collective identity? If you would have it both ways, any rogue nation could wreak havoc by waging guerilla warfare with fully armed—but unacknowledged—militaries that the "moral" "law-abiding" nations could not retaliate against.
"International law" is a rickety thing that nations abide by as it suits them. It's certainly nothing the Gazan government has ever used as a guide. Nor is it some fount of morality.
"If you had good arguments, you could afford to be civil." This is a common refrain that doesn't bear up under scrutiny. Edgar A. Poe was undeniably a genius and he was constitutionally allergic to civility. I can think of numerous other cases.
"All your ranting and raving only makes you look insecure. If you had good arguments, you could afford to be civil."
If you had good arguments, presenting them without the tone-policing would make me look far worse. Complaining about my tone is a distraction from the fact that your position is utterly morally and intellectually bankrupt and you know it. Like this:
"When it comes to sovereignty, you want to treat the Palestinians as a single people, with a right to a land. Yet when it comes to responsibility, you want to treat each individual separately, a hopelessly impractical task. That's a double standard."
Seriously? Perhaps it WOULD be a double standard in a universe where they DID have sovereignty. But they do not. They. Never. Have. A double standard is saying "this group of people who were forcibly denied statehood, self-determination, sovereignty, who have not even been allowed an ELECTION in 19 years are all considered culpable for the actions of some of them. But Israel, which DOES have all those things and has nevertheless ALSO conspicuously failed to live in peace with its neighbors for its entire existence, is exempt from such considerations."
This is the *fundamental* crux of the matter. Hamas has taken unacceptable and unconscionable actions. So has the IDF. But Hamas can only in the loosest and most tenuous sense be said to represent the Palistinian People, while the Israeli government (of which the IDF is a part) is selected by a prosperous, democratic, safe[1] polity in regular elections. A polity that proceeds to regularly vote for the bombing of hospitals and schools, the denial of Palestinian rights and sovereignty and the continual exercise of Israeli power on *everyone* in Gaza. Despite my distaste for everything Israel has done, I have never once called for the forcible removal of its people from their homes, nor have I had a single kind word for anyone who did. Where, again, is your double standard here?
[1] If you dare complain about that characterization again, please compare to the people you're demanding be ethnically cleansed.
"Arrests are not made on the basis of 'being part of the Italian mafia'"
They absolutely are. In Italy, being a member of a mafia organization is in itself a crime, worth a minimum of three years in prison if they can pin it on you.
"In Italy, being a member of a mafia "
This in not remotely what was under discussion, but I can see how you might be confused. "Being part of the Italian mafia" and "being part of a mafia organization, which is located in Italy" are two VERY different things for the purposes of this discussion, and ought not be compared.
Also "if they can pin it on you." makes this whole line doubly irrelevant, as I discussed above.
> Did we go back in time to the 1800s?
You don't need to go back that far, it happened in the 1940s as well.
No. Pretty much what I would expect from a moral cretin.
His pathology has always been transparent.
Same here...
people tried to say "oh its 4-D chess and helps us" when i wrote below about tariffs, arguing they work in the sense of isolationism, but now Gaza. Yeah.
a funny little thing that got me is if you follow vtubers, fans like to buy merch to support them. Silly things like acrylic standups, keychains, etc.
thanks to trump they are now getting tariffed with processing fees on top of the tariff, lol. trump
is removing the de minimis exception for china. Considering how much storefronts like amazon rely on dropshipping going to be surprised they wont be raging against him.
Trump didn’t have the raw competence to get anything done in his first term, but Elon Musk does. They’re actually gutting the NGO blob this time. If this keeps up, I’ll regret not voting for him in the primaries!
I used to love him and now I love him slightly more, does that count?
Seen elsewhere:
"Its like we were expecting cake, but instead we got a surprise party, and a free car, and a free house, and our grandmother came back to life."
(I don't endorse this sentiment, but I think I get it.)
Lol
It does, you sick freak.
I didn't think he was serious about the tariffs.
I still don't know if he was. Was he? Is he? Was it a stunt to impress his base, knowing he would back down quickly? Might he still be serious in a month?
The China tariffs haven't been retracted
For a certain value of "hours." My opinion of Trump has actually gone down in the past few days, and folks, it wasn't high to begin with! I feel like I must have somehow absorbed, over the course of 2024, some of the sanguinity of some of his less rabid supporters--sure, he talks about revenge and retribution and dictatorship, but he won't do that much!
Oddly, my opinion about Musk hasn't changed at all. While I'm genuinely shocked by how many levers of power he was handed and how quickly, I am truly not surprised at all by what he is doing with them. In every case, it's "yeah, sounds like something he would do!" Examining this, I believe it's because my previous opinion of him hovered around "he would have to actually be Hitler for me to think less of him," and, well, so far he does clear that bar.
(I know what you're really asking here, and no, no change. Because I have eyes, I had already seen the ample signals Trump had sent lately suggesting that anyone who still somehow expected him to be some kind of principled isolationist, or to relieve the Gazans' suffering in some way Biden didn't, was likely to be deeply disappointed.)
The last few weeks have been like another Jan 6 moment. For a long time, I thought the left was just being alarmist about Trump, but they keep getting proved right again and again.
I think a lot of people, especially centrists, reflexively don't want to accept that the left was right about something!
Plus, there are a lot of people in the Trump camp practicing Macbeth politics.
It's less painful to make just one more rationalization - take one more step into the bloody river - than it is to turn back and admit that "holy shit my outtribe was actually right and he *is* a uniquely bad leader, and I put him into power. We really were the baddies this time."
Indulging that reflex to self-justify is, of course, deeply human. It's also how you end *up* deep in the bloody river, frantically throwing excuses around about how the ethnic cleansing was never supposed to really happen it was supposed to be a bargaining chip and even when it did happen it was supposed to be done safely and carefully and it's really the fault of Egypt for not providing better housing when the people we forced across the border got there and anyways the blue tribe would have done something worse and Hamas was elected 20 years ago so these people are all culpable and probably deserved what they got I'm not bad I'm not bad I'm not bad.
Hopefully we don't get there, but as long as people have their own personal egos and self-image wrapped up in the equation and are rationalizing backwards from "I'm not bad and I voted for him so he can't be bad or at least the left has has has to be as bad or worse," there'll be no shortage of rationalizations out there.
I changed my mind about my position that he didn't really read Yarvin and the resemblances are coincidental. Trump's peace plan is basically https://graymirror.substack.com/p/gaza-and-the-laws-of-war, and there's no way a second person independently came up with that idea.
They even used similar wording - "the LA of the Mediterranean" vs. "the Riviera of the Middle East" (Trump's version is better).
I highly doubt Trump himself reads Yarvin. Far more likely a staffer that we don’t know about, Musk, (who reads adjacent publications that would occasionally link to Yarvin) or Vance (who has read you, and what Republican reads ACX but not Gray Mirror?).
> what Republican reads ACX but not Gray Mirror?
*Raises hand*
Kinda curious what Vance's blogroll is. He undoubtedly reads Razib Khan, for example (his first footnote in Hillbilly Elegy).
It's still a little crazy to think we have a Poaster Vice President right now.
Plot twist: Scott linked to Yarvin in the course of a review of some other issue, and Trump reads ACX.
2nd Plot Twist: Trump actively subscribes and comments to ACX
The toad has a vocabulary of about 500 English words. No way he could pass as anyone but himself.
Just watch for heavy use of anemic adverbs like ‘very’, ‘very very’ and Jeff Spicoli like usage of ‘totally’ plus variations on ‘such as the world has ever seen’.
It wouldn’t take Quantico level profiling skills to pick the semi literate buffoon out of this crowd.
3rd Plot Twist: Trump used to subscribe to and comment on ACX, but got banned for low-content/high-temperature comments.
He could be any one of us! He could be you, he could be me, he could even be... Oh gods, why didn't I see it sooner? Obviously no one in this country would be named "Scott Siskin", that's the name of a bird! Someone has a lot of explaining to do...
Interesting! It got me thinking that maybe Vance had conveyed this idea to Trump after reading Yarvin.
What _is_ it with Trump and territory? Did he come down with a case of Putin envy? :-(
...What do you mean "come down"? You knew he had authoritarian sympathies, right? I thought that was why people liked him...
Many of us, not just Jeff, regard Trump as a (very, very) imperfect instrument of a very necessary change, and are simply determined not to let the perfect be a successful enemy of the good.
If someone in 2015 had asked you to set a floor on "good", would Donald Trump meet that standard today? Or are you the frog not noticing the water being boiled around you?
Frankly speaking, if someone in 2015 had asked me to set a floor on "good" I would probably just have said "as long as he kills some woke people he can do whatever he wants". Ten years ago I was much more sickened by the zeitgeist. I was seething so hard I would've boiled the water, not it me.
But taking your question in the spirit it was intended, I think he would, insofar as even his many catastrophic flaws (74 boxes of classified material, Donald?!) do not overshadow the extreme need for a reckoning with the status quo ante. The ideological capture of the entire managerial class and attendant big-government issues are *the* issue of our lifetime. It's increasingly obvious that no more gentle, rule-following, establishmentarian candidate could – or would even have wanted to – even try to act on this, and in some ways I think Trump is the better alternative to a later candidate with whom the Hitler comparisons would have been more accurate.
The one thing he's done that gives me genuine pause is equivocate on Ukraine. If he'd taken the maximalist Israel-style tack on that, suggested annexing Crimea to the US, and sent Zelensky a gigantic pile of guns, planes and to the point that liberals were worried that he was disarming our borders I would have been certain that he was in all ways the better candidate of the two we got to choose from, but his actual attitude is alarming.
To be fair, living through Nazi Germany must've been a blast if you hated Jews.
You mean, if you were German?
I think the ending of the show got bad reviews even from them.
Many Thanks! Well, not all authoritarians are interested in expanding territory. Some just seek to expand their power (and this is typical of most POTUSs, finding Congress pesky is not surprising for a POTUS from either major party).
EDIT: I don't know what fraction "liked" Trump. I view him as not-Kamala-Harris, censor-in-chief, doubler-of-illegal-immigration (as part of the Biden administration and sort-of kind-of, denied-in-retrospect border czar). Marginally lesser evil is still evil.
>censor-in-chief
Yes remember the time the Biden admin forced everyone filing for federal grants to remove a defined list of words from their filings because these were deemed wrong-think?
Oh wait, thats what Trump has been doing.
Many Thanks! Yes, Trump is doing that, and it looks like a meataxe approach to digging the woke crap out of the government.
That said, you are making a _terrible_ argument here. The left is _infamous_ for language policing, including speech codes in academia. _How_ many times have they switched the "polite" term for blacks on us?? Remember "latinx"? That one even pissed off the group the left claimed was being served by it.
Even if i grant you that your imagined language policing is all happening just like you believe it has, how is that the same as scrubbing certain terms from government documents because they are wrong-think?
I mean, just think: if Kamala had been elected, who's to say that she mightn't have plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis by...I don't know, legalizing weed or something?
It astounds me how absolutely obtuse so many people can be. Trump lays out exactly what crimes he wants to do, why he wants to do them, acknowledges they are crime, tries to do them, and yet some people will still be like "oh well i am not sure he really means it and harris was bad too". Total brain rot
Many Thanks! Hey, remember that Kamala was part of the Biden administration, and Biden _DID_ try to unilaterally stick the ERA into the constitution, despite having blown by the time limits on it by decades. Kamala herself is on record as saying, of uncensored free speech on the internet "it has to stop", a direct attack on the First Amendment. She was also very much a piece of shit.
> ...and Biden _DID_ try to unilaterally stick the ERA into the constitution, despite having blown by the time limits on it by decades
That never happened.
Here's the statement he issued: https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2025/01/17/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-equal-rights-amendment/
Note what the statement does not include: any language to direct the government to publish the amendment, any changes to policy as a result of his belief, nothing to make it part of the Constitution at all. Not even directing some novelty copies of the Constitution with the new amendment printed up. It was using the bully puppet of the Presidency to try to make the issue salient but there was zero attempt to stick the ERA into the Constitution, unilateral or otherwise.
Note also the date: 3 days before Trump's inauguration. Essentially as lame as that duck was going to get. If he wanted to actually force it through he would have done so when he had time to potentially accomplish something.
Oh, for sure, for sure. We should all be breathing a sigh of relief that we haven't put into power the kind of Presidential administration that would shut down websites just because they contain disfavored sociopolitical content!
The news this evening that Musk and his little gang of tech randos have managed to gain control of the FDIC's systems and shut the actual agency staffers out of it, certainly has me thinking about some new stuff. Such as taking my ID to where we bank and clearing out our household bank accounts.
Is moving to Canada part of the plan?
Can we have a middle east containment thread? If Trump said what the media are saying he just said ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/04/trump-netanyahu-meeting/ ), I think we will need it.
On a less satirical note, here's the transcript if you want to compare what Trump actually said to any media reporting you're concerned may be inaccurate or alarmist.
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-conference-joint-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-february-4-2025/
Notably -
"Being in its [referring to Gaza] presence just has not been good and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there. Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly bad luck."
"The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It's right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down.
They're living under fallen concrete that's very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too."
"I do see a long-term ownership position and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East."
Many Thanks!!!
Did you love the debates about January 6, but wish there were more dead bodies to look away from while you put forth your technical argument that “it’s only a coup if the military is involved?” Well congratulations! From the fine folks at TrumpCo, who brought you 'I Can't Believe It's Not Coup!'…
...now try, 'I Can't Believe It's Not Genocide!'
Its all the legalistic navel-gazing that you loved from arguments like “you can’t say he refused to transfer power, Biden *did* technically become President after the riots failed” or “well Biden bullied Facebook so I think that makes Kamala the bigger tyrant"... but now just *chock full* with those civilian casualties we all *love* to deny!
“Technically it was up to the *host countries* to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the Palestinians we pressured them into accepting!”
“The UN definition of ‘genocide’ requires acts be ‘committed with intent to destroy’ the victims, and you can clearly see from these statements that our intent was to relocate them to ‘a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony!’ It's a terrible tragedy and a mistake, but let's not debase ourselves with inflammatory language!”
“I’m sure whatever *Kamala Harris* would have done to fix the Middle East would have been even worse!”
Yes, now with 'I Can't Believe It's Not Genocide!' you can distract yourself and others from *both* the damage you’ve done to your republican institutions *and* staggering human suffering and loss of life *at the same time*!
Look for it in stores sometime in the next 4 years! But hopefully not! He's probably bluffing! Let's suspend judgment and alarmism until it's actually tried!
(‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Genocide!' contains authoritarianism as an active ingredient and may destabilize your republic. Peace in the Middle East sold separately.)
Many Thanks!
Wanting to move them elsewhere is ethnic cleansing, which is often associated with genocide probably because past attempts to move a lot of people involved a lot of them dying due to technological limitations, eg see the British expulsion of Acadians from today's Canadian maritime provinces
Ethnic cleansing would be removing one ethnicity and leaving another. In this case we are talking about clearing out the entire human population.
There's precedent for this sort of thing, like when we build dams, or Chernobyl.
The area isn't permanently uninhabitable, like Chernobyl. Someone is going to live there once it's rebuilt, and if that someone isn't the Palestinians, then it's ethnic cleansing.
If it were sold to the UAE and filled with non-Palestinian Arabs would that still count?
I'm sure Palestinians and Emiratis would both say they are not the same, even if they all identify as Arab.
That would still count in my book. The thing we are trying to prevent is the act of forcing 2 million people out of their homes at gunpoint and giving their land to someone else to build hotels on. The fact that the someone else is Arabic doesn't really change the fact that this would be a horrible thing to do to the people living there.
Maybe there would be a different legal word for it - "forced population transfer" instead of "ethnic cleansing" or something - but on moral grounds I don't see how it would make a difference.
Notable recent occurrences of ethnic cleansing have been comparatively bloodless (eg in Nagorno-Karabakh, less than 300 people died when >100K Armenians-99% of the population-departed).
Not to mention the 900,000 Jews who were cleansed from North Africa and Arab nations during the 40s and 50s.
The conditions in that case were maybe the most favorable in history, eg, short distance, destination being a functioning nation state dominated by your coethnics ready to receive you, aid organizations able to assist, modern technology
Yeah, that's probably a ceiling to how bloodless you can make the process. I reckon trans-shipping the Gazans over the West Bank could look pretty similar, as a logistical undertaking (everything else would be there other than "functioning nation-state", and even the West Bank is probably pretty functional albeit not in a way to handle an extra 2 million people)
Except the West Bank is not a "functioning nation-state dominated by their co-ethnics", it's a dysfunctional occupied territory dominated by their enemies. This is going to make the Gazans much less enthusiastic about the process.
Well, we still have modern technology!
Sometimes I spend a lot of time thinking of just the right comment I could make in one of these threads. I don't think I will ever come close to making a comment as perfect as this one.
Bravo. (this is not sarcasm)
Glad you liked it! I don't know if I'd call it a *fun* write, but it felt good to put to paper.
Still processing how quickly the satire became a reality right in front of me on the board. Kinda head-spinning to post a joke about overlooking the human tragedy your president proposes to create in favor of "legalistic navel-gazing" about whether that tragedy technically meets the definitions of particular very-bad words, only to see arguments emerge minutes later about whether this would really count as ethnic cleansing and whether ethnic cleansing is really all that bad.
I think approximately 100% of the people at all familiar with the situation in Gaza going back many years will agree that the existing system is bad/untenable/cyclically full of war.
I wont pretend to know a solution, but "Israel leaves Gaza alone" isn't on the table. If it were on the table, then we would see one or more October 7ths and then Israel would get involved again - which is again obvious to everyone.
Top level politicians giving it their best effort haven't solved this issue. We all also know that.
I'm not sure what end game we would expect here. Either we stay in a deadly cycle that everyone hates, or we fundamentally change the game. It may be that the game change is worse than the cycle, but I don't see how we complain about trying to fix the cycle given all of the complaints about the cycle.
I'd be more sympathetic to the complaints if they came with alternative solutions that were at all tenable.
Many Thanks!
The US government has been working for decades to find a solution. The idea that no alternative solutions have been suggested is laughable.
Tenable is the crux of my objection. I agree that various attempts in the 70s-2000s were genuine and could have worked. But they didn't. A two state solution is not possible, and neither is a one state solution. We can see why - one or both sides will reject it.
If Trump has another option that can work, okay. We should have plenty of reason to doubt his plan will work as well, but people wanting to keep trying the same ideas of the last 50 years aren't being serious in my opinion.
Dang, I was just joking yesterday about turning Gaza into a charter city, and now here we are.
It's hard to know how to evaluate this. As a serious proposal? Or as a bunch of noises designed to possibly achieve some kind of political outcome?
There's some value in putting an even-worse-than-status-quo option on the table. It's also quite nice as a wedge issue that can separate ordinary Gazans (who would love to be resettled somewhere less sucky) from Hamas (who don't want to lose their power).
Many Thanks!
No no no, thank you!
There's currently no country that will accept these "ordinary Gazans". Arab governments won't accept them for fear of angering their citizens. Is Trump going to settle them some place like TDR Congo?
Am I wrong? Is there some country that will have them? Australia maybe?
US can bribe (or threaten, or both) a country to take Gazans. IMHO, Syria might be a feasible option (new government desperately needs money and recognition...)
Australia?? Heck no. We are already spiking antisemitism with the 2000 odd refugees we took in. Hoping to get rid of this government in short order
Time to correct the mistake of history and put them in Newfoundland
https://x.com/hamandcheese/status/1713028981979500777
Have you ever been to Newfoundland? I don’t think they would’ve liked it.
Well now the US has a new bargaining chip it can use against every other country.
Hey Mexico, do you want us to send you ten million Mexicans, or two million Gazans?
edit: I've got it! NEOM! The US can pay the Saudis to build NEOM on the condition that they fill it with Gazans. The Saudis get their dumb vanity project, the Gazans get new apartments, the US gets a bunch of beachside real estate which it can sell to offset the cost of building NEOM, everyone is happy.
"We will forcibly move two million people from another country into yours" is only a credible bargaining chip if you're willing to invade both countries and commit ethnic cleansing in at least one.
And okay, Trump's willingness to commit ethnic cleansing is probably not zero, but I'm less certain about the American people's willingness to support an invasion of Mexico for that purpose.
The US can already push Mexico around as much as it wants. I mean, we could force two million Gazans on them if we really wanted to.
I just don't see how the US taking ownership over Gaza puts America first. It looks to me like Trump let Bibi fuck him in the ass.
Does any American other than Trump want this situation?
"The US can already push Mexico around as much as it wants. I mean, we could force two million Gazans on them if we really wanted to."
The US quickly tired of Iraq, imagine what Mexicans could do.
Guerilla warfare only works when the enemy is concerned about civilian casualties.
> I just don't see how the US taking ownership over Gaza puts America first. It looks to me like Trump let Bibi fuck him in the ass.
How so? The problem with Gaza is that there are Gazans there. That problem is going to be solved. I'm more doubtful that Israel is going to let him have that piece of land, seeing as they were planning development there themselves...
>That problem is going to be solved.
How is it going to be solved? Give me one plausible scenario.
Jared Kushner seems pretty keen?
My personal preference would be to depopulate and terraform the West Bank, so that we can finally build England's green and pleasant land in Jerusalem.
Let’s put it on the shopping list with Panama Canal and Greenland and see if the idea goes anywhere.
Many Thanks!
...Is there anything even left to discuss at this point? It's over for them. No use crying over spilled milk.
Regardless of how over the war is for them, I think we still have a chance to avert an ethnic cleansing.
No one's ethnic cleansing anything. Gaza is a failed state. Resettle the people and wipe it from the memory of the Earth. Honestly that would be kindest to the actual Palestinians. Break them out of the hopeless trap that they're currently in.
>Resettle the people
Under most definitions of the word, forcibly resettling an ethnic group from the area they live in is ethnic cleansing. (Especially if you're then taking the cleared land and resettling it with your own people, like how Trump suggested letting America have the vacated land.) I don't know what definition you're using where this wouldn't fit.
And to be clear, it would have to be done by force. You are not going to get 2 million people to abandon their homes and land without literally sending soldiers to force them out at gunpoint. You are deluding yourself if you think that can be done "cleanly" or "peacefully."
Was the partition of India ethnic cleansing?
>You are deluding yourself if you think that can be done "cleanly" or "peacefully."
Oh you mean it would lead to ... unrest in Gaza? Oh no, anything but that.
The partition of India is a bad example for you to use (I saw you use it elsewhere also), because it led to a bunch of long-term bad effects, notably two piles of, functionally, Indians who hate each other's guts snarling at each other across nuclear warheads. Might I very humbly suggest that you look at the Greek-Turk population exchange of the 1920s instead?
> Was the partition of India ethnic cleansing?
Yes, obviously.
Who's "we"? Any chance you had to prevent this disappeared months ago. The die has already been cast. You can't stop this. No one here can.
You could put this comment under literally any politics post anywhere, and it would add the same amount to the discussion.
That's not true. If you had dealt with [him] four years ago, before they had a chance to organize around him... all of this could have been prevented. That would have been possible to accomplish just by yourself. It's too late for that now, obviously. You would only end up stoking the flames, and that's exactly what they want.
Many Thanks! I currently intend to step aside from the discussion I anticipate. I think silence is improbable.
Yesterday I saw an interview of a woman that was deported from the US. She said she was fleeing the violence of the Catatumbo in Colombia, her husband was killed and her children threatened. When she took a bus in Mexico to her asylum date she was kidnapped for ransom. I know what people will say, she should come back and make things better in her country. I saw an interview of young men, barely teenagers, soldiers being sent there to try and restore order. They sounded so cheerful, I don't know how many of them will die in the jungle. It's all so senseless. I was originally planning not to post this here as I am afraid of facing hatred, but chatgpt of all things convinced me to amplify this story, it told me letting their suffering go unnoticed can feel like a silent victory to the perpetrators. It brought me to tears honestly, I hope writing this means something however small I guess.
Yes, it is tragic for some individuals but better them than us. We're not the social safety net for the rest of the world. It's like the old joke about the wealthy man who bankrupts himself to save the poor, and then ends up broke without having ended poverty. At some point you have to put yourself first. In my view we're well past that point.
I thought that was a Dickens novel about a woman
By the way, if anyone wants to help with this, consider donating to the Colombian red cross. They're doing humanitarian help in this region. Hopefully google translate can help you navigate this website, I'm not 100% sure how easy it is to donate as a foreigner though.
https://accionistashumanitarios.org/
Anton, you got quite unfriendly responses. I don't think you should conclude based on this that people here are heartless and have no social conscience. Think about the way you set up this discussion: You saw 2 interviews that stirred your compassion and your anger at the injustice people are suffering. You came here with the goal of having people get how you felt. If you were talking to friends they would probably understand that mostly you wanted them to see how you felt, and share experiences where they felt the same. But the people who read your post are not your close friends, and many of them probably know absolutely nothing about even basic stuff like your interests, your views, your profession, etc. It is not reasonable to expect them to resonate the way a friend would.
Also, it's natural for people who do not know you to take your post as an argument in favor of doing more to help people like this woman, and everyone, even the most liberal, has to come to terms with the fact that there is no way for them or their country to help everyone. So people were pushing back against the implied idea that they or their country should.
You happened to see an interview with one particular person, and felt moved by her situation. There are millions of people on the planet with situations as dire as this woman's, and you do not have for them the kind of sharp heartache you have for this woman. Regarding everyone except this one woman, you are as oblivious as all of are about the woman you saw interviewed.
It is unfair to shove one instance of someone's suffering in front of us and expect us to react to the person as you are. I think some of the irritability you encountered was a reaction to that unfairness.
>So people were pushing back against the implied idea that they or their country should.
I think you're rightly identifying a part of a broader trend where progressives have changed acts of charity into obligations and entitlements, as well as the corresponding reaction of those who don't buy into it
Yeah, that's ok. I expect indifference, people are busy, I understand. I have seen Americans in US social media laughing at people in this situation, this is not something I understand. I have some familiarity of the sort of people that comment here, I used to lurk more a long time ago, so the unfriendliness is entirely expected.
>I know what people will say, she should come back and make things better in her country.
I don't think it's her responsibility to fix Colombia, but there are plenty of safe-ish countries she could've fled to.
Which ones?
Costa Rica is fine, and while Nicaragua is...not great, it's stable and it's citizens are not starving or being murdered by the bushel.
Well, it depends on what measure of safety you're taking, but: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay... maybe even Bolivia and Paraguay?
Completely separate
from your views and your choice to post them — I am horrified to hear about chatGPT expressing views about what steps you should take. Also, you should know that it makes no sense to turn to chat GP T when making a decision like whether to put up this
I went to chatgpt in order to find words of kindness. My friends were offline at the moment. It worked, I do not need to fish for kindness from here anymore.
Next time you should just write your own words and read them back to yourself. It would create an item of actual human compassion instead of a twisted simulacrum, and you could always share your creation with other people when they need it in turn.
This twisted simulacrum was pretty good, it gave me the impression of putting into words things I already knew were true, I would not have taken any decision if I thought the output absurd or uncompelling. If nothing else, it's been well trained in soothing platitudes, not unlike myself. Much better to have real human compassion of course, but that's unfortunately in precious little supply.
Same.
Sounds like bad situation. Nevertheless, we can’t let our country continue to be a dumping ground for anyone in the world who has problems. She is free to try anywhere else in the hemisphere. Come to think of it, why did she try the US and not some closer country? Perhaps there was some other factor on her mind?
"why did she try the US and not some closer country"
Because our Asylum laws are specifically designed for people in her situation. Because in the distant past (of 12 years ago) the US took pride in welcoming immigrants especially those in greatest need of help. Maybe she should thought a country full of Christians would welcome her and others fleeing terrible poverty, offer charity, and allow her to build a life here contributing to the wonder that is America.
At one point we were "a dumping ground for anyone in the world who has problems". Do you think the Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, Pilgrims, etc that came here in droves were doing it for fun?
The arrival the settlers was ultimately a disaster for the original inhabitants. And your idea of what past immigration policy was like for other groups in simply incorrect. The strictness of immigration policy has varied greatly over our history but has rarely (maybe never?) been this costly, destabilizing, and permissive. The recent large-scale abuse of refugee and asylum programs is a novel phenomenon. We simply do not have the capacity to take every migrant who wants to come here without destroying our society. No country could handle that volume people from all over the world.
"your idea of what past immigration policy was like for other groups in simply incorrect"
How so? Specifically how is it incorrect? What claims did I make that were wrong?
"We simply do not have the capacity to take every migrant who wants to come here without destroying our society."
Prove this.
>Because our Asylum laws are specifically designed for people in her situation.
Actually no. US asylum laws are based on the UN Refugee Convention, according to which the definition of refugee does not include those who do not face persecution in all parts of their country. It sounds like she could have moved to other parts of Colombia (eg Bogota, the capital, is quite far from Catatumbo) - edited, not sure why I said Caracas other than not having had my coffee yet
One of the problems is that the limits of the asylum system have been eroded over time by leftists, including the aforementioned
Does your assessment also apply to the 300k Venezuelan refugees on TPS that Trump is threatening to send back? They clearly cannot just go somewhere else in Venezuela.
I'm not as familiar with the details of US specific legislation so I'll first state that the following might be based partly on untrue premises
In short, yes. From what I can tell, America's TPS system doesn't actually have anything to do with the asylum system (which, again, is rooted in the UN Convention). The asylum system does not apply to those not at personal risk due to a Convention ground (race, religion, political opinion, nationality, other social group), that is it does not include people who face some other generalized misfortune such as poverty or even war. It was designed this way to not entitle entire countries' populations to a legal right to emigrate to another country. So yea asylum laws were not designed for people like the 300k Venezuelans on TPS - they're not technically refugees, the confusion is from the difference between the legal meaning and how 'refugee' is used in everyday parlance
TPS seems to be a way for the executive to make ad hoc decisions to allow whole countries' populations to stay in the US legally should they manage to get in. Basically, TPS allowances are political decisions directly subject to the desires of the executive
The other factors are most likely economic, but I don't know if she was threatened in other parts of Colombia. If the other factors were economic she does not have a valid asylum claim, but I don't care, I feel for her and mourn our dead all the same.
Note she also claimed she was kidnapped in Mexico. Of course, she has a strong incentive to lie, I am not naive. However people have been killed in the Catatumbo, thousands have been displaced, I have heard reports of Mexican criminal gangs targeting asylum seekers from years back as they know they're a vulnerable population, and of course there's been deportations.
The deportation is not very surprising either, to be eligible for asylum you need to be feeling violence which targets race, religion or politics, being unable or unwilling to pay extortion money or being collateral damage among warring factions is not enough. You also have to be more then 50% likely to be killed, any less will not do. America does not possess the administrative capacity to process all the asylum seekers at the border, so a claimant will have to wait at the border for several months, unable to work legally and worried for her safety from criminal gangs. Once this is all done an extensive interrogation will be conducted looking for any inconsistencies in the story, if any slip through this is proof of lying and a reason to be sent back. It is no surprise that some judges have a 100% denial rate. This was the status quo before Trump, now I've been told no cases are being heard at all, of course.
Since the implication of all this is that the US is responsible to fix this woman's suffering, my Modest Proposal(TM) is that the clear solution is the US should invade Colombia, overthrow the government, annex the country and depose/execute most of the leadership, and appoint Nayib Bukele Lord High Governor and give him unlimited power to fix this. This will undoubtedly make Colombia nice enough for this woman to be happy there.
You are not responsible for her suffering, kindness is given freely or not at all. Colombia has some unique challenges that make a Bukele harder, the geography is more remote so that guerillas can retreat deep into the mountains, and some have support of the communist dictatorship next door that is Venezuela. Expresident Alvaro Uribe managed to improve the security situation, at the cost of things like massacres of civilians, dressed in military fatigues for the purpose of claiming the bonuses, but if someone like him ran for election I would vote for him. This problem has plagued the country in all of living memory so far, and one of the reasons it's been extremely hard to eradicate is the vast amounts of money they have at their disposal, product of American addicts buying drugs they "tax".
Part of the assumptions in my Modest Proposal(TM) is that Bukele would use his Middle Eastern heritage and father's chemical experience to bring their own system for dealing with rebels in difficult provinces, by which I mean using nerve agents on them.
From the American perspective, there are, at a rough guess, more than 7. billion people* whose lives would be greatly improved if they moved to America (or if we moved America to them; it's probably not true in all countries but it probably is true that Latin America would be better run under American rule, which is neither here nor there). Which ones should not be let in?
* the math on this looks like it's closer to 7.25B, based off this this:
-Currently 8.2bn people per World Population Clock
-340M Americans, leaving 7.86B Poor Deprived Non-Americans (PDNAs)
-Assume 1% of PDNAs are the tops in their country and would not actually improve their lives "greatly" by becoming Blessed Americans, leaving ~7.78 B
-per here, there's about 700M people who have more than $100K in wealth
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-wealth-distribution/
-per here, maybe a 135M of them Blessed Americans? Shading makes it kind of hard to tell
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/15jlibp/oc_the_percentage_of_adults_that_have_at_least/
So we round it to around 7.25B PDNAs whose lives we can improve by admitting to the US
Surely you know gas agents are not a panacea? Assad's regime fell despite use of them. It can be comforting to think that with just enough brutality we could solve all our problems, but it is unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, not the world we live in. The reason I was initially hesitant to post this at all was the prospect of having to defend the idea of refusing such generous proposals as yours, though I did not expect it to involve the use of chemical weapons specifically. I believe I have nothing else constructive to say. This will be my last post, as I have shared everything I know about this case.
And yet Medillin is consistently ranked in lists of the "top twenty cities to visit this year" for tourists.
The security situation in the cities is different from the rural areas, you will not find guerillas in the cities. If you come as a tourist to Colombia, make sure to stay in the cities or in the towns near the cities. If you must go to a rural part, ask a local if it's a "red zone" in order not to inadvertently walk into one. Even if you stay in the cities, make sure not to go to the bad part of town, hopefully this is common sense everywhere in the world. Walking into a Medellin "comuna" or the south side of Bogota is not a good idea. Stay at the tourist part of town and you should have no problem. I recommend the nature parks in Colombia, as they can possess a stunning beauty, a walk to the Siecha lakes was a spiritual experience to me. This lake is safe because it is very close to the capital, and the reserve provides water to it. Of course, if a guide tells you you can continue at your own risk, turn back. I hope one day we will have peace.
Right, so why did this woman go all the way to the USA instead of moving to a nicer part of Colombia?
Most people do, hundreds have been killed and thousands have been displaced in this latest bout of violence. If you go to Bogota you may find beggars with signs advertising they have been displaced by the conflict. They have had their lives upended by it, and many struggle finding jobs when all they have known in life is working a farm. This woman is likely trying to find a better life for herself.
Your question has been adopted in many asylum systems around the world as the 'internal flight alternative'. The definition of refugee isn't supposed to include anyone who isn't in danger throughout the entirety of their country. Unfortunately, if my country is any indication, it's been watered down to uselessness. People can just get their relatives back home to write a letter about how the thugs or gangsters or whoever have been asking them for their location and the adjudicators are obliged to find that internal flight alternatives aren't a viable option because they'd have to hide their location from their family
By US asylum law, individuals who seek asylum can't have an option to seek asylum at any intervening country. Someone coming by land from Columbia is going to go through quite a few other countries. Even if they can't stay in their own country, it's quite unlikely they are specifically targeted in every country between.
I'm all for asylum, but if you make "asylum" a free way to get into the US, it's going to get Goodharted and everyone suddenly needs asylum. That's one of the reasons that asylum is supposed to be in the first country they can reach, not the country that they would most prefer and can physically get to.
Yea, that's how it's supposed to be in a lot of countries. Originally the UN refugee agreement was meant to address the massive migrations in Europe after WW2 and got changed to include the entirety of the world beneath people's noses
Much of my professional work has concerned asylum and frankly my experience has made me go from "I'm all for asylum, but..." to Muskian "throw it all out including the baby"
I've got an idea the Dems could put in their "Project 2029." You know how all citizens born on naturalized in the United States are citizens according to the 14th amendment? Well, the Philippines was part of the United states before 1946. They weren't citizens, but that was an outgrowth of the insular cases, which are widely regarded as being wrongly decided. You can say they were in fact, citizens and thus their descendants after 1946 are automatically natural-born citizens too. Thus all 117 million Filipinos are eligible to immigrate to the United States. While the Supreme Court would likely take issue with this interpretation, the President could simply direct the border patrol, DHS, etc., not to deport any Filipino nor turn them away at the border.
Birthright citizenship only applies to incorporated territories. The Phillippines don't qualify.
Filipinos tend to be mostly Catholic or Evangelicals. The young white lib staffers of the Democratic Administration would oppose this proposal just as much as any Republican for that reason. But when I think more about this proposal, it doesn't sound all that bad lol. Currently, the Filipinos vote about evenly between the GOP and Democrats. I assume these Filipinos are on average more educated, wealthier, and liberal than their brethren back home. Your average Filipino will be more religious and seems to like strongmen(Rodrigo Duterte) so this split might end up slighly more in favor of the Republicans. Add to this the idea of adding 100+ million Christians to the US, and I am sold on your proposal lol.
Your twitter still points to slatestarcodex dot com. Have you considered updating it?
If you are a straight man, roughly how many likes on dating apps do you get in a month?
If I'm paying, roughly 100+ likes, 25-50 matches and 5-10 dates a month on a single app. If I'm not paying, quite a bit worse but still some. (I'm 6'3, a gymrat, and told I'm fairly good looking, but not super hot or anything)
Personal experience: about 10 matches a month. But this was 3 years ago.
But there is a better way to look at online dating. Matches is not the only metric you need to optimize for. You need to actually write message to the women. They need to answer. Then you need to plan and go on a date. If you have 0 matches you need to work on your pictures. Everything >0 you should optimize the later steps. If you can "convert" every match into an actual date, 1-2 matches a week is plenty.
Disagree with that based on a lot of personal experience. Most women will have already decided if they want to meet you based on your profile. Canned humor works as well (or better) as highly personalized, thoughtful conversation.
I am striving to arrange a date within 5 - 10 messages. And if that doesn't happen it most likely isn't going to, it's a numbers game and until they meet you in person you are just another strange dating app man trying to fight against 100 other men for their attention
As someone who is not a 6'3 gymrat our experiences might differ quite a bit. Also age and region changes to game quite a bit. But i agree with the 5-10 messages until date. Everything longer and your window of opportunity closes fast.
My main point was: If you already have 25 matches but get only 5 dates I would optimize to get 10 dates out of 25 matches and not to increase the matches to 50. Big number looks nice but doesn't get you closer to your goal.
Yeah I didn't mean to come across as flippant, there was a time when I didn't know how to present myself at all and experienced how miserable dating apps could be. I still stand by my experience that between matching and getting a date there's not enough play to double your conversion rate as you suggest, did you experience otherwise? (After you meet skill/charisma is indeed a huge factor, it's just the dehumanizing aspect of the apps which is why you need to get off them within a handful of messages)
I expect there might be a lot of variance between different people. So not every advice works for everybody.
If you get a lot of matches and easy responses with canned humor I expect you profile/pictures to be very good. In this case I believe you that there is no room (and no need for) improving the later steps.
In my personal case I maybe messaged about half my matches. Because I was lazy or sometime because I reevaluated the woman's profile and decided against it. Easy room for improvements: only swipe if you really are attracted and then message all matches.
Similar for getting replies. If you are below a certain looks threshold (not bad looking, just below really hot guy) just writing "Hey" will just not work. I took the time to write personalized messages referring to something in her profile or pictures and got a huge boost in replies.
If you already always get replies or women even message you first you really don't need this. But please be aware this is not the experience of the average user.
> If you are a straight man, roughly how many likes on dating apps do you get in a month?
Not sure what "likes" corresponds to. Is this mutual right swipes? On average, women will right swipe ~5% of men:
https://imgur.com/H5oXiUZ
Basically just how many girls like your profile. You might not like all of them back(thus not a match).
In the debates about whether what Trump/Musk are doing is even constitutional to begin with, I saw the interesting position that since Congress passed a law saying such and such agency has to be funded and imposing restrictions on what the President can do with the agency, therefore this is illegal.
I think there is something strange about this, as it definitely makes the President seem much less of a chief executive and much more some kind of middle-manager, such that it seems that interpretation can be challenged.
I'm reminded of Yarvin arguing that this sort of "law" Congress passes isn't really a law in a sense the Founding Fathers would have understood it. Google gives me this definition of law:
the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties.
Since the law applies to everyone, it strikes me as strange that Congress gets to use its lawmaking power to micromanage the executive like this. I was wondering if someone could speak more about how this status quo came about.
The constitution spells out the powers of each branch of government. Get an AI to summarize them for you if like. Where those powers intersect there is debate of course.
But "congress power is to pass laws. Laws, according to the dictionary are..." Is not the right process for determining what us congress is empowered to do.
I am not sure Yarvin, a professed monarchist, is the best person to cite on constitutional principles. You should read the Constitution. It's pretty plainly laid out in there that the legislative branch has the power of the purse. Follow that up with a basic summary of the Impoundment act (which Ghillie Dhu provided) and you can answer your question.
At the risk of being rude, this is pretty Civic 101 stuff. Didn't everyone learn this high school? Or watch school house rock?
both his parents worked for the deepstate, and he's argued that the Actual Constitution (how the USG operates in practice) is basically a skeuomorph of the Written Constitution.
I didn't go to school in America. I think it must've been covered in my education in Puerto Rico regardless, but I never paid any attention in any class (speech sucks as a way to transmit information due to slowness and unsearchability).
The history of the US does paint a different picture regarding the relationship of the branches being that straightforward. I was reading in the NYT about the horror of what Trump is doing, and very far down in the article, they mention Truman once tried to seize control of the steel mills. That puts things in perspective, since that sure does seem much more aggressive than what Trump is doing. The Supreme Court struck him down, but not before there was a funny comic about Harry the First. And I don't know how what Trump is doing stacks up to what FDR did.
And there is the Warren Court that Hanania brought up today:
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/trumps-executive-branch-revolution
That definitely seems like a period where the Judiciary branch became more powerful than the other branches, or at least, definitely more powerful than we've been used to in recent times.
Hanania interestingly concludes that we haven't seen a president this revolutionary since Lyndon Johnson, so he didn't feel he needed to go as far as FDR to find someone similar. No idea what Johnson did, I should probably check that out.
That things have been as bad or worse in that past isn't justification for today's bad behavior. It is very clear that Trump and Musk are breaking the law and taking unconstitutional actions. It doesn't matter what FDR did almost 100 years ago.
That you grew up in Puerto Rico does explain things and so I apologize for my rudeness. I was, and continue to be, frustrated by more than just your comment. There seems to be a huge deficit of civic knowledge in the US and its leading to a lot of the issues we see right now.
Well, what came before does matter on establishing whether this is unprecedented. Turning the US into a fascist dictatorship would be unprecendented and it is something many are fearing (I feel pretty sure there will continue to be real elections).
I don't feel like the fact that sometimes one branch becomes more powerful than the others is bad or worse. Yarvin sees that as part of the natural process of politics. Governments should be judged more on a performance basis rather than on whether they adhere to some procedure or other.
So moral relativism? Or just straight nihilism?
Political relativism. I don't think the structure of a government has any particular moral bearing.
ACX is a global audience, including some people who've never lived in the US and have about as much reason to understand the relationship between its branches as we have to understand the structure of the government of Nigeria. It might also include a few people who took high school US civics, but not college; some who don't watch TV, or at least not on Saturday mornings when SHR was playing; and probably more than a few who took high school civics and remember some of the catchier SHR lyrics but found a lot of disagreement between their memory and what they read about the US government doing in the news, as well as a *huge* amount of detail that's necessarily left out, and have concluded that things are quite a bit more vague and slippery than advertised in school. So any consensus here about the government is going to have measurable breadth.
Case in point: Congress can declare how much money is going to an agency; how much money is going to a specific project or initiative or contract within that agency; and could *theoretically* declare how much money is going to be spent on the refrigerator to be placed in the second floor break room of the south wing of the OPM building, but in practice they're probably going to say "N thousand to facilities management" and wisely leave finer grains to the manager there. Likewise for a lot of other things, like who exactly gets promoted to the next GS grade or how much time gets spent on adding a feature to the timesheet software versus tracking a bug. And if they tried to manage that small, the executive branch people would Look At Them Funny and hope it's just a misunderstanding and they don't have to tip the press off to shenanigans, and Congress knows that and keeps to a certain altitude.
There turns out to be a lot of discretion at play. There are sums of money Congress cares about strongly enough to itemize in one place, and equal sums they'll routinely allot in another place and leave the details to OPM. It can turn on whether someone gets some Congressional committee's attention, or one US Representative with an axe to grind, or even a sufficiently important journalist.
US Civics 101 and Schoolhouse Rock provide some valuable baselines for people to keep in mind as a sanity check, but they unfortunately often don't extend to a lot of the day to day issues that make the news.
If I didn't have the knowledge of the US governmental system of the good reasons you state, I wouldn't opine on US governmental system as confidently as many commenters here are doing.
If Congress says that certain money *must* be spent, and spent in a certain way, that should be binding. But generally Congress leaves a lot of leeway (or executive branch people take leeway anyway) about the details. For instance, Congress could never say that a specific person must get a Social Security check on April 12, 2025. Instead, the bureaucrats working in the SS office must determine if that person is eligible for SS, what the payment schedule is for April 2025 (maybe they run checks on April 18th instead), and so on.
Some funds have much more flexibility than others, often fully intentionally. $100 million for foreign aid can mean a lot of different things if the details are not spelled out, and they rarely are or can be to that level.
Now, with that said, the chief executive would have all of the power that any individual bureaucrat or agency would have in regards to how that money is or is not spent. In addition to that, any power that comes from oversight of the agency. So if a bureaucrat on any level could decide that we're spending $1 million of that money for X versus Y, then the President can also make that decision. If a bureaucrat at any level could decide *not* to spend that particular money, either at the present moment for a particular reason or generally, then the President could also make that decision. Theoretically that's what Trump and Musk are doing now.
I have no special insight into the details, and it's quite possible that this is an illegal impoundment issue. But I suspect that various people in the executive branch have been making these decisions for many years, and it's fully within Trump's power to make those same decisions without them. USAID, specifically, was not created by Congress - it was created by a JFK executive order. It was in the furtherance of Congress setting up funds that must be spent, but obviously if the actual implementation was as broad as needed to allow an EO to create an entire organization for spending it, then there's a lot of leeway permitted by Congress. Trump using that leeway should be legal. He might say "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" if you will.
Correction: the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961 was Congress telling the executive to create an agency, JFK created it and gave it a name but he was responding to Congressional action.
Yes. I think what I wrote and what you wrote do not disagree. Congress passed a law (FAA 1961) and JFK created a specific agency to carry out the law.
But do you agree that another President can’t just ignore the law and eliminate the agency? I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me that if the President can do that, he can do anything.
If Trump ultimately eliminates the agency and doesn't replace it with something that still meets the requirements of the law, that would be illegal. But if JFK can create and staff the agency based on the broad law as written (rather than Congress establishing a specific agency as part of the law) then I don't see how a future president can't make adjustments.
I have more recently seen something about a law passed during Biden's time that may place limitations on future presidents, but I'm not sure how that works with what Trump is doing. SCOTUS has already made clear that an Executive Branch agency that is not beholden to the President is unconstitutional, so "hands off don't touch" can't be a constitutional option.
I’m a legal realist and believe that the Constitution “means” whatever 5 of 9 Supreme justices say it does at any given time. At the same time, I don’t see how the government can just pretend that laws like the Impoundment one and the Foreign Assistance Act no longer count without either action by Congress or the Supreme Court.
At that point there are no laws and we might as well go rob our neighborhood liquor store, right?
From Wikipedia: "Impoundment is an act by a President of the United States of not spending money that has been appropriated by the U.S. Congress. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to exercise the power of impoundment in 1801. The power was available to all presidents up to and including Richard Nixon, and was regarded as a power inherent to the office, although one with limits. The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was passed in response to the abuse of power under President Nixon. The Act removed that power, and Train v. City of New York (whose facts predate the 1974 Act, but which was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court after its passage) closed potential loopholes in the 1974 Act. The president's ability to indefinitely reject congressionally approved spending was thus removed." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds)
ISTM that there's a strong case to be made that impoundment is an inherent power of POTUS and the post-Nixon legislation restricting it is unconstitutional (N.B., the SCOTUS that heard Train was the same set of Justices that heard Roe).
This article argues, fairly persuasively in my opinion, that 19th century impoundments were generally authorized by statutory language about e.g. "authorizing and empowering" the President to spend "up to" a certain amount on a particular purpose. And in 1838, SCOTUS ruled that statutory language requiring money to be paid out as specified were binding on executive branch officials. Several 20th century Presidents before Nixon floated the idea of an inherent Presidential power of impoundment, but only Nixon pushed it and Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act shortly afterwards.
https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/the-president-has-no-constitutional-power-of-impoundment-by-zachary-s-price/
That is a strong rebuttal, thank you for sharing.
The implication of prosecutorial discretion as similarly extraconstitutional does give me pause about the degree to which this line of argument would be sufficiently persuasive to the current SCOTUS (especially given the ruling in the immunity case).
it was intended by the Founding Fathers that the House of Representatives would use their power over finances in order to influence the other branches of government. e.g. a quote from Federalist Paper 58:
"...This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure..."
So it's by design. Many other places where "Publius" makes similar statements. This is a major and well-known part of the system of checks and balances.
On the other hand, if the executive can disregard laws from Congress, particularly on an issue as fundamental as the budget, then the executive would be massively strengthened. This would also be pretty perverse
Well, from a completely different perspective:
There are constant complaints that people are pushing local politics into the federal government, where there are massive conflicts because the federal government oversees more than one locality. These complaints are generally accompanied by the observation that you can't get anyone to vote in local elections (for example, state governor; federal senator) because nobody cares about anything but the presidential election.
I suggest conceptualizing this differently than people usually seem to: because no one will vote for any office other than president, that office is where all of the political power exists. Is it a problem for political power to be concentrated in the office that is subject to meaningful elections?
Don’t hundreds of Congress-critters collectively represent our big diverse country better than one guy who might have lost the popular vote?
Depends. Who voted for the Congressmen?
The voting pools aren't even similar.
Well, the current approval rating of the Executive is currently 49%, and the approval rating of Congress is 24%. So, maybe it's not perverse? Maybe it's the opposite of perverse?
The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) has an 82% approval rating. Should he be made king?
King is a bridge too far, but if you told me that in 2028 we would all smell what the Rock is cooking, I would believe you. At this point we all have to acknowledge that the WWE-White House pipeline is real.
I'm sure it would go down if he ran for office...
Congress (well, the House) was elected at the exact same time as Trump was. Should Trump have lost the right to govern in term 1 when his approval rating was terrible?
Well sure if you ignore the text of the Constitution of the United States and think of operating the Republic as if Madison and Hamilton had come up with something similar to Facebook and they wanted to let ‘likes’ from the honeymoon period of a presidency guide us, you might have a point.
So yeah, no, if you give it a moment’s thought it’s pretty perverse.
BTW Trump’s ‘honeymoon’ approval rating is historically low. Biden’s approval rating was 57% at this point in his term. Barack Obama’s was 68%, Jimmy Carter’s was 66%.
A lot of commenters here would gain a lot by just reading the constitution and taking basic civics class. Amazing how many people don't understand the basics of our government.
And some other commenters would gain a lot by realizing that the constitution is nothing more than a rotting piece of parchment. Don't be surprised when people forsake a system that failed them.
It's one thing for them to openly rebuke that system; but, to support its destruction while claiming to uphold it is a hypocrisy that I just can't stand. If they want an autocrat they should just say that instead of coming up with bogus reasons this is all in accordance with our accepted laws.
When Congress passed that law, there was a president who signed it. That means something about the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch, right? If he decides he can kick that law to the curb, he is not only throwing a finger at Congress, but at the president who was in power when the law was enacted, and at the judicial branch as well because they are the ones who are supposed to sort out laws for us. In other words, he’s throwing his finger at the whole thing.
I think you are starting with a fundamentally flawed model that is something corporate like a board of directors and a CEO/company president. In the corporate model, the board is responsible for high level governance decisions and, to some extent, the overall mission/strategic direction, but the lead operating executive makes the tactical and operational decisions for implementation. (Side note: this is a simplistic model, even in the corporate world)
A better model of the (original) intention is to think of the legislative and executive branches as co-equal, each with specific areas of power only held by that branch and other areas of overlapping responsibility (especially to create checks and balances.)
If you want to trace through references, you might start with Advisory Opinions latest podcast, at 20:50: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/youre-fired/id1490993194?i=1000688814817
They cite:
2013 DC Circuit Court decision by Kavanaugh
1975 Train vs City of New York
1971 Office of Legal Counsel/William Rehnquist memo
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I am reminded of the aphorism, “Those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know”.
I have struggled with my weight my whole life, and I'd appreciate some new ideas/frames of mind on how to approach it.
The story so far:
- Standard-issue fat kid through my teens.
- Got problematically fat in my mid 20's, got catastrophically fat during early months of Covid
- Throughout this time had tried various diets, never with real energy or intensity
- During Covid got diagnosed with sleep apnea, got the CPAP, started sleeping well for the first time in my adult life
- Burst of new energy and fear of dying (I had hit 415 lbs) got me started on calorie counting, took it seriously, lost 130 lbs over the next 2 years. Also started lifting, took it seriously. Overall felt amazing.
- Met my future wife and got married shortly after
- Weight loss plateaued and then reversed due to it becoming much harder to eat at a deficit now that my maintenance calories had dropped so significantly, coupled with a general feeling of complacency and happiness in my new marriage
- Gained 15 pounds in year one of marriage, had a child
- Getting to the gym and taking eating right seriously got really hard due to lack of time and energy, gained 20 pounds in year two
- Had another child, did not make things easier, have gained another 10 pounds so far in year three
- Tried generic Ozempic, did not work at all. Made me sick, did not make me want to eat less or think less about about food
- Am currently on Metformin
I am now 335 lbs. For the sake of my wife and kids, I really want to get this under control. Things I am considering: Name-brand (really expensive!) Zepbound, and failing that, Bariatric surgery.
If you have some suggestions for other tools/methods/ideas I can try, I am very open to them.
As a single data point small piece of the puzzle thing-that-worked-for-me:
Psyllium Husk fibre supplement (ie Metamucil or similar). I dropped 30lbs in a year (starting at 265lbs). Plateaued after that but at least didn't come back on.
Not intentionally, it was recommended for a different issue. For the first time in my life I wasn't hungry all the time.
Try the surgery.
I'm on Team Bariatric Surgery. It sounds like you'd probably be a good candidate, so probably don't waste anymore time.
I had bariatric surgery (the sleeve, aka stomach stapling) 13 years ago, went from 250 > 145 at my lowest, and have put back on about 25 over the pandemic and my break-up after the pandemic (but have been maintaining 175 for over a year, not gaining. I can live with it, but I'd prefer to get back near my low). The weight gain was from sheer self-indulgence, partly from getting used to eating delicious stuff again with my boyfriend during the pandemic (though I didn't put on any weight while with him), then later not wanting to be bothered with eating inconveniently small portions semi-frequently. Plus some general lethargy from a couple of illnesses. My eating and exercise habits aren't what they should be, but they are still much better than they were before my surgery.
I needed the *very* high stakes of preparing for and complying with a surgical intervention to overcome the temptation of tasty food. Without stakes as high as "my surgery might not go well!" and "I'll feel uncomfortably sick and be malnourished if I don't eat right after the surgery" as dieting motivation, I was really good at procrastinating and rationalizing around just...not dieting in my day-to-day.
Usually bariatric patients have to do 6-12 months of prep work before a surgery, so I say...just get the ball rolling now. The success outcomes of bariatric surgery are much, much higher than white-knuckle diet and exercise, so just go ahead and do what works. Better to "cheat" weight loss with a bariatric surgery and succeed than fail at dieting.
I was in similar spot, lost over 100 lbs. I was lucky to be in a position where I could focus on it, but here's what worked for me:
- low carb diet, and learning variety of food I could eat and cook for myself. wraps, fajitas, pizza on low carb tortilla shells, lots roasted chicken, chicken wings, grilled chicken, lots of stir fry vegetables, cured sliced hams are easy/useful, salad, low carb chili I make regularly (go easy on beans which have the carbs).... probably missing things - bacon / eggs if you do breakfast. radishes are great snacks as are nuts if you don't eat too many.
- environmental control - not having any of the wrong food around, and making sure I didn't put myself in bad situations. (I will eat poorly if I get hungry). Travelling and eating out is very difficult, so I often took stuff with me. Some options I used in restaurant - naked buffalo wings, wendy's chili, meat + salad if sitdown.
- I exercised consistently in the morning for an extended period using exercise bike, I think 45 minutes to an hour. Often did a second ride later in the day. I'm not sure how important that is - diet seemed more important to stay on track, but exercise helps blood sugar. I also went through long period of walking up to 2hrs a day when I lived at a place that permitted. I currently walk each day, and that does help with blood sugar levels also -which helps appetite - but again not messing up the diet is more important to adhere to imho.
- Getting your weight down a bit from where you are will likely help blood sugar alot. Between 330 and down to 280 I noticed big difference in blood sugar stability, and at some point in there I went off metformin.
- drank diet drink, not many fruits work, but strawberries and blueberries are option
Hope this helps, but it did work for me. I weighed regularly to keep myself focused, and I did hit frustrating plateaus, but eventually things kicked back in.
I lost a lot of weight (230->195) when I started lifting weights seriously. I’d highly suggest 2-4 hours a week with a personal trainer. You’ll feel better and your body will work better regardless of what happens with your weight, plus it seems to lead to weight loss—far more than would be accomplished just by the calories burned in the activity itself.
You have to eat a ton of protein to make progress, which might make it easier to eat fewer calories overall.
Another commenter mentioned jumping jacks; I wouldn’t recommend dynamic loads with your body weight until your weight is lower, seems like an easy way to injure your joints. Instead, do kettlebells or another resistance modality where you can gradually increase the weight. A trainer is invaluable to teach good form, make sure you’re not risking injury, and make sure you’re continuing to make progress. Plus it’s way easier to put in the work when you have an appointment and are paying. Finally, a trainer can keep giving you new forms of exercise to keep things fun.
Consider drastic elimination diets? They spray plants with poison, you dont get to know when they swap poisons around, or even would poisons they tend to feed animals in your area and its unlikely you can track one that happens to effect you more then the average over likely weight gain which may take a week to see.
> I am now 335 lbs. For the sake of my wife and kids, I really want to get this under control. Things I am considering: Name-brand (really expensive!) Zepbound, and failing that, Bariatric surgery.
Everyone else has made great suggestions, so I'll just hit the things that nobody else hit upon yet:
1. Get a treadmill desk
Exercise is hard because adherence is hard - but do you know what’s easy? Slowly walking on a treadmill, in your own house, wearing whatever you want, while YOU’RE getting screen time, whether working or recreational.
The treadmill desks I’ve bought are UNDOUBTEDLY the single highest “unit of value in life per dollar spent” things I’ve ever owned in my entire life.
And if you’re like me and are always thinking “eh, I can do a smidge more than last time, why not?” and hit a single up-button on either speed or elevation, over time it can actually burn significant calories too.
I just found out recently I’d *inadvertently* been burning an extra 700-800 calories per day, while walking at an 8-10% incline for a few more hours.
2. Bariatric surgery
Is positive on costs / benefits, but you probably want gastric bypass vs banding.
The Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery study was able to keep track of 83% of a 1500 person sample who had gastric bypass for 7 years, and found that 7 years later, they had maintained a mean weight loss of 38kg (83.6 lbs), or around 28% of body weight.
For gastric banding, 7 years after surgery mean weight loss was 18kg, or 15% of body weight. Both had lower dyslipidemia at the 7 year mark, but only gastric bypass patients had lower rates of diabetes and hypertension.
Risk-wise, bariatric surgeries have a 17% complication rate, a 7% “needs resurgery” rate, and incremental mortality rates of ~.31% after thirty days. This is honestly probably fine. That’s 3.1 out of 1,000, and there’s 250k bariatric surgeries per year, so around 750 annual incremental deaths. The average one-year mortality rate for a 45 year old with a BMI of 45 is ~.9%, so not a ton of incremental risk from the surgery, and there’s some evidence that bariatric surgeries have beneficial effects on all cause mortality - the gastric bypass lowers diabetes rates, hazard ratios for cardiac mortality and myocardial infarction are 0.48—0.53 post surgery, and their 10 year cancer mortality rates are only 0.8% vs 1.4% in controls matched to characteristics who did not receive a surgery.
These are both from a post I did about weight loss, if you want some of the footnotes and studies, they're in there.
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/the-maximally-pessimistic-obesity
Thanks for this. Someone else linked your article, mostly things I knew already but still informative and well sourced.
I actually tried a treadmill desk! My plan was to work on it, but I could never get the ergonomics right for walking and typing comfortably at the same time, and more importantly, walking on the constrained surface of the treadmill exacerbated a persistent foot pain issue (corns). This meant that I eventually avoided going on it.
As for bariatric surgery, a realization that it was my only option to avoid dying is what kicked off my last burst of energy to calorie count and work out seriously. Maybe it'll work again!
> I actually tried a treadmill desk! My plan was to work on it, but I could never get the ergonomics right for walking and typing comfortably at the same time, and more importantly, walking on the constrained surface of the treadmill exacerbated a persistent foot pain issue (corns). This meant that I eventually avoided going on it.
Just one thought here - because it really is a good way to burn significant calories as a "background" thing without active conscious effort - there's a large and noticeable difference between the chintzy Chinese "treadmill desks" most people consider / try, and an actually good set up.
I've bought and used 4 or 5 different treadmill desks at this point. The best one by far has been a giant, 800+ pound commercial-grade Freemotion treadmill I bought from a gym that was going out of business and custom built an adjustable desk around. The difference is huge - the walking surface is wider and longer, and it actually has a suspension which mitigates the impact of footfall. It also has the ability to go up to an 18% incline grade, which is crazy, but incline (at 8%+) is how to actually burn significant calories.
It cost WAY more than a chintzy Chinese desk, but it's quality and ease of use and quality of life is much, much higher.
When comparing treadmill desks, the higher cost gets you second guessing yourself. When considering the costs and risks of surgery or the increased all cause mortality from being obese and sedentary, I think it's a pretty clear win, and might be worth considering.
Definitely don't do the band - like breast implants, they have to be replaced!
I had the sleeve, it was a great middle ground between band and bypass.
OK. I brainstormed.
-Try some of the other drugs in Ozempic family. Seems reasonable to hope one would have fewer side effects and better effects. Also, I read some speculation that the most recent one in use (or maybe it’s one that’s about to come out) looks like it might have stronger weight loss effects. Not sure if that’s valid or just hype, though.
-If you are taking an antidepressant or other psych med with a weight gain side effect, consider stopping drug. Obviously, do not do this if without the drug you are at risk of having major problems. If you have been taking a med for mild to moderate anxiety, try substituting CBT for the med.
-If you do not have any tendency to abuse drugs, consider taking amphetamine at dose prescribed for ADD. These drugs reduce appetite and increase energy for most people You will prob have to claim ADD symptoms to get it. I would not suggest this to someone whose weight problem was not severe.
-Consider spending money to clear more time for you to exercise. For ex, hire someone to help with child care or housework, eat out more, pay for grocery delivery, etc.
-Do something radical to lock yourself in to exercising— for ex, get rid of your car and bike. I did that 5 years ago, for the sake of fitness rather than weight loss, and it has worked out well. Or do some partial version where you simply swear to do something, for ex park car 2 miles from work every single day and walk the remainder. Or get an active dog that will drive the family crazy if not taken for long walks and runs daily.
-Rather than try to exert more willpower, do radical things to reduce temptation. For ex, have absolutely nothing in the house that is either high calorie or a moderate -calorie thing you like enough to eat in large quantities (things like pasta are often in this category). The rest of the family will have to go out for ice cream and favorite hi-cal meals.
-Use Beeminder.
> If you do not have any tendency to abuse drugs, consider taking amphetamine
aint you a licensed doc?(i.e. bound and controlled, your free speech gets limited by "best practice" opinions)
Jeez Monkyyy it seems to me you are in a position to answer the question you have asked on your own. You have enough information from my previous posts, my present post, and general knowledge.
(1) I am not an MD.
(2) When I gave the advice I did, I did not mention the degree I do have, because I did not want to claim some extra authority for my ideas, but just to present them as the ideas of a fellow member of the forum.
(3) Even if I were an MD, life furnishes abundant evidence that MD’s are not compelled to toe the party line regarding drugs. Youtube and Twitter and other sites have many MD’s expressing unconventional ideas. Some of these ideas, such as that the covid vax killed more people than covid did, are obviously false and harmful. Some are questionable, ideas that most would disagree with. A few are probably excellent, though unconventional, advice. It is clear from the presence of lots and lots of these MD’s online spouting all kinds of unconventional ideas that US MD’s, at least, do have free speech. How has this escaped your notice?
I do not know what the rules are for MD’s when they are expressing ideas publicly, as opposed to doing a patient consult for which they are paid. My guess is that there are no rules, but that it would be possible for the law or the licensing board to take action against somebody who was spouting godawful harmful nonsense online. In my profession, there are vague guidelines about being a good and honest representative of the professional even in one’s personal life and in communications to the public. Those guidelines are so loose that I would have to be promoting something awful like armed robbery or use of heroin for it to be a violation. And in fact I do think the info I gave, which is that amphetamines might help, but the user risks dependence or addiction, was good.
(4) Even if my statement about amphetamines was questioned, I would be prepared to defend it. It did not say to use amphetamines, I suggested OP consider it, but avoid using them if they had had any problems with drug abuse. When I answer requests for information on this forum I assume OP is a responsible adult unless they sound cracked. I do not think it is wrong to give people like that information about something risky that might be worth the risk, and leave it up to their judgment whether to try what I have told them about. OP sounds intelligent and responsible, so I gave him all the info I have, including info about risks of some approaches. And OP’s weight problem will shorten his life, and meanwhile interfere with quality of life. Under these circumstances, I think it’s reasonable for someone to consider solutions that have some risk.
(5) I also suggested several other things.
Seems to me that all this should have been evident to you.
> Seems to me that all this should have been evident to you.
Im not in favor of the current policy nor advice; but as I understand it, "best practice" hates the old weight lost methods despite them being known to work(granted cigarettes also are known to work, 12 cups of coffee of caffeine with amphetamines pills or whatever the current body builders dose with are just dangerous) and its risky to suggest alternative treatments in light of politically favored ones. See legal troubles of people suggesting ivermectin after the corona vax. While the bone lost drug isnt nearly as pushed as the vax, I would think its politically favored enough and you took a surprising risk here for a hill I wouldn't die on.
> In my profession, there are vague guidelines about being a good and honest representative of the professional even in one’s personal life and in communications to the public. Those guidelines are so loose that I would have to be promoting something awful like armed robbery or use of heroin for it to be a violation.
details can escape me easily but I think this is relivent
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/jordan-peterson-court-challenge-rejection-1.7086681
> life furnishes abundant evidence that MD’s are not compelled to toe the party line regarding drugs
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ivermeticin-arkansas-inmates-covid-19-doctor-eva-madison-fda-warnings/
> How has this escaped your notice?
I see allot of soft power being wielded towards people I agree with; while I can disregard soft power, Im unhinged by most estimates, and its still hard, and Im quite broke, I cant know how much of that is me picking the wrong battle at the wrong time publicly.
Soft power is still power, chilling effects are still censorship, while if you find yourself willing to face any legal danger to state your opinion, good on you, I would've skipped my least favorite class of drugs.
This forum is a very different place from youtube, etc; I did not deliver my suggestion in the role of an expert; and the idea I suggested that is mildly edgy is way way less extreme and politically hot than what got these 2 guys in trouble. The only soft power move being attempted in this situation is yours.
I suspect that he may have rather idiosyncratic nutritional issues, but you may be interested to check out the guy who writes the Experimental Fat Loss blog: https://www.exfatloss.com. His go-to diet involves a small amount of ground beef with some green leaves and tomato sauce, and pretty much all other calories from as much heavy cream as he wants to eat, which seems to allow him to lose weight without needing to exert superhuman willpower.
His leading hypothesis is that the modern diet contains much more polyunsaturated fatty acids (particularly linoleic acid) than a few generations ago, and that that is what is dysregulating many people’s weight.
Two comments.
First, what you're going through is totally normal. Everyone who has lost significant weight has experienced a bounce back. There's lots of theories why, no one knows why for sure, but it happens to everyone. You've only gained back ~33% of what you lost. Regaining 50-60% of your weight would not be unusual. It's not good, you should try to beat the odds, but it's not unusual.
Second, how heavy is your wife and how does she feel about weight loss? Have you discussed it with her?
Look, you need to eat clean and for that, your wife has to be on board. I can almost guarantee you're eating too much processed food. At 335 lbs, your maintenance calories are probably north of 3000/day. To be adding 1.5-2 pounds a month, you gotta be getting near 4000/day.
For reference, if you ate the McDonald's quarter pounder meal with fries and coke for every meal, you'd be at 3150/day. So you gotta be eating something on top of that.
Conversely, a pound of chicken breast is ~700 calories, 2 pounds of broccoli is ~300 calories, a pound of white rice is ~600 calories, and hot sauce has 0 calories. 4 pounds of food for 1600 calories. I know you're not eating that clean because you're not eating 8-10 pounds of physical matter a day. Your stomach ain't built like that; your sphincter ain't built like that.
But she's probably eating what you're eating. And she's probably comfortable with it. And there's no sustainable future where you're eating clean and she's eating your current diet. Saints can't eat white rice with veggies and chicken breast across the table from a pepperoni pizza.
The good news is that, at your weight and caloric intake, you can probably eat really good and still lose weight. You don't need to eat a pound of broccoli a day. You'd almost certainly lose weight on 2500-2800 calories/day and you can fit steak and ice cream and lots of great stuff in that budget. But you gotta get your wife on board. When I think of 4000 calorie days, I think of crushing a sleeve of Oreos. Your vice might be different but whatever it is, you got one, you probably can't have that in the house, and she's gotta be on board with that.
I eat plenty of junk, and I've taken steps to reduce my access to junk. But my challenge is that I want to eat all the time, and I don't have the option of creating the perfect environment for myself in the place where I spend 35%+ of my waking hours. The office is just stocked with crap.
As WoolyAI says, what you are going through is very typical. And it's unfortunate that your office environment is largely out of your control. I sympathize and hope you can find ways to make progress.
Have you worked with a therapist that specializes in distorted eating? They may be able to help you develop strategies to reset your relationship with food. You don't mention it but if you have any anxiety or past trauma that could be contributing to making a food a source of comfort they could help with this also.
Additionally, a coach or trainer could help with accountability and give you someone else who is "in your corner" and rooting for you. It's hard to make big changes like this alone!
I am also not against the surgical or medical interventions you mention. There is no silver bullet unfortunately.
Also, I think you should take a minute to appreciate that even when going through some very stressful periods over the last few years, you have only gained about 35lbs! I am sure it feels like a failure, but thats not atypical for someone of your age and period of life. I am at a similar point in life and gained 15 pounds last year too. You can do this!
I appreciate the kind words.
If you want long-term weight loss, you need long-term change of what you eat, how you eat, and how much you exercise. The fundamentals of the whole thing are "calories in, calories out", that's the easy part. Losing weight is mostly a mind game. It's also a marathon, not a sprint, so pace yourself accordingly.
What to eat:
* Research the caloric density of every single food item and meal you typically consume, repeatedly, to get an intuitive feeling for the values so you can properly compare different and new foods. Don't rely on marketing/packaging either, READ THE LABELS for cold, hard numbers. If you live in some backwards, consumer-hating legislation that doesn't require such labels, research on the internet.
* As far as possible, prepare your own meals (within the family), so you have the best control over the ingredients. Look into meal prepping if you don't have time every day of the week. Make restaurant food or other unlabeled food the exception.
* Half the battle is won in the grocery store. You can't eat what you don't have in the house, and you don't have in the house what you don't buy.
How to eat:
* Make rules about eating, and make them effective, but not so restrictive that you can't realistically follow them most of the time. That might cause frustration and regression into the habits that got you into obesity in the first place. Example: Make a caloric goal for the day/week depending on your age, height, physical activity and other pertinent factors, but don't stress about keeping a food or weight diary.
* Reduce the worst offenders (identified above) to "cheat day" treats, especially drinks (e.g. sugary, alcoholic). Don't stress about breaking the rules unless breaking the rules becomes the new, old norm.
Exercise:
* Anything at all will help, as long as you do it somewhat regularly. Take a walk of whatever duration you're comfortable with, every other day. Do basic gymnastics inside your own home if outside is not an option, like sit-ups or jumping jacks. Anything to get the literal juices flowing. Increase intensity as your motivation and physical condition allows. Don't stress about missing a day or two unless it becomes the new, old norm.
* If you need to reframe exercise as something outside your normal life, get some kind of gadget, like a fitness wristwatch, exercise bike, or gym membership.
Mind games:
* Whatever rules about eating you have, question them. For example: Do you really need breakfast, dinner, lunch each day? Or will two of them suffice? Maybe even only one? Example: I do 24 hour fasting: Eat one meal per day, and nothing else.
* Keep the rules you follow simple. The simpler, the better, as long as they're still effective. This will immediately identify any other calorie intake as self-fraudulent and allows you to think of alternative action it before you break them. Don't stress about still breaking a good rule unless it becomes the new, old norm.
* When a hunger pang happens outside of your meal times, you can ride it out: It will typically disappear within minutes, half an hour at most. Or you can prepare a big jug of low-calorie drink (e.g. water, water with a shot of lemon juice, unsweetened tea) and take a big gulp every time just to shut the stomach up.
* Half the battle is won in the grocery store: In my experience, being steadfast in the store is much easier than at home. You can't eat what you don't have, and you don't have what you don't buy.
* Don't stress too much about your every day weight, or what food or exercise might have which effect on it. Weight yourself every couple days and get a gist of where the trend is going. Slow and steady progress is what you're aiming for. Even just 2 pounds per month will be noticable in the long run and tell you that you're doing good at a sustainable rate.
OMAD can suit some preferences, but it's an overkill prescription. Often times those with a weight problem *don't* only consume 3 square meals, they snack, particularly at night. Consuming food earlier in the day has its metabolic benefits. In and of itself there is zero problem with 3 meals, and it more likely suits family-oriented lifestyle.
I agree, OMAD requires much more flexibility than other rules. If you can pull it off, though, the advantage is that it makes it maximally hard to cheat yourself with snacks. With 3 meals a day, it's much easier to convince yourself that if you snack, you can make it up with the next meal or whatever because you still have caloric budget left. With OMAD, that is never the case, and you will always be aware that any snack outside your one meal is just that, a snack that you can then more consciously decide whether you really want it or not. Since weight loss is mostly a mind game, saving a snack from that mental advantage might well outweigh metabolic advantages from eating 2 or 3 meals.
Basically, I try to optimize for the mind game and keep the metabolic side as simple as possible even at the risk of being slightly sub optimal there.
This is essentially what I was doing when I was losing weight steadily. I've just had an extremely hard time getting back into this routine
Seconding all of this.
From my own experience with losing weight: Nothing beats counting calories.
As for hunger: that's the feeling of calories leaving your body. Embrace it. Your animal brain will tell you that's a bad thing, and that you need to STOP IT NOW! It's lying to, ignore it.
Some low-hanging fruit if it hasn't applied yet: increase ratio of protein and fiber in your diet (more than you would think), consume whole foods, and restrict the amount of sweet and processed foods in the household (if they are around, you *will* eat them, purchase/make some alternatives). Also when counting calories, opt for a modest deficit to avoid tanking metabolism and keep hunger in check. Don't try to rush it, 0.5-1 lb a week is sufficient.
I've known people who've done all the above (bariatric surgery, drugs) and regained weight. Useful as that may be, it doesn't necessarily work, because a) it does not address emotional catalysts, addiction, habit, and b) it's still trivially easy to overconsume junk food after a recovery period.
A bag of chips is 1200 calories, which is as much as 17 apples. The hit of salty/sugary + fatty is moreish, and overrides satiety signals on top of being non-satiating in the first place.
Don't need to go crazy on exercise, but exercise in general correlated with long-term success. There could be several reasons for this, among: a) it protects lean body mass (muscle *and* organs) when losing weight and by extension metabolism, and b) relieves stress and helps regulate blood sugar and hunger
Highly recommend Layne Norton's book Fat Loss Forever
The best diet is the one you can sustain. Most people who diet *do* lose weight, but they gain it back, because they did not sustain it. This is a complete lifestyle change, once you hit maintenance calories you can't go back to consuming what you were before. Whether you gain weight back will not be a question of "if", it will be a question of "how fast".
edit: you may also benefit from seeing a therapist. They can equip you with tools through e.g. CBT to mitigate things like guilt, perspective, emotional eating, etc.
Appreciate all this, will check out the book
On Ozempic: Could it be the dose?
My cousin tried it and felt extremely sick, then discontinued it.
I tried a shot just for curiosity, but took the absolute minimum. One notch on the pen.
That made me _slightly_ nauseous for a couple of days and not hungry for >1 week.
When I spoke to my cousin, she had taken around 4-5 times what I took. So I wouldn't be surprised if more people try too big an initial dose and give up on it.
I ramped up as recommended and got sick from the get go unfortunately
I also responded in the survey that I had a very negative experience with Aya.
First ceremony was perfectly nice, very interesting, very unique and beautiful experience.
Second ceremony... I thought I was experiencing a brain aneurism, I sobered up entirely from the pain, I thought I had >80% chance that I was dying that night. No ambulances were coming. No hallucinations or anything like that, only pain.
It is a really intense feeling to be sure you'll die.
It was relatively brief in terms of aftereffects though - maybe a few days of insane hangover, then an upswing of several weeks of diffuse happiness to make up for it.
I have no experience with psychedelics, but even the best stories of taking Ayahuasca I have heard seem very unpleasant to me. So much vomiting and exhaustion and existential dread. Even if I was guaranteed the most amazing divine experience I am not sure I would do it. Especially when alternatives like mushrooms don't appear to have such unpleasantries.
I’m not asking for contact information here but is it possible to do this without leaving the United States?
Yes, I have acquaintances that are doing it. One gets it through a wealthy, well-connected friend. One took it with an underground psychedelic therapist. The friend who took it found the woman and the setting to be safe and sane.
Thanks. I had some good contacts with the Psychedelic Society of Minnesota but the head of that group isn’t terribly together and there haven’t been any meet ups in over a year.
I’ll figure it out. It wasn’t that damn hard to cultivate my on psilocybin mushrooms.
I no longer need any SSRIs for my long term OCD after several self guided sessions with those. It’s just no longer an issue. Pretty amazing.
It would be no financial hardship to fly to South America to try the ayawaska. I’d want to find a place that keeps the woo bs to a minimum though.
Wow, congratulations on your progress
getting free of OCD. By any chance would you be willing to describe your experience to someone in the field? As you probably know, many professionals are extremely interested in psychedelic experience as a
way of breaking free of painful prisons the mind has generated. I could steer you to a researcher who would be fascinated and not skeptical. And of course you could remain anonymous.
I found out through the friend with the wealthy contacts that in parts of S America ayahuasca is used in conventional churches, and is not thought of as disreputable and dangerous. That seems
promising, tho I expect you would not want to take it at a
church service either. But maybe it’s possible
to buy it legally, and find a local reliable source of advice about dose etc. There may also be ayahuasca retreats for people from the US.
Wait, are you talking about Christian churches, native religions, or something openly syncretistic? Because if those are Christian churches, that's *very* surprising.
Yes, Christian churches. Surprised the person who told me about it, also surprised me. He went to a privately organized ayahuasca retreat, and one of the two retreat leaders was a woman from S America who attended a church that used ayahuasca. My friend actually spoke with her about it. She was a well-educated, friendly person, and explained that what her church did was not uncommon. The doses they used at the church were lower, and very rarely caused the infamous vomiting side effect or made people so high they could not carry on with the prayers etc.
The middle east seems like a difficult to predict place right now. Iran might race for a nuclear weapon, or not. Israel and Saudi might normalize relations, but Saudi wants a Palestinian state on a short timetable and for Israel to do that it needs a Palestinian group willing to give up a claim to Israel proper lands and police against violent Palestinians who do, meanwhile no one has the capability or willingness to get rid of Hamas, and also much of Gaza infrastructure has been leveled but won't be rebuilt without Hamas gone and/or a large civilian displacement, which Jordan/Egypt couldn't risk a regime collapse over to accommodate.
And that's not even mentioning public opinion polarization. Middle East/some of Europe seems to think Gazans survived a genocide and Oct 7th had minimal war crimes, Israel thinks it fought a just war that minimized civilian casualties at tradeoffs to strategic objectives no other country or military in history would have agreed to due to Jewish culture/international pressure. I see virtually no discourse on either side to pressure their politicians to give the other concessions. As in, the people in Israel pushing for a Palestinian state have vanished under the belief it would be eventually used to wage war on Israel proper. And the Arab street seems to think that this war proves Israel needs to be dismantled.
Is there a simple model for how this resolves?
Well in about 1 billion years the earth will be too hot to be habitable so that would be a pretty guaranteed resolution.
An AGI takeover of the planet will lead to the Israel/Palestine dispute being solved much sooner than that.
One additional source of uncertainty is UNRWA being forced out; In the short term this will have very unpredictable effects, but in the long term it might be a major driver for peace (since it removes one major financial incentive palestinians have to keep claiming a right to destroy Israel).
I do not believe that UNRWA is in any danger of being "forced out"; it will continue to operate in Gaza and elsewhere for many years to come. And in the vanishingly unlikely event that Trump does manage to ethnically cleanse Gaza, UNRWA will then be working wherever the Gazans wind up. And it will not be working to integrate them into their new "home"; AIUI their charter specifically prohibits that.
A simple model would be: this continues to be a simmering pot of resentment and violence for the next 10...20 years; beyond that things are just unpredictable in general.
Website where you can use gpt4o and claude 3.5 and deepseek r1 & v3 and gemini 1206 anonymously and free. It puts all their answers side by side. https://dontseek.com
I asked "who are you" and deepseek v3 immediately said "I'm ChatGPT, an AI developed by OpenAI."... is this an issue with deepseek or with this dontseek website?
the model itself does that
Wild but not that surprising! Thanks for this, not sure that I would have sought out deepseek to try at all if it wasn't for this.
Going directly to DeepSeek, I got:
Question: “Who are you?”
Reply: “Greetings! I'm DeepSeek-V3, an artificial intelligence assistant created by DeepSeek. I'm at your service and would be delighted to assist you with any inquiries or tasks you may have.”
I assume that the DeepSeek V3 training data includes ChatGPT output, so your answer was likely in the training data. Perhaps you got a low probability response. Alternatively, it’s possible that DeepSeek is still being refined using reinforcement learning. OpenAI did that for a while after making ChatGPT public.
> is this an issue with deepseek or with this dontseek website?
Deepseek was fine tuned via OpenAI ChatGPT elicitation. Basically they were piggybacking on OpenAI's work to reduce the "mind space" of the Deepseek LLM in intelligent ways by using GPT elicitation to take advantage of all the knowledge / connections / mindspace paring GPT has already done.
They did have some genuine architectural insights on top of that, they weren't solely riding OpenAI's coat-tails, but they were at least piggybacking on a fair amount of their work by doing this.
Right... but answering "ChatGPT" to "who are you" seems like the very first thing you'd want to paper over when, uh, "piggybacking" like this, no? Have other people been getting that sort of behavior when asking deepseek similar questions?
Yeah, I think they just straight up didn't care about hiding it.
And yeah, other people have found the same thing, it's part of what inspired OpenAI to dig into it, and discover that they fine tuned off of them.
This is a pretty neat site (minor quibble that sideways scrolling is pretty bad, took me a while to figure out you have to click on the response boxes). But I'm glad you posted it, I haven't used claude-3.5-sonnet (or possibly any Claude) before and an amazed at how bad it is, probably at the level of Gemini which is just dreadful.
"Pretty neat site" actually means a lot to me, thanks for trying it
Being trad is part of a three-horned trilemma, but I don't know if anyone has ever identified it as such:
1. Follow traditional values! Long-lasting values are likely to be better than new values because they have stood the test of time.
2. Follow new values! If values have changed, it's probably because the old values had been tried and found flawed. Your best shot is to follow the latest trends.
3. Just make up your own mind on a case by case basis. This is the most tempting and yet somehow the dumbest of the three -- instead of relying on the collective wisdom of past or present millions, you're just going to listen to one random jerk with no particular qualifications apart from the fact that he happens to be yourself.
I don't have a good way out of this, but I just wanted to try framing it that way and see what happens.
You’re omitting from 1 one of the problems you put in 3— who’s to say that whoever you’re speaking with is sharing values that have “stood the test of time” and not just something people have done for the past few decades while claiming it’s hundreds of years old? This is a lot more common than you might think in discussions of tradition
3. Isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Most cultures explain and argue for their norms. As such, you can critically evaluate their arguments, and apply the norm when and if the argument is valid.
If you identify as "Trad" and aren't doing 1 then how can you be "Trad"? (putting aside the myriad potential answers to what is tradition/traditional)
Melvin is saying that being trad constitutes occupying prong one of the three-horned trilemma. Thus it is "part of the trilemma".
> Being trad is part of a three-horned trilemma, but I don't know if anyone has ever identified it as such:
One option you didn't articulate:
4. Look at the other people in your social graph who are "winning" by whatever metrics you care about (career, relationship, kids, etc), and then do what they do.
It avoids the arbitrariness of 3, and probably has a dash of 1. And hopefully you're able to discern how alike those people you admire are to you, to understand where you can / should make exceptions in their practices.
At the least, it gives you a direction on "things to try in 3) with a higher probability of success."
Isn't that just displacing the original three options by one degree? In that case, you're hoping that the people around you have already selected and then you're just second-hand choosing 1, 2, or 3. If literally everyone is doing that, then it's probably just 3.
I think it's just straightforward "look at what's working in the world for people like yourself." There is still incremental wisdom and lift you can aggregate from other people's choices and engagement with the same problems. Think of the "rest of the world" as a giant Monte Carlo simulator - if you now select from the "people like you" and have a high enough N to extract signal from the noise, you have actually unearthed truths about what works in the overall environment for people like you.
I don't have any sort of optimal solution, but it seems reasonable to me to mostly follow common practice. We live in a mostly functional society, so the usual way of doing things is mostly ok.
But people occasionally find better ways to do things, either overall, or just something that works better for them. So with that in mind, experiment cautiously with other ways of doing things in areas where common practice seems really dubious or really annoying to you.
This way of doing things means you'll mostly be doing things in a decent way, and allows for the possibility of occasional improvements.
When it comes to values, I don’t see much choice, but number three.
You are missing a crucial point: Being "trad" is a good old flex. For example, a trad wife that makes breakfast cereal from scratch instead of just buying them from the store sends the message that she has all the time in the world for activities that are technically productive but so low-efficiency that they amount to leisure, just without the social stigma of actual leisure. Which in turn means to convey that her husband earns enough money to comfortably support an entire family, which is a distant dream of bygone days for most people.
Point in favor of option 3: You (as in the general "you") probably aren't on the exact median across every relevant character trait, so the averaged wisdom of the masses will never apply without limits and bounds. That "random jerk" might just be the one most qualified to decide which values are best for him in his life situation at his age. Look at where groups of people sharing certain values tend to wind up at different stages of their lives, and judge for yourself if that's where you want to wind up as well.
That being said, following the "latest trends" is almost never a good idea. Let others try out new value combinations first, and see what it gets them.
Can anybody recommend a blog or podcast with a left wing bent? Feel like I've been in a bit of a right wing/liberal/libertarian bubble recently, and all the left wing commentary I've been seeing recently is low effort short form stuff on social media.
I'm looking for something that engages with the best of the arguments against it but still has a confident and clear philosophy. Something that tries to understand the world, not just make you feel depressed at how terrible it is.
Bonus if it's British or global. Obviously America will be a significant topic, but I don't want it to be the only topic.
(Some of you might be of the opinion that I'm asking for an oxymoron because any left-winger that takes seriously the arguments against them will end up not left wing anymore. That's not the topic of discussion of this comment, and I'd be very grateful if you'd keep it to yourself or start a new top level comment to discuss that.)
Thanks!
The Making Sense podcast by Sam Harris. He's a lifelong liberal but is also critical of many aspects of the Democratic party and the identitarian movements.
Thanks. I think he's good, but probably not what I'm after here. In my terms he's a centrist, and he seems to be broadly in line with the other centrist voices I'm exposed to (and trying to diversify from) like Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Scott Alexander etc.
If you're looking for a probable cross section of US right or left, another place to look is probably The Tangle at readtangle.com, run by Isaac Saul. Saul's advertisement is news from 360 degrees; every story gets what the left is saying, and what the right is saying (and then Saul's take). So, look at the sources Saul uses from the left, and look for blogs, and you're there.
Same for the right, obviously.
I think Tangle is worthwhile, but don't think this isn't going to achieve what OP wants.
Tangle isn't valuable b/c they've found high quality sources. Instead, Saul, and his team, are doing significant work on each issue by distilling the key claims/ideas from the sources, organizing them, and trying to create a synthesis. Most of the sources that they cite, on both sides, are bad, if you go to them straight.
I had the impression that Tangle was collating reasonably high quality sources, since the summaries seemed to avoid vituperative language. If I look at the USAID article, for example, I see WaPo, Slate, and Jacobin, which seems tolerable? (Of course, none of those are blogs or podcasts, either.)
Admittedly, I wouldn't just go with the first three sources I see on Tangle; I expect to poll it for a while to get a dozen or so sources, at least. And I don't know how long it would take to find a blog cited there, either.
If the OP defines a good source as something that recognizes the strongest arguments against their position and engages, then none of the underlying Tangle sources qualify.
What Tangle gives in the summaries is the best of what is available in the sources. Sometimes it is still nonsense, because that's all that was available, but usually they're able to avoid the trash. In any case, you get an overly positive view of the sources, if you are only seeing the bits that get through the Tangle screen.
BTW, I'm not claiming the underlying left sources are worse than the ones on the right.
Noah Millman writes good stuff, basically just a better Yglesias in my book:
https://gideons.substack.com/
Amicus really gets into the theory. Like halfway between Philosophy Bear and Zizek.
https://homosum.substack.com/
Gemma Mason writes really great stuff but more from caring than outright lefty viewpoint:
https://foldedpapers.substack.com/
> Like ... Zizek
Harsh but fair
Thanks! I'll check them out. :)
I've always liked Philosophy Bear's blog: https://philosophybear.substack.com which Scott has on his Recommendations list.
Thanks. I've read a bit of his stuff before and didn't quite click with it, but maybe I'll try again.
What is your threshold for left wing? Do center-left libs (like Matthew Yglesias, Josh Barro, the B&R guys) count?
Haha, good question. Always hard to define! I'm afraid I've never heard of Josh Barro or the B&R guys and have only a vague awareness of Matthew Yglesias.
I listen to The Rest is Politics, and I would put both Stewart and Campbell firmly in the centre. (I do like them, but they're not what I'm looking for here.) I used to read Owen Jones, who is maybe in the correct part of the political spectrum for what I'm asking here, but he's not very intellectually curious. Maybe George Monbiot is close to what I'm looking for, but I find him hard to read without getting very despondent. (Although I realise that trying to find someone on the left who doesn't radiate an air of despondency is perhaps asking a bit much with the current state of the world...) Actually, another problem with Monbiot for what I'm asking here is that I don't think there's much overlap between the issues he talks about and the issues everybody else talks about. He does a good job of saying "YOU SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT THIS" but he doesn't do much of "this person recently made xyz argument. Here's why I disagree".
Highly second the recommendation for Yglesias (his substack is Slow Boring, and his podcast is Politix, with a co-host who is more squarely on the left than he is).
The Ezra Klein Show is also a good podcast--not always political, but always interesting, and Ezra Klein is a great interviewer.
Thanks. Just looked up Politix and it seems to be entirely free previews of paid episodes. Can one get a good experience by just regularly listening to the previews or is it just a hook to get you to pay?
I haven’t paid either, I only listen to the free previews and I find them a good experience. They’re pretty generous, generally between 30-40ish min long (which as far as I’m concerned effectively makes it a standalone full length free podcast, if on the shorter side). They don’t leave on egregious cliffhangers imo but do pique your interest and if I had more disposable income I might pay for the whole thing. I do think, if you’re going to interact with Yglesias in only one way, it’s worth prioritizing his Substack over the podcast though.
And Noah Smith
Can we recommend ourselves? I've got a small blog that fits those criteria, it's leftist and tries to engage with more mainstream arguments against left-economics, and has a focus on Britain. e.g. here's a post responding to free-market attacks on the viability of central planning: https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/economic-calculation-in-the-rts-commonwealth
In general, I feel there's a lack good left-wing content online, we don't really have anything that compares to the libertarian blog-o-sphere. Basically the only one I come back to regularly is Paul Cockshott's Youtube channel but that's not the kind of thing it sounds like you're looking for.
You certainly can. I'll check out that post and maybe some of your others afterwards. Thanks. :)
Another example: the Cass review sounds pretty damning, and maybe there's no evidence that puberty blockers are an effective treatment for teenagers with gender dysphoria. Should it be impossible for trans kids to access this kind of treatment? Seems harsh to trans kids, but then again if the treatment isn't effective...
(This is more of a scientific question than a political one, but I'm just a little bit worried, because the science podcast that first got me questioning my views on this has a clear liberal/right bias so I worry they might've missed something important on this topic as they have on other topics I know more about.)
Please note that concluding there is a lack of evidence for effectiveness is not the same thing as concluding the treatment isn't effective.
Puberty blockers can be used to delay puberty. There is a hypothesis (reasonable, in my humble, non-medical opinion) that delaying puberty for gender dysphoric minors might be beneficial, since that way they can reach age of consent without developing characteristics they don't want to, fitting better with their identity, etc.
All of that is fine! Great even!
The problem is that there is no good evidence for this actually working, medical institutions pretend there is and activists brand anyone presenting objections as a bigot, with all the political fallout involved, involving and causing a plethora of problems I'd rather not talk about without another cup of coffee in me, point is, if you read the review itself (which, if you haven't and are interested, you totally can, it's public and very layman-readable: https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CassReview_Final.pdf) you will note that it doesn't really recommend a ban on puberty blockers, rather is advises caution and, most importantly, tying them to research in order to actually find out whether this works or not. The UK is expected to start clinical trials this year: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/07/delayed-puberty-blocker-clinical-trial-to-start-next-year-in-england
One framing of the puberty blockers for kids/teens debate that I found interesting was a departure from speaking in terms of gender dysphoria entirely and instead a reframing around consent, and in particular, where we place the onus of consent.
Why is it that kids/teens would be incapable of consenting to the *prevention* of major changes happening to their bodies, and we don't care when they *don't* consent to the actual major changes happening to their bodies (puberty)?
This point and others can be found in this (quite radical and distinctively left) article by Andrea Long Chu, something I'm sharing not as something I necessarily endorse but as a thought provoking counter-viewpoint: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trans-rights-biological-sex-gender-judith-butler.html
I am not an expert on this, but my impression was:
- Puberty blockers are meant to prevent young trans kids from developing adult characteristics of the opposite gender (eg beards).
- They do that.
- This is in no sense a "treatment", because it doesn't make them stop being gender dysphoric, and it doesn't even make them feel better than they felt before (since they also didn't have a beard before).
- But they don't get characteristics they don't want, which would make them worse off.
- I don't know if there are studies comparing them to a control group of trans people who were forced to develop preferred-gender-discongruent features against their will, or whether the difference was clinically meaningful. I wouldn't be too surprised if it wasn't, because clinically meaningful is a high bar. If someone forced me to only eat gruel every day, this would make me worse off, but I'm not sure if it would show up as a statistically significant change on a depression inventory or suicide rate. I think there is some room to trust common sense here.
- Realistically beards are a bad example, it's more like "typically masculine face shape" which can't be reversed. But puberty blockers can be reversed (you just stop taking them). It seems pretty cruel to make teens who feel sure they want to look feminine in the future irreversibly develop masculine features because "oh well, you're only 16 now, can't make your own medical decisions", especially when you could just give them the meds and, if they change their minds later, let them go off the meds.
- My impression is conservatives try to obfuscate this by saying that the meds have side effects, but all meds have side effects and the side effects of these wouldn't make anyone think twice if it weren't being used as a political football.
- For the level of cruel this is, I would imagine irreversibly giving a straight cis man breasts or something - it's going to screw up his ability to look normal for the rest of his life.
"But puberty blockers can be reversed (you just stop taking them)."
Does reversing puberty blockers result in a person going through a normal puberty with normal sexual/reproductive development at whatever age they stop taking the blockers?
I'm pretty sure that's not possible for social reasons alone: puberty involves a lot of awkward behavior that's only really tolerated when it comes from people in the normal age range for puberty. But I'm skeptical that even the purely physiological effects are entirely reversible.
Yes. The development of my libido was delayed by the exact amount of time I was taking the blockers, which was very interesting to see.
He's talking about the biological effects of puberty, not the social effects. I'm not sure you really want to argue that the social parts of conventional puberty are beneficial to everyone who goes through them.
And I'm *asking* about the biological effects. I already have a pretty good idea what the social effects are.
My understanding of the side effects includes potential sterilization of the patient. It may be that this is an acceptable side effect, especially in extreme cases, but that's exactly the kind of side effect that we may wish to prevent children from accepting.
Have I heard incorrectly that this may be one of the side effects?
There are also really obvious side effects that can hardly be called side effects - a man with a much more feminine face and who is short and thin who was on puberty blockers for most of their teenage years before changing their mind is going to deal with that choice forever. This of course gets into the conversation about rates for desistance and so forth, which is more muddy than clean. But even a low rate of desistance with a low rate of permanent changes is non-zero enough to consider whether children are capable of making informed decisions on the topic.
What nonzero rate of desistance would you say is low enough to be acceptable?
A libertarian approach (which I'm sympathetic to but no longer accept at face value) would say something like "doesn't matter, let the people decide." But for pretty much all medical care we set regulations and limitations on what people can do, especially for children. I don't know what rate I would choose, but if there is any level of desistance at all it's hard to argue that the government can't or shouldn't consider the matter and protectively refuse to allow some people to get the procedures or take the medication.
"[A]ll meds have side effects and the side effects of these wouldn't make anyone think twice if it weren't being used as a political football."
I have to question this, because the first country to ban or restrict these treatments was Sweden, specifically on the basis of the side effects, and it doesn't seem to have been a political football there.
I am pretty Liberal (maybe center left). It seems to me that, as you say, this is a scientific (or medical) issue. It also seems clear that at the moment we are prescribing too much of this to too many people. Eventually, though, the government should have nothing to do with this, just as they should have nothing to do with any other interaction you have with your personal doctor.
It is unclear, at this moment in time what the government could do, other than making some statements that the medical field needs to figure this out, and possibly throwing some money at the problem. However, part of the problem is that some on the Right believe that Trans people (like Gay people) are mythological and thus any concessions contrary to that are problematic.
"However, part of the problem is that some on the Right believe that Trans people (like Gay people) are mythological"
Yeah they're pretending to be something they're not, IMO.
It would be good if the medical scientific part of this equation could be separated from the social political side. I say that realizing I have no clue how to do that myself. Practically speaking the really difficult problem seems to be social accommodation; what prison do you go to, what level of sport are you allowed to compete in, and to a much lesser extent, which bathroom are you allowed to use? I do think these problems are solvable without demonizing transgender people or declaring a fatwa on medical interventions that makes sense.
Very much agreed. Since it's political, and many of the medical organizations have said things that can only be recognized as overtly political, it's now impossible to separate at least some of the medical literature from propaganda on behalf of social causes.
I don't like that the conservatives have taken the route of doing the same thing in reverse, but I don't see an alternative based on how the official medical organs made a point of taking political stances.
It’s difficult to believe anything you hear today; the noise level is very high. On one side it’s “THEY are burning America to the ground.” On the other is “WE are just tidying up.”
The whole trans issue is such a great hobby horse. It affects rather few people, and it gets everyone hot and bothered. IMO it was the intersection with sport that made it such a calamity.
I think all of them should be solved by the organization involved and not by the government. If 2 girls want to play D&D with the guy down the street who dresses funny, then they should be able to. If a sports organization thinks it's women's teams should consist solely of biological women (probably the sensible choice most of the time), then that should be their decision to make. Same with bathrooms.
For example, I've recently been coming around to the far-right narrative on Rotherham: that the race/culture of the perpetrators might be relevant (not just Chinese robber fallacy), and that anti-racism in the police might have been a significant contributing factor to refusing to investigate properly. But I've not read or heard anybody argue against this! It seems most people on the left take it as self evidently false and racist and not worth engaging with.
I suspect people on the left know this is one they won't win on. There are a lot of misconceptions about the Pakistani child rape scandal.
First. It was not one incident, in one town ten years ago. It started in the sixties, affected over 50 towns and goes on to this day.
Second. It was not broken like a 'regular' scandal by willing papers. The few journalists interested found it exceptionally difficult to get published and it got a hundred-fold less media attention than BLM or islamophobia.
Third: There were enquiries, but they did not result in any penalties for the authorities who allowed the rape and torture to occur on their watch and the recommendations of the enquiries have not been enacted, so many people believe the enquiries were just attempts to white wash.
Fourth: Most of the victims never got the help or compensation they needed. Many of the dual nationality rapists got no or minimum sentences. None of them got deported. None of the police, social workers, council leaders who ignored or in some cases actively colluded with the rapists got called out or punished. So many people believe justice was not done.
Fifth: There was clearly a systemic issue. This was not rape by random pedos. It was rape by a population imported against the will of the English people, who on the whole cost more in welfare than they contribute, and have a culture and attitude which is very hostile to the indigenous English. It appears it was not just one or two psychos but the majority of the Pakistani population covered up for and sided with the rapists and a substantial minority of Pakistani men, perhaps one in ten were involved in the rapes. That is a systemic problem that requires a systemic enquiry and solution - that never happened.
The Pakistani community were some of the most staunch supporters of the left. The left in England are known to be strongly in favour of immigrants and Muslims and hate and despise the English working class.
No wonder they don't want want to debate the issue. Elon is irrelevant except he drew attention to the ongoing and never resolved scandal.
The relevant immigration statutes (especially for incidents starting 60 years ago) seem quite clear that this was not an “imported” minority, and suggests that there was, in fact, no legal grounds for deporting the perpetrators.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_immigration_to_the_United_Kingdom, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_abode_in_the_United_Kingdom )
The facts described in rest of your fourth point constitute, of course, a tragedy.
> The left in England are known to be strongly in favour of immigrants and Muslims and hate and despise the English working class.
Source? Was this also true 60 years ago, or even 25?
> it got a hundred-fold less media attention than BLM or islamophobia.
I’m assuming you are being hyperbolic here. Again, it made most of the British press’s news headings for a while.
> the recommendations of the enquiries have not been enacted
Unless I’m mistaken, the UK was quite conservative at the time while Labor was in limbo. Maybe this one is not entirely the left’s fault?
> who on the whole cost more in welfare than they contribute,
Proof?
> and have a culture and attitude which is very hostile to the indigenous English.
If they have to justify their existence to any indigenous English who comes and asks them, that must get annoying pretty fast. Especially if the knee-jerk reaction is “a brown-skinned guy, I’m sure he’s raping little girls when he can get away with it”.
Re Elon: please read Chastity’s link. He only cared about the facts to the extent that they let him attack Starmer.
I am sure you know that wikipedia is not to be trusted on issues very close to the hearts of the liberal elites: immigration is certainly one of these. Various British elites wanted mass immigration for various reasons, but the English people have clearly and consistently been against it. As have all people everywhere. I challenge you to find one country where the working class poor welcomed in mass numbers of foreigners making them minorities in their own communities. I agree it is legally difficult to deport foreign rapists, torturers and criminals. That is because the law is an ass and has been subverted by left elitists who never saw a minority they didn't profess to love.
I am not actually being hyperbolic - Matt Goodwin (partisan I know) - ran the stats and there was literally 40 to 100 times more mentions of BLM and George Floyd (non-Uk issues) than the repeated rape and torture of thousands of little English girls.
Failure to enact recommendations are the failure of both left and right. The right have also been woefully and criminally inadequate in their response but they were not the one's importing the Pakistanis (Tony Blair's government opening up to mass immigration to "rub the right's face in diversity"). Pakistani community were monolithic left-voting before they started to vote for their own pro-Hamas representatives and the left everywhere love immigrants and muslims to a much greater extent than the right do. So not equally at fault. Both bad but left much worse.
For many years, it was claimed that low-skilled immigrants, as most Pakistanis are, are somehow a benefit to the country. Recent good economic studies from Denmark and the Netherlands (google them) clearly show that low-skilled immigrants from poor countries cost far more than they contribute when imported to rich countries with generous welfare states.
Pakistanis don't have to justify their existence in their Pakistan (where most retain citizenship, return regularly, and bring in spouses from). They are uninvited and unwelcome guests in England and yes for sure they should be able to justify their presence here and if they cannot they should go home. I would say the same about English people in Pakistan or Thailand.
Most people on the left view, I believe, Rotherham as a non-story. Not in the sense that it didn’t happen, or that it wasn’t outrageous – but in the sense that it was propelled in a foreign country’s news cycle by a certain powerful individual with twelve figures of net worth who cared first about attacking Starmer.
To the British, the story happened a decade ago, was reported in high-profile newspapers (the Times broke it, I think), and investigated by the government. The British press or commentary of that time might be worth looking into.
Thanks. Just to be clear, when you say "Rotherham" (as in, as a story or non-story), you mean not only the grooming and rapes themselves, but also the cover-up by the police? (I'm ashamed to admit that I am British myself and had very little awareness of the issue ten years ago. I probably vaguely assumed something along the lines of Chinese Robbers was going on. Maybe my own left-wing bias made me not want to take the story seriously. Or maybe I was just distracted by my university studies.)
I definitely agree that it's kind of stupid that when Musk says an issue should be on the agenda we all rush to discuss the issue, but at the same time, I'd like it if *somebody* on the left would discuss it, because otherwise their silence just plays into the hands of the far right, who say that the left just doesn't want to talk about it because it doesn't fit their narrative.
> I'd like it if *somebody* on the left would discuss it,
Scott himself discussed it back in 2014 on Slate Star Codex.
I think Chastity’s answer is worth a read, but yes, by Rotherham I also mean the police’s actions – which, again, wasn’t news in the early 2010s.
Something I’m surprised I didn’t see discussed is that even if the police trusts you, it seems simply hard to prosecute (let alone convict) anyone for rape.
We have (with excellent reason) high standards to prove anyone is guilty – but how would you prove to a court of law, more convincingly than a lawyer whose job is to deny it, that a rape even occurred?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1hv243b/effortpost_elon_musk_amplified_false_claims_about/
Saw this post discussing the issue a bit back, seemed to deal with the specific claims fairly well.
Overall, as somebody who has read a lot on rape, the whole rightoid narrative seems tough to believe on its face. Rape is an issue that cops/prosecutors ordinarily struggle to deal with (leaves relatively little evidence); children rarely come forward to authorities on their own, lacking the understanding of the seriousness of what's happening; authorities routinely just ignore first line reporting in defiance of regulations or guidance because the supposed perpetrator seems like a nice guy; and everybody really, routinely, regularly seems to think that if they just sweep serial offenders under the rug then they'll look better and it'll all go away (rather than what will actually happen, which is that it will come back in several years' time and they will look 1000x worse for having been told and done nothing).
There's no need to appeal to some special wokeism gone wrong explanation. The timeline also doesn't really work since they were getting reports in 2001 that they ignored (right after 9/11 being a notoriously Woke time, especially for Muslims), and the first trials were in 2010.
There are multiple cases of people explicitly saying "I was told to cover this up for fear that people would do a racism if the truth got out": https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/04/grooming-gangs-scandal-cover-up-oldham-telford-rotherham/
Could you be more specific in the quotes you are referring to? This is quite a long article and most of the quotes are from various after-action reports, not the police themselves.
One of the few quotes clearly from an officer was “x didn’t want [the] town to become the child abuse capital of the north. They didn’t want riots.” Which sounds much more "I don't want to deal with the flak of this rape getting out, so I will make the flak 100x worse by pushing it off for years/decades" and not "oh we can't be racist to the Pakistanis by mentioning some of them are rapists."
There were multiple examples of grooming gangs after Rotherham. On the other hand there’s less evidence of cover ups. The government is in a tough position, any inquiry will open old wounds, the abscence of one will allow those wounds to fester.
I'm noticing a drastic increase in calls for political violence on social media. Sometimes when I open Facebook it literally shows me "memes" that are just an image of a gun pointed at Elon Musk with a call to action to murder him. I'm not sure how much of this sentiment is some kind of bubble I'm in vs being a very widespread belief. But it is worrying me that there could be a continued escalation in political violence over what happened last year. Am I overreacting due to online overexposure to these topics or is it really getting that bad?
I mean, depending on the specifics, I believe that is criminal (Google criminal speech). I imagine, explicit calls for violence will be cracked down on in time.
At the moment, the left is just a bit of mess, and I think a lot of people don't understand that there are laws that apply to them, e.g., you saw celebrities saying they wish Trump had been shot (and saying that is a federal offense in America).
I imagine there will be a few test cases / warnings, and everything will chill out.
Saying one wishes Trump had been shot is not a federal offense in America.
It -is- likely to get the attention of the Secret Service. (I recall a teenage girl who wrote a LiveJournal entry some time in 2004 where she said she wished George Bush would die, and got real live agents knocking on her parents' door and a short interview in which they verified that this girl wasn't some adult posing as a girl and passing a secret go code to a crack assassin. The agents were probably a bit bored - this was probably the fiftieth one they had to process that term - but they had to follow up on every tip. They probably can't afford to do that to every social media entry now, but if it's a celebrity, it'll likely get priority.)
Obviously, if the individual responds like someone who would act on that wish, one could expect some maybe-jail time, but the more likely response is a stern lecture. The US is not North Korea.
I agree that: the courts and secret service certainly exercise discretion, and the words I actually quoted likely wouldn't be a federal crime.
I do believe: a lot of speech people engage in pretty freely (particularly the left at the moment) does meet the historic standard of criminal.
Quoting directly from Wikipedia:
Convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 871 have been sustained for declaring that "President Wilson ought to be killed. It is a wonder some one has not done it already. If I had an opportunity, I would do it myself";[15] and for declaring that "Wilson is a wooden-headed son of a bitch. I wish Wilson was in hell, and if I had the power I would put him there."[16] In a later era, a conviction was sustained for displaying posters urging passersby to "hang [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt".[17]
Quoting from that same page:
Because the offense consists of pure speech, the courts have issued rulings attempting to balance the government's interest in protecting the president with free speech rights under the First Amendment. According to the book Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures, "Hundreds of celebrity howlers threaten the president of the United States every year, sometimes because they disagree with his policies, but more often just because he is the president."
It should be clear (with roughly equal provenance) that there exists a difference between just saying one wishes the President were dead and whatever it is that results in sentences such as 90 days in jail (Palmer, a mechEng who blamed FDR for losing his $1M fortune), two to six years in prison (a group of Nazi sympathizers who threatened FDR), or deportation (Buddhi, an Indian immigrant who called for George Bush's assassination and his wife Laura's rape and murder), or 27 months in prison (Miller, a self-proclaimed terrorist who called for Obama's assassination in a Craigslist post). That same article cites a political cartoon that threatened Bush, got a Secret Service visit, but no charges; various Facebook groups that toy with assassination and earn hundreds of followers; and other incidents that result in no charges, or conviction overturned on appeal.
Obviously, threatening a President is not a great life choice, and a pretty good way to get the government's attention. But it's also not an automatic conviction.
compared to 2023 or 2020?
Election years are special, and this year seemed calm enough.
Well, other than two attempted assassinations.
I believe the fail assassination attempts drained the left of its energy to an absurd degree; not only was the reality of violence brought to mind(which makes people more right wing, and masculine) unlike a random black owned business reacting to a blm riot, trump has *plenty* of power to shame
We absolutely got lucky, but this could've happened at any time in the past 8 years, trumps been called hitler the whole time
I think it's becoming more normalized recently, although I think it's still kind very much from a certain bubble. I do expect escalation of political violence within the next few years. It feels baked into society. I don't think the loudest people with the most reach or biggest platform will actually do any violence, but as David Hines noted on Twitter, the pattern is for the dumb marks who don't understand it's all kayfabe to actually try.
I do kind of wonder if we'll see a rise in the next few years of leftists getting entrapped by the FBI into being part of plans to commit violence, getting their turns on the Sit-n-Spin.
Banned for this comment, which makes a broad (and false, and offensive) generalization about a political group.
How do you know it's false?
“ all right wing people just use their rhetorical and intellectual imaginings to cover up for the fact that they really want to exterminate everyone who doesn’t agree with them, or look like them.”
How do you know it’s false?
I mean that's a bad example in this context as that's not really a common stereotype. Also it's too absolutist. If the statement was "Republicans are uneducated racists" I wouldn't know it was false. Directionally it's probably true, particularly these days. Most stereotypes are accurate, after all. That doesn't mean they apply to all members of the relevant group. The problem with stereotypes isn't with their inaccuracy, it's applying them in bad faith to individuals on scant evidence.
I just think it's a weak ban. Liberals are, in a relative sense, the party of feminine sensibilities and women generally dislike direct conflict - that's why the Left taboos everything and disinvites speakers rather than defeating them in debate. Anomie's comment was directionally correct (I in fact agree with him) and isn't in the top 10% on the "needlessly provocative" scale IMO. Giving him a week to think about it would be more reasonable in my view. I suspect the indefinite ban comes from a place of "that hit a little too close to home" rather than "this is beyond the pale." But whatever, it's kinda fun to see Scott lose his temper every once in a while. (Not saying that's definitely what happened, it's just how it reads to me.)
Well, when you explain it that way, it all makes perfect sense.
>I mean that's a bad example in this context as that's not really a common stereotype. Also it's too absolutist
I think "leftists are spineless cowards" (or words to that effect) could be considered equal in absolutism to my proposal, and I can only pray that they are both uncommon. They certainly are in my world. A fairer comparison to the statement you offered up would be, "Leftists are all conceited assholes." which is a proposition I can take somewhat seriously. In fact I could apply it to a lot of people of any persuasion who let their politics subsume their reason.
Among other proofs, people kept coming after Kyle Rittenhouse even after he'd shot the first one.
Because liberals and leftists have been on the front lines fighting wars for centuries. And it is my understanding that today, the US military is only slightly more conservative than the general public. Which means there are massive numbers of liberals serving serving in our military.
Speaking only for myself, as an American liberal I stand ready to sacrifice my life for what I believe in. Thinking that your opponent is less sincere in their stated positions than your side is is a well known cognitive bias, with well known catastrophic outcomes ("Once we start (arresting/killing/bombing) them they will fold right away. We can't lose!")
Luigi Mangione is a pretty clear counter example. There were also plenty of people on the left that put their lives on the line during the protests a few years ago, many were arrested, injured, or killed. Going back further, the Uni-Bomber was left wing. Kent State. And quite a few people lost their lives fighting for Civil Rights.
Now will the current leadership of the political left put their lives on the line? Democrats didn't even work through the weekend to fight back against Musk, so I can't imagine any of them risking arrest let alone death.
However, since the civil rights and anti-vietnam war movements ended, the country has mostly been moving left. So the left has been able to achieve their goals without becoming militant. That part of the movement has atrophied.
But the Unabomber spent many pages bashing liberals and their psychology in his Manifesto. His primitivist ideology, which by his own admission would have resulted in the deaths of billions of humans, sought something no liberal would want.
Mangione is a chud, did you not see the reactions to this being discovered? Any number of liberal girls going "Oh nooooo, he's a Rogan viewer!"
Fine. He's a child who can plan and execute a successful assassination. The left has an awful lot of highly-eductated "children" old enough to legally purchase firearms. And it has a lot of thought leaders who are quite skilled at pointing these children in whatever direction suits their purpose.
This seems like it could be a problem if your plans depend on the left offering only non-violent resistance.
Not child, "chud". This is a piece of pejorative leftist internet slang for right-wing persons, particularly young men, and derives from an old urban legend of C.H.U.D.s in the New York sewer system – Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.
What do you mean? The administration wants some violent resistance. How else will we get our Reichstag fire?
> Liberals don't have the spine to sacrifice their life for their beliefs.
Wow
I mean, Donald Trump got elected promising revenge on his allies lol. He released the Jan 6 people who called for hanging Mike Pence. Musk is basically invading government offices at this point to steal data. Trump is threatening war, he's threatening to invade allies, and threatening to put people in Gitmo (read: a camp that concentrates people). I'm sure you disagree heavily with me in either some of these characterizations or with the idea of all of them being that bad, but I feel like the cat's out of the bag already, and it wasn't necessarily JUST the fault of people more to the left of the political spectrum.
It isn't so far-fetched that people who agree with what I said would think and say what you said.
>Musk is basically invading government offices at this point to steal data
Yeah when the other team wins an election they get to run the government.
When you "run the government" you generally don't lock employees out of their offices and prevent members of congress from entering the building.
You may agree with Musk/Trump's end goals, but why would the accomplish them in this manner if they thought what they were doing was legal?
Uh, how long since the last government shutdown? People get locked out of buildings all the time.
> but why would the accomplish them in this manner if they thought what they were doing was legal?
Why do police raid drug houses? The reason they're doing it like this is because the bureaucracy is out of hand and needs to be cut off at the heels. You can't kill bureaucracy by going through bureaucratic channels. This is the only way to do it.
During a government shut down, the doors are locked because there isn't money to pay for them to be open. Right now the doors are shut to prevent anyone from stopping Musk from doing crimes.
Where is the evidence that these agencies aren't doing anything other than what they have been order to do by law? Are you that brain rotted that you believe this lie that the bureaucracy is a criminal conspiracy?
I agree with the objection the other commenter pointed out, which is that you can't make an office called "I Do What I Want" just because you were elected. Musk should not have any authority to do what he is doing right now, and he's getting sued for it in fact.
The problem really just is that even if he is in the wrong, we are in a territory where, even if Musk lost the lawsuit and was given jail time, then
1) the executive, i.e. the one that would have to dole out the punishment wouldn't do anything to stop Musk, bc it's led by Trump
2) Congress wouldn't impeach the president for not following the court's order to impeach Trump, bc they are beholden to Trump
America is undergoing a new Watergate every 2 days since the Trump administration started lol.
The other commenter doesn't know what he's talking about, as I pointed out to him.
You point #1 and #2 are just part of the system of checks and balances, in this case checks on the power of the judiciary.
If Trump has a certain authority, say to regulate and control the bureaucracy, and he chose to share that authority with another individual, is there something illegal with that? I get that we could hound someone on form - did they sign the appropriate paperwork, etc. If Musk didn't have a security clearance and there was classified information, that could be an issue.
But nobody doubts that Trump asked him to do this and supports what he's doing. Why can't Trump exercise his own authority through a delegate?
If you think Trump has far too much power I would strongly agree. But this is also the case when it was Biden, and Obama, and Bush. We only seem to see that when the other team takes steps we don't think they should have taken. When someone does what we want, then we seem to think that the exercise of power was acceptable or even just.
My go-to example has been DACA, which was not at all permitted or envisioned by the relevant laws but still upheld in court as an appropriate exercise of executive authority. If permitting long term illegal immigrants to get work papers and other documentation and reside in the US is a proper use of the executive authority to deport illegal immigrants, then it's hard to argue that much Trump could authorize *isn't* within his authority.
They get to appoint people to run the actual agencies of the government, subject to Senate signoff. And those people have to be vetted for security clearances for obvious reasons.
Musk has not been appointed to anything except a made-up "DOGE" which does not exist legally or administratively; he's not been approved by the Senate nor does he have security clearance; etc. That's why for instance their "early retirement offer" scam email went out to federal staffers without any government letterhead or authorizing personnel code or anything -- it has no more legal enforceability than those old emails from the "Nigerian Finance Minister".
"Musk has not been appointed to anything except a made-up "DOGE" which does not exist legally or administratively; he's not been approved by the Senate nor does he have security clearance; etc."
DOGE exists within the executive office of the President, most of the positions of which do not require confirmation by the Senate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Executive_Office_of_the_President_of_the_United_States&oldid=1273620904
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Department_of_Government_Efficiency&oldid=1274016569
Right. It's just a group of presidential advisors having no more legal or regulatory authority than a deputy White House researcher or butler. DOGE can't fire anybody or change actually anything in the government. That's why their "early retirement offer" scam email went out to federal staffers without any government letterhead or authorizing personnel code or anything -- it has no more legal enforceability than those old emails from the "Nigerian Finance Minister". Federal agency employees have belatedly realized this and are now redirecting DOGE emails to their junk folders according to many commenters at reddit/r/fednews.
You're mistaken. That was the original plan announced, not what was carried out. It is now a formal part of the government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_DOGE_Service
I suspect part of it is a majority of social media platforms just declining to moderate anymore. Meta and X both made a big deal about ceasing to moderate, Reddit's powermoderater cliques support political violence against right wing figures while TikTok at best doesn't oppose sowing discord in the west. You don't need a particularly large amount of people to keep posting calls to political violence and get away with it to cause large culture shifts on social media.
In other news, some of my libbed up friend group have joined me in the gun club; given current events.
These are all the libest libs to ever lib, 45-65 year old upper middle class vaguely protestant anglo retired teachers and small business owners who think the type of person who owns guns is a couple IQ points short of room temperature and is best kept several hundred miles away from them in one of the shitty states with the other dumb animals. (They still think this, but it's different for them and also me because we aren't dumb animals, you see.)
Interestingly, the thing that tipped them over was a combo of ICE raiding churches and Musk doing coup shit, and the general observed reaction of conservatives around them.
If this is representative: holly shit lol. There are white women who have decided to become armed! White liberals! Teachers with pensions! Not socialists, not communists getting ready to fight against Amerikkka! That is some wild shit. Even last year, this would have been totally inconceivable.
This is probably not good for the fabric of society or whatever, but I think it's very funny and indicative of what we have to look forward to in the coming years (of lead [poisoning]).
Being willing to own a gun when cheap, legal and relatively trivial and the wrong person in power is hardly enough capability of violence to keep yourself free; by all means great the left should be less annoying about guns for maybe upto a decade, but this is hardly ground breaking events; tell me when they start wilderness camping without phones to train up their knife fight skills like the militias
Knife fighting is cosplay stuff IMO. It's fun, but if you've ever done it seriously you'll quickly realise that there is no situation where you stab and don't get stabbed unless you have control of their hands, which is hard when they have a knife in those hands.
Wilderness camping without phones is also cosplay; and this is coming form a dude that walks off into the jungle or the forest or the dessert a couple times a year for the past 20 years, and who refused to get a cell phone until 2019.
Here are the things that matter with guns in order: practicing at the range until the noise isn't scary,
standing in front of a mirror and practicing your draw to ready position over and over and over until it is good enough,
Practicing moving with your gun out while maintaining a good sight picture or awareness,
and finally: actually getting good at hitting things.
Everything else is just something people do to feel all manly and shit. If it isn't boring, it isn't helping.
> Knife fighting is cosplay stuff IMO. It's fun, but if you've ever done it seriously you'll quickly realise that there is no situation where you stab and don't get stabbed unless you have control of their hands, which is hard when they have a knife in those hands.
I wasnt implying fighting fair, Im fuzzy on actual militias but I would focus on time to kill of *attacking* an unarmed man(prehaphs from a hidden position), fighting several unarmed men, fighting people armed with holstered pistol
> Wilderness camping without phones is also cosplay; and this is coming form a dude that walks off into the jungle or the forest or the dessert a couple times a year for the past 20 years, and who refused to get a cell phone until 2019.
This directly contradicts the last two war books ive read that promotes guerrilla warfare; also my rather strong belief that 99.9% of people cant make a computer that is safe from the cia spying, if theres a civil war in america the majority of players should destroy their phones and computers; while this isnt true for blessed cia factions in tech illiterate society's; it will be be true if the true 1st world turns violent.
I mean, if you plan to mount a campaign of insurgency, sure.
That isn't what is gonna happen in the US if shit goes down though.
It will be a Troubles Bomb in me Potato situation, not a Red Dawn American Mujahadeen scenario.
The important skills there will be hiding from surveillance in populated areas, not hiding from patrols in the woods.
"a Troubles Bomb in me Potato situation"
Ha ha!
America isnt the uk, theres allot of wilderness left; the left will have tiny amount of land but the jets while the right will have all the land and grumpa shotgun (and the 80% of the miltery that desserts when the glowies do something undeniable, and wildly unethical), not the clean boarder of north vs south, but instead rural vs city, traveling around road blocks or damage will like be walking a mile around and hoping you dont run into anyone
Just here to chime in on how knife skills are the dark horse of self-defense. Pretty easy learning curve, a few hours of basic training get you from a bumbling fool likely to cut himself to a decent level of skill. And nobody bats an eye at a 3-inch knife in your pocket, looks totally innocent.
Agree. As long as you acknowledge that when you fight someone else with knife, there are usually two losers: He who dies now, and he who dies 15 minutes later.
Sure. Same with a gun? As in, in a shootout? And yet so many people advise guns for self-defense (which I'm not disagreeing with).
But what I'm getting at is a difference between "me with empty hands" and "me with a knife that I know how to get out of my pocket and open up because I practiced it 1000 times". When an angry 250 lb man knocks me down and gets on top, sure I can attempt a mount escape, but, you know... this ain't a BJJ mat. Being able to stab him in the kidney may just make a difference between me having my face bashed in and... not having my face bashed in.
Yeah, shootouts are statistically much safer than knife fights.
You can occasionally live through a couple 9mm holes punched through your meats much more readily than 10++ stab wounds; because once you pop you just don't stop vis. getting stabbed.
Also, Gun is the top of the escalation ladder you can have hidden on your person. If you pull a knife on somebody and they have a gun, you have given them incentive to pop you.
That said, I carry a knife for tool reasons, don't carry a gun, and count on my general wideness and incredibly thick neck to make people think twice.
If I lived in the south or the midwest I might think about car carrying, but in SoCal the gun is gonna make you more likely to get shot by the cops while not deterring any crime in particular, because all the personal crime you run into around here is burglars accidentally robbing a house with somebody in it.
I’d rather get shot than stabbed for sure. And definitely, pulling the knife out as a deterrent is a big no-no. I’ve had two knife instructors; both taught to only get the knife out at the moment you have to use it, and one was very specific about doing it as surreptitiously as possible (he had us practice taking the knife out the pocket). It’s a deadly escalation, the last resort. For example, if they want money, just give it. If you are being kidnapped, survival chances drop to <20%, so that’s when the knife comes out…
Hope I never have to use this training.
If you happen to be under 150 lbs and second place upper body strength and reach (e.g. most women vs. most men), a knife is going to be a much less sure defense than a gun.
A gun also has the large benefit of being enough to scare a man into not even trying.
No argument here. But a gun is much larger than a knife and is not as easy to alway have around. I’m by no means suggesting a knife to be a replacement for a gun, just a small weapon that’s easy to learn to use and always have around, and allowing an extra edge vs nothing.
Your idea of liberals is that they are like little mechanical toys: Wind them up and they start spouting woke shit and squealing
with horror if somebody says they own a gun. Come on! There aren’t any groups like that, and thinking that people in your outgroup are that simply summarized is just dumb. In fact it’s evidence that YOU are behaving like a wind up toy.
I probably count as a liberal. My gun attitudes are not the same as the ones you think are typical I. I have a couple acquaintances that absolutely love hunting, and are skillful at it, and I respect that as a hobby as valid as any of mine. And my mother, who had a career in the navy, was an expert shot with a pistol
I myself have never shot a gun, and never felt any interest in learning to do it as a hobby. I have not considered getting one for self-protection, because I think my risk of being savagely attacked is low — I live in a suburb where there is little crime. The risk of being robbed is probably not terribly low, but I would not want to risk a violent encounter with the robbers to prevent the robbery. What if they had guns too?
But if something in my life changed so that I thought the risk of a violent attack on my person was not low, I would certainly consider getting a gun and
learning to use it.
However, it seem to me now that we are far from the kind of situation where the benefit of guns justifies the risk of being in an armed encounter. In my libtard state the worst thing we are likely to have the way things are now is a protest of some Trump policy, with protest turning into a conflict between factions or between one faction and the police. It is easy to avoid ending up in that situation. And I think it’s a terrible idea for people to come armed to protests. All it does is allow people to weaponize their anger. (Of course, If you think the opposing side is a bunch of wind-up toys then sure, guns are fine. Shoot the hell outta them and watch the springs and gears fly. We should all be on the watch for the wind-up toy illusion in ourselves and other people).
I'm interested that your definition of "the libbest libs to ever lib" includes small business owners.
THere is nothing more liberal than extracting value from someone else's labor. It is possibly the most liberal thing of all!
There are tons of progressive small business owners and self-employed people. I'm one.
I am curious to know how they have become your friends because you seem to have a lot of contempt for them.
Only to the extent that I have contempt for anyone who is a conservative or a liberal. I can't hold that against them too bad, their whole lives have been built on a structure that itself was built on the air.
It's hard to get over that, realizing that everything you've ever done was based on a lie.
I’m pretty liberal and I wouldn’t give the time of day to anyone having such awful ideas about gun owners.
Do these libs actually articulate these hateful ideas - gun owner are stupid and so on - to you or are you making some assumptions based on your own construct of how they might be thinking?
If they were actually talking like this I’d advise finding new friends.
They would be complete assholes in my book.
No, they think gun owners are stupid, because most of the gun owners they've met are mostly stupid.
The reason they went to me, a leftist, for gun advice instead of their con Gun nut friends is because their con gun nut friends a couple IQ points short of a happy meal.
You have to be a couple layers down in the hobby before the majority of people you meet aren't alarmingly incompetent to eg have a drivers licence, let alone a gun.
I grew up within walking distance of a National Forest. All my male friends owned guns. None of them were idiots.
That's because they are from a place where the cultural milieu doesn't attract idiots to guns.
When I lived in the jungle everybody had a gun to scare off birds and big cats, so guns weren't associated with dummies. Now I live within a 40 minute drive of a major US city. In this environment, owning guns is a better predictor of IQ than educational attainment (citation needed).
It's like owning a big truck in Houston vs. Amarillo: one is an accessory for soft hand idiot cosplay, the other is a tool used for productive labor.
So they mocked the 'to protect myself from a tyrannical government' crowd for decades, but now they have seen the light and agree with the sentiment? Maybe a new era of cohesion and brotherhood is upon us!
We are all united in thinking the other side must die!
Truly utopia is upon us.
And perhaps the best part of it is the complete lack of self-awareness on their part, eh?
I think this is actually true self-awareness.
before, they were clinging to the liberal delusion that conservatives where somehow confused people, with morals and values just like them. That if you made the right argument or something, they could be convinced.
They have come to the realization that their enemies are anti-humanists who specifically want them to suffer, and who support of a given policy is completely disconnected from what it is or what it does.
This is them starting to shed false consciousness and the liberal tendency to ascribe mistake theory to everybody instead of just to people that share their priors.
Is there a rationalist term for people who shed one false consciousness in favor of another?
"And from the chrysalis emerged...the caterpillar"
(alt text shameless stolen from https://achewood.com/2006/08/14/title.html)
"(They still think this, but it's different for them and also me because we aren't dumb animals, you see.)"
Clearly, they have dizzying intellects.
No, I think this is legitimate.
If you spend any time in firearms spaces that are not membership only, you'll realize that the majority of gun owners are dumb animals that probably shouldn't it'd be allowed outside without supervision.
I exaggerate for comedic effect, but on the other hand I have been muzzle swept and flagged and had dudes turn around with their AR at hip level finger on the trigger pointed right at me enough times that I refuse to go to any sort of range that isn't membership only at this point.
Hmm. This might be geography dependent. I spent most of my gun-club time in central Texas, and I don't remember *anyone* ever doing any of that. And it was pretty clear that anyone who did would have gotten either called out, mocked, or sternly asked to leave, depending on context.
Same in multiple Boy Scout events I'd been at. Even older Scouts would reprimand newer ones.
I'm sorry that happened to you, though, and I totally don't blame you for your refusal.
Does anyone know of any rationalist-adjacent people or events in Hong Kong?
I know someone who is currently working as a quant at a hedge fund, and is interested in learning more about investing. He is a math whiz, and is especially interested in developing algorithms that give traders an edge, and curious about AI applications to this problem. He does not do much of that sort of thing at work, where his bosses make the big decisions, and where it is unwise to display one’s personal interests. He came here from another country in his 20’s to get an advanced degree, and does not know many other people in his field. What blogs can he read, what discussion forums join, to meet smart people with similar interests and learn more?
Ricki Heicklen is a former Jane Street trader that runs bootcamps that aim to teach trading to people with quant backgrounds, seems like the kind of thing your friend is looking for.
Note: I have no references for this other than a (friendly) podcast interview she did, so I'd suggest to dig in deeper.
A couple of good resources:
Subscribe to https://bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levine
And Cullen Roche is a must: https://disciplinefunds.com/research/
Thank you! He is most interested in statistical methods and adapting AI to the task of predicting & identifying strategies or particular stocks to buy and sell. He really is a math super-whiz — came out on top of various math hierarchies in a large
country with strong competition in that field. I think he is looking for people who are speculating about ways to do this, inventing and trying new approaches , etc. He reads a lot of the technical stuff coming out about new approaches to training AI. In short, he is much more interested in the technical challenge of predicting the market than in becoming a rich invester. He can already make a lot of money as a quant, and is not terribly interested in wealth.
So this sounds like he’s focused on the tools. I strongly believe that if one wants to develop a durable edge in the chosen field, developing a strong intuitional foundation is really useful. There are counterexamples, of course, Simmons’s Renaissance in a famous one, but it’s a bit like using Bill Gates to justify dropping out of college.
You are right. He is focused on the tools. He is one of those people who gets fascinated by intellectual challenges and puzzles, and he *craves* to put all his attention on the puzzles and the tools. His interest in the practical goal of making money via personal investments is small relative to his craving. I think he could get as fascinated by the problem of predicting the weather as he could the one of predicting the stock market, even though the former big chaotic phenom holds no promise for making money. But I agree with you that knowing more facts and practicalities is valuable. In fact it is valuable even if all you really care about is the giant math puzzle, because some of the factoids will give you ideas about new approaches and new models for formulating the problem.
I understand hhow his head is working because I, too, tend to hyperfocus on puzzles. For instance, I have been working on ways to get photoshop to select the delicate fringe of frizz around someone's very messy hair, leaving background out of the selection. Photoshop has a bunch of filters and things that are built for making photos more attractive -- but they are all systematic transformations of the image, and there are clever ways to combine them to do things like select something that's very hard to select. So I get bogged down in trying ideas using clever combos of the filters I'm most comfortable with. If I force myself to play with some new filters until I get fluent with them, I have new ideas about ways to do the selecting. Yet I resist doing the new learning. (Meanwhile, I figured out long ago that the best solution to keeping the fringe is just to give up on making Photoshop actually select it separate from the background. Just let Photoshop not even try to capture the fringe, and paint it in later with a special brush.)
Are you prone to getting stuck that way?
" In fact it is valuable even if all you really care about is the giant math puzzle, because some of the factoids will give you ideas about new approaches and new models for formulating the problem."
- It's even more than that - deep understanding of the fundamentals of the puzzle both opens new approaches and - crucially - prevents one from going down senseless tangents and blind alleys, especially when the models get so complicated that it's impossible to really follow what they are doing.
"Are you prone to getting stuck that way?"
- Rarely. I like poking around but I tend to quickly recognize when I'm out of depth and wasting time. When I got serious about recording music a few years back, I had to learn new tools, and initially I thought, I'm an engineer, I'll figure it out! Well, I quickly discovered that no, everything I do sounds like crap and no amount of tinkering with plugins and filters seem to help - off to the manual and instructional videos.
BTW I'm working with Topaz labs AI package to restore some old photos, Holy-Mother-of-God this thing is powerful!
I'm having a hard time with "he's a quant at a hedge fund but doesn't want his bosses to know that he's interested in investing and especially in algorithms that would give traders an edge".
Are you maybe trying to pick a fight? Something about how the person I described is either dumb or unethical?
He is not, but I may have described his agenda in a way that left some loopholes through which somebody can implement a gotcha. If that’s whattup
I don’t want to play.
Friend, buddy, pal, I know we're all a little on edge here, but I think you're assuming too much bad faith here.
It is, undoubtedly, very odd for someone working in a hedge fund to ask complete strangers (via proxy) for info on trading algorithms. This is usually propietary knowledge, which he would do much better trying to get from his workplace than from here. I don't believe Don P. was ascribing nefarious purposes to either you or your friend, just understandably expressing confusion over the situation.
I have pulled back from discussing this with you and Don P. because you both seem like you are doing something that seems pointless to me: Reading through comments til you find somebody whom you think is probably wrong or dumb in some clearcut way. Even if I were seeking a way for someone I know to swap info about trading algorithms with other hedge fund quants, is there much point in wading in to say you disapprove? There are lots of extrememly interesting posts to follow up on on this thread. Why select one that has little interesting intellectual meat to it? At best, you will end up having an argument with me about whether my acquaintance is doing a bad thing or not. It is a hyperspecific issue, not of general interest, and pretty sure to involve an acrimonious exchange.
And there are a couple easy ways to just glide on past my post: One is to think I’m asking for ways to help somebody do something unethical, but just dismiss the matter. My post can hardly be your first exposure to the fact that people do underhanded things to make money. Another way to glide past is to assume that I did not explain the situation clearly, and if I had it would not sound like my acquaintance was being unethical and/or things I’d said that did not not make sense to you would make sense. It actually seems to me that you are actively avoiding thinking of ways where the situation I described could make sense, and not involve unethical swapping of algorithms with other quants. For instance, your summary of what I what I said my friend wanted to do is inaccurate. You say he wanted “to ask complete strangers (via proxy) for info on trading algorithms. “I said he was “interested in developing algorithms that give traders an edge.” See the difference? He wants to develop his own algorithms, using novel methods involving AI. He knows there must be others interested in this. Probably some of them are not quants and not even in finance. It’s an interesting problem in and of itself, plus if you solve it you’ll get rich.
I think you and Dan P did not glide past mostly because my post explains things loosely enough that it was easy to bust me and/or my acquaintance for dumbness or moral wrongness. In the service of that you misremembered at least one bit of my post, and did not make much effort to fill in the gaps I left with explanations that were not hard to come up with.
I swear I’m honestly confused but if you consider that hostile I understand why you don’t care to continue.
Like, understanding and/or believing it. I see the words "where it is unwise to display his personal interests", but he doesn't want his bosses to know that he's interested in exactly the kind of the thing they care about? Those aren't personal interests! That's the business!
Yeah, see my longer and more considered reply above. Please
feel free to conclude that both me and the person I described are flaming assholes.
This one is tough because most of the stuff on the web that deals with investing is really crap. There is more than one trading platform out there available to subscribe to that offer to bring these kinds of tools to you as an investor. One of these platforms might be a place he’d prefer to work at than where he is now. He might want to check out Tradier brokerage. There are a few front ends that you can subscribe to that sound kind of like what he’s talking about. Delving more deeply into them might be of interest to your client. I looked into this because about a year ago I decided I wanted to start trading stock options as kind of a hobby.
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I have spent the last five years of my life bemoaning the fact that I don't have a circle of friends who are the sort of people who just want to work on cool ideas. I have tons of ideas. I want to be around other people who have tons of ideas. And I want to be around people who want to help each other actually do something about all these ideas.
Yuvraj, anyone who signs up: I want to know where I go to bump into people like this. They are not drinking at my local pub.
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According to Wired - https://archive.is/VPG8k - events at USAID have effectively shut down PEPFAR, a program credited with saving 25 million lives in 20 years, and one that costs under $7b per year to run.
This is about $5,600 per life saved, about on par with estimates of the Against Malaria Foundation's cost per life saved.
$7b here, $7b there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
Good. Sending money to third world countries is bad when EA does it and it's bad when PEPFAR does it. Those are 25 million people that shouldn't still exist and I'm sure that the world is worse off with them in it. Transferring resources from high-productivity cultures to low-productivity cultures is a deadweight loss of value to the world and we should absolutely stop wasting US tax dollars in mindless feel-good Quixotic quests. Invest in what you want more of. I don't want more sub-Saharan Africans and neither should you.
Wow. The hard-core, "I wish all black people would die" racists are really coming out of their rat holes. They must be feeling safe now, I wonder what changed.
I don't have anything against black people, I'm just a consequentialist and don't want first world dollars going to support cultures that can't support themselves. But hey, it's much easier for you to characterize me as racist so enjoy. This is standard progressive reasoning: you'll accuse your opponents of being evil but never acknowledge that they might have a point. If you did that then you might have to engage in self-reflection; self-righteous certainty is so much more fun.
That's a textbook motte-and-baily your pulling here. In your previous comment you wrote:
> Those are 25 million people that shouldn't still exist and I'm sure that the world is worse off with them in it. […] I don't want more sub-Saharan Africans and neither should you.
This is much stronger than and qualitatively different from what you wrote afterwards:
> I'm just a consequentialist and don't want first world dollars going to support cultures that can't support themselves.
Well... I appreciate your honesty and intellectual consistency, at least.
Sounds like a cause that should have no trouble finding EAs to fund it voluntarily in the future, then. No reason for it to be funded through theft and debt.
PEPFAR costs 0.1% of federal outlays. Even if I believed you that people would step in to an equal degree - and I don't - how long would that take to be as effective? A year? Two? What if a million people die as a result of a slow transition? I'm not sure I can imagine being such a Libertarian that I'd risk a million lives to save 0.1% of the federal budget, or about $21 per year for me personally. (Obviously a bad trade, since it implies I'd kill everyone in the US to save a third of expenditures!)
But let's say I can be that much of a Libertarian. What even do I think is the purpose of government? Preventing violence? Preventing theft? Isn't an HIV infection essentially both? It reduces your lifespan and/or forces you to purchase medication for your entire life. And each subsequent infection has some chance of infecting somebody else. Reducing it down as close to zero as possible is definitely a worthy goal under any philosophy other than nihilism.
I don't think you really understand because you can't seem to drop your globalist priors even when trying to get into the headspace of non-globalists. You keep saying people people people as if those against foreign aid assume, as you do, that every life is and should be equivalent in the eyes of the government of the United States of America. People against foreign aid believe that the American government should not be valuing non-American lives the same or similarly to American lives
I will agree that that's a challenge, although I think you need to make a stronger assertion here - for example, I might be perfectly comfortable thinking the US government should value the lives of its citizens more, but still think that PEPFAR represents great value. E.g. if I think the federal government should be willing to spend $50k to save a US citizen but only $10k to save a non-US citizen. (This is not really my perspective, but it would be a valid alternative perspective under which I could still be pro-PEPFAR).
I also think that PEPFAR promotes US interests in other ways:
- It greatly boosts our image around the world.
- It demonstrates the value of allying with us versus opposing us.
- Ultimately, eliminating or dramatically reducing HIV infections worldwide is possible, which in turn reduces the burden of HIV within the US, but also reduces the emergence of novel pathogens, which can evolve more easily in immunocompromised hosts.
I want to clarify that I wasn't, in that response, taking any position on whether or not the US government should fund PEPFAR. I was simply noting that people who are against it likely do not assume that the US government should be valuing non-American lives equally to American lives. Some may even believe that the US government should place no value at all whatsoever on non-American lives - and in my opinion that's a perfectly ethical belief to have and to vote based on
I mean, I don't expect anybody to get argued out of it, but I think very few ethical systems suggest it's valid to consider human life to have literally no value.
>"Preventing violence? Preventing theft? Isn't an HIV infection essentially both?"
Not all physical harm is violence. Not all loss of property is theft. This sort of thing will not generally be perceived as being in good faith by those from whose beliefs you're trying to extrapolate.
Okay, but why is one a valid target of government policy and not another? Merely noting that there are distinctions isn't really relevant.
From a libertarian perspective, one violates your negative rights, the other does not. Here’s an example.
Suppose that I build a house and don’t get fire insurance for it (and I have no mortgage). Does the government have an obligation to pay for me to install sprinklers and other fire prevention measures to prevent loss of property if I fire occurs? Does the government have an obligation to provide policing to prevent loss of property if arson occurs?
You might not agree with the perspective, but it is the predominant rule in the US of “no” to the former and “yes” to the latter. The explanation is that the government has much more responsibility to prevent others from damaging you than to mitigate other harms.
I follow what you're saying, but I don't think it fully resolves the issue. I am arguing that protecting somebody from disease has some characteristics that are similar to protecting them from violence, more so than, say, protecting them from the weather - the distribution isn't random, you can (sometimes) defeat diseases completely, and you can act to contain them geographically. Also you can realistically prevent people from getting diseases in advance (sometimes) just as you can realistically prevent physical violence (sometimes), not just deal with the effects afterwards. And you can (sometimes) reduce the global burden of disease without forcing every individual to do something, like in your install-sprinklers example.
I was only pointing out that you're failing the ideological Turing test here.
Okay, so you think I'm not doing a good job simulating a Libertarian, exactly as I suggested, but you don't actually have an explanation for how my point is invalid...?
I can see a few issues there, mostly that there is no continuity.
There simply isn’t enough EA money to run a program on a remotely close scale, so the program is basically going to crash, burn and start anew, most of its institutional knowledge lost.
With, of course, a significantly worse performance profile, because instead of relying on mostly guaranteed funding from a main source, they’re going to have to expand more effort to get far less money.
The Salvation Army and Red Cross combined are about the same size as PEPFAR at $7b. I don't see anything here that says only EAs are capable of contributing, and the existing charity infrastructure is far larger.
So the Salvation Army and Red Cross should abandon their existing missions and completely restructure and re-tool instead of PEPFAR continuing as it is? Is that what you're suggesting as a viable alternative?
No, just that the existing charity infrastructure is much larger than the amounts we're talking about and the US federal government doesn't have to be the ones running it. In fact, the US could donate the $7b to private organizations earmarked for their goals and that would be fine.
Libertarians can complain about taxes as soon as the state stops protecting the original theft, that being property rights.
If we're really going to reduce "government" to theft, then all "private" property is theft as well, because it was coerced out of other people through always-asymmetric contracts enabled and then enforced by the violence-power of GOVERNMENT.
Remove governments and you'll still have contracts and "norms" (if not written laws) and... yes... violence being used to enforce them. Then we can live in a mafioso utopia like 1800's Sicily.
Libertarianism is a tried-and-true system. After William the Conqueror took over England, he did the most libertarian thing ever: "this is LITERALLY ALL my land". (because who's gonna say it isn't?)
He then EFFECTIVE ALTRUISTICALLY gave 20% of it to an organization focused on the saving of souls.
Do you think that if Trump understood that a fellow GOP president initiated that program, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief#History ) he'd relent on shutting it down? I wonder if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush could persuade him?
...No? Why do you think Trump gives a crap about establishment Republicans?
Many Thanks! Well, at least they nominally share the same party.
It seems a pity. More generally, I _do_ sympathize with Trump's attempt to dig out as much of the Woke crap from the federal government as possible, and I understand that a lot of stuff was _hidden_ - e.g. DEI positions and projects hastily renamed at the last minute by the Biden administration. Still, Trump seems to be trimming using a chainsaw. :-(
This seems incorrect. Trump has been quite consistent about taking a chainsaw to international aid long before using the woke/DEI angle. Here are the first older links I found in my first Google search.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/10/politics/trump-foreign-aid-loan-senate-package/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42557818
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-propose-sweeping-cuts-foreign-aid-safety-net-programs-latest-n1133211
Many Thanks! Trump's 2024 opposition to the aid+border-issues bill looked mostly like politicing in one of its more loathsome forms. If I understood correctly, Trump didn't want to see the southern border successfully plugged on Biden's watch (albeit there are disputes about how helpful the measures in the bill would have been), and the linkage to foreign aid makes disentangling what he was trying to do and what his effect was a mess. The 2018 link looks like it was about putting pressure on Pakistan, which at least seems more like a targeted action than like a chainsaw.
Frankly, I think of foreign aid as a subcategory of defense spending, sometimes helping allies like Ukraine and Israel defend against attacks, sometimes tying more neutral nations in grants-with-strings. And it is relatively cheap as defense spending goes, so targeting it for cuts seems foolish.
I'm more concerned about e.g. the freezes and gag orders at NIH and NSF (and CDC??). Yeah, there is a problem with activism hidden as science, but, if I understand correctly, the Trump administration froze _everything_. It would be a pity to e.g. lose the discovery of the next transistor because some of the projects are really Woke activism hidden as if they were science, and ferreting the activist ones out is going to be difficult and lengthy.
> Frankly, I think of foreign aid as a subcategory of defense spending, sometimes helping allies like Ukraine and Israel defend against attacks, sometimes tying more neutral nations in grants-with-strings.
Don’t forget the power of simple goodwill. “They helped us/help other people in our time of need, now they’re asking for a small favor, sure!”
But this is, as far as I can tell, one of the arguments for foreign aid.
> And it is relatively cheap as defense spending goes, so targeting it for cuts seems foolish.
It’s a bit under 1% of the federal budget, so compared to DoD funding (I think 15-ish times bigger), it’s indeed small.
> I'm more concerned about e.g. the freezes and gag orders at NIH and NSF (and CDC??). Yeah, there is a problem with activism hidden as science, but, if I understand correctly, the Trump administration froze _everything_. It would be a pity to e.g. lose the discovery of the next transistor because some of the projects are really Woke activism hidden as if they were science, and ferreting the activist ones out is going to be difficult and lengthy.
The whole thing is a complete mess and it’s absolutely not clear where, and if, the dust settled. What seems certain is that, read literally, the executive order could ban the agencies from giving money that had already granted (something clearly illegal) so the agencies felt stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Given how broad the wording was, it could also have affected a large number of proposals which had the misfortune of containing a (then basically legally required) pro forma DEI paragraph.
(Or anything involving a “nongovernmental organization” or “woke gender ideology” – for instance, among other legal questions implied, would one of the grantee changing their pronouns invalidate the entire grant if the topic is, say, a completely normal investigation in quantum chemistry? What if the bureaucrat does not think the prosecution will be in good faith?)
The chaos also made clear to potential visiting researchers that the environment in the US was not as stable as they had been led to believe (surprisingly few developed countries end up pulling money they had formally pledged to appropriate). The chilling effect is likely real, although hard to quantify.
What I’ve read is that to avoid much of the uncertainty, the executive order could simply have targeted spending which had not been attributed yet (future grant proposals, to be submitted in the following months…). Very similar results, but a lot less sweating for everyone involved.
I’ve worked in retail management for twenty years - I got a BS in Nutrition in ‘18 & a Masters in Global Management in ‘20 - I still work retail - I’d like to translate my experience and degree into a better career … does anyone have any thoughts on HOW?
Do you work in retail that is related to Nutrition? What was the reason for getting the Masters degree?
I used to, yes.
GNC for 19 years and figured people listened to me 30x a day about nutrition, may as well become a dietician.
Decided to get my Masters in Business Management right after to try and steer my management career somewhere more lucrative.
Just hasn’t worked out that way.
Network and try to find a junior position at a large company, work your way up. Generally make yourself useful.
Google entry level roles in corporate offices, and work backwards.
I think this is good advice but could be more useful with a bit of specificity.
Step 0 of networking is to think long and hard about What you're good at, What you want to do, and What is valuable enough that someone would pay you to do it. Hopefully the intersection of this Venn diagram is large enough to include a few different types of professions and business models, casting a wide net at this stage is fine.
Step 1 is find someone 2 degrees of separation from you that is working in (one of) your dream jobs. LinkedIn is actually perfect for this. Then you ask your 1st degree contact to introduce you to this person with something like 'Hi there Bob, it's Angela, long time long time. Anywho, Mihow (CCed) is just getting started in Industry X and looking for some advice from an expert, naturally I thought of Bob! Hope you can spare 15m to talk about how you made it to the top of Industry X, I think you'll enjoy chatting with them.' Having a warm introduction is massively more likely to get you a *short* conversation than cold emailing/LinkedIn messaging, you can try that as well but only if you really have no intermediates willing to speak on your behalf
To be clear, the point of step 1 is not to ask for a job, that's crass and it won't work anyway. The point is to *learn* to actually be curious and interested and ask follow up questions of the successful person taking 15m out of their very busy day or precious free time to talk to you. If you go in with the expectation of getting a job out of that first convo, you'll be disappointed and also Bob will smell it out and probably be annoyed at Angela for referring such a needy person to them. It is helpful to prepare some questions ahead of time, doing some research helps demonstrate real interest.
Step 1.5 is revise step 0 as you go, taking what you learned from 1:1 conversations with experienced professionals and updating your previously simple and naïve assumptions. This will happen a lot, especially around the circle of What is valuable. This is fine, and natural, even if it means you have to give up your dream of being a professional lepidopterist or whatever.
Step 2, scour company websites for new job postings that fit your Venn Diagram. Ideally posted within the last week, beyond a month they've likely already been filled or maybe were never a real job in the first place (because the position was already promised to an internal candidate etc.). Once you find a job DO NOT APPLY YET. This is critical. Every decent job posting gets about 3000 barely qualified troglodytes who search replace the company name into their cover letter and hit send. You will not stand out of the pack. Instead, go back to one of the people you had an informational interview with over the last couple months, and ask if they could refer you. This instantly puts your resume, if not at the top of the stack, at least within the first 30 applications or so that might actually get read by a hiring manager.
Step 3. There is no step 3, only luck and diligent preparation (you need to be both, annoyingly). Expect this to take several months to a year depending on how lucky/hard working you are. But hopefully in the end it'll be worth it. Good luck!
This is very informative, thank you.
You're welcome! FWIW I followed basically these steps when I was laid off in October '23 and wound up starting a new job in my preferred field by April '24. I've had many friends and colleagues take this path and also found new jobs +/- a few months. I can't promise it will work for you but nothing ventured nothing gained!
Does anyone have experience with a BPD partner? Mine had floated the idea that she had it earlier in the relationship. I experienced being in the blast radius of drug abuse, shrieking panic attacks, suicide attempts, admitted lying, "walking on eggshells" all the time, and physical assaults. This experience had crippled my agency for years with her. I was just trying to get through the days but now that it's blown up, with some distance it's been uncanny how consistent descriptions of BPD align with my experience. I've read Scott's https://lorienpsych.com/2021/01/16/borderline/ and r/BPDLovedOnes , but I'm unsure how echo-chambery the subreddit is.
Partner, no. Mother, yes. I was raised by a single drug addicted, alcoholic mother with fairly severe BPD. She was enventually forced into medication by the courts after being charged with attempted murder.
A lot of the kids I grew up with were physically abused by their parents. Compared to them I felt like I was better off. My mother was so wrapped up in her own head that I suffered much more neglect than actual abuse, though she would lash out in anger and hit us sometimes, she never really layed down any of the extended beatings that my friends received from their parents. One of my childhood friends was actually beaten to death by his father, another murdered his father in revenge for past abuse. I spent most of my childhood (mostly successfully) avoiding her.
I didn't really understand how abnormal it was until I got to college and was surrounded by well adjusted peers who had active, engaged parents. I thought they were all just liars and fakes; it took me the better part of a year to realize they were 'normal' people from stable homes.
Wow I can't imagine having to deal with that as a child, it's hard enough being close when you're someone much more mature and physically stronger
To be honest my childhood was kind of a blast at the time. I was extremely unsupervised. I ran the streets with my delinquent friends, never really needed to check in with anyone. I would sometimes not even sleep at home for 2-3 nights in a row an no one noticed or really cared all that much. I never really had to worry about things that my peers were afraid of like getting grounded or really ever punished at all. I was basically feeding myself, doing my own laundry, forging my mother's signature on school forms etc by about 11 years old. I didn't get in trouble at school and my grades were pretty good. I knew that it was important that I not do anything that would make the other adults in my life like teachers etc try to get in contact with my mother. The worst thing I could to was be any sort of bother or inconvenience for her. She very much had a "no news is good news" view of her children.
I had a lot of fun at the time. It was only as an adult that I realized there are actually benefits to receiving the 'parenting' that I missed. As an adult I have some unfortunate personality characteristics; I not really capable of trusting other people and have missed out on some good opportunities b/c I couldn't trust the people offering them to me. I'm largely immune to both praise and criticism, and external motivations generally. If I don't want to do something its very difficult to motivate myself to do it. I'm almost entirely emotionally non-demonstrative; I feel things internally but my face and body language almost never change in response, the one exception being a sort of wry but detached amusement. I try to make a point to display positive emotions around people I care about like my wife, but it will always be at least in part a deliberate, artifical thing. I'm severly lacking in empathy for other people generally. My wife says I come off as 'predatory' sometimes, like the way a cat looks at a bird. This has made it hard to have friends. One of my past employees said once that I reminded them of the antogonist from No Country for Old Men. That probably should have been disturbing, but as mentioned I'm largely immune to criticism.
I never learned health dietary habits and started using drugs pretty young. I did manage to get clean as an adult and finish college on my own. I'm a very, very good liar and manipulator or other people generally. I can also cold read people very well, and quickly. I'm lucky I was able to find a career where these traits are useful (anti-fraud and identity theft). Things could have easily gone hard in the other direction.
I don't have experience with a partner, but with a family member, my uncle's ex-wife (my former aunt). She was beautiful and charismatic and believed she could heal AIDS with her prayers (and had followers who believed that, too). She did some very destructive things, including systematically, ritualistically coaching their six year old son into vividly "remembering" being molested by my uncle *and* my grandmother. I know the knee-jerk response is "believe all victims" and "where there's smoke..." but it was not part of a pattern of behavior and multiple state evaluators investigated and concluded the molestation didn't happen.
What did happen was that she was formally diagnosed with BPD.
Oh, and she once called my uncle in the middle of the night and screamingly wept that she was sorry, she made everything up. Then the next day she went right back into her campaign. My cousin, her primary disciple in her cult of personality, changed his name, basically went into hiding, and hasn't seen my uncle in at least 15 years. We had to hire a private investigator to find him to distribute his inheritance when my grandmother died.
It's supposedly best practice to resist the urge to ever diagnose someone if you aren't a doctor and they aren't your patient, but don't let anyone talk you out of diagnosing your ex if labeling her with "unmanageable mental illness" is what keeps you from going back to her or getting into a relationship with someone like her.
And this is outside of the scope of your question, but I'm a little worried for you! Are you seeing anyone yourself, to treat whatever it is that made you feel compatible with this woman?
This no doubt says more about me than you, but the tale of your in-law set me so off kilter that a thought entered my mind to wonder if you'd made the whole thing up in a fit of BPD.
(Point being: I read it, and thank you for sharing it.)
Off kilter because it's a horrible story? Or because I went into too much personal detail? Something else?
And FWIW I sincerely chuckled over the notion of being BPD myself; if I have a pathology, it's BPD's direct opposite. A BPD person doesn't have a strong internal sense of self and thus uses relationships with other people to define themselves, whereas I have such a present and robust sense of self that I'm not *quite* sure that other people *really* exist quite exactly as much as I do. I mean, I know they do, but...*do* they?
Is it solopsitic in here, or is that just me?
Off kilter mostly because I've never personally witnessed a case as extreme as your in-law's. (Your poor cousin! And uncle! And...)
So I deflected it with a little humor.
Your pathology sounds like what I'd call egoist, but I don't think that's an official term. It also sounds like an extreme form of stoicism, approximately. At least, you sound like you'd react to external judgements about the same as a stoic would.
If someone is a horrible person to be around, and being around them is voluntary, does it matter what specific name a psychiatrist might assign to that particular variety of horribleness?
I think people here are naturally pretty curious. I'm trying to understand the why's. Pouring everything you've got into another person for years only to be constantly yo-yo'ed in and out of misery to abandonment; it takes such a toll that you need reassurance it was just a special case that you likely won't run into in the future. Explanation helps.
Oh man.
I know I gently suggested finding a professional to explore why you were able to be in a relationship with your partner, but now I'm going to be less gentle.
Please read Scott's essay, Different Worlds: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/02/different-worlds/
With love and alarm,: I think there's great danger in assuming your partner was a one-off meteorite, unexpectedly and unavoidably striking you from the random void of space.
[Insert obligatory prelude about not blaming the victim here], but ultimately, if you want to avoid being with another person like your ex, I think you're going to have to understand with *why* you were with your ex. Ultimately, you were attracted to something about her, and something about you attracted her to you, and there was something about you that didn't let you feel enough contempt and disgust to immediately leave when the love-bombing stopped and the unambiguously unacceptable behavior began.
I'm really afraid that if you don't figure that "something" out, you'll end up picking someone who initially seems to be nothing like your ex but eventually starts coincidentally being a lot like your ex.
Ty for your very thoughtful responses. For the first time in my life I was able to muster attending a therapist the day after a traumatic night where she was caught lying, possibly cheating, stormed off and moved out. I saw the therapist once more but for the first time in my life, I also can't afford it, due to struggling with the relationship.
I am worried about my personality causing myself to be in a situation like this, that's why the other response gave me hope. I've only been in two relationships, both years long, but unfortunately the first one was diagnosed bipolar including the mother. I already thought that was the one off, but BPD or not, the extremely negative behavior isn't normal at all.
It sounds like I need to really dig in with a psychologist why these two were my only partners, lest I end up jumping into the same thing. I think there's some aspect of waiting until I receive immediately intense love in the beginning, making me feel on top of the world and that I hold the cards in the relationship (reassuring me the other person loves me so much more they're gonna stay), but then as the relationship spirals I'm hoping the whole time to to able to turn it around and get to that amazing infatuation they first experienced for me. It's possible I have something like codependency as I haven't been single much, going from 3.5 year rocky relationship to a miserably depressing 5 months single to 8 year rocky relationship with no casual partners.
But an even sadder reason is that I just don't have anything else. I started 2019 on the continual upswing in every way, feeling like my best years were ahead of me. Since then, I've faced calamity after calamity. By the end of 2020 I was completely broken from relationship issues, stress, anhedonia, career derailment, and wanted it to all end. You know how the saying goes, just hang in there it gets better? It hasn't, it only got worse. Career falling behind more than ever. Some of the last things I had, intimacy and affection, I lost 6 months ago. Now I don't even have seeing her. If I had to choice to not live past 2019 I would've taken it in a heartbeat. 5 years of misery waiting to abate. There's no end in sight. So my last hope is being able to turn things around with her.
Also unfortunately, I'm still trying to talk to her to get to the bottom of what happened with her and if the important life changes I'm making (getting job, finally marry) would fix this for us (she stopped the drug abuse 6 months ago and 50% of her anguish was the long wait to get married [religious]). Scott mentioned long term prognosis for BPD is good, and I feel like I can't just give up on someone in crisis where we spent our formative lives with.
> Also unfortunately, I'm still trying to talk to her
Do not talk to this person again.
I appreciate the clear conclusion. It helps me figure out what to do, but I can't say I can actually do that.
If our relationship is gone forever, I've already been beaten down for years and really have nothing else in life to look forward to. I'll go from 20% life satisfaction to practically 0.
I don't have time to leave a thoughtful reply this morning (I'll be back later), but honestly, I instantly felt less worried for you when I read your reply - you seem to be really introspective and open to analysis/criticism, and that puts you leagues ahead of the “all bitches are crazy” kind of person (pity that person). Even if therapy is out of the budget right now, it sounds like you may be open to considering the opinions/judgment of loved ones (or semi-random internet strangers, haha) when they opine “DANGER DANGER.”
And I am opining DANGER DANGER about your ex; I think you should consider going no contact, no exceptions with her for at least a year and then assess if the lonely peace of being without her is better than the lonely chaos of being in a terrible relationship with her.
EDIT: And yes, you may have to give it a full year; I'll circle back about why I think that.
I know that's exquisitely easy for me to say. But going no contact is very common advice in situations like yours for a reason - it usually helps a lot in the long run, even if it initially feels terrible!
> really introspective and open to analysis/criticism
> it sounds like you may be open to considering the opinions/judgment of loved ones (or semi-random internet strangers
That's my goal here. This is just my side of the story. Friends and family just got hers during the relationship (because I stayed silent and didn't want to blow up their relationships, she needed them). I feel the internet biases to "break up they're awful no contact" because it's missing context of the whole relationship, good and bad. But I do need the outside perspective of what the relationship sounds like when I elaborate why it turned bad. And without a therapist, I just have parents who know half. I'm wary of r/bpdlovedones being one-sided or over-diagnosy. All three commenters are telling me to completely move on, but I thought we already had the lifelong bond marriage is. Obviously she doesn't seem to be holding up that on her side.
> you may have to give it a full year
She would've found someone else and irrevocably destroyed what's left of us. Not something I'm willing to revisit in a year.
It really comes down to, if our relationship is gone forever, I've already been beaten down for years and really have nothing in life to look forward to except misery. 20% recent life satisfaction with her was really bad, but it wasn't 0%. I'll be at 0 without hope
Oh gosh, I really don't want to sound like I'm victim-blaming here, but I honestly don't understrand why people stay with a partner who (in Halley's case) tried emotional manipulation of "come back to me or I'll kill myself".
I suppose I'm hard-hearted enough that after a round or two of that, I'd say "Go right ahead, this has nothing to do with me, if you kill yourself that's on you".
"Some of the last things I had, intimacy and affection, I lost 6 months ago."
The simple thing here is that you didn't have intimacy and affection. You had someone using you as an emotional punching bag. What intimacy and affection is there in someone who was lying to you all the time, possibly cheating, constantly having big blow-up dramatic rows, and making you tip-toe around them?
"if the important life changes I'm making (getting job, finally marry) would fix this for us"
NO. RUN AWAY RIGHT NOW. You can't "fix" this, and if you try and get back together, you are signing up for years more of the same: the first initial blast of intense 'love' will never happen again, and if you are chasing that all the time hoping that if you just turn the screws a *little* bit more then *this* time the clock will work again - it won't. That was (to use the term) New Relationship Energy for you both, and you won't get it again unless and until you have a new relationship with a different person. And it doesn't last - so chasing after it will just make you miserable.
"I feel like I can't just give up on someone in crisis where we spent our formative lives with."
You want to be their saviour. You can't be that. And you can't make someone dependent on you so you will always have that warm feeling of "now they can never leave so I'm okay". You know you have issues, you know you need to work on them. Getting entangled with a mentally ill person because "hey if we're co-dependent then at least I'll never be abandoned" is the worst for both of you.
> The simple thing here is that you didn't have intimacy and affection.
It was some of the time, even when it was really bad the other half. That still improved my well-being enough that without it I'm much worse off.
> you are signing up for years more of the same
I have to have hope that some major life changes for both of us will improve things a year down the line. Scott's BPD prognosis is eventually good. There's already personality changes in her (no drug abuse, less blowups, but very little affection. Stone coldness attempting to stop her previous blowups)
> That was (to use the term) New Relationship Energy for you both
I'm aware what honeymoon phase is like. BPD seems to be extra intense in the beginning and extra bad after (high emotional variability). I'm not chasing what was the first 6 months. I'm not even chasing the highs of BPD (idealization), it's too complimentary and over the top. I think I would be happiest with her just getting to a more normal baselines without the wild wild swings positive and negative.
> Getting entangled with a mentally ill person
I'm already entangled. I spent my entire 20s with this person, they've been my other half. I have to have hope that certain changes in both of us will make us good together again, otherwise there's nothing in life I care about going forward.
I do. Or at least I believe I do; the symptoms are spot on, but he was never diagnosed.
We spent five years "together" (on and off, but never apart for more than a week before he'd come stalking and threatening suicide to make me get back together with him). The first six months were great, and then it gradually, but swiftly, went downhill after that. By the end, he was doing things like locking me into rooms, ripping up my childhood photos, and writing graphic fantasies about murdering me in his diary. I finally went into hiding, secretly left the state, and ultimately fled the country — eating up my savings in the process and leaving behind my friends and family, my job, my belongings, everything.
This unfortunately coincided with the 2008 financial crisis — but after a few years of hardcore struggle, I did eventually find my feet. And I (very cautiously) dated two lovely, easygoing men, which reassured me that I wasn't broken. I'm about to celebrate my 15th anniversary with the second one — and after all these years together, we've still never so much as raised our voices at each other. Our average days together are better than the very best days with my ex.
Some 8 or so years after I got away from the ex, he tried to find me in my new country — but thankfully he was arrested before his flight. Turns out he'd assaulted his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter after the girlfriend broke up with him. He got a 27-year sentence.
I am not familiar with that subreddit or any other community of people who've experienced partner abuse. When I was reeling from the big blow-up, I turned inward and focused only on myself and my immediate needs. When I finally started to feel human again and ready to reconnect with humanity, I felt disconnected from everything that happened with my ex — almost as if it were some 2-hour psychological thriller I'd watched on Netflix, rather than my day-to-day reality for years — and I discovered that all my desire for closure had simply evaporated. Thus I never engaged with any community, therapy, etc., because I was just completely done with him.
Thank you, this helped a lot. It gives me hope about being in a much better place in the future, as I'm currently heavily grappling with the ramifications. In my mind, if I'm still abandoned by someone who I spent 8 years providing for while constantly forgiving all the terrible things, what hope do I have for anyone else. Your story makes me feel I can eventually get there.
I also had a very good first 6 months of "lovebombing", probably nothing will be as good. But also when things kept gradually going downhill, it wasn't long before I was locking myself in bathrooms (only place I could lock to get away) many times as they tried to break it in.
I think it’s generally fine to trust your experience and trust resources that resonate
The drowning child argument is stupid. I’m not going to explain what it is because I’m sure everyone is familiar but let’s talk about it real quick. The reason it’s unconvincing to most people is because the drowning child is not like charity at all. It has three things that are obviously different. Urgency, proximity and it’s one off nature. It’s urgent because if you don’t act at that very second, the kid will drown. It’s proximate because it’s right in front of you. And it’s also a weird one off situation. If you save the kid, then your one act made a real difference and you feel good about what you’ve done. Now imagine that the same kid keeps drowning every day. Every day, you walk by and have to save the kid because no one else will do it or prevent him drowning. Now do you have to structure your whole life around saving this kid? Are you never allowed to move to a different city because the kid will drown? If your boss says he’s going to fire you because you are always late and soaking wet, are you still obligated? Where are his parents even at? You as an individual are being tasked with dealing with this systemic issue over a random kid who you didn’t know before you had to start saving him.
Peter Singer had to come up with the drowning child argument because it was the only intuition pump that would obligate you to save random strangers and then he used it to argue for things that are nothing alike. It may be superficially convincing but the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. And I haven’t really even gotten in to the demandingess objection yet.
Kudos for bringing back a classic SSC topic.
Russ Roberts did an interview with Peter Singer in 2020 where they talked about this thought experiment. Roberts is not convinced by Singers arguments. https://www.econtalk.org/peter-singer-on-the-life-you-can-save/ Its a good conversation.
Personally, I don't find Singer's arguments convincing and I dont find it strange that people act differently to the drowning child vs other problems. It's my view that because most philosophers reject selfishness as a valid ethical reason for doing anything, the have to twist themselves up in knots with these thought experiments.
For me it's simple: I save the child because it reinforces my selfish view of my self and aligns with my virtues. If another issue does that same thing then I will do it. And the things that tickles my ego may change over time or depending on the circumstances. I think this is ok and that a lot of political and societal problems are caused when we trick ourselves into thinking we can make people behave against their egos (instead of using their egoism as a tool to accomplish our goals).
>If you save the kid, then your one act made a real difference and you feel good about what you’ve done
Right. Saving a drowning kid obviously *feels* different from donating to malaria relief in Africa. That's the whole point of the thought experiment!
To consider the ways in which the latter is conceptually similar to the former, in spite of feeling different. Quantifying the elements which cause the former to feel different from the latter isn't sufficient to address the thought experiment.
A drowning kid *feels* urgent, while a kid dying of malaria doesn't feel urgent, but in reality, the latter is roughly similarly urgent. A thousand kids, or so, die a day from drowning, and a thousand kids, or so, die a day from malaria. While you can only save the particular kid from drowning today, and you have a little longer to save particular kids from malaria (maybe a couple of months until the next batch of nets are purchased or distributed), you can be quite certain that if you don't donate to malaria nets within that window that outside donations won't replace them (this is clear as malaria prevention remains underfunded).
The point of the thought experiment is to get the listener to consider: if saving kids is so important, does it really matter if I need to act within a minute or within a month?
True, saving a kid is a one off, but donating to save a kid can also be a one off. It's probably less satisfying, since it's easy to think about the other kids that will still die of malaria, but you could do the same thing when saving a drowning kid. In spite of saving the drowning kid, many other kids will still drown that day. You can "reassure yourself" that you can't save the other drowning kids, which may make it more "satisfying," but if you'd feel an imperative to save the drowning kid, rather than just a source of satisfaction, then you should similarly feel an imperative to save kids from malaria. And if there's no imperative for the latter, since you can't save them all, why should there be an imperative for the former?
The point of the thought experiment is that the average person would save a kid, even at the cost of a few thousand, if they could see the kid and feel satisfied about it. Indeed, the average person would even feel an imperative to. Similarly, one should feel an imperative to donate to save kids from malaria. But the "refutation" about devoting oneself wholly to saving kids from drowning doesn't hold up.
If someone had to save kids from drowning all the time, then the marginal cost per saved life would increase, due to losing their job, etc. Just as a person probably wouldn't feel an imperative to do that, a person could reasonably not feel an imperative to save so many kids from malaria that the marginal cost of saving them starts increasing (since marginal dollars have substantially higher value when a person is poorer).
That's not an argument, however, against saving a small number of children from malaria, such that the marginal cost wouldn't be greater than the few thousand dollars one would lost from a suit.
Furthermore, the thought experiment is useful even if one doesn't focus on the act being an imperative, but simply of the impact of the act.
Ignoring imperatives, and thinking about how a charitable act makes a donor feel, it's hardly trivial that a life can be saved for the cost of a few thousand dollars. Since many people would be very happy to save a life for a few thousand dollars if it involved a drowning kid, for example, a potential donor can examine their own feelings and consider whether they might be similarly motivated to save far away kids for the same cost. As noted, people don't feel this way naturally. But thinking about the thought experiment can help people identify what they fundamentally value and potentially inspire them to shift their behavior accordingly. E.g. if they decide that they don't care about Africans, at all, and if they saw a kid drowning, while wearing a shirt reading "African temporarily in the US," that they wouldn't bother saving them, then fine. Hopefully pondering the thought experiment sharpens the person's values.
If a person thinks that they would save a drowning African, but not a far away one, they could think about variant thought experiments. What if a kid is drowning in a pool in Africa, but you could make a very expensive phone call to a local to save him?
Simply noting that the examples feel different misses the point. The thought experiment can be useful in helping isolate the variables of what a person cares about and helping them act accordingly.
I'm sure you don't mean it but it's a little annoying that you're acting like I centered my argument on it feeling different when that's something I clearly did not do. I didn't say "it feels different and that's why it's different". I said "it's not analogous and here's why." You also use that misunderstanding to explain things I already know. I know what a thought experiment is. I know what an analogy is. You don't have to keep telling me what the purpose of these things is. Now putting all that aside.
First of all, charity is not urgent in the same way that the drowning kid is urgent. The kid is dying right in front of you and if you don't make a split second decision, they will die. On the other hand, the money you are sending is not like that. The money has to get filtered through many layers before it gets applied and then when it does the charity has many things they have to do. It's not a split second difference between life and death.
Second, I'm not going to put aside imperatives. I find this whole idea of doing ethics without obligations very bizarre. How can you say that someone should take an action without them being obligated to. It makes no sense.
Third, the drowning child argument is such a strong deviation from normal ethics that the more you guys try to make it more analogous, the more strained the examples become. For example, there is a child drowning in Africa. Why is my phone call going to save him? Why is the person on the other line not doing anything? These are obviously rhetorical questions and I don't ask them to "fight the hypothetical", but to demonstrate how much different the drowning child example is. But i will go ahead and answer:
"What if a kid is drowning in a pool in Africa, but you could make a very expensive phone call to a local to save him?"
I don't think random people have an obligation to make that phone call.
Here's the thing: if there were drowning children all around me every day, I would not feel like it's obligation to save one. Individuals are just not responsible for systemic issues. It's far too demanding. Sure if a kid is drowning in front of me and I have to pay this one time cost of a couple thousand dollars, that's one thing. But by taking on this responsibility of saving random drowning children in general, the costs shoot up exponentially. It's unending. The reason we have this intuition of the drowning child is because we right assume that it's not going to be this ongoing problem that we are taking responsibility for. Take a more realistic example: I may walk by dozens of homeless people doing drugs every day. It could be the case that I save some of them from overdosing. But no one would claim it's my responsibility and that I know have to spend all my leisure time watching for drug overdoses. That's ridiculous. Again, the drowning child is an exceptional case that has little to do with the normal rules of morality, and it's really the only example that you can come up with to make people feel like charity goes from supererogatory to obligatory.
Scott defined obligations (on twitter) as the sort of thing you will get legally punished for if you don't fulfill. Saving children in Africa at little expense to oneself is a pretty strong should, but it's not an obligation in Scott's sense.
That’s a bizarre definition of obligation. If I helped a friend move last year, is he not obligated to help me move when I need help now?
Scott is trying to be precise, and it is worthwhile making a distinction between the sort of error that comes with legal repercussions versus that which comes with just opprobium. Wouldn't get too hungup in the particular word he used to make this distinction.
Precision is fine but not at the cost of being needlessly confusing.
...So is the goal to convince people that they don't want to save kids, they just want to feel good about themselves? I really don't see how that advances EA causes...
I don't think this holds.
Urgency is a strong consideration for saving the child now rather than later. But suppose a child is caught in extremely slow moving quicksand that will kill him by the end of the week if you don't pull him out (and you're pretty sure that nobody else will be by within a week). To me this means it's fine to wait an hour if you have somewhere to be, but otherwise doesn't change the calculation. Now consider some child who's going to die of disease in one year if you don't donate to charity (and statistically and so on we expect nobody else will save them). This seems like a similar situation - it's fine to wait up to a year, but if you don't help at all, why is this better than if you had a week but chose not to help at all, or a minute but chose not to help at all?
As for one-off situation, it sounds like this just depends how you chunk scenarios. Suppose we track your charitable donations very carefully, and we find that a donation you gave five years ago went to save a child named Mbanga who would otherwise have died of tetanus in 2022. It seems like Mbanga having tetanus in 2022 is a one-off situation, and you fixed it. You can chunk this together with lots of other children in different situations and then say that it's a repeated situation. But how is this better than saying that 5,000 children drown per year, so children drowning is a repeated situation?
As for proximity, see https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/17/newtonian-ethics/ .
Not the main point, but you can't drown in quicksand. It's denser than the human body. You just kind of sink to your waist and float there.
I wrote a lengthy comment to Mallard so I'll go ahead and link to that:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-367/comment/91155364
I don't share your intuition about this kid in quicksand. If you tell me that something is gradually killing a random stranger, I don't feel an obligation to save them.
For the one off situation, you say that if I track the money, I find out it goes to some this child named Mbanga. But I'm not giving this money to Mbanga, I'm giving it to the set of kids that are at risk of dying from tetanus and then someone distributes it to a worker that saves Mbanga. Giving money to this set is obviously not a one off because my donation is not going to eliminate it.(I think this would be a better argument for someone like Bill Gates to do this kind of thing because that's actually a possibility).
I guess I don't really get your article Newtonian Ethics. You're basically making fun of people who think proximity matters and just saying it's ridiculous but it's common sense to most people. Although it's not really a math equation. It's more of a binary. They are right in front of you or they aren't. It's the same with urgency. Either action needs to be taken at this very second or it doesn't. Outside of that, normal rules of morality apply and you don't have obligations to save strangers. Like I said to Mallard, we only have the intuition about the drowning child because it's such an exceptional case that isn't analogous to most things.
Effective Altruism would be on a lot stronger philosophical ground if it didn't so heavily rely on this analogy. You could say something about how we all generally agree that charity is good and that we should strive to do some good without trying to make the argument that we are all letting children drown because of course any time you eat out or buy new clothes, you are letting children drown. I know you had a twitter post saying something like that but most EA's are still very extreme. It doesn’t help when they talk about how we need to prioritize shrimp over people or get rid of nature.
Wait, are you sure the quicksand case doesn't feel compelling? Imagine walking by in the jungle, when there's a child half drowned in quicksand, screaming for help. You could easily help them with zero risk to yourself. You know if you don't help them, the quicksand will pull them in further and they'll die within a week (or maybe just starve to death because they can't get out). You don't think it would be horrible/monstrous to walk by and not help them?
I can imagine not helping them if it's a very well-frequented quicksand patch, so that I'm pretty sure someone else will come by later and diffuse the responsibility. Maybe a better example would be something like - you accidentally leave your house door open, and a lost child (young enough that he didn't mean any malice by entering a stranger's house) wanders in, trips over the basement stairs, falls into the basement, breaks his leg, can't climb back up, and will die of starvation in one week. You are the only person who ever goes in your house, so definitely nobody else will help. You can lift him out trivially with no problem and bring him to the hospital which is across the street from your house, it would take less than five minutes. Are you saying you wouldn't really feel any moral urge to do this, and might just let him starve and deal with the body later?
In terms of Mbanga, I still think it's arbitrary how you group things. Suppose some enterprising charity teamed up with a hospital so that they could advertise specific real cases to you - "Mbanga is in the hospital now, please donate $50 to pay for his medication!" Actually, I guess GoFundMe is sort of like this. It doesn't really seem like the deep structure of the moral situation has changed in this case, it's just a clever advertising gimmick. If you should do things when there are clever advertising gimmicks, you should do them even without the gimmick.
>are you sure the quicksand case doesn't feel compelling?
Moral philosophy trains people to repackage their moral beliefs and reassert them rhetorically or via calling them theory-laden pseudopsychological "intuitions" that are supposed to be epistemically compelling for poorly defended reasons. This doesn't make the quoted line of questioning pointless - for example I am perauaded by drowning child cases - but it comes across as asking "Are you sure you don't really want to eat your vegetables?" For some people that answer will just be a brute "no" and there's no mistake they're making by disagreeing with what you value or with their understanding of the facts that inform your values. (And I'm not trying to bitch at you, just pointing out the futility of many instances of moral arguments.)
"I can imagine not helping them if it's a very well-frequented quicksand patch, so that I'm pretty sure someone else will come by later and diffuse the responsibility. "
It seems to me that in pretty much all the real-world cases the quicksand- or drowning-child thought experiment is meant to illustrate, the quicksand patch *is* well-traveled. A great many other people watched the same CNN segment or Youtube video or whatever that brought the child and the quicksand to your attention, and some of them will almost certainly take action.
Maybe not enough, or maybe they'll all overwork the problem of saving the first child and be too burnt out to help the second, but that's a different question that requires a different example to illustrate.
I have long had a problem with hypotheticals and intuition pumps that push too far outside of normal expectations. I think trying to extend local against distant moral feelings is pushing the intuition too far.
For me this is not about intuition or even morality. It's about knowledge. I can know, with a reasonably high degree of certainty, how my actions will affect the drowning child. I can also determine if saving that child is not worthwhile, and you and I can both come up with scenarios where you let the child die. For a quick example, if I'm Stephen Hawking or similarly disabled then that child cannot be saved by me, even at very great expense (his wheelchair didn't seem cheap, but driving it into a pond is not going to help).
Okay, so the distance problem. Because I cannot gauge the details on the ground, my understanding of malaria intervention is necessarily multiple steps away from the people being helped. A likely chain would look something like Foreign Child-Local Charity-International Charity-US Marketing-Me. Each step of this chain is going to be filtered through language, culture, expectations, misperceptions, lies, misapplied hope, whatever. My understanding of the situation is necessarily wrong. It may not be so wrong that I cannot help, but it's extremely difficult to have any assurance that my understanding is correct enough that my attempts at helping from this distance will be effective. On some levels this would still be true if I joined a charity and went to go work directly with these families. Maybe they think I'm stupid and bed nets are going to be used for something else or simply discarded (like with the examples of the nets being used for fishing - a better use by local cultural standards).
So my dollars in the US are being converted to lives saved at some kind of inefficiency. Maybe every dollar I send only ends up providing (on average) $0.40 worth of life-saving measures. So I sent $5,000 but only $2,000 worth (on average) gets to the kids. Instead of saving a life, I end up paying part of a life. But it's really worse than that, because "on average" kids are less real than actual kids. Maybe my actual donation gets lost in the mail, stolen by someone along route, or wasted in some way - a fire at the bed net storage facility would do it.
There's no way to guarantee that I've done any good at all, which is significantly different than the example of direct proximity. I may in fact have accidently funded a local warlord who stole money and supplies on their way to be used for my intended good!
None of this is a reason not to give to charity, even in far away lands. It is a really good reason to discount the amount of good we think we are doing. It may be enough of a discount that spending more locally and more legibly is the better option, even from a Peter Singer-type approach. Knowing that my $10,000 saves a life in the US could for many people be a much better option than potentially saving between 0-10 (and maybe making something worse) at $1,000 each.
Without the Peter Singer aspects, most people are going to discount by distance for a lot of really normal reasons that you are getting from people like Brandon, in top of the reasons I mention that I think a lot of us subconsciously consider but may not recognize.
If someone gets injured in my house, I have a responsibility to do something because it’s in my house. The jungle example seems more compelling because it becomes more plausible that no one else will walk by him. This kid is dying right in front of you and no one else will be able to save him is far more compelling than a kid thousands of miles away is dying and someone else could save him but the onus is on you to save him.
And yeah, the charity thing seems like a gimmick. Their purpose isn’t “save Mbanga”, even if that’s what they put on the flyers. Their purpose is to work on a systemic issue. So they are now taking on that responsibility and should work towards it but that doesn’t mean you the individual are obligated to do the same.
I don’t understand why you don’t think something happening right in front of you and something happening far away makes a difference. It obviously does for everyone else and it makes intuitive sense.
What if it is a different child drowning each time? You're using your own intuition pump here - "stupid kid getting himself in danger over and over" - to prime people against the argument.
That doesn’t really change anything. Why am I obligated to reorient my life to saving these kids?
Who is obligating you, exactly?
I don't think "obligation" is a coherent concept in the moral sphere. It's a coherent concept from a social perspective (i.e. if I don't do certain things, I may face social or legal consequences), but it doesn't make sense from a moral one. The reason you jump into the pool to save the child is that saving the child is good, not that others will think less of you; if others were all inured to it, it would still be good to save the child and bad to let the child drown. It was good that people fought against slavery, even when it was popular and widely-accepted, and it was bad when people enslaved others, even when it was normalized, expected, and positively-viewed.
If you just think it's fine that children die, then say that rather than complaining that I'm somehow magically obligating you. If you think it's bad that children die, but don't want to expend the effort, then say that instead. It's important to be honest about these things. If you use confused reasoning about the subject then it just obscures the reality and may make you less inclined to behave in a better way when the situation changes (e.g. you now won the lottery, but will not spend the money on charity because you've decided you aren't obligated to and therefore have no interest in doing so).
You are very wrong but before I explain, I assume you are a utilitarian?
I also make that assumption about Chastity. The key thing that brought me up short was ‘I don't think "obligation" is a coherent concept in the moral sphere’ whereas in many ways ‘obligation which isn’t externally enforced’ is what ‘morality’ is.
That's really a big flaw!
"Now imagine that the same kid keeps drowning every day."
It's not a coherent idea and I, probably therefore, cannot at all imagine it.
That KID is on the escalator AGAIN!
The unrealistic nature shows why the original drowning child example is a bad analogy. To make it more analogous requires contrived hypotheticals.
Yes, I agree that the original argument is stupid, because, as you said, saving a drowning child like this is a very different act then giving to charity.
I'm not sure I share your specific reasoning, but I would not include some "imagine that..." that's not waterproof, because it detracts and gives people a handle to grip on when they don't want to follow you.
"Every 20 minutes, a person falls down the stairs. ...Roger is that person."
---The Far Side (paraphrased)
Oh my god, just googled it, because that's soo funny. Can't stop laughing.
Did not find that one. But this one is also good. And also related. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFarSide/comments/1czmm3f/my_alltime_favourite_roger_screws_up/
That's more akin to having a child with a rare disease, and it's also true that most parents don't completely upend their lives in socially non endorsed ways to find cures. So yeah Brendon has a point: if good things are inconvenient and don't feel good that's a strong argument against doing it.
How is it not a coherent idea? Some people are just too stupid to live.
Someone who's to stupid to live must be dead. But whatever's dead isn't stupid. 😁
But I have to admit, right after posting I regretted my wording, because that kids just don't behave that way would be more correct.
It might be better to skip the drowning child argument entirely, just get into the number crunching of the real world situation where you're capable of saving a lot of lives (not the same life over and over) through the Giving What We Can Pledge, and so, it's a good idea to do that, it's not like you were going to have a comparable impact by using that 10% domestically (I think I would use it domestically if it were possible to make the impact here similar to what it is in Africa).
Some people get queasy because of the "when does it stop" question, I'm definitely willing to argue it's ok to be 90% selfish.
While that's a better, and more honest, argument, I don't think it really solves the core problem. Brandon is correct that we don't feel the same about distant giving. I think there's more reason for that. See my response to Scott above.
Yeah, I think that would be a better argument.
The more I look at it the more it looks like: You would eat a hot dog if you were hungry, right? So what is your objection to eating a whole pig?
I agree the one-off nature of the scenario changes one's intuitions. It's the reason most people who WOULD pull the trolley lever would not harvest the organs of a healthy patient to save five dying ones.
Do you mean because the organ harvester has bad second order effects? If so, I agree. Many thought experiments stipulate away obvious side effects, then ask you for your “intuition” but then your intuition is still assuming the side effects are there because in any realistic scenario they would be.
He means that "harvesting a healthy person's organs so that you can distribute them to people with failing organs" is a project that scales up seamlessly. If you do it once, there's no reason not to do it again.
Frankly, I take Peter Singer's argument as pretty nearly a reductio ad absurdum of the whole enterprise of ethical/moral argument. I prefer discussions of preferences and alliances and negotiations instead.
The problem is that ethicists over the last few centuries have been more concerned with system building than anything else.
Many Thanks! That sounds plausible, though I haven't looked into e.g. some sort of statistical summary of typical ethicists behavior. My main concern is with insanely demanding asks from ethicists/their ethical systems (as in Peter Singer's case). My main response is to cut off the camel's nose the moment it pokes into the tent.
I know they did that one study a while back that showed ethicists weren't really better than non ethicists at doing good.
The demandingness comes from their systematizing. They want a comprehensive theory that will always give them a clear answer so even when it gives insane results, they'll bite the bullet because at least it gives them certainty. Also utilitarianism says mathy things and having math gives an appearance of rigor.
>The demandingness comes from their systematizing. They want a comprehensive theory that will always give them a clear answer so even when it gives insane results, they'll bite the bullet because at least it gives them certainty.
Many Thanks! This matches the impression that I get. ( And then they try to force everyone _else_ to bite the same bullet. )
>I know they did that one study a while back that showed ethicists weren't really better than non ethicists at doing good.
Yes, I think I bumped into a similar study. I actually had a somewhat different kind of behavior in mind when I typed
>I haven't looked into e.g. some sort of statistical summary of typical ethicists behavior.
I was thinking more along the lines of: How aggressive are they at systematizing? Does a typical ethicist try to boil everything down to three axioms, or do they typically allow for more fundamental complexity?
In the case of complying with communal customs, the customs are typically much more complex, and much less systematic. Like preferences or like language, they pick up bits and pieces from a lot of sources. For preferences, at least, that is a perfectly sane way to proceed. One doesn't _just_ care about a comfortable temperature, or _just_ about sufficient salt in one's food. There is a mix of many (hundreds?) of somewhat important ingredients, and they get balanced and traded off against each other, and they aren't derived from three axioms.
Very good post, matches my intuitions around this which I couldn't effectively articulate. Thanks!
Appreciate it. For some reason there’s not that many people on Substack criticizing utilitarians and their bad arguments so someone has to do it.
Scott, could you review Canon of Medicine by Avicenna? Given that you have reviewed some old medical books before, you're in a good position for this. I'm always curious what kind of content is contained in a book that's claimed to be used for centuries up until modern era.
Probably won't get to it, but here's a relevant Book Review Contest entry: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-on-the-natural-faculties
Wow another article! Let's see.
Yeah this kind of article in this blog is exactly why I'm curious about that book. Given that its written more recently (at 1000) and, I think, still relevant the closest (until 1800?). Maybe other 18th or even 19th century medicine book would be nice too.
<AI Stuff>
How to release oneself of moral anxiety? What can I do to prevent AI misalignment and dystopia? (What can anyone do?!) I'm infinitely less-qualified than most of you. And yet........ when the moral consequences are this severe, it almost feels as though any action I take that isn't in the direction of preventing apocalypse is a waste of being alive.
If it were an asteroid coming, I could at least make peace with my powerlessness.
(I intend to write a longer comment about this, there's a lot missing, especially about "unique circumstances", but I just wanted to release this statement... or rather... "release myself of" this statement)
WHAT CAN THE AVERAGE JOE OR JANE DO TO TIP THE SCALES AGAINST BAD SCENARIOS?
Jesus, just get out of your head and start living your life. AI isn't going to destroy the world. This topic isn't different from any other attention-grabbing topic. People talk about it because it gets clicks. People like to be prophets of dooms because it gives them a vague sheen of credibility in the eyes of naive gullible people.
Most people who obsess over imagined catastrophes are typically just projecting their anxieties about their own failed lives. That's why they're so eager to listen to con men and doom mongers. Treat your anxiety, get some exercise, and move forward.
Imagine you are in a cult that keeps telling you the world is going to end in a few years. What can you do to prevent it, you ask? Not much, you are told.
What you should do in this situation is... leave the cult.
Easy answer. Stop reading blogs that take this AI risk stuff as gospel. We're nowhere close to AGI, let alone "ASI", despite what people would have you believe. These people are either talking their book (in the case of the AI research labs), or they believe in this weird millenarian AI risk religion (which recent AI progress, and its stagnation since ~2023 has mostly invalidated). The End Times are not soon, and everyone in history who has thought they were, were wrong.
https://pauseai.info/
Things are not nearly as hopeless as they seem.
This whole website is outdated and gives me low confidence that they will do anything at all, regardless of whether their actions are necessary at all from an x-risk perspective.
"25% chance we'll reach AGI in 2025"
Come on now...with what? That is ridiculous. It is 2025. The LLM paradigm is shaping up to be a resounding failure in both the business and consumer markets, OpenAI is struggling to have its next iteration ready for showtime, and China has shown that it does not take "hordes of engineers with million-dollar paychecks." or "a fully functional and unrestricted supply chain of the most complex hardware." (quotes from their FAQ), meaning "AI" of today is becoming a commodity with plateauing rather than exploding performance.
More from their FAQ:
"Are AI companies pushing the existential risk narrative to manipulate us?
[..]
And would a company like OpenAI dedicate 20% of its compute resources to AI safety if it wouldn’t believe in the risks? [..]"
The OpenAI SuperAlignment team which they're linking to has already been dissolved in early 2024 and its team leads were ousted, no longer even work at OpenAI, so that kind of answers the question. PauseAI lets outdated info stand on their website because of ignorance, or because of neglect, or to push their agenda despite the facts.
Zilch. Frankly, with the USA/PRC race now baked in to the AI landscape, and the rate of progress what it is, all I can say is: We are in for a very wild ride.
Is there anyone else beginning to think this community is underestimating the damage climate change is going to cause? The average global temperature has spiked since 2023 in ways climate scientists don't fully understand. January was over 1.7C warmer than the preindustrial average, during a La Nina. Unless there's a leveling out period of at least half a decade after this spike, it seems global warming is accelerating at a rather alarming rate. If we are hitting 3C closer to 2070 than 2100 then we are severely underestimating the potential damages.
The closer we get to climate catastrophe without actually seeing any meaningful catastrophe, removes the need for urgency in most people’s eyes.
This is especially true if you consider the effects of full decarbonization (absent being an extremely wealthy/blessed country with throttleable renewables) is a real and significant hit to quality of life. Even then, if the entirety of the west fully decarbonized, there are still billions of people with exponentially increasing CO2 emissions who care more for increasing their citizen’s quality of life over long term climate issues.
Well this is the whole problem right? You have to do the work on climate change decades before the effects arrive. Our societies aren't built to deal with that type of problem.
And I absolutely think total decarbonization is a fantasy. Nobody will accept it. But we could be funneling 100s of billions of dollars into emissions reduction/adaptation, and we are not doing that, and part of the reason why is that we don't expect catastrophic things to happen to us in our lifetimes. But if it is accelerating, and worse than we think, then that will change the calculus. But we have to talk about whether that is happening first.
I think part of the argument is that our society has demonstrated a capacity for hyper-adaptability that moots the need for massive preventative action. IPCC reports warn of a degree or so of temperature change over the next century, and the audience notices a change of several degrees of temperature every year. It warns of impacts to crop yields, and the audience already notices rapid changes to crop production on an even more frequent basis. Sea level might rise several centimeters in a century. People already move multiple times in the process. It's admittedly hard to move a skyscraper inland, but almost no one owns their own skyscraper. As fast as the climate is predicted to change, society appears to be changing even faster.
Throw in evidence of exaggerated predictions, unequal distribution of temperature rise, unclear effects of CO2 increase, and other effects, and the urgency retreats even farther.
The IPCC report warns of an average of 2.7C-3C rise over the century, which has a rather high variability. Now, we know we aren't going to get the absolute worse case scenarios anymore. In the 1990s/early 2000s it was still thought possible we could reach even 6C or something by 2100, and that's not going to happen. Which is good, because then billions of people would surely die. But that 2.7C-3C rise still has bounds out to about 4.5C at the upper limit, which would be catastrophic.
And what I'm trying to bring up, is that 2023-2025 has some pretty anomalous warming. Anomalous warming that, if it continues, could put is more in that 4C territory by 2100 than the more optimistic ~2.7C. It may be evidence that we are underestimating the warming to come, for a couple reasons I listed below, though climate scientists still aren't sure why.
Most people think 1-2C of warming is not so much. It doesn't sound like a lot, in pure terms. About 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit. But what most people don't seem to understand is that warming over land is DOUBLE warming over the ocean. So think instead of 3-4, more like 6-7. And that this warming is not equally distributed. It wont just be '6-7' degrees warmer all the time. It will come in heat waves sometimes that can be much higher than that. If crops/animals can survive a heat wave of 105 for three days, they may not be able to survive a heat wave of 115 for six days, and that's what we're potentially talking about here. Rises in heat, plus rises in duration. A particularly brutal heat dome over India could absolutely devastate their crop production.
And I do think changes to crop production in positive directions will happen at the same time. We are developing crops with higher heat tolerances/drought tolerances/etc., and it may be enough to offset whatever is coming. But that depends on what is coming.
We should be paying careful attention to the anomalous warming of the last couple of years, and the challenges they might make to our assumptions about that.
I guess you'd have to specify what damages you expect.
Personally, I don't deny the general claims of climate change. But, I am skeptical that the impact on humans* will be that great, mostly because we have proven to be a very resilient species that can use our big brains to solve problems. I am more concerned with the way that humans are getting in the way of other humans working to solve the problems.
*For animals and probably some populations of humans the impact will be devastating, but in general humans will be fine (or as good as they are now at least).
If warming is accelerating, the greatest impact will be on food availability, and with food instability comes political instability. Globally I don't expect us to come to some point where food is truly scarce, but large local events (droughts, floods, heat waves) are already frequently impacting local agriculture across the globe. This is only going to increase. History is rife with examples where spikes in the price of daily goods lead quickly to political crises. I think the chances of this happening to a country with an already shaky political system and a high vulnerability to climate change, India being the most commonly cited example, though just one of many possible countries that could realize this future, are being grossly underestimated.
And political instability is a contagion. Look the Syrian Civil War for much of the origin of current right wing party support in Europe. I won't try to predict anything about the resultant chaos, only to say that chaos of some sort is thought to be very likely if we hit 3C closer to 2070, and that it could affect the whole globe.
Perhaps warming isn't accelerating in a worrying manner. Maybe it will level out at this point for the rest of the 2020s and the past two years won't look so alarming. But maybe not. And maybe with genetic modification we can develop crops that can withstand the forthcoming heat waves and droughts and floods enough to insulate us from these effects, but we aren't there yet, and there's no guarantee that we will be.
I am optimistic that humanity can find ways to overcome the natural events you mention (or at least minimize their impact). Many of the examples you mention are largely man made by rejecting the technologies we've developed as solutions (technologies also encompassing political and societal ones, not just industrial).
Of course society and culture don't change overnight so perhaps I should be less optimistic.
In general I agree with you. Things are headed in the right direction. We already have ways to minimize the impact of these things, and will continue to develop better ones. We will de-carbonize eventually, even if too slowly.
The trouble is that the last 2 years have shown us that we may be underestimating future warming. If that's the case, all our cost-benefit calculations are skewed in favor of doing less, and that could be a huge mistake.
We've shown we're adaptable. Very adaptable. But the pace of change this century is going to be swift, and global. I hesitate to believe everyone is going to adapt, especially the poor.
Interested to hear your thoughts on https://x.com/StefanFSchubert/status/1886448293489615263 - it gave me the impression that things are overall going better-than-expected rather than worse-than-expected (even granting that the expectations were quite bad).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyjk92w9k1o
Brief BBC article covering the unexpected warming of the 2023-2025 period.
Without being able to tell where exactly this data is coming from it's hard to tell. It seems to be from this report: https://climateactiontracker.org/documents/1187/CAT_2023-12-05_GlobalUpdate_COP28.pdf
But where is that report getting its data and how it is estimating future emissions is also unclear.
But what I would say in response regardless, probably, is that this report came out in December 2023, at a time when it was only recently beginning to come clear that the spike in 2023 and 2024 was going to be a major outlier. The report predates the worrying data.
If there is one academic paper to describe the possible misestimation of global warming we might be seeing it is this (though there are more, recently): https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889
Written in collaboration with James Hansen, a very notable climate scientist since the 1980s, the paper posits that we have been underestimating the amount of masking that aerosols have been doing, essentially reflecting more heat than we thought. So as we lower pollution, and specifically the sulfur emissions from shipping in the early 2020s, we changed the earth's energy imbalance by more than we anticipated and this may be a contributor to the spike in 2023/2024, and lead to more warming throughout the century than we previously thought.
There is also a lot of debate in the climate community about cloud formation and how it will change as the world heats up. Clouds are one of the most important and least understood parts of climate change. They reflect a lot of energy, and if climate change reduces cloud cover more than we estimate, that could have a large effect on future temperature estimates also. A recent paper (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq7280) speculates that a larger reduction than anticipated in low-atmosphere clouds may also be occuring.
In one sentence, I would say any estimates of future warming come with major caveats like these and the last two years have emphasized that we may be missing something important, though nothing is for certain.
I expect the next IPCC report in 2029 will be more gloomy than the previous one.
The last two years were extraordinarily warm, but I think we are pretty much on course with the predicted warming. I would be very careful to extrapolate the trend from just 1-2 years 50 years into the future.
It was predicted in advance that 2023/2024 would be upwards outliers in terms of global warming due to the El Nino/La Nina cycle, just like 2021/2022 were likely downwards outliers. It was surprising how high the outliers were, especially in ocean temperatures, but they were not *that* high above the trendline either, if you take into account the abnormally cold (compared to trendline) years 2021/2022. The reason why the last two years appear so extreme is not just that they were very warm. It's also that the last record was so long ago (2016) that comparing with this old record gives us a wrong impression. The baseline in 2022 should have been at least 0.5° higher than the old 2016 record.
Look at it like this: The temperature has increased from 2016 to 2024 by 0.12 degrees in 8 years. If this trend continues then it will take another ~90 years to increase the remaining 1.3 degrees from +1.7C to +3.0C. So my best bet is that the trendlines are still correct, in which case we will probably not reach +3.0C around 2070.
The last two years have made us slightly less confident in the predictions. But for me they were not enough to change my baseline assumptions.
https://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024-Global-Time-Series.png
Finally, there are trends that point towards a decrease in CO2 emissions in the mid-term, most importantly the switch to renewables and electrification. The switch to renewables is likely unstoppable, since it's not a matter of politics anymore, but of economics. They are just cheaper. And it's not restricted to industrialized countries. For example, Pakistan had a capacity of producing 41GW electricity in 2022. Since then, they have added 17GW production capacity in solar. You need to discount the second number by a factor 5 because the average capacity of solar is smaller than max-capacity, but still those changes are huge if your timeline is 50 years, and they happen without government interventions. So it is still plausible that global warming will slow down and will not reach +3.0C by 2100, but rather something in the range +2.3 to +2.8 depending on how optimistic you are.
I generally agree with this, or at least this is the right argument for a more moderate position. But, I think the change from 2016 to 2024 is more like .25C, almost double what you have here, which is more alarming. Unless I'm reading the data wrong, 2016 peaked at about 1.3C above the preindustrial average, and 2024 is about 1.55C. If you extrapolate that instead of 0.12C, you end up with a far more alarming trend.
Dang, you are right, I must have mixed up some numbers. It's even an increase of 0.29C from 2016 to 2014 according to NOAA. Yes, I agree, this is a far more alarming trend, and your timeline with +3C in 2070 now makes sense. And 8 years is already a nontrivial time window.
I don't want to throw out all of what I said above. It's still only two years, and that's not much for long-term extrapolation. But you are certainly right: if this trend gets confirmed then we should really update our timelines. And I agree that the damage in a +3.0 world is probably a lot bigger than the damage in a +2.5C world.
I think the general sentiment of "don't over update on 2 years of data" is a good idea. You could have done the same thing in 2015/2016 and been very alarmed, but then it leveled out until 2023. But I do think when new and potentially alarming data comes in, you should talk about it. And I don't think this community is doing enough talking about it.
Yes, fair point. Especially because this community is often good at spotting important trends earlier than mainstream.
Climate change is woke and gay you see, so you can safely dismiss it.
For real though, this community is ideologically committed to market solutions; so there isn't really anything to say about (probably) the biggest market failure.
My model for which changes to focus on is:
AGI is a handful of years, climate is a handful of decades, human fertility decline is a handful of generations.
( albeit at any given moment we are 30 minutes away from a nuclear exchange )
I agree AGI deserves more attention given the recent acceleration in AI progress over the past 5 years, but I hardly see more than a brief mention of climate change as a threat in these circles. As if it's barely worth talking about. I think that's looking more and more like a mistake.
Many Thanks! I think discussion of climate change comes and goes, depending on the flow of the comments. Scott _has_ spent entire posts on the topic and various subheadings under it, e.g. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/carbon-costs-quantified
Discussions about energy sources almost always have a global warming comment stream (e.g. see https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-future-of-fusion).
Some of the fluctuation just follows what has been in the news. Between OpenAI's o1 release, DeekSeek's R1 release, OpenAI's o3 release, and Trump's endorsement of Stargate, AI has been in the news recently.
Within the past year, fertility decline has been in the news (even called a "crisis", which I think is absurd), and gotten lots of comments here, even though the relevant time scale is glacial.
What are some ways to grow a substack newsletter that don't involve "be so good at the writing that readers are automatically attracted to the blog"?
I like to think I've decent enough content and writing. What steps have other relatively famous Substackers taken to get where they are now? I write about once a week and would ideally like to write my newsletter full time in 2-3 years' time.
You need a niche.
May I suggest wearing a different luchador mask every week?
That aside, I do think a niche is very important. Why do I want to read your newsletter?
Anyone now feeling like relying on the non-profit complex/government funding is a bad idea? And more receptive to the idea that social good businesses are a better way to improve the world than the traditional charity model? Because I can tell you that my world is not really having issues and even where we need legislation it seems like we're going to get it.
I don't want to kick anyone while they're down. But I feel vindicated and I less want an "I told you so" than to convert people. Because I think I'm right and I'd prefer more people do more good.
Of course you should read the ACX post (and maybe it contains the point I’m about to make). It’s also worth pointing out that businesses only work when there’s a value-for-value exchange from equal-to-equal. This is the basic reasoning explaining why the “invisible hand” leads to the Wealth of Nations.
Among the people helped by USAID, many are victims of war, famine, natural catastrophes, disease, plain old poverty, and so on. These people simply do not have much to offer as payment.
I suppose you could ask them to pay in hair, nail, kidneys and lungs (among others), but are you *sure* you want to go this way?
I did read that post. Scott himself said it didn't reply to my points.
Trade does not only work when there's a equal for equal. In fact, trade is more beneficial to poorer nations because of the marginal value of money, and therefore you want to maximize trade between advanced and poor economies.
I didn't bring up USAID. My point here is not that USAID is bad but that government and charitable funding is less reliable than profit interests and less capable of making systemic change. A lot of people said the opposite was true, that government aid was more reliable. This argument looks especially bad right now and I was hoping some people would update based on new evidence.
If you read my reply (linked by Mallard) I point out that this kind of thing doesn't work well for immediate needs like, for example, a famine. But that famine relief does not permanently reduce poverty while development (which is driven more often by private businesses) does.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-capitalism-beat-charity/comment/46561324
Does anyone have a good, levelheaded, in-depth article that supports the Trump/Musk claim that USAID is hopelessly corrupt, leftist, and wasteful?
I don't know of anyone who has an article matching your exact criteria. The closest I can think of is a levelheaded in-depth argument, possibly in article form, possibly spread out among multiple TV interviews and podcasts and tweets, that claims that USAID has done a lot of good and a lot of harm at the same time, and it would be from Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber on X). Would that be of use?
Mike Benz claiming that USAID has done a lot of good is roughly as plausible as Churchill saying “actually, that Hitler fellow is a good chap.”
https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1887258751293661416
https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1887257397049331851
https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1887257118274732086
https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1887239523450376342
"USAID has done a lot of good and a lot of harm at the same time" != "USAID has done a lot of good"
I'd also like to see one, but I wont hold my breath.
They don't even know this. The condoms that supposedly went for Hamas to build bombs actually went to the Gaza province of Mozambique.
I'm sure there's corruption in USAID, and the extent of it is probably unknown, but you will never know how much good is in the program or if this actually was a significant problem at all, because they are just hellbent on destroying everything lol.
Yeah, but didn't you hear, Musk said it was a ball of worms and they were doing crimes so it must be true!
I think courtyard block apartment complexes with glass roofs over the courtyards are the best kind of housing in high latitudes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Urbanism/comments/1gyo7j4/why_courtyard_blocks_are_the_optimal_shape_for/?rdt=48378
In the Northern Hemisphere, the side of the square facing south should be lowest, at maybe three stories high. The left and right sides of the square should slope up, from three stories high where they connect to the south side, to seven stories where they connect to the north side. The north side of the block should be seven stories high.
This arrangement would let a lot of sunlight into the interior of the square. The sloped, glass roof over it all would trap the heated air inside the interior as well and keep out snow.
The result would be a warm, sunlit, common area in the center that all the apartments would face. The other side of each apartment would face the exterior of the complex.
I think this kind of complex would also cut down on wastage of heat. Furthermore, the first floor would have shops and things like post offices. Residents of the complex would just have to go downstairs to get things and services.
Neighboring blocks would be connected by sealed, elevated walkways, so you could travel between them without going into the freezing cold.
Why aren't these complexes everywhere in places like Sweden and Alaska?
I've never seen such a thing live, but looking at pictures/renderings, it just doesn't look very nice – it seems like the feeling of being outdoors when you're in the courtyard (or on your balcony) would be gone. If I were ever to move back to a cold country, I'd much prefer just having a greenhouse-type structure in the courtyard, such as this: https://www.groundstudio.se/innergard/
i dont know about trump. everyone seems to focus on him destroying the usa but i feel like hes actually burning conservatism to the ground. like if you wanted to make it a minority for decades you do what he is doing.
i don't think he can make his stuff stick; he seems to do the opposite conservatives want. like tariff china maybe, canada? make expansionist noise over greenland? con businessmen and hawks must think he is nuts.
even on reddit it feels like conservatives are quietly aghast. not sure he will have any support soon.
I would agree with you if there was a competent opposition party for people to flea to, but the democrats continue to be so flaccid and impotent they are unlikely to take advantage of this. They already failed to do that during Biden's admin.
I am very curious to see what happens to all this once Trump dies (he's not going to go away until then even if he isn't president). Is this all just a cult of personality? Is there someone else who can sell the same BS to people?
The republican party has lost a huge base of competent political professionals. If this was 2008 or something that could matter, but this is a new age of politics and political communication. Based on 2024 elections, the republicans have figured it out even without the old guard around.
Isn’t what he’s burning to the ground the Overton window of [conservative / liberal]? I think what he is bringing to town is a whole new thing. We are seeing the side of him that Steve Bannon encourages.
> like if you wanted to make it a minority for decades you do what he is doing.
I don't think that's even possible. No matter how much you screw things up, people will vote you back in four years.
LMAOAOAOOAOAOAO
HAHAHAHHAHAHHA
His base his over the moon, I assure you. Check X, not Reddit.
Do you not realize we're currently in the process of top-down regime change?
...he wants to create a sovereign wealth fund to buy tiktok. he wants to put tariffs on taiwan chips despite it being not feasible to move their chip fabs here in any reasonable time frame.
he thinks canada should be a state. all of canada. when did maga people ask for anything like this?
like even the libertarians are wondering what is up.
what good is regime change when you are acting outright stupid?
Banned for this comment (middle paragraph). Just say what you think without insulting the other person, why is this so hard?
> when did maga people ask for anything like this?
When they all chanted "America First". What did you think it meant?
it didn't mean "using economic warfare to bully canada and mexico." i think most would argue for curbing illegal immigration and reliance on H1B visas, and maybe tariffs or a harder stance on china.
like threatening denmark lol.
people want more manufacturing in the states but why is he using a massively regressive tax in the form of tariffs that also force retalliation that limit our businesses exports?
you cannot say maga expected or wanted these things. a lot of these make us weaker
Mexico agreed to send 10,000 national guardsman to the border to help enforce the rules there. Trump postponed tariffs on them. Canada said they were going to spend a whole bunch more money modernizing their side of the border and Trump postponed tariffs on them. I have heard that these things were going to be done anyway and Trump just did it this way so he gets the credit. I don’t know if that’s true or not.
Beyond that there is a larger Geo political issue here that might well have short term pain, but in the eyes of the Trump administration is worth it; taking firm control of the western hemisphere and getting a front seat along the Arctic ocean. Denmark and Canada need to play along, and I think after all the noise dies down they will. Did it have to be this ugly? I don’t know.
Both Mexico and Canada have agreed to do things *that they were already doing before the inauguration* (and the US agreed to keep a closer eye on gun smuggling outside the US, a gripe both of its neighbors have).
To anyone paying attention (as you can be sure China is), it looks like Trump is an easy mark.
How can you say people didn't expect this? Trump has always been clear he wants tariffs and he's never been shy about attacking allies. If any of this is really a surprise to you then sorry, but you haven't been paying attention.
Everyone believed he was lying rather than stupid. Now they know better.
Perhaps his most famous line is that he would get Mexico to pay for curbing illegal immigration. I'd expect that to include some level of "bullying." Him doing the same to the Canadians ("Snow Mexicans" as he is apocryphally said to have called them) was unexpected.
You are about one Ha ha from Captain Queeg territory there bucko.
I seem to remember people saying basically the same thing in 2016-20.
i don't remember trump acting nearly so...insane then. Nor doing things no one in
his base asked for, like Greenland.
the tariffs too...they are all stick no carrot and massively regressive to the point where they want to get rid of the $800 exception. its not like they cant just move factories like an RV.
i don't think it's the same. you can't use trump derangement syndrome if he is baffling his own base lol. Who would vote for Vance if Trump gets any more wackier?
The fact that he's not really acting like a true conservative is exactly why he _won't_ be the death of it. He is a unique figure. His unpredictable, will-he-or-won't-he, he's-just-crazy-enough-to-do-it schtick works perfectly for him in a way that it would never for a Vance or DeSantis. Or a Democrat, for that matter.
Trumpism is a potent force that is not transferable to anyone else.
When he leaves the stage, I think a lot of people on both sides are going to be disappointed at how fast things go back to 'normal'. Democrats will hope to see the GOP discredited forever, and this will not happen, because people will understand that Trump was Trump and the next guy is the next guy. Similarly, Republicans will quickly learn that you can't just copy the policy formula or the mannerisms and have people buy it, and that people will go back to not really trusting the GOP on social issues or supporting extreme fiscal conservatism, in a way that holds back their policy agenda.
One thing that seems nearly unique to Trump:
He seems generally willing to be "offensive" if he sees fit to do so.
Normally, this would mostly be obnoxious but - Woke weaponized politeness requirements. This is most glaringly obvious in their language policing, but I think they used it in other ways too, essentially narrowing the Overton window to make policies that didn't kowtow to them nearly unspeakable.
Deliberate offense is a good counter to that tactic!
Yes, and not only that, but if you make all opposition to your politics inherently offensive, deliberate offense becomes the *only* possible opposition tactic.
The weird thing, in this respect, was that the establishment Republicans played along and worried about being offensive for so long.
Very true! Many Thanks!
That’s not happening. No one else can really pull off Trumps style but Reagan conservativism is dead. Trump didn’t get popular only because of his rhetoric but because Republicans didn’t want the old conservatism.
the difference is he's damaging republicans now by association in a way they can't say its only democrats. The democrats can just say "you voted for DOGE and a leader who trolls Canada by making you all poorer."
like TDS is being proved to not be as much derangement as thought; he is embarrassing in a way republicans cannot deny and thats going to hit hard especially if his isolationist policies and tech libertarianism start to hurt.
don't think they will forget so easily
Is this really happening? Sure, liberals say "We thought we would hate his policies, we do hate his policies, so we told you so." But are there many conservatives who expected to like his policies but are breaking with him over the latest moves?
It’s not breaking per se, but what about the WSJ’s headline, “The Dumbest Trade War in History”?
i'm not sure, i think people are still in the stunned phase but i should look at public temperament. if he is just bluffing for short term goals maybe not but tariffs hurt big business conservatives and cede free trade to the Dems. not sure how hawks feel about Greenland or bullying ukraine for rare earth metals.
even the slash and burn of public agencies is more radical libertarian, and not sure him
abusing the xo to such an extent is a precedent they want set. idk how radical the base is at heart.
i'll need to keep eyes open and collect data.
God willing.
> i feel like hes actually burning conservatism to the ground
Yes, except this should be past tense.
eh, nah, there is a difference between theatrics before and just torpedoing it now. his decisions are as if someone wanted them all reversed and to
actively lose support for his base.
he's eroding the goodwill of people voting for him and will probably get thrown under the bus hard. Elon...good luck when no one wants to stock starlink or rent space to tesla, or senstors start to cut funding to spacex to spite him.
As far as I can tell, many lines of psychology research use individual differences to figure out things about constructs.
Example from cognitive science: collecting a large sample, noticing that people who have stronger spatial reasoning skills have poorer visual imagery, and concluding that this tells us something about how memory/spatial reasoning/etc work.
Example from personality psychology: any discussion of the relationship between Big 5 traits
(Example from health science: People who are more obese have more heart problems, therefore there is a relationship between obesity itself and heart problems. )
My question is, how can we be sure that an individual-differences-based analysis is informative? If methodological problems prevent us from studying constructs in the same person (e.g., you can't "make" someone have better spatial reasoning, so you can't see how the improvement affects imagery), can we even be sure they are related at all? Also, how can you be sure that a construct identified via individual differences is meaningful? Especially for the psychology examples, I'm confused about how something as abstract as a component pulled out of a PCA can be talked about as if it exists and be taken so seriously. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that e.g., the Big 5 trait openness only "exists" via individual differences and doesn't actually exist in a single person at a single time
This is especially confusing to me when the effect sizes are small. Like, you can tell me that, for example (just making stuff up) working memory abilities and trait anxiety are related across individuals, but if the effect size is smaller than something I'd notice by myself just walking around interacting with people, I frankly don't think this tells us anything new or interesting about either working memory or trait anxiety.
I'm considering testing if getting a therapist/psychiatrist can be worth it, though it seems so expensive that I am not sure how the cost/benefit of it pans out. I'm willing to spend a bit to try. I am based in Berlin and looking for recommendations on how to go about getting the most out of it.
Is there something concrete that you want to address?
Nothing too concrete, but perhaps addressing or improving some executive function deficits for a start.
B Civil mentions CBT and I agree. Luckily there is some good evidence that self guided CBT, using a workbook usually, is nearly or just as effective as doing it with a therapist. Try the book "Feeling Good" by David Burns. That will cost <$30 and be a good test of your hypothesis.
Well, that sounds somewhat concrete. I can’t help you with the cost benefit analysis because that’s pretty personal. To my unprofessional ear it sounds like a therapist in the CBT camp might be a good start.
Any good books or other readings on how people develop beliefs that are resistant to change (“trapped priors” as Scott would call it)? Curious about this in the context of modern politics
Check out the book "How Minds Change" by David McRaney
If you are trying to avoid trapped priors, then I suggest not ever lumping things into "true" or "false." If you always keep a kind of analog scale about how strongly you lean in a given direction then you won't have much skin in the game when it comes to adjusting your position. It is a lot more intellectual work though to reevaluate your position and requires really having a good picture of the various components that establish your confidence in a given position.
I don't have books or reading to suggest, but I do have one comment as a result of watching the wet market vs lab leak post and subsequent comments:
As soon as it becomes plausible that some of the evidence is an actual lie, the analysis becomes _vastly_ more complex and ambiguous. It is hard enough to get enough evidence to solidly support a conclusion when there is no plausible case that any of the evidence was fabricated. Once dishonest evidence becomes a live possibility, convincing anyone of anything, disjodging a trapped prior, becomes immensely harder, possibly impossible.
Tangential, but your wording prompted me to add this.
I like to have a better opinion about myself regarding certain characteristics, but as soon as it becomes plausible that some of the reasoning I use to convince myself is wishful thinking - and that's always plausible - I can forget about it.
So I have trapped priors about myself, whether they are correct or not.
Currently I try the new path of being okay about not being okay about me.
Many Thanks! Best wishes. I hope that you are able to make yourself more comfortable.
I did it in fits and starts, but it took me about seven months. I carried a Kindle and read it on busses, during meals, and during spare time. I haven't systematically read the sequences, though. I didn't know if the link is still live, but someone made an ebook of SSC and posted a link in the subreddit to a download.
Thanks u/sosuave.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-5Gq-AE7tqFiXQyqZpy_GjB9h08JEjBE?usp=sharing
I am assembling a small discord group (<12 people) to experiment with the impact of selectively filtering our consumption of digital media to consist of only text, audio or images over the next few months. Think of it as the digital detox equivalent of the potato diet. The aim is to spend each weekend in one of the three filtered states and compare tools and personal reactions to this experience. The ultimate aim is to develop a set of behavioural/cultural tools that allow people to defang the attention sucking mechanisms of the internet while not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
If you are interested in joining email me at Shane.simonsen@icloud.com
I wish you luck on the project. As someone who already does probably >95% text-only, I think it will help if the alternative is the youtube feed. Some text is better than others - text involving social interaction especially (mainly on substack or discord) seems to be the most distracting, resulting in me spending a lot of time that is neither getting things done nor restoring my mental energy so I can get things done later. Though, I would hope some of what I write is at least a little helpful to others, maybe.
Both fiction and nonfiction writings (nonpolitical, nonsocial) seem to be better for either not being distracting, or at least being a fun or worthwhile distraction.
Can't commit to joining but very interested in following along with how it all goes.
Ill post updates when I have data to share in a few months on my zero input agriculture substack blog.
I'm curious: This looks like it is set up to exclude video. Do you have _particular_ video in mind, or do you think that this is universally bad? I watch AI Explained, Sabine Hossenfelder's channel, a a bunch of others and I think my life is better with them.
Images/video are one of the three channels of digital media I hope to experiment with selective digital detoxing. The idea would be to not consume any video/images, or audio, or even text at various times as a part of a deliberate approach to digital media consumption. My gut instinct is that a habit of text only internet most of the time, coupled with dedicated days where audio/images can be consumed will end up being the best balance, but I want to start with small focused experiments first to get a feel for the impact of filtering down to one channel at a time.
Many Thanks!
Where did Trump get this idea of a permanent, extensive tariff wall?
Best I can figure, there has been a near consensus among the leaders and intellectuals of the West that trade is a good thing that makes everyone more prosperous. Tariffs and exclusions are justified only in narrow areas such as agriculture and defence-related production. But it looks like Trump has other ideas. Based on a recent speech at Davos, he intends to set up a permanent tariff wall around the American market to encourage domestic production.
https://www.wsj.com/video/trump-message-at-davos-make-your-product-in-the-us-or-pay-a-tariff/BBE8CF6D-0F57-4B07-8950-552DB5EC583D
Where is this coming from? Has he been listening to some really off-center economists, or what?
During the "near consensus", the thing to do has been to use tariffs and other state action with gusto when considered necessary but always hypocritically portray them as expection to the general rule. Trump just does away with the hypocrisy. Is it wise? No, but it is what it is.
Also, it doesn't exactly need particular economist influence to return to a policy that was considered natural and expected for centuries upon centuries.
A tariff wall is actually better than a bunch of random tariffs. And it's relatively easy to convert into nothing.
Compare https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/09/how_should_we_e.html :
> a subsidy on exports and a tax on imports would [if of equal size] exactly offset, leaving no effect on trade
You can have a permanent tariff wall around the market "to encourage domestic production", and you can _also_ have an across-the-board export subsidy "to encourage domestic production", and that will eliminate the damage from both policies.
Michael Pettis, Michael Lind, Brad Setser, and Robert Lighthizer.
Specifically, no idea.
But I remember a bit of a vibe shift during Covid. Everyone took another look at international supply chains with a much more critical eye once they realized that massive supply chain disruptions were a rare event, not an impossible one.
This isn't to say that everyone is on board with a "tariff wall", more like the money agreed that some amount of onshoring was wise, meaning we're debating how much onshoring is wise, not whether to do it at all.
its probably a lazy continuation of "build the wall" "make mexico pay for it" => "how do I do strong arm foreign policy, while decreasing america world police"
Im assuming its all threat to get people to the table quickly, we will see < 1/5 of countries not yield
Another monthly round up of the best long form content I have enjoyed. Includes a systematic analysis of the factors driving 168 civilisational collapses, whole genome analysis of humans tracking recent evolutionary pressure, a fascinating deep dive biography of Mendel, and the discovery of completely novel DNA sequences from a meteorite derived microbial culture. https://open.substack.com/pub/zeroinputagriculture/p/the-long-forum-february-2025?r=f45kp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Does USAID fund pro-LGBT, feminist, generally left of center NGOs in foreign countries?
1.5 million ain't much but it only took a couple minutes on Google to find this. I don't particularly feel like spending more, especially because USAID's website has been nuked off the internet. I think most would agree that this is further left than left of center
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_72016922FA00001_7200
>THIS ACTIVITY AIMS TO ADVANCE DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN SERBIA’S WORKPLACES AND BUSINESS COMMUNITIES, BY PROMOTING ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF AND OPPORTUNITY FOR LGBTQI+ PEOPLE IN SERBIA. IT WILL FOSTER AN ENVIRONMENT THAT INCREASES EMPLOYMENT POTENTIAL FOR LGBTQI+ PERSONS, EXPANDS OPPORTUNITIES FOR LGBTQI+ ENTREPRENEURS, AND REDUCES WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION.
Some of this probably depends on whether we are considering anti-authoritarianism to be a Rightist or Leftist position. This could also depend on whether the authoritarian threat is coming from the Right or the Left. Are we considering Freedom of Speech to be a Rightist or Leftist position? Does it depend on the speech being made-free?
Women's rights and LGBT rights and NGOs that support them are an explicit goal of USAID. A lot of the pages have just recently been pulled down but you can find various documents in archives and such. These are about 10% of their budget.
Just to be clear, in this case "LGBT rights" isn't paying for boob jobs or ensuring they can compete in women's sporting events. It is reducing how many of them are beheaded...
It's both. There's some work done on domestic violence but they also fund various kinds of social initiatives and healthcare initiatives that Republicans find controversial.
A quick look at the list of top recipients of "direct" foreign aid suggests little likelihood of "LGBT healthcare." Ukraine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria, Congo, Afghanistan, and Kenya. Like I said, "beheadings."
I do, however, have no doubt though that some Republican politicians would prefer you to focus on healthcare, no matter how many beheadings there are.
Ah yes, Kenya, famous for its beheadings of women. You've got thin evidence so you're relying on stereotypes. And I didn't say "LGBT healthcare" so your use of quotes is, at best, dubious.
What I was specifically referring to is numerous organizations that perform abortions. While most USAID can't go to perform abortions and much of the aid is restricted from going to organizations that perform them at all the Democrats have been pushing various carve outs and Republicans have been complaining about it for a long time. Plus contraceptives. And so on.
And there is some amount of the US government literally funding stuff like lesbian study groups in Eastern Europe. Though I think it tends to be overstated.
Honest apologies. I was not trying to misquote you. My original thread-comment was only about LGBT and not Feminist issues. I thought that was the aspect of my comment you were trying to debunk. I have no doubt that there exists feminist (abortion) aspects of foreign aid that are strongly objected to on the Right. I would, again, expect this to be a small percentage of overall foreign aid. And I think, under virtually every R president, this has been "fixed." "Fixing," does seem a bit more sensible than just blowing the entire thing up.
My personal experience is in Sierra Leone where USAID had a longstanding programme (with CRS I think) to provide food for primary school children.
Presumably the first start step be to check to which countries the money is going? For countries where homosexuality is frowned upon, or women are expected to stay in the kitchen, there’s likely some funding for feminist or pro-LGBT causes, which are unlikely to be led by Evangelical Christian nonprofits.
But my guess is that since there’s always a lot of misery in the world, we’re still overwhelmingly at the food/water/shelter/medicine stage of the pyramid of needs.
I'm sure some of it is, but the problem is more that it's *foreign* aid. All of which will be cut, obviously.
Ive seen at least one pretty cut and dry case, dont remember the country but a very leftist bio as claiming their magazine funding was cut
I've recently reread David Chapman's post about Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths[0]. I'm trying to fit the rationalist community into this framework, but not in any strict way. Just as a fun exercise.
From where I stand, it looks like rationalists are in a sweet spot where there enough mops to provide the community with energy, but not so much to warrant increasing attention from sociopaths. Thinking about troubles in the community, like the recent Zizian cult stuff, is evidence that some sociopaths do make it in, but it seems like the Geeks and Fanatics have enough power and clarity to minimize such damage. Maybe it's a result of the community's interest in norms and incentives?
Among other communities that I've experienced, the moat around rationalists appears very low. You don't have to buy expensive items or spend years accumulating arcane knowledge to get in. Yet even in today's climate where being a geek is cool, at least compared to how uncool it was in the 90's, one would think that would attract hungry mops. I suspect what's preventing that is the repelling force of strong discussion norms, eg. producing light instead of heat (not that it works 100%, but compared to mainstream culture, it's an extremely demanding norm).
I'm curious what other people think? How do you experience the rationalist community in terms of geeks, mops, and sociopaths?
[0]: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
You could argue that EAs are the sociopaths which is fun because it plays against type. SBF definitely fits the mold there. Also consider how much press EA gets vs the rest of the rationalist community. That's consistent with Chapman's model: you had a large community of awkward nerds with a lot of disposable income and then in swooped the smooth-talking charity PR types to a) put a global spin on a niche community and b) funnel the money while giving interviews to NPR about how they're saving the world.
Also it's just fun to say that the altruists are sociopaths.
Like TGGP said, Chapman's "sociopaths" is an attempt to sound edgy, Ziz seems to be an *actual* sociopath. This is what you get when you use the word "sociopath" for everything you don't like -- you lose the ability to talk meaningfully about actual sociopaths.
Using the Chapman's definition... let me rephrase it as "people who want to exploit the existing community for their own selfish goals, even if it means destroying the very thing that made the community valuable in first place"... it seems to me that there were multiple attacks on the rationalist community, and the community survived them surprisingly well.
The reason is that the rationalist community is mostly centralized, with the Less Wrong website at its center, and the people who have control over the website are smart enough to notice some problems, write a post explaining the situation, and when necessary, enforce the solution with bans.
The only way to avoid this control was to move to another website, or offline. Neoreactionaries made their own blogs. Leverage Research met offline. Zizians made their own blog, and they also met offline. Each of them took some members of the rationality community with them, but they couldn't take over the entire community, or even a sufficiently large fraction of it.
(Scott also made his own blog... hehe, just kidding. Unlike the other groups mentioned here, Scott is *not* banned on Less Wrong; many of his articles are reposted there and highly upvoted.)
Neoreactionaries tried to take over Less Wrong; they got banned. Some people yelled at Less Wrong that all unwoke content should be banned; they were ignored. Geoff from Leverage Research shared his psychological theories on Less Wrong; the readers were unimpressed. Athene (a YouTube celebrity) tried to promote some of his scams on Less Wrong; was banned so quickly that most readers probably didn't even notice that he exists. Elliot Temple tried to promote his crackpottery on Less Wrong; the readers were unimpressed. Hundreds of new users keep bringing their own versions of "actually, true rationality means..."; they get downvoted, and gradually lose the ability to post more comments.
Less Wrong is not just some average walled garden -- it is a fucking *fortress*! Once it got burned down, but in 2017 it rose again from the ashes, stronger than ever before.
The thing about Zizians is tragic, but at no moment of history were Zizians anywhere near the position to take over the rationalist community, which is what "Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths" is about.
I don't think the Zizian sociopaths are the same as Chapman's sociopaths. The Zizians didn't glom on because rationalism was popular & lucrative, they have no intention of doing what's popular and are willing to throw their own lives away rather than make lots of money.
I have seen it asserted that AI-generated images do not have First Amendment protection and can be freely regulated by US states under obscenity law. Is there any good legal evidence to back up this view?
> obscenity laws
those are pretty dead rn; there maybe a cycle( porn websites being banned) america has rapid gained more freedom of speech with the internet, theres plenty of historical *lies* about limits of freedom of speech, also see: any gun law ever, any cop interaction, cops stealing from people; but the amendments airnt nearly as hard to understand as the willful ignorance of lawyers would imply.
In the 70's ish gay rights got all the old laws around limiting speech by mail to the supreme court(while the post office is "private" it has a monopoly, so no opening people mail to censor) as far as I know email looks and sounds like mail this ruling is if its encrypted "packed up" and sent to adults, nothing can touch it.
Obscenity in general isn't granted First Amendment protections though; what does the AI have to do with it?
The implication was that as AI-generated images are not created by an "artist," no one's rights would be infringed if California defined all AI images to be obscene, so the Supreme Court wouldn't interfere.
Presumably they'd then prosecute people for possession and/or distribution of these "obscene" images, and I expect that'd confer standing. And I'd expect the state to lose in the Supreme Court any case resting on deeming innocuous images of astronauts riding horses on the moon or whatever to be obscene; they lose little by trying though.
Yes, the person claiming this sounded full of shit to me, but I wanted to check if there was any merit to that approach.
Someone I'm close to has a problem with intense, frequent nightmares. These leave them fatigued during the day and often mean that the morning is a time of anxiety. Otherwise, they have no trouble falling or staying asleep. Additionally, they report occasionally muttering in their sleep and, on a few rare occasions, crying out. This has been going on for a few years.
I'm looking for advice for what they could try to reduce either the frequency or intensity of them. Has anyone encountered this problem before? Has anyone had success in dealing with it?
Perhaps practicing lucid dreaming? Figuring out I'm having a nightmare and deliberately rewriting it to have a good ending helps me. Maybe check first that practicing lucid dreaming won't make things worse in the short term, since it includes deliberately remembering the dreams upon waking up.
Does this person have PTSD or could they feasibly be at risk of PTSD? Do they act out their dreams at night or have difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality? How old are they? Do they consume any substances, especially at night? What is their baseline mental health status?
They have no diagnosed PTSD. They do have diagnosed depression and are on SSRIs, though I don't know which ones. They vape marijuana but have been decreasing the dosage for the past few months (eg. 50mg edibles -> 5mg). They're in their mid 30s. Depression has been around for a few years, nightmares too but it's hard to say if one started alongside the other. They have no difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality. Sometimes they talk at night and occasionally they cry out.
When I hear nightmares, I think first about trauma/PTSD. Could be worth exploring that angle further with them.
Above, people say marijuana helped suppress their dreams, which I hadn’t heard before. Usually it actually worsens sleep quality, so I would have guessed that it might be a contributing factor and I’d think it good to continue to decrease the dose.
Unfortunately I don’t know much about side effects of SSRIs or if they cause bad dreams.
Is there any particular theme or recurrent content to the nightmares? Do they have panic attacks during the daytime? Do they meet any of the STOP-BANG criteria for sleep apnea (which can contribute to both depression and nightmares)? What is their gender? (There is a sleep apnea variant called UARS that primarily affects thin women and can have more mood-based effects)
A while ago Scott wrote something about being too warm in your sleep can increase the frequency of nightmares. Apparently socks are a common culprit.
Please don't just trust my fallible memory. But you could check with your friend and see whether they are wearing socks to bed?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/peer-review-nightmares
Thank you both! I'll give that a read. Didnt figure to check on Scott's site, d'oh!
A lot of people will give you a very reductive story about nightmares and recommend drugs to supress dreams, but this level of anxiety during the night is most likely indicative that something in their life is genuinely bothering them. Before doing anything else I would advise them to reflect on whether the content of the nightmares mean anything to them.
It's meaningful family-related content. They are taking part in talk therapy and talking about these issues (family past). There seems to be no ebb and flow in the intensity or regularity of the dreams though.
Cannabis tends to suppress dreams, at least it does for me and most people I know who partake. If they're in a legal state, may be worth a try? 5mg edible before bed might do wonders.
I've found the suppressive effect only takes hold if you are taking it regularly and as soon as you stop the dreams come back with a vengeance. An occasional edible or vape before a big day to try and suppress dreams does not seem to reliably work. Developing a cannabis dependence probably isn't a particularly great solution either.
...I mostly stopped dreaming after I started taking SSRI/SNRIs and gabapentin. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Interesting. I'll inquire further because I think they're taking sari's.
Caveat: gabapentin (for the first month I was on it) dramatically *increased* the length, vividness, intensity, and post-waking recall of my dreams. To the point where I considered going back to the joys of neuropathy for the sake of my mental health.
Hmm, strange. To clarify, I'm pretty sure that the anti-depressants were what's causing the dreams to stop, seeing as they stopped even after I started taking it without gabapentin. I have no idea why it has that effect, though...
Ok tariffs on Canada - Trump having gone demented and thinks it will help his economy, or he's taking his chess move to the fifth dimension?
It's not like this is solely Trump suffering from this idea. Tariffs are a traditional hammer for any protectionist up for doing a little nail watching, and both major US parties feature a share of protectionists (with Democrats even holding the edge).
Trump made the argument on his first term that a tariff against China (at the time) would, yes, hurt Americans, but it would hurt China more. Assuming that's true, there is some sense to that - set yourself back a little in order to set the other party back even further, relying on your leverage, until the other party cries uncle. And the US certainly has a lot of trade leverage.
Some of the point here - at least, as the protectionist argument goes - is to defend American workers from unfair foreign practices. A common example is a nation subjecting its own workers to poorer conditions than US workers have (sometimes to the point of lethal), in order to reduce labor costs, which permit lower prices on products, which US consumers buy instead of US goods. Given the choice, US workers prefer to force foreign goods to cost more than to worsen their own conditions or take pay cuts in order to reduce their own labor costs. This hurts US consumers, who are often US workers, but not always. (One imagines a fat tariff on yachts and imported marble bathroom tile, and the public largely doesn't care. They presumably care if it's washers and dryers, but maybe the workers who want the tariffs don't buy the specific brands the tariff targets. Also, if you're a US worker, maybe your reasoning is you pay extra only once for a new dryer for yourself, but you sell thousands more.)
So some US consumers suffer, but specific foreign businesses suffer more. Foreseeing that, those businesses capitulate and agree to US terms, whatever they happen to be. For China in the late 2010s, it was rectifying unfair trading practices. For Canada and Mexico today, it's blocking illegal immigration and fentanyl.
I think these arguments are at least partially unsupported, but this is what I understand them to be.
I get the impression that he is using the tariffs as a bargaining chip. I view this as playing with fire, but better than _actually_ imposing the tariffs. ( Some _very_ carefully chosen and _limited_ tariffs on China might be sane, as a way of disentangling the network of suppliers who ultimately build our military hardware from the CCP, which has been hovering on the edge of a hot conflict with the USA over Taiwan for several years now. )
Bargaining doesn't work very well when you refuse to issue demands.
In Trump's case it works great, because it gives you the flexibility of being able to claim that whatever random concession you manage to wrangle out of Trudeau was what you wanted in the first place.
At this point, Trump has created a precedent whereby he threatens tariffs and other countries rush to make a minor concession to him. So far the concessions don't add up to much, but will they in the future?
Other countries aren't stupid. If you keep playing that game they will just stop "giving in", implement their own tariffs and find new trading partners.
I don't know, I think other countries are on average just as stupid as the US.
At least in the case of Canada, they're very limited in their ability to make real concessions for game theory reasons (see the talk of Danegeld in the previous open thread). As long as Trump is ok with imaginary solutions to imaginary problems, it's fine, but he's not going to be able to get real action this way.
Huh? AFAIK, Trump did issue demands (border security in the case of Canada, IIRC), and got them. Thanks for the reply!
The amount of fentanyl coming through the Canadian border is negligible, and the talk about it is blatantly obviously a pretext to everyone. And even if that weren't the case, Trump never made any specific demands in relation to it. Usually when you want people to do something, you tell them what you want to do, whereas Trump seems to think that tariffs are a positive good in and of themselves, and has often indicated so in public.
Many Thanks!
>Trump seems to think that tariffs are a positive good in and of themselves, and has often indicated so in public.
Yetch. Admittedly my undergraduate economics class was half a century ago, but my impression is that one of the contenders for a cause of the Great Depression was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (yeah, I know, this was after the crash). _Not_ something we want to repeat.
> one of the contenders for a cause of the Great Depression was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (yeah, I know, this was after the crash). _Not_ something we want to repeat.
Obviously, but good luck convincing Trump of anything.
He has been clear about what he wants, though.
> We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use. Without this massive subsidy, Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113934520197790682
My understanding was that with the exception of the "fentanyl czar" there were no actually new concessions. The "extra funding" had already been agreed a month or two ago and Canada has announced nothing outside of the "fentanyl czar" that wasn't already included in that package.
Many Thanks! ( I thought I'd replied already, but I'm not seeing my reply. I apologize if this winds up as a duplicate. )
>with the exception of the "fentanyl czar"
Well, that is something, at least.
>The "extra funding" had already been agreed a month or two ago
Grr. It sounds like Trump is trying to make it look like he has more power than he actually has. The joy of politics. :-(
Pure theatrics. Canada has already "backed down" by committing to "improve border policing" by appointing a "Fentanyl czar." Trump has now paused the tariffs and is claiming it as a win. That's it.
The tariff story is already over. It was never serious policy. The only real point of interest here is musk and trump competing to see who can get more front page headlines.
Idk why you believe this. Trump really believes in tariffs being good. This is a man who has posted on social media "trade wars are good, and easy to win." He thinks a trade deficit is the same thing as a budget deficit.
Trump's fundamental idea is that every transaction is a zero-sum transaction, and that one party is always ripping another off. Therefore, if another country sells the U.S. stuff, they are almost by definition cheating the U.S. This leads to a kind of insane neo-mercantilism, exemplified by the current tariffs.
The business man fundamentally believes interactions are zero sum?
Really? No one could find him talking about providing value on his tv show?
He's a narcissist first and a businessman second. Narcissist usually approach the world as zero sum and will actively engage in conflict because that is the only way they believe they can't benefit.
Many of his businesses were negative sum, i.e. scams.
hmmm such as? While Im willing to say hotels shouldnt exist, nor reality tv shows, I would probably expect most people here to be "consoomers", I think people know what they are getting into with trash tv show and are willfully ignorant of illegal labor being preferred because they are 2nd class citizens
Trump University, his recent shitcoin, and all the times he said "work for me and I'll pay you" to various contractors and then did not pay them (this is a form of fraud).
Ordinary people are capable of acting economically rational in their daily lives when they hire Mexican immigrants to take care of their lawn or buy gizmos from China. But put them in a political context, like a voting booth or even just a discussion, and they start going insane.
Trump showing the same two faces in business vs politics would seem perfectly normal to me? At least it shows him to be a man of the people, warts and all.
Add to this the unrivalled opportunities for corruption when you offer exemptions, and it's no surprise tariffs are catnip to Trump.
The furore about DeepSeek is unfounded. It seems ridiculously slow to me and its reasoning ability needs a kick up the arse.
I asked it this.
Assume a country has 3 generations of equal size and 150m people. Assuming from then on the fertility per woman is 1, so the population halves each time. How long until the population is ~ 10M. Show a list for each passing generation. For instance the first would be: 50,50,50 = 150
Anyway it took 149 seconds of “reasoning” to come up with the answer with ridiculous asides about how long a generation was. It even admits it’s getting confusing and clearly - panics.
ChatGPT 4o produced a result in 1-2 seconds and a nice spiffy table of the results to the 10th generation.
The fuss wasn't really about the capability so much as the efficiency in training. It's not quite as good as 1o, let alone the newer models. But half the quality for a tenth of the price isn't a bad business model. And the MoE structure means it's a lot easier to run - only the relevant expert model needed for a particular problem is loaded. People on reddit have a build to run the model locally - the entire 670B parameter version, for about $6K. The whole thing is loaded on RAM and run through the CPU with no GPU/VRAM, which is the only way it's so cheap. At 5 tokens/sec, it isn't that fast, but basically anyone could run it on their own machine.
The issue might be with the wording of the question, TBH I'm not sure I get it.
To see if I understand it: the 3 generations are 50(young) 50(middle age) 50(old). At each time-step, the old generation dies, and a new young generation is born, half the size of the previous young generation. So next step would be 25,50,50 = 125, right?
It worked for me reasonable quickly with the reasoning switched off, though it got it wrong the first time, and needed to be told to do it carefully.
I'm told that it was really, really fast two weeks ago. Some of the speed issue seems to be load.
Oh it was fast enough to spew out paragraphs of insane reasoning - probably produced half as as many paragraphs as seconds.
I mean, note that we don't actually see the chain-of-thought for OpenAI's models -- they might seem equally neurotic if you actually saw them.
It's an anthropomorphization error to imagine that the craziness (and I agree they do seem crazy) of the chain of thought means the same thing that it would if that were the thoughts of an actual person.
The reasoning was objectively crazy even if there is no agency to it.
And yes the openAI models show reasoning - you just have to open a disclosure triangle.
My understanding is that that is not in fact the genuine chain of thought that the models used -- it is a perhaps summarized or sanitized version of it.
I would really appreciate this community's reaction to this video:
https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?si=Mkx3GlFFzqoiclA6
It shocked me that I had never heard any of this before - it really, really sounds like a conspiracy theory, and I had seen literally nothing about this in the media - but her sources seem pretty legit, and it seems kind of plausible now that Musk/Trump have gotten to work. Is this an accurate reading of the new administration's goals and plans to achieve them?
Some wide-eyed blonde Brit EDIT: she's Australian goes all DARK TECH MILLIONAIRES DARK MAGA DARK DARK DARK TECHBROS DESTROY DARK online.
It's a clickbait video. Just another one of the I CAN TELL YOU THE REAL TRUTH stuff out there. I can't be bothered. She seems to be an academic turned actor/comedian, so there you go. Besides, her eyes are too staring, that kind of opened too wide eyes is the sign of someone who is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
https://joannarichards.com/
Can someone summarize the video? I can't stand video.
So the party of "drag queen story hour" refers to people who prize freedom as "bizarre". Really???
In my country, men dressing up in drag and entertaining children and families is an ancient and widely beloved tradition that many thousands of people pay money to witness. They even make bawdy jokes for the parents.
From our perspective, the American reaction to drag queen story-hour is certainly bizarre. We're free to engage with it or not and no one bats an eyelid.
American definitions of freedom seem to be unique.
Many Thanks! In the USA, men dressing up in drag is usually considered a form of somewhat-erotic adult entertainment. In that particular context, and in the USA's context of very harshly condemning anything that intermixes sexuality and children, promoting interaction of children and drag queens is a major departure from typical community standards here.
I'm _not_ saying that the USA is "right" to have these community reactions, or that this is in any way universal, just that, given those community reactions, promoting drag queen story hour _here_ is a _very_ weird thing to do.
>American definitions of freedom seem to be unique.
Yes. In particular the First Amendment protects free speech much more securely than in most other nations. I treasure that particular bit of American exceptionalism.
Pantomime dames (who are traditionally played by men) are very different to drag queens. For one thing, although they might make the odd bawdy, parent-friendly joke, they aren't the least bit erotic.
Many Thanks! Yes, this sounds like quite a different case from what happened in the USA.
That's interesting, which country is that?
He's being disingenuous. No man on the street would lump pantomime and drag queens into the same category. Pantomime is ancient, entirely unrelated to sexuality, gender identity or anything modern. When the town blacksmith puts on a frock to play Widow Twanky, no one draws any conclusions about his orientation. It's more about taking men and women taking the piss out of each other.
The UK. It's called Pantomime and its a big christmas and winter tradition. The men in drag are called "Dames". I saw a panto last year with Sir Ian McKellan as the dame. Also often young male lead characters are played by women.
Drag in the UK also has a long history of being on television, with Dame Edna being a very famous primetime television star in the past as well as Lily Savage. There has been some attempt to import the American culture war against drag but it hasn't been as successful as the anti trans stuff because drag is well understood as a comedic artform here.
"Prize freedom" is worth a laugh. You have to be pretty gullible if you think eg Musk gives a shit about anybodies freedom but his.
Thanks for the reply. Musk has his downsides, but Biden and company, are pure poison. His administration built a whole censorship infrastructure. This last election was a choice between evils (as usual), but Trump and company looked to me, and still looks to me, like the marginally lesser evil.
Also "weird." That was an actual campaign strategy.
The Babylon Bee had a field day with that one...
Yup! Given the Democrat's record it is amazing that they even _tried_ that. Many Thanks!
A bit of a weird one, frankly.
Yes, more or less. At least that's what it seems. Seems it shifted in this direction when Musk and the rest of the tech crew swung to Trump after the assassination attempt - after which they pushed for Vance as VP.
Vance in 2021 on the podcast Jack Murphy Live:
"There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin. Who's written about some of these things. A lot of concerns that said we should deconstruct the administrative state. We should basically eliminate the administrative state. And I'm sympathetic to that project. But another option is that we should just seize the administrative state for our own purposes.
I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And then when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the 'Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.'"
Vance's campaign was funded by largely by Thiel, who has long been associated with this line of thought - I believe even funding Yarvin's crypto/web3 startup Urbit directly (along with Marc Andreessen).
Yes, seems like an accurate assessment of what the tech right enabled by Trump wants to achieve. Whether they will achieve it is an open question, though it seems they have a surprisingly strong will to power, and no one is opposing them as they break one norm after another, so maybe they can remake the government in their image to a surprising extent. If you’ve been following tech right circles, you would have heard of this plan being said out loud multiple times, so it’s not a big surprise.
We should always be suspicious of billionaires, but, it seems nonsense. I doubt any of these guys are influenced by Curtis Yavin, who doesn’t expect to be taken seriously. He’s a polemicist.
By and large silicon valley has voted overwhelmingly left, although it’s more of a libertarian leftism.
It's known that members of this administration have read Yarvin. For what it's worth, Yarvin does think his American Caesar needs to have broad bipartisan popularity, so neither Trump nor Musk are it.
This Henry Farrell essay about how Trump is a personalist rather than a transactional leader seems to be holding up well: https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/how-chaotic-is-trump-ii-going-to
Trump picked tariff fights with Canada and Mexico, then claimed victory in public . . . in exchange for "concessions" that the Mexican and Canadian governments had already publicly been planning to do before the tariff fight. That's not really good transactional politics - but it does make sense if your primary "goal" is to be the center of attention and be Seen Winning Big, regardless of what actually gets done.*
Interestingly, China seems to be quiet about this whole affair. Either they figured that bit of it out and aren't playing that game, or don't think there's actually a fake deal to postpone them.
* That's not exclusively a Trump thing. Patrick Wyman's "Tides of History" podcast did the Greek and Persian wars a while back, and talked about how from the perspective of the "Great King" of the Persian Empire, "winning" wasn't necessarily about actually winning concrete gains or territories. You could "win" by showing that you could mobilize a big army and reprimand an enemy by force, and then withdraw leaving it all behind.
I don't think you even need to make it about personal attention; from a political perspective, it's obviously better to have people attribute good things to you, even if they were going to happen anyway.
>That's not exclusively a Trump thing. Patrick Wyman's "Tides of History" podcast did the Greek and Persian wars a while back, and talked about how from the perspective of the "Great King" of the Persian Empire, "winning" wasn't necessarily about actually winning concrete gains or territories. You could "win" by showing that you could mobilize a big army and reprimand an enemy by force, and then withdraw leaving it all behind.
TBH that seems like modern revisionism to me. Xerxes seems to have struggled with rebellions and palace intrigues after his Greek expedition, which doesn't exactly suggest the Persians saw it as a great victory.
Is he engaging in deal making brinkmanship?
It’s been a weird few days but he certainly came prepared with an ideology.
"Say what you will about the tenants of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
Tenets, Julian. Tenants are the antonym of landlords.
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man."
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/010/856/4fcdf2e118613355b500ba5d.jpg
"Shut the fuck up, Donny."
"Brinkmanship" might be a misleading term because of the asymmetry in power. It is a threat, just one that you'd prefer not to have to carry out because you don't want to bruise your knuckles bashing the other guy's face in.
The Slate Star Codex omnibus ebook was incredibly useful to me. Does anyone know of an astral codex ten ebook?
Scott has licensed SSC under CC-BY, but he hasn't done the same with ACX, so I don't think an ebook could be released for it without his consent.
Thanks for the info. Let's see if he responds to this thread and gives permission
Can anyone point me to openly Anti-Immigration and Pro-Colonialism Effective Altruists and their public statements? Would appreciate it. As one of the more humanitarian inclined members of the Far Right I'd like to see if some kind of arrangement can be reached on foreign aid questions.
When you say pro-colonialism what do you mean by that? More uninhabited/sparsely inhabited places should be settled (like say the arctic), more inhabited settlements should be brought under imperial rule, existing colonies like Mayotte are good and should remain, or historical colonial projects were largely good - albeit shouldn't be reenacted. Or something else entirely? Those positions might all be described as pro-colonial but are pretty different from each other.
Pro colonialism? Perhaps you mean charter cities: https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/events/charter_cities
I think there seem to be people who mistakenly equate a colonial government like say The British Raj, with a well administered state like Singapore. The British raj of Singapore was far poorer and worse administered than modern day Singapore. The British raj of India, had a GDP growth average of 0.3% a year and multiple famines causing millions of deaths while modern day India has had no widespread deaths in famines and is now growing close to 6.5% a year. On top of this, colonial governments were racist, robbed local populations of their dignity, respect and let criminal elements of their society run free without impunity. Not sure why anyone in EA would support colonialism. In some of those countries, democracy has turned out to be worse, maybe they need a Paul Kagame or Lee Kuan Yew, they certainly don’t need a Leopold.
I'm not sure it's reasonable to compare a 21st century state with an 18th century state. You didn't have US PL-480 food aid programmes in 1890, like that which limited the 1967-9 Bihar famine to just 70,000 deaths. Plus technologies, forecasting, management techniques make the ability of governments to cope with famines far greater.
Compared to the non-colonised Asian countries the Raj had less growth than Thailand, but more than China (per Maddison project data looking between 1820 and 1938, Thailand 465% growth, India 204%, China 153%).
It seems like the official death toll for the Bihar Famine was 2353 (maybe the real number is higher), and that seems to be the last famine that caused widespread death in India. The Bengal famine of 1942 caused around 4 million deaths perhaps exacerbated by WW2, the 1876 famine that has an estimated 8.2 million deaths, again under the British Raj (during which wheat was still being exported to London at regular rates). If you just want a history of all the grievances Indians have towards the British Raj, any school textbook in India will suffice. Countless Indian Historians and economists have written papers and books on this. I think it's more useful to analyze the incentive structure that leads to these extreme cases of mis-governance.
The British people I do not think were uniquely evil, they still valued justice, kindness and all other good virtues that most populations valued. They were racist, that is true, but racism was the norm of that time, and racism alone cannot explain the bad governance of the British Raj. Maybe it can explain the average daily humiliation they meted out to Indians, or the lopsided justice system every time a Brit was involved but there are bigger problems to look at.
The fundamental issue is that the colonial system hired administrators whose career was beholden to a fickle group in London far more than the population they ruled, and once they were done, they left and often went back to London to end their lives, without having to deal with any of the havoc they caused in their territory. If anything good resulted from their administration, it had to happen due to their sense of honor that regularly was at odds with directives from London, or it happened because of their fondness for the land, which while present was clearly not enough as none of them actually chose to live in the country they administered unlike every other king, in human history. If Lee Kuan Yew was administering Singapore for China and went back to China after his 5 year term, he might consider all these policies reasonable:
1. Singapore can best function as an agricultural exporter to China, since China is industrializing well and it doesn't make sense to compete with China that clearly has more resources.
2. He can play the Malays off against the Tamils, so that they are too distracted fighting each other and make his administration easy.
3. During wartimes or emergency, all resources in Singapore need to be diverted to protect the motherland, because that is what matters the most.
If you change the incentives and tell Lee that his faith is forever sealed with Singapore, you end up with the opposite conclusion in each of these policies.
Fair correction, that's what I get relying on wikipedia for a source. From a quick google 70,000 seems to be the excess deaths, which is quite a different thing. It isn't the last famine in the former Raj, Bangladesh had a major famine in 1974 that seems to have killed between 26,000 and 1.5 million people (which is a stunningly unhelpful range, but there you go).
I'm not convinced by your explanation of administrators being beholden to London rather than the local population makes sense for the fundamental issue of colonialism - isn't that just how bureaucracy works. As in the civil service in say Cornwall will be made up of people whose career is beholden to a fickle group in London, but Cornwall hardly seems the worse for it. Even at the city state level you are still going to have principal-agent problems.
A brief historical aside, many administrators did choose to live in the Raj and many kings didn't live in a country they administered (take James VII of Scotland).
That all said is does seem indicative that India has had a higher GDP growth rate in period since independence as the Raj - when a country has GDP growth in the double digits, you are unlikely to find a much better system. Also I am sympathetic to your points about humiliation, basically people do like a sense of national/racial pride even if it makes them poorer and probably nationalism as a positive good is the strongest argument against colonialism.
>when a country has GDP growth in the double digits, you are unlikely to find a much better system
Per: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$bubble$encoding$x$data$concept=gdppercapita_us_inflation_adjusted&source=sg&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&frame$value=1960;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v2, since 1960 (when the data there begin) India has had 3.21% annual real GDP / capita growth.
Real GDP growth not per capita has been about 5% over the period.
Looking at IMF data (which start in 1980): https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/IND, India has never had a year of double digit real GDP growth.
Thanks for the correction. I don't think it substantially changes my point that modern India is doing quite well for a developing country to the extent it seems hard to do much better.
There's a good SSC post on Indian economic development https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/23/indian-economic-reform-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ that I think shows quite well we really out to treat Indian post-independence as basically 2 different things pre- and post- ~1990.
https://x.com/AndreasKoureas_/status/1639329604996325379
https://xcancel.com/AndreasKoureas_/status/1639329604996325379#m
Thank you for the link, however lack of ill-intent does not resolve the question for us. If say membership of the Commonwealth dragged the Raj into wars it otherwise would not have been involved in that would still I think be a serious failing of colonialism. Generating more wars or wider involvement in wars seems to be a bad thing in itself.
A look at modern day colonialism would probably be best to look at the Comoro Islands, 4 islands in an archipelago, in 1975 3 become independant as Comoros, one (Mayotte) remains a French colony. Fast forward to today and Mayotte is now about 8x richer than the independent Comoros
There's no Lee Kwan Yew without the British Empire, though.
Yes, but what’s the success rate on the 20th century British colonial Empire giving birth to a Lee Kwan Yew?
Openly Pro-colonialist but no recent statements on immigration is fine as well.
I suppose aggressive open Anti-Immigrationist would also work.
Thanks.
Hello, I'm relatively new to SSC/ACX and currently attempting to work my way through as much content as possible (and the sequences to boot!) and maybe write about the experience if it doesn't completely atomize my brain. I noticed that the about page for ACX currently reads "Once this blog is up and running, it’ll have more interesting places to start" -- is it safe to say that this blog is now meets any reasonable definition of "up and running" and, as such, is there any plan to make a guide on what to read on ACX?
The LessWrong Codex guide, for example, is a great entry point for SSC, but Substack is frankly a bit harder to navigate. Browsing "Top" under Archive is okay, but it would be helpful to separate some of the more transient pieces that were more about Current Thing from the general ones, and I don't think the Top filter really manages to do that. Ideal world would be some way to navigate by topic, but I realize that may be a herculean task (something something try asking an LLM something something).
Also, any chance you'll do an even LONGER write up on ACX for the "whole theory of morality and charity" post you shared on Twitter? I know it's mostly a summary of ideas explained elsewhere, but again, as a recent follower it's nice to have a new user guide. Plus it was just a good read.
Someone made this website, it has topic tags at least: https://readscottalexander.com/
Beautiful. Thank you!
I wish you much luck. I read through basically the entirety of SSC soon after discovering ACX. I kind of wish ACX had tags like SSC did.
Thank you! Approx. how long did that take you, if you don't mind me asking?
About seven months. Although I have a similar problem to yours with the early ACX content. I haven't really caught up.
I apologize if I'm a replying again, I just don't see the reply I thought I posted already.
I only see one comment, so you're good! And 7 months shouldn't be too bad--sounds like a good belated New Years Resolution then. Also for ACX, someone else linked this below and it includes all the old ACX content. The tagging system and simple summaries help a LOT imo. https://readscottalexander.com/
Someone made an ebook of SSC:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-5Gq-AE7tqFiXQyqZpy_GjB9h08JEjBE?usp=sharing
(U/sosuave on the subreddit)
I found it extremely helpful. I sideloaded it onto my Kindle and and read slate star codex offline. Having it as an ebook allowed me to read it on an e-paper device, which I find a bit easier, and allowed me to highlight and search more easily.
Hi Scott, you mentioned at the end of last year's review contest that you're thinking of having an "anything but book reviews" contest this year. Is that still the plan? (I'm planning out what I might want to write)
I forgot that the book review contest wasn't happening this year and I've been carefully rereading an old favorite.
Max Read has a new piece on "rationalist death cults" which struck me as surprisingly negative about rationalism overall -- I don't live in the Bay Area and am not terminally online enough to be kept up at night by fears of Roko's Basilisk; is there a genuine over-representation of culty weirdos in the rationalist scene?
Or is this a case of base-rate fallacy / "look at these awful cardiologists, they must be terrible people!" (Scott has a post about this called cardiologists and chinese robbers). I live a pretty normal middle-America life and can name several people I know who've fallen into things on the (non-rational) culty spectrum, ranging from modestly alarming health-related spiritual woo-woo to genuinely disturbing criminal behavior.
In other words, what's the base rate of joining a death cult?
The internet rationalist community grew out of a focus on cognitive biases and errors. This topic is more interesting, more relevant, and more comprehensible to people with mental illnesses than to the general population. If your brain routinely overtly lies to you, you're more likely to be interested in the "look at all the ways brains lie to people" community.
Additionally, the community is >~2 standard deviations above average intelligence, which correlates with the very problematic skill of "actually believing arguments"/lack of epistemic learned helplessness, which Scott has written about here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130111103623/http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html .
I don't know any statistics on this, but I strongly suspect both of these traits overlap with the kinds of behaviours that lead to starting/joining death cults and other dangerous edge-cases.
What is the source for >2 standard deviations claim?
Self-reported IQ (and self-reported SAT scores), from the LW community census/survey: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WRaq4SzxhunLoFKCs/2023-survey-results
The ACX survey had similar results.
I was wondering when the blowback from the Zizians would commence. Read makes some good points, but I think his conclusions are overblown. While I don't believe there is a "genuine over-representation of culty weirdos in the rationalist scene," Read gave some examples of culty behaviors in some rationalist adjacent organizations.
Read makes the case that you can fall into culty behaviors if you're obsessed with perfecting the art of human rationality. But let's face it. If someone labels themselves a rationalist, they're implying that their reasoning skills (and implicitly their intelligence) differentiate themselves from the rest of humanity.
He then goes on to claim that rationalists qua rationalists are recapitulating Scientology and Dianetics, Werner Erhard and EST, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Manson Family. Worse yet, rationalism may lead to polyamory!
"Zizians and the Rationalist death cults" — https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death
"The most famous version of this Rationalist impulse is reasoning yourself into a belief that a godlike computer-based super-intelligence is inevitably coming..." I snorted my dinner wine when I read that. Luckily, it was white wine and didn't stain my carpet.
Can't find it now with a quick search, but I remember reading someone's substack about how there are a lot fewer cults around these days than there used to be. Which agrees with my perception.
Seems right -- if you dig a bit, you'll find that in the '60s and '70s there were cults and communes somewhere on the culty spectrum EVERYWHERE. Only a few of them drank kool-aid in the jungle or butchered celebrities, the rest mostly just did weird polygamy stuff and took lots of drugs.
> is there a genuine over-representation of culty weirdos in the rationalist scene?
Relative to "normal middle-America", yes, definitely. Relative to other bay area counterculture types, maybe a bit?
Are we talking the Zizians here?
most likely yeah
In my experience, yes, there's an overrepresentation of culty weirdos. If you attend real life events, you will notice, it's not subtle.
This isn't because rationalism is bad, it's because most people who attend events are extreme outliers. You get way more death cultists...you also get way more millionaires and rocket scientists and obsessive-compulsive uber drivers and people with serious mental illness. The entire culture is composed of two standard deviation outliers.
We joke about autism a lot around here but if you hang around you'll notice that very minor intellectual and personality differences result in dramatically different life outcomes. Like, congratulations, your Autism Power Level is 70 and you became obsessed with cryptography, you get to be an adorkable multi-millionaire. Sorry, your Autism Power Level is 73 and you became obsessed with early 20th century jazz, you will die penniless and Forever Alone.
The "most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people" SSC subreddit post comes to mind. The average person in the rationalist sphere will read a few blogs or forum posts, maybe fire a comment off once in a while and then continue living normally. Maybe adjusting some behaviour like being more charitable.
Ah, maybe I was unclear. The average reader on, like, the internet, is pretty normal. The average person who consistently shows up to real-life events is noticeably different.
I think that there's some difficult fine-tuning for every person to do between "be willing to consider arguments that are not popular/seem counter to established morality at first glance," and "follow consensus morality." And I think that different people should be at different places for them.
Rationalism is heavily weighted towards, "Don't reject arguments at first glance, give serious consideration to arguments even if they seem abhorrent." And I think that for some people, if you spend a long period of time letting people throw every abhorrent argument they can think of at you, they'll find one that gets past your defenses and inducts you into a cult.
Conversely, like the dominant bay area paradigm was, "Don't even consider anything even slightly askew from the Official Narrative," and that was also bad, both for the epistemics of the people caught up in it, and for the causes of the Official Narrative.
My take is that different people should have different calibrations for when to just retreat to the wisdom of the crowd and say, "Look, I'm not going to take seriously the 1,000th different argument for why it's okay to murder people," and when they should push against the Official Narrative. And it's hard to discover where your own calibration should be.
> Rationalism is heavily weighted towards, "Don't reject arguments at first glance, give serious consideration to arguments even if they seem abhorrent." And I think that for some people, if you spend a long period of time letting people throw every abhorrent argument they can think of at you, they'll find one that gets past your defenses and inducts you into a cult.
Or, if you already believe things that seem abhorrent, then Rationalism is an ideology that provides you with a somewhat socially acceptable justification for why you spend so much time thinking about those things.
Sometimes you congratulate people on their superior rationality skills, because they can properly steelman "the moon is made of cheese".
Then you become a bit suspicious when you notice that they are unable and unwilling to steelman any other statement.
Finally, you realize that they actually *believe* that the moon is made of cheese, and what seemed to you like an amazing mental flexibility was mere craziness.
(If you want to experiment with steelmanning safely, you always have to make people steelman both "the moon is made of cheese" and "the moon is *not* made of cheese". Only those who can pass *both* tests are the true mental athletes.)
Well said.
Interestingly, this is how science-based medicine differs from the merely evidence-based one. Science-based medicine says ”We actually don’t need any more studies about homeopathy - not only is it physically impossible, but we also have studies already. It’s pointless and a waste of resources to even investigate the 1000th claim.”
Does anyone know any weight loss methods that are specifically good if you need to work around medication that induces weight gain? In my case it's Seroquel, but many psychiatric meds make you baloon. I gained 50kg since I started it, and I don't like it.
Is this caused by metabolism changes, or changes in diet?
Google Seroquel and type 2 diabetes and look at all the Ambulance Chasers R Us responses. It’s metabolic.
Edit: might have to add attorney to the search to screen out links to studies of its metabolic effects and get to the lawyers.
I work in a busy field. Things like gym/training are not as feasible. Portion control aka plate control has been extremely helpful. More obvious is also walking everywhere and stairs at work!
Lastly, If weight gain is surely medication-induced, speak to your prescriber about weaning or switching to another option.
Not medical advice, but if weaning/stopping is not realistic could always look into adding a medication with an opposite effect on weight. For example Wellbutrin or a dedicated start of a GLP-1a (many other indications)
Random topic here but I’m curious whether I sound like a whack job to you— I’m struggling with the back sleeping recommendation for babies (infants are supposed to sleep on their backs to reduce SIDS risk, which back sleeping seems to do, significantly). But back sleeping recommendations, which started in the 90s, seem like a pretty good candidate for explaining increased autism incidence, especially for those who are predisposed (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4978628/). In a nutshell: sleep is still a fairly mysterious set of processes, babies strongly prefer stomach/side sleeping (like most mammals!), and we’re overriding evolution on a massive scale by forcing them on their backs during early brain development without a clear read on long term consequences (which are so hard to measure for practical / legal /ethical reasons). And yet the recommendation is emphatic and questioning it seems to be taboo. Reducing SIDS risk from .13% to .04% while possibly 10x’ing the risk of lifelong social difficulties and god knows what other cognitive deficiencies is a non-obvious call and I wish public health officials were a little more circumspect in their guidance on this topic
> , which started in the 90s, seem like a pretty good candidate for explaining increased autism incidence, especially for those who are predisposed
it lacks any natural theory?
even if timing is evidence, theres probably 10000 things that happened starting in the 90's so it weak evidence
Oh sorry and here’s someone with some credentials with a tad more evidence (but this is all tiny stuff - this should be getting huge research grants. It’s a really tricky research question). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306987722000135
Ya sorry I think it’s a good candidate because it makes a lot more intuitive sense to me than anything else I’ve thought of. The research all sucks (which is mind blowing - this is a universal and extreme public health intervention that has deprived whole generations of quality sleep in the first 12 months). So to be clear It’s a crackpot theory of mine!
That feeling we get when we’re dozing off that suddenly tells us ‘the other side would be more comfortable’ - I suspect that’s a mechanism for targeting sleep’s benefits at a certain brain region (gravity ensures distribution of cerebrospinal fluid and blood is more abundant in side facing pillow?). My understanding is the front of the brain (prefrontal cortex) is responsible for, among other things, top down emotional regulation, decision making, abstract reasoning - robbing that region of sleep’s benefits (whatever those may be!) in the first 12 months of life, when neural circuitry is proliferating like wild fire, is (I think) batshit crazy and the timing of increased autism incidence is eerie in this context…having said all this, I admit I may not be thinking very clearly, as I have not been getting much sleep :)
I'm not sure about the autism link, but a lot of the anti-SIDS messaging is too hardline in its recommendations and ends up setting new parents up for unnecessary misery. Falling asleep with a child on the sofa is risky. And so getting so sleep deprived doing unnatural stuff like repositioning babies on their back and avoiding (well-planned) co-sleeping makes everyone more tired, which increases the risk of risky behaviour like sofa sleeping.
What do you mean by repositioning?
My understanding is that while you need to put the baby down on their back, if they're able to roll themselves back to front, it's okay to leave them in that position. A baby who's strong enough to roll is also strong enough to move themselves into a position where they can breathe.
I think that this is not exactly correct. I think it is assumed that the risk is dramatically less when they can return to their back (something that happens a bit after being able to roll onto their front). Conceptually, it also seems likely that just being able to lift their head and reposition their face to fix a position problematic to breathing. This(in my sample size of 2 study) happens before any rolling if you give babies "tummy time."
I think it's mostly parsed as the way beleester phrased it though (certainly how my wife interpreted it for our three; IIRC we discussed head-lifting as the standard but they were able to do that pretty early and we weren't comfortable letting them sleep on their bellies until they could roll over). Pelorus is right though, that there are definitely discourage belly-sleeping well past the point where it's okay (up until they're toddlers, actually), and insist that you need to go in an roll poor little sleepers onto their back up throughout, sacrificing your sleep to protect your DL.
The other "interesting" thing about SIDS is how IIRC not discussed among the major risk factors is maternal obesity and maternal smoking/drug use. There's an argument that SIDS is a compassionate diagnosis to reassure women that no, you didn't in fact just roll over and kill your child at night, it's a syndrome whose cause we don't know.
Not just maternal smoking. Apparently, an extremely strong link to any smoker in the house, even if they do 100% of their smoking, outdoors. I believe I got that tidbit from a previous piece by Scott.
This study examines five countries that have different time periods for campaigns to promote back sleeping... which all start within the same five-year period. And their five graphs don't have similar trends and in several cases the trend starts before the sleep campaign. This doesn't seem to me like anything more than a coincidence.
Ya great point. I guess I’m mostly surprised no one has collected better data on long term effects of back sleeping, given the scale and extreme nature of the intervention. Here’s another paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306987722000135
I read a tweet once that estimated parents lose 48,620 hours of sleep per SIDS death prevented by back sleeping. The kids lose more, based on the estimate
https://x.com/ruthgracewong/status/1818895404542627881
If we assume that the kid would have lived to 75, it loses about 650 000 hours of life by getting dead.
This seems like a fair tradeoff for lost sleep?
Not if SIDS is very rare?
The number of SIDS deaths is the denominator of both sides of the comparison, so it is already accounted for.
>It is acknowledged that the quality of this data leaves much to be desired.
yeah no kidding
I wonder what negative effects there are from parents not sleeping as well...seems like there have to be at least a few more accidents due to lack of sleep.
Ya exactly. Feels like the American Academy of Pediatrics is making parents and babies sicker. But I’m not entirely sure!
Scott thanks again for the wonderful blog.
I think many of us here share a concern about AI safety. But many of the articles on the topic are a bit technical. I made an attempt today to create a lecture on the topic which would be accessible to a broader audience, feedback welcome
https://youtu.be/bcO53WDXzLQ
Does anyone know any weight loss methods that are specifically good if you need to work around medication that induces weight gain? In my case it's Seroquel, but many psychiatric meds make you baloon. I gained 50kg since I started it, and I don't like it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/11c904r/seroquel_and_weight_maintenance/
https://www.reddit.com/r/bipolar/comments/17dqkas/anyone_had_dietary_advice_for_being_on_seroquel/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BipolarReddit/comments/12sjcaf/anybody_on_seroquel_have_any_tips_for_losing/
https://www.reddit.com/r/seroquelmedication/comments/1dz8gpz/has_anyone_successfully_lost_weight_while_taking/
And many similar links in search results offer suggestions.
Try metformin. I take an atypical antipsychotic as well and metformin works for me.
> Does anyone know any weight loss methods that are specifically good if you need to work around medication that induces weight gain?
Unfortunately, weight loss even for non-medicine induced cases is supremely hard, with 80-98% failure rates.
Medically-induced weight gain is typically due to changes in appetite or metabolism (or both), which are generally hard to fight against.
There is a subset of people who have lost significant weight and kept it off, who are part of the National Weight Control Registry. The interventions they've done are:
1. Average 1hr / day of physical activity
2. Eat a low calorie, low fat diet - so you are counting both calories and macros
3. Eat breakfast
4. Self-monitor weight regularly
5. Maintain a consistent eating pattern across weekdays and weekends
"Easy mode" is 'tides, GLP-1's, or bariatric surgery.
I've written a post about all this here:
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/the-maximally-pessimistic-obesity?r=17hw9h
I would just like to add, not disagreeing with you, but just add, that I’ve seen the best results from people when they skipped breakfast, ate more fat, and cut back on the carbs.
I know we’re both really reinventing the wheel here haha
Yeah, I eat low carb myself, but multiple really good high N studies don't find it to be a positive intervention at the population level.
Still, there almost certainly are pockets of people who can / would benefit from it that are lost in the noise of such studies.
When does a joke become a dad joke?
At least one of the requirements is that it's a joke about form rather than substance. Puns and stuff like that. Low brow is a synonym but not exactly the same. I wouldn't consider slapstick or fart jokes to be dad jokes.
I think there needs to be an element of wilful misunderstanding by the joke-teller
"Low brow but clean" is a pretty good heuristic I think.
When it’s simple enough for a very young child to understand and find funny, but too simple for anyone much older to enjoy unironically.
When it becomes apparent.
Bravo.
I got that from my grandson.
When it has a kid, obviously.
absolutely beautifully executed :')
Anyone have any good ideas about how to stop the federal government from ceasing any basic function Elon doesn't like? He appears to have gotten direct control of all federal payments at the moment, at a time when all basic scientific and medical research had already ground to a halt due to Trump's Day 1 EOs forbidding DEI and foreign aid.
Are you willing to risk your life or freedom? Only half joking.
Move elsewhere.
If enough do this, perhaps those who are left will take note that they don't have any serfs left to lord it over. But even if they don't, the fallout doesn't have to be your problem.
...You know damn well that they'll make this everyone's problem, one way or another.
Gosh, *EVERY* single bit of science and medical research stopped dead in the water on the exact day of the Executive Order?
All hail the God-Emperor of Mankind, I guess, I had no idea his reach extended even beyond the USA and affected Europe, China, the rest of the globe.
I was talking about the US and I should have said research is grinding to a halt. It hasn't completely come to a dead stop yet, but is in the process of doing so.
Reviews of all new grants at NSF and NIH have been suspended and, to my knowledge, have not resumed (https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2025/01/27/nx-s1-5276342/national-science-foundation-freezes-grant-review-in-response-to-trump-executive-orders/).
Every single NSF grant is being reviewed for non-compliance with the anti-DEI executive order (http://nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00365-z), and I think the same is happening at NIH, though there's been less reporting. The way this review is proceeding is by asking NSF officers to flag all grants that include any words from a very long list, including "bias", "female", and "barrier" -- which will amount to flagging literally all research with human subjects (https://bsky.app/profile/darbysaxbe.bsky.social). New grants that were supposed to start have been delayed for an unknown amount of time (guess how I know).
All of this amounts to taking a sledgehammer to American science, which has led the world since WW2. You can scoff all you like, but if this persists for 4 years (let alone longer), American science (and consequently, all science) will be set back tremendously. Any country smart enough to fund science is likely to poach many top researchers, and they won't come back.
Premier research institutions take a long time to build, but can be destroyed very quickly. Despite massive investment for decades, Germany's research institutions are still nowhere near where they were 90 years ago.
Surely this inspection for compliance is a one-time cost, and then people will stop DEI-ing their research with human subjects? At some point there must have been a similar executive or congressional decree concerning the content of research, and that didn't grind anything to a permanent halt, evidently.
Or are you suggesting that a permanent prohibition on academics barfing fringe ideologies all over their science amounts to a lasting, total halt? Pretty grim, if so.
First, "Since 1980, Congress has mandated that the agency seek to broaden participation of underrepresented groups, including women and other minorities, within science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)" (from the Nature piece linked above). So this is less modern day wokeness and more a longstanding requirement for what scientists should be trying to do.
Second, no, there has never been a similar executive or congressional decree concerning content research. Funding priorities change all the time (not just with changes in administrations), but they change for new solicitations, not for existing already-funded research. There has never been a culling of research based on keywords before in the US.
Third, if you think mentioning the word "female" in a grant is "barfing a fringe ideology", then the fringe ideology isn't where you think it is.
"So this is less modern day wokeness and more a longstanding requirement for what scientists should be trying to do."
I mean... the fact that it's *old* woke and they used a different word for it at the time doesn't make it any less bad. That it's long-standing makes it more bad.
Apologies for the typo also, that should have read "content OF research".
"Third, if you think mentioning the word 'female' in a grant is 'barfing a fringe ideology', then the fringe ideology isn't where you think it is."
No, and I didn't say that (obviously). The point is that once the fringe ideology is removed all the rest should be smooth sailing, with nothing but wholly justifiable mentions of the trigger words, and then we can stop checking. The only scenario where this is *not* the case is if academics are clinging white-knuckled to their horrible deranged ideology and continue to try to force it in no matter what, in which case checks will have to remain in place.
Ok. All I can say is good luck having a functioning national scientific research enterprise when you start subjecting academics to government scrutiny about whether their research is too woke for your tastes. The nazis and the soviets both tried it, and both destroyed their academic research enterprises for generations.
I want to feel sympathetic for you, but (1) if you can't explain why the word "female" is in your grant application because "we're testing a new drug for ovarian cancer, this is nothing to do with DEI or trans stuff" then I think you need to work on that and (2) oh no, oh gosh, you mean if you don't get a grant, you will lose your job and have to go find another?
Like every other working person when the factory closes down? Like I've had to do when I've been out of a job?
I want science to go on. I want research to go on. But this kind of complaining does sound like "for years we've been in a comfortable little bubble and now reality is biting".
What if I *can* explain the bit about ovarian cancer, but I don't get paid for three months and also the electric bill for the lab fridge isn't being paid so the tissue samples are all worthess, because it takes three months for my explanation to work its way up DOGE's inbox?
Yeah, I'll be getting a different job. It probably won't be curing ovarian cancer, and I won't be available when you decide to restart the ovarian-cancer research project.
> Like every other working person when the factory closes down? Like I've had to do when I've been out of a job?
You’re Irish, aren’t you? Aren’t you entitled to a bit of compensation in this case (Redundancy Payments Act, the Internet suggests)?
> But this kind of complaining does sound like "for years we've been in a comfortable little bubble and now reality is biting".
I’m sure you were so thrilled when people threw that line at you when you lost your job?
More on the object level:
First, the academic job market is very international – what this means is that a postdoc or PhD student who took up an offer to go work in America for a limited period (funded on a grant) could lose their job and have to relocate in a different continent. For instance, postdocs visiting to America have to use a J-1 visa, which does not come with an authorization to work.
They also accepted the contract on the implicit and fairly reasonable assumption that grant money is actually due to their PIs and that the university will not go under in the meantime (I will grant you that many people do not have this luxury, but it is part of the implicit contract as well).
Second, the current traditions in academia are only 80-ish years old in the US, easily 150 in Western Europe. At this point, the bubble is more like a concrete wall and someone has just blown explosive through it. A measure of annoyance does not seem unwarranted.
The implicit contract of academia has remained broadly similar – the money is well under what you can get in industry, the work-life balance is a joke, your literal job involves wrestling with failure all the time (your own, because you’re neither Einstein nor your more successful next-office colleague; your students’; your department’s; the bureaucracy’s), and you may be forced to give it up anyway because there’s not enough room for everyone. The counterpart is the lifestyle, the relative freedom, and the fact that you can spend part of the week working on something you truly like.
It is not clear that anyone is offering grantees the chance to explain anything. When USAID got shut down wholesale the other day, there was no chance for aid recipients to explain how what they’re doing is worthwhile. Again, nobody expects this administration to use a scalpel, and so far all evidence points to killdozer, which you were arguing would be a good thing anyway, a few posts ago.
If you don’t mind federal funding of science being arbitrarily cut off based on the presence of suddenly forbidden keywords, then that is in direct opposition to your stated desire of wanting science to continue. “I want science to continue but we should killdoze the government first” is not a possible world or a coherent position.
You probably can't stop it, but you can *document* it.
When a bad thing happens, write it down. A short explanation of what was done, a short explanation of consequences, some links to prove that you didn't just make it up.
Publish the entire report when the next election is near. Or maybe a chapter each month or two, and then a list of links to all of it.
Also, when people complain about something, you can remind them of the action this is a consequence of.
Because if you won't do it, this is what happens -- there will be so many bad things that most people won't be able to remember all of them, and they will also become the new normal. So right before the election, most people will only remember two or three recent things, and even those won't feel very unusual, so they will round it to "actually, not that bad".
Not wishing to appear flippant but honestly I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. Change is really hard, and Trump has little attention span.
The machine will win.
(Overall everyone regardless of politics should be a pessimist about this outcome)
Sorry, I don’t have that luxury. I’m a scientist with a grant that has been thrown into limbo, like every other grant in the country right now, while Trump officials do a search in grant text for forbidden words like “female” and “barrier” (I wish I was kidding, you can look it up). No one knows if all grants with words like that (which would amount to all grants for human subjects research) are about to be cancelled. No one expects Trump appointees to be taking a scalpel. Everyone I know is panicking about either not being able to eat if they’re on soft money, or not being able to pay their staff to eat. So maybe the machine will win eventually, but there is a very good chance that much of science in the US will be destroyed by then. Universities as a whole will soon follow, since they depend on grant dollars to keep the doors open.
Changing a system thoughtfully is slow. Taking a sledgehammer to it can be very fast.
If you're a scientist wondering if your grant will survive and you'll be able to put food on your table, then your competition is all the taxpayers who couldn't food on -their- table because they kept being forced to fund science projects they didn't approve.
And many of them are indeed bright enough to tell real science from stuff that isn't real but has the "science!" label slapped on it (or worse, actively harmed them while flying the "science" flag). The catch is that they have to inspect it for a little while, and there are a lot of projects, so it's going to take lots of little whiles.
Meanwhile, your argument in defense of science and researchers and universities is very easily made - indeed, even likely to be made - by someone running a fake (or actively harmful) science project, and if it turns out to be actively harmful, they're going to wish they had an even bigger sledgehammer, so that argument isn't doing what you want, either.
There's an argument here that your real beef ought to be with the people who were running fake or harmful projects alongside you.
"all the taxpayers who couldn't food on -their- table because they kept being forced to fund science projects they didn't approve"
A ford class aircraft carrier cost $13 billion. How much food does that take off peoples tables?
I personally, don't think the federal gov should be spending as much money as they do on pretty much everything, but all government spending is open to the same criticism you wage. And the answer isn't to just shut the taps off with no warning. It's to follow the constitutional legislative process to eliminate funding. Should be easy considering trump controls every branch of government.
It's true that all government spending can be criticized this way. In fact, there are people who criticized Biden administration expenditures this way. And now there are people criticizing the critics. It's a free country.
What's special in this case is the response to a longstanding problem with the legislative process you mention. Namely, to a rough approximation, it's broken at the incentive level; criticisms of spending stretch back as far as there's been a US, and have even been accompanied with official legislative processes for the past 80 or so years, and they've been met not only with even more spending, but in the last 10 or so years, they've also been getting "and you're a bigot racist for criticizing" sprinkled on top.
Apparently enough people got hustled into that camp, and decided that the solution was to try something other than the usual process. We're about to find out to what extent that works.
I feel bad for the honest people who are going to get squished by this (I know a lot of them personally), but it's hard to feel bad for the people who thought the process was so solidly in their favor that they could heap insults on top of it. And I hope the people coming out of the ensuing dust cloud figure out a more lasting solution to addressing government waste than saying "legislative processes".
The only way these cuts will address your complaint that this spending creates a deadweight loss and makes the public poorer, is if the funds are redirected to spending that doesn't cause that or results in a tax cut. I have seen no evidence that Trump is going to do either. His proposed Tax Cuts benefit this in the highest income brackets, not the people struggling to put food on the table.
It's fine if you want to celebrate cuts in government spending, I applaud them as well, but the manner in which the cuts happen does matter. And what is done with the freed up money matters as well. I have no reason to trust that Trump will do anything with the money besides things that benefit himself.
See this is where you really tick me off. Because I've been fortunate enough to be close to people whose job it is to evaluate the grant proposals for one of the major Federal departments, and I can't tell you how seriously they take their job to evaluate the methodology and to weed out bias. That's the thing that's generally missing from this conversation, you can say that you don't think government can be doing certain things, that's fair ideologically speaking, you can't abstract the process by which government does things away from the people who work in government, and in my experience those folks really, really care about providing the highest quality good they are able and labeling them all as corrupt or incompetent is malicious and stupid.
If it makes you feel any better: I work in a different part of the government, staffed by people I know personally, who take their work seriously and genuinely for the good of Americans, and are nevertheless vilified by some subset of those same Americans who don't fully understand what they do and suspect they're up to no good and would like to see them all unemployed (and in a few cases, even incarcerated).
Earlier this week, I had a long conversation with another friend who worked like hell to get what he thought was a pretty stable position, just in time to have to worry about it going away, and I tried to give him advice on what would most likely preserve that work. So I think I know how you feel.
Thing is, I'm trying to look through more than one pair of glasses. There's the honest government worker. There's also the civilian who believes honest government workers exist. But there's also the government lifer (common phrase we use: RIP - "retired in place") who deadweights their way through an entire career and is virtually impossible to fire due to all the rules in the way, as well as the mid-level government manager who has plenty of energy that -could- go toward serving the people, but instead goes toward their own bureaucratic fiefdom and future position on some lobbyist board and McMansion deep in Rappahannock or the Eastern Shore. And there's civilians well aware of that type as well. A -lot- of them.
You can complain to me all you like about the fact that there are good people; but you'd be wasting your time, because I already know. And I'm going to say yes, but also there's all this deadweight, and while I could conceivably perform surgery on a few departments and save some real money if I was authorized to do so, I'm going to question whatever system gave me that authority and who else also got it and would I approve of whatever -they- would cut, and anyway, whatever I cut is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to all the rest of the waste, which means that's not going to be good enough for the taxpayers who are also struggling. You can't ignore them and then also get indignant when they vote to axe your pet government program, any more than I can ignore them when they vote for someone who isn't a libertarian.
I can blame the taxpayers who are struggling for thinking that any of the cutting is going to benefit them. All we are seeing is avenues of government aid being even more cut off or obstructed than before. It would be one thing if the money saved were going towards some kind of direct subsidy to the American people or even a broad tax cut or tax credit, but there's no evidence that's going to happen. The last time Trump authorized a tax cut, it was specifically for the benefit of large corporate tax payers over everyone else and I don't know why this time would be any different.
I can understand people's frustration with an inefficient government, although I think a lot more of that inefficiency is due to constant Republican obstructionism than people normally grant. And I can certainly understand people's skepticism with the idea that more government spending in the name of efficiency isn't actually going to speed things up, because that's pretty understandable even though I think it might actually be the solution in at least some cases. But what I can't understand is being mad at democrats or government officials because the government isn't benefitting them the way it should when they are the only side who believes that's the governments job. Most of the people think that Trump should be empowered to help them on an individual level, that means they aren't really libertarians. They've just been conned into thinking that somehow the money we aren't spending to keep babies from getting AIDS in Africa is going to come back to them. And I think being conned that way makes them stupid marks, no matter how justified their general anger is.
If your default assumption is that every bit of federal spending, including every NSF grant, is guilty until proven innocent, then no one is going to be able to convince you that all the worthwhile things are worthwhile one by one. First, there are just too many of them to go through. Second, no one person is qualified to understand the reason that most grants in most fields are worthwhile (I'm including myself, a science professor. I'm not competent to evaluate the vast majority of grants in any field outside my own).
What you should be aware of is that making the assumption that it's majority wasteful just... making an assumption. There's lots of empirical evidence of specific instances of waste or fraud, but there's zero evidence that most federal spending is "waste" or that it would not be able to win public support if exposed to careful scrutiny by experts who understand it. In fact, most federal spending IS exposed to careful scrutiny at different times, at which points it's most often found to be worthwhile after all. That's why, e.g. congress has kept voting to fund USAID even despite the difficulty of justifying it to non-experts, and despite the presence of killdozer proponents who couldn't care less about any spending details at all.
Already aware. I didn't bother going into it because I was certain you were aware as well.
Notice the pattern here? If we assume grants are wasteful until proven productive, we have the current scenario. But if it we assume grants are productive until proven wasteful, we have the scenario I described earlier. I wouldn't call either of these good enough to celebrate at the next Nobel Prize dinner.
I don't have the literature in front of me, but I don't think your claim of "zero evidence of most federal spending being wasteful" is beyond question. The method for showing it is itself questionable (who chooses the evaluation experts? What are their motivations?). Multiple instances of fraud have been unearthed (replication crisis; p-hacking; plagiarism; peer review corruption; faked data). Alternate methods for funding are available, with different tradeoffs, including some very likely preferable. And if we're using the continued approval of Congress as a metric for whether something is worth doing, I think you'll find a great many people on this forum alone will have issue, even those who (like me) will defend real science.
The reason to assume that grants are productive until proven wasteful is that in order to get funded in the first place, every grant already has to go through
multiple layers of serious content-level review by many actual experts. There are still going to be problems with this approach, sometimes systematic problems when an entire field is wrong, but I'm not aware of any system that would consistently work better.
If there are some "very likely preferable" alternatives, what are they? What's the evidence that they're preferable? Without details, this is hand-waiving of the classic "I bet we could build this better from scratch" variety. Well, as long as we're just placing bets, I bet you couldn't. And I definitely bet that Elon can't.
You’re not completely wrong, but I just wanted to check: you are aware that (say) the NSF’s budget is less than 0.2% of the federal budget, right? And that together with the NIH they’re still under 1%?
Generally aware, yes.
But this is similar to the older conflict over the NEA: tiny amount of funding relative to the entire budget, given to something a lot of people really didn't like. The usual gripes come up. 0.2% of the funding takes up 20% of the public awareness (blame sensationalism if you like). That funding could have gone to something a lot more people would approve of, like cancer research (ironically, maybe that's now frozen as well).
Meanwhile, if you have two instances of wasteful spending, one tiny but easy to get rid of, the other larger but much more entrenched, it's often wiser to go after the tiny pot rather than tackle the bigger one in the name of Making A Difference and getting no progress at all.
A fair bit of this freeze is motivated by anger, and so there's going to be mistakes, and we'll doubtless hear of them. OTOH, I don't think the anger is completely unfounded, and whether it is or not, ignoring the root causes seems unwise.
There are court cases and injunctions in place around the "spending freeze" from last week. Not clear if they are being followed. There will probably be more court cases around anything Musk does, especially usurping the power of the purse.
When (as I'm guessing he will) Musk ignores court orders, then I guess the constitutional crisis will escalate and we'll see what happens.
Whatever you think of Trump and USAID, I doubt every Republican Congressman will want to cede their own power, and the power of the courts.
The Republican calculus seems to be consistent since 2016: hope Trump implodes, but say nothing against him as long as he’s popular with their base. If that last part doesn’t change, I can’t see any Republican in congress opposing Trump to assert their own power. They know that their base will pick Trump over them, and they’ll (personally, if not congress as an institution) be left without power anyway
They might not say anything against him, but they have often proved remarkably good at just imploding into internal strife that makes it impossible to implement his strategies. See what happened with Matt Gaetz, no one is really mad at the Republicans who blocked his nomination, I think because they framed it as "we love Trump, we just really have beef with this jackass). I don't know why that works, and I'm not sure its entirely conscious of their part, but I hope it continues.
> I doubt every Republican Congressman will want to cede their own power, and the power of the courts
When the alternative is living under leftist rule, I'm sure they're willing to make some sacrifices.
Just on the basis of left-right stuff they should want it.
In particular, the supreme court is likely to be majority Republican appointees for at least several decades. If SCOTUS blocks Musk's actions and trump pulls an Andrew Jackson then it will be a huge win in the long run for liberals, who see SCOTUS as a block on their agenda that will, again, not go away for decades absent some norm-breaking action from someone. And if you're an R Congressman who wants to have conservatism even after trump is out of the picture, not that hard to figure this out.
To a smaller degree, Congress favors Republicans more than the presidency does.
> If SCOTUS blocks Musk's actions
...If. I don't know why you're so confident that they're not compromised as well.
They are willing to do a lot of shit to benefit Republicans, but I really don't think they want to kneecap their *own* power. They all see themselves as philosopher-kings who should run everything and lecture everyone else about how wise and noble they are compared to the unwashed masses. Nor do I think them being "compromised" is necessary to explain their actions, fun as it might be to speculate about.
You should not attempt to stop it. Civil service obstructionism is antidemocratic. They won an election on this plank and they aren't doing anything worse or dodgier with respect to the limits of the office than FDR ever did. If this kills off boondoggle government for even one generation, it's a great act and will even make up for all the stupid shit they're doing with respect to Ukraine and so on.
Vote for someone else in four years, see how keen the Democrat candidate then will be to rebuild all the superfluous shit.
So, if civil service obstructionism is antidemocratic, what do you call it when a "special government employee" arbitrarily decides to shut down funding for an entire government agency against the wishes of Congress?
Efficient functioning of the executive branch? It's clear that he has the imprimatur of the office behind him.
Try reading the constitution before spouting nonsense.
It's the opposite of efficient functioning! Congress ordered the Executive Branch to do various things (send out foreign aid, give money to the states for social services, etc.) and the executive branch is not doing those things efficiently, because Elon Musk, unelected civil servant, has unilaterally decided that they shouldn't happen!
I will grant that Elon Musk is very efficient in his attempts to break the law, and that the President is supporting his attempts to break the law, but if you're complaining about unelected civil servants getting in the way of the laws being executed, well, Congress is the one that writes the laws, not the President.
You and I both know that Musk isn't a career civil servant of the kind that bends government leftward even when (as now) there's a rightwing majority in every branch of government. This is a sophistic gotcha attempt and not worthy of real engagement.
If you want me to take you at all seriously on this you can start by expanding on your lasting detestation of FDR and the New Deal era of government for his violation of political norms and executive overreach. As of right now I'm not impressed.
It's not really a sophistic gotcha to say "you only dislike unelected civil servants ignoring all the laws when they are on the other side of the aisle" and then you say, "Yes, I only dislike unelected civil servants ignoring all the laws when they are on the other side of the aisle." It's just admitting you're a partisan hack, in which case, stop blithering about how undemocratic unelected civil servants are and just say you want power.
The people have decided Congress is corrupt and have entrusted the executive branch with doing an end-run around the Oligarchy on the Hill - in defiance of the "law", as is their right as the People, who art sovereign.
In accordance with the Constitution, if Congress does not like this turn of events, they are free to impeach and remove the executive.
When did we vote on that? Did I miss the email?
If "the people" have decided that Congress is corrupt, wouldn't they have voted them out of office a couple months ago? Well, a third of the Senators and all of the Representatives at least.
A good chunk of the people have perhaps decided that the *bureaucracy* is corrupt, in which case it's understandable that many of them would vote for Donald Trump. But they really should have voted for similarly-inclined congressmen to back his play, because the Constitution is pretty clear that much of what they want to do is properly the job of the (democratically elected) Congress.
But, OK, "the people" will have a chance to reconsider that in just under two years; we'll see what they do.
The people decided no such thing. This is no more than the language authoritarians use to grab power. Every authoritarian in history claimed to be executing “the will of the people”, which just happened to be whatever they want to do, long before democracies even existed.
The civil service failing to obstruct.
>Civil service obstructionism is antidemocratic.
Agreed.
Civil servants, just like the president and other elected officials take an oath to uphold the constitution above all else. Refusing to do unconstitutional things is not antidemocratic.
Many Thanks! Bluntly, I'd find that position a lot more believable if there were widespread refusal by civil servants to implement the thinly disguised racial quotas of Didn't Earn It as violating the equal protection clause of the constitution.
Can you please describe to me what you think the DEI policies of the federal government were and what was their impact? The outrage seems to be so out of scale with the actual reality of the policies.
Many Thanks! See the extensive discussion of DEI in https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke . Ultimately, the _effect_ (after regulators and regulatees finish dancing around ambiguous language) is, as I said, thinly disguised racial quotas.
( one more localized link in the comments on that post: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke/comment/55283658 - there are many similar ones. )
move to blue state
support state rights
> He appears to have gotten direct control
Many things are not what they appear, especially in times of change, fear and rumors.
I'm pretty sure he and his crew just has "read only access". They analyze where the money actually flows, and make recommendations.
Any actual spending and reorg issues has to be taken by whoever has that authority, which is some combination of the President and Congress.
Of course, Elon has Trump's ear, and much or all he recommends may be enacted. But using the legal ways in due time.
If you read his X feed, he has been bragging about turning off payments “in real time” all weekend. In particular, he has bragged about shutting down payments by USAID and closing that agency. The email that told USAID employees not to come into work today was written by one of his DOGE “employees” (unclear what position or credentials or clearance, if any, any of them actually have). Trump clearly found out about these things from reporters asking him what he thought — the interviews make it clear he didn’t order those moves. It’s possible Musk is bragging/lying and is really just conducting an audit, but I’ve never heard of an auditing that required telling the organization being audited to pause all payments…
Don't remember where, so take it FWIW, but I saw or heard Elon say Trump had agreed to shutting down USAID. I imagine Trump then set the wheels in motion.
If there have been some miscommunications and/or shortcuts taken in the process, I wouldn't be completely stunned, of course...
It isn't legal for Trump to decide to shutdown USAID, either. Money for USAID was appropriated by congress as recently as December.
Trump is the leader of the executive branch asserting his authority under Article II of the Constitution. If you don't like what he's doing, you need to convince 1/2 of Congressmen, and 2/3 of Senators to remove him. The first is probably pretty easy, the second seems very hard.
Note that if you pull that off you end up with President JD Vance, and a *very* upset Elon Musk and GOP base, so uhh....yeah. Idk what to tell you man.
Oh no an upset elon musk! What will he do? Ask his kept-boys to beat me up? Maybe he'll call me a Pedo. I am so scared!
https://www.justsecurity.org/107267/can-president-dissolve-usaid-by-executive-order/
Wait...that fascist Donald Trump is breaking...le law? It can't be! That's illegal! You can't do that!
I guess Congress needs to impeach and remove him. Ok. Ball is in their court.
No, there are other ways.
Donald Trump had a suggestion about this once: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html
...Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the people upset about this are not "second amendment people".
Listen, if you want President Vance, Trump as a martyr, and a *very* angry Musk and MAGA base, I mean, that's your prerogative, I suppose.
In context of the discussion, I think it would be very angry President Trump, Vice-President (edited: Vance), MAGA and X base. It would certainly not be much better, that’s for certain.
Did you mean Pence or Vance?
There’s 200 years of precedent of congress and the executive arguing over the exact limits of their respective powers. To act like impeachment is the only remedy is silly.
And if the executive says "yeah lol we don't care" - what do you propose happens? What's the remedy?
(Also, much of this is pushing back on pretty modern precedent. The Impoundments Control Act (which stops the President from declining to spend money Congress appropriated) is only from 1974. )
>asserting his authority under Article II of the Constitution.
Surely the point is that his actual authority is less than what he asserts it is. The extent to which that position is the correct one is, of course, contested, but one can't simply wave it away.
You can't wave it away, I agree, but if the Congress does not act to correct it, well...de facto that's his authority. Article II is asserting Article I does not have the authority over Article II it assets - so we're at a bit of an impasse. Who will win? Tune into X.com to find out!
Courts can also act to correct it.
Yes, and if the courts say "you must stop", and they don't, well...
In that event, Congress would need to step in, impeach, and remove. There are 47 Democratic Senators, so you need 20 GOP Senators to remove him. Can you get 20 GOP Senators to do that? That's the question.
That's a rather big "if."
There are, historically, many ways to push back on government (and non-government, in the case of Elon) excesses that are still far short of impeachment
Indeed. Perhaps the New York Times can try calling him a fascist.
Oh, they have, a hundred times already. Honestly, you have to give them some credit for not backing down like the other papers. I wonder though, do they not actually think he's fascist, and thus feel safe saying it? Or do they actually believe what they're saying, and they really are just suicidal enough to die on this hill? Time will tell...
I don't believe the NYT offices are currently at any risk of facing the DOGE gestapo, luckily. Doesn't seem to be their style.
However, they do seem to be in a bit of a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" situation.
For legal reasons, I cannot offer any viable recommendations.
Maybe the government is doing too much. Perhaps it is a time for a few steps back.
Just being devils advocate here.
Weirdly enough, there are laws in place for when and how and under what circumstances those kinds of decisions get made. What those laws do NOT say is "the president has full authority over all disbursal of government funds, full stop."
So the question really isn't whether the government is doing more or less than it should. The question is, do you want the government--as an institution of laws based on democratic processes--to exist at all? Or do you want it replaced with something that does not respect laws and does not answer in any fashion to the will of the people?
p.s. You might try cracking a history book or three and reading up on the past examples of the exercise of autocratic power. If you think "making the government do less stuff" is a guaranteed (or even likely) outcome, you're in for just a bit of a surprise.
Maybe, but if so that should be something discussed and considered, and not just some unelected billionaire cancelling the things he disagrees with. I highly doubt we'll see an of his government funding removed.
The correct way to solve for that, I earnestly believe, is not to glance over a $50b-a-year agency for a couple of weeks and then abruptly destroy it. Doubly so when it's the "try to fight Ebola and famines" agency.
If that is a legitimate use of our tax dollars. Is it?
Yes. Are you pretending that it isn't?
Trivially, yes. You don't have to _support_ it, but obviously it's something that's legal and legitimate for a government to do.
... Yes.
1. I don't want the world to have more famine and Ebola in it.
2. It improves the standing of the US, for a tiny portion of the federal budget.
3. It has funding properly appropriated to it by Congress.
And "I think any given Federal agency is utterly useless and should be summarily destroyed, with little analysis" isn't a very reasonable default position. Elon Musk is tearing through the government way faster than anybody could be while actually understanding what they're doing.
I think one can justify money toward fighting epidemics on defending our nation against foreign enemies, and famine as a domestic one. Although this is fraught territory in which it's tempting to slap the E word on anything a fed wants to charge everyone for defending against.
Or appearing to defend against, which brings us back to what I think is the crux of the problem: whether said federal agency is actually defending effectively with the money given it. The whole issue here isn't so much with whether it's right to coordinate federally to fight epidemics and famine, but rather whether it's being being done well enough. The side that thinks it isn't, sees the side that thinks it is insisting that this is a referendum on the first question, in a way that looks like justifying {disease and famine defense at any expense, and boy are we gonna lean into 'any'}. And they're really, really tired of that, especially after the COVID fiasco and a couple of FEMA chasers.
The latter party, being one which also prides itself on holding the lion's share of advanced education degrees, ought to be able to notice this argument and speak to it pretty easily, even if they acknowledge the problem is hard; and yet, they don't. The former party sees -this-, too, and concludes that either they're not as bright as advertised, or they are and deliberately choose to frame it the other way in order to bully the former party into acquiescence. And either way, the former party isn't getting its diseases and famines fought, or is paying more than tolerable, and many of them know how to stay healthy and grow food on their own.
This is probably going to lead to some disease and food shortages that a federal agency -could- have prevented, but every time the question comes up as to how to distinguish wasteful spending from useful, and the latter party claimed the mantle of expertise, they proceeded to random-walk back into pouring intolerable amounts of wealth into questionable expenses. So it's now come to a shakeout.
But the point is that there are 6 million of these and it has grown out of control. Let’s start over and get things under control.
At almost no point in the life of a very complex system is the correct way to handle its issues "take a sledgehammer to it, destroy it completely and then rebuild it from scratch".
And I say this as a software engineer who often acutely feels the "I just want to refactor our entire codebase, it's so ugly I can't look at it" instinct.
That's obviously a wild exaggeration - the Federal Register lists 438 agencies, and this one is a bit less than 1% of the Federal budget so it's larger than the average one.
But also, if we want to consolidate Federal agencies, fine, but we shouldn't just shut off the one that's trying to prevent people from dying in plagues and famines before we have something in place to replace it.
Then Congress should pass a budget to that effect.
unilateral executive action isn't going to make the government any smaller
The significant majority of complaints about Trump & co. I've heard over the last week or so deal precisely with the ways in which he's unilaterally made government smaller.
Well Biden unilaterally blew like $1T+ as executive by canceling student loans and expanding food stamps and all sorts of very pricy giveaways by reinterpreting existing laws (and would have done more if the SCOTUS didn’t stop him on the student vote buying front).
https://www.city-journal.org/article/biden-trump-spending-federal-government-debt
So if that’s ok, it’s just as ok to reinterpret the spending obligations more strictly and cut back on stuff as it is to give away more.
Trying to shut down USAID completely is not "reinterpreting the spending obligations more strictly" by any stretch of the imagination.
When did Congress authorize USAID to spend any of that money? Serious question.
So, nothing to worry about?
"size" isn't the only dimension to care about
Whoever told you size does not matter was lying to you. Size does matter and it matters a lot. In fact it is one of the most fundamental disagreements that define politics. Those right of center believe the government should be smaller and do less and those left of center believe the government should be bigger and do more. It's a core principal that you can find a the core of almost all political discussions if you dig deep enough. Yes, it's not the only dimension but it may be the single most important dimension.
But an important one considering someone has to pay.
Someone has to pay for everything the government does, but if you shrug at Trump's trillion-dollar tax plan while demanding every last bit of foreign aid go under the microscope, you do not actually care about saving money.
Also, this bears repeating - what Elon is doing is almost certainly illegal. It is illegal regardless of the size of the government, so saying "but what if the government is too big?" is a complete red herring.
This devil doesn't need any advocates, he owns a xitter.
I think this is a Herculean task that is going to take a lot of support.
What is?
Cutting government waste and inefficiency. If successful (which is doubtful) it will be the most important political accomplishment this century.
Count me skeptical. “Government waste and inefficiency” are useless buzzwords. There’s no budget item called “waste and inefficiency, here for Mask to cut”. “Most important […] this century” is downright preposterous in the year #25.
No? We're kind of fucked? Elections have consequences. This one is shaping up to be a doozy.
"The American people deserve to get what they want, and get it good and hard"--H.L. Mencken
Yep!
Live by the largess of the state, die by the largess of the state (or lack thereof). If your cause or organization is dependent on federal dollars to survive, then its continued existence is a political issue, whether you want it to be or not.
Very very regrettably, quite a bit of work that _could_ have been largely apolitical has been made quite political by the people in the field. I've read arguments for scientists to mix activism in with the science. Live by activism, die by activism.
This isn't a political issue so much as a legal issue - neither Elon Musk not Donald Trump is allowed to order government agencies to not spend money that Congress has told them to spend. But Elon Musk can issue orders a lot faster than a court can tell him to stop.
If this political issue was actually being fought over in political channels, there wouldn't be remotely as much drama.
The agencies are part of the Executive Branch, i.e., the person of the President, Donald Trump. Congress does not give them orders, just funding and the right to spend it as earmarked in the budget.
1. The executive branch is not "the person of the President." There are all sorts of constraints on how the executive branch operates, both statutory and constitutional.
2. It is manifestly untrue that "Congress does not give them orders." The fact that the executive can largely only act pursuant to statutory authority has been the basis for a whole series of Supreme Court cases. Eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine
And it was just months ago that SCOTUS ended Chevron deference.
I know liberals who continue to bitch about this, because their heads are stuck up their asses. But it's about to become the most important ruling they have to say "no, the Executive branch can't just order the administrative apparatus to do whatever the hell it wants."
2. I think that misunderstands the doctrine: that is mainly a limit on how much the executive branch can LEGISLATE, through the regulations of the administrative agencies. At best it delegates authority. That is not the same as giving them orders.
1. Plenty of statutes, yes, with so-called "independent" agencies. Blatantly unconstitutional ones though, but I suppose the Supreme Court can just make shit up if a case goes to them.
It's supposed to be up to Congress. If Congress decides my super-conductiong super-collider is a super-boondoggle, well, I lose it.
That would be fine, but my understanding is that Congress is being completely bypassed here by an actor (Musk) who was appointed without confirmation to lead an agency with apparently far-reaching authority that was not approved by Congress. Seems like a problem, especialy since Musk is a megalomanic bullshit artist with massive conflicts of interest.
People round here seemed to like unelected actors when it was Dominic Cummings, for instance. I don't like Cummings (I don't much like Musk for that matter) but if "the government of the US was being run by everyone except the president in the last months of Biden's term, and that's okay" is acceptable, than having a guy appointed by and acting on behalf of the president should also be okay.
Who are these “people around here”? For the record:
Fuck Cummings and Musk
No it wasn’t ok for not-Biden to be running things
No it’s not ok for a rando to act on “behalf of the President”
Yes, that's my point. This is all Congress's job. Congress can write a law tomorrow to eliminate hundreds of federal agencies. It's completely straightforward and legal, if they do that.
I think the interconnected web of state and private economies in any developed country is so dense one expects to find such a dependence in most unexpected places. Shutting down accounts payable operations does nothing to reduce the underlying liabilities, although I admit it could be fun for a billionaire who thinks he's somehow not "dependent on federal dollars" to, well, still being a billionaire, to find out otherwise.
"I think the interconnected web of state and private economies in any developed country is so dense one expects to find such a dependence in most unexpected places."
...And you understand that that's a *bad* thing, right? Almost anything that can be done to thwart this sort of interconnection is on the side of the angels. Yeah, sure, if you rip out part of a highly enmeshed system no doubt you'll damage some other pieces – but the whole point of enmeshing those things so tightly in the first place was the other side trying to prevent them ever being removed with this sort of argument, so ripping them out first and surveying the consequences later is the only sensible response.
" but the whole point of enmeshing those things so tightly in the first place was the other side trying to prevent them ever being removed with this sort of argument, so ripping them out first and surveying the consequences later is the only sensible response."
Not being accusatory here, I swear. People pick up ideas from all over the place and need not have any malicious intent. But I notice when I paraphrase this just a little bit I get "thinking carefully about these things is a deceptive tool of the enemy! Don't think, act! You can stop and think only after you've taken irreversible action!"
This could not be more clearly a tool of Dark Side Epistemology. On the one side there is an outright admission that the consequences are unknown and very difficult to know and on the other side there is a very strong declaration that they will Definitely Be Good, even across a very broad range of possible actions. And then on top of that is time pressure! Why is there time pressure? This state of affairs is not remotely new and many millions of human-hours have been devoted to thinking and writing about it. Saying that there's no time to work out the probable consequences is both clearly false, and clearly intended to route around the sort of epistemic defenses that would otherwise catch the other contradictions here.
Let's be clear: Donald Trump, the man at the head of this effort, knew with certainty he was going to be president some 10 weeks in advance of taking the office. Before that he spent four straight years planning and preparing to get back into the office, and before THAT he spent four years in the office the first time, with unprecedented levels of access to all of the departments he is now trying to alter, and virtually unlimited resources in terms of planning, interpreting and information gathering. To say there has been ample opportunity to plan ahead and do these things (which are know being done recklessly and wantonly) with methodical and deliberate action would be an enormous understatement. It is hard to imagine how anyone in the world *could* have a better opportunity to prepare for this moment than he has had.
So when you present the meme that says that attempts careful action and deliberate damage-mitigation are counterproductive, and that the sledgehammer approach is the only viable one, it is certainly false. Not only is it certainly false, it's pretty definitely intended (by whoever originated it) to smuggle faulty reasoning into the brains of people who might otherwise notice and object to such.
"Let's be clear: Donald Trump, the man at the head of this effort, knew with certainty he was going to be president some 10 weeks in advance of taking the office. "
There are a lot of pollsters who would very much like to subscribe to your newsletter where you expand upon this. I can think of one lady in Iowa, for instance:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/us/politics/ann-selzer-iowa-trump.html
Unless you mean "ten weeks after winning the election before he was officially ratified" as here:
https://www.cfr.org/blog/transition-2025-donald-trump-won-presidency-now-he-needs-staff-his-administration
I am surprised by how fast Trump is moving and all the things he wants - and is getting - done. I think some of that may be a reaction to accusations that in his first term he did nothing and wasn't able to achieve his goals and aims, if he had any. Well, this time round, he's prepared and getting it done straight out of the gate.
> Why is there time pressure?
You could lose the House in the midterms.
A touch histrionic, friend! No, what you're missing is something very simple: the scale of the benefit and the possible consequences are of different orders of magnitude. What I'm saying is we should remove the barnacles right now and not worry about exactly who might stub his toe in the process. That toe will hurt the one guy, but it won't make the ship go any slower, whereas removing the barnacles is guaranteed to make it go faster and sail smoother.
Anybody who demands a full toe-stubbing study at a cost of years of time and ten times the scraping in money is an obstructionist, pure and simple. The toe just isn't that important.
"but the whole point of enmeshing those things so tightly in the first place was the other side trying to prevent them ever being removed with this sort of argument"
There are many things here that seem erroneous, but this seems to be straying near to conspiracy theory territory. There is literally nobody with the sort of god's-eye-view and extended time horizons that this implies. Individual humans are really quite limited in both our ability to retain and process information, and our lifespan. The interactions between government and business that were built up over 250 years in a country of 300 million people were certainly not shaped by ANY singular purpose or intent.
The actual reasons that state and private economies are entertwined are neither so simple nor so sinister:
People sometimes work together to get stuff done. When a bunch of them work together in certain very specific ways--campaigning, voting, lobbying--they can direct public money towards common goals. They can do this because of a set of agreements that all of us are invested in, that says very explicitly that they get to do this. But since there are many different people, with many different goals, spread across fifty states, thousands of towns and 250 years of history, they'll direct such money in a great many different directions. And sometimes as part of achieving those goals they will--working within a largely capitalist economy as they do--give it to private companies in exchange for services. Sometimes, when some such flow of money seems particularly stable, a private company won't just happen by to offer services, it will grow up around it. Like parasites feeding on a host, now that you mention it. Or are they private companies heroically offering valuable and in-demand services and civic framework that makes practicing their trade possible the real parasite? Hmm...maybe this metaphor is optimized more for heat than light.
Lastly, I can't help but be struck by your one allowable exception being "funnel[ing] tax dollars directly into the military." I'd invite you to take a loot at how the military in the U.S. does business. Because if all your entertwined-enmeshed-entagled-parasite rhetoric applies to ANY part of the relationship between government and private enterprise, surely it applies to this one.
"Sometimes, when some such flow of money seems particularly stable, a private company won't just happen by to offer services, it will grow up around it. Like parasites feeding on a host, now that you mention it. Or are they private companies heroically offering valuable and in-demand services and civic framework that makes practicing their trade possible the real parasite?"
The problem is that there are real needs for private companies to provide services and meet demand as agents/contractors for state bodies. That's legit (we're one ourselves!)
*But* there are also private enterprises who see "big pot of government money for the taking", and set up to get that big pot, and don't provide the services but are more interested in enriching the directors. This is why the "effective" in Effective Altruism, after all: charities that spend money efficiently and not on "we need to pay CEO business salaries to attract the right calibre of person to be the manager, so that's why all your donations are going on our salaries and not the cause". And leaving aside the BLM lot who seem to have done well for themselves out of being Oppressed Victims (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html), there are several examples in my own country of people on state and semi-state bodies who treated them like their own private piggy-banks.
I think we all agree that the piggy-banks need to be cut away, and DOGE is at least an attempt to do that. What we're arguing over is how to distinguish between the effective agencies and the piggy-banks, and is DOGE too much of a blunt instrument.
"Lastly, I can't help but be struck by your one allowable exception"
It's the one allowable exception because it's necessary. As Bastiat says, the ideal state of being is one where nobody plunders anybody; but we need to pay for a military or we get plundered to fuck and back by roving bandits slash foreign tyrants. That's just reality. This should not be read to say that I am massively on board with the US military-industrial complex. In fact, someone with some willingness to think past kneejerk outrage might identify the by no means original line of argument and suspect the opposite would be more likely!
Mate, while I pretty much agree with the substance of your arguments, your tone... you do catch more flies with honey. Sarcastic tone pretty much shuts any chance your arguments would be heard, much less considered. Ask me how I know...
“And you understand that that's a *bad* thing, right?”
Is it? Always? Why are so many best places to live on this planet feature this kind of enmeshing?
Don’t get me wrong, I know it can be a bad thing, but I think the view that is “always” a bad thing is empirically not correct.
First of all, the state ideally should not *have* an economy in any meaningful sense. It should funnel tax dollars directly into the military and that's about it. It shouldn't be meddling in any economic affairs that can be handled on either the private or the local-government level.
Secondly, the entanglement is, as noted, a way for parasites to prevent their own removal, thus anything that prevents such a web of interconnection from existing is to the good, the way that coppering the bottom of an old ship prevented barnacles. Keeping a firebreak between the two operations as much as possible is both necessary and desirable.
And not only the best places to live feature this kind of enmeshing, the bad places have plenty of it too, but then we call it by its right name, corruption. And the reason the good places keep having it is because rich countries are better to leech off: fat, healthy bodies with plenty of blood to suck. The incentives are enormous, and successful parasites are then rich with ill gains they can use to push the state to permit more of the same.
The best time to act would have been three months ago. The second-best time is...well, you get the picture.
Coordinated pressure on your members of Congress -- write them letters, call their offices, send them free faxes via FaxZero (if their office accepts faxes, you can type text as a message to be included in your cover sheet or fax them PDF attachments). Some members of Congress are actually out there in front of the cameras trying to enter USAID (and being turned away by federal agents) -- tell them to keep it up. Some government officials actually care when their constituents might be impacted (the response to the federal grant freeze seems to show that).
Is there anything else I'm forgetting? Unless you've already got the ear of elected officials, that's about that.
I would recommend calling - but only your congressmen. If you're a member of any kind of civic group, play that up as well. A bunch of calls like that can really weigh on representatives to do something.
(cross-post from https://x.com/dfranke/status/1886493611446927531)
Shitposts are the primordial ooze from which AI evolved.
That's my bon mot summarizing an AI-generated argument that changed my mind about something. The broad question I've been exploring is: in nearby alternate timelines, how soon could the deep learning revolution have happened? I came in thinking that chip technology would be the bottleneck at most every step. But I noticed one place where that clearly wasn't true: word2vec.
Word2vec was a critical stepping stone on the innovation path to GPTs. But when its research team published the seminal papers about it in 2013, it took them only one CPU-day to train their network. Feedforward neural nets had been known since 2003 to be a promising approach to language modeling, and everything else in those papers seems pretty simple in hindsight. So why did we have to wait until 2013 for it to happen?
I challenged GPT-o1 to refute my claim that word2vec was low-hanging fruit which had been ripe for a decade, and one counterargument it came up with was extremely persuasive: in 2003, the largest English corpora available were only on the order of billions of words, and that wouldn't have been enough for word2vec to be able to prove its superiority over other approaches. By 2013, the word2vec team had a 100-billion word corpus available, and today's leading LLMs are trained on trillions of words.
What made these huge corpora possible was social media, and more generally, the growth of the web. In 2003, Wikipedia was in its infancy, Google Books had not yet launched, and social media was still in the blogosphere era. A high-quality digitization of the library of congress might have been enough to produce an adequate corpus, but that was impossible because OCR sucked in 2003 and stuff like word2vec was a prerequisite for improving it. The explosion of social media which began circa 2008 was what broke this impasse.
In short, what held AI back for a decade is that we just didn't have enough shitposts.
Quite credible.
Does anyone know of an AI that's trained on the Internet *without* all the PC reinforced human learning? I want to know what people really think.
You'll have to be more clear on what you're asking for. There are lots of base models of various sizes which have had no particular effort put into censoring their pretraining corpus. https://huggingface.co/tiiuae/Falcon3-10B-Base is a good one that's small enough to run locally, and https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3-Base is the biggest I know of. Yes, you read that right: DeepSeek's base model isn't particularly censored and has plenty of knowledge about all the topics that the CCP is sensitive about. I'm using the weasel-word "particularly" here because when training a base model there's no bright line between censorship and curation: an LLM trained on the entire Library of Babel is useful to nobody. But, keep in mind what a base model is: it's strictly a next-token predictor, not a chatbot that's been trained in instruction-following. This makes them not-terrible-useful either for day-to-day work or for your stated goal.
So, perhaps more in line with what you're asking for is a chatbot that's been fine-tuned for instruction-following, but has not been tuned to refuse certain instructions. This refusal-training is where most of the censorship happens. There are many such models, in two varieties. The first, straightforward, variety just never had any refusals included in its training data. https://huggingface.co/abacusai/Liberated-Qwen1.5-72B is an example of this. The other variety has had these refusals removed through a technique called abliteration. https://huggingface.co/blog/mlabonne/abliteration has a thorough description, but the layman's version is that you detect which neurons light up particularly when it's deciding to issue a refusal, and kill those. Just search HF for models with "abliterated" in their name and you'll find lots of them.
Like many people, I've joked before that social media is destroying the world. But if a few years down the line we get an Earth-shattering foom from a malevolent AI, my last though as the nanobots start to render me into paperclips is now definitely going to be "wow, so I guess that was more literally true than any of us expected, eh?"
>in 2003, the largest English corpora available were only on the order of billions of words
That sounds plausible. The largest corpus I know of off the top of my head that would have been available at the time is Project Gutenberg, which probably would have been in the mid-to-high hundreds of millions of word tokens. As of 2020, it has about 3 billion tokens and was about a factor of five larger in terms of number of works than it was c. 2004. I wouldn't be surprised if you could pad that out with USENET and FIDONET archives into the low billions of tokens.
>and that wouldn't have been enough for word2vec to be able to prove its superiority over other approaches
I am somewhat skeptical of this. It's been a long time since I've done hands-on machine learning work (since roughly 2003, as it happens), but my recollection was that the important things were training sets being significantly larger than the model itself (to force generalization) and covering a reasonable approximation of territory you want the model to be able to handle. More training data gets you better results, but with declining marginal returns. Unless word2vec is a much larger model than I'm assuming, hundreds of millions of word tokens seems like it would be enough to demonstrate the viability, strengths, and weaknesses of the concept.
After writing the above, I looked up the word2vec paper to check my intuitions about model size. It doesn't come out and say how many trainable weights there were, and it's a little over my head to quickly parse, but they're talking about three layers with 20-100 nodes in the output layer, 640 in the hidden layer, and a "projection layer size" of 640*8. If the projection layer size is in weights, that works out to 17k - 70k weights in the model. If the projection layer size is in nodes, that works out to about 3 million weights in the model. I think the former is more likely but my confidence of that is only moderate. Either way, the model is a lot smaller than the Project Gutenberg corpus.
While looking over the model, I also noticed that the training set for word2vec consisted of 6 billion word tokens, harvested from Google News archives. Looks like o1 was very wrong about the corpus size for word2vec, and also the corpus for word2vec only depended on shitposting from the perspective of an observer with a very low opinion of mainstream media outlets.
Paper link:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3781
Also, if I'm reading the paper correctly, word2vec was conceptually similar to several other approaches already in the literature (in terms of treating words as atomic token inputs to a neural network and outputting a vector with on the order of 100 dimensions), which had been trained with corpuses of tens or hundreds of millions of tokens. The innovation of word2vec was that it was actually a dumber model than the existing models, and the paper demonstrated that it could make up for the dumber design by being cheaper to train on large data sets and thus yielding as good or better performance for a given training cost.
This does actually reinforce a major aspect of your revised thesis, that corpus size was the rate-limiting step for post-word2vec LLM development, as word2vec allowed trading less hardware for larger training sets.
The older models are referenced to papers ranging from 2007 to 2011. Heck, I did something that waved very vaguely in the direction of word2vec as an undergraduate class project in 2001, using fortune files as my training set. I think I got a B.
Mine was missing several critical pieces, especially properly defining the problem: I was trying to highlight key words in a sentence and was using word length as my input parameter rather than assigning token values. Still, it was shaped just enough like word2vec that in hindsight I'm kicking myself a little for doing my thesis on missile interception problems instead of following up on that project.
A 'Mannerheim Defeat' is the natural corollary to a 'Pyrrhic Victory.'
Perhaps the most interesting case here is WW2 Japan, they probably did much better out of defeat than they could have done out of victory. Trade and enterprise was better for Japanese prosperity than imperialism and plunder.
I'm not sure we can say this without having a good model of what "Victorious Imperial Japan (VIJ)" in the post WW2 world looks like. I'm assuming they retain Korea and large chunks of China, as well (maybe are still fighting an insurgeny against Communists or Nationalist dead-enders), along with a lot of the former Dutch East Indies. Do they retain the Philippines?
My initial thought is that VIJ is probably a pretty strong player in the Non-Aligned Movement and probably has pretty close ties with newly-independent India, actually. If they win, they probably have most of their industry intact, along with a newly expanded empire to gain resources. They might have done way better than they ended up doing.
Yes, my assumption would be hegemony in Korea, China, SEA, probably up to India. Probably ends up something similar to Korea pre-war, with increasing degrees of autonomy as you get further away.
Thing is you don't need an empire to gain resources like oil - you can trade. As far as I know Japan didn't face any dramatic resource shortages (besides 70s oil shock I guess but East Asian empire isn't fixing that).
Japanese Industry recovered to pre-war levels in about 5 years I think, but the costs of running an empire (which frankly they weren't very good at) I think would have been much more harmful to their economy. In the modern era industry is what builds wealth not land or people.
Certainly they would have more international influence in the 20th century, but frankly that wouldn't be worth the cost, they reaped a large peace dividend from relying on American defence.
Interesting point. But it might not have been the defeat itself, it might have been more a matter of the US needing to prop up Japan during the cold war.
Anyone have info on the sources of Japanese reconstruction funding?
Sir, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick is on line three.
True, Japan had "won the peace" by the grace of the United States - but their military defeat was real and thorough. It wasn't a case of US forces barely holding out long enough for Japan to agree to some minor concession in return for an end to hostilities.
Is this a reference to Finland /Winter war?
Indeed. The Finns had nominally lost and had to give up a bit of territory - but their defeat ended up looking better than the Soviet "victory".
Scott, I really like the tweet you made in response to the thought experiment of the children drowning and how much of a moral incentive we have to strangers (did I understand it correctly?), and it makes me wonder how you choose what you make your blog posts on.
The responses to the original tweet were absolutely moronic. I want to attribute it to how bad twitter is, but even some people I've seen around made replies that patently missed Scott's fairly basic point about the drowning child thought experiment. I've never seen a lower IQ discussion involving Scott (not on Scott's side) before and was kinda shocked tbh.
I also really liked Scott's response, but I feel like it's engaging with the issue at a way higher level than the commenters he's responding to are going to be able to appreciate.
So many cases of Scott posting "I endorse doing good things!" And people dog piling him to instead endorse the opposite.
Well yes, obviously they're going to do that if they don't think those things are good.
With each long-Tweet Scott make Grok a better person.
Agree. Really liked it.
For context, the "tweet" (which is blog post length):
https://x.com/slatestarcodex/status/1886505797502546326
That's a good tweet. It makes a lot of solid points. I think it's broadly compatible with my "altruism makes you feel good" thesis up above, but obviously Scott goes way past that.
I might dispute his definition of "obligation", but that's really a quibble.
I really didn't like the tweet, but I'd be interested in seeing the steelman version in the form of a full-length blog post.
Also voicing support.
You've probably read some clever arguments for effective altruism, but what about altruism itself? What are the arguments in favor of (and against) acting with the motivation of promoting the welfare of someone else, even at cost to yourself?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/naAwghw54bCnD6ggk/notes-on-altruism attempts to address this question, and the related questions of how you can practice altruism well (on more dimensions than efficiency) and how you can become (more) genuinely altruistic.
It's meant to summarize the state-of-the-art wisdom on those topics, rather than to give my own answers.
I'd appreciate any suggestions for improvement from the ACⅩ crew.
The main argument for altruism is that it's a psychological motivator for many people, much like curiosity. As such, it's a terminal value, that is, something one does in and for itself, not as a means to something else. You act altruistically because it makes you feel good (like everything else one does in life).
Getting better is a matter of satisfying oneself. Again like curiosity, there are broad techniques for pursuing altruism, mostly centered around cultivating one's empathy. By paying attention to social cues, one develops experience in observing, then imagining, the happiness many people feel when someone does something nice for them. By imagining yourself in their place, yourself receiving the favor or gift, one can vicariously experience their happiness, thereby elevating your own happiness. This is a skill one can acquire by practice, although there may be neurological differences between people in terms of how much empathy they can experience (again like intellectual stimulation).
Obviously, different types of favors or gifts deliver varying amounts of happiness. I find it isn't much correlated to the size of the gift, but according to how much the gift is needed, given the circumstances they are in. Finding an unemployed person a job might be worth more to them than, say, a free house, when they already have one. Helping a lonely person meet a new friend (yourself?) might mean more to them than any amount of money. Gaining insight into "appropriateness" is also a skill one acquires via practice.
Institutionalized altruism (charity) is tricky. Due to bureaucracy, it isn't unheard of for people in some sort of need to receive services they don't actually want, or in the wrong amount, or only at a personal cost of some kind, so it's a good idea to check reviews of a non-profit service delivery organization before donating money, even if you like and appreciate the services they deliver.
"Sharing happiness" is very difficult to measure, though, so it will always require some degree of personal judgement.
If you define a virtue as something that helps the group, not the individual, altruism is much easier to defend.
I mean, I don't believe in it. Makes me sort of a bad person.
But there is no reason to, really. There's no a priori reason to be an altruist or egoist or any other -ist. Generally societies need to convince people to act in the collective interest of the society rather than their own or society falls apart, so ethical systems based on egoism haven't really been fleshed out too well. (Ayn Rand kind of tried.) You can act only to serve yourself--most sociopaths and narcissists do. It's perfectly logically consistent.
Heck, among the dark tetrad, sadism even raises the possibility of an effective *maltruism* (I'm going with this one), where you aim to *minimize* the welfare of others, usually an enemy. I can see why people don't want to announce they're doing this, but I think it motivates people in everyday life a lot more than anyone wants to admit. What else do you call 'owning the libs'? (Or 'afflicting the comfortable', though that one's kind of old.)
These days, I'm all about conflicting the affordable.
Obviously moral philosophy is fun and interesting, but it really reduces to: be nice and don't be a c**t. Because obviously. And I am much more comfortable having dealings of any kind with someone who thinks that is a complete statement of morality, than someone whose conduct is guided by divine instruction or by their interpretation of Shafer-Landau.
Altruism is a paradigm case of "because obviously" morality. And incidentally having the concept adopted by a bunch of SF tech bros is like them discovering the bicycle and bragging about their invention of effective rotarianismTM.
What does a non-c*nt do.in the Trolley Problem? Omelas?
Omelas, walk away. Trolley problem no right answer: there are wrong ones like not doing anything to protect oneself from prosecution, or because you want to see as many deaths as possible. If you act in good faith but get the wrong answer that's a philosophical error not a moral one
"Altruism is a paradigm case of "because obviously" morality."
Nothing obvious about it. Why shouldn't I be nasty and be a cunt? People who are bad do bad things and get ahead of the nice people, and there certainly isn't any justice in the world where they will inevitably get their come-uppance, instead of dying rich and at an advanced age in a comfortable bed.
I don't have any native instinct telling me "help that person", outside of what I have absorbed from being taught to be nice and don't be a cunt. Were it not for "guided by divine instruction", I'd happily let you all die in a ditch.
What if being nice means mollycoddling an only child, so they grow up to be an entitled, ineffectual brat?
Sure. Sentencing people to life in prison is also harsh. These are edge cases though
Hard cases make bad law, but there are always edge cases, and that means that there isn't a simple, one-sentence, uncontested reduction of morality down to "be nice".
I think you are missing the effective in EA. The idea is to be altruistic but effectively, and they work out what’s the most effective charities.
Hard to be angered by this.
He's literally replying to a comment that said "You've probably read some clever arguments for effective altruism, but what about altruism itself?"
I'm not angered I am an admirer, just amused by the implied claim that nobody thought of it before. In fact the good Samaritan is an effective altruist in that he doesn't say to the innkeeper Here's all my money, not Here's a lot of money but you can account to me for the balance. He gives him 2 denarii with more to come if he runs through that.
effective is a value judgement, and rationalist values tend to abstract or elegant solutions. This leads to ineffective charity in general, stepping over homeless people on the way to send malaria nets to africa.
telescopic philanthropism and mrs jellyby, and given how much rationalism may be a form of neo-Victorianism, well.
> effective is a value judgement, and rationalist values tend to abstract or elegant solutions.
Not really, if spending money on malaria nets is more useful than some other charity it’s good to know.
> telescopic philanthropism and mrs jellyby, and given how much rationalism may be a form of neo-Victorianism, well.
That’s true enough, but Scott has written a good piece on how intractable fixing homelessness is in SF.
This seems a bit extreme. Can you precisely quantify the good and bad of your action? Probably not down to arbitrary significant digits, but there is little question than "giving $10 dollars to the homeless man under your house" and "curing cancer forever" for example would be very different amounts of "good" done in the world. If EA does not get something right, you're at liberty to make an argument for why, where and how and I'm sure at least some will agree if it's sensible. And you can well argue that past a certain scale comparisons just aren't very realistic so may as well go with your gut. But it's not like the principle is completely untenable.
I guess i'd argue only local and small scale interventions really work in the long run, and can resist ideal capture. you have a local homeless guy, its concrete what to do with him.
but the more abstract you go its tougher and its tough now. curing cancer is actually "giving money to smart people you don't know." and even on the local level doing that seems to be harmful.
lot of people go further and try to solve problems 100 years down the line when we couldn't even anticipate or prevent problems five years ahead.
guess im more anarchic by nature
I do accept the general argument - I think longtermism of the sort "we must do X in order to guarantee there exist a fantastillion more people 10,000 years from now" is nonsense. But I think denying you can ever predict the consequences of your actions meaningfully enough to have any kind of guarantee that anything more complex than "give money to this local homeless guy" will have a net good effect is downright not grounded in reality.
Like, for example, "giving money to smart people you don't know" might not be a 100% guarantee of good. But overall medicine has certainly done a lot of good in the last 150 years, some bad too but overall way more good. If everyone thought and spent their efforts just on the small scale like you say, because anything else might risk doing something else than the exact intended purpose, we would overall be worse off. It would look like a rather petty and provincial world. There is a balance. If I donate to purchase malaria nets in countries beset by malaria I need to trust an intermediary organization based on the information I have, but if they CAN be trusted then I can save lots of lives with my money in a way I couldn't as easily if I just looked for people in danger near me.
> Hard to be angered by this.
I find emotions come very easily; one would simply have to disagree that effective altruism isn't just a 1 sentence argument and perhaphs aware vaguely of political movements and peoples as... political movements and people, with tradeoffs and flaws
Which leaves me none the wiser as to why you specifically dislike EA.
Me specifically? I dont remember making any such claim
For you wisdom, Id suggest not making claims about the limits of emotions or beliefs of nebulous others
You definitely started the sentence with I, moved to using the formal One, and then it’s relatively common in English to assume that the One is thus a more formal personal pronoun.
Anyway I’m not sure what you or whomever “One” is, is objecting too as the sentence wasn’t that clear on its own.